On 9 April 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler’s nomination as Reich Chancellor, a group of communist activists tore down the German flag of the German general consulate in Beirut and wrote explicit slogans on its walls: “Down with Hitler, the tyrant, the executer of the German workers! The German workers and their heroic Communist Party shall live!”⁸

For a broader, left‐leaning spectrum, including not only the Syrian–Lebanese Communist Party but other non‐party‐affiliated workers, students, and intellectuals as well, opposition against fascism gradually shifted to the center of ideological and strategic debates.⁹

[…]

The threat of fascist coups in Europe, the formation of Popular Fronts in France and Spain, and [Fascist] preparations for an attack against Abyssinia in 1935 ever more highlighted the need to revise the [Communist] party’s isolationist strategy. In close contact with the Comintern and the French [Communist Party], the communist movement in Lebanon and Syria set up a Committee for the Popular Struggle in Defense of Ethiopia explicitly meant to raise public awareness and to create broader alliances against fascism in the Arab world itself.¹⁴

In addition to the publication of the clandestine newspaper Nidal al‐Shaʻb (People’s Struggle) and the takeover of the renowned monthly cultural magazine Al‐Duhur (Ages), the organization of strikes and manifestations extended the popular basis of its activities—and further shifted its political priorities to questions of Arab independence, national unity, and the struggle for Palestine.¹⁵

Internationally, the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, held in July–August 1935 in Moscow, marked a turning point for Communist strategies vis‐à‐vis Italian Fascism and German [Fascism], confirming the gradual revision of past tactics whose devastating consequences had become all too visible in the ultimate defeat of political opposition in [the Third Reich].

The proceedings of the conference and the speeches by representatives of the national communist parties highlighted these changes, drawing particular attention to the need to unite mainstream nationalist forces in an attempt to thwart further fascist successes. Summarizing recent developments in Syria and Lebanon, Yusuf Khattar al‐Hilu, the delegate of the Syrian Communist Party, outlined the menaces posed by several imperialist powers striving to extend their influence into the Arab world:

Italian Fascist propaganda has greatly increased in recent times. Each year Mussolini’s agents organize free trips to Italy for young Arabs. The station Radio Bari broadcasts Arabic‐language programs three times a week about “Italian–Arab friendship” and “fascist well‐being” in Italy. It is the same with German fascism. Hitler has purchased the largest bourgeois newspapers in Syria which every day are full of photographs and articles about Hitlerism, which they represent as the “saviour of the German people.” Nazi agents try to use the national hatred the Arab people have for French imperialism to obtain their fascist goals.¹⁶

The resulting strategy to confront [Fascism] echoed the dilemma of the communist movement under French mandate rule. The congress’s decision to form broad popular fronts in Europe and national fronts in the colonies further emphasized the national struggle of the colonized populations, shifting attention from local “reactionary” powers and social and political rights to imperialism and European fascist régimes. The [Fascist] invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935 gave credibility to these needs.

As in the case of Libya, Italy’s latest aggression illustrated the immediate dangers posed by European fascism. The struggle against fascism as a threat to independence increasingly served to mobilize popular support and helped link the [Communist Party] to mainstream nationalist currents. While larger sectors of the local population continued to voice fascination for the [German Reich], Italy’s brutal policies in Libya and its attack against Abyssinia had fostered the image of fascism as an imperialist power.

Notwithstanding significant efforts to ameliorate its standing in the Middle East, suspicion of [Fascist] ambitions was shared—as in Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq—by many in Lebanon and Syria.¹⁷

[…]

The [Fascist] advance against France in summer 1940 left the Levantine public in a state of shock. On 22 June 1940 the German–French armistice agreement was signed. Three days later, on 25 June, a similar agreement was concluded in Rome between Italy and France.

The agreed‐on conventions were intended to regulate France’s relations to the Axis and to set preliminary rules for cooperation and the administration of territories affected by the French defeat. Both armistice conventions called for the demobilization and disarmament of French forces not required for an immediate preservation of public order and territorial defence.²⁹

Despite the immediate influence of the Axis and the rule of Vichy forces in the mandates, opposition to rapprochements to the Axis and its agents had not completely ceased. Local communist circles were among the most outspoken objectors of the Axis’s growing influence. The publication of the clandestine newspaper Nidal al‐Shaʻb in the name of the party was part of their activities.³⁰

As a handwritten pamphlet consisting of a few pages, the paper provided one of the rare opportunities to voice uncensored criticism of the local government and its Axis partners. Demands for an amelioration of the economic and social conditions were linked to calls for neutrality of the mandates in the international conflict. Despite its explicit criticism of the Axis as an immediate threat and the most aggressive expression of imperialist rule, such a position did not imply concession to the Allied powers.

On the eve of the Iraqi–British conflict, in March 1941, the paper strongly criticized not only Axis ambitions in Africa and the Arab Middle East but British intentions as well, with its slogan “No British, no Germans, no Italians, but bread, freedom and independence!”³¹ Under current conditions, neither European power could count on sympathies among the local population. As imperialist states driven by shared interests in the region, they were no allies in the struggle for independence, political rights, and economic prosperity.

[…]

News of the Soviet army’s encirclement of Berlin had reached the Levantine public in the early evening of 24 April 1945. Soon after, large crowds took to the streets. People gathered spontaneously in Beirut and other Lebanese and Syrian cities. From a local perspective, the war against [the Western Axis] had effectively come to an end.

(Emphasis added.)

Quoting Harvey Henry Smith’s Area Handbook for Lebanon, page 299:

Upon the surrender of the Vichy […] troops in [West Asia] in July 1941, volunteers from the Troupes Spéciales du Levant were enlisted in the [Allies] and saw action in north Africa, Italy, and Southern France.

In June 1943 the [Allies] reconstituted units of the Troupes Spéciales du Levant, which then operated as part of the British forces in the Middle East. In 1945, as a result of continuing pressure by Lebanese leaders for control of their own forces, [Paris] turned over to them the Lebanese units of the Troupes Spéciales du Levant. These units totaled about 3,000 men and became the nucleus of the present Lebanese Army.

In 1942, these troops participated in the Battle of Bir Hakeim against the Wehrmacht.

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 30).

1883: Bernhard Rust, Reich Minister of Science, Education and Culture, was unkind enough to exist.
1934: Erwin Rommel met Adolf Schicklgruber for the first time, and Reich Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht reported to his Chancellor on his progress of planning the German Reich’s economy for another war.
1935: The Third Reich commissioned U‐12 into service under the command of Kapitänleutnant Werner von Schmidt.
1936: Mutsu completed her reconstruction at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal.
1937: Imperial flightcraft bombarded Chinese coastal battery positions overlooking the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province.
1938: Shortly after midnight, Adolf Schicklgruber, Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini, and Édouard Daladier (in that order) signed the Munich Agreement at the Führerbau building in München, which ceded Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich (the actual document was backdated to the previous day). Upon returning to the United Kingdom, Chamberlain announced outside 10 Downing Street in London that ‘I believe it is peace for our time’!
1939: As General Władysław Sikorski became the Polish government‐in‐exile’s prime minister, Reinhard Heydrich became the leader of new Reich Main Security Office, RSHA, and U‐23 completed her twoth war patrol. Additionally, Walther von Brauchitsch received the Clasps to his Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class medals as well as the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross.
1940: Four Axis raids, each consisting of sixty to two hundred bombers and escorted by large numbers of fighters, crossed into southern England at 0900, 1000, 1300, and 1600 hours; some got through to London, but some did not drop their bombs as they had little visibility due to low clouds, overshooting their targets as radar operators misread the Knickebein radio beacon signals. Meanwhile, two groups of about one hundred bombers each attacked cities on the southern coast. On that day, the Axis lost fourteen bombers, twenty‐eight Bf 109 fighters, and one Bf 110 fighter (while the Allies lost 19 fighters and 8 pilots). The daylight attacks would represent the last major raids of such type conducted by the Luftwaffe. Overnight, the Axis bombed London, Liverpool, and several others cities; the aircraft factory at Yeovil was only lightly damaged as most bombs fell on the town instead.

Apart from that, Axis submarine U‐37 sank Allied ship Samala west of Ireland at 1013 hours, massacring everyone aboard (65 crew, 1 gunner, and 2 passengers). At 2156 hours, in the same area, U‐37 sank Allied ship Heminge, killing somebody. Axis mines laid by destroyers Eckholdt, Riedel, Lody, Galster, Ihn, and Steinbrinck two days earlier off Falmouth in southwestern England destroyed two Allied vessels, resulting in twenty‐nine and fifteen deaths, respectively. Elsewhen, Karl Dönitz inspected the Axis submarine Alessandro Malaspina at Bordeaux, and Alpino Bagnolini ended her third war patrol arriving there.
1941: The Axis finished the Babi Yar massacre, but the Jager Report noted that the Axis exterminated 366 Jewish men, 483 Jewish women, and 597 Jewish children in Trakai, Lithuania (for a total of 1,446 people). As well, Operation Typhoon got an unofficial start when Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 attacked two days ahead of schedule, and Axis bombers attacked shipyards at Tyneside in northern England, severely damaging submarine HMS Sunfish.
1942: The Third Reich’s head of state publicly repeated his forecast of the annihilation of Jewry while a transport containing 610 Jews arrived at Auschwitz from the Westerbork camp in the Netherlands; the Axis registered 37 men and 118 women into the camp but exterminated the remaining 454. As well, Axis bombers attacked Lancing and Colchester, England, and Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss forbade his SS guards to consume raw fruits, raw vegetables, and raw milk due to the typhus epidemic in the camp. On the bright side, Hans‐Joachim Marseille, Axis pilot, died falling to his death.
1943: On the eve of the Jewish New Year, the Gestapo and Danish fascists began rounding up Danish Jews. A Danish businessman passed the news of the operation and passed the information to the Danish resistance, which then arranged fishing boats to ferry a large number of Danish Jews to Sweden. Meanwhile, SS‐Hauptsturmführer Eduard Weiter became the commandant of Dachau (replacing Martin Wei), and the Wehrmacht began evacuating Naples amidst continued fighting, leaving behind a burning city historic archive and many traps. A ‘wolfpack’ consisting of Axis submarines U‐703, U‐601, and U‐960 also attacked Soviet convoy VA‐18 near the Sergey Kirov Islands in the eastern Kara Sea and sank freighter Arhangelsk.
1944: The Third Reich commenced a counteroffensive to retake the Nijmegen salient, this having been captured by the Allies during Operation Market Garden. Likewise, a V‐1 flying bomb caused five deaths and many injuries when a row of houses was demolished at Ardleigh in Essex, England. The USAAF base at Thorpe Abbots, home of the 100th Bomb Group (‘The Bloody 100th’) reported buzz bombs flying over the airfield at one hundred fifty feet before exploding in the farm fields surrounding the base. A U.S. 8th Air Force 750‐bomber raid on Munster and Handorf in the Greater German Reich killed the Staffelkapitän and the training officer of Axis Air Force 7/KG3; records captured by the Allies showed that the Staffel had launched one hundred seventy‐seven flying bombs during thirteen nights of sorties in Sept. 1944.
1945: The Western Allies disbanded I‐401’s crew, and all of the officers and other men went back into the civilian population, including the few who had committed war crimes!
1946: Takashi Sakai, Axis governor of Hong Kong, died at the hands of a Chinese firing squad.

Quoting Regula Ludi in Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States, pages 94–5:

In Bern, throughout the spring and summer of 1938, different agencies were tackling the problem of how to identify Jewish refugees at the border and distinguish them from other German travellers.⁵⁸ Anxious not to disturb ‘normal relations’ with the Third Reich, Swiss diplomats were eagerly seeking a practicable solution.

In May of 1938, Rothmund was the first to propose a visa requirement for the Jews only in an internal note. While his suggestion found the approval of colleagues from other government agencies, it did not resonate well with [Fascist] authorities. Such a provision was obviously in direct contradiction to the [Fascist] goal of removing Jews from the Third Reich. In addition, it would require mechanisms for the identification of Jews that were not yet in place.

By the end of July 1938, Swiss worries materialised: the [Third Reich] officially announced the replacement of Austrian passports by German ones.⁵⁹ Some time later in August, the idea to mark the passports of ‘non‐Aryan’ German citizens emerged in a letter by Hans Frölicher, the Swiss ambassador to Berlin.

However, the documents are not clear about whether German or Swiss negotiators first came up with this suggestion. They only testify to the persisting reluctance of the [Third Reich] to agree to any solution reducing the chances of emigration for the Jews. Eventually, in August of 1938, the Swiss threatened to reintroduce a general visa requirement. As Rothmund stressed, such a step would require German applicants to ‘present proof that they were Aryan’, which implied additional administrative work for Swiss consulates.⁶⁰

In addition, the general visa requirement would probably have failed to find federal government approval because of its unpredictable economic repercussions and potential damage to the tourist industry. As a bluff to speed up negotiations, however, it was successful. In early September, the Swiss sensed a breakthrough as the [Fascists] gave up their opposition and agreed to mark the passports of Jewish nationals, but they insisted on reciprocity. This entailed that the Swiss government condone discrimination against its own Jewish citizens.

Rothmund objected to this compromise, even though he had been the first to propose discriminatory measures, and he warned that such a step would not only alienate Swiss Jews, but also expose Switzerland internationally to the accusation of becoming embroiled in [Fascist] antisemitism. As a consequence he reiterated the demand for a general visa requirement. None of these considerations eventually entered the final agreement.

The German–Swiss Protocol of 29 September 1938 included the [Third Reich’s] promise to mark the passports of its nationals belonging to the ‘Jewish race’, to be defined according to the Nuremberg Laws, with a distinctive mark and thus prevent their holders from entering Switzerland. The mark should be a clearly visible and indelible ‘J’‐stamp, as the two parties agreed. The document also included provisions that introduced discrimination against Swiss Jews. Rothmund, who was directly involved in the last rounds of negotiations, did not endorse the agreement.

The Federal Council did not heed his reservations and adopted the Protocol in a meeting of 4 October 1938. Simultaneously, it introduced the visa requirement for ‘Non‐Aryan Germans’. It thereby allowed [Fascist] racial terminology and ‘German racial legislation to penetrate Swiss administrative law’.⁶¹ The federal authorities had to deal with the international and domestic protests that followed publication of the visa requirement.

This decision, however, was the only part of the whole story to become publicly known in 1938, in contrast to Switzerland’s active rôle in the preceding negotiations that only entered public knowledge through an Allied edition of German documents in 1953.⁶² Within days, on 15 October 1938, Sweden followed the Swiss example and signed a similar agreement with the [Third Reich].

More than ever, the federal authorities were zealously dedicated to fighting ‘foreign inundation’, but by the autumn of 1938 they had dropped all pretences, leaving no doubt of whom they had in mind when talking of ‘undesirable elements’. Official discourse no longer distinguished between Jewish foreigners and refugees but used the terms ‘emigrant’ and ‘Jew’ in an interchangeable way. And all those considered ‘emigrants’ were treated as if they were undocumented or even stateless persons.

The introduction of the visa requirement for German Jews was soon followed by mandatory visa for all ‘emigrants’ on 20 January 1939, regardless of their country of origin and subsequently also for holders of Czechoslovakian passports on 15 March 1938. Eventually, not only German Jews, but all Jews and any potential refugee had to reckon with expulsion, even when they arrived from a country that had no travel restrictions between itself and Switzerland.

As a consequence, they were trapped in a dilemma: either they risked being turned away when entering without permission or they forfeited almost any chance of acceptance when revealing their true intentions by submitting a visa application.

(Emphasis added.)

It may seem odd that the Third Reich wanted to prevent Jews and legally ‘Jewish’ people from escaping to the Swiss Confederation and the Kingdom of Sweden in the 1930s, but this was likely so as to maintain good relations with the Swiss and Swedish ruling classes, which were disinterested in providing for a huge influx of refugees.

---

Click here for other events that happened today (September 29).

