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Capitalism in Decay

!capitalismindecay@lemmygrad.ml

5 years ago

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Fascism is capitalism in decay. As with anticommunism in general, the ruling class has oversimplified this phenomenon to the point of absurdity and teaches but a small fraction of its history. This is the spot for getting a serious understanding of it (from a more proletarian perspective) and collecting the facts that contemporary anticommunists are unlikely to discuss.

Posts should be relevant to either fascism or neofascism, otherwise they belong in !latestagecapitalism@lemmygrad.ml. If you are unsure if the subject matter is related to either, share it there instead. Off‐topic posts shall be removed.

No capitalist apologia or other anticommunism. No bigotry, including racism, misogyny, ableism, heterosexism, or xenophobia. Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades should feel welcome.

For our purposes, we consider early Shōwa Japan to be capitalism in decay.

Capitalism in Decay

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 9 months ago • 100%

The Capitalism in Decay Megathread

Due to another user’s request, I have decided to compile threads on fascism, profascism, Japanese Imperialism, & neofascism here for your convenience. This compilation is, of course, incomplete, & its structure is subject to eventual change, but I hope that it suffices. # Origins * [German towns & cities with a history of medieval pogroms were likelier to support Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/691946) * [The History of Fascism in Ukraine, with Prof. Barry Lituchy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/311560) * [The U.S.’s many influences on German Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3486522): [The colonization of North America inspired the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1248822) & [the Third Reich’s Chancellor was inspired by racist ‘Wild West’ stories](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1169177) * [How the Second Reich’s Colonialism in Africa Incubated Ideas & Methods Adopted & Developed by the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/654182) * [How European imperialism in general influenced the Third Reich’s imperialism in particular](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/376261) * [The Armenian Genocide inspired the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1498253) * [Really Existing Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2514078) * [Why Mussolini shifted from socialism to Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/769209) * [How World War I created Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3177738) * [The History of Fascism in Ukraine, Pt. I: The Origins of the OUN, 1917–1941](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/538346) * [Crash course on the Freikorps: social democracy’s pawns & German Fascism’s heritage](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1044917) * [Many of the Gestapo’s leading officials also worked for the Weimar Republic](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1052889) # Economics * [**The Functions of Fascism, a monologue by Michael Parenti**](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/457159) (highly recommended) * [The Corporate State in Action](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/420482) * [White‐collar workers in Italy from the Liberal to the Fascist era](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1727974) * [The Fascists promoted ‘class collaboration’ over class struggle](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1233966) * [The first privatisation: Selling SOEs & privatising public monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922–1925)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/462843) * [The advertising industry flourished under Fascism; many Fascist advertisers learned their techniques from the U.S.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3743127) * [Imperial capitalists once marketed products based on three accidental deaths](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/345563) * [In Fascist Italy, state interference in the private sector was minimal](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/107037); [a refutation of the old ‘fascism is socialism’ nonsense…from 1936](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/518305) * [Analysis of the Fascist colonization of Libya](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2763896) * [Analysis on the recruitment of Italian proletarians to Eritrea under Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/936147) * [The Anglo‐American ruling classes wiped out Fascist Italy’s WWI debts](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/449626); [in the 1920s, the American govt. effectively forgave 80.4% of Fascist Italy’s war debt](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/94628) * [Fascist Italy’s economy was directly influenced by Morgan Bank](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/93323) * [How nutrition worsened under Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/535177) * [How the Fascists handled unemployment](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2460657) * [London supported Fascism’s intrusion into Albania’s economy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/103385) * [The most shockingly honest summary of Fascism that you’ll see from capitalists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/390118) * [Against the Mainstream: Fascist Privatization in 1930s Germany](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/463968) * [The Fascist prehistory of the shoes & sportswear company Adidas](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/458205) * [The Third Reich was not a planned economy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/612010) * [The transfer of Jewish‐owned property into “Aryan” hands was at first left to private initiative](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/466425) * [The Weimar Republican origins of the Reich’s “welfare” bureaucracy & its use to the Fascist bourgeoisie](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/468331) * [The Workers’ Opposition in the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/508579); [the folly of the Third Reich’s ‘Strength through Joy’ initiative](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3104560); [street politics in Hamburg & the lower‐class struggle against anticommunism, 1932–3](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/510623) * [How petty bourgeois white musicians benefitted from German Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/517466) * [Adolf Schicklgruber’s capitalism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1418855) * [The Third Reich supplied Tel Aviv with building materials](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3306020) & [funded most of the Zionist settlements in Palestine from 1933 to 1941](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3294394), which [included some prefabricated buildings](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3435504) * [Zionists became distribution agents for Fascist products all over the Middle East & North Africa](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3272753); [Zionism rendered the Jewish boycott on German goods useless](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3378380) * [British bankers extended credits to the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3070876) * [Consumer research in the Third Reich was based on that in the U.S.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3124507) * [Tobacco policies (or the want thereof) in the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/608826) * [Fascist Beanie Babies](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/98252) * [Recruitment & coercion in Imperial Japan: evidence from colonial Karafuto’s forestry & construction industries](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1711549) * [The secret behind Fascist Italy’s food self‐sufficiency](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/857135) (and no, just because a country is food self‐sufficient doesn’t mean that everybody is eating well) * [The Fascists were forced to rely on Ethiopian labor to feed white colonists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/710411) * [Fascist‐occupied E. Africa received 26.9% of its oil from the U.S. in 1935](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1606626) * [An analysis of the Fascist takeover & segregation of an Ethiopian marketplace](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/753775) * [Analysis of the white proletariat in E. Africa under its Fascist occupation](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/885301) * [Britain exported considerable quantities of scrap metal to the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3058666) * [U.S. capitalists supplied Japanese Imperialists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3200620) * [The Third Reich was the source of 60% of all investment in Zionist‐occupied Palestine from 1933–1939](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1879120) * [Southeastern European capitalists willingly supported antisemitism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/130222) & [Southeastern European capitalists benefited the Third Reich’s rearmament tremendously](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/444213) * [The Third Reich made it easy for landlords to evict Jewish tenants](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1126810) * [How Allied capitalists supplied Fascist Germany throughout WWII](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/509269); [corporate America’s support for the Third Reich was so crucial that the U.S. might as well have been an Axis power](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3755791); [these American corporations aided the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/99758) * [Liberal capitalists greatly rearmed prefascist Romania, which traded heavily with Fascist states](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/558855) * [Native banks in Zhejiang prospered under Axis occupation](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/500839) * [Norwegian capitalists asked Fascists to forge letters saying that they were ‘forced’ to collaborate](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/91272) * [How Danish capitalists willingly collaborated with the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/96739); [more than one thousand Danish capitalists happily assisted the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/339909) * [The Third Reich interfered minimally in France’s private sector](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/104943) * [Netherlandish capitalists willingly collaborated with the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/101104) * [Swiss capitalism was critical to the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/601908) * [Antisemitism made Bulgarian capitalists richer](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/621978) * [Portugal & the Third Reich’s Gold](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/577432) * [Finland was the Third Reich’s only ally that was allowed to buy German goods on credit](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3166634) * [The Cloaking of Fascist Assets Abroad, 1936–1945](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/129148) * [Gold, Debt & the Quest for Monetary Order: The Fascist Campaign to Integrate Europe in 1940](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/131297) * [Finnish–Fascist Relations & the Diplomacy of the Petsamo Question, March–December 1940](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/126482) * [Fascist officials & SS commanders amassed personal fortunes](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/365362) * [The Empire of Japan employed millions of child laborers](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/610574) * [How the Axis (partially) caused famines in Vietnam & Java](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/642932) * [Why fellow capitalists bailed out Axis businessman Alfried Krupp](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/88298) * [The labour movement & business élites under fascist dictator Francisco Franco, 1939–1951](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/632760) # Culture * [Why Fascism (mostly) opposed Freemasonry](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/878930) * [How Fascism Ruled Women](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/541372); [the Fascists mobilized women for their colonization of Ethiopia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3596037); [Women & Alcohol Consumption in Fascist Italy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/603629) * [Corporal punishment & psychological violence were common in Fascist Italy’s rural schools](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3616776) * [How the Fascists altered the ancient landscape of Rome to fit their agenda](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/547466) * [How Fascist Italy suppressed abortion](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/303741) * [Fascist propaganda in pre‐1933 Germany](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/645754) * [The history of the fascist motto ‘Slava Ukraini’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/468886) * [Hermann Göring predicted that ‘nobody in Germany will know what Marxism is’ by 1983](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/785512) * [Policing under German Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/626812) * [‘Race, military training, leadership, religion! These are the four unshakable foundations of [German Fascism’s] education!’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3233952) * [Christmas under the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3114948) * [Fascists normalized imperialism for children with games, playthings, & even dishware](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/652729) * [There were competing factions in the Third Reich’s govt.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3575067) * [Police propaganda (copaganda) in Europe’s Fascist empires](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/650242) * [Redefining the Individual in Berlin, 1930–1945](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/217082) * [Archaeology confirms that…the Fascists avoided African cuisine like the fucking plague](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/648540) * [The Third Reich strongly discouraged marriages & sexual relations with Italians (even during Axis membership)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3647568) * [The Fascists built a zoo right next to one of their concentration camps](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3637544) * [The Fascists intentionally built a merry‐go‐round next to the Warsaw Ghetto](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3368174) * [A collection of bizarre or unsettling posters from Fascist Italy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/591193); [‘Russian folk, Stalin orders you to die in order to save the Jew!’ (Serbia, 1942)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3444879); [a typical example of OUN‐B propaganda, dated 1941](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/446550) * [Those Who Said “No!”: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians during World War II](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3156797) * [Some Fascists contemplated keeping the earth’s last remaining Jews in a zoo](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2901673) * [The Fascists were the only force in history to deploy a sonic weapon in the field of battle](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3473631) * [Scandinavia & the U.S. sterilized more people than Fascist Italy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2723874) * [Suicide figures of German Fascists in 1945](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/210404) * [The Last of the Wehrmacht to Surrender in WWII](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/434540); [Europe’s last Axis troops surrendered in September 4, 1945](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1640632) # Foreign policy * [Fascist Italy’s annexation of Fiume](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/553117) * [Greece & Fascist Italy signed a Treaty of Friendship, Conciliation, & Judicial Settlement](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1992453) * [Fascist Italy funded efforts to achieve cultural hegemony in Eastern Europe](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/744966) * [Fascist Italy & the Kingdom of Romania signed a ‘Pact of Friendship & Cordial Collaboration’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1859403) * [The Treaty of Defensive Alliance between Fascist Italy & Albania](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2773106) * [The Penetration of Italian Fascism in Nationalist China](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/500080) * [The Fascists skillfully manipulated many Italian‐Americans into promoting Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/688204) * [Britain’s, France’s, & the Fascists’ Four‐Power Pact](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/956413) * [Introducing the Anti‐Komintern: Fascism’s own little ‘NGO’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/124939) * [Poland & the Third Reich signed a nonaggression pact](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3437154) * [Polish–German film relations in the process of building Fascist cultural hegemony in Europe](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/595996) * [Poland’s ruling class let Fascists spread propaganda in its country](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/684106) * [Fascist Italy hired an American to train dozens of its cadets](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1513779) * [The Fascists spied on Italians living thousands of miles away from Italy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/705473) * [Latinism & Hispanism in the Hispano‐American Right in Interwar Spain & Argentina](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2860449) * [Italian Fascist propaganda in Finland (1933–9)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/113427) * [The Mussolini–Jabotinsky Connection: The Hidden Roots of Israel’s Fascist Past](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/142732); [Zionist support for Italian Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2409282); [the Fascists created Zionism’s first naval academy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2482078) * [Zionist collaboration](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3494119) [with the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2379065): [The ‘Jewish Agency for Israel’ maintained friendly relations with the Third Reich’s head of state as early as 1933](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3534873), [Zionists saw the victory of Fascism in Germany as a ‘fertile force’ for Zionism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3658733), [the Third Reich generally supported Zionism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2334919), [the Third Reich produced Zionist films](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2534198), [it trained (Zionist) Jews in agriculture to help settle them in Palestine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2568540), & [‘The ardent Zionists […] have objected least of all to the basic ideas of the Nuremberg Laws’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/509901) * [How the Third Reich supported China’s anticommunists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/128552) * [The Anglo‐German Naval Pact of 1935](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/755482) * [How Racist Policies in Fascist Italy Inspired & Informed the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/403875) * [The Fascists drew upon British Kenya & South Africa to implement racial policies in Ethiopia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/680560) * [A sample of Italian Fascist colonialism: nursing & medical records in the Imperial War in Ethiopia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/442379) * [Maltese support for Fascism & Rome’s support for Maltese fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1954569) * [Romanian students & researchers in the Third Reich became tools of Fascist propaganda](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/613917) * [The Fascists partially created one of South Africa’s worst organizations](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/386078) * [Some Zionists compared their ideology favorably to German Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3283730) * [Transnationalizing fascist martyrs: an entangled history](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/172516) * [The Spectacle of Global Fascism: The Italian Blackshirt mission to Japan’s Asian empire](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/132098) * [Paris & Fascist Italy’s Franco‐Italian Declaration (“an outright military alliance”)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3247201) * [Fascist Italy helped train Ukrainian & Croatian ultranationalists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/331545) * [The Indians (of South Asia) who fought for the Axis](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3565222) * [A brief guide to the Blueshirts: Ireland’s Fascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/533683) * [Conceptions & Practices of International Fascism in Norway, Sweden & the Netherlands, 1930–40](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/631394) * [Fascism’s alleged ‘War on Slavery’ during the 1930s](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/566960); [the various native reactions to Fascism’s invasion of Ethiopia, from resistance to collaboration](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/661660) * [The Anti‐Comintern Pact](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2798921) * [The Rome–Berlin Axis](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2551737) * [Russian anticommunist collaboration with Spanish fascists (1936–1944)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/629792) * [The Dalai Lama & the Fascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/594416) * [The Third Reich was a useful ally to the Spanish fascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/983420) * [Fascist Plans for Mass Jewish Settling in Ethiopia (1936–1943)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/443246) * [Imperial Japan helped Finland decrypt Soviet military codes in its war on the Soviets](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/430319) * [Collaboration between Polish anticommunists & Japanese Imperialists in the 1930s & 1940s](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2224252) * [A guide to the ‘Honorary Aryans’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2599408) * [Britain, France, & Fascist Italy gave part of Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2121750) * [Paris & the Third Reich signed a Franco‐German Declaration](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2910456) * [Estonia & Latvia ratified nonaggression pacts with the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1029307) * [Why Berlin signed a nonaggression treaty with Moscow](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1449043) * [Why Thailand aligned with the Axis](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/597437) * [Ukrainian fascists in Poland fled towards the Third Reich for safety from the Soviets](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/374118) * [The Tripartite Pact](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2068089) * [France’s New Caledonia: The missing link between the Third Reich & the Empire of Japan](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3669207) * [The Axis’s national policy towards the Russian minority in the Baltic States](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/436303) * [The Empire of Japan’s counterinsurgency before 1945 & its persistent legacies in Asia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/620461) * [How Fascist Italy recruited Greeks to shill for the Axis](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/943151) * [The Netherlands had one of the highest numbers of Waffen SS volunteers in Western Europe](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2701574) * [Fascist Italy was a valuable ally to the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/658795) * [Denmark’s volunteers in the Waffen SS](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2161947) * [The Slovak Republic’s Axis membership](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2789527) * [The Kingdom of Hungary’s Axis membership](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2752285) * [The Kingdom of Romania’s Axis membership](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2781175) * [Percentage of ‘non‐Germanic’ troops who helped start Operation Barbarossa](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/122369) * [Liechtenstein was complicit in Axis war crimes](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1935369) * [The Estonian Security Police’s collaboration with the Axis](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/581071) * [Why the Empire of Japan went to war against Imperial America](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2921087) * [Foreigners who joined the Wehrmacht & Waffen‐SS by January 1942](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/123867) * [The Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism: France’s truly pathetic Wehrmacht formation](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/920724) * [Turkey’s ‘Treaty of Friendship’ with the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/761137) * [Fascists forced thousands to build a railway in Finland, barely used it, & then destroyed it](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/467552) * [Handbook on Axis imperialism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/528264) * [‘Neutral’ European states that assisted the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/76983) # Atrocities * [**Why the Fascist bourgeoisie committed the Holocaust**](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3446353) (highly recommended) * [**Masterpost on Italian Fascism’s atrocities**](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1415023) (highly recommended) * [The *brava gente* myth: Fascist Italy’s equivalent to the ‘clean Wehrmacht’ lie](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3240908) * [The Fascists repeatedly assaulted Libyan Jews in the 1920s & later](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3261132) * [The Fascists’ suppression of Libya prepared them for their invasion of Ethiopia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3516742) * [Continuities & Discontinuities: Antiziganism in Germany & Italy (1900–1938)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3220968); [Roma & Sinti in Fascist Italy: from expelled foreigners to dangerous Italians](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/511249) * [The Imperial invasion of Manchuria](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1897727); [Bodies in the Service of the Japanese Empire: Colonial Medicine in Manchuria](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/369461) * [The Fascist suppression of the Free Union of German Workers](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/913011) * [The Third Reich legalized the sterilization of disabled people](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/951786) * [The Fascists sometimes explicitly encouraged Jews to attempt suicide](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1744609) * [The Third Reich’s racism against the Japanese](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1563646) * [The first Nuremberg Laws](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1840544) * [Transgender People, the Third Reich, & the Holocaust](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2749636); [the life & death of a transgender woman in the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/530122); [the Fascists oppressed lesbians](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/671137); [German Fascism’s early assault on LGBT rights](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/316087) * [The Third Reich intentionally neglected thousands of tuberculosis patients](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1916387) * [The fate of black Germans under Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/513263); [brief summary of the Third Reich’s persecution of black humans](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/514069); [as early as 1933, the Third Reich killed a biracial communist for his antifascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3778926) * [The unique difficulties that legally ‘Jewish’ Germans suffered under Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1662631) * [The Fascists’ massacre of Addis Ababa](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3693366) * [*Kristallnacht*](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2640599) * [Comparisons between the “State of Israel” & Fascist Italy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2359781); [comparisons between the “State of Israel” & the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2629552) * [Rome ordered all ‘foreign’ Jews to leave Italy within six months](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1695905) * [The Third Reich’s most infamous serial killer](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2547122) * [The Empire of Japan killed millions of people](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1354431); [it invaded Nanking, tormenting & massacring hundreds of thousands](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2975098); [Japanese Imperialists promoted a racism based on Japanese supremacy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1384660); [Japanese Imperialism (indirectly) oppressed gay folks](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/737765) * [The Reich–Slovakian joint invasion of Poland](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1589922) * [The Polish government’s antisemitism was a major factor leading to the Shoah](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/639708); [Poland’s police force had a key rôle in the Fascist oppression of Jews](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/338889) * [The Third Reich kidnapped & attempted to forcibly assimilate thousands of Polish children](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1326797) * [The Fascist destruction of Poland’s infrastructure](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3626829) * [A brief overview of Italian Fascist atrocities in Greece](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/127311); [Axis occupation resulted in an increase in infectious diseases among Greeks](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3733398) * [The Fascists first tested Zyklon‐B on Soviet POWs](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1629203) * [The Warsaw ghetto](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2387858) * [France’s ruling class willingly committed its own fascist atrocities without outside pressure](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/668540) * [Alsace, France became a testing ground for the Third Reich’s anti‐Roma policies](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/666987) * [Romanian fascists literally butchered hundreds of Jews in a parody of Judaism’s kosher butchering](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/634071) * [Oskar Dirlewanger: the Fascist whom even other Fascists thought was cruel & depraved](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/617459) * [The misogynist revenge that the fascists inflicted on women in Southwestern Spain](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1215872); [the Spanish fascists encouraged Moroccan men to abuse women](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1679877) * [The Western Axis’s invasion of the Soviet Union](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/787189) * [The Wannsee Conference: how the Fascist bourgeoisie worked on a new policy for exterminating Jews](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3387950) * [How Ukrainian fascists pioneered brutal terror techniques (later improved by the CIA)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/583731) * [The Religious Dimension of the First Antisemitic Violence in Eastern Galicia (June–July 1941)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/832784) * [This is how the Axis & its collaborators treated Soviet civilians](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/460511) * [The Third Reich attempted to erase concentration camp prisoners’ identities](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2048998) * [Finland deported more than 2.8k POWs (including many Jews) to the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/452892) * [The Finnish bourgeoisie interned 24,000 ethnic Russians in concentration camps, 4,200 of whom died](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3134646) * [What the Kapos did in Axis concentration camps](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2878472) * [How the Third Reich treated Soviet POWs vs. Western ones](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1281909) * [The Wehrmacht & the anticommunist persecution of the Roma](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/372538); [the Third Reich ordered all Roma to be deported to Auschwitz](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3011695); [Auschwitz survivor Mano Höllenreiner recalls Axis death camp for Roma](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3426076) * [Therapeutic Fascism: ‘re‐educating’ Communists in Axis‐occupied Serbia, 1942–44](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/86969) * [The Wehrmacht massacred thousands of civilians in Axis‐occupied Serbia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2429584) * [Jacob Gens: the Third Reich’s deadliest Zionist collaborator](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3347821) * [A ‘Wannsee Conference’ on the Roma’s extermination? New research findings regarding 15 January 1943 & the Auschwitz Decree](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3335072) * [The Axis massacred thousands of Jews & Roma (many of whom were Muslim) in Simferopol](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2941695) * [The Axis exterminated thousands of Kharkiv’s Soviets](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3000900) * [The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, & the Axis’s Massacres in Ukraine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/121464) * [A brief history of fascism & terrorism within Zionism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3503907) * [Axis auxiliaries laughed after a Gestapo commander falsely pardoned a girl, then shot her](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/439091) * [The Third Reich ran tanks over Senegalese soldiers](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1776817) * [The Holocaust in North Africa](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2818860) * [The Axis massacred thousands of Jews in its liquidation of the Słonim Ghetto](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2691635) * [History of Fascism in Ukraine, Pt. II: The OUN during 1941–1945](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/540063); [Stepan Bandera](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/408256); [Ukrainian fascists supported antisemitism (while simultaneously claiming to oppose it…apparently)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/382178) * [Finnish volunteers in SS units took part in Axis atrocities, Finland confirms…in 2019](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/507068) * [The Axis’s capture of Banská Bystrica & its defeat of the concurrent Slovak National Uprising](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2503680) * [The Third Reich deliberately bombed hospitals](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2419988); [the Axis intentionally sunk a Soviet hospital ship, massacring over 5,000 people](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2619295) * [The Third Reich publicly massacred antifascist juvenile delinquents in 1944](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/438273) * [A Zionist collaborated with the Axis to sacrifice 800,000 ordinary Jews in return for 600 prominent Zionists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3415556) * [The Third Reich had its own kamikaze pilots](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1465678) * [‘Murder of the Jews’: The testimony of Germans & Austrians who were part of Fascism’s murder machine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3145718) * [Of the 5–6 million Jews that the Axis massacred, more than 160,000 were Sephardim](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3453600) * [Grandmother relating her experience as a Holocaust survivor](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1802943) # Profascism * [Mussolini’s Sources of Financial Support, 1914–1915](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/437339); [British capitalists in the 1910s paid Mussolini to assault antiwar protesters](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/145809) * [‘Where Lenin’s system has won for itself international ostracism & armed intervention, that of Mussolini has been the subject of widespread enthusiasm’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/63998) * [*The Economist* on Fascist Italy in 1922: ‘So far, so good.’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/520580) * [‘I can understand why a businessman would admire Mussolini & his methods. They are essentially those of successful business.’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/66099) * [Britain’s capitalist press repeatedly praised Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2681864) * [The KKK freely compared itself to European fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/861944) * [The Polish anticommunists of the short 20th century were very impressed with Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1036732) * [From Churchill to NATO: How the West built & empowered Italian Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/536751) * [How the *New York Times* reacted to the rise of Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/129729); [the *New York Times* repeatedly suggested giving the German Fascists a chance](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/399247) * [A conservative chancellor referred to violence against Fascists as an excuse to harm communists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/975079); [the Weimar Republic rarely prosecuted fascists, but suppressed socialists regularly](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/366971) * [Most German adults voted in approval of Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2671705) * [The riot at Christie Pits: Canada’s worst (and little‐known) antisemitic incident](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/380428); [documentary on the Christie Pits riot](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1340571) * [How the U.S. Associated Press cooperated with the German Fascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/514754) * [The little country that voted overwhelmingly to join the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/459183) * [How *The Economist* reacted to the Fascists violating the Treaty of Versailles by taking the Rhineland](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/552468) * [U.S. Responses to the Policies & Practices of the Third Reich’s Eugenics](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/521959) * [Winston Churchill](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2848151) * [Queen Elizabeth’s Fascist Salute is a Reminder how Close Britain Sailed to the Fascist Wind](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/375128); [how Queen Victoria’s Grandson Became Hitler’s Pawn & Favourite Royal](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/461277) * [U.S. capitalist Prescott Bush supported the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/618974) * [The gay men who sided with their Fascist oppressors](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/695985) * [The Jews who fought for their Fascist oppressors](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/568071) * [How the Pentagon Helped Hollywood Launder the Third Reich’s Reputation](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/132989) * [Chase National Bank supported the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/127982) * [The Third Reich’s Labour Services’ influence on Swedish & U.S. politicians](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/588196) * [The bourgeoisie let Fascists build summer camps across the U.S. during the 1930s](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/873227) * [About 20,000 fascists held a rally at the Madison Square Garden in 1939](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3711920) * [Many powerful Icelanders sympathized with the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/582419) * [The representation of Jews in the Finnish press before 1939](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2734853) * [How the Vatican collaborated with the Fascists throughout the 1930s](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/569730) * [When the Fascists massacred thousands in Addis Ababa, the U.S. & British govts. ignored it to avoid offending them](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3606254) * [Chinese landlords frequently collaborated with the Imperialists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1076320) * [London Deliberately Ignored Axis Factories so that the Wehrmacht could Attack the USSR](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/341056); [London intentionally played down atrocities in an Axis concentration camp on its soil](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/635302) * [Zionist militia’s efforts to recruit Fascists against Britain revealed by Zionist archives](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2808329) * [New York’s capitalists let Fascist Italy host a pavilion in their city in 1939](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/867241) * [IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad’s ties to fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/623533) * [The U.S. held more Fascist prisoners of war than it held Jewish refugees](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2439945); [Fascist POWs in Alabama had more food than they could eat, permission to attend university courses, befriend locals & leave the camp to work](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/440104) * [‘Captive Nations’: The Forgotten Origins of the ‘Victims of Communism’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/429493) * [How Australia’s Fascists got away with supporting the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/544930) * [Italian anticommunists pardoned Fascists while punishing thousands of partisans](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/557490) * [U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy defended Fascist war criminals](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/526597) * [The Western Allies became unconcerned with neofascist shrines as they now focused their aggression on the Soviets](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3722616) * [Operation Paperclip in New Jersey](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/433762) * [The CIA used ‘moderate’ anticommunists to distract people from the Axis collaborators](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1022596) * [A fascist sympathizer suggested a monument to the ‘victims of Communism’ as early as 1970](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/700465) * [LaRouche’s ‘Ukrainian Nazi’ Legacy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/431918) * [The University of Alberta’s $1.4 million‐dollar Fascist problem](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2317037) * [Anticommunists equating us with German Fascists martyrize Axis collaborators](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/425878) * [Zelensky & U.S. Congress salute profascist “Representatives of Diaspora”](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/468887) * [Neofascists in Ukrainian military bragged about Canadian training, report says](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/136338) * [The *New York Times* on Ukraine’s neofascist imagery: It’s ‘complicated’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/743309); [NYT has found more neofascist troops to lionize in Ukraine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/449943); [Hawkish Pundits Downplay Threat of War, Ukraine’s Neofascist Ties](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/102075); [Western Media Fall in Lockstep for Neofascist Publicity Stunt in Ukraine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/135568); [Facebook Protects Neofascists to Protect Ukraine Proxy War](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/503727) * [‘NAFO’ exposed](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/435416) # Legacy * [The Fascist roots of Columbus Day](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2298758) * [The U.S. Army continued keeping Jews in the Axis’s concentration camps](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/317643) * [British officials recycled Fascists for their control of Eritrea in the 1940s](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/218047) * [How fascists who beat Jews to death became America’s favorite “Freedom Fighters” in 1945](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/585084); [the U.S. did not defeat Fascism in WWII, it discretely internationalized it](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/723848) * [There was no equivalent to the Nuremberg Trials for Italian Fascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/329377); [the liberal bourgeoisie refused to prosecute Fascists for their atrocities in Ethiopia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2141002) * [The Wehrmacht bred with hundreds of Finns](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3679429) * [The Shadow of Fascism over the Italian Republic](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/344080) * [Important elements of the Fascist era survived in postwar France](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/356395) * [The Third Reich influenced eugenics in Iberia’s anticommunist dictatorships](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/713654) * [The Western Allies reused the Empire of Japan’s system of forced prostitution](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/818028) * [How Austria’s Fascists got away with supporting the Third Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/592949) * [W. Germany’s govt. was riddled with ‘former’ Fascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/321206) & [its capitalist press was outraged to see Axis criminals treated as anything less than saints](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/382814) * [Latvia’s anticommunist resistance consisted of many Axis collaborators (whom NATO honored)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/364029) * [Axis servicemen provided the CIA with its most critical information on the Soviet Union](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/157722) * [Canada knowingly admitted thousands of SS members](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2350330) * [Continuities between Fascism & the post‐1945 Italian police](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/651377) * [The Kingdom of Sweden welcomed Baltic war criminals who served the Axis](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/607104) * [U.S. authorities gave Axis war criminals comfortable jobs in post‐1945 Japan](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/677360) * [A Zionist authority helped a horrifying Axis war criminal escape justice](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3405571) * [How a Romanian fascist responsible for killing hundreds of Jews found a safe haven in the U.S.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/839908) * [In 1948, at least 53% of South Korea’s police officers worked for the Axis](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/348060) * [Historian discussing how the U.S. intentionally recruited ‘former’ Fascists & Axis collaborators](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/450887); [interview with the author of *Old Nazis, New Right, & the Republican Party*](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1820753); [how a Slovakian fascist war criminal became a CIA asset](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/999901) * [Ratlines, NATO, & the Fourth Reich](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/110696); [NATO’s Fascist Inheritance & the Long War on the Third World](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1187682); [NATO’s Fascist Beginnings](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/108356) * [MI6 hired Fascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/409130) * [Mossad intentionally hired Axis war criminal Walter Rauff](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2945569) * [The European Union’s Court of Justice’s first President was a Fascist](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/115644) * [Benito Mussolini has his own tomb (and it’s in good condition)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/794764) * [Spain’s largest monument to fascism (still exists)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2492575) * [Denmark failed to thoroughly purge its upper classes of Axis collaborators](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3048065) * [W. Germany’s Federal Court ruled that a 1940 deportation of Roma was not a racist atrocity](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/615760) * [When John F. Kennedy was asked when he would uproot Fascism from W. Germany, he said nothing](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/118738) * [Did Zionists cover up thousands of Axis war criminals in exchange for military technology?](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/505209) * [A former SS official became an advisor to Augusto Pinochet’s secret police](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/377458) * [Henry Kissinger’s ties to Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2842987) * [The interview that led to the arrest of Klaus Barbie, the Axis’s Butcher of Lyon](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3554553) * [W. Germany purged thousands of irreplaceable documents on Fascism & other subjects after 1990](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/852948) * [The Captive Nations Lobby: the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s fascist heritage](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1007502); [Victims of Communism’s founder Lev Dobriansky’s associations with Axis collaborators](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/638161) * [The Latvian SS‐Legion & issues regarding its modern glorification](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/525244); [Latvia invests in Axis commander biopic](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/523625) * [Yugoslav survivors of Fascist war camp lament Italy’s apathy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/555772) * [The prolonged effects of trauma on Holocaust survivors](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1063097) * [An Analysis of Present‐Day Historical Narratives of Italy’s Colonial Wars](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3462880) * [In 2010, a Zionist judge proposed learning Fascist propaganda techniques](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2994681) & [that same year, a few Zionists repeated ‘Hitler was right’ in public & the neocolonial police did nothing](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3036749) * [Finland’s cemeteries dedicated to Axis soldiers](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/448757) * [Some 1,500 statues & streets around the world honor Fascists — including in Germany & the U.S.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/639930); [examples of monuments in Eastern Europe dedicated to Axis collaborators](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/571406); [Germany still exhibits Fascist sculptures](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/515731); [Italy still exhibits Fascist monuments](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/516493); [Japan still exhibits monuments dedicated to Axis war criminals](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/572782); [Axis collaborator monuments in Ukraine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/181631) * [Mass graves left by the fascists discovered in Extremadura](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1529862) * [Archaeologists are exhuming the bodies from Spain’s fascist concentration camps](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/903757) * [Analysis of skeletal remains from the Battle of Britain: A temporary cemetery of Fascist aviators](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3689788) * [A New Anti‐Bolshevik Bloc of Nations?](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/111651) * [Ottawa apologizes for honouring another Axis collaborator](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2243131) * [Survivors of the Axis’s siege of Leningrad continue to suffer worse health even after seven decades](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3396804) * [Auschwitz museum justifies the extermination of Palestinians](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3093469) * [The Third Reich’s antisemitic indoctrination still survives in some elderly Germans](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/660234) * [The Axis’s barbed wire continues to harm Norway’s wildlife](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/586480) * [Even from beyond the grave, Fascists are still massacring people & inhibiting scientific research](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/447563) * [Fascist‐era parenting is still harming German youths today, & the Fascists themselves had abusive parents](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3211392) # Neofascism * [Operation Gladio](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2467689); [the CIA’s Secret Fascist‐Collaborating Terror Armies in Europe & Beyond](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1297377) * [How NATO worked with neofascists to crush communism in Turkey](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/928524) * [Swedish neofascist solidarity with the Chilean military junta](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1760462) * [The Zionists did nothing to help as Argentine neofascists terrorized thousands of Jews](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2956330) * [Refresher course on neofascist antisemitism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2449906) * [Anders Breivik](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1015457) * [The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: Revelations from Trials & Investigation](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/134417) * [A neofascist opened fire on a synagogue & massacred 11 people](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2513630) * [The road to neofascism: How the war in Ukraine has changed Europe](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/574232); [what you should really know about Ukraine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/119497); [the roots of fascism in Ukraine: From Axis collaboration to Maidan](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/136242); [successive govts. in Ukraine have accommodated neofascists to counter Soviet nostalgia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/641522); [examples of Ukraine’s head of state awarding vile antisemites](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1089216); [how Zelensky made peace with neofascist paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/140217); [how neofascists made their home in Ukraine’s major western training hub](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/144732) * [Ukraine Neofascists Infiltrate Every Level of Military & Government](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/138211); [a look at the Svoboda party: Ukraine’s second largest bundle of neofascist fuckwads](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/543426); [the Bandera cult, memory warriors, & ‘patriotic education’ in Ukraine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1369745); [Bandera’s ‘Insurgency‐in‐Waiting’: OUN‐B & the ‘Capitulation Resistance Movement’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/455175); [the Ukrainian Fascist Advisor from Azerbaijan](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/403052) * [Blackwater is in the Donbas with the Azov Battalion](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/124918) * [Famous Ukrainian Neofascist Visits U.S.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/432702) * [Why is there now such an affinity between antivaxxers & neofascism?](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/120536) * [How USAID contributed to neofascism in Ukraine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1153670) * [The neofascist ‘American Banderite Network’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1433303); [defense contractors trying to ‘reactivate’ OUN‐B in Pittsburgh area](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3025755) * [‘Nazigate’ & the ‘Bandera Lobby’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2399487); [Ukrainian ultranationalism & Canada](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2105661) * [Meet Oleh Medunytsia, OUN‐B’s first Leader from Ukraine in over 20 years](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/465587) * [Neofascism strengthening in Germany (and elsewhere)](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/810122); [neofascism is becoming more popular & powerful in Europe](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/402309); [international neofascists show solidarity with Ukrainian neofascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1264914); [the Rise of Neofascism in Italy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/825539) * [“Now, All of You Are Azov”: Ukrainian Neofascists Tour U.S.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/431205); [Azov is getting public funding from NAFO & other suckers](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1142025) & [has been improving its relations with “human rights” think tanks](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1114569) * [The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s links to Hungarian neofascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/583867) * [What German neofascists have inherited from Fascism](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3544991) * [Nordic Resistance Movement: neofascists who hope to erect a pan‐Scandinavian ethnostate](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/662668) * [Adam Smith to Richard Spencer: Why ‘Libertarians’ (read: propertarians) turn to the Alt‐Right](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/560511) * [What is the Lukov March & why did the authorities ban it in Bulgaria?](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3760823) * [Neofascist Andy Ngô photographed with child molester Amos Yee](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/64364) * [Neofascists partook in anti‐transgender rally in Melbourne, Australia](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/560297) * [Zionist support for Azov](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2589797) * [Zionist neocolony contemplated forging ties with neofascist party accused of Holocaust denial](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2651839) * [Beware of neofascist grifters pretending to care about Palestine](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2579885) * [Spanish neofascist mercenary among others helping neocolonists in Gaza](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2609673) * [A reminder that neofascism is alive & well in the U.S.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3317466): [Former(?) Neofascist Leader Holds U.S. Dept. of Justice’s ‘Domestic Counterterrorism’ Position](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/512749); [Neofascists Parade around Florida Chanting ‘Jews Will Not Replace Us’](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1660737); [U.S. congressman ‘unaware’ that he was posing for photo with neofascists](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/546032); [Texan Republican leaders reject ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2891978); [neofascist march at the Tennessee State Capitol](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3704806) --- Feel free to suggest any resources that you have in mind or how I could structure this thread better. Lastly, if you have any questions on fascism, profascism, parafascism (e.g. Japanese Imperialism), protofascism, or neofascism, you are welcome to ask me here or in private.

