Heroes of the Reich

HEROES OF THE REICH
Michael Walsh
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INTRODUCTION
Researching and compiling Heroes of the Reich was for me a work of heart. Few know
better than I what a depressing thing it is to write on World War Two matters; not a sad
emotion is left untouched.
When writing on related matters I experience a gamut of emotions; anger and outrage,
indignation and feelings of abhorrence that creatures, I refuse to call them human, could
behave so monstrously. We don’t often learn from them but wars teach us many lessons.
In one lesson we learn that conflicts and their aftermath polarise human behaviour.
Extreme circumstances reveal the most heroic and unselfish human beings; it reveals
those imbued with a Satanic wickedness who plumb the depths of human wickedness.
Of the post-war scribes; palace journalists, their editors; documentary makers and
prostitute historians, what can be said? It is true that forensic science will fail to find
human blood on their hands or clothing. But, they know who they are and their infamy is
stone-etched into posterity.
These poison pen scribes are a parable of Alberich, the hideous cave-dwelling dwarf in
Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The subterranean caves in which they write are in their minds. To
them I dedicate Heroes of the Reich.
My life has been remarkable for a series of coincidences; some so noteworthy they defy
explanation. This is neither the time nor place to recount them except for one set of
twists of fate. On three different occasions, inflamed by indignation, I wrote to three
important figures. Each had much on their conscience to take before their Maker. Angrily I
set their sins before them. I cannot explain it; in each case the men died within a week or
so of their presumably receiving those letters.
It was quite surreal. I felt like a hanging judge who, within weeks of sentencing, learns
that the scaffold has done its work. Except under the most deserving cases I abhor capital
punishment and believe in karma. I took no comfort from these strange outcomes.
Those men were Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton (February 10, 1984 – December
29, 1986). Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC. (September 7, 1917 – July 31, 1992).
Interestingly the latter was an outspoken atheist until coincidence in 1948 turned him to
God.
The third was William Golding (September 19, 1911 – June 9, 1993). The latter in this
case was most notable for his novel, The Lord of the Flies. He was not so well known for
his being a champagne socialist and outspoken apologist for Josef Stalin and his Allied
henchmen.
I dedicate Heroes of the Reich to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Israel, Josef
Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. I do so knowing that the spirit that
shines through the souls of their victims will blind them in its light. It is the only light that
will ever pierce the deep darkness of their minds and souls.
Compiling Heroes of the Reich has been for me a revelation for it is rare to find
opportunity to salute the fallen foe. I do so unconditionally. In this respect I hope I am
something of a vanguard in the pursuit of balance and something strangely absent in
modern Europe; honour. I regret only that there is so many more, Hans Rudel comes to
mind, who for space consideration must step aside until perhaps a second volume is
compiled. God bless you all.
Michael Walsh.
CONTENTS
HEROES OF THE REICH
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS
GERMANY -Rudolf Höss the Man Who Defied British Torture
GERMANY AND BRITAIN - Lale Andersen -The Nightingales of War
AUSTRIA- Walter Novotony -Air Ace among Air Aces
SWITZERLAND - THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY - Baron Franz von Werra
GERMANY - Clemens Forell - Epic Escapes
GERMANY - SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny -Springing the Italian Leader
NORWAY - (Sir) Vidkun Quisling - (The Slaying of a Viking Hero)
THE EPIC POLAR ADVENTURERS
THE LIVES OF SIX MILLION CHILDREN SAVED
VIDKUN QUISLING HONOURED
EUROPE IN TURMOIL
VIKING BLOOD
QUISLING MEETS ADOLF HITLER
BRITISH TROOPS ROUTED
NORWEGIAN GOVERNMENT FLEES
UNIVERSAL APPROVAL OF QUISLING
POSTERITY STANDS IN JUDGEMENT
QUOTABLE QUISLING QUOTES
AND SO DIED A VIKING
ROMANIA- Corneliu Codreanu and the Iron Guard
GERMANY - THE ALPINE FORTRESS EAGLES NEST -The Men Who Built the Alpine
Fortress Eagles Nest
GERMANY - Arno Breker - ‘He is up in the Horse’s Left Ear’
ENGLAND / GERMANY - An English Woman who won the Fuhrer’s Heart
U.S. / EIRE - THE MARTYRDOM OF WILLIAM JOYCE
EXTRACTS: VIEWS ON THE NEWS
AUSTRIA- Herbert von Karajan - The Unrepentant National Socialist -Every Age its
Giants
GERMANY - THE REAL HEROES - German Victims of the Allied Bombing Holocaust
GERMANY- Elizabeth Schwarzkopf- The Unrepentant National Socialist
GERMANY - Norbert Schultze - The Man Who Made Lili Marlene
U.S.A / GERMANY - The Charlie Brown and Fritz Stigler Story
SILESIA - The Sky my Kingdom - Aviator Hanna Reitsche
THE NETHERLANDS - Florentine Rost van Tonningen
AUSTRIA / GERMANY - WOMAN OF THE REICH -Paula Hitler’s 1957 Statement
GERMANY - Gunter Prien - U-Boot Commander Extraordinary
GERMANY - The Battleship the Bismarck
BELGIUM - Leon Degrelle
FRANCE - The Last Defenders of Berlin’s Chancellery
GERMAN AND FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS - The Ghosts of the Waffen S.S.
GERMANY - Heroism under British Occupation
BRITAIN / GERMANY - Doctor Death and the Hanging of Heroes
BRITAIN - How Cowards Hang Heroes
NORWAY - Knut Hamsun - Norway’s Soul
ESTONIA - Alfred Rosenberg
RUSSIA - Rosenberg’s Russian Heroes
LIECHTENSTEIN - The Lion Principality
GERMANY - Heroes Salute Heroes
GERMANY - Wernher von Braun
PROPHETIC WORDS - Prophecies That Today Come True
BEFORE BEING HANGED - HERMAN GOERING
DEAD MEN’S PROPHESIES
RIP U.S. / BRITAIN – OBITUARY - Winston Churchill
GERMANY -Rudolf Höss the Man Who Defied British
Torture
When browsing the newspapers much editorial relating to the German prison camps
will include the name Rudolf Höss. The ‘confessions’ of this former commandant of
Auschwitz labour camp adds credibility to the victors’ myth of German brutality. Another
of the great ironies of the period was that in order to extract flawed evidence from this
unfortunate captive far worse torture was applied than those methods he was wrongly
convicted of.
Rudolf Höss provides the original source of much of the Auschwitz myth. It is for these
reasons palace journalists and morally corrupt news editors mention his name as often as
they do. It would be more honest if they would at least put an end note to their articles,
‘we obtained this information by torture.’
In the defence of journalists and broadcasters many simply know no better. They are
misinformed. Many use Wikipedia or similar to do their background research for them.
Further, there is hardly the incentive to be truthful as they know their story will end up in
the editor’s waste paper basket if it is. Even palace journalists and historians need to eat.
Editors like to pretend they are the arbiters of current affairs but are restricted by their
newspaper’s owner and of course advertising revenue. If he or she steps out of line they
will, as in the former Soviet Union, be told to clear their desk.
Rudolf Höss, perhaps unwisely, never attempted to evade capture. It was unlikely it
would occur to him to do so. After all why would he? The rules of war are clear and he
had every expectation of being cleared of any wrongdoing. He was a camp manager,
nothing more. Britain and the United States, along with other allies had thousands of
such camps into which anyone thought to be even a mild threat to their country’s war
aims would be confined.
In Britain many thousands of ordinary British people were gaoled under a hastily
contrived piece of legislation called 'Regulation 18B'. They were imprisoned without trial
for years merely for being considered anti-war or ambiguous in their political beliefs. It
was said 'that every decoration from the Victoria Cross downwards could be seen on the
prison yard at Brixton'.
Lord Jowett, Lord Chancellor to the House of Lords on December 11 1946 conceded:
‘Let us be fair to these people who were imprisoned under 18B, and let us remember that
they have never been accused of any crime; not only have they not been convicted of any
crime, but they have never been accused of any crime. This should be remembered in all
fairness to them.’
The Soviet Union ruled with an iron fist by Josef Stalin, co-conspirator of Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, held an estimated 20 million innocents in thousands of
camps far worse than Auschwitz or any of the German camps. These awful camps, in
which few survived, were scattered across the Soviet Union from the frontiers of Finland
to where the USSR is just a short boat ride from the United States in the Soviet Far East.
Of the tens of thousands of gulag Soviet commissioners responsible for the terrible crimes
that occurred not a single one of them was ever brought to face justice.
Simon Finch writing for The Times (January 28, 2000): ‘No iconic images exist to
symbolise the millions who died in Stalin’s camps. There is no archive. There has been no
public process of reckoning, and precious little public discussion of guilt. There is no
chance of a memorial day for the victims of Stalinism.’
There is in one such monument; it stands outside the dreadful Moscow prison
Lubyanka. It bears the inscription: ‘In memory of the millions of victims of a totalitarian
regime.’ The Times journalist recounts a conversation with a former inmate: ‘You have to
remember, all the heads of the camps, all the investigators, all the prosecutors, all those
who confirmed our sentences were Jews.’
Not a single one of these Jews or their few Gentile assistants’ monsters were ever
brought to trial yet still they whinge and whine about being persecuted. It is precisely
because they are guaranteed never to be persecuted that they can condemn tens of
millions of innocent people to death and emerge blameless.
In the United States there were hundreds of Auschwitz type barrack formation camps to
house German and Italian prisoners. The Americans tended not to take Japanese
prisoners in their Asian Pacific war but over 100,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry;
along with past nationals of other Axis countries, were rounded up and caged without
trial. The same can be said of Britain; there were hundreds Auschwitz labour camps
scattered across the landscapes of Scotland, England, Wales, the Isle of Man and
Northern Ireland.
Back to the German Auschwitz situated in Poland, this is now something of a
depressing theme park. Worse still let us return to the camp’s unfortunate commandant,
Rudolf Höss. 12 months after the war’s end he was brought before the International
Military Tribunal. This is not a legitimate court of law presided over by qualified jurists
such as we would recognise; very few were legitimate jurists and the methods were far
from being as they are in an ordinary courtroom. The appearance of the hapless prisoner
was said to have ‘caused a sensation.’
Jaws dropped as Höss confessed to crimes that Genghis Khan and his armies would
have been proud of. If it wasn’t so tragic it would have been laughable. He claimed to
have been personally instructed by Heinrich Himmler to exterminate Jews. To this end
this one camp alone, he said, had been responsible for the murder of 3 million.
Nowhere at Auschwitz is today there suggestion that anything like such numbers died.
This figure would, according the World Jewish almanac, have meant that in this one camp
one quarter of world Jewry had been gassed at Auschwitz. How on earth Himmler and the
Third Reich managed to find so many Jews outside of German territories is difficult to
imagine.
Imagine the poker faced court scribes scratching away with their pens as they took
down the testimony of a clearly deranged man; a prisoner driven to insanity by
unimaginable months of extreme torture. How the ‘court’ personnel could continue with
such a judicial circus makes any rational human being despair of the human race and the
banality of evil it can descend to.
Thirty-seven years would pass before the truth would emerge about the conditions
endured by that terribly unfortunate man before he was led into the kangaroo court set
up by the allies.
Rudolf Höss was taken into custody by Bernard Clarke and Rupert Butler, who openly
and proudly boasted of the brutality meted out to their prisoner. They said that he had
been taken into custody on March 11, 1946. They said ‘it took three days of torture to
obtain a coherent confession.’
How on earth anyone can make a coherent anything after three days of torture is
anyone’s guess. It was this so-called confession that sealed the fate of the commandant.
Here then was the sequence of events as recounted by the man’s torturers, British
soldiers of the 92nd Field Security Section.
On the date of his being taken into custody, Bernard Clarke, Rupert Butler and four
other intelligence specialists, dressed in British Army uniform, in threatening manner
entered the home of Frau Höss and her children. According to their later statements all
six men were ‘practised in the more sophisticated techniques of sustained and merciless
investigation.’
The lady of the house was told that unless she revealed her husband/s whereabouts
they would turn her and her children over to the Red Army. Frau Höss broke down and
told them the location of the farm where her husband was working incognito. The family’s
son and daughter were also interrogated. This produced the same information.
On their appearance in the small hours of the night Höss screamed in terror; a portent
of what fate awaited him no doubt. When asked to do so he gave a false name. Sergeant
Clarke’s fist smashed into their prisoner’s face and on the fourth blow he conceded his
true identity. The soldiers of course knew from the very beginning he was Höss; there
was no need at all for the gratuitous violence. It says much for the arrogance of the
occupying forces and the compliant media that this and subsequent treatment towards,
not just towards Höss but most captives, was considered unremarkable.
At this point their captive was torn out of his bunk where he had been sleeping, and his
pyjamas ripped from his body. Under a constant barrage of kicks and blows with the six
burly uniformed men vying with each other to assault their naked victim, he was dragged
to a farm table. Eventually, one of the assailants, a medical officer no less, advised
against further beatings otherwise they would be returning with a corpse. Sadly for their
victim he did not there and then die.
The methods of torture I will, if you will forgive me, skip over. They are distressing to
the extreme but for those who, for whatever reason, wish to avail themselves of the
language and methods of extreme torture used on Höss I refer them to the venerable Dr.
Robert Faurisson’s detailed reports.
It is enough to say that he was deprived of sleep whilst his guards took it in turns to
visit upon the unfortunate man every diabolical debasement sick minds can dream up. His
torturers interests were to keep their prisoner alive, just. And so it was, the sergeant
boasts, ‘three days before we got a statement off Höss.’ This was corroborated by Ken
Jones in an article to the Wrexham Evening Leader (Wales) on October 17, 1986.
Not surprisingly their half dead terrified prisoner, by this time clearly deranged, was
telling them the most outlandish stories imaginable. Most were so bizarre that few could
have dreamed them up. Notes were taken and subsequently this former soldier was
brought before handpicked accusers impersonating judges. There his condition was
described as ‘schizoid apathy.’ No surprises there then.
The American prison psychologist G. M. Gilbert, who was in charge of psychological
surveillance of the prisoners, whose evidence was accepted said: Höss ‘was split in two.’
Equally predictable Rudolf Höss was sentenced to death. After what he had been
subjected to that must have been something of a relief. He reacted ‘with indifference.’
The commandant was hanged in Poland in April 1947.
GERMANY AND BRITAIN - Lale Andersen -The
Nightingales of War
Like Japanese infantrymen emerging from Far Eastern jungles much of the news media
today remains convinced that World War Two still rages. Reminding them it is over is as
futile as it is exasperating. It is like telling someone it is raining. They refuse to believe
you but they will not go out to have a look.
For most of the rest of us it is a fading memory but never to be forgotten are the four
women singers who evoke the troubled period like no other.
For the Allies there was Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn and collaborator Marlene Dietrich. For
the Axis Lale Andersen is probably the best remembered and internationally adored.
Through a quirk of fate both Gracie Fields and Marlene Dietrich were exiled from their
homelands due to their being perceived as turncoats.
Dietrich was the ultimate anti-hero. Her appalling degenerate lifestyle, which so
reflected the debauchery of 1920s Berlin, left her little choice but to opt for a country
more suited to her sexual tastes than was Hitler’s Germany. Part of Adolf Hitler’s appeal
was to launder the image of the seedy Berlin Dietrich epitomised.
Dietrich’s reputation as a predatory and insatiable bi-sexual was carefully airbrushed
out of her American image. Almost certainly a drug addict she frequented homosexual
parties catering for every imaginable debauchery as did Winston Churchill and allegedly
Lord Beaverbook.
Of the four nightingales Dietrich was the only one whose life ended in ignominy. She
died of kidney failure aggravated by her alcoholism. There were few visitors during her
final years and those attending her funeral fell far short of what one might have expected
of a songstress whose name was synonymous with the term Uncle Sam.
Attempts to rehabilitate her in her native land ended in failure. A scheme to have a
Berlin street named after her was dropped amidst public protest. Spurned by her native
land her final tour lost money. Her adopted country, the United States, turned their nose
up when offered her estate; U.S. institutions had no interest in it.
Destined to be the ultimate feminine icon of the war years Lale Andersen was little
known outside Germany. As a Berlin cabaret artiste during the 1930s she recorded the
Franz Leip poem, The Song of a Young Soldier. It had been renamed Lili Marlene and was
set to music in 1938 by composer Norbert Schultze. Her recording of Lili Marlene brought
her international acclaim.
From 1945 to 1952 Lale was largely forgotten; a phantom of Germany’s troubled past.
Renewed confidence and prosperity launched her reappearance with the song Die blaue
Nacht am Hafen, the lyrics of which she had written herself. It was an instant hit as was
Ein Schiff wird kommen written in 1959. She was awarded a Gold Album for each of these
songs.
With the prejudices and bitterness of war largely forgotten Lale Andersen took part in
the 1961 Eurovision Song Contest and reached position 13. Adored both at home and
abroad she completed a world tour during the 1960s. Her book, The Sky Has Many
Colours topped Der Spiegel magazine’s bestselling list.
A beautiful woman and the loveliest of singers Lale Andersen will always be
synonymous with a lonely soldier’s poem, penned in a barracks shortly before his being
posted to the Russian front. Lili Marlene was in fact two women. Lili was Hans Leip’s own
sweetheart and Marlene, a young nurse who was dating his comrade in arms. By another
quirk of fate the only other famous Marlene was never Marlene Dietrich’s real name. She
was born Marie Magdalene. The Marlene is made up of the first and last letters of her
Christian names.
Lili Marlene was a poem of little significance. When its haunting words were put to
music its sales numbered less than 700 discs. In occupied Yugoslavia in 1941 Radio
Belgrade broadcast Lale Andersen’s Lili Marlene as space filler. It was listened to and
enthusiastically adopted not only by the Afrika Korp but by the British Eighth Army too.
Forces favourites Anne Shelton and Vera Lynn both sang Lili Marlene on the BBC.
It has since been translated into 48 languages and became the most popular wartime
song ever recorded, a record unlikely to be broken. Lale was still performing in her sixties
and remained stunningly beautiful and elegant when tragically, by today’s life
expectations, this beautiful singer died of a heart attack when still young.
The political leaning of professional artistes is often a matter of some dispute between
purists of one side or the other. What is often forgotten is performers; singers, actors,
musicians; everyone in the arts world, as are doctors, obliged to be colour blind. Often
forgotten too, artistes of all nationalities tend to be individualistic and often
temperamental.
Adolf Hitler’s distaste for international Jewry and its machinations never got in the way
of his enormous respect for performers and artistes regardless of their race, religion or
creed. The only exceptions to the rule were those who, like Dietrich, blatantly aided the
war efforts of Germany’s enemies.
Other internationally adored singers of the Reich period included ‘dream couple’ Lilian
Harvey and Willi Fritsch. Harvey’s father was German, her mother English. During her rise
to international fame, like most Berlin-based performers, the actress-singer had little
choice but to associate and befriend Jewish impresarios. In 1931 Berlin 80 per cent of
theatre managers were Jewish. 75 per cent of all plays prior to Hitler’s election were
written by Jews; the film industry as is Hollywood was dominated by Jews.
Hitler’s Berlin was no place to be for artistes dependent upon Jewish patronage. As part
of the NSDAP agenda the internationally notorious Berlin entertainments industry was to
be ‘cleared out of the temple. Of it, Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, wrote: ‘One needed only
to look at the posters announcing the hideous productions of the cinema and theatre, and
study the names of the authors who were highly lauded there, in order to become
permanently adamant on Jewish questions. Here was a pestilence, a moral pestilence
from which the public was being infected. It was worse than the Black Plague of long ago.
‘And in what mighty doses this poison was manufactured and distributed. Naturally, the
lower the moral and intellectual level of such an author of artistic products the more
inexhaustible his fecundity. Sometimes it went so far that one of these fellows, acting like
a sewage pump, would shoot his filth directly in the face of other members of the human
race...... It was a terrible thought, and yet it could not be avoided, that the greater
number of Jews seemed specially designed by Nature to play this shameful part.’
He added: ‘The fact that nine-tenths of all the smutty literature, artistic tripe and
theatrical banalities, had to be charged to the account of people who formed scarcely one
per cent of the nation - that fact could not be gainsaid. It was there. It had to be
admitted.’
Unsurprisingly there were mixed loyalties in the world of entertainment; it was a time
for, ‘you made your bed you lie on it.’ Like Dietrich before her Harvey did so and ended
up in Los Angeles working as a nurse but ended her life running a souvenir shop in the
South of France. Like Dietrich she died of kidney failure.
One of the greatest singers and actresses of the Reich period was Hilde Hildebrand who
was a card-carrying National Socialist. After the war she was arrested by the allies,
interned by the Russians, very badly treated and repeatedly raped. She was released in
1947. Hilde died in 1976 in her home situated in Berlin-Grunewald lonely and forgotten.
Lizzi Waldmuller lost her life as a consequence of an allied air raid on Vienna. Life Adolf
Hitler Lizzi Waldmuller was Austrian by birth and nationality.
AUSTRIA- Walter Novotony -Air Ace among Air Aces
A much respected friend of mine, with an illustrious career in the Luftwaffe behind him,
first mentioned the exploits of Walter Novotny, his Luftwaffe comrade. It is yet another
lesson to remind us of the untapped strengths most people possess, without their being
tested or being aware of it, unless faced with challenges that will test us to our limits.
As a young choir boy there was nothing to distinguish the young Walter yet he was
destined to become top gun in aerial combat. It has been conceded that the Luftwaffe’s
fighters were commonly piloted by airmen heroic for their outstanding bravery and kill
ability. Set against such background Walter Novotny’s short career as a fighter pilot ace
was quite remarkable.
He was born December 7, 1920 in Gmuend. This is a typical town nestling in the
foothills of Lower Austria within walking distance from what was then Czechoslovakia.
One can only wonder at the career that might have been chosen by the youngster had
the war not been declared or generous peace terms agreed as proposed by Hitler in
1940.
Novotny graduated from a higher vocational school with honours after an excellent
start in life as a choir boy at Zwettle Abbey. He was nineteen-years old when the stunned
German nation awoke to hearing on their radios the British and French declarations of
war on September 3, 1939. Their country had after all simply been defending its borders
and repelling Polish incursions. In doing so they were following the Napoleonic maxim;
‘he who hits first hits twice.’ At that stage, mission accomplished, the war could
satisfactorily have been over and Europe again might settle into its gentle and cultured
ways.
As did many young men in all the combatant nations the young Walter volunteered to
serve his country and opted for service in the Luftwaffe. By the time he reached his
twentieth birthday he had been flying for two months. As a fighter pilot he was 19
months later posted to Jagdgeschwaer on the Eastern Front to join the ‘Grunherz’ JG54
Group.
Within weeks he had downed his first Russian J 18. Things didn’t always go the young
fighter pilot’s way. On his 24 th mission he was shot down and ended up in the Bay of
Riga. There is nothing tropical about the Baltic Sea at any time of the year and for three
days Novotny clung to life in a small dinghy. On one occasion he was very nearly rammed
by a Soviet torpedo boat. Eventually he drifted ashore where he was saved by a
Lithuanian fisherman.
It was a kindly deed that would be repaid many times over. Lithuania, like
neighbouring Estonia and Latvia; Poland too, was to be later handed over to Stalin’s slave
empire by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Revenge needs to be supped with
a long spoon; the best revenge is to act first and deny the enemy his victories. From
there on the twenty-one year old pilot was destined to become a highly decorated hero
fighter pilot of the Third Reich. One had to be pretty special to become the cream of the
Luftwaffe’s formidable gladiators of the skies.
As a person there was nothing that separated Novotny from his airmen friends. He was
in fact a typical fun loving young man; humble in his outlook, dismissive of his victories.
There was an easy-going self-confidence about him. Stationed in Vilnius, Lithuania’s
capital, he was thoroughly enjoying his war and celebrating his 250th downing of an
enemy plane when on October 19, 1943 he was called to the telephone. At the other end
of the line was Adolf Hitler to add to the congratulations. The German leader awarded
the young flier with the Knight’s Cross with diamonds; an honour for which only seven
other officers earned as tribute.
My friend, Willi (Wilhem Ludwig Kreissmann) describes the conditions in which they
fought over the north Baltic Sea. ‘On June 19, 1943 a Russian anti-aircraft shell exploded
at the plastic cupola of my He111 A! +BR-3rd squadron KG 53; we were high in the skies
above the bridge head of Wolhoffstroj. The shell killed my wireless operator Eugen Merz.
It ripped a large hole in the fuselage and damaged my aircraft’s rudder.
I received the order to drop my bombs and shear away from the group. Right away FW
190 fighter planes of the ‘Gruenherz’ wing. First Lieutenant Nowotny`s group was on my
wing’s side. As so often the ‘Gruenherzler’ of JG 54 around Trautloft, Philipp and Novotny
were controlling the skies above Leningrad around the Ladoga Lake and all the way to
the Illmen Lake.’
Willi adds: ‘By the time I flew my first missions on September 1942 as a bomber pilot,
Walter Novotny had cleared the skies of Russian Yaks and the U.S. manufactured Curtis
aircraft of the elite Statlin squadron.’
After his 56th aerial victory, Walter Novotny, in September 1942, received his
Ritterkreuz (Knight’s Cross and a year later following his 191th victory the rare and
coveted Oak Leaves Award. He says, ‘we were used to success in the skies defending
Europe from Stalin’s hordes.’ Of special mention is when our group was engaged in aerial
combat in which Novotny shot down ten Russian fighters on a single day. When his kills
reached 220 the fuehrer awarded my comrade in arms perhaps Germany’s highest
honour.
It was on the fuehrer’s orders that Walter Novotny was stood down; to leave his
fighting wing. Novotny’s notoriety was drawing flak. This was putting other fliers in
danger. There was a price on the young fighter pilot’s head.
Soon afterwards a call came from Major General Galland, who was still general of the
Jagflieder and now leading a new German fighter unit. Novotny was ordered to Berlin –
Rechlin. By early 1944 the Messerschmitt aircraft factories had the twin-engine jet
propelled fighter ME 262 coming off the production lines. Walter Novotny was chosen to
create Germany’s first jet fighter squadron. It was touch and go at the time; there were
disappointments but by autumn 1944 the squadron downed 4 MOTS, Mosquitoes and
Mustangs. Unknown to the fuehrer Novotny made his first kills and he successfully asked
Reichsmarschall Herman Goering to lift the grounding order.
At the latter part of 1944 Novotny’s 262 fighter group was located at Achmer in the
north-west corner of Germany. The selection of the location was prudent for it
commanded the main routes of the allied air armadas as they swept through on their way
to incinerate German cities and towns.
On November 8, 1944 Major General Galland called on Walter Novotny, after receiving
news of a massive incoming attack. Wave after wave of American bombers was on their
way. The group’s Messerschmitt force took to the air as Novotny followed their progress
from the Command Post. He was at his post when he received the disturbing news that
two of his fighter pilots had been shot down.
Leaving his post he was in the air with his own jet fighter within minutes. Soon
afterwards, in the thick of air battle, he had downed a Liberator and a Mustang fighter
when his crackling radio carried a message from a fellow airborne fighter pilot telling him
there were flames erupting from his aircraft. The plane, now disabled, spiralled towards
the ground as Novotny opened the canopy and bailed out. Tragically the parachute lines
were tangled in the falling aircraft’s rudder and both fighter jet and pilot met their end. It
was November 8, 1944.
The German nation mourned their loss and the young pilot was laid to rest with
honours in a special lot in Vienna’s Central Cemetery.
During the Soviet occupation of Vienna, invited to occupy the stricken Austrian capital
by the British and American leadership, Walter Novotny’s grave was desecrated. Later
restored it became a subject controversy when the city council refused to maintain it.
The tail of this story does have a happy ending. I hear from Vienna that Walter
Novotny’s last resting place is in the Group of Honour Graves at the Zentrafriedhof. The
City Council denies having refused maintenance of the hero pilot’s grave. Since 2003 this
special place has been well cared for and on special anniversaries his memory is told in
the many wreaths and flowers that adorn the place where he now sleeps; perhaps
dreaming of soaring high in the skies and denying the rape of Europe to so many of its
invaders.
Biographic Detail: Walter Novotny was credited with 442 flying missions and 258
victories in aerial combat. Of these 255 were on the Eastern Front and 3 whilst flying the
world’s first jet fighters, the Messerschmitt Me 262. He achieved most of his victories in
the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and approximately 50 in the Messerschmitt Bf 109.
His achievements earned him the coveted Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwerten und
Brillanten (Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds). After his death,
Jagdgeschwader 7, the first operational jet fighter wing in history, was renamed Nowotny
in his honour.
SWITZERLAND - THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY - Baron
Franz von Werra
Of the great escapes during and after World War Two there were two German escapes
that become legendary. Both were turned into unmissable movies though each should be
view with a more balanced and informed background by reading the books of these
sagas. I seem to recall that the escape of Luftwaffe fighter pilot Oberleutnant Franz von
Werra was said to be the only successful German POW escape. This is not true for there
were thousands of successful and unsuccessful escapes from allied prisoner-of-war
camps, mainly American and French, during and after World War Two.
What is often overlooked is that for the Germans the war did not end on May 8, 1945.
There was no end of the war for millions enslaved after being transferred to the USSR as
‘reparations’ and were sooner or later to die in captivity. Over a million captive
Europeans, mostly German, were to die whilst in captivity in the West in French, British
and American concentration camps.
For the eleven unfortunate Eastern European nations, including East Germany, handed
over to Stalin’s Soviet Union by the victorious allies, their ordeal never ended until 1989.
Their war lasted from 1939 - 1989; a horrifying 50 year ordeal under oppression; secret
police, torture, death, gross violations of human rights and lack of democracy. It was one
of the most awful periods of hatred towards one’s fellow man in the course of human
history. This was the outcome of agreements forged by Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill,
who was often too inebriated to think let alone talk, and U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
Baron Franz von Werra (b. July 13, 1914) and his sister Emma were born into a well to
do Swiss family of German blood who had fallen on hard times. As was the law of the
time relatives were obliged to offer assistance. The two siblings care was transferred to
aristocratic German relatives. It would mean financial survival and the knowledge that
the two children would receive a wonderful lifestyle, security and education.
Given his privileged background it was hardly surprising that Franz, on becoming a
young man, was rather full of himself; he certainly wasn’t short on self-esteem. He was
22-years old when he joined the Luftwaffe and saw action in May when serving with the
Jagdgeschwader 3 in the French campaign.
A well-considered officer he was promoted to Adjutant of 11 Gruppe JG 3. Ever the
showman his pictures appeared in the German press cuddling the unit’s mascot, a lion
cub named Simba. Later, engaged in the Battle of Britain, he relished the destruction of
nine RAF fighters, five of them on the ground.
He was regarded by Luftwaffe and later on prisoner-of-war camp comrades as a bit of a
show off and rather full of himself. If he was over confidant he would soon prove that
there was some justification in his self-assuredness.
A German prisoner-of-war was to say of him; ‘he was an honest and pleasant young
man; a bit of a showman with a wonderful imagination, but a reliable and honest chap.’
Franz Von Werra was first captured September 5, 1940 after being shot down over the
Kent countryside by Pilot Officer Basil Gerald Stapleton of 603 Squadron. Working on the
rural countryside farm employees later told of how they were working in the fields when
they heard and saw a low flying German fighter. Its wheels were still tucked into its
fuselage and the disabled fighter we following the contours of the meadows they were
working in. The aircraft made a crash landing less than half a mile distant.
Arrested with just bruises and hurt pride Franz von Werra was taken to police HQ at
Maidstone in Kent, from where he made his first attempt at escaping. Recaptured he was
later picked up by a squad sent by the British Army before being transferred to the
barracks in the same town. He was not to be their guest for very long; the prison’s latest
arrival was taken to what was known as the London District Prisoner of War Cage. At this
location and at others too he was interrogated for several weeks. He then learned he was
to be transferred to Camp No.1 Grizedale Hall in Cumbria in the north of England.
The young fighter pilot retained his cockiness and good humour. He thought it would
only be a matter of weeks before Britain sued for peace. Always up for a challenge he
determined on an escape strategy anyway. Within days of his arrival at Grizedale he put
his plans before the Escape Committee; German POW camps had them too.
There was nothing too spectacular planned. Each afternoon the POWs were taken in a
group on walks through the countryside. Typically the parties would be escorted by ten
armed guards plus an officer and two NCOs. It was agreed that a distraction be arranged
once they were in the countryside. Von Werra, taking advantage of it would clamber over
a stone wall and take cover until the party had moved on. He would then have three
hours of light to lie low and to then during nightfall put as many miles between himself
and the camp as possible.
All went to plan and as soon as prudence allowed he took off across the dales and
moors of the wild countryside. The landscapes were broken only by stone walls and
occasional stone built sheds called Hogarths. Sheep famers used them to store their tools
of the trade in, and to use as shelter when the weather turned exceptionally bad. At the
onset of winter that could be counted upon.
As soon as the alarm was raised so was the hue and cry. Methodically members of the
Home Guard searched the hills and inspected every Hogarth they could find. They got
lucky on October 10, 1940 when their torchlight beams found von Werra with an
expression on his face that said something along the lines of nein Wilkommen.
There was no protest as he allowed his hands to be tied behind his back. The small
group set off in the gathering darkness to take their prisoner home. As the guardsmen set
out for the camp the Home Guardsmen, with the lamp, also held firmly to the cord
holding the young flyer’s wrists together. There was no reason for him to think escape
possible; maybe he dropped his guard. He certainly dropped his lamp and his credibility
when with a quick jerk the flyer knocked him off balance and deftly freeing himself of the
makeshift handcuffs took off up the hill and disappeared into the woodland.
The Home Guard was largely made up of men judged unfit for active service so
pursuing their fit young fugitive was likely to be futile. Determined to get their man the
local constabulary, supported by troops and bloodhounds, combed the surrounding hills
without making contact. Ironically it was whilst several members of the posse were
enjoying a pint at a local pub that they heard a shout that their man had been spotted.
By the time they reached the location where the fugitive’s silhouette had been seen
against the skyline there was just the bleak landscape, the silence broken only by
birdsong.
It seemed the trail had once again gone cold when a Mister Staples, as sharp-eyed as
ever, noticed movement in nearby bog reeds. The pursuers were actually standing almost
on top of the fugitive. There they discovered young Franz von Werra lying face up, with
only his face visible in the near freezing water-logged bogs. This time the handcuffs were
real. Also real was the Camp Commander’s indignation and the hapless escapee was
sentenced to 21 days in solitary for him to contemplate the error of his ways.
With 19 days completed he was handed the few possessions he had and curtly told he
was to be transferred to another of Britain’s 1,050 POW camps. On this occasion he was
to be the guest of Hayes Camp 13 in Swanwick, Derbyshire. Wehrmacht Major Fanelsa,
who helped plan the downed flier’s escape from Grizedale, was not in the best of moods
when Franz turned up. He sensed trouble ahead and he wasn’t to be disappointed.
Von Werra, as were the other POWs, found himself confined to the camp’s ‘garden
house’. He soon made friends and as quickly made plans too. There was enthusiasm for
an escape bid and those determined to reach the Reich consisted of an old friend of von
Werra’s; his Austrian friend Leutnant Wagner. There was also Major Heinz Cramer,
Leutnant Walter Manhard and two men by the name of Willhelm and Malischewski. They
were dubbed der Swanwick Tiefbau A G.
In the time honoured way of many prisoner-of-war escapes the method to affect
escape was by a 13 metre tunnel. This would provide them with a subterranean route
taking them under two perimeter fences and a road running parallel to them. This would
bring the escapers to a copse of bushes and trees situated on waste ground. They started
to dig for victory on November 17, 1940; no doubt hoping to be home for Christmas.
As with such methods the disposal of the displaced earth was problematic. Despite
their great resourcefulness it was soon evident that they were running out of places to rid
themselves of the removed soil and clay without it being discovered. It was then they
made a lucky find; a sunken well. It was in fact a large tank out of sight underground that
was more than big enough to take whatever came from the construction of Hitler’s latest
autobahn. Precisely one month after the plucky prisoners had started to dig for Germany
they put their shovels down with a sigh of relief; mission accomplished.
The Reich beckoned and the only one not on the coach tour was Malischewski, who had
decided to stay put. They had all the props necessary so all looked the part; at least
nothing a blind horse wouldn’t notice. Franz von Werra had a flying suit on, underneath
his pyjamas, which were intended to keep his work wear spruce. As they made their final
arrangements they could hear the Luftwaffe’s bombers overhead and accompanying them
a ‘go away’ serenade of salvoes from the anti-aircraft batteries.
Filled with good humour and comradeship the gathered POWs broke into song; Muss i
den, Muss i den, um Stadtli Hinaus (I must away into the great wide world). This song
was immortalised by Elvis Presley when the lyrics were changed to A Wooden Heart.
As the escapees successfully negotiated their tunnel all seemed too good to be true.
The would walk to Somercoates, catch a bus to Nottingham, which would take them on to
the East Coast from where escape across the North Sea might be possible. Given
hindsight it is difficult to see how this might be accomplished. The group shook hands in
the darkness and went their separate ways. There were cheery promises to meet up at
their favourite watering holes in Berlin.
Unfortunately for Cramer, he didn’t quite make it; he only reached South Normanton
where he had his collar felt whilst stealing a policemen’s bicycle. Manhard, on his own,
caught a bus and was captured in Sheffield. Willhelm and von Werra’s Austrian friend
Wagner were caught entering Manchester hidden in the rear of a truck. For them the war
was over but von Werra’s war was still very much in evidence. He had settled on what he
would describe as a master plan. Wearing his flying suit and posing as a Dutch pilot in the
service of the allies he intended to bluff his way on to an RAF base and steal a plane.
He had prepared well. His English was certainly fluent enough to get him by; he had
absorbed the content of every newspaper he could lay his hands on. He was an expert on
current affairs and sport from the British perspective.
He was aware that the British bombers carried out their work at night and furtively
remained in hiding until well before dawn. Then, having made his way to a railway line
he came upon a train driver to whom he explained that he was Captain van Lott, a
member of the Royal Netherlands Air Force assigned for duty with the Royal Air Force. He
told the railwayman that he was returning from a bombing raid but his aircraft was so
badly damaged he hadn’t quite made it back. Could the train driver help or direct him to
the nearest RAF base.
This wasn’t a problem and soon afterwards Von Werra fund himself at Codnor Park
Station, where he was left in the care of signalman R. W. Harris. As impudent as ever the
German flier asked for the use of the telephone so that he might call the nearest base to
have a car sent to pick him up.
As there wasn’t a telephone in the signal box the escaping pilot had no choice but to
await the arrival of Sam Eaton, the booking clerk; there being a telephone in his booking
office. When Mr. Eaton arrived he listened to the young foreigner’s explanation but wasn’t
convinced. He thought it might be better if the constabulary were called instead. The look
on von Werra’s face must have been a sight to see; it wasn’t quite what he wished to
hear. He persisted and in the end he got his way. The RAF’s nearest base, RAF Hucknall
sent a car to collect von Werra.
In fact the police had got wind of his presence and arrived before the RAF car turned
up. To the constabulary his story was perfectly plausible and they saw no reason to
detain him. When the car sent by RAF Hucknall arrived at the railway station the guard
was armed. Duty Officer Squadron Leader Boniface, stationed at Hucknall, did have his
doubts. The German pilot as always was brimming with confidence and never suspected
his story wasn’t as easily accepted as it had by the railway staff.
On being questioned at the RAF base von Werra claimed he was based at Dyce
Aerodrome, near Aberdeen in Scotland. As the RAF base got in touch with Dyce von
Werra was asked to produce his identity disc. Disaster had struck; the counterfeit disc
had melted due to his body heat. As he made a theatre out of searching for the identity
disc he made his excuses to visit he toilet. As soon as the door closed behind him he ran
off towards the nearest hangar, past the car that had brought him from the railway
station.
There was not a soul in sight but as soon as he found himself in the hangar he
discovered civilian builders involved in renovations; they looked at the intruder with some
surprise. Slipping confidently between aircraft in various stages of repair he was
disappointed to find most to be bombers. He could fly them but they were totally
unsuited for an escape across the North Sea.
Climbing over a security fence he found himself in the adjacent Rolls Royce factory.
There he spotted a number of parked Hurricane fighter planes. Before he could reach one
of the aircraft he was intercepted by several mechanics, one of whom insisted he be
accompanied to sign the visitor’s book. The man who took him to the office assumed von
Werra to be one of the ATA ferry pilots, who were often at the base. It was their jobs to
fly the Hurricanes to various bases around Britain. Whatever it was that the German pilot
said or did to arouse suspicion we will never learn; suffice to say that he was aware that
he was attracting the wrong kind of attention.
The Luftwaffe officer slipped away and told a different mechanic he had been instructed
to take a test fight by the station’s commanding officer, Squadron Leader Boniface. By
this time the mechanic, who had given the German escaper a summary of the aircrafts
controls, went off to assist by bringing up a trolley accumulator to help start the aircraft’s
engine. As he awaited the mechanic’s return he looked up from the Hurricane’s controls
and then straight into the barrel of the revolver in the RAF officer’s hands. Squadron
Leader Boniface ordered him out. Clearly the game was well and truly up. Resigned to his
fate he was accompanied to the adjutant’s where he came clean.
In due course his escort arrived. He was returned to Hayes prison camp where he was
banged up for 14 days in solitary. This was probably just as well for the airman had much
to think about. There was a little light relief when he and his fellow malcontents were
allowed their Christmas dinner and, in the spirit of things, a little wine too.
The following month arrived and the prisoners were informed that they were on the
move again, this time to Canada. Under heavy escort the German POWs had the
opportunity to become acquainted with Greenock on the River Clyde, not too far from
Glasgow.
The acquaintanceship was not to last long for soon they were boarding the Duchess of
York. It is difficult to say if von Werra was so enchanted with Greenock as to wish he
could stay there. Perhaps not but he knew Germany was far closer to Scotland than was
Canada. Franz von Werra never gave up his hopes to slip his captors. He was the
consummate escaper.
On January 12, 1941, the ship carrying its 1,250 POWs and almost the same number of
Royal Air Force cadets en route to training, set sail. It must have been with a
considerable sigh of relief the escorting party saw the airman on his way. He had been
placed on special guard on the 300 mile trip from Derbyshire to Glasgow. Canada was to
welcome him but whether the sentiment was returned is debatable.
By the time von Werra had settled into Cabin 35 his compulsion to do a runner was so
strong that fantasy took over reality. It had not escaped his notice that the convoy was
being escorted by several Royal Navy warships. One of these was the Revenge-Class
battleship HMS Ramillies; the only warship to serve in both World Wars. It had a more
notorious history in that it was one of the two warships Winston Churchill had ordered up
the River Mersey during the national strike. Ostensibly to bring supplies, less apparently
to fire on striking workers if need be. The HMS Ramillies was by far the slowest of the
Allied and Axis warships operating at the time, which must have made her something of a
sitting duck.
One of the pilot’s hare-brained schemes was to, with others; take over the ship by force
in the event of the escorts breaking off having partially completed their cross Atlantic
escort duties. It was probably just as well they did not do so and eventually the ship’s
passengers, willing and unwilling, disembarked at Halifax in Nova Scotia.
From there they boarded trains whereupon the untiring airman learned that he and
other officers would soon find themselves on the north shores of Lake Ontario. He was
informed enough to know that the lake and region bordered the United States, which was
then, ostensibly at least, still neutral in the war.
The airman decided to relieve the train carriage of one less of its passengers. A major
problem was the point of exit, the only one possibility being the carriage’s window, which
was placed impossibly high and so narrow it would be difficult to get his head and body
through. There was little need for the windows to be barred. Being January presented
other difficulties; the windows of the travelling train were locked in frozen ice. Undeterred
he got together with others wishing to join him in using their body heat to unfreeze the
aperture. A small world, the others escapees were his old travelling companions,
Manhard, Willhelm and old friend Wagner. Other travelers gleefully donated their body
heat and soon the aperture could be opened.
Their intention was to make good their escape as close as possible to the U.S. Canadian border. Another essential being was human habitation that would offer
opportunity for shelter and food. The decision was to alight somewhere between
Montreal and Ottawa. Soon Montreal was in the locomotive’s rear view mirrors so to
speak and the prisoners set to work.
When the moment of salvation arrived his fellow conspirators held up a blanket as
though folding it and unseen the wily flier snake-like wriggled his way through the
aperture window. Dropping to the tracks from the slow moving train he then disappeared
into the night. In the area of Smith Falls he was just 30 miles from the St Lawrence River,
its far banks being those of the United States. In total eight POWs joined his escapade;
seven were quickly recaptured.
Picking up a map from a garage he made his way to the River Lawrence, which to his
delight was covered seemingly with ice. On the great river’s far side the escapee could
make out the twinkling lights of Ogdensburg. Finding the best place to cross a little
upstream he set out to reach the far banks but was thwarted on discovering an unfrozen
channel in the middle of the river so had little choice but to return to the river’s northern
bank.
There he found a deserted holiday camp and to his good fortune an upturned rowing
boat, which proved difficult to manhandle. Unwilling to give up so close to his destination
he struggled with the heavy craft and without gaining a hernia managed somehow to get
it to the water’s edge. Jumping in the exultant flier set off and on reaching the far banks
of the river set off in the direction of Ogdensburg. After so many futile efforts he had
finally gained liberty. His first act on reaching New York was to call in at the police station
and confess his sins. There he was to discover he was an illegal immigrant and as a
consequence he was charged.
Unsurprisingly, in view of the relationship between the U.S and Churchill’s Britain, he
was concerned as to his future. He had little precedent to go on. So far only three
German POWs had successfully escaped from Canada. One of these had returned home
via Japan and Russia, but the second had been handed over to the Canadian authorities.
Unwilling to share the latter’s fate he contacted Germany’s Consul in New York and by
doing so attracted massive media attention, which was far from unfavorable.
Now something of a movie star status he lapped up his new life as a celebrity; it
seemed to make all things worthwhile. There were many Americans who adored Hitler’s
Germany, not all of them by any means of German descent. Franz von Werra quickly
became something of a cult hero and in his element when giving interviews; perhaps with
a little forgivable embellishment here and there. Of course he was not to know at the
time that his exploits would be turned into a movie and be told in books.
