Capitalism in Decay

Pictured: Imperial troops entering Tsitsihar on November 19, 1931. Click here for more photographs.

The event, known as the Mukden Incident or the Manchurian Incident, became the Imperial pretext to invade and occupy Manchuria. Quoting Louise Young’s Japan’s Total Empire, page 40:

The Kwantung Army set the construction of Manchukuo in motion with the military conquest of the Northeast known as the Manchurian Incident. Between September 18, 1931, and the Tanggu Truce of May 31 , 1933, a series of campaigns brought the four provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Rehe under [Imperial] military control. The occupation began with a conspiracy engineered by Kwantung Army officers. What had failed in 1928 worked to spectacular effect in 1931.

Staging an explosion of Mantetsu track near the Chinese military base in the city of Fengtian (now known as Shenyang), the conspirators used the alleged attack as a pretext to open fire on the Chinese garrison. Over the ensuing days and months the army quickly escalated the situation, first moving to occupy the railway zone and then embarking on the operations to expel from Manchuria the estimated 330,000 troops in Zhang Xueliang's army.

Unlike in 1928, the metropolitan government ultimately sanctioned army action; the army high command in Tokyo refused to rein in their forces in Manchuria, and the cabinet was unwilling to relinquish territory gained in a fait accompli. Thus the Kwantung Army was permitted to overrun the Northeast, and [the Empire] found itself in full possession of Manchuria.^32^

Now the question that is likely preoccupying you more is why this date, rather than the traditional (and more Eurocentric) proposal of September 1, 1939, should be the real starting point of World War II. If correct, this would mean that WWII lasted for thirteen years and even predated the Third Reich, and for this reason a few scholars refer to this period as ‘the long Second World War’.

Throughout the 1920s, there were plenty of civil wars, uprisings and revolts against local or colonial authorities, and sometimes even border skirmishes between powers. But to the best of my knowledge, there were no major invasions that started in the 1920s (with the possible exception of the Soviet–Georgian conflict, and its international significance is questionable). While the Tibetan Army did invade the Chinese region of Kham in 1930, the Imperial invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was probably the first major invasion in a decade and it would have severer international repercussions.

For example, Geoffrey R. Hamm’s Imperial Defence and the ‘Ultimate Potential Enemy’ shows how this invasion (indirectly) lead to the United Kingdom signing a Navy treaty with the Third Reich in 1935, although in the same text there is the implication that World War II had not yet started:

From the beginning of the crisis Sir Francis Lindley, the ambassador to Tokyo writing in early 1932, held the eerily prophetic view that the

Japanese cannot be turned out of Manchuria without a world war, which it is our first duty to prevent; and that in these circumstances we must trust to the Japanese people gradually realising that they cannot with advantage to themselves pursue a policy of aggression in China in the face of the passive hostility of the rest of the world.^65^

Of course, even in late 1939 there were still some people implying that World War II had not yet begun. For example, quoting from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pages 601–2:

Any idea of mediation [Cadogan said] while German troops are invading Poland is quite out of the question. The only way in which a world war can be stopped is (one) that hostilities be suspended, and (two) that German troops be immediately withdrawn from Polish territory.^7^

While there might not have been a great deal of conflict in Europe (directly) as a result of the invasion of Manchuria, it is worth noting there was almost no military activity on the Western Front from September 1939 to April 1940 either. Furthermore, unlike the 1920s, there were several invasions between 1931 and 1939:

• The Colombia–Peru War (September 1, 1932 – May 24, 1933)
• The Chaco War (June 15, 1932 – June 10, 1935)
• The Saudi–Yemeni War (March 1934 – May 12, 1934)
• The Second Italo‐Ethiopian War (October 3, 1935 – February 19, 1937, which some Africans consider WWII’s beginning)
• And the Second Sino‐Japanese War (July 7, 1937 – September 9, 1945, which some Asians consider WWII’s beginning)

The Spanish Civil War (July 17, 1936 – April 1, 1939) was not, strictly speaking, an invasion, but it did involve German Fascists, Italian Fascists, and Portuguese anticommunists fighting for the Spanish fascists, whereas the Soviet Union (and, it seems, Mexico) fought for the Spanish socialists.

The invasion of Manchuria would have significant influences on European fascism, economically and elsehow. For byspel, quoting Walter A. Skya’s Fascist Encounters: German Nazis and Japanese Shintō Ultranationalists:

Hitler closely followed [Imperial] Japan’s conquests in East Asia in the next several years as [it] successfully nibbled away territory from China through a combination of diplomacy, alliances of expediency, and sheer military power. His interests and those of the [Imperial] leadership converged in various ways, including their common concern about the communist threat.

Reto Hofmann’s The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952, page 6:

[The] imperial expansion into Manchuria between 1931 and 1933 played a key role in redefining the relationship between Japanese and European fascisms. The establishment of Manchukuo radicalized Japanese politics. It paved the way to the rise of “reformist bureaucrats,” intensified militaristic rhetoric and policies as well as calls for autarky, and heightened patriotic fervor, giving Japanese across the ideological spectrum a sense that [the Empire] had caught up with fascism.^14^

Paradoxically, the more difficult it became to maintain clear distinctions between Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, the more fascism appeared obsolescent. And yet […] it was in empire that Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and later, Nazi Germany found a powerful ideological common ground.

Page 101:

The Ethiopian crisis dealt a double blow to both political and economic internationalism, signaling a global turn toward the kind of imperial economy that [the Imperialists] had spearheaded in Manchuria.

Page 112:

On November 18, 1936, [Imperial] Japan became the first power to recognize the [Fascist] annexation of Ethiopia and downgraded its embassy there to the rank of a consulate. The Italians reciprocated somewhat belatedly, as it took some time to disengage from its China‐centered foreign policy in East Asia.^14^ But the following year, in November 1937, Italy joined Japan and Germany in the Anti‐Comintern Pact and recognized Manchukuo.

Finally, note the timing of this invasion: it was only two years earlier that the Wall Street stock market crashed and the Great Depression ensued. Quoting from Japan’s Total Empire, pages 36–7:

In 1929, the collapse of the American stock market and ensuing shock wave of global depression dealt the interimperialist alliance another profound blow. All parties responded to the economic crisis with economic nationalism. As they sought to barricade their own interests against any competitors, the imperatives of economic survival seemed to leave less and less room for compromise.

To [Imperial] policy makers this meant sealing off their extensive investments in Manchuria from the rest of China, for special steps seemed necessary to secure a sphere of interest from the forces of Chinese nationalism.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Other events that happened today (September 18):

1939: The Polish government of Ignacy Mościcki fled to Romania while the radio show Germany Calling began transmitting Fascist propaganda.
1940: The Axis submarine U‐48 sunk the Allied liner SS City of Benares; those massacred included 77 child refugees.
1943: Berlin ordered the deportation of Danish Jews.
1944: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoed the Axis cargo steamship Jun'yō Maru, tragically massacring 5,600 humans, mostly neoslaves and POWs. Meanwhile in France, the Battle of Arracourt commenced.

Pictured: ‘Transfer agreement used by the Palästina Treuhandstelle ("Palestine Trustee Office"), established specifically for Jews wishing to emigrate from Nazi Germany under the Haavara Agreement, to recover some assets when they arrived in Palestine.’ (Source.)

Quoting Lenni Brenner’s Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, page 63:

The debate over the Zionist–Nazi pact continued angrily until 1935. The Ha’avara rapidly grew to become a substantial banking and trading house with 137 specialists in its Jerusalem office at the height of its activities. The regulations were always changing in response to [Berlin’s] pressure, but in essence the agreement was always the same: German Jews could put money into a bank inside Germany, which was then used to buy exports which were sold outside Germany, usually but not exclusively in Palestine.

When the émigrés finally arrived in Palestine, they would receive payment for the goods that they had previously purchased after they had finally been sold. Fiscal ingenuity extended Ha’avara’s operations in many directions, but throughout its operation its attraction to German Jews remained the same: it was the least painful way of shipping Jewish wealth out of [the Third Reich].

However, the [Third Reich] determined the rules, and they naturally got worse with time; by 1938 the average user was losing at least 30 per cent and even 50 per cent of his money. Nevertheless, this was still three times, and eventually five times, better than the losses endured by Jews whose money went to any other destination.^132^

The top limit through the Ha’avara scheme was 50,000 marks ($20,000 or £4,000) per emigrant, which made the Ha’avara unattractive to the richest Jews. Therefore only $40,419,000 went to Palestine via Ha’avara, whereas $650 million went to the United States, $60 million to the United Kingdom and other substantial sums elsewhere. Yet if, in terms of German Jewry’s wealth, Ha’avara was by no means decisive, it was crucial to Zionism.

Some 60 per cent of all capital invested in Palestine between August 1933 and September 1939 was channelled through the agreement with the [Third Reich].^133^ In addition, the British set the annual Jewish immigrant quota, using the weak economic absorptive capacity of the country to limit their number; however, ‘capitalists’ — those bringing in over £1,000 ($5,000) — were allowed in over quota.

The 16,529 capitalists were thus an additional source of immigrants as well as an economic harvest for Zionism. Their capital generated a boom, giving Palestine a wholly artificial prosperity in the midst of the world‐wide Depression.

At first the WZO tried to defend itself against the charges of boycott‐scabbing and outright collaboration by insisting that the Ha’avara transfers did not really break the boycott, since [the Third Reich] did not receive foreign currency for its goods as they were all purchased inside the country for marks.

However, Berlin soon demanded part payment for some of the commodities in foreign currency and soon, too, the WZO started soliciting new customers for [the Third Reich] in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Eventually the Zionists began exporting oranges to Belgium and Holland using [Fascist] ships.^134^ By 1936 the WZO began to sell Hitler’s goods in Britain.^135^

(Emphasis added. Note that ‘Ha’avara’ refers to a trading company that the World Zionist Organisation established to trade with the Third Reich.)

An example of this investment was the ‘Agreement for Transferring Property from Germany to Palestine: Details of the Three Million Mark Agreement’, which is available in the Zionist Record. Excerpt:

The Ministry of Economic Affairs has today published the full text of the decree providing for the transfer of Jewish property from Germany to Palestine.

The decree, which is numbered 54, and is dared August 28th, states that an agreement was concluded “with the Jewish bodies concerned,” for “promoting Jewish emigration to Palestine by releasing the necessary sums without putting excessive strain upon the foreign currency funds of the Reichsbank, and at the same time for increasing German exports to Palestine.”

The Reichsbank is for this purpose opening two special accounts for the Bank of Temple Society, it states, in favor of the Anglo‐Palestine Bank.

See Lenni Brenner’s 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis for the full text.

Lastly, while I hate to state the obvious, I am afraid that it is now justified since there are more neoliberals than usual on this website, so I’ll go ahead and say it: no, demonstrating Zionism’s links with Fascism does not mean that I have anything against Jews. Zionism has nothing to do with protecting Jewish people, unless it intends to protect them by ensuring that thousands of Palestinian civilians won’t be able to breathe anymore, let alone meet Jews. So don’t pretend that a pseudodemocracy that lets dozens of thousands of its own citizens waste away in poverty can possibly hope to represent millions of people from around the world. If Zionism were about caring for Jewish people, its earliest head of state would never have said that he would rather have half a million Jews gone and half a million serving Zionism than both halves living safely in another part of the world:

A month after the [Fascist] pogrom against Germany’s Jews, famously known as Kristallnacht, [David Ben Gurion] stated on December 7, 1938: “If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz‐Yisrael, I would choose the latter—because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People.”

(Source.)

Events that happened today (September 17):

1939: The Reich submarine U-29 sunk the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous.
1940: Due to setbacks in the Battle of Britain and approaching autumn weather, Berlin postponed Operation Sea Lion.
1944: Axis forces occupied San Marino but quickly suffered an Allied assault. (Coincidentally, Allied airborne troops parachuted into the Netherlands as the ‘Market’ half of Operation Market Garden, and Soviet troops launched the Tallinn Offensive against the Third Reich and anticommunist Estonian units. Lastly, an Axis war criminal, General Friedrich Zickwolff, died of a disease whilst in France.)
1953: Hans Feige, Axis general, mustered up the decency to drop dead.
2013: Eiji Toyoda, Axis industrialist, expired.

Pictured: Possibly the most unflattering photograph available of General Alexander Averescu.

Quoting from Alan Cassels’s Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy, pages 339–341:

General Alexander Averescu […] had been educated in Italy and was reputed to be both an Italophile and pro‐Fascist. Yet one of his government’s first acts was to override Italian objections and sign a friendship pact with France. On the other hand, Mussolini would take this rebuff from an ideological sympathizer without becoming incensed; in fact, it stimulated [Rome] to reach some accord with Bucharest lest Rumania slip completely into the French orbit.

Averescu was willing to balance his Francophile gesture by an agreement with [Fascist] Italy, so he set no preconditions regarding Bessarabia. Negotiations were conducted on the [Fascist] side by Dino Grandi, and on the Rumanian by Averescu himself and the Rumanian minister in Rome, Alexander Lahovary.^2^ Three months after the accord between France and Rumania, an Italo‐Rumanian friendship pact was concluded on September 16, 1926.