1881: Ludwig von Mises, Austrofascist turned neoclassical liberal, rudely burdened us all with his presence.
1912: Michelangelo Antonioni, Axis journalist and draftee, was born.
1933: The Third Reich passed a hereditary farm law that protected farmers against potential predatory practices by financial institutions, but it also bound the farmers to the land comparably to serfs.
1934: The Third Reich recommissioned Emden into service, with Karl Dönitz in command.
1936: The Nationalist cruiser Canarias sunk the Spanish Republican destroyer Almirante Juan Fernandez during a naval battle off the coast near Gibraltar.
1937: Imperial aircraft sank Chinese gunboat Chuyou.
1938: The Munich Conference between Adolf Schicklgruber, Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini, and Édouard Daladier took place at the Führerbau building in München, during which London and Paris ceded Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich in an attempt to avoid war. The two Czechoslovakian representatives at the conference became locked in an adjacent room, unpermitted to actually participate in the negotiations.
1939: Berlin issued a repatriation order for the 86,000 ethnic Germans living in Estonia and Latvia, knowing that Moscow would soon demand the Baltics. Aside from that, the Imperialists reached the outskirts of Changsha, Hunan Province, China; the Empire of Japan had thus far suffered 40,000 casualties on this assault.
1940: At 1600 hours, a large group of Luftwaffe flightcraft, mostly fighters, conducted a sweep in Kent in southern England. This sweep failed to draw Allied fighters, but overnight the Axis heavily bombed London while assaulting Liverpool.
1941: The Einsatzgruppen, with the aid of Ukrainian anticommunists, commenced the two‐day Babi Yar massacre, resulting in the deaths of 50,000–96,000 Soviets (33,771 of whom were Jewish). Likewise, Berlin ordered that Leningrad be wiped out by artillery and aerial bombardment. The Third Reich could not and would not feed its population, which was of no use for the future of the Fascist bourgeoisie. Lastly, Reinhard Heydrich became Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.
1942: A lone Axis bomber assaulted the rural town of Petworth in Sussex County, England in the morning, destroying a boys’ school, killing twenty‐three folk (a score of whom were children), and seriously injuring thirty (two dozen of whom were children). The Axis also attacked Somerton, Somerset County; Shrewton, Wiltshire County; and Betteshanger Collthbourne, Kent County.

Aside from that, somebody informed Max Merten that, starting two days later, he would be the head of the Administrative and Economic Department of the Axis occupation administration in Thessaloniki. Meanwhile, Axis submarine I‐25 surfaced off Cape Blanco, Oregon in the early morning darkness. Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita took off in I‐25’s Yokosuka E14Y “Glen” floatplane and flew inland from the Cape Blanco lighthouse and dropped two incendiary bombs on an Oregonian forest, but nobody reported any fire! This was the twoth and last ever aerial bombardment of the mainland United States.
1943: Axis occupation troops fought against the resistance in the Giuseppe Mazzini Square (where an Axis tank fired on the Italians), the Ponticelli district, the Capodichino military airfield, the Piazza Ottocalli square, and other locations in Naples. As the scale of the uprising continued to grow, Colonel Walter Schöll began negotiating with some of the Italian leaders, using captured resistance fighters as collateral.
1998: Bruno Munari, Axis artist, expired.

During the fascist period, a series of commercial accords between Norway and Italy were successfully concluded thanks to parallel cultural diplomacy. These agreements were organized through an arrangement that was defined as ‘clearing’, organized through an exchange of goods between the two countries. The clearing operations were often used in trade relations between Norway and other countries. According to Einar Lie, the clearing system was the result of a weak financial position that limited credit opportunities for Norway.⁷¹

1933 ended with an increase in exports to Norway for a total of 10,701,000 Norwegian kroner against imports of 19,094,600. [Fascist] Italy therefore aspired to increase exports to Norway in such a way that the figures were balanced to [Fascism’s] advantage. [Fascist] Italy ‘fully absorbs the production of cod, stockfish and dried fish in general from Norway’, and was thus Norway’s most important customer in the trade of these products.

According to a commercial report drawn up by the Italian Legation, in addition to fish, [Fascist] Italy imported cellulose, cod liver oil, newspaper paper, copper, nickel, chromium, leather, fur, and whale fat from Norway. [Fascist] Italy for its part exported salt, bran, citrus fruits, walnut flour, almonds, hazelnuts, tomato paste, linen fabrics, wool, jute and canvas, artificial silks, hats, tires, and cars. Usually, [Fascist] merchant ships unloaded their cargoes in the ports of Tromsø, Trondheim, or Lofoten.⁷²

The [Fascist] government was able to make important sales contracts with Norway and, in addition to traditional sectors such as fishing, began to sell ships and planes to Norway. These were the contracts that most interested the fascist authorities and that [Fascist] Italy aspired to consolidate. The sales of aircraft and ships would not only increase the number of exports, but also enhanced the prestige of the [Fascist] mechanical industry.

In 1934, the [Fascist] company Breda sent a seaplane purchased by the Norwegian navy to Norway.⁷³ It was one of the first contracts of this type, followed by many others. These agreements often entailed skilful diplomatic work that in many cases involved intermediaries residing in Norway, and who therefore knew the reality of the country and the language.

On 8 August 1934, a telegram was sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which it was communicated that it had ‘happily flew from Italy to the military airport of Horten, the first of the Breda seaplanes’. Upon arrival, the Legation secretary announced: ‘I was accompanied by the sales representative Luzi, and I had the opportunity to personally ascertain the full satisfaction of the local aviation authorities’.⁷⁴

On 2 October 1935, with the [Fascist] invasion of Ethiopia, the relations between the two countries reduced. As highlighted above, Norway officially disapproved of the invasion, and the Norwegian press was very critical. The Italian Legation in Oslo tried in every way to regain the Norwegian market and to unblock ‘a series of projects and conventions presented at various times’.

Despite the apparent Norwegian hostility towards [Fascist] Italy, the slowdown in relations between the two countries was strongly felt also by the Norwegian economy, to the extent that Norwegian authorities grew concerned about a rupture in commercial activities.

The Norwegian authorities were led to define the sanctions imposed on [Fascist] Italy as ‘unhappy’, ‘in which we took part during the Ethiopian war’. ‘The Norwegian fishmongers suffered, suffer and will suffer considerable losses following Norway’s participation in punitive action against one of the main buyers of our products’.⁷⁵

After just over a year, the tensions between the two countries eased, and commercial transactions resumed even more strongly than before, to the great satisfaction of the [Fascists] and Norwegians. In 1937, through a clearing operation, Norway purchased five Fiat production fighter planes. The purchase was preceded by numerous trips to [Fascist] Italy by Colonel Trygve Klinge[n]berg, Norwegian Air Force Chief Inspector, who had visited many [Fascist] factories in order to find a convenient plane for military aviation in his country.

The colonel expressed great satisfaction with the treatment received [under Fascism], declaring that he had found an atmosphere of real sympathy for Norway. The agreements seemed to satisfy both parties and were met with much approval in the Norwegian newspapers.⁷⁶

A new compensation agreement was signed between the Bergen group of fish exporters through director Nil[s] Marthinussen and Oslo’s Fiat Norsk–Italiensk. It included the exchange of 120 Fiats for 450,000kg of fish.

Again in 1937, the Norwegian trade minister enthusiastically communicated a new compensation agreement that ‘will drain all the dry fish warehouses’ and was reported by the main Norwegian newspapers, including Arbeiderbladet, Dagbladet, and Aftenposten.⁷⁷ [Fascist] Italy purchased from Norway 7,100 tons of dried fish at a value of more than 5 million crowns.

[Fascist] Italy, for its part, provided to the Norwegian company Bergenske two ships of 9,000 tons and a speed of 19 knots. The price of the boat was around 6 and a half million Norwegian kroner, of which 60 per cent would have been paid in fish.⁷⁸

The ship was to be used by Norway for the Bergen–Newcastle line in the spring of 1938. The Minister of Commerce, Alfred Madsen, communicated the news to the Norwegian media with great satisfaction. From the Lofoten Islands and from the Finnmark region in the far north, great happiness was expressed, as the fish warehouses were entirely emptied and the entire fish production for the year was sold. This greatly boosted the economy of the poorer regions of northern Norway.⁷⁹

On 13 September 1937, the Italian Legation sent a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to communicate that the Trolla steamer in Trondheim had left for [Fascist] Italy with 1,000 tons of Lofoten stockfish purchased by the Glipesco company in Rome.⁸⁰

(Emphasis added.)

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 28).

1937: The Boletín Oficial del Estado officiated the ‘Fiesta Nacional del Caudillo’, the first time that somebody referred to Francisco Franco as the Caudillo. Meanwhile, Mussolini and Schicklgruber spoke together at a famous rally in Berlin. While the League of Nations officially condemned the Imperial bombing of Chinese cities that day, two of the League’s members, Britain and France, balked at the Spanish Republic’s demand to condemn Germany and Italy as aggressors and allow arms exports to the Spanish government, fearing it would worsen the general situation in Europe.
1939: The siege of Warsaw ended. Coincidentally, Berlin and Moscow renegotiated their Spheres of Influence.
1940: At 1000 hours, over a great hundred of Axis flightcraft crossed the coast of Kent in southern England in two waves, but Alliued fighters intercepted most of them, and only six bombers were fit to reach London to release their bombs. At 1330 hours, thirty‐five Axis bombers escorted by one hundred twenty‐five fighters attacked targets in Kent; this group turned back by 1410 hours. At 1415 hours, sixty Axis flightcraft flew toward Portsmouth, southern England from Cherbourg, France; the Allies intercepted them over the English Channel, they released their bombs into the water, and they returned to base. Although most Luftwaffe missions failed to reach their targets, the kill ratio of the day favored the Axis: sixteen Allied fighters were shot down with nine pilots dead, while the Axis only lost six fighters. Overnight, the Luftwaffe heavily bombed London, while also assaulting Liverpool; Axis aircraft mined the Thames Estuary.
1941: The Axis occupation in northern Greece now faced the Drama uprising. Less importantly, the Oak Leaves and Swords to the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross award, along with the Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, both became established in the German Reich.
1942: Axis bombers attacked Colchester and Broadstairs, England, and Erwin Rommel telephoned Hans‐Joachim Marseille because he wanted accompaniment to Berlin for a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast. Marseille rejected the offer, citing his wish to save his leave time to marry Hanne‐Lies Küpper later in the year.
1943: The Axis recaptured Split, Dalmatia from the partisans, and Axis occupation troops fought against the resistance in the Materdei district, the Vomero district, the Porta Capuana city gate, the Castel Nuovo fortress, the Sant’Anna dei Lombardi church, and other locations in Naples.
1944: Beginning on this date and through the following month, about 18,402 prisoners from Theresienstadt transferred to Auschwitz, and Axis Air Force III/KG3 flew twenty sorties yet lost two of their flightcraft. The Axis also surrendered Calais Citadel in France after further intensive bombing raids by Allied bombers (but there were a few isolated pockets of resistance). Lastly, the grand Shinto shrine in Lushun, the Empire of Manchuria (Liaoning Province, China), having its construction completed in March that year, held its opening ceremony.

Spain soon became a major destination for postwar German tourism. This is especially relevant taking into account that tourism is not only one of the most powerful tools for shaping cultural imaginaries but was also a key diplomatic instrument for the Franco dictatorship.¹¹

[…]

The emphasis placed on the figure of Charles V as the epitome of the alleged Spanish–German friendship also played another particularly important rôle: it helped minimize the importance of the much more recent alliance between Franco and Hitler.

The memory of [Third Reich] collaborationism had to be “whisked away as a parenthesis or blank historical space” according to Carlos Sanz, “so that it would not interfere in an idealized ‘traditional Spanish–German friendship’ that would have its roots in the times of Charles V—now celebrated […] as precursor and paladin of the ‘Christian West.’”³⁴

The imperative need to bury the recent past under layers of the distant past becomes easier to understand if we bear in mind that, according to reports analyzed by Birgit Aschmann, it was still common in 1950s Spain that “any German man” was greeted with the fascist salute as a sign of friendship.³⁵

Such displays shocked German observers and diplomats, who helplessly noted the “undeniable admiration that the Third Reich arouses in Spain,” to the extent that for the average Spanish citizen, “the existence of a federal president as the highest representative of the German State was, even in 1960, ‘largely unknown.’”³⁶

[…]

Among the sources consulted, it is striking, first of all, that most of the documents in which the monastery is mentioned were written by authors that are directly associated with the rehabilitation of the Franco dictatorship in the German public opinion.

Of particular note among these are Werner Schulz, who reported on it in several of his articles in Merian (a popular travel magazine of the time in the FRG);⁴² Heinz Barth, who, even before the end of World War II, had published an article entitled “Yuste,” in which he wrote wistfully about the Europe of the past;⁴³ and Otto Roegele, who covered the Monastery of Yuste in his Diary of a trip to Spain in the mid‐1950s.⁴⁴

Werner Schulz and Heinz Barth have been identified as two of the main correspondents who contributed to disseminating a pro‐Franco perception among the German public throughout the 1950s.⁴⁵

(Emphasis added.)

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 27).

1864: Andrej Hlinka, Slovakian fascist, was born.
1938: Franz Halder and other Wehrmacht officers set September 29, 1938 as the launch date of their revolt should Berlin lead the Third Reich into a war over the Sudetenland crisis. In the early afternoon, the Third Reich’s Chancellery moved several divisions to the German–Czechoslovakian border. In the late afternoon, it called for a military parade on the Unter den Linden boulevard in Berlin to rouse a patriotic sentiment; Berlin citizens responded coolly, however. Apart from that, the Third Reich passed law to revoke licenses to practice law for all Jewish attorneys, effective November 30, 1938; thereafter Jewish attorneys could only act as ‘consultants’ for other Jews on matters of law.
1939: Berlin ordered its top military leaders to begin planning for a war in the west, with a target launch date of November 12, 1939. The generals would complain that the date was too soon. As well, Reinhard Heydrich became the head of Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and the Dachau concentration camp temporarily closed until February 18, 1940 for use of training SS units; prisoners of Dachau transferred to Mauthausen.
1940: The European Fascists and Japanese Imperialists signed the Tripartite Pact. On the other hand, Julius Wagner‐Jauregg, Fascist eugenicist, dropped dead. At 0900 hours that day, eighty Axis bombers escorted by one hundred fighters flew over Kent toward London, but most of the bombers turned back near Maidstone and Tonbridge; some got through and released their bombs over London. Between 1200 and 1230 hours, three hundred Axis aircraft, mostly fighters, conducted a sweep and engaged in dogfights near London; a score of bombers within this group were able to bomb London. By the end of the day, the Axis lost twenty‐one bombers and thirty‐four fighters. Overnight, the Axis bombed London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Nottingham.
1941: The Axis and its collaborators exterminated 23,000 Jews at Kamenets‐Podolsk, Ukraine, and the Jager Report (issued on December 1, 1941) noted that the Axis slaughtered 989 Jewish men, 1,636 Jewish women, and 821 Jewish children in Eysisky, Lithuania (for a total of 3,446 people). Additionally, Axis submarine U‐201 attacked Allied convoy HG‐73 north of the Azores islands, sinking two merchant ships and the antiaircraft ship HMS Springbank; thirty‐two folk died but two hundred one survived. On the other hand, the Axis garrison at Wolchefit Pass in Ethiopia surrendered to British King’s African Rifles regiment, and Axis troops in plain clothes infiltrated the north gate of the walled city of Changsha, Hunan Province, China, but failed to complete their sabotage mission.
1942: Luftwaffe unit III./KG 4 (flying He 111 bombers) flew its last bombing sortie over Stalingrad. The unit would soon be transported out of its base in Morozovsk, Russia for the German Reich to undergo glider towing training. As well, Axis troops landed on Kuria, Gilbert Islands.
1943: One of the Axis officials in Rome demanded that the Jewish community pay one hundred pounds of gold within three dozen hours or three hundred Jews would become prisoners. The Vatican would open its treasury to help the Jews reach the required amount. Meanwhile the Wehrmacht started to withdraw all forces out of Ukraine to defensive positions on the west side of the Dnieper River, and Italy’s Axis occupation administration arrested thousands of rioters in Naples.
1944: Armeegruppe E withdrew from western Greece, and the Kassel Mission (which aimed to destroy the factories of the engineering works of Henschel & Sohn, which built tracked armoured vehicles and their associated infrastructure) resulted in the largest loss by a USAAF group on any mission in World War II.
2006: Helmut Kallmeyer, a chemist involved in Action T4, died.

Lazar was able to spread these messages widely by inserting articles in the Spanish press and broadly distributing two specific publications: ASPA, a weekly bulletin created by Goebbels’ propagandists that had proved its effectiveness during the Spanish Civil War, and the official bulletin for political information issued by the embassy and addressed to the Spanish authorities, which, thanks to Lazar and the Francoist government, was disseminated to a larger audience, while the British one had far fewer readers.²⁶

The bulletins, which appeared three times a week with a circulation of 45,000 to 60,000,²⁷ made an effort to justify [the Third Reich’s] actions, especially the attack on Poland. Following the same arguments [that the Third Reich’s] propaganda had been using since May 1939,²⁸ they attempted to prove that Poland had been persecuting its German minority, in turn criminalizing the nations that had crafted the Versailles Treaty.

