Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #748 Update on the Rewriting of World War II History

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Slow­ly, and over time, the fas­cists who launched and pros­e­cut­ed the war are being polit­i­cal­ly exon­er­at­ed and/or reha­bil­i­tat­ed.

In some cas­es, this has gone unrec­og­nized because ele­ments of the Axis alliance remain rel­a­tive­ly obscure to most observers. Eth­nic groups nurs­ing griev­ances, many of them in ter­ri­to­ries cre­at­ed through the col­lapse of the Euro­pean impe­r­i­al order, allied with the Axis and faced ret­ri­bu­tion when the Allies achieved a bat­tle­field vic­to­ry.

As the sands of time pass through the waist of the polit­i­cal hour­glass, col­lab­o­ra­tionist ele­ments in the Baltic states, the for­mer Czecho­slo­va­kia, the for­mer Yugoslavia, Bel­gium and Poland are under­go­ing a polit­i­cal face lift.

In addi­tion to Esto­ni­a’s hon­or­ing of the Nazis, the broad­cast notes that Bel­gian Flem­ish col­lab­o­ra­tors and Croa­t­ian Ustachi are the focal point of polit­i­cal revi­sion­ism, the lat­ter with the assis­tance of Pope Bene­dict.

As its eco­nom­ic for­tunes have extend­ed Ger­many’s shad­ow over the rest of Europe, the rewrit­ing of Ger­many’s launch­ing of the Euro­pean war is con­tin­u­ing apace. Ger­man eco­nom­ic hege­mo­ny may well aid the accep­tance of that revi­sion­ism by cash-strapped Euro­pean economies.

In addi­tion to dis­miss­ing the Nazis’ crim­i­nal mis­treat­ment of Sovi­et POW’s,  the “new” Ger­many is mov­ing to endorse a “Sec­ond Nurem­burg”, sup­pos­ed­ly to address the mis­treat­ment of the eth­nic Ger­mans expelled from East­ern Europe because of their Fifth Col­umn activ­i­ties on behalf of the Third Reich.

Much of the agi­ta­tion for the for­mal his­tor­i­cal and judi­cial revi­sion of World War II his­to­ry comes from the BdV–the Ger­man gov­ern­ment min­istry charged with the pros­e­cu­tion of the expellee agen­da. The Ver­triebene groups over­seen by the BdVwere under the stew­ard­ship of SS ele­ments.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of the Nazi blue­print for polit­i­cal revi­sion­ism as set forth in Ser­pen­t’s Walk; review of Ber­tels­man­n’s house historian–who blames World War II on Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt.

1. The broad­cast begins with Eston­ian cel­e­bra­tion of the Nazi inva­sion of World War II as “lib­er­a­tion.”

The Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty of Vil­jan­di in Esto­nia has expressed its dis­ap­proval of an event staged on Thurs­day in which res­i­dents of the city com­mem­o­rat­ed its “lib­er­a­tion” by the Ger­man army from Sovi­et occu­pa­tion in June 1941.

Sev­er­al dozen attend­ed a com­mem­o­ra­tion ser­vice at the city’s Ger­man mil­i­tary ceme­tery for the 70th anniver­sary of the Nazi inva­sion. The event was orga­nized by the Eston­ian Sakala Sol­diers Asso­ci­a­tion.

“The usu­al attempt to por­tray peo­ple who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazi occu­pa­tion­al regime as ‘war­riors against Bol­she­vism,’ and fur­ther­more on the day when the mass mur­der of the cit­i­zens of Vil­jan­di and Esto­nia who belonged to the ‘wrong’ eth­nic­i­ty began...appears com­plete­ly idi­ot­ic,” Ala Jacob­sen, chair­woman of the Eston­ian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, said in a state­ment on Thurs­day.

Jaani­ka Kres­sa, one of the event orga­niz­ers, told the Sakala news­pa­per of Vil­jan­di that “the arrival of the Ger­mans is con­sid­ered the lib­er­a­tion of Esto­nia, because it was saved from the order intro­duced in June 1940, when about ten thou­sand peo­ple were deport­ed to Siberia and the local peo­ple were impov­er­ished.

The sit­u­a­tion of the Esto­ni­ans became nor­mal again.” . . . .

“Nazi-inva­sion Com­mem­o­ra­tion Ignites Row in Esto­nia” by Jere­my Sharon; Jerusalem Post; 7/11/201.

2. In Bel­gium, too, the past is being rewrit­ten.

Some 400,000 Bel­gians were charged with col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazi occu­piers after the coun­try was lib­er­at­ed in 1944. Some, like Wyss, were exe­cut­ed. Oth­ers were jailed, fined or deprived of their civ­il rights.

Sev­en­ty years on, that lega­cy of col­lab­o­ra­tion has become the lat­est bat­tle­field between Bel­gium’s deeply divid­ed French- and Dutch-speak­ing politi­cians.

Polit­i­cal wran­gling between the two lin­guis­tic groups has left Bel­gium with­out a ful­ly func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment for a year, since elec­tions on June 13, 2010. Now rela­tions have been fur­ther strained by a bill pre­sent­ed in par­lia­ment by a Flem­ish nation­al­ist par­ty that seeks an amnesty for sur­viv­ing Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors and com­pen­sa­tion for their descen­dants.

