The Berlin Wife by Marion Kummerow - Book Review - Five Stars

 

BOOK REVIEW FIVE STARS

The Berlin Wife: A totally gripping WW2 historical novel about bravery against the odds by Marion Kummerow

An eye-opening novel that is timely and based on true history. 

In this age of enlightenment it is unfathomable that an entire adult population could be duped into voting for and backing a Fascist with a criminal record.

As an introduction to this era and the political climate that precipitated a Fascist government which quickly spread over Europe and beyond resulting in 13 over run countries and millions of victims, I recommend listening to the audio book; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer.

Pay special attention to 1943.

It has been said that Americans can be sold anything, even a war. The last war they won was in 1945.

EXCERPTS:

Did you know that he recently founded his own party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party? It already has fifty thousand members.” Joseph puffed out his breast, leaving no doubt that he was one of the fifty thousand.

“This is the problem of all democracies. The commoners are simply not educated enough to know what is good for the country, they tend to put their personal benefit over everything else. We need a strong ruler in Germany to reunite the states.”

I have experienced more crises in my life than I care to remember. All have passed sooner or later. Those who are prepared will profit, the rest goes under.

You just sit back and let the inflation do its work. I’m quite certain a currency reform is the only way out of this depression, then you have got it made.

“Hitler is our man,” Joseph said as he took the offered cigar. Julius shook his head. “I don’t see how. He’s too hotheaded, has no political experience, no allies, and, most importantly, no backing in the population.”

Hitler has to stifle his rhetoric if he wants to be successful.”

The task was done. Germany was on its way to a bright future! And he would be an important part of it.

Joseph offered a toast. “Our leader Adolf Hitler can always rely on his SS. We will do our duty. Heil Hitler!”

A vicious coup had been prevented and everyone in the unit would receive a promotion.

Over the course of a week, not only had fifty SA leaders in the hotel been eliminated, but also Ernst Röhm had been arrested and shot on Hitler’s order.

Hitler told his senior SS men, in the same words he later repeated in front of the German Parliament, consisting solely of trusted NSDAP members. About two hundred men had been killed: Only Vice-Chancellor von Papen evaded death and was placed under house arrest.

Hitler had won on every count, and at the same time had shown his people that he was their sole leader, who would ruthlessly oppress any and all critics, no matter who they were or how much power they held.

The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor supposedly protected the racial purity of the Master Race and forbade “miscegenation”, or inter-breeding, between Aryans and Jews.

Reich Citizenship Law additionally stipulated that a Jew, and to a lesser extent a half-Jew, did not belong to the German race and nation, thus was not allowed to have the Reich citizenship.

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RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS. 1940-1945 - John M. Grimsrud

 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS. 1940-1945

I was born in 1940.

My first remembrance of those war years is that I could see real hate in everybody’s eyes as they chanted “kill the Nazis.” The chant “kill the Nazis” became “kill the Germans” by the end of the war.

There were 13 countries overrun by the Axis powers (Fascists), Germany, Spain, Italy, and finally Japan.

The U. S. issued 13 different commemorative five cent postage flag stamps depicting all of these overrun countries.

A link to the stamps: Click here.

I obtained a three by four foot world map that I framed and made into a stamp map where I affixed and labeled the countries stamps, and so opened my education in geography and interest in world history.

In 1944 when I was four years old, I ran away from home. Getting a beating, slapped around, and having soap rubbed in my eyes got me going. Mom said that I hurt her and now she was going to hurt me.Grandma’s apartment was nine blocks away, and I was on my way.

Wartime gasoline rationing made the streets quiet, and the East End Drug where Grandma’s apartment was located I knew well. It was my best-loved sanctuary…I loved Grandma, and she loved me. She named me stakkar, and said in Norwegian that means “poor thing.” Grandma was fully aware of her daughter’s personality and her eccentric dangerous behavior.

Great aromas wafted up from Grandma’s humble little kitchen where Scandinavian cookies were always in abundance. Her dessert specialty was prunes whipped up in whipping cream, oh so good!