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 11 hours ago • 100%

On this day 84 years ago, the Third Reich sent a military mission to the Kingdom of Romania to train soldiers https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-69/JFQ-69_92-98_DiNardo.pdf

([Mirror.](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA617477.pdf)) >With Antonescu’s ascension to power, the relationship between [the Third Reich] and [the Kingdom of] Romania warmed considerably. Antonescu began by promising closer collaboration with [the Third Reich]. He also renewed the request for German military assistance, with the idea of having Germans train and reorganize the Romanian army. > >This time, Hitler agreed and on September 19, 1940, he decided to send a military mission to [the Kingdom of] Romania. The improvement in relations would culminate on November 23, 1940, with [the Kingdom of] Romania’s adherence to the Tripartite Pact.⁶ > >To be precise, **[the Third Reich] actually sent four missions to [this Kingdom]. The umbrella organization was the [Third Reich’s] military mission**, commanded by Army General Erik Hansen, who was also the military attaché to Bucharest. Hansen also commanded the [Wehrmacht] mission (*Deutsches Heeres Mission in Rümanien*, or DHM) to [the Kingdom of] Romania. > >The next major element was the [Luftwaffe] mission (*Deutsches Luftwaffe Mission in Rümanien*, or DLM), commanded by Luftwaffe Lieutenant General Wilhelm Speidel. The final part of the military mission was the [Kriegsmarine] mission, headed by Admiral W. Tillesen.⁷ This article looks at the activities of the DLM to a small degree, but the major focus will be on the DHM. > >[…] > >The DLM had two principal missions. The first was to create air defenses around the vital oil region of [the Kingdom of] Romania in the vicinity of Ploiești and the Black Sea port of Constanța. Also involved was the regulation of air space over the defended areas. The second mission was to modernize the Romanian air force. The DLM was more successful in completing the first mission. **Speidel and his staff were able to use both Romanian and German matériel and procedures to make Ploiești one of the most heavily defended targets against air attacks.** > >This was to prove invaluable in the initial Romanian participation in Operation *Barbarossa*. Between late June and mid‐October 1941, Ploiești and Constanța were attacked 91 times by Soviet aircraft. Led by the efforts of the Luftwaffe’s Jagd Geschwader 52, the combined [Axis] defense brought down some 81 Soviet aircraft.⁹ > >[…] > >Like the DLM, the DHM had two missions. Aside from the training mission, the [Third Reich’s] units were to assist the Romanian force in erecting defenses against a possible Soviet invasion, although the mere presence of [these] units in [the Kingdom of] Romania did act as a guarantee against further Soviet encroachments. > >The second mission was to train the Romanian army up to a level that was as close to [the Fascist bourgeoisie’s] standards as possible. These units would play a part in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler had distinctly mentioned this in his December 5, 1940, speech to the heads of the Wehrmacht. Both Finland and [the Kingdom of] Romania are mentioned as possible allies in the execution of Operation *Barbarossa* in Hitler’s first official directive on the subject issued December 18, 1940.¹² > >[…] > >Training was conducted at the tactical and operational levels, at least in a theoretical sense. There was also an ideological aspect to the training. > >**Tactically, the [Third Reich] set up training centers for the Romanian 5th, 6th, 13th, 18th, and 20th infantry divisions as well as for the Romanian Panzer Division. These centers aimed at training Romanian soldiers in both German weapons and tactics. Later on in the spring of 1941, the [Third Reich] extended the training in a limited way to artillery.¹⁹ [It] also sought to improve the quality of Romanian general officers through education.** > >**The DHM set up the equivalent of the German *Kriegsakademie* in [the Kingdom of] Romania. All aspirants for general officer rank were to take a 2‐year course of instruction. Like its German counterpart, the Romanian war college was tactically oriented and focused on division‐sized operations. The course was also aimed at producing officers who could undertake all staff and administrative functions associated with division and brigade operations. A course was also set up for general officers and older staff officers as well, lasting from 1 to 3 months.²⁰** > >As might be expected of such an effort mounted by [an empire] such as [the Third Reich], there was the previously mentioned ideological component to DHM activities. In a situation report, Hube noted that, in addition to the need for measures to be taken against corruption in the officer corps, friendly attitudes toward Great Britain and the Jews had to be eliminated. To aid this, **[Fascist] German propaganda was disseminated that found a degree of receptivity in [the Kingdom of] Romania**, although not as much as the [Third Reich] hoped.²¹ > >The various endeavors of the DHM brought about a record of mixed success. :::spoiler (Emphasis added. For a summary of the Romanian army’s combat performance in 1941, click here.) >In the first phase of the campaign, Romanian performance might be regarded as satisfactory. The army was able to accomplish its task even though, in a number of places, the Romanians’ Soviet opponents were often better armed and equipped. > >Even Colonel General Franz Halder, the chief of the German Army General Staff and no particular admirer of Romanian military prowess, confessed pleasant surprise at the initial performance of the Romanians. The liaison staff with the Romanian 1st Border Division thought well enough of the division’s conduct to submit the names of some 37 members for [Wehrmacht] awards.³¹ > >Things were much tougher in the second phase of the 1941 campaign. The Romanian Third and Fourth Armies were now required to undertake missions well beyond their normal operational radius. That often left them requiring logistical support from the German [Fascists], who were not always in a position to deliver it when needed. Dumitrescu’s Third Army narrowly avoided a deadly clash with the Hungarian Mobile Corps, which was also operating on that part of the front, thanks to the efforts of German liaison officers with both formations.³² > >The siege of Odessa proved long and costly to the Romanian [anticommunists]. The Soviet High Command was able to keep the Independent Coastal Army, garrisoning Odessa, supplied by sea. That allowed the garrison to conduct an active and energetic defense. Several successful Soviet sorties forced the Fourth Army to fight repeatedly over the same ground in bloody assaults. > >It was only after the Romanian [anticommunists] secured key points in the fortress’s defense system, combined with the threat of intervention by [the Third Reich’s] airpower on a massive scale, that the Soviets evacuated the city on October 15, 1941. Odessa’s occupation marked a clear end of the campaign for what was by that time an exhausted Romanian army.³³ ::: --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (September 19). **1909**: Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, bourgeois Fascist, was born. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/19/1939): The Battle of Kępa Oksywska concluded, with Polish losses reaching roughly 14% of all the forces engaged. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/19/1940): Witold Pilecki was voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz to gather and smuggle out information for the resistance movement. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/19/1942): [The Axis brought some two thousand Jews to Mineralnye‐Vodi (from Esentuki) and exterminated them.](https://books.google.com/books?id=DqAb5tY4Ai8C&pg=PA294) [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/19/1944): The Battle of Hürtgen Forest commenced, and would become the longest individual battle that the U.S. Army has ever fought. (Coincidentally, the Moscow Armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union was signed, which officially ended the Continuation War.) :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 day ago • 100%

On this day 81 years ago, ex-convict Benito Mussolini proclaimed the so-called ‘Italian Social Republic’

Quoting Carlo Moos in [*World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=39C48DD44DC9812B0B76D8001EC63598), page 585: >The [so‐called] [Italian Social Republic](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Italian_Social_Republic) (RSI), or Salò Republic (named after the seat of the régime on Lake Garda in northern Italy), arose as a consequence of the [Kingdom of Italy’s] withdrawal from World War II on 8 September 1943 and the occupation of northern and central Italy by the Wehrmacht. > >Mussolini had been dismissed by King Victor Emmanuel III on 25 July 1943 after the Grand Council of Fascism voted to unseat him; he was transferred from one detention place to another but [liberated from imprisonment on the Gran Sasso by [Axis] paratroopers on 12 September 1943.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gran_Sasso_raid) > >Following a radio address by Il Duce from Munich on 18 September, a [postmonarchic] fascist government was formed in northern and central Italy, and the Fascist Party was revived along with the militia, which was later brought over with the Carabinieri into the Republican National Guard. > >The Salò régime continued the battle against the Allies on the side of the [Axis] in competition with the royal government under Badoglio in the south. But relations with the Germans and their governor, Ambassador Rahn, and with the army commanders Rommel, Kesselring, and Vietinghoff, as well as the SS under Wolff, were always difficult. Mussolini was unable to reassert his authority successfully, for not only the south, freed by the advancing Allies, but also a part of Italy controlled by [Berlin] remained wholly or more or less completely beyond his grasp. > >The *Alpenvorland* and “Adriatic Coast” zones were to all intents and purposes annexed by Germany and subjected to the Reich governors of the neighboring regions (Friedrich Rainer in Karinthia, Franz Hofer in Tirol‐Vorarlberg). Mussolini retained what autonomy he could in the remaining area, and a new republican army under Marshal Graziani was established, whose four divisions were initially sent to Germany for training and from the summer of 1944 were used chiefly for the battle against the anti‐Fascist partisans. > >The RSI began by dealing with those members of the Grand Council who in the night of 24/25 July 1943 had voted against Mussolini and who had thereby made possible his fall, and with all who were classified in the widest sense as “traitors” to Fascism. > >In January 1944 the trial of the chief conspirators was held in Verona, concluding with eleven death sentences *in contumaciam*, of which five were carried out immediately (on 11 January 1944). Victims included Mussolini’s own son‐in‐law Galeazzo Ciano and the quadrumvir Emilio De Bono. At least 1,500 death penalties were also handed down and implemented by specially established provincial special tribunals. > >The Salò Republic manifested an intensification of violence and pursued a race policy that was deeply anti‐Semitic, declaring all Jews to belong to a hostile nation and requiring them to be herded into camps and ordering that their property and investments be confiscated. > >The deportations organized subsequently by the [Greater German Reich] could never have been implemented without these preparations and without the collaboration of the organs of the Salò Republic. Altogether, more than 6,800 Jews were deported in forty‐three transports to the East (for the most part to Auschwitz), of whom only 837 survived. > >Salò had to engage in an increasingly brutal struggle with the developing resistance, and that struggle became the main job of the forces of order (police, national guard, black brigades) and the armed forces of the RSI. Assessment of this has remained a matter of controversy down to the present day, but it is increasingly interpreted as a real civil war. > >At the same time, relations with the [Axis] occupiers/allies worsened: agreement could not be reached as to the problem of the Italian military internees sent to [the Greater German Reich] as forced labor, while the increasingly heavy‐handed [Axis] reprisals—which degenerated into downright massacres in such cases as that of the Fosse Ardeatine on 24 March 1944—led to catastrophic consequences for the standing of Fascism in the country. > >Mussolini’s last public appearance in Milan, on 16 December 1944, was astonishingly successful, but four months later he was killed by partisans on 28 April 1945 as he attempted to escape to Switzerland in the face of the advancing Allied forces. The war in northern Italy ended with the capitulation of the [Wehrmacht] on 29 April, which came into force on 2 May, about a week before the complete capitulation of the Wehrmacht. The Salò régime was a brief but interesting and important episode in Fascism’s history. Whereas previously Fascist Italy had a significant degree of autonomy from the Third Reich (I would argue), it is much harder to convince somebody that the Salò régime in particular also possessed this, with the Greater German Reich intervening frequently and directly in its affairs, practically producing a sort of hybrid between German and Italian Fascism. (The latter phenomenon had not quite yielded to the German one as Austrofascism had in the late 1930s.) Hence, we see the only Italian division of the SS: the [29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Italian)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:29th_Waffen-Grenadierdivision_of_the_SS_(1st_Italian)); we can hear the Italian translation of *Horst Wessel Lied*: [*È l’ora di marciar*](https://archive.org/details/e-l-ora-di-marciar); and we witness the Italian Fascists being as aggressive as possible in their antisemitism. ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Pio_Filippani_Ronconi_in_Waffen-SS_uniform.jpg) Pictured: Pio Filippani Ronconi in the uniform of a foreign volunteer of the Waffen‐SS. The Salò régime officially had [an army](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Army_of_the_Italian_Social_Republic) (*Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano*), a police force (*Corpo di Polizia Repubblicana*), [an airforce](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aeronautica_Nazionale_Repubblicana) (*Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana*), and technically [a navy](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Marina_Nazionale_Repubblicana) (*Marina Nazionale Repubblicana*). We can find hardware (e.g. the [FNAB‐43](https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=XwY5ZQDqG70), the Armaguerra OG‐43, the [TZ‐45](https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=z5RYzCmK4-Q)) manufactured for this régime. We can even find [postage stamps](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Stamps_of_the_Italian_Social_Republic) for it. All of this is probably unsurprising, but the point here is that collaborationist régimes should not be glossed over simply for being cardboard cutouts of ‘real’ governments. They can continue to hold a great deal of meaning or hope for the thousands who fight for them; a much more preferable alternative to outright colonization, and sometimes regarded merely as transitory phases before actual independence. :::spoiler There is plenty more that I could add, but I am omitting it to keep this post at a manageable length… with the following exception. For an examination of the Salò régime’s pseudosocialism, including the misnomer ‘Italian Social Republic’, click here. Quoting [*Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945: The Failure of a Puppet Regime*](https://web.archive.org/web/20240226180544im_/http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/70965/1/pdf.175), page 30: >To underline the renewed ideological solidarity between the two régimes, Hitler strongly urged the Duce to include “Fascism” in the new Italian state’s title, but since the Fascist canon had fallen into disrepute, Mussolini, on 25 November 1943, formally ushered into existence the more neutral‐sounding Italian Social Republic. This was to be Mussolini’s final crack at holding power. The exceedingly vague expression ‘social republic’ has been attested [since at least the 1820s](https://books.google.com/books?id=121CAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA137) and [was in vogue during 1848](https://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution-1848/ephemera/democratic-socialists.htm), but whether its reintroduction in 1943 was a conscious misappropriation or a mere coincidence remains uncertain. In any case, we can see right off the bat that this was another marketing decision to make fascism less unappealing to the proletariat. Not being content with one euphemism, though, the Salò régime made some promises to proletarians to confuse or pacify them. Quoting Philip Morgan’s [*Italian Fascism, 1915–1945*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=721B8F777FAE8627EDD7DBCFA70D3471), pages 226–8: >The [Salò régime’s] programme was agreed at the unruly congress of the *Partito Fascista Repubblicano* (Republican Fascist Party or PFR), the reconstituted successor to the PNF, held in Verona in November 1943. It was an attempt to give a meaning and content to the [Salò régime], other than doing the [Third Reich’s] business, and to win the support of the population nominally under its jurisdiction, whose loyalties were contested by the anti‐Fascist and anti‐German Resistance movements. > >It called for a constituent assembly to replace the monarchy with a [so‐called] social Republic, an elected head of state based on the U.S. model, a scarcely credible charter of citizens’ rights, a single party for the political education of the people, socialisation of the economy, treating the Jews as enemy aliens, and a foreign policy whose talk of ‘living space’ and European federation was a rehash of the former régime’s New Order wartime propaganda. > >The abolition of the monarchy and socialisation were both a rejection of and an alibi for Fascism’s past. The desire for revenge and scapegoating was brutally evident in the extraordinary Special Tribunal’s trial and execution of those of the July 1943 Grand Council ‘traitors’ who could be found, including Ciano. > >It was they, in league with the king and conservative bourgeois and capitalist interests, who were charged with not only bringing about Mussolini’s fall and the Allied invasion but also subverting and sidetracking the Fascist Revolution during the twenty years of the regime. Now shorn of its conservative fellow‐travelling elements and liberated from the ‘pluto‐monarchical compromises of 1922’,³ Fascism could ‘return to the origins’ and enact the national syndicalist and republican strands of the revolutionary interventionism and early Fascism of 1915–19. > >This was myth‐making in the grand style, and to justify it Salò’s propaganda evoked the legacy of Giuseppe Mazzini, D’Annunzio and Fiume. > >Socialisation owed as much to the ‘Third Way’ corporatist rhetoric of the 1930s and of the Fascist New Order as to national syndicalism, at least in the proposals put together by the Republic’s Ministry of Corporations. The principle of private property was still sacrosanct, but the state could regulate it in the context of a national economic plan and would take over or retain the running of essential national utilities and services. > >What the measure approved by the government in February 1944 proposed was a kind of socialisation of management, not capital, to create that collaborative and productivist ‘community of producers’. The running of state and private firms was to be shared between an elected assembly of employees and shareholders, a management council of representatives of capital and labour, and an executive director elected by the assembly or chosen by the government. Here it is at last: the smoking gun that fascism was socialism! Not that utopian capitalists needed it, since they are convinced that **every political or economic system** ([with the sole exception of their completely unregulated free market phantasy](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1762569)) is socialism already, but now the evidence is undeniable! Wait until TIK and other propertarians get their hands on this knowledge. Then all that they need to do is broadcast this to every unionizer on the planet, and the entire working‐class movement will grind to a halt! Yes, reversing the tides of history is just that easy! Oh wait a minute, what is this? >But the [régime] could decide on anything and enact little to nothing. Making ‘labour […] the foundation of the Social Republic’⁴ in this abortive ‘return to the origins’ cut across the two unavoidable realities of the Republic’s tenuous existence: [Berlin’s] control of Italy for the exploitation of its economy, and the worsening civil war between the Fascists and the Resistance. Hitler was mystified by the RSI’s social policy but thought it irrelevant and innocuous. **The [Third Reich’s] authorities on the ground intervened to nullify it.** > >**Hans Leyers, the head of the Italian arm of the German Ministry of Armaments and War Production, regarded socialisation as ‘sabotage’⁵ of the Italian industries working for the [Axis] war effort and co‐operated with the industrialists themselves to exclude or obstruct its implementation in key areas. By April 1945 perhaps 60–80 firms with about 130,000 employees had been ‘socialised’, mainly newspapers and publishers under the auspices of the Ministry of Popular Culture, which took the measure seriously.** > >**The decree of February 1945 for the socialisation of large industries was a dead letter, not only because of [Reich]‐inspired procrastination by employers but also because most workers boycotted the council elections. Industrial workers had enough experience of the Fascist régime not to trust in this false dawn or twilight of labour reforms. The left‐wing Resistance movements certainly warned them off, as they did employers. Fascism’s attempt to redefine itself could not escape the taint of its past.** (Emphasis added.) ::: \ Further reading: [*The Fallen Hero: The Myth of Mussolini and Fascist Women in the Italian Social Republic (1943–5)*](https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/002200949603100104) --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (September 18). [**1931**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/18/1931): [The Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria, (arguably) beginning World War II.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1897727) [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/18/1939): The Polish government of Ignacy Mościcki fled to Romania while the radio show *Germany Calling* began transmitting Fascist propaganda. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/18/1940): The Axis submarine *U‐48* sunk the Allied liner SS *City of Benares*; those massacred included 77 child refugees. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/18/1941): Although it captured Poltava, Ukraine, the Axis modified its strategy against Leningrad, switching from assault to besiegement; tanks from the 4th Panzer Army loaded onto trains for Moscow. This shift in strategy partially resulted from Berlin’s order earlier on this date that Leningrad be razed to the ground. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/18/1942): Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to have full judicial control over Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Romani prisoners; all prisoners of the Third Reich’s ‘justice’ system capable of work were to transfer to concentration camps for neoslavery, and food rations for Jews in the Third Reich were to diminish. Coincidentally, Theresienstadt surpassed its maximum capacity; 58,491 prisoners now resided in that camp. Meanwhile, Axis troops began retreating back along the Kokoda Track across the Owen Stanley Range in Papua, and one dozen He 111 torpedo bombers attacked Allied convoy PQ‐18 at the entrance of the Kola Inlet, Russia, sinking Allied ship *Kentucky* (without killing anybody) at the cost of three aircraft. Stuka dive bombers hampered a Soviet defence by destroying forty‐one of the one hundred six Soviet tanks committed, while escorting Bf 109 fighters destroyed seventy‐seven Soviet aircraft in the immediate area. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/18/1943): Berlin ordered the deportation of Danish Jews. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/18/1944): The British submarine HMS *Tradewind* torpedoed the Axis cargo steamship *Jun'yō Maru*, tragically massacring 5,600 humans, mostly neoslaves and POWs. Meanwhile in France, the Battle of Arracourt commenced. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 days ago • 100%

Why the Axis was slow to exterminate Slovakia’s Jews https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?doi=84c133ce3283fce714521a2cc2dd5a03928a4d25

>The Working Group,²⁵ an unofficial Jewish organization formed to help protect Jews from anti‐Semitic forces, had for some time exploited every means of ensuring the survival of the Jewish people of Slovakia. **One of the tactics used by the Working Group to stop Jewish deportations was to prove to those in the Slovak government charged with expanding the economy that Jews were a vital asset to their cause.** > >[…] > >In June the SD [Sicherheitsdienst] reported that the deportation of Jews was very unpopular with the Slovak population and blamed this unpopularity on the clerics and “English propaganda.”³³ The pressure was so significant that Prime Minister Tiso specifically requested that he not be told anything about the deportations. An SD report states a fear expressed by Mach that Tiso would not be able to stand up to the pressure of the clerics. Another speaks of Tuka’s loyalty to the cause but states that he was thwarted by “clever maneuvering.”³⁴ > >The clever maneuvering to which the report referred is almost certainly the efforts of the Working Group. The Working Group reached out with appeals to the morality and compassion of some government officials **but more often with bribes.** For example, Josef Sivak towed the party line with regard to the Jews well enough to “pass muster” but was in fact also a close friend of Rabbi Frieder, a member of the Working Group. > >Sivak was appointed Minister of Education and Culture and gave Frieder a secret phone number that allowed them to stay in direct contact. He warned the Working Group of planned measures and during the deportations did what he could to ensure Jewish schoolmasters were excluded.³⁵ > >**In other cases, it was necessary to bribe officials, as was the case with the head of the president’s bureau**, Dr. Isidor Koso. In fact, it was from Koso that the Working Group first learned of the planned deportations. They responded by quickly putting forward the plan for Steiner’s labor camps but feared that by the time the camps were fully established, there would be no Jews left. **They then sought to bribe the head of Department 14**, the government department in charge of solving “the Jewish question” in Slovakia, Dr. Anton Vasek, “the Jew King.” > >**They not only appealed to his bank account but also to his vanity, encouraging him to write a book about his fascinating life in politics. This was so successful that Vasek arranged for several transports already scheduled to leave the country to encounter technical difficulties that caused lengthy delays.** > >Koso and Vasek seem to be examples of Slovak **officials that were described as wanting “money, motor‐cars, resounding title’s [sic], and the maximum of personal pomp and circumstance. They seem to have been quite indifferent to the means by which these things were obtained.”³⁶** > >The Working Group’s attempts to bribe the Slovak officials produced such success that the Group even went so far as to meet with the German [Reich’s] representative Dieter Wisliceny. They enlisted a corrupt member of the official Jewish Committee named Hochberg, who was familiar with Wisliceny, to present the equivalent of $40,000 as a bribe to the German. **Hochberg pocketed half of the sum and only presented Wisliceny with $20,000.³⁷ However, the German accepted that amount immediately** before a scheduled visit to Berlin for consultation. > >[…] > >Wisliceny continued to appear to cooperate with the Working Group, even going so far as to report upcoming activities that might lead to the resumption of the deportations. Steiner, Wisliceny’s primary contact, became so emboldened by his manner and continued cooperation he once asked Wisliceny, “if he so much wanted to help the Jews why was he in charge of the expulsions?” to which Wisliceny reportedly replied that he was not an anti‐Semite but was doing his duty as a German soldier.⁴² > >Steiner continued to work with Wisliceny **and also to work on improving and expanding the Jewish labor camps which became more and more important to the Slovak economy.⁴³ These camps differed so greatly from the concentration and labor camps in Germany and Poland that Edith Katz, an imprisoned 21 year old Jewish woman with a heart condition, was transferred to the camp at Novaky because it was thought the environment would be better for her health.⁴⁴** > >Meanwhile, cultural activities were encouraged within the camps, and members of the Working Group, namely Y.O. Neumann and Steiner, were successful in sneaking weapons into the camps intended for the inmates’ self‐defense.⁴⁵ > >The efforts of the Working Group to make the Jews an essential asset to the Slovak economy were successful. The religious community succeeded in turning a significant portion of public opinion against renewed deportations. The Working Group bribed certain officials, distracted others with appeals to their vanity, and convicted others with appeals to their humanity.⁴⁶ > >Though there were many efforts made to renew the deportation of Jews from the region of Slovakia, they were all met with opposition and failed. When concrete plans were presented, politicians openly opposed them.⁴⁷ Roman Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter read in all the Catholic churches of a country that was 80% Catholic, decrying the attempt to resume deportations.⁴⁸ > >[…] > >In August of 1944, there was a rebellion against the HSĽS government and by extension the [Third Reich]. Slovak partisans were encouraged to revolt by [Soviet] authorities who promised military support.⁵⁰ With [the Axis] faring so badly on the Eastern front and the assurances of the [Soviets], the Slovaks believed they could succeed. > >They were wrong. [The Greater German Reich], finally freed of diplomatic restraint, attacked in force and quickly quelled the rebellion. 20,000 Jews, almost all which remained in the Slovak Republic, were deported in October and November of 1944. Most of them never returned. > >All of the efforts to both stop the deportation trains and keep them from resuming were significant. The influence of the Vatican and both the Catholic and Protestant church was substantial in directing public opinion against the deportations. By providing significant economic incentives, both personal and political, to Slovak and German politicians, the actions of the often marginalized Working Group were undeniable contributing factors in the halt of deportations. > >The actions of these groups were seldom conducted in conjunction with each other but nevertheless worked together, placing pressure on Slovak officials to create more and more exemptions. > >Yet, **the most startling and arguably most important contributor to the halt of deportations remains Germany itself. Few of the other influences and factors previously discussed would have succeeded or even been possible had Germany not allowed Slovakia an unprecedented amount of autonomy. The most compelling evidence for the importance of Germany’s diplomatic policies in the thwarting of its own goals is the fact that the deportation of Jewish Slovaks only resumed when Germany abandoned that diplomacy.** (Emphasis added.) --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 17). [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/17/1939): The Reich submarine *U-29* sunk the British aircraft carrier HMS *Courageous*. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/17/1940): Due to setbacks in the Battle of Britain and approaching autumn weather, Berlin postponed Operation Sea Lion. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/17/1944): Axis forces occupied San Marino but quickly suffered an Allied assault. (Coincidentally, Allied airborne troops parachuted into the Netherlands as the ‘Market’ half of Operation Market Garden, and Soviet troops launched the Tallinn Offensive against the Third Reich and anticommunist Estonian units. Lastly, an Axis war criminal, General Friedrich Zickwolff, died of a disease whilst in France.) **1953**: Hans Feige, Axis general, mustered up the decency to drop dead. **2013**: Eiji Toyoda, Axis industrialist, expired. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 days ago • 100%

Ukrainian Canadian Congress fundraises for Neofascist Battalion as it recruits Canadian mercenaries

www.thecanadafiles.com

>In ‘honour’ of [neofascism’s] 12th Azov Special Brigade, indoctrinated Ukrainian Canadians did a ‘charity run’ to collect funds for the rogue and criminal unit largely responsible for brutally enforcing the [neofascist] ideology of the state. The fundraiser was sold shamelessly as a battle for ‘independence’. The [Maidan coup](https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/anatomy-of-a-coup-how-cia-front-laid), instigated by NATO leadership in 2013-2014, that made Ukraine a full-on NATO anti-Russia proxy, is well known. > >[The 12th Azov Special Brigade was founded and run initially by Andriy Biletsky](https://meduza.io/en/news/2023/05/10/azov-regiment-founder-andriy-biletsky-says-ukrainian-forces-defeated-russian-brigade-in-bakhmut), infamous for [threatening to kill Volodomyr Zelensky](https://wp.me/p9MxL0-nTN) while asserting military rule of the state of Ukraine, and for the [following quote](https://web.archive.org/web/20230928025300/https:/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11025137/Ukraine-crisis-the-neo-Nazi-brigade-fighting-pro-Russian-separatists.html) in a written commentary: >>“The historic mission of our nation in this moment is to lead the white races in the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.” > >It is illegal under Canadian law for a registered non-profit or charity to [support a foreign government’s military](https://www.canadiancharitylaw.ca/?p=18490). However, this is being shamelessly done out in the open by the UCC. As an added insult, the Canadian government is regularly rewarding the UCC for its repeated legal transgressions and [[Fascist] honouring](https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/canadian-mp-wont-condemn-honouring-of-hunka-or-2007-2010-2021-honourings-of-nazi-ss-division) with regular grants in [the hundreds of thousands](https://search.open.canada.ca/grants/?sort=agreement_start_date+desc&search_text=%22Ukrainian+Canadian+Congress%22&page=1). > >Glenn Michalchuk, President of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians says the story: >>“raised the concern of many that such an open display of support for an organization with such close links to neo-nazism would be the centre of a local activity especially on Ukraine Independence Day.” > >Michalchuk emphasized that such fundraising in connection to Ukrainian history is egregious: >>“The history of Ukraine is intimately connected to the struggle against Nazism in World War II. >> >>The land and people of Ukraine suffered tremendous losses from the Nazi invasion. The injuries were made more grievous by the role of collaborators who joined the Nazis with the plan that they would rule a Nazi occupied Ukraine.” > >It should be of little surprise that the same UCC has [repeatedly honoured](https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/canadian-mp-wont-condemn-honouring-of-hunka-or-2007-2010-2021-honourings-of-nazi-ss-division) the Waffen SS 14th (Galicia) Division. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 16). **1878**: Karl Albiker, Axis sculptor, was born. [**1891**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/16/1891): Karl Dönitz, Axis admiral who briefly served as the Greater German Reich’s head of state, existed. Likewise did the Reich spy and ‘honourary Aryan’ Stephanie von Hohenlohe. **1910**: Erich Kempka, SS member and chauffer, polluted life with his presence. Karl Kling, Axis mechanic, was born on the same day. [**1926**](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1859403): Fascist Italy and the Kingdom of Romania signed a ‘Pact of Friendship and Cordial Collaboration’. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/16/1940): Fascist troops conquered Sidi Barrani. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/16/1943): The German Tenth Army reported that it could no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/16/1945): The Axis occupation of Hong Kong was over. **2012**: Friedrich Zimmermann, Axis lieutenant, expired. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 4 days ago • 100%

On this day 89 years ago, the Third Reich officially adopted a new national flag: one bearing a swastika

After reusing the [Twoth Reich’s flag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Flag_of_Germany_(1867–1918).svg) for merely two years, the Third Reich deprecated it for what would soon become [the most infamous symbol of Fascism.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Germany_(1935–1945).svg) Since World War II, the swastika in the West has become associated with white supremacy and tyranny, and despite [minor](https://reclaimtheswastika.com) [efforts](https://web.archive.org/web/20221127194925/https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/visceral-impact-hindus-buddhists-try-to-reclaim-the-swastika-from-its-nazi-taint-20221128-p5c1pi.html) at reclamation (not universally regarded as a worthwhile enterprise), it shall likely remain so for a very long time, especially given the neofascists who are unafraid to show it. It didn’t help that the German Fascists liked to paste this shape on [pretty](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/1934_Wecker_mit_Swastika,_Junghans_Schrambert.JPG) [much](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/"Nazi-Glocken"_in_der_Sonderausstellung_des_Lutherhauses_Eisenach.jpg) [everything](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/WW2_Norway._German_Chirstmas_decorations_stars_baulb_Nazi_swastika_Die_Handgranate_Nachrichtenblatt_der_Division_front_paper_Kriegsweihnachten_1944_memorabilia_Lofoten_Krigsminnemuseum_Museum_2022IMG_7681.jpg) [imaginable](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ea/Swastikatree.jpg). But what was it that inspired them to misappropriate this symbol? Quoting William L. Shirer’s *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich*, pages [43](https://archive.org/stream/B-001-014-606/page/43/mode/1up)–[4](https://archive.org/stream/B-001-014-606/page/44/mode/1up): >In the summer of 1920 Hitler, the frustrated artist but now becoming the master propagandist, came up with an inspiration which can only be described as a stroke of genius. What the party lacked, he saw, was an emblem, a flag, a symbol, which would express what the new organization stood for and appeal to the imagination of the masses, who, as Hitler reasoned, must have some striking banner to follow and to fight under. > >After much thought and innumerable attempts at various designs he hit upon a flag with a red background and in the middle a white disk on which was imprinted a black swastika. The hooked cross—the hakenkreuz—of the swastika, borrowed though it was from more ancient times, was to become a mighty and frightening symbol of the [NSDAP] and ultimately of [the Third Reich]. Whence Hitler got the idea of using it for both the flag and the insignia of the party he does not say in a lengthy dissertation on the subject in *Mein Kampf*. > >The hakenkreuz is as old, almost, as man on the planet. It has been found in the ruins of Troy and of Egypt and China. I myself have seen it in ancient Hindu and Buddhist relics in India. In more recent times it showed up as an official emblem in such Baltic states as Estonia and Finland, where the men of the German free corps saw it during the fighting of 1918–19. [The Ehrhardt Brigade had it painted on their steel helmets when they entered Berlin during the Kapp putsch in 1920.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1971-091-20,_Kapp-Putsch,_Marine-Brigade_Erhardt.jpg) > >Hitler had undoubtedly seen it in Austria in the emblems of one or the other anti‐Semitic parties and perhaps he was struck by it when the Ehrhardt Brigade came to Munich. He says that numerous designs suggested to him by party members invariably included a swastika and that a “dentist from Sternberg” actually delivered a design for a flag that “was not bad at all and quite close to my own.” > >For the colors Hitler had of course rejected the black, red and gold of the hated Weimar Republic. **He declined to adopt the old imperial flag of red, white and black, but he liked its colors not only because, he says, they form “the most brilliant harmony in existence,” but because they were the colors of a Germany for which he had fought. But they had to be given a new form, and so a swastika was added.** > >Hitler reveled in his unique creation. “*A symbol it really is!*” he exclaims in *Mein Kampf*. “In *red* we see the social idea of the movement, in *white* the nationalist idea, in the *swastika* the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man.”²⁰ > >Soon the swastika armband was devised for the uniforms of the storm troopers and the party members, and two years later Hitler designed the [Fascist] standards which would be carried in the massive parades and would adorn the stages of the mass meetings. Taken from old Roman designs, they consisted of a black metal swastika on top with a silver wreath surmounted by an eagle, and, below, the initials NSDAP on a metal rectangle from which hung cords with fringe and tassels, a square swastika flag with “*Deutschland Erwache!* (Germany Awake!)” emblazoned on it. > >This may not have been “art,” but it was propaganda of the highest order. The [NSDAP] now had a symbol which no other party could match. The hooked cross seemed to possess some mystic power of its own, **to beckon to action in a new direction the insecure lower middle classes which had been floundering in the uncertainty of the first chaotic postwar years. They began to flock under its banner.** (For a brief explanation on why the Germanic Fascists saw theirselves as ‘Aryans’, [see here](https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/1924062).) Samuel Koehne’s [*The Nazis’ use of “Sieg Heil”: A Point of Continuity with the Völkisch Movement*](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278683211): >According to Nicholas Goodrick‐Clarke, some of the leaders in the early *völkisch* movement were interested in the idea that the swastika was especially ‘Germanic,’ leading to the esoteric writer Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (Adolf Lanz) hoisting a swastika flag in 1907.¹³ Indeed, there were a number of antisemitic organisations, including the *Reichshammerbund* (founded 1912 by Theodor Fritsch), which used the swastika as a symbol. This example comes from the Stuttgart chapter in around 1912.¹⁴ > >[There were also ‘Yule’ celebrations by such groups that were held for winter solstice.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3114948) This is a 1919 invitation issued by the *Reichshammerbund* and another major organisation, the *Deutschvölkischer Schutz‐ und Trutzbund* in Stuttgart.¹⁵ It included both the swastika and ‘Heil!’ (an expression used from 1902 by Georg von Schönerer).¹⁶ > >Neo‐pagan ‘secret societies’ like the Thule‐Society (*Thulegesellschaft*), the Germanic Order (*Germanenorden*) and the Order of Odin’s Children (*Wälsungen‐Orden*) also made use of the symbol. This is an example from the monthly publication of the Germanic Order Walvater in January 1918, the *Runen* paper that declared itself to be ‘for Germanic spiritual revelations and studies’ as well as the ‘pamphlet for the Friendship‐Grade of the Germanic Order’[.] > >The *Wälsungen‐Orden* made use of both the swastika and the phrase ‘Heil und Sieg’ (Hail and Victory, or Salvation and Victory) around 1918 in their newsletter[.] > >There were some common features: the swastika was believed to be a an ‘sunwheel,’ a particularly ‘Aryan’ symbol and an antisemitic sign. These points were reiterated by leading [German Fascists]. Hitler repeatedly argued of the [Fascist] flag that ‘The red is social, the white is national, and the swastika is antisemitic.¹⁷ In his Official Commentary on the NSDAP Programme, Gottfried Feder argued: ‘Our flags of attack (*Sturm‐Fahnen*) flutter before us…Eternally young, radiant and bright the sun‐wheel, the swastika, the symbol of reawakening life, rises before us.’¹⁸ While I have no proof of this, I suspect that it was no mere coincidence that [this was also the day when the Third Reich officially passed the first Nuremberg Laws](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1840544), since one of them reads ‘*§ 4: Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national colors.*’ --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (September 15). **1913**: Johannes Steinhoff, Luftwaffe fighter ace and later NATO official, existed. **1919**: Angelo Fausto Coppi, Axis soldier (and cyclist), was born. [**1932**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1932): Ambassador Nobuyoshi Muto and Prime Minister Zheng Xiaoxu signed the Japan–Manchukuo Protocol at the State of Manchuria’s capital Xinjing (Changchun, Jilin Province, China). [**1935**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1935): Fascism’s 1st Submarine Flotilla officially incorporated a unit trained in motored torpedo boat warfare; the new unit was based at La Spezia. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1937): The Imperialists took the town of Luodian near Shanghai after four days of attacks. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1938): Neville Chamberlain visited Adolf Schicklgruber at Berchtesgaden in southern Germany to discuss Fascist demands on Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain expressed his personal approval for Berlin’s previous demands for Sudetenland, but would need to discuss further with his cabinet and the French. The Chancellery expressed its appreciation and promised that no military action would be taken. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1939): The Wehrmacht captured Gdynia, and the IJA’s 101st Division under Lieutenant General Masatoshi Saito engaged in Chinese troops near Mount Lianhua near Gao'an, Jiangxi Province, China, capturing the city shortly thereafter. On the other hand, Tōkyō and Moscow signed a ceasefire that ended the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1940): Fascist submarine *U‐99* attacked Canadian ship *Kenordoc* with the deck gun northwest of Ireland just after midnight, killing seven and wounding thirteen; heavily damaged, Canadian destroyer HMCS *St. Laurent* and British destroyer HMS *Amazon* later scuttled her after the destroyers took the survivors aboard. Fascist submarine *U‐48* sank British sloop HMS *Dundee* northwest of Ireland at 0025 hours; twelve died but eighty‐three lived. At 0123 hours, *U‐48* attacked Greek ship *Alexandros* with a torpedo, slaughtering five yet leaving twenty‐three alive. At 0300 hours, *U‐48* reattacked and sunk British ship *Empire Volunteer*; six died but thirty‐three did not. West of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland at 0605 hours, Fascist submarine *U‐65* sank Norwegian ship *Hird*, but the entire crew survived. At 1130 hours, 250 Fascist bombers with fighter escort crossed the English Channel, with one hundred of them targeting London. At 1430 hours, another 250 bombers arrived in two waves, with seventy of them reaching London. At 1600 and 1800 hours, the aircraft factory at Woolston in Southampton, building Spitfire fighters, took a bombing, but with little damage. The Fascists lost 56 flightcraft and 136 airmen either died or fell into Allied captivity. Overnight, the Luftwaffe conducted heavy bombing raids over Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Southampton. This was the climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Luftwaffe launched its largest and most concentrated assault of the entire campaign. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1941): The XXXXI Armeekorps fought the Soviets in the southwest of Leningrad on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, but Axis soldiers in Paris suffered an assault from local partisans. On the other hand, Axis submarine *U‐94* sank British ship *Newbury* at 0816 hours (all aboard survived but were never seen again), Greek ship *Pegasus* at 2038 hours (sixteen died after lifeboat capsized, yet thirteen survived), and British ship *Empire Eland* at 2348 hours (all aboard survived but were never seen again) eight hundred miles west of Ireland. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1942): Axis torpedoes sunk the Allied Navy aircraft carrier USS *Wasp* at Guadalcanal, and Axis frogmen entered Gibraltar harbor and attached limpet mines on the British ship *Ravens Point*, causing her to sink in shallow water shortly thereafter. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1943): To combat the growing strength of Allied bombing attacks, the Luftwaffe reorganised its air defences into two territorial fighter commands: one in the Greater German Reich and the other in the western occupied territories. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1944): The Battle of Peleliu commenced as the United States Marine Corps’ 1st Marine Division and the United States Army’s 81st Infantry Division hit White and Orange beaches under heavy fire from Axis infantry and artillery. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/15/1945): Anton Webern, ambivalent Axis musician, expired. **1975**: Franco Bordoni‐Bisleri, Axis pilot, died. **1978**: Willy Messerschmitt, Axis aircraft designer and manufacturer, perished. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 5 days ago • 100%

Why numerous European men joined the Waffen SS https://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=histuht

I first learned about the [Schutzstaffel](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SS_(Nazi_Germany)) nearly two decades ago when I read about *Doom II: Hell on Earth*’s characters. A website succinctly described them as the head of state’s bodyguards, but the Schutzstaffel did more than just protect somebody, or even commit war crimes, which is the likelier reason that you are familiar with them. Members of the Schutzstaffel had a great deal of responsibilities as well as privileges: >**The SS in general had a multitude of duties that included but were not limited to police work, honor guard rôles, concentration camp duties, and eventually combat operations.** The Waffen SS fulfilled the personal guard and army aspect of what the SS would be to the [Fascists] but could also be considered the élite within the élite. If the SS were to be the Third Reich’s general élite then the Waffen SS was the method through which the SS could use an élite group for extreme force. > >John Steiner stated SS members across all sections were encouraged to think of themselves with an “*Elitebewusstsein* (élite consciousness) as a group.”¹⁶ This quote is important when looking specifically at the Waffen SS regarding statements that gave the Waffen SS the title of the Imperial Guard of the [Third Reich].¹⁷ It was very clear that the Waffen SS was designed to be Adolf Hitler’s and by extension, the [NSDAP’s] personal army, police force, and political enforcers. > >Moreover, the Waffen SS was encouraged to take their imperial guard idea beyond the confines of Germany. Historian Evertjan van Roekel stated that the SS had to think of themselves as “the advocate and protector of the Germanic or Nordic race.”¹⁸ This quote shows that **the SS assumed a peculiar hybrid rôle in society. They were intended to serve as a [Fascist] praetorian guard while also serving as the military will of the Germanic race according to [Germanic Fascism’s] ideology.** If this wide variety of responsibilities sounds similar to the knights of the Middle Ages, [that is because it is supposed to be](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4009664): >**The new aristocracy was not new in the sense that it had never been done before. It was new in its combination of élite warriors with a modern fascist régime and the fact that many [Fascists] thought [that] the nobility of old was lost and had to be reintroduced.** There were many references to ancient knights, Vikings, and Prussian imperial guards all of which were respectively considered élite in their native cultures. The naming conventions of certain SS units were indicative of these references. If you ever tried *Wolfenstein 3D*, you likely noticed that the Élite Guard was an abnormally tall (as well as blond and blue‐eyed) foe. At first I thought that this was a quaint reference to the Aryan archetype conceived of by European protofascists, but in fact the Schutzstaffel did have rules pertaining to physique: >The Waffen SS as an élite group had a difficult selection process. **Waffen SS requirements were stringent regarding aspects like height, race, and health. Here is where physical aspects played a part in the general notion of SS élite status. Before the start of the Second World War height requirements for the SS was a minimum of five feet, ten inches** which was noticeably taller than the average German man of military age in the 1930s.²⁶ > >Furthermore, the leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler stated “Until 1936 we did not accept a man in the *Leibstandarte* (1st SS division) or the *Verfügungstruppe* (2nd SS division) if he had even one filled tooth.”²⁷ These strict physical requirements established the SS as a physical élite. This naturally made the SS appealing to the physically fit in Germany or young men who saw tall and active men who boxed, ran, rode horses, or competed in other sports. > >The reputation of being tall, strong, and racially pure was just one part of what made the SS achieve its own place in the [Third Reich]. The SS being physically larger and more fit on average made them seem better than other groups in society due to their participation in major athletic events and the publicity that followed. For example, **the SS was involved in the 1936 Olympic Games which shows a certain degree of elevation above normal people.²⁸** Hans Woellke broke the Olympic record in the shot put.²⁹ The Schutzstaffel participated in the Olympics! That surprised me. Now, let us focus on understanding the privileges that came with joining the Schutzstaffel. >**Job security and future career prospects were a large component of volunteering for the SS both domestically and outside of Germany. The long service requirements while a disadvantage for some did provide the potential for years of steady employment. For the volunteers who were not from Germany proper, there was a hope that in their nation of origin, there would be some level of autonomy or favorable job placement in a post‐war context.** > >A case of study for favorable post‐war status is the case of Léon Degrelle, the commander of the Walloon Legion of Belgian SS collaborators.⁴⁵ Degrelle is problematic because he was a member of Belgium’s far‐right Rexist party and was an SS apologist. > >However, in his memoir, there were potentially good outcomes for Belgium to Degrelle and his fellow Belgian SS men. When [the Western Axis] declared war on the Soviet Union there was a need for more men. Degrelle and many Rexists viewed this as the opportunity “to command respect of the Reich” and a chance to win a position of prestige that would be favorable for them after the war when Europe would be reorganized under the Third Reich.⁴⁶ > >These men under Degrelle’s command were eventually deployed to the Ardennes forest in Belgium in 1944 where they were given the task of recognizing Belgium.⁴⁷ Despite Degrelle's complicated past, he and his Belgian SS men believed that for their service they would gain something for Belgium. > >The logic that encouraged Belgians to join the SS also applied to the Dutch. According to historian Evertjan van Roekel, the Waffen SS made membership appealing. **Rationing was common during the period due to the war and the need for supplies but “SS soldiers and their families received supplies as a matter of priority.”⁴⁸ Dutch SS volunteers were also promised that they could receive job training and civil jobs whenever they returned home like their Belgian counterparts.** > >Diary entries from a Dutch SS volunteer named Mr. Luiken states, “They are conscripted into the SS for 6 months. On their return to the Netherlands, they are placed in a secretarial office and, after a longer period of study, may also qualify for higher‐level jobs. My interest has been piqued.”⁴⁹ He wrote this when describing friends who were about to depart for Munich for their SS training. Belgian and Dutch volunteers were told that they would be rewarded for SS service. > >**Aside from jobs, education was a large perk that the SS could offer.** In many countries, different classes have different levels of education. Historians acknowledge this and bring up examples of attempts at “élite” education throughout the rest of the world.⁵⁰ One would think of the stereotypical delineation between public and private schools or finishing academies as a certain barrier that is difficult to cross. While the lines are not always strict, they do represent a distinction in education among class lines. > >The Waffen SS provided a partial bypass on the notion of an educated versus uneducated distinction amongst the classes. The SS created officer cadet schools and worked with the [Fascist] idea of education to foster institutions that would fuel the SS. **Despite the demanding racial and physical requirements, educational requirements were less stringent. Due to a different set of standards, roughly 40% of officer candidates pre‐1938 had an elementary school education.⁵¹** > >While this appears as though the SS was watering down the quality of their officers, this was not the case due to the SS being a form of social mobility. **For those who were racially worthy, it did not matter how educated one was. One could be molded by the schooling that the SS said was a “holistic approach to individual development.”⁵²** > >If a farmer’s son could prove that he was Aryan, not communist, and physically fit, he could go and be educated to move into the new breed of [Fascism’s] élite men. **Upon acceptance to an SS officer school a candidate would learn sports, basic military history, and tactics along with other “élite” activities like fencing and sailing.⁵³** > >[…] > >**Protection from arrest was the most unsavory perk the SS could provide.** Herbert Maeger (1922–present) is the case study for this benefit of SS membership. […] Despite being ethnically German, **his parents were not fans of Adolf Hitler, and this caused tensions when the [Fascists] occupied Belgium. Maeger’s mother openly called Hitler a criminal and a local official pointed out this was “ a very grave matter, and serious consequences could only be avoided by a very broad‐minded course of action.”⁵⁸** > >Maeger recalled that given his situation, **“It would be extremely helpful in this respect if I volunteered for the Waffen SS and my father agreed.”⁵⁹ He joined the SS as a teenager and was assigned to the 1st SS division in exchange for his mother not being arrested.** (Emphasis added.) If you haven’t the time to work your way through a book such as Herbert F. Ziegler’s [*Nazi Germany’s New Aristocracy*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=D46C82AF37A644390CEC846999EAFD56), this forty‐page document is mostly worth reading. [It is naïve to believe that any Fascist seriously wanted to realize a classless nation](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1233966) (at best, he might have wanted to somehow render class irrelevant), but liberal blemishes aside, you’ll learn a good deal about the SS and why so many men chose to join it. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 14). [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/14/1940): The Hungarian Army, supported by local Hungarians, massacred 158 Romanian civilians in Ip, Sălaj, a village in Northern Transylvania. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/14/1943): The Wehrmacht commenced a three‐day retaliatory operation targeting several Greek villages in the region of Viannos, whose death toll would eventually exceed 500 persons. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/14/1944): The Axis slaughtered eight hundred Romani children (more than one hundred of whom were boys between 9 and 14 years of age) at Auschwitz, and three Axis V‐2 rockets hit Britain. One of them hit the centre of Walthamstow, London at 0455 hours, killing six immediately and another one later from wounds. (The resulting crater was 50′ wide and 10′ deep.) On the other hand, the Axis lost the Netherlandish city of Maastricht and the Italian town of Coriano to the Allies. Lastly, Léon Degrelle received the Close Combat Clasp award in Gold. **1966**: Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, dropped dead. :::

