The Hossbach Protocol and Hitler's bellicose intentions

[hermod]

The Hossbach 'Protocol': The Destruction of a Legend

Das Hossbach-'Protokoll': Die Zerstoerung einer Legende, by Dankwart Kluge.
Leoni am Starnberger See [Bavaria]: Druffel Verlag, 1980. 168 pages. DM 19.80. ISBN 3-80611003-4.
Reviewed by Mark Weber

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world, or at least Europe. At the great postwar Nuremberg Tribunal the victorious Allies sought to prove that Hitler and his "henchmen" had engaged in a sinister "Conspiracy to Wage Aggresive War." The most important piece of evidence produced to sustain this charge was and is a document known as the "Hossbach Protocol" or "Hossbach Memorandum."

On 5 November 1937, Hitler called a few high officials together for a conference in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin: War Minister Werner von Blomberg, Army Commander Werner von Fritsch, Navy Commander Erich Raeder, Air Force Commander Hermann Göring, and Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. Also present was Hitler's Army adjutant, Colonel Count Friedrich Hossbach.

Five days later, Hossbach wrote up an unauthorized record of the meeting based on memory. He did not take notes during the conference. Hossbach claimed after the war that he twice asked Hitler to read the memorandum, but the Chancellor replied that he had no time. Apparently none of the other participants even knew of the existence of the Colonel's conference record. Nor did they consider the meeting particularly important.

A few months after the conference, Hossbach was transferred to another position. His manuscript was filed away with many other papers and forgotten. In 1943 German general staff officer Colonel Count Kirchbach found the manuscript while going through the file and made a copy for himself. Kirchbach left the Hossbach original in the file and gave his copy to his brother-in-law, Victor von Martin, for safe keeping. Shortly after the end of the war, Martin turned over this copy to the Allied occupation authorities, who used it to produce a substantially altered version for use as incriminating evidence at Nuremberg. Sentences such as those quoting Hitler as saying that "The German question can only be solved by force" were invented and inserted. But over all, the document presented at Nuremberg is less than half the length of the original Hossbach manuscript. Both the original written by Hossbach and the Kirchbach/Martin copy have completely (and conveniently) disappeared.

According to the Hossbach document presented at Nuremberg and widely quoted ever since, Hitler told those present that his remarks were to be regarded as a "final testament" in case of his death. The most incriminating section quotes Hitler as saying that the armed forces would have to act by 1943-45 at the latest to secure the "living space" ("Lebensraum") Germany needed. However, if France became weakened by internal crisis before that time, Germany should take action against Czechia (Bohemia and Moravia). Or if France became so embroiled in war (probably with Italy) that she could not take action against Germany, then Germany should seize Czechia and Austria simultaneously. Hitler's alleged references to German "living space" refer only to Austria and Czechia.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany was militarily at the mercy of hostile foreign states. Rearmament had begun slowly, and in early 1937, because of a raw materials shortage, the three armed service branches had to cut back. A furious dispute broke out between the branches for the remaining allocation.

Contrary to what the Hossbach protocol suggests, Hitler called the conference of 5 November 1937 partially to reconcile the squabbling heads of the military branches and partially to revive the German rearmament program. Foreign policy was only a subsidiary issue. Hitler sought to justify the need for rebuilding German armed strength by presenting several exaggerated and hypothetical foreign crisis cases which would require military action, none of which ever occurred. Hitler announced no new course in German foreign policy, much less a plan for aggressive war.

At Nuremberg Göring testified that Hitler told him privately just before the conference that the main purpose in calling the meeting was "to put pressure on General von Fritsch, since he (Hitler) was dissatisfied with the rearmament of the army." Raeder confirmed Göring's statement.

Like some other aristocratic and traditionalist conservatives, Hossbach became a bitter opponent of Hitler and the National Socialist regime. He was an intimate friend of General Ludwig Beck, who was executed in 1944 for his leading role in the conspiracy which tried to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the government. Despite his postwar denial, it is virtually certain that Hossbach prepared his slanted version of the conference at Beck's urging for possible use in discrediting the Hitler regime following a coup d'etat. Hossbach was also close to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of military intelligence, and General Ziehlberg, both of whom were also executed for their roles in the 1944 assassination plot. Even in early 1938 Hossbach, Beck and Canaris were in favor of a coup to forcibly overthrow Hitler.

The Hossbach memorandum is frequently cited in popular historical works as conclusive proof of Hitler's plans for aggressive war. A good example is William Shirer's best-selling but unreliable Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which alleged that the protocol recorded "the decisive turning point in the life of the Third Reich." At this critical conference, Shirer wrote, "... the die was cast. Hitler had communicated his irrevocable decision to go to war. To the handful of men who would have to direct it there could no longer by any doubt." Like many other Germanophobe publicists, Shirer deceptively cites the Hossbach memorandum as a reliable record. He even distorts the actual wartime importance of the conference participants. Of the five top officials present, three (Blomberg, Fritsch, Neurath) lost their high positions within months of the meeting. Raeder was replaced as Navy Commander in January 1943. Only Göring was really close to Hitler.