Pre­vi­ous­ly such pro­pos­als have been reject­ed out of hand, but this year, with the coun­try dead­locked by the lin­guis­tic dis­pute, main­stream Flem­ish par­ties from the Dutch-speak­ing north have used their major­i­ty in the upper-house of par­lia­ment to ensure that the bill will be debat­ed.

“At a cer­tain moment, we have to be adult and be ready to dis­cuss these things and per­haps also to for­get because it’s the past,” said Jus­tice Min­is­ter Ste­faan De Cler­ck, from the cen­ter-right Chris­t­ian-Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Flem­ish par­ty. “We have to for­get cer­tain things, that’s nec­es­sary to re-estab­lish soci­ety.”

Flem­ish sup­port for the amnesty debate, along with the min­ster’s com­ments, has pro­voked out­rage among French-speak­ing politi­cians and Jew­ish groups in Bel­gium. . . .

. . . Dur­ing World War II, thou­sands of Dutch-speak­ing Flem­ings and French-speak­ing Wal­loons risked their lives fight­ing with the resis­tance against the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Bel­gium. How­ev­er, oth­ers on both sides of the lin­guis­tic divide worked with the Nazis. His­to­ri­an Chan­tal Kesteloot says those found guilty of col­lab­o­ra­tion totalled less than 1 per­cent of pop­u­la­tion.

Flem­ish nation­al­ist extrem­ists wel­comed the Nazis, hop­ing they would end what they viewed as Flan­ders’ dom­i­na­tion by Bel­gium’s French-speak­ing minor­i­ty. Among Fran­coph­o­nes, the Rex­ist move­ment gave Adolf Hitler fanat­i­cal sup­port, recruit­ing 25,000 vol­un­teers for a Wal­loon Legion that fought for Ger­many on the Russ­ian front. Hitler once report­ed­ly told Rex­ist leader Leon Degrelle: “If I had a son, I wish he’d be like you.”

After the coun­try’s lib­er­a­tion, the restored Bel­gian author­i­ties cracked down hard on col­lab­o­ra­tors. Almost 250 faced the fir­ing squad and tens of thou­sands were impris­oned. Some 4 bil­lion Bel­gian francs ($91 mil­lion by the exchange rate of the time) were seized from con­vict­ed col­lab­o­ra­tors.

While col­lab­o­ra­tion is still almost uni­ver­sal­ly con­demned by Bel­gium’s French-speak­ers, atti­tudes in Flan­ders have changed. Many believe that a venge­ful Bel­gian state was unfair­ly severe on Flem­ish nation­al­ists who were not con­vinced Nazis but worked with the occu­py­ing forces in the hope of advanc­ing their goal of inde­pen­dence for Flan­ders. . . .

“Bel­gian Pol­i­tics Makes Room for Nazi Apol­o­gists” by Paul Ames; Glob­al Post; 6/16/2011.

3. Pope Bene­dict has advanced the Vat­i­can’s his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism of World War II, which has been pro­found and par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious with regard to the Vat­i­can’s own col­lab­o­ra­tion with fas­cism. In a recent vis­it to Zagreb (Croa­t­ia), he laud­ed Alois Stepinac, a Car­di­nal who was a mem­ber of the Ustache par­lia­ment dur­ing World War II. Bru­tal allies of the Nazis, the Ustachi were so mon­strous in their slaugh­ter of Jews, Gyp­sies and Serbs dur­ing the war, that even the SS were hor­ri­fied at their excess­es.

The Amer­i­can Gath­er­ing of Jew­ish Holo­caust Sur­vivors on June 6 blast­ed Pope Bene­dict XVI over his state­ment about WW2 Croa­t­ian Car­di­nal Alo­jz­i­je Stepinac.

The spir­i­tu­al leader of the Roman Catholics claimed dur­ing his vis­it to Zagreb that Stepinac — tried and found guilty of col­lab­o­ra­tion with the fas­cist Ustasha regime of the Inde­pen­dent State of Croa­t­ia (NDH) — was a defend­er of Jews, Ortho­dox Chris­tians and any­one under per­se­cu­tion.

That regime ran death camps, includ­ing the largest — Jasen­o­vac, where Serbs, but also Jews and Roma, were slaugh­tered.

Stepinac, beat­i­fied by Pope John Paul II in 1998, is an “adored per­son­age in Croa­t­ia”, accord­ing to a Beta report, cit­ing AFP.

Vis­it­ing Stepinac’s grave in Zagreb the pope said this car­di­nal “knew how to resist total­i­tar­i­an­ism in all its forms, as a defend­er of Jews, Ortho­dox Chris­tians and any per­se­cut­ed group under the Nazi and fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship, and an advo­cate for believ­ers and per­se­cut­ed and mur­dered priests under com­mu­nism”.

The Amer­i­can Gath­er­ing of Jew­ish Holo­caust Sur­vivors and Their Descen­dants denounced the pope for hon­or­ing Stepinac, recall­ing that the Zagreb car­di­nal was a pas­sion­ate sup­port­er of the Ustashe, whose bru­tal­i­ties were so extreme that they even shocked some of their Nazi mas­ters.

A press release from the orga­ni­za­tion also said that the pope was right to con­demn the Ustashe regime, but wrong to pay trib­ute to one of its most promi­nent back­ers. . . .

“Holo­caust Sur­vivors Denounce Pope’s Croa­t­ia State­ment”; Glob­al Research; 6/9/2011.

