Wwii German Quotes

There was nothing conservative about Adolf Hitler. Hitler was an artist and a revolutionary at heart. He wanted to completely upend and remake German society.

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Sturm, Swung, Wucht

Could you see yourself sitting down to tea with these girls? Will it surprise you to learn that one of them went on to gun down three unarmed German prisoners? Will it shock you to learn that one lit her cigarette from the flames of a burning German SS officer?

(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.

You can do anything you put your mind to doing.

I hope that in the final settlement of the war, you insist that the Germans retain Lorraine, because I can imagine no greater burden than to be the owner of this nasty country where it rains every day.

Of the twenty-eight thousand German fighter pilots to see combat in WWII, only twelve hundred survived the war.

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.

Many Germans nowadays say they were not Nazi, and many were not, but they were nearly ALL Party members. It was safer ... and if you were not, you could end up in a ‘camp’ for retraining ... so they mostly all paid ‘lip service’ to the Nazi Party.

The German occupation had changed the once beautiful Dutch spirit into a land of minefields containing hatred and cruelty that stripped a person of basic human rights that all should have and enjoy

The present destruction of Europe would not be complete and thorough had the German people not accepted freely [the Nazi] plan, participated voluntarily in its execution and up to this point profited greatly therefrom

She dreamed of Venice. However, it wasn’t a city alive with stars dripping like liquid gold into canals, or Bougainvillea spilling from flowerpots like overfilled glasses of wine. In this dream, Venice was without color. Where pastel palazzi once lined emerald lagoons, now, gray, shadowy mounds of rubble paralleled murky canals. Lovers could no longer share a kiss under the Bridge of Sighs; it had been the target of an obsessive Allied bomb in search of German troops. The only sign of life was in Piazza San Marco, where the infamous pigeons continued to feed. However, these pigeons fed not on seeds handed out by children, but on corpses rotting under the elongated shadow of the Campanile.

In World War II, some Japanese soldiers preferred to take their own lives rather become prisoners of war. In Saipan hundreds of civilians jumped to their deaths over cliffs in order to avoid falling into American hands. Even in life-or-death situations cultural ties and duties often outweigh the instinct for survival. This is why people die in the attempt to rescue a dog from drowning, or decide to become suicide bombers.

I don’t blame Germans,” Emil said. “I don’t even blame Nazis. I blame people who want to live at the expense of others.

We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not just going to shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.

When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. . . . I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it.

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe.

You do not know the force of the German propaganda. It appeals to something in man, some desire or lust for power. These people are ready to betray their country not for money, but in a kind of megalomaniacal pride in what they themselves, were going to achieve for that country. In every land it has been the same. It is the Cult of Lucifer- Lucifer, Son of the Morning. Pride and desire for personal glory!

He loved children and used to dandle me on his knee. This was how the title came about for this book, Uncle Hitler, although in the old German tradition, I called him Uncle Adolf, even though I was not related to him. This was a sign of respect to an older person, which is why I called Frau Eva ‘Aunty Eva’. However, little did I know at that time what revulsion the name Adolf Hitler would eventually invoke in the decent conscience of the world.

I wonder" he wrote, "if the day will ever come that the loveliest of hymns, Silent Night, will come into the minds of the people throughout the world to express the German heart. I belive it is the expression of the heart of many Germans...[and]of most people throughout the world. That is the appalling tragedy of all that we witness today" Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King in his diary during WWII during German occupation of the Netherlands.

One day, I noticed that my father’s uniform had changed from a smart, light green colour with silver edging on the shoulder straps to a black uniform with SS markings and runes on the collar. I asked him why this was, and he told me that he was still a policeman, but now worked for the Schutzpolizei.

The fact is that many people did not – and still do not – understand that many Germans were held in the concentration camps from 1933 onwards. The camps were not just for Jews or other ‘non-people’, but also for any German who had made some remark about the Nazis, or who would not follow the Nazi rules.

The organization of the camps in the east revealed a contempt for life, the life of Slavs and Asians and Jews anyway, that made such mass starvation thinkable. In German prisoner-of-war camps for Red Army soldiers, the death rate over the course of the war was 57.5 percent. In the first eight months after Operation Barbarossa, it must have been far higher. In German prisoner-of-war camps for soldiers of the western Allies, the death rate was less than five percent. As many Soviet prisoners of war died on a single given day in autumn 1941 as did British and American prisoners of war over the course of the entire Second World War. pp. 181-182

When I got home from my war, my uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he bellowed, 'You're a MAN now!' I damn near killed my first German.

When the excellent German novelist and graphic artist Günter Grass heard that I was born in 1922, he said to me, "There are no males in Europe your age for you to talk to.

World War II ended in a battle for a single buildng, Germany's Reichstag...7,000 German troops defending the building...Nearly 5,000 men died in a battle for the building.

the twenty-eight thousand German fighter pilots to see combat in WWII, only twelve hundred survived the war.

I heard people talking about what this Red Army did to any Germans they captured, and this only added to my fears.

They made a mess of 1914. They came a cropper in 1940. And now they're working up for it again.

She was now ready. Diarrhea pills, speed, sleep dope, lethal pill, and beauty aid. Bring on the Germans.

Current interventions in use with children include psycho-pharmacological treatments, play therapy, psychological debriefing and testimony therapy, but this was Nazi Germany in 1945!

