The Last Days of the Big Lie

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Goebbels and World War II Propaganda

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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At War’s End

At War’s End
Richard A. Widmann
inconvenienthistory.com

Recent headlines announcing that World War One had finally ended were sure to raise an eyebrow of those of us who noticed. While even on-going wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan are minor media stories dwarfed by the latest extravagances and debauchery of Hollywood’s rich and famous and the momentary stars of “reality” TV, it’s no wonder that most missed the end of “the War to End All Wars.” While few of us are old enough to recall the actual fighting which drew to a close on 11 November 1918, the matter was apparently not officially closed until Germany had made its final payment. It was indeed that final payment to the war’s victors that allowed the officials to declare “game over.”

While this announcement may seem an unimportant matter in our age of iPods and iPhones, it highlights several key points for those of us who label ourselves “revisionists.” While “setting history into accord with the facts” as Harry Barnes would have put it, is the stuff of which all good historical writing has always been composed, it was in the years that followed Europe’s first great immolation that Revisionism was born. Attempting to revise the terms of the Armistice as laid out in the treaty of Versailles, revisionists sought to move beyond the old hatreds that fueled the murder of millions to a common understanding among nations that would usher in a time of peace. Revisionists accurately prophesied that the economic punishment inflicted upon Germany as well as the humiliating coerced admission of guilt for the war’s initiation would serve no purpose but to renew hostilities at the first possible moment. Indeed the economic sanctions and the Treaty of Versailles were key elements in the rise of National Socialism and the tremendous waste of life that became popularly known as World War Two.

Crippling economic sanctions appeared to be the peaceful weapon of choice in the years following World War One. Sound economic theory would not only prevent “aggressor” nations from rebuilding a military, it would funnel the pillaged booty of those so foolish as to lay down their arms to those who refused to stop the bloodletting. We must note the sums which seemed crippling some 90 years ago seem insignificant when compared to the ridiculous spending of today’s wars. If Germany has only now paid off World War One, when might we expect the current wars to be paid off?

From the standpoint of “perpetual war for perpetual peace” and the ulterior motives and baggage associated with such campaigns, revisionists should note that the “war against terror” is a vast improvement over the “cold war” and that, in turn, a vast improvement over the hot wars against Germany and her allies.

Hot wars have an objective. There is a goal that can be easily understood by all; to destroy one’s enemy. The enemy may be and often is cast as a monstrous villain who must be destroyed at all costs. Failure to annihilate “them” will mean sure annihilation of “us”. But such hot wars come to an end – at least the fighting and economic hyperactivity with which they are so closely tied. The Cold War is a significant improvement as a concept. In the Cold War you get all the spending with little of the death and protests that come when a tired nation no longer recalls the reason to halt the spread of foreign economic and social ideologies. With the War on Terror the eternal threat of an extremist faith always ready to strike at the civilian population not only ensures unlimited budgets for military growth (wasn’t it the Pentagon who recently asked to have its budget slashed because it didn’t know what to do with the funds?) but also the need to deploy our forces to the far-flung corners of the empire. It seems that out-of-control spending and self-inflicted debt can be our friend. With an economics-in-wonderland attitude no debt can ever be too high, and no debt will need be repaid. A lesson those silly fiscally responsible Huns could never understand!

As the declaration of World War One’s end falls on deaf ears, we must wonder when the wars that followed will come to an end. From the appearance of things, several may never end. By the time of World War Two, economic deprivation had been replaced with psychological persecution. This was not going to be the “guilt clause” of Versailles but the new hyper-guilt of Nuremberg – a guilt that was so great that no one would ever question the methods of the crusaders who slew the Nazi beast. Civilians would be marched through the camps. Those who did not see them personally would be subjected to the films made by horror-film director Alfred Hitchcock and other Hollywood talent flown in for the occasion. New words would be created, books would be written, memorials and museums would spring up in what might be described as the greatest faith-based movement of the second half of the 20th century.

While the payments for losing World War One eventually came to an end, shedding the guilt of World War Two amounts to denouncing the Virgin Mary as a harlot during the Inquisition – even analyzing the Nazi Holocaust is the heresy of the 20th and now 21st century. The guilt of World War Two and its associated atrocities are fundamental to our world vision, our expansion of empire and our perpetual wars. For every would-be tyrant, every former-friend-turned–despot, enables a military action if only to prevent another “Chamberlain at Munich.” Every opportunity for diplomacy and peace is painted as foolishness that is better resolved by blitzkrieg. Any ideology other than social democracy is a threat that requires the speedy deployment of our well-armed forces. The empire spreads and the economy inflates. Even during our recent economic failures, the fear of mass depression (the worst since FDR’s New Deal) prevents the conclusion of hostilities abroad. For without war we would surely feel the Depression’s icy blast once again.

If the announcement of the end of World War One means anything for American revisionists, it simply means that our dream of the USA minding its own business, taking care of its own and dismantling its empire is out of reach. Our solutions to the world’s woes are a heresy not unlike that of questioning the unique guilt and monstrosity of Germans. So focused are American court historians on our long-defeated enemy that they fail to recognize his likeness when they look in the mirror. But then again, why should we consider our national sins, (didn’t the Japs in Nagasaki have it coming?) why should we wonder about the origin of so much of the world’s hatred towards us? Why should we care while we have Facebook, reality TV, football and Hollywood? We are a nation that would forfeit its rights for a flat-screen TV and a home theater system. We are a naïve and self-absorbed people who are doomed to pay the reparations of war both in dollars and blood forever into an eternal future.

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America Cannot Go to War for Israel

America Cannot Go to War for Israel
By Ahmed Moor
August 18, 2010
Source: Huffington Post

The mongrel dogs of war are foaming at the bit. For years they’ve cowered in their damp trenches, bristling in the heat. But they’re back now. They’ve gathered their sagging flesh and cast their milky, crusty eyes at Iran. The mongrel dogs of war are planning another war.

The Zionists Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeffrey Goldberg and George Will want young American men and women to attack Iran on behalf of Israel. These are the same men who wanted young American men to attack Iraq. But Iran is not Iraq, and many thousands of Americans will die in the next war. This will not be a cakewalk or a slam dunk. And no enwreathed children will greet Americans in the streets with lily-white flower petals.

There are thousands of Americans stranded in Iraq and Afghanistan, two states that share long and porous borders with Iran. It’s foolish to think that if America attacks Iran, those American troops will emerge from the carnage unscathed. Iran is in no position to engage America in a conventional war, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t spill much American blood.

Mahan Abedin — a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government — explains what a Zionist-propelled American war on Iran may entail:

The range of predictable responses available to the IRGC high command include dramatic hit and run attacks against military and commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, the use of mid-range ballistic missiles against American bases in the region and Israel and a direct assault on American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. All these options are likely to be used within 48 hours of the start of hostilities…

What is less predictable is the response of the IRGC Qods Force, which is likely to be at the forefront of the Pasdaran’s counter-attack. One possible response by the Qods force is spectacular terrorist-style attacks against American intelligence bases and assets throughout the region. The IRGC Qods Force is believed to have identified every key component of the American intelligence apparatus in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan…

The IRGC navy will also play a key asymmetrical role in the conflict by organising maritime suicide bombings on an industrial scale. By manning its fleet of speedboats with suicide bombers and ramming them into American warships and even neutral commercial shipping, the Pasdaran will hope to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 40 percent of world crude oil supplies pass…

The combination of these asymmetrical forms of warfare with more conventional style missile and even ground force attacks on American bases in the region will likely result in thousands of American military casualties in the space of a few weeks. The IRGC has both the will and wherewithal to inflict a level of casualties on American armed forces not seen since the Second World War…

Benjamin Netanyahu is a dangerously delusional man. His mind is encumbered by a fixation on the holocaust and Hitler. He zealously reanimates Hitler at every opportunity, thrusting him onto real world objects. Hitler is, according to Netanyahu, among us, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is his present day incarnation, or worse. That’s how the Israeli Prime Minister can say the following, to an audience suffering from the same affliction:

“Hitler went out on a world campaign first, and then tried to get nuclear weapons. Iran is trying to get nuclear arms first. Therefore from that perspective, it is much more dangerous.”

This is Benjamin Netanyahu’s opportunity to kill Hitler.

It’s a truism that old men declare wars, and young men die in them. George Will will never die in a war. And while Jeffrey Goldberg was a corporal in the Israeli army, he’s too old to enlist in the American army now (although he appears to be a reservist in the Israeli army). Despite that, all Americans will feel the sting of war. Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the dismal economic reality in America today. A war on Iran will bankrupt the country.

America must not attack Iran; it also has an obligation to forestall an Israeli attack. The UK’s Sunday Times reported that the Israelis may use nuclear weapons against Iran. This will be the first time nuclear weapons have been used since 1945. The wars on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and the flotilla murders demonstrate the irrationality of the Israeli leadership. The Israelis must be disarmed before they strike Iran with nuclear weapons. The hypocrisy has gone on for long enough.

We have a responsibility to stop this hysterical march to war. Iran does not pose any threat to America. The men pushing this war lied to us about Iraq, and they’re lying now about Iran. The warmongers and profiteers must be forced back into their kennels. They must be discredited and shamed. America cannot fight another war built on lies. America cannot afford another war for Israel.

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President Roosevelt’s Campaign to Incite War in Europe

President Roosevelt’s Campaign To Incite War in Europe : The Secret Polish Documents
By Mark Weber
Source: Institute for Historical Review

Major ceremonies were held in 1982 to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With the exceptions of Washington and Lincoln, he was glorified and eulogized as no other president in American history. Even conservative President Ronald Reagan joined the chorus of applause. In early 1983, newspapers and television networks remembered the fiftieth anniversary of Roosevelt’s inauguration with numerous laudatory tributes.

And yet, with each passing year more and more new evidence comes to light which contradicts the glowing image of Roosevelt portrayed by the mass media and politicians.

Much has already been written about Roosevelt’s campaign of deception and outright lies in getting the United States to intervene in the Second World War prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Roosevelt’s aid to Britain and the Soviet Union in violation of American neutrality and international law, his acts of war against Germany in the Atlantic in an effort to provoke a German declaration of war against the United States, his authorization of a vast “dirty tricks” campaign against U.S. citizens by British intelligence agents in violation of the Constitution, and his provocations and ultimatums against Japan which brought on the attack against Pearl Harbor — all this is extensively documented and reasonably well known.[1]

Not so well known is the story of Roosevelt’s enormous responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War itself. This essay focuses on Roosevelt’s secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. It deals particularly with his efforts to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany in 1938 and 1939.

Franklin Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war which had already engulfed Europe. He bears a grave responsibility before history for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time.

This paper relies heavily on a little-known collection of secret Polish documents which fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in September 1939. These documents clearly establish Roosevelt’s crucial role in bringing on the Second World War. They also reveal the forces behind the President which pushed for war.

While a few historians have quoted sentences and even paragraphs from these documents, their importance has not been fully appreciated. There are three reasons for this, I believe. First, for many years their authenticity was not indisputably established. Second, a complete collection of the documents has not been available in English. And third, the translation of those documents which has been available in English until now is deficient and unacceptably bad.

When the Germans took Warsaw in late September 1939, they seized a mass of documents from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In a letter of 8 April 1983, Dr. Karl Otto Braun of Munich informed me that the documents were captured by an SS brigade led by Freiherr von Kuensberg, whom Braun knew personally. In a surprise attack, the brigade captured the center of Warsaw ahead of the regular German army. Von Kuensberg told Braun that his men took control of the Polish Foreign Ministry just as Ministry officials were in the process of burning incriminating documents. Dr. Braun was an official of the German Foreign Office between 1938 and 1945.

The German Foreign Office chose Hans Adolf von Moltke, formerly the Reich’s Ambassador in Warsaw, to head a special Archive Commission to examine the collection and sort out those documents which might be suitable for publication. At the end of March 1940, 16 of these were published in book form under the title Polnische Dokumente zur Vorgeschichte des Krieges [“Polish Documents on the Pre-History of the War”]. The Foreign Office edition was subtitled “German White Book No. 3.” The book was immediately published in various foreign language editions in Berlin and some other European capitals. An American edition was published in New York by Howell, Soskin and Company as The German White Paper. Historian C. Hartley Grattan contributed a remarkably cautious and reserved foreword.[2]

The translation of the documents for the U.S. White Paper edition was inexcusably bad. Whole sentences and parts of sentences were missing and portions were grossly mistranslated. H. Keith Thompson explained to me why this was so during a conversation on 22 March 1983 and in a letter of 13 May 1983. A poor first draft English-language translation had been prepared in Berlin and sent to America. It was given to George Sylvester Viereck, a prominent pro-German American publicist and literary advisor to the German Library of Information in New York City. Thompson knew Viereck intimately and served as his chief aide and re-writer. Viereck had hurriedly redrafted the translation from Berlin into more readable prose but without any opportunity of comparing it to the original Polish text (which he could not read in any case) or even the official German-language version. In making stylistic changes for the sake of readability, the meaning of the original documents was thereby inadvertently distorted.

The matter was also discussed at a small dinner for Lawrence Dennis hosted by Thompson at Viereck’s apartment in the Hotel Belleclaire in New York City in 1956. Viereck explained that he had been a highly paid literary consultant to the German government, responsible for the propaganda effect of publications, and could not be concerned with the translation groundwork normally done by clerks. Even the most careful translation of complicated documents is apt to distort the original meaning, and literary editing is certain to do so, Viereck said. Thompson agreed with that view.

In preparing the English-language text for this essay, I have carefully examined the official German translation and various other translations, and compared them with facsimiles of the original Polish documents.

Media Sensation

The German government considered the captured Polish documents to be of tremendous importance. On Friday, 29 March, the Reich Ministry of Propaganda confidentially informed the daily press of the reason for releasing the documents:

These extraordinary documents, which may be published beginning with the first edition on Saturday, will create a first-class political sensation, since they in fact prove the degree of America’s responsibility for the outbreak of the present war. America’s responsibility must not, of course, be stressed in commentaries; the documents must be left to speak for themselves, and they speak clearly enough.

The Ministry of Propaganda specifically asks that sufficient space be reserved for the publication of these documents, which is of supreme importance to the Reich and the German people.

We inform you in confidence that the purpose of publishing these documents is to strengthen the American isolationists and to place Roosevelt in an untenable position, especially in view of the fact that he is standing for re-election. It is however not at all necessary for us to point Roosevelt’s responsibility; his enemies in America will take care of that.[3]

The German Foreign Office made the documents public on Friday, 29 March 1940. In Berlin, journalists from around the world, including the United States, were given facsimile copies of the original Polish documents and translations in German. journalists were permitted to examine the original documents themselves, along with an enormous pile of other documents from the Polish Foreign Ministry.

The release of the documents was an international media sensation. American newspapers gave the story large front page headline coverage and published lengthy excerpts from the documents. But the impact was much less than the German government had hoped for.

Leading U.S. government officials wasted no time in vehemently denouncing the documents as not authentic. Secretary of State Cordell Hull stated: “I may say most emphatically that neither I nor any of my associates in the Department of State have ever heard of any such conversations as those alleged, nor do we give them the slightest credence. The statements alleged have not represented in any way at any time the thought or the policy of the American government.” William Bullitt, the U.S. Ambassador to Paris who was particulary incriminated by the documents, announced: “I have never made to anyone the statements attributed to me.” And Count Jerzy Potocki, the Polish Ambassador in Washington whose confidential reports to Warsaw were the most revealing, declared: “I deny the allegations attributed to my reports. I never had any conversations with Ambassador Bullitt on America’s participation in war.”[4]

These categorical public denials by the highest officials had the effect of almost completely undercutting the anticipated impact of the documents. It must be remembered that this was several decades before the experiences of the Vietnam war and Watergate had taught another generation of Americans to be highly skeptical of such official denials. In 1940, the vast majority of the American people trusted their political leaders to tell them the truth.

After all, if the documents made public to the world by the German government were in fact authentic and genuine, it would mean that the great leader of the American democracy was a man who lied to his own people and broke his own country’s laws, while the German government told the truth. To accept that would be quite a lot to expect of any nation, but especially of the trusting American public.

