Under Two Flags

by Heinz Weichardt

www.jrbooksonline.com
http://www.louisbeam.com/twoflags.htm
 

Introduction

After years of urging my dear friend Heinz Weichardt to make at least a partial memoir of the vicissitudes of his interesting life, he finally was persuaded by Louis Beam, whom he met last year, to do so. This article was originally in the form of a letter to Louis.

Heinz certainly has had an unusual perspective of the Twentieth Century. A supporter of Hitler who left Germany as an unwanted non-Aryan, he became an enemy alien in America. As the years passed, Heinz became successful in his field of physics (electron-optics), retiring from IBM as a manager in its research division. As his article reveals, he never wavered in his support for National Socialism, even if he had himself been rejected by it.

Lately there has appeared a peculiar contempt for Historical Revisionism. The latter has undeniably been slashing and chopping the roots of contemporary Jewish power, so Heinz was very unsettled by such criticism. He told me often that when the Holocaust was beginning to be promoted in the 1960s he could only recall his school days in Germany. "I went to school with those fellows in the SS. I knew that they were simply not capable of behavior which the Jews were ascribing to them." He felt that Revisionism was crucial to the regeneration of his once-beloved Germany which has staggered under the libels of Jewish-American lies for fifty years. The same goes for this miserable country.

Heinz believed that our goal must be to disfranchise Jews, to dislodge them from government, medicine, law, education, the arts and, of course, from the media. He believes that to criticize those who have demonstrated the Holocaust to be a lie only helps to maintain the Jews as our overlords.

It doesn't matter if one genius today says he knew the Holocaust was phony in 1958 and because of that Revisionism is a waste of time. I don't notice any reduction of Holocaust poison in the media today; our children continue to receive it. They must be protected from deadly lies. We adults must grow up, too. The truth will make us mad. It may make us fight. The fighting may one day make us free.

J. B. Campbell

February 23, 1995

Dear Louis,

I felt that I should give you a somewhat more extended background to the political situation which led to the events of January 1933 in Germany, since most of the pertinent facts are only rarely realized by or available to the citizenry of this country.

First a few biographical notes about myself. My father, Dr. Carl Weichardt, of Frisian background, was among the dozen leading journalists of Germany, during the years 1911 to 1944. From 1912 to 1932 he was chief editorial writer and foreign correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, the leading liberal German newspaper, Jewish owned. From 1934 to 1944 he was editor and in charge of reporting about all major cultural events for the Berliner Morgenpost, the largest German daily then and again today. During that time the Morgenpost was owned by the publishing house, Eher, which also published the Völkische Beobachter, the official government paper during the Hitler years. After the Second World War he became the co-founder of a small south-German newspaper. He died in the year 1955. His brother became an officer in the Imperial Army during the First World War and during the Weimar Republic he was the adjutant to General-Field Marshal and President von Hindenburg in the latter's honor regiment. His oldest son lied about his age to join the army during World War I and became a lieutenant at the age of eighteen. He remained with the Reichswehr during the Weimar years and became a high level officer in the Wehrmacht. He fell during the campaign in Russia. The next son was active as a radical nationalist as early as 1921 and was even jailed for a few months because of it during the Weimar years. Later he became a NS party functionary. The third son became a Reichswehr officer and later a lieutenant colonel in the Wehrmacht. He was seriously wounded in Russia but is still alive and well at the age of ninety-four. The fourth, my youngest cousin, fell as a member of Rommel's Afrika-Korps and is buried at Tobruk. A brother of my grandfather emigrated to South Africa and his son, Louis Weichardt, was the highly respected founder of the National Socialist movement of South Africa in the early thirties. During the war he was incarcerated by the British. At the end of the war he was released and became the senator of the province Natal. He was so highly respected that after his death in 1985, even the Zionist Capetown Times, which had fought him for sixty years, wrote a decent obituary.

My mother, of Jewish extraction, was a professional musician and renowned opera singer. Her father fought in the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. Her brother-in-law was a professional soldier and captain in the Imperial Austrian army. He fell during the first six days of World War I when Russia invaded Austria and Germany. Her first cousin, also an Austrian officer, received shrapnel in his right lung on the same occasion and spent the following seven years as prisoner of war in Siberia. Another of her cousins fell on the Western Front and still another cousin survived all actions of the war in the Balkans and became, during the early thirties, personal adjutant to prince Starhemberg, the leader of the Austrian Nationalist, but not National Socialist, Heimwehren until the Anschluss.

I was born in 1914 and grew up in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, depending on my father's assignments. From 1929 to the end of 1938 I lived in Berlin where I finished my intermediate schooling and obtained my master's degree in engineering-physics from the Berlin Institute of Technology. I like to emphasize the military participation of the Jewish part of my family because this was by no ways an exception but rather the norm, especially among the more well-to-do Jewish families which strived to be Germans first and in many cases, such as my family's, to forget their Jewishness by letting themselves be baptized. It is generally well known that in no other country in the world was the Jewish community assimilated as well as in Germany. Examples: One of the best known German romanticists, H. Heine, was Jewish (baptized); the greatest Jewish composer, Mendelssohn, was another German romanticist and to this day his music cannot be performed in some synagogues because he too had himself baptized. The best friend of the Kaiser was Albert Ballin, the Jewish founder of the largest German shipping line and the only person who had a private telephone line into the emperor's bedroom. The famous Jewish chemist Haber was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry where he developed the process for the production of ammonia from the nitrogen in the air. For this he received the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Without this process the German armament industry would not have been able to produce sufficient munitions within one year into World War I. As a fact, the condition of the 500,000 Jews among the sixty million Germans was such that at the beginning of the war in 1914 the American-Jewish press stood solidly behind Germany.

What happened then? Why was there virulent "anti-Semitism" in Germany only ten to fifteen years later?

The main reason that Jewry became so respectable and could aspire to be accepted by the highest levels of German society was the rigid structure of the Prussian dominated state. Within this environment there simply was no possible room to develop shady business methods so acceptable to the oriental mind; there were no corruptible officials which could be bought because to become an official did not entail the possibility to enrich yourself at the cost of the public. It was an honor, which had to be earned by hard and successful labor. A teacher, a soldier, a postal employee, a policeman or any other government worker had to be a role model and if he ever betrayed the trust given to him by the public he had to serve, he was finished. Today Prussianism is equated to despotism. Nothing could be further from the truth! The motto of Prussia and later of the German Reich was: Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz. (The well-being of the people is more important than your own.) This might sound somewhat exaggerated for the citizens of a vast and immensely rich domain, but must be the mode of survival in a relatively small, overpopulated country, whose main resource was the diligent labor of its hands and the creativity of its brains. Nothing describes better the difference in the idea of statehood better than the declarations of Frederick the Great of Prussia and Louis XIV of France. "I am the first servant of the state," for the former and "I am the state" for the latter. The Jews of Germany, and especially of Prussia, being, if nothing else, quite smart, simply adapted themselves very successfully to the rules of the game and many of them became even more Prussian than the Prussians. They were greatly assisted therein by Prussia as well as by the rest of the predominantly evangelical north Germany, being by far the religiously most tolerant domain in all of Europe. Any remaining anti-Jewishness, anti-Semitism barely existing, was mainly aimed at some Jewish mannerisms which sometimes grated on the somewhat stiff Prussian form of social etiquette. Today we know, of course, that exactly those mannerisms expose a deep-seated character flaw and, if permitted to become the norm of societal behavior, will lead to the destruction of a whole culture. A Jewish acquaintance of mine during the Hitler years, when asked why the Jewish people everywhere and always are getting into trouble, put it quite succinctly. The answer: Wir sind leider ein zwar kleines aber äußerst mieses Volk. (Unfortunately we are a small but exceedingly obnoxious people).

While the Jewish question seemed solved, or at least dormant, in Germany and most of western Europe, real trouble began across the Atlantic. After the disastrous defeat of the more civilized half of this country by ruthless Yankeeism, the North soon found that the fleeing blacks of the South were essentially useless for cheap labor in a feverishly expanding industry driven by mercantile materialism. The search for easy profit led to the laying of a cuckoo's egg of such size that after it is fully hatched may yet lead to the final destruction of this country. I am referring to the massive introduction of the "huddled masses and refuse" (Emma Lazarus' desecrating inscription at the foot of the Statue of Liberty). Thereafter this country was never the same. These masses were a totally different breed from the docile, now "liberated" slaves of the South. Mostly the large numbers of eastern Jews with their inborn "smartness" quickly worked themselves out of the sweatshops and low-paying industrial jobs and became independent businessmen. Their ruthless and unconscionable business methods, possibly a necessity for survival in Russian and Polish ghettos, were permitted to develop without restrictions in a country where unlimited personal liberty was sanctified. This lack of restrictions on personal behavior culminated in the appearance of such financial "geniuses" (I am quoting the Wall Street Journal) as Milken, Boesky, Steinberg and Levine. In Europe, meanwhile, the political influence of the Jewish banking dynasties became so strong that a Mrs. Rothschild could state, "My sons can decide if there will be war or not." After the death of Queen Victoria, under the rule of the already somewhat degenerate playboy, Edward, this influence would become all-pervasive. The simultaneous growth of German industrial might under the wise political guidance of Bismarck was of course unacceptable to British self-esteem and the thought that the competition on the world markets could be met with a bit more of hard labor and diligence or by reducing the length of the extended weekends to which English upper classes had become accustomed, was simply too horrible to be contemplated. When the Germans committed the unspeakable crime of becoming financially nearly independent from the international banking system and began to build a high-seas fleet to assure access to their modest colonial possessions, this was the last straw and something had to be done to put them down for good. With the help of Russian imperialism and French chauvinism and revanchism (they still had not reconciled themselves with the loss of the war of 1871 which was started by them under typical French delusions of grandeur) it was easy to pursue a policy of encirclement against Germany.

Kaiser Wilhelm was an utterly civilized and peace-loving man. I know this from the British mother of my best friend; she was a close personal friend of Wilhelm who in turn was my friend's godfather. The Kaiser did suffer unfortunately from an inclination to vainglorious gab and this was used quite liberally against him by his enemies. At a much later time the similar afflictions of the warmongering criminals, Churchill and Roosevelt, were generally well accepted! After the Russians arranged the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand through their Serbian dupes, the First World War was on. The American people wanted to stay out of the European mess, but since the country was, at the time, suffering from one of its strangely recurring recessions, the powers that were decided differently. The opportunity of reaping huge profits by supplying one of the fighting sides with liberal credits and massive infusions of war matériel was too tempting and could not be ignored.

