By the time this article appeared on paper, the defeated Germans had been living among the soldiers of four different military powers for two years: the British, the French, the Russians and the Americans - each army had their own distinct personality and the Teutonic natives knew them well. With that in mind, an American reporter decided to put the question to them as to what they thought of these squatters - what did they like most about them and what did the detest most about them?
The Germans did not truly believe that the Americans were there friends until they proved themselves during the Berlin Blockade; click here to read about that... This Collier's Magazine article from 1947 was penned by the German-speaking Sigrid Schultz (1893 - 1980) who's report told on those discontented Germans who enjoyed tweaking the collective noses of the armies that lorded over them - oddly believing that a war between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union was the best answer to their hopes. Elements of the populace spoke openly about the good old days under Hitler and sang the old Nazi anthem, "The Horst Wessel Song":
"In Munich, the signs on the square named for 'The Victims of Fascism' were replaced by signs reading 'The Victims of Democracy'. The police only acted after a Munich paper front-paged the story."
A similar article from 1951 can be read here...
Read about American censorship in Occupied-Japan...
In the chaos and confusion of 1945 Berlin the whereabouts of Gestapo General Heinrich Müller was lost; many believe he had been killed or committed suicide. Another report had it that Müller had been captured with the Africa Korps by the British and subsequently made good his escape into Syria. In an issue of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia that appeared on newsstands at the end of July, 1950, it was reported that while residing in the Middle East he had converted to Islam, changed his name to Hanak Hassim Bey and was amassing an army of German veterans in order to march on Israel. The attached notice seems to be based on the Izvestia article.
Distrusting Germans was a common pastime for many people in the Twentieth Century; some thirty years earlier a similar article was published about this distrust. Here is another article about escaped Nazis.
When a Nazi converted to Islam it was undoubtedly the work of Haj Amin Al-Husseini. Click here to read about him.
"Barely existing on brief rations of food and other necessities, the three million-odd Germans in 1948 Berlin are cold and afraid. In their battle for survival they spy on one another, steal coffins from the dead for firewood and raid garbage cans to eat."
Just how accurate was the Allied bombing campaign of Germany? Click here and find out. Norwegian traitor Vidkun Quisling (1887 - 1945) insisted on his innocence throughout his trial and all the way up to the day of his firing squad. To counter his claims in the courtroom prosecutors produced the diary of Hitler's foreign minister, Alfred Rosenberg, that clearly stated that Quisling was complicit from the very beginning in the invasion of his homeland. A pride of Norwegian military officers recalled the day of the Nazi attack when Quisling refused to give the mobilization order.
Click here to read an article about another European traitor: Pierre Laval. Counted among the hundreds of thousands of captured Nazi combatants during the war were thousands of anti-Nazi German draftees who were predictably alienated from the majority of German P.O.W.s in their respective camps. Subjected to kangaroo courts, hazings and random acts of brutality, these Germans were immediately recognized by their captors as a vital element that could prove helpful in the process of rebuilding Germany when the war reached an end.
And so it was early in 1944 when the U.S. Army's Special Projects Division of the Office of the Provost Marshal General was established in order to take on the enormous task of re-educating these German prisoners of war, all 360,000 of them, in order that they might clearly understand the benefits and virtues of a representative form of government. This article tells the story of their education within the confines of two special encampments that were established just for this purpose, and their repatriation to Germany, when they saw the all that fascism had willed to their countrymen. |