They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with their comrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. He will be withdrawn from the common law and will become untouchable; the more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful and hated. When he is given the command of a group of unfortunates, with the right of life or death over them, he will be cruel and tyrannical, because he will understand that if he is not sufficiently so, someone else, judged more suitable, will take over his post. Moreover, his capacity for hatred, unfulfilled in the direction of the oppressors, will double back, beyond all reason, on the oppressed; and he will only be satisfied when he has unloaded onto his underlings the injury received from above.

A very important man used to visit her sometimes, and I met him too. He loved children and used to dandle me on his knee. This was how the title came about for this book, Uncle Hitler, although in the old German tradition, I called him Uncle Adolf, even though I was not related to him. This was a sign of respect to an older person, which is why I called Frau Eva ‘Aunty Eva’.

We were always taught as historians, or at least I was at university, never to use the word 'inevitable', because nothing is inevitable in history. And that's true, except for German counterattack.

While the Antifascist Action and all opposing groups were banned after Hitler became head of state, the antifa communist ideology never went away. From the ashes of WWII, it was absorbed and institutionalized in the official state ideology of what would become the German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany. From 1949 to 1990, East Germany existed as a communist state carved out of the Weimar Republic by the Soviet Union, one of WWII’s victorious Allied leaders. For over forty years, the extremely repressive conditions in East Germany exemplified what “antifa” state-building actually looks like.

Ad they entered Berlin, while still killing off the last of its German defenders, The Russians indulged in an orgy of rape and rage beyond the bounds of human Imagination. Over the course of ten days, about 130,000 women were raped---

Overriding all of them, however, was the memory of 1918, the belief that the Jews, wherever and whoever they might be, threatened to undermine the German war effort, by engaging in subversion, partisan activities, Communist resistance movements and much else besides.

The Aryan mind never ceases to amaze me," gloated the Nazi. "No wonder we're taking over the world!" "You can have the rest of the globe," Jozef said dryly, "but you shall never have Poland. You may think you're winning now, but Poland will live on. Poland is not yet lost!

Political calculation and local suffering do not entirely explain the participation in these pogroms. Violence against Jews served to bring the Germans and elements of the local non-Jewish populations closer together. Anger was directed, as the Germans wished, toward the Jews, rather than against collaborators with the Soviet regime as such. People who reacted to the Germans' urging knew that they were pleasing their new masters, whether or not they believed that the Jews were responsible for their own woes. By their actions they were confirming the Nazi worldview. The act of killing Jews as revenge for NKVD executions confirmed the Nazi understanding of the Soviet Union as a Jewish state. Violence against Jews also allowed local Estonians, Latvian, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles who had themselves cooperated with the Soviet regime to escape any such taint. The idea that only Jews served communists was convenient not just for the occupiers but for some of the occupied as well. Yet this psychic nazification would have been much more difficult without the palpable evidence of Soviet atrocities. The pogroms took place where the Soviets had recently arrived and where Soviet power was recently installed, where for the previous months Soviet organs of coercion had organized arrests, executions, and deportations. They were a joint production, a Nazi edition of a Soviet text. P. 196

It is not pleasant to be disliked,' he said, 'and it is very unpleasant to be German and to know that one is hated because one is German and because, collectively, we are wrong in what we are doing. That is why I hate this war, or one of the reasons. And of course, because of this, we shall lost it. We must. We have to.

The casting of the brash United States Army Air Force officer Colonel Robert E. Hogan and the pompous German Luftwaffe officer Colonel Wilhelm Klink was inspired. For this series—a comedy with the serious backdrop of war—to succeed, the lead players had to be the perfect fit. The dynamic portrayal of this military odd couple had to be articulate, accurate, and precise. For the show to work, for the concept to be accepted, for one of the most outlandish premises in television history to be believed, the actors signed to play the two leading characters not only had to bring these extreme individuals to life with broad, fictional strokes, they had to make them real in the details.

In October 1941, Mahilue became teh first substantial city in occupied Soviet Belarus where almost all Jews were killed. A German (Austrian) policeman wrote to his wife of his feelings and experiences shooting the city's Jews in the first days of the month. 'During the first try, my hand trembled a bit as I shot, but one gets used to it. By the tenth try I aimed calmly and shot surely at the many women, children, and infants. I kept in mind that I have two infants at home, whom these hordes would treat just the same, if not ten times worse. The death that we gave them was a beautiful quick death, compared to the hellish torments of thousands and thousands in the jails of the GPU. Infants flew in great arcs through the air, and we shot them to pieces in flight, before their bodies fell into the pit and into the water.' pp. 205-206

Πώς να περιγράψει κανείς το απερίγραπτο; Πώς μπορείς να μιλήσεις για κάτι που σε άφησε άφωνο από τρόμο; Υπάρχουν άλλοι, πολύ πιο ευφραδείς, που στάθηκαν ανίκανοι να βρουν τις κατάλληλες λέξεις, Πρόκειται για την σιωπή που γεννάει η ντροπή, αφού ακόμα και οι αθώοι είναι ένοχοι. Στερούμενος τα δικαιώματά του, ο άνθρωπος ξαναγίνεται ζώο. Οι πεινασμένοι κλέβουν απ' τους πεινασμένους. Η προσωπική επιβίωση αποτελεί την μόνη έγνοια. Μια έγνοια που καταπατά, ή και διαγράφει ακόμα, το οποιοδήποτε βίωμα. Σκοπός του Νταχάου ήταν να δουλεύεις μέχρι να καταστρέψεις την πνευματική σου υπόσταση. Ο θάνατος ήταν ένα αναπάντεχο υποπροϊόν. Για να επιβιώσεις εσύ, οι άλλοι έπρεπε να υποφέρουν για λογαριασμό σου. Όταν χτυπούσαν ή λιντσάριζαν κάποιον άλλο, εσύ ήσουν ασφαλής -έστω και για λίγο. Άλλοτε πάλι, για μερικές μέρες, έτρωγες την μερίδα του διπλανού σου, που είχε πεθάνει στον ύπνο του.

