Under Two Flags
by Heinz Weichardt
Under Two Flags
Introduction
After years of urging my dear friend Heinz Weichardt to make at least a partial memoir of the vicissitudes of his interesting life, he finally was persuaded by Louis Beam, whom he met last year, to do so. This article was originally in the form of a letter to Louis.
Heinz certainly has had an unusual perspective of the Twentieth Century. A
supporter of Hitler who left
Lately there has appeared a peculiar contempt for Historical Revisionism.
The latter has undeniably been slashing and chopping the roots of contemporary
Jewish power, so Heinz was very unsettled by such criticism. He told me often
that when the Holocaust was beginning to be promoted in the 1960s he could only
recall his school days in
Heinz believed that our goal must be to disfranchise Jews, to dislodge them from government, medicine, law, education, the arts and, of course, from the media. He believes that to criticize those who have demonstrated the Holocaust to be a lie only helps to maintain the Jews as our overlords.
It doesn't matter if one genius today says he knew the Holocaust was phony in 1958 and because of that Revisionism is a waste of time. I don't notice any reduction of Holocaust poison in the media today; our children continue to receive it. They must be protected from deadly lies. We adults must grow up, too. The truth will make us mad. It may make us fight. The fighting may one day make us free.
J. B. Campbell
Dear Louis,
I felt that I should give you a somewhat more extended background to the political situation which led to the events of January 1933 in Germany, since most of the pertinent facts are only rarely realized by or available to the citizenry of this country.
First a few biographical notes about myself. My father, Dr. Carl Weichardt, of Frisian background, was among the dozen
leading journalists of
My mother, of Jewish extraction, was a professional musician and renowned
opera singer. Her father fought in the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian
war of 1871. Her brother-in-law was a professional soldier and captain in the
Imperial Austrian army. He fell during the first six days of World War I when
I was born in 1914 and grew up in
What happened then? Why was there virulent "anti-Semitism" in
The main reason that Jewry became so respectable and could aspire to be
accepted by the highest levels of German society was the rigid structure of the
Prussian dominated state. Within this environment there simply was no possible
room to develop shady business methods so acceptable to the oriental mind;
there were no corruptible officials which could be bought because to become an
official did not entail the possibility to enrich yourself at the cost of the
public. It was an honor, which had to be earned by hard and successful labor. A
teacher, a soldier, a postal employee, a policeman or any other government
worker had to be a role model and if he ever betrayed the trust given to him by
the public he had to serve, he was finished. Today Prussianism
is equated to despotism. Nothing could be further from the truth! The motto of
While the Jewish question seemed solved, or at least dormant, in
Kaiser Wilhelm was an utterly civilized and peace-loving man. I know this from the British mother of my best friend; she was a close personal friend of Wilhelm who in turn was my friend's godfather. The Kaiser did suffer unfortunately from an inclination to vainglorious gab and this was used quite liberally against him by his enemies. At a much later time the similar afflictions of the warmongering criminals, Churchill and Roosevelt, were generally well accepted! After the Russians arranged the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand through their Serbian dupes, the First World War was on. The American people wanted to stay out of the European mess, but since the country was, at the time, suffering from one of its strangely recurring recessions, the powers that were decided differently. The opportunity of reaping huge profits by supplying one of the fighting sides with liberal credits and massive infusions of war matériel was too tempting and could not be ignored.
Alas, the boys in
As an aside, a propensity for accidental death seems to be quite common
among people not agreeing with the prevailing Anglo-American policy. You surely
remember George Patton, who wanted to warn the American people that the war was
not won if the Western Allies did not continue their advances until they
reached
Back to 1916. After obtaining the Balfour
Declaration the Jewish-American press and their followers made a sudden
turnabout and began to pour their well-practiced venom on the still hard-fighting
Germans, who were from now on to be known simply as barbarous Huns. This was
not only a betrayal of Germany but also of their German co-religionists who
were more accepted in Germany than anywhere else in the world and where most of
their able-bodied men were still fighting for what they considered their
fatherland. It was rather easy to convert the "idealistic" but
feebleminded
Things began to look up for Germany because the Americans had as yet not
arrived in telling numbers at the Western Front and there would be soon some
two million battle-hardened German troops released from the east and available
in the west for a final push.
Here now rises the curtain over the second act of Jewish treachery against
The war was lost and in
When the populace observed newly-rich Jewesses in their fancy fur coats,
bedecked with jewelry, entering expensive nightclubs with their escorts while
veterans with missing arms or legs are sitting on the sidewalks, shivering in
their worn uniforms and trying to sell some pencils or whatnot to earn a few
pennies for their modest needs, it did not go over too well with them, even if
the majority of the professional Jews, professors, engineers, doctors,
government employees, etc., shared the misery with the rest of the people. My
mother's father, a retired small businessman, made the mistake to invest his
savings in English industrial stocks long before the war and lost every penny
of it when, after the war, the English, like all the other "victors,"
stole every bit of private German property they could lay their hands on. The
Americans got away with "taking-over" all German patents and sold
them to the public at a dollar apiece. An acquaintance of mine, Dr. Becker, a
German immigrant chemist, bought a sufficiently large amount of them to found
Allied Chemical Corp. on the basis of their content. The last time I visited
him, in 1941, he was still president of Allied and resided in an incredibly
beautiful, Roman style villa in Bolton-Landing on the
The first victim of the rising tide of anti-Jewish sentiment was the foreign
minister of
The invasion of the industrial Ruhr Valley by 80,000 to 100,000 French
troops, in January 1923, because of lagging tribute deliveries, as well as the
total collapse of the German mark (in November 1923 it took 4.2 trillion--not
billion!--marks to buy one dollar) revitalized the nationalistic movement, which
culminated in Hitler's reach for power on November 9th, 1923. In the meantime,
however, the bankers in
The Hitler putsch was betrayed and defeated and Hitler was sentenced to five
years imprisonment, but was released after less than one year. During his
captivity he wrote, with the assistance of Rudolf Hess, Mein
Kampf which, with the exception of the Bible, had the
largest edition of any book previously printed. Unfortunately, as with the
Bible, too few of its purchasers read it, but considering the present
disastrous worldwide conditions this might yet be remedied in the not too
distant future. Hitler had decided to attempt his quest for power by totally
legal means, a decision from which he never wavered and which in the end lead
him to success, all negative propaganda to the contrary. Starting with the year
1924 a slow but steady recovery began. During 1926 the last French troops left
the
During the
After the 1929 crash of the
On
What was the situation of the German Jews at that point? The first blow came
from abroad. World Jewry declared war on
The next anti-Jewish measure was the Arierparagraph,
which eliminated non-Aryans from all government positions. Everybody with one
quarter or more Jewish background was considered non-Aryan. Exempt from this
law were all Jews who had fought for
The immediate effect on the private lives of most Jews was in the beginning
only minimal. Some personal experiences will show this. Since my early teens I
had been an avid gun lover. In
My guns were registered in the name of my (Jewish) mother, who had
contributed the money for their original purchase, because I was only fifteen
years old and could not own firearms until I reached maturity (21 yrs). After
Hitler came to power, nothing was changed in the existing gun regulations;
nobody had to turn in the registered guns--period. My mother still had them on
the day of her immigration to the
The laxness with which the existing firearm laws were enforced was clearly demonstrated in the days after the Reichstag fire, when most people feared an imminent Communist uprising. Suddenly untold numbers of veterans or members of patriotic organizations were seen walking around, proudly displaying their wartime military Mausers or Parabellums strapped to their sometimes paunchy bellies. After a while, after the Communist threat had been eliminated, they were politely reminded that carrying of firearms in public was against the law and the guns were put back into drawers at home. The sale of ammunition was never restricted.
Suddenly a longtime dream of mine seemed to come true: the ownership of a genuine Parabellum in good condition. One of my friends had heard of a deal where members of the many existing nationalistic party organizations could purchase retired army pistols in lots of one hundred at a price of fifteen marks per gun. The price of a new Parabellum was one hundred and fifty marks in those days, which was about the monthly income of a lowly worker, if he had a job. My search for prospective customers was frantic. By charging an extra mark for my services I had to sell only fifteen guns to earn sufficient money for the purchase of a gun for myself! Alas, the dream was of short duration. Some envious or overzealous citizen felt obliged to inform the authorities of my dreamy deal. It was followed by the famous knock on the door, and on opening I faced three agents of the secret police (Gestapo). No hands in the pockets groping for hidden arms, no shouted orders or threats, only showing of identifications and the polite question if I had any firearms at home and if they could see them. I asked them in, got my guns and asked my mother to show the registration receipts. The disappointment of the rather mild-mannered gentlemen at the measly display was obvious and they asked about the whereabouts of one hundred Parabellums which I was suspected to harbor. My heart sank and I told them about my, now surely aborted, hoped-for big deal, which as yet had not been consummated. They looked greatly relieved and the man in charge said that a perfunctory search of our premises was in order. No drawers were ripped out and emptied, nothing was displaced or damaged--only a short look under beds into armoires and storage cabinets. When they were ready to leave the man in charge spotted a letter on the table with a Jewish-sounding name of the sender and being obviously informed about my mother's racial background he very kindly admonished her that because of the new conditions prevalent to be especially careful and not to break any of the existing laws. With that they apologized for the inconvenience they had caused and left. My loaded guns remained on the table.