Capitalism in Decay rainpizza • 7 days ago • 100%

ROK(occupied Korea) forcibly sold away thousands of babies in a horrific for-profit adoption scheme FOR DECADES

www.yahoo.com

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean commission found evidence that women were pressured into giving away their infants for foreign adoptions after giving birth at government-funded facilities where thousands of people were confined and enslaved from the 1960s to the 1980s. ![](https://preview.redd.it/samsung-republic-forcibly-sold-away-thousands-of-babies-in-v0-8z8r7kjkuund1.jpg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7fdfa1faff68699ecec6b62aa0df5ba5aafe9161)

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 6 days ago • 100%

Why the Third Reich’s technology was not as good as we may think

inv.nadeko.net

I should note that the author overstates his case, and his perception of the Soviet Union is… flawed, but you may still find this of some interest. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 13). **1877**: Wilhelm Filchner, Reich explorer, was born. **1885**: Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke, Fascist mathematician, was brought into the world. **1891**: Max Pruss, Fascist captain, arrived on this dust ball. **1899**: Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Romanian fascist, stained the earth. [**1936**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/13/1936): Stefano Delle Chiaie, neofascist terrorist, worsened life with his presence. Coincidentally, Berlin promoted Karl Burk to the rank of SS‐Hauptsturmführer and Rudolf Höss to SS‐Untersturmführer as the Spanish Nationalists captured San Sebastian, Spain. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/13/1942): Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign: U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Japanese with heavy losses for the Axis forces. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/13/1944): Start of the Battle of Meligalas between the Greek Resistance forces of the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) and the collaborationist security battalions. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 7 days ago • 100%

Azov’s links to international neofascism

banderalobby.substack.com

>Some notable Azov veterans and groups affiliated with the Azov movement took part in the launch of the Nation Europa network. In particular, Denis Kapustin, [said to be](https://www.politico.eu/article/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-the-ukraine-war) “one of the most dangerous neo-Nazis in Europe,” is the commander of the HUR’s Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC). Alexey Levkin, an important [ideologist](https://nitter.poast.org/kooleksiy/status/1254881535888629762) in the Azov movement, also from the RVC, co-founded Nation Europa as the head of “Wotanjugend,” an [extremely neo[fascist]](https://www.bellingcat.com/?p=24891) group from Russia. Whereas Kapustin has a history of organizing far-right fighting tournaments in Russia and Ukraine, Levkin has organized [so‐called] National Socialist black metal festivals as the leader of the band “M8L8TH,” which is popular among hardcore neo[fascists] in Ukraine. > >![](https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8c618e94-1903-4f13-b04e-737a6c2142b7_1150x1404.png) >Screenshot from Twitter (because Substack can’t embed posts anymore) [For anybody having difficulties reading the screenshot, it is a post from Leonid Ragozin that says, ‘Those were the days back in Russia:) Aleksey Levkin and Denis Vikhorev of Azov-linked Wotanjugend with Russian neo-pagan and fascist ideologist Aleksey "Dobroslav" Dobrovolsky in 2005. Both are in Ukraine now and Dobroslav died in 2013. Recently posted by Levkin.’ — Anbol] > >Yurii Pavlyshyn, the medic from Azov’s 3rd Assault Brigade, is the bass guitar player in M8L8TH, and apparently a coordinator of Nation Europa. To hear it from him, no matter who “wins” the war, “it will be a defeat,” because there will be a “dictatorship” in Ukraine of the Russian or Western neoliberal variety. He suggested that instead there should be a nationalist dictatorship of war veterans, “because the real elites of our ancient Ukraine are now in trenches and dugouts.” He calls this “[Trincerocrazia](https://nitter.poast.org/Dreznicagoat/status/1833459157543817432),” or “Trenchocracy.” > >[…] > >The HUR’s International Legion, which includes the RVC, is filled with neo[fascists] tied to the Azov movement, and they largely spearheaded the conference. Representatives of the HUR’s Russian, German, and Belarusian Volunteer Corps, including Alexey Levkin from Wotanjugend, constituted a majority of those from Ukraine’s military that signed Nation Europa’s “Memorandum of Unity and Cooperation.” Azov veterans created the Belarusian unit, and the German squad originated in Der Dritte Weg (“The Third Way”), a small neo[fascist] party in Germany that is allied with the Azov movement. The German delegation at the Nation Europa conference included Klaus Armstroff, the founding chairman of “III. Weg.” > >![](https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/15d7a489-8e5e-4791-900e-3a1069d43c30_1260x717.png) >In the short video that Nation Europa released about the conference, the representative of the German Volunteer Corps (NDK) only briefly appeared without a blur over his face. This might be the same neo[fascist] NDK fighter seen on the right, who included the “Fourteen Words” in his selfie. > >The Revanche battalion is another HUR unit that participated in the conference and signed its memorandum. It did so alongside the violent far-right “conservative” organization “Tradition & Order,” which created the unit. These groups might have drifted apart, but not from their [allies in CasaPound](https://nitter.poast.org/LuigiDeBiase/status/1587083827180195841), an Italian neo-fascist movement, which is an important backer of the Nation Europa project. > >![](https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1b2bfbd4-844e-49cb-8f98-73f83b4f6659_1098x1326.png) >Luigi De Biase: “The Ukrainian battalion ‘Revanche’ celebrates the anniversary of the [fascist] March on Rome. The motto (‘The March Continues’) is the same one that appeared the day before yesterday [October 27, 2022] in Rome, on a banner near the Colosseum.” > >Alberto Palladino, an Italian “journalist” who hospitalized five members of the Italian Democratic Party in 2011, represented CasaPound at the first Nation Europa meeting. Several years ago, Palladino presented “CasaPound’s Point of View” at the Azov movement’s second “Paneuropa” conference. In 2022, he [shared](https://nitter.poast.org/LuigiDeBiase/status/1587087195185315841) the above photo on his Instagram account. That year Palladino wrote a report and made a mini-documentary about the Revanche battalion after an exclusive visit to their base. The [video](https://www.instagram.com/borderlinevisual/reel/CnNEDv0j97W) featured an interview with a soldier who wore a patch inspired by the Waffen-SS Dirlewanger Brigade. > >Gabriele Adinolfi, an unofficial founder of CasaPound, was the main [guest speaker](https://telegra.ph/Speech-of-Gabriele-Adinolfi-on-Nation-Europa-conference-09-10) at the Nation Europa conference, although he participated remotely. “The great challenge is to create new elites for Europe,” he said. One month earlier, the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University published an illuminating essay about this 70-year-old “[Architect of a European Neofascist Network](https://www.illiberalism.org/?p=90414).” --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 12). **1882**: Ion Agârbiceanu, fascist priest, made the mistake of existing. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/12/1938): Adolf Schicklgruber demanded autonomy and self‐determination for the Germans of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/12/1941): The Axis launched a renewed offensive against Odessa, and the Jäger Report (issued later that year) noted that the Axis and its collaborators massacred 993 Jewish men, 1,670 Jewish women, and 771 Jewish children in Vilnius for a total of 3,334 people. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/12/1942): An Axis submarine torpedoed the RMS *Laconia* off the coast of West Africa, sinking it and massacring its civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs. Meanwhile, on the first day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge during the Guadalcanal Campaign the Imperial Japanese Army assaulted the U.S. Marines protecting Henderson Field. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/12/1943): Otto Skorzeny’s commando forces rescued Benito Mussolini from his house arrest. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/12/1944): The liberation of Yugoslavia from Axis occupation continued, and Bajina Bašta in western Serbia was among the liberated cities. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/12/1945): Korean communists proclaimed the People’s Republic of Korea, bringing an end to Axis rule over Korea. Coincidentally, the Axis field marshal Hajime Sugiyama ended his own life. **1953**: Hugo Schmeisser, Axis arms designer, expired. **1956**: Count Sándor Ágost Dénes Festetics de Tolna, pro‐Reich Zionist, dropped dead. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 week ago • 100%

Chile’s antisocialist dictatorship used Argentine and Italian neofascists to further its transnational ends https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/978-3-319-91358-2_9

Quoting Galadriel Ravelli’s and Anna Cento Bull’s *The Pinochet Regime and the Trans‐nationalization of Italian Neo‐fascism* in [*Hayek: A Collaborative Biography*](https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/978-3-319-91358-2), pages 374–380: >**The relationship between Pinochet and the Neo‐Fascists significantly evolved in 1975**, when they were asked to kill Chilean Christian Democratic deputy Bernardo Leighton, who had moved to Rome after the 1973 coup (Mayorga 2003, 11). **The case of the attempted murder of Bernardo Leighton illuminates the key rôle played by right‐wing groups in implementing Pinochet’s transnational repression plans and explains why the Neo‐Fascists fed to Chile in 1977.** > >[…] > >Prats, a former Chilean army commander at the time of Allende’s government, had moved to Argentina after the coup to avoid the Junta’s prosecution. The general and his wife were killed in September 1974 by a bombing attack. **Judicial investigations clarify that ‘the assassinations were carried out by agents of [DINA](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/377458) with the assistance of members of the Fascist Argentine group Milicia […] and the complicity of the Argentine army and police’** (McSherry 2005, 69, 70). > >The Prats murder was one of the frst extraterritorial DINA’s executions and it proved that the Chilean intelligence could rely on the support of neighbouring countries in targeting political opponents. McSherry argues that the surveillance cooperation established between Chile and Argentina in 1973 was the prototype of Operation Condor. The attack against Bernardo Leighton and his wife, which occurred on the 6 October 1975, should thus be considered as part of the preliminary operations of the Condor prototype led by the Chilean intelligence. > >Why was Leighton attacked in Italy? First, the Prats murder suggests that from the very beginning the Chilean Junta carried out a borderless crusade against its political opponents. Whether these were still based in Latin America or elsewhere, they had to be monitored and eventually eliminated. > >Second, Leighton’s political rôle and his relations in Italy were considered as particularly problematic by the Chilean régime. The main concern was Leighton’s capacity to unify and potentially organise Chilean political opponents abroad, with unpredictable consequences for the régime (*Relazione introduttiva sui fatti e i mezzi di prova* 1995, 6). > >Furthermore, the DINA was particularly worried about the potential collaboration between the Italian Christian Democratic party and the Italian Communist Party (which had been under discussion at the time). In September 1973, the leader of the Italian CP, Enrico Berlinguer, launched the proposal to collaborate with its main political enemy, the Italian CD party, ‘to restore the economy and maintain public order’ (Clark 2008, 388). > >The proposal for a ‘historic compromise’ seemed to pave the way for an involvement of the Communists in the government, a perspective that obviously scared conservative forces. The concerns were echoed by the DINA, which according to its former agent Townley feared that the collaboration between the two parties in Italy would have legitimized a similar convergence in Chile ‘and would have, in great part, unifed the Marxist opposition in Europe against Chile’ (U.S. District Court, Deposition of Michael Vernon Townley 1992, 76). > >Hence, the attack against Leighton played a double rôle: on one hand, it aimed at sending a clear message to the exiled opponents of the Junta that they were still under the DINA’s radar, even in Europe. On the other hand, it aimed at discouraging any compromise with Communist forces at a transnational level. > >**The key element in the Condor operation was covert action. The operation relied on a state parallel structure, which could count on the collaboration of paramilitary squads and non‐state actors such as right‐wing groups. This was crucial to the survival of the military Juntas, as ‘to secure at least a minimal acceptance of their legitimacy, the national security states needed to mask the involvement of the state in the atrocities being carried on’** (McSherry 2005, 21). > >**This explains why the Argentine right‐wing group Milicia was involved in the Prats assassination and why the Italian Neo‐Fascists were asked to kill Leighton in 1975. The aforementioned relationship between Delle Chiaie and Pinochet, provides a further explanation for the Neo‐Fascists’ involvement. Thanks to the transnational relations between Fascists and Fascist sympathizers, Pinochet could count on the expertise of the Italian Neo‐Fascists to eliminate his enemy in Rome.** > >As previously highlighted, the political performance of the Neo‐Fascists in Italy was marked by their deep involvement in the Strategy of Tension, which made them *experts* on political violence and terrorism techniques. > >**Judicial investigations carried out by the Rome Prosecutor’s office provide an exhaustive overview of the relationship between the Chilean Junta and the Italian Neo‐Fascists. The evidence gathered by judicial authorities highlighted that the murder was first commissioned to the Neo‐Fascists by DINA agent Townley in summer 1975 and eventually carried out by Delle Chiaie’s group.** As Vincenzo Vinciguerra¹ reconstructs, despite the direct relationship between Pinochet and Delle Chiaie, it was agent Townley who contacted him about the Leighton operation. > >This was necessary as the relationship between Pinochet and the militant, who was a fugitive under investigation for several crimes, had to be covert to protect the dictator from possible scandals (Tribunale Ordinario di Milano, hearing of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, 22/05/02). > >**In spring 1975, the Neo‐Fascists were asked by Townley logistic support to coordinate the assassination of Carlos Altamirano, leader of the Chilean Socialist party who had found refuge in Spain. At the time, the Neo‐Fascists were mostly based in the Spanish sanctuary, where they had a close relationship with the Spanish intelligence.** > >According to Vinciguerra (Procura della Repubblica di Roma, hearing of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, 9/09/92), **Townley, as a DINA agent, preferred to avoid direct contact with the Spanish intelligence to prevent diplomatic incidents and hence asked for the Neo‐Fascists’ support, given their relationship with the Spanish intelligence.** Delle Chiaie discouraged the operation against Altamirano, warning Townley that the Spanish intelligence was not keen on foreign interferences within its territory. > >As a matter of fact, the operation was called off (Relazione introduttiva sui fatti e i mezzi di prova 1995, 18–19). While the preparatory meetings for the murder of Leighton between Townley and the Neo‐Fascists took place in Rome in summer 1975, the Altamirano episode highlights that already in the early months of 1975 the DINA relied on the group to implement its transnational repression plan. **The agency wanted to target its enemies in Europe and the relationship between Pinochet and the Neo‐Fascists proved to be a valid asset to this end.** (Emphasis added.) --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 11). **1899**: Philipp Bouhler, the SS official responsible for the *Aktion T4* euthanasia program that massacred more than 250,000 disabled adults and children, as well as co‐initiator of the *Aktion 14f13* campaign that massacred 15,000–20,000 concentration camp prisoners, disgraced humanity with his existence. [**1935**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1935): *U‐12* launched at the Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1937): Following the advice of Berlin’s advisor to China, Falkenhausen, Chinese troops dug in at Luodian near Shanghai to defend against an Imperial offensive. The 300,000 Chinese infantry troops would hold on to Luodian for four days against attacks by 100,000 Imperialists with overwhelming firepower. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1938): Rudolf Höss received the rank of SS‐Obersturmführer. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1939): As the Third Reich officially lost its diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, ‘Lord Haw‐Haw’ began broadcasting his ‘Germany calling’ programme on Radio Hamburg. The name was linked to William Joyce, a Yankee citizen who had spent some time in Ireland, had been Propaganda Director of Oswald Moseley’s (qv) British Union of Fascists and who had fled to Berlin a week before the outbreak of war. Additionally, Georg von Küchler’s superiors awarded him Clasp 2nd Class to his Iron Cross, and Wolfgang Falck shot down two Polish aircraft (a bomber and a reconnaissance aircraft). [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1940): Northwest of Ireland between 0326 and 0328 hours, Fascist submarine *U‐28* assaulted Allied convoy OA‐210, sinking the Netherlandish ship *Maas*, massacring twenty, and severely damaging the British ship *Harpenden*, killing somebody. Afterwards, Fascist submarine *U‐99* sank British ship *Albionic* at 0716 hours, slaughtering twenty‐five. After an entire morning without aerial attacks, three hundred Fascist bombers flew across Kent in southern England and up the Thames Estuary in two waves at about 1500 hours, then some bombers got through British defences and bombed the East End of London. On the same day, the Fascists also bombed Portsmouth and Southampton, then they bombed London and Liverpool overnight. Off Ramsgate, Kent, the Fascists assaulted destroyers HMS *Atherstone* and HMS *Fernie* in the Strait of Dover, seriously damaging HMS *Atherstone*, which also suffered six deaths. Lastly, as *Luigi Torelli* began patrolling waters off the Azores Islands, Winston Churchill noted that the coming week was to be dangerous as intelligence showed a Fascist amphibious invasion about to be launched, but IJA Major General Issaku Nishihara reported to Tōkyō, complaining that French authorities were delaying negotiations regarding Indochina matters. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1941): Axis artillery bombarded Leningrad throughout the day, and submarines *U‐82*, *U‐202*, *U‐207*, *U‐432*, and *U‐433* assaulted the Allied convoy SC‐42 east of Greenland, sinking seven merchant ships. Meanwhile, Charles Lindbergh gave a speech accusing the British, Jews and FDR régime of pressing for war with the Third Reich. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1942): Axis submarine *U‐404* attacked Allied convoy ON‐127 west of Ireland, damaging Norwegian tanker *Marit II* at 0016 hours and ending two lives. At 0135 hours, *U‐218* also attacked the same convoy, damaging Norwegian tanker *Fjordaas*. At 0147 hours, *U‐584* sank British tanker *Empire Oil* west of Ireland. Elsewhere, *U‐96* sank Portuguese sailing vessel *Delães* at 1150 hours, *U‐517* sank corvette HMCS *Charlottetown* in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in northeastern Canada at 1300 hours (slaughtering nine but leaving fifty‐five alive), and *U‐584* sank Norwegian merchant ship *Hindanger* at 1925 hours (killing somebody but leaving forty alive). During the day, USS *Saratoga* delivered aircraft to Henderson Field at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Axis destroyers landed troops at Guadalcanal; in the past two weeks, six thousand men were successfully delivered to the island. Meanwhile, Axis aircraft attacked Henderson Field. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1943): The Axis commenced its three‐day liquidation of the Jewish ghetti in the Byelorussian cities of Minsk and Lida. Coincidentally, Axis authorities raided Jews in Nice, France. Italian forces in various Aegean islands surrendered to the Axis, and at 1500 hours, Kurt Student ordered Major Harald Mors to have a plan for the rescue of Benito Mussolini ready at his desk as soon as possible, with the plan to be executed on the following day at 0730 hours. Lastly, the Wehrmacht occupied Corsica and Kosovo‐Metohija, thereby discontinuing the Kingdom of Italy’s occupation of Corsica. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1944): Axis troops under Friedrich Schubert and Greek paramilitary fighters under Georgios Poulos exterminated one hundred twenty civilians in the city of Giannitsa, Greece according to an anticommunist operation. On the other hand, the Axis lost at least 11,000 lives to a firestorm that an RAF bombing raid on Darmstadt caused. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/11/1945): Australian 9th Division forces arrived at the Axis‐run Batu Lintang camp, a POW and civilian internment camp on the island of Borneo. :::

Capitalism in Decay Coco0330 • 1 week ago • 94%

Proving Social Democracy is a moderate wing of Fascism 1/8

lemmygrad.ml

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 week ago • 100%

The German Fascists quoted Zionist sources to validate their claims that Jews could not be assimilated

Quoting Tony Greenstein’s *Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation*, pages 60–62: >Joachim Doron observed that: ‘the Jewish self‐criticism so widespread among the German Zionist intelligentsia often seemed dangerously similar to the plaints of the German anti‐Semites.’¹¹⁰ The [Fascist] leadership quoted Zionist sources to validate their claims that Jews could not be assimilated.¹¹¹ It was difficult for German Jews to refute [Fascist] claims that they were aliens ‘when a loud and visible group of their own continually published identical indictments… Zionism had become a tool for anti‐Semites.’¹¹² > >[Zionist leaders even used the same language as the anti‐Semites.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/509901) [The Zionist régime’s] first Justice Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth, described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’.¹¹³ Josef Sprinzak, the first Speaker of the Knesset, spoke of the new German immigrants as ‘a great deal of filth in the Yishuv.’¹¹⁴ Klatzkin held that Jews were: >>a people disfigured in both body and soul — in a word, of a horror […] some sort of outlandish creature […] in any case, not a pure national type […] some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name of Jew.¹¹⁵ > >Anti‐Semitic ideologues and politicians in the 19th century were almost unanimous in their universal endorsement of Zionism.¹¹⁶ They considered Zionism ‘a useful vehicle for ridding Germany of its Jewish population and thus found it worthy of support.’¹¹⁷ > >Heinrich Class, President of the hundred‐thousand‐strong Pan‐German League, who was made an honorary member of the Reichstag on Hitler’s assumption of power, wrote, *If I was the Kaiser* which was considered by German anti‐Semites as ‘trailblazing’.¹¹⁸ Class outlined a programme ‘for the complete expulsion of the Jews from German public life’, writing that:¹¹⁹ >>[…] among the Jews themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more adherents […] They also declare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible […] the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews […] have always asserted…¹²⁰ > >Theodor Fritsch, who was ‘greatly admired’ by Hitler¹²¹ and who wrote *Antisemiten Katechismus*, which by 1944 was in its 49th edition, quoted approvingly from Klatzkin, who believed that ‘the liberals have understood better than the anti‐Semites how to destroy a nation.’¹²² Other anti‐Semitic supporters of Zionism included Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Eugen Dühring.¹²³ Alfred Rosenberg, [German Fascism’s] main theoretician, wrote in 1919 that >>Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.¹²⁴ > >Rosenberg ‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’ and ‘eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.’¹²⁵ Donald Niewyk asked whether ‘the German Zionists’ assertions of racial and national otherness […] hasten the day when the Nazis might seek to make Germany *Judenrein*?’¹²⁶ Rabbi Jacob Agus asked if: >>the Zionist programme and philosophy contribute[d] decisively to the enormous catastrophe of the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis by popularizing the notion that the Jews were forever aliens in Europe?¹²⁷ > >Claude Montefiore, a founder of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and President of the Anglo‐Jewish Association, accused the Zionist movement of having aided and abetted the rise of the [Third Reich].¹²⁸ > >The Union of Jewish War Veterans [RjF] argued that in demanding national minority rights ‘Zionism provided anti‐Semites with political ammunition.’¹²⁹ Robert Weltsch, the Editor of *Judische Rundschau* wrote that ‘If I am a Jew then I cannot be a German’.¹³⁰ Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a prominent German Zionist leader and later President of the American Jewish Committee [AJC] and Vice Chairman of the World Jewish Congress [WJC] described the [Third Reich’s] assumption of power as the ‘beginning of the Jew’s return to his Judaism.’ > >It was little wonder that the CV talked about German Zionism having inflicted ‘a stab in the back’ to the anti‐fascist struggle against Hitler.[¹³¹](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2379065) Weizmann wrote: >>that unless some radical measures are taken fairly soon, we Zionists may stand charged, when history comes to be written, with criminal indifference in the face of the greatest trial to which Jewry has been subjected in modern times.¹³² --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 10). **1887**: Giovanni Gronchi, Fascist Italy’s (briefly serving) Undersecretary for Industry and Commerce, was born. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1938): Hermann Göring claimed at a Nürnberg rally that the Czechs were oppressing Sudeten Germans. Aside from that, new air regulations in the Third Reich prohibited overflight by all foreign aircraft (except along specified air corridors established for civil aircraft). [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1939): The Canadian declaration of war on the Third Reich received royal assent, and to make matters worse for the Fascists, Polish insurgents killed their Waffen‐SS general Wilhelm Fritz von Roettig at Opoczno around 1415 hours. (On the other hand, the Third Reich might have been happier to learn that the submarine HMS *Triton* accidentally sunk HMS *Oxley* near Norway, becoming the Royal Navy’s first loss of a submarine in the war.) Likewise, the Wehrmacht made a breakthrough near Kutno and Sandomierz in Poland. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1940): The Fascist bourgeoisie postponed by four days the decision to launch Operation Sealion, and foul weather in the United Kingdom restricted the Fascists to flying reconnaissance missions only through most of the day. At 1715 hours, six small raids approached London, yet they lost two bombers and all of the rest turned back because of British fighters. Overnight, the Fascists bombed the East End section of London, damaging the Buckingham Palace among others; the Fascists also assaulted South Wales, West Midlands, and Liverpool during the night. Lastly, the *Regio Esercito* crossed the Libyan–Egyptian border, and armed merchant cruiser *Atlantis* sank British ship *Benarty* 1,250 miles east of Madagascar, then took the entire crew of forty‐nine as prisoners. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1941): Generalleutnant August Krakau succeeded Robert Martinek as the commanding officer of the Wehrmacht’s 7th Mountain Division, and Axis submarines *U‐81*, *U‐82*, *U‐85*, *U‐432*, and *U‐652* assaulted Allied convoy SC‐42 100 miles east of Greenland, sinking six merchant vessels and damaging two more. Axis submarine *U‐111* also sank Netherlandish merchant ship *Marken* three hundred miles north of Brazil, but all thirty‐seven aboard survived and the *U‐111*’s crew gave them food. Axis submarine *Topazio*, on the other hand, sank British ferry *Murefte* off Haifa and killed somebody. Meanwhile, Panzergruppe 1 and Panzergruppe 2 completed the crossing of the Dnieper River in southern and northern Ukraine, respectively, and both headed toward Kiev. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1942): The British Army carried out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to relaunch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign, frustrating Vichy France. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1943): In the course of Operation Achse, the Wehrmacht began its occupation of Rome. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1944): Berlin ordered that all deserters be shot, along with their families. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/10/1945): Otto Skorzeny transferred from Wiesbaden to Nuremberg; he traveled by aircraft with other top Axis leaders. Coincidentally, Vidkun Quisling received the death sentence in Oslo. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 week ago • 100%

How to Make SpaghettiNazi: an exposé of NAFO’s ‘Papa Pasta’

banderalobby.substack.com

>“I feel the best thing to do is take the war into Europe,” he said last December. “Organize the [Ukrainian] diaspora and refugees, and start striking the russians and their allies in the West.” Later he predicted that the United States will become “a major front in the war.” Meanwhile, he called on American leftists to face the same “consequences” as neo[fascists], as in, it should become morally acceptable to physically assault them. > >This includes [pro-Palestinian activists](https://archive.is/VaqRA) (guilty of doing “[Nazi shit](https://archive.is/8dbM5)” and “a [ratfucking op](https://archive.is/wL5IE)”), “[tankies](https://archive.is/WVVph)” and “dirtbag leftists” (who “[are basically Nazis](https://archive.is/ZaPDD)”), members of DSA (after all, “most of these people are more accurately national socialists”), and PSL. (“These groups justify any kind of violence in the name of decolonization. [So I guess that means they’re fair game](https://archive.is/Yfx1e) for Ukrainians fighting Russian occupation.”) > >Still fantasizing about the “Day of the Rope”? “I’m not even opposed to what some may call [vigilante justice](https://archive.is/pPIEl),” he said earlier this year. “When I come back to the US I’m going to help clean out the garbage.” It was around this time that I was [strangled in Washington](https://wp.me/p9MxL0-pzU) by Marko Suprun, the main face of the aforementioned “StopFake.” > >For “Spaghetti Kozak” and other rabid NAFO dogs, this was a good start. “Choking, punching, and stomping a Grayzone ‘reporter’ isn’t just okay, it’s morally correct,” said “Fella Hendrix.” (I don’t work for the Grayzone, but this is NAFO dogma.) “Good for Marko,” chimed in James. “These people aren’t journalists; they’re unregistered agents for multiple fascist dictatorships. And because our govt won’t defend its citizens from such rats, people have to do the job themselves.” At the time, I was [surprised](https://nitter.poast.org/mossrobeson__/status/1783954995504894440) to see him engage an antisemitic troll calling me “Moss Rosenberg.” Of course, it all makes sense now. > >**Lying Spaghetti Monster** > >According to “Spaghetti Kozak,” I’m a “[weird stalker](https://nitter.poast.org/SpaghettiKozak/status/1581295441122951168)” who “[likely has mental illness](https://nitter.poast.org/SpaghettiKozak/status/1581204694067998720)” and is “[probably a sex offender](https://nitter.poast.org/SpaghettiKozak/status/1760422655369662725).” But these aren’t the blatant lies that concern me. Earlier this year, he spent a week “[doing some training](https://nitter.poast.org/SpaghettiKozak/status/1803089350726484375)” with the 3rd Assault Brigade, an [openly](https://nitter.poast.org/mossrobeson__/status/1761918591266426976) [neo[fascist]](https://nitter.poast.org/mossrobeson__/status/1758559372978855966) formation of the Azov movement, which James insists is “just a regular military unit.” As a former hardcore [Stormfronter], he would obviously know better, and certainly does. > >For example, just last year he said this about the black sun, a neo[fascist] symbol used by several units in the 3rd Assault Brigade: “Many folks erroneously think it’s just a Slavic pagan symbol. But yeah, it’s bullshit and people shouldn’t defend it.” Instead of openly defending it, James intentionally obfuscates the reality. “It’s all very complicated,” he says, and “the least important thing to report on right now.” > >Perhaps “Spaghetti Kozak” takes some satisfaction in knowing that, in the worst case scenario, Azov would create an “Aryan state in my lifetime.” As explained by the journalist Leonid Ragozin, “Azov’s Reconquista agenda goes far beyond Ukraine. It envisages the ‘liberation’ of Russia as stage two. Russian neo-nazis played a big role in it from day one.” (“J.P. Slovjanski” would have probably come on board, too, if they let him.) > >The economist Branko Milanović added a relevant comment: “I’ve come to the conclusion that in 99% of the cases, ideology of extreme nationalism is purely a way to package a desire to fight, kill, steal, rape, etc. That’s why they can easily change ideologies. They mean nothing to them.” As for “Spaghetti Kozak,” he has continued to call himself a “leftist.” (Emphasis original.) James Slavyanski’s (brief) detour into revolutionary leftism is hardly unusual among petty bourgeois men who can’t decide if they hate their corporate competitors or the lower classes more, and grossly misinterpreting successful movements to be more in line with his politics is likewise to be expected given neofascism’s desperate need for long‐term successes to cite as examples. I would be unalarmed about his ‘leftist’ history, especially given how strongly opposed to us he is now. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 9). **1908**: Shigekazu Shimazaki, Axis career officer, was born. [**1936**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1936): At the NSDAP’s annual rally the Chancellor announced a four year plan for economic and military revival under Hermann Göring’s supervision. Hjalmar Schlat, the Reich Minister of Economics, was insultingly unnotified of the plan until its public announcement. Meanwhile, the crews of Portuguese Navy frigate NRP *Afonso de Albuquerque* and destroyer *Dão* mutinied against the Salazar régime’s support of General Franco’s coup and declared their solidarity with the Spanish Republic. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1939): The Battle of Hel commenced, and became the longest‐defended pocket of Polish Army resistance during the Fascist invasion of Poland. (Coincidentally, Burmese national hero U Ottama starved in prison after a hunger strike to protest Britain’s colonial government.) [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1940): [The Hungarian Army perpetrated the Treznea Massacre in Transylvania.](https://books.google.com/books?id=O3DgDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA189) [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1941): Vojtech Tuka, with the guidance of SS‐Hauptstrumführer Dieter Wisliceny, enacted the Ordinance Judenkodex, which required Slovakian Jews to wear the yellow Stars of David, annulled all debts owed to Jews, confiscated Jewish property, and deported all Jews from the capital Bratislava. Aside from that, Hans Spemann, Fascist embryologist, expired. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1942): An Axis floatplane dropped incendiary bombs on Oregon. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1943): The Allies landed at Salerno and Taranto, Italy. Coincidentally, Reich bombers killed the former Axis admiral Carlo Bergamini. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1944): The Axis lost the Kingdom of Bulgaria because of the armed rebellion throughout the country and specifically the military coup in the capital. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/9/1945): The Empire of Japan officially surrendered to China. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 weeks ago • 100%

Soviet prisoners of war were the first victims of Fascism’s mass starvation policy in the East

encyclopedia.ushmm.org

>[Soviet prisoners of war](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-soviet-prisoners-of-war) were the first victims of the [Fascist] policy of mass starvation in the east. In August 1941, the [Wehrmacht] set a ration of just 2,200 calories per day for working Soviet prisoners of war. Even this was not enough to sustain life for long, but in practice the POWs received much less than the official ration. Many Soviet prisoners of war received at most a ration of only 700 calories a day. > >Within a few weeks the result of this "subsistence" ration, as the [Wehrmacht] termed it, was death by starvation. The POWs were often provided, for example, only special "Russian" bread made from sugar beet husks and straw flour. Suffering from malnutrition and nearing starvation, numerous reports from the late summer and fall of 1941 show that in many camps the desperate POWs tried to ease their hunger by eating grass and leaves. > >### Epidemics > >The [Axis powers] made little provision to shelter most of the prisoners they took from the Soviet military. Eventually the [Axis] established makeshift camps but the lack of proper food, clothing, and shelter took a terrible toll. Often the prisoners had to dig holes in the ground as improvised shelter from the elements. > >By the end of 1941, epidemics (especially typhoid and dysentery) emerged as the main cause of death. In October 1941 alone, almost 5,000 Soviet POWs died each day. The onset of winter accelerated the mass death of Soviet POWs, because so many had little or no protection from the cold. > >Even in POW camps [under Fascism], Soviet POWs had often been left for months to vegetate in trenches, dugouts or sod houses. In the occupied eastern territories conditions were even worse. In Belorussia only pavilions (structures with roofs but no walls) were available to house Soviet POWs. By the winter of 1941, starvation and disease resulted in mass death of unimaginable proportions. > >Many Soviet soldiers, including many wounded, died on the way to the prisoner collection centers and transit camps; others died during transit to camps in occupied Poland or the [German Reich](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/third-reich-an-overview). Most of the prisoners captured in 1941 had to march to the rear across hundreds of miles and those who were too exhausted to continue were shot to death on the spot. > >When Soviet POWs were transported by train, the Armed Forces High Command permitted only open freight cars to be used. Sometimes days went by without the prisoners receiving any rations. This resulted in an enormous loss of life during winter months. According to army reports between 25 percent and 70 percent of the prisoners on these transports from the occupied Baltic countries died en route to Germany. > >### Mass Shootings > >The large number of dead was due not just to irresponsible neglect by [Axis] officers but also to mass shootings. The [Axis] shot severely wounded Soviet soldiers to free the [Wehrmacht] of their care. Time and again [Axis] forces were called upon to take "energetic and ruthless action" and "use their arms" unhesitatingly "to wipe out any trace of resistance" from Soviet POWs. Those attempting to escape were shot without warning. > >Moreover, a decree issued on September 8, 1941, stated that the use of arms against Soviet POWs was, "as a rule, to be regarded as legal"—a clear invitation for [Axis] soldiers to kill Soviet POWs with impunity. > >In the middle of July 1941, Gen. Hermann Reinecke, who was the officer in charge of prisoner-of-war affairs in the Armed Forces High Command, permitted security forces under the [Reich Security Main Office](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/reich-security-main-office-rsha) to screen Soviet prisoners of war in the POW camps for "politically and racially intolerable elements" among the Soviet prisoners. These prisoners were transferred to SS jurisdiction and killed. > >This contributed to an enormous rise in the number of victims, since not only were "all important state and party functionaries" regarded as "intolerable," but so were "intellectuals," all "fanatic Communists," and "all Jews." > >### Executions > >The executions did not take place in the prisoner-of-war camps or their immediate area. Instead, prisoners were transferred to a secure area and shot. The concentration camps proved an ideal location for executions. In [Gross‐Rosen](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gross-rosen) concentration camp, for example, the SS killed more than 65,000 Soviet POWS by feeding them only a thin soup of grass, water, and salt for six months. > >In [Flossenbürg](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/flossenbuerg), SS men burned Soviet POWs alive. In [Majdanek](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lublin-majdanek-concentration-camp-administration), they shot them in trenches. In [Mauthausen](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mauthausen), Austria, so many POWs were shot that the local population complained that their water supply had been contaminated. The rivers and streams near the camp ran red with blood. Estimates of the numbers of victims of this operation range from at least 140,000 up to 500,000. [Even the Jewish POWs who worked for the Western Allies still fared better than Soviet POWs](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1281909) (be they Jewish or gentile). The Axis presented millions of Soviet POWs with a lose‐lose situation: they could either serve anticommunism, or slowly die in agony. Most of them chose the latter. Quoting Christopher Simpsons’s [*Blowback*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=EA7C61C8CDD238DDB5884E83B3156463), page 19: >In 1942, however, Vlasov was just the man that the political warfare faction was looking for, and the creation of an army of Soviet defectors under [Axis] control using him as a figurehead became its central preoccupation for the remainder of the war. > >“The Germans started a form of blackmail against the surviving Russian war prisoners,” war correspondent Alexander Werth notes. **“[E]ither go into the Vlasov Army or starve.” The overwhelming majority of Soviet POWs refused the offer, and about 2 million POWs who were given the choice of collaboration or starvation between 1942 and 1945 chose death before they would aid the [Axis].** But many thousands of Russians did join the invaders as porters, cooks, concentration camp guards, and informers, and later as fighting troops under [Axis] control.⁷ (Emphasis added.) --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 8). [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/8/1941): Axis forces commenced the Siege of Leningrad. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/8/1943): The Allies proclaimed the Armistice of Cassibile by radio; *OB Süd* immediately implemented plans to disarm the Italian forces. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/8/1944): For the first time a V‐2 rocket hit London. **1949**: Richard Georg Strauss, who briefly (and unhappily) served as Reichsmusikkammer, left the world. **1965**: Hermann Staudinger, patron member of the SS, expired. **2003**: Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl, Reich propagandist, had the decency to finally drop dead. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 weeks ago • 100%

Fascist Italy’s widely celebrated, record-breaking flights to South America ended up killing several crewmen https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/1206331211414459

>Mario Stoppani had been a World War I ace before working at the Ansaldo aircraft company. He was subsequently employed by the Cantieri Riuniti Dell’Adriatico (CRDA) aircraft company as a test pilot. In the early 1930s, he gained several long‐distance seaplane distance and altitude records (Bruschina, Mecchia, & Turrini, 2000; Mencarelli, 1971). These included a long‐distance seaplane flight between Monfalcone, Italy, and Mitsiwa, Eritrea, in 1934, and Berbera, Italian Somaliland, in 1935. > >These attempts were flown with Enrico Corradin and Casimiro Babbi, respectively (“A Record Seaplane Flight,” 1934, “New Record Flight by Seaplane,” 1935). Enrico Comani, his copilot on the flight to Brazil in 1937, was an expert in flying without external visual clues, relying only on instruments (known today as Instrument Flight Rules or IFR). The 1937 record attempt, achieved using a seaplane imaginatively registered as I‐LAMA, earned both pilots a national medal for valor (“Distance Record Attempt by I‐LAMA: Route Meteorological Conditions,” 1937). > >However, the two aviators’ life paths ended in tragedy in the same waters they had crossed. After the successful record attempt, on February 2, 1938, Stoppani, Comani, and three other crew members were en route back to [Fascist] Italy. During a flight segment of the flight between Natal, on the Brazilian coast, and the island of Fernando de Noronha, in the South Atlantic, a double‐engine failure and fire on their three‐engined seaplane led to a successful ditching attempt in stormy waters. > >Mario Stoppani was the only survivor (Rossi, 2006): He was rescued by a Lufthansa seaplane (“Record Breakers’ Crash in the Atlantic,” 1938). > >As with other long‐distance attempts by [Fascist] aviators in the 1930s, Stoppani and Comani’s feat was celebrated by the régime’s highest echelons. Achille Starace, secretary of the fascist party, forwarded the following telegram to the pilots: >>The party *gerarchi*, meeting at the Palazzo del Littorio, have asked me to extend to the brave pilots Stoppani and Comani, and to their crew, sentiments of admiration and comradely joy for the brilliant victory which they have conquered for fascist aviation [*ala fascista*]. Achille Starace. (Starace to the Cabinet of the Ministry of Aeronautics, December 30, 1937) > >The attainment of the record was couched in ideological terms which pitted fascism’s espousal of speed and power over the “compromises” which had been made by the previous, French recordholders. French pilots had achieved the record barely 2 months earlier, on October 25–26, 1937. > >Major Gianni Bordini, writing in *Sapere* magazine, celebrated the fact that the CANT Z.506 seaplane used by Stoppani and Comani had not been modified (as the French aircraft had been) to gain range at the expense of speed. Rather, the attempt had been flown “on a bomber aircraft which had not been modified, except for the installation of auxiliary fuel tanks” (Bordini, 1938). > >Regardless of the fact that the two modifications which the seaplane actually underwent were the construction of an apposite cockpit and, in all probability, the removal of heavy defensive armament (thus increasing range), the flight was contrasted to French use of aircraft heavily modified for record‐breaking purposes. > >This contrast implied Italian technological superiority in flying faster, nonmodified aircraft: “This approach, which differs substantially from that espoused by the French, is the cause of recent conquests by Italian aviation. These conquests can be defined by the most important aeronautical concepts: speed, load, range, altitude” (Bordini, 1938). > >The speed of the [Fascist] “three‐engined bomber seaplane” was also noted in *The Times* (“4,375 Miles in a Straight Line,” 1937), which similarly contrasted it to the slower French aircraft. However, in turn, Stoppani’s record attempt was superseded by [Luftwaffe] aviators in March 1938 on a route from Devon, Great Britain, to Caravelas, Brazil (“Devon to Brazil in 43 Hours,” 1938). > >[…] > >Pedrazzi was also aware of the propaganda potential of depicting flight as a modern activity pitting individuals and machines against nature’s previously insurmountable obstacles. The environment of flight, and the landscapes glimpsed from above, were at times described and couched in a language that evidenced not only a sense of fear of nature but also a sense of distance and elevation from nature’s grasp through technology. > >For example, on describing clouds, Pedrazzi stated that “Cloud formations often take the shape of horrific voids and infernal shapes, and sometimes they look like azure, dreamy landscapes” (Pedrazzi to *Il Resto del Carlino*, December 30, 1939). The aeroplane made possible the witnessing of these cloudscapes and ensured that they could be safely traversed. Furthermore, the potential for a tragic end to the flight was a reminder of the risks inherent in pushing the boundaries of aviation. > >As the aeroplane flew over the crash site of I‐ARPA, the journalist and his crew members reported that >>We turn our thoughts to our fallen comrades, and salute them in Roman fashion. It seems to us as though the three powerful engines of the Savoia‐Marchetti take on a deeper roar, as if they too were providing a background for this time of sadness. However, flight is victory and we cannot serve the will of those who have fallen if we don’t follow their example. (Pedrazzi to *Il Resto del Carlino*, n.d.) > >At the same time, when crossing paths with an aeroplane returning from Brazil to [Fascist] Italy, salutations were exchanged between the two craft, “with words singing hymns to fascism, and greetings to the Duce from Italian hearts” (Pedrazzi to *Il Resto del Carlino*, n.d.). The mid‐air encounter was clearly described in propagandistic tones. What is interesting to note, however, is the fact that Pedrazzi chose to highlight the meeting of two [Fascist] craft, on routes which were not devoid of traffic, however scarce. In what almost feels like a scene out of *Starship Troopers*, these widely celebrated, record‐breaking flights that emphasized speed, load, range, and altitude were still of little use to science, did not last long on the record books, and cost several lives… I have no further comment. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 7). **1923**: Fascist Italy cofounded the International Criminal Police Commission along with over a dozen other anticommunist countries. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/7/1938): [Rome ordered all ‘foreign’ Jews to leave Italy within six months.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1695905) [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/7/1940): As the Kingdom of Romania returned Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria under the Treaty of Craiova, the Luftwaffe began the Blitz, bombing London and other British cities for over fifty consecutive nights. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/7/1942): Axis marines were forced to withdraw during the Battle of Milne Bay. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/7/1943): The German 17th Army began its evacuation of the Kuban bridgehead (Taman Peninsula) in southern Russia and moved across the Strait of Kerch to the Crimea. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/7/1945): Axis forces on Wake Island, which they had held since December 1941, surrendered to U.S. Marines, and around the same time that the Berlin Victory Parade of 1945 was held. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 weeks ago • 100%