The train, I was later told by my mother, only had about ten carriages to it, and there were hundreds of people fighting to get on. I don’t think anybody knew where the train was going, only that it was leaving Strausberg and would take us away from the Russians, who were now arriving on the far end of the platform. Some German SS soldiers and Police were shooting at the Russian troops, and many people – men, women and children – were hit by the flying bullets.

Later, I started to understand just why these children ‘hated’ us other children. I understood that they did not, in fact, hate ‘us’, but hated the fact that we were German and spoke in a language that they associated with pain, fear and the loss of their parents, uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers, their whole families, in fact. Once I understood this it affected me in all sorts of subconscious ways, ways that were to blight my life for many years and make me deny my German birth.

This was a particularly spectacular example of the German campaign to gather forced labor in the East, which had begun with the Poles of the General Government, and spread to Ukraine before reaching this bloody climax in Belarus. By the end of the war, some eight million foreigners from the East, most of them Slavs, were working in the Reich. It was a rather perverse result, even by the standards of Nazi racism: German men went abroad and killed millions of "subhumans," only to import millions of other "subhumans" to do the work in Germany that the German men would have been doing themselves - had they not been abroad killing "subhumans." The net effect, setting aside the mass killing abroad, was that Germany became more of a Slavic land than it had ever been in history. (The perversity would reach its extreme in the first months of 1945, when surviving Jews were sent to labor camps in Germany itself. Having killed 5.4 million Jews as racial enemies, the Germans then brought Jewish survivors home to do the work that the killers might have been doing themselves had they not been abroad killing.) pp. 244-246

Like many who wondered about the rise of the Third Reich, Kelley saw connections between the growth of Nazi ideology and the presence of long-standing barbaric tendencies and prejudices in German culture. From the late nineteenth century through World War I, German leaders had preached the necessity of slaughtering enemies, setting Germans above people of neighboring countries, and recognizing their destiny to conquer others. The Nazis did not have to invent notions of the Führer principle, the folk hero who would rescue the nation, and the existence of an elite who could lead everyone else. They simply tapped into what was already present in the national atmosphere.

But the public did not know the truth about what happened to the people in the trucks; they believed the stories from the government, who said that these people, known as Untermensch (non-people or ‘lower people’), were simply moved to open spaces in the east and settled on farms, away from Germany, so as not to ‘contaminate’ the German race. This is an example of people not wishing to know the facts behind the rumours in which were whispered between trusted friends. The general belief was that the rumours were rubbish anyway, for how could a civilized country do such things? Our leaders would never allow anything bad to happen to these people; after all, we were not barbarians! And so nothing was said, or done, and the public developed a collective blindness to the truth.

The idea of the camp was to use it as a staging area for soldiers on their way to liberate France. It was much better than putting them in Boston in case the Germans attacked. Allied soldiers from several countries left from Camp Myles Standish to go to England and then on to France. They would only stay for a week or two. One group would go out, and another group would come in. At that camp we were doing everything, all the maintenance. There was a small hospital with nurses and doctors, and we were busy. I worked in the PX. We sold coca-cola, and Narragansett beer was delivered once a month. Cigarettes were five dollars a carton. There was plenty of food. We were glad when they gave us American uniforms; that meant we were something. We had work, and we were doing something good. When Italy got out of the war, and we signed to cooperate, that felt pretty good.

In time of war, under the banner of an enemy recognisable as such, a foreigner from a camp outside the lines, the imperial idea grew strong in confidence and temper. The British democracy rallied to the call of a strong leadership, and it was not just in rhetorical enthusiasm but with considerable personal satisfaction that Churchill hailed the year 1940-1 as the British people's 'finest hour'. He, with other imperialists, was delighted by the fact that, when it came to the sticking-place, it was the old-fashioned loyalty of the reactionary British Empire to all that was symbolised by allegiance to Crown and country that came forward to save European civilisation from utter overthrow by German tyranny...The days of showing the flag—even for only a momentary glimpse, such as wall that inhabitants of Greece and Crete and Dieppe had of it—had returned. The Empire was the Empire once more, and to 10, Downing Street returned that imperial control that two generations of Dominion opinion had combined to condemn as sinister.

Next to the assignment of the yellow star, the decision to arrest children between the ages of two and 16, then separate them from their parents, was probably the most significant public relations mistake of the Vichy government and their German partners...the sight of youngsters in busses, roaming the streets alone, or holding their mothers hands as they mounted police vehicles made an impression on gentile Parisians. Police reports following the round-up were especially sensitive to public opinion...'The measures taken against the Israelite have profoundly troubled public opinion. Though the French population is generally anti-Semitic, it nonetheless judges these specific measures as inhumane. It is the separation of children from their parents that most affects the French population and that provokes strong criticism of the government and of the occupying authorities...In general, our measures would have been well-received if they had only been aimed at foreign adults, but many were moved at the fate of the children...

