In order they were Admiral Gerhard Wagner, who from the beginning of the war until 1944 had been a member of the Naval Operations Staff and from then to the end of the war a special assistant to Doenitz . . .

Kranzbuehler's principal purpose in calling these witnesses was to confute the testimony given earlier by Lieutenant Peter Heisig and Lieutenant Commander Moehle to the effect (in Heisig's case) that Doenitz, in a speech to a large group of U-boat officers in the fall of 1942 and (in Moehle' s case) in the order of September 17, 1942, had approved shooting the survivors of ships sunk by U-boats. Wagner, Godt, and Hessler all denied that there was any basis for the charge and faced sharp cross-examination from Phillimore, who had previously called Heisig and Moehle as witnesses for the prosecution. ...

The other topic, which engaged the witness Wagner, was the Commando Order, which Doenitz had sloughed off as a question of reprisal and with which he denied having any connection. The prosecution had intrduced documents concerning the capture, on a Norwegian island in the summer of 1943, of the uniformed crew of a Norwegian torpedo boat.

According to the documents, the crew members were interrogated by subordinates of Otto von Schrader, Commanding Admiral of the Norwegian West Coast. The Admiral turned them over to the SD, who shot them pursuant to the Commando Order.

Doenitz denied knowledge of the matter despite sharp and disbelieving pressure by Fyfe on cross-examination. Wagner emphatically corroborated Doenitz' s lack of information and added that he himself had learned of the incident for the first time at Nuremberg .

His reward was a protracted and accusatory cross-examination by Phillimore, who argued forcefully that such an episode must have been reported to Doenitz' s headquarters, and this argument appeared to discredit Wagner' s confused denials.

But later development s cleared Doenitz of responsibility; Schrader was a naval officer, but he was a military area commander and therefore reported not to Doenitz but to General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, Wehrmacht Commander of Norway."

From The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Irials: A Personal Memoir", by Telford Taylor.

Kranzbuhler: What was the relationship between the Naval Operations Staff and the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the OKW?

Wagner: The OKW passed on the instructions and orders of Hitler, who was the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, regarding the conduct of the war; usually, as far as naval warfare particularly was concerned, after examination and review by the Naval Operations Staff. General questions of the conduct of the war were decided without previous consultations with members of the Naval Operations Staff.

Kranzbuhler: In which manner were the preparations of the High Command of the Navy for a possible war carried out?

Wagner: Generally speaking, they consisted of mobilization preparations, tactical training, and strategic considerations for the event of a possible conflict.

Kranzbuhler: Did the Naval Operations Staff during your time receive an order to prepare for a definite possibility of war?

Wagner: The first instance was the order for "Case White," the war against Poland. Before that, only tasks regarding security measures were given us.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/05-13-46.asp#wagner

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCxBZm53\_o4

Note: As always, these excerpts from trial testimony should not necessarily be mistaken for fact, and in fact are often bold-faced lies. It should be kept in mind that they are the sometimes-desperate statements of hard-pressed defendants seeking to avoid culpability and shift responsibility from charges that—should they be found guilty—could possibly be punishable by death. -W

CONTEXT: http://propagander2.tripod.com/d04.html

NOT MY LINKS

The Nuremberg Defendants: http://4rs.neocities.org/index.html

1: Julius B.Stafford-Baker Nuremberg 10/1/46 - "The interior of a wood-panelled courtroom seen from the visitor's gallery. The accused are seated on the left, in a box in front of a row of US military police. There are a group of lawyers sitting in rows in front of them, and the judges sit out of the frame to the right. Most of the men in the image are wearing earphones.

From left to right the men in the box are Admiral Karl Doenitz (wearing dark glasses), Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel and Alfred Jödl. Hermann Goering is in the front row, with his face half obscured by the back of an American policeman wearing light grey uniform. The black hair just above Goering's head belongs to Rudolf Hess. The other five in the box are Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk and Hjalmar Schacht."

The "Brown Eminence", Bormann, will utilize his new position to accumulate unmatched administrative control. He manages Hitler's schedule, appointments, & access, effectively deciding who could speak to the Führer. He filters all incoming data, reports, and political documents before they reached Hitler's desk.

He holds final approval over civil service promotions and reviews all domestic legislation. He manages the Adolf Hitler Endowment Fund, controlling gifts and securing dependencies within the Nazi hierarchy. Through these heavily bureaucratic mechanisms, Bormann earns his nickname as the shadow leader or "Brown Eminence" of the Third Reich.

"The battle for Hitler's favor was almost something out of the Borgias," Speer said to me in 1979 . . . .

>"This was doubly strange in that the men principally involved in this‑-Himmler, Bormann, Lammers‑-really had none of the 'qualities' (in quotes) which are historically associated with such figures. How can I tell you? These three were--bourgeois hardly describes them. They really were very gross men."

Bormann, he said, was "definitely the most dangerous of them all. He came to have quite unique power over Hitler's life. From very early life, 1935 I think, when he was on Hess's (Fuehrer's Deputy) staff, he very carefully administered Hitler's finances: his income from Mein Kampf, which was of course enormous, the buying and selling of land on the Obersalzberg and‑-a brilliant financial coup‑-the royalties Hitler received for the use of his picture on postage stamps.

"Of course, Bormann's power grew immeasurably after Hess's flight to England in 1941," said Speer.

>"Long before then, he had succeeded in virtually eliminating Hess from contact with Hitler, which was no doubt one of the reasons for his crazy trip. After he had gone, Bormann (who, incidentally, then behaved appallingly toward Hess's wife) very quickly, really within days, took over his functions and had himself appointed Fuehrer's Secretary, which meant he was in charge of Hitler's environment and thereby really controlled his daily life. He was always with or near him, the only one who was in such continuous and permanent contact."

That didn't mean that other people, including Speer, could not see Hitler privately . . . .

>"Hitler was his own man; Bormann's control and power only went as far as Hitler allowed it to go. Hitler trusted him implicitly but, although Bormann was always there, he had no personal relationship with him. He valued him immensely for his quite incredible diligence and as a totally loyal vassal, but always as a vassal. In all my years near Hitler, and the countless days and evenings on the Berghof, I don't think I ever heard Hitler make a private remark to him."

From Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Sereny:

"When Hess fled to Great Britain in May 1941, Bormann's ascent to power quickened. He took over as head of the Parteikanzlei, Hitler's Chancery. In 1942, he was appointed head of the party secretariat and of the party staff, with the rank of Reichsminister. In 1943, he became Hitler's personal secretary.

In October 1944, Bormann was appointed commander of the Volkssturm (People's Army), a mass of German civilians established as the Allies were about to invade the Reich. As Hitler's secretary, Bormann [became] involved not only with party affairs, but also with the domestic policies of Germany. He was active in fields such as the pillage of art objects in occupied countries in Eastern Europe.

He controlled questions of security in the regime, legislation, appointments and promotions. He created a system of spies in the army, in which he would promote young officers to survey the political attitudes of older fighters. He was a rabid fighter against the Christian churches, stating in a confidential 1942 memo that Nazism was incompatible with Christianity and the power of the churches "must absolutely and finally be broken."

Bormann was an extreme racist who was the "zealous executor" of Nazi persecution and extermination of the Jews. He ordered the deportation of Jews to the East, at first concealing the killings as the "transfer of Jews to labor."

He later stopped hiding the massacres and signed a decree on October 9, 1942, stating that "the permanent elimination of the Jews from the territories of Greater Germany can no longer be carried out by emigration but by the use of ruthless force in the special camps of the East." His July 1, 1943, decree gave Adolf Eichmann and the Gestapo (the German secret police) complete power over Jewish affairs.

Bormann's hatred was not confined to Jews. He called the Slavs a "Sovietized mass" of sub-humans and wrote in an August 19, 1942 memo,

>"The Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we do not need them, they may die. Slav fertility is not desirable."

He expanded a slave labor program for both Slavs and Jews.

Toward the end of the war, Bormann personally witnessed the suicides of Goebbels and his family, and finally the suicide of Hitler himself. Before his death, Hitler ordered Bormann to save himself and flee the bunker. Some say that Bormann tried to negotiate with the Soviets after Hitler's death, but realized that negotiations were fruitless. In the end, he escaped the bunker on April 30, 1945 and, after that, his fate is unclear.

Hitler's chauffeur Erich Kempka claimed that Bormann was killed trying to cross the Russian lines by an anti-tank shell, which caused the tank he was in to blow up. Kempka, who was temporarily blinded, said he saw Bormann's body. Hitler Youth leader, Artur Axmann, believed that Bormann killed himself, and claimed to have spotted the body on May 2, 1945, in the Invalidenstrasse in Berlin.

In 1946, it was announced that Bormann was in a north Italian monastery. He was also rumored to have escaped via Rome to Argentina or Paraguay, and was sighted in Italy, Brazil, and Chile.

On October 29, 1945, Bormann was indicted in absentia by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He was sentenced to death in absentia almost a year later, on October 1, 1946.

In December 1972, excavations dug up two skeletons near the Reichstag in West Berlin and, in early 1973, a West German forensic expert used dental records, to determine that one was almost certainly that of Bormann. In early May 1973, the DNA was matched to that of an 83-year old relative of Bormann.

The other skeleton was identified as Hitler's doctor, Ludwig Stumpfegger. The two men had apparently been found by a Russian soldier, and had taken cyanide. In April 1973, a West German court formally pronounced Bormann dead."

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/martin-bormann

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Detailed Bormann Bio: https://propagander.tripod.com/mb01.html

1: This artwork is a political caricature by Polish-American Jewish artist Arthur Szyk titled "Satan Leads the Ball" (1942). The painting lampoons the leaders of the Axis Powers during World War II, depicting them as a nightmarish procession led by Satan. Key figures include Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini (shown with holey boots), and Hideki Tojo. Szyk utilized a meticulous technique influenced by medieval illuminated manuscripts to fight against fascism, bigotry, and antisemitism. NOTE that the swastika hate symbols have been defaced.-W

"Upon his very first entrance into the House of Commons as Britain's new Prime Minister on Monday, May 13, 1940, Winston Churchill only received a lukewarm reception from the assembly, while at his side, outgoing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was heartily cheered.

Churchill then made this brief statement, which has become one of the finest call-to-arms yet uttered. It came at the beginning of World War II when the armies of Adolf Hitler were roaring across Europe, seemingly unstoppable, conquering country after country for Nazi Germany, and when the survival of Great Britain itself appeared rather uncertain."

