Latest news with #Himmler
Wall Street Journal
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
‘A Calculated Restraint' Review: How the World Turned Away From Horror
In January 1939, Adolf Hitler gave a major speech about his plans for the Third Reich's future. Careful not to provoke Franklin Roosevelt, he did not mention the U.S. president by name and played down, relative to some of his other speeches, his hatred for the Jewish people. But even as the Führer sought to reassure the West of his intentions, Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the Nazi Party's SS (the Schutzstaffel, or 'protection squadron'), was already planning to build concentration camps and cremation ovens for the disappearing of those to be exterminated. Nearly three months earlier, thugs had attacked Jewish homes and businesses across Nazi Germany in what would come to be known as Kristallnacht. Laws were introduced to deprive German Jews of the privileges and civil rights they had enjoyed for centuries. In 'A Calculated Restraint,' Richard Breitman argues that by the time Hitler gave his speech in early 1939, 'he already hoped to physically eliminate the Jews of Europe.' Antisemitism was an essential and well-known element of Hitler's regime. So why did Americans and non-Reich Europeans continue to ignore it? Mr. Breitman's study concerns itself primarily with how a combination of institutionalized antisemitism and conservative diplomacy among Western governments was called on to deal with the vagaries of warfare. A distinguished professor emeritus at American University, Mr. Breitman has written extensively on World War II, including 'FDR and the Jews' (2013, with Allan J. Lichtman) and 'Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew' (1998). In 'A Calculated Restraint,' he sets out to explore 'the contrast between what Allied leaders knew and what they said publicly about the Holocaust,' re-examining some of his earlier conclusions in light of new and revised information. Mr. Breitman suggests that moral timidity meant that the dilemma faced by Europe's Jews was not a prime consideration for military and religious leaders. For years, Pope Pius XII equivocated about speaking out against Hitler's plans for fear of placing European Catholics in the Nazi leader's sights. Surprisingly, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Roosevelt were similarly reluctant. They 'initially viewed the Nazi campaign against the Jews as one small element of the war,' Mr. Breitman writes. The author's deep research reveals that their continued hesitation to acknowledge such organized killing is demonstrated by the historical record. Rabbi Stephen Wise, a co-founder of the World Jewish Congress and its first president, was a close friend of Roosevelt's and kept him apprised of antisemitism in Europe and the U.S. He urged more than once that FDR make a public statement about what was happening under the Nazi regime. But the president felt strongly that successfully prosecuting the war itself was of more immediate concern than the suffering of refugees, Jewish or otherwise. 'In retrospect,' both Roosevelt and Churchill 'could have done more to articulate genocide without major damage to the Allied war effort,' Mr. Breitman acidly asserts. 'That would have had at least some benefit in alerting potential victims and rescuers in Europe.'
Medscape
03-06-2025
- Politics
- Medscape
Behind History's Icons II: Hitler's Jaw and Cold War Secrets
Ancient Egyptians believed that mummifying a king's body was key to his ascent into the realm of the gods. The preserved body, known as the Ach, a luminous spirit, was thought to begin this journey by entering the sarcophagus, seen as the womb of Nut, the mother goddess of the sky. The belief in the enduring power of human remains has been deep in global history. In the West, reverence for the relics of Christian saints took place early in the Church. Some of the most extraordinary examples include what was believed to be the foreskin of Jesus and the severed head of Saint John the Baptist. By the 19th century, European scientists had begun preserving and studying body parts of famous individuals — from Mohammed's beard and Buddha's teeth to Adolf Hitler's jaw. Following the Napoleon relics story, Part II probes Hitler's preserved jaws. Hitler's Final Days It was April 28, 1945. Hitler, 1889-1945, Germany's leader, paced furiously through the corridors of the Wolf's Lair, his secret headquarters near Rastenburg, close to Görlitz. He was furious, as his trusted deputy head of the Nazi Party's paramilitary force, Heinrich Himmler is believed to have been betrayed by Hitler for several months. He reportedly held secret talks with Western Allies to end the war. Shockingly, he is said to have offered to halt the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews if Americans — Germany's main enemy in the West — would ease