Grandma was also a “poor thing.” When Grandma was sixteen years old she and four of her brothers set sail for America saying a final farewell to family and friends, and returning was not going to be an option.

Grandma told me a story about when the sailors played a prank on her bringing her a banana to see what she would do with it. Her little Norwegian village was isolated amd only accessible by boat in good weather with no electric or phone where they spoke only an Old Norse dialect. She had never seen a banana.

Grandma and her brothers headed west in America and did not stop until they reached a place where they could speak Norse. North Dakota is where they settled, but it was not yet a state, and Indian raids were serious business. You could see a long way in Dakota Territory but you couldn’t see much. There wasn’t anything to obstruct your view, not even a tree for a bird to sit in…they had to hop around on the ground. The soil was fabulously rich, and farming was a dream come true, not like rock bound Norway. Land was free for the taking.

Grandma married Edwin Benson, a landed Norwegian. He and his brother weren't taught any work ethics, and after the parents died the farm was lost. The sad part was that oil was later discovered on the farm land.

Grandpa Benson took a job as a watchman on the railroad when he moved to Superior, Wisconsin, with his wife and three daughters.

When the great depression hit and the “Hoover Days” began the family took up residence in a humble shanty in the woods east of Brule, Wisconsin.

My father married my mother, Myrtle Benson, the second of the three daughters and provided her widowed mother Bertha an apartment above his East End Drug Store.

Back to my runaway story, yes it was “poor thing” Grandma.

Grandma’s apartment:

Prominently displayed on her living room wall was a large sepia photo of her younger brother in his military dress uniform. He died in 1918.

I met one of Grandma’s brothers, Ingvald, who was a cook aboard a Great Lakes ore carrier that frequently called at Duluth-Superior harbor. He would always came to visit his sister Bertha arriving by city bus. One day when I was with my father in his car in downtown Superior, I spotted Ingvald at the corner of Belknap and Tower where he would transfer to the East End bus line. My Dad stopped and picked up Ingvald and drove him to Grandma’s apartment above the East End Drug Store. Gasoline was rationed at this time. but Dad received gasoline ration stamps because his drug store did home deliveries of medicine. Dad’s blue Studebaker coupe had to out last the war, rusted out floor boards and all.

Back to Grandma’s apartment, and my runaway story:

Grandma had a still working very old desk top tube radio that we would tune into for noon time weather and news plus some favorite evening broadcasts. During the war news was especially important for us and couldn’t be missed.

Her well-worn dining room table and chairs were part of a set with a bureau of drawers filled with her few valuables.

She treasured an envelope from her family in the Old County. It had been opened and resealed with an ornate tape decorated with Nazi swastikas. Inside the envelope the letter had been meticulously blanked out to censor the message. This was my first hand look at Fascism that was spreading across Europe with lightning speed and killing thousands in its wake. From the very northern tip of Norway on the Arctic Ocean at Kirkenes all the way south to the Straits of Gibraltar in southern Spain fascism had total control of the west coast of Europe. This was frighting and resistance was imperative. The U. S. was at the same time battling fanatic Kamikaze Imperial fascist Japan in the Pacific Ocean.

I have to interject that in 1944 I was only four years old, but I have to expand on this monumental story of my family’s involvement of resistance to Hitler’s Nazi invasion of little neutral Norway with a population of 3 million.

In the predawn hours of April 10, 1940, three German battle ships flying British flags stealthy and deceptively entered the Oslo Fjord refusing to halt on demand and identify themselves. My Grandfather’s nephew then performing his military duty (national guard), took aim with his Krupp German made cannon and sent 1,600 of the deceptive invading Nazi’s to the bottom of Oslo harbor. Neutral Norway whether they wanted it or not had entering the war and would be brutally occupied. They would be just one of the thirteen invaded countries of WWII.

