15 Feb 2015
Hitler Didn’t Die, He Fled To Argentina
On April 30 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker. His body was later discovered and identified by the Soviets before being rushed back to Russia. Is it really possible that the Soviets have been lying all this time, and that history has purposely been rewritten? No one thought so until the release of the FBI documents. It seems that it is possible that the most hated man in history escaped war torn Germany and lived a bucolic and peaceful life in the beautiful foothills of the Andes Mountains.
Recently released FBI documents are beginning to show that not only was Hitler and Eva Braun’s suicide faked, the infamous pair might have had help from the director of the OSS himself, Allen Dulles. In one FBI document from Los Angles, it is revealed that the agency was well aware of a mysterious submarine making its way up the Argentinian coast dropping off high level Nazi officials. What is even more astonishing is the fact that the FBI knew he was in fact living in the foothills of the Andes.
16 Sept 2014
Germany charges 93-year-old with at least 300,000 counts of murder
Germany charged a 93-year-old former member of the Nazi Waffen-SS on Monday with at least 300,000 counts of accessory to murder over his time at the Auschwitz death camp.
The charges relate to the around 425,000 people believed to have been deported to the camp in occupied Poland between May and July 1944, at least 300,000 of whom were killed in the gas chambers.The accused helped remove the luggage of victims so that it was not seen by new arrivals, said prosecutors in the northern city of Hanover.
"The traces of the mass killing of concentration camp prisoners were thereby supposed to be covered for subsequent inmates," prosecutors said in a statement. Prosecutors said the accused was aware that the predominantly Jewish prisoners deemed unfit to work "were murdered directly after their arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz".
A regional court must now decide whether the accused will go on trial. The German office investigating Nazi war crimes last year sent files on 30 former Auschwitz personnel to state prosecutors with a recommendation to bring charges against them. The renewed drive to bring to justice the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust follows a 2011 landmark court ruling.
16 Aug 2014
91yo Dutch man returns Israeli WWII medal after Gaza strike kills his relatives
A 91-year-old Dutch man who was honored with Israel’s Righteous Among the Nations medal for rescuing a Jewish boy during WWII, has returned the award, after he learnt his six relatives were killed in the Gaza strip by an Israeli missile.
7 Jul 2014
These 5 Corporations Helped Carry Out the Holocaust
Abby Martin highlights the top five companies that aided Nazi Germany during the height of WWII, calling out companies such as Hugo Boss, IBM and Ford.
6 Jun 2014
Normandy landings
The Normandy landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the landing operations on 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied western Europe,
9 May 2014
V-Day parade: Cutting edge weapons, Special Forces on Red Square
Russia has celebrated the 69th anniversary of Victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) with a traditional May 9 military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, which featured 11,000 troops, 149 military vehicles and 69 warplanes.
Not much has changed since the soviet days:
Or the first parade:
The Moscow Victory Parade of 1945 was a victory parade held by the Soviet army (with a small squad from the Polish army) after the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. It took place in the Soviet capital of Moscow, mostly centering around a military parade through Red Square. The parade took place on a rainy June 24, 1945, over a month after May 9, the day of Germany's surrender to Soviet commanders.
4 May 2014
10 Jan 2014
Unseen Alfred Hitchcock Holocaust documentary ‘Memory of the Camps’ to be released
An Alfred Hitchcock documentary about the Holocaust which was suppressed for political reasons is to be screened for the first time in the form its director intended after being restored by the Imperial War Museum, reports the Independent.
Hitchcock was asked to assemble footage shot by a British army film unit cameraman of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. But the resulting documentary, which had been commissioned in an attempt to inform and educate the German populace about the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in their name, was ultimately held back.
It was not shown at all until 1984, in an incomplete version at the Berlin film festival, and was missing a sixth reel and in poor quality when it was screened on the PBS network in the US a year later. Now the film, retrospectively titled Memory of the Camps, is to finally see the light of day in a format Hitchcock would have approved of.
“It was suppressed because of the changing political situation, particularly for the British,” Dr Toby Haggith, senior curator at the Department of Research for the Imperial War Museum told the Independent. “Once they discovered the camps, the Americans and British were keen to release a film very quickly that would show the camps and get the German people to accept their responsibility for the atrocities that were there.”
19 May 2013
Putin's Patriotism: Duma May Make Criticism of WWII Illegal
The Russian State Duma has ordered an evaluation of a comment made by opposition politician Leonid Gozman in which he compared a Soviet intelligence agency to Adolf Hitler's SS on the grounds that the comment may hurt the image of Russia's military history. Gozman wrote an op-ed on the Echo Moskvy website last week in which he criticized a TV show about a Soviet security agency that worked during World War II called Death to Spies, or SMERSH in its Russian abbreviation. The show portrayed the officers of the agency, which in Soviet times focused on counterintelligence, as heroes helping the coalition to win the war.