The important role of the fraudulent Hossbach protocol at the Nuremberg Tribunal is another damning confirmation of the illegitimate, show-trial character of this most extravagant judicial undertaking in history. On the basis of the protocol, which became Nuremberg document 386-PS, the Tribunal indictment declared: "An influential group of the Nazi conspirators met together with Hitler on 5 November 1937 to discuss the situation. Once again it was emphasized that Germany must have living space in Central Europe. They recognized that such a conquest would probably meet resistance that would have to be beaten down with force, and that their decision would probably lead to a general war." U.S. prosecutor Sidney Alderman told the Tribunal that the memorandum ("one of the most striking and revealing of all the captured documents") removed any remaining doubts about the guilt of the German leaders for their crimes against peace. It was also the basis for the conclusion of the Nuremberg judges that the German "Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War" began at the conference of 5 November 1937. The document was crucial in condemning Göring, Neurath and Raeder for their roles in the "criminal conspiracy." The spurious Hossbach protocol is all too typical of the kind of evidence used by the victorious Allies at Nuremberg to legitimize their judicial imprisonment and murder of defeated Germany's leaders.

There is now no doubt that the Hossbach protocol is worthless as a historical document. After the war both Hossbach and Kirchbach declared that the U.S. prosecution version is quite different than the document manuscript they recalled. Hossbach also testified at Nuremberg that he could not confirm that the prosecution version corresponded completely with the manuscript he wrote in 1937. And in his memoirs, he admitted that in any case, Hitler did not outline any kind of "war plan" at the meeting. At Nuremberg, Göring, Raeder, Blomberg and Neurath all denounced the Hossbach protocol as a gross misrepresentation of the conference. (Fritsch was dead.) The protocol deals only with the first half of the meeting, thereby distorting its true character. The memorandum concludes with the simple sentence: "The second half of the conference dealt with material armaments questions." No details are given. In 1968 Victor von Martin characterized the memorandum with these words: "The protocol presented at the Nuremberg court was put together in such a way as to totally change the meaning [of the original] and can therefore be characterized only as a crude forgery."

When he wrote his path-breaking study, The Origins of the Second World War, A.J.P. Taylor accepted the Hossbach memorandum as a faithful record of the meeting of 5 November 1937. However, in a supplementary "Second Thoughts" added to later editions, the renowned British historian admitted that he had initially been "taken in" by the "legend" of the document. The allegedly significant conference was actually "a maneuver in domestic affairs." The protocol itself, Taylor noted, "contains no directives for action beyond a wish for increased armaments." He ruefully observed that "those who believe in political trials may go on quoting the Hossbach memorandum." H.W. Koch, a Lecturer at the University of York (England), further dismantled the legend in a 1968 article which concluded that the infamous protocol would be "inadmissible in any other court except the Nuremberg tribunal."

Dankwart Kluge has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the origins of the Second World War. His study will stand for many years as the most authoritative dissection of a great documentary fraud. This attractive work includes the complete text of the Hossbach protocol as an appendix, four photos, and a comprehensive bibliography. The author was born in 1944 in Breslau (Wroclaw), Silesia. Since 1974 he has worked as an attorney in West Berlin. Kluge has done an admirable job of assembling his material, which is drawn not only from all the available published and documentary sources, but also from numerous private interviews and correspondence with key witnesses. Kluge argues his case compellingly, although the narrative style is somewhat weak. This important study leaves no doubt that the highly touted protocol is actually a forged revision of an uncertified copy of an unauthorized original, which has disappeared. Harry Elmer Barnes, to whom the work is dedicated, would have welcomed it heartily.


From The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 3), pp. 372-375.


http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p372_Weber.html

[Hannover]

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world ...

Indeed, that is what is regurgitated repeatedly by the simple minded. All one needs to do is look at a map of the world in 1939, pre-war, and take note of who had already 'conquered the world'.

- Hannover

[Kingfisher]

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world ...

Indeed, that is what is regurgitated repeatedly by the simple minded. All one needs to do is look at a map of the world in 1939, pre-war, and take note of who had already 'conquered the world'. - Hannover

And yet, unfortunately it is accepted by almost the entire world, including many who are anything but simple minded. The Holocaust is part of this larger legend, and both are accepted for the same reason: "everybody knows". It is not so much that it is difficult to question what "everybody knows" - you have shown that it is actually quite easy. It is rather that there are psychological and sociological barriers to doing so.

