Exclusive at carolynyeager.net! This is the never-before-published true story of a young German soldier thrown into the battle of Seelow Heights in the last month of the Second World War—how he survived against all odds and managed to return home.

The Odyssey of Fahnenjunker Wenger

From the Seelow Heights—April 1945

Back Home to Leoben, Austria—July 1945

By Willy Wenger

An officer-candidate in the German Luftwaffe, Willy Wenger was only 18 in 1945 when his “odyssey” began. He is now 86. His older brotherLeopold Wenger was awarded the Knight’s Cross, Germany's highest military decoration.

Translation and Introduction by Wilhelm Kriessmann

Editing by Carolyn Yeager
copyright 2012 Wilhelm Wenger

For the 17-year-old high school student Willy Wenger, his brother "Poldi," squadron leader at SG10 of the German Luftwaffe, was an outstanding role model. Willy wanted to follow in the footsteps of this highly decorated Jabo*pilot, who was five years older than himself. In July 1942, Willy received his C license for glider pilots (pictured at right on glider) and in April 1943 at the Reichssegelflugschule Spitzerberg near Vienna, he earned the Luftfahrerschein (air pilot pass). (See picture below)

[*Jagdbomber -  Refers to Bf 109 fighter aircraft converted to carry 250-kg bombs and carry out nuisance raids.]

The war situation in the spring of 1943 made it necessary to call up the final classes of high school students to the services of the Home Anti-Aircraft Forces, or FLAK. Wenger’s high school class assembled at barracks within the steel plant of the Herman Goering Werke (later named Voest-Alpine) at Linz/Donau. School lessons continued but the young pupils also had to learn how to handle the 3.7cm anti-aircraft guns and all the additional equipment.

Above: Wenger earns his basic pilot's license in 1943 at the flying school at Spitzerberg.

Because of injuries at gun practices, Willy was able to spend a furlough at home in Leoben at the same time his older brother 'Poldi, the Luftwaffen pilot, also arrived back home for a short leave.

Turbulent months followed his return from his New Year furlough to his FLAK unit in Linz. Only a few weeks after the class returned to the school in Maburg and report cards were issued, Wenger was called to the service at the RAD (Reichs Arbeits Dienst), Reichs Labor Service, an obligatory three-month draft. During the three very cold winter months of 1944, the RAD men were working on a railway ramp to connect the main line with a trunk line to a large armament plant in Silesia. Basic boot camp training was still part of their activities, however. (Willy is in center of group)In early May, Wenger was back at school in his last year but, as it turned out, only for a few weeks. There were merry reunions, parties and dancing and when the call for military service came, Wenger volunteered to be an officer candidate in the Luftwaffe.

On July 6, 1944, he arrived at the Kriegsschule 3 at Oschatz, in the state of Saxonia/Anhalt. As a Fahnenjunker (cadet), he was looking forward to becoming a pilot like his brother.

That dream ended when Reichsmarschall Göring ordered 100,000 Luftwaffen personnel to fill the gaps suffered by the German army. In early spring 1945 Fahnenjunker Wenger, now Fallschirmjaeger (parachute trooper), was on the way to the Eastern front some 80km distance from Berlin.

We now let him tell his story:

Please continue reading HERE at carolynyeager.net

April 20, 2013

Adolf Hitler’s 124th birthday is celebrated with proof of his amazing popularity and face-name recognition. Examples of oratory by himself and by others praising him is read and commented on. Carolyn also brings up some news stories showing the abject fear exhibited by the enemies of mankind whenever a positive feeling toward Hitler might in some way be exposed by their institutions or media.

When all is taken into consideration, it’s clear that the German Führer is, at the very least, the single best-known historical personality in the world today.  I would say that’s quite a success story.

Image: An example of Hitler's amazing recognizability from only two shapes, demonstrating he has penetrated the consciousness of the entire world population.

August 22, 2013

Why didn’t Hitler address the German nation considering its defeat as the Emperor Hirohito did in Japan? Why was Hirohito allowed to live and continue his reign, while Hitler and his party had to be eradicated totally? Why was Japan allowed to keep its industrial capacity and participate in world trade, but Germany not. One reason is the difference between Dwight David Eisenhower (the terrible Swedish Jew) and Douglas MacArthur.

Image:  FM Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Army (center) with Chief of the Luftwaffe Stumpff (left), Admiral Friedeberg of the Kriegsmarine (right) are forced by Eisenhower's threats to surrender to the Soviet Union on May 8, 1945 in Berlin-Karlhorst.

Carolyn also looks at the continuing media attention to the  “problem” of antisemitism and what to do about it. Friday, April 26 is the 100th anniversary of the rape/murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan by the Jew Leo Frank in Atlanta, Ga. The Anti-Defamation League was created 100 years ago to defend Frank and has been doing its best to prevent justice for Jews ever since.

The Odyssey of Fahnenjunker Wenger

Part Two - Conclusion

From the Seelow Heights—April 1945

Back Home to Leoben, Austria—July 1945

By Willy Wenger

An officer-candidate in the German Luftwaffe, Willy Wenger was only 18 in 1945 when his “odyssey” began. He is now 86. His older brotherLeopold Wenger was awarded the Knight’s Cross, Germany's highest military decoration.

Translation and Introduction by Wilhelm Kriessmann

Editing by Carolyn Yeager
copyright 2013 Wilhelm Wenger

From April 20th onward - the final days of the Reich - 18 year old Willy Wenger was involved in the Battle for Berlin. His story continues right after receiving his first wound as he covered for German civilians trapped inside the cellar of a house. As he attempted a peek out the front door to check conditions, a Russian grenade exploded close to it. A grenade fragment struck his hand, bringing forth profuse bleeding.

For the time being we escaped hell; it was insanity what we tried to accomplish near the Sparre Platz next to a waterfront. (I still carry the grenade fragment in the ball of my left hand. I feel it only when I hit something accidentally.) We marched back to the Maikaefer barracks.

The long row of barracks on Chausseestrassee as it appeared in 1910.

I was sent to a first aid station to get properly bandaged and to receive a tetanus shot. Marching on, I was informed that it was the famous Hotel Adlon on the Unter den Linden, close to the Brandenburg Gate, where I could get help. With ruins and wreckage all around, I tried first to cross the wide Unter den Linden avenue – impossible with continual rocket fire from the Stalin Organ batteries. So I found the subway entrance and finally entered the Adlon, my first encounter with my future profession.

But what did this former luxury establishment look like? Debris all over. The floor of the great hall was covered with straw bales, wounded soldiers lay spread out. From the adjoining rooms a penetrating smell of blood and antiseptic circled the air. Doctors, nurses and medical orderlies were busy attending, all of them with tired eyes. I received my tetanus shot and the medal for wounded soldiers was handed to me, not too proud an award.

I ran into soldiers from the nearby Fuehrerbunker-headquarter. They told us Hitler and his staff were living deep underground in a bomb-secure extended bunker from where he is still giving his orders. He will remain in Berlin. There was also talk that an airplane landed at the Axis (Siegesallee) raising hopes that we might be able to leave the city. Many years after the war I read that Hanna Reitsch with Reichsmarshall Ritter von Greim landed with a small plane, stayed a few days and then returned to Rechlin. Hitler refused to leave.

With my hand bandaged and a sling around my shoulder, I returned to the Maikaefer barrack. Immediately I was assigned to an ammunition transport - a motorbike with a sidecar. I was sitting on the back seat, the sidecar loaded with ammunition. We were driving like crazy back to our infantry. There were no clear roads anymore, just debris, rubble, dense smoke, and artillery shells howling in the air. We got entangled in utility wires hanging down from split poles. (Picture below of Under den Linden gives only an idea of the clogged nature of the streets.)

It was ghostly, not a soul around, eyes and nose were burning from smoke and dusty air. We could hardly distinguish ruins and obstacles when, not too far ahead of us, a Russian T 34 tank turned from a side alley into our road. With no way to turn around, we drove with full speed straight toward the tank and swerved around the corner into an alley, seeing how the tank's turret swung in our direction and the canon fired. It hit the corner of the ruin – another narrow escape. The munitions were delivered on time.

With a small group, I moved from the Maikaefer barracks to the cellar of the Deutsche Theater where we stayed put. The outside was under continual Russian artillery barrage - only a few houses away the Russians were dug in. The cellar was full of civilian refugees, mostly women and a few elderly men. They warned and begged us to empty the wine cellar, they were afraid if the Russians got hold of it a terrible consequences for the women would occur. We helped ourselves with the selected treasures and obviously overdid it, a kind of end-of-the-world mood.

The 1st of May was also approaching and we had all the more reason to celebrate, believing in a miracle victory. Champagne was flowing, close to an orgy when a shrieking “hurraeae” and wild rifle shooting broke out. The Russians stormed in. Stark awake, I ran straight away through the pitch dark night and saw a glowing object rolling toward me. I thought first it was a burning cigarette, but jumped into the next house entrance. A hand grenade exploded.

I felt right away a hit in my back and the left leg. No pain but I could feel warm blood. With a large group of soldiers I moved with great difficulty from the Friedrichstrasse northwards. They laid me in a communication car, more troops joined us and, finally, two armored vehicles with guns.

We moved through the part of the city which for days had been already occupied by the Russians. Along the side of the streets and behind ruins they were dug in, shooting at us. It was severe street fighting again, with heavy losses. After hours, about 800 to 1000 men arrived in Pankow (North Berlin), among them men from the bunker who told us Hitler was dead. Years later, I read that Axmann, the Youth leader, and Bormann were amongst us, and Bormann was killed.

Martin Bormann, right, and Artur Axmann, far right

Early in the morning, still within Greater Berlin in its northwest part, our column got bogged down. Everybody was dead tired, quite a few apathetic lifeless forms sitting around, waiting, no action.

I, the wounded little corporal, forced myself up and pushed toward the head of the column. There I pleaded strongly with a ranked officer, and might even have yelled at him to take over the command. It was his duty to lead and fight us through the encirclement. There was no way back.

So we formed ourselves into a solid formation and broke though towards the Northeast, still moving through villages with Cyrillic signs – Russians living there who, surprised by our appearance, ran away in panic. By using secondary roads and trying to avoid towns and villages we managed to proceed undetected. Some young hot-heads then started shooting at distant, shadowy Russian positions and, sure enough, we right away got their answer. Our unprotected column was an easy target for the grenade launchers. A shell hit close to the radio car where I was laying between a bunch of different cables.

The driver tried to swerve around, lost control and we tumbled down a slight slope. Like in a movie in slow motion I watched how we turned around and landed upside down on the roof. The crew ran away, but I could not, entangled as I was in the mess of all the cables. I yelled for help and finally a fellow soldier got me out of the rubbery pile. I had difficulty walking but with his help reached a near-by forest.

Under hedges of dense bushes we were all hiding. I could finally change my bloody shirt and a medical orderly tried to treat my terribly hurting foot. He cut my shoe up, blood and pus oozed. The grenade fragment entered my foot between the big toe and the ball of the foot. I would not let the man touch the wound; I handled it myself with a knife, scissors and tweezers. The excruciating pain drove tears from my eyes but I succeeded, and thanks to the tetanus shot I received a few days before I did not get an infection. Exhausted, I fell into a deep sleep.

They woke me up late and it was already pitch dark. We decided to march only at night and traveled a long semi-circle in a westerly direction  throughout the night. The morning breakfast: we licked the dew from the leaves of the bushes and trees. For days, we had nothing to eat or drink. We were down to a small group of about 20 men, decided upon in order to avoid the more likely detection of a large column. We dared now to march during the day, found an empty house and some food – cans of pork fat. We mixed it with rhubarb leaves and gorged it down, resulting soon in running diarrhea. Horrible.

Worse was the sight at some other desolated farm houses we passed by of brutally murdered German soldiers, mutilated just a few hours before. We were terribly shaken, checked again and again the terrain ahead of us. Our movement slowed down, partly due to my inability to march by myself. I needed help and I got it, but I felt the eyes looking at me. For a short moment I thought to take my life. They took away my rifle and the hand grenade.

An old Berliner stood up in front of me and said he did not want to walk further away from his home town and would help me. It was a sad moment when I shook hands and said good bye to all the comrades with whom I spent the last days and nights so close to disaster and death.

*

We both looked for protection, dead tired as we were, and fell asleep under dense bushes. Unreal serenity greeted us when we woke. No canon thunder, no rifle shots, burning fires or thick smoke. Flat country with no people. It was  a herd of bellowing cows, their udders full of milk, that woke us, We listened to the lovely song of birds and recognized spring was here, after all the past days of horror.

Only then we noticed a farmer and his wife chasing some of the cows, trying to catch and milk them. First they were scared when they saw us in our hideaway. When we spoke hesitantly in German, they recognized our worn-out uniforms and became very friendly and helpful. “You have to get rid of your uniform, otherwise you have no chance to avoid getting caught by the Russians,” they said, and told us they would bring us civilian clothes when dusk set in.

They had two sons who were both killed on the Eastern front. We lay around the whole afternoon listening to the cows still bellowing, the longest afternoon of my life. Then there was the farmer again, pulling out of a jute sack a whole bunch of clothes and in a brown bag boiled potatoes. Heavenly thanks.

We buried all our identification, the uniform, our dog tags, our military passbook, even family photos, and started walking - my comrade from Berlin putting his arm around my shoulder, I limping. We reached a large farmhouse, the farmer allowed us to sleep between his horses overnight. The first time we had a roof above our head and no frosty shivering. The following day, May 6th, my 19th birthday!

I had slept well and felt newly born. For breakfast we got hot milk, bread and butter – what a beginning of a day. Before we left the farmer asked for my camera and explained that the Russians would confiscate it right away or even accuse me of espionage. It made sense, so sadly I handed it to him. We were civilians again, a little strange but nevertheless a nice feeling. We walked along a narrow field path, progressing slowly; my foot hurt and I could not step on it. I realized I could not continue.

A small dwelling, very isolated, literally invited us to seek rest. A farmer's wife of about 55 years invited us to come in, immediately gave us something to eat and dressed my wounds. She was very helpful, very sympathetic and reminded me of my aunt Gritzi. When she realized how desperate my condition was she would not let us leave and offered us to spend the night in the barn. We accepted thankfully.

In the next days the pain in my foot became intolerable. Pus oozed out of the cut-up shoe. I could hardly make a step; I needed a doctor. The woman told me the next available doctor would be in Oranienburg, 40km (25 miles) south. Her farmhouse was about 3 to 4km south of Löwenberg, a road junction where Neuruppin-Eberswade crosses Neubrandenburg-Berlin.