4. The “new” Ger­many con­tin­ues to cov­er-up crimes of the Third Reich. The war crimes com­mit­ted at the Byeloruss­ian con­cen­tra­tion camp Ozarichi have been dis­missed by the Ger­mans.

70 years after the Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union, the Ger­man Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is still deny­ing the exis­tence of con­cen­tra­tion camps run by the Wehrma­cht. Over the past four years, alone, the Repub­lic of Belarus has “repeat­ed­ly” asked Berlin to rec­og­nize the Ozarichi death camp that had been estab­lished by the Nazi army as a con­cen­tra­tion camp. The Ger­man side has reg­u­lar­ly reject­ed this request by refer­ring to ambigu­ous “judi­cial obsta­cles.” The Wehrma­cht estab­lished the Ozarichi Con­cen­tra­tion Camp on marsh­lands in March 1944, where rel­a­tives of slave labor­ers, who had been deport­ed to Ger­many, were held cap­tive in the open with­out shel­ter. The pris­on­ers, most of whom were elder­ly, sick or chil­dren, were con­sid­ered “unfit to work” and there­fore delib­er­ate­ly exposed to death by star­va­tion and cold. Under these cir­cum­stances, more than 9,000 peo­ple died in just one week. The Ger­man army com­mand con­sid­ered this a suc­cess: “We don’t need to sup­ply food to use­less mouths,” declared the Wehrma­cht com­mand respon­si­ble for the death camp. Ger­man his­to­ri­ans have called this “one of the worst crimes the Wehrma­cht ever com­mit­ted against civil­ians.” How­ev­er, the sur­vivors of the Ozarichi con­cen­tra­tion camp have nev­er received repa­ra­tions for their suf­fer­ing.
Recog­ni­tion Denied
Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion released by the Belaru­sian Jus­tice Min­istry, 70 years after the Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union, Ger­many is still refus­ing to rec­og­nize the Ozarichi death camp, which had been erect­ed by the Nazi mil­i­tary, as a con­cen­tra­tion camp. Since July 2006, the Belaru­sian Jus­tice Min­istry has “repeat­ed­ly” addressed this request to the Ger­man side, and always received the answer “that it is impos­si­ble due to legal obsta­cles.” In March 2010, the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry unex­pect­ed­ly explained, “con­cen­tra­tion camp lists had been com­piled in coop­er­a­tion with the Inter­na­tion­al Trac­ing Ser­vice” of the Red Cross. The Belaru­sian Repub­lic then applied to the Inter­na­tion­al Trac­ing Ser­vice, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly send­ing a let­ter to François Bel­lon, head of the ICRC’s region­al del­e­ga­tion for the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, Belarus, Moldo­va and Ukraine, “request­ing assis­tance in a thor­ough and time­ly con­sid­er­a­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of rec­og­niz­ing Ozarichi as a con­cen­tra­tion camp. For the sake of the vic­tims, the Jus­tice Min­istry will do “its utmost” in this mat­ter, declared the Belaru­sian Jus­tice Ministry.[1]
Nine Thou­sand Dead in a Sin­gle Week
The Ozarichi Con­cen­tra­tion Camp was erect­ed under orders of the Supreme Com­man­der of the 9th Ger­man Army, Josef Harpe, in March 1944. Units of the 35th Infantry divi­sion under the com­mand of Johann-Georg Richert, rein­forced by the spe­cial com­man­do of the 7‑A SS Bat­tle Group B herd­ed at least 40,000 civil­ians into sev­er­al barbed wire enclosed and mined pens south of the Belaru­sian city of Bobruisk.[2] The pris­on­ers were most­ly fam­i­ly mem­bers of slave labor­ers — chil­dren under thir­teen, sick­ly, moth­ers with infants and elder­ly — peo­ple for whom the Wehrma­cht had no usage. The guards had already shot at least 500 of them on their way to this impro­vised camp, because they were too weak to con­tin­ue walk­ing. The oth­ers, many of whom had caught typhus, had to sur­vive in the open in the marsh­lands — defense­less against the cold, lack­ing med­ical aid, san­i­ta­tion, drink­ing water and food. With­in one week at least 9,000 more had died.[3] “There was a gate with barbed wire, small watch tow­ers with sol­diers and Ger­man shep­herds, but noth­ing else,” recalls the sur­vivor Lar­isa Stashke­vich, and explains fur­ther that any­one, who even attempt­ed to light a camp­fire, was imme­di­ate­ly gunned down. To at least be able to have a bit of warmth, she laid “behind the corpses” of mur­dered prisoners.[4]
A Nutri­tion­al Bur­den
With their dead­ly oper­a­tion, the Wehrma­cht com­mand was first pur­su­ing the objec­tive of elim­i­nat­ing all those behind the front lines, clas­si­fied “unfit for work” and con­sid­ered a bur­den for the fore­see­able retreat ahead of the Red Army. The March 8, 1944 entry in the war diary of the 9th Army explained: “For the zone close to the front­lines, it is planned (...) to bring all natives unfit for work to the area to be evac­u­at­ed and leave them behind, in the retreat from the front, par­tic­u­lar­ly the numer­ous typhus infect­ed, who, to avoid their pos­si­bly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the troops, had been sent to par­tic­u­lar vil­lages. The deci­sion to rid our­selves of this nutri­tion­al bur­den in this way has (...) been reached after due con­sid­er­a­tion and exam­i­na­tion of all pos­si­ble consequences.”[5]
Res­i­den­tial Areas Relieved
In their plan­ning, the Wehrma­cht com­man­ders appar­ent­ly had two oth­er aspects under con­sid­er­a­tion. On the one hand, the sick and starv­ing, to be left behind, were intend­ed, if not to halt the advance of the Sovi­et army, then at least to slow it down, because the Sovi­et troops would, first, have to treat those mis­han­dled by the Ger­mans. More­over, on the oth­er, because of the large num­ber left behind infect­ed with typhus, there was a good chance that many Red Army sol­diers would also catch typhus. In any case, the high com­mand of the Ninth Army con­sid­ered their action a total suc­cess: “the con­sol­i­da­tion pro­vid­ed an essen­tial relax­ation over the entire bat­tle area. Res­i­den­tial areas were relieved mak­ing space avail­able for troops. No more pro­vi­sions were made avail­able for use­less mouths. Remov­ing the ill sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced the source of infection.”[6]
One of the Worst Crimes
Dieter Pohl, a his­to­ri­an at the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ry (IfZ) in Munich, char­ac­ter­ized the mass dying in the Ozarichi Con­cen­tra­tion Camp as “absolute­ly one of the worst crimes the Wehrma­cht ever com­mit­ted against civilians.”[7] Hans-Hein­rich Nolte, a schol­ar for East Euro­pean Stud­ies, places the Ger­man mil­i­tary’s actions in the gen­er­al con­text of the Ger­man war of pre­da­tion, exploita­tion and anni­hi­la­tion against the Sovi­et Union: “That crime cor­re­sponds to how the Wehrma­cht treat­ed Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war in the win­ter 1941/1942, and had sim­i­lar­i­ties to the star­va­tion of Jews as well as those ‘unfit to work’ when (...) labor was forced into depor­ta­tion to the Reich. In many aspects, the crime cor­re­sponds to the gen­er­al char­ac­ter of the Ger­man war against the USSR, pre­cise­ly in the wish of not feed­ing ‘use­less’ people.”[8] In spite of these assess­ments by renowned schol­ars, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment still refus­es repa­ra­tions to the sur­vivors of the Ozarichi Con­cen­tra­tion Camp — point­ing to cur­rent legal stan­dards.