The myth goes that the mad, evil Hitler and the Nazis seized power in 1933 and immediately began attacking the Jews, (putting them in concentration camps, kicking them out of their jobs and smashing their shops) and rearming . Some Jews managed to escape over the next six years as they knew if they stayed Hitler was going to kill them in gas chambers. In 1934 Hitler consolidated his power by murdering his former comrades and in 1936 remilitarised the Rhineland. The French could have nipped him in the bud at this point but didn't have the guts to do so. German rearmament was so fast that Britain could not keep pace. (France tends to be ignored in this Anglo-American version: the cheese-eating surrender monkeys would be walked over in 1940, though they would then turn into brave Resistants.) In 1938 he seized Austria and then began to take over all of Czechoslovakia by salami tactics. Chamberlain who was weak and stupid was taken in and manipulated but the brave Churchill, who understood what was happening, was powerless. When the British (and French) saw how they had been hoodwinked over Czechoslovakia, they speeded up rearmament to try to catch up with Germany, which was by now far ahead. As soon as he had swallowed Czechoslovakia Hitler turned to Poland. Fortunately, Britain and France had now determined to stop his plan to take over Europe and murder all its Jews (followed by America once he had developed the atom bomb), and when Hitler invaded Poland to get Lebensraum and to kill its Jews (maybe the Slavs as well) they declared war. Hitler then invaded and took over Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and France and would have taken over Britain but for the Spitfires with their brave young pilots and the hero Churchill who rallied the British in their "finest hour" and held out until the Americans, who up to this point had been stupidly blind to the danger represented by the murderous tyrant, were reluctantly dragged in by Pearl Harbour. In the meantime, the madman took over Yugoslavia and Greece. etc. and decided if he couldn't beat Britain he would attack peace-loving Russia.

In the end, America - late but not too late - liberated Europe with a little help from the Russians and everybody (except the Six Million dead jews) would have lived happily ever after, if the brave heroic Russians hadn't suddenly turned into evil Communist brutes behind an iron Curtain...

It's bullshit but it's an internally coherent narrative. None of us have the time, the energy or the knowledge and skills to personally examine and analyse every aspect of life and culture. We have little choice but to rely on received wisdom as found in the academic, news and entertainment media, which generally is reliable on issues of science and technology, but fraught with uncertainty when it comes to history and politics. Only a small number find the time, energy and independence to dig out and assess the sources that contradict it. Until the arrival of the Internet it was nigh impossible for most of us.

The myth has replaced Christianity as the religious glue that holds Western society together. Like other religious beliefs at the height of their power, it becomes a kind of collective hallucination, and doubters are perceived as evil heretics who must be suppressed for sullying the Truth. In our relatively free Westen societies you can question most other things, you can even advocate the overthrow of the social and economic order by revolution, but you must not defile the Myth.

[hermod]

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world ...

Indeed, that is what is regurgitated repeatedly by the simple minded. All one needs to do is look at a map of the world in 1939, pre-war, and take note of who had already 'conquered the world'. - Hannover

And yet, unfortunately it is accepted by almost the entire world, including many who are anything but simple minded. The Holocaust is part of this larger legend, and both are accepted for the same reason: "everybody knows". It is not so much that it is difficult to question what "everybody knows" - you have shown that it is actually quite easy. It is rather that there are psychological and sociological barriers to doing so.

Psychological and socialogical barriers, as well as high political interests (not only Zionist interests).

"The Non-Jewish Stake in the Holocaust Mythology: Why the Continued Success of a Failed Ideology?" Paul Grubach: http://inconvenienthistory.com/archive/ ... hology.php

The myth goes that the mad, evil Hitler and the Nazis seized power in 1933 and immediately began attacking the Jews, (putting them in concentration camps, kicking them out of their jobs and smashing their shops)

"Lies and slander of positively hair-raising perversity are being launched about Germany. Horror stories of dismembered Jewish corpses, gouged-out eyes, and hacked-off hands are circulated for the purpose of defaming the German Volk in the world for a second time, just as they had succeeded in doing once before in 1914. The animosity of millions of innocent human beings, peoples with whom the German Volk wishes only to live in peace, is being stirred up by these unscrupulous criminals. They want German goods and German labour to fall victim to the international boycott. It seems they think the misery in Germany is not bad enough as it is; they have to make it worse!"

They lie about Jewish females who have supposedly been killed; about Jewish girls allegedly being raped before the eyes of their parents; about cemeteries being ravaged! The whole thing is one big lie invented for the sole purpose of provoking a new world-war agitation!"

