Valkyrie’s Revisionism
The conspirators against Hitler were anything but heroes.
In the preface to the third German edition of his Stauffenberg biography, Hoffmann insists that the document, dated September 1944, “is untainted by any wish for ex-post self-justification.” (Cited from German critic Micha Brumlik here.) The remark amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that all the rest of his evidence — consisting as it does of post-war recollections — is precisely so tainted. But, as it happens, Kuhn was a close subordinate of none other than Tresckow, and in Soviet captivity one could easily imagine that he too felt more than a little need for “self-justification.”
Given his ample access to German archives and his many years of research, the fact that Hoffmann would have to rely on such a fortuitous second-hand source is perhaps the most damning indication of just how unconcerned Stauffenberg must have been about the fate of the Jews. Hoffmann himself provides inadvertent insight into Stauffenberg’s views of Jews — as well as his racism more generally — when he cites a letter that Stauffenberg wrote home to his wife Nina from Poland in September 1939, just days after the German invasion. “The population is unbelievable rabble,” Stauffenberg writes, “a whole lot of Jews and a whole lot of racial mixing [Mischvolk]. A people that only feels comfortable under the knout.” And then, displaying an insouciance worthy of a true member of the Germanic “master race,” he adds: “The thousands of prisoners will really be good for our agriculture. In Germany, they will definitely be of good use: hard-working, docile and undemanding.” Hoffman concedes, moreover, that both Claus von Stauffenberg and his brother and co-conspirator Berthold approved of the Nazi “racial” policies. Berthold was indeed a legal scholar and published an article already in 1933 in which he defended stripping the so-called “Eastern Jews” [Ostjuden] of their German citizenship on “racial” grounds.
One would never know any of this from the film, however. The very first scene opens with Cruise/Stauffenberg brooding over the “mass executions of the Jews.” Later, after the assassination attempt and while Cruise/Stauffenberg is still under the impression that Hitler is dead, he is depicted energetically issuing orders to shut down the concentration camps and to arrest the Nazi leadership. The scenes in question represent the most outrageously bogus sequence in the entire film. Among other things, they give the impression that the plotters’ coup plans got much farther than they ever did. But the initial orders [German link] prepared by Stauffenberg in the event of Hitler’s death are known. They contain nothing about shutting down the concentration camps and refer not to the arrest of the Nazi leadership, but merely to its subordination to the Army leadership. Cruise/Stauffenberg’s “concentration camp order” appears to be a transfer from a draft declaration attributed to General Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler, the leading civilian member of the plot who was slated to become chancellor if it succeeded. The text of the declaration [German link] is available from the German Resistance Memorial Center. It is, however, accompanied by a note that indicates that the original document is “missing.” The extant text is a “reconstruction.” While Goerdeler may well have been put off by the brutality of the Nazis’ methods, incidentally, he too advocated the expulsion of Jews from German society.
“We have to show the world that not all of us were like him,” Cruise/Stauffenberg can be heard solemnly intoning toward the end of the film, presumably referring by “us” to Germans and by “him” to Hitler. When all is said and done, this seems indeed to be the whole point of the movie — which undoubtedly helps to explain why it received millions of dollars in financial support from the German government.
Well, of course not all of “them” were like “him.” But Stauffenberg and his inner circle of co-conspirators were in many respects more like “him” than he was. Their geo-political “vision” was essentially indistinguishable from that of leading Nazi theorists like Carl Schmitt. Stauffenberg advisor Adam von Trott zu Solz wrote, for instance, “Germany — and all of Europe — is threatened by alien powers from the East and from the West, by the Soviets and by the Americans.” Stauffenberg and his brother Berthold were devoted followers of the esoteric poet and prophet of the “New Reich,” Stefan George. It is no wonder, then, that they were thrilled when Hitler’s “Third Reich” seemed to fulfill the master’s prophecy.
Above all, Stauffenberg was a great German chauvinist whose convictions about the natural superiority of the German “race” or Volk were arguably even more pronounced than those of Hitler himself. This can be seen most clearly in the “oath” that Stauffenberg and his fellow plotters composed for themselves just weeks before the assassination attempt. The purpose of the oath, incidentally, appears to have been to create a “secret bond” among the plotters that would enable them to continue their struggle against the Allied occupiers, i.e., in the event that they were not able to prevent the Reich’s collapse. It begins as follows:
We believe in the future of the Germans.
We know that the German has powers by virtue of which he is called to lead the community of western nations into a more beautiful life.
In spirit and deed, we pledge our faithfulness to the great tradition of our people [Volk], which created western man through the fusing of Hellenic and Christian origins in the Germanic character.
We want a New Order that makes all Germans into bearers of the state and guarantees them law and justice. But we despise the lie of equality and demand the recognition of naturally given ranks.
The only trace of the plotters’ mystical Germanomania that remains in the film are the final words that Cruise/Stauffenberg cries just before he is executed: “Long live sacred Germany!” According to some reports, his actual words were “secret Germany.” It was this “secret Germany” that was sworn to defy the Allied powers that were then advancing toward the heart of the Reich.
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John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic relations. More of his work can be found at Transatlantic Intelligencer.
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101 Comments
1. DavidN:I’m something of a World War II buff, and my wife asked me if I was going to want to see Valkyrie. I told her that I would go with her, but only if she was prepared for me to laugh at inappropriate moments, as I have pretty strong opinions about the July 20 plotters and their supposed moral superiority. It’s clear that Stauffenberg wasn’t an enthusiastic Nazi (most of the Prussian military nobility wasn’t, they considered Hitler uncouth and rude), but Nazism isn’t a requirement for racism. Most of these guys were racists of the more mild “I don’t associate with *those* people” sort. American World War II buffs have become enamored, over the years, with the legend that the German army was almost bereft of racism, anti-Semitism, and war crimes. A few years ago, a previously unknown exhortation of Erich von Manstein’s was uncovered. Von Manstein is one of the best known German generals, and generally is very well-regarded for his supposed heroism in standing up to Hitler (always on matters of tactics and strategy, never morality or the ethics of mass-murder), and so it came as a shock to a lot of people that this address (written when he was a corps commander, on the eve of the invasion of the Soviet Union) was virulently racist in content, and exhorted the German troops under his command to fight the good fight against the eastern subhumans.
I’m not saying every German, or even every German general, was equally evil. Some of them, notably Rommel and a more obscure corps commander in Italy named von Senger und Etterlin, were decent men trying desperately to fight for their country and at the same time not become part of the evil that they saw dragging their country down. Rommel wound up succumbing to the July 20 plot, because apparently the conspirators intended to offer him some sort of position in the government, and Nazi investigators decided he must have known this. He committed suicide to avoid public prosecution. Senger was luckier, in that at least he survived.
The question of German complicity in what happened during the war has always fascinated me, for several reasons. For one thing, there were a *lot* of accomplices to the crimes that were committed, and few of them were punished. In addition to the Holocaust itself, Germany invaded a whole bunch of countries without declaring war on them, or at least without provocation. The list includes Poland (though they had a weak falsified casus belli there), Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Greece, and of course the Soviet Union. I don’t include France because the French had declared war on Germany when the Germans invaded Poland, so technically the Germans were defending themselves (and their right to invade their smaller eastern neighbors) when they invaded France. In the Soviet invasion alone, the German army captured 3 million prisoners of war, and worked most of them to death in slave labor camps before they could be liberated by the Red Army. The SS, and the Nazi party, were largely absent from this process, as far as I know. Christopher Browning wrote a book some years ago documenting a “Reserve Police Battalion”, made up of ordinary non-Nazi middle-aged German policemen doing their reserve duty, that conducted “anti-partisan” operations in Poland, and during one nine month period shot 100,000 Jews. Remember, these are not the Nazis, these are the guys who supposedly weren’t evil while Hitler and his cronies were doing very very evil things.
I wasn’t aware of the research with regards to Stauffenberg himself. I have to admit I’ve always considered him a pretty minor character in history, a failed conspirator who isn’t important in any fashion beyond the effect the assassination attempt had on Hitler and the course of the rest of the war. Essentially, the attempt made Hitler a little crazier and a lot more paranoid. I’m frankly somewhere between appalled and amused that he’s now portrayed as this great white knight who was going to save the Jews. Amazing how history gets rewritten when it’s convenient for someone to do so.
Also, one last question. I wonder why the German government financed the movie so much, given that they supposedly were very upset, originally, about the casting of Cruise in the lead role. The German government, officially, dislikes Scientology, and hasn’t made its aversion to its adherents a secret, and reportedly they were very upset originally, even threatening to not allow location shooting. Perhaps they were shown the script?
Jan 8, 2009 - 2:05 am 2. Ken Besig:After 12 years of some of the most effective anti Jewish and anti Slavic racial indoctrination at the hands of the Nazi regime, it is almost a miracle that any German was willing or able to even see beyond Hitler’s racial madness, and given the all powerful secret police, the Gestapo, much less speak out against it. Indeed, any German military officer who didn’t at least pay lip service to Hitler’s vision probably faced at least difficulties in remaining in the military, not to mention the possibility of investigation or arrest by the all powerful Gestapo or Special Security Police. Let us also keep in mind that eliminationist anti Semitism and other distasteful forms of eugenics was widespread even in America and other non German European nations. And yet, senior German officers like Stauffenberg dared, for their own reasons, to risk their lives and their families lives to assassinate Hitler. And not to discount their sacrifice, they indeed paid the highest price for their daring. This is not to justify anti Semitism, or the fact that the German officer corps was riddled with it, but it hardly diminishes the truly heroic deed that this group of Germans tried to carry out. And by the way, if one wishes to accuse any military of failing to save Jewish lives, then one can justifiably accuse the American and British Air Forces for failing to bomb the Auschwitz rail lines as early as 1942. Those pilots and their political and military commanders had nothing to fear from bombing those lines, and yet they didn’t take any action at all because they couldn’t have cared less about Jewish lives either.
Jan 8, 2009 - 3:29 am 3. TomJW:2. Ken Besig:
Jan 8, 2009 - 3:29 am
Nice. It’s not Germans who are guilty of the Holocaust, it’s the Americans and British.
Jan 8, 2009 - 4:07 am 4. Valerie:Try watching the movie before commenting on its content. That will help the accuracy.
Jan 8, 2009 - 4:30 am 5. Jarhead91:It always surprised me that more attempts were not made to kill Hitler for his incompetent management of the war. German officers had to know the blunders and fools’ errands they were being sent on - The pointless campaign in Africa, the failure to take Gibraltar that would cost them the Mediterranean, attacking the Soviets before finishing the Brits, the aimless strategy in Russia, the stupid oppression in the Ukraine that turned a liberated people against the Germans, and the micro-managing orders that wasted divisions on every front.
Those Prussians played along with a lot of nonsense.