"I'm sure there were honest officers in SMERSH but they were unfortunate to work for an agency that was as criminal as the SS," he wrote. "The word SMERSH must fall into the same category as such words as the SS, NKVD and Gestapo, and cause horror and disgust, but not be a part of the headline for a patriotic movie." The Duma's sharp reaction to Gozman's words comes amid a drive by President Vladimir Putin to bolster patriotism among Russians, including through the glorification of Russian military exploits. Following Putin's lead, pro-Kremlin politicians have aggressively targeted critical views on certain aspects of Russia's past, and the government plans to create a single set of textbooks for Russian schoolchildren to present a "canonical" version of the country's history.
10 Apr 2013
Greece Says Germany Owes It €162 Billion In War Reparations
Greece is considering slapping a €162 billion invoice on Germany as compensation for the Second World War. Athens has compiled a top-secret report that says the cash - enough to solve the Greeks' debt crisis - is owed in war reparations, Der Spiegel reported.
But the Greeks are said to be reluctant to take on mighty Germany over the debt, for fear of antagonising its Eurozone paymaster. The Greek media is said to be more bullish, with the To Vima newspaper headlined: "What Germany Owes Us". It set out a number of possible ways that Germany could repay the cash, after a panel of experts spent months preparing the 80-page classified report.
28 Feb 2013
Hero Stéphane Hessel has died
Stéphane Frédéric Hessel (20 October 1917 – 26 February 2013) was a diplomat, ambassador, writer, concentration camp survivor, French Resistance fighter and BCRA agent. Born German, he became a naturalised French citizen in 1939. He participated in the editing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.
In October 2010, his essay, Time for Outrage! (original French title: Indignez-vous!), was published in an edition of 6,000 copies (ISBN 978-1455509720). It has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into Swedish, Danish, Basque, Catalan, Italian, German.Greek, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Croatian, Hebrew, Korean, and Dutch. Translations into Japanese, Hungarian, and other languages are planned. In the United States, The Nation magazine's March 7–14, 2011 issue published the entire essay in English.
Hessel's booklet argues that the French need to again become outraged, as were those who participated in the Resistance during World War II. Hessel's reasons for personal outrage include the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, France's treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-establish a free press, the need to protect the environment, importance of protecting the French welfare system, and the plight of Palestinians, recommending that people read the September 2009 Goldstone Report. He calls for peaceful and non-violent insurrection.
In 2011, one of the names given to the Spanish protests against corruption and bipartisan politics was Los Indignados (The Outraged), taken from the title of the book's translation there (¡Indignaos!). These protests, in conjunction with the Arab Spring, later helped to inspire other protests in many countries, including Greece, UK, Chile, Israel, and Occupy Wall Street which began in New York's financial district, but has now spread across the United States and numerous other countries. Ongoing protests in Mexico challenging corruption, drug cartel violence, economic hardship and policies also have been called the Indignados.
Wikipedia – Al Jazeera – NY Times – The Star
12 Dec 2012
Third Reich - Operation UFO
For the first time, the legendary 2006 Russian documentary 'Third Reich - Operation UFO' in its entirety, fully translated into English and available for free viewing. Many thanks to Irina Du Toit for the translation and the saucer people for the subtitles.
The film explores the historical mysteries and rumours of a Nazi secret base in Antarctica, the 1947 flying saucer attack on Admiral Byrd's ill-fated 'Operation Highjump' expedition and the occult origins of Third Reich anti-gravity engines, flying discs and ancient Atlantean technologies viewed through the lens of perhaps the three most mysterious twentieth century German organisations of all: the 'Thule Society, 'Vril Society' and the 'Ahnenerbe'
5 Oct 2012
Alan Turing's Death Shows 'Cost Of Intolerance Is A Loss To The Nation'
The head of intelligence agency GCHQ has paid tribute to World War II codebreaker Alan Turing, saying that the "cost of intolerance was a loss to the nation" during centenary celebrations of the mathematician's birth.
Spy chief Iain Lobban described Turing as "one of the great minds of the 20th century" whose breakthroughs have laid the foundations of the modern information age". Turing worked at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park - the forerunner of GCHQ - where he devised the techniques which cracked the German Enigma code.
But despite his achievements he was found guilty of "gross indecency" in 1952, a conviction for the-then illegal act of homosexual sex. Turing chose to be chemically castrated by being injected with female hormones rather than go to prison. Two years after his conviction he died of cyanide poisoning, a verdict recorded as suicide at his inquest. Although his mother and other academics have maintained his death was accidental, many have argued he took the poison deliberately to end the persecution he was suffering for being homosexual.