>"Mister Speaker, on Friday evening last I received His Majesty's commission to form a new Administration. It was the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties, both those who supported the late Government and also the parties of the Opposition.

>I have completed the most important part of this task. A War Cabinet has been formed of five Members, representing, with the Liberal Opposition, the unity of the nation. The three party Leaders have agreed to serve, either in the War Cabinet or in high executive office. The three Fighting Services have been filled. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day, on account of the extreme urgency and rigor of events.

>A number of other key positions were filled yesterday, and I am submitting a further list to His Majesty tonight. I hope to complete the appointment of the principal Ministers during tomorrow. The appointment of the other Ministers usually takes a little longer, but I trust that when Parliament meets again, this part of my task will be completed, and that the administration will be complete in all respects.

>Sir, I considered it in the public interest to suggest that the House should be summoned to meet today. Mr. Speaker agreed, and took the necessary steps, in accordance with the powers conferred upon him by the Resolution of the House.

>At the end of the proceedings today, the Adjournment of the House will be proposed until Tuesday, the 21st of May, with, of course, provision for earlier meeting, if need be. The business to be considered during that week will be notified to Members at the earliest opportunity.

>I now invite the House, by the Resolution which stands in my name, to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new Government.

>Sir, to form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations have to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today.

>I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

>We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

>You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope.

>I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

>I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

>We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.

>You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

>You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terrors—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal.

>I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say: Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength"

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/churchill.htm

NOT MY LINKS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TlkN-dcDCk

Ernst Bohle attends a meeting with Hitler at Obersalzberg.

>"I (Bohle) heard that Hess—who since the beginning of war seldom wanted to bother Hitler and thus saw him only rarely—had had a four-hour-long private meeting with him at the Chancellery shortly before he left.

>And on May 13 when Hitler received the "top men"—including me—on the Obersalzberg, he confirmed this meeting and said that Hess had asked him whether he still stood by his program of collaboration with Britain as stated in Mein Kampf. Hitler said he did."

-From Dr Robert Kemper's account of his post-war conversations with Bohle: (Sereny)

Statement by the German Information Office:

>"It is officially announced by the National Socialist Party that Party Member Rudolf Hess, who, as he was suffering from an illness of some years standing, had been strictly forbidden to embark on any further flying activity, was able—contrary to this command—again to come into possession of an aircraft.

>On Saturday, May 10, at about 6:00 PM, Rudolf Hess . . . set off on a flight from Augsburg, Bavaria, from which he has not yet returned. A letter left behind shows by its confusion traces of a mental disorder, and it is feared that he was a victim of hallucinations.

>The Fuehrer at once ordered the arrest of [his] adjutants . . . who alone had knowledge of these flights and did not, contrary to the Fuehrer's orders, of which they were fully aware, either prevent or report the flights. Under these circumstances it must be assumed that Party Member Hess either jumped from his aircraft or met with an accident.

From Khrushchev Remembers by Nikita Khrushchev, translated by Strobe Talbot:

>Stalin's face and behavior showed signs of his anxiety, but he rarely shared his anxiety with the rest of us or even asked our opinion about what should be done. I remember that when Hess flew to England and the Germans put out the canard that he had fled, I said to Stalin,

>"The Germans are hiding something. I don't think Hess's flight to England is really an escape from Germany at all. I think he must actually be on a secret mission from Hitler to negotiate with the English about cutting short the war in the West to free Hitler's hands for the push east."

>Stalin heard me out, and then said, "Yes, that's it. You understand correctly." He didn't develop his thoughts on the subject further. He just agreed. We had long since become accustomed to the practice that if you weren't told something, you didn't ask.

A Nazi Party correspondent fills in some detail in a later edition:

>From an examination of the papers left behind by Rudolf Hess, it seems that he harbored the delusion that, by a personal approach to English acquaintances, he could still bring about an understanding between Germany and England. In point of fact, a report from London states that he has bailed out of his plane over Scotland, near the place he was seeking, and has been found there, apparently injured.

>Rudolf Hess, who for years had been known to suffer from severe pain, has lately had increasingly frequent recourse to all kinds of cures, to hypnotists, astrologers, and so forth. How far these persons are to blame, for creating mental confusion in Hess, is being investigated. But it is also conceivable that Hess has been deliberately lured into a trap by the English.

>The whole nature of [Hess's] action confirms the fact—mentioned in the first announcement—namely, that he suffered from delusions. He knew, better than anyone else, the numerous peace proposals put forward honestly by the Fuehrer. But apparently, he has deluded himself [that], by personal sacrifice, he could prevent those developments, which would end only with the complete destruction of the British Empire. Hess, whose duties, as we all know, lay exclusively within the Party, had no clear idea about this venture, still less of its consequences.

Interview with Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, a British Foreign Office expert on Germany:

>At this point, Hess tried to make my flesh creep, by emphasizing that the avaricious Americans had fell designs upon the Empire. Canada would certainly be incorporated into the United States.

>Reverting to [the subject of] Hitler's attitude, [Hess] said that, only as recently as May 3rd—after his Reichstag speech—Hitler had declared to him that he had no oppressive demands to make of England. The solution, which Herr Hess proposed, was that England should give Germany a free hand in Europe, and [that] Germany would give England a completely free hand in the Empire, with the sole reservation, that we should return Germany's ex-colonies, which she required as a source of raw materials.

>I asked, in order to draw him on the subject of Hitler's attitude to Russia, whether he included Russia in Europe or in Asia. He replied, 'In Asia'. I then retorted that under the terms of his proposal, since Germany would only have a free hand in Europe, she would not be at liberty to attack Russia. Herr Hess reacted quickly, by remarking that Germany had certain demands to make of Russia, which would have to be satisfied: either by negotiation, or as the result of a war. He added, however, that there was no foundation for the rumors now being spread, that Hitler was contemplating an early attack on Russia.

>I then asked about Italian aims, and he said that he did not know. I replied that it was a matter of some importance. He brushed this aside, and said that he was sure that Italy's claims would not be excessive. I suggested that Italy scarcely deserved anything, but he begged to differ. Italy had rendered considerable services to Germany; and besides, England had compensated defeated nations like Romania, after the last war.

>Finally, as we were leaving the room, Herr Hess delivered a parting shot. He had forgotten, he declared, to emphasize that the proposal could only be considered, on the understanding that it was negotiated by Germany with an English [sic] Government other than the present British Government. Mr. Churchill, who had planned the war since 1936—and his colleagues, who had lent themselves to his war policy—were not persons with whom the Fuehrer could negotiate.

From an account of conversations between Ribbentrop and Mussolini and Ciano:

>To begin with, the Reich Foreign Minister conveyed the Fuehrer's greetings to the Duce. He would shortly propose to the Duce a date for the planned meeting, which he would like to take place as soon as possible. As [to] the place for the meeting, he would probably prefer the Brenner. At the present moment, he was, as the Duce could well understand, still busy with the Hess Affair, and with a few military matters. The Duce replied that he would agree with all the Fuehrer's proposals.

>The Reich Foreign Minister then said that the Fuehrer had sent him to the Duce, in order to inform him about the Hess affair, and the conversations with Admiral Darlan. With regard to Hess's affair he remarked that the Fuehrer and his staff had been completely taken aback by Hess's action, and that it had been the deed of a lunatic. Hess had been suffering for a long time from bilious attacks and had fallen into the hands of magnetists and nature-cure doctors who caused his state of health to become worse.

>All these matters were being investigated at the moment, as well as the responsibility of the aides-de-camp, who had known about Hess's forbidden flights. Hess had, for weeks, carried out secret practice flights in an ME-110. Naturally, he had acted only from idealistic motives. Disloyalty towards the Fuehrer was utterly out of the question. His conduct had to be explained by a kind of abstractness, and a state of mind caused by his illness.

>Being sympathetically inclined towards England, he had conceived the crazy idea of using Great Britain's fascist [sic] circles, to persuade the British to give in. He had explained all this in a long and confused letter to the Fuehrer. When this letter reached the Fuehrer, Hess was already in England. It was hoped, in Germany, that he would perhaps meet with an accident on the way, but he was now really in England, and had tried to contact the former Marquis of Clydesdale, the present Duke of Hamilton. Hess quite wrongly considered him as a great friend of Germany, and had flown to the neighborhood of [the Duke's] castle in Scotland.

From the Diary of Count Ciano, Foreign Minister of Axis Italy:

>Von Ribbentrop arrives in Rome unexpectedly. He is discouraged and nervous. He wants to confer with the Duce and me for various reasons, but there is only one real reason: he wants to inform us about the Hess affair . . . . The official version is that Hess—sick in body and mind—was a victim of his pacifist hallucinations, and went to England in the hope of facilitating the beginning of peace negotiations.

>Hence, he is not a traitor; hence he will not talk; hence, whatever else is said or printed in his name, is false. Ribbentrop's conversation is a beautiful feat of patching things up. The Germans want to cover themselves before Hess speaks, and reveals things that might make a great impression in Italy.

>Mussolini comforted von Ribbentrop, but afterwards told me that he considers the Hess affair a tremendous blow to the Nazi regime. He added that he was glad of it, because this will have the effect of bringing down German stock, even with the Italians.

From a post-war interview with Willy Messerschmitt:

>In the late autumn of 1940, he told me in Augsburg that he wanted to try out new fighter planes. At first I refused, but Hess insisted and declared that his position entitled him to this, and in the end I gave permission for "the Fuehrer's Deputy" to fly the ME-110 plane. Hess, an outstanding pilot, carried out some twenty flights from the Augsburg airfield.

>After each flight he reported to me and my engineers what faults he had discovered in the machine, in hope that this would lead the engineers to design a special machine for the secretly planned flight to Britain.

>After one such flight Hess said to me, "This fighter plane is excellent, but it is only suitable for short flights. I bet that it will lose all its maneuverability if you put additional fuel tanks on the wings." Shortly after this, Hess tried the same tactics with regard to a radio set which he wanted to have greater range.

>In order to show that the installation of a heavier radio set did not affect the flying qualities of the machine, I had one put in. Pretending that his interest was a purely technical one, Hess gradually got us to build for him an ideal machine for the flight he had planned.