[…]

Superficially then, the Italo‐Rumanian pact was no more substantial than most of the other arbitration agreements that followed Locarno. For that matter, it said no more than the inconsequential Italo‐Czech treaty of 1924. Yet it was vastly more important, partly because the Rumanian and [Fascist] governments intended that it should be so, partly because events quickly brought out its true portent. For Fascist Italy the pact with Rumania was linked in a preparatory way with the first Treaty of Tirana with Albania just over two months later.

Aloisi left Bucharest for Albania to preside over the negotiations leading up to the Tirana pact, while Durazzo, who had held the Albanian post, took Aloisi’s place in Bucharest in time for the Italo‐Rumanian pact. Moreover, while France and Czechoslovakia rushed to Yugoslavia’s side in denouncing the Treaty of Tirana, Bucharest honored the spirit of the recent friendship pact and hailed the treaty.^5^

But one good turn deserves another, and Averescu now felt free to raise the Bessarabian question again. He called for one more mediatory overture to Moscow, certain to be rejected, and then [Fascist] ratification of the protocal of 1920.^6^

All along, Mussolini had anticipated that the Italo‐Rumanian pact would sooner or later, in however roundabout a way, compel him to a firm decision on Bessarabia, and he had made it well in advance. Even before the signing of the pact he had confidentially informed the Italian ambassador in Moscow: “I have come to the decision to ratify the Bessarabian treaty as soon as Rumania provides suitable compensation.”^7^

Also early in September Mussolini had sketched in a memorandum what he considered an adequate quid pro quo; substantially the same requirements were presented to Averescu early in 1927.^8^ The Duce’s demands were in three parts. First was the usual request for commercial privileges in Rumania, “to assist Italy overcome difficulties with Russia of an economic nature as a result of ratification.”

It had been nearly three years since Fascist Italy had accorded the Soviet [Union] de jure recognition in the expectation of vast amounts of mutual trade which had long ago proved illusory, but it was still a useful bargaining ploy.^8a^ Then came a minor point, but one of concern to a hypernationalist like Mussolini—the teaching of Italian in Rumania’s secondary schools.

The sting lay in the third, and political, category: “The honest counterweight to balance the risks and dangers of a rupture of diplomatic relations between Italy and Russia must be offered us by Rumania in the field of Danubian politics. Under the aegis and eventually with the participation of Italy, Rumania must strive to reach an accord with Hungary on the one hand and Bulgaria on the other. Only by realizing under [Fascist] inspiration and guidance an Italo‐Magyar‐Rumanian‐Bulgarian quadruple alliance [quadruplice] could [Rome] face with equanimity the inevitable crisis with Russia.”

While Bucharest declined in January 1927 to join this Danubian bloc, it was probably no mere coincidence that later the Kingdoms of Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, and Romania would officially ally, thanks to the Third Reich and Imperial Japan, shortly after September 1940.

Page 342:

What, in effect, Rumania was offered was the final assurance and legal sanction in Bessarabia, but at the hazard of reawakening another irredentist bogey in Transylvania, for such was the inference of an association with Hungary. In trying to sell this enterprise Mussolini made special allocations of money to win the favor of the Rumanian press.^9^ But in reality he staked everything on Averescu. “Averescu is a sincere friend of Italy,” he wrote confidently to King Victor Emmanuel.^10^

Page 346:

Mussolini was busily engaged in cultivating the friendship of the Magyar’s archenemy, Rumania. In these circumstances, [Rome], to be sure of Hungary’s allegiance, had to buy it with a formal agreement. Indeed, in early 1927, while Mussolini’s hopes of including Hungary and Rumania in a radical Danubian alignment were still alive, arrangements were made for Bethlen to visit Italy again; an Italo‐Hungary treaty was clearly in the offing.^17^

In the spring Mussolini continued to try to balance between Rumania and Hungary. [The Fascist] ratification of the Bessarabian protocol, which was supposed to win Rumania’s adherence to Mussolini’s grand design, now had to be used to mollify the Rumanian reaction to the impending accord with Hungary. So in March ratification was given and may have muted, if it did not silence entirely, Rumanian criticism of what followed on April 5. This was the signing in Rome by Mussolini and Bethlen of a pact of amity, conciliation, and arbitration, valid for 10 years instead of the customary five. It was accompanied by another accord of no little consequence to [Fascism] for the channeling of Hungarian trade through Fiume.^18^

Rome’s attempts to cool its relations with Moscow were proven half‐hearted with Bessarabia. Pages 350–2:

There remained one criterion of Russo‐Italian relations, which overrode ideology, Matteotti, and Locarno, and which in the last resort determined whether the détente that had begun with recognition continued or lapsed. This was Italian ratification of the Bessarabian protocol. So long as Mussolini withheld it, and thereby also withheld Rumania’s full legal title to the region, the Soviets would endure much at Italian hands and preserve at least the semblance of friendship between Moscow and Rome.

But Mussolini was less concerned with nonratification as a means of maintaining a tie with [Moscow] than he was with ratification as a bribe to entice Rumania to join his grand design in the Danube valley. On September 16, 1926 the conclusion of the Italo‐Rumanian friendship pact implied that a shift in Italy’s stand on Bessarabia was imminent. […] To delay ratification, he wrote to King Victor Emmanuel, “permits Italy still to play the Russian card.”^32^

But the Soviets refused to be mollified. On November 20 Manzoni reported: “The Italo‐Rumanian pact, the Bessarabian situation (fatto Bessarabico) have, then, occasioned the manifestations of Soviet political frigidity toward Italy, and at the same time they have brought to the surface the already existent but hitherto latent feeling of coldness.”^33^

The Soviets were correct in distrusting Mussolini. Since September 1926 he was resolved on ratification of the Bessarabian protocol; his talk of a Russo‐Italian political accord was so much camouflage. This emerged clearly on March 7, 1927, when [Rome] at long last ratified the Bessarabian protocol—and this despite Rumania’s refusal to join Mussolini’s league of Balkan states. Mussolini’s prime concern was still to reconcile Bucharest to [Fascist] Italy’s growing rapprochement with revisionist Hungary.^34^ Mussolini quite consciously, then, provoked a breach with the Soviets. Obviously he now considered the utility of the Russo‐Italian rapprochement to be at an end. It was time to return to a consistent anti‐Bolshevik ideology.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Events that happened today (September 16):

1878: Karl Albiker, Axis sculptor, was born.
1891: Karl Dönitz, Axis admiral who briefly served as the Greater German Reich’s head of state, existed. Likewise did the Reich spy and ‘honourary Aryan’ Stephanie von Hohenlohe.
1910: Erich Kempka, SS member and chauffer, polluted life with his presence. Karl Kling, Axis mechanic, was born on the same day.
1940: Fascist troops conquered Sidi Barrani.
1943: The German Tenth Army reported that it could no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno.
1945: The Axis occupation of Hong Kong was over.
2012: Friedrich Zimmermann, Axis lieutenant, expired.

(Mirror.)

Quoting William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, page 233:

The so‐called Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935, deprived the Jews of German citizenship, confining them to the status of “subjects.” It also forbade marriage between Jews and Aryans as well as extramarital relations between them, and it prohibited Jews from employing female Aryan servants under thirty‐five years of age. In the next few years some thirteen decrees supplementing the Nuremberg Laws would outlaw the Jew completely.

Some of us may remember reading somewhere that Imperial America’s so‐called ‘Jim Crow’ laws formed the basis of the Nuremberg Laws. There is certainly some truth to that claim, but chances are your understanding of this is minimalistic. The following paragraphs shall hopefully provide you with a clearer and more formal understanding of the matter:

The [Fascist] attorney and scholar Heinrich Krieger was a crucial actor in the process of [the Third Reich] studying and adopting American racial laws and practices and, in particular, American Indian law and policies. “Krieger himself defended the importance of studying the race laws in the United States” because it “was the only country besides the German Reich and South Africa that had ‘real race legislation.’”^295^

Consequently, Krieger researched and published important materials that [Reich] officials, jurists, attorneys, and scholars used to debate and formalize legislative proposals in the run‐up to the enactment of the infamous Nuremberg Laws in 1935.^296^ For example, Krieger’s materials were probably distributed, or at the least were well‐known, to the attendees at the crucial June 5, 1934 meeting in the process of developing the Nuremberg Laws.^297^

At this meeting, seventeen German jurists, lawyers, scholars, and party officials debated at great length how [the Third Reich] could legally discriminate against Jews and they discussed in depth American federal and state laws as viable working models.^298^ A brief review of Krieger’s work adds significant strength to the thesis that [Fascist] scholars and officials were heavily influenced by United States race law and by federal Indian law.

In 1933–34, Krieger was an exchange student studying American “legal and sociological” issues at the University of Arkansas Law School while he also held a fellowship from the prestigious Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Association of German Science). 299 He was simultaneously “conducting research in the Library of Congress to write his dissertation on “American Racial Law.”^300^

His dissertation was published in 1936 and became well‐known to [Fascist] scholars and even somewhat to the German public. But significantly, he also published his research and findings on American race laws in an article contemporaneously with the June 5, 1934 Nuremberg Laws meeting discussed infra.^301^

In the 1934 article, Race Law in the United States, and in the 1936 publication of his dissertation under the same title, Krieger presented his findings on American racial laws and, for example, cited the statutes of thirty U.S. states that criminalized or civilly nullified inter‐racial marriages, or miscegenation.

Most importantly for this Article, Krieger became intimately familiar with American Indian Law. He published a twenty‐nine page law review article on Indian law in March 1935, Principles of the Indian Law and the Act of June 18, 1934.^302^ His findings and the information he provided on federal Indian law were important to [Fascist] officials in their study of American race law in general.

One author, citing Krieger and other [Fascist] scholars, notes that Indian law was discussed by many [Fascists] “within the context of more general descriptions of American racial legislation. […] [and they] deliberately compared American legislation to the so‐called Nuremberg Race Laws […] [and it is] obvious that the discussion of Indians as segregated racial entities on reservations […] suited the [Fascist] ideology of racial purity and cultural determinations.”^303^

This author concludes that “prohibiting mixed marriages [as American antimiscegenation statutes and the Nuremberg Laws did] and the Indian New Deal [the specific Indian law that Krieger analyzed] served as a model and justification for [Fascist] racial legislation, and eventually for racial discrimination.”^304^

There are more paragraphs therein, and further could be said about the Nuremberg Laws, such as looking directly at the Jews who suffered from them, but for the sake of brevity I’d like to end this excerpt here.

Other events that happened today (September 15):

1913: Johannes Steinhoff, Luftwaffe fighter ace and later NATO official, existed.
1919: Angelo Fausto Coppi, Axis soldier (and cyclist), was born.
1935: The Third Reich officially adopted its new national flag bearing the swastika.
1940: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Luftwaffe launched its largest and most concentrated assault of the entire campaign.
1942: Axis torpedoes sunk the Allied Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp at Guadalcanal.
1944: The Battle of Peleliu commenced as the United States Marine Corps' 1st Marine Division and the United States Army's 81st Infantry Division hit White and Orange beaches under heavy fire from Axis infantry and artillery.
1945: Anton Webern, ambivalent Axis musician, expired.
1975: Franco Bordoni‐Bisleri, Axis pilot, died.
1978: Willy Messerschmitt, Axis aircraft designer and manufacturer, perished.

And then when I went to the Republican ones, and I talked to Latvians and Lithuanians and so forth, they just started talking openly about the connection between the Republican Club, the Coalition for Peace through Strength, the ABN [Antibolshevik Bloc of Nations], and the World Anticommunist League. They all—it was all umbrella, the same people.

And so, I said [that] this story is going to take a while to tell, because I wanted to cover everything, and… make sure they—they were used to operating without anybody questioning who[m] they were. They were taken at face value. You know. ‘I hate the Soviet Union.’ ‘Well, you hate the Soviet Union, so we don’t ask any other questions’, you know. Right.

[…]

[A]fter the election of 1988 was over, the New York Times published an opinion piece [that] I wrote on this subject, about the [Fascist] wing of the Republican Party, and not one newspaper picked the story up, and there was no reporting on it ever. And… 60 Minutes, which was a major television investigative reporting program, started working on it, but White House pressure was put on them to kill the story and they did.

(Spotted here.)

Events that happened today (September 14):

1940: The Hungarian Army, supported by local Hungarians, massacred 158 Romanian civilians in Ip, Sălaj, a village in Northern Transylvania.
1943: The Wehrmacht commenced a three‐day retaliatory operation targeting several Greek villages in the region of Viannos, whose death toll would eventually exceed 500 persons.
1944: The Axis the Dutch city of Maastricht to the Allies.
1966: Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, dropped dead.

I thought [that] it was the end of us all then. I was 15 years old. I was all alone in this hell. They told us to undress and that we were going to be showered, and that they were going to give us clothes. The place was so cold, it was in early winter. Birkenau, which is Poland, it was freezing cold. We stayed there for hours to wait for our clothes. They took our clothes away, and they gave us inmate clothes. And it was paper thin.

The next day they came after roll call, and they tattooed me. They tattooed me and they told us [that] from now on, this is my name. My name is A‐5143. And they said, “From now on you do not answer by your name. Your name is your number.” And the delusion, the disappointment, the discouragement that I felt…I felt like I was not a human person anymore.

