Don’t worry, I will be back next year, God willing!
December 31, 2016
December 30, 2016
Hitler’s infamous dinner on January 25, 1942
I have a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri. While I was at the University, I learned that every story has two sides, and that both sides must be told. While I do sometimes editorialize — in my blog post today, I want to provide an example of journalistic writing, which presents both sides of the story.
In modern times, in the context of the Holocaust, this method of covering a story is known as Holocaust denial, and you can go to jail for Holocaust denial in a rapidly growing number of countries.
In an earlier blog post I talked about a television show entitled “Hitler:The Monster”. Among other things, in the older blog post, I talked about the dramatization of a dinner meeting, which allegedly took place on Jan 23, 1943. On the AHC program, they make it sound like this meeting is the smoking gun, in which Hitler gave his blessing for mass murder.
David Irving recalls a meeting on Jan 25th 1942, that was attended by Himmler, Lammers, and Colonel Hans Zeitzler. The following quote is from page 496 in the 2002 version of David Irving’s book entitled “Hitler’s War” [according to Heinrich Heim’s record].
Here are the words spoken by Hitler at the infamous dinner:
Begin quote
If I extract the Jew today our citizens get uneasy: “what’s happening to him, then?” But did these same people care one hoot what happened to the Germans who had to emigrate? We’ve got to get it over fast; it’s no better to pull a tooth a bit at a time over three months — once it’s out, the agony is over. The Jew’s got to get out of Europe. Otherwise we will never reach a European consensus. He’s the worst troublemaker, every where. And really: am I not in fact terrifically humane? During the papal tyranny in Rome the Jews were maltreated. Up to 1830 they hounded 8 Jews through the city on asses every year. All I say “He’s got to get out”. If he goes for a Burton [kaputt geht] in the process, I can’t help it. I do see one thing however: their absolute elimination [absolute Austottung] if they won’t leave willingly.
End quote
The American Heroes Channel offers a different version, insinuating that it was at this fateful dinner that Hitler ordered the Holocaust verbally, or at least blessed it. The show cuts to a dinner scene, while sinister violin music plays.
Begin quote from the show
The announcer says, January 23rd 1942, Hitler invites SS chief Himmler and other senior aids for a quiet meal. According to his staffs official memos, private moments like this provided the Fuhrer with the perfect opportunity to give the Holocaust his blessing without issuing a direct order.
Robert Citino Continues, saying that
“They are having a fine meal, immaculate table cloth, everything just a so very civilized encounter in which the conversation turns as it often does with Hitler to the Jews.”
Guy Walters Continues, saying that
“The talk is chilling, its not bureaucratic, but Hitler is saying things like, if I had to say to the Jews, could you just go voluntarily and they said they didn’t want to then I would see no other option than extermination.”
Robert Citino continues, saying that
“Notice here how Hitler doesn’t tell anyone to do something specific, he allows those around the table to draw their own conclusion.”
End Quote from show.
The show then goes on to talk about the Wannsee conference, but out of chronological order. I have blogged about the Wannsee conference several times: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/wannsee-conference/
Could Hitler have only blessed the Holocaust, AFTER the Wannsee conference, not before it?
To quote, out of context, a famous comment from the show, “there were so many parts of it that just didn’t add up.”
December 29, 2016
Henriette Von Schirach on AHC
Henriette von Schirach
In episode 5 of their new series about Hitler on the American Heroes Channel, titled “Hitler:The Monster”, around six minutes into the episode, an incident at the Berghof, involving the beautiful Henriette von Schirach, is discussed. In the show, it was claimed that Henriette was banished from the Berghof for bringing up the “brutalization of Jewish women in Amsterdam”. In the words often repeated in the show: “but it was all a lie.” She was back at the Berghof the next evening, where events caused her to leave with her husband in a huff, never to return again, for a completely different reason.
A different account of the incident, which took place in late June 23rd and 24th, 1943, is recorded in the 2002 version of David Irving’s book “Hitler’s War” on page 595.
Begin Quote:
The ‘Jewish Problem’ was taboo at the Berghof… Bauder von Schirach and his pretty wife Henrietta were in Hitler’s house party. They joined the fireside circle, slumped into the deep armchairs in the semi-darkness. While Hitler sipped his special tea and the others their wine or cognac, Henriette exclaimed that she had just witnessed at Amsterdam the loading of Jews into open trucks for deportation.
‘Do you know about it?’ she asked. ‘Do you permit it?”