“Use­less Mouths”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 6/14/2011.

5. In a sim­i­lar vein, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to refuse repa­ra­tions to Sovi­et POW’s from WWII.

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is still refus­ing repa­ra­tions to Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war, sev­en­ty years after the Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union. This refusal is in spite of the fact that hun­dreds of thou­sands of Sovi­et sol­diers were held in camps sim­i­lar to con­cen­tra­tion camps and were forced to do slave labor for Ger­man agri­cul­tur­al and indus­tri­al enter­pris­es under dead­ly con­di­tions. Even though the Foun­da­tion “Remem­brance, Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Future,” found­ed by Berlin in 2000, envis­aged repa­ra­tions for sur­viv­ing slave labor­ers, Red Army pris­on­ers of war as well as “Ital­ian mil­i­tary detainees” were exclud­ed from the defined scope of appli­ca­tion of this foun­da­tions act. Ger­man courts have always dis­missed law­suits of repa­ra­tion claims brought by sur­viv­ing Sovi­et POWs — with the argu­ment that “slave labor was per­mit­ted under inter­na­tion­al law.”
Con­di­tions Sim­i­lar to Con­cen­tra­tion Camps
The his­to­ri­an Ulrich Her­bert dis­cov­ered that dur­ing World War II, up to twelve mil­lion peo­ple had been deport­ed from their Wehrma­cht occu­pied home­lands to Ger­many, where they had been detained in camps. By the end of the war, most of them found them­selves still on the ter­ri­to­ry of the for­mer Ger­man Reich and were clas­si­fied by the allies under the catch-all term “Dis­placed Per­sons” (DPs). They includ­ed around six mil­lion so-called alien work­ers, more than half of whom were from Poland and the Sovi­et Union. They, for the most part, had been deport­ed to Ger­many as labor­ers. In addi­tion, approx. 750,000 con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates — more than 90 per­cent non-Ger­mans – had been sent main­ly to work in the arms indus­try under mur­der­ous con­di­tions. The DPs also includ­ed approx. two mil­lion pris­on­ers of war, who were also used as slave labor in indus­try and agri­cul­ture. The largest por­tion of these were sol­diers of the Red Army, the French and the Ital­ian military.[1] In 1944 alone, more than 600,000 Sovi­et POWs were forced into slave labor in the “Greater Ger­man Empire.” They had been impris­oned in con­di­tions sim­i­lar to those of the con­cen­tra­tion camps, under per­sis­tent death threats and dead­ly harass­ment by their Ger­man “employ­ers.” If they had been fed at all, then very insuf­fi­cient­ly. And yet, they have nev­er received repa­ra­tions for their suf­fer­ing at the hands of the Ger­man side.[2]
Half a Turnip Dai­ly
The for­mer Sovi­et sol­dier, Vladimir Ivanovich Margevs­ki, from the region of Zhy­to­myr in the Ukraine, recounts his expe­ri­ences as a pris­on­er of war of the Ger­mans. “Once a day, we ate dried turnips and greens. We were doing hard, dan­ger­ous work in the fer­til­iz­er fac­to­ry in the city of Beuthen, at the Bobrik train sta­tion, which also pro­duced car­bide. I will not men­tion here all the humil­i­a­tion, which is still painful. Nei­ther French, nor Serb, Ital­ian, Czech and Pol­ish POWs were treat­ed as cru­el­ly as we Rus­sians. When the Ger­mans start­ed their retreat, we were put out in the win­ter like dogs, with near­ly noth­ing to wear and bare­foot. They gave us half a turnip dai­ly to eat. En route we were locked into stalls like sheep. I will not say more. My heart bleeds, when I think back on those hor­rors. I, myself, am sur­prised that I sur­vived at all and am still alive.”[3] Renowned his­to­ri­ans esti­mate that the num­ber of Sovi­et sol­diers, who had been killed in Wehrma­cht cap­tiv­i­ty was near­ly three mil­lion. In a recent study, the his­tor­i­cal schol­ar Wig­bert Benz writes that their “num­ber 1 cause of death” was starvation.[4]
Def­i­n­i­tion Exclu­sion