- Adolf Hitler, March 28, 1933

http://winstonsmithministryoftruth.blog ... -hair.html

Zionist Samuel Untermyer claimed on August 6, 1933 that the Germans were herding the Jews of Germany into "vile concentration camps, starving and torturing them, murdering and beating them without cause and restoring to every other conceivable form of torture, inhuman beyond conception, until suicide has become the only means of escape, and all solely because they are or their remote ancestors were Jews, and all with the avowed object of exterminating them" and "the world will confront a picture so fearful in its barbarous cruelty that the hell of war and the alleged Belgian atrocities will pale into insignificance as compared to this devilishly, deliberately, and cold-bloodedly planned and already partially executed campaign for the extermination of a proud, gentle, loyal, law- abiding people" at a time when German Jews were free to come and go in Germany, to use their wealth as they wished, or to leave and take it with them. When Untermyer pronounced those words, only the most virulent communist agitators (many were jewish) had been put in concentration camps according to a Presidential Order (promulgated by non-Nazi President Hindenburg), German Jews had been excluded from organizations, professions, and other aspects of German public life ("Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service") and a one-day boycott of the jewish shops had taken place on April 1, 1933 (one week after the beginning of the jewish 12-year anti-German boycott). But most of the Holocaust narrative had already been written as Untermyer's words demonstrate. Today no historian would still dare to say that German Jews were being exterminated in August 1933

and rearming .

After asking the other nations to keep their promise and disarm as they had said they would do at Paris/Versailles in 1919...

War Against Syria and the 2010s' Pop-Narrative of WWII

Some Jews managed to escape over the next six years as they knew if they stayed Hitler was going to kill them in gas chambers.

Normal. Many Jews knew Hitler would build gas chambers years before Hitler had allegedly thought about it...

In 1934 Hitler consolidated his power by murdering his former comrades

Something non-Nazi President Hindenburg congratulated and described as "The German Folk Saved from a Serious Danger" (http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t985828/)...

and in 1936 remilitarised the Rhineland. The French could have nipped him in the bud at this point but didn't have the guts to do so.

A return to normality...

German rearmament was so fast that Britain could not keep pace. (France tends to be ignored in this Anglo-American version: the cheese-eating surrender monkeys would be walked over in 1940, though they would then turn into brave Resistants.)

What a joke!

"The state of German armament in 1939 gives the decisive proof that Hitler was not contemplating general war, and probably not intending war at all." (Prof AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, p. 267)

"Even in 1939 the German army was not equipped for a prolonged war; and in 1940 the German land forces were inferior to the French in everything except leadership." (Prof AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, p. 104-5)

http://rense.com/general83/dett.htm (see "Myth 2")

In 1938 he seized Austria

According to the will of the vast majority of that time's Austrian population. A reality which was mainly distorted by the American movie "The Sound of Music" (http://www.ihr.org/other/weber2011soundofmusic.html).

and then began to take over all of Czechoslovakia by salami tactics.

According to Czech President Emil Hacha's request - something confirmed by Hacha's own daughter (who was part of the trip to Berlin) after WW2. Something very understandable when you know that Hacha had seen Czechoslovakia dislocate parts after parts and be seized by the surrounding countries during the previous months...

Chamberlain who was weak and stupid was taken in and manipulated but the brave Churchill, who understood what was happening, was powerless. When the British (and French) saw how they had been hoodwinked over Czechoslovakia, they speeded up rearmament to try to catch up with Germany, which was by now far ahead. As soon as he had swallowed Czechoslovakia Hitler turned to Poland.

The British "blank check" and the subsequent Polish provocations and persecutions of the German minority of Poland helped a lot...

Fortunately, Britain and France had now determined to stop his plan to take over Europe and murder all its Jews (followed by America once he had developed the atom bomb),

and when Hitler invaded Poland to get Lebensraum and to kill its Jews (maybe the Slavs as well) they declared war.

"The fact is that the only real offer of security which Poland received in 1938 and 1939 emanated from Hitler. He offered to guarantee the boundaries laid down in the Versailles Treaty against every other country. Even the Weimar Republic had not for a moment taken this into consideration. Whatever one may think of Hitler's government or foreign policy, no doubt exists on this point; his proposals to Poland in 1938/39 were reasonable and just and the most moderate of all which he made during the six years of his efforts to revise the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means." - Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, American Historian

"The last thing Hitler wanted was to produce another great war. His people, and particularly his generals, were profoundly fearful of any such risk - the experiences of World War One had scarred their minds." - Sir. Basil Liddell Hart, The History of the Second World War

"Of all the Germans, Believe it or not, Hitler is the most moderate as far as Danzig and the Corridor are concerned." - Sir, Neville Henderson, British Ambassador to Berlin, 16th August, 1939

"Poland's decision of August 30, 1939 that was the basis for general mobilization marked a turning point in the history of Europe. It forced Hitler to wage war at a time when he hoped to gain further unbloody victories. " - Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Polish General and Government-in-Exile's commander-in-chief, August 31, 1943

Hitler then invaded and took over Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and France

Hitler should probably have waited to see the Allied troops in the streets of Berlin before fighting any Allied troop...

and would have taken over Britain but for the Spitfires with their brave young pilots

The myths about the battle of Britain: http://www.germancross.com/2nd%20WW/The ... itain.html

and the hero Churchill who rallied the British in their "finest hour"

Churchill's "finest hours"...not as inspirational as claimed before and sometimes even recorded 9 years later for posterity (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23778816).