Hitler retorted, ‘They are being driven 0ff to work, so you needn’t pity them. Meantime our soldiers are fighting and dying on the battlefields!’ Later he added, ‘Let me tell you something. This is a set of scales’ -and he put up a hand on each side like pans. -‘Germany has lost half a million of her finest manhood on the battle field. Am I to preserve and minister to these others? I want something of our race to survive a thousand years from now’ He reproached her: ‘You must learn how to hate!’
The Schirachs were still there the next evening, June 24, when Goebbels wickedly brought the fireside conversation around to Vienna. Until after four A.M. Hitler drew savage comparisons between Schirach’s Viennese and Goebbels’s Berliners until tears welled up in Henriette’s eyes: the Berliners, he said, were hard-working, intelligent, and politically shrewd. Goebbels wrote, ‘Frau von Schirach in particular acted like a silly cow…and later summed up her unhappiness by saying that she wanted to go back to Munich with her husband and would the Fuhrer send [Gaulieter] Giesler to Vienna instead.’ ‘Tell me,’ Hitler challenged her, ‘is your husbnd our Reich representative in Vienna-or is he Vienna’s man in the Reich?’ The Schirachs departed in a huff the same night, and never saw Hitler again.
End Quote
In the notes section on page 912 in his book, Irving cites five different sources for his account including both Schirachs. While I agree that it is brutal to load Jewish women into trucks to take them to work, [the film footage of women being abused does not show them being loaded into a truck.] clearly Henrietta and her husband did not leave the Berghof immediately after her question about the final solution.
On the show Guy Walters claimed that on the 23rd “He [Hitler] just orders her out, and she left in tears never to be seen at the Berghof again.” Clearly, if we can believe Goebbels’ account, she was still there the next night, on June 24th, acting like a silly cow.
What the world needs now — more Holocaust museums!
In this news story, you can read about a new Holocaust museum that will soon be going up in Great Britain:
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/challenge-designing-holocaust-memorial-britain/
The following quote is from the news article:
Begin quote
On 18 November, the Government announced the 10 shortlisted teams in the running to design a £50 million national Holocaust memorial for Britain, to be erected in Victoria Tower Gardens just outside the Palace of Westminster. The memorial project is a legacy of the coalition government led by David Cameron, whose cross-party Holocaust Commission recommended its construction after a survey revealed that of 8,000 British secondary school children, less than a third knew what ‘anti-Semitism’ was, and ‘the majority of those surveyed did not know some of the most fundamental facts that explain why and how the Holocaust happened’. Announcing the subsequent design contest, Cameron’s successor Theresa May said: ‘We need to ensure that we never forget the horrors of the Holocaust and the lessons that must be learnt from it.’
End quote
This photo of the Jewish Museum in Berlin is included in the news article
I have a photo, of the structure shown above, on my website at
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Berlin2002/JewishMuseum/JewishMuseum01.html
December 28, 2016
Hitler: The Fall
I had my first opportunity to watch the final installment of the six part Hitler series, entitled “The Fall”. In preparation for my analysis of this series, I re-read David Irving’s book, Hitler’s War, the 2002 updated version.
The final episode starts with the aftermath of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6th 1944, on what is called D-Day, and ends with Hitler’s suicide in his Berlin Bunker at the end of April 1945.
This is a great deal of history to cover in a one-hour show with lots of commercials. Important topics include the aftermath of D-day landing, the July 20th, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, fall of France, the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s rapidly declining health, the Yalta Conference, the final Battle for Berlin, Hitlers marriage to Eva during the last days in the bunker, and their final suicide in the bunker after all was lost.
I would say, all in all, it was a pretty good summery of the final days of World War Two, which might be valuable for college students, who are ignorant in History, to learn about these important topics.
Most of the accounts on the final episode agree with the accounts written by David Irving, although the show seems to have, as it’s main thesis, that Hitler was the most evil man that ever lived, while Irving simply recounts the facts of history.
The show selects the same dividing line, the D-day invasion, as Irving does for section VII of his book entitled “The Worms Turn”. Irving concludes his book with the final section VIII Endkampf which covers the final collapse and Hitler’s suicide in his Berlin bunker.
Hitler’s doctor, Morrell, left us detailed records of Hitler’s declining health and his use of a large number of medications. Irving’s book does a great job of citing individual entries 0f Dr. Morrel’s records, but I think that the show also did a very good job in documenting Hitler’s declining health on film.
In addition to Hitlers War, Irving also dedicated an entire other book to Dr. Morrell, and both books do a good job of telling the story of Hitler’s rapidly declining health, near the end of the war.
