German Invasion Of Poland Research Articles

World Domination and Genocide: The ‘Lochner Version’ of Hitler’s Speech from 22 August 1939, a Key Document of National Socialist Ideology

ABSTRACT On August 22, 1939, only days before the German invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler delivered an infamous secret speech before the leading Wehrmacht generals at the Obersalzberg. The American foreign correspondent Louis Lochner, as head of the Berlin bureau of Associated Press, was a key figure in securing, spreading, and publishing this speech during the World War II. Despite Lochner’s presence throughout the Nuremberg trials 1945/1946 as a reporter for AP, he was not called as witness to testify regarding the document which today is usually referred to as ‘Lochner Version’ of the secret Hitler speech. Later, while verifying this source during the 1960s, Lochner’s role was too underappreciated and even distorted by German historians. Therefore, until today, the Lochner Version of Hitler’s speech is either unknown, underestimated or misjudged. To reassess this central source for Hitler’s worldview and the global aspirations of National Socialist ideology, this article reconstructs its historical background and context for the first time. It argues that the Lochner Version is indeed the most authentic and reliable version available of this speech by Hitler. Only the Lochner Version reflects Hitler’s two ultimate goals: World conquest and genocides of all ‘inferior races’. Furthermore, it proves that all leading German generals knew of Hitler’s planned crimes against humanity even before World War II started.

German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus by Marc David Baer (review)

Reviewed by: German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus by Marc David Baer Geoffrey J. Giles Marc David Baer. German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. xii + 300 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000350 Gay may be the last of the cognomens in the title of this biography, but it is the feature that looms largest in the book. Three of the five chapters have "gay" or "queer" in their title. Yet Hugo Marcus (1880–1966) did not lead an especially active gay love life. Rather, he was prominent in the fight for homosexual emancipation in the early twentieth century, and a close associate of Magnus Hirschfeld and his circle. And he did write a large amount of erotic gay fiction. He never succeeded in winning a life partner, and, as Gerdien Jonker has recently commented, in his final years his letters show that he was lonely. During the last ten years of his life, Marcus was in touch with few people and took refuge instead in the fictional gay character, Heinrich, he created.1 [End Page 487] One gains the impression from Baer's many-sided exploration of this unusual life that Hugo Marcus never entirely fitted in. His passions were intellectual ones rather than personal. His best and closest companion was his pen. He was naïve about the dangers of the real world. Despite a brief incarceration in Sachsenhausen after Kristallnacht in 1938, and a Nazi demand to leave the country, he remained in Berlin in order to finish his work on a German edition of the Qur'an. He used his entry visa for Switzerland only one week before the German invasion of Poland. In some ways, he seems a rather uncongenial character. Indeed, the author notes that, in a portrait painted of him in 1925, he seems, with his wrinkled face and mussed hair, to be scowling. He looks rather grumpy in surviving photographs as well. Since Baer describes these in detail, it is a shame that this book includes no illustrations. The one attractive photo of Marcus as a twenty-one-year-old (and rather stunning he looks, too) graces the cover of the book, but, beauty being in the eye of the beholder, Baer inexplicably dismisses it as "not flattering" in its profile of his "large right ear, bony right cheek, and large sharp nose" (22). There is not so much in this book about Marcus as a Jew, because the remarkable fact about him was his conversion to Islam, with the Ahmadi community giving him a lifetime appointment as the editor of all their German publications. They regarded Marcus as "the most valued prize of our Mission in Berlin" (68). Yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith, and praised Islam for not requiring that or even a public affirmation of conversion. He saw it as more tolerant of others, including gay men like himself. And in rejecting violence, it seemed the perfect religion to heal the nations after World War I: "A religion that precedes each conversation with the greeting 'peace be with you' cannot be blood-thirsty." But was Islam really that liberal, even about other religions? Baer has to admit that Marcus was being a bit starry-eyed: "Marcus seems to have forgotten that, normatively speaking, the first pillar of Islam is the Shahadah, the proclamation of faith: 'there is only one God and Muhammad is his Prophet'" (139). The Berlin imam was instrumental in obtaining Marcus's exit visa from Nazi Germany. However, Baer cannot entirely gloss over the fact that Nazi ideology infiltrated some German Muslims and "helped contribute to the antiSemitic atmosphere in Berlin," even leading some to join the Nazi Party. But to add that "they ultimately frustrated the Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jews of Europe, if only by saving one life" (namely Hugo Marcus), smacks of a bucket of whitewash (115). Of course, the Nazis had stamped him as a Jew, adding the name Israel to his passport, which the Swiss authorities cruelly maintained in their identity papers when he went into exile. And Marcus insisted on his Jewish faith...