Alas, the boys in New York and Washington bet on the wrong horse. The war went badly for them. By the year 1916 Russia was ready to collapse and on the Western Front the combined Anglo-French forces were fought to a standstill. The treacherous Italians (they were bound by a tripartite treaty to Austria and Germany until they found it to their advantage to switch sides) were losing in the south. The multiple declarations of war by many powers as distant as Japan and Brazil did not seem to improve the situation either and there were nasty rumors of a negotiated peace floating in the air. At exactly this point the seeds were laid to the future growth of German "anti-Semitism" (a euphemism for anti-Judaism) because the majority of middle-eastern Semites were still backing Germany at that time. The Jewish bankers in London and New York had Britain over a barrel and found it easy to extract the Balfour Declaration, which promised them a Jewish homeland--but not a sovereign Jewish state--in Palestine, which in 1916 still belonged to Turkey. The British, being famous for their fairness and integrity in all their dealings, made a similar offer to middle-eastern Arabs and even dispatched T. E. Lawrence to found the Arab Legion. At a later time when Lawrence reminded his government of this promise he suddenly and conveniently died in a motorcycle accident.

As an aside, a propensity for accidental death seems to be quite common among people not agreeing with the prevailing Anglo-American policy. You surely remember George Patton, who wanted to warn the American people that the war was not won if the Western Allies did not continue their advances until they reached Warsaw. He also was greatly impressed by the human quality of the personnel in the SS-Führerschulen and had the audacity to state so publicly. After these unpopular utterances the healthy, strapping general suffered minor injuries in a highly suspicious car accident and died shortly from the consequences. Or the court appointed Jewish lawyer, who was to defend Ivan Demjanjuk during the latter's show trial in Jerusalem. It was his misfortune to discover some items which were disputed the claims of the prosecution and promptly and conveniently dropped out of a high-up hotel room window. It was declared a suicide but this was hotly denied by his family. There are many other cases, of course.

Back to 1916. After obtaining the Balfour Declaration the Jewish-American press and their followers made a sudden turnabout and began to pour their well-practiced venom on the still hard-fighting Germans, who were from now on to be known simply as barbarous Huns. This was not only a betrayal of Germany but also of their German co-religionists who were more accepted in Germany than anywhere else in the world and where most of their able-bodied men were still fighting for what they considered their fatherland. It was rather easy to convert the "idealistic" but feebleminded Wilson into a fanatic crusader for "democracy" and America joined the bloodletting with supposedly the best of intentions. As far as the public was concerned it was the job of the Jewish press, as well as others such as the Hearst press to release a never ending stream of anti-German hate propaganda which did a good job and the easily misled masses patriotically marched off to war. Russia had collapsed, the Jew Kerensky formed the first revolutionary government and decided to continue the war against Germany--a preposterous idea considering the condition of Russia at that time. Germany, eager to end the war in the east, decided to help a new and more radical revolution in Russia. Lenin, leader of the far left Communists, was residing in Zurich. He had promised to end the war with Germany as soon as he was in control of Russia and negotiations began for his secret transport through Germany to St. Petersburg. I am somewhat familiar with these occurrences because my father was at that time the top member of the German press corps in Switzerland and got involved in the above-mentioned negotiations. The Jews outside Germany decided to help Lenin along in his bid for power and sent his comrade Trotsky (Bronstein) and hundreds of Communist Jewish radicals from Brooklyn, armed with untold millions of dollars, to Russia. The rest is well-known history as far as the events in Russia are concerned.

Things began to look up for Germany because the Americans had as yet not arrived in telling numbers at the Western Front and there would be soon some two million battle-hardened German troops released from the east and available in the west for a final push. Paris was in panic and very drastic measures had to be applied to prevent mutiny in the French army.

Here now rises the curtain over the second act of Jewish treachery against Germany--this time unfortunately in Germany proper. This is the story: After the German army had driven the Russians out of Germany and Austrian Galicia it drove them out of Russian Poland and Ukraine. The Jews, in Poland a major part of the population, became fearful of the traditional severe anti-Semitism in those parts, especially since the Germans had the plan to create a new Polish state at the end of the war with Russia. A massive movement of Galician Jews, most of them being Austrian citizens, began their trek westward into Austria, mainly Vienna, whence they could freely enter Germany. A few thousands in the beginning swelled to hundreds of thousands towards and after the end of the war. Among the first arrivals there was a disproportionate amount of Communist agitators which wormed its way into Germany's Socialist movement, which already was dominated by Jewish intellectuals. In Germany, because of the Allied blockade, the suffering of the civilian population had already become severe and demoralizing and exactly after the Russians were forced to sign the peace-treaty of Brest-Litowsk, the unions struck a mortal blow to Germany's war effort by striking the munitions factories. The planned offensive was thereby sufficiently delayed to permit the Americans to arrive with their unlimited supplies and after another year of hopeless resistance and president Wilson's reasonable sounding peace offer, revolution broke out in Germany.

The war was lost and in Versailles Wilson's proposals were wiped off the table and a peace was dictated to the newly formed German democracy, the insanity of which doomed it to an early demise at the day of its birth. The Communists under their Jewish leadership (Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Toller, Eisner, Radek, Kuhn, etc.) started bloody uprisings in Berlin, Munich and Hungary. Hostages, including women, were being taken and murdered, thousands were dying in street fights with police and gendarmes. Toller, leader of the Red Army which formed in Bavaria, recommended that most Germans should be gassed (aha!) and received congratulations and promises of help from Lenin personally. The new Socialist president, Ebert, was finally forced to call on the remnants of the German army, and with the help of the newly formed Freikorps (mostly patriotic former members of the army), the Bolsheviks along with the incursions of Poles across the newly enforced German borders were finally defeated. It should be emphasized at this point that nearly all the leaders of the Communist terrorists were foreign Jews. During the accelerating inflation certain businessmen and well connected financiers, again the majority being Jewish, were able to amass fortunes, which helped the rise of anti-Semitism in the country suffering from defeat and incredible hunger, thanks to the continuing British blockade, which was prolonged for one year after the armistice and caused the deaths of approximately 800,000 Germans, mostly women and infants.

When the populace observed newly-rich Jewesses in their fancy fur coats, bedecked with jewelry, entering expensive nightclubs with their escorts while veterans with missing arms or legs are sitting on the sidewalks, shivering in their worn uniforms and trying to sell some pencils or whatnot to earn a few pennies for their modest needs, it did not go over too well with them, even if the majority of the professional Jews, professors, engineers, doctors, government employees, etc., shared the misery with the rest of the people. My mother's father, a retired small businessman, made the mistake to invest his savings in English industrial stocks long before the war and lost every penny of it when, after the war, the English, like all the other "victors," stole every bit of private German property they could lay their hands on. The Americans got away with "taking-over" all German patents and sold them to the public at a dollar apiece. An acquaintance of mine, Dr. Becker, a German immigrant chemist, bought a sufficiently large amount of them to found Allied Chemical Corp. on the basis of their content. The last time I visited him, in 1941, he was still president of Allied and resided in an incredibly beautiful, Roman style villa in Bolton-Landing on the shore of Lake George in upstate New York. A further boost to the rising anti-Semitism was given by a rash of large scale financial scandals caused by recent Jewish arrivals. Names like Barmat, Sklarek, Kutisker, Levy, Lewin were as well recognized by the public of those days as Boesky and Milken are today. Most of them wound up in jail and did not become lecturers on financial operations after short stints of incarceration as seems fashionable in our day. But massive damage had been done, not only to the tottering finances of the Reich but also to the standing of the Jewish community in Germany.

The first victim of the rising tide of anti-Jewish sentiment was the foreign minister of Germany, Walther Rathenau. He was machine-gunned by two former army officers on the way to his office on June 24, 1922. They considered him to be the leading representative of a policy which played into the hands of Germany's enemies by acquiescing in the ridiculous and deadly demands of the Versailles Dictate. In fact there was at that time very little else he could have done. His father was an outstanding engineer and industrialist who founded the German Edison Society which later became German General Electric. The son, Walther, became a top industrialist who founded several corporations in Germany and Switzerland and eventually took over the presidency of General Electric after his father's death. During the war he distinguished himself by organizing the supply of raw materials for the war effort, while being in charge of the corresponding department of the German ministry of war. After the revolution he entered government service and became Germany's foreign minister. His murder was not only a senseless crime but also caused a serious setback to the nationalistic cause, because of the general revulsion against this deed among even the most nationalistic circles.

The invasion of the industrial Ruhr Valley by 80,000 to 100,000 French troops, in January 1923, because of lagging tribute deliveries, as well as the total collapse of the German mark (in November 1923 it took 4.2 trillion--not billion!--marks to buy one dollar) revitalized the nationalistic movement, which culminated in Hitler's reach for power on November 9th, 1923. In the meantime, however, the bankers in New York and London had reluctantly come to the conclusion that it would be far easier to milk a live cow than a dead one. The Americans, who knew that it was hopeless to get repaid by their European allies for the enormous credits they had granted the latter to keep them in the war until they could be salvaged by the arrival of American troops, began to grant large credits to Germany under still onerous and normally unacceptable conditions. With these credits Germany was able to stabilize the mark at its pre-war value of 4.20 marks to the dollar.

The Hitler putsch was betrayed and defeated and Hitler was sentenced to five years imprisonment, but was released after less than one year. During his captivity he wrote, with the assistance of Rudolf Hess, Mein Kampf which, with the exception of the Bible, had the largest edition of any book previously printed. Unfortunately, as with the Bible, too few of its purchasers read it, but considering the present disastrous worldwide conditions this might yet be remedied in the not too distant future. Hitler had decided to attempt his quest for power by totally legal means, a decision from which he never wavered and which in the end lead him to success, all negative propaganda to the contrary. Starting with the year 1924 a slow but steady recovery began. During 1926 the last French troops left the Ruhr Valley region, but occupation of the Rhineland lasted until June 1930.

During the Weimar years many outstanding performers in concerts and theater as well as scientists were Jewish, but they never dominated and were more than balanced by Germans of equal or superior stature. In literature, however, in the arts as well as in the left-leaning part of the press their influence became all encompassing and pernicious. With it, the deterioration of civility, speech and social behavior became endemic. Nothing, of course, compared with what we are witnessing today, but one must remember that seventy years ago the standards of propriety were vastly different when compared with the present. The constant assault on the sensibilities and moral values which were held dear by the majority of patriotic Germans created a backlash within the parties from the center to the radical right. "Anti-Semitism" was again on the rise.

