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Goebbels and World War II Propaganda
By Mark Weber
Source: Institute for Historical Review

Apart from Hitler himself, perhaps the most fascinating figure of Third Reich Germany is the regime’s chief publicist and spokesman, Joseph Goebbels. He is widely portrayed as a master of lies and deceitful propaganda. But this familiar image, which is particularly entrenched in the United States, is itself a propaganda falsehood.

He was raised in a middle-class, Roman Catholic family in a medium-size city in the German Rhineland. He had a first-rate education, and was an outstanding student. At the age of 24, he earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Heidelberg. After an unsuccessful effort to find employment as a writer for major national daily papers, and a nine-month stint working at a bank in Cologne, he became an activist in the fledgling National Socialist Party.

In 1926, at the age of 29, Hitler appointed him party district leader, or Gauleiter, of Berlin. He lost no time taking firm control of the small and feuding Party organization in the nation’s most important city, and infusing it with new dynamism. He quickly proved himself a quick-witted and sharp-tongued public speaker, and a courageous, skilled and creative organizer.

In early 1933, six weeks after Hitler became Chancellor, the 35-year-old Goebbels was named “Reich Minister for Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment.” In this newly-created position, and then as President of the “Reich Culture Chamber” (Reichskulturkammer), he exercised wide control over Germany’s newspapers, radio broadcasting, motion pictures, magazines and book publishing. More than anyone else, he set the parameters and tone of the nation’s mass media and cultural life.

During the first years of the Second World War, 1939 to 1942, his job was relatively easy. With an almost unbroken string of German and Axis military victories, maintaining public morale was not difficult. His greatest challenge came during the final two years of the war, as Germany’s armies suffered ever more terrible military reverses, and as her great cities were battered into ruins under a growing storm of murderous British-American bombing. It was during this period, as utter defeat loomed, that Goebbels most strikingly proved his skill as a master molder of public opinion. In spite of the drastically worsening situation — both on the front lines and at home — he largely succeeded in maintaining public morale, confidence in Hitler’s leadership, and even hope.

One of the best profiles of this man is the biography by German historian Helmut Heiber. Although his portrayal is highly critical and generally unflattering, the author nonetheless acknowledges his subject’s extraordinary talents and abilities. Goebbels, he notes, “was able, until the very last minute, to encourage and exploit a blind trust in Hitler and his genius. It is indeed one of the macabre phenomena of the Third Reich that even in their country’s agony the mass of the German people remained docile and faithful to Hitler’s banner … In spite of everything they had experienced, they kept the faith.”

After the great defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943, Goebbels was the first official forthrightly to acknowledge the gravity of the peril that faced the nation and Europe, and frankly to concede that Germany could lose the war. His frankness and even courage during these increasingly difficult months won him a measure of popular admiration. Writes Heiber: “As other influential Nazis began to creep into their shells, Goebbels could dare to appear before a mob and not only gain a hearing, but even arouse faith and hope …”

As the war dragged on, Goebbels’ front-page editorial essays in the weekly paper Das Reich played an increasingly important role in sustaining public morale. They were widely reprinted and routinely read over the radio. “His articles in Das Reich were indeed excellent, brilliantly written, and full of bright ideas,” Heiber writers. He goes on: “Goebbels’ articles were carefully worked out more than a week before they were to appear, written in excellent, polished German, stylistically enjoyable and relatively discriminating in content; often they seemed illumined by the lofty wisdom of a great thinker. Their very titles were reminiscent of philosophical treatises: `On the Meaning of War,’ `The Essential Nature of the Crisis,’ `On the Work of the Spirit,’ `On Speaking and Being Silent,’ `The Indispensability of Freedom,’ `About National Duty in War.’ … It is all very well turned and very solid. These articles made an impression, and Goebbels knew it.”

During this period, he also directed German newspapers, magazines and newsreels to stress the themes of continental unity and a common European destiny, and the goal of building a peaceful and prosperous community of nations. (One notable exception to this was a kind of official silence regarding Poland and the Poles. And, of course, the German media was vehemently anti-Jewish.)

In keeping with the outlook of Germany’s wartime leadership, Goebbels instructed the German press, radio and newsreels to portray other nations and ethnic groups tactfully, and with regard for the sovereignty and national character of other peoples. He stressed the importance of treating other nations and peoples with tact and respect.

This outlook was laid out in confidential guidelines to the German media In February 1943, Goebbels issued an internal directive in which he ordered:

“The entire propaganda work of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and the [German] National Socialist state must accordingly be organized to make clear, not just to the German nation, but also to the other European peoples, including the peoples in the occupied Eastern territories, and in the countries still under [Soviet] Bolshevik rule, that the victory of Adolf Hitler and of German arms is in their own most basic self interest.

“It is therefore inappropriate to hurt the feelings of inner self-worth of these peoples, directly or indirectly, especially those of the eastern nationalities, particularly in public speeches or writings … Stalin and the Bolshevik system should be attacked as bestial, but not the peoples who have been subdued by them.

“Similarly inappropriate is any discussion of the future new order of Europe that might create the impression among people of foreign nationality that the German leadership intends to maintain any long-term relationship of subjugation .

“Completely out of place are any remarks suggesting that Germany might set up colonies in the East or carry out a colonial policy, or would treat the land or its inhabitants as objects of exploitation . …

“Following their systematic destruction by the Bolsheviks [in accord with Stalin’s `scorched earth’ order of July 1941], the occupied Eastern territories will be rebuilt under German leadership. With the riches of the soil, this will secure, for the long-term future, freedom in food and raw materials, as well as the social advancement for Germany and all of Europe, and, thereby, also for the peoples living in the East.”

A few weeks later, in mid-March 1943, Goebbels reinforced these “guiding principles” in a talk to foreign journalists about the “new Europe.” He said:

“The severe measures that Germany has been forced by the war situation to introduce in the occupied Eastern territories are valid only for the duration of the war. The new Europe will be held together not by compulsion, but rather it will be built on the basis of free will. There will be no dictatorship over the various nations of Europe. Individual national identity will not be extinguished … No European country will be obliged to introduce any particular social-political system. If countries want to hold on to their traditional democracy, that’s their own business.”

One of the most emotionally moving and enduring chapters of the Second World War is the mass killing at Katyn and other places in April 1940 by Soviet secret police of some 14,000 Polish officers and Polish intellectuals, who had been captured and rounded up when eastern Poland was invaded and occupied by the Soviets half a year earlier. For decades this has been an especially painful subject for the Polish people, because this was the annihilation not merely of thousands of fellow Poles, but of a significant portion of the nation’s intellectual, political and military leadership. (This grim story is movingly dramatized, for example, in the 2007 Polish feature film, titled Katyn.)

In April 1943 Germany announced to the world that a mass grave of murdered Poles had been discovered in the Katyn forest, near Smolensk, in occupied Russia. Goebbels saw to it that this sensational news was prominently highlighted in the German media. In accord with his instructions, newspapers and magazines devoted great attention to the story, giving it weeks of detailed, often front-page coverage.

In London, officials of the Polish government in exile took a keen interest in this discovery, because for several years Soviet officials had refused to provide any information to Polish authorities about the fate of the thousands of Polish officers that the Soviets had taken prisoner in 1939, and of whom all trace had been lost since the spring of 1940. Shortly after the German announcement, Polish officials in London asked the International Committee of the Red Cross in neutral Switzerland to investigate. The German authorities quickly agreed. This prompted the Soviet government to accuse the Poles of collusion with the Germans, and then to break relations with the Polish government in London.

Goebbels traced the unfolding of this story in his diary. In the entry of April 14, 1943, he noted: “We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU [Soviet secret police], for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand scale. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found … I give instructions to make the widest possible use of this propaganda material.” (In fact, the number of Poles killed was about 14,000, of whom some 4,500 were shot and buried at Katyn. Most were killed by the Soviets at two other sites.)

Three days later, he noted: “The Katyn incident is developing into a gigantic political affair which may have wide repercussions. We are exploiting it in every manner possible.” In the dairy entry of April 27, he reports: “The Katyn incident has taken a really sensational turn through the fact that the Soviets have broken off diplomatic relations with the Poles, giving the attitude of the Polish government-in-exile [with regard to the Katyn matter] as the reason.”

The next day, in the entry of April 28, Goebbels remarked with some pride: “The most important theme of all international discussion is naturally the break between Moscow and the Polish émigré government. All enemy broadcasts and newspapers agree that this break represents a one hundred percent victory for German propaganda and especially for me personally. The commentators marvel at the extraordinary cleverness with which we have been able to convert the Katyn incident into a highly political question …One can speak of a complete triumph of German propaganda. Throughout this whole war we have seldom been able to register such a success.”

And the next day, in the entry of April 29, Goebbels noted: “The Polish conflict still holds the center of the stage. Seldom since the beginning of the war has any affair stirred up so much public discussion as this. The Poles are given a brush-off by the English and the Americans as if they were enemies. It is admitted that I succeeded in driving a deep wedge into the enemy…”

The break in relations between the Soviet and Polish governments was major diplomatic and public relations setback for the Allied war effort. It made an embarrassing mockery of the goals proclaimed by the Allied leaders. It underscored the pretense and hypocrisy of the claims of the British, American and Soviet governments that they were fighting for freedom and democracy. In his skillful and energetic treatment of the Katyn massacre story, Goebbels contributed significantly to a major Allied political defeat — and thereby scored what was perhaps his greatest single wartime propaganda achievement.

It’s worth comparing how the Katyn massacre was dealt with in the German wartime media, which was under Goebbels’ supervision, with how it was treated in the American media during this same period. Not only in Germany, but across Europe, the press and other media gave prominent and detailed attention to this story, and to the break in relations between the Polish and Soviet governments that it triggered.

In the United States, newspapers and magazines understandably gave much less attention to the Katyn affair, but they could not entirely ignore it, especially after it brought on an embarrassing break in the Allied coalition. The American media, acting in harmony with the views and interests of the US government and of America’s most important military ally, the Soviet Union, basically treated the Katyn matter as a German propaganda lie.

The tone for how this was handled in the US media was set by the Office of War Information, an official US government propaganda agency. Its director, Elmer Davis, spoke about Katyn in a radio broadcast on May 3, 1943, in which he dismissed the German reports on this as a great propaganda hoax.

American newspapers echoed this official view. Writing in The New York Times, foreign affairs commentator Anne O’Hare McCormick, explained to readers of that influential daily that there was no proof that the officers had even been killed. William L. Shirer, a prominent American journalist, who is perhaps best known for his best-selling but historically deceitful book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, dismissed the Berlin reports on Katyn as “German propaganda.”

The United Press, a major US wire service news agency, dealt with the matter in a dispatch that appeared in many American newspapers. This UP item, which was typical of American press treatment of the matter, referred to what it called the “alleged” disappearance of the Polish officers which, it went on, “has been used by the Berlin radio for propaganda purposes. The Germans claim the men were killed.”

Another prominent American daily paper explained that the German reports about Katyn had been “concocted with diabolical cunning.” In the US capital, The Washington Post told readers that “the assumption of loyal members of the United Nations [that is, the alliance headed by the US, Britain and the Soviet Union] must be that they [the Poles] were killed by the Germans.”

While Germany’s wartime media was not always entirely accurate or fair, with regard to this very important chapter of World War II, Goebbels and the German media told the truth, while American officials and the US media told lies.

In addition to his work as the nation’s chief spokesman and propagandist, Goebbels took on ever greater organizational and policy-making responsibilities during the war, playing an increasingly important role in keeping the nation’s industrial and social machinery functioning.

In the summer of 1944 Hitler named him “Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Mobilization.” Thus, during the final catastrophic months of the war, Goebbels — along with Armaments Minister Albert Speer — directed Germany’s human and material resources for maximum war production, while simultaneously seeing to the continued operation of the nation’s electric power and water plants, transportation and telephone systems, food and fuel supply networks, public schools, radio broadcasting and daily newspaper publishing.

This organizational feat of keeping essential social and community services functioning, while at the same time maintaining and even increasing armaments production — in spite of devastating aerial bombardment and an ever worsening military situation — is an achievement without historical parallel.

His final radio address to the nation, broadcast over what remained of a tattered network, was delivered on April 19, 1945, twelve days before his death. As he had done every year since 1933, he spoke on the eve of Hitler’s birthday. Even on this occasion, when the terrible end was glaringly obvious to all, Goebbels spoke with eloquent, controlled passion. While frankly acknowledging the supreme gravity of the situation, he was still able to persuade and inspire.

Contrary to the propaganda image that millions have come to accept, Goebbels was successful as a publicist and spokesman not because he was a master of the “Big Lie,” but rather as a result of his regard for accuracy and truth.