Julian Tuwim: Misfortunes of a Polish-Jewish Poet in Exile

Abstract This article examines the lesser-known chapter in the life of the Polish poet and writer of Jewish origin Julian Tuwim during World War II. With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and after suffering in prewar ethnocentric and anti-Semitic Poland, Tuwim fled to Romania, where he tried, in vain, to obtain a visa for the British Mandatory Palestine, without having any Zionist affinity. This attempt was based on friendly relations with Leib Jaffe, the director of the Zionist National Fund in Poland. Tuwim’s attitude towards Zionism is analyzed in the context of similar attitudes of Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig. Shortly thereafter, Tuwim came to Paris where he manifested, for the first time, anguish of exile, a feeling that didn’t leave him until the end of the war. After the German invasion of France, Tuwim fled to Portugal where he experienced a deep anguish over the refusal of an American visa, lack of money and prospects. In Lisbon, with the help of a Brazilian writer and diplomat, Tuwim obtained a visa to enter Brazil, where, with ambivalent feelings, he began his famous poem “Kwiaty polskie” [Polish flowers]. After nine months, Tuwim and his wife finally arrived in the USA where, in addition to being a writer, Tuwim became a political engagé. “We Polish Jews …” is the poem written in the shadow of the Jewish tragedy which reflects the complexity of Tuwim’s Polish-Jewish identity before and during World War II.

Remembering a Son of the Midwest: Ellis Hawley, 1929–2020

Remembering a Son of the MidwestEllis Hawley, 1929–2020 Jon K. Lauck (bio) Many scholars of the Midwest will be familiar with the work of the historian Ellis Wayne Hawley, who recently passed away at the age of 91 years. He was a man who graciously granted advice to many scholars who studied the Midwest and who did not shy away from studying midwestern figures and topics. From 1969–1994 Hawley was professor of history at the University of Iowa. Hawley was born near Cambridge, Kansas in June 1929. His parents, Winfield Scott Hawley and Maggie Logsdon, had earlier moved from West Virginia to South Dakota and then, in the 1890s, settled in Kansas. The wagon they traveled in is now located in the Grenola Grain Elevator Museum in Grenola, Kansas.1 Young Ellis left Cambridge to attend college about an hour away at the recently re-christened Municipal University of Wichita (formerly the Congregationalist-run Fairmount College), now known as Wichita State University, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1950. At Wichita, according to his college yearbook, he was in the Debate Club and the History Club and on the Dean's Honor Roll. Hawley then earned an MA in history in 1951 from the University of Kansas, where the historian James Malin, originally from Edgley, North Dakota, held court on all matters related to midwestern, Great Plains, agricultural, and environmental history.2 Hawley thought Malin should be considered a midwestern historian "not only in terms of his background, interests and professional activities but also in terms of the kind of history he did, his midwestern values and attitudes, and his notions about paying attention to creative individuals, folk processes, environmental settings, and local differences."3 After his time in Lawrence, Hawley served in the U.S. Army (1951–1953), where he rose to the rank of first lieutenant. While stationed in Germany, [End Page 219] Hawley met Sofia Koltun, originally from Zamosc, Poland, and they were married on September 2, 1953. They would later have a son, Arnold Jay, and a daughter, Agnes. Sofia had been displaced by the German invasion of Poland. "Her village was bombed and she was trapped inside a house while baby-sitting her younger cousins," her daughter Agnes recalled. "She would have been about ten years old. She said the house was on fire on the outside and she couldn't get out because the pressure on the outside kept the shutters closed. Her uncle finally showed up and got them out. She saw some horrible things happen. Her school was closed and used as a stable for German horses. The church was going to be used for the same, so many of the people of the village locked themselves inside to prevent it from being taken, but the Germans just locked them in until they all died, then carted their bodies offto be disposed of somewhere." Sofia was then sent to Germany to work on a farm. after the war she was sent to a Displaced Person camp and ultimately found work on a U.S. Army base. She never heard from her family in Poland again.4 In 1953, after his marriage to Sofia, Hawley enrolled in the famed graduate program in history at the University of Wisconsin. At Wisconsin, Hawley further pursued his interests in Herbert Hoover, trade associations, competition policy, and the National Industrial Recovery Act, subjects he first broached in his work with Malin at Kansas.5 Hawley's advisor at Wisconsin was Howard K. Beale, much of whose work focused on northern business interests during the Reconstruction era. Beale was known as the "most contentious" member of the department, in a striking contrast with his humble student Hawley, but Hawley recalled that "he always treated me well."6 In the end, Hawley's dissertation-turned-book, which was dedicated to Beale, was titled The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence (1966) and was published by Princeton University Press. Trudy Peterson, a former Acting Archivist of the United States and a Hawley student with deep Iowa roots, remembers the book as a "staggering achievement" because of all the research...