In order fully to appreciate this story you must remember that the Parabellum was at the time still the most powerful and sophisticated military handgun on the European market. Today's equivalent would be a fully automatic MP5 or Ingram. Just imagine somebody informing our democratic government that I was stocking one hundred of those, possibly intending to sell them to some shady characters harboring racist or otherwise non-PC views. Can't you just hear Janet Reno screaming and ordering her trigger-happy minions into action. The roar of armored trucks loaded with SWAT teams in full battle dress would be deafening and reinforced by the clatter of helicopter-gunships hovering overhead, in case any difficulties should develop. The headlines would shout: Gun Crazy Rightist Has Arsenal Endangering His Neighborhood! Governor Might Call In National Guard! Remember the recent actions of our government in the case of a man who sold a shotgun, allegedly one quarter inch shorter than the law permits, to an undercover agent, which resulted in the deaths of a mother holding a baby in her arms, one un-armed child, the family dog and a marshal. Or the one involving a religious nut who could have been arrested any day by a single cop while the former attended to his shopping in the local supermarket. Result: about eighty people, mostly women and children, incinerated alive. I think my imagined scenario above is an understatement.
My next run-in with the authorities of the Third Reich happened about three
years later and was a bit more ominous. I had just received the notification
that my application for voluntary service in the newly-recruited army had been
definitely denied and I was understandably very bitter because service in the
armed forces was considered an honor and privilege, not an onerous duty.
Instead of swallowing my badly injured pride I complained to everybody who
would listen to me, ending my complaints with the caustic question: Why me,
when even the top general of the Luftwaffe, Erhard Milch,
had a Jewish father? Well it didn't take very long for the knock at the door.
This time I faced three members of the Algemeine-SS.
The situation was made more serious by my little Dachshund. She had a dislike
for tall men in black uniform and immediately attacked the intruders, loudly
barking and snapping. The SS retreated a few steps until I had taken control of
the objecting animal. Precautionary shooting of pet animals was definitely not
PC in Hitler's
Another little story which characterizes the official attitude for behavior towards Jews was told to me by a very good friend. As a member of the storm troops, he had to attend weekly meetings of his troop for political indoctrination and other matters. In Germany, as well as in most European countries, it was the custom that children and young men ceded their seats in crowded trains when a lady or elderly adult entered and could not find a seat. During one meeting of the troop the members were reminded to adhere to this rule and a wise guy asked the tricky question of what to do if the lady or elderly adult was obviously Jewish? After a short silence for reflection, the (pardon the expression) solomonic judgment was forthcoming: "Storm troopers, in order to avoid this embarrassing situation, remain standing in trains which were apt to be crowded!" To some nice old Jewish lady I strongly recommend a ride on the New York subway or any other public conveyance.
Next, consider the listening to foreign radio stations. In Europe, there were fewer transmitting stations than here in America, but they were much more powerful and in centrally located Germany you could always listen to the transmissions from Austria, Switzerland, France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Hungary. They all disseminated programs in German language and most of them contained vicious anti-German and specially anti-Hitler propaganda as well as outright lies about the terrible conditions in Germany under "Nazi terror." You were not supposed to listen to these radio transmissions but most people did and it was technically not feasible to jam the powerful foreign long- and middle-wave transmitters without causing disturbing interferences of your own radio programs. One evening, while listening to radio Moscow, the bell was ringing and there stood the lady living in the apartment below us. Her husband was the Blockward of our building and responsible to take care of all problems of or with the tenants and to make sure that everybody behaved nicely and in accordance with the rules and regulations of the new era. How did she phrase her demands and threats? "Dear Mr. Weichardt, if you have to listen to radio Moscow, wouldn't you be so kind and turn the volume down a bit in order to avoid possible trouble for you or us." In today's Germany, under the most democratic government in the country's history, if you are found to possess two or more copies of this letter you could wind up in jail up to five years for making light of "Nazi crimes" and inciting race hatred. House searches without warrant are the order of the day, confiscation of "incriminating" printed material and privately-owned office equipment are rampant and if you are lucky (and well insured), your insurance company will be stuck with the ensuing expenses if a bunch of paid ruffians burns down your place of business.
Let's go back to Nazi terrorism. There were, as everybody knows, concentration camps. Who were the inmates? Mostly vagrants, bums and, yes, some obnoxious politicians of the leftist variety (come to think of it, not a bad idea at all) who had previously caused the ire of the new rulers. Strangely enough--hardly any Jews, who after all, according to Hitler, where at the root of most of the country's troubles. According to a typically nasty postwar British anti-German propaganda movie (HISTORY OF THE SS), the pre-war population of the concentration camps never exceeded ten thousand inmates, out of a population of nearly seventy million! I should say this is pretty good, when compared with the twenty thousand penal institutions and camps (Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago) in Soviet Russia, which at the same time had--quoting President Roosevelt--the most progressive government in Europe. While confined in a camp the inmates had to perform labor, I am sure sometimes hard labor, which was tough on the mostly overweight politicians. They learned new skills, were well fed and had excellent medical facilities available in case of illness or injury. After their release some actually became useful citizens.
Here I must state categorically that during my nearly six years under the Hitler regime, living at the center of power in Berlin with my father, as a journalist in constant touch with the authorities (he had, e.g., to attend, together with other journalists, confidential monthly meetings with Propaganda Minister Goebbels to obtain political directives and listen to pep talks) and aware of all nasty anti-government rumors, I had neither a single personal contact with anybody who had suffered physical harm from the authorities of the Third Reich, nor did I hear from anybody among my rather extended acquaintances that they knew of somebody who had. Yes, yes, I know there was the nasty Röhm affair, which I shall discuss a little later, and which was an interparty affair. The exodus of Jews began immediately, principally of the well-to-do and the prominent, some of whom felt that they had exposed themselves politically. They could leave with all their property but had to pay a tax of ten percent on their liquid assets according to a law already enacted under the Weimar government. This caused a major hemorrhage of German foreign exchange reserves and forced a change in the law after which, a year later, emigrants had to pay a ninety percent tax on their liquid assets and were forced to sell all their real estate. Emigrants to Palestine were eventually exempted from all taxes. The not so well-to-do, while never hindered by the German government, were not so lucky, because no country was willing to receive them if they did not bring along sufficient capital to sustain themselves over an indefinite period. The remaining Jews also had to suffer from the vicious propaganda which was launched abroad by the Jewish-controlled press and by some of the émigrés.
Toward the end of 1933 Hitler took the first major step towards the resurrection of the Reich's authority and independence. He demanded from the League of Nations, that club of vacationing parasites on the shores of Lake Geneva, that after Germany had fulfilled all the onerous conditions imposed on her by the dictate of Versailles, including essentially total disarmament, the other signatories should now adhere to the agreed upon condition and begin with their much talked about disarmament. This was an absolutely fair demand, since Germany was surrounded by her former enemies possessing large and superbly equipped armies. Of course this is denied today, but France had the largest air force in the world, England the largest fleet, Russia the largest number of active soldiers and tanks, Poland heavily armed and sounding as aggressive as ever, the Czech army probably the most efficient of the lot and Italy, under Mussolini, was at that time still hostile towards Germany. The silence answering Hitler's demand was deafening, whereupon Germany left the League and suspended all future tribute payments coming due.
To survive economically Germany was forced to conduct most of her foreign trade on the basis of exchange and went off the gold standard. The last measure was probably the real beginning of World War II. The world's banking system simply could not permit that this upstart free his nation from their shackles. If his bold try became a success their whole empire would begin to crumble because others might be emboldened to try the same gambit. Horrors over horrors, it did become a success. Germany's economic recovery became meteoric, unemployment disappeared rapidly while the rest of the world was floundering in an ever-worsening depression. It would take a major volume to describe the details of changes which took place in the first year of the Third Reich and the enthusiasm with which the vast majority of the people greeted the new system. When, at the end of 1933, after leaving the League of Nations, elections were called for the approval of the new and forceful foreign policy, 92.5% of the eligible voters backed the new government. Since I voted in several elections, together with my mother (!), until the fall of 1938, when I left for the US, I can assure everybody that there was never any coercion or fraud involved in these elections. The only serious crisis developed during the spring of 1934, when Hitler had to make the surely agonizing decision to liquidate his close friend, Röhm. By then the SA ranks had swollen by millions, many of them former Communists. So many people wanted to become registered party members that during the previous year a moratorium had to be declared on all further applications for membership. Röhm, as the chief of the SA, was a major power factor and had greatly assisted the rise of Hitler by supplying arms and funds from the army and securing the safety of the streets from the attacks of the Bolshevik assassins with his storm troops. Because of the incessant hate campaign of such professional haters as Roosevelt, Churchill, Vansittart, etc. ("Germany is getting too strong, we have to destroy her again." "We will force a war on Hitler, if he likes it or not." "The coming war is not a war against the German people, but against Hitler and his Nazis;" and ad nauseam), it became obvious that Germany had to create an army which would be adequate to protect the Reich against her belligerent opponents. This was impossible without the complete collaboration of the small but very professional Reichswehr and its generals. Röhm wanted his SA incorporated into the new army and also eyed the position of minister of defense, which he considered due to him. This was anathema to the very conservative general staff. Among the SA there were many to whom the utterly peaceful takeover was distasteful and who would have liked a little more ruckus to get even with some of their former enemies. There also was a large segment among them which was left-leaning and desired a more "socialistic" approach to the country's problems. Hitler knew, of course, that, if he decided for Röhm and against the Reichswehr, he would face a major upheaval and possible destruction of all his hard-won gains. He was therefore forced to acquiesce in the generals' demands and liquidate Röhm. To avoid any revolt within the SA, this had to be done with surgical precision and cost the lives of eighty-eight men. Please compare this number with those of Stalin's contemporary purging of his army. [The homosexuality of the Röhm camorra had been reported to Hitler but the latter had been unwilling to believe it. When he learned that the clique planned to overthrow him he went personally to their den of iniquity that night and, armed with a pistol, arrested Röhm and others.]
