Adolf Hitler (1889-1945):
"Today Germany, Tomorrow the World." Based on 1-Andrew Nagorski, Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses
to the Nazi Rise to Power,
2012. 2-William L. Shirer, Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, 1960, & Related Sources. Dialogue Given at Uplands, Adshead,
Pleasant Hill, TN, June 16, 2014, by Franklin and Betty Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
Frank: We chose this Hitler
topic when a friend, Alex Karter,
refugee from Hitler’s Germany, read and praised Nagorski’s Hitlerland:
American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power.
Betty: Andrew Nagorski was former Newsweek bureau chief in Berlin and
Bonn. His Hitlerland tells what key Americans in Germany
between WW 1 and 2—journalists, U.S. Embassy staffs, important U.S.
visitors—what they knew, saw, learned, about Hitler's Nazism; their
warnings/failed warnings; what they got right/wrong.
Frank: Hitlerland to journalists meant how Hitler's
militarizing of Germany affected the U.S., Europe, and the world. ¶Nagorski begins with Chicago
Tribune's woman
reporter Sigrid Schultz's interview in 1919 of German naval officer Eric Raeder,
who told her: “You Americans need
not feel proud of yourselves.
Within 25 years…your country and [mine] will be at war again. And this time we'll win, because we
will be better prepared…”[1]
Betty: Eric Raeder's
bitterness and outrage—felt by most Germans--determined us first logically to
explain defeated Germans' terrible sufferings under the punishing 1919
Versailles Treaty, sufferings that gave rise to
Hitler.
Frank: We trace Hitler's rise to power; tell
why Germans backed him, why he wasn't stopped earlier, we explore his obsession
to rule the world. We end with
Nagorski's Americans-in-Germany views on Hitler. Historical background is from prize winner William L.
Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. [2]
Betty: World War I cost
Germany millions of lives, loss of its colonies, plus vast destruction,
upheaval, and misery. World War I
winners France, Poland, USSR took Germany's most productive lands.
Frank: Poverty-stricken,
half-starved, with 40% jobless, Germans endured high inflation, lost their life
savings, could only pay high reparations through long term low interest U.S.A.
loans.
Betty: Germans hated the Allied-imposed supposedly democratic
Weimar Republic in power (1919-33), 14 years.4 It was
left-leaning, weak, faction-ridden, with leftists fighting rightists in the
streets. Germans were humiliated,
seeking salvation.
Frank: Hitler's Nazi party arose from these horrible German
sufferings and thrived during the 1930s worldwide depression.[3] Hitler, dictator after 1933, did end Versailles
demands and Weimar, created job security, build autobahns and Volkswagens, re-awaken past German
glories, militarized Nazi Germany, tied together every group, every aspect of German
life toward one goal: world dominion.
We pursue the roots of his drive for power.
Betty: Anything in
Hitler's family background to explain his later cruelty? His father Alois, born illegitimately,
was given his mother's maiden name, Schicklegruber: When Alois Schicklegruber
was age 5 (1842), his mother married Johann Georg Hiedler. When Alois Schicklegruber, age 30, was
a respected Austrian Civil Service Customs Inspector, a proud Hiedler uncle
helped Alois change his last name legally, recorded as H-i-t-l-e-r. [4]
Frank: Alois Hitler
13 years later fathered Adolf Hitler.
Why significant? "Heil
Schicklegruber" would have been laughed at. Later, to neglect the required "Heil Hitler" with
upraised arm salute was to court arrest, a beating, or worse.
Betty: Alois Hitler's illegitimacy was little
known. Few knew the rumor that his
unmarried mother worked for a rich Jewish family whose 19-year-old son might
have made her pregnant. [5]
Frank: Researchers never identified
Hitler's paternal grandfather. Yet
Hitler deliberately made the area where family records might exist into
a military target practice area and wiped it out. Why? Hitler
once said privately, "No one must know my past." Was hiding family shame part of Hitler's cruelty? Maybe. [6]
Betty: Hitler
adored his loving mother Klara Hitler, hated his stern father who beat Adolf
for wanting to be an artist rather than follow in his father's footsteps as
civil servant. Did Adolf later reflect his father's cold nature? Was Adolf's early rebellion part of his
iron will as dictator? Was Adolf's
cruelty a strike back at a cruel father?
Maybe.
Frank: Adolf
Hitler's mother was his father's third wife; the first two wives died. Adolf's siblings and step siblings died
young. Did Adolf, a sickly lone
male survivor, later believe himself spared to Nazify and Aryanize Germany and
the world? Maybe.
