On 29 April 1945, Hitler completed his will and last political testament and married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun. He also received the news that Benito Mussolini met his death in Italy. Mussolini’s corpse, along with that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, had been smashed in fury by a mob and hung upside down outside a gas station.
The following day, 30 April 1945, while holed up in his bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Hitler committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. His wife, Eva Braun also killed herself.
This is how the media reported the news.
One of Time magazine’s most iconic covers of all time was used to mark Hitler’s death.
Inside the edition, TIME Magazine would also mention the death of Mussolini.
Karl Lehmann was a German-Jewish refugee. He arrived at Leighton Park in 1936 from Cologne, Germany, where conditions were no longer safe for him. Karl joined the BBC Monitoring Service, first at Evesham, then Reading, where he listened to and translated German wartime broadcasts, including the one on 1 May 1945 announcing the death of Adolf Hitler.
The 24-year-old was monitoring German state radio when listeners were told to prepare for an important announcement.
“They played solemn music and then they said Hitler had died,” he recalls. “They said he had fallen fighting Bolshevism. It was announced in a very sombre way.”
“We were the first people in Britain to hear the announcement,” he remembers. “The whole building cheered. We realised how important it was. It meant the end of the war against Germany.”
Many people assume that there was no resistance in Germany against the Nazi regime, and to be honest there wasn’t much, nevertheless there were those who were relentless in trying to end that regime.
There were dozens of assassinations attempts on Hitler’s life, the most famous being the 20 July plot. Some of the those involved in that plot weren’t necessarily anti Nazi, but more anti the way the war was going, I therefore think it is a mistake that all should be considered to be heroes.
One of the men was Adam von Trott zu Solz. He was one of the leaders of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s plot of 20 July 1944 to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested within days, placed on trial and found guilty. Sentenced to death on 15 August 1944 by the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court), he was hanged in Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison on 26 August. He had also been a member of the Kreisau Circle.
From 1940 on, men and women opposed to the regime but with a variety social backgrounds, values, and also values met for talks in Berlin, on the Kreisau estate in Silesia, and in Munich. The driving force behind it were the friends Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg. Catholic and Protestant Christians and clergymen, Social Democrats, conservatives, and liberals who had different positions in society , but had a mutual respect.
The Kreisau Circle aimed to draft basic principles for an intellectual, political, and social new order after the end of the “Third Reich.” They prepared themselves for “the time afterward” through conferences, discussions, and memoranda. They hoped to provide a new foundation for both human coexistence and the state. Questions of the state structure, the restriction of state power, the economy, the church, and education were discussed in depth. It was particularly important to them to embed Germany in a new European postwar order.
Although the circle did not promote violent overthrow of the regime, their planning was considered by the Nazis to be treasonous as it rested on the assumption that Germany would lose the war.
The members of the Kreisau Circle recognized early on “not only the devastation of the cities but also the horrific destruction in the minds and hearts of the people” (Moltke). They knew that a functioning democracy required both the participation and the sense of responsibility of its citizens. As early as 1939, Moltke had outlined his concept of democracy in a text on “Small Communities”:
“Only those who have carried some form of responsibility in smaller communities will have the right sense of responsibility towards a larger community, the state or any other large communities …”.
The participation of women in the Kreisau Circle discussion was often limited to the presence of their husbands. Freya von Moltke, a founding participant, was cut off from the circle’s correspondence following her husband Helmuth von Moltke’s arrest.
There are also no known female members who were not married to a male member. However, despite these limitations, women played an integral role in the Kreisau Circle. Margrit von Trotha, for example, utilized her skills as an economist to partake in the plans for Germany’s future economy. In addition, in Marion Yorck von Wartenburg’s memoirs, she refers to the circle as “our group”, indicating that she was a part of the circle’s membership and discourse. A known list of female members of the circle includes: Freya von Moltke (lawyer), Marion Yorck von Wartenburg (lawyer), Margrit von Trotha (economist), Rosemarie Reichwein (physician/therapist), and Irene Yorck von Wartenburg
The group disagreed about several different issues. Whereas Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and Helmuth von Moltke were strongly anti-racist, others such as Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, believed that Jews should be eliminated from public service and evinced unmistakably anti-Semitic prejudice. “As late as 1938 he repeated his call for the removal of Jews from government and the civil service. His biographer, Albert Krebs, attests that he ‘was never able to rid himself of feelings of alienation toward the intellectual and material world of Jewry.’ He was appalled to learn of the crimes perpetrated against the Jewish population in the occupied Soviet Union, but this was not a major factor in his determination to see Hitler removed.