Repa­ra­tions for Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war, at least for those among them, who per­formed slave labor, have been strict­ly refused by the Ger­man side. Though the Foun­da­tion “Remem­brance, Respon­si­bil­i­ty, Future” (EVZ), cre­at­ed in 2000 by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, fore­saw the pay­ment of repa­ra­tions to the sur­viv­ing slave labor­ers, Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war along with “Ital­ian mil­i­tary detainees” were exclud­ed from the defined scope of appli­ca­tion of this foun­da­tions act. Their depor­ta­tion to Ger­many and the ensu­ing slave labor in indus­try and agri­cul­ture, it is argued, was legal under the laws of war (“ius in bel­lo”) in force at the time, explained the inter­na­tion­al jurist, Chris­t­ian Tomuschat in an exper­tise for the Ger­man government.[5] The foun­da­tion act had been for­mu­lat­ed accord­ing­ly. Arti­cle 11, Para­graph 3 of the act stip­u­lates, “pris­on­er of war sta­tus is no grounds for repa­ra­tions claims.”[6]
Mur­dered through Work
Attempts by Sovi­et POW sur­vivors to have their claims of repa­ra­tions hon­ored through law­suits have always seen their cas­es dis­missed by Ger­man courts. As the lawyer, Ste­fan Taschjian explained in an inter­view with german-foreign-policy.com, some­times the courts argued with the EVZ-Foun­da­tion Act or, if they were pre­pared to pay repa­ra­tions at all, only to the sur­viv­ing Sovi­et sol­diers who had been held in Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps. There­fore, accord­ing to Taschjian, “95 per­cent of the for­mer Sovi­et POWs are exclud­ed from any form of repa­ra­tions,” since they were in the Wehrma­cht’s “Sta­lags” or POW camps. It was this jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for refus­ing repa­ra­tions that was so “bewil­der­ing,” says Taschjian. “The con­di­tions of incar­cer­a­tion in the Sta­lags were often worst than those in con­cen­tra­tion camps. Fifty-five per­cent of the Sovi­et pris­on­ers were delib­er­ate­ly mur­dered through work.” Besides, explains Taschjian, in Ger­man courts, slave labor still is con­sid­ered “per­mis­si­ble under inter­na­tion­al law.”[7]

“Per­mit­ted Under Inter­na­tion­al Law”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 6/20/2011.

6. Through the “Deutsche Burschen­schaft”, Ger­man cab­i­net min­is­ters are tied to the NPD, Ger­many’s top neo-Nazi par­ty.

7. Anoth­er Ger­man cab­i­net min­is­ter has laid the blame for start­ing World War II on Poland.

8. Asso­ciates of the ver­triebene groups have joined Eri­ka Stein­bach’s cho­rus in lay­ing the blame for World War II on the Allies.

9. Even the respect­ed Der Spiegel has advanced his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism in the same vein as the Ver­triebene groups.

10. Dirk Baven­damm, the house his­to­ri­an for Ber­tels­mann (which dom­i­nates Eng­lish-lan­guage news media) has laid the blame for World War II on the Unit­ed States, Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and (of course) the Jews. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Ber­tels­mann was the pub­lish­ing house for the SS in World War II.

His [Dirk Baven­damm’s] book Roo­sevelt’s Way to War (Roo­sevelts Weg zum Krieg) was pub­lished in 1983. Rewrit­ing his­to­ry, he stat­ed that Roo­sevelt, not Hitler, had caused World War II. He also wrote that Amer­i­can Jews “con­trolled most of the media,” and he claimed they gave a false pic­ture of Hitler. . . .

. . . . In a sec­ond book, Roo­sevelt’s War (pub­lished in 1993, reis­sued in 1998), Baven­damm accus­es the US Pres­i­dent of enact­ing a plan to start World War II. In the same book he sug­gests that Hitler’s threats in ear­ly 1939 against Euro­pean Jew­ry were a reac­tion to Roo­sevelt’s strat­e­gy against Ger­many. . . .

“Ber­tels­man­n’s Revi­sion­ist” by John Fried­man and Her­sch Frischler; The Nation; 11/8/1999.

11. Jim Fet­zer, one of the prin­ci­pals in the con­fed­er­a­cy of dunces known as “The Truthers,” has become an advo­cate of “open debate” about the Holocaust–i.e. con­ced­ing that it may be fic­tion. (Fet­zer main­tains that he is “unde­cid­ed.”) Like the unten­able the­sis that the Twin Tow­ers and WTC 7 were brought down by con­trolled demo­li­tions, this line of argu­ment is pure fas­cist revi­sion­ism, stand­ing in fun­da­men­tal con­trast to the facts.