We had to march to Oranienburg, a long way ahead of us. So we bid goodbye by to the dear, helpful farmer's wife and thanked her gratefully. She repeated to us that we were welcome to come back any time if we are in trouble. But I wanted to go home and see my family; I was worrying about what might have happened to them.

At a snail's pace we marched along a wide road, an important main artery to the South.At times, my Berlin friend pulled me in a hand cart, where I could sit. Many people, mostly refugees, wandered with us. They told us that today, May 9th, the remaining German army capitulated – the war was over. Then we confronted the first Russian soldiers. We were scared but they only wanted to ask us how we were, exclaiming "nix Krieg, nix Krieg” (no war, no war), giving us some cigarettes. We were relieved and marched on, soon passing by a column of German prisoners guarded by Russian soldiers. What a pity to see them and what luck had struck us.

A little bit outside the city of Oranienburg, the town of Sachsenhausen is located. There we found out that the only doctor was at the KZ Sachsenhausen (concentration camp), pictured above. I did not hesitate to go there since I knew a KZ was a penalty camp for criminals. We walked first through a pine tree forest amid nice villas. I later found out those were houses for the SS guard. Then a big gate, where we parted, my friend and helper now wanting to return home to Berlin. There were fences with barbed wire and, after the entrance, a long barrack with a large Red Cross sign. Relieved, I thought I would very soon see a doctor.

But it didn't happen. Several strange-looking men wearing red arm straps, who I was told later were armed civilian Polish bandits, blocked our way, and when I told them I was injured and sick they yelled, "Du nix krank, Du muessen arbeiten.” (You are not sick, you have to work).

A broom was pressed into my hand to sweep and clean the ground. From other civilians doing the same job, I was told they were grabbed on the street and forced into the camp to work. When it turned dark I was driven to the exit – free again. Since nobody was allowed to be seen outside after dark, I was afraid to be caught and get into deep trouble.

Limping into a small alley amidst villas, I entered one – it was empty. I found a soft bed and fell into a deep sleep. Next morning, I rummaged through all the drawers, found fresh underwear and could, after quite a long time, wash myself. I did not know what to do. Continuing homewards seemed to be impossible. The words of the farmer's wife entered my mind and those words gave me strength enough to make it all the way back. It was also the fear of being caught again that made me forget my pains. I found a walking stick and marched on.

When I arrived late in the afternoon at the small farmhouse the woman greeted me like a lost son. I found out that she had a close relative - nephew, or even son - with the name of Willy and maybe, for that reason, took such good care of me. I had my own room, bed, table and chair, and felt like I was  in seventh heaven. For breakfast I had real coffee with an egg since she had no milk. Lots of chickens but no cattle. She grew plenty of asparagus, which was unknown to me, but now very appreciated for its various dishes – soup and omelet and as salad with mayonnaise.

I thought I was living in the land of milk and honey. I helped her with daily chores as well as I could and was happy as a lark. Gradually my wounds healed. My foot and hand showed scars, but I could move around fairly well.

For over a month Elswitha - that was her name - took care of me. But I got restless wondering what was going on back home, thinking what the future held. We were completely cut off from the outside world - no radio, no newspapers. From time to time people from Berlin found our farm house, trying to exchange some of their "goodies" for eggs and vegetables. Some of those visitors told me the Ostmark was now Austria again, and that my homeland, Styria, was occupied by the Soviets. They also told me Berlin and the rest of Germany was divided into four zones.

Were my parents alive? Where was my older brother, fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe? Plans circulated through my brain; maps and traveling routes were tossed around. My desire to return grew stronger and my female protector knew that the time would come when I would have to leave. I thought I should try to reach the US zone in Berlin and from there somehow get to Bavaria and from there to Austria. It was known that the Russians very often snatched young people without any special reason and forced them to accompany the cattle transports headed back East.

Luck then helped me with my further planning. Two women from the mayor's office of the village of Loewenburg visited Elswitha and, when they heard I was going to try to return to Austria, they offered me an identification pass. A few days later they returned and, sure enough, they handed me a paper which was of immense help later on. On a half page the following text was typed:

CERTIFICATION

Mr. Wilhelm Wenger, born May 6, 1926, in Anger, Austria, was drafted to render important war services in the town of Löwenburg. He was hard-working and did his job properly. There is no objection to his return to Austria. Kindly help Mr. Wenger as much as possible to return to his homeland.

Signed, Mayor of Löwenburg (carrying the office stamp)

It was not easy to leave. She treated me as her son as she nursed me back to health and now I was leaving. We both had tears in our eyes as I bid her goodbye. She put a large food package and a shirt into my rucksack. I gripped my walking stick and, slightly hobbling, I walked on. One last time I turned around, seeing the little farmhouse disappear behind the group of willow trees.

Pretty soon I reached the main road South. I walked through Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen and arrived dead tired at the edge of Berlin, in Tegel. (Note that Seelow is east of Berlin close to the Oder River. Willy is back where he began. -cy) I was surprised when a young, well-attired man addressed me, asking if I were a former soldier on my way home. He introduced himself as a Lutheran priest helping homeward-bound soldiers. At a small villa, I met a lot of other ex-soldiers; we were fed, slept in a bed and next morning we could even take a shower bath. A hearty breakfast and some pocket money were handed out and, with a goodbye, we were sent on our further way. Indeed, a very unusual treatment.

I received detailed information on how to find my way to the South end of Berlin, and thought to visit the Deutsche Theater where I found such good company in April. I had to turn away in a hurry when I noticed Russian soldiers at the entrance. Walking through ruins and debris, I came to the railway station of Lichterfelde-Ost at the South end of Berlin. The hall was crowded but I found  a patch of straw on which I could lay down for sleep. 

Early in the morning, everyone pushed to get a place in the rail cars. We passed through Jüterbog, which I had marched through two month ago, and arrived in Wittenberg on the Elbe river. I tried to cross the river over the bridge but the Russian border guard drove me back. My idea to reach the West through the U.S. zone to Bavaria failed. Some of us were thinking to swim across the Elbe river, but gave up the idea when we were told the Russians were cold-bloodedly shooting at everybody who tried.

I joined a small group of refugees and we marched for quite a time southwards. At a small village I went to the mayor's office to find out which route we should take. Bread was distributed. I received half a loaf and got signature and stamp on my identity paper. Overnight, a mixed crowd of women, children and men slept in a large school gym. Our morning toilette was very primitive. Again, a long, tiring foot march and we reached the city Riesa on the Elbe river.

Someone suggested to try a steamship trip; we saw a boat on a landing stage and managed to get on board amid a hard-pushing crowd. In the distance we recognized the silhouettes of Dresden and by the dimming light of the early evening we made out the contours of some of the well-known buildings. How terrible then was the view when we approached the waterfront.

Not one house or building was intact. It was ruins everywhere, and piles of rubbish – a depressing scene of devastation. We lost our orientation because former streets were narrowed to paths of small roads edged on both sides by piles of stones, wire and wood. We hurried along and just guessed our direction towards the South. We were now a small group of Austrians, closely bound together by our decision to make our way to Austria through the former protectorate, Bohemia-Moravia. It was now the new Czech Republic and we were uncertain what was waiting for us there.

We were hungry and tired when we boarded the overloaded train and in a while crossed the border. We noticed that the Czech passengers looked at us with deep suspicion. We were all wearing red-white-red patches on our jackets and held on to our papers identifying us as Austrians. When we could not answer their questions in Czech, most of them addressed us in German.

A flood of terrible tales poured over us. They were eager to let us know how they treated German civilians, their neighbors, and German soldiers without their weapons. They demanded our attention as to how they threw people into the Elbe river, nailed them on rafts and burned them, buried German soldiers alive after they clobbered them to cripples. Deeply shocked, we were quiet, did not utter a word and were relieved when we arrived at Leitmeritz/Litomerice and had to get off the train.
 
We were directed to a freight train and told it was on the way to Vienna. The cars were dirty and full of coal dust. I got very suspicious and, sure enough, after the train left, somebody yelled, “It is going to Poland.” When the train slowed climbing up a hill, I and a friend from my home area, Bruck, jumped off the train. It was pitch dark, I rolled down a hill, did not hurt myself and found my comrade also unhurt. We walked back to the train station and in the morning boarded a train to Prague. Sheer luck. At Prague, we had to leave the train again and found out that in a few hours a train will depart for Vienna. We walked through the city and were surprised to see streets and houses intact, no ruins at all and plenty of goods in the stores, like a fairy tale. But it did not help us.

Hungry, we returned to the station. Terrified, we recognized that the entrance was cordoned off by military police and everybody was checked. I had lots of trouble convincing them that I was an Austrian returning from work in Germany and not a Hitler Youth or soldier. My paper with the stamps and signatures were finally a help to me. They turned my rucksack upside down, but luckily my watch that was hidden there did not fall out. My comrade from Bruck also passed.

We found the train to Bruenn but we did not find any room inside and so climbed like many others onto the roof. There, we did not have to listen to the horrible talk but we got some bruises on our head and shoulders when hit by the  wires hanging down from bridges we passed under. Right next to me sat a Russian soldier with his automatic rifle across his legs, trying to talk to me. By gestures and finger-pointing we finally understood each other. He also spoke some German. He was rather friendly to us, however he disliked the Czechs very much.

When we stopped at a station he asked me take care of his weapon; he wanted to get a drink of water. He left the gun on my lap. The Czechs looked hatefully at me and I was afraid something might happen. With a friendly smile, the soldier returned and sat down by my side as if nothing happened. Did he want to humiliate the Czechs?
 
During the afternoon we arrived at the central station of Bruenn. I tried to join a line in front of a Red Cross station to get something to eat. Hateful voices yelled at me, "Deutsche, Raus” (get out, you Germans), pushed me away and threatened me. A Red Cross nurse grabbed my hand and gave me a bowl of soup and a slice of bread – never did a meal taste better.

A local train took us to the border. As dusk set in, we walked to the border line. The customs-and-transfer station was closed. We were informed that after dark an absolute lockout was ordered; we were afraid to be shot at if we moved and looked for shelter. So we – about 30 people – camped right there on the meadow next door to the customs house. Czech officials tried to drive us away but we stubbornly laid down and would not move.

Hardly any one slept and restlessly we waited for the dawn, looked over the crossbeam to the dear homeland only a few feet away. Finally, after hours, the ugly beam was lifted; we ran across, threw our arms around each other and cried, “Home!” Suddenly a Russian soldier approached us with his Kalashnikov raised, shouting "Dokumenti, Dokumenti." I pulled my paper out, he turned it around and when he noticed the many stamps and signatures, I could pass.

We marched on and were lead to a big building where we received a hearty breakfast and then had to register and check out lists of refugees, to eventually find friends or family. Overwhelmed and carried away with emotion, I could not wait for a train which was supposed to arrive in a few hours. I took my walking stick and arrived shortly before noontime at Gaenserndorf.

I was hungry and needed help. I found the mayor's office adorned by a Soviet star – Communist rule?  I entered and introduced myself as an ex-soldier. They were very friendly and handed me a loaf of bread. Gratefully, I turned around, clicked my heels, raised my hand in "Heil Hitler." Right away realizing my mistake, I could have sunk into the floor – but they laughed and I rushed out and hurried up the road.

There seemed to be no end to the Marchfeld when I walked towards Vienna and reached the Danube. No bridge led across the river, two were destroyed. A local told me to march further on northwards and I would be able to climb over the broken pillars and cement blocks of a half-damaged bridge.

It was dark when I reached the west bank of the Danube. The streets were empty, a curfew was obviously established, but I still walked on, hiding behind corners when military guards approached. I knew where my Aunt Mitzi and Uncle Karl lived – it must have been past midnight when I pushed through the entrance door and awakened my relatives. They stared at me half-awake, recognized who I was and embraced me dearly.

Next morning, my uncle and I climbed into a crowded train at the Suedbahnhof that was going to Graz. In Bruck a Mur we departed the train;  my uncle went on to Bad Gleichenberg to find out if his garden house survived the war, and I boarded the train to Leoben. I was nervously excited, everything went too slow. When I crossed the Mur bridge on foot my knees shook. I waved when I saw the windows of our apartment on the second floor and my mother looking out. She recognized me.

What tremendous joy, a deep, emotional embrace, what heavy tears and sobs. My sister had grown up, my 6-year old brother Gerhard did not recognize me. There was joy all around, but one bitter pill – we did not know where my older brother was.

My odyssey was over, my future very uncertain.

Please contribute to the publishing of this valuable memoir, if you are able to, so that I can send some token of appreciation to the author who lived it, Willy Wenger.  Click on Donate on the top menu bar and select either by Paypal or by mail. Designate that it is for Herr Wenger, either all or in part. Thank you.

The Odyssey of Fahnenjunker Wenger

Part Two - Conclusion

From the Seelow Heights—April 1945

Back Home to Leoben, Austria—July 1945

By Willy Wenger

An officer-candidate in the German Luftwaffe, Willy Wenger was only 18 in 1945 when his “odyssey” began. He is now 86. His older brotherLeopold Wenger was awarded the Knight’s Cross, Germany's highest military decoration.

Translation and Introduction by Wilhelm Kriessmann

Editing by Carolyn Yeager
copyright 2013 Wilhelm Wenger

From April 20th onward - the final days of the Reich - 18 year old Willy Wenger was involved in the Battle for Berlin. His story continues right after receiving his first wound as he covered for German civilians trapped inside the cellar of a house. As he attempted a peek out the front door to check conditions, a Russian grenade exploded close to it. A grenade fragment struck his hand, bringing forth profuse bleeding.

For the time being we escaped hell; it was insanity what we tried to accomplish near the Sparre Platz next to a waterfront. (I still carry the grenade fragment in the ball of my left hand. I feel it only when I hit something accidentally.) We marched back to the Maikaefer barracks.

The long row of barracks on Chausseestrassee as it appeared in 1910.

I was sent to a first aid station to get properly bandaged and to receive a tetanus shot. Marching on, I was informed that it was the famous Hotel Adlon on the Unter den Linden, close to the Brandenburg Gate, where I could get help. With ruins and wreckage all around, I tried first to cross the wide Unter den Linden avenue – impossible with continual rocket fire from the Stalin Organ batteries. So I found the subway entrance and finally entered the Adlon, my first encounter with my future profession.

But what did this former luxury establishment look like? Debris all over. The floor of the great hall was covered with straw bales, wounded soldiers lay spread out. From the adjoining rooms a penetrating smell of blood and antiseptic circled the air. Doctors, nurses and medical orderlies were busy attending, all of them with tired eyes. I received my tetanus shot and the medal for wounded soldiers was handed to me, not too proud an award.