Here is a little story about a Jewish lady victimized by the Röhm affair. Among the victims of the purge was a certain Dr. Schmidt. His was a case of mistaken identity. Not a too surprising occurrence with a name like Schmidt in Germany. His Jewish wife was understandably upset about this and went in a rage directly to Hitler's office. Greatly embarrassed by the lady's rightful complaint, he not only offered all kinds of compensations but also to make her an honorary Aryan with all the ensuing privileges. She took the compensations but declined the honorary Aryan and left for the US. When she told me the story she had become the wife of a colleague of mine at the company I worked for in Binghamton, NY.
In the meantime, back in the good old USA, Mr. Roosevelt's hatred of everything German in general and Hitler specifically, became pathological. To understand his rage one must compare the rapid recovery of small resourceless country which had been held down and ransacked by its enemies with the meager results of his policies as president of the then still richest nation in the world, which was suffering under a seemingly never ending depression. While Hitler was able to raise capital through loans from the top industrialists--they must have been sitting on it during the largely distrusted Weimar regime--by giving them ironclad guaranties for repayment, Roosevelt was unsuccessful in obtaining them from the powerful capitalists in his country, who were more interested in maximum returns for their investments than in the well-being of their nation.
This situation could only be remedied by stirring up a little war which would guarantee huge profits in a revitalized heavy industry and loosen the money in the pockets of the recalcitrant bankers and industrialists. It is therefore understandable that already as early as 1934--one year before the first soldier was enlisted into Germany's new Wehrmacht--plans were laid for the creation of a strategic bomber force which could only be used in the brutal extermination of the civilians of any nation trying to defend herself against an attempt to subject her to the imperialistic rule of bankers or Bolsheviks, both striving for world domination. England followed with the building of a fleet of heavily armed, long-range bombers but Germany never even anticipated the development of planes solely to be used against civilians. In a recent biography written by Germany's most prominent aircraft designer, Messerschmidt, the decision to rely primarily on tactical airplanes was pushed through by the above-mentioned General Erhard Milch. It proved to be fatal during the coming war imposed on Germany by Roosevelt and his Kehilla of advisers. In March of 1935 the new Wehrmacht was established and every young German had to serve in the army for one year. The time of service in the French army was three years, as it had been for over sixty years!
In June of 1935 the famous Nuremberg laws were issued which laid down the condition of Jews and those of partially Jewish descent within the Reich. From that date on Jews were considered members of the Reich, enjoying the protection of the law but not full citizenship. To be a one-hundred percent Aryan, one had to prove that there were no Jewish ancestors in the family as far back as 1800. That this was possible at all shows to what length the Germans went in the effort to keep orderly records of vital data. (I mention this to show how ridiculous it is to assume that during the war there was no orderly record kept of the people sent to labor camps. Today we know, as a fact, that all data were kept to the bitter end. They are available today and show that in case of death of an inmate, the family of the deceased was notified and the ashes returned to them whenever possible.)
At the time these laws seemed to be extraordinarily harsh, especially to those with only partially Jewish background, who had been brought up, like myself, as Christians and patriotic citizens who loved their "fatherland" unconditionally. Personally I was devastated. I could not marry the Aryan woman I loved and my application for voluntary service in the Wehrmacht was denied, probably because I was of slight build and had brown eyes and hair. This was most embittering, considering the military history of both my paternal and maternal ancestors. Today, sixty years later and observing the precipitous decline of a typical multiracial and multicultural society, I am forced to conclude that it was exactly the racial and cultural unity of the Third Reich which enabled its people to survive the monstrous assault of their enemies and to arise again from the ashes of their nation. The present effort to destroy by all means this unity through the planned influx of millions of the unwashed garbage of the Third World and systematic destruction of all traditions in the mind of the present generation shows that Germany's eternal enemies fully agree with me on this point. That this destruction proceeds under the direction of a Jewish dictator (Ignaz Bubis, head of the thirty to forty thousand strong Jewish community among eighty million Germans), who rules Germany solely through the strength of American bayonets, bodes ill for the future of that nation, if he should succeed in his nefarious plans. It is high time that Americans realize that they have been reduced to the unbecoming status of executioners for the all-powerful state of Israel.
It must be mentioned, that the Nuremberg laws only applied to German non-Aryans and never to Jewish visitors traveling under foreign passports, for whom there existed no restrictions whatsoever. The Jews were permitted their own organizations in sports, culture, medicine, schools and they even had their own department at Gestapo headquarters which was staffed by Zionists who welcomed the government's anti-Jewish measures because they promoted their wished-for emigration of Jews to Palestine. There were a total of sixty training camps run by the Zionists under German sponsorship. However at this point the British objected and demanded that every Jewish immigrant must bring one thousand pounds sterling in gold (today equivalent to at least $50,000) in order to be permitted permanent residence in Palestine. The German government concluded the so-called "Transfer Agreement" with the Zionists and supplied the required funds from its scarce foreign exchange reserves to help young Jews emigrating to Palestine. About fifty thousand young Jews received this assistance which represented an outlay of $50,000,000 of pre-war dollars to the exchange-starved Reich. So much for the "planned destruction" of the Jews!
The international Olympics of 1936 presented a high point in the unrelenting rise of Germany. One had to be there to marvel at the expressions of astonishment on the faces of the guests from all over the world who had been prepared to expect a quite different appearance of a people "groaning under the yoke of Nazi tyranny." The joy at the festivities and the show of solidarity and comradeship among the youth from everywhere in the world seemed to herald the coming of a new and peaceful future. Yet, until this day, the Jewish controlled journaille repeats the stupid story that Hitler left the games in order to avoid shaking hands with America's top gold medal winner, Jesse Owens, a Negro. They conveniently forget to mention that Owens, like all the other medalists, was invited to a festive dinner at Hitler's chancellery. This included, of course, also the Jewish girl, Helene Mayer, who won the silver medal in fencing for Germany. They also forget the remarks of another American Negro athlete, who, on his return was asked by a reporter: "Did you meet any nasty Nazis in Germany?" Answer: "No, I only met nice Germans and I didn't have to ride in the back of the bus, either."
Hitler's unprecedented diplomatic successes, which, without exception, were achieved by peaceful negotiation, only increased the relentless propaganda war against Germany. This was primarily conducted by the Jewish-controlled foreign press and hostile emigrants. The Nuremberg Laws contained a specific clause, that in case of continuing Jewish attacks through propaganda or any other means, further restrictions of Jews in Germany would follow. And so they did. Most of the Jews wanted to emigrate but this was nearly impossible because no country was willing to receive them. Switzerland went so far that it asked the German government that all Jewish passports should be recognizable as such. Thereafter all Jewish passports had the additional first names "Israel" and "Sarah" added, for males and females respectively. These were names which no German Jew would have given his children. Also, a large letter "J" had to be imprinted on the first page of their passports. The murder of a very prominent National Socialist, Wilhelm Gustloff, in Switzerland by a Jewish assassin and another assassination by a Jew (the circumstances and name of the victim have slipped my mind) exacerbated anti-Jewish sentiments in Germany. Only the USA allowed a modest amount of immigrants, if the emigrating person had a relative in the States, who was an American citizen and would supply an affidavit stating that he was willing fully to support the immigrant as long as necessary, or if the latter could bring along adequate financial means to support himself for several years. Walking across the Rio Grande at night was definitely not considered an alternative in those days. Endless lines were forming around the block in Berlin which housed the US consulate by Jews hoping to get on the waiting list which would permit them to apply for an immigration visa after several months or even years of waiting time.
Austria finally united with the Reich amid the jubilant approval of practically the whole population. On his entrance into Austria, Hitler, the country's most famous son, could barely proceed through the throngs of flower-throwing people. These were the same people whose Socialist parliament had nineteen years earlier voted unanimously to join the Reich but were then prevented by the Allied powers to do so under the threat of refusing the signing of a peace treaty. After the Anschluss the Austrian Jews faired much worse than those in Germany because the local population harbored much stronger anti-Jewish sentiments than in Germany. This was largely due to the fact that in predominantly Catholic countries there is always more religious bias against Jews, but in addition great resentment was caused by the influx of more than one hundred thousand Galician Jews into the starving capital Vienna after the war and by the creation of an independent Poland. Yet, when the previously mentioned cousin of my mother left the country for Brazil, the SS officer who inspected his baggage at the Swiss border saw in the first trunk the uniform of the former officer of one of the emperor's exclusive guard regiments, he stepped back, gave the appropriate military salute and refrained from any further inspection.
