Germany

By Carolyn Yeager

VOLKSTRAUERTAG TRANSLATES LITERALLY AS PEOPLE'S DAY OF MOURNING.

It originated in 1919 as a day of remembrance for victims of the First World War.

In 1934, the National Socialist government changed the name to “Heroes Remembrance Day,” with emphasis on the fallen German soldiers of the Great War.

After the end of the Second World War, under the rule of the enemy Jews and Communists as allowed and directed by the United States Eisenhower-led Occupation Control Council, the remembrance was expanded to include “victims of violence, terror and oppression, including victims of racism and xenophobia as well as refugees,” according to Deutsche Welle (dw.com).

By Carolyn Yeager

Alternative für Deutschland Thuringia went from 12.8% of the vote total five years ago to 23.4% on Sunday, with all districts reporting. No other party came close to such an advance. Merkel's CDU (Christian Democrats) was the biggest loser, down 11.7%, from the last election! It's pretty clear the AfD took their new voters away from the CDU.

Nearly 65% of the state's eligible voters cast ballots in Sunday's election compared to 53% five years ago.

By Carolyn Yeager

I'M REPORTING ON THIS IN RESPONSE TO MY READERS who attack the German Alternative für Deutschland party as “controlled opposition” because these readers believe being anti-Israel is the only important issue. They attack US President Donald Trump for the same reason. But both are doing tremendously worthy work for us in other very important areas.

The Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has begun a campaign to stop the Greens (a strongly rising leftist political party) from making advances the AfD sees as detrimental to the welfare of the German people. They write on their website:

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By Carolyn Yeager

IT'S HAPPENING. Yes, it's going further than you thought it could, sooner than you thought it would. Scientists in Germany have declared that “there is no biological basis for races, and there has never been one. The concept of race is the result of racisim.”

Let that sink in.

They urge that the word 'race' no longer be used in science.

By Carolyn Yeager

"MY COUNTRY UNLEASHED A HORRIFIC WAR THAT WOULD COST MORE THAN 50 MILLION PEOPLE — among them millions of Polish citizens — their lives. This war was a German crime," the president of the Federal Republic of Germany said in a speech before Polish President Andrzej Duda, and US Vice President Mike Pence, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe as well as representatives of 30 other countries. No Russian representative was invited.

Shame, shame, shame! Disgusting behavior by the top representative of today's Germany.

TWO WEEKS AGO, I reported that the parliamentary election committee in the German state of Saxony banned 43 of the 61 candidates selected for the ballot by the Alternative for Germany party.  Now a state constitutional court has partially overruled that decision.

By Carolyn Yeager

TRADITIONALLY, GERMANY'S CURRENT LEADERS LAY FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS IN the national colors of red and gold in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, the large army headquarters in Berlin from where the plot leaders staged their attempted takeover of the German government and military known as Operation Valkyrie in 1944. It's still not known whether this year's 75th commemoration will be a more elaborate affair.

By Carolyn Yeager

IN THE WAKE OF THE GROWING SUCCESS of anti-migration parties and their demand for protection of the national populations in Europe, the establishmentarians that remain in power are cracking down harshly and ramping up their anti-right rhetoric against any and all they see as threats to their control. In Germany we've seen the treatment of Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West – founded in 2014), hit with bad press, frivolous lawsuits and intrusive investigation by domestic intelligence agencies. The founder of Pegida has been sidelined by Facebook in ways that make it difficult to find and read his content.

By Carolyn Yeager

HOW TO CONQUER the Germans … one way or the other. The Poles were never able to reach the 'promised land' in their historical quest to conquer and occupy Berlin, but they will never stop trying. The latest plan is to have the German government build a major monument to them as “victims of Nazism” in the center of Berlin, on a par with the memorials to the allegedly murdered Jews, the Sinti-Roma and the Homosexuals that currently take up large amounts of prime space in the German capital near the Reichstag. These are cultural groups that existed within Germany, at least, while the Poles are a foreign national population on foreign soil. What nation with any self-respect puts up a monument in the center of their capital city memorializing their enemy in a previous war? None that I know of.

By Carolyn Yeager

THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGNING OF THE VERSAILLES PEACE TREATY was quietly commemorated this week in Germany. The date of the signing was June 28, 1919. 

The treaty was 100% the creation of the Allied victors. No German negotiators were allowed to participate in discussing its content. Thus the peace treaty was a fait accompli which Germans never agreed to but were compelled to sign. It forced the country to pay billions in reparations; to give up its colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region; and to cede almost 20% of its territory to other nations: Alsace-Lorraine became French and most of West Prussia became Polish. The victorious powers — led by the United States, Britain, France and Italy — declared Germany and its allies to be solely responsible for the outbreak of the war that they themselves had turned into a World War. They accused the Germans of having forced them into war (when it was clearly the other way around), thus holding the Reich accountable for "all losses and damages" incurred.