Poldi Wenger's "beautiful" plane after being destroyed in an air attack and fire while parked in Marsa del Oro, Sicily on July 7, 1943

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

Notes from Poldi's brother, Willy Wenger:
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 June1943.

After the death of Hauptmann Frank LIESENDAHL, Oberleutnant Fritz SCHRÖTER took over command of the 10th Jagdgeschwader (Day Fighter Wing) JG 2 until 31 December 1942, after which Hauptmann Heinz SCHUMANN took over in April 1943 following SCHRÖTER’s transfer to Tunisia. In the meantime, the following name changes were made:

The 10th /JG 2 (Jagdgeschwader– Fighter-Bomber Wing) was renamed the 13th/ SKG10(Schnellkampfgeschwader - Fast Bomber Wing)

Squadron Commander - Lieutenant Poldi WENGER

The 10th /JG 26 and the 10th /JG 54 were renamed the 14th/ SKG10

Squadron Commander – Lieutenant Colonel Erwin BUSCH

The newly appointed 15th/SKG10

Squadron Commander - Lieutenant Erhard NIPPA

The three squadrons formed the Second Group (Gruppe) of SKG10, the name of which was changed, as of December 1942, over the course of a reorganisation of the close combat flier units, to SG10(Schlachtgeschwader– Ground Attack Wing)

Group Commander – Hauptmann Heinz SCHUMANN

Transfer to SICILY

Take-off on 15.6.1943 at 13h53 with stopovers in Bourges, Istres and Albenga (near Allassio, Italy) on 16.6. to Pratrica di Mare near Rome. After refuelling, off to Capodichino near Naples on 17.6 over the Straits of Messina and Catania to Gerbini-West.

Throughout the entire stretch of 2,270 kilometers, Poldi’s first maintenance engineer Thielen had to sit crammed into the baggage compartment directly behind the pilot’s seat and must have needed a lot of endurance to sit hunched up in this cramped compartment for hours.

Taking off from the foot of Mount Aetna, they flew the first dive bomber and high-altitude bombing attacks against large Allied convoys in the Mediterranean and achieved great results. They bombed harbor installations on the island of Pantelleria from a VERY high altitude. The whole group flew hard missions against Allied invasion troops, particularly around Gela, achieving the first tank kill and damaging several landing craft. -WW

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17 June 1943 : I’m now sitting at the foot of Mount Aetna. So I’ve really left the land of the great flesh pots now, at least temporarily. I have a wonderful journey behind me and I’ve already seen a lot of new and interesting things. I was able to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa from the air, even if only very briefly. In Naples, on the other hand, I was able to spend more time, lived in a first-class hotel there. I didn’t find it as beautiful as people always described it as being, though. Vesuvius, as usual, had its peak hidden in the clouds.

Naples, Italy - Different, but not as beautiful as Poldi expected.

Group Commander Hptm. Schumann looks out at the harbor.

View of Naples as seen from a picture-taking location, in June 1943.

A street in Naples, in June 1943

On the 15th, that is, yesterday, I flew from Caen to Bourges (310 Km). After lunch, around 14h53, I took off again and landed 490 km away in Istres. Along the way, I flew over the exact same spot where I smashed my plane to pieces in an emergency landing in a mountain meadow 7 months before.

Around 17h52, I took off from southern France over the Cote d’Azur and landed 262 km [away] near San Remo. The very next morning I was off again, along the Italian Riviera, past Genoa, and southwards along the boot, past Pisa, Grosetto, to Pratica di mare near Rome, where I landed at 11h53, after flying 523 km, after a 70 minute flight. Towards evening I flew back to Capodichino, near Naples, 180 km away, where I landed around 7h30 in the evening.

This afternoon, we flew from Naples to Gerbini West, where I landed after an 85-minute flight, a distance of 505 km, over the Strait of Messina and Catania.

So I got here yesterday, on the 16th. It’s Mom’s birthday today. I sent her my best wishes in a letter a few days ago, I hope she got to Gleichenberg safely.

It’s fiendishly hot here and, at the same time, people say it ought to be cool. Good job, we got light-weight tropical clothing. Nobody lives around here, for miles around. A good thing in a way, but there’s a water shortage. There’s nowhere near enough water for us. I live in a barracks in the middle of an olive grove, but I’ll have to move into a tent soon, since it’s too hot in the barracks.

The pilots in their tropical uniforms (Poldi 3rd from left), June 17, 1943 (above) and living among the Almond trees (below)

Sicilian landscape near Gerbini, Sicily in June 1943.

Poldi Wenger talks to an odd-looking group of youths on the airfield in Sicily in June 1943.

19 June 1943: It’s a little cooler in my little hut this afternoon. It’s monstrously boring for the moment. So here I am, sitting in my little shack in the semi-darkness, because if you went outside you’d get heatstroke. It’s dusty, too. The transition from the climate on the Channel coast to what we’ve got here was probably too sudden for me.

____________

[Transfer to another location always causes a few problems. If the whole unit gets transferred, the pilots don’t have so many problems, because they’ve got their planes there, right where they’re supposed to be. But the technical ground personnel have a harder time of it, who have to travel overland, which often takes days, by train or by truck. A pilot can’t fly without his maintenance engineers and mechanics—the availability of a maintenance engineer is the one single most important thing in keeping the plane in good condition and ready for action. That’s the alpha and omega of flying, so to speak. After the transfer from northern France to Sicily, though, it still took a long time for the ground personnel to get here. Of course, a new location almost always has some technical personnel from another unit, but every pilot swears by his own maintenance engineer.

So Poldi, without further ado, simply crammed his 1st maintenance engineer, Obergreiter Thielen—affectionately known as “Pipifax”—into the small luggage compartment behind his pilot’s seat, where he sat all hunched up throughout the entire duration of the 2,270 km journey. One would require the patience of a fakir to sit in this cramped position for hours. Fortunately, Poldi had already performed this experiment on a 300 km flight during a transfer from Caen to Coxyed. Later, in Sicily, Poldi took his 1st maintenance engineer with him in precisely this same way on all his transfer flights. -WW]

"Pipifax"(Thielen), who took care of Poldi's plane, traveled with him whenever he changed locations, crammed into the baggage compartment.

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22 June 1943: The climate here is said to be worse than in North Africa. So it caught us all by surprise, in some cases with serious consequences. Some of us spend a lot of time in bed with fever and stomach cramps. I’m feeling better today. But I can’ t eat anything except cakes, chocolate and tea. I can’t keep anything else down. And this murderous heat is really enough to finish you off.  It’s already 80 or 90 degrees in the plane. The first few times I felt faint as soon as I got out of my plane after flying. I know the island pretty well now. I’ve been getting around quite a bit. It’s barren, mountainous country; there aren’t this many savage, arid mountains even in the Alps.

Happily, I’ve just about gotten over my tropical staggers. I’ve gotten over my rubber knees and dizzy feeling since yesterday and I’m getting ravenously hungry. The heat hasn’t let up in the slightest and reaches incredible temperatures around noon, so that it’s impossible to leave the shadows of the olive and almond trees.

I flew my first mission here yesterday afternoon. We attacked an American convoy off the North African coast, off Cape Mostafa (near Bone) with everything we had. We were quite successful. I personally attacked a 7,000 British ton freighter, got it right in my sights and hit it hard. The flak was just like what you often see in the newsreels. So I saw the African coast yesterday for the first time. I also saw the Italian island of Pantelleria from the air yesterday.

29 June 1943: We were very busy again yesterday. Around noon I flew a reconnaissance mission in the Gulf of Tunis and towards Pantelleria, and in the afternoon we attacked the harbor and landing strip of Pantelleria with heavy forces. Again, it was a proud feeling for us when we saw nothing but our own fighters and bombers all around us. The English fighters kept a careful distance and did not attack us although we were flying very boldly.

And then all hell broke loose. We dove on our targets from a great height (5,000 meters) and hit all our targets. But the flak was very heavy and quite accurate. We got used to that a long time ago and we don’t let it bother us. I hope the English will land soon, so we can give them a good hiding.

8 July 1943: Once again I am able to say that we’ve just had another couple of exciting days. We got attacked from the air in a way you really can’t begin to imagine. They gave us no rest, either day or night. On 6 July, I took a direct hit in aerial combat with American fighter and bomber units and had to change planes. The next morning, as I was flying another mission, my good old plane was completely destroyed in a low-level attack on our position. My plane got burned, including my fur jacket. I’m back on the mainland now, in southern Italy.

Poldi's Fw 190 destroyed in an air attack on 7-7-43, during which it caught on fire. The plane was damaged on the 6th in combat, thus he was flying another plane while this one was parked.

Oberleutnant Holzapfel sitting by his grass-covered plane two days before he was killed. July 1943, Sicily.

12 July 1943: (Marsa del Oro) We’ve been fighting all around the island for three days now! Our troops have been involved in heavy fighting and we are supporting them as best we can, with everything we have. We’ve been flying continuous missions against the Americans and giving it to them in the neck. This morning, once again, we tore hell out of an American tank column. It makes you feel good to think how much we’re helping our own infantry. I got hit hard, a direct hit, but got back to base safely despite everything. The English ground troops are getting worn down almost everywhere.

I’m quite glad to be back in good health. I had a beautiful tent camp built and I’m living there quite comfortably. I am very glad to get out of those miserable barracks. But the English air attacks have left things in a bit of a mess for the moment.
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[Among other things, one gathers from Poldi’s flight log book that he flew 4 missions on 7 July against Allied landing craft near Cape Muro, one of them towards evening near Gela, where the Americans succeeded in establishing a bridgehead. On 11 July, he flew 6 missions in the area near and around Gela, destroying the first tank, a railway bridge and shooting up units in the Straits, near Floridia. There was heavy aerial combat.