Jan 8, 2009 - 4:41 am 6. Cato:In an earlier life, I studied European history. I spent considerable time among the German sources on the German army and knew a number of German officers, aristocrats, and the non-Nazi extended families of some early Nazis. While generalizations are always dangerous, it always seemed to me the aristocracy despised the Nazis on the basis of social class. As one cultivated Junker woman who emigrated after the ‘36 Olympics put it, she left in part because “Hitler had such bad manners.” The officer corps as a whole had more mixed feelings - the positive side of the feelings relating largely to Nazi support for rearmament and getting around the Versailles Treaty. There were not many ‘von’ bearers among the Nazis, and some of those who were were kept at arms length by their families, even at the height of the Nazis power. On the other hand, it’s certainly true that most of them were to some degree racist and anti-Semitic. It is easy to forget just how widespread such attitudes were worldwide some 70 odd years ago (and even more recently), and, in our politically correct purity in such matters, easy to forget (or ignore) the fact that there are degrees of racism and anti-Semitism that range from the sort of almost benign belief and acceptance of the status quo by people who treated everyone with courtesy and recoiled from any overt mistreatment of those they considered their inferiors (as beneath their own dignity — I recall a completely unreconstructed Southern grandmother who washed my mouth out with soap for using the “n word”) to the full fledged exterminationists. My sense is that most of the German officer corps and aristocracy considered Slavs and Jews as inferiors, certainly, and was perfectly prepared to accept a social system that relegated them to inferior roles. The same could probably have been said for the upper classes in the US, England, and France.
Jan 8, 2009 - 4:48 am 7. Valerie:Here’s a review from somebody who actually watched the movie, and is not trying to present a caricature of the plot.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cdevore/2009/01/07/valkyrie-they-dared-to-stop-it/
moneyshot:
“Valkyrie follows men, not necessarily good men, who take life as it is dealt to them right up on the screen, drawing in the audience, and inviting those watching to question whether they would have summoned the courage to do the right thing from deep inside the monstrous regime that was Hitler’s Nazi Germany.”
I got dragged to the movie with low expectations because I’ve lived in Germany, and I was not interested in watching a bunch of contemporary Americans try and fail to act like World War II Germans. I really did not think that Tom Cruise could capture the formality and restraint of a German officer. And yet, the movie pulled it off.
Jan 8, 2009 - 4:59 am 8. Roy:As a German, I have to say I pretty much agree with your view of Stauffenberg. But in his defense I must point out that under the old order of rule by men like the Stauffenbergs, Catholic aristocrats, or the old Prussian Junkers, the Holocaust would never have happened. Even the grotesqueries of men like Ludendorff are as nothing. As a German I am profoundly deeply ashamed by both the National socialists and their enablers, both on the old right like Hindenburg and von Papen, and so many more, but the difference is that under all these others, these real crimes would not have occurred, only under the Nazi’s did they happen.
Their is a fundamental difference between the crime of National Socialism and the crime of ruthless imperialist war. It is important to not confuse these two things, that is how we lose the true evil of men like Hitler and those who served him joyously, and also all those Germans who did nothing or very little to stop them. But to say that in all of Germany that the “Good German” is a myth, this is false, though I can with shame not count myself in this category, it was “enough” we thought to try and be just a “decent German,” though of course now we know this to be false. But if there were no “Good Germans”, how can we be judged harshly? If no “Good Germans”, what can you say to shame us, if we say no one said no, no one resisted, we were all Nazis, then you cannot criticize us as individuals because there is no example of the counter. If Hitler is wrong then we Germans are nothing different than all of you, and if this is the case, with no “Good Germans” how can you stand and criticize us, for merely being passive?
I think this is the most important thing to remember about Germany during the war. In the act of contrition, the sinner must repent not only what he did that was evil, but also what he did not do that was good. For the vast majority of Germans of these generations, this is the sin they live with. The sin of omission.
Fortunately for our souls, there are plenty of examples of “Good Germans” to shame us, but these stories lack the glamor to be so widely known, but they do exist, look at the poor tragic white rose (If you need a recent movie may I suggest “Sophie Scholl”), and those who fled their homeland. I Schindler’s List, the one transcendent moment was when Schindler breaks down weeping, conscious fully of all hiss sin, his sin of omission, of all that he did not do. This is for most German’s of the war generation, or of those like me, their children, what our sin is.
Jan 8, 2009 - 5:04 am 9. mk:So, Val, did they happen to mention in the movie that the reason the German High Command attempted this plot was because Hitler was losing the war, and had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with concentration camps, the fate of the Jews, etc?
I’m just curious, because all I’ve ever read about this attempt was that the people involved knew Hitler was losing the war and they didn’t want to do that…..
(for the record, I haven’t seen the movie, but maybe I will once it comes out on DVD)
Jan 8, 2009 - 5:25 am 10. Lynne:Why does no one ever mention the one German directly involved in the plot who had publicly resisted Hitler from the moment he became Chancellor?
Jan 8, 2009 - 5:39 am 11. Northern Light:I’m speaking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. By the time of the failed asassination attempt he was already a marked man who had spoken out repeatedly against the Nazis and helped Jews escape to Switzerland. He was hanged in a concentration camp for his part in the July 20 plot just weeks before the end of the war.
He left behind him a body of theological work explaining why Christians should oppose evil men like Hitler- works that are still studied today.
Why does no one ever tell his story?
I too have noticed that the German military only turned to the idea of assassinating Hitler after they started losing. There was no conspiracy against Hitler when they were winning in Poland, France, and the low countries.
A much more heroic attempt against Hitler’s life happened in 1939 when a handyman named Johann Elser built a bomb and planted it at the beerhall where Hitler had launched his fail putsch attempt in the 1920s. Hitler made an appearance at the beerhall, but left 12 minutes before the bomb exploded. Elser was arrested and tortured for six years before being executed.
There were other attempts on Hitler’s life that were not simply based on the fact that he was losing the war.
Jan 8, 2009 - 5:57 am 12. happy1ga:Roy,
I think from reading your post that you must be a very good man with a thoughtful heart. I had ancestors that were from Poland that were enterred in the camps, I cannot imagine the hell all of the children on all sides of this horrible time went through. God Bless You for living through that time in history, and coming out a good person.
Jan 8, 2009 - 6:08 am 13. John Rosenthal:Dear Roy,
Thanks for your comment. Of course, there were good and decent Germans. And, of course — more importantly, as far as I’m concerned — there are good and decent Germans today: for example, the many Germans, both professional scholars and interested amateurs, who have helped to expose the Stauffenberg myth. I’m deeply indebted to them.
That title is not mine.
Jan 8, 2009 - 6:18 am 14. Michael T:Myths,myths,myths. As has been pointed out, these generals were more concerned about Hitler’s disastrous direction of the waras supreme commander than any concern for the people who suffered under the Nazi yoke. As has also been pointed out, one of the biggest myths was that the Nazi extermination policies were strictly under the control of the SS and the army’s hands were clean. That is absolutely not true. The Wehrmacht were very instrumental in the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, especially in Russia. What amazes me is that all the attempts at getting rid of Hitler were all so amateurish and inept. An army that had conquered most of Europe couldn’t eliminate a short effeminate man with severe body odour and halitosis.Strange; or is it?
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:01 am 15. newton:Let’s be honest. There were very few heroes in Germany at that time. The whole place became an insane asylum under Hitler. Few remained sane, and even fewer were able (or willing) to escape the madness.
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:02 am 16. HardHeadedWoman:I wish that John Rosenthal and DavidN would go to BigHollywood to give the real story to counteract the dead-wrong, drivel written by a man who is truly ignorant of, but claiming to be an expert of, history. His
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:03 am 17. Big Red:Roy, thank you for your post. My best friend’s mother was from Vienna, and was a secretary at Gestapo headquarters in that city during the war. I remember her telling us very straightforwardly that she, and her friends, believed in Hitler up until he forced Rommel to commit suicide. As Rommel was extremely popular it would make sense to involve him in any post-Hitler government in Germany.I have met others from that time, including an Afrika Korps veteran. None of these people seemed to be evil, rabid Nazis, just ordinary people caught up in the times they lived in. After the turmoil of the Twenties they probably would have followed anyone who brought stability and restored some degree of national pride again.
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:08 am 18. Scott:I think your point of sin of omission is well taken. If someone can make our lives a little better, we will be more likely to ignore or excuse the evil they may do. This should be one of the lessons we learn from history, but, sadly, I don’t think we will.
Northern Light…glad that you mentioned Johann Elser,who came within minutes of blowing Hitler to bits in November 1939.He is the one who deserves to be remembered on film,not Stauffenburg
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:23 am 19. Roy:newton is exactly right, there were very few heroes of the sort you are thinking about.
As to happy1ga, I am from the postwar generation, but while I know my own family were hardly nazis, they were good Germans only in the sense that they tried to do what appeared at the time to be their best for their country, just like the vast majority of other Germans, they fought in the army and air force, and did war work, and happily did what they were told. If it had been any other regime, they would not feel shame over this, but for them they happened to be Germans and the regime was that of Hitler. I was raised with this knowledge,, and it is my hope that everyone else can be aware of the fact that for most of us, doing good is much more complicated than it appears.
Also in defense of the plotters, they may have not done it for the Jews, but who knows how their consciences played out, who knows in their hearts what injustices may have moved them to act, when no one else did so. I do not doubt their courage or honor, if they thought that the Nazis were in the right, I think they would have willingly died for them, as they willingly died to stop them. No they were not pure but they still tried to do the right thing.
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:39 am 20. Paul from Hamburg:Lynne,
Excellent point. I checked the credits for Valkyrie on IMDB and I don’t see any mention of Bonhoeffer. His omission does seem odd.
Roy:
You comments are very valuable. I think it there are many young people in the US who say “If I were in Weimar Germany, I would have seen the evil in Nazism and I would have fought against it right from the start.” You show that life is not that simple. Even evangelical Christians who point with pride to Bonhoeffer can’t be certain that they would have followed him into the Confessing Church. Many German Christians went along with Nazism because Nazism promised to clean-up a decadent and immoral culture.
I haven’t decided if want to see this movie. This story would be nice way to illustrate that not everyone who does the right thing has pure motives. Likewise, not everyone who fails to act is completely immoral. Based on what I have heard about Valkyrie, that doesn’t sound like the story that is told.
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:44 am 21. Steve:geheimvoll Deutschland = Secret Germany
heilig Deutschland = Sacred Germany
were Stauffenberg’s last words uttered in English?
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:56 am 22. Andrew Ian Dodge:Does anyone else find it amusing that Cruise is doing a puff piece on a Nazi when Scientology is pretty much frowned on in Germany? Is this an attempt by a high-profile Scientologist to improve their reputation in Germany?
Jan 8, 2009 - 8:07 am 23. John Rosenthal:Almost, Steve.
“Heiliges Deutschland” = Sacred Germany
“Geheimes Deutschland” = Secret Germany
According to some reports, Stauffe said the former; according to other reports, he said the latter.
