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The Holocaust In Poland: Truth and Reconciliation

The book "City of Death. Neighborhood pogroms against the Jews" by Dr. Miroslaw Tryczyka will appear in bookstores on October 21. Among the quotes in the pre-release hype for this book is this: "The Poles gradually learned how to kill the Jews." I realize that a single quote from a book no one has yet read is not reason enough to decide upon the merits of the work, but that particular phrasing is worrisome. This quote leads me to suspect that this book is yet another of a long line of attempts to prove that ‘The Poles’ were on a level with ‘The Germans’ as regards responsibility for the Holocaust, and thus it is probably not worthy of being utilized as a learning text. An objective scholar would have written “Some Poles gradually learned how to kill the Jews", not the broad accusation “The Poles”, as if all Poles were engaged in antisemitic murder. Not to make that important distinction can hardly be considered fair scholarship, and thus it becomes less than good educational material because of that lack of objectivity.

Hitler, in his speeches and writings, would go on at great and nauseous length about how ‘The Jews’ were this, or ‘The Jews’ were that, as if all Jews were of the same universal mind and could be lumped together as all-the-same. Hitler’s broad generalizations about ‘The Jews’ were despicable and hardly reasonable or objective. I maintain that broad, generalized statements about ‘The Poles’ must be considered equally suspect. An objective historian would be careful to use precise language, something that is an essential component of good teaching material. This requires objective qualifiers, in this case qualifiers indicating that not ALL Poles were murderers, but ‘some’, or ‘many’, or even ‘most’, as the case may be. I would certainly not approve a textbook that uses such broad, all-inclusive statements lacking appropriate nuance. It would not be Good Holocaust Education to do so.

All of us must deal with the realities of our individual and collective pasts in a manner consistent with our own needs and proclivities, and the various reactions to the Holocaust run the gamut of human emotional response. In a Truth and Reconciliation exercise, the victims and perpetrators together First get to the actual Truth of the events, and Second attempt to Reconcile the two sides on that basis. Some percentage of perpetrators will always continue to deny their guilt—or even the Truth of the events—no matter how great the evidence against them (these types neither desire nor deserve Redemption or forgiveness). Other perpetrators (or those who are members of accused groups) will completely confess their guilt—even to the point of accepting blame for events in which they took no part, and for evil intent they did not actually feel—in order to gain the Redemption they so desire. (The responses of a majority of those who participate in these Truth and Reconciliation processes fall somewhere between these two extremes.)

Truth and Reconciliation is a difficult process under ‘normal’ conditions, but in the case of the Holocaust as it occurred in Poland in WW2, it is doubly difficult. Being both a Jew and a Pole can make one feel doubly victimized. A certain impossible-to-accurately-quantify number of Poles stood on both sides, as victims and as perpetrators as well, often in point-of-fact, but just as often in a spiritual/empathic capacity.

The most important thing to keep in mind when discussing these issues is to never forget our shared humanity, which of course is the very element that made the Holocaust possible to begin with. In order for Truth and Reconciliation to succeed, both Truth AND Reconciliation must be considered in equal measure; and this is where that ‘shared humanity’ dynamic comes in. At some point, neither side can forever continue to look upon the other as evil, or as something less than human. The perpetrators themselves were all-too-human, despite the fact that the consequence of their actions were quite inhuman. I’m not calling upon anyone to Forgive the perpetrators; most of them do (or did) not deserve forgiveness. The most that can be achieved is understanding, and such understanding can never occur if we continue to consider the perpetrators as merely Evil, or Inhuman Monsters. Only by accepting that Evil lies to some degree in us all, can we Reconcile the Holocaust and grow past it spiritually.

At some point, merely expressing shock and horror when discussing the events of the Holocaust is hardly an adequate response. ‘I can’t believe they were so inhuman’, or ‘How could they have been’, or ‘It just makes me sick what those monsters did’, are all understandable reactions. But simply expressing outrage doesn’t allow one to move forward. Only an honest accounting of the events (Truth), and a willingness to finally accept that Human Nature itself is the perpetrator of this evil, can bring about any sort of meaningful Reconciliation. Surely all can see that this is preferable to forever believing that some of us are Good Guys, and others are perpetually Bad Guys. I maintain that there is a more healthy and productive way to live, and that it includes Truth and Reconciliation in the real world. And only by accepting our own Human Nature in all its various aspects can this be accomplished.

Copyright © 2015 Walther Johann von Löpp - All Rights Reserved


9/26/2015 Poll: One-Third of Americans Would Refuse to Hide a Jew During the Holocaust.

A few things on this hypothetical poll question:

1) The poll sample is too small for accuracy (so says this article), making the results less than reliable. Having said that, if the number were even half of what it is, it would still seem shameful and disturbing, taken at face value.

2) Many survivors have this in common: Most of those who escaped going to the camps were assisted at some point by the kindness of a German (and some in the camps as well). The anecdotes are many (and imagine how many more who didn’t survive were at some point assisted as well, but were never able to tell the story). Many of those who proffered these acts of kindness would not have thought of themselves as heroic after the fact, just as Medal Of Honor winners often do not see themselves as heroes (a common reaction). These same folks could possibly have not been able to foresee their courage before the fact as well.

3) No one can say exactly how they would react—and individual circumstances can determine such things in large part—in such a situation. Perhaps some of those who said they wouldn’t actually would have, in the event. People can often find courage where they did not previously suspect they had any when the need arises.

3) As well, perhaps some who said they would, wouldn’t. Again, circumstance would tend to dictate actions or inactions to a large extent.

My main in point is; no one could possibly accurately predict how they would act in such extreme conditions, making it an unfair question, IMV.




9/25/1937 Mussolini and Hitler meet in Berlin (Sep 25-28): From Hitler & Mussolini: The Secret Meetings, by Santi Corvaja (2001): "Mussolini saw Berlin from an angle that comprised most of its population. Hitler had the trains stop at the Kaiserdamm station so that he could line up on this interminable avenue and up the chancellery on the Wilhelmstrasse a few square miles of Germans. On the station platform, the entire Nazi leadership was present, two rows deep and in perfect order (apart from Goring, who stood one step ahead of the others): Goebbels, Himmler, Neurath, Schacht, and all the generals stood at rigid attention, waiting for the Duce to walk by. This disciplined review of the most illustrious representatives of the Nazi leadership impressed Mussolini favorably when compared to the picturesque disorder displayed by his own party leaders. Under a steady rain, we boarded the large open cars to take the longest possible route, allowing millions of Berliners to see the Duce and the Führer sitting side by side in the same car."

The heavy rain reinvigorated the visitors who had spent some four days almost uninterruptedly traveling by train. A state dinner was offered that evening at the Reich chancellery for two hundred high officials, including the entire diplomatic corps. Early the next morning, September 28, Mussolini visited the palace of Sans Souci, with its famous orchids, and the tomb of Frederick the Great in Potsdam. He then paid a visit to the Italian embassy and the Fascist house. The high points of the day were to be the lunch offered by Goring and the speech at the Maifeld. . . . .

An autumn thunderstorm poured a steady rain over Berlin. The marching bands continued playing military music, and when it was Mussolini's turn to step up to the podium with his prepared speech in hand, the rain turned into a violent storm. The Duce stuck to his program even though he could barely read his speech. What he said was difficult to understand because of the poor acoustics and his very approximate German with its distinctly southern accent.

"My visit to Germany and its Führer and the speech I am about to give are important events for me and in the history of our peoples. Fascism and Nazism are two expressions of the historical parallel positions that draw our two nations closer together, having become united during the same century . . . To the people all over the world questioning what will come out of this Berlin meeting, war or peace, both the Führer and I can answer together in a loud voice: peace."

Mussolini, handling his dates loosely, stated that the Axis between Rome and Berlin was born in the fall of 1935 and that it had worked well up to now "for an increasing understanding between our two countries and an effective policy of peace in Europe."

Well aware that the Italians, after 1914, were considered the champions of switching partners in the middle of the waltz when it came to alliances, Mussolini added pointedly: "Fascism has its code to which it intends to remain faithful, and this is also my own code: speak clearly and openly, and when we are friends, march together until the end." Mussolini's final words were the signal to the crowd to leave the Olympic stadium and return through the streets singing the national anthems of both countries. It was a truly Wagnerian third act to the meetings.

As Filippo Anfuso wrote: "I was still with Schmidt, who kept silent. We returned to the palace on the Wilhelmstrasse—the foreign ministry—where Mussolini was staying in von Hindenburg's former residence. We were brought into the Duce's apartment; he was drenched but pleased. He was at his best in the crowds, and that day, he'd had more than he could hope for . . . He was not so impressed by the choreography of the events, but the order and enthusiasm of the crowds had greatly impressed him." Mussolini returned to his room to change and call his mistress, Claretta Petacci: "It was a triumph. I want to feel you close to me at this special moment."

The next day, Mussolini had a farewell review of the troops at Charlottenburg. Again the sound of goose-stepping jackboots, cannon, and armored vehicles, enough for a lifetime. Finally, at 3:45 p.m. on September 29, the Italian train left Berlin to return to Rome. At the station came a final farewell from Hitler: "What I am for Germany, you, Duce, are for Italy. But what we shall both be for Europe will be judged by future generations."


The Value of Himmler

Night of 3rd-4th January 1942: Adolf Hitler, in private conversation:

The SS shouldn't extend its recruiting too much. What matters is to keep a very high level. This body must create upon men of the elite the effect of a lover. People must know that troops like the SS have to pay the butcher's bill more heavily than anyone else—so as to keep away the young fellows who only want to show off. Troops inspired by a fierce will, troops with an unbeatable turn-out—the sense of superiority personified!

As soon as peace has returned, the SS will have to be given its independence again—a complete independence. There has always been a rivalry between troops of the line and guardsmen. That's why it's a good thing that the SS should constitute, in relation to the others, an absolutely distinct world. In peace-time it's an elite police, capable of crushing any adversary. It was necessary that the SS should make war, otherwise its prestige would have been lowered. I am proud when an army commander can tell me that "his force is based essentially on an armored division and the SS Reich Division".

Himmler has an extraordinary quality. I don't believe that anyone else has had like him the obligation to deploy his troops in such constantly difficult conditions. In 1934, "the old gentleman" was still there. Even afterwards, a thousand difficulties arose.