[…]

They took her away, and they threw—they didn’t bury or burn [everybody]. They just threw [some] out in front of the barrack—the door, and the mountain was as tall, uh, like, uh… to the top of the door. I’ll never forget it; it was a mountain of dead people, […] cadavers. And one day, [on] the second day, I decided to go look and see where Christian was, and I almost fell on the […] cadavers, because [sic] she was covered with lice! And I couldn’t believe it, and they were crawling [sic?] all over her, eating her flesh. And so I ran away; I couldn’t look anymore. And I ran away from her, and never looked at her again.

Events that happened today (September 13):

1877: Wilhelm Filchner, Reich explorer, was born.
1885: Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke, Fascist mathematician, was brought into the world.
1891: Max Pruss, Fascist captain, arrived on this dust ball.
1899: Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Romanian fascist, stained the earth.
1936: Stefano Delle Chiaie, neofascist terrorist, worsened life with his presence.
1942: Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign: U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Japanese with heavy losses for the Axis forces.
1944: Start of the Battle of Meligalas between the Greek Resistance forces of the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) and the collaborationist security battalions.

Quoting Raffael Scheck’s Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940, page 39:

The [Fascists] then led eight white officers and sixty to seventy Tirailleurs Sénégalais down the road to Chères, the next village. Near a field where two tanks were parked, the officers had to lie down. Meanwhile, the [Fascists] ordered the Tirailleurs to assemble with raised hands in the field with the tanks and ordered them to start running, as if attempting to escape. The two tanks then fired their machine guns and cannons at the fleeing black soldiers while driving over the wounded and dead.^59^

Close to fifty Tirailleurs were murdered in what an observer described as a Dantesque “vision of horror.”^60^ A [Fascist] deliberately wounded the white French commander with a pistol shot, but the other officers were not hurt. In the days that followed, some surviving Tirailleurs were found in the houses of Chasselay and the surrounding fields and orchards.

[…]

Some sources claim that the tanks deliberately ran back and forth over the bodies, but witnesses closer to the events state that the tanks drove over the bodies while in pursuit of the fleeing Tirailleurs without apparent intention to crush them. For testimonies, see Archives départementales de Lyon, folders 3808 W 879 (Chasselay) and 437 W 173. The most detailed and reliable witness reports are by Marcel Requier, one of the surviving officers, and by Raymond Murard, a resident of Chasselay who helped bury the corpses the next day.

(Emphasis added.)

Similarly, the Fascists in Libya sometimes ran tanks over rebels.

Events that happened today (September 12):

1882: Ion Agârbiceanu, fascist priest, made the mistake of existing.
1938: Adolf Schicklgruber demanded autonomy and self‐determination for the Germans of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region.
1942: An Axis submarine torpedoed the RMS Laconia off the coast of West Africa, sinking it and massacring its civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs. Meanwhile, on the first day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge during the Guadalcanal Campaign the Imperial Japanese Army assaulted the U.S. Marines protecting Henderson Field.
1943: Otto Skorzeny’s commando forces rescued Benito Mussolini from his house arrest. 1944: The liberation of Yugoslavia from Axis occupation continued, and Bajina Bašta in western Serbia was among the liberated cities. 1945: Korean communists proclaimed the People’s Republic of Korea, bringing an end to Axis rule over Korea. Coincidentally, the Axis field marshal Hajime Sugiyama ended his own life.
1953: Hugo Schmeisser, Axis arms designer, expired.
1956: Count Sándor Ágost Dénes Festetics de Tolna, pro‐Reich Zionist, dropped dead.

While the Chilean military junta was not, technically speaking, fascist, it nevertheless remains indisputable that it won the support of Fascists (Walter Rauff) and neofascists alike. One indirect but interesting way was through the torturer Miguel Krassnoff, the son of Axis soldier Pyotr Krasnov, but for today’s topic I invite you to look at the Swedish neofascists who supported the junta:

In January 1976, the Swedish–Chilean society was officially established. Because of the political background of most of its members, it was soon publicly known for having strong connections with [neofascist] organizations.^22^ […] The most important members were Åke Lindsten, Ulf Hamacher and Erik Ulfhake. The treasurers were Sven Brile and Olle Svanström.^30^ The only newly known [neo]fascist from this list was Åke Lindsten, who was an active member of National League of Sweden together with Ulf Hamacher.^31^

[…]

Ambassador Törnvall was also invited by Ungsvenskarna (Young Swedes) to give a lecture about the new Chilean constitution in September 1980. This political association had its origins in [German Fascist] ideology but formed part of the conservative Moderate Party, although promoting more radical right-wing positions than its mother party.^69^ About 40 members of the organization attended the lecture. During this meeting, the president of Ungsvenskarna, Claes av Ugglas, voiced his sympathies for Pinochet and expressed his criticism in relation to the Swedish media and the public authorities and their stance to Chile.

[…]

On August 9, 1982, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published an extensive article about Nazi organizations in Sweden and their racist and violent actions against immigrants which included a long interview with Ulf Hamacher. The author of the article referred several times to the former Ambassador Törnvall and informed about the connections of these radical groups with the Chilean embassy.

The articled included the names of some of the ultra‐conservative members of the [neofascist] organizations that had strong sympathies with Pinochet, such as Claes Lantz, G. Frostensson, Per‐Johan Bergelin and Ulf Hamacher, all active in the Society and also in the National League of Sweden. During the interview, Hamacher lamented that the new Chilean ambassador did not have any interest in keeping the collaboration with them. The author also mentioned that even the leader of Ku Klux Klan in Sweden had been active in the Swedish–Chilean society for a short period of time.^74^

[…]

Pinochet himself benefited from the sympathies of the Swedish [neofascist] militants. Besides the limited number (around 250 members in the society by 1980), they were quite active in publishing articles in local magazines and newspapers on his honor. Indeed, the dictator had a long contact with the leaders of the Swedish–Chilean society. They personally met in Chile and they had a direct communication via regular mail. Some of them received the highest Chilean award.

(Emphasis added.)

Events that happened today (September 11):

1899: Philipp Bouhler, the SS official responsible for the Aktion T4 euthanasia program that massacred more than 250,000 disabled adults and children, as well as co‐initiator of the Aktion 14f13 campaign that massacred 15,000–20,000 concentration camp prisoners, disgraced humanity with his existence.
1941: Charles Lindbergh's Des Moines gave a speech accusing the British, Jews and the FDR régime of pressing for war with the Third Reich.
1943: Reich troops occupied Corsica and Kosovo-Metohija, thereby ending the Kingdom of Italy’s occupation of Corsica.
1944: RAF bombing raid on Darmstadt and the following firestorm killed 11,500.
1945: Australian 9th Division forces arrived at the Axis‐run Batu Lintang camp, a POW and civilian internment camp on the island of Borneo.

The 1919 law established the minimum requirements for all white‐collar contracts, both on an individual basis, and, potentially, for collective agreements. This law was further amended in 1924 with decree‐law number 1825, and later converted into law 562 of 1926.^9^ Private sector white‐collar employment, therefore, saw substantial continuity between the Liberal Age and the fascist period — a continuity that found no correspondence in any other category of employment.

[…]

In collective bargaining, white‐collar workers represented a weak counterparty. They were unable to manifest adequate autonomous trade union strength and not particularly willing to ally themselves as a subordinate component with the workers’ movement, given that they could not identify with the latter’s prevalently class‐based values.

From these factors emerges one of the specific reasons for white‐collar interest in fascist trade unionism: the 1924 law confirmed and restructured for the better the minimum guarantees for private white‐collar workers, and the union laws of 1926^17^ established a new top‐down solution for collective bargaining and gave legal value to collective agreements. This solution best responded to the traditional needs and attitudes of the white‐collar class in general.

[…]

Overall, the industrialists behaved in the same way towards white‐collar workers as they had towards labourers, but following a formally contrary course. While the rapid establishment of contracts for manual labourers in the late 1920s had sanctioned a change in the balance of power, following the period of salary increases and regulatory victories of 1919–1920 (the ‘red biennial’), for white‐collar workers, it was the very absence of national contracts that allowed the erosion of the post‐war salary increases to take place.^28^

The Confederation of industrialists had also sought the abolishment of the white‐collar law of 1924, accusing it of being a product of class struggle and as such incompatible with the new régime^29^; this venture did not, however, meet with success.

(Emphasis added.)

Events that happened today (September 9):

1908: Shigekazu Shimazaki, Axis career officer, was born.
1936: The crews of Portuguese Navy frigate NRP Afonso de Albuquerque and destroyer Dão mutinied against the Salazar régime’s support of General Franco’s coup and declared their solidarity with the Spanish Republic.
1939: The Battle of Hel commenced, and became the longest‐defended pocket of Polish Army resistance during the Fascist invasion of Poland. (Coincidentally, Burmese national hero U Ottama starved in prison after a hunger strike to protest Britain’s colonial government.)
1940: The Hungarian Army perpetrated the Treznea Massacre in Transylvania.
1941: Hans Spemann, Fascist embryologist, expired.
1942: An Imperial floatplane dropped incendiary bombs on Oregon.
1943: The Allies landed at Salerno and Taranto, Italy. Coincidentally, Reich bombers killed the former Axis admiral Carlo Bergamini.
1944: The Axis lost the Kingdom of Bulgaria because of the armed rebellion throughout the country and specifically the military coup in the capital.
1945: The Empire of Japan officially surrendered to China.

Kangoku-beya were prison-like hanba which used violence and debt-bondage to retain labour. Working hours at work sites with kangoku-beya were often between 13 and 16 hours a day, and food at these worksites was invariably of poor quality, often with nothing more than rice gruel, miso and perhaps a few pickles for most meals. Despite the poor quality of food and accommodation, the hanba head subtracted a large hanba fee from labourers’ salaries, which covered food and board.

Moreover, hanba heads ran small stores, overcharging labourers for a number of daily essentials, and goods necessary for use in the workplace, which were again subtracted from labourers’ salaries. As mentioned previously, some contemporary social commentators referred to kangoku-beya as a ‘modern slavery’ system, and described conditions within them as ‘a living hell’.^39^ They were poorly constructed, filthy places, where riots, fights, intimidation, injury and cruelty were commonplace, and in some cases labourers were murdered for attempting to run away.

Events that happened today (September 8):

1941: Axis forces commenced the Siege of Leningrad.
1943: The Allies proclaimed the Armistice of Cassibile by radio; OB Süd immediately implemented plans to disarm the Italian forces.
1944: For the first time a V-2 rocket hit London.
1949: Richard Georg Strauss, who briefly (and unhappily) served as Reichsmusikkammer, left the world.
1965: Hermann Staudinger, patron member of the SS, expired.
2003: Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl, Reich propagandist, had the decency to finally drop dead.

Pictured: “Black and Jew: Two typical American types.” (Reproduced from the Fascist periodical La difesa della raza, September 5, 1939, p. 7. Courtesy of Karen Pinkus’s Bodily Regimes.)

Quoting Why Didn’t the Press Shout?: American & International Journalism During the Holocaust, page 341:

On September 1, 1938, citing public safety, the government forbade “foreigners of the Jewish race to establish permanent residence on Italian soil, in Libya, on it Italy’s Aegean possessions” and on September 7 revoked the “concession of Italian citizenship to Jews contracted after January 1, 1919,” and gave them six months to leave the country.

(Confusingly, some sources such as Katy Hull’s The Machine Has a Soul: American Sympathy with Italian Fascism conflate these days and suggest that Rome issued the time limit on ‘foreign’ Jews on September 1st, but apparently it was really September 7th; you can see from the above how the confusion resulted.)

The law applied to at least 7,000 people (possibly as many as 10,000), but only 3,720 of them had left by March 1939.

Quoting Gene Bernardini’s 1977 article The Origins and Development of Racial Anti‐Semitism in Fascist Italy:

[Mussolini’s] decision to formulate a policy which would weld together racism and anti‐Semitism was purely voluntary and flowed naturally from the confluence of Italy’s imperial policies, the ideological tenets of fascism, and Italian national interests as enunciated by the Duce. It was not, as some observers believed, imposed upon Mussolini by official German pressure.^10^

From Klaus Voigt in Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, page 185:

Until the enactment of the racial laws, Fascist Italy had granted admission to Jewish refugees from territories under Nazi rule. Their situation then suffered a drastic setback with the decree of September 7, 1938, which threatened with expulsion the great majority of Jews who had entered Italy as immigrants or refugees after 1918 if they did not leave the country within six months.

The expulsion, however, proved impracticable: by the time the deadline expired, approximately one half of the 9,000 Jews affected by the decree, 4,500 of whom were refugees from Germany and Austria, were as yet without visas to another country and therefore unable to leave Italy. Until August 1939, Jews could still enter Italy with a tourist visa, which enabled them to remain in the country up to six months. When authorities realized that 5,000 mostly destitute people had used this kind of visa only to flee [the Third Reich’s] persecution, it was suspended.