Betty: Adolf's
elementary school grades: good; high school marks: poor, partly from clashes
with his father; partly, he said, from bad teachers, except history teacher
Leopold Poetsch, who inspired Adolf with German heroes, glories, with Germans
as a master race when race-polluting Jews, Slavs, other inferiors were
eliminated.[7]
Frank: High school
dropout at 16 and unskilled, Adolf loafed on a civil servant orphan's pension
in Linz, Austria; read library books, watched and worshiped Richard Wagner's
Germanic opera heroes. His only
friend, August Kubezek, music student, said Adolf was high strung, opinionated,
angry if corrected, sometimes violent.10
Betty:
They roomed together in Vienna, Austria, 4 years, Adolf aged 19-24. Adolf, twice rejected by the Vienna
Academy of Art, then rejected by the School of Architecture for not having a
school-leaving certificate, was angry, vengeful. He read Darwinian survival of the fittest books; read
eugenic tracts on eliminating the mentally handicapped and physically deformed
Frank: Dependent on flop houses and soup
kitchens, Hitler painted scenes of well-known Vienna buildings on postcards
sold in a few Jewish shops or hawked by Jewish flophouse acquaintances. His scapegoating of
"Jewish-communist-betrayers-of-Germany," came later, when, as Nazi
Party head, stressing Jew hatred won him public notice, Nazi party members, and
financial contributions. Did
Hitler sense that defeated Germans with no way to hit back at their Allied
enemies, got some satisfaction from hitting back at substitute ancient
scapegoat, Jews? Did he use
historic Jew hatred because it bonded German masses to him? Did hatred of Jews, gypsies, Slavs,
political enemies become an ingrained obsession? Maybe.12
Betty: Leaving
Austria for Munich, Germany, to avoid Austrian compulsory military service,
Hitler loafed in Munich 2 years, ages 24-25. Austrian authorities found him, gave him a physical exam,
rejected him as too thin, too weak.
Frank: It was WW 1 that galvanized Hitler. With Army medical requirements lowered,
he enlisted in a Bavarian branch of the German Army, served 4 years as a
message runner behind trench lines, was twice wounded and twice awarded an iron
cross. Did anger over WW 1
defeated, persecuted Germans
instill in Hitler his later drive to rebuild Germany into a Deutschland
uber allus? Maybe. Did W.W. I kill-or-be-killed trench warfare harden Hitler
later to kill, without remorse?
Maybe.
Betty: Germany's November 11, 1918, surrender
ending WWI shocked and angered Hitler.
No Allied troops had occupied German soil; the German General Staff
never surrendered. Hitler believed
the "Stab in the Back" falsehood: that the 1918 Armistice was signed
by left-wing German politicians paid to do so by Jewish-Russian Marxists.
Hitler later called them "the November Criminals."
Frank: For food, lodging, income Hitler
remained in the army 1919-1920, in a propaganda unit, lecturing mustering-out
soldiers to be pro-German, anti-communist. His superior officer, impressed by Hitler's speeches, sent
Hitler to see if a new small Munich German Workers' Party was pro-German or
communist.
Betty:
Attending this party's Sept. 12, 1919, meeting, Hitler spoke out against
a remark that Bavaria should secede from Germany. His impromptu rebuttal impressed party co-founder Anton
Drexler, who said: "He [Hitler] has the gift of gab; we need
him." Drexler gave Hitler a
pamphlet listing German Workers Party aims: pro-German nationalism,
pro-military, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, anti-Weimar government.
Frank:
Wandering young Hitler, dreamer, loafer, rejected artist-architect, now
a budding politician, had—as he inwardly always knew--hidden talents that
emerged amazingly: organizer,
propagandist, mesmerizing speaker.
He instinctively sensed and spoke to audiences' wants, needs, fears,
hopes. Even hostile audiences
warmed to him, praised him to friends.
He voiced their hopes, shared their prejudices, promised them a good,
proud life. He pushed out
weaker party leaders, became the party's leader, listed 25 party aims,
broadened the party's appeal by renaming it National Socialist Workers Party,
popularized it as the Nazi Party, chose its arresting red and black flag and
striking swastika.
Betty: To oust communists and other hecklers, to intimidate and
remove enemies, Hitler organized brown-shirted Storm Trooper thugs. Then, 1923 events led Hitler to attempt
a Bavarian government takeover which failed, Nov. 8-9, 1923. What were these events?
Frank: Event 1-The German mark's sharp
decline halted reparation payments.
France seized Germany's rich industrial Ruhr Valley. Its German workers rebelled. Riots erupted against France and the
Weimar government.
Betty:
Event 2-Hitler's role model, Benito Mussolini, had marched on Rome to
become Italy's dictator. Could
Hitler do the same?
Frank: Event 3-Hitler's Storm Trooper rowdies
wanted more power, pay, action.