Jan 8, 2009 - 8:16 am 24. BMoon:Thank you for this piece (PJM and Rosenthal.) Months ago, I predicted that the movie would follow the well-worn paths of WW2 revisionism. I will not see it. But the reason why revisionism is so pervasive and seductive needs to be understood. Some commenters even here still reveal their revisionist indoctrination that the Germans were just a good, decent bunch of Christians who were duped, seduced and mesmerized by the “insane” Hitler. Jonah Goldhagen’s seminal work, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, forever put to rest that contrived notion by documenting the overwhelming, historic, and unwavering support of the average German, not to speak of many other Europeans for not just Anti-Semitism, but eliminationism, Yet the mad myth prevails of the “good” Nazis, the “good” Germans - and the reason is bound up in the aforementioned bizarre exclusion of Boenhoeffer, as well as Paul’s comment (#20.) Boenhoffer represents what many secularist intellectuals, writers, producers cannot face up to- Christianity, especially its discomfitting notion of original sin - that evil dwells in all of us. The secularist part of the Enlightenment, as well as three centuries of philosophical sophistry attempting to equivocate on the matter, cannot cover the crude, bloody fact of a Holocaust staring them in the face, as from a mirror. Nevertheless, because the real truth is too painful and uncomfortable, we will never lack another rewriter of history who will make the audaciously disingenuous attempt once again, as Valkyrie has done.
Jan 8, 2009 - 8:59 am 25. Bill Perron:Sadly we have “thought nazis” in our country today, only they call themselves by other names such as “skeptics” “Darwinists” “evolutionists” “atheists.” Try expressing an opinion that differs from members of the so called “Skeptics Society” and see how quickly you are vilified.
Jan 8, 2009 - 9:00 am 26. DoktorNo:AFAIK those German anti-Hitler conspirators were hardly anti-militarists and would be unlikly that they would accept Poland in current borders.
Jan 8, 2009 - 9:32 am 27. rileyb:Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. I had two dear friends that were drs who were interred
Jan 8, 2009 - 9:36 am 28. rileyb:in Dachau. In fact, that is where they met and, after being freed, came to the U.S. and later married.
They are both gone now, but both were rabid on people becoming caught up in the Cult of Personality
crazies. They would have despaired of their adopted country in todays world where you read about
demonstrators yelling for the Jews to be put into ovens. They would have been disgusted by a press
that is so taken with a candidate that he is never vetted by them and is elected without a body of
accomplishments to point to as qualifications. They would have been further disgusted that one cannot criticize this person without being villified. In this country, where pc reigns supreme, at this
time, I have a feeling that we are skipping down the same garden path that the Germans went down
when Hitler came to power. I am not comparing anyone to Hitler, I am saying that with the way the
press and the voters are acting at this time causes me to feel as if this country is in the same danger that Germany was in when Hitler stepped in. Remember, there was also a depression in the
country at that time.
I may not be clearly stating my point here, but I see and hear so many things that clearly reming
me of that time in history. And, as my friends used to say, it can and will happen again…perhaps
not quite in the same way, but it will happen.
should have been reminding, not reming…
Jan 8, 2009 - 9:48 am 29. garyt:This of course ignores the generals that tried to get Chamberlain to stand up to Hitler as he demanded Czechoslovakia hand over the Sudatenland. Generals like Halder and Beck were prepared to seal off Berlin and arrest Hitler and the other top Nazis if Britain and France would just stand up to him. They saw that Hitler would be the ruin of Germany and tried to prevent it. However, once Chamberlain caved, Hitler became a hero to many germans and it was impossible for the generals to move against him.
Jan 8, 2009 - 10:38 am 30. Follow me!:I’m apalled at the sniffy attitude toward people that took action–any action to remove Hitler–in the middle of a police state.
Anyone bold enough to risk knocking off Hitler hardly needs to be second guessed by chip-crunching couch-commandos 65 years later.
Put down the bag of potato chips and think for a minute: Nitpicking Stauffenberg for not acting “earlier” when they would have had almost no assistance is as bad as dismissing the contributions of late converts in Jackson, Mississippi to the civil rights movement.
At least he tried to act decisively when he could have waited it out without much risk. Acting as he did was frought with risk in a society infested with secret police that whisked people away in the middle of the night.
Earlier efforts were made to get rid of Hitler: one german general who resisted Hitler’s war plans was dismissed and humiliated; others assumed the Brits and french would show some spine when Hitler moved, enabling them to move against Hitler. When the French showed no spine, the plotters lost support.
Lumping the Wehrmacht indiscriminately in with the true nazis is also inaccurate: being captured as a POW for example, by regular army was unquestionably preferred to capture by the Waffen SS (so my WWII era uncles told me). The regular army didn’t formulate the Wansee protocol and its plainly inaccurate to tar them as equals with those that did.
Looking back from the safety of over half a century, its wrong to demean those that acted and demonize the rest that failed to act. but if anything, the few that did act and the lateness of their action shows the enormous fear or reluctance of most people to act at all. They may not have been heros in the conventional sense, but they sure deserve better than this.
Jan 8, 2009 - 10:57 am 31. BMoon:While we are deconstructing the Hitler-brainwashed-and-forced-good-people-to-commit-genocide myth….
This article tells how at least 2,000 of the “neutral” Swiss fought alongside the Nazis.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/feature/index.html?siteSect=118
Jan 8, 2009 - 11:11 am 32. Shef Rogers:Who cares? You live in America in 2009. Deal with that, not this ancient history.
Jan 8, 2009 - 11:16 am 33. Neil Lane:BMoon
I don’t think Goldhagen is as objective as you mention. I suggest you read Rabbi David Dalin’s article on one of his books in the Weekly standard dated 2/10/2003. It mentions Hitlers Willing Executioners also. Mildly it seems he is not a source for serious scholars.
Jan 8, 2009 - 11:37 am 34. cedarford:The problem of the “blanket smear” of a whole ethnicity is that it is simply a mirror of blanket racism or religious bigotry. Clearly, ALL this or that people do not think in lockstep nor merit collective branding as “Christ’s Killers” because they did not speak out against the Sanhedrin, “subhuman evil Japs” because they loyally did as the Emperor commanded, “Stalins willing Jewish secret police and commissars”, not to mention “Hitler’s willing executioners”.
In troubled times threatened nations (and Germany WAS threatened by the Red Terror that had killed millions already as, “the next target” by the COMINTERN’s own words in the 1920s and early 1930s) do not respond “nobly” to existential threats. They respond with “fire and steel” readiness.
And during war, nations do things unthinkable to their populations initial peacetime desires at the start of war, that are fully backed in war by that population as bodies of “their own” begin piling up. Great Britain invented the Concentration Camp in the Boer War. Britain, France, and Russia conspired to starve the German population into submission in WWI and use starvation after Armistice to force ruinous terms on Germans.
In WWII, America had the crudest anti-Jap, anti-German propaganda. They “interned and relocated” the whole West Coast Jap population not under martial law. So did Canada and Latin America. Troops and ships arriving at islands we retook saw billboards saying “Kill Japs, kill them all!” - and we did a pretty good effort via firebombings, starvation strategy, A-Bombings. We killed millions of civilians in the Pacific and in Europe to terrorize them, force the survivors to Our Will.
Actions absolutely unthinkable to the average American before war started.
It was similar in Germany. The average German in early 1939, would have considered concentration camps for Jews and bombing of cities like Coventry unthinkable. They simply wanted the Jews out of Europe and wanted the British Empire to pay for their punishments and humiliation of Germany post-WWI with their own humiliating military defeat.
But war quickly changes a people.
The American and Mexican Civil Wars both started “civilly” but soon progressed into near-total, bloody war where lands were pillaged, civilian settlements and farms were put to the torch. Medicine was and food was embargoed. And that was how their own people ended up being treated - not “The Other”.
The lesson, to me, is that we should all be wary of condemning any people for their wartime actions from a position of complete peacetime complacency and safety - where nothing we have - save perhaps our precious concern about terrorist rights and their freedom from waterboarding, is seriously threatened. When the ACLU’s own children were coming home in caskets in WWII, they were conspicuously silent on “enemy rights” and moving enemy Japanese nationals and their Nisei Japanese-America kids away from the West Coast.
It is easy to beat up on the people that fought wars, on either side, after the fact - from our own positions of relative safety for them doing things in war they too would have never contemplated in peacetime. (Both my grandfathers and one grandmother were “complicit”. One bombed Jap cities, one worked on the Manhattan project meant to get a weapon to destroy cities, and one ran a line of nearly all females making incendary bombs intended on roasting German and Jap civilians alive..Completely different people than the peacetime, kindly and caring folks I grew up knowing…)
************************
Bill Perron:
Sadly we have “thought nazis” in our country today, only they call themselves by other names such as “skeptics” “Darwinists” “evolutionists” “atheists.” Try expressing an opinion that differs from members of the so called “Skeptics Society” and see how quickly you are vilified.
I’d call you on reducio ad Hitlerum absurdum.
People who oppose teaching creationism and ID is school are Nazis…Yep, that’s the ticket!
********************
IMO, the best way to see the Operation Valkrie plotters is as German patriots who thought Hitler was bad for Germany and the lasting image of Germany that their soldier comrades were then out dying for. To stop him, they were willing to risk their lives and suffer traitor’s deaths to do what they thought they had no choice to do as patriots in Germany’s, not Hitler or the Nazis, service.
For that matter, if we scrutinize other “resistors” we can find plenty of flaws. Partisans who not only had Nazi death lists, but also internal death lists of opponents of communism intended for liquidation. “Heroic” Soviet commissars who began liquidating E European elites and Christian leaders after pointing machine guns at the backs of Soviet troops to ensure they wouldn’t retreat. Tito’s ethnic slaughters. Jews who “cut deals” with the Nazis while doing other things unquestionably noble and heroic.
Jan 8, 2009 - 11:37 am 35. wlpeak:@Bill Peron
I am a skeptic who sees the efficacy of the Darwinian evolutionary model and doesn’t believe in a deity. Indeed I would even consider myself a relativist. But I would never vilify someone for making an honest attempt to argue a position. That’s just uncivil and counterproductive.
As for the movie, it was an enjoyable romp but shouldn’t be venerated or scrutinized too closely. Also I disagree that Tom was a convincing example of an aristocratic officer.
Those who get their history from movies are condemned to repeats.
Jan 8, 2009 - 11:56 am 36. David W. Lincoln:Heinrich Bruening, a devout Roman Catholic from Westphalia, saw the danger Hitler posed in 1930,
and tried his best to fill the expanding vacuum attributable to Hindenburg slipping into dotage.
How? By having a grandson of Kaiser Willy as a constitutional monarch, much like Kaiser Willy’s cousin George. Mind you, the grandson would have
had a regent’s council to guide him.
If only Bruening had succeeded.
Jan 8, 2009 - 12:01 pm 37. wlpeak:@Shef Rogers
“Who cares? You live in America in 2009. Deal with that, not this ancient history.”
I’m not sure exactly what you mean here, but in the off chance you think this particular event in history or the issues of general complicity in Germany or elsewhere it raises are moot or have nothing to say to us now…I have to disagree in the extreme.
A proper understanding of how demagogues arise, gain support, and pull the population into hell is one of the most important issues any participant in a democracy must consider. Closely followed by how crowds turn into mobs, how social groups induce groupthink, how true courage is extremely rare, and how self deception, vanity, and fear are the witches brew that keeps one from doing the right thing long after the masks have come off.
Jan 8, 2009 - 12:39 pm 38. Jack Olson:Hitler’s henchmen in the Army and the SS murdered at least 85 people in the infamous Night of the Long Knives in 1934, including twelve Reichstag deputies. Goering arrested a thousand, by his own account. All this was intended to forestall a potential coup by the Sturmabteilung, the so-called Brown Shirts. At the time, a young Lieutenant Claus von Stauffenberg likened this purge to the lancing of a boil. He clearly had no objection to dictatorship in principle, he simply recognized that assassination was the only way to remove a dictator from office.