A little background here might be appropriate, for some of my younger readers, about my next observation. One of Hitler’s best generals, General Rommel believed that the key to repelling an invasion was to strike quickly and not let the invading forces establish a beach head. Irving writes on page 681 about D-day, “the Allies had established a beachhead …some 15 miles wide and two miles deep inland.”
He continues “Thus by the time Hitler’s war conference began, the Battle of France was already lost – if Rommel’s dictum about defeating the enemy on the beaches had meant anything.”
The very ending of the episode before Hitler:The Fall, called Hitler:The Monster also claims that Hitler’s over sleeping on D-day had a significant effect. This comes in the final minute of Hitler:The Monster, but if you are watching a marathon, this bleeds right into the final episode.
I watched most of the entire six part marathon, and observed that the series never mentioned the word “typhus”, as far as I could tell, and spent no time documenting the mass rape of German women after the fall of Berlin. Although the series does mention the firebombing of Hamburg on July 27th 1943; there was very little talk about the attacks on German civilians by the firebombing of a different city in Germany every day and every night during that period.
But all in all, I would say that the last episode of the series provided a fairly good short one-hour history of the time from D-Day to the fall of Berlin.
I welcome comments by anyone else, who saw the show.
December 27, 2016
Hitler Marathon is starting at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time today.
I will be watching the Hitler Marathon on the American Heros Channel, beginning at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time today. There will be 12 hours straight, of binge watching, the new mini-series!
When I am old, I shall wear purple — and red
Donald J. Trump
The title of my blog post today is from a poem that I read many years ago. This was on my mind this morning, when I woke up, and remembered the day that I had voted for Hillary to be our next president — I wore purple and red that day: a red hat with a purple coat.
In the weeks before the election night, Wiki-Leaks was leaking news about the Democrats, but not about the Republicans. Wiki-Leaks was revealing bad thing about Hillary, but strangely, there were no leaks about Trump. It was at this time that TCM came out with film footage in which Trump revealed his “pussy grabbing” history. He said “when you’re a star, they let you do it. ”
Many people including me, think that Putin was involved with Wiki Leaks, and that he was “hacking” the election. It was Wiki Leaks that also revealed information about Hillary’s e-mail server and her e-mail messages. I knew that it was not a crime to have an e-mail server; I had such a server myself, at one time.
My voting place was less than a mile from my house — I could have walked there, but instead my son drove me there — in a red car. He parked the car near the door into the building and I walked up a long ramp, after declining a wheel chair. There was a very long hallway that we had to walk through. There were no direction signs up yet, but there was a young woman there who gave us directions.
When we reached the polling place, I was asked if I needed help to mark my ballot, and to put it into the ballot box. I declined all help — I wanted to do it myself.
After I voted, I was given a sticker to put on my coat, to show that I had voted. These stickers were in many different languages, including English. After voting, my son and I went to a local restaurant and had coffee along with a hearty meal.
As I sipped my coffee, I was hoping that I had just voted for the first woman president of the United States of America. The final count for the election showed that Hillary had gotten 2.9 million MORE votes than The Donald, but he won because of our electoral college voting system.
On the night of the election, all the pundits were predicting that Hillary would win the election. When I went to bed on the night of the election, Hillary had 2.3 million more votes than Trump, but all night long, Trump had been chanting that he would win. When I woke up, on the morning of the election, I found that Trump had been right: he had won the election.
How did Trump know that he would win? “When you are a star, they let you do it!”
December 23, 2016
Could Herschel Grynszpan still be alive?
Photo on news article shows Herschel Grynszpan, then and now
On this news article, you can read about the possibility that Herschel Grynszpan is still alive: http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.759957
In 1938, there was a night of violence in Germany, that came to be known as Kristallnacht. This was the night that German citizens smashed windows in Jewish shops and set fire to over 200 Jewish Synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland in what is now the Czech Republic. Ninety-one people were killed during this uncontrolled riot which the police did not try to stop.
That night, Hitler and his henchmen were gathered at the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich, celebrating the anniversary of Hitler’s attempt to take over the German government by force in 1923; Hitler’s failed Putsch had been organized at the Bürgerbräukeller.
Joseph Goebbels made a speech, at the beer hall, in which he said that he would not be surprised if the German people were so outraged by the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, by a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan, that they would take the law into their own lands and attack Jewish businesses and Synagogues. Goebbels is generally credited with being the instigator of the pogrom. (Pogrom is a Polish word which means an event in which ordinary citizens use violence to drive the Jews out.)
