Goerings last Stand

[PBI]

Did anyother members watch this Drama Documentary ?,of interest was the American Army phsycologist who was Jewish and who was assigned to profile Goering.The American Officers Father had been arrested and sent to Buchenwald sometime in 1938..3 Weeks later He is sent Home,no explanations given.The reasons for this were later found to have bbeen a direct order from Goering declaring that any Jew who had served in the Kaisers Army and had been awarded a Decoration was to be Freed Immediatley.Amazing.Happily the Family left Germany and reached America.

[Take on me]

I remember seeing something like that on an episode of Days That Shook the World, it was covering the Night of the Broken Glass, the day when the Nazis unleashed a pogrom upon the Jews in late 1938. It told the story of a Jewish man who was able to shock the SS men who had arrived to arrest him into leaving, by presenting an Iron Cross he had won in the trenches.

Jon

[gporta]

Primo Levi, in his book "If this is a man", gives an example of the contrary: an old man who had fought in WW1 and was decorated, and was shocked as to why he was kept in a concentration camp by the same fatherland he had fought for twenty years before.

Gloria

[Take on me]

Primo Levi, in his book "If this is a man", gives an example of the contrary: an old man who had fought in WW1 and was decorated, and was shocked as to why he was kept in a concentration camp by the same fatherland he had fought for twenty years before.

A First World War past would have been of no help to anyone of Jewish origin during the 1940s, I think that we can be fairly short of that.

Jon

[gporta]

Then it would be assumed that the Jewish veteran mentioned in the first post had a very lucky escape?

Gloria

[Take on me]

Then it would be assumed that the Jewish veteran mentioned in the first post had a very lucky escape?

Yes. Although it must be said that Nazi racism had not reached the intensity that it did during the Second World War during the late thirties. The nature of the Nazi state meant that it was constantly radicalising. It had not reached its height in 1938, Jews would certainly not have been released during the 1940s. Nevertheless it was certainly a lucky escape.

The Nazis always considered the trenches to be the birth place of their movement. They idolised those who had fought during the war and never believed that Germany was actually defeated. Those Jews who fought during the First World War and escaped being imprisoned during the 1930s were probably respected because of their service histories. Although chances are the cases mentioned above are probably exceptions.

Anyway I am now getting completely off topic.

Jon

[PBI]

go to google search and type in Hitlers Jewish Army.

[Guest mruk]

I don't think your off the mark Jon. But rather than the 'radicalization' of German politics, I tend to agree with George Mosse, and see it has the 'brutalization' of German policiess, which had its origins both pre and post war. I don't want to go into a lengthy discussion of how anti-Semitism was most manifest, such as the 'Jewish Question', and the 'Jew Count' of Jewish soldiers in WW1, but almost certainly by 1929, the Jews had been excluded by the 'Stahleim', the German veterans organisation, and by 1935 an edict had been imposed forbidding the inclusion of the Jewish dead on war memorials. I don't supose it mattered to most that many Jewish soldiers had been awarded the Iron Cross only ten to twenty years earlier.

Dave

[Take on me]

I don't think your off the mark Jon. But rather than the 'radicalization' of German politics...

That seems to make sense. There are certainly pre-war roots to the anti-semitism in Germany which affected Jews who fought during the First World War well before Hitler came to power. Although Hilter's style of leadership and the structure of Nazi Germany fostered competition between factions, this led to constantly radicalising policy in regards to racial matters. This meant that the historical anti-semitism among the German far right became more and more deadly under Hitler.

Jon

[Frank_East]

Did anyother members watch this Drama Documentary ?,of interest was the American Army phsycologist who was Jewish and who was assigned to profile Goering.The American Officers Father had been arrested and sent to Buchenwald sometime in 1938..3 Weeks later He is sent Home,no explanations given.The reasons for this were later found to have bbeen a direct order from Goering declaring that any Jew who had served in the Kaisers Army and had been awarded a Decoration was to be Freed Immediatley.Amazing.Happily the Family left Germany and reached America.

From the time of the passing of the Nuremberg Racial Laws in 1935 when only Aryans could be "true" Germans and "citizens of the Reich", Goring promised to his Jewish friends and inner circle that he would intervene with Hitler against anti Semitism.