I ran into soldiers from the nearby Fuehrerbunker-headquarter. They told us Hitler and his staff were living deep underground in a bomb-secure extended bunker from where he is still giving his orders. He will remain in Berlin. There was also talk that an airplane landed at the Axis (Siegesallee) raising hopes that we might be able to leave the city. Many years after the war I read that Hanna Reitsch with Reichsmarshall Ritter von Greim landed with a small plane, stayed a few days and then returned to Rechlin. Hitler refused to leave.

With my hand bandaged and a sling around my shoulder, I returned to the Maikaefer barrack. Immediately I was assigned to an ammunition transport - a motorbike with a sidecar. I was sitting on the back seat, the sidecar loaded with ammunition. We were driving like crazy back to our infantry. There were no clear roads anymore, just debris, rubble, dense smoke, and artillery shells howling in the air. We got entangled in utility wires hanging down from split poles.

It was ghostly, not a soul around, eyes and nose were burning from smoke and dusty air. We could hardly distinguish ruins and obstacles when, not too far ahead of us, a Russian T 34 tank turned from a side alley into our road. With no way to turn around, we drove with full speed straight toward the tank and swerved around the corner into an alley, seeing how the tank's turret swung in our direction and the canon fired. It hit the corner of the ruin – another narrow escape. The munitions were delivered on time.

Please continue reading here 

May 2, 2013

Carolyn Yeager and Hadding Scott read and comment on Chapter 40, “Why the Jews Dislike the Morgenthau Report.”

The Morgenthau Report was the result of a fact-finding commission to Poland in 1919, in the wake of massive immigration of Jews from Poland into New York. The American Jewish press was claiming terrible persecution and pograms of Jews in Poland, but the commission report concluded that the claims were greatly exaggerated. Instead of 3,000 murdered in Lemberg, for instance, there were 76. On-the-scene investigation showed that Jews actually enjoyed a better standard of life than indigenous Poles. Since the 12th Century when Jews first came into Polish territory, the history is one in which Jews run all the business and commerce, getting rich off what Poles produce.

Illustration: Jewish merchants in nineteenth century Warsaw.

Note: We are using the Noontide Press publication of The International Jew — The World’s Foremost Problem which can be found online here as a pdf file.

By Willy Wenger
May 5, 2013

I was in the final battle for Berlin - from the Seelow Heights up to the last bitter street fighting in the vicinity of the bunker of Adolf Hitler. All Berliners participated in this, the bloodiest battle on German soil. The city had already included for some days troops of the Red Army.

Knowledge of the possiblity of being liberated by the Twelfth  Army under the command of young General Walther Wenck must have been what gave us the hope and the courage to endure. But General Wenck came up only as far as Potsdam.

"Then was the terminus." Those were his words as I heard them from him in Geneva in 1966, a time that I was able to talk to him about it.

At right, Willy Wenger right before his 87 birthday.

The war ended on 8 May 1945. Immediate peace should have followed, but it was different. Families waited for husband or father, but so many were languishing in prison camps under inhuman treatment. (The Rhine meadows camps, most people still don’t know about today.) Women, longingly expecting their husbands to return, were often enough raped by occupying troops - especially in the East.

I myself personally know some soldiers who were delivered by the Americans and Russians to spend many years in Russian camps, leading a most terrible life. Erich Hartmann, the most successful fighter pilot in the world; Fritz Schröter, who was Poldi's* group commander; or Wilhelm Rauch from Bad Gleichenberg,  now a spa director, was held ten years in Siberia.

Albin Laggner, my wife's brother, was heavily wounded on the day of capitulation in Czech territory and was beaten almost to death. Then, with other wounded, he was made to lay down on the road to be run over by tanks. A Czech woman, feeling pity for the 17-year old, pulled him out of the road at the last second, while others were being crushed by tank tracks.

These may be anecdotal, but there are thousands of similar stories. And these victims remained silent, as they did not want to be reminded of the horrors they experienced and one has to respect that. Even so, they were usually innocent victims.

A monument should be built to the German women. It was they, in German cities night after night with their children, often having to remain in the freezing cold of the shelter when Allied aircraft of up to a thousand machines carried out their carpet bombing on the defenseless civilian population down below. Instead, the British commander responsible for this area bombing gets a monument located in the English capital.

I want to avoid arousing hatred, but justice should prevail in the world and reporting should correspond to the facts. The war that really no one wanted was brought to the German people, and not vice versa.

*Poldi is Willy's older brother, Oberleutnant Leopold Wenger, who died after being shot down over Vienna in April 1945.

May 9, 2013

Hadding Scott and Carolyn Yeager read and comment on Chapter 41, “Jews Use the Peace Conference to Bind Poland.”

This chapter starts out with “trouble between Jews and other people is a continuous situation.” Naturally the huge number of Jews in Poland – as much as 10% of the population at that time – caused trouble for the Poles. International Jewry propagandized sporadic Polish reaction into “persecution” of tens of thousands – facilitating the entry of a quarter of a million Jews from Poland into the United States in a short period of time. The background information of why Poles acted as they did is given, along with how the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 gave the Jews of Poland everything they wanted. The chapter asks if the United States will do the same.

Image: Deliberations taking place at the Paris Peace Conference, dictated to by victorious France, England and the United States. Jews were reported to be much in evidence.

Note: We are using the Noontide Press publication of The International Jew — The World’s Foremost Problem which can be found online here as a pdf file.

The great battleship Bismarck was launched on Feb. 14, 1939 at Hamburg.

Adolf Hitler proclaimed June 18, 1935 the happiest day of his life. It was because the naval agreement his government sought with Great Britain, the A.G.N.A., was signed. Hitler saw it as the beginning of an alliance between the two nations against France and the Soviet Union—the beginning of the partnership that he was seeking between the “leading” nations of Europe: Germany and England. These two, Great Britain by sea and Germany by land armies, would share the burden of defending Europe from all enemies.

It also released Germany from the Treaty of Versailles in the area of naval rearmament. Under the 1919 treaty, Germany was allowed no submarines, no naval aviation, and no battleships. The total naval forces allowed to the Germans were six each heavy and light cruisers, 12 each destroyers and torpedo boats. 

Germany had continued through the years to protest these restrictions, demanding that either all of Europe disarm down to German levels, or Germany be allowed to rearm to their level. Every German government of the Weimar Republic , preceding Hitler's Third Reich, had been implacably opposed to the terms of Versailles; the British were well aware that the terms were unjust, unstable and indefensible. It was France that always vetoed any relaxation.

Deep cuts that were made to the Royal Navy, imposed by two conferences, combined with the effects of the Great Depression caused the collapse of much of the British shipbuilding industry in the early 1930s. Thus, the Admiralty valued treaties which imposed quantitative and qualitative limitations on potential enemies as the best way of ensuring British sea supremacy--not something that Britain considered negotiable.

Hitler, from1933 onwards, requested a Reichsmarine one-third the size of the Royal Navy, which was then changed to 35% to make it all come out more evenly. Britain's Admiral Chatfield advised it would be best to have a treaty in order to regulate the future size and scale of the German Navy, and stated that a 35:100 tonnage ratio between London and Berlin was “the highest that we could accept for any European power.”

Germany had already started to build its first U-boats again in 1933, and launched the first ones in April 1935.  On May 2, the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald told the House of Commons of his government’s intention to reach a naval pact to regulate the future growth of the German Navy. On May 21, Hitler gave a “peace speech” in Berlin formally offering to discuss a treaty with a German Navy that was to operate forever on a 35:100 naval ratio, disallowing any intention of engaging in a pre-1914 style naval race with Britain. 

“The German Reich government recognizes of itself the overwhelming importance for existence and thereby the justification of dominance at sea to protect the British Empire, just as, on the other hand, we are determined to do everything necessary in protection of our own continental existence and freedom.”

For Hitler, his speech illustrated the equality of status in an Anglo-German alliance, namely British acceptance of Germany's dominant position in continental Europe in exchange for German acceptance of British dominance over the seas.

*      *      *

The Pact was signed in London on June 18 without any consultation with France and Italy. Hitler became annoyed, however, when the A.G.N.A was not followed up with further expressions of alliance between the two countries. By 1937, he started to increase both Reichsmarks and raw materials to the Kriegsmarine; in December, he ordered the laying down of six 16-inch gun battleships. By 1938, the only use the Germans had for the A.G.N.A. was to threaten to renounce the treaty as a way of pressuring London to accept continental Europe as Germany's rightful sphere of influence.

In January 1939, Hitler gave first priority to the Kriegsmarine in the allocation of money, skilled workers, and raw materials. He launched the Plan Z to build a colossal Kriegsmarine of 10 battleships, 16 "pocket battleships", 8 aircraft carriers, 5 heavy cruisers, 36 light cruisers, and 249 U-boats by 1944. Since the fleet envisioned in the Z Plan was larger than that allowed by the 35:100 ratio in the A.G.N.A, the Z Plan made it inevitable that Germany would renounce the A.G.N.A.

In response to the British guarantee of Poland of March 31, 1939, Hitler, in a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the Admiral Tirpitz battleship, threatened to denounce the A.G.N.A. if the British persisted with their encirclement policy as represented by the guarantee of Polish independence. On April 28,  in a speech before the Reichstag, Hitler did renounce both the A.G.N.A. and the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact.

On Britain's side, Chatfield, who originally had recommended the treaty, commented at a Cabinet meeting on May 3, 1939 that Hitler had “persuaded himself” that Britain had provided the Reich with a “free hand” in Eastern Europe in exchange for the A.G.N.A. In a later paper to the Cabinet, Chatfield stated

“that we might say that we now understood Herr Hitler had in 1935 thought that we had given him a free hand in Eastern and Central Europe in return for his acceptance of the 100:35 ratio, but that as we could not accept the correctness of this view it might be better that the 1935 arrangements should be abrogated.”

Adolf Hitler made a surprise visit to Gotenhafen on 5 May 1941 to inspect the Bismarck and Tirpitz (which had recently arrived to conduct her sea trials in the Baltic) and be briefed on Admiral Günther Lütjens' plans for executing the forthcoming sortie, although the actual date was kept vague. 

June 24, 2013

In the wake of the current successes of three openly ethno-nationalist political parties in Europe, Carolyn looks at the advantages of “the Ethnic state” over “the Democratic state,” or even a pan-European state, for preserving a legitimate people’s future and autonomy. In the second hour, the National Political Institutes of Education (NAPOLA) in National Socialist Germany (an ethnic state) is discussed.  Some major points:

• Israel is an ethno-nationalist  state that excludes non-ethnics;
• Political parties in Greece, Hungary and Ukraine are out front in calling for the removal of foreign elements from their countries;
• The further “out” we go in allying with other nations, the more we stop depending on ourselves and rely on others;
• Pan-Europa and a “United States of Europe” are ideas that go way back, yet never really worked;
• Very little is written about the NAPOLA schools; what is available is biased and dishonest;
• The German film“Before the Fall” portrays a Napola school and it’s staff as evil, sadistic brutes whose aim is to produce merciless killers;
• Letters from Leopold Wenger from a Napola school in 1939, showing the true nature of that program, will be posted at Carolyn’s website.

Image: Raising your children in your own image is one advantage of an ethno-nationalist state.

Norwegians are the most White-hating, self-hating people on the planet. They can't do enough to destroy their own country by bringing dark-skinned people into it with whom to race-mix and be raped by. And when it comes to holocaust reparations that they are not required to make, they go whole-hog.

Right: Norway's Holo Center is housed in the Oslo mansion formerly occupied by Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling.

According to News and Views from Norway:

At a time when many museums in Norway are struggling with budget cuts, the Holocaust Center in Oslo has been granted NOK 20 million. The funding is four times greater than the amount the center itself originally requested.

The story informs us that only 771 Jews were deported from Norway from 1940 to 1945. Only 771! Yet because only 34 returned, the Norwegians who have been indoctrinated with post-war guilt and hatred for "Nazis" feel compelled to "make reparations" in whatever way they can.

Common sense and the history of the period tells us that most of those who didn't return to Norway went somewhere else. But to the Norwegians, they are "lost" and that's it.

The museum will use the excess money to make the exhibits more interactive and build a new underground entrance and lift. Only about 200 children visit the museum each week; that averages to 40 per day counting only 5 days a week! How cost-effective is this $20 million NOK gift?

But the education minister (of the Socialist Left Party) says:

when we see the attitudes after the July 22 terrorist attacks, we cannot vaccinate ourselves strongly enough.

Norway is currently sensitive to accusations of "intolerance" coming from the UN over how Norway deals with Muslims and Jews. In addition, there is a problem of Roma migrants who have become beggars on the streets. That is a typical lifestyle/occupation for the Roma, who truthfully do not belong in Norway.

Hans Krampe, a German-Canadian, sent out a letter written by another German-Canadian living on the other side of Canada – Walter Ruthard – and it is such a great letter that I am posting it here. It was written in response to an editorial in the Daily Mail by Peter Hitchens. Ruthard lived through the bombing and knows of which he speaks.

Don't confuse Peter Hitchens wih Christopher Hitchens, his brother, who was famous and recently died. This article by Peter Hitchens seeks to pin all the blame on Bomber Harris, none on Winston Churchill who led the British war effort -- keeping Harris in place and approving of what he was doing. Hitchens engages in typical scapegoating with the goal of covering up rather than exposing the truth, thus retaining a patriotic narrative for the folk. ~CY

The Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, London, which was unveiled by the Queen Thursday, June 28.

I am referring to your column “The heroes of Bomber Command deserve their memorial... unlike the butcher who led them”, which was published in The Daily Mail Online on June 30th , 2012 and updated on July 1st , 2012 and which I received today,  July 6th, 2012.To me as a German who survived the treatment meted out by Bomber Command, it is indeed interesting to read what you, a Briton, have to say about these dreadful years although you did not live during the 
time of the nightly terror attacks on German cities.

However, I am surprised about your rather polite interpretation of the events that led to the Second World War and especially to the fight between the British and the Germans. Other Britons are not so
civil when, as you write, “the football crowds who crudely chant Bomber Harris’ name to tease modern Germans”. Ah, yes, “Sir Harris” the knighted war criminal, also known as “Butcher Harris”:

“No doubt he had been brave in his time...”. Brave? Already in the
early 20th century he established his reputation of a ruthless
terrorist during the Iraqi uprisings against British rule. At that
time he was the commander of the 45th squadron of the Royal Air Force
in Iraq. Together with Winston Churchill, who was Minister of War in
1919, he expressed the idea of forcing the rebellious Iraqis to
surrender to the Empire’s wishes by attacking them with bombs and
gas! Churchill himself wrote: “I do not understand the opposition
against the use of gas. I am very much in favour of employing poison
gas against uncivilized tribes.” And: “It is not necessary for the
gas to be deadly but it must cause great pain and spread extensive
terror.” After a bombing raid in 1924, Harris noted: “Arabs and Kurds
have begun to believe that if they could tolerate a bit of noise,
they could also bear being bombarded and still be able to negotiate.
They now know what real bombardment means in terms of losses and
devastation. They now know that within 45 minutes a whole village can
be eliminated and a third of its inhabitants killed or maimed by four
or five airplanes which don’t present a real target to shoot at and
which don’t give them a chance to fight like brave warriors or take
flight.” Later, after realizing that the inhabitants often were
running away when a British plane approached, they used time fuse
bombs which killed the fugitives after their return to their houses.
This is also what Sir Harris, the nobleman, and his criminal air
crews did to German civilians!