As biographer Heiber notes: “Goebbels was accordingly able to celebrate his information policy as being not only superior to the enemy’s in its monolithic character, but also of a `seriousness and credibility’ which `simply cannot be surpassed.’ The boast could be made with some justification: Seen in the long view, Goebbels preached, the best propaganda is that which does no more than serve the truth. Goebbels’ real lies, his conscious lies, always pertained to mere detail … Goebbels’ lies were more in the nature of those equivocations and evasions by which government spokesmen everywhere seek to ‘protect’ the ‘national interest’.”

The postwar image of Goebbels as a master dissembler is itself a propaganda distortion, explains French scholar Jacques Ellul in his classic study, Propaganda. He writes:

“There remains the problem of Goebbels’ reputation. He wore the title of Big Liar (bestowed by Anglo-Saxon propaganda) and yet he never stopped battling for propaganda to be as accurate as possible. He preferred being cynical and brutal to being caught in a lie. He used to say: `Everybody must know what the situation is.’ He was always the first to announce disastrous events or difficult situations, without hiding anything. The result was a general belief between 1939 and 1942 that German communiqués not only were more concise, clearer and less cluttered, but were more truthful than Allied communiqués … and, furthermore, that the Germans published all the news two or three days before the Allies. All this is so true that pinning the title of Big Liar on Goebbels must be considered quite a propaganda success.”

In a letter to his stepson written just days before his death, Goebbels expressed confidence that truth would ultimately prevail: “Do not let yourself be disconcerted by the worldwide clamor that will now begin. There will come a day, when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and truth will again triumph.”

This is an edited text of an address given by Mark Weber on April 23, 2011, at a meeting in southern California.

Sources / For Further Reading

Benjamin Colby, ‘Twas a Famous Victory (Arlington House, 1975), esp. chap. 6.

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (New York: 1965, 1973)

Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943. Edited by Louis P. Lochner. (Doubleday & Co., 1948)

Helmut Heiber, Goebbels (New York: 1972, 1983)

David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (St. Martin’s Press. 1996)

Walter Lipgens, ed., Documents On The History of European Integration: Plans For European Union (De Gruyter, 1985, 1991), Vol. I , esp. pp. 118-119, 121-122.

Mark Weber, “Goebbels’ Place in History,” The Journal of Historical Review, 1995.

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Communism was never destroyed. It was merely transferred from one state to another. Never mind titles. Never mind appearances. Essence speaks (even if repeating it aloud is forbidden).

From JP1: This interview exposes the KGB’s subversive tactics against Western society. In this interview, Yuri Bezmenov explains how Marxist ideology is deconstructing Western values, destabilizing the economy, and provoking crises in order to bring about a Socially-Marxist society.

Yuri Alexandrovic Bezmenov, was born in 1939 in the former Soviet Union and worked as a journalist for Pravda. In this capacity, he secretly answered to the KGB. His true job was to further the aims of Communist Russia. After being assigned to a station in India, Bezmenov eventually grew to love the people and culture of India, while, at the same time, coming to resent the KGB-sanctioned oppression of intellectuals who dissented from Moscow’s policies. He decided to defect to the West.

Ed Griffin (interviewer) asks – “Okay, so what do we do? What is your recommendation to the American people?”

Yuri Bezmenov responds – “Well, the immediate thing that comes to mind is, of course, there must be a very strong national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism, number one. Number two, to explain to them the real danger of Socialist, Communist, whatever, welfare state — Big Brother government… The moment at least part of the United States population is convinced that the danger is real […] they have to FORCE their government… to stop aiding Communism.”


Merely consider what we’ve lost in 26 years, and you will see that the “conspiracy” was no theory, but rather prophetic insight. -W.

The complete interview may be viewed HERE.

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War in Iraq and Afghanistan : Who Benefits?
By Tom Sunic
August 17th, 2010
Source: The Occidental Observer

The following article is a translated and edited transcript of the speech Mr. Sunic gave on August 7, 2010 at the festival-conference of the NPD (National Democratic Party), near the town of Goerlitz, Germany.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, dear friends. Thank you all for being here. Many thanks for the invitation to our friends, the NPD chief Mr. Udo Voigt and Mr. Gerd Finkenwirth. Also many thanks to a lovely young lady Silvana for her professionalism and her kindness. I’d like to extend also my best greetings from my friends in the USA and from my colleagues from the American Third Party Position, our Chairman, William Johnson, Prof. Kevin MacDonald, the radio host of Political Cesspool, James Edwards, and many, many other valiant members. Our recently launched party shares many similar ideas and pursues similar goals.

Instead of raising the question “who benefits from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq,” one might just as well ask the question: Who was the instigator of these two wars? The latter question does not sound very specific and provides a treasure trove for various conspiracy theoreticians. Wild speculations about the true motives of these wars are of no interest for us despite the fact that some of these conspiratorial allegations may be true. What we wish to find out is how these two wars were justified from the standpoint of international law and how they were legitimized by public discourse.

By the way, conspiracy theories, often ascribed to proverbial right-wingers, are not only the hallmark of right-wingers. The ruling class in the West does not shun using different types of conspiratorial vocabulary whose prime purpose is to demonize and criminalize the political foe. In addition, the liberal system resorts frequently to conspiracy theories in order to justify its military interventions. Months before the invasion of Iraq, many American politicians, including the media had in all seriousness ranted about the “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” It soon turned out that the Iraqis had no such weapons, which was later conceded [albeit rather quietly] by the very same politicians.

From my own experience I could give you some firsthand illustrations of this conspiratorial vocabulary. As a young man in communist Yugoslavia, I witnessed daily the endless verbal demonization of fictitious political opponents. The Yugo-communist system used the words “Nazi and fascist threat” in order to legitimize its repression against its critics. Although there were no more fascists in communist Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the Second World War, the system and its scribes had to dig up fictitious Nazi-Croats in order to justify its shortcomings and its terror. Back then we used a joke, which soon became iconic all over ex-communist Europe: “Even when a fly farts the Yugo-communist judiciary will not level criminal charges against the fly, but will instead apprehend the proverbial ‘Nazi-Croats.’” Similar linguistic escapades have now become part and parcel of the official vocabulary of the European Union, whose politicians dish out their propaganda under the elegant cloak of “freedom of speech” and “human rights.”

It is important to analyze how the liberal politicians and their warmongers manipulate public discourse. On the one hand we are bombarded by a litany of horrific labels, such as “war on terror”, “Islamo-fascism”, and “Al Qaeda terrorists”; on the other, we must daily stay tuned to their sentimental utterings such as the “fight for human rights,” “multicultural tolerance”, or “freedom for Afghan women.” The German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not sound credible at all when she recently rendered homage to fallen German soldiers and the enduring commitment of German troops in Afghanistan, “which serves the interest of our country.” The entire address by Chancellor Merkel was teeming with theatrical verbiage, better known in Germany as “cemented language” (Betonsprache), once commonly used in former communist East Germany.

Regardless of the hyper-moralistic lexicon used by the Western ruling class, empirical evidence regarding the true motives for the US commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan is very sparse if not completely absent.

A Balance Sheet

The war in Afghanistan was launched 3 weeks after the terror attack on September 11, 2001 in New York. Even a halfwit can tell that a long-term military strategy for Afghanistan could not be readied in three weeks. The plan to overthrow the regime in Afghanistan and Iraq had already been waiting in the wings. The first indications of the upcoming war in the Middle East and Central Asia had been put on paper by pro-Zionist academics in America in the early nineties, namely, after the first indecisive Gulf War in 1991. Many American pro-Israeli journalists and many well-known Jewish-American scholars had began drafting a long term plan for the reorganization of the region — “regime change” in the Middle East and Asia. Especially important was the role of the American Enterprise Institute and the launching of “the Project for the New American Century.” Many important names participated in these projects, names that later came to be associated with the code term “neoconservatives.” September 11, came to them as if sent by God.

Any war anywhere in the world must be always preceded by cultural warfare. The US neocons understood that very well. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq began first as an academic dispute — largely spearheaded by neocon journals, such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard. Today, however, the language of “weapons of mass destruction” has replaced its bellicose denominator with the euphemism of “fighting for democracy.” In retrospect, one must raise the question whether one could also draw parallels between the fraudulent motives for the current war in Iraq and the Allied motives for their WWII commitment in Europe and the subsequent “reeducation” of the German people.

Even after nine years of war in Afghanistan, even after seven years of Iraq, the security climate in the Middle East and Afghanistan, or for that matter in the entire West, has not improved. It has deteriorated. There is far more terrorist threat today than eight or nine years ago. One can argue that the risk of Islamic terrorism in Europe and the USA grows in proportion to the continuation of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And what happened with European politicians during that time? In 2001, during the deployment of US troops in Afghanistan, as well as two years later during the invasion of Iraq, the consent of the European allies was difficult to come by. European NATO members, apart from their servile policies toward Washington, knew well that no quick war results were at hand. Official Germany and France were skeptical because they have twice as many Muslim immigrants than the entire U.S., and in addition, they have different visions about how to fight terrorism. For Germany, as a valiant US ally and a NATO member, it was not easy to openly defy the Americans. It is not worth talking about this post-World War II German subservience now. In order to grasp German foreign policy somersaults over the last 60 years one must first delve into the Allied laundering of the German character and the process of massive reeducation which is still part of the German media landscape.

Unlike Germany and France, the Bush administration had no problem drumming up support among Eastern Europeans for their foreign expeditions. Here are two reasons:

Only two decades ago all East European countries were allies of the Soviet Union; they became NATO members just a decade ago. The political and cultural mimicry of Americanism — albeit with a broken Slavic accent — in this part of Europe is more widespread than in Germany or in France.

The other reason is that the bulk of politicians and academics from the Baltic to the Balkans, is made up of rebranded communist apparatchiks and their progeny. In order to cover up their own criminal past, or for that matter their former communist terror policies, they needed to become more Catholic than the Pope, i.e. more American than the Americans themselves.

Hence the reasons Eastern Europeans politicians can now be far better manipulated and are far easier to bribe into political servility than Western European politicians — with the exception of Russia. Once upon a time East European politicians made obligatory pilgrimages to Moscow, Belgrade, or Havana. Today, their mandatory places of pilgrimage are Washington and Tel Aviv.

American Political Theology

The beneficiaries of these two wars were, at least at the beginning of the hostilities, US neoconservatives and the state of Israel. But it is wrong to blame them only. To understand the deep-seated motives of U.S. foreign policy, one has to delve into American political theology — the conviction of many American politicians of their country’s divine chosenness. The architects and beneficiaries of these wars are motivated by secular political consequences, but the root causes of these wars have a theological dimension. These two cannot be separated. Uri Avnery, an Israeli leftist writer, remarked some time ago that “Israel is a small America, the USA is a huge Israel.”

Sure, it goes without saying that an Israeli journalist, but also many left-leaning Jewish American scholars, such as Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein can easily get away with such anti-Israeli rhetoric. Its is questionable what type of grammar, let alone language structure a non-Jewish intellectual, or some “right-winger” would need to use in order to express the same judgments.

Over one hundred years US politicians and their advisors have tapped into the Old Testament in quest of their notion of the political. Many American politicians have adopted their political conceptualization from the ancient Hebrew thought. One hundred and fifty years ago it was the ante bellum secessionist South which became the symbol of absolute evil; later, at the beginning of the 20th century, the symbol of the absolute evil became the “bad German” and shortly afterward the proverbial “Nazi.” During the Cold War it was temporarily the role of Communists in the Soviet Union to play the bad guys. As there are today no more Communists, no more Fascists, no more Southern Segregationists, some substitute had to be urgently looked for. So for many American Bible do-gooders the Ersatz was to be found among the so-called Islamo-fascists, or Islamic terrorists.

Soon this new category of absolute evil expanded to include the Palestinian Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah and “rogue states”, like Iraq, Syria and Iran. Geopolitically, these states, including Israel, are of no importance to America’s security whatsoever. But America’s metaphysical ties to Israel make many American politicians perceive Israeli’s enemies as their own.

It is wrong, therefore, to solely blame the Israelis and US neoconservatives, or for that matter the Jews for these two wars. They were or may still be the beneficiaries, but much of the popular support for this “make-the-world-safe-for-democracy” political theology comes from the millions of Christian-Zionists.

Their spirit of chosenness has had its offshoot in a secular ideology of human rights, taken now for granted as something humane and indispensable by the entire world. Yet it is in the name of human rights that the worst mass crimes are often committed. It is in the name of “human rights” that many non-conformist intellectuals can be easily shut up. When a self-proclaimed democrat talks about human rights, one should raise a critical question: “What happens then to those who do not fit into the category of humans or democrats?” Logically, they must be tagged as beasts and animals and therefore, cannot be re-educated, but must be physically wiped out or shut down. Let us try to picture what was crossing the mind of young American pilots who flew over Cologne and Hamburg in the summer of 1943. They had no remorse firebombing these cities below. They viewed the creatures down below as the embodiment of the absolute evil, as the most dangerous beasts that needed to be exterminated for good.