Comment from Capitol Hill generally echoed the official government view. Senator Key Pittman, the Democratic Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the documents “unmitigated falsehood designed to create dissension in the United States.” Senator Claude Peper, Democrat of Florida, declared: “It’s German propaganda and shouldn’t affect our policies in the least.” Only a few were not impressed with the official denials. Representative Hamilton Fish of New york, the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for a Congressional investigation and declared in a radio address: “If these charges were true, it would constitute a treasonable act. If President Roosevelt has entered into secret understandings or commitments with foreign governments to involve us in war, he should be impeached.”[5]

American newspapers stressed the high-level denials in reporting the release of the documents. The New York Times headline read: U.S. BRANDS AS FALSE NAZI DOCUMENTS CHARGING WE FOSTERED WAR IN EUROPE AND PROMISED TO JOIN ALLIES IF NEEDED. The Baltimore Sun headlined: NAZI DOCUMENTS LAYING WAR BLAME ON U.S. ARE ASSAILED IN WASHINGTON.[6]

Although the book of Polish documents was labeled “first series,” no further volumes ever appeared. From time to time the German government would make public additional documents from the Polish archives. These were published in book form in 1943 along with numerous other documents captured by the Germans from the French Foreign Ministry and other European archives, under the title Roosevelts Weg in den Krieg: Geheimdokumente zur Kriegspolitik des Praesidenten der Vereinigten Staaten [“Roosevelt’s Way Into War: Secret Documents on the War Policy of the President of the United States”].[7]

A very important unanswered question is: Where are the original Polish documents today? Unless they were destroyed in the conflagration of the war, they presumably fell into either American or Soviet hands in 1945. In view of recent U.S. government policy on secret archival material, it is very unlikely that they would still be secret today if they had been acquired by the United States. My guess is that if they were not destroyed, they are now either in Moscow or at the East German Central State Archives in Potsdam.

It is particularly important to keep in mind that these secret reports were written by top level Polish ambassadors, that is, by men who though not at all friendly to Germany nonetheless understood the realities of European Politics far better than those who made policy in the United States.

For example, the Polish ambassadors realized that behind all their rhetoric about democracy and human rights, and expressions of love for the United States, the Jews who agitated for war against Germany were actually doing nothing other than ruthlessly furthering their own purely sectarian interests. Many centuries of experience in living closely with the Jews had made the Poles far more aware than most nationalities of the special character of this people.

The Poles viewed the Munich Settlement of 1938 very differently than did Roosevelt and his circle. The President bitterly attacked the Munich agreement, which gave self-determination to the three and a half million Germans of Czechoslovakia and settled a major European crisis, as a shameful and humiliating capitulation to German blackmail. Although wary of German might, the Polish government supported the Munich agreement, in part because a small Polish territory which had been a part of Czechoslovakia against the wishes of its inhabitants was united with Poland as a result of the Settlement.

The Polish envoys held the makers of American foreign policy in something approaching contempt. President Roosevelt was considered a master political artist who knew how to mold American public opinion, but very little about the true state of affairs in Europe. As Poland’s Ambassador to Washington emphasized in his reports to Warsaw, Roosevelt pushed America into war in order to distract attention from his failures as President in domestic policy.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to go into the complexities of German-Polish relations between 1933 and 1939 and the reasons for the German attack against Poland at dawn on the first day of September 1939. However, it should be noted that Poland had refused to even negotiate over self-determination for the German city of Danzig and the ethnic German minority in the so-called Polish Corridor. Hitler felt compelled to resort to arms when he did in response to a growing Polish campaign of terror and dispossession against the one and a half million ethnic Germans under Polish rule. In my view, if ever a military action was justified, it was the German campaign against Poland in 1939.

Poland’s headstrong refusal to negotiate was made possible because of a fateful blank check guarantee of military backing from Britain — a pledge that ultimately proved completely worthless to the hapless Poles. Considering the lightning swiftness of the victorious German campaign, it is difficult to realize today that the Polish government did not at all fear war with Germany. Poland’s leaders foolishly believed that German might was only an illusion. They were convinced that their troops would occupy Berlin itself within a few weeks and add further German territories to an enlarged Polish state. It is also important to keep in mind that the purely localized conflict between Germany and Poland was only transformed into a Europe-wide conflagration by the British and French declarations of war against Germany.

After the war the Allied-appointed judges at the International Military Tribunal staged at Nuremberg refused to admit the Polish documents as evidence for the German defense. Had these pieces of evidence been admitted, the Nuremberg undertaking might have been less a victors’ show trial and more a genuinely impartial court of international justice.

Authenticity Beyond Doubt

There is now absolutely no question that the documents from the Polish Foreign Ministry in Warsaw made public by the German government are genuine and authentic.

Charles C. Tansill, professor of American diplomatic history at Georgetown University, considered them genuine. “… I had a long conversation with M. Lipsky, the Polish ambassador in Berlin in the prewar years, and he assured me that the documents in the German White Paper are authentic,” he wrote.[8] Historian and sociologist Harry Elmer Barnes confirmed this assessment: “Both Professor Tansill and myself have independently established the thorough authenticity of these documents.”[9] In America’s Second Crusade, William H. Chamberlain reported: “I have been privately informed by an extremely reliable source that Potocki, now residing in South America, confirmed the accuracy of the documents, so far as he was concerned.”[10]

More importantly, Edward Raczynski, the Polish Ambassador in London from 1934 to 1945, confirmed the authenticity of the documents in his diary, which was published in 1963 under the title In Allied London. In his entry for 20 June 1940, he wrote:

The Germans published in April a White Book containing documents from the archives of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, consisting of reports from Potocki in Washington, Lukasiewicz in Paris and myself. I do not know where they found them, since we were told that the archives had been destroyed. The documents are certainly genuine, and the facsimiles show that for the most part the Germans got hold of originals and not merely copies.

In this ‘First Series’ of documents I found three reports from this Embassy, two by myself and the third signed by me but written by Balinski. I read them with some apprehension, but they contained nothing liable to compromise myself or the Embassy or to impair relations with our British hosts.[11]

In 1970 their authenticity was reconfirmed with the publication of Diplomat in Paris 1936-1939. This important work consists of the official papers and memoirs of Juliusz Lukasiewicz, the former Polish Ambassador to Paris who authored several of the secret diplomatic reports made public by the German government. The collection was edited by Waclaw Jedrzejewicz, a former Polish diplomat and cabinet member, and later Professor Emeritus of Wellesley and Ripon colleges. Professor Jedrzejewicz considered the documents made public by the Germans absolutely genuine. He quoted extensively from several of them.

Mr. Tyler G. Kent has also vouched for the authenticity of the documents. He states that while working at the U.S. embassy in London in 1939 and 1940, he saw copies of U.S. diplomatic messages in the files which corresponded to the Polish documents and which confirmed their accuracy.

Two Key Diplomats

Two American diplomats who played especially crucial roles in the European crisis of 1938-1939 are mentioned often in the Polish documents. The first of these was William C. Bullitt. Although his official position was U.S. Ambassador to France, he was in reality much more than that. He was Roosevelt’s “super envoy” and personal deputy in Europe.

Like Roosevelt, Bullitt “rose from the rich.” He was born into an important Philadelphia banking family, one of the city’s wealthiest. His mother’s grandfather, Jonathan Horwitz, was a German Jew who had come to the United States from Berlin.[12] In 1919 Bullitt was an assistant to President Wilson at the Versailles peace conference. That same year, Wilson and British Prime Minister Lloyd George sent him to Russia to meet with Lenin and determine if the new Bolshevik government deserved recognition by the Allies. Bullitt met with Lenin and other top Soviet leaders and upon his return urged recognition of the new regime. But he had a falling-out with Wilson and left diplomatic service. In 1923 he married Louise Bryant Reed, the widow of American Communist leader John Reed. In Europe Bullitt collaborated with Sigmund Freud on a psychoanalytical biography of Wilson. When Roosevelt became President in 1933, he brought Bullitt back into diplomatic life.[13]

In November 1933, Roosevelt sent Bullitt to Moscow as the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. His initial enthusiasm for the Soviet system gave way to a deep distrust of Stalin and Communism. In 1936 the President transferred him to Paris. He served there as Roosevelt’s key European diplomat until 1940 when Churchill’s assumption of leadership in Britain and the defeat of France made his special role superfluous.

In the Spring of 1938, all U.S. envoys in Europe were subordinated to Bullitt by an internal directive of the State Department.[14] As the European situation worsened in 1939, Roosevelt often spoke with his man in Paris by telephone, sometimes daily, frequently giving him precisely detailed and ultra-confidential instructions on how to conduct America’s foreign policy. Not even Secretary of State Cordell Hull was privy to many of the letters and communications between Bullitt and Roosevelt.

In France, the New York Times noted, Bullitt “was acclaimed there as ‘the Champagne Ambassador’ on account of the lavishness of his parties, but he was far more than the envoy to Paris: He was President Roosevelt’s intimate adviser on European affairs, with telephone access to the President at any hour.”[15]

Bullitt and Roosevelt were fond of each other and saw eye to eye on foreign policy issues. Both were aristocrats and thorough internationalists who shared definite views on how to remake the world and a conviction that they were destined to bring about that grand reorganization.

“Between these teammates,” the Saturday Evening Post reported in March 1939,

there is a close, hearty friendship and a strong temperamental affinity. The President is known to rely upon Bullitt’s judgment so heavily that the ambassador’s mailed and cabled reports from abroad are supplemented several times a week by a chat by transatlantic telephone. In addition, Bullitt returns to the United States several times each year to take part in White House councils, to the displeasure of the State Department, which considers him a prima donna.

In the whole roster of the State Department the President could not have found an adviser who would have been so responsive to his own champagne personality as Bullitt. Both men, born patricians, have the same basic enthusiasm for remolding society …[16]

In Europe, Bullitt spoke with the voice and the authority of President Roosevelt himself.

The second most important American diplomat in Europe was Joseph P. Kennedy, Roosevelt’s Ambassador at the Court of St. James. Like Bullitt he was a wealthy banker. But this Boston Catholic of Irish ancestry was otherwise a very different sort of man. Roosevelt sent Kennedy, an important Democratic party figure and father of a future President, to Britain for purely political reasons. Roosevelt disliked and distrusted Kennedy, and this sentiment grew as Kennedy opposed the President’s war policies more and more vehemently. Moreover, Kennedy despised his counterpart in Paris. In a letter to his wife, he wrote: “I talk to Bullitt occasionally. He is more rattlebrained than ever. His judgment is pathetic and I am afraid of his influence on F.D.R. because they think alike on many things.”[17]

The Documents

Here now are extensive excerpts from the Polish documents themselves. They are given in chronological order. They are remarkably lucid for diplomatic reports and speak eloquently for themselves.

* * * * *

On 9 February 1938, the Polish Ambassador in Washington, Count Jerzy Potocki, reported to the Foreign Minister in Warsaw on the Jewish role in making American foreign policy:

The pressure of the Jews on President Roosevelt and on the State Department is becoming ever more powerful …

… The Jews are right now the leaders in creating a war psychosis which would plunge the entire world into war and bring about general catastrophe. This mood is becoming more and more apparent.

in their definition of democratic states, the Jews have also created real chaos: they have mixed together the idea of democracy and communism and have above all raised the banner of burning hatred against Nazism.

This hatred has become a frenzy. It is propagated everywhere and by every means: in theaters, in the cinema, and in the press. The Germans are portrayed as a nation living under the arrogance of Hitler which wants to conquer the whole world and drown all of humanity in an ocean of blood.

In conversations with Jewish press representatives I have repeatedly come up against the inexorable and convinced view that war is inevitable. This international Jewry exploits every means of propaganda to oppose any tendency towards any kind of consolidation and understanding between nations. In this way, the conviction is growing steadily but surely in public opinion here that the Germans and their satellites, in the form of fascism, are enemies who must be subdued by the ‘democratic world.’

On 21 November 1938, Ambassador Potocki sent a report to Warsaw which discussed in some detail a conversation between himself and Bullitt, who happened to be back in Washington:

The day before yesterday I had a long conversation with Ambassador Bullitt, who is here on vacation. He began by remarking that friendly relations existed between himself and [Polish] Ambassador Lukasiewicz in Paris, whose company he greatly enjoyed.

Since Bullitt regularly informs President Roosevelt about the international situation in Europe, and particularly about Russia, great attention is given to his reports by President Roosevelt and the State Department. Bullitt speaks energetically and interestingly. Nonetheless, his reaction to events in Europe resembles the view of a journalist more than that of a politician …

About Germany and Chancellor Hitler he spoke with great vehemence and strong hatred. He said that only force, and ultimately a war would put an end to the insane future German expansionism.

To my question asking how he visualized this coming war, he replied that above all the United States, France and England must rearm tremendously in order to be in a position to oppose German power.

Only then, when the moment is ripe, declared Bullitt further, will one be ready for the final decision. I asked him in what way a conflict could arise, since Germany would probably not attack England and France first. I simply could not see the connecting point in this whole combination.

Bullitt replied that the democratic countries absolutely needed another two years until they were fully armed. In the meantime, Germany would probably have advanced with its expansion in an easterly direction. It would be the wish of the democratic countries that armed conflict would break out there, in the East between the German Reich and Russia. As the Soviet Union’s potential strength is not yet known, it might happen that Germany would have moved too far away from its base, and would be condemned to wage a long and weakening war. Only then would the democratic countries attack Germany, Bullitt declared, and force her to capitulate.

In reply to my question whether the United States would take part in such a war, he said, ‘Undoubtedly yes, but only after Great Britain and France had let loose first!’ Feeling in the United States was no intense against Nazism and Hitlerism, that a psychosis already prevails today among Americans similar to that before America’s declaration of war against Germany in 1917.

Bullitt did not give the impression of being very well informed about the situation in Eastern Europe, and he conversed in a rather superficial way.

Ambassador Potocki’s report from Washington of 9 January 1939 dealt in large part with President Roosevelt’s annual address to Congress:

President Roosevelt acts on the assumption that the dictatorial governments, above all Germany and Japan, only understand a policy of force. Therefore he has decided to react to any future blows by matching them. This has been demonstrated by the most recent measures of the United States.

The American public is subject to an ever more alarming propaganda which is under Jewish influence and continuously conjures up the specter of the danger of war. Because of this the Americans have strongly altered their views on foreign policy problems, in comparison with last year.

Of all the documents in this collection, the most revealing is probably the secret report by Ambassador Potocki of 12 January 1939 which dealt with the domestic situation in the United States. This report is given here in full:

The feeling now prevailing in the United States is marked by a growing hatred of Fascism and, above all, of Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with Nazism. Propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100 percent radio, film, daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and presents Germany as black as possible-above all religious persecution and concentration camps are exploited-this propaganda is nevertheless extremely effective since the public here is completely ignorant and knows nothing of the situation in Europe.

Right now most Americans regard Chancellor Hitler and Nazism as the greatest evil and greatest danger threatening the world. The situation here provides an excellent platform for public speakers of all kinds, for emigrants from Germany and Czechoslovakia who don’t spare any words to incite the public here with every kind of slander. They praise American liberty which they contrast with the totalitarian states.

It is interesting to note that in this extremely well-planned campaign which is conducted above all against National Socialism, Soviet Russia is almost completely excluded. If mentioned at all, it is only in a friendly manner and things are presented in such a way as if Soviet Russia were working with the bloc of democratic states. Thanks to the clever propaganda the sympathy of the American public is completely on the side of Red Spain.

Besides this propaganda, a war psychosis is being artificially created. The American people are told that peace in Europe is hanging only by a thread and that war is unavoidable. At the same time the American people are unequivocally told that in case of a world war, America must also take an active part in order to defend the slogans of freedom and democracy in the world.

President Roosevelt was the first to express hatred against Fascism. In doing so he was serving a double purpose: First, he wanted to divert the attention of the American people from domestic political problems, especially the problem of the struggle between capital and labor. Second, by creating a war psychosis and by spreading rumors about danger threatening Europe, he wanted to get the American people to accept an enormous armament program which exceeds the defense requirements of the United States.

Regarding the first point, it must be said that the internal situation on the labor market is steadily growing worse. The unemployed today already number twelve million. Federal and state expenditures are increasing daily. Only the huge sums, running into billions, which the treasury expends for emergency labor projects, are keeping a certain amount of peace in the country. Thus far there have only been the usual strikes and local unrest. But how long this kind of government aid can be kept up cannot be predicted. The excitement and indignation of public opinion, and the serious conflict between private enterprises and enormous trusts on the one hand, and with labor on the other, have made many enemies for Roosevelt and are causing him many sleepless nights.