Being convinced that there are always circumstances in which elite troops are called for, in 1922-23 I created the "Adolf Hitler Shock Troops". They were made up of men who were ready for revolution and knew that one day or another things would come to hard knocks. When I came out of Landsberg, everything was broken up and scattered in sometimes rival bands. I told myself then that I needed a bodyguard, even a very restricted one, but made up of men who would be enlisted without restriction, even to march against their own brothers. Only twenty men to a city (on condition that one could count on them absolutely) rather than a suspect mass.

It was Maurice, Schreck and Heyden who formed in Munich the first group of "tough 'uns", and were thus the origin of the SS. But it was with Himmler that the SS became that extraordinary body of men, devoted to an idea, loyal unto death. I see in Himmler our Ignatius de Loyola. With intelligence and obstinacy, against wind and tide, he forged this instrument. The heads of the SA, for their part, didn't succeed in giving their troops a soul. At the present time we have had it confirmed that every division of the SS is aware of its responsibility.

The SS knows that its job is to set an example, to be and not to seem, and that all eyes are upon it.

Note: Hitler’s comparison of Himmler to Ignatius de Loyola cannot be considered a compliment. Trevor-Roper, from the Introduction to Hitler’s Table Talk: “Himmler and Rosenberg both had the outlook of priests, and Hitler laughed at them both.”

Note: The source of the above quote is Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944
Introduction and Preface by Hugh Trevor-Roper
Copyright © Enigma Books 2000
First published in Great Britain
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, London
a division of the Orion Publishing Company



2/21/1943 Stalin to Churchill:

 The behavior of the Polish Government towards the USSR of late is, in the view of the Soviet Government, completely abnormal and contrary to all rules and standards governing relations between two allied states. The anti-Soviet slander campaign launched by the German fascists in connection with the Polish officers whom they themselves murdered in the Smolensk area, in German-occupied territory, was immediately seized upon by the Sikorski Government and is being fanned in every way in the Polish press. Far from countering the infamous fascist slander against the USSR, the Sikorski Government has not found it necessary to address questions to the Soviet Government or to request information on the matter.

The Hitler authorities, having perpetrated a monstrous crime against the Polish officers, are now staging a farcical investigation, using for the purpose certain pro-fascist Polish elements picked by themselves in occupied Poland, where everything is under Hitler’s heel and where no honest Pole can open his mouth. Both the Sikorski and Hitler Governments have enlisted for their ‘investigation’ the aid of the International Red Cross, which under a terror regime of gallows and wholesale extermination of the civil population, is forced to take part in the investigation farce directed by Hitler. It is obvious that this ‘investigation,’ which, moreover, is being carried out behind the Soviet Governments back, cannot enjoy the confidence of anyone with a semblance of honesty. The fact that the anti-Soviet campaign has been started simultaneously in the German and Polish press and follows identical lines is indubitable evidence of contact and collusion between Hitler - the Allies’ enemy - and the Sikorski Government in this hostile campaign.

At a time when the peoples of the Soviet Union are shedding their blood in a grim struggle against Hitler Germany and bending their energies to defeat the common foe of the freedom-loving democratic countries, the Sikorski Government is striking a treacherous blow at the Soviet Union to help Hitler tyranny. These circumstances compel the Soviet Government to consider that the present Polish Government, having descended to collusion with the Hitler Government, has, in practice, severed its relations of alliance with the USSR and adopted a hostile attitude to the Soviet Union. For those reasons the Soviet Government has decided to interrupt relations with that Government. I think it necessary to inform you of the foregoing, and I trust that the US Government will appreciate the motives that necessitated this forced step on the part of the Soviet Government.

February 11, 1946

Note: On February 11, 1946, former German Field Marshall von Paulus—who'd surrendered Stalingrad and subsequently worked for the Soviets—testifies for the prosecution. Below is a behind-the-scenes account of the reactions of the Nuremberg Defendants by an eye-witness with a privileged perspective and excellent observational skills.

Nuremberg Tribunal – Occupied Germany - February 11, 1946

LUNCH HOUR: I showed newspapers at lunch. Jodl blew up at the headline, " HESS FLEW TO ENGLAND ON HITLER'S ORDER " in the Nuremberg paper. "That is a dirty lie! I never in my life saw a man in such a fury as when Hitler heard that Hess had flown to England. He was in such a rage he was fit to be tied!"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he was afraid the Italians would think he was negotiating peace behind their backs and leaving them in the lurch. He was mad as hell!"

Jodl and Keitel then started talking about von Paulus' expected testimony this afternoon. "Of course, those generals are just talking now to preserve their own existence," Jodl assured me.

"Do you mean that they were forced to testify under pressure?"

"No, but they realized that they would never return to Germany regardless of whether Germany won the campaign or not, and they had to decide to make their peace with the Russians."

"But couldn't von Paulus have decided that Hitler was destroying Germany in a reckless adventure, and considered himself absolved of his oath of loyalty to Hitler?"

Here Keitel flared up. "Then he should have taken that stand before he was captured!—He should not have accepted his iron cross, his promotions to Colonel-General and Field Marshal, his sword, and other decorations, and keep sending messages of loyalty to the Fuhrer—that is my viewpoint.—I always stuck up for him with the Fuhrer. It is a shame for him to be testifying against us."

"He swore loyalty to the Fuhrer right up to the last minute," Jodl put in "—even after his position was hopeless."

Suddenly Doenitz popped up. "They cost us the lives of thousands of German women and children, by causing defection in the ranks."

I couldn't follow Doenitz' argument. "I thought it was the unnecessary prolongation of the war that caused the unnecessary loss of life."

"No, it was the undermining of morale by their disruptive propaganda. If we had collapsed in January, there would have been still more loss of life. At least I made an orderly peace." It was an obvious non sequitur, and Speer looked at me, knowing I knew his views about the needless slaughter and destruction since January 1945. He did not want to rebuff his friend, Doenitz, in open discussion, however.

Fritzsche caught up the propaganda angle, and showed his friendship for von Paulus, "It wasn't von Paulus who directed that propaganda campaign anyway."

"I am not talking about von Paulus. I mean that Seydlitz group. They were preaching out-and-out treason," Doenitz insisted.

AFTERNOON SESSION: In the afternoon, von Paulus testified that Germany had prepared its "criminal attack" on Russia at least as far back as September 3, 1940, according to his own knowledge, thus violating its Non-Aggression Pact with Russia. He also denounced the "irresponsible policies" of Hitler, and implicated Keitel, Jodl, and Goering in the plans for aggressive war and the senseless sacrifice of German lives.

During the afternoon intermission, the military section blew up in an uproar, and they argued with heated invective with their attorneys and each other. "Ask that dirty pig if he knows he's a traitor! Ask him if he has taken out Russian citizenship papers!" Goering shot at his attorney.

Raeder saw me watching and shouted at Goering, "Careful! The enemy is listening!"

Goering kept right on shouting to his attorney, and there was real bedlam around the prisoners' dock. "We've got to disgrace that traitor!" he roared. Keitel was still arguing with his attorney, and Raeder passed him a slip with the same warning.

At the other end of the dock, the attitude was more sympathetic toward von Paulus. "You see," said Fritzsche, "that is the tragedy of the German people right there. He was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea." Von Neurath, Seyss-Inquart, and Schacht also made sympathetic remarks about von Paulus.

"The military section seems to think he is a traitor," I said.

"Nothing of the sort," said Funk gloomily, "it is a human tragedy."

Full Trial Transcript

----------------------
Gilbert, G. M.
Nuremberg diary / by G.M. Gilbert.—1st Da Capo Press ed.
Copyright © 1947 by G. M. Gilbert
Copyright renewed © 1974 by G. M. Gilbert
http://books.google.com/books/about/Nuremberg_diary.html?id=Fc8OAQAAIAAJ
-----------------------



February 8, 1946

Note: On February 8, 1946, Chief Russian Prosecutor, General Roman Rudenko, made his opening address before the Nuremberg Tribunal. Below is a behind-the-scenes account of the reactions of the Nuremberg Defendants by an eye-witness with a privileged perspective and excellent observational skills.

Nuremberg Tribunal – Occupied Germany - February 8 - OPENING ADDRESS

Goering looked rather depressed as I pointed out that the courtroom was full for the first time in weeks, to hear the chief Russian prosecutor, General Rudenko, make his opening address. "Yes, they want to see the show," he said scornfully. "—You will see—this trial will be a disgrace in 15 years."

MORNING SESSION: General Rudenko began the prosecution by the Russian delegation with an impassioned condemnation of the fascist invaders. "...The defendants knew that cynical mockery at the laws and customs of war constituted the gravest crime. They knew it, but they hoped that the total war, by bringing victory, would also secure their immunity. But victory did not arrive on the heels of their crimes. Instead came complete and unconditional surrender of Germany, and with it came the hour of grim reckoning for all the outrages they committed . . .

"When entire regions of flourishing countryside were turned into desert areas, and the soil was drenched with the blood of those executed, it was the work of their hands, of their organization, their instigation, their leadership. And just because the masses of the German people were made to participate in these outrages, because . . . the defendants for years had poisoned the conscience and the mind of an entire generation of Germans by developing in them the conceit of 'the chosen,' the morals of cannibals and the greed of burglars, can it be said that the guilt of the Hitlerite conspirators is any less great or grave? . . .

"The criminal conspiracy aimed at the establishment of a 'new order' in Europe. This 'new order' was a regime of terror, by which, in the countries seized by the Hitlerites, all democratic institutions were abolished and civil rights of the population abrogated and those countries themselves were plundered and rapaciously exploited. The populations of those countries, and of Slav countries first of all, were subjected to merciless persecutions and mass extermination. Russians, Ukrainians, Belo-Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbians, Slovenes suffered more than others. The conspirators failed to achieve their objectives. The valiant struggle of the peoples of democratic countries, led by the coalition of the three great powers—The Soviet Union, The United States of America, and Great Britain—resulted in the liberation of the European countries from the Hitlerite yoke. The victory of the Soviet and of the Allied armies destroyed the criminal plans of Hitlerite conspirators, and liberated the people of Europe from the terrible threat of Hitlerite domination."

LUNCH HOUR: (During the address Goering and Hess took off their headphones as a gesture that the address was not worth listening to.) When I asked Goering why he hadn't been listening, he said that he knew in advance what the Russians were going to say, but he was amazed to hear them talking about Poland—he had caught that word when General Rudenko mentioned aggression against various countries. "I did not think that they would be so shameless as to mention Poland," he said.

"Why do you consider that shameless?" I asked.

"Because they attacked at the same time we did.—It was all a prearranged affair."