12 Sept 2012
Greek plea for Nazi damages
Greece has dramatically revived demands for billions in war damages from Germany as the euro crisis deepens. Ministers have set up a working party to add up how much Germany owes them for crimes committed after Hitler invaded Greece in 1941.
The Greek National Bank was also forced to lend the Nazis 476 million reichsmarks interest-free during World War Two — worth £8.7billion today. Greeks claim they were forced to accept “unfavourable” reparation payments in the 50s. Deputy finance minister Christos Staikouras said: “The matter remains pending — Greece has never resigned its rights.” He insisted the investigation would be “realistic and cool-headed”.
The move comes as opposition grows in Germany to handing out more bailouts to Greece. And it risks inflaming anti-German feelings in Greece, where newspapers regularly depict Chancellor Angela Merkel as a Nazi. Germany’s constitutional court is due to rule today on whether Berlin should hand more cash to Athens.
22 Feb 2012
Die Weiße Rose
The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler's regime.
The six most recognized members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded in 1943. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, and in July 1943 copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."
Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany amongst its greatest heroes, since they opposed the Third Reich in the face of death.
On 18 February 1943, coincidentally the same day that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called on the German people to embrace total war in his Sportpalast speech, the Scholls brought a suitcase full of leaflets to the university. They hurriedly dropped stacks of copies in the empty corridors for students to find when they flooded out of lecture rooms. Leaving before the class break, the Scholls noticed that some copies remained in the suitcase and decided it would be a pity not to distribute them. They returned to the atrium and climbed the staircase to the top floor, and Sophie flung the last remaining leaflets into the air. This spontaneous action was observed by the custodian Jakob Schmid. The police were called and Hans and Sophie Scholl were taken into Gestapo custody. Sophie and Hans were interrogated by Gestapo interrogator Robert Mohr, who initially thought Sophie was innocent. However, after Hans confessed, Sophie assumed full responsibility in an attempt to protect other members of the White Rose. Despite this, the other active members were soon arrested, and the group and everyone associated with them were brought in for interrogation.
The Scholls and Probst were the first to stand trial before the Volksgerichtshof—the People's Court that tried political offenses against the Nazi German state—on 22 February 1943. They were found guilty of treason and Roland Freisler, head judge of the court, sentenced them to death. The three were execAuted the same day by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison. All three were noted for the courage with which they faced their deaths, particularly Sophie, who remained firm despite intense interrogation (however, reports that she arrived at the trial with a broken leg from torture are false). She said to Freisler during the trial, "You know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won't admit it?" When Hans was executed, he said "Let freedom live" as the blade fell.
19 Feb 2012
The Nazis, A Warning From History
Arguably one of the most important documentary series ever made, The Nazis: A Warning from History sets out to show that, far from being a uniquely German aberration, Nazism fed upon and was fostered by the prejudices and lemming-like inclinations of ordinary people. Although culminating with the atrocities of the Holocaust, these programmes are equally good on the motives of otherwise perfectly normal people, who needed only the tacit encouragement of the regime to perpetrate horrors against their enemies, their neighbours, or their own family.
27 Sept 2011
Nazi was post-war spy for Germany in South America
A high-ranking Nazi officer, who helped develop a mobile gas chamber, became a spy for West Germany after World War Two and went on a training course for the BND intelligence agency despite German warrants for his arrest, BND archives showed.
"In hindsight, the recruitment of Walther Rauff is politically and morally incomprehensible," said BND historian Bodo Hechelhammer on Monday.
Rauff, who was a top SS security officer in Nazi Germany, was a BND agent in South America between 1958 and 1962, earning more than 70,000 Deutsche marks (about $US18,000), Hechelhammer said. Rauff died in Chile in 1984 having evaded attempts to bring him to justice.
The BND, formed after World War Two with the help of the United States, even sent money to pay for Rauff's legal fees when he fought extradition from Chile to face war crimes.
After the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 Rauff fled to South America, where he was recruited by the BND. He operated under the name of Enrico Gomez and was assigned to report on Fidel Castro, a mission that turned out to be futile because he was denied entry into Cuba.
Between 1960 and 1962, Rauff took part in two BND training courses in Germany - the second in February 1962 when there was a German arrest warrant for him.
8 Jul 2011
Your handy guide to aerial bombing
This illustration appeared in a british wartime publication around the time of the Baedecker Blitz. A combination of high explosive and incendiary was the norm for the bombs, the former blasting open buildings, the latter then setting them ablaze. The two civilians appear to have been included for scale without any sense of irony.