Christian-Zionists bear some of the responsibility for these two wars. Their self-serving idea of some special divine election does not lead to better understanding among different nations and different races, but to endless and futile wars.

Dr. Sunic (www.tomsunic.info) is a writer and former U.S. professor in political science. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Third Position. He is the author of several books. His latest book, dealing with the meaning of national identity is in French, La Croatie; un pays par défaut? (Paris: éd Avatar, 2010)

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An ‘Unknown Holocaust’ and the Hijacking of History
by Mark Weber
July 25, 2009
Source: Archives, Institute for Historical Review

We hear a lot about terrible crimes committed by Germans during World War II, but we hear very little about crimes committed against Germans. Germany’s defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, “ethnic cleansing,” and mass killing — one that Time magazine called “history’s most terrifying peace.” / 1

Even though this “unknown holocaust” is ignored in our motion pictures and classrooms, and by our political leaders, the facts are well established. Historians are in basic agreement about the scale of the human catastrophe, which has been laid out in a number of detailed books. For example, American historian and jurist Alfred de Zayas, along with other scholars, has established that in the years 1945 to 1950, more than 14 million Germans were expelled or forced to flee from large regions of eastern and central Europe, of whom more than two million were killed or otherwise lost their lives. / 2

One recent and particularly useful overview is a 615-page book, published in 2007, entitled After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation. / 3 In it, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the ruined and prostrate German Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or starvation. He explains how some three million Germans died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities — about two million civilians, mostly women, children and elderly, and about one million prisoners of war.

Some people take the view that, given the wartime misdeeds of the Nazis, some degree of vengeful violence against the defeated Germans was inevitable and perhaps justified. A common response to reports of Allied atrocities is to say that the Germans “deserved what they got.” But however valid that argument might be, the appalling cruelties inflicted on the totally prostrate German people went far beyond any understandable retribution.

Although I’m focusing here on the treatment of Germans, it’s worth keeping in mind that they were not the only victims of postwar Allied brutality. Across central and eastern Europe, the heavy hand of Soviet rule continued to take lives of Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians, and people of other nationalities.

As Soviet troops advanced into central and eastern Europe during the war’s final months, they imposed a reign of terror, pillage and killing without compare in modern history. The horrors were summarized by George F. Kennan, the acclaimed historian who also served as US ambassador to the Soviet Union. He wrote: / 4

“The disaster that befell this area with the entry of the Soviet forces has no parallel in modern European experience. There were considerable sections of it where, to judge by all existing evidence, scarcely a man, woman or child of the indigenous population was left alive after the initial passage of Soviet forces; and one cannot believe that they all succeeded in fleeing to the West … The Russians … swept the native population clean in a manner that had no parallel since the days of the Asiatic hordes.”

During the last months of the war, the ancient German city of Königsberg in East Prussia held out as a strongly defended urban fortress. After repeated attack and siege by the Red Army, it finally surrendered in early April 1945. Soviet troops then ravished the civilian population. The people were beaten, robbed, killed and, if female, raped. The rape victims included nuns. Even hospital patients were robbed of their possessions. Bunkers and shelters, packed with terrified people huddling inside, were torched with flame-throwers. About 40,000 of the city’s population were killed, or took their own lives to escape the horrors, and the remaining 73,000 Germans were brutally deported. / 5

In a report that appeared in August 1945 in the Washington DC Times-Herald, / 6 an American journalist wrote of what he described as “the state of terror in which women in Russian-occupied eastern Germany were living. All these women, Germans, Polish, Jewish and even Russian girls `freed’ from Nazi slave camps, were consumed by one desperate desire — to escape from the Red zone “

“In the district around our internment camp … Red soldiers during the first weeks of their occupation raped every women and girl between the ages of 12 and 60 [some reports say 8 and 80]. That sounds exaggerated, but it is the simple truth. The only exceptions were girls who managed to remain in hiding in the woods or who had the presence of mind to feign illness – typhoid, dyptheria or some other infectious disease … Husbands and fathers who attempted to protect their women folk were shot, and girls offering extreme resistance were murdered.”

In accord with policy set by the “Big Three” Allied leaders of the US, Britain and the Soviet Union — Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin — millions of Germans were expunged from their ancient homelands in central and eastern Europe.

In October 1945, a New York Daily News report from occupied Berlin told readers: / 7

“In the windswept courtyard of the Stettiner Bahnof [rail station], a cohort of German refugees, part of 12 million to 19 million dispossessed in East Prussia and Silesia, sat in groups under a driving rain and told the story of their miserable pilgrimage, during which more than 25 percent died by the roadside, and the remainder were so starved they scarcely had strength to walk …

“A nurse from Stettin, a young, good-looking blond, told how her father had been stabbed to death by Russian soldiers who, after raping her mother and sister, tried to break into her own room. She escaped and hid in a haystack with four other women for four days …

“On the train to Berlin she was pillaged once by Russian troops and twice by Poles. Women who resisted were shot dead, she said, and on one occasion she saw a guard take an infant by the legs and crush its skull against a post because the child cried while the guard was raping its mother.

“An old peasant from Silesia said … victims were robbed of everything they had, even their shoes. Infants were robbed of their swaddling clothes so that they froze to death. All the healthy girls and women, even those 65 years of age, were raped in the train and then robbed, the peasant said.”

In November 1945 an item in the Chicago Tribune told readers: / 8

“Nine hundred and nine men, women and children dragged themselves and their luggage from a Russian railway train at Lehrter station [in Berlin] today, after eleven days traveling in boxcars from Poland. Red Army soldiers lifted 91 corpses from the train, while relatives shrieked and sobbed as their bodies were piled in American lend-lease trucks and driven off for interment in a pit near a concentration camp.

“The refugee train was like a macabre Noah’s ark. Every car was packed with Germans … the families carry all their earthly belongings in sacks, bags and tin trunks … Nursing infants suffer the most, as their mothers are unable to feed them, and frequently go insane as they watch offspring slowly die before their eyes. Today four screaming, violently insane mothers were bound with rope to prevent them from clawing other passengers.”

Although most of the millions of German girls and women who were ravished by Allied soldiers were raped by Red Army troops, Soviet soldiers were not the only perpetrators. During the French occupation of Stuttgart, a large city in southwest Germany, police records show that 1,198 women and eight men were raped, mostly by French troops from Morocco in north Africa, although the prelate of the Lutheran Evangelical church estimated the number at 5,000. / 9

During World War II, the United States, Britain and Germany generally complied with the international regulations on the treatment of prisoners of war, as required by the Geneva accord of 1929. But at the end of the fighting in Europe, the US and British authorities scrapped the Geneva convention. In violation of solemn international obligations and Red Cross rules, the American and British authorities stripped millions of captured German soldiers of their status, and their rights, as prisoners of war by reclassifying them as so-called “Disarmed Enemy Forces” or “Surrendered Enemy Personnel.” / 10

Accordingly, British and American authorities denied access by International Red Cross representatives to camps holding German prisoners of war. Moreover, any attempt by German civilians to feed the prisoners was punishable by death. / 11 Many thousands of German POWs died in American custody, most infamously in the so-called “Rhine meadow camps,” where prisoners were held under appalling conditions, with no shelter and very little food. / 12

In April 1946, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) protested that the United States, Britain and France, nearly a year after the end of fighting, were violating International Red Cross agreements they had solemnly pledged to uphold. The Red Cross pointed out, for example, that the American transfer of German prisoners of war to French and British authorities for forced labor was contrary to International Red Cross statutes. / 13

Another report by the International Committee of the Red Cross in August 1946 stated that the US government, through its military branch in the US zone of occupation in Germany, was exacting forced labor from 284,000 captives, of whom 140,000 were in the US occupation zone, 100,000 in France, 30,000 in Italy, and 14,000 in Belgium. Holdings of German prisoners or slave laborers by other countries, the Red Cross reported, included 80,000 in Yugoslavia, and 45,000 in Czechoslovakia. / 14

Both during and after the war, the Allies tortured German prisoners. In one British center in England, called “the London Cage,” German prisoners were subjected to systematic ill-treatment, including starvation and beatings. The brutality continued for several years after the end of the war. Treatment of German prisoners by the British was even more harsh in the British occupation zone of Germany. / 15 At the US internment center at Schwäbisch Hall in southwest Germany, prisoners awaiting trial by American military courts were subjected to severe and systematic torture, including long stretches in solitary confinement, extremes of heat and cold, deprivation of sleep and food, and severe beatings, including kicks to the groin. / 16

Most of the German prisoners of war who died in Allied captivity were held by the Soviets, and a much higher portion of German POWs died in Soviet custody than perished in British and American captivity. (For example, of the 90,000 Germans who surrendered at Stalingrad, only 5,000 ever returned to their homeland.) More than five years after the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of German prisoners were still being held in the Soviet Union. Other German prisoners perished after the end of the war in Yugoslavia, Poland and other countries. In Yugoslavia alone, authorities of the Communist regime killed as many as 80,000 Germans. German prisoners toiled as slave labor in other Allied countries, often for years.

At the Yalta conference in early 1945, the “Big Three” Allied leaders agreed that the Soviets could take Germans as forced laborers, or “slave labor.” It is estimated that 874,000 German civilians were abducted to the Soviet Union. These were in addition to the millions of prisoners of war who were held by the Soviets as forced laborers. Of these so-called reparations deportees, nearly half — 45 percent — perished. / 17

For two years after the end of the fighting, Germans were victims of a cruel and vindictive occupation policy, one that meant slow starvation of the defeated population. To sustain life, a normal adult needs a minimum of about 2,000 calories per day. But in March and February 1946, the daily intake per person in the British and American occupation zones of Germany was between one thousand and fifteen hundred calories. / 18

In the winter of 1945-46, the Allies forbid anyone outside the country to send food parcels to the starving Germans. The Allied authorities also rejected requests by the International Red Cross to bring in provisions to alleviate the suffering. / 19

Very few persons in Britain or the United States spoke out against the Allied policy. Victor Gollancz, an English-Jewish writer and publisher, toured the British occupation zone of northern Germany for six weeks in late 1946. He publicized the death and malnutrition he found there, which he said was a consequence of Allied policy. He wrote: “The plain fact is … we are starving the Germans. And we are starving them, not deliberately in the sense that we definitely want them to die, but willfully, in the sense that we prefer their death to our own inconvenience.” / 20

Another person who protested was Bertrand Russell, the noted philosopher and Nobel Prize recipient. In a letter published in a London newspaper in October 1945, he wrote: “In eastern Europe now mass deportations are being carried out by our allies on an unprecedented scale, and an apparently deliberate attempt is being made to exterminate many millions of Germans, not by gas, but by depriving them of their homes and of food, leaving them to die by slow and agonizing starvation. This is not done as an act of war, but as a part of a deliberate policy of ‘peace‘.” / 21

As the war was ending in what is now the Czech Republic, hysterical mobs brutally assaulted ethnic Germans, members of a minority group whose ancestors had lived there for centuries. In Prague, German soldiers were rounded up, disarmed, tied to stakes, doused with gasoline, and set on fire as living torches. / 22 In some cities and towns in what is now the Czech Republic, every German over the age of six was forced to wear on his clothing, sewn on his left breast, a large white circle six inches in diameter with the black letter N, which is the first letter of the Czech word for German. Germans were also banned from all parks, places of public entertainment, and public transportation, and not allowed to leave their homes after eight in the evening. Later all these people were expelled, along with the entire ethnic German population of what is now the Czech Republic. / 23 In the territory of what is now the Czech Republic, a quarter of a million ethnic Germans were killed.

In Poland, the so-called “Office of State Security,” an agency of the country’s new Soviet-controlled government, imposed its own brutal form of “de-Nazification.” Its agents raided German homes, rounding up some 200,000 men, women, children and infants — 99 percent of them non-combatant, innocent civilians. They were incarcerated in cellars, pris­ons, and 1,255 concentration camps where typhus was rampant and torture was commonplace. Between 60,000 and 80,000 Germans perished at the hands of the “Office of State Security.” / 24

We are ceaselessly reminded of the Third Reich’s wartime concentration camps. But few Americans are aware that such infamous camps as Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz were kept in operation after the end of the war, only now packed with German captives, many of whom perished miserably.

For many years we’ve heard a lot about so-called Nazi art theft. But however large the scale of confiscation of art by Germans in World War II, it was dwarfed by the massive theft of art works and other objects of cultural value by the Allies. The Soviets alone looted some two and half million art objects, including 800,000 paintings. In addition, many paintings, statues, and other priceless art works were destroyed by the Allies. / 25

In the war’s aftermath, the victors put many German military and political leaders to death or sentenced them to lengthy prison terms after much-publicized trials in which the Allies were both prosecutor and judge. The best-known of these trials was before the so-called “International Military Tribunal” at Nuremberg, where officials of the four Allied powers were both the prosecutors and the judges.

