240TH AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY (JULY 4, 2016)
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THE LONG JUMPER: OTTO SKORZENY (12 JUNE 1908 TO 5 JULY 1975)
Otto Skorzeny(12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer[1](lieutenant colonel) in the German Waffen-SSduring World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he accompanied the rescue mission that freed the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity. Books and papers written about him prior to the 2013 release of records pursuant to the Nazi War Crimes Declassification Act incorrectly refer to him as "Field Commander" of the operation. Skorzeny was the leader of Operation Greif, in which German soldiers were to infiltrate through enemy lines, using their opponents' languages, uniforms, and customs. At the end of the war, Skorzeny was involved with the Werwolf guerrilla movement.
Although he was charged with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention in relation to Operation Greif, the Dachau Military Tribunal acquitted Skorzeny after the war. Skorzeny fled from his holding prison in 1948, first to France, and then to Spain. He later lived in Ireland.
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WHITE SUPREMACIST PRISON KILLER: TROY KELL [MURDERED INMATE, ON JULY 6, 1994]
On this date, July 6, 1994, a White Supremacist Lifer, Troy Kell murdered his African-American Inmate, Lonnie Blackmon at the Utah Department of Corrections Gunnison facility. Please go to this previous blog post to learn more.
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Troy Kell |
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THE PHILADELPHIAN SERIAL KILLER: GARY HEIDNIK (NOVEMBER 22, 1943 TO JULY 6, 1999)
On this date, July 6, 1999. Philadelphian Serial Killer, Gary Heidnik, was executed by lethal injection at State Correctional Institution – Rockview in Centre County, Pennsylvania. As of 2015, he is the last person to be executed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Please go to this previous blog post to learn more.
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Gary Heidnik |
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WINSTON CHURCHILL FAVORED THE DEATH PENALTY FOR ADOLF HITLER
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Winston Churchill tried to execute Adolf Hitler? The intention of the British Prime Minister was to use the electric chair for the first time to execute him. (Photo: Telemundo.com) |
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1506725/Churchill-wanted-Hitler-sent-to-the-electric-chair.html
Churchill wanted Hitler sent to the electric chair
Chris Hastings, Arts Correspondent
12:01AM GMT 01 Jan 2006
Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime Prime Minister, planned to execute Adolf Hitler in the electric chair if the Nazi leader fell into Allied hands.
Declassified documents reveal that Churchill was opposed to Allied plans for war crimes trials and wanted summarily to execute leading Nazi figures including Hitler who he regarded as "the mainspring of evil" and a "gangster".
They also show that he was willing, against the advice of his Cabinet colleagues, to "wipe out" defenceless German villages in retaliation for Nazi atrocities in Czechoslovakia.
The disclosures are contained in notebooks kept by Sir Norman Brook, the former wartime deputy cabinet secretary, who kept an account of proceedings in a form of shorthand.
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Hitler on the electric chair? [PHOTO SOURCE: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/417075615460744984/] |
On July 6, 1942, according to his notes, the Prime Minister said: "Contemplate that if Hitler falls into our hands we shall certainly put him to death.
"Not a Sovereign who could be said to be in hands of Ministers, like Kaiser. This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument - electric chair, for gangsters no doubt available on lend-lease."
Churchill's choice of the electric chair was despite the fact that it was never used in Britain before the final abolition of the death penalty in 1965.
Sir Norman's notebooks, which are being made public by the National Archives at Kew, reveal Churchill to be a ruthless commander who was prepared to override moral and legal considerations to defeat Germany.
On July 7, 1943, Churchill argued passionately that leading Nazis who fell into British hands should be treated as "outlaws" and shot rather than put on trial.
"I suggested that U.N. to draw up a list of 50 or so wd. be declared as outlaws by the 33 Nations. (Those not on the list might be induced to rat!) If any of these found by advancing troops, nearest offr. of brigade rank shd. call a military court to establish identity and shd. then execute w'out higher authority."
The papers also show that he was willing to "bump of" Himmler and shoot German prisoners of war should Germany begin doing the same to British prisoners.
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An extremely rare silver charm depicticting Adolf Hitler hanging from a noose |
Churchill's own six volume history of the conflict, The Second World War, makes no reference to this disagreement over war crimes trials and includes just a passing reference to "the unexpectedly ultra-respectable, 'no executions without trial' line being taken by Stalin".
Equally controversial will be the revelation in the notebooks, that Churchill wanted the RAF to wipe out German villages in retaliation for the massacre of civilians in Lidice, a Czech village, which was razed to the ground by the SS.
The Prime Minister abandoned his plan only in the face of opposition from Cabinet colleagues. On June 15, 1942, he said: "My instinct is strongly the other way... I submit (unwillingly) to the view of Cabinet against."
It may be that Churchill would have lived to regret the raids. Within weeks of authorising bombing raids on the German town of Dresden in 1945 he began to question the wisdom of the policy. He would later say that the deaths of up to 30,000 German civilians raised a "query against the conduct of Allied bombers".
The notebooks also reveal Churchill's preferred method for dealing with Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader, who embarked on a hunger strike in 1942.
Churchill, almost alone among his Cabinet colleagues, did not see the need to cave into the Gandhi's demands even though many observers believed he only had days to live.
He finally agreed for a reprieve on condition that Gandhi's release did not cause Britain to lose face. On January 7, 1943 he asked colleagues: "Why give way to h-strike by Gandhi?
"Let him out as an act of State, rather than an act of submission to G' will. I wd. keep him there and let him do as he likes... But if you are going to let him out because he strikes, then let him out now... Tell Viceroy."
Churchill was equally dismissive of Gen Charles de Gaulle, one of Britain's closest allies, who he believed suffered from "an insensate ambition" and who was the "greatest living barrier to re-union and restoration of France".
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Adolf Hitler |
The notebooks reveal that the plight of Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East was a frequent topic of discussion at Cabinet.
On December 14, 1942, Churchill asked Anthony Eden, his Foreign Secretary, whether reports about "the wholesale massacre of Jews" by "electrical methods" were true.
Eden tells him that "Jews are being withdrawn from Norway and sent to Poland, for some such purposes evidently". Eden, is, however, unable to "confirm the method" of killing.
Churchill, himself, seems to have been more concerned with the fate of "Poles, not Jews" as the war drew to a close. On March 28, 1945, he said: "Actually we have a very small Jewish population compared with other countries. I'm only concerned with Poles - and Poles who have really fought."
Sir Norman also records on June 11, 1945, that Churchill described Russia's advance into Central Europe as "one of the most terrible events in history".
Despite the USSR's advances Churchill still believed there was a place for British values. On July 12, 1943, he said: "Propagate our language all over world is best method. Harmonises with my ideas for future of world. This will be the English speaking century."
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FREIKORPS
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Waldemar Pabst Book |
Freikorps(pronounced [ˈfʀaɪ̯ˌkoːɐ̯], "Free Corps") were Germanvolunteer units that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, the members of which effectively fought as mercenaries, regardless of their own nationality. In German-speaking countries the first so-called Freikorps"free regiments" (German: Freie Regimenter) were formed in the 18th century from native volunteers, enemy renegades and deserters, and criminals. These sometimes exotically equipped units served as infantry and cavalry or, more rarely, as artillery. Sometimes in just company strength, sometimes in formations up to several thousand strong, there were also various mixed formations or legions. The Prussian von Kleist Freikorps included infantry, jäger, dragoons and hussars. The French Volontaires de Saxe combined uhlans and dragoons.
In the early 20th century, Freikorps were raised to fight against the newly formed Weimar Republic, as well as their left-wing counterparts, through the early 1920s. These paramilitary organizations "roamed the countryside, killing with impunity.""They engaged in bloody confrontations with republican loyalists and engineered some of the more notorious assassinations" of the Weimar period, and are widely seen as a "precursor to Nazism". An entire series of Freikorps awards also existed, mostly replaced in 1933 by the Honor Cross for World War I veterans.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps
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Reichswehr Minister Noske inspects the Freikorps Hülsen in Berlin (Jan 1919) |
18th century
The very first Freikorps were recruited by Frederick the Greatduring the Seven Years' War. On 15 July 1759, Frederick ordered the creation of a squadron of volunteer hussars to be attached to the 1st Regiment of Hussars (von Kleist's Own). He entrusted the creation and command of this new unit to Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm von Kleist. This first squadron (80 men) was raised in Dresden and consisted mainly of Hungarian deserters. This squadron was placed under the command of Lieutenant Johann Michael von Kovacs. At the end of 1759, the first 4 squadrons of dragoons (a.k.a. horse-grenadiers) of the Freikorps were organised. They initially consisted of Prussian volunteers from Berlin, Magdeburg, Mecklenburg and Leipzig but later recruited deserters. The Freikorpswere regarded as unreliable by regular armies, so they were mainly used as sentries and for minor duties.
These early Freikorps appeared during the War of the Austrian Succession and especially the Seven Years' War, when France, Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchyembarked on an escalation of petty warfare while conserving their regular regiments. Even during the last Kabinettskrieg, the War of the Bavarian Succession, Freikorp formations were formed in 1778. Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Lithuanians and South Slavs, as well as Turks, Tatars and Cossacks, were believed by all warring parties to be inherently good fighters. The nationality of many soldiers can no longer be ascertained with certainty as the ethnic origin was often described imprecisely in the regimental lists. Slavs (Serbs, Croats) were often referred to as "Hungarians" or "Croats", and Muslim recruits (Albanians, Bosnians, Tatars) as "Turks".
For Prussia, the Pandurs, who were made up of Serbs and Croats, were a clear model for the organization of such "free" troops. Frederick the Great created 14 "free infantry" (Frei-Infanterie) units, mainly between 1756 and 1758, which were intended to be attractive to those soldiers who wanted military "adventure", but did not want to have to do military drill. A distinction should be made between the Freikorps formed up to 1759 for the final years of the war, which operated independently and disrupted the enemy with surprise attacks and the free infantry which consisted of various military branches (such as infantry, hussars, dragoons, jäger) and were used in combination. They were often used to ward off Maria Theresa's Pandurs. In the era of linear tactics, light troops had been seen necessary for outpost, reinforcement and reconnaissance duties. During the war, eight such volunteer corps were set up:
- Trümbach's Freikorps (Voluntaires de Prusse) (FI)
- Kleist's Freikorps (FII)
- Glasenapp's Free Dragoons (F III)
- Schony's Freikorps (F IV)
- Gschray's Freikorps (F V)
- Bauer's Free Hussars (F VI)
- Légion Britannique (FV - of the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg)
- Volontaires Auxiliaires (F VI).
Because, with some exceptions, they were seen as undisciplined and less battleworthy, they were used for less onerous guard and garrisonduties. In the so-called "petty wars", the Freikorps interdicted enemy supply lines with guerrilla warfare. In the case of capture, their members were at risk of being executed as irregular fighters. In Prussia the Freikorps, which Frederick the Great had despised as "vermin", were disbanded. Their soldiers were given no entitlement to pensions or invalidity payments.
In France, many corps continued to exist until 1776. They were attached to regular dragoon regiments as jägersquadrons. During the Napoleonic Wars, Austria recruited various Freikorpsof Slavic origin. The SlavonicWurmser Freikorps fought in Alsace. The combat effectiveness of the six Viennese Freikorps (37,000 infantrymen and cavalrymen), however, was low. An exception were the border regiments of Serbs who served permanently on the Austro-Ottoman border.
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Serbian, Wurmser, Odonel and Mahony Free Corps in 1798. Rudolf Otto von Ottenfeld. |
Napoleonic era
Freikorpsin the modern sense emerged in Germany during the course of the Napoleonic Wars. They fought not so much for money but rather out of patriotic motives, seeking to shake off the French Confederation of the Rhine. After the French under Emperor Napoleon had either conquered the German states or forced them to collaborate, remnants of the defeated armies continued to fight on in this fashion. Famous formations included the King's German Legion, who had fought for Britain in French-occupied Spain and were mainly recruited from Hanoverians, the Lützow Free Corpsand the Black Brunswickers.