1: "Another Case of Mental Derangement” (June 16, 1941) by Ty Mahon (1896-?) "Mahon was the editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as well as a general illustrator Esquire during the 1930s and 1940s. He is a bit of a ghost. The 1940 census lists him as living in Philadelphia and being born in 1896.

Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess served in that position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom during World War II. He was taken prisoner and eventually convicted of crimes against peace, serving a life sentence until his suicide.

Hitler decreed in 1939 that Hermann Goering was his official successor, and named Hess as next in line. In addition to appearing on Hitler’s behalf at speaking engagements and rallies, Hess signed into law much of the government’s legislation, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped the Jews of Germany of their rights in the lead-up to the Holocaust.

Concerned that Germany would face a war on two fronts as plans progressed for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union scheduled to take place in 1941, Hess decided to attempt to bring Britain to the negotiating table by travelling there himself to seek meetings with the British government.

Before his departure from Germany, Hess had given his adjutant a letter addressed to Hitler that detailed his intentions to open peace negotiations with the British. He delivered the letter to Hitler at the Berghof around noon on May 11. After reading the letter, Hitler let loose an outcry heard throughout the entire Berghof and sent for a number of his inner circle, concerned that a putsch might be underway.

Hitler worried that his allies, Italy and Japan, would perceive Hess’s act as an attempt by Hitler to secretly open peace negotiations with the British. Hitler contacted Mussolini specifically to reassure him otherwise. For this reason, Hitler ordered that the German press should characterize Hess as a madman who made the decision to fly to Scotland entirely on his own, without Hitler’s knowledge or authority.

The official press bulletin said that Hess had become “a deluded, deranged and muddled idealist, ridden with hallucinations traceable to World War injuries“… hence the cartoon’s title of “another case” of derangement.

Hitler stripped Hess of all of his party and state offices, and secretly ordered him shot on sight if he ever returned to Germany. He abolished the post of Deputy Führer.

Hess was already in a deteriorated mental state by the Nuremburg Trials, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Forty years later, while in custody in Spandau, he died by hanging himself in 1987 at the age of 93.

After his death, the prison was demolished to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine." https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/ww2/category/1941-jan-jun/

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VIDEO - Moss Side Stories: Guarding Rudolf Hess - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWSc5kSEjgk

NOTE: We apologize for the swastika hate symbol in the historic picture.

Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

Stroop's forces encounter fewer Jews as the majority have already been killed, deported, or remain tightly sealed in underground bunkers. To root out remaining resistance fighters, German troops systematically burn blocks, blow up dugouts, & cut off water supplies.

Shock troops face desperate, sporadic fire from Jewish insurgents hiding in the smoldering rubble. By the official conclusion of the operation on May 16, 1943, Stroop reports a total of 56,065 Jews captured or killed. The captured survivors are sent directly to the Treblinka killing center or to forced-labor camps like Majdanek, Poniatowa, and Trawniki.

The uprising stands as the largest single armed Jewish revolt during WW2, shattering Nazi expectations of a swift, submissive liquidation. Evidence of these actions will be presented at Nuremberg using Stroop's own commemorative photo album, a document now preserved in the Institute of National Remembrance and registered by UNESCO.

Today's Stroop Report:

>"Progress of large-scale operation on 13 May 1943, start 1000 hours. In combing out the Ghetto and the miniature Ghetto (Prosta) today we found 234 Jews. 155 Jews were shot in battle. Today it became clear that the Jews and bandits whom we are catching now belong to the so-called battle groups.

>All of them are young fellows and females between 18 and 25 years of age. When we captured one, a real skirmish took place, in which the Jews not only fired from 08 pistols and Polish Vis pistols, but also threw Polish "pineapple" hand grenades at the Waffen-SS men.

>After part of the inmates of the dug-out had been caught and were about to be searched, one of the females as quick as lightning put her hand under her shirt, as many others had done, and fetched from her bloomers a "pineapple" hand grenade, drew the safety-catch, threw the grenade among the men who were searching her, and jumped quickly to cover. It is only thanks to the presence of mind of the men that no casualties ensued.

>The few Jews and criminals still staying in the Ghetto have for the last few days been using the hideouts they can still find among the ruins, retiring at night into the dug-outs whose location is known to them, to eat and get provisions for the next day.

> Lately we have been unable to extract information on the whereabouts of further dug-outs from the captured Jews. The remainder of the inmates of that dug-out where the skirmish took place were destroyed by using heavier explosive charges. From a Wehrmacht concern we evacuated 327 Jews today. The Jews we catch now are sent to T.II.

>The total of Jews caught has risen to 55,179.

• Our losses:
• 2 Waffen SS dead
• 3 Waffen SS wounded
• 1 Policeman wounded.
• The 2 Waffen SS men lost their lives in the air attack against the Ghetto.
• 33 dug-outs were discovered and destroyed. Booty: 6 pistols, 2 hand grenades, and some explosive charges.

>Termination of today's operation: 2100 hours, will be continued on 14 May 1943, 1000 hours.

>My intention is to terminate the large-scale operation on 16 May 1943 and to turn all further measures over to Police battalion III/23. Unless ordered otherwise, I am going to submit to the conference of SS and Policefuehrers a detailed report of the operation, including an appendix containing photos."

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-stroop-report-may-1943

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE: The SS-men lay in wait for the fighters and civilians forced out of their bunkers by fire, gas, and a lack of water.

It revolved around a basic question that cut to the heart of her personal identity. Was she an Austrian or was she a Jew? Of course, there was no real reason why she couldn’t be both, but Nazi racist ideas didn’t allow for that possibility. The irony of Elisabeth’s situation was that she no longer lived in Austria; nevertheless, the question followed her when she left.

LIFE AS AN ENEMY ALIEN

Nazi Germany took over Austria in 1938, so Elisabeth and her family fled to France to escape. In France, the government should have recognized German and Austrian Jews as refugees, but that isn’t what happened.

Instead, when World War II began, the French government required many German and Austrian men, even refugees, to be interned as “enemy aliens”. This happened during the so-called “Phoney War” period from September 1939 until the beginning of May 1940.

During this time, Germany attacked Poland in the east, but made no move against France in the west. The “Phoney War” ended on May 10th when Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Then rumors began to circulate that the internment policy would be greatly enlarged.

On May 13th, Elisabeth wrote,

>“We, as Austrians, are in a great state of anxiety. The official decree does not clearly state whether Austrians fall under the internment order, or whether we have been excepted. Mother and I – I skipped school today – are running from one office to another and are being given evasive answers. One commissioner says ‘yes’ and another ‘no’.

>They play with our nerves as if they were toys. This kind of day is nerve-wracking and filled with doubt about losing in the next three days what one values most in life, what is left of our personal freedom.”

As it turned out, Elisabeth was not sent to an internment camp as she had feared on this day. Instead, she ended up fleeing for her life as the German army got closer and closer to Paris. When France fell, Elisabeth found refuge Le Chambon-sur-Lignon with the family of André and Magda Trocmé.

Eventually, she and her parents were able to escape to the United States. She had won back that person freedom that was so important to her, but she was one of the lucky few to be able to do so.

You may read excerpts from Elisabeth Kaufmann’s diary in Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust by Alexandra Zapruder." (holocaustedu)

ABOUT Elizabeth Kaufmann---> https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/elizabeth-kaufmann

1: Elizabeth Kaufmann

2: Page from a diary written by Elizabeth Kaufmann while living with the family of Pastor André Trocmé in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, 1940–41.

Under the command of Captain Gustav Schröder, passengers are treated with absolute dignity & respect. Traditional Jewish Friday evening services are permitted in the ship's dining room. A bust of Adolf Hitler inside the ship is purposefully covered with a tablecloth.

Most passengers held entry documents for Cuba and intended to wait there until their U.S. visa applications were approved. Upon reaching Havana on May 27, the Cuban government will refuse to honor the transit documents. Only 28 passengers will be allowed to disembark.

The ship will then sail close to Miami, but the U.S. government will refuse to make quota exceptions. The Coast Guard will prevent anyone from swimming ashore. Canada will also reject appeals to accept the ship, forcing it back to Europe on June 6.

Four western European countries—Great Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands—agree to take sections of the refugees. The passengers will finally disembark the ship in Antwerp, Belgium, on June 17, 1939. World War II began less than four months later. Nazi Germany subsequently invaded and overran France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Historical analysis by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum determined that 254 of the original passengers were ultimately murdered in the Holocaust.

"The German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba.

On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most were German citizens, some were from eastern Europe, and a few were officially "stateless." The majority of the Jewish passengers had applied for US visas, and had planned to stay in Cuba only until they could enter the United States.

But by the time the St. Louis sailed, there were signs that political conditions in Cuba might keep the passengers from landing there.

The US State Department in Washington, the US consulate in Havana, some Jewish organizations, and refugee agencies were all aware of the situation. The passengers themselves were not informed; most were ultimately compelled to return to Europe...." THE FULL HEARTBREAKING STORY—> https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbFM1Vw8Q1M

1: 1939 POSTCARD of the "St. Louis."

2: The plight of German-Jewish refugees, persecuted at home and unwanted abroad, is illustrated by the voyage of the SS "St. Louis." On May 13, 1939, the SS "St. Louis," a German ocean liner, left Germany with almost a thousand Jewish refugees on board. The refugees' destination was Cuba, but before their arrival the Cuban government revoked their permission to land. The "St. Louis" was forced to return to Europe in June 1939. However, Great Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands agreed to accept the stranded refugees. After German forces occupied western Europe in 1940, many "St. Louis" passengers and other Jewish refugees who had entered those countries were caught up in the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe.

3: This photograph shows a group of Jewish refugees aboard the German transatlantic liner MS St. Louis in May 1939.

"He is now recognized as the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp during WW2.

Pilecki was born on May 13, 1901 in Karelia, Russia where his family had been forcibly resettled by Tsarist Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland's January Uprising of 1863-1864. In 1910, Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania) where he joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization.

In 1918, during World War I, Pilecki joined Polish self-defense units in the Wilno area with which he helped collect weapons and disarm retreating German troops in what became the prelude to the Vilna offensive.

During the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920, Pilecki commanded a ZHP Scout section that was overrun by the Bolsheviks. He later joined the regular Polish Army and fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev. On August 5, 1920, Pilecki joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest and took part in the liberation of Wilno.