In the autumn of 1943, Helmuth von Moltke learned from an informant that a Gestapo spy had discovered an anti-Nazi salon in Berlin and that there would be a round-up of all participants. Moltke warned his friend who had been present at the salon, Otto Kiep, of the round-ups.[2] Kiep, former German Consul General in New York and member of the counterintelligence department under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, failed to escape and was arrested in January 1944.The Gestapo later discovered that von Moltke had warned him of the arrests, and Helmuth himself was then arrested on 19 January 1944.This left the Kreisau Circle without one of its integral members. Freya von Moltke was also ousted from the group following Helmuth’s arrest as the members were worried she would be interrogated. During this time, Yorck struggled to maintain cohesion of the group. However, this was not the death knell of the circle as the Gestapo was not yet aware of the resistance. Prior to the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler, Helmuth von Moltke was treated fairly in prison and allowed to correspond with his wife Freya.
The mass round up of suspects after the July 1944 Bomb Plot and the subsequent torture of these suspects led to the Gestapo gaining the names of many plotters or supposed plotters – including men in the Kreisau Circle. Yorck von Wartenburg was arrested as part of the July Bomb Plot, tried, found guilty and executed in August 1944. Von Moltke had already been arrested (January 1944) and tried before the People’s Court. Found guilty of treason, he was executed in January 1945.
You are telling the world that you have carried out this military mission in the Ukraine, to protect its citizens, to rid it of Nazis. However you have not fully explained to us what you consider to be Nazis.
I would love it of you could just clarify that matter to a simpleton like me. When you say Nazi, are you referring to the Ukraine’s Jewish president whose grandfather barely survived the Holocaust?
Or were you perhaps referring to the 10 year old school girl Polina, who was murdered on your orders?
Maybe it is the 2 year old Shpak who was murdered during a shelling ordered by you. Was he that Nazi you were referring to? Is that the type of funerals you want to see more in the Ukraine to achieve your goals?
Dear Comrade Putin, if you can’t explain it to me may you can explain it to Oleh,Shpak’s Father? Because he asked “I don’t know if there is a God. What is this all for? For what?”
Dear Comrade Putin, your actions look a lot like that of a nationalised German Austrian, he also said in the 1930’s that he wanted to liberated the people in the Sudeten land and Poland. But he was a Nazi, So are you perhaps a Nazi, Comrade Putin? If so, the only thing for you to do to rid the Ukraine from Nazis is by withdrawing your troops.
Perhaps that isn’t your goal. Perhaps you long to the Russia of the days of yore? Where it was still part of the USSR and maybe you want to rule like Czar Nicholas once did. Maybe you want to become the new USSczaR.
If you ask me that is what you want to be. But people will not remember you as a Czar. They will see you like cowards such as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. That is what you real legacy will be.
Is that what you really want? It is not too late yet, you can still change that.
There are some in Germany and in other countries who portray all of those involved in the 20 July plot as heroes. I believe this is a misinterpretation. Firstly they are not heroes because they did not succeed, and secondly, there were quite a few of them who had no issues with the Nazi policies but had more of an issue with Adolf Hitler.
Arthur Nebe was one of the plotters. He was to lead a team of 12 policemen to kill Himmler, but the signal to act never reached him. After the failed assassination attempt, Nebe fled and went into hiding.
Prior to this part in the plot, Nebe rose through the ranks of the Prussian police force to become head of Nazi Germany’s Criminal Police (Kriminalpolizei; Kripo) in 1936, which was amalgamated into the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in 1939.
In an August 1939 speech, he defined crime as “a recurring disease on the body of the people.” This disease was supposedly passed hereditarily from criminals and “asocial individuals” to their children. In the Nazi state, asocials were people who behaved in a way considered outside of social norms. The category included people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics; the arbeitsscheu (work-shy); and the homeless. This category also included Roma. The Nazi regime viewed Roma as behaviorally abnormal and racially inferior. Defining crime as a disease connected to certain groups radicalized Kripo’s practice.
Kripo officials from the KTI developed early techniques to gas people en masse. In October 1939, Nebe instructed the KTI to experiment with methods of killing people with mental and physical disabilities. This effort was conducted in cooperation with the Euthanasia Program. A KTI chemical engineer and toxicology expert, Albert Widmann, tested possible killing methods. He ultimately suggested carbon monoxide gas. In the fall of 1941, Widmann helped create gas vans. The vans used carbon monoxide gas generated from exhaust fumes.