They were all flying again the next day, before 6 in the morning. The American landing parties were marching with heavy tank units from Gela in the direction of Ragusa. Light anti-aircraft guns were firing heavily. The second attack took place at 8 hours against vehicles in the railway station at Vittoria, during which his plane received 3 direct machine-gun hits. After all these attacks there was repeated aerial combat against Spitfires and Lightnings. Poldi lost his FW 190 when it was destroyed by American low-level fliers on 12 or 13 July.

The Allies were advancing with such superior numbers that they were gaining ground very quickly, despite heavy defensive action by German and Italian units. American air superiority was very hard to deal with and the bombardments went on around the clock. So the order came to vacate the island on 13 July. Poldi must have already been on his way to Munich by this time, where he had to remain for several days (presumably because of bad weather). He appears to have been given a new fighter plane at around this time. -WW]
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17 July 1943: I visited the House of German Art yesterday and wandered around town a little bit. My lodgings in the “Bayrischer Hof“ Hotel are perfectly magnificent. But I’ve already got to go back down south this afternoon.

20 July 1943: My beautiful days in Munich are over. I took off from Munich on Saturday, 17 July and flew over the Alps with very good visibility. I also got good views of Innsbruck, the Brenner Pass, and Bozen from the air. When I got to my destination, I was having pain in my left knee. It soon got so bad that I couldn’t sleep, so I went limping to the Doctor late in the afternoon.

But he couldn’t tell me much about what was wrong, so he bandaged it and ordered me to go to bed and rest. Today, my leg, from the foot to the knee was so badly swollen that I could no longer straighten my leg. I can no longer walk except by hopping on one leg. Nobody can tell me what’s wrong. Now
they want to send me to a military hospital in Rome. And all this at a time when every man is urgently needed!

Last night I went through what was the toughest and most violent air attack I ever experienced. Hopping on one leg, I managed to reach a rubbish pit where I dug myself into the rubbish and filth as best I could with the help of an old tin can I found. The bombs were dropping so thick and fast all around me that I had the impression that I could no longer hear them when they hit the dirt nearby; rather, I could only feel the tremendous, appalling shock waves churning the air. I got thrown into a stone wall. When it was all over I looked like a pig and stank like mad; my clothes were torn completely to pieces, and I was covered with cuts. Of course, this wasn’t so good for my foot, either.

Now I’m lying in bed and hope the shamans can fix me up soon so I can be back in action. I’m waiting for the mail and feeling increasingly impatient. I hope it hasn’t all been destroyed.

__________________________________________

[Poldi told me that it was unbearably hot in the cockpit, so he had his technician install a small ventilation flap, enabling him to regulate the amount of fresh air by means of a small slider. This must have had the effect, however, of exposing the knee to too much cold air, causing his disability.

A telegram caused some confusion in the family. The telegram confirmed that Poldi had been confined to a military hospital in KONSTANZA, which, as everybody knows, is on the Black Sea. It was a mistake in the address, and it soon turned out that he was in Constance, on the Bodensee. -WW]

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In the military hospital at Konstanz am Bodensee 

Click to enlarge

28 July 1943: After a short stay in the military hospital in Rome, and after an aspiration of the joint, I was put on a hospital train to Germany and ended up here, in Konstanz. The 48-hour journey was horrible and I’m glad to have a little peace here. The pain has eased somewhat, except that the leg is still very badly swollen all the way up to the knee, and I can hardly move.

Otherwise, it’s quite beautiful here, but for the time being I won’t be able to see much of it. I’ve got a double room with a lieutenant, but I’m alone a lot, so I get a lot of rest, which is what I need.

1 August 1943: Not much has changed in my situation. I’m still lying in bed with a splint on my leg, and underwent aspiration of the joint day before yesterday, for the third time. I’ve had all sorts of medications and injections Every time I ask the head doctor what’s wrong with me, he shrugs his shoulders and says I must wait a while and leave my leg alone, don’t strain it, but let it rest. And in actual fact, when I lie perfectly still, I don’t feel any pain at all, only I mustn’t touch the knee or even bend it. I can get up but I can’t use my left leg for anything.

So I’ve been lying here in my hospital bed for days, and every day is like every other: breakfast at 6 hours, then it’s visiting time. Around 10 hours we get something to eat again, and 12 hours it’s lunch, after which my roommate leaves the hospital to visit his family, who live around here; he only gets back about 22 hours. He got shot in the pelvis and he’s been here six months and is now allowed to walk a little bit.

The monotony is broken by a snack in the afternoon and dinner around 18 hours; then comes the endless night. I can hardly sleep. So I doze until morning with the help of a few morphium injections. And then it starts all over again: lying still, eating, drinking, and doing nothing. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if this goes on much longer. I already told the doctor that. In the meantime, it’s magnificent summer weather outside. Grumbling won’t help, though. When I get out of here, I’m sure they’ll give me a few days off to see my family.

It would be nice if somebody from the family could come visit but it’s probably too inconvenient at this time. It must be rather difficult to find a place to stay around here, because so many families have moved here after being bombed out, to find a new place to live and escape the bombings. –I just talked to a nurse. She could find a room for my family for a few days, she would just have to know when they were coming with enough advance notice.

5 August 1943:  I fought a very successful defensive action today. The doctor wanted to put a plaster cast on me, but I started talking and getting a little bit mutinous, until he saw that a split would be just as good, even better, in my case.

Since I’m alone most of the time, I managed to get a radio today, which helps me pass the long days. I’m very dissatisfied with myself, so much so that I could kick myself. It’s all because I have to lie around all the time. I tried to sleep through the night without sleeping medication. It was bad; every ten minutes I was fully awake again. I think the longer I lie here the worse it will get. For the moment, I’m trying to get in touch with my unit again. But I haven’t been able to get through so far. I ought to
try to get transferred to a backup unit, but that’s no good for me. Thank God I’ve got good connections, that ought to help me get back to my old unit.

11 August 1943: Willy arrived here safely and he seems to like it a lot in Konstanz. Despite his telegram, I was very surprised that he was still able to make it here, even it was 22 hours. So he’s visiting me every afternoon. I’m also feeling better after my throat inflammation, although I could hardly talk to Willy. The suppuration from my knee joint has abated somewhat. The only thing the doctor won’t let me do is get up. But I hope it will all be over soon.

There’s no question of a transfer to Gleichenberg for the moment, since it takes at least three or four weeks for an application to be processed. I hope to be fit to travel by then, so as to be able to drive to Gleichenberg for my last outpatient treatment. That would help me get out of the military hospital as quickly as possible.

16 August 1943: I just learned that I’m going to be transferred to a Luftwaffe military hospital as soon as I can travel (without assistance). So nothing has come of Gleichenberg. I’ll have to choose between Nuremberg and Munich. I do a little bit of exercise in bed; chest expander, throwing a 5 kg medicine ball around, and so on. So my flabby muscles are getting back in shape again.

18 August 1943: Well, on top of everything else, now I’ve got jaundice! Now I’ll have to lie here even longer!. But I’m doing all I can to get well again.

4 September 1943: For a few days now, when nobody’s looking, I’ve been trying to bend my leg again and take a few steps. I’ve made a lot of progress very quickly, and today, the doctor told me I could try to get out of bed, very slowly and carefully, and sit at the table. I would have laughed if he’d only known! – Now I’m sitting here at the table like an old grandfather and I ate my first meal at the table today!!! I’ve been told that my jaundice is all over now. I almost jumped out of bed from sheer joy. It’s really something to be able to get out of bed again after almost 7 weeks. Of course, I can’t do
anything with my leg yet, but I’m very glad to have made as much progress as I have.

6 September 1943: I’m hobbling around the countryside on crutches now. Of course, I’m not supposed to leave my room, but I already wandered around the military hospital a couple of times. I want to see the park first, and I’m very happy to be able to be outside. Hope the weather stays like this. The fall colors are slowly making their appearance.

Apparently Mom traveled to see her son during this time and took this picture of the unhappy patient on 9 September, 1943.

10 September 1943: Hopefully Mom will soon have recovered from the hardships of the long journey (Leoben-Konstanz and back). I’d like to hear how she liked Munich. I can easily imagine that the visits were tiring in such a short time.

My leg is gradually getting stronger. Today I tried to stand on just one leg, the bad one. I could only hold the position for a couple of seconds, then my leg got jumpy. Now I’m walking around on one crutch, in order to strengthen the weak leg by main force. I still can’t move my knee, but what I can is enough so I can sit in a plane!

I still don’t know when this will be all over, but I hope, very soon; I might get straight out of here, without having to stay in a Luftwaffe military hospital. Nobody knows exactly. I’ve got a new doctor now. I left the military hospital this afternoon to walk around in the park for an hour (with one crutch). It wasn’t as easy as it looked at first. But it was wonderful anyway, just to see the sky after so many weeks house arrest.

16 September 1943: I’m feeling very well by now. I wanted to see the shore of the lake for once, yesterday evening, but I got lost and suddenly ended up at the Rhein Bridge and saw the town for the first time. It was a bit difficult on crutches, and I’ve got enough calluses and blisters on my hands to prove it.

Despite it all, I was right back outside this afternoon. The little town was just as beautiful as Willy had described it to me. Unfortunately, I’m not making any more progress with my knee. But I hope that I’ll soon be strong enough to be discharged, on my feet and even with a stiff knee, since I’ve had enough of being laid up. I’m getting another room mate tomorrow.