After the 1929 crash of the New York stock exchange most of the credits to Germany were called in and a world-wide depression began. Millions of Germans lost their jobs, the payments to the enemy countries had to continue and the political situation became progressively chaotic. By the end of 1932 Germany counted over six and a half million unemployed, about one third of the total workforce! The Communist Party, over three million strong including an armed organization, thought its day had come and began frequent attacks on rightist groups which developed into regular street battles. Together with the Social Democrats, who also commanded a large quasi-military organization, they had still 37.8% of the voters behind them, but the National Socialists, with 33.6%, had become by far the largest party of the Reich.

On January 31, 1933, with a Bolshevik uprising only weeks, perhaps days, away, Hitler, as leader of the largest party, was constitutionally named Reichs Chancellor. The most remarkable part about the following national "revolution" is the fact that it was totally orderly and bloodless. A few especially obnoxious leaders of the extreme left were locked up and perhaps got a well earned beating from overly enthusiastic storm troopers, who remembered their murdered comrades. If I am wrong about this, please name me one prominent victim of this "terror." When on February 27, 1933 a Communist succeeded in setting fire to the Reichstag building in Berlin, the Communist Party was outlawed and the top leaders were arrested. Any claim that the National Socialists set the fire is typical lying propaganda. Today this is even admitted in Jewish-ruled Germany! During the following fall a trial was held in Germany's highest court against the admitted arsonist and the Communist hierarchy. One Bulgarian Communist, Dimitroff, of postwar fame, had a field day in court by insulting Hermann Göring, but in the end all of them were acquitted except the arsonist. The highest court in National Socialist Germany could not produce sufficient evidence to tie the Communist élite to the crime which was certainly committed in their name. Compare this with the Jewish-run show trials in Moscow, the lynchfest in Nuremberg and the Jerusalem lynching of Eichmann (who did not heed the warnings about his impending abduction, because "the Jews will not do anything against me, after what I have done for them during the war"). The above story about the acquitted Communists has an ironic ending: They all took off for Moscow, being afraid that some of the stalwart storm troopers might not be too happy with the result of the trial and take matters into their own hands to amend the judgment in a way more suitable to their ideas. In Moscow they found several things not quite to their taste and, in typical German fashion, they did not keep their mouths shut and voiced some criticisms. In typical Russian fashion they were put into the slammer. After the end of the Polish war, when the Russian and German armies met, still cordially, they were unceremoniously handed over to the Gestapo. What happened thereafter, I do not know.

What was the situation of the German Jews at that point? The first blow came from abroad. World Jewry declared war on Germany. This was no idle threat. It is true that the Jews at that time did not control the most powerful army in the world as in our day when they exert nearly total domination over the deployment of forces of the United States. But neither did the Germans possess an army which could become a threat to anybody somewhat larger than Grenada or maybe Panama. Germany faced the most disastrous economical condition in its history and was completely dependent on foreign trade in order just to feed the population. Any successful boycott of its foreign trade would greatly exacerbate this already dangerous situation and could even lead to widespread starvation. At first the German reaction to riotous, Jewish-led, anti-German demonstrations abroad was a government-decreed one day (!) boycott of Jewish stores which had been marked overnight with stars of David. Never at any time, neither then nor today, did National Socialists mark Jewish properties of any kind with swastikas, because this would be considered a desecration of their revered symbol. The most astonishing result of this boycott was the revelation of the unbelievably large number of big and small businesses in Jewish hands. Had the German-Jewish community voiced a unanimous and vociferous protest against the action of their co-religionists throughout the world, they would have avoided, in my opinion, some of the harsher measures soon to come. It must, however, be understood and firmly remembered, that Jews with regard to one characteristic are and act vastly superior when compared with most other white populations. It is their unflinching racial cohesion, which makes them Jews first and anything else second. This leads them to actions which might be at first thought detrimental to their interests, but which have resulted over more than two thousand years in their survival in a largely hostile world.

The next anti-Jewish measure was the Arierparagraph, which eliminated non-Aryans from all government positions. Everybody with one quarter or more Jewish background was considered non-Aryan. Exempt from this law were all Jews who had fought for Germany in the World War or had lost sons during that war or who already held government positions before that war. Certain exemptions for meritorious individuals could be granted. All non-Aryans in government positions had to be retired (not fired!) with their pensions forthcoming. Businesses, large or small, were not affected; doctors could continue their practices but were not compensated for treating patients insured under the government-run health plan. Many, many--including high party officials--stayed with their Jewish family doctors who had treated them for a long time. The number of university students of three-quarters or all-Jewish ancestry were limited to the percentage of their numbers in the populace. Still pretty good, when compared with the experience of deserving whites under our Jewish-imposed affirmative action. Students with one-half or less Jewish ancestry were under no restrictions at all, and even had, at a later date, to join the nationalist student organization. They were not permitted to join the SA or SS. Joining a national organization became, in effect, obligatory for all Aryan students.

The immediate effect on the private lives of most Jews was in the beginning only minimal. Some personal experiences will show this. Since my early teens I had been an avid gun lover. In Austria, where we lived at the time, there were in effect no restrictions on the possession of handguns or rifles. If there were, they certainly were not enforced. At the age of fifteen I could walk into one of the finest gun shops in Vienna and purchase any weapon in the store, as long as I had the necessary money. Unfortunately I didn't, but after some time I had scraped together a sufficient amount to start my modest collection by acquiring three low-priced handguns. Shortly thereafter, in 1929, we moved to Berlin. In Germany, under the Weimar Republic, one had to register each gun with the police. There were no restrictions on the possession except if you wanted to carry them. In this case you had to have a hunting license which required a lengthy course in gun handling, marksmanship, game laws and handling of bagged game. The police had absolutely no say or power to refuse you the ownership of your guns when you came to register. It was a purely bureaucratic measure which enabled the police to trace a gun involved in a criminal action.

My guns were registered in the name of my (Jewish) mother, who had contributed the money for their original purchase, because I was only fifteen years old and could not own firearms until I reached maturity (21 yrs). After Hitler came to power, nothing was changed in the existing gun regulations; nobody had to turn in the registered guns--period. My mother still had them on the day of her immigration to the US (May 1941) and gave them to a friend of mine because importation of firearms was prohibited under US law.

The laxness with which the existing firearm laws were enforced was clearly demonstrated in the days after the Reichstag fire, when most people feared an imminent Communist uprising. Suddenly untold numbers of veterans or members of patriotic organizations were seen walking around, proudly displaying their wartime military Mausers or Parabellums strapped to their sometimes paunchy bellies. After a while, after the Communist threat had been eliminated, they were politely reminded that carrying of firearms in public was against the law and the guns were put back into drawers at home. The sale of ammunition was never restricted.

Suddenly a longtime dream of mine seemed to come true: the ownership of a genuine Parabellum in good condition. One of my friends had heard of a deal where members of the many existing nationalistic party organizations could purchase retired army pistols in lots of one hundred at a price of fifteen marks per gun. The price of a new Parabellum was one hundred and fifty marks in those days, which was about the monthly income of a lowly worker, if he had a job. My search for prospective customers was frantic. By charging an extra mark for my services I had to sell only fifteen guns to earn sufficient money for the purchase of a gun for myself! Alas, the dream was of short duration. Some envious or overzealous citizen felt obliged to inform the authorities of my dreamy deal. It was followed by the famous knock on the door, and on opening I faced three agents of the secret police (Gestapo). No hands in the pockets groping for hidden arms, no shouted orders or threats, only showing of identifications and the polite question if I had any firearms at home and if they could see them. I asked them in, got my guns and asked my mother to show the registration receipts. The disappointment of the rather mild-mannered gentlemen at the measly display was obvious and they asked about the whereabouts of one hundred Parabellums which I was suspected to harbor. My heart sank and I told them about my, now surely aborted, hoped-for big deal, which as yet had not been consummated. They looked greatly relieved and the man in charge said that a perfunctory search of our premises was in order. No drawers were ripped out and emptied, nothing was displaced or damaged--only a short look under beds into armoires and storage cabinets. When they were ready to leave the man in charge spotted a letter on the table with a Jewish-sounding name of the sender and being obviously informed about my mother's racial background he very kindly admonished her that because of the new conditions prevalent to be especially careful and not to break any of the existing laws. With that they apologized for the inconvenience they had caused and left. My loaded guns remained on the table.

In order fully to appreciate this story you must remember that the Parabellum was at the time still the most powerful and sophisticated military handgun on the European market. Today's equivalent would be a fully automatic MP5 or Ingram. Just imagine somebody informing our democratic government that I was stocking one hundred of those, possibly intending to sell them to some shady characters harboring racist or otherwise non-PC views. Can't you just hear Janet Reno screaming and ordering her trigger-happy minions into action. The roar of armored trucks loaded with SWAT teams in full battle dress would be deafening and reinforced by the clatter of helicopter-gunships hovering overhead, in case any difficulties should develop. The headlines would shout: Gun Crazy Rightist Has Arsenal Endangering His Neighborhood! Governor Might Call In National Guard! Remember the recent actions of our government in the case of a man who sold a shotgun, allegedly one quarter inch shorter than the law permits, to an undercover agent, which resulted in the deaths of a mother holding a baby in her arms, one un-armed child, the family dog and a marshal. Or the one involving a religious nut who could have been arrested any day by a single cop while the former attended to his shopping in the local supermarket. Result: about eighty people, mostly women and children, incinerated alive. I think my imagined scenario above is an understatement.

My next run-in with the authorities of the Third Reich happened about three years later and was a bit more ominous. I had just received the notification that my application for voluntary service in the newly-recruited army had been definitely denied and I was understandably very bitter because service in the armed forces was considered an honor and privilege, not an onerous duty. Instead of swallowing my badly injured pride I complained to everybody who would listen to me, ending my complaints with the caustic question: Why me, when even the top general of the Luftwaffe, Erhard Milch, had a Jewish father? Well it didn't take very long for the knock at the door. This time I faced three members of the Algemeine-SS. The situation was made more serious by my little Dachshund. She had a dislike for tall men in black uniform and immediately attacked the intruders, loudly barking and snapping. The SS retreated a few steps until I had taken control of the objecting animal. Precautionary shooting of pet animals was definitely not PC in Hitler's Germany. Besides, no member of a uniformed organization, except army and police, was ever permitted to carry firearms publicly in order to emphasize their non-military character. After the three men had entered our apartment, I was severely admonished for spreading insulting rumors about high-level army officers. All I could say was that I was absolutely sure that the father of General Erhard Milch was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Dessau, home of the famous Junkers aircraft works. I will never forget the stunned expressions on the faces of the three as they left, this time without apologies, in a huff. I did not hear from them again. Of course I knew that the statement to which they objected was true.