their attacks. Hitler was reportedly stunned. In an effort to regain his composure, Hitler summons Hermann Fegelein — 1906-1945, his liaison to the Waffen Schutzstaffel, the Nazi Party's armed military unit responsible for combat operations. According to these reports, Hitler ordered their execution. Another report stated that he ordered his arrest and left the execution order to his subordinates. Himmler, in turn, expels Hitler from the Nazi Party and removes him from all party and state positions. However, in reality, Hitler was more composed than he appeared. As often in his life, even moments of lost composure serve a greater purpose. Historian and Himmler biographer Heinz Peter Longerich noted that just one week before his public outburst on April 22, 1945, Hitler privately declared that he would stop issuing orders. This was his way of signaling to his top officials that the war was lost. By this point, Hitler had effectively lost control over his army. Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner, 1896-1966, had earlier refused to carry out a relief attack ordered by Hitler during the Battle of Berlin, calling it impossible. To avoid being linked to inevitable and shameful defeat, Hitler allowed others to handle peace negotiations and then publicly expelled them from the Nazi Party. Historians widely agree that Hitler decided to take his own life on April 27, 1945, one day before his outburst. When news of Himmler's betrayal became known, Hitler acted quickly and decisively. He first expelled Himmler from the party and then, by proxy, took revenge on Fegelein. Just before midnight, Hitler hurriedly married his partner, Eva Braun in 1912-1945. He then dictated his political and personal will to his secretary, Traudl Junge in 1920-2002. On the morning of April 30, Hitler tested poison ampoules on his German shepherd and later gave a similar poison to his colleagues. At approximately 3:30 PM, he had Braun swallow cyanide before shooting. However, myths and uncertainties surround what occurred next. Corpse Odyssey Hitler's death did not end speculation. Conspiracy theories quickly surfaced, claiming that he had faked his death and fled abroad, possibly to Argentina or Japan, with the help of body doubles and plastic surgery. According to conspiracy theories, Hitler fired a double shot and burned his body beyond recognition before escaping the submarine to Argentina or Japan. These theories claim that his outbursts of rage, will, distribution of poison vials, and suicide were staged. Until recently, Hitler was said to have lived a privileged life abroad, even after undergoing surgical alterations. Local historian and biographer Harald Sandner calls this 'humbug.' He pointed out that Hitler's body was examined multiple times by experts and moved at least 10 times. According to the report, Hitler and Braun's bodies were carried into the Reich Chancellery Garden at approximately 3:50 PM on April 30, 1945. The individuals who carried the bodies into the garden included Hitler's valet Heinz Linge, Criminal Director Peter Högl, Hauptsturmführer Ewald Lindloff, and Obersturmführer Heinrich Josef Reiser. The bodies were then doused with gasoline and set on fire. Eyewitness accounts, including that of Rottenführer Hermann Karnau, mentioned that between 4 and 6:20 PM, the remains showed movement described as 'the flesh moved up and down,' which is consistent with the natural effects of burning human bodies and muscle contractions during cremation. On May 4, Soviet soldiers found the remains, initially unaware of their significance. The next day, the bodies were reburied and moved to Helios Hospital Berlin-Buch, where autopsies were performed on May 8. Fritz Echtmann, longtime assistant to Hitler's dentist Hugo Johannes Blaschke, 1881-1959, may be for propaganda reasons, confirmed the identity of Hitler's jaw remains as unclear. However, Soviet authorities promoted the narrative that Hitler had cowardly taken poison, rejecting the evidence that he had also shot himself, and confirmed the authenticity of the jaws. Soviet doctors later claimed Hitler had 'cowardly poisoned himself instead of heroically shooting himself.' On May 4, 1945, Soviet troops from the 3rd Shock Army discovered these bodies. Unaware that they belonged to Adolf and Eva Hitler, they wrapped them in blankets and buried them. On May 5, the next day, other Soviet soldiers found the bodies again and transported them in an ammunition box to the Pathological Institute at Helios Hospital Berlin-Buch. The bodies were autopsied between May 8 and May 10. Echtmann confirmed the authenticity of Hitler's jaw. For propaganda purposes, Soviet doctors later claimed that Hitler had 'cowardly poisoned himself instead of heroically shooting himself.' Even decades later, in 1968, the well-known Russian journalist and military history professor Lev Aleksandrovich Bezymensky in 1920-2007 