20 September 1943: I got the three little packages just today, the cakes were a little bit moldy after the long journey, but that’s all right. My appetite is as good as ever and I eat tremendous amounts every day. The last time I got weighed, I weighed 56 kilos again. I always get extra portions from the kitchen. People have noticed what a huge appetite I have.

My knee is already worrying me a lot, though. I’m getting short wave radiation treatment now, and a black ointment on it at night. In the morning I get a hot bath first thing, then hot air treatment and finally short wave radiation treatment every other day and underwater massage twice a week. I’m also exercising quite diligently. I’ve actually gotten much stronger; I notice that during my daily chest expansion exercises.

I’ve already been to the lake a couple of times and caught a hearty cold from it. In the meantime I’ve got a new room mate; he was on the Eastern front and is from Konstanz, so he’s at home here. This evening we both want to go to the cinema to the see the “Münchhausen” film, which is in color.

22 September 1943: My pullover finally got here. I got a lot of mail today, all addressed to me in Sicily. Letters from June and July.

Leaving Lake Constance, September 29, 1943

To be continued ... Officers Hospital in Vienna and then to Lemberg (Lviv)

Feb. 24, 2014

Margaret Huffstickler guides us through more of the research by Vincent Reynouard, this time on the Gestapo in occupied France.

• Even the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 could not find any grounds to declare the Gestapo a “criminal organization” until Sept. 1939;
• In the German-occupied territories everything was blamed on the Gestapo, as if they were omnipotent, yet there were only 160 Gestapo personnel (of all types) in France;
• Reinhard Heydrich ordered that torture could not be used to obtain confessions, and only the more mild forms to gain vital, life-saving information;
• Not one single German order for torture has ever been produced;
• The war against Germany conducted by the Allies was a war of extermination from the beginning, and that was also the purpose of the “Unconditional Surrender” demand;
• The Gestapo behavior toward women and girls was always correct – notwithstanding the pornographic books, comics and images flooding the marketplace, specialized in mostly by Jews.
• The Barnes Review revisionist magazine “half-price subscription” special: $23 for one year (6 issues), call 1-877-773-9077.
  

March 15, 2014

British Nationalist Richard Edmonds joins Carolyn to discuss the causes of WWI and, in particular, Britain’s role in bringing about this devastating event that ushered in even worst disasters in its wake.  We also discuss the White Man’s March which took place today, with Paul Hickman calling in the 2nd hour with a report of his activities in Birmingham, England. Some highlights of this interesting discussion:

• Britain became a more war-like country after the Norman invasion of William the Conqueror in the 11th Century;
• Britain declared war on Germany in both World Wars;
• In 1922, the British government officially apologized to the German Army for the atrocity propaganda lies put out during the war, shocking the American public who felt “used”;
• What happened in the 20th Century was a huge betrayal of the trust of the patriotic citizens by the British establishment, on an unprecedented scale -Edmonds;
• What is the purpose for desiring a society made up of a 1% fabulously wealthy “overclass”, a 3% criminal “underclass”, and a 40% “middle class” of working people supporting the rest;
• The holocaust lie (which must be defeated) was created at the Nuremberg Tribunal, which some American jurists called a “lynch mob”;
• Richard describes some of the torture carried out on German POW’s to get them to confess to crimes they didn’t commit;
• Demonization of patriots began in earnest after WWII by calling them “Nazis” and bringing up the “Holocaust”;
• Paul brings up National-Socialist Germany’s independence from the Central Banking System as a cause for WWII.
  

Any new writing from Jürgen Graf is to be celebrated. In the following you'll find Graf's famously incisive style is as fit as ever. So read, learn and enjoy! -Carolyn

Introduction to the German translation of
Douglas Reed’s book
“The Controversy of Zion”
By Jürgen Graf

1. The Controversy of Zion

Douglas Reeds monumental work has two evident weaknesses which should be pointed out from the outset:

Reeds references are insufficient. For example, the title of Josef Kastein's “History and Destiny of the Jews” (1933), his most frequently quoted source, does not appear anywhere in the original English text; he simply keeps mentioning “Dr. Kastein's book”, and leaves it to the reader to find the title in the (surprisingly meager) bibliography in the appendix. In such cases I, as the translator, could correct that and insert the relevant book titles in the text. I could not find out on which page the quotations in question are to be found, for such information is not to be found in Reed's text, and the purchase of the original texts would have involved unreasonable expenses. Similarly with the newspaper articles: here one must be content when Reed mentions the name of the newspaper in question, and ideally also the date on which the quoted article was published. Often he gives as his source “A South African newspaper” which makes it impossible to trace the quotation.

In the frequent quotations from The Old Testament, especially in the first chapter, Reed typically mentions that it comes from, for example, “The Book of Leviticus” of “from The Book of Ezekiel”.  As a translation back from the English text was out of the question, I spent many days in finding the passages in question, and thus got to know The Old Testament better.

Reed delivers a wealth of information on the methods by which Zionist Jewry gained its overwhelming political influence during the 20th century, so that at some point it could control the top politicians in “the free world” almost at will, but he leaves out completely one central aspect - the economic one. We hear nothing about the sources of the enormous sums at the disposal of the Zionist leaders to further their agenda (including bribing of politicians).  He does not mention at all such important questions as the roots of the Jewish financial power or the fundamental difference between the productive capitalism of, for example, Henry Ford who created workplaces and produced goods that served the common good, and the parasitic financial capitalism of, for example, the Rothschild family which used, and still uses, money as a means of acquiring enormous riches through speculations at the stock exchanges.

These were the weaknesses of Reeds work. What about its strengths which aroused my admiration, and moved me to immediately accept the offer of translating it into German, already after the first cursory reading? Please continue reading the entire Introduction at the website controversyofzion.info

March 29, 2014

The malaise of Whitescan be attributed to our susceptibility to attacks on our virtue, mainly driven by Jewish interests that control vast segments of society, such as media, religion and education. To defend ourselves we need a tough skin and a deep loyalty to our folk. Some highlights:

• The contradictions of Russia, and the emigration of Russians into Western Europe;
• The different cultures within the White race, and how that can affect following a single, central leadership;
• The royal family of Russia (the Romanovs) were actually of German blood; even the Bulgarian and Albanian monarchs took German, Italian and Spanish wives;
• Kevin MacDonald’s identification of “moral legitimacy” as the main problem White’s have is spot-on, but how we demonstrate our “goodness” is debatable;
• Jews and non-Whites are unceasingly at work trying to instill guilt in Whites – we can only counter it by believing we are intrinsically good;
• Dr. Rafael Medoff, a true rat-faced jew, accuses Roosevelt’s ambassador to Germany Thomas Dodd of antisemitism for using the words ‘Chosen People’ in a private letter in 1934;
• The Eugenic Movement should be defended as good across the board, as a right of every people to improve itself.

Image:Booklet given to German boys and girls when they finished basic school - summarizes concepts as folk, fatherland, Reich, race, duty, comradeship and patriotism. Part of their duty was to find the right mate and create at least four children.

March 31, 2014

Dr. Andreas Wesserle calls in (on my invitation, but I missed his email answer), so the topic of the program reverted to the previous idea of understanding Slavism in relation to the East-West divide. Some highlights from an information -packed program:

• 22 million people were expelled from Eastern Europe and in the Baltics – 16 million of them German – in 1944-45;
• 7 million of the 16 million Germans died, more than the famous 6 million jews number;
• U.S. is main expansive element in the world today, in league with Wall St. and NATO;
• Russia is too weak to challenge the United States at the present time, but many Slavs still dream of dominating Europe;
• Slavs are divided into two Christian groups: the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox;
• Russian tourists go to the eastern part of Germany because they still consider it “theirs”;
• How and by whom can the entire White Aryan population be united?

Click Image to enlarge: East Slavs: Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians; West Slavs: Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lusatians (Sorbs); South Slavs: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Bulgars

This is a bi-lingual video from Vincent Reynouard. The narration is in French, with English sub-titles.

Argument #1 - At Nuremberg, the existence of the "gas chambers" was never demonstrated.

April 7, 2014

Tanstaafl, Paul Hickman, Ray Goodwin and I discussed the issue that moral legitimacy is taken, not given;  the sensitive Russia-Ukraine-Crimea situation; Israeli efforts to have Jewish U.S. spy Jonathan Pollard released from U.S. incarceration. Main topics:

• Ways White guilt can be thrown off  by seeing it as having no legitimate basis;
• Jewish aggression against us comes from the Christian Churches as much as from the TV, according to our panel;
• Is Russia’s President Putin one of us or one of them;
• The strategic importance of Crimea and the craziness of another war between closely related White people;
• Why freeing Jonathan Pollard is of paramount importance to the Israelis despite the fact it could be bad public relations;
• “Disparate Impact” federal school program continues the attack on white schoolchildren – what will be the result?

Image: No matter how "good" you are, you're still bad, White person.

April 24, 2014

Above: Despatch dog brings hot rations and bullets to WWI soldiers holding on to an outlying German position. How sweet is this? Click to enlarge.

Ray Goodwin and Carolyn Yeager read and comment on the Sept.  25 to early October, 1941 dinner table monologues by the German Führer, as taken down by an adjutant and checked for accuracy by Martin Bormann. Main topics in this episode:

• Life is a cruel struggle

• Soldiering makes a man

• Vienna's art treasures

• Antonescu of Germanic origin

• National types of Christians, and more.
  

The edition being used was translated by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, published by Enigma Books, New York, and can be found as a pdf here.