Hess said he didn't have to listen to foreigners slandering his country. (A significant repetition of his statement with regard to his amnesia on the second day of the trial.) I pointed out that even if he disagreed, it was necessary to hear what they had to say, in order to prepare his own defense. "That is a matter that concerns only me," he retorted.

After lunch Goering started in again on the theme of how shameless it was of the Russians to mention the violation of human rights. "I wonder if they will have the nerve to mention that in their newspapers," he said to Fritzsche.

"No, that is not the kind of stuff they like to print in Russian newspapers."

Here von Schirach laughed, "Why, when they mentioned Poland, I thought I'd die."

As I joined the conversation, Fritzsche mentioned that one thing the Russians brought up which he had not known about, was the extermination camp behind the German lines, in which Russian women and children were exterminated in a pit, and no buildings to mark the site. Goering retorted that all the atrocities the Russians were bringing up were Russian atrocities which they were blaming on the Germans.

"You will have a hard time proving that the Russians murdered their own citizens to blame you for atrocities," I said.

"How do you know what I can prove?" Goering snapped back fiercely. Fritzsche also asked him what he meant by that. "I saw the official reports and pictures myself!" he bellowed.

"Where are they?" Fritzsche asked.

"In Geneva!" Goering roared, becoming increasingly furious over the needling he was getting.

"Oh, but that Geneva report is an entirely different matter," Fritzsche explained, as if Goering didn't know it. Goering kept fuming and splattering invectives in all directions.

At this point Rosenberg came to Goering's support with: "Everything they say about Nazi atrocities you can say about the Communists."

Goering calmed down long enough to take another tack. "It's all right—as I've always said, the world is round, and turns around, and some day the tables will be turned—"

I expressed the opinion that Germany's day of ascendancy was past, and it was now a question of preserving the peace and rebuilding what Hitler had destroyed, but not for any dreams of empire.

"What do you mean by that?" Goering demanded.

"I mean that the day of German world power and aggression is past."

"I hope you don't have to see that day," he retorted threateningly.

Fritzsche caught him up on that. "No, I agree that Germany's day of power is past, and I am even opposed to encouraging the people ever to risk regaining it!" Von Schirach agreed, timidly.

"But I happen to be a patriot nationalist!" Goering challenged.

"I think I have some patriotism too—and some sympathy for the German people besides," Fritzsche replied. "That is why I don't want to see my people led back into such a mad adventure ever again." Von Schirach nodded.

"Oh, you're chicken-hearted little boys. What do you know about patriotism. Chicken-hearted, that is what you are! Phooey!"

Goering dropped some more scornful remarks, and then it was time to go down to the courtroom. As he passed me, Goering gave the parting shot, "I believe the German people will rise again!"

AFTERNOON SESSION: [As the Russians continued with evidence of German aggression and atrocities, Goering still tried to look bored.]

General Rudenko continued: "Together with the chief prosecutors of the United States of America, Great Britain, and France, I charge the defendants with having prepared and carried out a perfidious attack on the peoples of my country and on all freedom loving nations.

"I accuse them of the fact that, having initiated a world war, they, in violation of the fundamental rules of international law and of the treaties to which they were signatories, turned war into -an instrument of extermination of peaceful citizens; an instrument of plunder, violence, and pillage . . .

"Now, when as a result of the heroic struggle of the Red Army and of the Allied Forces, Hitlerite Germany is broken and overwhelmed, we have no right to forget the victims who have suffered. We have no right to leave unpunished those who organized and were guilty of monstrous crimes.

"In the name of the sacred memory of millions of innocent victims of the fascist terror, for the sake of the consolidation of peace throughout the world, for the sake of the future security of nations, we are presenting the defendants a just and complete bill which must be paid. This is a bill on behalf of all mankind, a bill backed by the will and the conscience of all freedom-loving nations. May justice be done."

EVENING

Fritzsche's Cell: I dropped in on Fritzsche in the evening. In the course of the conversation I mentioned Goering's accusation that Roosevelt had forced the war on Germany. To my surprise Fritzsche said that he had discussed that with Goering and Ribbentrop. I asked him what brought that up.

"I was only explaining why I had said so in my radio speeches. Naturally at that time I did not know anything about Hitler's deliberate plans for aggressive war. I only knew that Ambassadors Bullitt and Biddle were giving other countries assurance that America would support them."

"You mean that America would not stand by and see Hitler conquer all of Europe. If Roosevelt did that, you may be sure it was a desperate attempt to prevent war, not precipitate it. God knows he tried everything possible—pleading, conceding, threatening. Hitler obviously simply could not be appeased, and Roosevelt must have realized that the only language he could understand was the threat of force. It was clearly Hitler's intention to make and break treaties, and attack one small country after another until he was strong enough to attack the big powers."

"That is what I realize now—but then I did not.—I thought he was threatening Germany.—But Goering must have misunderstood me. I must sound him out."

Full Trial Transcript

----------------------
Gilbert, G. M.
Nuremberg diary / by G.M. Gilbert.—1st Da Capo Press ed.
Copyright © 1947 by G. M. Gilbert
Copyright renewed © 1974 by G. M. Gilbert
http://books.google.com/books/about/Nuremberg_diary.html?id=Fc8OAQAAIAAJ
-----------------------

1/29/2015

Hitler’s Table Talk - 9/6/1942

Hitler: The concentration of effort in the defense of Stalingrad is a grave mistake on the part of the Russians. The victor in war is he who commits the fewest number of mistakes, and who has, also, a blind faith in victory. If the Russians had not decided to make a stand at Stalingrad, they would have done so elsewhere; but it does prove that a name can give to a place a significance which bears no relation to its intrinsic value. For the Bolsheviks it would have been an evil omen to lose Stalingrad—and so they still hold Leningrad! For this reason I have always refused to allow my name, or that of any of my colleagues, to be given to anything exposed to the hazards of war—be it a town or a battleship. It is precisely in time of war that people become most superstitious. The Romans, including Julius Caesar, were a superstitious people; although it is quite possible that Caesar was not really superstitious, but simply bowed to public opinion. I myself would never launch an attack on the thirteenth, not because I myself am superstitious, but because others are. Dates play no part in my life. I have frequently had setbacks on days deemed propitious, and successes on days condemned as unlucky.

Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944
Introduction and Preface by Hugh Trevor-Roper
Copyright © Enigma Books 2000

 January 10, 1946

Note: On January 10, 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal presented in court—and to the world—massive documented evidence against Hans Frank and Julius Streicher. Below is a behind-the-scenes account of the reactions of the Nuremberg Defendants by an eye-witness with a privileged perspective and excellent observational skills.

From Nuremberg Diary, by G. M. Gilbert (Formerly Prison Psychologist at the Nuremberg Trial of the Nazi War Criminals)


Frank's Cell: Frank's attorney startled those who knew Frank by asking whether the Vatican was helping the prosecution, and saying that in that case his client would have to leave the Church. Before court this morning I asked Frank what he meant by that.

He explained that his attorney had misunderstood him. He merely wanted to know whether the Catholic Church, who should be far above all worldly affairs, was helping the prosecution, but he had not said he would leave the Church. He had merely said it would put all the German Catholics in a difficult position. "It was just another one of those times when I suddenly get startled [gasps] and jump right in . . . It is interesting to observe one's own reactions. It is as though I am two people.—Me, myself, Frank here—and the other Frank, the Nazi leader. And sometimes I wonder how that man Frank could have done those things. This Frank looks at the other Frank and says, 'Hmm, what a louse you are Frank!—How could you do such things?—You certainly let your emotions run away with you, didn't you?'—Isn't that interesting? I am sure as a psychologist you must find that very interesting.—Just as if I were two different people. I am here, myself—and that other Frank of the big Nazi speeches over there on trial.—Fascinating, isn't it?"

(Very fascinating, in a schizoid sort of way.)

MORNING SESSION: Colonel Baldwin summarized the proof of charges against Frank as Governor-General of Poland by reading excerpts from his own diaries: "Before the German people are to experience starvation, the occupied territories and their people shall be exposed to starvation . . . This territory in its entirety is the booty of the German Reich."—"I have not been hesitant in declaring that when a German is shot, up to 100 Poles shall be shot too."—"I am pleased to report to you officially, Party Comrade Sauckel, that we have up to now supplied 800,000 workers for the Reich."

Mr. Griffith-Jones then cited Streicher's speeches and writings as proof of his moral guilt in inciting to mass murder (from a speech in 1926): "For thousands of years the Jew has been destroying nations. Let us make a new beginning today so that we can annihilate the Jews." Pornographic pseudo-science:

"The male sperm in cohabitation is partially or completely absorbed by the female, and thus enters her bloodstream. One single cohabitation of a Jew with an Aryan woman is sufficient to poison her blood forever. Together with the alien albumen she has absorbed the alien soul. Never again will she be able to bear purely Aryan children, even when married to an Ayran . . . Now we know why the Jew uses every artifice of seduction in order to ravish German girls at as early an age as possible; why the Jewish doctor rapes his patients while they are under anesthetic. He wants the German girl and the German woman to absorb the alien sperm of the Jew."

Fantastic stories of ritual murder were also contained in the Stürmer.

LUNCH HOUR: At lunch Frank was beaming. "It was wonderful how the judge pointed out that one quotation was taken out of context—just marvelous! So fair!—so upright! It restores my faith in human nature. A thing like that really inspires me.—You know how I get these sudden emotional inspirations." Here he imitated the gasp of sudden astonishment which he had demonstrated both for his reaction to the Führer's image and to the mention of the Vatican. It seems to suggest a mixture of fear and admiration—the luring ambivalence toward the parental authoritative figure. "I still wonder how I could have said and done the things I did.—I was just too impetuous, I guess. Anyway, isn't it funny how the German mania for making complete records of everything works out? Now you have plenty of material for documents for the trial. Hahaha!"

"Are you sorry you handed over your diaries now?" I asked.

"No, not at all. God knows what I did, so mankind might as well know the whole truth too—all of it—the good and the bad. I have no illusions about my fate as I've always told you. Now only the truth remains."

The conversation then turned to Streicher, who was being avoided like the plague, since the revolting pornography and stupidity of his quotations was still fresh in everybody's mind. A few remarks were made to the effect that he never would have lasted even as a publisher, if Hitler hadn't supported him, and even Rosenberg ridiculed his pseudo-scientific approach to racial anti-Semitism.

Downstairs Streicher said to me, " A doctor wrote that piece about the breeding of the German race, and animal breeders have told me that it is so.—I didn't mean to insult anybody."