Planners of Operation Reinhard killing centers adopted this development. At Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, large motor engines were used to generate carbon monoxide gas for the gas chambers.
In 1941 during operation Barbarossa, Nebe volunteered to serve as the commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe B, one of the four mobile death squads of the SS. During Nebe’s tenure, this deadly unit was responsible for the mass murders of 45,000 people in the areas around Bialystok, Minsk, and Mogilev. Many of these victims were Jews. Nebe was not forced to take control of this Unit, he volunteered.
In July 1941, Arthur Nebe reported that a “solution to the Jewish problem” was “impractical” in his region of operation due to “the overwhelming number of the Jews”, as in there were too many Jews to be killed by too few men. By August 1941, Nebe came to realize that Einsatzgruppe’s resources were insufficient to meet the expanded mandate of the killing operations, due to the inclusion of Jewish women and children since that month. This mean, seem to some as a person with a conscience, but the only reason he said these things, is not because he didn’t want to kill more Jews, he said it because he did feel he didn’t have enough men to do the job. Just let that train of thought sink in for a minute.
In late 1941, Nebe was posted back to Berlin and resumed his career with the RSHA. Nebe commanded the Kripo until he was denounced and executed after the failed attempt to kill Adolf Hitler in July 1944.
Nebe was arrested in January 1945 after a former mistress betrayed him. He was sentenced to death by the People’s Court on 2 March and, according to official records, was executed in Berlin at Plötzensee Prison on 21 March 1945 by being hanged with piano wire from a meat hook, in accordance with Hitler’s order that the bomb plotters were to be “hanged like cattle.”
This is not a scientific fact it is solely based on my own observations. It seems to be that a lot ,if not all, dictators behave like a toddler. The whole world revolves around them and they get very cross if someone doesn’t want to play with them.
Hitler was one of these toddler like dictators. He had a black book with all the names of British people who had said negative things about them.
The ‘Black book’ was a popularised name of the Nazi ‘special wanted arrest list’ drawn up for the immediate period after a successful Nazi invasion of Great Britain in 1940.
The official name was the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. (“Special Search List Great Britain”) a secret list of prominent British residents to be arrested, produced in 1940 by the SS.
Compiled by Walter Schellenberg, the head of counter-espionage and part of the Reich Security directorate, the book was essentially a Who’s Who for Nazi detainment. The names were listed in alphabetical order followed by the bureau section where the details of each individual were kept; Jewish individuals had the word ‘Jude’ in brackets after their names. At the end of each section there were blank, lined pages presumably for additional names to be added. At the back of the book was a directory of institutions such as embassies, trade unions, universities, newspaper offices and Masonic lodges, in which the Nazis were interested.
The list also gives a glimpse of the ‘type’ of persons who were to be arrested (if not specifically on the list)- Politicians, press barons, large international company directors, trade unionists, communists/political opponents & Jews, Gypsies, senior clergymen, scientists and everyone who had already escaped the Nazis from occupied Europe, in essence anyone either useful to the Nazi regime or a perceived opponent.
Although there are notable mistakes on the list. For example people such as Lytton Strachey who had died in 1932 ,or Paul Robeson, who had moved back to the United States in 1939.
It does seem that most information had been gathered from newspaper reports, telephone directories and published works of the immediate pre war period, although the inclusion of British & allied intelligence agents has been recently noted as ‘frighteningly accurate’.
Beside each name was the number of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) to which the person was to be handed over. Churchill was to be placed into the custody of Amt VI (Ausland-SD, Foreign Intelligence), but the vast majority of the people listed in the Black Book would be placed into the custody of Amt IV (Gestapo).
The list also includes personalities with LGBT connections, including author and Abinger resident EM Forster, and actor Noel Coward.
On finding himself listed, Noel Coward received a telegram from author and suffragist, Rebecca West, who also featured; it read:
‘My dear – the people we should have been seen dead with!’
Coward was of interest to the Nazis for a number of reasons. He opposed pre-war appeasement, was an armed forces entertainer, had connections with MI5 and he was also homosexual. In his memoirs Future Indefinite (1954), Coward wrote:
‘If anyone had told me at that time that I was high up on the Nazi black list I should have laughed and told them not to talk nonsense’.