Jan 8, 2009 - 12:44 pm 39. DavidN:I post on this article, expressing an opinion largely in agreement with the article itself, and come back to find a number of comments that seem to either defend the movie or try to insult me as a “couch potato”. While I’ll admit to sitting on a couch to read sometimes, and I do on occasion eat potato chips, I think this is a bit much.
First, I stand by what I said originally. Stauffenberg and his friends participated in the German attacks on various countries in Europe (see my post above for a list) without effectively protesting any of what occurred, from kidnapping civilians for use as slave labor in Germany to the taking of hostages (and their execution) in various parts of eastern and southern Europe in response to partisan activities. Millions of citizens of other nations were killed (not just as collateral damage; often deliberately) in various nations, and often the German army participated without protest or objection. Sure, various members of the German General Staff fought with Hitler, and some were relieved of their duties as a result. Guderian is a good example, and there was another Panzer commander (Hermann Hoth if memory serves correctly) who protested so much he wound up being denied his pension by the German government, sued and won in court (!) and as a result wound up being killed in a concentration camp. The difficulty is that as far as I know, none of them objected to Hitler’s regime on *moral* grounds; instead everyone was upset with the fact that he was losing the war. In addition to the statements of everyone involved, there’s the actual circumstantial evidence of this fact: if these guys were so upset with what Hitler was doing, why didn’t they try and kill him in 1939 or 1940, when the war was just starting? The obvious answer is that they didn’t have any problem with the war as long as the bombs were falling on Rotterdam, Coventry, and Belgrade. When it came the turn of Berlin and the Ruhr, their opinion changed.
Of course there were good Germans during the war. I already, in my above post, mentioned Senger and Rommel. Sophie Scholl was to all accounts a good person, along with her co-conspirators. Unfortunately all they felt able to do was distribute leaflets, for which they were executed. Bonhoffer has already been mentioned, and Martin Niemoller, a German protestant clergyman who started out a Hitler supporter, and slowly morphed into an opponent who lived out the war in a concentration camp, is another. Niemoller is the author of the famous “First they came for the Jews…” quotation which is even today a good argument for why all thoughtful people should strongly oppose anti-semitism. My quibble isn’t with the idea that there were good Germans, it’s with the idea that these particular Germans were *that* good. Remember, they wanted to continue the war against the Soviet Union. Regardless of what you think of Stalin (he was perhaps the most prolific mass murderer of the 20th Century, certainly in the top 3) his crimes don’t justify the Nazis invading his country without warning or pretext, and murdering millions of its citizens in an attempt to enslave the rest.
As a final comment, someone mentioned Hitler’s Willing Executioners. I happen to have found the book to be overwrought and overstated, though the overall premise isn’t bad. The author ascribes everything bad that happened to the Jews during the war to German anti-semitism, which he insists pervaded pretty much ever German in a particularly vicious mode. A number of different scholars have dissected Goldhagen’s writings, notably (for Pajamas readers) Ron Rosenbaum, who devotes a whole chapter to him in his book “Explaining Hitler”. The book is recommended, and the chapter is a good overview of the Goldhagen controversy from about 15 years ago.
Jan 8, 2009 - 2:22 pm 40. Ed:Your arguments were completely unpersuasive for me. Your assertions are far more tenuous than those you accuse Hoffman of.
Yes, he was certainly likely a racist. But, if memory serves me, so was everybody on the entire planet in the 1940s, the United States included, except for a relatively small minority. Class and race mattered to everyone, everywhere. Can we really condemn Stauffenberg for this?
Jan 8, 2009 - 2:45 pm 41. johnbrown:Here is a problem with our society. We have somehow come to believe that we can accurately learn history from watching a movie. This movie was not made to portray historical fact. I am sure there are some facts that are accurately portrayed but remember…..Movies are made to make money, therefore the ‘history’ is allowed to make twists and turns to allow for sellable story telling.
Anybody see Al Gore’s movie? How much of that was true?
Never take a movie seriously or believe the director is trying to communicate an unbiased message. If you do, you are more of a fool than the director.
Jan 8, 2009 - 3:28 pm 42. History repeats:Those that refuse to study history tend to repeat it!
Now throw in the Depression- 1929- 200,000 marks, a wheelbarrow full of money, think $150,000 to buy a couple loafs of bread.
Upper class women selling their bodies for food and family- men selling theirs.
Could it happen in America? Withdrawal from Iraq- Afghanistan?
15 trillion dollars of debt? 5 years of depression, Car trunk loads of worthless money to buy milk?
Gas at 20 dollars a gallon?
We might even become insane, start rounding up Hispanics, Muslims, Americans Etc. put them in concentration camps, pull out their fingernails, water boarding, etc. Attack Russia, Saudi Arabia, for their oil and land.
Think about it?
Jan 8, 2009 - 4:01 pm 43. myth buster:I tell you, another Holocaust will happen, and it will dwarf the first. However, this second holocaust will not be as bad for the Jews as the first. They will escape the worst of it. Gentiles, however, will be slaughtered in numbers at least an order of magnitude greater than WWII for not bowing to the dictator.
Jan 8, 2009 - 4:57 pm 44. Michael B:Revisionism, from Hollywood, who’da thought. Shocked, I’m shocked …
There were over two-hundred people, all total, who variously took part in the July 20 plot alone, some much more central players than others. The notion heroism cannot include actors who are less than pure, are even profoundly tainted in terms of their past, even aspects of their lives while while taking part in the July 20 plot or one of the other plots, is patently absurd. Ironically, it’s such manichean conceptions that Hollywood attempts to live up to in the first place that result in such revisionisms. Humanity is deeply and profoundly tainted, sinful, whatever label one cares to apply.
And in general, as to what can be deconstructed and subjected to the bright light of meticulous review - as produced by Hollywood, no less and no more - that will result in including a whole lota’ subjects which will not be propitious for a wide variety of traditions.
Jan 8, 2009 - 5:05 pm 45. Trey:I am not a revisionist historian, but I have seen Valkyrie I dispute Mr. Rosenthal’s assertions that the film is filled with revisionist history. There was a legitimate resitance in Nazi Germany in which the allies, mainly the British, did not consider serious. In the book “The Fabricated Luther: The Rise and Fall of the Shirer Myth” by Uwe Siemon-Netto he touches on the resistance and details the allies unwillingness to support it. For a synopsis of the book go here: http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9504/reviews/benne.html
Jan 8, 2009 - 5:10 pm 46. Seb. v. Stauffenberg:Maybe because I am German I can´t share your opinion on Stauffenberg. But I admit I enjoyed your well presented explanations and interesting links. Stauffenberg originally was not ment to kill Hitler personally. This came only after he had organized four unsuccessfull attempts to kill Hitler to be executed by others. As you deny Stauffenberg to have had scarcely any intentions to stop the killing of jews, take the example of young german army officer Axel von dem Bussche, one of the plotters, who planned to kill Hitler in a suicide attack organised by Stauffenberg in November 1943 ( not mentioned in Valkyrie). Bussche as an army officer had witnessed in October 1942 in Ukrainia the systematic mass executions of thousands of jews. He got so impressed by this terrible experience, he saw no other way to stop this than by killing Hitler and at the same time by sacrificing his own life. He had no chance to get close enough to Hitler and survived WW II. By the way , it was Bussche who had brought Stauffenberg´s written instructions for Kuhn from Berlin to the Wolfsschanze in 1943.
Jan 8, 2009 - 5:20 pm 47. Bugs:Just curious - Is there anything historically revisionist in L. Ron Hubbard’s writings or statements? I’m wondering if Cruise was attracted to this story because of some Scientologist beliefs about history in general or WWII in particular. Of course, not everything Tom Cruise does or says is related to his “religion.” But you never know…
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:00 pm 48. Donna V.:Lynne wrote:
Why does no one ever mention the one German directly involved in the plot who had publicly resisted Hitler from the moment he became Chancellor?
I’m speaking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Would today’s Hollywood present a Christian clergyman as a hero? Or a handyman?
No, a handsome aristocrat with an eyepatch and a sharp uniform is much more photogenic.
Jan 8, 2009 - 7:33 pm 49. eb:Valkyrie is a Hollywood movie based on a historical event. As such, it’s a mix of fact and fiction…the latter either made-up or falsely slanted.
As far as the morality of von Stauffeberg and the general German populous, almost all were complicit with the M.O. of National Socialism.
One had/has only to take the S Bahn north to the end of the line and the suburb of Oranienburg. That’s where Sasenhausen, one of the original concentration camps is located…just 18 miles from the center (Stadt Mitte) of Berlin.
Dachau, another of the first camps, is almost exactly the same distance from the Stadt Mitte of Munich, the Bavarian birthplace of the N.S.D.A.P…the Nazi party.
My father, a forward observer with the 45th Infantry Division, liberated Dachau. I grew up with the pictures. I’ve also been to Berlin, Wansee, Munich, Berchdesgarten, the D Day beaches, Moscow and more. And have read hundreds of books on the Third Reich, the Holocaust, WWII, etc.
To me, the term ‘good German’ sticks in my throat.
Jan 8, 2009 - 10:39 pm 50. Fen:“The problem of the “blanket smear” of a whole ethnicity is that it is simply a mirror of blanket racism or religious bigotry.”
Echo. I see the same patterns in America today. What we would call “decent” Americans, staring down at their shoelaces while evil is visited upon another. Or just going with the flow b/c they don’t want to make waves. Its easy to sit back and condemn an entire demographic, but I think America’s hip-cool crowd [ie cultural leftists] would fall right in line with the Nazi.
Jan 9, 2009 - 5:57 am 51. Larry J:And by the way, if one wishes to accuse any military of failing to save Jewish lives, then one can justifiably accuse the American and British Air Forces for failing to bomb the Auschwitz rail lines as early as 1942. Those pilots and their political and military commanders had nothing to fear from bombing those lines, and yet they didn’t take any action at all because they couldn’t have cared less about Jewish lives either.
This is simple nonsense. In 1942, the very first American bomber units arrived in England and began their attacks. At the time, the best they could do was strike nearby targets in France. When they tried attacking targets in Germany in 1943, they suffered very heavy losses (1/6th of the bombers sent out were lost in some of these missions) because they didn’t have long range fighters to escort the planes to the targets. It wasn’t until 1944 that sufficient numbers of these fighters were available.
The British were doing night-time bombing for most of the war. In 1942, they had very little in the way of navigation aids so finding the targets was very difficult. One study at the time determined that less than half of the bombs were hitting within 5 miles of the target. Since they couldn’t be certain of hitting factories, they targeted cities. The head of Bomber Command once noted, “It takes 3 years to build a factory. It takes 20 years to grow a factory worker.” In a brutal unlimited war, civilians were actively targeted by all sides. By 1944, the British had established radio navigation systems like Oboe and on-board radar systems like H2S to help guide their planes to the targets. They also used Pathfinders to mark the targets for the larger bomber streams. Still, hitting something like a railroad yard would’ve been difficult giving the inaccuracy of the day.