Justice — as opposed to vengeance — is a standard that is applied impartially. But in the aftermath of World War II, the victorious powers imposed standards of “justice” that applied only to the vanquished. The governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other member states of the so-called “United Nations,” held Germans to a standard that they categorically refused to respect themselves.

Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-46, privately acknowledged in a letter to President Truman, that the Allies “have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of [German] prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them [for forced labor in France]. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest.” / 26

Germans were executed or imprisoned for policies that the Allies themselves were carrying out, sometimes on a far greater scale. German military and political leaders were put to death on the basis of a hypocritical double standard, which means that these executions were essentially acts of judicial murder dressed up with the trappings and forms of legality. If the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunal had been applied impartially, many American, Soviet and other Allied military and political leaders would have been hanged.

An awareness of how the defeated Germans were treated by the victors helps in understanding why Germans continued to fight during the final months of the war with a determination, tenacity and willingness to sacrifice that has few parallels in history, even as their cities were being smashed into ruins under relentless bombing, and even as defeat against numerically superior enemy forces seemed inevitable.

Two years after the end of the war, American and British policy toward the defeated Germans changed. The US and British governments began to treat the Germans as potential allies, rather than as vanquished subjects, and to appeal for their support. This shift in policy was not prompted by an awakening of humanitarian spirit. Instead, it was motivated by American and British fear of Soviet Russian expansion, and by the realization that the economic recovery of Europe as a whole required a prosperous and productive Germany.

Oswald Spenger, the great German historian and philosopher, once observed that how a people learns history is its form of political education. In every society, including our own, how people learn and come to understand history is determined by those who control political and cultural life, including the educational system and the mass media. How people understand the past — and how they view the world and themselves as members of society — is set by the agenda of those who hold power.

That’s why, in our society, death and suffering during and after World War II of non-Jews — Poles, Russians and others, and especially Germans — is all but ignored, and why, instead, more than six decades after the end of the war, Jewish death and suffering — above all, what is known as “the Holocaust” — is given such prominent attention, year after year, in our classrooms and motion pictures, and by our political leaders.

What I’m calling here an “unknown holocaust” of non-Jews is essentially ignored not because the facts are disputed or unknown [though it is certainly peculiar that those who are unfamiliar with these facts often choose to dispute them], but rather because this reality does not fit well with the Judeo-centric view of history that is all but obligatory in our society, a view of the past that reflects the Jewish-Zionist hold on our cultural and educational life.

This means that it is not enough simply to “establish the facts.” It is important to understand, identify, and counter the power that controls what we see, hear and read — in our classrooms, our periodicals, and in our motion pictures — and which determines how we view history, our world and ourselves — not just the history of what is called “the Holocaust,” but the history and background of World War II, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Middle East turmoil, and much, much more.

History, as the old saying goes, is written by the victors. In our society, the “victors,” that is, the most important single group that sets our perspective on the past through its grip on the media, and on our cultural life, is the organized Jewish community .

This reality is hardly a secret. Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic, has acknowledged: “It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture … Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie stu­dios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names.” / 27

One person who has carefully studied this subject is Jonathan J. Goldberg, editor of the influential Jewish community weekly Forward. In his 1996 book, Jewish Power, Goldberg wrote: / 28

“In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood stu­dio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a sta­tistical observation …

“Hollywood at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives at the major studios are Jews. Writers, pro­ducers, and to a lesser degree directors are disproportionately Jewish — one recent study showed the figure as high as 59 per­cent among top-grossing films.

“The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America’s most lucrative and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic candidates.”

A writer for the Los Angeles Times, Joel Stein, boldly declared in December 2008, in a column for the influential daily paper: “As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood … I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.” / 29

Thirty seven years ago, two of the most powerful men in our country, indeed, in the world, frankly discussed this matter in a private conversation that should be much better known. It was in 1972, in the oval office of the White House. President Richard Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham — the nation’s best-known and most influential Christian evangelist — were alone. These were not just prominent and influential men. They were shrewd and astute individuals who had accomplished much in their lives, and who had thought a lot about what they had observed and experienced over the years.

We know about this one-on-one conversation, and exactly what the two men said to each other, because Nixon had arranged for all conversations in his office to be secretly recorded. He regarded these recordings as his personal property, but he was later forced by court order to give them up. It wasn’t until thirty years later — in 2002 — that this conversation was finally made public. / 30

Here’s how their talk went. Graham said: “This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.” The President responded by saying: “You believe that?,” “Yes, sir,” said Graham. “Oh, boy,” Nixon replied, “So do I. I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.”

Now consider for a moment what this means, for America and the world, and for us today. Here’s the most powerful political personality in the United States at that time, indeed the most powerful man in the world, and the most influential religious figure in the US, in agreement about the Jewish hold on our media. They didn’t talk about the Jewish role in the media, or even Jewish domination of the media. They spoke about a Jewish “stranglehold” on our media.

For everyone who cares about our nation and the world, it’s worth asking and answering two questions. First, were Nixon and Graham right? Were they correct in what they said that day about what they called the Jewish “stranglehold” on the media? And, second, if they were right, what does that say about America and our society?

Two of the most influential men in our country were so afraid of the intimidating power of the organized Jewish community that they felt unable to even mention this “stranglehold” publicly — that’s the term Graham used — on our media, a “stranglehold” that they regarded as so harmful that unless it is broken, America, again, their words, is “going down the drain.” What a telling commentary on the corruption and perversion of our national life! If Nixon and Graham were right, is it not important, indeed, imperative, to clearly and forthrightly address the reality of this hold on our media?

What has brought us together here this evening is, first and foremost, our interest in real history — our passion for a clearer understanding of the past, free of “politically correct” orthodoxy and stricture. But an awareness of real history is not enough. It is important to understand the how and why of the systematic distortion of history in our society, and the power behind that distortion. Understanding and countering that power is a critically important task, not merely for the sake of historical truth in the abstract, but for the sake of our nation and humankind.

Notes

1. Time magazine issue of Oct. 15, 1945.
2. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993). See also: Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Eastern European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994); Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans From the East (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 1989. 3rd rev. ed.)
3. Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007). See also the review of this book by Mark Weber, “New Book Details Mass Killings and Brutal Mistreatment of Germans at the End of World War Two.” (IHR: 2007).
( http://www.ihr.org/other/afterthereich072007.html )
On this subject, see also: Douglas Botting, From the Ruins of the Reich: Germany 1945-1949 (New York: Crown, 1985); Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (New York: Harper, 2009); Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1949); James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation 1944-1950 (Little, Brown: 1997).
4. George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 (Boston: 1967), p. 265. Also quoted in: A.-M. de Zayas, The German Expellees (1993), p. 62.
5. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 47-50.
6. Ralph Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest: The Allies’ Postwar War Against the German People (IHR, 1992), pp. 59-60. (In the original edition, published in Chicago in 1947, pp. 55-56.). Also mentioned, in part, in: Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004), p. 479.
7. R. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (1992), pp.15-16.
8. R. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (1992), p. 15.
9. R. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (1992), p. 61. See also: R. Bessel, Germany 1945 (2009), pp. 116-117; Max Hastings, Armageddon (2004), pp. 428-431; G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 78-79.
10. Günter Bischoff and Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German POWs (Louisiana State University Press, 1992), pp. 9-10 (incl. n. 24), 58-64, 147 (n. 33), 178.
11. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 392-395. See also: James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies (1997), pp. 41-45.
12. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 396-399; G. Bischoff and S. Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German POWs (1992), pp. 165, 169, 170
13. R. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (1992), pp. 27-28 (or pp. 26-27 of the 1947 edition)
14. R. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (1992), p. 26.
15. “Secrets of the London Cage,” The Guardian (London), Nov. 12, 2005
( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/nov/12/secondworldwar.world ); G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 412- 413. F. Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (1949), pp. 185-201.
16. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 400, 406.
17. A.-M. de Zayas, The German Expellees (1993), p. 113.
18. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 362-363; G. Bischoff and S. Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German POWs (1992), pp. 12, 106, 109.
19. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), p. 362.
20. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 362-365.
21. A.-M. de Zayas, The German Expellees (1993), p. 108.
22. A.-M. de Zayas, The German Expellees (1993), p. 85.
23. A.-M. de Zayas, The German Expellees (1993), pp. 86-92.
24. John Sack, An Eye For An Eye (2000. Fourth, revised and updated edition);
See also: “Behind An Eye for an Eye, an IHR Conference address by John Sack, May 2000. ( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n1p-9_Sack.html )
25. G. MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007), pp. 38, 382, 386 , 389.
26. Jackson letter to Truman, Oct. 12, 1945. State Department files. Quoted in: R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (1983), p. 68. Also quoted in: M. Weber, “The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust,” The Journal of Historical Review (Vol. 12, No. 2), Summer 1992. ( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html )
27. M. Medved, “Is Hollywood Too Jewish?,” Moment, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1996), p. 37. Also quoted in: M. Weber, “A Straight Look at the Jewish Lobby”
( http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/jewishlobby.shtml )
28. Jonathan Jeremy Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 280, 287-288. See also pp. 39-40, 290-291.
29. J. Stein, “How Jewish Is Hollywood?,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 19, 2008.
( http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stein19-2008dec19,0,4676183.column )
30. “Nixon, Billy Graham Make Derogatory Comments About Jews on Tapes,” Chicago Tribune, March 1, 2002 (or Feb. 28, 2002)
( http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/02/Graham_Nixon.html ); “Billy Graham Apologizes for ’72 Remarks,” Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2002. “Graham Regrets Jewish Slur,” BBC News, March 2, 2002. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1850077.stm ). The conversation apparently took place on Feb. 1, 1972.

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Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The 1920s.” Chapter 18 of 200 Years Together
Kevin MacDonald
July 5, 2010
Source: The Occidental Observer

The English translation of Chapter 18 of 200 Years Together, “The 1920s” is now available. (See here, and notice the link requesting donations.) It has a very different feel from Chapter 20, on the Gulag. Whereas Solzhenitsyn’s account of the Gulag stresses his own experiences, this chapter relies on a wide range of academic historical writing to paint his picture of the USSR during the critical decade of the 1920s. His account is therefore based on mainstream scholarship and overall is similar to other accounts, such as Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century. However, it goes beyond other accounts in several important ways and provides a great deal of new information for Western audiences. It is a very long chapter (26000 words). Here I summarize some of the main points and draw analogies to the current situation in the West.

Solzhenitsyn recounts the migration of Jews to the urban areas of the USSR—the centers of culture and of power. Well over 80% of ethnic Jews moved to urban areas, and they were represented in the government at around their percentage of the urban population and 6.5 times their representation in the population at large.

Russians commonly perceived Jews as dominating the Soviet government, a situation that resulted in anti-Jewish attitudes. A Jewish observer is quoted about the situation in 1923:

“The Jew is in all corners and on all levels of power.” “The Russian sees him as a ruler of Moscow, at the head of the capital on Neva [Leningrad], and at the head of the Red Army, a perfected death machine. He sees that St. Vladimir Prospect has been renamed Naumson Prospect… The Russian sees the Jew as judge and hangman; he sees Jews at every turn, not only among the communists, but among people like himself, everywhere doing the bidding of Soviet power… Not surprisingly, the Russian, comparing present with past, is confirmed in his idea that power is Jewish power, that it exists for Jews and does the bidding of Jews.

Jews also took full advantage of new opportunities for education, aided by the “social origins policy” in which non-Jews who were children of the pre-revolutionary middle and upper classes were expelled from the universities. Jews were not subject to exclusion based on social origins because they were classified as a “repressed nationality” under that Czar. The result was that the ethnic Russian intelligentsia was “pushed to the margins.” Jews were then competing for prestigious occupations with the children of proletarian Russians. Jews therefore came to be overrepresented in the intelligentsia even controlling for the percentage of the urban population. The Russian merchants and traders were also subjected to a much harsher fate than Jews in similar positions: “The Jewish bourgeoisie was not destroyed like the Russian bourgeoisie. The Jewish merchant, much less likely to be damned as a “man of the past,” found defenders. Relatives or sympathizers in the Soviet Apparatus … warned about pending arrests or seizures. And if he lost anything — it was just capital, not life.”

This is a speeded up version of what is happening via affirmative action in America and other Western societies now. There is discrimination against higher IQ Whites in favor of lower-IQ groups. Jews, however, continue to be overrepresented in elite academic institutions on the basis of IQ, so they are not suffering a similar level of discrimination. The only difference is that the beneficiaries are non-Whites, not the White working class. Indeed, the White working class is losing the most as a result of the multicultural revolution and, not surprisingly, this is where most of the White anger is coming from (see here and here).