wrote that Hitler's charred corpse smelled of bitter almonds. In the second half of May 1945, grave robbers opened Hitler's grave, searching for a rumored Nazi treasure said to be buried with him. Soviet soldiers protected the bodies and moved them again, in ammunition crates, to Finow, 38 km away, where they were reburied. On May 22, 1945, the body was exhumed and reburied for unknown reasons. Forensic Investigation On June 9, 1945, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov in 1896-1974 claimed that Hitler's death was uncertain. British historian Sir Richard John Evans suggested that the Soviet Union might have wanted to maintain the threat of Hitler's survival to justify a harsh occupation policy. Consequently, false information about Hitler's death is deliberately disseminated. This theory is supported by the fact that Hitler's suicide was reported in the Soviet newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on May 10, 1945. As late as June 5, Soviet Army officers confirmed this to American officers. Probably on orders from Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in 1878-1953 denials began just 4 days later. On June 7, 1945, the bodies of Adolf and Eva Hitler were reportedly brought to Rathenau in a 'half-rotten state.' Between December 8, 1945, and January 13, 1946, Soviet Colonel General Bogdan Zakharovich Kobulov ordered a new examination of Hitler's body. To prevent this investigation, other Soviet officials arranged for the bodies to move to Magdeburg, Germany. Once again, the bodies were buried in ammunition crates in a 2 m deep pit in the courtyard of Westendstraße 32 (now Klausenerstraße 32). On February 21, 1946, the bodies were autopsied. They were then buried in the courtyard of a Soviet military settlement beneath an 18 cm thick concrete slab. On April 5, 1970, the KGB, a highly centralized and secretive organization Chief Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, 1914-1984, ordered the bodies to be destroyed. The military settlement was to be handed over to the East German authorities, and Andropov did not want to risk the bodies falling into their hands. Among historians, Sandner's accounts are valued but are not fully reliable. Sandner, who had never received formal training in history, did not provide detailed annotations in his books to clarify his reasoning. A publication by the French forensic scientist and pathologist Philippe Charlier in the European Journal of Internal Medicine is considered scientifically credible. Charlier reported that the Russian domestic intelligence service (Federal Security Service) allowed him and his team to examine Hitler's presumed skull and dentures, which had survived the final burning. Their investigation confirmed that the dentures belonged to Hitler. However, they were not 100% certain about the skull, which showed traces of a gunshot wound. These findings align with the report of German forensic biologist Mark Benecke, who was permitted to examine Hitler's alleged remains for a week in November 2001. Benecke wrote at the time: 'There is no doubt about the authenticity of the teeth. Hitler had a unique dental structure. He used a large metal bridge in 1944. Using old x-rays, I was able to clearly identify the teeth as Hitler's.' However, Benecke found no traces of poison or glass fragments in the ampoule. Surprised, he consulted Bezymensky. 'Bezymensky told me that the KGB had only allowed him to publish his book in 1986 on one condition: That he would support the poison theory,' Benecke wrote about his conversation with Bezymensky. Finally, the alleged fragment of Hitler's skull was stored in a plastic box, which was intended for computer disks. According to contemporary historian Joachim Fest in 1926-2006, Hitler's body was found 'slumped over,' with 'his head slightly bent forward…on the flowered sofa,' after he had shot a coin-sized hole in his temple with a pistol. If this description is correct, the skull fragment could not belong to Hitler. The entry and exit wounds suggest the shot came from below, most likely fired 'in the mouth.' To confirm identity, the remaining blood traces must be examined. However, Benecke stated that he would require comparative DNA from Hitler's relatives, such as his sister, who was buried near Munich. Exhumation is the only method to obtain genetic material. Conclusion Few other deaths are surrounded by myths similar to Hitler's death. The search for the truth about Hitler's death is complicated by the competing interests and the interests of those with partial knowledge. Historians now agree that Hitler died by suicide on April 30, 1945, either by shooting himself or by combining gunshots with poison. Scientific evidence confirms that Hitler's dentures are preserved and currently held by Russian domestic intelligence services. Whether the skull in the Russian State Archives belonged to him remains unclear.