During World War II, Pilecki smuggled himself into Auschwitz under the false name Tomasz Serafinski in 1940 and began recruiting members for an underground resistance group that he organized into a coherent movement. He began sending information about what was going on inside the camp and confirming that the Nazis were seeking the extermination of the Jews to Britain and the United States as early as 1941.

Pilecki used a courier system that the Polish Resistance operated throughout occupied Europe to channel the reports to the Allies. Documents released from the Polish Archives that provided details of these reports again raised questions as to why the Allies, particularly Winston Churchill, never did anything to put an end to the atrocities being committed that they learned of so early in the war.

By 1942, Pilecki's resistance group had learned of the existence of the gas chambers and began work on several plans to liberate Auschwitz, including one in which the RAF would bomb the walls or Free Polish paratroopers would fly in from Britain.

In 1943, when Pilecki realized that the Allies did not have plans to liberate the camp, he escaped with two other prisoners after he voluntarily spent 2½ years at the camp smuggling out its darkest secrets to the Allies. The documents released from the Polish Archives also included a Gestapo manhunt alert following Pilecki's escape.

In 1944, Pilecki was captured while fighting in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp. He joined the Free Polish troops in Italy in July of 1945 and agreed to return to Poland and gather intelligence on its takeover by the Soviets.

Pilecki was caught by the Polish Communist regime, tortured, interrogated on his espionage, and executed following a trial at which he was given three death sentences. Pilecki was executed on May 25, 1948 at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison.

The details of Pilecki's bravery could not truly emerge until after the collapse of Communism in 1989. He received posthumously the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1995 and the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish decoration in 2006.

Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, said that Pilecki was “an example of inexplicable goodness at a time of inexplicable evil.

There is ever-growing awareness of Poles helping Jews in the Holocaust, and how they paid with their lives, like Pilecki. We must honor these examples and follow them today in the parts of the world where there are horrors again.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/witold-pilecki

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - The story of Witold Pilecki - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0LuqcsEFiw

"Oskar Rosenfeld was born in Koryčany, Moravia to Jeanette Rosenfeld (Jellinek). Finished his studies in 1908 and earned a doctorate in Vienna on Philipp Otto Runge in the Romantics. Active in different Zionist organizations.

Wrote for Jewish papers and journals such as “Die Welt” and “Juedische Volkssimme”, culture critics, about art, theater and literature. Was a member of Jewish “Hochschuelerverein Theodor Herzl”.

Career - 1904 he was one of the founders of the Jewish youth and student newspaper Unsere Hoffnung. 1907 he founded, together with writer Hugo Zuckermann, Egon Brecher and others a Jewish theatre initiative, to play modern Yiddish dramas in German language.

His first novel was Die vierte Galerie, published in 1910. In the First World War he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army in Sofia in the Austrian-Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and was the chief editor of the Bulgarische Handelszeitung 1916–1918.

1920 six novels of Rosenfeld's were published under the title Tage und Naechte. He was active in the Judenstaatspartei. 1923–1927 he worked as an editor of the Wiener Morgenzeitung.

1927 he founded the new Jewish theater in Vienna Jüdische Künstlerspiele. Rosenfeld translated classical and modern Yiddish literature, works of Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Leib Peretz and Joshua Singer.

Rosenfeld started to work for the illustrated weekly Die neue Welt in 1929, later becoming its editor in chief. The 1938 Anschluss brought Rosenfeld's work in Vienna to an end. He and his wife, Henriette, emigrated to Prague, where he became a correspondent for The Jewish Chronicle.

World War II - In 1939, Rosenfeld's wife emigrated to England in anticipation of him following, but the outbreak of Second World War made his emigration impossible. In November 1941, Rosenfeld was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland, along with 5,000 Jews from Prague. From June 1942 on, he worked in the Ghetto archive, where he took part in publication of the community's chronicle and wrote for its lexicon.

Death and afterward - In August 1944, Oskar Rosenfeld was deported to Auschwitz, where he was killed in a gas chamber.

His diary, written in the ghetto between 17 February 1942 and 28 July 1944 in a series of fifteen school notebooks, is kept at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Rosenfeld

As a centerpiece of the Nazi regime's inner circle, he was later appointed Supreme SS and Police Leader in occupied Italy. Wolff managed Himmler's office, schedules, and communications from 1933 to 1943. He acted as the primary conduit between the SS leadership and the Führer's headquarters. He secured rail transport from the German State Railways to deport 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka.

Appointed in 1943, he oversaw anti-partisan operations in Italy and directed the deportation of Italian Jews.

In early 1945, Wolff initiated Operation Sunrise with OSS agent Allen Dulles in Switzerland. He bypasses Hitler's orders to sign the surrender of Axis forces in Italy on April 29, 1945. Due to his cooperation, American and British intelligence shielded him from the Nuremberg Trials. Instead of facing a tribunal, he was used as a witness against other Nazi defendants.

Wolff spent only a brief period in a denazification camp before building a successful advertising career. Public focus during the Adolf Eichmann trial brought new evidence of Wolff's signature on Holocaust transport documents. A Munich court labeled him "Himmler's bureaucrat of death" and sentenced him to 15 years in prison. After suffering a heart attack, he was released from prison for medical reasons in 1971. He died in Rosenheim in 1984.

"...During the Second World War, Wolff remained in his job as Himmler's adjutant, but soon began losing authority and power as disagreements developed with Himmler and also Wolff began to fall under the shadow of the number two man in the SS, Reinhard Heydrich.

In 1942, Wolff was made a full SS-General (Obergruppenführer) but dismissed by Himmler as Chief of Staff to the Reichsführer. Wolff, however, did manage a comeback as Adolf Hitler personally granted him equivalent General's rank in the Waffen-SS and assigned him as an SS adjutant to the Italian Government in 1943.

When Italy surrendered to the Allies later that year, Germany occupied the country and Wolff became the Supreme SS and Police Leader of Italy. At the start of 1945, Wolff (who was now acting military commander of Italy) extended secret negotiation requests to the Allies and thus hastened the end of the war in Italy by surrendering the country to the Allies on May 2, 1945. Wolff was taken into American custody, although was allowed to escape trial as an SS-General and leading Nazi, by providing evidence against his fellow Nazis at Nuremberg, in 1946.

In 1947, Karl Wolff retired to private life, however the West German government soon arrested Wolff for war crimes in 1949, sentencing him to four years in prison. Wolff was again arrested in 1964, after evidence presented at the Adolf Eichmann trial, in Israel, had revealed that Wolff had organized the deportation of Italian Jews to the Nazi death camps in 1944. Wolff was sentenced to fifteen years in prison but only served half of this term..." MORE: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938273/bio

NOT MY LINKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Wolff

1: This image shows former SS General Karl Wolff during his war crimes trial in Munich on July 14, 1964. Wolff served as the Chief of Personal Staff to Heinrich Himmler and was later the senior SS commander in Italy. Despite his high rank, he initially escaped prosecution at Nuremberg due to his involvement in negotiating the surrender of German forces in Italy, known as Operation Sunrise. He was arrested again in West Germany in 1962 and ultimately sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1964 for his complicity in the deportation of Polish Jews.

"Demjanjuk sat in a wheelchair before the judges as they announced their verdict, but showed no reaction.

It was not immediately clear how much credit he would get for time already served. Defense attorneys had said during the 18-month trial they would appeal a conviction.

Demjanjuk was a Red Army soldier allegedly captured as a prisoner of war by the Wehrmacht in 1942 and trained as an SS guard before being sent to work at a death camp near Sobibór, a village close to the border between Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.

He has been described by one Nazi expert as "the littlest of the little fishes" and is the lowest ranking person ever to be put on trial for war crimes in Germany.

The prosecution has presented no evidence that Demjanjuk committed a specific crime, but claims his presence at Sobibór is enough to charge him with being an accessory to murder. It is the first time this legal argument has been tried in German courts.

The case against Demjanjuk was that he was one of the guards who forced Jewish prisoners into rooms, knowing that engine fumes were to be pumped in. Demjanjuk is then alleged to have dragged out the corpses and thrown them into a mass grave, where they were later burned in an attempt to leave no trace.

Demjanjuk said he was a victim, not a perpetrator, of Nazi crimes. His lawyer, Ulrich Busch, told the court on Wednesday that high-ranking Germans, such as the commander of the Trawniki SS camp where Demjanjuk allegedly trained, had been acquitted by German courts.

"Should foreigners pay for the crimes of the Germans … in order to acquit Germany of its responsibility alone for the Holocaust?" Busch said.

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr, accused German prosecutors of ignoring the facts.

"My dad is a survivor of the genocide famine in Ukraine, of the war fighting the Nazis, of the Nazi POW camps … and now of Germany's attempt to finish the job left unfinished by Hitler's real henchmen," he said in an email to the Associated Press on Wednesday.

>"While some who refuse to accept the history of that period may take satisfaction from this event, nothing the Munich court can say will erase the true suffering he has endured to this day."

A Dutch Nazi war crimes expert, Professor Christiaan Rüter, has said Demjanjuk was not a key Nazi lieutenant but "the littlest of the little fishes".

The long, often interrupted proceedings attracted international attention after some legal experts suggested it could be the last trial of a Nazi war criminal in Germany. However, Cornelius Nestler, a lawyer for families of Sobibór victims who joined the trial as co-plaintiffs, said on Wednesday that "if there is a verdict for accessory to murder because one was a guard in a camp where many people were killed, it could be a beginning of new last wave of many [such] proceedings".

The trial was listed for 35 days when it began at the end of November 2009, but Demjanjuk's poor health, plus countless legal arguments, have strung it out for 18 months.

Hearings were sometimes cut short when Demjanjuk complained about his numerous health problems, which include early onset leukemia and gout. The court was only able to sit for two 90-minute sessions a day after a doctor said the accused could cope with no more.

Demjanjuk was carried into the court precinct each day on a stretcher and lay inside the courtroom on a bed with his eyes shut, or hidden behind sunglasses, as his alleged crimes were read out in horrific detail, translated loudly into his ear in Ukrainian.

The trial was derailed by the death of a key witness in November last year. Samuel Kunz, 89, had been a Nazi guard at Sobibór and could also have stood trial for mass murder. Kunz's death meant that no living witness could testify to having seen Demjanjuk at the concentration camp.

The prosecution instead relied on written records and an SS identity card alleged to have belonged to Demjanjuk, who fled to the United States in 1952 and spent decades working in an Ohio car factory.