This propaganda framed the repatriation policies established by the Polish government as a clear de‐Germanization policy, part of an extermination campaign against the German minority that resulted in 58,000 deaths, and was the product of a ‘twenty‐year orgy of violations and destruction’.²⁹

However, it was not easy to convince Spain of the righteousness of an attack on a friendly, Catholic country. Franco’s government ordered journalists to refrain from making damaging references to Poland, a friendly and anti‐Bolshevik nation, always without endangering the friendship with [the Third Reich]. Lazar acknowledged that his fight against this attitude produced only mixed results.³⁰

[…]

The Große Plan […] also focused on the use of irony, humour and entertainment to spread anti‐Allied sentiment. Crossword puzzles thematically connected to the course of the war, other publications like Humor de bolsillo (Pocket Humour) and illustrated fiction stories were widely distributed.⁴⁶ Most of them aimed at making fun of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, especially showing that Stalin could not be trusted (Figures 1 and 2).

Additionally, the plan had an economic purpose, that of integrating Spain in the New Order. The embassy had begun to issue a brand‐new bulletin of economic information in early 1941. Throughout 1942, these bulletins, addressed to the Spanish authorities, increasingly mentioned the self‐sufficiency of the European continent and highlighted how all occupied areas, from the Netherlands to Poland, were economically thriving under [the Third Reich’s] rule.⁴⁷

[…]

Given Lazar’s skill at managing propaganda campaigns, it is not surprising that Hitler came to describe the Spanish press as the best in the world.¹⁰⁰ Years later, when writing his memoirs, Lazar would try to tone down his contributions during the war by jokingly reflecting on how he should have tried to make the Spanish press less pro‐German.¹⁰¹

However, not even the most skilled propagandist could counteract the hard realities of the front and the conflict’s trajectory. The shift in Spanish politics established by Jordana found, albeit slowly, its counterpart in the Spanish media. This new attitude provoked confusion among the Falangists, as the complaints of one local leader of the single party reflected:

[I don’t know] if I should bust the heads of all those new Anglophiles, if I should incarcerate them at the mere provocation, or if, on the contrary, I should shake hands with them and turn into one of them.¹⁰²

(Emphasis added.)

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 26).

1877: Ugo Cerletti, Axis neurologist, was born.
1889: Martin Heidegger, Fascist philosophist, was delivered to the world.
1895: Jürgen Stroop, SS commander who led the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, made the mistake of living.
1939: As a Fascist seaplane shot down a civilian KLM aircraft, killing somebody, Werner Mölders’s superiors relieved him of his duty as the commanding officer of 1./JG 53, making him the commanding officer of III./JG 53 instead. Additionally, the Third Reich buried former German Army Commander‐in‐Chief Werner von Fritsch in Berlin, but neither Adolf Schicklgruber, nor Joachim von Ribbertrop, nor Heinrich Himmler attended the ceremonial state funeral.
1940: Erich Raeder met with his Chancellor, noting that the Fascist territories in the Mediterranean Sea were in danger of being attacked by the British; he deduced from the importance the British had placed on the region historically. To prevent this, he recommended that the Chancellery make plans to seize Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, and the Suez Canal. At 1630 hours, one hundred Luftwaffe flightcraft attacked Southampton in England, causing damage to the factory at Woolston producing Spitfire fighters. RAF fighters claimed sixteen bombers and sixteen fighters shot down (which was likely an overestimate), while losing ten fighters and three pilots. Overnight, the Fascists bombed London for the 26th consecutive night, and they also assaulted Liverpool as well as other towns and cities.
1941: Axis battleship Tirpitz sailed with other warships to patrol off of the Aaland Islands in the Baltic Sea to prevent Soviet naval maneuvers, and Axis submarines U‐124 and U‐203 attacked Allied convoy HG‐73 north of the Azores islands and sank six merchant ships.
1942: The Wehrmacht began a ‘final’ reattack on Stalingrad, and Senior SS official August Frank issued a memorandum detailing how Jews should be ‘evacuated’. Likewise, the Schutzstaffel began to confiscate possessions of Auschwitz’s and Majdanek’s prisoners. Currency, gold, and jewelry transferred to the SS Headquarters of the Economic Administration. Watches, clocks, and pens went to the troops on the front lines. Finally, clothing went to needy German families.
1943: Otto Skorzeny presented three Knight’s Cross medals at the Harvest Thanksgiving festival at the Berlin Sportpalast. In the early afternoon, he had lunch with the Goebbels family.
1944: Axis shore batteries, cut off behind Allied lines around Calais in France, bombarded Dover, England, massacring forty‐nine folk.

[Transcript]

Strikingly similar remarks to Ilgner’s were made barely four months later by Erich Neumann, the [Fascist] Secretary for the Four‐Year Plan. On 25 January 1941, he drafted a memorandum entitled ‘Towards the Question of Future Economic Policy in the South‐East’.

According to him, the penetration of German capital and industry was only natural. Although Germany overall had an interest in improving the living conditions of its neighbours, any increase in standard of living and purchasing power was not to be allowed in the future if it came at the expense of the surplus exports of the goods on which [the Third Reich] relied.

The only reason why those countries could provide an export surplus of the goods which [the Third Reich] needed was their low average consumer spending, which in Yugoslavia, as he stressed, was seven times lower than in [the Third Reich]. The average consumption of meat and bread in Yugoslavia was one third of that in [the Third Reich] and according to Neumann it should stay that way.

[Fascism’s] task was not to increase the living standard of the region, but to help with technical improvements which could increase production and yield. Any independent economic development of these countries was to be prevented from now on, they should be kept in the status of raw material and foodstuffs suppliers to the Reich and their surplus population used as migrant workers in [the Reich].

Such a policy would ‘keep us [the Germans] from danger […] that the consuming power of the people from the south‐east grows faster than their production abilities, which would leave only smaller and more expensive leftovers for our import needs’.³³

(Emphasis added. Source.)

(I know that this is a short post today, but my other ideas for subject matters looked less interesting and I’m too tired to research something else.)

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 25).

1934: Helsinki ratified the ‘Exchange of Notes constituting an Agreement modifying the Treaty of Commerce of March 24th, 1934, between the Two Countries’ in Berlin.
1937: Imperial bombers flew ninety‐five sorties over Nanjing between 0930 and 1630 hours, dropping five hundred bombs which caused more than six hundred (mostly civilian) casualties. The National Central Hospital, which had a large red cross painted on the roof, also took damage from these bombs. Coincidentally, sixteen Imperial carrier flightcraft from Kaga sank the Chinese light cruiser Yixian at Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, but the Imperialists lost two flightcraft in the attack.
1939: The Luftwaffe bombed Warsaw heavily as the Third Reich’s head of state arrived to observe the assault, then he returned to Berlin, which reintroduced food rationing throughout the German Reich.
1940: Vichy instituted a court martial body for crimes committed against the state. There was no appeal, and the sentence was to be carried out within two dozen hours. At 1145 hours, meanwhile, twenty‐seven Luftwaffe bombers escorted by thirty fighters attacked the Bristol Aeroplane Company factory at Filton in southwestern England, destroying construction sheds, eight newly‐built aircraft, 132 lives, and wounding 315, but the Luftwaffe lost six aircraft, eight lives, ten men became prisoners. At 1647 hours, two dozen Luftwaffe bombers escorted by 12 Bf 110 fighters attacked Plymouth in southern England, losing one bomber. Overnight, the Luftwaffe bombed London and other cities, while other Luftwaffe bombers laid mines in the Thames Estuary.
1941: Berlin ordered a halt to attacks on Leningrad in northern Russia, instead ordering that the city be starved into submission. Likewise, various Axis troops reached the Perekop Isthmus in Russia and began to cut off the Crimean Peninsula. Lastly, the Axis slaughtered 215 Jewish men, 229 Jewish women, and 131 of their children, all in Jahiuna, Lithuania (for a total of 575 people).
1942: The Axis exterminated 472 Jews in Bogdanovka. (There was only one survivor: a fifteen‐year‐old named Alisa Prizova, whom the Axis spared after she screamed, ‘Don’t kill me. I am not a Jew, I am a Kabardian.’) As well, Axis troops landed on Beru, Gilbert Islands, and the Third Reich’s Chancellor dismissed the Chief of the Army General Staff, Colonel‐General Halder, and appointed General Zeitzler to succeed him. At the same time, Berlin took away responsibility for the employment of General Staff Corps personnel from the Chief of the General Staff and gave it to the Army Personnel Office, which was directly subordinate to the Chancellor. After sundown, the Luftwaffe attacked Penzance, southwestern England.
1943: The Axis liquidated all Jewish ghetti in Byelorussia, and General Otto Fretter‐Pico became the commanding officer of the Wehrmacht’s 148th Infantry Division in Italy.
1944: The Greater German Reich formed the Volkssturm as Norwegian ministers urged its Teuton occupiers to withdraw from Norway.
1946: Hans Eppinger, Jr., Axis physician who joined the NSDAP (despite his Jewish ancestry) and performed experiments on concentration camp prisoners, took his own life.
1968: Hans Friedrich Karl Günther, the only leading racial theorist to join the NSDAP before 1933, was kind enough to drop dead.
1991: CIA asset and the Butcher of Lyon, Nikolaus ‘Klaus’ Barbie, finally kicked the bucket.
2005: Friedrich Peter, active Fascist, finally hit the dirt.

Evidently, there was an enormous difference between what was happening in Republican Spain and what was actually known about it, especially in a context of scarce information and inordinate political manipulation in Italy.²⁴ Many legionnaires based their decision to go to fight in Spain on distorted, propagandistic information. Indeed, stereotypes and biased news reports regarding anti‐clericalism, killings of priests and sacrophobic violence carried immense qualitative weight in motivating the first wave of enlistments.

Echoes of religious persecution in revolutionary Spain had helped to magnify what Giulio Castelli described — in 1951’s La Chiesa e il fascismo (a somewhat conditioned interpretation written six years after the end of fascism) — as the ‘generous, heroic participation of Italian volunteers’ in the fight ‘against barbarism and atrocities of international atheistic communism in all its Bolshevik extremism and terrorism’.

According to Dario Ferri (a pseudonym given by the person who interviewed him, who did not have permission to reveal the individual’s real identity), the volunteers went into combat as the ‘new legionnaires of Christ’.²⁵ ‘We volunteers’, they would say, ‘are the true crusaders of the fascist idea that will triumph with our infallible victory over all Spain, imposing on our enemies the human and divine truth it brings with it’. These fascist Italians were on a sacred crusade ‘for the homeland and for Christ’ against atheistic terrorism and Bolshevik barbarism.²⁶

Edgardo Sogno’s perspectives on the war were later collected in a small volume Due fronti, where he recalls his decision in 1938, at the age of 22, to fight for the victory of the ‘national’ Spain and ‘eject the communists from within Europe’.²⁷ The violent ‘revolution’ of the war facilitated a clash between ‘Bolshevik materialism and Roman Catholic spiritualism’;²⁸ only a poor Italian or a bad fascist would not have followed the ‘so, so many Italians who spontaneously go there, where the Ideal [sic] calls them’.²⁹

The section of the book La Grande Proletaria attributed to Arconovaldo Bonaccorsi (‘Count Rossi’) is clearly plagiarized from the Spanish falangist Agustín de Foxá, and as such repeats many classic images of Red terror and odious characterizations of the enemy.

Nevertheless, its rhetoric provides some enlightening insights into Italian fascist antirevolutionary perceptions. ‘Count Rossi’ depicts a Spain of ‘azano [sic, referring to Azaña] and quirosa’ [sic, referring to Casares Quiroga]’ which has been turned into ‘a province of the Socialist Homeland’, a ‘branch office’ of the Soviet Union in Europe.

This ‘forward base’ is full of loveless women with flaccid bellies and rickety, hunchbacked men, alcoholics reeking of blood, people who have never set foot in a museum and satanic beings with ferocious smiles, driven by diabolical obsession.³⁰

Mussolini himself wrote in the Proceedings of the Grand Council of Fascism that in Spain for the first time — and perhaps the last — the Blackshirts had faced Bolshevik forces on the international stage in the first confrontation between two revolutions: the reactionary one of the nineteenth‐century, and the twentieth‐century fascist one.³¹

Later on, another book in honour of the legionnaires described them as ‘Volunteers for Civilization, defenders of human and divine law, soldiers of the new Europe’ who would be endowed with the ‘supreme and eternal principle’ of faith, progress, peace, concord, exaltation of life, for honouring women and defending children, for opposing the ‘spasmodic hordes’, the ‘barbarians’, the ‘unleashed human beasts’ and their obsession with death, massacre and savagery.³²

This narrative would permeate all Italian fascist cultural, literary, scientific and technical fields just as European Red Terror literature had. General Sandro Piazzoni recalled how the national anthem played as the volunteers were shipped off to Spain to face ‘sacrifice and death for the triumph of fascism over Bolshevism and of social order over crazed criminal barbarism’.³³

Here we see the power of atrocity stories, a strangely chivalrous self‐image, and a lack of self‐awareness, as these antisocialists not only failed to understand Fascism as reactionary but also forgot about the atrocities that they committed in Libya, Corfu, and Ethiopia, and some of which they were about to repeat in Spain, too. The similarities between Fascist antisocialism and generic antisocialism are also hard to overlook.

However, these antisocialists needed more than just chivalrous duties and solidarity with a fellow Latin civilisation to risk their necks out in the wild. They needed a reason to believe that this was in their best self‐interest, specifically that a communist victory in Spain would eventually mean the triumph of communism in Italy and the rest of Europe: an assertion that bears a resemblance (almost strikingly so) to the ‘domino theory’ that later antisocialists used to justify the war on Vietnam.

This offensive and defensive anti‐communism would protect fascist identity: volunteers would not be shedding their blood under a foreign flag, but ‘for the salvation of a common civilization’ under the fascist flag, as only the Duce understood. ‘Anti‐fascists’ included all the enemy forces, and fascism was what ‘democratic Bolshevism’ strove to bury. To some, ‘so much Italian blood sacrificed’ for the cause was crucial for Spain but not always considered beneficial for Italy.

However, this was not mere generosity and sacrifice. These aristocrats, imbued with warrior courage, would fight to fulfil the ‘political and spiritual objectives of the Italian Nation [sic]’.³⁴ ‘It was right’, said Italian National Volunteer Commander Eugenio Coselschi in the commemorative volume Legionari di Roma, that in ‘Mediterranean Spain one fought and won in the name of Rome’. To defend the Mediterranean was to defend ‘the tradition and unity of the entire European continent’ and to stop ‘Soviet leprosy’, that ‘voracious Empire’ from corroding its shores.³⁵

Click here for a review of the Italian Fascists’ atrocities in Spain.

Naturally, somebody spread rumours about us committing cruelties reminiscent of The 120 Days of Sodom:

Sandri conceded that testimonies of the ‘Red terror’ […] were appalling. However, he also noted that they were somewhat incongruous, given that retreating forces have little time for such excesses.

This is inevitably going to remind readers of the many dubious October 7th atrocities that Zionism’s propagandists have attributed to Hamas, most of which were improbable given the nature of the similarly time‐sensitive operation (among other reasons). Moreover, not only did the Fascists commit similar atrocities, but they are much better substantiated:

The camp authorities — as the director of the San Juan de Mozarrifar concentration camp complained — imposed punishments which contravened the code of military justice, such as tying prisoners by their hands and feet to trees or lampposts ‘for several days’. Frecce Nere officials from Dario Ferri’s unit summarily executed four Civil Guards who had shot at them from the Girona castle as they occupied the city.⁷⁰

[…]

[Fascist] forces bombed Lleida on 2 November 1937 (wounding many civilians, including schoolchildren), Barbastro on 4 November and other parts of Aragon such as Bujaraloz, Caspe and Alcañiz, ending an intense year of aerial destruction. However, this destruction was but a prelude to the campaign of 1938, the year in which the Aviazione would carry out its highest number of attacks. These bombing raids, which increasingly targeted non‐combatants, formed part of a mission to terrorize the Red rearguard and especially urban centres.

Almost all the larger cities along the Catalan and Valencian coast were bombed regularly during these months by both the Italian forces and the German Condor legion. These included Tarragona and Reus (more than fifteen times), Gavá, Badalona and Mataró. From its Logroño base, the Aviazione devoted itself fully to supporting the territorial occupation of Aragon (Alcañiz, Sariñena, Fraga, Monzón) and inland areas of Catalonia.