The British and Canadian governments were far from amused and were negotiating for
his return. It was a tedious legal process that would drag on until April 1941. The decision
was made to return the absconder to Canada. By that time, with a little help no doubt
from the consulate, the bird had flown. On April 18 1941 Franz von Werra arrived in Berlin
after travelling via Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona and Rome.
Naturally the Germans made a great fuss of their returning hero and bizarrely he was
the only Luftwaffe pilot to be personally awarded the Iron Cross by Adolf Hitler, not for
his flying but for his fleeing exploits. He soon afterwards married his long-time girlfriend
before returning to active duty on the Russian Front. There he added further humiliation
to Britain by downing Russian planes and pilots, much to Churchill’s vexation.
Sadly, although the story of Franz von Werra’s escape ends on an inspiring note it
concludes sadly. Transferred to fighter patrols over the North Sea, to defend Germany
from the waves of attacking RAF and USAF bomber fleets, his aircraft engine failed and
the engaging but disengaging flier was lost at sea. Never has there been a trace of the
flier or his aircraft. He was again the one that got away; salute a great hero.
GERMANY - Clemens Forell - Epic Escapes
Little equals the greatest land escape of all time. This is the story of Clemens Forell a
young German lieutenant captured on the Eastern Front by the Russians. With tens of
thousands of other captured German prisoners-of-war and German slaves handed to the
Soviet Union as reparations, Forell was sentenced to twenty-five years penal servitude in
the Siberian lead mines. If you ever come across a book entitled As Far as my Feet will
Carry Me as narrated to J. M Bauer pick it up and treasure it.
It is also available in DVD. Although not as good as the book it is nevertheless
compelling with an ending guaranteed to break your heart. It is the true account of the
soldier’s fate after he was captured. After several years of working as a slave labourer far
underground in intolerable conditions in the lead mines, from which few lived to tell the
tale, he made the amazing decision to walk home to Germany or die in the attempt. He
was going to die anyway. He might as well end his life in the tundra as in the misery of
the mines. Helped by a doctor he set out, ill-equipped and ill provisioned to trek through
8,000 miles of enemy occupied land to Germany.
During his incredible journey Forell suffered untold hardships. He learned how to live off
the hostile Siberian wastes, he fell ill and recovered. On he wandered in the general
direction of Germany to the west, across a hostile environment as long as is the Atlantic
Ocean. He often fell in with nomadic tribes. Forell arrived at the edges of lakes big
enough to be better described as seas; rivers so broad it was impossible to see their far
banks. As he made his incredible journey through the Siberian wilderness and its bitterly
cold weather he occasionally fell in with brigands and criminals who were also keeping
one step ahead of the secret police. Such men would kill for the meagre contents of a
fellow traveller’s pockets. He worked at lumber camps; then would wander on always to
the West. On numerous occasions he was within a hair’s breadth of being identified and
returned to the gulag or shot.
At one stage he roamed the countryside with a desperate band of Russian criminals
who, after gaining his trust, conspired to murder him. Barely surviving, always on the run
from the ever oppressive presence of the notorious NKVD; stealing, enduring, he
contrived to drift southward and westward until three years later he ... read it yourself.
The newspaper Daily Herald described it as one of the most fantastic episodes of
human courage and endurance ever written. The Observer: ‘The book stands out in the
readers’ memory with moving, tragically and sometimes frightening impressiveness.’
The biographer says, the whole story was so nightmarish, the incidents and situations
he claimed to be true so incredible, and that I kept on raising doubts, yielding only to the
stubbornness with which he stuck to history or to corroboration from other sources. Time
and again, when I did turn elsewhere for corroboration, his story was confirmed. Such is
the epic that be warned you will not put it down the whole night through. Clemens Forell,
a true hero.
GERMANY - SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny Springing the Italian Leader
Another escape recorded for posterity is that of the then Italian leader’s rescue by
German Commandos. This took place on September 12, 1944.
Italian leader Benito Mussolini had fallen victim to an allied coup and placed under
house arrest in various Italian locations. Adolf Hitler’s fear was that Italy’s allied-backed
stooge, Marshall Pietro Badoglio, would make peace with the allies. This would likely
result in his giving the allies permission to invade Germany’s back door via Italy. The last
thing Germany needed was yet another front to defend in the security of his beleaguered
nation. The vengeful Winston Churchill was gloating over Germany’s impending
misfortune.
To turn the tables on the allies Adolf Hitler picked the battle-hardened SSSturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny to carry out one of the most daring escapes in wartime
history. By this time German intelligence had tracked down the Italian leader’s location to
his latest place of incarceration; a ski resort on the high peak of Gran Sasso in the
Apennine Mountains. His gaolers had chosen it wisely, it was virtually impregnable, and
the only access to it was via a cable car.
The high ranking German officer carefully planned his intended raid. Aerial
reconnaissance had by then identified a small grassy meadow yards from the hotel that
might conceivably offer a landing opportunity for the most expertly piloted gliders. The
elite assault force was made up of a mix of carefully selected Waffen-SS commandoes
and Fallschirmjager (paratroopers).
As the rescue attempt got underway a dozen light assault gliders soared high above
the Apennine snowy peaks. The rest of the paratroopers’ battalion went by road to
capture the Aquila airfield in the valley below the soaring mountain redoubt.
As the escape unfolded eight of the gliders slithered to a stop on the small mountaintop
plateau. Before the land borne paratroopers arrived the startled guards had been
bloodlessly overpowered. Within minutes the Italian leader was spirited away in a Fiesler
Storch reconnaissance aircraft piloted by SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny himself.
Churchill had been foiled. Benito Mussolini was restored to power and SSSturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny personally awarded the Knights Cross by Adolf Hitler.
Such was the valour shown that the epic then and now earned international respect and
acclaim.
NORWAY - (Sir) Vidkun Quisling - (The Slaying of a
Viking Hero)
‘A Nordic union between Scandinavia and Great Britain, with the adherence of Finland
and Holland, and in which Germany and eventually the British Dominions and America
might later be absorbed, would take away the sting of any communist combination and
secure European civilization and peace for the foreseeable future.’ – Vidkun Quisling,
‘Russia and Us’, 1930
Norwegian Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling had a serious expression on his face as he
sat opposite his secretary, Franklin Knudsen: ‘You will be my historical witness. The day
will come when I will need it.’ The national leader’s words were spoken with great
solemnity as the two men sat in a room of Oslo’s Grand Hotel. The date was 18 April
1940 and marked one of the most dramatic events in the great Nordic nation’s history.
Nine days earlier their country had surrendered to the forces of the German Third Reich.
Posterity would record that the trigger for this cataclysmic collapse had been pulled by
England’s half-American unelected parliamentarian Winston Churchill. Within three weeks
the former bankrupt and often lampooned British parliamentarian would be handed
powers a dictator could only dream about.
First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill’s aim was to cut National Socialist
Germany’s essential ore lifeline. Norway and Sweden enjoyed the status of neutrality and
within international agreements and law the two nations were amicably trading with their
near neighbour. Much of German’s ore was being transported from Northern Sweden to
the Reich.
Britain, having declared war on Hitler’s Germany, found applying pressure to Sweden
and Norway was futile; both countries, whose war it was not, were happy to trade
mutually with Germany.
Churchill was incandescent; a trade blockade was essential and cutting Germany out of
the Baltic, once known as the White Sea, was essential to his war aims. The Scandinavian
snub left the war leader little choice but to once again defy international opinion and law.
He decided that these countries neutrality was to be denied; Britain would mine
Norwegian waters and subsequently invade the peaceful Nordic nation.
The conspiracy to do so was later exposed by Churchill’s ally, Prime Minister Paul
Reynard of France. The British belligerent had arrived in Paris on April 5, 1940. It was
there that the plan was finally hatched to illegally lay minefields in Norway’s territorial
waters; its harbour entrances to force a blockade. The operation was postponed until
April 7, 1940. The intention was an open secret for the ruse was to provoke the German
leader, Adolf Hitler, into occupying Norway. This would cleverly relieve Britain of the
charge of breaking the country’s neutral status. It would provide the excuse for the
counter invasion of Norway with the aim of attacking Sweden and severing Germany’s ore
trade. Britain could then posture as having come to Norway’s aid from the aggression of
Nazi Germany. The Swedish government, up to the tricks of Winston Churchill’s war
cabinet, was soon to make it absolutely clear to Britain’s unelected coalition regime that
any invasion of its territory by British troops would be resisted.
Churchill had already boasted, ‘all German ships in the Skagerrak and Kattegat will be
sunk.’ This was a direct threat to Scandinavian trade access. In fact these waters were
and still are international and passage to all shipping is sacrosanct. These sea passages
are the gateway to the Baltic Sea. The straits provide the trading gateway for northern
Germany, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Finland, Sweden and
vital sea lanes for Norway and Denmark. For Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty to
consider such a move was a matter of international condemnation.
Aware of the British leader’s intention to open up a bloodletting Scandinavian front with
its equal on the battlefields of World War One France the Reich had little choice but to
pre-emptively strike. This was where and when, not for the first time in his life, Winston
Churchill discovered he had seriously miscalculated. Once again thousands of British
troops would lose their limbs and lives to another of their soon to be prime ministers
‘cunning plans’ destined to go awry.
Winston Churchill’s de facto war on Norway, Sweden and Finland had been drawn up as
early as February 5, 1940. It was agreed to send up to four divisions, camouflaged as
volunteers to Finland via Norway and Sweden to seize these countries iron ore assets.
Part of the strategy was aborted because of Sweden’s stated determination to resist
Britain’s intended invasion.
Eleven days later on February 16, 1940 Churchill did order British naval forces to
proceed into Norway’s territorial waters and to then board the German freighter Altmark.
On April 8 the Royal Navy began to illegally mine the neutral Norway’s territorial waters;
an act of war that once again blew a gaping hole in previously solemnly signed
declarations.
As the mining of Norway’s ports took place British and French troops were mobilising to
invade Norway. Their first objective was to occupy Narvik and to then clear the port
before advancing to the Swedish frontier. Simultaneously British conscripted troops were
readied to occupy Stavenger, Bergen and Trondheim.
Hitler was aware the invasion of a completely encircled Germany would follow: ‘The
occupation of Norway by the British would be a strategic turning movement which would
lead British forces into the Baltic.’ Germany had few military defences in the region and
no wish to invade the Baltic States to defend their northern borders. ‘If British and French
forces were to become established in southern Sweden and Norway Germany’s enemy
would find himself in a position to advance on Berlin and break the backbone of our two
fronts.’ It was for these reasons that the great British historian, A J P Taylor surmised:
‘Germany fought a defensive war.’
The German leader acted decisively. This immediately produced hysterical denunciation
by the sanctimonious British government and its hypocritical media. Behind closed doors
Churchill and his henchmen were gloating; Hitler had walked into a trap. The selfcongratulation was a little premature.
In that hotel room in Oslo, where the Norwegian Prime Minister conferred with his
secretary, the atmosphere was grim. Vidkun Quisling was under no illusions as he
continued speaking: ‘I want a man who observes and reflects. I may tell you that in
future you are going to be the man who himself has seen and heard what is happening at
this decisive moment in the history of Norway and that of the West. You will be my
historical witness.’
The Norwegian leader’s secretary was to recall those prophetic words nearly five years
later when on October 24, 1945; Vidkun Quisling sleeping fitfully in his sparse cell, was
aroused in the very early hours of the morning, long before dawn. From his sleep he was,
without a jacket, taken into the bitter cold of the prison yard at Mollergaten Gaol in Oslo.
The cavalcade of limousines had rolled into the old Akerhus fortress forty minutes
earlier. Shortly afterwards a volley of shots reverberated beyond the prison walls. One of
Europe’s most enigmatic and bravest leaders crumpled to the hail of firing squad bullets.
The limousines departed into the darkness of the bleak wintry night. It was hardly
Norway’s most glorious of moments.
Back in the prison, on the stone floors outside the recently vacated Cell 34B, were rose
petals. They had likely come from one of the many bouquets handed in for Vidkun
Quisling. Upon the desk rested a copy of the Holy Bible with its pages resting open.
Vidkun, a deeply religious and charitable man, was the son of a clergyman; in fact the
latest in a line of eight ecclesiastical forbears in the district. It was a calling he himself
was attracted to.
Underlined twice in the Holy Bible were the words: ‘He shall redeem their soul from
defeat and violence and precious shall their blood be in His sight.’ - Psalms 72-14.
It is ironic that the name of a man who was a patriot and hero without equal has
become synonymous with treachery. Such is the awesome power of propaganda wielded
by victor nations, who write the history books.
Vidkun Quisling, born July 18, 1887, was a man of his time, whose life was orchestrated
by events sweeping Europe following the Jewish-Bolshevik seizure of Russia in 1917.
THE EPIC POLAR ADVENTURERS
In 1908 the young Norwegian had achieved an officer’s position and three years later
achieved the best degree ever recorded in the history of Norway’s Military Academy. Such
was his standing that a report was forwarded to the King of Norway. The young
lieutenant was immediately attached to the General Staff. By 1918 he was military
attaché to Petrograd and Helsingfors. Just four years later Vidkun Quisling became closely
involved with Fridtjof Nansen in his charitable work under the auspices of the Relief
Committee for Russia.
Nansen, the internationally renowned Norwegian polar explorer, scientist and
humanitarian was the first man, with five companions, to traverse Greenland, the world’s
largest island. This epic adventure along with others polar expeditions achieved with his
ship Fram (‘Forward’) cannot fail to inspire.
An obvious choice, due to his enormous international reputation as a humanitarian,
Nansen agreed to act as the High Commissioner for the League of Nations Commission
for Prisoners of War. As a consequence Vidkun Quisling’s mentor was responsible for the
humane repatriation of 450,000 POW’s rescued from twenty-six countries in the aftermath
of the Great War. Without question these unfortunate captives’ exiles would have died
without Nansen’s endeavours.
THE LIVES OF SIX MILLION CHILDREN SAVED
Leading from these humanitarian successes the Norwegian explorer carried the extra
burden of bringing relief to millions of refugees torn apart by the cataclysmic upheavals
following the Jewish-Bolshevik civil wars. Having succeeded in bringing respite to the
world’s dispossessed, Nansen in the early 1920s was invited by the International Red
Cross to direct the work required to save the lives of millions of Russians suffering from
revolution, civil war and Stalin’s famine caused by the export of grain to the West which
had invested in the overthrow of Tsarist Russia. Nansen, assisted by Vidkun Quisling and
other organisations, is estimated to have saved the lives of over seven million people of
who six million were children.
In 1922 their relief program brought them to the Ukraine and the Crimea. From 192425 Quisling was in the Balkan and Donau states on behalf of the League of Nations. In
1925 he joined Nansen again in the Near Orient and Armenia before taking up residence
in Moscow to better co-ordinate his tasks.
Sadly Quisling never wrote anything about his work apart from official reports so we
need to refer to Nansen’s epic, ‘Through the Caucasus to the Volga’. From it we may
obtain an impression of the devoted service that Vidkun Quisling offered
‘From house to house were to be seen the same appalling sight of expiring and expired
human remains. Dried grass, leaves and crushed bones and horse’s hooves, instead of
bread. No warmth, so that the pitiful bodies froze to the floors before life was
extinguished. At an infants home forty-two children died last night. They were still lying in
their beds with the living at their sides, who – with great wondering baby eyes – sat
staring at death, the great deliverer from all suffering. Dead bodies were dug out of the
burial grounds to be eaten. Parents – in their distraction – killed their children in order to
satisfy their own hunger. Over thirty million persons were starving, and in addition
epidemics were raging, worst of all spotted fever.
More than three million died, despite the succour, which was too little too late. And
over these same identical plains, thousands of gaunt human beings fled, without food,
not knowing where, just away, through the congealing winter, while they and their last
camels and horses died on the frozen roads. All traffic on the rivers was halted by the ice,
the railways were out of order, the few trains – packed to overflowing with refugees –
remained standing on the lines, people died in the carriages. Horror was all around.’
VIDKUN QUISLING HONOURED
In the foreword to Nansen’s narrative will be found the explorer’s effusive thanks to his
personal assistant, Vidkun Quisling: ‘These prefatory words cannot be brought to
conclusion without heartfelt thanks to Captain Vidkun Quisling, for his tireless friendship
as a fellow-traveller and for his valuable assistance he has rendered to the author
through his comprehensive knowledge of Russian.’
On June 22, 1941 the German Reich, assisted by anti-Communist allies, pre-emptively
attacked the Soviet Union that had amassed its armies on Europe’s borders. The German
and other armed forces where surprised to discover on the walls of hovels the icon
portraits of both Fridtjof Nansen and Vidkun Quisling sharing equal status with Our Lady.
The spectacle of unknown Norwegians elevated to saintly status bemused but inspired
the soldiers.
Norwegian front line soldiers (frontkjempere) several times found plain plaster of Paris
busts of Quisling in Russia’s impoverished villages. The peasants told them of the man
from the far north that had once saved them from starvation. It was a memorable
experience for those soldiers who had now been charged by the same man with the task
of saving the people of the Ukraine from a worse destiny – communist slavery.
By now Vidkun Quisling’s reputation was such that he was invited by the British
Government, which did not have diplomatic access to the USSR’s Communist regime, to
look after Britain’s diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. For his humanitarian
achievements and his services to the British Crown, Norway’s acclaimed son was
honoured with the British order of Commander of the British Empire (CBE). It was a
source of great pride to him.
In 1930 Quisling returned to his Norwegian homeland. It was important that he do so;
Norway was then in the throes of Communist subversion very similar to that suffered by
Germany following the Great War. Communist insurgents had brought the Scandinavian
country to the precipice of revolution. The so-called Norwegian Labour Movement was
affiliated to the Communist International. Financed by Moscow, its blood-red hammer and
sickle flag fluttered as its party-banner. These ‘Sons of Moscow’ agitated for a ‘Soviet
Norway’, a ‘Soviet Republik’, through bloody revolution if need be.
On one notable occasion a politician who was later to become a Norwegian Minister,
was arrested on the Norwegian-Russian border. In his possession was gold to the value of
several million kroner hidden in his luggage. The Kremlin stooge spat: ‘The lives of
twenty thousand middle-classes counted for nothing compared with that of a single
worker’.
Another future minister bragged that soon the red flag would be hoisted above
Norway’s parliament while another future minister made incendiary speeches calling for
revolution.
This same rabid revolutionary politician was elevated to Minister of (Norwegian)
Defence in 1935. This was the same government that failed the opportunity to build a
defence force capable of resisting Winston Churchill’s sinister invasion of Norway; or resist
Germany’s preventive invasion.
Throughout this troubled period agitation and revolutionary fervour was ripe in Norway.
It was a similar situation to Western backed insurgencies in North African countries,
including Libya, and Syria. Strikes were organised, seditious literature passed from hand
to hand; political opponents and police were murdered. Simultaneously the offices of
opposition parties were torched, politicians intimidated, riots organised by
revolutionaries, few of whom were Norwegian nationals.
Into this maelstrom came Vidkun Quisling, now Minister of Defence on the cabinet of
the country’s newly elected Peasants Party. Few people on earth were better qualified to
recognise the danger posed to humanity by godless Communism. Quisling acted
decisively to prevent Norway becoming another Soviet Republic.
Realising that the final Communist push was imminent, with armouries and military
installations already targeted, Quisling immediately mobilised Norway’s armed forces and
police. The Communist insurrection was quickly put down and for this the Reds never
forgave Vidkun Quisling for denying them Norway.
By April 1932 Quisling was free to stand in his country’s parliament and publicly expose
the treacherous activities of the international revolution directed by Moscow at Norway’s
heart.
‘I have in my possession, photos, and duplicates of actual statements that an agent of
international Communist leadership has made in Norway. What does it say? It says simply
that the revolutionary movement in this country is being financed from abroad. In 192829 they have received 500,000 kroner from a foreign power. There are not many parties
in the land that dispose of similar amounts for their work.’
Quisling went on to show the hard evidence of communists urging Norwegian soldiers
‘to start an insurrection, of organising cells in the Army and Navy, in factories; preparing
for revolution and insurrection’.
Moving on and whilst conceding the laudable aims (working class enfranchisement) of
Norway’s labour movement, in a speech regarded as one of his finest, the Norwegian
Minister of Defence shamed the Red Front movement for being foreign financed and
guided by Marxist principles with the single aim of class-war and revolution.
At this point Vidkun Quisling directed his anger at the desperate straits Communism
had brought Russia to: ‘I went there in order to help men in distress; sacrificed nearly all
my means in order to help needy people there; ruined my health for a long time to come,
and in addition lost my position in life at home. At that time, I visited the famine-struck
districts, where all were suffering distress – we too – and security for life and health was
negligible. But, when in other ways I was assisting Nansen in aiding those in distress, I
looked about myself in vain for those people, who are now abusing me, and who in words
and gestures feel so warmly for that same country.
‘The position I now occupy forbids me to enter more fully into these matters, which
concern another country. But I am convinced that sooner or later the representatives of
labour in this hall will come to consist of men and women who – like myself – have had
their views about social questions revised and developed in the hard school of life and
experience, who do not support ruinous, foreign, inferior and compromised ideas, but who
desire a solid and constructive national policy of work, which can protect the interests of
the workers as well as those of the country at large.’
At this point legend has it, Norway’s impassioned Minister of Defence rose to his feet
and banged on the podium with his hand. It had a similar effect on the Storting
(parliament) as that intended by Haydn’s amusing ‘Surprise’ symphony No.94, when the
sudden orchestral clash startles the theatre goers.
Uproar ensued and the outcome was that Marxist members of the Norwegian
parliament squealed ‘like stuck pigs’, the bourgeois parties counted the buttons of their
waistcoats but finally the parliament agreed to look at the hard evidence.
Vidkun Quisling produced it. What followed was an analytical dissection of the country’s
revolutionary left proving beyond all doubt the violent, treacherous, revolutionary aims of
Norway’s radical left. Vidkun Quisling was thus vindicated.
QUISLING’S BLUEPRINT FOR PEACE ON EARTH
Quisling had a keen understanding of world order and was a recognized political
philosopher. Much of Quisling’s analysis and many of his statements influenced and
contributed to the ideology of Italy’s emerging Benito Mussolini whose new Fascism was
successfully creating the corporate state. Such was the success of Fascism that even
Churchill conceded: ‘Of Italian Fascism, Italy has shown that there is a way of fighting the
subversive forces which can rally the masses of the people, properly led, to value and
wish to defend the honour and stability of civilized society. Hereafter no great nation will
be unprovided with an ultimate means of protection against the cancerous growth of
Bolshevism.’ (2)
As a philosopher about whom few records remain Vidkun Quisling put forward a
revolutionary thesis to provide for a system of ‘universalism’. It called for a new world
order based on ‘groundwork, of religion and morals as well as statecraft and science’. He
saw this as the essential building block of a world community based on the
complementary values of race, a ‘constitution’ of religion, statecraft, science, and
essentially morals. The manuscript as far as I know is still hidden away in an Oslo vault.
Quisling’s real politik would place in history’s dustbin all systems based on principles
that lack morality, defy natural order and deny a spiritual dimension to the human
condition. i.e. Communism/Capitalism.
Knudsen added: ‘It is now many years since he showed me his draft for a ‘European
Covenant’; a commonwealth and a common market, conducted by a coalition cabinet in
which each state had one vote. In such a United States of Europe, united with the British
World Empire, and with the re-insurance of Russia, he saw the only possibility of peaceful
progress.
‘The plan did not reach maturity because of the war, and after the war no recognition
has been given him for it, even the draft mysteriously disappeared from the archives, and
his enquiries for it at his trial were in vain. But (here Knudsen in 1967 comments on the
emerging Common Market) they are the same thoughts which at this very moment are of
impelling interest to the peoples of Western Europe.’
Quisling set about carving his niche as a politician and in the same year wrote his book,
‘Russia and Us’. It was the most stringent analysis of Soviet affairs ever to appear in the
Norwegian language. Increasingly Quisling attracted the fury of Norway’s red agitators,
those ruthless revolutionaries he had so recently bettered during his term as Norway’s
Minister of Defence.
On 17 May 1933, Norway’s Day of Independence and the same year in which the
German people elected Adolf Hitler as their country’s leader, the Norwegian leader
formed his own political party; Nasjonal Samling (National Unification).
His opponents sought in vain to libel and slander the patriotic newcomer but there was
no flaw in the party leader’s Curriculum Vitae. His popularity, integrity and patriotism
were without question; his impeachments of the hard men of the left had by now been
endorsed by two-thirds of the Norwegian parliament.
Nevertheless the black propaganda persisted until Mrs. Sigrun Nansen, wife of the
recently deceased renowned explorer leapt with others to his defence: ‘Whether opposing
or supporting the policy of Mr. Quisling, I think that many deplore the personal and
insulting form which the election campaign has taken against him. It will surely be of
interest to know what Fridtjof Nansen thought of his aide. He often expressed his opinion
about having had such a man for his helper: Excellent administrator, self-sacrificing and
honest – his face was alight, when he mentioned Quisling’s name.’
The Nasjonal Samling’s leader, inspired by the Elysian ambitions of Nansen, sought to
unify the Norwegian people under a program of reconstruction based on social equality.
As in Britain today Norway had become separated from the fundamentals of life and was
drowning in political expediency, social engineering, pornography, decadence, racial
debasement and political correctness gone mad. His solution: ‘Like every society, which
wishes to save itself from serious crisis, and to be reborn, we must find our way back to
the life-giving substratum, and on this substratum unfold our potentialities.
‘A spiritual and responsible view of existence, as a living faith extended to all parts of
our life, that is what people chiefly need; a proper combination of individualism and
fellowship, with our best men to lead us, freedom of personal initiative, security of life
and property, of work and its results, a sense of and a respect for, the family institution
and parentage, for blood and soil, good-will and co-operation, instead of class-warfare,
sound economic principles for the individual and for the entire society, emancipation of
intellectual life and solidarity of economic life.’
Describing his re-born social order Vidkun Quisling concluded by confronting the forces
of national decadence: ‘Taking my departure from this ground, and joining battle with the
forces that are partly opposing the new trend of things and partly endeavouring to lead it
into ways abhorrent to nature, we will form a new, and – we may say – a religiously
determined - political doctrine.’
In Vidkun Quisling, Norway’s Communists discovered an opponent far more to be feared
that the compliant conservatives. No leader could match his resolution, his insider
knowledge of Communist subversive and revolutionary strategy. Gangs of red thugs,
financed and encouraged by the Moscow Mafia, repeatedly attacked the Nasjonal
Samling’s meetings and election campaigns. They vilified him as ‘a Nazi’, ‘a fascist’, ‘an
enemy of the working class’; there was no slander to which they wouldn’t stoop.
Similar scenes were being repeated throughout Europe as the Communist international
attempted to bring down the continent’s democracies. From London to Oslo, Madrid to
Copenhagen, anti-Communist patriots sharing the ideals of Oswald Mosley and Vidkun
Quisling sought to stem the red tide.
In terms of physical courage Vidkun Quisling inspired respect. Franklin Knudsen
described events at a Nasjonal Samling meeting in Tonsberg in the autumn of 1933:
‘Communists took possession of the hall in advance, and created a fearful racket, in order
– if possible – to interrupt Quisling’s speech. They shouted and sang the ‘international’
and eventually a struggle ensued at the entrance. I had to knock down a couple of men,
the more noisy ones were thrown out, and the meeting was eventually carried through in
comparative order.’
Subsequently however, a threatening crowd congregated outside the hall, and the
managers advised Quisling to leave by a rear entrance. He refused. He went out by the
main entrance and looked around, coolly appraising the mob. A silence fell, and then a
forcible term of abuse was heard in the middle of the throng. Quisling inspected the
hundreds of excited faces and suddenly saw which one had shouted. He went straight up
to him and said: ‘Would you care to repeat that?’
The man stared at him furiously, but soon his eyes began to waver following which he
meekly turned round and disappeared. Quisling walked straight through the crowd
without anyone laying a hand on him.
It was not merely his tall forceful figure that inspired respect. He had such powerful
eyes and was so totally devoid of fear that he could actually paralyse an opponent.
After the meeting we went for a walk through the town. Nearing the shipping wharf
four men came running out of a side street to ‘go for’ Quisling. ‘I seized my pistol and
called out: ‘Stop, or I shoot!’ and the gang disappeared as swiftly as they had arrived.
Quisling turned to me, a broad smile on his face. ‘You should not take people so
seriously,’ he said. ‘Certainly, I can stop them myself if necessary. And who knows,
perhaps we might have had a chance of getting four more new members.’
Town after town throughout Norway democratically fell to the popular appeal of
Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling party. These included Gjovik, Bergen, Trondheim, Norkoping,
Oslo and elsewhere. Even the Communist stronghold, the market place in front of ‘The
Peoples House’ in Oslo, fell to the enthusiasm carried by Norway’s patriotic reaction to
communist insurrection. It was a bitter blow to the Reds who had vowed that no party
other than their own would speak from the square.
Such was the extent of the red terror that Nasjonal Samling, as with all anti-communist
organisations throughout Europe, found it necessary to organise a defensive ring.
Throughout Norway over 500 well-disciplined men were selected to form the ‘third’
defence force. In highly mobile detachments they placed themselves wherever needed,
protecting Nasjonal Samling meetings, rallies, marches, political campaigning activities.
Inevitably there were casualties.
Knudsen explained: ‘The fact that we were constantly fighting for our rights gave us a
fanatical fervour, that no adverse fortune could smother, not even the defeat we suffered
at the general elections by reason of the collective opposition from both the ‘red’ (left
wing) and the ‘blue’ (conservative) parties. Nevertheless, we continued with our
educational work; we stressed the Communist danger, the need for proper defence to
ensure Norway’s neutrality, the need for national reconstruction.’
As a lesson and a warning that might be taken heed of by current political activists
Knudsen went on to say: ‘Party politics in the strict sense of the term, we never pursued
apart from short electioneering campaigns. Otherwise we confined ourselves to general
questions of national politics.
‘In 1936, the day dawned which was to be decisive. We held a great national meeting
in Oslo, which was attended by several thousand men from all over the country. Quisling
then assembled his most active fellow activists, and we solemnly took an oath of fealty to
him – staking our existence upon the issue – we promised – under his leadership – to
continue with our struggle until we had won victory. He himself and over a thousand of
his followers sealed this oath with their lives.’
Apart from struggle, education and the entryism there were no further tangible success
in terms of seats won until 1936, three years following Nasjonal Samling’s formation. The
party’s leaders realised that electioneering was secondary to education. First the
electorate must be properly informed as to the dangers posed to their country, the threat
posed by the weakness and treachery of the established parties, the need for national
reconstruction.
EUROPE IN TURMOIL
With the exception of stable and prosperous National Socialist Germany Europe was in
turmoil. Britain and France, whose preferential trade agreements were threatened by
German competition, urged on by international Jewish interests, were by then blockading
German products and threatening war.
Poland backed by England was constantly attacking Germany’s borders whilst
Czechoslovakia on Germany’s eastern border had treacherously allowed the anti-German
Soviet Union the use of its military airfields aimed at Germany’s heart.
Throughout the world and in particular, Europe, the Soviet Union was agitating for
world revolution. Menacingly it was now poised to overthrow Rumania and its oilfields
thus grabbing Germany by the jugular.
In northern Europe tiny Finland was desperately fighting to stem Soviet aggression
(The Winter War). Overrun by overwhelming odds they failed and the heroic Finns
surrendered (March 6, 1940) much of their country to the ever expansionist USSR.
Despite their government’s capitulation many bravely fought on; an army of farmers
brought the Red Army to a grinding halt.
Their success against Stalin’s Red Army outraged Winston Churchill. The English
autocrat soon sought revenge for Stalin’s humiliation and finally got it on December 7
1941 when England declared war on Finland. Simultaneously England declared war on
Hungary and Romania.
Spain was simultaneously locked in the grip of Civil War in which General Franco was
mobilising sufficient forces to (eventually) hurl Moscow’s cuckoo out of the Madrid nest. In
Norway, Quisling took the field against the Soviet-inspired Camerilla then aiming to
embrace the whole of Europe in a gigantic pair of pincers with one of its claws in
Scandinavia and the other in Spain. Europe was in mortal danger from its extremes; north
and south.
Few were better qualified to act than was Vidkun Quisling. He knew the Soviet plans as
well as they themselves did. He could follow the Soviet strategy step by step towards its
final goal of world domination.
Quisling had already met Leon Trotsky, the alias Lev Davidovitsj Bronstein, a Ukrainian
born American revolutionary Jew; he was familiar with the gaunt and bearded
revolutionary’s view of world upheaval. The Norwegian leader had also met leaders of the
‘Russian’ revolution in the Caucasus and the Ukraine, the Danube deltas and in Moscow
itself.
A combination of diplomacy and media silence disguised Soviet revolutionary aims from
the masses of Western Europe. People throughout Europe were blithely unaware of the
danger posed by the spread of Communism. Quisling was one of the few sufficiently
enlightened to identify and thwart the Communist threat. This is something for which
Britain owes a debt of gratitude to the Norwegian leader.
Nasjonal Samling’s slogan was: ‘Norway neutral – Norway prepared.’ It was a slogan
detested by the sabre-rattling Winston Churchill. The British First Lord of the Admiralty
was already conspiring to violate Norway’s neutrality as part of his strategy to deny ore to
National Socialist Germany. Vidkun Quisling was proving to be an adept prophet in the
militaristic manoeuvring of those countries that sought any excuse for war.
There was hardly a Communist cell, act of entryism, conspiracy or fifth-columnist front
in Europe that Quisling didn’t know about. The Norwegian patriot’s base was Norway but
his heart was for the security of Europe. His two principle aims were to stop the Marxists
in Norway and to bring unity to the anti-Communist reaction throughout Europe. Up until
Hitler’s election, when Communism in Germany was dealt with by tearing it out root and
branch, Quisling was concerned about the intentions of Germany’s Weimar regime. He
had evidence that, in defiance of the Versailles Treaty terms, the Weimar Republik had
assisted Communist Russia’s aggressive intentions towards Britain and her Empire. This
was yet another reason for Britons to reflect the debt they owe to the Norwegian patriot.
Vidkun Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling Party urged adequate defences to maintain
Norway’s neutrality from wherever it was threatened. The real traitors, Norway’s
Communists, especially after 1935 when the red-front Labour Party came to power,
campaigned for disarmament and in the event of war, a general strike and the laying
down of arms. This was precisely what the Soviets wanted. The Norwegian Labour Party
smuggled the politically toxic Trotsky into Norway under the assumed name of Sedow.
This left little doubt as to the catastrophe likely to befall Britain’s closest Scandinavian
neighbour.
Quisling did everything possible within the law to have the New York ghettorevolutionary thrown out of Norway. He failed due to the Government having invited the
firebrand in the first place. What followed was one of the most audacious acts of antisubversion ever mounted in peacetime. Agents attached to Nasjonal Samling, without
Quisling’s knowledge, tapped Lev Trotsky’s telephones, infiltrated his circle, spied on the
revolutionary and his entourage, and even burgled their homes.
One of Quisling’s men, posing as an estate agent, visited Trotsky’s lair and ‘liberated’
several compromising directives. On other occasions his secretaries, (Trotsky was
supposed to be convalescing) were spied upon and their belongings discreetly searched.
Finally Trotsky’s home was ’burgled’ by the enterprising Nasjonal Samling’s operatives
whilst he himself was intimidated by a multi-car pursuit during which the nervous
architect of the Red Terror protected himself with a sandbag at the rear of his neck.
Within days the luckless Jewish mouse, already responsible for the butchery of
unknown numbers, and contrary to his permit, imported several thug minders who were
anything but Nordic in appearance.
By then, faced with the undeniable evidence of the Jewish revolutionary’s activities, the
thwarted Red Front Labour Party had little choice but to intern Trotsky. This was followed
by the New York - Kremlin firebrand being extradited to Mexico. There the rat-faced little
butcher was subsequently ice-picked to death by Jackson-Mornard, one of Stalin’s agents.
Quisling, in public at least, was less than amused at the unorthodox methods used by
his party members to counter the Trotsky threat. He suggested, ‘It would have been
simplest to have him delivered to the Russian consulate whereupon he would probably
have been despatched to Moscow – in an urn.’
Vidkun Quisling was very much an ascetic and refused to accept a salary from his
party’s funds. During the years 1933/44 his secretary organised and recorded over 500
public meetings. The living and travelling expenses for Quisling must have been
considerable but the party leader preferred to live on a meagre pension, occasionally
selling a few possessions.
His efforts were rewarded by a constant stream of abuse both in the left wing and
conservative press. As a person he was noted for his genial humour, which made light of
such abuse. To those who were remote he could appear to be severe and serious, even
uncommunicative. But among friends he was always good-humoured and the
conversation sparkled when he was present. He was a great practical joker and his lighthearted banter made him extremely popular among friends and party activists.
Physically, Quisling was lank and loose-jointed but he was later to put on weight due to
an inflammation of the kidneys, which he contracted just before England’s declaration of
war on Germany and later his own nation.
VIKING BLOOD
Physically Quisling was seemingly blessed with extraordinary stamina. Typically he
would run, apparently effortlessly, through the mountains for anything from six to eight
hours. Franklin Knudsen said: ‘’He walked like an elk, purposeful and indefatigable.’
Both his parents belonged to a family line whose distinguished ancestry went back
many generations. The name Quisling designates that the bearer belongs to a collateral
branch of the Norwegian Royal Family, and Norway’s two most revered poets, Henrik
Ibsen and Bjornstjerne Bjornson. Quisling had good grounds to say at his court hearing:
‘It is not dishwater that flows through my veins.’
At school Vidkun excelled, particularly in literature, science, history and traditions. He
reached the top of his class effortlessly. He remained in that position and so his final
degree presented no problem to him. The young Norwegian’s love of the outdoors never
suffered as a consequence of his academic diligence; he excelled at both shooting and
fishing.
Knudsen affirmed that he had never met a man who needed less sleep. Six hours was
his absolute maximum but frequently he would be dismissive of rest until the day’s work
was completed and comrades ‘safely stood down’. Though that might be three or four
o’clock in the morning he would still be back on his feet at 7am.
His ability to remember was uncanny. He once dictated some fifty lines of political text
before asking Knudsen’s opinion. His secretary replied that he thought the wording
unnecessarily academic. Without looking at the notes he mentioned a series of words and
expressions explaining as he did so what was to be replaced and where. He then dictated
the amended text flawlessly.
He was once introduced to sixteen new party members. Several months later he asked
how each was getting on, recalling individual names, districts and attributes. He never
made a single mistake. As a youth he had memorised the many hundreds of parishes of
Norway, and their boundaries, simply to familiarise himself with the precise topography of
his country.
Distraught at the appalling likely consequences of what he called the ‘brothers war’
between Britain and Germany, Quisling had intervened a month following England’s
declaration of war on its European neighbour.
He personally telegraphed British Prime Minister Chamberlain, proposing that on a
British initiative a union of European nations be formed. His secretary and biographer
Franklin Knudsen wrote: ‘A few weeks later he had ready a detailed draft for cessation of
hostilities and a proposal for re-establishing peaceful relations between the brothernations Great Britain and Germany.’
As Knudsen surmises, ‘If Quisling had had any desire to exploit the confusion of the war
and to seize power himself by the aid of foreign bayonets; he would have done exactly
the reverse. He could have lulled the people into a still more profound sleep, and one day
confronted it with an accomplished fact.’
On October 11, 1939 after Poland’s attacks on Germany had been repulsed and German
territory ceded to Poland in 1918 recovered, Vidkun Quisling sent an urgent telegram to
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: ‘Having in 1927 to 1929 been charged with
the task of attending to the British interests in Russia, I take the liberty of addressing
myself to your Excellency being aware, of expressing the opinion of nearly all in the
Nordic countries, when saying that the brothers’ war between Great Britain and Germany,
with bolshevism as a tertius gaudens, is being felt in an especially tragic degree in our
countries, that are so closely related to Great Britain as well as to Germany.
Your declaration of September 30, 1938, concerning the relations between Great Britain
and Germany, and their vital importance to the peaceful development of Europe, made a
strong impression here, and we are convinced that what is in question today is to save
Europe and civilisation through peace with Germany in the spirit of your declaration.
‘The only positive way to achieve this is to fuse British, French, and German interests
into a European Confederation on the initiative of Great Britain, in order to create a
community of interests and co-operation, beneficent to all parties.
‘Under these circumstances, and in view of the sufferings, which the war is causing also
to the neutral Nordic countries, I deferentially appeal to your immense authority and
responsibility, and beg to suggest that the British government – in accordance with the
tested methods of federalisation in America, South Africa and Australia – invite every
European state to choose ten representatives to a congress charged with the task of
preparing a constitution for an empire of the European nations, to be submitted to a
plebiscite in each country for acceptance or rejection
‘You are the only statesmen who, under present circumstances, can bring Europe back
to peace and reason.’ - Quisling, C.B.E., formerly Norwegian Minister of Defence.
This telegram was cordially acknowledged to which Quisling afterwards said: ‘I received
a friendly message of thanks, but otherwise I heard nothing more about the matter.’
One of the great ironies is that within two decades of the brother’s war such a
confederation of European states was formed. An even greater irony is that Britain rather
than taking the lead as suggested by Quisling became a junior partner to a united Europe
and is today standing on the sidelines.
QUISLING MEETS ADOLF HITLER
At his later trial in Oslo Quisling was at pains to explain a meeting with Hitler on
December 16/17, 1939:
‘Later at the beginning of December 1939, I had the chance of going to Germany. The
real reason for my journey was, however, a private request from Doctor Aall, who was
living with the Norwegian-American professor Strangeland, to visit him in order to discuss
a scientific work. It has nothing to with the present (court) case.
‘Through the instigation of Reichsminister Alfred Rosenberg, I then had an audience
with Hitler. It was the first time I had met him, and immediately received a strong
impression that he was much attached to me. My conversation with him I may sum up as
follows:
‘I mentioned the question of peace to him, and Hitler then – as was his habit – gave
me a long lecture on his and Germany’s relations with Great Britain. In the strongest
terms he explained that it was a matter of emotion as well as reason that lay behind his
fervent desire to reach an understanding with Great Britain, because Great Britain had
gone to war about the Polish question, and he thought that he had made more than a fair
proposal for a settlement of this question. Provisionally, things must run their course, but
in due time, he would revert to the subject. As we know, this happened in the summer of
1940, but it was not a success.
‘He also discussed Norwegian and North European matters. Hitler mentioned that he
was aware of our endeavours to keep Norway out of the war, and emphasised strongly
that the Scandinavian States – and particularly Norway – remaining neutral, best
attended to Germany’s interests. Germany, Hitler emphasised, had no interest whatever
in interfering in Norway, if only Norway vindicated her neutrality. Should she not do so,
Germany would be bound to interfere, for if Great Britain tried to establish herself in
Norway, it would constitute such a crucial threat against Germany, and that Hitler would
put forth all his strength to prevent it.
Germany would then also have to occupy Denmark and against Norway, he would pit
everything that was needed to break any resistance, regardless of how many divisions
might be required. 6 – 10 – 12 – 16 divisions, he stated. I particularly remember that he
said 16 divisions, presumably, however, only as a casual end to a numerical series, which
might be further increased.
‘This was exactly as I had argued for years, and had been preaching to my countrymen
in numerous lectures and articles. It was, however, important to me to have my views
thus confirmed at first hand. And there was no doubt as to his being in mortal earnest.
‘Hitler also asked about our movement. I told him about it and about our struggle I had
been carrying on in Norway. He asked what chances there were of our taking over the
government, or whether it would be possible for us to get some of our men into
government. This would secure Norway’s neutrality. I replied that I did not think this was
possible for the time being, but that we were gaining an increasing number of supporters,
and that the war might perhaps develop in such a manner as to make it possible or even
desirable. Hitler said he would hail it with delight, because Germany was first and
foremost, interested in the neutrality of Norway, to which – it was obvious – Hitler
attached the greatest importance.’
Vidkun Quisling went to great pains to prove conclusively that from as far back as the
‘Russian’ revolution he had consistently sought a peaceful unified Europe, preferably a
single market Europe, with neutrality for Norway. He added that just as he had discussed
Norway’s neutrality with Hitler he had done likewise with Great Britain from the British
Prime Minister down through the ranks of parliament who were similarly in favour of an
arrangement with Germany.
The British, and as a consequence the Germany invasion of Norway reduced Quisling’s
status and means to achieve anything internationally.
Alarmed at the emerging evidence that Britain and France intended to attack Norway,
Sweden and Finland, Hitler on December 27 gave explicit orders to prepare
comprehensive plans for the defensive occupation. If this might prove too late then there
must be a strategy to throw the English cuckoo out of the Norwegian nest.
The German leader’s fears were not groundless. On September 19 1939, less than two
weeks after the declaration of war against Germany, Winston Churchill, as First Lord of
the Admiralty, put forward the suggestion ‘that the British fleet should lay a mine field
across the three mile limit in Norwegian territorial waters,’ the intention being to
intercept and stop the essential supply of Swedish ore (via Narvik) to Germany. (4)
Churchill went on to bemoan the fact that having made his case the cabinet would not
give their consent. ‘The Foreign Office’s argument in favour of respecting Norway’s
neutrality was weighty’.
It was not until April 1940 that Churchill got his way. He dismissed any suggestion that
Norway would retaliate by pointing out that Great Britain, through trade blockades ‘could
bring the whole industry of Norway, centring on Oslo and Bergen, to a complete
standstill, in short, Norway, by retaliating against us, would be involved in economic and
industrial ruin.’ England’s swashbuckling First Lord contemptuously dismissed suggestions
that Germany would retaliate.
Another strategy of the ever-bellicose Winston was to declare de facto war on Norway,
Sweden and Finland. This strategy was drawn up on February 5, 1940 when the Allied
Supreme Council of the western powers held a meeting in Paris. There it was agreed to
send up to four divisions, camouflaged as volunteers’ to Finland via Norway and Sweden
to seize those countries iron-ore assets. The strategy was aborted because of Sweden’s
stated determination to resist.
Having been denied his calamitous warlike way Churchill on February 16, 1940 ordered
British naval forces to proceed into Norway’s territorial waters and board the German
freighter ‘Altmark’, which had prisoners-of-war on board. As Quisling had surmised the
Norwegian government turned a blind eye to Churchill’s impudent two-fingered salute to
their country’s neutrality.