The Freikorps attracted many nationally disposed citizens and students. Freikorpscommanders such as Ferdinand von Schill, Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow or Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, known as the "Black Duke", led their own attacks on Napoleonic occupation forces in Germany. Those led by Schill were decimated in the Battle of Stralsund (1809); many were killed in battle or executed at Napoleon's command in the aftermath. The Freikorps were very popular during the period of the German War of Liberation (1813–15), during which von Lützow, a survivor of Schill's Freikorps, formed his Lützow Free Corps. The anti-Napoleonic Freikorpsoften operated behind French lines as a kind of commando or guerrilla force.
Throughout the 19th century, these anti-Napoleonic Freikorps were greatly praised and glorified by German nationalists, and a heroic myth built up around their exploits. This myth was invoked, in considerably different circumstances, in the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I.
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Painting of three famous Free Corps members, 1815. – Heinrich Hartmann, Theodor Körner and Friedrich Friesen |
1815 to 1871
Even in the aftermath of the Napoleonic era, Freikorps were set up with varying degrees of success.
During the March 1848 riots, student Freikorpswere set up in Munich.
In First Schleswig War of 1848 the Freikorpsof von der Tann, Zastrow and others distinguished themselves.
In 1864 in Mexico, the French formed the so-called Contreguerrillas under former Prussian hussar officer, Milson. In ItalyGaribaldi formed his famous Freischars, notably the "Thousand of Marsala", which landed in Sicily in 1860.
Even before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, Freikorpswere developed in Francethat were known as franc-tireurs.
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Recruitment poster for Freikorps Hülsen Poster shows stylized profile of German soldier. Text: Protect your homeland! Enlist in the Freikorps Hülsen. 1918 |
Post-World War I
The meaning of the word Freikorps changed over time. After 1918, the term was used for the paramilitaryorganizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. They were the key Weimar paramilitary groups active during that time. Many German veterans felt disconnected from civilian life, and joined a Freikorps in search of stability within a military structure. Others, angry at their sudden, apparently inexplicable defeat, joined up in an effort to put down communist uprisings, such as the Spartacist uprising, or exact some form of revenge. They received considerable support from Minister of Defense Gustav Noske, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, who used them to crush the German Revolution of 1918–19 and the MarxistSpartacist League and arrest Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were killed on 15 January 1919. They were also used to defeat the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919.
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Waldemar Pabst in 1930 |
On 5 May 1919, members of Freikorps Lützow in Perlachnear Munich, acted on a tip from a local cleric and arrested and killed twelve alleged communist workers (most of them actually members of the Social Democratic Party). A memorial on Pfanzeltplatz in Munich today commemorates the incident.
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Kaiser Wilhelm II on Adolf Hitler |
Freikorpsalso fought against the communists in the Baltic, Silesia, Poland and East Prussia after the end of World War I, including aviation combat, often with significant success. Anti-Slavic racism was sometimes present, although the ethnic cleansing ideology and anti-Semitismthat would be expressed in later years had not developed. In Baltic they fought against communist and as well against newborn independent democratic countries Estonia and Latvia too. In Latvia, Freikorps murdered 300 civilians in Mitau who were suspected of having "Bolshevik sympathies". After the capture of Riga, another 3000 alleged communists were killed, including summary executions of 50–60 prisoners daily. Though officially disbanded in 1920, many Freikorps attempted, unsuccessfully, to overthrow the government in the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. Their attack was halted when German citizens loyal to the government went on strike, cutting off many services and making daily life so problematic that the coup was called off.
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Pabst (carrying bouquet) entering Austria from Italy with Richard Steidle (bearded), c. 1930 |
In 1920, Adolf Hitler had just begun his political career as the leader of the tiny and as-yet-unknown Deutsche Arbeiterpartei/DAP German Workers' Party, which was soon renamed the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei/NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) or Nazi Party in Munich. Numerous future members and leaders of the Nazi Party had served in the Freikorps, including Ernst Röhm, future head of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, Heinrich Himmler, future head of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, and Rudolf Höß, the future Kommandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hermann Ehrhardt, founder and leader of Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, and his deputy Commander Eberhard Kautter, leaders of the Viking League, refused to help Hitler and Erich Ludendorff in their Beer Hall Putsch and conspired against them.
Hitler eventually viewed some of them as threats. A huge ceremony was arranged on 9 November 1933 in which the Freikorps leaders symbolically presented their old battle flags to Hitler's SA and SS. It was a sign of allegiance to their new authority, the Nazi state. When Hitler's internal purge of the party, the Night of the Long Knives, came in 1934, a large number of Freikorps leaders were targeted for killing or arrest, including Ehrhardt and Röhm. Historian Robert GL Waite claims that in Hitler's "Röhm Purge" speech to the Reichstagon 13 July 1934, he implied that the Freikorps were one of the groups of "pathological enemies of the state".
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Waldemar Pabst versus Adolf Hitler [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.lachschon.de/item/163784-optischevwg/] |
Notable Freikorps units
- Iron Division (Eiserne Division, related to Eiserne Brigade)
- Fought in the Baltic.
- Defeated by the Estonian Army in the Battle of Cēsis
- Trapped in Thorensberg by the Latvian Army. Rescued by the Rossbach Freikorps.
- Volunteer Division of Horse Guards (Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision)
- Killed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, 15 January 1919
- Led by Captain Waldemar Pabst
- Disbanded on order of Defence Minister Gustav Noske, 7 July 1919, after Pabst threatened to kill him
- Freikorps Caspari
- Fought against the Bremen Soviet Republic
- Fought under the command of Walter Caspari
- Freikorps Lichtschlag
- Fought against the Red Ruhr Army
- Fought under the command of Oskar von Watter
- Freikorps Lützow
- Occupied Munich following the revolution of April 1919.
- Commanded by Major Schulz
- Marinebrigade Ehrhardt (The Second Naval Brigade)
- Participated in the Kapp Putsch of 1920
- Disbanded members eventually formed the Organisation Consul, which performed hundreds of political assassinations
- Freikorps Maercker (Maercker's Volunteer Rifles, or Freiwilliges Landesjägerkorps)
- Had Reinhard Heydrich as a member
- Founded by Ludwig Maercker
- Freikorps Oberland
- Kurt Benson
- Freikorps Roßbach (Rossbach)
- Founded by Gerhard Roßbach
- Rescued the Iron Division after an extremely long march across Eastern Europe.
- had Rudolph Hoess as a member.
- Sudetendeutsches Freikorps
- Formed by Czech German nationalists with Nazi sympathies which operated from 1938 to 1939
- Part of Hitler's successful effort to absorb Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich
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Freikorps in March Hazlov for your 1938 |
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Sudeten German Voluntary Force in combat, 1938. |
OTHER LINKS:
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THE PUNISHER OF DAVAO DECLARES WAR ON DRUG DEALERS
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DAVAO DEATH SQUAD
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DUKUN SERIAL KILLER FROM INDONESIA: AHMAD SURADJI (10 JANUARY 1949 TO 10 JULY 2008)
On this date, 10 July 2008, an Indonesian Serial Killer, Ahmad Suradji was executed by the firing squad.
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Ahmad Suradji |
Ahmad Suradji (10 January 1949 – 10 July 2008) was a serial killer in Indonesia. Suradji, a cattle-breeder, was also known as Nasib Kelewang, or by his alias Datuk. He admitted to killing 42 girls and women over 11 years. His victims ranged in age from 11 to 30, and were strangled with a cable after being buried up to their waists in the ground as part of a ritual.
Suradji was arrested on 2 May 1997, after bodies were discovered near his home on the outskirts of Medan, the capital of North Sumatra. He buried his victims in a sugarcane plantation near his home, with heads of the victims facing his house, which he believed would give him extra power.
He told police that he had a dream in 1988 in which his father's ghost told him to kill 70 women and drink their saliva, so that he could become a mystic healer. As a sorcerer, or dukun, women came to him for spiritual advice or on making themselves more beautiful or richer. His three wives—all sisters—were also arrested for assisting in the murders and helping to hide the bodies. One of his wives, Tumini, was tried as his accomplice. The trial began on 11 December 1997, with a 363-page charge against him, and although Suradji maintained his innocence, he was found guilty on 27 April 1998, by a three-judge panel in Lubuk Pakam. He was sentenced to death by firing squad and executed on 10 July 2008.
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A local television station broadcast a chilling re-enactment of how executions are carried out in Indonesia. |
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JOHN CALVIN IS PRO-LIFE [PRO-LIFE QUOTE]
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[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/702686] |
For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.
AUTHOR:John Calvin (French: Jean Calvin, born Jehan Cauvin: 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he published the first edition of his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536. In that year, Calvin was recruited by William Farel to help reform the church in Geneva. The city council resisted the implementation of Calvin and Farel's ideas, and both men were expelled. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a church of French refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and was eventually invited back to lead its church. Following his return, Calvin introduced new forms of church government and liturgy, despite the opposition of several powerful families in the city who tried to curb his authority. During this time, the trial of Michael Servetus was extended by libertines in an attempt to harass Calvin. However, since Servetus was also condemned and wanted by the Inquisition, outside pressure from all over Europe forced the trial to continue. Following an influx of supportive refugees and new elections to the city council, Calvin's opponents were forced out. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe. Calvin was a tireless polemic and apologetic writer who generated much controversy. He also exchanged cordial and supportive letters with many reformers, including Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger. In addition to the Institutes, he wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, as well as theological treatises and confessional documents. He regularly preached sermons throughout the week in Geneva. Calvin was influenced by the Augustinian tradition, which led him to expound the doctrine of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Reformed and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.
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SEAN O’BRIEN (EXECUTED IN TEXAS ON JULY 11, 2006)
On this date, July 11, 2006, Sean O’Brienwas the first of the three convicted killers of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena on June 24, 1993 to be executed by lethal injection in Texas. I wish there was a Joint Enterprise Law and all six of them would have been executed.
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Sean O’Brien |
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SUICIDE ASSIST EXECUTION: ROCKY BARTON (JULY 28, 1956 TO JULY 12, 2006)
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Barton
Summary: Barton murdered his fourth wife, Kimbirli Jo Barton, at their home in Waynesville after they had gotten in a domestic dispute that morning. He called and threatened Kimbirli several times the day of the killing before persuading her to come to the house to get her belongings. When Kimbirli arrived, he appeared and shot Kimbirli once in the shoulder and then again in the back at close range. His uncle and Kibirli's 17 year old daughter witnessed the shooting. Barton then shot himself with an upward blast to the chin, leaving just a scar below his ear. Barton has a history of arrests for burglary, assault, drug and DUI charges and violence against women. He beat one of his ex-wives with a shotgun, stabbed her three times, cut her throat and left her for dead, but she survived. Kimbirli had known Barton for many years, but the couple had just married two years earlier while Barton was in prison for the attempted murder of his ex-wife in Kentucky.
Man executed less than 4 years after killing wife; FIRST LETHAL INJECTION WITH NEW PROCEDURES," by Alan Johnson. (Thursday, July 13, 2006)
What Rocky Barton started when he put a shotgun to his chin after killing his wife three years ago, the state of Ohio finished yesterday. Barton, 49, was executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. His death by injection occurred without incident at 10:27 a.m.
In a sense, Barton died a little every day since Jan. 16, 2003, when he shot and killed Kimbirli Barton, the woman he said he loved more than anyone else and could not live without.
Consumed by guilt, Barton said he deserved to die and didn’t want to "have to wait around no 10, 20 years and go through the appeals process." From crime to punishment, it was the shortest time in Ohio’s 22 executions during the past seven years. Donald and Wilma Barton, the condemned man’s parents, and two of his victim’s daughters, Tiffany and Jamie Reising, witnessed the execution from a few feet away, separated by a sheet of glass.
Following Barton's execution, Reising said she's reaching the point where she can forgive Barton, but not yet. She said she doesn't want to carry hate in her heart for the rest of her life. Barton, who did not seek clemency from Gov. Bob Taft, had asked the trial court to sentence him to death. A judge ruled last week that he was competent to give up his appeals.
