Posted on 09/12/2019 4:16:55 PM PDT by max americana
"This bizarrely conflicted view was even more pronounced in Hitler’s attitude towards the U.S. In World War I, Corporal Hitler had been given two captured American soldiers to escort back to his brigade HQ and he was appalled by the fact that the pair were of German descent.
From that moment on, Hitler was transfixed by the notion that the best of Germans had emigrated to the U.S. (attracted by the potential for self-realisation in its vastness) and that Germany should prove itself to be a mighty state that would persuade its ‘children’ to return.
Hitler would constantly complain that ‘American soil had been fertilised by Germans’ and that his historical mission was to reverse that process.
Simms points out: ‘In the late 1930s, he briefly experimented with a really quite grotesque plan for an international “exchange” of German-Americans for German Jews.’
SNIP
As Simms writes: ‘The Fuhrer was aware that the supreme command of the Allied Expeditionary Force had been given to Dwight Eisenhower, descended from the Eisenhauers . . . who left the Saarland for Pennsylvania.’
Then there was General Clarence Huebner, General Walter Lauer, General Donald Stroh, General Paul Baade and General Bertram Hoffmeister — all from German emigrant families, leading the pulverisation of Hitler’s regime.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
has some street names in German even today. ................... You should have seen the street names in Yaphank NY, they removed them when WW II began I am sure.
New Braunfels, between Austin and San Antonio, had a German newspaper until fairly recently when it finally died out.
Most of them were Mennonites. Good people, they would stop and help you if your car had a flat. Also would let me hunt pheasants and deer.
Germany, as a nation, didn’t exist until after 1871.
Not wasted, I think, simply underappreciated. Slim's performance was crucial to the winning of the Pacific war. His is the name I mention when I'm asked who was the best British general of WWII.
Hitler's own nationalism was a very peculiar thing, not toward any past or existing German nation but toward an entirely fictional Aryan mythos whose proper place is on the opera stage. It is often noted that you have to strain to find any Blond Beasts within Hitler's inner circle - tragic, I think, that the most destructive war in human history was informed by a fairy tale.
“Family legend says that my great-grandfather came to America to avoid being conscripted into the Kaiser’s army...
Mine too. He came from Darmstadt.
“Another thing so horrific about the Nazis is how much death and destruction they caused in just a few years. The persecution and destruction of the Jews was Hitler’s policy from the beginning, but it was ramped up to a frantic pace in 1938 and the Holocaust was a chief priority even towards the end of the war when the Third Reich was crumbling.”
They were the most industrially, scientifically advanced nation in the world (aside us) and they used this to carry out the Holocaust.
That was just pure evil.
“Serves them right for starting THEN losing 2 world wars.”
Not WW 1 Jack. That was a collective deal.
Mennonites, Catholics and Jews. I saw a map of the area they came from, with all the little settlements near each other, kind of near Odessa in Russia.
Names? I only recognize Galland.
A good move!
I am of German descent. As a friend liked to say, “Our people were kicked out of Germany before the Prussians got to the Jews.” Many of the emigres had no love for the 2nd or 3rd reich. My Geandfather hated the Prussians, the Nazi’s, and the Swedes in that order
Probably should have included Erich Hartmann. Probably the greatest fighter pilot ever.
His parents were missionaries to China.
Mine was from Todtenhausen in Nordrhine-Westfalen. There are lots of German communities in southwestern Illinois where I grew up. There’s a tiny town named Darmstadt in St. Clair County.
...and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Just sayin’
Excellent summary!
Bears repeating.
Not evil...good men in service to their country. No war criminals.
Of note: There is historical information in context in this book review that has not been captured and presented by any other author that I am aware of.
I’ve studied 20th Century War and Revolution quite a bit but was not aware of some of this.
Reviewing those old speeches from the archives has provided a much better picture of what happened then.
Eisenhower was a logistical genius and project manager.
He was not the subject matter expert on martial matters.
I suspect that the chief reason why Germans supplanted English immigrants as the largest ethnic group in the US was that Britain had many different colonies for British settlers to choose to go to, without having to make the emotional break of becoming a foreigner. Germans didn’t really have a choice, although I believe many also settled in Argentina and Brazil, not that it saved them from their inevitable destiny of turning into one of a multitude of dysfunctional backwaters thanks to the dominant hispanic/latin culture.
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