The Russians were angry too. In 1926 a professor gave a “remarkable speech” in which he described the dispossession of the Russians:

We have isolated expressions of hooliganism…. Its source is hurt national feelings of Russians. The February Revolution established the equality of all citizens of Russia, including Jews. The October Revolution went further with the Russian nation proclaiming self-renunciation. A certain imbalance has developed with respect to the proportion of the Jewish population in the country as a whole and the positions they have temporarily occupied in the cities. We are in our own cities and they arrive and squeeze us out. When Russians see Russian women, elders and children freezing on the street 9 to 11 hours a day, getting soaked by the rain in their tents at the market and when they see relatively warm covered Jewish kiosks with bread and sausage they are not happy. These phenomena are catastrophic …. There is a terrible disproportion in the government structure, in daily life and in other areas….We have a housing crisis in Moscow — masses of people are crowding into areas not fit for habitation and at the same time people see others pouring in from other parts of the country taking up housing. These arrivals are Jews. A national dissatisfaction is rising and a defensiveness and fear of other nationalities. We must not close our eyes to that. A Russian speaking to a Russian will say things that he will not say to a Jew. Many are saying that there are too many Jews in Moscow. This must be dealt with, but don’t call it anti-Semitism.

Notice particularly the comment that Russians were supposed to engage in “self-renunciation” — precisely what we see now in the common expectation that Whites are expected to accept their dispossession without complaint because of their complicity in the pre-revolutionary, traditional culture of America. As would also happen in contemporary America, the speech was quickly denounced as nothing more than “anti-Semitism.” Those who opposed the dispossession of the Russians or criticized the position of the Jews were framed as counterrevolutionaries. “And for counter-revolutionaries there is 9 grams of lead — that much is clear.”

The result was that “the average person saw [quoting a Jewish author], ‘arrogant, self-confident and self-satisfied adult Jews at ease on ‘red holidays’ and ‘red weddings’…. ‘We now sit where Czars and generals once sat, and they sit beneath us.” “Judeophobia is everywhere in Russia today. It has swept areas where Jews were never before seen and where the Jewish question never occurred to anyone. The same hatred for Jews is found in Vologda, Archangel, in the towns of Siberia and the Urals.”

Solzhenitsyn cites a Jewish writer, Maslov:

“The expression ‘Kike Power’ is often used in Russia and particularly in Ukraine and in the former pale of settlement not as a polemic, but as a completely objective definition of power, its content and its politics.” “Soviet power in the first place answers the wishes and interests of Jews and they are its ardent supporters and in the second place, power resides in Jewish hands.”

As in his chapter on the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn stresses Jewish ethnic networking as a key to their success, again citing Maslov: the “tightly welded ethnic cohesion they have formed as a result of their difficult thousands-year-old history.” “This is particularly noticeable when it comes to selecting staff at institutions — if the selection process is in the hands of Jews, you can bet that the entire staff of responsible positions will go to Jews, even if it means removing the existing staff.” Jews were also aided by international Jewish charities throughout the 1920s, and during the New Economic Policy period (1921–1928), when capitalism was encouraged, Jews quickly came to dominate certain industries. Anger against Jewish success stemmed from the perception that “their commerce was routinely facilitated by their links and pulls in the Soviet apparatus.”

Not only did Jews favor their own, observers noted that they regarded the Russians with contempt. Solzhenitsyn again quotes Maslov: “The preference for their own is displayed in a sharp, discourteous manner which is offensive to others” (emphasis in text).

The Parisian Zionist journal Sunrise wrote in 1922 that Gorky essentially said that “the growth of anti-Semitism is aided by the tactless behavior of the Jewish Bolsheviks themselves in many situations. That is the blessed truth!” And Gorky wasn’t speaking of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev — he was speaking of the typical Jewish communist who occupies positions in the collegiums, presidiums and petty and mid-level Soviet institutions where they come into contact with large swaths of the population. They occupy leading front-line positions which naturally multiplies their number in the mind of the public.

Russian concern about the overrepresentation of Jews at the highest levels of the party (e.g., 3 of 6 Politburo members) led to a plan for an anti-Jewish revolt in 1924 at a Party conference. It was thwarted when the leader died, “literally on the eve of the conference [as the result of] an unsuccessful and unnecessary operation for a stomach ulcer by the same surgeon who dispatched [Mikhail] Frunze with an equally unneeded operation a year and a half later” (see Wikipedia’s account of Frunze’s death.)

Solzhenitsyn makes the point that the Cheka held life and death power over all of the USSR: “Each of them with the flick of a finger could destroy anyone of us!” Seventy percent of its leadership positions during the Red Terror were non-Russian, but this fell to around 40–45% by the mid-1920s. However, Jews became an increasing percentage of the Cheka at this time; hence, Slezkine’s comment on Jews as “Stalin’s willing executioners.” “In the 20’s the inevitable question hangs in the air that was posed many year later by Leonard Schapiro: why was it ‘highly likely that anyone unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the Cheka would go before a Jewish interrogator or be shot by a Jew.’”

Solzhenitsyn is emphasizing the ethnic angle to mass murder in the USSR: Russians were disproportionately victims, and non-Russians, and particularly Jews, were disproportionately perpetrators. He also emphasizes that a prime motive for Jews was revenge against the old order. Describing a family of Hasidic Jews who became prominent in the Cheka, he notes, “They thirsted for revenge on everyone — aristocrats, the wealthy, Russians, few were left out. This was their path to self realization.”

Again, the analogy is striking. As emphasized repeatedly on TOO, Whites can expect to be increasingly victimized by non-Whites with historical grudges as they sink to minority status and lose political power. The difference, of course, is that because the Bolsheviks had totalitarian control, they were able to carry out their war on ethnic Russians even though the Russians comprised a dominant majority of the population.

But the general Jewish reaction to this horror has been pride in accomplishment, not guilt for having perpetrated mass murder against their perceived ethnic enemies.

Often these Jewish authors thoughtlessly and meticulously comply and publish vast lists of the Jewish leadership of the time. For example, see how proudly the article “Jews in the Kremlin,” published in journal Alef, provides a list of the highest Soviet officials — Jews for 1925. It listed eight out of twelve directors of the state Central Bank. The same Jewish representation was found among top trade union leaders. And it comments: “We do not fear accusations. Quite the opposite — it is active Jewish participation in governing the state that helps in understanding why the affairs of state were better then than now, when Jews at top positions are as rare as hen’s teeth.” Unbelievably, it was written in 1989.

As usual, Jews themselves had self-serving and self-deceptive attitudes on the causes of anti-Jewish attitudes. For example, Yuri Larin prepared a report asserting that anti-Jewish attitudes were “dreamed up and spread among the masses by an underground organization of counter-revolutionaries!” The closest Larin comes to a reasonable interpretation is his assertion that the anti-Semitism of the Russian intelligentsia comes from competition with Jews for government jobs, but he denied that Jews in fact held an “excessive number” of government jobs.

The result was a government-led campaign against anti-Semitism: “The battle to create an atmosphere of intolerance of anti-Semitism was to be taken up in educational programs, public reports, lectures, the press, radio and school textbooks and finally, authorities were ‘to apply the strictest disciplinary measures to those found guilty of anti-Semitic practices.’”

Again, the analogies with the present are striking, although in the contemporary West there is a greater role for non-governmental entities, such as privately owned media and activist organizations, most notably the ADL and the SPLC. However, whereas current propaganda about anti-Semitism emphasizes Jewish suffering, particularly the Holocaust, in the USSR the ideology was that anti-Semitism was a cloak for anti-revolutionary activities: “The masses must regard anyone who shows sympathy to anti-Semitism as a secret counter-revolutionary or the mouthpiece of a secret monarchist organization.”

Solzhenitsyn alludes to a 1930 ruling that prevented the Draconian provisions of the law on anti-Semitism (prison, confiscation of property, and in some cases, death) from being used in cases of personal dispute. This suggests that at least prior to this ruling, Jews at times made accusations of anti-Semitism in order to win personal disputes with non-Jews.

Because Jews had assumed a position of power and influence in the USSR, the USSR was regarded quite highly in the West. Much of the West, including European and American Jews, maintained feelings of good will towards the Soviets. The Soviet Union was good for the Jews, and therefore received positive coverage in the West.

Positive relations with the Soviet regime were held not only because of European intellectuals’ sympathy for any socialist movement but, to a large degree, because world and American Jewry were satisfied with the status of Russian Jews. Undoubtedly things would be good for Jews under the Soviets and no pogroms threatened. Effective Soviet propaganda further publicized the positive outlook for Soviet Jews.

International good will and sympathy helped Soviet leaders obtain Western, particularly American, financial support. Without that support, the Soviet economy could not have escaped the damage of the “war communism” era.

The fact that the USSR was good for the Jews therefore had a major effect in bolstering and motivating the Jewish left which was the backbone of the left in the US and elsewhere in the West. This in turn had major implications well into the Cold War era. Jews were vastly overrepresented as targets of the McCarthy era, and Jewish intellectuals generally continued to have rosy views of the USSR throughout the 1950s. Most egregiously, the American Jewish Congress — by far the largest Jewish organization in terms of membership — continued to be associated with the far left and was formally affiliated with organizations listed as subversive by the US Attorney General. The CPUSA viewed members of the AJCongress as “democratic forces” in their attempt to create “democratic and anti-fascist” policies in the World Jewish Congress.

Writers like Yuri Slezkine and Jewish activist organizations like the ADL claim that the Jews who played such an important role in the USSR left their Jewish identity behind and completely assimilated to Soviet culture. Solzhenitsyn rejects this myth (see also here, p. 79ff). Despite government hostility toward all religion, Jewish ethnicity remained intact: “A remnant of Jewish self-awareness was preserved and remained. Even in the flood of the internationalism of the 20’s, mixed marriages (between Jews and Russians or Jews and any non-Jew), as measured from 1924–1926, were only 6.3% of the total marriages for Jews in the USSR, including 16.8% in RSFSR, but only 2.8% in Byelorussia and 4.5% in Ukraine (according to another source, on average in USSR, 8.5%; in RSFSR, 21%; in Byelorussia, 3.2%; and in Ukraine, 5%).

Solzhenitsyn makes the important point that the public face of the USSR in the West was Jewish, since such a large percentage of the diplomatic corps and embassy and trade officials were Jewish: A Jewish author notes that “‘In the publishing arm [of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs] there is not one non-Jew’ and further, with evident pride, the author ‘examines the staff in Soviet consulates around the world and finds there is not one country in the world where the Kremlin has not placed a trusted Jew.’”

This then fed into the public perception throughout the West among conservatives that Jews dominated the USSR, with far-reaching implications. Despite the fact that the left continued to see the USSR as the promised land, at least partly because of its treatment of Jews, this was not the case with a great many non-Jewish intellectuals and political leaders, including Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, and the National Socialists in Germany (see here, pp. xxxix–xli). Hitler in particular saw Jews as being an elite in the USSR and as involved in mass murder of Russians.

Solzhenitsyn also presents an interesting discussion of the struggle for control of the Party between Stalin and Trotsky. Trotsky was joined by two other Jews, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. As a result, the “United Opposition” had a decidedly Jewish look, and many of its supporters, followers of Trotsky, were also Jewish. However, Stalin decided not to use the Jewish angle in his battle with the United Opposition because of the power of Jews within the Party and the need to preserve good relations with the West — a comment that says much about Jewish power in the West at that time. He also realized that he needed to continue to curry favor with Jews in his struggle with Russian nationalism and the collectivization of the Russian peasants. Nevertheless, there was an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the opposition to Trotsky.

Particularly interesting is that Stalin continued to see the Jews as reliable allies in his opposition to Russian nationalism: “At the 26th Party Congress in 1930 Stalin declared ‘Great Russian chauvinism’ to be the ‘main danger of the national question.’ Thus, at the end of the 20’s Stalin did not carry out his planned purge of the party and government apparatus of Jews, but encouraged their expansion in many fields, places and institutions.”

This is a common theme in Jewish history from the ancient world into modern times—Jews as making alliances with oppressive elites in opposition to the great majority of the population. Stalin would continue this policy in post-World War II Eastern Europe, where Jews were often installed as a ruling elite in opposition to nationalist movements. (See, for example, the discussion of Poland here, p. 60ff). As ethnic outsiders, Jews had no allegiance to the native population and were “willing executioners” of the native peoples.