Another little story which characterizes the official attitude for behavior towards Jews was told to me by a very good friend. As a member of the storm troops, he had to attend weekly meetings of his troop for political indoctrination and other matters. In Germany, as well as in most European countries, it was the custom that children and young men ceded their seats in crowded trains when a lady or elderly adult entered and could not find a seat. During one meeting of the troop the members were reminded to adhere to this rule and a wise guy asked the tricky question of what to do if the lady or elderly adult was obviously Jewish? After a short silence for reflection, the (pardon the expression) solomonic judgment was forthcoming: "Storm troopers, in order to avoid this embarrassing situation, remain standing in trains which were apt to be crowded!" To some nice old Jewish lady I strongly recommend a ride on the New York subway or any other public conveyance.

Next, consider the listening to foreign radio stations. In Europe, there were fewer transmitting stations than here in America, but they were much more powerful and in centrally located Germany you could always listen to the transmissions from Austria, Switzerland, France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Hungary. They all disseminated programs in German language and most of them contained vicious anti-German and specially anti-Hitler propaganda as well as outright lies about the terrible conditions in Germany under "Nazi terror." You were not supposed to listen to these radio transmissions but most people did and it was technically not feasible to jam the powerful foreign long- and middle-wave transmitters without causing disturbing interferences of your own radio programs. One evening, while listening to radio Moscow, the bell was ringing and there stood the lady living in the apartment below us. Her husband was the Blockwart of our building and responsible to take care of all problems of or with the tenants and to make sure that everybody behaved nicely and in accordance with the rules and regulations of the new era. How did she phrase her demands and threats? "Dear Mr. Weichardt, if you have to listen to radio Moscow, wouldn't you be so kind and turn the volume down a bit in order to avoid possible trouble for you or us." In today's Germany, under the most democratic government in the country's history, if you are found to possess two or more copies of this letter you could wind up in jail up to five years for making light of "Nazi crimes" and inciting race hatred. House searches without warrant are the order of the day, confiscation of "incriminating" printed material and privately-owned office equipment are rampant and if you are lucky (and well insured), your insurance company will be stuck with the ensuing expenses if a bunch of paid ruffians burns down your place of business.

Let's go back to Nazi terrorism. There were, as everybody knows, concentration camps. Who were the inmates? Mostly vagrants, bums and, yes, some obnoxious politicians of the leftist variety (come to think of it, not a bad idea at all) who had previously caused the ire of the new rulers. Strangely enough--hardly any Jews, who after all, according to Hitler, where at the root of most of the country's troubles. According to a typically nasty postwar British anti-German propaganda movie (HISTORY OF THE SS), the pre-war population of the concentration camps never exceeded ten thousand inmates, out of a population of nearly seventy million! I should say this is pretty good, when compared with the twenty thousand penal institutions and camps (Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago) in Soviet Russia, which at the same time had--quoting President Roosevelt--the most progressive government in Europe. While confined in a camp the inmates had to perform labor, I am sure sometimes hard labor, which was tough on the mostly overweight politicians. They learned new skills, were well fed and had excellent medical facilities available in case of illness or injury. After their release some actually became useful citizens.

Here I must state categorically that during my nearly six years under the Hitler regime, living at the center of power in Berlin with my father, as a journalist in constant touch with the authorities (he had, e.g., to attend, together with other journalists, confidential monthly meetings with Propaganda Minister Goebbels to obtain political directives and listen to pep talks) and aware of all nasty anti-government rumors, I had neither a single personal contact with anybody who had suffered physical harm from the authorities of the Third Reich, nor did I hear from anybody among my rather extended acquaintances that they knew of somebody who had. Yes, yes, I know there was the nasty Röhm affair, which I shall discuss a little later, and which was an interparty affair. The exodus of Jews began immediately, principally of the well-to-do and the prominent, some of whom felt that they had exposed themselves politically. They could leave with all their property but had to pay a tax of ten percent on their liquid assets according to a law already enacted under the Weimar government. This caused a major hemorrhage of German foreign exchange reserves and forced a change in the law after which, a year later, emigrants had to pay a ninety percent tax on their liquid assets and were forced to sell all their real estate. Emigrants to Palestine were eventually exempted from all taxes. The not so well-to-do, while never hindered by the German government, were not so lucky, because no country was willing to receive them if they did not bring along sufficient capital to sustain themselves over an indefinite period. The remaining Jews also had to suffer from the vicious propaganda which was launched abroad by the Jewish-controlled press and by some of the émigrés.

Toward the end of 1933 Hitler took the first major step towards the resurrection of the Reich's authority and independence. He demanded from the League of Nations, that club of vacationing parasites on the shores of Lake Geneva, that after Germany had fulfilled all the onerous conditions imposed on her by the dictate of Versailles, including essentially total disarmament, the other signatories should now adhere to the agreed upon condition and begin with their much talked about disarmament. This was an absolutely fair demand, since Germany was surrounded by her former enemies possessing large and superbly equipped armies. Of course this is denied today, but France had the largest air force in the world, England the largest fleet, Russia the largest number of active soldiers and tanks, Poland heavily armed and sounding as aggressive as ever, the Czech army probably the most efficient of the lot and Italy, under Mussolini, was at that time still hostile towards Germany. The silence answering Hitler's demand was deafening, whereupon Germany left the League and suspended all future tribute payments coming due.

To survive economically Germany was forced to conduct most of her foreign trade on the basis of exchange and went off the gold standard. The last measure was probably the real beginning of World War II. The world's banking system simply could not permit that this upstart free his nation from their shackles. If his bold try became a success their whole empire would begin to crumble because others might be emboldened to try the same gambit. Horrors over horrors, it did become a success. Germany's economic recovery became meteoric, unemployment disappeared rapidly while the rest of the world was floundering in an ever-worsening depression. It would take a major volume to describe the details of changes which took place in the first year of the Third Reich and the enthusiasm with which the vast majority of the people greeted the new system. When, at the end of 1933, after leaving the League of Nations, elections were called for the approval of the new and forceful foreign policy, 92.5% of the eligible voters backed the new government. Since I voted in several elections, together with my mother (!), until the fall of 1938, when I left for the US, I can assure everybody that there was never any coercion or fraud involved in these elections. The only serious crisis developed during the spring of 1934, when Hitler had to make the surely agonizing decision to liquidate his close friend, Röhm. By then the SA ranks had swollen by millions, many of them former Communists. So many people wanted to become registered party members that during the previous year a moratorium had to be declared on all further applications for membership. Röhm, as the chief of the SA, was a major power factor and had greatly assisted the rise of Hitler by supplying arms and funds from the army and securing the safety of the streets from the attacks of the Bolshevik assassins with his storm troops. Because of the incessant hate campaign of such professional haters as Roosevelt, Churchill, Vansittart, etc. ("Germany is getting too strong, we have to destroy her again." "We will force a war on Hitler, if he likes it or not." "The coming war is not a war against the German people, but against Hitler and his Nazis;" and ad nauseam), it became obvious that Germany had to create an army which would be adequate to protect the Reich against her belligerent opponents. This was impossible without the complete collaboration of the small but very professional Reichswehr and its generals. Röhm wanted his SA incorporated into the new army and also eyed the position of minister of defense, which he considered due to him. This was anathema to the very conservative general staff. Among the SA there were many to whom the utterly peaceful takeover was distasteful and who would have liked a little more ruckus to get even with some of their former enemies. There also was a large segment among them which was left-leaning and desired a more "socialistic" approach to the country's problems. Hitler knew, of course, that, if he decided for Röhm and against the Reichswehr, he would face a major upheaval and possible destruction of all his hard-won gains. He was therefore forced to acquiesce in the generals' demands and liquidate Röhm. To avoid any revolt within the SA, this had to be done with surgical precision and cost the lives of eighty-eight men. Please compare this number with those of Stalin's contemporary purging of his army. [The homosexuality of the Röhm camorra had been reported to Hitler but the latter had been unwilling to believe it. When he learned that the clique planned to overthrow him he went personally to their den of iniquity that night and, armed with a pistol, arrested Röhm and others.]

Here is a little story about a Jewish lady victimized by the Röhm affair. Among the victims of the purge was a certain Dr. Schmidt. His was a case of mistaken identity. Not a too surprising occurrence with a name like Schmidt in Germany. His Jewish wife was understandably upset about this and went in a rage directly to Hitler's office. Greatly embarrassed by the lady's rightful complaint, he not only offered all kinds of compensations but also to make her an honorary Aryan with all the ensuing privileges. She took the compensations but declined the honorary Aryan and left for the US. When she told me the story she had become the wife of a colleague of mine at the company I worked for in Binghamton, NY.

In the meantime, back in the good old USA, Mr. Roosevelt's hatred of everything German in general and Hitler specifically, became pathological. To understand his rage one must compare the rapid recovery of small resourceless country which had been held down and ransacked by its enemies with the meager results of his policies as president of the then still richest nation in the world, which was suffering under a seemingly never ending depression. While Hitler was able to raise capital through loans from the top industrialists--they must have been sitting on it during the largely distrusted Weimar regime--by giving them ironclad guaranties for repayment, Roosevelt was unsuccessful in obtaining them from the powerful capitalists in his country, who were more interested in maximum returns for their investments than in the well-being of their nation.

This situation could only be remedied by stirring up a little war which would guarantee huge profits in a revitalized heavy industry and loosen the money in the pockets of the recalcitrant bankers and industrialists. It is therefore understandable that already as early as 1934--one year before the first soldier was enlisted into Germany's new Wehrmacht--plans were laid for the creation of a strategic bomber force which could only be used in the brutal extermination of the civilians of any nation trying to defend herself against an attempt to subject her to the imperialistic rule of bankers or Bolsheviks, both striving for world domination. England followed with the building of a fleet of heavily armed, long-range bombers but Germany never even anticipated the development of planes solely to be used against civilians. In a recent biography written by Germany's most prominent aircraft designer, Messerschmidt, the decision to rely primarily on tactical airplanes was pushed through by the above-mentioned General Erhard Milch. It proved to be fatal during the coming war imposed on Germany by Roosevelt and his Kehilla of advisers. In March of 1935 the new Wehrmacht was established and every young German had to serve in the army for one year. The time of service in the French army was three years, as it had been for over sixty years!