May 5, 2014

Carolyn's guest is Margaret Huffstickler, a Germanophile and singer who tells us about the most popular song of WWII, Lili Marleen, and how English translations don't do it justice. We hear 3 versions of the song. Also discussed:

• Is Putin "helping his people" by signing into law the punishment of 5-years imprisonment for denying the findings of the Nuremberg IMT in Russia;
• Rialto Unified School District under fire for assigning a holocaust debate research paper to eigth-graders;
• A closer look at the European Knights Project and its promotion of "national" nationalism for European states, while dismissing White Nationalism;
• Famous and beloved women of great accomplishment who did not have children;
• Rodney Martin's refusal to honor Fredrick Toben's request to remove his name from Rodney's ANA-ANN Board of Directors "Bio."
  

Putin, during a meeting with leaders of Armenia, Tajikistan, Kyrgzstan and Belarus on May 8, 2014, warns of growing Militant Nationalism and "Nazi" Ideology in Europe

MOSCOW, May 8 (RIA Novosti) – Militant nationalism, which has led to the appearance of Nazi ideology, is raising its head in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

“Here and there militant nationalism is again raising its head, the same kind that brought on the appearance of Nazi ideology,” Putin said during a meeting with the leaders of Armenia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus.

[For those who have been cheering Putin on, what is Golden Dawn in Greece but "militant nationalism?" -cy]

RT (Russia Today) published this story on May 10, 2014:

Gov. Yuri Odarchenko, 3rd from left, hold microphone as he gives his Victory Day speech to the gathered crowd of his city on May 9.

Kherson Govenor Calls Hitler a "liberator" while addressing Veterans on Victory Day

Pro-Soviet crowd boos; woman rushes up, grabs microphone

RT writes: Addressing the public on a Victory Day, the governor of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region trampled on the feelings of many veterans and desecrated the memory of all those who perished during the war against Nazi Germany by calling Hitler a “liberator.”

Kherson is in southern Ukraine, just north of Crimea. Its administrative center is Kherson.

Governor of Kherson region Yuri Odarchenko was booed by thousands including WWII veterans when he told the previously cheering crowd that the Soviet Union tried to enslave Ukraine, while Hitler on the other hand tried to bring freedom to their land.

“Those [Soviet] aggressors justified their capture not only by their desire to seize others' territory and enslave the people, but they also put forward slogans about liberating nations and people that inhabit the lands which Hitler hoped to capture,” Odarchenko told the crowd.

Painting his version of the events further, he challenged history by saying that “if you read history books, we have a number of documentaries on this, then we see that he [Hitler] first of all put forward a slogan of liberating people from the communist yoke, and liberating people from the tyrant Stalin,” Odarchenko said, sparking anger and outrage by the crowd.

As thousands yelled out “shame”, a young woman with a child approached the governor, stripped him of the microphone, before throwing it away. See videohere.

RT tells us that -just like Israel and its Holocaust - the Russian leadership continues to stress that any attempts to rewrite history and equate executors with their victims are unacceptable,

Russian President Vladimir Putin has numerously reiterated Russia's position on the Soviet nation’s struggle during the Great Patriotic War and said future generations should know the truth about WWII heroes.

“We will always guard this sacred, unfading truth, and we will not allow the heroes to be betrayed or forgotten – everyone who saved peace on the planet, not sparing oneself [from death],” Putin said at the Red Square parade on May 9.

Comment: I believe this shows us that Putin is one of the instigators of this historical view in the current time period ... NOT someone who is under compulsion to say it. In this he seeks agreement with the Western powers. -cy

Crimean Tatars gather to commemorate the mass deportations from the region in 1944 during a rally in the Crimean capital Simferopol May 18, 2014.

By Alexander Winning for Reuters
Simferopol, Crimea 5-18-14

Defying a ban by their new Russian-backed rulers, thousands of Crimean Tatars gatheredat a mosque on Sundayto commemorate the day 70 years ago the mass deportation of their families began under the orders of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Crimea's Muslim Tatars are among the most vociferous opponents of Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and have condemned as "inhuman" the temporary ban on mass gatherings, which was issued just days before the symbolic date in the minority group's history.

Waving blue-and-yellow flags and chanting slogans, they rallied outside the mosque on the outskirts of the capital Simferopol as Russian military helicopters circled overhead.

The 1944 Soviet-era deportation of some 200,000 Tatars to Siberia and Central Asia killed many and is a reason for Tatars' deep mistrust of the Russian authorities. Many still associate Moscow's rule with oppression, exile and suffering.

"People, homeland, Crimea!" the crowd chanted. One banner read: "Eternal remembrance for the victims of genocide - the Crimean Tatars."

*    *    *

Self Determination?

"We didn't think we'd be marking the anniversary under these circumstances," Refat Chubarov, head of the Mejlis assembly said, "I don't have a solution to our problems, but I know that we will only be respected if we are united."

Looking up at the helicopters, Mufti Emirali Ablaev told the crowd: "They are watching us, they are afraid of us."

In a resolution adopted at Sunday's rally, the Tatars called for Crimea to have autonomous status within Russia to protect their rights. The Tatars - who make up more than 12 percent of Crimea's population of 2 million - also demanded laws to guarantee their representation in Crimea's government.

On Sunday afternoon, the central square was fenced off and guarded by ranks of Russian riot police and pro-Russia "self-defense" units standing alongside armored personnel carriers.

Adding to tensions, Mejlis leaders say officers from Russia's Federal Security Service had raided the homes of several Tatars earlier in the week, citing suspicions of "terrorist activity."

Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov on Friday banned mass gatherings on the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in March, until June 6, citing violence in southeast Ukraine.

At Sunday's rally, Lenur, 28, wearing the Ukrainian national team's football strip, said discrimination against Tatars had increased since the region became part of Russia and that he still considered himself a Ukrainian citizen.

"I'll be with Ukraine forever," he said, condemning the ban on mass gatherings as cynical, given that celebrations to mark Simferopol's City Day and the Russia Day public holiday fall in the week after the ban ends. He declined to give his last name.

Many Tatars wanted Crimea to remain in Ukraine and boycotted a March 16 referendum in which authorities said nearly 97 percent of voters backed joining Russia.

Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have since promised that Tatars' rights will be respected, but the OSCE rights and democracy group said this week their situation was "particularly precarious" since the annexation.

May 22, 2014

Joseph Goebbels on his wedding day in Dec. 1931, with Magda's 10 yr. old son walking beside him. Hitler, walking behind dressed in coat and hat, was best man. The Church put Goebbels under a ban for marrying a Protestant, but he still had to pay the church tax.

Carolyn Yeager and Ray Goodwin read and comment on the October 24-30th, 1941 dinner table conversation and monologues by the German Leader, taken down in shorthand by trusted aide, attorney Heinrich Heim.  Topics included in this episode:

• Religion and the Church versus science;
• The beauties of the Ancient World and the destruction of antiquity and the past;
• The fate of Europe's Jews for their responsibility in bringing on war;
• Vision of a strong and great Europe with the addition of Ukraine;
• Thoughts on motorized war, the qualities of Croatians, National-Socialism, training of teachers, the art and culture of Paris;
• A number of distinguished guests were present at these meals.

The edition of Hitler's Table Talk being used was translated by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, published by Enigma Books, New York, and can be found as a pdf here.

May 31, 2014

The current year 2014 is the centenary (100th anniversary) of the start of what came to be called the First World War, called "The Great War" before WWII. To learn how and why this war took place, Carolyn goes to two sources: Thomas Dalton's "The Jewish Hand in the World Wars, part 1" and the introduction and first chapter of The Hidden History: Secret Origins of the First World War by Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor. To the question: Were the Jews or the British responsible? How about both?

• How a small number of Jews can control entire nations;
• Zionists set out to obtain ownership of Palestine for the Jews;
• The English establishment was willing to make deals with Jewish Zionists to bring the USA into the war;
• Cecil Rhodes and the Society of the Elect were a secret group of very powerful Englishmen with the goal of controlling the entire world;
• The behavior of England in South Africa/Rhodesia is a preview of their nonchalance about the slaughter of millions of Europeans in 1914-18;
• Are the Royal Institute of International Affairs and it's American counterpart, the Council on Foreign Relations, the direct descendants of Cecil Rhodes'"Association of Helpers"?
  

June 14, 2014

With Guest Paul Hickman. Carolyn and Paul start with the Naval Defence Act of 1889 and from there trace some of the tensions that built up between the UK and Germany. Some of the events and "personality clashes" that are discussed are:

• The competition for naval supremacy ushered in by Britian's "two power standard";
• Cecil Rhodes and British expansionist ideas;
• The Jameson raid and the Kruger telegram;
• The 2nd Boer War;
• The European royal family entanglements and their effect on Kaiser Wilhelm II;
• Fears brought on by the Berlin-Bagdad Railway;
• Germany's increasing economic and trade strength;
• The Zionist plan for Palestine and the Landman Document;
• German help in fomenting revolution in Russia in 1916.
  

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 and Carolyn Yeager

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.

July 12,2014

Carolyn discusses Racial Nationalism in the context of “Blood and Soil” vs the confused ideas coming from Julius Evola that spirit, rather than ethnic substance, determines culture, and that there is such a thing as a “race of the spirit.” Some highlights from this program:

• Evola was a homosexual, a traditionalist and an elitist who never joined the Italian National Fascist Party;
• In his youth, he was attracted to avant-gard art, literature, philosophy and he became a prominent representative of the anti-art "Dada" movement in Italy;
• His later thinking was more in line with with Fascism than National-Socialism, but he was critical of both;
• Evola wrote a great deal on "the metaphysics of sex" in which he held neither romantic love or procreation to be a worthwhile or "noble" purpose;
• Evola believed our world and societies were "devolving" from a high state rather than "evolving" toward a higher state;
• Evola saw rationalism, the Enlightment and science as inferior to ancient "heroic" myths which he recommended as the best role models;
• Carolyn thinks Evola is way over-rated and causes more harm than good - that he should be dropped from the WN curriculum.