However, few aerial raids had such lasting repercussions as those carried out on the Republican capital of Barcelona. The bombardment that took place on New Year’s Day was ordered by Mussolini and carried out by General Valle, though Ciano had not been notified beforehand. General Valle wrote that this aerial terror campaign had two objectives: to demonstrate clearly that [Fascist] planes could carry a tonne of bombs for over a thousand kilometres and to ‘give the Reds in Barcelona a New Year’s welcome that will cause them to meditate on the Teruel defeat.’

In complete radio silence and with 850 kilograms of bombs loaded into his S.79, bombs were dropped from 3,000 metres (and from 5,000 meters when reflectors were lit), catching the defenders by surprise: the gunners must have been out ‘celebrating New Year’s Eve’.

As an epilogue to this macabre report, General Valle thanked the Duce for the ‘high honour’ of having been chosen for this mission and having demonstrated ‘with legitimate pride’ that in the nineteen years that had passed since his last bombing raid, his physical prowess and military experience had remained, as always, in the hands of […] fascist fortune.⁷³

This terror campaign on Barcelona reached its greatest intensity with the attacks of 30 January and especially 16–18 March. [Fascist] planes bombed the port and city centre for up to eight days in January, destroying aerial defence shelters such as the San Felipe Neri church.

Ciano confessed in his diaries that the report which described the 30 January bombing raid was the most horrifying one that he had ever read, despite the fact that the attack had been conducted by only nine S.79 planes and had lasted only one and a half minutes: ‘pulverized buildings, interrupted traffic, panic that turned into madness, with 500 dead and 1,500 injured. A good lesson for the future’, as it revealed the ineffectiveness of anti‐aircraft defences and shelters. Thus, ‘the only means of salvation against aerial attacks is to abandon the cities’.⁷⁴

On 16 March, Mussolini directly ordered the Aviazione to ‘initiate from this evening’ a ‘violent action on Barcelona’ in the form of ‘rhythmic hammering’ with thirteen flights organized in such a way that the city centre would experience the bombs and sirens from beginning to end.⁷⁵

This supplies empirical evidence of the degree of autonomy that the Aviazione Legionaria exercised with respect to Francoist command. Scholars consider the [Fascist] bombing of Barcelona to be a series of deliberate attacks on civilian populations on the home front. In 1938, there were also attacks on munitions and weapons factories, ports, airports and petrol deposits, all of which were located outside the city centre.

The Aviazione Legionaria chain of command did not even go through the CTV [Corpo Truppe Volontarie] command, but depended directly on the government in Rome. The bombings of Barcelona, Alcañiz, Granollers, Alicante, and later Sitges or Torrevieja were indiscriminate attacks on military and civilian targets; their random nature was intended to terrorize non‐combatants and decrease resistance. This conclusion has been corroborated by others. […] Smyth‐Piggott and Leneune concluded that the bombings were deliberate attacks on civilian areas.

I feel like this is so obvious that I need not spell it out, but in case somebody reads this several years later: this sounds identical to Zionism’s aerial terror bombings of Gaza.

Fascist Italy’s contribution to the Spanish Civil War was so important that it is doubtful that anticommunism would have triumphed otherwise:

In late September 1937, [Fascist Italy] had 376 airplanes in Spain, compared with forty‐two Spanish planes. […] The final count of 78,474 troops (45,000 regular army, 29,000 MVSN fascist militia (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale)) may not appear numerically significant at first glance. However, if we understand [Fascist] Italian involvement as an intervention in support of an allied faction in a domestic war, we see that [the Regio Esercito] represented a quarter of the total forces used in conquering the fascist empire, and almost double the number of soldiers who fought in the International Brigades.

Mussolini achieved the true internationalization of the Spanish Civil War, deploying the largest contingent from one single foreign country to Spain. His troops accounted for approximately one tenth of the estimated overall total membership of Franco’s Army, and he spent the equivalent of an entire annual budget for the armed forces — some 8.5 billion liras — in Spain.⁷⁷

[…]

[Fascist Italy was] crucial to the success of the Rebel army in occupying Malaga, Bermeo and Santander, in breaking through and stabilizing the Aragon front, in the occupation of Barcelona and Girona and in concluding the Levantine campaign.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Hence, il Duce could brag on January 26, 1939 that

The shout of your legitimate exultation merges with the shout rising from all the cities of Spain now wholly free from the Reds’ infamy, and with the shout of the anti‐Bolsheviks from all over the world. The bright victory of Barcelona is another chapter in the history of the new Europe we are creating. Franco’s magnificent troops and our intrepid legionnaires did not defeat only Negrín’s government. Many others among our enemies are biting the dust right now. The Reds’ watchword was ‘No pasarán’, but we passed and, I am telling you, we will pass.¹³⁰

Well, I hate to say it, but with the loss of the Republic in 1939 it does look like he had a point there (for once)… then again, given the thousands of holdouts in the Spanish State, the Axis’s defeat in 1945, how the institution of Iberian parafascism ended with a bang in the mid‐1970s, and the decline of Imperial America as we speak… I’ll let you decide who is getting the last laugh.

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 24).

1884: Hugo Schmeisser, Axis arms designer (who, I’ve read, frequently influenced Schicklgruber and Göring’s decisions), started existing.
1922: Ettore Bastianini, Axis aviator, was born.
1935: The Third Reich’s Minister for Church Affairs, Hans Kerrl, appointed a Reich Church committee to supervise the local committees of dissident Evangelical Churches.
1936: The Fascists commissioned U‐23 into service.
1938: As Neville Chamberlain departed Bad Godesberg to return to London, Berlin promised him that the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia would be the last German territorial demand in Europe. Paris rejected Berlin’s latest demands; the French military partially mobilized in preparation for war.
1939: Limited food rationing began in the Third Reich, and Einsatzgruppen exterminated eight hundred members of the Polish intelligentsia at Bydgoszcz. As well, the Fascist submarine U‐4 (Oberleutnant zur See Harro von Klot‐Heydenfeldt) stopped the 1,510‐ton Swedish merchant steamer Gurtrud Bratt southeast of Jomfruland. As the ship was registered in a neutral country, the Fascists demanded to see the ship’s papers. The Swedish ship was loaded with wood pulp, paper and cellulose and bound for Bristol. Regarding this cargo as contraband, the Fascists ordered the master of the Gurtrud Bratt, E. K. Jönssen, to get his crew into the lifeboats as he was going to sink his ship. As there were no more scuttling charges on board, the submarine sunk her with a torpedo. According to the survivors the Fascists had promised to tow the two lifeboats towards the nearby Norwegian coast but apparently the submarine left without helping them after sighting a flightcraft.
1940: At 0830 and then again at 1115 hours, a couple hundred Fascist bombers, escorted by twice as many fighters, took off to assault targets in Kent in southern England; Portsmouth, Southampton, and the nearby Spitfire fighter factory at Woolston were among the targets. Meanwhile, as the Prime Ministry announced plans to expand evacuation, 444,000 children had already evacuated from the London area. The arrival of Fascist bombers on this night marked the eighteenth consecutive night in which London had been bombed; Liverpool, Dundee, and other cities and towns were also bombed. Meanwhile, the Imperialists occupied Lang Son, Indochina.
1941: The Armeegruppe Sud started its offensive from southern Ukraine towards Crimea, and Einsatzgruppe C set up its headquarters in Kiev. As well, Axis submarines U‐107 and U‐67 attacked Allied convoy SL‐87 and sank four ships west of Madeira island, slaughtering sixteen folk, but 197 survived.
1942: The Armeegruppe A launched an assault against Tuapse on the Black Sea, and the Third Reich’s 94th Infantry Division and 24th Panzer Division effectively wiped out all Soviet units in the southern pocket in Stalingrad. To make matters worse, Axis bombers attacked Hastings in England, leaving nineteen dead and seventeen seriously injured. The Axis also assaulted Seaford in southeastern England. Axis troops landed on Maiana, Gilbert Islands, and Berlin sacked General Franz Halder as Chief of Staff, replacing him with General Kurt Zeitzler.

Axis submarine U‐432 sank Allied ship Penmar east of southern Greenland at 0144 hours, leaving two dead but fifty‐nine alive. In the same general area, U‐617 sank Belgian ship Roumanie at 0158 hours, massacring forty‐two people and leaving only one human alive. At 0924 hours, U‐175 sank Allied ship West Chetac north of Georgetown, Guyana; thirty‐one died while nineteen did not. At 1825 hours, U‐512 sank Allied merchant ship Antinous (under two by British rescue tug HMS Zwatre Zee) also north of Guyana. At 1910 hours, U‐619 sank Allied ship John Winthrop southeast of Greenland, slaughtering all fifty‐two aboard.
1943: Axis submarine U‐711 shelled the Soviet wireless telegraph station at Blagopoluchiya in northern Russia.
1944: Axis submarine U‐739 sunk the Soviet minesweeper T.120 (formerly the USS Assail) in the Kara Sea in the Arctic Circle. Additionally, the Axis sealed off the U.S. Third Army’s bridgeheads across the Moselle River, south of Aachen.
1945: Hans Geiger, Axis physicist, expired.
1978: Freiherr Hasso Eccard von Manteuffel, Axis general who was born into a Prussian noble family and eventually lectured at the United States Military Academy at West Point, mustered up the decency to finally drop dead.

Quoting Paul Isaac Hagouel’s The Holocaust of Jewish Greeks and Jews of Thessaloniki: Italian Truncated, Selective & Hybrid Humanity, Italiani Brava Gente into the 21st Century, page 5:

Preventive censorship continues unabated, perhaps to guard the myth of Italiani brava gente. After the 1953 publication of the screenplay of L’Armata s’Agapò about the presence of the Italian army in Greece during the Second World War,⁵⁶ screenwriters Renzo Renzi and Guido Aristarco, both also film critics and essayists, were accused of insulting the armed forces (vilipendio alle forze armate, bringing disgrace to the armed forces) and sentenced to forty‐five days in prison.

They were arrested and taken to the fortress of Peschiera and, even more incredibly, on 5 October, they were put on trial in Milan, by the military court, not the ordinary judiciary. The reason was that both were former members of the Italian Army, Renzi as lieutenant, Aristarco as a sergeant major, which, in 1953 was still considered “a historical continuity of the fascist army.” The accusation against them was that of “disgracing the armed forces.”

Renzi had dared to tell the truth of the lack of honorable behavior of the Italians in Greece, including episodes ranging from the shooting of hostages to the decision to send the cavalry to commit massacre, from the colossal round of prostitution to the overbearing requisition of food. The trial ended with sentences of eight months to Renzi and four and a half months for Aristarco. Renzi was also demoted.

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 23).

1861: Robert Bosch, Axis industrialist, was born.
1888: Raffaele de Courten, Axis commanding officer, started his life in Milan, Lombardia.
1890: Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus, Axis field marshal (who failed miserably in his assault on Stalingrad), was rude enough to exist.
1900: Volodymyr Kubijovyč, Axis collaborator, imposed his presence on the earth.
1916: Aldo Romeo Luigi Moro, Axis university student and draftee, was born.
1921: Naoshi Kanno, Axis squadron commander, was born in a village near Edano (now Kakuda), Miyagi Prefecture.
1925: The protofascist Prince Philipp (of the House of Hesse‐Kassel) married Princess Mafalda of the House of Savoy, daughter of King Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy, at the Castello di Racconigi in Fascist Italy.
1928: Greece and Fascist Italy signed a Treaty of Friendship, Conciliation, and Judicial Settlement.
1933: The Third Reich’s head of state made an announcement in Nürnberg stressing the importance of separating the functions of the S.A. and the Reichswehr.
1938: In the evening, Neville Chamberlain and Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber met again in Bad Godesberg. The Chancellor demanded that Czechoslovakia leave the Sudetenland area by September 28, 1938; Chamberlain expressed frustration that this Chancellor was now demanding more than what had originally been discussed; after some heated discussion, Schicklgruber returned to the original demand of October 1, 1938.
1939: The Third Reich’s police began confiscating radios from Jews as the construction work for slip III at Deutsche Werke Kiel AG completed. In Hunan Province, China, the IJA’s 6th Division crossed the Sinchiang River at dawn, followed by a similar crossing by another division at 0620 hours at Yingtian (now Miluo). Likewise, naval vessels landed the IJN’s Shanghai Special Naval Landing Force and the IJA’s 3rd Division east of the city of Changsha.
1940: Two Fascist raids approached London at 0930 hours and 1730 hours, yet few flightcraft reached it; the Fascists lost ten Bf 109 and one Bf 110 fighters (while the British lost eleven fighters). Overnight, Fascist bombers assaulted London and Liverpool. Apart from that, the IJA invaded Indochina (despite French agreement to Imperial demands during negotiations on the previous day). Lastly, the Vichy forces in West Africa imprisoned the crew of two Allied flightcraft that had landed at Dakar, and then fired upon a boat containing Allied personnel approaching to negotiate (wounding two).
1941: Axis dive bombers attacked naval facilities at Leningrad, sinking submarines P‐2 and M‐74 and damaging cruisers Maksim Gorki and Kirov. Additionally, the Axis authorities in Paris issued a decree that stated that any Frenchman concealing or assisting a British Airman would be shot, and any woman would be sent to a concentration camp.
1942: The Axis struggled to liquidate the Tutzin ghetto in western Ukraine, and Erwin Rommel departed North Africa for a six‐week rest in the Third Reich to recover from sinusitis, high blood pressure, and other ailments linked to the North African environment.

Axis submarine U‐617 attacked Allied convoy SC‐100 east of the southern tip of Greenland just after the start of the day, sinking British tanker Athelsultan at 0019 hours (fifty‐one died, ten did not) and British merchant ship Tennessee at 0142 hours (fifteen died, twenty did not). At 0026 hours, U‐211 sank Allied tanker Esso Williamsburg south of Greenland; most of the sixty aboard died, and the few survivors never reached land.

Hundreds of miles southeast of Newfoundland, U‐582 sank Norwegian merchant ship Vibran, and all forty‐eight aboard perished. At 0615 hours, U‐515 sank Norwegian ship Lindvangen off British Guyana; fifteen died, but eight survived. At 1103 hours, U‐515 struck again in the same area, damaging Allied ship Antinous. At 2334 hours, U‐125 sank British ship Bruyère 380 miles southwest of Freetown, West Africa after an eight‐hour pursuit, but nobody died.
1943: Joseph Goebbels visited his Chancellor at Rastenburg, East Prussia. The two had dinner together, during which the Chancellor shared his belief that Winston Churchill would be unwilling to consider peace offers coming from Berlin. Meanwhile, the Axis liquidated the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania.
1944: The Axis exterminated the Jewish prisoners of the Kluga concentration camp in Estonia. In northern Italy, the microstate of San Marino declared war on the Greater German Reich after a mere platoon of Axis soldiers rounded up its three hundred‐man army. Meanwhile, Patrick Hurley asked Chiang Kaishek to accept communist assistance in the war against the Empire of Japan, but Chiang rejected the request!
1963: Karl Burk, Axis commanding officer, dropped dead.
1968: Pio of Pietrelcina, fascist cleric, expired.

The reporters wanted to know why the appointed minister president of Bavaria, Fritz Schaeffer, was still in office since he was corrupt. [General George S.] Patton responded that the appointed officials did what they were told from the U.S. command or they were removed. The questions then turned to why there were still [Fascists] in the government. Patton stated that all top [Fascists] had been purged, though there were probably many other lower [Fascists] who eventually would be removed. Then he said,

suppose that AMERICA had lost the war and the conquering nation started the removal of persons in power. Denazification would be like removing all the Republicans or all the Democrats who were in office, who had held office or were quasi Democrats or Republicans and that would take some time.¹⁴⁴

He went on to say that Germany needed to be put back on its feet to save the U.S. taxpayers money and keep the Germans from starving and the displaced persons from freezing.¹⁴⁵ The press conference ended, and Patton confided to his diary, “I will probably make the front page, but frankly, do not give a damn.”¹⁴⁶

The next day’s headline in the New York Times read, “Patton Belittles Denazification; Holds Rebuilding More lmportant.”¹⁴⁷ Its author, Raymond Daniell, stated that Patton’s remarks were important “not only because he is head of the Military Government of Bavaria, but because some of the views he expressed in the occupation policy toward Nazis appeared to be in conflict with the ideas laid down in the Potsdam Declaration and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s directives.”