In spite of the Jewish “holy war” against the Nazis, there were no Jews sent to any of the concentration camps solely because they were Jewish, during the first five and a half years that the Nazi concentration camps were in existence. Jews were sent to the Dachau concentration camp, from day one, but it was because they were Communists or trade union leaders, not because they were Jewish.
The first Jews, to be taken into “protective custody” in Germany, simply because they were Jewish, were arrested during the pogrom on the night of November 9th & 10th in 1938, which the Nazis named Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass).
Kristallnacht was the night that German citizens smashed windows in Jewish shops and set fire to over 200 Jewish Synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland in what is now the Czech Republic. Ninety-one people were killed during this uncontrolled riot which the police did not try to stop.
That night, Hitler and his henchmen were gathered at the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich, celebrating the anniversary of Hitler’s attempt to take over the German government by force in 1923; Hitler’s failed Putsch had been organized at the Bürgerbräukeller.
Joseph Goebbels made a speech, at the beer hall, in which he said that he would not be surprised if the German people were so outraged by the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, by a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan, that they would take the law into their own lands and attack Jewish businesses and Synagogues. Goebbels is generally credited with being the instigator of the pogrom. (Pogrom is a Polish word which means an event in which ordinary citizens use violence to drive the Jews out.)
Approximately 30,00 Jewish men were arrested during the pogrom, allegedly for their own protection, and taken to the 3 major concentration camps in Germany, including 10,911 who were brought to Dachau and held as prisoners while they were pressured to sign over their property and leave the country.
The majority of these Jews were released within a few weeks, after they had promised to leave Germany within six months; most of them wound up in Shanghai, the only place that did not require a visa, because other countries, except Great Britain, refused to take them.
In anticipation of such violence against the Jews by the Nazis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had invited 32 countries to a Conference in Evian, France in July 1938 to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees.
The only country which agreed to allow Jewish refugees, as immigrants. was the Dominican Republic; 5,000 German Jews emigrated to the Dominican Republic before the start of World War II.
The American Congress refused to change the US immigration laws, passed in 1920 and 1921, to allow a higher quota of Jewish refugees from Germany to enter, although America did start filling the quota under the existing laws for the first time. The poor Jews — no country wanted them!
Christine Flowers is a lawyer.
My photo of the gate into the Dachau concentration camp
The title of my blog post today is the last sentence in a news article, which you can read in full at
So she’s a lawyer. And I’m not. So what does that make me? Dog shit?
The following quote is from the news article written by Christine Flowers:
Begin quote
Ironically, though, the [newspaper] column elicited something that I didn’t see coming. Apathy is one thing, and so is nationalistic bravado in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, but the response that I got from a man named Joe was so unexpected, I had to reread it a few times just to make sure it wasn’t a joke.
Joe wrote me a long email that started off with a compliment: “Christine, obviously you seem to be a very caring person with your article.” And then, like Joe Frazier landing one of those deadly left hooks on your weak side, he wrote: “But, of course, you use some of the same propaganda that we have heard for 70 years about the Jews and their genocide and the 6 million.”
And he proceeded to explain to me how the Holocaust was a lie, and “there were no gas chambers.” To make sure I believed him, Joe helpfully provided links to support his thesis, most of which included the word “hoax.”
End quote
The article continues with this quote:
Begin quote
The thing is, I don’t even feel good that my post [on Facebook] ridiculing Joe was “liked” over 250 times and that my old law professor suggested I should win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
I keep coming back to the idea that there are still people out there, people with thousands of Facebook friends like Joe, who believe the Holocaust never happened.
You’ll sigh and raise your eyebrows and try to convince me that this is just a fringe element of society and that, of course, most educated people believe that Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka existed in stone and brick and mortar and not simply as the architecture of fantasy. Of course, that’s true.
But it’s not enough to say these are the fringe elements in society, these deniers of Germany’s great shame, just as it’s not enough to say that anyone who thinks slaves were well-treated by their “masters” is a lobotomized moron.
End quote
December 22, 2016
My memories of Berlin
I visited the city of Berlin for several days in 2001 and took photos of what I saw, including the place near the ruined church, where a recent tragedy has taken place.
You can read about the recent attack on the Christmas market in Berlin at http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/12/22/u-s-placed-berlin-terror-suspect-on-no-fly-list-months-ago-report-says.html
You can see my photos of Berlin on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Berlin2002/index.html
Included on my website are photos of the Monument to the Russians who “liberated” Berlin and celebrated by raping over a million German women.
Scrapbookpages Blog 