The title of this book can be a tad misleading, or confusing, in that it can be interpreted in more than one way, since there are no known biological offspring of the infamous German leader. He had preached the gospel of racial superiority of Germans (and using a stolen word, Aryan, falsely to describe them), and had instituted two or three separate but equally demeaning streams of lives fòr the German women, while the men were supposed to be busy conquering the world - primarily, the women were supposed to be limited to kitchen and children, with church thrown in - which might seem to be for satisfaction of higher aspirations, but no, that wasn't possible; church as an institution had 'managed' women as much as it had managed the poor and the workers, for centuries, for benefits of males and those of wealth and power; and inquisition had put women down with the horrible prospect, rather certainty, of being burnt at the stake if suspected of being a person of intellect and knowledge, rather than a sex object available for servitude. There were two special channels, elevating this role of being limited to serving the males, for selected women, selected by nazis. One was for breeding with males designated special, which did not mean those of abilities in science or arts or academic excellence, but rather Nazi officers. The other was serving nazis and others deemed deserving the service, in the role of sex object.
So the title does confuse at first in that one might naturally think it's about the children bred by those designated women chosen for reproduction who'd been kept at special facilities for this process, and the children of the nazis and others held worthy of reproduction under nazi ideology, born at those facilities and brought up by designated Germans.
Instead, it's about what the children of the accused at Nuremberg trials and similar other war criminals, and asking what they thought of their parents!
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What is also true but he hasn't noticed or connected it to, is two separate but connected factors. One is general rise of racism in Europe, especially France and Germany, that manifests against "other"s in strange behaviours that once would have been clearly seen as halfway between uncivilized and viciously hostile, but after 2001 are often excused in names of fear or security. Second is migration to Europe and West in general from precisely those lands that are on one hand suffering from jihadist wars and on the other are source of jihadists migrating to West, when West opened its doors for refugees fleeing from jihadist wars.
Needless to say the connection is obvious, since the jihadists on one hand perpetrate much of the antisemitic terrorist attacks as well as general ones, and terrorise the general populations, while West is at a loss about discerning jihadists from other, non threatening migrants or visitors or citizens who, to western race based sight, look no different.
In other words, it's like - say - Vietnamese people confusing between nazis and British royalty, or between communist visitors from Moscow and republicans from Texas. Funnily enough Vietnamese, according to what one read decades ago in a U.S. publication, do discern the difference. Western lack of discernment is not merely a "They look the same" innocence, but much worse.
As a result, often it's those not in sympathy with racism, antisemitism or jihad, who are likely to be turned off by the rising racism in West, and migrate if possible, while the jihadists out to flood the globe and convert or conquer as the basic agenda are unlikely to be deterred.
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Reading about Hans Frank, the "Butcher of Poland", the first person discussed in the book, one begins to get the impression within the first couple of pages that the real point was to set forth details about the life and career of Hans Frank, who is less famous than the others indicted at the most famous of the Nuremberg trials, the first and the public one. One wonders if that was the point of the book after all, to describe these men and their work and legacies.
But then, after a couple of pages, the picture shifts and one sees that while the information was necessary, the appoint really is about the children and the effect (of their father's lives and work and legacy, and of the whole nazi regime and ideology and crimes) on their persona, their psyche and their lives.
Frank children were not only were not indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology, but also were mostly kept away from the criminal side of the Nazi regime - Norman, born in 1930, not only never heard a word of antisemitism but had a close friend at his school in Berlin who was Jewish, until 1938, when this friend suddenly vanished - and their rare brushes with the realities of the horrors were, the elder one thought, normal parts of wartime. The youngest one Niklas did notice strain between his parents, but also recalls driving past the ghetto and seeing the people.
To their credit, when newspapers published the photographs of concentration camp inmates as discovered by the allied forces, they knew it was real, didn't brand it as propaganda, for which their mother must be given credit. Their struggle for survival later - Norman wasn't allowed by authorities to continue at school and nor was he allowed to work, while Niklas was sent out to beg for food with a note pinned to his shirt, bringing back a loaf of bread - is very moving, as is the clear bond between the brothers who got close later. They have very diverse view about their parents, but understand one another.
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Wolf Hess in the next chapter, on the other hand, is as contrasting a figure as can be from the Frank family, and carries the banner of his father and their party and their boss as a matter of conviction, from "injustice to Germany" to calling Nuremberg trials a farce. In particular, he's bought every lie uttered by his father's boss about German rights to integrate various lands because it was "German domestic matter", and accuses Churchill and FDR of having engineered a conspiracy against Germany and forcing Germany to attack Poland because "Poles were murdering Germans by thousands". And one has to find black humour when reading of Wolf Hess speaking of his father being treated by British, when Hess was in prison, with terrorising techniques such as light kept on at night (after his attempted suicide, presumably it was so he was visible), or the air raid siren being turned on (since by definition it was heard in the vicinity, it wasnt for his benefit alone), and Wolf might have thought about the civilians of various countries terrorised - and massacred wholesale - by Germany as a small matter of clean-up for finding "lebensraum" for Germans to settle and reproduce in dozens.
Wolf Hess says that nazis guilty of crimes should have been tried by German courts. If the subsequent - or previous, post WWI - trials were an indication, that would have amounted to the whole lot getting a hero treatment and a less than two year sentencing at most, if that. He finds it ridiculous that his father was judged guilty of crimes against peace, which implies that Wolf thinks German aggressions against Austria and Czechoslovakia were not of importance nor were nazi crimes against the disfranchised civilians. Wolf resents his father's and his mother's imprisonment "only because they were ...", and fails to see the irony of his not relating it to the victims of nazis who were massacred only because they were not nazi nor approved by nazis.
"It was also during this period in the mid-1950s that Wolf began learning about his father and the war. German newspapers and magazines ran many stories about the Third Reich. Initially, Wolf drew his information from these sources. He did not learn about the period at school. “The Allies wanted the German teachers to teach a new version of National Socialist history,” he recalls. “But good German teachers would always find some way around this requirement, like saving it until the bell to end the class, and then starting the next class with a different subject.”"
And then some Germans complain that if they meet Jews outside Germany, they stop talking to them after learning they're German! One really must wonder what makes them think that their victims would accept the German world view when it amounts to definition of 'good German' being not recognising that genocides perpetrated by Germans is not a good thing.
Wolf visited South Africa in 1956 and says he realised that conditions there were quite different from as they were presented in newspapers in Germany, which prompted his turnaround in views about the nazi past of Germany and of his father, and he returned to speak with various nazis which changed his mind. Presumably he didn't live as a non white in South Africa, and there was no reason any non white would seek out a young visitor from Germany whose father was a nazi bigwig imprisoned instead of hanged only because he flew to Scotland.
"“During all the long years it is true I had a father, but in the end I did not have him, because the situations under which we corresponded, or rather conferred, were controlled through the rules of his imprisonment. There was not a single truly moving father-son discussion in which I could ask him about things on my mind. That was true for human problems a young man wants to discuss with his father, and particularly for historical issues.”"
Funny, he never thought about the children of those massacred by nazis, or the children who were massacred, in his complaining he didn't have a father.
"“I always predicted reunification in my lifetime. Germans are sick of having to feel ashamed to say they are proud to be German. Now it’s all changing. The Soviet Union is crumbling, and the great American “melting pot” is melting over with crime and drugs and racial hatred. Germans know that Americans, British and French in the West, and Russians in the East, are still occupying our country. We want them all out. Then it will return to the Europe of old, with a powerful and large Germany in the middle. Even our lands the victors gave away after the war will come back. Now, the price for unification is to sign a treaty guaranteeing the present Polish border. But wait some years. Sooner or later that land will return where it belongs, to Germany. The Poles have run their former blossoming land into a dry, grass-covered land. With their economy in ruins, they must depend on financial aid. The German nation will not continually nourish these people who have stolen our property. The Americans should remember what Abraham Lincoln once said: “Nothing is settled unless it is settled in a just way.”"
And Germans are offended when reminded of the nazi past or atrocities! If Wolf Hess is anything he's a nazi.
"He claims to have received thousands of letters and says “ninety-nine per cent are positive.” He is encouraged by letters he receives about his father from German high schools. “They show the right type of interest and understand what really happened. To me, this is a promising sign for German youth.”"
Which connects to the author's preface to the digital edition where he speaks about the rising antisemitism in Europe, only, it's far more evil than that - it's nazism rising, in Germany and around. Wolf Hess sums up his hatred for the allies and assertion about Germans being vindicated at the end. Not a word in the whole conversation about victims of the regime that his father was the "conscience of", which he mentions proudly.
Wolf Hess in the next chapter, on the other hand, is as contrasting a figure as can be from the Frank family, and carries the banner of his father and their party and their boss as a matter of conviction, from "injustice to Germany" to calling Nuremberg trials a farce. In particular, he's bought every lie uttered by his father's boss about German rights to integrate various lands because it was "German domestic matter", and accuses Churchill and FDR of having engineered a conspiracy against Germany and forcing Germany to attack Poland because "Poles were murdering Germans by thousands". And one has to find black humour when reading of Wolf Hess speaking of his father being treated by British, when Hess was in prison, with terrorising techniques such as light kept on at night (after his attempted suicide, presumably it was so he was visible), or the air raid siren being turned on (since by definition it was heard in the vicinity, it wasnt for his benefit alone), and Wolf might have thought about the civilians of various countries terrorised - and massacred wholesale - by Germany as a small matter of clean-up for finding "lebensraum" for Germans to settle and reproduce in dozens.
Wolf Hess says that nazis guilty of crimes should have been tried by German courts. If the subsequent - or previous, post WWI - trials were an indication, that would have amounted to the whole lot getting a hero treatment and a less than two year sentencing at most, if that. He finds it ridiculous that his father was judged guilty of crimes against peace, which implies that Wolf thinks German aggressions against Austria and Czechoslovakia were not of importance nor were nazi crimes against the disfranchised civilians. Wolf resents his father's and his mother's imprisonment "only because they were ...", and fails to see the irony of his not relating it to the victims of nazis who were massacred only because they were not nazi nor approved by nazis.
"It was also during this period in the mid-1950s that Wolf began learning about his father and the war. German newspapers and magazines ran many stories about the Third Reich. Initially, Wolf drew his information from these sources. He did not learn about the period at school. “The Allies wanted the German teachers to teach a new version of National Socialist history,” he recalls. “But good German teachers would always find some way around this requirement, like saving it until the bell to end the class, and then starting the next class with a different subject.”"
And then some Germans complain that if they meet Jews outside Germany, they stop talking to them after learning they're German! One really must wonder what makes them think that their victims would accept the German world view when it amounts to definition of 'good German' being not recognising that genocides perpetrated by Germans is not a good thing.
Wolf visited South Africa in 1956 and says he realised that conditions there were quite different from as they were presented in newspapers in Germany, which prompted his turnaround in views about the nazi past of Germany and of his father, and he returned to speak with various nazis which changed his mind. Presumably he didn't live as a non white in South Africa, and there was no reason any non white would seek out a young visitor from Germany whose father was a nazi bigwig imprisoned instead of hanged only because he flew to Scotland.
"“During all the long years it is true I had a father, but in the end I did not have him, because the situations under which we corresponded, or rather conferred, were controlled through the rules of his imprisonment. There was not a single truly moving father-son discussion in which I could ask him about things on my mind. That was true for human problems a young man wants to discuss with his father, and particularly for historical issues.”"
Funny, he never thought about the children of those massacred by nazis, or the children who were massacred, in his complaining he didn't have a father.
"“I always predicted reunification in my lifetime. Germans are sick of having to feel ashamed to say they are proud to be German. Now it’s all changing. The Soviet Union is crumbling, and the great American “melting pot” is melting over with crime and drugs and racial hatred. Germans know that Americans, British and French in the West, and Russians in the East, are still occupying our country. We want them all out. Then it will return to the Europe of old, with a powerful and large Germany in the middle. Even our lands the victors gave away after the war will come back. Now, the price for unification is to sign a treaty guaranteeing the present Polish border. But wait some years. Sooner or later that land will return where it belongs, to Germany. The Poles have run their former blossoming land into a dry, grass-covered land. With their economy in ruins, they must depend on financial aid. The German nation will not continually nourish these people who have stolen our property. The Americans should remember what Abraham Lincoln once said: “Nothing is settled unless it is settled in a just way.”"