Raymond Daniell quoted Patton saying that “this Nazi thing is just like a Democratic and Republican election fight” and “[d]o you want a lot of Communists?”¹⁴⁸ Finally, Raymond Daniell wrote that the views expressed by Patton and others below him were little different “from those expressed from the beginning by German apologists.”¹⁴⁹

General Patton apparently did not consider the NSDAP to be an especially criminal organization, which would explain why he made this analogy; he intended no disrespect. After all, Patton was not a Native American, or a Korean, or a Vietnamese person, or an Iraqi, or a Palestinian, or any of the other millions of victims of U.S. capitalism, in which case the analogy would be perfectly easy to understand.

I believe that it would be an exaggeration to call Gen. Patton a fascist… but only a slight one, because we have good reasons to suspect that he was, at minimum, sympathetic to the Fascists. There is a rumor that Gen. Patton said ‘We’ve defeated the wrong enemy’ in 1945, but even if he never said those exact words, we can see that they accurately summarize what he thought during that year. Quoting Jacques R. Pauwels’s The Myth of the Good War, pages 181–2:

Looking back at that era, an American war veteran later echoed this sentiment:

We were aware that the Russians had taken enormous losses on the eastern front, that they really had broken the back of the German army. We would have been in for infinitely worse casualties and misery had it not been for them. We were well disposed toward them. I remember saying if we happen to link up with ’em, I wouldn’t hesitate to kiss ’em. I didn’t hear any anti‐Russian talk. I think we were realistic enough to know that if we were going to fight them, we would come out second best […] In the final campaign down through Bavaria, we were in Patton’s army. Patton said we ought to keep going [to Moscow]. To me, that was an unthinkable idea. The Russians would have slaughtered us […] I don’t think the rank of the GIs had any stomach for fighting the Russians. We were informed enough through press and newsreels to know about Stalingrad.⁹

[…]

In a telephone conversation with General Joseph T. McNarney, Eisenhower’s deputy, General Patton reportedly made this statement:

We are going to have to fight them [the Soviets] sooner or later […] Why not do it now while our army is intact and the damn Russians can have their hindends kicked back into Russia in three months? We can do it ourselves easily with the help of the German troops we have, if we just arm them and take them with us; they hate the bastards. In ten days I can have enough incidents happen to have us at war with those sons of [insert slur here] and make it look like their fault. So much so that we will be completely justified in attacking them […]¹²

Patton was not the only American leader who saw things that way. The American historians Russell D. Buhite and William Christopher Hamel emphasize that many other military and political leaders “had begun to consider preventive war [against the USSR] in 1945.”¹³

Here is a summary of a letter that he typed in 1945:

Patton seems to respond to a combative press conference that took place just two weeks prior in which Patton was blamed for the appalling living conditions at many camps for Displaced Persons, many of whom were Jews.

As a result of this press conference, General Eisenhower reportedly ordered Patton to improve the camps under his area of command and to attend a Yom Kippur service.

The letter, all but confirming the poor conditions of the Displaced Persons camps, reads: “So far as the Jews are concerned, they do not want to be placed in comfortable buildings. They actually prefer to live as many to a room as possible. They have no conception of sanitation, hygiene or decency and are, as you know, the same sub‐human types that we saw in the internment camps.”

The letter also refers to the people of the Soviet Union as “the degenerate descendants of Genghis Khan” and says the envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness in Europe “passes beyond belief.”

Unfortunately, that was not all that he had to say about Jews:

“Harrison and his ilk believe that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews who are lower than animals,” Patton wrote. He complained of how the Jews in one camp, with “no sense of human relationships,” would defecate on the floors and live in filth like lazy “locusts,” and he told of taking his commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, to tour a makeshift synagogue set up to commemorate the holy day of Yom Kippur.

“We entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest stinking mass of humanity I have ever seen,” Patton wrote. “Of course, I have seen them since the beginning and marveled that beings alleged to be made in the form of God can look the way they do or act the way they act.”

Other evidence emerged revealing not only Patton’s disdain for the Jews in the camps, but an odd admiration for the [Axis] prisoners of war under his watch.

Under Patton, [Axis] prisoners were not only bunked at times with Jewish survivors, but were even allowed to hold positions of authority, despite orders from Eisenhower to “de‐Nazify” the camps. “Listen,” Patton told one of his officers of the [Fascists], “if you need these men, keep them and don’t worry about anything else.”

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Gen. Patton, like many of the other white gentiles who fought for the Western Allies, did not see defeating the Axis as a heroic, altruistic quest to rescue millions of innocents from oppression. It was a job that they had to get done, nothing else.

---

Click here for other events that happened today (September 22).

1882: Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel, Axis field marshal, stained the earth with his existence.
1905: Eugen Sänger, Fascist aerospace engineer, was delivered to the world.
1906: Ilse Koch, Axis war criminal, arrived to worsen life.
1933: The Third Reich’s Culture Ministry passed laws banning Jewish writers and artists.
1934: The first stage of renovations at the SS castle of Schloß Wewelsburg in Büren completed, and the Fascists held a ceremony to mark the transfer of its possession to Heinrich Himmler.
1938: Seeing that the Czechoslovakians gave in to Berlin’s demands, the Kingdom of Hungary made demands of its own on Czechoslovakian territory. Coincidentally, Sudeten Freikorps occupied two Czechoslovakian towns close to the German border. In Prague, the Czechoslovakian cabinet resigned. In Bad Godesberg, Chamberlain met the Third Reich’s head of state, who demanded that Czechoslovakians allow the Wehrmacht to occupy Sudetenland by next month.
1939: The Fascists won the Battle of the Bzura (also known as Battle of Kutno to the Germans); it was the largest battle of the Polish campaign during which more than 18,000 Polish troops and about 8,000 Wehrmacht ones died. Former Wehrmacht Commander‐in‐Chief Werner von Fritsch died from a Polish bullet whilst on a tour of inspection at Praga, Warsaw. Following the Battle of Bzura, Polish General Tadeusz Kutrzeba arrived in Warsaw, Poland where he briefly became the Deputy Commander of the Warsaw Army. However, his valiant efforts proved futile. The commander of the Warsaw Army, Juliusz Rómmel, could see the writing on the wall and implored his colleague to begin surrender talks with the Wehrmacht. Lastly, the Third Reich held a farewell parade in Brest‐Litovsk.
1940: France tentatively agreed to meet increased Imperial demands for Indochina, and Fascist submarines continued assaulting Allied convoy HX‐72 about six hundred miles west of Inishtrahull, Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean. In the United Kingdom, the weather restricted flying on both sides; only one Fascist flightcraft (Ju 88 bomber on reconnaissance mission shot down near the Isle of Wight, with entire crew captured) was lost that day, but the Luftwaffe bombed London heavily overnight.
1941: On the Jewish New Year Day, the SS massacred six thousand Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. (Those were the survivors of the previous massacred that took place a few days earlier in which the Axis exterminated about two dozen thousand Jews.) As well, Axis submarine U‐562 sank the Allied ship Erna III east of Iceland at 0233 hours, killing all twenty‐five folk aboard.
1942: The Axis advance down the Taritsa River gorge in Stalingrad split the Soviet 62nd Army in half, and the Axis now held nearly the entire southern half of the city.
1943: Wilhelm Kube, Axis official and war criminal, would never wake up again thanks to a Soviet time bomb hidden in his mattress. On the other hand, the Axis occupation administration in Naples announced that all men between 18 and 33 years of age were to go to labour camps in northern Italy and in the Greater German Reich.
1944: The Axis garrison in Boulogne, France surrendered to Canadian troops.
1957: Soemu Toyoda, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, expired.
2000: Saburō Sakai, Axis naval aviator, died.

One of the most active IAdN [Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Nationalisten] members was [Hans] Keller’s pen pal Herman Harris Aall, a Norwegian jurist and party ideologue of the National Gathering who became the co‐host of the Oslo congress.⁴⁹

Another example was the leader of the Danish Nazi Party (DNSAP), Frits Clausen, who gave a lecture on ‘Nation and Race’ at the London congress. Only months earlier, Clausen had also lectured at a meeting of the CAUR [Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità di Roma] executive committee in Amsterdam, making him the only fascist party leader who was actively involved in both competing groups.⁵⁰

In Switzerland, the IAdN cooperated with the pro‐[Reich] party National Front and its leaders Rolf Henne and Hans Oehler.⁵¹ The Dutch National Socialist Workers Party (Dutch Nationaal‐Socialistische Nederlandsche Arbeiderspartij; NSB) was represented at the London congress by its founding member and leading propagandist Herman van Houten, and the Swedish National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nationalsocialistiska Arbetarepartiet; NSAP) sent two members to the Oslo congress.⁵²

In all these cases, the character of the IAdN as a rather loose, ephemeral network with a supposedly academic purpose was helpful. Politicians from fascist parties such as Frits Clausen or Rolf Henne could make appearances at its congresses without fearing a backlash within their national movements for being too involved in an international organisation which would contradict the nationalist aims of their own parties.

In addition to politicians, fascist intellectuals and writers participated as well. Many came from the Balkans, such as the poet Ion Sân‐Giorgiu, a sympathiser of the Fascist Party Iron Guard, as well as Janko Janeff, a Bulgarian philosopher and follower of the völkisch intellectual Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.

However, beyond these ‘fascist’ politicians and intellectuals in a narrow sense, there were also delegates representing […] aristocratic and conservative political beliefs.

For example, at the London congress, the large British section included Daniel Gerald Somerville, a member of parliament from the Conservative Party. The Catholic aristocratic Count Henry Carton de Wiart, a former prime minister of Belgium, also sent a long message to the congress (without being present himself ).⁵³ France was represented by Louis Bertrand, a well‐known conservative French novelist, historian and member of the Académie française.

To conclude, an analysis of the international delegates of the IAdN illustrates the fluid entanglements between fascism, the radical right, conservatism and existing élites in the interwar period. All were united in their antagonism towards their internationalist enemies, as will be addressed in the following section.

[…]

Communist internationalism was perceived as the other main enemy of the delegates. For example, Arnold Huber, the leader of the anti‐communist Swiss Patriotic Federation (Schweizerischer Vaterländischer Verband), 1919–48, argued at one congress that the IAdN should take action against Bolshevism and its international activities.⁶¹ The anti‐communist stance was often blended with anti‐Semitism in general and the ‘Jewish‐Bolshevist’ myth in particular.

This was most openly expressed by Ulrich Fleischhauer from the anti‐Semitic organisation Welt‐Dienst (World Service) at the Berlin congress. Fleischhauer argued that international Jewry would destroy all national development; hence, the Jewish question should not only be addressed by Germans but by all nationalists.⁶² This demonstrates an overlap of interest between the IAdN and other interwar organisations such as the Welt‐Dienst involved in anti‐communist and anti‐Semitic propaganda.

[…]

Ideas of a ‘racial community’ of the ‘Nordic’, ‘European’ or ‘white’ race(s), which had to be protected from miscegenation and from other ‘black’ or ‘yellow’ races, featured prominently at the IAdN congresses. Examples were two speeches at the Oslo congress by the Norwegian racial researcher Jon Alfred Mjøen and by the South African Herman Dirk van Broekhuizen (of Dutch descent), who talked about the white race as a larger community of destiny.⁷⁷

(Emphasis added.)

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 21).

1894: Anton Piëch, Fascist lawyer, was born.
1934: A large typhoon struck western Honshū, Japan, killing more than three thousand people.
1939: The Iron Guard murdered Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu.
1942: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Axis scum sent over one thousand Jews of Pidhaitsi to Bełżec extermination camp, while in Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, other Axis paskudnyaks massacred 2,588 Jews. At Yom Kippur’s end, the Third Reich ordered Konstantynów’s Jews to permanently move to Biała Podlaska.
1944: Artur Gustav Martin Phleps, Axis lieutenant general, died in combat.
2012: Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen (a.k.a. Sven Hazel), Axis soldier, expired.

The OUN had been preparing itself ideologically to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing in Ukraine since 1928. These preparations began in the first issue of R.N. which came out openly against democracy, against the Soviet Union and socialism.

The OUN’s opposition to ‘demo‐liberalism’ and ‘humanitarianism’ was consciously based on a philosophical rejection of reason and the Enlightenment. Rozbudova’s fascist, anti‐socialist politics, and its genocidal schemes, sprung from the same rotten philosophical soil as [Germanic Fascism].

In 1928 #3, E. Onatskyi’s infamous ‘On Fascism’ appeared. He compared Ukrainian nationalism and Italian fascism, but declared that Ukrainians must work hard to build a state before they can call themselves ‘fascists.’ The article is full of praise for Italian fascist youth.

1928 #12, a fascinating article, ‘Ukrainization of Ukraine’ attacks the original, Bolshevik nationalities policy of support to national minority cultures, the policy of ‘Korenizatsiya.’ I will discuss this article at length as it exposes the reactionary basis of racial politics.

Reviewing mid‐1920s Soviet statistics, nationalists were forced to admit the successes of the ‘Ukrainization’ policy. The article exposes as a lie the Ukrainian nationalist assertion that the early Bolshevik policy oppressed Ukrainians. […]

The Bolshevik policy of 'Ukrainization' was NOT about ‘creating a Ukraine for Ukrainians only’ but about raising the cultural and political level of Ukrainian peasants and workers, part of a struggle for a world socialist republic enabling the full participation of Ukrainians.

R.N.’s ‘Ukrainization’ article is the first of many in which ‘Jews’ are counted as separate from Ukrainians using statistical information from the Soviet Union. The nationalists were very concerned to quantify the ‘Jewish problem’ which they qualified using antisemitic slanders.

1929 #3–4: “Russian–Jewish Domination and the role of Russian culture in Soviet Ukraine” by 'V. Bogush'. It is an extended complaint using demographic statistics, that although Ukrainians are a majority of the population, power and influence in Ukraine rest with Jews and Russians[.]

1929 #8–9 “Jewry, Zionism and Ukraine” by Yuri Milyanich: Jews are the “enemies of the Ukrainian independent national idea” and “In the fight against Jewry, which is hostile to us in every respect, we must develop the most advantageous forms for solving the Jewish question.”

1930 #9–10. Mykola Stsiborskyi, later author of the 1940 OUN‐M constitution publishes “Jewry and Ukraine” in which he argues for assimilation of “Jewry” subordinate to Ukrainian state goals, in order to re‐start capitalist social relations, after the future collapse of the USSR[.]

1932 #1–2 Mitsiuk's antisemitic account of ‘Pre‐revolutionary Jewish trade relations’ accusing ‘Jewry’ of monopolizing trade and exploiting the peasants of the Hutsul region. A 1943 Krakivski Visti article would later rejoice that ‘there were no more Jews in the Hutsul region.’

Rozbudova published Mitsiuk’s incitement in every issue for two years, and then issued the articles as a book. What is clear is that well before the [German Fascists] constituted a mass movement, Ukrainian nationalists had developed clear plans for a ‘Ukraine for Ukrainians only.'

I will follow this up in the coming weeks with an examination of OUN's ideology into the 1930s, after the [German Fascists’] seizure of power, and how fascist ideology was openly expressed in the Ukrainian Canadian press of that time.

This author has published quite a few other interesting examinations, including one on how the Ukrainian anticommunists, under Stepan Bandera and with Axis support, organized expedition groups that followed an advance into the U.S.S.R.

Yes, I know that many of you are going to roll your eyes or groan at this author’s ‘ultraleftist’ politics, like his periodic urges to point a finger at ‘Stalin(ism)’ or the ‘Stalinist bureaucracy’ for something, but if you can force yourself to grin and bear through it then you’ll find it a rewarding experience.

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 20).