So Far From Home: Royal Air Force and Free French Air Force Flight Training at Maxwell and Gunter Fields during World War II by Robert B. Kane

Reviewed by: So Far From Home: Royal Air Force and Free French Air Force Flight Training at Maxwell and Gunter Fields during World War II by Robert B. Kane Michael V.R. Thomason So Far From Home: Royal Air Force and Free French Air Force Flight Training at Maxwell and Gunter Fields during World War II. By Robert B. Kane. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2016. 152 pp. $23.23. ISBN 978-1-6030-6369-2. The United States contributed to the Allied cause in World War II long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was determined to support France and the United Kingdom even before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, but he had to deal with isolationists in Congress who opposed American involvement in European affairs. The president moved cautiously to undermine his opponents in Congress even as France collapsed in the spring of 1940 and Great Britain and its empire stood alone against the Nazi juggernaut. He sent Harry Hopkins to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and assess the needs and strengths of the United Kingdom as it endured the German air assault and the Blitz in the fall and winter of 1941-42. As a result, Roosevelt convinced Congress to embark on the policy of Lend-Lease, making the United States the "Arsenal of Democracy" for the Allied Powers. While American support was characterized by supplies of food, fuel, and weapons, it involved much more. Early in 1942 the United States agreed to give pilot training to Royal Air Force (RAF) cadets. A few months later that training was extended to the Free French who had fled France after its surrender, or who had been stationed in its overseas colonies. While such training was carried out at Army Air Force bases across the nation and by private entities such as Pan American Airways, operating under government contracts, the brunt of the effort took place at Maxwell and Gunter Army Air Force fields near Montgomery, Alabama. From 1941 to 1943, 7,800 RAF cadets passed through ground and flight schools there with 4,300 getting their wings and the rest being trained in other flying and support roles. By the war's end 4,100 French cadets were similarly trained with 2,100 earning their wings. The cadets from both countries were schooled in all aspects of flight training, but they also had to become [End Page 67] accustomed to American military discipline and practice, to the heat and humidity of the climate of central Alabama, and to southern culture and food. The challenges were considerable and the French cadets did not speak the language. Most of the British trainees faced linguistic difficulties as well. The Army had to find French speakers who understood airplanes to teach, or at least translate, the instructions for the Free French cadets. By all accounts the civilian population was hospitable, if somewhat mystified, by the foreign airmen. They invited the visitors into their homes for meals and entertained them at dances and other social functions when training allowed, but the men were there to learn to fly, not to enjoy southern hospitality. However, most managed to do both! This book is part of a long-term effort by Montgomery's NewSouth Books to explore the history of aviation in Montgomery, beginning with the Wright Brothers. Books in this series demonstrate the importance of the Army Air Force, and after 1947, the Air Force in central Alabama, an important role that continues to grow in the twenty-first century. The training of Allied cadets from Britain and France during World War II remains one of the signature achievements of Maxwell Air Force Base, and after the war the program was expanded to include pilots from Latin America and other American allies around the globe. Kane has provided us with an account of this remarkable story, and So Far From Home is an excellent part of NewSouth's effort. The author has assembled a great deal of statistical and technical information and tells his story in a straightforward and readable manner. People who are interested in the Army's handling of the considerable...

’The Struggle for Spiritual Values’: Scottish Baptists and the Second World War

Abstract The Secord World War was a conflict which many British people feared might happen, but they strongly supported the efforts of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to seek a peaceful resolution of tensions with Germany over disputes in Continental Europe. Baptists in Scotland shared these concerns of their fellow citizens, but equally supported the declaration of war in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. They saw the conflict as a struggle for spiritual values and were as concerned about winning the peace that followed as well as the war. During the years 1939 to 1945 they recommitted themselves to sharing the Christian message with their fellow citizens and engaged in varied forms of evangelism and extended times of prayer for the nation. The success of their Armed Forces Chaplains in World War One ensured that Scottish Baptist padres had greater opportunities for service a generation later. Scottish Baptists had seen closer ties established with other churches in their country under the auspices of the Scottish Churches Council. This co-operation in the context of planning for helping refugees and engaging in reconstruction at the conclusion of the war led to proposals for a World Council of Churches. Scottish Baptists were more cautious about this extension of ecumenical relationships. In line with other Scottish Churches they recognised a weakening of Christian commitment in the wider nation, but were committed to the challenge of proclaiming their faith at this time. They had both high hopes and expectations for the post-war years in Scotland.