In February, his lawyers asked the judge to stop the trial after a declassified FBI file emerged which suggested the ID card might have been forged by the KGB. The case continued after prosecutors argued that subsequent examinations had proved its authenticity.

Demjanjuk, who changed his first name from Ivan when starting his new life in the US, spent more than seven years in prison in Israel, five of them on death row, after being found guilty of being a notorious concentration camp guard at Treblinka known as Ivan the Terrible. He was set free when his lawyers proved it was a case of mistaken identity.

Demjanjuk spent 10 months in a US jail while awaiting extradition to Germany. He has been on remand in the hospital wing of Stadelheim, the jail where Hitler once served time, since 12 May 2009.

Last November, on the first anniversary of the trial's opening, Busch read out a statement in which Demjanjuk said he was just "a simple prisoner of war" who was being unfairly singled out and persecuted by German authorities who had let far more serious Nazi war criminals slip through the net.

Busch had suggested at the start of the trial that Demjanjuk was a victim rather than a murderer. "Ultimately, my client is not different from Thomas Blatt, who did what he could to stay alive," he said.

Eighty-four-year-old Blatt, one of two plaintiffs who survived the camp, managed to stay alive by working as a shoeshine boy to the camp commandant before escaping in October 1943.

Another survivor, Jules Schelvis, whose whole family was murdered at Sobibór, has said he is less interested in seeing Demjanjuk sentenced to die in jail than seeing justice done.

"Justice must be done and be seen to be done, the sentence is almost irrelevant," he said as the trial opened.

Outside the courtroom on Wednesday, David van Huden, a 79-year-old Dutchman whose mother, father and sister were murdered within hours of arriving at Sobibór in 1943, said he saw the trial as a chance "to defend our rights as Holocaust survivors and the rights of our parents".

Helen Hyde, headteacher at Watford grammar school for girls, whose aunt, uncle and cousin were killed at the camp, said:

>"The horrors of Sobibór must never be forgotten."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/12/john-demjanjuk-guilty-nazi-war-crimes

2: Historic records and biometric analysis suggest the man seen front row center in this 1943 image of Sobibor camp guards is John Demjanjuk. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

>“We stay in Berlin, period!" -POTUS Harry S. Truman

"An early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin’s two million citizens.

At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into four sectors administered by the four major Allied powers: the USSR, the United States, Britain, and France. Berlin, the German capital, was likewise divided into four sectors, even though it was located deep within the Soviet sector of eastern Germany.

The future of Germany and Berlin was a major sticking point in postwar treaty talks, especially after the United States, Britain, and France sought to unite their occupation zones into a single economic zone.

In March 1948, the Soviet Union quit the Allied Control Council governing occupied Germany over this issue. In May, the three Western powers agreed to the imminent formation of West Germany, a nation that would exist entirely independent of Soviet-occupied eastern Germany. The three western sectors of Berlin were united as West Berlin, which was to be under the administration of West Germany.

On June 20, as a major step toward the establishment of a West German government, the Western powers introduced a new Deutsche mark currency in West Germany and West Berlin. The Soviets condemned this move as an attack on the East German currency and on June 24 began a blockade of all rail, road, and water communications between Berlin and the West.

The four-power administration of Berlin had ceased with the unification of West Berlin, the Soviets said, and the Western powers no longer had a right to be there. With West Berlin’s food, fuel, and other necessities cut off, the Soviets reasoned, it would soon have to submit to Communist control.

Britain and the United States responded by initiating the largest airlift in history, flying 278,288 relief missions to the city during the next 14 months, resulting in the delivery of 2,326,406 tons of supplies. As the Soviets had cut off power to West Berlin, coal accounted for over two-thirds of the material delivered. In the opposite direction, return flights transported West Berlin’s industrial exports to the West.

Flights were made around the clock, and at the height of the Berlin airlift, in April 1949, planes were landing in the city every minute. Tensions were high during the airlift, and three groups of U.S. strategic bombers were sent as reinforcements to Britain while the Soviet army presence in eastern Germany increased dramatically.

The Soviets made no major effort to disrupt the airlift. As a countermeasure against the Soviet blockade, the Western powers also launched a trade embargo against eastern Germany and other Soviet bloc countries.

On May 12, 1949, the Soviets abandoned the blockade, and the first British and American convoys drove though 110 miles of Soviet Germany to reach West Berlin. On May 23, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was formally established. On October 7, the German Democratic Republic, a Communist state, was proclaimed in East Germany.

The Berlin airlift continued until September 30, in an effort to build up a year’s supply of essential goods for West Berlin in the event of another Soviet blockade. Another blockade did not occur, but Cold War tensions over Berlin remained high, culminating in the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

With the gradual waning of Soviet power in the late 1980s, the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its grip on power. Tens of thousands of East Germans began to flee the nation, and by late 1989 the Berlin Wall started to come down. Shortly thereafter, talks between East and West German officials, joined by officials from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR, began to explore the possibility of reunification, which was achieved on October 3, 1990.

Two months following reunification, all-German elections took place and Helmut Kohl became the first chancellor of the reunified Germany. Although this action came more than a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for many observers the reunification of Germany effectively marked the end of the Cold War." https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/berlin-blockade-lifted

While the lifting of the blockade proved the long-term viability of collective action, several other western successes preceded it:

Iranian Crisis (1946): Often called the "opening salvo" of the Cold War, this was the earliest documented success of containment. Through intense diplomatic pressure at the newly formed United Nations and firm negotiations, the United States and Iran forced the Soviet Union to withdraw the Red Army from northern Iran, where they had remained past a treaty-mandated deadline.

The Truman Doctrine (March 1947): President Harry Truman secured $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey, which successfully prevented communist takeovers in those countries. This established the "containment" strategy that would define the era.

The Marshall Plan (April 1948): Officially the European Recovery Program, this initiative sent over $12 billion to rebuild Western Europe. It was a massive success that blunted Soviet influence by stabilizing war-torn economies before they could fall to communist subversion.

The 1949 lifting of the Berlin Blockade was unique because it was the first major direct confrontation between the superpowers that the West won without firing a shot. It also led directly to the formation of NATO in April 1949, formalizing the western alliance just before the Soviets backed down.

VIDEO - Berlin Blockade Ends Reel 1 (1949) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvXJ5LLu-jA

2: West Berliners watch a Douglas C-54 Skymaster land at Tempelhof Airport, 1948

3: Berlin Airlift Monument in Berlin-Tempelhof, displaying the names of the 39 British and 31 American airmen who lost their lives during the operation. Similar monuments are located at the military airfield of Wietzenbruch near the former RAF Celle and at Rhein-Main Air Base.

On the night of May 8, 1945, Keitel signed the unconditional surrender at the Soviet headquarters in Berlin at the insistence of Joseph Stalin, who wanted a formal ceremony on Soviet-controlled territory following the initial signing in Reims.

Keitel was arrested in Flensburg, where the short-lived Flensburg Government under Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was located. Following his arrest, he was interned at Camp Ashcan in Mondorf-les-Bains, Luxembourg, before being moved to Nuremberg.

Keitel was tried by the International Military Tribunal and convicted on all counts, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was executed by hanging on October 16, 1946.

From The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel:

"I was to surrender as a prisoner of war, and would be flown out at 2:00 that afternoon — in two hours time. I was to turn over my official business to Colonel-General [Alfred] Jodl; I was to be allowed to take with me one personal staff officer, a batman, and 300 lbs. of baggage. I stood up, saluted briefly with my Field Marshal's baton, and drove back to headquarters . . . .

>I took leave of [Grand Admiral Karl] Doenitz, who had already been briefed on what was to happen, and selected Lieutenant-Colonel John von Freyend, and Monch, to accompany me, thereby ensuring a considerably less arduous captivity for them. I handed my personal papers and keys to Jodl, and handed Szimonski ... one or two things and a letter for my wife, which were to be flown down to Berchtesgaden in the courier plane.

>Unfortunately, the British later seized everything ... even my ... bank passbook, and the letter to my wife. We took off for a destination not disclosed to us and, after flying right across Germany, landed that evening in Luxembourg airport; there I was treated as a prisoner-of-war for the first time, and taken to the internment camp in the Palace Hotel, Mondorf, where [Arthur] Seyss-Inquart had already arrived.

>In Flensburg, I had been my own master; I drove to the airfield in my own car; in those two unguarded hours, I could have put an end to my life, and nobody could have stopped me. The thought never occurred to me, as I never dreamed that such a 'via dolorosa' lay ahead of me, with this tragic end in Nuremberg."

FULL BIO CONTEXT: https://4rs.neocities.org/nur03d.html#027

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

1: The official detention slip of Wilhelm Keitel 22 June 22, 1945

2: Defendant Wilhelm Keitel on November 24, 1945 in his cell during the International Military Tribunal (IMT) Nuremberg.

Haushofer is ordered to write a full report on everything he knows about Hess's flight. Hitler then orders that Haushofer be sent to the Prince Albrecht Strasse Gestapo Prison in Berlin. He will be intensely interrogated by the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Mueller.

From Haushofer's Report:

"The circle of English individuals whom I have known very well for years, and whose utilization on behalf of a German-English understanding in the years from 1934 to 1938 was the core of my activity in England, comprises the following groups and persons:

1. A leading group of younger Conservatives (many of them Scotsmen). Among them are: the Duke of Hamilton—up to the date of his father's death, Lord Clydesdale—Conservative Member of Parliament; the Parliamentary Private Secretary of Neville Chamberlain, Lord Dunglass; the present Under Secretary of State in the Air Ministry, Balfour; the present Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Education, Lindsay (National Labour); the present Under Secretary of State in the Ministry for Scotland, Wedderburn.

Close ties link this circle with the Court. The younger brother of the Duke of Hamilton is closely related to the present Queen through his wife; the mother-in-law of the Duke of Hamilton, the Duchess of Northumberland, is the Mistress of the Robes; her brother-in-law, Lord Eustace Percy, was several times a member of the Cabinet and is still today an influential member of the Conservative Party (especially close to former Prime Minister Baldwin).

There are close connections between this circle and important groups of the older Conservatives, as for example the Stanley family (Lord Derby, Oliver Stanley) and Astor (the last is owner of The Times). The young Astor, likewise a Member of Parliament, was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the former Foreign and Interior Minister, Sir Samuel Hoare, at present English Ambassador in Madrid.