Event 4-Hitler's hidden ace was popular WW I hero General Eric von
Ludendorff, Nazi Party member, to co-lead the attempted Putsch.
Betty: Hitler secretly bribed 3 wavering
Bavarian high officials to back his Nazi Party's seizure of Bavaria as a first
step toward ending Weimar.
Frank:
Nov. 8, 1923: the 3 Bavarian officials held a large beer hall political
rally. Hitler barged in with armed
Storm Troopers, fired his pistol for attention, declared a Bavarian revolution.
Betty:
Herding the 3 Bavarian leaders into an anteroom, Hitler demanded their
support. They hesitated. Hitler dashed back to the large
audience, lied triumphantly: Bavarian officials support the Putsch! The
waiting audience cheered.
Frank:
News of the attempted coup quickly reached Weimar officials, who firmly
ordered: stop the traitors; arrest them, jail them, try them, convict them.
Betty: Nov. 9, 1923: armed Bavarian military
and police clashed with Hitler's Nazi marchers. Shots fired, 16 Nazis, 3 military/police killed. Hitler, dragged to the ground, escaped
to the home of his Nazi friend Ernst Hanfstaengl.
Frank: Police arrived. Hitler put his gun to his head. Ernst
Hanfstaengl's wife, Helen, pushed the gun aside, said: the Nazi Party needs
you, saved Hitler to fulfill his destiny.
Betty:
Tried for treason, Hitler's brilliant defense went something like this
and spread his fame:
Frank:
When a thief takes your money and you take it back, is that owner
guilty? No. Never. Our Nazi Party and every German must
take back what the criminals robbed us of: our land, resources, government,
past glory. Tear up the criminal Versailles
Treaty. End unworkable Weimar.
Restore German honor, glory.
Improve Germany today, for tomorrow we lead the world.
Betty: The judge, sympathetic, had to
pronounce Hitler guilty; sentence, 5 year; early release recommended. Nine months in jail was Hitler's
re-think, rebuild time. He told
aides: We will hold our noses, compete legally to win Reichstag seats, gain
power, and destroy Weimar.
Frank: Ten years later, 1933, Hitler, whose
1923 beer hall Putsch
failed, was Chancellor, Fuehrer, dictator.
Betty:
In jail Hitler dictated Mein Kampf (My Battle), a mix of
sanitized autobiography plus a blueprint for a rebuilt Nazi Party aimed to win
political power legally to end Weimar.
Frank: Now, we quicken our pace to dates, key
events, from 1925 to Sept. 1, 1939, 14 years, the start of WW 2 in Europe.
Betty: The years 1925-29 were better
economic times. In good times Nazi Party membership dwindled. May 20, 1928. Nazis won only 12
legislative seats in the then 491-seat Reichstag.
Frank:
Oct. 29, 1929, U.S.A., financial Wall Street crash. 1930s Great Depression worldwide with
Germany hardest hit. Joblessness
and despair returned. A Germany in
misery again was Hitler's golden opportunity, for the Nazi Party thrived on
troubled times.
Betty:
Sept. 14, 1930.
National election. Nazis
won 107 seats in a 577-seat legislature, making Nazis the second largest
party.
Frank:
Spring 1932: Weimar President Paul von Hindenberg, WW I
commander-hero, age 85, near-senile, was up for re-election. Austrian-born Hitler wants to run
against Pres. Hindenberg but he cannot.
Hitler is not a German citizen.
Then, by trickery, an official of Brunswick State, Germany, a Nazi party
member, suddenly appoints Hitler envoy to Berlin, making Hitler automatically a
German citizen. Hindenberg wins,
but runner up Hitler, is now a major political figure.
Betty:
July 31, 1932.
National election. Nazis
win 230 seats in 608-seat legislature and are now Germany's largest party.
Frank: Jan. 4, 1933, the secret
meeting that made Hitler Chancellor.
The then Chancellor Franz von Papen, weak, unable to govern, made this
secret proposal to Pres. Hindenberg:
you appoint Hitler Chancellor, and me (Papen) Vice Chancellor. Hitler to name only 3 of the 11 member
Chancellor's Advisory committee; I, Papen will name my 8 majority members. Why? Hitler's Nazi Party, largest in the legislature, was
popular, Papen, not popular. He
wanted to convince Pres. Hindenberg that he (Papen) could control Hitler. Senile President Hindenberg reluctantly
agreed. Papen's mistake made
Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
Hitler already knew how he would achieve absolute power.
Betty: Jan. 30, 1933. FDR elected; his inauguration still
weeks away. Hitler, now chancellor, pushed Papen aside, ousted him, later
jailed him. Suddenly, as if by
magic, Hitler, intent on dismantling the Weimar Republic, is aided by the
Reichstag fire, equivalent to the burning of our U.S. Capitol Building. Accident? Or did Hitler make it happen?