As to point two, I can only say that President Roosevelt, as a clever political player and an expert of the American mentality, speedily steered public attention away from the domestic situation to fasten it on foreign policy. The way to achieve this was simple. One needed, on the one hand, to conjure up a war menace hanging over the world because of Chancellor Hitler, and, on the other hand, to create a specter by babbling about an attack of the totalitarian states against the United States. The Munich pact came to President Roosevelt as a godsend. He portrayed it as a capitulation of France and England to bellicose German militarism. As people say here: Hitler compelled Chamberlain at pistol-point. Hence, France and England had no choice and had to conclude a shameful peace.

The prevalent hatred against everything which is in any way connected with German Nazism is further kindled by the brutal policy against the Jews in Germany and by the émigré problem. In this action, various Jewish intellectuals participated: for instance, Bernard Baruch; the Governor of New York State, Lehman; the newly appointed judge of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter; Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau; and others who are personal friends of President Roosevelt. They want the President to become the champion of human rights, freedom of religion and speech, and the man who in the future will punish trouble-makers. These groups of people who occupy the highest positions in the American government and want to pose as representatives of ‘true Americanism’ and ‘defenders of democracy’ are, in the last analysis, connected by unbreakable ties with international Jewry.

For this Jewish international, which above all is concerned with the interests of its race, to portray the President of the United States as the ‘idealist’ champion on human rights was a very clever move. In this manner they have created a dangerous hotbed for hatred and hostility in this hemisphere and divided the world into two hostile camps. The entire issue is worked out in a masterly manner. Roosevelt has been given the foundation for activating American foreign policy, and simultaneously has been procuring enormous military stocks for the coming war, for which the Jews are striving very consciously. With regard to domestic policy, it is very convenient to divert public attention from anti-Semitism, which is constantly growing in the United States, by talking about the necessity of defending religion and individual liberty against the onslaught of Fascism.

On 16 January 1939, Polish Ambassador Potocki reported to the Warsaw Foreign Ministry on another lengthy conversation he had with Roosevelt’s personal envoy, William Bullitt:

The day before yesterday, I had a longer discussion with Ambassador Bullitt in the Embassy where he called on me. Bullitt leaves on the 21st of this month for Paris, from where he has been absent for almost three months. He is sailing with a whole ‘trunk’ full of instructions, conversations, and directives from President Roosevelt, the State Department and Senators who belong to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In talking with Bullitt I had the impression that he had received from President Roosevelt a very precise definition of the attitude taken by the United States towards the present European crisis. He will present this material at the Quai d’Orsay [the French Foreign Ministry] and will make use of it in discussions with European statesmen. The contents of these directives, as Bullitt explained them to me in the course of a conversation lasting half an hour, were:

1. The vitalizing of foreign policy under the leadership of President Roosevelt, who severely and unambiguously condemns totalitarian countries.

2. United States preparations for war on sea, land and air will be carried out at an accelerated pace and will consume the colossal sum of 1.25 billion dollars.

3. It is the decided opinion of the President that France and Britain must put an end to any sort of compromise with the totalitarian countries. They must not get into any discussions aiming at any kind of territorial changes.

4. They have the moral assurance that the United States will abandon the policy of isolation and be prepared to intervene actively on the side of Britain and France in case of war. America is ready to place its whole wealth of money and raw materials at their disposal.

The Polish Ambassador to Paris, Juliusz (Jules) Lukasiewicz, sent a top secret report to the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw at the beginning of February 1939 which outlined U.S. policy towards Europe as explained to him by William Bullitt:

A week ago, the Ambassador of the United States, William Bullitt returned to Paris after a three months’ leave in America. Meanwhile, I have had two conversations with him which enable me to inform you of his views regarding the European situation and to give a survey of Washington’s policy.

The international situation is regarded by official circles as extremely serious and in constant danger of armed conflict. Those in authority are of the opinion that if war should break out between Britain and France on the one hand, and Germany and Italy on the other, and should Britain and France be defeated, the Germans would endanger the real interests of the United States on the American continent. For this reason, one can foresee right from the beginning the participation of the United States in the war on the side of France and Britain, naturally some time after the outbreak of the war. As Ambassador Bullitt expressed it: ‘Should war break out we shall certainly not take part in it at the beginning, but we shall finish it.’

On 7 March 1939, Ambassador Potocki sent a remarkably lucid and perceptive report on Roosevelt’s foreign policy to his government in Warsaw. This document was first made public when leading German newspapers published it in German translation, along with a facsimile reproduction of the first page of the Polish original, in their editions of 28 October 1940. The main National Socialist party newspaper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, published the Ambassador’s report with this observation:

The document itself needs no commentary. We do not know, and it does not concern us, whether the internal American situation as reported by the Polish diplomat is correct in every detail. That must be decided by the American people alone. But in the interest of historical truth it is important for us to show that the warmongering activities of American diplomacy, especially in Europe, are once again revealed and proven by this document. It still remains a secret just who, and for what motives, have driven American diplomacy to this course. In any case, the results have been disastrous for both Europe and America. Europe was plunged into war and America has brought upon itself the hostility of great nations which normally have no differences with the American people and, indeed, have not been in conflict but have lived for generations as friends and want to remain so.

This report was not one of the Polish documents which was released in March 1940 and published as part of the “German White Book No. 3” (or the German White Paper). However, it was published in 1943 as part of the collection entitled “Roosevelt’s Way Into War.” As far as I can determine, this English translation is the first that has ever appeared. Ambassador Potocki’s secret report of 7 March 1939 is here given in full:

The foreign policy of the United States right now concerns not only the government, but the entire American public as well. The most important elements are the public statements of President Roosevelt. In almost every public speech he refers more or less explicitly to the necessity of activating foreign policy against the chaos of views and ideologies in Europe. These statements are picked up by the press and then cleverly filtered into the minds of average Americans in such a way as to strengthen their already formed opinions. The same theme is constantly repeated, namely, the danger of war in Europe and saving the democracies from inundation by enemy fascism. In all of these public statements there is normally only a single theme, that is, the danger from Nazism and Nazi Germany to world peace.

As a result of these speeches, the public is called upon to support rearmament and the spending of enormous sums for the navy and the air force. The unmistakable idea behind this is that in case of an armed conflict the United States cannot stay out but must take an active part in the maneuvers. As a result of the effective speeches of President Roosevelt, which are supported by the press, the American public is today being conscientiously manipulated to hate everything that smacks of totalitarianism and fascism. But it is interesting that the USSR is not included in all this. The American public considers Russia more in the camp of the democratic states. This was also the case during the Spanish civil war when the so-called Loyalists were regarded as defenders of the democratic idea.

The State Department operates without attracting a great deal of attention, although it is known that Secretary of State [Cordell] Hull and President Roosevelt swear allegiance to the same ideas. However, Hull shows more reserve than Roosevelt, and he loves to make a distinction between Nazism and Chancellor Hitler on the one hand, and the German people on the other. He considers this form of dictatorial government a temporary “necessary evil.” In contrast, the State Department is unbelievably interested in the USSR and its internal situation and openly worries itself over its weaknesses and decline. The main reason for United States interest in the Russians is the situation in the Far East. The current government would be glad to see the Red Army emerge as the victor in a conflict with Japan. That’s why the sympathies of the government are clearly on the side of China, which recently received considerable financial aid amounting to 25 million dollars.

Eager attention is given to all information from the diplomatic posts as well as to the special emissaries of the President who serve as Ambassadors of the United States. The President frequently calls his representatives from abroad to Washington for personal exchanges of views and to give them special information and instructions. The arrival of the envoys and ambassadors is always shrouded in secrecy and very little surfaces in the press about the results of their visits. The State Department also takes care to avoid giving out any kind of information about the course of these interviews. The practical way in which the President makes foreign policy is most effective. He gives personal instructions to his representatives abroad, most of whom are his personal friends. In this way the United States is led down a dangerous path in world politics with the explicit intention of abandoning the comfortable policy of isolation. The President regards the foreign policy of his country as a means of satisfying his own personal ambition. He listens carefully and happily to his echo in the other capitals of the world. In domestic as well as in foreign policy, the Congress of the United States is the only object that stands in the way of the President and his government in carrying out his decisions quickly and ambitiously. One hundred and fifty years ago, the Constitution of the United States gave the highest prerogatives to the American parliament which may criticize or reject the law of the White House.

The foreign policy of President Roosevelt has recently been the subject of intense discussion in the lower house and in the Senate, and this has caused excitement. The so-called Isolationists, of whom there are many in both houses, have come out strongly against the President. The representatives and senators were especially upset over the remarks by the President, which were published in the press, in which he said that the borders of the United States lie on the Rhine. But President Roosevelt is a superb political player and understands completely the power of the American parliament. He has his own people there, and he knows how to withdraw from an uncomfortable situation at the right moment.

Very intelligently and cleverly he ties together the question of foreign policy with the issues of American rearmament. He particularly stresses the necessity of spending enormous sums in order to maintain a defensive peace. He says specifically that the United States is not arming in order to intervene or to go to the aid of England or France in case of war, but rather because of the need to show strength and military preparedness in case of an armed conflict in Europe. In his view this conflict is becoming ever more acute and is completely unavoidable.

Since the issue is presented this way, the houses of Congress have no cause to object. To the contrary, the houses accepted an armament program of more than one billion dollars. (The normal budget is 550 million, the emergency 552 million dollars.) However, under the cloak of a rearmament policy, President Roosevelt continues to push forward his foreign policy, which unofficially shows the world that in case of war the United States will come out on the side of the democratic states with all military and financial power.

In conclusion it can be said that the technical and moral preparation of the American people for participation in a war-if one should break out in Europe-is preceding rapidly. It appears that the United States will come to the aid of France and Great Britain with all its resources right from the beginning. However, I know the American public and the representatives and senators who all have the final word, and I am of the opinion that the possibility that America will enter war as in 1917 is not great. That’s because the majority of states in the mid-West and West, where the rural element predominates, want to avoid involvement in European disputes at all costs. They remember the declaration of the Versailles Treaty and the well-known phrase that the war was to save the world for democracy. Neither the Versailles Treaty nor that slogan have reconciled the United States to that war. For millions there remains only a bitter aftertaste because of unpaid billions which the European states still owe America.

Juliusz Lukasiewicz, Poland’s Ambassador to France, reported to Warsaw on 29 March 1939 about further conversations with U.S. envoy Bullitt in Paris. Lukasiewicz discussed Roosevelt’s efforts to get both Poland and Britain to adopt a totally uncompromising policy towards Germany, even in the face of strong sentiment for peace. The report concludes with these words:

… I consider it my duty to inform you of all the aforesaid because I believe that collaboration with Ambassador Bullitt in such difficult and complicated times may prove useful to us. In any case it is absolutely certain that he agrees entirely with our point of view and is prepared for the most extensive friendly collaboration possible.

In order to strengthen the efforts of the American Ambassador in London [Joseph Kennedy], I called the attention of Ambassador Bullitt to the fact that it is not impossible that the British may treat the efforts of the United States with well-concealed contempt. He answered that I am probably right, but that nevertheless the United States has at its disposal the means to really bring pressure on England. He would be giving serious consideration to mobilizing these means.

The Polish Ambassador in London, Count Edward Raczynski, reported to Warsaw on 29 March 1939 on the continuing European crisis and on a conversation he had with Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, his American counterpart. Kennedy’s remarks to Raczynski confirmed Bullitt’s reputation in diplomatic circles as an indiscreet big mouth:

I asked Mr. Kennedy point blank about the conference which he is supposed to have had recently with [British Prime Minister] Mr. Chamberlain concerning Poland. Kennedy was surprised and declared categorically that a conversation of such special significance never took place. At the same time, and thereby contradicting his own assertion to a certain extent, Kennedy expressed displeasure and surprise that his colleagues in Paris and Warsaw [William Bullitt and Anthony Biddle] ‘who are not, as himself, in a position to get a clear picture of conditions in England’ should talk so openly about this conversation.

Mr. Kennedy-who made me understand that his views were based on a series of conversations with the most important authorities here-declared that he was convinced that should Poland decide in favor of armed resistance against Germany, especially with regard to Danzig, it would draw England in its wake.

This concludes the excerpts from the Polish reports.

* * * * *

The Path To War

While the Polish documents alone are conclusive proof of Roosevelt’s treacherous campaign to bring about world war, it is fortunate for posterity that a substantial body of irrefutable complementary evidence exists which confirms the conspiracy recorded in the dispatches to Warsaw.

The secret policy was confirmed after the war with the release of a confidential diplomatic report by the British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay. During his three years of service in Washington, the veteran diplomat had developed little regard for America’s leaders. He considered Roosevelt an amiable and impressionable lightweight, and warned the British Foreign Office that it should not tell William Bullitt anything beyond what it wouldn’t mind reading later in an American newspaper.[18]

On 19 September 1938 — that is, a year before the outbreak of war in Europe — Roosevelt called Lindsay to a very secret meeting at the White House. At the beginning of their long conversation, according to Lindsay’s confidential dispatch to London, Roosevelt “emphasized the necessity of absolute secrecy. Nobody must know I had seen him and he himself would tell nobody of the interview. I gathered not even the State Department.” The two discussed some secondary matters before Roosevelt got to the main point of the conference. “This is the very secret part of his communication and it must not be known to anyone that he has even breathed a suggestion.” The President told the Ambassador that if news of the conversation was ever made public, it could mean his impeachment. And no wonder. What Roosevelt proposed was a cynically brazen but harebrained scheme to violate the U.S. Constitution and dupe the American people.

The President said that if Britain and France “would find themselves forced to war” against Germany, the United States would ultimately also join. But this would require some clever maneuvering. Britain and France should impose a total blockade against Germany without actually declaring war and force other states (including neutrals) to abide by it. This would certainly provoke some kind of German military response, but it would also free Britain and France from having to actually declare war. For propaganda purposes, the “blockade must be based on loftiest humanitarian grounds and on the desire to wage hostilities with minimum of suffering and the least possible loss of life and property, and yet bring the enemy to his knees.” Roosevelt conceded that this would involve aerial bombardment, but “bombing from the air was not the method of hostilities which caused really great loss of life.”

The important point was to “call it defensive measures or anything plausible but avoid actual declaration of war.” That way, Roosevelt believed he could talk the American people into supporting war against Germany, including shipments of weapons to Britain and France, by insisting that the United States was still technically neutral in a non-declared conflict. “This method of conducting war by blockade would in his [Roosevelt’s] opinion meet with approval of the United States if its humanitarian purpose were strongly emphasized,” Lindsay reported.[19]

The American Ambassador to Italy, William Phillips, admitted in his postwar memoirs that the Roosevelt administration was already committed to going to war on the side of Britain and France in late 1938. “On this and many other occasions,” Phillips wrote, “I would like to have told him [Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister] frankly that in the event of a European war, the United States would undoubtedly be involved on the side of the Allies. But in view of my official position, I could not properly make such a statement without instructions from Washington, and these I never received.”[20]

Carl J. Burckhardt, the League of Nations High Commissioner to Danzig, reported in his postwar memoirs on a remarkable conversation held at the end of 1938 with Anthony Drexel Biddle, the American Ambassador to Poland. Biddle was a rich banker with close ties to the Morgan financial empire. A thoroughgoing internationalist, he was an ideological colleague of President Roosevelt and a good friend of William Bullitt. Burckhardt, a Swiss professor, served as High Commissioner between 1937 and 1939.

Nine months before the outbreak of armed conflict, on 2 December 1938, Biddle told Burckhardt

with remarkable satisfaction that the Poles were ready to wage war over Danzig. They would counter the motorized strength of the German army with agile maneuverability. ‘In April,’ he [Biddle] declared, ‘a new crisis would break out. Not since the torpedoing of the Lusitania [in 1915] had such a religious hatred against Germany reigned in America as today! Chamberlain and Daladier [the moderate British and French leaders] would be blown away by public opinion. This was a holy war!,[21]

The fateful British pledge to Poland of 31 March 1939 to go to war against Germany in case of a Polish-German conflict would not have been made without strong pressure from the White House.

