World War II

July 10, 2014

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill face to face for the first time in 1941. Hitler despised them both.

Carolyn Yeager and Ray Goodwin read and comment on the Jan. 5th-7th, 1942 dinner table monologues by the German Leader, as taken down in shorthand by trusted aide, attorney Heinrich Heim. Some highlights of this episode:

• Japan and the Jews, the stupid Americans, the Spanish soldier;
• Stalin identifies with the Tsars and Pan-Slavism more than Boshevism - Slavs and Asians can copy but not invent;
• Corruption in Freemasonry, fictitious wealth of gold, guilt of Jews;
• Changes at Rome, Hitler removes Brauchitsch as Army chief;
• Churchill's faults, the decline of England, the decay of America.

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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) meets with a delegation of Rabbis from several countries at the Kremlin in Moscow, July 9, 2014. REUTERS (click to enlarge)

While he reportedly admitted during this meeting that Dr. Josef Goebbels was a "talented man" and maybe even that Goebbels had 'achieved some of his goals' (this has not been reported everywhere), these words were later removed from the published statement on the ITAR-TASS website.

ITAR-TASS also represented Putin as meeting with "representatives of international public and religious organizations" rather than with the black-hatted Orthodox rabbis we see in the photos taken. Pro-Putin websites have substituted a older picture of Putin alone with Russian flags behind him when running this story.

Kremlin.ru reported Putin discussed the fight of Jewish people during WWII and the struggle that still exists today regarding anti-Semitism. He recalled his visit to Yad Vashem in Israel – a "Holocaust" museum – and also mentioned the Museum of Tolerance in Moscow (which he was instrumental in having had built, even personally donating a month's salary to the cause).

Hermann Giesler on left; Albert Speer on right,

The Contradictious Speer

 From Hermann Giesler’s memoir Ein Anderer Hitler
Der zwiespältige Speer, pages 332-339
1977 edition, Druffel-Verlag

Translated  by Wilhelm Kriessmann and Carolyn Yeager
copyright Carolyn Yeager 2014

This section from Giesler's memoir Ein Anderer Hitler deals with his correction of Albert Speer’s insulting statements about the Fuehrer at occasions when Giesler was present or knew differently because of his own experience with Hitler.

To add some perspective to Giesler’s account, we remind you that Speer’s biographer Gitta Sereny titled her book, Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth.

In addition, Nicolaus von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant from 1937-45, wrote in his memoir At Hitler’s Side about an incident of seeing a striking red color appear in the sky while in the company of Hitler on the terrace at Obersaltzberg in Aug. 1939. He told Hitler it augured a “bloody war.” He said he “recounted this conversation to Speer in 1967 but later he (Speer) attributed my remark erroneously to Hitler in his book Erinnerungen.”1

July 7, 2014

Called the best spy of all time for his "impeccable" work, Richard Sorge was a German national born in Russia of a German father, Russian mother who became a very successful intelligence agent for the Soviet Union against Weimar Germany following WWI. When Hitler rose to power, Sorge joined the National-Socialist party and made a convincing 'Nazi.' Other highlights:

• Ernst Zundel writes to Ingrid that treason within caused Germany to lose the war in 1945;
• Sorge's great uncle was a friend and associate of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and a leading Socialist labor organizer in the U.S.;
• Sorge became an avowed Marxist because of disillusion about the war and bourgeois political complacency;
• As an secret agent of the Red Army's Fourth Department, he worked in Britain, Germany and Shanghai as an agricultural journalist/expert before being assigned to Japan in 1933;
• Though he developed a useful network of informants, his greatest success came from gaining the trust and friendship of the German Ambassdor to Japan, and others in the embassy in Tokyo;
• Sorge passed on the actual date of the Barbarossa invasion but was not believed, however his further information was and saved Moscow for Stalin;
• Sorge was arrested in 1941 because he failed to heed warnings in time, perhaps due to depression and drinking;
• Sorge was hanged by the Japanese in Nov. 1944 because the Soviet Union refused to recognize him as "one of theirs" when Japan 3 times tried to arrange a prisoner exchange.

Image: Cover of the brilliantly executed 'graphic novel' (like a comic book) about Richard Sorge by award-winning German cartoonist Isabel Kreitz.

July 3, 2014

Hitler calls Heinrich Himmler "our Ignatius de Loyola" who "with intelligence and obstinacy forged the instrument of the SS" to become "that extraordinary body of men."

Ray Goodwin and Carolyn Yeager read and comment on the dinner table monologues by the German Leader from Jan. 1st to 5th, 1942, as taken down by trusted aide Heinrich Heim.  Included in this episode:

• The importance of that which transcends understanding and the inspiration received at Obersalzberg; 

• The sacrifice demanded of the SS and other elite forces and the extraordinary qualities of Heinrich Himmler;

• The personality of Sepp Dietrich and the leadership of Goering and Viktor Lutze;

• The importance of optimism and comparison of the American, English and Russian soldier;

• The meaning and importance of the title "Fuehrer";

• The three great mistakes of the Italian High Command and the future of tank warfare.