12. Creep­ing revi­sion­ism of the type illus­trat­ed in the items above epit­o­mizes the cog­ni­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare strat­e­gy delin­eat­ed in the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk.

It assumes that Hitler’s war­rior elite — the SS — didn’t give up their strug­gle for a White world when they lost the Sec­ond World War. Instead their sur­vivors went under­ground and adopt­ed some of the tac­tics of their ene­mies: they began build­ing their eco­nom­ic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opin­ion-form­ing media. A cen­tu­ry after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of gov­ern­ment-enforced mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism and ‘equal­i­ty.’

(From the back cov­er of Serpent’s Walk by “Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall;” Copy­right 1991 [SC]; Nation­al Van­guard Books; 0–937944-05‑X.)

13. This process is described in more detail in a pas­sage of text, con­sist­ing of a dis­cus­sion between Wrench (a mem­ber of this Under­ground Reich) and a mer­ce­nary named Less­ing.

. . . . The SS . . . what was left of it . . . had busi­ness objec­tives before and dur­ing World War II. When the war was lost they just kept on, but from oth­er places: Bogo­ta, Asun­cion, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Mex­i­co City, Colom­bo, Dam­as­cus, Dac­ca . . . you name it. They real­ized that the world is head­ing towards a ‘cor­po­racra­cy;’ five or ten inter­na­tion­al super-com­pa­nies that will run every­thing worth run­ning by the year 2100. Those super-cor­po­ra­tions exist now, and they’re already divid­ing up the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of food, trans­port, steel and heavy indus­try, oil, the media, and oth­er com­modi­ties. They’re most­ly con­glom­er­ates, with fin­gers in more than one pie . . . . We, the SS, have the say in four or five. We’ve been com­pet­ing for the past six­ty years or so, and we’re slow­ly gain­ing . . . . About ten years ago, we swung a merg­er, a takeover, and got vot­ing con­trol of a super­corp that runs a small but sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the Amer­i­can media. Not open­ly, not with bands and trum­pets or swastikas fly­ing, but qui­et­ly: one huge cor­po­ra­tion cud­dling up to anoth­er one and gen­tly munch­ing it up, like a great, gub­bing amoe­ba. Since then we’ve been replac­ing exec­u­tives, push­ing some­body out here, bring­ing some­body else in there. We’ve swing pro­gram con­tent around, too. Not much, but a lit­tle, so it won’t show. We’ve cut down on ‘nasty-Nazi’ movies . . . good guys in white hats and bad guys in black SS hats . . . lov­able Jews ver­sus fiendish Ger­mans . . . and we have media psy­chol­o­gists, ad agen­cies, and behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion spe­cial­ists work­ing on image changes. . . .

(Ibid.; pp. 42–43.)

Discussion

11 comments for “FTR #748 Update on the Rewriting of World War II History”

  1. fas­ci­nat­ing and well researched expo­sure of neo-fas­cist revi­sion­ism in recent pol­i­tics and busi­ness,

    Posted by jed jackson | September 5, 2011, 7:11 pm
  2. Great arti­cle Dave.

    You need to watch this video about ‘Curve­ball’ and who encour­aged his WMD lies to stitch up the UK and US!

    http://germanywatch.blogspot.com/2011/09/wmd-and-germanys-dirty-secret.html

    Posted by GermanyWatch | September 7, 2011, 6:06 am
  3. “mur­dered through work”

    This seems to be what the US is mov­ing towards with the tax bur­den being put on the mid­dle class, and job­less rates soar­ing, with no safe­ty net.

    Work peo­ple to death in vir­tu­al ghet­tos and then toss them out. If they get vio­lent put them in pris­ons, but most will have no need or an expen­sive prison and guards, most will just wan­der around and be irrel­e­vant.

    Posted by brux | September 19, 2011, 9:05 pm
  4. Hel­lo Dave,

    A piece of news from last sum­mer, but rel­e­vant I think in these mat­ters. Pub­lished in Ger­man, it seems to be say­ing that Ber­tels­mann envi­sions to begin hav­ing a par­tic­i­pa­tion in Pol­ish media. Is it, by any chance, to have a bet­ter chance to rewrite his­to­ry and all the ter­ri­ble things they did in WWI and WWII? I think that thought deserves to be enter­tained. Here is the orig­i­nal Ger­man with the google trans­la­tion in Eng­lish.

    http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/de/fulltext/58129

    Ger­man: Die zu Ber­tels­mann gehörende RTL Group plant den Ein­stieg beim pol­nis­chen TV-Konz­ern TVN.

    Eng­lish: Which belongs to Ber­tels­man­n’s RTL Group plans to enter the Pol­ish tele­vi­sion TVN Group.

    Posted by Claude | November 26, 2011, 5:17 pm
  5. [...] FTR #748: Rewrit­ing of WWII His­to­ry This entry was post­ed in Counter-pro­pa­gan­da, Media, Nazism and tagged Ber­tels­mann, Démoc­rates, Deux­ième Guerre Mon­di­ale, Dirk Baven­damm, John F. Kennedy, Mimi Alford, Once Upon a Secret, Ran­dom House, Révi­sion­nisme, Roo­sevelts Weg Zum Krieg. Book­mark the perma­link. ← Loic Tassé sur le ren­verse­ment de la poli­tique étrangère cana­di­enne vis-à-vis de la Chine Armin Van Buuren – Thrill (HQ) → [...]