1880: Ugo Cavallero, Axis commander, and Ildebrando Pizzetti, Fascist composer, were born.
1925: After a long delay, Rome finally opened its first underground rail line: the Villa Literno–Napoli Gianturco railway.
1933: Rudolf Höss applied for a transfer into the Schutzstaffel, which gave him the rank of an SS recruit: SS‐Anwärter.
1935: Berlin newspapers published photos of five new U‐boats, the Reich’s first public admission to having any.
1938: Berlin pressed the Kingdom of Hunary to assert greater demands on Czechoslovakia, and Sudeten Fascist leader Konrad Henlein urged Slovakians to demand autonomy with greater vigor.
1939: The RAF and Luftwaffe clashed for the first time over the Westwall, Fascism’s defensive line on the border with France. The British lost two aircraft, the Fascists one. Meanwhile, Wehrmacht General Johannes Blaskowitz noted in his order of the day that, at the Battle of the Bzura in Poland (also known as Battle of Kutno to the Germans), his troops were fighting ‘in one of the biggest and most destructive battles of all times.’ Elsewhere, Wehrmacht troops withdrew to their agreed sphere of influence in Poland. Finally, the remaining Polish garrison in Grodno exterminated eight hundred Soviet troops and destroyed at least ten Soviet tanks (even though marshal E. Rydz‐Smigly ordered Poles not to engage the Soviets in military actions).
1940: Jean Decoux allowed Imperial forces to enter Haiphong harbor in Indochina! Less surprisingly, Fascist flighcraft detected and assaulted Allied convoy BN‐5 in the Red Sea, damaging British ship Bhima with near misses and necessitating a towing to Aden, but the Regia Aeronautica still lost one bomber. (The escorting New Zealand cruiser HMS Leander sustained no damage.) Three waves of Bf 109 fighters totaling over one hundred flightcraft flew across the English Channel for London, successfully lured out British fighters, then shot down seven of them (slaughtering four pilots) at the cost of two of their own. Overnight, Fascist bombers reattacked London.
1941: Lithuanian anticommunists and local police commenced a mass execution of 403 Jews in Nemenčinė. Additionally, Axis submarine U‐111 sank British ship Cingalese Prince east of Brazil, slaughtering fifty‐seven folk (but leaving twenty alive), and Axis submarine U‐552 (Kapitänleutnant Erich Topp) torpedoed the 6,325‐ton Norwegian motor tanker Barbro carrying 9,000 tons of petrol off Greenland’s east coast. Two torpedoes hit the ship and she immediately burst into flames, trapping the thirty‐four crew aboard, and other ships in convoy SC‐44 could only watch helplessly as she sank. Axis submarine U‐69 (Kapitänleutnant Zahn) had fired a torpedo to finish off the vessel but this failed to detonate. The crew included three Swedes, one Dane, five Britons and four Canadians apart from the Norwegians. (The Barbro’s master, Lauritz Knudsen had previously commanded the motor tanker Britta that was torpedoed and sunk by Axis submarine U‐47 (Kapitänleutnant Günther Prien) on 6 Dec 1939.)
1945: Eduard Wirths, chief SS doctor who performed experiments on prisoners, committed suicide in captivity… I have no comment.
1993: Erich Alfred Hartmann, Axis pilot, dropped dead.

(Mirror.)

With Antonescu’s ascension to power, the relationship between [the Third Reich] and [the Kingdom of] Romania warmed considerably. Antonescu began by promising closer collaboration with [the Third Reich]. He also renewed the request for German military assistance, with the idea of having Germans train and reorganize the Romanian army.

This time, Hitler agreed and on September 19, 1940, he decided to send a military mission to [the Kingdom of] Romania. The improvement in relations would culminate on November 23, 1940, with [the Kingdom of] Romania’s adherence to the Tripartite Pact.⁶

To be precise, [the Third Reich] actually sent four missions to [this Kingdom]. The umbrella organization was the [Third Reich’s] military mission, commanded by Army General Erik Hansen, who was also the military attaché to Bucharest. Hansen also commanded the [Wehrmacht] mission (Deutsches Heeres Mission in Rümanien, or DHM) to [the Kingdom of] Romania.

The next major element was the [Luftwaffe] mission (Deutsches Luftwaffe Mission in Rümanien, or DLM), commanded by Luftwaffe Lieutenant General Wilhelm Speidel. The final part of the military mission was the [Kriegsmarine] mission, headed by Admiral W. Tillesen.⁷ This article looks at the activities of the DLM to a small degree, but the major focus will be on the DHM.

[…]

The DLM had two principal missions. The first was to create air defenses around the vital oil region of [the Kingdom of] Romania in the vicinity of Ploiești and the Black Sea port of Constanța. Also involved was the regulation of air space over the defended areas. The second mission was to modernize the Romanian air force. The DLM was more successful in completing the first mission. Speidel and his staff were able to use both Romanian and German matériel and procedures to make Ploiești one of the most heavily defended targets against air attacks.

This was to prove invaluable in the initial Romanian participation in Operation Barbarossa. Between late June and mid‐October 1941, Ploiești and Constanța were attacked 91 times by Soviet aircraft. Led by the efforts of the Luftwaffe’s Jagd Geschwader 52, the combined [Axis] defense brought down some 81 Soviet aircraft.⁹

[…]

Like the DLM, the DHM had two missions. Aside from the training mission, the [Third Reich’s] units were to assist the Romanian force in erecting defenses against a possible Soviet invasion, although the mere presence of [these] units in [the Kingdom of] Romania did act as a guarantee against further Soviet encroachments.

The second mission was to train the Romanian army up to a level that was as close to [the Fascist bourgeoisie’s] standards as possible. These units would play a part in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler had distinctly mentioned this in his December 5, 1940, speech to the heads of the Wehrmacht. Both Finland and [the Kingdom of] Romania are mentioned as possible allies in the execution of Operation Barbarossa in Hitler’s first official directive on the subject issued December 18, 1940.¹²

[…]

Training was conducted at the tactical and operational levels, at least in a theoretical sense. There was also an ideological aspect to the training.

Tactically, the [Third Reich] set up training centers for the Romanian 5th, 6th, 13th, 18th, and 20th infantry divisions as well as for the Romanian Panzer Division. These centers aimed at training Romanian soldiers in both German weapons and tactics. Later on in the spring of 1941, the [Third Reich] extended the training in a limited way to artillery.¹⁹ [It] also sought to improve the quality of Romanian general officers through education.

The DHM set up the equivalent of the German Kriegsakademie in [the Kingdom of] Romania. All aspirants for general officer rank were to take a 2‐year course of instruction. Like its German counterpart, the Romanian war college was tactically oriented and focused on division‐sized operations. The course was also aimed at producing officers who could undertake all staff and administrative functions associated with division and brigade operations. A course was also set up for general officers and older staff officers as well, lasting from 1 to 3 months.²⁰

As might be expected of such an effort mounted by [an empire] such as [the Third Reich], there was the previously mentioned ideological component to DHM activities. In a situation report, Hube noted that, in addition to the need for measures to be taken against corruption in the officer corps, friendly attitudes toward Great Britain and the Jews had to be eliminated. To aid this, [Fascist] German propaganda was disseminated that found a degree of receptivity in [the Kingdom of] Romania, although not as much as the [Third Reich] hoped.²¹

The various endeavors of the DHM brought about a record of mixed success.

(Emphasis added. For a summary of the Romanian army’s combat performance in 1941, click here.)

In the first phase of the campaign, Romanian performance might be regarded as satisfactory. The army was able to accomplish its task even though, in a number of places, the Romanians’ Soviet opponents were often better armed and equipped.

Even Colonel General Franz Halder, the chief of the German Army General Staff and no particular admirer of Romanian military prowess, confessed pleasant surprise at the initial performance of the Romanians. The liaison staff with the Romanian 1st Border Division thought well enough of the division’s conduct to submit the names of some 37 members for [Wehrmacht] awards.³¹

Things were much tougher in the second phase of the 1941 campaign. The Romanian Third and Fourth Armies were now required to undertake missions well beyond their normal operational radius. That often left them requiring logistical support from the German [Fascists], who were not always in a position to deliver it when needed. Dumitrescu’s Third Army narrowly avoided a deadly clash with the Hungarian Mobile Corps, which was also operating on that part of the front, thanks to the efforts of German liaison officers with both formations.³²

The siege of Odessa proved long and costly to the Romanian [anticommunists]. The Soviet High Command was able to keep the Independent Coastal Army, garrisoning Odessa, supplied by sea. That allowed the garrison to conduct an active and energetic defense. Several successful Soviet sorties forced the Fourth Army to fight repeatedly over the same ground in bloody assaults.

It was only after the Romanian [anticommunists] secured key points in the fortress’s defense system, combined with the threat of intervention by [the Third Reich’s] airpower on a massive scale, that the Soviets evacuated the city on October 15, 1941. Odessa’s occupation marked a clear end of the campaign for what was by that time an exhausted Romanian army.³³

---

Click here for other events that happened today (September 19).

1909: Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, bourgeois Fascist, was born.
1939: The Battle of Kępa Oksywska concluded, with Polish losses reaching roughly 14% of all the forces engaged.
1940: Witold Pilecki was voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz to gather and smuggle out information for the resistance movement.
1942: The Axis brought some two thousand Jews to Mineralnye‐Vodi (from Esentuki) and exterminated them.
1944: The Battle of Hürtgen Forest commenced, and would become the longest individual battle that the U.S. Army has ever fought. (Coincidentally, the Moscow Armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union was signed, which officially ended the Continuation War.)

Quoting Carlo Moos in World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, page 585:

The [so‐called] Italian Social Republic (RSI), or Salò Republic (named after the seat of the régime on Lake Garda in northern Italy), arose as a consequence of the [Kingdom of Italy’s] withdrawal from World War II on 8 September 1943 and the occupation of northern and central Italy by the Wehrmacht.

Mussolini had been dismissed by King Victor Emmanuel III on 25 July 1943 after the Grand Council of Fascism voted to unseat him; he was transferred from one detention place to another but liberated from imprisonment on the Gran Sasso by [Axis] paratroopers on 12 September 1943.

Following a radio address by Il Duce from Munich on 18 September, a [postmonarchic] fascist government was formed in northern and central Italy, and the Fascist Party was revived along with the militia, which was later brought over with the Carabinieri into the Republican National Guard.

The Salò régime continued the battle against the Allies on the side of the [Axis] in competition with the royal government under Badoglio in the south. But relations with the Germans and their governor, Ambassador Rahn, and with the army commanders Rommel, Kesselring, and Vietinghoff, as well as the SS under Wolff, were always difficult. Mussolini was unable to reassert his authority successfully, for not only the south, freed by the advancing Allies, but also a part of Italy controlled by [Berlin] remained wholly or more or less completely beyond his grasp.

The Alpenvorland and “Adriatic Coast” zones were to all intents and purposes annexed by Germany and subjected to the Reich governors of the neighboring regions (Friedrich Rainer in Karinthia, Franz Hofer in Tirol‐Vorarlberg). Mussolini retained what autonomy he could in the remaining area, and a new republican army under Marshal Graziani was established, whose four divisions were initially sent to Germany for training and from the summer of 1944 were used chiefly for the battle against the anti‐Fascist partisans.

The RSI began by dealing with those members of the Grand Council who in the night of 24/25 July 1943 had voted against Mussolini and who had thereby made possible his fall, and with all who were classified in the widest sense as “traitors” to Fascism.

In January 1944 the trial of the chief conspirators was held in Verona, concluding with eleven death sentences in contumaciam, of which five were carried out immediately (on 11 January 1944). Victims included Mussolini’s own son‐in‐law Galeazzo Ciano and the quadrumvir Emilio De Bono. At least 1,500 death penalties were also handed down and implemented by specially established provincial special tribunals.

The Salò Republic manifested an intensification of violence and pursued a race policy that was deeply anti‐Semitic, declaring all Jews to belong to a hostile nation and requiring them to be herded into camps and ordering that their property and investments be confiscated.

The deportations organized subsequently by the [Greater German Reich] could never have been implemented without these preparations and without the collaboration of the organs of the Salò Republic. Altogether, more than 6,800 Jews were deported in forty‐three transports to the East (for the most part to Auschwitz), of whom only 837 survived.

Salò had to engage in an increasingly brutal struggle with the developing resistance, and that struggle became the main job of the forces of order (police, national guard, black brigades) and the armed forces of the RSI. Assessment of this has remained a matter of controversy down to the present day, but it is increasingly interpreted as a real civil war.

At the same time, relations with the [Axis] occupiers/allies worsened: agreement could not be reached as to the problem of the Italian military internees sent to [the Greater German Reich] as forced labor, while the increasingly heavy‐handed [Axis] reprisals—which degenerated into downright massacres in such cases as that of the Fosse Ardeatine on 24 March 1944—led to catastrophic consequences for the standing of Fascism in the country.

Mussolini’s last public appearance in Milan, on 16 December 1944, was astonishingly successful, but four months later he was killed by partisans on 28 April 1945 as he attempted to escape to Switzerland in the face of the advancing Allied forces. The war in northern Italy ended with the capitulation of the [Wehrmacht] on 29 April, which came into force on 2 May, about a week before the complete capitulation of the Wehrmacht.

The Salò régime was a brief but interesting and important episode in Fascism’s history. Whereas previously Fascist Italy had a significant degree of autonomy from the Third Reich (I would argue), it is much harder to convince somebody that the Salò régime in particular also possessed this, with the Greater German Reich intervening frequently and directly in its affairs, practically producing a sort of hybrid between German and Italian Fascism. (The latter phenomenon had not quite yielded to the German one as Austrofascism had in the late 1930s.)

Hence, we see the only Italian division of the SS: the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Italian); we can hear the Italian translation of Horst Wessel Lied: È l’ora di marciar; and we witness the Italian Fascists being as aggressive as possible in their antisemitism.

Pictured: Pio Filippani Ronconi in the uniform of a foreign volunteer of the Waffen‐SS.

The Salò régime officially had an army (Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano), a police force (Corpo di Polizia Repubblicana), an airforce (Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana), and technically a navy (Marina Nazionale Repubblicana). We can find hardware (e.g. the FNAB‐43, the Armaguerra OG‐43, the TZ‐45) manufactured for this régime. We can even find postage stamps for it.

All of this is probably unsurprising, but the point here is that collaborationist régimes should not be glossed over simply for being cardboard cutouts of ‘real’ governments. They can continue to hold a great deal of meaning or hope for the thousands who fight for them; a much more preferable alternative to outright colonization, and sometimes regarded merely as transitory phases before actual independence.

There is plenty more that I could add, but I am omitting it to keep this post at a manageable length… with the following exception. For an examination of the Salò régime’s pseudosocialism, including the misnomer ‘Italian Social Republic’, click here.

Quoting Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945: The Failure of a Puppet Regime, page 30:

To underline the renewed ideological solidarity between the two régimes, Hitler strongly urged the Duce to include “Fascism” in the new Italian state’s title, but since the Fascist canon had fallen into disrepute, Mussolini, on 25 November 1943, formally ushered into existence the more neutral‐sounding Italian Social Republic. This was to be Mussolini’s final crack at holding power.

The exceedingly vague expression ‘social republic’ has been attested since at least the 1820s and was in vogue during 1848, but whether its reintroduction in 1943 was a conscious misappropriation or a mere coincidence remains uncertain.

In any case, we can see right off the bat that this was another marketing decision to make fascism less unappealing to the proletariat. Not being content with one euphemism, though, the Salò régime made some promises to proletarians to confuse or pacify them. Quoting Philip Morgan’s Italian Fascism, 1915–1945, pages 226–8:

The [Salò régime’s] programme was agreed at the unruly congress of the Partito Fascista Repubblicano (Republican Fascist Party or PFR), the reconstituted successor to the PNF, held in Verona in November 1943. It was an attempt to give a meaning and content to the [Salò régime], other than doing the [Third Reich’s] business, and to win the support of the population nominally under its jurisdiction, whose loyalties were contested by the anti‐Fascist and anti‐German Resistance movements.

It called for a constituent assembly to replace the monarchy with a [so‐called] social Republic, an elected head of state based on the U.S. model, a scarcely credible charter of citizens’ rights, a single party for the political education of the people, socialisation of the economy, treating the Jews as enemy aliens, and a foreign policy whose talk of ‘living space’ and European federation was a rehash of the former régime’s New Order wartime propaganda.

The abolition of the monarchy and socialisation were both a rejection of and an alibi for Fascism’s past. The desire for revenge and scapegoating was brutally evident in the extraordinary Special Tribunal’s trial and execution of those of the July 1943 Grand Council ‘traitors’ who could be found, including Ciano.

It was they, in league with the king and conservative bourgeois and capitalist interests, who were charged with not only bringing about Mussolini’s fall and the Allied invasion but also subverting and sidetracking the Fascist Revolution during the twenty years of the regime. Now shorn of its conservative fellow‐travelling elements and liberated from the ‘pluto‐monarchical compromises of 1922’,³ Fascism could ‘return to the origins’ and enact the national syndicalist and republican strands of the revolutionary interventionism and early Fascism of 1915–19.

This was myth‐making in the grand style, and to justify it Salò’s propaganda evoked the legacy of Giuseppe Mazzini, D’Annunzio and Fiume.

Socialisation owed as much to the ‘Third Way’ corporatist rhetoric of the 1930s and of the Fascist New Order as to national syndicalism, at least in the proposals put together by the Republic’s Ministry of Corporations. The principle of private property was still sacrosanct, but the state could regulate it in the context of a national economic plan and would take over or retain the running of essential national utilities and services.