In June of 1935 the famous Nuremberg laws were issued which laid down the condition of Jews and those of partially Jewish descent within the Reich. From that date on Jews were considered members of the Reich, enjoying the protection of the law but not full citizenship. To be a one-hundred percent Aryan, one had to prove that there were no Jewish ancestors in the family as far back as 1800. That this was possible at all shows to what length the Germans went in the effort to keep orderly records of vital data. (I mention this to show how ridiculous it is to assume that during the war there was no orderly record kept of the people sent to labor camps. Today we know, as a fact, that all data were kept to the bitter end. They are available today and show that in case of death of an inmate whenever [sic] the family of the deceased was notified and the ashes returned to them whenever possible.)

At the time these laws seemed to be extraordinarily harsh, especially to those with only partially Jewish background, who had been brought up, like myself, as Christians and patriotic citizens who loved their "fatherland" unconditionally. Personally I was devastated. I could not marry the Aryan woman I loved and my application for voluntary service in the Wehrmacht was denied, probably because I was of slight build and had brown eyes and hair. This was most embittering, considering the military history of both my paternal and maternal ancestors. Today, sixty years later and observing the precipitous decline of a typical multiracial and multicultural society, I am forced to conclude that it was exactly the racial and cultural unity of the Third Reich which enabled its people to survive the monstrous assault of their enemies and to arise again from the ashes of their nation. The present effort to destroy by all means this unity through the planned influx of millions of the unwashed garbage of the Third World and systematic destruction of all traditions in the mind of the present generation shows that Germany's eternal enemies fully agree with me on this point. That this destruction proceeds under the direction of a Jewish dictator (Ignaz Bubis, head of the thirty to forty thousand strong Jewish community among eighty million Germans), who rules Germany solely through the strength of American bayonets, bodes ill for the future of that nation, if he should succeed in his nefarious plans. It is high time that Americans realize that they have been reduced to the unbecoming status of executioners for the all-powerful state of Israel.

It must be mentioned, that the Nuremberg laws only applied to German non-Aryans and never to Jewish visitors traveling under foreign passports, for whom there existed no restrictions whatsoever. The Jews were permitted their own organizations in sports, culture, medicine, schools and they even had their own department at Gestapo headquarters which was staffed by Zionists who welcomed the government's anti-Jewish measures because they promoted their wished-for emigration of Jews to Palestine. There were a total of sixty training camps run by the Zionists under German sponsorship. However at this point the British objected and demanded that every Jewish immigrant must bring one thousand pounds sterling in gold (today equivalent to at least $50,000) in order to be permitted permanent residence in Palestine. The German government concluded the so-called "Transfer Agreement" with the Zionists and supplied the required funds from its scarce foreign exchange reserves to help young Jews emigrating to Palestine. About fifty thousand young Jews received this assistance which represented an outlay of $50,000,000 of pre-war dollars to the exchange-starved Reich. So much for the "planned destruction" of the Jews!

The international Olympics of 1936 presented a high point in the unrelenting rise of Germany. One had to be there to marvel at the expressions of astonishment on the faces of the guests from all over the world who had been prepared to expect a quite different appearance of a people "groaning under the yoke of Nazi tyranny." The joy at the festivities and the show of solidarity and comradeship among the youth from everywhere in the world seemed to herald the coming of a new and peaceful future. Yet, until this day, the Jewish controlled journaille repeats the stupid story that Hitler left the games in order to avoid shaking hands with America's top gold medal winner, Jesse Owens, a Negro. They conveniently forget to mention that Owens, like all the other medalists, was invited to a festive dinner at Hitler's chancellery. This included, of course, also the Jewish girl, Helene Mayer, who won the silver medal in fencing for Germany. They also forget the remarks of another American Negro athlete, who, on his return was asked by a reporter: "Did you meet any nasty Nazis in Germany?" Answer: "No, I only met nice Germans and I didn't have to ride in the back of the bus, either."

Hitler's unprecedented diplomatic successes, which, without exception, were achieved by peaceful negotiation, only increased the relentless propaganda war against Germany. This was primarily conducted by the Jewish-controlled foreign press and hostile emigrants. The Nuremberg Laws contained a specific clause, that in case of continuing Jewish attacks through propaganda or any other means, further restrictions of Jews in Germany would follow. And so they did. Most of the Jews wanted to emigrate but this was nearly impossible because no country was willing to receive them. Switzerland went so far that it asked the German government that all Jewish passports should be recognizable as such. Thereafter all Jewish passports had the additional first names "Israel" and "Sarah" added, for males and females respectively. These were names which no German Jew would have given his children. Also, a large letter "J" had to be imprinted on the first page of their passports. The murder of a very prominent National Socialist, Wilhelm Gustloff, in Switzerland by a Jewish assassin and another assassination by a Jew (the circumstances and name of the victim have slipped my mind) exacerbated anti-Jewish sentiments in Germany. Only the USA allowed a modest amount of immigrants, if the emigrating person had a relative in the States, who was an American citizen and would supply an affidavit stating that he was willing fully to support the immigrant as long as necessary, or if the latter could bring along adequate financial means to support himself for several years. Walking across the Rio Grande at night was definitely not considered an alternative in those days. Endless lines were forming around the block in Berlin which housed the US consulate by Jews hoping to get on the waiting list which would permit them to apply for an immigration visa after several months or even years of waiting time.

Austria finally united with the Reich amid the jubilant approval of practically the whole population. On his entrance into Austria, Hitler, the country's most famous son, could barely proceed through the throngs of flower-throwing people. These were the same people whose Socialist parliament had nineteen years earlier voted unanimously to join the Reich but were then prevented by the Allied powers to do so under the threat of refusing the signing of a peace treaty. After the Anschluss the Austrian Jews faired much worse than those in Germany because the local population harbored much stronger anti-Jewish sentiments than in Germany. This was largely due to the fact that in predominantly Catholic countries there is always more religious bias against Jews, but in addition great resentment was caused by the influx of more than one hundred thousand Galician Jews into the starving capital Vienna after the war and by the creation of an independent Poland. Yet, when the previously mentioned cousin of my mother left the country for Brazil, the SS officer who inspected his baggage at the Swiss border saw in the first trunk the uniform of the former officer of one of the emperor's exclusive guard regiments, he stepped back, gave the appropriate military salute and refrained from any further inspection.

Because of the great pressure exerted on the Austrian Jews President Roosevelt conceived the brilliant idea to convene an international conference at the lovely French resort at Evian (reads "naive" backwards) on the shores of Lake Geneva. The purpose of the meeting was to persuade every country present to lower its stringent immigration requirements and permit the remaining three hundred thousand Jews remaining in Germany to emigrate. It was July 1938, the weather in Evian was glorious and a good time was had by everybody. The results were according. Not one of the thirty-three nations present, including the USA, was willing to change its immigration laws! Dr. Goebbels was in sheer ecstasy. The display of hypocrisy was plenty of water on his propaganda mills. ("Doesn't anyone want our geniuses?") One German newspaper commented: "We see that one likes to pity the Jews, as long as one can use this pity for a wicked agitation against Germany, but that no state is prepared to fight the 'cultural disgrace' of central Europe by accepting a few thousand Jews. Thus the conference serves to justify Germany's policy against Jewry."

During the fall of 1938 Hitler achieved one of his greatest political triumphs. The return of the predominantly German Sudetenland was achieved without war. The anxiety of the people in Berlin during the Munich Conference was extremely high because the arrival of the Czech air force was expected at any minute. Their flying time to Berlin was less than half an hour and Germany was, at that time, totally unprepared for any major military confrontation. I shall never forget the evening Hitler returned from Munich. The relief and jubilation were without bounds. The anti-aircraft batteries in and around Berlin, some eighty guns, had been lined up along Hitler's route from the railroad station to the chancellery and I was standing behind a good friend of mine who fired the electrically connected guns simultaneously with the push of one button. The roar of that salute was indescribable.

Part II

My stay in Germany came to an unexpectedly early end on November 5, 1938. I had received my diploma of engineering (MS) during April of that year but my efforts to obtain an adequate position in the German industry had been unsuccessful because of the ever-stricter application of the Nuremberg Laws. My father had a good and very influential friend, Dr. Hugo Eckener, who was president of the world famous Zeppelin and Maybach Motor Works. He was best known as the commander of the pioneering, world encircling flights of the Zeppelins during the Twenties and Thirties. He was also at the time the best known and most respected German in the United States. Upon his strong recommendation I decided to emigrate to the US, where he had influential connections and assured me that, despite an again deepening depression and rising unemployment, I should be able to find gainful employment. He arranged my personal introduction to the Consul General of the US, Mr. Raymond H. Geist. The latter was most cordial but regretted that he could not overrule the existing restrictions on immigration into the US. This decision held even after I showed an affidavit of Eckener's representative in the US, a vice-president of his own company, which guaranteed that I would be supported indefinitely after my arrival. The affidavit had to be ruled insufficient because the guarantor was no relative of mine. Even if adequate, it merely would put me on a waiting list for up to several years until my application could be acted upon. The only possible way to obtain an immigration visa in short order was to deposit a large sum into an American bank, which would enable me to immigrate as a capitalist. Dr. Eckener would have made the deposit for me, but under existing German laws one could not export more than ten marks ($4.00) at a time. This would have been the end of my efforts had not, by accident, a friend of Eckener, who was a vice-president of National City Bank of New York, been on a visit in Berlin. Upon my introduction to him he sat down and wrote a note to the Consul General in which he advised the Consulate that a sum of $10,000 (1938! when the price of a brand new Cadillac sedan was $1,650) has been deposited in my name at his bank in New York. With this note in my hands I returned to the US Consulate where I received my immigration visa in a couple of hours, accompanied by the personal good wishes of Mr. Geist.