Grandma’s oldest daughter, Esther enlisted in the military and was off to war. Her youngest daughter Nelly Bergland married a career military man who served five years in Europe during WWII, and was later sent off to Korea.

My dad’s older brother Lawrence was inducted into the army infantry and shipped off to North Africa and then to Italy where he was involved in the bloodiest invasion battle of WWII at Anzio, Italy. That brutal experience altered him for life.

Dr. Rudy Christianson, my father’s very best friend, I called him my “Uncle Rudy” gave his life to the war effort taking amphetamines “speed” so that he could do his life saving surgery until he literary dropped. Less than three years after the war his heart quit.

My father was deferred from military service because he was vital to the efforts at home, but his father, born in 1879, was eligible to be called to service. I remember my father, born in 1908, telling me that regarding military inscription of his father, he told him,

“How could they take an old man like you?”

Back to Grandma’s apartment: I was safe with Grandma.

There came a knock on the door and Grandma had me hide in her bedroom. There was a police man inquiring about me. Grandma protected me, and she sent the policeman on his way.

In retrospect looking back on this incident I learned about poisonous personalities and how deceptive and cunning they could be. Bipolar psychopathic personalities are impossible to live with and absolutely no positive outcome can ever be expected.

What sparked my memories?

I recently listened to the audio version of the book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I highly recommend it. It is apropos to our current times.

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What is Fascism?

 

WHAT IS FASCISM?

From Webster’s Third International Unabridged Dictionary;

Fascism; “any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship and forcible suppression of opposition”.

The Thousand-year Reich in Germany only survived for twelve years under fascism.

Here is what war correspondent Eric Sevareid had to say after total immersion in WWII from start to finish in his monumental book, Not So Will A Dream:

“Now our Military Government officers were sorting out the sick and the healthy at the entryway, bringing water for them and dispatching trucks for bread and meat. The Germans clustered in large groups, watching the Americans’ every move and gesture. The woman’s legs were smeared with coal dust, and their hair straggled down over their unwashed faces while children blinked their eyes and clung to their mothers’ skirts. Despite this familiar situation of misery and starvation, a thing I had seen many times before, the relationship was not the normal one. It was conqueror and conquered, of course, but there was something else besides. You could see in their eyes. There were the sullen expressions of suspicion which one suspected, but there were other expressions, which revealed a deep, fixed indignation, which said: “This cannot happen to us.” There seemed to be a sheep like desire to do exactly as they were told, and yet an air of outraged dignity. When their burgomaster announced in a loud voice that the Americans would be unable to move back into their homes until the next day, a muttering ran through the crowd, there were drooping sneers on the faces of some of the young men and women, and one white haired grandmother burst into shrieks of despair and anger. Human misery is human misery, but I could not avoid a sudden feeling of detestation and incredulity. Millions of people in many lands were in the same condition, and worse, because of what the Germans had done. The starving dehumanized foreign workers were just down the road. The homes of these Germans, as we had verified, were stocked with food, warm clothes, new furniture, and radios. One could tell at ounce merely by looking into their faces that they had not the faintest sense of having done anything wrong, that they were utterly unable to grasp what had happened to them and their country, that they had been, were now, and would continue to be concerned only with themselves, unable even to imagine the suffering of others.

It could have been self-deceptive, but I had a profound feeling of having seen at a flash into the minds of a people who were different. As we drove back across the river I realized that a contradiction had been introduced into what had been a basic belief of mine: that all people are essentially the same, that all are capable of democracy and peace, that given bread and security they will have no desire to aggress upon others, that if all people are given bread and security long enough, wars will be impossible. Now I felt entirely unsure of the economic interpretation of political events. Whatever the overpowering logic of Marx and others, I had an uneasy feeling that the structure broke down where the Germans were concerned. It was difficult to put into words, but somehow they were different. They were not quite rational or normal in the realm of human relationships, in the procedures of social existence. There was an inexplicable knot in their souls. Their spirit was an ingrown one, not an outgoing one. Perhaps, as some said there was a loneliness in them, but if so it was a loneliness which neither we nor they could assuage on this world, this side of death. Had this generation of breast-beating and mysticism alone done this to them? I was not sure; I was inclined to feel it was a basic and permanent matter, and how outsiders-conquerors and others- were to go about altering this state of affairs I had no idea. The war we had poured upon the country had certainly altered Germany; I had yet to believe that it had altered the Germans.”