    Posted by Once Upon a Secret de Mimi Alford: Ramdom House se paie un Démocrate? | Lys-d'Or | February 13, 2012, 8:10 pm
  6. Glob­al Research has an arti­cle about the re-writ­ing of his­to­ry and the return of Nazism:

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-rising-tide-of-neo-nazism/5321249

    The Ris­ing Tide of Neo-Nazism-
    Rus­sia, Israel, Iran and Syr­ia Join Hands in Sup­port­ing UN Anti-Nazi Res­o­lu­tion

    Excerpts:

    “Twen­ty-two coun­tries of the Euro­pean Union failed to sup­port the Unit­ed Nations Anti-Nazi Res­o­lu­tion, and, instead, abstained. By con­trast, Iran and Syr­ia vot­ed to sup­port the Anti-Nazi Res­o­lu­tion, togeth­er with Israel and 120 oth­er mem­ber states of the Unit­ed Nations. Although Iran ’s Pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad has been accused of “holo­caust denial,” Iran ’s vote in sup­port of the Unit­ed Nations Anti-Nazi Res­o­lu­tion is a seri­ous com­mit­ment oppos­ing a recur­rence of the holo­caust.

    Europe’s absten­tion can be explained, in part, as a result of the most insid­i­ous and dan­ger­ous cur­rent form of holo­caust denial, which is con­tained in the “Prague Dec­la­ra­tion,” a doc­u­ment of crude pro­pa­gan­da that attempts to deny the explic­it­ly racist and geno­ci­dal doc­trine of Nazism, and in an act of mam­moth fraud­u­lence, attempts to equate the his­tor­i­cal­ly unique hor­rors of Nazism with com­mu­nism. This is a sin­is­ter fal­si­fi­ca­tion of his­to­ry which has encour­aged attempts to legit­imize the rebirth of Nazism now spread­ing through­out Europe .

    This fal­si­fi­ca­tion of his­to­ry inten­tion­al­ly ignores the deci­sive part played by the Sovi­et Union in defeat­ing the most mon­strous, geno­ci­dal onslaught of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, per­pe­trat­ed by armies incul­cat­ed with the Nazi doc­trine. The Prague Dec­la­ra­tion, by demo­niz­ing com­mu­nism, implic­it­ly makes heroes of Nazis and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors by deceit­ful­ly defin­ing them as “free­dom fight­ers,” and “san­i­tiz­ing” Nazism by use of the more neu­tral descrip­tive term “total­i­tar­i­an,” there­by obscur­ing the explic­it­ly sav­age racist and geno­ci­dal iden­ti­ty of Nazism.

    The Prague Dec­la­ra­tion requires “adjust­ment and over­haul of Euro­pean his­to­ry text­books so that chil­dren could learn and be warned about com­mu­nism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes.” This very sug­ges­tion of “equiv­a­lence” is a machi­avel­lian triv­i­al­iza­tion of the holo­caust. And call­ing for the Jan­u­ary 27 date of memo­ri­al­i­sa­tion of the vic­tims of the Holo­caust to be changed to a “joint day of remem­brance of the vic­tims of both Nazi and Com­mu­nist total­i­tar­i­an regimes” is, once again, as venal and dan­ger­ous a form of holo­caust denial as any­thing the Iran­ian Pres­i­dent ever sug­gest­ed. This is an attempt to deny the unique­ly racist and geno­ci­dal real­i­ty of Nazism. Nazism is not sim­ply “total­i­tar­i­an,” it is geno­ci­dal.”

    More at link

    Posted by Swamp | February 1, 2013, 9:53 am
  7. Sub­mit­ting this with lots of ques­tions;

    “Pope Pius XII helped Jew­ish refugees to hide from the Nazis, claims new book”

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/09/hitlers-pope-revealed-as-a-secret-friend-to-holocaust-victims/

    Excerpts:
    “Pius XII has long been vil­i­fied as “Hitler’s pope”, accused of fail­ing pub­licly to con­demn the geno­cide of Europe’s Jews. Now a British author has unearthed exten­sive mate­r­i­al that Vat­i­can insid­ers believe will restore his rep­u­ta­tion, reveal­ing the part that he played in sav­ing lives and oppos­ing nazism. Gor­don Thomas, a Protes­tant, was giv­en access to pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished Vat­i­can doc­u­ments and tracked down vic­tims, priests and oth­ers who had not told their sto­ries before.

    The Pope’s Jews, which will be pub­lished next month, details how Pius gave his bless­ing to the estab­lish­ment of safe hous­es in the Vat­i­can and Europe’s con­vents and monas­ter­ies. He over­saw a secret oper­a­tion with code names and fake doc­u­ments for priests who risked their lives to shel­ter Jews, some of whom were even made Vat­i­can sub­jects.

    Thomas shows, for exam­ple, that priests were instruct­ed to issue bap­tism cer­tifi­cates to hun­dreds of Jews hid­den in Genoa, Rome and else­where in Italy. More than 2,000 Jews in Hun­gary were giv­en fab­ri­cat­ed Vat­i­can doc­u­ments iden­ti­fy­ing them as Catholics and a net­work saved Ger­man Jews by bring­ing them to Rome. The pope appoint­ed a priest with exten­sive funds with which to pro­vide food, cloth­ing and med­i­cine. More than 4,000 Jews were hid­den in con­vents and monas­ter­ies across Italy.

    Dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after the war, the pope was con­sid­ered a Jew­ish sav­iour. Jew­ish lead­ers – such as Jerusalem’s chief rab­bi in 1944 – said the peo­ple of Israel would nev­er for­get what he and his del­e­gates “are doing for our unfor­tu­nate broth­ers and sis­ters at the most trag­ic hour”. Jew­ish news­pa­pers in Britain and Amer­i­ca echoed that praise, and Hitler brand­ed him “a Jew lover”.

    How­ev­er, his image turned sour in the 1960s, thanks to Sovi­et antag­o­nism towards the Vat­i­can and a Ger­man play by Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, which vil­i­fied the pope, accus­ing him of silence and inac­tion over the Jews. It was a trend that inten­si­fied with the pub­li­ca­tion of Hitler’s Pope, a book by John Corn­well.

    How­ev­er, as the Vatican’s ambas­sador in Ger­many before the war, the future pope con­tributed to the damn­ing 1937 encycli­cal of Pius XI, With Burn­ing Anx­i­ety, and, as Pius XII he made con­dem­na­to­ry speech­es that were wide­ly inter­pret­ed at the time – includ­ing by Jew­ish lead­ers and news­pa­pers – as clear con­dem­na­tions of Hitler’s racial poli­cies. Due to the Vatican’s tra­di­tion­al­ly diplo­mat­ic lan­guage, the accu­sa­tion that Pius XII did not speak out has fes­tered.

    Pro­fes­sor Ronald J Rych­lak, the author of Hitler, the War and the Pope, said: “Gor­don Thomas has found pri­ma­ry sources … He has tracked down fam­i­ly mem­bers, orig­i­nal doc­u­men­ta­tion and estab­lished what real­ly was a uni­ver­sal per­cep­tion pri­or to the 1960s. He’s shown what the peo­ple at the time – vic­tims, res­cuers and vil­lains – all knew: that Pius XII was a great sup­port­er of the vic­tims of the Holo­caust.”

    Asked why the Vat­i­can had not made the new mate­r­i­al avail­able until now or, where sto­ries were known, dis­sem­i­nat­ed them more widely,Thomas said: “The church thinks across cen­turies. If there’s a dis­pute for 50 years, so what?”
    (more at link)
    —————————-

    I’m in the mid­dle of the “Rat­line” chap­ter in Simp­son’s “Blow­back”. Also reviewed some of Dav­e’s work on the Vat­i­can.
    I find it inter­est­ing that this sto­ry comes out the same week that the New York Times reports that over 10,000 girls were used for slave labor in Catholic work­house laun­dries:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/world/europe/ireland-magdalene-institutions-report.html?_r=0

    More on that in the Feb. 7 print edi­tion

    Re-writ­ing Vat­i­can his­to­ry?
    Pub­lic Rela­tions cam­paign?

    Posted by Swamp | February 9, 2013, 10:20 am
  8. @SWAMP–

    Sim­ply put, it’s a lie. Gen­er­at­ed because the truth is start­ing to come out.

    The doc­u­men­ta­tion on Euge­nio Pacel­li aka Pius XII is beyond dis­pute.

    Try AFA #17, FTR #504, FTR #532.

    The recent book “The Real Odessa” also has good dis­cus­sion of the “anti-Nazi Pope!”

    Best,

    Dave Emory

    Posted by Dave Emory | February 9, 2013, 7:10 pm
  9. Thanks Dave, Just ordered the book “The Real Odessa” and will review the above men­tioned shows.

    Posted by Swamp | February 9, 2013, 7:45 pm
  10. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/279363#.UnE3khA4FpE

    10/30/2013, Chesh­van 26, 5774

    Croa­t­ion Min­is­ter Accused in Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tor Killings

    The courts in Zagreb, Croa­t­ia have upheld an indict­ment againt for­mer Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or, Josip Boljko­vac. The 93-yr.-old ex-min­is­ter is accused of order­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of 21 civil­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors dur­ing World War II.

    Boljko­vac, who was one of Mar­shal Tito’s senior aides when he was a Yugosla­vian par­ti­san com­man­der. denied the charges. He appeared in court on Mon­day in his wheel­chair, say­ing there was nei­ther proof nor evi­dence against him in this mat­ter.

    Posted by Vanfield | October 30, 2013, 8:49 am
  11. http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/General_News/2014–02-11/35084/Alojzije_Stepinac_could_soon_be_announced_a_saint

    11. 02. 14. — 14:00
    Alo­jz­i­je Stepinac could soon be announced a saint

    Croa­t­ian Times

    Late Croa­t­ian car­di­nal Alo­jz­i­je Stepinac could soon be declared a saint by the Catholic church. Reli­gious ori­ent­ed news web­site Bitno.net pub­lished that the car­di­nal Ange­lo Ama­to said this week the Pope Fran­cis knew about the case of a mir­a­cle where­by a per­son was healed after pray­ing to the blessed Alo­jz­i­je Stepinac. The Vat­i­can’s com­mis­sion of doc­tors have rec­og­nized the case as a mir­a­cle, which could be the last step need­ed to announce Alo­jz­i­je Stepinac a saint.

    Posted by Vanfield | February 14, 2014, 10:08 am

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