On April 8 English aggression against Norway proceeded. The Royal Navy began to
mine the Scandinavian country’s coastal waters; an act of war that once again blew a
gaping hole in solemnly signed declarations.
As the mining of Norway’s ports proceeded British and French troops were
simultaneously being mobilised to invade Norway. Their first objective was to occupy
Narvik and to clear the port before advancing to the Swedish frontier. Simultaneously
further troops were readied to occupy Stavenger, Bergen and Trondheim’.
At a time when, according to Britain’s palace historians, England was said to be
standing alone, Adolf Hitler was hardly alone in being horrified at the English and French
invasion of Scandinavia. Germany legitimate and critical trade links with Finland would be
broken in defiance of international law. Furthermore, Hitler was painfully aware that the
invasion of his country would quickly follow. The fuehrer said; ‘The occupation of the
Norway by the British would be a strategic turning movement which would lead them into
the Baltic, where we have neither troops nor coastal fortifications . . . the enemy would
find himself in a position to advance on Berlin and break the backbone of our two fronts.’
Churchill was silent about his criminal disregard for Scandinavia’s neutrality but his
French counterpart, the equally belligerent Prime Minister Daladier was more forthright:
‘Churchill came to Paris,’ he explained, ‘on April 5, 1940 and at last the British
government resolved that the mine fields in Norwegian territorial waters would after all
be laid. The operation was, however postponed until April 7 so Hitler could learn of it and
prepares his counter move. One of the aims of the enterprise was to entrap the opponent
by provoking him into making a landing in Norway.’
Churchill’s reticence was understandable. The Reich had anticipated his move and
decisively occupied Norway to better defend the nation against British aggression.
‘Consequently, we were out of the running, and for all that, it was we, who had taken
the initiative in the operations,’ admitted France’s Paul Reynard.
France’s General Gamelin disconsolately agreed: ‘The intention had been to entrap
their opponent (Germany) by provoking him into making a landing in Norway.’ It had
gone disastrously wrong; they had been beaten to it by Hitler. Churchill himself
reluctantly conceded that ‘The Norwegian government, at the time, was chiefly concerned
with the activities of the British.’
BRITISH TROOPS ROUTED
Undeterred Churchill persisted in his aim to occupy Norway with Trondheim being the
obvious choice. There were only 2,000 German troops stationed in the coastal town who
would be little match for 13,000 British troops. The British Army was routed during their
encirclement and badly mauled, the remnants were evacuated by May 1, 1940.
More to save face than from any realistic chance of seizing neutral Sweden’s iron-mines
Britain mobilised 20,000 troops and put them ashore at Narvik. Embarrassingly they too
were routed by 2,000 Austrian Alpine troops supported by as many sailors again from the
German destroyers based at Narvik.
At this stage of the war, Germany, which had so far merely protected its borders
against Anglo-French aggression, retaliated against their tormentors. The numerically
fewer and more lightly equipped German Army overran France. 338,000 allied troops,
mostly British, retreated through northern France. Most of who were rescued on the
express orders of the conciliatory Adolf Hitler. Along the Norwegian coastline the
remnants of Churchill’s defeated British Army in Norway were simultaneously evicted; the
newspapers called it an evacuation.
Everything that Vidkun Quisling had warned against had turned out precisely as he had
predicted; Quisling stood vindicated.
Interestingly, the then Norwegian government, like today’s Labour Party activists, were
selectively pacifist. Quisling recalled a Norwegian apparatchik sitting on the military
committee whilst wearing the ‘broken rifle’ emblem on his lapel. He became the Minister
of Defence. Quisling wondered what these ‘warriors’ would do now to defend Norway’s
interests.
Even Quisling’s most vociferous opponents agreed on the point of Norway’s lamentable
lack of preparation: Major O.H Langeland, a vociferous opponent wrote: ‘Never have a
people embarked on a war under a government that was so incompetent, and as totally
incapable of understanding the nature of war as the Nygaardsvold government.’
Such was Norwegian parliamentary party’s incompetence, betrayal and treachery that
in order to save their own skins, when the post war inquest arrived, they had little
hesitation in placing the blame on the 100,000 of their fellow countrymen who had joined
Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling Party.
NORWEGIAN GOVERNMENT FLEES
Overnight the German armed forces consolidated their hold on Norway by setting up a
protective coastal cordon to thwart Anglo-French incursions. In Oslo the Norwegian
authorities disappeared like spring snow leaving the police to cope with the invasion.
It was at this stage that a representative of the German government named Scheidt
and an old acquaintance, Hagelin, approached Quisling; meeting him in his hotel room,
the Astoria. The situation was made painfully clear to him; in a word, resistance was
useless. At this stage resistance could come only from guerrilla bands. All defence
establishments had surrendered. The obvious was stated; continuation of the conflict
would be catastrophic for Norway.
Overall the capitulation was peaceful and uneventful. The city of Oslo surrendered and
thousands of curious Norwegians stood calmly along the pavements to witness the
surprisingly low-key troop movements. Hitler despised victory celebrations. Knudsen says
he saw one elderly lady spit in a German soldier’s face. He simply wiped the spittle off
with the back of his hand and smiled.
At 1 o’clock Quisling completed his walk of contemplation and accompanied by Knudsen
and Scheidt set off for the War Office. Once there he was recognised and saluted; he had
of course been Norway’s Minister of Defence for two years, in these same offices.
The authorities had vanished. No one knew where they had disappeared to and no
orders had been given. The General Staff had evacuated during the night. It was later
discovered they had ensconced to a small hotel outside Oslo where they had mobilised to
enjoy a hearty breakfast.
Sadly it was not to be relished. Just as these stalwarts were about to tuck in to their
hearty meals a German plane came flying over the suburb of Holmenkollen; the entire
general staff ran for their cars and disappeared leaving their caps, shoulder belts,
overcoats, portfolios, and of course their breakfasts.
Back at the War Office it was unanimously agreed ‘that it would be an act of utter
insanity to attempt to resist.’
Having secured German agreement to consider the War Office as sacrosanct, Quisling
ordered the destruction of all documentation that might aid the German armed forces. He
then endeavoured to discover where Norway’s government had disappeared to. He did
manage to contact a colonel at Elverum who informed him that the government was on
the point of fleeing to Sweden.
Quisling was quite certain that this must be prevented; its government and the
authorities could not abandon Norway. In Oslo there were already signs of panic. Vidkun
Quisling, ever the pragmatic, took the only available course open to him, an equally
pragmatic solution that was taken also during the German occupation of the British
islands of Guernsey and the Channel Islands.
The German objective had been reached. This was the denial of Norway to their English
and French tormentors. In having acted pre-emptively they had secured also the integrity
of both Finland and Sweden. It had never been German intention, borne out by events, of
bringing bloodshed to their peaceful European neighbour. Furthermore, the Germans
occupiers had no wish whatsoever to interfere in the administration of Norway.
There was anger that the German battleship Blucher had been sunk with heavy loss of
life. This caused resentment and outrage from which there were demands for revenge in
the form of armed aggression but pragmatism won the day. Retaliation was prevented on
the express orders of Adolf Hitler.
With the other political parties having fled Norway the only one to remain was Nasjonal
Samling. Accordingly it was invited to administer the country’s affairs. Taking off his
jacket Quisling set to work. His first intention was to broadcast a national appeal for
calm. His doing so prevented much loss of life.
At 7.32 pm Vidkun Quisling made his speech from Oslo’s radio station: ‘Norwegian men
and women! England having violated the neutrality of Norway by laying minefields in
Norwegian territorial waters, without encountering any other resistance than the usual
flimsy protests from the Nygaardsvold government. The German government has offered
the Norwegian government, its help, accompanied by a solemn declaration that Germany
will respect our national independence and Norwegian lives and property.
‘As a reply to this offer, which would provide a solution to the untenable situation in
which our country finds itself, the Nygaardsvold government has ordered a general
mobilisation with the instructions that all Norwegian military forces are to oppose the
Germans by armed force.
‘The government itself has fled, having recklessly gambled with the fate of our country
and its inhabitants. Under these circumstances, it is the duty and the right of the national
unity movement to take possession of the power of government, in order to vindicate the
vital interests of the Norwegian people and the safety and independence of Norway.
‘By the virtues of circumstance and of the national aims of our movement, we are the
only people who can do this and thereby save the country from the desperate situation
into which the party politicians have brought our people. The Nygaardsvold government
has withdrawn. The national government has assumed power with Vidkun Quisling as
head of government and minister for foreign affairs, and with the following other
members.’
Quisling then went on to name his government members drawn from a wide spectrum
of professional Norwegian life including the armed forces. ‘All Norwegians are hereby
called upon to keep the peace of the realm and to preserve their presence of mind in this
difficult situation. By united assertions and the good will of all, we shall bring Norway free
and safe through this serious crisis. I add that with the way the situation has developed,
resistance is not merely useless, but directly synonymous with criminal destruction of life
and property. Every official and every municipal functionary, and particularly all the
officers of our country, in the army, navy, coastal artillery and air force, are bound to
obey orders from their national government.’
Knudsen described his congratulating Quisling on his new role as Prime Minister of
Norway. ‘He smiled – somewhat sadly I thought – and said: ‘It surely is no position to
aspire after, Franklin. Let us hope, however, that the Germans understand our objectives.’
Was Quisling the puppet claimed by the vengeful victors? The evidence suggests
otherwise. Norway’s new prime minister insisted on considerable autonomy with the
occupying forces. In doing so the prime minister was far less cowardly and compliant than
were the British authorities mismanaging Britain’s Channel Islands when they too were
occupied to thwart a British invasion of mainland Europe.
The first sign of Quisling’s independent spirit was shown when Reich Minister Brauer
asked Quisling to visit him. The Norwegian prime minister declined saying that on the
contrary; Brauer must come to see him. On this occasion Quisling presented his list of
government ministers, rather embarrassingly handwritten on a hotel letter heading. This
at least put the lie to the allegation that Nasjonal Samling was part of a pre-arranged
plot. If that had been the case then the new government of ministers, some in remote
regions of the country, would never have been appointed ‘on the hoof’. They would have
already been selected and approved by the German occupiers.
It was Vidkun Quisling who ordered the evacuation of German troops from his country’s
parliament. He did so while the illegitimate Nygaardsvold regime, through
unconstitutional extension of their mandate, were abandoning their country and people.
It was Quisling who by various directives saved many Norwegian lives.
There were amusing incidents. On one occasion Franklin Knudsen, Quisling’s secretary,
was required to show his identity card. On showing the officer his passport he was
promptly arrested which caused considerable tension. The Germans however did have a
point. There in Knudsen’s passport were the words, ‘Acting British Consul’.
There was amusement all round however when it was revealed that Knudsen, who had
indeed acted as British Consul, had been dismissed from the post several months earlier.
Presumably this was because his father, British vice-Consul for thirty years, was dismissed
for disagreeing with Britain’s war aims.
Of Quisling’s role Knudsen was afterwards to say: ‘There was no doubting in my mind
that Quisling had acted correctly in order to salvage priceless values. Nothing that has
happened subsequently has shaken this belief of mine one jot.’
The claim that Quisling was Germany’s imposed puppet is also wide of the mark. Whilst
the Nasjonal Samling’s leader was indeed Prime Minister, it was Amrsleiter (Head of
Department) Scheidt and President of the Board of Trade, Hagelin, who autonomously
negotiated with the German authorities.
Quisling’s principal role was to provide responsible civilian rule thus denying the need
for martial law. He first aim was to ensure political and social stability and through proper
defence to deter British and French aggression. It was assumed that adequate defensive
fortifications would be in place prior to German withdrawal and the re-establishment of
Norway’s neutral status. Had Quisling been listened to in the years leading up to
England’s war against Germany and Scandinavia then of course British and then German
invasion would have never occurred.
UNIVERSAL APPROVAL OF QUISLING
The incoming Norwegian government earned the guarded approval of industry’s official
representatives and ironically the spontaneous and total support of the trade unions. Prior
to the union’s executive committees fleeing the country, Nasjonal Samling had been a
thorn in the side of the Socialists but now abandoned by their representatives Norway’s
workers became enthusiastic for their new government.
The press also promised Vidkun Quisling their support. After a statement to the Oslo
Press, the editor-in-chief of Norway’s equivalent to The London Times or New York Times
wrote supportively. He said that for many years he had been one of Quisling’s most
consistent opponents. After what had happened he was convinced that there was only
one course open to the nation, and that was the one which Quisling’s new government
had made possible.
Every newspaper loyally quoted all the press releases Quisling forwarded. They were
not compelled to do so; the new government did not possess the means to compel
anyone to do anything against their wishes. In effect, whilst Quisling responsibly
administered the country’s needs the German authorities, which considered Quisling ‘a
bothersome fellow’, merely provided for the country’s defence against England.
Unlike Britain’s whip system of government none of the Quisling government’s ministers
or functionaries was coerced. Each Norwegian Member of Parliament was given the free
choice, to serve or not to do so. It is interesting to note that all functionaries were
requested to dispose of all documents that might fall into German hands.
Throughout Norway settled a blissful calm except for one tumultuous day when Quisling
was alarmed to see mass panic in Oslo. Tens of thousands of people were fleeing for
their lives, even hijacking vehicles; anything to reach safety. On that ill-famed aptly
named ‘panic day’ tens of thousands spent the freezing night in the woods surrounding
Oslo.
There was a dreadful irony in the reason for Norwegian panic. Rumour had it that
British warships were lying out in the fjord and were going to bombard Oslo on the stroke
of twelve noon. The rumour was likely fuelled by a British broadcast aimed at giving the
impression that Britain had allowed the Germans to successfully invade so that the Royal
Navy could blockade and confine Germany’s troops.
Acceptance of their position was universal and largely supportive throughout Norway.
Certainly the fleeing Nygaardsvold regime was condemned throughout the Nordic country
and in scenes that would undoubtedly have been echoed had England been invaded the
Norwegian people set out to make the best of things.
People, especially those in authority, did everything possible to ingratiate themselves
with the Germans, offering assistance and advice. The German legation was besieged by
Norwegians wishing to assist the new authorities. Oslo’s local government were nothing if
not enthusiastic in carrying out nightly repairs to the Fornebu airport which was being
bombed by Britain’s Royal Air Force. For their part the German authorities kept Quisling
informed as to those who were conspiring to oust him. There were several separate and
parallel plans to remove Quisling, one of which was to succeed.
Quisling for his part applied himself to getting the country running again. Previously
Norway’s industry was disproportionately dependent upon Britain. As a consequence of
the occupation entire industries closed down as did the banks. Thousands of workers
found themselves without the means to make a living. Churchill’s boast to bring Norway’s
economy to destruction looked certain but was again thwarted by Quisling. With
enormous drive and energy he brought Norway’s entire economic and social
administration back to work.
Perversely it was Quisling’s independent spirits that lead to his being removed from
office. The new prime minister’s relationship with minister Brauer had always been
abrasive. The Reich’s appointee resented playing second fiddle to Quisling. Furthermore
the Germans were great believers in real politik and the Machiavellian Brauer succeeded
in convincing the German High Command that an alternative government to Vidkun
Quisling’s had been assembled. This Administrasjonsrad would be far more compliant to
German demands. Furthermore it had the unequivocal support of the King, who had
refused to recognise the Quisling government. This was pragmatism the Germans could
not refuse.
Quisling was furious and, in an angry confrontation with the German appointed puppetpresident of the newly formed Administrasjonsrad, he exclaimed: ‘You have these thirty
years been walking about acting patriot and friend of the military defence of Norway.
Now it becomes evident that you are willing to take over the government on German
terms, which I had rejected in contempt. You have made yourself a vile hostage in the
hands of the Wehrmacht. You will be forced to join in the plundering of our people, and
when it is finished your new taskmasters will throw you out of office. It will be well
deserved.’ Events again turned out precisely as Quisling predicted.
Within days it became clear that Norway’s Administrasjonsrad had been economical
with the truth. They did not have the King’s blessing and were unable to govern in the
way the Germans had wished. The Administrasjonsrad was immediately dissolved,
Norwegian territories placed under a Reichskommissar and Norway found itself under
direct military rule. The Reich’s new kommissar was Terboven; for the first time the
Swastika rather than the Norwegian national flag flew over parliament house.
Hitler who had allowed himself to be badly advised by the deceitful Brauer and fellow
conspirators was ruthlessly pragmatic. The hapless German appointee, Brauer, delirious
with pride, flew to Berlin on April 16. A week later he was demoted to common soldier
and posted to the Western Front. Rumour has it (by 1967) that Brauer had been absorbed
into the Soviet apparatus as an advisor to the inspectorate of recruitment.
With less freedom than that enjoyed by the occupied Danes, a freedom likely to have
been enjoyed by Norway had Quisling’s administration not been sabotaged by Brauer,
Norway’s infrastructure hit the ground running. Industry was accelerating at such a pace
that it was afterwards mockingly said that the Norwegians ‘were profiteers by day and
patriots during the evening.’
Quisling meanwhile was politically sidelined. Reich Minister Terboven informed Quisling
that unless he resigned as leader of Nasjonal Samling it would be declared an illegal
organisation. Vidkun Quisling flew to Berlin, hoping to lay the situation before the Fuhrer,
but those who had an interest in maintaining Terboven’s position prevented the meeting
from immediately doing so and it was claimed that Quisling was ‘otherwise occupied’.
Resting in a small hotel on the outskirts of Berlin, the days turned into weeks giving
Terboven the space needed to consolidate his hold.
Finally the meeting with the German leader took place and was to last several hours.
There, Quisling was given the opportunity to properly recount events which he did so
without throwing Terboven to the wolves. Hitler, understandably upset at Norway’s prewar treachery that had left his beloved Germany exposed to Baltic invasion, pointed out
that Norway had no right to anything ‘after the pro-English policy she had been pursuing.’
The Fuhrer then smiled and added ruefully: ‘It is a strange irony of fate that we should
be waging war against the two countries, for which, all my life, I have had the most
sympathy, namely, Norway and England.’
Hitler spoke quietly saying that he could not make any changes to the conditions of
occupation but would consider, as soon as conditions allowed, Norway’s craving for
liberty.’ He also reminded Quisling that if England’s invasion had made occupation
inevitable then better for the people of Norway that the occupiers be German rather than
English.
The Fuhrer had bitter memories of the English as occupiers. To underline his point the
Fuhrer added that had it not been for the German occupation, the Soviet Union aided by
England, would have certainly pursued its claim to access to the open sea (Atlantic). The
implication was clear; it was hardly in Norway’s interests to be occupied by the Red Army.
It was an irresistible argument.
The meeting ended with Quisling being afforded every facility for continuing his work,
and working within a Norway enjoying considerable autonomy within a Germanic Europe.
The German leader was set in his mind that never again would the offshore prodigal son,
England, threaten Europe.
Unbeknown to the Norwegian patriot the Fuhrer, unaware of the Norwegian leader’s
presence in Berlin, sent Quisling a telegram which read: ‘By his many years’ work against
world bolshevism, Minister Quisling has involved the German people and myself in a debt
of gratitude to him, a debt of honour, that will be paid in full both to him personally, and
to the Norwegian people that bred him.’
Subsequently Quisling remained on the sidelines in the belief that doing so gave him
the best opportunity of engaging and ousting Terboven’s Administrasjonsrad. Adolf Hitler
was personally involved in negotiations aimed at providing Norway with a multi-party
administration with Nasjonal Samling under Quisling’s leadership making up at least onequarter of then proposed government. It was the Fuhrer’s fervent hope that the
Norwegian patriot’s track record would quickly make him the dominant figure in
Norwegian politics.
Such were the contenders that it was jokingly said that Norway had enough ministers
to run Europe. In the event of the successful formation of Hitler’s choice, the Council of
the Kingdom, Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling was accorded one-third of the new parliament’s
seats but he himself was not made a member of the government. At least his work for
the reconstruction of Norway, though now compromised by the intervening period, could
begin.
POSTERITY STANDS IN JUDGEMENT
Posterity, not the vengeful victors will decide on guilt or otherwise. Certainly in the
chaos of war and occupation there will be compromise, treachery, acts of cowardice and
bravery, brutality, duplicity; all of humanity’s strengths and failings will be evident.
Separated from passion there were many collaborators (not just with the Germans)
who were elevated to high position following the war. Equally there were patriots who
fought passionately for their country, their race or the combination of both. They gave
their lives. In between there were tens of thousands who lived, worked, often
enthusiastically, to consolidate the achievements of the Third Reich. Many were building
and repairing airfields used by the Luftwaffe to carry on the German war against
Norwegian partisans. In such a chaos of torn loyalties are found hypocritical and unjust
judicial sentencing.
If any nation and its people are to survive in the face of adversity some persons must
take it upon themselves to negotiate, to see to it that there is a minimum of abuse of
power. Would it have been any different had England been occupied? It is doubtful.
Had those in Britain been in a position to seek concessions from the Germans would
they afterwards have been state-murdered for their collaboration in the events of the tide
turning? If so, then who shall protect us should England be occupied in the future?
It may be (conveniently) forgotten today in Norway but it was Quisling alone who
gained Adolf Hitler’s assurance that after the war Norway’s status as a free and
independent nation would be fully restored. In fact, Norway officially was a German
province only between his being stood down on April 11 1940 and the restoration of
government in 1942. Norway was delivered with her national integrity intact, due entirely
to the efforts of the greatest Viking of all, Vidkun Quisling.
Was Vidkun Quisling a National Socialist? Decidedly not for in fact it was his and
Knudsen’s almost English (establishment) negative perception of National Socialism that
earned them the distrust of Berlin. Those politicians who did replace him were appointed
not so much because of their affection for or understanding of Norway but for their
affection for the Third Reich and in particular National Socialism. They were National
Socialists; Vidkun Quisling’s sympathies and aspirations lay elsewhere.
Quisling had, much to his later regret, always trusted England first and foremost. He
was particularly aggrieved when, in the summer of 1940, he was deprived of his order of
CBE (Commander of the British Empire). In his biography his secretary emphasised ‘the
naked truth’: ‘Quisling was far more pro-English than pro-German.’
Franklin Knudsen himself was a product of the English public school system. He had
also been an Acting British Vice Consul, hardly a role suited to a National Socialist. Up
until 1939 Knudsen had collaborated with the Air Ministry in London. This was in
connection with a Norwegian patent for directing torpedoes by the aid of photoelectric
cells. It was hardly surprising the Gestapo suspected him of belonging to the British
Secret Service.
Essentially the Nasjonal Samling Party was Fascist inclined only inasmuch as it
represented a sea change for social improvement, the elimination of class, the provision
of conditions amenable to national prosperity, and a sound defensive strategy. As such it
was natural that it should be vehemently opposed to Communism but then, virtually
every country in Europe had, with varying degrees of success, their own Nasjonal Samling
parties.
On May 7, 1945 Norway capitulated to the allies and the disintegration proceeded
during which time Vidkun Quisling was ordered to present himself with party members to
the police station. He had already spurned an offer to decamp for a neutral country, Spain
or South America. The Norwegian patriot preferred to stand by his post to vindicate his
actions. It showed a surprising lack of judgement for he must already have known of the
vengeful extremes to which his opponents would go.
The campaign to blacken the Norwegian patriot’s reputation began immediately upon
his being gaoled. The media that had been on friendly terms with him so recently, now
denounced him as ‘a drunken decadent bearing all the signs of excess debauchery.’ Pretty
good considering Quisling was a tee-totalling non-smoking ascetic. One can only imagine
what the same media might say if let loose on the Vatican?
Vidkun Quisling and thousands of other gaoled political hostages were systematically
starved with rations as low as 700 calories a day, the normal requirement being 3000
calories daily. In these prisons various diseases ran rampant and neuritis, due to lack of
nutrition, was common. Such was Quisling’s physical condition that on at least one
occasion the court had to be adjourned because he had difficulty standing.
Quisling’s political activity before the occupation was a mainstay of the prosecution’s
case. (Defence evidence was inadmissible) It alleged that he had 1. Furnished Germany
with military and political information. 2. That in December 1940 (three months prior to
the invasion) he had procured an audience with the Norwegian businessman, Hagelin,
Admiral Raeder and Adolf Hitler. 3. That by declaring illegal (which it was) the Norwegian
parliament’s extension of itself he had provided himself with a reason to force a coup
d’etat.
The rest was an equal nonsense. It was charged that Quisling would invite the
Germans to occupy Norway as being preferable to being occupied by Britain, that he
would incorporate Norway into a Great Germanic League. It was also charged that he had
convinced Adolf Hitler in 1939 of the western powers intention to invade Norway; this
ironically was something they themselves had done. It may have been irrelevant to such
a court that it was of course true. Finally Quisling had charged (again quite correctly) the
then illegal Norwegian government with having decided not to hinder an allied invasion of
Norway. Perversely, rarely has a prosecution so successfully managed to turn acts of
great patriotism into base treachery.
It was never explained why, if it was Quisling’s intention to surrender his country to
Germany, why his party alone in the Norwegian parliament, had offered a solution that
would guarantee Norway’s continued neutrality. A strange thing to do if one is
contemplating surrender to an enemy.
Nor was it ever explained, if it was Quisling’s intention to surrender to German invasion
(caused by England’s invasion) why he had always advocated a strong defensive
capability, pushed for a strong national government, for the formation of a BritishNorwegian League, and for peace between England and Germany.
As in all of the victors’ show trials Quisling was allowed neither defence counsel save
one chosen for him by the state, nor defence witnesses or defence evidence. The judge,
Eric Solem, was handpicked as a veteran political opponent of the Nasjonal Samling’s
leader. He was almost certainly Jewish.
An article in the ‘Aftenposten’ April 18, 1947, says: ‘It would perhaps not be so strange,
if one or other of the worst traitors (landssvikers), who is brought into the court, where
Judge Eric Solem is presiding, for a moment recalls to his mind the inscription over the
entrance to Dante’s famous hell. ‘Whosoever enters here leaves hope behind.’
This statement incredibly was written in an article praising ‘hanging judge’ Solem.
Afterwards Gustav Smedel, one of Norway’s greatest jurists remarked in references to the
sinister appointment of Chief Justice Paul Berg: ‘In a state which recognises equality
before the law one cannot accept that one political leader sentences another to death.’
The entire legal apparatus assembled to judge Vidkun Quisling was drawn from his
avowed enemies. The Norwegian patriot was inevitably sentenced to death by firing
squad.
QUOTABLE QUISLING QUOTES
October 1, 1938: ‘Europe is standing on the brink of the greatest tragedy in the history
of the human race: a new world war that may involve the doom of our entire civilisation.’
– Vidkun Quisling
June 27, 1936: ‘Such a war between Great Britain and Germany would be catastrophic
for Norway. Norway cannot and will not march, except when our own liberty and our own
boundaries are in danger. We therefore demand a strong and unconditional vindication of
Norway’s neutrality, and that the neutrality and the peace of the realm are secured
through the strengthening of our military defence, quickly and effectively.’ – Vidkun
Quislin
‘We, in Nasjonal Samling, therefore endeavoured to do all in our power to create peace
and mutual understanding between these two great kindred peoples. We worked for a
union of all Nordic peoples, in a Great Bond of Peace, of Scandinavians, of Britons,
Germans and Netherlanders. At the National Congress of Nasjonal Samling in 1936, we
made the matter one of the chief points of our policy. However, when the people stood at
the crossroads they chose Barabbas.’ – Vidkun Quisling
FRANKLIN KNUDSEN
‘He (Quisling) could never imagine that the Western Powers would be so stupid as to
open Europe to the Russian hordes. He regarded Churchill as a practical politician of the
greatest stature, a warlord, who was perhaps even more unscrupulous than Hitler, when
it was a question of furthering the interests of his country; but that Churchill should be a
party to delivering Europe to communism was a shattering disillusionment to Quisling.
Churchill had for years been quite as anti-bolshevistic as Quisling or Hitler, and he also
was a staunch supporter of the classical English policy on foreign affairs, namely, the
balance of power.
If Hitler failed to break the back of bolshevism, there was still the belief that the
western Powers would clip its claws, or at least contain it within the old Russian
boundaries.
The reverse situation meant that the death sentence would be passed on eastern and
central Europe, and even Norway would be put into an extremely dangerous position, as
a close neighbour of Russia.’ – Franklin Knudsen.
‘The British were adept at committing atrocities leaving evidence to suggest partisan
responsibility. German retaliation often resulted in inflaming tension: ‘It is sufficient to
call to mind how the ‘voice of London’ sparkled with enthusiasm every time it reported
new German reprisals, executions and deportations. Then one may say to oneself: In
every truth, the Norwegian heroic saga has still unwritten chapters.’ - Franklin Knudsen.
‘The men of the Nuremberg Court came to an agreement beforehand to bar evidence
that might have been awkward for the allies. I am left with the unfortunate feeling that
something similar may have happened in connection with the Quisling trial. I do not say
that it did happen, but that the trial leaves that impression with one who perhaps
possesses certain qualifications for evaluating the facts of the trial.’ - Lord Hankey,
Politics, Trials and Errors.
THE LAST WORD: ‘Do not handicap yourself with the idea of revenge, for the trend of
things will revenge your wrong not only upon the individuals responsible for your
persecution, but on the society that has permitted this lawlessness.’ - Vidkun Quisling’s
final words to his friends and party members.
AND SO DIED A VIKING
(1) Memoirs of Prime Minister Paul Reynard of France: La France a sauve L’Europe.
(2) Winston Churchill, 11th, November, 1938
(3) I Was Quisling’s Secretary, Britons Publishing Company, 1967
(4) The Second World War, vol.2. Winston Churchill
(5) History of the Second World War, Liddell Hart.
(6) History of the Second World War, Liddell Hart
(7) ‘Judge Not’, p.22
(8) I Was Quisling’s Secretary, Britons Publishing Company, 1967
Footnote: H. Franklin Knudsen’s Norwegian father was British Consul in Norway, his
grand-uncle the Norwegian Prime Minister and his mother’s father an Englishman. The
young Knudsen was privately educated in England at a school ‘frequented by the sons of
Ambassadors and Viceroys.’
ROMANIA- Corneliu Codreanu and the Iron Guard
‘We shall create a spiritual atmosphere, a moral atmosphere, in which the
hero may be born and on which he can thrive. This hero will lead our people on
the road to its greatness.’ – Cornelieu Codreanu
In the pre-dawn hours of October 9, 1923, half-dozen men sat on benches in a bare
room at the police headquarters in Bucharest, Romania. The police had seized them
several hours before. An informer in their midst had accused them of plotting to murder
over twenty of Romania's leading citizens. Now they were to be questioned by police and
government officials.
The leader of the alleged conspirators, Corneliu Codreanu, 24 years old, waited
pensively as his comrades disappeared, one by one, into the interrogation room. He tried
to devise tactics for parrying the questions to come. Then it was his turn.
The prosecutor ordered several incriminating letters and two baskets containing the
group's firearms to be placed in front of Codreanu. ‘Are these your weapons?’ he snarled.
Codreanu hesitated. He asked for a moment's reflection. It was a moment at the
crossroads. The prosecutor and the police smirked derisively, waiting for the expected
denials.
Then Codreanu spoke out: ‘Yes, these guns are ours. We wanted to use them to shoot
the government ministers, the rabbis and the big Jewish bankers.’
Codreanu reeled off the names of the Romanian politicians and Jews on his death list:
Marzescu, Bercovici, the Blanks, Rosenthal, Fildermann, Honigmann, and the rest. His
interrogators were stunned by the young man's boldness and resolve. The prosecutor, his
smugness forgotten, gasped, ‘But why kill them?’
‘The former because they betrayed our country,’ Codreanu shot back. ‘The latter as
enemies and corrupters,’
‘And you don't regret it now?’
‘No, we regret nothing…Though we have fallen it does not matter: behind us there are
tens of thousands who think likewise!’
At dawn's first glow filtered in through the windows of the police station, Codreanu,
shoulders squared and head held high, was led to a basement cell.
The die was cast. From then on in his struggle for his country's freedom Codreanu gave
no thought to turning back. Who was this remarkable young man, and what had driven
him to such desperate measures?
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was born on September 13, 1899, in Hushi, a small town in
the Romanian Province of Moldavia. His father, Ion Zelea Codreanu, the descendant of
several generations of foresters, was a secondary school teacher and an ardent
nationalist; his mother, Elise Brauner Codeanu, was the granddaughter of a Bavarian
immigrant.
Between the ages of eleven and sixteen Codreanu attended the famous military school
at Manastirea Dealului, the Cloister on the Hill. There he learned the soldierly virtues of
courage, discipline, and taciturnity. Codreanu's inborn talents for leadership and
organizing were reinforced and developed at the academy, and he acquired a taste for
hard work and self-denial. At the Cloister, as he later wrote, he ‘learned to love the
trench and to despise the drawing room.’
When Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary in August 1916, Codreanu, not old
enough to enlist, left home and joined his father at the front, where the elder Codreanu
commanded an infantry company. Codreanu took part in the advance and subsequent
retreat across the rugged terrain of Transylvania, until his father ordered him to return
home. When the First World War ended in 1918, Codreanu was an officer cadet at an
infantry training camp.
When Codreanu arrived at Jassy, however, he found the city and its university wracked
by strikes and demonstrations. The workers, chafing under miserable working conditions
and meagre wages, had succumbed to the wiles of Communist agitators. These filled
their heads with visions of the Promised Land being built across the border in Russia. At
the university many students and professors were outspoken Marxists and had little
difficulty in intimidating their nationalist colleagues.
At face value the situation in Jassy was incomprehensible, especially to a young patriot
like Codreanu. The unification of all Romanians in a single Great Romania after the First
World War was the fulfilment of centuries-old nationalist longings. Nevertheless, the
urban intelligentsia and the workers ceaselessly reviled Romania's King Ferdinand, the
Church, and the Army.
It didn't take long for Codreanu to identify the driving force behind the anti-national
activities of the workers and the intellectuals. Both factions were propagandized, agitated
and controlled almost entirely by members of an alien group hostile to Romania's
heritage and soil: the Jews.
In 1919 the so-called ‘workers' movement’ in Jassy was led by a Dr. Ghelerter, who had
as his lieutenants Messrs. Gheler, Spiegler, and Schreiber. Their superiors in Bucharest,
the Romanian capital, were Ana Pauker and Ilie Moscovici. All of them, like the great
majority of the communist leaders in Romania, were Jews.
The Jewish revolutionaries in Romania derived moral sustenance from the successes of
their kinsmen in Russia, where Jews made up the majority of Bolshevik leaders and
cadres. Equally inspirational for them had been the short, blood-drenched regime of Bela
Kun (born Cohn) and his Jewish commissars in Hungary, which had been smashed by the
intervention of the Romanian Army only months before.
Codreanu was undaunted by the swaggering, arrogant leftists and their Jewish wire
pullers. He set to work to smash Judeo-Marxism in Jassy with the same reckless courage
he had shown for the front three years before.
Disgusted by the apathy and cowardice of the university's conservative students,
Codreanu joined a small group called the Guard of National Conscience, which had been
founded and now led by Constantin Pancu, a burly steelworker. The Guard numbered
among its members Romanians from all classes, pledged to build a strong Romania based
on a just social order and purged of racial aliens. Thiscould only mean the overbearing
Jewish influence on Romanian cultural and political life.
Codreanu quickly became the dominant figure in the Guard of National Conscience.
Through ceaseless and heroic activism he made the small movement a force to be
reckoned with in the streets and factories of Jassy.
At the Agency of State Monopolies and the Nicolina railway works Codreanu, with a
handful of followers, defied thousands of striking workers to haul down the red flag and
raise the Romanian tricolour above the factories. Codreanu's bravery and determination
won him the grudging respect of the Romanian workers and the bitter hatred of their
Jewish manipulators.
Codreanu and the men of the Guard of National Conscience were far from reactionaries
anxious to shore up the existing social order. The Guard's program called for ‘Christiannational socialism,’ and it was Codreanu's avowed aim to free the workers from the
Jewish-Bolshevist influences and then to develop a strong sense of national identity in
them. As Codreanu said, ‘It is not enough to defeat Communism. We must fight for the
rights of the workers. They have a right to bread and honour. We must fight against the
oligarchic parties, creating national workers' organizations which can gain their rights
within the framework of the state and not against the state.’
After the Romanian government mustered the will to crush the Communist-directed
strikes and demonstrations, Codreanu and his student supporters turned their attention to
the university. In 1920 the Romanian universities, and especially Jassy, swarmed with
Jewish aliens. Although the Jews in Romania constituted only five per cent of the
population over a third of Jassy's students were Jews, and Jewish students carried on a
ceaseless agitation against everything Romanian.
Codreanu and his comrades put an end to the Jewish terror on the campus in short
order. The Red toughs who had hazed and bullied the nationalist students now found
themselves on the defensive.
The fashion in Russian caps, worn as a sign of sympathy for the Bolsheviks, became
unfashionable after Codreanu and his friends began thrashing students so attired and
then burning their revolutionary headgear.
A student strike led by the Jew Speigler was foiled when Codreanu's group seized the
dining hall and barred the striking students on the grounds that, ‘he who doesn't work,
doesn't eat.’
When the Jewish-owned newspapers in Jassy, Opinia and Lumea, attacked King
Ferdinand and insulted Codreanu, the young nationalist led a raiding party to the
newspaper offices. There, he and his followers wrecked the presses.
By 1922, when Codreanu graduated from the university's Faculty of Law, he had almost
single-handedly converted the University of Jassy into a bastion of nationalist sentiment.
Furthermore, Codreanu's supporters were disseminating pro-Romanian and anti-Jewish
ideas at schools and universities across the country.
Codreanu elected to continue his studies in political economy. In the autumn of 1922
he travelled to Germany and registered at the University of Berlin. In the German capital
he made contact with German nationalists. In those days this was the first he first heard
of Adolf Hitler, whom he came to esteem as a fellow nationalist and the saviour of his
people.
Codreanu's studies in Germany were terminated suddenly. On December 10 , 1922, the
Romanian university students went on strike, demanding not only improved food and
decent living conditions, but also a limitation on the number of Jews admitted to the
universities.
Codreanu hurried back to his home country to make common cause with the striking
students. The strike dragged on for months, despite the liberal use of police and regular
troops by the government.
During the strike Codreanu became convinced that the time was ripe for the creation of
a nationalist movement which would appeal to Romanians of every station in life, rather
than limiting itself to students. Together with professor A.C. Cuza of the University of
Jassy, Codreanu founded the League of Christian National Defence on March 3, 1923.
Scarcely three weeks later the Romanian National Assembly underscored the need for a
nationalist, anti-Jewish fighting movement by amending the Romanian constitution to
allow nearly every Jew in the country to become a citizen. When Codreanu heard the
news he burst out crying. National-minded Romanians were stunned.
There was a simple reason for the outrage at the assembly's high-handed action. The
Jews of Romania were demonstrably an alien body in the national organism. They
differed from Romanians in language, dress, customs, religion, race and spirit. Nor were
they ready to change their ways: it was the Romanians who would have to change in
order to accommodate them.
The Jews of Romania were not content to subvert the country through their Marxist
ideology. Since the early 19th century they had largely controlled Romanian finance,
commerce and industry. As the historian Abraham Leon Sachar put it, with characteristic
Jewish arrogance, ‘Anti-Semitism needed no external stimulation in bigoted little
Romania… the Jews formed the only middle class, practically the only intelligent class,
and the commerce of the country usually passed through their hands. They were bitterly
hated by the Romanian peasantry.’
After Romania won its freedom from the Ottoman Empire in 1879, Romanian statesmen
and intellectuals had attempted to deny the Jews living there citizenship under any
circumstances. Pressure from the European powers, always eager to appease their Jewish
financiers, forced the Romanian government to recognize the theoretical right of Jews to
citizenship. Since qualification depended on either service in the Romanian armed forces
or a certification of the applicant's high moral character, however, few Jews were to
become citizens.
Nevertheless, due to a virtual absence of Romanian self-interest regulation Jewish
economic control increased steadily. During the years in which Codreanu sought to
combat their influence, the Jews of Romania owned most of the country's banks and
newspapers. The liberal historian Eugene Weber has noted that in this period 80 per cent
of bank employees and 70 per cent of the journalists were Jews, as were 139 out of the
142 members of the Bucharest stock exchange.
Their hold on the Romanian economy enabled the Jews to exercise a corresponding
control over the country's political system. The larger parties-the Liberals, the Peasant
Party, and the agrarian party headed by the war hero General Averescu-could all be relied
on to uphold Jewish interests. These parties became so deformed by their servility to the
Jews that it was impossible to distinguish among them. As Codreanu wrote,
‘Fundamentally there was no distinction among them other than differences of form and
personal interests-the same thing in different shapes. They did not even have the
justification of differing opinions. Their only real motivation was the religion of personal
interest.’
Despite the exertions of Codreanu and his followers, the student strike failed. In the fall
of 1923, the Romanian students returned to school. They had won a few material
improvements, but the government would make no concessions toward limiting the
number of Jews flooding into the universities.
Filled with despair at the collapse of the student strike coupled with the extension of
citizenship to the Jewish aliens, Codreanu and Ion Mota, a young nationalist from
Transylvania, devised the assassination plot which ended in their betrayal and arrest.
At his trial in Bucharest Codreanu took full responsibility for the plan. A botched
prosecution and the obvious sympathy of the jurors, all native Romanians, won him and
his companions’ acquittal. Only Mota remained in prison: on the first day of the trial he
had shot their betrayer in his cell.
Codreanu returned to Jassy and resumed his work of organizing for the National
Christian Defence League. Lacking funds, and labour, Codreanu and the Brotherhood of
the Cross, as the League's youth wing was known, set to work constructing a club house
at Ungheni, several miles from Jassy. The sight of middle-class students hard at work
with pick and shovel, something almost unheard of in Romania up to that time, had a
great effect on the local villagers. Many of them joined in, and at the same time they
began to learn of Codreanu's ideas for the regeneration of Romania.
Codreanu and his supporters were not left in peace for long, however. Three weeks
after beginning the construction project at Ungheni, the young men of the Brotherhood
were surrounded by policemen, arrested, and hauled off to the Jassy police station. There
they were beaten and otherwise abused. Only the intervention of a number of Jassy's
leading citizens secured their release.
Codreanu and Professor Cuza appealed to the Minister of the Interior to remove the
officer responsible, Police Prefect Manciu. Manciu was not even reprimanded; instead, he
was decorated and promoted. The Jews of Jassy showed their appreciation by buying him
a car. Several months later, on October 25 1925, Manciu again encountered Codreanu,
this time at the courthouse, where Codreanu was preparing to defend a student who had
been arrested in the police raid on the Ungheni site. Surrounded by a phalanx of
gendarmes, Manciu lunged at Codreanu. This time Codreanu refused to be humiliated. He
drew his revolver and he shot the police prefect dead.
Codreanu was tried at Tunul Severin, in the extreme southwest of Romania, as far as
possible from Moldavia, where sympathies ran strongly in Codreanu's favour.
Nevertheless, the court, meeting in a large theatre, was packed with thousands of
Codreanu's supporters. Leading Romanians testified on Codreanu's behalf, while the
state's witnesses stammered out unconvincing denials of Manciu's brutality. After
deliberating for 25 minutes, the jurors proclaimed Codreanu innocent.
Codreanu restricted his political activity for the next year or so. Shortly after the Manciu
trial he married Elena Ilinoiu. He and his bride then travelled to France, where Codreanu
resumed his studies at the University of Grenoble and earned his doctorate in political
economy.
In May 1927 Codreanu returned to Romania. The League of Christian National Defence
had split into two factions, and Professor Cuza had summarily banished his opponents
from the League.
A rift had been growing between Codreanu and Cuza for some time. Cuza was
essentially a conservative, and despite his doctrinaire anti-Semitism he had revealed
himself more than once as willing to cooperate with the established political parties. The
League also suffered from his lack of organizational ability.
Codreanu and several steadfast friends took their leave of Professor Cuza and the
League of Christian National Defence. On June 24 1927, at a small gathering in his Jassy
apartment, Codreanu proclaimed a new movement: The Legion of Michael the Archangel.
The Legion had no party program. As Codreanu wrote, ‘This country is dying of lack of
men, not lack of programs. That in other words, it is not programs that we must have,
but men, new men. For such as people are today, formed by politicians and infected by
the Judaic influence, they will compromise the most brilliant political programs.’
Codreanu envisioned the Legion as the school for the creation of these new men, a new
Romanian aristocracy, a generation of heroes. The men of the Legion were to be
animated by love of God and country, mutual loyalty, and a joyous acceptance of duty
and sacrifice. Thus, Codreanu recognized that a spiritual revolution was the precondition
for a political revolution, if it was to create anything of lasting value.
Without a strong organizational structure, the aims of the Legion would have remained
platitudes. Here, as well, Codreanu showed his genius. He organized the Legion on
hierarchical lines. At each level, from the basic unit, the nest, up through town, city,
county, and regional groups to the Captain, as Codreanu came to be called, the leader
validated himself not though election but by ability and courage.
The fundamental Legionary unit, the nest, numbered from three to thirteen members.
It comprised of men who already felt the same way, but who had to be taught the
discipline of acting for a common purpose. To that end the men of the nest marched and
sang together, distributed propaganda, and conducted weekly meetings. Just as
important, they helped the impoverished peasants by numerous voluntary labour
projects.
The Legion grew slowly. Codreanu was resolutely opposed to any large-scale
recruitment which might endanger the Legion's high standards. The university students
tended at first to remain in the more established nationalist groups. The Legion was more
successful initially in enlisting high school students and those attending commercial and
technical institutes.
The nests were painstakingly established and made self-sufficient. At first in Moldavia
and Bucovina, and then in Transylvania and Wallachia, the Legion gained strength. Soon
Codreanu was in a position to reach out to the forgotten men and women of Romania:
the peasants.
No one in the country had suffered more at the hands of the system and the system's
Jewish masters. Despite a sweeping program of land reform after the war, the peasants
lacked tools, animals, and other necessary capital. Forced to borrow money to survive,
they were gouged with frightful rates of interest by Jewish moneylenders and banks;
Jewish lumber companies stripped the hillsides of the forests which the peasants once
held in common, and Jewish speculators gobbled up their land if their luck faltered.
Malnutrition and disease were widespread. If there was some consolation to be found in
the tavern, it was diminished by the fact that there, too, the owner was almost always a
Jew.