Jamie Reising, 21, who watched Barton kill her mother, was given permission to leave the Warren County jail to witness the execution. She is serving time on a drug charge. "This is closure for our family,"she said afterward. "He took the glue that was holding us together."
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THE TRIAL OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN (DECIDED: JULY 13, 2013)
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THE CARBON COPY KILLER &‘DEVOUT’ CHRISTIAN: BARRY GORDON HADLOW (DIED: 13 JULY 2007)
On this date, 13 July 2007, Barry Gordon Hadlow A.K.A The Carbon Copy Killer who was a pedophile died in a Brisbane Hospital in Queensland, Australia. I will post information about this unrepentant pedophile from several news sources and also from Paul B. Kidd’s book, ‘Never To Be Released’ before giving my comments.
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Barry Hadlow |
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REEM ISLAND GHOST: ALAA BADER ABDULLAH (EXECUTED BY FIRING SQUAD ON JULY 13, 2015)
In June 2015, the Federal Supreme Court sentenced an Emirati woman, Alaa Bader al-Hashemi, to death for the murder of Ibolya Ryan and planting a handmade bomb in an Egyptian-American doctor's home in Abu Dhabi. The woman committed the crime in December 2014 and was executed at dawn on July 13, 2015. This is the only time that a prisoner has been executed within such a short time frame and this is the one of the few cases of a woman being executed.
Let us not forget Ibolya Ryan, a Romanian American Teacher from Colorado who was murdered in Abu Dhabi on December 1, 2014. Justice was swift and sure as the killer, was executed by firing squad on July 13, 2015, only 7 months after the crime.
I will post information about this case from Wikipedia.
Murder of Ibolya Ryan
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Location | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates | ||
Date | 1 December 2014 | ||
Deaths | 1 | ||
Non-fatal injuries | 0 | ||
Perpetrator | Ala'a Badr Abdullah al-Hashemi | ||
Ibolya Ryan was a Hungarian (raised in Romania)-American kindergarten teacher murdered in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on 1 December 2014.
Overview
The murder was committed by a woman wearing black gloves and a veiled niqab, who proved to be unknown to the victim. After committing the murder, the perpetrator planted a bomb at the home of an Arab–American physician. These attacks, taking place in the wake of a spate of recent attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia, attracted international coverage and raised concerns in the international security and business communities.
The stabbing, which took place in Boutik Mall, an Abu Dhabi shopping mall located on Al Reem Island, and was caught on tape in a routine surveillance video, unsettled citizens and the foreign population of Abu Dhabi because acts of terrorism are such a rare event in the United Arab Emirates.
The Emirates have classified the murder as a lone wolf terrorist attack inspired by terrorist ideology acquired online.
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| Police in the United Arab Emirates made an arrest in the deadly stabbing of a Colorado teacher at an Abu Dhabi mall. |
Incident
Murder
At the beginning of the investigation, authorities left open the possibility the murderer could have been a man in disguise. Two days after the murder, on 3 December, Abu Dhabi Police released a statement that, "Investigations are still under way to identify the suspect's identity and gender. Witnesses reported that the culprit was fully covered wearing an abaya, black gloves and face cover." Abu Dhabi Security Media Department at the Ministry of Interior posted a video on its official YouTube channel, showing CCTVfootage of the suspect, dubbed the “Reem Island Ghost”, who stabbed the American kindergarten teacher Ibolya on Monday afternoon on Al Reem Island in Abu Dhabi. On the CCTV footage, people on the scene can be seen reacting to the killing. One mother with a young child can be seen hurrying him away while security guards move towards the corridor. People appear to be alerted to something happening in the toilets and while a security guard moves along the corridor into them, the suspect moves towards the elevators. The video then shows the assailant fleeing the scene following the crime that took place inside the washroom of a shopping mall, wearing a black abaya, black gloves and the face-covering veil known as niqab.
Police said the victim was stabbed to death with a "sharp tool" following an argument in a women's restroom. On the surveillance footage, the robed suspect is seen stepping off an elevator, briefly interacting with a security guard, then taking a newspaper before walking toward the restroom. Some 90 minutes later, the suspected attacker runs back into the lobby as shoppers scatter, shakes off a woman who tries to stop the suspect, and boards an elevator to a parking garage before fleeing. The tape ends with footage of a bloody trail of footprints leading from one of the restroom stalls.
On the morning of Thursday 4 December, news sources mentioned that Abu Dhabi Police were able to catch the killer. Later during the day, General HH Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior in UAE, said that the security and police forces arrested the suspected "Niqabi" woman for the brutal murder of the American teacher. He emphasized that the suspect was identified in less than 24 hours, and arrested in less than 48 hours. He explained that after committing her first crime, the "Niqabi" suspect went to another building located at the Abu Dhabi Corniche where she planted a primitive bomb on the doorstep of an Egyptian American doctor's house. The police forces were able to dismantle the bomb time before it detonated.
Sheikh Saif described the crime as “a slap to every noble human value that the UAE cherishes- all of which are derived from the teachings of Islam and the genuine Arab heritage.” He stressed that the UAE vigorously defends such civilized values both on its own soil and outside of its borders, and expressed his deep sorrow to witness such crimes in a country that is characterized by security and safety.
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Alaa Al Hashemi, 30, was found guilty of murdering Ibolya Ryan in a toilet stall in Boutik Mall. Courtesy Security Media |
Murderer
There was a conflict in information about the real identity of the murderer. While international news coverage mentioned that the murderer was 38-year-old Yemen-born U.A.E. citizen Dalal al Hashemi, UAE based newspapers mentioned on December 4 that the murderer was not called Dalal al Hashemi. A few months later, UAE based news coverages started to refer to the murderer as Alaa Bader Abdullah, also called Ala'a Badr Abdullah al-Hashemi.
The woman was reported to have been executed in 2015.
Attempted bombing
Security videos show, and police reports confirm, that Ryan's murderer returned to her car and drove to the home of an Egyptian-American ex-pat physician where she planted a bomb, which was discovered by the physician's son before it could explode. The physician's 13-year-old son discovered the bomb on his way to evening prayers at mosque. According to WAM, the materials used in the homemade bomb were "primitive".
The Security Media Department posted a dramatic YouTube video explaining the details of the crime which included images taken from CCTV. The video also highlighted the search and inspection procedures conducted by the police and security forces, which eventually led to the arrest of the suspect and solved the mystery behind the crime. There are also shots showing the same white SUV that the suspect was seen driving from the scene of the crime. Blood can be seen on the steering wheel and a black suitcase - identical to the one she allegedly carried to the doctor's apartment - are also shown in the police video. In the 4th of December video, the suspect is also seen heading towards the doctor's home with a small black suitcase. A security guard said he saw her enter and then leave quickly. The bomb was spotted when the doctor's son was going to mosque in the evening to pray and noticed the strange object in front of the house. Colonel Rashid Bourshid, head of the criminal investigation department, said: 'The doctor who was targeted with the bomb, 46-year-old MH, informed the security guard about the strange package in front of his door. The guard in turn informed the police who rushed to the spot and evacuated the site. They dismantled the bomb and identified its primitive components that included small gas cylinders, a lighter, glue, and nails to cause maximum injuries when detonated.'
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Ibolya Ryan |
Victim
Ryan was a Romanian-born US citizen. She was a mother of 11-year-old twins who lived with her in Abu Dhabi and a 13-year-old daughter, who lived with Ryan's ex-husband, Paul Ryan, in Vienna. She self-described as a Hungarian, born and raised in Romania, who taught in four countries including the United States over the past 15 years. She and her husband moved to Sopron, Hungary with their 3 children about 8 years before her death, and subsequently divorced.
Classification as terrorism
The move to classify the incident as an act of terrorism was not taken lightly in Abu Dhabi, where the economy depends on the labor of hundreds of thousands of ex-pats and on tourism. According to an unnamed security official in the U.A.E. and reported by the official WAM (Emirates News Agency), shortly before the attack the killer had, logged on to terrorist websites, and “acquired the terrorism ideology and learned how to manufacture explosives.” According to WAM, the “crimes she had committed are the result of a personal instigation and a lone terrorist act.”
Context
The economy of the UAE depends on the tight security for which its member states are noted.
The murder followed a September 2014 statement by Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, spokesman for the self-described Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant urging Muslims to murder Westerners and people from any country participating in attacks on the Islamic State — "kill him in any manner or way however it may be." The Emirate has taken an important and well-publicized role in that war. The attack can be viewed as part of a "trend of terrorist acts through inspiration rather than a direct order from militant groups", including the 2014 Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu ramming attack, the beheading of French tourist Herve Gourdel in Algeria, and recent killings of Danish and American nationals in Saudi Arabia.
Response
The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office(FCO) issued new security warnings on 5 December, advising that indiscriminate attacks could be made on foreigners in the Gulf States and elsewhere, “Attacks could be directed against British interests. There is considered to be a heightened threat of terrorist attack globally against UK interests and British nationals, from groups or individuals motivated by the conflict in Iraq and Syria.”
The US State Department's Overseas Security Advisory Council(OSAC) issued a new security advisory, urging Americans in the Gulf to vary their routines and schedules. American Security officials had previously warned ex-pats working in the Middle East of a jihadist web posting urging attacks on teachers in American schools.
A fundraising effort was launched by the recruitment firm involved with bringing Ryan to Abu Dhabi in order to bring Ryan's body home and provide for her children's education. The Ryan family took control of the fund weeks later and repurposed it to assist Ryan's family in Romania.
The expat community in Abu Dhabi was shaken by the murder; security in Abu Dhabi is tight and the country is usually considered safe for foreign workers.
Trial
In late June 2015, the Federal Supreme Courtin Abu Dhabi sentenced to deaththe accused Emirati woman, Alaa Bader al-Hashemi, for the crimes. The ruling was made by the supreme court, and could not be appealed. Hashemi had reportedly requested the court for psychological help, on account of a chronic mental illness and "unreal visions". However, psychiatric tests ordered by the court showed that she had been aware of her actions and that her mental condition was not found to have affected her actions.
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The Firing Squad in Indonesia. |
Execution
Ahmed Al Dhanhani, Attorney General for the State Security Prosecution, announced that on Monday morning, July 13, 2015, the ruling of The State Security Circuit of the Federal Supreme Court No. 73 of 2015 on the execution of Alaa Bader Abdullah had been carried out, following the approval of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
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JUSTIFICATION OF THE BLOOD PURGE: HITLER’S SPEECH TO THE REICHSTAG (13 JULY 1934)
In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.- Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Reichstag (13 July 1934)
On this date, 13 July 1934, Adolf Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag justifying the Rohm Purge.
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| [PHOTO SOURCE: http://comicism.tripod.com/340713.html] |
INTERNET SOURCE: http://der-fuehrer.org/reden/english/34-07-13.htm
Adolf Hitler-Speech to the Reichstag
Berlin, July 13, 1934
Deputies! Men of the German Reichstag!
Acting on behalf of the Reich Government, the President of the Reichstag, Hermann Göring, has called you together today in order to give me an opportunity to enlighten the Volk before this body, the highest appointed forum of the nation, concerning events which will hopefully live on in our history for all time as both a sad reminder and a warning.
Out of a combination of objective circumstances and personal guilt, of human incompetence and human defects, a crisis arose in our young Reich which all too easily may have brought about truly destructive consequences for an indeterminate period of time.
The purpose of my remarks is to explain to you and thus to the nation how they came about and were overcome. The contents of my remarks will be completely frank. Only in respect to scope must I impose upon myself limitations necessitated, on the one hand, by consideration to the interests of the Reich and, on the other, by the boundaries drawn by the feeling of shame.