Frank: Feb. 27, 1933, is the date of
the Reichstag Fire, blamed on a half-witted 24-old-Dutch communist arsonist,
hastily tried and hanged. Hitler
immediately thundered publicly his big lie that Communists deliberately set the
Reichstag Fire to start a Communist takeover of Germany. Hitler's intent with the big lie was to win public approval
to remove all communists. Also,
eliminating communists with impunity masked Hitler's eliminating hundreds of
his other enemies. Suspicion
persists that Nazis set the fire, scapegoated the half-wit Dutchman, to
eliminate enemies and strengthen Hitler's control.
Betty:
March 23, 1933. Less
than two months as Chancellor, Hitler won Reichstag approval for an
"Enabling Act" that gave Hitler sole power to make all
laws, a ruthless move for absolute rule.
Frank: July 14, 1933: Hitler removes problems. Stressing the Reichstag Fire as prelude
to a planned Communist takeover, Hitler induced Pres. Hindenberg to suspend
civil liberties. This allowed
Chancellor Hitler to suppress all parties except the Nazi Party, outlaw trade
unions, tie workers to their jobs, farmers to the land. Hitler's last hardest problem was Nazi
Storm Trooper head Capt. Ernst Röhm who demanded that his Storm Troopers
replace the Prussian Army.
Prussian Generals thundered: Never, sharply ordered Hitler: remove Röhm and his lieutenants or
the Prussian Army will crush and replace you with a Kaiser descendant. Hitler had to act.
Betty: June 30, 1934, was the "Night
of the Long Knives." During a
Storm Trooper night rally, Hitler's armed personal guards swooped down,
murdered Röhm, his lieutenants, and over a thousand others who had opposed,
angered, or threatened Hitler.
Frank: July 13,
1934, Two weeks later, after massive propaganda about putting down
the "Röhm Attempted Revolution," Hitler justified the Röhm bloodbath
to a Reichstag audience as follows: "In this [crisis] hour I was
responsible for the fate of the German People. I became the Supreme Judge…" Reichstag audience cheered and applauded.
Betty: Aug. 2, 1934, Hindenberg Died.
Learning that Hindenberg was dying, Hitler ordered his cabinet to combine the
office Presidency with his
Chancellorship. He compelled all
military to swear: "unconditional obedience to Hitler unto
death."
Frank:
Nov. 5, 1937. Lebensraum, Living Space. Now
absolute dictator, Hitler secretly told his generals and admirals: prepare for war, which might come
anytime as he (Hitler), through peaceful
ways (mostly threats and tricks), sought Lebensraum, living space, by absorbing neighboring Austria,
Czechoslovakia, Poland.
Betty: March 14, 1938, meeting with
Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, Hitler raved and ranted that Germans
in Austria were mistreated, abused (a deliberate lie). Hitler demanded that
unless Schuschnigg signed a declaration of Austria-German union (Anschluss), German troops would march into Austria.
Frank:
Taken aback, Schuschnigg insisted on a plebiscite (Austrians to vote yes
or no). Hitler cunningly
forestalled a most likely "no" plebiscite vote. He had his Nazi agents line up crowds
of cheering Austrians welcoming equally cheering friendly entering German
troops. With no way to resist,
Schuschnigg signed the Declaration of Union. Hitler absorbed Austria. No shot fired.
Betty:
March 15, 1939, a year after Austria. Czechoslovakia had 3.5
million Germans living in its Sudetenland area. Again, Hitler, ranting and raving his lie about abused
Germans, demanded that Sudetenland be ceded to Germany or the German army would
enter and take it. Britain's Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain, seeking peace at any price, convinced Czech
leaders to cede Sudetenland to Germany.
Frank: Soon after March 15, 1939,
wanting all of Czechoslovakia, Hitler met with old ailing Czech President Emile
Hácha, raved and ranted his propaganda lie of Germans persecuted in
Czechoslovakia. Hitler's bluff
worked. The Czech President
signed all of Czechoslovakia to Hitler's Germany. No shot fired.
Betty: Aug. 23, 1939. Poland and the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Britain's PM Neville Chamberlain, finally
realizing war was inevitable, said: if Germany invades Poland, Britain and
France will fight Germany. Threatened, Hitler entered a secret pact with
Stalin, whose communism Hitler hated: Germans attack Poland from the west;
Russians from the east; Russia's reward: northern areas of Poland.
Frank: Aug. 31,
1939. Hitler needed to justify
invading Poland. He faked this
incident: Nazis dressed in Polish uniforms attacked German frontier stations
bordering Poland and left scattered bullet-ridden German uniformed bodies (the
dead bodies came secretly from a German concentration camp). Realistic Nazi propaganda film of the
faked Polish massacre of Germans convinced many that it really happened.