And Germans are offended when reminded of the nazi past or atrocities! If Wolf Hess is anything he's a nazi.
"He claims to have received thousands of letters and says “ninety-nine per cent are positive.” He is encouraged by letters he receives about his father from German high schools. “They show the right type of interest and understand what really happened. To me, this is a promising sign for German youth.”"
Which connects to the author's preface to the digital edition where he speaks about the rising antisemitism in Europe, only, it's far more evil than that - it's nazism rising, in Germany and around. Wolf Hess sums up his hatred for the allies and assertion about Germans being vindicated at the end. Not a word in the whole conversation about victims of the regime that his father was the "conscience of", which he mentions proudly.
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Third chapter is about Saur, who - his sons are clear - liked power but didn't care about titles; in Speer's work he is present as a shadow figure, preferred by various high up nazis undermining Speer. This shadow emerges in this chapter as an unsavoury character who undermined anyone as long as it served his purpose, and since he testified against Krupp, paid the price by being unable to find work later, as his hopes of being employed by U.S. like Braun didn't come through. He was dictatorial to the children subsequently and hit them too.
The children only heard good things about nazis from the teachers and didn't discover realities until Klaus saw a television documentary in 1955-56 depicting concentration camps, which shocked not just him but a teacher who was a Lutheran priest who said he'd had no idea. Klaus discovered more through book trade exhibitions and an article in Cologne. He returned home to help with the family business on verge of bankruptcy and helped it turn.
"A year after Klaus’s return, Karl junior witnessed the only confrontation in his family over any war-related issue. “It was between Klaus and my mother. They had seen a discussion on television about the war and a Jewish person had been interviewed. My mother had said a typical German expression, “That is one that should have gone to the gas chambers.” And my brother was furious and told her it was stupid to say such things. And she was really shocked that he was so angry. “It’s just an expression, it doesn’t mean anything,” she told him. “You know I don’t mean any harm by it.” But Klaus was very firm with her. “Those stupid sentences are what eventually led to the types of things that happened in the war,” he told her."
"Both brothers seem amused by the admiration some people have for their father. It is alien to them. “See, I don’t feel any love for him, nor do I feel any pride,” says Klaus."
"Saur Verlag is the vehicle through which he tries to confront his Nazi heritage. His current catalogue shows a broad selection of serious works, including titles on European emigres, Jewish immigrants, a Hebrew text from Harvard University, and a selection of anti-Nazi books."
Karl is cultural editor of Der Spiegel.
"It is important that people understand the truth. Too many people in Germany talk about the ‘good’ things that Hitler did, and then they speak about the bad things as though only a few criminals were responsible. Their feeling is that the Third Reich gave off all this light and it is only natural that there be some shadows. This is wrong. They do not understand that the entire régime, in its everyday operation, was dark. My father was responsible for helping to create those shadows. He must be held accountable for his own actions.”"
The children only heard good things about nazis from the teachers and didn't discover realities until Klaus saw a television documentary in 1955-56 depicting concentration camps, which shocked not just him but a teacher who was a Lutheran priest who said he'd had no idea. Klaus discovered more through book trade exhibitions and an article in Cologne. He returned home to help with the family business on verge of bankruptcy and helped it turn.
"A year after Klaus’s return, Karl junior witnessed the only confrontation in his family over any war-related issue. “It was between Klaus and my mother. They had seen a discussion on television about the war and a Jewish person had been interviewed. My mother had said a typical German expression, “That is one that should have gone to the gas chambers.” And my brother was furious and told her it was stupid to say such things. And she was really shocked that he was so angry. “It’s just an expression, it doesn’t mean anything,” she told him. “You know I don’t mean any harm by it.” But Klaus was very firm with her. “Those stupid sentences are what eventually led to the types of things that happened in the war,” he told her."
"Both brothers seem amused by the admiration some people have for their father. It is alien to them. “See, I don’t feel any love for him, nor do I feel any pride,” says Klaus."
"Saur Verlag is the vehicle through which he tries to confront his Nazi heritage. His current catalogue shows a broad selection of serious works, including titles on European emigres, Jewish immigrants, a Hebrew text from Harvard University, and a selection of anti-Nazi books."
Karl is cultural editor of Der Spiegel.
"It is important that people understand the truth. Too many people in Germany talk about the ‘good’ things that Hitler did, and then they speak about the bad things as though only a few criminals were responsible. Their feeling is that the Third Reich gave off all this light and it is only natural that there be some shadows. This is wrong. They do not understand that the entire régime, in its everyday operation, was dark. My father was responsible for helping to create those shadows. He must be held accountable for his own actions.”"
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Cordula Schacht loved her father. He went from promoting nazis as head of Reichsbank because he thought they had right ideas for German economy to recover, to openly let his disagreement be known by communicating directly and as a result being dismissed, to even being placed in a concentration camp and almost murdered, before being liberated by allies.
"Concerned that party excesses were hurting Germany’s foreign image, Schacht repeatedly urged the Nazis to moderate their policies. He was not a mere yes-man, and this did not sit well with Hitler. “Remember, my father was first attracted to National Socialism because of financial policies,” says Cordula. “He was not enamored of Hitler. My father spoke his mind, and this was not always appreciated.”
"In April 1938, Schacht complained to Göring that the economy would be out of control within six months unless rearmament was curtailed. Göring ignored him. Frustrated at government infighting, Schacht resigned as minister of economics to avoid the blame for what he thought was an inevitable economic crisis. After delaying three months, Hitler accepted the resignation in November. Schacht was still, temporarily, president of the Reichsbank.
"Kristallnacht, the November 1938 Nazi rampage against Germany’s Jews, prompted outrage from Schacht. He approached Hitler, condemning Goebbels’s orchestrated violence, and offered a plan to solve Germany’s “Jewish question.” He proposed that all German Jewish property be placed in trust, and international bonds floated against it. Jews in other countries would be encouraged to buy the bonds, which would pay 5 per cent interest, and the money would be used to pay for the emigration of every Jew who wanted to leave Germany. Hitler professed to like the idea and ordered Schacht to begin discussions with prominent Jews in England. There Schacht received a lukewarm reception, with most Jewish groups rejecting the plan out of hand. His negotiations on behalf of the Nazis ended when Hitler dismissed him as president of the Reichsbank in January 1939. In a meeting at the old Chancellery building, the Führer abruptly informed him that “you don’t fit into the general National Socialist scheme of things.”"
"Returning to private life, Schacht left Germany on extended foreign travel. During his trip, he maintained a daily diary which contained so many negative references to Hitler that he had to hide it on his return, lest it be used against him in a prosecution."
"In September 1941, he wrote Hitler urging him to make a peace treaty and stop the war. ... In November 1942, Schacht wrote a long letter to Göring castigating the war effort. ... First Hitler dismissed him from his ministerial position. Then Göring wrote, chiding Schacht for his “defeatist letter” and expelling him from the Prussian State Council. Finally Bormann wrote, demanding the return of Schacht’s Nazi party gold badge of honor. As Schacht recalled in his memoirs, “It gave me peculiar satisfaction to comply with this request.”"
"After being stripped of his titles, he noticed he was under Gestapo surveillance."
"On July 20, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg placed the bomb that almost killed Hitler. That prompted a broad sweep to crush the resistance; Schacht’s earlier dissension made him suspect. That suspicion was enough in Nazi Germany. Three days later, at seven o’clock in the morning, the Gestapo arrested a pajama-clad Schacht and drove him to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Most of the time he was kept in solitary confinement. Interrogations started within days of his internment. By August, he was transferred to No. 9 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, the principal Berlin headquarters of the National Security Service. For the next four months, the sixty-seven-year- old Schacht was confined to a small basement cell. In December his wife visited him for the first time, just prior to his return to the Ravensbrück camp. There he remained until February 1945, when Russian troops drew near. He was moved to the Flossenbürg extermination center, then to Dachau, and finally, in early April, farther south where American troops finally liberated him."
"Worried for his life in Nazi concentration camps for nine months, he was now charged as a leading Third Reich conspirator."
"When the defendants were given IQ tests by prison authorities, Schacht scored the highest, 143. The result reinforced his superior attitude towards his colleagues. He was blunt in his opinion of them: Göring while of “superior intelligence” was still “egocentric, immoral and criminal,” the “worst” of the accused; Streicher was “a pathological monomaniac;” Kaltenbrunner was a “callous fanatic;” von Ribbentrop “should be hanged for extraordinary stupidity; Hess had “fifty- one per cent retarded intelligence;” and Keitel was an “unthinking and irresponsible yes-man.” While sitting in the front row of the defendants’ box Schacht often glanced at his former colleagues with undisguised hostility. During his direct examination he blamed the Nazis for most of Germany’s economic problems and for leading the nation into an unnecessary war. Of Hitler, he admitted the Führer was “a mass psychologist of really diabolical genius” but condemned him in harsh language for betraying the German people and being a “perjurer a hundredfold.”"
"During Schacht’s cross-examination, most of the other defendants were rooting for the American prosecutor, Robert Jackson. They were infuriated by Schacht’s personal denunciations and arrogant behavior and hoped he would be cut down to size in the witness chair. They were disappointed. Schacht was so confident that he was the only witness to answer questions in English. When Jackson tried to invade the territory of finance and economics, Schacht totally outmatched him, and the cross-examination seemed only to strengthen his defense."
"Schacht became the only defendant to have a judgement reversed by the tribunal. In the case of Franz von Papen, who had preceded Hitler as chancellor, the Americans and the British voted for acquittal and the Russians and French for conviction. Neither side would compromise. It was the first deadlocked vote, and after a severe argument with the Russian delegates, it was decided a tie vote meant acquittal. Von Papen was not guilty. Within several days the French judge had decided Schacht was not worse than von Papen, and if von Papen was acquitted Schacht should be freed as well. Fie switched his vote, creating a tie, and Schacht was added to the acquittal list."
"After his acquittal, Schacht left the Nuremberg prison and went to the house his wife had stayed at during the trial. There, two German policemen were waiting; they arrested him for denazification proceedings. Schacht did not think he needed denazification since he had never joined the party and had ended up in a Nazi concentration camp. When he was returned to his home under house arrest, he left for a quick holiday, but was again arrested, in Württemberg, and sentenced by a Stuttgart court to eight years in a labor camp as a major offender. Though his appeal was successful and he was released on September 2, 1948, he was retried and acquitted again by a German jury in 1950."
Their properties were lost, and Schacht family survived by his writing.
"After two years, the Indonesian government asked Schacht to advise them on a new economic plan. He accepted the invitation and left Germany for an extended trip that also involved advice to the Indian, Syrian, Egyptian and Iranian governments. Cordula and her sister Konstanze were left with a cousin in a small Tyrolean village. There the Schacht daughters attended school, waiting for the return of their parents."
"My father talked very freely about the war. He never made a mystery of that time.”"
"“When I grew up, I learned that people would always continue to ask me about my father. I have worked very hard to establish my own independence and I have started to feel successful in moving away from his shadow. It has taken a long time, but I am very pleased that I can confidently say I am Cordula Schacht, the daughter of Hjalmar Schacht. Now it is an enrichment to have had this father, and no longer a burden.”"
"Concerned that party excesses were hurting Germany’s foreign image, Schacht repeatedly urged the Nazis to moderate their policies. He was not a mere yes-man, and this did not sit well with Hitler. “Remember, my father was first attracted to National Socialism because of financial policies,” says Cordula. “He was not enamored of Hitler. My father spoke his mind, and this was not always appreciated.”
"In April 1938, Schacht complained to Göring that the economy would be out of control within six months unless rearmament was curtailed. Göring ignored him. Frustrated at government infighting, Schacht resigned as minister of economics to avoid the blame for what he thought was an inevitable economic crisis. After delaying three months, Hitler accepted the resignation in November. Schacht was still, temporarily, president of the Reichsbank.