At first the peasants were suspicious of the Legion. They had been disappointed many
times since the war. The regime of General Acerescu, which the peasants had initially
supported with the greatest enthusiasm proved no different from those of the other
politicians. Similarly, the Peasant Party's policies, in practice, were identical with those of
the laissez-faire Liberals. The politicians showed their solicitude for the peasants' plight
only at election time, when they would arrive in the villages in their limousines, make
flowery speeches filled with nebulous promises, and then roar off.
Codreanu and his Legionaries quickly dispelled the doubts of the rural folk. They made
no promises, nor did they ask for support. Instead, marching or riding on horseback into
the villages, singing the songs of Romania's heroic past, they established their kinship
with the impoverished farmers by pitching in and helping wherever they were needed.
The nests dug ditches, mended fences, repaired houses, and helped with the harvest.
The green-shirted Legionaries spoke of a coming Romania, where everyone would have
his place, not according to wealth or his learning, but according to his character and his
faith.
By 1931 the Legionary Movement was strong enough to contest the elections. In his
electoral manifesto Codreanu summed up the plight of the nation: ‘Nobody who has eyes
can fail to see that this rich country has become a ruin. The peasant's household and
land, the village a handful of miserable people, who lament-the county, the region, the
barren mountains, the uncultivated plains which no longer produce anything for the poor,
unfortunate peasant all are in ruins. The State budget and the entire country are a
shambles.
‘And above these ruins scattered all over the Romanian land, a band of dishonourable
men, of imbeciles and shameless brigands, have built palaces defying the country, which
writhes in pain, and ridiculing your suffering, poor, miserable, Romanian Peasant!
‘A more revolting, painful, and indecent scene has never been witnessed by anyone
elsewhere in the world. Millions of households are being destroyed, crushing underneath
their ruins countless God-forsaken people who have nothing else left but tears. To top
this shame, the palaces of the rascals, who plundered the land and emptied the treasury
of our country, rise in a supreme irony and mockery.’
The election was not a success. The governing parties did everything in their power to
destroy the Legion and its companion movement, the Iron Guard, which had been
established as the militant wing of the Legion the previous year. In January 1931 the
government banned the Legion and the Guard after a nationalist student, unaffiliated
with the Legion, had attempted to assassinate a cabinet minister. Although the courts
vindicated Codreanu and his movement, the Legion's election campaign was effectively
stifled, and no Legionaries were elected to the assembly.
The Jews and their Romanian henchmen were unable to contain the growth of the
Legion's popularity for long. Both Codreanu and his father were victorious in by-elections
held in Moldavia in 1932, and the Legion entered the National Assembly.
As support for the Legionary Movement increased, its Jewish opponents grew less
cautious about violating the niceties of the democratic process, to which Codreanu
allegedly posed such a threat. As historian Eugene Weber, hardly sympathetic to the
Legion, wrote of the Jew-dominated Romanian establishment: ‘To any real threat against
the established order, its beneficiaries reached by all the means at their command,
however violent, however illegal: army, police, gendarmerie, the courts-both military and
civil, the administrative apparatus with all its possibilities of intimidation and chicanery,
were mobilized against those who challenged the system.’
In 1933, the Liberal government of Ion Duca, egged on by his foreign minister, Nicolae
Titulescu, one of Jewry's chief agents in Romania, banned the Legion once more. The
inevitable mass arrests followed: Legionaries by the thousands were imprisoned in
concentration camps. There were still men of honour in the Romanian judiciary, however.
Only Duca's executioners were convicted; Codreanu and his Legionaries were found
innocent.
For the next three years the Legionary movement built up its strength and prestige.
Codreanu organized a workers' corps in the cities which eventually grew to over 13,000
members. The Legionaries maintained ties with other European nationalist movements. A
Legionary contingent fought Bolshevism in Spain. (Ion Mota, Codreanu's right-hand man,
fell there.)
In the December 1937 elections the Legion's electoral front; All for the Fatherland,
became the third strongest party in the land. The Legionary success, coupled with the
heavy losses suffered by the establishment parties, seemed to raise the possibility of a
coalition government dominated by Codreanu.
One man stood in his way: King Carol II. He was empowered by the constitution to
confirm or reject ministerial governments proposed by the National Assembly. Carol was
a man of authoritarian leanings but was of weak character. His extra-marital affair with
the Jewess, Magda Lupescu (nee Wolff), as well as his extravagance and greed, had
resulted in his father, King Ferdinand, disinheriting him. After Ferdinand's death, Carol
had returned to Romania from France in 1930. With the approbation of the ruling parties,
he dethroned his son Michael and set himself up as King Carol II, with Madga Lupescu as
his consort. Now the Jews of Romania pinned their hopes on Carol's cupidity and vanity
and on the hold which his Jewish mistress had over the weak-willed monarch.
Prompted by his alien advisors, Carol moved adroitly and treacherously. He refused to
confirm any government including the Legion. After authorizing a weak rightist party to
form a caretaker government, King Carol seized power for himself and his Jewish masters
in February 1938. A puppet government ostensibly headed by the Orthodox Patriarch of
Bucharest was set up. The driving force in the administration was the Minister of Justice,
the ruthless Armand Calinescu.
Calinescu immediately ordered the roundup of the Legionaries. Despite Codreanu's
disbanding of his movement's political arm and his steadfast refusal to take violent action
against the unlawful regime, he was arrested, tried, and convicted of conspiracy against
the state in a rigged trial held before a military court. He was sentenced to ten years
confinement with hard labour.
Despite Codreanu's imprisonment, his enormous moral authority continued to inspire
the outlawed and hunted Legionaries. The Jews cried out for his blood. Magda Lupescu,
like a modern-day Esther, pleaded with her lover to have him killed.
On November 29, 1938, in the dead of night, Codreanu and 13 of his fellow Legionaries
were removed from their cells in the prison at Ramnicul-Sarat. From there they were
trucked into a forest. Then, hands bound behind their backs, they were strangled in
accord with the Talmudic ritual. After they were dead, their killers shot them in the back
of the head. The story was put out that they tried to escape.
Codreanu's murderers had little time to savour their triumph. Within two years,
Calinescu was dead, assassinated by the Legionaries, and King Carol, whose vacillating
foreign policy resulted in the dismemberment of Romania at the hands of Russia,
Hungary, and Bulgaria, had been forced to abdicate. He and Magda Lupescu departed
Romania forever.
King Carol's regime was followed by a short-lived Legionary government. The social
activism and revolutionary idealism of the Legion, however, rendered it unpalatable to
the strong man of the regime, Marshal Ion Antonescu, who was only nominally a member
of the Legion. Antonescu, in firm command of the army, was able to suppress the Legion
in February 1941.
The overthrow of the Legionary government was far from marking the end of the
Legion. Individual Legionaries with the forces of the Third Reich fought with selfless
heroism in the defence of Romania against the conquering hordes from the East. After
Antonescu's regime capitulated to the Russians, the men of the Legion fought on as long
as they were able. The puppet regime which the Soviets brought to power after the war
(headed by the Jewess Ana Pauker) hunted down; tortured and killed members of the
Legion with a sadistic zeal.
The Legion lives on, however, and with it lives Cornelieu Codreanu. Legionaries in
exile, all over the world, keep alive and propagate the Captain's ideas through a tireless
work of translation and publishing. It can be justly said that the memory of none of the
heroic leaders of the revolution which swept Europe in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s has been
better served by his followers than that of Codreanu.
GERMANY - THE ALPINE FORTRESS EAGLES NEST -The
Men Who Built the Alpine Fortress Eagles Nest
We sometimes forget that in Germany alone over 80 million people made the Reich
what it was. It is all very well reading of the powerful elite; what of ordinary people’s
success in achieving in five years what other countries fail to achieve in one hundred
years.
I would like to dedicate this story to ordinary or rather extraordinary German workers.
It is because of their efforts, and the spirit in which those efforts served, that we today
enjoy Germany. There is no greater joy or monument to their place in history than
Kehlstein (Eagle’s Nest) in Bavaria.
It is over twenty years since a friend mentioned a faraway place in Germany called
‘Eagles Nest’, the name given to Adolf Hitler’s mountain home. He told me it was
accessible only through a tunnel and lift bored through a 2,000-metre mountain. It
seemed to me improbable and I mentally filed it as another piece of Third Reich folklore.
A year or so later, with another couple, we decided on a driving tour of Germany. We
had no itinerary and very little money, we just wanted to familiarise ourselves with what
remained of the giant nation of central Europe.
Boarding the ferry at Dover for Ostend we soon reached Germany (Aachen) thirtysomething years after the US Army had done likewise. Unlike the Americans, who have
never been invaded by anyone least of all the Germans, we weren’t hell bent on
‘liberating from life’ every living creature regardless of ‘guilt’ or innocence discovered
across the rubble strewn landscape. There is no one quite as good at turning beautiful
countries into parking lots than the British and Americans.
We were charmed by what we saw and as we meandered south through the German
countryside we were struck by the friendliness shown to us, which I still find surprising.
After all, if the Germans had done to us what we had done to them I would want to slit
every one of their damned throats. For every Briton killed in the British declared war 80
Germans had lost their lives. Virtually every city and town the length and breadth of the
German nation had been incinerated along with untold numbers of unfortunate civilians.
Much of what remained had been placed under the tyranny of the Soviet Union along
with eleven other formerly free European nations. You call it the liberation of Europe if
you must; I do not quite see it that way. I am sure someone mentioned it was a war
against tyranny; guess I must have misheard.
We discovered Nuremberg and by accident what remained of inspiring National Socialist
arenas where hundreds of thousands had once been mesmerised by the sight and sound
of national leaders; arguably the most popular in European history.
The next day took us to Dachau, then incorrectly described as an ‘extermination camp’,
but why spoil a good story when told around the victors; fireplaces. Besides, Israel
needed a cash point and this was as good a place as any to place one or two.
WISH YOU WERE HERE
The camp was certainly coining it; it was doing so well that similar theme parks were
quickly built elsewhere in Europe. At Dachau we found lots of macabre souvenirs; it was
all a bit like Disneyland really. What I couldn’t understand was, how can people make
money out of the miseries inflicted upon their own people?
I shall explain. Let’s pretend the holocaust actually happened as they describe it. They
have told lies about everything else; exaggerated and put their spin on events. But for a
moment we shall suspend reality and we shall run with the six million fantasy.
What is not a fantasy is the Irish Famine. Now I have especial interest here. Being an
Irish national I can tell you that my people suffered British oppression not for five years of
war but over 700 years. Let us take a small part of that history; the Irish Famine (1845 –
1852). Like Stalin’s Ukrainian ‘famine’ it need not have happened, certainly not to the
severity of is outcome. No less than 25 per cent of the Irish population died; mostly from
indifference; likewise again the Ukrainian artificial famine.
Now tell me, what would you think of the Irish, Ukrainians, Russian and the Germans;
the peoples of the Baltic States, if they were to forever, on a daily basis, rattling the
begging bowls under your noses to raise money for ‘survivors’ and hurt feelings?
Precisely, point made but I digress.
David our companion, who had an impish sense of humour, bought a fistful of postcards
showing what was alleged to be a gas chamber (crematorium actually; you have them in
your town too). He had it in mind to send a postcard to various Jewish Members of
Parliament inscribed, ‘Wish you were here.’
The walls inside the ‘museum’ were filled with photographs of the camp and its inmates
during the wartime period. All these pictures, for all visitors to see, showed inmates far
healthier in appearance than were their liberators. They were also well dressed. Those
engaged in manual work were even wearing padded gloves and in each case wearing
caps too. Ironically the only pictures showing deprivation were those taken after the
‘liberation’, months after the allied bombing raids had reduced the infrastructure to such a
level that everyone, regardless of race or nationality was dying like flies through
starvation and related diseases.
The only pain-inducing instrument on show was a bench allegedly used for the birching
of prisoners guilty of misdemeanours. It could have been phoney like so much else but
then, what is the big deal? Every British police station at the time had one of these
birching contraptions.
The same afternoon brought us to Munich and its famous Hofbrauhaus Bier Keller. Here
it is said that Hitler may have spoken at a public meeting. We were so stunned at this
revelation that we each availed ourselves of a filled stein, which somewhat lifted our
spirits. We then headed further south to the small town of Berchtesgaden about 15 miles
south of enchanting Salzburg.
DER HITLER HAUS
On reaching this utterly charming alpine town on the most beautiful of summery days
we found it to be a traveller’s heaven. Berchtesgaden, in Germany but close to the
Austrian border, is a region of indescribable beauty. It has attracted poets, painters,
emperors and kings, philosophers and statesmen from the beginning of the 20th Century.
One such was the thirty-four year old Adolf Hitler, twice decorated veteran of the Great
War. He can’t have been such a bad pillar of the local community. House-hopping, as in
parliamentary musical chairs, Winston Churchill said of this village patron: "While all
those formidable transformations were occurring in Europe, Corporal Hitler was fighting
his long, wearing battle for the German heart. He, and the ever increasing legions who
worked with him, certainly showed at this time, in their patriotic ardour and love of
country, that there was nothing that they would not dare, no sacrifice of life, limb or
liberty that they would not make themselves or inflict upon their opponents."
Sadly there was nothing in the town to suggest that Berchtesgaden or rather the
nearby Obersalzburg had any special place in German history. There was just, if you look
hard enough for it a single postcard scene showing the ruins of Adolf Hitler’s former
home. It had not fallen into disrepair; it had been bombed and dynamite almost out of
existence. Surprise! Surprise! There were no weapons of mass destruction found within
its ruined walls. Anyway, we had come a long way and we didn’t wish to be deterred
having finally reached our destination. I thought it would be nice to at least go up there,
to see whatever remained and quietly contemplate history and fickle fate.
“Wo ist der Hitler haus?” I asked an elderly peasant, who, with a twinkle in his eye and
hand signals pointed me in the right direction. In doing so he gave the impression that for
a fit youngster like me it was just a short stroll; perhaps the German equivalent of a walk
in the park. David and I set out and after an hour’s sweat-streaming hard slog we paused
for a bier before retreating back to the town in the valley idyll below. .
We then did what we should have done in the first place. We retrieved the car and
drove up that winding mountain road for about 7 km or five miles depending on where
you were educated. It was then that we came across a scene nothing could have
prepared us for.
Instead of the expected solitude of a forest glade and a scattering of rubble disturbed
only be midges and crickets, we found ourselves on a plateau. Here was parked many
hundreds of cars; obviously car parks the size of football pitches. There were coach parks
too and well organised market place offering every imaginable memento and artefact of
the Third Reich era. Among the gaily decorated stalls thousands of Hitler tourists milled
about, browsing and purchasing.
The Hitler epoch had thus far and no further been quarantined. At this point it was as if
the Bavarian authorities, with grudging permission from their American masters, having
done everything they could to discourage visitors, even pretending the place didn’t exist,
finally conceded defeat. If thousands upon thousands of Hitler pilgrims and tourists were
going to turn up anyway they might as well make a fast buck out of that too. There’s no
business like Shoah business. That was only the first of several surprises to come.
THE ROAD TO THE GODS
Mission accomplished, not quite yet. We were still on the lower slopes of Obersalzberg
Mountain. Boarding one of a fleet of buses destined for Eagles Nest we relaxed as the
convoy set off. Bear in mind these convoys of super buses; with presumably modified
engines and gear boxes; hopefully braking systems too, are here for one purpose only; to
take tourists and pilgrims to the teahouse at the top that was built for Adolf Hitler.
Again, nothing could have prepared us for the breathtaking ascent up this incredible
Alpine mountain. The road is single track. Such was the virtually precipitous gradient that
these powerful buses, each filled to capacity, truly struggle. Cable cars as an alternative
could never cope with the huge numbers of tourists who visit Eagle’s Nest. What makes
this all the more remarkable is that one never sees Eagle’s Nest or Upper Salzburg
(Obersalzberg) advertised. You will never find it on a holiday programme or in a tourist
brochure; it is Europe’s greatest hidden secret.
As our fleet of coaches wound its way in zigzag formation up the mountainside we
gazed in disbelief as the valleys fell away below. In the middle distance we could see the
snow-capped peaks of the Watzmann (2713 m) Hochkalter (2607 m) and Unterberg
(1972 m); true mountain monoliths.
The valley forests far below now took on the appearance of a lawn and at this point we
were snaking our way upwards through thin cloud cover. Outside of aeroplane flight it
was the first time I had ever looked down on clouds.
After twenty minutes or so the convoy of coaches reached yet another plateau about
half the size of a football pitch. It was here that the convoy of coaches ‘fell into line’
before disgorging several hundred passengers. We all wished we had the foresight to
bring warm clothes. Although it was August and in Berchtesgaden town a sweltering day
at this altitude it was close to freezing and we were just below the snow line. No trees up
here.
Around the perimeter of this mountain plateau was a rail to restrain over enthusiastic
sightseers whilst in the walls of the awesome mountain backdrop; was that the cave into
which the Pied Piper of Hamelin had perhaps led his young charges? Into the
mountainside was cut a gated tunnel entrance, big enough for a coach to drive through.
It led straight into the heart of this formidable mountain. In for a penny in for a pound,
we paid a small fee and joined scores of other Hitler tourists for the final lap to the peak
of Obersalzberg Mountain and Eagles Nest.
The 200 metres walking along the stone clad tunnel is illuminated by ornate lamps. We
eventually arrived at a muster point and one of the biggest lifts (Americans call them
elevators) I ever seen. It was an eerie but not uncomfortable feeling to realise that on
occasion the Fuhrer, accompanied by fellow leaders, who are now household names, had
walked this same route into the mountain.
The tunnel and lift of course had been stripped of its Swastika embellishments but all
else was more or less as it had been. The decor of this elevator is walled with burnished
brass framed plating and mirrors. Around its sides beautiful green leather upholstered
perimeter seats. We are accompanied by a lift attendant whose day job is to sweep
scores of us open-eyed tourists 124 metres up through the core of the mountain peak.
Emerging at last we explored this granite-hewn colossus of a mountain retreat with its
many rooms, restaurants and vantage points. Six thousand feet below we could now
absorb the incredible natural beauty of the entire Berchtesgaden alpine panorama. In the
distance glistening in the afternoon sun we could see Konigsee (Kings Lake), a favourite
haunt of Europe’s greatest thinkers not to mention the enchanting Eva Braun, Hitler’s
deathbed wife. Lovely villages like Ramsau, Strub, Bishofswiesen, and Berchtesgaden. Far
to the south across the plain Mozart’s beautiful Salzburg completed our scenic wonder.
THE FUHRER’S BIRTHDAY PRESENT
Like millions who had already trodden this path we were the latest to share in the
opening of the German leader’s fiftieth birthday gift, bestowed on April 20, 1939 by a
grateful National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in recognition of his
achievements.
As early as 1923 Berchtesgaden’s locals, including Helene Bechstein of the famous
piano family name, had warmly welcomed the future German leader when he was just 34
years old. Following his release from Landsberg Prison the German leader had rented a
small wooden house on the Platterhof where he started work on Volume.1 of his work
Mein Kampf. It was to become the biggest selling book in the 20th Century world after
the Holy Bible. Not surprisingly this modest mountain home was later named,
Kampfhausl. (Volume.2 was completed at the ‘Marine-Heim Antenberg’ and at the
‘Deutsches Haus’ in Berchtesgaden town itself).
Dietrich Eckart, the young German leader’s mentor, used the location as an exclusive
secluded retreat. He had introduced Hitler to the beauty and solitude of this Alpine idyll.
The charismatic young revolutionary, destined to be idolised by hundreds of millions of
people; indeed regarded by many as the second coming, rented Haus Wachenfeld just
500 metres below the Platterhof Berchtesgaden in 1923. If you search you will find a few
remnants of the house; left from when it was dynamited by the ‘liberators.’
It was here in 1928 where our story really begins. This was to be the NSDAP’s leader’s
rented home until 1933. It was then, the year of his successful election that he purchased
the property and re-named it simply Der Berghof. The next to buy it... well, not quite buy
it was the U.S. Government. Don’t ask them for the receipt they haven’t got one. Der
Berghof was a name that would make its mark on history.
This beautiful spacious residence was situated a few metres up from ‘Zum Turken’
Hotel. This is still there and commercially flourishing but as I say, Hitler’s private
residence Der Berghof was destroyed by the occupying powers; it is the way they are
wired. Back in the good old days the location became something of des’ res’ location for
up and coming National Socialists. Over time leading lights in the National Socialist
movement took up Platterhof residence too. The Platterhof ‘estate quickly grew into a
small village, a community of German leaders and their families. Here were situated
barracks and schools, a hotel, guesthouses, administrative buildings, security offices and
of course the homes of various party leaders. When adding to the NSDAP’s property
portfolio, Martin Bormann complained that the Fuhrer’s unwillingness to apply any
pressure whatsoever on the community’s sitting tenants, many the family homes of
generations of German peasants, meant they were able to charge the NSDAP outrageous
prices for land sold to the Party.
LOFTIER PLANS
Below the Berghof residence Martin Bormann, personal secretary to the German leader,
built a small teahouse for the Fuhrer’s use. The foxy Bormann had a private agenda; the
creation of a magnificent structure 1,800 feet higher. This incidentally was first dubbed
Eagle’s Nest by a contingent of visiting Italian First World War veterans.
It was Martin Bormann’s intention to build an additional teahouse (fortress would be a
more apt description) on the actual mountain peak. This could be presented to the Fuhrer
as a fiftieth birthday present. This really was a civil engineering dream; it would cause
the less insane to mutter, ‘don’t go there; don’t even think about it.’ Had he been drinking
a beer you would have taken it away from him but that is the Germans for you
The self-proposed dream project fascinated Martin Bormann. Together he clandestinely
conspired with Germany’s most accomplished civil engineering personalities. These
included Dr. Ing Fritz Todt. The strategy to build the impossible, a metalled road to the
plateau just short of the peak became an all-consuming challenge to the happy band of
birthday wish surprise conspirators.
To roll out his ambitious plan Bormann told a small white lie. Well he would wouldn’t
he. He informed the visiting engineers that the Fuhrer wanted to use the road by spring.
In fact, Hitler knew absolutely nothing of the project but then we don’t normally reveal
birthday presents in advance do we; it is not polite to do so.
The world’s most ambitious civil engineering accomplishment was begun on April 1
1937. The only difference of opinion between the conspirators was how to achieve the
final objective, by road or by tunnel and lift? The final few hundred metres are more or
less virtually. Do they tunnel and carve an elevator shaft into the guts of the mountain or
was a tunnel road feasible.
The former was chosen as being the most cost effective and ecologically acceptable. A
major issue was to maintain the natural beauty and keep to a minimum the disturbance
of the mountain fauna, even during construction. You see, you’re not even to see this
road from way down there.
During these early stages a labour force of 3,500 men, capable of shrugging off the
most extreme alpine conditions, were recruited. Few other opportunities existed in
Germany for such high salaries. These included bonuses for family separation, high
altitude working conditions and hardship allowances with bonuses for working with
explosives.
THE ULTIMATE IN UPWARD MOBILITY
The construction of five large work camps was already taking place to house the
workers, not all of whom were German nationals. They included Austrians who were
highly experienced from their labours on the impressive Grossglocknerstrasse construction
Trans-Alpine project. Also labouring hard were Italians experienced in alpine road
construction.
Germany’s most gifted engineers were involved in the Kehlstein project as were the
nation’s greatest construction companies. A further 1,000 men, mostly experienced in
tunnel and shaft engineering were recruited to drive the tunnel into the mountain’s core.
No expense was spared either in the construction or the home comforts of the men
involved. Barrack-like accommodation was of the highest standards. These fully heated
buildings were festooned with planter boxes and inside traditional classical scenes of the
highest artistic merit. In an already prosperous Germany these were the highest paid and
valued workers in the construction industry. The project itself commanded its own power
station and cable car systems, much of it innovative. Sadly the first tragedy was about to
occur when at kilometre.3 of the Kehlstein Road 5,000 cubic metres of rock was displaced
and five workers were tragically buried.
Work proceeded regardless of all considerations and the metalled road spiralled ever
upwards, sometimes threaded through the mountainside walls. This included the famous
Martinswand and Schwalbennest Tunnel projects.
‘I DREAMED I WALKED IN MARBLE HALLS’
By September 1937 work on the service tunnel was begun. This provided for the boring
of a 300-metre (1,000 feet) tunnel into the heart of the Obersalzburg Mountain. This
would terminate in a 126-metre lift shaft to take visitors on the final leg to the
Obersalzberg peak.
Strangely (ask a civil engineer) construction of the lift shaft started from the peak
down. The tunnel being excavated into the mountainside far below was now 15 metres
into the rock. Whilst this work was proceeding the massive engine and emergency
generators, necessary to power the elevator and provide air conditioning, would soon be
entombed in the mountain. A further passageway running parallel to the main tunnel
would service the engine rooms. No one gets to see this; it is hidden from public view.
During its construction there were two occasions when landslides blocked the tunnel
entrance. Undeterred the work went on and by May 4, 1938 the work on the shaft was
completed and the elevator ready to be installed. The shaft rising to the mountain peak
stretched an incredible 409 feet yet had a vertical tilt of just three centimetres. In
engineering terms this was impossible and unnecessary preciseness but again there’s the
Germans for you
There is at the end of this mountain tunnel a waiting area. This is where you and
gawping world leaders await their elevator. Don’t inform your president or whoever is
occupying 10 Downing Street; this cannot be repeated, nor can it be afforded.
This waiting area, deep inside the mountain, has a marbled domed ceiling seven
metres in diameter. Each of the individual marble blocks is laid close together with no
mortar joints. The tunnel into the mountain was veneered with Kalberstein marble blocks
set two centimetres apart. The tunnel entrance and the adjacent octagonal shaped room
were completed with Untersberger marble.
With amazing attention to detail it was discovered that the mountain interior
maintained a constant temperature of 7 degrees Celsius and an elaborate system of heat
and ventilation was contrived to deal with condensation.
Outside on the near sheer mountainside the work on the Kehlstein mountain highway
continued relentlessly. Equally relentlessly it snowed almost daily. The heavy snowfalls
and drifts often disrupted work as it progressed. Snowfalls were so heavy that nine-foot
snowdrifts were to typically confront workers as they emerged from their living quarters.
On those days most of the workforce of several thousand was assigned to shovelling
snow so work could progress.
AVALANCHES AND SNOWSTORMS
Frequent avalanches were another hazard and made for a great deal of extra work not
to mention danger. One such avalanche buried a group of convoy workers on the night of
January 30, 1938. Happily, two men managed to free themselves and rescued the
remaining worker.
There was a year to go to the Fuhrer’s birthday gift from the nation being unwrapped.
The weather was particularly bad between March 26 and May when it snowed constantly.
The snowstorms were actually worse than those experienced in the winter months. On
such occasions supply lines to the thousands of workers were disrupted and there was a
need for men to resort to survival rations.
Often the working conditions were like scenes of hell. Snowfall typically started at
1,200 metres where it often snowed without interruption. It is interesting to note that
visits to Kehlstein today are curtailed from early October to May. This is because
appalling weather conditions make ascent impossible. On another occasion, during a
thunderstorm, the south-west tunnel’s insulation system was so charged by natural
electricity that one of its panels burst with a loud bang releasing tons of water. Entire
electricity systems were destroyed and each was patiently restored.
Heavy thunderstorms were another constant hazard. Their electrostatic charges on the
upper part of the mountain caused a great deal of damage. On one occasion, lightning hit
the water pipe at the Scharitzkehl and exited at the teahouse construction site. This
resulted in five workers being hurt, two seriously.
High above all of this activity the construction of the Kehlstein Haus (Eagle’s Nest)
continued at Germany’s highest construction site. Massive granite stones, indeed all of
the building materials needed, had to be brought up from the valley thousands of feet
below. Working alongside each other, often in the most hazardous conditions, were
masons, carpenters, elevator technicians and tile-layers. It is to the credit of all involved
that despite the high altitude, the horrendous possibilities for tragedy not to mention the
appalling weather, no one was seriously hurt during this period of critical construction -
except for the effects of the lightning bolts.
THE MOUNTAIN GETS A MAKEOVER
Gradually the time came when mountain cosmetics needed to be applied to put the
finishing touches to the Eagle’s Nest project. The world’s most demanding construction
project needed a makeover to ensure all evidence of construction and the road itself
would blend into the mountain-scape. Equally important was the constructors’
determination that the ecology of the area should remain as wild and beautiful as it had
been throughout its long history.
A difficult task was the application of hydrochloric acid solutions to stones, which in the
construction process, had been unearthed. It was necessary to ensure their colours
matched the weathered rocks and to also speed up moss growth and restore nature. It
was important to ensure that natural watercourses remained unpolluted. Asphalt was
chosen for the road surfaces but because of the weather the surfaces never dried out for
weeks. The spreading of topsoil and the laying of grass seed was also taking place and all
waste was carefully disposed of. The objective was to ‘leave the place as they had found
it.’
Finally the Kehlstein Eagle’s Nest construction epic was completed. Even by today’s
standards the construction of the mountain road leading to Eagle’s Nest stands out as a
milestone in the history of road construction. This winding road, spiralling upwards to the
snow-capped peak of Obersalzberg Mountain, has so far withstood an estimated a total
weight of 4.2 million tons and that since 1960. It might provide a lesson for today’s potholed Britain. Only the smallest defects have been found in the walled systems. This was
also the first road project with a 25% gradient to employ the use of hot liquid asphalt.
Eagle’s Nest in a word is a construction of history-making firsts.
THE CASUALTIES
Despite the most stringent safety considerations there were sadly four accidents
involving eight workers that resulted in fatalities. A landslide below the south-west tunnel
killed five workers. One truck driver tumbled with his Opel Blitz truck 200 metres down
the mountainside. Another worker, for non-payment of a debt, stabbed another worker to
death. Finally one unfortunate worker fell to his death down a 130-metre shaft.
Each a tragedy of course for the individual and their families involved but against this is
the recognition that so few lives were lost on such an awesome epoch-making venture.
Many more lives were lost in more modest tunnel construction projects in Britain.
One that comes to mind was the Queensway Tunnel linking the maritime city of
Liverpool to Birkenhead. In the 1930s it was at 3 km the longest underwater tunnel in the
world. It took nine years in the making and cost the lives of 17 construction workers.
EAGLE’S NEST THE VITAL STATISTICS
The Kehlstein road carved out of the mountain is 6.5 kilometres long and four metres
wide. Five tunnels were dug out of the mountainside and a parking area in which buses
could turn was built at 1,700 metres. From this parking plateau is the tunnel leading to
the mountain’s centre. It is 3 metres high and 300 metres (1,000 feet) long.
Eagle’s Nest teahouse (restaurant actually) is an impressive granite stone multi-room
edifice that is beautifully furnished with the most exquisite furniture. The rooms include a
huge round reception hall with many panoramic windows and a most impressive marble
fireplace. There is a dining room still used as a restaurant today as indeed there is a
reception hall. There is also a large kitchen area, guardrooms and the elegantly pinepanelled ‘charitzkehlstube room.
Both the road leading upwards to it and Eagle’s Nest itself were built in just 12 months
and cost 30 million Reich marks. The 101st Airborne Division occupiers damaged neither
the tea house nor the road though they did seriously consider dynamiting it. The U.S.
armed forces did however vandalise the building and of course loot it. One can watch the
videos taken at the time. It is almost beyond belief that other than barbarians could take
such pleasure in wantonly destroying such magnificent art whomsoever it was related to.
Eagle’s Nest was confiscated by American troops of occupation although from 1948 the
State of Bavaria officially owns it. It was until 1960 off limits to Germans.
Today in the visiting season fleets of buses carry thousands of tourists up to the
restored Eagle’s Nest each day. There they may enjoy the panoramic scenery, explore the
beautiful mountaintop, enjoy soft drinks and purchase souvenirs.
THE VANDALISM OF THE BARBARIANS
Thankfully, much of the town of Berchtesgaden remains at it always was. It is an
absolute joy to wander through. Tragically however the USAF and RAF bombed the
Platterhof and the village community of National Socialist leaders. During the U.S.
occupation the homes, buildings, and infrastructure were pillaged, dynamited, and
bulldozed out of existence. Only the Hotel Turken survives and thrives.
Allied barbarians wantonly razed all other buildings, fearful of their becoming shrines.
Meticulously destroyed was Adolf Hitler’s beautiful residence Der Berghof. Also destroyed
were the subterranean SS barracks; the cavernous garages, kindergartens for their
children, the ornate and beautiful gardens and guesthouses.
All the stunningly fine-looking homes of the then Germany’s leaders, Herman Goering,
Martin Bormann and so many others were similarly razed to the ground. Every stone and
all trace removed. All that remains are photographs and memories and of course the
ghosts and the pilgrims. Such is the legacy of Europe’s ‘liberators’. All had gone on the
wind as had the honour of the victor nations.
Still remaining the greenhouse and nurseries, the gardens were once tens of thousands
of children with proud and optimistic parents stood in the sunlight hoping to catch a
glimpse of the most revered leader in European history. One can only wonder if the
present day destruction, the squalor, and the misfortune increasingly heaped upon the
multi-racial madness of the equally colonised western powers are Nature’s revenge.
HOW TO GET TO EAGLE’S NEST
As with all destinations you pay your money, you take your choice but it is seriously
easy to get to. Our route took us from Dover to Ostend, Aachen and then south to
Koblenz, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Munich and then we took the autobahn 90 miles to Bad
Reichenhall and Berchtesgaden. The distance from Ostend is roughly 1,000 kilometres
(675 miles). Alternatively and much cheaper is to fly to either Salzburg or Munich; to then
hire a car.
Berchtesgaden itself is a delightful spa town that long before the emergence of the
Third Reich attracted tens of thousands of visitors wishing to experience its utterly
Bavarian Alpine charm. Do visit its web site. We used it to select and book a hotel close
to Lake Konigsee. Explore its attractive shops, restaurants, and bars. You will find
Berchtesgaden the most difficult town to turn your back on so do purchase the ubiquitous
handkerchief. You will need it to blow your nose on as you promise yourself a return visit.
Believe me, it will be a promise kept.
Should you wish to visit the Fuhrer’s childhood home town of Braunnau you will find the
it an easy (and charming) location to drive to, a truly beautiful place to spend a summer’s
day. For the moment his home stands several yards to the east of the imposing town
gate. Do make a point of spending some time in the town’s incredibly beautiful domed
church where undoubtedly the young German leader visited for services; it is as it was
then. It is I promise an uplifting experience.
And might I recommend a stroll along the forested banks of the swirling river Inn,
through the meadows. Such a walk is the opening paragraph of Adolf Hitler’s story, Mein
Kampf. Here on these very same banks Adolf Hitler, as a young boy, stood and
whimsically gazed across to Germany and his true homeland. Braunnau (the river is the
German/Austrian border) is actually situated on the East Side of the river frontier and the
Custom House where Hitler’s father once worked is still standing. Of this small town
community Hitler wrote in that opening paragraph:
“It turned out fortunate for me today that destiny appointed Braunnau-on-the-Inn to be
my birthplace. For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those two
States the reunion of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to
which we should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means should
be employed.”
Other than that the town is very much as he would remember it although on its
outskirts small industry and shopping malls have mushroomed. No real problem with that.
Enjoy your shopping. Like Munich, Braunnau is easily reached and is about 50 miles from
Berchtesgaden. Have a safe and enjoyable journey.
GERMANY - Arno Breker - ‘He is up in the Horse’s Left
Ear’
As we gaze at images of iconic neo-classical buildings and stadia of the Third Reich one
cannot help but be impressed by the great stone-carved heroic figures displayed. These
depict or are symbolic of the German soul; the folk community. Here you will fine
monumental sized sculptures of the swastika; motherhood and fatherhood; military and
racial comradeship; busts of great Germans, Olympian sports. It is reasonable to suggest
that many of these great sculptures, reaching as high as 20 metres, whilst reminding us
of the grandeur of Rome far exceed them.
Once when he received a visitor at his Berlin studio enquiry was made as to where
precisely the great sculptor was: ‘He is up in the horse’s left ear,’ he was informed.
Professor Josef Thorak and Arno Breker, two of the period’s great artists, in
achievement, grandeur and scope, rivalled anything of centuries past. Had they not
served the Reich they would of course be well recognised and commented upon.
Many of these great statues, nude figures depicting the art form preferred by the
National Socialist government and its cultural and art depositories were destroyed by the
allies. These two artists creations, if found, today raise enormous sums of money. One
cannot imagine newsreel of the period in which their art forms are not highly visible and
recognisable. The works can be seen at great theatres, art galleries and sports stadium.
If you wish to be better aware of his monumental achievements purchase a copy of
Olympia; the official film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Josef Thorak and Adolf Hitler’s 1889 dates of birth were separated by only seven
weeks. Both were Austrian. The sculptor was born in Salzburg, which is a short drive from
the small town of Braunnau am Inn where the future leader of Germany was born.
Thorak first came to public notice when in 1922 he created Der sterbende Krieger; a
monumental granite statue in memory of the dead of World War One of Stolpmunde. It
was perfectly natural that he should later become better acquainted with his peer Arno
Breker. The two were soon to become the official sculptors of the Third Reich.
The two men’s artistic merits were highly regarded by Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer,
responsible for the architectural triumphs of the epoch. Speer was known to refer to
Thorak as ‘my sculptor.’
Worthy of mention was Thorak’s second wife, Erna Thorak. 25-years his junior she was
devoted to him throughout her long life. She outlived her husband by 52 years, dying as
recently as 2004 at the age of 90 years. Her devotion and loyalty to her husband and his
works through the very troubled period following the war was officially recognised.
The Josef Thorak Archives in Berlin honored the deceased with a proclamation. ‘Erna
Thorak was a courageous and strong woman. She has endured with honour and patience
all attacks against Josef Thorak, who, after 1945 and until his death in 1952, became a
target of evil defamations by the official art world and many politicians, due to his work
as artist during the Third Reich for Adolf Hitler and his architect Albert Speer.
‘Instead of trying to defend the creative period of her husband during the National
Socialist era, Frau Thorak took care of the remaining artistic heritage of the sculptor, who
lost all his rights in Germany and Austria after the war. She lived and worked withdrawn
from the public spotlight.
‘She herself avoided all public appearances in the media, and thus kept misfortune
away from the family. All, who knew this conscious, self-willed and charming lady, will
keep her in their fond memories. The Thorak Archive is aware of its mission after the
departure of Erna Thorak to keep alive a worthy remembrance about this significant artist
of the 20th century.’ The man who created heroic figures had clearly married one such
heroic figure.
ENGLAND / GERMANY - An English Woman who won
the Fuhrer’s Heart
‘If Hitler were to walk in through that door now, for instance, I'd be as happy and glad
to see and have him here as ever. And that whole dark side of him, I know it exists but it
doesn't exist for me because I don't know that part of him. You see, the only thing that
exists for me in a relationship with somebody is my personal experience.’ Winifred
Wagner
When on occasion the German leader was asked why he remained single he replied
simply, ‘I am married to Germany.’
Without question he was adored by the ladies and few men in history had a greater
choice of Europe’s most beautiful and eligible women. Adolf Hitler was undoubtedly
appealing to most of the fairer sex. It is a matter of record that his popularity with
German women was even greater than it was with men; though it was marginal. It would
be an easy option to dismiss this as woman’s perennial search for a powerful or rich male
as a partner. Hitler was not rich and lived a life of great austerity. He did not have a bank
account and never took money from the state. His only indulgences were works of art,
which he purchased with the royalties of his own works.
Nor was it his power for the women attracted to him that might suggest a marriageable
outcome, were already fabulously rich or powerful. There was little that could be added
by the fuehrer as a life partner. Women are attracted to intellect; it is a magnet for the
fairer sex; the rest that might come with it are the trimmings.
One such woman was English born Winifred Wagner. Fate had arranged for her
marriage into the Richard Wagner family. She was born Winifred Marjorie Williams in the
seaside town of Hastings. The daughter of John Williams a writer and mother Emily,
Winifred lost both parents by the time she reached two years of age. Until she was tenyears old she was brought up in a number of homes before being adopted by a distant
German relative of her mother. Henrietta Karop and husband Karl Klindworth, a musician
were friends of the composer Richard Wagner.
At the time Adolf Hitler was a penniless and largely unemployed eighteen-year old.
Winifred was far from maturity and at 17-years of age met Siegfried Wagner, Richard
Wagner’s only son. The two were married a year later; he was 45-years of age and died
in 1930. The couple had four children. It was upon his death that she would assume
responsibility for the Bayreuth Festival.
Meanwhile Adolf Hitler, a consummate admirer of Wagner’s compositions, was very
much engaged in his struggled for German hearts and minds. Winifred met Adolf Hitler in
1923 following the failed Munich Beer Hall putsch. There was much about Wagner’s
operas that symbolised his struggle. One need read the Ring of the Niberlungen (Der Ring
des Niberlungen) to read a parallel alternative to Mein Kampf.
Before Hitler entered politics and the likely reason for him doing so was a visit to the
opera. There the future German leader was wracked with emotion on experiencing
Richard Wagner’s opera Rienzi. The saga is based on the life of Cola di Rienzi, a medieval
Italian social revolutionary. From humble beginnings he constantly outwits the nobility
and ecclesiastical establishment of the period. In doing so he returns democracy to the
people. He is universally adored for freeing them from the travails and taxes imposed
upon them. But in turn he is no match for the forces of darkness. The people are
subverted and turn against him and then their leader in their capital is consumed by the
flames ignited by those Rienzi earlier ousted.
Opera, and in particular Richard Wagner was an integral part of Hitler’s life. It was the
National Socialist government that put new life into the Salzburg Festival. Today it is the
ultimate occasion for aficionados of the classical musical world. When it is in full swing
the world is denied their greatest musicians and opera singers, composers and all
involved in classical music production. They are at Salzburg.
The heart of Wagnerian opera was and still is the Bayreuth Festival. Here again the
National Socialist government raised the event’s status to become the musical equivalent
of St Peter’s Square in Rome. Even during Germany’s darkest moment the Bayreuth
Festival continued. When things became so bad, because of destruction caused by the
constant allied bombing raids, few could afford to attend; the house was packed with
wounded servicemen, their tickets paid for by the government.
It was his enduring friendship with Winifred Wagner that fuelled Hitler’s enthusiasm for
the festival and all things Wagnerian. Theirs was the most harmonious relationship
imaginable. It was rumoured for a while that the two might marry, but of course Hitler
already had his bride; Germany. He married again only on becoming a widower.
They were to stand together in solemn silence before their great musical mentor’s
tomb. When Hitler’s Rienzi like successes had in 1923 caused him to be imprisoned the
future German leader was constantly supplied with food parcels sent by Winifred. The
parcels included writing paper upon which he and Rudolf Hess set down his epic struggle,
Mein Kampf. In return he brought considerable patronage of all things Wagnerian to
Bayreuth. It was and still is a world class occasion.
Hitler was a constant visitor to Bayreuth and he and Winifred Wagner spent a great
deal of time together. Hitler stayed in an adjacent house, which was known as the
Fuehrer Haus. He was by all accounts the perfect house guest and conversationalist. The
two and their guests would talk the sun up after settling down hours earlier in front of a
great roaring log fire. The German leader’s audience were reportedly spellbound by his
storytelling abilities.
Never once did Winifred Wagner’s faith in Adolf Hitler waver. Even when she was, as
were all German people, on the receiving end of allied brainwashing called de-nazification
she remained defiant and loyal, refusing to believe allied accounts. Time has proved her
instincts right and the orphan who became the Fuhrer’s closest confidant took with her to
the grave her unswerving faith in Hitler and Germany.
At her trial before the allied tribunals was read out the testimonials of several Jewish
families whom she had assisted. Although she wasn’t gaoled or detailed to a working
party she was stripped of her position as head of the Bayreuth Festival.
Throughout the years that followed, throughout the occupation, which today remains in
place, her faith and that of others never wavered. Along with compatriots who had
disdained the occupiers’ propaganda they maintained a coded link by using the term USA
which was in fact an acronym of ‘Unser selige Adolf’ (Our Beloved Adolf).
It is true that Winifred Wagner might have faded with the memories had it not been for
a filmed interview in 1975, which she agreed to take part in. It was because a
documentary on the Bayreuth Festival was being made that she agreed to take part. She
was naively unaware that a trap was being set for her. The filmmaker Hans-Hurgen
Syberberg had a secret agenda. His real aim was to win the confidence of Winifred
because she had known the Fuhrer so well; he knew also that she had never regretted
her friendship with Hitler.
Skilfully putting her at ease the then 78-year old lady was enthusiastic about sharing
her recollections of the festival. However, during parts of the interview he pretended to
turn off the recording equipment so that he might better be able to chat to the old lady of
music ‘off the record.’
The unsuspecting Winifred chatted amicably off camera and expressed herself
transparently, unknowing that the sound equipment was still recording her every word.
She chatted about recollections unrelated to the Bayreuth Festival and at one point, when
asked about her relationship with the Fuhrer replied: ‘If Hitler were to walk in through
that door now, for instance, I'd be as happy and glad to see and have him here as ever.
And that whole dark side of him, I know it exists but it doesn't exist for me because I
don't know that part of him. You see, the only thing that exists for me in a relationship
with somebody is my personal experience.’
Her comments were broadcast and the German liberal media owned and certainly
controlled by the occupiers saw to it that their victim was pilloried. I would like to think
that in the first place the German viewers saw through the trick and anyway were
delighted to hear her express herself in such a way. A true heroine, Winifred Wagner,
born June 23, 1897 passed away on March 5, 1980.
U.S. / EIRE - THE MARTYRDOM OF WILLIAM JOYCE
It was a bitterly cold morning on January 3, 1946. In a small chapel in Galway, Ireland,
mass was being said for an American citizen about to be hanged in England’s grim
Wandsworth Prison. In England the condemned prisoner was still writing his farewell
notes as the liturgy began. His notes ended:
‘In death, as in this life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war: and I defy the power
of Darkness which they represent. I warn the British people against the aggressive
Imperialism of the Soviet Union.
May Britain be great once again; and, in the hour of greatest danger to the West, may
the standard of the Hakenkreuz (Swastika) be raised from the dust, crowned with the
historic words! ‘Ihr habt doch gesiegt.’(Still you have won!) I am sorry for the sons of
Britain who have died without knowing why.’
The Consecration of this mass with others was timed to coincide with the young
American’s departing soul at 9.00am. The baying mob, given a spurious legitimacy by
England’s judiciary, had dragged the infamous gallows of Tyburn into the 20 th Century.