On 14 March 1939, Slovakia declared itself an independent republic, thereby dissolving the state known as Czechoslovakia. That same day, Czechoslovak President Emil Hacha signed a formal agreement with Hitler establishing a German protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech portion of the federation. The British government initially accepted the new situation, but then Roosevelt intervened.

In their nationally syndicated column of 14 April 1939, the usually very well informed Washington journalists Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen reported that on 16 March 1939 Roosevelt had “sent a virtual ultimatum to Chamberlain” demanding that henceforth the British government strongly oppose Germany. According to Pearson and Allen, who completely supported Roosevelt’s move, “the President warned that Britain could expect no more support, moral or material through the sale of airplanes, if the Munich policy continued.”[22] Chamberlain gave in and the next day, 17 March, ended Britain’s policy of cooperation with Germany in a speech at Birmingham bitterly denouncing Hitler. Two weeks later the British government formally pledged itself to war in case of German-Polish hostilities.

Bullitt’s response to the creation of the German protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia was to telephone Roosevelt and, in an “almost hysterical” voice, urge him to make a dramatic denunciation of Germany and immediately ask Congress to repeal the Neutrality Act.[23]

In a confidential telegram to Washington dated 9 April 1939, Bullitt reported from Paris on another conversation with Ambassador Lukasiewicz. He had told the Polish envoy that although U.S. law prohibited direct financial aid to Poland, it might be possible to circumvent its provisions. The Roosevelt administration might be able to supply war planes to Poland indirectly through Britain. “The Polish Ambassador asked me if it might not be possible for Poland to obtain financial help and aeroplanes from the United States. I replied that I believed the Johnson Act would forbid any loans from the United States to Poland but added that it might be possible for England to purchase planes for cash in the United States and turn them over to Poland.”[24]

On 25 April 1939, four months before the outbreak of war, Bullitt called American newspaper columnist Karl von Wiegand, chief European correspondent of the International News Service, to the U.S. embassy in Paris and told him: “War in Europe has been decided upon. Poland has the assurance of the support of Britain and France, and will yield to no demands from Germany. America will be in the war soon after Britain and France enter it.”[25]

In a lengthy secret conversation at Hyde Park on 28 May 1939, Roosevelt assured the former President of Czechoslovakia, Dr. Edvard Benes, that America would actively intervene on the side of Britain and France in the anticipated European war.[26]

In June 1939, Roosevelt secretly proposed to the British that the United States should establish “a patrol over the waters of the Western Atlantic with a view to denying them to the German Navy in the event of war.” The British Foreign Office record of this offer noted that “although the proposal was vague and woolly and open to certain objections, we assented informally as the patrol was to be operated in our interests.”[27]

Many years after the war, Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister in 1939, confirmed Bullitt’s role as Roosevelt’s deputy in pushing his country into war. In a letter to Hamilton Fish dated 26 March 1971, Bonnet wrote: “One thing is certain is that Bullitt in 1939 did everything he could to make France enter the war.”[28] An important confirmation of the crucial role of Roosevelt and the Jews in pushing Britain into war comes from the diary of James V. Forrestal, the first U.S. Secretary of Defense. In his entry for 27 December 1945, he wrote:

Played golf today with [former Ambassador] Joe Kennedy. I asked him about his conversations with Roosevelt and [British Prime Minister] Neville Chamberlain from 1938 on. He said Chamberlain’s position in 1938 was that England had nothing with which to fight and that she could not risk going to war with Hitler. Kennedy’s view: That Hitler would have fought Russia without any later conflict with England if it had not been for [William] Bullitt’s urging on Roosevelt in the summer of 1939 that the Germans must be faced down about Poland; neither the French nor the British would have made Poland a cause of war if it had not been for the constant needling from Washington. Bullitt, he said, kept telling Roosevelt that the Germans wouldn’t fight; Kennedy that they would, and that they would overrun Europe. Chamberlain, he says, stated that America and the world Jews had forced England into the war. In his telephone conversations with Roosevelt in the summer of 1939, the President kept telling him to put some iron up Chamberlain’s backside.[29]

When Ambassador Potocki was back in Warsaw on leave from his post in Washington, he spoke with Count Jan Szembek, the Polish Foreign Ministry Under-Secretary, about the growing danger of war. In his diary entry of 6 July 1939, Szembek recorded Potocki’s astonishment at the calm mood in Poland. In comparison with the war psychosis that had gripped the West, Poland seemed like a rest home.

“In the West,” the Ambassador told Szembek, “there are all kinds of elements openly pushing for war: the Jews, the super-capitalists, the arms dealers. Today they are all ready for a great business, because they have found a place which can be set on fire: Danzig; and a nation that is ready to fight: Poland. They want to do business on our backs. They are indifferent to the destruction of our country. Indeed, since everything will have to be rebuilt later on, they can profit from that as well.”[30]

On 24 August 1939, just a week before the outbreak of hostilities, Chamberlain’s closest advisor, Sir Horace Wilson, went to Ambassador Kennedy with an urgent appeal from the British Prime Minister for President Roosevelt. Regretting that Britain had unequivocally obligated itself in March to Poland in case of war, Chamberlain now turned in despair to Roosevelt as a last hope for peace. He wanted the American President to “put pressure on the Poles” to change course at this late hour and open negotiations with Germany. By telephone Kennedy told the State Department that the British “felt that they could not, given their obligations, do anything of this sort but that we could.” Presented with this extraordinary opportunity to possibly save the peace of Europe, Roosevelt rejected Chamberlain’s desperate plea out of hand. At that, Kennedy reported, the Prime Minister lost all hope. “The futility of it all,” Chamberlain had told Kennedy, “is the thing that is frightful. After all, we cannot save the Poles. We can merely carry on a war of revenge that will mean the destruction of all Europe.”[31]

Roosevelt liked to present himself to the American people and the world as a man of peace. To a considerable degree, that is still his image today. But Roosevelt cynically rejected genuine opportunities to act for peace when they were presented.

In 1938 he refused even to answer requests by French Foreign Minister Bonnet on 8 and 12 September to consider arbitrating the Czech-German dispute.[32] And a year later, after the outbreak of war, a melancholy Ambassador Kennedy beseeched Roosevelt to act boldly for peace. “It seems to me that this situation may crystallize to a point where the President can be the savior of the world,” Kennedy cabled on 11 September from London. “The British government as such certainly cannot accept any agreement with Hitler, but there may be a point when the President himself may work out plans for world peace. Now this opportunity may never arise, but as a fairly practical fellow all my life, I believe that it is entirely conceivable that the President can get himself in a spot where he can save the world …”

But Roosevelt rejected out of hand this chance to save the peace of Europe. To a close political crony, he called Kennedy’s plea “the silliest message to me that I have ever received.” He complained to Henry Morgenthau that his London Ambassador was nothing but a pain in the neck: “Joe has been an appeaser and will always be an appeaser … If Germany and Italy made a good peace offer tomorrow, Joe would start working on the King and his friend the Queen and from there on down to get everybody to accept it.”[33]

Infuriated at Kennedy’s stubborn efforts to restore peace in Europe or at least limit the conflict that had broken out, Roosevelt instructed his Ambassador with a “personal” and “strictly confidential” telegram on 11 September 1939 that any American peace effort was totally out of the question. The Roosevelt government, it declared, “sees no opportunity nor occasion for any peace move to be initiated by the President of the United States. The people [sic] of the United States would not support any move for peace initiated by this Government that would consolidate or make possible a survival of a regime of force and aggression.”[34]

Hamilton Fish Warns The Nation

In the months before armed conflict broke out in Europe, perhaps the most vigorous and prophetic American voice of warning against President Roosevelt’s campaign to incite war was that of Hamilton Fish, a leading Republican congressman from New York. In a series of hard-hitting radio speeches, Fish rallied considerable public opinion against Roosevelt’s deceptive war policy. Here are only a few excerpts from some of those addresses.[35]

On 6 January 1939, Fish told a nationwide radio audience:

The inflammatory and provocative message of the President to Congress and the world [given two days before] has unnecessarily alarmed the American people and created, together with a barrage of propaganda emanating from high New Deal officials, a war hysteria, dangerous to the peace of America and the world. The only logical conclusion to such speeches is another war fought overseas by American soldiers.

All the totalitarian nations referred to by President Roosevelt … haven’t the faintest thought of making war on us or invading Latin America.

I do not propose to mince words on such an issue, affecting the life, liberty and happiness of our people. The time has come to call a halt to the warmongers of the New Deal, backed by war profiteers, Communists, and hysterical internationalists, who want us to quarantine the world with American blood and money.

He [Roosevelt] evidently desires to whip up a frenzy of hate and war psychosis as a red herring to take the minds of our people off their own unsolved domestic problems. He visualizes hobgoblins and creates in the public mind a fear of foreign invasions that exists only in his own imagination.

On 5 March, Fish spoke to the country over the Columbia radio network:

The people of France and Great Britain want peace but our warmongers are constantly inciting them to disregard the Munich Pact and resort to the arbitrament of arms. If only we would stop meddling in foreign lands the old nations of Europe would compose their own quarrels by arbitration and the processes of peace, but apparently we won’t let them.

Fish addressed the listeners of the National Broadcasting Company network on 5 April with these words:

The youth of America are again being prepared for another blood bath in Europe in order to make the world safe for democracy.

If Hitler and the Nazi government regain Memel or Danzig, taken away from Germany by the Versailles Treaty, and where the population is 90 percent German, why is it necessary to issue threats and denunciations and incite our people to war? I would not sacrifice the life of one American soldier for a half dozen Memels or Danzigs. We repudiated the Versailles Treaty because it was based on greed and hatred, and as long as its inequalities and injustices exist there are bound to be wars of liberation.

The sooner certain provisions of the Versailles Treaty are scrapped the better for the peace of the world.

I believe that if the areas that are distinctly German in population are restored to Germany, except Alsace-Lorraine and the Tyrol, there will be no war in western Europe. There may be a war between the Nazis and the Communists, but if there is that is not our war or that of Great Britain or France or any of the democracies.

New Deal spokesmen have stirred up war hysteria into a veritable frenzy. The New Deal propaganda machine is working overtime to prepare the minds of our people for war, who are already suffering from a bad case of war jitters.

President Roosevelt is the number one warmonger in America, and is largely responsible for the fear that pervades the Nation which has given the stock market and the American people a bad case of the jitters.

I accuse the administration of instigating war propaganda and hysteria to cover up the failure and collapse of the New Deal policies, with 12 million unemployed and business confidence destroyed.

I believe we have far more to fear from our enemies from within than we have from without. All the Communists are united in urging us to go to war against Germany and Japan for the benefit of Soviet Russia.

Great Britain still expects every American to do her duty, by preserving the British Empire and her colonies. The war profiteers, munitions makers and international bankers are all set up for our participation in a new world war.

On 21 April, Fish again spoke to the country over nationwide radio:

It is the duty of all those Americans who desire to keep out of foreign entanglements and the rotten mess and war madness of Europe and Asia to openly expose the war hysteria and propaganda that is impelling us to armed conflict.

What we need in America is a stop war crusade, before we are forced into a foreign war by internationalists and interventionists at Washington, who seem to be more interested in solving world problems rather than our own.

In his radio address of 26 May, Fish stated:

He [Roosevelt] should remember that the Congress has the sole power to declare war and formulate the foreign policies of the United States. The President has no such constitutional power. He is merely the official organ to carry out the policies determined by the Congress.

Without knowing even who the combatants will be, we are informed almost daily by the internationalists and interventionists in America that we must participate in the next world war.

On 8 July 1939, Fish declared over the National Broadcasting Company radio network:

If we must go to war, let it be in defense of America, but not in defense of the munitions makers, war profiteers, Communists, to cover up the failures of the New Deal, or to provide an alibi for a third term.

It is well for all nations to know that we do not propose to go to war over Danzig, power politics, foreign colonies, or the imperialistic wars of Europe or anywhere in the world.

Powers Behind The President

President Roosevelt could have done little to incite war in Europe without help from powerful allies. Behind him stood the self-serving international financial and Jewish interests bent on the destruction of Germany. The principal organization which drummed up public support for U.S. involvement in the European war prior to the Pearl Harbor attack was the cleverly named “Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.” President Roosevelt himself initiated its founding, and top administration officials consulted frequently with Committee leaders.[36]

Although headed for a time by an elderly small-town Kansas newspaper publisher, William Allen White, the Committee was actually organized by powerful financial interests which stood to profit tremendously from loans to embattled Britain and from shrewd investments in giant war industries in the United States.

At the end of 1940, West Virginia Senator Rush D. Holt issued a detailed examination of the Committee which exposed the base interests behind the idealistic-sounding slogans:

The Committee has powerful connections with banks, insurance companies, financial investing firms, and industrial concerns. These in turn exert influence on college presidents and professors, as well as on newspapers, radio and other means of communication. One of the powerful influences used by the group is the ‘400’ and social set. The story is a sordid picture of betrayal of public interest.

The powerful J.P. Morgan interest with its holdings in the British Empire helped plan the organization and donated its first expense money.

Some of the important figures active in the Committee were revealed by Holt: Frederic R. Coudert, a paid war propagandist for the British government in the U.S. during the First World War; Robert S. Allen of the Pearson and Allen syndicated column; Henry R. Luce, the influential publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines; Fiorella LaGuardia, the fiery half-Jewish Mayor of Now York City; Herbert Lehman, the Jewish Governor of New York with important financial holdings in war industries; and Frank Altschul, an officer in the Jewish investment firm of Lazard Freres with extensive holdings in munitions and military supply companies.

If the Committee succeeded in getting the U.S. into war, Holt warned, “American boys will spill their blood for profiteers, politicians and ‘paytriots.’ If war comes, on the hands of the sponsors of the White Committee will be blood-the blood of Americans killed in a needless war.”[37]

In March 1941 a list of most of the Committee’s financial backers was made public. It revealed the nature of the forces eager to bring America into the European war. Powerful international banking interests were well represented. J.P. Morgan, John W. Morgan, Thomas W. Lamont and others of the great Morgan banking house were listed. Other important names from the New York financial world included Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Felix M. and James F. Warburg, and J. Malcolm Forbes. Chicago department store owner and publisher Marshall Field was a contributor, as was William Averill Harriman, the railroad and investment millionaire who later served as Roosevelt’s ambassador in Moscow.

Of course, Jewish names made up a substantial portion of the long list. Hollywood film czar Samuel Goldwyn of Goldwyn Studios was there, along with David Dubinsky, the head of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The William S. Paley Foundation, which had been set up by the head of the giant Columbia Broadcasting System, contributed to the Committee. The name of Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman, wife of the New York Governor, was also on the list.[38]

Without an understanding of his intimate ties to organized Jewry, Roosevelt’s policies make little sense. As Jewish historian Lucy Dawidowicz noted: “Roosevelt himself brought into his immediate circle more Jews than any other President before or after him. Felix Frankfurter, Bernard M. Baruch and Henry Morgenthau were his close advisers. Benjamin V. Cohen, Samuel Rosenman and David K. Niles were his friends and trusted aides.”[39] This is perhaps not so remarkable in light of Roosevelt’s reportedly one-eighth Jewish ancestry.[40]

In his diary entry of 1 May 1941, Charles A. Lindbergh, the American aviator hero and peace leader, nailed the coalition that was pushing the United States into war:

The pressure for war is high and mounting. The people are opposed to it, but the Administration seems to have ‘the bit in its teeth’ and [is] hell-bent on its way to war. Most of the Jewish interests in the country are behind war, and they control a huge part of our press and radio and most of our motion pictures. There are also the ‘intellectuals,’ and the ‘Anglophiles,’ and the British agents who are allowed free rein, the international financial interests, and many others.[41]

Joseph Kennedy shared Lindbergh’s apprehensions about Jewish power. Before the outbreak of war he privately expressed concerns about “the Jews who dominate our press” and world Jewry in general, which he considered a threat to peace and prosperity. Shortly after the beginning of hostilities, Kennedy lamented “the growing Jewish influence in the press and in Washington demanding continuance of the war.”[42]

Betrayal, Failure, Delusion

Roosevelt’s efforts to get Poland, Britain and France into war against Germany succeeded all too well. The result was untold death and misery and destruction. When the fighting began, as Roosevelt had intended and planned, the Polish and French leaders expected the American president to at least make good on his assurances of backing in case of war. But Roosevelt had not reckoned on the depth of peace sentiment of the vast majority of Americans. So, in addition to deceiving his own people, Roosevelt also let down those in Europe to whom he had promised support.