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." - Winston Churchill

and held out until the Americans, who up to this point had been stupidly blind to the danger represented by the murderous tyrant, were reluctantly dragged in by Pearl Harbour.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p119_Stolley.html


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... p1TOA99S88

In the meantime, the madman took over Yugoslavia and Greece. etc.

After the Allies had replaced the pro-German regime ruling Yugoslavia by a pro-Allies regime and Mussolini had decided to invade Greece without consulting his German ally.

and decided if he couldn't beat Britain he would attack peace-loving Russia.

Very logical.

Myth exploded by Suvorov, Joachim Hoffman and others...

In the end, America - late but not too late - liberated Europe with a little help from the Russians and everybody (except the Six Million dead jews) would have lived happily ever after, if the brave heroic Russians hadn't suddenly turned into evil Communist brutes behind an iron Curtain...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g0XyosEza8

[Hannover]

Well done, hermod.

- Hannover

[propagandaskeptic]

"Serious discussion of the question of the return of colonies to us could only be considered at a moment when Britain was in difficulties and the German Reich armed and strong. The Fuehrer did not share the view that the Empire was unshakable. Opposition to the Empire was to be found less in the countries conquered than among her competitors. The British Empire and the Roman Empire could not be compared in respect of permanence; the latter was not confronted by any powerful political rival of a serious order after the Punic Wars. It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans." http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp

This is a very odd quote from the memorandum. It seems to play into the Nietzchean anti-Christian myth of Hitler when the evidence shows Hitler was if not a devout Catholic at least moderately religious.

[hermod]

"Serious discussion of the question of the return of colonies to us could only be considered at a moment when Britain was in difficulties and the German Reich armed and strong. The Fuehrer did not share the view that the Empire was unshakable. Opposition to the Empire was to be found less in the countries conquered than among her competitors. The British Empire and the Roman Empire could not be compared in respect of permanence; the latter was not confronted by any powerful political rival of a serious order after the Punic Wars. It was only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age which appear in every country, which caused ancient Rome to succumb to the onslaught of the Germans." http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp

This is a very odd quote from the memorandum. It seems to play into the Nietzchean anti-Christian myth of Hitler when the evidence shows Hitler was if not a devout Catholic at least moderately religious.

Indeed. Not consistent with the quote of Hitler reportedly saying that the Catholic Church and the British Empire were both essential elements of stability in the world. Not very consistent either with Hitler's well-known anglophilia and admiration for the British Empire. But British wartime propaganda had spread for a while the lie of Nazi Germany allegedly threatening the British Empire. So the "Hossbach protocol" was probably written or edited accordingly.

"He (Hitler) then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilization that Britain had brought into the world. [...] He compared the British Empire with the Catholic Church - saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany's position on the Continent. [...] The return of Germany's lost colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops if she should be involved in any difficulties anywhere." - Guenther Blumentritt

During an address given several years ago, David Irving, Churchill's biographer, showed the illusory nature of the justifications given by Churchill, first, to launch his countrymen into the war, and then to keep them in it. The business, if one may so term it, was carried out in four phases.

In the initial phase, Churchill assured the British that it was their obligation to go to the aid of a Poland that had fallen victim to Hitler's aggression but, two weeks into the war, this motive was nullified by the Soviet Union's aggression against the same ally.

In the next phase, he explained to his countrymen that they must carry on the war in order to safeguard the British empire. He rejected Germany's repeated peace proposals, and in May 1941 he had the peace emissary Rudolf Hess incarcerated. Whereas Germany wanted to preserve and maintain the British empire, he chose to conclude an alliance with the empire's worst possible enemy: the American Franklin Roosevelt. Thus the second motive was then nullified.

In a third phase, Churchill told the British that they were duty-bound to fight for Democracy, including its most paradoxical variety: the Soviet Socialist. He held that a second European front must be opened to relieve the burden on Stalin. This of course meant aiding a dictatorship that had assaulted Poland on September 17, 1939, and which was preparing a new conquest of that country.

As late as one month before the end of hostilities in Europe (May 8, 1945), British propaganda was generally lacking in coherence, while many British and American soldiers were appalled to learn the extent to which their bombers had ravaged Germany.

It was then that suddenly, in April 1945, there occurred a miracle that enabled Churchill to find his fourth, and really good motive: the discovery of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp prompted him to assert that, Britain's difficult fight over nearly six years, wreaking and enduring so much havoc, was for no less a cause than that of civilization itself. To be sure, on more than one occasion he had already spoken to his countrymen, in his customarily high-flown rhetoric, about Britain as the cradle of a civilization threatened by the Teutonic hordes (the "Huns," as he called them), but these oratorical devices no longer worked so well. The godsend was the discovery in April 1945 of a pestilence-ravaged camp: a boon for Churchill and for British propaganda.