Now, Mr. Hitchens, please tell me where was the bravery in Butcher
Harris’ and Winston Churchill’s long and honourable military careers?
There, in Iraq, they tested what they perfected in WW II on a much
grander scale.

“To this day, few British people know what we actually did to
Germany. We know of and are rightly angered by the Luftwaffe attack
on Coventry and by the London Blitz.”

Well, here are some more facts that are kept from you, and maybe
after checking them out, you could extend your anger against Bomber
Command and its criminal bosses:

September 5, 1939 the British attacked Altendeich near Wilhelmshaven
with one bomb;
September 29, 1939 they attacked Vechta with one bomb;
December 3, 1939 they attacked the coast of Helgoland with 21 bombs;
December 12, 1939 they attacked Borkum with five bombs;
December 14, 1939 they attacked Sylt with five bombs;
December 18, 1939 they attacked Borkum with seven bombs, Juist five
bombs and Amrum five bombs;
December 20, 1939 they attacked Hörnum near Sylt with 3bombs;
December 21, 1939 they attacked Rantum near Sylt with four bombs.

And this was only the beginning. I could go on and on. In order to
not to stress your attention too much, I now will quote your own
Undersecretary of State, Spaight, the foremost authority on  the law
of air warfare, who wrote in his book  Bombing  Vindicated,
published  in London in 1944:

“We  began bombing  targets in Germany before  the  Germans  did  so
in England. That is a historical fact that has also been publicly
admitted. We sacrificed  London, because the  retribution was
certain. It is not absolutely positive, but nevertheless very likely,
that the  Germans  would  not  have  attacked  London and the
industrial  area. Germany sought a moratorium in the bombing war
whenever there seemed to be the slightest chance of  such.”

And another British historian in Oxford, A.J.P. Taylor, wrote this:

“The British initiative (for the air war) is perfectly clear. The
German bombing of Warsaw and Rotterdam was part of a military
campaign, an expansion of a previous shelling of defended cities. The
Blitz (the German air raids on London) began only after the British
had already bombed German cities for five months.”

And to round this up, read what another British nobleman had to say:

Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War
Crimes Trials, remarked recently on a British TV program, that at the
time of the trials, he found himself wishing that the "great Allied
war criminals" be put on trial. Sir Hartley has also been quoted as
saying that neither Adolf Hitler nor the German people ever planned
or wished for World War 2".
Source: “Spotlight”, February 17, 1997, p. 13.

And he also said this:

“Step by step, I have arrived at the conviction that the aims of
communism in Europe are sinister and fatal. At the Nuremberg Trials,
I, together with my Russian colleague, condemned Nazi aggression and
terror. I believe now that Hitler and the German people did not want
war. But we declared war on Germany, intent on destroying it in
accordance with our principle of balance of power, and we were
encouraged by the ‘Americans’ around Roosevelt. We ignored Hitler’s
plea not to enter into war. Now we are forced to realize that Hitler
was right. He offered us the co-operation of Germany; instead, since
1945, we have been facing the immense power of the Soviet Empire. I
feel ashamed and humiliated to see that the aims we accused Hitler
of, are being relentlessly pursued now, only under a different label.”
Source: The British Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross in a
speech at Stourbridge in March 16, 1984 (AP).

So, there is no reason for you and the British people to be angry at
the Germans for bombing Coventry on November 15, 1940 and the “Blitz”
because “you asked for it”. The attacks on defenceless German
civilians and cities were planned and executed by the British.
2,050,000 German civilians died in those terror attacks according to
the Zurich paper Die Tat.

This is what your “very best, brightest and bravest young  men in
Britain, the Commonwealth and the Allied countries” accomplished.
Look around you, Mr. Hitchens, and you will see a world that was made
possible by your “very best, brightest and bravest young men in
Britain, the Commonwealth and the Allied countries. This is the
England  they “fought” for. And for what? No German ever threatened
you. But you, their descendants, now have to live in it with its
glory of boundless crime, brought in from your former colonies,
unemployment and the real Britons marginalized and afraid to go out
at night. As you said: “they asked for it”. Not the Germans, no, not
the Germans! “They devastated the following German cities, ”... not
just [in] Hamburg and Dresden but [in] dozens of lesser cities.”  
Here are a few of the “dozens of lesser cities”:

Berlin, Hamburg, Dortmund, Essen, Dresden, Frankfurt/Main, Nuremberg,
Düsseldorf, Hannover, Bremen, Wuppertal, Vienna, Duisburg, Munich,
Magdeburg, Leipzig, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Kiel, Gelsenkirchen, Bochum,
Aachen, Würzburg, Darmstadt, Krefeld, Münster, Mönchen Gladbach,
Braunschweig, Ludwigshafen, Remscheid, Pforzheim, Osnabrück, Mainz,
Bielefeld, Gießen, Düren, Solingen, Wilhelmshaven, Karlsruhe,
Oberhausen, Heilbronn, Augsburg, Hamm, Knittelfeld, Lüneburg,
Cuxhaven, Kulmbach, Hagen, Saarbrücken, Freiburg, Graz, Koblenz, Ulm,
Bonn, Bremerhaven, Wanne-Eickel, Worms, Lübeck, Schweinfurt, Kleve,
Wiener Neustadt, Wiesbaden, Paderborn, Bocholt, Hanau, Hildesheim,
Emden, Siegen, Pirmasens, Halle, Bayreuth, Kreuznach, Witten,
Aschaffenburg, Kaiserslautern, Gladbeck, Dorsten, Insbruck,
Neumünster, Linz, Klagenfurt, Reutlingen, Recklingshausen, Reuel,
Regensburg, Homburg, Elmshorn, Wetzlar, Villach, Hameln, Königsberg,
Moers, Passau, Solbad Hall I.T, Coburg, Attnang-Puchheim,
Friedrichshafen, Frankfurt/Oder, Danzig, Bozen, Chemnitz, Rostock,  
Schwerte, Plauen, Bad Kreuznach, etc., etc.

“I don’t call this a ‘war crime’ because the phrase is more  or less
meaningless. As those who have actually fought in wars know, all war
is crime, mixed with hell. The question is whether it can possibly be
justified. Nor do I (as some liars will immediately claim) in any way
compare it with the crimes of the Germans against the Jews. The two
are not remotely equivalent and anyone who says so is a fool and a
scoundrel.”

This is typical English pious platitude. A war crime is a war crime
no matter who committed it, even if they were English bomber pilots
and their masters Harris and Churchill. There is no question about
it. Only the vanquished were brought to “justice” by the glorious and
ever so guiltless victors. And, of course, you have to mention the so-
called Holocaust. It sounds like you have to please some authorities
that have impaled your  rational thinking and made you aware that
your career depends on you behaving like a docile pupil. I think it
is impossible for an Englishman to grasp the possibility that there
was no Holocaust at all. That is the power of propaganda and you fell
for it like untold millions of others. It is a pity that you as a
journalist, having enjoyed an investigative training, are still
incapable of seeing through a monstrous lie.

“The [their] death rate was an appalling 44 per cent – 55,573 of them
gone for ever, and our ill-led, sloppy and declining country has felt
their loss every day since. Heaven knows it is time their sacrifice,
and the equal bravery of those who survived, was marked. A medal
would be nice, too.”

For every Allied airman killed, there were 37 Germans murdered by
them. Now, who has more reason to be angry? There were also Canadian
bomber pilots over German cities trying their best to kill Germans.
Recently, one of them boasted publicly that he killed 50,000 Germans
and that he is proud of it. And there is this English nobleman, John
T. Saxon, Esq., of  Lake Worth, Fla. who in his letter to the Barnes
Review (May 1997, p. 31) proudly announced this:

“... as the captain of a Lancaster heavy bomber, having witnessed the
destruction of English cities, I was delighted to partake in 91
bombing missions, including the fire bombing of both Hamburg and
Dresden, and I would happily go back and do the same all over
again. ... Speaking of myself, and many other crews, we were
delighted when the met (meteorology) boys forecast strong winds, in
any direction over a major German city, and immediately changed our
bomb load to one Tall Boy (a 10-ton bomb of high explosives plus two
tons of small incendiary bombs, dropped at the same time.) The
catastrophic results were almost guaranteed; ask the citizens of
Hamburg, of whom over 2 million trudged out of the city over a period
of months to get away from the firestorms. We saw them from the air,
endless miles of people running away from the firestorm, and we had
no sympathy for them then, or now. They started it, and we replied in
kind, with far greater bombs, and better fire ignitions. I visited
both Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven, Dresden, Essen and other cities we paid
a visit to, after the war, and saw the destruction which the
firestorms inflicted upon the German population, and I lost no sleep
over it at all. ... The Germans asked for it, and we gave it o them,
good and strong. In war, to achieve victory, you must be ruthless, or
you will end up speaking German for a long time.”

Now, Mr. Hitchens, these were your “... bomber boys [who] did what
they believed was their duty and asked few questions.”  Yes, they
delighted in what they were doing, the “brightest and bravest young
men in Britain”. Today, Canadian veterans of Bomber Command get riled
up when it is suggested that their activities were war crimes. They
need not fear; it never ever happened that an Allied war criminal was
brought to justice and it will never happen. That is reserved for
Germans only. And “lesser” people like Irakis, Afghans, Libyans and
more.

You do not have to believe what I just wrote but you owe it to
yourself to prove me wrong. Can you do it? I do not think so.

Sincerely,

Walter Ruthard

August 30, 2012

Hadding Scott and Carolyn Yeager read and comment on Chapter 8: Does a Definite Jewish World Program Exist?

Image: The finances of the world are in control of Jews; their decisions and their devices are themselves our economic law. The Jew’s history is one of wandering among all the nations. They have a clearer world-sense than any other people, because the world has been their path. The political element inheres in the fact that the Jews form a nation in the midst of the nations. The Gentile, never having been trained in secrets or invisible unity, immediately concludes that such things cannot be. It was the Zionist program that was followed by the (Paris) Peace Conference. It must therefore be regarded as the official program.

Note: We are using the Noontide Press publication of The International Jew — The World’s Foremost Problem which can be found online here as a pdf file.

July 27, 2013

Andrew Anglin tells of his first few weeks in Athens, where he is getting along famously and meeting European tourists from all over the world because of his out-going personality. He attended the recent food distribution rally in front of Golden Dawn headquarters and watched Ilias Kasidiaris moving among the people.  We also discussed Andrew’s new, very successful news site Daily Stormer. Some specifics of the conversation:

• Athens is more P.C. free than the U.S. and Western Europe;
• Meetings 2 or 3 times a week at Golden Dawn headquarters attract normal, working-class people to socialize and hear educational speeches, some of whom were already familiar with his website Total Fascism;
• Andrew estimates that immigrants make up 30-50% of the population in Athens and are generally degenerate, with the Bangladeshi and Turks being the most civilized;
• Golden Dawn members of parliament give approximately 4/5 of their pay to support GD party expenses and charity work;
• In today’s world, Democracy is a sham that facilitates Internationalism and unrestricted immigration, leading to race-mixing;
• Mark Glenn and Joe Klein represent two anti-White points of view – one Muslim and the other Jewish;
• And much more.
  

Albin's Story

In the photo above, Albin Laggner stands in center, utilizing a crutch under his right arm, next to his sister Wilma at right.

Albin Laggner was the 5th child of Stefan Laggner and Ida Gols Laggner, of Feicht, Lendorf parish, (Pfarre Holz), Carinthia. Wilhelm Kriessmann's home village of Feistritz im Rosenthal was in Carinthia also. Albin's birthdate was 14 May, 1927, making him one year younger than Willy Wenger, of Leoben, Styria, who eventually married Albin's sister, Wilma.

After attending eight years of elementary school in Holz, Albin Laggner sought for an apprentice position as a cook or waiter. He found a place at the Hotel Reisch in Kitzbühel, Tyrol. Later, he was hired at the Europa Hotel in Bad Gastein, initially as elevator operator, later as a waiter.

In the autumn of 1944, at the age of 17 ½ years, Albin was drafted into the Wehrmacht. Reporting in early 1945, and after probably minimal training, he was assigned to an armored unit that was stationed on the Czech border near Cottbus. It was clear the end of the war was already approaching.

However, in March, Albin was seriously wounded. A grenade exploded into his upper left arm. He lost the entire arm, for which he was operated on two or three times in the hospital in Cottbus. While in the hospital, he was taken into Czech captivity.

On May 9, 1945 (fourteen days before his 18th birthday), the end of the war was declared, but the Czechs kept shooting at the German soldiers! In the following days, all the prisoners were driven to the streets and scorned by the Czech population. German soldiers were kicked, beaten and hit with rifle butts. The crippled and wounded were laid down on the street and continued to be beaten and kicked, also by hateful women. Albin was seriously wounded on his right foot at this time. They then brought trucks and Red Army tanks and these defenseless men were brutally run over. This is documented and some film of it was found and shown on the Internet.

In Albin's case, an old woman, feeling pity for the German-Austrian soldier because of his youth, reached for him and pulled Albin out of the way of the tank tracks. He thus escaped being crushed to death. He was placed in a Czech concentration camp, where he had the good fortune to meet a comrade from a neighboring parish, Ragersdorf in Mölltal, Anton (Toni) Zraunig who became like a guardian angel to Albin.

They thought about ways to escape the hell they were in and one lucky day they succeeded in walking away in the direction of home. Because of Albin's injured right foot, which had been given no medical attention, walking was very difficult for him. Yet they walked all the way from the Northeast Czech Republic to the southernmost part of Austria.

As Albin often told, when they came to uneven terrain, Toni had to actually carry Albin. Without Albin, Toni would have reached home quicker and without problems, but Toni would not abandon Albin. They had to endure a lot of trouble and hardship along the way, yet it was together that they arrived in Feicht, Lendorf parish, in September 1945, in an emaciated condition. Albin was badly wounded, tattered, ragged and hungry, but happy to have reached home. The friendship with Anton Zraunig kept, as is said in good German, forever.

