Monday, 22 November 2010

1590 Planning the Holocaust and a Christmas Film

The unusual aspect of the Sunday before Christmas was an hour’s experience with EMTV Sky 2 channel 200, not the commercial TV station of Papua New Guinea but Edge Media Television, a platform for people to share alternative and suppressed viewpoints intended to be education and thought provoking. This led to one talk on the hydrogen car being developed by General Motors, and an advertisement by `Watkins Books of London’s Charing Cross which specialises on books about mind body and spirit and an unusual slant on European News which included the collapse of Belgium’s government and a support ceremony for Stalin held in Moscow..

The moment of wonder on Sunday was the presentation of a glass vase bought for £1 at a car boot sale and identified as a unique Lalique creation estimated to be worth £25000. Once upon a time I would have said WOW Until learning that the boss of BHS paid himself a dividend of £1.2billion. I did enjoy Prince Charles explaining that the contents of the country house filled with authentic and original antiques had got as far as Cumbria en route bto the sale rooms before he manage to persuade the aristocratic owner how the property could be saved and which had an asking price of £45million, perhaps it was £55 and one wondered how much the Prince had found from his own coffers to prevent the break up of yet another British Treasure.

The Sunday before Christmas film was The Angel of Pennsylvania Avenue, particularly relevant for this year as it featured the reality of the previous Great Depression as a good man and parent of three children without work went on a trip to Kansas, not Somewhere over the Rainbow Kansas, in response to a job advert only to find all the jobs filled and himself in prison charged with causing grievous bodily harm, mistaken for another who hit the foreman when he announced all the jobs had gone before the advert had been published. The advertising of non existent jobs was a reality feature of the great depression, as well as job seekers holding vigil’s outside of the White House. While mother tries to find a lawyer who doe snot want cash up front, the three children embark on a trip to see the President, getting on a train without a ticket and then onto a freight train, jumping off before reaching the goods yard on the advice of former stockbroker turned box car hobo and then hitching lifts, meeting a travelling puppet show, singing in the park for the fare for the rest of the journey, while their mother attempts to follow their trail to Washington.

With great difficulty and luck the children, closely followed by their mother get to see the President and tell their story and return home optimistic that their father will be released and home for Christmas. Alas it does not work out as easy that, but of course it goes work out. This 1996 film has featured of various TV film channels. Meanwhile in Afghanistan a twelve year old becomes a human bomb killing three Marines and the USA announced it will double the size of its armed force in the country in the New Year.

A different kind of reality experience was the re-showing of Conspiracy. The 2001 TV film starring Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich one of the key men behind the ruthless rise to power of Hitler given the job of chairing the Winter 1942 conference which organised the attempted elimination of anyone Jewish from within the boundaries of the German Empire. The re-showing was timely because it reveals how men, and these days, women of power behave when tackling the problems which face governments. As a lesson in history and political management, that the purpose of the two hour meeting was ensuring that all the leading services and agencies in German were geared together to eliminate all Jews is now of secondary significance. This is not being insensitive or cold blooded but a way of drawing attention that all governments all over the world held similar gathering to determine the fate of millions of human being subsequently. In fairness the scale of death and destruction was usually different. That to allow the destruction of Coventry or the bombing of Dresden, the creation and use of atomic bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the creation of the Berlin Wall, through to some of the more recent horrors in Asia and Africa would have all and their cold blooded meetings in which the commitment and participation of key military and civil figures to a cause would have been enlisted with those reluctant replaced and eliminated. I have no doubt they have been taking place in Russia and China on how to exploit Muslim Terrorism to enhance the global ambitions of those countries before President Obama is able to get his act together in moving the USA once more into the driving seat behind world government.

It is worthwhile examining how those around that table that set about identifying those who should be put on the trains organised to arrive at Austwitchz to able the extermination of 2500 [people at hour, fifty thousands a day, over a million in one month if everything went according to plan.