Because of the great pressure exerted on the Austrian Jews President Roosevelt conceived the brilliant idea to convene an international conference at the lovely French resort at Evian (reads "naive" backwards) on the shores of Lake Geneva. The purpose of the meeting was to persuade every country present to lower its stringent immigration requirements and permit the remaining three hundred thousand Jews remaining in Germany to emigrate. It was July 1938, the weather in Evian was glorious and a good time was had by everybody. The results were according. Not one of the thirty-three nations present, including the USA, was willing to change its immigration laws! Dr. Goebbels was in sheer ecstasy. The display of hypocrisy was plenty of water on his propaganda mills. ("Doesn't anyone want our geniuses?") One German newspaper commented: "We see that one likes to pity the Jews, as long as one can use this pity for a wicked agitation against Germany, but that no state is prepared to fight the 'cultural disgrace' of central Europe by accepting a few thousand Jews. Thus the conference serves to justify Germany's policy against Jewry."
During the fall of 1938 Hitler achieved one of his greatest political triumphs. The return of the predominantly German Sudetenland was achieved without war. The anxiety of the people in Berlin during the Munich Conference was extremely high because the arrival of the Czech air force was expected at any minute. Their flying time to Berlin was less than half an hour and Germany was, at that time, totally unprepared for any major military confrontation. I shall never forget the evening Hitler returned from Munich. The relief and jubilation were without bounds. The anti-aircraft batteries in and around Berlin, some eighty guns, had been lined up along Hitler's route from the railroad station to the chancellery and I was standing behind a good friend of mine who fired the electrically connected guns simultaneously with the push of one button. The roar of that salute was indescribable.
Part II
My stay in Germany came to an unexpectedly early end on November 5, 1938. I had received my diploma of engineering (MS) during April of that year but my efforts to obtain an adequate position in the German industry had been unsuccessful because of the ever-stricter application of the Nuremberg Laws. My father had a good and very influential friend, Dr. Hugo Eckener, who was president of the world famous Zeppelin and Maybach Motor Works. He was best known as the commander of the pioneering, world encircling flights of the Zeppelins during the Twenties and Thirties. He was also at the time the best known and most respected German in the United States. Upon his strong recommendation I decided to emigrate to the US, where he had influential connections and assured me that, despite an again deepening depression and rising unemployment, I should be able to find gainful employment. He arranged my personal introduction to the Consul General of the US, Mr. Raymond H. Geist. The latter was most cordial but regretted that he could not overrule the existing restrictions on immigration into the US. This decision held even after I showed an affidavit of Eckener's representative in the US, a vice-president of his own company, which guaranteed that I would be supported indefinitely after my arrival. The affidavit had to be ruled insufficient because the guarantor was no relative of mine. Even if adequate, it merely would put me on a waiting list for up to several years until my application could be acted upon. The only possible way to obtain an immigration visa in short order was to deposit a large sum into an American bank, which would enable me to immigrate as a capitalist. Dr. Eckener would have made the deposit for me, but under existing German laws one could not export more than ten marks ($4.00) at a time. This would have been the end of my efforts had not, by accident, a friend of Eckener, who was a vice-president of National City Bank of New York, been on a visit in Berlin. Upon my introduction to him he sat down and wrote a note to the Consul General in which he advised the Consulate that a sum of $10,000 (1938! when the price of a brand new Cadillac sedan was $1,650) has been deposited in my name at his bank in New York. With this note in my hands I returned to the US Consulate where I received my immigration visa in a couple of hours, accompanied by the personal good wishes of Mr. Geist.
Within less than two weeks, on November 4, 1938 at about 10 pm, I boarded the evening express in Berlin and went to sleep in my first class compartment. The train was to arrive the next morning in Flushing, Holland, where the good ship Ilsenstein was to take me aboard at 9 am. The small freighter, which had comfortable accommodations for about two dozen passengers, belonged to the Jewish-owned Bernstein Line, but was flying the German swastika. Just before the train arrived at the Dutch border, at 3 am, I was awakened by the appearance of three SS men in full regalia, who grabbed my voluminous baggage and ordered me off the train together with about a dozen of other emigrants. We were standing on an inhospitable railroad platform watching sadly the disappearing taillights of our comfortable express train. All I could think about at that moment was the part of my baggage which had been sent ahead to the steamer and was surely soon to disappear beyond the horizon. We were ordered into separate rooms for women and men, our baggage was thoroughly scrutinized and we had to take off our clothes, which were X-rayed to detect hidden documents. The SS men were in not too good a mood, which was understandable for men who had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to search the baggage of a bunch of emigrants. I was carrying my brand new expensive camera, my hundred year old violin, some of my mother's jewelry and, besides the suitcases with my clothing and personal belongings, a special case loaded with our family silver consisting of about hundred pieces in nearly new condition. In addition, I was carrying my 9 mm Parabellum, which was ignored. My forebodings proved to be unfounded. We were ordered to dress, no questions were asked, our baggage was re-packed in good order and we could rejoin the ladies in the waiting room. One of the young Jewish ladies began to cry because of the nervous strain she had undergone. This changed the stern expression on the faces of the SS men into one of obvious concern and two of them tried to comfort her by buying her coffee and giving assurances that everything was going to be all right. Nothing was confiscated, nobody was detained! Two hours had passed and with it any hope that we were going to reach our ship before its departure. After boarding a slow train which carried us across the border, we were to make three changes to other slow trains before reaching Flushing with only minutes available for each change. The good Dutch must have been used to this routine and were well prepared. At each station a large crew of baggage carriers descended on us, grabbed all of our baggage and without saying a word dumped us on the next train. The last one arrived in the nick of time in Flushing and discharged us at the side of the steamer which was ready to leave shortly.
The crossing of the Atlantic began more like a pleasure cruise than a flight. The accommodations were good, the food was outstanding and so plentiful, that I gained ten pounds during the trip. The all-German crew made every effort to make our presence on board as pleasant as possible and some of the young officers had a very good time with two attractive ladies among the passengers. It seemed that six years of incessant "racist hate propaganda" had not quite taken hold in the minds of the young Germans. On the fifth day out, however, the news of the anti-Jewish riots in Germany were received and somber thoughts about the future overshadowed the festive mood.
What had been the cause of the "Kristallnacht," which resulted in damage to or destruction of 180 synagogues among the existing 14,000 and an equal percentage of Jewish businesses? A seventeen year old Polish Jew, Hershel Gruenspan, residing in Paris, had become so upset about the fate of his father in Germany that he armed himself with a pistol, walked into the German embassy and, not being able to see the ambassador, shot the first secretary, vom Rath. This being the third German official fatally assassinated by a Jew, the storm troopers were supposedly ordered out to take revenge on the Jewish population. This story is about as ridiculous as the by now discredited myth about the six million gassed Jews or the one about the slaughter of the Polish officers in Katyn by the Germans. The troubles of Gruenspan Sr. did not originate in Germany but in his native Poland, where the rampant anti-Judaism had caused the flight of tens of thousands of Jews into neighboring countries, mainly Germany, where they were treated as foreign visitors. In the beginning of 1938 the Polish government suddenly declared that it was going to invalidate all passports of citizens residing abroad if they did not return home to have them renewed. About 70,000 Jews with Polish passports were at the time residing in Germany, and the German government became worried that it might eventually become stuck with them. It ordered them rounded up and transported to the Polish border in regular trains, not cattle cars as it was claimed, with all the necessary supplies including medical personnel if needs should arise. Among them [was] Gruenspan Sr. The Poles refused to accept the deportees and the planned deportations were stopped for the time. Gruenspan's son, Herschel, had been staying for two years with an uncle in Paris, who, after the Polish government's revocation of Herschel's passport and the French government's refusal to renew his residence permit, asked him to leave in order to avoid problems with the French authorities. The uncle also refused him any further support. The supposedly penniless Jewish boy moved into a decent hotel in February and on November 7th he purchased a gun for 250 francs in a regular gun shop, with which, an hour later, he murdered the first secretary of the German embassy.
Interestingly enough, the hotel in which Herschel resided for over nine months without any visible means of support was situated right around the corner from LICA (International League Against Anti-Semitism, today called LICRA), whose legal representative was one of France's most famous lawyers, Moro Giafferi. In 1936 he had defended David Frankfurter, the murderer of Wilhelm Gustloff, in Switzerland. That crime had obviously been engineered by LICA. Only a few hours after Gruenspan's arrest at the German embassy, Ernst vom Rath was still alive and no news of the shooting could have been made public. Giafferi appeared at the police station which held Gruenspan and announced that he was representing the assassin. Who paid him? Why his interest in an unknown foreign criminal who was illegally residing in France?