And so the soul of William Joyce, who had fought so tenaciously for the racial security and
Christian integrity of Europe, was separated from his mortal existence.
A FAMILY TREE TO BE PROUD OF
Born on the morning of 24, April 1906 at 1377 Herkimer Street in New York, the
intellectually gifted William Joyce had a family tree to be proud of. Theirs was a family
whose merits had given an entire region of Galway their name, ‘Joyce’s Country’.
Their roots traced back to William the Conqueror’s colonisation of medieval England
and the later crusades. Among Joyce’s descendents were three archbishops, three
founders of the Dominican College at Louvain, several mayors of Galway, an historian, a
nineteenth century poet-physician, an American revivalist preacher, and the noted author
and poet James Joyce
The renowned Claddagh wedding/engagement ring, which serves also as an eternity
ring much cherished by Irish emigrants, has its origins with the Joyce family.
According to legend Mary Joyce, the widow of a wealthy Spanish merchant ploughed
her inherited fortune into her local Galway community. Once, while out on the moors she
was surprised to discover a beautiful finger ring on her lap. It could have been ‘delivered’
only by the eagle soaring above.
This beautiful ring, still sold in Galway today (T. Dillon & Sons, Jewellers) features a
heart held in two hands, crested with a crown – signifying, according to popular belief,
the motto, ‘Let Love and Friendship Reign’.
Irish historians contend that the Claddagh ring belongs to a group of ‘faith’ rings that
date back to pre-medieval times. It takes its name from the Galway region because, ‘The
Claddagh people tended to keep to themselves and generally married within their
community thus ensuring the survival of many local customs, including that of their dearly
beloved Claddagh ring.’
Either way the symbolism of the Claddagh ring will not be lost on the more esoteric
discoverers of real history and in particular National Socialists.
As we shall discover, of martyrs ennobled by their desire for ‘love and friendship’
combined with ‘racial pride and exclusivity’, William Joyce is perhaps most deserving of
the Claddagh crown.
William’s Joyce’s father, as a twenty-year old British citizen, for Ireland was then ruled
from Westminster, had emigrated to the United States in 1888. Four years later his British
citizenship lapsed through absence and he became an American citizen. He was very
successful in his trade and returned to Ireland in 1909 to live in comfort.
Fiercely loyal to the Crown and proudly pro-British the Galway County Inspector of
Police was unstinting in his praise of Michael Joyce who now, though lapsed, considered
he was again a British citizen.
Not so, the Chief Constable of Lancashire informed him. Joyce and his wife Gertrude
were formally cautioned against the provisions of the Aliens Restriction Order (8 July
1917). Michael and his wife were now in no doubt as to theirs and their sons’ nationality.
They were citizens of the United States of America.
At the conclusion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty (8 December 1921) when the twenty-six
counties of Eire gained independence, Michael Joyce, no doubt due to his anti-Republican
sentiments, removed himself to England to dedicate himself to King and Empire. His son
William, later to be hanged as a traitor, was then fifteen.
There was never any doubt as to his son’s similar loyalty to the Crown, an excess of
which caused him to lie about his age when enrolling in the British Regular Army at
sixteen. The youngster was ejected after four months service when his true age was
revealed.
ACADEMICALLY BRILLIANT
The young William Joyce joined the Officer Training Corp. It was through the OTC
college system that the dedicated and highly cerebral student acquired BAs in Latin,
French, English and History. Later on, in 1927 he obtained First Class Honours in English.
In terms of his academic brilliance William Joyce’s achievements have never been
bettered.
His close friend John Angus Mac Nab described how Joyce could quote Virgil and Horace
freely. Besides being able to speak German he spoke French fairly well and some Italian.
He was not only gifted in mathematics but had a flair for teaching it. He was also widely
read in history, philosophy, theology, psychology, theoretical physics and chemistry,
economics, law, medicine, anatomy and physiology. He played the piano by ear.
This was a period of international upheaval and uncertainty set between the toxic
effects of the Bolshevik overthrow of the Russian government and the two World Wars.
The so called Russian Revolution, hijacking of a nation and bitter civil war was now over.
Events had delivered Russia to the tyranny of international Jewish revolutionaries.
Bankers such as New York-based Kuhn, Loeb and co., who shared their race and
presumably with an eye to the ensuing opportunity for profit, had financed these
revolutionaries.
Europe was horrified at what appeared to be the relentless flames of revolution licking
at their own shores. Winston Churchill was on record as saying: ‘It may well be that this
same astounding (Jewish) race may at the present time be in the actual process of
providing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was
benevolent, which if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has
rendered possible . . . at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld
of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of
their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous
empire’.
SLASHED FROM MOUTH TO EAR
Against this background the young William Joyce 6 December 1923 joined Miss LintonOrman’s British Fascisti Limited; an organisation set up specifically to counter red
revolutionary activity. Joyce was soon to come face to face (literally) with the red
revolutionaries.
During an election meeting a Communist thug leapt on the eighteen-year old activist’s
back and with an open razor slashed him from mouth to ear. It was a scar that Joyce
carried with him to gallows.
During this period of international upheaval membership of a Fascist organisation and
the defence of the British Empire was considered one and the same thing. Indeed it was
so in Germany, Italy and many other European nations then battling against the
Communist struggle for world domination.
In 1933, the Financial Times brought out a special eight-page supplement under the
caption: 'The Renaissance of Italy: Fascism's Gift of Order and Progress.' As late as 11
November 1938 Winston Churchill opined: ‘Of Italian Fascism, Italy has shown that there
is a way of fighting the subversive forces which can rally the masses of the people,
properly led, to value and wish to defend the honour and stability of civilised society.
Hereafter no great nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means of protection
against the cancerous growth of Bolshevism.’
Only later would the defeated British Empire genuflect to the triumphant airs of ‘The
Internationale’.
The political event, which Joyce was defending when attacked by the Communist thugs,
was an election meeting for the Unionist Parliamentary candidate, Jack Lazarus.
William Joyce, reluctant to commit himself to existing anti-communist organizations
opted for Oswald Mosley’s newly formed British Union of Fascists. The young ideals
remained sceptical however of Benito Mussolini His scepticism was due to the Italian
leader’s apparent lack of concern at the threat posed by organised world Jewry. On the
other hand he had the greatest admiration for Germany’s recently elected leader, Adolf
Hitler.
Fired by the prospect of accompanying BUF leader Oswald Mosley to Germany with the
possible opportunity of meeting the Fuehrer, the young Joyce was to unwittingly sign his
own death warrant.
Realizing that as an American citizen it would be impossible to obtain a British passport
he lied about his place of birth to obtain the document. Obviously such a document is
thereby invalid but Britain’s judiciary would soon be happy to make an exception to the
rule if it would provide opportunity for a hanging. As it happened, much to the vagaries of
fate, the proposed trip to Germany never did take place.
‘A SPEECH TERRIFYING IN ITS DYNAMIC FORCE’
An excellent speaker, William Joyce often deputized for Oswald Mosley. He regularly
addressed large audiences including a major Fascist rally in Liverpool on the 26
November 1933 attended by an estimated 10,000 Fascists. Of him AK Chesterton wrote:
‘William Joyce, brilliant writer, speaker, and exponent of policy, has addressed hundreds
of meetings, always at his best, always revealing the iron spirit of Fascism in his refusal
to be intimidated by violent opposition.’
John Beckett, the former Labour Member of Parliament, on attending a meeting
addressed by Joyce said: ‘Within ten minutes of this twenty-eight year old youngster
taking the platform I knew that here was one of the dozen finest orators in the country.’
Cecil Roberts who heard Joyce at a political dinner in London’s Park Lane Hotel
described the event years later: ‘Thin, pale, intense, he had not been speaking many
minutes before we were electrified by this man. I have been a connoisseur of speechmaking for a quarter of a century, but never before, in any country, had I met a
personality so terrifying in its dynamic force, so vituperative, so vitriolic.’
During this period Oswald Mosley was speaking at the largest political rallies ever held
in Britain. ‘We know that England is crying for a leader,’ William Joyce told a Brighton
audience in 1934, ‘and that leader has emerged in the person of the greatest Englishman
I have ever known, Sir Oswald Mosley.’
Joyce’s political sympathies however were unambiguously in favour of National
Socialism and by 1936 he had coined the slogan: ‘If you love your country you are a
National. If you love her people you are a Socialist. Therefore, be a National Socialist’.
He was equally uncompromising on the Jewish question. Then as now it was usual for
Jewish financial interests to buy a country by buying the party in power. In the summer of
1934 the British Union of Fascists was offered £300,000 by a Jewish businessman
prominent in the tobacco trade. It was sufficient to finance the BUF for two years.
Without consulting his party’s leader Joyce rejected the offer ‘with an impolite message.’
Joyce if nothing else was an indomitable champion of the working class for whom all his
efforts were directed. It was hardly surprising that he was as consistently scathing of
Jewish capitalists and communists; not to mention decadent English bootlickers who he
described as ‘the parasites of Mayfair’.
Joyce, by then divorced, had one other great passion, his love for fellow party worker,
Margaret Cairns White. Upon the announcement of their engagement a mutual friend of
them both said to her: ‘Well, I do hope you will be happy, but it may be uncomfortable
being married to a genius. And William is a genius you know!’
By 1937 the English establishment’s enthusiasm for Fascism had waned. The Fleet
Street-based propaganda machine, backed by Jewish interests, was in its ascendancy.
The success of National Socialist Germany and Italian Fascism, rather than being seen as
a template for European solidarity and revival was now seen as a threat to British
interests, the establishment and its aristocracy. Simplistically there were more readers of
Fleet Street’s poisonous press than there were readers of the British Union of Fascist’s
tabloid, The Fascist. The BBC then as now had always leaned towards Marxism.
Riding on the back of media organised anti-Fascist propaganda and red violence the
government banned the wearing of political uniforms and torchlight processions. Their
further tightening up of The Public Order Act hit, as intended, the Fascist movement hard.
As the police turned a Nelson’s eye to red riots; the owners of public halls, most of
them Labour authority controlled, denied venues to the Fascists. Their printing presses
were seized and members intimidated and harassed.
War clouds were now looming and the British Fascists last chance to form peaceful
alliance with burgeoning racial-nationalism in Europe was fading fast. Britain was slipping
into the dictatorship of a parliamentary coalition; there would be no more elections until
1945. Britain was a parliamentary dictatorship from 1940 to 1945, and in fact is still
regarded as a cosy rotating dictatorship through the decades that were to follow.
On the retreat and burdened with unsustainable overheads the British Union of Fascists
(BUF) staff was reduced by 80%. Within a month of his wedding to his Maria Callas lookalike bride, William Joyce was unemployed. His enforced redundancy owed much to his
disenchantment with Mosley who he now privately referred to as ‘the bleeder’ rather than
‘the leader’. William Joyce was intolerant of weakness exemplified by Mosley’s
concessions to the then Government.
THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST LEAGUE
Subsequently William Joyce, John Beckett and John Angus Mac Nab set up the National
Socialist League NSL), which was as it happens dismissive of copying the German
structure. To do so, Joyce insisted, would be an insult to Adolf Hitler who disdained
imitation. The German leader anyway was always keen to show friendship and solidarity
with the British Government. The last thing Hitler needed was anything that suggested
German interference in the British political system
William Joyce expressed his aims: ‘His way is for Germany, ours is for Britain; let us
tread our paths with mutual respect, which is rarely increased by borrowing.
‘Nationalism stands for the nation and Socialism for the people. Unless the people are
identical with the nation, all politics and all statecraft are a waste of time. A people
without a nation are a helpless flock or, like the Jews, a perpetual nuisance; a nation
without people is an abstract nothing or a historical ghost.’
By studying these words carefully one can perceive why Britons today, deprived of their
nationhood through open-door immigration and foreign ownership, have become a flock
without a shepherd.
By now the war clouds were darkening leaving Joyce on the horns of a dilemma. He
could not support a war arranged by corrupt politicians acting on behalf of international
finance. Yet evasion of National Service was unthinkable.
A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
In any event there was to be no dilemma. William Joyce and wife Margaret were
already marked down for arrest and detention for the duration of the coming war. In fact,
people were sentenced to long terms in prison merely for peaceful activities aimed at
stopping Britain’s war against Germany.
One such was Anna Wolkoff, daughter of a Russian Imperial Navy admiral-of-the-Fleet.
For no other reason than her presumed sympathies with Hitler’s Germany, the lady on
November 7 1940 was sentenced her to ten years imprisonment. The sentencing judge
Justice Tucker was ‘coincidentally’ the same judge who four years later would preside
over the trial and pass the death sentence on British patriot William Joyce at the Old
Bailey. At the Wolkoff trial the establishment appointed judge described the absent
William Joyce as a traitor. This was a well-publicized remark that should have
automatically have eliminated him from presiding over the fugitive’s later trial.
William Joyce’s plan was to remove himself and his wife Margaret from British soil; to
beforehand renew his false passport and that of Margaret’s. To then leave for the
Republic of Ireland from where they could resolve their dilemma of mixed loyalties.
However the Munich Agreement made their departure unnecessary and the couple
went instead to Ryde on the Isle of Wight. There William Joyce experienced a spiritual
visitation, the impact of which kept him awake and talking all night.
What followed was a period of much soul-searching. Events forced the young couple to
decide on Berlin as being the best option to escape an English prison. Angus Mac Nab had
already established that both Joyce and his wife would be granted German citizenship if
they chose to resettle in Germany.
Time was fast running out. The House of Commons was being recalled the following
Thursday to pass all stages of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act. This would
effectively turn the British Government into a dictatorship.
Joyce was under no illusions. He and tens of thousands of others, who had pursued
peace with Germany, would soon be summarily arrested and detained indefinitely without
trial. Many fled Britain. Most fled to the far flung outposts of empire or the United States.
Even government ministers and members of the British establishment were at the time
preparing to flee, again mostly to the United States. William and his wife were destined
to go in ‘the wrong direction.’ Joyce applied for the renewal of their passports. As National
Socialists working for peace between the two nations there was now only one country
where the Joyce’s presumed they would not be imprisoned. Germany. It was an argument
strongly favoured by Margaret.
GET OUT OF ENGLAND NOW
At about midnight on August 24, 1939 the couple’s telephone rang. It was a call from
an MI5 Intelligence officer. The voice at the other end of the line warned the 33-year old
Joyce that he was due to be arrested under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act. He had
at most two days to make good their escape. On 26 August 1939, five days before
Germany retaliated against repeated Polish attacks on her borders, William and Margaret
Joyce caught train for the channel port from where they would catch a ferry before
making their way to Hitler’s Germany.
Arriving in Berlin the two tired travellers found the great European city seething with
defensive preparations. There the English visitors found that Christian Bauer, their
contact and ticket to a new life, had exaggerated his influence. He could offer little by
way of assistance. In the confusion of events there was even the possibility that they
might be interned should Britain declare war on Germany.
Disconsolate and footsore the pair tramped the streets of the German capital coming
up against one obstacle after another. Finally, without work and running short of money
they decided in unison to return to England. Yet again fate was against them. By this
time William Joyce had changed all of his British pounds sterling money into Reich marks,
a currency now invalid for journeys beyond Germany’s borders. British Embassy staff was
unhelpful. At Margaret’s suggestion the couple fatefully decided to stay in Berlin; a
decision reinforced when next day Joyce landed a job as a part time freelance interpreter.
During the night of August 31, 1939 Poland, which six months earlier had invaded
Czechoslovakia and which already controversially occupied German territory looted after
World War One, crossed the German border. It was a little after midnight when radio
broadcasts were interrupted by an announcement that the small German border town of
Gleiwitz had been attacked and occupied by Polish irregular formations. Within hours
Germany retaliated.
ENGLAND GETS THEIR WAR
Two days later a delegate of the Labour Party met with British Foreign Minister Lord
Halifax. 'Do you still have hope?' he was asked. 'If you mean hope for war,' answered
Halifax, 'then your hopes will be fulfilled tomorrow.' 'God be thanked!' replied the
representative of the British Labour Party.
In Germany the mood was less jubilant. The shocked population listened to their
country’s leader Adolf Hitler as he addressed the Reichstag on September 1, 1939. ‘Just
as there have occurred, recently, twenty-one border incidents in a single night, there
were fourteen this night, among which three were very serious...
‘Since dawn today we are shooting back. I desire nothing other than to be the first
soldier of the German Reich. I have again put on that old coat which was the most sacred
and dear to me of all. I will not take it off until victory is ours or - I shall not live to see
the end. There is one word that I have never learned: capitulation.’
Back in London the police were raiding the Joyce’s apartment to find the tipped off
couple had already flown. Though free in Germany they felt lonely, helpless and
homesick. They had no ration cards; William’s meagre earnings reduced them to living on
acts of charity. Every job opportunity turned out to be a disappointment, a vague promise
and nothing more.
Reduced to destitution he was finally asked: ‘Have you ever thought of working for the
radio?’ Joyce replied that he had not and moments later an interview was being arranged.
Though desperate for competent English speakers the Reichsrundfunks Foreign Service
was not impressed with Joyce’s performance (he was suffering a heavy cold that week)
but reluctantly provided employment to the equally unenthusiastic Joyce. Faced with
possible internment or certain destitution he had little choice but to accept the post
offered.
The rest is history. Joyce spent the rest of England’s war providing English-speaking
listeners with the German point of view on the conflict’s unfolding events. He was one of
many various nationalities carrying out the same task. The same could be said for the
internationally-recruited staff serving the British Government through the BBC at London’s
Bush House.
William Joyce was never the ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ of Fleet Street mythology. He was given
this nom-de-plume by Daily Express journalist, Jonah Barrington, who had mistaken
Joyce’s broadcast for that of Norman Baillie-Stewart, a Seaforth Highland Regiment
veteran who like many others had decided to fight for European interests rather than
Capitalism and international Jewry. It was a choice of fight for the Reich or the rich.
Much of the comment made about Joyce’s broadcasts is similar myth. His biographer,
J.A Cole conceded that: ‘To this day he is quoted as having made statements he never
uttered. Most of what people think they know of him is false and not fact . . . an
extraordinary viciousness has characterized much of the writing about him, but what was
written in anger (about Joyce) now looks spiteful and even absurd.’
Claims that Joyce sneeringly provided accurate predictions that certain areas or
buildings had been chosen for air strikes were also wide of the mark. The Government’s
Ministry of Information having already refuted claims that Germany had detailed topical
knowledge felt the need to issue a further statement: ‘It cannot be too often repeated
that Haw-Haw made no such threats.’
Joyce’s biographer concluded by remarking: ‘And the legend lives on to this day.
Mention Haw-Haw in any gathering and out come the stories of what people heard, as
they will insist, with their own ears. Joyce was a man who is remembered – for what he
did not say.’
William L. Shirer, the author of the notable distortion, ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’,
who worked in Berlin with William Joyce, described him as ‘No.1 personality of World War
2’; an amusing and intelligent fellow.’
What is beyond question is that Joyce’s broadcasts, with the benefit of hindsight, seem
compellingly accurate. In the first radio talk definitely established as William Joyce’s the
expatriate spoke of Britain’s position in the war.
ENGLAND, FIGHTING TO THE LAST FRENCHMAN
In this broadcast he commented on the hypocrisy of England’s government ‘fighting to
the last Frenchman (Pole, Belgian, Norwegian . . .’); making promises it couldn’t keep.’
Ironically the facts as William Joyce presented them, are more in accordance with the
facts than those presented by the subsequent British explanation of events.
England’s pact with Poland, its reason for declaring war on Germany, was later found to
be illegal. The declaration should have been endorsed by parliament; it was not.
Furthermore the British government’s promise of direct aid to Poland, 9,500 planes for
instance, came to nothing as did other promises. Britain promise armaments they did not
possess; nor have the capability of making.
Poland was lured into a trap to ignite the war Britain (and international Jewry) craved
for. More recently the same agenda has been applied to other countries, most notably
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Iran. Likewise promises were made to Norway whose
neutrality was to be desecrated by British invasion after they, unlike Poland, refused to
take the British bait.
By now the German government had documents setting out the most fulsome English
promises of assistance to Holland and Belgium if their territories could be used to launch
attacks on Germany. These promises were subsequently found to be similarly false.
Joyce spoke passionately of the French and British Expeditionary Force’s ‘Dunkirk
debacle’ He was quick to mock but derision was happening on an international scale
anyway. Nations across the world smiled at Britain’s humiliation; especially the occupied
colonies including Joyce’s native Ireland.
‘What was England’s contribution,’ Joyce exclaimed: ‘An expeditionary force which
carried out a glorious retreat, leaving all its equipment and arms behind, a force whose
survivors arrived back in England, as the Times admitted, ‘practically naked.’
‘Whatever excuses may be found for their plight the men who made the war were
reduced to boasting of a precipitous and disastrous retreat as the most glorious
achievement in history. Such a claim could only besmirch the proud regimental standards
inscribed with the real victories of two centuries. What the politicians regarded, or
professed to regard, as a triumph, the soldiers regarded as a bloody defeat from which
they were extremely fortunate enough to survive.
‘The next test of Britain’s might was the Battle of France. All the professions of
brotherly love and platonic adoration which Churchill had poured forth to the French
politicians resolved themselves into ten divisions, as compared with eighty five divisions
which had been in France at the height of her struggle in the last war.
As the world knows, the effect was nil, and when Reynaud telegraphed madly night and
day for aircraft he was granted nothing but evasive replies. The glorious RAF was too
busy dropping bombs on fields and graveyards in Germany to have any time available for
France. But after the final drama of Compiegne and the defeat and the utter collapse of
the French, the heroic might of the British lion suddenly showed itself at Oran.
‘That inspired military genius, Winston Churchill, discovered that it was easier to bomb
French ships, especially when they were not under steam, than to save the Weygand line.
If it was so hard to kill Germans, why not, he reasoned, demonstrate Britain’s might by
killing Frenchmen instead? They were beaten and would be less likely to resent it.’
Joyce in this first broadcast went on to scorn Churchill’s ‘cowardly’ response to
Germany’s success in fighting back. ‘Churchill, the genius, has his answer ready. What is
it? First, Germany’s ambulance planes are to be attacked wherever seen. They can easily
be identified by the Red Cross that they bear, and they are unarmed, so the great brain
conceives another possibility of victory. The fact that these planes have saved many
British lives weighs as nothing in comparison with the triumph that can be achieved by
shooting them down.
ENGLAND’S BOMBING CAMPAIGN ‘ILLEGAL AND COWARDLY’
Joyce was scathing of Britain’s bombing campaign, which in modern parlance led to
much ‘collateral damage and the loss of innocent lives. ‘The second part of the answer is
to be found in the instructions issued to British bombers flying over Germany. In reply to
the charge that these machines were dropping bombs on entirely non-military places, Mr.
Churchill with another flash of genius, replies, ‘Of course. The planes have to fly so high
that the targets cannot be distinguished! Otherwise, the Germans would shoot them
down. In consequence of this instruction, harmless civilians have been murdered at
Hanover and in other towns.
‘The British Prime Minister has abandoned all pretence that these bombing operations
have military objectives. The principle is, ‘Drop the bombs wherever you can, without
being seen, and what they hit, they hit.
‘It is unnecessary to say that a terrible retribution will come to the people who tolerate
as their Prime Minister the cowardly murderer who issues these instructions. Sufficient
warnings have already been given.’
J.M Spaight., C.B. C.B.E. Principal Secretary to the Air Ministry later admitted Churchill’s
role in flouting international law by bombing civilians. ‘Hitler only undertook the bombing
of British civilian targets reluctantly three months after the RAF had commenced bombing
German civilian targets. Hitler would have been willing at any time to stop the slaughter.
Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement confining the action of
aircraft to battle zones.’ (7)
In a later broadcast on the 4 January 1944 William Joyce asked: ‘How can the ordinary
British soldier or sailor understand why he should be expected to die in 1939 or 1940 or
1941 to restore an independent Poland on the old scale, whilst today he must die in order
that the Soviets rule Europe? Surely it must occur to him that he is the victim of false
pretences?
Speaking on the 17 April 1944 Joyce said: ‘There are today hundreds of thousands of
British soldiers who will cease to live during the attempt to invade Western Europe. They
are prepared to sacrifice their lives, but for what? For their country? Demonstrably not!
Britain has only the stark prospect of poverty before her. For the rights of small nations?
Certainly not. What British politician wants to hear of Poland today? For what, then, are
these men to die? They are to die for the Jewish policy of Stalin and Roosevelt. If there is
any other purpose to their sacrifice, I challenge Mr. Churchill to tell them what it is.’
Perhaps it was the accuracy of Joyce’s analysis of events that would later place his
head in the vengeful British noose.
EXTRACTS: VIEWS ON THE NEWS
JOYCE’S LAST BROADCAST. HAMBURG, 30 APRIL 1945
(Note – first few words missed) ‘ . . . that the German resistance continues despite the
successes which the allies have gained during the past few days. Germany is sorely
wounded but her spirit is not broken. Her people are conscious of their duty and of their
nation. In this hour of supreme trial, they seem to understand the European position with
a clarity which is, unfortunately, denied to the people of Britain, and they realize that the
great alternative lies between civilization and Bolshevisation.
‘That is the dominant truth, in comparison with which other considerations have to take
second rank or such lesser place as they merit. How modest, how harmless does
Germany’s request for the return of Danzig seem in contrast to the immense acquisitions
of the Soviet Union and the further ambitions of the Kremlin.
‘Stalin is not content with Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States, Rumania, Bulgaria,
Hungary, and Eastern Slovakia. He wants the whole of Central Europe, with Norway,
Turkey and Persia thrown in. And if these territories fall to him, the lust for
aggrandizement will only be stimulated further. He sees now the Bolshevik dream of a
world proletarian revolution changing into a substantial prospect of bachelor (?) politics.
‘Such is the attitude of the Red Dictator who menaces the security of the whole world,
and whose power today constitutes the greatest threat to peace that has existed in
modern times.
BRITAIN’S VICTORIES ‘BARREN’
‘Britain’s victories are barren; they leave her poor; and they leave her people hungry;
they leave her bereft of the markets and the wealth that she possessed six years ago.
But above all, they leave her with an immensely greater problem than she had then. We
are nearing the end of one phase of Europe’s history, but the next will be no happier. It
will be grimmer, harder, and perhaps bloodier. And now I ask you earnestly, can Britain
survive? I am profoundly convinced that without German help she cannot.’
Note. Ironically the major talking point in England today is how it is being dragged into
Europe and is increasingly subordinate to Germany on Germany’s terms).
STATESMAN LLOYD GEORGE PRAISES WILLIAM JOYCE
Part of the blackening of Joyce’s character is the claim that his speeches were
universally ridiculed. In fact, his broadcasts were widely listened to in Britain and far from
laughable as was claimed by the newspapers of the time. His biographer, J.A Cole
describes an event at which two visitors were having afternoon tea with David Lloyd
George.
The statesman interrupted the conversation to switch on the radio so that the Hamburg
service could be listened to. The former prime minister listened attentively, and once he
remarked: ‘The Government ought to take notice of every word this man says.’
Life magazine accorded Germany the lead in the radio war. The influential American
magazine calculated, probably correctly, that 50% of the English listened to Joyce’s
broadcasts from Hamburg. The BBC disagreed, but it would.
The manager of the East Riding Radio Relay Service complained, ‘We are inundated
with requests for Lord Haw-Haw broadcasts, which we are not allowed to give.’
As the war drew to a close several attempts were made to save William Joyce and his
wife from English vengeance but they came to naught. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, before his
death, enquired whether a submarine could be used to take the fugitives to Galway in
neutral Ireland. Though not dismissed out of hand it was impractical and the idea was not
pursued. A further plan to allow escape to Sweden was blocked by the Swedes but at that
late stage an escape was unlikely to succeed anyway. Denmark was in a state of near
chaos and Communist bands roamed a law unto themselves.
In fact Joyce was not inclined to either run or to take his own life, preferring to allow
fate to deal with him as it might. The couple ended their days in defeated Germany much
as they had begun; as wandering victims of events.
As the first rays of spring were warming the north German countryside the couple often
strolled through the pastoral landscapes surrounding Flensburg, They contemplated
nature and no doubt remarked on the budding birch trees. Occasionally they would come
across small groups of British soldiers. It amused Joyce to banter with them and on one
occasion, a knot of soldiers enjoyed a conversation with a couple who they thought were
Herr and Frau Hansen. It was precisely because Joyce did not sound like his music hall
caricature that he went unrecognized.
THERE IS A GREEN HILL FAR AWAY
The beginning of the end came on Monday morning on May 28 1945. Joyce had climbed
to his favourite spot, the crest of the hill overlooking Flensberg’s beautiful harbour. There,
to use his own words he seemed to have fallen into a trance-like state and with the
utmost earnestness he prayed for help and guidance.’
Later, realising that his wife would be searching for him Joyce took one final look at his
beloved harbour below before turning to search for her. Following the path down the hill
the former broadcaster encountered two British army officers gathering wood. Perhaps
realising that silence would be regarded as suspicious Joyce, speaking in French to the
servicemen, said, ‘here are a few more good pieces.’
Whatever aroused their suspicion we may never know. Captain Alexander Adrian
Lickorish of the Reconnaissance Regiment, and Lieutenant Perry, an interpreter, followed
and overtook the limping man. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be William Joyce would you?’
Perry asked. The conditioned response for anyone so challenged was to do as Joyce did.
Reaching into his pocket he fingered the official document that would disprove the
officer’s suspicion.
Before he could present it Perry drew and fired his revolver. It was never felt necessary
to explain why such a standard response to a simple request should have resulted in
Joyce being shot down. The bullet entered Joyce’s right thigh and then through his left
leg, causing four wounds. As he fell to the ground he cried: ‘My name is Fritz Hansen.’
The grim irony is that the ‘officer’ who shot Joyce, Lieutenant Perry was no Englishman,
nor was he a soldier. Perry was not his real name; the Lieutenant was an armed GermanJew serving with the British forces.
The wounded fugitive was handed over to the guard commander at the frontier post
where his true identity was revealed. During the ensuing raid on the couple’s lodgings a
lieutenant and a party of ten infantrymen, two Bren gun carriers and a lorry arrested his
wife, Margaret. ‘Your husband has been arrested,’ he snapped, adding that he was to
arrest everyone in the house including the children.
‘WOUNDED MEN ARE NOT PEEP SHOWS’
Held at the frontier post for several hours, a door was eventually flung open and the
sight of soldiers confronted Margaret as they emerged carrying her husband on a
stretcher. He looked pale, his face sunken. As the party passed, he looked up and waved.
‘Erin gro braa’ (Ireland for ever) she called out to her wounded husband.
Her claim that the occupants of their lodgings had not known their true identity brought
the group’s release. On returning to their home the family discovered that it had been
ransacked by the troops; even their meagre food supply had been ‘liberated’.
William Joyce’s arrest and subsequent imprisonment was treated as something of a
freak show for the entertainment of his captors. To one of his tormentors the wounded
fugitive responded: ‘In civilized countries wounded men are not peepshows.’ Newspaper
hacks, unable to afford the slightest dignity to the captured pair referred to Margaret as
‘his alleged wife, or, ‘the woman who claims to be his wife’.
THE MACABRE DEATH PROCESSION OF BRITISH JUSTICE
The macabre death procession of British justice; a parade of grim reapers garbed in the
accoutrement of state legislature, now began the long march to the gallows. The
subsequent trial ran its murderous course and few today question that it was a judicial
lynching.
Joyce was not of course a British citizen; the rest of the proceedings were equally
questionable. Never from the moment of his arrest to his present predicament had Joyce
ever denied his role, his purpose or his belief in National Socialism. To the end Joyce took
the view that friendship with Germany being in the best interests of the English people he
could not therefore be judged a traitor. On the contrary, those who conspired with Jewish
Bolshevism to subvert and overrun civilization were indeed the real traitors to England.
The German Reich had never threatened England; Soviet Russia had and was to continue
to do so until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
In a letter to his friend Miss Scrimgeour he wrote: ‘One day, I hope, it will be
recognized that, whether or not I aided the King’s enemies (and who made them
enemies?) I was no enemy to Britain: But I had no intention of offering any apology or
excuse for my conduct, which history will surely vindicate . . . As the days go by, it will
become more and more obvious that the policy which I defended was the right one.
Joyce was well aware that he was being hanged for opposing a war; a war that had
cost the British Army alone 350,000 dead. As the young men fell England’s bunker-bound
aged warmongers lined their pockets and gained their peerages through war profiteering,
Joyce ended his letter:
‘I cannot quite restrain my contempt for those who would hang me for treason. Had I
robbed the public and impeded the war effort by profiteering on ammunitions, a peerage
would now be within my reach, if I were willing to buy it.’
In a later letter to the same recipient Joyce wrote: ‘You may be sure that the Jewish
interests in this country will make every conceivable effort to liquidate me.’
Whatever the rituals of the court procedure its day-to-day events were a parody; a
judicial circus for the mob who, inflamed by the baying media wished nothing other than
the gallows (for words he had never uttered). Joyce’s fate had already been decided upon
despite the illegality of the charge laid against him. Undeniably, he was an American
citizen and therefore could not be subject to England’s hastily improvised Treason Act
1945.
It must be said that Joyce’s defence counsel, under the circumstances, acquitted
themselves well. Joyce recounted afterwards how in the cell below the court, he had
discussed his prospects with his counsel. They remarked in unison that they had both
been threatened with assassination if the court found in his favour
Counts 1 and 2 were dismissed on the grounds that Joyce was undoubtedly an alien.
The crucial legal ruling as to whether he owed allegiance to the Crown had yet to come.
J.A Cole described how ‘the sparkling display of mental agility and legal erudition
fascinated him (Joyce) as lawyers argued over nationality matters of mind-numbing
complexity.
Rumours swept the streets and public ignorance in legal complexities caused a near riot
when misinterpretation of findings suggested that the hangman had been thwarted. The
first two charges, the assumption that he was British, had been dropped much to the
disappointment of citizens who preferred to see their victim dropped. Joyce however was
convinced that a state lynching was quite certain. He was under no illusions. He was a
spectator and a foil; he was lending his presence to the fabrication of the spurious
legitimacy of a show trial.
In the outcome Judge Justice Tucker decided that Joyce’s passport, obtained
fraudulently on 24 August 1939, for the purpose of making his escape from England,
caused the defendant to owe allegiance to the Crown. This is probably unique; you
cannot conceivably become a citizen of any country by illegally acquiring a country’s
passport. No doubt the same judge would have regarded an Irish Kerry Blue to be a
British bulldog had its owner falsified its Kennel Club papers.
In respect of the single remaining charge, a particular broadcast deemed to be
treacherous, there was considerable doubt. The prosecution’s case hung (if you will
excuse the expression) on what a detective-inspector ‘thought he had recognized’. In fact,
the inspector’s case was afterwards undermined but it was on this third count that Joyce
was found ‘guilty – ‘assisting the King’s enemies by a specific broadcast’.
THE JUDICIAL LYNCHING OF WILLIAM JOYCE
‘William Joyce! The sentence of the court upon you is; that you be taken from this place
to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution, and that you be there hanged until
you are dead; and that your body be afterwards buried within the precincts of the prison
in which you shall have been confined before your execution. And may the Lord have
mercy on your soul.’ The chaplain murmured: ‘Amen!’
Joyce stared defiantly at Judge Tucker as he pronounced the death sentence, then
turned sharply and walked as smartly from the dock as he had entered it.
Joyce, without precedent, was denied the right to express an opinion as to why the
death sentence should not be carried out. In a letter to his wife, he wrote: ‘I thought of
interrupting the judge and demanding my undoubted right to make a reply; but my
contempt for the judgment, combined with a somewhat belated respect for my own
dignity, kept me silent.’
JUDGE TUCKER’S ‘VAMPIRE CHAPEAU’
William Joyce afterwards reflected on the judge’s reluctance to hold his gaze as he
donned the black cap and read out the sentence: ‘It gave me no small degree of
satisfaction to see that His Lordship, complete with vampire chapeau, after once meeting
my eyes, read his precious sentence into his desk. Ah! My dear, those were a proud few
minutes of my life.’
To his wife he added: ‘some papers, I am told, have stated that my expression was
contemptuous: it probably was. But whether I bore myself becomingly is, after all, for
others to judge: but I do believe that I did nothing to shame me in the eyes of my lady:
and I am therefore content.’
Whilst the hanging apparatus in the condemned cell of London’s grim Wandsworth
prison was prepared William Joyce was held in a Wormwood Scrubs cell. Though his
counsel began the appeal procedure Joyce was under no illusions. ‘Distinguished lawyers
were laying 50 to 1 on an acquittal: I was not.’ He wrote.
Initially the date for Joyce’s execution was set for November 23, 1945 and on the 17 of
that month his wife Margaret was transferred from the Belgian prison where she was
being held to Holloway Prison; the women’s prison in London.
The execution date having passed due to the appeals process Joyce retracted nothing
of his original statement, and he advised his wife not to amend hers. ‘Morally, if not
legally,’ he wrote, ‘it is highly pertinent that we firmly believed ourselves to be serving
the best ultimate interests of the British people – a fact which was appreciated and
respected by the best of our German chiefs. And it was always our thesis that German
and British interests were, in the final analysis, not only compatible but mutually
complementary.’
The Manchester Guardian was not alone in expressing doubt as to the legality of
Joyce’s forthcoming hanging. ‘One can say that this document, which he ought never to
have possessed, has been – unless the Law Lords judge differently – the deciding factor
in Joyce’s sentence. One would wish that he had been condemned on something more
solid than a falsehood, even if it was one of his own making . . . Even in these days of
violence killing men is not the way to root out false (unpopular) opinions.’
RESIGNED TO GOD’S WILL
Despite the dangers of association William Joyce was far from alone in his beliefs and
he received many letters of support. He wrote: ‘I feel overwhelmed by the generosity of
my friends and these tributes from complete strangers. I am really embarrassed.’ A
couple ‘living frugally in Kensington, seeking to preserve bygone decencies,’ sent a
cheque for £50. Typically a small Suffolk farmer contributed ten-shillings; ‘for a very brave
gentleman’.
On the morning of December 18 the appeal was heard and dismissed. The death
sentence was to be carried out on January 3, 1946. On December 28 William Joyce wrote
to his friend Miss Scrimgeour: ‘I trust, like you, that the works of my hand will flourish by
my death; and I know there are many who will keep my memory alive. The prayers that
you and others have been saying for me have been and are a great source of strength to
me: and I can tell you that I am completely at peace in my mind, fully resigned to God’s
will, and I am proud of having stood by my ideals to the last.
I would certainly not change places either with my liquidators, or with those who have
recanted. It is precisely for my ideals that I am to be killed. It is the force of ideals that
the Hebrew masters of this country fear; almost everything else can be purchased by
their money: and, as with the Third Reich, what they cannot buy, they seek to destroy:
but I do entertain the hope that, before the very last second, the British public will
awaken and save themselves. They have not much time now.’
In his last letter to his wife while he was still alive on New Year’s Day, 1946 he wrote:
‘As I move towards the Edge of Beyond, my confidence in the final victory increases. How
it will be achieved, I know not: but I never felt less inclined to pessimism, tho’ Europe and
this country will probably have to suffer terribly before the vindication of our ideals . . .
Tonight I want to compose my thoughts finally: the atmosphere of peace is strong upon
me: and I know that all is ready for the transition.’
A SPIRITUAL SENSE OF PEACE
Visitors beside his wife found Joyce in a spiritual sense of peace. Angus Mac Nab
expressed his feelings with these words. ‘In his last days, although in perfectly good
health, his actual body seemed spiritualised, and without what you would call pallor, his
flesh seemed to have a quasi-transparent quality. Being with him gave a sense of inward
peace, like being in a quiet church.’
William Joyce in a letter to his wife recalled the spiritual visitation he had experienced
at Ryde just before the outbreak of England’s war. ‘It was, in those hours; as if some
shadowy foreknowledge were given to me, causing a convulsion of what you might rightly
call ‘burning of energy’. I knew that all I had and more was required of me: and I suppose
I was in an emotional state arising out of ‘knowledge’ hidden from the conscious mind.
‘My fear on each occasion was that you would be physically torn from me: but far
stronger was the feeling that we should never be spiritually separated. And the hill – our
hill – over Flensburg harbour provides the final clue.’ (Joyce was a firm believer in the
soul outliving mortal existence).
Such was the esteem with which Joyce was held that on the night of his execution
former teachers at Birkbeck College, who remembered their likeable, hardworking,
although strange student, sent a message to the Governor of Wandsworth Prison. ‘They
recalled him as they had known him and if it were within the rules they would like the
Governor to tell him that they wished him well.’
FAITH WILL TRIUMPH OVER TEARS
In the last letter that his wife would receive posthumously the condemned American
wrote: ‘I never asked you if you wanted to receive posthumous letters: the question was
too delicate, even for me: but I assumed your wish. For I think you are sufficiently strong
now to overcome the grief of this blow, and that your faith will triumph over tears. For my
part, I want to write as long as I can and then mend the snapped cable in an eternal
way.’
At this point his letter was interrupted by his wife’s final visit. When she had gone he
continued in a smaller, neater hand.
‘Oh, My dear! Your visit! With no words can I express my feelings about it: I want the
children to take leave of me, of course, as they will this afternoon: but now I am anxious
to die. I want to die as soon as possible, because then I shall be nearer to you.
With the last glimpse of you, my earthly life really finished. With you, dear, it is
otherwise, because you are destined to stay for a time and will have me with you to help:
I am more confident than ever that we shall be together: but, after I have seen the
children, the lag-end will be of no use to me except in one way; that I can still write some
lines to you
Let me tell you, though, that spiritually, an unearthly joy came upon me in the last
instants of your visit. And you will know exactly why.
You would not blame me for being impatient to go Beyond. Still, despite my
impatience, I shall be glad to talk this evening to my kind, good Chaplain, who has done
so much for me and who will give me Communion tomorrow morning. There will be a
great chorus of prayer as I pass beyond.’
He advised his wife to read the Gospel of John repeatedly – with of course, our insight.
‘To me it has recently been a revelation. It has contributed much to my understanding.
Try it. I need hardly say that I have no fear of dying: for there will be no ‘death’.
In reference to his former employer, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, William Joyce wrote; ‘Well, I
have done my best for my old chief. . . . as I look back on all that period, I see that I am
the object of the most flagrant hoax in the history of ‘British Justice’. Well, so be it. I am
all the prouder
‘In death, as in this life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war: and I defy the power
of Darkness which they represent. I warn the British people against the aggressive
Imperialism of the Soviet Union. May Britain be great once again; and, in the hour of
greatest danger to the West, may the standard of the Hakenkreuz (Swastika) be raised
from the dust, crowned with the historic words! ‘Ihr habt doch gesiegt.’
I am proud to die for my ideals; and I am sorry for the sons of Britain who have died
without knowing why.’
IN MEMORIAM
‘The great happenings and thoughts, and the greatest thoughts are indeed the greatest
happenings are the slowest in winning understanding. The generations who witness them
never live these happenings; they live past and beyond them. Something befalls, as in
the realm of the stars, but the light of the farthest star reaches man behind that of
others, and not until it reaches him does he know that any such star exists. How many
hundreds of years does it take an idea to be grasped? From this we can form our
yardstick, and place in perspective our scale of values and behaviour, both for Star and
Idea.’ - Friedrich Nietsche
‘The highest that can be achieved is a heroic passage through life. Such a life is led by
the man who, pursuing a purpose for the benefit of all, struggles against all too great
difficulties, yet receives a poor reward or no reward at all.’ - Schopenhauer.
AUSTRIA- Herbert von Karajan - The Unrepentant
National Socialist -Every Age its Giants
Born Salzburg 5th April 1908 - 16th July 1989
Every age should have its giants, every race its heroes, every man someone to inspire
him. Such a man among men will not only reach the epoch of his calling but become a
master of other men’s crafts.
Many regard Herbert von Karajan as the greatest conductor ever to mount the podium,
the greatest translator of Europe’s classical music.
He was simultaneously one of the most versatile and accomplished sportsmen of all
time. Karajan’s youthful passion for mountain climbing and fast motorcycles resulted in a
number of spectacular accidents which blighted his health throughout his life. His spinal
injuries and broken ankle was consequences of a 25 metre fall when as a twelve year old
he was rock climbing locally.
AN ACCOMPLISHED PILOT
Despite many close encounters with the Grim Reaper he took up scuba diving and was
an accomplished water skier. He was in his fifties when he developed a passion for flight.
He took to flying naturally, like a duck to water. He learned to fly and piloted his own
airplanes and helicopters which he flew with considerable panache.
He loved gliding and adored snow skiing. At the age of 54, when most men are looking
forward to retirement, fully kitted out he climbed Mont Blanc. Otherwise known as the
White Mountain, at 4,810 metres (15,000 feet) it is Europe’s highest mountain. The gifted
German musician descended on skis. Herbert von Karajan spoke four languages fluently;
Italian, French, English and of course German. He could get by in several others.
An exceedingly skilled yachtsman his pride and joy was his 77 foot Helisara, which
required a crew of 25. He raced it to perfection and to international acclaim.
Were these the indulgences of a rich and successful musician; toys for boys who can
afford them? Not at all for Karajan skied with Stein Ericksen, drove fast cars with Nikki
Lauder, dived with Jacques Costeau, and he sailed with Gary Jobson. These men had
reached the pinnacles of their respective sports; they were fabulously rich and successful;
such men do not associate with self-indulgent playboys.
Such were the sports injuries he endured that at the age of 78 he had to undergo major
surgery life-threatening on his spine. It was successful but at that age he had to learn to
walk again as does an infant. He swam, suffered long agonising walks, had massages and
physical therapy. Throughout such ordeals he always mounted the orchestral podium and
enthralled his audiences with his distinctive interpretation of Europe’s most loved classical
pieces.
Like Beethoven and other great contributors to world civilisation Herbert von Karajan
firmly believed that he was an instrument; that his was a God given mission to make
music.
ADOLF HITLER. ‘THERE IS NO MONUMENT TO HIM.’
Such men as Karajan have little need for heroes but Roger Vaughan, the conductor’s
biographer tells of the time they drove through Berchtesgaden, up through the winding
forested roads past Hitler’s Berghof and on up to Eagle’s Nest, Adolf Hitler’s mountain
retreat.