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why Neo-Nazis Are Obsessed With the Occult
Deep in northwestern Westphalia, Germany, stands a twelfth-century castle conceived by Heinrich Himmler, leader of the paramilitary Schutzstaffel, as a kind of 'Camelot' for the triumphal knights of the Aryan race. The Wewelsburg Castle was also a fantasy nerd's dream come true. In its bowels lies an occult enclave straight out of Cecil B. DeMille: an Arthurian-style set of catacombs designed to look medieval but actually made of concrete. Above, in the Hall of the Supreme S.S. Leaders, there's a marble floor inlaid with a design of the Black Sun, or Sonnenrad—a circle containing swastika-like arms that epitomizes Nazi striving to create an idealized Norse-Aryan past for themselves. Himmler started renovations on the castle in the mid-1930s; the Nazi paradise he built was meant to host S.S. ceremonies, such as handing particularly distinguished murderers the Totenkopfring, a ring adorned with the signature S.S. skull but also a variety of quasi-Nordic runes and symbolic oak leaves, designed by Himmler's personal occultist, a purportedly clairvoyant mystic by the name of Karl Wiligut. The Nazis, in short, were obsessed with legend and magic. Consider the swastika itself: First written about in Germany by the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the symbol in the ruins of Troy in 1868, the swastika was seized on by Hitler—whose birthday falls on Easter Sunday this year—as emblematic of the idealized, quasi-mythical Aryan race he sought to recreate. More to the point, the Nazis were murder nerds, LARPing as wizards of racial superiority as they committed very real atrocities. And the same is true of their successors today. Partly aping their dead heroes and partly engaged in a similar delusion—self-mythologizing as the scions of an ancient white race—neo-Nazis are a remarkably myth-oriented bunch. This manifests in a lot of different ways, like engaging in werewolf-themed cultic neopaganism or dedicating themselves to Norse gods. Or, in a recent newsworthy example, following the Order of the Nine Angles, a late-twentieth-century neo-Nazi pseudoreligion that seeks to turn its adherents into racially pure Satanic wizards. Earlier this week, a Waukesha, Wisconsin, teenager and devotee of the Order of the Nine Angles, or ONA, was charged with murdering his mother and stepfather and plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump, in order to further the Order's goals of a world plunged into chaotic violence. 'Jewish occupied governments must fall. The white race cannot survive unless America collapses,' the 17-year-old, Nikita Casap, wrote in a manifesto. 'Huge amounts of violence will be required.' He called himself a 'niner' (a Nine Angles devotee) and encouraged his imitators to read a variety of extremist books. In doing so, Casap drew on nearly a century of blood-drenched legacy in his pairing of violent death with a potent dose of magical thinking. The symbol of the Order of the Nine Angles looks, more than anything, like a mutilated cat's cradle, just as their ideology is a muddle of inverted myths, profligate cruelty, and pure bigotry. It's a religion of shock and destruction, and as such, it has appealed particularly to young men—teens seeking to break away from their parents, and aimless mid-twenties men who want to blaze a path of dubious glory by blood. The movement was created in the 1970s by a British neo-Nazi named David Myatt, nicknamed the 'Cat Strangler' by his friends because of his affinity for torturing animals. His ideology reflects the charming sobriquet. In 1999, a 22-year-old man reportedly inspired by Myatt's book A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution planted bombs embedded with nails in areas frequented by London's minority and gay communities, injuring 129 people and killing three. In Myatt's work and speeches, an increasingly elaborate cosmology is paired with direct calls to terrorist action, all in the service of ushering in an eschatological race war. Affiliated with the so-called 'Left-Hand Path' of magic—dark or black magic—the ONA offers such occult hokum as a world divided into the seven branches of the 'Tree of Wyrd,' a creator deity named Vindex, and individual cells called 'nexions.' It's a religion of edgelords who've cliff-dived over the edge into madness. The chief tenet of the Order of the Nine Angles, though, is chaos. It's a religion of edgelords who've cliff-dived over the edge into madness. The creation of chaos—ideally through violence, particularly murder and rape—is a form of magic, which, if enacted often enough and brutally enough, will destabilize a moral order dominated by 'Magian' (Jewish) and 'Nazarene' (Christian) morality. The ultimate goal of the Order is a climactic race war, which will usher in a new 'Aeon,' or age—in essence, a Thousand-Year Reich. With enough chaos magic unleashed on the world through acts of violence—the more spectacular the better, like Casap's would-be assassination of Trump—the 'Dark Imperium' led by evil wizards will commence. 