What the measure approved by the government in February 1944 proposed was a kind of socialisation of management, not capital, to create that collaborative and productivist ‘community of producers’. The running of state and private firms was to be shared between an elected assembly of employees and shareholders, a management council of representatives of capital and labour, and an executive director elected by the assembly or chosen by the government.

Here it is at last: the smoking gun that fascism was socialism! Not that utopian capitalists needed it, since they are convinced that every political or economic system (with the sole exception of their completely unregulated free market phantasy) is socialism already, but now the evidence is undeniable! Wait until TIK and other propertarians get their hands on this knowledge. Then all that they need to do is broadcast this to every unionizer on the planet, and the entire working‐class movement will grind to a halt! Yes, reversing the tides of history is just that easy!

Oh wait a minute, what is this?

But the [régime] could decide on anything and enact little to nothing. Making ‘labour […] the foundation of the Social Republic’⁴ in this abortive ‘return to the origins’ cut across the two unavoidable realities of the Republic’s tenuous existence: [Berlin’s] control of Italy for the exploitation of its economy, and the worsening civil war between the Fascists and the Resistance. Hitler was mystified by the RSI’s social policy but thought it irrelevant and innocuous. The [Third Reich’s] authorities on the ground intervened to nullify it.

Hans Leyers, the head of the Italian arm of the German Ministry of Armaments and War Production, regarded socialisation as ‘sabotage’⁵ of the Italian industries working for the [Axis] war effort and co‐operated with the industrialists themselves to exclude or obstruct its implementation in key areas. By April 1945 perhaps 60–80 firms with about 130,000 employees had been ‘socialised’, mainly newspapers and publishers under the auspices of the Ministry of Popular Culture, which took the measure seriously.

The decree of February 1945 for the socialisation of large industries was a dead letter, not only because of [Reich]‐inspired procrastination by employers but also because most workers boycotted the council elections. Industrial workers had enough experience of the Fascist régime not to trust in this false dawn or twilight of labour reforms. The left‐wing Resistance movements certainly warned them off, as they did employers. Fascism’s attempt to redefine itself could not escape the taint of its past.

(Emphasis added.)

Further reading: The Fallen Hero: The Myth of Mussolini and Fascist Women in the Italian Social Republic (1943–5)

---

Click here for other events that happened today (September 18).

1931: The Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria, (arguably) beginning World War II.
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.
1941: Although it captured Poltava, Ukraine, the Axis modified its strategy against Leningrad, switching from assault to besiegement; tanks from the 4th Panzer Army loaded onto trains for Moscow. This shift in strategy partially resulted from Berlin’s order earlier on this date that Leningrad be razed to the ground.
1942: Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to have full judicial control over Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Romani prisoners; all prisoners of the Third Reich’s ‘justice’ system capable of work were to transfer to concentration camps for neoslavery, and food rations for Jews in the Third Reich were to diminish. Coincidentally, Theresienstadt surpassed its maximum capacity; 58,491 prisoners now resided in that camp.

Meanwhile, Axis troops began retreating back along the Kokoda Track across the Owen Stanley Range in Papua, and one dozen He 111 torpedo bombers attacked Allied convoy PQ‐18 at the entrance of the Kola Inlet, Russia, sinking Allied ship Kentucky (without killing anybody) at the cost of three aircraft. Stuka dive bombers hampered a Soviet defence by destroying forty‐one of the one hundred six Soviet tanks committed, while escorting Bf 109 fighters destroyed seventy‐seven Soviet aircraft in the immediate area.
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.

The Working Group,²⁵ an unofficial Jewish organization formed to help protect Jews from anti‐Semitic forces, had for some time exploited every means of ensuring the survival of the Jewish people of Slovakia. One of the tactics used by the Working Group to stop Jewish deportations was to prove to those in the Slovak government charged with expanding the economy that Jews were a vital asset to their cause.

[…]

In June the SD [Sicherheitsdienst] reported that the deportation of Jews was very unpopular with the Slovak population and blamed this unpopularity on the clerics and “English propaganda.”³³ The pressure was so significant that Prime Minister Tiso specifically requested that he not be told anything about the deportations. An SD report states a fear expressed by Mach that Tiso would not be able to stand up to the pressure of the clerics. Another speaks of Tuka’s loyalty to the cause but states that he was thwarted by “clever maneuvering.”³⁴

The clever maneuvering to which the report referred is almost certainly the efforts of the Working Group. The Working Group reached out with appeals to the morality and compassion of some government officials but more often with bribes. For example, Josef Sivak towed the party line with regard to the Jews well enough to “pass muster” but was in fact also a close friend of Rabbi Frieder, a member of the Working Group.

Sivak was appointed Minister of Education and Culture and gave Frieder a secret phone number that allowed them to stay in direct contact. He warned the Working Group of planned measures and during the deportations did what he could to ensure Jewish schoolmasters were excluded.³⁵

In other cases, it was necessary to bribe officials, as was the case with the head of the president’s bureau, Dr. Isidor Koso. In fact, it was from Koso that the Working Group first learned of the planned deportations. They responded by quickly putting forward the plan for Steiner’s labor camps but feared that by the time the camps were fully established, there would be no Jews left. They then sought to bribe the head of Department 14, the government department in charge of solving “the Jewish question” in Slovakia, Dr. Anton Vasek, “the Jew King.”

They not only appealed to his bank account but also to his vanity, encouraging him to write a book about his fascinating life in politics. This was so successful that Vasek arranged for several transports already scheduled to leave the country to encounter technical difficulties that caused lengthy delays.

Koso and Vasek seem to be examples of Slovak officials that were described as wanting “money, motor‐cars, resounding title’s [sic], and the maximum of personal pomp and circumstance. They seem to have been quite indifferent to the means by which these things were obtained.”³⁶

The Working Group’s attempts to bribe the Slovak officials produced such success that the Group even went so far as to meet with the German [Reich’s] representative Dieter Wisliceny. They enlisted a corrupt member of the official Jewish Committee named Hochberg, who was familiar with Wisliceny, to present the equivalent of $40,000 as a bribe to the German. Hochberg pocketed half of the sum and only presented Wisliceny with $20,000.³⁷ However, the German accepted that amount immediately before a scheduled visit to Berlin for consultation.

[…]

Wisliceny continued to appear to cooperate with the Working Group, even going so far as to report upcoming activities that might lead to the resumption of the deportations. Steiner, Wisliceny’s primary contact, became so emboldened by his manner and continued cooperation he once asked Wisliceny, “if he so much wanted to help the Jews why was he in charge of the expulsions?” to which Wisliceny reportedly replied that he was not an anti‐Semite but was doing his duty as a German soldier.⁴²

Steiner continued to work with Wisliceny and also to work on improving and expanding the Jewish labor camps which became more and more important to the Slovak economy.⁴³ These camps differed so greatly from the concentration and labor camps in Germany and Poland that Edith Katz, an imprisoned 21 year old Jewish woman with a heart condition, was transferred to the camp at Novaky because it was thought the environment would be better for her health.⁴⁴

Meanwhile, cultural activities were encouraged within the camps, and members of the Working Group, namely Y.O. Neumann and Steiner, were successful in sneaking weapons into the camps intended for the inmates’ self‐defense.⁴⁵

The efforts of the Working Group to make the Jews an essential asset to the Slovak economy were successful. The religious community succeeded in turning a significant portion of public opinion against renewed deportations. The Working Group bribed certain officials, distracted others with appeals to their vanity, and convicted others with appeals to their humanity.⁴⁶

Though there were many efforts made to renew the deportation of Jews from the region of Slovakia, they were all met with opposition and failed. When concrete plans were presented, politicians openly opposed them.⁴⁷ Roman Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter read in all the Catholic churches of a country that was 80% Catholic, decrying the attempt to resume deportations.⁴⁸

[…]

In August of 1944, there was a rebellion against the HSĽS government and by extension the [Third Reich]. Slovak partisans were encouraged to revolt by [Soviet] authorities who promised military support.⁵⁰ With [the Axis] faring so badly on the Eastern front and the assurances of the [Soviets], the Slovaks believed they could succeed.

They were wrong. [The Greater German Reich], finally freed of diplomatic restraint, attacked in force and quickly quelled the rebellion. 20,000 Jews, almost all which remained in the Slovak Republic, were deported in October and November of 1944. Most of them never returned.

All of the efforts to both stop the deportation trains and keep them from resuming were significant. The influence of the Vatican and both the Catholic and Protestant church was substantial in directing public opinion against the deportations. By providing significant economic incentives, both personal and political, to Slovak and German politicians, the actions of the often marginalized Working Group were undeniable contributing factors in the halt of deportations.

The actions of these groups were seldom conducted in conjunction with each other but nevertheless worked together, placing pressure on Slovak officials to create more and more exemptions.

Yet, the most startling and arguably most important contributor to the halt of deportations remains Germany itself. Few of the other influences and factors previously discussed would have succeeded or even been possible had Germany not allowed Slovakia an unprecedented amount of autonomy. The most compelling evidence for the importance of Germany’s diplomatic policies in the thwarting of its own goals is the fact that the deportation of Jewish Slovaks only resumed when Germany abandoned that diplomacy.

(Emphasis added.)

---

Click here for 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.

In ‘honour’ of [neofascism’s] 12th Azov Special Brigade, indoctrinated Ukrainian Canadians did a ‘charity run’ to collect funds for the rogue and criminal unit largely responsible for brutally enforcing the [neofascist] ideology of the state. The fundraiser was sold shamelessly as a battle for ‘independence’. The Maidan coup, instigated by NATO leadership in 2013-2014, that made Ukraine a full-on NATO anti-Russia proxy, is well known.

The 12th Azov Special Brigade was founded and run initially by Andriy Biletsky, infamous for threatening to kill Volodomyr Zelensky while asserting military rule of the state of Ukraine, and for the following quote in a written commentary:

“The historic mission of our nation in this moment is to lead the white races in the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

It is illegal under Canadian law for a registered non-profit or charity to support a foreign government’s military. However, this is being shamelessly done out in the open by the UCC. As an added insult, the Canadian government is regularly rewarding the UCC for its repeated legal transgressions and [Fascist] honouring with regular grants in the hundreds of thousands.

Glenn Michalchuk, President of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians says the story:

“raised the concern of many that such an open display of support for an organization with such close links to neo-nazism would be the centre of a local activity especially on Ukraine Independence Day.”

Michalchuk emphasized that such fundraising in connection to Ukrainian history is egregious:

“The history of Ukraine is intimately connected to the struggle against Nazism in World War II.

The land and people of Ukraine suffered tremendous losses from the Nazi invasion. The injuries were made more grievous by the role of collaborators who joined the Nazis with the plan that they would rule a Nazi occupied Ukraine.”

It should be of little surprise that the same UCC has repeatedly honoured the Waffen SS 14th (Galicia) Division.

---

Click here for 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.
1926: Fascist Italy and the Kingdom of Romania signed a ‘Pact of Friendship and Cordial Collaboration’.
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.

After reusing the Twoth Reich’s flag for merely two years, the Third Reich deprecated it for what would soon become the most infamous symbol of Fascism. Since World War II, the swastika in the West has become associated with white supremacy and tyranny, and despite minor efforts at reclamation (not universally regarded as a worthwhile enterprise), it shall likely remain so for a very long time, especially given the neofascists who are unafraid to show it. It didn’t help that the German Fascists liked to paste this shape on pretty much everything imaginable. But what was it that inspired them to misappropriate this symbol?

Quoting William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pages 43–4:

In the summer of 1920 Hitler, the frustrated artist but now becoming the master propagandist, came up with an inspiration which can only be described as a stroke of genius. What the party lacked, he saw, was an emblem, a flag, a symbol, which would express what the new organization stood for and appeal to the imagination of the masses, who, as Hitler reasoned, must have some striking banner to follow and to fight under.

After much thought and innumerable attempts at various designs he hit upon a flag with a red background and in the middle a white disk on which was imprinted a black swastika. The hooked cross—the hakenkreuz—of the swastika, borrowed though it was from more ancient times, was to become a mighty and frightening symbol of the [NSDAP] and ultimately of [the Third Reich]. Whence Hitler got the idea of using it for both the flag and the insignia of the party he does not say in a lengthy dissertation on the subject in Mein Kampf.

The hakenkreuz is as old, almost, as man on the planet. It has been found in the ruins of Troy and of Egypt and China. I myself have seen it in ancient Hindu and Buddhist relics in India. In more recent times it showed up as an official emblem in such Baltic states as Estonia and Finland, where the men of the German free corps saw it during the fighting of 1918–19. The Ehrhardt Brigade had it painted on their steel helmets when they entered Berlin during the Kapp putsch in 1920.

Hitler had undoubtedly seen it in Austria in the emblems of one or the other anti‐Semitic parties and perhaps he was struck by it when the Ehrhardt Brigade came to Munich. He says that numerous designs suggested to him by party members invariably included a swastika and that a “dentist from Sternberg” actually delivered a design for a flag that “was not bad at all and quite close to my own.”

For the colors Hitler had of course rejected the black, red and gold of the hated Weimar Republic. He declined to adopt the old imperial flag of red, white and black, but he liked its colors not only because, he says, they form “the most brilliant harmony in existence,” but because they were the colors of a Germany for which he had fought. But they had to be given a new form, and so a swastika was added.

Hitler reveled in his unique creation. “A symbol it really is!” he exclaims in Mein Kampf. “In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalist idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man.”²⁰

Soon the swastika armband was devised for the uniforms of the storm troopers and the party members, and two years later Hitler designed the [Fascist] standards which would be carried in the massive parades and would adorn the stages of the mass meetings. Taken from old Roman designs, they consisted of a black metal swastika on top with a silver wreath surmounted by an eagle, and, below, the initials NSDAP on a metal rectangle from which hung cords with fringe and tassels, a square swastika flag with “Deutschland Erwache! (Germany Awake!)” emblazoned on it.

This may not have been “art,” but it was propaganda of the highest order. The [NSDAP] now had a symbol which no other party could match. The hooked cross seemed to possess some mystic power of its own, to beckon to action in a new direction the insecure lower middle classes which had been floundering in the uncertainty of the first chaotic postwar years. They began to flock under its banner.

(For a brief explanation on why the Germanic Fascists saw theirselves as ‘Aryans’, see here.)

Samuel Koehne’s The Nazis’ use of “Sieg Heil”: A Point of Continuity with the Völkisch Movement:

According to Nicholas Goodrick‐Clarke, some of the leaders in the early völkisch movement were interested in the idea that the swastika was especially ‘Germanic,’ leading to the esoteric writer Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (Adolf Lanz) hoisting a swastika flag in 1907.¹³ Indeed, there were a number of antisemitic organisations, including the Reichshammerbund (founded 1912 by Theodor Fritsch), which used the swastika as a symbol. This example comes from the Stuttgart chapter in around 1912.¹⁴

There were also ‘Yule’ celebrations by such groups that were held for winter solstice. This is a 1919 invitation issued by the Reichshammerbund and another major organisation, the Deutschvölkischer Schutz‐ und Trutzbund in Stuttgart.¹⁵ It included both the swastika and ‘Heil!’ (an expression used from 1902 by Georg von Schönerer).¹⁶

Neo‐pagan ‘secret societies’ like the Thule‐Society (Thulegesellschaft), the Germanic Order (Germanenorden) and the Order of Odin’s Children (Wälsungen‐Orden) also made use of the symbol. This is an example from the monthly publication of the Germanic Order Walvater in January 1918, the Runen paper that declared itself to be ‘for Germanic spiritual revelations and studies’ as well as the ‘pamphlet for the Friendship‐Grade of the Germanic Order’[.]

The Wälsungen‐Orden made use of both the swastika and the phrase ‘Heil und Sieg’ (Hail and Victory, or Salvation and Victory) around 1918 in their newsletter[.]

There were some common features: the swastika was believed to be a an ‘sunwheel,’ a particularly ‘Aryan’ symbol and an antisemitic sign. These points were reiterated by leading [German Fascists]. Hitler repeatedly argued of the [Fascist] flag that ‘The red is social, the white is national, and the swastika is antisemitic.¹⁷ In his Official Commentary on the NSDAP Programme, Gottfried Feder argued: ‘Our flags of attack (Sturm‐Fahnen) flutter before us…Eternally young, radiant and bright the sun‐wheel, the swastika, the symbol of reawakening life, rises before us.’¹⁸

While I have no proof of this, I suspect that it was no mere coincidence that this was also the day when the Third Reich officially passed the first Nuremberg Laws, since one of them reads ‘§ 4: Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national colors.’