"Kristallnacht, the November 1938 Nazi rampage against Germany’s Jews, prompted outrage from Schacht. He approached Hitler, condemning Goebbels’s orchestrated violence, and offered a plan to solve Germany’s “Jewish question.” He proposed that all German Jewish property be placed in trust, and international bonds floated against it. Jews in other countries would be encouraged to buy the bonds, which would pay 5 per cent interest, and the money would be used to pay for the emigration of every Jew who wanted to leave Germany. Hitler professed to like the idea and ordered Schacht to begin discussions with prominent Jews in England. There Schacht received a lukewarm reception, with most Jewish groups rejecting the plan out of hand. His negotiations on behalf of the Nazis ended when Hitler dismissed him as president of the Reichsbank in January 1939. In a meeting at the old Chancellery building, the Führer abruptly informed him that “you don’t fit into the general National Socialist scheme of things.”"
"Returning to private life, Schacht left Germany on extended foreign travel. During his trip, he maintained a daily diary which contained so many negative references to Hitler that he had to hide it on his return, lest it be used against him in a prosecution."
"In September 1941, he wrote Hitler urging him to make a peace treaty and stop the war. ... In November 1942, Schacht wrote a long letter to Göring castigating the war effort. ... First Hitler dismissed him from his ministerial position. Then Göring wrote, chiding Schacht for his “defeatist letter” and expelling him from the Prussian State Council. Finally Bormann wrote, demanding the return of Schacht’s Nazi party gold badge of honor. As Schacht recalled in his memoirs, “It gave me peculiar satisfaction to comply with this request.”"
"After being stripped of his titles, he noticed he was under Gestapo surveillance."
"On July 20, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg placed the bomb that almost killed Hitler. That prompted a broad sweep to crush the resistance; Schacht’s earlier dissension made him suspect. That suspicion was enough in Nazi Germany. Three days later, at seven o’clock in the morning, the Gestapo arrested a pajama-clad Schacht and drove him to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Most of the time he was kept in solitary confinement. Interrogations started within days of his internment. By August, he was transferred to No. 9 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, the principal Berlin headquarters of the National Security Service. For the next four months, the sixty-seven-year- old Schacht was confined to a small basement cell. In December his wife visited him for the first time, just prior to his return to the Ravensbrück camp. There he remained until February 1945, when Russian troops drew near. He was moved to the Flossenbürg extermination center, then to Dachau, and finally, in early April, farther south where American troops finally liberated him."
"Worried for his life in Nazi concentration camps for nine months, he was now charged as a leading Third Reich conspirator."
"When the defendants were given IQ tests by prison authorities, Schacht scored the highest, 143. The result reinforced his superior attitude towards his colleagues. He was blunt in his opinion of them: Göring while of “superior intelligence” was still “egocentric, immoral and criminal,” the “worst” of the accused; Streicher was “a pathological monomaniac;” Kaltenbrunner was a “callous fanatic;” von Ribbentrop “should be hanged for extraordinary stupidity; Hess had “fifty- one per cent retarded intelligence;” and Keitel was an “unthinking and irresponsible yes-man.” While sitting in the front row of the defendants’ box Schacht often glanced at his former colleagues with undisguised hostility. During his direct examination he blamed the Nazis for most of Germany’s economic problems and for leading the nation into an unnecessary war. Of Hitler, he admitted the Führer was “a mass psychologist of really diabolical genius” but condemned him in harsh language for betraying the German people and being a “perjurer a hundredfold.”"
"During Schacht’s cross-examination, most of the other defendants were rooting for the American prosecutor, Robert Jackson. They were infuriated by Schacht’s personal denunciations and arrogant behavior and hoped he would be cut down to size in the witness chair. They were disappointed. Schacht was so confident that he was the only witness to answer questions in English. When Jackson tried to invade the territory of finance and economics, Schacht totally outmatched him, and the cross-examination seemed only to strengthen his defense."
"Schacht became the only defendant to have a judgement reversed by the tribunal. In the case of Franz von Papen, who had preceded Hitler as chancellor, the Americans and the British voted for acquittal and the Russians and French for conviction. Neither side would compromise. It was the first deadlocked vote, and after a severe argument with the Russian delegates, it was decided a tie vote meant acquittal. Von Papen was not guilty. Within several days the French judge had decided Schacht was not worse than von Papen, and if von Papen was acquitted Schacht should be freed as well. Fie switched his vote, creating a tie, and Schacht was added to the acquittal list."
"After his acquittal, Schacht left the Nuremberg prison and went to the house his wife had stayed at during the trial. There, two German policemen were waiting; they arrested him for denazification proceedings. Schacht did not think he needed denazification since he had never joined the party and had ended up in a Nazi concentration camp. When he was returned to his home under house arrest, he left for a quick holiday, but was again arrested, in Württemberg, and sentenced by a Stuttgart court to eight years in a labor camp as a major offender. Though his appeal was successful and he was released on September 2, 1948, he was retried and acquitted again by a German jury in 1950."
Their properties were lost, and Schacht family survived by his writing.
"After two years, the Indonesian government asked Schacht to advise them on a new economic plan. He accepted the invitation and left Germany for an extended trip that also involved advice to the Indian, Syrian, Egyptian and Iranian governments. Cordula and her sister Konstanze were left with a cousin in a small Tyrolean village. There the Schacht daughters attended school, waiting for the return of their parents."
"My father talked very freely about the war. He never made a mystery of that time.”"
"“When I grew up, I learned that people would always continue to ask me about my father. I have worked very hard to establish my own independence and I have started to feel successful in moving away from his shadow. It has taken a long time, but I am very pleased that I can confidently say I am Cordula Schacht, the daughter of Hjalmar Schacht. Now it is an enrichment to have had this father, and no longer a burden.”"
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Chapter five has one of the hardest cases of any nazis for the reader to read about, Mengele, who was the doctor in charge of life or death decisions at Auschwitz and in charge of medical experiments conducted with inmates. He ended his life as a fugitive hiding from an international search for him, which ironically only went in high gear after he was already dead, having lived in three or more countries in South America fleeing from one to another to escape every time he thought he was being looked for. One time he fled, Eichmann was caught and taken to Israel and hanged after his trial, from the house opposite that Mengele had lived at and fled.
Strangely, while he's branded criminal, those that set him on the path are not; he deserves it, of course, but so do they.
"Mengele studied under Ernst Rudin, an architect of the compulsory sterilization laws, and a leading advocate that doctors should destroy “life devoid of value.” While pursuing a medical degree, Mengele also obtained a PhD under Professor T. Mollinson, who claimed he could tell if a person had Jewish ancestors simply by looking at a photograph. In 1937, Mollinson recommended the twenty-six-year-old intern for an appointment that changed his life. He became a research assistant at the prestigious Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfurt, joining the staff of one of Europe’s foremost geneticists, Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer."
"August 1940, eager to join the battle, he left Verschuer and joined Hitler’s most fanatical fighting troops, the Waffen SS. For a year, serving with the SS Race and Resettlement Office, he examined the racial suitability of conquered Poles. By mid-1941 he was posted to the Ukraine, and the following year was wounded, earning an Iron Cross First Class and a reassignment back to Berlin and Verschuer. His mentor encouraged him to work in a concentration camp, holding out the inducement that such an assignment was in the interest of science. As wartime director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Hereditary Teaching and Eugenics in Berlin, Verschuer secured funds for Mengele’s concentration-camp experiments. In turn, Mengele sent him his lab results, skeletons and body parts, wrapped in thick brown paper and marked “Urgent – War Materiel.” After the war, Verschuer returned to teaching while Mengele was a fugitive for his crimes. Although that does not engender any sympathy for his father, it still angers Rolf: “I am not happy that the man who sent my father to Auschwitz, the man who gave the order to go there and conduct the studies, was never punished. For those who were behind desks during the war, in my view, it was easier than if they were there. At the minimum, Verschuer had a moral responsibility.”"
"At its most productive in 1943 and 1944, it contained five crematoria and gas chambers which could gas and burn 9000 victims daily. On clear days, flames and black smoke spewing from the crematoria chimneys could be seen for thirty miles. While mass extermination was Auschwitz’s primary purpose, it also provided slave labor for thirty-four German companies with work stations at the camp’s perimeter. Corporations, many of which are household names like Bayer, AEG Telefunken, Krupp, Siemens and I. G. Farben, used the tortured labor of inmates. Auschwitz was packed with more than a hundred thousand prisoners at a time, and most worked until they dropped dead."
"While many of the SS doctors viewed their camp work as a difficult and distasteful assignment, Mengele relished his duties."
The duties began with selecting from the arrivals, and sending them to either death or experiments or slave labour.
"Josef Mengele sent four hundred thousand people to their deaths through his ramp-head selections."
"“For me that is enough for him to be guilty of everything,” says Rolf Mengele. “Just to be at a place like Auschwitz is a crime. But the selections are all I need to know to say he is guilty as charged, that he is responsible for murder. I have tried so many times to understand how he could have ended up there, doing the things he did. I cannot. It is so foreign to me. He is like an alien to me. Auschwitz seems like another planet.”"
His wife visited, but did not know about his work, and he told her not to ask about the stench. After the war, most of the family took the view that he was only a cog in the machine and not guilty, and accusations were exaggerated; his son Rolf disagrees and thinks opposite.
"Despite his father’s protestations, Rolf, alone of the Mengele family, does not accept his claim of innocence."
"As the Russian army moved closer to Auschwitz during early January 1945, Mengele did not act like an innocent man. Colleagues and inmates recall that he was severely depressed because his work would soon fall into Russian hands. He was often seen pacing in the SS doctors’ office, silent, morose, his head in his hands. Although he had continued his experiments until December 5, 1944, he also took steps to disguise his work. His pathology lab was dismantled while the crematoria and gas chambers were dynamited. He packed as many of his personal and medical papers as possible and destroyed the rest. On January 17, 1945, as Russian artillery pounded in the distance, Josef Mengele fled the madness of Auschwitz."
He was arrested several times but despite his name being on the wanted war criminals list, was let go because they didn't realise they'd got him; he hid first at a farm near his family hometown, but was afraid of his wife's visits, and made scenes. His family arranged for him to go to Argentina on forged papers, and paid hundreds of dollars bribe when he was arrested in Italy. He managed to arrive in Argentina and was happy with the nazi expat community. His wife divorced him, taking no money from the family, and remarried.
Rolf had little contact until he was informed as a teenager, after the West German indictment and the father having fled from Argentina to Paraguay, that his father wasn't a hero dead in battle in East, but the war criminal now being talked about since there was a hunt on. Then on, their relationship was of Rolf being informed by his father what a disappointment the son was, and the son not interested. Mengele fled twice more, to Brazil and Argentina. Rolf was a lawyer and worked for the government.
"If his father were captured, Rolf realized he might have to defend him in a trial. “I would have been a very poor aid to him, but he has a right to a defense, and if no one would defend him, I would have done so. But you should know that I have seen the statements of the witnesses, and I think if he was healthy enough to stand trial he would have been found guilty of murder and given a lifetime in prison.”"
Rolf was criticised by his father in every letter.
"Then he turned his attention to Rolf’s decision not to pursue a doctorate. The doctorate had been a sore point for more than a year, and now he was convinced that Rolf’s “laziness” was at the root of the problem. “You let me down. It is the only thing I asked of you in my whole life. I doubt that being an attorney would satisfy me. If I compare it to being a medical doctor or any kind of PhD, then I must draw a negative conclusion.”"
Rolf saw him at the age of thirty three.
"In the end it was impossible to discuss the concepts of evil or guilt because his father felt no guilt. “I tried. These allegations, these facts left me speechless. I was hoping he’d say, “I tried to get a transfer to the front. I did this, I did that.” But it didn’t even come to this preliminary agreement. Unfortunately, I realized that he would never express any remorse or feeling of guilt in my presence.”"
"Even though Rolf was not subject to his influence, Mengele justified it as poor education, postwar propaganda, and the influence of a weak stepfather."
He died sixteen months after Rolf had visited him in October 1977, by drowning due to a stroke while swimming at a beach.