These promises in the end, were worthless but in one case where he thought his authority would be challenged,Goring retorted to an SA leader Theo Chroniess who thought he had Goring's confidence, "I decide who is a Jew or not a Jew".This was when Chroniess informed Goring that Milch,his ultimate Luftwaffe deputy was half Jewish.Goring then drew up an affidavit which Milch's mother signed to the effect that Milch was a ******* son of her marriage in order to aryanise Milch.This is one approach that Goring took and it would appear that his anti Semitism was not taken as seriously as Hitlers but he never allowed this to come between him and his ambitions to head the Nazi regime.

Goring as President of the Reichstag read out the Nuremberg Race Law legislation to the Reichstag.

His concern,it can be argued, for the German Jewish veterans of the Great War was far less than his concern for his duties as Reichsjagermeister.

[Jonathan Saunders]

Its probably worth mentioning that Goering's brother, Albert, used his family name to save Jews during WW2 - no one would argue with the name. There has been a book and documentary about his efforts. To what extent his brother knew and allowed him to continue I do not know, but I imagine his brother must have had some knowledge.

Albert's reward from the Allies was to be imprisoned for about 5 years for having the name Goering.

[Take on me]

To be honest I am not sure that Goering was a true anti-semite, a fact that is might be true of Goebbels as well, although such matters are really irrelevant. The fact was that he was an adventurer, and an opportunist, he might not have been as much as a believer in Nazi ideology as others such as Himmler. He might have known that his brother was trying to help Jews, that adventurous streak in him probably would have enjoyed the fact. But given his vital role in the negotiations with Papen in 1933 and his role as Prime Minister President of Prussia in that same year Hitler might have struggled to come to power without him.

Jon

[Frank_East]

Without Hitler,Goring would have forged a career in avaition but with Hitler,Goring became the notorious ridiculed figure he was with unlimited privilage.He was regarded by Milch,his deputy as being afraid of Hitler.After the fall of Stalingrad when his Luftwaffe had failed to support the doomed 6 th Army,Goring responded by taking to drugs, a habit he had done without for 10 years.

However,by his loyalty to Hitler,Goring became powerful and rich but could not find the moral courage to oppose Hitler overtly, although he often had thoughts of dissent.

[PBI]

That is the impression i have built up of Him,i think he was simply in the right place at the right Time,the German people idolised Him,but sadly he was carried along,and became Drunk on Power and all that goes with it,and yes He was a Drug addict,who did retreat into his own world after his failures,if you check out the History of the Reich,Goering basically dissappears for about 2 years after Stalingrad..

[Guest mruk]

While seemimgly distant, and absent from political and public life, this doesn't neccessarily absolve him, or exonerate Goering from the fact that atrocities were being committed. He was as much complicit in the systematic murder of millions as Hitler and the rest of his degenerate cronies, and was as gutless and vain to the end. No amount of hypothesising is going to change that.

Dave

[PBI]

Agreed,i wasnt making a case for him,just pointing out His total abscence from any recorded Nazi History from this point until his capture.

[paul guthrie]

Did WW1 service help Jews during WW2? I read somewhere that 6 or so AH general officers were executed by Nazis.

The saddest thing on the Western Front is Jewish headstones in German cemeteries.

[Guest mruk]

Sorry for any confusion PBI, I wasn't implying otherwise.

Paul,

I'm sure some Jews had a narrow escape during the days of the Third Reich, and that this may have been due to their war service. I'm also sure that many Germans were appalled by anti-Semitism, and that some Jews were saved by the risks taken by strangers and neighbours, and the ill-fated part which resistance groups such as the White Rose made.

Regards to Both,

Dave

[Frank_East]

While seemimgly distant, and absent from political and public life, this doesn't neccessarily absolve him, or exonerate Goering from the fact that atrocities were being committed. He was as much complicit in the systematic murder of millions as Hitler and the rest of his degenerate cronies, and was as gutless and vain to the end. No amount of hypothesising is going to change that.

Dave

Goring was rightly found guilty on all four counts at Nuremberg.He could never see Hitler standing before the court but Goring,still playing the "Crown Prince"apparently was prepared to accept responsibility in Hitler's stead.

It is impossible to understand the logic of both Himmler and Goring at the death of the Third Reich.Both thought they would be accepted by the Allies as statesmen in a new post war Germany.