Seldom in American history were the people as united in their views as they were in late 1939 about staying out of war in Europe. When hostilities began in September 1939, the Gallup poll showed 94 percent of the American people against involvement in war. That figure rose to 96.5 percent in December before it began to decline slowly to about 80 percent in the Fall of 1941. (Today, there is hardly an issue that even 60 or 70 percent of the people agree upon.)[43]

Roosevelt was, of course, quite aware of the intensity of popular feeling on this issue. That is why he lied repeatedly to the American people about his love of peace and his determination to keep the U.S. out of war, while simultaneously doing everything in his power to plunge Europe and America into war.

In a major 1940 re-election campaign speech, Roosevelt responded to the growing fears of millions of Americans who suspected that their President had secretly pledged United States support to Britain in its war against Germany. These well-founded suspicions were based in part on the publication in March of the captured Polish documents. The speech of 23 October 1940 was broadcast from Philadelphia to the nation on network radio. In the most emphatic language possible, Roosevelt categorically denied that he had

pledged in some way the participation of the United States in some foreign war. I give to you and to the people of this country this most solemn assurance: There is no secret Treaty, no secret understanding in any shape or form, direct or indirect, with any Government or any other nation in any part of the world, to involve this nation in any war or for any other purpose.[44]

We now know, of course, that this pious declaration was just another one of Roosevelt’s many brazen, bald-faced lies to the American people.

Roosevelt’s policies were more than just dishonest-they were criminal. The Constitution of the United States grants authority only to the Congress to make war and peace. And Congress had passed several major laws to specifically insure U.S. neutrality in case of war in Europe. Roosevelt continually violated his oath as President to uphold the Constitution. If his secret policies had been known, the public demand for his impeachment would very probably have been unstoppable.

The Watergate episode has made many Americans deeply conscious of the fact that their presidents can act criminally. That affair forced Richard Nixon to resign his presidency, and he is still widely regarded as a criminal. No schools are named after him and his name will never receive the respect that normally goes to every American president. But Nixon’s crimes pale into insignificance when compared to those of Franklin Roosevelt. What were Nixon’s lies compared to those of Roosevelt? What is a burglary cover-up compared to an illegal and secret campaign to bring about a major war?

Those who defend Roosevelt’s record argue that he lied to the American people for their own good — that he broke the law for lofty principles. His deceit is considered permissible because the cause was noble, while similar deception by presidents Johnson and Nixon, to name two, is not. This is, of course, a hypocritical double standard. And the argument doesn’t speak very well for the democratic system. It implies that the people are too dumb to understand their own best interests. It further suggests that the best form of government is a kind of benevolent liberal-democratic dictatorship.

Roosevelt’s hatred for Hitler was deep, vehement, passionate — almost personal. This was due in no small part to an abiding envy and jealousy rooted in the great contrast between the two men, not only in their personal characters but also in their records as national leaders.

Superficially, the public fives of Roosevelt and Hitler were astonishingly similar. Both assumed the leadership of their respective countries at the beginning of 1933. They both faced the enormous challenge of mass unemployment during a catastrophic worldwide economic depression. Each became a powerful leader in a vast military alliance during the most destructive war in history. Both men died while still in office within a few weeks of each other in April 1945, just before the end of the Second World War in Europe. But the enormous contrasts in the lives of these two men are even more remarkable.

Roosevelt was born into one of the wealthiest families in America. His was a life utterly free of material worry. He took part in the First World War from an office in Washington as UnderSecretary of the Navy. Hitler, on the other hand, was born into a modest provinicial family. As a young man he worked as an impoverished manual laborer. He served in the First World War as a front line soldier in the hell of the Western battleground. He was wounded many times and decorated for bravery.

In spite of his charming manner and soothing rhetoric, Roosevelt proved unable to master the great challenges facing America. Even after four years of his presidency, millions remained unemployed, undernourished and poorly housed in a vast land richly endowed with all the resources for incomparable prosperity. The New Deal was plagued with bitter strikes and bloody clashes between labor and capital. Roosevelt did nothing to solve the country’s deep, festering racial problems which erupted repeatedly in riots and armed conflict. The story was very different in Germany. Hitler rallied his people behind a radical program that transformed Germany within a few years from an economically ruined land on the edge of civil war into Europe’s powerhouse. Germany underwent a social, cultural and economic rebirth without parallel in history. The contrast between the personalities of Roosevelt and Hitler was simultaneously a contrast between two diametrically different social-political systems and ideologies.

And yet, it would be incorrect to characterize Roosevelt as merely a cynical politician and front man for powerful alien interests. Certainly he did not regard himself as an evil man. He sincerely believed that he was doing the right and noble thing in pressuring Britain and France into war against Germany. Like Wilson before him, and others since, Roosevelt felt himself uniquely qualified and called upon by destiny to reshape the world according to his vision of an egalitarian, universalist democracy. He was convinced, as so many American leaders have been, that the world could be saved from itself by remodeling it after the United States.

Presidents like Wilson and Roosevelt view the world not as a complex of different nations, races and cultures which must mutually respect each others’ separate collective identities in order to live together in peace, but rather according to a selfrighteous missionary perspective that divides the globe into morally good and evil countries. In that scheme of things, America is the providentially permanent leader of the forces of righteousness. Luckily, this view just happens to correspond to the economic and political interests of those who wield power in the United States.

President Roosevelt’s War

In April 1941, Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota prophetically predicted that one day the Second World War would be remembered as Roosevelt’s war. “If we are ever involved in this war, it will be called by future historians by only one title, ‘the President’s War,’ because every step of his since his Chicago quarantine speech [of 5 October 1937] has been toward war.[45]

The great American historian, Harry Elmer Barnes, believed that war could probably have been prevented in 1939 if it had not been for Roosevelt’s meddling. “Indeed, there is fairly conclusive evidence that, but for Mr. Roosevelt’s pressure on Britain, France and Poland, and his commitments to them before September 1939, especially to Britain, and the irresponsible antics of his agent provocateur, William C. Bullitt, there would probably have been no world war in 1939, or, perhaps, for many years thereafter.”[46] In Revisionism: A Key to Peace, Barnes wrote:

President Roosevelt had a major responsibility, both direct and indirect, for the outbreak of war in Europe. He began to exert pressure on France to stand up to Hitler as early as the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936, months before he was making his strongly isolationist speeches in the campaign of 1936. This pressure on France, and also England, continued right down to the coming of the war in September 1939. It gained volume and momentum after the quarantine speech of October 1937. As the crisis approached between Munich and the outbreak of war, Roosevelt pressed the Poles to stand firm against any demands by Germany, and urged the English and French to back up the Poles unflinchingly.

There is grave doubt that England would have gone to war in September 1939 had it not been for Roosevelt’s encouragement and his assurances that, in the event of war, the United States would enter on the side of Britain just as soon as he could swing American public opinion around to support intervention.

Roosevelt had abandoned all semblance of neutrality, even before war broke out in 1939, and moved as speedily as was safe and feasible in the face of anti-interventionist American public opinion to involve this country in the European conflict.[47]

One of the most perceptive verdicts on Franklin Roosevelt’s place in history came from the pen of the great Swedish explorer and author, Sven Hedin. During the war he wrote:

The question of the way it came to a new world war is not only to be explained because of the foundation laid by the peace treaties of 1919, or in the suppression of Germany and her allies after the First World War, or in the continuation of the ancient policies of Great Britain and France. The decisive push came from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Roosevelt speaks of democracy and destroys it incessantly. He slanders as undemocratic and un-American those who admonish him in the name of peace and the preservation of the American way of life. He has made democracy into a caricature rather than a model. He talks about freedom of speech and silences those who don’t hold his opinion.

He talks about freedom of religion and makes an alliance with Bolshevism.

He talks about freedom from want, but cannot provide ten million of his own people with work, bread or shelter. He talks about freedom from the fear of war while working for war, not only for his own people but for the world, by inciting his country against the Axis powers when it might have united with them, and he thereby drove millions to their deaths.

This war will go down in history as the war of President Roosevelt.[48]

Officially orchestrated praise for Roosevelt as a great man of peace cannot conceal forever his crucial role in pushing Europe into war in 1939.

* * * * *

It is now more than forty years since the events described here took place. For many they are an irrelevant part of a best-forgotten past. But the story of how Franklin Roosevelt engineered war in Europe is very pertinent — particularly for Americans today. The lessons of the past have never been more important than in this nuclear age. For unless at least an aware minority understands how and why wars are made, we will remain powerless to restrain the warmongers of our own era.

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Notes

1. See, for example: Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War 1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948); William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Regnery, 1952, 1962); Benjamin Colby, ‘Twas a Famous Victory (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1979); Frederic R. Sanborn, Design for War (New York: Devin-Adair, 1951); William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980); Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War (Chicago: Regnery, 1952); John Toland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (New York: Doubleday, 1982).
2. Saul Friedlander, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States 1939-1941 (New York: Knopf, 1967), pp. 73-77; U.S., Congress, House, Special Committee on Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States, 1940, Appendix, Part II, pp. 1054-1059.
3. Friedlander, pp. 75-76.
4. New York Times, 30 March 1940, p. 1.
5. Ibid., p. 4, and 31 March 1940, p. 1.
6. New York Times, 30 March 1940, p. 1. Baltimore Sun, 30 March 1940, p. 1.
7. A French-language edition was published in 1944 under the title Comment Roosevelt est Entre en Guerre.
8. Tansill, “The United States and the Road to War in Europe,” in Harry Elmer Barnes (ed.), Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1953; reprint eds., New York: Greenwood, 1969 and Torrance, Calif.: Institute for Historical Review [supplemented], 1982), p. 184 (note 292). Tansill also quoted from several of the documents in his Back Door to War, pp. 450-51.
9. Harry Elmer Barnes, The Court Historians Versus Revisionism (N.p.: privately printed, 1952), p. 10. This booklet is reprinted in Barnes, Selected Revisionist Pamphlets (New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1972), and in Barnes, The Barnes Trilogy (Torrance, Calif.: Institute for Historical Review, 1979).
10. Chamberlin, p. 60.
11. Edward Raczynski, In Allied London (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963), p. 51.
12. Orville H. Bullitt (ad.), For the President: Personal and Secret (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), p. x1v [biographical foreword]. See also Time, 26 October 1936, p. 24.
13. Current Biography 1940, ed. Maxine Block (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1940), p. 122 ff.
14. Gisleher Wirsing, Der masslose Kontinent: Roosevelts Kampf um die Weltherrschaft (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1942), p. 224.
15. Bullitt obituary in New York Times, 16 February 1967, p. 44.
16. Jack Alexander, “He Rose From the Rich,” Saturday Evening Post, 11 March 1939, p. 6. (Also see continuation in issue of 18 March 1939.) Bullitt’s public views on the European scene and what should be America’s attitude toward it can be found in his Report to the American People (Boston: Houghton Mifflin [Cambridge: Riverside Press], 1940), the text of a speech he delivered, with the President’s blessing, under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society in Independence Hall in Philadelphia shortly after the fall of France. For sheer, hyperventilated stridency and emotionalist hysterics, this anti-German polemic could hardly be topped, even given the similar propensities of many other interventionists in government and the press in those days.
17. Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt (New York: Norton, 1980), pp. 203-04.
18. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 31. See also pp. 164-65.
19. Dispatch No. 349 of 20 September 1938 by Sir. R. Lindsay, Documents on British Foreign Policy (ed. Ernest L. Woodward), Third series, Vol. VII (London, 1954), pp. 627-29. See also: Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill 1939-1941 (New York: Norton, 1976), pp. 25-27; Dallek, pp. 164-65; Arnold A. Offner, America and the Ori-, gins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), p. 61.
20. William Phillips, Ventures in Diplomacy (North Beverly, Mass.: privately published, 1952), pp. 220-21.
21. Carl Burckhardt, Meine Danziger Mission 1937-1939 (Munich: Callwey, 1960), p. 225.
22. Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen, “Washington Daily Merry-Go-Round,” Washington Times-Herald, 14 April 1939, p. 16. A facsimile reprint of this column appears in Conrad Grieb (ed.), American Manifest Destiny and The Holocausts (New York: Examiner Books, 1979), pp. 132-33. See also: Wirsing, pp. 238-41.
23. Jay P. Moffat, The Moffat Papers 1919-1943 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 232.
24. U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (Diplomatic Papers), 1939, General, Vol. I (Washington: 1956), p. 122.
25. “Von Wiegand Says-,” Chicago Herald-American, 8 October 1944, p. 2.
26. Edvard Benes, Memoirs of Dr. Eduard Benes (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954), pp. 79-80.
27. Lash, p. 64.
28. Hamilton Fish, FDR: The Other Side of the Coin (Now York: Vantage, 1976; Torrance, Calif.: Institute for Historical Review, 1980), p. 62.
29. James V. Forrestal (ads. Walter Millis and E.S. Duffield), The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking, 1951), pp. 121-22. I have been privately informed by a colleague who has examined the original manuscript of the Forrestal diaries that many very critical references to the Jews were deleted from the published version.
30. Jan Szembek, Journal 1933-1939 (Paris: Plan, 1952), pp. 475-76.
31. David E. Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy: A Life and Times (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 207; Moffat, p. 253; A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961; 2nd ed. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Premier [paperback], 1965), p. 262; U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1939, General, Vol. I (Washington: 1956), p. 355.
32. Dallek, p. 164.
33. Beschloss, pp. 190-91; Lash, p. 75; Koskoff, pp. 212-13.
34. Hull to Kennedy (No. 905), U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1939, General, Vol. I (Washington: 1956), p. 424.
35. The radio addresses of Hamilton Fish quoted here were published in the Congressional Record Appendix (Washington) as follows: (6 January 1939) Vol. 84, Part 11, pp. 52-53; (5 March 1939) same, pp. 846-47; (5 April 1939) Vol. 84, Part 12, pp. 1342-43; (21 April 1939) same, pp. 1642-43; (26 May 1939) Vol. 84, Part 13, pp. 2288-89; (8 July 1939) same, pp. 3127-28.
36. Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 128, 136-39.
37. Congressional Record Appendix (Washington: 1941), (30 December 1940) Vol. 86, Part 18, pp. 7019-25. See also: Appendix, Vol. 86, Part 17, pp. 5808-14.
38. New York Times, 11 March 1941, p. 10.
39. Lucy Dawidowicz, “American Jews and the Holocaust,” The New York Times Magazine, 18 April 1982, p. 102.
40. “FDR ‘had a Jewish great-grandmother'” Jewish Chronicle (London), 5 February 1982, p. 3.
41. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 481.
42. Koskoff, pp. 282, 212. The role of the American press in fomenting hatred against Germany between 1933 and 1939 is a subject that deserves much more detailed treatment. Charles Tansill provides some useful information on this in Back Door to War. The essay by Professor Hans A. Muenster, “Die Kriegsschuld der Presse der USA” in Kriegsschuld und Presse, published in 1944 by the German Reichsdozentenfuehrung, is worth consulting.
43. An excellent essay relating and contrasting American public opinion measurements to Roosevelt’s foreign policy moves in 1939-41 is Harry Elmer Barnes, Was Roosevelt Pushed Into War By Popular Demand in 1941? (N.p.: privately printed, 1951). It is reprinted in Barnes, Selected Revisionist Pamphlets.
44. Lash, p. 240.
45. New York Times, 27 April 1941, p. 19.
46. Harry Elmer Barnes, The Struggle Against the Historical Blackout, 2nd ed. (N.p.: privately published, ca. 1948), p. 12. See also the 9th, final revised and enlarged edition (N.p.: privately published, ca. 1954), p. 34; this booklet is reprinted in Barnes, Selected Revisionist Pamphlets.
47. Harry Elmer Barnes, “Revisionism: A Key to Peace,” Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought Vol. II, No. 1 (Spring 1966), pp. 29-30. This article was republished in Barnes, Revisionism: A Key to Peace and Other Essays (San Francisco: Cato Institute [Cato Paper No. 12], 1980).
48. Sven Hedin, Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1943), p. 54.