Solzhenitsyn makes clear the Jewish role as ethnic outsiders who could be counted on to carry out the war on the predominantly Slavic Russian peasants:

At the 25th Congress in December 1927, the time had come to address the looming “peasant question” — what to do with the presumptuous peasantry which had the temerity to ask for manufactured goods in exchange for their grain. Molotov delivered the main report on this topic and among the debaters were the murderers of the peasantry — Schlikhter and Yakovlev-Epstein (250). A massive war against the peasantry lay ahead and Stalin could not afford to alienate any of his reliable allies and probably thought that in this campaign against a disproportionately Slavic population it would be better to rely on Jews than on Russians. He preserved the Jewish majority in the Gosplan. The commanding heights of collectivization and its theory included, of course, Larin. Lev Kritzman was director of the Agrarian Institute from 1928. As Assistant to the President of the Gosplan in 1931–33 he played a fateful role in the persecution of Kondratev and Chayanov. Yakov Yakovlev-Epstein took charge of People’s Commissariat of Agriculture in 1929. … And thus he led the “Great Change,” the imposition of collectivization on millions of peasants with its zealous implementers on the ground. A contemporary writer reports: “for the first time ever a significant number of young Jewish communists arrived in rural communities as commanders and lords over life and death. Only during collectivization did the characterization of the Jew as the hated enemy of the peasant take hold — even in those places where Jews had never been seen before”

Solzhenitsyn acknowledges that Russians could have been found who would have done the same thing. Nevertheless, “Jewish communists participated efficiently and diligently” in collectivization. It was a war against the Russian people — a war that was carried out with “a certain enthusiasm among Jews.”

De-Kulakization was not a socio-economic measure, but a measure taken against a nationality. The strategic blow against the Russian people, who were the main obstacle to the victory of communism, was conceived of by Lenin, but carried out after his death. In those years communism with all its cruelty was directed mostly against Russians. It is amazing that not everything has perished during those days. Collectivization, more than any other policy of the communists, gives the lie to the conception of Stalin’s dictatorship as nationalist, i.e., “Russian.”

This was not only a war against Russians. It was a war against the concept of being a Russian. “The study of Russian history, archeology, and folklore was suppressed — the Russians could not have a past. … Even the word ‘Russian,’ as in ‘I am Russian’ sounded like a counter-revolutionary cry which I well remember from my childhood. But without hesitation everywhere was heard and printed “Russopyati” [an anti-Russian slur]! Thus a Jewish writer demands the removal of “history’s garbage” from the city square in Moscow — the removal of statues and other tokens of Russian historical memory.

Russian patriotism was abolished forever. But the feelings of the people will not be forgotten. Not how it felt to see the Church of the Redeemer blown up by the engineer Dzhevalkin and that the main mover behind this was Kaganovich who wanted to destroy St. Basil’s cathedral as well. Russian Orthodoxy was publicly harassed by “warrior atheists” led by Gubelman-Yaroslavsky. It is truthfully noted: “That Jewish communists took part in the destruction of churches was particularly offensive… No matter how offensive the participation of sons of Russian peasants in the persecution of the church, the part played by each non-Russian was even more offensive.”

This makes psychological sense because the actions of an outgroup member are always seen in a more negative light — an aspect of evolutionary psychology.

Despite all this, Jewish intellectuals and activist organizations have attempted to sanitize the Jewish role in the darkest days of the USSR. Solzhenitsyn notes that now there is a myth that

under Soviet power Jews were always second class citizens. … It’s very rare to hear an admission that not only did they take part, but there was a certain enthusiasm among Jews as they carried out the business of the barbaric young government. “The mixture of ignorance and arrogance which Hannah calls a typical characteristic of the Jewish parvenu filled the government, social and cultural elite. The brazenness and ardor with which all Bolshevik policies were carried out — whether confiscation of church property or persecution of ‘bourgeois intellectuals’ gave Bolshevik power in the 20’s a certain Jewish stamp” (263).

Solzhenitsyn closes with a comment that also has a very clear analogy to the present situation in the US and other Western nations.

In the 90’s another Jewish public intellectual, writing of the 20’s said: “In university halls Jews often set the tone without noticing that their banquet was happening against the backdrop of the demise of the main nationality in the country. … During the 20’s Jews were proud of fellow Jews who had brilliant careers in the revolution, but did not think much about how that career was connected to the real suffering of the Russian people… Most striking today is the unanimity with which my fellow Jews deny any guilt in the history of 20th century Russia”

A similar comment could be made about the role of Jews in the erection of the current multicultural, anti-White climate in the US, and especially their role in bringing about massive non-White immigration and the erection of the “proposition nation” idea in place of the historical American nation with a sense of White racial and cultural identity. In the USSR Jews actively participated in the destruction of the idea that there was any ethnic or national basis to the USSR and they were eager participants in the destruction of the older culture as well as in the mass murder of millions of ethnic Russians. But Jewish intellectuals deny any special role for Jews in these transformations, and this line is rigorously enforced by Jewish activist organizations.

White Americans must think long and hard about what this portends in a future America where Jews are already a major part of the elite and are already active in promoting alliances with non-White ethnic groups, many of which, like the Jews themselves, have historical grudges against the traditional people and culture of America.

Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. Email him.

Permanent URL: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-Solzhenitsyn-200-Years-Together-18.html

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In Defence of Germany
By G. E. O. Knight

The Golden Eagle Publishing Co., Fetter House, Fetter Lane, London E.C.4, © 1934
This digitalized version © 2009 by The Scriptorium.

[3]
Preface

It is a pleasure to me to write a few words to the twentieth Edition (20th thousand) of Mr. G. E. O. Knight’s most excellent brochure in its revised form. Mr. Knight has a perfect understanding of the difficulties confronting the new Germany, and, what is equally important, he possesses a fair and independent judgment. We Germans feel grateful to him, and to all our English friends who have taken the trouble, at no little expense and inconvenience to themselves, to study our revolution without prejudice. I hope sincerely that this pamphlet will be read all over England, and that it will help towards a better understanding between Great Britain and Germany.

Baronesse von der Goltz.
Rogzow, über Belgard/Pers,
Pom, Germany.

August 10th, 1934.

[4=blank] [5]
A Personal Note

For some time past, a handful of Englishmen and women, all pro-German, and each anxious to see a better and more intimate understanding between the two countries, have found themselves considerably handicapped in their work of reconciliation by the report of happenings in the German Reich which have gained impetus without any manifestation of disapproval from official German sources. Not that we wish it to be thought that it would redound to the dignity of the German or any other Government to go out of their way to refute statements which on the face of them are manifestly absurd and published to serve political ends. But the hard fact has to be faced that Germany to-day is culturally isolated from the rest of the world. In the main, this is due to the new form of government now found in Germany, obviously a matter that concerns the Germans alone, and no part of our business to discuss. But we do not think that Germany is giving of her best to-day. No doubt this is attributable to the fact that she has been torn by internal strife and the haunting fear that Communism and other subversive forms of government are even yet capable of doing the country infinite harm unless a strong hand is [6] used to keep them in check. Whereas German culture was formerly the admiration and inspiration of every thoughtful man and woman the world over, there has been a serious setback during the last two or three years in her contribution to letters. We think that this is but a passing phase. In the meanwhile, we can but work for the cause of Anglo-German amity, conscious of the fact that with the lifting of the clouds, we shall secure the aims we have in view – Justice for Germany and World Peace.

The Committee of the Friends of Germany.
July 6th, 1934.

[7]
Foreword

Who is behind the present unparalleled anti-German campaign in this country? What are their motives? All the facts point to the existence in the principal cities of Europe and America of a world-wide organisation whose object is to bring discredit on a country which has suffered more during the last twenty years than can ever be recorded. The present orgy of calumny and abuse is pitiful, to use no stronger word. The most sinister aspect of the campaign is the attempt, through the Press of the world, to overthrow the existing European order and tradition and place the Communists in power. How often must it be repeated that there is no alternative to the Hitler regime in Germany but Communism. Once Communism gets control there it will speedily spread its evil influence to every country in Europe. I can scarcely believe there is a responsible Englishman who wishes to see the German Reich fall into the hands of Communists. Every article that appears in the London and Provincial Press to-day against Germany and its Government is a direct incitement to the Communists. If anyone questions the truth of this statement let him read the exulting Communist Press, [8] who boast of having every country on their side in so far as Germany is concerned. The British Press will one day realise the significance of what they are now doing and curse the day they countenanced the anti-German campaign. It is a double-edged weapon full of the gravest consequences, perhaps not so much to England for the time being, but certainly to Germany’s nearest neighbours, destined to become impregnated with the Communist theory of government once it establishes itself in the German Reich.

London, E.C.4. G. E. O. K.
July 5th, 1934.

[9]
In Defence of Germany

1.

If one is to judge from the facts of history, it will be seen that Nations are not for long permitted to run their respective lives and affairs without outside interference. The last twenty years alone suffices to prove the truth of this much under-emphasised fact. Since the Armistice, the various European countries have adopted measures against Germany that aimed at the virtual ruin and degradation of the people and country. It is true that the policies pursued have brought economic havoc to the world at large, and created a situation the end of which is as yet difficult to determine. Just as Germany was blamed before the War for wanting a war, so was she blamed for the War itself. She had grown prosperous, and needed a strong navy to defend her economic and political interests. England watched her every movement as a cat watches a mouse. She saw, or fancied she saw, her markets threatened everywhere. Germany’s growing influence was a continuous source of anxiety to British statesmen and industrialists. A five year anti- [10] German newspaper campaign was inaugurated in London; this led to considerable bitterness and misunderstanding on both sides of the North Sea. The ground, it seems, was slowly being prepared for bigger things; the seeds of hatred and mutual mistrust among them. Parliament did not interfere with the “glorious and hard won liberties of the British Press.” The armaments racket was in full blast; war-mongers reaped no inconsiderable pecuniary gain for their patriotism. “We want eight and we won’t wait,” was the temper of the country in general. No one will ever forget it. The ex-Kaiser was caricatured everywhere and became the laughing-stock of Great Britain. The spy mania was rampant. When the War actually came, it needed little effort on the part of Whitehall to convince the British public that Germany, and Germany alone, was responsible for the outbreak of hostilities. No one but a lunatic thinks so to-day. While some of the more foolish among us are sighing for a return to the status quo ante bellum, others are clamouring for yet another war with Germany for some as yet unspecified act of atrocity she has committed, or will commit if she be permitted to re-arm. At the conclusion of the last war, the European nations had a glorious opportunity of shewing their mettle and vindicating their honour in the matter of disarmament. The question had been before the League of Nations for many years. Con- [11] ference after Conference has been held to no good purpose. The old double game of lying and shuffling so sickened the German Delegation that Germany left the last Conference and the League of Nations convinced that the European nations never had the slightest intention of disarming then or at any other time. Now, of course, Germany is blamed for the failure of the Conference.

2.

A world-wide reorganisation of the political and economic systems of every country seems to be called for. The present cannot for long endure, the edifice is cracking most ominously and will soon be tumbling about our heads. Unless we are very careful, the forces against us will prove too much for statesmen, and not alone Europe, but the world in general, will be engaged in the greatest holocaust yet vouchsafed man to wage. The spectre of Communism stalks every land. The fact that we have no obvious solution to hand for our present overwhelming difficulties is enough to indicate the bankruptcy of Parliament and politicians. A change of heart may go a long way towards solving some of our problems, but will the on-coming tide abate its fury while men are thinking about things? The Germans are still a very great people, possessing an independent will, indomitable energy and courage, [12] with an undying love for their country, a people who, in their dynamics, occupy themselves more with kinetics than statics.

3.

A casual glance at the columns of the Press of this country is disturbing, to say the least. Not a few of the old, wartime stories and their variants are again in evidence, and every conceivable device known to war-mongers in particular and their allies in general is being used to stir up the worst passions in the least intelligent portion of the population – men and women who have no opportunity, time, inclination or even money to combat anything that is being circulated. To find a parallel to the present newspaper talk, one has to go back to the years preceding the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. For long the yellow Press of Great Britain was conducting a newspaper campaign against Germany, clamouring for more battleships, more guns, and a bigger army, aye, even for conscription, to meet the “expansionist” policy of Imperial Germany.

There is scarcely a newspaper or review in this country that will open its columns to the realities of the German situation; indeed, anything that is favourable to the Hitler regime is turned down with the deepest scorn, while the contributor himself is roundly accused, or silently suspected of being in the pay of the Reich.

[13]
4.

The British Press is virtually unanimous in agreeing that our erstwhile enemies are out for revenge, that the members of the Nazi Government are thugs, thieves, liars and even murderers; that nothing good can ever come out of the German Government; that it would be better to march into the country now and crush the Nazis rather than wait until they have re-armed. Almost every item of news is falsified and exaggerated to meet the exigencies of a lying campaign.

5.

Politics are at the root of the evil. The ex-Allies and Associated Powers are naturally anxious to save their faces for the failure to carry out their part of the Treaty of Versailles. What better excuse for their not so doing than that Germany is re-arming? Germany, they tacitly argue, must not be allowed to rise from her ashes, or if she does, it must not be under the leadership of demagogues.