Betty: Sept.
1, 1939. Hitler's army invaded Poland, attacked and killed Polish military.
Britain and France declared war against Germany. WWII, which we do not cover, began.
Frank: Now we turn to Nagorski's Hitlerland to view Hitler's Nazis through the eyes of key U.S.
journalists, U.S. Embassy staff, and U.S. visitors to Germany; their
experiences and insights.
Betty: Some 50 U.S.
news reporters between WW 1 and 2 covered Germany, stationed mostly in Berlin,
which was then surprisingly the artistic-cultural-cabaret-song-and-dance
center of Europe. Berlin, more than
Paris, was the swinging-rocking-sin-city. Recall the 1972 musical with Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey, Cabaret.
Frank:
Besides being Europe's cultural hub Germany was Europe’s least expensive
center, drew many tourists. The
small overworked U.S. Embassy staff in Berlin, especially the Harvard-Yale Ivy
League State Department professionals, kept publicly
quiet
about Nazi atrocities. Not so U.S.
journalists who aggressively with searching eyes and keen minds sent back to
the U.S.A. searing reports on Hitler-Nazi misdeeds.
Betty:
Newspapers were numerous, avidly read, the main source of the ordinary
person's view of the world.
Still remembered U.S. journalists who covered the rise of Hitler
include: H.V. Kaltenborn, William L. Shirer, Dorothy Thompson, Howard K.
Smith. Less remembered top
journalists were Chicago Tribune
pioneer woman reporter Sigrid Schultz and Chicago Daily News reporter Edgar Mowrer. But first, the views of some prominent U.S. visitors to
Germany.
Frank:
In July 1933, then well known YMCA International Secretary Sherwood Eddy, on
his l2th visit to Germany.
Sherwood Eddy said publicly
to a German audience: “In your
country, injustice is committed every day, every hour,” a bold thing for an
American to say to Germans.
Betty: Visiting novelist Sinclair Lewis, then
married to newswoman Dorothy Thompson, visited Germany summer 1934. He felt compelled to write his novel, It
Can't Happen Here,
set in the U.S.A. Its Hitler-like
dictator, claiming to solve all problems, abolished the U.S Congress and
established a fascist U.S.A.
Lewis's popular novel warned Americans to beware of home-grown
Hitler-like fascist politicians.
Frank: African American sociologist and NAACP
leader W.E.B. Dubois, had a six-month fellowship in Germany during the 1936
Berlin Olympics. Nazis had
efficiently removed all anti-Jewish propaganda signs temporarily. It was "Be Nice to Foreign
Visitors During the Olympics" time. Black W.E.B. Dubois was treated with courtesy. Yet he observed and wrote that Nazi
Germans' ugly campaigns of hatred against non-Nordic races and Jews “surpasses
in vindictive cruelty and public insult anything I have ever seen.”
Betty: H.V. Kaltenborn, American-born radio newsman of
German heritage, at first thought warnings about Hitler overblown. Then in 1933 when Kaltenborn’s own son
Rolfe was beaten by a storm trooper for failing to salute Nazi banners carried
in a parade, Kaltenborn quickly saw his mistake.
Frank: Novelist Thomas Wolfe visited Germany
in the mid-1920s, again in 1935 where he was lauded for his Look Homeward
Angel, and also
attended the 1936 Olympics. His
loud cheering for African American runner Jesse Owen irritated Hitler who,
sitting nearby, scowled at Wolfe's cheers.
Betty: Thomas Wolfe admired the German people
and culture but he abhorred the Nazis.
Wolfe described a German train ride as follows in You Can't Go Home
Again, which the
Nazis banned.
Frank: Wolfe was with talkative German
passengers enjoying themselves, when Nazi officials burst in and roughly hauled
out one of the travelers as an escaping Jew. In the shocked silence that followed, a German woman said to
the others: "Those Jews.
They make all the trouble.
Germany has to protect herself."
Betty: Dorothy Thompson, first in Berlin in the mid 1920s, again in
1931, met Hitler, misjudged him as insignificant, not to be taken
seriously. Returning to
Germany in 1934 with Hitler by then a menacing dictator, she reported
devastating truths about his ruthless regime, was expelled and, back in the
U.S.A., her expulsion made her an instant celebrity.
Frank: Howard K. Smith was in Berlin
in 1936 as a United Press junior reporter, later as TV commentator. Seeing how easily American visitors
overlooked Hitler's threat, he was alarmed that the world had no idea of the
danger Hitler posed.
