Election Day ~ 2024

 American voters prefer a dictator— and they got what they wanted. 

Opposing Adolf Hitler ~ February 22, 1943

Hans and Sophie Scholl were students who distributed flyers in the main foyer of the University of Munich protesting the War and Hitler's dictatorship. A janitor took note and called in the Gestapo. They were hauled into court and four days later were beheaded.        Photo: dpa

Christmas 2022 ~ Three Nativities

Jesus Christ    0001

Adolf Hitler     1889

Vladimir Putin 1952

Have Seen Him Before ~

 

 We are slowly learning to hate our enemy, Putin. 

Symbolism ~

How appropriate, that Putin used half of Hitler's swastika  Z as his war emblem.

Impeachment 2 ~

 Hitler survived impeachment, then committed suicide. 

When the Downfall is Imminent ~

When Hitler saw that he was defeated, he expected his nation to go down with him.

Casting a spell ~

The majority of Germans fell victim to Adolf Hitler's strong magic spell.

The Founding Fathers ~

The good Germans didn't have a mechanism like impeachment to oust Adolph Hitler.

Protestant Theologian ~

After being tortured Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging on 9 April 1945 at a Nazi concentration camp.

Remembering with Gratitude ~

Today is VE-Day. 

I look out my window and think what it would be like had Hitler not been stopped.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko ~

† April 1, 2017

BABI YAR

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.

I am afraid.

Today, I am as old

As the entire Jewish race itself . . .

Nazi Concentration Liberated ~ April 15, 1945

Shades of Shoah

One Sunday morning in Munich

Seventy years later

Six suitcases painted white

Stood on a sidewalk

Each with a rose stuck on

And nametags.

People walked past,

Stopped, bent over to read

And continued on

With shoulders stooped—

Wrenched from Sunday calm.

Wannsee Conference ~ January 20, 1942

As if for a routine business meeting 15 high ranking Nazis met in this house to finalize plans for the "Endlösung", the deportation and extermination of all European Jews, the monstrous crime that anticipated the murder of 11 million human beings.

Night of Broken Glass - November 9, 1938 [Burning of the Synogogues]

I often wonder if I would have had the inner strength and courage, had I been here in Germany then, to stand up against the omnipresent subtle magic and brutal terror of Hitler's seduction. I wonder. . .

Displaced Persons ~

There was a remarkable show on German TV the last two evenings. It was the story of aristocratic German family in East Prussia that had to flee, along with their indentured servants, among whom there were several French prisoners, from the approaching Russian armies in 1945. I had read an account by another person who had gone through the same harrowing experience, Marion Hedda Ilse Countess Dönhoff in her book: Names No Longer Used: East Prussia - People and History. She participated in the resistance against Hitler's National Socialists with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. After the war, she became one of the leading German journalists and intellectuals.


A close friend of mine made the trek with his parents from Breslau to Bavaria when he was just four years old.

Memorial Day in Germany ~

Yesterday was Memorial Day here and those soldiers killed in W.W.I and W.W.II were commemorated. In church we remembered them with prayers. The priest told of families that had lost sons and up to this very day they are psychologically broken because of that. Of course, I prayed for those soldiers together with all the people in our village.

Would I have shot at them back then? Over the years I have learned what it meant for Germans to live in a totaltarian state, to be terrorized, and to conform or be shot. God spared me the awful situation and the decisions one had to make, living in Germany during Hitler's time. That diabolical charisma. I often ask myself how I would have reacted.