As they neared the ruins, bombed by the USAF and then later looted for no reason
other than its wilful destruction, the man regarded as the world’s greatest conductor
expressed a deep sadness. ‘There is no monument to him.’
Herbert von Karajan, a German-Austrian, had joined the National Socialist Deutsche
Arbeit Partei (NSDAP) within two months and eight days of the Chancellor Adolf Hitler
being elected to lead Germany.
His membership card carries the number #1 607 525. In fact he had the distinction of
being a member twice over as he also carried a German issue NSDAP card (#3 430 914).
As an Austrian it was illegal for him to be a member of the NSDAP. His admiration for
Adolf Hitler was to endure and nothing, not even the passage of time, would temper it.
Never once did he deny his membership despite being interrogate repeatedly and losing
his career as a consequence of his unwillingness to recant.
Karajan’s integrity further inflamed the professional jealousy of Furtwangler who,
despite profiting from National Socialist patronage, never himself joined the NSDAP;
indeed he afterwards attempted to distance himself from Hitler’s Reich it. He even denied
shaking the hand of Reich’s Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels yet his doing so was filmed. The
irony is that von Karajan was cleared to work again before Furtwangler was.
The ‘von’ in Karajan’s name is a family title; Knight of the Holy Roman Empire. His
father, Dr. Ernst von Karajan, a noted physician and accomplished pianist and clarinettist
inherited the title.
Herbert von Karajan reached the summit of musical accomplishment. By his early fifties
he was the Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic, artistic advisor of La Scala, artistic
director of the internationally acclaimed Salzburg Festival, and simultaneously of the
Vienna State Opera, and Music Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra: ‘General
Music Director of Europe’. Who says men cannot multi-task?
CLASSICAL MUSIC. THE SOUL OF EUROPE
Never presume classical music to be the preserve of po-faced musical geeks. If you do
you are missing out on what could well be the most exhilarating and absorbing of lifestyle
choices. Certainly it is not without its humour and the humour centred on Karajan was
positive.
Karajan was once scheduled to conduct Haydn’s Creation in Vienna’s Goldene Hall.
‘That’s absurd,’ exclaimed a noted German conductor. ‘I love Karajan, but he is
temperamentally unsuited to conduct Haydn.’
The Viennese critic: ‘People don’t go to hear Haydn. They go to see Karajan conduct.’
The same critic on another occasion surmised that if a stereo system was set up in a
hall people would pay to watch Karajan conduct it.
THE ORCHESTRAL CONDUCTOR
‘Power seems to go with the profession. Consider this: in a hall there is an orchestra of
a hundred players who are chatting, tuning their instruments, drumming, playing phrases,
telling jokes, and there are two thousand people getting seated, arranging their coats,
flipping through programs, waving at friends, talking, coughing.
One person enters the hall and there is dead silence, followed by noise of the most
complex sort rendered in pleasurable sound; instant order from chaos.’ - Roger Vaughan,
Biographer.
THE CONSUMMATE ORGANISER
Herbert von Karajan epitomised the maxim; if you want a job doing properly do it
yourself. A philharmonic or operatic performance is a monumental team effort put
together and managed by handpicked professionals in set design and effects, casting,
costume down to fabrics and colours. There is the stage director, the lighting director,
and the recording studio and camera professionals.
The conductor will normally confine himself to managing the orchestral sound to his
interpretation of the composers’ works to be performed. This in itself is an enormous
undertaking, which often keeps conductors preoccupied for weeks. The score will have to
be learnt by heart; he has up to 96 professional musicians on various instruments to
teach his interpretation of the orchestration.
Karajan trusted no one. He personally selected everything and everyone from singers,
soloists, musicians, costumes, the exact cuts of films; he even decided on the breed of
dog in the Richard Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier. To his credit he had the gumption to
stand his ground and refuse to conduct Carmen if a non-European was going to play the
part of the tempestuous Spanish flirt.
He finalised all deals, scrutinised every contracts, and arranged tours, television
specials and films. Ever the perfectionist he took a hand in everything; all was
subordinate to his wishes. One harried official at the Salzburg Festspielhaus was heard to
mutter, ‘I am surprised he doesn’t sell the tickets and show people to their seats.’
Karajan was second to none when it came to the entrepreneurial skills needed to make
and manage money. The Salzburg Easter Festival cost him $300,000. It grossed
$2,660,000. Yet the Grosse Festspielhaus was subsidised by the Salzburg citizens who
couldn’t afford to go to the events.
He was certainly the last giant of the podiums to command such lucre. He was also the
only conductor who never felt it necessary to ostentatiously acknowledge applause no
matter how tumultuous. A few bows, rare to take an encore he would complete the
performance and while applause from the audience was still lifting the roof he would turn
on his heel and leave the podium.
This was not due to vanity or eccentricity for in his view applause before and after a
performance was simply a by-product of his perfection. He evaluated his performance;
good or bad he never felt it necessary to note the opinions of others. At the close of
orchestral, ballet or operatic performances it is usual for the conductor and other
musicians to retire to soirées to which only the names had been invited. They were rarely
honoured by the presence of von Karajan. Before the chatter had even begun he was in
solitude, working on the next performance or perhaps swimming in the near freezing lake
fronting his home. Otherwise the maestro would sit quietly watching television.
THE BERLIN PHILHARMONISCHERS and PHILHARMONIKER
‘Some conductors are synonymous with their orchestras, at once their creators and
creation as Herbert von Karajan with is in Berlin.’ - Yehudi Menuhin.
It is estimated that Karajan has nearly 1,000 recordings to his credit and cumulative
sales far exceed 100 million records. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was arguably the
world’s best. This was and possibly is a phenomenon reflected in the salaries paid to its
musicians. They are paid 10% - 15% more than any of the other near hundred German
orchestras. This is doubled by recording contracts, television programmes, films, special
events, teaching, solo appearances, and sub-events.
Within the 125 year old Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) are thirteen musical
organisations: trios, quartets, chamber groups, brass choirs, the ‘twelve cellos. Each
under the Berlin Philharmonic name makes their own recordings and provide for their own
events.
It is in fact two orchestras made up of the same players. The Berlin Philharmonisches
Orchestra is financed by the City of Berlin and is ‘concert only’. They play 108 concerts
each year in Berlin, plus concerts on tour around the world.
The other, the Berlin Philharmoniker, is a cooperative owned by the members
themselves. It controls all recording, film, television productions, and special events.
Karajan’s contract was with the latter.
In practice the Berlin Philharmoniker can engage the conductor they collectively feel is
best suited but Karajan exercises control and encouraged up and coming conductors such
as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Ozawa . . .
Another feature of the orchestra is collectively its 150 musicians decide on new
replacement and new players, though Karajan had the power of veto. Any aspirant will be
given the opportunity to ‘fit in’ and only after a gruelling period of selectivity on a number
of criteria will he or she become a member on this the world’s most distinguished
orchestra.
THE BEGINNING
Of course Karajan’s start in life was no different from that of any other German-Austrian
born to the new century. It was a period of chaos, unemployment and mass starvation.
By the time the gifted youngster was ten years old, Europe’s oldest 1,000 year old
dynasty, with Austria as its beating heart had been dismantled by the triumphant nations
of World War One. Austria was now little more than a province, a new purse to dip into
by its conquerors.
What did set him apart was his consuming passion to learn things. As he later said if it
had not been music then it would have been something else. The family home was at
Grundslee in the Austrian Alps. The enchanting scenery still draws the more discerning
travellers. Such visitors today are quite welcome to stay over in what was once the home
of young Karajan and his brother Wolfgang.
THE PRODIGY
Karajan surmised that may be so but reminds us that for the prodigy life is normal. At
the age of four he was taking piano lessons from Franz Ledwinka, the well-known teacher
and impresario. He performed for his first concert at the age of five. By this age he had
already taken up skiing, climbing, football and solo sailing. The focus however remained
on music and the learning of the art by today’s standards of support was arduous.
His career actually started as a pianist but his prodigious talent wasn’t helped by a
tendon abnormality in his fingers. His tutor, noted pianist Professor Josef Hofman, said
Karajan’s ability required eight hands rather than eight fingers; he should consider a
career as an orchestral conductor.
The study was relentless and the competition for advancement left little time for
chasing the ladies. In order to study a career of musical conducting at the Academy for
Music and Performing Arts in Vienna one already knew that of the 220 talented
youngsters only perhaps eighteen would be selected and only three would graduate. Such
was the young Karajan’s all consuming passion for quality music that at the age of
fourteen he mounted his bicycle and peddled 200 miles to experience a concert.
His rise to prominence whilst phenomenal was based on the most unrelenting effort
and guile on his part. This included raising funds to put on his personal concerts. The first
was in Salzburg. He was twenty-one years old. No one can read of Karajan’s struggle to
the summit of his career without admiration for his tenacity, his gruelling hard work, his
single-mindedness, his ingenuity, and of course his God given talent. It was a period
dominated by Furtwangler and Toscanini, who were regarded as the ultimate
personification of an orchestral podium’s purpose.
Many have drawn the parallel with yet another rising star of the same period. Herbert
von Karajan was applying the same single minded tenacity that would shortly achieve the
resurrection of central Europe’s fulcrum-nation. ‘Culture is a poster for the Third Reich,’
said Josef Goebbels.
THE HITLERIAN CHEST CLASP
As is the way of victors’ justice Herbert von Karajan, who with others represented the
culture of the Third Reich, was persecuted by the forces of occupation. Like millions of
other Europeans he was denied the means to support himself or his family.
Much of the period between autumn 1944 and December 1948, after being cleared by
the denazification process, he spent at St. Anton patiently waiting for the return to the
comparative normality of the war and pre-war years. When not there he and his wife
lived in a remote wooded area north of Milan where partisans, had they known of his
existence, would have murdered him in cold-blood.
Throughout those trying years Karajan was consistent in his admiration for the
achievements of National Socialism. He revelled in the economic miracle, the quality of
life that went with it, the prosperity that accompanied it, and the cultural base which
supported it.
As Joachim Fest says in his biography of Adolf Hitler, ‘If Hitler had succumbed to an
assassination or an accident at the end of 1938 few would hesitate to call him the
greatest of German statesmen, the consummator of Germany’s history. The aggressive
speeches and Mein Kampf . . . . Would presumably have fallen into oblivion, dismissed as
the man’s youthful fantasies . . . ‘
Karajan’s association and indeed enthusiasm for National Socialism never troubled him
nor drew from him an apology. He wouldn’t ever discuss the matter other than declaring,
‘I would not change anything I have done.’
INTENSELY CHRISTIAN
Edge Leslie, the British Diplomat stationed in Zurich, an ardent classical music expert
was a good friend of Karajan. He describes how in 1947 he arrived early at the
conductor’s humble flat. Religious books of all sorts were scattered around. Passages in
books had been underlined and notes scribbled in the margins.
‘When he returned home I asked him about it. He said that you don’t need any faith to
believe in God, because there are plenty of signs available of His existence. Mozart wrote
a symphony as a child. Heredity cannot account for this,’ Karajan said. ‘There is only one
explanation: the Creator chooses people as His instruments to produce some beauty in a
world that is all too ugly.’
Karajan went on to say: ‘I was given special tools, special talents. I never had any
doubts that my talents came from the Creator. My duty to Him is to exploit them to the
fullest. My ambition is to make music as perfectly as possible and reach as many people
as possible.’
NEVER RECANTED
Even those who are not given to respect Nazi ideology noted, some with admiration
that no matter what inducements or threats made Karajan never once renounced his
beliefs or criticised Germany’s National Socialist system or its leaders.
Karajan’s biographer Roger Vaughan writes: ‘Throughout the long drawn-out denazification process there is not the slightest sign of contriteness from Karajan. One may
question his ethics, but not his toughness, his strength of purpose, his self-assured singlemindedness.
He told the authorities what he had done and he told them with his head held high and
his voice in full timbre. He voiced no apologies, no regrets. Here is the story: so be it. And
when he was challenged he didn’t defend himself, he attacked.’
Occasionally one will note that Karajan closes an orchestral performance by clasping his
arms across his chest. Is it a signal to the faithful? It may be just a coincidence that one
of the Fuehrer’s habits was to close a speech with the same gesture. It is certainly a
gesture that was and will be understood by National Socialists.
The last musical work performed on Berlin Radio before it went off the air in 1945 was
Anton Bruckner's 7th Symphony in E-Major. Forty-four years later, in a special tribute
to the Fuehrer on the 100th anniversary of his birth world-renowned conductor Herbert
von Karajan was to lead the Vienna Philharmonic in his final performance with this
monumental work. It was just three months before his death.
And so against a formidable backdrop of internationally revered conductors Karajan
carefully picked his way to achieve a stature that had always evaded his contemporaries.
I would say that Herbert von Karajan ventured where lesser conductors feared to go. He
achieved immortality as a conductor of international acclaim. He did so by bringing to
bear his consummate passion and ability to conduct not only the performance but
everything related to it.
If you enjoy an opera or orchestral event then you will be entertained and hopefully
inspired by the team who brought the event together. If it is a Karajan production he is
the team. He will never be followed.
If you missed Beethoven and Richard Wagner as musicians and conductors then enjoy a
Herbert von Karajan performance for the true interpretation of their works at their very
finest. In them you will behold almost unseen images of the great masters of European
classical music.
GERMANY - THE REAL HEROES - German Victims of the
Allied Bombing Holocaust
Dresden before the bombing
The Holocaust
Like the word love the term hero is a very big word in the English language. Many
times it is wholly undeserved; for instance when a goal-scoring footballer is described as
a hero. Some people are heroes because, knowing the risks, they put life and limb in
danger to help others.
Most heroes had no wish to be so but under the most distressing of circumstances fate
had marked them out to bear terror, pain, anguish and tortured death that thankfully we
shall never have to endure.
Heroism, like love, is a human emotion that crosses national boundaries. Heroism is
respected by human beings throughout the world regardless of ethnicity. We warmed to
the salutes of the Zulu warriors who honoured the fallen and the survivors of Rourke’s
Drift during the Zulu Wars. Every skirmish, every battle and every war produces as many
heroes as it does rounds of ammunition.
It is corrupted by a few who, for their own selfish reasons, see advantage in denying
their enemies credit no matter how well deserved. Theirs is the opposite of heroism; it is
cowardice. It is the cross, the ignominy and the shame they and their families must carry
throughout posterity. Who today visits the graves of those who inflicted the most
appalling cruelties on their innocent victims? Yet, their victims live on in our memories
and our memorials.
Sadly there have been too many victims to be individually recognised. There are too
many victims who, without our knowing about it, selflessly sacrificed themselves to save
others. Let us honour the ordinary German civilians:
‘One closes these volumes feeling, uneasily, that the true heroes of the story they tell
are neither the contending air marshals, nor even the 58,888 officers and men of Bomber
Command who were killed in action. They were the inhabitants of the German cities
under attack; the men, women and children who stoically endured and worked on among
the flaming ruins of their homes and factories, up till the moment when the allied armies
overran them.’ - London Times reviewer on the British Official History of the Strategic Air
Offensive.
There have been more than enough books written about the blitz, despite it being a
minor detail when compared with the consequences of the saturation bombing of Europe,
primarily Germany.
The common perception is of Britain reduced to rubble. Yet, as late in the war as
September 1941, the Economist conceded that only 2% of British real estate had been
destroyed by German bombing; only a tiny fraction of that consisted of industrial sites.
Included is a note which commented on the furious pace at speculators who were
buying up the bombed sites for a song. The article disclosed; This created such a scandal
that the Government established a requirement that such premises, when taken for the
purposes of reconstruction, was to be paid for at the rates prevailing in March 1939.
Wherever civilians were bombed there were acts of great heroism. I was incidentally
born in Liverpool at the height of the blitz. My earliest memories are of wailing sirens and
life in subterranean air raid shelters. Liverpool suffered more than most during the blitz. I
would say 90% of the city was untouched. To place things in perspective I invite anyone
to gaze mournfully and thoughtfully at the German and French cities that were totally
incinerated, not a single building across the landscapes, not a single survivor of saturation
bombing; a madness unleashed by the British War Office.
Such pictures as these were later used by
allied propagandists as victims of the Germans
I cannot help but think that scattered among those hundreds of thousands of charred
corpses, many of them indistinguishable as human beings, there were many selfless but
futile sacrifices and they too, unrecognized, were hurled onto the funeral pyres of allied
bloodlust.
To these nameless men, women, and in particular the children, God bless. You live on
in our hearts forever whilst those who did these dreadful things to you lived in bleak
obscurity as will their memories. You are, as The London Times reviewer on the British
Official History of the Strategic Air Offensive reminds us, the true heroes.
GERMANY- Elizabeth Schwarzkopf- The Unrepentant
National Socialist
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf was to opera singing what Karajan was to conducting. Nothing
short of perfection and adherence to originality would suit her temperament and this
beautiful singer’s voice. Born December 9, 1915 she might have been lured by the
medical profession. Her father’s earlier aversion to National Socialism scuppered that
plan, though he was later to become enthusiastic. Happily for the world of music lovers
she took up a career in classical singing.
Her date of birth and reaching maturity coincided with the coming of age of the NSDAP.
She was eighteen-years old when Adolf Hitler’s chancellorship was enthusiastically
endorsed by the German people. It was impossible not to be enthused by the adoration
of both the new leader and as the months went by impressed by his achievements.
Elizabeth signed up to three different National Socialist organisations.
Not surprisingly she was never forgiven by her nation’s conquerors; nor apparently did
she wish to be for she did little to disguise her true beliefs. Her situation was no different
from that of artistes in Russia, after the Bolshevik seizure of power. In order to work and
eat she was required to recant. She refused to be drawn, especially when the post-war
palace authors wriggled free from the rotten woodwork. They impudently had the gall to
interrogate her and to cap it all the chutzpah to become indignant at her refusal to
collaborate.
Elizabeth, when a student at the High School for Music joined the Nazi Students
League; about half of university students did so. She was soon elected to a position of
leadership. Upon joining the Deutsche Oper she was mentored by Mari Ivogün and her
pianist husband Michael Raucheisen. Both were ardent supporters of Adolf Hitler and
National Socialism.
The artistes who inhabit the world of theatre were not over represented in the National
Socialist Party; nor were they required to be. Their apolitical stance was well understood
and respected by the NSDAP. However one in five was members of the party and
Elizabeth was a member. Her adoration of National Socialism was returned in full.
She also successfully applied for membership of the National Socialist People’s Welfare
Organisation due to her charitable nature.
Little is known of her private life through those years but is it any of our business
anyway? This most gifted of sopranos did contract tuberculosis during the years of war.
When convalescing in the Tatra Mountains her companion was a high-ranking SS officer;
though is identity has never been ascertained. He was said to be the gauleiter of Lower
Austria, Dr Hugo Jury. Apart from being an SS General he was also a medical doctor
specialising in tuberculosis.
Elizabeth died on August 3 2006 at the age of 90 at her home in Schruns, Austria. She
had by then been awarded a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
However she never was in doubt as to the membership her heart belonged to.
GERMANY - Norbert Schultze - The Man Who Made Lili
Marlene
Waiting for a friend on a hot summer’s day I opened the car windows and placed a
cassette in the slot. The tape playing was Musik der Third Reich. All of these years later I
recall the pleasure of a mixed group of passengers waiting at a nearby bus stop. They
were lapping the music up. It was clear they enjoyed the martial music; some were
tapping their feet in beat to it. My friend arrived and I had little choice but to go on my
way. The disapproval on the faces of the bystanders made me feel like I had just kicked a
puppy.
Chances are the music they had been listening to were the rollicking melodies of
Norbert Schultze. Like many others he couldn’t choose the time or place of his birth; he
was a child of the times. His family survived the British naval blockade after World War
One in which 800,000 German civilians had miserably perished. His place of birth was
Brunswick (Braunschweig) and the date that raised the baton on some of the world’s best
loved melodies was January 26 1911.
From there on it was a foot-tapping musical odyssey that had the distinction of not only
charming German listeners and audiences but enchanting fans across the world.
He is best remembered for putting the Hans Leip poem, Lili Marlene to music.
Fascinatingly he later revealed to a BBC researcher that this melody was first intended as
a toothpaste commercial ditty; eat your hearts out Colgate. It was for record buffs the
very first German bestseller.
Schultze was equally gifted at creating memorable film and opera scores. His many
other works included the operas Schwarzer Peter (Black Heated Peter) and Das Kalte
Herze (The Cold Heart). The musical Kapt’n Bye-Bye is remembered for the delightful
melody Nimm’ mich mit, Kapitan, auf die Reise (Take me Travelling, Captain). Norbert
Schultze was still in full flow after the war, but only after he had paid the bribe required
for a work permit in his own country. Yes, bribery was part of the full democracy package
too.
He worked under several pseudonyms so if you happily chance upon melodies written
by Frank Norbert, Peter Kornfeld and Henry Iverson, you are listening to the venerable
Norbert Schultze. The consummate musician Schultze qualified in Brunswick and from
there on he studied the piano; took up conducting, composing and theatre science. In the
early 1930s he decamped from Cologne and took up residence in the capital of Bavaria,
Munich. It was there that he worked under the name of Frank Norbert and indeed acted
under that name. He conducted in Darmstadt, Munich and Mannheim.
The market for artists and artistes during the middle thirties was patriotic and folk; and
with the build-up in arms then taking place in France, Britain and Russia, there was a
German demand for newer martial songs and marches. This was a genre perfectly suited
to the effervescent composer’s mood.
A member of the National Socialist Workers Party he composed and arranged numerous
songs and marches that reflected the period’s mood. Those interested in the more martial
compositions of the Third Reich will recall Von Finnland bis zum Schwarzen Meer (From
Finland to the Black Sea). This of course was a celebration of the Third Reich at its virile
best when the Reich did indeed extend in a protective barrier between Europe and
Communist Russia. He was also famous for Tanks Roll in Africa and Bombs on England
and Poland.
Such was his popularity throughout the German armed forces that there was soon an
insatiable demand for new Norbert Schultze melodies and marches. He composed the
scores for Veit Harlan’s morale boosting movie Kolbrg and provided the music for the
documentary Baptism of Fire (Feuertaufe).
Arrested at the war’s end Norbert Shultze’s status was defined as a ‘Fellow Traveller.’
That was hardly surprising; who wasn’t in Hitler’s Germany. Lectured and de-nazified he
was invited to offer 3,000 Deutsch Marks in return for a work permit, without which he
would starve. A no brainer he managed to find the money to bribe his way back into
work. The royalties from his works produced between 1933 and 1945 he donates to the
German Red Cross. Undoubtedly his music put a bounce into universal sailor and soldier
steps whilst gladdening the hearts of sweethearts and wives back home.
The 3,000 DM bribe paid off. Norbrt Schultze was as prolific as a composer after the
war as he was throughout that awful conflict. He wrote numerous operas, operettas, and
film music. Over fifty movies were set to his background music. He lived well did Norbert,
until the age of 91 and for many German and British servicemen, press ganged into
Churchill’s war, he was revered as a hero of good music.
U.S.A / GERMANY - The Charlie Brown and Fritz Stigler
Story
Unlike politicians and palace journalists the fighting men in the various services, when
serving their respective countries hold a high regard for each other. They honour them
and pay tribute when their foe falls. I have heard numerous examples of comradeship
across uniforms and frontiers, ideologies and faiths.
Charlie Brown was an American military pilot with United States Army Air Corps. In
1943 and stationed at RAF Kimbolton in England he was briefed to, with other USAF
airmen, bomb targets in Hitler’s Reich. At the same time also serving his own country was
Fritz Stigler, a German military pilot with the Luftwaffe.
The date was December 20, 1943. Charlie Brown’s group was given their orders. They
were to fly their B-17 Flying Fortress bombers to destroy an aircraft factory situated near
Bremen in north Germany. After their doing so the American pilot’s aircraft was attacked
by eight German fighters. Simultaneously the sky was being raked by anti-aircraft fire; for
the American crew things were looking bleak indeed; their aircraft was an irresistible
sitting duck.
Inevitably their Fortress bomber was soon torn to shreds though still airborne. Such
was the incoming fire that most crew members, to one degree or another, were
wounded. Three of the aircraft’s four engines were kaput; destroyed or damaged.
Afterwards Charlie Brown said he believed that his gunners had destroyed two enemy
planes. At this point the American pilot blacked out. When he regained consciousness he
realized that his stricken bomber was now at a very low altitude and flying over a German
airfield.
His crippled aircraft was quickly spotted by German ground crews, one of whom was
fighter pilot Franz Stigler. He was at the time servicing his aircraft; refueling and rearming
it at its base airfield. Climbing quickly and expertly into the cockpit of his Messerschmitt
ME-109 before drawing its canopy he was soon in the air and flying alongside the limping
American bomber piloted by the half conscious Charlie Brown.
As the German pilot drew closer he was able to take in the bomber’s desperate
situation; to compound it he could as clearly see, through gaping holes in the aircraft’s
fuselage, crew members desperately attending to their wounded crew members.
On seeing the German fighter the Fortress crew had every reason to know that Nemesis
was to deal with them that very day; that hour, that minute. Then, to the American
crew's surprise, Fritz Stigler couldn’t bring himself to fire on the stricken aircraft.
It was at that moment that the Luftwaffe pilot he remembered the words of one of his
Luftwaffe commanders. When serving in the deserts of the North African campaign he had
told the fliers, ‘you are fighter pilots first, last, always. If I ever hear of you shooting
someone in a parachute I will shoot you myself.’
Stigler later explained the enemy crew’s helplessness. ‘To me, it was just like they
were in a parachute. I saw them and I couldn't shoot them down.’
Twice Stigler indicated to Charlie Brown that he should land his aircraft at the nearby
German base and surrender. Brown refused to do so because he considered his wounded
comrades were in urgent need of medical assistance best provided at base. Stigler then
escorted the limping B-17 Flying Fortress until it reached the North Sea at which point he
signaled good luck and banking returned to base.
Charlie Brown did safely reach England. After the ritual debriefing he told of the
German fighter pilot who had resisted the opportunity to administer the coup de gras to
their aircraft and had then seen them safely to the North Sea. He was told to forget about
it. The American pilot afterwards remarked: ‘Someone had decided you can't be a human
being and be flying in a German cockpit.’
After the war end, Fritz Stigler moved to Vancouver in Canada whilst USAF airman
Charlie retired and moved to Miami in Florida. Ever curious and grateful he did what he
could to discover the identity and the whereabouts of the German pilot who had saved his
life and the lives of his crew members. He eventually published a letter about the account
in a German veterans' magazine. Fitz Stigler saw the letter and picking up a pen began a
correspondence with his former adversary. The two men met each other in 1990 and
were to later on appear on television to recount their remarkable story. It was a lesson
perhaps lost on the old men who send the young men off to wars of old men’s making.
Coincidentally both Charlie Brown and Fritz Stigler died in 2008.
SILESIA - The Sky my Kingdom - Aviator Hanna
Reitsche
‘When asked why she had left the Fuehrer bunker Hanna Reitsch replied: ‘It
was the blackest day when we could not die at our fuehrer’s side.’ She added
with high spirit; we should all kneel down in reverence and prayer before the
altar of the Fatherland.’
When asked to explain better what she meant by ‘altar’ she replied: ‘Why,
Why, the Fuehrer’s bunker in Berlin.’
H e r ophthalmologist father wanted her to be a doctor; her mother was a devout
Christian; she wrote daily to her daughter throughout her life. Hanna’s ambition was to
become a flying missionary doctor attending to the needs of the world’s unfortunates. It
was as a twenty-year old medical student that she had her first experience of flying. From
there on it were cricket boards’ scores of firsts in aviation advances. Hanna was one of
the first to cross the Alps in a glider.
Born 1912 she became a legend in aviation and won international acclaim during her
pioneering career. The world’s first female test and helicopter pilot she added weight to
the debate over woman’s role in the Third Reich. Certainly more women were given free
rein to advance their careers in the Reich than in any other country.
As a test pilot, a job in which longevity is more likely to be shortevity, she flew every
type of aircraft produced by Hitler’s Germany. She was the only woman to be awarded
the Iron Cross First-Class and Luftwaffe Diamond Clasp. One other woman did indeed win
the coveted Iron Cross First-class. She set over 40 aviation altitude and endurance
records after World War Two. Many of them remain unbroken. She is truly a woman who
has been to where no other man or woman has ever before been. She was almost
certainly the last flier to soar over her war-shattered Berlin.
It was Hanna Reitsch who enthralled her world’s admirers when she flew the word’s
first helicopter. This feat occurred inside Berlin’s Deutschlandhale in February 1938. The
aircraft was an FW-61; a small biplane fuselage with two outriggers supporting the
contra-rotating rotors.
She later recounted: ‘Professor Focke and his technicians standing below grew ever
smaller as I continued to rise straight up, 50 metres, 75 metres, 100 metres. Then I
gently began to throttle back and the speed of ascent dwindled till I was hovering
motionless in midair. This was intoxicating! I thought of the lark, so light and small of
wing, hovering over the summer fields. Now man had wrested from him his lovely secret.’
Throughout the Third Reich era she was devoted to the National Socialist concept. She
adored Adolf Hitler with such passion she begged to be allowed to perish with him in the
Berlin bunker where, rather than suffer the humiliation of cruel torture at the hands of the
allies, several of the Reich leadership had already denied the victors’ their Soviet-style
show trial justice.
She knew no fear. Through her career Hanna Reitsch fearlessly flew a sailplane into the
heart of a thunderstorm. Soaring at 100mph she reached 10,500 feet at which point her
controls began to freeze up. Like the fuehrer she seemed not only to be God protected
but to know it.
Silesian born, she was a petite blonde and despite her diminutive 5’ 1” size took to the
air as a fish takes to water. The skies were her natural habitat. As early as 1931 she set
the women’s international record for non-stop glider flying. She was in the air for 5.5
hours but broke her own records repeatedly. She extended this achievement to 11.5
hours within 24-months.
In 1934 Hanna soared to new heights when she levelled out at an incredible 2,800
metres. Hitler made her an honorary Fight Captain and she became the first woman pilot
to be so awarded. Her name for German aircraft as an entire entity was Guardians of the
Doors of Peace. Throughout the Reich she was held up as a role model of female
achievement and her fame spread far beyond the borders of her fatherland.
On her fifth test flight on an ME 163 she crashed. Before falling unconscious she
insisted on filling out her flight report; she then five months in hospital before resuming
he flight pioneering career.
Towards the war’s end Hanna Reitsch in a way became the only flier to survive suicide
flights. The V-1 unmanned international ballistic missile, built by the Reich arms industry,
was preceded by the V-le. This was a kamikaze missile. A pilot to guide its true course
was essential but it was sadly to be a one-way flight. About 9 metres in length it had a
cockpit and the essential instrumentation. The V-le was flown several times by the
fearless Hanna. Problems with engine vibration and the unacceptable loss of pilots
caused the project to be shelved.
The fearless aviatrix went on to test flight the Fieseler F1 103R manned missile.
Basically it was a manned V-1; it was powered by the same engine. It was designed to
inflict maximum damage on allied troops gathering in the South of England for the
invasion of Europe. The concept called for the manned missile to be carried by a parent
aircraft. Upon release, and with its final destination in its sights, the missile pilot would
bale out. Chances of survival were considered remote as the canopy would block the
missile’s inlet.
After two disasters Hanna Reitsch and fellow test pilot Heinz Kensche were assigned to
the project. Flying the missile-aircraft was not in itself too arduous; landing it was far
more problematical as it was never designed for or expected to return. Despite the
German High Command’s baulking at the potential loss of heroic pilots seventy German
aviator heroes did in fact volunteer to fly the Fieseler F1 103 missile. She was one of the
first volunteers. In fact the entire conception was the inspiration of Flugkapitan Hanna
Reitsch and SS-Haupsturmfuhrer Otto Skorzeny.
As Germany faced the destruction and wrath of the allied armies closing in the
unfaltering Hanna soared over shattered Berlin. She was searching for an escape route
for the German leader. Landing on an improvised airstrip on Berlin’s Tiergarten her light
aircraft was under constant fire from Red Army troops. By the time they landed her
companion Robert Ritter von Greim had been wounded. She and her companion picked
their way through the debris and fire to reach the bunker of the Reich’s Chancellery. On
reaching the Fuehrer Robert von Greim was promoted to General Field Marshall. Both
fliers were given cyanide pills, which they accepted. Both were prepared to spend their
last moments and die together with the fuehrer. The German leader steadfastly refused
their offer to share in his suicide. Reluctantly, on April 28 1945 the intrepid pair returned
to their aircraft through the raging battle for Berlin. As it took to the air Red Army troops,
perhaps presuming the German leader to be aboard, attempted but failed to bring the
aircraft down.
Upon the defeat of National Socialist Germany, Hanna Reitsch and head of Luftwaffe
(Goering had been dismissed) now Generaloberst Robert Ritter von Greim, fell into the
hands of American Intelligence Officers. The two repeated the same answer when asked
why they had left the Führer bunker: ‘It was the blackest day when we could not die at
our fuehrer’s side.’ Hanna Reitsch added with high spirit; we should all kneel down in
reverence and prayer before the altar of the Fatherland.’
When asked to explain better what she meant by ‘altar’ she replied: ‘Why, Why, the
Fuehrer’s bunker in Berlin.’
Hanna was held and interrogated for eighteen months. Her companion, von Greim took
his own life three weeks after capture. Hanna’s father took the lives of her mother, her
sister, and her sister’s children before taking his own life and joining them. Death was far
preferable to the fate that awaited the family, including children, had they fallen into the
hands of the invaders from the east, courtesy of Winston Churchill and Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
Following her eventual release Hanna settled down in what could be salvaged of
Frankfurt am Main. There were no employment opportunities. Of the many draconian
constrictions on the German people in their own country a ban on their flying was one of
them. The ban on glider flying was lifted in 1952 the young woman won third place in the
World Gliding Championships in Spain.
She continued to break glider records, including the women’s altitude record of 6,848
metres; not far short of the height a modern airliner flies. She was German champion in
1955.
She met international heads of state. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited her to
India to found a gliding school and centre. In 1961 she was invited by John F. Kennedy to
visit him in the White House. Between 1962 and 1966 she lived in Ghana where she
founded the first black African national gliding school.
She was 58 years old when she earned the Diamond Badge and from there on, with not
a thought for retirement, she continued to break records across the world. She won
helicopter flying championships.
Hanna Reitsch was interviewed several times in respect of her service to Hitler’s Reich.
Hanna is quoted as saying: ‘And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and
car makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question
orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron
Cross with Diamonds Hitler gave to me. But today in all German you can’t find a single
person who voted Hitler into power. Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But, they
do not explain the real guilt that we lost.’
For years after the war’s end Hanna Reitsch was consistently invited to assist in the
publication of her biography. She was offered a fortune in royalties that would have
transformed her life. There was a catch; it would be necessary for her to lace her
biography with criticism of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Hanna Reitsch steadfastly
refused and her approved biography was never penned.
Hanna Reitsch died in Frankfurt on August 24 1979 following a heart seizure. Was it a
heart attack that took her? On balance such an end at just 67 years of age was unlikely.
The bravest of aviators the world had ever known left behind a clue.
One of her professional friends was the British test pilot, Eric Brown. He had known and
admired Hanna since before the war. Shortly before her death he received a letter from
her. In it she reminisced about their shared love of flying. The letter ended with the
enigmatic words: ‘It began in the bunker and there it shall end.’
There was much speculation as to the meaning of her words. However, few new Hanna
Reitsch as well as did Eric Brown. In his opinion it was an enigmatic reference to a suicide
pact the then young flier had made with Robert Ritter von Greim; the gallant companion
who had accompanied her through the ruins of the Reich in their last minute futile
attempt to save the life of the embattled fuehrer.
Hanna was known to have kept the cyanide pill given to her by Adolf Hitler. She and
her companion are believed to have made a suicide pact; which he was to carry out
within weeks. It is thought that she and her companion had been her lover. Her death
was announced before the British test pilot had the opportunity to respond to her letter.
It led him to speculate that she had finally committed to her pact and she had taken the
suicide pill. Strangely or not so strangely there was no post mortem carried out on the
heroine’s body.
These years on, Hanna Reitsch is no doubt soaring in the heavens still and equally
doubtless as committed to Adolf Hitler and the German Reich as she ever was. Perhaps
they are together; one can only hope so. God bless one of the world’s greatest women.
THE NETHERLANDS - Florentine Rost van Tonningen
I suppose it could be said that Florentine Rost van Toningen epitomised the perfect
European woman; the type of woman often held up as an example of womanhood during
the Third Reich era.
Born Amsterdam in The Netherlands at the outbreak of The Great War she was the
third of four children. All were adored by their German army officer father, who was also a
banker. The family name was Heubel; Gustav Adolf Heubel was of German-Dutch blood,
as are many in the Netherlands. Her mother was Dutch through and through, Frisian as it
happens; hardy stock. The four siblings were much loved and indulged as far as
circumstances allowed during those dark days of war and its dreadful aftermath.
A typical youngster of the period her family had a garden menagerie. Many families
were self-sufficient. If eggs were required, a chicken or perhaps a duck, one didn’t go to
the local supermarket; a visit to the garden would suffice.
Theirs was a pleasing middle class lifestyle; officers, as in most armies, were respected
and reasonably well paid. She spoke German fluently; excelled at drawing and biology.
Later she was educated in Britain and in Switzerland to better develop her language
skills. She was something of an academic with a compulsion for absorbing knowledge.
She was 22-years of age when her happy feet took her off to Helgoland. She was there to
learn avian and marine biology; not long afterwards she was on her way with her brother
Wim to what was then the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. The family had plantation
ingress there.
Back in her home country, her early twenties coincided with the dramatic rise of
National Socialism in neighbouring Germany. Indeed she spent some time in Berlin, which
then was radically and pleasantly different from the seedy 1920s debasement reflective
of the ousted Weimer government.
Throughout the middle to late 1930s much of Europe viewed the radical social
improvements in Germany with envy and something approaching awe. Miss Florentine
Heubel, like tens of millions of others, was impressed. She and her brother Wim enrolled
in the Nayional Socialistische Beweging Jeugdstorm section. This was the Dutch
equivalent to the Hitler Jugend. Her brother would later be killed whilst serving with the
Waffen SS.
It was due to her political activity that she met the man who was to become her
husband, Dr. Meinoud Rost van Tonningen. A former Assistant Commissioner for the
Vienna-based League of Nations he was a leading light in the NSB. The two were married
in 1940. This was during the stalemate when National Socialist Germany was getting on
with its life and refusing to respond to repeated military goading and feints from the
British and French governments.
After the pre-emptive strike to the West by the harried Germans, in which the
Netherlands was occupied, Florentine’s husband took up a post as President of the Bank
of the Netherlands. He also was unofficial advisor to the German fuehrer on matters
pertaining to European Economic Development. His next meeting with Adolf Hitler would
be in 1944 when the deteriorating situation was a subject of discussion. Florentine
accompanied her husband and was presented with a magnificent bouquet by the German
leader.
It was a period of great anxiety. Meinoud volunteered to leave his profession at the
bank and to serve as a member of the Dutch Waffen-SS. Captured or surrendered, he
received similar treatment as did many other forces personnel. Left to the tender mercies
of his Canadian gaolers, they were well aware they were unaccountable for anything they
did to prisoners, Tonningen was tortured and beaten relentlessly and died in captivity.
The cause of death was said to be suicide. In truth the cause of death was his knowledge
of financial transactions that had taken place by the elite before and during the war.
Florentine was denied access to her husband’s body. There was good reason for the
denial. He was at that stage totally unrecognisable as her husband. From what an
informant told her it was best she did not see her husband’s body. His remains were
never returned to her and the official seal on the case has never been removed; it is
unlikely to be so.
The widow, now with three youngsters to care for, was also subjected to imprisonment,
beatings and other indignities. Welcome to liberated Holland. As did many others she
eventually emerged with the scars of the brutality and set up a small company. This
employed two to three score of workers, manufacturing wind-powered drying machines
used for domestic purposes.
Not once did this gentleman’s lady waver in her devotion to National Socialism; not
once, despite the hardships, did she ever regret her loyalty. For the rest of her life she
devoted her time to holding the standard, and the standards of National Socialism. She
tirelessly published articles in her own language, German and English, telling the truth
about the defeated ideal. She was continually assaulted, her home attacked; the Dutch
police often raided, without finding evidence of illegal activity. Regular National Socialist
soirées were held at her home in Velp, a little outside Arnhem. She was later to take up
residence in Wassmunster in nearby Belgium.
Florentine Rost van Tonningen passed away on March 24, 2007. Upon her gravestone
where she rests the inscription: ‘The Truth Makes You Free.’
AUSTRIA / GERMANY - WOMAN OF THE REICH -Paula
Hitler’s 1957 Statement
Translated from the original German by Gerry Frederics. Paula Hitler, sister to German
leader Adolf Hitler wrote the following statement 12 years after the death of her beloved
brother. (It was aimed at German recipients but if the cap fits, wear it!)
“Gentlemen! - Never forget this: Your names will long be forgotten even before your
bodies have rotted away in the earth. But the name Adolf Hitler will still be a light in the
darkness.
You cannot murder him by drowning his memory in your sick-buckets and you cannot
strangle him with your filthy, ink-stained fingers. His name exists forever in hundreds of
thousands of souls. You are far too insignificant to even touch him.
He loved Germany. He fretted over Germany. When he fought for honour and respect
he fought for German Honour, for respect for Germany and when there was nothing left,
he gave his life for Germany.
What have you given so far? Which one of you would give his life for Germany? The
only things you care about are riches, power and never ending luxurious living. When you
think of Germany, you think of indulging your senses without responsibility, without
cares?
Trust me on this: The Fuhrer’s utter unselfishness in word and deed alone guarantees
his immortality. The fact that the bitter fight for Germany’s greatness wasn’t crowned by
success, like for example Cromwell’s in Britain has a lot to do with the mentality of the
people involved.
On the one hand the Englishman’s character is essentially unfair, ruled by jealousy,
self-importance, and a lack of consideration. But he never forgets he is an Englishman,
loyal to his people and to his crown. On the other hand, the German with his need for
recognition is never first and foremost a German.
Therefore it doesn’t matter to you, you insignificant beings, if you destroy the entire
nation. Your only guiding thought will always be me first - me second - me third.
In your worthlessness you will never think of the welfare of the nation - and with that
pitiful philosophy you wish to prevent the immortality of a giant?
What I wrote down immediately after the war has been proven to be correct. That my
convictions are true is evident even as late as 1957.
Signed, Paula Hitler, Berchtesgaden. May 1, 1957
GERMANY - Gunter Prien - U-Boot Commander
Extraordinary
Daring and opportunism by a German u-boot skipper sent the pride of Britain’s Royal
Navy, the battleship Royal Oak to the bottom of Scapa Flow; a fortress harbor on
Scotland’s west coast used by Britain’s naval forces as they attacked German shipping in
the North Sea. The facts are well documented as are the excuses made to cover up the
humiliating disaster that befell this great ship and many of its ratings. There could be no
question, before or after the war, of giving the German armed forces for any credit for
such valor.
One can well imagine that if a British submarine had as daringly penetrated an
impregnable harbor similarly used by the Kriegsmarine there would be more television
repeats than there have been for The Great Escape and The Sound of Music.
On the October 4 1939, under a clear night sky, U-boot U-47 commander Lieutenant
Gunther Prien skillfully steered his submarine through the eastern channels of this heavily
defended naval redoubt. There was irony to the impending exploit. It was in the same
almost landlocked harbor that many of Germany’s fighting ships when surrendering at the
end of World War One were impudently scuttled by their ships officers rather than allow
their use to the British foes. Gunther Prien would have been well aware that in entering
the unassailable Royal Naval lair he ran an extra risk. If he was to fail in his objective
then he would be handing the British a propaganda coup that would settle an old score. It
was a risk he felt he had to take.
Furthermore, with what he was about to do it is inconceivable that Lieutenant Prien
could expect to escape swift and lethal revenge. The odds against his submarine’s escape
were heavily stacked against him. For him the prize must have seemed well worth death.
Moving silently on the surface to avoid submarine nets the German commander steered
his submarine through the narrow rocky channels of one of the world’s most heavily
protected naval citadels.
On each side of his lurking craft, and clearly silhouetted against the night sky and island
escarpments, were Royal Navel block ships. All heavily manned the purpose of the lock
ships was to act as sentinels to protect the pride of Britain’s navy hiding from the open
seas. One can imagine the tension as the U-boat crew in the darkness ahead spotted the
Royal Oak swinging at anchor. At first they thought they had discovered HMS Repulse.
There wasn’t a whisper on board U-47 as a salvo of three torpedoes was released to carry
out their worst. The Royal Navy target was fortunate. Only one of the lethal torpedoes hit
its target. It caused little damage to the formidable British Goliath.
Such was the complacency of their well-defended and protected position, Royal Naval
officers investigating presumed the explosion originated inside the ship and raised no
alarm. Undeterred the U-boat’s commander reloaded his tubes and let loose another
salvo. Of these two struck the battleship. Within 13 minutes the pride of the Royal Navy
had capsized with massive loss of life.
Amidst the confusion that followed Commander Gunther Prien’s U-47 submarine slipped
without notice through the harbor’s defenses. They had however left a calling card and in
the records of naval warfare evidence of one of the most audacious sea raids in history.
On reaching Germany the gallant skipper was received as a national hero. He was
awarded the Iron Cross First Class for his outstanding seamanship and courage. From the
British side what followed were a cacophony of sneers, cheap insults, and red herrings;
fifth columnists and spies again being blamed for the humiliating catastrophe.
GERMANY - The Battleship the Bismarck
Leaving ideologies aside it is generally recognised that the German Battleship Bismarck
was one of the most formidable fighting ships ever built. There was nothing to match it,
even in the imagination. It must have appeared awesome to anyone seeing it for the first
time, or for the last time. Had the Bismarck not been sunk but instead preserved for
posterity then the sightseers would still be queuing around the block to become better
acquainted with the leviathan.
It was named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who was pivotal to German
unification in the late 19th century. There were only two battleships in its class, the
other-bother being the Tirpitz. At 49,500 tonnes, 815 feet in length and a beam of 18 feet
they were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, the largest at the time from a
European shipyard. On board were 1,962 ratings and 103 Kriegsmarine officers. All crew
members read the ship’s newspaper, Die Schiffsglocke (The Ship's Bell).