Interfaith Activism: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Religious Diversity by Harold Kasimow

Reviewed by: Interfaith Activism: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Religious Diversity by Harold Kasimow Zev Garber Interfaith Activism: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Religious Diversity By Harold Kasimow. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2015. xxx + 101 pp. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) is considered one of the preeminent Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Harold Kasimow shows why in his learned and thoughtful interpretation of the philosophical and theological thought of Heschel. Kasimow examines Heschel's writings on issues gleaned from the cultural, religious, and secular spheres of the Jewish experience. Chapters affirm the divine-human relationship, selfhood and freedom, the primacy of ethics, religious diversity, interfaith dialogue, and civil rights, and present salient thoughts on the Shoah. But it is Heschel's insistence on taking God and Israel reciprocity seriously for Jewish theology and his commitment to post-Shoah Jewish survival with dignity and without apologetics that has rendered him a consummate mover and broker of contemporary Jewish life and thought. Genuine Jewishness is living Jewishly, that is, testifying against idolizing nature and paganism; it is to proclaim "God is the God of pathos who suffers when we suffer," a transnatural Creator whose operative commandment is to mend the world (tikkun 'olam) and the faith of the post-Auschwitz Jew (tikkun 'am). Also personally real and important in Heschel's thought is that no "religion is an island" and that diverse religions in activity and in dialogue are the will of God; hence, the book title, Interfaith Activism, a perceptive book written by a foremost student of Heschel and commentator of his thought. Kasimow's effort to understand Heschel's methodology and objectives is distinguished by a dual accomplishment. First, his revised PhD dissertation, published under the title Divine-Human Encounter: A Study of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1979), is the forerunner of the text under review. Of major importance in understanding this encounter are the three paths to God abstracted from Heschel's seminal work, God in Search of Man (1955), discussed in detail in chapter one of Interfaith Activism and referenced in other chapters. These three paths are sensing the presence of God in the world asher bara' (Creation); sensing the divine presence in the words, events, and encounters in the Tanakh; and sensing the holy presence in doing the mitzvoth (obligatory and voluntary commandments or sacred acts). Heschel's novel theology draws from biblical, rabbinic, and mystical traditions that sprout forth the message that the earth is full of God's glory and that every place conceivably is a gateway to heaven's [End Page 111] door. His creation-Bible-deeds interplay parallels the inalienable importance of Torah (teaching) to Israel transmitted by written and oral tradition and sustained by the Mosaic rallying cry, Na'aseh ve-Nishma' ("We shall do and we shall hear [reason]" [Exod 24:7]) in this world. Also, the impact of visual images and metaphors are compelling in Heschel's view of Jewish thought and practice. Second, Kasimow's chapters are published essays primarily related to Heschel, the man and his influence, and range from a critical view of the literary structures and secondary sources under discussion to popular writing. The author injects additional sources in the basic narrative and his literary-analytical approach enables the reader to appreciate diversified viewpoints on Heschel's philosophy and theology. The author follows his dissertation in style and argumentation but restructured for the non-specialists. Forewords by Edward Kaplan, Alan Race, and Eboo Patel speak on Harold Kasimow's life and expertise in Heschelian studies. Authors and sources are noted in footnotes but a word index is not provided. Life orientation, chosen or imposed, undeniably affected Heschel, the man and scholar: Warsaw-born, Chasidic home, yeshiva education, rabbinic ordination, University of Berlin PhD, Gestapo detainee, returnee to Poland, refugee to the United States weeks before the German invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, and plunged into the shifting contours of American Judaism. In eight republished chapters, Kasimow pays close attention to the changing faith of Heschel's pre-WWII East European Orthodoxy on American shores. He delves into Heschel's Man is Not Alone (1951) to portray his...

Między endo- a egzogenezą państwa polskiego. Polemiki historyków polskich z historiografią niemiecką w czasach II Rzeczypospolitej

The concept of the Norman origin of the Polish state, in different versions that were given varying political and ideological forms, was formulated by Polish historians in the nineteenth century. However, it was only after Hitler’s rise to power – when some German historians attempted to prove that Mieszko the First was a Norman warrior known by the name Dago and, consequently, that the members of the Piast dynasty were not descended from indigenous Slavic people – that it became the focus of some controversy in Polish historiography. This article presents the Polish-German polemic regarding this topic. Neither the political aspects of the hypothesis in question nor the way in which it was dealt with by German scholars can be given a clear-cut interpretation. The question is still unanswered of why “the historical science in ruin” – as Henryk Olszewski characterised the state of German historiography at the time – did not altogether yield to the pressure (to which the total war was only adding fuel) to use the hypothesis of the Norman founder of the Polish state to its fullest “ideological potential”. The answer to this question and a number of others lies outside this author’s field of expertise; the examination of these issues needs to be left to scholars interested specifically in the history of German historical and political thought. Should the facts referred to in the article be regarded as evidence that, even when in ruin, historiography was able to preserve some enclaves of freedom where it was subjected to no interference by the totalitarian state? Or, perhaps should one link these facts to the ideological ambiguity present in the theory of Prince Dago and his Norman warriors, who were to give rise to the Polish nobility and who, by establishing blood ties with Slavic autochthons, deserved credit for making an organisational and racial contribution to the rise of the Polish state and the Polish nation? How deep were the genetic bonds uniting the Germans and this Slavic nation? Didn’t one, in accepting such a hypothesis, seem to support the view that the German invasion of Poland in 1939 – and the country’s occupation which followed and that involved fighting against the Polish underground movement – was simply an example of fratricidal war?