Within less than two weeks, on November 4, 1938 at about 10 pm, I boarded the evening express in Berlin and went to sleep in my first class compartment. The train was to arrive the next morning in Flushing, Holland, where the good ship Ilsenstein was to take me aboard at 9 am. The small freighter, which had comfortable accommodations for about two dozen passengers, belonged to the Jewish-owned Bernstein Line, but was flying the German swastika. Just before the train arrived at the Dutch border, at 3 am, I was awakened by the appearance of three SS men in full regalia, who grabbed my voluminous baggage and ordered me off the train together with about a dozen of other emigrants. We were standing on an inhospitable railroad platform watching sadly the disappearing taillights of our comfortable express train. All I could think about at that moment was the part of my baggage which had been sent ahead to the steamer and was surely soon to disappear beyond the horizon. We were ordered into separate rooms for women and men, our baggage was thoroughly scrutinized and we had to take off our clothes, which were X-rayed to detect hidden documents. The SS men were in not too good a mood, which was understandable for men who had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to search the baggage of a bunch of emigrants. I was carrying my brand new expensive camera, my hundred year old violin, some of my mother's jewelry and, besides the suitcases with my clothing and personal belongings, a special case loaded with our family silver consisting of about hundred pieces in nearly new condition. In addition, I was carrying my 9 mm Parabellum, which was ignored. My forebodings proved to be unfounded. We were ordered to dress, no questions were asked, our baggage was re-packed in good order and we could rejoin the ladies in the waiting room. One of the young Jewish ladies began to cry because of the nervous strain she had undergone. This changed the stern expression on the faces of the SS men into one of obvious concern and two of them tried to comfort her by buying her coffee and giving assurances that everything was going to be all right. Nothing was confiscated, nobody was detained! Two hours had passed and with it any hope that we were going to reach our ship before its departure. After boarding a slow train which carried us across the border, we were to make three changes to other slow trains before reaching Flushing with only minutes available for each change. The good Dutch must have been used to this routine and were well prepared. At each station a large crew of baggage carriers descended on us, grabbed all of our baggage and without saying a word dumped us on the next train. The last one arrived in the nick of time in Flushing and discharged us at the side of the steamer which was ready to leave shortly.

The crossing of the Atlantic began more like a pleasure cruise than a flight. The accommodations were good, the food was outstanding and so plentiful, that I gained ten pounds during the trip. The all-German crew made every effort to make our presence on board as pleasant as possible and some of the young officers had a very good time with two attractive ladies among the passengers. It seemed that six years of incessant "racist hate propaganda" had not quite taken hold in the minds of the young Germans. On the fifth day out, however, the news of the anti-Jewish riots in Germany were received and somber thoughts about the future overshadowed the festive mood.

What had been the cause of the "Kristallnacht," which resulted in damage to or destruction of 180 synagogues among the existing 14,000 and an equal percentage of Jewish businesses? A seventeen year old Polish Jew, Hershel Gruenspan, residing in Paris, had become so upset about the fate of his father in Germany that he armed himself with a pistol, walked into the German embassy and, not being able to see the ambassador, shot the first secretary, vom Rath. This being the third German official fatally assassinated by a Jew, the storm troopers were supposedly ordered out to take revenge on the Jewish population. This story is about as ridiculous as the by now discredited myth about the six million gassed Jews or the one about the slaughter of the Polish officers in Katyn by the Germans. The troubles of Gruenspan Sr. did not originate in Germany but in his native Poland, where the rampant anti-Judaism had caused the flight of tens of thousands of Jews into neighboring countries, mainly Germany, where they were treated as foreign visitors. In the beginning of 1938 the Polish government suddenly declared that it was going to invalidate all passports of citizens residing abroad if they did not return home to have them renewed. About 70,000 Jews with Polish passports were at the time residing in Germany, and the German government became worried that it might eventually become stuck with them. It ordered them rounded up and transported to the Polish border in regular trains, not cattle cars as it was claimed, with all the necessary supplies including medical personal if needs should arise. Among them Gruenspan Sr. The Poles refused to accept the deportees and the planned deportations were stopped for the time. Gruenspan's son, Herschel, had been staying for two years with an uncle in Paris, who, after the Polish government's revocation of Herschel's passport and the French government's refusal to renew his residence permit, asked him to leave in order to avoid problems with the French authorities. The uncle also refused him any further support. The supposedly penniless Jewish boy moved into a decent hotel in February and on November 7th he purchased a gun for 250 francs in a regular gun shop, with which, an hour later, he murdered the first secretary of the German embassy.

Interestingly enough, the hotel in which Herschel resided for over nine months without any visible means of support was situated right around the corner from LICA (International League Against Anti-Semitism, today called LICRA), whose legal representative was one of France's most famous lawyers, Moro Giafferi. In 1936 he had defended David Frankfurter, the murderer of Wilhelm Gustloff, in Switzerland. That crime had obviously been engineered by LICA. Only a few hours after Gruenspan's arrest at the German embassy, Ernst vom Rath was still alive and no news of the shooting could have been made public. Giafferi appeared at the police station which held Gruenspan and announced that he was representing the assassin. Who paid him? Why his interest in an unknown foreign criminal who was illegally residing in France?

Nothing ever happened to Gruenspan. After the fall of France the French authorities handed him over to the Gestapo, which detained him hale and healthy during the whole war without bringing him to trial. After the war he was not tried by the French but was permitted to emigrate to Palestine, where he was reunited with his family. They had been deported from Germany to Poland whence they emigrated to Palestine. Where did Gruenspan Sr., a poor tailor, obtain the four thousand pounds sterling required by the British to permit his family of four entrance into Palestine? The solution to these puzzling questions is revealed in Flashpoint, a book by Ingrid Weckert. On the fateful day of November 9th the whole hierarchy of the National Socialist party was assembled in Munich to commemorate the fallen of the Hitler putsch on the same day in 1923. When the first news of the riots hit the assembly, everybody was aghast and immediate orders went out to the SA and SS to suppress all attempts of doing damage to Jewish properties. The German government was extremely concerned about its image abroad which was constantly smeared by hostile propaganda and it is inconceivable that the riots were ordered at a high level. It has been established that any orders given were issued by telephone through agents provocateur, who followed a well thought-out plan doing the maximum damage to the German government and people. Through personal contacts I was well aware fifty-five years ago that the version of the whole affair, as given by the foreign press, was obviously wrong. The president of the company I eventually worked for happened to be a Herr vom Rath, the uncle of the murdered embassy secretary, from whom I got a more detailed description of what went on in Paris after the assassination. Dr. Eckener was in constant personal contact with Hermann Göring concerning air force matters and the building of a new airship, and he wrote to me that the air marshal was in a state of shock because of the irreparable damage done to the German reputation abroad.

Our journey continued through very stormy weather and on the 16th of November we disembarked in Hoboken. The reception was not too friendly because the customs inspection lasted for hours and turned out to be a disaster for a few. Some young Polish Jews were hit especially hard. They were trained craftsmen and not being able to export any sizable amount of money from either Germany or Poland, they had invested all they had in tools of their trade. They had no money to pay the required duty for their brand new equipment, which was simply confiscated. I wonder if they remembered their treatment at the Dutch border, where nothing was taken from the harshly persecuted ones. When the surly customs inspector laid eyes on my brand new camera, my sterling silver flatware and my thirty year old, but still like-new looking microscope (but not my disassembled and concealed Luger) he literally began to salivate and declared everything for brand new and subject to duty payments. He had, however, not reckoned with the presence of my sponsor, Mr. Wilhelm von Meister, an imposing figure of nearly seven feet in height and capable of an impressive and demanding bearing. Already annoyed for having to come to Hoboken instead to one of the fancier shipping lines docking on the New York side, to which he was accustomed, he was visibly irritated by the slowness of the proceedings. He told the customs inspector in an inimitable British accent to repack everything because his time was too valuable to be wasted on such trivia. He further demanded that everything was to be kept under lock until the arrival of his lawyer, who would take care of the necessary formalities. The startled inspector retreated immediately to the office of his superior and reappeared shortly to tell us that everything was okay and that we could leave with all of my belongings. This showed me for the first time that even in a much-vaunted democracy some people are more equal than others.

Thereafter I was driven to New York City and installed at a very comfortable hotel in downtown Manhattan. This was followed by a sumptuous lunch at an exclusive club. Things were beginning to look up. My sponsor gave me $25 every week, which I was to repay after having obtained a job and getting settled. The weekly bill at the hotel amounted to $12 and a good dinner at that time was obtainable for less than $1.00. After three days at the hotel I got bored and called an acquaintance of mine who was residing at the International House of Columbia University. He immediately arranged for me to move uptown into a room at the House with a splendid view of the Hudson river and the George Washington bridge. The weekly cost of my new accommodation came to $9.00 and the food at the in-house cafeteria was even cheaper than in the downtown restaurants. I was beginning to feel affluent. The atmosphere at the house was most encouraging for a lonely stranger in a new country with a very limited knowledge of the then still prevailing language. The best I could do in English was to recite Marc Antonio's funeral oration from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, which together with Hamlet's "To be or not to be," had to be learned by heart during my high school years in Berlin. This did not get me very far when trying to order a hot dog, a cheeseburger or asking a gruff-looking policemen for some direction in downtown Manhattan. His curt but easily understandable answer: "Why the hell don't you learn first some English before asking stupid questions?" I must confess to some nostalgic thoughts at the time about the policemen in Berlin, placed at major intersections and carrying armbands designating the foreign languages they were speaking, who would accompany a stranger to the place he wanted to go, if they felt he didn't understand their verbal directions.

At the House things were very different because quite a few people did speak German, including a number of acquaintances from Berlin and Vienna, whom I had not seen in years and who had arrived earlier. There was also a great number of very attractive girl students who, after proper introduction, were kind enough to help me in improving my knowledge of basic English. After celebrating my first Thanksgiving among the students of the House I had to give some serious thoughts to the finding of a job. I had good credentials and personal recommendations to top executives at General Electric, Allied Chemical, Hanovia and RCA, whose world famous director of research, Vladimir Zworykin, was a good friend of my thesis-father in Berlin, Max Knoll, the original inventor of the magnetic electron microscope. In the latter's laboratory I had studied the then still very new and advanced field of electron-optics which became of fundamental importance to the development of TV picture- and camera-tubes. The course and the results of all these interviews with bigwigs of the American industry were of discouraging sameness. Before each meeting I was picked up by a chauffeured limousine and a company representative who took me to lunch at an exclusive restaurant and, after consuming some fine food and a couple of soothing drinks, I was driven to a grimy looking factory in New Jersey where I was introduced to the top executive to whom I was recommended. After listening to a friendly and reassuring pep talk I was interviewed by several department heads, each of them offering me his best wishes for a successful future but regretting that at the time there were no openings in their departments. Thereafter I was driven to my temporary abode at the International House, again by chauffeured limousine but this time without accompanying company representative.

