Posted on 07/05/2012 10:33:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Adolf Hitler made a personal intervention to spare a Jew from the Holocaust that consumed millions of Jewish lives it has been revealed.
Hitler made the dramatic intervention to protect Ernst Hess, his old company commander from the Flanders trenches of the First World War, who had risen to be a judge in post-war Germany
In a letter from August 27, 1941 to the Dusseldorf Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler, one of the architects of the Final Solution, instructed the secret police to grant Hess "the relief and the protection as per the Fuhrer's wishes". Himmler also instructed all authorities that Hitler's old comrade in arms was not "to be in-opportuned in any way whatsoever".
The letter was unearthed in a Gestapo file on Hess by Susanne Mauss, editor of the newspaper Jewish Voice from Germany.
Christened a protestant, Hess had a Jewish mother and that under Nazi race laws that made him "a full-blooded Jew", and a prime target for persecution and eventual destruction.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
He always was, propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding.
Interesting way of looking at it. The accepted date for the start of WW2 is Sept. 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. But what about the Re-militarization of the Rhineland ('36), or the Sudetenland (followed by the absorption of all Czechoslovakia)? The forced "Anschluss" with Austria? The Japanese invasion of Manchuria? Their invasion of China?
I wonder how much Hitler's conquest would have been disrupted had France done more than a minor incursion into Germany. What if they'd done a full-bore invasion? There was very little in the way of defenses facing them while the bulk of the Wehrmancht was in Poland. My point is that these were disconnected conflicts until other large powers got involved making it a general world war. That's not quite the same thing as saying France started it, but their alliance with Poland meant that Germany would have to at least plan for a repeat of WW1.
Can’t disagree with that
A) You can throw names all you want. EVen you would be called a noob by those who have been on longer. It really is pointless.
B) You presume I do not know history. Wrong presumption. Moreover it is fair to ask someone what there point was in posting a particular article. To post and leave no comment about what the poster thinks is rather hit and run
C) Take a deep breath and don’t bother to respond. I know you will merely try and flame some more
Well done.
It's pure communist propaganda, and the media are communists.
Even in Weimar Germany, the communists and national socialists hated and fought each other. They did so not out of disagreement but of rivalry. Bloody-handed, bloody-minded, bloodthirsty totalitarians don't like competition.
Following WWII, the Soviet communists continued the charade, doing everything they could to distance themselves (and their brand of socialism) from the disgraced and defeated national socialist enemy. Their fellow travelers in the western media and academia carried water for them.
The charade continues to this day, even though Soviet communism is gone.
Sadly, even some FReepers try to rationalize that somehow fascists and communists were some sort of opposite. It's nonsense.
However what I was asked Condor was more about how the France started the war in 1871.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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My father's father was a decorated officer from the Austro-Hungarian army and this did save their lives. A German officer who served with my grandfather warned him that ghettos were being liquidated.
“I had read that Hitler had “exempted” any Jews who had been decorated in WWI from extermination”
You could apply. I am a Jew from French and German background.
My German-Jewish family included my grandfather who had multiple Iron Cross decorations and was even nominated for the Blue Max (kind of like the Congressional Medal of Honor) — although he did not receive it. In short, a stellar military record — and a second generation one, too, as his father was highly decorated.
Anyway, the final solution was much more subtle that people think. It started with “move to areas set aside for Jewish people,” or leave -— but leave 75% (or more) of your money behind -— on top of a huge fee to get a passport.
Anyway, the Nazis started with civil restrictions that had kind of a backwards logic on the theory that Jewish people were not German and would not be part of German social security, for example. Twisted logic that reminds me of the ObamaCare Decision.
You could demonstrate loyalty to Germany, you could get exemptions from restrictions.
A common proposed example was for military service.
A lot of non-Jews who had Jewish ancestors managed to pull this off (aka “half Jews”), although later they got moved to work camps or forced civil service, and eventually military on the Soviet front. Full Jews were marketedly less sucessful.
Anyway, my grandfather tried, and failed, to get an exemption.
He basically gave his very successful business (several hundred employees, making auto parts) away to Bosch in return for a pittance that allowed him and my grandmother to escape — made their way to Mandatory Palestine, overland — essentially walking to Israel, sleeping in barns, ditches, etc.
All this goes to show is that yes, while Hitler was a MONSTER...he was also a human being.
A lot of people seemed to be threatened by this idea, and I think underneath that is the fear that given the right circumstances—we also could, as sinners all, possibly commit the atrocities of the Nazis.
I’ve seen in Europeans especially an idea that somehow the Germans are an especially evil people—in that 70+ years ago they were doing things the English, or the Swedes, or the French, or even Americans...would never do.
The fact of the matter is that for 12 years—an especially evil mania gripped Germany—and it could, in other forms, grip any country as well, given the right circumstances.
We cannot have a triumphalism which says, “Oh, well we’re not Germans (or Japanese, or Chinese for that matter, Mao...), so it can’t happen here!” It can, and it can happen anywhere to any people, if we are not vigilant for freedom.
The fact that Hitler—and others who did the most monstrously evil things, were also human....should serve as a warning to us all.
Evil men can still be hypocrites, in fact, they usually are.
I’ve heard Estern Europeans, is response to people mitigating the effects of Nazism in comparison to Bolshevism, say: “Hitler was not “better than” Stalin; Stalin was just worse than Hitler”. They didn’t feel either merited a “better than...”.
That’s interesting; I know Hitler wasn’t a fan of Austria-Hungary or the Hapsburg monarchy. He felt they were surrendering to the various ethnic minorities in the empire.
Thank God for your grandfather’s escape; a shame for your father’s cousin.
Thank God your grandfather was able to get out.
I know the distance involved is considerably shorter, but I’ve read similar accounts of conscripted “guest workers” walking back to their European homelands after the war.
It must have been an incredible (and terrifying) time to be alive.
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