Ordinary Clerks or Trailblazers of Destruction? – The ‘First Wave' of Chiefs of Civil Administration and Their Implementation of Nazi Policy During the German Invasion of Poland in 1939

When the German Army invaded Poland in September 1939, it was closely followed by special police units: the Einsatzgruppen of the Sicherheitspolizei. It is well known that both formations committed horrendous crimes against the civilian population, killing tens of thousands of people during the barely two months of military administration alone. But one group of perpetrators has remained shrouded in obscurity to this day: the first chiefs of civil administration (CdZ) who entered Poland in the first half of September 1939. This article elucidates not only how this group facilitated frictionless cooperation between the army and the police, but also how they often actively induced mass violence against Poles and Jews in the occupied areas. The CdZ were no ordinary clerks, as their own postwar narratives would have it, but rather ‘willing executioners’ of the Third Reich's extermination program. Unlike their successors – Hans Frank, Arthur Greiser, Alber Forster, and Erich Koch – the first CdZ were not highly ideologized party barons; it thus follows that the opportunity to demonstrate their ‘work ethic’ in the service of the Third Reich was sufficient to make them well-functioning cogs in the wheel of mass murder and the Holocaust. Nevertheless, in the new dispensation of the Cold War, none of these ‘first wave’ CdZ had to stand trial for their dark deeds at the very beginning of the war.

POLAND AND ITS RESIDENTS IN THE EYES OF GERMAN SOLDIERS DURING POLISH CAMPAIGN OF 1939

The authors present the circumstances related to the German invasion of Poland during the campaign in September 1939, with special emphasis put on the attitude of Germans towards Poland and Polish people. This is presented on the basis of the letters from Poland to soldiers’ families in Germany and reports in company or battalion chronicles.The moment when German soldiers entered Polish towns and villages was a terrible experience for their residents. The behaviour of the invaders was crude and rough: not only was it caused by war, but also by the attitude of Germans towards Poland and Polish people. Poles were perceived as a lower category of people, without any right to defend themselves. Each part of their life was criticised and damaged. Germans’ irritation was intensified by Jews living in Poland. The article can be useful for supporting lessons on military history.

Nationalism in United States Music Education during World War II

In the early decades of the twentieth century, educators in the United States were not concerned with promoting musical nationalism through their teaching, in contrast with many of their European contemporaries. Rather, they wished cultivate the taste and expand the international perspectives of their students. They sought immerse them in the musical works of European master composers on the basis of their belief that exposure and involvement in music, a morally elevated art, would have liberating and elevating effects. Influential educator James Mursell (and others) wrote rhapsodically and at length about the value of in education, asserting that music, in its essence, expresses and embodies emotion, and that students could find personal happiness through the self-fulfillment that stems from musical involvement. (1) Simultaneously, many educators sought broaden their students' international perspectives by introducing them the music of many lands and peoples, and the profession's leaders held that an important aim of their work was enable children to know, love, and appreciate in as many forms as possible. (2) However, after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, which began World War II in Europe, the focus on as an art and orientations toward musical internationalism began lose their centrality in public school education in the United States. Music educators' fears caused them regard their teaching in a very different way. Realizing that they could play an important role in the growing crisis, they largely set aside their artistic goals, refocusing their instruction and selecting for the purposes of contributing the nation's solidarity and bolstering the morale of the nation's populace. This change in their orientation did not stem from a highly debated philosophical or theoretical shift within the profession, but rather emerged gradually as citizens became increasingly distraught over the war in Europe and fearful that they might be engaged in it. (3) Responding the War in Europe Throughout the late 1930s, the American public was largely pacifist and disinclined give attention the expansionist efforts of the growing totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Some citizens believed the causes of the Great Depression could be traced back the nation's involvement in World War I, and they felt that staying clear of all foreign problems was the way future security. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said nothing at all about foreign relations in his second inaugural address in 1937. But when France fell the German and Italian armies on May 10, 1940, and only Great Britain stood between Nazi Germany and the United States, the strong pacifism and comfortable isolationism of the American public began be shaken. When the President addressed a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives on May 16, 1940, his frustration with the isolationist stance of the citizenry and the Congress became evident as he spoke of the growing European threat. He said: Let us measure our strength and our defense without self-delusion. The clear fact is that the American people must recast their thinking about national protection. (4) Roosevelt's impassioned speech finally convinced the reluctant Congress appropriate $2.5 billion for military equipment and installations. On September 6th, he took the additional step of signing into law the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, creating the country's first peacetime military draft. At the same time, the United States government began efforts raise citizens' awareness of the importance of national unity and foster concern about the nation's common welfare via broadcasts and publications; phrases such as sustain morale, mobilize pride and faith, enliven hope and devotion, strengthen loyalty, and develop a sense of belonging began be used in print and on the radio by the Office of National Defense and other agencies, as they sought raise public awareness of the threat of war. …