"Since Mengele’s death remained a family secret, the hunt for him continued unabated. During the next six years a slow- burning fuse on the case finally resulted in worldwide media attention. From 1984 to 1986, he was the subject of dozens of magazine cover stories and television specials."
The family questioned whether to keep it a secret now that the family firm was losing money due to publicity, but his death was discovered without their help. Rolf was cut off by the family because he decided to publish his father's diaries and papers and share benefit with the concentration camp survivors and victims' families.
"Rolf is the only one in the family who has tried to confront the magnitude of what his father did. While the rest of the Günzburg clan rationalizes Mengele’s role in Auschwitz, convinced that some of the charges are exaggerated, Rolf completely condemns him. He is the only family member to have publicly apologized for his father’s crimes and to have admitted that he is “ashamed” to be his son. The fundamental differences in judging Mengele’s crimes have left the family little room for reconciliation."
"Rolf does not only have to cope for himself with his father’s legacy. With three children, he must now pass the information to a new generation. “It is hard,” he says. “It’s very hard for us. My eldest daughter [twelve years old] has already asked us. But they understand it when we explain we were also children. We were in their position, just one generation removed. We weren’t involved. It would be nicer to say he was a great scientist or soldier, but instead we must tell them the truth. They must hear it from us instead of from friends or school. It is my obligation to them.”"
He decided to change the family name for sake of the children.
"He is gone, but he has left me here to answer the questions of what he did and why he did it. He is gone but I must bear the burden.”"
Strangely, while he's branded criminal, those that set him on the path are not; he deserves it, of course, but so do they.
"Mengele studied under Ernst Rudin, an architect of the compulsory sterilization laws, and a leading advocate that doctors should destroy “life devoid of value.” While pursuing a medical degree, Mengele also obtained a PhD under Professor T. Mollinson, who claimed he could tell if a person had Jewish ancestors simply by looking at a photograph. In 1937, Mollinson recommended the twenty-six-year-old intern for an appointment that changed his life. He became a research assistant at the prestigious Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfurt, joining the staff of one of Europe’s foremost geneticists, Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer."
"August 1940, eager to join the battle, he left Verschuer and joined Hitler’s most fanatical fighting troops, the Waffen SS. For a year, serving with the SS Race and Resettlement Office, he examined the racial suitability of conquered Poles. By mid-1941 he was posted to the Ukraine, and the following year was wounded, earning an Iron Cross First Class and a reassignment back to Berlin and Verschuer. His mentor encouraged him to work in a concentration camp, holding out the inducement that such an assignment was in the interest of science. As wartime director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Hereditary Teaching and Eugenics in Berlin, Verschuer secured funds for Mengele’s concentration-camp experiments. In turn, Mengele sent him his lab results, skeletons and body parts, wrapped in thick brown paper and marked “Urgent – War Materiel.” After the war, Verschuer returned to teaching while Mengele was a fugitive for his crimes. Although that does not engender any sympathy for his father, it still angers Rolf: “I am not happy that the man who sent my father to Auschwitz, the man who gave the order to go there and conduct the studies, was never punished. For those who were behind desks during the war, in my view, it was easier than if they were there. At the minimum, Verschuer had a moral responsibility.”"
"At its most productive in 1943 and 1944, it contained five crematoria and gas chambers which could gas and burn 9000 victims daily. On clear days, flames and black smoke spewing from the crematoria chimneys could be seen for thirty miles. While mass extermination was Auschwitz’s primary purpose, it also provided slave labor for thirty-four German companies with work stations at the camp’s perimeter. Corporations, many of which are household names like Bayer, AEG Telefunken, Krupp, Siemens and I. G. Farben, used the tortured labor of inmates. Auschwitz was packed with more than a hundred thousand prisoners at a time, and most worked until they dropped dead."
"While many of the SS doctors viewed their camp work as a difficult and distasteful assignment, Mengele relished his duties."
The duties began with selecting from the arrivals, and sending them to either death or experiments or slave labour.
"Josef Mengele sent four hundred thousand people to their deaths through his ramp-head selections."
"“For me that is enough for him to be guilty of everything,” says Rolf Mengele. “Just to be at a place like Auschwitz is a crime. But the selections are all I need to know to say he is guilty as charged, that he is responsible for murder. I have tried so many times to understand how he could have ended up there, doing the things he did. I cannot. It is so foreign to me. He is like an alien to me. Auschwitz seems like another planet.”"
His wife visited, but did not know about his work, and he told her not to ask about the stench. After the war, most of the family took the view that he was only a cog in the machine and not guilty, and accusations were exaggerated; his son Rolf disagrees and thinks opposite.
"Despite his father’s protestations, Rolf, alone of the Mengele family, does not accept his claim of innocence."
"As the Russian army moved closer to Auschwitz during early January 1945, Mengele did not act like an innocent man. Colleagues and inmates recall that he was severely depressed because his work would soon fall into Russian hands. He was often seen pacing in the SS doctors’ office, silent, morose, his head in his hands. Although he had continued his experiments until December 5, 1944, he also took steps to disguise his work. His pathology lab was dismantled while the crematoria and gas chambers were dynamited. He packed as many of his personal and medical papers as possible and destroyed the rest. On January 17, 1945, as Russian artillery pounded in the distance, Josef Mengele fled the madness of Auschwitz."
He was arrested several times but despite his name being on the wanted war criminals list, was let go because they didn't realise they'd got him; he hid first at a farm near his family hometown, but was afraid of his wife's visits, and made scenes. His family arranged for him to go to Argentina on forged papers, and paid hundreds of dollars bribe when he was arrested in Italy. He managed to arrive in Argentina and was happy with the nazi expat community. His wife divorced him, taking no money from the family, and remarried.
Rolf had little contact until he was informed as a teenager, after the West German indictment and the father having fled from Argentina to Paraguay, that his father wasn't a hero dead in battle in East, but the war criminal now being talked about since there was a hunt on. Then on, their relationship was of Rolf being informed by his father what a disappointment the son was, and the son not interested. Mengele fled twice more, to Brazil and Argentina. Rolf was a lawyer and worked for the government.
"If his father were captured, Rolf realized he might have to defend him in a trial. “I would have been a very poor aid to him, but he has a right to a defense, and if no one would defend him, I would have done so. But you should know that I have seen the statements of the witnesses, and I think if he was healthy enough to stand trial he would have been found guilty of murder and given a lifetime in prison.”"
Rolf was criticised by his father in every letter.
"Then he turned his attention to Rolf’s decision not to pursue a doctorate. The doctorate had been a sore point for more than a year, and now he was convinced that Rolf’s “laziness” was at the root of the problem. “You let me down. It is the only thing I asked of you in my whole life. I doubt that being an attorney would satisfy me. If I compare it to being a medical doctor or any kind of PhD, then I must draw a negative conclusion.”"
Rolf saw him at the age of thirty three.
"In the end it was impossible to discuss the concepts of evil or guilt because his father felt no guilt. “I tried. These allegations, these facts left me speechless. I was hoping he’d say, “I tried to get a transfer to the front. I did this, I did that.” But it didn’t even come to this preliminary agreement. Unfortunately, I realized that he would never express any remorse or feeling of guilt in my presence.”"
"Even though Rolf was not subject to his influence, Mengele justified it as poor education, postwar propaganda, and the influence of a weak stepfather."
He died sixteen months after Rolf had visited him in October 1977, by drowning due to a stroke while swimming at a beach.
"Since Mengele’s death remained a family secret, the hunt for him continued unabated. During the next six years a slow- burning fuse on the case finally resulted in worldwide media attention. From 1984 to 1986, he was the subject of dozens of magazine cover stories and television specials."
The family questioned whether to keep it a secret now that the family firm was losing money due to publicity, but his death was discovered without their help. Rolf was cut off by the family because he decided to publish his father's diaries and papers and share benefit with the concentration camp survivors and victims' families.
"Rolf is the only one in the family who has tried to confront the magnitude of what his father did. While the rest of the Günzburg clan rationalizes Mengele’s role in Auschwitz, convinced that some of the charges are exaggerated, Rolf completely condemns him. He is the only family member to have publicly apologized for his father’s crimes and to have admitted that he is “ashamed” to be his son. The fundamental differences in judging Mengele’s crimes have left the family little room for reconciliation."
"Rolf does not only have to cope for himself with his father’s legacy. With three children, he must now pass the information to a new generation. “It is hard,” he says. “It’s very hard for us. My eldest daughter [twelve years old] has already asked us. But they understand it when we explain we were also children. We were in their position, just one generation removed. We weren’t involved. It would be nicer to say he was a great scientist or soldier, but instead we must tell them the truth. They must hear it from us instead of from friends or school. It is my obligation to them.”"
He decided to change the family name for sake of the children.
"He is gone, but he has left me here to answer the questions of what he did and why he did it. He is gone but I must bear the burden.”"
................................................................................................
Chapter seven begins, for an introduction to the subject, with why this man belongs in the book.
"In the final hours of his life, at 4 a.m. on Sunday, April 29, 1945, Adolf Hitler finished his last will and testament. Russian soldiers were only five hundred yards away and the sound of artillery penetrated the Führerbunker’s thick walls as he summoned Josef Goebbels and Martin Bormann as witnesses. The will was a rambling document brimming with hatred for “international Jewry,” blaming the Allies for starting the war, and castigating the German army for losing the conflict. While he exhorted the German people to continue fighting, he prepared to abandon the struggle. On the next day, resolved not to be captured alive, not to be a “spectacle, presented by the Jews, to divert their hysterical masses he placed the barrel of a Walther pistol in his mouth and killed himself with a single shot."
The last bit has been questioned lately, since evidence has emerged about the story being a front, and his having in reality escaped via a flight to Canaries and a subsequent u-boat ride across South Atlantic to a hideout, as shown in a TV infochannel documentary.
"He stripped his most likely successors, Himmler and Göring, of their ranks, titles, and positions. Then he created a new cabinet of fourteen veteran Nazi hacks. But the section that named his successor shocked his Berlin aides – it proclaimed as the next Führer the reserved chief of the navy, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was not even a Nazi party member, but who was the only officer of the Reich whom Hitler trusted to lead Germany in its final battle."
Dönitz was never a nazi, and was of course involved in the war, as would be any military officer. His inclusion in Nuremberg trials and his conviction surprised everyone, although he thought he would be executed too. There was a specific charge about change in wartime conduct, when at Hitler's egging on he changed his orders about rescuing survivors of an allied ship with 1,200 on board sunk by a u-boat, to opposite, but there was ambivalence regarding his subsequent orders which could be interpreted as shoot those in water, although they didnt say so.
He lost two sons in WWII, and his surviving daughter loved and respected him. She was the only one who could change his mood for better, from early on.
"In October 1918, Dönitz was commander of U-68 when it came under heavy British attack off Sicily and he and his crew were captured. British interrogators described the twenty-seven- year-old first lieutenant as “moody and almost violent,” crushed by the news of the humiliating terms of German defeat. He remained a British prisoner until he appeared to go mad, which prompted a short stay in the Manchester Lunatic Asylum and then a release to Germany. Ursula Dönitz says her father later confided that he fooled his British captors by drinking a combination of oil and tobacco to make himself ill and then feigning mental problems."
Which is worth notice for consideration, since it amounts to his lack of inability to lie to those he'd consider enemy.
"“He had taste for good things,” Ursula remembers. “He had a very good collection of Oriental carpets. They were important to him. He had purchased several in Constantinople [now Istanbul], and a dealer told him that one of the rugs was hundreds of years old and was museum quality. “It should be on a wall,” the dealer said. “Don’t walk on it.” My father did not have the money to put another rug over it. You must know that an officer in the navy did not earn a lot of money - he had three children and we were happy when his pay arrived each month. But then, we were not nearly as badly off as many other families.”"
Ursula Dönitz had a good life as her father's daughter, and married another navy man.
"I knew that some things were not good in Germany, especially around the Depression. I knew that Versailles was a bad treaty, not just from my father, but everyone knew that Versailles was bad.”"