I have known almost all of the persons mentioned for years and from close personal contact. The present Under Secretary of State of the Foreign Office, Butler, also belongs here; in spite of many of his public utterances he is not a follower of Churchill or Eden. Numerous connections lead from most of those named to Lord Halifax, to whom I likewise had personal access.

2. The so-called "Round Table" circle of younger imperialists (particularly colonial and Empire politicians), whose most important personage was Lord Lothian.

3. A group of the "Ministerialdirektoren" in the Foreign Office. The most important of these were Strang, the chief of the Central European Department, and O'Malley, the chief of the South Eastern Department and afterwards Minister in Budapest.

There was hardly one of those named who was not at least occasionally in favor of a German-English understanding. Although most of them in 1939 finally considered that war was inevitable, it was nevertheless reasonable to think of these persons if one thought the moment had come for investigating the possibility of an inclination to make peace.

Therefore when the Deputy of the Fuehrer, Reich Minister Hess, asked me in the autumn of...about possibilities of gaining access to possibly reasonable Englishmen, I suggested two concrete possibilities for establishing contacts. It seemed to me that the following could be considered for this:

A. Personal contact with Lothian, Hoare, or O'Malley, all three of whom were accessible in neutral countries.

B. Contact by letter with one of my friends in England. For this purpose the Duke of Hamilton was considered in the first place, since my connection with him was so firm and personal that I could suppose he would understand a letter addressed to him even if it were formulated in very veiled language.

Reich Minister Hess decided in favor of the second possibility; I wrote a letter to the Duke of Hamilton at the end of September 1940 and its dispatch to Lisbon was arranged by the Deputy Fuehrer. I did not learn whether the letter reached the addressee. The possibilities of its being lost en route from Lisbon to England are not small, after all." (SSN)

J. R. Rees reports to Churchill on the facts of Hess' capture: "Hess said he was horrified at the heavy raids on London in 1940, and loathed the thought of killing young children and their mothers. This feeling was intensified when he contemplated his own wife and child, and led to the idea of flying to Britain and arranging peace with the large anti-war faction he thought existed in this country . . . .

He was insistent that he would have no dealings with the 'clique'—the government now in power—who would do everything possible to thwart him, but he was very vague as to what statesmen should replace them, and seemed to be extremely ill-informed as to the names and relative importance of our politicians."

FULL HESS BIO CONTEXT: https://propagander3.tripod.com/nur01.html#050

1: Hess in his cell, November 1945 at Landsberg Prison awaiting trial

His death occurs during the final days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, shortly after he'd received news that the Resistance is being crushed and that his own wife and son had perished in the ghetto.

Zygielbojm, a leader of the Jewish socialist Bund and a member of the National Council of the Polish Government-in-Exile, had spent years tirelessly providing intelligence to the West about the Holocaust. He chose to take his own life by gas to "jolt the indifference" of leaders who he believed could still save the remaining Jews.

He left a poignant suicide note addressed to Polish President Władysław Raczkiewicz and Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski.

>"I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish people in Poland... are being exterminated... I belong with them, and with their mass graves".

He stated that while the perpetrators were directly responsible, the Allied governments shared a "burden" for their "passive observation" and lack of concrete rescue efforts. He hoped his death would serve as an "energetic cry of protest" to force diplomatic and propaganda initiatives to save the "living remnant" of Polish Jewry.

While Zygielbojm's death was reported in the British press and later in the The New York Times, it failed to trigger the immediate, massive Allied intervention he sought. Today, he is remembered as a symbol of Jewish solidarity and moral courage, with monuments dedicated to him in Warsaw, Chelm, and London.

Today's Stroop Report:

>"Progress of large-scale operation on 12 May 1943, start 0930 hours.

>When the raiding parties combed out the area for remaining dug-outs in which Jews were hiding, they succeeded in discovering 30 dug-outs. 663 Jews were pulled out of them and 133 Jews were shot. The sum total of Jews caught has arisen to 54,463.

>Furthermore today the units cordoning off the miniature Ghetto were reinforced and destroyed by fire. Probably a considerable number of Jews perished in the flames, no accurate information in this regard could be obtained since the fire was still burning when darkness set in. One concrete building in the Prosta, from which Jews had been removed, was heavily damaged by blowing-up operations in order to make it impossible for the bandits to use it as a base later.

>It is noteworthy that the Poles, without having been warned, took appropriate measures for protecting their window-panes, etc., before the blowing-up started.

>The transports of Jews leaving here will be directed to T.II beginning today. Termination of today's operation: 2160 hours, will be continued on 13 May 1943, 1000 hours."

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-stroop-report-may-1943

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

PRESS REPORTS:

"Not until May 12, 1943 do we see any significant reaction to the uprising. On that day, Szmul Zygielbojm, a Polish Jewish socialist politician, Bundist trade union activist, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile, committed suicide “to jolt the indifference of those who save the Jews who are still alive in Poland.”

For an entire year, the Ghetto Speaks, the monthly magazine of the General Workers Union of Poland, recalled: “Day in and day out, from the time that he became member of the Polish National Council in London, until his tragic death, Zygielbojm had received appeal upon appeal, cry upon cry, from the tortured Jews of Poland.”

The first information came from the Bund as early as June 1942 according to historian Yehuda Bauer. Dated May 1942, the report concluded the Germans have “embarked on the physical extermination of the Jewish population on Polish soil… It is estimated that the Germans have already killed 700,000 Polish Jews.” https://jewishlinknj.com/features/31612-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-in-the-american-jewish-press

OVERVIEW: The uprising began on April 19, 1943, on the eve of Passover, when German troops entered the ghetto for the final "liquidation". Approximately 750 poorly armed Jewish fighters, primarily from the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW), resisted thousands of heavily armed Nazi troops for nearly a month. It was the first urban uprising against Nazi occupation in Europe. The uprising officially ended on May 16, 1943, when Stroop ordered the symbolic destruction of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw.

NOT MY LINKS

ABOUT Szmul Zygielbojm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szmul_Zygielbojm

1: Jews pulled from a bunker

2: Remember Szmul Zygielbojm! "He used every means, including his own life, to persuade the Allied powers to take extraordinary action to save the remaining Jews in Poland, but they had other priorities.

>"I cannot remain silent. I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish people, whose representative I am, are being exterminated. My comrades in the Warsaw Ghetto perished with their weapons in their hands in their last heroic battle. It was not my destiny to die as they did, together with them. But I belong to them and in their mass graves.

>By my death I wish to make the strongest possible protest against the passivity with which the world is looking on and permitting the extermination of the Jewish people …

>My life belongs to the Jewish people in Poland and, therefore, I give it to them. I wish that the surviving remnants of the several millions of Polish Jews could live to see, with the Polish population, the liberation that it could know in Poland, in a world of freedom and in the justice of socialism."

These are extracts from letters left in his Paddington flat by Polish Jewish anti-fascist and trade unionist, Szmul “Artur” Zygielbojm, who committed suicide as an act of protest on the night of 11th – 12th May 1943." MORE: https://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/remember-szmul-zygielbojm

"When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker, employed by the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality. After the German occupation, the department continued to take care of the great number of poor and dispossessed people in the city.

Irena Sendler took advantage of her job in order to help the Jews, however this became practically impossible once the ghetto was sealed off in November 1940. Close to 400,000 people had been driven into the small area that had been allocated to the ghetto, and their situation soon deteriorated.

The poor hygienic conditions in the crowded ghetto, the lack of food and medical supplies resulted in epidemics and high death rates. Irena Sendler, at great personal danger, devised means to get into the ghetto and help the dying Jews. She managed to obtain a permit from the municipality that enabled her to enter the ghetto to inspect the sanitary conditions.

Once inside the ghetto, she established contact with activists of the Jewish welfare organization and began to help them. She helped smuggle Jews out of the ghetto to the Aryan side and helped set up hiding places for them.

When the Council for Aid to Jews (Zegota) was established, Sendler became one of its main activists. The Council was created in fall 1942, after 280,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When it began to function towards the end of the year, most of the Jews of Warsaw had been killed.

But it played a crucial role in the rescue of a large number who had survived the massive deportations. The organization took care of thousands of Jews who were trying to survive in hiding, seeking hiding places, and paying for the upkeep and medical care.

In September 1943, four months after the Warsaw ghetto was completely destroyed, Sendler was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children. Sendler, whose underground name was Jolanta, exploited her contacts with orphanages and institutes for abandoned children, to send Jewish children there.

Many of the children were sent to the Rodzina Marii (Family of Mary) Orphanage in Warsaw, and to religious institutions run by nuns in nearby Chotomów, and in Turkowice, near Lublin. The exact number of children saved by Sendler and her partners is unknown.

On 20 October 1943, Sendler was arrested. She managed to stash away incriminating evidence such as the coded addresses of children in the care of Zegota and large sums of money to pay to those who helped Jews. She was sentenced to death and sent to the infamous Pawiak prison, but underground activists managed to bribe officials to release her. Her close encounter with death did not deter her from continuing her activity.

After her release in February 1944, even though she knew that the authorities were keeping an eye on her, Sendler continued her underground activities. Because of the danger she had to go into hiding. The necessities of her clandestine life prevented her from attending her mother's funeral." https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/sendler.asp

2: Irena Sendler: Bringing Life to Children of the Holocaust is a juvenile nonfiction biography by Susan Brophy Down that chronicles the life of a Polish social worker who rescued approximately 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Part of the Crabtree Groundbreaker Biographies series, this 112-page book is designed for readers aged 10 to 14 (grades 5–9).

The biography details how Sendler, a Catholic woman, worked with a secret network called Żegota to smuggle children to safety by hiding them in ambulances, baskets, or coffins. She provided them with forged identity papers and placed them with Polish families or in orphanages. Crucially, she kept meticulous lists of their real names buried in jars so they could be reunited with their Jewish families after the war.

Includes an overview of WW2 in Poland and sidebars focusing on specific aspects of the war. Features both historical and full-color photographs Contains a chronology of events, a glossary, a bibliography, and recommended websites for further study.

You can find copies through major retailers like Amazon, ThriftBooks, and Crabtree Publishing. While praised as an inspiring portrait of moral courage, some reviewers have noted that the text can feel dry and sometimes prioritizes general war history over personal details of Sendler's life.

Without him, Anne's diary would not have been published, and without him, there would not have been an Anne Frank House. But of course, Otto Frank was much more than Anne's father: you can read his story here.