Image: This hideous painting by Julius Evola, "La Genetrice dell'universo" (the birth mother of the universe), 1968, reveals his lack of empathy for women - the face is a blank mask. Enlarge

Hermann Giesler on left; Albert Speer on right,

The following is something of a masterpiece of satiric wit from Giesler. -cy

The Column Saint

 From Hermann Giesler’s memoir Ein Anderer Hitler
Der Säulenheilige, pages 355-360
1977 edition, Druffel-Verlag

Translated byWilhelm Kriessmann and Carolyn Yeager
copyright Carolyn Yeager 2014

In the year 113 the Roman senate erected a gigantic column for the emperor and military leader Trajan. (Shown right) On the capital of the column stood the gilded statue of the honored.

The art historian Bruhns writes ”Used to gigantism and always striving to exceed, Rome created that form of eternal triumph which then did mankind not less convince of its greater impression than the older kind of triumphal arch, now of a lesser rank. As the colossal column expresses the idea of “height” exceptionally well, it can also be used very well for the adoration of the “highest.” Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius were given similar columns in Rome. Arcadius got his at the new capital Constantinople.

When Europe during the Napoleon era felt itself specially close to Rome’s greatness, it presented the new emperor with the Vendome column in Paris—and his conqueror, Alexander of Russia, a second one in Petersburg.”

The emerging Christianity overthrew the images of antique greatness and now paid homage to its believers on imposing columns. After the final decline of the ancient dignities around the 4th and 5th centuries, ascetic Christians requested the top of the Roman columns as pleasing to God. The best known among them was Symion Stylites from Aleppo. Those ascetics and penitents, called stylites or “Säulenheilige (column saints), strove to increase their ranking  by self-elevation.

Napoleon 1 Column in Place Vendome, Paris, above left, and on the right an icon honoring Symion Stylites and "Symion the Younger" on their column homes where they remained for decades without coming down.

To enhance oneself—who wanted to hinder the column saint, standing between earth and heaven? Was he not predestined, by his high location from where he could overlook everything, to judge the bad, and if it had to also be mentioned, the good? Everything that came down from isolated but triumphant height was important, even scolds and abuses, if quite a bit drew attention only post festum (too late).

In Speer's Spandauer Tagebuecher I saw some caricatures sketched by his colleague Hans Stephan [on p494]. They were done during the high time of planning Berlin's renewal. Speer commented: “We treated our own gigantism ironically.”

Now I remembered Stephan's ironic caricature. At first it seemed to have a double meaning but looking closer it was pretty obvious: One giant column pushes through layers of myrrh and incense, or even through clouds, up to an extreme height. Sacrificial smoke also shrouds the statue, clad in a Roman toga and holding a spear, characterizing the “most enhanced.”

At first one would consider it as an antique Caesarean honor. But on the three step base of the column sits the chronicler dressed in a capuchin robe, busy and carefully making notes about all thoughts of the “most-enhanced,” of all his confessions and opinions but also his scolds, to make it known to the interested present and future generations.

The caricature referred to that time, but with the monk on the bottom of the column it was, as it has turned out, also pointed to the future. Stephan had portrayed as well the imperatorial present, as he pointed with a fine vision to “what is to come.” The monk on the column base does not allow any other interpretation. Did it ever dawn on Stephan how significant his depiction would become: Speer as a column Saint?

Yet, after all, he put him a few column-drums higher than the ascetic and scolder Symion Stylites from Aleppo. Because, as an architect, Stephan had a good feeling for rank and file.

After the publication of Speer's books I met quite a few who thought his strange change, his schizophrenic fantasies, his distortions and his obsession for abuse—plus his awkward readiness for remorse—were the result of 20 years of “jail-torture by isolation” as they used to call it, according to Sartre. I opposed that. There was too much influence from the world around him. It might be that the imprisonment aggravated the contours. Speer's “turnaround” is mere opportunism, cold and carefully planned, as it is in conformity with his genetically generated character—demonstrated already before his jail time.

Nuremberg, Prison and Beyond

After the grotesque comedy of the Nuremberg trials, when Speer tried to tie the bear Tabun (nerve gas but also the name of a Teddy bear -wlk) to the court-benches: “I had the intention to kill Hitler by poisonous gas however...” He was addressed by Kranzbuehler, the attorney of Grossadmiral Doenitz, who asked Speer if it would not have been more certain and more effective to shoot Hitler than start a poison gas operation endangering an unknown number of secretaries, drivers and others, without being sure to even get Hitler himself. Speer answered: “I could not shoot.”

The attorney's remark since: “That was enough for me to characterise his personality, and both his books only convinced me more.”

The experiences and statements of this former fleet lawyer need a further explanation: Had he known Stephan’s caricature, he would have reached another opinion, for from a column saint you do not expect that he knows how to shoot! Poison, however, you could imagine with a stylite. But again, not with Speer, the “second most important in the Reich”—he was only short of a ladder to execute the planned deed at the air shaft of the command bunker at the federal chancellery.1

In the “innermost circle” of the Speer boys they might have whispered about passionate plans while completely ignoring the real situation. Only in that way can I explain the phone-call of his colleague to the “central planning department” from cage to cage, in the prison winter of 1946: Nothing will happen to Speer—he will be the German minister for reconstruction! His willing guilty confession, combined with his assassination-attempt-declaration, would no doubt form Speer's basic defense. But it was only the first propaganda-cry of the first re-educator sent by the Americans to the German people. It became a success also of the crook “Dr.Gaston Oulman.”2

Beginning with the desperate Charivari 3 of his statements at the military tribunal, Speer intensified, as a prisoner, his unscrupulous abuses by quotations and secret messages, and then, after 20 years, as a free man in his books and interviews, not sparing even the victims of the victors' justice.

In order to justify himself in facing his children, so that they would not be ashamed of him, and “to help once more” the German people4 by, as he believed, his sincere attitude, he thought he had to take away from the fallen of the war, the fighters for the freedom of Europe, the meaning of the deep sense of their sacrifice. For the surviving dependents it must certainly be comforting to hear from Speer that their men—sons and brothers—were sacrificed, that their women and children were bombed, for a wrong ideal and for “a total madness.” Thus Speer has, as he wrote, “served his own people the best way.”5

There is also the infamy of the Nuremberg tribunal. Speer formed a bond with the American chief prosecutor Jackson. If there was ever a doubt about that, Speer arrogantly confirmed it 30 years later: “When Jackson started with his cross-examination, he smiled friendly. Anyway,” Speer continued, “I would have cooperated with anybody who would have supported my line to let the Germans regain common sense.”6

In his Erinnerungen, his Spandauer Tagebücher and in his scolding interviews, he tries to manipulate history and events. He wants to be involved in the confusion of the German people even though he thus exposes himself to the suspicion of a lack of historical awareness and truthfulness.

Horse dung [Rossapfel, Ross=horse] found on his bed in the Spandau jail put him into a schizophrenic frenzy. Speer associated it with the Reichsapfel, the imperial insignia of power and dignity. Then the horse dung is brought into a connection with the eagle holding in his talons the world globe.7

He discovers the “deeply criminal character” in Hitlers face and he believes he has to assume that a part of Adolf Hitler's success was based on an audacity to pretend to be a great man.8 But enough of all that.

Who does not remember? Speer was at that time considered to be the confidant; he appeared to be the Johannes very close to Hitler's heart. Naturally it was Speer's smartness, his extraordinary organizational talent, the nonchalant way he put himself into the scene, his ambition and effort to gain recognition and power—indeed he felt himself already as the sage. Therefore it was no surprise that Stephan placed him for adoration on top of the High Column, decorated with the leaves of the Acanthus. Towards the end, however, doubts entered and Christian soldiers carried out the fall of “the enhanced.” After his conviction, a cruel road lay ahead of him for decades. To alter his reputation, he severely re-shaped himself as is so fitting to his character.

With will power and toughness he began that road and walked on it. One can assume without doubt that he believes in himself and his strange mission. He reached his goal anew by his own way and under peculiar signs. Thus he remains on a high column, completely changed as Baal Teschuwa, the son of repentance, as his friend the rabbi Geis calls him.9

He wrote his Erinnerungen as that man, praised by the American historian, Professor Eugene Davidson as “an historical testimony par exellence” and as an “absolutely priceless document.” It took the writer Zuckmayer's breath away when he read the Spandauer Tagebuecher.

Speer begins his Erinnerungen with an aphorism of the theologian Karl Barth. Yet it would have been more fitting to begin with the caricature by Stephan—one would then be prepared for the confessions of a reformed person, the opinions of a column saint.

Notes:

1. Speer testified at Nuremberg that his plan to kill Hitler by placing poison in an air vent into his private bunker failed only for lack of having a ladder high enough to reach the vent!

2. A Vienna-born Jewish jailbird with the name Walter Ullmann, who called himself Dr. Oulma and became a radio commentator at the Nuremberg trials, before being unmasked and causing a big scandal.