Jan 9, 2009 - 6:13 am 52. Bugs:Good points, Larry J. When I read about the “culpability” of the Allies in not bombing the concentration camps, I have to ask myself “Bomb what?” I mean, do they think we should have just obliterated the camps, killing all the inmates along with the Germans? Or did they have in mind some kind of “precision” bombing to destroy the gates and create enough confusion to allow the prisoners to escape? Or maybe just bomb the railroads and bridges leading into the camps?
The best example of an air-assisted prison break was the bombing of Amiens prison in 1944 - known as Operation Jericho. The purpose was to free French resistance fighters who were scheduled to be executed, as well as some who had important information about the upcoming D-Day invasion. RAF Mosquito fighter bombers performed a low-level attack, destroying the guards’ quarters and knocking down part of the prison wall. Of roughly 700 inmates, 102 were killed and 258 escaped. Most of the escapees were recaptured shortly afterward. The RAF lost six aircraft (I believe), three aircrew killed and several captured.
That mission had a single, relatively small target and a well-defined purpose. It took extremely careful planning, including detailed aerial recon and the preparation of maps and scale models. It was carried out by a single, highly-trained, specialist air wing.
I don’t think a mission like this could have been repeated dozens of times against concentration camps. Even if the RAF had had the resources and its planes sufficient range, the results would have been equivocal at best. Concentration camps were sprawling facilities housing thousands of inmates, sometimes in widely separated compounds. Many camps were actually camp complexes, consisting of multiple facilities located miles apart. How would mission planners decide exactly what to bomb? And assuming any prisoners actually escaped, where would they go and what would they do? It’s one thing for a French resistance fighter to hide from the Germans in France. How was a German Jew supposed to hide from the Germans in Germany?
Seriously, I haven’t read any books on this particular subject, so I’m wondering exactly how strategic or tactical bombing was supposed to deal with the concentration camps. Or are we just supposed to feel guilty because the Allies didn’t “do something” about the camps?
Jan 9, 2009 - 7:59 am 53. Bugs:P.S. As far as bombing the railroads: If transportation lines had been cut, I don’t think the Nazis would have had a problem just killing Jews and other “undesirables” wherever they found them. Take Babi Yar as an example. If anything, this would have accelerated the massacre rather than slowing it down.
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:07 am 54. JFM:And by the way, if one wishes to accuse any military of failing to save Jewish lives, then one can justifiably accuse the American and British Air Forces for failing to bomb the Auschwitz rail lines as early as 1942. Those pilots and their political and military commanders had nothing to fear from bombing those lines, and yet they didn’t take any action at all because they couldn’t have cared less about Jewish lives either.
How easy is to be a hero amrchair general
1) If the Allies had used their airforce on bombing Auschwitz railways instead of bombing German cities and industry hundreds of German fighters and thousands of guns would have been available on the East Front. The Geramns would have crushed the Red Army, Europe would be now speaking Geman and there would be no Jews at lla in it.
2) Bomber missions who went a bit far into Geramnyin daylight (you can’t bomb railways at night) and without fighter escort lost 20 to 30% of their planes. In other words after five mssions you have been wiped out. And Auschwitz was in Poland. Cross all of Germany and then croos it again. For the info in 1942 the fighter available was the Spitfire who barely reached Holland. It was not until December 1943 that teh Allies got a fighter able to reach Berlin and by then wiping out the Luftwaffe and preparing the D-Day, who came within a hair from failing, (a demolition squad at Omaha, the last remaining after the seven first had been wiped out), was considered more important.
3) Did you notice that it would have been far easier for the Russians to bomb those railways? Ask your chomskite mentor why he is blaming the Allies and not the Russians. (I am sure he will find ways to whitewash the Russians, renew the blame on the allies and in addition to blame the Israeli Air Force)
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:30 am 55. Horace Wells:it is a given that most Germans were racist and anti-Semitic, as well as most of Euro and us too at that time. The NAZIs fanned that instinct to a white hot pitch. It is wrong to portray the Valkyrie actors as plotting to do in Hitler over the Jews, but stuff like that sells movies. But it is also wrong that some Opus Dei types tried to portray the Church as some Jew loving anti-Nazi bastian either or the idea that saving the Jews was big on any of the Allie’s war plans for that matter.
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:36 am 56. Horace Wells:But one thing that no one can deny them, for all their incompetence and not so grand motives: they were brave and better than most Germans.
Fen
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:42 am 57. Horace Wells:Your partisan smear of the left as Nazi accomplices is gross hypocrisy and a lie to boot, that only a blog tard can post with a straight face. Are you trying to tell me you supoported the war in Iraq cause you were concerned about the Iraqis, I call that garbage. You supported the war cause you are a paranoid war monger, but you need some phony moral cause to make your cowardly self centered support seem holy. But you sound so low minded that you are unable to see your gross hypocrisy and irony, so my rebuttal is rather pointless.
“Would today’s Hollywood present a Christian clergyman as a hero? Or a handyman?
No, a handsome aristocrat with an eyepatch and a sharp uniform is much more photogenic.”
So now it all boils down to a righty’s favorite conceit” that all those bad others should stop complaining about racism/sexism/anti-semitism cause the real victims of bigotry are all the godly humble stupid little people like them.
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:49 am 58. Horace Wells:Hey avian mind, maybe it has something to do with the fact that this was the best known and organized plot against Hitler that came the closest to killing him. If that one staff officer didn’t move the Colonel’s brief case, Hitler would have died. You can’t get any better than that!
JFM,
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:54 am 59. david foster:The “they should have bombed the camps” claim has nothing to do with Chomsky or the left. When you inject your kneejerk, dishonest slurs into the dicusssion, it makes you seem pretty small. Just thought I’d point it out for future reference in case you thought you were posting on FrontPage.
Different members of the conspiracy had different motivations, and some were involved much earlier than others. Hans Oster, who should probably be considered the initiator of the whole thing, was working against Hitler as early as 1933. He attempted to give warning of the 1940 invastion to Dutch Intelligence, and he used Abwehr funds to support the escape of Jews from Germany.
Erich Fellgiebel, portrayed by the movie as a coward who had to be bludgeoned into joining the conspiracy, was in fact involved much earlier than Stauffenberg was.
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:58 am 60. Horace Wells:“myth buster:
I tell you, another Holocaust will happen, and it will dwarf the first. However, this second holocaust will not be as bad for the Jews as the first. They will escape the worst of it. Gentiles, however, will be slaughtered in numbers at least an order of magnitude greater than WWII for not bowing to the dictator.”
What kind of paranoid delusions are you referring to?
Jan 9, 2009 - 9:22 am 61. JFM:Horace Wells
I just pointed at the hypocrisy of the “Blame America first” crowd: just take a look at a map and tell me who was nearer from Auschwitz, Russia or the Allies. And there was far less in the way of flak, radars and fighters when you came from Russia. I ironized because I hoped you were a honest but naive man who only need a slap. For points 1 and 2, just read a good book on airwar. Going to Berlin in daylight and (Auschwitz is farther) was close to a suicide mission until the arrival of the Merlin-engined Mustang and that is December 1943. January to March was spent clearing the skies over Germany. That left only April , May and five days of June for bombing the Atlantic wall. Bomb Auschwitz instead and D-Day fails.
After taking my advice and reading about the air war, read a book about the D-Day to see how close it came of failing.
Jan 9, 2009 - 9:51 am 62. Horace Wells:Nobody was blaming America first. You seem to be of the ilk that interprets the least bit of criticism of US policy as blame for the whole Holocaust. Many surviving Jews after the Holocaust really felt let down, to say the least, and pointed out that bombing the camps and lines could have mitigated it. It’s hardly some leftist thing, unless you conflate the Jews and the left as one. Other Jews said that the best we could do was concentrate on winning the war.
Only the USAAF and Bomber Command had an airforce that could have hit the camps. The Soviets did not have a long range airforce like we had, and what they had was so technically inferior it was capable of little more than harrassment against all but frontline targets.
Heck, while we are at it, the Catholic Church could have spread the word about the Holocaust and supported the campaign against the Nazis as a just war. Instead they let their innate anti-Semitism, fear of the Reds, and over concern about German Catholics, at the expense of the rest of the Catholics, dissuade them. If the Nazis were so viciously anti-Catholic as some say, they had 10 months, from September 43 to June 44 to do what they wanted to the Vatican. But I don’t blame them for the Holocaust either, though they could have helped a lot in a moral way. Then again, the news of the Holocaust was deliberately suppressed by us too.
Face it, saving the Jews was not tops on anyone’s list. Nobody of any credibility is blaming us.
Jan 9, 2009 - 10:41 am 63. HistoryLover:While I have not seen Valkyrie (primarily because, as others have said, I doubt Tom Cruise’s ability to convince me that he’s any nationality other than American), I can recommend to anyone who is curious about Germans who were “not like him (Hitler),” the available literature on the student resistance group The White Rose. The best English books on the subject are A Noble Treason, by Richard Hanser, and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, by Jud Newborn and Annette Dumbach. Beware of internet sources, which not only contain many inaccuracies but are also frequently slanted to support the “Bush=Hitler” crowd. Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with their friends, were imperfect , occasionally prejudiced but highly moral and apolitical youths whose conscientious intelligence and idealism represent, in my opinion, one of the finest examples of non-violent resistance within Nazi Germany. Not that this diminishes the accomplishments of the conspirators dramatized in Valkyrie, but The White Rose is a less oft-told story that most WW2 historians should know.
Jan 9, 2009 - 10:56 am 64. cedarford:eb:
As far as the morality of von Stauffeberg and the general German populous, almost all were complicit with the M.O. of National Socialism.
…………….
And (I) have read hundreds of books on the Third Reich, the Holocaust, WWII, etc.
To me, the term ‘good German’ sticks in my throat.
eb, part of the problem is that National Socialism did not arise in a threat-free environment but in one where several nations were screwed by the WWI victors and thus locked into popular mass sentiment demanding revanchism. For lost lands, for the victors giving smaller allies the bums rush and locking them in an inferior status or violating pledges made (the Baltics, Romania,Czechs, Italy, Japan, Arab self rule). Even greater was the knowledge of the magnitude of the millions killed in terrorist actions. Butchery happening under Communism - the Red Terror, anti-Christian slaughters, Great Purges…aborted Revolutions in Hungary, Romania, Germany, Spain where the communist revolutionaries were found to have meticulous, extensive death and prison lists prepared.
Even Churchill, perhaps the foremost enemy of National Socialism, conceeded that certain fears and grievances were valid. WWI victors had gone too far, and Churchill also blamed “Bolsheviks and far too many Jews involved to say the Jews were no less culpable than other races” for the slaughter of millions in the East and the terrible threat they pose to other nations….
Remember that “The Germans” were not just “Germans”…they had plenty of nations willing to fight against the threat of “Jewish Bolshevikism and the Red Terror”. Nations that suffered awfully, directly, at the hands of the communists fought side by side with the Germans - Spanish and Romanian Divisions battled Soviets, so too did Italians, Austrians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. Slovenians and freed Poles. There were French, Dutch, Belgian volunteers. Tatars. Ukranians. The Poles and Ukranians in particular welcomed the Nazis as liberators and would have been foursquare behind them - if the Nazis had not quickly proved themselves as bad as the Russian and Jewish communists they had suffered greatly under.