Scientists excavate an Axis POW camp in northern Norway https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/15740773.2022.2111539

([Mirror.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362646788)) History would be nowhere nearly as potent if it had no archaeology to support it. The various fragments left over from a generation ago can collectively tell a story that a document cannot. These researchers did find a few documents (mostly newspaper fragments), but what was primarily of concern to them were the potsherds, cartridges, glass, coke, coal, trinkets, tools, footwear, bones, and other crap left over when the camp’s employés dismantled almost everything in November 1944. They analysed 10,034 animal bone fragments. That is correct: they examined over **ten thousand** bones. Since there was a coast nearby, almost all of these bones were piscine, but they also found avian and mammal bones. Unusually, they even found a few canine bones; somebody at the POW camp ate one fox and one dog, presumably as last resorts. Even though the prisoners of war were Soviet, in this case their diets might not have been vastly worse than those of the Axis employés. Indeed, these prisoners might have even had access to alcohol, if only for special occasions. In many cases, the Axis scheduled Soviet prisoners for previsible extermination, seeing as how the Western Axis wanted their land and other resources. In this instance, however, the Axis kept these Soviets around for exploitation and presumably did not plan to terminate them until after the war, but we should note that the locals often gave the prisoners spare food out of sympathy. Very unusually, the most well preserved remnant of this POW camp is a Russian oven, and yes, it was in the prisoner section of the camp. The likeliest explanation is that the employés assumed that it was inculpable and thus not worth the time and effort to dismantle like everything else in the camp, but it is possible that somebody spared it out of pity for an inmate. Receiving insufficient exposure to Axis propaganda, somebody might have grown fond of the prisoners, at least in the same condescending way that somebody feels fondness for a dog. Even prisoners trapped in the most miserable conditions are going to come up with ways to pass the time. The archaeologists found chess sets and other gaming pieces in the ruins, and they found evidence that one of the prisoners likely had an instrument. Of course, there were doubtless cheaper ways to pass the time: singing, joking, spinning yarns, and other ways of socialising, as long as nobody peaked out of a window to tell them to shut up. As you might have guessed, the Axis employés had more ways to deal with their homesickness and boredom: reading, board games, card games, drinking, cinema, performances, fishing, and of course hunting. The staff also had porcelain ware and other trinkets to create a sense of homeliness. Although it is technically possible that an employé had some innocent and friendly interactions with the prisoners, the class and racial divisions between the prisoners and the staff makes this unlikely. :::spoiler [Click here for an excerpt.] >The remains of most buildings inside the camp indicate that they were taken down and dismantled in a relatively controlled manner prior to the final withdrawal. One trivial but telling indication relates to the remains of the roof anchors of structure 5 where all the wires for this barrack were systematically cut right above the stone weights and removed. The situation, however, proved to be very different for the second barrack, structure 6. > >The excavation of a 5 × 8‐metre trench yielded finds suggestive of a third and final phase of the POW camp, probably associated with the last days or weeks up to the Wehrmacht evacuation of Sværholt between November 11 and 15, 1944 (Gamst 1984, 119). During this time the remaining prisoners were crammed into this lone, remaining camp dwelling where they stayed until the building was set ablaze before the ultimate withdrawal. > >Indicative of this final event are the complete stretches of roof‐anchor wire splayed over the barrack area and still secured to large boulders — a telling indication of their sudden collapse (Figure 7). Along the outer walls heaps of broken glass, deformed by fire, mark the location of the windows; inside, pieces of a smashed stove were dispersed across the site alongside burnt wood and other evidence of intensive burning (Grabowski et al. 2014, 11–13, 15–20). > >[…] > >Two middens or refuse dumps were excavated in the course of our fieldwork. Displaying both the highest phosphate and MS‐levels within the sampled area, the first midden was identified just a few metres outside the northern perimeter of the camp. The soil science mapping combined with excavation and test‐pitting indicate that the dump covers an area of at least 60 m². Two trenches, one measuring 1 × 4 m from 2011 and 2012, the other, 2 × 1 m from 2015, showed that the trash was deposited in pits, up to 0.7 m deep (Figure 10). > >Huge amounts of garbage were recovered, including alcohol and medicine bottles, tin cans, pieces of rubber and leather, iron heel and toe plates, cartridges, fishing equipment, textile fragments, buttons, coins, nails, bolts, washers, window glass, potsherds, bits of plastic/bakelite, string/wires, slag, coke and coal, and myriad wood fragments (Figure 11). The midden also contained faunal material. > >A total of 3177 bone fragments (weighing 1652 grams) suggests a diet predominantly composed of fish (98%), mostly cod supplemented by haddock and plaice (Figure 12 a, b). The cod was primarily from small to medium sized specimens (shorter than 60 cm), and the many head bones indicate that whole and therefore likely fresh cod were brought to the camp. > >There were, however, also crushed bones, which probably represent dried cod and cod‐heads. About 2% of the bones were from mammals and birds — cattle, sheep/goat, fox, pig, and seagulls (Vretemark 2013, 2016). The presence of fox is intriguing, especially since one hipbone had clear traces of butchering, suggesting that even *Vulpes vulpes* occasionally was consumed. > >Another conspicuous feature is the number of alcohol bottles in this midden. Red wine (Bordeaux and Bourgogne types), white wine (Alsace/Mosel/Rhine types), and even several champagne bottles are common alongside beer bottles as well as bottles for schnapps or other hard liqueurs (see Olsen and Witmore 2014, 185–186). > >A broken brown glass bottle with a screw cap marked ‘E. Merck Darmstadt’, may be indicative of other stimulants. Merck is a German pharmaceutical company that pioneered the commercial manufacture of methamphetamines, opiates, and cocaine. During WW2 the company was a major supplier of the narcotics used by Wehrmacht personnel and its director was closely associated with the [NSDAP] (Steinkamp 2008; Ohler 2015). > >Though the traces of intoxicants may suggest that the guards shared the dump with the prisoners, and thus represent their consumption and possibly the need to get rid of evidence of on‐duty drinking, alcohol bottles, as we have seen, were also found inside the camp (Grabowski et al. 2014, 15–16). While reuse to hold drinking water is possible, alcohol consumption among the POWs is mentioned in local testimonies (Sagen, interview). > >[…] > >The faunal material, on the other hand, was considerably more abundant compared to the first midden. A total of 13,530 bone fragments (6801 g) were recovered, and, as with the first midden, the overwhelming majority derives from fish (97.5%). The remaining 2.5% are from reindeer, cattle, dog, sheep/goat, and bird (a few bones of seagull, oaks, duck, and ptarmigan) (Vretemark 2020, 2–3). > >Among the mammal remains, reindeer is most common with 112 bones (with another 86 undecided cattle/reindeer), followed by cattle, dog and sheep/goat. The latter is hardly represented (one bone only) — as in the first midden, caprine remains are rare. This is intriguing given that sheep were the predominant livestock in this area (and most likely the one present in the material rather than the less common goat). > >The presence of reindeer and dog is new compared to the first midden, and it should be noted that some of the dog bones (all likely from a young specimen), have traces of butchering (Vretemark 2020, 4).² > >[…] > >The material from these middens adds considerable nuance to common assumptions concerning POW diet derived from the available ration lists from WWII [in Europe]. > >Though these rations varied over time, between areas, and with respect to the prisoners concerned, one gets an impression that the per‐week rations given in 1942 to a Soviet POW classified as ‘normal worker’ (*Normalarbeiter*) in Norway consisted of: bread (2600 g), meat (250 g), fat (130 g), potatoes (5250 g), ‘nutrition’ (150 g), sugar (110 g), tea (14 g), and vegetables (‘only if available’) (Lundemo 2010, 42–43). > >As one can see, the prescribed staple consists of bread and potatoes, while fish, which dominates in the middens, find no mention. Needless to say, neither are intoxicants listed among such rations. Though the remains of tinned food are quite plentiful in the two middens, the faunal remains suggest that local resources, especially fish, constituted a very important addition to the diet. > >The surprising presence of fish equipment in the first dump, with numerous hooks and large fragments of a cotton fishnet, along with a needle for net mending found in structure 2, may support oral statements that the inmates were allowed to fish in the hamlet harbour area where they commonly worked (see Figures 11 and 12b). This was also where the hamlet fishermen brought their catch ashore, and there are testimonies of fish changing hands during these frequent encounters (interviews Gunnlaug Sagen and Oddvar Sjøveian). ::: --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 6). **1915**: Franz Josef Strauss, former Axis soldier and educator, was born. **1917**: Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, Wehrmacht Major who conspired to murder the Third Reich’s head of state, was born. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/6/1939): South Africa declared war on the Third Reich (around the same time that friendly fire at the Battle of Barking Creek resulted in the British Royal Air Force suffering its first WWII fighter pilot casualty). [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/6/1940): King Carol II of Romania abdicated and was succeeded by his son Michael; General Ion Antonescu became the Conducător of Romania. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/6/1944): The Axis lost the cities of Ypres, Belgium and Tartu, Estonia to Allied forces. **1978**: Adolf Dassler, bourgeois Fascist, dropped dead.

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 weeks ago • 100%

The Brown Shirts’ uniforms were originally intended for a mission to colonize Africa

Quoting David Olusoga & Casper W. Erichsen’s [*The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=FF5B75A7B4A46692BF85CADA8CFFB1C4), introduction then chapter 16: >[Eighteen years after the Herero–Nama genocide, Hitler became closely associated with a veteran of the conflict.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/654182) In 1922 he was recruited into an ultra‐right‐wing militia in Munich that was indirectly under the command of the charismatic [General Franz von Epp](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Franz_von_Epp), who had been a lieutenant during [the Second Reich’s] [wars against the Herero and Nama.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide) > >As both a young colonial soldier and, later, a leading member of the [NSDAP], von Epp was a fervent believer in the *Lebensraum* theory, and spent his life propagating the notion that the German people needed to expand their living space at the expense of lower races, whether in Africa or Eastern Europe. It would be an exaggeration to claim that Hitler was von Epp’s protégé, but in the chaos of post‐World War I Munich, von Epp, perhaps more than any figure other than Hitler himself, made the [NSDAP] possible. > >It was through von Epp, in various convoluted ways, that Hitler met many of the men who were to become the élite of the party: von Epp’s deputy was Ernst Röhm, the founder of the [Third Reich’s] storm troopers. **Via the party’s connections to von Epp and other old soldiers of [the Second Reich’s] African colonies, Röhm and Hitler were able to procure [a consignment](https://books.google.com/books?id=ZzBkAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT249) of surplus colonial [*Schutztruppe*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Schutztruppe_of_German_East_Africa) uniforms. Designed for warfare on the golden savannah of Africa, the shirts were desert brown in colour: the [Fascist] street thugs who wore them became known as Brown Shirts.** > >[…] > >In Riefenstahl’s films of the vast Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s, the [German Fascists] appear in the uniforms and symbols of the Third Reich. In these early party gatherings the men filmed shuffling together for the photographers wear a bewildering array of uniforms, hats, insignia, tunics and medals — the symbols and honours of the Reich that had so recently collapsed. Through this muddle of uniforms, the spectrum of various military and paramilitary subcultures from which the [German Fascists] drew their early support is clearly visible. > >Alongside the old Prussian generals with their spiked *Pickelhaube* helmets and ex‐*Freikorps* commanders proudly wearing their modern *Stalhelm* is a uniform that is now almost completely unrecognisable: that of the *Schutztruppe* officers. The desert‐brown tunic and wide‐brimmed hat of the men who had avenged Germany after the Boxer Rebellion and exterminated the Herero and Nama appears time and again in these films. > >**In the 1920s the uniform was a potent reminder of the painful loss of [the Second Reich’s] colonies and [its] living space.** Today the *Stalhelm* is an instantly recognisable icon of [Fascist] aggression and the *Pickelhaube*, although rendered slightly comical by historical distance, is firmly associated with the sabre‐rattling militarism of the old Prussian‐dominated Germany of the Kaisers. The *Schutztruppe* uniform, in its obscurity, is untarnished by any association with [Fascism]. > >**One feature of the *Schutztruppe* uniform has a direct association with [Fascism], though that connection has been obscured. The brown shirts of the SA, the first symbol of [German Fascism’s] brutality, were surplus *Schutztruppe* uniforms. They had been manufactured for [von Lettow‐Vorbeck](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paul_Emil_von_Lettow-Vorbeck)’s *Schutztruppe* units in German East Africa, but as von Lettow‐Vorbeck and his men had been cut off from [the Second Reich] for the entire duration of the war, the uniforms had become unwanted army surplus.** > >They were procured for the SA probably by Gerhard Rossbach, another former *Freikorps* commander and reputedly [a] lover of Ernst Röhm. (Emphasis added. For one citation, see Heinz Höhne’s *Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf — Die Geschichte der SS. Weltbild‐Verlag*, 1992, pg. 27.) --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 5). **1876**: Wilhelm Josef Franz Ritter von Leeb, Axis field marshal and war criminal, stained the world with his life. **1919**: Elisabeth Volkenrath, SS officer, arrived to burden humanity. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/5/1937): Llanes fell to the Spanish fascists following a one‐day siege. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/5/1938): Chilean officials executed a group of youths affiliated with the fascist National ‘Socialist’ Movement of Chile after they surrendered during a failed coup. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/5/1941): The Axis absorbed Estonia. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/5/1942): The Empire of Japan’s high command ordered withdrawal at Milne Bay, the Eastern Axis’s first major defeat in land warfare during the Pacific War. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/5/1943): The Axis lost the Lae Nadzab Airport (near Lae in the Salamaua–Lae campaign) to the Western Allies’ 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. **1953**: Richard Walther Darré, Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture as well as Chief of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, expired. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 weeks ago • 100%

On this day 85 years ago, the Fascists commenced slaughtering the residents of Częstochowa https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=PGg67oOzmJ8&=25

Quoting Katarzyna Jedynak’s [*German repressions in the Częstochowa area during the Second World War*](https://instytutpileckiego.pl/public/upload/books/rocznik_2019%202019_11_27%20calosc%20na%20ekran%20z%20okladka.pdf#page=405): >The Częstochowa area¹ suffered the first losses already at the onset of the 1939 Defensive War. The Wehrmacht units entering Poland committed numerous crimes, among others setting fire to buildings and executing Polish citizens. Repressive operations of this kind were rarely connected with military action. In the main, they were retaliation on the local populace for the stubborn resistance of regular troops of the Polish Army. > >The methods of terror included taking hostages, death threats, brutal treatment, various types of harassment, as well as destruction and robbery of property. The shooting of civilians usually did not follow from any formal procedure, and in many cases even the personal data of the victims were not checked. The majority of executions were conducted ad hoc and spontaneously, but first and foremost arbitrarily, for which reason they may be called war banditry. > >The casualties of 1 September 1939 included residents of three villages in the Kłobuck district: Konieczki (three people), Koski (four people), and Przystajń (one person). Next, on the night of 1–2 September, the villages of Parzymiechy and Zimnowoda, both situated in the Częstochowa district, were pacified. The [Fascists] shot 75 and 39 people respectively, and razed both locations to the ground. > >On the following day (3 September) in the township of Krzepice (Krzepice commune), the invaders gathered the residents in the market square and began shooting. As a result, 30 people perished. > >On the same day in the Myszków district, south of Częstochowa, Wehrmacht troops surrounded and set fire to the village of Mysłów (Koziegłowy commune). The soldiers shot at anyone who attempted to escape. Some people suffocated or burned alive in the basements of farm buildings which the [Fascists] had set alight. 22 people died at the time, including 10 children. On 4 September, [the Fascists] shot 104 people in Żarki (Żarki commune) (*Rejestr miejsc i faktów*, 1986, pp. 54, 64, 71, 99, 101). > >The Wehrmacht units marked their advance into Poland with a succession of tragedies, committing crimes against civilians who were not taking part in fighting off the aggressor. The armies of the Third Reich thus violated international treaties on the laws of war, including for instance the Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, appended to the 1907 Hague Convention IV (Kosowska, 2011, p. 63). > >By 6 September, the [Fascists] had perpetrated crimes in a dozen or so villages in the vicinity of Częstochowa, all situated along the route of the German Tenth Army, which was commanded by General Walter von Reichenau (including XVI Panzer Corps and XV Light Corps). > >The killings included: in Koszęcin commune — Koszęcin (seven people), in Konopiska commune — Hutki, Rększowice, and Łaziec, in Kłobuck commune — Łobodno (13 people), in Poczesna commune — Nierada, in Lipie commune — Napoleon (10 people), in Kruszyna commune — Baby and Jacków (14 people), and Kruszyna (38 people), in Mstów commune — Małusy Wielkie (11 people), in Przyrów commune — Zarębice (25 people), in Dąbrowa Zielona commune — Cielętniki (11 people), Chrząstów (presently a district of Koniecpol; 21 people) and Kajetanowice (72 people). > >The [Fascists] also committed numerous crimes against the residents of towns. In Częstochowa, 4 September 1939 was dubbed “Bloody Monday”; according to various estimates, on that day the [Fascists] murdered from 227 to 500 people (Pietrzykowski, 1985, pp. 16–23; Pietrzykowski, 1964, pp. 14–21; Domański, Jankowski, 2011, pp. 25–28). > >The first 55 days of the Wehrmacht on Polish soil were marked by the brutality of its soldiers, who often destroyed Polish townships and killed their residents without any [given] reason, just as a pre‐emptive measure. Only some expeditions were military in nature, with their objective being — for instance — a search for weapons (for example in the village of Stany in the Częstochowa district, where three men were killed for hiding Polish Army weapons) (Pietrzykowski, 1985, p. 28). > >Civilians were in particular danger near large concentrations of troops, where they would be attacked for largely inexplicable (and oftentimes imaginary) reasons. For instance, if weary, inexperienced and careless soldiers accidentally wounded their comrades at their billets, blame would be placed on the local populace or on alleged “soldiers of the Polish Army”, who purportedly had already resorted to partisan warfare (Böchler, 2009, pp. 22, 84, 87). > >In October, Augustyn Gwóźdź, a teacher from Kalety, was arrested on charges of shooting a [Fascist] soldier. He was killed on the way to prison. Six men were murdered in Mokrzesz (Mstów commune). In the same commune, the village of Jaskrów became one of the first mass execution sites. On two separate dates — 9 and 25 November — the [Fascists] brought in some 47 arrestees from Częstochowa and shot them there (*Rejestr miejsc i faktów*, 1986, p. 41). > >Also worth mentioning here are the crimes committed by auxiliary units assigned to the main Wehrmacht forces. These included: deployment units (so‐called *Einsatzkommando*), operational groups of the Security Police, units of the Order Police, Field Gendarmerie, Secret Field Police, and the self‐protection militia (*Selbstschutz*), which was composed of members of the local German minority (Durlej, Gmitruk, 2008, p. 10; Pietrzykowski, 1989, p. 135; Pietrzykowski, 1964, pp. 10–11). > >Among the numerous crimes which they perpetrated was the shooting of four local farmers in the village of Piasek (Koszęcin commune) in September 1939 (*Rejestr miejsc i faktów*, 1986, p. 74). Although this author presents these atrocities as arbitrary, the Fascists slaughtered the civilians in this area for the same reasons that other imperialists in other colonial wars had: looting the dead for any goods, and making room for later settling. The annihilation of the natives also meant that the settlers would have less competition in the struggle for food, wood, and other resources. Quoting Witold Wojciech Mędykowski’s *Macht Arbeit Frei?: German Economic Policy and Forced Labor of Jews in the General Government, 1939–1943*, [chapter 1](https://g-city.sass.org.cn/_upload/article/files/95/3b/47f3b7af4841b67ff82a3cdea8c6/1c95fb97-3774-493d-93b0-66734fa71971.pdf): >One [of Fascism’s] objectives […] was economic expansion in […] new territories, which was generally referred to as *Lebensraum*. However, this concept represented much more than merely territory. > >It was, first of all, “living space for the German economy,” bringing with it, apart from territory, a labor force, raw materials, and agricultural production. On May 10, 1939, the chief commander of the armed forces sent a letter to various OKW departments that was signed by Hitler. Attached to the letter were the “Instructions for the conduct of war and the economic security of their own.”¹ > >Thus, parallel to the preparations for the military, were preparations for sustainability in economic terms. A conference in the Reich’s Chancellery was held on May 23, 1939 to summarize preparations in economic terms. The report from this meeting was called the “Schmundt protocol.”² > >During his speech, Hitler recalled again the validity of *Lebensraum* and said that the war was not really because of Gdańsk and the Corridor, but its objective was extension of living space in the east.³ Also in other occasion, during a meeting with Mussolini in August 1939, Hitler said: “For economic reasons also, Germany needed the foodstuffs and timber from these eastern regions.”⁴ --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (September 4). [**1891**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/4/1891): Fritz Todt, Axis engineer, was born. **1909**: Eduard Wirths, chief SS doctor at Auschwitz, was…born…today. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/4/1939): The Fascists exterminated one thousand Poles near Bydgoszcz, including a number of Boy Scouts. *U‐23* completed her first war patrol, and Fritz Todt declared that Organization Todt would function as a fortress construction organization with Xaver Dorsch as his deputy and operational commander. Berlin forbade any further attacks on passenger ships, but it published a War Economy Decree which laid down guidelines for the rapid mobilization of civilian resources and the conversion of the economy to war. Lastly, the Third Reich suffered its first assault from the Royal Air Force. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/4/1941): An Axis submarine assaulted a United States warship, the USS *Greer*. This was one of the earliest instances of a Fascist empire making a move against its Yankee competitor. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/4/1944): The Axis lost the Belgian city of Antwerp to the British 11th Armoured Division, and Finland exited from the war with the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the Third Reich executed one of its generals, Fritz Erich Fellgiebel, for conspiring against the head of state. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/4/1945): [The Western Axis’s last active soldiers finally surrendered to the Allies.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1640632) :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 weeks ago • 100%

U.S. diplomats in 1933 considered the Third Reich to be harmless

Quoting Arnold A. Offner’s [*American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933–1938*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=A1DD1171AB4562DAE7BC924B3A4D80BA), pages 57–60: >Diplomatic opinion differed on the new Germany. **For the American consul general at Stuttgart, Leon Dominian, Germany’s new masters represented something old, “the cynical militarism of their predecessors of pre‐Weimar days,” and, he felt, the United States should deal with them accordingly.** > >For Douglas Miller, commercial attaché in Berlin, the average [German Fascist] was essentially a “young, ignorant, and romantic” misfit, willing to declare the modern capitalistic world in which he had never known success a failure, voting for a “return to medieval status where the individual does not have to do his own thinking.” [German Fascism’s so‐called] revolution, Miller believed, was the work of a handful of “fanatics and adventurers who had learned how to appeal to the moron majority in a period of depression and discouragement.”¹¹ > >Miller and many other Americans did not yet believe the [German Fascists] a large threat. The NSDAP represented “almost unanimous” German opinion on such critical questions as disarmament and revision of the Treaty of Versailles. Still, the [supposed] revolution was both an assertion of Germany’s rights against other nations and an effort at adjusting class and occupational problems in Germany.¹² > >By the summer of 1933 **Miller regarded Hitler and his immediate lieutenants as the moderate forces trying desperately to ward off a second revolution. Withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference hardly disturbed Miller, who remained unconvinced as to any threat of the new German government in international affairs.** > >**Having given *Mein Kampf* a careful reading, he concluded that Hitler’s advocacy of deception in foreign affairs, his “inflammatory statements regarding foreign policy and Germany’s mission to expand in the East,” were all so much propaganda. There was no reason for concern: “The Nazis’ war talk, superman talk and posing is simply designed to impress their followers and should be discounted.”¹³** > >**Davis, the American disarmament negotiator, had reached much the same conclusions.** No one could understand what was happening in [the Third Reich] without being there. Germany, he wrote from Berlin in the early spring of 1933, was in the midst of a “real revolution.” One had to expect “certain excesses,” though the American press probably made too much of them. > >He could not determine the course of the [supposed] revolution and its effects on foreign policy. These would depend on Hitler’s ability to withstand radicals in his party and also to shackle the semimilitary forces he had organized for purposes of the [so‐called] revolution. The Hitler government was committed to an early revision of the Treaty of Versailles, although the exact method was unclear.¹⁴ > >**Long‐term objectives of the Hitler government did not appear of immediate concern.** American diplomats knew that in 1933 Germany was no threat. Politically isolated, mired in the world‐wide economic collapse which saw more than 6,000,000 Germans unemployed, its army of 100,000 greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the French, the [Third Reich] could not move in any direction without running against the French alliance system.¹⁵ > >Nonetheless, [the Third Reich] affected American interests, and it was necessary for the government to respond to developments there. > >One development, persecution of the Jews, had by no means assumed a pattern in 1933. From the end of January until the March 5 Reichstag elections, the government and NSDAP proceeded cautiously with anti‐Semitic policies, attacking Jews who were opponents of the [NSDAP] by virtue of their being Social Democrats or Communists. > >After March 5, commanding a majority in the Reichstag for the first time through support by the Nationalists, the [Fascists] made their attacks more frequent, arbitrary, and bloody. The government apologized, blaming undisciplined NSDAP members acting as party men, not government officials. As attacks abated everyone waited to see what would be the outcome of the government’s official one‐day boycott of all Jewish businesses scheduled for April 1.¹⁶ > >Ambassador Sackett reported in early March that four American Jews in Berlin had been beaten up and one of them forced to rescind an eviction notice against a [Fascist] tenant who owed a year’s rent. Hull lodged no protest, and when Hitler on the morning of March 11 issued a public appeal to his followers to maintain law and order, Sackett optimistically declared anti‐Jewish demonstrations at an end.¹⁷ > >Violence intensified. Shortly a delegation representing American Jewish organizations called upon Hull to urge him to protest to the German government. **He declined, saying at a press conference next day that the United States was still “endeavoring industriously” to gain information on conditions in [the Third Reich].¹⁸** (Emphasis added. Much of the chapter goes on like this, and I had to stop here so as to avoid testing your patience.) --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 3). [**1935**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1935): The Fascists laid down the keel of submarine *Iride* at the Odero‐Terni‐Orlando Navy Yard in Muggiani, La Spezia. [**1936**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1936): Fascist aeroplanes threw back the Republican troops on Majorca, and the Nationalist forces on the mainland captured Talavera de la Reina. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1938): The Kriegsmarine launched *U‐56* at Deutsche Werke, Kiel. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1939): The Third Reich’s head of state issued an order to his generals, again stressing that the Wehrmacht must not attack British and French positions, then he departed Berlin for the Eastern Front. Coincidentally, the Fascist submarine *U‐30* torpedoed British passenger liner *Athenia* in the Atlantic Ocean, and Otto Skorzeny returned home from Trost Barracks, Vienna (despite the outbreak of war) due to the lack of instructors to train new recruits. The Fascists exterminated fifty‐five Polish peasants in Truskolasy while Berlin issued orders that executions by members of the SS were to be carried out in concentration camps, to go into effect seventeen days later. Finally, France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declared war on the Third Reich after its invasion of Poland, forming the Allied nations. (The Viceroy of India also declared war, but without consulting the provincial legislatures.) Consequently, the United Kingdom and France began a naval blockade of the Third Reich that lasted until the war’s end. This also marked the beginning of the Battle of the Atlantic. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1940): Berlin commenced planning Operation Sealion (the invasion of Britain). In the meantime, fifty Do 17 bombers escorted by 80 Bf 110 fighters and 40 Bf 109 fighters flew up the Thames Estuary in southern England, then split up to hit RAF airfields at North Weald, Hornchurch, and Debden. All three airfields were severely damaged, yet remained operational. Biggin Hill also saw two minor raids on this date. The Luftwaffe lost seventeen fighters and eight bombers. During a meeting on this date, Kesselring recommended Göring to cease the bombing of British fighter airfields because there were too many of them; instead, he suggested to bomb London and use the threat of civilian deaths to force large numbers of British fighters to come to battle. Overnight, Fascist bombers attacked Kent, Liverpool, and South Wales. As well, four Abwehr spies landed from rowing boats on the Kent coast in southern Britain. Poorly trained and without papers, the four—Charles van den Kieboom, Carl Meier, Jose Waldberg, and Sjoerd Pons—were quickly apprehended and handed over to Colonel Robin Stephens of Military Intelligence for interrogation. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1941): The Axis captured the Ukrainian village of Vakarzhany, and Axis bombers damaged British ship *Fort Richepanse* at noon in the Atlantic Ocean; at 2042 hours, Axis submarine *U‐567* caught up with the damaged ship west of Ireland, then sunk her, resulting in forty‐one casualties (but leaving twenty‐two survivors). Lastly, Axis flightcraft sank Chinese vessel *Ganlu* at Bazhong, Sichuan Province, China. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1942): In response to news of its coming liquidation, Dov Lopatyn lead an uprising in the Axis ghetto of Łachwa (present‐day Belarus). [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1943): British and Canadian troops landed on the Italian mainland. On the same day, Walter Bedell Smith and Giuseppe Castellano signed the Armistice of Cassibile, although it went unannounced for another five days. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/3/1944): Axis personnel placed diarist Anne Frank and her family on the last transport train from the Westerbork transit camp to the Auschwitz concentration camp, arriving three days later. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 2 weeks ago • 100%

On this day 85 years ago, the Third Reich annexed the City of Danzig https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:1939_in_Gda%C5%84sk

Danzig (or Gdańsk) was the last microstate that the Fascists absorbed, after Fiume and the Saar Basin. Many of Danzig’s gentile gadje welcomed the annexation of 1939, and it was soon in close neighbourhood with a concentration camp. Quoting Ruth Schwertfeger’s [*A Nazi Camp near Danzig: Perspectives on Shame and on the Holocaust from Stutthof*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/de721d80246ad7c11db552eb2ef5aee8), pages 47–48: >After September 1, 1939, Stutthof/Sztutowo lost forever its former identity as a pleasant village near Danzig and the Baltic beaches, and its namesake camp began to receive first hundreds, then thousands of prisoners. > >These “civilian prisoners,” as they were called, were local people from Danzig and [Pomerania](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4520857) who were either representatives of the Polish intelligentsia—clerics, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals, or Jews from the Danzig community. All of them were arrested because they were seen through the one lens of “Germandom”—any deviation from the ideal meant treatment as an opponent and an enemy of the Third Reich. > >Not every prisoner who was arrested in these early September days was sent right away to Stutthof, but it was soon to become central in the camp system of Danzig–West Prussia. For many reasons, but especially its proximity to Danzig, it was ideal. Every publication and pamphlet on Stutthof points out that it had water on all sides—the Baltic to the north, a lagoon (das Frische Haff) to the south and east, as well as canals and marshes, and to the west, the Vistula River.¹ > >Stutthof was clearly an ideal spot for the purposes of internment. No one could easily escape from Stutthof, surrounded as it was by such forbidding terrain; few attempted in the course of the next five plus years. > >Besides, it was extensive enough in acreage to accommodate opponents of the regime beyond Danzig in Pomerania that was soon to be officially annexed to the [Third] Reich as Danzig–West Prussia. From approximately eleven acres, it grew to over 300 acres in size, accommodating initially around 250 prisoners. This is how Waclaw Lewandowski, one of the first to arrive on September 2, 1939, describes his reception: >>After getting us off the closed trucks and buses that brought us there, we were again brutally searched, with frequently raining fists and whips […] We were immediately put to digging foundations for huts under construction, felling trees and clearing stumps. The tempo was murderous […] Late in the evening we were issued some 500 grams of very watery, lukewarm turnip soup and about 100 grams of dark bread. Dead tired, we fell to our pallets in the tents without undressing or washing. Even the physically strongest broke down, weeping with pain, exhaustion and humiliation.² > >Grabowska‐Chałka describes Stutthof as striking “fear in the hearts of Polish inhabitants of Pomerania and synonymous with bestial cruelty, terror, murder and finally mass extermination.”³ It is a fair summary of what will follow.⁴ In 1979, scientists found and examined dozens of skeleta from a mass grave near the camp. Decades later, other scientists used modern utilities to reexamine them. Quoting [*Skeletal evidence of the ethnic cleansing actions in the Free City of Danzig (1939-1942) based on the KL Stutthof victims analysis*](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scijus.2023.02.003): >The first arrests and deportations to the nearby concentration camp KL Stutthof began as soon as September 2nd 1939, even though Polish defenders fighting in the Westerplatte peninsula were yet to surrender [10]. The first transportation of 150 people to KL Stutthof included, among others, members of the clergy, teachers, political leaders and clerks. Most of them were killed within months of their arrival [5 11]. > >[…] > >Our trauma analysis shows that the prevalent killing method in the KL Stutthof sample was blunt force trauma to the head, as the rib cage trauma had to be excluded from the analysis (it was impossible to associated singular rib with particular skeleton, nor was it possible to determine time of the trauma occurrence on majority of the fractured ribs). The majority of the perimortem lesions were found above the hat brim line (HBL), which is a common indicator of a violent attack in medico‐legal studies [48,49]. Even before 1939, Fascism had substantial support in Danzig, and it was normal for anticommunist gentiles to harass Jews. Quoting one example from Krzysztof Ulanowski’s ‘[Record of Violence. The Socio‐Political German–Jewish Relations in Free City of Danzig in the Years 1933–1939](https://doi.org/10.4467/23916001HG.22.015.17435)’: >1938 was an extremely difficult for the Jewish Community on all possible levels; the political, religious and social. The degradation of the Jews eventually affected the religious sphere as well. This tragic event was reported on August 1938 by both Nowy Dziennik (published in Warsaw) and *The New York Times* in the article: “Nazis Plunder Synagogue in Danzig.” The report states that on 29 August 1938, about 40 […] SA militants broke into the synagogue, demolished its interior, desecrated and tore the Torah scrolls. The police, summoned by the Jewish community for help, refused to provide assistance. For a few years, Danzig was of great concern to the international community. Quoting Anita J. Prazmowska’s ‘[Poland, the ‘Danzig Question' and the Outbreak of the Second World War](https://istmat.org/files/uploads/66649/poland_the_danzig_question_and_the_outbreak_of_the_second_world_war.pdf)’: >At the beginning of August, the Polish government and the Senate were once more in conflict. Since May, Polish customs inspectors had been under constant attack, which made their job impossible. This allowed the [Fascists] to militarize Danzig to the point that it became a fortress. > >In August, the Senate informed the Poles that it would no longer recognize Polish customs guards.⁴⁸ This led the Poles to warn the Senate that it was acting outside its jurisdiction. Beck also took an opportunity to attack Burckhardt for supposedly disseminating false information about the city.⁴⁹ > >[Berlin] intervened only to be informed by [Warsaw] that it had no right to make representations on behalf of the Danzig Senate. When the Poles had decided to confront the Danzig authorities they did not seek British advice, but merely informed the Foreign Office of the crisis after the fact. The Poles threatened to bomb Danzig from the sea and the Senate backed down. The Foreign Office was appalled to hear how close the two had come to a military conflict. > >The Danzig issue continued to be a bone of contention between [Warsaw] and [Berlin] with Britain desperately trying to wrestle from the Poles an agreement not to proceed without British approval. While Beck belligerently refused to do so, [London] sought means of ascertaining whether indeed Danzig was merely a pretext for a conflict with Poland or a difficulty that could be resolved with a modicum of good will. > >The British Cabinet chose to believe that the latter was the case, whereas the Poles increasingly acted on the assumption that war with [the Third Reich] was likely to break out in the near future. To the Poles the Danzig crisis, like reports of tension on the Polish–German border in Silesia and [Fascist] claims that Poland was mistreating the German minority were seen as signs of a German propaganda campaign, which inevitably preceded an outright attack. > >In the end, it was the Poles who were correct. On 23 August the Danzig Senate voted for the city to return to the Reich. The Danzig Gauleiter Albert Forster was appointed Head of the Danzig state. These actions contravened the League charter and in principle should have been a matter for the League. Instead the British and French government spoke of negotiations and used their diplomatic offices to try and persuade Beck to appoint a negotiator or at least to accept the appointment of a suitable person to negotiate between [Warsaw] and [Berlin]. > >Events nevertheless fast overtook these efforts for on 1 September the [Fascist] battleship *Schleswig‐Holstein* attacked the Polish fort and ammunition dump of Westerplatte on the tip of the Hel peninsula. Danzig was officially incorporated into Germany on that day. Burckhardt, who was in the city, was instructed to leave immediately. Wholesale attacks on Polish property and citizens completed the picture. > >On 1 September 1939 developments taking place in Danzig were of little consequence as on the same day, in the early hours of the morning, [the Fascists] initiated a military attack on Poland. In the end the war did not start because of Danzig, though the city had always been a reliable barometer of relations between the two states. Further reading: [*Comparison of the situation of Freistaat Danzig and Saarland under the auspices of the League of Nations*](https://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-bb2e16ed-af16-4dd5-b61e-04d67f0c4a7b/c/CEP_20180602_Somogyi.pdf) --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (September 2). [**1878**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1878): Werner von Blomberg, Reich field marshal, was born. So were the Balkan fascist Milan Nedić and the Axis legislator Nobutaka Shioden. [**1919**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1919): Adolf Schicklgruber joined the so‐called ‘German Workers’ Party’. **1923**: Amid rumors that Koreans had been conducting acts of sabotage in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, lynch mobs of Japanese began massacring thousands of civilians over the course of several weeks, mainly ethnic minorities such as Koreans and Chinese. **1933**: Rome and Moscow signed a [Pact of ‘Friendship, Non‐Aggression, and Neutrality’](https://books.google.com/books?id=y3-iCQAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PA203), regrettably. (For a commentary on that, [see here](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/369716).) [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1939): The Fascists ordered the construction of a concentration camp in Sztutowo (German: Stutthof) with the labor of 65,000 Poles. As well, it appears that Rome continued unsuccessfully to urge peace between the German Reich, United Kingdom, and France. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1940): In the morning, Fascist bombers attacked RAF Eastchurch (destroyed buildings and down to only one runway), RAF Rochford (bombs fell on Gravesend instead of the airfield), RAF North Weald (most bombers forced back), and RAF Biggin Hill (suffered heavy damage) in England. In the afternoon, RAF Hornchurch (most bombs missed), RAF Eastchurch (bomb dump detonated), and the Vickers bomber factory at Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey, England was attacked. On the other hand, the Fascists lost twenty‐seven fighters and ten bombers, while British antiaircraft fire shot down another fighter and three bombers. Overnight, Fascist bombers assaulted Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1941): *Maggiore Baracca* departed La Pallice, La Rochelle, France for her sixth war patrol, and the Empire of Japan commissioned *Kasuga Maru* into service. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1942): Axis training submarine *U‐222* sank in the Danzig Bay after colliding with training submarine *U‐626*, causing forty‐two deaths! Aside from that, the Wehrmacht’s 46th Infantry Division crossed Strait of Kerch and landed on the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia via two dozen landing barges and other small boats. Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht’s 17th Army moved toward Novorossiysk. Axis surface vessels intercepted some of the convoys, sinking Soviet gunboats *Oktybar* and *Rostov‐Don*. Axis bombers also assaulted Teignmouth, England. The British War Cabinet received the Home Security Situation Report which noted that in the week ending at 0600 hours, Axis bombing massacred ninety‐two British civilians and seriously injured ninety‐one. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1943): After the Gestapo tortured Josef Mahler (an emigré and Jewish communist expelled from the Netherlands) for months, it finally executed him in a Düsseldorf prison. The Gestapo had failed to obtain from him any confession of a conspiratorial nature. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1944): Axis officials declared the V‐2 operational. In Britain, a V‐1 flying bomb landed on RAF Hawkinge destroying a Spitfire fighter of 350 squadron and wounded some airmen. Another fell on the perimeter of RAF Nacton in Ipswich, killing a RAF noncommissioned officer and destroying a house. Records later showed that by this date, the effective end of the V‐1 assault from France, 8,617 bombs had been ground launched against the United Kingdom. Axis Air Force unit III K/G3 had launched about 410, mostly against London, however the Axis still had more to send. On the other hand, Vojtech Tuka resigned as the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, citing poor health, and Axis troops began evacuating the Aegean Islands. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/2/1945): Tōkyō and the major warring powers aboard the battleship USS *Missouri* in Tōkyō Bay signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, officially ending World War II. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 weeks ago • 100%

On this day 81 years ago, the Axis commenced slowly liquidating the Vilna ghetto https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Ghetto_Vilinus.gif