Due to its speed and armament nothing since has matched the Bismarck and the
Tirpitz. Three Blohm and Voss turbines gave her a speed of up to 34mph. When next
using your car at that speed imagine a 50,000 ton battleship travelling at that rate. This
will give you an idea of the threat it presented. By 1940 the Bismarck was ready to fulfil
its purpose. This was to destroy shipping on Britain’s essential north Atlantic supply route;
this would be ratcheted up with the arrival of further ships. .
Her first engagement was in the Denmark Straits when confronted by the Royal Navy’s
battle cruiser HMS Hood and HMS battleship Prince of Wales. Despite being faced down
by two formidable challengers it was an unequal contest. HMS Hood was sent to the
bottom of the sea taking 1,416 seamen with her; a heavily mauled HMS Prince of Wales
beat the retreat. It was quite a coming out party for the pride of the Kriegsmarine.
The gloves were off. Britain and its Royal Navy threw all they had into the pursuit and
destruction of the leviathan of the high seas. Dozens of warships were sent in pursuit of
the giant. These included six battleships and cruisers, two aircraft carriers, 13 cruisers,
and twenty-one destroyers in pursuit of just one ship; such was the threat posed by it.
If the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, then being repaired in the French port of Brest,
ever joined these warships the effect the three battleships and the cruiser would have on
allied shipping would be devastating. Britain could possibly be starved into giving up its
war against the German nation.
The German battleship was discovered in the Atlantic bound for German occupied
France. When in pursuit Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers soared above the decks of
their mother ship, HMS Ark Royal they were to get lucky. So too were the British sailors
on HMS Norfolk, the inexperienced Swordfish aviators at first mistook it for the Bismarck
but were at the last moment dissuaded from such a mortal sin.
Finding the correct target one of the torpedo strikes damaged the monster ship’s
steering gear, which had the effect of crippling her. At reduced speed the Bismarck
continued on course for Brest and managed to evade its pursuers now desperately
searching for their adversary. Contact was lost but a Catalina from 209 Squadron spotted
the Bismarck the following day. From HMS Ark Royal fifteen Swordfish were launched.
Admiral Somerville then ordered a second strike from HMS Ark Royal. In appalling
weather conditions Royal Navy flying officer Lieutenant-Commander Jim Coode led SubLieutenant Ken Pattison and Sub-Lieutenant Joey Beal took off to find the elusive
Bismarck. On finally encountering the German battleship the pilots launched their
torpedoes one of which hit the Bismarck’s port boiler room.
Jim Coode’s ‘tin fish’ then hit the German battleship’s rudder leaving the giant
battleship circling helpless in the Bay of Biscay. A Royal Navy pilot who was later to be
killed on a training flight in North Africa had thus sealed Bismarck’s fate.
As dawn broke on May 27 HMS King George V, HMS Rodney, HMS Norfolk and HMS
Dorsetshire having closed in on their prey positioned themselves and began to fire
salvoes into the stricken German marauder. For three hours the Royal Navy pounded
broadside after broadside into the crippled battleship. In just 90 of those minutes an
incredible 2,876 heavy calibre shells were fired at the helpless battleship. Adolph Eich,
Heinz Jucknat and Franz Halke, all survivors from the German battleship, described the
lower decks as absolute carnage. Fires raged everywhere as magazines exploded.
Circling, HMS Rodney fired two torpedoes into the Bismarck’s hull. Still the magnificent
warship remained afloat. At 10.15 am the British Commander-in-Chief ordered the
German battleship to be torpedoed again. HMS Dorsetshire fired torpedoes into starboard
and port hulls of the Bismarck’s burning shell.
The battle now was very much an uneven one; one crippled battleship at the mercy of
the Royal Navy pack. Disabled, she was a sitting duck. Fleet Commander Lutjens and
Captain Otto Ernst Lindemann were almost certainly dead. Leaderless, Hans Oels, the
Bismarck’s First Officer took command of the stricken ship and ordered her scuttled.
Whether this order was given and carried out has been a matter of some dispute.
In a scene straight from hell many hundreds of German seamen found themselves
tossed helplessly by the seas, swimming vainly in their attempts to remain afloat. High
above them the heaving grey superstructure of the HMS Dorsetshire and HMS Maori, their
scrambling nets cascading down its sides in compliance with the law of the sea.
Eager hands reached out for assistance but helpless by a combination of exhaustion
and the action of the waves few of the stricken men were able to make it as far as the
warships’ sea swept decks. Of a crew of 2,221 men only 110 were picked from the
waters; these by HMS Dorsetshire and HMS Maori.
At 10.40 am the great battleship rolled silently on her side and began her descent to
the bottom of the seas, her war flag still saluting the grey skies. She would settle at the
foot of the North Atlantic’s only undersea volcano after slithering down its precipices.
On both sides of the tragic conflict there were singular acts of great heroism. Notably a
young 17-year old British sailor, Midshipman Brookes, courageously climbed over the
warship’s heaving side. Descending to the heaving waterline he manfully attempted to
rescue a young German sailor who had lost both his arms and was trying to hold on to
the rope with his teeth. Sadly by this time ‘naval activity had been spotted’ and the
rescuing warships were ordered under way. The young British midshipman was placed
under arrest for defiantly refusing to give up his rescue attempt and threatened with
execution.
Several of those who later died aboard the HMS Dorsetshire were committed to the sea
with full military honours. Typically each was sent to a watery grave as a bugler played
the last post and both German and British sailors stood solemnly to attention.
The German survivors were given permission to salute their fallen comrades with the
oldest salute in the history of mankind, the raised arm and open hand, the sign that says
‘I do not carry a weapon; I wish only peace with you.’
In the background could be heard the mournful laments of a borrowed harmonica
playing the fallen German serviceman’s lament: ‘Ich hatt einen kamaraden.’ (I once had a
comrade). As each body was committed to the waves both German and British sailors
wept openly.
Of the two greatest controversies surrounding the sinking of the Bismarck one has been
resolved. The Germans always held that the Bismarck was never sunk but was scuttled to
prevent it falling into the hands of the Royal Navy.
Subsequent investigation has found in favour of the German account. The great
German battleship was not sunk by the British but scuttled by its own officers. With all
but one gun destroyed it was imperative that the British should never learn of its
unsinkable structure. British ships subsequently built to its design would almost certainly
lead to the deaths of untold thousands of German sailors. The great sub-marine explorer
Commander Ballard, who has since discovered the wreck of the Bismarck, confirmed that
it had been scuttled.
The remaining great controversy centres on the Royal Navy’s abandonment of nearly
2,000 German seamen, left to their fate in defiance of international law, the age-old law
of the sea, and that of common humanity. This abandonment has never been properly
explained and one can only question the deliberate obfuscation.
One cannot however question the pathos of the scene the retreating ships left in their
wake. One British sailor described how, as the rescuing ships turned stern on, there was
the most tragic wailing of despair from the multitude of men, young and old, left
floundering in the water. May God look after the souls?
The Captain of the Bismarck, was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron
Cross (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes), an honour that recognised extreme bravery on
the battlefield or outstanding military leadership. The medal was presented to his widow,
Hildegard, on 6 January 1942.
Footnote: The Spanish Leader General Franco, on hearing of the tragedy, immediately
despatched the Spanish cruiser Canarias to the scene but the Spanish warship found no
survivors.
BELGIUM - Leon Degrelle
Adolf Hitler said to Belgian Waffen-SS officer, ‘If had I a son I would have wished him to
be like you.’ It wasn’t difficult to see the reason why. It could be also said that if Europe
had a son; a man who might best symbolize its courage and fortitude, its faith and farsightedness, then what better representative and inspiration on the plinths of the
continent’s plazas.
A Catholic, born in Bouillon in the Belgian Ardennes, the man who scorned the
decadence of the post-World War One democracies was a passionate nationalist and antiCommunist; it was perfectly natural that the growing appeal of Fascism, and in particular
National Socialism, should act as a magnet for his passion.
It is a measure of the man that from the rank of private he was promoted on merit
through the ranks of the foreign volunteers of the Waffen SS. There were few or no peers
to his abilities, his passion and loyalties. A born leader of men it could be said that when
awarded the rank of General he had been carried to that podium on the shoulders of his
comrades through the greatest battles of World War Two.
He was one of the most talked and written about of Hitler’s generals. One writer
described him thus: ‘Leon Degrelle’s story is probably the most unique tale of courage
and determination to come from the ranks of foreign volunteers in the Waffen SS.’ He
was also the most highly decorated and when interviewed by a Belgian journalist, long
after the war’s end he was asked if he had any regrets about the war, without a
moment’s hesitation he answered simply, ‘Only that we lost!’
The Degrelle family was of French extraction and the young Leon studied law at the
University of Louvain. His main focus was spread evenly over Tomistic philosophy, art,
archaeology and political science. No slouch and a follower of few but himself he clearly
had gifts. Whilst still young he had published five books. He was also, before his
twentieth birthday, publishing his own newspaper. A devout Catholic he was soon to
become a leader in the Belgian Catholic Action Movement.
Degrelle’s recruiting sergeants were his books and his newspaper. Many were drawn to
the charismatic young man; perhaps their instinct told them that fate had singled him out
for great things. Their instincts would prove them right.
By 1936 Degrelle’s Rexist Party won 34 electoral and senate seats in the Belgian
parliament; it was a triumph and precursor of a future that commanded respect.
Accordingly his power and influence led to meetings with Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill
and Italy’s Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. He for his part was fascinated and influenced
by Charles Maurras, the enigmatic French nationalist. He was also drawn towards both
National Socialism and Fascism.
On September 3 1945 Britain’s Chamberlain led government declared war on Germany.
It did so much to the approval of scores of Members of Parliament and their lordships in
the Second Chamber. For years many of them had anticipated war and invested heavily in
the armaments industries. The French government simultaneously declared war on their
neighbour.
When eight months later, Hitler’s Germany got wind of a build-up of arms in
preparation of an attack on Germany’s western frontiers, he acted decisively. Germany
would not tolerate a repeat of World War One when millions of men pitted against each
other served, fought and died along the Western Front for no advantage. He had been a
highly decorated soldier in that calamitous military failing.
On this occasion the forces of the Reich pre-emptively swept through the Low Counties
and France to deny the ports of entry to the British armed forces. The same British forces
had already been routed in an earlier attempt to attack Germany’s northern territories by
occupying neutral Norway.
Before autumn fell Leon Degrelle was arrested for sympathising with Hitler’s Germany.
This emissary for peace; a man of such standing that he spoke freely with heads of
government, was held in the worst possible conditions and brutally treated by his captors.
The spirited young man was eventually released due to German pressure being applied.
Degrelle did in fact have reservations about the disputed Wallonia regions of Belgium
being ceded to the Reich. Feeling he would be better placed to influence matters from
within, Degrelle volunteered for the German armed forces in 1941. It was gratifying to
see 1,000 Belgian volunteers fell into line and joined him.
Ironically, Degrelle was the unlikeliest of soldiers; he had no military training at all and
had shown little inclination to become a serving soldier. At 35 years of age he was
married with two daughters.
After brief training, in November of the same year, he and his volunteer comrades were
fiercely engaged in fighting the Red Army around the Donets Basin during the Reich’s
defensive incursions aimed at once and for all pacifying Communism. Leading from the
front he suffered no separation from his men or their duties.
It was a harsh winter, even in a climate notorious for extreme weather conditions, but
the troops grimly held their positions on the Eastern Front. In February 1942, the German
lines were overstretched and under supplied, the Reds knew it. Seeking to take
advantage they probed the German defences.
The Walloons, known for their steadfast ferocity were moved quickly to counter Soviet
incursions and found themselves in the heaviest fighting, including hand to hand combat.
The aim of both protagonists was to secure the village of Rosa Luxembourg. The location
was named after the Jewish revolutionary, who had with other Jews, attempted to
Bolshevise Germany in the closing stages of World War One. There was also a desperate
need to secure the defence of Gromovaya-Balka.
In both battles men and equipment were lost and were to cost the Walloon fighters
dearly. The force lost one third of its men leaving only 2 of its 22 officers fit for duty.
Degrelle was promoted after the battle to Feldwebel. Later, on May 1 1942 he was
promoted to Lieutenant. Although the non-soldiering academic’s training in military
tactics was non-existent none could question his personal courage. He had proved it time
after time in the mountainous terrain in which outnumbered and isolated he and his
comrades fought as professional soldiers of the highest calibre.
The year wore on and throughout the spring and autumn months Degrelle and the
Walloons were involved in countless holding battles and skirmishes. They rarely lost
ground and always recovered ground at heavy cost to the Red Army. Such was their
outstanding soldiery efforts that they were soon brought to the attention of Heinrich
Himmler. He was impressed enough to incorporate the Walloons into the Waffen SS. It
was an honour which both Degrelle and his men accepted with pride and relish. They saw
it as another instrument to eventually influence sentiment in favour of an independent
Walloon State.
In the spring of 1943 the Walloon Waffen SS were sent to a number of Waffen SS
training camps to hone their fighting skills better. Once training was completed
Sturmbannführer Luicien Lippert was appointed commander of the newly formed 28th
Waffen-SS
In the spring of 1943 the Walloons were sent to various SS training camps and were as
a consequence elevated to new heights of combat prowess. In November with training
complete, Sturmbannführer Luicien Lippert was appointed commander of the new 28th SS
Freiwilligen Panzergrenadeir Division Wallonie with Leon Degrelle as his chief of staff.
Returned to the front the Division fought gallantly and in January 1944 were posted to
a sector not far from the Cherkassy salient. The Red Army countered and fought
heroically and within weeks had turned the salient into a trap. The German defensive
forces, which included 5 Frw Sturmbrigade Wallonian would again experience hand to
hand combat unrelenting in its ferocity and loss of life.
It was during the fighting in the salient that Sturmbannführer Luicien Lippert lost his
life; gunned down outside a peasant’s hovel. Degrelle himself was wounded in the same
pitched battle, suffering from bullet and shrapnel wounds. The commander
Sturmbannführer Luicien Lippert was posthumously promoted to Obersturmbannführer
and awarded the Deutsches Kreuz in Gold. It would mean a great deal to the gallant
officer’s family and of course posterity. For his part Leon Degrelle was awarded the
coveted Knights Cross. Further on in his illustrious career he would receive the Oak
Leaves too. For the part he played in the breakout from Cherkassy salient, which had the
happy consequence of saving the lives of the German troops engaged in the redoubt,
Adolf Hitler commended him saying, ‘If I had a son I would want him to be like you.’
It was against the Fuhrer’s wishes that Degrelle returned to the Eastern Front and held
the line all the way back through the retreat to war torn Germany, then suffering heavily
through allied bombing raids.
Upon the defeat of Germany Degrelle escaped his Russian captors only to be sentenced
to death by his own Belgian government. It almost defies belief that any government
could make such a decision in the light of one of their citizen’s bravery, which must have
brought great pride to the polyglot nation. A deftly and as resourcefully as he had slipped
his Red captives Leon Degrelle escaped to Spain where he was granted sanctuary and
political asylum by General Francisco Franco. He, like the Belgian warrior, had humbled
the Reds during the Spanish Civil War. The bravest of the brave lived in Malaga for the
rest of his life and died peacefully there in 1994.
WAFFEN SS GENERAL LEON DEGRELLE
‘Hitler was the greatest statesman Europe has ever known. History will prove that
when whipped up emotions have died down. He was more matter of fact, generally more
unfolded than Napoleon. Napoleon was more of a vanquishing, empire-founding
Frenchman than a true European.
‘Hitler, in his being a man of his time, dreamed of an enduring, just, honest Europe,
unified by the initiative of the victor. A Europe however in which each ethnic group could
develop according to their merits and accomplishments. The proof of this is that he
offered Petain his hand. Just as Bismarck knew how to outgrow Prussia and become a
German, so Hitler soon changed from being a German to being a European.
At an early stage he disconnected himself from imperialistic ambition. Without any
difficulty he began to think of himself as a European and initiated the creation of a Europe
in which Germany - like Prussia in Bismarck's time, was to be the foundation stone.
Some comrades of the Fuhrer might still have been short-sighted Pan-Germanists. But
Hitler had the genius, the right scale, the absence of bias and the necessary vision to
accomplish the terrific task. He had an authority, not to be found a second time in the
history of the continent. His success would have established wealth and civilisation of
Europe for centuries, probably forever. Hitler's plans for Europe would have meant a
blessing for us all.’
FRANCE - The Last Defenders of Berlin’s Chancellery
The 33. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Charlemagne (französische Nr. 1) and
Charlemagne Regiment are collective names used for units of French volunteers in the
Wehrmacht and later Waffen-SS during World War II. From 7,340 at its peak in 1944, the
strength of the division fell to just sixty men in May 1945.
T h e Charlemagne division was formed in 1944, combining troops serving in other
French units of the German armed forces, as well as from the paramilitary Franc-Garde of
the Milice.
It is impossible to set examples of extreme valour displayed by the foreign volunteers
of the Waffen-SS. This account of heroes of the Reich would be encyclopaedic in scope
and size. As with all heroic deeds one is forced to be selective. It is for the reader to
presume that the bravery against all odds success of the French volunteers, who fought
against the Soviet Union, was equalled across the various fronts by those of other
nationals defending Europe.
Throughout the conflict these men fought with such tenacity that their defeated foes
saluted them. Had they not been on the losing side of this apocalyptic brothers war then
their exploits would have been published through numerous media. It is not yet
fashionable to give credit to the defeated foe no matter how deserving.
An excellent example of their gladiatorial prowess was their defence of the lines along
the Eastern Front when confronted by the might of the better supplied Red Army. Their
collective title was the LVF (Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme).
In June 1944, shortly before their transport arrived to take them home to recover after
months of fighting the regiment was called back into action. Army Group Centre's front
was now collapsing under the Red Army's summer offensive.
On 25 June, at the Bobr River, elements of the LVF under Major Bridoux fought for 48
hours against a Soviet assault. Attached to the 4th SS-Police Division and supported by
Stukas and five Tiger tanks, they stopped several attacks in what is generally regarded as
the LVF's most successful settling of scores. As many as fifty Soviet tanks were smashed
when confronting the French fighting forces. Testimony to the ability of the LVF came
from a Soviet communiqué which spoke of their forces being stopped by the sacrifice of
just two French divisions.
Within a month, a new recruiting drive in German occupied France attracted 3000
applicants. Most were members of collaborating militias and university students. The 1st
battalion of about 1000 men was attached to SS Division Horst Wessel and moved to
Galicia to stop the Soviet advance. Throughout this uneven conflict the French volunteers
suffered calamitous casualties.
A point of interest is that their fighting proficiency was such that they were empowered
to influence the German High Command at its top levels. In early 1945, Oberführer Puaud
received assurance from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler that his men would not be
sent to the western front, where they might fight fellow Frenchmen. He was also told that
they would fight under the French flag and continue to have Catholic military chaplains.
Heinrich Himmler promised that France would regain its sovereignty after Germany's
victory.
Another great irony is that these French volunteers were fighting for French
independence. They were doing so whilst renegade Charles de Gaulle was skulking at
Churchill’s feet in London. There he was providing theatrical backdrop to the impending
occupation of his country by the Allied armies of Britain and France.
In February 1945, the unit was officially upgraded to a division and renamed 33Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Charlemagne. This division was very much under
strength with only 7,340 men. The Division was ordered to fight the Red Army in Poland.
On February 25 it was attacked whilst repositioning from the railhead at Hammerstein
(Czarne) in Pomerania by troops of the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front. The French troops
were heavily outnumbered by forces that were far better equipped. Opposing the
undermanned lightly armed single division of French troops were four Red Army infantry
divisions and two tank brigades. The French division had neither maps nor radios.
Resourceful to a man they used what they could and most of the Red Army tanks were
destroyed by Panzerfausts in the hands of the Frenchmen.
On the night of March 3, the division’s survivors were ordered to defend Körlin. Their
orders made it clear that the town was to be defended at whatever cost. At noon the
next day a powerful Red Army force hit Körlin from the southwest. Fighting back
ferociously the French troops were able to hold their positions throughout the day. Only
then was the Division ordered to withdraw to the west; this to avoid their becoming
circled and trapped.
The survivors were divided into three battle groups, only one of which survived the
ensuing carnage. This was the battle group under the command of Krukenberg. As the
depleted ranks fell back under the onslaught they eventually reached the Baltic Sea from
where they were evacuated. Sent to Denmark they were later ordered to Neustrelitz for
refitting. During the defence of the Eastern Front and through the heroic retreat the
Division lost nearly all of its troops; about 4,800 men in all.
By early April 1945 with the course of the war to run just a further 4 weeks, Krukenberg
was down to only 700 men. These few were organized into a single infantry regiment
with two battalions (Battalions 57 and 58). There was one ‘heavy support’ battalion,
without equipment. Of these about 400 men were used to serve in the construction
battalion. The remaining troops, numbering approximately 300, volunteered to go to
Berlin. There they would conduct a delaying action against the approaching Soviet Army.
On April 23 the Reich Chancellery in Berlin ordered Krukenberg to proceed to the
capital. In the meantime they had been reorganised as Sturmbataillon (assault battalion)
Charlemagne. Between 320 and 330 French troops arrived in Berlin on April 24. This was
a week before the Fuhrer would take his life, and that of his wife’s. This was to deny the
Red Army their blood fest. Hitler said, probably correctly, that Winston Churchill’s Soviet
ally would no doubt place him and Eva naked in a cage to be paraded through Moscow to
add to Germany’s humiliation.
After a lengthy detour to avoid the Soviet advance columns, Sturmbataillon
Charlemagne was attached to the 11th S.S Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland.
Such was the men’s fighting spirit and uniformed charisma the beleaguered German
population of Berlin thought the troops were an advance guard of further great French
Divisions sent to defend their city against the Red barbarians. Sadly they were wrong on
two counts. The Charlemagne Division, such as it was, was all that remained. Churchill
and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had already agreed to allow the Red Army loose
on the ruined German capital.
On arrival in Berlin the French S.S troops strengthened the Scandinavian Nordland
Division who’s Norge and Danmark Panzergrenadier regiments had also been decimated
in the fighting. Together they made up the strength of a battalion. Brigadeführer
Krukenberg was appointed commander of (Berlin) Defence Sector C on April 25. This
command included the Nordland Division
It is said the soldiers noted that the first night in Berlin was unnaturally quiet. They
heard people dancing and laughing but no sounds of fighting were audible. They walked
from West to East Berlin and then on to a brewery near the Hermannplatz. It was here
that the fighting took hold. There they joined youthful members of the Hitler Youth firing
their Panzerfausts at Soviet tanks approaching Berlin’s Tempelhof Aerodrome. Soon some
members of the Sturmbataillon joined the Hitler Youth in tank hunting sorties.
Supported by Tiger II tanks and the 11th SS Panzer-Regiment Hermann von Salza, the
Sturmbataillon took part in a counter attack on the morning of April 26 in Neukölln. This is
a district in south-eastern Berlin near the Sonnen Allee.
The counterattack ran into an ambush by Soviet troops who were using a captured
German Panther tank. The regiment lost half of the available troops in Neukölln on that
first day defending Berlin. They were later to mount an incredible last stand at Neukölln's
Town Hall. Given that Neukölln was heavily penetrated by Soviet combat groups,
Krukenberg gathered his men to fall back from their holding positions. He moved his
headquarters into the opera house. As the Nordland Division fell back towards
Hermannplatz the French SS and about 100 Hitler Jugend youngsters attached to their
group destroyed 14 Soviet tanks with their handheld panzerfausts. One of the defenders
machine gun positions situated by the Halensee bridge managed to hold up Soviet
advances for 48 hours.
The steady Soviet advance into Berlin followed a pattern of massive shelling. Each of
these attacks was followed by assaults using battle groups of about 80 men each. These
were supported by tank escorts and close artillery support. On April 27, after a spirited
but futile defence, the remnants of Scandinavia’s Nordland were pushed back into the
centre government district (Zitadelle sector) in Defence sector Z. There they found there
that the Krukenberg's Nordland headquarters was now a carriage in the Stadtmitte UBahn station. Fighting was extremely heavy and by April 28, it is believed that 108 Soviet
tanks had been destroyed in the southeast of Berlin within the S-Bahn. This would mean
fewer Red Armyists, decked out in British made uniforms and boots, being free to rape at
will Berlin’s defenceless women and children; reparations that had been promised to
them.
Sixty-two of these tanks were destroyed by the efforts of the Charlemagne
Sturmbataillon alone. These were now under the command of Frenchman Henri Joseph
Fenet. His battalion was given the area of Neukölln, Belle Alliance Platz, Wilhelmstrasse
and the Friedrichstrasse to defend.
Commander Henri Joseph Fenet was now badly wounded in the foot. He remained with
his battalion as they withdrew to the vicinity of the Reich Aviation Ministry in the centre
government district, which was under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Mohnke. For the
success of the battalion during the Battle in Berlin Henri Josep Fenet was awarded the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on April 29, 1945 by Brigadeführer Mohnke.
A day earlier the Red Army began a full-scale offensive into the city centre sector.
Fighting was intense and the Sturmbataillon Charlemagne was in the centre of the battle
zone around the Reich Chancellery. Unterscharführer Eugene Vaulot, who had destroyed
two tanks in Neukölln, used his Panzerfausts to claim six more Soviet tanks near the
Führerbunker. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by Krukenberg during
a candlelight ceremony on a subway platform on April 29 but failed to survive the
intensity of the fighting.
The French Charlemagne SS were the last defenders of Hitler's Führerbunker. At heavy
cost they held their positions at the bunker throughout May 1 to prevent the Soviets from
capturing it on May Day.
Reduced to approximately thirty able men, most members of the Sturmbataillon had
been captured or escaped Berlin on their own or in groups. Most of those who made it
back to France were denounced and sent to Allied prisons and camps. Hauptsturmführer
Henri Joseph Fenet, one of the last recipients of the Knight's Cross, was sentenced to 20
years forced labour. He was released from prison in 1959. This is how the French treat
those who, with the Reich, gave their all to defend Europe and regain the independence
of their nation. Today Wall Street’s bankers occupy fallen France. But, that was the real
aim from the very beginning.
Other heroes of the LVF were shot upon capture by the French authorities. General
Leclerc was presented with a defiant group of 11-12 captured Charlemagne Division men.
T h e Free French General immediately and pompously asked them why they wore a
German uniform. One of the captured men gave a spirited response. ‘Why’, he asked,
‘was the General wearing an American uniform.’ (The Free French wore modified US army
uniforms). This group of French Waffen-SS men was later executed without any form of
military or civilian court or tribunal procedure. Heroes’ every last man of them for the best
of France had died leaving only the defeated and humiliated worst of the French.
GERMAN AND FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS - The Ghosts of
the Waffen S.S.
Throughout the Eastern Front, where the fiercest battles of World War 2 took place,
grave robbers known as black archaeologists search for military artefacts. These are then
sold throughout Europe and the U.S., which seems to have an inexhaustible appetite for
such macabre souvenirs.
Other than the dangers of unexploded devices and the horror of exhuming human
remains are paranormal events often experienced by researchers. In 1997 six grave
robbers drew close to the war ravaged ruins of Makaryevsky monastery in the
Leningradsky region. Noticing what appeared to be a bonfire they approached and were
shaken to discover the inferno was hanging in the air. On their approach it died and
disappeared.
Their sleep that night was broken by human screams coming from the direction of the
nearby forest. When dawn broke one of the party entered the woods where he became
disoriented. He returned hours later in filthy clothes with what his companions described
as ‘an insane look on his face.’ He never revealed any detail of his experience.
One of the most notorious of the war related paranormal event zones is to be found in
the valley of Myasnoy Bor 30km from Novgorod. Here, during the 1942 Lyuban Offensive
the Soviet 2nd Attack Army confronted divisions of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS which
included volunteers of the Spanish Blue Division.
Galina Pavlova from Engels leads a search group. She tells of an incident she shared
with others in 1997: 'The forests of Myasnoy Bor are scary and mystical. As soon as you
find yourself alone, sounds begin to come from the forest. You can clearly hear yells as if
battle still rages.'
War graves explorer, Alexei, used to excavate in the woods near Bryansk where the
Red Army was dug in between 1942 and 1943. He says: 'We excavated the bodies of six
Russian and 11 German soldiers, four of which were Wehrmacht soldiers, in a swamp
trench shelter.
'We cut the trench logs and discovered decomposed German boots with bones sticking
out. Little by little we dug out remains of four people. It was getting dark. We left the
skeletons at the trench and camped on the meadow 200 metres away.'
He told of how later they were woken from their sleep by one of the group who said
something weird was going on. 'We got up and began to listen very carefully. It was
unmistakable. We could hear German speech; songs, laughing, and the clatter of tank
tracks. It was very scary.'
He described returning in the morning light to the trench they had been working on. It
was much as they had left it but walking a little further they saw tank ditches and most
amazingly, fresh tank tracks.
Another haunted zone is Novokhopersk in the eastern section of Voronezh. Members of
an exhibition, led by acclaimed battlefields archaeologist Genrikh Silanov, took
photographs of ghostly uniformed troops near tents.
Researchers were baffled by a figure that appeared to be inexplicably wearing Czech
uniform. According to their records there were no Czech units in action on this field of
battle. Later they discovered that a Czech unit had integrated with the Red Army. Silanov
believes the pictures are ‘chronal mirages’ created by what he calls memory fields
connected to dramatic events of the past.
SPAIN
The Spanish Waffen SS
Although Spain was not a member of the Axis its people could not forget their suffering
under the Soviet inspired, financed and fought Civil War. The Spanish got their chance to
even the score by taking up arms against Soviet Communism and repay the German
nation for coming to their aid during the Civil War.
Although only 18,000 volunteers were requested over forty-times that number
responded. These formed the Blue Division after the blue shirts worn under their fieldgrey uniforms.
Experienced Civil War veterans’ fought alongside their German comrades as the 250 th
Infantry Division of the German Army. In all up to 47,000 men served in the Blue (Azul)
Division. Adolf Hitler told heir commander, General Augustin Muinag Grandes that he
considered the Blue Division ‘equal to the best German divisions.’
Sadly, over half of the Blue Division became casualties of the broader conflict to defend
Europe from Soviet empire building.
GERMANY - Heroism under British Occupation
Courage comes in all shapes and forms. It is selfless sacrifice for others and often it is
the stoicism vital to get you and your family through the most trying times. We are not
talking of the sort of austerity that means you buy own brand at the supermarket, or
leave the visit to the hairdresser’s for the moment. It is when a decision has to be made
to prostitute oneself to occupying troops or starve.
It is the courage you need when you hear that a child, on his thirteenth birthday, is
hanged by the occupiers. He was found to be displaying a picture of his country’s elected
leader on his bedroom wall. Did it take courage on the part of the British hangman who
carried out this and similar dreadful acts?
This and more that is equally evil is what happened in British occupied Germany after
the war’s end. If the hanging of a thirteen-year old boy fails to take the breath away what
of the chutzpah of those today who celebrate the ‘liberation’ of Hitler’s Germany.
There is little likelihood of our easily accessing images or newsreels of the national joy
of Germany’s people before they were liberated. It is best left to the imagination as to
their country’s prosperity, their never to be equalled living standards, and their
unrestrained exultation whenever their country’s elected leadership appeared.
The following description of life in British occupied Germany is a review of a book about
to be then published: details at the end of this article, if you can see through the tears.
The two page feature, Under the British Jackboot was published in the Daily Mail
(London), August 25, 2001.
‘Theft carries the death penalty, so does possession of any kind of firearm, including air
rifles, which then could be found in the bedrooms of most schoolboys. Firing squads are
expensive, hanging wastes time; permission is asked for the use of a guillotine, which can
carry out six single executions in 14 minutes.
Throughout the occupied zone internment camps have spread like a rash. 40,000
civilian and prisoners of war, men and women alike between the age of 16 and 70 have
been swept up and interned in these camps, the horror of which equals anything in the
Soviet Union. In these camps one will find anyone considered to have ‘ridiculed, damaged
or destroyed’ British culture or criticised any aspect of the occupier’s regulations or their
methods.
It is not necessary to have committed an offence to be interned. All are held without
charge being brought or any likelihood of a trial. A mother of four children has been
arrested and interned. Her offence was to hide in a roadside ditch in a vain attempt to
snatch a word with her husband working as an unpaid slave on a working party.
Conditions in the camps defy belief. They are brutally administered and in truth, leaving
allied propaganda aside, the British internment camps were far worse than the German
prison camps that were managed when there was a war in progress.
The civilians slept in their clothes for weeks, months at a time. One cannot call their
sleeping arrangement beds. These were ‘constructed from old pieces of wood.’ They slept
in groups of five. There was so little food that most if not all suffered from a malnutrition
one today sees only in the famine stricken Horn of Africa.
These unfortunate inmates are allowed one 30 minutes visit every three months. Many
of these German civilian and ex-servicemen are kept in unlit cellars, indistinguishable
from dungeons, to prepare them for interrogation. According to a courageous German
bishop, who dared to voice his outrage; these wretched prisoners ‘are terribly beaten,
kicked, and so mishandled that traces can be seen of their wounds weeks afterwards.’
The account goes on to accurately report: ‘The notorious Third Degree methods of
using searchlights on victims and exposing them to high temperatures are also applied.’
What fortitude, what heroism these desolate inmates must have suffered.
Besides these appalling interrogation centres, where students as young as sixteen were
routinely abused and torture, there were what was known as Direct Interrogation Centres
(DIC). Here is a typical day’s work for the monsters who manned them. Note the date,
nearly two years after the war was over.
‘One day in February 1947, two of the inmates of No 74 DIC (Bad Nenndorf) were
dumped at an Internee Hospital. One patient was skeletal, suffering from frostbite,
unable to speak; the other was unconscious, with no discernible pulse – cold, skeletal and
covered in ‘thick cakes of dirt; frostbite to arms and legs.’ No escape; both prisoners died
within hours. There will be no movies like The Great Escape for them; for the survivors
there will be no movies called The Bridge on the River Rheine.
A third, who had been arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking, committed suicide while
undergoing interrogation. It does not explain how one commits suicide whilst under
interrogation. This rather suggests a similar situation to prisoners of the Black and Tans
and British Army in Ireland who, having been shot when running away, where found to
have bullet wounds in their chest and abdomen.
There was an investigation of sorts; it uncovered conditions and methods of
deprivation, torture and abuse of such extremes the mind reels. Inmates were treated for
their injuries without anaesthetic. What heroes to be called upon to endure such misery
more in keeping with the darkest dungeons of the nightmarish Middle Ages.
One prisoner, after eight days of solitary confinement, was put in an unheated
punishment cell in mid-winter. Buckets of freezing water were thrown into the cell, which
the prisoner was forced to mop up with a rag.
His jacket and boots were removed, and he was forced to stand with bleeding feet for
about ten hours in extreme cold on a bare concrete floor. Finally, he was forced to crawl
on hands and knees to be interrogated. There is no record of this unfortunate man’s end.
The Camp Commandant, Medical Officer and three interrogators, whose names are not
revealed, were suspended and charged. The charges were later dropped or reduced to
negligence.
Britain had inherited that which had reduced to rubble. Hamburg, second only to Berlin
in size, by May 1945 was a bomb cratered scene of devastation for as far as the eye could
see. This was courtesy of the RAF. Virtually nothing was left standing. The firestorm
between July 24 and 29, 1943 had created terror and destruction worse than that visited
upon Nagasaki and Hiroshima. 750,000 civilians had been made homeless; there was
never an attempt at strategic bombing. The inferno had one purpose in mind, to
completely destroy this fine Hanseatic city; to drive the survivors to the extremes of
terror. The weapons of horror included the internationally outlawed phosphorous. All
would be well for it would be the victors, not the vanquished, who would be controlling
the information after the war’s end.
During the incineration of his city an estimated 150,000 people had lost their lives. The
truth is, no one will ever know. Given the scale of the destruction this figure was likely to
be very much an underestimate again; those who write the records are the victors. Far
more people died in Hamburg those fateful few nights than died in Britain throughout the
length of the war. It has been conceded that it was the British Air Ministry, at the request
of the unelected coalition leader, Winston Churchill, who initiated as a deliberate policy
the bombing of civilian targets.
When the occupying forces left their bombers behind and entered the city in their
military armoured personnel carriers, trucks and tanks, bought on credit, they discovered
what was described as ‘a land of cave dwellers.’
Tens of thousands of civilians, many of them refugees, were living in rat-infested under
round air raid shelters and complexes. It seemed the entire city’s population and its
uninvited refugee guests, lived in holes and cellars wherever they could find them. Where
else, very little was left standing. If a house or building had miraculously escaped the
carnage it was commandeered by British Army personnel and their camp followers.
Braver souls risked life and limb by using makeshift ladders to live in the few remaining
half destroyed homes and buildings. Very often these buildings had no fronts and
resembled dolls houses.
Very little water was available; many thousands of desperate people who, a few years
earlier had rapturously welcome and enjoyed a lifestyle and standard of living far superior
to anything that has been experienced then or since, queued at street standpipes for
their water. Such ‘oasis’ were very few and far between. In scarce supply household
cutlery and kitchen utensils; every day household needs and of course medicines.
Such were the conditions that it would be reasonably to expect compassion and
assistance from the British servicemen as they flooded into the ruined city. On the
contrary; Unlike Germany, Britain had not benefited from a general election since 1935.
There was an election shortly after VE day in July 1945; it was dubbed the khaki election
for obvious reason.
By order of the London governments, Conservative and to their everlasting shame, the
Labour Party, Commander-in-Chief of the British Zone, Field Marshall Montgomery, was
ordered to enforce an inflexible policy of ‘non-fraternisation.’
The instructions given were: ‘You must keep clear of Germans – man, woman and child
unless you meet them in the course of your duty. You must not walk with them, or shake
their hands or visit their homes.’
Servicemen were told that smiling at Germans, even children, would not be tolerated.
There would be no playing with children. If soldiers being soldiers occasionally allowed
German children to clamber on their military vehicles they were placed on a charge.
There was a method in this seeming madness. What the British government and high
commend feared most was that friendliness would open up opportunity for servicemen to
learn at first-hand what Germany had been like before and during the war. They had
been told very little of the period. It was thought to be demoralising if occupying troops,
through conversation, friendships; access to German media and where possible, lifestyle,
revealed earlier prosperity.
It had been much the same for the Russian Red Army. They had been told of a
Germany far removed from the truth. For many of their Asiatic, and Russian troops, it was
the first time they had seen modern wonders. Most had not even seen a light bulb or
used a conventional toilet; let alone indoor toilets. Most of the British servicemen’s toilets
would have been in dingy backyards of tiny terraced Victorian hovels.
The American policy, in the U.S. zone of occupation, perhaps because of the relative
prosperity of the United States, took the opposite view. They encouraged fraternisation in
order that the defeated Germans could learn of the ‘superior’ American system.
Montgomery worked on changing the London government for three months but it was
to be another three months before the non-fraternisation order was watered down. What
has been described as strict apartheid was still in place. As in apartheid South Africa
British and German people were obliged to travel in separate railway carriages. The two
communities were forbidden to worship at the same churches, the few that were left
standing. Nor were they allowed to attend the same cinema; or concerts, theatres or
social events. It was punishable to listen to music together. British officers’ wives would
be warned in advance if Germans were present at dances.
It was the same blinkered British inflexible mind-set that had led to so many of the
earlier military disasters. As the Americans would later put it; you can’t fix stupid.
The situation of course demanded the utmost collaboration and partnership if order
was to be restored. As Christopher Hudson, something of a palace journalist put it; ‘’It
was unnatural; more than that it put a break on every aspect of administering Germany.’
It is supposed the most outrageous chutzpah in history was when in May 1947, the
British government, which had caused the deaths, the miseries and slavery on a scale
equalled only by the ally, Josef Stalin, made the following proclamation: ‘We should
behave towards the Germans as the people of one Christian and civilised race towards
another whose interests in many way converge with our own and for whom we no longer
have any ill-will.’
England is not so Christian now and its cities streets today hardly suggest civilisation.
Clearly by this time, Churchill’s ally, the Soviet Union, have by far taken the biggest slice
of Europe, and the highest number of slaves, had caught its breath. The scourge of
Communism, which Adolf Hitler had warned against and fought against, was now rearing
on its hind legs once more. On getting out the maps it seems the British government,
stripped of its Empire to pay for its war, belatedly realised that the only country standing
between their country and the ‘hyena like appetite’ of the Soviet Union was Germany.
Again, something that Adolf Hitler had been telling them since 1919.
The cowardly attempt to win German hearts and minds was to be a long haul, if it was
ever achieved, which I doubt. The problem being, it had been constantly drummed into
British servicemen’s’ heads that the Germans were subhuman and were to be treated like
pariahs.
Seven weary heart-breaking months after the first British Army vehicles crunched over
the debris their aircraft had wrought all Germans, even children and their mothers were
regarded as equally guilty. They were guilty of what? For creating in just six short years a
nation that stood tall; to become the most prosperous nation on earth led by the most
popular leader in European history. If this is guilt then not a few British and Americans
today might relish a little of it for themselves.
Part of the holistic problem was that Britain’s new Prime Minister, the ‘socialist’ Clement
Attlee, whose love affair with Stalin’s Communism, was as notorious as was Churchill for
hating and fearing the German people. He British PM boasted that he had a German
maid. I suppose it gave him a similar sentiment to the feelings of a Negro who takes for
his woman a European blonde. It is symbolic of savagery over civilisation.
Attlee’s Foreign Secretary was equally repellent: ‘I try to be fair to them (the Germans)
but I hates them really.’ Neither of these so-called statesmen ever out a day to one side
to visit the British Occupied Zone (BOZ). Perhaps they had no wish to be confronted by
the visible consequences of their liberation; to compare what had been with what was
now. It was unlikely that had they made such a visit their armoured vehicle column would
have received anything like the rapturous welcome the defeated elected leader had
received before his country had been liberated.
Both the British and the Germans had their gallows humour. Of their foes the British
loftily declared: ‘All Germans are intelligent, honourable and pro-Hitler, but never more
than two of these three.’
The Germans for their part responded with the joke about the 1,000 year Reich: ’12
Years of National Socialism; 988 years of de-nazification.’ Yes, it would it seems take that
long to erase the memory of Adolf Hitler.
The British media then as now was hostile to all things German; jealousy perhaps; who
knows with their natural baseness. Newspaper correspondents based in the British
Occupied Zone were under unspoken instruction ‘never to send back reports which were
complimentary to the Germans. It is said that this policy was not changed until the visit
to Germany by Britain’s sovereign, Queen Elizabeth 11 in 1965. This is clearly nonsense
even today nearly seventy years after the European tragedy. As ever the media has
hardly a good word to say about Germany or the German people. Any reference towards
Hitler’s Germany is as venomous as it ever was. Readers are constantly reminding news
media editors that the war is now over; to move on. Their pleadings fall on deaf ears.
The scale of British failure to deal with post war occupation, regional government and
administration is now recognised as hapless to the extreme. This monumental failing was
despite German offers of assistance, which were arrogantly elbowed aside. The British
and the Americans were to repeat the same mistake time after time in their future wars
of aggression and theft. In Washington DC, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
instructed that no former members of the NSDAP were to be employed in positions of
authority.
Such a policy was half-witted to the extreme; how can any society be effectively
managed by excluding those most experienced at government administration;
government and its civil service. In Germany it had been virtually a condition of
employment that there be membership of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Roosevelt was unyielding.
Patronisingly the visitors to vanquished Germany were handed a booklet. This was
arrogantly entitled, The German Character. The more thoughtful might have raised an
eyebrow at the booklets editorial: it was explained how the Germans ‘stress fanatical willpower, work and sacrifice’. It went on to describe the German disposition for sadism,
fatalism and sentimentality.’ Its summing up declared: ‘trying to be kind or conciliatory
will be regarded by Germans as a weakness.’ As the British armed forces hardly had a
reputation for being either kind or conciliatory to anyone in the multiple territories they
occupied over 400 years empire building it was difficult to understand how they would
know.
The biggest failing of all was the sheer ineptitude of the British personnel recruited to
serve the Central Administration of the British Zone. This was known as the Control
Commission Germany (CCG). The poor quality of employees would reduce one to tears.
The review concludes: ‘They included demobbed servicemen with nowhere else to go,
officers who couldn’t find a job on Civvy Street, and in the words of a Foreign Office
memo, ‘retired drain inspectors, unsuccessful businessmen and idle ex-policemen.’ ‘Very
few of them could speak German. Encouraged to believe that non-Nazis were as
dangerous as Nazis, they kept all Germans at arm’s length.
‘No one could apply for public employment who had not been ‘de-nazified’, which meant
they had to fill in a form demanding their record of employment and income, and their
memberships of every party, group, club, union or institute since Hitler came to power.’
From there it went to the ‘You Couldn’t Make it Up’ department. More than one million
of these ridiculous forms were printed and handed out. Checking them was described as
beyond parody. Those charged with interpreting them knew little or no German. They
were totally clueless as to the German way of life before the occupation. They had of
course no idea of the German organisations they were vetting, whether they were
political or not. It was unlikely they had ever heard of the institutes and parties listed by
applicants. Anyone who had not actively resisted any part of the German government and
authority risked the death penalty. However, to guillotine all who had not resisted their
government was impractical. In the free elections held on March 29 1936, no less than 99
percent of the electorate had enthusiastically placed their votes in favour of their
Fuehrer’s National Socialist Party. It seems even the CCG accepted that you cannot put
99/100 people to the guillotine.
Those job applicants (there was no social security) who were thought to be economical
with the truth when asked if they had resisted their democratically elected government
were liable to internment or dismissal.
There could only be one outcome to such lunacy; those best able to get Germany
moving again were denied opportunity to do so. The great English writer, D. H. Lawrence
was once asked what his thoughts were on the English. He replied; ‘One great laughing
oaf.’ Seeing how the CCG operated in Germany there would be few to disagree.
Of course everything in the Brinish Occupied Zone went belly up. Someone had the
bright idea of limiting the de-Nazifying process to the head typist. Her subordinates could
be used for the present without being grilled, re-educated and forced to watch endless
spools of allied propaganda. That must have been a relief for the ladies.
It was nearly three years after the war’s end, October 1947, before the authorities had
an even brighter inspiration. It was decided to hand local government to the German
lander (civil administration) to sort out the appalling mess. Democracy was dragging its
feet a long way behind the tanks. In a similar 30 month period from 1933 the fuehrer,
without any help from the British or their Control Commission, had turned a nation,
brought to its knees under the terms of a previous occupation, to becoming the richest
country on earth.