Street riots, barricade fighting, mass terror, and an individualistic propaganda of disintegration today trouble nearly all countries throughout the world. In Germany as well, a few isolated fools and criminals of this type are still making repeated attempts to ply their destructive trade. Since the defeat of the Communist Party, we have experienced, albeit growing constantly weaker, one attempt after another to establish Communist organizations with varying degrees of anarchist character and to put them to work. Their methods are always the same. While portraying the present lot as unbearable, they extol the Communist paradise of the future and, in doing so, are practically only waging war for hell. For the consequences of their victory in a country like Germany could be nothing other than destructive.
However, the trial run of their capability and of the consequences of their rule have, in the concrete case, already produced results so clear to the German Volk that the overwhelming majority, particularly of the German workers, has recognized this Jewish-international benefactor of mankind and inwardly defeated it.
The National Socialist State will wage a Hundred Years’ War, if necessary, to stamp out and destroy every last trace within its boundaries of this phenomenon which poisons and makes dupes of the Volk (Volksvernarrung).
The second group of discontented is comprised of those political leaders who regard their futures as having been settled by January 30 but who have never been able to reconcile themselves to the irreversibility of this fact.
The more Time veils their own incompetence with the merciful cloak of forgetfulness, the more they believe themselves entitled to gradually reintroduce themselves to the mind of the Volk. However, because their incompetence then was not a matter of time but a matter of inborn incompetence, they are equally unable today to prove their worth by positive, useful work but instead perceive their purpose in life as being fulfilled by voicing criticism which is as underhanded as it is false. The Volk does not belong to them either. They can neither seriously threaten the National Socialist State nor seriously damage it in any way.
A third group of destructive elements is made up of those revolutionaries who were shaken and uprooted in 1918 in regard to their relation to the State and who thus have lost all inner connection to a regulated human social order.
They have become revolutionaries who pay homage to the revolution for its own sake and would like to see it become a permanent state of affairs.155 All of us once suffered from the horrible tragedy that, as obedient and dutiful soldiers, we were suddenly faced by a revolt of mutineers who actually succeeded in gaining possession of the State. Each of us had originally been trained to abide by the laws, to respect authority and to show obedience to the commands and orders it issues, and instilled with an inner devotion to the representatives of the State.
Now the revolution of deserters and mutineers forced us to inwardly disassociate ourselves from these concepts.
We were unable to muster any respect for the new usurpers. Honor and obedience forced us to refuse to obey; love of the nation and the Vaterland obliged us to wage war on them; the amorality of their laws extinguished in us the conviction of the necessity for complying with them-and hence we became revolutionaries.
However, even as revolutionaries, we had not disassociated ourselves from the obligation to apply to ourselves the natural laws of the sovereign right of our Volk and to respect these laws.
It was not our intention to violate the will and the right of selfdetermination of the German Volk, but to drive away those who violated the nation.
And when finally, legitimated by the trust of this Volk, we drew the consequences from our fourteen-year-long struggle, this was not done in order to unloose a chaos of unreined instincts, but with the sole aim of establishing a new and better order.
For us, the revolution which shattered the Second Germany was nothing other than the tremendous act of birth which summoned the Third Reich into being. We wanted to once again create a State to which every German can cling in love; to establish a regime to which everyone can look up with respect; to find laws which are commensurate with the morality of our Volk; to install an authority to which each and every man submits in joyful obedience.
For us, the revolution is not a permanent state of affairs. When a deathly check is violently imposed upon the natural development of a Volk, an act of violence may serve to release the artificially interrupted flow of evolution to allow it once again the freedom of natural development. However, there is no such thing as a permanent revolution or any type of profitable development possible by means of periodically recurring revolts.
Among the countless files which I was obliged to read through in the past few weeks, I also found a journal with the notes of a man who was cast onto the route of resistance to the laws in 1918 and now lives in a world in which the law itself appears to provoke resistance; an unnerving document, an uninterrupted sequence of conspiracies and plots, an insight into the mentality of people who, without realizing it, have found in nihilism their ultimate creed. Incapable of any real cooperation, determined to take a stand against any kind of order, filled by hatred of every authority as they are, their uneasiness and their restlessness can be quelled only by their permanent mental and conspiratorial preoccupation with the disintegration of whatever exists at the given time. Many of them stormed the State with us in our early period of struggle, but an inner lack of discipline led most of them away from the disciplined National Socialist Movement in the course of the struggle.
The last remnant seemed to have withdrawn after January 30. Their link with the National Socialist Movement was dissolved the moment this itself, as State, became the object of their pathological aversion. As a matter of principle, they are enemies of every authority and thus utterly incapable of being converted. Accomplishments which appear to strengthen the new German State only provoke their even greater hatred. For there is one thing, above all, which all of these oppositional elements principally have in common: they do not see before them the German Volk, but the institution of order they so abhor. They are filled not by a desire to help the Volk, but by the fervent hope that the government will fail in its work to rescue the Volk. Thus they are never willing to admit that an action is beneficial but are instead filled by the will to contest any success as a matter of principle and to extract from every success any potential weaknesses.
This third group of pathological enemies of the State is dangerous because, until a new order has begun to crystallize from a state of chaotic conflict, they represent a reservoir of willing accomplices for every attempt at revolt.
I must, however, now devote my attention to the fourth group, which on occasion-perhaps even unintentionally-nonetheless plies a truly destructive trade. I am speaking of those who belonged to a relatively small class in society, who have nothing to do and thus find the time and the opportunity to deliver oral reports on everything capable of bringing some interesting-and important-variety to their lives which are otherwise completely meaningless.
For while the overwhelming majority in the nation is made to earn its daily bread by toilsome labor, in certain classes of life there are still people whose sole activity consists of doing nothing, followed by more of the same to recuperate from having done nothing. The more pathetic the life of such a drone is, all the more avidly will he seize upon whatever can fill this vacuum with some interesting content.
Personal and political gossip is caught up eagerly and passed on even more eagerly. And because these people, as a result of doing nothing, have no living tie to the masses of the nation’s millions, their lives are delimitated by the scope of the sphere within which they move.
Every bit of prattle which becomes absorbed by these circles throws its reflection back and forth endlessly as between two distorting mirrors.
Because their very beings are filled with a nothingness which they constantly see reflected in those like them, they believe that this phenomenon is universal. They mistake the view of their circle for the view of all. Their doubts, they fancy, constitute the troubles of the entire nation.
In reality, this little colony of drones is only a state within the State, without any living contact with life, with the feelings, hopes and cares of the rest of the Volk. However, they are dangerous, for they are veritable germ-carriers for unrest, uncertainty, rumors, allegations, lies, suspicions, slander, and fear, and thus they contribute to creating a gradually increasing tension until, in the end, it is difficult to recognize or draw the natural boundaries between them and the Volk.
Just as they wreak their havoc in every other nation, they do so in Germany, too. They regarded the National Socialist Revolution as a conversation topic just as interesting as, on the other hand, the fight of the enemies of the National Socialist State.
But one thing is certain: the work of rebuilding our Volk and, with it, the work of our Volk itself is only possible if the German Volk follows its leadership with inner calm, order and discipline and above all if it trusts in its leadership. For it is only the trust and the faith placed in the new State which have enabled us to take on and solve the great tasks put to us by former times.
Even though the National Socialist regime was forced to come to terms with these various groups from the very beginning and has, in fact, come to terms with them, a mood has nonetheless arisen in the past few months which, in the end, could no longer be taken lightly.
The prattle of a new revolution, of a new upheaval, of a new uprising- while at first infrequent-gradually took on such intensity that only a foolhardy leadership of state would have been capable of ignoring it. It was no longer possible to simply dismiss as empty chatter what was put down in hundreds and ultimately thousands of oral and written reports. Even three months ago, the leadership of the Party was convinced that it was simply the foolish gossip of political reactionaries, Marxist anarchists and all sorts of idlers, completely lacking any substantiation in fact.
In mid-March I directed that preparations be made for a new wave of propaganda. It was to make the German Volk immune against any new attempts at poisoning. At the same time, however, I also gave certain Party Offices the order to track down the recurring rumors of a new revolution and, if possible, to locate the source of these rumors.
It was found that tendencies had appeared in the ranks of several highranking SA leaders which naturally gave rise to serious doubts.
At first, there were only isolated manifestations, the inner connections of which were not yet quite clear.
1. Against my express order and contrary to reports given me by former Chief of Staff Röhm, the SA had been blown into such proportions as to necessarily endanger the inner homogeneity of this unique organization.
2. Education in the National Socialist Weltanschauung was becoming more and more neglected in the ranks of these certain SA offices I have mentioned.
3. The natural relations between the Party and the SA slowly began to weaken. Methodical steps were taken, by means of which it was ascertained that endeavors were being made to disengage the SA from the mission which I had assigned to it in order to utilize it for other tasks or interests.
4. Promotions to leadership posts in the SA revealed themselves upon review to be based upon a completely one-sided evaluation of purely external capabilities or, in many cases, on a merely assumed intellectual capacity. The greater number of our oldest and most loyal SA men were increasingly neglected when leaders were appointed and posts filled, while those who had enlisted in 1933 and who are not favored with any especial regard within the Movement were incomprehensibly given priority. In some cases, only a few months of uninterrupted membership in the Party or even only in the SA sufficed for promotion to a higher SA office to which an old SA leader was barred access even after many years of service.
5. The behavior of these individual SA leaders who, for the most part, had in no way grown to become part of the Movement, was as un-National Socialist as, at times, it was positively revolting. However, it could not be overlooked that these circles contained one source of unrest in the Movement, which lay in the fact that their lack of practical National Socialism attempted to veil itself in quite uncalled for demands for a new revolution.
I drew Chief of Staff Röhm’s attention to this and a number of other problems, but this did not result in any noticeable improvement or even in any recognizable reaction to my censures. In the months of April and May, there was a constant increase in these complaints. For the first time, however, during this period I received reports-with supporting documentation-of discussions which had been held by individual high-ranking SA leaders and which can be described in no other terms than “gross insubordination” (große Ungehörigkeit).
For the first time, there was undeniable supporting documentation in several cases that references had been made to the necessity of a new revolution in such discussions and that leaders had received instructions to prepare both inwardly and materially for such a new revolution. Chief of Staff Röhm attempted to deny that any of these incidents had in fact taken place, stating that they could be explained as disguised attacks on the SA.
The gathering of evidence for several of these incidents by means of statements of parties involved ended in a most serious maltreatment of these witnesses who, for the most part, came from the ranks of the old SA. As early as the end of April, the leadership of the Party and a number of State institutions concerned were convinced that a certain group of high-ranking SA leaders had deliberately contributed to the alienation of the SA from the Party and other State institutions or at least had failed to prevent this from happening.
Repeated attempts to remedy this through normal official channels failed each time. Chief of Staff Röhm gave me his personal assurance time and time again that the cases would be investigated and the guilty parties removed and, if necessary, punished. However, no visible change took place.
In the month of may, several Party and State offices received countless complaints of offenses committed by high-ranking and middle-ranking SA leaders which, accompanied by supporting documentation, could not be denied. The offenses included everything from rabble-rousing speeches to intolerable excesses. Minister-President Göring had already previously endeavored in Prussia to give the authority of the National Socialist will of the State priority over the individual wills of certain elements. In other Länder, Party offices and public authorities had been forced, on occasion, to take a stand against certain intolerable excesses. A number of the parties responsible were arrested. I have always stressed that an authoritarian regime bears particularly great responsibilities. If it is demanded of the Volk that it place blind trust in its leadership, that leadership must earn this trust by its achievements and by particularly good behavior. Mistakes and errors may occur in a given case, but they can be eradicated. Bad behavior, drunken excesses, molesting peaceful, upstanding citizens-this is unworthy of a leader, contrary to National Socialism, and detestable to the utmost degree. Thus I have always insisted that higher demands be placed upon the behavior and conduct of National Socialist leaders than upon the other Volksgenossen. He who would command more respect for himself must in turn achieve more.
The most basic thing which can be expected of him is that his life not be a disgraceful example to those around him. Thus I do not want National Socialists to be more leniently judged and punished for such offenses than other Volksgenossen; rather, I expect that a leader who forgets himself in this way be punished more severely than an unknown man would under identical circumstances. And I do not wish to make any distinction here between leaders of the political organizations and leaders of the formations of our SA, SS, HJ, etc.