'According to the ONA, Judeo-Christian morals, such as 'Don't rape and murder people,' and 'racial equality, human rights'—those are part of a worldwide illusion,' Barrett Gay, a threat-analysis researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told me in an interview. 'Part of becoming self-actualized and pursuing the eternal Imperium is to act out the taboos of that system, and by doing so you take away its power. They practice a more mystical form of accelerationism: They believe they can destabilize the entire moral fabric of our civilization through mystically boosted, but also very real, murder and rape.' They also, Gay added, 'get into some weirder stuff, like an Aryan empire in space.' The movement made the transcontinental jump from the U.K. to the United States by the mid-1990s, but took off in the early 2000s. One early and prominent American branch got the cheesily murderous name the Tempel ov Blood. The cult spread among neo-Nazis on the now-defunct white supremacist forum Iron March; according to Gay, until quite recently, information on the Order was hard to come by unless you already knew what you were looking for, deep in the fever swamps of Telegram. It isn't, in and of itself, a path to radicalization: It's a method of making murderers out of those already inclined toward white supremacist ideals; an instrument of self-justification and self-aggrandizement. It isn't especially innovative, either: The Ku Klux Klan wore robes and called themselves wizards too. All of the Order of the Nine Angles' seminal texts are written in a pseudo-elevated tone, larded with jargon that reads like a particularly depraved D&D campaign. Rites such as the 'Black Mass of Heresy' open with adulation of Hitler and include chants like: We believe in justice for our oppressed comradesAnd seek an end to the world-widePersecution of believe in the magick of our wyrdAnd curse all who oppose us. This is, to put it mildly, dorky; it's generally a social faux pas to chant loudly about the 'magick' of your 'wyrd.' It's also part of a murderous doctrine of total amorality. These two things go together better than you think; as events around us are illustrating all the time, things can be ridiculous and awful all at once. The 'Sevenfold Way' of the Order dictates an incremental increase in violence—with a particular focus on sexual violence, which is something of an obsession in the creed—along with personal asceticism and the military or paramilitary training common among neo-Nazi groups of all stripes. To put it another way: The rigmarole of the order is an occult support structure for the endgame of creating a decentralized army of racist rapists and murderers. And it's been quite successful. There's been a lot of murder, and a great many terror attempts and attacks, inspired by this ideology. There's been a lot of murder, and a great many terror attempts and attacks, inspired by this ideology. It's been taken up by a number of neo-Nazi groups as their chosen niche sub-ideology, and has inspired lone gunners like Casap, along with multiple rapes and widespread dissemination of child pornography (in keeping with its doctrine of sexual depravity). In 1997, members of a Swedish affiliate group murdered a gay Algerian man in a Gothenburg park, as part of a human sacrifice (which ONA literature refers to as a 'culling'). In 2008, eight young Russian Satanists killed four teenagers in the Yaroslavl region, fried their hearts over a bonfire, ate them, and buried the bodies in a peat bog; an ONA cult dedicated to their deeds sprang up in the region. The pace picked up in the 2010s and 2020s; affiliates of the Order were charged with possessing child pornography, planning terror attacks, multiple child rapes, and murders. In 2022, a U.S. soldier and Order member was caught plotting to ambush members of his unit in order to cause 'the deaths of as many soldiers as possible.' The same year, an 18-year-old in London murdered two sisters in a park after signing a pact with a demon in blood, promising to 'sacrifice only women.' Why are murder and magic so intertwined for these adherents? Whether you wear Crusader gear, don a skull ring bedecked with runes, chant black masses, or sacrifice to Odin, it all serves the same goal: It's a process of bonding and becoming. Neo-Nazis lean so heavily on myth because their ideology is prima facie absurd; the purported oppression of whites needs tortuous, even mythological explanations to ring remotely true. Hence the dorky architecture propping up all that