AFTERNOON SESSION: Mr. Griffith-Jones showed that besides publishing a paper full of pornography, ritual murder, rape stories, and other lurid incitements to persecution of the Jews, Streicher found anti-Semitism profitable as Gauleiter of Franconia. Much of the proceeds from the Aryanization of Jewish property failed to reach the Reich treasury. That was the ostensible reason for his removal from office in 1940, but the Stürmer continued to serve its purpose.

In the intermission Göring said to Hess, "Well, at least we did one good thing: getting that prick kicked out of office." Hess agreed, saying it was hard to prevail upon the Gauleiters to agree. "But the really tough job was getting the Führer to agree," Göring said. "You can thank me for that." (He did not mention, however, that his real motive for getting rid of Streicher was a personal peeve over the latter's rumor-mongering that Göring's child must have been a test-tube baby because he didn't have what it takes. Benno Martin, the police chief of Nuremberg, and General Bodenschatz told me the inside story, and Streicher himself confirmed it.)

----------------------
Gilbert, G. M.
Nuremberg diary / by G.M. Gilbert.—1st Da Capo Press ed.
Copyright © 1947 by G. M. Gilbert
Copyright renewed © 1974 by G. M. Gilbert
http://books.google.com/books/about/Nuremberg_diary.html?id=Fc8OAQAAIAAJ
-----------------------

1/1/2015: Efraim Zuroff: Brussels faces the revival of fascism in Eastern Europe


Croatian Ante Pavelic, founder of the Ustasha movement is personally responsible for genocide

Try to imagine the following scenario: next spring for the 70th anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler, a memorial service is held in the center of Berlin in one of the most important churches in the city, which by chance happens to be located a few hundred meters from the offices of the Jewish Community. This Mass attracts thousands of people who come to honor the founder of the Third Reich. Obviously, such an event seems impossible in the Federal Republic today for a plethora of legal and other issues, including not least Hitler entertained rather tense relations with the Church.

However, such an event took place there two days in Zagreb, Croatia, where several hundred people attended a memorial service in memory of Ante Pavelic, head of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) established by the Germans and the Italians after the occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, and one of the greatest mass murderers in the history of World War II.

Pavelic is the founder of Ustasha, a fascist movement he created in the late twenties, and was brought to power in the satellite countries in 1941. He was personally responsible for the genocide committed by members of its party in the region under its control, where hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma were brutally murdered, most in concentration camps throughout the territory of Croatia, the largest of which was the Jasenovac, where at least 100,000 innocent people were murdered and that has since been dubbed "Auschwitz of the Balkans".

After the war, Pavelic was able to escape to Argentina via the infamous "ratlines," the evacuation network founded by the Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal with the help of a Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganovic to help war criminals Nazis to reach South America and the Middle East. He was tracked down in Buenos Aires by the Yugoslav secret service and was wounded in an assassination attempt. He died of his injuries in Madrid two years later in 1959.

To date, however, Pavelic remains a hero to many Croats, which is why this memorial service Sunday. One would assume that almost a quarter of a century later, Croatia became a democracy, and having recently been accepted as a full member of the European Union, it would turn the page of the adulation for one of the major war criminals of World War II, but unfortunately a strong nostalgia arises from a part of the Croatian society and ceremonies like Sunday mass always attract many participants.

In this regard, the fact that two senior priests have led the ceremony is also a source of concern. One of them, the Dominican Vjekoslac Lasic is known to have taken the initiative in this Mass, and his eulogy at the funeral of the former commander of Jasenovac, Dinko Sakic, during which, he said, that Sakic has not met all the Ten Commandments [Thou shalt not kill, for example], it could still serve as a model for Croatia. This type of preaching by the clergy helps to promote the ideology of the Ustasha movement, made of hatred for the alleged enemies of Croatia, Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats, who were all victims of Sakic and his fellow murderers in Jasenovac and other lesser-known concentration camps.

At the time of this writing, no political leader or Croat religious, or any other public figure has condemned Sunday's ceremony, which is another indication of the government's failure to eradicate the vestiges of fascism and intolerance. One might attribute their silence during the presidential elections, the first round is completed without a winner, but it is a sad comment on the status of an official member countries of the European Union.

The time has come to Brussels to finally confront fascism and the resurgence of ultra-nationalist ideas, which instead of being eradicated once and for all by the European liberal democracy are being revived in Europe in the post-communist East .

Note: Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the office of the Centre in Israel. His most recent book is: Operation Last Chance; the search for a man to bring Nazi criminals to justice.

His website is: www.operationlastchance.org and he can be followed on Twitter @EZuroff

Note: The above is a translation of a short article http://www.i24news.tv/fr/opinions/56306-150101-la-croatie-rend-hommage-a-l-instaurateur-du-auschwitz-des-balkans) posted by Efraim Zuroff (@EZuroff) on Twitter. Any mistakes in translation are mine and the on-line translator I used, NOT Mr. Zuroff's, or the publishers of the article.

 12/31/2014: Efraim Zuroff: Chasing the Last Nazi War Criminal
By Florian Rinke

Efraim Zuroff is a 66 -year-old historian and yet he works daily in a race against time chasing the last living Nazi war criminals as director of the Israeli Simon Wiesenthal Center. He wants them to be called to account before they die. Annually, the Center publishes the a list of the ten most wanted Nazi criminals. Now the center has launched a new call.

Since it was announced that Alois Brunner, the right hand of Adolf Eichmann in the deportation of Jews, was dead in December. He has been angry, although Zuroff knew that Brunner is living in Syria and was protected. "I 'm still hoping that we can bring him to justice."

The Eichmann trial had been on New York TV when Zuroff was twelve. He'd never heard about the Holocaust in the US, the Jews had never really talked about the Holocaust. It was not until the Six - Day War in June 1967 awoke in him the feeling that his people could be threatened and had to be prevented from repeating itself something like the Holocaust. He went to Israel .

Since then, the desire for justice drives him. "Hundreds of thousands were involved in the Holocaust," he says. "The remaining Nazi criminals are sometimes referred to as small fish 'because they were just sergeant or sergeant and none of the major commanders. My answer is: If it was the person who killed your grandmother, it is the largest fish in the sea for you. "

From Jerusalem, the Center therefore collects information from all over the world on alleged war criminals. Zuroff describes his job as a mixture of detective, lobbyist and historian. On retirement he thinks not. He doesn't feel sorry for any of them. "I 've never met a Nazi criminal who had regretted his actions."

Note: The above is a Google translation of a short article (http://www.rp-online.de/politik/efraim-zuroff-jagt-die-letzten-nazi-verbrecher-aid-1.4767023) posted by Efraim Zuroff (@EZuroff) on Twitter. Any mistakes in translation are mine and the on-line translator I used, NOT Mr. Zuroff's, or the publishers of the article.

 Thursday December 25, 2014 12:00 AM
 
Syrian Accountability unpunished Nazi
 
RITTIGSTEIN W. BEATRIZ DE | EL UNIVERSAL
 
 For days, Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, confirmed the news of the death of Alois Brunner (above), one of the most wanted war criminals in the world.  He was a captain of the German SS during World War II;  top lieutenant of Adolf Eichmann.  Then he took refuge in Syria under the pseudonym Dr. Georg Fischer.  He was protected by the Syrian regime, advised Assad especially in torture techniques against dissidents.
 
 Zuroff revealed that the Nazi officer in Syria probably died four years ago.  The CSW removed his name from the list of wanted Nazis, but Zuroff said that could not validate his physical disappearance forensically due to the civil war;  However, "the information came from someone trusted."
 
 Zuroff said that "the only interview he gave was in a German magazine in 1985, where he was asked if he had any regrets and said 'My only regret is that we did not kill more Jews'".  Indeed, Brunner organized mass arrests and deportations from all parts of Europe occupied by the Nazis to death camps.  Responsible for the slaughter of some 130,000 Jews, he took part in Nazi excesses in Austria, France, Greece and Slovakia.  In 1954 he was tried in absentia and sentenced to death by a French court;  but, despite repeated requests for extradition by Germany, France and Austria, the Damascus regime maintained its refusal, ignoring the issue.
 
 In relation to the evidence of the veracity of place of residence of Brunner, after the denials of Syrian representatives, the German magazine Bunte, in the mid-80s, published a series of photographs showing him performing daily activities in his house in a luxury complex on the outskirts of the Syrian capital.
 
 With the Brunner case, Assad showed that beyond its territorial claims against Israel, the conflict is based on anti-Semitic feelings. They approved the idea that the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis should go unpunished.  In addition, the affair proves that the human quality of Assad resembles that of Brunner himself, for it should be noted Hafez crimes and today, the Bashar regime.

Note: The above is a Google translation of a short article posted by Efraim Zuroff (@EZuroff) on Twitter. Any mistakes in translation are mine and the on-line translator I used, NOT Mr. Zuroff's, or the publishers of the article.
 
http://www.eluniversal.com/opinion/141225/responsabilidad-siria-en-impunidad-de-nazis

Note: On December 13 & 14, 1945, the Nuremberg Tribunal presented in court—and to the world—massive documented evidence of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. Below is a behind-the-scenes account of the reactions of the Nuremberg Defendants by an eye-witness with a privileged perspective and excellent observational skills.

From Nuremberg Diary, by G. M. Gilbert (Formerly Prison Psychologist at the Nuremberg Trial of the Nazi War Criminals)

December 14, 1945
Extermination in Poland

The momentary flair of Nazi inspiration which flickered up after the Nazi films was smothered completely by the devastating evidence of calculated mass murders brought out in yesterday's and today's sessions. Before the session started this morning, Baldur von Schirach was still struggling to cling to the remnants of the Goering inspired cynicism and skepticism with respect to the trial.

"I doubt very much whether a German woman could have deliberately had lampshades made out of human skin," he said.

"Then it was done by a German man and she accepted it as a matter of course," I retorted. "What difference does it make?"

Schirach sat back with a despondent look.

Keitel caught my eye and whispered "Furchtbar!—Furchtbar!" (terrible). He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands to indicate that he renounced the whole thing with horror.

MORNING SESSION: Major Walsh read some excerpts of evidence on starvation and killing of Jews in Poland.

From Frank's diary: "That we sentence 1,200,000 Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally. It is a matter of course that should the Jews not starve to death it would, we hope, result in a speeding up of anti-Jewish measures."