3. A ritual used by Europeans to chastise community members who did not conform with social expectations.

4. Speer, Erinnerungen, p594

5. Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, Albert Speer oder das achte Gebot; in: Klüter Blätter,21. 1970, p53

6. Welt am Sonntag of Oct. 31, 1976

7. Speer, Spandau Tagebücher, p247

8. Ibid, p52

9. Ein Mensch namens Albert Speer; Das Evangelische Darmstadt, Oct. 17, 1971

Führer speech before Generals and Officers of May 26, 1944 at the Platterhof in Obersalzberg

Continued from Part One: http://carolynyeager.net/hitlers-platterhof-speech-part-one 

But at first this was of course not a pretty picture, I admit this. In the beginning we had difficulties upon difficulties, and until one is able to bring everyone together and tame them, one can turn grey. But I was always convinced that some day all will be rewarded, it will be realized that the selection made, based on hard party ideology, were the right ones. This is in actuality fundamental, crucial. For, if we now talk of a folkish society we have to acknowledge that it could only be built up, and be preserved, under an able leadership. This could never, never happen in a multi-cultural society. The more diversity in a society, the weaker it is as far as unifying goes.

At this time all sorts of seminars, many conducted by officers, are taking place in castles of the Teutonic order, not because they are especially suited but because this gives them some insight as to how we started to educate our youth. Gentlemen, this is of course not a finished product. Don’t forget: In 1933 we came to power, in 1939 the war started, only six years had passed. During war progress is limited. But there can not be any doubt: If one will take a look at our people following 50 peaceful years he will have to conclude that the whole of the nation is totally organized with a political leadership at the helm which represents the best the nation has to offer. There can be no doubt about that. (Applause)

That is to say, Gentlemen, not just a selection of talented rhetorics but also of a fearless leadership. We don’t select youth just because they are intellectually gifted, as was done before. This was the time when many a talent sat in the dunce corner. Teachers used the dunce method as a form of vengeance, when the talented confronted them.

Gentlemen, this is not just an issue of scientific education, but also a means to look at the characters of the boys, their attitudes, toughness, their leadership qualities, this so-called “ringleader” ability, developed early. All this has to be taken into consideration, in addition to their intellectual qualities. When looking at a chap, one has to sometimes admit that he is talented but he prefers, for the moment to box or do similar things, has the best notes in physical education and the like but is just not good in other disciplines. Earlier, as little as 30 years ago, when someone was given a failing grade, he was done, dismissed. Today we compromise. We now go so far, with regards to artistry, that the talent we discover is sent to an art school, and if it becomes apparent that this boy is not good at mathematics and that he has no talent for languages, or that science is a closed book to him and that this will always be the case, but that he is a talented artist, then he will become a musician. The rest of it is anyway mostly forgotten later in life. Whatever we don’t need in our daily lives, nine tenth of it we forget. Only that knowledge acquired and needed will remain.

Therefore we select talents regardless of their social standing or origin; and believe me, with this we are eliminating most social concerns, based on two facts. First: We are creating a community whose leadership originates from the common folk, people who know what concerns the commoners. By continually replenishing the bloodlines from the bottom up, I am doing what the Catholic Church is doing, which by the detour via celibacy, Priest cannot have children, is forced to always find new priest in the common people. That is why we have priests stemming from families of low ranking bureaucrats, of small businesses, former farm boys, etc. That is the strength of this so-called militant church. And I am extracting as they do, not via celibacy, I have no use for it (agreement and cheeriness) a new generation from the people. The whole population is sifted through and that then produces, by and by, the leadership of the nation which is familiar with the day to day problems of life, the experience gained through their youth, by being with relatives, the parents, etc. But they themselves are rising above the rest, witness my Gauleiter (governors) who are extremely practical, know what it is all about, who are able to solve common problems that arise because of their common sense. The governors and other officials do this almost blindfolded, because they themselves experienced it. I am able to solve social issues because I am introducing a wide variety of elements. And second, I am able to solve problems by bringing the best and most energetic people into the leadership, thereby impeding any attempt of a counter revolution, but mostly to demonstrate to them that this is a classless society.

For, believe me if I say this, principles are most often more important than so-called reality, and that is so for us Germans. Don’t forget: we Germans are so concerned with principles that we waged the Thirty Year War just to determine if the Holy Communion should be taken in by one or two entities, and other important things. It is therefore not inconsequential for this people to be convinced that the leadership consists of members of the whole of society, and that is important, especially for woman and mothers. Because it is something special for a mother to realize that the child she is carrying which could achieve God knows what in this state. And if we now look at the positive achievements fairly - not the political ones who are mostly bad at the beginning anyway – if we take those achievements honestly into consideration, those that form a whole people, the cultural and scientific aspects, etc., the social achievements of a nation, the intellectual ones – and when we see in our mind's eye that all of them are products of individuals, and if we could have them pass before our eyes, then all the untold inventors, explorers, the scientists, engineers, technicians and chemists, etc. would rise up, as well as the great artists, the musicians of our people and God knows who all we have to thank for reaching the cultural hights and whom we have to thank that we even are able to speak a language, that we can proudly claim to be German – if they could appear, we would suddenly see, just like magic, a mother standing beside each one of them. And we would see what those mothers are, what poor little creatures, farmers wives, workers wives, wives of small artisan’s, etc. And what did the sons of those mothers amount to? There is something immensely forgiving in a people who realize that even though there are differences in abilities and consequently in the scope of their conduct, that will be so for eternity, to convince these people that, if a child is found, wherever it is found, a child that is gifted and that this child is taken care off at all costs, and helped to develop instead of putting artificial obstacles in its way because of its birth, but on the contrary having the state helping him to overcome obstacles.(boisterous applause)

This would then eliminate the last remnants of the Marxist class theory. And Gentleman, it is this conviction, prevalent in the broad masses of Germans, we can be thankful for, all of us, for it enables very old German workers to go to work in the factories, something portions of them refused to do in 1917. If they do it today then because they are convinced that they are fighting for their country, that it is their state, even though they are just common workers. But they know that in this state, they enjoy all the rights of a citizen, total equality – giving them immense power -, and they are convinced that this state, if it is allowed to develop, will care for them, care for their children and that everyone will be treated according to his abilities.

And this I did - surely I am allowed to say this – without wronging anyone, or hurting them. Because one can also accomplish this by first destroying everything, as the Bolsheviks did, by killing and so on, and that I did not do. And since I believe in the selection process, which has already proven itself in the past, I know that the leadership present today is a product of the selection process of the past. And since I also believe in heritage, then we see here a continuation of heretical strain. Therefore I did not want to destroy this old goodness, to raise something else, but I wanted to hang on to it and have the other mix with it, over time.

That this was not easy is a given. It would have been a lot easier for me to just get rid of all the old elements, as was done under Bolshevism, to root them out to then start something new. Then there would not have this comparison, evident today. I have to say here that the war had some educational effects. I would never have become a National Socialist without WWI. But the war was immensely instructive, and that without that what had happened already.

There were some that said: “You know, National Socialism is alright, but if I have to visualize that at some day I might have the honor to sit beside one of those proletarians – then you have to understand, by all that is proper how could I, and after all I am somebody (parts illegible, I did the best I could). Of course I am also concerned about my people, we strive to be a united band of brothers (this seems to be from Switzerland), and anyway, but a little distance—distance Sir! All has to be within bounds, we should not throw out the baby with the bath water!”

The other side said basically the same, they said: “What, we are supposed to sit with those big shots, those capitalists? No way, not in your dreams! We are class conscious, we are proletarians!” Thus, we had the class conscious on one side and those concerned about their social standing on the other, and those kind of prejudices are often more solid than a concrete wall we are constructing today. (cheerfulness and agreement)

But in spite of this, we succeeded to overcome those prejudices and regardless of the rhetoric from both sides were able to build the party, albeit with many setbacks. And this, Gentlemen, is why I am immune against crisis. You can never imagine the setbacks I had to suffer in my life! What we experience on military setbacks of today only serves to identify the mistakes we made, to improve organization and to do better: this is insignificant when compared to the difficulties I had when trying to build up my party.

Don’t ever say: But, that was not important. Gentlemen, that was my life and the conviction that the fate of Germany hangs in the balance, just like it is today with this war; and if we would not have been able to build us up, then one day the Bolshevik wave would have washed over Europe: that the Polish state could have prevented this, or any other state, no one believes anymore after what we have learned. And the battle of 1933 is part of this fight about to be or not to be.

I was convinced, at that time, that all of those setbacks needed to be overcome because history teaches us that any enormous undertaking has always been accompanied by setbacks, and one has to accept this. Name one big historical event that was not plagued by setbacks. Impossible. Every state had to master crisis on its way up. And I maintain that great men are formed by crisis. No great man exists that did not have to overcome a crisis, not one, be assured. The great, sympathetic men of German history are those who had to overcome the biggest crisis, who had to fight to do so. Be it in recent time a Martin Luther, or for all I care Frederick the Great, or Richard Wagner in a totally different sphere – I have taken three from different spheres – all people who (illegible) have fought through great difficulties (catastrophes) and who have reached their goal because of their doggedness and perseverance.

But there was an additional problem that needed to be solved if Germany was to be resurrected. It was not just an issue of social order, the most important issue was to try and mobilize those intellectual elements, already present and who had in the past been the driving force, successfully, able to spur on people to do their best. Two points of view prevailed: On the one side the nationalistic ideal, obscured and differently defined but a force nevertheless, able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of volunteers in 1918 who were willing to fight and risk their lives in the Freikorps, and one can not expect a greater form of idealism, from a common man, than to be willing to lose his life if necessary.

But idealists also stood on the other side of the barricades: communists, who believed to be fighting for a communist ideal. Thus we had basically two phenomenon fighting each other: on the one side a nationalist, a (piss)poor devil and a Officer, also extremely poor; and on the other side a communist or Spartakist, the USPD man, etc., also poor devils.