manic violence. It serves social and psychological purposes too: The commission of crimes in service of an ideology binds one tighter to it. Embracing a faith that is repugnant and outlandish to outsiders shuts one off from the rest of the world. And the profession of belief in concert with others is one of the most ancient, and simple, forms of human communion. It's also a big confidence booster, at age 17, to think you're at one with the underlying forces of the cosmos. Even if you're not one hundred percent sold on the 'magick' of your 'wyrd,' it's exciting to be part of a secret scary movement that does scary things, and know you can scare or impress people just by being part of it. It's one thing to post racist things online from the comfort of your home; another thing entirely to embrace the notion that you are a master of magic, a powerful wizard whose bloodletting will usher in an 'Imperium' of racially pure enlightenment. To wield that kind of power is to be wondrous; to stride atop multiple planes of reality. In other words, the appeal of evil wizardry is, on some level, the same as the desire to be Harry Potter: to be the most special boy in the world. These ideologies dangle just that promise, convincing people around the world that shooting your mother will make you a wizard, instead of just another killer. That's what creates murder nerds, and the myths and legends that support them: the urge to achieve a great apotheosis and to do so via the blunt instruments of the knife, the gun, and the pain of others. In Westphalia, the Wewelsburg Castle is now a museum of the horrors of the S.S. Despite Himmler's grandiose desire to drench his murders in myth and mystery, the elaborate occult ceremonies he and his pet clairvoyant hoped for didn't materialize; there were unfathomable atrocities to commit. Less than a kilometer from Himmler's faked-up magic playground stand the remnants of a concentration camp where over a thousand people died, conscripted as slave labor to build ever-grander extensions to the castle. The tombs in the great S.S. catacomb are empty; they always were. But the graves are full, the only true monument to the small, sadistic men who dreamed they were the kings of legend. All they ever made was a heap of bones.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Her father owned Himmler's personal copy of ‘Mein Kampf' — but how?
The book had long lingered there. Known, but not acknowledged. Sitting on her father's bookshelf for decades after the war in Western Europe had culminated in an Allied victory on May 8, 1945. Except it was no ordinary book. It was Heinrich Himmler's — one of the chief architects of the Holocaust — personal copy of Adolf Hitler's Volume I of 'Mein Kampf,' replete with Himmler's own annotations. It wasn't until the death of her father, John Fletcher Sisson, who served in the 4th Infantry Division, in 1992 that author and historical preservationist Karen Sisson Marshall recognized what she described to Military Times as the 'magnitude of evil' the book possessed. But what began as a simple process of donating a piece of history forced Marshall to contemplate her own father's history — and his path to possessing such ephemera. Can you talk about what occurred after your father's death in 1992 and what led you down this path? Two days after my father died, I was asked to go through the files for my mother. As I was going through his files I discovered a 70-page manuscript that had been typed fully, that had been completed and even edited. There was memorabilia, information from World War II and and then this letter that I found with his pictures from the time he returned to Normandy in 1979. He had retraced his own footsteps and he identified on an old map where he thought they had been. I was shocked when my mother told me she didn't know anything about any of this. As I said in the book, I felt like I was meeting a man I'd never met. So then, for the first time, I actually paid attention to Himmler's 'Mein Kampf' book. I had always been aware of it, vaguely, but I didn't realize that he had kept this little book on Himmler with it. I just had never taken anything seriously about his service in World War II. So what we did was we published his manuscript into a small pamphlet and my mother gave it to her close friends and that was it. But in 2004 for a number of reasons, I decided that I was going to find a home for the 'Mein Kampf' volume. My mother came to live with us after dad died, and I realized she was getting older — that was probably the most important impetus. I began to think about this book. I'd gone back to school and gotten a degree in historic preservation and I think I was becoming more aware of the past, its ramifications. So I brought it up to her that I did not want to be responsible for the book