From SS General Stroop's report on the razing of the Warsaw ghetto: " . . . I therefore decided to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on tire . . . Not infrequently, the Jews stayed in the burning buildings until, because of the heat and the fear of being burned alive, they preferred to jump down from the upper stories . . . With their bones broken, they still tried to crawl across the street into blocks of buildings which had not yet been set on fire or were only partially in flames . . . Their stay in the sewers also ceased to be pleasant after the first week . . . A great number of Jews who could not be counted were exterminated by blowing up sewers and dugouts . . . Only through the continuous and untiring work of all involved did we succeed in catching a total of 56,065 Jews whose extermination can be proved. To this should be added the number of Jews who lost their lives in explosion or fires."

During the intermission, Jodl shouted loudly and vehemently. "The dirty arrogant SS swine! Imagine writing a 75-page boastful report on a little murder expedition, when a major campaign fought by soldiers against a well-armed enemy takes only a few pages!"

I talked to Frank about those cold-blooded statements in which he spoke of letting a million Jews starve on the rations allowed. He admitted he had made such statements in his days of blind Nazi fanaticism, but had turned all his diaries and writings over to the American Military Government upon capture, so that the truth of the whole ugly episode could finally be brought to light, let the axe fall where it may.

Major Walsh continued reading documentary evidence of the extermination of Jews at Treblinka and Auschwitz. A Polish document stated: "All victims had to strip off their clothes and shoes, which were collected afterwards, whereupon all victims, women and children first, were driven into the death chambers . . . Small children were simply thrown inside."

While this was going on, Governor Frank was keeping a diary: On December 16, 1941 he wrote: "The Jews for us also represent extraordinarily malignant gluttons. We have approximately 2,500,000 of them in the Government General." On January, 1944, he wrote, "At the present time we still have in the Government General perhaps 100,000 Jews."

LUNCH HOUR: Hitler was the subject of conversation both at Frank's table and Goering's table. At the former, Hess and Ribbentrop had both raised the question whether Hitler had known about all those things. Frank scornfully replied that it would have been impossible otherwise. He insisted it was Hitler's direct command.

In the meantime, Keitel had apparently raised the issue at Goering's table as to whether the Fuhrer shouldn't have stood by his followers and assumed responsibility for his commands.

"Oh, but after all, think of his position," said Goering, trying desperately to stem the open defection in the ranks.

"Sure, the position of chief war criminal!" I said, standing between the two tables.

"Be that as it may, he was our sovereign. It would be intolerable for me to have him standing before a foreign court. You men knew the Fuehrer. He would be the first one to stand up and say, 'I have given the orders, and I take full responsibility.' But I would rather die 10 deaths than have the German sovereign subjected to such humiliation." The others did not seem at all impressed by this dramatic loyalty.

Frank retorted across the tables, "Other sovereigns have stood before courts of law!" hurling open defiance at Goering for the first time since the trial started. His face was red with mounting rage. "He got us into this, and all that there is left is to tell the truth!"

Keitel, Doenitz, Funk, and Schirach suddenly got up and left Goering's table contrary to their usual custom, and Goering found himself sitting alone. To cover this up he rose and came over as if he had intended to continue the conversation with me. "You know," he said confidentially, "it is not my purpose to exaggerate my love for the Fuhrer, because you know how he treated me at the end.—But, I don't know what to say—I think maybe in the last year and a half or so, he just left things to Himmler—"

"But they must have had a definite understanding; otherwise it would have been impossible for such large scale horrors to occur."

"I suppose Himmler must have reported so and so many deaths as inevitable or something like that—and in the war, with so many deaths on all sides—I don't know—." I walked away.

Schirach had joined Fritzsche, Speer, and Seyss-Inquart. After exchanging some wisecracks with me about the Hitler Youth getting older and grayer and wiser, Schirach said seriously: "But we're not going to live long enough to use our new-found wisdom. After today, it's all over. I wouldn't blame the court if they just said, 'Chop off all their heads I' Even if there are a couple of innocent ones among the 20, it wouldn't make a bit of difference among the millions who were murdered."

"I understand they read that Vienna speech of yours yesterday."

"Yes, that is the one we discussed at our first long talk." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "It is too late now."

The conversation shifted back to Hitler. "I told you I had the impression that he had gone crazy in '43," Schirach said to Fritzsche.

"I had that impression in '42," Fritzsche replied.

It was then time to return to the courtroom.

Downstairs Frank was openly lecturing the others on the necessity for telling the whole truth for the German people and the world to know. Rosenberg tried to hark back to the old tactic of Allied aggressions and how America was going to be faced with the same racial problem. He looked to Speer for moral support, but Speer laughed in his face with a sarcastic wave of the hand.

AFTERNOON SESSION: Captain Harris read further extracts from Frank's diary: "Poland shall be treated as a colony; the Poles shall be slaves of the Greater German World Empire." "We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them, and wherever it is possible."

----------------------
Gilbert, G. M , 1911-
Nuremberg diary / by G.M. Gilbert.—1st Da Capo Press ed.
Copyright © 1947 by G. M. Gilbert
Copyright renewed © 1974 by G. M. Gilbert
http://books.google.com/books/about/Nuremberg_diary.html?id=Fc8OAQAAIAAJ -----------------------



2014: Hitler's Best Art

From “The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler”, by Robert Payne: During the first two years of the war Hitler sketched and painted continually, but he appears to have lost interest in these pursuits after he was wounded. About forty of his wartime watercolors have survived. The best is probably the earliest, The Sunken Road at Wytschaete, which he painted with thick, heavy strokes in the autumn of 1914. He knew this road well, for he had traveled along it often when it was under heavy enemy fire. On a single day 192 German soldiers were killed or wounded while marching down this small country road.

Hitler, no longer under the necessity of creating architectural forms, has suggested the stark horror and menace of the landscape with a minimum of means.

In the following year he drew the farmhouse at Fournes where he was billeted, and the drawing has all the marks of a student's architectural drawing. Every window pane, every tile has been drawn in; a bicycle leans properly against the wall; all the odds and ends of the farmyard are in their proper places. It is an unimaginative drawing, flat and monotonous, a world away from the fierce, impressionistic sketch of the sunken road.

He delighted in painting buildings shattered by the war, the roofs caving in, the walls crumbling, the roads littered with rubble. He was not showing a predilection for ruins; he was simply painting what he saw in front of him. A church near Fromelles was sketched and painted several times, but whether drawing with meticulous care or painting impressionistically he rarely succeeded in anchoring his designs in space. As always, except when he was copying photographs, his sense of perspective was faulty; and for Hitler it was all the more difficult to maintain a strong sense of perspective when the building itself was ruined and shapeless. He liked to throw his pictures off balance, or at least he gives every impression of enjoying that curious tortured effect that comes when something essential to the composition is missing. He rode roughshod over perspective. The walls of his ruined buildings remain standing by an act of will.

The best of his war drawings was a caricature showing eight German soldiers marching jauntily through the Flanders mud, with a ruined church and some trees sketched in lazily in the background. The drawing, which is reproduced in this book, is entitled Auf nach Cannes (On the Way to Cannes). Hitler depicts himself in the foreground with an umbrella instead of a rifle over his shoulder, and he is clearly the leader of the expedition. The youthful, round-faced Bachmann has opened his umbrella, while the saturnine Schmidt hovers behind him, and the small, sturdy Jakob brings up the rear, the very picture of the plodding warrior.

Bachmann and Schmidt were Hitler's close friends, and he therefore gave them an especially comic appearance. The caricature is gay and impudent, full of life and movement, and Hitler's self-portrait—the only self-portrait known to have been drawn by him—admirably conveys the jaunty, irascible, somewhat aloof quality of the man as he was known by his fellow soldiers.

From “The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler”, by Robert Payne
Published in the United States of America in 1973
by Praeger Publishers, Inc.
111 Fourth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003
© 1973 by Robert Payne
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-92891

 2/21/2014: Time Travelers: Please Kill Hitler!

The essay at the end of this link is complete crap, IMV. None of his speculations are logical and none show any depth of knowledge of the history whatsoever. All of his arguments are specious, if that. I do not have the time or stomach to refute all of them (anyone?), but I cannot let these few slide:

"Say whoever replaced him was ineffectual and the war ended with reduced loss of life and destruction. In this timeline, maybe no German rocket scientists ended up in the US. The space program loses some of its best minds, and happens more slowly (or not at all?)"

The idea that only Hitler's scientists could have developed rocket technology is utter nonsense, as Werner von Braun himself stated after reading through Robert Goddard's papers:

Wernher von Braun: "[Goddard was] ahead of us all [and] in the light of what has happened since his untimely death, we can only wonder what might have been if America realized earlier the implications of his work. I have not the slightest doubt that the United States today would enjoy unchallenged leadership in space exploration had adequate recognition been accorded to him."

The author of this sub-par essay assumes that advances in technology in the context of the Cold War is a reasonable tradeoff for the horror of the Holocaust. The moral degeneracy of this opinion is a bit breathtaking.

As to the so-called positive effect of Hitler's Scientists, I have addressed this issue elsewhere:

Where Would We Be Without Hitler's Scientists

The main problem I have with this essay is this:

"What about Stalin? He was arguably worse, killing 20 million of his own people to fuel his ideology. But no, Stalin went about his business unmolested by time travellers, all of whom are busy targeting Hitler. It’s understandable. Who wouldn’t want to prevent the holocaust? It’s probably the worst thing in history. And I only say “probably” because I don’t know all of history, and the human capacity to be awful should not be underestimated."

Can you sense my revulsion at this relativist garbage? 6 million innocent souls were needlessly murdered because Hitler thought he was on a mission from God and this fellow wants to talk about Stalin being worse. As though the crimes of one mass-murderer are somehow modified due to there having been a more prolific mass-murderer at some point. Please.

Hitler was directly responsible for the Holocaust. For this reason alone, should you find yourself in possession of a Time Machine, PLEASE go back and kill one Adolf Hitler. (And if you get Stalin in your sights, well why not: Go for it!)

Wally

PS: Of course, since Time Travel is most probably an impossibility, the entire exercise is a bit silly. But the assumptions made by this essayist, while engaged in such speculative fantasy, are real world ones and thus should be addressed on some level.

PSS: This essay is yet more proof of the correctness of the view that The Guardian is a very bad periodical indeed.

The Link: Time Travelers: Please Don't Kill Hitler




FHQ Wolfsschanze Marlene von Exner, Traudl Junge

12/29/2013: From The Women Who Knew Hitler: The Private Life of Adolf Hitler, by Ian Sayer & Douglas Botting: In the summer of 1943 Hitler and his entourage moved back to the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. By now the place was beginning to look like a burgeoning pioneer settlement in the outback. Albert Speer had an estate there, Hermann Goring had a kind of palace, Hitler's medic, Dr Morell, reviled by all except his patient, even had a bath of his own, though he was so fat and gross he was unable to get out of it without assistance. But though this outpost in the woods on the Eastern Front was well established and well provided, to Traudl and most of the others who worked there it was like a kind of moon base, cut off from real life - and even more so when, with British and American planes now bombing at will all over Germany, the Wolf s Lair bunkers were reinforced and the whole place ringed with barbed wire and land mines that dreadfully disfigured the forest.