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Bibliography

Listed here are the published editions of the Polish documents, the most important sources touching on the questions of their authenticity and content, and essential recent sources on what President Roosevelt was really-as opposed to publicly-doing and thinking during the prelude to war. Full citations for all references in the article will be found in the notes.

Beschloss, Michael R. Kennedy and Roosevelt. New York: Norton, 1980.

Bullitt, Orville H. (ed.). For the President: Personal and Secret. [Correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and William C. Bullitt.] Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.

Germany. Foreign Office Archive Commission. Roosevelts Weg in den Krieg: Geheimdokumente zur Kriegspolitik des Praesidenten der Vereinigten Staaten. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag, 1943.

Germany. Foreign Office. The German White Paper. [White Book No. 3.] New York: Howell, Soskin and Co., 1940.

Germany. Foreign Office. Polnische Dokumente zur Vorgeschichte des Kriegs. [White Book No. 3.] Berlin: F. Eher, 1940.

Koskoff, David E. Joseph P. Kennedy: A Life and Times. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

Lukasiewicz, Juliusz (Waclaw Jedrzejewicz, ed.). Diplomat in Paris 1936-1939. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.

Wirsing, Giselher. Der masslose Kontinent: Roosevelts Kampf um die Weltherrschaft. Jena: E. Diederichs, 1942.

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This item was first presented at the Fourth IHR Conference in Chicago, September 1982. It was first published in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 2), pages 135-172.

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War in Iraq and Afghanistan : Who Benefits?

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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Nature is Stronger than the Rotten Symbols of Your Lie

Anne Frank’s Tree of Hope Toppled by Storm
23 August 2010
Source: www.bbc.co.uk

The 150-year-old horse chestnut that brought comfort to Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis in World War Two has toppled in high winds and heavy rain.

The tree, whose trunk was diseased and rotten, snapped a metre (3ft) above the ground, and crashed into neighbouring gardens in Amsterdam.

It smashed into a brick wall and sheds, but nobody was reported injured.

The Anne Frank House museum, which has a million visitors a year, also escaped unscathed during Monday’s poor weather.

“Someone yelled: ‘It’s falling. The tree is falling,’ and then you heard it go down,” museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart told the Associated Press. “Luckily no one was hurt.”

“Unpleasantly surprised”

A global campaign to save “the Anne Frank tree” was launched in 2007 after Dutch officials and conservationists declared it a safety hazard and ordered it felled. They feared it could topple and crash into the museum.

But the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation won a court injunction in November that year, stopping the city authorities from chopping it down. Neighbours and campaigners argued that, as a symbol of freedom, the tree was worth making extraordinary efforts to preserve.

But it was blighted with fungus and moths, and two years ago conservationists encased the trunk in steel girders to prop it up.

The Netherlands’ Trees Institute, a leading supporter of the project to save the tree, said it was “unpleasantly surprised” to hear it had fallen.

“On the advice of experts in tree care, it had been calculated that the tree could live several more decades” the institute said in a statement. “Alas, in the event it seems that nature is stronger.”

The Jewish teenager referred several times to the tree in the [Ironlight: forged] diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained in hiding.

Anne Frank wrote on 23 February 1944: “From my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind.”

She died, aged 15, [Ironlight: of typhus] the following year in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

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Don’t Apologize for the Truth

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European Unity : the Example of the Volunteer Movement

The European Volunteer Movement in World War II
By Richard Landwehr
Source: Integral Traditions

They called themselves the “assault generation” and they had largely been born in the years during and after World War I. Coming from every nation of Europe, they had risen up against the twin hydra of communism and rampant capitalism and banded together under one flag for a common cause. Fully a million of them joined the German Army in World War II, nearly half of them with the Waffen-SS. And it was in the Waffen-SS, the elite fighting force of Germany, where the idea of a united, anti-communist Europe became fully developed.

It was also in the Waffen-SS where a new society emerged from among the “front fighters” of thirty different nations. It was a society that had been forged in the sacrifice, sweat and blood of the battlefield and that propagated the concept of “one new race,” the European race, where language and national differences counted for little, and the culture of each nation was taken for granted as a common heritage. Many countries sent more volunteers into the Waffen-SS than they could raise for their own national armies, so something truly phenomenal was taking place.

The Waffen-SS itself was something unique. It had begun as a small-scale personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler, but had gradually expanded into a full-scale military force under the guidance of a number of disgruntled former army officers who saw the Waffen-SS as a chance to break out from the conservative mold that the German Army had become mired in. The Waffen-SS was designed from the start to be a highly mobile assault force whose soldiers were well versed in the art of handling modern, close-combat weapons. The training regimen therefore resembled that given to special commandos in other countries, but it pre-dated U.S. and British commando training by nearly a decade.

The soldiers of the Waffen-SS were also the first to implement the camouflage battle dress that was to later become so common around the world. But in one field, that of internal personnel organization, the Waffen-SS has yet to be imitated, much less surpassed. The Waffen-SS was probably the most “democratic” armed force in modern times. Rigid formality and class structure between officers and other ranks was strictly forbidden. An officer maintained his position only because he had proven himself a better soldier than his men, not because of any rank in society, family connections or superior academic education. In sports, one of the vital cogs in the Waffen-SS training programs, officers and their men competed as equals in an atmosphere that encouraged team work and mutual respect. Non-German volunteers of whatever nationality were not regarded as inferiors; they were judged on their ability and performance as soldiers.

The idea to actively recruit foreign nationals into the Waffen-SS came shortly after the outcome of the Polish Campaign of 1939, when SS units were being formed and expanded and it was noticed that a great many men (usually of German extraction) from foreign countries were volunteering for service. The fact that Waffen-SS recruitment among Germans was restricted by the Wehrmacht, made these “out country” volunteers all the more desirable. Since Western Europe contained many sympathizers and admirers of Germany and its National Socialist movement, the SS decided to create three new regiments (“Nordland,” “Westland” and “Nordwest”) for Dutch, Flemish, Danish and Norwegian volunteers in the spring of 1940. There was, at this time, little in the way of a cohesive, Pan-European ideal to follow, but thousands of recruits turned up anyway, primarily out of disgust for the performance of their respective socialist/pacifist governments.

For many there was additional incentive. In Belgium, Holland and France, scores of populist and right-wing political figures had been arrested, incarcerated, beaten and outright murdered. The most famous single incident occurred in Abbeville, France in May 1940, when French police lined up 22 leading Belgian right-wing leaders and executed them in a public park shortly before the arrival of the Germans. It was certainly a “war crime” — one of the first in fact to be committed and documented in World War II — but try to find this event recorded in any standard text book! The establishment historians have shied away from any discussion of this event. Following this massacre, many of the followers of the victims flocked to join the new volunteer regiments of the Waffen-SS.

The war with the Soviet Union, commencing in June 1941, brought a new direction to the effort to attract European volunteers in what can be called “The Legionary Movement.”

The Legionary Movement

The “Legionary Movement” was an attempt to attract qualified military personnel from various countries who otherwise would not have considered engagement with the German Armed Forces, by appealing to their national pride and anti-communist convictions. The Waffen-SS undertook the task of forming Legions from “Germanic” countries, while the Wehrmacht, or German Army proper, was given responsibility over Latin and Slavic Legions. The national Legions proved to be a success, but for a number of reasons — primarily “cost efficiency,” redundancy with Waffen-SS elements and size factor — were not worth perpetuating in the same format. The primary West European Legions were as follows:

Volunteer Legion Norwegen: This was an 1,150 man reinforced battalion that served with distinction on the Leningrad Front and around Lake Ilmen. It later served as the nucleus of the 23rd SS Regiment “Norge.” On the home front it was supported by numerous political figures and celebrities including the famous opera singer Kirsten Flagstad and Nobel-Prize winning author, Knut Hamsun. Hamsun was an honorary member of the Legion and actually wore a Legion uniform. His son served with the Legion and the Waffen-SS and was decorated with the Iron Cross, second class.

Volunteer Legion Flandern: This was initially a 900 man battalion later increased to 1,116 men that served around Lake Ilmen under the 2nd SS Brigade and at times with the 4th SS Police Division and the Spanish “Blue” Division. It conducted itself splendidly, obtaining favorable mention in the Wehrmacht war bulletin among other honors. Its supreme moment came in March 1943 when it recovered a lost regimental frontline sector from the Soviets in a bold attack and held onto the regained positions for a week against all odds. By the end of the engagement the “Legion Flandern” had been reduced to a net strength of 45 men! Equal numbers of Flemings served with the 5th SS Division “Wiking” and the Volunteer Regiment “Nordwest.” Eventually these contingents were merged with new recruits to form the Storm Brigade “Langemarck.”

Volunteer Legion Niederlande: The was a 2,600 man regiment and component of the 2nd SS Brigade on the Leningrad front. “Niederlande” swiftly obtained a reputation for valor and achievement. In June 1942, Legionnaires succeeded in capturing the commander of the 11th Soviet Army and 3,500 of his soldiers. One enlisted man, Sturmann Gerardus Mooyman became the first West European volunteer to receive the Knight’s Cross decoration after singlehandedly destroying 14 Soviet tanks in one day in February 1943. The Legion later formed the basis for the “Nederland” Brigade and division.

Freikorps Danmark: This was an 1,164 man reinforced battalion that served with considerable distinction in the Demyansk Pocket alongside the 3rd SS Division “Totenkopf.” For a time it was led by the swashbuckling Christian Frederick von Schalburg, a Ukrainian-Danish count who met a soldier’s death in the frontlines. The “Freikorps” was authorized and fully supported by the government of Denmark. After the war, however, members of the “Freikorps Danmark” were prosecuted as “traitors” with the Danish government evading responsibility by saying that the volunteers should have known that the government was merely “acting under duress” when it established the “Freikorps” and signed the Anti-Comintern pact. Later the “Freikorps” formed the nucleus of the 24th SS Regiment “Danmark.”

Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS: This was a 1,000 man unit that served as a component part of the “Nordland” Regiment of the SS “Wiking” Division. Its greatest moment came in October 1942, when the Finns were able to seize Hill 711 near Malgobek in the south Caucausus in a daring frontal assault. Other Berman units had repeatedly tried to do the same thing but had failed. The Finns served in the Waffen-SS at the discretion of their government, which in June 1943 thought it would be more discreet to transfer the Battalion from the Waffen-SS to the Finnish Army.

The principal Wehrmacht Legions were the following:

The French Volunteer Legion Against Communism: It served as the 638th Regiment with the 7th German Infantry Division, participated in the drive on Moscow and fought well whenever it was deployed. It was largely transferred to the Waffen-SS in 1944.

Legion Wallonie: This was organized as a mountain-infantry battalion. It was formed by the SS from the French-speaking Belgians (Walloons) and was taken over by the Wehrmacht in late 1941 so as not to offend the “Germanic” Flemings already serving in the Waffen-SS. It fought exceptionally well in the campaign through the Caucasus Mountains alongside the SS Division “Wiking.” It contained many former Belgian Army Officers and the famous political leader Leon Degrelle, who exhibited a flare for death-defying heroics. It was finally re-transferred back into the Waffen-SS in June 1943 at Degrelle’s request and was reformed as an assault brigade.

Croatian Legion: This was a regiment that fought on the southern region of the eastern front with considerable valor and was completely annihilated in Stalingrad. It was later replaced by three full-scale divisions.

Spanish Legion: This was the independent 250th Infantry Division of the “Spanish Blue” Division that fought with incredible heroism on the Lake Ilmen Front. After it was withdrawn from the eastern front in August 1943 by Franco, survivors carried on in a Spanish SS Legion that fought until the end of the war.

Per Sorensen: Portrait of a Legionary

The 27 year old Danish Army Lieutenant Per Sorensen (formerly Adjutant of the Viborg Battalion) was the ideal model of what the Germans were looking for when they launched the Legionary Movement. On 1 July 1941, Sorensen volunteered for service with the “Freikorps Danmark” motivated by anti-communist feelings and a vague sort of National Socialist attitude. In the autumn months he attended the Waffen-SS Officer School at Bad Toelz and in the spring of 1942, rejoined the “Freikorps” as commander of the 1st Company.

During the summer months he led his company in the tough back-and-forth fighting that raged in the relief corridor to the Demyansk Pocket. After several engagements, the 1st Company had been reduced from over 200 men to only 40. They had to hold a long stretch of front against strong communist forces. On the afternoon of 16 July 1942, Sorensen telephoned “Freikorp’s” HQ to state that he did not know whether or not his troops could survive another strong attack, but that they would maintain their position no matter what. That night a Red Army infantry battalion attacked with tank support. The communists were soon in the 1st Company’s trenches. From sundown to midnight hand-to-hand fighting raged for possession of the positions. Then suddenly it was all over with the Russians either dead or driven out. Thanks to Sorensen’s leadership, the 1st Company held its ground.

In the years to come, whether in White Russia or Estonia, Latvia or Pomerania, the troops under Sorensen’s command would always meet their duty. Before every action, the tall, slender Dane would make a personal reconnaissance of the terrain and during the battle he was always positioned in the hottest spots with a machine-gun strewn about his neck.

To his soldiers, Sorensen had the uncanny habit of attracting the enemy. They passed around the phrase: “Wherever Sorensen is — the Russians will come!” And they usually were right. For his endless solicitude and patience, he received the nickname “På Sorensen” from his men. Time and time again, Sorensen provided the special qualities so vital in a leader. In January 1944, he took over an entrapped battalion near Vitino in northern Russia and literally led it to safety by remaining at the fore of their formation on a journey through thick, snow-shrouded forests.

After commanding battalions and battle-groups, Sorensen received command of the 24th SS Regiment “Danmark” just to the east of Berlin in April 1945. Finally, the Regiment was reduced to trying to defend a street-car station in the heart of Berlin. While climbing a telephone pole to try and survey the terrain, Sturmbannführer (Major) Sorensen was picked off by an enemy sniper. On the next day, in the midst of the desperate, last battle for the German capitol, Sorensen was given a military funeral in the Ploetzensee cemetery by Germans and Danes from the “Nordland” Division.

With shells detonating all around, the body of Sorensen was taken to the cemetery in an armored troop carrier. Over the open grave, Sturmscharführer (Sgt.) Hermann gave a brief eulogy:

We are standing here by the graveside to take our last departure from a courageous Danish comrade, the foremost officer and leader of the Regiment “Danmark”: Per Sorensen! I must, even in this hour, give the thanks of my people for you and your many Danish comrades who have stood so loyally beside us. I would like to express from my heart: may you find peace at last in our bleeding city!

As Hermann spoke, the coffin (constructed from ammunition crates by “Nordland” engineers) was lowered into the grave. Two of the Danish officers attending struggled to contain their emotions. Hermann led a last salute and the eight man honor guard fired three salvos over the grave. A woman flak helper tossed flowers into the grave, and each of the Danish and German soldiers attending passed by throwing in a handful of earth. As the great city shook under rumbling artillery fire and great clouds of smoke obscured the sky, the haunting strains of “I had a Comrade” echoed over Sorensen’s grave as the funeral reached its conclusion. The tragic symbolism was complete and fitting: in the very heart of Europe, on its last battlefield, a prototypical representative of the European Volunteer Movement had met his end.

The European Movement takes Shape

In 1943, the European Volunteer Movement which had been individually developing in the Legions and the Waffen-SS was finally amalgamated and consecrated within the ranks of the Waffen-SS. The spiritual citadel of the movement now became the SS Officers’ School at Bad Toelz in Bavaria, which in 1943 established its first “class” (or “inspection”) exclusively for West European Volunteers. Previously the volunteers had received no specialized treatment but were treated like Germans. Now all of that changed and a sense of European unity with respect for all nationalities and cultures was openly fostered. Within the next two years, SS-JS Toelz would produce more than 1,000 highly motivated European officers from 12 different countries exclusive of Germany.

Bad Toelz was considered the premier officers’ training school in World War II and in addition to a thorough training program that featured live ammunition in most field exercises, it offered well-rounded athletic, cultural and educational opportunities. The great opera, musical and theatrical troops of central Europe made frequent visits while the athletic facilities were unsurpassed in Europe. Twelve different coaches, each one either an Olympic or world class champion in his field, supervised a vast sports program that even included golf and tennis. In the academic arena, freedom of speech was not only permitted but encouraged and the writings of such disparate souls as Marx, Hitler, Jefferson and Churchill were openly discussed and debated.