After that, and until May 1940, entry into the country was allowed only on a transit visa in order to board a ship in an Italian harbor. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, the border was closed to Jews. After Yugoslavia’s defeat, this ban was extended to include the territories annexed by Italy.^11^

I would like to talk more generally about antisemitism in Fascist Italy. Many summarize Fascist Italy pre‐1938 was a period of ‘relative tolerance’ for Jews, but this summary leaves a lot unsaid. Benito Mussolini made antisemitic remarks even before the 1930s (though he was usually careful when and where to say them). For example, quoting from Giorgio Fabre in Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, page 60:

Mussolini in Il Popolo d’Italia on June 4, 1919, published his famous piece (“The Accomplices,” “I complici”) against Jewish Bolshevik leaders whom he claimed had been financed by Jewish American bankers[.]

Other Fascists were also quite tolerant of antisemites. Pages 60–1:

Preziosi’s magazine, La Vita Italiana, was transformed into an anti‐Semitic publication, this took on for the Fascist movement and then for the National Fascist Party (PNF) a heavily anti‐Jewish significance, which was reinforced when the magazine was joined by another anti‐Semitic periodical, the Rivista di Milano. Robert Michels, sharp‐eyed as usual, pointed this out immediately in December 1922.^19^ Nor was he the only one to do so.

The newspaper of the small and democratic Republican Party (the party inspired by Giuseppe Mazzini) made a very similar comment.^20^ The symbolic climax in this anti‐Jewish operation came a little later, on March 1, 1923, when the anti‐Semite Pantaleoni was appointed senator under the first Mussolini‐led government and at Mussolini’s wish.^21^ For the very first time in Italy, a party had an official or semiofficial anti‐Semitic wing.

When something similar had happened before the war in the Nationalist Association — a small “nationalist association” which, after the war, set up a real influent party — the “association” had split in two.^22^

Mussolini himself impressed a personal anti‐Jewish mark upon Fascism: his devastating hostility against the Jewish political élite, first and foremost against the élite of the socialist or communist “enemy.” Michels’s intuition, that anti‐Semitism was the result of a struggle within the socialist leadership, was borne out by Mussolini’s course of action after he left the socialist party and founded a movement that was in some respects a competitor of the former.

Take heed to the following! Pages 61–2:

Although this article is similarly anonymous and is not included in his Opera Omnia (Collected Works), it can nevertheless be attributed to Mussolini.^24^ It is dated September 1, 1921, and in it Mussolini commented on the Zionist conference at Karlsbad, which had been attended by Dante Lattes and other Italian delegates. Alluding to them, Mussolini wrote that there were “Jews who are fed up with living [in Italy], which is something that does not trouble us in the least.”

The “anonymous” writer of Il Popolo d’Italia then added, “If Italian — so‐called Italian! — Zionists were to move elsewhere and take with them the whole pack of Treveses, Modiglianis, Musattis, Momiglianos, Sacerdotis (Genosse), Passiglis and that fine Mr. Ottolenghi who has regaled Italy with several strikes of the postal service, it would afford us great pleasure to expedite this ‘exodus.’”^25^

For us anti‐Zionists, the fact that Fascist Italy initially supported Zionism while also tolerating antisemitism is unsurprising. After all, surely any fervent antisemite would prefer that Jews leave his country as soon as possible rather than stay in it!

True, both Fascist Italy and the Third Reich would later oppose mainstream Zionism, but it was not so much Zionism per se that bothered them as it was the British Empire, which held Palestine at that time and came increasingly in conflict with the Fascist empires. Thus the Fascists later suggested alternatives to Palestine, most infamously Madagascar, but also Ethiopia. Keep in mind that the original Zionists themselves proposed their own alternatives to Palestine, such as Patagonia and Uganda.

It is also helpful to examine the Jews who joined the PNF (the subject of the book Italy’s Fascist Jews: Insights on an Unusual Scenario), as this helps illuminate how Fascist antisemitism manifested in subtler ways. Page 63:

[A]s a matter of fact, no Jew had ever held a truly leading post in the party. Gino Arias, the famous nationalist economist, who was a Jew and would receive the party membership card on May 1, 1923, was in fact invited to the momentous Fascist congress held in Naples on October 25, 1922.^30^ But he was quite definitely only a guest. Mussolini himself wrote an extremely chilly and disconcerting letter concerning his invitation, saying that his participation was “not impossible.”^31^

Margherita Sarfatti’s situation, around that time, was in many ways similar. Maybe she was indeed Mussolini’s mistress. And in any case, her being a woman complicated things. In January 1922, when she had in fact a post of some importance, as the editor of the cultural review Gerarchia (of which Mussolini was the editor in chief), her name did not appear. She officially appeared as “direttore responsabile” (that is solely as the person legally responsible in front of authorities) only in February 1925.

(Emphasis added in all cases. It may be useful to compare this to the Nixon régime: a Zionist circle that had some token Jews but manifested antisemitism anyway.)

Thus we see that antisemitism was present in Fascist Italy even before it evolved into a systematic phenomenon in the late 1930s. Indeed, one could argue that Fascism, even at its most tolerant, could not help but be antisemitic, because it was an ultranationalist phenomenon whereas Jews have almost always been a very international people. There is more that I want to say about antisemitism in Fascist Italy, but for the sake of brevity I’ll have to discuss that another day.

Other events that happened today (September 7):

1923: Fascist Italy cofounded the International Criminal Police Commission along with over a dozen other anticommunist countries.
1940: As the Kingdom of Romania returned Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria under the Treaty of Craiova, the Luftwaffe began the Blitz, bombing London and other British cities for over 50 consecutive nights.
1942: Axis marines were forced to withdraw during the Battle of Milne Bay.
1943: The German 17th Army began its evacuation of the Kuban bridgehead (Taman Peninsula) in southern Russia and moved across the Strait of Kerch to the Crimea.
1945: Axis forces on Wake Island, which they had held since December 1941, surrendered to U.S. Marines, and around the same time that the Berlin Victory Parade of 1945 was held.

(Mirror.)

During the Civil War, dehumanising the enemies and treating them as invaders was a key strategy that was used in a contradictory way in the Spanish case. Having learned from other tribal conflicts at home and the previous colonial war against Spaniards—during which, according to military archives, chemical weapons were used by Spain in the Rif’s war (Stenner 2019)—some Moroccan soldiers were encouraged by high‐ranking officers to use violence against women.

Mechbal (2011) highlighted how Moroccan soldiers were thought of as naturally or intrinsically violent, corresponding to a tribal structure prone to anarchy and revenge. Some authors have suggested that they might have enjoyed the context of war and brutality; however, this idea should be revised using historical evidence and from an anti‐colonial perspective.

As previously quoted, Franco’s General Queipo de Llano contrasted the brutality of Moroccans against the ‘sissy character’ of Republicans. This brutality was particularly described in relation to sexual violence against women (Bolorinos Allard 2016).

Again, it was part of a political and psychological strategy to spread terror using the ancestral fear of ‘Moors’ that had recently been experienced in the 1934 repression of the miners in Asturias. That terror was particularly focused in small towns, against rural women, as Moroccan soldiers were predominantly deployed in the countryside and rarely fought in cities.^9^

Events that happened today (September 6):

1915: Franz Josef Strauss, former Axis soldier and educator, was born.
1917: Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, Wehrmacht Major who conspired to murder the Third Reich’s head of state, was born.
1939: South Africa declared war on the Third Reich (around the same time that friendly fire at the Battle of Barking Creek resulted in the British Royal Air Force suffering its first WWII fighter pilot casualty).
1940: King Carol II of Romania abdicated and was succeeded by his son Michael; General Ion Antonescu became the Conducător of Romania.
1944: The Axis lost the cities of Ypres, Belgium and Tartu, Estonia to Allied forces.
1978: Adolf Dassler, bourgeois Fascist, dropped dead.

(Mirror.)

Along with harming millions of humans who were indisputably Jewish, the Third Reich’s antisemitism also harmed a significant number of people who either never or no longer identified as ‘Jewish’, in any meaning of the word. The German Fascists were well aware of these people, mentioning them in, for example, the children’s book Der Giftpilz, and they didn’t care; they treated them as Jews all the same.

Although there were certainly some commonalities, such as the ‘Aryanization’ of their businesses, the experiences of people who were legally ‘Jewish’ still differed quite substantially from those of Judaists and other self‐identified Jews:

Thus, by the late 1930s, the Eisigs, like all other ‘full Jews,’ had lost most of their ‘Aryan’ friends, and were practically alone, apart from several private relationships. Yet—and this is the primary focus of this article—unlike self‐identifying ‘Jews,’ they could not turn to their ‘fellow Jews.’ […] Self‐identifying Jews constructed a semblance of normality amidst the abnormality, through their interactions with one another.

On the other hand, non‐Jewish ‘Jews’ [meaning individuals who were ‘Jewish’ only according to the Nuremberg laws] like the Eisigs became truly isolated. Exceptional in their interpersonal relations within the ‘Aryan’ sphere, the Eisigs, like other non‐Jewish ‘Jews,’ could not maintain ‘normality.’

[…]

Yet, as can be seen through the examples of the Eisigs, Klemperers, and of Walter Blumenthal (discussed below), these patterns of interactions of non‐Jewish ‘Jews’ (including marriage choices and Lekebusch’s findings), combined with the reasons inherent to leaving the Jewish community entirely, support the claim that there existed a cohort of non‐Jewish ‘Jews’ which was minimally socially connected to self‐identifying Jews and was often uninvolved in Jewish organizations.

All these factors taken together suggest that the social loss experienced by all ‘Jews’^81^ was worse for non‐Jewish ‘Jews’ because the latter had a smaller pool of Jewish friends to turn to or, at least, were of a social disposition that inclined them toward shunning communal Jewish activities.

Integrating into a Jewish community was not an easy fix, and relatively few people attempted to do so, since it basically meant starting life all over:

Thus, even if some did attempt to take part in Jewish communalism after 1933, perhaps for pragmatic reasons, our starting points when analyzing their actions should be entirely different. Living an intentionally non‐Jewish life before 1933 would make any transition into a Jewish world after 1933 exceedingly difficult, regardless of the willingness of the individual.

An example of this was the difficulty that Judeo‐Christians (if you’ll allow me to use the term) had in adjusting to a Jewish school, where they felt incongruous:

[W]hile the Jewish school system was already in existence, it took time for the disparate collection of schools for the children of ‘Christian Jews’ to be set up.^92^ Equally, the Jewish community provided more than just schooling [but] for the majority of non‐Jewish ‘Jewish’ children who were forced to attend Jewish schools, the (inconsistent) provision of Christian lessons was no protection from the associated separation from the surrounding school. Where Jewish children finally found themselves in an environment in which they were not treated as different to their peers, non‐Jewish ‘Jewish’ children were segregated, yet again.

Jewish schools simply did not specialize in accommodating children of other faiths, for obvious reasons. While the placement in Jewish schools might have been better than nothing, it was still an awkward fit for Judeo‐Christian students who must have come across as incompetent and they likely did not wish to be there at all. Try to imagine forcing a neoclassical musician to attend heavy metal lessons (or vice versa) and hopefully you’ll understand the ordeal.

Sadly, few outsiders were interested in accepting legally ‘Jewish’ immigrants:

[A]s Kevin Ostoyich’s research on the Catholic St Raphael Society’s attempts to help non‐Jewish ‘Jews’ reveals, and as the society’s emigration representative in Germany, Johann Friedrich, realized: ‘no one wanted the Jews … the Catholic Church was mistaken if it believed the outside world would look past race and accept these persons as Catholics.’^101^ Even when Friedrich was finally able to help 3,000 Catholic ‘non‐Aryans’ escape to Brazil, this was in the context of repeated rejections from other consulates.

In the Eisig family memoirs, there is no evidence of international organizations proactively seeking to help them emigrate. Rather, Ludwig and Amalie managed to emigrate with the assistance of individual contacts. Gerhard was helped by an English Quakers group and their ‘Germany Emergency Committee.’ However, he only connected with them through his friendship with an individual he had met during his time studying in Manchester.^102^

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Unmentioned in Legg’s research is how some legal ‘Jews’ took their own lives, heartbroken that all of their hard work at assimilation had been for naught. Quoting Christian Goeschel’s Suicide in Nazi Germany, pages 110–1:

Take the case of the pensioner Dora G from Prenzlauer Berg, a working‐class district in the centre of Berlin. She gassed herself in her kitchen on 4 March 1943. She was due for deportation and announced her suicide to her non‐Jewish husband and her neighbours. She left a suicide note, written under great stress and almost unreadable, on the kitchen table. In it, she declared:

For forty long years I have been married to Aryans, in my first marriage in America […] For 34 years married to an Aryan, had no contact to Jews, brought up the children in an Aryan way and took them to holy Communion, exercised no Jewish influence on them […] did not marry according to Jewish faith, 1905 in America, married according to Protestant rituals […] never did any harm to anyone, always worked (as a girl and as a woman) […] I am only sorry for my dear ill husband, I like to die, there I am safe.⁶⁵

Events that happened today (September 5):

1876: Wilhelm Josef Franz Ritter von Leeb, Axis field marshal and war criminal, stained the world with his life.
1919: Elisabeth Volkenrath, SS officer, arrived to burden humanity.
1937: Llanes fell to the Spanish fascists following a one‐day siege.
1938: Chilean officials executed a group of youths affiliated with the fascist National ‘Socialist’ Movement of Chile after they surrendered during a failed coup.
1941: The Axis absorbed Estonia.
1942: The Empire of Japan’s high command ordered withdrawal at Milne Bay, the Eastern Axis’s first major defeat in land warfare during the Pacific War.
1943: The Axis lost the Lae Nadzab Airport (near Lae in the Salamaua–Lae campaign) to the Western Allies’ 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment.
1953: Richard Walther Darré, Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture as well as Chief of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, expired.