Quoting Tony Greenstein’s *Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation*, pages 229–230: >[Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=W9en6H4TSyE), was occupied by [the Axis] on June 24, 1941. It contained about 70,000 Jews, 80% of whom were murdered by the end of the year. The [Axis] appointed a Jewish Council headed by a Revisionist Zionist, [Jacob Gens](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3347821). Twenty one thousand Jews were liquidated immediately before the rest were herded into two ghettos, [one of which](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ghetto_Vilnius) was also liquidated. > >Between September and December a further 27,000 were murdered, mainly in the Pits of Ponary, just outside Vilna.¹⁹⁶ The Jewish police actively participated in these killings and in some cases, actually carried out the “selections.”¹⁹⁷ > >Like Merin in Sosnowiec, Gens believed that by sacrificing the majority of Jews he could save the rest. In this way the [Axis] used the Judenrat to carry out the deportations until there was no one left. The [Axis] gave Gens absolute power, including the power of capital and corporal punishment. > >In Vilna a United Partisans Organisation [FPO] was formed in January 1942, between the Communists and the Zionists. Josef Glazman, a Revisionist who had been deputy police commandant until Gens dismissed him, was deputy commander of the FPO.¹⁹⁸ > >The FPO was headed by a communist, Yitzhak Wittenberg. After having tortured another communist the Gestapo became aware of his rôle and ordered his arrest. On 16 July 1943, after having been invited to talks by Gens, Wittenberg was seized by the Lithuanian police led by the head of the Jewish police, Revisionist Salek Dessler. However Wittenberg was freed by the Resistance. > >The Gestapo gave Gens an ultimatum — hand over Wittenberg or the ghetto would be destroyed.¹⁹⁹ Gens mobilised the ghetto and forced Wittenberg’s surrender.²⁰⁰ Abba Kovner of Hashomer Hatzair urged surrender and Wittenberg gave himself up.²⁰¹ > >‘*Aktion* swiftly followed *Aktion*.’ Between 1 and 5 September a great deportation to Estonia took place. The Jewish police, who were armed by the [Axis], ‘went wild as they smelled blood.’ They forced 5,000 people onto the trains. On September 23 the final *Aktion* took place.²⁰² Nine days previously Gens himself had been shot by the Gestapo. > >Gens destroyed the Resistance knowing that a communist‐led resistance would fight the ghetto’s liquidation.²⁰³ The resistance under Kovner chose not to fight but escape instead to the forests.²⁰⁴ According to Chaim Lazar, Kovner reached an agreement with Gens and Salek Dessler and they were given a safe exit. Kovner ensured that only the underground escaped.²⁰⁵ > >The main purpose of Kovner’s partisan group was to save themselves. Chaim Lazar alleges that when a group of Jews from Ishishuk came to the forest, having been sheltered by farms until the danger of being discovered became too great, they were refused entry into Kovner’s group even though refusal was tantamount to a death sentence. For many weeks these Jews wandered near the Jewish camp, suffering from cold and starvation. Only after the Soviet partisan camp absorbed some of them did Kovner agree to absorb the rest.²⁰⁶ > >Soviet partisans, although thin on the ground, ‘offered the most hope to the Jews’ including arming them.²⁰⁷ See also: [*Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/7f45020eb81845668a58dde84ea39729) [Interview with Jewish partisan Sam Hamburg.](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=urpXcpouyG0) [Fania Brantsovskaja: the last living survivor of the Vilna ghetto.](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=2g7MleQUh6M) --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (September 1). **1886**: Shigeyasu Suzuki, lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army from December 1936 to December 1938, was born. **1895**: Engelbert Zaschka, Axis inventor, was born. [**1923**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1923): The first three combat legions of the Blackshirts were mobilized and sent to Libya. [**1932**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1932): Kenkichi Ueda attached to the IJA’s General Staff. [**1935**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1935): Robert von Greim received the rank of Oberstleutnant. [**1936**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1936): *U‐23* became assigned to the 1st Submarine Flotilla and Korvettenkapitän Eberhard Friedrich Clemens Godt became her commanding officer. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1937): The Spanish Nationalists, led by Generals Antonio Aranda and José Solchaga, launched an offensive through the mountains of Leon and along the coast from the east to capture Gijón. Gen. Aranda’s forces, however, were unable to break through the mountain passes until a Navarrese force, under Gen. Solchaga’s command, captured the village of Infiesto one month later, thus outflanking the mountain defences and forcing the Asturians into a retreat. Meanwhile, the IJA’s 5th Division and 11th Mixed Brigade, under Itagaki Seishiro’s command, marched from Beiping toward Chahar and Shanxi Provinces. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1938): Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein met with the Third Reich’s head of state at the Berghof in Berchtesgaden while officials announced in Austria that all religious and other private schools would be closed and education would be taken over by the NSDAP. Coincidentally, the Reich Economics Ministry set up a meeting to discuss the question of credits, possibly guaranteed by the state, for the purchase of ‘Jewish’ property. Citing public safety, Rome officially forbade “foreigners of the Jewish race to establish permanent residence on Italian soil, in Libya, or in Italy’s Aegean possessions”. Gen. Franz Halder became Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht (Oberkommando des Heeres and the first self‐identified Catholic to be assigned this position), succeeding General Ludwig Beck. The Fascists commissioned M1 into service under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Hans Bartels, and Masafumi Arima stepped down as the commanding officer of converted seaplane tender Kamikawa Maru and was made a commanding officer of Sasebo Naval Air Corps in the Empire of Japan. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1939): Berlin officially declared war on Poland, then the Luftwaffe bombed the town of Wielu in Poland, causing 1,200 civilian casualties. Over Warsaw, Oberst Walter Grabmann’s Messerchmitt Bf 110 squadron (I.(Z)/Lg.1) led by Hauptmann Schleit, shot down five Polish PZL P.11 fighters whilst escorting the Heinkel He 111P bombers of II/KG.1. He sustained wounds as one of the P.11 fighters damaged his Bf 110 fighter. Berlin relieved Rome from having to fight in the war against Poland and possibly with the pseudodemocracies in writing, asking only for politico‐economic support. London and Paris turned to Rome in response to a proposal to revamp the conditions of the Versailles Treaty rather than declaring war on the Third Reich. Meanwhile, Rome declared itself a nonbelligerent nation in this battle. As the ‘Free City’ of Danzig ceased to exist, Gauleiter Albert Forster’s title of State President of the ‘Free City’ of Danzig was abolished. He would soon be named the Gauleiter and Reichstatthalter of Danzig‐West Prussia. As well, the Third Reich officially placed a curfew on Jews: 9 P.M. in the summer and 8 P.M. in the winter. Berlin likewise authorized Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt to ‘grant merciful deaths’ for the mentally ill and those who were suffering from incurable diseases, thus beginning Action T4. Reinhard Heydrich presided a meeting attended by the heads of Security Police and Commanders of Special Units, during which Berlin ordered the deportation of the remaining 30,000 Roma and Sinti from the German Reich to the nearly conquered territory of Poland. The Iron Cross awards became established in the Third Reich as an award for those who displayed bravery in combat or in command of military personnel. Four grades were specified: Iron Cross 2nd Class, Iron Cross 1st Class, Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, and the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross. Lastly, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop warned his Chancellor that the invasion of Poland would compel France to fight. The Chancellor (exceptionally irritable, bitter and sharp with anyone advising caution) replied: ‘I have at last decided to do without the opinions of people who have misinformed me on a dozen occasions [so] I shall rely on my own judgement.’ [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1940): The coke‐fired two‐retort furnace in the Auschwitz crematorium went into service for the disposal of bodies. Meanwhile, formations of Fascist fighters arrived in Britain in the morning to lure British fighters, but the tactic failed. At 1100, 1330, and 1730 hours, large Fascist raids attacked Debden, Biggin Hill, Hawkinge, Lympne, Kenley, Detling, Eastchurch, Tand Sherburn, as well as the Tilbury Docks in the East End of London. The Luftwaffe lost seventeen fighters and eight bombers. Overnight, Fascist bombers attacked Kent, Bristol Channel, and South Wales. Lastly, the *Regia Marina* established a frogmen training school at the Naval Academy at Livorno under Lt. Wolk’s command. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1941): Berlin passed a law, to go into effect eighteen days later, whereby all Jews above the age of six in the Third Reich (including its occupied lands) were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David with a word for ‘Jew’ inscribed in black therein. Coincidentally, the 9th Company of German Police Battalion 322 participated in the extermination of more than nine hundred Jews from the Minsk area in Byelorussia. On the same day, the Police Regiment South reported shooting eighty‐eight Jews, and Battalion 320 reported exterminating three hundred eighty. Additionally, Alfons Bentele’s superiors assigned him the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1942): SS‐Obersturmführer Franz Reichleitner became the commandant of Sobibór in occupied Poland, replacing Franz Stangl, and Axis bombers attacked Lydd in southeastern England. After sundown and lasting until the next date, they attacked Doncaster. As well, Axis aircraft sank Soviet torpedo boat *Purga* on Lake Ladoga near Leningrad, and 1.Panzerarmee established a bridgehead across the Terek River near Mozdok in southern Russia. Hans‐Joachim Marseille flew three sorties and shot down a total of seventeen enemy aircraft between 0826 and 0839 hours while escorting Stuka dive bombers to El Taqua in Libya, seven P‐40 fighters between 1055 and 1103 hours near Alam Halfa, and five Hurricane fighters between 1747 and 1753 hours while escorting bombers toward El Imayid). His score at the day’s end stood at 121. Martin Gottfried Weiss became Dachau’s commandant, and Kurt Fricke received the Order of Michael the Brave 3rd Class of Romania. Axis submarine *U‐759* avoided a ramming attempt by the Allies but would succumb to depth charging by Morden; all forty‐three aboard died in *U‐759*'s sinking. Fifty miles to the east, the Allies damaged *U‐91*, then fifteen miles east of Cape Coast, Gold Coast, *U‐125* sank British ship *Ilorin* at 2206 hours, massacring thirty‐three but leaving four alive. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1943): Rudolf von Schmettow became the military governor of the Channel Islands for the second time, succeeding Erich Müller. Aside from that, the Empire of Japan’s 21st Air Flotilla at Saipan, Mariana Islands disbanded. Its two air groups, Air Group 253 (fighters) and Air Group 751 (medium bombers) transferred to Rabaul. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1944): *U‐23* fired three torpedoes into the harbor of Constanța and reported three detonations at about 0333 hours. Two of them of them damaged berthing facilities, while another struck and sank the already damaged Romanian merchant ship *Oituz*. *U‐23* departed at about 0400 hours and laid one EMS mine in the roads near Tuzla lighthouse about 10 kilometers to the south. Afterwards, several waves of V‐1 flying bombs were launched across the English Channel toward Britain, yet most failed to make their targets. [**1981**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/9/1/1981): Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital, Head of Organization Todt, Inspector General of German Roadways, Inspector General for Water and Energy, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, and Reich Minister of Industry and Production, died of a stroke while revisiting London. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 weeks ago • 100%

On this day 85 years ago, the Schutzstaffel and Gestapo staged attacks on German targets in Polish territory

There is a short way and a long way to describe this assault. The short way per Richard J. Evans’s [*The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=86D3CB86646625D45637A1CA26916194), pages 699–700: >Acting according to plans arranged some time before by Heydrich, [SS men in civilian clothing staged a mock assault on the German radio station at Gleiwitz](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=S2ygLHHpaEw), in Upper Silesia. Its staff were replaced by another detachment from the SS. Evidence of the Poles’ supposedly murderous assault was provided by two concentration camp inmates from Sachsenhausen, killed by lethal injections and dumped at the radio station to be photographed by the German media. The orders, approved by Hitler personally, referred to the bodies as ‘canned goods’. > >A third man, Franz Honiok, a pro‐Polish German citizen, was arrested on 30 August 1939 as someone who could be plausibly identified as a Polish irregular, and taken out of the police gaol by the SS at Gleiwitz the next day. He was put to sleep with an injection, placed inside the radio station, and, still unconscious, shot dead. To lend further authenticity to the action, the Polish‐speaking SS men shouted anti‐German slogans into the microphone before leaving. Normally the radio station was only used for emergency weather forecasts, so hardly anybody was listening. > >Elsewhere, two other border incidents were staged by SS men dressed in Polish army uniforms. As one SS man came out of a German customs house that he had just helped smash to pieces, he stumbled over several dead bodies wearing Polish uniforms. Their heads, he reported later, were shaven, their faces had been beaten to make them unrecognizable, and their bodies were completely rigid.¹⁹³ :::spoiler [Click here for the long way.] Quoting William L. Shirer’s *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich*, pages [518](https://archive.org/stream/B-001-014-606/page/518/mode/1up)–520, [594](https://archive.org/stream/B-001-014-606/page/594/mode/1up)–596: >[A]s the second half of August 1939 began, the [Wehrmacht] chiefs pushed forward with their plans to annihilate Poland and to protect the western Reich just in case the [pseudo]democracies, contrary to all evidence, did intervene. On August 15 the annual Nuremberg Party Rally, which Hitler on April 1 had proclaimed as the “Party Rally of Peace” and which was scheduled to begin the first week in September, was secretly canceled. A quarter of a million men were called up for the armies of the west. > >Advance mobilization orders to the railways were given. Plans were made to move Army headquarters to Zossen, east of Berlin. And on the same day, August 15, the Navy reported that the pocket battleships *Graf Spee* and *Deutschland* and twenty‐one submarines were ready to sail for their stations in the Atlantic. > >On August 17 General Haider made a strange entry in his diary: “Canaris checked with Section I [Operations]. Himmler, Heydrich, Obersalzberg: 150 Polish uniforms with accessories for Upper Silesia.” > >What did it mean? It was only after the war that it became clear. It concerned one of the most bizarre incidents ever arranged by the [Fascists]. Just as Hitler and his Army chiefs, it will be remembered, had considered cooking up an “incident,” such as the assassination of the [Reich’s] minister, in order to justify their invading Austria and Czechoslovakia, so now they concerned themselves, as time began to run out, with concocting an incident which would, at least in their opinion, justify before the world the planned aggression against Poland. > >The code name was “Operation Himmler” and the idea was quite simple—and crude. The S.S.–Gestapo would stage a faked attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, near the Polish border, using condemned concentration camp inmates outfitted in Polish Army uniforms. Thus Poland could be blamed for attacking [the Third Reich]. Early in August Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr Section of OKW, had received an order from Hitler himself to deliver to Himmler and Heydrich 150 Polish uniforms and some Polish small arms. > >This struck him as a strange business and on August 17 he asked General Keitel about it. While the spineless OKW Chief declared he did not think much of “actions of this kind,” he nevertheless told the Admiral that “nothing could be done,” since the order had come from the Fuehrer.⁸ Repelled though he was, Canaris obeyed his instructions and turned the uniforms over to Heydrich. > >The chief of the S.D. chose as the man to carry out the operation a young S.S. secret‐service veteran by the name of Alfred Helmut Naujocks. > >This was not the first of such assignments given this weird individual nor would it be the last. Early in March of 1939, shortly before the [Fascist] occupation of Czechoslovakia, Naujocks, at Heydrich’s instigation, had busied himself running explosives into Slovakia, where they were used, as he later testified, to “create incidents.” > >Alfred Naujocks was a typical product of the S.S.–Gestapo, a sort of intellectual gangster. He had studied engineering at Kiel University, where he got his first taste of brawling with anti[fa]; on one occasion he had his nose bashed in by Communists. He had joined the S.S. in 1931 and was attached to the S.D. from its inception in 1934. > >Like so many other young men around Heydrich he dabbled in what passed as intellectual pursuits in the S.S.—“history” and “philosophy” especially while rapidly emerging as a tough young man (Skorzeny was another) who could be entrusted with the carrying out of the less savory projects dreamed up by Himmler and Heydrich.* > >On October 19, 1944, Naujocks deserted to the Americans and at Nuremberg a year later made a number of sworn affidavits, in one of which he preserved for history the account of the “incident” which Hitler used to justify his attack on Poland. >>On or about August 10, 1939, the chief of the S.D., Heydrich, personally ordered me to simulate an attack on the radio station near Gleiwitz near the Polish border [Naujocks related in an affidavit signed in Nuremberg November 20, 1945] and to make it appear that the attacking force consisted of Poles. Heydrich said: “Practical proof is needed for these attacks of the Poles for the foreign press as well as for German propaganda.” […] >> >>My instructions were to seize the radio station and to hold it long enough to permit a Polish‐speaking German who would be put at my disposal to broadcast a speech in Polish. Heydrich told me that this speech should state that the time had come for conflict between Germans and Poles […] Heydrich also told me that he expected an attack on Poland by Germany in a few days. >> >>I went to Gleiwitz and waited there fourteen days […] Between the 25th and 31st of August, I went to see Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, who was then nearby at Oppeln. In my presence, Mueller discussed with a man named Mehlhorn* plans for another border incident, in which it should be made to appear that Polish soldiers were attacking German troops […] Mueller stated that he had 12 to 13 condemned criminals who were to be dressed in Polish uniforms and left dead on the ground of the scene of the incident to show they had been killed while attacking. For this purpose they were to be given fatal injections by a doctor employed by Heydrich. Then they were also to be given gunshot wounds. After the incident members of the press and other persons were to be taken to the spot of the incident […] >> >>Mueller told me he had an order from Heydrich to make one of those criminals available to me for the action at Gleiwitz. The code name by which he referred to these criminals was “Canned Goods.”⁹ > >While Himmler, Heydrich and Mueller, at Hitler’s command, were arranging for the use of “Canned Goods” to fake an excuse for [Fascist] aggression against Poland, the Fuehrer made his first decisive move to deploy his armed forces for a possibly bigger war. On August 19—another fateful day—orders to sail were issued to the [Kriegsmarine]. > >Twenty‐one submarines were directed to put out for positions north and northwest of the British Isles, the pocket battleship *Graf Spee* to depart for waters off the Brazilian coast and her sister ship, the *Deutschland*, to take a position athwart the British sea lanes in the North Atlantic.† > >[…] > >Having convinced the German people (and of this the writer can testify from personal observation) that the Poles had rejected the Fuehrer’s generous peace offer, there remained only the concocting of a deed which would “prove” that not Germany but Poland had attacked first. > >For this last shady business, it will be remembered, the Germans, at Hitler’s direction, had made careful preparation.* For six days Alfred Naujocks, the intellectual S.S. ruffian, had been waiting at Gleiwitz on the Polish border to carry out a simulated Polish attack on the German radio station there. > >The plan had been revised. S.S. men outfitted in Polish Army uniforms were to do the shooting, and drugged concentration camp inmates were to be left dying as “casualties”—this last delectable part of the operation had, as we have seen, the expressive code name “Canned Goods.” There were to be several such faked “Polish attacks” but the principal one was to be on the radio station at Gleiwitz. >>At noon on August 31 [Naujocks related in his Nuremberg affidavit] I received from Heydrich the code word for the attack which was to take place at 8’o clock that evening. Heydrich said: “In order to carry out this attack report to Mueller for Canned Goods.” I did this and gave Mueller instructions to deliver the man near the radio station. I received this man and had him laid down at the entrance to the station. He was alive but completely unconscious. I tried to open his eyes. I could not recognize by his eyes that he was alive, only by his breathing. I did not see the gun wounds but a lot of blood was smeared across his face. He was in civilian clothes. >> >>We seized the radio station, as ordered, broadcast a speech of three to four minutes over an emergency transmitter,* fired some pistol shots and left.†⁷⁹ > >Berlin that evening was largely shut off from the outside world, except for outgoing press dispatches and broadcasts which reported the Fuehrer’s “offer” to Poland and the German allegations of Polish “attacks” on German territory. > >I tried to get through on the telephone to Warsaw, London and Paris but was told that communications with these capitals were cut. Berlin itself was quite normal in appearance. There had been no evacuation of women and children, as there had been in Paris and London, nor any sandbagging of storefront windows, as was reported from the other capitals. > >Toward 4 A.M. on September 1, after my last broadcast, I drove back from Broadcasting House to the Adlon Hotel. There was no traffic. The houses were dark. The people were asleep and perhaps—for all I knew—had gone to bed hoping for the best, for peace. > >Hitler himself had been in fine fettle all day. At 6 P.M. on August 31 General Haider noted in his diary, “Fuehrer calm; has slept well […] Decision against evacuation [in the west] shows that he expects France and England will not take action.”* > >Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr in OKW and one of the key anti‐Nazi conspirators, was in a different mood. Though [the Fascist bourgeoisie] was carrying Germany into war, an action which the Canaris circle had supposedly sworn to prevent by getting rid of the dictator, there was no conspiracy in being now that the moment for it had arrived. > >Later in the afternoon Gisevius had been summoned to OKW headquarters by Colonel Oster. This nerve center of Germany’s military might was humming with activity. Canaris drew Gisevius down a dimly lit corridor. In a voice choked with emotion he said: > >“This means the end of Germany.”⁸¹ The choice of Gleiwitz (Gliwice) for a staged assault was not aleatory. In particular, Polish nationalists had unintentionally made the Third Reich’s claims easier to believe with some provocative actions earlier that year. Quoting Peter Polak‐Springer’s [*‘Jammin’ with Karlik’: The German–Polish ‘Radio War’ and the Gleiwitz ‘Provocation’, 1925–1939*](https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/0265691413478095): >In an effort to stem the tide of popular defection to [the Third Reich], to counter [its] propaganda’s aims of demoralizing the public on the Polish side of the border, and also to deliver a response to German radio’s irredentist aggression, the PRK [Polish Radio Katowice] promoted its own muscle‐flexing gestures. > >While claiming to be reading from a letter sent by a fan in occupied Czechoslovakia during one of his broadcasts, Ligón announced that ‘it was better to fall in battle than to become a part of the Protectorate’, thus dismissing the option of also surrendering to Germany.⁷¹ > >His broadcasts did much to convey the message that war with the Third Reich was imminent, and that Poland should prepare for this. From informing the public that [the Third Reich’s] propaganda on Danzig is ‘already a war game’, to **holding a fund‐raiser for the Polish military forces during August of 1939, ‘Karlik’ made it quite clear that war was to come.⁷²** > >And **he did this in a confident and high‐spirited manner, warning the [German Fascists] to ‘get your behinds ready [for punishment]’, and that ‘they [the Germans] should just come and we will tear out their bloody and crusty claws’.⁷³** > >He even made gestures in the direction of Poland’s making the first move. Referring to the fortifications the [German Fascists] were building on their side of the border during this time, Ligón commented that this was ‘so that they will be able to hide their behinds when we come’.⁷⁴ > >When the Germans expressed their annoyance with such statements, Polish officials accused them of not being able to take a joke. According to the Grażyńskiite daily newspaper, *Polska Zachodnia*, ‘how tense must the nerves of the “fuehrers” [sic] be if they are bothered even by humour and laughs’.⁷⁵ > >If Ligón could always excuse his statements as mere jokes, the actors of Grażyński’s highhanded militant ceremonies held at the border on the eve of the war certainly could not. Since coming into power, the voivode had been holding rallies of this nature usually several times a year to praise and commemorate both the second and third Polish Silesian insurgencies against Germany after World War I, and proudly display his paramilitary force, the ‘Insurgent Union’ (*Związek Powstańców*, ZP), largely made up of the veteran fighters of these uprisings.⁷⁶ > >During the first decade after the partition, the bombastic militant character of these stirred much uproar in the Provinz, and even raised fears among ordinary locals that the Poles were going to invade. Eventually, such rallies became a commonplace ‘tradition’ and hardly drew attention from the German media. This changed in the last year before the war, when the [Reich’s] propaganda bureau was searching for any ‘evidence’ to support its propaganda of Polish aggression. > >Surely aware of this, in the summer of 1939, **Grażyński, the ZP, local administrators, and units of regular soldiers nevertheless staged several of these official gestures of military aggression and open irredentism. In early June of 1939, the voivode himself presided over the unveiling of a statue of the insurgent in Ruda Śląska (Friedrichsdorf) about 220 yards from the border.** > >As was common for these statues, a number of which been erected around the border area since the late 1920s, **this one pointed to the German side of the border as a public reminder of Poland’s still unfulfilled irredentist mission.** During this ceremony, which the PRK broadcast over the airwaves, and at which units of the ZP and also the Polish army surrounded Grażyński, **the latter vowed that ‘what the heroes of the third insurgency did not complete will be finished by us’ — in other words, the seizure of western Upper Silesia by military force.⁷⁷** > >Such statements of the voivode, had been repeated for years and had become quite banal by this time, as were other ‘invented traditions’ that were officially observed that summer, including the unveiling of another statue of the insurgent at the end of June in the border village of Boruszowice, a monument that was 33 feet high and clearly visible from the German side.⁷⁸ > >In addition, in mid‐August, the ZP staged their annual ‘March to the Oder’, a march from Poland’s border with Germany to that with Czechoslovakia (this time including the Teschen/Zaolzia area that the Polish state had annexed in October of 1938), to commemorate the second insurgency of August 1919 with warmongering militancy.⁷⁹ Indeed, **the German media had a field day exposing these rallies under provocative headlines such as ‘the insurgents want to “take back” Silesia — the agitation has made Poland crazy’.⁸⁰** > >**This [Fascist] propaganda on Poland’s intention to capture all of the German eastern provinces up to the Oder River inadvertently gave the well‐known Gleiwitz ‘provocation’ on the last day before the war’s outbreak at least some foundation of logic.** The attack on the newly built relay station, with its awe‐aspiring 361‐foot‐high wooden broadcasting tower, had been orchestrated by the SS, which dressed up its agents and Polish‐minority members, who were concentration camp prisoners, in Polish military uniforms. > >However, **the German media’s account of the event strove to give it credibility by linking it to Grażyńskiite irredentism towards western Upper Silesia. And so, the official accounts reported that ‘bands of the “Insurgent Union”’ accompanied by regular soldiers had performed the deed.⁸¹ Having broadcast official rallies commemorating the Polish Silesian insurgencies of 1919–1921, along with other propaganda that lauded Poland’s taking of all of Upper Silesia by force, the PRK had helped to make a Polish attack on the Provinz at least conceivable.** > >**The heated military muscle‐flexing that both German and Polish radios interactively promoted on the airwaves in the last months before the war likewise provided the [Third Reich] with a suitable atmosphere to stage this final propaganda event to legitimate the invasion of Poland.** (Emphasis added.) ::: --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (August 31). **1923**: [The Fascists invaded Corfu.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1577976) [**1932**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1932): The Fascist cruiser *Bolzano* was launched at Genoa. [**1933**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1933): Werner von Blomberg received the rank of Generaloberst. **1935**: In an attempt to stay out of the growing tensions concerning the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan, Washington passed the first of its Neutrality Acts. [**1936**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1936): The Fascist submarine *Iride* attacked British destroyer HMS *Havock* off Spain, and HMS *Havock* responded with depth charges, but neither incurred any damage. On the other hand, the Battle of the Sierra Guadalupe ended in a tactical Nationalist victory, and a Nationalist radio broadcast from Seville announced the executions of sixty‐seven miners at Rio Tinto for supplying Republican forces with munitions. Coincidentally, an explosion at a mine in Bochum killed twenty‐nine workers. The Japanese Navy Kanoya Air Group, based in Taiwan, launched nine Type 96 G3M2 bombers to attack Guangzhou. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1938): Winston Churchill suggested that if United Kingdom, United States, and Soviet Union collectively asserted pressure on the Third Reich, Berlin might abandon its claims for the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, yet he was unable to persuade fellow British politicians! Aside from that, the Fascists commissioned *Aviere* into service, and Akagi completed her modernization, emerging with the three flight decks removed. In their place was a single flight deck running nearly the length of the ship, and aircraft capacity increased from sixty‐one to ninety‐one. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1939): Berlin made an offer to London: the Third Reich would not risk war if Poland was willing to turn over Danzig and a small section of the Polish Corridor, and Poland was to allow a plebiscite for the remainder of the Polish Corridor in the near future; British Ambassador in Germany Nevile Henderson expressed that the United Kingdom, while desiring peace, could not sacrifice Poland to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, Henderson continued to press Poland to send a delegation to the Third Reich in a last attempt to negotiate peace over Danzig and the Polish Corridor. When Polish Ambassador in Germany Józef Lipski attempted to send Henderson's message to Poland later in the evening, he found that the Fascists had cut telephone and telegraph communications to Poland. In the Kingdom of Italy, Galeazzo Ciano sent the United Kingdom and France a secret message noting that Kingdom of Italy would not fight should the Third Reich start a war over Poland, and Fascist official Hermann Göring hosted British Ambassador Nevile Henderson and Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus at his home in Berlin for tea between 1700 and 1900 hours, during which the latter two made a last attempt to broker peace, but Berlin still formally ordered the Fascist invasion of Poland, and made specific instructions for Wehrmacht troops on the western border to avoid conflict with the United Kingdom, France, and the Low Countries. Lastly, the Imperialists lost their 23rd Infantry Division at Nomonhan. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1940): At 0206 hours, Fascist submarine *U‐59* sank British ship *Bibury*, killing the entire crew of thirty‐eight and one gunner. At 0615 hours, Fascist submarine *U‐38* sank British ship *Har Zion*; thirty‐three died but somebody survived (rescued by Polish destroyer Blyskawica on the next day). Northwest of Ireland, Fascist submarine *U‐46* sank Belgian passenger ship *Ville de Hasselt*, but the entire crew survived on four lifeboats. Before noon, two hundred Fascist bombers attacked Essex; № 56 Squadron RAF shot down one bomber but lost four fighters to Fascist escort fighters from III./ZG26 and III./JG26. Debden, North Weald, Eastchurch, Dietling (strafed by fighters), Croydon (bombed by Bf 109 fighter‐bombers of Erprobungsgruppe 210), and Hornchurch were all attacked in the morning. In the afternoon, the Fascists reattacked Hornchurch, destroying two Spitfire fighters on the ground but at the cost of five Bf 109 fighters. At 1800 hours, the Fascists bombed Biggin Hill from low level, destroying two of the three remaining hangars, cutting telephone lines, and destroying the operations room. On this day, the Luftwaffe lost fifty‐six fighters and twenty‐nine bombers. After sundown, the Fascists bombed Liverpool for the fourth consecutive night; other cities received bombs, too. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1941): Axis bombers attacked Alexandria, Egypt, killing two British Royal Navy officers but otherwise doing little to no damage to ships and port facilities, which were the primary targets. The Wehrmacht also lost the Battle of Loznica to Serbian paramilitary forces. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1942): Berlin ordered Wilhelm List to launch a major offensive to gain the Caucasus region in southern Russia, and tanks from the 4th Panzer Army reached the Stalingrad–Morozovsk railway on Stalingrad’s outskirts. Hans‐Joachim Marseille shot down two Hurricane fighters during the morning sortie over El Alamein, Egypt at 1003 and 1004 hours. In the afternoon sortie, he shot down a Spitfire fighter over Alam Halfa, Libya at 1825 hours. His score by the end of the day stood at 104. Axis and British tanks meanwhile engaged in combat near Alam el Halfa, Egypt, reaching no conclusion by nightfall as the British refused to fight in open terrain as the Axis wanted. The Axis broke off the attack at sundown after losing twenty‐two tanks. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1943): Berlin authorized limited withdrawals in Ukraine, and Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn‐Wittgenstein received Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross. The Axis submarine *U‐703* arrived at Narvik, Norway and dropped off four survivors of the Soviet freighter *Dekabrist*. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1944): In the early morning hours between 0300 and 0630 hours, German Air Force III K/G3 launched twenty V‐1 flying bombs with Gloucester, England as the target. Only eight got across and over the coast and six of these fell to earth in Suffolk and the other two in Essex. One of the bombs injured seven people in Suffolk near to Harleston. One bomb brought down by a fighter near the coast impacted near Whitstable in Kent seriously injuring four. One of the Heinkel bombers flown by Unteroffizier Lorenz Gruber crashed at Vossenberg in Belgium on the return flight, all the crew perished. This was the final operation of the of the month by the aircraft of III K/G3, they had flown 228 sorties for the loss of three aircraft, a better return from the previous month. As well, the Wehrmacht disarmed two divisions of Slovakian resistance fighters at Presov, Czechoslovakia. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/31/1945): Tatsunosuke Ariizumi suicided aboard submarine *I‐401* by taking a pistol to his mouth at 0420 hours. At 0500 hours, this submarine lowered its naval ensign while in Sagami Wan. Nobukiyo Nambu, the submarine’s commanding officer, secretly ordered his signal officer to burn the flag to prevent Allied capture. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 weeks ago • 100%

How British eugenicists influenced the Third Reich https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/Conatus/article/view/21200/19001

([Mirror.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338363874)) >The passing of the Mental Deficiency Act serves as a direct connection between British eugenics biopower and that of the [Third Reich’s] eugenics program. Whereas British eugenics shifted from class and race to feeblemindedness, the [Third Reich’s] eugenics program, aimed at *Lebensunwertes Leben* (“life unworthy of life”), focused first on those with physical or mental disabilities and then extended to a racialized eugenics that targeted non‐Aryans. While [Fascist] sterilization laws were modeled after the American eugenics program, the language to describe the need for such laws has roots in the British eugenics rhetoric of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.³⁸ > >Much like British eugenics, such rhetoric predates the formal proposal, or, in the case of the [Third Reich], implementation, of a eugenics program, but nevertheless creates the culture for such a proposal to be made. The defining factors of these groups were couched in a scientific rhetoric that both emulated British eugenics and embodies power/knowledge as biopower. > >In the 1920 book that coined the term “life unworthy of living,” *Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens* (The Permission to Destroy life Unworthy of Life), the authors, lawyer Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, made claims to scientific authority in their justification of killing those deemed “incurable idiots.” Hoche argues, “the physician has no doubt about the hundred‐percent certainty of correct selection [and] proven scientific criteria” of his actions regarding the killing of “a mentally dead person.”³⁹ > >The claim to authority is defined by criteria that are created by the very people using this authority, thus perpetuating that authority: couched in claims of certainty, questioning the doctor’s authority on this account would be to question a doctor’s authority as a doctor. > >[…] > >Claims for national health justified the power of scientific and medical discourse to ensure this health, which allowed for the creation of further knowledge to expand the powers of this very discourse. Thus, classificatory systems derived from biological claims of authority, based largely on what was seen in Britain, became central to the [Third Reich’s] eugenics rhetoric. > >The creation of the Nuremberg Laws, for instance, has roots in the same biological classification seen in early British eugenics regarding class distinctions; when situated historically as a response to the economic crisis of the 1930s, these roots are even more pronounced. Moreover, the shift to expand eugenics from those deemed mentally deficient to include Jews (and eventually others) demonstrates the deliberate blurring of biological difference to justify the segregation and extermination of any group deemed unfit by the dominating party. > >Again, power (eugenics as policy) is determined by the very knowledge (eugenic claims to a science of difference) that justifies its existence and recreates this knowledge (the expansion of such claims of difference). The Nuremberg Laws, then, continued and expanded the eugenics rhetoric that empowered the medical and legal communities. > >The Laws, which controlled the sexual and marital activity of Jews and Germans, prohibiting the mixing of “races,” categorized Jewishness as strictly biological (dismissing conversion or religious activity) and traced back Jewish blood through heritage lines, modeled after Galton’s own work. > >Creating such hereditary hierarchies and divisions justified policies and the power to regulate them, which allowed for the creation of further hierarchies — such as the *Untermensch*, with connections to Galton’s “residuum” — and the perpetuation of this power that continues to create knowledge to justify itself. Quoting Gerwin Strobl’s [*The Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/943856cc9a3251f5ef14b180c45f1c4b), page 88: >Other aspects of racial policy provided more promising evidence. In November 1937 the *Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung* acquainted its readership with the life and work of Sir Francis Galton, the inventor of eugenics.¹⁰⁸ The article was part of the régime’s wider attempts to ensure at least tacit acceptance of its eugenic measures. But, even so, the mere existence of the article is remarkable. Here was an attempt to popularise a key [Reich] policy by invoking its British roots. > >Perhaps just as striking is the fact that the experience of other nations went unmentioned. For in terms of more recent eugenic expertise, the record of other countries was more substantial than that of the United Kingdom. This was particularly true of the United States, which has the dubious distinction of leading the field here in the twenties and early thirties. [Fascist] racial scientists acknowledged their debt to America freely before 1933.¹⁰⁹ > >Yet it was Britain and Francis Galton that featured in the weekend paper of the German middle classes and not the United States. Invoking *American* precedent might have been counterproductive (nor would it have been popular with the leadership in the later thirties). Yet, once again, this is surely revealing about German attitudes to Britain — both within the party and outside it. > >Hans Günther, the father of [Fascist] *Rassenkunde*, also concentrated on Britain in his attempt to popularise eugenics. He sought, for instance, to exploit British literature for his purposes. In particular, he attempted to demonstrate that Shakespeare had possessed an instinctive grasp of the issues involved, and pointed eagerly to the first Sonnets (‘From fairest creatures we desire increase […]’). > >Only the Elizabethan poet Sir Thomas Overbury had put it more succinctly, he thought: ‘Myself I cannot chose, my wife I may,/ in that choice of her it much doth lye/ to mend myself in my posterity’.¹¹⁰ That was the best explanation, Günther suggested, of the Third Reich’s own aims. > >And the fact that there was nothing like this in German literature, with its familiar refrain about the universal brotherhood of men, added to the glow of the British example. The SS newspaper had reached similar conclusions: ‘This happy breed of men’, which Shakespeare had extolled, was the result not of nature but ‘of deliberate breeding’.¹¹¹ --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 30). [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/30/1940): The Second Vienna Award reassigned the territory of Northern Transylvania from the Kingdom of Romania to the Kingdom of Hungary. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/30/1941): The Third Reich and the Kingdom of Romania signed the Tighina Agreement, a treaty regarding administration issues of the Transnistria Governorate. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/30/1942): The Battle of Alam el Halfa commenced. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/30/1945): The Axis occupation of Hong Kong came to an end. (Coincidentally, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Atsugi Air Force Base while the Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, came into being.) **1954**: Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, Fascist sympathizer, expired. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 weeks ago • 100%

Frenchmen conscripted into the Wehrmacht, and the children thereof, are likelier to vote for neofascists http://www.stephanosvlachos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/1-s2.0-S0014292122000356-main.pdf

>In general *Gauleiters* were subject to the authority of the occupying army. However, **in August 1940, [Berlin] issued a decree granting full civil control to Wagner and Bürckel. Therefore, the two administrators of Alsace and Moselle possessed virtually unrestricted civil powers**, and essentially were responsible only to Hitler himself. The two administrators held similar positions but their personalities and methods differed significantly (Iung et al., 2012). > >Wagner, a WWI veteran, was of the view that the Wehrmacht and the party would be the means by which the local youth would complete their ideological and cultural assimilation. Bürckel, which was considered a “nazification” (*Gleichschaltung*) expert after being in charge of nazifying the Saar region, believed that assimilation through education was not possible and openly considered deporting part of the population and replacing them with German farmers. The course of the war on the Eastern Front favored Wagner’s approach. > >The decision to grant German nationality to the populations of Alsace and Moselle was made on August 9, 1942. This made it possible to introduce military service in Alsace on August 25, 1942, and in Moselle on August 29, 1942. The administrators’ independence gave them broad discretion in implementing the policy. Wagner who felt that assimilation could be accomplished through military service, mobilized 20 cohorts in Alsace (1908–1927), while Bürckel only mobilized 14 in Moselle (1914–1927).⁹ > >In total 103,000 men from Alsace and 31,000 from Moselle were drafted into the Wehrmacht (MACVG, 1954). The process was otherwise identical in both departments (Iung et al., 2012). According to historians “*the responsibility falls entirely on Gauleiter Wagner who did everything in his hand so that a maximum of Alsatians are incorporated in the Wehrmacht*” (Riedweg, 1995, p.99), an explanation also put forward by the French National Statistical Institute after the War (INSEE, 1956, p.205). > >[…] > >In the meanwhile, **life in Moselle went slowly back to normal.** Street were renamed, all administrative managers were replaced, and public administration was reorganized. An urbanization plan that intended to merge small municipalities into larger ones was introduced and public transport was intensified. Large manifestations were frequent during the period. Measures were introduced to overcome potential shortages such as training days for business managers and incentives to farmers (Sary, 1983). > >In parallel, **Brückel proceeded to three waves of deportation of inhabitants not belonging to the “German people”, recent movers from other regions of France and inhabitants of French‐speaking municipalities.¹¹ Nonetheless, as summarized in Sary (1983), “*during fours years, the occupying authorities worked with determination to earn the sympathy of the population of Moselle. A situation and activity of quasi‐normality was maintained in Metz, with an intense cultural life, several cultural events, and a supply of goods that was sufficient*”.** > >[…] > >The radical right resurfaced in the 1984 European parliament election when a list led by Jean‐Marie Le Pen, who claimed that the policies of both left‐ and right‐wing governments “betrayed popular trust”, received 11% of the vote. Up to that point, the radical right‐wing had campaigned with very limited success. In 1965 Jean‐Louis Tixier‐Vignancour received 5% of the votes on a platform to keep Algeria French, while in 1974 Le Pen only received 0.8% of the vote and did not run in 1981. > >The success of the radical right was confirmed in the 1988 Presidential election with 14% of the vote. In his campaign, Le Pen wondered out loud “why [mainstream candidates] would do tomorrow what they did not know how to do yesterday”. The radical right has had a presence in every presidential election since. > >Electoral participation was systematically lower in Alsace and Moselle than the rest of France until the 1980s. Since then, these regions have been strongholds of the radical right, where its share of the vote is well above the national average in every election. **In 1988, Le Pen received 21% of the valid ballots in Alsace and Moselle, 47% more than the national average.** > >**In 1995, Le Pen received the highest share of votes in the annexed departments out of the 101 departments in France (66% more than the average). In the elections from 2002 to 2017, the radical right’s vote share exceeded the national average by between 3 and 8 percentage points (22 to 41% above average).** > >[…] > >Recall that in 1969 there was no radical right‐wing candidate. **The results indicate that Wehrmacht draft eligibility is a powerful predictor of abstention in the 1965, 1969, and 1974 elections (Panel B). In later elections (after 1995) an increase in eligibility is associated to an increase in radical right‐wing support (Panel A).** > >The coefficients for 1995 and 2002 (Columns [4] and [5] of Panel A) are of similar magnitude as the early abstention coefficients. The effects in subsequent elections are positive, but fail to reach any conventional level of significance. The interplay between the effects is also noteworthy. When the coefficient on radical‐right wing support is positive and significant, it is negative for abstention, while when the effect is not statistically significant, it is positive for abstention. > >[…] > >**Since women in Alsace and Moselle were not conscripted, being born in 1908–1913 in Alsace should not make any difference in political preferences. The results, presented in Panels A and B of Table A.4, show that women born during the 1908–1913 period do not differ neither with respect to political trust, nor in their sympathy of the radical right.** […] Previous research has demonstrated how beliefs can be transmitted from parents to children and persist in environments that are different than the ones they were developed in Guiso et al. (2006). > >To test whether this intergenerational transmission mechanism holds, I construct the likelihood that an individual’s father or grandfather was born during the 1908–1913 and 1914–1927 periods, using the 1962 to 2011 censuses organized by INSEE (and available on IPUMS‐I).²⁹ I then estimate Eq. (11) for the full sample of respondents. A separate coefficient is estimated for individuals affected directly, via their father, or via their grandfather(s). > >The results are presented in Column (1) of Table 9. Two findings stand out: Firstly, **both individuals whose father was eligible and those whose grandfather(s) was eligible display reduced political trust.** > >Secondly, **transmission from the first to the second generation, as captured by the ratio of the two coefficients, is very strong**: The effect for the second generation (−0.6) is statistically indistinguishable of the effect for the first (−0.536), while the effect for the third generation (−0.218) represents 35% of the effect for the second one (𝑝‐value=0.17, not statistically significant). **These results point towards slow‐moving attitudes that are inherited from past generations.³⁰** (Emphasis added.) --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (August 29). **1904**: Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann, Axis scientist, was born. [**1923**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1923): Rome delivered a seven‐point ultimatum to Greece demanding satisfaction over the recent murder of Fascist Italy’s General Tellini, with Athens given twenty‐four hours to agree to pay fifty million lire reparations, a full inquiry, execution of the killers, an official apology, and a funeral and military honours for the victims. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1937): Imperial aircraft damaged Chinese gunboat Chuyou at Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China, and *Settsu*, which had ferried a battalion of Sasebo 4th Special Naval Landing Force from the Empire of Japan, disembarked the troops onto light cruiser *Natori* and destroyer *Yakaze* off Shanghai. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1938): While the Third Reich’s head of state toured the Westwall defenses in western Germany, General Wilhelm Adam warned Berlin that the régime would be unable to defend against an invasion by France for more than three days should the Third Reich deploy most of its forces for an invasion of Czechoslovakia. The head of state grew furious at Adam, who would retire from service at the year’s end. Apart from that, the Imperialists captured Tianjia, Anhui, China. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1939): The Third Reich’s head of state summoned the three leading representatives of the Reich’s armed forces — Walther von Brauchitsch, Hermann Göring, and Erich Raeder together with senior Army commanders — to his mountain villa at Obersalzberg in southern Germany, where he announced the details of the recently signed German–Soviet nonaggression treaty, the plan to isolate and destroy Poland, and the formation of a buffer state in conquered Poland against the Soviets. As well, Berlin expressed through the Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus that the German Reich only desired Danzig and a small section of the Polish Corridor, while a plebiscite should be held in the near future to determine the fate of the remainder of the Polish Corridor. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1940): Ribbentrop and Count Ciano met the Romanian and Hungarian Ministers in Vienna. At 1500 hours and 1915 hours, the Fascists launched large groups of fighters in an attempt to draw out British fighters, which were initially successful yet very quickly Air Vice Marshal Keith Park saw through the this attempt and recalled the fighters; only nine fighters were lost on either side. On this day, RAF leadership decided to stop using Defiant turret fighters as daylight interceptors as they were no match for enemy fighters. Overnight, Fascist bombers attacked Portsmouth, Tyneside, Hartlepool, Swansea, Manchester, and Liverpool; decoy fires were lit in the countryside to lure Fascist bombing, which were partially successful. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1941): The Axis captured Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, from the Soviets. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1942): The 4th Panzer Army broke through Soviet lines fifteen miles south of Stalingrad, and the Axis submarine *RO‐33* damaged Australian troopship *Marita* in the Gulf of Papua south of Australian Papua at 1200 hours; Australian destroyer HMAS *Arunta* counterattacked and sank *RO‐33*, killing all forty‐two aboard. During the day, the Empire of Japan’s 144th Regiment attacked Australian troops at Isurava along the Kokoda Track in Papua. To the east, 769 Axis Special Naval Landing Force troops landed at Waga Waga on the coast of Milne Bay; the Axis cruiser and nine destroyers that covered the landing bombarded the Australian airfield at Gili Gili before returning to Rabaul, New Britain, causing little damage. Before dawn, Axis bombers attacked the village of Blackhall Colliery in County Durham, England, and the Axis also assaulted Swindon and Brighton. An Axis torpedo boat seriously damaged British destroyer *HMS* Eridge two miles off the Egyptian coast, slaughtering five folk. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1943): Denmark scuttled most of its navy; the Third Reich dissolved the Danish government. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/29/1944): [The Slovak National Uprising took place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Axis.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1535984) :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 weeks ago • 100%