Children of Genocide: A Legacy of Lost Dreams

Dr Janusz Korczak was a European pediatrician, educator, and children's author from the first half of the 20th century. First as a pediatrician and then as a teacher he dedicated his life to impoverished and vulnerable children. He formed a progressive orphanage and school in Warsaw, Poland, during the 1930s to care for orphaned children of both Jewish and Catholic descent. In 1940, after the German invasion of Poland by the Nazis, Dr Korczak was ordered to close the orphanage. Instead, he moved the 200 to 300 Jewish children for whom he cared into the Warsaw ghetto and attempted to establish a safe haven within the turmoil, uncertainty, and fear of the new location. Eventually, the children were ordered to be relocated to the death camp of Treblinka. Despite being a Jew, because of his fame as Poland's “old doctor” he was encouraged on several occasions to abandon the children and return to the Aryan side of Warsaw. He refused, and on August 6, 1942, he quietly marched with his children to the trains for relocation and eventually to death at the hands of the Nazis.1 His story and the fate of these children are but an example of the many silent others who attempted to protect men, women, and especially children from the ravages of the Holocaust. This commentary has three overall goals. The first is to encourage us to not think of genocide solely as a historical event such as the Holocaust but, rather, a persistent reality that requires constant vigilance and action as it transitions from our past into the current affairs of the 21st century. Second, to realize that as part of genocidal denial, we frequently forget that the burden of these atrocities is disproportionally placed on children. Finally, as pediatricians, to advocate by being … Address correspondence to Charles Oberg, MD, FAAP, Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, 1300 S Second St, West Bank Office Building, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55454. E-mail: oberg001{at}umn.edu

The "B" Movie Goes to War in Hitler, Beast of Berlin (1939)

The “B” Movie Goes to War in Hitler, Beast of Berlin (1939) Cynthia J. Miller (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The press kit for Hitler, Beast of Berlin (1939) urges theater owners to promote the film "boldly, and without reservation." Courtesy of Author's collection During the 1930s, the neighborhood movie house was a place of refuge for many—the pressures and strains of the world vanished amidst the laughter, thrills, and chills of the Golden Era of the "B" movie. In the world outside, people were weighed down with the burdens of the era—living with memories of the family, friends, and neighbors who died in World War I; struggling to survive the effects of the Great Depression; and cautiously witnessing the strife of the Spanish Civil War—but once inside the movie house doors, the tensions of everyday life melted away as the "Bs" brought low-budget action, suspense, comedy, and melodrama into the lives of the movie-going masses. With a shriek, a pratfall, or a fiendish glare, "B" movies served up extra helpings of the over-the-top escapism that Americans craved. By the end of the decade, however, the boundaries between the world of the cinema and the world outside began to erode. The question of whether or not to once again become involved in Europe's recurring struggles was beginning to polarize popular sentiment, and, as the conflicts in Europe and Asia escalated, the film industry once again engaged with the more serious affairs of the world. Hollywood's "Poverty Row," known for its quick, low-budget "B" productions pandering to desires for over-the-top entertainment, produced a small film, Hitler, Beast of Berlin (1939), that played a striking role in the national tug-of-war over military preparedness. While other films of the interwar era whispered words of fear or caution in the ears of American moviegoers, Beast of Berlin screamed—it mocked, shocked, and menaced in defiance of the Third Reich. Dismissed by critics as an artistic flop, but a masterful work of propaganda (Crowther, Morrison, Thirer), Beast of Berlin combined images depicting life inside the Third Reich and slap-in-the-face, exploitation-style public relations to create one of the first few blatantly interventionist films of the pre-war years and also one of the first to openly cast the Nazi regime in a villainous light. The film brought vivid, tangible oppression onto the screens and into the lives of theater-goers in support of U.S. involvement in the European conflict. Produced by Ben Judell in 1939, Hitler, Beast of Berlin was one of the inaugural efforts of the small, independent Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC)—which, in 1943, would become the infamous Producers Releasing Corporation. When the German invasion of Poland (September 1939) produced widespread concern in Hollywood, Judell's low-budget studio was one of the first to act, and it did so in sensationalist form, setting aside other projects to rush into production of Hitler, Beast of Berlin, based on the novel and screenplay, Goose Step (n.d.) by Broadway producer-director Shepard Traube. In line with the studio's lowbrow dedication to "high entertainment and exploitation values" (Fernett [End Page 58] 99), Judell changed the title to the more dynamic Hitler, Beast of Berlin, hoping to capitalize on the notoriety of the 1918 film, Kaiser: Beast of Berlin, which, during the previous world-wide struggle, had incited audiences to anti-German riots in several cities. Subsequently the PDC project became Beasts of Berlin, but as public sentiment mounted in favor of the Allied cause, the "Hitler" title shouted at audiences from marquees and lobby posters. At the time of its official release date (Oct. 15, 1939), Beast of Berlin was a 'hot' item, regardless of its "B" status. Cited as pro-war, inflammatory, and offensive to Germany—it was quickly sanctioned by the Production Code Administration (PCA) and censorship boards in several states. After a month of editing and title-changing, it reopened to reviewer praise as the first fiction feature to depict the terrors of life inside the Fuhrer's Reich. Hollywood and Intervention Before 1936, the idea of...