Otto Frank was the second son of Michael Frank and Alice Betty Stern. The family lived in Germany and were liberal Jews. They valued Jewish traditions and holidays but did not observe all religious laws.

Father Michael Frank was the proud owner of a business bank in Frankfurt am Main. After high school, Otto briefly studied art history in Heidelberg. He then went on to do traineeships at various banks and at Macy's (New York).

Otto returned to Germany after his father's sudden death in 1909. He spent some time at a company that produced horseshoes. The First World War initially seemed to pass Otto by, but he enlisted in 1915. He was part of a ‘Lichtmesstrupp', a unit that analyzed where enemy artillery fire came from.

When the war ended, Otto had been promoted to lieutenant and was decorated. After his return, he joined the family bank.

At the age of 36, Otto married Edith Holländer. The couple settled in Frankfurt am Main and had two daughters, Margot (1926) and Anne (1929). They had a good life, although they worried about the future. Germany was in crisis. The country had been hit hard by the global economic crisis of 1929 and many people lived in dire poverty. Hitler and his party took advantage of the feelings of dissatisfaction, and their support increased.

Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Holländer marry in Aachen on 8 May 1925. The blessing takes place in the synagogue and the party is four days later, on Otto's 36th birthday.

A new start in Amsterdam

In early 1933, Otto and Edith took the plunge. They decide to leave Nazi Germany because of their business problems and the growing antisemitism of Hitler and his followers.

In the Netherlands, Otto worked hard to get his company going and build a new life for his family. Meanwhile, the developments in Nazi Germany continued to give cause for concern. From 1937 onwards, Otto looked into options for setting up a business in Great Britain, but the plans never worked out.

Things looked better financially when Otto started selling spices and herbs in addition to the pectin in 1938. The second company was named Pectacon. Hermann van Pels joined the company and took on part of the work.

The feeling of freedom came to an abrupt end when the German army invaded the Netherlands in May of 1940.

From 15 May 1940 onwards, the Netherlands was occupied territory. The Nazis kept introducing new anti-Semitic measures. It doesn’t take long for them to rule that Jews were not allowed to have their own companies. With the help of his employees and Jan Gies (Miep's husband), Otto succeeded in keeping his companies out of Nazi hands.

In the course of 1941, the situation got worse: Jewish men were arrested during raids and taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Among them were friends and acquaintances of Otto’s. After a while, reports of their deaths started coming in.

Otto made every effort to emigrate to the US with the help of a former fellow student in order to escape the persecution of the Jews. But he never managed to get all the necessary documents together, and the option ran out when the US got involved in the war. At that point, all borders were closed.

In the spring of 1942, Otto decided to set up a hiding place in an empty part of his business premises. If necessary, there would be enough room for his own family and for the family of his employee Hermann van Pels, seven people in all. Otto asked four of his closest employees to take care of him and his family if they would have to go into hiding. All of them agreed.

The hiding place was not quite ready when Margot received a call-up on 5 July 1942 to report to a labour camp in Nazi Germany. Still, Otto and Edith did not hesitate for a moment: the next morning, they left for Prinsengracht 263 with Margot and Anne.

From 6 July 1942 onwards, Otto was in hiding in the company building on the Prinsengracht . The Van Pels family followed one week later, and in November 1942, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer, the eighth person in hiding.

Anne's diary tells us that Otto continued to be concerned with the ins and outs of the company. Whenever business relations from Frankfurt visited, he would lie down in the hiding place with his ear to the floor in order to hear what was being discussed in the office below.

Whenever he was not busy with the companies, Otto loved to read Charles Dickens, with a dictionary at hand, according to Anne. Anne: “A little Latin, never reads novels but likes serious and dry-as-dust descriptions of people and countries.” 

Otto felt responsible for the atmosphere in the Secret Annex and mediated in the countless larger and smaller arguments. ‘We had thought that living with my partner's family in our hiding place would make life less monotonous, but we had not foreseen how many problems would arise because of the differences in characters and views.’ 

In her diary, Anne wrote: ‘I am dazed by all the abusive exchanges that have hurtled through this virtuous house during the past month. Daddy goes about with his lips tightly pursed, when anyone speaks to him, he looks up startled, as is he is afraid he will have to patch up some tricky relationship again. (...) Quite honestly, I sometimes forget who we are quarreling with and with whom we've made it up.’

Miep Gies remembered Otto in the Secret Annex as ‘the calm one, the children’s teacher, the most logical, the one who balanced everyone out. He was the leader, the one in charge.’

The hiding period came to an abrupt end when, on 4 August 1944, Dutch police officers headed by SS-Hauptscharführer Karl Josef Silberbauer unexpectedly raided the Secret Annex. The hiding place had been discovered. Otto and the other people in hiding were arrested. Otto felt guilty when they also took Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler.

After a few days in prison, Otto and the others were put on a train to the Westerbork transit camp. They ended up in the prison barracks, and the men and women were separated. Otto had to work during the day - the kind of work is not known - but in the evening he could be with Edith, Margot, and Anne.

After only a few weeks in Westerbork, Otto and the others were put on train travelling to the east. This was the last train ever to leave Westerbork for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. The prisoners were packed tightly in cattle wagons, without enough food and with only a small barrel for a toilet.

After three days on the train, they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The men and women were separated on the platform. It was the last time Otto would ever see his wife and children.

After the separation on the Auschwitz-Birkenau platform, the men from the Secret Annex stayed together. At first, Otto was put to work outside the camp in the 'Kommando Kiesgrube’, a gravel mine. The gravel was used for construction projects. Then, he was transferred to the 'Kommando Strassenbau', building roads outside the camp. When the frost made working outdoors impossible, Otto ended up with less exhausting work: peeling potatoes.

Otto felt greatly supported by Peter van Pels, who would sometimes be able to get some extra food through his job in the camp’s post office. He was also helped by other friends in the camp. When at one point, Otto lost hope after he had been beaten, his fellow inmates, with the help of a Dutch doctor, made sure that he was admitted to the sick barracks.

When the Soviet troops came closer, the camp command cleared Auschwitz. Those able to walk, had to come along. Otto stayed behind in the sick barracks. He was too weak to travel, weighed only 52 kilogrammes and was in no condition to join.

Otto’s main worry: have Margot and Anne survived?

Otto expected the prisoners remaining behind to be shot, but that did not happen. On 27 January 1945, Soviet troops entered the camp. Otto felt that it was a miracle that he had survived. ‘I was lucky and had good friends,’ he wrote to his mother on 18 March.

As soon as Otto had his strength back, he wanted nothing more than to return to the Netherlands. As the fighting was still going on in large parts of Europe, he had to make a long detour. In Odessa (then in the Soviet Union, today in Ukraine) he got on board of the 'Monowai', a ship that was heading towards Marseille (France), with hundreds of other survivors.

During the long journey, Rosa de Winter - who had been imprisoned together with Edith in Auschwitz - told him that his wife had died in Auschwitz. From that moment on, all his hopes were pinned on Anne and Margot. Would they still be alive? On 3 June 1945, ten months after his arrest, Otto was back in Amsterdam. To his great relief, the helpers of the Secret Annex had all survived the war. Otto moved in with helpers Jan and Miep Gies.

>‘I had had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings. I had to acknowledge that I had not known what went on in her mind.’

Otto’s hope that Anne and Margot might have survived the concentration camps ended in July 1945, when he met with the Brilleslijper sisters, who had been imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen with Anne and Margot. They told him about their miserable last months and about their deaths due to illness and exhaustion.

When Miep learned the sad news, she handed Anne's diaries over to Otto. At first, he could not summon the courage to read them, but once he started, he was gripped by her writing.

Otto copied passages from the diaries and asked family and friends to read them. Some of them pushed him to have her diaries published, but that was easier said than done: so soon after the war, people wanted to look forward rather than back.

Eventually, Otto found a publisher and Anne’s diary was published two years after the war: ‘Anne would have been so proud if she had lived to see it,’ Otto wrote about that first Dutch edition. Translations into French, German and English were soon to follow.

Living in Amsterdam hurts too much

In spite of the loyalty of his friends and the success of the diary in the Netherlands, Otto felt he would forever associate Amsterdam with his pain and loss. In 1952, he moved to Basel (Switzerland). One year later, Otto remarried to Fritzi Geiringer in Amsterdam. Fritzi already had a daughter, Eva, who was born in 1929, just like Anne.

Otto remained closely involved with the Anne Frank House, which was founded to preserve Prinsengracht 263 and its annex. Of course, he was present at the opening of the Anne Frank House on 3 May 1960. He spoke only briefly, as his emotions overpowered him.

In the following years, Otto was the initiator of international youth conferences held in Amsterdam. During these conferences - at which he was present - young people discussed topics such as 'Is there still room for religion in the modern world' (1966), 'Youth protest' (1967) and 'Youth and human rights' (1968).

Fighting for reconciliation and human rights

Countless readers of Anne's diary contacted Otto. Some of them kept corresponding with him over the years, others became real friends of Otto and Fritzi. About the letters, Otto wrote:

>‘I often end my letters by writing: “I hope that Anne's book will impact the rest of your life so that insofar as it is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace.”’

Otto died on 19 August 1980. Shortly before his death, he said in an interview:

>‘I am almost ninety now and my strength is slowly fading. But the mission that Anne passed on, keeps giving me new strength - to fight for reconciliation and for human rights across the world.’"

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/main-characters/otto-frank/

NOT MY LINKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frank

1: Otto Frank inaugurating the Statue of Anne Frank, Amsterdam 1977

Naval Judge Kranzbühler, who wears his Kriegsmarine uniform to emphasize that he is defending the honor of the entire Navy, spends the day presenting critical evidence regarding the conduct of German submarine warfare.

Kranzbühler's primary goal is to refute charges of unrestricted submarine warfare and the alleged "Laconia Order" to kill shipwrecked survivors. He successfully argues that German naval practices were indistinguishable from those of the Allies, notably using an interrogatory from U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz to show that American submarines also practiced unrestricted warfare in the Pacific.

He defends the 1942 order by arguing that the safety of the submarine was paramount and that rescuing survivors often invited Allied air attacks. By always addressing his client as "Herr Grossadmiral" and appearing in uniform, Kranzbühler maintained a professional military atmosphere that commanded respect, even from the Soviet guards.