The segments of capitalist society satisfied with the system did not fight; this also was true of course for the Jewish leaders, the Marxists – that goes without saying.

It was therefore obvious from the start that this new movement, which could also have been called by any other name, needed to consider those two elements. We could never say: we deny their existence, or we dismiss them, we had to acknowledge that they were forces.

At that time the definition of those two concepts were diametrically different. One of them stood on the right side of the barricades, the other on the left, and I stood in-between those two fighting forces, on the barricades and fired upon from both sides, naturally; I tried to define a new concept under the motto that in the end, nationalism and socialism are the same under certain aspects, when placing people into the centre, not some special class concept or social standing as opponent, but to place the people into the centre of that which is to be desired. Socialism is in that case, just as is nationalism, nothing more than a fight for those people as a whole.

I was attacked, at that time, both from the left and the right. The left declared that it was impossible to join in with nationalism because “Nationalism” represented the bourgeoisie, and on the other hand the bourgeoisie rejected socialism because it was perceived to be Marxist, i.e., international.

But now it is clear, nevertheless: “race” and “people” are not the same. I can imagine a nation with a small upper class and a totally impoverished public mass: dilapidated, lice-ridden, and filthy, but trained to blind obedience, as followers. I can imagine this. This image, however, brings me no satisfaction; it is hideous in my eyes. That which I believe to be the ideal worthy of pursuit is a people that as a whole present an image of healthiness. For in the long run, I will not be able to represent the interests of the state with a body other than that [which is healthy]: for that other body will one day disintegrate, at the latest when a catalyst enters which is suddenly able to unite and mobilize this leftist mass, and that would be the foreign body of Judaism.

Therefore I had to come up with a new popular concept and I could only do so by imagining a future society, as an ideal society, wherein the average person enjoys, in actuality, the highest degree of education, culture and living standards. And when one has acknowledged this as his ideal, then it is, believe me, just as much of a pleasure to care for the people than it is for a company leader to care for his men; he also begins to see his men as the reason for his existence. He doesn’t see something in them that does not concern him, something he doesn’t need to know, but see in them the extension of himself. He cares for the last one of them, etc., and the more satisfied his men are, the more satisfied he becomes and he will value this. That is much the same when leading a people.

I have therefore made it the objective of my movement to overcome the class state of before. Now I have to admit that in one sphere this has been easy. We also had, among us Germans, all together about 800,000 Jews, in the Ostmark (Austria) more than 1 million together with the Sudetenland, far more than 1 million. They were a foreign object in our people who had systematically occupied all key positions and when this had been achieved, others of the same group followed. Some never understood why I acted as brutally as I did in this regard, that is, those who should have thanked me for it did not understand. If I would not have done so, in an effort to build up a united society, I would have had to rearrange the positions occupied by the elderly, those who are in them because of ability or because of protection.

I forced the Jews out of those positions, forced them out ruthlessly. Here to I acted as nature does, not brutally but reasonably, to preserve the best and thus make available hundreds of thousands of positions. With this, I not only prevented a so-called national intellect to present itself as proletarian, but I was able to slowly move tens of thousands of able children of the people into those positions. I freed up untold numbers of undergraduates(?) who were harvesting peat moss, and offered them positions. But I also made it possible for hundreds of thousands of workers, and farmers children, to prepare themselves for positions, which were formerly filled by Jews, a foreign body. (lively applause)

This had another advantage, Gentlemen, because it removed the last catalyst from the broad masses, as already mentioned. By removing the Jews, I eliminated all possibilities of establishing a revolutionary core. I have been told: Sure, but could this not have been done in a simpler fashion, and if not simpler because everything else would have been more complicated, but more humane? Gentlemen Officers, we are involved in a life or death struggle. If our enemies/opponents would be successful, the German Volk would be eliminated. Bolshevism would butcher millions upon millions upon millions of out intelligentsia. Whatever could not be killed by a shot in the neck would be transported elsewhere. Children of the members of high society would be done away with. This whole bestiality was organized by Jews. Incendiary bombs, as well as other bombs, are falling on our cities even though our opponents know that all they are killing are women and children. Normal passenger trains are fired on, as well as farmers in the field. In one night, in Hamburg, we lost over 40,000 woman and children, they were incinerated. Don’t expect from me anything other than that I will represent our national interests, in a fashion that will be most effective and to the greatest benefit for our German nation.  (long lasting, lively applause)

In this, as well as in other situations, humanity would be cruelty towards our own people. For, if I am going to be hated by the Jews anyway, I would not want to miss the advantages of that hate.

Our advantage is that we now have a well organized society, and no outsiders can lecture us.

Compare this to other states. We witnessed what happens when a state chooses to take the opposite direction, as Hungary did. The whole state is decayed and corroded. Jews everywhere, right up to the highest position, Jews upon Jews, the whole of the state one network of spies and agents who remained inactive because they were afraid that if they acted we would get involved, but they were biding their time. I interfered here as well, and this problem will be solved also and I have to say: Jews have made it their purpose to eliminate the German peoples. I explained this to the Reichstag on September 1, 1939, stating that if someone believes that the German nation will be eliminated through war, then he is mistaken; if Jewry will realize this [bring this about -cy], then Jewry will be eliminated.  (lively applause)

With this we probably made the biggest step towards internal order. Everything else just fell into place. And here I would like to go back to the beginning of my deliberation and the term: Ideology. I stated that this is in fact nothing more than a view of the world as it represents the latest in scientific perceptions, the most sober/reasonable perceptions. Every problem I approached in this way. This is how we tackled economic problems. We solved economic problems, Gentlemen Officers, that the so-called experts said could not be solved. We solved cultural problems. What was said before: “What, you are trying to eliminate the Jews? A joke, because then you are eliminating money, you will have no more money!” As if Jews would produce money! Money only makes sense if it represents a value. And those values have not been created by Jews, but by people who have invented valuables, or produced them. The Jew wedges himself between the inventor, the producer and consumer. We have here a valve that is a hindrance. I have removed this valve, which regulated the flow by closing or opening, depending on opportunity.

In my youth, I often visited the German museum in Munich, at that time the first, big, technical museum. I was immensely interested in the display; and while there I tried to ascertain, amid all that had been invented by humans, what of it was invented by Jews? The Jews who dominate everything: the whole economy, our industry, they dominate it all! But what did they invent? Where are the Jewish inventors? Not one can be found, not even one!

The same question can be asked regarding cultural life. I was told: “If you remove the Jews, you might as well shut down the theatres!” But who, in actuality, established our culture? Was it the Jews? Who are our greatest poets and great (illegible, I am guessing) philosophers and composers, were they Jews? How is it possible that now Jews are involved in the re-production of works produced by the greatest Germans. (sorry, but the last part makes no sense)

This experiment has proven me right, I removed the Jews. German theatres are more popular then ever. The German movie industry is blossoming. German literature, German press, read like never before. The theatre? Much better!

Impiety has been eliminated in countless areas, and we did not become falsely prudes. Because here also we only hold fast to one principle, that being the preservation of our race, of our species. Everything helpful to uphold this principle is right, everything that is harmful is wrong.  (lively applause)

Thus, we have taken revolutionary steps in some areas, and I understand that they will not be understood no matter what, mainly by those who have not followed the movement from the scientific aspect, or were unable to follow it. Also, we often collide with old perceptions, old moral concepts, etc. But we often forget that those moral concepts are only fake concepts that, for instance, don’t even exist among people because people perceive them differently. What we didn’t have to eliminate!

But, Gentlemen, in the process of constructing a great new society or the organization of a Volk community on a large scale one always needs to get rid of old traditions, always!

Allow me to return to the military aspect. The formation of Prussia, and I am starting with nucleus of our Reich was, after all, a process of the gradual elimination of numerous traditions of other, smaller, states. That is always painful. The formation of the German Reich—starting with the North German Confederation (Union) and later the German Reich—was again an attack on numerous old traditions. Believe me, it was of course not easy for a Bavarian to forgo his history, events that are closely connected to the history of Bavaria. But this was also not easy for the Hanoverians, it was not easier for the Saxons, not easier for the Württembergers, not easier for the Austrians—Austria too having been a great country at one time. Those 9 million Austrians ruled over 65 million people of other races. To give up your independence is always hard. But where would we be if this united state/country had not been created.

I have always stressed: this is never done out of disdain/contempt for the achievements of individuals. At the time when the hall of soldiers is built in Berlin, all great German commanders-in-chief of our history will be immortalized. I will make sure that all of them are immortalized, regardless of where they have fought in their life. Frederic the Great will be there, as well as his generals; but also on the opposite side a Daun(?), a Laudon(?), the historical enemies of the Germans of yesteryear, if worthy opponents, will be displayed as a brotherhood. We have united in our Reich all the traditions of German states of the past, as well as all single tribes, something to be proud of. In that hall in Berlin you will find the monuments of all German heroes, those of the past and present, and they will rest together as brothers, regardless of what tribe they belonged; as long as they are worthy of being remembered by Germans, the memory of them will be prolonged. This means that in this state the many facets of our German history will be memorized and cultivated: and that is necessary. A lot of what is harmful to the individual will be eliminated; and that is necessary.

Gentlemen, this is why I never considered 1933 to be the first year of German history. Many told me at that time: “Why don’t you say Year No.1, Year No.2?” This would have befitted the Brits with their megalomania! If someone would ask me: “What do you consider to be Year No.1 in German history?”, I’ll tell him: I don’t rightly know, at the latest – very latest – it was the battle in the Teutoburg forest, but perhaps even (before that) after some battles of the Teutons and the Zimbern: why not? All of that is German history. When I perceive/consider today's German history in that big scope, and if I consider the state of today to be the finished product of the aspirations, German military and political activities, then I have the right to unite all that which been achieved in the past: and now let one of those ridiculous come and confront us! He can peddle his laughable English Kings Tale, I’ll mention our Emperors. I can tell them that at the time when England consisted of a laughable small island, German Emperors rode thousands of kilometres, representing the German Reich.(lively applause)

What was England at that time? A laughable small enclave populated by Germans, no more!