What Bad Toelz produced was literally a “Renaissance man” who was also a top-notch military officer. In early 1945, the staff and students were mobilized into the newly authorized 38th SS Division “Nibelungen,” and one of the great ironies of the war took place: a mostly German division was officered by non-German Europeans (the officer cadets) instead of the other way around. Once in action against the Americans in southern Bavaria, the Scandinavians, Lowlanders and Frenchmen found themselves opposing an enemy whom they thought could only have existed on the Eastern Front. Like all of the Waffen-SS units to serve in the west in 1945, “Nibelungen” was soon victimized by numerous “war crimes.” Entire companies and battalions were bludgeoned and shot to death after going into U.S. captivity. To date this grisly story has only been revealed in bits and pieces and has, naturally enough, been largely suppressed by the Allied side. However, it is interesting to note that some former members of the Waffen-SS consider it likely that more of their comrades were killed in American captivity than on the battlefield itself!

1944-45: A European Army at War

The year 1944 opened with the Flemish SS Storm Brigade “Langemarck” fighting a savage retrograde action near Zhitomir in southern Ukraine. Simultaneously the Scandinavian “Nordland” Division and Dutch “Nederland” Brigade were desperately trying to stem a massive Red Army offensive in the Leningrad sector, and the European “Wiking” Division and Belgian Brigade “Wallonien” were going into the “sack” west of Cherkassy. The breakout from the Cherkassy Pocket on the southern Eastern Front was a true epic of heroism: a sacrificial struggle that bound troops of different nationalities firmly together. In the post-war years the survivors have held annual remembrance gatherings so that to this day “Cherkassy” remains a living symbol of the European Volunteer Movement.

The spring of 1944 saw the three Baltic SS Divisions fighting with steadfast courage on the eastern boundaries of their countries. In Lithuania, the nucleus for a new SS Division began taking shape under the guidance of former Lithuanian Army generals, but the country was overrun by the communists before the project could be brought to fruition. Against the Anzio beachhead in Italy, the first combat ready Italian SS battalion grimly held its ground against all American breakout attempts. All over Europe, manpower was being voluntarily mobilized into the Waffen-SS to participate in what many people saw as the forthcoming, decisive struggle for the freedom of the continent.

The summer of 1944 saw the “battle of the European SS” on the Narva Front in Estonia. Here, nationals from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Flanders, Holland and Estonia shared the trenches and fought shoulder-to-shoulder to repel the Bolsheviks from “Orphanage Hill” and “Grenadier Hill.” Leon Degrelle personally led a battalion from his “Wallonien” Division in a brilliant defensive action near Tartu on the west shore of Lake Peipus. Near Brody in Ukraine, the 14th Ukrainian SS Division fought a life-or-death battle to escape Soviet encirclement; only about one-fourth of the Division survived the action, but they had acquitted themselves well.

As the year went on, more and more foreign volunteer divisions were formed. This meant that flexible leadership was needed to handle the different cultural distinctions and surprisingly, the Waffen-SS was equal to the task. Although organized religion was kept separate from the Waffen-SS, volunteers from devout Catholic, Moslem, Greek Catholic and Orthodox countries were given total freedom to practice their religions with their own clergy. For morale purposes, ethnic cultural activities were actively encouraged. It was quite a contrast to the way some minority groups were treated in the Allied armies at the time.

Some of the foreign SS divisions composed of Russian and Moslem volunteers had to be disbanded, since the time and personnel needed to develop these units were lacking. By the autumn of 1944 the Waffen-SS European volunteer tally sheet contained the following elements: 2 Dutch brigades, 2 Belgian brigades, 1 French brigade and 1 Italian brigade, (all being transformed into divisions), 2 Croat Moslem divisions, 1 Albanian Moslem division, 2 Hungarian divisions with 2 more in the works that never panned out, 2 Scandinavian/German divisions, 2 Latvian divisions, 1 Estonian division, 2 Russian divisions (both of which would later be transferred to the Vlasov Liberation Army), 1 Ukrainian division, 1 Italian/German division, 1 Hungarian/German division, 1 Balkan/German division, 1 Serbian division, numerous ethnic brigades from the Soviet Union, and small detachments of Spaniards, Britons, Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Arabs and Indians. The foreign SS units were all suitably supplied with national badges, insignia and unit distinctions. And while there were many volunteers from such neutral countries as Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland they could not be openly designated as Irish, Swedish or Swiss such so as not to offend their respective governments.

On the Eastern Front, the war raged with unending intensity. In White Russia, part of the French SS Storm Brigade fighting with the 18th Hungarian/German SS Division “Horst Wessel,” sacrificed itself completely in hard defensive action, losing two-thirds of its personnel in the process. In Estonia, a regiment of Estonian soldiers who had been serving in the Finnish Army returned home to fight for their country. They were reformed into a battalion of the 20th Estonian SS Division and in desperate combat on the Latvian frontier, were virtually annihilated. With grim determination the Latvian 15th and 19th SS Divisions fought the communists for every square foot of their homeland, while in the Carpathian Mountains, the Ukrainian Volunteer Division was reassembled.

In Slovenia and Hungary, the brave Moslems of the 13th SS Division “Handschar” performed well against both Tito’s partisans and the Red Army, but in France the 30th White Russian SS Division had virtually collapsed while in action against the Americans and French Maquis. These soldiers had only wished to fight the communists and saw no point in what their activities in the west.

This was not the case with regard to both the 29th Italian SS Division and the 34th Dutch SS Division “Landstorm Nederland.” The Italian SS troops fought both the Americans and the rear area communist partisans, and they distinguished themselves as perhaps the best troops that Italy produced during the war. “Landstorm Nederland” first battled the British at Arnhem as part of a hurriedly organized self-defense brigade, but during the winter of 1944-45 it was enlarged into a full-scale 12,000 man infantry division. In the spring of 1945, the almost exclusively Dutch “LN” SS Division frustrated the British and Canadians as they tried with little success to advance into northwest Holland. None of the Allies could figure out why so many Dutchmen chose to join the “Landstorm” Division, so to avoid embarrassment, the story of this unit has been largely suppressed ever since. For the Dutch volunteers, there was no motivational problem. The Allies had joined with the Bolsheviks against not only their homeland but what they perceived to be European civilization altogether. Like their fellow countrymen on the Eastern Front, the men of “Landstorm Nederland” fought with dedicated resolve.

The Belgian and French SS Divisions were brought up to strength in the fall of 1944 from among the many refugees that had fled to Germany plus veterans of the war with Russia. In Holland, volunteers flocked to the Waffen-SS recruiting offices like never before and not because they had to. It didn’t take a clairvoyant to see that Germany was virtually finished, but still the European volunteers rushed to join the battle.

The establishment historians have never been able to understand this phenomenon, perhaps because it involved an concept alien to most of them: conscience. There was a great desire for many people, who had until this point sat out the war, to finally be “true to themselves”; to make the ultimate sacrifice out of loyalty to their beliefs, their homelands and their fellow countrymen who had already done so much. This was Europe’s moment of crisis and many young men made the decision to leap into the crucible. It was a manifestation of spiritual honesty.

The Waffen-SS also managed to generate a certain natural magnetism. Littlejohn, in his book The Patriotic Traitors (p123), described the pull of the Waffen-SS as follows: “The Runic Flag evoked a heroic pagan spirit, a swaggering defiant attitude to life equally contemptuous of bourgeois timidity and of communist anarchy.” The far-sighted Leon Degrelle, who had almost obtained political power in prewar Belgium also saw a powerful attraction and purpose in the Waffen-SS. In his words: “True elites are formed at the front … the young leaders are born there … the emblem of the SS shows Europe where political and social truth is to be found … We are preparing the political cadres of the post-war world in the Great Seminary of the Front Line.” A good many volunteers agreed with him.

The end of 1944 saw Leon Degrelle’s 28th SS Division “Wallonien” moving into that part of Belgium that had been retaken in the Ardennes offensive, where it received a hearty welcome and new recruits! But the curtain was rising on the last act on the Eastern Front, and in the weeks ahead most of the European volunteer forces would be in action there. In Kurland, Western Latvia, three SS divisions — 11th “Nordland,” 23rd “Nederland” and 19th Latvian-were caught up in an unequal life-or-death struggle in January 1945. A few extracts from the history of the 49th Dutch SS Regiment, “De Ruyter,” gave the sense of the action: (From the series of articles titled “Soldiers of Europe: The 3rd SS Panzer Korps” in Siegrunen Magazine)

After a surging, back-and-forth struggle, the southern bastion of Ozoli Hill fell irretrievably to the Russians. The over-powered First Co./SS Rgt. “De Ruyter” fell back to the west. Untersturmführer Schluifelder, the commander, was badly wounded and shot himself rather than fall into enemy hands.

The Red Army infantry was storming forward. Guided entirely by radio reports, Obersturmführer Behler directed the heavy weapons fire of his Dutch gunners at the center of the enemy onslaught. But by mid-day, Behler’s positions were entirely surrounded by the enemy. In bloody, close combat, Obersturmführer Behler and a few of his men managed to break out to the west.

In the same battle area, Danish Obersturmführer Johannes Hellmer’s company from Second Battalion/”De Ruyter,” was fighting for its life … Using his own initiative, Kanonier Jenschke, a private, led a small battle group to a successful breakout. Jenschke’s rank insignia had been obscured by his camouflage jacket so the men that he had been ordering about were unaware that they outranked him!

During these two days of heavy fighting all of the companies in the main battle line were fully extended. There was nothing to fall back on … only 7 men could be spared to defend the whole town of Kaleti … This, the defensive struggle of SS Division “Nederland,” was the most heroic battle that I have ever lived through. Everyone stayed in position to the finish. The attack came right up to the barrels of our artillery pieces. The firing pits were the main battle line. But although we were weakened and dispersed, we had acquitted ourselves with honor. (This extract from the war diary of Untersturmführer Horstmann.)

By the end of the fighting, the SS Regiment “De Ruyter,” with a nominal strength of 2,000 men, had been reduced to 80 combatants! The Regiment was rebuilt on the run and thrown into action again on the Pomeranian Front less than two weeks later. For the first time “De Ruyter” received a Third Battalion, this being composed of Dutch and German war reporters whose jobs had become rather superfluous given recent military reversals.

Remaining in Latvia was the 19th Latvian SS Division, which time and again had proven itself the mainstay of bitter defensive fighting and had received several mentions in the Wehrmacht war bulletins. The Latvian volunteers received more decorations than any other non-German group in the Waffen-SS, including the award of 13 Knight’s Crosses; a clear indication of their contributions on the battlefield. In Poland and Silesia, the Hungarian and Estonian SS Divisions were temporarily able to stop the enemy onslaught, even though the commander of the 26th SS Division, “Hungaria,” Oberführer Zoltan von Pisky had been killed in action at Jarotschin.

As the Eastern Front was slowly expanded westward, bits and pieces of the 27th Flemish SS Division “Langemarck” were rushed to the Oder River line from various training camps. Here they served alongside their co-national rivals, the Walloons, in a spirit of unparalleled comradeship. First Battalion of the 66th SS Regiment/Division “Langemarck” picked up the nickname “leaping tiger” for the way its soldiers threw themselves into battle. But even more amazing was the fact that the battalion was composed mostly of teenagers from the Flemish Hitler Youth who had volunteered for service in the Waffen-SS after their country had been overrun by the Allies. If there was one drawback to service in this battalion it was that the regimental quartermaster stubbornly saw that the young troopers received a special ration of Schokolade and Bonbons instead of the schnapps and cigarettes passed out to the older soldiers!

With a deep sense of historical irony, the Eastern Front slowly bent and folded itself around the German capitol city of Berlin, throwing a vast portion of the foreign volunteers into the battle for the city. Regiments of the 15th Latvian SS Division, battered beyond belief, had naively decided to throw in their lot with the western allies against the communists (which proved to be an unfortunate decision for many of the officers who were forcibly repatriated to the death camps), and made a complete circuit of Berlin traveling in no-man’s land all the time, until they saw a chance to make it to the American lines. The Division’s reconnaissance battalion went out a little too far on a scout mission and wound up being impressed into the defense of the city.

To the north of Berlin, 500 survivors of the 33rd French SS Division “Charlemagne” which had been decimated in the defense of Pomerania, actually volunteered to go to the defense of the German capital, even though the Divisional commander had absolved them from any further service obligations. In the week of the epic battle that followed, these Frenchmen constituted the core of defense in the city center, displaying courage and fortitude on a scale seldom seen. When the fighting was over, only a few dozen would still be alive and four of their survivors would be decorated with Knight’s Cross. One could call their mission a “beau geste,” but the French soldiers saw it as a moral obligation — another abstract concept the establishment scholars choke on. The following is a description of these soldiers from the artilce, “Defeat in the Ruins: France’s Last Battle for Europe,” by Gustav Juergens (Siegrunen, June 1980):

By this time, the warriors of the “Charlemagne” Division didn’t even look like human beings any more. Their eyes were burning and their faces skull-like and covered in dirt and mortar dust. Supplies only came in negligible amounts, the most telling being the lack of water. The young SS men moved like robots through the hell of Berlin. The future was the farthest thing from anyone’s mind. The only motivating idea that burned in their consciousness and kept them from collapsing was their flaming desire to come to grips with the Bolsheviks! They had to throw hand grenades, destroy tanks, and hold out against the Reds. That was their only reason for living and for dying.

The SS Divisions “Wallonien,” “Nederland” and “Nordland,” after spearheading the last successful offensive on the Vistula sector to relieve the trapped garrisons at Arneswalde, had been driven inexorably westward. “Nederland” was split into two segments, one being trapped and destroyed in the Halbe Pocket to the south of Berlin and the other retreating to the north of Berlin. Much of the “Nordland” Division, including the staff elements, wound up in Berlin itself.

At Prenzlau, due north of Berlin, the Flemish “Langemarck” Division led by the “leaping tigers” of its Hitler Youth battalion, made the last relief attack against the communist encirclement on 25 April 1945. In violent, savage fighting “Langmarck” was burnt to a cinder along with the “Wallonien” Division and parts of “Charlemagne” and “Nordland”; the survivors were forced to fall back towards the Elbe River. In Silesia, the 20th Estonian SS Division was surrounded and forced to surrender to the Soviets; beginning what for most, would be a long, final journey toward the Gulags. On the Austrian frontier, the Ukrainian, Moslem and Cossack SS formations fought with skill and valor before retreating to the west. Most of the Moslems and Cossacks would later be forcibly repatriated to their deaths at the hands of the Yugoslav and Soviet communists; the Ukrainians escaped this real “holocaust” by posing as pre-war Polish citizens.

Going with the Cossacks of 15th SS Army Corps to the Gulags, was their beloved commander, Gen. Lt. Helmuth von Pannwitz, the first foreign national ever to be freely elected Ataman of the Cossack tribes. He chose to share the fate of his men although he could have gone into comparatively comfortable Allied internment. In 1947, von Pannwitz, along with the Cossack leaders of the 15th SS Corps, was hanged in Moscow as a “war criminal”; the Cossack soldiers and about one-half million others of their nationality were physically exterminated with the assistance of the United States and Great Britain.

In Italy, after putting up a brave fight, the 29th Italian SS Division surrendered either to the Americans or to the Red partisans and almost to a single man, the Italian SS men were put to death. Between 20,000-30,000 of these volunteers were therefore killed outright in captivity. In Yugoslavia another great nightmare unfolded. 10,000 Moslem volunteers from the 13th SS Division “Handschar” were exterminated in a mass execution and their bodies stuffed in an abandoned mine shaft. Many of the soldiers of the 7th SS Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen,” recruited from Yugoslav Germans, met a similar fate. In Kurland, Latvia, where a small German Army Group had courageously held out against vastly superior enemy forces until the end of the war, 14,000 members of the 19th Latvian SS Division marched into captivity and oblivion. They were never heard from again.