It wasn’t just “the average German” being complicit, it was more like the average Continental European being aligned and thus also complicit to at least some of the goals of the National Socialists, particularly in the anti-communist area and in the success authoritarian capitalism had in lifting people with failing economies back into relative prosperity.
Anti-Semitism was also a part of it, though no one, not even the worst Nazis - were pursuing a goal of eradication in the 1930s or the first year and a half of WWII. Jews were seen like many see Muslims today - a willfully unassimilated minority with lots of money - heavily involved in terrorism, revolution, and attempting to subvert lawful governments. And overblamed Jews for the Communist democide…where Jews were certainly overrepresented in terms of their actual population vs, percentages of Jews serving as communist leaders, executioners, and agents in the organs of state terror….but not calling all the shots in the Soviet Union, and various communist revolutions elsewhere…something many did accuse them of, being the controllers of communist butchery.
Jan 9, 2009 - 11:01 am 65. Mr Blackwell:Horace Wells:
Some people crossing thru the Red Sea with Moses would complain about getting their feet wet.
Many ingrate french citizens that didn’t fight and tried to live peacably with the occupying germans were stirred only to criticize liberating allied troops for boisterous bad manners.
Those inclined to fault the allies for not temporarily severing railroad lines while Albert Speer was rampig up synthetic oil production, producing jet fighters, V-2 rockets and some terrific tanks have to remember that despite what it seems now, WWII was a near thing in Europe.
(The US also suppressed reports of beheadings and gross mistretament of US POW’s in the pacific and didn’t bomb those camps either).
Jan 9, 2009 - 11:11 am 66. JFM:The Soviets did not have a long range airforce like we had, and what they had was so technically inferior it was capable of little more than harrassment against all but frontline targets.
They bombed Berlin in A
Jan 9, 2009 - 11:25 am 67. JFM:Horace Wells sujad
The Soviets did not have a long range airforce like we had, and what they had was so technically inferior it was capable of little more than harrassment against all but frontline targets.
And here we go again. How many times will it be need tosay you that until December 1943 the Allies didn’t have a long range airforce. What they had was a short or medium range airforce plus a long range force of dead man flying. For the Soviets they didn’t bomb Auschwitz railways even in 1944 when they were in Poland and well within the range not only of their tactical bombers but of their fighters
Also while we are at it, if we look at people who didn’t care how about the people of the Irgun and Stern who instead of enlisting in the Allied Forces or at the very least, remaining dormant for the war where planting bombs thus forcing the British to keep in the Middle West troops who should have been in Europe fighting Nazis.
Jan 9, 2009 - 11:37 am 68. Roderick Reilly:“”"”"”"”I’m speaking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. . . . . He was hanged in a concentration camp for his part in the July 20 plot just weeks before the end of the war.
He left behind him a body of theological work explaining why Christians should oppose evil men like Hitler- works that are still studied today.
Why does no one ever tell his story?”"”"”"”"”"
His story was told, and rather well, in a PBS special about a decade ago.
Jan 9, 2009 - 2:21 pm 69. Bill Perron:wIpeak: Thank you for your civility. ….cedarford: Thank you for proving my point exactly, I wrote something you obviously disagree with and you took everything personal, immediately got defensive and took it all to another level. CONGRATULATIONS, your guru James Randi will be proud.
Jan 9, 2009 - 4:32 pm 70. Judy, NYC:well, i am no history buff so there is little detail in my opinion of the good german. i do recall however the german cameras rolling when mothers holding their babies were killed just so, in order to murder them both at the same time. and, soldiers took mother’s babies and smashed those babies against trees. then gave biscuits to their beloved german shepherds. of course, there actually were a few germans who shot themselves in the head after murdering whole towns of jews. they were good germans. tragically, valkeryie seems to have missed this, until it appeared he and his fellow officers were going to lose not just the war, but perhaps their heads as well. nothing heroic. just corporate.
Jan 9, 2009 - 6:42 pm 71. BMoon:Great discussion. Congrats PJM readers. But I am still convinced that Goldhagen’s premise in Hitler’s Willing Executioners is not only well-resereached with literally hundreds of documented instances of the pervasive Anti-Semitism throughout every sector of German society (as it was also throughout Europe and America too,) but it remains the only rational explanation of how such an undertaking was even logistically possible. Germans were NOT just “looking down at their shoelaces.” They were, like today’s insipid Left - gloating over 9/11, waving signs supporting the “insurgency in Fallujah,” or hoping Hizbollah gives Israel a drubbing — cheering them on.
Jan 9, 2009 - 7:56 pm 72. Michael B:BMoon,
Germany unquestionably was rife with a level, a degree of anti-Semitism. But the greater, more pervasive part of it was not remotely murderous or genocidal. The greater, more pervasive part of it was no worse than the anti-Christian biases one can meet in many Jewish communities. That doesn’t make it excusable and it doesn’t make it something nicer or better than it was, it merely throws it into perspective. There are also many other factors that were at play, majority vs. minority factors for example. None of that makes it somehow better than it was, but the basic problem is not racially based, and it’s not a problem that Jews or others are somehow inherently immune from. To put it in simplistic terms, sin exists within the heart of man, regardless of race. Hence there were many, many Jews who participated in the atrocities during the early Bolshevik years, the Lazar Kaganovich reflecting one who was simply at the top of the heap, one of Stalin’s right-hand men.
And you have to own up to it, Goldhagen’s is a racist or racialist based thesis, effectively if not explicitly positing that Germans as such are almost genetically formed upon an anti-Semitic basis.
But this is one of those debates that cannot very honestly take place with kid gloves on, not if it’s to take place in a truly honest and undeterred fashion, because people like Kaganovich and Yagoda, etc. are merely the tip of the iceberg, the more prominent, more historic figures that could be brought to bear.
Jan 9, 2009 - 8:40 pm 73. eb:Cedarford…
I see you think that the vanquished peoples of WWI were ’stabbed in the back.’ Yes, things were tough. That not carte blanche to the commit terror that followed. Yes the Reds fought in Wedding and other districts of Berlin, but the Reichswehr and the Friekorps were itching for revenge.
As far as you saying that there was no eradication in the 30’s, not so. There was no mass extermination yet but warehouses and places like Columbia House just north of Berlin’s Templehoff airport, in the southern district of Neukoln, were turned into Nazi jails a month or so after Hitler became Chancellor. Sausenhausen, Dachau and more camps were opened then too.The point is…Jews, Gypsies, Reds,Free Masons and any opponents to the Reich were rounded up and then beaten, starved and murdered.
Yes I do read a great deal on the subject and it’s more then just as passing fancy. Part of my family comes from Cherznow, a city that is about 9 miles from Auschwitz. Some made it to safety, many did not. So it’s not just academic with me.
Jan 9, 2009 - 10:01 pm 74. Former Belgian:Some names nobody has brought up yet:
* Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (head of militairy intelligence). Executed together with Bonhoeffer.
* Hans Oster, his right-hand man, tipped off Dutch military intelligence about the May 10, 1940 invasion of Belgium and Holland. Was not believed. Eventually found out and executed.
* Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Henning von Tresckow’s sidekick. Survived the war (Tresckow took his knowledge of the plotters to the grave with him by committing “suicide by Red Army”) and wrote a memoir “Officers Against Hitler”.
A very peculiar character was the head of the Kriminalpolizei, Arthur Nebe. He was involved in anti-Nazi plotting from the very beginning (documented at length in the self-serving but eminently readable memoir of his sidekick Hans Bernd Gisevius, “Bis zum bitteren Ende”/”To the Bitter End”). He actually COMMANDED one of the four Einsatzgruppen (some of his apologists claim that he deliberately stalled their operations), yet was a kingpin in many of the plots (as well as the only one who appears to have had a clue about operational security). Arrested and hanged by the Nazis in 1945.
Jan 9, 2009 - 10:48 pm 75. Former Belgian:Another intriguing character: Wilhelm Kube, the Gauleiter (Nazi viceroy) of White Russia. He was not only a Nazi (and at the same time very active in the German Lutheran Church, trying to push it into a more “racial” direction) but enthusiastically supported the anti-Jewish “actions”. Until (this story is told in Hans Höhne’s history of the SS, “The Order of the Death’s Head”) he saw shipments of German Jews arrive, including decorated WW I veterans — and started vigorously protesting. He was later assassinated by partisans, and a reprisal killing of 1,000 civilians took place, but Himmler (y”sh) was privately satisfied that he was gone.
As Hoehne puts it, Kube appears to have had a “red line”. It was morally arbitrary, and it was very high, but it appears to have been there. And once crossed, it turned him against the regime.
There are two traps to be avoided in this debate. The one is false black-white dichotomy (”1-bit moral grayscale”), where Stauffenberg was either a white knight in shining armor or no better than Hitler y”sh himself. The other one is false moral equivalence where everybody (including Hitler y”h himself) becomes medium gray (”0-bit moral grayscale”). If you have enough “bit depth” in your moral grayscale, you see that Stauffenberg may be even a dark gray character, but still morally greatly superior to the midnight black represented by Hitler (y”sh).
Jan 9, 2009 - 11:08 pm 76. Former Belgian:Oops, Heinz Höhne, not Hans Höhne.
Hans = Johannes = John
Jan 10, 2009 - 12:35 am 77. JFM:Heinz = Heinrich = Henry
I think there is time to refine the catch-all word Anti-Semitism who is being used as a matra in this discussion.
1) Traditional anti-semitism is about professing a religion, who leads to a set of values and ideas, those ideas leading to the practitioners
of this religion adopting certain behaviours. And the same way that it is legitimate to hate a political idea (nazism, communism) and its practitioners it is legitimate to hate a religion be it Christianism, judaism, atheism or the aztec cult. So in the same way I wouldn’t shake hands with a Nazi (and disinfect my hand if I had done it before knowing he was one) I understand people who wouldn’t shake hands with a Jew. Notice that I am not saying it is right (ie Jews are evil), just legitimate. A key characteristic of religious anti-semitism is that if you break away with that religion, and provided there is no doubts about your sincerity, you become just another member of the community, and your children will not be labelled as Jews. An example of this is Diego Lainez(1512-1565), son of converts, who became General (that is supreme head after the Pope) of the Jesuits.
But Nazism was not about religion but race. People who had converted well before Hitler raised to power and even before WWI, were still hated as Jews, new born babies were still hated as Jews. You could have earned ten iron crosses during WWI you were still hated as a Jew. There was no way out.
2) There are degrees in antisemitism. There is a Polish woman who was a high ranking memeber of a political party whose goal was expelling the Jews from Poland. And still she savied hundreds of Jews during the war. It was not because she liked Jews, she openly told: “I didn’t like them before the war, I didn’t like them during the war and I didn’t like them after the war”. Even between Nazis, there were some who choked on the idea of extermination: one ofb the participants in the conference of Wannsee who advocated sterilization (we must remeber that he had been summonned to discuss how to implement final solution, not to tell “Live and let live”) or the major of a town who saved Jews despite being a party memeber since 1933.
That is why when someone tells such or such of the people
Jan 10, 2009 - 1:08 am 78. JFM:That is why (cf my preceeding post) when someone tells such or such of the people in the Valkyrie opertion was an antisemite, he is saying nothing until we know his kind and intensity of antisemitism. He could be like the Polish woman I mentionned.