(So, that is what Eric Sevareid had to say about the Germans directly after the war.)

A quote from my wife Jane: “No politician can exist without a Krupp behind them!”

The German people as a whole are honest, hard working, law abiding, dedicated, and loyal to their leadership. When compared to all nationalities world wide they stack up near the very top in all of the above attributes.

Now America: “The home of the brave”

“The land of the free, with Liberty and Justice for ALL”

is under the jackboot of fascism.

Will it survive the dynasty?

In addition, if so, how long?

As America entered WWII, the slogan was; “Kill the Nazis” and that soon became; “Kill the Germans”.

So, it went from kill Castro to kill the “Cubans”, then; “kill the Viet Cong became kill the gooks”. Recently this became kill Ben Laden and that soon moved on to “kill the rag-heads”.

Who are the insurgents now?

Who are the imperialists?

Where is the evil empire?

America needs to take a long look in the mirror!

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Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell - Book Review Five Stars

Book Review - Five Stars

Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell

As WWII was ramping up to begin, fascism was spreading across Europe on the wings of the Blitzkrieg with blood thirsty Francisco Franco and his like-minded followers clamoring for despotic dictatorship. There would ultimately be thirteen overrun countries by war’s end and countless millions of slaughtered victims.

As the French writer André Malraux put it, “Fascism has spread its great black wings over Europe.”

How quickly memories fade as history is about to repeat itself only now with much more sophisticated and deadly weaponry.

EXCERPTS:

The late 1930s were a grim time. Not only had Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini established dictatorships in Germany and Italy, but in half a dozen other countries, from Portugal to Lithuania, Hungary to Greece, régimes of the far right had risen to power, some of them, like the Nazis, making dark threats against Jews. Even in England, the British Union of Fascists boasted fifty thousand members; wearing black tunics, black trousers, and wide black leather belts, they paraded through Jewish neighborhoods of London under a flag with a lightning bolt, shouting insults, giving the straight-arm salute, and beating up anyone in their way.

In the first weeks of fighting, the plotters and their troops occupied roughly a third of Spain. The dominant figure among them quickly became a young general, Francisco Franco—ambitious, puritanical, devoutly Catholic, and possessed by a fierce belief that he was destined to save Spain from a deadly conspiracy of Bolsheviks, Freemasons, and Jews.

He spoke of Germany as “a model which we will always keep before us” and kept a photo of Hitler on his desk. “It is necessary to spread terror,” declared another general, Emilio Mola. “We have to create the impression of mastery [by] eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do.”

Eliminated they were, with a violence far greater than anything seen when Hitler or Mussolini had first seized power. As Franco’s armies advanced through Spain, it was with a ferocity that Europeans had assumed their right in colonial wars but that had seldom been unleashed in Europe itself since the Inquisition. Trade union leaders and Spanish Republic officials, including forty parliamentary deputies from the governing coalition, were bayoneted or shot on sight.

Most regular army officers had joined Franco, and quickly Hitler and Mussolini began supplying his forces with airplanes, tanks, and other weapons, and, from Italy, whole divisions of infantrymen. Against these forces the Republic mustered a smaller number of loyal officers and soldiers, and, trained hastily or not at all, badly armed militias organized by trade unions or left-wing political parties. Desperately short of rifles, artillery, tanks, and warplanes, it tried to buy these weapons overseas. But Britain, France, and the United States were, in varying degrees, leery of the Republic’s left-leaning government, and all of them were loath to fuel a war that might spread to engulf the continent. They declared that they would not sell arms to either side in Spain and pressured many smaller countries to follow their lead.

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