As you might expect, Albin had big problems with his neglected injured foot until it finally had to be completely amputated to above the knee. Thus he lost both his left arm and his right leg. Albin was a victim of and witness to the crimes committed by the Czechs after the war was supposedly over.

Albin also developed a close friendship with his school friend Peter Lipp (Peter Lanzinger). Peter visited him regularly and there was a lot of singing on these occasions. Albin later moved with his brother Louis to Graz, they then went back to Bludenz in Vorarlberg and, finally, home again to Feicht. Albin then took an apartment in Klagenfurt, close to his sister Anna. Albin got to know a woman there who took care of his war wounds.

Albin died on 26 October 1976 in Klagenfurt at age 50, and was buried in St. Peter's, Holz. He never married. He was a good soul.

Composed by Carolyn Yeager, thanks to information received from Albin's brother Rupert Laggner and Wilma Laggner Wenger.

Below: The family of Stefan and Ida Laggner all together on Christmas 1944. Albin is at far left. At far right is Stefan Jr. in paratrooper uniform. In front of him is Wilma, age 9. To the left of his mother and father (holding youngest) is Sepp Laggner, home on leave  after having been wounded, wearing civilian clothers. Thus, the older three sons all served in the war. There are 15 children in all.

Thanks to James Damon (right) for the English translation of this outstanding interview given by Erich Priebke to his Italian attorney Dr. Paolo Giachini and translated anonymously into German.

See UPDATE 10-24 from Dr. Giachini and Robert Faurisson at end of interview.

 The Interview

Question: Herr Priebke, several years ago you stated that you never deny your past. Now that you are 100 years old, do you still think that?

Answer: Yes.

Q: Would you please elucidate?

A: Long ago I made the decision to remain true to myself.

Q: So, do you still consider yourself a National Socialist?

A: Loyalty to our past determines our convictions and our character.
This is the way I view the world and my ideals. It is what was once our German Weltanschauung, the way we view the world. It is what still determines my sense of honor and my self-respect. Politics is something different. National Socialism perished with the defeat of Germany and today there is no longer any prospect of its continuation.

Q: Does this Weltanschauung that you mention also include anti Semitism?

A: If you want to discover the truth with your questions you must stop using certain clichés and prejudices, because to criticize does not mean to exterminate. Since the early 20th Century the conduct of the Jews has been widely criticized in Germany. The fact that Jews exercised enormous economic and political power, even though they were a very small part of the population, was considered unjust. Today it is still a fact that, if we consider the thousand richest and most powerful men in the world, we must acknowledge that a very large number of them are Jews, Jewish bankers and Jewish owners of multinational corporations. Especially after Germany's defeat in the First World War and under the yoke of the Versailles Dictate, Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe led to a catastrophe in Germany. This was caused by their sudden immense accumulation of capital at a time when the overwhelming majority of Germans were suffering severe poverty under the Weimar Republic. In this climate of desperation the usurers greatly increased their wealth, which caused feelings of frustration and resentment of the Jews.

Q: What is your opinion about the old story that Jews are allowed by their religion to practice usury while this is forbidden for Christians?

A: This is certainly not my idea. You have only to read Shakespeare or Dostoevski to realize that, in the historical perspective, such problems with the Jews have existed from Venice to St. Petersburg. This does not mean that Jews were the only usurers, however. I agree with the poet Ezra Pound, who said "I see no difference between a Jewish usurer and an Arian usurer."
 
Q: Do all these things justify anti Semitism?

A: No, Jewish usury does not mean that there are no upright and honorable Jews. I repeat what I just said: anti Semitism implies unconditional hatred. Even during the long years of my persecution I, an old man deprived of my freedom, always rejected hatred. I choose not to hate even those who hate me. I insist on nothing but the right to criticize and I always explain the reasons for my criticism. I would also like to point out that, because of their unique religion, many Jews consider themselves superior to other peoples. They identify themselves with "God's chosen people" as mentioned in the Bible.
 
Q: Didn't Hitler also speak of the superiority of the "Aryan" race?

A: Yes, Hitler also succumbed to ideas of racial superiority, and this caused certain errors from which there was no returning. However one has to consider that racism was the norm all over the world. It was not just a popular belief, it was enshrined in law and government. Even after the Americans ceased being slave dealers and importing Africans they continued highly racist and they practiced official discrimination against black people. Hitler's first "racial laws" did not restrict the rights of Jews any more than Americans restricted the rights of negroes in many states of the USA. The same was true of English discrimination against Asian Indians. The French acted no differently toward their so-called inferiors in their colonies. We won't even mention the treatment of ethnic minorities in the old Soviet Union.
 
Q: In your opinion, what brought about the escalation of discrimination against Jews in Germany?

A: The situation became radicalized and ever more intense. It turned into German Jews, Americans, British and then global Jewry on one side and Germany on the other. The situation forced the German Jews into an increasingly difficult position. The decision to impose restrictions on Jews in Germany made life ever more difficult for them. In November 1938 a Jew named Grünspan killed a member of our consulate in France, Ernst von Rath, as a protest against Germany. The result was Reichskristallnacht in which groups of demonstrators throughout the Reich smashed windows of Jewish shops. After that the Jews were treated strictly as enemies. After coming to power, Hitler initially encouraged the Jews to leave Germany. Ultimately, in a climate of great and growing distrust of Jews caused by war, boycotts and open conflict with global Jewish organizations, the Jews in Germany were interned in camps as enemy populations. This was of course a catastrophe for many innocent families.
 
Q: So, in your opinion, were Jewish sufferings their own fault?

A: Jewish suffering was inextricably connected with the War and there was guilt on both sides. There was guilt on the side of the Allies who unleashed the Second World War against Germany after the partitioning or repartitioning of Poland. This was a region in which the large ethnic German population was exposed to constant depredations, a region that had been placed under control of the newly resurrected Polish state by the Dictate of Versailles. Nobody raised a finger against Stalin's Russia on account of the partitioning. On the contrary: At the end of the conflict, which ostensibly came about to defend Poland against German aggression, Stalin was rewarded with all of Eastern Europe including all of Poland.
 
Q: Apart from political revisionism, do you sympathize with historical revisionism?

A: I am not sure just what "revisionism" means. If we are talking about the Nuremberg Tribunal I can only say that it was political theatre. It consisted of fantastic show trials staged for the sole purpose of depicting the German nation and its leaders as inhuman monsters. Its aim and purpose was to slander our defeated nation, which was completely unable to defend itself.
 
Q: What is your basis for this allegation?

A: What can you say about a self-appointed "court" that prosecutes only the crimes of the vanquished while ignoring those of the victors? What can you say about such a "court," in which the victors are simultaneously accusants, prosecutors and judges and impose unique new criminal laws ex post facto merely in order to convict? Even US President Kennedy called the Nuremberg trials "disgusting." In his words, they "violated the American Constitution in order to punish a defeated enemy."
 
Q: Even if, as you allege, the "crimes against humanity" for which German leaders were convicted in Nuremberg had not previously existed as such, but were first so designated by the International Tribunal, must it not be said that the charges were based on horrible crimes?

A: Consider that at Nuremberg the Germans were prosecuted for the Katyn massacre. Then in 1990 Russian President Gorbachev admitted that these same prosecutors had ordered the murders of twenty thousand Polish officers in Katyn Forest. In 1992 President Yeltsin published the original document ordering the executions, which was signed by Stalin. The Germans were even accused of having made soap from Jewish corpses. Bars of "Jew Soap" were exhibited in museums in Israel, the US and other countries. It was not until 1990 that a professor at the University of Jerusalem finally admitted that "Jew Soap" was a hoax.
 
Q: Yes but the concentration camps were not inventions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, were they?

A: In those terrible war years there was natural expediency in interning civilian populations that were considered a threat to national security. Every country did that. In the United States, persons of Asian descent were interned whose ancestors had immigrated generations before. Germany also interned civilian populations that it considered a threat.

Q: But in American concentration camps there were no gas chambers, were there?

A: As I have said, a great many bogus charges were manufactured for propaganda purposes. As for homicidal gas chambers in German camps, we are still waiting for proof of such allegations. The internees of course had to work. Many of them worked outside the camps during the day and returned in the evening. The severe manpower shortage during the War is incompatible with allegations of internees standing in line to be murdered in gas chambers. The danger of using a gas chamber extends beyond its immediate vicinity and would have been hazardous for everyone in camp, including the guards. It is an absurd idea that millions of people could have been sent to their deaths in this way, at the same place where large numbers were living and working. As a practical matter it is impossible.
 
Q: When did you first hear of a plan to exterminate Jews in gas chambers?

A: I was a prisoner in an English camp along with Walter Rauff when I first heard of such a thing. We were both amazed. We could not believe such a terrible story: homicidal gas chambers to murder men, women and children!
I discussed the matter with Col. Rauff and other prisoners for days on end.
We all belonged to the SS and were all Party members, serving in various capacities but nobody had ever heard of such a thing. Just imagine: Many years later I learned that Rauff, who shared many a hard loaf with me in prison, had been accused of inventing mysterious "mobile gas vans." No one who knew Walter Rauff could have come up with such an idea.
 
Q: What about the eyewitnesses to the existence of gas chambers?

A: No homicidal gas chambers were ever found except for one at Dachau, which the Americans built after the War. Judicial or historical evidence simply does not exist. The statements and confessions of camp commandants, the best known of which is Rudolf Hoess of Auschwitz, would be unacceptable in any real court of law. His admissions were wildly self-contradictory. He was severely tortured at Nuremberg, then gagged and hanged at the insistence of the Russians. In the absence of evidence, confessions of defendants and statements of witnesses were vitally important for the prosecutors. Reliance on coercion in cases where the defendants or witnesses refused to confess or testify was inevitable, and it included threats against family members. From my own experiences as a prisoner of war, as well as those of friends, I am familiar with the methods used to force confessions from German prisoners, who often did not understand English and could not read what they signed. The treatment of German prisoners in the Russian camps is now widely known: the prisoners were simply forced to sign whatever was placed before them.
 
Q: Do you consider the millions of deaths in concentration camps nothing but an invention of the victors?

A: I was personally familiar with the German camps. The last time I visited a camp was Mauthausen in May of 1944 in order to interrogate the son of Badoglio. I spent two entire days there and observed the huge kitchens in operation to feed the inmates. Mauthausen even had bordellos - it had everything except gas chambers! Unfortunately a great many people died in those camps at the end of the War but it was not because they were murdered. Harsh conditions, starvation and lack of care at the end of the War caused their doom. Civilian tragedies were not restricted to concentration camp inmates, however. They were the order of the day throughout Germany primarily because of the Allied carpet bombings of cities.
 
Q: Do you trivialize the tragedy of the Jews during the Holocaust?

A: There is little to trivialize. Tragedy is tragedy. We should be concerned with historical reality rather than "trivialization." It obviously was in the interest of the victorious powers to avoid being held responsible for the atrocities they committed. They totally destroyed entire cities in Germany in which not there was not a single German soldier in order to kill as many women, children and elderly as possible. Their intention was to break our will to fight. This was the fate of Dresden, Hamburg, Lübek, Berlin and many other cities. Our enemies exploited the advantage of their heavy bombers to target civilians in their homicidal frenzy. The same fate befell the population of Tokyo and then, with the atomic bomb, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Because of these unsurpassed atrocities against civilian populations, it was necessary for the victors to invent bizarre stories of atrocities that they alleged were committed by Germany. They depicted Germans as satanic creatures in horror stories that Hollywood made into horror movies. Little has changed in the propaganda of the global power elite since World War II: they still see themselves as "exporting democracy" with "peace missions" against "scum." In the process they manufacture images of their targets as "terrorists" bent on committing ever more monstrous atrocities. In actuality they attack everyone who does not submit to their wishes, primarily with their air forces. They delight in mowing down masses of civilians and soldiers who lack the means to defend themselves. In the course of "exporting democracy" to one country after another it happens that their "humanitarian interventions" result in the establishment of puppet governments that serve their economic and political interests.

Q: How do you explain unambiguous evidence of atrocities such as photographs and films of concentration camps?

A: These films are in fact more evidence of falsification. Almost all of the pictures of "German death camps" are of Bergen Belsen. That was a camp that various agencies created by bringing inmates who were unable to work from all the other camps. There was a huge convalescent facility there, which tells us a great deal about the intentions of the Germans. It would be very odd to construct such facilities for prisoners who were going to be gassed. By 1945 the Allied bombing raids had left the camp without food, water, medicines and other supplies to combat raging epidemics of typhus and dysentery, which killed many thousands of inmates. The horrific movie of the camp was made in April 1945 after Bergen-Belsen had been devastated by the epidemics. The movie was made specifically for propaganda purposes by Alfred Hitchcock, the masterful English producer of horror films. The cynicism and total absence of human feeling in the movie are indeed horrifying. For many years Hitchcock's movie has been broadcast on TV accompanied by somber background music. It unscrupulously deceives the public by linking terrible scenes with gas chambers that did not exist. Pure falsification!
 
Q: So, in your opinion, the reason for this deception was to cover or trivialize the atrocities of the victors?

A: Yes, this was true even at the beginning. General MacArthur followed the Nuremberg scenario with the Tokyo Trials in Japan. In that case the victors again thought up novel crimes and atrocities that ended with the death of the accused by hanging in order to criminalize the Japanese, who had already suffered atomic weapons of mass destruction. The Allies even accused the Japanese of cannibalism!
 
Q: Why do you say it was "at the beginning" that the victorious powers used deceptions to cover their own atrocities?

A: Because after that, the Zionist state of Israel began using the "Holocaust" story for its own benefit. It profited in two ways. The first way is explained very well by Prof. Norman Finkelstein, the son of Jews who were interned at Auschwitz. In his book "The Holocaust Industry" he explains how "Shoa Business" brought many billions of dollars in damages and reparations to Israel and Zionist organizations. He refers to this as "regular organized extortion." The second way Israel benefits from "Holocaust" is explained by Sergio Romano, who no one considers a revisionist. Following the war in Lebanon, Israel realized that exaggerating and accentuating the dramatic elements in "Holocaust" literature gives it advantages in its territorial disputes with Arab countries. This gives Israel a kind of diplomatic immunity.
 
 Q: All over the world people refer to the Holocaust as "extermination." Do you deny or have doubts about that?