Betty: Howard K. Smith identified 4 stages in U.S. visitors’
reactions to Nazi Germany: Stage 1-Admiration for spic-and-span, attractive
Germany. Stage 2-Awareness of uniforms,
guns, rearmament, parading soldiers.
Stage 3-Awareness of swift preparation for war, of quick cold-blooded
killing of regime critics. Stage
4: Alarm that Hitler's gathering military strength could annihilate unprepared
countries including the U.S.A.
Most U.S. visitors on quick visits were stuck in stage 1-Admiration, and
never saw ultimate dangers Hitler posed.
Frank: Now, a few experiences of journalist Sigrid Schultz,
Chicago Tribune's newswoman, who in 1919
interviewed naval officer Eric Raeder.
Chicago-born of Norwegian parents, well schooled in France and Germany,
multilingual, Schultz in 1932 in a group of U.S. journalists met Hitler. Fascinated, she saw him as a consummate
actor. He locked eyes with each
journalist in turn, shook hands, was amiable even with journalists known to be hostile.
Betty: Schultz was among hastily assembled foreign reporters when
Nazi Air Force Marshall Hermann Goering justified the June 30, 1934 "Night
of the Long Knives" massacre.
In his justification Goering said: we had to prevent a planned rebellion
against Hitler. Looking directly,
piercingly, at Schultz, who he knew to be a Nazi critic, he named a prominent
German politician shot trying to escape.
Schultz had the chilling sensation that Goering was telling her that the
Nazis could do anything they wanted with impunity.
Frank: Schultz noted that the Nazis soon stopped expelling hostile
reporters who back home only drew sympathetic attention. Instead, the Gestapo tried planting
damaging evidence on critical journalists to arrest, try, and jail them. In April 1935 an envelope marked
"Important Information" delivered to Schultz contained an airplane
design. Seeing the agents
outside who delivered the envelope, she loudly told them that she burned the
envelope. Entering a cab in their
presence she shouted to the cabbie for all to hear: "Take me to the U.S. Embassy." Schultz believed Goering tried several
times to set her up as a spy to dispose of her.
Betty: When Poland was invaded, Sept. 1, 1939, Schultz's maid
appeared red-eyed, teary. Asked why,
she said her husband had seen pictures of uniformed Germans maimed and killed
by Polish troops at a German military outpost near Poland. When Schultz told the maid that the
incident was faked to justify Hitler's march into Poland, the maid, affronted, later
reported to the Gestapo all of Schultz's phone call, messages, and mail
received.
Frank: Schultz described this above
incident to show how gullible and unquestioning most Germans were to follow
their leader Hitler. He had given
Germans jobs, social security, restored their pride. Joseph Goebbels' Nazi propaganda was masterful. Most Germans closed their eyes and
minds to alleged Nazi atrocities, saying if Hitler only knew of abuses, he
would have stop them.
Betty: Schultz, at a reception of Nazi officials
after Hitler invaded Poland, asked about reports of mass murders of Poles. A Nazi official answered her: I don't
see why you get excited over the deaths of Poles. They are Slavs and only white on an inferior
level. They outnumber us Germans,
have a much higher birth rate, so killing them is justified. He concluded with: only those Slavs and
Jews who work with us as slave underlings will survive.
Frank: U.S. Embassy junior Military Attaché
Army officer Lt. Truman Smith first interviewed Hitler Nov. 20, 1922. To Smith Hitler openly admitted his
intent to become dictator and rid Germany of Jews. Lt. Smith
from the first believed Hitler was dangerous but did not then imagine Hitler
becoming Germany's dictator or European conqueror or WW 2 initiator.
Betty: On
Truman Smith's second 4-year tour in Berlin, 1935-39, as U.S. Senior Military
Attaché, he was much more concerned about dictator Hitler's military
build-up. Smith arranged famed
aviator Charles Lindbergh's several visits to Germany, believing correctly
that Nazis would be proud, especially Air Marshall Goering, to show Lindbergh
their air force Luftwaffe
advances. Lindbergh gathered information about Germany's massive military
buildup invaluable to U. S. Intelligence.
Frank: Chicago
Daily News reporter Edgar Ansel
Mowrer, learning secretly from a Jewish doctor about Jews in concentration
camps, warned his readers about Hitler, told Jewish friends, "Get out of
Germany while you can."
Betty: When new President FDR in 1933
appointed University of Chicago historian William E. Dodd Ambassador to
Germany, FDR told Dodd: "I want a liberal in Germany as an
example." Dodd, disliked by
State Department insiders, early saw and told FDR that Hitler was a danger who
must be stopped.
Frank: Author Nagorski concluded his Hitlerland by saying that the most insightful Americans in
Germany helped the U.S. begin to recognize Hitler as an ominous threat, begin
to abandon U.S.A.'s strong USA isolationism, begin FDR's rearming to
stop Hitler. They changed
U.S. public opinion. That was
their most important contribution.