The principal Labour organ of London sees in the German “dictatorship” an attack on the “freedom” enjoyed by British “wageslaves” of this country. It damns every form of tyranny save that exercised by the Trades Union Congress. It hates the British Communists and expels them from membership of the National [14] Labour Party, but a German Communist is a brother, and his arrest and incarceration in a Concentration Camp a crime against civilisation! The Jews of Germany, no matter whether they be leaders of the German Communist Party or men engaged in “big business,” must on no account be touched by the brutal Nazis!

6.

Before the revolution of March 1933, the Jews in the Reich overran many Government Departments, and enjoyed the highest privileges in every profession and calling. They were the principal organisers of the German Communist Party, and became identified with every one of the warring political sects in the country. In every way they proved themselves eminently capable business men and politicians. Many had grown very wealthy. Nearly every German war profiteer was a Jew; the native German seems to have regarded with feelings of shame and horror the idea of making money out of his country during times of great distress. It is not denied that the Jews are clever and amiable people, that they have contributed very materially to science, literature, art and music. That one per cent of the population of Germany should impose their rule and culture – however eminent that culture may be – on seventy million native-born Germans is un- [15] thinkable, to use no stronger word. Modern Germany will not have it. It is obviously inimicable to the best interests of the country, and if the reader objects, then he must ask himself whether a Government of Jews in the House of Commons would be tolerated in this country, and if so, for how long. So when the Nazi worm turned, and the services of many Jews were dispensed with, Jewry throughout the world rose in arms and through the medium of the Press and public meetings in London and the provinces, denounced the German Government in violent terms.

The Germans have assumed control of their country, and for weal or woe they mean to maintain their position. The German people are perfectly entitled to possess what form of government they please; it ill becomes us to dictate to them.

7.

The time is drawing nigh when the position of foreign correspondents should be dispassionately reviewed by the Foreign Offices of all countries. Some sort of understanding or convention is necessary. It is notorious that foreign correspondents are not above abusing their privileges. The temptation to exaggerate the truth; the restrictions put upon them by representatives of their own countries, the harm done by news-editors who insist upon [16] “frightfulness,” and not faithfulness in telegraphic reports, are matters that need investigation. I would feel disposed to make it a legal offence for any foreign correspondent to send false or exaggerated accounts of happenings when his sole object is to do harm to that country because his own Government is pursuing a policy calculated to bring discredit upon it for political purposes.

The British Foreign Office is well aware that not a few men attached to newspapers in foreign countries are employed for purposes of espionage. In the course of my wanderings round the European capitals I have met newspaper men who openly boasted of having been employed in this and that country’s secret service, who have accepted the hospitality of people whom they later on wantonly betrayed. That, you will argue, is all part of the business. But it seems to me a pity that foreign correspondents should not be above suspicion and devote themselves to their specific jobs and to their specific jobs alone.

8.

Recent happenings in Germany have not redounded to the prestige and interests of British foreign correspondents accredited to that country, and although Fleet Street has obscured the real issue, it is felt everywhere that irreparable damage has been done the call- [17] ing of a foreign correspondent by men whose sense of duty has been obscured by their insensate quest for sensation, wilful lying, and even espionage. If men want to pursue the role of a spy, it would be better and more honourable for them and their country if they carried on their work without camouflaging themselves as foreign correspondents. The British Government do not offer protection to the professional spy, although he is in the service of the State. He knows the conditions attached to his office and takes all risks. Columns of the most pathetic sob-stuff were recently printed and published in a well-known London morning daily when its Berlin correspondent was bundled out of Germany, lock, stock and barrel. Questions were asked in the House of Commons about the ” indignity and outrage,” and Sir John Simon was pretty hard put to it when called upon to reply. The Foreign Minister, of course, did his best for the deported man, but he also had Germany to consider – and satisfy.

9.

British foreign correspondents at present in Germany have been placed in an invidious position, and there are few among us to-day who envy them their job, or who would like to accept it, were it offered. Never was the status of a British foreign correspondent in Germany [18] lower than it is to-day, and it will be many years, I fear, before the stigma attached to the profession is removed. If the innocent suffer with the guilty the fault lies with the employers of men quite unsuited to their posts. It is of international importance that only the very best and most trustworthy men shall be employed as foreign correspondents of newspapers.

10.

International Jewry, at the moment, would seem to be destroying the best in British journalism, and that in a cause which is both worthless and futile. If British journalism is to sink to the level of the gutter, the fault will certainly be found at the door of the Jews.

11.

Convinced that the Press of this country was conducting a political campaign against Germany, I resolved to go to Berlin and make free and independent investigations on the spot. I was determined to do pretty much as I pleased when I got there, and no one interfered with my movements. I found Germany, comparatively speaking, a free country, much freer than some of its neighbours. My own views were not always acceptable to my friends, among whom I can count Jews and Gentiles, Nazis and Com- [19] munists, Democrats and Socialists. I discovered that being a Nazi does not preclude one holding views that few Labour men of my own country would express to their “comrades ” of the National Labour Party! Young Germany is keenly interested in social and political questions; I wish to goodness the British working man showed the same interest and intelligence in matters that pertain to his welfare. My visits to the Concentration Camps were full of interest, and recalled the days of my own internment in the Dual Monarchy during the War. Consequently I felt I could regard myself as something of an authority on Concentration Camps in general. I was up to all the tricks of the Camp Commanders at Sonnenberg and Oranienburg, where I made free and personal contact with many of the prisoners, without any interference from the Camp Commanders or their assistants. Indeed, I let it be known to the responsible authorities that unless I was privileged to do as I liked within reason, I would not accept the invitation extended to me to visit the Camps. I was also much struck by the many Workers’ Lagers I visited, and the splendid efforts now being made by the German Government towards ameliorating the lot of the unemployed. I saw no murders of Jews or assaults upon their persons. Order and cleanliness were everywhere. Courtesy and kindness from all and sundry favoured me wherever I went. My private [20] conversations with Jews were illuminating. They did not bear out what the British newspapers suggested. Mountains had been made out of molehills, melodrama out of comic opera. The majority of the “assaults” were committed by over-zealous youths, and in nearly every instance they consisted of “ratting” unfortunate men who were not particularly respectful towards the new regime. Physical harm very little, mental, perhaps much. The laws relating to the freedom of movement of Jews are substantially the same as those of other people. Much of the trouble that has arisen has nothing to do with the domiciled German Jew, many of whom are still employed by the Government in various spheres of usefulness. There are about 80,000 undesirable Jews that Germany wants to get rid of for all time, and willingly would she deport them all to Great Britain or the United States of America if the request were made. These are the Jews who since the Armistice have penetrated the country and created a situation that has wrought considerable social and political harm in Germany. Among these undesirables are murderers, ex-convicts, potential thieves, fraudulent bankrupts, white slave traffickers, beggars of every description that beggar description, and political refugees. Many have come from the Baltic States, others from Poland, and not an inconsiderable number from Russia.

[21] The Jewish question in Germany, as indeed elsewhere, will naturally be settled sooner or later. The best possible solution to the present impasse is to treat all Jews as aliens, as indeed they are in tradition, race and culture, and to extend to them the same privileges, courtesy and consideration as those granted to all foreigners.

12.

The Press of the world, speaking generally, has made no attempt to interpret the views of the German Government on the Jewish or any other question. The campaign of “assaults” had the effect of keeping thousands of tourists out of the country, and there was scarcely an hotel or pension in Berlin last summer that was not empty. The handful of British and American subjects who had been roughly treated by some Nazi youths in mistake for their own countrymen for not giving the Nazi salute was made the occasion for diplomatic protests, but not a word was printed here of the apologies offered by the German Foreign Office; one looked in vain for any such generous gesture from Fleet Street.

Things have cooled off a bit since I left Germany insofar as the Jewish question is concerned. The British public, ever slow to understand the truth, is now asking nasty questions. Was it all true? Who was behind the [22] “atrocity” stories? Is the British Press controlled by Jews? In whose hands lies the power of Fleet Street? Was the propaganda campaign a smoke screen to cover up the failures of the Disarmament Conference? Did the Jewish armament interests of Great Britain see an opportunity of scaring the public into believing that unarmed Germany was preparing for a war of revenge? Should the public be permitted to know that Germany is the only country that has honoured the Treaty of Versailles?

13.

Of Herr Hitler’s peace policy I cull the following from an address given by the Reich Chancellor on October 14th, 1933, and which speaks for itself: –

I speak in the name of the entire German nation when I say that all of us most sincerely desire to root out an enmity whose sacrifices are out of all proportion to any possible gain.

“The German people are convinced that their honour has remained pure and unstained upon a thousand battlefields, just as they see in the French soldier only their ancient but glorious opponent. We, and the whole German nation, should all be happy at the thought that we could spare our children and our children’s children what we ourselves as honourable men have had to watch in the long and bitter years and have, [23] ourselves, had to suffer. The history of the last hundred and fifty years, with all its various changes and chances, should have taught both at least one lesson; that important and permanent changes can no longer be purchased by a sacrifice of blood. I, as a National-Socialist, and all my followers, absolutely refuse, however, by reason of our national principles, to acquire, at the cost of the life-blood of those who love and are dear to us, men and women of a foreign nation, who, in any case, will never love us. It would be a day of untold blessing for the whole of humanity if the two nations could once and for all banish the idea of force from their mutual relationships; the German nation is prepared to do this.

“While boldly asserting the rights which the treaties themselves give us, I will, however, declare equally boldly that in future there will be for Germany no more territory conflicts between the two countries.

After the return of the Saar Basin to the Reich it would be insanity to think of a war between the two States. For such a war there could no longer be, from our point of view, any reasonable or moral excuse.

For nobody could demand that millions of young lives should be destroyed in order to correct the present frontiers. Such a correction would be of problematical extent and even more problematical worth.”

Continuing his address, Herr Hitler said:
[24]

“Earlier German Governments trustfully joined the League of Nations in the hope that it would prove to be a forum for a fair adjustment of national interests, but, above all, for honest reconciliation between former opponents. But the prerequisite for this was the recognition of the final restoration of the equality of rights of the German nation. The German nation took part in the Disarmament Conference on the same condition. To be disqualified to the rank of a member without equal rights of such an institution or conference is an unbearable humiliation for a nation of sixty-five millions with a sense of honour, and for a Government with an equally strong sense of honour.

The German nation has more than fulfilled its obligations with regard to disarmament. It is now the turn of the highly-armed States to fulfil similar obligations to no less extent. The German Government does not take part in this Conference in order to haggle for a few guns or machine guns for the German nation, but to co-operate as a factor with equal rights in the general appeasement of the world. Germany has no less right to security than other nations. If the English Minister, Mr. Baldwin, represents it as obvious that, for England, disarmament can be understood only as the disarmament of the more highly-armed States simultaneously with an increase of England’s armaments up to a common level, then it would be [25] unfair to overwhelm Germany with reproaches if, as a member of the Conference with equal rights, she maintains the same view in her own case. Germany’s demand in this respect cannot constitute any menace to the other Powers. For the defensive works of other nations are constructed to withstand the most powerful offensive weapons, while Germany does not demand any offensive weapons but only those defensive weapons which are not forbidden even in future but sanctioned for all nations. And in this case, too, Germany is ready from the start to be satisfied quantitatively with a minimum which is out of all proportion to the gigantic stocks of offensive and defensive weapons of our former opponents. The intentional disqualification of our nation, however, contained in the fact that an obvious right is granted to every nation in the world and denied only to us, is felt by us to be the perpetuation of a discrimination that is intolerable for us. I already stated in my peace speech in May that under such conditions we should, to our regret, no longer be in a position to belong to the League of Nations or to take part in international conferences.”

14.

If I were asked what is uppermost in the minds of the average man and woman in Germany to-day, I would unhesitatingly answer – [26] the fear of invasion. What have Germany’s neighbours done to dispel this fear complex? An unarmed Germany is an anachronism and the greatest danger to the peace of Europe.

15.