A: The propaganda of the global power elite is indeed overwhelming. A historical subculture is manipulating the world's conscience by playing on our human emotions. The younger generations in particular are being brainwashed in school, besieged with gruesome stories that suppress their ability to think critically or form individual opinions. As I stated earlier, the world has been waiting for 70 years for evidence of the atrocities for which we Germans are blamed. The historians have not found a single document supporting the existence of homicidal gas chambers. Not a single written order, instruction, report by a government agency or communication by personnel. There is absolutely nothing. In the total absence of documentation the judges at Nuremberg pointedly assumed that the German program for a "permanent solution to the Jewish problem," which provided for the deportation of to Madagascar or other locations in the East, was a secret code word for "extermination." How absurd! In 1941, while the War was fully under way and we were still winning in Africa as well as Russia, the Jews were encouraged to leave Germany voluntarily and then they were more strongly encouraged to leave. Only after the War had been underway for more than two years did Germany introduce measures to limit their freedom.

Q: If evidence such as you mention - that is, a document signed by Hitler or someone else in the hierarchy - were found, what would be your reaction?

A: In that case I would propose a rigorous investigation of the crimes indicated. Any use of force against groups that does not take individual responsibility into consideration is unacceptable and should be condemned, absolutely and without exception. Extermination is what happened to the Indians in America, the Kulaks in Russia, the Italian Foibe victims in Istria and the Armenians in Turkey. It is what happened to German prisoners in the American death camps in Germany and France as well as in the Russian camps. Some died on orders of General Eisenhower, others on orders of Stalin. Both Eisenhower and Stalin deliberately ignored the Geneva Convention in ordering those atrocities. All crimes against humanity must be unambiguously condemned, and this includes persecutions of the Jews. I mean real persecutions, not false and hate-filled allegations invented for propaganda purposes.
 
Q: Do you admit the possibility that evidence of exterminations by Germans at the end of the War might have eluded historians and could some day come to light?

A: I just stated that certain crimes must be condemned unconditionally. In the extremely unlikely event that we should one day find real evidence of the use of homicidal gas chambers in German concentration camps, then the imperative for prosecution of whoever planned and carried out such crimes would be unequivocal. In my long life I have learned that surprises never end but in the case of homicidal gas chambers I feel absolutely safe in my conclusion. For almost seventy years the German documents confiscated by the victorious powers have been minutely examined by hundreds of professional historians, thus it is extremely unlikely that they will find any such evidence in future. It is unlikely for another reason as well: even while the War was still under way, Germany's enemies had begun spreading rumors about mass murders in our concentration camps. I am referring to the Allied declaration of December 1942 in which they speak of "barbarous atrocities" against Jews in Germany and demand punishment of those responsible. By the end of 1943 they were not only continuing their usual propaganda, they were manufacturing falsified evidence of atrocities. The first news I had of this came from my comrade Major Paul Reinicke, who served as chief of the escort of Reichsmarschall Göring, the number two man in our government. When I last saw him he informed me of Allied plans for systematic falsifications. Göring was furious because he considered the falsifications scurrilous and outrageous. Before he committed suicide he denounced the falsifications in the strongest terms before the Nuremberg Tribunal. I later received additional information about Allied falsifications of evidence from Chief of Police Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who succeeded Heydrich after his death. Kaltenbrunner too was sent to the gallows following the show trials. I visited him shortly before the end of the War in order to report on the evidence pertaining to the treachery of King Vittorio Emanuel. Kaltenbrunner informed me that the enemy propaganda agencies were busily manufacturing falsified evidence of atrocities and gruesome concentration camp stories about German brutality. He said the enemy propaganda ministries had reached agreement on details of a unique procedure for dealing with the losing side. Most significant of all I met General Kaltenbrunner's close colleague, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mueller, in August 1944. I was admitted to officer school on his recommendation, so I was greatly indebted to him, and he liked me as well. He was sent to Rome in order to assist in a personal problem of my commander, Colonel Herbert Kappler. At that time the American Fifth Army succeeded in breaking through at Cassino while the Russians were entering Germany. The War had already been lost.
Mueller invited me to his hotel where, on the basis of mutual confidence, I ventured to question him on further details of the Allied plans for postwar Moscow type show trials. Mueller informed me that through our espionage we had received explicit indications that, in expectation of victory, the enemy was manufacturing evidence of German atrocities in order to stage spectacular trials. The purpose of these trials would be to criminalize Germany. He knew many exact details and was seriously concerned. He said our enemies could not be trusted to conform to international norms because they were completely unscrupulous and had no concept of honor whatsoever. I was still rather young and did not give his words the credence they deserved, but everything turned out exactly as Gen. Mueller had said. He knew the names of the enemy propagandists who, as we know today, concocted the stories about exterminating Jews in gas chambers. I would consider all this to be ridiculous and laugh at it if the results had not been so tragic. When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003 under the pretext that Sadam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction" and Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his brazenly false oath to the U.N. Security Council, I said to myself, "There is nothing new under the sun!" The imperialists, the only ones who have used such weapons in war, are accusing small countries of having them.
 
Q: Are you aware that several laws in Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland impose prison sentences on those who deny the Holocaust?

A: Yes. The global power elite has demanded such laws and soon Italy will pass them as well. The object of such laws is to make people believe that those who oppose Zionism and Israeli colonialism in Palestine are anti Semitic. Anyone who dares to criticize Zionism is called an anti Semite. Anyone who dares to ask for evidence of the existence of gas chambers is automatically persecuted as an advocate of exterminating Jews. It is devilish manipulation, but these laws expose the global elite's fears that the truth is coming to the surface. The elite is terrified that despite its vast propaganda campaigns, historians will demand evidence and scientists will expose falsifications. The very existence of these draconian laws opens the eyes of those who still believe in freedom of speech and the indispensability of independent research. Of course I am aware that I can be prosecuted for what I have just said. My situation would become even more difficult, but I must say these things because they are true. For me, courage to be truthful is duty to my Volk. It is an expression of gratitude for the hundred years of life that was granted me. It is my contribution to the dignity of my Volk.
 
Signed: E. Priebke
"From the vantage of my hundred years of life!"

UPDATE 10-24 sent by James Damon:  Following is a left-out portion of Dr. Paolo Giachini's interview with Erich Priebke concerning the events of 1944 in Rome.

On 23 March of that year [1944] the Italian Communist assassin GAP attacked a company of German police from South Tyrol in order to provoke retaliatory actions on the part of the Germans.

33 German policemen died immediately; ultimately the total number of deaths was 42 Germans and 10 Italians, including an 11-year-old child. [52 in all! -cy]

Through Kesselring, Hitler gave orders to Priebke's superior Herbert Kappler, commander of security services in Rome, that 10 Italians must be shot for every murdered German,as allowed by international law to deal with unlawful insurrection. This order was carried out in the Ardeatine Caves on 24 March 1944. Five persons too many were shot by mistake so that a total of 335 Italians were shot in retaliation for the 42 Germans killed. [But 42x10 is 420, so it was not 5 too many -cy] For Erich Priebke and his comrades, carrying out these shootings was a horrible experience. They would have preferred to not carry out these retaliatory measures. However this was an order from Adolf Hitler, the commander-in-chief of the German Army, and no member of the German military could refuse such an order.

From Robert Faurisson's Blog, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013:

Captain Erich Priebke was in Rome in 1944 when thirty of his comrades in arms were cowardly murdered, blown up by a bomb planted in via Rasella by Communist-led partisans. Another hundred of his comrades in arms were wounded by the same bomb, a large number of them permanently blinded. He was especially disturbed on learning that an eleven-year-old Italian boy had also been killed, his body cut in two by the blast. So, just a minute: what man, what woman, in such circumstances, could keep a cool head? One may add that Priebke was among those who received the order from Berlin, transmitted by his superiors, to execute the following day, in reprisal, approximately ten men for each victim. Read complete blogpost.

*********************

The translator is a Germanophilic Germanist who makes the writings of German dissidents available to those who do not read German.

Nov. 16, 2013

Warsaw-based historian Piotr Zychowicz has written two books since 2012 that are hugely controversial in Poland. Both are centered on tragic mistakes Poles made that added to their suffering during the second world war. The first is Pakt Ribbentrop-Beck, with the premise that Foreign Minister Beck should have agreed to ally with Hitler against the Soviet Union in 1939. The second is Madness ’44: How Poles Made a Gift to Stalin by Launching the Warsaw Uprising.  Zychowicz sees it as a disastrous mistake. Some highlights:

• Poland’s #1 enemy has always been the Soviet Union and/or Russia;
• Great Britain convinced Josef Beck he could prevent war by helping in the encirclement of Germany in ’39;
• England cynically used Beck to provoke Hitler to attack Poland and create war between Germany and Soviet Union;
• Churchill is the most terrible character in the whole history of Poland;
• Zychowicz says the National-Socialists had stupid genocidal policies in Poland and all Eastern Europe;
• Zychowicz admits that a problem for Poles is not thinking realistically about themselves;
• Today, Poland and Germany have a great relationship, says Zychowicz.

Image: Piotr Zychowicz and his second book.

Celebrating a victory with a champagne breakfast in Caen, July 9, 1942, left to right: Schröter, Nippa and Poldi wearing his newly awarded Iron Cross 2. (Picture taken by a war reporter)

The letters from 1942 begin with Operation Cerberus, for which Leopold "Poldi" Wenger's squadron  (Jagdgeschwader 2 Richthofen) played an essential role. This is the first of two major operations in which he was to take part in 1942, the second being the Battle of Dieppe in August. In between these two, we read of exciting air warfare over the Channel. Poldi's first letter home was not until after Cerberus was successfully completed.

copyright 2013 Wilhelm Wenger and Carolyn Yeager
Translated from the German by Carlos Porter

14 February 1942: Everything has been happening at once over the past few days, as you have, of course, heard from the Christmas news bulletins; and this time we are involved, too. We flew fighter support for the German fleet and were present at precisely the most exciting moments shortly before the breakthrough at the narrowest point on the Channel and in the evening air and sea battles. It was a bold undertaking and a surprise attack right in front of the Englishmen’s own front door, so to speak, with the two battleships “Gneisenau” and “Scharnhorst”, as well as with the heavy cruiser “Prinz Eugen” and many convoy ships, torpedo boats and destroyers in the front line. [Poldi is describing Operation Cerberus that I wrote about here.] 

Poldi second from left on the airfield at Katwyik, Feb. 14, 1942

At Katwyik for Operation Cerberus

When German long-range guns attempted to destroy the English coastal artillery, all the houses on the square where we were trembled, and the floors vibrated at the rumbling. This day was the first time I saw aerial combat from the ground. When we started back towards the safety of the ships, we just managed it when a British destroyer attack was defeated by our ships. There was rather misty weather and the flare of the muzzle fire from the guns was getting more and more dazzling and frightening. Once we confused two ships and found ourselves suddenly being strafed by flak from one of the British destroyers. Then the Tommies tried to blow us through the heavy use of Spitfires. That failed, too. Since we absolutely had to maintain radio silence, it wasn’t possible to communicate with each other in the normal way. For example, we could only fire tracers in front of a comrade’s [plane] to let him know that he was being attacked by one or more Brits. We protected the ships in such a way that each squadron had to fly a certain sector to prevent hostile aircraft from getting anywhere near our big ships. Most of the enemy bombers were swept away from the outer ring of our fighter squadron and we seldom even saw them with all the bad weather. It was really beautiful aerial combat.

Yesterday I flew what was up until that time my northernmost flight in the maritime territory of the Friesian Islands. In the evening we were in The Hague. That is the first time you notice the difference compared with French muddling.

In Albertville I had two days off with QBI [bad weather]. Albertville is a city of ruins, in which only the church is still standing.

Icy Leuwarden airfield, Feb. 19, 1942

Photo taken by Poldi in Leuwarden, Holland 2-19-42

19 February 1942: I’m further north now, in the vicinity of Leuwarden. So much snow and ice is something new to me, it’s the first we’ve met with this winter. So I’ve quit flying in the English Channel and I‘m flying in the North Sea now. But there’s a big difference, apart from the cold. But it won’t be long until I can fly again. We all like it better here in Holland than in France; here, you can almost speak of a second Germany. (At least compared to the usual conditions in France.) Everything is clean and neat, every house is friendly, the windows are all full of flowers, now, in the winter; even relations between soldiers and the civilian population cannot be compared with France at all.

One problem, though, is the Dutch money. Nobody can make out the guilders yet. I had a couple of hours furlough today, and was able to see the city of Leuwarden during the daytime for once. Over and over again, all I could think about was the big difference between here and “La Grande Nation".

____________________

Sudden furlough with the family in Leoben in early March.

Poldi on holiday with his parents in Marburg, a historic city in central Germany, March 6 ...

...where they met up with Prof. Matzl.

16 March 1942: This morning about 6 o’clock I was back in Morlaix again, a whole day too early. I couldn’t know that I would have such good connections all the way through. I was already in Linz that same afternoon and waited an hour for the commuter train from Vienna, upon which I travelled through Nuremberg and Metz to Paris, where I arrived at 6:30pm yesterday, on the 15th. My stay in Paris was also very short and I was able to travel by train direct to Morlaix the same evening, where I was happy to arrive this morning. The trains were very full!

23 March 1942: My last letter was written from Morlaix. At that time, I wanted to fly to Holland, but that was impossible due to the bad weather. So I took the train by way of Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam and The Hague. Then I had to wait a couple of days and was finally able to fly back to my unit (Katwijk-Leuwarden). But it was still a whole week until I was back with my comrades again. This time, I travelled by train during the day, so I was able to see something new. Yesterday we were transferred again and now, after a long time, I’m back in France where I flew for the first time (according to the flight log book: Le Havre, after a relocation flight from Leuwarden to Calais and following a layover, on to Le Havre, that is, 710 km overland).

28 March 1942 : I just received the photograph of my family, taken by the photographer Fürst in Leoben during my furlough; [it was] posed just right, but the main thing is, everybody is on there!

Everything is happening at once here. Recently, we’ve been waiting for a big offensive almost any day now. All seems very normal at night now, but, at the same time, the English have had big losses. Tonight they tried to play a trick on us. You‘ve certainly heard the special reports on this. We were happy to be able to fly a few low level attacks on them, but the Tommies got hit so bad during the night that everything was all over by the early hours of the morning, around dawn.

4 April 1942: For the moment, there’s nothing really going on here (Le Havre), so it’s really the calm before the storm. But at night there’s a lot happening. The last few nights, I was able to watch the entire air attack from my window, which gives me a good view of the whole city and the entry to the harbor. Once a bomb hit the water about a hundred meters away from me, so that I was pushed gently away from the window. But the Brits score so few hits, that it’s a shame to waste so many bombs. Most of them fall in the water.