Hitler was invading every European country surrounding Germany, and it was obvious that eventually we would also be at war. At the time, some Americans joined the German American Bund that backed what Hitler was doing. Others advocated that we stay out of the war.... Charles Lindbergh was of that persuasion and supported the isolationist “America First Movement,” advocating that the United States remain neutral. You could not blame people for their hostile feelings towards the German-Americans, when Nazi Bund meetings were being held at many locations around New York City, as well as in the neighboring Schuetzenpark, the German word for the riflemen’s or shooters’ park, in North Bergen. In April of 1941, after President Roosevelt accused Lindbergh of being a fascist sympathizer, Lindbergh resigned his commission as a colonel in the United States Army Air Forces. Later in the war, Lindbergh flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific Theater as a civilian consultant, but Roosevelt refused to reinstate his commission. The majority of Americans just wanted to stay out of what they considered a European matter.

WHO WAS J.F. LEHMANN? This book postulates that Adolf Hitler made a subtle, but all-important shift from proselytizing the myth of Germans as the oppressed victims of an “international Jewish conspiracy” to that of the superior race and oppressor because of J.F. Lehmann. It is not until after J.F. Lehmann brought Hitler the infamous Baur-Fischer-Lenz book on eugenics that Hitler’s speeches shifted from the stab-in-the-back myth, or the “Dolchstoßlegende,” with Germans as the oppressed victims of betrayal, to the eugenic propaganda of Germans as the pinnacle of white-supremacy. Weakness and superiority are incompatible attributes, and J.F. Lehmann is responsible for the shift away from the weakness inherent in victimhood to a racial superiority. Thus, it begs to question, who was this pivotal figure in Adolf Hitler's life, and why is his name and history not part of the commonly accepted history of The Holocaust? Nothing of The Holocaust or World War II can be understood without documenting who was Julius Friedrich Lehmann. Yet, J.F. Lehmann barely makes it onto the radar of even the most thorough books on the subject, and then only to name him as the person who delivered the Baur-Fischer-Lenz book to Adolf Hitler at Landsberg prison.

The Germans don't want us, or did you not get that when they started dragging people into the streets and killing them? We can't be Jews and Germans, not any more. You have to get that through your thick head, Japhet Buchanan. You're a Jew and only a Jew.

It was just Franz!” “Just Franz?” Franz retorted, catching the last part as the window jerked free of the ice which held it to the window sill. “Since when did I become 'Just Franz'? I'm almost another member of your family!” Japhet leaned on the frame, not caring when cold snow seeped into his sleeves. “That's when you became 'Just Franz',” he said. “Like Ruth is 'Just Ruth'. And you ruined my drawing. I hope you're happy.

Are you murdering more eggs for breakfast?” Japhet raised his head as the sound of boiling water filled the small apartment. “Don't insult my eggs, Buchanan.” “You insulted my roasted chicken, Kappel, so I can insult your eggs all I want.

After Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe had turned its sights onto England. We’d seen the destructive force of German military might playing to universal horror across cinema screens up and down the country, and with our army gone, Hitler and Göring’s eyes turned west to the white cliffs of Dover. Warsaw, Rotterdam… was London next? Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh? They bombed us relentlessly for a fortnight, even before France signed her official surrender. Night-time bombing raids on London, now called “The Blitz”. Fires in the night sky, women and children screaming, the shriek of the bombers, the deathly silence that briefly, fatefully follows. And then dust, blood, sirens. Noise and smells and screeching yells, panic and terror. The rising panic of a people under fire, who knew they had no army left to defend them when the enemy came.

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What is interesting is that the term Aryan was adopted by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in the early 20th century to describe a people group they deemed as purely Germanic (must be of one people group) and more “evolved” than the rest of European peoples and the rest of the world. And yet, the true Aryans were one of the most famous groups of people who were of mixed descent. Hitler and the Nazis were playing off of Charles Darwin’s model of higher and lower races. This idea, claimed by this humanistic religion, has been a cause of terrible atrocities in WWI, WWII, and mass exterminations of people by leaders like Stalin (Soviet Union) and Mao (China), among others.

The condemnation of the National Socialist Party goes much further than it seems to. In reality, it reaches all the solid forms, all the geological forms of political life. Every nation, every party which urges us to remember our soil, our tradition, our trade, our race is suspect. Whoever claims right of the first occupant and calls to witness things as obvious as the ownership of the city offends against a universal morality which denies the right of the people to write their laws. This applies not just to the Germans; it is all of us who are dispossessed. No one has any more the right to sit down in his field and say: “This ground belongs to me.” No one has any more the right to stand up in the city and say: “We are the old ones; we built the houses of this city; anyone who does not want to obey our laws should get out.

need the other great powers. Russian trade would keep Germany from launching an attack on his homeland and aid in the rebuilding of the Soviet state. When the two nations signed the secret pact, Stalin gained an even greater boost to his ego when Hitler effectively gave away much of eastern Europe to Russia in the form of “spheres of influence” along with the ten-year nonaggression pact. Moreover, Germany would now move against the British and the French, leaving Russia considerable time before becoming Hitler’s next target. Besides, no mere paperhanger could outwit Stalin! Well, it did sound good at the time … and those who might have objected would have wisely saved their nation the trouble of the interrogation, trial, and firing squad by blowing out their own brains. If anything, years of pogroms and purges had proved that Soviet premier Stalin did not tolerate pessimism. With the new buffer states, security, and the promised trade bonus, as far as the Russian leader could see, Hitler had effectively bought off Joseph Stalin at just the right price. Time was now on Stalin’s side … or so he thought. While feelings of suspicion and paranoia had served him well over the years, Stalin demonstrated confidence in the deal and his ability to handle prospective German aggression, failing miserably to

Berlin’s alternative edge, exciting food scene, palpable history and urban glamour never fail to enthral and enchant. More than a quarter century after the Wall’s collapse, the German capital has grown up without relinquishing its indie spirit and penchant for creative improvisation. There’s haute cuisine in a former brewery, all-night parties in power stations and world-class art in a WWII bunker. Visit major historical sights – including the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor and Checkpoint Charlie – then feast on a smorgasbord of culture in myriad museums.