There was plenty for the new German authorities to do, much of which went against
the grain. The price of bringing the less accountable British version of democracy to the
German nation was not bargain basement. Germany had already been stripped of its
assets; this loot, now called ‘reparations’ was fought over like dogs at a bone. Germany
was pillaged and the spoils distributed between Britain, the United States, France, and
the Soviet Union.
‘It was a condition of the Peace Treaty, that the defeated foe was denied access to,
that swathes of German industrial plant such as was left after much of it was shipped
abroad, was either dismantled or destroyed with explosives.’
Such was the CCG interference in all matters German even folk songs were scrutinised
for a lyric that might suggest patriotism. Perhaps Beethoven’s Spring Symphony or his
Pastoral Symphony was blue-pencilled too; such were the mind-sets of the period. One
again wonders if the censors when playing the Moonlight Sonata saw not the refection of
the moon in the lake but a Swastika. Bizarrely the British authorities even interfered,
pored over and dissected areas of public life that the National Socialist government had
never shown interest in.
Eighteen months after the war’s end the Control Commission Germany needed 24,785
personnel to ineptly manage what the Americans were managing more effectively with
just 5,008 personnel. Think of Dad’s Army posted to Germany and you get the picture.
Meanwhile Germany was once again reduced to the desperation of the post-World War
One years when the British naval blockade resulted in the starvation of 800,000 German
civilians. For years after the end of World War Two the average German food availability
was just 1,500 calories a day. This is just about enough to keep the human body alive but
persistently listless and prone to disease. Of course the CCG personnel were becoming
more rounded by the day despite the British population at home in being still on ration
books, albeit far more generous than was the German allowance.
In prostrate Germany the only thing of value was cigarettes and these were blackmarket. ‘Even German girls from good families found they had nothing to offer in return
for food than their bodies. It was either that or join the ‘rubble ladies’ who cleared the
roads and rubble, pulling decomposing bodies and body parts from crushed buildings.’
Most of Germany’s manhood had either been killed or captured during active service;
millions were still held in concentration and internment camps throughout the victorious
nations. In Eisenhower’s death camps in the Rheine Valley an estimated 750,000
surrendered German servicemen were systematically being starved to death. Five million
German people, mostly but not exclusively male, had by then been railroaded to the
Soviet Union to be used as slaves in Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago.
This meant that in Germany there were three women for every man. In the capital it is
estimated that 500,000 German women were forced to prostitute themselves to the
occupying forces in order to feed their families.
‘In the British Zone, where one cigarette was worth 5 Deutsch Marks, British troops
received an allowance of 50 free cigarettes each week, plus chocolate and soap. 80
percent of German women suffered from venereal disease. Such are the fruits of
liberation. Whoever the humourist was who had scrawled on the walls of a bombed
house, ‘enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible,’ had remarkable foresight.
To add insult to this most terrible injury, because German women were considered by
the British to be immoral, British servicemen were not only relieved of their excess
sperm; they were relieved of any responsibility for their being obliged to take
responsibility for child maintenance if offspring resulted from these liaisons. In effect it
was a London government, a Socialist government’s invitation to rape the women and
girls of Germany. This was perfectly in line with the policy of the Soviet Red Army so
there is nothing new there. One supposes that in the light of these terrible times Britain
prays fervently for a delay on karma.
Surely if a medal is to be struck for heroism in the face of devilish depravity then the
German people, especially the women and girls who survived the war and its occupation
should be granted such a medal. God forbid that any other nation on earth should be
reduced to such wanton suffering by an army of occupation. God bless each and every
one of you.
END. A Strange Enemy People: Germans under British Rule 1945 – 1950.
Patricia Meehan. Peter Owens Publishers. Patricia Meehan is a historian and
former BBC TV producer and documentary maker who worked in Germany in
1945.
BRITAIN / GERMANY - Doctor Death and the Hanging
of Heroes
In sharp contrast to the generosity and magnanimity shown by the German political
and military High Command to their defeated foes was the behaviour of the allies
towards their defeated enemies.
Despite international criticism and objections, even from those of their armed forces, a
policy of putting Germany’s leaders through the Nuremberg show trials went ahead. If the
same charges were laid today at current and recent Western leaders undoubtedly they
would be hanged too.
To a man and woman, those condemned to death at Nuremberg retained their courage
and put up a spirited defence, which was ignored. The Nuremberg and military tribunals *
were not of course legitimate judicial processes; nor were the procedures; all
international standards of civilised judicial process were avoided. The Nuremberg ‘trials’
were staged exclusively by the victors on their terms, which were often made on the hoof
to suit changing circumstances. The prisoners’ fates had been already decided upon
before they even entered these dreadful ‘courts.’
On October 16, 1946 the American News Service announced at 2.45am that eleven
members of the former government of Germany had been executed. The executions or
rather judicial murders began at 1am and came to an end at 2.15am. The bodies of the
hanged men were then laid out for witnesses to ogle, gloat over and take photographs.
There would have been 12 still war corpses had Herman Goering not foiled his captors by
taking his own life in his cell. This was, in the view of these men’s’ captors, a heinous act,
which deprived them of their obscene spectacle.
Nearly 70 years on the details of the burial methods and places of internment of these
eleven vanquished leaders have still not been revealed, nor are they likely to. This was
on account of the very real allied fear that forever more, long after their killers had been
forgotten; pilgrims would visit the shrines of the martyrs of Germany. The same applied
throughout Europe wherever and whenever leading Axis figures were hanged, shot,
guillotined or otherwise murdered. Nor have their families been informed of their last
resting places. It is doubtful if any conflict in history has so dishonoured the morality of
the human race.
In the run up to the hangings of the martyrs a commentary of sickeningly bad taste was
relayed by the prison governor for the delectation of the vampires lusting with almost
sexual passion for the agonies of their former enemies. Here was Tyburn revisited; the
witch hunts, the torture chambers, the gloating and the public cries of ‘hats off!’ in order
that the gruesome carnival could be witnessed more favourably.
Herman Goering, the incredibly flying ace of World War One, with his eleven
colleagues, spent their last day on earth. They spent most of the time reading, writing,
and talking with the two chaplains. Most of the prisoners appeared resigned to their fate;
Goering spoke of his faith and his lack of fear.
As a World War One flying ace of the famed Richthofen Squadron he had fearless faced
death many times; the difference then was the foes had been honourable. This was no
longer the case.
Two of the German leaders complained about the overzealous security applications.
These required the prisoners to sleep with their hands outside their blanket. Each of the
condemned men was awakened if during their sleep, they turned away from the
ceaselessly shining lights with the brightness of interrogation lamps.
Interestingly but not unique, Edda Goering, Herman Goering’s daughter never once
criticised her father. She adored him through and beyond death. Her circumstances were
such, thanks to Allied Control, that she lived and died in dire poverty.
With the exception of Herman Goering each of the prisoners, manacled to guard, took
exercise in the corridors of the prison block put aside for the prisoners to be hanged. All
conducted themselves with their affairs and manner with the utmost dignity. One can
only wonder if today’s Western leaders, if brought before the bar for far worse crimes
than those alleged against the defendants, were to face a similar fate with similar selfrespect and dignity.
Julius Streicher, a specialist in agriculture and a farmer throughout the years of conflict,
was particularly loathed by his Jewish tormentors. He had, through his Private Eye style
satirical newspaper constantly exposed and lampooned the Jews in similar fashion to the
press they receive in much of the Arab and especially Palestinian media today.
At the time of the killings of the German leaders, Sir Anthony Eden, MP, and former
British Foreign Minister, and soon to be Prime Minister rose to his feet in the House of
Commons. He pointedly asked Clement Atlee, MP, prime minister of the first post war
Labour government, if as was rumoured, films of the executions were to be made. He
asked if the government was taking action to prevent public exhibition of such film.
The prime minister replied: ‘My attention has been called to this report. It is inaccurate.
The Allied Control Council (ACC), on which His Majesty’s Government are represented,
decided last week that no cinematography film or photographs should be taken of the
executions. Photographs of the bodies will be taken after death by an official
photographer as a representative of the four powers, for identification purposes. These
will be the only photographs allowed.’
Was this true? This is open to debate but it is unlikely if morality had any bearing on
the decision not to film the actual executions. Even the people, by then propaganda
immunised against sympathy for the defeated Germans, might have been repelled by
such public mawkishness. After all, despite the horrors being inflicted by the allies they
continued to posture as holders of the moral high ground. This was already very shaky
ground. The fact is that the public execution of the Japanese leaders, played out to
whooping American audiences, had already been shown on newsreels throughout
America and Europe. Clearly questions of morality of the medieval practice of public
hangings didn’t enter into the debate.
Photographs of the murdered men were taken and have been widely and publicly
circulated since that fateful day. Impossible to disguise is the massive physical damage,
and the blood streaming consequences of their murders. These photographs were
distributed throughout the German population in an attempt to terrify them into abject
submission. Many would say it seems to have had that effect.
One of the principle executioners of the Nuremberg ‘trials murders were described as ‘a
nice Jewish boy.’ Whether he was nice or not is subjective. What is known is that he was
given a free hand to gloatingly make these last acts as tortured as could be imagined.
Each would suffer a long agonising death, literally by slow strangulation, after their faces
had been smashed against the sides of the trapdoors.
The hangman, John C. Woods, a sergeant in the United States Army, was Jewish. The
executions were deliberately bungled, the prisoners given a short drop so that their necks
would not be instantaneously broken to ensure their slow strangulation amidst the
utmost pain.
The official timing between the springing of the trap and death in the ten victims
(Goering had cheated the hangman by committing suicide) in minutes was 18, 24, 13, 10,
10, 12, 14, 14, 16 and 11-minutes.
The official United States undertaker, who was present at the executions, stated that:
‘The Jewish-American boy in charge of the execution (of Streicher) let him strangle,
horribly for a long, long minute.’ One of the executioners later, allegedly, committed
suicide.
Another of the executioners was the notorious British Albert Pierrepoint. Of French
ancestry he showed no qualms about the killings. He was a well-known drunkard who
went into the business of running public houses after capital punishment was ended. He
made stage tours of Blackpool, a resort notorious for its tackiness. Before his own end he
conceded that capital punishment was wrong. Let’s hope his afterlife Nemesis offers
clemency for he never did whilst scuttling from condemned cell to condemned cell. His
victims included teenagers, some found afterwards to be not guilty of the crimes for
which they had been hanged.
Note: ‘Out of 3,000 people employed on the staff at the Nuremberg Courts, 2,400 were
Jews.’ - Louis Marschalko, Special Correspondent; Playwright and Poet
BRITAIN - How Cowards Hang Heroes
Prior to the execution of German martyrs; the high command, political leaders, officers
both men and women, secret British tests were conducted to allegedly ‘improve the
efficiency’ of the methods used to execute those condemned to die. In documents held at
Records Office in Kew, London, the tests revealed that it was taking up to 25 minutes for
victims of Nuremberg and the military tribunals to die on the gallows.
The experiments disclosed in these files confirmed that the hangings did not inflict
instantaneous death, either by accident or design. The hearts of those hanged could be
heard beating after execution. Death could only be hastened when doctors injected
chloroform and other substances into the victims’ bodies.
Despite the evidence the British Home Office continued to take the view that hanging
was ‘the most humane and efficient form of execution’ until capital punishment ended in
1965. Since then it has been confirmed that a number of executed men, women and
youths were totally innocent victims of miscarriages of justice and have since been
pardoned. I would have thought the last persons qualified to issue a pardon in such cases
were the judicial murderers of these unfortunate people. The question is, will those who
sentenced them to death, and carried out their executions, be pardoned in the thereafter.
It is for us to wonder; it is for them to find out.
The experiments in hanging techniques at Hamelin in Germany during the winter
months of 1945 / 1946 involved the putting to death of 64 Germans who had been found
guilty on trumped up charges that would never have been for a moment considered in
any properly set up legitimate court of law.
Because of the production line scale of sentences being handed out at these artificial
courts there were as many as thirteen prisoners awaiting execution at any one time. It
was felt that there would be an ‘inordinate delay’ if bodies were left suspended for more
than an hour or more which was necessary to ensure someone hanged could not regain
consciousness.
A doctor F. E. Buckland, Assistant Director of Pathology, British Army of the Rhine, was
asked by the Director of Medical Services whether he thought there was any objection to
injecting the body immediately after the execution with lethal dose of ‘some chemical
solution’. This was to ensure that the body could be removed ‘without delay.’ According to
the file, Doctor Buckland felt no ‘ethical objection’ and believed 10 percent of chloroform
was appropriate.
The first series of killings took place on December 13, 1945. To be hanged were three
women and ten men. The women were to be hanged one by one, the men in pairs.
According to the file, after the trap was sprung the medical officer descended the stairs to
the room below where, standing on a step ladder, he listened to the beat of the heart for
half a minute. He would then inject 10cc of chloroform.
Some he injected directly into the heart, which he noticed caused instant heart
stoppage. Others were injected intravenously in the arm, which caused the heart to stop
within a few seconds. This latter method of course proves beyond all doubt that the
hanged victims were at that point still alive.
In a later third series of executions on May 15, 1946 the doctor used an
electrocardiograph. This is a medical instrument that records the electrical activity of the
heart. It revealed that inaudible impulses were produced for a further ten minutes in the
hanged victims’ bodies. In this case twenty-minutes would elapse between hanging and
release through death. Dr Buckland concluded that in future executions bodies should be
left hanging for fifteen minutes, until a heartbeat was no longer audible; this rather than
the customary hour interval. This the doctor surmised, would make it ‘possible to affect
dual executions at half hourly intervals.’ It was necessary, the hanging process were
putting to death a constant stream of victims, including women and children as young as
thirteen years of age. In the courage and dignity of their final moments each of the
victims of British vengeance was a hero or heroine. Their names will be honoured with
the passing of time; which is much more than can be said for their murderers.
I am indebted to my friend, now sadly deceased, Vivian Bird. Also The Times October
16 1946. The Times March 10 2000 (Doctors Speeded up War Crime Hangings). James
Bacque, Other Losses. MacDonald 1989. David Irving, Churchill, London 1990. A. J. Beale,
Advance to Barbarism. Professor Dr. Henry Barnes. The Question of German War Guilt.
NORWAY - Knut Hamsun - Norway’s Soul
Many great men have the utmost respect for the great Norwegian classical composer,
Edvard Grieg. Certainly he shares a podium with the great composers of Europe. As a
Norwegian he embodies the soul of Norway; it pours from his stories, his sagas; every
musical note. In Norway he is rightly revered. Even great men stand in his shadow so
what kind of a Norwegian casts a shadow bigger?
The Norwegian author Knut Hamsun (1859 – 1952) was deserving of the Nobel Prize in
Literature awarded in 1920. A handsome and debonair gentleman; unlike most people’s
idea of a poet and writer, he was described as the Soul of Norway by the venerable King
Haakon X11 of Norway.
Hamsun published more than twenty novels; he was a prolific poet and writer;
philosophy and wisdom was his life-long driving passion. His stories were turned into
motion pictures. A true European and standard bearer for ‘blood and soil’ there is little
doubt as to his belief in the importance or erecting walls to protect the race. He believed
implicitly that writers should ‘describe the whisper of blood and the pleading of bone
marrow.’
Like Adolf Hitler, Knut Hamsun is the spectre who simply will not go away. Despite his
undeniable standing in history his memory stays to haunt Norway. It constantly reminds
Norwegians of their base treachery, opportunist lack of generosity and narrowmindedness. Unfortunately for Norwegian honour and posterity many others share this
opinion.
We shall soon discover the reason why, in politically correct Norway today, with its
festering wounds caused by self-inflicted injury of non-European immigration, it has no
wish to be reminded of their philosopher father’s dire warnings, which have come true.
Today Norway is the truculent Scandinavian teenager having little wish to be told, ‘I told
you so; you should have listened to your father.’
What they do not wish to hear either is the generally accepted summing up of Hamsun;
‘’He is considered to be one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the
past hundred years.’
The Norwegian literary giant’s writings influenced the great writers, correspondents and
thinkers of the 20th Century. One can well imagine the constant eulogies this great man
of Norway would have received if, instead of admiring Adolf Hitler, he had thrown himself
at the feet of Stalin.
Those whose writing careers blossomed as a consequence of his intellect and style,
include Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Maxim Gorky, Stefan Zweig,
Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse. Of him Isaac Bashevis Singer described him as ‘the father
of the modern school of literature in every aspect.’ He went on to say, ‘the whole modern
school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun.’ Ernest Hemingway, who
was incidentally a friend of my father, wrote: ‘Hamsun taught me to write.’
Thomas Mann described Hamsun as, ‘a descendant of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich
Nietzsche. Arthur Koestler was a great fan of Hamsun’s romantic tales. The great
American writer H.G Wells praised the Norwegian writer’s Markens Grøde (1917). It was
for this novel that Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Charles Bukowski
described Hamsun as ‘the greatest writer to have ever lived.’
It is futile to compare any writer with other great men of the pen. It is easier however
to identify their greatness with those as internationally revered. Hamsun is considered in
the same light as England’s Shakespeare or Charles Dickens, America’s Jack London and
H.G. Wells, Russia’s Dostoevsky or Maxim Gorky; Germany’s Goethe. Had he instead had
a leaning towards classical music think Ludwig van Beethoven or Amadeus Mozart.
To liberals Hamsun is an irritating dilemma; they despise the man but find it difficult if
not impossible to refute his views: ‘The Negroes are and will remain Negroes, an
emerging human form from the tropics, rudimentary organs on the body of white society.
Instead of founding intellectual elite, America has established a mulatto stud farm’
He was no armchair philosopher; he knew his America. As a young man he spent
several years in the United States, travelling and working at various occupations. The
experience was the influence behind his published Fra det Moderne Amerikas Aansliv
(1889).
The great Norwegian detested British oppression and a fervent champion of the more
unfortunate nations long before the term Third World was dreamed up. He was not
alone; much of Norwegian thinking between the wars was hostile to British and
sympathetic of the New Order in the awakening Europe drawn to the social revolution,
order and prosperity of modern Fascist Italy and later the National Socialist epoch of Adolf
Hitler.
In 1943 as Germany battled for survival, Hamsun sent Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels
his cherished Nobel Prize for Literature as a gift. He was later to meet Adolf Hitler.
Perhaps most poignant of all was throughout this period Hamsun was revered by
Norwegians but was one of the few who refused to eat his words when pictures on
Norwegian walls changed from those of Hitler to portraits of Winston Churchill.
Throughout the war he was unstinting in his support for Hitler’s Germany and despite
the turn of events refused to alter his views. A day after Adolf Hitler’s death, Hamsun
wrote: ‘I am not worthy to speak aloud of Adolf Hitler. And his life and work do not invite
sentimental words. He was a warrior for mankind and a herald of the gospel of justice for
all nations. He was a reformative figure of the highest rank, and it was his historic fate
that he had to work in a time of unprecedented baseness, which in the end brought him
down. Thus, I suppose, must the ordinary Western European look upon Adolf Hitler. And
we, his closest followers, now bow our heads before his immortal shroud.’ Aftenposten,
May. 1945
This placed the post-war Norwegian regime on the horns of a dilemma. When in
England T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) had unwisely signalled his support for Adolf
Hitler and campaigned against war with Germany he was soon to become the victim of a
‘road accident’; certainly his assassins belonged to Special Branch and later met a similar
fate.
In Norway’s case it was too late for that, the Hamsun cat was well out of the bag. He
was also at this time a grand and revered old gentleman 86 years of age. The father of
Norwegian writing was by this time almost deaf and had suffered two minor strokes
through the course of the war. The Norwegian regime was almost certainly under
pressure from the allied perspective to be rid of the Hamsun legend. What might be
done? There was just one thing left and that was to assassinate the philosopher’s
standing and reputation.
Arrested June 14, 1945 he was charged with treason. In true Soviet style he was
confined to a psychiatric hospital for many long months. Forced to undergo psychiatric
examination the results were, like a forthcoming Soviet election, tediously predictable. He
was found to have ‘permanently impaired mental faculties.’ This is a psychological copout because taken at their literal meaning the analysis is in fact meaningless; it could
equally be applied to a youthful university graduate.
The medical report, as desired, gave the Norwegian authorities the get out of jail
option they were desperate for. The last thing they wanted was a court case in which his
Norwegian patriotism could be put on trial. He was instead fined the ruinous sum of
325,000 kroner. This begs the question; if a defendant is too mentally impaired to be put
on trial is he not too mentally deficient to be subject to a fine, which would have not only
bankrupted him but deprived him and his family of all their family possessions and
inheritance.
Of course there is still heated debate as to his being charged, the guilty verdict and the
penalties handed down but today it is still too early for the rehabilitation of Norway’s
soul; it would be inappropriate timing; far better after the present corrupt regime, like
Israel and the Soviet Union, disintegrates through the march of progress.
The last word, as one might expect from a writer, comes from Hamsun himself. Despite
his advanced years he wrote his last book, Paa giengrodde Stier (On Overgrown Paths) in
1949. It is conceded that the writing, in which he deals scathingly about his psychiatrists
and the judges, leaves no doubt as to his fully functional mental faculties.
Opinion is still sharply divided. Danish author Thorkild Hansen believed implicitly that
the Norwegian writer’s fate was similar to that of writers persecuted by the Soviets. He
wrote the book The Hamsun Trial (1978). Hamsun was a man who didn’t mince his
words. ‘If you want to meet idiots,’ he had penned; ‘go to Norway. A motion picture called
simply Hamsun was based on Hansen’s book.
Knut Hamsun’s works remain as popular as ever in his home country and elsewhere. In
2009 a Norwegian biographer stated: ‘We can’t help loving him, though we have hated
him all these years. Than is our Hamsun trauma. He is the ghost that won’t stay in his
grave.’
The physical form but not the ghost of Knut Hamsun passed away on February 19, 1952
aged 92. His ashes are interred at his home’s gardens in Norholm, Norway.
ESTONIA - Alfred Rosenberg
German officers and servicemen, upon surrendering were seized, manacled under
armed guard, and stripped of their uniforms, decorations, insignia and personal
belongings. They were then placed in unheated cells under the harshest conditions. This
included lights burning 2-hours with guards waking them if they changed their sleeping
positions. Their rations were barely sufficient to keep them alive and sleep deprivation
was commonly used by their guards.
The wives and children of captured German officers were arrested and detained.
Although completely innocent of any offence they were insulted and abused over long
periods of time. Typical was that of Hedwig, the wife of Alfred Rosenberg, the great
Estonian born philosopher. She and the couple’s 16-year old daughter Irene were arrested
and imprisoned. Family members were not allowed visits.
Upon the pre-emptive invasion of Russia in 1940 Rosenberg had been appointed head
of the Reich Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories. Under his proposals the
population of these territories would be encouraged to resist the Soviet occupation of
their countries. These were primarily the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and
Belarus; The Ukraine and the Caucasus. Granted autonomy these nations would act as
buffer states between Germany and Russia, thus ensuring a peaceful and secure future
for Europe. He regarded Slavs as a branch of the Aryan race.
Rosenberg immediately repealed Stalin’s collective farm system, which essentially were
Western bankers’ plantations. He also issued an Agrarian Law in February 1942. This
annulled all Soviet legislation on farming and restored family farm to their original
owners. He also encouraged the populations of thee liberated lands to enlist in the armed
forces of the greater efforts being waged by the free nations of Axis.
Rosenberg’s success was remarkable and under his influence the greatest army in
European history, the only European army to exceed more than one million men under
arms, was recruited to wage war on their Soviet tormentors.
The unfortunate captive when ‘tried; was accused of crimes against peace and
executed by hanging on October 16 1946.
Online ‘encyclopaedia’ Wikipedia, put together by amateur historians claims Alfred
Rosenberg had nothing to say in his defence. This is quite untrue. It is however
understandable that there is little wish to publish the great philosopher’s thoughts before
being hanged with other leaders on the Jewish Feast Day Hoshana Raba, October 15 /
16.
STATEMENTS MADE BY ALFRED ROSENBERG BEFORE BEING HANGED
‘Crimes against Christianity? Did you ever pay any attention to the Russian crimes
against Christianity?’
‘The Russians have the nerve to sit in judgement, with thirty million lives on their
conscience? Talk about persecution of the Church! Why! They are the world's experts.
They killed priests by the thousands during their revolution. The persecution of the
Church is a big question that goes back hundreds of years, and there are several sides to
the question. The Lord only knows how much blood has been spilled by and because of
the Church.’
‘Of course they do not want to discuss the Versailles Treaty. That treaty explains how
the whole war came about. Even the Americans refused to sign that thing, because it was
so evil. Wilson had drawn up his Fourteen Points so carefully, and then when the time
came to make the peace treaty the French laid their secret treaties with the Poles and all
the rest on the table, and said that was what they were fighting for - and the Fourteen
Points were thrown into the waste paper basket.’
‘History also considers the murder of three thousand Chinese in the Opium War, and
the degradation of some three million Chinese by the British through their opium traffic.
And how about the 300,000 exterminated by an atomic bomb in Japan. And the air
attacks on our cities? That is all mass murder too!’
The Nuremberg show trials will presently be over and our fates decided. Let my
confession stand behind them: National Socialism was the European answer to a centuryold question.
It was the noblest of ideas to which a German could give all his strength. It made the
German nation a gift of unity; it gave the German Reich a new content. It was a social
philosophy and an ideal of blood-conditioned cultural cleanliness.
National Socialism was misused, and in the end demoralised, by men to whom its
creator had most fatefully given his confidence. The collapse of the Reich is historically
linked with this. But the idea itself was action and life, and that cannot and will not be
forgotten.
As other great ideas knew heights and depths, so National Socialism too will be reborn
someday in a new generation steeled by sorrow, and will create in a new form a new
Reich for the Germans. Historically ripened, it will then have fused the power of belief
with political caution.
In its peasant soil it will grow from healthy roots into a strong tree that will bear sound
fruit. National Socialism was the content of my active life. I served it faithfully, albeit with
some blundering and human insufficiency. I shall remain true to it as long as I still live.’
Sadly, the eastern nations that Alfred Rosenberg had freed from Soviet oppression were
returned to the dictator’s regime under terms and agreements co-signed by British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Rosenberg was yet another hero of the Reich. His daughter, Irene, subsequently
released, refused to collaborate with her country’s occupiers or their palace journalists
and historians.
RUSSIA - Rosenberg’s Russian Heroes
In his essay ‘The Russian Question at the End of the 20th Century,’ which appeared in
the renowned Russian literary magazine Nowij mir In July 1994, Solzhenitsyn wrote:
‘As for the attempt on the German side to form Russian volunteer units, and the belated
formation of the Vlassov army, I have already covered that in the Gulag Archipelago. It is
indicative of their valor and devotion that at the end of the winter of 1944-45, when it
was obvious to everyone that Hitler had lost the war, in those last few months, tens of
thousands of Russians volunteered for that Russian army of liberation.
‘This was the real voice of the Russian people. The story of the Russian Liberation Army
has been slandered by ideologues as well as the nations of the West, which could not
imagine that the Russians desired liberation for themselves. Nevertheless it represents a
heroic and manly page in Russian history. We still believe in its continuation and future
today’ - (Page 120 of Piper’s German translation, Munich, 1994.)
LIECHTENSTEIN - The Lion Principality
Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans and Russians, who had fought to free
their countries from the scourge of Soviet oppression, were rounded up by the allies as
the war came to an end. In many cases their offer to surrender was turned down by the
armies of the United States and Britain. The outcome was their surrender to the Red
Army. As they did so they were massacred in groups.
There is no record of the numbers involved. A guess can be made from the fact that
more than one million were engaged by the Russian Army of Liberation. Obviously all had
families either in the Soviet territories or about to be returned to the Soviets. A
conservative estimate therefore suggests the deaths and slavery of up to 4 million
members of the states freed from Soviet tyranny by the German Reich.
Tens of thousands were rounded up by the British 8 th Army and on trucks, trains and
ships forcefully deported with their refugee wives and children to the Soviet borders.
There, within earshot of British servicemen, they too were machine gunned in groups.
Many managed to free themselves and were scattered throughout middle Europe. Many
members of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) reached the small landlocked principality
of Liechtenstein. Despite its diminutive size and the close proximity of the Red Army this
lion-hearted community refused Soviet demands to return these unfortunate refugees to
the USSR. They were permitted to emigrate to Argentina.
GERMANY - Heroes Salute Heroes
In September 1939, after the speedy success of the Polish Campaign, surrendered
Polish generals and officers, as well as other ranks, were treated with the utmost chivalry
and in no way abused or ill-treated by their German victors.
Following the cessation of hostilities Adolf Hitler paid a personal visit to the tomb of
Marshall Jozef Pilsudski (1867 – 1935). President Pilsudski is regarded as Poland’s
greatest revolutionary, statesman and president. There, for a time the German leader
stood bareheaded with cap in hand in remembrance.
On September 3 1939 France declared war on her neighbour Germany. Having
defended her borders for 8 months Germany retaliated. On May 10 1940 German troops
invaded; within six weeks France surrendered. The threat to Germany’ western borders
had been lifted; the German high command could now focus on the eastern borders
where the Soviet Red Army was preparing for invasion.
Immediately following the fall of France, Adolf Hitler again made a conciliatory gesture
by visiting the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. There he paid homage to France’s former
emperor, who had for so long been an adversary of Germany.
Members of the French government were not molested. German servicemen undeniably
behaved impeccably towards the French populace; violations were punishable by court
martial; rape was a capital offence.
As a further remarkable act of conciliation the German head of state ordered that the
remains of Napoleon’s son, the ill-fated Napoleon 11, be removed from its crypt in Vienna
and reinterred at les Invalides in Paris.
By contrast, in 1943 at the Tehran Conference, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin proposed to
British Premier Winston Churchill that after the allied victory 50,000 German officers
should, without trial be summarily shot. As the Soviet ally had already executed virtually
all of his own Red Army general staff in 1937 such an act posed no particular problem.
The British war leader demurred not because he was opposed to the suggestion in
principle, or because doing so would be contrary to international law but because of
potential unfavourable reaction in Britain and United States.
The British leader proposed the immediate execution without trial of one hundred
National Socialist leaders and ‘trials’ for the rest. The Chief Soviet jurist at the allies
Nuremberg Trials was Andrej Vyshinsky. He was the infamous prosecutor at the notorious
Stalin show trials of the 1930s. Those on ‘trial’ and executed included many British
engineers, working in Russia, who were denounced as ‘imperialist spies.’
GERMANY - Wernher von Braun
When recently there were celebrations in the United States to commemorate the father
of Space Age travel, German scientist Wernher von Braun, British media turned a Nelson’s
Eye. Perhaps understandable since his pioneering V1 and V2 rockets had once caused
panic in wartime London. There was little need for such sour-faced reticence; the British
had, according to their own high command’s admission, started indiscriminate bombings
of civilians as a deliberate policy. When von Braun’s rocket-propelled missiles rained
down on London the country’s hapless strategists were reaping a harvest they had sown.
From a detached point of view one can only wonder at what triumphs Europe might
have achieved if, instead of waging war on National Socialist Germany, the so-called
democracies had at least let the country get on with running its affairs as its peoples
plainly wished. Apart from tearing up party manifestoes immediately after elections,
interference with the affairs of other countries seems to be something of a bad habit or
the democracies. It has to be added always with disastrous consequences, but sadly for
millions, governments, unlike children, never learn from their mistakes.
Space pioneer Wernher von Braun is idolised in the U.S. city of Huntsville, where the
former SS-Sturmbannführer, the man who designed V-2 rockets for the German war effort
during World War II, was later to build the Saturn V rocket. This spacecraft was to hurl
American astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on their mission to
the moon in 1969. Early in 2012 the city marked the scientist’s 100 th anniversary of his
birth.
The great scientist was born 1912 in the Polish town of Wirsitz. It was then, before the
victorious Allies dismembered Germany, part of West Prussia. Like many young boys and
men he had an insatiable appetite for anything relating to science fiction and space
travel. In 1920 the young Wernher’s reading material, much of it Jules Verne and H.G.
Wells, was fantasy.
The ambitious lad with a vision must have daydreamed of the time when fiction would
be turned into reality. After reading noted physicist Hermann Oberth's 1923 report Die
Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket to Space) he left fiction behind. H took up the
study of calculus and trigonometry so he could better master the physics of rocketry. By
the time he received his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1934, von Braun
already was working for the German military by assisting Oberth in building and firing
small, liquid-fueled rockets. During World War II, he led rocket research at the German
propulsion laboratory in Peenemünde on the Baltic coast.
But von Braun wanted to do more than develop weapons. He wanted to use rocket
power to fly to space, to create a new frontier for scientific exploration and, eventually,
peaceful human colonization of the stars. With these goals in mind, as the war ended in
Europe, the team of scientists was invited to hone their skills in the United States.
The invitation really was a no-brainer, as the Americans would put it. It was either the
U.S. or Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union was already vacuuming up the best of German
scientific talent, along with their laboratories, their knowhow; factories. If it could be
moved the Russians, Americans and British certainly moved it. When they couldn’t they
simply dynamited it. Winston Churchill’s determination to once and for all remove
Germany as a trade competitor was already well known; National Socialism had little to
do with it; but it served as an excuse for rapacious war.
Speaking to U.S. President Harry Truman at Fulton in the United States in Mach, 1946,
Winston Churchill conceded ‘The war wasn’t only about abolishing fascism, but to conquer
German sales markets. We could have, if we had intended so, prevented this war from
breaking out without doing one shot, but we didn’t want to.’
It was equally well put when John Flynn in1944 surmised: ‘The enemy aggressor is
always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always
moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our
victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and
paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.’ In Germany’s case
their industrial and scientific might was coveted by Britain, Russian and the
U.S.A.
The U.S. was keen to get started on its own space program. The U.S. military
was well aware that Communist Russia, their former henchmen in international
piracy, was thinking along similar lines. They too were largely dependent upon
the Reich’s kidnapped scientists. The American effort was at the time centred
a t White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. There was built, without the aid of
computers, the first powerful engines that would power rockets capable of breaking free
of the earth’s restraining atmosphere.
In 1950, von Braun and his team moved to Huntsville to oversee rocket development
for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal. There, the team led by von Braun, embarked upon
the development of the Jupiter Rocket. The community was at the time the nation’s
fastest growing town and became known not as Peenemünde Mk 2 but as ‘Rocket City.’
That was a bit more suited to American verbiage.
By the time the Marshall Center opened on Redstone Arsenal in 1960, von Braun had
been a naturalised U.S. citizen for five years. As Marshall's first director, a post he held
from July 1 1960 to January 27, 1970, he spearheaded development of NASA's Mercury
and Apollo space programs.
Without the benefit of modern computers or state of the art manufacturing tools
essential to the modern aerospace industry, the team built and tested the most powerful
engines the world had ever seen. Even then, during the very early years, the engine
designs had the power and the effrontery necessary for tossing massive vehicles out of
the earth’s atmosphere. Public interest in space exploration was fired the fiction was
finally turning into reality. Wernher had come a long way since studying H.G Wells and
Jules Verne as a schoolboy.
As he labored von Braun tirelessly aimed not just at space but at the public
imagination; he needed an enthusiastic public to put rocket fuel in his bid to attract
capital from the capital, Washington DC. He constantly made impassioned public
presentations about the future of space travel in Collier's Weekly, at many seminars, and
assisted in making documentary features for Walt Disney.
His crowning achievement came in November 1967, when the massive Saturn V rocket
was successfully launched for the first time. Just 12 months later this monument to
human achievement would propel the first human voyage to the moon; explorers would
walk there for the first time on July 21, 1969. It was a small step for mankind; a giant
step for Wernher von Braun.
In 1970, von Braun moved his family to Washington to lead strategic planning for the
agency. He retired from NASA in 1972. Von Braun died in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 16,
1977. The timing of his spiritual journey to the afterlife was an appropriate moment’s
departure in earth time. That same year, the first space shuttle began flight tests.
PROPHETIC WORDS - Prophecies
That Today Come True
THE LIES WILL BREAK DOWN
Do not let yourself be confused by the uproar that will now reign throughout the world.
The lies will one day break down under their own weight and the truth will again triumph.
The hour will come when we shall stand pure and undefiled as our aims and beliefs have
always been.
Farewell, my dear Harald. Whether we shall ever see each other again lies in the hand
of God. If it is not to be, then always be proud to have belonged to a family that even in
the face of disaster remains true to the Fuehrer to the very last and true to his pure and
Holy cause. All the best and my heartfelt greetings. Your Papa.’ - Joseph Goebbels written
in the cellars of the Reich Chancellery.
Before taking their lives Joseph and his wife Magda wrote to their son Harald, who was
not in the bunker with them. They will have assumed that the letters would one day be
made public, which they were. This being the case the full letters should be read as being
vital to the understanding of the driving principles of National Socialism and what
endeared hundreds of millions to ‘the new social order religion.’ It leaves one wondering,
was this the end or the beginning of National Socialism? After all, the crucifiers of Jesus
Christ deluded themselves that the crucifixion would mark the end of Christianity.
BEFORE BEING HANGED - HERMAN GOERING
‘Next to my own people, I feel closest sympathy with the English. Anyway, one thing is
clear - Germany must rise either with the English or the Russians and the Russians seem
to have the upper hand. They are clever, too.’
‘My people have been humiliated before. Loyalty and hatred will unite them again. Who
knows but that in this very hour the man is born who will unite my people - born of our
flesh and bones, to avenge the humiliation we suffer now.’
As I write this relationships between President Vladimir’s Russia and Angela Merkel’s
German are strengthening. The British Empire has evaporated just as did the Soviet
Union. In fact, Britain is disintegrating. Scotland is seeking independence whilst Wales
and Northern Ireland are granted greater autonomy. England, through race mixing and
race ghettoes, is becoming tribal. It is going into fast reverse to increasingly resemble the
poverty and socially dysfunctional warring societies of Medieval England.
RUDOLF HESS:
‘Just wait twenty years. Germany will have risen again!’
‘I should do it all again, even if it meant going to the martyr's stake to be burned. A
temporary defeat in war is nothing in terms of history. Nothing can prevent the Germanic
race from fulfilling its destiny. When America and Russia have exhausted themselves in
war, then will be the time for Germany to rise from the ashes.’
Note: Germany today is second only to the People’s Republic of China in exports and
trade:
WILHELM FRICK
‘Every race has the right to protect itself, just as the Jewish race has done for
thousands of years. You will have the same problem in America. The whites don't want to
intermarry with Negroes. The (National Socialist) Nuremberg Laws were for the
protection of the Aryan race.’
This is a perfect analysis of America today. It is common knowledge that the White
House, Congress and Senate are Israeli Occupied Zones. The U.S. today is almost totally
dependent upon Jewish patronage and votes; media support. The Jews were in this
instance smarter than the European talking heads.
HANS FRITSCHE
‘On the contrary, my friends, this means the beginning of the Hitler legend.’
Of increasing concern, voiced ever more stridently in the Western media, is the
increasing positive interest being shown in the Third Reich era. As a consequence,
fighting a losing battle, the mainstream media to counter Hitler’s growing appeal are
panicking. Every newspaper, television station is pumping out more and more hysterical
anti-Nazi scare stories. In Germany, using a loophole in the law, which forbids the public
to read material from the period, re-published Mein Kampf is being snatched up by
hundreds of thousands of Germans wanting to hear the non-allied version of history.
IT HAPPENED
‘Hitler talked to me in July, 1940, about the possible hostilities with Russia. He wanted
to be ready to forestall an attack by Russia in the autumn. Hitler was convinced that
Russia would squeeze or attack us in the near future, and that England would encourage
it.’ General Alfred Jodl.
We now know that Hitler’s invasion of Russia was pre-emptive; even the Russian high
Command concedes their armies were poised to invade Germany when the Reich struck
and took them by surprise. The British media, despite all the evidence, continue to deny
it. The same Western media, long after Russia concedes responsibility for the murders of
tens of thousands of Polish officers, still claim it as German crime,
IT HAPPENED
‘A few years from now the lawyers of the world will condemn this trial. You cannot have
a trial without law.’ – Joachim von Ribbentrop.
‘The last time I saw Hitler was on April 23 1945. I felt sure that Hitler intended to
remain in Berlin until the end. I was able to ask him what he wanted me to do if it came
to the point of surrender. He said that I should try to remain on good terms with Britain.
He always wanted that, you know. I was always for a rapprochement with Russia. Hitler
thought we would be attacked sooner or later. History will show that Hitler was right and
I was wrong.’ – Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The European Union was a National Socialist concept. Shortly after the war’s end the
Common Market was formed. The signatory of it was Edward Heath’s government.
Edward Heath was a World War 2 officer later alleged to be partly responsible for
arranging the delivery of tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans to Stalin for slavery and
slaughter.
Britain had lost its Imperial Preference, which was sold to the Americans to finance
Churchill’s war. Its Empire had evaporated and its Commonwealth a culture club
absorbing British taxpayers’ money to keep it together. Today, disintegrating Britain is
largely dependent not bon its self-sufficiency, its empire or its Commonwealth, but on
European hegemony. Pride certainly went before Britain’s fall.
ALFRED ROSENBERG
‘Crimes against Christianity? Did you ever pay any attention to the Russian crimes
against Christianity?’
‘The Russians have the nerve to sit in judgement, with thirty million lives on their
conscience? Talk about persecution of the Church! Why! They are the world's experts.
They killed priests by the thousands during their revolution. The persecution of the
Church is a big question that goes back hundreds of years, and there are several sides to
the question. The Lord only knows how much blood has been spilled by and because of
the Church.’
As other great ideas knew heights and depths, so National Socialism too will be reborn
someday in a new generation steeled by sorrow, and will create in a new form a new
Reich for the Germans. Historically ripened, it will then have fused the power of belief
with political caution.
In its peasant soil it will grow from healthy roots into a strong tree that will bear sound
fruit. National Socialism was the content of my active life. I served it faithfully, albeit with
some blundering and human insufficiency. I shall remain true to it as long as I still live.
Today’s Western media mounts a newspaper and television blitzkrieg about phony
German atrocities whilst keeping quiet about Soviet atrocities. This is hardly a balanced
media. The more enquiring intelligent minds will ask the question. Can a Western media
that covers up the Soviet Union’s iniquities be trusted to tell us the truth on other matters
such as World War 2 or foreign policy today?
DEAD MEN’S PROPHESIES
‘After all, the Talmud itself told the Jews to preserve their racial purity. The Jews are
making a mistake if they make a martyr out of me, you will see. I didn't create the
problem; it existed for hundreds of years. I saw how the Jews were pushing themselves
into all spheres of German life, and I said that they should be pushed out. After all, if you
read the Talmud, you will see that the Gentiles should take measures to protect
themselves against the Jews.’ Julius Streicher, Publisher and Agricultural Expert.
Reports coming from Germany and indeed Europe show a sharp rise in resentment
against the power being wielded by Jews and the pro-Israeli lobby:
ADOLF HITLER
‘I nourish the conviction that the hour will come when millions of men who now curse
us will take a stand behind us to welcome the new Europe, our common creation born of
a painful and laborious struggle and an arduous triumph - a Europe which is the symbol of
greatness, honour, strength, honesty and justice.’
Germany was united again at the end of the 1980s when the Berlin Wall fell to the
enjoyment of the world. Hitler’s popularity is increasing. Mein Kampf in scores of
countries is still a bestseller.
‘.......By the sacrifice of our soldiers, by my comradeship with them right to the end, has
been sown the seed which will spring forth in the history of Germany and of Europe in the
resurrection of National Socialism together with a nation truly united.’ - Adolf Hitler, Last
Will and Testament. April 29 1945
It is happening
‘The day will come when we shall make an agreement with the men of other Aryan
nations. Then there will come a union between the entire one, good, ruling race
throughout the world.’ Adolf Hitler.
THE LAST WORDS OF THE VICTORS
‘We made a monster, a devil out of Hitler. Therefore we couldn’t disavow it after the
war. After all, we mobilized the masses against the devil himself. So we were forced to
play our part in this diabolic scenario after the war. In no way we could have pointed out
to our people that the war only was an economic preventive measure.’ - US Foreign
Minister James Baker (1992).
RIP U.S. / BRITAIN – OBITUARY - Winston Churchill
Half-American yet voted oddly as the Greatest Englishman, once mocked: ‘Of course
history will be kind to me for I shall write it.’ This said much for the man’s arrogance.
However, he could not have foreseen a time when, thanks to the internet’s free flow of
information, earlier statements would receive a far bigger readership than he could have
imagined. Hi earlier gloating might well be engraved on his obituary and the gravestones
of millions who perished and suffered as a direct consequence of his policies.
‘Should Germany merchandise (do business) again in the next 50 years we have led
this war (WW1) in vain.’ - Winston Churchill in The Times (1919)
‘We will force this war upon Hitler, if he wants it or not.’ - Winston Churchill (1936
broadcast)
‘Germany becomes too powerful. We have to crush it.’ - Winston Churchill. (Nov. 1936
speaking to U.S. - General Robert E. Wood)
‘This war is an English war and its goal is the destruction of Germany.’ - Winston
Churchill (autumn 1939 broadcast).
‘The war wasn’t only about abolishing fascism, but to conquer sales markets. We could
have, if we had intended so, prevented this war from breaking out without doing one
shot, but we didn’t want to.’- Winston Churchill to Truman (Fulton, U.S. March 1946)
‘Germany’s unforgivable crime before World War Two was its attempt to loosen its
economy out of the world trade system and to build up an independent exchange system
from which the world-finance couldn’t profit anymore. ...’ --Winston Churchill (The Second
World War - Bern, 1960)
‘Not the political doctrine of Hitler has hurled us into this war. The reason was the
success of his increase in building a new economy. The roots of war were envy, greed
and fear.’ - Major General J.F.C. Fuller, historian, England.
‘We didn’t go to war in 1939 to save Germany from Hitler...or the continent from fascism.
Like in 1914, we went to war for the not lesser noble cause that we couldn’t accept a
German hegemony over Europe.’ - Sunday Correspondent, London (17.9.1989)
‘The enemy is the German Reich and not Nazism, and those who still haven’t understood
this, haven’t understood anything.’ – Churchill’s chief counsellor Robert Lord Vansittart (as
said to foreign minister Lord Halifax, September 1940)