Jan 10, 2009 - 1:47 am 79. Scott:Actually,the Christian response to pagan Nazism was contemptable.The Evangelical Lutherans folded up very soon,and the Catholics were not much better(the Vatican was very anxious to cut deals with Mussolini and Hitler).As for Bonhoeffer,he dithered around for years(as did Helmuth James von Moltke)about killing one man to save millions.Why is he a hero?
Jan 10, 2009 - 8:27 am 80. Former Belgian:JFM: what you call “Traditional antisemitism” is properly called “anti-Judaism”.
The term “antisemitism” was itself coined by an anti-Jewish agitator named Wilhelm Marr as a polite synonym for “Judenhass” (Jew-hatred, judeophobia). Marr, being a proto-Nazi, was concerned with race, not religion.
I agree that there were people (even Nazis) who were conventional antisemites, but for whom extermination was “one bridge too far”.
Jan 10, 2009 - 9:59 am 81. JFM:The Vatican was very anxious to cut deals with Mussolini and Hitler
Let’ remember that had he not allied with Hitler, Mussolini would be just another dictator and not a particularly blood-thirsty one. At least three or four leagues below Lenin (not to mention Stalin) and nobody objects about cutting deals with Lenin.
For Hitler Vatican published “Mit brennender Sorge” but impact was close to nil since the regime controlled the media. Also the rate of catholicism was a near perfect match in negative from the Nazi vote: it was not Catholics but Protestants and non-religious people who voted him to power (more exactly, who gave him the votes who made him selectable as Kanzler, but it is probable that Hitler would have won the Presidentialelections against Hindenburg or got over absolute majority in Reichstag without the Catholic vote)
Also about those who said the Vatican should havve done this or that during the war, I remind them that Vatican is not in Antarctica but in the middle of Italy and that its “army” numbers about one hundred men. That even without resorting to invasion or assassination it was easy to jam the small power Radio Vatican or still better cut its power supply.
Jan 10, 2009 - 10:53 am 82. Larry Patty:General Beck, Henning von Tresckow, Admiral Canaris and others opposed Hitler and the Nazis well before the war began. General Beck was army chief of staff until he was forcibly retired by Hitler in 1938. He was never after that in a position to do anything about Hitler. General Erich Hoeppner, another one of the plotters, had been dismissed from the army in 1941 for retreating on the Russian front against Hitler’s orders. One of the reasons that the plot failed was that many of the senior and long term plotters were either out of the service or relegated to minor posts in remote locations. Admiral Canaris and General Oster had been dismissed from the Abwher (military intelligence). Field Marshall von Witzleben had been relieved of command because of poor health. And of course, Rommel had been gravely wounded in an air attack just a few weeks before the attack on Hitler.
Jan 10, 2009 - 11:38 am 83. Hans Schenk:Another problems that the plotters suffered from was incompentence or dithering from some of their fellow plotters. General Fellgiebel of the signal corps was stationed at Rastenburg and was supposed to sabotage the communications network. He froze at the vital moment and did nothing, thus allowing Hitler to communicate with his supporters in Berlin.
John Rosenthal´s analysis not of the movie Valkyrie, but of the historical background of this flick is well prepared, but drawing wrong conclusions about Stauffenberg and his circle. To describe Claus Stauffenberg as being the same or worse than Hitler obviously is too wrong to be taken seriously. It does not matter what Claus or his brother Berthold thought , said or wrote before 1941 on which John Rosenthal concetrates, What only matters is how and why they acted against Hitler after 1941. When Claus had recognized the extreme and deadly evil, to which Jews, gipsies, homosexuals, political dissenters, russian POW´s, civilians in most ocupied countries, german civilians and soldiers were exposed because of Hitler he started to act. Yes, his secret military underground resistance group also worked with some Nazis like Nebe or Wagner. And so what ? His group came close to kill Hitler in five ocasions, before Claus placed the bomb. As a career officer in his mid thirties he persuaded more than a dozen Generals to plot against there commander in chief. It is proven he wanted to discontinue imediately the cocentration camps. Yes, he wanted to save as much of Germany as possible. Something wrong with that? The only thing that really matters is, that he had risked and lost his life in order to end this nightmare. Millions of human beings on all sides would have survived had he succeeded. Why is John Rosenthal so extremely negative about Claus Stauffenberg and about Valcyrie? Is it in the service of historical truth as he tries to make believe? Not probable: He stretches his interpretation of the presented documents ( links ) to the extreme against Stauffenberg and the plotters. Is it because Valkyrie ( or Schindler´s list ) could open the door to a dangerous new thought - as Roger Friedmann wrote in Fox News - : That the holocaust and all other atrocities could get into secondary importance … and this Rosenthal tries to avoid?. This would be wrong thinking: Never hide the truth. There really existed some Germans who tried to stop the Nazis. All of them were heroes. As German I am proud of them.
Jan 10, 2009 - 12:17 pm 84. cedarford:Scott - Actually,the Christian response to pagan Nazism was contemptable.The Evangelical Lutherans folded up very soon,and the Catholics were not much better(the Vatican was very anxious to cut deals with Mussolini and Hitler.
You can’t just claim that this or that party was without any grievance or rational fear of events outside Nazism at the time, therefore their behavior in ignoring the nazis or acquiescing to Nazi leaders, even supporting Nazis, was contemptable. This era in Europe was not like a couple of 1930s Nazis showing up at the door of a contented couple in a 2009 well-off, safe Denver suburb asking for support of 1930 policies suddenly transplanted to America.
And the “bashing” of those that worked with the Nazis tends to beat up Christians, evil capitalists, and US isolationists…and overlooks the “inconvenient” parties that allied with the Nazis to achieve common objectives:
1. The Poles and Slovenes wanted the Partition of Czechslovakia and backed Hitler.
2. Zionists cooperated with Nazis, even co-founding training camps for Zionist goals with the intent of them learning skills needed to move on to Palestine. Hitler youth and young Zionists working hand-in-hand erecting tents and building machine shops and industrial skills, farming skills shops…
3. The Soviets had German artillery and tank Divisions invited in to use Soviet ranges. French, Dutch, Pole, Belgian, Norweigan, and Brit defenders faced a German war machine 1939-mid 1941 fueled by Comrade Stalin’s Baku basin oil.
4. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Jews on the Left in America who strongly opposed Nazis then vigorously imposed the Party line to stifle critics of the deal their Comrade Stalin had made. Until June 1941, Jewish criticism of Nazis in leftist Jewish hotbeds like NYC and LA
was quashed a good deal by Jews beholden to communism and the Soviet Union.
As for the “Christian failure”, the “Pope’s failure”, and the “capitalist failure” to act…let us remember that those were the groups being killed off by the tens of millions by the Communists prior to and during the Nazi’s rise. 18-20 million even before the Great Purge of 1937-38. Aborted revolutions in Hungary and Germany showed the revolutionaries there, also disproportionately Jewish - as was the case in Russia - had extensive death lists prepared of Christian leaders, laity, landowners, and business owners. In Russia, most of the Orthodox churches priests and leaders were killed, their churches dynamited while synogogues were left unmolested. In the Spanish Civil War, and in the Soviet half of Poland, and in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia -Catholic priests were executed in large numbers by Red Terror NKVD liquidation squads as class enemies and counter-revolution enemies.
That they “didn’t do enough” about the Nazis appears to have been a completely rational call on the threatened groups part. They judged the Nazis to be odious, but not at all the existential threat that the Russian, Jewish, and other ethnicity communists were to them. And judged, as the French, Brits, and Americans did, that Germany lacked the strength on paper to even be a threat to take over France by force, let alone all of Europe. “SOBs, but Our son’s of bitches” that would serve as a bulwark against the Red Terror that would kill many Christians and capitalists for sure if they took over, and starve nations trying to collectivize them as happened in the Ukranian Holmodor. That was the consensus thinking. They underestimated Germany’s competent ferocity, the depth to which the Nazis would sink in war. But their decision to fear the communists more than the Nazis, prior to WWII, was rational.
As was, the Nazis are only 3rd on the list of
20th Century Democides.
1st-Chicoms
2nd -Soviets
3rd - Nazis
4th - Muslim Radicals & Turks
5th - Japanese military slaughter of civilians
6th - Cambodian Communists
********************
Scott - As for Bonhoeffer,he dithered around for years(as did Helmuth James von Moltke)about killing one man to save millions.Why is he a hero?
“Dithering” and not getting rid of a guy or thinking about it until things really got sour - infers that the “ditherers” were gifted with 20-20 hindsight. In Hitler’s case, the “prescient” argument that he should have been purged sometime in his successful years 1932 -1942 for the mess he would cause in the future years 1942-1945. And the purgers must be magically capable of ignoring the great successes happening in the early years by anticipating future failure.
And later, with wartime penalties for treason, defeatism escalated to “no appeal” rapid execution death penalty offenses, Germans opposed to Hitler faced the same magnitude of difficulty anti-Stalin forces in Russia faced - no public dissent countenanced, informers everywhere, a single wrong word to the wrong person - someone you read wrong or who later betrayed others when caught - could spell doom.
We see the same intimidation at work in the Muslim world and even in non-Muslim Europe - pervasive physical fear to denounce the radical Islamists, the default is to keep your head down and not speak up or risk your life by being discovered to be a threat to them. Quite unlike the dissent Americans can make in perfect safety. Contemptable for not knowing the future or not resisting when you know you will die for doing so if caught?
It’s like saying all Iraqis are contempable people for not removing Saddam Hussein. Lack of foresight? It’s sort of like saying voters failed in electing Eliot Spitzer given his future sex scandal, or Juarez failed in the 1858-61 Mexican Civil War and was no hero because he “dithered” for years before entering his phase of decisive action at great personal risk.
****************
Jan 10, 2009 - 12:23 pm 85. Horace Wells:JFM,
Jan 10, 2009 - 3:04 pm 86. Horace Wells:on a practical level you are right, an aerial attack here or there probably wouldn’t have done much to mitigate the Holocaust. But on a moral level, it signalled that saving Jews was not high on anyone’s list, if at all. Churchill sacrificed a huge chunk of British forces(land, sea and air), at a critically weak point in the war, in the vain attempt to save Greece in 1941, militarily it was a bad idea but politicall and morally it was the right thing and the Greeks were good allies, even for an occupied country.
Of course there are different levels of anti-Semitism, from the level of some crank bigot who simply hates everyone different, like the Italians, or someone who thinks Judaism is obsolete and they should stop whining and convert. But in my experience, anti-Semitism is a world view that many scumbags, some that I have met, that puts all Jews on the level of the devil; subhuman enemies of all mankind innately evil.
Former Belgian:
Jan 10, 2009 - 5:18 pm 87. Bob Sherman:Your non-binary world view is not welcome around here; where everything and everyone is either godly or evil. Stauffenberg might not have been a godly man or a humanitarian, something Prussian militarists were not known for, but he was a better man than most Germans.
Read all the entries tonight.. a lot to “digest”.