On this day in 1936, the Third Reich ordered a mass arrest of Jehovah’s Witnesses

encyclopedia.ushmm.org

It is common for Shoah scholars to briefly note that [Jehovah’s Witnesses (often known then less precisely as Bible Students) were among the many victims whom the Third Reich targeted for persecution](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jehovah's_Witnesses_in_the_Third_Reich), but it is unusual for anybody to elaborate on the oppression that they suffered. Put simply, Jehovah’s Witnesses have long had (and still have) an aversion to serving any governments directly and see it as incompatible with serving the Almighty. Because of this disloyalty, the Fascists detested them. Quoting Prof. Nikolaus Wachsmann’s [*KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=95E6C5ECE57FA60C3A94319E5449E997), ch. 2: >By far the largest group of religious prisoners in the mid‐1930s was Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, having pledged their allegiance to God, resisted the total claim of [Fascism]. Their persecution had started early in the Third Reich and soon intensified, after they refused to serve in the new German conscript army, continued to proselytize after their religious association was banned, and distributed critical leaflets. > >The régime tried to stamp out such defiance, with some paranoid [Fascist] officials picturing the Witnesses as a mass movement in cahoots with Communists (in reality, they only had some twenty‐five thousand members). Several thousand believers were arrested in the mid‐1930s. Most ended up in regular prisons, but others were taken to the KL. > >At the height of repression in 1937–38, more than ten percent of all men in Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald were Jehovah’s Witnesses. So large was this prisoner group that the Camp SS gave them a special insignia: the purple triangle.³⁰⁵ > >**Prisoners with the purple triangle endured great hardship. “The Jehovah’s Witnesses are the daily targets for every kind of persecution, terror, and brutality,” one of them wrote in 1938, not long after his release.** Some abuse was ideologically motivated, with Camp SS men mocking their victims as “heaven clowns” and “paradise birds.” Asked after the war why he had buried one of the prisoners up to the neck, **the former report leader in Sachsenhausen replied: “He was a conscientious objector. As such he had no right to life, in my view.”³⁰⁶** > >**What really enraged the SS men, however, was not the prisoners’ religious beliefs but their “obstinate” behavior, as Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to carry out certain orders and even tried to convert other prisoners.³⁰⁷ The leaders of the passive resistance were hit with great venom.** > >**One of them, the miner Johann Ludwig Rachuba, was punished by the Sachsenhausen SS between 1936 and 1938 with more than 120 days strict detention, more than one hundred lashes, four hours hanging from a post, and three months in the punishment company (he later died in the camp).** > >Such brute tactics rarely worked, however, as many prisoners saw the torture as a test of their faith. Only later in the war did SS officials become shrewder, realizing that many Jehovah’s Witnesses made reliable workers as long as they were not deployed in ways that conflicted directly with their beliefs.³⁰⁸ ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Striped_pajamas_with_purple_triangle_(crop).jpg) Pictured: The uniform for a concentration camp inmate who was a Jehovah’s Witness. >The […] prisoner population in Moringen was more diverse. Jehovah’s Witnesses made up a sizable proportion already in 1935, reflecting the high level of female activists, and during 1937 they became the largest prisoner group; by November, around half of the protective custody prisoners were Jehovah’s Witnesses.³³² […] Upon arrival in Lichtenburg, Erna Ludolph—a thirty‐year‐old Jehovah’s Witness from Lübeck—immediately realized that the premises were much bigger than Moringen. > >Soon, Ludolph and the others saw further differences, almost all for the worse. As an SS camp, Lichtenburg was run along far more military lines, with roll calls in the corridors and the yard. Leisure time was cut back and forced labor extended by about two hours. The SS also made far greater use of Kapos. > >Above all, the women endured harder punishment and occasional violence. Jehovah’s Witnesses made up the largest prisoner group, and conditions were particularly grim for those, like Erna Ludolph, who were isolated as “incorrigible.” One day in 1938, after these women refused to line up to a radio speech by Hitler, the guards attacked them and sprayed them with high‐pressure water hoses.³³⁶ :::spoiler [Click here for more.] >“In the middle of May 1939,” Erna Ludolph recalled after the war, “we Jehovah’s Witnesses, all 400 to 450 of us, were brought by truck with the first mass transports to Ravensbrück.” Expecting the number of female prisoners to grow further, SS officials had decided sometime in 1938 to establish an entirely new camp for women. > >After plans to build it near Dachau fell through, attention soon turned to a secluded site by the town of Fürstenberg, some fifty miles or so north of Berlin. Once a small detachment of men from Sachsenhausen had erected the first barracks and buildings in the early months of 1939, the new camp, called Ravensbrück, was ready.³³⁸ > >The prisoners’ living conditions deteriorated after the move from Lichtenburg, just as they had done after the prior move from Moringen. “Everything escalated to an unbelievable degree,” Erna Ludolph recalled. Roll calls in Ravensbrück were more torturous, forced labor more exhausting, punishment more severe, and life more rigid, with women now wearing identical dresses with blue and gray stripes, as well as an apron and headscarf.³³⁹ > >Still, terror remained gender‐specific, as the Camp SS continued to reserve its most violent abuse for men. Although flogging was introduced as an official punishment in Ravensbrück, some other excesses, including hanging from a post, were still absent. Instead of brutal assaults, the local SS relied more heavily on guard dogs, because Himmler believed that women would be particularly scared of them.³⁴⁰ Jeohvah’s Witnesses behaved differently from their fellow inmates. Chapter 10: >Many inmates drew strength from religious devotion. Some groups formed close communities of faith, dividing almost everything; in some camps, for example, Jehovah’s Witnesses evenly split all the money and provisions sent by relatives. What is more, religious practices provided a lasting link to their pre‐camp lives. And it helped them to find meaning in their suffering, seeing the camp as the culmination of centuries of persecution, or as a divine test of faith, or as penance for the sins of mankind.⁵⁰ > >[…] > >A hard core among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, remained firm in their refusal to carry out any work related to the [Axis] war effort. The SS fury about their obstinacy, which reached all the way to Himmler, hit these prisoners hard and several lost their lives.²³¹ ::: \ Of especial interest to me are Jehovah’s Witnesses who were legally ‘Jewish’. From what I can tell, these people were rare. For example, Kim Wünschmann’s [*Before Auschwitz*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=7CC327FE531A5B1D38BA35D9FAB20256) says on page 208 that of Buchenwald’s 1,963 Jewish prisoners on April 19, 1939, only one (yes, *one*) was a Bible Student, but I found a few more examples. As implied in this next quotation, Jehovah’s Witnesses who were legally ‘Jewish’ had to wear [a yellow upwards triangle with a purple (or violet) downwards triangle superimposed on it.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Purple_triangle_jew.svg/892px-Purple_triangle_jew.svg.png) From Michel Reynaud and Sylvie Graffard’s [*The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Nazis: Persecution, Deportation, and Murder, 1933–1945*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=E3BF708921E826DD98D303892D738CB8), pages 211–2: >Rachel Sacksini, a Dutch Witness who was of Jewish extraction, was arrested in the Netherlands. She was first interned in the Dutch concentration camp at Westerbork (where many Jewish prisoners were being herded) and was scheduled to leave in a cattle car, but at the last moment she was put in a convoy to Bergen‐Belsen. Later evacuated to Beendorff and Malmö, Sweden, she returned to the Netherlands after the war, where she converted the wife and three daughters of a [Fascist] serving a prison term. > >The authors questioned the Dutch Bethel to learn which type of triangle Jewish Jehovah’s Witnesses were assigned at the camps. After obtaining information from Jehovah’s Witnesses of Jewish origin who were imprisoned for years, he responded, “A Jewish woman I questioned said, ‘I was locked up with the Jews and wore a yellow triangle during my stay in the concentration camp.’ The Germans called her *die jüdische Bibelforscherin* (the Jewish Bible Student). A Jewish Witness said he wore the violet triangle during his internment at Sachsenhausen camp. On the other hand, he noted that the [Axis was] unaware of his Jewish origins, as he was arrested for being a Jehovah’s Witness.” The scarcity of legally ‘Jewish’ Jehovah’s Witnesses had a good deal to do with the general infrequency of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Fascist concentration camps: of the approximately twenty thousand German Jehovah’s Witnesses who stayed active during the Fascist era, it may be surprising that only three thousand or so ever suffered imprisonment in the camps, over **one thousand** of whom perished therein… *sigh*… and that makes the rest of this entry even harder to write. You see, there was another reason that many Jews (and supposed ‘Jews’) would have hesitated to become Jehovah’s Witnesses. A great deal of upper‐class Christians continued promoting anti‐Judaism throughout the 1930s, and [the JW authorities were unexceptional.](https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/hitler-nazi.php) Quoting Prof. M. James Penton’s [*Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics under Persecution*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=D9138F2687E5A56ED3D95B0FC5E15118), pages 87–8: >Jehovah’s Witnesses — who are perhaps the most active proselytizers in Christendom — have always shown particular kindness to anyone who is a prospective convert. **Only after someone has rejected their message do they become cold to that person. So it is quite possible that there were many instances of kindness to Jews by Jehovah’s Witnesses both outside and inside the concentration camps based on the assumption that they might become converts. Chu herself points out that the main concern of the Witnesses seems to have been to proselytize**: >>The Witnesses were known for sharing their Bible message with other prisoners. ‘Though gentile prisoners were forbidden to talk to us,’ said a Jewish woman in Lichtenburg, ‘these women never observed this regulation. They prayed for us as if we belonged to their family, and begged us to hold out.’ BBC reporter Bjorn Hallstrom said that in Buchenwald, Witnesses were punished for eight days because they ‘had not avoided the forbidden paths between the Jewish blocks:’ Frustrated by the Witnesses’ persistent resistance, the SS regularly announced in Sachsenhausen that prisoners caught talking to Witnesses would receive 25 strokes. Survivor Max Liebster recalls that the SS there isolated the Witnesses and declared their barracks off limits to other prisoners. In Melk, Polish survivor Joseph Kempler says he saw ‘a camp within a camp’ and was told that the SS kept the ‘purple triangles’ in it, dangerous prisoners because they taught the Bible.⁵⁹ > >Perhaps the best analysis of this subject was done in the early 1940s by Hebert Stroup,⁶⁰ who carried out his study mainly by associating with ordinary Jehovah’s Witnesses and participating in their activities. He carefully dissected the Witnesses’ thinking on many subjects, including their attitude toward Jews. > >He said bluntly: ‘**The Jews also are hated by the Witnesses.** Although this feeling is common among them, it appears strange at first glance, inasmuch as the movement appeals to many Jews. But all who have joined “the Lord's organization” are precious in the sight of Jehovah and are fellow members of a special human group; thus, converted Jews are made welcome, often with the idea that they are “the chosen people.” The official literature terms the Jews outside the movement “blind” because they do not accept “the truth.”’ > >Regarding those Jews who did not become Witness converts, however, Stroup remarked: **‘Prevalent among the Witnesses is the notion that all Jews are rich. Even refugees who have escaped to this country from persecution abroad are believed to have brought “scads of money” with them. One Witness told me fantastic tales about the apparent luxury within some of the homes of Jewish refugees that he had visited. The affluence of the refugees, according to this Witness, is hidden from most people because they do not have the opportunity which he and his fellow workers have of visiting all kinds of homes.’** > >Because the Witnesses’ anti‐Semitism was based more on religious prejudice than racism, Stroup noted: ‘In spite of **this generally unfavorable attitude [toward Jews], which is, indeed, sometimes shared by Jewish Witnesses themselves**, the movement is able to satisfy its Jewish members, who find in its theology the natural, developed expression of essential Judaism.[’]⁶¹ (Emphasis added in all cases.) Hopefully it goes without saying that none of this justifies the Fascist abuse of thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses, some of whom no doubt still helped Jews (even if only for the wrong reasons), and credit where it is due, J.F. Rutherford backpedalled on his sympathies for the Third Reich in 1934, but his recommendation that German JWs continue working out in the open anyway did nothing to protect them from further oppression. This has to have been the toughest article for me to write, because I’ll be honest, there are many Jehovah’s Witness practices and beliefs that I despise, and mentioning some of those in the 1930s is almost inevitably going to provoke somebody into accusing me of justifying the many torments and over one thousand deaths that JWs suffered under Fascism, but I did not want to put off the subject forever and I felt like I’d only be misleading you if I gave you an incomplete picture of the JW community’s relationship with Fascism, which was anything but straightforward. --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (August 28). **1934**: Stockholm signed the [Agreement concerning Payments in connection with Goods Transactions between the Two Countries, and Protocol](http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/LNTSer/1934/238.html), [Agreement concerning the Execution of the German Transfer Moratorium in relation to Swedish Creditors](http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/LNTSer/1934/239.html), and [Agreement concerning the Payment of Interest on Swedish Bonds of the Dawes, Young and Kreuger Loans](http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/LNTSer/1934/240.html) at Berlin. [**1936**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/28/1936): Spanish Nationalist aircraft bombed Madrid for the first time. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/28/1943): Reich authorities demanded that Danish authorities crack down on acts of resistance; they imposed martial law imposed on Denmark the next day. Meanwhile, Boris III of Bulgaria dropped dead. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/28/1944): The Axis lost Marseille and Toulon to the Allies. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 weeks ago • 100%

On this day 82 years ago, the Axis and its collaborators commenced exterminating the Jews and Roma of Sarny

Quoting Yehuda Bauer’s ‘Sarny and Rokitno in the Holocaust: A Case Study of Two Townships in Wolyn (Volhynia)’ in [*The Shtetl: New Evaluations*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=EE8B0061CC77C92251604AAB0E9AB4A4), pages 267–9: >The murder of the two communities took place in August 1942, on the twenty‐sixth for Rokitno and on the twenty‐seventh for Sarny. Characteristically, the order of the *Generalkommissar* of the Bezirk, in Lutzk, to liquidate all Jewish ghettoes within six weeks was issued *after* the murder in the two townships; it came on August 31, in the wake of a meeting of [Axis] officials in Lutzk on August 29–31. To act first, and confirm the decision to do so later, was a common [Axis] practice. > >In Sarny, [Axis] and [collaborationist] policemen were supplemented by some 200 members of the *Todt* organization, which was charged with building and repairing, but was also used for murder actions against Jews. Prior to the mass murder, rumor spread that [an Axis] police station in the area, in Ostarky, was annihilated by partisans, who were reported to have killed 20 Germans.⁶⁸ If this indeed took place, it may have constituted an additional incentive for the [Axis] to annihilate the area’s ghettos. > >In Sarny, a tragic discussion took place on the eve of the mass murder. A resistance group was created apparently at the very last minute. Consisting of former members of Zionist groups, together with refugee strongmen (*shlegers*), many probably with a criminal background, it included the head of the Jewish Police, Yonah Margalit, a former teacher in the Hebrew school. Together they organized themselves into three groups that were poised to burn the ghetto and enable people to escape to the nearby forests.⁶⁹ They had the blessing of Gershonok. > >However, when the [Axis] concentrated forces in Sarny and the Jews became suspicious, the *Judenrat’s* secretary, Neumann, argued that he had received assurances from the acting *Gebietskommissar* of Sarny, Krökel, that no harm would befall the Jews. The potential rebels decided that they could not take upon themselves the responsibility of acting, and thereby sentencing the ghetto to death, if there was a reasonable chance that nothing would happen; the rebellion was aborted.⁷⁰ > >On and after August 24, the [Axis] concentrated all the Jews from the Sarny district in Sarny; some 14,000 Jews and 100 Roma […] were also brought in. Some three days of thirst and starvation followed, as the Jews were guarded by [anticommunists] armed to the teeth.⁷¹ There was a wooden structure in the enclosure, and the [Roma] and some Jews were kept inside. > >On August 27, **the Jews of Sarny were driven out of their homes and forced to join the others in the enclosure. The first to be taken out to be killed, on that day, were the recently arrived Rokitno Jews. Soon, automatic fire was heard from the nearby forest.** Now there was no further doubt about the [Axis’s] intentions, and two members of the Sarny underground, Yosef Gendelman and the smith Tendler, who had managed to smuggle in his wire‐cutter, rushed to the fence and cut it. > >At the same time [that] the [Roma] set fire to their barracks—the actions may have been coordinated—and in the ensuing commotion, while some 500–1,000 Jews escaped, **about 2,500 were killed on the spot by automatic fire. The rest were then taken out to the forest and killed there. After the massacre, [Axis] and [collaborationist] police and members of the *Todt* organization searched Sarny and murdered Jews trying to hide. “Almost all the Christian population, Ukrainian as well as Polish, participated in killing the Jews.”⁷²** > >In Rokitno, there had been two roll calls of all the Jews (on March 12 and March 17, 1942) before the final liquidation, possibly in order to lull any suspicions on the part of the victims.⁷³ When the third roll call was ordered, for August 26, members of the *Judenrat* calmed the people by saying that after the assembly on a cattle market, near the railway, they would be sent home again.⁷⁴ > >The [Axis] prepared railway carriages to transport the Rokitno Jews to Sarny and kill them there. All came—contrary to the situation in Sarny, we don’t hear of people hiding. The roll call yielded 1,638 (some survivors say 1,631) present.⁷⁵ The [collaborationist] police, under the command of *Oberwachmeister* of the *Gendarmerie Sokolowski*, possibly a Polish *Volksdeutscher* from Silesia (or Berlin), guarded the assembled Jews, but they left one side of the square open, whether intentionally or not is not clear.⁷⁶ > >[Collaborative] militiamen from one of the battalions mentioned above then marched into positions near the square. According to a number of testimonies, there was also a Latvian unit.⁷⁷ A Jewish woman, Mindl Eisenberg (known as “Mindl Cossack” because of her physique and courage), saw this and screamed “Jews, they have come to kill us.”⁷⁸ > >**The militia and the [Axis] gendarmes began shooting, and then a disorganized, panicked, mass attempt to escape ensued, in which hundreds managed to run to the adjoining forest—the estimates vary between 400 and 900. Many women with small children were among them, but of these, only a few managed to escape the pursuers.⁷⁹ Families were torn apart, and groups of Jews began wandering through the dense forests.** In the shtetl, the rest, variously estimated at between 800 and 1,200, were herded into the cattle wagons. > >**Between 100 and 300 were killed on the spot.** There are no German or Polish accounts, and the survivors could not reconcile their different impressions of the numbers involved. (Emphasis added. All told, [the Axis and its collaborators exterminated approximately fourteen thousand of Sarny’s Jews.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/121464)) I feel like I am only stating the obvious here, but I want to remind readers that my intention behind highlighting Christian anti‐Judaism is not to make contemporary Christians feel ashamed or guilty by association (especially if they already respect and cherish Judaism). Rather, historically many gentiles referred to their culturally specific variants of Christianity to justify their exploitation of Jews, theft of their belongings, or elimination of economic competition, thereby helping gentiles either stay in business or keep their jobs. An oppressor professing Christianity should be noted but never overstated. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 27). **1874**: Carl Bosch, founder of I.G. Farben, was born. [**1923**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/27/1923): Somebody stopped a delegation inspecting the disputed border between Greece and Albania by massacring General Enrico Tellini and four of his companions, thereby triggering the Fascist assault on Corfu later that this month. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/27/1939): Berlin responded to Rome’s message from the previous day, noting that it accepted the Kingdom of Italy’s inability to participate in direct fighting should a German–Polish war broke out, but it would very much appreciate political (by means of threatening to entering the war, thus tying down French troops on the French–Italian border) and economic (by offering Italian workers for German industry and agriculture) support. Berlin also responded to the message from French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier from the previous day, noting that the German Reich had no intention of fighting France, so if France was to attack it due to the German–Poland situation, it would be a war initiated by France, and the Reich could not be faulted for such a conflict; additionally, the Chancellery stressed that the Reich had no territorial demands on the German–French border. Meanwhile, Hermann Göring’s friend Birger Dahlerus, a Swedish national, attempted a parallel route to negotiate for peace. Berlin announced that the annual NSDAP rally in Nürnberg and the upcoming Tannenberg memorial event were both canceled. As well, the government announced the start of food, footwear, textile, and coal rations. On the other hand, Luftwaffe Captain Erich Warsitz successfully took the prototype He 178 jet aircraft out of the Rostock‐Marienehe Airfield into the Baltic Sea coast’s air, thus making it the first aircraft to fly using a turbojet engine. In the East, however, the Imperialists’ 23rd Infantry Division attempted and failed to break out of the encircled village of Nomonhan, Mongolia Area, China. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/27/1942): Admiral Scheer approached Port Dikson in northern Russia at 0105 hours, intending to attack the command center of the Soviet Northern Sea Route with a 180‐man landing party, not knowing the port was well defended with fifty NKVD troops, three hundred militia, two antitank guns, one antiaircraft gun, one 750mm howitzer, and large caliber coastal guns. As Admiral Scheer approached to bombard, Soviet flagship *Dezhnev* became disabled at 0145 hours (seven died), followed by Soviet ship *Revolutionary*. To Admiral Scheer’s surprise, 152mm coastal guns opened fire; although the Soviet coastal gun crews could not see through the thick smoke from *Dezhnev* and *Revolutionary* and could only fire in Admiral Scheer’s general direction, it was enough to force Admiral Scheer to break off the attack. At the end of the engagement, Port Dikson saw its radio station, oil depot, coal storage, and power station damaged or destroyed. Apart from that, the Axis registered Polish Catholic priest Roman Sitko, formerly a rector of the theological seminary in Tarnów, Poland, into the Auschwitz concentration camp as prisoner number 61908, and the Axis turned a French tractor factory (previously owned by a Jew named Robert Rothschild) over to the Friedrich Krupp A.G. firm. On the other hand, the 16th Panzer Division, with too little fuel to move further, dug in north of Stalingrad to wait for the Reich’s 6th Army to catch up to reinforce its position. Sixteen miles south of Stalingrad, the 4th Panzer Division made slow progress due to heavy resistance near Lake Sarpa. Axis bombers attacked Leeds, England in the late hours of the day, lasting until the next day. Axis submarine *U‐156* sank British ship *Clan MacWhirter* north of Madeira island at 0100 hours; twelve died but seventy‐four did not. Axis submarine *U‐511* attacked Allied convoy TAW‐15 with two torpedoes east of Haiti at 0629 hours, sinking British tanker *San Fabian* (26 dead, 33 survivors), Netherlandish tanker Rotterdam (10 dead, 37 survivors), and damaging U.S. tanker *Esso Aruba*. At 1348 hours, *U‐517* sank U.S. passenger ship *Chatham* off Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Canada; fourteen died but 548 did not. Lastly, eight Axis dive bombers escorted by twelve Zero fighters attacked the Gili Gili airfield at Milne Bay, but the Axis caused minimal damage there and it lost one aircraft to Australian Kittyhawk fighters. At 2000 hours, the Axis attacked Australian troops at Gama River on the Milne Bay coast, killing forty‐three and driving the Australians back. In land, along the Kokoda Track, the Axis made advances at Isurava and Australian 2/16th Battalion was dispatched from reserve to reinforce the defenses. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/27/1943): Axis forces evacuated New Georgia Island in the Pacific Theater of Operations while the Luftwaffe in Crete razed the village of Vorizia to the ground. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/27/1944): Georg von Boeselager, nobleman and Wehrmacht officer, died in battle. Oops! :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 3 weeks ago • 100%

How Romanian fascism oppressed Armenians https://sci-hub.ru/10.1080/14623528.2017.1291001

>Overall, Antonescu’s Armenian policy was both inconsistent and ambiguous. While the primary focus was upon Jews, **the Antonescu régime persecuted Armenians, especially the Nansen Armenians [read: stateless Armenian refugees], primarily through restrictions on employment, real estate ownership, and conduct of business**—although to a lesser extent than the Jews. > >As an ultranationalist government, which aimed to construct a homogenous nation‐state (and to find a scapegoat for the threats posed by the revisionist neighbours, and for the problems of comparatively low participation of ethnic Romanians in the economy), **Romanian official accusations against Armenians resembled some used by Turkish nationalists a few decades earlier, namely that they were disloyal to the state in favour of that dangerous eastern neighbour, the Soviet Union/Russia, that Armenian entrepreneurs took over vital sectors of the local economy, and sabotaged Romanianization by profiting from it and collaborating with the Jews.²⁰** > >The apparent contradictory nature of the anti‐Armenian accusations—that they belonged to the exploiting bourgeoisie and harboured pro‐Soviet sympathies—was nothing new among [the Axis’s] Romanian leaders (as well as among […] other [Axis] leaders), who did not seemed to be bothered by the contradictions of their antisemitic/racist worldviews. > >Romanianization also resembled the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)’s and, later on, the Kemalists’ policy of creating a Muslim/Turkish bourgeoisie through the confiscation of property from Armenians and Greeks and redistribution of assets to deserving Muslim beneficiaries. Thus, CUP and Kemalist leaders tried to address the under‐representation of Muslim/Turkish and over‐representation of Christian minorities among urbanites and middle‐class entrepreneurs.²¹ > >However, as one of the smallest Christian minorities of [the Kingdom of] Romania—Armenians were mostly affiliated with the Gregorian and Catholic Churches—they were viewed as less threatening than the Jews and were not targeted for deportation and mass murder.²² Nonetheless, **they and particularly the Nansen Armenians were swept up in the hostility towards non‐Romanians.** > >[…] > >**Antonescu’s main obsession and fear was the threat posed by the Soviet Union and communism, and any suspicion about a group’s sympathy for the USSR triggered his hostility towards that community.** > >This happened with certain of the Nansen Armenians. **The intention of some Nansen Armenians to emigrate to Soviet Armenia—in 1940 and 1941, repatriation applications were submitted to the MAI and the Soviet Legation in Bucharest by 400 individuals (possibly 1,000 families by other sources) and a committee was formed to pursue this issue as a result of a rumour that the government would persecute them like the Jews³⁵—was interpreted by the Antonescu régime as ultimate proof of disloyalty to [the Kingdom of] Romania and of allegiance to the Soviet Union.** > >Romanian officials failed to understand the desire of some Armenians to escape their uncertain refugee status and live in their own republic, even if this meant relocation to a state with worrying domestic policies. The Soviet Union was nevertheless a state that promised equality to all its citizens and seemed to be the main international protector of Armenians.³⁶ > >The Antonescu régime ignored the fact that only a tiny minority of Armenian refugees wanted to emigrate to the Soviet Union and that native Armenians and most Nansen Armenians opposed the idea of such ‘repatriation’, publicly criticizing the organization advocating emigration.³⁷ **For Antonescu it was important that, just like some Jews, especially from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in 1940, certain Armenians wanted to live under the rule of its most threatening enemy, the Soviet Union.** > >While in the case of the former, their intention to return to their natal land and families took place during the war—accompanied by mass violence fostered by antisemitism, border changes, and rumours of war and domestic treason³⁸—the Armenians did not emigrate to the Soviet Union during the Antonescu régime. > >In fact, as the Soviet troops approached Romania[n] borders (in late 1943 and early 1944), some wealthy Nansen Armenians planned to emigrate from [the Kingdom of] Romania to Egypt (via Turkey) in order to escape a future Soviet occupation and a [people’s republic].³⁹ > >Nevertheless, **the mere discussion of potential emigration to the USSR and the submission of repatriation applications kept Nansen Armenians on Antonescu’s list of suspect groups under close surveillance.⁴⁰** > >[…] > >While the régime spared Armenians from ‘too harsh and inhumane measures’ unlike […] towards the Jews, the hostility of Romanian officials towards Armenian businessmen continued. > >During the 4 September 1943 government meeting, which debated various topics including the sugar industry, Ion Antonescu blamed minority tradesmen, including Armenians, for exploiting Romanian customers by selling them cheap sweets and thus making huge profits. According to Ion Antonescu, minority entrepreneurs speculated in the sugar produced from the sugar beet delivered by Romanian peasants, who received little benefit for their hard work. > >**Marshal I. Antonescu:** The peasant cultivated sugar beet and bore all the risks and the sugar manufacturers and speculators are the ones who gain [the money]. Who are these speculators? […] They are not [ethnic] Romanians. In this way, the Romanian nation’s snag had been sucked away by certain foreigners who seized several economic fields, where they encountered little competition. There are a lot of Armenians, [*insert slur here*], Greeks and stinky [*insert slur here*] who opened sweet stores where they transform the sugar into dirty and tasteless candies […] That is why I am asking you to put this field under surveillance. All Armenians, all Greeks, the so‐called Macedonians […] are making commerce with sweets.⁵¹ > >As a highly urbanized and economically dynamic population, with a significant diaspora and international trade connections, Armenians were indeed over‐represented in the economy during that era. According to SSRCI’s data, Armenian entrepreneurs owned almost one per cent of [the Kingdom of] Romania’s industrial and commercial capital, while Armenians represented around 0.2 per cent of the country’s population.⁵² Armenians had an even larger share in specific economic fields, such as the textile industry (4.56 per cent) and the food industry (2.44 per cent).⁵³ > >[…] > >**Lacking ‘proper’ ethnicity, citizenship, or international protection, Nansen Armenians struggled not only with business and real estate interdictions, but also with labour restrictions.⁷¹ For instance, Cividian, a Nansen Armenian, managed to work legally only when the post‐Antonescu régime cancelled the xenophobic laws protecting ‘national labour’ even though he earned his college degree from the University of Iași in 1937.** > >‘I graduated from Iași [University and] in 1937 […] I was unemployed and I could not work. [Because of] the laws for the protection of national labour that functioned at that time […] We had Nansen passports […] not [real] passports, but Nansen identity cards. Therefore, we were foreigners.’⁷² :::spoiler (Emphasis added in most cases. Click here for more.) >German profiteers also saw Nansen Armenians as a major economic threat to the Romanianization (or Aryanization, as they preferred to think of it) of the economy. > >During the 13 February 1942 government meeting, Mihai Antonescu, the deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, agreed with German complaints about the (alleged) privileges enjoyed by their Armenian competitors and urged his subordinates to register them and keep them under surveillance. His position was backed by Titus Dragoș, the head of the main Romanianization agency, the Under‐Secretariat for Romanianization, Colonization, and Inventory (SSRCI). > >**M. Antonescu:** Yes, there are some [businessmen] with Nansen passports. Here, the Germans are right. That means that besides the problem of [insufficient ethnic] Romanian presence in some companies, we face the issue of foreign elements, besides Jews and Germans, who infiltrated these companies […] I asked the heads of MEN [Ministry of National Economy] and SSRCI to study this problem […] > >**Titus Dragoș:** I advised the Marshal about the bearers of Nansen passports and he recommended their expulsion. For the state, this is one of the main issues which should be immediately implemented, because [they] are the only profiteers from our [economic] life. > >**M. Antonescu:** Please, talk to Mr Iurașcu, whom I assigned to study the problem of all Nansen passport holders […] This [Nansen Passports] Commissariat should have not been allowed in Romania […] The MAE in collaboration with Siguranța [the Secret Police] should present us a statistic of all Nansen passport holders in our country. Together with MEN, Mr Dragoș, you should indicate in the table the activity of every such Nansen passport holder.⁴⁷ > >Antonescu and Dragoș exaggerated the rôle of the Armenian businessmen. The Armenian refugees were not the only or the main profiteers of [the Kingdom of] Romania’s economy in the context of the antisemitic Romanianization process. In reality, as recent studies on Romanianization by Jean Ancel, myself, and Vladimir Solonari have shown, even though some Armenians did profit from Romanianization, ethnic Romanians and Germans were the main beneficiaries of the dispossession of the Jews.⁴⁸ (Emphasis original.) ::: \ Somebody might think that the discrimination against Armenian businessmen was evidence of anticapitalism, but that would be a shallow conclusion. The goal of harassing Armenian capitalists was not to reduce capital, the law of value, or generalised commodity production, but to reduce competition, something that capitalists loathe, and thereby secure Romanian businesses. --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (August 26): **1900**: Hellmuth Walter, an engineer for the Axis, was born. **1901**: Hans Kammler, Axis SS officer and engineer, burdened the planet with his existence. **1936**: Santander fell to the Spanish fascists, dissolving the Republican Interprovincial Council. Meanwhile, Vienna signed in Berlin the [Agreement regarding Passport Facilities to be granted in Minor Frontier Traffic, with Annex](http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/LNTSer/1936/178.html). [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/26/1940): With clear weather, the Fascists launched three major raids. At 1200 hours, 150 aircraft flew over the Strait of Dover from Calais in France; № 616 Squadron’s Spitfire fighters of RAF Kenley and № 264 Squadron’s Defiant fighters were attacked and devastated by escorting Bf 109 fighters; the Fascist bombers split up after reaching Britain and bombed RAF Biggin Hill, RAF Kenley, and various towns in Kent. At 1500 hours, 170 Fascist aircraft flew up the Thames estuary, but most were turned back by British fighters; six Do 17 bombers made it through the fighter defense and bombed RAF Debden, causing heavy damage. At 1600 hours, 55 Fascist bombers of KG55 escorted by about 100 fighters attacked Portsmouth, but the group was repulsed by five № 11 Group and three № 10 Group squadrons. In total, the Luftwaffe lost 22 bombers and 24 fighters. While the machine losses were heavy for both sides, the RAF only lost six airmen, while most of the downed Fascist crews suffered either death or capture. Aside from that, Fascist torpedo bombers attacked two British ships east of Kinnaird Head, Fascist submarine *Dandolo* sank British steamer *Ilvington Court* in the Atlantic Ocean, slaughtering eight, and Berlin ordered the transfer of ten infantry divisions together with two armored divisions from France to Poland. (To avoid Soviet suspicion, it made plans to make this transfer appear as if these fresher troops were coming in to relieve older men who were going to be released back into the work force.) Lastly, Fascist armed merchant cruiser *Pinguin*’s seaplane attacked Norwegian tanker *Filefjell* off Madagascar at 1748 hours. *Pinguin* soon arrived to capture the ship which was carrying 10,000 tons of gasoline and 500 tons of oil. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/26/1941): Axis submarine *U‐571* seriously damaged Soviet submarine supply ship *Marija Uljanova* with two torpedoes north of Teriberskij lighthouse in northern Russia in the Barents Sea at 0459 hours, then the Armeegruppe Nord surrounded and destroyed Soviet forces in Velikije Luki as Adolf Schicklgruber and Benito Mussolini inspected Axis troops at Uman, Ukraine. Additionally, the Hungarian Army rounded up eighteen thousand Jews at Kamenets‐Podolsk, Ukraine. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/26/1942): At Chortkiv, the collaborationist police and the Schutzpolizei deported two thousand Jews to Bełżec extermination camp, and the Axis massacred five hundred of the sick and children on the spot. This continued until the next day. Likewise, the Axis arrested 7,000 Jews arrested in Vichy, and Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops that had landed at Waga Waga late on the previous day began making contact with positions held by troops of Australian 25th Infantry Militia Battalion and 61st Infantry Militia Battalion. Behind them, Allied aircraft discovered the Waga Waga landing site and destroyed landing barges and other equipment. Axis warships entered Milne Bay for support. Inland, 2,500 Axis troops marched onto the Kokoda Track from Buna, along with a mountain gun and several mortars. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/26/1943): Albert Speer called a meeting with Hans Kammler, Walter Dornberger, Gerhard Degenkolb, and Karl Otto Saur to negotiate the move of V‐2 (A‐4) rocket main production from Peenemünde Army Research Center on the Baltic Sea coast to an underground factory in the Harz mountains deeper inland. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/26/1944): Berlin ordered its troops to withdraw from Greece, and an Axis air raid on Paris, France destroyed several residential neighborhoods. Apart from that, Axis forces led by Lieutenant General Reiner Stahel attacked Bucharest. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/26/1945): Vice Admiral Sadayoshi Yamada was named the commanding officer of the Japanese Navy 3rd Air Fleet, with Captain Chihaya Takahashi as his chief of staff. Meanwhile, *I‐400* and *I‐401* both dumped all of their ammunition and Seiran aircraft overboard according to orders. [**1974**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/26/1974): Junio Valerio Borghese, Axis commander, in Cádiz, Spain. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 4 weeks ago • 100%

Heinrich Himmler wanted to surrender to the Western Allies and join them against the Soviets https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=fd176zUEAtE

>[T]hen on the 23rd of April 1945, Himmler met with Count Bernadotte in Lübeck and he claimed he was the provisional leader of Germany. In this meeting, Himmler was acting as Hitler’s successor and he said that Hitler would be dead within days and he hoped that the British and Americans would fight against the Soviets and the remaining parts of the Wehrmacht. Himmler then asked Bernadotte to tell Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, that Germany wanted to surrender with the Western Allies, but did not want to surrender to the Soviet Union. > >Himmler even put this into writing, but days later the BBC broadcast Himmler’s attempted peace negotiations which had leaked, and Hitler was furious. Hitler had been betrayed by the very man who[m] he referred to as a loyal Heinrich, only second to Goebbels in loyalty and devotion to Hitler. The dictator ordered Himmler’s arrest and he flew into a mad rage, ordering the execution of Himmler’s representative inside the Führerbunker: his own brother‐in‐law Hermann Fegelein. > >Himmler would, though, go on a power grab as a new government was forming in Flensburg and he believed [that] he was entitled to a position, but the new president, Dönitz, rejected Himmler’s proposals. He then went on the run, and this resulted in the Reichsführer‐SS being captured inside of British custody, where he consumed cyanide and then died. He wasn’t necessarily a man who was trusted to have been a successor by the Führer, but Himmler believed [that] he was entitled to power and a significant and powerful position. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 25). **1916**: Saburō Sakai, Axis naval aviator, was born. [**1933**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/25/1933): Berlin agreed to the [Final act of the Conference of Wheat Exporting and Importing Countries](http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/LNTSer/1933/143.html), and the Jewish Agency together with the German Ministry of the Economy signed the Haʻavara Agreement. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/25/1940): Berlin (barely) survived its first bombing by the British Royal Air Force. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/25/1942): Second day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons; an Axis naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal was turned back by an Allied air attack. On the other hand, Axis marines assaulted Allied airfields Milne Bay, New Guinea (thereby initiating the Battle of Milne Bay). [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/25/1944): The Axis lost Paris to the Allies. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/25/1945): The August Revolution ended as Axis Emperor Bảo Đại abdicated, ending the Nguyễn dynasty. (Coincidentally, ten days after the Empire of Japan announced its surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed U.S. intelligence officer John Birch, regarded by some antisocialists as the Cold War’s first victim.) **1967**: A former member of the American Nazi Party murdered its leader, George Lincoln Rockwell. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 4 weeks ago • 100%

To the capitalist media’s delight, another professional hack obscures Zionism’s history of Fascist collaboration

azvsas.blogspot.com

>Freedland’s suggestion that Kasztner’s appeal was upheld by the Supreme Court (by which time he was dead, [assassinated by agents of Shin Bet in 1957](https://electronicintifada.net/node/33831)), because >>*they accepted that Kasztner had in good faith believed that he was engaged in an effort to save the many, rather than the few* > >is the precise opposite of what happened. The Supreme Court found no such thing. Haim Cohen, [Zionism’s] attorney‐general, conducted the appeal. He argued that: >>If in Kasztner’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few. He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millions […] that was his duty… It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine […] Are we to be called traitors? > >Judge Cheshin summed up the viewpoint of the majority of the Supreme Court when he ruled that: >>A person sees that an entire community is doomed, is he allowed to make efforts to save the minority, although some of the efforts consist in hiding the truth from the majority or must he reveal the truth to all. > >The decision of [Zionism’s] Supreme Court was primarily political not legal. Cheshin voiced the fears of [the] Zionist Establishment that: >>if we rule that Kasztner collaborated with the enemy because he failed to inform those who boarded the trains in [Kasztner's hometown] Kluj that they were heading for extermination, then it is necessary to bring to court today […] many other leaders and half‐leaders who also kept silent in times of crisis, who didn’t inform others about what they knew. > >Being a modest man, Freedland begins the book with "Praise for The Escape Artist" and there are 39 examples which demonstrate not so much the brilliance of his book as the ignorance of his admirers. > >Adjectives such as "*riveting*," "*thrilling*" and "*fascinating*" abound. To Jamie Susskind Freedland’s book is "*not just one of the best books I’ve read about the Holocaust, it is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.*" > >To Zionist historian Simon Schama, the book is "*immersive, shattering and ultimately redemptive.*" To Tom Holland *The Escape Artist* ranks alongside *Anne Frank’s Diary* and Primo Levy. > >All I can say to these "experts" is that they should read Vrba’s book *I Cannot Forgive*. There is nothing of importance in *The Escape Artist* that isn’t in Vrba’s book. It is Vrba’s book, not Freedland’s cheap imitation thriller that ranks alongside *Anne Frank’s Diary* and *Is This a Man*. > >According to the *Financial Times*, "*Vrba died almost forgotten.*" Melissa Fay Green told how "*I didn’t know Vrba’s name previously.*" For C.J. Carey it was a "*little‐known story.*" > >The real question is *why* Vrba was unknown. The Holocaust has produced thousands of books and articles. Why then was it that the names of the first Jewish escapees from Auschwitz (leaving aside [Siegfried Lederer](https://rudolfvrba.com/?p=1108) who was taken out by an SS man) were almost entirely missing from the history of the Holocaust and Auschwitz? > >The simple answer is that a conscious decision was taken by the Zionist Holocaust historians, led by Yehuda Bauer and Yisrael Gutman, to erase all mention of Vrba and Wetzler. Freedland justifies this and Zionism’s distortion of history because of the need to preserve Zionism’s monopoly when it comes to Holocaust history. > >[…] > >Freedland’s book is part of the process of manipulating and changing the historical record to accord with a false narrative of Zionist heroism. Freedland pretends that Vrba was a supporter of Israel "*and rooted for it*" believing that its existence "*was a good thing for Jews.*" > >The idea that Vrba was some kind of Zionist is absurd. Freedland provides no evidence for his assertion. On the contrary when he first met Ruth Linn, a Haifa University professor of education, **[he told her that he had no interest](https://archive.is/gn0N0) in “*your state of the Judenrats and Kastners.*”** (Emphasis added.) While I am unfamiliar with Jonathan Freedland’s other writings, it is probably an overreaction to accuse him of being a neofascist. I cannot, however, allow another overrated historiaster to whitewash Zionism’s profascist history again. That is what makes him relevant to capitalism in decay. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 24). **1903**: Karl Hanke, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, was sadly born. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1937): The Basque Army surrendered to the Italian *Corpo Truppe Volontarie* following the Santoña Agreement. Meanwhile, the Sovereign Council of Asturias and León was proclaimed in Gijón. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1938): The Third Reich’s head of state asked his generals to evaluate the possibility of the conquest and occupation of Belgium and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the Imperialists captured Ruichang, Jiangxi, China, and an Imperial warplane shot down the Kweilin, a Chinese civilian airliner, killing fourteen people. It was the first recorded instance of somebody shooting down a civilian airliner. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1939): In Berlin, journalist William Shirer noted in his diary that ‘it looks like war’ based on his observations throughout the day, and coincidentally the warship *Deutschland* departed the Reich for a raiding mission against British shipping. M1 also ferried 230 naval infantry troops of the Marinestosstruppkompanie to the battleship *Schleswig‐Holstein* during the preparations for the invasion of Poland, and *U‐23* began her first war patrol. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1940): Before dawn, the London Blitz began as a misguided group of Fascist bombers from KG1 unloaded their bombs London’s Thames Haven oil terminal, which also damaged the church of St. Gile in East End; Göring demanded to know the crews that did this so to punish them. Clear weather allowed the Fascist attacks to restart in size, and Fascist bombers arrived in waves against RAF Hornchurch, RAF North Weald, and RAF Manston in southern England; the Fascists lost twenty‐two fighters and eighteen bombers, while the British lost twenty fighters. At 1600 hours, fifty Fascist aircraft bombed Portsmouth in southern England, slaughtering one hundred civilians and wounding a further three hundred while damaging HMS *Acheron* (killing two and wounding three) and HMS *Bulldog* (killing the commanding officer) in the harbor. Overnight, deliberate bombing of London began, hitting north, east, and west of the city. Hans‐Joachim Marseille scored his first kill, a British Hurricane Mk I fighter, over Kent, England. While he was congratulated by his commanding officer, he was also reprimanded because he achieved the kill after abandoning his wingman to pursue the target. Later that evening, in his diary, he noted great sadness when he thought about the enemy pilot’s mother never being able to see his son again. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1941): The Third Reich’s Chancellery ordered the cessation of its systematic T4 euthanasia programme of the mentally ill and the handicapped due to protests, but killings continue for the remainder of the war. As well, Vichy passed ‘antiterrorist’ laws, punishable with death sentences, to deal with the resistance movement, and Oberleutnant Hans Philipp became the 33rd member recipient of the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross. On the other hand, the Axis suffered heavy losses during the Soviet counterattack near Odessa, Ukraine. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1942): The Axis aircraft carrier Ryūjō sunk during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, with the loss of seven officers and 113 crewmen (but the Yankee carrier USS *Enterprise* was still heavily damaged). [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1944): The Allies began their assault on Axis‐occupied Paris. **1949**: The treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization went into effect. [**1979**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/24/1979): Hanna Reitsch, Axis aviator and test pilot, expired. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 4 weeks ago • 100%