German history did not start with us, but it will be completed by us. This so-called Third Reich will complete what the first aspired to achieve, was unfortunately partially overlooked in the second, but it will finally be fulfilled in this, the third. That is what this state strives for. For this purpose all the enormous organizations have been founded with the party as the model, formed out of the sour dough, our people. And here also I need to mention an objection we heard often. We are told: “Sure, that has happened, but why are you still maintaining the party, as a small body within the German peoples?” Because, as I have said before, the whole of the people is not suited to lead. In the past, the party was formed in struggles, out of people willing to fight and now we do this employing other methods, since I am unable to manufacture communists for them to fight. You will have witnessed that German youth is taught to be brave, ready for any action. Because it is folly to assume that only the leader of a military organization needs to be brave, whereas there is no need for braveness in political organizations. Gentlemen, political organizations administered in the end all that has been accomplished through military actions over the last centuries. And if they are cowardly in their administration, then all that had been won by the sword is lost. They can therefore not be brave enough. In contrast: here bravery is of the utmost importance, civil bravery is rare and has to be cultivated.

For the party of the future to consist of the best and bravest we need to select suitable recruits from today’s youth. This then will be solid leadership. Especially soldiers should not object to this. One could also look at it this way: We are teaching all Germans to love their country and be willing to maintain and defend it; why then would we need military organization? We don’t need them! We already have this concept of military responsibility in all of the people, they know that they have to fight. Yes, Gentlemen, the military organization is the school where the handling of weaponry is taught. If we remove that school, then the theoretical instructions are useless and the movement is, in the nation, the school and the leadership in one, as I have tried to demonstrate to you in condensed form, in a few minutes. I would like to stress: If I were to outline all of the revolution in detail – which I see as a revolution of common sense in contrast to a revolution of madness – then this would naturally take many, many, hours. Twenty to thirty lectures would be necessary because it concerns almost all of life’s problems, I had to take a new approach in many areas because under the load of old traditions, etc., just as under an assembly of old household rubbish covered in dust, issues loose their clarity.

We collected and incorporated all of this as planned, tried to perfect is and that work continues. We are not at the end of this revolution, but only in the first year if you will. To explain this in detail would take “an eternity,” an impossibility.

But in closing, I would like to leave you with the impression that this is an enormous occurrence, and only then can one comprehend the huge change taken place in the German people and their willingness to accept one leader and endure all the hardship German people are burdened with today. And history has shown that a movement such as this can perform miracles. When French revolutionary armies assembled to defend their revolutionary ideals, which after all had inspired millions with its Gallic phrases, one could observe the crumbling of the guards, partially because the revolution moved forward and started to destroy them from within, and also because it was intellectually superior.

Prussia finally collapsed in 1805/06 and this is when the term “Fatherland” began to appear, a dangerous term in the era of dynastic destruction, because it advocated the notion of a big German state. Those who advocated that notion were, a few years later, sentenced to death or jailed, but this notion was so powerful that those soldiers who were taken up with it, even though the product of inferior military training and therefore average, in the end were different fighters. Let me say that many of the ideas envisioned by a Scharnhorst and not realized, could only slowly and steadily be realized in our fighting forces of today. Therefore, here also we are not accomplishing something someone dreamt up, but what we are accomplishing today is the intellectual product of generations. All I am doing is to shape those perceptions so as to form them into a political and military reality, if you will. That is my job. We now have two more examples: Russia. Could you imagine Czarist Russia conducting itself as the Bolshevik Russia of today? What a difference an ideology made! And don’t believe that I did not envision this. A few days before the start, I had a conversation with Reich Marshal Göring and told him at that time: Göring, this will be our toughest fight by far, by far! The Reich Marshal asked: “Why do you believe that this will be so, my Führer”? Because, I answered, we have here for the first time an ideological opponent, a fanatically ideological opponent.

But Germany is also evidence for what an intellectual transformation is able to accomplish; or on the other hand are the others, those who did not witness this transformation, evidence of what could have happened without it so that I have to say in closing: Officers, especially, must play a decisive part in this intellectual transformation. I would like to say that it has to be his declaration of faith, because he is for the first time in our recent history in the fortuitous situation to say that: all of those representing the state—state ideology—and civil servants are united; I only need to have one single thought, and I will serve to maintain this state, something impossible for generations before. Something else he can say: I am not alone in this, age group upon age group of that teaching is entrusted upon me and all I have to do is continue this education. If I continue this then I have here a tool in my hand which I am familiar with and know that each of them carrying a weapon will follow me just as he has followed the political leaders before and who will follow them always.

The soldier, the officer, is therefore in the envious situation to continue the education which has, in this state, begun in childhood, because small children are thus educated in Kindergarten. Later he will belong to the scouts and his education will go on. From the scouts he advances into the Hitler Youth and later into industry, his education continues. During his apprenticeship the same uniform education. These young people will, when 18, become members of the party: and again the same education. A portion will join the SA – the same education still – or the SS, more of the same. Then he will be enrolled in the labor pool, continuation of the same education. Then the army, and here as well the education has to be continued and when, after two years, they are dismissed they will immediately be guided into the political movement again: continuation of this education. Uniform education from childhood to old age. Believe you me, a Folk body thus educated and created is impossible to destroy, a 1918 would not be repeated. One can always depend on them, no matter how bad the thunder or storm. One thing must not be allowed to happen: the interruption of this education, and it is the duty of the whole of the German Officer core to devote himself to this, I have to say, wonderful task, fanatically, to have a part in this unified education and to further it. He himself will learn while doing so and remain informed about scientific perceptions so as to not only hold on to the youth entrusted to him but to further them to ensure that, when they move on, the stream of that young German blood will run in the same channel up to old age and will remain free of doubts and all scruples.

What all of us do with this is being of the greatest service to the German people, because believe me, those masses want to be led. Just as they are fond of a company leader and pleased if they have one who knows how to lead, someone able to avoid problems (illegible) and that with groups of 80, 100, 150 men, so are the German people pleased/happy when guided by a unified leadership and thus protected from all mishap.  (lively applause)

Believe me, the people are not able to decide that for themselves. Often I have been asked: “Well, why don’t you let the people decide in this matter?” I have always made the decisions and then asked the people: Are you in agreement with this decision? But I never expected the people to make this decision. If the leadership is unable to muster the courage to make a decision, can I then expect the common People of my Folk to make it? When the deep thinkers are unable to agree, then somebody has to make a decision. And that is what is beautiful about the Officer profession: It is obvious: Impossible to let the company decide, or the battalion, or even my subordinate officer what decision has to be made. But one has to be made and if it has to be made in a critical situation then that officer can be proud to have made it, when he accepted the responsibility, knowing full well that at times he could be wrong, that is not important.  (applause)

Better to be wrong than to allow the masses to have the conviction that they are in charge, that the decision rests with them; that would be synonymous with a declaration of abandonment of leadership, a declaration of cowardice. That must never happen.

Therefore I am convinced—it is my solid conviction—that this war in particular will reinforce the idea of National Socialism in the armed/fighting forces and that, when we have won the war this will have happened because of this new education of the people and because of the new German fighting forces and that we must therefore pursue only one objective: to further strengthen our Folk body, to toughen it until finally it becomes indestructible, so as to fulfill the role in Europe destined to it.

There can be no doubt about one matter: Either we lose this war – that would be the end of our people – or we are victorious – and that we will be! – this then will be the beginning of our rule over Europe. 

(long lasting, tempestuous applause)

Reich Marshal Goring:

My Führer!

Gentlemen!

We had a immense inner experience in this hour, enabling you, Gentlemen, to take a deep look at the substance of National Socialism through the eyes of the Führer, what he is and what he wants. I can here be translator, better than anybody, because I too have been educated, as were you Gentlemen, as officer cadets, experienced that education we all have. I became a National Socialist early and I thank my creator for that. I was able to discard the baggage early, which you, Gentlemen, carried for a long time, ‘till now. You will experience an immense feeling of relief when you have discarded the old junk, to enter into the new and beautiful, something you were not able to see before. We must be clear about one thing, especially we Officers, that it is our duty in the future – as the Führer has mentioned – to train and educate the new Officers. We must understand that this, what was perhaps right at one time, can no longer be correct in this state and especially in these people. We have to also find new principles, and Gentlemen it is my wish to say it openly at this hour: When we were trained as cadets, as lance corporals, as young lieutenants the Monarchy still existed and as the Führer has rightly stated: Of course the Officer corp was monarchist and that the Officer corps was obviously dedicated to its Monarch. That was absolutely normal for us. Nobody dared to criticize, perish the thought. He accepted the Commander in Chief as he was, was dedicated to him.

Therefore I need to ask, Gentlemen: how much more fortunate are we and how much prouder can we be when in this hour we feel duty bound to a Commander in Chief, a man whose coming to be we witnessed, a man who accomplished so much, but who also had to suffer. There can be no prouder feeling for an officer, that is at least my opinion, than to gather round that man in this hour and to have the feeling of fortune to be able to stand by his side no matter what.

Long live our Führer for all time, this from the bottom of our hearts!

Hail! – Hail! – Hail!

(enthusiastic Hail calls and renewed uproarious applause for the Führer)

END