(Mirror.)

“In both the white supremacist and the anti-LGBTQ spaces, you have seen these very similar patterns where the fringe has become embraced by an increasingly large subset of Americans,” Lewis said. “Concepts like the great replacement theory that 10 years ago were fodder for these closed white supremacist chat rooms and niche online spaces are now in the past couple years are all over Tucker Carlson’s show.”

I am reminded of when Morris Kominsky (alav hashalom) wrote this:

‘There are those who believe that the best way of coping with the professional hate‐peddlers is to ignore them, because, forsooth, they appeal only to the crackpots, the malcontents, the lunatic fringe. Unfortunately, there are two things wrong with this theory.

‘In the first place, it ignores the fact that the followers of the hate‐peddlers spread the poisonous doctrines and prepare the minds of the stormtroopers of incipient Fascism. Secondly, it ignores the fact that “respectable” segments of our society covertly and overtly encourage and support the hate‐peddlers.

‘If you think that Major Robert H. Williams’ anti‐Semitic lie about the “secret Government of the United States” can be ignored, what will you say to the fact that the powerful Chicago Tribune carried a front‐page story on May 29, 1950, with the same canard? It was written by Walter Trohan, one of the darlings of the Ultra‐Rightists. Trohan, who is chief of the Tribune's Washington Bureau, attacked and slandered Senator Herbert Lehman, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and former Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr.—all Jews—as the “secret Government of the United States.” Trohan covered himself from a libel suit by “quoting” anonymously a high official in the State Department.’

https://archive.ph/nnTx4

After twelve gruelling months surviving Polar bear attacks and being under constant threat of British Commando ambushes, they were ordered to destroy all their scientific and communications equipment.

Bolshevik Polar bears, to be exact.

For a book on this subject, see Wilhem Dege’s War North of 80: The Last German Arctic Weather Station of World War II.

Other events that happened today (September 4):

1891: Fritz Todt, Axis engineer, was born.
1909: Eduard Wirths, chief SS doctor at Auschwitz, was…born…today.
1939: The Third Reich suffered its first assault from the Royal Air Force.
1941: A Reich submarine assaulted a United States warship, the USS Greer. This was one of the earliest instances of a Fascist empire making a move against its Yankee competitor.
1944: The Axis lost the Belgian city of Antwerp to the British 11th Armoured Division, and Finland exited from the war with the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the Third Reich executed one of its generals, Fritz Erich Fellgiebel, for conspiring against the head of sate.

Pictured: Relinquished Axis vehicles on the road to Amba Alagi, dated May 1941.

Per Professor Gian Giacomo Migone’s The United States and Fascist Italy, page 328, ‘Italian East Africa’s’ oil imports in 1934 were as follows: Soviet Union: 24.5%; Iran and Dutch Indies: 41.4%; Imperial America: 7.8%; Other: 26.3%.

In August–November 1935: Romania: 14.6%; Soviet Union: 5.9%; Iran and Dutch Indies: 16.7%; Imperial America: 26.9%; Other: 35.9%.

As tensions were worsening and war broke out in October, imports from Imperial America only rose by a whooping 19.1%! (It is interesting to note that the trend in the Soviet Union was almost the exact opposite: oil imports thence decreased by 18.6%.)

When Hull and Rosso had their meeting, at a moment when in Geneva the extension of the embargos to oil was being seriously considered, [Fascist] Italy had already begun revising its import strategy for raw materials. First of all there was a drop in imports from those countries that appeared most hostile to Mussolini’s Ethiopian project and were most committed to the sanctions already in place.

The imports from the Soviet Union, while remaining consistent, diminished notably starting in 1934. The same was true for Iran, which marked its total dependence on British imperial policy. Imports from the United States, however, grew proportionally starting in the autumn of 1935.^102^ This impression is strengthened by observing the data regarding the imports directly to the theater of war, which throw into greater relief the political influence on the overall configuration of [Fascist] imports.

[The Kingdom of] Romania not only remained the principal source but increased its overall share during the period considered. The relatively modest amount of [Fascist] demand satisfied by American oil became greater, which one can tell was destined to serve military needs by disaggregating the various subproducts. According to the League of Nations data, in the period 1932–1934, [Fascist] Italy imported from America 14.9 percent of its crude oil, 9.4 percent of its diesel, 3.5 percent of its gasoline, and a whopping 48.3 percent of its total lubricant demand.^103^

Page 329:

Turning to the total American figures for raw material exports to [Fascist] Italy, the effect of the Ethiopian war and the League of Nations sanctions becomes very clear. But the data on raw materials only make sense in the context of the overall commercial relationship between [Fascist] Italy and [Imperial] America.

The failure of the United States to participate in the sanctions had a strong effect even on their early phase, which aimed to limit purchases of [Fascist] imports (and which were, obviously, closely tied to the problem of Italy’s access to raw materials, inasmuch as they provided the hard currency necessary to do business with suppliers who, as was the case with American oil companies, dealt in cash in order to avoid tax‐based governmental sanctions as well as to be more sure of a client that was obviously in precarious financial straits and therefore not a good credit risk).^104^

Indeed, the United States and [the Third Reich], which were not members of the League of Nations, were responsible for the purchase of 23 percent of [Fascist] Italy’s exports in 1934. The United States by itself made the following transactions:

Fascist imports (percentage of total) shrunk from 15.0% in 1933 to 12.5% in 1934, and Fascist exports (percentage of total) shrunk from 8.7% to 7.4% during the same period.

Source: Feis, Seen from E.A., p. 304.

If we extend the comparison to the years affected by the Ethiopian war, the result is significant:

American Commerce with Italy (in millions of dollars of that year)

Fascist imports rose from 276 in 1934 to a disturbing 4,558 in 1935 before shrinking to 771 in 1936. Exports rose from 213 to 218 to 224 during the same period.

Source: Feis, Seen from E.A., p. 304.

Disaggregating these numbers by month makes the connection to the war even more evident:

What follows is a large table whose data can best be summarized as ‘worrisome’.

It is clear that the overall amounts of trade between the two countries, especially [Fascist] imports, were dramatically influenced by the war, reaching an apex in the final months of 1935. The figures for Italian East Africa are notable to the extent that they demonstrate how the war transformed a fundamentally nonexistent trade in that region into a fevered trade — or rather, import — situation that can only be explained in terms of the war.

The table that follows, instead, specifically illustrates [Fascist] imports of raw materials and machinery from the United States. These figures also show an effect from the war, including the effects of extending sanctions.

As the table shows, all raw materials and products except cotton underwent a very strong increase (hovering around 100%) from 1934 to 1935, without however nearing the levels of 1928, before the Depression. The only exception is machinery and transport vehicles, which deserve a short and separate explanation. A large part of the controversies in this era swirled around raw materials, and especially oil.

The available figures indicate that purchases of trucks from Ford and General Motors were of great importance for what was the first motorized war of substantive size and which played out almost exclusively through communication and supply lines.

(Probably due to black activism, Ford Motor Company announced that it was stopping all shipping of its trucks to the Fascists in Ethiopia.)

If we add to the figures in the table the fact that the exports of such products to Italian East Africa had gone from a value of $172,706 in the first ten months of 1934 to the enormous amount of $2,961,681 in the first ten months of 1935,^105^ there can be no other possible conclusion than that the motorization of the [Fascist] war effort was largely guaranteed (to be more precise would require the data on other available vehicles, but the sum of purchases still constitutes clear evidence) by the import of American vehicles.^106^

What follows is another worrisome table; suffice to say that Imperial American oil exported to Fascist Italy in 1935 amounted to $2,368,584.

Source: CFR, Information for Members, attached to Council on Foreign Relations, Conference on American Neutrality Policy, New York, November 13, 1935.

The data specifically on oil are equally revealing. Beyond the figures recorded in the table of the Council, it may be observed that, according to data from the Department of Commerce and cited by Herbert Feis, when Hull received Rosso’s visit he already knew that exports of oil to [Fascist] Italy and Italian Africa for the month of October had reached a sum of $1,084,000 dollars, while in that same month in 1934 they had only been about a third of that ($382,857).

In the following months, the situation would become even more acute. Given that the monthly average of all petroleum exports to [Fascist] Italy between 1932 and 1934 had been $480,000, there was an extraordinary growth in imports due to the war even if one discounts the usual seasonal increase of 10 percent.^107^ In November 1935, it was $1,684,000; December, $1935, 2,674,000; and in the last three months of 1935 it reached the stunning total of $5,442,000.

This is in comparison to a total for the entire year of 1934 of $6,062,000.^108^ Herbert Feis, at that time the economic adviser to the State Department, observed: “Included in our shipments during the last three months of 1935 was $828,000 sent directly to Italian East Africa — that is, directly supplied for the use of the Italian Army and Navy and Merchant Marine.”^109^

This progression of data regarding American oil exports clearly demonstrates that, starting in the month of October, the [Fascist] government had begun to modify its choice of suppliers in preparation for imminent sanctions from the League of Nations, especially depending on American oil to provision the expedition corps in African territory. The total amount indicates the significant, even determinative, weight of American oil in the [Fascist] war effort.

The reasoning of the British petroleum companies as set out in a memorandum for the cabinet was even bolder in coming to this conclusion.^110^ According to that memorandum, the United States produced around 400,000 tons of crude per day. Even if the major oil companies were willing to respect the moral embargo proclaimed by the Roosevelt administration, the minor companies and producers were completely uncontrollable in this way; their production alone amounted to 80,000 tons of crude per day (60% of world demand).^111^

Their conclusion: the normal [Fascist] demand was 8,000 tons per day, so that, even without supplies from Romania and the Soviet Union, and allowing for an exceptionally large demand from [Fascist] Italy in wartime, [Fascist] Italy would be able to obtain all the oil it wanted simply by turning to the wildcat American oil companies.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Thus, not only did U.S. capitalists contribute a significant amount of oil to the Fascists, it was critical to the Fascist war machine! (Contrary to what free market purists would teach, we really have no good reason to believe that a ‘true’ free market would have prevented this situation, since the capitalists ignored the embargo anyway.)

Events that happened today (September 2):

1878: Werner von Blomberg, Reich field marshal, was born.
1923: Amid rumors that Koreans had been conducting acts of sabotage in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, lynch mobs of Japanese began massacring thousands of civilians over the course of several weeks, mainly ethnic minorities such as Koreans and Chinese.
1933: Rome and Moscow signed a Pact of ‘Friendship, Non‐Aggression, and Neutrality’, regrettably. (For a commentary on that, see here.)
1939: Following the start of the invasion of Poland the previous day, the Third Reich annexed the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland).
1945: Tōkyō and the major warring powers aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tōkyō Bay signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, officially ending World War II.

Pictured: Alexander Mach congratulating Germanic anticommunists for their war on Poland.

How many of us were already aware that Slovakian anticommunists were involved in the ‘German’ invasion of Poland? Not many, I suspect; I have almost never seen anybody even mention this. Fewer of us still must be familiar with the details.

One could justify this obscurity by claiming that the Slovakian anticommunists’ contributions to the invasion were ‘unimportant’ and therefore trivial, or that the Rep. of Slovakia was nothing more than a de facto German state, but neither of those interpretations is convincing. Quoting James Mace Ward’s Priest, Politician, Collaborator, pages 191–2:

Tiso’s increased confidence showed in his dealings with Germany. In talks for implementing the Protection Agreement, the Slovaks grew stubborn, pushing the [Third Reich] to accept narrow interpretations of the text and dragging out negotiations. Tiso’s government, among other things, wanted [the Wehrmacht] in Slovakia withdrawn or, at the least, Slovak troops permitted into the Schutzzone.^202^

In one important conflict, Tiso won. The German High Command preferred a wartime Slovak army of only 50,000 men. He held out for three times more. Needing Slovakia as a staging ground for war on Poland, Hitler all but gave in, agreeing to a 125,000‐man limit. Otherwise, the High Command got almost all of their demands. In addition, Tiso’s régime was browbeaten into creating a Central Security Service.^203^

[…]

On 1 September, the first day of the Second World War, Slovak troops marched alongside German ones into Poland. During the campaign, Slovakia mobilized over 115,000 reservists, placing over 50,000 in operational units.

This act of war took place without the approval of the Slovak parliament, as constitutionally required. Tiso later claimed that he had not authorized the invasion, instructing Slovak soldiers instead only “to occupy” the border.^207^

General Čatloš told a different story, according to which the Germans at the last minute broke their promise to leave Slovak troops behind. Although Čatloš initiated the advance, he sought approval from Tiso, but the president left him hanging until the deed was done.^208^ Čatloš, like Tiso, was often an unreliable postwar witness. The general had actually been eager for action and gave orders to advance hours earlier than his story allowed.