Coward would have been assigned to RHSA, VI, G 1 – the Security Service under the control of the SS.
Coward, with Norman Hackforth at the piano, performing for sailors aboard HMS Victorious in Ceylon, August 1944
Likewise, gay author E M Forster was of interest for his socialist writings and his homosexuality.
The person who was to be in charge of arresting those listed in the book was SS Colonel Professor Dr Frank Six. Six was subsequently responsible for massacres in the Soviet Union for which he was sentenced at Nuremberg as a war criminal.
Some notable people on that list:
Virginia Woolf, novelist and essayist, wife of Leonard Woolf. It appears that Hitler was afraid of Virginia Woolf.
“Harry Bullock”, thought to be a mistake for Guy Henry Bullock, diplomat and Everest mountaineer.
Heinrich Mann, German novelist and anti-fascist.
Robert Baden-Powell, founder and leader of Scouting, which the Nazis regarded as a spy organisation.
Fergus Anderson, two-time Grand Prix motorcycle road-racing World Champion.
Leonie Zuntz (1908–1942), German Hittitologist, refugee scholar at Somerville College, Oxford
Dr Agnes Maude Royden, suffragist, author, preacher, philosopher, pacifist.
One of the most powerful weapons during World War 2 was propaganda. The armies did not have to be persuades to go to war, it was their job to follow the orders of their respective governments.
However to persuade the civilians of the merits of war, propaganda was used this was done by all sides.
But World War 2 was different then any other war before. it also included the targeted mass murder of civilian population. For the Nazis to convince the general population that they were not only fighting external enemies but also ‘internal# ones they came up with a whole range of propaganda tools to sell their lies and market them as truth. It is a fact there is an element of truth in every lie.
Lou Manche was a member of the NSB, the Dutch Nazi party. He was also a member of the WA, which was the Dutch equivalent of the Stormtroopers, they called themselves a group who maintained order, but in fact they were just a gang of thugs.
Lou was also an artist, and by all means a very talented artist, but rather then using his talents for good he used them for evil.
He became a prominent propagandist for the NSB. The poster at the start of the blog is one of his posters. In the poster he makes clever use of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation, there are a few symbols in the poster: The star of David; the hammer and sickle, a caricature of Winston Churchill sitting on someone, who I believe to be Stafford Cripps, who was appointed Ambassador to the Soviet Union by Churchill..
Lou also makes use of words like: retarded; dandy ; millionaire communist; gold trading Jews. All of these symbols and words are all subliminal messages- messages that are meant to kind of ‘slip past your mental radar’ and embed itself deep into your subconscious mind- they were aimed to make Jews, English, Communists and also people with mental illness look to be the enemy of the state.
People who read these messages may have thought they were no so harmful because they didn’t call for aggression. They may have thought they were warnings of what could happen. The headline says “If England wins the war” it then lists all that could happen. In short it says that the Jews would exploit the Dutch and the English described as retarded’ and Soviets would destroy the country.
The poster also makes reference to a piece H.G Wells had written in a magazine called the ‘Fortnightly’ .
Wells warns about the mistake the English government has made by going to war with Germany. To end Hitler’s regime, he warns about what may come after Hitler. He also says that they think that they can render Hitler powerless just so that can go back fishing and golfing, quoted on the poster of Lou Manche. This of course was one of those cherry picking tactics of the Nazis, H.G. Wells had been one of the authors banned by the Nazi regime. His book “The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind” was one of the books, thrown into the flames, a the 1933 book burnings. But if it suited the Nazis agenda they would be willing to overlook that fact.
Although many Dutch used their common sense and did not heed the propaganda of the NSB and Lou Manche, there were plenty who fell for it, and quite a few were well educated. 75% of all Dutch Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, Lou Manche’s ‘art’ had a part to play in this.
Many of Lou Manche’s propaganda posters remind me of modern day memes, which are often used in a similar way to get a political message across. Like then they are usually taken out of context.
After the war Lou Manche was only jailed for a short time. In 1954 the Royal British Legion had even commissioned him to do a stained glass piece for them. But afters a great number of protests they decided to assign it to another artist
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It is strange sometimes how little you can find out of a person, yet you can still tell a story about him.
Martin Sealtiel was born on May 19,1935. There are no pictures of him. The only indication that he was born was a newspaper announcement in a local newspaper, placed on May 20-1935 by his parents. The announcement was of the birth of their son Martin. Born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In neighbouring Germany, the first section of the Reichsautobahn, connecting Frankfurt and Heidelberg, was opened by Hitler in Darmstadt.