While Kranzbühler focused on legalities, Dönitz maintained a personal stance of military professionalism and detachment from political atrocities. Dönitz consistently claimed he was a professional sailor, not a politician, and was unaware of the Holocaust or orders to kill survivors. He insisted that the U-boat war diaries be saved, believing the Navy had a "pure conscience" and that history would eventually vindicate their conduct.

Kranzbühler’s brilliant lawyering is credited with saving Dönitz from the gallows.

FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBUEHLER: The next document, Dönitz-88, shows President Roosevelt's attitude to the question of neutrality toward Germany in that war. It is an excerpt from the speech of 11 September 1941 and is well known:

>"Hitler knows that he must win the mastery of the seas if he wants to win the mastery of the world. He knows that he must first tear down the bridge of ships which we are building over the Atlantic and over which we constantly transport the war material that will help, in the end, to destroy him and all his works. He has to destroy our patrols on the sea and in the air."

I should like to say a few words about the view also expressed in Exhibit GB-191, namely, that the crews of enemy merchant ships were civilians and noncombatants. On Page 254 of the document book I have reproduced part of Document Doenitz-67, which I have already submitted. It is an excerpt from the confidential Admiralty Fleet Orders and deals with gunnery training for the civilian crews of merchant ships.

I only wish to refer to the first page of these orders which say that, as a general rule, there should be only one navy man at a gun, all the rest being taken from the crew of the ship. I read from the paragraph headed "Training," Section (d):

"In addition to the gunlayer and the men specially trained for serving guns, five to seven men more-depending on the size of the gun-are needed to complete the gun crew and to bring ammunition from the magazine."

This is followed by regulations for training in port and gunnery drill for the crews.

The next document, re-numbered Dönitz-106, is a circular decree issued by the French Minister for the Merchant Marine on 11 November 1939. It deals with the creation of a special badge for men serving on merchant ships who are liable for military service. That is on Page 256. I should like to point out that this decree was signed by the head of the Military Cabinet, a rear admiral. The character of the order is demonstrated by the second to the last paragraph:

>"This armband may only be worn in France or in the French colonies. In no case may men issued the armband wear it in foreign waters."

I come now to several documents dealing with the question of the rescue of survivors. These documents can be found in Document Books 1 and 2.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kranzbuehler, do you not think it would be sufficient if you were to refer to these documents and give us the numbers without reading from them? They are all dealing, as you say, with rescue.

FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBUEHLER: I believe I can do this with most of them.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/05-11-46.asp

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iFacRQWEis

NOT MY LINKS

BIO CONTEXT: http://propagander2.tripod.com/d04.html

Behind The Scenes:

"Dönitz' Cell:

>"Well, what do you think now?—I showed that I was on your side. I moved our whole fleet to Western waters before the Armistice.—That is why the Russians are so mad at me. —I have shown that I am a friend of the West.—That is also why I said in court, Germany belongs to the Christian West."

Dönitz then told me that an American admiral in the audience had sent his aide to his defense counsel to say that he considered Dönitz' naval warfare beyond reproach.

>"I told Kranzbuhler to tell him that the Russians have been trying to get hold of the technicians who have been working on our new submarine—the one that can cruise around the world without surfacing."

I told him that such a move would probably look as if he was trying to play the West against the East and get some personal advantage for himself, while on trial by the International Military Tribunal. Dönitz said he knew that, and had changed his mind about letting his attorney tell that to the admiral's aide.

"—But you ought to tell him that," Dönitz urged me.

>"It is your duty. Ever since the Armistice the Russians have been trying by all possible means to get those technicians and experts on the X U-boat. And do you know why? Because it has a cruising range all around the world without surfacing for recharging of the batteries, and it is foolproof against any weapon—even the atomic bomb!"

He drew a sketch of the U-boat, showing how it could recharge its batteries by merely rising to 20 M. below the surface, sending up a tube to the surface to get oxygen for the diesels which recharged the batteries. Its fishlike shape gave it a speed of X m.p.h., faster than any U-boat speed even at the surface.

>"—And if Stalin is generous, as I believe he is in these matters, it will be a simple matter for him to build a few thousand of these U-boats, and then he will control the seas of the world. And what will you be able to do against a submarine that never has to surface?

>Even your atomic bomb won't help you.—Now I have imparted this information to you, and it is your duty to inform that admiral, because six months from now I will say that I told you about it, and you don't want to carry it around in your heart."

For an honest soldier who condemned dirty politics, it was a pretty clever move. I told him I might transmit the information as a matter of security, but he needn't think we were at all interested in going to war against Russia."

From “Nuremberg Diary”, by Gustave Gilbert (Formerly Prison Psychologist at the Nuremberg Trial of the Nazi War Criminals)

CONTEXT: http://propagander2.tripod.com/d04.html

NOT MY LINKS

"Otto Heinrich Kranzbühler was a German naval judge who represented defendant Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials." DETAILS--> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Kranzb%C3%BChler

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

Hess's adjutants, Karl-Heinz Pintsch & Alfred Leitgen, present Hitler with Hess's letter of explanation. When Hitler reads it, he lets out a "bestial scream" & orders the arrest of both adjutants. Hitler fears that the flight will signal German weakness to the Allies & worries it would jeopardize the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa).

Hitler orders a press release claiming Hess is suffering from "hallucinations", strips Hess of all his titles, & declares him insane.

"Once again, as so often at decisive moments, Speer happened to be at the Berghof, apparently waiting to show Hitler new designs. Hess's "pale and agitated aides," he writes with one of his not infrequent embellishments in Inside the Third Reich, putting himself more "in the know" than he actually was, "asked if I would let them see Hitler first: they had a personal letter from Hess to transmit to him."

In the more factual draft (and in Below's memoirs) it is not Speer who allows them—or is asked for—precedence. The other guests, including Speer, are quickly herded up to the second floor, where they would wait for hours, in ignorance of the dramatic events downstairs.

Hitler, having hurried down and perused the letter handed to him by General Karl Bodenschatz (Goering's liaison officer with Hitler), bellowed for Bormann, and ordered adjutant Pintsch into his presence. Hess's unhappy aides, having admitted that they knew the contents of the letter, were arrested and taken off to a concentration camp . . . .

The concern over Italy's and Japan's goodwill led Hitler to issue an announcement that night that Hess's flight to Britain was the result of a mental breakdown, the symptoms of which had been noticed for some time. "My God," wrote Goebbels in his diary that night, "and that was the second man in the Reich. What will the world think of us?"

Actually Hitler had to fear something considerably worse than the suspicion of his Axis partners and the mockery of "the world." This was the appalling prospect of Hess—voluntarily or by being drugged or otherwise coerced—giving away to the British the plans for Barbarossa, then scheduled for June 22, with which he was fully familiar.

"I don't know how far advanced the British were with truth drugs then," Speer told me, "but voluntarily, Hess would never have betrayed Hitler, of that I am quite certain." In fact, in his letter to Hitler Hess had specifically promised silence, and he kept his promise."

From Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny:

Hess has an interview with the Duke of Hamilton. From the Duke's account:

>"On Sunday, May 11, I came to Maryhill Barracks with an Intelligence Officer, and there we first inspected the personal effects of the prisoner. Among these were a Leica camera, photographs of himself and a young child, some drugs, and visiting cards of Dr. Karl Haushofer and his son, Dr. Albert Haushofer.

>I entered the prisoner's cell accompanied by the Intelligence Officer and the officer in charge. The prisoner immediately asked if he could speak to me alone. I therefore asked the officers to retire. The German began by telling me that he had made my acquaintance during the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 and that I had once dined in his house.

>"I don't know if you remember me," he said, "but I am Rudolf Hess." He said further that he had come on a mission for mankind: the Fuehrer did not wish to destroy England and wanted to end the war.

>His friend, Albert Haushofer, had told him that I was an Englishman who would appreciate his point of view. He went on to say that he had tried three times to fly to England, the first time in the previous December, but he turned back each time on account of bad weather. The Fuehrer, Hess also maintained, was convinced that Germany would win the war, possibly soon, but certainly in one, two, or three years.

>Hess himself wished to stop the futile carnage...He asked me if I could get together leading members of my party to talk over things with a view to making peace proposals. I replied that there was now only one party in this country. He then said he could tell me what Hitler's peace terms would be. First, he would insist on an arrangement whereby our two countries would never go to war again.

> I questioned him as to how that arrangement could be brought about; and he replied that one of the conditions, of course, is that Britain would give up her traditional policy of always opposing the strongest power in Europe."

The connection between Rudolf Hess (Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany) and Douglas Douglas-Hamilton (the 14th Duke of Hamilton) stems from one of the most bizarre diplomatic incidents of WW2. On May 10, 1941, Hess flew a solo mission from Germany to Scotland, intending to parachute near the Duke's estate to negotiate a peace treaty.

Hess aimed for Dungavel House, the Duke's primary residence in South Lanarkshire. He ran out of fuel and parachuted onto Floors Farm, near Eaglesham, south of Glasgow. Upon capture by a local farmer, Hess used the name "Alfred Horn" and insisted on speaking with the Duke of Hamilton.

The Duke, then a serving Wing Commander in the RAF, visited the prisoner in a local hospital. It was here that Hess revealed his true identity and his proposal for peace. Hess chose the Duke because he mistakenly believed he was a leader of an "anti-war party" in Britain that could overthrow Winston Churchill. Hess claimed to have seen the Duke during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, though the Duke later stated they had never actually met or spoken.

Hess's advisor, Albrecht Haushofer, was a friend of the Duke and had suggested him as a potential contact who might be sympathetic to German peace overtures. Hess believed the Duke had high-level access to King George VI and could facilitate a direct bypass of the British government. The Duke immediately informed Winston Churchill and the war cabinet of the arrival.

Churchill famously ignored the overture, treating Hess as a prisoner of state. Hitler was reportedly furious, disowned Hess, and declared him mentally unstable to explain the embarrassment to the German public. Hess was held in Britain until the end of the war, then tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment. He remained the sole prisoner in Spandau Prison until his death by suicide in 1987 at age 93.

Despite having no involvement in the plan, the incident clouded the Duke’s name for decades, leading to persistent conspiracy theories that he or British intelligence had lured Hess to Scotland.

Full Hess BIO: http://propagander3.tripod.com/nur01.html

1: Duke of Hamilton (left) and Rudolf Hess (right).