But Tiso also had reasons for wanting to participate in the advance, especially his desire to strengthen the [Third Reich’s] commitment to Slovakia.^209^ Even though the testimony of both men thus must be discounted in part, Čatloš’s version fits Tiso’s pattern of shifting responsibility onto others while claiming ignorance.

The president knew that Hitler often broke promises. Yet Tiso neither sought reassurances that his troops would sit out the invasion nor devised command mechanisms to ensure that they did. Instead, he positioned himself to be surprised and ostensibly subordinated to events.^210^

This, my beloved students, was the real joint invasion of Poland in 1939.

Pictured: Wehrmacht soldiers and Slovakian soldiers showing good relations.

Quoting Břetislav Nakládal & Charles K. Kliment’s Germany’s First Ally: Armed Forces of the Slovak State, 1939–1945, page 61:

War with Poland — September 1 – October 1, 1939
Poland appropriated certain Slovak territories during the Munich crisis in September 1938. This gave the Slovak government a needed pretext to take part in the planned [Reich] invasion of Poland.

On August 23, 1939 Lt. Colonel Malár was named a commander of the Polish–Slovak border area. On August 24, all units were placed on war footing and their transport to the north began. Members of the Hlinka's Guard, beginning from August 24, replaced the army units on the Hungarian border and freed them for the oncoming campaign. On August 26, three classes of reservists were called to arms, augmented by another five classes on August 30.

What you are about to read is a striking example of fascist coordination; nothing comparable to this happened under the neutrality between the German Reich and the Soviet Union. Page 62:

On September 1, 1939 the Slovak Army had 13,035 men, 88 NCOs and 228 officers. The mobilization filled the ranks to 49,782 men, 291 NCOs and 1,232 officers. The headquarters of the Slovak Field Army was set up in Spišská Nová Ves. Troops were moved up to the Polish border on August 30.

The Slovak sector was part of the German Army Group South and specifically the 14th Army of General von List with its five infantry, three mountain, two Panzer and one light divisions. The Slovak army’s task was to protect the Eastern wing of the 14th Army and prevent Polish army penetration into Slovakia. It was assigned a Wehrmacht liaison staff of 120 members, led by General Ernst von Engelbrecht.

The Slovak army group BERNOLÁK was deployed as follows:

1st Division "Jánošík" (Commander Colonel Anton Pulanich) was in the area Spišská Nová Ves - Prešov, 2nd Division "Škultéty" (Commander General Alexander Cunderlík) in the area Brezno nad Hronom - Poprad, and the 3rd Division “Rázus” (Commander Lt.Colonel Augustin Malár) was in the border area east of the High Tatra Mountains. At the same time, the Slovak Government gave its approval for Wehrmacht formations to use Slovak territory for the planned invasion of Poland.

The Poles were aware of the concentration of the [fascist] armies on their border, and sent parts of the 5th and 10th Corps to the border area as army “Karpaty”. These were mainly infantry units with no armor and very little artillery, as all the available armor, artillery and cavalry units have been transferred to the Sanok area.

The 2nd Division was reinforced with an armored company, consisting of a platoon of four armored cars and a platoon of three LT vz.35 tanks. Another three OA vz.30 armored cars were assigned to a cavalry reconnaissance unit.

The war began on September 1, 1939. The Slovak infantry started their attack at 5.00 and quickly retook the former Slovak villages Javorina and Podspady. The 1st Division took Zakopané and penetrated about 30 km in the direction of Nowy Targ, but already by September 9 returned to Slovakia. The 3rd Division joined the German XVIII Mountain Corps and attacked in the direction Jaslo - Krosno - Sanok and fought several encounters with the Polish army. Its penetration was between 60 and 90 km deep.

On September 2, the leading Slovak units were on the line Bialowodska Dolina - Javorina - Jurgov- Niedzice. Four of the armored cars, augmented by a cavalry squadron, were sent to Tylicz, which they reached on September 3. All four cars reached the main square but had to withdraw in the face of strong reistsance and lack of support from the accompanying cavalry.

Slovak Army losses (per page 64): 18 dead, 46 wounded & 11 missing.

Pictured: A platoon of LT vz.35 tanks in Poland, 1939. (The requisitioned civilian car in front is the Tatra Type 57 two‐seater with a rumble seat.)

Page 65:

The army participated in a large parade in Zakopané, and in Poprad, Spišská Nová Ves and other Slovak towns Slovak and [Reich] soldiers were decorated. Adolf Hitler decorated General Catloš and two other Slovak officers with the Iron Cross and sent a telegram of appreciation to President Tiso, who replied that the Slovak nation will never let the Führer down.

Later, on March 14, 1941, he proclaimed: “We remember that it was the German army led by Adolf Hitler which allowed the birth of our (Slovak) army. We remember that and we know if the German army will be victorious, it would form the basis of our future. Thus we hope for its victory and are willing to lend a helping hand.”

(Emphasis added in most cases.)

There is plenty more that I would like to discuss, most notably the Fascist colonization of Poland, but that is a topic for another day. For the sake of brevity I chose to focus on the Slovak Army’s contributions.

Other events that happened today (September 1):

1886: Shigeyasu Suzuki, lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army from December 1936 to December 1938, was born.
1895: Engelbert Zaschka, Axis inventor, was born.
1938: Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein met with Hitler at the Berghof in Berchtesgaden while officials announced in Austria that all religious and other private schools would be closed and education would be taken over by the NSDAP. Coincidentally, the Reich Economics Ministry set up a meeting to discuss the question of credits, possibly guaranteed by the state, for the purchase of ‘Jewish’ property. Finally, citing public safety, Rome officially forbade “foreigners of the Jewish race to establish permanent residence on Italian soil, in Libya, or in Italy’s Aegean possessions”.
1981: Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital, Head of Organization Todt, Inspector General of German Roadways, Inspector General for Water and Energy, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, and Reich Minister of Industry and Production, died of a stroke while revisiting London.

In 1923, the Fascists occupied Corfu for twenty‐eight days, and only evacuated after Athens met Rome’s terrorist demands. While four weeks of occupation may seem ‘insignificant’ to some, this show of force should have been a warning to Europe that the Fascists meant business, and that they did not have to limit their exploits to Africa; it was a step towards their dream empire. Quoting from J. S. Papafloratos’s The Fiume and the Corfu Incidents:

On August 27th, 1923, the members of the international commission for the delineation of the Greek–Albanian borders started out in automobiles to do their work once again. The Italian car was last in the line and three officers, an interpreter and a driver were riding in it. In the 54th km, near Zepi (inside the Greek territory), unknown persons ambushed and killed General Enrico Tellini and the other members of the Italian delegation.

The murderers then evidently crossed the border and escaped in Albania. The name and the nationality of the murderers are still unknown^9^. In [Fascist] Italy, there was a perfect flare‐up of national pride and patriotic sentiment^10^. Mussolini at once drew up and sent out an ultimatum to the Greek government (on August 29th). He assumed, without a proof, that the responsibility for the murder belonged to the Greeks. The demands made in the ultimatum were extremely severe and the Greek government, by common consent outside of Italian circles, could not accept them^11^.

The comparison with the Austro‐Hungarian ultimatum sent to Serbia in July 1914 was inevitable^12^. The isolated Greek government^13^ accepted the ultimatum partially, because the Greek responsibility for the crime had not been proved. The resent research proved that Mussolini did not wait for the official reply of the Greek government and he had ordered a fleet of more than fifteen battleships to occupy the island of Corfu, on August 31st.

Although the [Duce] did not authorize the use of force against a demilitarized island, the [Fascist] commander Admiral Solari ordered the bombardment of the two castles of the island relating to the Middle Ages. These castles were full of refugees from Asia Minor. As a result, fifteen women and children were killed. This incident aggravated the diplomatic position of [Fascist] Italy. On September 1st, the Greek government appealed to the League of Nations without making any reference at the bombardment and the innocent victims in Corfu. Fiume and Corfu were already connected as aspects of [Rome’s] Balkan policy. But, the Greek recourse to the League of Nations made their interaction even stronger.

Pictured: The Church of Annunciata shortly after the Fascists bombarded it.

Pictured: Artist’s impression of the (first) Fascist invasion of Corfu.

Mussolini was very happy to see that there was no agreement between Athens and Belgrade. Momcilo Ninčić, was keen to reconcile with Italy and he said that his government would send no troops in the area^48^. A day earlier, Lord Curzon, then Foreign Minister of the British government, had accepted the French plan for the evacuation of Corfu.

According to this, the Greek government was found guilty for the murder of the members of the Italian delegation. The Greek government should compensate the [Fascist] one without receiving any satisfaction for the murdered refugees from Asia Minor, who were killed by the [Fascist] bombs. On September 27th, the Greek government was obliged to accept the decision of the Conference of Ambassadors in order to liberate Corfu. Mussolini’s new foreign policy appeared to be effective.

As long as the Fiume case was concerned, on January 27th, 1924, the Treaty of Rome was signed. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formally recognized Italy’s full and entire sovereignty over the city and the port of Fiume. The rest of the Free State together with port Baros was ceded to Slovenia in conformity with the pledges given by Count Sforza.

To this agreement was added, at Belgrade’s request, a general treaty of friendship, which bound both countries to preserve the peace settlement. Italy ratified the Fiume agreement on February 22nd. On the same day, a Royal Decree annexing Fiume to the Kingdom of Italy appeared in the Official Gazette^49^. Mussolini was rewarded with the Collar of the Annunziata Order, the highest distinction, which the King could bestow on him^50^.

He […] followed a very clever policy in order to achieve his goal. Mussolini succeeded in receiving a compensation for the murder of the members of the Italian delegation in Kakavia and he was capable to avoid to loose face in the League of Nations. Moreover, he managed to annex Fiume to [Fascist] Italy. He used the French uneasiness in Ruhr in order to secure Paris’ assistance as long as Belgrade was concerned.

It is true that the French government used all its influence in Belgrade in order to persuade it to compensate and not to form a Balkan bloc with Athens. In addition, the Italian PM took advantage of the internal decline and the division among the nations of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the external isolation of the Greek government. He also realized the effect of the use of force upon a weak and unstable government such as the Greek one of that time.

It is doubtful if he could persuade the Serbs to retreat without the bombardment of Corfu, which proved his will to adopt any possible measure. On the other hand, the League of Nations acted in a very insufficient way in order to fulfill mainly the interests of the Great Powers. The well‐known tendency of the Balkan history to separate the states according to the will of the Great Powers was also proved. Viewed in retrospect, this bombardment was the key to unlock Fiume’s door.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Unfortunately, this would not be the only time that Fascism came to Corfu. Thanks to the Third Reich’s assistance, the Fascists reoccupied Corfu on April 1941.

Further reading: France and the Corfu-Fiume Crisis of 1923, ‘Consistently with Honour’: Great Britain, the League of Nations and the Corfu Crisis of 1923, Ireland and the Corfu Crisis, 1923 & The Corfu Incident of 1923: Mussolini and The League of Nations

Other events that happened today (August 31):

1935: In an attempt to stay out of the growing tensions concerning the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan, Washington passed the first of its Neutrality Acts.
1939: The Third Reich mounted a false flag attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to assault Poland the following day.
1941: Serbian paramilitary forces defeated the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Loznica.

In the Third Reich’s imagination, Japanese people were somewhere between Germanic gentiles and Jews. In public, Reich officials treated the Japanese courteously, but in private their feelings about the Japanese were mixed at best.

Hitler explained that if mankind were to be divided into three groups — culture‐founders, culture‐bearers, and culture‐destroyers — only the Aryan would qualify for the first category. The Japanese would be culture‐bearers for the following reasons:

It is not the case, as some people claim, that Japan adds European techniques to her culture, but European science and techniques are trimmed with Japanese characteristics. But the basis of actual life is no longer the special Japanese culture but it is the enormous scientific and technical work of Europe and America, that is, of Aryan peoples. Based on these achievements alone the East is also able to follow general human progress […]

But if, starting today, all further Aryan influence upon Japan should stop then the source [of a further development of Japan's present rise in science and technology] would dry out, […] its culture would stiffen and fall back into the sleep out of which it was startled seven decades ago by the Aryan wave of culture. […] the present Japanese development owes its life to Aryan origin[.]^15^

Thus in Hitler's eyes, the Japanese, as a “race”, were clearly inferior to the Aryans. Presseisen mentions that the above words were expressed in Hitler's early days before his speeches were circumscribed by political expediency. Thus they may come closest to his genuine feelings.^16^

What follows is a clue on why the Third Reich allied with the Empire of Japan:

At the same time, Hitler identified with the Japanese on one essential point: both Germany and Japan, he thought, were victims of the Jewry. In the section called “Japan and Jewry” in the chapter “German Policy of Alliance After the War,” Hitler wrote:

The Jew knows only too accurately that […] he has it well within his power to undermine European peoples only he would hardly be in a position to subject an Asiatic national State like Japan to this fate […] He dreads a Japanese national State in his millennial Jew empire, and therefore wishes its destruction in advance of the founding of his own dictatorship. Therefore, he is now inciting the nations against Japan, as against Germany[.]^17^

You see, rather than blaming Imperial America and the British Empire—both of which the Fascists admired—for snatching gains away from the Empire of Japan, the German Fascists instead blamed “the Jews”, who presumably “corrupted” both of the Anglophone empires to some extent or another. Remember that at the time both of the Anglophone empires officially held Asian territories such as Singapore, India, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, among others; the Japanese bourgeoisie had to settle for tablescraps like Korea and Taiwan.