¶Time, Betty, to wind down with last thoughts. Your last thoughts, Betty?
Betty: I feel more
strongly than ever the need for vigilance against fascism and racism. Hitler was a genius, wrote William L.
Shirer, impossible to understand, except in the context of a defeated,
desperate Germany which his megalomania led astray. Your last thoughts, Frank.
Frank: Democracy with all its faults is slow
but safer and better than dictatorship.
Our demagogues, would-be-Hitlers: Huey P. Long, Joseph McCarthy, Father
Coughlin of Detroit, others,
spouted, we listened, then repudiated them. It's better to jaw jaw than war war, said Winston
Churchill. About our own
considerable U.S. problems: Let debate flourish; let thoughts contend. Between political parties let's return
to civil compromise. If you want
peace, work for justice.
Betty: Anything we missed for lack of time?
Frank: Yes, Hitler's henchmen, worse than
Hitler; they did his dirty work with vengeance: Hermann Gõring, Heinrich
Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Martin
Bormann, Reinhard Hedrick, others.
Betty: Why are we glad we chose this topic?
Frank: Hitler, starting WW 2, changed history in so many ways. His evil hastened the founding of the United
Nations. He and WW. 2 changed all
our lives, got me into the armed forces, to Berea College, KY, where we met and
married, to Nashville's Vanderbilt University, to 40+ years teaching, to
Uplands.
Betty We could not have done it
without this Uplands audience and Third Monday Book Review Co-Chairs Mary and
Don Smith. Thank you all so much
for being here. End.
Footnotes:
1-See Sigrid
Schulz and Eric Raeder in google.com and in Nagorski index.
2-William L. Shirer's condensations
in his: The Rise and Fall
of Adolph Hitler,
NY: Scholastic, 1961; and his: "Hitler on the March: The Years of
Triumph," Reader's
Digest Book
Section-II (April, 1962), pp. 248-299.
3-WW1 (1918) defeated
Germany's sufferings: http://tinyurl.com/og7yrbc
4-Weimar, a university
city, less politically volatile than Berlin.
5-Hitler's
background…recorded as H-i-t-l-e-r.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/born.htm Or: http://tinyurl.com/dn7qar
6-Why significant? "Heil Schicklgruber" would have: Ibid.
7-Hitler's illegitimacy… impregnated
her.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=leopold+frankenberger+hitler&rls=en
8-Family cover-up shame:
http://tinyurl.com/dn7qar
…for unknown paternal
(alois) father: http://tinyurl.com/odmtcrt
9-Leopold Poetsch (1853-1942):
http://www.google.com/webhp?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS352&btnG=Google+Search#hl=en&q=leopold+poetsch-hitler. Or: http://tinyurl.com/mdbxk5l
10-Wagner's (1813-1883)
11-August Kubezek: high strung, opinionated, angry when corrected,
sometimes violent: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/art.htm
Or:
http://tinyurl.com/pltbmd3. http://www.toolan.com/hitler/fuhrer.html
Or: http://tinyurl.com/qewc4fl
12-Hitler's anti-Semitism: German
author Göetz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Envy, Race Hatred, and the
Prehistory of the Holocaust,
Metropolitan Books, 2014.
13-German author Göetz, Ibid.