European perfumery started in earnest around the turn of the twentieth century, and developed apace with the discovery of aroma chemicals: coumarin, vanillin, cyclamen aldehyde, the great nitro musks. The Great War left industry and cities largely intact and killed countless males. Many factors then conspired to make the period 1918-1939 the golden age of mass perfumery: working women vying for the remaining men, cheap aroma chemicals, cheap labor to harvest the naturals, flourishing visual arts and music, the obsolescence of prewar bourgeois dignity, replaced by irreverence and optimism. The WWII destroyed the great engine of European chemistry (Germany). The tail end of German chemistry on the Rhine lay in the neutral Switzerland and was untouched, which is wy today two of the biggest perfumery houses in the world (Firmenich and Givaudan) are Swiss. Postwar France stank. In 1951, six years after the Liberation, only one household in fifteen had an internal bathroom. The Paris Metro at rush hour was famous for its unwashed stench. Given cost constraints, French perfumes in those years ('50) had an air de famille, a perfumey feel based on then-cheap drydown materials like sandalwood oil and salicylate esters. Being able to smell someone's fragrance was a sign of intimacy. When a perfume left a trail (called sillage) it was remarked upon, usually unfavourably. It is a strange coincidence, or perhaps a hint of the existence of God, that skin melanin is a polymer spontaneously formed from phenols, and that the perfumery materials that defined American perfumery were also in good part phenols.

Many Belgians who had previously been engaged in only passive resistance to the occupation realized active resistance was the only way Belgium could free itself from German rule.

I found it much harder to accept the harsh reality of the German experience in the Third Reich. We, a civilized, humane people, had allowed ourselves to become indifferent to brutality committed by our own government on our own citizens.

But the most intriguing part of the van Meegeren story is how his success as a forger got him arrested as a war criminal. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, Han-he was also an art dealer-sold one of his Vermeer forgeries, Christ with the Adulteress, to a German banker, who then sold it to Hermann Goering, number two in Hitler's command. When the painting was discovered hidden in an Austrian salt mine after the war, it was traced back to Han. On the assumption that he had sold a Dutch national treasure to the enemy during wartime, van Meegeren charged as a Nazi collaborator and thrown into jail. Han was then faced with a choice: Confess to forging the painting or spend the rest of his life in prison. After a week in solitary confinement, he told his jailers that the painting was not a master- piece by Vermeer, just a forgery by van Meegeren. But, to both his dismay and gratification, no one believed him. So, under the vigilant eyes s of reporters and court-appointed witnesses, he repainted the forgery while a prisoner at the Headquarters of Military Command. Both of his works were "authenticated" as forgeries, and the war crime charges were dropped.

The colonel had better reason than the brigadier for knowing that the Russians were hunky-dory, for once, in Jugoslavia, he had watched a Soviet division capture in a few hours from the Germans a bridge which the 386th Division could not have taken in under a week. Down the hill those flaxen-haired boys had marched, laughing and singing, and the bullets had come tearing at them, smashing their tibias, cracking their femurs, opening their bellies, gouging their eyes, grounding them, scorching them. As, through his field-glasses, the colonel had watched them swept from the bridge into the river, it had not seemed to him that they could really be suffering, as he himself had suffered in 1914, with the big angry red thing up against him, and he had to make and effort of will to understand that each of these boys had died his own death, smash up against the Christ he didn't believe in, with his bowels gushing out over his boots as he thought for the last time of his mother, and with his hair still young in the sun. And still others had come on, laughing and singing, as they marched to kill and to be killed by other boys with lineless faces, because it was sweet and decorous to die for one's country. Yes, the Russians were hunky-dory all right, provided they were fighting on the same side as you were.

When we were fighting the war we were told that we were doing right, but that we have lost it, we are told that we have been doing wrong. We are wanting to know why.

Before the war, a Parisian woman could not vote, work, or even open a checking account without her husband’s say so. To humiliate her now, propaganda posters fed the lie that she and her children had been abandoned in the necessities of life by the French men who’d run off to play savior by fighting a war they couldn’t possibly win. Now it was only the German soldier who could save her. It was not by a blitzkrieg that Hitler sought to take over. It was by a prolonged methodical effort to win the ravaged minds of the women left behind and to appropriate all that was distinctly Parisian - the arts, Haute couture, the very spirit of the French people - and repurpose it to become a higher form of the German ideal. In all of this flowed the callus and crafty undercurrent of fear.

Przerażenie, wie pan, to przerażenie, jakie odczuwaliśmy na początku, że człowiek w taki sposób może obchodzić się z drugim człowiekiem, ono z czasem jakoś zelżało. No, tak to już jest, prawda? Widziałam to później sama po sobie, że z czasem zaczęliśmy do tego wszystkiego podchodzić 'na luzie', jak to się dzisiaj ładnie mówi.