The determination of the National Socialist leadership of State to put an end to such excesses committed by unworthy elements who serve only to heap shame upon the Party and the SA evoked extremely vehement counter-reactions on the part of the Chief of Staff. The first of the original National Socialist fighters, a number of whom had struggled for nearly fifteen years for the victory of the Movement and now represented the Movement as high-ranking State officials in leading positions in our State, were called to account for the action they took against such unworthy elements; in other words, Chief of Staff Röhm attempted to take disciplinary action against these persons, the oldest supporters of the Party, in courts of honor composed in part of the youngest party comrades and even of persons who were not members of the Party.
These conflicts led to very serious talks between Chief of Staff Röhm and myself, in the course of which, for the first time, doubts as to this man’s loyalty began to arise in my mind. Although I had rejected any such thoughts for many months, although I had personally protected this man in unshakable loyalty and comradeship for years in the past, warnings gradually began to leave their mark on me-above all, warnings from my deputy in the Party leadership, Rudolf Hess-which, try as I might, I could no longer refute.
From May onwards, there could no longer be any doubt that Chief of Staff Röhm was involved in ambitious plans which, had they become reality, could have resulted only in the most violent disruptions.
The fact that, throughout these months, I hesitated again and again to make any final decision, was due to the following: 1. I could not simply reconcile myself to the idea that a relationship which I had built upon trust could be nothing but a lie.
2. I still harbored the secret hope of being able to spare the Movement and my SA the disgrace of such a confrontation and to repair the damage without bitter fighting.
However, the end of May brought even more alarming facts to light. Chief of Staff Röhm began to depart, not only inwardly, but with his entire outward behavior, from the Party.
All of the principles with which we had become great lost their validity. The life which the Chief of Staff-and with him, a certain circle of others-began to lead was intolerable from any National Socialist point of view. As if it were not terrible enough that he himself and his circle of devotees broke every single law of decency and modesty, still worse, this poison now began to spread in ever increasing circles.
But worst of all was the fact that, out of a certain common predisposition, a sect gradually began to form in the SA which made up the nucleus of a conspiracy directed not only against the normal conceptions of a healthy Volk but against the security of the State as well.
Reviews conducted in the month of May of the promotions granted in certain areas of the SA resulted in the terrible realization that men had been promoted to positions in the SA without any consideration to their accomplishments within the Movement and the SA for the sole reason that they belonged to the circle of these persons with this particular predisposition.
Individual incidents which are well known to you, for instance the case of the Standartenführer Schmidt157 in Breslau, revealed a state of affairs which could only be regarded as intolerable. My order to intervene was followed in theory, but in fact, it was sabotaged.
Three groups gradually crystallized from the leadership of the SA: a small group, the elements of which were held together by a common predisposition who would stop at nothing and who had blindly delivered themselves into the hands of Chief of Staff Röhm.
In principle, these men were the SA leaders Ernst from Berlin, Heines in Silesia, Hayn in Saxony, and Heydebreck in Pomerania.158 In addition to these men, there was another group of SA leaders who did not inwardly belong to this circle but felt themselves obligated to obey Chief of Staff Röhm simply from a soldierly point of view. And these were faced by a third group of leaders who made no secret of their inner aversion and disapproval and, as a result, had in part been removed from positions of responsibility while others had been pushed aside and, in many respects, simply disregarded.
At the fore of these SA leaders who were rejected because of their basic decency stood the present Chief of Staff, Lutze, as well as the leader of the SS, Himmler. Without informing me at all and, initially, without even the slightest suspicion on my part, Chief of Staff Röhm had established contact with General Schleicher using as intermediary a thoroughly corrupt swindler, a certain Herr von A., whom you all know.160 General Schleicher was the man who gave an external framework to Röhm’s inner desires. He was the one who upheld and defined in concrete terms the viewpoint that 1. the present German regime was insupportable; that 2. above all, power over the Armed Forces and all national associations was to be united in one hand; that 3. Chief of Staff Röhm was the only man who could be considered for this post; that 4. Herr von Papen would have to be removed, and he was willing to assume the position of Vice Chancellor; and that furthermore, other major changes would have to be made in the Reich cabinet.
As always in such cases, the search for men to make up the new government began, under the condition that I was to be allowed to remain at my post-at least for the time being.
The implementation of these proposals from General von Schleicher was bound to meet with my unconquerable resistance as early as item 2.
It would never have been objectively or humanly possible for me to have given my consent to a personnel change in the Reich Ministry of Defense and to have appointed Chief of Staff Röhm to the vacant post.
First of all, for objective reasons: For fourteen years, I have consistently upheld that the fighting organizations of the Party are political organizations which have nothing to do with the Army. In my eyes, it would constitute a disavowal of my view and my policies of fourteen years to appoint the leader of the SA to head the Army. In November 1923, I proposed appointing an officer161 to head the Army and not my SA leader at the time, Captain Göring.
Secondly, it would have been humanly impossible for me to ever consent to this proposal on the part of General von Schleicher. When I became aware of these plans, my own view of the inner value of Chief of Staff Röhm was already such that I would all the more never have been able to accept him for this post before my own conscience and for the sake of the Army’s honor. However, above all, the supreme head of the Army is the Field Marshal and President of the Reich. As Chancellor, I gave him my oath. His person is inviolate for all of us.
The pledge which I made to him to maintain the Army as an unpolitical instrument of the Reich is binding for me, due both to my innermost conviction and to the fact that I gave my word.162 However, it would also have been humanly impossible for me to have done such a thing to the Reich Minister of Defense. I myself and all of us are happy to be able to look upon him as a man of honor from head to toe. From the very depths of his heart, he has reconciled the Army with the revolutionaries of old and allied it with their present leadership of State.
He has affirmed his most loyal devotion to that principle to which I will be devoted until my dying breath.
There is only one bearer of arms in the State: the Wehrmacht. And only one body in which is vested the political will of the Volk: the National Socialist Party.163 Any thought of agreeing with General von Schleicher’s plans would, on my part, have constituted an act of disloyalty not only to the Field Marshal and the Minister of Defense, but also an act of disloyalty to the Army. For just as General von Blomberg is doing his duty as Minister of Defense in the National Socialist State in the most pronounced sense of the word, the other officers and soldiers are also doing the same. I cannot expect that each of them find his own position within our Movement; but none of them have abandoned their basic position of loyalty to the National Socialist State. Furthermore, without the most cogent reasons, I could not have those men removed who with me jointly made a vow on January 30 to save the Reich and the Volk.
There are certain duties attached to loyalty, duties which we may not and must not breach. And I believe that, above all, the man who has led the nation to unity in his own name must under no circumstances commit an act of disloyalty, for doing so would make all external and internal confidence in good faith disappear.164 Due to the fact that Chief of Staff Röhm was himself unsure whether attempts in the direction mentioned might not well meet with resistance on my part, the first plan was designed to bring this development about by force.
Extensive preparations were made.
1. The psychological groundwork for the outbreak of a second revolution was systematically laid. For this purpose, the SA propaganda offices spread a rumor-penetrating as far as the SA-alleging that the Reichswehr was planning to dissolve the SA, which was later supplemented by the claim that I had unfortunately been personally won over in support of this plan. A lie as pitiful as it is malicious!
2. The SA was now forced to forestall this attack and eliminate, in a second revolution, both the elements of Reaktion on the one hand and the resistance of the Party on the other, while entrusting the authority of the State to the leadership of the SA.
3. For this purpose, the SA was to make all necessary material preparations within the shortest time possible. By using pretexts-among other things, by falsely claiming that he intended to implement a social relief plan for the SA- Chief of Staff Röhm succeeded in raising twelve million marks for this purpose.
4. In order to be in a position to concentrate exclusively on delivering the most decisive blows, special terror groups were formed under the name of “Stabswachen”165 and sworn in for this sole purpose. While an old SA man had starved his way through an entire decade for the Movement, in this case paid troops were formed whose inner character and purpose cannot be more clearly revealed than in the truly horrible criminal records of the elements of which they are comprised, accompanied by the fact that the tried and true SA leaders and SA men were now thrust into the background to make room for politically untrained elements which were better fit for such actions. At certain Führertagungen and recreational outings, the SA leaders in question were brought together step by step and given individual treatment; in other words, while the members of the inner sect made systematic preparations for the action itself, the second large circle of SA leaders were given only general information to the effect that a second revolution was knocking at the door, that this revolution had the single aim of restoring to me my freedom of action; that hence the new and, this time, bloody uprising-‘The Night of the Long Knives,’ as it was gruesomely called166-corresponded to my own aim.
The necessity for action on the part of the SA was explained by drawing attention to my inability to make a decision; this situation could be remedied only by a fait accompli. Presumably, these false pretexts were used to assign Herr von Detten167 the task of making preparations for the action in foreign countries. General von Schleicher personally took care of part of this drama abroad, leaving the practical work to his messenger, General von Bredow.
Gregor Strasser was brought in.
In a final attempt early in June, I had Röhm summoned for a talk which went on for nearly five hours and lasted until midnight. I informed him that I had received the impression from countless rumors and innumerable assurances and statements from old and loyal party comrades and SA leaders that preparations were being made by unscrupulous elements for a national Bolshevist action which could only bring unutterable misfortune upon Germany. I further informed him that I had also heard rumors that there were plans to include the Army within the scope of this scheme. I assured Chief of Staff Röhm that the assertion that the SA was to be dissolved was a malicious lie, and that I could make no comment whatsoever on the lie that I intended to take action against the SA, but that I would personally take immediate steps to avert any attempt to allow chaos to arise in Germany, and that anyone who attacked the State would have to count me among his enemies from the very onset. I beseeched him for the last time to take a stand against this madness and use his authority to prevent a development which could only end in a catastrophe one way or another.
I once more voiced my strongest objection to the growing number of unimaginable excesses and demanded that every trace of these elements be wiped out in the SA in order to avoid that the SA itself as well as millions of decent party comrades and hundreds of thousands of old fighters were robbed of their honor by isolated inferior subjects. The Chief of Staff left me with the assurance that a number of the rumors were untrue and others were exaggerated and, in other respects, he would do everything he could to set things right.
The result of the conference was, however, that Chief of Staff Röhm, knowing that under no circumstances could he count on me in his planned undertaking, now proceeded to take steps toward my own elimination.
For this purpose, a larger circle of SA leaders who had been initiated were told that I myself was basically in agreement with the planned undertaking but that I could not afford to become personally involved and wished to be placed under arrest for a period of 24 or 48 hours when the uprising broke out so as to be relieved, by virtue of the fait accompli, of the embarrassing incrimination which would otherwise result for me abroad. This explanation is conclusively illustrated by the fact that, as a precautionary measure, the man had already been hired in the meantime who was to carry out my elimination at a later date: Standartenführer Uhl, who confessed only a few hours before his death that he had been willing to carry out such an order.
The initial plan for the upheaval was based upon the idea of granting leave to the SA. During this period and due to the lack of available forces, inexplicable riots were to break out along the lines of the conditions of August 1932169 which would force me to summon the Chief of Staff, who alone would be in a position to restore order, and to entrust to him the executive authority. However, since it had become clear in the interim that under no circumstances could one count on such a willingness on my part, this plan was abandoned and direct action contemplated. Such action was to commence abruptly in Berlin with a raid on the government building and my arrest in order to allow other actions to follow in sequence, supposedly at my bidding. The conspirators proceeded on the assumption that orders given to the SA in my name would not only mobilize the SA throughout the Reich but also serve to bring about an automatic fragmentation of all other opposing forces within the State.
Chief of Staff Röhm, Gruppenführer Ernst, Obergruppenführer Heines, Hayn and a number of others declared before witnesses170 that initially the bloodiest possible confrontation with their adversaries was to take place, lasting several days. The question as to the financial side of such a development was dismissed with a positively insane lack of concern and the comment that the bloody terror itself would serve to provide the requisite funds one way or another.