Nothing ever happened to Gruenspan. After the fall of France the French authorities handed him over to the Gestapo, which detained him hale and healthy during the whole war without bringing him to trial. After the war he was not tried by the French but was permitted to emigrate to Palestine, where he was reunited with his family. They had been deported from Germany to Poland whence they emigrated to Palestine. Where did Gruenspan Sr., a poor tailor, obtain the four thousand pounds sterling required by the British to permit his family of four entrance into Palestine? The solution to these puzzling questions is revealed in Flashpoint, a book by Ingrid Weckert. On the fateful day of November 9th the whole hierarchy of the National Socialist party was assembled in Munich to commemorate the fallen of the Hitler putsch on the same day in 1923. When the first news of the riots hit the assembly, everybody was aghast and immediate orders went out to the SA and SS to suppress all attempts of doing damage to Jewish properties. The German government was extremely concerned about its image abroad which was constantly smeared by hostile propaganda and it is inconceivable that the riots were ordered at a high level. It has been established that any orders given were issued by telephone through agents provocateur, who followed a well thought-out plan doing the maximum damage to the German government and people. Through personal contacts I was well aware fifty-five years ago that the version of the whole affair, as given by the foreign press, was obviously wrong. The president of the company I eventually worked for happened to be a Herr vom Rath, the uncle of the murdered embassy secretary, from whom I got a more detailed description of what went on in Paris after the assassination. Dr. Eckener was in constant personal contact with Hermann Göring concerning air force matters and the building of a new airship, and he wrote to me that the air marshal was in a state of shock because of the irreparable damage done to the German reputation abroad.
Our journey continued through very stormy weather and on the 16th of November we disembarked in Hoboken. The reception was not too friendly because the customs inspection lasted for hours and turned out to be a disaster for a few. Some young Polish Jews were hit especially hard. They were trained craftsmen and not being able to export any sizable amount of money from either Germany or Poland, they had invested all they had in tools of their trade. They had no money to pay the required duty for their brand new equipment, which was simply confiscated. I wonder if they remembered their treatment at the Dutch border, where nothing was taken from the harshly persecuted ones. When the surly customs inspector laid eyes on my brand new camera, my sterling silver flatware and my thirty year old, but still like-new looking microscope (but not my disassembled and concealed Luger) he literally began to salivate and declared everything for brand new and subject to duty payments. He had, however, not reckoned with the presence of my sponsor, Mr. Wilhelm von Meister, an imposing figure of nearly seven feet in height and capable of an impressive and demanding bearing. Already annoyed for having to come to Hoboken instead to one of the fancier shipping lines docking on the New York side, to which he was accustomed, he was visibly irritated by the slowness of the proceedings. He told the customs inspector in an inimitable British accent to repack everything because his time was too valuable to be wasted on such trivia. He further demanded that everything was to be kept under lock until the arrival of his lawyer, who would take care of the necessary formalities. The startled inspector retreated immediately to the office of his superior and reappeared shortly to tell us that everything was okay and that we could leave with all of my belongings. This showed me for the first time that even in a much-vaunted democracy some people are more equal than others.
Thereafter I was driven to New York City and installed at a very comfortable hotel in downtown Manhattan. This was followed by a sumptuous lunch at an exclusive club. Things were beginning to look up. My sponsor gave me $25 every week, which I was to repay after having obtained a job and getting settled. The weekly bill at the hotel amounted to $12 and a good dinner at that time was obtainable for less than $1.00. After three days at the hotel I got bored and called an acquaintance of mine who was residing at the International House of Columbia University. He immediately arranged for me to move uptown into a room at the House with a splendid view of the Hudson river and the George Washington bridge. The weekly cost of my new accommodation came to $9.00 and the food at the in-house cafeteria was even cheaper than in the downtown restaurants. I was beginning to feel affluent. The atmosphere at the house was most encouraging for a lonely stranger in a new country with a very limited knowledge of the then still prevailing language. The best I could do in English was to recite Marc Antonio's funeral oration from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, which together with Hamlet's "To be or not to be," had to be learned by heart during my high school years in Berlin. This did not get me very far when trying to order a hot dog, a cheeseburger or asking a gruff-looking policemen for some direction in downtown Manhattan. His curt but easily understandable answer: "Why the hell don't you learn first some English before asking stupid questions?" I must confess to some nostalgic thoughts at the time about the policemen in Berlin, placed at major intersections and carrying armbands designating the foreign languages they were speaking, who would accompany a stranger to the place he wanted to go, if they felt he didn't understand their verbal directions.
At the House things were very different because quite a few people did speak German, including a number of acquaintances from Berlin and Vienna, whom I had not seen in years and who had arrived earlier. There was also a great number of very attractive girl students who, after proper introduction, were kind enough to help me in improving my knowledge of basic English. After celebrating my first Thanksgiving among the students of the House I had to give some serious thoughts to the finding of a job. I had good credentials and personal recommendations to top executives at General Electric, Allied Chemical, Hanovia and RCA, whose world famous director of research, Vladimir Zworykin, was a good friend of my thesis-father in Berlin, Max Knoll, the original inventor of the magnetic electron microscope. In the latter's laboratory I had studied the then still very new and advanced field of electron-optics which became of fundamental importance to the development of TV picture- and camera-tubes. The course and the results of all these interviews with bigwigs of the American industry were of discouraging sameness. Before each meeting I was picked up by a chauffeured limousine and a company representative who took me to lunch at an exclusive restaurant and, after consuming some fine food and a couple of soothing drinks, I was driven to a grimy looking factory in New Jersey where I was introduced to the top executive to whom I was recommended. After listening to a friendly and reassuring pep talk I was interviewed by several department heads, each of them offering me his best wishes for a successful future but regretting that at the time there were no openings in their departments. Thereafter I was driven to my temporary abode at the International House, again by chauffeured limousine but this time without accompanying company representative.
Christmas was approaching and I became increasingly pessimistic about my chances of finding employment in my chosen field or otherwise. The country was in a deepening recession and the glowing stories which I had heard during the listening to foreign broadcasts while still in Berlin, of how the friendly genius Roosevelt was leading his country to new economic heights, lost some of their luster. I was walking up and down the endless avenues of New York to catch the flavor of The City but only developed a bitter taste, which has remained ever since. Yet, I do not want to be totally negative, because if I compare the New York of 1938 with the one I last visited in 1982, it seemed like paradise lost! To someone having been primarily raised in the two cleanest places of the world south of Scandinavia, namely Berlin and Switzerland, the first impressions were devastating. The streets were far from clean and the wintry winds blew the dust through the canyons between the skyscrapers resulting in sore eyes. The subways were incredibly noisy and grimy. Millions of people with strangely expressionless faces were constantly rushing around, seemingly from nowhere to nowhere. The show windows appeared dull and their displays were lacking taste but sometimes showed refreshing humor. I fondly remember a department store displaying ladies' unmentionables with a sign from a service station among them announcing: "We Are Fixing Flats." The best and cheapest diversions were a ride on the Staten Island ferry, which cost only one nickel, and a visit to gorgeous Radio City Music Hall which cost only 44 cents, if you were in time for the first show which started at 11 am and lasted four hours. Even in those days, there was a noticeable hostility among all those different kinds of people who were thrown together into this gigantic heap which belonged to nobody and did not own anybody but only consumed its inhabitants. Most of the once stately mid-town brownstones had been converted into multiple apartments consisting of a rather small living room, an even smaller bedroom and an improvised kitchenette-bathroom arrangement separated by a thin wall which only reached halfway to the ceiling. Many of the recently arrived immigrants wound up in these depressing places but soon moved up to Washington Heights located at the northern tip of Manhattan Island. There the apartments ranged from adequately roomy and airy to exclusively modern and beautiful with views of the Hudson River. A couple of years later this area was to be known as "Prussian Palestine," where the obligatory Dachshunds spoke German only.
A few days after Christmas I was called to the office of my sponsor, Mr. von
Meister, and was told that my hopeless search for employment had come to an
end, because he had made arrangements for me to start work at the camera plant
of Agfa-Ansco Corporation in Binghamton, NY. To
understand how he was able to perform this seemingly impossible feat I must digress
and relate some of his background as well as some of the history of the company
where I was to start my career on the second day of the approaching New Year.
Von Meister was, as previously mentioned, the son of a British mother. He was
born and educated in England and therefore a British subject. His father was
the president of the government of the Prussian state, Hesse-Nassau,
and a prominent industrialist as well as one of the three founders of the giant
German chemical trust known as IG-Farben. The trust
consisted of six major combines, one of which was Agfa-Berlin, the number one
supplier of photographic materials and equipment throughout Europe. The
American subsidiary of IG-Farben was General Aniline
and Film Corporation, which had purchased the venerable photographic firm of
Anthony and Scovill in Binghamton, from then on
called Agfa-Ansco. There they produced all types of
photographic films, papers and chemicals as well as low priced cameras in
competition with Kodak and DuPont. Because of the high quality of their
products, especially the photographic papers, they became very successful. Von
Meister had come to the US in the Twenties where he became, only twenty-some
years old, the sales representative of Luerssen
Yachts, a German manufacturer of large and luxurious motor yachts. They must
have sold very well during the Roaring Twenties, because after the Depression
hit the country in the early Thirties, von Meister was able to found his own
company which produced reproduction papers for engineering drawings. The new
product, he introduced, known as Diazo-Print, was the
property of IG-Farben and therefore easily available
to von Meister. Eventually Diazo-Print replaced
blueprinting in the US as it had done previously in Germany and most of Europe.