Edmund Veesenmayer. Agent und Diplomat der nationalsozialistischen Expansionspolitik by Igor-Philip Matić (review)

358 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 In the words of Maurice Pearton, the theories of Corneliu Codreanu 'were derived from the Book of Revelation'. Codreanu made a practice of going up in the mountains to pray, something that Hitler and Mussolini were not known to have done. Codreanu conceived the Guard'sprogrammelike a monastic order.It was endowed with a spiritualmissionto change Romanians by creating 'the new man', one bent on socialjustice. There was no place for the bourgeoisie.Codreanu'soppositionto democracywas expressedin a virulent anti-Semitism.The Guard'sarticlesof faithdictateda pathologicalhatred ofJews whom Codreanu saw as the fount of Communism. lordachi ascribesthe Guard'sappeal to Codreanu'scharisma.The genesis of that charisma was a vision that Codreanu had on 8 November 1923 whilst in prison for organizing a plot to shoot politicianswho had supported an amendment to the Romanian constitutiongrantingJews the right to citizenship . He claimed that the ArchangelMichael had appearedto him, urging him to dedicate his life to God. The particular inspiration for Codreanu's charismatic revelation seems to have been an icon of Saint Michael in a Bucharestmonasteryin which the archangelis depicted in a punitiveposture, wieldinga swordin one hand, and holding scalesofjustice in the other. It was in this mould that St Michael became the object of a fanaticcult. Proclaiming the archangel as patron and symbol, Codreanu founded, in July I927, the Legion of the ArchangelMichael. Michael'ssaint'sday 8 November was the officialcelebrationof the Legion. lordachi constructsa convincing theoretical frameworkin which to place an illuminatingexegesis of the Guard'spropaganda. Codreanu's intellectual followers developed his charisma into an effective propaganda machine. In various articles Codreanu was portrayed in multiple and complementary roles, as a religiousprophet, spiritualreformerand predestinedhero. He was proclaimedas 'a new Messiah',the instrumentsent by the ArchangelMichael to bring salvation to the Romanian people. Codreanu's charisma was thus supernatural,being based on a divine call of mission originatingoutside the established Church. In his depiction as a predestined revolutionaryleader, Codreanu was celebrated as one of a line of Romanian heroic figures,just as Ceausescu was some half a century later. Codreanu was compared with Stephen the Great (I457-I504), and was addressedby the title of 'Captain' on the model of the haiducs, popular outlaws fighting for socialjustice. With this intricate yet lucid analysis, the author furthers our understanding of Romanian Fascism. School of Slavonic andEastEuropean Studies DENNIsDELETANT University College London Matic, Igor-Philip. EdmundVeesenmayer. AgentundDiplomatdernationalsozialistischen Expansionspolitik. StidosteuropaischeArbeiten, II4. R. Oldenbourg, Munich, 2002. 324 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?49.80. FOR most of the Third Reich, from I934 to I944, Dr Edmund Veesenmayer was virtuallyinvisible to the public as he worked mostly behind the political REVIEWS 359 scenes. Only when Hitler appointed him Plenipotentiary of Hungary in March I944, did Veesenmayer step out of this political twilight.The trained economist, member of the NSDAP (fromI932) and the SS (fromI934), was an economic consultantand special agent at the same time and worked in these capacities at keyjunctures in the making of Hitler'sempire:the Anschlussof Austria (1938), thedestruction of Czechoslovakia (I939) andYugoslavia (I94I), and the German invasion of Poland in I939. In all these assignments his main task was to make contact with key players of industryand commerce, undermine political opponents of National Socialist Germany, and foster future allies in the local nationalistparties. Veesenmayer's career path took a differentturn only months afterhis successin Croatia. InJuly I941, he was sent to quell the military and civil resistance against German occupation in Serbia. As in his previous assignments,Veesenmayer's overall assessmentof the local situationwas factualand rational.He advisedthe ForeignOffice that only a political and not a militarysolutionwould end the popular supportfor the Serbianresistance,which he feltwas largelyled by Communists.However, Veesenmayer also identified the SerbianJews as the main instigatorsof this resistanceand suggested that allJewish men (about 8,ooo) be deported. The assignmentto Serbia was Veesenmayer'sfirstcontact with National Socialist anti-Semitic policy. It would continue to play a sizable role in his last three years as a career diplomat in Slovakia (I943/44) and as Plenipotentiaryof Hungary (I944). Veesenmayer believed then that a shared guilt in the deportation of the Jews would bind the wavering allies Slovakia and Hungary to Germanyat a time when the EasternFrontwas alreadybreakingdown. At...