"However, National Socialism’s strong anti-communist and Versailles-bashing platforms must have appealed to him. Hitler promised to expand Germany’s borders and build a military machine that rivalled Britain’s. Although Dönitz exhibited no signs of anti-Semitism during this time, he later seemed to accept the Nazi theory that Jews were an internal threat to Germany. Ursula never recalls any discussion with her father “about Jews.” She claims that after Kristallnacht he officially complained to the highest ranks. There is no record of any such protest."
"With the merging of Sudetenland, and Germany being strong again, we were all very proud. These were very good times for me.”"
"But as events led inexorably to full-scale war, Dönitz eschewed his winter holiday in 1939. Instead he published a book called Die U-Bootswaffe (The U-Boat Arm), a primer on how he intended to use his fleet during war. Unfortunately, British intelligence did not obtain a copy until 1942. By that time the Allies had experienced Dönitz’s tactics on the open seas."
"My husband was away at sea and my father said to me, for the first and only time, ‘There will be a war and it will be a long one. The British will not allow Germany to get too powerful.’ It surprised me a little because I had not thought it was that certain.”"
"In the first months of the war, Dönitz’s U-boat fleet followed the Prize Law, a treaty which mandated warnings before firing torpedoes. However, as the war rapidly intensified, Raeder and Hitler prodded him to flout the Prize Law. Unrestricted U-boat warfare was waged by mid-1940. The results were impressive. The British lost aircraft-carriers and destroyers, and tons of Allied merchant shipping were sent to the ocean bottom. Hitler was ecstatic about this elite and dangerous naval fleet which mirrored Dönitz’s pride and enthusiasm.
"In June 1940, France fell. That convinced many in the navy that world domination was within Germany’s grasp. Ursula is not certain her father shared the enthusiasm for eventual victory. “I remember a conversation during the war, when he said very earnestly, “It will be a long, long and very hard war.”"
"In September 1942, as Dönitz prepared a status report for Hitler, an incident took place which later became a key part of the Nuremberg case against him. A U-boat sank a British troop transport, the Laconia, with over two thousand men aboard.
"Four U-boats arrived at the scene to save survivors, and, their decks crammed with Allied troops, they steamed along on the surface towards a safe port. All the vessels flew large Red Cross flags. Three days into their rescue mission, in clear and visible weather, American planes circled for an hour and then bombed the submarines. One U-boat was badly damaged. Against the advice of his staff, Dönitz did not call off the rescue operation. When Hitler learned of the Allied bombing, he telephoned in a rage. He screamed that German lives should never be at jeopardy because of rescuing enemy soldiers. Dönitz responded by issuing a directive, later dubbed the Laconia order, to cease all attempts to save survivors at sea. He proclaimed: “Rescue contradicts the most fundamental demands of war for the annihilation of ships and crews.” He ended by urging his troops to “be hard. Think of the fact that the enemy in his bombing attacks on German towns has no regard for women and children.”"
"Although not an order to shoot survivors, the Laconia directive could be so interpreted by individual commanders. The Allies charged that Dönitz left the language ambiguous, hoping his fleet would resolve the question in favor of murder. Ursula later spoke to her husband about the order, and is adamant that it was never intended as permission to kill survivors."
But at Nuremberg trials his attorney contacted Charles Nimitz of U.S. navy, whose response made it difficult to assign criminality to this action; it made him Hitler's favourite, on the other hand.
"Although he was at a conference in Posen in the autumn of 1943, when Himmler informed senior party members of the extermination program, some ministers claim Dönitz had left by the time of the Reichsführer’s talk."
"What seems probable is that Dönitz was willing to follow Nazi policies against any enemy of the state, whether external ones like Britain or the United States or internal ones like communists and Jews. Whatever he heard about the extermination program during the last years of the war, he did not consider it his duty to investigate."
"Ursula hoped the Nimitz testimony would exonerate her father. This quandary split the judges. The American judge, Francis Biddle, argued that Dönitz must be acquitted because of the Nimitz affidavit. Biddle said, “Germany waged a much cleaner war than we did.” But the other judges were persuaded by the British argument that even if both sides broke the law, that did not clear Dönitz. Of the judges who voted him guilty of waging aggressive war and of war crimes, a majority carried the day with a ten-year sentence."
"I did not think they had proven he did anything wrong. It seemed like a nightmare, not at all real. But I later learned that he actually thought they would condemn him to death.”"
But when sentenced, he looked at the judges blazing with fury, threw his earphones and stalked out. In Spandau he did not get along with Speer, berating him for not being loyal to Hitler forever.
"The following year there were rumors of a neo-fascist attempt to obtain Dönitz’s freedom and make him Germany’s new leader. When Speer asked him about the rumor, Dönitz announced, “I am and will remain the legal head of state, until I die.” When Speer protested that there was a new West German president, Dönitz said, “He was installed under pressure from the occupying powers.” Another prisoner, Konstantin von Neurath, said of him that the idea of leading Germany had become “an obsession with him.”"
"Dönitz did not have a good relationship with most of the other prisoners. Instead, he spent much of his time alone, occupied by voluminous reading and contemplating his own memoirs. On the final day of his imprisonment, September 30, 1956, he attacked Speer, accusing him of recommending his appointment as Hitler’s replacement. “What did I have to do with politics? But for you, Hitler would never have had the idea of making me head of state. All my men have commands again. But look at me! My career is wrecked!” Speer yelled back, accusing Dönitz of being more concerned with his career than with the fifty million killed during the war. Only during that final night did Speer feel any sympathy for the former admiral. Dönitz went from cell to cell to shake hands with the remaining prisoners; Speer says he later heard him crying in the adjoining cell. Only at that moment did Speer realize that the prison pressures were so great that even the "strong-nerved" Dönitz quietly wept during his last hours of confinement."
He lived an increasingly lonely life after his return from Spandau, especially after his wife's passing on, and preferred it that way due to feeling ignored by the government of West Germany, despite being respected by both military and nazis alike, who attended his funeral in hundreds. He wrote about his life.
"One of his major critics who criticized the book was Speer, who read a smuggled copy in Spandau. He felt it was “the book of a man without insight. For him, the tragedy of the recent past is reduced to the miserable question of what mistakes led to the loss of the war. But should this surprise me?”"
"He also reveled in the opinion of British and American naval authorities that he was the most dangerous enemy they ever faced."
"However, during the early 1970s several books reconsidering the navy’s role in waging aggressive war upset Dönitz’s political rehabilitation. They exposed the grand admiral’s total identification with Hitler. When the BBC interviewed him in 1973 for a documentary on U-boats, they found him suspicious of any questions about National Socialism or Hitler. He refused to answer most questions without checking the books that lined his walls."
"The daughter of the last Führer lives next door to a Turkish family; some observers say Turks are Germany’s new Jews. “Many things have changed since the time of my father,” she told me. When I last left her, I noticed the concrete underpass outside her home had been sprayed with large black painted letters, “Auslander Raus!” (Foreigners Out!). Maybe things have not changed as much as Ursula Dönitz thought."
................................................................................................
Chapter seven begins, for an introduction to the subject, with why this man belongs in the book.
"In the final hours of his life, at 4 a.m. on Sunday, April 29, 1945, Adolf Hitler finished his last will and testament. Russian soldiers were only five hundred yards away and the sound of artillery penetrated the Führerbunker’s thick walls as he summoned Josef Goebbels and Martin Bormann as witnesses. The will was a rambling document brimming with hatred for “international Jewry,” blaming the Allies for starting the war, and castigating the German army for losing the conflict. While he exhorted the German people to continue fighting, he prepared to abandon the struggle. On the next day, resolved not to be captured alive, not to be a “spectacle, presented by the Jews, to divert their hysterical masses he placed the barrel of a Walther pistol in his mouth and killed himself with a single shot."
The last bit has been questioned lately, since evidence has emerged about the story being a front, and his having in reality escaped via a flight to Canaries and a subsequent u-boat ride across South Atlantic to a hideout, as shown in a TV infochannel documentary.
"He stripped his most likely successors, Himmler and Göring, of their ranks, titles, and positions. Then he created a new cabinet of fourteen veteran Nazi hacks. But the section that named his successor shocked his Berlin aides – it proclaimed as the next Führer the reserved chief of the navy, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was not even a Nazi party member, but who was the only officer of the Reich whom Hitler trusted to lead Germany in its final battle."
Dönitz was never a nazi, and was of course involved in the war, as would be any military officer. His inclusion in Nuremberg trials and his conviction surprised everyone, although he thought he would be executed too. There was a specific charge about change in wartime conduct, when at Hitler's egging on he changed his orders about rescuing survivors of an allied ship with 1,200 on board sunk by a u-boat, to opposite, but there was ambivalence regarding his subsequent orders which could be interpreted as shoot those in water, although they didnt say so.
He lost two sons in WWII, and his surviving daughter loved and respected him. She was the only one who could change his mood for better, from early on.
"In October 1918, Dönitz was commander of U-68 when it came under heavy British attack off Sicily and he and his crew were captured. British interrogators described the twenty-seven- year-old first lieutenant as “moody and almost violent,” crushed by the news of the humiliating terms of German defeat. He remained a British prisoner until he appeared to go mad, which prompted a short stay in the Manchester Lunatic Asylum and then a release to Germany. Ursula Dönitz says her father later confided that he fooled his British captors by drinking a combination of oil and tobacco to make himself ill and then feigning mental problems."
Which is worth notice for consideration, since it amounts to his lack of inability to lie to those he'd consider enemy.
"“He had taste for good things,” Ursula remembers. “He had a very good collection of Oriental carpets. They were important to him. He had purchased several in Constantinople [now Istanbul], and a dealer told him that one of the rugs was hundreds of years old and was museum quality. “It should be on a wall,” the dealer said. “Don’t walk on it.” My father did not have the money to put another rug over it. You must know that an officer in the navy did not earn a lot of money - he had three children and we were happy when his pay arrived each month. But then, we were not nearly as badly off as many other families.”"
Ursula Dönitz had a good life as her father's daughter, and married another navy man.
"I knew that some things were not good in Germany, especially around the Depression. I knew that Versailles was a bad treaty, not just from my father, but everyone knew that Versailles was bad.”"
"However, National Socialism’s strong anti-communist and Versailles-bashing platforms must have appealed to him. Hitler promised to expand Germany’s borders and build a military machine that rivalled Britain’s. Although Dönitz exhibited no signs of anti-Semitism during this time, he later seemed to accept the Nazi theory that Jews were an internal threat to Germany. Ursula never recalls any discussion with her father “about Jews.” She claims that after Kristallnacht he officially complained to the highest ranks. There is no record of any such protest."
"With the merging of Sudetenland, and Germany being strong again, we were all very proud. These were very good times for me.”"
"But as events led inexorably to full-scale war, Dönitz eschewed his winter holiday in 1939. Instead he published a book called Die U-Bootswaffe (The U-Boat Arm), a primer on how he intended to use his fleet during war. Unfortunately, British intelligence did not obtain a copy until 1942. By that time the Allies had experienced Dönitz’s tactics on the open seas."
"My husband was away at sea and my father said to me, for the first and only time, ‘There will be a war and it will be a long one. The British will not allow Germany to get too powerful.’ It surprised me a little because I had not thought it was that certain.”"
"In the first months of the war, Dönitz’s U-boat fleet followed the Prize Law, a treaty which mandated warnings before firing torpedoes. However, as the war rapidly intensified, Raeder and Hitler prodded him to flout the Prize Law. Unrestricted U-boat warfare was waged by mid-1940. The results were impressive. The British lost aircraft-carriers and destroyers, and tons of Allied merchant shipping were sent to the ocean bottom. Hitler was ecstatic about this elite and dangerous naval fleet which mirrored Dönitz’s pride and enthusiasm.
"In June 1940, France fell. That convinced many in the navy that world domination was within Germany’s grasp. Ursula is not certain her father shared the enthusiasm for eventual victory. “I remember a conversation during the war, when he said very earnestly, “It will be a long, long and very hard war.”"
"In September 1942, as Dönitz prepared a status report for Hitler, an incident took place which later became a key part of the Nuremberg case against him. A U-boat sank a British troop transport, the Laconia, with over two thousand men aboard.