His company, Ozalid Corp., was located in Johnson
City, NY, a small town situated between its two sister cities, Binghamton and
Endicott. The latter was the home of
On
The first eight months of the year were mostly enjoyable. The work at the newly created research department was easy, the American people were very friendly and quite different from the types encountered in New York. The streets were clean and safe and the entrances to the houses were left unlocked during the night. There was some resentment because a greenhorn such as I had what was then considered a well paying job, while many locals were unemployed during the still-unrelieved Depression.
The personal difficulties I had were mainly with ethnic Germans who had immigrated into the US in the Twenties. They resented my efforts of setting them straight with respect to their distorted views of the Third Reich, which had been infected with anti-German media propaganda. My efforts to give them a more balanced view of the new Germany were usually given the pat admonishment: "Vee are Americans and venn in America you have to do as ze Americans do." This attitude, shared by the vast majority of ethnic Germans, comprising about twenty percent of the total population, is actually quite laudable and could, if practiced by the numerous and more vociferous minorities, would make life in our times much more agreeable. For the German-Americans it has led to a situation were they have, despite their not inconsiderable contributions to the progress and well-being of this country, become the politically most impotent group in the US. Compare this with the influence and power of American Jewry, whose supposedly two percent of the population occupies nearly fifty percent of the seats of the upper echelons of our government, and exerts an iron grip over the remainder. There is not a single German-sounding name in the ranks of our present administration! A more active participation in American politics by the large German minority would certainly have prevented the idiotic and disastrous participation of the US in a war in Europe which was instigated by the imperialistic ambitions of Russia, France and England. (For the best researched background to that conflagration, make sure to read Degrelle's Hitler: Born at Versailles). It also would probably have nullified the sinister plans of Roosevelt which caused the outbreak of the war in Poland and dragged the American people into it through his lying and the cynical sacrifice of nearly three thousand sailors and soldiers at Pearl Harbor.
The spring of 1939 saw Hitler's last effort to solve the problems of the German Jews in a civilized manner. He sent Hjalmar Schacht, the president of the Reichsbank and architect of of the German recovery, to England for the purpose of negotiating a large loan which would enable Germany to let the remaining 250,000 Jews emigrate with their belongings and the necessary financial means to assure the required immigration visas. The governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, along with many members of parliament, were agreeable to this scheme but it was immediately torpedoed by Chaim Weitzmann and the warmongers around Churchill, who had become a faithful servant of the Jewish banking hierarchy after they had saved him from bankruptcy from the loss of his fortunes in the crash of 1929. In earlier times he had been an outspoken anti-Jew. The Polish dictator Pilsudski had concluded a friendship and non-aggression treaty with Hitler but after his death the brainless chauvinistic successor, Colonel Beck, became a willing victim of Anglo-American intrigues. When Hitler advanced the incredibly generous offer to Poland which let her keep the totally undeserved spoils from World War I, and only asked permission to build an autobahn through the former German lands making up the "Korridor" to connect East Prussia with the Reich, and asked for the return of the predominantly German city Danzig, he was rebuffed. Danzig was a free city under the protectorate of the League of Nations. Roosevelt's traveling emissary, William Bullit, had completed his assignment well in Warsaw and London. England concluded a treaty with Poland promising instant help in case of war with Germany. Careful and treacherous as usual! For the still large German minority in Poland an incredible rule of terror ensued immediately. It resulted in 58,000 gruesomely mutilated German corpses, victims of murderous, thieving Polish mobs. The events and political machinations during the final days of August and the beginning of September are meticulously reported and referenced in the book, The Forced War, by the eminent American historian David Hoggan. The assumption of any guilt of Hitler in the outbreak of the war is simply ludicrous. Hitler, who had by then concluded the famous non-aggression pact with Stalin, reacted swiftly to the excesses of the Poles against the helpless German minorities in their midst and their multiple border violations.
During two month-long visits to Warsaw, where my mother's cousin (the one who survived seven years of captivity in Siberia during the first war) was manager of the largest and most exclusive nightclub in all of eastern Europe, I had plenty of opportunity to observe the large amount of Polish officers swaggering through the streets in their impressive uniforms and boasting about how they would get to Berlin in less than two weeks and ride triumphantly through the Brandenburg Gate. They had been persuaded by their leaders that the new German army was badly equipped and poorly trained and would revolt as soon as Hitler sent them to war. Well, they had to revise their travel plans a bit. The outmoded Polish air force was smashed in the first few hours of the conflict before it even could take to the air. Thereafter their army was driven eastwards into the loving embrace of the Russians, which had in the meantime advanced to the demarcation line previously agreed upon between Hitler and Stalin. The good friends of the Polish people in London and Paris declared war on Germany but did not send a single round of rifle ammunition to help them in their distress. Neither did they order a few regiments to distract the Germans in their endeavor to resolve the Polish question once and forever. Maybe I am wrong about that, because there is a story floating about that a couple of French regiments advanced a mile across the border into the Saarland but beat a hasty retreat after sighting a few German uniforms. The brutal but cautious Asiatic tyrant, ruling in Russia, immediately solved the problem of a possible organized resistance in Poland by ordering fourteen thousand of their officers and intelligentsia to be liquidated by the simple expedient of a single shot in the back of the head. This exemplary display of efficiency and frugality should be a valuable lesson to our money-squandering military establishment. The supposedly even more brutal Germans sent many of the captured Polish officers to schools were they could study fields of their choice, hoping that they would become useful members of the human society. This was possibly a mistake.
After the successful completion of the Polish campaign Hitler began the demobilization of his army, because he was convinced that the British were sufficiently reasonable to discontinue a war which by now had become utterly senseless. Most of the British were possibly agreeable to this, as were the French. Not so Mr. Roosevelt, who ordered his ambassador, Joe Kennedy, to "put some iron up the British backsides." Kennedy was reluctant to do it, was recalled and went home fearing for his life, according to his own remarks. The war continued; Hitler sent his soldiers to the recently constructed West wall and the warring armies were staring at each other for several months. The "phony war!" After several unsuccessful tries to persuade the stubborn English to make peace, Hitler finally decided to end this nonsense and went to the attack. The invincible French army as well as their British allies and even the impenetrable Maginot Line collapsed within a few weeks under the rapid advance of Guderian's panzers and the relentless pounding of the Stukas. The British retreated to Dunkerque, Hitler ordered his victorious panzers to stop and let the expeditionary force escape to England. This was a very bad mistake which none of his enemies would have made. But then he was after all a sort of idealist who simply could not comprehend that his racial brothers across the sea would not finally see the light and agree to make peace. They didn't, which eventually cost them their empire and reduced them to the status of a small secondary power. Their megalomaniacal, alcoholic leader was from now on merely a lieutenant to our "great" president.
The French were ordered to sign the armistice in the same railroad car in which the Germans were previously forced to sign the armistice after the First War. In typical brutal Hitlerian fashion he ordered a German army band to strike up the French national anthem at the arrival of the emissaries and opened his speech by paying homage to his brave enemies who had fallen in the defense of their country. Compare this with the humiliating behavior of the "gentlemen" of the British army who, after the final defeat of Germany, arrested the only legal post-Hitlerian German government of Admiral Doenitz. They stormed into the room where the Germans had been waiting for them, shouting: "Hands up, pants down!" and proceeded to steal all their personal items including the fountain pens. For me, having grown up in post-Versailles Germany, the day of the signing of the French surrender was one of the happiest of my life. Justice had finally been done!
Back in Binghamton my life became less carefree because of the incessant anti-German propaganda which was to push the reluctant American people into joining the homicide far beyond their shores. Theodore Kaufmann was laboring on his infamous opus, Germany Must Perish, which demanded that all Germans of reproductive age should be sterilized, a book which was highly recommended by Roosevelt, especially for recruits of the newly drafted army. It was said that the Germans, who were not even able to cross the English Channel in force, were going to invade Brazil and proceed their march northwards to attack the US. The highly-paid Jewish managers of Agfa-Ansco suddenly became suspected of being secret Nazi agents and as for me personally, most people were sure of it because not only was I not Jewish but I had also previously defended Germany and worst of all I had required a secondhand Buick for the princely sum of $750 as early as November 1939. Since this seemed to be impossible, considering my still low-level position, I must surely have received remunerations for my activities in service of the Third Reich. In addition, some observant neighbor had seen me at night carrying a suspicious looking briefcase, probably containing contraband of some sort. Actually I was attending an evening course in order to improve my still very limited English and carried my writing papers in the briefcase. I was reported to the local District Attorney and called on the carpet for this deviation. It took the chief of the Binghamton FBI office to supply me with a clean bill of health. [Try that today!]