Sander van der Wiel, brother to Frans, had become an active member of the cell. He brought with him a handful of others who were joining to add potential resistance fighters to what was anticipated to be a bloody end to the war. Not all of these newcomers were reliable recruits; in fact, some proved to be more interested in causing general mayhem than fighting Germans or NSB collaborators. In the middle of January, the new members headed out to the polders to confront and rob a farmer who they suspected of profiteering off the famine. In the process, they executed the man, whose name was Willem van de Zon. As it turned out, however, not only was Zon innocent of making profits off the Hunger Winter, but he had long and solid ties to the resistance. He had hidden a number of Jewish people through the course of the war and was actually giving food away during that hard winter

Claims for compensation for physical damage through sterilization and for psychological damage through incarceration were not recognized for this reason. Claims for lost possessions were rejected on the basis of a wholesale prejudice that Gypsies did not own possessions. Claims for compensation for lost income on the basis of a reduction of earning capacity (as a result of physical and psychological damage and years lost due to imprisonment) were rejected on the grounds that Gypsies were unlikely to have sought employment even under more favourable circumstances. Like the German Jews, the Roms had been stripped of their citizenship rights by the Nazi regime's racist legislation.

There was every proof that the persecution and genocide against Romani minorities had been carried out on the basis of racial ideology. Nevertheless, many Roms encountered difficulties reclaiming their German citizenship. As a result they were also considered to be ineligible for compensation payments, which according to the West German compensation law could be made only to German citizens. By the time their citizenship had been reinstated and compensation claims were filed again, claimants were often informed that the deadline for submitting claims had passed.

Paranoid Systems of History (PSH), a short-lived periodical of the 1920s whose plates have all mysteriously vanished, natch, has even suggested, in more than one editorial, that the whole German Inflation was created deliberately, simply to drive young enthusiasts of the Cybernetic Tradition into Control work: after all, an economy inflating, upward bound as a balloon, its own definition of Earth's surface drifting upward in value, uncontrolled, drifting with the days, the feedback system expected to maintain the value of the mark constant having, humiliatingly, failed. . . . Unity gain around the loop, unity gain, zero change, and hush, that way, forever, these were the secret rhymes of the childhood of the Discipline of Control—secret and terrible, as the scarlet histories say. Diverging oscillations of any kind were nearly the Worst Threat. You could not pump the swings of these playgrounds higher than a certain angle from the vertical.

Later I learned that they were carrying paratroopers to occupy airfields and bridges toward the west of the country so that the attack of the German army would not be slowed down.

It was a lot more dangerous to expose several thousands of people to the dangers of traveling on exposed roads, with German fighter planes overhead strafing everything that moved

He [John Eisenhower] followed up by presenting me with Eugene Davidson's The Trial of the Germans, a searching and exhaustive account of the Nuremberg trials complete with in-depth profiles of the Nazi defendants. Like the Bible I had received at age ten, The Trial of the Germans was one of the most treasured gifts I had

You'd have to be a do-nothing not to beat the Germans. Ever since the world began, everybody's beaten the Germans. And they've beaten nobody. Except each other. It was on them he earned his glory." People talking about the Germans before WWII

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.” TRAUMA IS EVERYWHERE It’s not just veterans, crime victims, abused children, and accident survivors who come face-to-face with trauma. About 75% of Americans will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than they are to get breast cancer.

Marching into Germany, Americans had no intention of remaining; they had counted on keeping occupation armies on German soil no more than two years. But once involved in Central Europe, and understanding Soviet motives and ambitions, the U.S. government did not dare depart. Gradually, American officialdom began to accept the fact that some problems, like that of Germany, defied any quick solution, and that the price of continued security or success had to be eternal vigilance.

I did not want a war, nor did I bring it about. I did everything to prevent it by negotiations. After it had broken out, I did everything to assure victory. Since the three greatest powers on earth, together with many other nations, were fighting against us, we finally succumbed to their tremendous superiority. I stand up for the things that I have done, but I deny most emphatically that my actions were dictated by the desire to subjugate foreign peoples by wars, to murder them, to rob them, or to enslave them, or to commit atrocities or crimes. The only motive which guided me was my ardent love for my people, its happiness, its freedom, and its life. And for this I call on the Almighty and my German people to witness. (31 August 1946)

Appeasement was a policy put in place by Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister to try to avert war. His theory was that trying to prevent Germany from getting what it wanted would cause more harm than good in the long run. Therefore Britain’s official foreign policy would be that they would fulfill Germany’s wishes, “provided they appeared legitimate and were not enforced with violence,” described in German newspaper Der Spiegel. Chamberlain was aware that the British Empire’s resources were limited and that they really didn’t have the power to stop Hitler. So cooperating with them seemed like a better option.

In 1935, a British engineer named Robert Watson Watt was asked whether it was possible that the Germans were developing a death ray using radio waves. No such weapon was being made, but in studying the possibility, Watt ended up creating a radar detector, one of the biggest technological advances of WWII.