The conference Chairman(1) Reinhard Heydrich had proved himself one of the most ruthless men in Nazi Germany ruthless. Son of the composer brought up in a strict Catholic household although still at school during World War I he joined anti Jewish and anti Communist organisations and then found his family ruined when Germany lost the war and was made to pay through the Treaty of Versailles. However his persecution of fellow countrymen and women appears to have been due to what happened after he switched his attentions from one young woman to someone he was to marry and have four children, three of whom are believed to be alive today. Because of the influence of the one who was angered by the switch in affections he was forced to leave the Navy his chosen career and quickly became a an ideal candidate to play a leading role in the Nazi rise to power, identified by Himmler as the man to lead counter intelligence, setting about the task with brilliant organisational efficiency creating a comprehensive manual database. He eliminated anyone likely to demonstrate in relation to the 1936 Olympic games. He then created the terror police state by crushing the SA and then set about the extermination of the resistance in the occupied countries after 1939. He became the ideal man to put in charge of exterminating all Jews as well as the dictator of Bohemia and Moravia that part of Czechoslovakia acquired in 1939 and which was to be his downfall, successfully assassinated in 1942 within months of infamous meeting

(2) Dr Joseph Buhler also had a Catholic background but of more humble origin rising to power after training as lawyer and becoming legal adviser to Hitler. He represented the Governor General’s office at the meeting. After the war he was tried, sentenced and executed in Poland for his War crimes. (3) Dr Roland Friesler also became a lawyer who became a judge and rose in the Justice Department representing the Minister at the 1942 conference. There is reported evidence that when a prisoner of War in Russian be became actively interested in Marxism thus confirming my argument that it is a matter of accident which extreme or fanatical ideology or group some individuals join and which makes them open to switching sides. He became the Minister of Justice and was responsible for execution of Sophie Scholl and her brother and for half the 5000 death sentences passed by the High court. He was killed by an allied bomb in 1945.

(4)Otto Hoffman joined the SS in 1931 after serving as a pilot in World War 1. Between 1937 and 1953 he service in the Race and settlement office in which capacity eh attended the 1942 conference. In 1943 he became Police Leader for South West Germany and therefore his actual role was limited which led to 25 year sentence in 1948 and a pardon six years later. His background was Austrian

(5) Dr Gerhard Klopper was born in what is now Poland and rose to power as an assistant to Hess and represented Martin Bormann, Hitler’s Deputy at the 1942 Conference as a leading Member of Nazi Party office at the Chancellery. After the war he was not convicted for war crimes because of a lack of evidence and was the member of the meeting to die in 1987 in an Old People‘s Home.

There is some evidence to suggest that (6) Dr Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger did not support the decisions of the 1943 conference where as a leading party Member he represented the deputy head of the Reich Chancellery. He was openly critical and ashamed of other atrocities detailed during the Nuremburg war trials and he was acquitted, but died afterwards at the age of 57.

(7) Dr Rudolf Lang was a prominent Nazi party official who is said to have been personally responsible for killing 250000 Latvian Jews in six months following the 1942 conference. He is believed to have been killed in action in West Prussia in 1945.

(8) Dr Georg Leibbrandt had an unusual background born near Odessa in the Ukraine, an intellectual with a talent for Languages, studied and worked extensively in Russian, Paris and the USA before returning to Germany and joining the Nazi Party. Held position in the Ministry of Occupied Territories and attended the 1942 conference. Although held after the war charges against him were dismissed and he returned to the USA to live and work and where his anti Russian and ant Communist experience was of value.

(9)Martin Luther was an early recruit to the Nazi party and became a diplomat working for the Foreign Ministry and Von Ribbontrop who he tried to replace and was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he died of a heart attack aged 50 in 1945 shortly after liberation by the Russians. It his copy of the minutes of the 1942 meeting upon which our knowledge is based.

(10) Dr Alfred Meyer was also an academic who was a decorated soldier in World War I, became a lawyer and a member of the Nazi party joining the Department for Occupied Territories in the East where he had an important role concerned with salve labour and the extermination of Jews. He was found to have committed suicide in 1945 aged 54.