"Four U-boats arrived at the scene to save survivors, and, their decks crammed with Allied troops, they steamed along on the surface towards a safe port. All the vessels flew large Red Cross flags. Three days into their rescue mission, in clear and visible weather, American planes circled for an hour and then bombed the submarines. One U-boat was badly damaged. Against the advice of his staff, Dönitz did not call off the rescue operation. When Hitler learned of the Allied bombing, he telephoned in a rage. He screamed that German lives should never be at jeopardy because of rescuing enemy soldiers. Dönitz responded by issuing a directive, later dubbed the Laconia order, to cease all attempts to save survivors at sea. He proclaimed: “Rescue contradicts the most fundamental demands of war for the annihilation of ships and crews.” He ended by urging his troops to “be hard. Think of the fact that the enemy in his bombing attacks on German towns has no regard for women and children.”"
"Although not an order to shoot survivors, the Laconia directive could be so interpreted by individual commanders. The Allies charged that Dönitz left the language ambiguous, hoping his fleet would resolve the question in favor of murder. Ursula later spoke to her husband about the order, and is adamant that it was never intended as permission to kill survivors."
But at Nuremberg trials his attorney contacted Charles Nimitz of U.S. navy, whose response made it difficult to assign criminality to this action; it made him Hitler's favourite, on the other hand.
"Although he was at a conference in Posen in the autumn of 1943, when Himmler informed senior party members of the extermination program, some ministers claim Dönitz had left by the time of the Reichsführer’s talk."
"What seems probable is that Dönitz was willing to follow Nazi policies against any enemy of the state, whether external ones like Britain or the United States or internal ones like communists and Jews. Whatever he heard about the extermination program during the last years of the war, he did not consider it his duty to investigate."
"Ursula hoped the Nimitz testimony would exonerate her father. This quandary split the judges. The American judge, Francis Biddle, argued that Dönitz must be acquitted because of the Nimitz affidavit. Biddle said, “Germany waged a much cleaner war than we did.” But the other judges were persuaded by the British argument that even if both sides broke the law, that did not clear Dönitz. Of the judges who voted him guilty of waging aggressive war and of war crimes, a majority carried the day with a ten-year sentence."
"I did not think they had proven he did anything wrong. It seemed like a nightmare, not at all real. But I later learned that he actually thought they would condemn him to death.”"
But when sentenced, he looked at the judges blazing with fury, threw his earphones and stalked out. In Spandau he did not get along with Speer, berating him for not being loyal to Hitler forever.
"The following year there were rumors of a neo-fascist attempt to obtain Dönitz’s freedom and make him Germany’s new leader. When Speer asked him about the rumor, Dönitz announced, “I am and will remain the legal head of state, until I die.” When Speer protested that there was a new West German president, Dönitz said, “He was installed under pressure from the occupying powers.” Another prisoner, Konstantin von Neurath, said of him that the idea of leading Germany had become “an obsession with him.”"
"Dönitz did not have a good relationship with most of the other prisoners. Instead, he spent much of his time alone, occupied by voluminous reading and contemplating his own memoirs. On the final day of his imprisonment, September 30, 1956, he attacked Speer, accusing him of recommending his appointment as Hitler’s replacement. “What did I have to do with politics? But for you, Hitler would never have had the idea of making me head of state. All my men have commands again. But look at me! My career is wrecked!” Speer yelled back, accusing Dönitz of being more concerned with his career than with the fifty million killed during the war. Only during that final night did Speer feel any sympathy for the former admiral. Dönitz went from cell to cell to shake hands with the remaining prisoners; Speer says he later heard him crying in the adjoining cell. Only at that moment did Speer realize that the prison pressures were so great that even the "strong-nerved" Dönitz quietly wept during his last hours of confinement."
He lived an increasingly lonely life after his return from Spandau, especially after his wife's passing on, and preferred it that way due to feeling ignored by the government of West Germany, despite being respected by both military and nazis alike, who attended his funeral in hundreds. He wrote about his life.
"One of his major critics who criticized the book was Speer, who read a smuggled copy in Spandau. He felt it was “the book of a man without insight. For him, the tragedy of the recent past is reduced to the miserable question of what mistakes led to the loss of the war. But should this surprise me?”"
"He also reveled in the opinion of British and American naval authorities that he was the most dangerous enemy they ever faced."
"However, during the early 1970s several books reconsidering the navy’s role in waging aggressive war upset Dönitz’s political rehabilitation. They exposed the grand admiral’s total identification with Hitler. When the BBC interviewed him in 1973 for a documentary on U-boats, they found him suspicious of any questions about National Socialism or Hitler. He refused to answer most questions without checking the books that lined his walls."
"The daughter of the last Führer lives next door to a Turkish family; some observers say Turks are Germany’s new Jews. “Many things have changed since the time of my father,” she told me. When I last left her, I noticed the concrete underpass outside her home had been sprayed with large black painted letters, “Auslander Raus!” (Foreigners Out!). Maybe things have not changed as much as Ursula Dönitz thought."
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Chapter eight is different from the rest in that it's not about someone accused, of war crimes or crimes against humanity or anything, at Nuremberg, but completely the opposite - it's Claus Philip Schenk von Stauffenberg who's known for the only serious attempt to rid Germany of Hitler, that too at his zenith of power.
"It was no easy task. Surrounded by an elite SS bodyguard, Hitler changed his schedule constantly to avoid any potential trap. He had not made a public appearance since 1942, and access was restricted to the most trusted and ranking officers. Even his oversized cap was lined with three and a half pounds of steel plating."
To anyone who's watched Valkyrie and even more so for those who've seen The Valkyrie Legacy, the details of the story are well known, and yet this chapter is of great interest in that one gets to read about the family, the wife and children, how they were treated and how they fared. Franz Ludwig, the son interviewed, is the third son, and it would have been nice to read about the rest too. Understandably he's proud of his father.
"“He was not an early addict of Hitler, and I have seen this information published. I would not have much of a problem if it were so. It would be very decent for a young man to be quite enthusiastic and then to change his mind as he discerned and saw new facts which brought him to a new conclusion. But it was not like this. My father was not a definite opponent from the very beginning, but he was not a disciple or an addict in any way. It was not in his character or his personality. This report of my father is simply not true.”
"Franz Ludwig is correct. His father, while not opposed to National Socialism in the mid-1930s, was certainly far from a slavish follower of Hitler. Stauffenberg’s first doubts about the Nazi programs came during the virulent anti-Jewish campaigns of 1938, the year Franz Ludwig was born. But when the war started in September 1939, Stauffenberg was willing to perform his duty. He did so with characteristic energy and talent, earning a solid reputation as an officer in the Sixth Panzer Division’s campaigns in both Poland and France. In early June 1940, just before the Dunkirk assault, he was transferred to the army high command. And for the first eighteen months of Operation Barbarossa, the Russian campaign, he spent most of his time in Soviet territory. There he witnessed first-hand the brutality of the SS. His Russian service disillusioned him with the Third Reich."
"The unnecessary disaster at Stalingrad in February 1943 further alienated him from Hitler’s strategy. As soon as the battle for Stalingrad finished, he asked for a transfer to a new front, and he was sent to the Tenth Panzer Division in Tunisia, just in time to join the last days of the fierce battle for the Kasserine Pass."
As is well known, the assassination attempt failed, as did the coup. The children's grandmother was arrested, but what with a large house and several people, Franz says the children didn't realise it.
"Unknown to the Stauffenbergs, isolated on their large estate in southern Germany, Hitler and Himmler had embarked on a brutal campaign of vengeance to stamp out all vestiges of the resistance. There was a wild wave of arrests followed by gruesome torture, kangaroo trials, and sadistic death sentences, including the suspension of victims from slaughterhouse meat- hooks. Relatives and friends of the suspects were rounded up by the thousand and sent to concentration camps. The Stauffenberg arrests had marked the beginning of the sweep across Germany. Within two months the Gestapo arrested more than seven thousand suspects, and “people’s courts” sentenced 4980 to death."
"One of those executed was Count Berthold von Stauffenberg, Claus’s older brother."
"The third Stauffenberg brother was a professor of ancient history at a university and was above suspicion. Still, the Gestapo arrested him because he was a Stauffenberg. With two of the brothers dead and the adults of the family in prison, the Nazis decided to move against the children."
"“Then something happened which I remember quite well. My grandmother’s maid was a devout Catholic. She took us to the village priest, and we went the very short walk to the priest whom we knew well, all six of the children. He talked to us, and he gave us a blessing and told us that quite bad and even ghastly experiences might await us, and that we even might land in a pigsty. But that whatever happened we should always remember that our father was a great man and what he did was good. Of course, this was an extremely dangerous and courageous thing for this priest, because if we had told that story to the Gestapo men, he would have been put into a concentration camp. I remember that evening walk and I remember the maid crying. I knew something very emotional had happened but I didn’t realize what it was."
They were taken to Bad Sachsa, a to a country estate. An aunt managed to visit.
"“Alexander, my father’s brother who was the university professor was married to a very interesting woman, Melitta. We called her Aunt Lita. She was a flier, a pilot, which was not that common a profession for a woman at that time. She was not merely an adventurer; she was also an engineer and had invented a number of quite important gadgets for night flying."
She was arrested too, but freed due to her flyer fraternity, and insisted she'd be informed and visit the family, which she said meant the Stauffenberg clan.
"So as a surprise, she came to us during Christmas 1944. During the holiday, we were asked to the house of the camp director, a woman, and we went over and there was Aunt Lita. And there was a Christmas tree and she wanted to celebrate with us the way we used to, and since it was difficult to get toys, she had gone to a place where they kept war medals, and she took a handful of them and gave them to us. Of course, we felt like real war heroes."
"“We loved her. She was very exciting. She told the most wonderful stories of her flying and her planes. Christmas was great with her that year.”"
Bad Sachsa was liberated by U.S. troops.
"“The memory I have of the American soldiers is absolutely positive, and not just because of the chocolate. They were friendly, awfully nice, and they were all very young. They played with us and had fun with us.”"
Their mother, with their new baby sister born after they'd been all taken away, managed to arrive.
"But we received very bad news from my other aunt. Melitta did not survive the war. She was shot down in her small aeroplane during the last days of the war. We now know she was intentionally shot down in Bavaria by German troops."
She'd kept everyone informed, which helped the grandmother collect the children and hurry back home as allies closed in, but the aunt was shot down by German troops due to someone saying she was flying to Switzerland with Stauffenberg family jewels.
Stauffenberg children did well.
"You are interviewing me now for hours, and not because I am a member of the European parliament, but because I am the son of Stauffenberg. It is really still that way.
"“But it is quite acceptable for me because I am proud of my father and I have much love for him. I don’t see him as the perfect god on earth. I think he was a very intelligent man with great courage, but I also see him as somebody who had his weaknesses, as any other person. He was a great man, and a very human one. He had some extraordinary and great qualities well worth remembering, not only for his children.
"“It is quite understandable that I much prefer being the son of Stauffenberg than the son of a Himmler or the like. The memory and knowledge of what my father did will always be very special to me. He is very special to me.”"
"It was no easy task. Surrounded by an elite SS bodyguard, Hitler changed his schedule constantly to avoid any potential trap. He had not made a public appearance since 1942, and access was restricted to the most trusted and ranking officers. Even his oversized cap was lined with three and a half pounds of steel plating."
To anyone who's watched Valkyrie and even more so for those who've seen The Valkyrie Legacy, the details of the story are well known, and yet this chapter is of great interest in that one gets to read about the family, the wife and children, how they were treated and how they fared. Franz Ludwig, the son interviewed, is the third son, and it would have been nice to read about the rest too. Understandably he's proud of his father.
"“He was not an early addict of Hitler, and I have seen this information published. I would not have much of a problem if it were so. It would be very decent for a young man to be quite enthusiastic and then to change his mind as he discerned and saw new facts which brought him to a new conclusion. But it was not like this. My father was not a definite opponent from the very beginning, but he was not a disciple or an addict in any way. It was not in his character or his personality. This report of my father is simply not true.”