I now must deal with only one more idea, namely whether or not every successful revolution constitutes its own justification. Chief of Staff Röhm and his elements explained the necessity of their revolution by citing the fact that this alone could secure the triumph of pure National Socialism. However, at this point I must make it clear for the present and for posterity that these men no longer had any right whatsoever to cite National Socialism as their Weltanschauung. Their lives had become as bad as the lives of those whom we overcame and relieved in the year 1933. The conduct of these men made it impossible for me to invite them to my home or to even once set foot in my Chief of Staff’s house in Berlin. It is hard to even fathom what would have become of Germany in the event that this sect had been victorious. The magnitude of the danger was documented all the more strongly by the observations which then entered Germany from abroad. English and French newspapers more and more frequently talked of a forthcoming upheaval in Germany, and increasing numbers of reports indicated that the conspirators had systematically impressed upon foreign countries the idea that the revolution of the true National Socialists was now imminent in Germany and that the existing regime was no longer capable of action. General von Bredow, who procured these connections as foreign agent for General von Schleicher, worked only in respect to the activities of those reactionary circles which-perhaps without having any direct connection with this conspiracy-allowed themselves to be exploited as a willing subterranean intelligence center for foreign powers.
At the end of June, I was thus determined to put an end to this outrageous development, and to do it before the blood of tens of thousands of innocent persons would seal the catastrophe.
Due to the fact that the danger and the tension which oppressed everyone had grown unbearable and certain bodies within the Party and the State had been compelled by virtue of their assigned duties to take defensive measures, the strange and sudden prolongation of service prior to the SA vacation leave171 aroused my suspicion, and thus I resolved that, on Saturday, June 30, 1 would dismiss the Chief of Staff from office, place him in custody for the time being, and arrest a number of SA leaders whose crimes had come to light.
Because it was doubtful whether, in view of the threat of an escalation, Chief of Staff Röhm would have come to Berlin or anywhere else at all, I resolved to personally travel to Wiessee for the conference of SA leaders scheduled there. Relying upon my personal authority and upon my power of determination, which had never failed me in the hour of need, I planned to dismiss the Chief of Staff from his post at 12:00 noon, arrest those SA leaders principally to blame and, in an urgent appeal, call upon the others to return to their duties.
In the course of June 29,1 received such threatening news of the most recent preparations for the action that at midday I was forced to interrupt my tour of the labor camps in Westphalia in order to be available in case of emergency. At 1:00 in the morning I received two extremely urgent alarm bulletins from Berlin and Munich. Namely first of all, that an alert had been issued in Berlin for 4:00 in the afternoon, that the order had already been given for the requisition of trucks to transport what were actually the raiding formations and that this was already being carried out, and that the action was to begin promptly at the stroke of 5:00 as a surprise attack with the occupation of the government building. This was the reason why Gruppenführer Ernst had not traveled to Wiessee but remained in Berlinin order to conduct the action in person. Second of all, an alert had already been given to the SA in Munich for 9:00 in the evening.
The SA formations would not be allowed to return home but were assigned to the alert barracks. That is mutiny!172 I am the commander of the SA and no one else! Under these circumstances, there was only one decision left for me to make.
If there was any chance to avert the disaster, lightning action was called for.
Only ruthless and bloody intervention might perhaps still have been capable of stifling the spread of the revolt. And then there could be no question of the fact that it would be better to destroy a hundred mutineers, plotters and conspirators (Meuterer, Verschwörer und Konspiratoren) than to allow ten thousand innocent SA men on the one hand and ten thousand equally innocent persons on the other to bleed to death. For if once the plans of that criminal Ernst were set in motion in Berlin, the consequences were unimaginable! How well the manipulations with my name had worked was evidenced in the distressing fact that these mutineers had, for instance, succeeded in securing four armored vehicles for their action from unsuspecting police officers in Berlin by citing my name, and that furthermore, even before then, the conspirators Heines and Hayn had made police officers in Saxony and Silesia uncertain by demanding that they decide between the SA and Hitler’s enemies in the coming confrontation.
It finally became clear to me that only one man could and must stand upto the Chief of Staff. He had broken his vow of loyalty to me, and I alone had to call him to account for that! At 1:00 in the morning, I received the last alarm dispatches, and at 2:00 a.m.
I flew to Munich. In the meantime, I had already instructed Minister-President Göring that, in the event of a purge action, he was immediately to take corresponding measures in Berlin and Prussia. He crushed the attack on the National Socialist State with an iron fist before it could develop. The fact that this action required lightning speed also meant that very few men were at my disposal in this decisive hour. Then, in the presence of Minister Goebbels and the new Chief of Staff, the action with which you are acquainted was carried out and brought to a close in Munich.
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English:Adolf Hitler delivers a speech at the Kroll Opera House to the men of the Reichstag on the subject of Roosevelt and the war in the Pacific, declaring war on the United States. Next to Hitler in the government benches (from right to left) are Joachim von Ribbentrop, Erich Raeder, Walther von Brauchitsch, Wilhelm Keitel, Wilhelm Frick and Joseph Goebbels. In the second row (from right to left) are Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Walther Funk, Richard Walther Darré, Bernhard Rust, Hanns Kerrl, Hans Frank, Julius Dorpmüller, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Fritz Todt. In the third row (from right to left) are Alfred Rosenberg, Otto Meißner and Johannes Popitz. (11 December 1941) |
Although I had been willing to be lenient only a few days before, in this hour there was no longer any room for such consideration. Mutinies are crushed only by the everlasting laws of iron. If anyone reproaches me and asks why we did not call upon the regular courts for sentencing, my only answer is this: in that hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German nation and was thus the Supreme Justiciar of the German Volk! Mutinous divisions have always been recalled to order by decimation. Only one State did not make use of its wartime legislation, and the result was the collapse of this State: Germany. I did not want to abandon the young Reich to the fate of the old.
I gave the order to shoot those parties mainly responsible for this treason, and I also gave the order to burn out the tumors of our domestic poisoning and of the poisoning of foreign countries down to the raw flesh. And I also gave the order that if the mutineers made any attempt to resist arrest, they were at once to be brutally struck down by force (sofort mit der Waffe niederzumachen).
The nation should know that no one can threaten its existence-which is guaranteed by inner law and order-and escape unpunished! And every person should know for all time that if he raises his hand to strike out at the State, certain death will be his lot. And every National Socialist should know that no rank and no position relieves him of his personal responsibility and, with it, his due punishment. I have prosecuted thousands of our former opponents on account of their corruption.173 I would have to reproach myself if I were now to tolerate the same phenomenon in our own ranks.
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Adolf Hitler on wanting war. [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/551231] |
No Volk and no leadership of State can be held responsible if creatures turn up such as those we have known in Germany in the likes of Kutisker etc., just as the French came to know Stavisky,174 and as we are witnessing them again today with the aim of sinning against a nation’s interests. However, any nation which does not find the strength to exterminate such pests makes itself guilty.
When people confront me with the view that only a trial in court would have been capable of accurately weighing the measure of guilt and expiation, I must lodge a solemn protest. He who rises up against Germany commits treason.
He who commits treason is to be punished not according to the scope and proportions of his deed, but rather according to his cast of mind as revealed therein. He who dares to instigate a mutiny, thereby violating the principles of good faith and sacred vows, can expect nothing other than that he himself will be the first victim. I do not intend to have the lesser culprits shot and to spare the major culprits. It is not my responsibility to ascertain whether and if so,which of these conspirators, agitators, nihilists and well-poisoners of German public opinion and, in a wider sense, of world opinion, too, has been dealt too hard a lot; rather, my duty is to make certain that Germany’s lot is bearable. A foreign journalist who is enjoying the right to hospitality has filed a protest on behalf of the wives and children of those shot and expects reprisal from among their ranks. I can give this man of honor only one answer: women and children have always been the innocent victims of criminal acts committed by men. I, too, have sympathy for them, but I believe that the suffering which has been inflicted upon them by the fault of these men is only a tiny fraction compared to the suffering which would perhaps have come upon tens of thousands of German women had this deed been successful. A foreign diplomat has explained that the meeting between Schleicher and Röhm was naturally of a quite harmless nature. I refuse to discuss this matter with anyone. The concept of what is harmless and what is not will never coincide in the political sector.
However, when three traitors arrange and conduct a meeting in Germany with a foreign statesman which they themselves describe as “business,” conduct it privately by excluding their staff and keep it concealed from me by the strictest orders, I will have such men shot dead, even if it were true that, at this meeting which was kept so secret from me, they talked only of the weather, old coins and similar topics.
The punishment for these crimes was a hard and severe one.
Nineteen high-ranking SA leaders and 31 SA leaders and members were shot, as were three SS leaders who were accomplices to the plot. Thirteen SA leaders and civilians who resisted arrest sacrificed their lives in the process. Three other lives were ended by suicide.
Five non-SA party comrades were shot for being accomplices.
And last of all, three members of the SS were shot who were guilty of disgraceful abuse of prisoners in protective custody.
In order to prevent the political passion and indignation from spreading to the lynch law in respect to other incriminated parties, once the danger had been removed and the revolt could be regarded as having been defeated, the strictest orders were issued on Sunday, July 1, to refrain from any further reprisals.
Hence as of Sunday night, July 1, normal conditions have been restored. A number of acts of violence in no way connected with this action are being handed over to the regular courts for sentencing.
As heavy as these sacrifices may be, they were not in vain if they may serve to bring about once and for all the conviction that every attempt to commit treason against the internal and external security of the State will be broken, without distinction of person. I am confident in my hope in this respect that, if Fate were to dismiss me from my post at any given hour, my successor would not act differently, and were he also made to vacate this post, that the third in line would exhibit no less determination in his willingness to uphold the security of the Volk and the nation.
In view of the fact that, in the two weeks which now lie behind us, a part of the foreign press flooded the world with untrue and incorrect assertions and reports in the absence of any kind of objective and just reporting, I cannot accept the excuse that it was not possible to obtain any other news. In most cases, it would have required merely a short telephone call to the competent authorities in order to ascertain the groundlessness of most of these assertions.
When, in particular, it is reported that members of the Reich cabinet were among the victims or conspirators, it would not have been difficult to establish that the contrary was the case. The assertion that Vice Chancellor von Papen, Minister Seldte or other gentlemen in the Reich cabinet had had any connection with the mutineers is proven wrong most conclusively by the fact that one of the primary goals of the mutineers included murdering these men. Similarly, all reports of an involvement on the part of any of the German princes or of their prosecution are pure fabrication.
Finally, whereas an English paper has reported in the last few days that I had now had a nervous breakdown, I must note that in this case, too, a short inquiry would have sufficed to learn the truth immediately. I can only assure these anxious reporters that I have never suffered a nervous breakdown, neither in the War nor after the War, but this time I did suffer from the worst breakdown of the good faith which I had placed in a man whom I had once protected to the utmost, a man for whom I had veritably sacrificed myself.
However, at this point I must also confess that my confidence in the Movement-and particularly in the SS-has never wavered. And now my confidence in my SA has been restored to me as well. Three times175 did the SA have the misfortune of having leaders-the last time, even a Chief of Staff-to whom they believed they owed obedience and who deceived them, men in whom I placed my trust and who betrayed me. However, I have also had three opportunities to witness how, in that moment in which a deed revealed itself to be treason, the traitor was abandoned, left alone and shunned by all. But the behavior of this small group of leaders was just as disloyal as these two National Socialist organizations were loyal to me in the decisive hour. The SS, aching inside, did its highest duty in these days, but no less decent was the behavior of the millions of upright SA men and SA leaders who, standing outside the circle of treason, did not waver for a second in their concept of duty. This gives me the conviction that the newly appointed Chief of Staff of the SA, to whom I am bound by the ties of the old fighting community, will finally succeed in rejuvenating the organizations according to my guidelines and in making of them an even stronger part of the Movement. For never will I consent to the destruction of something which is not only inseparably bound up for all time with the battles and the victory of the National Socialist Movement, but which also deserves immeasurable credit for its contribution to the formation of the new Reich.