There were some seven thousand political prisoners interned in the whole of Germany in August, 1933. Of this number, about seven hundred were Communists interned in Oranienburg. The site of this camp is that of a disused brewery; there is no question of the place being large enough for the men and their one hundred guards. Not more than one hundred of the seven hundred internees belonged to the intelligentsia class. The remainder were workers, not a few of whom were mentally deficient. Some had already served terms of imprisonment for offences other than political, among whom Jews predominated. The discipline in the camp was of the robust kind. Every man had some kind of work to do, but this was not always enforced. The camp rose at 6 a.m. and all lights were out at 9.30 p.m. The meals consisted of breakfast, dinner, supper with meat served daily except on Fridays. There was a dispensary attached to the camp and a German doctor was in charge. Severe cases of illness were sent to the local hospital. On an average, ten men reported themselves daily to the doctor, and it was generally found that of [27] this number only two or three needed treatment. Various trades were carried on within the camp, such as carpentry, tailoring and shoe-making. Part of the camp was set off for bathing. Shower baths and facilities for sun bathing were shown me. There was also a splendid sports ground. The sleeping apartments consisted of wooden beds and straw mattresses, with three blankets for each prisoner. The working hours were from 7 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., and from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. A library was in course of being introduced. Visitors were allowed once a week, and were received in the dining room which accommodated some three hundred people. There were apartments set apart for music and dramatic performances. In addition to receiving free board and lodging, each of the prisoners was drawing Rm.10 to Rm.12 per week, which represented his unemployment allowance pay. Instruction in ethics, religion, the new form of Government in Germany, history, languages were given daily to those who desired to attend. There was little or no crime among the men in the camp. Good order prevailed among all classes. The guards ate the same food as the prisoners, and were subject to the same discipline as the internees, although they were Government officials. One of the guards was a Prince of the House of Hesse! Letters and parcels were subject to censorship. In not one case out of many thousands received had it been found necessary to [28] destroy any parcel or letter forwarded. Newspapers were permitted and smoking allowed. When a prisoner desired to light his pipe or cigarette, he had to go to a guard detailed off to supply lights for the prisoners, as no matches were permitted prisoners. Services were held every Sunday, and the majority of the prisoners availed themselves of the opportunity. No objection was raised by the authorities to me taking photographs of both camp and internees. The men looked in splendid physical condition. Having heard so many dreadful stories of brutal treatment being meted out to the Communists in this particular camp, I asked some of the men to confide in me and tell me the truth of these allegations. Not a few laughed “at the bloody capitalist liars of your country!” I took fifteen men at random and asked them to strip in my presence. I wanted to see if they bore any marks of violence about their persons. I saw nothing indicative of bad treatment. When I asked if I could help any of the prisoners in any possible way, a young Communist stepped forward and in pathetic tones enquired if England could now send raw materials to Germany to get work started once again in the Fatherland!

16.

It is not necessary for me to give any details of my visit to the Concentration Camp at Son- [29] nenberg, for exactly the same conditions prevailed there as at Oranienburg.

17.

Stories of starvation of prisoners in German Concentration Camps having been circulated throughout the world, I append herewith the diet of prisoners since the date of their internment. Both at Oranienburg and Sonnenberg I took occasion to make enquiries into the starvation reports, and found them lacking in truth. Save for the loss of personal liberty, no complaints were forthcoming, in spite of the fact that every opportunity was given the men to speak to me privately and without fear of being overheard by officials. Here is the daily prison menage: 1,000 grammes of bread, 500 grammes of potatoes, meat, except on Fridays, soup (Sauerkraut), tea or coffee, vegetables (cabbage or potatoes), fish (Fridays). Those on the sick list are dieted in accordance with the orders of the resident doctor. [For our readers not familiar with the metric system, Scriptorium notes: 1,000 grammes = 1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds, 500 grammes = just over 1 pound.]

18.

The Workers’ Lagers are wonderful examples of what a Government can do for the unemployed. These are voluntary institutions run solely by the German Government, and the camps are scattered all over the country, about 5,000 all told. At the time I left Germany, [30] (August, 1933) there were more than 300,000 men and women working in various spheres of usefulness. At Bernau I was shown over a Lager that contained 276 men, all of whom were engaged in agricultural work. They had converted an old mill into a barracks which were to form the future headquarters of the workers. In addition to free board and lodging, each of the workers received 30 Pfennigs per day. All the men I saw were enjoying excellent health. The discipline, while strict, was not of a military character.

The object of these Workers’ Lagers is to raise the morale of the men who have known years of unemployment. In each camp the worker stays for 40 weeks, and the period will be renewed on application of the worker and with the permission of the Government. Preference is always given to those young men who are really likely to pursue the life of a farmer. What I saw of the Workers’ Lagers in various parts of Germany convinced me that the Government is doing an excellent work and one which the British Government could emulate with advantage to the community.

19.

Everywhere one goes on the Continent one finds mistrust and disillusionment. The fear of invasion is rampant in France. It is common to Germany, Belgium, Poland, Russia; [31] it permeates the Balkan States, it is to be found as far afield as the Americas. No nation seems capable of ridding itself of this fear. It is not a product of Fascism, it is not peculiar to Democracy. It may be a symptom of our mechanical age, the fear of a rival inventing some easy and damnable lethal weapon that will destroy whole populations without reply. The malaise is briefly referred to by newspapers, who, in their turn, fear to let the public know the truth of things political and the possibility of a new war. It is everywhere taken for granted that our pro-French policy is the correct one, that the isolation and encirclement of Germany must be pursued at all costs. We seem to have learned nothing from past experience. France, the hysterical young lady of Europe, wants “security.” So does Germany and England, and Belgium, and Russia, and every nation in the world. Why French “security”? What about British security? Who is going to guarantee the security of Russia, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Tibet, etc.?

20.

It has become patent to the meanest intelligence that if the whole world were to support France and grant her all she demands in the way of security, that country would still insist on arms and ammunition in the last resort. France is well aware that she cannot now rely [32] upon the promises of nations to support her in her eagerness to keep intact the Treaty of Versailles. The security cry does not deceive the meanest intelligence. It is French armament interests that France demands Britain to guarantee. It needs little emphasis to say that France is the most powerful nation in the world just now, and she alone, if she felt so persuaded, could march into Germany at any moment and invoke the Treaty of Versailles for taking possession of every vantage point in the Reich, and England could not plead the Locarno Pact in reply to her action. To-day French ‘planes could lay waste Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, the Ruhr, Hanover and every city in the Reich with scarce a response from the German people. She could dictate her own terms; in a few words, France is so strong militarily that unaided she could crush Germany within twenty-four hours and emerge from her triumphs with no apparent loss to her power as the greatest military force in Europe.

21.

When one begins to realise the manifold forces at work against Germany to-day, with that country insisting upon re-armament if others fail to disarm, one is appalled at the impudence of the claim that Germany will be responsible for a disturbance of the peace. Ever since the Peace treaties, France has pursued a [33] policy which in every respect is identical to that she followed before 1914 – a combination of formidable groups to support her own political ends. Pro-Jewish France has used all her influence to destroy the political and economic aspirations of anti-Jewish Germany. Germany left the League of Nations because that organisation can no longer be regarded as providing machinery for the preservation of peace. Its whole procedure, as events have proved, is too cumbrous and dilatory, it possesses no effective means of exercising its authority.

22.

First and foremost, Germany wants peace and friendship with France in particular and the world in general. The concord she demands of France must be based on goodwill and understanding, there must be a sincere regard for each other’s interests, and an end put to the ancient feuds that have wrought such incalculable mischief in Europe. It was a thousand pities that France rejected the offer of a peace pact made by Germany. The accord with Poland may be the cause of the contemptuous tone of the French reply.

Germany has no need for the League of Nations at the present time, and in no circumstances will she rejoin that organisation until her demands are satisfied. Her abandonment of the League is the consequence of the refusal of equality implied in the attitude of the highly [34] armed powers in the Disarmament question. Germany’s demand for practical equality does not mean that Germany wants heavy tanks, heavy mobile guns, or bombers, or other arms which, according to the stipulations of the proposed Convention, will be abolished in the future. But it does mean that Germany wants at once those arms which, being of a defensive character, will be definitely retained under the Convention, and that she wants these arms from the beginning in quantities sufficient for her security.

It is quite clear that as long as this equality is not granted, international control of arms would be a one-sided affair, directed against Germany alone.

23.

The question is being asked – Why was unarmed Germany invited to sit in consultation with the heavily armed powers? That she consented to do so must prove goodwill and a desire for a common understanding. Germany accepted because she thought she would be able to make her whole weight felt on the side of the Disarmament cause. It will be seen that Germany’s participation made it very difficult for the highly armed powers to get away without some appearance of disarmament. Germany’s reason for refusing to participate further in the deliberations was quite simple – [35] there had been a crisis in the Disarmament Conference in May, 1933. This crisis had been overcome by Germany granting a concession in regard to the reorganisation of the Reichwehr. After that, the Conference unanimously adopted the MacDonald plan as “a basis for the future Disarmament Convention” (June 8th, 1933). This resolution went much farther than the previous resolution, which was adopted soon after the MacDonald plan. During the recess of the Disarmament Conference, secret negotiations took place between the Governments of the highly armed powers in which Germany was not invited to take part. The results of these negotiations were the proposals made by Sir John Simon in his celebrated speech on October 14th, 1933. As is well known, these proposals introduced an entirely new element into the whole of the Disarmament question in the form of a trial period for Germany, and thereby constituted a vital modification of the MacDonald plan which only four months previously had been unanimously adopted by the Conference in all its main features. Faced by these questionable tactics, there was no option for Germany but either to capitulate and re-open negotiations on questions which had already been settled or to leave the Conference altogether in the conviction that such methods of negotiation would never lead to real Disarmament.

Germany left the Disarmament Conference.

[36]
24.

Since all the above was written, events in Germany have greatly increased the political and economic uncertainties of Europe. The encirclement of Germany is almost a fait accompli. The country is now politically, economically, and culturally shut off from the rest of the world. Every conceivable issue has been confused and discussion now rages round not how to prevent Germany re-arming, for rearmament by the Reich is a foregone conclusion and the exercise of a legitimate right, but how more and more to spread the gospel of hate and restore pre-war anti-German alliances. We are back to the bad old days. Since the War, Germany has not been given even a dog’s chance to set her house in order. The gentlemen who made the Treaty of Versailles must now be thinking hard and furiously how best to get Germany out of the mess they themselves have created for that country. It requires little vision to see that nearly all of Germany’s present day troubles arise from the most objectionable clauses of the Treaty, and as a pro-German, I shall never cease shouting this from the house-tops until justice is done the German people. As I understand things at the moment, Germany is faced by the alternatives of standing aloof from the rest of the world if she can, and working out her own destiny by the strength of her own political and [37] economic systems – an Ishmaelite among the nations of Europe – or taking part in the future of the world and helping to bring order and peace into it. I doubt she can stand alone for long. I doubt any nation can hope to achieve anything worth while single handed. I am confident that Herr Hitler is aware that an insane nationalism leads the world nowhere. To my mind there is no greater crime than to fire a people with ideas of their own super-eminent superiority. Incalculable harm has been done the world in the promotion of the idea among the peoples. A magnified sentiment of national pride always despises humanity at large. We saw it in the last War, the doctrine involved every nation in the direst peril. No country to-day is free of the scourge. It is useless blaming Germany for this complex as some of her foes are too prone to do. Nationalities-by-mutual-rights obtain the world over, and while they dominate every issue, I can see little hope for the realisation of humanity’s emancipation. They forced themselves on the World Economic Conference, they smashed the Disarmament Conference. And they will smash every well-meant political and economic issue and lead to further bloodshed unless they are scotched in time.

Herr Hess, in a speech to a congress of East Prussian Nazis on July 8th, 1934, made an appeal for frankness. Inter alia, he said:

“I appeal to the front line comrades of the [38] war, on both sides. Be frank. We felt then we were real men; we sometimes had pleasure in a life which was in direct contrast to the effeminacy which civilisation and over-civilisation bring; we felt ourselves better men than those far behind the front; we felt ourselves the defenders of the nation, the guardians of its future. We sometimes had happy hours, and tried to live every minute of them double. But be frank. We felt the fear of death. We saw it probably in more powerful form than any men before us. We crouched in dug-outs, waiting for the disintegrating impact. We held our breath when our trained ears heard the grenades whistling, the trench-mortars rumbling through the air towards us. Our hearts beat fit to burst as we vainly sought cover against machine-gun fire. We thought to suffocate beneath our gas-masks. We struggled through sodden trenches, froze in shell holes. We were then nearly desperate. We heard the shrieks of the wounded, saw the gassed men writhing, met blinded men staggering along, heard the last rattle of the dying. Among the piled corpses of our comrades we lost our last hope of life. We saw the widows and orphans, the cripples, the sickly children, the starving women. Be frank. Did we not all ask ourselves: What is the use of it all? Must it be so? Cannot mankind be spared this in future? But we held out – on both sides.

“Now I take up this question, and call it [39] accusingly to the world – as front-line soldiers to front-line soldiers, as the leaders of a nation to the leaders of other nations. Must it be so? Can we not with good will spare mankind all this?

How shall we answer Herr Hess? With the usual lies of Germany’s bad faith? I hope not.

More from [The Scriptorium‘s] English Archive:

The Case for Germany

What the World Rejected: Hitler’s Peace Offers 1933-1939

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