There is a gaping hole in the history of the Holocaust. Between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Mengele there was a hierarchy of scientists whom were responsible for writing the infamous racial legislation of the Third Reich. These scientists, doctors, and legislators enjoyed prestigious positions in the various institutions within Hitler's Germany. To be more precise, many of the ghastly experiments credited to Mengele were ordered by this group of high-ranking scientists and doctors. Mengele was following their orders, yet many of these German doctors and scientists were set free after being captured by the Allies. Previously unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, and conveniently forgotten publications reveal professional and political relationships as well as shared scientific convictions between high-profile American Progressives, British Fabian Socialists, and their German counterparts. The mounting evidence points to the long-standing designs and machinations of "scientific racism", a still poorly understood aspect of history. This book documents the hundred year trajectory of the history of "scientific racism" from its initial intentions to create "a race of masters" to the Holocaust, which resulted from Hitler's conviction to create a "master race". These scientific prejudices and political dogmas are as relevant today as they were leading up to WWII. A thorough understanding of the origins of this movement is in order.

War is incidental to ideology, and this was certainly true for the war instigated by Adolf Hitler. Historians have aptly documented that Hitler knew he needed the fog of war and a radicalized population in order to enact the most extreme policies. This was equally true for both Germans and the people of their conquered territories. The war allowed Hitler the cover and justification to radicalize the T4 Euthanasia program against those lives deemed “not worth living” by pointing to the costs of maintaining those “useless eaters” during a time of war. It allowed license for Karl Brandt to “clear hospital beds” in the name of the war effort. The war’s conquered territory also brought conquered populations and increased the number of “unfit” and “undesired” population, including the Jewish population of Eastern Europe. The methods and technology of the T4 Euthanasia program were subsequently transferred from the German hospitals to the extermination camps, doctors, nurses, equipment, and all. This transference and repurposing of resources was all decided in the infamous Wannsee Conference, which we now know was the beginning of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”:“The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Jews in a legal manner.” (From the text of the Wannsee Protocol)

Though Pius acted discreetly, he did not hide Hitler's attack plan under the proverbial bushel basket. During the second week of January 1940, a general fear gripped Western diplomats in rome as the pope's aides warned them of the German offensive, which Hitler had just rescheduled for the 14th. On the 10th, a Vatican prelate warned the Belgian ambassador at the Holy See, Adrien Nieuwenhuys, that the Germans would soon attack in the West. ... Pius had in fact already shared the warning, while shielding the source. On 9 January, Cardinal Maglione directed the papal agent in Brussels, Monsignor Clemente Micara, to warn the Belgians about a coming German attack. Six days later, Maglione sent a similar message to his agent in The Hague, Monsignor Paolo Giobbe, asking him to warn the Dutch. That same month, Pius made a veiled feint toward public protest. He wrote new details on Polish atrocities into Radio Vatican bulletins. But when Polish clergy protested that the broadcasts worsened the persecutions, Pius recommitted to public silence and secret action.

There are many faces to the horrors of war-- decimation, mutilation, barbarity, and, of course, death itself. But one of the most savage and dehumanizing consequences of armed conflict is the prison system that springs up to house enemy combatants--and ordinary citizens too. These hellish camps encapsulate the lowest depths of human depravity; ruled by violence and degeneracy, political prisoners are forced to endure unthinkable conditions and unchecked cruelty--all without any chance of reprieve. Uta Christensen's latest novel, Caught: Surviving the Turbulent River of Life, chronicles this appalling consequence of war, weaving a narrative of atrocity that, despite its artful inventions and complex characters, is so starkly based on grim realities... that one cannot help but shudder. Caught tells the story of Janos, a young German boy kidnapped by the Nazis during WWII--and forced into a Russian prison camp. There, Janos must survive against all odds, fighting off starvation and death at every turn as the years march on... and he becomes a man. It is, in fact, within the hardships of this very crucible, that Janos thrives, overcoming the frailties and ignobilities of existence to discover friendship, compassion, and love--making him into the apotheosis of an upstanding, self-reliant citizen: a true model to all his fellow countrymen. Told in flashbacks, Caught: Surviving the Turbulent River of Life explores the intricate nature of suffering and memory, delving into the complexities of how the past--even the most vicious episodes--informs the present... and the very nature of the self. Uta Christensen, with striking prose and a poetic sensibility, brings the darker chapters of history to life in such a way that one is instantly captivated by a concurrent horror and pity, a sense of tragedy, but too a catharsis in overcoming, in human resilience and beauty itself. A truly breathtaking novel, Caught is a tour de force of literary perfection; poignant, unremitting, and painfully real, this book is essential reading for all those willing to face hard truths--and grow from them.

ABOUT BED OF ROSES, BED OF THORNS: As I read the exciting new novel Bed of Roses, Bed of Thorns by Uta Christensen, the thought suddenly came to me: what a rich many-faceted story of a bygone era it is, a revisiting of the German culture of the first half of the 20th century. While two horrendous wars were unfolding – WWI and WWII – families tried to cope with losing their loved ones, being uprooted, experiencing hardships and depravations, witnessing their cities being destroyed and eventually welcoming their conquerors. In these chaotic times, Ursula Meister was born and is growing up. The novel is an engrossing coming-of-age story, set in a rich family saga of three generations of colorful characters. Simply, but masterfully told, Bed of Roses, Bed of Thorns is a complex, moving, ambitious and interesting work of fiction. I loved every bit of it.

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love.