The SA has upheld its inner loyalty to me in these days which have been so difficult for both it and myself. It has thus proven for the third time that it is mine, just as I am willing to prove at any time that I belong to my SA men. Within the space of a few weeks, the Brown Shirt will once again dominate German streets and clearly demonstrate to everyone that the life of National Socialist Germany has become all the stronger for having overcome a difficult crisis.
When, in March of last year, our young revolution swept through Germany, it was my foremost endeavor to shed as little blood as possible. For the new State, I offered a general amnesty to millions of my former opponents on behalf of the National Socialist Party; millions of them have since joined our ranks and are faithfully working with us to rebuild the Reich. I had hoped that it would not be necessary to ever again defend this State with weapons in our hands. But now that Fate has nonetheless put us to the test, all of us wish to pledge to hold fast even more fanatically to that which was first won with so much of our best men’s blood and today had to be defended once more with the blood of German Volksgenossen.
Just as, one and a half years ago, I offered reconciliation to our opponents of that time, I would also like to make a bid of forgiveness from now on to all of those who shared the blame for this act of madness. May they all reflect and, in memory of this sad crisis of our recent German history, devote their entire strength to atoning for it. May they now more clearly than before recognize the great task which Fate has assigned to us and which cannot be accomplished by civil war and chaos; may they all feel responsible for the most valuable possession there can be for the German Volk: inner order and peace both within and without! I am likewise willing to assume the responsibility, as history be my witness, for the 24 hours of the most bitter decisions of my life,176 in which Fate once more taught me to anxiously cling fast with my every thought to the most precious thing we have been given in this world: the German Volk and the German Reich!
Much to my own regret, I was forced to destroy this man and his following.
[-] What kind of life would one have in this Volk had the precept of utmost brutal loyalty [to the Army] not been brought to bear here? Where would we be today? Back then, perhaps we might have been able to take a different path.
What would we have today? I am not claiming too much when I speak of it [the militia army] as a completely worthless bunch, in military terms. I do not believe in the so-called levée en masse. I do not believe that it is possible to create soldiers only by mobilizing what might be called enthusiasm.
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SERIAL KILLER, JOHN JOSEPH FAUTENBERRY (EXECUTED IN OHIO ON JULY 14, 2009)
On this date, July 14, 2009, a serial killer by the name of John Joseph Fautenberry was executed by lethal injection in Ohio. He was the 30thperson executed by the State of Ohio since 1976. Surprisingly, the abolitionists in Ohio kept quiet about his case. Please go to this previous Blog Post to learn more about this Serial Killer and please go to the Unit 1012 Blog Post to hear from his victims’ families.
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John Joseph Fautenberry |
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WAFFEN-SS FIELD OFFICER: JOACHIM PEIPER (JANUARY 30, 1915 TO JULY 14, 1976)
40 years ago on this date, July 14, 1976, Waffen-SS Field Officer, Joachim Peiper was murdered by unknown assailants in France. I will post information about this Nazi Officer from Wikipedia and other links.
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Joachim Peiper |
Joachim Peiper (German pronunciation:[ˈjoːaxɪm ˈpaɪpɐ]; 30 January 1915 – 14 July 1976), also known as Jochen Peiper, was a field officer in the Waffen-SS during World War II and personal adjutant to Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler between November 1940 and August 1941. Peiper fought on both the Eastern Front against the Red Army and the Western Front against the Western Allies, and he won the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords for extreme battlefield bravery and outstanding military leadership. By 1945, he was an SS-Standartenführer and the Waffen-SS's youngest regimental colonel.
Peiper, who had three children with his wife Sigurd (Sigi) Hinrichsen, was convicted of war crimes committed in Belgium and imprisoned for almost 12 years. He was accused of war crimes in Italy, but Italian and German courts concluded that there was insufficient evidence to warrant prosecution.
After his release from prison, Peiper worked for both Porsche and Volkswagen, before moving to France, where he translated books from English to German under the nom de plumeRainer Buschmann. Peiper was murdered in France in July 1976, when he was shot by unknown assailants who then burned his house to the ground using Molotov cocktails.
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OTTO WACHTER (8 JULY 1901 TO 14 JULY 1949)
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Otto Wächter |
Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter (8 July 1901, Vienna, Austria-Hungary – 14 July 1949, Rome, Italy) was an Austrian lawyer and Nazipolitician and administrative officer. During World War II, he was the Governor (head of the civil administration) of two parts of occupied Poland: first of Kraków in the General Governmentand, then, of District of Galicia(now part of mostly Ukraine), before being appointed as head of the German Military Administration in Fascist Italy.
For the last two months of the war he was responsible for the non-German forces at the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) in Berlin. Although he finished his career with the honorary rank of an SS-Gruppenführer (lieutenant general), his duties were confined to an administrative role, and he was never part of the SS and Police forces in any of the occupied territories.
68,000 Jewswere expelled from Krakow in 1940 and the Kraków Ghetto was created in 1941 by his decrees. After WWII, the Soviets-controlled Polish government petitioned the Americansin control of Allied-occupied Germany that Wächter be delivered for trial for being responsible for the mass murder of one hundred thousand Polish citizens, but he was successfully hiding for 4 years. In 1949, Wächter was given refuge by pro-Nazi Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal in the Vatican where he died from kidney disease in July 1949, allegedly poisoned.
INTERNET SOURCE:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_W%C3%A4chter
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Otto Wächter |
1901–1934 Early life and Nazi activist
Otto Gustav von Wächter was the third child and only son of Martha Pfob, daughter of the owner of the Graben Hotel in Vienna Centre. His father, Joseph Freiherr von Wächter, was born in northern Bohemia and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In the last year of the First World War, Joseph Freiherr von Wächter was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Maria Theresia, that earned him the title of Freiherr (Baron). In 1922, after the first Austrian Republic was established, he was twice nominated as Minister of Defence in the Cabinet of Monsignor Dr Ignaz Seipel. Wächter spent his first years in Vienna before the family moved to Trieste then, Austria, in 1908. For the duration of World War I he lived in southern Bohemia, taking his A-levels in 1919 at the German High School in Budweis - České Budějovice, where everyday life was dominated by the national differences between Germans and Czechs.
The family moved to Vienna, where Wächter studied law and joined a number of diverse national and sporting organizations. In 1923 he joined the SA and became Austrian Champion in M8+ (eight-man rowing team). He received his doctorate in 1925 and in 1929 began practicing as a lawyer. His clients included indicted members of the Nazi Party, which he joined on 24 October 1930 (party No: 301093). On 11 September 1932, Wächter married Charlotte Bleckmann (born 20 October 1908) daughter of a Styrian steel magnate. Wächter continued to work for the Nazi Party in Vienna as organizer and defender of accused Nazis in court and subsequently played a leading role in the organization of the failed July Putsch of 25 July 1934, which eventually led to the assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfussby his former Vice-chancellor Major Emil Fey. After the failed coup, Wächter fled to Nazi Germany. He entered the SS on 1 January 1932, (SS No: 235368) and completed his German military service in Freising, Bavaria. In 1935 his Austrian citizenship was denied and German citizenship conferred upon him while he completed his academic training and education as a lawyer in Germany. In 1937 he started working in the relief organization of Austrian NS-refugees in Berlin.
1938–1939 State Secretary in the Nazi government in Vienna
Following the “Anschluss”, (the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany) on 12 March 1938, Wächter held the post of state commissar in the "Liquidation Ministry" under the Nazi governor of Austria, Seyss-Inquart, from 24 May 1938 to 30 April 1939. The government body he headed known as the "Wächter-Kommission", and responsible for the dismissal and/or compulsory retirement of all Austrian officials who did not conform with the Nazi regime. Because of the fact that the former Austrian bureaucracy was strictly Anti-Semitic, only a small fraction of the officials were actually dismissed.
1939–1941: Governor of Kraków, Poland
Following the defeat of Poland in September 1939, the Germans established a puppet state known as the General Government which was ruled over by Hans Frank. Until 1940 his deputy was the Austrian Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who took Wächter with him to the General Government, where he was appointed as Governor of the administrative district of Kraków.
From the outset Wächter proved to be an effective administrator. He also understood that the policies of racial discrimination, brute force and coercion deprived Germany of substantial material assistance and alienated large sections of the local population. He preferred instead to draw upon the experiences of the Austrian Government up to the First World War. In this sense he chose the two crowns of Galicia in the coat-of-arms issued for the nobility of his father. As Governor of Kraków he was under the direct and local supervision of Frank and had to face the fanatical actions of the local SS and police forces.
The arrest on 6 November 1939 of the entire staff of professors and academics of the Jagiellonian University and other academic institutions and their subsequent deportation to Sachsenhausen concentration camp called Sonderaktion Krakau resulted in widespread condemnation worldwide. Wächter publicly criticised the action which took place without his knowledge and reportedly tried to free the academics. Nevertheless, because of the "Special action Krakow" he was indicted by exiled Poles in New York on 16 October 1942.In his capacity as Governor an execution warrant for 52 Poles in Bochnia was issued 18 December 1939 under Wächter's signature, as reprisal for killing two Viennese police officers.
Likewise in December 1940, a decree organizing the expulsion of the city's 68,000 Jews also appeared under his name as did a further decree ordering the remaining 15,000 Jews to move into the newly created Kraków Ghetto ("Jewish Residence Zone") issued on 3 March 1941.
Wächter, unlike his wife who was often in the company of the Franks, tried to keep his distance from them. The family lived in a pseudo Romanesque villa in Przegorzaly on a steep slope above the Vistula outside Kraków, which belonged to Professor Szyszko-Bohusz, head of the restoration measures of the Royal Wawel. The atmosphere of the confiscated building did not meet with the approval of Wächter's wife, so she built which she called “Wartenberg Castle”. Frustrated with the severe limitations of his role, Wächter was about to resign from his office in Kraków, when he received a new posting in Galicia.
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Hans Frank with districts administrators in 1942 from left: Ernst Kundt, Ludwig Fischer, Hans Frank, Otto Wächter, Ernst Zörner, Richard Wendler. |
1942–1944: Governor of Galicia, Ukraine
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 21 June 1941, the Soviet-occupied eastern part of the former Austrian province of Galicia was attached to the General Government as the District of Galicia. Its capital city variously known as L'viv (Ukrainian), Lwów (Polish) and Lemberg (German) had been - after Vienna, Budapest and Prague - the largest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Poles, Ukrainians and Jews had lived together for centuries. The first German governor was Karl Lasch, an intimate friend of Frank, who was later arrested and shot for extensive black market activities on orders of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Wächter was chosen by Hitler "as the best man on the spot". and inserted as Governor on 22 January 1943.
His first official visit was to the influential and respected Greek Catholic Metropolit Andrij Aleksander Szeptycki (Sheptytsky). With his assistance Wächter endeavored to promote a greater degree of co-operation among the occupying Germans and the various ethnic elements in the district of Galicia. Consequently, he immediately found himself in conflict with SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, the Reichsführer’s representative in the Generalgovernment and executor of his planned large scale resettlement programs. At the government meeting in Kraków on 17 February, Wächter publicly opposed plans to "germanize" the city of Lemberg, which would have resulted in the expulsion of its entire population stating: “A German colonization of the East during the war would bring about the collapse of production.”
Wächter's continued opposition to Krüger policies led to a number of open confrontations. To avoid further altercations, Himmler offered Wächter the chance to relocate to Vienna, which he declined. As Governor of Galicia, while he remained a firm believer in the principle 'Germany first', his administration often went further to accommodate the wishes of the population than it was required to. He was frequently obliged to use his influence and connections by first circumventing General Governor Hans Frank and by exploiting the strained relations between Frank and Himmler to pursue his own policies. Wächter consciously selected men with liberal views for the key posts in his administration, notably his department heads Otto Bauer and Dr. Ludwig Losacker, with whom he consulted before deciding all important issues.