At Bergen-Belsen, the British Introduce the 'Nazi Crime' Media Spectacle

Situated near Hannover, Bergen-Belsen was originally established as a camp for wounded soldiers. In 1943 it became a detention center for European Jews who were to be exchanged for German civilians held by the Allies. In the middle of the war, Jews were transferred from that camp to Switzerland or, by way of Turkey, even to Palestine (yet another proof, as may be pointed out in passing, of the absence of an extermination program).

Until the end of 1944, conditions for inmates at Bergen-Belsen were about normal: then, along with a convoy of deportees brought from regions in the East facing the imminent Soviet onslaught, there arrived epidemics of dysentery, cholera, and exanthematic typhus. The resulting disaster was aggravated by the Anglo-American bombing raids that severely hampered deliveries of medicine, food, and -- most devastating of all -- water. The rail transports of Jews from the East no longer took just two or three days to reach the camp, but rather one or two weeks. Because of Allied air bombardment and strafing, the trains could proceed only at night. As a result, the trains arrived containing only dead and dying, or exhausted men and women unfit to withstand such epidemics. On March 1st, 1945, camp commandant Josef Kramer sent a letter to General Richard Glücks, chief of concentration camp administration, in which he described this "catastrophe" in detail, concluding with the plea: "I implore your help in overcoming this situation." note 51

Germany, on its last legs, could no longer deal with the influx of its own eastern refugees arriving by the millions. It could no longer manage to supply its army with weapons and ammunition, or its population with food. Finally, it could no longer remedy the tragic conditions in camps where even guards were dying of typhus. Himmler authorized Wehrmacht officers to establish contact with the British to warn them that they were approaching, in their advance, a frightful den of infection. Negotiations followed. A wide truce area was declared around Bergen-Belsen, and British and German soldiers decided, by mutual consent, to share the task of camp surveillance.

But what they found in the camp, including barracks and tents flooded with excrement, and the unbearable odor of decomposing bodies, quickly had the British feeling indignant. They came to believe, or were allowed to believe, that the SS had deliberately chosen to kill the inmates or to let them die. And, despite their own best efforts, the British were unable to curb the terrible mortality rate.

Then, like a swarm of vultures, journalists swooped down on the camp, filming and photographing every possible horror. They also proceeded to arrange certain scenes of their own making: a famous one, shown for example in the film "Night and Fog," is that of a bulldozer pushing corpses into a large pit. Many viewers have been led to believe that they are seeing "German bulldozers." note 52 They didn't notice that the bulldozer (just one) is driven by a British soldier who, doubtless after a body count, is pushing the corpses into a large trench that had been dug after the camp's liberation. The Jew Sydney Lewis Bernstein, London head of the Home Office cinema section, called on Alfred Hitchcock to make a film on these "Nazi atrocities." Hitchcock accepted, but, in the end, only fragments of his film were made public, probably because the complete version contained assertions that might cast doubt on its authenticity. note 53

On the whole, the "shock of Bergen-Belsen" was a great success for Allied propaganda. In every possible way, the media exploited it to show dead and dying camp inmates to the world at large, but while at the same time leading viewers, through commentary, to think that these inmates had been killed, murdered, or exterminated, or else were walking corpses condemned to perish as victims of killing, murder, or extermination. Thus, on the basis of the ghastly conditions in a camp that, as already noted, had neither crematories nor (as conventional historians acknowledge) any homicidal gas chamber, was built the general myth of the existence and use, at Auschwitz and elsewhere, of "gas chambers" coupled with crematories.

Among the most famous casualties of epidemics in that camp were Anne Frank and her sister Margot who, for nearly 40 years, were widely and persistently said to have been gassed at Auschwitz (from where, in fact, they had been brought), or killed at Bergen-Belsen. Today, it is generally conceded that they died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in February-March 1945.

The "shock of Bergen-Belsen" was very quickly imitated by the Americans who, turning to Hollywood, shot a series of motion pictures on the liberation of the German camps. After editing the extensive footage (6,000 feet of film, of a total of 80,000), they produced a film that was shown on November 29, 1945, at the Nuremberg trial. Everyone, including most of the defendants, found it quite disturbing. A few of the defendants sensed the deceit, but it was too late: the great lie's bulldozer had been set in motion. It is still running today. The viewers of all the many horror films on the "Nazi camps" have, over time, been conditioned by the choice of images and the commentary. A section of wall, a heap of shoes, a smokestack: it has taken no more than these for the public to believe that they have seen a chemical slaughterhouse.


http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n1p-2_Faurisson.html

[Hektor]

Here is a German version of the supposed document:
http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/pdf/deu/German50.pdf
and an English translation:
http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English50.pdf

Supposedly this is a copy of a copy of a copy.....