if something happened to her. I tell the story in the book and I shouldn't laugh, but it was actually very amusing. I was just wandering around, calling people up, telling them that I had Heinrich Himmler's 'Mein Kampf' and I didn't know what to do with it. Can you share a little more about the process of deciding what to do with Himmler's book? I got my degree and this was, I think, really important. I had gone back to school and I began to think about why I was ignoring my father's role in history? That's when I began to look around the house and look at these artifacts and think, 'Who was my father?' So the book fell in line with that. Sotheby's essentially hung up on me, thinking I was a crank. And that is how I was treated, sort of like a crank by various places I would call — I probably sounded like one to be fair. You have to remember, we're in the very beginnings of the internet. That's where the Baldwin's [Bookbar comes in. I finally went in because I had bought books from him and he knew I was legitimate. He finally listened to me and he's the one who found the article on the internet about Volume II. That in turn led us to meet the curator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and going through that whole process of learning how you authenticate something. In your book, 'Finding My Father's Footsteps' you write about two soldiers and two crossed stories. How did you resolve those of Mr. Williams and his father's, and your own? I never questioned my father, but the world has to question him. It was then that I received a phone call from Mr. Williams [a pseudonym]. Mr. Williams couldn't have been nicer. We chatted. I told him my father's story, and he said, 'Mrs. Marshall, with all due respect, I believe your father lied to you.' Just like that. What a gut punch. His father had told him that at the end of World War II, he was in possession of both volumes — one and two. So he thought my father's story had to be made up. He seemed to indicate that my father must have, for some reason, decided to take one of the books from his dad, otherwise he couldn't explain his father's story. So in the book I focused my story on resolving my father's story. I do not want to call into question his father's story, because I want to respect the fact that soldiers came home and just tell you a little bit of their experience. In this book you had to work backwards — you had the ending, albeit a confusing one, and to resolve it you had to work back from the beginning. How did you eventually come to resolve the question of your father's honor? I wish I could tell you that I was such a good researcher, but I met Bob Babcock, who is the historian for the 4th Infantry Division and he sent me the list of documents they had and I was intrigued by [Swede] Henley's name. I got copies of different diaries and journals. It wasn't until I had gone through it that I realized he'd been my father's commanding officer at the end of the war. My father's own journal ended in January [1945], but Henley kept a diary for all of the 11 months that he fought through Europe. So I followed Henley's diary knowing my father was under him. So there it was when Henley put the entry in his diary that they had taken 3,000 prisoners in Tegernsee, [Germany], on May 3. My father's story always was: 'I was the commanding officer in charge of securing Heinrich Himmler's home.' Somehow my father's story just came completely alive. He even sent a postcard home to my grandmother from Tegernsee. So I was like, 'Okay, there's no question in my mind. This is what I think happened.' The intelligence officer has to file a report, has to report back to their commanding officer and tell them what they've done. So I think my father must have been in a report, and I think William's father saw the report. And so when he said he had both copies, I think that's what he thought. I think he meant he had Volume II, and that he knew Volume I was in the system. That's what I think, but I am surmising. You write about holding Himmler's copy of 'Mein Kampf' and recognizing the magnitude of evil it possessed. Were there any personal annotations of Himmler's that stood out to you after it was translated? I drew a very strong line between Dr. [Richard] Brightman's expertise on Heinrich Himmler and what our family was doing. I actually don't know what the annotations are. I did not want explore that side of the book with him. Can you tell me a little bit about your father, John's, wartime experience? The 4th Infantry Division had a storied contribution to the Second World War — it was the first U.S. unit to land on Utah Beach, helped to liberate Paris, fought in the grueling battles of the Hurtgen Forest and in the Battle of the Bulge and was among the first units to liberate Dachau. How did researching and following