On September 28, 1870, after heavy bombardment, during the Siege of Strasbourg, the French were forced to surrender the heavily fortified fortress. The Municipal Library housed in the Dominican church, with its unique collection of medieval manuscripts, rare Renaissance books and historical artifacts were destroyed by fire, as were many other Gothic buildings in the city center. Of the population of 150,000 people, over 600 were left dead and 3,200 were wounded and left without shelter. Strasbourg was surrendered to the Prussian General August von Werder and thus became part of the German Empire. In 1919, following the Treaty of Versailles, the city was returned to France in accordance with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points." With this many Germans left Strasbourg and went back to Germany. It wasn’t until in June of 1940 during World War II and after the Fall of France, that Alsace was annexed by Germany again. The final Liberation of Strasbourg took place on 23 November 1944, thus returning the Alsace district to France.

In 1933, the regional elections held in many parts of Germany, overwhelmingly favored Adolf Hitler and the NAZI Partei. On August 2, 1934, at 9:00 a.m., the long awaited demise of 86-year-old Hindenburg finally occurred in the town of Neudeck, near Rosenberg, East Prussia. Within hours after the announcement of Hindenburg’s death, Hitler seized total control of Germany by establishing himself in the contrived, dictatorial and ultimate position of “der Führer.” It was in this way that he became the supreme leader, ruling Germany until 1945.

Frau Heinchen, was the elderly woman with her dog, who talked to me on the windy hillside overlooking Überlingen on Sunday afternoon, December 1, 2002. She recalled the Polish and Russian prisoners, whom she called Cossacks, and vividly remembered the hanging of the Russian soldier, described in “Suppressed I Rise”. According to her, it was the farmer’s wife Clarissa who was raped by the Russian soldier and later, bore his child. She remembered the lager (warehouse) that was used to house the prisoners, saying that it was located on a field near the municipal hospital. She also told us the location of where the one room schoolhouse had been. For the limited time that we talked, she glowed and became twenty-one years young again.

We are living in an artificial world—a world of fantasies and illusions. We've learned beautiful phrases but haven't learned yet how to carry out that little bit that we know. Our brains are stuffed with quotations, while at the same time nine out of ten of these dogmas are incomprehensible, murky, or lies. Which are worthwhile and which are not? Yes, I must stop being false before others and myself. How simple it all seems! But how do I do this? Let just a little time pass, and then we may understand—only the simplest, honorable acts determine the value of a man. Only I myself can and must help myself to become an adult.

In 1933, the regional elections held in many parts of Germany, overwhelmingly favored the NAZI Partei. The full name of this vile group was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei and actually was originally abbreviated NSDAP, not NAZI. With what seemed to be decisive popular approval, the Reichstag endorsed Hitler. On the morning of January 30, 1933, at the Presidential Palace, Hindenburg swore in Adolf Hitler as the Reich Chancellor of Germany, a title equivalent to that of the Prime Minister of England. However, as the Reich Chancellor, Hitler was in a relatively stronger position of authority than the Prime Minister of England. Everything being equal, it would be much more difficult to remove him from power since the Chancellor of Germany remains in office until the majority of the Bundestag can agree on a successor, whereas the Prime Minister serves at the whim of his party. Hindenburg publicly denounced any responsibility for appointing this “Austrian Corporal” to the Reich Chancellery, while he prudently caved in to Adolf Hitler’s popular demands. On the other hand, Hitler frequently referred to Hindenburg as “that old fool.” Although the men maintained an appearance of cordiality to each other in public, Hitler did not respect the “Old War Horse” and there was definitely no love lost between them. During the following summer, Hindenburg grew increasingly concerned about the radical Nazi rallies in Nuremburg, and the political demonstrations that were being carried out throughout Germany. During the summer of 1934, the elderly German President became extremely ill and was close to death at his mansion in East Prussia. Having contracted lung cancer, he had been incapacitated and bedridden for several months, thereby giving Hitler enough time to plan and impose his next move. On August 2, 1934, at 9:00 a.m., the long awaited demise of 86-year-old Hindenburg finally occurred in the town of Neudeck, near Rosenberg, East Prussia. Within hours after the announcement of Hindenburg’s death, Hitler seized total control of Germany by establishing himself in the contrived, dictatorial and ultimate position of “der Führer.” It was in this way that he became the supreme leader of Germany, ruling until 1945.

It was the economy that troubled most people prior to World War II. Europe, especially Germany, was dealing with a deep worldwide depression. Fascism was gaining a stronghold in Germany as well as in many other European countries. Although small and generally not popular, the Communist Party was the only organized group to stand in opposition to the Nazis. Small bands of these Communists occasionally attempted to disrupt the government by rioting in the streets. Occasionally gunfire would be heard, but very little could be done about it by a people that did not want to get involved. Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” were rapidly solidifying their position, and the Nazi Party was becoming stronger. Even though they frequently violated the National Constitution, they brought order to what had been chaos. The Treaty of Versailles, enacted after World War I, was hated by the German people, who felt that it suppressed them in a most demeaning way. Now however, Hitler was putting people to work building cars and an autobahn highway system that connected the larger cities. Modernization of airports and the development of a national railroad were all in violation of the imposed international regulations. Now however, workers were bringing paychecks home and could once again feed their families. Therefore, little thought was given to Hitler’s power grab. Germany was emerging from the dark era following World War I, and things were getting better. The Vaterland was regaining its strength, without regard to what France and other European countries thought.... After all, what could they, or would they, do about it?

When the Führer predicted a quick victory over England, implying Spain could wait not longer if it wanted to share in the triumph, Franco doubted the scenario, before adding that even if the Germans were to capture London, the British would continue fighting from Canada.

Our best messenger dog was Missy, a white German Shepherd that came to us in the original shipment of dogs we got from the Army.