14-Hitler's 1918 German-Jewish
commanding officer Hugo Gutman, 1880-1961, see: http://tinyurl.com/qjsmyl7, never promoted Hitler above lance
corporal despite his two iron crosses. Some questionable sources allege that
superior officers denied Hitler's promotion because of his devious sex reports:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=Hitler's+sex+orientation&rls=en
15-Frank:
Recovering from a gas attack:
http://tinyurl.com/nk6ygce
16-Betty: Unskilled in a jobless time, Hitler
remained in the army 1919-20: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=german+freikorps&rls=en
17-His Bavarian military Captain Karl Mayr (1883-1945),
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=Karl+Mayr&rls=en
Or: http://preview.tinyurl.com/o2vsnnp
)
18-Impressed by Hitler's persuasive
speeches, was pro-communist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Workers%27_Party)
19-Nazi friend
Ernest Hanfstaengl's (1887-1975)
house:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=Hitler%2C+Ernest+Hanfstaengl&rls=en
20-Helen
Hanfstaengle pushed the gun aside:
http://www.theglobalist.com/the-woman-who-prevented-hitlers-suicide/ Or: http://tinyurl.com/m8ffe6z
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=Hitler's+Beer+Hall+Putsch&rls=en
Or: http://tinyurl.com/pjk8jbs
21-Hitler got
German citizenship by trickery and
subterfuge:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=how+did+hitler+become+a+german+citizen&rls=en
22-Hitler became
Germany's Chancellor by trickery and backroom bargaining:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/named.htm
and:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=how+hitler+became+chancellor+essay&rls=en
23-Event 1: Hitler's model Benito
Mussolini, Oct. 29, 1922:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=mussolini+facts&rls=en
For
Americans-in-Germany, see their Last, First names in Nagorski, Hitlerland index
General
Sources:
Adolph Hitler
references are enormous. Besides
the Nagorski and Shirer books reviewed the authors used Google.com and other
search engines under these typed headings:
--Adolph Hitler
--Germany Under
Adolph Hitler
--Nazi Germany
--Adolph Hitler's
Henchmen
--Adolph Hitler's
Psychological Profile
--Adolph Hitler's
Best Authors
Authors' Other
Writings---------------------------------------------- :
Published Works by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, E-mail:
bfparker@frontiernet.net
Franklin Parker,1921-, Betty
J. Parker, 1929-, 41 Library of Congress Publications listed in:
http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&Search_Arg=Parker%2C+Franklin%2C+1921-&Search_Code=GKEY%5E*&CNT=100&hist=1&type=quick
Or: http://tinyurl.com/mtba25h
For our Library of Congress
and WorldCat publications, many on George Peabody: copy Franklin Parker, 1921,
and Betty J. Parker, 1929-) on your browser and click on:
http://bit.ly/mfEmU2
Or: http://tinyurl.com/pepg4ft
Or:
http://tinyurl.com/qxmydzw
To read many pages (not all)
of Franklin Parker, George Peabody, A Biography, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt
Univ. Press, 1995, copy/paste on your browser/click on:
http://tinyurl.com/nyxqe4w
Seven books listed in
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Parker/e/B001KMQUD8
Access our' many articles through google.com or
any other search engine by typing as subject any of the following:
Franklin Parker, or Betty J. Parker, or Franklin and Betty J. Parker, or
Betty and Franklin Parker, or bfparker, or bfparker@frontiernet.net or bandfparker@frontiernet.net
Franklin Parker, 1921-Publications in U.S. Govt.
ERIC File, 5 pp, full text available:
http://eric.ed.gov/?q=Parker%2C+Franklin&ft=on
Or: http://tinyurl.com/oxmo2os
For 37+ of our articles in blog form,
copy and paste on your browser and click on:
For F.P.'s articles on: 1-George Peabody
College of Vanderbilt Univ., 2-Peabody Education Fund in TN., & 3-May
Cravath Wharton: click on:
Or: http://tinyurl.com/kwrxeo3
For a funny skit on our 61st wedding
anniversary, access:
Or: http://preview.tinyurl.com/lmtl7q2
Vanderbilt University's Wise Library,
Nashville, has these 9 Franklin Parker, 1921-, publications (with Lib. of
Congress call numbers): (copy on your browser and click on): http://tinyurl.com/leroakx
1. George Peabody, a biography Rev. ed. HV28 .P4 P29 1995, 1995
2. George Peabody, a biography [electronic resource] Rev. ed. 1995.
3. Education in the People's Republic of China, Past
and Present : An Annotated Bibliography, 1986.
4. U.S. higher education : a guide to information
sources, 1980. 5. British schools and ours, 1979. 379.156 P224b, 1975
6. The Battle of the Books : Kanawha County.
Parker, Franklin,
1921-. Z5811 .P25 v.18,pt.1, 1971
7. American dissertations on foreign education; a
bibliography with abstracts (20 volume series). 370.8 In8, no.2, 1960
8. African development and education in Southern
Rhodesia. 370 P32 no.70 v.2, 1956
9. George Peabody, founder of modern philanthropy.
Berea College's Hutchins Library , Ky (the
Parkers' undergraduate college, FP, B.A., 1949; BJP, B.A., 1950), lists 17 of
their publication titles: Copy and click on:
http://banc.berea.edu:7008/vwebv/searchResults?searchId=10387&recPointer=10&recCount=10
Or: http://tinyurl.com/nzhksll
For Picture/article F. Parker playing Xmas Jingle
Bells: copy, paste on your browser:
http://www.crossvillechronicle.com/features/x1956151520/Making-music-in-Pleasant-Hill/print
Lists
66 of Franklin Parker's
publications in the U.S. Government ERIC (Educational
Resources Information Center) system, with access to Abstract of each
Publication plus full access to each Publication. Paste on your browser and click on:
http://eric.ed.gov/?q=Parker%2C+Franklin&ft=on
Or:
http://tinyurl.com/ma7znaq
THE END. Corrections, comments to
bfparker@frontiernet.net