(11) Heinrich Muller was a Munich Bavarian Catholic who became head of the Gestapo although he had strong political beliefs he became fanatical and ruthless in his work and held a position between and working closely with Himmler and Geobbels who is reported to have devised the extermination plan and Eichmann given the task of carrying it out, He was put in charge if dealing with those thought to have been involved in the Assassination plot. He is known to have been in the Hitler bunker at the end and then all trace disappeared, he is the most senior Nazi where what happened is not known.

(12) Erich Neumann was a Nazi politician who studied law and economics at three universities and work for various Ministries representing a range of them at the 1942 meeting arising from his involvement in four year plans. He was arrested and interrogated after the war dying in 1948 aged 56.

(13) Dr Karl Schongarth was one of the younger men at the 1942 meeting who had risen rapidly through the SS hold 8 ranks between 1936 and 1943 and was Gestapo head in the Netherlands and then headed a special group in Poland where he was regarded as responsible for the death of 4000 Jewish citizens in Krakow. However at the end of the war he was convicted of killed an allied airman and hung.

(14) Wilhelm Stuckhart was a lawyer who worked at the Ministry of the Interior and represented the Minister at the 1942 meeting where in the film he is shown as arguing about the position of Jews according to the Law in which he had played a major part in drafting. His defence team at the trial of the Ministries was successful in their defence of his actions as a loyal officer who obeyed orders but who supported the rule of Law. He was effectively released on conviction in 1949 because of time already served and died in a mysterious accident four years later which some alleged was staged.

(15) Adolf Eichmann became the most well known of those attending the meeting because he was chosen by Heydrich to carryout the transportation plans which led to millions of Jews perishing, and because he escaped the allied in Germany and then lived in Argentina for 15 years working for Mercedes Benz until captured by Mossad and put on trial in Israel where he was convicted and hung in 1962. In 1944 he had been sent to Hungary to supervise the killing of 430000 Jews, making his escape to Austria before the Russians liberated Hungary.

One of the great scandals of American and German Governments is that they were aware that Eichmann was living in Argentina for a number of years because of what Eichmann might reveal about the Nazis which the USA recruited as part of their atomic and nuclear and anti Russian post war and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was worried about what Eichmann might say about his national security adviser Hans Klobke as they had worked together in the Jewish affairs department.

It was therefore just as well that I had prepared for the film by watching the Sunday Christmas Comedy The Clash of Santas in which Robson Green and his best mate Mark Benton who does the bank adverts which con new investors or those taking loans with taster incentives before applying the small print, journey to World Santa Championships in Lithuania where the prevent the statue of St Nicholas being blown up by Santa Non believers, overcoming their natural rivalry and Mark’s despair at the break of his marriage and being away from his daughter at Christmas time

Earlier in the day there was an hilarious ho ho than ha ha Western in which Star Trek William Shatner played the good and the bad twin half Indian half white brothers who eventually fight their duel to the death. Meanwhile the good guy finds himself caught up the bloody feud between the two richest and powerful men in the territory and a friend for life of the woman his bad guy brother has raped. Newcastle managed to win their home match and thus like Sunderland move away from the bottom three but there is a long way to go. I enjoyed stuffed lamb shoulder for lunch, soup and Mackerel for tea, ice cream and chocolates on a day of indulgence
I also enjoyed the Christmas special of Lark Rise to Candleford in which the importance of family and friends at Christmas time was underlined with a sub plot of the appearance of a restless spirit who accidentally died while searching fro her father some 80 years earlier and been buried in the woods in an unmarked grave because it was thought she had committed suicide.. There were also a dozen other sub stories in this heart warming series of country life in the days before cars, TV and computers.

My impression is that all the channels are working hard to down play the Christian aspects of Christmas given the changing composition of British Society, that December 25th was pagan festival and there is no evidence linking this date with the birth of Jesus., a fairy tale subsequently created by the Catholic church. However the Christian birthday is one of the concepts for this day worth retaining.

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