Weather wise May 19,1935 was not a pleasant day. The temperature that day was between 3.9 °C and 13.0 °C and averaged 8.0 °C. There was 1.9 mm of rain during 2.0 hours. There was 8.6 hours of sunshine (54%). The average windspeed was 3 Bft (moderate breeze) and was prevailing from the west. T
Martin’s parents, Esther Sealtiel-Waterman and David Sealtiel, got married on January 31,1934.
The family lived in the Cronjéstraat 17 in Amsterdam. Martin’s dad was a sales rep for a Metal company. Martin’s mom sold lamp shades which she made herself.
On May 10,1940 Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. Although the lives of Jews didn’t change too much initially, gradually laws were introduced with the aim to eradicate every Jew in the Netherlands. The Nazis nearly succeeded.
On July 17,1943, the Sealtiel family is deported to Westerbork transit camp. On August 31,1943 Martin and his Mother are both transported to Auschwitz in Poland. They arrive on September 3,1943, they are both murdered on arrival. Martin was aged 8 at the time.
Martin’s dad ,David, is sent to a labour camp Warsaw,Poland. Here he has to clear rubble and debris from the ghetto. He died on June 30,1944 off pneumonia(at least that is what is death cert says) just over 9 months after his wife and son were murdered.
The whole Sealtiel of the Cronjéstraat 17, wiped away because of the warped ideology of Nazism.
I wish I could say that this was the only family, but that would be a lie. Millions were murdered and not only Jews. Homosexual, people with a disability, people with a different political point of view, Jehovah Witnesses and others were subject to the evil of the Nazis.
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The one thing we all have in comon ,regardless of we are good or bad , at one stage of our lives we were all children.
Even the most evil men on who ever roamed the planaet started off as a child, like Joseph Mengele ,pictured above.
Below are a few more exampes of evil men when they were young.
John Wayne Gacy
Saddam Hussein
Adolf Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Jeffrey Dahmer
Ted Bundy
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On April 22,1945 Hitler had publicly admitted that the war was lost.He also had said that Göring was in a better position to negotiate a peace deal.
Previously on June 29,1941 a week into the start of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler had issued a decree stating that in the event of his death. or if Hitler ever lost his freedom of action;by way of incapacity, disappearance or abduction;Göring was to act as Hitler’s deputy, with full power to act on Hitler’s behalf.
On April 23,1945 Göring sent a telegram to Hitler indicating that he would take over as the leader of Germany if Hitler would not reply by 22:00 PM.
“My Führer:
General Koller today gave me a briefing on the basis of communications given him by Colonel General Jodl and General Christian, according to which you had referred certain decisions to me and emphasized that I, in case negotiations would become necessary, would be in an easier position than you in Berlin. These views were so surprising and serious to me that I felt obligated to assume, in case by 2200 o’clock no answer is forthcoming, that you have lost your freedom of action. I shall then view the conditions of your decree as fulfilled and take action for the wellbeing of Nation and Fatherland. You know what I feel for you in these most difficult hours of my life and I cannot express this in words. God protect you and allow you despite everything to come here as soon as possible.
Your faithful Hermann Göring”
Hitler was not happy with this and branded Göring a traitor and stripped him of all powers and appointed Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz as his successors.
Even in the last days they were still delusional.
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Here are just some examples of people who were awarded the title “person of the year” by Time magazine. As you can see that doesn’t always equate of having a positive impact in the world.
Above : Pierre Laval, Man of the Year | Jan. 4, 1932. Had been a FrEnch politician and had held the role of prime miniters. During WWII collaborated withe the Nazi regime, while he held positions in the Vichy government. Was executed in 1949 for his role in WWII
Adolph Hitler, Man of the Year | Jan. 2, 1939. There are 2 covers for that edition . There is another one with Hitler himself , displaying a Swastika on his arm.
Joseph Stalin: 1939, 1942
Richard Nixon, Man the Year | Jan. 3, 1972
Deng Xiaoping, Man of the Year 1979 and 1986. the supreme leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1978 until his retirement in 1992..
Ayatullah Khomeini, Man of the Year | Jan. 7, 1980. Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
To be honest I don’t know why anyone would think there is anything honorable in receiving the title. I would not want to be associated with any of these men in any way or shape or form.
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History of Sorts 
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