With the beginning of 1941 I also had some problems in connection with my mother. She was still living by herself in Berlin, since my parents had been divorced back in 1919. The nightly attacks of the RAF on the city were becoming a real nuisance and she put great pressure on me to facilitate her immigration. This was again very difficult to achieve. My affidavit for her was rated as insufficient, because of my limited income and also I had as yet not become a full citizen. My first papers of citizenship were already issued during 1939. The American Consul General, Mr. Geist, had shortly after my leaving Germany become acting ambassador because Ambassador Dodd was recalled by Roosevelt. In the spring of 1940 Geist was also returning to America to be put in charge of commercial affairs in the department of state in Washington. I visited him shortly after his return in the DOS and at his home in Georgetown, where he assured me that Roosevelt was getting into this war come hell or high water. ("I say it now and again and again, that your sons will never be sent to fight on foreign soil, etc. etc.....") I therefore knew already then that the war was lost for Germany and felt that I owed it to my mother to spare her the inevitably approaching catastrophe. Geist advised me that my mother could only hope to come here by way of a capitalist immigration visa. My by-then good friend and mentor von Meister took it upon himself to deposit $3,500 into a bank account for my mother, who then received her immigration visa for the US without any further delay. The next problem was how to get her out of Germany and Europe. With the air war raging over Germany, civilian transportation was sharply restricted, especially for totally unessential emigrants to the US, which was by now considered enemy territory because of Roosevelt's loaning fifty destroyers to Britain and his surreptitiously ordered attacks on German submarines in the Atlantic. This time Dr. Eckener solved our problem by a personal call to Air Marshal Göring, who at that time was already plagued by more pressing problems than the transportation of my mother. Nevertheless, he immediately ordered that she be put on a diplomatic flight to Lisbon, which took her there two days later. After a wait of two weeks she was able to board a freighter which brought her to America. Only two weeks after her arrival, Hitler was forced to start the preventive war against the Soviet Union, after Stalin had assembled 140 divisions, and a larger and more modern tank force than Germany could muster at the time, at the eastern border of the Reich. Stalin was ready to start his dreamed-of conquest of Europe.
Surprisingly, the German army beat the Russians to the gates of Moscow, despite its lower numbers and inferior tanks. They did, however, have much better trained soldiers and far superior leadership. The advance of the Germans was stopped by the onset of an abnormally harsh winter for which they lacked the appropriate clothing. Stalin's breathing spell was used to re-equip his forces, thanks to a massive influx of American war matériel of all kinds. Stalin could also shift his large Siberian armies to the west, having concluded a non-aggression pact with Japan, which made the fatal mistake to fall into the trap Roosevelt had set for them at Pearl Harbor. Had they attacked Russia instead, to help their ally Germany, Stalin could not have recovered from his defeat and Roosevelt would not have been able to drag this country into the war by the back door.
My situation in Binghamton became now quite precarious. After Pearl Harbor all German emigrants who had as yet not acquired full citizenship (it took a minimum of five years of continuous residence in the US to receive the second and final papers) had to leave Agfa-Ansco, which by now was named simply Ansco Corp. This included the Jewish top managers. The Swiss-owned General Aniline was illegally disowned and put under the totally inept management of the Enemy Alien Property Custodian. In addition, the top management of the corporation was sued for infringement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It was a totally ridiculous, trumped-up charge and the government indirectly admitted as much by thwarting every effort to let it come to a trial. Von Meister was able to switch me to his Ozalid Corp., but a few days later the axe fell on him, too. A born Britisher who had years ago become an American citizen was now considered suspect because his late father had been a prominent figure in imperial Germany. The well laid plans of my becoming the future director of research at the camera plant were thereby shattered. One afternoon three agents of the FBI showed up and confiscated my camera (it was returned in good condition after the war) as well as those of my two roommates. I showed them the shortwave coils, which I had removed from my radio set, as required by the law, which prohibited the possession of shortwave radios by enemy aliens. One of the agents turned on the radio and, believe it or not, the booming voice of Der Führer filled the room, giving a major pep talk to the German nation. Short waves are very tricky. Everybody had a good laugh but the radio was taken anyhow. The next day a front page photo appeared in the local blat showing all the contraband taken from the enemies and, of course, all their names given. As it turned out I stayed at Ozalid another eight months, but then I had to leave because their copy papers were considered essential to the war effort.
In four years my career had now advanced from an unwanted non-Aryan in Germany to an unemployed enemy alien in the US. Because I had to eat and to support my mother, I was desperately looking for a job until the kind hearted owner of a German-American bakeshop hired me to drive his delivery truck, which brought bread and rolls to most of the restaurants in and around Binghamton. This job actually paid as well as my former engineering position, but when the owner found out about my professional background he immediately pulled me off the truck and wanted me to look after the machinery in his largely automated bakery. First I had to learn everything about baking bread, which paid much less than driving a truck, but to keep me he gave me a raise every week. The working hours were brutal. I had to be at the shop at 3 am and left around 2 pm. Being already used to a more leisurely approach to making a living, I got on the phone to call Mr. Geist at the department of state and let him have my tale of woe. Within a few days I held in my hands the papers, which stated that I could be hired for war-work up to the classification of "Confidential." I was now on my own and luckily another German-American, who was director of research at the Tung-Sol Lamp works in Newark hired me over the telephone. Newark not being a very attractive place, I rented a nice little apartment in a high-rise on Manhattan's West Side. Everything went well for about nine months, when I was called in to my boss, who sadly told me, that "Washington" had revoked my working permit. No reasons given. Some dimwitted official probably had to show that he was doing his job, watching diligently that no dangerous alien impaired the safety of the war effort. I was told that I would be paid an additional two weeks and that I could return as soon as I straightened things out with Washington. In a similar case affecting a German-American colleague of mine who was already a full citizen, the "straightening-out" process had taken six months. Sitting with my mother in a, for me rather costly, apartment, recently furnished on credit, the situation was depressing to say the least. And now, on my way home, I experienced one of those little episodes which assured me that there is something basically all right with the American people and gives hope, even in the present desperate times, that things eventually can be turned around. In passing a small shop selling electrical appliances and radios I noticed a sign in the window: "Radio Repair-Man Wanted!" I had absolutely no experience in radio repair, but being at least theoretically quite familiar with the functioning of a radio set and having built some primitive sets by myself, when I was still a kid about fifteen years earlier, I decided to try this "opportunity." The little old lady who owned the shop asked me about my radio know-how and I told her that I was a graduated engineer and an expert in the design of radio tubes. Hearing my very heavy accent she then asked where I had come from. I could have told her that I was Swiss or Austrian, which would have been at least partially true, but in my somewhat bitter mood I blurted out, "I am German!" and got ready to leave. Then something happened, which could not have happened in any other country under similar circumstances. She simply said, "Oh! If you are German, you must be a good repairman and you can start work immediately." She was definitely not of German extraction. In my weakened condition, I was ready to burst into tears. With all the propaganda constantly telling how dangerous these wicked Germans were, she must have actually retained some common sense and refused to believe that vicious nonsense.
My career as a radio repair man was only short-lived. As usual, I had called Mr. Geist at the department of state and told him of my problems. He said that he was going to look into what could be done in my behalf. It was two weeks later that I was just removing an electrocuted and partially decomposed mouse from a bad-smelling, inoperative radio set, when I got a call from my boss at Tung-Sol. "Heinz," he said, "a miracle has happened. The United States Government has moved within less than two weeks in your case and you can come back immediately to your old job."
The remaining two years of the war were personally rather uneventful. Shortly before the surrender of Germany I was called to a final interview about my upcoming citizenship. The interviewer, a very unpleasant Jewish lady, started by asking if I was not ashamed for holding on to my German name, to which I angrily replied that I saw no reason not to be proud of my German heritage. This about ended the interview and I was convinced that I had failed in my efforts to become an American citizen. To my great surprise a couple of days later, I received notice to appear in court to be sworn in as a new citizen and to pick up my final papers. My first act, after being sworn in, was to take a subway train to a downtown gun shop were I purchased a Springfield rifle, caliber .30-'06, in perfect condition. At the time, non-citizens were still prohibited from possessing any kind of firearm and when I walked home with my new acquisition proudly slung across my back, I began to realize that I finally had become an American.
During the postwar years we have experienced an ever-increasing propaganda effort denigrating everything German, including a vicious campaign aimed at the poisoning of the minds of generations of German youths, unfortunately with great success. Nothing of the kind was ever done to the Japanese, who after all did attack the US, even if it was in desperate self defense against being choked by economic strictures enforced by our government. There never has been an established act of enmity by Germany against the US before the former was attacked by the latter in the First or Second World Wars. But then, the Japanese did not persecute Jews. They did not have to, because there was no Jewish presence in Japan.
The complete lack of veracity in reporting anything about Germany and the outbreak of the war became obvious to me shortly after I arrived in this country and my conviction that a colossal fraud was imposed on the American people by the Jewish-controlled media has been reinforced ever since. I like to relate a few personal experiences which started me on the road of becoming a one hundred percent supporter of historical revisionism.
Already at a very early age I became aware of the fact that my mother was received with open arms into the family of my father, while a great number of her own family never forgave her for marrying a "goy." In later years I found that this is the rule rather than an exception. In case of mixed marriages it is nearly always the Jewish part of the family which shows resentment and only very rarely the non-Jewish. This racist attitude found its most concrete expression in the Israeli law forbidding its citizen the marriage with non-Jews. Only very recently was this law repealed.