Christmas was approaching and I became increasingly pessimistic about my chances of finding employment in my chosen field or otherwise. The country was in a deepening recession and the glowing stories which I had heard during the listening to foreign broadcasts while still in Berlin, of how the friendly genius Roosevelt was leading his country to new economic heights, lost some of their luster. I was walking up and down the endless avenues of New York to catch the flavor of The City but only developed a bitter taste, which has remained ever since. Yet, I do not want to be totally negative, because if I compare the New York of 1938 with the one I last visited in 1982, it seemed like paradise lost! To someone having been primarily raised in the two cleanest places of the world south of Scandinavia, namely Berlin and Switzerland, the first impressions were devastating. The streets were far from clean and the wintry winds blew the dust through the canyons between the skyscrapers resulting in sore eyes. The subways were incredibly noisy and grimy. Millions of people with strangely expressionless faces were constantly rushing around, seemingly from nowhere to nowhere. The show windows appeared dull and their displays were lacking taste but sometimes showed refreshing humor. I fondly remember a department store displaying ladies' unmentionables with a sign from a service station among them announcing: "We Are Fixing Flats." The best and cheapest diversions were a ride on the Staten Island ferry, which cost only one nickel, and a visit to gorgeous Radio City Music Hall which cost only 44 cents, if you were in time for the first show which started at 11 am and lasted four hours. Even in those days, there was a noticeable hostility among all those different kinds of people who were thrown together into this gigantic heap which belonged to nobody and did not own anybody but only consumed its inhabitants. Most of the once stately mid-town brownstones had been converted into multiple apartments consisting of a rather small living room, an even smaller bedroom and an improvised kitchenette-bathroom arrangement separated by a thin wall which only reached halfway to the ceiling. Many of the recently arrived immigrants wound up in these depressing places but soon moved up to Washington Heights located at the northern tip of Manhattan Island. There the apartments ranged from adequately roomy and airy to exclusively modern and beautiful with views of the Hudson River. A couple of years later this area was to be known as "Prussian Palestine," where the obligatory Dachshunds spoke German only.

A few days after Christmas I was called to the office of my sponsor, Mr. von Meister, and was told that my hopeless search for employment had come to an end, because he had made arrangements for me to start work at the camera plant of Agfa-Ansco Corporation in Binghamton, NY. To understand how he was able to perform this seemingly impossible feat I must digress and relate some of his background as well as some of the history of the company where I was to start my career on the second day of the approaching New Year. Von Meister was, as previously mentioned, the son of a British mother. He was born and educated in England and therefore a British subject. His father was the president of the government of the Prussian state, Hesse-Nassau, and a prominent industrialist as well as one of the three founders of the giant German chemical trust known as IG-Farben. The trust consisted of six major combines, one of which was Agfa-Berlin, the number one supplier of photographic materials and equipment throughout Europe. The American subsidiary of IG-Farben was General Aniline and Film Corporation, which had purchased the venerable photographic firm of Anthony and Scovill in Binghamton, from then on called Agfa-Ansco. There they produced all types of photographic films, papers and chemicals as well as low priced cameras in competition with Kodak and DuPont. Because of the high quality of their products, especially the photographic papers, they became very successful. Von Meister had come to the US in the Twenties where he became, only twenty-some years old, the sales representative of Luerssen Yachts, a German manufacturer of large and luxurious motor yachts. They must have sold very well during the Roaring Twenties, because after the Depression hit the country in the early Thirties, von Meister was able to found his own company which produced reproduction papers for engineering drawings. The new product, he introduced, known as Diazo-Print, was the property of IG-Farben and therefore easily available to von Meister. Eventually Diazo-Print replaced blueprinting in the US as it had done previously in Germany and most of Europe. His company, Ozalid Corp., was located in Johnson City, NY, a small town situated between its two sister cities, Binghamton and Endicott. The latter was the home of IBM. Johnson City was hometown to the Endicott-Johnson shoe factory. Binghamton had, in addition to Agfa-Ansco, the Link Aviation Corporation and later a large division of Remington-Rand Corp. The whole area of the "Triple Cities" called itself the "Valley of Opportunity." Shortly before my arrival Ozalid had fused with General Aniline and Film Corp. and von Meister became thereby a vice president in this large combine. The financial relations with IG-Farben were severed for political reasons and their interest in General Aniline, today known as GAF, was taken over by Swiss Interhandel, a financial institution of Switzerland. These details are important to appreciate the actions of the US Government a few years later.

On December 30, 1939 I arrived by bus in Binghamton and settled temporarily in von Meister's beautiful little summer house in Johnson City. The following week I was introduced to the management of Agfa-Ansco where I found to my great surprise that nearly everybody from the president down to the chief engineer was a recently arrived Jewish émigré from Germany. As everybody knows today, IG-Farben was the terrible outfit which mistreated Jewish deportees in their large Buna (artificial rubber) Works located in Auschwitz. Of course their management was tried after the war and many of them severely punished for their alleged misdeeds. Anyway, during the late Thirties Agfa-Berlin was pressured by the German government to get rid of its high-level Jewish staff members and arrived at the heinous solution of deporting them to the wild west in Binghamton, NY, where they languished at salaries from fifteen to fifty thousand dollars per annum. These salaries were published by the local press at the end of each year and should be compared with my starting salary of $1,300 ($25 per week) and the then-existing minimum wage of $0.45 per hour for a factory worker. But even with my modest income I was able to scrape together the $50 down payment for a four year old Pontiac in less than eight weeks. In prosperous Germany I would have to work several years before I could think about the purchase of an automobile.

The first eight months of the year were mostly enjoyable. The work at the newly created research department was easy, the American people were very friendly and quite different from the types encountered in New York. The streets were clean and safe and the entrances to the houses were left unlocked during the night. There was some resentment because a greenhorn such as I had what was then considered a well paying job, while many locals were unemployed during the still-unrelieved Depression.

The personal difficulties I had were mainly with ethnic Germans who had immigrated into the US in the Twenties. They resented my efforts of setting them straight with respect to their distorted views of the Third Reich, which had been infected with anti-German media propaganda. My efforts to give them a more balanced view of the new Germany were usually given the pat admonishment: "Vee are Americans and venn in America you have to do as ze Americans do." This attitude, shared by the vast majority of ethnic Germans, comprising about twenty percent of the total population, is actually quite laudable and could, if practiced by the numerous and more vociferous minorities, would make life in our times much more agreeable. For the German-Americans it has led to a situation were they have, despite their not inconsiderable contributions to the progress and well-being of this country, become the politically most impotent group in the US. Compare this with the influence and power of American Jewry, whose supposedly two percent of the population occupies nearly fifty percent of the seats of the upper echelons of our government, and exerts an iron grip over the remainder. There is not a single German-sounding name in the ranks of our present administration! A more active participation in American politics by the large German minority would certainly have prevented the idiotic and disastrous participation of the US in a war in Europe which was instigated by the imperialistic ambitions of Russia, France and England. (For the best researched background to that conflagration, make sure to read Degrelle's Hitler: Born at Versailles). It also would probably have nullified the sinister plans of Roosevelt which caused the outbreak of the war in Poland and dragged the American people into it through his lying and the cynical sacrifice of nearly three thousand sailors and soldiers at Pearl Harbor.

The spring of 1939 saw Hitler's last effort to solve the problems of the German Jews in a civilized manner. He sent Hjalmar Schacht, the president of the Reichsbank and architect of of the German recovery, to England for the purpose of negotiating a large loan which would enable Germany to let the remaining 250,000 Jews emigrate with their belongings and the necessary financial means to assure the required immigration visas. The governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, along with many members of parliament, were agreeable to this scheme but it was immediately torpedoed by Chaim Weitzmann and the warmongers around Churchill, who had become a faithful servant of the Jewish banking hierarchy after they had saved him from bankruptcy from the loss of his fortunes in the crash of 1929. In earlier times he had been an outspoken anti-Jew. The Polish dictator Pilsudski had concluded a friendship and non-aggression treaty with Hitler but after his death the brainless chauvinistic successor, Colonel Beck, became a willing victim of Anglo-American intrigues. When Hitler advanced the incredibly generous offer to Poland which let her keep the totally undeserved spoils from World War I, and only asked permission to build an autobahn through the former German lands making up the "Korridor" to connect East Prussia with the Reich, and asked for the return of the predominantly German city Danzig, he was rebuffed. Danzig was a free city under the protectorate of the League of Nations. Roosevelt's traveling emissary, William Bullit, had completed his assignment well in Warsaw and London. England concluded a treaty with Poland promising instant help in case of war with Germany. Careful and treacherous as usual! For the still large German minority in Poland an incredible rule of terror ensued immediately. It resulted in 58,000 gruesomely mutilated German corpses, victims of murderous, thieving Polish mobs. The events and political machinations during the final days of August and the beginning of September are meticulously reported and referenced in the book, The Forced War, by the eminent American historian David Hoggan. The assumption of any guilt of Hitler in the outbreak of the war is simply ludicrous. Hitler, who had by then concluded the famous non-aggression pact with Stalin, reacted swiftly to the excesses of the Poles against the helpless German minorities in their midst and their multiple border violations.

During two month-long visits to Warsaw, where my mother's cousin (the one who survived seven years of captivity in Siberia during the first war) was manager of the largest and most exclusive nightclub in all of eastern Europe, I had plenty of opportunity to observe the large amount of Polish officers swaggering through the streets in their impressive uniforms and boasting about how they would get to Berlin in less than two weeks and ride triumphantly through the Brandenburg Gate. They had been persuaded by their leaders that the new German army was badly equipped and poorly trained and would revolt as soon as Hitler sent them to war. Well, they had to revise their travel plans a bit. The outmoded Polish air force was smashed in the first few hours of the conflict before it even could take to the air. Thereafter their army was driven eastwards into the loving embrace of the Russians, which had in the meantime advanced to the demarcation line previously agreed upon between Hitler and Stalin. The good friends of the Polish people in London and Paris declared war on Germany but did not send a single round of rifle ammunition to help them in their distress. Neither did they order a few regiments to distract the Germans in their endeavor to resolve the Polish question once and forever. Maybe I am wrong about that, because there is a story floating about that a couple of French regiments advanced a mile across the border into the Saarland but beat a hasty retreat after sighting a few German uniforms. The brutal but cautious Asiatic tyrant, ruling in Russia, immediately solved the problem of a possible organized resistance in Poland by ordering fourteen thousand of their officers and intelligentsia to be liquidated by the simple expedient of a single shot in the back of the head. This exemplary display of efficiency and frugality should be a valuable lesson to our money-squandering military establishment. The supposedly even more brutal Germans sent many of the captured Polish officers to schools were they could study fields of their choice, hoping that they would become useful members of the human society. This was possibly a mistake.