How credible.

Here is how some gullible German hobby historians deal with it:
http://www.geschichtsforum.de/f68/krieg ... 5-a-17476/

[Mortimer]

Here is what David Hoggan had to write about this subject. It is taken from the blog of John Wear author of Germany's War.
https://wearswar.wordpress.com/2018/02/ ... n-leaders/
Hoggan agrees with other revisionists that the Hossbach protocol is spurious and recounts how it was used by the prosecution at the Nuremberg tribunal.

[Deitrich]

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world ...

Indeed, that is what is regurgitated repeatedly by the simple minded. All one needs to do is look at a map of the world in 1939, pre-war, and take note of who had already 'conquered the world'. - Hannover

And yet, unfortunately it is accepted by almost the entire world, including many who are anything but simple minded. The Holocaust is part of this larger legend, and both are accepted for the same reason: "everybody knows". It is not so much that it is difficult to question what "everybody knows" - you have shown that it is actually quite easy. It is rather that there are psychological and sociological barriers to doing so.

The myth goes that the mad, evil Hitler and the Nazis seized power in 1933 and immediately began attacking the Jews, (putting them in concentration camps, kicking them out of their jobs and smashing their shops) and rearming . Some Jews managed to escape over the next six years as they knew if they stayed Hitler was going to kill them in gas chambers. In 1934 Hitler consolidated his power by murdering his former comrades and in 1936 remilitarised the Rhineland. The French could have nipped him in the bud at this point but didn't have the guts to do so. German rearmament was so fast that Britain could not keep pace. (France tends to be ignored in this Anglo-American version: the cheese-eating surrender monkeys would be walked over in 1940, though they would then turn into brave Resistants.) In 1938 he seized Austria and then began to take over all of Czechoslovakia by salami tactics. Chamberlain who was weak and stupid was taken in and manipulated but the brave Churchill, who understood what was happening, was powerless. When the British (and French) saw how they had been hoodwinked over Czechoslovakia, they speeded up rearmament to try to catch up with Germany, which was by now far ahead. As soon as he had swallowed Czechoslovakia Hitler turned to Poland. Fortunately, Britain and France had now determined to stop his plan to take over Europe and murder all its Jews (followed by America once he had developed the atom bomb), and when Hitler invaded Poland to get Lebensraum and to kill its Jews (maybe the Slavs as well) they declared war. Hitler then invaded and took over Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and France and would have taken over Britain but for the Spitfires with their brave young pilots and the hero Churchill who rallied the British in their "finest hour" and held out until the Americans, who up to this point had been stupidly blind to the danger represented by the murderous tyrant, were reluctantly dragged in by Pearl Harbour. In the meantime, the madman took over Yugoslavia and Greece. etc. and decided if he couldn't beat Britain he would attack peace-loving Russia.

In the end, America - late but not too late - liberated Europe with a little help from the Russians and everybody (except the Six Million dead jews) would have lived happily ever after, if the brave heroic Russians hadn't suddenly turned into evil Communist brutes behind an iron Curtain...

It's bullshit but it's an internally coherent narrative. None of us have the time, the energy or the knowledge and skills to personally examine and analyse every aspect of life and culture. We have little choice but to rely on received wisdom as found in the academic, news and entertainment media, which generally is reliable on issues of science and technology, but fraught with uncertainty when it comes to history and politics. Only a small number find the time, energy and independence to dig out and assess the sources that contradict it. Until the arrival of the Internet it was nigh impossible for most of us.

The myth has replaced Christianity as the religious glue that holds Western society together. Like other religious beliefs at the height of their power, it becomes a kind of collective hallucination, and doubters are perceived as evil heretics who must be suppressed for sullying the Truth. In our relatively free Westen societies you can question most other things, you can even advocate the overthrow of the social and economic order by revolution, but you must not defile the Myth.

5 years ago I would have thought this guy and his post to be totally insane- it's a completely honest synopsis in every line, including the last paragraph.

[Otium]

On the Hossbach memo Irving states:

page 49 An authentic but evidently incomplete note on the Hossbach Conference of Nov 5, 1937 exists, written on Nov 10 (ND, 386–ps). There has been controversy as to its authenticity: e.g., Walter Bussmann in VfZ, 1968, 373ff. I am satisfied with it, as Hitler’s adjutants (Below, Puttkamer) told me they saw it at the time; it is also mentioned in Jodl’s diary, and in Beck’s horrified commentary of Nov 12 (BA, n.28/4), and indirectly in the Wehrmacht directive of Dec 7, 1937. Other useful arguments on it: Kielmansegg, in VfZ, 1960, 268ff; and Hermann Gackenholz, Reichskanzlei 5 Nov 1937 (Berlin, 1958), 458ff. It is to be noted that there is no acceptable evidence of any opposition by Fritsch either at this conference or later. He did not even mention the conference in his private papers. Alan Bullock, in Hitler, a Study in Tyranny, describes a dramatic row between Hitler and Fritsch on Nov : it must have been a loud one, because Fritsch spent the day in Berlin and Hitler was in Munich.