in your father's footsteps bring about a different understanding of your father? It changed my life. At that moment when I stood there in Normandy, I reflected back yelling at my father at the dinner table about the Vietnam War. I yelled, 'You just don't understand that people are dying. You don't care that people are dying. You don't know anything.' I knew he had a Nazi bullet — we all knew the story about the bullet that was in his abdomen that didn't go away. That was sort of a little family joke, you know, that he still had the bullet. I obviously knew somewhere in the back of my foolish 19-year-old brain that my father had been shot at. I don't know why I never put two and two together. It wasn't until I stood there in Normandy that I put the pieces together. As you mentioned, you were among the protesters of the Vietnam War. How did researching your father's war experience affirm or alter your opinions on war and its necessity? What our generation did … it's just unconscionable what we did. I guess because we were all kids, but we somehow blamed the soldiers who were just kids like us who were sent off to war. We mixed it up. You can stand your ground politically but not conflate the politician's war with the soldier's war. It has been really nice to go to those 22nd Infantry reunions. It's mainly Vietnam vets now, and we've talked and I'm very honest when I sell the book, I always say, 'You know, if you're going to be offended by the fact that I was an anti-war demonstrator, please don't buy the book.' I've had wonderful discussions with these men. How would you like your book used as a blueprint for others? At the heart of my book is the idea of how well do we know the stories that impact our lives? What I'm hoping to do is to inspire people to go up in the attic. Get those letters down. Think about someone you love and go learn the story behind the story. You don't have to become an expert on World War II, just become an expert on your area. Every war has all kinds of stories to tell — important stories to tell. World War II called upon an entire generation to do unbelievable things and the vast majority of them rose to the occasion. And we now have these stories buried in our attics.
Telegraph
13-03-2025
- Telegraph
Bayeux Tapestry piece stolen by Nazis will be returned to France
A missing fragment from the Bayeux Tapestry that was looted by Nazi archaeologists will be returned to France, after it was discovered in northern Germany. The missing piece of the 11th-century tapestry was taken from the collection of Karl Schlabow, a textile archaeologist who worked in league with the Nazi SS as they scoured Europe for Germanic artefacts. Schlabow and his colleagues looted the piece after Heinrich Himmler, the SS leader, sent them to study it in occupied France in 1941. According to German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung, a member of the team removed part of the fragment and took it back to Germany, where it was hidden for decades. But this month, it emerged that the elusive fragment had finally been discovered in the state archives of Schleswig-Holstein, where the Schlabow collection is held. A press conference is due to be held in late March where further details about the fragment, which was taken from the underside of the tapestry, will be revealed. The Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts William the Conqueror's invasion of England in 1066 and his ascension to the throne, is an integral part of France's cultural heritage. It is full of brutal depictions of combat, with the bodies of slain soldiers littering the bottom half of the tapestry. Schlabow looted the fragment while working for Ahnenerbe, an occult-obsessed organisation created by Himmler to promote the idea that Germans descended from a superior Aryan race. Research by Ahnenerbe was often used by the Nazi regime to justify its racist policies, though the group largely engaged in bizarre pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Himmler himself was fascinated by occult mysteries, keeping a rock crystal on display in his lair of Wewelsburg Castle that supposedly represented the Holy Grail. The fragment is being returned to France just in time for major restoration work that will start this summer, when the tapestry will leave its public viewing gallery in Bayeux, Normandy for two years. 'In terms of economic and cultural influence, this is the most complex and ambitious project … ever undertaken by the Town of Bayeux,' said Bayeux mayor Patrick Gomont of the £30 million restoration efforts. However, even after the Schlabow piece has been stitched back into the tapestry, it will not be complete. Another section of up to 10ft of fabric, which is presumed to show the coronation of William I, is also missing - and its whereabouts are still unknown.
