Category: World War II

The Situation of the Jews in Europe, a 1941 Assessment

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

Jews in Nazi Europe, February 1933 to November 1941; a study prepared by the Institute of Jewish affairs, submitted to the Inter-American Jewish conference, November 23-24-25, 1941, Baltimore, Md., .Institute of Jewish Affairs.Institute of Jewish Affairs, [New York, 1941]. This 175pp (or so) report made at the end of 1941 was a sort of census about what was happening to the Jews delegated in geographical sections, at the end of which was an overview summation. The writer(s) were seeing things accurately in terms of overall viciousness towards the Jews, and amongst other conquered peoples, but did not see the full and overwhelming, impossible, extent of the situation and the enormous numbers, not in 1941. (In that year alone, addressing solely the construction of concentration camps, six death/extermination camps were constructed in Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec , Sobibór, Lublin ( Majdanek ), and Chelmno, with the result of murdering millions.)

This from the “Conclusion”:

“How does the general picture of Jewish life in Axis Europe look? The most important elements are the following: 1. Decrease in the number of Jews in Europe At the beginning of 1933» the area now under Axis domination had a population of about 8,500,000 Jews. Since that time, about 600,000 Jews have migrated. Another 400,000 are now homeless refugees, interned in concentration camps, building railways in deserts, waiting vainly in harbors for a ship, rotting on floating prisons, in the heat of the Sahara and in the cold of Siberia…addition, hundreds of thousands of Jews of the Soviet Union have been forced to leave their homes as evacuees and as refugees. The Jewish birth rate has been decreasing steadily during this period, while the death rate has been increasing at an accelerated speed of between five and ten times the normal pace. The population has been further decimated by the death of thousands in concentration camps, at the hands of the Gestapo and in the flames of total war, while many thousands more took their own lives in hopeless despair…”–Jews in Nazi Europe…, final section (unpaginated).

The entire document is well worth reading:

[Source for page images: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c070874352;view=2up;seq=1

[Source for text version: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ssd?id=mdp.39015002352097;seq=303;num=

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Social History — World War II
The Nazis, Seudetenland, and Budweis (1938)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

This pamphlet¹ by Karl Janovsky seems to be a very thorough and heavy piece of German-interest propaganda regarding the Seudetenland, and seems to have been printed prior to the “annexation”. The tragic front cover bears a label for the meeting of the NSDAP Council in Budweis, Czechoslovakia, for June 4, 1939. Unfortunately we see the famous 16th century Black Tower desecrated by two large Nazi banners. The tower survived; the Nazis didn’t. (Also–Budweiser, the U.S. beer, was originally supposed to be a knockoff of the famous bier brewed here since the 14th century–after a while, Budweiser USA “changed directions” in the taste of their beer, but kept the marketing and brand, which is enormously valuable.) And so one of the statistical maps, showing a chart of imports from Germany into Czechoslovakia:

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Anticipation, History of — World War II
On Not Repudiating Versailles–Yet (1932)
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

I found this scarce, offset publication¹ written in 1932 by Dr. Otto Kiep (who was the German Consul General in New York) which addressed the worldwide Depression and the German interpretation of it. At this point, nearly two years after the U.S. market collapse, and still in the last lingering months of the Hoover presidency, the Depression had not yet earned the sobriquet “Great”, though that would come soon enough. In these dark days before the Dark Days Kiep addressed the German intention of honoring the Versailles Treaty, stating that “Germany is not r e p u d i a t in g [sic] her contractual obligations” and that no government had anything to fear. Of course that would not last long, though it is highly doubtful that Kiep had anything to do with the Nazi plans shaping up behind his back.

Following his great success in the election of 1930, Hitler decided in February 1932 to run for the presidency against von Hindenburg, from which emerged the Great and Impossible Tragedy, and the series of horrific events that would see Hitler in power in 1933. It was then, nearly immediately following his consolidation of power that Hitler promptly decided to drop the Versailles Treaty in all of its ways and means.

So, if this pamphlet was printed in January/February 1932 there was only a year left to Kiep’s claim of non-repudiation. Kiep moved on from his position and in short order would advance to a new job in charge of the Reich’s Press Office. It turns out that Kiep was an ardent German and fervent anti-Nazi, and became one of the nearly 5000 people Hitler executed for their real or imagined role in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. He was tried by the reprehensible Freisler², found guilty, and like the great mass of others was hanged or shot within two hours of his verdict.

Notes:
1. [KIEP, Otto.] Germany’s Attitude Towards the Present Crisis (Remarks of Dr. O.C. Kiep, German Consul General in New York, before the Eastern Regional Conference… No place and no date, though it is dated February 1932 by hand on the back of the first sheet. 11×8″, 6 leaves. Provenance: H.L. Mencken, and then the Library of Congress. WorldCat/OCLC locates 0 copies.
2. Roland Freisler was a Wannsee attendee and President of the People’s Court, an architect of the Nazification of German law enabler of the Holocaust. He died in February 1945, killed by falling debris in a bombing raid in Berlin. He was a widely despised man who was the presiding judge of countless show trials, and his death was evidently mourned by no one.
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World War II
A Declaration of Future Independence (1942)

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“I am speaking to you once again since the time of the bloody persecutions to which you have been subjected from the inhuman German regime since the shooting of Heydrich”

This morning I’m sharing a scarce document¹of a radio broadcast for 8 August 1942 made by the president of the Czechoslovka Republic, Edvard Benes. In this address Benes (1884-1948) announces the formal nullification of the dreaded Munich Agreement (or Munich Diktat in Czechoslovakia) of 30 September 1938 in which the infamous “Peace in Our Time” appeasement was made with Hitler granting the Nazis annexation of certain parts of Czechoslovakia, and without the participation of the Czech government. Benes, who was the president of Czechoslovakia then in exile in London, reports on the action of Jan Masaryk concluding a treaty with the British government on the “final liquidation” of the Munich agreement and the return of the seized lands come war’s end.

I’m sharing this now as I can find no trace of the address online nor is there any sighting of it in WorldCat or OCLC. The full document follows the page-break:

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Anticipation, History of — World War II
How Warsaw Fell (1944)
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2757 (expanding an earlier post)

The bottom line of the 63-day-long Second Warsaw Uprising (August/September 1944) is that the Soviet Union allowed the Polish Home Army to fail, watching from its position across the Vistula as the Nazis and Poles slugged it out, both exhausting themselves, the Nazis ultimately defeating the Poles, eliminating most of the Soviet concern for the Polish military and government, allowing the Soviet Union to take the country over more completely when the time came a few months earlier. It was the Soviets’ choice to see two enemies annihilate themselves to have more control over Poland and immediately turn it into a vassal state when it rolled into Warsaw in January, with 85% of the city destroyed (“at the moment of its fall practically the whole city was [razed] to the ground”) and 600,000 of the city’s population dead, along with 80% of the Home Army.
- Full text (though not from my copy) here, at Instytut Józefa Piłsudskiego w Londynie :http://pilsudski.org.uk/archiwa/dokument.php?nonav=&salatka=1&nrar=709&nrzesp=108&sygn=88&handle=709.238/632
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Social History — World War II