Celebrating Witold Gombrowicz

centenary of Witold Gombrowicz's birth was celebrated in 2004 amid worldwide testimonials to his importance as a writer. Fame did not come early or easily to Gombrowicz, although his hunger for it was the driving force of his life. Of the three works he published while still living in Poland the minor story collection Pamietnik z okresu dojrzezvania (1933; A memoir from adolescence); the absurdist costume drama Iwona, ksiezniczka Burgunda (1938; Eng. Ivona, Princess ofBurgundia, 1970) on the theme of otherness; and his first novel, Ferdydurke (1938; Eng. Ferdydurke, 1961) only Ferdydurke evoked any reader response. A demolition of traditional Polish values and a vehicle for his ideas on the tyranny of Form over Life, the novel remains Gombrowicz's best-known text. As if driven from Poland by the furor it raised, Gombrowicz in 1939 eagerly joined a journalist friend covering the maiden voyage of the Polish liner Batory to Buenos Aires. They reached Argentina a few weeks before the German invasion of Poland. However, the kind of reflexive heroism Gombrowicz rejected in his writings negated a return to Europe and participation in the liberation of Poland. Barely knowing Spanish, and dependent financially on contacts in the Polish emigre community in Buenos Aires, Gombrowicz nevertheless remained in Argentina for nearly twenty-four years. Ignored by, and ignoring, the Argentine literary establishment (as indeed virtually any other aspect of Argentinean life and culture), Gombrowicz built an alternative life around a small group of young Argentines that he encountered in Buenos Aires cafes. With their assistance, he published a Spanish translation of Ferdydurke in 1947; it marked, in a sense, the beginning of his international career. Subsequent publication of Gombrowicz's works in Polish in the cultural journal Kultura, issued by the Paris-based Polish emigre Instytut Literacki (Literary Institute), opened a broader readership. By 1963, when a Ford Fellowship to Berlin made possible his return to Europe, Gombrowicz had published his best play, Slub (The marriage; originally published in Spanish in Buenos Aires in 1948), a dreamlike Shakespearean parody with a World War II setting; the novel Trans-Atlantyk (first published in Kultura in 1953, together with The Marriage); the first part of his Dziennik, 1953-1956 (1957; Diary); the intriguing novel Pornografia (i960; Eng. Pornografia, 1966); and the second part of Dziennik, 1957-1961 (1962). Apart from the first two portions of his delightful and engrossing diary, which many regard as the richest fruit of his Argentinean exile, the only other significant book by Gombrowicz from this period is his masterful novel Trans-Atlantyk (1953), a Rabelaisian account of his early years in Argentina, written in a parody of the old Polish gentry oral narrative. Witold Gombrowicz I

‘Another’ Germany: The Secret Foreign Contacts of Ulrich von Hassell during the Second World War

foreign contacts of the German opposition to Adolf Hitler, particularly after the summer of 1938, offer some of the most interesting prospects for research into the Resistance. In the first volume of the Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, published in 1953, Hans Rothfels, a pioneer in this field, introduced an article by J. Lonsdale Bryans in which Bryans describes the intermediary role he played in talks between a leading representative of the conservative opposition to Hitler, Ulrich von Hassell,1 and the British foreign office at the beginning of 1940. Criticism of the manner of these negotiations, and interest in them, have not yet subsided.2 Without doubt, Hassell's efforts rank with the Vatican negotiations of October 1939 to May 1940 (led by Josef Miiller, one of the group around Hans Oster and Franz Haider), and with Carl Goerdeler's venture of May 1941,3 as among the most important foreign contacts of the German opposition in the first phase of the Second World War. They also stand at the centre of this essay, which focuses mainly on the period between the German invasion of Poland in September 1939

International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics

THE seventh General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics was held at Washington, D.C., during the period September 4–15, 1939, after the declaration of war upon Germany by Great Britain and France, consequent upon the German invasion of Poland. It was thore-fore probably the last of the series of great international scientific conferences of the period following upon the War of 1914–18. The choice of Washington as the place of the seventh assembly was made at the sixth assembly, in Edinburgh, in 1936. At Washington the invitation of Norway to the Union, to hold its eighth assembly in that country, was formally accepted, for 1942 or as soon thereafter as conditions in Europe permit. The first five assemblies of the Union were held at Rome, Madrid, Prague, Stockholm and Lisbon.