Hitler's long-established personal routine remained unchanged, however. As before, his meals were taken with the young women of his entourage, Traudl included, and when his new dietician, Frau von Exner, joined them, the total of young women who lunched and dined with him every day rose to five. To these generally bright and attractive companions at the war front Hitler was unfailingly courteous, attentive and flattering. And he never stopped talking — about his past, about his beliefs, about his likes and dislikes, about anything that came into his head that wasn't about the war, the Russians, the generals, and the whole unendingly burdensome weight of Fuehrership.

From The Second World War: A Complete History, by Martin Gilbert: That February, Hitler had a more personal problem to deal with. For nearly a year his meals had been cooked by Frau Marlene von Exner, a Viennese dietician originally recommended to him by the Roumanian dictator, Marshal Antonescu. In due course, Frau von Exner became engaged to an SS adjutant at Hitler's headquarters, whereupon it was discovered that she had a Jewish great grandmother. 'You will understand', Hitler told her, 'that I must pay you off. I cannot make one rule for myself and another for the rest.'

Frau von Exner left Hitler's employ, and her relatives were forced to leave the Nazi Party. But there were no further repercussions. Meanwhile, on February 23, in Warsaw, twenty-six Jews were discovered in hiding and deported to Auschwitz, followed two days later by thirty-seven Jews from Vienna, Frau von Exner's own city. Nor did the deportations end there; on March 3 it was the turn of 732 Dutch Jews to be deported, followed on March 7 by 1,501 Jews from France. Nearly two thousand of them were gassed.

From this site: Women of the Third Reich | Jewish Virtual Library

“In May, 1943, an electrocardiogram revealed no improvement in Hitler's heart condition. A stomach ailment also troubled him and he discussed this at a meeting with Romania's Marshal Antonescu who recommended to him a well known dietitian from Vienna, Frau Marlene von Exner. She took up her duties to cook exclusively for the Führer with an inducement of a 2,000 Reichsmark cash payment and a tax free salary of 800 marks a month. While serving at Hitler's headquarters she became engaged to an SS adjutant and it was through this that Hitler learned that her great grandmother was Jewish. Hitler had no option but to sack her immediately 'I cannot make one rule for myself and another for the rest' he explained.”

 12/27/2013: From The Psychopathic God: Adolph Hitler, by Robert Waite: Another unreliable "memoir" has caused further misconceptions about Hitler's life. John Toland used this spurious source for his biography; Adolf Hitler (New York, 1976), 365, 917, 964; and Robert Payne relied on it for a chapter entitled "A Journey to England" in which he has Adolf leave Vienna in 1912 to spend several months visiting relatives in Liverpool. It was during this visit, according to Payne, that Hitler learned to respect the English people and fear the British Navy—hence his refusal to smash the English at Dunkirk and his desire for a separate peace with England during World War II.

There is only one source for this story: a 250 page undated typescript (now in the New York Public Library Manuscripts Division) entitled "My Brother-in-Law Adolf" and written about 1940 by Brigid Dowling Hitler. She was the Irish wife of Adolf's half-brother, Alois Jr., a wandering waiter and razor-blade salesman. Their son, William Patrick Hitler, purportedly tried to blackmail his famous uncle in the early 1930s. It seems likely that Brigid Hitler, like Josef Greiner, had noted that early biographies of Hitler spoke of a "lost year" during the Vienna period in which virtually nothing was known about him. Brigid therefore must have felt safe in filling the gap by having Adolf go to England to visit her family for the entire period from November 1912 until April 1913 (p. 13). There are several reasons for believing that this trip was an invention of Brigid's—as was most of her "memoir" of Adolf Hitler.

(1) Vienna police records show that during the months in which Brigid—and Robert Payne—put Hitler in England, he was actually living in the Home for Men in the Meldemannstrasse, Vienna. Official records for this period are supported by reliable testimony of Karl Honisch, a resident of the Home who knew Hitler during these months.

(2) In any case, it is highly unlikely that the Germanophile Hitler would have left Austria and gone, not to Germany, but to a foreign land whose language he did not know in order to visit a half-brother he despised.

(3) There is something very wrong with the picture Brigid (and Payne) paint of the arrival scene at the Liverpool station: "He looked as though he had always been famished . . . he was badly dressed and obviously had not changed his shirt for many weeks" (Payne, Life and Death, p. 95). Hitler was compulsively clean; in 1912 he was enjoying a financial windfall from his aunt and living comfortably in Vienna.

(4) Brigid's imagination is unable to cope with her brother-in-law's turbulent personality. "I cannot imagine," she writes, "a less interesting or prepossessed guest . . . I found him weak and spineless" (p. 13). Young Hitler was many things, but placid, uninteresting, and spineless he was not.

(5) Her guest, she insists, was so ignorant of music that when he heard Liverpudlians singing God Save the King he thought it was Deutschland iiber Alles (p. 17). Hitler, the avid German patriot and music lover, would not have made that mistake.

(6) Her imagination also fails her—as do her facts—in writing about other people and events. She has the wrong year for Klara Hitler's death, and she thinks that after Klara's funeral Adolf and Paula moved to Vienna to live with their half-sister Angela (p. 21). Neither Paula nor Angela lived in Vienna at that time; Hitler never lived alone with his sisters; she has the wrong color for Geli Raubal's hair; and she gives the wrong name for Hitler's housekeeper in the flat at Prinzregentenplatz.

(7) Brigid describes Paula as "the only person who might exert any influence on Adolf" (p. 129). Adolf had little respect for his rather pleasant and mentally limited sister; she exerted no discernible influence upon him.

(8) Brigid is mistaken in thinking that Hitler once registered in the "Vienna Municipal Lodging House" under the name of his dead brother, Edmund (p. 11). Police files show that Hitler always registered under his correct name; the lodging house she describes did not exist.

(9) Brigid's adventures in the Third Reich as she sought to rescue her beloved son Patrick from the clutches of the Gestapo read like the script for a very bad television spy story; the long, verbatim conversations she says she recalls with Rudolf Hess, Baldur von Schirach, Heinrich Himmler, and other Nazi leaders are inventions.

(10) There is no mention of a visit to England in any of Hitler's speeches, books, or lengthy "Table Conversations," nor is it mentioned in any authentic memoir written by people who knew him well. Indeed, his valet of ten years' service, Heinz Linge, says flatly that with the exception of brief trips to Italy and Paris, the Fuhrer "had visited no other country" (News of the World, 13 November 1955).

(11) The British Home Office has reported that "a careful search" through all the files of the Immigration Service for the period of November 1912 to April 1913 shows no record of Adolf Hitler having visited England. (H. G. Pearson, Departmental Record Officer, British Home Office, letter of 30 May 1975. Used with permission of Professor Peter Loewenberg, University of California at Los Angeles.)

* * * * A book entitled Inside Adolf Hitler, purportedly written by "Hitler's psychiatrist Kurt Krueger," appeared in New York in 1941. It was endorsed by Upton Sinclair and an officer in the U.S. Medical Corps, both of whom wrote laudatory prefaces. A reputable American publishing house considered republishing the book in 1973; it has been taken seriously in several articles dealing with Hitler's psychopathology, and cited as evidence in a popular biography. "Dr. Krueger" claims to have had Hitler under analysis from August 1919 to August 1934. But it is obvious that the writer had no training in psychology and could not have known Hitler. He misuses the terminology of psychoanalysis; while his patient is still alive, he reveals his most intimate confidences; he admits that he took no notes of any conversations he had with Hitler but says that "it all comes back now" and reprints verbatim, page after page, of invented conversations. Time after time, this "psychiatrist" displays his ignorance of his alleged patient. A few examples must suffice:

(1) Hitler became an anti-Semite at the age of ten after watching a Jew, who was the village grocer, rape his mother. There was no Jewish grocer in Leonding; the alleged incident is mentioned neither by anyone living in the village nor in any record or memoir of Hitler's boyhood. Hider did not become an anti-Semite until many years later.

(2) Up to the age of ten, little Adolf slept in a big bed between his father and mother. Anyone who knows anything about Alois Hitler would be amused by the idea of his sharing his conjugal bed with Adolf.

(3) All the children in the neighborhood called Adolf a Jew and refused to play with him. There is widespread and reliable testimony that Adolf was a popular leader of boyhood games.

(4) When "Dr. Krueger" knew him, Adolf wore a goatee and gave his name as Adolf Schickelgruber. Hitler never wore a goatee and never used the name, which was never his own.

(5) All during this time Hitler lived in "an obscure part of Munich . . .in a filthy room painted green." Hitler actually lived in comfortable, clean rooms in Munich's famous Schwabing quarter and later in a spacious apartment in the fashionable Bogenhausen District.

(6) All the Nazi leaders knew Krueger as Hitler's psychiatrist, an many sought him out to be their doctor. "Dr. Krueger" is not mentioned in any of the memoirs or testimonials of the Nazi hierarchy. Hitler despised psychiatry as "Jewish medicine." There is no reliable testimony that he was the patient of a psychiatrist.

(7) Max [sic] Weber was a leading Nazi orator; Captain Heinrich [sic] Goerring [sic] organized the Beer Hall Putsch.

 12/23/2013: From Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, by Gitta Sereny: In April 1977, Speer received a letter from D. Diamond, director of the South African (Jewish) Board of Deputies, asking him to assist the Board in their legal action against the publishers and distributors of the pamphlet Did Six Million Die? The Hoax of the Twentieth Century to prevent its distribution in South Africa. The request to Speer was that he should affirm on oath that: a) contrary to what the pamphlet claimed, there had indeed been a plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe; b) that he had heard of this plan and could testify that it existed; c) that it was implemented and how he knew that it was implemented. Speer's affidavit in reply, which I translated from his original German, consisted of three pages in which, point after point, he described the background to the exterminations and the devastating admissions of those directly implicated accused at the Nuremberg trial. After paying, as often before, a tribute to Nuremberg as an attempt to create a better world, he ended with the most revealing words he had ever written:

“I still recognize today that the grounds upon which I was convicted by the International Military Tribunal were correct. More than this, I still consider it essential today to take upon myself the responsibility, and thus the blame in general, for all crimes which were committed after I became a member of Hitler's government on February 8,1942. It is not individual acts or omissions, however grave, which weigh upon me, but my conduct as part of the leadership. This is why I accepted an overall responsibility in the Nuremberg trial and reaffirm this now. However, to this day I still consider my main guilt to be my tacit acceptance [Billigung] of the persecution and the murder of millions of Jews."