"Franz Ludwig is correct. His father, while not opposed to National Socialism in the mid-1930s, was certainly far from a slavish follower of Hitler. Stauffenberg’s first doubts about the Nazi programs came during the virulent anti-Jewish campaigns of 1938, the year Franz Ludwig was born. But when the war started in September 1939, Stauffenberg was willing to perform his duty. He did so with characteristic energy and talent, earning a solid reputation as an officer in the Sixth Panzer Division’s campaigns in both Poland and France. In early June 1940, just before the Dunkirk assault, he was transferred to the army high command. And for the first eighteen months of Operation Barbarossa, the Russian campaign, he spent most of his time in Soviet territory. There he witnessed first-hand the brutality of the SS. His Russian service disillusioned him with the Third Reich."
"The unnecessary disaster at Stalingrad in February 1943 further alienated him from Hitler’s strategy. As soon as the battle for Stalingrad finished, he asked for a transfer to a new front, and he was sent to the Tenth Panzer Division in Tunisia, just in time to join the last days of the fierce battle for the Kasserine Pass."
As is well known, the assassination attempt failed, as did the coup. The children's grandmother was arrested, but what with a large house and several people, Franz says the children didn't realise it.
"Unknown to the Stauffenbergs, isolated on their large estate in southern Germany, Hitler and Himmler had embarked on a brutal campaign of vengeance to stamp out all vestiges of the resistance. There was a wild wave of arrests followed by gruesome torture, kangaroo trials, and sadistic death sentences, including the suspension of victims from slaughterhouse meat- hooks. Relatives and friends of the suspects were rounded up by the thousand and sent to concentration camps. The Stauffenberg arrests had marked the beginning of the sweep across Germany. Within two months the Gestapo arrested more than seven thousand suspects, and “people’s courts” sentenced 4980 to death."
"One of those executed was Count Berthold von Stauffenberg, Claus’s older brother."
"The third Stauffenberg brother was a professor of ancient history at a university and was above suspicion. Still, the Gestapo arrested him because he was a Stauffenberg. With two of the brothers dead and the adults of the family in prison, the Nazis decided to move against the children."
"“Then something happened which I remember quite well. My grandmother’s maid was a devout Catholic. She took us to the village priest, and we went the very short walk to the priest whom we knew well, all six of the children. He talked to us, and he gave us a blessing and told us that quite bad and even ghastly experiences might await us, and that we even might land in a pigsty. But that whatever happened we should always remember that our father was a great man and what he did was good. Of course, this was an extremely dangerous and courageous thing for this priest, because if we had told that story to the Gestapo men, he would have been put into a concentration camp. I remember that evening walk and I remember the maid crying. I knew something very emotional had happened but I didn’t realize what it was."
They were taken to Bad Sachsa, a to a country estate. An aunt managed to visit.
"“Alexander, my father’s brother who was the university professor was married to a very interesting woman, Melitta. We called her Aunt Lita. She was a flier, a pilot, which was not that common a profession for a woman at that time. She was not merely an adventurer; she was also an engineer and had invented a number of quite important gadgets for night flying."
She was arrested too, but freed due to her flyer fraternity, and insisted she'd be informed and visit the family, which she said meant the Stauffenberg clan.
"So as a surprise, she came to us during Christmas 1944. During the holiday, we were asked to the house of the camp director, a woman, and we went over and there was Aunt Lita. And there was a Christmas tree and she wanted to celebrate with us the way we used to, and since it was difficult to get toys, she had gone to a place where they kept war medals, and she took a handful of them and gave them to us. Of course, we felt like real war heroes."
"“We loved her. She was very exciting. She told the most wonderful stories of her flying and her planes. Christmas was great with her that year.”"
Bad Sachsa was liberated by U.S. troops.
"“The memory I have of the American soldiers is absolutely positive, and not just because of the chocolate. They were friendly, awfully nice, and they were all very young. They played with us and had fun with us.”"
Their mother, with their new baby sister born after they'd been all taken away, managed to arrive.
"But we received very bad news from my other aunt. Melitta did not survive the war. She was shot down in her small aeroplane during the last days of the war. We now know she was intentionally shot down in Bavaria by German troops."
She'd kept everyone informed, which helped the grandmother collect the children and hurry back home as allies closed in, but the aunt was shot down by German troops due to someone saying she was flying to Switzerland with Stauffenberg family jewels.
Stauffenberg children did well.
"You are interviewing me now for hours, and not because I am a member of the European parliament, but because I am the son of Stauffenberg. It is really still that way.
"“But it is quite acceptable for me because I am proud of my father and I have much love for him. I don’t see him as the perfect god on earth. I think he was a very intelligent man with great courage, but I also see him as somebody who had his weaknesses, as any other person. He was a great man, and a very human one. He had some extraordinary and great qualities well worth remembering, not only for his children.
"“It is quite understandable that I much prefer being the son of Stauffenberg than the son of a Himmler or the like. The memory and knowledge of what my father did will always be very special to me. He is very special to me.”"
................................................................................................
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Chapter nine is about Mochar, an early nazi party member from Carinthia who was a soldier on eastern front and never involved in war crimes and has never changed his mind about the ideology, and his daughter Ingeborg who grew up loving her parents but then learned more, and fought with her father about his beliefs most of the years. She loves him, and longs to hear him admit that perhaps he was wrong.
The astonishing part is her own life. Neither the author nor she question why it took so different a direction, but the clues are given away with her mother's background.
Mochar was from a very poor family and didn't get much of education, while his wife was from an urban German affluent family of doctors, and although she too was a party member, much less antisemitic, because her family knew many Jewish people since many of them were doctors.
Ingeborg lived during her graduate school and doctorate years in Vienna, and she lived for a while with someone who helped her growth in questioning the Nazi ideology and antisemitism. Subsequently she met and lived with and married someone Jewish. With her parents' background this was a problem, but she fought through. His parents were displeased, too, but Ingeborg found his mother warm, welcoming and nice.
They don't say that the strain of the gap in backgrounds was why it happened, but since then her husband lives with another woman who is Jewish and a doctor as he is, and they have a son. Ingeborg does mention that the son is the difference, Ingeborg had only daughters.
The author went with her to Berlin to check if her father's claim of innocence was true, and she was in tears to find that it was. She didn't know if she could have loved him if he were involved in the crimes.
The astonishing part is her own life. Neither the author nor she question why it took so different a direction, but the clues are given away with her mother's background.
Mochar was from a very poor family and didn't get much of education, while his wife was from an urban German affluent family of doctors, and although she too was a party member, much less antisemitic, because her family knew many Jewish people since many of them were doctors.
Ingeborg lived during her graduate school and doctorate years in Vienna, and she lived for a while with someone who helped her growth in questioning the Nazi ideology and antisemitism. Subsequently she met and lived with and married someone Jewish. With her parents' background this was a problem, but she fought through. His parents were displeased, too, but Ingeborg found his mother warm, welcoming and nice.
They don't say that the strain of the gap in backgrounds was why it happened, but since then her husband lives with another woman who is Jewish and a doctor as he is, and they have a son. Ingeborg does mention that the son is the difference, Ingeborg had only daughters.
The author went with her to Berlin to check if her father's claim of innocence was true, and she was in tears to find that it was. She didn't know if she could have loved him if he were involved in the crimes.
................................................................................................
The penultimate chapter ten, title "The Little Princess", is about Göring and his daughter Edda. Quite worth reading, what with his thefts, of art and new is and more, from Germans and subsequently from all over Europe, using his power; his lies and deception at the trial and his suicide, of which Edda here inadvertently let slip knowledge to the family. She ends the interview stating there is no need for her to say how she felt because everyone loves her father with exception of Jews and Americans. Her idea of U.S. is drugs and crime.
................................................................................................
The penultimate chapter ten, title "The Little Princess", is about Göring and his daughter Edda. Quite worth reading, what with his thefts, of art and new is and more, from Germans and subsequently from all over Europe, using his power; his lies and deception at the trial and his suicide, of which Edda here inadvertently let slip knowledge to the family. She ends the interview stating there is no need for her to say how she felt because everyone loves her father with exception of Jews and Americans. Her idea of U.S. is drugs and crime.
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
The final, eleventh chapter, seems to be the quintessential case of a child traumatised by the horrendous crimes of her father while the nazi is not only unrepentant, he is, by his town, considered wronged by the government in sentencing him for murders of over seven hundred people including families, and even the judge bought the fraudulent remorse about the cases that couldn't be denied - the sentence was reduced from twenty years to five, of which Max Drexel, of Boeblingen, Leonberg and Heubach, served less than three.
"“When the verdict was announced I was not surprised by the dimension of the punishment,” says Dagmar. “I don’t want to be a judge of what is fair and what is not fair. You can’t measure crimes like his by the length of a prison sentence. If he had been indicted right after the war he probably would have got a life sentence. But even if he was put behind bars for the rest of his life, the suffering of the people he killed and their relatives cannot be compensated. Not even with a life sentence.
"“I visited him frequently in prison. But I definitely want to point out that I never, never accepted what my father did. On the contrary, he carries a heavy burden for what he did and his actions can never be excused.”"
Dagmar hasn't confronted him. She is hugely conflicted and tries hard to make up, bringing up her children with very different values, working with foreigners to help them settle, and encouraging her children in associating with Greek and Turkish people. Her husband is her true partner in this effort.
"In 1985, Dagmar met another daughter of a Nazi father, Dorte von Westernhagen, who was researching a book on children of non-prominent Nazi officers. The book, Die Kinder der Täter (Children of the Perpetration), appeared in Germany in 1987, and Westernhagen included a chapter on Dagmar and her father. This was shortly after the publication of Born Guilty, a collection of anonymous interviews with the children of Nazis.
"Two years after Dagmar’s interview was published in Westernhagen’s book, a cousin told Drexel about it. He was furious.
"“Later I received a long letter from him in which he tried to deny everything I said. He attacked me. One example is when he said, ‘To make a point that could serve as an excuse for you, I would say you are a psychopath, as you have admitted yourself, who in this notorious interview has acted wildly.’ He also said he would like to justify his behavior to his grandchildren. After that letter I decided not to have any further contact with him. A second letter followed but I refused it, in order to protect myself.”"
"“For a long time I debated whether I should again go public with my personal story. And I am doing it only because I spoke to you for a long time. In the meantime, I am not afraid any more, I don’t fear my family’s repressions or threats. But I do think of my children, and they should not suffer from this. I have arrived at this after a long process of thinking that one cannot make up for what happened. But by listening to my story people may realize they have to react sensibly to political change and that every individual is responsible to ensure that something like this never happens again. People have to engage themselves to fight for freedom and peace, and most of all for humanity.”"
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The final, eleventh chapter, seems to be the quintessential case of a child traumatised by the horrendous crimes of her father while the nazi is not only unrepentant, he is, by his town, considered wronged by the government in sentencing him for murders of over seven hundred people including families, and even the judge bought the fraudulent remorse about the cases that couldn't be denied - the sentence was reduced from twenty years to five, of which Max Drexel, of Boeblingen, Leonberg and Heubach, served less than three.
"“When the verdict was announced I was not surprised by the dimension of the punishment,” says Dagmar. “I don’t want to be a judge of what is fair and what is not fair. You can’t measure crimes like his by the length of a prison sentence. If he had been indicted right after the war he probably would have got a life sentence. But even if he was put behind bars for the rest of his life, the suffering of the people he killed and their relatives cannot be compensated. Not even with a life sentence.
"“I visited him frequently in prison. But I definitely want to point out that I never, never accepted what my father did. On the contrary, he carries a heavy burden for what he did and his actions can never be excused.”"
Dagmar hasn't confronted him. She is hugely conflicted and tries hard to make up, bringing up her children with very different values, working with foreigners to help them settle, and encouraging her children in associating with Greek and Turkish people. Her husband is her true partner in this effort.
"In 1985, Dagmar met another daughter of a Nazi father, Dorte von Westernhagen, who was researching a book on children of non-prominent Nazi officers. The book, Die Kinder der Täter (Children of the Perpetration), appeared in Germany in 1987, and Westernhagen included a chapter on Dagmar and her father. This was shortly after the publication of Born Guilty, a collection of anonymous interviews with the children of Nazis.
"Two years after Dagmar’s interview was published in Westernhagen’s book, a cousin told Drexel about it. He was furious.