After the successful completion of the Polish campaign Hitler began the demobilization of his army, because he was convinced that the British were sufficiently reasonable to discontinue a war which by now had become utterly senseless. Most of the British were possibly agreeable to this, as were the French. Not so Mr. Roosevelt, who ordered his ambassador, Joe Kennedy, to "put some iron up the British backsides." Kennedy was reluctant to do it, was recalled and went home fearing for his life, according to his own remarks. The war continued; Hitler sent his soldiers to the recently constructed West wall and the warring armies were staring at each other for several months. The "phony war!" After several unsuccessful tries to persuade the stubborn English to make peace, Hitler finally decided to end this nonsense and went to the attack. The invincible French army as well as their British allies and even the impenetrable Maginot Line collapsed within a few weeks under the rapid advance of Guderian's panzers and the relentless pounding of the Stukas. The British retreated to Dunkerque, Hitler ordered his victorious panzers to stop and let the expeditionary force escape to England. This was a very bad mistake which none of his enemies would have made. But then he was after all a sort of idealist who simply could not comprehend that his racial brothers across the sea would not finally see the light and agree to make peace. They didn't, which eventually cost them their empire and reduced them to the status of a small secondary power. Their megalomaniacal, alcoholic leader was from now on merely a lieutenant to our "great" president.

The French were ordered to sign the armistice in the same railroad car in which the Germans were previously forced to sign the armistice after the First War. In typical brutal Hitlerian fashion he ordered a German army band to strike up the French national anthem at the arrival of the emissaries and opened his speech by paying homage to his brave enemies who had fallen in the defense of their country. Compare this with the humiliating behavior of the "gentlemen" of the British army who, after the final defeat of Germany, arrested the only legal post-Hitlerian German government of Admiral Doenitz. They stormed into the room where the Germans had been waiting for them, shouting: "Hands up, pants down!" and proceeded to steal all their personal items including the fountain pens. For me, having grown up in post-Versailles Germany, the day of the signing of the French surrender was one of the happiest of my life. Justice had finally been done!

Back in Binghamton my life became less carefree because of the incessant anti-German propaganda which was to push the reluctant American people into joining the homicide far beyond their shores. Theodore Kaufmann was laboring on his infamous opus, Germany Must Perish, which demanded that all Germans of reproductive age should be sterilized, a book which was highly recommended by Roosevelt, especially for recruits of the newly drafted army. It was said that the Germans, who were not even able to cross the English Channel in force, were going to invade Brazil and proceed their march northwards to attack the US. The highly-paid Jewish managers of Agfa-Ansco suddenly became suspected of being secret Nazi agents and as for me personally, most people were sure of it because not only was I not Jewish but I had also previously defended Germany and worst of all I had required a secondhand Buick for the princely sum of $750 as early as November 1939. Since this seemed to be impossible, considering my still low-level position, I must surely have received remunerations for my activities in service of the Third Reich. In addition, some observant neighbor had seen me at night carrying a suspicious looking briefcase, probably containing contraband of some sort. Actually I was attending an evening course in order to improve my still very limited English and carried my writing papers in the briefcase. I was reported to the local District Attorney and called on the carpet for this deviation. It took the chief of the Binghamton FBI office to supply me with a clean bill of health. [Try that today!]

With the beginning of 1941 I also had some problems in connection with my mother. She was still living by herself in Berlin, since my parents had been divorced back in 1919. The nightly attacks of the RAF on the city were becoming a real nuisance and she put great pressure on me to facilitate her immigration. This was again very difficult to achieve. My affidavit for her was rated as insufficient, because of my limited income and also I had as yet not become a full citizen. My first papers of citizenship were already issued during 1939. The American Consul General, Mr. Geist, had shortly after my leaving Germany become acting ambassador because Ambassador Dodd was recalled by Roosevelt. In the spring of 1940 Geist was also returning to America to be put in charge of commercial affairs in the department of state in Washington. I visited him shortly after his return in the DOS and at his home in Georgetown, where he assured me that Roosevelt was getting into this war come hell or high water. ("I say it now and again and again, that your sons will never be sent to fight on foreign soil, etc. etc.....") I therefore knew already then that the war was lost for Germany and felt that I owed it to my mother to spare her the inevitably approaching catastrophe. Geist advised me that my mother could only hope to come here by way of a capitalist immigration visa. My by-then good friend and mentor von Meister took it upon himself to deposit $3,500 into a bank account for my mother, who then received her immigration visa for the US without any further delay. The next problem was how to get her out of Germany and Europe. With the air war raging over Germany, civilian transportation was sharply restricted, especially for totally unessential emigrants to the US, which was by now considered enemy territory because of Roosevelt's loaning fifty destroyers to Britain and his surreptitiously ordered attacks on German submarines in the Atlantic. This time Dr. Eckener solved our problem by a personal call to Air Marshal Göring, who at that time was already plagued by more pressing problems than the transportation of my mother. Nevertheless, he immediately ordered that she be put on a diplomatic flight to Lisbon, which took her there two days later. After a wait of two weeks she was able to board a freighter which brought her to America. Only two weeks after her arrival, Hitler was forced to start the preventive war against the Soviet Union, after Stalin had assembled 140 divisions, and a larger and more modern tank force than Germany could muster at the time, at the eastern border of the Reich. Stalin was ready to start his dreamed-of conquest of Europe.

Surprisingly, the German army beat the Russians to the gates of Moscow, despite its lower numbers and inferior tanks. They did, however, have much better trained soldiers and far superior leadership. The advance of the Germans was stopped by the onset of an abnormally harsh winter for which they lacked the appropriate clothing. Stalin's breathing spell was used to re-equip his forces, thanks to a massive influx of American war matériel of all kinds. Stalin could also shift his large Siberian armies to the west, having concluded a non-aggression pact with Japan, which made the fatal mistake to fall into the trap Roosevelt had set for them at Pearl Harbor. Had they attacked Russia instead, to help their ally Germany, Stalin could not have recovered from his defeat and Roosevelt would not have been able to drag this country into the war by the back door.

My situation in Binghamton became now quite precarious. After Pearl Harbor all German emigrants who had as yet not acquired full citizenship (it took a minimum of five years of continuous residence in the US to receive the second and final papers) had to leave Agfa-Ansco, which by now was named simply Ansco Corp. This included the Jewish top managers. The Swiss-owned General Aniline was illegally disowned and put under the totally inept management of the Enemy Alien Property Custodian. In addition, the top management of the corporation was sued for infringement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It was a totally ridiculous, trumped-up charge and the government indirectly admitted as much by thwarting every effort to let it come to a trial. Von Meister was able to switch me to his Ozalid Corp., but a few days later the axe fell on him, too. A born Britisher who had years ago become an American citizen was now considered suspect because his late father had been a prominent figure in imperial Germany. The well laid plans of my becoming the future director of research at the camera plant were thereby shattered. One afternoon three agents of the FBI showed up and confiscated my camera (it was returned in good condition after the war) as well as those of my two roommates. I showed them the shortwave coils, which I had removed from my radio set, as required by the law, which prohibited the possession of shortwave radios by enemy aliens. One of the agents turned on the radio and, believe it or not, the booming voice of Der Führer filled the room, giving a major pep talk to the German nation. Short waves are very tricky. Everybody had a good laugh but the radio was taken anyhow. The next day a front page photo appeared in the local blat showing all the contraband taken from the enemies and, of course, all their names given. As it turned out I stayed at Ozalid another eight months, but then I had to leave because their copy papers were considered essential to the war effort.

In four years my career had now advanced from an unwanted non-Aryan in Germany to an unemployed enemy alien in the US. Because I had to eat and to support my mother, I was desperately looking for a job until the kind hearted owner of a German-American bakeshop hired me to drive his delivery truck, which brought bread and rolls to most of the restaurants in and around Binghamton. This job actually paid as well as my former engineering position, but when the owner found out about my professional background he immediately pulled me off the truck and wanted me to look after the machinery in his largely automated bakery. First I had to learn everything about baking bread, which paid much less than driving a truck, but to keep me he gave me a raise every week. The working hours were brutal. I had to be at the shop at 3 am and left around 2 pm. Being already used to a more leisurely approach to making a living, I got on the phone to call Mr. Geist at the department of state and let him have my tale of woe. Within a few days I held in my hands the papers, which stated that I could be hired for war-work up to the classification of "Confidential." I was now on my own and luckily another German-American, who was director of research at the Tung-Sol Lamp works in Newark hired me over the telephone. Newark not being a very attractive place, I rented a nice little apartment in a high-rise on Manhattan's West Side. Everything went well for about nine months, when I was called in to my boss, who sadly told me, that "Washington" had revoked my working permit. No reasons given. Some dimwitted official probably had to show that he was doing his job, watching diligently that no dangerous alien impaired the safety of the war effort. I was told that I would be paid an additional two weeks and that I could return as soon as I straightened things out with Washington. In a similar case affecting a German-American colleague of mine who was already a full citizen, the "straightening-out" process had taken six months. Sitting with my mother in a, for me rather costly, apartment, recently furnished on credit, the situation was depressing to say the least. And now, on my way home, I experienced one of those little episodes which assured me that there is something basically all right with the American people and gives hope, even in the present desperate times, that things eventually can be turned around. In passing a small shop selling electrical appliances and radios I noticed a sign in the window: "Radio Repair-Man Wanted!" I had absolutely no experience in radio repair, but being at least theoretically quite familiar with the functioning of a radio set and having built some primitive sets by myself, when I was still a kid about fifteen years earlier, I decided to try this "opportunity." The little old lady who owned the shop asked me about my radio know-how and I told her that I was a graduated engineer and an expert in the design of radio tubes. Hearing my very heavy accent she then asked where I had come from. I could have told her that I was Swiss or Austrian, which would have been at least partially true, but in my somewhat bitter mood I blurted out, "I am German!" and got ready to leave. Then something happened, which could not have happened in any other country under similar circumstances. She simply said, "Oh! If you are German, you must be a good repairman and you can start work immediately." She was definitely not of German extraction. In my weakened condition, I was ready to burst into tears. With all the propaganda constantly telling how dangerous these wicked Germans were, she must have actually retained some common sense and refused to believe that vicious nonsense.

My career as a radio repair man was only short-lived. As usual, I had called Mr. Geist at the department of state and told him of my problems. He said that he was going to look into what could be done in my behalf. It was two weeks later that I was just removing an electrocuted and partially decomposed mouse from a bad-smelling, inoperative radio set, when I got a call from my boss at Tung-Sol. "Heinz," he said, "a miracle has happened. The United States Government has moved within less than two weeks in your case and you can come back immediately to your old job."

The remaining two years of the war were personally rather uneventful. Shortly before the surrender of Germany I was called to a final interview about my upcoming citizenship. The interviewer, a very unpleasant Jewish lady, started by asking if I was not ashamed for holding on to my German name, to which I angrily replied that I saw no reason not to be proud of my German heritage. This about ended the interview and I was convinced that I had failed in my efforts to become an American