I mentioned above that my mother had a cousin who spent seven years as a prisoner of war in Siberia and had become the manager of a very exclusive nightclub in Warsaw. During my visits in 1934 and 1936, I had become friendly with the two bandleaders, a pair of Jewish brothers, who conducted the two excellent orchestras on the premises, which were kept open twenty-four hours every day. Later, in 1939, the great World's Fair opened in New York. Symbolically the most impressive structure, at least on the outside, was the Soviet Russian pavilion. Thanks to the machinations of New York's mayor, LaGuardia, Germany was not permitted to build an exhibit, a decision made more than a year before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. During the second year of the fair in the summer of 1940 I again visited the mostly exquisite exhibits. While standing in front of the Polish pavilion, who should walk up to me but my Warsawian acquaintance, one of the bandleaders from my cousin's nightclub. Upon my question as to how he was able to get out of Poland, he told me that he, his brother and their family had been very lucky. When the German armies were approaching Warsaw, they packed up and started to flee eastwards. After hearing that the Russians were invading Poland from the east, they immediately and luckily decided to put their fate into the hands of the rapidly advancing Germans. Shortly after turning around they fell into the hands of the SS. Being able to produce their valid immigration visas for the US, they were treated with the utmost consideration by the SS, which immediately made arrangements for their safe transportation through war-torn Poland and from there to Turkey from where they secured passage to the US.
Sometime during the year 1946 I attended a party in New York where many Jews were present. One of the young fellows spoke fluent German and during a conversation he told me that he had spent many months as an internee at the Buchenwald-Belsen concentration camp. Immediately I asked him about the Beast of Belsen, Ilse Koch (Lampshades of specially picked human skins, etc., etc.). "Oh, those are just stories," he said. "I know for certain, because for several months I was assigned the duty to be her chamber boy who had to clean her premises. She acted absolutely normal and correctly and was never abusive. Only after what happened to her husband, the camp commander, she came close to a nervous breakdown." He had embezzled funds which were part of the money designated to purchase the necessary supplies for the inmates of the camp, was prosecuted of his crime by an SS court, sentenced to die and summarily shot. To anybody familiar with the extremely strict rules of conduct for the German armed forces, especially in occupied enemy territory, this story is not very surprising. For example, any German soldier caught raping a woman faced a firing squad shortly thereafter. Compare this with the announcement of the Russian commanders to their forces invading Germany at a later date, that all enemy females were their property, or the recommendation of President Roosevelt that our troops should study Kaufmann's tract, Germany Must Perish, which recommended that all Germans of reproductive age be sterilized. The case of Ilse Koch went eventually before the American High Commissioner of occupied Germany, Mark Clark, by whom she was exonerated of all pending charges and freed. Several years later the German authorities were pressured into re-arresting her (Never forget, never forgive!) and [she] allegedly committed suicide in her cell.
A very substantial boost to my revisionist thinking was received during my first of several business trips to Israel. Like every other visitor I was subjected to an obligatory visit of the holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. On entering I observed a small (8 by 10) framed note hung up on the wall facing the entering visitor but easily overlooked because of its diminutive size. It stated that there were never any extermination camps within the borders of the Reich. Only in occupied Poland were the murderous gassings performed. I was thunderstruck by this revelation right from the horse's mouth! It was July 1978 and I had never heard through our "official" media that all of the stories about exterminations in German camps were obvious lies. Not even to this day is this public knowledge. To the contrary, not a day passes that the newspapers do not refer, either directly or through letter writers calling themselves eye witnesses, to the victims of mass-murder in the German camps. The, by now admitted, mass murder of 560 mostly invalid Waffen-SS front fighters at Dachau by the American "liberators" is discretely never mentioned (see: Buechner, Dachau, The Day of the Avenger). Another revealing piece of information, on the same 8 by 10 inch announcement, informs the astonished reader that on the 5th November, 1938 (which accidentally happens to be the day on which I emigrated) only 250,000 Jews were left in all of Germany. Of those, it says, about 100,000 survived the war in Germany while about 150,000 cannot be accounted for. The remaining 450,000 of the prewar Jewish population of Greater Germany, about 700,000, had thereby already safely emigrated before the above mentioned date. Not mentioned was how many of the missing 150,000 emigrated between the fall of 1938 and the summer of 1941, when the forced deportation of the remaining German Jews began, or how many perished during the genocidal Allied attacks on the German civilian population. The first or second room displayed a wall-sized mural of the famous picture of the little Jewish boy followed by his family, hands raised in front of a German soldier with rifle lowered at the pathetic group. Of course everybody knows that these people were being marched off to the gas chambers to meet their doom. At the moment of this writing I am holding in my hands a large book, entitled Adolph (sic) Hitler--A Photographic Documentary, by Ivor Mantanle, 1983, Crescent Books, Crown Publishers. It is opened to a double-spread copy of the famous picture. The title says: "The image of this little boy in Warsaw shocked the world and became a wartime symbol of the horrors of Nazi persecution of the Jews. Amazingly he survived and is today a prosperous London businessman. He has never forgotten his ordeal in spring 1943." In the meantime there have spoken up one or two more men in New York and England, who vie for the fame of being the miraculously surviving little boy. The pictures of thousands of burst pregnant women, burnt children and partially molten corpses, the leftovers of the firestorm in Dresden, have not made it, as yet, to any public showing. Nor those of the German soldiers who had surrendered in Prague and were strung up by their feet, alive, soaked with gasoline and lit to illuminate the triumphal return of Mr. Benes.
Since there seems to be no shortage of "Holocaust" survivors around the world, I should like at this point to mention some more revealing statistics. According to a carefully conducted population study by Sanning (The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry), which takes into account the flight of Jews from these areas before the war as well as the evacuation of more than two million Jews by the Soviets in the areas soon to be occupied by the advancing German armies (they were dropped somewhere in Siberia and left to shift for themselves), there were about 3.5 million Jews who were left in the domain occupied and controlled by Germany, which reached from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. As, of course, everybody knows, six million of them were murdered by the vicious Nazis. Yet only a few years ago I read in the German-language, Jewish weekly "Aufbau" from New York the proud announcement, that already more than four million "Holocaust" survivors have received financial restitutions from Germany! To comprehend these numbers to be simultaneously as correct must take a mathematical genius of Einsteinian dimensions. Looking into my latest World Almanac (1989) I also discover some astounding facts. Remembering the Jewish declaration of war against Germany--not against the Nazis!--in the London Daily Telegraph of March 1933, it said that fourteen million Jews worldwide stood behind this declaration. Subtract six million, which leaves eight million.
According to my World Almanac, which bases its numbers on Jewish sources, there were 18,075,400 Jews worldwide (pg. 591). For reasons unbeknownst to me the breakdown of this number by geographical regions totally suppresses the roughly four million Jews in Israel! In a recent book by the Russian-Jewish author Sonya Sallmann (?), which exposes the true extent of Jewish control in Soviet Russia, it is claimed that the present count of about four million Jews in Russia is simply ludicrous and a number of ten million would be by far more realistic. This would leave the worldwide Jewish population at well above twenty-five million! A remarkable recovery by a people whose leadership constantly bemoans the frightfully low birthrate of Jewry. I should also like to mention that the recent reduction of more than two and a half million from the roster of supposed victims in Auschwitz has not even made a dent in the six million trumpeted on a daily basis by our "free democratic" media. Finally I want to state my firm conviction, being thoroughly familiar with German efficiency as well as the attitude of eastern Europeans towards their Jewish host populations, that, if it was decided by the Germans to exterminate the Jews, they would have solved this problem promptly and without encountering any gigantic logistic problems, by simply putting up posters announcing to the indigenous populations that from now on there was open season on all Jews. The Jewish problem would have disappeared permanently within a few weeks or maybe months.
The sickening continuation of the war by other means is the main reason for my writing these compressed memoirs of mine, hoping that some people, by reading them, might change their minds about Germans and their National Socialist government. I have always regretted that I was not permitted to serve Germany in its time of great need and feel absolutely no resentment because of Hitler's racial policies. To the contrary, I am convinced that the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were an absolute necessity and if they could be enforced throughout that part of the world which still considers itself white they would prevent a coming disaster of unimaginable dimensions. Only a highly disciplined, racially and culturally homogeneous nation, like Hitler's Germany, could have achieved the unprecedented recovery from nearly total destruction and loss of practically all resources and one-third of her territory to her sadistically vengeful, victorious assassins. The systematic effort to convert the world into a racial cesspool will lead to a condition which was predicted by Hitler seventy years ago in his fundamental work, Mein Kampf. These are his words: "If ever the Jew succeeds in conquering the people of this world by means of his Marxist ideology, his crowning achievement will be the dance of death of humanity. The planet will then move through space without a human being, like millions of years ago."
With my very best wishes for you and your wife, I am always yours.
Heinz H. Weichardt
[NOTE:
I have taken the liberty of correcting numerous minor typographical and
grammatical errors, but nothing which could alter meaning. –JR, ed.]