"“Later I received a long letter from him in which he tried to deny everything I said. He attacked me. One example is when he said, ‘To make a point that could serve as an excuse for you, I would say you are a psychopath, as you have admitted yourself, who in this notorious interview has acted wildly.’ He also said he would like to justify his behavior to his grandchildren. After that letter I decided not to have any further contact with him. A second letter followed but I refused it, in order to protect myself.”"
"“For a long time I debated whether I should again go public with my personal story. And I am doing it only because I spoke to you for a long time. In the meantime, I am not afraid any more, I don’t fear my family’s repressions or threats. But I do think of my children, and they should not suffer from this. I have arrived at this after a long process of thinking that one cannot make up for what happened. But by listening to my story people may realize they have to react sensibly to political change and that every individual is responsible to ensure that something like this never happens again. People have to engage themselves to fight for freedom and peace, and most of all for humanity.”"
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"British prosecutor’s summation: “It may be that the guilt of Germany will not be erased, for the people of Germany share in it to large measure. But it was these men who, with a handful of others, brought that guilt upon Germany and subverted the German people. That these defendants participated in, and are morally guilty of crimes so frightful that the imagination staggers and reels back at their very consideration, is not in doubt. Let the words of the defendant Frank be always well remembered: ‘Thousands of years will pass and this guilt of Germany will not be erased.’”
"The sins of the father: they affected a second generation of Germans in ways little understood or appreciated. The children of those who served the Third Reich have had to deal with their dark legacy to a much greater extent than the rest of the German nation.
"Those who broke with their fathers’ politics and crimes are often troubled by shame and guilt. Some, like the Frank brothers, are haunted by images of mounds of twisted corpses or Jewish families being packed into a ghetto. Yet, even without these chilling memories, many are confused by their heritage, almost sharing the guilt for their fathers’ crimes. “I am afraid,” says Dagmar Drexel, “that if the people I meet know what my father did, they won’t want anything to do with me.”"
"Murderers like Mengele and Drexel returned to quiet, mundane lives, unburdened by guilt. It is that lack of remorse that some of the children find most disturbing. The second generation often has greater moral outrage over the atrocities than any of their parents, the actual perpetrators."
"The generation responsible for the crimes closed all discussion. They refused to be honest and forthright. This silence did not eliminate the family friction, but only submerged it, often into the child’s psyche. Years after the parent’s death, some of the children seek to have the public discussion about their feelings that their fathers denied them."
"“And I think it’s important for the victims and their families,” says Dagmar Drexel. “They should know that we, the children of these men who are guilty of crimes, that we don’t just forget about the Holocaust. Instead, we try to deal with it. The murders of millions of people, especially Jews, can’t be redressed. We try to do our little part to prevent it from happening ever again. It is our special obligation.”"
................................................................................................
"British prosecutor’s summation: “It may be that the guilt of Germany will not be erased, for the people of Germany share in it to large measure. But it was these men who, with a handful of others, brought that guilt upon Germany and subverted the German people. That these defendants participated in, and are morally guilty of crimes so frightful that the imagination staggers and reels back at their very consideration, is not in doubt. Let the words of the defendant Frank be always well remembered: ‘Thousands of years will pass and this guilt of Germany will not be erased.’”
"The sins of the father: they affected a second generation of Germans in ways little understood or appreciated. The children of those who served the Third Reich have had to deal with their dark legacy to a much greater extent than the rest of the German nation.
"Those who broke with their fathers’ politics and crimes are often troubled by shame and guilt. Some, like the Frank brothers, are haunted by images of mounds of twisted corpses or Jewish families being packed into a ghetto. Yet, even without these chilling memories, many are confused by their heritage, almost sharing the guilt for their fathers’ crimes. “I am afraid,” says Dagmar Drexel, “that if the people I meet know what my father did, they won’t want anything to do with me.”"
"Murderers like Mengele and Drexel returned to quiet, mundane lives, unburdened by guilt. It is that lack of remorse that some of the children find most disturbing. The second generation often has greater moral outrage over the atrocities than any of their parents, the actual perpetrators."
"The generation responsible for the crimes closed all discussion. They refused to be honest and forthright. This silence did not eliminate the family friction, but only submerged it, often into the child’s psyche. Years after the parent’s death, some of the children seek to have the public discussion about their feelings that their fathers denied them."
"“And I think it’s important for the victims and their families,” says Dagmar Drexel. “They should know that we, the children of these men who are guilty of crimes, that we don’t just forget about the Holocaust. Instead, we try to deal with it. The murders of millions of people, especially Jews, can’t be redressed. We try to do our little part to prevent it from happening ever again. It is our special obligation.”"
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
"Before every interview I constructed my own biography of the Nazi parent. In cases where the child presented new information, I checked his or her recall independently against documentary evidence. At no time did I accept the children’s recollections as the final word, although their memories mostly proved remarkably accurate."
"Bunte eventually gave more than $100,000 to a New York-based survivors’ group. When Rolf allowed me to use his father’s papers in a biography, Mengele: The Complete Story (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986), he requested that I donate 20 per cent of my profits to survivors. I did so, giving the money to a group of surviving twins, all victims of his father’s experiments."
................................................................................................
"Before every interview I constructed my own biography of the Nazi parent. In cases where the child presented new information, I checked his or her recall independently against documentary evidence. At no time did I accept the children’s recollections as the final word, although their memories mostly proved remarkably accurate."
"Bunte eventually gave more than $100,000 to a New York-based survivors’ group. When Rolf allowed me to use his father’s papers in a biography, Mengele: The Complete Story (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986), he requested that I donate 20 per cent of my profits to survivors. I did so, giving the money to a group of surviving twins, all victims of his father’s experiments."
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Benton, Wilbourn, and George Grimm, eds, German Views of the War Trials. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1955.
Bewley, Charles. Hermann Goering and the Third Reich. New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1962.
Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1983.
Davidson, Eugene. The Trial of the Germans: An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants Before the International Military Tribunal. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War Against the Jews. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970.
Dönitz, Karl. 10 Jahre un 20 Tage. Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1958. —.
Mein wechselvolles Leben. Gottingen: Musterschmidt, 1968. —.
Deutsche Strategie zur See im zweiten Weltkrieg. Munich: Bernard & Graefe, 1969.
Dulles, Allen. Germany's Underground. New York: Macmillan, 1947.
Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less Than Slaves. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Fishman, Jack. The Seven Men of Spandau. New York: Rinehart and Co., 1954.
Frank, Hans. Im Angesicht des Galgens. Munich: Beck Verlag, 1953. —.
Das Diensttagebuch des Deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen, 1939-1945,
Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1975.
Frank, Niklas. Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung. Munich: Bertelsmann, 1987.
Frischauer, Willi. The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering. New York: Ballantine, 1951.
Gilbert, Dr. Gustave M. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1947. —.
“Hermann Göring, Amiable Psychopath,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 1948).
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985.
Göring, Emmy. My Life with Göring. London: David Bruce and Watson, 1972.
Hess, Wolf Rudiger. My Father, Rudolf Hess. London: W. H. Allen, 1986.
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961.
Hohne, Heinz. The Order of the Death’s Head. Translated by Richard Barry. New York: Ballantine, 1971.
Irving, David. Göring: A Biography. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1989.
Kelley, Douglas. 22 Cells in Nuremberg. London: W. H. Allen, 1947.
Kempner, Robert M. W. “Blueprint of the Nazi Underground,” Research Studies of the State College of Washington. (June 1945).
Kersten, Felix. The Kersten Memoirs, 1940-1945. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
Knieriem, August von. The Nuremberg Trial. Translated by Elizabeth D. Schmidt. Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1959.
Kranzbühler, Otto. “Nuremberg, Eighteen Years Afterwards,” De Paul Law Review, Vol. 14 (1964).
Manchester, William. The Arms of Krupp, 1587-1968. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1968.
Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. Göring. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962. —.
Hess. London: McGibbon & Kee, 1971.
Padfield, Peter. Dönitz: The Last Führer. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
Parker, John J. “The Nuremberg Trial,” Journal of the American Judicature Society 30 (December 1946).
Rees, John R., ed., The Mind of Rudolf Hess. New York: W. W. Norton, 1948.
Reitlinger, Gerald. The SS, Alibi of a Nation. London: Heinemann, 1956.
Rowe, Harvey T. “Im Schatten der Väter,” Quick, 6 November 1986.
Schacht, Hjalmar. Account Settled. London: Weidenfeld &c Nicolson, 1948. —. Confessions of the Old Wizard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1956.
Schlabrendorff, Fabian von. The Secret War Against Hitler. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965.
Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.
Speer, Albert. Erinnerungen. Berlin: Propyläen, 1969. —. Spandau: The Secret Diaries: London: Collins, 1975.
Swearingen, Ben E. The Mystery of Hermann Goering’s Suicide. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.
Benton, Wilbourn, and George Grimm, eds, German Views of the War Trials. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1955.
Bewley, Charles. Hermann Goering and the Third Reich. New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1962.
Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1983.
Davidson, Eugene. The Trial of the Germans: An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants Before the International Military Tribunal. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War Against the Jews. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970.
Dönitz, Karl. 10 Jahre un 20 Tage. Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1958. —.
Mein wechselvolles Leben. Gottingen: Musterschmidt, 1968. —.
Deutsche Strategie zur See im zweiten Weltkrieg. Munich: Bernard & Graefe, 1969.
Dulles, Allen. Germany's Underground. New York: Macmillan, 1947.
Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less Than Slaves. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Fishman, Jack. The Seven Men of Spandau. New York: Rinehart and Co., 1954.
Frank, Hans. Im Angesicht des Galgens. Munich: Beck Verlag, 1953. —.
Das Diensttagebuch des Deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen, 1939-1945,
Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1975.
Frank, Niklas. Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung. Munich: Bertelsmann, 1987.
Frischauer, Willi. The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering. New York: Ballantine, 1951.
Gilbert, Dr. Gustave M. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1947. —.
“Hermann Göring, Amiable Psychopath,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 1948).
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985.
Göring, Emmy. My Life with Göring. London: David Bruce and Watson, 1972.
Hess, Wolf Rudiger. My Father, Rudolf Hess. London: W. H. Allen, 1986.
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961.
Hohne, Heinz. The Order of the Death’s Head. Translated by Richard Barry. New York: Ballantine, 1971.
Irving, David. Göring: A Biography. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1989.
Kelley, Douglas. 22 Cells in Nuremberg. London: W. H. Allen, 1947.
Kempner, Robert M. W. “Blueprint of the Nazi Underground,” Research Studies of the State College of Washington. (June 1945).
Kersten, Felix. The Kersten Memoirs, 1940-1945. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
Knieriem, August von. The Nuremberg Trial. Translated by Elizabeth D. Schmidt. Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1959.
Kranzbühler, Otto. “Nuremberg, Eighteen Years Afterwards,” De Paul Law Review, Vol. 14 (1964).
Manchester, William. The Arms of Krupp, 1587-1968. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1968.
Manvell, Roger, and Heinrich Fraenkel. Göring. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962. —.
Hess. London: McGibbon & Kee, 1971.
Padfield, Peter. Dönitz: The Last Führer. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
Parker, John J. “The Nuremberg Trial,” Journal of the American Judicature Society 30 (December 1946).
Rees, John R., ed., The Mind of Rudolf Hess. New York: W. W. Norton, 1948.
Reitlinger, Gerald. The SS, Alibi of a Nation. London: Heinemann, 1956.
Rowe, Harvey T. “Im Schatten der Väter,” Quick, 6 November 1986.
Schacht, Hjalmar. Account Settled. London: Weidenfeld &c Nicolson, 1948. —. Confessions of the Old Wizard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1956.
Schlabrendorff, Fabian von. The Secret War Against Hitler. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965.
Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.
Speer, Albert. Erinnerungen. Berlin: Propyläen, 1969. —. Spandau: The Secret Diaries: London: Collins, 1975.
Swearingen, Ben E. The Mystery of Hermann Goering’s Suicide. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.
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December 29, 2019 - January 9, 2020.
ISBN 978-1-909979-47-5
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December 29, 2019 - January 9, 2020.
ISBN 978-1-909979-47-5
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