Posted on 08/09/2009 5:18:11 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
August 9. – Ribbentrop has approved the idea of our meeting. I decided to leave tomorrow night in order to meet him at Salzburg. The Duce is anxious that I prove to the Germans, by documentary evidence, that the outbreak of war at this time would be folly.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Also on this thread:
Reich Orders All From 5 to 70 Registered To Supply Basis for Wartime Assignments – 3*
British Defenses Repel Air ‘Enemy’ Raiding in Waves – 4**
Imperial Airways Booked Up for This Year; Lacks Planes and Pilots to Expand Service – 5
Pope’s Peace Key is Renunciation – 6***
* Most children at 10 are enrolled in the Hitler Youth Movement, which in time of emergency might have special duties assigned to it.
Like taking on the Red Army.
** An imaginary enemy out in the North Sea tonight sent wave after wave of bombing planes, raiding Eastern England in the most ambitious test yet made of Britain’s air defenses.
*** The keynote to peace lies in sacrifice, without which the tenets of Fascism or even of legality will fail, says Pope Pius XII in a letter that Luigi Cardinal Maglione has written to Canada and that is being hailed in some quarters here as the Pontiff’s most important doctrinal pronouncement to date.
Ciano’s diary update at reply #2.
And that was in the days before email.
I knew I shouldn’t have stepped through that worm hole. Shouldn’t this be in breaking news? :^)
This is very interesting to me. My father, his brother and his mother were visiting relatives in Poland 70 years ago today. When the Germans invaded they didn’t get out till 1947. He would tell some stories about it but not many. It was a very difficult time for them.
He was fortunate to have survived.
This is what National Socialism looks like.
As for the articles themselves, the complete objectivity and lack of bias is striking.
They lived in the outlying area of Wroclawek, which is northwest of Warsaw. They were shoved in a farmhouse with two other families. He often told of having to sneak out to find wild fowl and firewood. They weren't Jewish and I am not sure the whether American passports had anything to do with the Germans pretty much leaving them be but it must have helped in some way. He was only five when it happened so his memory wasn't all that good about what happened. Also, I get the feeling he simply didn't like to talk about it.
Did they choose to stay in Poland rather than go back to the U.S.? Wouldn't the Germans would have allowed them passage because of their U.S. passports? Germany and the U.S. weren't at war until Dec. 41.
According to my dad they were simply herded into a farmhouse. It was like that all over Poland. I am not a hundred percent sure but I think they were basically imprisoned in their own homes. The Germans shut down the borders. Or, maybe my grandmother didn't have her U.S. citizenship yet. My dad and his brother were born in the U.S. but my grandmother was from Poland. I never did get the whole story. My dad passed this past May so I guess we'll never know.
That probably explains it.
Not my area, but it's my recollection that they would have been considered to have dual citizenship since they were born of Polish parents. The mother probably did have a window in which she could have appealed to American diplomats to help get the children out, but she probably would have had to travel to Berlin (or at least a city with counsulor offices) to make the appeal, and probably couldn't do so.
They were fortunate they weren’t stuck on the Soviet zone of occupation in 1939, the fate for Poles there was even worse than under Nazi occupation.
If they were still there in 1947 then they must have experienced both forms of governance. Talk about a vacation gone bad!
William L. Shirer: This is Berlin. Excellent reading. I didn’t realize he wrote The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich.
My grandmother had to save money to get my dad's younger brother out. How she got the money I have no idea. They sailed home on the Ernie Pyle.
What a time it must have been.
On the first pass, I missed the little blurb about the American woman not in Dachau - or at least she wasn’t after her husband escaped.
On the first pass, I missed the little blurb about the American woman not in Dachau - or at least she wasn’t after her husband escaped.
That short article about the pro-Nazi Austrian Bishop being forced to retire is interesting, in that the Church was still able to resist within the Reich even this late in the game. I am a little confused by referring to him as Monsignor, but giving him the title ‘Prince Bishop’, which I don’t think I have heard before, unless the Prince part referred to a secular noble title.
The feeling I get reading this stuff is pity for the millions being rushed into unutterable horror.
Before the unification of Germany, certain areas were controlled by the Bishop as secular as well as religious leader. Thus the Prince Bishop. And the religious office was not enough to provide protection against neighboring Dukes. The Bishop of Koeln was captured and held by a neighboring ruler, for example.
For an overview of how it worked, here’s an article from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electorate_of_Cologne
I’d assume it worked the same in Austria.
Of course, by the 1930s, the civil titles were largely empty.
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