David Irving, Hitler's War and the War Path (Focal Point Publications, 2002) Pp. 847

Irving is yet again not using critical thought, and just towing the narrative line of the establishment. Whether Puttkamer or Von Below "saw" this document is immaterial, literally, there's no way to verify if this is true although I suspect it might be due to the fact that Below wrote in his memoirs that the original version that he claimed to see was longer than the one submitted at Nuremberg (Rhonhof, p. 381) . Even Hossbach himself couldn't confirm whether the version of the memo at Nuremberg was an authentic copy of the original, "in summa", he said, it reproduced the original (Rhonhof, p. 381). Nobody is disputing that there was an original version of the memo, only that the subsequent importance of the Memo we do have isn't legitimate, nor is it a faithful rendition of the speech Hitler gave. The version of the memo that was used as evidence at Nuremberg, and subsequently by historians, is a photocopy of a typewritten copy! Even if there was at one time an original we do not have it:

The so-called “Hossbach Memorandum” is not available in any shape or form, neither as an original nor as a copy, nor has it ever been.7 There exists merely the photocopy of a typewritten copy which had been slipped privately (the source remained unknown), without a signature, to the Americans in 1945.

Udo Walendy, Who Started World War II? (Castle Hill Publishers, 2014), Pp. 449

However:

Grand Admiral Raeder also casts doubt on the authenticity of the transcript and the copy and demands at the trial that the original of the transcipt be submitted, which is in the possession of the Americans. His lawyer wants to check whether between the typescript and the photocopy montages have been performed. The court rejects the request. The Americans refuse to submit the original of the typescript to an inspection.

Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, 1939 - The War that Had Many Fathers (Olzog Verlag, George F. Held English Translation, 2011), Pp. 381

I wouldn't be surprised if the original document no longer existed. That is, if it even existed in the first place. The Americans may not have presented it simply because they didn't have it, or because if it did exist, then it would destroy the fabrications of the photocopied typewritten copy that the prosecution preferred to use.

There were never official minutes taken of this conference, and it was only ever made to be important by the enemies of Hitler. Hossbach himself was a friend of Canaris, and Ludwig Beck was involved in the July 1944 bomb plot. The fact that Irving gives Credence to Beck is also shocking because he wasn't even an attendant at the conference!

Like some other aristocratic and traditionalist conservatives, Hossbach became a bitter opponent of Hitler and the National Socialist regime. He was an intimate friend of General Ludwig Beck, who was executed in 1944 for his leading role in the conspiracy which tried to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the government. Despite his postwar denial, it is virtually certain that Hossbach prepared his slanted version of the conference at Beck's urging for possible use in discrediting the Hitler regime following a coup d'etat. Hossbach was also close to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of military intelligence, and General Ziehlberg, both of whom were also executed for their roles in the 1944 assassination plot. Even in early 1938 Hossbach, Beck and Canaris were in favor of a coup to forcibly overthrow Hitler.

The Hossbach 'Protocol': The Destruction of a Legend: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p372_Weber.html

And

The researchers of the Military History Research office (Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt: MGFA) [...] consider the authenticity of the content of the protocol as proven by "critical studies of source" and the handed-down response of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army Beck. The MGFA therefore relies on a general who was not present there, on Colonel General Beck.

[...]

On Beck, who has not even participated in the meeting, the "Protocol" makes a "devastating impression".

Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, 1939 - The War that Had Many Fathers (Olzog Verlag, George F. Held English Translation, 2011), Pp. 383, 384

It's not exactly new information that the Generals and Army staff were skittish and old-fashioned. They didn't have the same access to information that Hitler had, the secret decodes for example, so their assessments of the foreign policy situation of the Reich was uniformly bleak. Nor did many of them trust the Corporal Hitler. There were loyal generals and adjutants of course, Keitel and Jodl for example.

[Hannover]

Hannover wrote:

Hitler, we're told over and over again, set out to conquer the world ...

Indeed, that is what is regurgitated repeatedly by the simple minded. All one needs to do is look at a map of the world in 1939, pre-war, and take note of who had already 'conquered the world'.

Kingfisher response:

And yet, unfortunately it is accepted by almost the entire world, including many who are anything but simple minded. The Holocaust is part of this larger legend, and both are accepted for the same reason: "everybody knows". It is not so much that it is difficult to question what "everybody knows" - you have shown that it is actually quite easy. It is rather that there are psychological and sociological barriers to doing so.

"Are anything but simple minded"?
Good heavens, KF.
People who simply follow along via "everybody knows" and thoughtlessly yield to "psychological and sociological barriers" are the epitome of simple mindedness.

- Hannover