Poldi in the "readiness seat" (Sitzbereitschaft) in Le Havre

Transfer flight to Triqueville in a Me 109 on April 10

Triqueville living barracks, April 12, 1942

11 April 1942: We’ve been transferred again [Triqueville]. Although not particularly far away (40 km), there’s the usual confusion. I’m on the left bank of the Seine now, on a small square [presumably Beaumont le Roger], in the middle of the countryside. It’s a big meadow. We live in a place seven kilometers away, with about 7,000 inhabitants, in the best hotel in the region. I don’t believe we could find a bigger hotel anywhere. We’re all glad to be out of Le Havre, since the nightly bombing attacks didn’t allow us to get any sleep. On Easter Sunday night, they dropped 12 bombs on the square, without damaging anything but the grass.

Now I’m sitting in a deck chair in front of my plane and “helping them wait.” None of us can understand why the Tommies no longer come over by day. Apart from the daily combat alarms, we hardly fly any more.

It’s all wonderfully green here; we have the feeling that summer is just ahead.

19 April 1942: Today I’m sitting at my command post, on duty. I was sitting here a few days ago, when there was quite a hubbub: A large of number of incoming flights and an aerial combat, with about 150 English fighter planes and bombers... and I had to sit around down here. Today, my plane is right in front of the door and there’s really nothing going on. It’s Sunday today and the Tommies aren’t flying, after all; only a few Poles and other Legionnaires.

Day before yesterday, we had some incoming flights again and, once again, no move on the part of the enemy: Spitfires were playing blind man’s bluff with us, and us with them. The cloud towers had something to do with this, since they all flew around behind them, but, on the other hand, there was no shooting. We all flew quite a bit, which was, of course, another morale booster. 

25 April 1942: The English have now started yet another offensive on the Channel and came off second best for the most part. What that’s all supposed to mean is not clear. The bombs never hit their targets and are mostly simply jettisoned. But the fighter protection is very strong. Today, I couldn’t even count the number of Spitfires swarming around the bombers. They were estimated at 150 to160. Six were shot down in our sector yesterday. It was an exciting time. There were no losses on our side.

6 May 1942: It is very hot, cloudless, almost no wind. We’re sitting around in deck chairs in battle-preparedness. Strangely, it’s been completely quiet for two days. Day before yesterday, we flew two missions. We had some serious aerial combats in the morning. We chased the Tommies right back to the Isle of Wight. In the afternoon, during our second mission, there was aerial fighting all the way to the French coast. The English were more numerous than we were. There was a lot of excitement north of Fécamp and the air was full of tracers and smoke. Well, we’ll even the score next time around.

9 May 1942: For the moment, everything’s quiet around here. This doesn’t usually last more than a couple of days, though. So we can calculate fairly accurately when something is going to bust loose again. The last attack was on 6 May, that is, it will be time soon. There was a big alarm yesterday, and we all took off, but the enemy wasn’t stirring. On the  6th, though, there were big dog fights. There were about 100 to 120 English fighter planes up there. The whole sky was full of planes [Geigen]! We flew right over into the thick of it and it worked: the whole formation dissipated and the Tommies disappeared, flying away downwards away from us. Just off the English coast our squadron got into another dog fight, but the English wouldn’t really be drawn into a fight. There was wonderful weather and we had a marvellous view of both coasts from the middle of the Channel. It was so beautiful and such clear weather that I could see the Isle of Wight in great detail and the whole coast of Dover quite exactly.

One time we attacked a whole bunch of 30 Spitfires. There were only three of us, they saw us too soon, we were forced back, and our lead plane got shot down. But we got even during the next English large-scale attack: we dove right into a whole pack of them, all Spitfires, blew them up and 5 Tommies went down in flames.

21 May 1942: I’m still lying around on the same meadow as before. I was first quartered in the house of the village bank director. Now we’re in a beautiful house. There was an almighty ruckus around here in the past few days. On the 15th, we flew to Portsmouth, over Brighton and back, in the twilight, in very bad weather. We stayed there for a long time and only landed as it was getting dark... no sign of the enemy at all. The next day, our “English comrades” were kind enough to pay us a visit. There was a lot of aerial combat with a lot of Spitfires. At one point, our leader [according to the flight log book: Oberleutnant Meinberg] shot down a Spitfire in front of the whole squadron. It was something to see, the plane all aflame and the Tommy bailing out with a chute. Then our squadron flew over the Channel and we attacked an English fighter unit near Hasting. They withdrew in a hurry, though, only the last one stayed there to fight for a few moments. Our squadron leader (according to the fight log book entry Oberfeldwebel Heinzeller) shot the Spitfire down. The Tommy bailed out with his chute and landed in the water off Hasting.

To the fighter bombers:

25 May 1942  I’ve been transferred to another unit. It’s very beautiful here in Beaumont le Roger. Our lodgings consist of a little castle in green surroundings. Since I already know all the other people, I don’t feel like a stranger.

Poldi and Obergruppenführer Limberg on standby, June 4, 1942

13 June 1942: (Le Bourget-Paris) I’ve been travelling a lot recently. I once flew from Caen to Wevelghem and drove to Lille at night. The next day I went to Paris and back to Caen by train. I’ve been assigned to a new type of plane, the Focke Wulf FW 190 (A-2) and after flying in, I made the ferry flight to Caen.

29 June 1942: Yesterday evening I flew my first combat flight with my new FW 190. We did some reconnoitering flights on the English seacoast between the Isle of Insel Wight and Selsey Bill.

7 July 1942: Today I half-way participated in the sinking of a 10,000 ton submarine mother ship [the letter with the report has unfortunately been lost!]

9 July 1942: Today we attacked an English convoy of ships west of Portland [Dorset]; we shot out of that convoy ships that were all together in tonage 20,000. In one attack we sank one 2,500-ton ship and severely damaged three more. I had to break off my first approach because my position was unfavorable. During a second attack I was shot at from all barrels at once and at the last moment they shot a rocket barrier right in front of my nose, so that I was still able to drop my bombs and yank my plane around. My bombs, of course, fell right next to the target. When we landed the fighter squadron leader came over; short briefing, in which, among other things, he said, “On behalf of the Führer, I award you, Lieutenant L. Wenger, the Iron Cross 2nd Class, for your decisive participation in the sinking of a 10,000 ton ship” (on 7 July 1942 in the Solent, off the Isle of Wight). Then there was a breakfast with champagne. Everybody had great fun anyway. Another formation at the same time had attacked an English airfield and hangar and destroyed a plane on the ground. We were in a really great mood. A war reporter was here, too, and took photographs. I’ll send you the pictures.

12 July 1942:  This afternoon I flew another mission and sank a watch ship of about 800 tons in the harbor of Brixham (Bay of Torquay) with a direct bombing hit to the starboard side of the ship. The other plane damaged a 4,000 ton freighter so severely that I must assume that it sank, too. This time, there were two of us. It wasn’t easy to approach the ship, since the harbor was full of barrage balloons and flak and very strongly protected. So we struck all at once, by surprise, out of a beautiful blue sky, flying through the barrage balloons, firing at the ships with everything we had. My ship sent up jets of flame from the superstructure after being shot at using my guns, that’s all. The bombs did the rest.

My ship capsized in half a minute, breaking in half right in the middle, while the other ship began to sink stern first. There was so much flak that we had to give up hope of being able to observe much of anything else. At any rate, I was very happy over this success, since it was the first ship I ever sank all by myself. Yesterday, my superior officer (Hauptmann A. Liesendahl,scroll down) and another lieutenant also sank a destroyer in this area, that is, everybody got one. Unfortunately, the ships aren’t always where we’d like to have them.

Celebrating an air victory by Deinzer and Vock

15 July 1942: I flew my last mission on the 13th. I really wanted to attack a port. But the English coast was under clouds. So I flew towards an isolated watch ship and attacked it, with the wingman [of] my squadron. My bombs hit the ship, which was running towards the English coast at high speed, amidships, right before the stern. My wingman’s bombs also landed right in front of the stern. Then everything happened very quickly. There was a gigantic explosion – the boilers must have blown up – and when the steam and smoke cleared away, all we could see was a trail of foam, with a whole load of ship’s parts (planks and a rubber dinghy) floating around at the end of it. There was nothing to be seen of the crew. At the same time, I got a direct machine-gun hit in the wing. The watch ship was about 800 tons and looked just like the one I sank in Brixham the day before. It all happened so fast, that I hardly had time to shoot at the superstructure when I was attacking, and what’s certain is that no more radio signals were received from the ship afterwards. This was about 5-10 kilometers southeast of Dartmouth.

A few days ago, the squadron slaughtered two pigs they had and gave a party. Everybody could eat as much as he wanted, and there was still something left over.

July 9, 1942, front row from left: Oblt Fritz Schröter, Lt Leopold Wenger, Obstlt (Lt. Col) Karl Hentschell, Hptm Frank Liesendahl (group leader), Lt Erhard Nippa. In front, Bim the dog. (click to enlarge) This picture appeared in a newspaper.

21 July 1942: Unfortunately, I wasn’t there during the last two missions, since I had to turn around and break off my mission due to a technical problem, and during the next to last I was on duty at the command post. That is really the most uncomfortable thing there is, just sit there and wait. Now and then you get a radio message and you look at the clock and realize that the attack must be taking place at that very moment. And then you wait for them to return and get a shock when they’re not all there.

No, I’d rather fly every mission than wait at the command post. And during this mission, our leader [Liesendahl] wasn’t there afterwards. We simply couldn’t grasp the fact that our leader was no longer with us. A few weeks ago he sank an English destroyer and now he had probably been shot down by flak. I flew my best bombing missions with him as squadron leader and learned everything from him, so to speak. He already had the German cross in gold and should have gotten the Knight’s Cross in a few days. We all hoped that he had just been captured. That wasn’t ideal, but it was better.

My suitcases are all packed again, since we’re being transferred again tomorrow. Yesterday and day before yesterday, I was still far out overland. The day before yesterday I was in Bordeaux, Vannes and Lorient. I flew from southwest France along the Atlantic coast to Caen (1170 Km.). Yesterday I arrived in Albertville and then flew to Amsterdam-Schipol and back again in the eveninng (another 1070 km).

28 July 1942: A couple of days ago, Oberleutnant Schröter asked me whether I felt like flying a mission. I’d like to see the guy that would say “no” to that. So we flew quickly to our home port and off we went, my wingman and me, with a 500 kg bomb. We had to fly some armed maritime reconnaissance in the maritime region of Start Point (east of Plymouth). We couldn’t see any ships clearly, so we flew over the land. That way we could see exactly what our bombs did to our terrestrial targets first. In the evening we flew back to our port.

- To be continued -

Leopold Wenger, Jr climbs into the cockpit of his plane as he talks with his mechanic. In April '43, Poldi was made squadron leader.

copyright 2014 Wilhelm Wenger and Carolyn Yeager
Translated from the German by Carlos Whitlock Porter

4 January 1943: We had some very strong wind and monstrous sea swells in the past few days. Heavy surf on the coast, like you hardly ever saw. I didn’t even celebrate New Year’s Eve at all this time. I was already in bed by 22 hours, since we wanted to convey our New Year’s Best Wishes to the tommies really early in the morning. But once we got outside on New Year’s Day, you couldn’t fly at all, the weather was so bad. So on the 2nd we bombed a small town, Knightbridge, until there was not much left of it. I took really good photographs during this attack. We were over there again yesterday. This time it was Shanklin’s turn to get it, a city on the Isle of Wight. The flak was quite accurate, but too late. Once again, we got good photos of the attack.

A deep attack was made into Knightbridge on Jan. 2nd (above) and on Jan. 3rd, Shanklin (below). Photos from Poldi's on-board camera.

11 January 1943: Yesterday around midday, we attacked Teignmouth, a city on the southern coast of England, with heavy bombs. The effect was enormous. Whole rows of houses flew through the air. Unfortunately a good comrade of mine failed to return from this combat sortie. We hope he ended up in captivity. (According to the casualty list, it must have been Feldwebel Joachim von Bitter, shot down by a Typhoon of the 266th Squadron).

9 February 1943: Back from furlough. I got here about 5 hours and hit the sack right away, slept until breakfast. Although they roused me, I overslept. This trip was more comfortable than the last. I got a connection in Linz right away and a good seat. I kept watch in Schallerbach and actually saw the Hotel "Austria", where Mom stayed last summer. I also got a connection in Paris right away and went on to Rouen by fast train; but there I had to wait three hours. So I was able to call Caen and there was already someone waiting for me there, at the railway station. So I got back just exactly on time, three hours before I was supposed to start service. Not much has changed here. A few new faces and a few of the old ones stayed away. They’ve got a beautiful plane for me, so everything is all right.

14 February 1943: So I’ve got a new plane now (Fw 190 A-5 ). First I had to break it in for myself and drop practice bombs on a target area. Then it was back to work, over there. Yesterday I delivered my “business cards” on my official visit there. This time it was Dartmouth’s turn. We surprised them so much that the tommies never even had time to sound the alarm when they saw us. So the streets were very lively; very active anti-artillery fire and barrage balloons.

17 February 1943: Yesterday afternoon I flew back to England and gave Kingsbridge another good bombing. While I was doing it, I could very easily see the destruction left over from our last mission. There wasn’t much flak. This morning, we followed suit with a bigger squadron towards Shanklin on the Isle of Wight and gave them a good beating. They seemed to be very surprised, but their flak was very accurate during our approach.

23 February 1943: We had thick fog a few days ago, and our military activity was restricted to exercises, sports and education. In the evening, we sat down together as usual and chatted about all kinds of things. As I often do, I went to the cinema yesterday evening. I bought the book "Anilin" at the Front bookstore in town. I was on radio on the 19th, during the Front Reports. I also got a phonograph record from them. I’ll play it when I get back home again.

23 February 1943: Today, I’m sending Dad the first small package with a ½ kg of solid glue. Will that be enough for Dad? I’m already looking around for some silk for Mom. I’ll buy it when I get back in town again.

28 February 1943: Since the weather is still so bad, we haven’t gotten a lot of flying done! We only got active again on the 26th. We attacked the city of Exmouth; it was a hard mission. I’ve seldom seen such accurate anti-aircraft fire as this time. But the city got a really good “Thank “You” message. At the same time I blew up a gas tank and shot up a moving train, hard. I was able to take some really good photographs while doing it.

However, once again, we unfortunately had some losses in the dog fights that followed the attack. (According to the casualty list, Feldwebel Hermann Rohne and Unteroffizier Kurt Bressler were shot down in aerial combat with 2 Spitfires and 4 Typhoons from the 266th Squadron, 80 km south of Exmouth).

12 March 1943: After writing to you yesterday morning, I again take up my pen to let you have the latest news of the events of the past few hours. We are now a few hours away from our home port. We flew a very heavy attack with many planes yesterday against the city of Hastings. It was a large-scale attack with all the trappings. The English flak was especially active. There were a lot of fireworks and finally some hard aerial combat.