On this day 82 years ago, the Axis invaded Stalingrad

archive.org

It is ironic that the antisocialists designated this day ‘European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism’, because August 23rd in the years 1941–1945 demonstrates evidence that does not fit nicely with their repetitive attempts to equate socialism in one country with Fascism. [The anticommunist invasion of Stalingrad](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Battle_of_Stalingrad) is another good example that they prefer to ignore (because otherwise they’ll slip into exonerating the Axis): >At noon on the twenty‐third of August, Panzers of the Sixth Army rolled towards Stalingrad. Above them roared the might of Airfleet Four, saluting the soldiers with their sirens. They were on route to Stalingrad to unleash the heaviest bombing campaign yet seen on the Eastern Front. When the air raid sirens sounded, many people assumed [that] it was a test. Only when the sky became dark with planes and antiaircraft batteries open fire did people rush to the shelters. > >Bombs rained down on the city. Approximately 80% of buildings were destroyed in the first day of bombing. Most of Stalingrad’s suburbs were built of wood. Inside the city itself, there were oil storage facilities and timberyards. The city was parched by the August sun. [Axis] incendiary bombs caused the whole city to flare up like gunpowder. Rivers of burning oil and petrol flowed towards the Volga. First the surface of the water and then the ships caught fire. > >[Luftflotte] 4, commanded by General [Wolfram Freiherr] von Richthofen, flew fifteen hundred missions on the twenty‐third of August. Its aircraft dropped a thousand tonnes of bombs and lost only three [vehicles]. On that single day, an estimated forty thousand people died in Stalingrad. Most of the survivors fled the city, but some chose to stay and share the city’s fate. > >At about four P.M., [Colonel General Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst] Paulus’s tanks reached the Volga. Approaching Stalingrad from the north, all [that] the [Axis soldiers] could see through their binoculars was fire and smoke. It seemed [that] nothing could prevent the [Axis] from entering the burning city, and yet [its] attempt to take Stalingrad in one swift assault was bloodily repulsed. Many historians mark the Battle of Stalingrad as the beginning of the end for the Axis. [I respectfully disagree](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4898553), but I cannot dispute that the Axis only dug its hole deeper throughout its failed attempt to capture the city. One of the quibbles that I have with this otherwise worthwhile documentary—an issue that I have with commentators on WWII in general, to be fair—is its tendency to refer to the Axis forces mostly as ‘the Germans, the Germans, the Germans’. I never liked this tendency, not only because it implies that Germans who abhor what their countrymen did somehow had something to do with this, but also because it distracts us from the other Axis nationalities (e.g. Austrians) that contributed. A reminder from Dmitry Degtev’s *Battle of Stalingrad: The Beginning of the End for Hitler in the East*, [pg. 53](https://books.google.com/books?id=HIQKEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA53): >On the morning of 24 August, in the battle for the Izbushensky farm (near the village of Ust‐Khoperskaya), the Savoia Cavalry Regiment (3rd Rgt ‘Savoia Cavalleria’) from the 3rd Mobile Division ‘Amadeo Duke D’Acosta’ defeated the 812th Rifle Regiment of the 304th Rifle Division. This battle went down in history as ‘the last horse sabre attack at the gallop’. > >The 812th Regiment was defeated, 150 men were killed, and the remaining 900 surrendered. However, due to the disorganisation of the Italian [Fascist]s, 300 men later simply fled, and only 600 were captured as a result. The trophies of the ‘macaronis’ were four regimental guns, 10 mortars and 40 machine guns and light machine guns. They themselves lost 40 killed, 79 wounded and 108 horses. In fairness, the documentary does mention the other Axis powers several times, but repeatedly emphasizing somebody’s nationality still leaves a foul taste in my mouth. Terms such as ‘Fascists’ (if you want to kick it old school like me), ‘Axis’ (if the context is either September 27, 1940 or later), ‘German(ic) Fascists’ (to avoid any possible confusion), ‘Nazis’ (if you want to sound generic and don’t mind reusing a misnomer), or ‘(German) anticommunists’ (just to annoy contemporary anticommunists) would all work better than the overly broad and misleading ‘Germans’, but now I’m just rambling. Anyway, the Battle of Stalingrad, aside from showing us more of the Axis’s atrocities, gives us an important lesson that the Zionists have chosen to ignore: >[Vasily] Chuikov’s task was to hold the city and its industrial centres, but the city was consuming his men at a terrifying rate. Those who survived for any length of time learned new tactics for this ruined urban landscape. Ironically, it was the [Axis] by bombing the city to rubble that had done most to undermine [its] own tactics. Tanks, the [Axis’s] shock weapon, quickly got stuck in the mountains of broken bricks, while from around every corner, they were pelted with Molotov cocktails. > >[Axis] bomb‐aimers were finding it more and more difficult to spot targets in the city. From the air, it was almost impossible to distinguish between [friend] and [foe], nor were the Heinkels very accurate, scattering their bombs over a path of several hundred metres. > >To further negate [Axis] air superiority, Chuikov ordered his [soldiers] to advance as close as possible to the enemy lines. The distance between Red Army and [Axis] positions was reduced to as little as ten metres. This made it impossible for Heinkels to bomb the enemy without also hitting their own troops. This next lesson is less important, but, well… just read it yourselves: >The […] 48th Panzer Corps tried to launch a counterattack. They met the attacking Soviet forces head‐on near the village of Ust‐Medveditsky. An enormous tank battle raged for more than a day. At its end, the […] Panzer Corps lay crushed. Ones of its divisions had been hindered by an unlikely foe. While the division had been in reserve with its vehicles standing idle, field mice had got inside the vehicles and gnawed through the electrical wiring. This humble ally of the Red Army had put dozens of tanks out of action. We all know what that means. ![](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/add13099-4baa-4cdf-b077-8103f5d0be17.png) (Forgive me, I couldn’t resist.) --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (August 23). [**1923**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1923): Two Fascists in Argenta murdered an antifascist priest, Giovanni Minzoni, fracturing his skull and beating him to death with clubs (probably on Italo Balbo’s orders). [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1939): [Berlin and Moscow agreed to a nonaggression treaty.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1449043) Apart from that, Rome sent a message to Berlin noting that when the two empires negotiated the Pact of Steel, article 3 obliged one to join any war in which the other was engaged, yet the two had the understanding that Fascist Italy would be unready for war until 1943. As well, Berlin appointed Albert Forster as the State President of the Free City of Danzig, and it also promoted Erwin Rommel to the rank of major general, posting him to the Staff of the Chancellor’s headquarters to be responsible again for the Chancellor’s safety. Lastly, *U‐27* departed Wilhelmshaven for her only war patrol. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1940): Rain and clouds prevented the Fascists from mounting large raids against Britain, giving British airmen a chance to rest and crews a chance to repair airfields. Single‐aircraft raids were, however, mounted against southern and central England, as were raids against shipping; two merchant ships sunk and one became damaged by He 115 torpedo bombers. Coincidentally, Fascist propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels launched a new campaign that stressed the British fighting spirit in an attempt to rally Germans behind the war effort. Overnight, Fascist bombers raided British cities. Aside from this, Fascist submarine *U‐37* torpedoed Norwegian ship *Keret* in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland at 0222 hours, killing thirteen but leaving seven alive. In the general area, at 1250 hours, *U‐37* sank British ship *Severn Leigh*, slaughtering one gunner and thirty‐two of the rest of the crew, but leaving ten survivors. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1941): The Third Reich’s head of state rejected Heinz Guderian’s advice to attack Moscow. Berlin moved troops to the south instead. At 2347 hours, Axis submarine *U‐143* (Oberleutnant zur See Harald Gelhaus) torpedoed the 1,409‐ton Norwegian merchant steamer *Inger* twice as it was heading towards Loch Ewe, Scotland, and *Comandante Cappellini* took orders to move to a new patrol area in the Atlantic Ocean at 0000 hours. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1942): In what amounted to little more than a publicity stunt, the 1.Gebirgsjäger Division soldiers hoisted the Reichskriegsfahne flag on Mount Elbrus, which was the highest point in the Caucasus Mountains. As well, Hans‐Joachim Marseille returned to his unit at Sanyet El Qutaifiya, Egypt, and Axis submarine *U‐506* sank British ship Hamla southwest of Freetown, West Africa at 2337 hours, slaughtering all forty aboard. Additionally, Axis and Allied aircraft engaged in combat over Darwin, Australia between 1200 and 1245 hours; the Axis lost seven bombers and eight Zero fighters to P‐40 Warhawk fighters of the U.S. 49th Fighter Group, and this became to be the last Axis attempt to raid Darwin. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1943): The Axis lost Kharkiv to the Red Army after the Battle of Kursk. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1944): The Axis lost Marseille to the Allies. Meanwhile, King Michael of Romania dismissed the Axis government of Marshal Antonescu, who was later arrested; Romania switched sides from the Axis to the Allies. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/23/1945): The Axis resistance in the Manchuria region of northeastern China was effectively over, and the Axis garrison at Paramushiro surrendered to the Soviets. On the other hand, He Yingqin ordered Axis generals in northern and eastern China to continue to maintain peace until Nationalist forces would arrive to relieve them. Meanwhile, Douglas MacArthur ordered the release of all Filipinos—most of whom were Axis collaborators—interned by the U.S. Army. He claimed that their fates would be tried by the Filipino government rather than the U.S. military. Lastly, the Axis news agency Do Trzei announced the death of Subhash Chandra Bose. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 4 weeks ago • 100%

The Axis introduced history’s first jet fighters

yewtu.be

As odd as it may seem, I had been unaware of [these terrors](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Messerschmitt_Me_262) until I watched somebody play the WWII video game [*Secret Weapons Over Normandy*](https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=kb0ScEowMfo&list=PLUuDA5nw2anRSvEP8fVAM4vCi4bLqlfX5&index=22&t=879), where they appear as an unexpected enemy. I nearly cringed at the sight of the Axis powers having one glaring technologic superiority over us (we can grant them that), but it is apparent that even these monstrosities could not turn the tide of the war. What happened? A brief history, first. Jet fighters had been a theoretic possibility since at least the 1920s, and [the Fascists commenced experimenting with jet propulsion in the late 1930s. The experiments with jet fighters in particular became successful in the summer of 1942, and the Me 262 was officially ready for deployment in April 1944.](https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/collections/messerschmitt-me-262a-2a-schwalbe-swallow) [The Eastern Axis even constructed one prototype in 1945 largely based on it: the Nakajima *Kikka*.](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pIsjX3nXWas) So far so good, but [while the Third Reich had over one thousand two hundred of these jets in storage (making them WWII’s commonest jet by far), only several dozen of them were actually ready to fight at any given time](https://books.google.com/books?id=-nBmAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA214), and perhaps only four hundred in total ever saw any action. This was not all. Although it is hardly deniable that the Me 262 was a remarkable work of engineering, it had its weaknesses and limitations as well. Because the jets sucked up so much fuel, they could only stay in the air for approximately one hour, whereas an ordinary Allied warplane could stay in the air several times longer than that. [Like some of the Axis’s other innovations](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3473631), the Me 262 proved to be somewhat gimmicky. The jet’s strengths and weaknesses were almost like those of a cheetah. The cheetah is famous for being the world’s fastest animal, but what is less known about cheetahs is that they can only sprint so far before becoming exhausted. Gazelles, in contrast, are slower, but they can sustain their modest speed for a longer period of time (which is why cheetahs have yet to extinguish them). Berlin’s order to construct versions that could bomb, a function never intended for the Me 262, complicated its production, and another important problem was that the pilots found jets troublesome to fly, even after they received training for them. The pilots simply weren’t used to this new technology; transitioning from traditional warplanes to jet fighters proved awkward. Quoting Walter Schuck: >In an Me 109 plane, one could just switch off the engine and drift down slowly […] but in this plane it wasn’t possible at all. I was traveling at a speed of 500 mph and couldn’t reduce it. The plane just wouldn’t descend. I had to fly in circles until I reached an altitude where I could ask for permission to land. Once I finally landed, I was completely soaked in sweat… Dan Snow notes another problem: >The cockpit itself was cramped, basic, and clumsy. With the [Axis] essentially relying on a decentralised network of labour camps to create parts for the aircraft, the instrument panels inside would vary from jet to jet. Very sadly, [the Axis sacrificed dozens of thousands of neoslaves for many of these jets](https://archive.is/uJKDF), and they ended lives more directly by destroying hundreds of Allied vehicles. It was not only uncomfortable but very difficult for Allied pilots to face them head‐on since they had never dealt with rapid machines like these before. Even so, the Allies managed to take out around one hundred of them. How? The trick was to intercept them while they were either taking off, landing, or stationary. In fact, this was the standard method for dealing with them; successful dogfights against them were uncommon, but since the jets were incapable of making sharp turns, it was still possible to destroy them as they were in the middle of flight, too. ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Messerschmitt_Me_262_jet_fighters_at_Rechlin-Lärz_Airfield_in_1944.JPG) Pictured: An Me 262 on an Axis airfield. I should mention that [technically the Allies did deploy some jets of their own for combat.](https://wikiless.northboot.xyz/wiki/list_of_jet_aircraft_of_World_War_II) The problem was that the Gloster Meteor was slower, less heavily armed, rarer, and saw less action than the Messerschmitt Me 262. When the Allies officially deployed it in 1944, [its only purpose was to intercept Axis rockets targeting the United Kingdom, and even after London approved it for continental use, its purpose remained primarily defensive rather than offensive. It probably never got into any (conventional) dogfights with the Axis either](https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=g3myjh7bMPY), as the Western Allies feared the possibility of the Axis or the Eastern Allies recovering a copy. So the Gloster Meteor could not really compete with the Axis’s jets despite being the best candidate for the job. Finally, arguably the Me 262’s greatest weakness (like its extremely rare Eastern counterpart the [Nakajima *Kikka*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nakajima_Kikka)) was the want of resources, including time. They officially appeared late in the war, only a few hundred ever saw any action, and the Allies’ successful seizures and destructions of Axis resources, most notably oil, made the jets too costly to manufacture and deploy in larger numbers. With all of these factors taken into account, the Me 262 was less terrifying than it could have been, and [few other Axis jets](https://wikiless.northboot.xyz/wiki/Category:World_War_II_jet_aircraft_of_Japan) [even made it past the conceptual stages.](https://wikiless.northboot.xyz/wiki/Category:World_War_II_jet_aircraft_of_Germany) ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Messerschmitt_ME_P-1111.JPG) Pictured: Miniature model of the Messerschmitt P.1111, a proposed Axis jet that never saw the light of day. Many remember the Me 262 for being history’s first successful jet fighter and for its long‐term influence on many later flightcraft, but we can derive another lesson from it: as our oppressors taught the Yugoslavs in the 1990s, and are teaching the Palestinians now, the Me 262 can serve as another reminder that technology isn’t everything. ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Ме262.jpg) Pictured: A ruined Me 262. Further reading: [*Me 262: Hitler’s jet plane*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/3f251850e4b9edf88af763fc3d4f2dd8) [*The race for Hitler’s X‐planes: Britain’s 1945 mission to capture secret Luftwaffe technology*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/b932c95b72d66bd8d8bb1c56ff6bc18c) [*Fighting Hitler’s jets: the extraordinary story of the American airmen who beat the Luftwaffe and defeated Nazi Germany*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/a61e7670efe99d28dd8bae26fa8fa2e5) […and much, much more.](https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Messerschmitt+Me+262) --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 22). **1895**: László Almásy, Axis aviator and explorer, was born. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1938): *Prinz Eugen* launched at the Germaniawerft yard in Kiel. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1939): Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Reich’s delegation departed Berlin aboard two Condor aircraft for Königsberg, East Prussia. With a nonaggression pact nearly secured with Moscow, Berlin ordered the reinvasion of Poland to commence four days later. The top military commanders received orders to be brutal and show no compassion in the upcoming conflict, but the Chancellor said that even though he was important for Germany, anybody could murder him at any time. Less importantly, Georg von Küchler became the commanding officer of 3rd Army and Westerwald began supporting cruiser *Deutschland* in the Arctic Sea. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1940): Adolf Galland became Geschwaderkommodore JG 26 ‘Schlageter’, and Fascist bombers raided British cities, including Aberdeen, Bristol, and Hull, but the Fascists lost several vehicles at sea and elsewhere. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1941): The Axis began the Siege of Leningrad. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1942): The 16th Panzer Division began to cross the Don River toward Stalingrad, and the Fascist bourgeoisie increased the work week for foreign workers in the Third Reich to fifty‐four hours. On the other hand, Axis torpedo boat *Generale Antonio Cantore* struck a mine five miles west of Tobruk and sank. Axis submarine *I‐30* departed Lorient, France with fifty T‐Enigma coding machines (which would enable communications between the IJN and the Kriegsmarine), blueprint of air‐defense radar, five G7a torpedoes, three G7e electric torpedoes, and other technologies on board. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1943): Axis troops in Kharkov, Ukraine began evacuating after sundown. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1944): Axis forces on Crete committed populicide against the inhabitants of Amari Valley, and Berlin ordered the destruction of Paris, starting tomorrow. As well, the Wehrmachtbericht mentioned Léon Degrelle, and the Luftwaffe’s 111/KG3 launched twenty‐one sorties during the early hours from their new base at Venlo in the south east of the Netherlands. All Heinkel bombers returned safely after launching their V‐1 flying bombs. One of these impacted on just half a mile down Oak Lane, where the railway bridge had just been repaired. Another clipped some elm trees near some cottages and span into on of them killing two adults and orphaning the two children who were dug out of the wreckage unhurt. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1945): Axis forces in the Manchuria region of northeastern China surrendered. In the two‐week campaign, eighty thousand Axis personnel suffered either death or injury and fifty‐four became prisoners, including one hundred forty‐three generals. Additionally, the Axis began to withdraw from larger towns in Malaya. Since British colonial administration had not yet returned, this resulted in Malay–Chinese ethnic violence escalating in some of these towns. Likewise, Axis troops at Mui Wo, Lantau Island, Hong Kong arrested and executed civilians Lam Tsah and Lam Kuan in retaliation of an attack on the Axis on August 19, 1945. Company commander Yasuo Kishi personally executed Lam Kuan. [**1946**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/22/1946): Döme Sztójay, Axis head of state, dropped dead. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 4 weeks ago • 100%

Why the Axis’s nuclear weapons programmes could not compete with the Allies’ https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=EJmQC-xR1Gc&t=31

The two major Axis powers in both the [East](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Walter-Grunden-2/publication/327076517_Nuclear_Weapons_Research_in_Japan_During_the_Second_World_War/links/5b76e6f6299bf1d5a70e76c8/Nuclear-Weapons-Research-in-Japan-During-the-Second-World-War.pdf) and the West had their own atomic weapons programmes and they were maybe more advanced in nuclear technology than we previously suspected; it is possible that Axis scientists even achieved a few nuclear detonations somewhere in the Greater German Reich, [though some analysts doubt this](https://doi.org/10.3390/jne4030040). That being said, it is clear that the Axis still made nowhere nearly enough progress to compete with the Allies, for reasons which are mostly identical in both the East and the West. The first problem was that [for at least one year](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4898553), an Axis victory seemed plausible. [This made the Axis’s atomic weapons projects seem exceedingly risky investments that would have taken away valuable resources from more immediate concerns. Consequently, they had much lower budgets than the Manhattan Project.](https://archive.is/0Ralt) The next most important reason was the want of materials, notably uranium (some of which Jewish neoslaves might have mined). [There was indeed a modest expansion in uranium mining during the Fascist era, and the Third Reich had enough uranium to make one bomb.](https://books.google.com/books?id=q2IhoDujFBsC&pg=PA9) Nevertheless, it is unlikely that they had enough in 1945 for a bomb ready for deployment in the battlefield instead of testing. Quoting John H. Gill in [*The Hitler Options: Alternate Decisions of World War II*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/eed373153d34345e002fa8ea102f7fa7), chapter 7: >Activity at the KAT virtually ceased and, at the end of the month, the Eighth Air Force inflicted another significant loss on the German program by devastating Diebner’s key uranium processing facility at Oranienburg. […] The June bombing raids had cut off the supply of processed uranium, disrupted the plutonium manufacturing process and killed or injured dozens of critical workers. A new DEGUSSA uranium refinery was under construction south of Berlin, but the Oranienburg plant was a near‐total loss and it would take months to repair the KAT. Due to Allied intervention, the Axis lost a good deal of nuclear materials, [at sea](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4623788) and elsewhere. See Thomas Gallagher’s [*Assault in Norway: Sabotaging The Nazi Nuclear Program*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/fbbb4f0e0edf195fd2564fa4c0a1da50) for more examples. Apart from Allied submarines disrupting exports from Malaya, the Eastern Axis’s nuclear programmes did not suffer such a loss of materials, but only because [the Eastern Axis had less uranium, and what little that it did have was of low quality. To make matters worse, Allied warfare directly impacted the Eastern Axis’s research, sending many of its institutes up in flames. The surviving scientists consoled theirselves by unintentionally underestimating the time when the Allies’ nuclear weapons would be officially ready for deployment.](https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=SJPxEqgN2ek) In the Third Reich’s case, the white supremacist laws caused many physicists and other researchers (e.g. Nikolaus Riehl) to flee to the future Allied powers. [Research on the military potential of atomic energy started off slow because the Fascists were suspicious of quantum mechanics as a ‘Jewish’ science.](https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4362/4/3/40#Part2EvaluationofthePeculiaritiesandConclusions) This xenophobia was only one of the reasons why few scientists were involved in the projects. Lastly, there was a want of confidence in the scientists theirselves concerning the probability of nuclear weapons; morale was low. The Eastern Axis’s most senior physicist, Hantarō Nagaoka, was the most critical on the very project on which he worked, and he published an article titled ‘A Critique of the Application of Nuclear Fission to Weapons’. For the Western Axis, [the situation was little better](https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4362/4/3/40#Part1ObservationofthepeculiaritiesoftheGermanUraniumProject): >Another problem was the mistrust among supporters and opponents of the [Third Reich]. Some members of the Uranium Club—for example, Schumann, Diebner, and Erich Bagge—were members or followers of the [NSDAP]; others—among them, Hahn, Harteck, Heisenberg, Gerlach, and Karl Wirtz—were not. Everyone who chose not to openly support the régime had to find a way to deal with its factual power. > >Heisenberg decided against open opposition, because that would deprive him of any possibility to act and mitigate the consequences of the […] régime ([16], pp. 208–210). After a year‐long investigation ordered by SS leader Himmler with several interrogations at the SS Headquarters in Berlin in 1937, he had no illusions about the criminal character of the régime [27]. And he had to be careful not to cast doubt again on his alleged loyalty to the party line. > >As a result of the different individual attitudes, there was, as Wirtz said, no atmosphere of confidence among the participating groups and no trust between the scientists and the political institutions ([28], p. 57). Some Axis scientists might have even sabotaged the project deliberately, as the Farm Hall tapes suggest. The scarcity of time, money, and other resources sealed the projects’ fates. Nevertheless, the work continued after 1945: [the Zionists probably acquired their nuclear technology from surviving Axis personnel.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/505209) See also: [*Hitler's nuclear pile — WWII uranium cube reactor & the Alsos mission: Atomkeller Haigerloch*](https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=xVG5lWn4hd8) [*Secret Nazi nuclear facility found during excavation*](https://archive.is/BPvQQ); [*Secret Nazi nuclear weapons testing bunker unearthed in Austria*](https://boingboing.net/2014/12/29/secret-nazi-nuclear-weapons-te.html) [*The Uranium Club: Unearthing the Lost Relics of the Nazi Nuclear Program*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/722395dc5ae42d920533d14831a6638d) [*Uranprojekt: The History and Legacy of Nazi Germany’s Nuclear Weapons Program during World War II*](https://annas-archive.org/md5/bd08209700307f40096c1ed33527b161) --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 21). **1934**: Benito Mussolini met with Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg in Florence. Meanwhile, an international Jewish conference in Geneva declared that the boycotting of the Third Reich would be redoubled until the rights of German Jews were fully restored. **1936**: Fascist Italy accepted a French proposal to pursue a policy of nonintervention in the Spanish Civil War. Britain announced a similar policy to the Third Reich’s, warning that any attempt to interfere with British shipping in Spanish waters would be met with stern measures. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1937): The Spanish Nationalists captured Villacarriedo. Meanwhile, patrolling Imperial E8N floatplanes intercepted six Chinese Gamma 2E light bombers over the suburbs of Shanghai. The Imperialists succeeded in forcing the Chinese to abandon the planned attack on the Kunda Texile Factory, yet failed to shoot down any flightcraft (although the Imperialists claimed two victories anyway). Lt. Yue Yiqin of the 22nd Pursuit Squadron of the Chinese 4th Pursuit Group, flying a Hawk III biplane fighter, shot down the Imperial floatplane flown by Petty Officer First Class Shigeru Yano, who survived the downing. Yano attempted to ram a Chinese aircraft as he went down; he failed to make contact as none of the Chinese fighters reported being rammed, yet Yano believed that he did. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1938): The Third Reich’s head of state visited the sailing ship *Horst Wessel*, and the Imperial 10th Division captured Luoshan, Hubei Province and Xinzi, Jiangxi Province in China. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1940): Johann Schalk received the Ehrenpokal der Luftwaffe, while the ‘tree of liberty’, planted in Saverne after Alsace was restored to France at the end of World War I, was chopped down by members of the Hitler Youth. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1941): As the Axis captured the Ukrainian port city of Kherson and the Bila Tserkva massacre took place in Ukraine, Berlin ordered Army Group North to encircle Leningrad, believing that the loss of the symbolic capital of the Russian Revolution would deal a crushing blow to Soviet morale. Coincidentally, the Axis officially opened the Drancy internment camp in France and also commissioned the submarines *U‐376* and *U‐584*. But less happily for the Fascist bourgeoisie, the communist activist Pierre Georges murdered Axis naval cadet Alfons Moser at the Barbès–Rochechouart metro station in Paris by shooting him in the back. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1942): The Guadalcanal Campaign: American forces defeat an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1943): The Axis lost both Kiska and Wewak. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1944): Canadian and Polish units captured the strategically important town of Falaise, Calvados, France, from the Axis. (Coincidentally, Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, began.) [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/21/1945): The first major Imperial Japanese surrender ceremony in China took place at the Zhijiang Airport in Hunan Province. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 4 weeks ago • 100%

The Fascist bourgeoisie’s war on Polish Catholicism and the long-term consequences thereof http://charnysh.net/documents/Charnysh_Pique_Church.pdf

Even though some Fascist politicians were self‐identified Catholics, colonizing Poland took precedence over any Christian solidarity, so Polish churches had to vanish: >The nature of repression differed between the annexed territories, intended as a Lebensraum for Germans, and the General Government, which served as a reservoir of Polish laborers. In the former, all traces of Polish identity would have to disappear. This was accomplished through the arrests and executions of Catholic priests, the closure of churches, and restrictions on Catholic practices. Moreover, schools that served Catholic and Jewish populations were closed. > >The Catholic Church was the main target because it was considered a bastion of Polish identity. As early as July 1939, the Army High Command declared the Catholic clergy as *“primarily responsible for nationalistic rabble‐rousing”* (Huener 2021, 53). The image of the “agitator‐priest” (*Hetzkaplan*) as an enemy of Germandom drew on a legacy of Prussian animosity toward Catholicism during the partitions of Poland (Huener 2021). > >The Warthegau, which had the largest Polish population within the annexed zones, experienced the brunt of these policies (Epstein 2010, 2). Hitler wished the Gau *“to become flourishing German land in ten years”* (Epstein 2010, 5), and he found a willing executioner in Greiser, an “anti‐Polish Nazi zealot” from the formerly Prussian province of Posen. > >Greiser succeeded in decimating the Polish clergy in the Warthegau: of the 2,100 secular and religious clergy, 133 (6%) were killed in the Gau territory, 1,523 (73%) were arrested, and 1,092 (52%) were sent to concentration camps, where two thirds died (Huener 2021, 208). > >As a result, entire districts had no priests to serve parishioners during the war (Huener 2021, 167). Charitable and educational institutions previously maintained by the Catholic Church were abolished. Some 97% of all church buildings and shrines were closed, desecrated, or destroyed (Huener 2021, 2). [Fascist] authorities also restricted the times of worship, prohibited public displays of faith, and tried to prevent individuals from travelling outside of their parish to attend services elsewhere. > >Greiser closed Polish schools, although this policy was applied less consistently than repression against the Church. Instead of going to school, Poles aged 14 and above were forced to work. Poles were strictly segregated from Germans and faced restricted hours for using public baths and entering shops and markets. Public spaces and cafes were designated “for Germans only.”³ > >Greiser also began deportations into the General Government in order to create space for German settlers. However, these slowed as [the Fascists] realized that they needed Polish laborers and farmers. From mid‐1940 onward, thousands of Poles were put to work in the Warthegau or in the Altreich. > >On the other hand, while the General Government also experienced large‐scale violence and roundups for forced labor, de‐Polonization was limited. There was “an unresolved conflict in [Axis] minds” over whether this region should become a pure German colony (Lukas 2012, 32). For the time being, [the Axis] administration sought to control rather than eradicate Polish culture. As Gąsiorowski (2010, 72) states, *“despite the difficult food and material situation and the growing terror in the General Government, [one] was still allowed to be a Pole.”* > >Allowing religion was viewed as important for preventing unrest. It is estimated that 95% of the clergy in the General Government remained in the same parish during the war (Lukas 2012, 15), a marked contrast to the Warthegau. Religious life continued uninterrupted [in the General Government]; there were no mass closings of churches or restrictions on religious services [there], although training new priests was prohibited (Kłoczowski, Müllerowa and Skarbek 1986, 354–355).⁴ > >[…] > >The arrest and execution of clergy, along with the closure of churches, especially on the scale witnessed in the Warthegau, significantly diminishes the supply of religious services. We know that vacancies created by [Fascist] arrests and executions typically remained unfilled until the war’s end.⁵ > >While the "orphaned" parishes were occasionally visited by the surviving priests from elsewhere, who secretly baptized children and officiated marriages, and some religious rites were perfomed by lay Catholics, an average repressed community experienced a disruption in religious practices (Huener 2021, 243). > >For example, the deportation of Father Ignacy Bronszewski from his parish of Białotarsk (Włocławek diocese) to the General Government in March 1941 resulted in the interruption of worship until February 1945. As a result, most parishioners stopped attending church altogether (Huener 2021, 234). Even in parishes where the priests avoided persecution, the availability and quality of religious services were reduced. > >As noted above, the [Fascist] government restricted days of the week and hours of the day when the churches could operate. Eventually, most churches were closed, vandalized, or destroyed. In addition, overwhelmed with the demand from outside their parish, some priests asked their parishioners to attend services less frequently and to keep their confessions brief (Huener 2021, 244). > >Supply shifts can have important consequences on future religious behavior (Finke and Iannaccone 1993). In our context, due to habit formation, those who were unable to attend religious services during the war may not have returned to their old customs. Intergenerational religious preference transmission and peer effects (Patacchini and Zenou 2016) can lead to changes in the religious practices of future generations. Hence, this channel predicts a drop in religious observance, which can persist for decades. > >[…] > >Figure 7 shows a clear discontinuity in average mass attendance across four survey years (1991, 1995, 2001, and 2015). The results in Table A.6 show an effect of −6.9 percentage points, or 0.45 standard deviations, on average attendance. The estimate is largely driven by the first two years of our sample (see Figure A.1). In particular, we estimate an effect of −11.3 percentage points for the first year for which systematic data exist, which represents more than 0.5 standard deviations. > >The estimates for all survey years are negative, albeit they gradually diminish in magnitude and significance. Hence, the persecution of clergy appears to have weakened the norm of church attendance, with effects lasting into the early years of the post‐transition period. […] As shown in Table 2, municipalities with high rates of priest victimization had lower church attendance [after 1989]. > >This relationship holds for the average across our sample period and for 1991 and 1995 in particular, the years for which we observe more sizable treatment effects in the geographic RD framework. The result is consistent with the religious supply channel detailed in Section 3. > >We should note that in 44% of municipalities, all priests were removed, i.e. there is limited variation in the proportion of victimized priests, our main explanatory variable. This proxy for reduced supply of religious services also neglects the interruption of supply following the destruction or closure of church buildings, which was almost universal in the Warthegau. > >Furthermore, even though mass attendance is a significant predictor of PiS [Law and Justice] and LPR [League of Polish Families] vote shares, we find higher support for these parties in municipalities with higher rates of priest victimization (Table 2). The estimate is significant at a 10% level for the 2005 election, but not for other years. We interpret this pattern as suggestive evidence for the martyrdom channel. :::spoiler This research also inadvertently complicates equations between socialism in one country and Fascism. >Once the party strengthened its grip on power, however, the Church holdings were confiscated and Catholic education was restricted. Yet even during the Stalinist period, religious practices were tolerated, even among party members (Grzymala‐Busse 2015, 155). Instead of restricting church attendance, the Communist government sought to harness religiosity to its advantage. > >In 1949–56, it enlisted priests sympathetic to the Communist cause to disseminate communist ideology from the pulpit. Survivors of Gestapo arrests and concentration camps were particularly desirable recruits, as the authorities believed they would be more supportive of communist policies. At the height of the infiltration campaign, approximately 10% of all priests in Poland were the so‐called “patriot” priests (*księża patrioci*) (Nalepa and Pop‐Eleches 2022). ::: --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 20). [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/20/1940): Hermann Göring sent peace proposals to Britain via Netherlandish and Turkish foreign ministries! Nevertheless, the British ignored them. Aside from that, the Eighth Route Army launched the Hundred Regiments Offensive, a successful campaign to disrupt Axis war infrastructure and logistics in occupied northern China. (Coincidentally, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’.) [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/20/1942): István Horthy de Nagybánya, Axis Deputy Regent, died in a flight accident. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/20/1943): The Axis submarine *U‐197* was sunk in the Indian Ocean by a PBY Catalina of № 265 Squadron RAF; on the same day, the Axis submarine *U‐670* sank in the Bay of Danzig after a collision with the target ship *Bulkoburg*. Meanwhile, the Empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Thailand signed a peace treaty, in which four provinces of Axis‐occupied British Malaya (Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trengganu) were to be made part of Thailand. Thai administration would begin on October 18. Finally, Soviet Major General P. V. Bogdanov, who had collaborated with the enemy after being captured by the Wehrmacht, was recaptured and turned over to the Soviet counterintelligence service, SMERSH. Moscow would execute Bogdanov, along with five other former Red Army generals, on April 19, 1950. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/20/1944): One hundred sixty‐eight captured Allied airmen, including Phil Lamason, accused by the Gestapo of being ‘terror fliers’, arrived at Buchenwald concentration camp. Meanwhile, the Battle of Romania began with a major Soviet Union offensive. **1985**: Wilhelm Meendsen‐Bohlken, Axis fleet commander, expired. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 month ago • 100%

The Fascist bourgeoisie treated Polish girls like livestock https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/philosophica/article/view/8098/9639

([Mirror.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352081697_Experiences_of_Polish_Forced_Laborers_from_Lodz_Employed_for_Telefunken_in_Ulm_in_Years_1944-1945_with_Consideration_of_Medical_Care/fulltext/63b1cf22a03100368a45e995/Experiences-of-Polish-Forced-Laborers)) >Polish capitulation in September 1939 brought for people in Łódź significant changes. On 9 November 1939, the city was annexed into the new Greater German Reich. […] Businesses and buildings of Polish and Jewish owners were expropriated with the aim of providing them to companies under [Fascist] management.²¹ The city was meant to become an industrial base for the war economy. > >**One of the first administrative decisions of the [Fascist] occupation administration was the introduction of labor conscription for all Polish nationals, initially from ages 16 to 60, then from age 14 and lastly from age 10. Several important [Fascist] companies — among these Krupp, BMW, Askania, and Telefunken — took advantage of this opportunity and located their production plants in Łódź.²²** > >[…] > >In 1941 Telefunken relocated part of its production lines to Łódź. The city was chosen for several reasons: the distance from areas exposed to aerial bombardment and short lines of product delivery to military units at the eastern front. However, **one of the most important reasons was the availability of an appropriate workforce.²⁴** In Łódź, the company intended to produce vacuum tubes used in military communication. > >For this kind of production, precision and sleight of hand were of great importance; therefore, **mostly young workers, especially girls were preferred.** Already in 1942, Telefunken employed more than 2,000 workers in its two production plants in Łódź. Whereas the management and engineer positions in the plants were occupied by Germans, the foremen and office positions were staffed by ethnic Germans (“Volksdeutsche”) from Łódź. > >However, **the majority of the production workers were girls of ages 12 to 16. They were recruited for work partly under coercion, but partly, due to the labor conscription, to “volunteer” to work for Telefunken.** This allowed them to remain at home and be exempted from forced relocation for work in [the Third Reich]. > >[…] > >The first transports of the workers from Łódź arrived in late summer 1944. It was planned that the new Telefunken plant will be located in the fortress Wilhelmsburg, which was supposed to provide protection from aerial attacks. Because at the moment of arrival of first transports with girls from Łódź the industrial park of the factory had not yet been completed, the girls were delegated for work for the local farmers. > >**One of the female workers recalls the moments, when the farmers chose “suitable” personnel: “Because the factory was not finished yet, we had to work for the local farmers. […] At one day, all Polish girls were forced to the city square. Interested farmers taxed them very carefully. Some even assessed their teeth! Every [farmer] tried to choose the strongest women. Nobody asked about agreement. They took us like a livestock to their farms.”²⁹** With the completion of production facilities in November 1944, the girls re‐commenced work for Telefunken. > >Living and work conditions > >**The living conditions in Ulm were characterized by unsuitable accommodation in the camps, scarcity of food, harassment, and punishment. From the point of view of the company management, the full productivity of the plant was in the foreground. “Human material,” as the management reports and documents repeatedly state, could be “used for consumption”.³⁰ As the heads of Telefunken were under the greatest production pressure, they ensured only a minimum of living conditions that guaranteed survival.** > >Telefunken‐laborers in Ulm were accommodated in two main locations.³¹ First was the fortress of Wilhelmsburg, directly at the production site. In the southern part of the fortress were sleeping quarters for 600 to 800 workers as well administration offices, kitchen, canteen, and storage facilities. Production areas were underground in the basement. > >The northern part of the fortress still housed barracks for the [Wehrmacht], which posed an additional risk for the forced laborers of becoming an object of unintentional bombardment. Another 600 girls from Łódź were located in the “Kepler‐Mittelschule”, a school building located in the northern part of the city. > >**Both quarters were unsuitable for accommodation of a larger number of persons. From the beginning of the war, the city administration in Ulm grappled with the problem of providing living places for the increasing number of forced laborers. The sudden transfer of more than a thousand additional persons in the final phase of the war only aggravated these difficulties. Therefore, both the Wilhelmsburg and the Kepler‐School had only a provisional character and lacked basic sanitary facilities. They were dark, cold, and leaky. Lack of water was especially severe.** > >**This situation is vivid in the recollection of former forced laborers: “Rooms were cold. There was no electricity. It was dark, even during the day, because the windows had no glass, just paper. There was no water. Toilets were closed. The lack of water was very difficult. For the first time we understood what real thirst means. […] We couldn’t even wash our hands. The administration didn’t care that there were no toilets. We had to go to the attic.”³²** > >**Due to the lack of living spaces, the girls had to live in cramped small rooms.** For sleeping, only military bunk beds were provided. The rooms were scarcely equipped — a few double beds, a table, several stools, and closets. There were no stoves or other heating. **Beds were equipped with sacks filled with sawdust.** To cover themselves during sleep, each girl received two blankets. > >The living conditions considerably deteriorated in the winter. On 17 December 1944, Ulm was the target of the severest aerial attack during the war. A number of city buildings were destroyed, among others the Kepler‐School. > >Although no girls from Łódź lost their lives in the resulting fire, they had to be relocated to the Wilhelmsburg. It meant that **the quarters had to be even more densely populated and girls had to share beds: “The beds were the same as the beds in the concentration camps. Bunk beds. We had to sleep in a bed in pairs. Beddings and blankets were always dirty.”³³** > >It also led to the further deterioration of sanitation in the camp: “**The worst were hygiene conditions. We couldn’t wash properly. It just wasn’t possible in a room where there were a lot of people and only a small bowl of water.** And so many women.”³⁴ :::spoiler (Emphasis added. Click here for more.) >In order to discipline the girls and motivate them for work, a system of daily terror was introduced. The camp’s superintendent, Captain Thalhofer, was particularly brutal in his treatment. He punished the girls indiscriminately, often abused them, and beat them or let his subordinates hit the victims.³⁵ Other guards followed this example. > >Especially contacts between male and female workers provided opportunities for physical abuse: “Three girls visited us in our [male] barracks. They did not even sit down, when suddenly German female supervisor came in and started shouting. She was accompanied by two armed guards. She had a pistol in her hand. She started to curse in German. She used the wors[t] words to describe the girls. […] And with the hand with the pistol, she started to beat the girls in the head and face. She was spiting on them, she pulled their hair, she was kicking the girls. After few minutes, she sent the girls with guards back to their barracks. And she told us that next time, we will be also beaten by the guards.”³⁶ > >Severe living conditions were aggravated by a lack of appropriate food. The laborers were provided only minimal rations for survival and effective work. The daily diet consisted of products with insufficient nutritional value for physical work and retaining health. > >Memories of the surviving girls still retain the always accompanying hunger: “And this disgusting food. […] In the morning 2 slices of bread, at noon cabbage soup. Cabbage turnip and potatoes — we mostly ate that. […] In the evening we got black cereal coffee and boiled potatoes with some margarine. That’s all.”³⁷ Recollections of other forced laborers support this testimony: “The diet: beets, jam from red beets, soup from snails, porridge with worms. So just hunger and no hope of improvement.”³⁸ > >The workers received no milk or other dairy products, also no fresh fruits or vegetables. Meat was a seldom addition to the meals. Mostly, girls supplemented their diet with products that they stole from the storages and surrounding fields or received from the guards or Ulm citizens. These were prepared in secret and shared among co‐workers living in the same room. > >[…] > >The municipal medical officer, Dr. Eduard Schefold (1880–1958), who was responsible for the provision of medical care in the camp, lacked empathy for the fate of the girls and did not try to improve the conditions in which they lived.⁴³ Among his greatest concerns were unwelcomed pregnancies among the girls. He denied Polish girls the right to reproduction and complained that, due to lack of space, abortions among Polish workers could not be conducted, which led to a situation women unrestrainedly having babies.⁴⁴ > >If it was no longer possible to prevent childbirth, pregnant women were sent to so‐called “maternity hospitals.” In Ulm, such an institution was also used as an abortion facility. In the “maternity hospital,” Polish toddlers were deliberately exposed to such catastrophic living conditions that the majority of them died within the first few months of their lives.⁴⁵ > >Sick girls were rarely admitted to hospitals. In most cases, they had to stay in the barracks for the duration of their illness. There were no isolated barracks for the sick, and even the simplest medication or wound dressing was difficult to find. This led in some cases to fatal consequences: “My roommate, who had a cold, later developed tuberculosis. She was with us from December to April […] but no doctor was there. When the Americans arrived, we took her to the hospital. Afterwards we wanted to visit her, but she has already died.”⁴⁶ > >[…] > >The investigation of the fate of Polish female forced laborers from Łódź working for Telefunken in Ulm shows a system that aimed at the total exploitation of the workers towards ever increasing efficiency and lowering costs of production. Such exploitation was symptomatic for the last years of the war, during which the life and health of the foreign workforce was systematically ignored. Atrocious living and working conditions contributed to deteriorating health, outbreak of epidemics, and deaths. ::: --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 19). **1923**: Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto, one of Benito Mussolini’s educators, perished. [**1934**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/19/1934): The German referendum that year approved Adolf Schicklgruber’s appointment as head of state with the title of Führer. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/19/1941): As Joseph Goebbels met with his Chancellor, the Axis captured Gomel and Kherson. Likewise, the Third Reich and the Kingdom of Romania signed the Tiraspol Agreement, rendering the region of Transnistria under control of the latter. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/19/1942): The Axis successfully repelled Operation Jubilee: the amphibious Allied assault on Dieppe, France. Additionally, the Axis exterminated scores of Mountain Jewish families who remained in Menzhinskoe by machine gun fire, and it liquidated a workers’ ghetto in Kovel. Axis police teams also conducted house‐to‐house searches in the Kaunas ghetto. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/19/1943): Axis defenses along the Mius River succumbed to a breach near Stalino (now Donetsk), Ukraine, and Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Oberstgeneral Hans Jeschonnek suicided. Less importantly, the Wehrmachtbericht daily radio report mentioned Paul von Kleist. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/19/1944): Paris, France rose against Axis occupation with the help of Allied troops. Axis troops in the Falaise pocket in France received orders to break out, and Field Marshal Günther von Kluge committed suicide by taking cyanide near Metz, France after being relieved of his command and recalled to Berlin. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/19/1945): Tōkyō told its troops that surrendering under the terms of a ceasefire would not be considered a loss of honour under the bushidō, which demanded fighting to the death. Thousands resultingly began laying down their arms as the Soviets landed on Maoka to deal with more Axis holdouts. (Coincidentally, the Kuomintang lost against the Communists in the Battle of Yongjiazhen as the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, took power in Hanoi, Vietnam.) On the other hand, Malayan nationalist leader and Axis collaborator Ibrahim Yaacob (who, despite his name, seems to have been a gentile) and his family escaped Malaya for Java. Hiroshi Nemoto also became the commanding officer of the Axis’s North China Area Army while still retaining his command over the Japanese Mongolian Garrison Army. At Mui Wo, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, Axis commander Lieutenant Chozaburo Matsumoto ordered several civilians nearby to be tied to stakes and beaten in retaliation for a Chinese assault. When company commander Lieutenant Yasuo Kishi returned to duty later that day, he ordered the arrest and beheading of village elders Tsang Sau and Lam Fook. Later in the evening, Matsumoto ordered further arrests. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 month ago • 100%