Japan could have been next on the Anglosphere’s chopping block, a possibility that no doubt continued to concern some Japanese Imperialists, yet they remained resilient. The author continues:

Kirby further mentions:

Although the Japanese were said to owe their progress largely to ‘Aryan influence,’ the book [Mein Kampf] showed grudging admiration for the accomplishments of a Japanese state that had remained impervious to the machinations of ‘international Jewry’ and had so completely defeated Russia in 1904–5.^19^

Kirby's statements as well as Hitler's beliefs as expressed in Mein Kampf and other sources lead one to conclude that Hitler's attitude toward the Japanese encompassed more than just plain racism. While there was no question that Hitler despised the Japanese as “racially inferior,” he admired the Japanese state as an administrative unit. The irony was that these “racially inferior” Japanese made and ran the “admirable” Japanese state of which he was even envious.

Berlin’s mixed feelings towards the Empire of Japan exposes the Fascists’ suppressed Anglophilia:

Japan's victory in Singapore was welcome news to Hitler, since he hoped that this victory would cause “a crisis for the British Empire.”^24^ However, on the very same day he made the aforementioned comment to Goebbels, he told a former president of Romania: “I rejoice, yet am terribly sad at the same time.”^25^ Apparently, Hitler's deep‐rooted racism did not allow him to heartily welcome successes of the “racially inferior” Japanese.

Furthermore, the former ambassador to Italy and anti‐Nazi Ulrich von Hassell^26^ recorded on March 22, 1942 that Hitler was apparently not happy with the enormous successes of the [Imperial] Japanese army against the British, and that “he would rather send twenty army divisions to England to roll back the yellow race.”^27^ Therefore, while the [Axis] victories in the Pacific were clearly welcomed as far as [the Third Reich’s] Realpolitik was concerned, Hitler could not heartily rejoice in any advances of “the yellow race.”

Evidence of Hitler's seemingly contradictory reactions regarding the [Axis] victory in Singapore shows that Hitler's admiration for [Imperial] achievements had no bearing whatsoever on his disdain and fearful, racial hatred of the Japanese.

Although Reich officials tried to be polite in public, ordinary Germans were not always so accommodating; there were many recorded cases of discrimination against Japanese people in the Third Reich, sometimes momentarily complicating relations between the Reich and the Empire of Japan. For example:

Councillor Fujii mentioned several instances of racial discrimination against Japanese and Japanese‐German individuals. […] The first instance of discrimination involved a member of the Biologische Reichsanstalt für Land‐ und Forstwirtschaft (Institute of Biology for Agriculture and Forestry), Dr. Otto Urhan, who was dismissed on May 18, 1933 because his mother was Japanese.^49^ […] The second publicized discrimination case, which took place in Berlin in October 1933, involved the nine‐year‐old daughter of Dr. Takenouchi, a sales representative of the Sumitomo Group. According to Councillor Fujii, the girl was insulted and eventually hit by other children on her way to school because she was “colored.”^55^

Contrary to popular belief, the Fascists (even strictly within the confines of their own fatherlands) did not agree on everything, nor did they have to do so:

For instance, the prominent historian of East Asian art Otto Kümmel^59^ implicitly argued against [the] racism toward [the] Japanese in a lecture [that] he gave at the Society for Germanic Pre‐ and Early History: he emphasized the worthiness of the Japanese people by pointing out that their roots went back to Western Europe — hence the Aryan race — in prehistoric times.^60^ Also, in a lecture entitled “The People and Race of the Great Japanese Empire” given at the DJG and probably also at a lecture‐series open to the public at the Institute for Oriental Languages, Dr. Fritz Härtel stated:

Racial differences are not absolute […] The worth of a race is to be judged less by physical features (i. e. color), than by its cultural and ethical achievements […] Today in the East, Japan is the guardian, not only of the eastern, but also of the western culture‐world[.]^61^

Most notably, in October 1934, [Fascist] writer and journalist Dr. Johann von Leers produced a twelve‐page “DJG Memorandum on the Question of the Application of the Racial Laws to the Offspring of the German–Japanese Mixed Marriages” (Denkschrift der DJG zur Frage der Anwendung der Rassengetzgebung auf die Abkömmlinge aus deutsch‐japanischen Mischehen).^62^ > Dated October 25, it was sent the next day by Admiral Paul Behncke, the President of the DJG, to Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, Foreign Minister Freiherr von Neurath, Reichsminister and Führer's Secretary Rudolf Hess, and four days later to Walter Gross, the Head of the Racial Policy Office (Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP). The aim of the Memorandum was to persuade [Reich] authorities to exempt the Japanese from [the] racism toward all non‐Aryans.

This memorandum triggered a debate within the Foreign Ministry. (Admittedly, Dr. Johann von Leers’s status as a respected Fascist, and the fact that the Third Reich was not yet involved in a war, were likely the most important factors that removed the likelihood of any authorities pestering him.) Nevertheless, it is worth noting that even after the Anticomintern Pact’s signature in 1936, the Foreign Ministry failed to affect the Reich’s racial laws.

What is interesting about the laws is that marriages between Germans and Japanese were technically possible (if strongly discouraged, both implicitly and explicitly):

[T]here was no explicit, universal legal restriction on the marriage of a German to a Japanese. As Walter Gross had mentioned in his letter to the DJG, such a marriage was officially highly “unerwünscht” — undesirable. Although this claim came up again and again in [Fascist] papers dealing with race issues, it never became a law.

Several Reich officials drafted a law designed to further tighten restrictions between German gentiles and everybody else, but having already pissed off Tokyo by signing a nonaggression treaty with Moscow, the Fascist bourgeoisie didn’t want to try anything else that might further upset its Imperial ally, so it remained unimplemented. For now, an annoying impediment would have to suffice: bureaucracy.

Japanese capitalists, diplomats, and politicians would suffer no ostensible discrimination while visiting the Third Reich, for obvious reasons. Such tolerance did not always extend to the less ‘important’ people, though:

That racism toward all non‐Aryans had permeated some German communities is evidenced by the experience of Hilde O.^122^, a half‐Japanese German citizen. She reported to the DJG in January 1936 that she and her Japanese mother had been verbally insulted on the open streets in the rural town of Naumburg, in particular by one retired civil servant and his wife, who yelled after them: “‘Asian, German‐Japanese mish‐mash, African‐Chinese […] Japanese out’, etc.”^123^

Ms. O. wrote that even their friends had come to alienate them since anybody who interacted with them would be committing a Rassenschande. In such a rural town as Naumburg, she wrote, psychological association between her and a Rassenschande spread so fast that consequently, she was not able to get a job, nor would she be able to marry. Therefore, she requested an official passport‐like certificate proving that she was German.

In a classic liberal maneuver, the Foreign Ministry offered her this advice:

The Foreign Ministry informed O. via DJG that she was definitely not Aryan^124^, and therefore she should apply to be treated as an exception to the racial laws. This official statement that she was non‐Aryan clearly refuted the often cited rumor that Japanese were “honorary Aryans.” Regarding verbal insults in public, the Ministry advised her to file a libel complaint. As for her employment, Ms. O. would have to have a proof that she was denied a job because of her Japanese descent — i. e. a rejection letter from a company. Evidently, the Foreign Ministry's response to O.'s case did nothing to improve her situation. What exactly happened with her afterwards is not recorded by the DJG.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Events that happened today (August 30):

1940: The Second Vienna Award reassigned the territory of Northern Transylvania from the Kingdom of Romania to the Kingdom of Hungary.
1941: The Third Reich and the Kingdom of Romania signed the Tighina Agreement, a treaty regarding administration issues of the Transnistria Governorate.
1942: The Battle of Alam el Halfa commenced.
1945: The Axis occupation of Hong Kong came to an end. (Coincidentally, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Atsugi Air Force Base while the Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, came into being.)
1954: Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, Fascist sympathizer, expired.

László Pásztor, a Hungarian immigrant who began his career in a pro‐Nazi Hungarian party called the Arrow Cross was the founding chair and pivotal figure within the [Republican Heritage Groups] Council. When Pásztor came to the United States in the 1950s he joined the Republican Party’s ethnic division. As one of the leaders of the Nixon campaign’s ethnic unit in 1968, Pásztor said [that] Nixon promised to form a permanent ethnic outreach council within the Republican Party, as their ethnic division was not active in‐between presidential campaigns.

Surely enough, the Republican Heritage Groups Council was created after Nixon’s victory. Pásztor’s picks to help form the council included various far‐right organizations which collaborated with the [Axis]. Each formed a Republican federation with local clubs across the country, which then evolved into state multiethnic councils. By 1990 there were thirty‐four national defederations and twenty‐five state councils that constituted the National Republican Heritage Group’s Council.

The Bulgarian National Front was one of the first organizations recruited into the council. It was headed by Ivan Dochev, a Bulgarian fascist politician who immigrated to the United States in 1951. In 1934 Dochev met with Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, the [NSDAP’s] leading philosopher. Shortly after, Dochev created the Union of Bulgarian Legions, a pro‐[Reich] group that advocated for government action against Jews.

As early as 1971 the Republican Party was warned that the National Front was beyond the pale. Journalist Jack Anderson writes a series of reports exposing the pro‐[Reich] backgrounds of Republican ethnic advisers, including Laszlo Pasztor and Ivan Dochev, a member of the pro‐[Reich] Bulgarian National Front. The Washington Post also did a story elaborating on the Republican Party’s [Axis] ties. These reports had no effect on the Republican ethnic outreach strategy.

After [1945], Dochev was given three separate death sentences in absentia for sending Jews to concentration camps whilst mayor of Silistra. The Justice Department opened an investigation into Dochev for alleged war crimes [that] he was suspected of committing while he was the mayor of [an Axis] city in Bulgaria. The Republican Party took no action to weed out these troublesome fascists. Dochev later began publishing Prelom, a newspaper featuring a swastika and one headline reading, ‘Long live the sacred struggle against the Jews.’

Dochev left the Bulgarian National Front in 1984 and another member of the Bulgarian Legion named George Paprikoff became chair. Paprikoff endorsed Ronald Reagan’s election in an issue of Borba, a publication put out by the Front. Reagan’s photograph appeared in the same issue with a ‘Dear George’ message, which appeared to be in Reagan’s handwriting. Despite warnings about Dochev and the Bulgarian National Front, Dochev was a preelection guest at the White House in 1984. Ultimately he faced no sentence, and Dochev died at 99 years old in 2005.

Events that happened today (August 29):

1904: Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann, Axis scientist, was born.
1923: Rome delivered a seven‐point ultimatum to Greece demanding satisfaction over the recent murder of Fascist Italy’s General Tellini, with Athens given 24 hours to agree to pay 50 million lire reparations, a full inquiry, execution of the killers, an official apology, and a funeral and military honours for the victims.
1941: The Axis captured Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, from the Soviets.
1943: Denmark scuttled most of its navy; the Third Reich dissolved the Danish government.
1944: Slovak National Uprising took place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Axis.

(Mirror.)

In Mass Grave II, we observed a differential order of the individuals in relation to their gender. Males were deposited in the central and eastern sides of the grave and arranged longitudinally with their heads facing east.

Conversely, females were placed on the west side of the grave and arranged longitudinally and obliquely to the axis of the deposit, with their heads facing west (Muñoz-Encinar and Rodríguez-Hidalgo, 2010:277-278). By analyzing the sequence of the corpses, we observed that these three female individuals were the last to be introduced into the grave.

The differences in the general pattern of the corpses’ disposition and their ordering in relation to their gender can be interpreted as a way of differentiating the group of detainees on the part the firing squad. This differentiation could be associated with perimortem practices used to degrade the victims (Fig. 10).

Events that happened today (August 28):

1936: The Third Reich began its mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses, whom they interned in concentration camps.
1943: Reich authorities demanded that Danish authorities crack down on acts of resistance; they imposed martial law imposed on Denmark the next day. Meanwhile, Boris III of Bulgaria dropped dead.
1944: The Axis lost Marseille and Toulon to the Allies.

In the early 1930s Macfadden made two trips to Europe, one to Mussolini’s Italy and another to Salazar’s Portugal, with two goals in mind. First, Macfadden hoped to strengthen bonds between the United States and these countries, a goal motivated by his own political ambitions. Additionally, and aware of the primacy placed on the body by both leaders, Macfadden planned to demonstrate the value that his unique brand of physical culture had for nation‐states.

Over the course of several months, Macfadden trained troops from both Italy and Portugal in the hope of improving their physical strength and fitness, a goal he ultimately achieved. Publicising his ‘experiments’ and results over several articles and monographs, Macfadden’s beliefs were founded on nationalist principles infused with a fascist respect for authority and a stress laid on the muscular body. Macfadden would, in time, come to disavow his fascist links and, during the [1940s], became an ardent supporter of American involvement.