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.

June 23, 2014

Carolyn goes for a three-hour show because Speer is such an interesting character! Some highlights:

• How Architect Speer found work with the NS Party, came to the attention of Hitler and designed the Zeppelin Field Stadium;
• After the death of Fritz Todt; Speer becomes Reich Minister of Armaments in 1942;
• Speer's Final Statement at the Nuremberg Tribunal reveals his strategy of total cooperation with his captors
• Former assistant and friend Rudolf Wolters disapproves of Speer's increasing harshness toward Hitler and insistence on piling guilt upon himself, and breaks the relationship;
• Speer goes out of his way [scroll to June 15, 1977] to support the Jewish fable of extermination of Jews in concentration camps;
  
• Hermann Giesler points out lies and/or total contadictions told by Speer about Adolf Hitler in times when he (Giesler) was present;
• Speer seemed totally bent on regaining the respect of the world by professing total disrespect for everything about the Third Reich he had served.

Image: Albert Speer enjoys the confidence of Adolf Hitler during a walk at Wolf's Lair military headquarters in East Prussia. Enlarge

June 9, 2014

Carolyn looks at the members of the anti-Hitler faction in Germany, dominated by high-level military officers, and asks how they got away with their assassination plots for so long. She also asks: Can a consensus of opinion ever be reached, even among similar people? Some ideas covered:

• What makes a traitor?
• Of 30 top leaders, 20 held high military rank (Colonel or above) and 10 were diplomats and Chiefs of Police;
• It's all in how you view it -to them, they were the loyalists and Hitler was the traitor;
• While they didn't want the Jews around, they also didn't want to harm them;
• They believed Germany's enemies were only against Hitler, and wanted the same things they, as Germans, did;
• Their efforts to remain undetected may have hampered their success in achieving their goal.

Image: At Rastenburg on 15 July 1944. Stauffenberg at left, Hitler center, Keitel on right. The person shaking hands with Hitler is General Karl Bodenschatz, who was seriously wounded five days later, by Stauffenberg's bomb. Enlarge

June 7, 2014

On the 70th anniversary of the Allied landing  on Normandy's coast, known as D-Day, which was Friday, June 6, Carolyn looks at the possibility of treason as the reason for the poor Wehrmacht response to the invasion. Highlights include:

• Generals and even Field Marshals serving in Northwest France in anticipation of the 1944 invasion were the same ones who participated in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler;
• Most likely of all to be helping the enemy was Lt. General Hans Speidel, FM Erwin Rommel's Chief of Staff, who had authority while Rommel was away and was slow to pass on information;
• An unusual number of key leaders were away from their headquarters on June 6, but the weather was thought unfavorable for a landing;
• Hans Speidel was released by the French after the war and in 1957 was named Commander of the Allied Forces, Central Europe, an important NATO post, held until 1963;
• The last installment of Oblt. Leopold Wenger's letters from the front have been published - comments are welcomre.

Image: Lt. General Hans Speidel and FM Erwin Rommel, with Gen. Lang between, at Pas-de-Calais in April 1944. Enlarge

Poldi Wenger receives the Knights Cross from Generaloberst Otto Dessloch, Chief of Luftflotte 4, on 19 January, 1945, assisted by the General's adjutant. (click to enlarge)

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

First, an account of the fall of Sevastopol and the loss of Ukraine by the end of June 1944, assembled by Willy Wenger. The letters that follow, the last ones Leopold Wenger wrote to his family, spanned August '44 to January '45. Poldi had been in Ukraine since November 1943, relocating only slowly westward, but now his Group begins to move around, first to Poland, finally closer to Vienna.

Sevastopol Falls

In six to eight weeks, the situation looked quite different. The Allies had landed in Normandy. On 5 May, the 2nd [Russian] Guard Army went on the offensive on the west side of Sevastopol. On 7 May, the [Soviet] 51st Army and Coastal Army expanded their offensives to Balaklava and conquered the crest of the Sapun mountains, with which the German commanders, two years before, had sealed the [fate of the] siege. The German commanders now abandoned their lines all the way to Inkerman, where they intended to regroup for a counterattack, after gaining the relative security of the commanding mountain heights. The situation of the defenders was desperate. One German division after the other gave way. On 8 May, General Schörner issued an order to the Navy and Luftwaffe to make the best of a bad job. On 9 May, the Soviets liberated Sevastopol. A single German unit fought a rearguard action for four days on the Kherson peninsula to permit the embarkation of survivors.