With those words, especially the hard-to-translate Billigung, Speer associated himself for the first time directly with the murder of the Jews. Three months later, when Die ZeitMagazin, the color supplement of Germany's influential weekly, obtained the German rights to my profile of Speer, the contract provided that the retranslation into German would be rechecked with Speer, and most specifically this last paragraph. Just as he had not registered any objection when I had given him the English draft to read, here again he accepted the profile as written, except that in a handwritten note to Die Zeit he asked for a footnote to be added in which he explained the term "Billigung," which I translated as "tacit consent," to mean "looking away, not by knowledge of an order or its execution. The first," he wrote, "is as grave as the second."

"Why did you say this so directly now, after denying it for so long?" I asked him. He shrugged. "For this purpose, and with these people," he said, "I didn't wish to—I couldn't—hedge." (wollte ich nicht—komte ich nicht—handeln.)

If Speer had said as much in Nuremberg, he would have been hanged.

 12/16/2013: From Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, by Deborah E. Lipstadt: The producer was incredulous. She found it hard to believe that I was turning down an opportunity to appear on her nationally televised show: "But you are writing a book on this topic. It will be great publicity." I explained repeatedly that I would not participate in a debate with a Holocaust denier. The existence of the Holocaust was not a matter of debate. I would analyze and illustrate who they were and what they tried to do, but I would not appear with them. (To do so would give them a legitimacy and a stature they in no way deserve. It would elevate their anti-Semitic ideology—which is what Holocaust denial is—to the level of responsible historiography—which it is not.) Unwilling to accept my no as final, she vigorously condemned Holocaust denial and all it represented. Then, in one last attempt to get me to change my mind, she asked me a question: "I certainly don't agree with them, but don't you think our viewers should hear the other side?

I soon discovered that this was not to be an isolated incident. Indeed, in the months before I completed this manuscript, I had one form or another of this conversation too many times. A plethora of television and radio shows have discovered Holocaust denial. Recently the producer of a nationally syndicated television talk show was astounded when I turned down the opportunity to appear because it would entail "discussing" the issue with two deniers. She was even more taken aback when she learned that hers was not the first invitation I had rejected. Ironically—or perhaps frighteningly—she had turned to me because she read my work while taking a course on the Holocaust. When the show aired, in April 1992 deniers were given the bulk of the time to speak their piece. Then Holocaust survivors were brought on to try to "refute" their comments. Before the commercial break the host, Montel Williams, urged viewers to stay tuned so that they could learn whether the Holocaust is a "myth or is it truth."

My refusal to appear on such shows with deniers is inevitably met by producers with some variation on the following challenge: Shouldn't we hear their ideas, opinions, or point of view? Their willingness to ascribe to the deniers and their myths the legitimacy of a point of view is of as great, if not greater, concern than are the activities of the deniers themselves. What is wrong, I am repeatedly asked, with people hearing a "different perspective"? Unable to make the distinction between genuine historiography and the deniers' purely ideological exercise, those who see the issue in this light are important assets in the deniers' attempts to spread their claims. This is precisely the deniers' goal: They aim to confuse the matter by making it appear as if they are engaged in a genuine scholarly effort when, of course, they are not.

The attempt to deny the Holocaust enlists a basic strategy of distortion. Truth is mixed with absolute lies, confusing readers who are unfamiliar with the tactics of the deniers. Half-truths and story segments, which conveniently avoid critical information, leave the listener with a distorted impression of what really happened. The abundance of documents and testimonies that confirm the Holocaust are dismissed as contrived, coerced, or forgeries and falsehoods. This book is an effort to illuminate and demonstrate how the deniers use this methodology to shroud their true objectives.

Note: One can only give Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, by Deborah E. Lipstadt, the very highest recommendation.

12/01/2013: From Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, by Alan Bullock: Stalin's diplomatic successes at Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam were as great as Hitler's in the 1930s, but they were achieved by very different methods. Like Hitler he was quick to read the hands of those across the table and to exploit their weaknesses, while concealing his own and keeping his cards to his chest. But there was none of Hitler's exploitation of his temperament. The paranoid and despotic side of Stalin's character was kept out of sight and the political gifts that had brought him to the top in Russia given full play. Instead of pacing up and down the room as was his habit during discussions in the Kremlin, he sat impassively, listening intently, avoiding the expansive confidences in which Churchill and Roosevelt indulged when talking with him privately. His questioning could be sharp and his comments blunt, but his tone was reasonable, his judgments sensible, and his arguments cogent, as when he demolished Churchill's case for operations in the Balkans or eastern Mediterranean which might delay the invasion of France.

General Brooke, the British chief of staff, who had much experience working with Churchill and whom Stalin baited at dinner for being anti-Russian, was impressed by his performance. Although the Soviet leader was unaccompanied by expert advisers, Brooke noted: "Never once in any of his statements did Stalin make any strategic error, nor did he ever fail to appreciate all the implications of a situation with a quick and unerring eye."

Stalin's attitude showed that he clearly distinguished between Roosevelt and Churchill, the former the representative of the rising power of the U.S.A., the latter of the declining power of the British Empire. He met Roosevelt's wish for closer contact by offering the American delegation more secure accommodations in the compound of the Soviet legation—no doubt wired for the occasion. In the first of three private talks that the president sought, he expressed agreement with Roosevelt's views that the day of colonial empires was over, and with the American president's disparaging remarks about Churchill's resistance to independence for British colonies and his anachronistic view of India. The arguments during the conferences were all between Stalin and Churchill—whether in plenary session or private talks—not between Stalin and Roosevelt. At an early stage Stalin confirmed the promise, of special significance for the Americans, to join the war against Japan as soon as Germany was defeated, and after initial skepticism he came around to accepting the scheme for an international organization, the origin of the United Nations, to which Roosevelt attached so much importance.

Roosevelt opened the plenary sessions by confirming the date of May 1, 1944, for the launch of the invasion across the Channel (Overlord) and asked Stalin how best the Allied forces in the Mediterranean could be used to bring relief to the Soviet armies. He mentioned as possible areas for operations Italy and the Adriatic and a junction with Tito's partisans; the Aegean and Greece, and Turkey, some of which might involve a delay of two or three months for Overlord. The question brought a sharp disagreement between Stalin and Churchill. Stalin maintained that the one thing that mattered was to attack the Germans in France, and not waste time and forces in the Mediterranean; Churchill persisted in arguing that, without abandoning Overlord, they should look at the possibilities of the eastern Mediterranean-Balkans area. Roosevelt sought to end the dispute by ruling that nothing should be done to delay Overlord and that instead of the eastern Mediterranean they should look at the possibility of landing a force in southern France. At the second plenary Stalin brushed aside all the other suggestions except the president's, which he said would contribute directly to the success of the main invasion across the Channel. He called for the appointment of a supreme commander for Overlord and a firm date so that the Red Army could launch a simultaneous offensive from the east. When Churchill tried to keep open the eastern option, Stalin asked him point-blank: Did the British really believe in Overlord or merely talk about it to keep the Russians quiet? The only result of Churchill's persistence was to underline his isolation in the face of Soviet-American agreement, which was ratified by the third session.

At one point, the proceedings were interrupted for a ceremony. "By the king's command," Churchill presented the Sword of Honor, which had been specially designed and wrought as a British tribute to the Russian defenders of Stalingrad. Few could match Churchill's ability to create an atmosphere and convey emotion on such an occasion. But Stalin? Although he was one of the shortest men in the hall, which was filled with Russian officers and soldiers, he achieved as great an impression as Churchill. Receiving the gift with the same touch of dignity and emotion, he silently raised the great sword to his lips and kissed the scabbard. For a brief moment all were touched by a sense of history, and the sword was solemnly carried from the room escorted by a Russian guard of honor—but not, as Churchill noted, before Voroshilov had managed to drop it.

In the general discussion of the postwar settlement, Stalin drew a gloomy picture of the revival of German power fifteen to twenty years after her defeat and insisted that arrangements for the control and disarmament of Germany must be rigorous. Without going into details, he appeared to favor the dismemberment of Germany and the establishment of Poland's western frontier on the Oder, although he subsequently added that nothing could exclude the possibility of Germany reuniting.

Stalin formed the impression that on Germany, too, Churchill was out of step and in favor of greater leniency. At dinner in the Soviet embassy, according to the American interpreter Chip Bohlen, "He lost no opportunity to get a dig in at Churchill, and apparently desired to put and keep him on the defensive." It was on this occasion that Stalin proposed the liquidation of the 50,000 German officers, who were the heart of Germany's military power, as the only way to destroy it—evidently aiming his remarks at Churchill. The latter rose from the table, saying that neither he nor the British people would have anything to do with mass executions. When Stalin persisted, repeating, "Fifty thousand must be shot," and Elliott Roosevelt, FDR's son, made a speech expressing enthusiasm, Churchill walked out of the room in disgust. He was quickly followed by Stalin, who put both hands on his shoulders, assured him that he had not been talking seriously, and persuaded him to return. In his memoirs, Churchill remarks: "Stalin has a very captivating manner when he chooses to use it, and I never saw him do so to such an extent as at this moment, although I was not then, and am not now, convinced that all was chaff, and there was no serious intention behind it." What Churchill does not say is whether he reflected that it was by such means that Stalin had come close to destroying the strength of the Red Army.

 11/29/2013: Truman warns he will use nukes in order to achieve peace in Korea.

One often hears the simplistic claim made that North Korea developed nuclear weapons because they are a founding member of the "Axis of Evil" (which recalls comic book supervilliany rather than real-world international relations) and are intent on "taking over the world." However, keeping in mind Truman's threat to use nukes against the North to solve the civil war, cannot the case be made that nukes are essential to their survival as a sovereign nation? Is it not reasonable for the powers-that-be in North Korea to seek counter-balancing capabilities? And now that they have their own nukes, isn't it true that they are now immune from nuclear saber-rattling on the part of the US? The US does not attack countries with nukes.

Is it not then reasonable to assign this same dynamic to Iran?