Documentary on the Stern Gang, Zionism’s pro-Axis faction

aje.io

([Mirror.](https://invidious.perennialte.ch/watch?v=Dxawt329m8U)) >He wanted to fight the British in order to gain independence. Stern, in his utter naïveté, believed [that] he could form an alliance with Hitler against the British. […] Haganah, and the mainstream Zionists, and even Irgun realized [that] you had to wait for the defeat of the [Axis] before you could then take on the British. It was a question of tactics; it wasn’t a question of principle. > >So the idea that you negotiate with the [European Fascists], of course, was acceptable. Nineteen thirty‐three, they negotiated [Haʻavara](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1879120), the transfer agreement, a trade agreement with the [Third Reich] [that broke the Jewish boycott of [it].](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3378380) So, again, there was no difference in principle, but tactically you could see that Stern was, again, impatient. He couldn’t wait, he couldn’t see that sometimes you can’t do everything at once. > >[…] > >Stern totally disregarded the anti‐Jewish side of Fascism. He was so focussed on trying to build an alliance against the British that he was only thinking about this maxim: ‘The enemy of my enemy’s my friend.’ So, in 1940, he tries to, first of all, to meet the Fascists from Italy. > >They made a kind of agreement, which [was] called the Jerusalem Agreement, made by the Stern Group, which said that he’s gonna be one side, and Ital[y] will be the other side. > >He agreed to recognise the Italian Fascists as the sovereign power in most of the region while the Italian Fascists would recognize Stern […] and the Lehi as the sole sovereign power in historic Palestine, but one of the most interesting parts of the agreement was that it required the Italian Fascists to use their military power to dissolve what they referred to as the Jewish diaspora, meaning that Stern wanted the Fascist military to forcibly remove Jews who were not in Palestine, and make them go to Palestine. > >The problem was that, unbeknownst to Stern, these messages had been intercepted by his rivals at the Irgun, and for a while he was actually communicating—unbeknownst to him—with the Irgun rather than with the Italian Fascists. Cheers to [Tony Greenstein](https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2024/08/in-1941-the-stern-gang-zionist-terror.html) for showing me this. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 18). **1890**: Walther Funk, Reich Minister of Economics, was unfortunately born. **1912**: Otto Ernst Remer, Axis general, burdened humanity with his existence. **1916**: Neagu Bunea Djuvara, Romanian fascist, arrived to worsen the world. [**1933**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1933): The Volksempfänger was first presented to the German public at a radio exhibition; the presiding Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, delivered an accompanying speech heralding the radio as the ‘eighth great power’. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1937): Imperial Japanese Army General Masakazu Kawabe entered Beiping, China and proclaimed himself the city’s military governor. [**1938**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1938): Colonel‐General Ludwig Beck’s fellow Fascists forced him to resign as Chief of the Army General Staff because of his consistent opposition to Berlin’s decision to attack Czechoslovakia. Apart from that, the Imperialists lost one bomber. [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1939): Bucharest placed an additional order to purchase six more He 112 fighters, and Berlin ordered the construction of Havelland. Additionally, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop pushed for his visit to Moscow, offering Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov favorable terms in terms of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. (Coincidentally, Soviet negotiations with the Western régimes stalled again as Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck continued to resist allowing Soviet entry into Polish territory even in the face of a Fascist invasion!) [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1940): The Hardest Day air battle, part of the Battle of Britain, took place. At that point, it was the largest aerial engagement in history with heavy losses sustained on both sides (especially for the Fascists). Elsewhen, perhaps after Rudolf Betzendahl became *Togo*’s commanding officer, *Alessandro Malaspina* sighted armed merchant cruiser HMS *Circassia* in the Atlantic Ocean at 1620 hours. At 1700 hours and at eight hundred metres, *Circassia* suddenly steered toward the submarine, and the Fascists dove deeper to avoid being rammed (it was unclear whether *Circassia* was intending to ram or if she was merely zigzagging). At the distance of a couple hundred metres, *Circassia* fired three rounds at the submarine’s periscope followed by three depth charges, causing some damage with instruments within the conning tower from the vibration. *Alessandro Malaspina* remained submerged for half an hour before extending her periscope again, by which time *Circassia* had already left the area. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1941): In southern Ukraine, the Axis established a bridgehead across the Dnieper River at Zaporizhia. Further southwest along the river, the Axis began an assault on Kherson city, which was situated on the western bank of the river. The port facilities of Odessa, Ukraine was struck by He 111 bombers of the Luftwaffe KG 27; the pilots reported overwhelming success in terms of Soviet shipping destroyed. Out at sea, two Axis torpedo boats, NMS *Viscolul* and NMS *Vijelia*, damaged a Soviet destroyer south of Odessa. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1942): Berlin issued the Commando Order: all Allied commandos encountered by the Reich’s forces in Eurafrica now had to die immediately, even if in uniform or if they attempted to surrender. As well, the Axis assaulted Novorossiysk and Tuapse on the Black Sea coast in southern Russia, and one hundred kilometers to the northeast, the 1st Panzer Army captured Krasnodar. The Axis submarine *U‐553* attacked Allied convoy TAW‐13 close to the coast of southeastern Cuba, then Axis submarine wolfpack Blücher, which consisted of *U‐214*, *U‐333*, *U‐406*, *U‐566*, *U‐590*, *U‐594*, and *U‐653*, attacked Allied convoy SL‐118 west of Portugal. Two Axis transports arrived at Buna and disembarked reinforcements, and six Axis destroyers delivered 916 troops to Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands; about four hundred were of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Japanese Infantry Regiment who landed at Taivu Point, while the other about five hundred were of the Yokosuka 5th Special Naval Landing Force who landed at Kokumbona; this was the first Axis reinforcement of Guadalcanal by warships. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1943): Otto Skorzeny conducted an aerial reconnaissance mission over La Maddalena, Italy, but his He 111 aircraft was shot down by Allied fighters. Although Skorzeny survived the crash, he suffered three broken ribs. Apart from that, General Hans Jeschinnek, Chief of the Luftwaffe’s staff since 1939, having already lost faith with Hermann Göring, committed suicide at the Luftwaffe Lager Robinson headquarters in Goldap, Ostpreußen (East Prussia) following his controversial order to the air defence units in Berlin to fire on Luftwaffe fighters which had landed there in error during the RAF’s raid on Peenemünde. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1944): The Greater German Reich’s Seventh Army retreated across Orne River in France, leaving 18,000 men behind to be captured. In southern France, Germans began evacuating from areas of Spanish border and Bay of Biscay. On the other hand, a V‐1 bomb blew up and destroyed the railway bridge over Oak Lane in Newington, Kent, England. This happened as an express train was approaching. The locomotive and the tender jumped the gap, but the first two carriages crashed onto the road. Seven passengers and a railway worker who had run to the bridge for shelter died. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/18/1945): Some of the Axis’s last remaining troops prepared theirselves as Soviet forces landed at Takeda Beach on Shumshu Island and launched the Battle of Shumshu; the Soviet Union’s invasion of the Axis’s Kuril Islands commenced. (Coincidentally, Sukarno took office as Indonesia’s first president, following the country's declaration of independence the previous day.) On the other hand, nearly four thousand Axis troops surrendered along the Hailar River in Liaobei Province, China, effectively ending organised resistance. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 month ago • 100%

The Third Reich’s ‘Aryanizations’ extended into the Kingdom of Sweden https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1864466/FULLTEXT01.pdf

>Jewish representatives that had been removed had to be appeased, so they do not turn to the public, with the payment of severance fees and the [Fascist] assurance to Swedish authorities that Aryanising their foreign representation is “perfectly within the right” of [Fascist] companies and that strict procedures will be followed. > >We can already observe during this period first instances of our first theoretical framework in action, such as in the case of Ludwig Klaar when the GES argues in favour of him despite his half‐Jewishness, citing his economic achievements for his German employer. Our second theoretical framework is also apparent in how his case was treated. > >The GES referred to him, being a foreign representative of a [Fascist] company abroad, as a *Mischling* instead of a Hellenic codename, reinforcing the notion that the two nomenclatures are effectively two sides of the same coin. The superficial differences and the artificiality of this system that could bear vast consequences become visible in how after 1940, if deals had to be signed quickly, a non‐Aryan representative could be used, but he had to categorised non‐Jewish after the fact. One’s stamp on a file made all the difference. > >Furthermore, we are presented with an interesting paradox connected to [Fascist] companies’ private investigations into racial matters and their prohibition from doing so. We can trace Bjerre’s argument that [Fascist] companies’ own investigations were no longer accepted from Summer 1940 back to the aide‐mémoire from the 9th of February 1939 where [Fascist] companies were first told to refrain from contacting Swedish companies directly about their racial composition. Despite this, they continued doing so well into the 1940s, leading to direct complaints from the Swedish embassy. > >We can see from Van Scherpenberg’s response, in line with [Fascist] pre‐war caution that such infractions were something they sought to avoid, yet turned to seemingly tolerate out of practical necessity by the early 1940s, certainly after the expansion of foreign trade Aryanisation’s scope. In Denmark for instance, Bjerre demonstrates several examples of Danish companies also still being interrogated on their racial composition after 1940.¹²⁶ > >[…] > >Swedish companies that were to be aryanised were often asked to fire for example Jewish employees, board members and get rid of Jewish share capital. This happened within the framework of discrimination between smaller and larger companies described previously, and in line with our first theoretical framework in that leniency towards economically significant exporters to [the Third Reich] or important buyers of [Fascist] goods became increasingly apparent, especially within the GCCS. > >By June 1941, AB Turitz for instance was subjected to Aryanisation, yet only in the top management circles.¹⁹⁸ However, as part of this and the latter takeover by *Upplands Enskilda Banken*, the Jewish leadership only went into “hiding”, still exercising control over the company. Smaller companies, such as *A. Wiklund A.B.A.W.*, were asked more explicitly, often with the usage of semantic and stylistic writing techniques to exert pressure, to relinquish their Jewish contingent: >>Dear Mr. Consul, […] we learned that Mr. Hohenacker had a longer conversation about the increasingly acute staff questions at the company Wiklund, which concern all German businesses equally. […] That it is impossible for any German firm to continue working with the company Wiklund, if the misters Hirsch, Nachmansson senior and junior are not eliminated from the board of directors corresponds entirely to our assessment. […] You know, dear Mr. Consul that the Adlerwerke have, during the long‐lasting friendly cooperation with the house Wiklund, always avoided to intervene in internal affairs. […] In this case we have no other choice if we want to achieve the goal of continuing our existing trade relationship.¹⁹⁹ > >Some [Fascist] representatives in Sweden, like Ernst Seidel working for *Simons und Frowein AG* even hoped that the suspension of [Fascist] deliveries to Swedish–Jewish companies will lead to a self‐reduction of Jewish influence in Swedish companies. --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 17). **1911**: Martin Sandberger, SS functionary and Shoah perpetrator, was unfortunately born. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/17/1942): German Army Group A established bridgeheads across the Kuban River while the Reserve Police Battalion 101 massacred 1,700 Jews in the Polish village of Łomazy. (Coincidentally, U.S. Marines raided the Axis‐held Pacific island of Makin while the USAAF made its first air raid on occupied Europe, bombing railroad marshaling yards at Sotteville‐lès‐Rouen. These were somewhere around the same time that the Second Moscow Conference ended.) [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/17/1943): The Axis took down sixty bombers from the U.S. Eighth Air Force during the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission, but it lost Sicily to the Allies as the U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrived in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Somewhere around the same time that the first Québec Conference of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and William Lyon Mackenzie King began, the Royal Air Force commenced Operation Hydra: the first air raid of the Operation Crossbow strategic bombing campaign against the Third Reich’s V‐weapon program. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/17/1945): At Talitzou by the Sino‐Korean border, Puyi, then the Kangde Emperor of Manchukuo, formally renounced the imperial throne, dissolving the state, and ceding its territory to the Republic of China. (Coincidentally, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed the independence of Indonesia, igniting the Indonesian National Revolution against the Dutch Empire.) Meanwhile, the Third Reich’s last submarine, *U‐977*, surrendered to the Allies. [**1971**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/17/1971): Siegmund Wilhelm Walther List, Axis field marshal, dropped dead. [**1987**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/17/1987): Rudolf Walter Richard Heß, leading members of the NSDAP, hung hisself in prison… I have no comment. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 month ago • 100%

The Axis transformed a fringe ideologue into the spokesman for ‘World Jewry’ overnight https://sci-hub.ru/10.1080/00335630500157516

Do you remember when antifeminists would cite the *SCUM Manifesto*, or a few strangers online writing ‘kill all men’ as an obvious joke or overreaction, as evidence in support of antifeminism? What about conservatives citing a violent kidnapper shouting ‘black lives matter’, or a stranger publicly saying mean things about whites, as evidence against the Black Lives Matter movement (or even against Afro‐Americans in general)? Well, this tactic was exactly what the Axis deployed: find an obscure ideologue proposing an extreme solution, then [magnify his importance to such a ridiculous extent that it justifies one’s own actions.](https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/kriegsziel.htm) [Theodore N. Kaufman](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/category:Theodore_Newman_Kaufman), a petty bourgeois Jew without any political power, would have been quickly forgotten by history if only the Axis overlooked him, but he unwittingly made Axis propagandists’ job a little easier by writing a polemic titled [*Germany Must Perish!*](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Germany_Must_Perish!), and you better believe that they were going to [milk that cow for all that she was worth](https://northboot.xyz/search?q=kaufman+site:research.calvin.edu&language=all&safesearch=0): >A month after the [re]invasion [of Soviet Eurasia] came one of the most peculiar propaganda elements of the war: Theodore N. Kaufman’s *Germany Must Perish!* Kaufman was a 31‐year‐old American Jew who owned a theater ticket agency in New Jersey. In March 1941, he self‐published a 100‐page book that called for the sterilization of the entire German population (excepting only Jews and those no longer fertile). > >It would be inhumane, he wrote, to kill the Germans, but sterilization would eliminate them within two generations. He also included a map proposing the partition of German territory among neighboring nations. As he wrote in the introduction, Germany had been a source of misery for the rest of the world from its beginning: >>This time Germany has forced a TOTAL WAR upon the world. >>As a result, she must be prepared to pay a TOTAL PENALTY. >>And there is one, *and only one*, such Total Penalty: >>Germany must perish forever! >>In fact—not in fancy!¹⁹ > >Kaufman had earlier presented himself as the president (and perhaps sole member) of the American Federation of Peace, which in 1939 had urged Congress either to stay out of Europe’s war, or to sterilize all Americans to keep their children from becoming homicidal monsters. > >He did have a gift for public relations. Before reviewers received his book, a small black coffin came in the mail announcing that his book would arrive the next day.²⁰ Kaufman’s effort got limited attention in the United States, generally negative, though he, in the fashion of film publicists, found several passages that could be made to sound positive to include in his second printing.²¹ > >That would have been the end of it, but copies made their way to [the Third Reich]. Although the United States was not yet a combatant, the [Axis] immediately presented Kaufman’s book as the official American plan to deal with Germany. On July 23, 1941, a month after the [re]invasion of [Soviet Eurasia], a Berlin press conference revealed Kaufman’s plan. The next day, the *Völkischer Beobachter* ran a story that covered most of the front page: “The Product of Criminal Jewish Sadism: Roosevelt Demands the Sterilization of the German People.” > >The article stated that “Theodor Kaufmann [*sic*]”²² had “a monstrous plan for the extermination of the German people and the total fragmentation of Germany,” noting that he was president of the American Federation of Peace and >>one of the closest advisers to the New York Jew Samuel Roseman [*sic*], who as is well known provides advice and assistance in speechwriting to the current president of the United States, Roosevelt. […] Given the close relationship of the writer to the White House, this monstrous war program can be seen as a synthesis of genuine Talmudic hatred and Roosevelt’s views on foreign policy.²³ > >The story received prime coverage in other German newspapers as well. Many articles followed in the German press, all of which claimed that Kaufman’s proposal was incontrovertible proof of international Jewry’s intent physically to destroy Germany and its people.²⁴ *Das Reich* avoided commentary, simply carrying particularly startling passages from Kaufman’s book.²⁵ > >Significant parts were read over national radio. It is important to remember that from July to September 1941, Third Reich bureaucracies were engaged in energetic and explicit internal discussions on killing the Jews, discussions reflected in more general terms in public discourse.²⁶ > >But that was only the beginning. Joseph Goebbels read Kaufman’s book early in August. In his diary, he expressed outrage, then wrote: >>This Jew did a real service for the enemy [German] side. Had he written this book for us, he could not have made it any better. I will have this published in an edition of millions for Germany and above all for the front, and will write the forward and afterward myself.²⁷ > >Goebbels realized that Kaufman’s diatribe had little significance in the United States, but that did not prevent him from recognizing its propaganda value.²⁸ Goebbels discussed Kaufman’s book with Hitler a few weeks later, who was also outraged. Notably, [Hanover’s mayor cited Kaufman’s polemic as an excuse to evict the city’s Jews](https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kxhlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vW4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=1522,728722&dq=Kaufman): >Hundreds of Jews in Hanover received notices Monday to evacuate their homes within 24 hours. > >They were permitted to take only “the most necessary objects and furniture” and advised [that] the remainder of their property would be sold, the proceeds to be turned over to them “at a given time.” [Read: never.] > >One reason cited for the action was said to have been a book written by “the Jew Kaufmann [*sic*] in New York.” The book, it was alleged, demands sterilization of all Germans and employment of German soldiers as coolies in foreign lands. > >[…] > >Theodore N. Kaufman, whose book “Germany Must Perish!” was cited by the mayor of Hanover […] in his eviction notice to Jews of that city, said Monday, “This is just a flimsy pretext for another of the innate cruelties of the German people.” > >The author said, “I don’t think [that] it was my book that prompted this barbarity. They employed every possible German cruelty against the Jews long before my book was published.” Silly prejudice aside, Kaufman raised one valid point here: he cannot be blamed for the eviction of Hanover’s Jews, or for any of the Axis’s other atrocities, for that matter. Some anticommunists might think that that is a great idea, but anybody who can apply materialist analysis knows that [the causes behind atrocities run far deeper than an irrelevant stranger saying mean things about a kind of people.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3446353) Freeing up room for gentiles is one example. In many ways, Kaufman’s importance parallels Haj Amin al‐Husayni’s. [Even though the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an unpopular, Zionist‐appointed politician who failed to prevent thousands of Palestinians from serving the Allies, and failed to organize any efficient Waffen‐SS divisions](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3937885), he remains the only link that Zionists have between Palestinians and the Shoah, so they inflate his importance to astronomic proportions. :::spoiler Click here for examples. >Hajj Amin‐al‐Husseini was highly influential and extremely popular throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.¹⁷ The Husseini family of Jerusalem was one of the most powerful and respected clans in Palestinian Arab society for centuries. The Husseinis claim to be descendants of Hussein, the son of the Caliph Ali and his wife Fatima, daughter of Muhammad.¹⁸ For centuries, the Husseinis had held important positions in Palestine, including Mufti of Jerusalem.¹⁹ Under the British Mandate in Palestine, due in part to the power and prestige of his family, Hajj Amin al‐Husseini served as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council. Thus, he was the most powerful Arab official in British Palestine and controlled a large budget and a network of patronage that included imams of mosques, judges in the Islamic courts, Islamic schools, and Islamic endowments (*waqf*).²⁰ By virtue of these two offices, Husseini “became the most influential Arab in Palestine.”²¹ [Source.](https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/spoe/Spoerl%20Palestinians%20Arabs%20and%20the%20Holocaust.pdf#page=2) On the contrary, [René Wildangel documented that](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=E68EC5531C3AF8E1512406BBA4EA080D), among other facts, ‘*Filastin*, like the other traditional Christian paper, *al‐Karmil*, edited by Najib Nassar, was generally closer to the biggest opposition bloc (*al‐muʻarada*) against Amin al‐Husayni, and was dominated by the Nashashibi family. *Al‐Sirat al‐Mustaqim*, edited by ʻAbdullah al‐Qalqili, supported the same faction’ and ‘Arab Palestinian support for the old political élite disintegrated, and the dissatisfaction with the mufti, which had been growing for quite some time, fed the growing factionalism in Palestinian politics.⁴⁷’ No matter: [Benjamin Netanyahu had to blame him for the Shoah](https://sci-hub.ru/10.1080/23739770.2015.1130401), and ordinary Zionists shoehorn mentions of him wherever they please. [For example](https://www.judeochristianity.org/jewish_anti-zionism.htm): >If one insists on invoking the Holocaust, it should also not be forgotten that the Palestinians actively collaborated with Hitler. Their leader, Haj Amin al‐Husseini, met with Hitler to collaborate on plans to eliminate the Jews. So Palestinians are not innocent of Holocaust guilt. You get the picture. ::: \ True, Kaufman was no war criminal (not even a minor one like the Mufti), but that is irrelevant: [Walter Rauff caused far more damage than one Mufti ever did, yet he is of far less concern to Zionists.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2945569) So criminality is not the issue here. Kaufman became important because the Axis decided that he should be, then the Zionists bestowed the Grand Mufti with the same importance, not so much because of something intrinsic to his misbehavior, but because of his value to propagandists. The propagandists would have completed their jobs all the same; these two blokes only made them a little easier. That being said, in at least one of these cases the professional liars still had some trouble reprogramming ordinaries despite the unwitting aid and their exhaustive efforts: >The […] German response to [Fascism’s] anti‐Semitic argument was more indifference than internalization. Despite the steady anti‐Semitic propaganda [that] we have surveyed, [Fascist] internal communication consistently worried about the lack of passionate anti‐Semitism on the part of the German population.⁸⁹ > >Anti‐Semitism increased gradually as the war went on. For the first two years, most Germans did not pay much heed to the alleged Jewish threat, since there seemed little chance the Jews would be able to do anything to Germany. Propaganda emphasized Germany’s other enemies, and the [Axis was] winning the war. The Security Service (*Sicherheitsdienst* or SD) of the SS provided confidential reports on public morale until 1943, when Goebbels had them eliminated because they too accurately reflected public doubts about the war.⁹⁰ > >A July 1941 SD report, written after the first appearance of the Kaufman story, noted that people read newspaper accounts with interest, but without any particular concern. “Frequently, there were characteristic expressions of popular humor: ‘Sure, they would if they could.”’ It did seem to strengthen anti‐Semitic attitudes, but others saw it as propagandistic preparation for the expected entrance of the United States into the war.⁹¹ --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 16). [**1904**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/16/1904): Minoru Genda, Axis aviator, was born. **1919**: Karl‐Heinz Euling, Waffen‐SS captain, was unleashed on the earth. **1933**: [Pro‐Reich Canadians provoked a riot at Christie Pits.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1340571) **1934**: Rome ordered the 48,000 troops rushed to the Austro‐Italian border during the July Putsch to return to their regular bases. Meanwhile, Schicklgruber’s amnesty announcement went into effect, releasing the prisoners in time to vote in Sunday’s referendum. **1935**: Representatives of France, Great Britain and Fascist Italy met in Paris to negotiate a solution to the Abyssinia Crisis. Haile Selassie offered new economic concessions to Italy, stressing that he would not accept a military occupation but would grant facilities for mining, road construction and railway operations. [**1942**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/16/1942): As the Soviets evacuated Maykop and Axis positions in Egypt were bombed by Yankee aeroplanes for the first time, the *Kriegsmarine* began Operation Wunderland with the objective of entering the Kara Sea and destroying as many Soviet vessels as possible. Meanwhile in Bilbao, Spain, a mass was held at the Basilica of Begoña to commemorate members of the Begoña Regiment who died in the Civil War. After the service there was some shouting between the Carlist and Falangist factions, and during the ensuing scuffle a Falangist threw two hand grenades and wounded thirty people. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/16/1944): First flight of a jet with forward‐swept wings, the Junkers Ju 287. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/16/1945): Takijirō Ōnishi, Axis admiral, took his own life. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 month ago • 100%

On this day 81 years ago, the Axis attempted to liquidate the Białystok ghetto

Quoting Faris Yahya’s [*Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=965D0938C8441DE06561BCB5D5857C08), page 46: >Attempts to organise resistance in [the Białystok ghetto](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Białystok_Ghetto) were not very successful. This was partly owing to a tactical miscalculation by the resistance leadership, which tried both to fight in the ghetto and also to strengthen the rural partisans, but had too few resources to achieve both tasks properly. > >They were also undermined by the collaboration of the Zionist‐led Judenrat with the [Axis]. “The policy of the Białystok Judenrat was all the more convincing because its chief champion and executor was Ephraim Barasz, an engineer by profession and a liberal Zionist in his political beliefs.” Barasz had previously had the reputation of being an “honest man”, which enabled him more effectively to lull the ghetto’s inhabitants into a false sense of security. > >In February 1943, the [Axis] demanded the surrender of 6,300 Białystok Jews for extermination. The Judenrat complied by preparing lists of people whose sin was that they were poor or had fled to Białystok from the annihilated provincial ghettoes. The deal was arranged in absolute secrecy, without any warning or hint from Barasz or other Judenrat members to the ghetto population of what was in store for it. > >However, the resistance United Anti‐Fascist Bloc prevented most people on the lists from reporting for transportation to their deaths, and the ghetto inhabitants fought back when the [Axis] came to collect them. On 15 August 1943 the [Axis] informed Barasz they intended to liquidate the ghetto. “Barasz returned to the ghetto and did not warn anybody that only a few hours were left to the 40,000‐odd Jews” still in there, nor did he encourage them to revolt. > >The Anti‐Fasci[s]t Bloc nevertheless managed to arm 300 combatants with firearms and grenades and a further 200 with Molotov cocktails, home‐made bombs, knives and axes. These weapons, many of them smuggled into the ghetto in most daring ways, were grossly inadequate for a large‐scale revolt, but the resistance nevertheless lasted until 26 August and the [Axis] had to use artillery and aircraft to subdue it. About 100 [Fascists] were killed.⁵⁷ --- :::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (August 15). [**1939**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/15/1939): Twenty‐six Ju87 bombers commanded by Walter Sigel met unexpected ground fog during a dive‐bombing demonstration for Luftwaffe generals at Neuhammer. Thirteen of them crashed and burned. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/15/1940): A Fascist submarine torpedoed and sunk the Greek cruiser *Elli* at Tinos harbor during peacetime, marking the most serious Fascist provocation prior to the outbreak of the Greco‐Italian War in October. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/15/1941): Hungary’s leaders officially ended their large‐scale deportations because the Axis occupying forces in East Galicia did not want to handle more deportees. Elsewhen, an Allied firing squad executed Corporal Josef Jakobs at the Tower of London for his espionage on the Axis’s behalf. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/15/1943): Superior Axis forces surrounded Cretan partisans during the Battle of Trahili, who managed to escape against all odds. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/15/1945): Emperor Hirohito broadcasted his declaration of surrender following the Axis’s defeat in World War II; Korea gained independence from the Empire of Japan. Shortly before or after the broadcast, Korechika Anami, the Axis’s last remaining War Minister, committed suicide. **1953**: Ludwig Prandtl, Axis physicist and aerospace scientist, expired. [**1989**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/15/1989): Minoru Genda, Axis aviator who helped plan the assault on Pearl Harbor, died. :::

Capitalism in Decay AnarchoBolshevik • 1 month ago • 100%

Romanian anticommunists scapegoated and massacred Jews independently of outside pressure

Quoting Grant T. Harward’s [*Romania's Holy War: Soldiers, Motivation, and the Holocaust*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=91046E850337906169D9BEFB32DEC2D7), chapter 4: >Reports of “red rockets” fired from Jewish neighborhoods in cities as far away as Bucharest flooded in after air raids, but investigations determined these were tracers from antiaircraft guns, not signals by Jewish communists.²³ > >Soldiers were not immune to panic. On 22–23 June, the 3rd *Călărași* Regiment in Siret, a border town in Bukovina, reported being fired on by civilians, so a military praetor was assigned to investigate. He ordered gendarmes to look for snipers, investigated reports of local Ukrainian or Lipovan (Russian Orthodox schematics) snipers in other nearby villages, arrested a Romanian lawyer concealing a Jewish family from deportation, and oversaw the evacuation of civilians. > >Fortunately, the military praetor concluded that Soviet soldiers had fired the shots, although nervous [Axis] soldiers were likely responsible, and no one was executed.²⁴ Any air victories were celebrated to bolster morale. On 23 June, First Lieutenant Hoira Agarici downed three Soviet bombers over Constanța, and his feat became a popular song, “Agarici has gone to hunt *bolșevici*.”²⁵ However, a constant flow of warnings from the MCG about saboteurs, spies, and parachutists in the rear kept soldiers, and civilians, on edge. > >Soviet counterattacks reduced Axis bridgeheads on the Prut; one Romanian toehold was described as a “nest of projectiles,” and **in some places Axis forces were forced to evacuate back over the river, triggering the first mass reprisals against Jews.²⁶ One of the worst massacres occurred after Axis troops evacuated the Sculeni bridgehead.** The town had changed hands four times in the previous three days, when Axis troops finally evacuated twenty‐five hundred civilians, including a thousand Jews, also joined the exodus to escape the carnage. > >Colonel Ermil Matieș, commanding the 6th Vânători Regiment, ordered his intelligence officer “to arrest and execute all the suspected Jews” blamed for directing Soviet artillery fire onto his men. On 26 June, officers began to “classify” Jews with the help of soldiers and civilians from Sculeni. **Soldiers marched Jews who had been fingered as communists into the hills around the village of Stânca Roznovanu and forced them to dig mass graves before being shot.** > >**[Axis] soldiers and […] civilians arrived to watch, sometimes joining in to beat men to turn over valuables, and to rape women. Over the next several days soldiers became increasingly indiscriminate, killing women, children, and the elderly, totaling around six hundred people.²⁷ Shocked civilian authorities reported the soldiers’ atrocities, prompting an investigation, but Matieș justified the crimes as legitimate reprisals, and no one was punished.²⁸** > >The Stânca Roznovanu massacre shows how mass reprisals quickly turned into genocidal massacres as permissive officers allowed soldiers—joined by civilians—to do whatever they wanted to Jews. > >Meanwhile, Soviet troops had even crossed the Danube, establishing bridgeheads near Ismail, which increased [Axis] commanders’ fears of Jewish uprisings in the rear to support Soviet attacks at the front, especially in Iași.²⁹ The city had come under regular air attack because it was an important rail hub on the frontier. > >On 26 June, bombs killed two hundred citizens, including thirty‐eight Jews.³⁰ Some people fled to the countryside, but most lacked the means; Jews were not allowed to leave. Some Romanians blamed corrupt or incompetent authorities for inadequate air defenses, but **even more told stories about Jewish communists signaling Soviet pilots.³¹ The press contributed to hysteria with stories about Jewish agents.** > >Iași garrison commander Colonel Constantin Lupu, Prefect Colonel Dumitru Captaru, Police Superintendent Colonel Constantin Chirilovici, and two others formed an emergency committee that ordered a search leading to the arrest of 207 Jews for possessing flashlights or red cloths and the provisional arrest of 317 other Jews. The few women rounded up were immediately released. **The men were beaten during interrogations at police headquarters**, but many were soon freed, owing to lack of evidence.³² > >**Certain that police interrogators were blind or bought off, soldiers took matters into their own hands. Sergeant Mircea Manoliu, a former Legionary, first started shooting released Jews instead of escorting them home, then shooting newly detained Jews instead of taking them to police headquarters.³³** > >Iași city authorities were losing control, in part because of institutional confusion. There was an array of groups within the city operating independently and often at cross purposes, including police, gendarmes, garrison troops, units heading to the front, SSI agents, and [Wehrmacht] soldiers.³⁴ > >**Police lacked authority over soldiers**; 14th Infantry Division soldiers were mostly spread out in the countryside; Romanian military police had no control over [Wehrmacht] soldiers; German 198th Infantry Division and Todt Organization troops had their own missions; and SSI agents operated clandestinely. > >On 27 June, after hearing gunfire, Colonel Chirilovici found a group of Romanians in a Jewish cemetery singing Legionary songs while receiving rifles from two men who said they had orders from army intelligence to arm volunteers in case of a Jewish–communist uprising. He discovered later they were SSI officers.³⁵ > >German patrols prowled the streets as well. Colonel Lupu began preparations to deport “suspect” Jewish men to prevent “rebellious actions in Iași on the part of the Jews” that army intelligence had been predicting for a year.³⁶ > >Hundreds of Jewish men from towns in the evacuation zone had already been deported, and now the *conducător* wanted to do the same thing on a far grander scale in Iași, since by now nearly half the city’s population was Jewish after having been swollen by ten thousand Jews—refugees from Bessarabia the year before and deportees from surrounding towns in recent weeks.³⁷ > >Colonel Captaru requested the 6th *Vânători* and 13th *Dorobanți* Regiments to organize patrols to help the overstretched municipal police after reports of looting during the blackout. Unintentionally, **these orders destabilized Iași even further and set the stage for a pogrom.** > >On 28 June, the situation in the city deteriorated, and inflammatory army propaganda did not help. An article in *Soldatul* reminded soldiers it had been a year since Soviet troops entered northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, calling the day a “black page in the calendar of the Romanian nation,” but rejoiced that soon Romania would be “reborn in all its ancient virtues, under the correct leadership of a great soldier and Romanian, General Ion Antonescu.”³⁸ > >At 10 a.m. **soldiers from the 13th *Dorobanți* and 24th Artillery Regiments, including Sergeant Manoliu, entered the Tătărași neighborhood to search for radios but quickly began ransacking Jewish homes. Police arrived to find soldiers holding Jews, many beaten and bleeding, at gunpoint as civilians shouted encouragement. When the police tried to intercede, those on the scene “screamed that [the police] belonged to the Jews and had been bribed by them.”³⁹** > >Manoliu told a passing German patrol “the police were protecting the Jews.”⁴⁰ **The [Wehrmacht] let the Romanian soldiers continue searching for radios and did nothing to stop the abuses.** Only when Colonel Lupu and a military praetor came with gendarmes was the looting stopped and Manoliu temporarily detained.⁴¹ > >Calm was not restored for very long. An air raid alarm at 9 p.m. put the city on edge, then antiaircraft gunfire was misidentified as blue or green “flares” (actually different‐colored tracers indicating different antiaircraft guns), and by 10 p.m. [Axis] patrols reported being fired upon. The patrols shot back and searched homes but never found any snipers.⁴² German patrols reported casualties; it took days for Romanian authorities to confirm that this was false.⁴³ > >At 11 p.m. General Antonescu phoned Lupu, ordering him to restore order and deport all Jewish men in the city at once.⁴⁴ Soon afterward, two [Axis] columns passing through Iași on the way to the front reported being fired at by snipers. **By 3 a.m. soldiers across the city were grabbing Jews from buildings they thought were the sources of fire and summarily executing them. A report recorded three hundred dead and fifty wounded during the night.⁴⁵ As the sun rose, civilians joined soldiers, turning reprisals into a pogrom.** > >“That Sunday,” as locals subsequently referred to 29 June, **soldiers, gendarmes, civilians, and some Germans killed thousands of Jews, mostly men, but women and children too.** At dawn city authorities realized that, despite all the gunfire, not a single soldier had been killed; nonetheless, **soldiers and gendarmes pulled Jews into the streets, sorting out military‐age men, to be arrested. Anyone who resisted was shot. [Axis] patrols marched “convoys” of Jews to various collection points or directly to police headquarters.⁴⁶** > >**Those who fell behind or lowered hands from over their heads were shot, and streets were quickly littered with bodies. The cells at police headquarters were already crammed, so its courtyard was used as overflow, and by 9 a.m. it contained perhaps two thousand Jews.⁴⁷ Civilians began looting Jewish properties.** City authorities believed Jewish communists and “very weak Romanian communist elements” had attacked to hinder troop movements by purposefully triggering a pogrom to spread disorder, so commanders made feeble attempts to restore order.⁴⁸ :::spoiler (Emphasis added. Click here for a few statistics.) >The Iași pogrom remains controversial. For decades Antonescu was held responsible for manipulating what occurred in an attempt to exterminate the city’s entire Jewish population; but he did not order the massacre. Nor did city authorities try to murder all Jews. The death toll is still hotly contested. Rumors soon afterward among Jews in Bucharest claimed ten thousand dead.⁶³ Since then, estimates ranging from 3,200 victims (tabulating only the dead from police headquarters and the two trains) to 13,200 (subtracting between censuses) have been proposed.⁶⁴ > >The truth lies in between these extremes. A year after the pogrom, the Iași Jewish community reported it lacked death certificates for some seven thousand Jewish men who “disappeared” during the violence.⁶⁵ With slain Jewish women, children, and elderly added, the total figure was probably close to eight thousand dead. Although the number of victims may not be as high as commonly assumed, this does not lessen the depth of depravity plumbed by [Axis] soldiers and civilians. ::: --- :::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (August 14). **1890**: Bruno Emil Tesch, Axis chemist who co‐invented Zyklon B, arrived to worsen life with his existence. **1934**: Adolf Schicklgruber received a signed document containing Hindenburg's ‘last wish’, which was for the restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy. Schicklgruber did not have the document published. Hermann Göring was injured in an accident outside Munich when the car he was driving collided with a truck on a narrow road. He sustained injuries to his back and cuts to his face and knees, but left the hospital the next day. [**1936**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/14/1936): Nationalist forces led by Juan Yagüe captured the walled city of Badajoz. Once inside, a savage repression known as the Massacre of Badajoz began, making headlines around the world. Meanwhile, Portugal accepted a French proposal for neutrality in the Spanish Civil War, an important step in the international nonintervention agreement that France was seeking. [**1937**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/14/1937): The Battle of Santander began. Chinese warplanes attacked Imperial ships in Shanghai harbour, but most of the bombs missed their targets and struck civilian areas instead, killing over 1,000. [**1940**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/14/1940): Fascist administrator Gustav Simon abrogated the Constitution of Luxembourg, banned all opposition parties and made German the only official language there. [**1941**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/14/1941): Axis forces captured Krivoy Rog while the Third Reich commissioned the submarine *U‐583*. Meanwhile, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, stating the Allied goals for the postbellum world as British bombers conducted an overnight raid on the railway yards at Hanover. [**1943**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/14/1943): Allied bombers flew a record distance, traveling 2,500 miles from Australia to carry out the first bombing raid on the island of Borneo, striking the Axis oil reserves at Balikpapan. Meanwhile, the Axis lost both the Battle of Roosevelt Ridge and the Battle of Belgorod. To make matters even worse for them, Rome was declared an open city by the Italian government a day after its twoth bombing, making the announcement in a radio broadcast by Stetani, the official news agency. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Italian Prime Minister confirmed the decision later in the day, offering to remove Rome’s defenses, under the supervision of the Allies, in exchange for no further bombing. Finally, the British submarine *Saracen* was damaged by depth charges from Italian corvettes off Bastia, Corsica and scuttled to prevent capture. [**1944**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/14/1944): The Osovets Offensive officially ended with the completion of Soviet objectives. Canadian and Polish troops began Operation Tractable, the final offensive of the Battle of Normandy. An Italian prisoner of war was killed during a violent conflict between Yankee soldiers and Italian POWs. Finally, the Axis submarine *U‐618* was sunk in the Bay of Biscay by British ships and aircraft. [**1945**](https://ww2db.com/event/today/8/14/1945): Emperor Hirohito recorded a radio message to the Japanese people saying that the war should end and that they must ‘bear the unbearable.’ That night the Kyūjō incident occurred, an effort by a group of officers to steal the recording and stop the move to surrender. The attempt would fail and the conspirators would commit suicide. **1947**: The Western Allies completed the Buchenwald Trial. Of the thirty‐one convicted staff members of the Buchenwald concentration camp, they executed only eleven, and gave the rest prison sentences, most of whom they let out early. **1956**: Konstantin Hermann Karl Freiherr von Neurath, Axis diplomat and war criminal, dropped dead. **1988**: Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari, Axis businessman, expired. :::

Capitalism in Decay

!capitalismindecay@lemmygrad.ml

5 years ago

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For our purposes, we consider early Shōwa Japan to be capitalism in decay.