Today, this morning, at dawn, we started at 7 hours, on the dot, to carry out a reprisal. I saw the roofs of the English capital cityfor the first time. But London was clouded in fog, so that you could hardly see a couple of kilometers at low level. Their anti-aircraft batteries weren’t even firing at all, but there were a lot of English fighter planes. Just as we were flying back, the sun came out, red-red, and rose high over the ocean; what a beautiful sight, but we had relatively little time to enjoy this natural wonder in its full glory, since we had some very hard aerial combat.

16 March 1943: On the 14th, I flew a mission against the [south] eastern coast of England, attacking the railway station of the city of Clacton-on-Sea (north of the mouth of the Thames), destroying it with a direct hit. (According to the flight logbook, taking off from Vizernes, approximately 50 km from Coxyde).

The attacks we’ve flown in the past few days were some of the heaviest these English cities have experienced lately. Even the tommies admit this. Of course, it wasn’t child’s play for us, either, since their defenses were extremely heavy. You can’t describe the results of an air attack in words, so I won’t even try. You can see just how tough it’s getting by all the bullet holes in our planes and our own losses.

Willy already thought we’d have a tougher time of it over there – as even Little Moritz [slang for “a child”] can understand – but just leave everything to us. For the moment, he’s already happy to see the flak of our own defenses, and he wrote to me that he wanted to join the Air Force Auxiliary Personnel and be stationed in the Rhineland or somewhere around there. When I read that, it makes me mad. How often have I told him – and he can see proof of it all around us, wherever he looks – that he has to finish school first. A few days later, he got the idea that he wanted to join the infantry and be stationed on the Eastern Front. Let’s hope he gradually gains a bit more sense and will decide once and for all, what he really wants to do. I’ll write about something else now, otherwise I’ll get even madder!

19 March 1943: Our squadron commander (Captain Heinz Schumann) got the Iron Cross today. He earned it a long time ago and we’re all happy for him.

24 March 1943: After a few days of very unfavorable weather, it finally cleared up so as to allow to fly a heavy attack against Ashford, the most important railway junction northwest of Folkestone. It’s not very often I get to observe the effects of the bombs going off the way I could today. They were all direct hits. I was flying second string and received some heavy flak, too. One plane exploded next to me in the air. A light artillery piece fired a shell right in front of my nose as I was diving, and tore the sheet metal off my engine, leaving a hole in my wing. Butber, my wingman, was right there on the spot and knocked out the gun in an instant. Then a gas container exploded and so much debris went flying through the air that it was a pleasure to see. As we flew away, one single cloud of smoke hung over the entire city.
_________________________________________

Poldi becomes squadron leader ...

The captain has since become group commander, was granted a furlough and wrote the following letter to my brother while on furlough -WW:

Dear Poldi,

I assume that Bunny has now reported for duty as an adjutant with Peltz (at 28 years of age the youngest general in Germany) and that you’re in charge of the whole she-bang now, that is, on the condition that the Reichsmarschall has approved the exact plan with the group that Peltz wanted to suggest to him. But I assume that anyway. As Major Grammas has probably informed you, you would then get the whole squadron.

Although you’re a little bit young for it, I recommended you anyway, and I assume that you’ll run the whole show forcefully and efficiently; lieutenants as squadron commander are no rarity these days. I also did it in the interests of the squadron, since I’d like to see a new man in charge for a change. The squadron has been decimated by this deployment and your big job, and Nippa’s, too, will be to obtain replacements. But with Radlewski, Eschenhorn, Pfeiler and maybe Basil, too, of whom I'm not informed yet, remaining – that should be possible. As a flier, you know better than I what it’s all about, and you have more experience than I do in fighter-bomber warfare. The main thing, in my view, however, lies somewhere else. What good is a squadron with fantastic pilots, if they lack a certain something. And that certain something, Poldi, is something that only the squadron commander can supply, if they can’t supply it for themselves. You have to make the men understand that it doesn’t matter to a soldier whether he dies or not. Maybe this is putting it a bit crudely, since we all like to live, of course, but you have to have at least a willingness to die. But I don’t want to try to give you too many lessons, since I’m entrusting you with the squadron I’ve grown so fond of, precisely because I assume that you have that attitude.

Apart from that, I’m having a damn good time on furlough and I’m enjoying my family. I still have a few favors to ask of you, Poldi: please send a voucher for a shirt and trousers for my uniform.
2. some cigarettes
3. some onions and butter and maybe something else to eat. There’s not much to eat around here.* And let me hear from you soon! Please thank Müller especially, who is probably taking care of Strolchi [the Squadron dog]. Is Eckleben back yet? [He had been on furlough.]

Best wishes and good luck
Yours, H. Schumann

*The food situation is already critical in some parts of Germany.
_______________________________________________________

4 April 1943: It’s Armed Forces Day today, and for this reason, even the English paid us a visit today, trying to drop bombs on our heads during lunch. Two English bombers got shot down.

I’ve flown two attacks since we got back here (to Caen): on 1 April we attacked Ventnor, where again, I took a couple of photographs this time, and yesterday, a big attack on the city of Eastbourne. Although we caught them napping on the 1st, we came under a lot of English anti-aircraft fire yesterday. On the 1st, I shot up a moving automobile travelling along the country road until it caught fire.

Ventnor immediately before the attack, April 1, 1943, and after the attack (below)

Yesterday, we had to put some of the anti-aircraft positions out of action with our cannons and machine guns before we could attack the city. In doing so, I received three direct hits in the the fuselage and tail of my plane. These must have been the last three shots that gun ever fired, though, since my cannons did a nice piece of work on it. Our bombs were very effective. Very shortly after the attack, the whole town was cloaked in smoke and grime. Unfortunately, my plane was so badly shot up that it crash-landed in the sea shortly before we reached our own coastline.

Eastbourne on April 3, 1943 (above and below)

We finally got magnificent spring weather today, very good if you want to go walking, but too good if you have to go on a mission. The park is beautifully green. I wonder what it looks like in Germany? Perhaps I'll make it home again in the summer, what do you think?

8 April 1943: It was really hot during the last few missions, every time. We attacked the biggest city on the Isle of Wight yesterday, Newport. But we dropped all our bombs under heavy flak, and they all scored direct hits. Unfortunately, another two of us got shot down. (According to the casualty list, it must have been Uffz. Günter Eschenhorn and Uffz. Rudolf Radlewski). On the way back, we had to deal with a few English fighters (Typhoons) and came home bathed in sweat. The missions aren’t getting any easier, quite the contrary, but our reprisals are making themselves felt, as the English themselves admit.

14 April 1943: We’re receiving frequent visits from "the other side" now. They attacked us twice yesterday afternoon, in two equal attacks. But apart from a few window panes, there wasn’t much damage. At the same, some pretty fierce and hectic dogfights between English and German escorting fighter planes took place right over our heads. This was the first time I was able to observe planes getting shot down while watching from the ground. For our ground personnel it was really something. They do nothing but get our planes ready for action, after all, and they take great care to make sure everything is working as it should. But they were never able to participate in our successes personally. So they cheered like mad at every Spitfire they saw spiralling down and exploding in flames.

 Poldi's mechanic Gefreiter (Aircraftman 1st Class) Thielen, affectionately known as "Pipifax."

10 May 1943: We haven’t flown any missions in the last few days, but we’ve been in the air a lot, mostly practice missions, testing various kinds of new and different and smaller bombs, almost always dropping them at low altitude or practice attacks on paratroopers; a type of maneuver. The weather is sometimes very good, but there’s a big storm going on now, sometimes with gusts of about 100 km per hour wind. It’s unbelievable the way you get knocked around by these gusts in a plane.

I had to go pick up my squadron pullover today. That’s a white woolen sweater with our squadron insignia, the red fox, on the left breast; they look very good. At any rate, only four of us are supposed to wear it at first, since they were lent to us by a committee. You’d think they had nothing better to do, but it‘s great fun anyway.

One of us got the German cross in gold today, naturally it had to be celebrated as it deserved, and did we!

16 May 1943: Nothing new on the Western front, you might say. That’s the way it’s been with us; in any case, we haven’t flown any missions. But in exchange we went through several aerial attacks recently. Just yesterday, I had just gotten to town and was at the Front book shop, when our position was attacked again. My office looks like hell. But overall most of the damage is slight. We’ve been having up to three air alerts a day sometimes; mostly false alarms. But whatever we’re not doing now,  we’ll make up for it when the time comes.

18 May 1943: We had to endure a whole series of heavy attacks in the past few days. We were  lucky nothing worse happened, but it’s a miserable feeling to lie there in the dirt and be unable to defend yourself when they’re shooting all around you.

23 May 1943: After a long period of inactivity we flew a few large-scale attacks again today and I was one of the first ones there with my squadron (I’ve been made squadron leader in the meantime). The attack on the city of Bournemouth was very effective, we dropped large numbers of bombs and did a lot of damage. Of course, the English flak tried to get a word in edgewise but we answered back smartly with our cannons and machine guns. We were pursued by four Spitfires but there was no aerial combat. This attack made a big impression on our young aviators in particular, and they were appropriately enthusiastic. We were unfortunately not in a position to celebrate properly with cakes and coffee, because we’ve got to be ready for action, but we’ll make up for it when we get a chance.

Attack on Bournemouth on May 23rd (above and below) - notice the smoke.

I got a magnificent fur vest as a present from a well-known major (Heinz Schumann) a short time ago. I’ll send it home some time.

25 May 1943: We made a surprise appearance back over on the other side of the Channel with a big squadron of planes today about noontime, and attacked the city of Brighton with heavy bombs. In doing so we blew up two gas works with a total of five gas containers. Those were some real fireworks, I can tell you! You could see the black pall of smoke far out over the ocean. The flak was very accurate though, but we got off with surprisingly little damage and we shot them up quite nicely with our cannons.

The city of Brighton on May 25th (above) and the Gas Works (below) which Poldi and his squadron blew up.

29 May 1943: The 25th of May attack on Brighton must have done a lot of damage, since the English are still screaming about it today. They paid us a return visit today, we really had to hit the dirt. It made a lot of noise, of course, but when it was all over the damage wasn’t half as bad as we had feared at first. In any case, we suffered no casualties and that’s the main thing. Next time we pay them a visit, it’ll be a different story, we’ll really give it to them.

1 June 1943: About noon day before yesterday we carried out a very heavy attack against Torquay. As with every large-scale attack, we really gave it to them. The English flak was really up to scratch, and gave us a hard time. Then we had some aerial combat, first with English, and then American, fighters. I left a good comrade behind on this mission, too. We’ve taken our revenge, though! Yesterday morning, the tommies tried to tear up our position. Once again, we hit the dirt, and when everything was all right again and we had put out the fires, we could see that really there wasn’t too much damage.

The pictures from Torquay on May 30th (above and below) are very clear but don't show the damage done.

So to pay them back for their little visit, we paid them another courtesy call, with a big squadron, just for company. Just as we got to the English coast I saw a 4-motored flying boat. We shot at it, but didn’t have any time to stick around, otherwise we would have given them a good hiding. We had our bombs to drop, after all. Then the fun started. At St. Catherinas Point (Isle of Wight) I scored a direct hit on a fuel or ammunition warehouse. In any case, the whole kit and kaboodle blew up with huge jets of flame. We then attacked a couple of targets with cannon and machine gun, and raked a radio station. The flak was a bit lively and shot at us as we flew away. English fighter planes came up after us, but were too late. In any case, this mission was one we all enjoyed; anyhow we did our job for today.

Encountering the lighthouse at St. Catherine's Point (above) on June 1st mission, and also a British plane (below).

4 June 1943: We attacked Eastbourne again about noon today, with heavy forces, flying low level, doing considerable damage, although the flak was shooting significantly better than usual. I received a 2 cm direct hit behind the motor, putting a hole all the way through the plane. Several of my instruments quit working and I got a little splinter in my right lower thigh which remains there, someplace. First I felt a violent impact, and after that I had enough to worry about just with my wound, but I was able to get home safely.

A 2nd mission against Eastbourne on June 4th; in the picture below smoke can be seen rising in several locations.

I’m taking photographs on each mission now, and will send the pictures home when I get a chance. Our park is very beautiful now, only the grass has grown too high, but nobody around here cares about that.

14 June 1943: Dear Mother! I would like to wish you all my love and fondest greetings, and I hope you will be able to celebrate this birthday very many times yet and in good health. I would also like to express my belated best wishes to my little brother [Gerhard Adolf], who proudly celebrated his “Fourth Jubilee” a few days ago. I completely forgot to wish you a joyful Pentecost, but I only noticed it was Pentecost when other people told me about it. Anyway I hope you enjoyed a very happy couple of days during the holiday.

Everything is all right with me here, only there’s a lot to do. Day before yesterday, we had yet another heavy English air attack. Two English bombers were shot down in flames by our flak. No casualties here. I hope all is well with you. Now, dear parents, heart-felt greetings from your Bibi.
N.B (last letter from France).

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The mission on 4 June 1943 was also Poldi’s last combat flight on the Channel coast and the letter to his mother dated 14 June 1943 was the last one from France, since he was transferred to Sicily on 15 June 1943. To be continued ....

February 22,2014

From whence comes the intense historical attacks on “the German people,” and why? Is it purely because of economic competition, or is there another level involved? Retired professor Andreas Wesserle talks about the genocidal residential bombing of Germany planned out by Winston Churchill and his "scientific advisor"Dr. F.  Lindemann (Lord Cherwell), whom also went after thousands of irreplaceable cultural-historical landmarks in some of the oldest German cities. Some highlights of the discussion:

• The British Mosquito 2-engine fighter-bomber had the capacity to fly all the way to Germany and back, and outfly all German fighters at the time – thus the heavy bombers were not needed;
• Erich Kern in the Swiss newspaper Die Tat in 1955 put the number of German civilian dead due to air attacks at 2 million, 5 thousand.
• Initially, the Americans were only bombing legitimate war targets, like the Messerschmitt factory outside of Regensburg in 1943, but later also became genocidal;
• Ernst Heinkel, though a racial Jew, built some of the best aircraft used by the Luftwaffe and was awarded the German Natl. Prize for Art and Science in 1938;
• The fate of the Eastern Jews: some came West, a million more in the Soviet east were dispatched by Stalin to Siberia;
• The “Sophie Scholl fable” similar to the Anne Frank romantic stories;
• Hans Scholl and the half-Russian Alexander Schmorell wrote pamphlets under the banner of the White Rose Society with text suspiciously similar to Soviet propaganda and the Nuremburg Tribunal findings.

Image: Carpet bombing of the Munich Bogenhausen residential district in background, with St. Peter's at right foreground (Munich's oldest and most important parish) already gutted.(click to enlarge) More Munich pictureshere, hereandhere.