Tag: Nazis

Thousands of Nazis were rewarded with life in the U.S. to aid the Cold war

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In the early ’70s, New York Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman received a confidential tip that American immigration authorities knew of dozens of former Nazis — some implicated in serious war crimes — who were living in the U.S.

Holtzman looked into it and discovered that it was true, and that the formerly named Immigration and Naturalization Service wasn’t doing much about it.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg, according to investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau.

In his new book, The Nazis Next Door, Lichtblau reports that thousands of Nazis managed to settle in the United States after World War II, often with the direct assistance of American intelligence officials who saw them as potential spies and informants in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Lichtblau says there were whole networks of spy groups around the world made up of Nazis — and they entered the U.S., one by one…

Most Americans knew little about the Nazis among them. And then in 1979, media reports and congressional interest finally spurred the creation of a Nazi-hunting unit with the Justice Department.

That prompted the first wave of Nazi-hunting, Lichtblau says.

There are still documents that remain classified today about the CIA’s relationship with Nazi figures in the ’40s and ’50s and into the ’60s. A lot of these documents have become declassified just in the last 10 or 15 years. … There are documents that may open up whole new chapters that still remain classified…

RTFA for all the delightful topics in Lichtblau’s book: Generals who wanted Nazis in charge of DP camps; the ease of Nazi collaborators to slide through the DP camps vs the roadblocks faced by Jews.

Our transparent government continues to be see-through in name only. We have a new generation of politicians raised on the model of the Cold War. They are no less inclined to hide who they’re spying on and why. And the political hacks who set the standards were the creeps who brought Nazis into the US by the boatload – figuring they did their job “thoroughly” — why not do the same for us?

Or something like that.

Vienna prepares to honor Austrians who deserted Hitler’s army

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Hitler’s “defense” force marching into Austria, 12 March 1938

The Austrian capital Vienna has announced plans to erect a memorial in honour of soldiers who deserted from Adolf Hitler’s army, the Wehrmacht.

The city council has yet to decide the exact location, but campaigners want it to be put in Heldenplatz (Heroes Square) alongside war memorials. The square is also where Hitler, born in Austria, addressed crowds in 1938 when Austria was annexed to Germany…

Two years ago Austria’s parliament agreed to rehabilitate soldiers criminalised by the Nazis for deserting from the Wehrmacht.

The decision to erect a memorial was endorsed by the socialist and green parties which form Vienna’s municipal government coalition. Vienna Green Party leader David Ellensohn said the monument could be modelled on other memorials to Wehrmacht deserters in some German cities…

“In large parts of the Austrian population deserters are still considered cowards, traitors, even comrade-killers. A monument – and especially the public debate around the erection of the monument – could somehow change that.”

Mr Geldmacher said an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Austrians deserted from the Wehrmacht, especially in the final days of World War II.

And someday – someday – the United States may even honor those who deserted from our war on VietNam.

Not yet. The chickenhawks who run for public office still reinforce the patriotic agitprop that sends young men and women off to invade lands judged threatening to the United States – regardless of history and truth.

Auschwitz sign stolen to fund Swedish Nazi terror attacks

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The Nazi gang that ordered the theft of the infamous ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign from the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland planned to sell it to fund violent attacks against the Swedish Prime Minister and Parliament, it was claimed today.

A spokesman for the Swedish security police confirmed that the authorities were taking seriously a threat by a militant Nazi group to disrupt national elections next year.

“We are aware of the information about the alleged attack plans,” said Patrik Peter, the security police spokesman. “We have taken actions. We view this seriously…”

Allegations concerning who ordered the theft, and why, have surfaced today in Swedish newspaper reports after the former leader of a Swedish Nazi group claimed that it had been stolen to order for a collector in England, France or the United States…

The Nazi source said that the money would pay for an attack on the home of Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish Prime Minister who has held the rotating presidency of the European Union for the last six months, and on the Swedish Foreign Ministry, the paper reported.

A third attack allegedly involved plans to bombard Swedish MPs from the public seats of the parliament…

The source allegedly said that five men were to be paid for carrying out the theft. He reportedly insisted that he personally was not guilty of any crime as the deal had not been completed.

I admit I’m surprised. Not about the theft being engineered for sale to a collector. There is no shortage of people with too much money who drape their pitiful egos with art and history.

I wasn’t aware that revanchist Nazis had advanced plans for terror in Western Europe to the stage of attacks upon the institutions of democracy. Quasi-criminal groups like this exist on the fringes of racist and bigoted sects. Both sides of the Atlantic.

At least security services in Sweden appear to keep a broad view – undiminished by the conventional Conservative vision of Middle Eastern terror hiding under every bed.

OTOH – these klowns may just be the Swedish cousins of Michelle Bachman seeking backers for a run at fuehrer.

German law finally exonerates those ruled “traitors” by Nazis

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After a long struggle, on Tuesday, the German parliament revoked the convictions of the last group of victims, those condemned as “war traitors,” more than 60 years after the end of World War II…

According to historians, around 30,000 people were sentenced to death for desertion or treason by Nazi military tribunals during World War II, and some 20,000 were executed.

Ludwig Baumann says the men who were described as “wartime traitors” were not traitors at all.

“They behaved humanely. Some hid Jews, others helped prisoners – they followed their moral conscience,” he said.

It is a view backed by experts. “These men were not traitors, they were part of the German resistance movement against Hitler,” said Johannes Tuchel, the Director of the German Resistance Memorial Centre in Berlin.

“This is a great day for Germany – finally the last sentences handed down by Nazi courts will be lifted,” he said.

But the issue of pardoning WWII soldiers has proved to be highly controversial in Germany. For years, many conservative politicians resisted calls for a general rehabilitation, arguing that they did not want to encourage soldiers to betray their comrades.

“We never believed we could achieve this because we had so many opponents. But we got there in the end and I’m very pleased,” Baumann said…

“I’m on my own now, one of the few survivors. But the fight for dignity was worth it,” he says.

I wonder when next we might have an American generation which feels the same. Not since the VietNam War has there been enough courage and spirit in a generation – willing to stand up to deceit and murder by those in charge of this nation.

While the same sort of conservative ideologues invent rationales to prevent justice. RTFA.