If one is interested (as I have long been) in why some Germans resisted the Nazi’s evil and demented policies (and why many more acquiesced and/or embarced the evil..) the story of Sophie Scholl (and her brother) is very illuminating. They were members of the White Rose (mainly university students and were executed for their efforts.They “merely” produced and passed out anti-Nazi leaflets. But their story is more compelling, more realistic and much more revealing of the milieu within which the resistance evolved. There’s a remarkable book
book- “Sophie Scholl and the White Rose” by Jud Newborn and Annette Dumbach. Also, a movie-DVD:
“Sophie Scholl - The Final Days” (with Julia Jentsch, Gerald Alexander Held, Fabian Hinrichs, and Johanna Gastdorf) I’ll warn you, it’s “heavy” but incredibly well acted!)
And another “Do Not Miss” book is “Conscience and Courage” by Eva Fogelman. It’ contains true (and heroic) stories and a a compelling and insightful analysis of the differences between Germans who acquiesced or embraced Nazism, as opposed to those who resisted it (mainly by helping Nazi victims, especially Jews). Here’s the synopsis from Publishers Weekly:
“Some sheltered one Jew for a night; others hid several Jews for years. Some performed a single spontaneous act of heroism, like the baker who saved the author’s father in Poland in 1942; others were part of an anonymous network. These brave people, along with the well-known rescuers Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, had this in common: they were gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazi regime. In her deeply affecting book, Fogelman recounts the stories of these Europeans –housewives, businessmen, telephone operators, farmers, diplomats, nurses–and tells how the state of Israel has honored them with the title “Righteous Among the Nations.” The author, a New York City social psychologist who directs the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers, ponders deep questions: Why did these particular individuals become rescuers? Can moral integrity be taught and then applied? Is there such a thing as altruism? She explains that one of her reasons for writing the book was “to give altruism back its good name.” Her study of extraordinary instances of moral courage will appeal to a broad audience. Fogelman wrote and co-produced the PBS series Breaking the Silence: The Generations After the Holocaust.”
Finally, one should certainly see the PBS documentary “Inheritance”. It is described (in the PBS link below) as “Imagine watching Schindler’s List and knowing the sadistic Nazi camp commandant played by Ralph Fiennes was your father. Inheritance is the story of Monika Hertwig, the daughter of mass murderer Amon Goeth. Hertwig has spent her life in the shadow of her father’s sins, trying to come to terms with her “inheritance.” She seeks out Helen Jonas, who was enslaved by Goeth and who is one of the few living eyewitnesses to his unspeakable brutality. The women’s raw, emotional meeting unearths terrible truths and lingering questions about how the actions of our parents can continue to ripple through generations.” (link): http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/inheritance/
I think the lesson for all of us is to beware that the “seeds’ that created Nazi Germany are not “sown” here. This chilling quote should elicit some caution, even now, in the good ‘ol U.S. of A. When the patriotism (of those who oppose our “Cops of the World” approach to Iraq and Afghanistan) is questioned, we should remember this quote” -
“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
- Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Commander, From his cell at Nuremberg Trials 1946
Jan 10, 2009 - 11:26 pm 88. Nora Brinker:- from Nuremberg Diary by G M Gilbert (Signet, New York, 1947)
Dear Mr. Rosenthal,
you say:
““Heiliges Deutschland” = Sacred Germany
“Geheimes Deutschland” = Secret Germany
According to some reports, Stauffe said the former; according to other reports, he said the latter.”
I think you (deliberately?) ignored the excellent point Steve made. While those two words are easily confused in English, this is definitely not the case in German. Oughtn’t you better have admitted that the sacred-secret argument was a non-starter?
By the way, that doesn’t mean that I do not agree with the gist of your article.
I know that this entry was about the film “Valkyrie” and thus about the “conservative” German resistance. But let me add that the left was by no means any more concerned about the fate of the Jews. I come from a family with a long Socialist tradition on both sides. My father (born 1911) was, when he was only 22, imprisoned and trialled for high treason while Stauffenberg was still doing the goose step for the Nazis. He survived to tell his tale (and to father me) but I have, however, never, not only once, heard him state that anything he did (and he did a lot during those 12 years) had anything to do with the Jews and their fate. Neither did his many contemporary comrades I had the opportunity to meet while he was alive, and I do not think that this is mere chance.
This just for the record!
Jan 11, 2009 - 12:53 am 89. Nora Brinker:Horace Wells: Stauffenberg may have been a militarist, but he wasn’t Prussian. He was a Bavario-Swabian Catholic. Should you be German: Shame on you for your ignorance! If you are not, those differences are important to us, last but not least because they exemplify the adhesive power of the Nazi ideology across all internal German cultural borders, however deep they may be otherwise.
Jan 11, 2009 - 1:05 am 90. JFM:Horace Wells
In French it is said “There is no worse deaf than the one who doesn’t want to hear”.
After giving you all kind of detailed information (eg rate of losses between unescorted bombers, date of introduction of the first long range fighter competitive with german fighters, need to prepare D-Day who succeeded by a razor thin margin and whose failure would have led to perpetuation of Nazism) you haven’t deviated a iota: It is the fault of the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil Allies.
Curipously the only people you don’t seem to blame are the Nazis themselves and the Soviets, those peop1e who not only didn’t sent a single bomber, even when Auschwitz was in fighter range, and who by the way, made Holocaust possible by their 1939 aliance with the Nazis, are as blamesless as new born babies.
Jan 11, 2009 - 8:59 am 91. John Rosenthal:Hallo Nora:
Well, let’s say Steve’s confusion was indeed understandable (even if his German translations were not so hot). When I wrote of “sacred” Germany versus “secret” Germany, I was not suggesting that the different reports are somehow connected to the phonetic similarity of the words. It just so happens that *heilig* and *geheim* translate that way. But, as so happens, the declined adjectives *heiliges* and *geheimes* are also phonetically similar: not as much as “sacred” and “secret”, but certainly a lot more than *geheimvoll* and *heilig* (Steve’s proposed equivalents). I’d be curious myself about the history of the different versions.
(Mein Kompliment zu Editrixblog!)
Jan 11, 2009 - 10:17 am 92. Syd Hill:Skip the movie and save your $. The history and international history channels on DirectTV (satillite) has been running documentaries on the subject. It would provide more fact the fiction.
Jan 11, 2009 - 7:26 pm 93. Isdor:Cedarford,
You said “Hitler youth and young Zionists working hand-in-hand erecting tents and building machine shops and industrial skills, farming skills shops…”
Jan 12, 2009 - 1:44 am 94. Nora Brinker:Can you provide a source? and be more specific? I am curious.
“But, as so happens, the declined adjectives *heiliges* and *geheimes* are also phonetically similar: not as much as “sacred” and “secret”, but certainly a lot more than *geheimvoll* and *heilig* (Steve’s proposed equivalents).”
Put like that, it makes sense.
And thank you for your kind words regarding my blog.
Jan 12, 2009 - 4:31 am 95. JFM:I doubt even an Anglo-Saxon could confuse heiliges and geheimes and, I cannot believe that, the people who heard it, that is Germans, that is people who had been trained since they were two years old into picking apart such similar sounds as schliessen and schiessen or nicht and nichts, could confuse heiliges and geheimes
Jan 12, 2009 - 5:26 am 96. vivo:Unbelievable. This thread shows how Germans can be detailed and verbose. And civil. Prost!
Jan 13, 2009 - 4:45 am 97. cottus:To Bob Sherman and other idealists who seem oblivious to the risk of a weak and complacent Western culture sinking into Islamic barbarism:
Remember the Romans, who, in the end, were no longer able to find the will to manage it all? And remember the dark ages, if you can.
Good/Evil is no more than survival/extinction:death. Grapple with it, but try to have some historic perspective, please. Don’t fall for the latest feel - good panacea that comes down the pike. Don’t get all caught up in platitudes that earn you the immediate knee - jerk affirmation of your friends. It’s all rather complicated, won’t you agree?
Jan 13, 2009 - 7:29 am 98. Nora Brinker:“Unbelievable. This thread shows how Germans can be detailed and verbose. And civil.”
Nobody has ever dared to call me civil. Detailed and verbose is alright, though.
Jan 14, 2009 - 3:11 am 99. Sebastian von Stauffenberg:Allow me to come back once again to John Rosenthals article which sports the interesting because so far unique conclusion Stauffenberg and his inner circle of co-conspirators to have been in many respects more like Hitler than Hitler himself. I suppose this insult has the intention to make his clearly untrue statement more believable, that the conspirators had no interest in the holocaust. Allthough I admit the language of the letter written by Claus to Nina in 1939 is terrible, allthough I also admit, that there were some criminals like Nebe, Wagner and others involved in the plot this does not mean the conspirators were unaware or uninterested in the fate of the jews. Read the protocols of Freisler´s Volksgerichtshof ( people´s court ). Many of the acused conspirators mentioned expressly, that they wanted to kill Hitler because of his murderous extermination politics against the jews. One of them was Clausen´s brother Berthold, who had written the admiitedly stupid article in 1932 you mention. Or investigate e.g.in Wikipedia why Axel von dem Bussche a member of the inner circle of Claus St. was prepared to sacrifice his life to kill Hitler in November 1943 . Did you know Clausen´s brother Alex married in 1939 a Lady of jewish origin, admired by Claus? As I am certain, that you Mr. Rosenthal are neither driven by hatred nor prejudice nor a friend of one sided argumentation, you will correct your conclusions and find your way to a more balanced comparison between Adolf Hitler and Claus Count Stauffenberg. As it is now the human quality of your article is comparable to Clausen´s letter to his wife written in 1939. From there you will agree it would be a dramatically wrong conclusion to write John Rosenthal is more like him than he is. Because he certainly isn´t. Maybe we at least agree on this.
Jan 26, 2009 - 2:19 pm 100. Nora Brinker:Count Stauffenberg, I was agreeing with what you said up to this point: “As it is now the human quality of your article is comparable to Clausen´s letter to his wife written in 1939.” Do you really think that John Rosenthals ultracritical, even captious article about the German military resistance is comparable to what your relative wrote to his wife? Rosenthal’s article served the important purpose to expose another one of the countless efforts of self-exculpation by historical revisionism (in this case helpfully performed by Americans who, in naive wishful thinking, only too gladly support such efforts because they hate to hate the Germans). I think that ought to be recognized as important and the right thing to do. I would place Mr. Rosenthal somewhere at the conservative wing (if there is anything like that) of the “anti-German” movement, the members of which tend to tar Germany and the Germans with too broad a brush. However, in the light of the neverending German whining and lack of honest self-reflection it ought to be seen as a thought-provoking counterpoise. It is certainly disproportional, even unfair, to judge and dismiss the achievement of a man like Claus von Stauffenberg on the strength of some very private biographical detail, but it doesn’t serve any positive purpose either to dismiss John Rosenthal’s article summarily.
I think this is a most interesting and potentially fruitful discussion.
Jan 28, 2009 - 2:09 am 101. Rob:24 Moon. Probably the best attempt at understanding evil of the Nazis as I have seen. Even as a believer in original sin and the fallen nature of man, I still hope for something that is good that comes out of redemed man. The sense that we are utterly fallen in every aspect of our being doesn’t mean however that we are totally evil or as evil as we can be. Our sense of evil and goodness can at least prove the case. Thanks
Mar 1, 2009 - 12:08 pm