In Berlin, members of the Spanish SS Legion attempted to break out of the city wearing pilfered Red Army uniforms; none made it. Those caught by the communists were shot as spies and those intercepted by the Germans were shot as turncoats. When General Krebs went to surrender the Berlin garrison early on the morning of 1 May 1945, he took with him the Latvian Waffen-Obersturmführer (1st Lt.) Nielands as an interpreter. After performing his duty, Nielands returned to the command of his 80 man company from the 15th SS Recce Battalion. For the Latvians there would be no surrender — they asked for no quarter from the Soviets and they gave none themselves. In the ruins of the Air Ministry building the Latvian SS troops made their last stand. In hand-to-hand combat they fought to the death.

A few of the volunteers trapped in Berlin actually escaped. The Danish Obersturmführer Birkedahl-Hansen, suffering from jaundice, led some men from Regiment “Danmark” successfully out of the city through Spandau to the northwest. They made their way to the seaport of WarnemiInde and took a row boat back to Denmark, thus escaping a long trek to Siberia.

The end of the war saw most of the European volunteers frantically trying to make it to the western Allied lines. Surrender, though, only marked the beginning of their problems. The “democratic” governments of the “liberated” countries were determined to exact a terrible vengeance. In each country some of the more prominent volunteers were run through quick “judicial” proceedings and executed, with the others being stripped of their civil rights and sentenced to prison terms of varying lengths. Those that wound up in Soviet hands were either: 1) extradited to their home countries for criminal proceedings or 2) simply shipped to forced labor camps with the Germans. Those that survived up to a decade or so of this treatment were eventually sent home.

The final tally sheet for the European Volunteer Movement ran roughly as follows: (Waffen-SS only)

Western Europe: 162,000 volunteers, ranging from about 55,000 in Holland to 80,000 from Liechtenstein. Out of this total about 50,000 were killed or missing in action. Included in this figure would be 16,000 Dutchmen and 11,500 Belgians.

Baltic States and Soviet Nationalities: About 250,000 soldiers. Casualties and post-war losses through forced repatriation and execution were enormous.

Balkan and Slavic: About 100,000. Considerable losses. Ethnic Germans not from Germany: About 300,000.

Germans from the Reich: 400,000. For the Germans and ethnic Germans, losses in killed and missing were about one-third.

In some countries like Holland, the “volunteer” problem was so great that censorship was imposed and in most cases remains in place to this day. The Dutch were particularly brutal in treating their military “collaborators”; incarcerating many for long terms in concentration camps that followed the German models faithfully. Many volunteers in the Netherlands subsequently rose to prominence in the political and business fields, but because of their “background” remained vulnerable to a form of blackmail that has seen some of them (including parliamentary leaders) sent into distant oblivion.

Treatment of returning volunteers was equally harsh in other countries. Belgium executed many both legally and illegally while keeping a majority of their “military collaborators” locked up in concentration camps run in the German style. In France, some of the more prominent officers were executed, while the rank-and-file of the “Charlemagne” Division was given the option of serving time in Indo-China with the Foreign Legion. Joining them were numerous Hungarian and German SS men who had wound up in French captivity.

Norway locked up its volunteers in stone fortresses and kept them on near starvation rations for between 4 and 8 years. The Norwegian volunteers had sealed their fate when they had offended a “hanging judge” who had offered them modified clemency for admissions of guilt. The judge was spat upon and pelted with rubbish by the incarcerated soldiers so he threw the book at them. Denmark, which produced a multitude of volunteers (nearly 15,000 including the crown of the Danish officer corps), was relatively lenient to most of their soldiers — only the more prominent ones had to suffer for long. One ex-commander of the “Freikorps Danmark” was executed (a decision officially condemned by the Danish Parliament 30 years later), and the Danish Major-General Kryssing, who had commanded a multi-national ad hoc division on the Eastern Front, was kept in prison 5 years and deprived of his civil rights.

When the volunteers were mentioned at all after the war, it was always in a very derogatory manner; they were usually referred to as criminals and mercenaries. The Dutch went so far as to hire a psychiatrist to buttress this theory. He interviewed 400 volunteers and later propounded the thesis that these men had not served out of any moral commitment but had “sold their souls” for material inducements and adventure. This has been pretty much the establishment line ever since, although it is never mentioned that those interviewed (constituting one-half of one percent of the total number of Danish military collaborators), were quite willing to say anything to secure release from their brutal internment.

If one looks at the rigorous screening process that the Germans applied to their foreign volunteers, the myth of their being “criminals” and “mercenaries” is rather thoroughly exploded. The basic criteria for acceptance in the Waffen-SS revolved around the applicant’s physical fitness, mental attitude and past record. Anyone with a criminal record was officially rejected, although some managed to pass the screening process deceptively. Utilizing these standards, the Waffen-SS accepted only 3,000 recruits out of about 12,000 who flooded the recruiting offices of the original Dutch Legion. And out of this 3,000 another 400 would be culled out during training for either harboring a criminal past or an incompatible political attitude. Similarly we can look at the Ukranian volunteers and see that out of 81,999 initial applicants only 29,124 were finally accepted after screening!

If there is any judgment that can be made from this it is that the men who got into the Waffen-SS usually represented the best human material that their respective countries had to offer. There is no way to categorize them individually since they came from all different classes and backgrounds sharing only one common denominator: a love of their country and continent.

It is more than fair to say that the European volunteers left a mark on the battlefields of the Eastern Front far out of proportion to their actual numbers, and this paper would not be complete if it did not include a sampling of their achievements.

In the Linden Hills east of the Oder River, Obersturmführer Capelle’s company of Walloon volunteers was in its death struggle. Enemy tanks were swarming all over — many had been knocked out but all of the Panzerfäuste were now exhausted. At this point, Capelle radioed to “Wallonien” Division headquarters that he was going to try and breakout and link-up with the Division. But escape for the company was no longer possible. Walloon volunteers were crushed to death by tanks running over their foxholes. The badly wounded fired their weapons until their last breath.

Finally all that was left was the company command post. In a heroic stand, the Belgian SS men fought it out until the end. The severely wounded were humanely put out of their misery. The survivors fought on with rifle butts and service revolvers. Incredibly, the command post resisted for the whole day. As it was finally overwhelmed in the early evening, Obersturmführer Capelle went down firing his pistol. Two wounded Walloons reached the German lines during the night to tell of this last battle.

On the next day, 27 February 1945, a supplement to the daily Wehrmacht war bulletin was read over the German radio: “In Pomerania a battle-group from the SS Volunteers Grenadier Division ‘Wallonien’ under the leadership of SS-Obersturmführer Capelle was deployed for flank for flank protection. Displaying exemplary steadfastness and fanatical battle spirit, it was destroyed (in action).” Capelle was recommended for the posthumous award of the Knight’s Cross, but documentation for the decoration was lost in the chaos of the war’s end.

* * *

On the morning of 26 January 1944 a Soviet tank force broke into the town of Gubanizy. The Dutch volunteer Caspar Sporck drove his self-propelled gun right into their midst and began shooting them up right and left, eventually claiming 11 kills. Later, during the last hours of the German retreat to the Narva bridgehead on 31 January 1944, Sporck stayed back alone with his armored vehicle and patrolled far to the east of the main battle lines, seeking out enemy tanks and vehicles and providing protection for stragglers. At dusk, with the enemy close behind, Sporck’s assault gun was the last vehicle to cross into the German lines. For his initiative and valor, Casper Sporck was later awarded the Knight’s Cross.

* * *

On 12 June 1944 at the “Sunshine” outpost to the southeast of the Narva bridgehead, the Danish NCO Egon Christophersen literally saved the main front, when with a small assault troop he counterattacked German trenches that had been seized by the Russians and regained them in hand-to-hand combat. Christophersen and his men then defended the positions against all attackers, enabling the broken German lines to re-consolidate and maintain position. Christophersen was awarded the Knight’s Cross.

* * *

At the Vepskula bridgehead on the wast bank of the Narva River in February 1944, the bedraggled German forces were unable to eliminate a dangerous Soviet inroad. Fresh Estonian assault troops were brought in. For a time they, too, were pinned down. Then the young Estonian Sergeant Haralt Nugiseks led a leap-frog attack that broke through the communist lines. In vicious close combat the enemy trenches were cleared all the way to the river’s edge. Nugiseks was awarded the Knight’s Cross.

* * *

In August 1943 on the Wolchov Front, the Latvian Sergeant Zanis Butkus led a storm troop into the enemy lines and proceeded to capture a string of communist bunkers without loss. He returned to the German lines with many prisoners and much booty. Butkus was given an officer’s commission on the spot. Later, after taking part in 59 close combat engagements, Butkus was awarded the Knight’s Cross.

* * *

In July 1944, on the north side of “Orphanage Hill” on the Narva Front, the Flemish NCO Remi Schyrnen singlehandedly knocked out more than a dozen enemy tanks while wounded and cut off from his unit. In a 48 hour period he turned back — all by himself — several Soviet tank attacks that would have encircled the Flemish and Estonian volunteer battalions fighting nearby. He even scored a lucky “double kill” when one shot from his anti-tank gun penetrated through two tanks advancing side-by-side. Incredibly, in January 1944, Schyrnen had pulled off a similar feat to save the “Langemarck” Brigade near Zhitomir. Schyrnen was awarded the Knight’s Cross.

* * *

Strong Soviet tank forces were attacking along the road south of Dorpat in eastern Estonia in August 1944 with the intention of severing the entire Estonian Front. The only things blocking their way were three anti-tank guns from the “Wallonien” Division under the direct command of the Walloon Lieutenant Leon Gillis. Gillis positioned his guns directly in the road and flung back attack after attack. In furious fighting that raged all day, the anti-tank guns were destroyed and most of the Walloons wounded. The whole front hinged on Gillis’ next move. He chose to attack. The Walloon volunteers knocked out three more tanks with hand grenades and drove back the rest. The enemy was unable to advance. Leon Gillis was awarded the Knight’s Cross.

* * *

In February 1945, the communists were closing in on the military training camp at Neuhammer in Silesia. The Hungarian Captain, Georg Hermandy in command of the emergency battalion of the 26th SS Division “Hungaria” led his unit in a valiant counterattack to prevent a breakthrough. Even after being badly wounded, Hermandy insisted upon staying in the front lines and directed a successful defensive battle that saved the Neuhammer sector. After the fighting, the Wehrmacht Colonel in charge of the area visited the Hungarian SS positions, took off his own Knight’s Cross and draped it around the neck of Hermandy. Waffenhaupsturmführer George Hermandy was subsequently killed on 23 March 1945 leading his men in yet another counterattack.

* * *

The last bridgehead on the east bank of the Oder River in March 1945 was held by the 1st Battalion/SS Regiment Division “Wallonien,” led by the Walloon Major Henri Derriks. Derriks, or “Der Boss,” as he was known to his men, deployed his two tanks and his companies of infantrymen with cool decisiveness, enabling the last German soldiers and refugees to make their way to safety. Finally, with the communists closing in from three sides, Derriks calmly pulled back his forces step-by-step and got them safely across the river, destroying the last bridge behind them. It was nothing new for “Der Boss,” as he had earlier commanded the last group of “Wallonien” soldiers to fight their way out of the Cherkassy encirclement in south Ukraine. Later, Derriks led the last assault of the “Wallonien” Division on the Eastern Front. Among his many decorations for bravery, Sturmbannführer Henri Derricks received the German Cross in Gold.

* * *

And there were many, many more European heroes, most of whom would not have their deeds recorded at all, but would instead find a final resting place in an unmarked grave somewhere in the “East.” We cannot begin to do justice to them in this paper, but we can, hopefully, lift part of the veil that has hidden their exploits for so long a time.

The Reckoning

We are now at the point where it can be asked, what does this discussion of the European Volunteer Movement prove? I think that it has at least validated the following statement by Beadle and Hartmann in their book, The Waffen-SS: Its Divisional Insignia: (p4)

By 1945, the Waffen-SS had proved by its combat success that European people could exist together, as long as they recognized and accepted the national differences between one another. It had been in the Waffen-SS that, for the first time, Dutch had been commanded by Germans and Germans by Belgians. It was this idealism, dearly bought on the roads of Russia and later in the gulags, that forged an outstanding spirit of comradeship and combatant ability among all members, regardless of nationality or rank.

Beadle and Hartmann also made one other trenchant statement that I hope is born out in this essay: (p4)

The greatest triumph of the Waffen-SS though, was not on the field of battle. It was in its policy of recruiting non-German volunteers, not as hired mercenaries, but as co-fighters for a European ideal.

After generations of slander, vilification and falsehood concerning the European volunteers, the first rays of light are beginning to shine through. Slowly, but surely, their story is being told. As for the soldiers themselves, many are of the belief that they were ahead of their time, both militarily and philosophically, and that their legacy is yet to be fulfilled.

For myself, perhaps the most incisive observation was made by the former Waffen-SS Colonel Jochen Peiper in a letter to his comrades while he was being held in American confinement under sentence of death: “Don’t forget that it was in the ranks of the SS that the first European died … ”

Bibliography

Beadle, C. and Hartmann, T., The Waffen-SS, Its Divisional Insignia, Key Publications, 1971.
Bender, R. and Taylor, H.P., Uniforms, Organization and History of the Waffen-SS, Bender Publishing, 4 Volumes, 1969-75.
Buss, P. and Mollo, A., Hitler’s Germanic Legions, Macdonalds and Janes, 1978.
Cerff, Karl, Die Waffen-SS im Wehrmachtbericht, Munin Verlag, 1971.
Degrelle, Leon, Die verlorene Legion, Verlag K.W. Schuetz, new printing, 1972.
De la Maziere, Christian, The Captive Dreamer, Saturday Review Press,1974.
Haaest, Erik, Frontsvin, Frostknuder, Forraedere, Bogans Forlag, 3 Volumes, 1975.
Hausser, Paul, Soldaten wie andere auch, Munin Verlag, 1966.
Hausser, Paul, Waffen-SS im Einsatz, Verlag K.W. Schuetz, 9th printing, 1976.
Heike, Wolf-Dietrich, Sie wollten die Freiheit, Podzun Verlag, new printing, 1978.
Historia #32: L’Internationale SS, Paris, 1973.
Huxley-Blythe, Peter, The East Came West, Caxton Press, 2nd printing, 1968.
Kern, Erich, The Dance of Death, Collins, 1951.
Littlejohn, David, The Patriotic Traitors, Doubleday, 1972.
Littlejohn, David, Foreign Legions of the Third Reich Volume One, Bender Publishing, 1979.
Landemar, Henri, Les Waffen-SS, Balliard, 1972.
Mabire, Jean, Berlin im Todeskampf 1945, Verlag K.W. Schuetz, 1977.
Reider, Frederic, La Waffen-SS, Pensee Moderne, 1975.
Schneider, Jost W., Their Honor Was Loyalty, Bender Publishing, 1978.
Stein, George, The Waffen-SS: Hitler’s Elite Guard at War, Cornell University Press, 1966.
Steiner, Felix, Die Armee der Geächteten, Verlag K.W. Schuetz, 4th printing, 1971.
Steiner, Felix, Die Freiwilligen, Verlag K.W. Schuetz, 5th printing 1973.
Strassner, Peter, Europäische Freiwillige: Die 5. Panzer-Division Wiking, Munin-Verlag, 1968.
Taylor, H.P., Germanische SS, 1940-45, Historical Research Unit/ Uniforms of the SS series, 1969.
Tieke, Wilhelm, Das Finnische Freiwilligen Bataillon der Waffen-SS, Munin-Verlag, 1979.
Tieke, Wilhelm, Im Luftransport an Brennpunkte der Ostfront, Munin-Verlag, 1971.
Tieke, Wilhelm, Tragödie um die Treue, Munin-Verlag, 3rd printing, 1978.
Wenn alle Brueder schweigen, Munin-Verlag, 1973 & 1975 editions.

Periodicals

Berkenkruis, Birch Cross/Belgium: Publication of the Flemish Waffen-SS veterans association. Various issues.
Der Freiwillige, Munin-Verlag: Monthly magazine of the Waffen-SS veteran’s self-help association. 1965 to date.
Siegrunen: The Waffen-SS in Historical Perspective, Glendale, Oregon, all issues, 1976 to date.
Siegrunen Bulletin, Glendale, Oregon, all issues 1979 to date.
Siegrunen Anthology 1, Glendale, Oregon, Spring 1979.

Other Material

Documents, letters, maps, photos, and records in the author’s archives.
Verordnungsblatt der Waffen-SS 1941-45. Various issues.

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In Defence of Germany

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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