In late 1942 Wächter visited the “Reichskommissariat Ukraine” (eastern Ukraine) to witness first hand the effect of the implementation of the Nazi Untermensch(subhuman) philosophy by Gauleiter Erich Koch and his policies of repression and subjugation. On his return in December 1942 he sent a secret ten page letter to Martin Bormann in the Führerhauptquartier (Führer Headquarters) in Berlin, criticizing the serious mistakes made in the handling of the Ukrainians and their far reaching ramifications with regard the overall conduct of the German policy in the east during the war against the Soviet Union.
Whilst Governor of Galicia, he established an Waffen-SS Division recruited from the Ukrainian population of Galicia, under German supervision, to fight against the hated Bolsheviks. The formation of the unit was approved by Himmler after the disastrous German defeat at Stalingrad. Wächter submitted the proposal to Himmler on 1 March 1943, and, on 28 April, the SS Division Galicia was publicly inaugurated.[8]
1944–1945: end of the war
With the loss of the entire District of Galicia on 26 July 1944 to the advancing Red Army, Wächter sought to be released from his administrative obligations in the General Government so that he could take up a position in the Waffen-SS. In response Himmler agreed to order his release on the basis that he assume a new commission as "Chief of the Military Administration to the Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy headed by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff.
Himmler felt Wächter would be "of immense use in this equally interesting and difficult field." On assuming his new post “Wächter relocated to Gardone on the Lago di Garda.
As the German situation at the front worsened day by day, in a vain attempt to regain the military initiative the Nazi authorities became increasingly desperate and sought to exploit the Eastern European Anti-Bolshevik movements. In so doing, on 30 January 1945 Himmler appointed Wächter as subsidiary head of the Group D of the RSHA in Berlin, which sought to utilize and combine the Russian Liberation Army of General Andrey Vlasov and the newly formed "Ukrainian National Army" which included the 1st Ukrainian Division (formerly the 14 Galician Division), the creation of which he had instigated.
Vlasov's 'federalist' concept which required the subordination of all the other former Soviet nationalities to his overall command, proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for Wächter who was unable to bring about the unification of Vlasov and the separatist Ukrainians led by General Pavlo Shandruk. Nevertheless, Wächter redoubled his efforts with the Ukrainians whom he rejoined on 7 April 1945 in Carinthia. On 8 May 1945, Wächter informed General Shandruk of the unconditional surrender of the forces of the German Reich with the following words: "Now, General, you are the central figure in the action of saving the Division, and possibly of all of us who are with you." In Zell am See, amidst the German collapse, his wife burned a crate full of documents he had methodically collected to justify his deeds, which should demonstrate "that he had done everything to help so many people".
1945–1949 Post-war and death in Rome
Following German capitulation, Wächter remained with the staff of the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army until 10 May. He left them near Tamsweg in the Salzburg mountain district to avoid being taken prisoner and inevitable extradition to the Soviet Union. Together with a young member of the 24th Waffen-Gebirgs-(Karstjäger-) Division of the Waffen-SS, he successfully hid for 4 years, sustained by his wife who supplied both men with food and equipment from secret pick-up points. In the spring of 1949 Wächter crossed the border to South Tyrol in Italy where he met his wife and his elder children for the last time.
On 24 April 1949 he arrived in Rome, where through the Austrian Bishop, Dr Alois Hudal, rector of the Teutonic College of Santa Maria dell'Anima, he found rudimentary accommodation in the clerical institute “Vigna Pia” on the southern outskirts of Rome under the name of Alfredo Reinhardt. In June he took part in an Italian film, playing the part of an actor and was in the process of collecting information about a flight to South America. As a result of his daily morning swim in the polluted Tiber he contracted jaundice on 3 July. On 9 July, he was taken to Santo Spirito Hospital near the Vatican where Wächter revealed his true identity. He received last rites from Bishop Hudal in the evening of 13 July and died peacefully in the early hours of 14 July 1949.
Wächter and the Holocaust
Largely as consequence of work undertaken by the famous Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, Wächter has been portrayed as one of the more prominent perpetrators of the Holocaust and a leader of the Jewish extermination campaign in the General Government. Wiesenthal claimed to personally have seen Wächter on 15 August 1942 inside the ghetto of Lemberg, rounding up four thousand elderly Jews, including his own mother, who were subsequently driven to the railway station to be sent to death camps. However, from 14-16 August 1942, Wächter was in Kraków, attending the NSDAP Party Congress. He held the honorary rank of SS-Gruppenführer, conferred on him by the Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to ensure his subservience. The dual German administration in the General Government meant that he did not control the SS and Police matters which in Lemberg were within the remit of Katzmann.
As police and security responsibilities were subsequently enlarged the possibility of Wächter influencing matters outside his responsibilities became successively smaller and finally non-existent. His most radical remark is documented during the government session on 20 October 1941 in Kraków, where he camouflaged his attempt to alleviate the conditions for the Jews. The protocol states: "With regard to the solution found in the Kraków Jewish residential districts, the governor mentioned that according to the view that would have been followed here in Kraków, the Jew is to be forced to help himself." Yet the protocol ends as follows: "The governor points out, however, that ultimately a radical solution of the Jewish question is inevitable and that no consideration of any kind then - as certain artisan's interests - could be taken“.This has been interpreted as proof that Wächter decided on the extermination of Jews by gassing, however, it is noted that he did not have control of influencing the fate of the Jews, which was a “Geheime Reichssache” – Secret state matter – and as such under the direct orders of Himmler.
Wächter and the Ukrainian Division
As Governor of Lemberg.Wächter was finally able to realize his political ambitions. Even though he belonged to the Civil Government, he succeeded in establishing a native military force which he wanted to call the “Ukrainian Division” from the beginning. This was forbidden by Himmler who preferred to employ the term "Galician", and was only eventually realized on 12 November 1944, due to Wächter’s efforts in his capacity as subsidiary head of the Group D of the RSHA in Berlin. Wächter worked on behalf of the Ukrainians and successfully secured the appointment of General Pavlo Shandruk, a former officer in the Polish Army, as commander of the Ukrainian National Army. From this point on he did his utmost to save this unit from extradition to the Soviet Union which was expressively demanded by Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945.
The failure of the Western allies to surrender the only Eastern multinational military force after the war despite pressure from the Soviet Union, can be directly attributed to Wächter's influence which he exerted by secretly contacting General Władysław Anders of the Polish II Corps under western allied command and the intervention of Ukrainian Archbishop Ivan Bucko, who was in the Vatican. The rescue of this division had been planned in advance of a cessation of hostilities. The influence of this action affected the eight thousand or so soldiers held in the British internment camp at Rimini, Italy, and whose names appeared in the so-called “Rimini List” and represented a general attitude of the Western Ukrainians.
Wächter and his legacy
Whilst he was in office, Wächter remained a feared individual by the Soviet government because the success of his policies threatened Communist rule in Eastern Europe. With his contacts he might have been of value for the Western Allies in 1949, when the Cold War between the world powers was in its infancy. His son Horst appeared in an episode of the PBS television series Independent Lens, entitled "My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did", which aired in May 2016.
Notes
Hitherto the date of Wächter’s decease has been incorrectly cited in all publications, due to an imposing headline which appeared on 2 September 1949, in Rome and Vienna, one and a half months after his death.
Cymet, David (Jul 10, 2012). History Vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church. Lexington Books. p. 510. ISBN 0739132954.
The pair eventually had six children, four daughters and two sons: Otto Richard (1933-1997) and Horst Arthur (born 1939).
This was particularly apparent in the public sector where the elimination of the Jews had already started in the First Austrian Republic. In 1933, among the 160,696 civil servants just 682 belonged to the mosaic religion: Maderegger p. 240 cit. after Irene Harand, So oder so? Die Wahrheit über den Antisemitismus (One way or another? The truth about Antisemitism), Vienna, 1933.
Letter to his father, Kraków, 9 December 1939. – Archive Wächter
The action was disparagingly referred to by him as “smut”, Letter to his wife, 17 December 1939 – Archive Wächter
This is the only time Wächter is named in the Nuremberg Trial Proceedings: Vol. 12, 112th day (23 April 1946), p. 106. The circumstances of the execution naming Wächters intervention is described by General Glaise von Horstenau in Broucek, p. 445
Schenk p. 60: “She interfered constantly in construction and plundered palaces in Warsaw and Krakow museums”. The harsh judgement of Professor Szyszko-Bohusz on Baroness Wächter is to understand on (sic) the background of his employment in the Wawel during the whole period of the war.
"FilmSpringOpen - Filmmakers social networking". Filmspringopen.eu. Retrieved 4 May 2016.
Wächter Archive, memories of Charlotte Wächter.
Melitta Wiedemann, Wächter Archive sound recording of Charlotte Wächter.
In a five page letter dated 24 February 1942, Krüger reminded Wächter him after emphasizing that he was senior in both age and rank, that his pronouncements on the resettlement issue were a direct confrontation to the policies of Himmler: In a five page letter to Wächter, after emphasising that he was Wächter's senior in both age and rank, Krüger reminded him that his recent public pronouncements on this issue were a direct confrontation to the policies of the Reichsführer-SS: “Even though you wear the uniform of an SS Brigade Leader, in performing the tasks provided to you, you have never guided that you are members of the SS.”
Losacker p. 127.
Losacker was dismissed of all his functions on 10 October 1943 for defending Poles and put into an SS penal squad on the Italian front; Bauer was shot by a Soviet agent, Nikolai Iwanowitsch Kusnezow, on 9 February 1944 in place of Wächter after W. had been warned by the OUN – Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists underground organisation UPA, calling him “a very decent human“ (written in italics in the original): letter 28 September 1943 in Archive Wächter.
Losacker was dismissed of all his functions on 10 October 1943 for defending Poles and put into an SS penal squad on the Italian front; Bauer was shot by a Soviet agent, Nikolai Iwanowitsch Kusnezow, on 9 February 1944 in place of Wächter after W. had been warned by the OUN – Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists underground organisation UPA, calling him “a very decent human“ (written in italics in the original): letter 28 September 1943 in Archive Wächter.
Despite mandatory enrolment requirements, on 30 October 1943 the Supplementary Office of the Waffen-SS produced the following breakdown for the registrations: Volunteered/Registered 80,000; called up for service 19,047; actually reported 13,245.
Letter: 28 July 1944 dzt Kracow, Gouverneur des Distrikits Galizien, An den Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei Reichsinnenminister Heinrich Himmler, NA T175, roll 32.
Wolf managed to shorten the war in Italy by six days through secret negotiations with Allan F. Dulles, head of the American secret services, in Switzerland.
Telex Heinrich Himmler, 1 August 1944, Melnyk to Battle, p. 175
He heavily criticised SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, who was one of the most brutal SS-leaders in the General Government. After being also sent to Italy he continued his extermination programs at Trieste. “G. who variously rages around here too.” Letter dated 9 September 1944: Archive Wächter.
Germanic and Volunteer Central Office in the RSHA. He arrived in Berlin on 26 February 1945.
Shandruk: 28. The 1st Ukrainian Division.
Shandruk: 29. The Surrender
Archive Wächter, memory files Charlotte Wächter. Provisional list of individual Poles and Jews saved by him; in Archive Wächter.
Archive Wächter, bequest Otto Wächter.
Simon Wiesenthal, The Murderers Among Us, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967
Losacker p. 127; re Wächter's outbursts of anger over Katzmann.
Excerpt also in Präg, 10 October 1942.
"Opera Mundi - The evaluation of my father, Otto Wächter". Operamundi.uol.com.br. 26 September 2013. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
Documents in Archive Wächter.
Names of personalities in Lemberg in 2006 in Archive Wächter
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THE RILLINGTON PLACE STRANGLER: JOHN CHRISTIE THE SERIAL KILLER (8 APRIL 1899 TO 15 JULY 1953)
On this date, 15 July 1953, The Rillington Place Strangler, John Christie was executed by hanging at Pentonville Prison, London, England. I had blogged earlier about Timothy Evans whom I have doubts if he was truly innocent of the crime. Please go to this previous blog post to learn more about this serial killer.
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John Christie |
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