If Iran does develop a nuclear weapon, why is it assumed that they will immediately drop it on Israel? It does not automatically follow that they would. To do so would merely be a form of suicide. Israel (presumably) has a more than adequate stockpile of nukes, AND a submarine delivery system. Drop an atomic bomb on Israel and the entire region will be devastated. Mutual Assured Destruction, though a mad policy, does work. So why would Iran commit suicide? It would not, of course.

If Iran had a nuke they would do exactly the same as all other nuclear powers; spend an inordinate amount of time and money keeping the dust off missiles they will never use.

Stalin's USSR (nukes since 1949) didn't use their atomic devices. Neither did Mao's China (1967). I do not see that the Ayatollah's Iran has anything on these two as regards evil. They had nukes and we are all still here. If Iran gets them we will still be here as well.

No one wants to see Iran with a nuke (or a firecracker, for that matter). But the panic concerning it is overblown and unbecoming of adults. If we lived through Stalin and Mao with nukes, we can all survive Iran as well. Mutual Assured Destruction has been with us since the 50's and has proven to be a stabilizing force. It will continue to be so in the near future.

We need to do everything possible to stop Iran's nuclear program short of war. If we cannot, we will then have to live with yet another nuclear armed state. That is just the way of it. Panic serves no useful purpose.

Wally

11/13/2013: Italian Trade Union’s ‘Hitler Prize’ Ignites Controversy.

From the article: “Creeping Nazism is a slow but steady trend that minimizes the Holocaust, demeans the memory of those murdered and diminishes the suffering of the survivors. The fact that a competition such as the Hitler Award is even conceivable, let alone celebrated, is more than troubling and indicates a significant change in the Italian public’s general tolerance for anti-Semitic remarks and activity.”

The above seems to be a wee-bit of an over-reaction. Invoking the word "Holocaust" to make political points is, as the article rightly states, "Creeping Nazism", and should be avoided under most circumstances. But simply invoking the name of Hitler is hardly, in and of itself, a manifestation of "Creeping Nazism". The name "Hitler" is intimately connected to the Holocaust, but that is not the sole and singular pertinent reference-point. Aggressive War, state-sponsored racialism, the Fuehrer Principle, Lebensraum, Collective Security, rampant Nationalism, soldier worship, pathological patriotism, etc., are some of the other issues intimately associated with the late German Fuehrer.

In this particular case, the point is made that Nazi policies were progressive and enlightened concerning animal rights (this is fully documented), while Human Rights were rejected (which is also fully documented).

Had these folks a better grasp of the actual history, their award would be better-named the Hermann Goering Prize.

But, either way, their award criterion is illogical, over-blown, and unsupported by the facts. To brand the entire Animal Rights Movement Hitler-like because some bozo on that side engaged in unfortunate rhetoric equating criminals with lab-rats is itself Hitler-like.

The bottom-line, of course, is that folks should be very careful when they invoke the Holocaust to make a political point that does not involve the Genocide of humans. Such misuse can be considered "Creeping Nazism" as it tends to trivialize the event itself. But to suppose that no comparisons to Hitler can be made in any other context, merely because there are those who presume that the Holocaust is the only Hitler-like event of note, is ludicrous and not conducive to profitable political intercourse.

Wally

10/25/2013: The Making Of "The World at War".

 Daily Mail: My dear, you're the sort of woman we in the SS wanted to breed from": How a Nazi's infatuation with a blonde TV girl unlocked Hitler's secrets for a classic documentary

This is a very informative article and well worth a read. One small quibble:

It fell to Smith himself to interview Albert Speer, who after the war had served a 20-year sentence for war crimes but in the early Seventies was a free man and, as Hitler’s former chief architect and Minister for Armaments and War Production, was one of the most senior Nazis still alive. Like several of the team who came into personal contact with former Nazis, Smith said he felt disgust at having to meet Speer and be polite to him so he would appear on camera. The result, however, was extraordinarily powerful television, with Speer admitting that not personally finding out what was happening in German concentration camps was ‘the biggest fault in my life’.

This is a typical Speer obfuscation, with Speer "admitting" a moral lapse-in this case, willful ignorance-to hide actual criminal acts (guilty knowledge of the Holocaust). He managed to convince the Nuremberg judges, his book publisher, and many interviewers over the years utilizing this very dodge.

Unfortunately, folks still read and rely upon his various books, though Spandau Diary is a truly noteworthy book and worth a read. The others may have some limited historical value, but one must dig very deep to find sufficient facts to overcome the intentional obfuscations littering the work.

While Speer's 'admission' may have been "extraordinarily powerful television," it was, in fact, depressingly misleading history.

Wally

Further Recommended Reading: Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth, by Gitta Sereny

10/21/2013: Will it Rain? Ask a Psychic, says Hitler.

 Apparently, even though Hitler, by the night of I4-I5 October 1941, was aware of the existence of RADAR, it never crossed his mind that the technology could prove useful in forecasting the weather. But this is not to say that the German Fuehrer, knowledgeable concerning all things, did not have an inspired solution to the problem of the unreliable weather person: Just hire psychics:

Hitler:

One can't put any trust in the meteoro­logical forecasts. The meteoro­logical services ought to be separated from the Army.

Lufthansa had a first-class meteorological service. I was terribly sorry when that service was broken up. The present organization is not nearly as good as the old one. Moreover, there are various improvements that could be made to meteoro­logy generally.

Weather prediction is not a science that can be learnt mechanically. What we need are men gifted with a sixth sense, who live in nature and with nature— whether or not they know anything about isotherms and isobars. As a rule, obviously, these men are not particularly suited to the wearing of uni­forms. One of them will have a humped back, another will be bandy-legged, a third paralytic. Similarly, one doesn't expect them to live like bureaucrats. They won't run the risk of being transported from a region they know to another of which they know nothing— as regards climatological conditions, that's to say. They won't be answerable to superiors who necessarily know more about the subject than they do —in virtue of their pips and crowns —and who might be tempted to dictate to them the truths that are vested in a man by virtue of his superior rank.

Doubtless the best thing would be to form a civil organization that would take over the existing installations. This organization would also use the information, communicated regularly by telephone and applicable to particular regions, which one would owe to these human barometers. It would cost very little. A retired school-teacher, for example, would be happy to receive thirty marks a month as payment for his trouble. A telephone would be installed in his home free of charge, and he'd be flattered to have people relying on his knowledge. The good fellow would be excused from making written reports, and he would even be authorized to express himself in his own dialect. He might be a man who has never set foot outside his own village, but who understands the flight of midges and swallows, who can read the signs, who feels the wind, to whom the movements of the sky are familiar. Elements are involved in that kind of thing that are imponderable and beyond mathematics. There are bits of knowledge that are developed in the course of an existence intimately associated with the life of nature, which are often passed on from father to son. It's enough to look around one. It's known that in every region there are such beings, for whom the weather has no secrets.

The central office will only have to compare these empirical pieces of information with those provided by the "scientific" methods, and make a synthesis.

In this way, I imagine, we would finally again have an instrument on which one could depend, a meteorological service in which one could have confidence.

Note: The source of the above quote is Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944
Introduction and Preface by Hugh Trevor-Roper
Copyright © Enigma Books 2000
First published in Great Britain
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, London
a division of the Orion Publishing Company

A German Worker, by Klaus Richter

10/20/2013: "The only really authentic portrait of Hitler."

From The Psychopathic God, by Robert G. L. Waite: The circumstances in which this portrait was painted were remarkable. Richter had been invited in 1941 to do a portrait of Reich Marshal Hermann Goering. When he learned that a visit from Hitler was expected, it was arranged for him to sketch the Fuehrer, with the proviso that he do so from a well-concealed hiding place. Richter was unimpressed with Hitler's face until someone mentioned the word "Jew." When Hitler heard that word, Richter later recalled, his face was immediately transformed into something at once demonic and defensive, a haunting look which Richter quickly sketched and, later that night, put down in oils. He labeled it " A German Worker" and hung it in a shed where it survived the war. Richter had also painted Field Marshal von Schlieffen, Chancellor Stresemann and President of the Reichstag Lobe, but he considered the Hitler portrait to be his masterpiece. The art critic of Die Zeit called it "the only really authentic portrait of Hitler . . . perhaps the most important historical portrait that any German artist has ever had the opportunity to paint."

Note: The source of the above quote is The Psychopathic God,
by Robert G. L. Waite
Copyright © 1977 by Robert G. L. Waite
Basic Books, Inc., Publishers
New York

10/18/2013: Historical Revisionism in the Pacific

Examples of Recent WW2 Revisionism in the Pacific:

China outraged as Japanese lawmakers visit shrine to war dead

China: Japan defeated not only by atomic bombs

The World’s Wartime Debt to China

It is interesting and alarming that both China and Japan are now engaged in sweeping history Revisionism.

"Beijing is trying to cash in today a geopolitical check Chiang Kai-shek wrote nearly seven decades ago."

I have very little sympathy for the Chinese on this issue. "Thunder Out of China" by Theodore H. White (to cite just one eye-witness account) details not Chinese devotion to defeating Japan, but their almost exclusive concentration on infighting between the Communists and Nationalists. While I do not know the exact figures, I recall reading that a large percentage of Allied Aid to Chiang went to fighting the Chinese Communists, and vice-versa. General Stillwell himself was in despair at Chinese intransigence, corruption, and double-dealing during the war, and documented such things in detail.

When Mao took power he rewrote Chinese history in such a way as to deny the Nationalists any small credit for fighting against Japan. Similarly, there was no mention that the Communists received any aid whatever from the Allies. The official party line: The Noble Chinese Communists defeated Japan and the Nationalists (two entities Mao often insisted on lumping together) single-handedly, and then Mao rested on the seventh day.

Now China wishes to be considered a Great Power: "If America’s leadership in defeating Japan in 1945 continues to justify a U.S. presence around the Pacific today, Chinese leaders feel, why shouldn’t China’s contribution to the same goal earn it some clout in the region?"

The simple answer is that China bled during WW2 (and well before), but can hardly be credited with a major contribution to defeating Japanese Militarism. (China's only real contribution to defeating Japan was that it was too large for Japan, with its limited population, to conquer and hold. China's feats-of-arms were really quite limited.) Thus, the idea that China could justify a leading role in Pacific affairs because of its WW2 prowess is ridiculous.

Even more to the point: One does not need a positive historical narrative (real or invented) to justify the projection of military power in competition with the United States. One need merely build enough Aircraft Carriers, satellites, and submarines to compete.

One day soon China will be an actual Superpower, both potentially and in fact. It would be best if such future power did not rest on a Historiography of Lies.

Wally


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