[…]

Through Mussolini’s article, and a later piece penned by Macfadden entitled, ‘What Bernarr Macfadden did for Italian Physical Culture’, it was reported that Macfadden took personal responsibility for training forty [Fascist] naval cadets, ranging in age from their late teens to early thirties (Morgan 1932, 1–12). Cadets were brought to New York, trained under Macfadden and introduced to American culture.

The experiment, which lasted six months, was recorded by Thomas Morgan on behalf of the Macfadden publishing company. Between Macfadden’s articles in Physical Culture and Morgan’s 1932 writings, two messages emerged. First that Italian fascists had an appreciation of the body surpassing anything found in the United States. Mussolini’s article in Physical Culture, which contained musings from Macfadden on the Dictator’s writing, stressed the value of strength and athleticism in undertaking hard work.

‘A whole country organized for work’ was presented as the cornerstone of fascism (Mussolini 1932). Training men so they could undertake even greater labours was part of this project. As part of the great ‘Italianization’ of citizens undertaken the Fascists, men and women were trained to take civic pride in their surroundings. […] The cadets were called true ‘students of physical culture’ who, it was hoped, would serve as inspiration for fellow countrymen and women.

(Emphasis added.)

Events that happened today (August 27):

1874: Carl Bosch, founder of I.G. Farben, was born.
1923: Somebody stopped a delegation inspecting the disputed border between Greece and Albania by massacring General Enrico Tellini and four of his companions, thereby triggering the Fascist assault on Corfu later that this month.
1939: First flight of the turbojet‐powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft.
1942: Axis officials, together with Ukrainian anticommunists, initiated the Sarny Massacre.
1943: Axis forces evacuated New Georgia Island in the Pacific Theater of Operations while the Luftwaffe in Crete razed the village of Vorizia to the ground.
1944: Georg von Boeselager, nobleman and Wehrmacht officer, died in battle. Oops!

For the 127th anniversary of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s occupation of the Ottoman Bank—which, interestingly, coincides not only with the 101st anniversary of the Büyük Taarruz but also with the 78th anniversary of Franz Viktor Werfel’s death—I want to talk to you about the Armenians.

The Armenian massacres (or genocide), for anybody unaware, was an atrocity carried out by the Central Powers from 1915 to 1918. At least 800,000 Armenians perished in this tragedy, but the actual number could have been as high as 1,500,000. I say ‘Central Powers’ because although the primary perpetrator was the Ottoman Empire, there is evidence that the Second Reich had at least a modicum of direct involvement in it as well, though the exact extent is not entirely clear.

Franz Viktor Werfel’s familiarity with the Armenian massacres lead him to predict the Shoah, and many people—including some Shoah victims and survivors themselves—have compared the two tragedies ever since the latter started. Some have gone so far as to suggest that there is a direct link between the two.

For example, William Mishell (himself a Shoah survivor) said:

No doubt Hitler knew all about these massacres and the criminal neglect by the [so‐called] free world, and was convinced that he could proceed with impunity against the helpless Jews.

Given how many potentially incriminating documents the Axis destroyed in 1945, we unfortunately have no evidence that proves conclusively that the Armenian massacres inspired the Shoah. Certainly, in any case, it would be an exaggeration to claim the the Shoah was directly modelled after the Armenian massacres.

Nonetheless, given how infamous the topic was in the German media throughout the 1920s (with many well respected anticommunist papers openly justifying the massacres), and the German officials with some links to the atrocities who later became Fascists (Rudolf Hoess, Hans‐Heinrich Dieckhoff, Otto von Feldmann, Max Erwin Scheubner‐Richter & alii), and the famous Fascists such as Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Günther, and Adolf Schicklgruber himself who disparaged the Armenians in German media, and the Fascists’ respect for the Kemalists, the chances that the Armenian massacres had no influence whatsoever on the Shoah are extremely unlikely.

The closest that we have to a direct, unambiguous link between the two events is a comment from Hans Tröbst in 1924. From Professor Stefan Ihrig’s Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, page 326:

As a (one‐off) commentary on the ongoing Hitler trial, Hans Tröbst answered Lossow’s attempts to distance himself from the “Ankara in Munich” solution in a front‐page article in the now‐leading [NSDAP] newspaper, the Völkischer Kurier. Again, he expanded on the “ethnic problem,” which the Turks, he claimed, had solved “in a most exemplary fashion.” He then mashed up the Armenian Genocide and the Turkish–Greek population exchange:

The alien blood suckers were given one month to leave the country in order to create room for the national colleagues [Volksgenossen]. Who hinders us from doing the same? Just as the American Armenians immediately sent ships in aid of their brethren in Anatolia when they realized what the bell had tolled […], so will the coreligionists of the children of Israel in America and England organize the necessary ships when at some point in the future they will be “treading water” on the shores of the North Sea. And if [they do] not? What business of ours is it?^18^

Thus, ethnic cleansing in the form of mass expulsion, with the possibility of genocide, was already an option for at least some of the early [German Fascists].

It may be hard to believe, but (as Ihrig notes on pages 345–6) there is actually a sudden and very conspicuous scarcity of direct references to the Armenian massacres that date back to the Third Reich. We can only speculate, but a plausible explanation for this silence was to help hide the criminal conspiracy to commit populicide. On the other hand, some of you may be familiar with this quote attributed to Adolf Schicklgruber:

Our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my Death‐Head formation [that is, the SS] in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation. Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

This is apocryphal. Page 348:

Hitler’s question was perhaps never posed. The document and its trail are sketchy, and the sentence in question is absent in other accounts of the meeting—though, of course, that may simply mean that others did not write down this remark concerning genocide, not necessarily that it was never actually uttered.

Nevertheless, even if inauthentic, it would not disprove the postdiction that the Ottoman Empire’s violence against a minority positively influenced the Third Reich. Page 349:

The burden of proof is actually not on showing that Hitler and the other Nazis did know of the Armenian Genocide; it is quite the reverse: there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the Germans had actually forgotten about the Armenian Genocide by 1939, as the famous Hitler quotation is often believed to have proven—and less even that the leading [Fascists] had not been somewhat inspired by it.

And furthermore, there is every reason to believe that what Hitler meant in that part of his speech—if he did in fact ever utter it—was similar to what the Nevile Henderson excerpt suggested (in reference to the Greeks): the Turks (as a whole) had never had to “pay” for the Armenian Genocide; they got away with it unscathed, without negative consequences.

Indeed, quite the contrary, if we were to adopt the perspective of German (extreme) nationalists and [Fascists] in the 1920s and 1930s, the New Turkey was instead a hugely successful new state, built upon the solid foundation of wholesale “ethnic cleansing.” The [German Fascists], as a political movement, had grown up with Turkey, that is, the Turkish War of Independence.

Hitler was in such awe of Atatürk that he had even modeled his first attempt to take power, the Hitler Putsch, on Atatürk’s rebellion. But this also means that Hitler “grew up,” politically, as a [Fascist], that is, with the debates about the Armenian Genocide. How could it and the debates we have discussed in the previous chapters not have impressed and inspired the future Führer?

There can be no doubt that the [Fascists] had incorporated the Armenian Genocide, its “lessons,” tactics, and “benefits,” into their own worldview and their view of the new racial order they were building. Werner Best, [Fascist] legal specialist and politician, wrote in a book compiled in honor of Heinrich Himmler and presented to him in 1942 that “history proves that the annihilation or expulsion of a foreign nationality is not contrary to biological law, if carried out totally” (this excerpt was also published in the journal Zeitschrift für Politik, in June 1942).

We can sum it all up with this, from page 353:

Hitler’s alleged words at the Obersalzberg—about who “still talked” about the Armenians—might not come from a watertight source, but the statement still accurately sums up one of the major lessons the Armenian Genocide must have held for the [Fascists]: it must have taught them that such incredible crimes could go unpunished under the cover of war, even if one lost that war.^64^ That one could “get away” with genocide must have been a great inspiration indeed. This included not only the international community but also potential domestic reactions.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Of course, the late Ottoman Empire was by no means the Third Reich’s only inspiration. See, for example, Fascist Italy, the Twoth Reich, and Imperial America.

Other events that happened today (August 26):

1900: Hellmuth Walter, an engineer for the Axis, was born.
1901: Hans Kammler, Axis SS officer and engineer, burdened the planet with his existence.
1936: Santander fell to the Spanish fascists, dissolving the Republican Interprovincial Council.
1942: At Chortkiv, the Ukrainian police and German Schutzpolizei deported two thousand Jews to Bełżec extermination camp. The Axis massacred five hundred of the sick and children on the spot. This continued until the next day.

Mykhailo Fedorov, said to be an expert in digital marketing, put it this way: “we are trying to protect our brand… Our brand as one of an honest nation and an honest people trying to tell the truth.” Later that spring, Fedorov declared, “We have already won the information war with Russia.”

United24, the “Official Fundraising Platform of Ukraine,” describes itself as “The initiative of the President of Ukraine,” but according to Wired magazine, Fedorov’s Ministry of Digital Transformation quickly raised millions of dollars in cryptocurrency donations after Russia’s invasion and subsequently “turned this into United24.”

“The main point of United 24 is not fundraising itself,” according to Fedorov, “but keeping people around the world aware of what is going on in Ukraine.”

During the summer of 2022, the Digital Transformation Ministry created United24 Media, an English-language outlet which immediately made use of the famous self-portrait of Dmytro Kozatsky, the neo-Nazi press officer of the Azov Regiment, standing in a beam of light in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. (“Orest made these powerful shots in Azovstal, so world can face the truth about the bravest people,” tweeted Fedorov, referring to Kozatsky by his Azov call sign.)

At the end of the year, United24 Media published the following video — in retrospect, an omen of what was to come in 2023.

In January 2023, Mykhailo Fedorov announced the “important news” that Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta agreed to remove the Azov Regiment (which is now the Azov Brigade) in the National Guard of Ukraine from its list of dangerous organizations. The Washington Post reported a couple days later:

In this case, Meta argues that the Azov Regiment is now separate from the far-right nationalist Azov Movement. It notes that the Ukrainian government has formal command and control over the unit. Meta said in a statement that other “elements on the Azov Movement, including the National Corp., and its founder Andriy Biletsky” are still on its list of dangerous individuals and organizations.

Events that happened today (August 25):

1916: Saburō Sakai, Axis naval aviator, was born.
1940: Berlin (barely) survived its first bombing by the British Royal Air Force.
1942: Second day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons; an Axis naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal was turned back by an Allied air attack. On the other hand, Axis marines assaulted Allied airfields Milne Bay, New Guinea (thereby initiating the Battle of Milne Bay).
1944: The Axis lost Paris to the Allies.
1945: The August Revolution ended as Axis Emperor Bảo Đại abdicated, ending the Nguyễn dynasty. (Coincidentally, ten days after the Empire of Japan announced its surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed U.S. intelligence officer John Birch, regarded by some antisocialists as the Cold War’s first victim.)
1967: A former member of the American Nazi Party murdered its leader, George Lincoln Rockwell.

Quoting Christian Goeschel’s Suicide in Nazi Germany, pages 147–8:

In March 1945, when [Axis] defeat was certain, Hitler agreed with Goebbels’s plan to send 300 fighter planes on suicide missions against Allied bomber planes. Eventually, Goebbels himself was disappointed with the failure of this mission.¹³² There is some evidence that the Luftwaffe flew self‐sacrifice missions against Soviet bridges across the River Oder in April 1945.

Thirty‐five pilots of the Leonidas squadron, based in Jüterbog, near Berlin, allegedly died after destroying two bridges. Before their mission, pilots reportedly signed a declaration, saying ‘I am above all clear that the mission will end in my death.’¹³³

Indeed, many of these pilots were [Fascist] fanatics who had volunteered for the self‐sacrifice mission.¹³⁴ The concept of self‐sacrifice (Selbstaufopferung) fundamentally differed from Selbstmord, which the [Fascists] condemned as a cowardly action, as noted earlier. Dying a soldier’s death was more dignified than negotiating for peace, the [Axis] thought.¹³⁵

Events that happened today (August 24):

1903: Karl Hanke, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, was sadly born.
1937: The Basque Army surrendered to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement. Meanwhile, the Sovereign Council of Asturias and León was proclaimed in Gijón.
1938: An Imperial warplane shot down the Kweilin, a Chinese civilian airliner, killing fourteen people. It was the first recorded instance of somebody shooting down a civilian airliner.
1941: The Third Reich’s Chancellery ordered the cessation of its systematic T4 euthanasia programme of the mentally ill and the handicapped due to protests, but killings continue for the remainder of the war.
1942: The Axis aircraft carrier Ryūjō sunk during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, with the loss of seven officers and 113 crewmen (but the Yankee carrier USS Enterprise was still heavily damaged).
1944: The Allies began their assault on Axis‐occupied Paris.
1949: The treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization went into effect.
1979: Hanna Reitsch, Axis aviator and test pilot (hence today’s subject matter), expired.