---

Click here for 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.
1932: Ambassador Nobuyoshi Muto and Prime Minister Zheng Xiaoxu signed the Japan–Manchukuo Protocol at the State of Manchuria’s capital Xinjing (Changchun, Jilin Province, China).
1935: Fascism’s 1st Submarine Flotilla officially incorporated a unit trained in motored torpedo boat warfare; the new unit was based at La Spezia.
1937: The Imperialists took the town of Luodian near Shanghai after four days of attacks.
1938: Neville Chamberlain visited Adolf Schicklgruber at Berchtesgaden in southern Germany to discuss Fascist demands on Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain expressed his personal approval for Berlin’s previous demands for Sudetenland, but would need to discuss further with his cabinet and the French. The Chancellery expressed its appreciation and promised that no military action would be taken.
1939: The Wehrmacht captured Gdynia, and the IJA’s 101st Division under Lieutenant General Masatoshi Saito engaged in Chinese troops near Mount Lianhua near Gao'an, Jiangxi Province, China, capturing the city shortly thereafter. On the other hand, Tōkyō and Moscow signed a ceasefire that ended the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.
1940: Fascist submarine U‐99 attacked Canadian ship Kenordoc with the deck gun northwest of Ireland just after midnight, killing seven and wounding thirteen; heavily damaged, Canadian destroyer HMCS St. Laurent and British destroyer HMS Amazon later scuttled her after the destroyers took the survivors aboard. Fascist submarine U‐48 sank British sloop HMS Dundee northwest of Ireland at 0025 hours; twelve died but eighty‐three lived. At 0123 hours, U‐48 attacked Greek ship Alexandros with a torpedo, slaughtering five yet leaving twenty‐three alive. At 0300 hours, U‐48 reattacked and sunk British ship Empire Volunteer; six died but thirty‐three did not. West of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland at 0605 hours, Fascist submarine U‐65 sank Norwegian ship Hird, but the entire crew survived.

At 1130 hours, 250 Fascist bombers with fighter escort crossed the English Channel, with one hundred of them targeting London. At 1430 hours, another 250 bombers arrived in two waves, with seventy of them reaching London. At 1600 and 1800 hours, the aircraft factory at Woolston in Southampton, building Spitfire fighters, took a bombing, but with little damage. The Fascists lost 56 flightcraft and 136 airmen either died or fell into Allied captivity. Overnight, the Luftwaffe conducted heavy bombing raids over Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Southampton. This was the climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Luftwaffe launched its largest and most concentrated assault of the entire campaign.
1941: The XXXXI Armeekorps fought the Soviets in the southwest of Leningrad on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, but Axis soldiers in Paris suffered an assault from local partisans. On the other hand, Axis submarine U‐94 sank British ship Newbury at 0816 hours (all aboard survived but were never seen again), Greek ship Pegasus at 2038 hours (sixteen died after lifeboat capsized, yet thirteen survived), and British ship Empire Eland at 2348 hours (all aboard survived but were never seen again) eight hundred miles west of Ireland.
1942: Axis torpedoes sunk the Allied Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp at Guadalcanal, and Axis frogmen entered Gibraltar harbor and attached limpet mines on the British ship Ravens Point, causing her to sink in shallow water shortly thereafter.
1943: To combat the growing strength of Allied bombing attacks, the Luftwaffe reorganised its air defences into two territorial fighter commands: one in the Greater German Reich and the other in the western occupied territories.
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.

I first learned about the Schutzstaffel nearly two decades ago when I read about Doom II: Hell on Earth’s characters. A website succinctly described them as the head of state’s bodyguards, but the Schutzstaffel did more than just protect somebody, or even commit war crimes, which is the likelier reason that you are familiar with them. Members of the Schutzstaffel had a great deal of responsibilities as well as privileges:

The SS in general had a multitude of duties that included but were not limited to police work, honor guard rôles, concentration camp duties, and eventually combat operations. The Waffen SS fulfilled the personal guard and army aspect of what the SS would be to the [Fascists] but could also be considered the élite within the élite. If the SS were to be the Third Reich’s general élite then the Waffen SS was the method through which the SS could use an élite group for extreme force.

John Steiner stated SS members across all sections were encouraged to think of themselves with an “Elitebewusstsein (élite consciousness) as a group.”¹⁶ This quote is important when looking specifically at the Waffen SS regarding statements that gave the Waffen SS the title of the Imperial Guard of the [Third Reich].¹⁷ It was very clear that the Waffen SS was designed to be Adolf Hitler’s and by extension, the [NSDAP’s] personal army, police force, and political enforcers.

Moreover, the Waffen SS was encouraged to take their imperial guard idea beyond the confines of Germany. Historian Evertjan van Roekel stated that the SS had to think of themselves as “the advocate and protector of the Germanic or Nordic race.”¹⁸ This quote shows that the SS assumed a peculiar hybrid rôle in society. They were intended to serve as a [Fascist] praetorian guard while also serving as the military will of the Germanic race according to [Germanic Fascism’s] ideology.

If this wide variety of responsibilities sounds similar to the knights of the Middle Ages, that is because it is supposed to be:

The new aristocracy was not new in the sense that it had never been done before. It was new in its combination of élite warriors with a modern fascist régime and the fact that many [Fascists] thought [that] the nobility of old was lost and had to be reintroduced. There were many references to ancient knights, Vikings, and Prussian imperial guards all of which were respectively considered élite in their native cultures. The naming conventions of certain SS units were indicative of these references.

If you ever tried Wolfenstein 3D, you likely noticed that the Élite Guard was an abnormally tall (as well as blond and blue‐eyed) foe. At first I thought that this was a quaint reference to the Aryan archetype conceived of by European protofascists, but in fact the Schutzstaffel did have rules pertaining to physique:

The Waffen SS as an élite group had a difficult selection process. Waffen SS requirements were stringent regarding aspects like height, race, and health. Here is where physical aspects played a part in the general notion of SS élite status. Before the start of the Second World War height requirements for the SS was a minimum of five feet, ten inches which was noticeably taller than the average German man of military age in the 1930s.²⁶

Furthermore, the leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler stated “Until 1936 we did not accept a man in the Leibstandarte (1st SS division) or the Verfügungstruppe (2nd SS division) if he had even one filled tooth.”²⁷ These strict physical requirements established the SS as a physical élite. This naturally made the SS appealing to the physically fit in Germany or young men who saw tall and active men who boxed, ran, rode horses, or competed in other sports.

The reputation of being tall, strong, and racially pure was just one part of what made the SS achieve its own place in the [Third Reich]. The SS being physically larger and more fit on average made them seem better than other groups in society due to their participation in major athletic events and the publicity that followed. For example, the SS was involved in the 1936 Olympic Games which shows a certain degree of elevation above normal people.²⁸ Hans Woellke broke the Olympic record in the shot put.²⁹

The Schutzstaffel participated in the Olympics! That surprised me.

Now, let us focus on understanding the privileges that came with joining the Schutzstaffel.

Job security and future career prospects were a large component of volunteering for the SS both domestically and outside of Germany. The long service requirements while a disadvantage for some did provide the potential for years of steady employment. For the volunteers who were not from Germany proper, there was a hope that in their nation of origin, there would be some level of autonomy or favorable job placement in a post‐war context.

A case of study for favorable post‐war status is the case of Léon Degrelle, the commander of the Walloon Legion of Belgian SS collaborators.⁴⁵ Degrelle is problematic because he was a member of Belgium’s far‐right Rexist party and was an SS apologist.

However, in his memoir, there were potentially good outcomes for Belgium to Degrelle and his fellow Belgian SS men. When [the Western Axis] declared war on the Soviet Union there was a need for more men. Degrelle and many Rexists viewed this as the opportunity “to command respect of the Reich” and a chance to win a position of prestige that would be favorable for them after the war when Europe would be reorganized under the Third Reich.⁴⁶

These men under Degrelle’s command were eventually deployed to the Ardennes forest in Belgium in 1944 where they were given the task of recognizing Belgium.⁴⁷ Despite Degrelle's complicated past, he and his Belgian SS men believed that for their service they would gain something for Belgium.

The logic that encouraged Belgians to join the SS also applied to the Dutch. According to historian Evertjan van Roekel, the Waffen SS made membership appealing. Rationing was common during the period due to the war and the need for supplies but “SS soldiers and their families received supplies as a matter of priority.”⁴⁸ Dutch SS volunteers were also promised that they could receive job training and civil jobs whenever they returned home like their Belgian counterparts.

Diary entries from a Dutch SS volunteer named Mr. Luiken states, “They are conscripted into the SS for 6 months. On their return to the Netherlands, they are placed in a secretarial office and, after a longer period of study, may also qualify for higher‐level jobs. My interest has been piqued.”⁴⁹ He wrote this when describing friends who were about to depart for Munich for their SS training. Belgian and Dutch volunteers were told that they would be rewarded for SS service.

Aside from jobs, education was a large perk that the SS could offer. In many countries, different classes have different levels of education. Historians acknowledge this and bring up examples of attempts at “élite” education throughout the rest of the world.⁵⁰ One would think of the stereotypical delineation between public and private schools or finishing academies as a certain barrier that is difficult to cross. While the lines are not always strict, they do represent a distinction in education among class lines.

The Waffen SS provided a partial bypass on the notion of an educated versus uneducated distinction amongst the classes. The SS created officer cadet schools and worked with the [Fascist] idea of education to foster institutions that would fuel the SS. Despite the demanding racial and physical requirements, educational requirements were less stringent. Due to a different set of standards, roughly 40% of officer candidates pre‐1938 had an elementary school education.⁵¹

While this appears as though the SS was watering down the quality of their officers, this was not the case due to the SS being a form of social mobility. For those who were racially worthy, it did not matter how educated one was. One could be molded by the schooling that the SS said was a “holistic approach to individual development.”⁵²

If a farmer’s son could prove that he was Aryan, not communist, and physically fit, he could go and be educated to move into the new breed of [Fascism’s] élite men. Upon acceptance to an SS officer school a candidate would learn sports, basic military history, and tactics along with other “élite” activities like fencing and sailing.⁵³

[…]

Protection from arrest was the most unsavory perk the SS could provide. Herbert Maeger (1922–present) is the case study for this benefit of SS membership. […] Despite being ethnically German, his parents were not fans of Adolf Hitler, and this caused tensions when the [Fascists] occupied Belgium. Maeger’s mother openly called Hitler a criminal and a local official pointed out this was “ a very grave matter, and serious consequences could only be avoided by a very broad‐minded course of action.”⁵⁸

Maeger recalled that given his situation, “It would be extremely helpful in this respect if I volunteered for the Waffen SS and my father agreed.”⁵⁹ He joined the SS as a teenager and was assigned to the 1st SS division in exchange for his mother not being arrested.

(Emphasis added.)

If you haven’t the time to work your way through a book such as Herbert F. Ziegler’s Nazi Germany’s New Aristocracy, this forty‐page document is mostly worth reading. It is naïve to believe that any Fascist seriously wanted to realize a classless nation (at best, he might have wanted to somehow render class irrelevant), but liberal blemishes aside, you’ll learn a good deal about the SS and why so many men chose to join it.

---

Click here for 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 slaughtered eight hundred Romani children (more than one hundred of whom were boys between 9 and 14 years of age) at Auschwitz, and three Axis V‐2 rockets hit Britain. One of them hit the centre of Walthamstow, London at 0455 hours, killing six immediately and another one later from wounds. (The resulting crater was 50′ wide and 10′ deep.) On the other hand, the Axis lost the Netherlandish city of Maastricht and the Italian town of Coriano to the Allies. Lastly, Léon Degrelle received the Close Combat Clasp award in Gold.
1966: Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, dropped dead.

I should note that the author overstates his case, and his perception of the Soviet Union is… flawed, but you may still find this of some interest.

---

Click here for 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. Coincidentally, Berlin promoted Karl Burk to the rank of SS‐Hauptsturmführer and Rudolf Höss to SS‐Untersturmführer as the Spanish Nationalists captured San Sebastian, Spain.
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.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean commission found evidence that women were pressured into giving away their infants for foreign adoptions after giving birth at government-funded facilities where thousands of people were confined and enslaved from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Some notable Azov veterans and groups affiliated with the Azov movement took part in the launch of the Nation Europa network. In particular, Denis Kapustin, said to be “one of the most dangerous neo-Nazis in Europe,” is the commander of the HUR’s Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC). Alexey Levkin, an important ideologist in the Azov movement, also from the RVC, co-founded Nation Europa as the head of “Wotanjugend,” an extremely neo[fascist] group from Russia. Whereas Kapustin has a history of organizing far-right fighting tournaments in Russia and Ukraine, Levkin has organized [so‐called] National Socialist black metal festivals as the leader of the band “M8L8TH,” which is popular among hardcore neo[fascists] in Ukraine.

Screenshot from Twitter (because Substack can’t embed posts anymore) [For anybody having difficulties reading the screenshot, it is a post from Leonid Ragozin that says, ‘Those were the days back in Russia:) Aleksey Levkin and Denis Vikhorev of Azov-linked Wotanjugend with Russian neo-pagan and fascist ideologist Aleksey "Dobroslav" Dobrovolsky in 2005. Both are in Ukraine now and Dobroslav died in 2013. Recently posted by Levkin.’ — Anbol]

Yurii Pavlyshyn, the medic from Azov’s 3rd Assault Brigade, is the bass guitar player in M8L8TH, and apparently a coordinator of Nation Europa. To hear it from him, no matter who “wins” the war, “it will be a defeat,” because there will be a “dictatorship” in Ukraine of the Russian or Western neoliberal variety. He suggested that instead there should be a nationalist dictatorship of war veterans, “because the real elites of our ancient Ukraine are now in trenches and dugouts.” He calls this “Trincerocrazia,” or “Trenchocracy.”

[…]

The HUR’s International Legion, which includes the RVC, is filled with neo[fascists] tied to the Azov movement, and they largely spearheaded the conference. Representatives of the HUR’s Russian, German, and Belarusian Volunteer Corps, including Alexey Levkin from Wotanjugend, constituted a majority of those from Ukraine’s military that signed Nation Europa’s “Memorandum of Unity and Cooperation.” Azov veterans created the Belarusian unit, and the German squad originated in Der Dritte Weg (“The Third Way”), a small neo[fascist] party in Germany that is allied with the Azov movement. The German delegation at the Nation Europa conference included Klaus Armstroff, the founding chairman of “III. Weg.”

In the short video that Nation Europa released about the conference, the representative of the German Volunteer Corps (NDK) only briefly appeared without a blur over his face. This might be the same neo[fascist] NDK fighter seen on the right, who included the “Fourteen Words” in his selfie.

The Revanche battalion is another HUR unit that participated in the conference and signed its memorandum. It did so alongside the violent far-right “conservative” organization “Tradition & Order,” which created the unit. These groups might have drifted apart, but not from their allies in CasaPound, an Italian neo-fascist movement, which is an important backer of the Nation Europa project.

Luigi De Biase: “The Ukrainian battalion ‘Revanche’ celebrates the anniversary of the [fascist] March on Rome. The motto (‘The March Continues’) is the same one that appeared the day before yesterday [October 27, 2022] in Rome, on a banner near the Colosseum.”

Alberto Palladino, an Italian “journalist” who hospitalized five members of the Italian Democratic Party in 2011, represented CasaPound at the first Nation Europa meeting. Several years ago, Palladino presented “CasaPound’s Point of View” at the Azov movement’s second “Paneuropa” conference. In 2022, he shared the above photo on his Instagram account. That year Palladino wrote a report and made a mini-documentary about the Revanche battalion after an exclusive visit to their base. The video featured an interview with a soldier who wore a patch inspired by the Waffen-SS Dirlewanger Brigade.

Gabriele Adinolfi, an unofficial founder of CasaPound, was the main guest speaker at the Nation Europa conference, although he participated remotely. “The great challenge is to create new elites for Europe,” he said. One month earlier, the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University published an illuminating essay about this 70-year-old “Architect of a European Neofascist Network.”

---

Click here for 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.
1941: The Axis launched a renewed offensive against Odessa, and the Jäger Report (issued later that year) noted that the Axis and its collaborators massacred 993 Jewish men, 1,670 Jewish women, and 771 Jewish children in Vilnius for a total of 3,334 people.
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.

Quoting Galadriel Ravelli’s and Anna Cento Bull’s The Pinochet Regime and the Trans‐nationalization of Italian Neo‐fascism in Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, pages 374–380:

The relationship between Pinochet and the Neo‐Fascists significantly evolved in 1975, when they were asked to kill Chilean Christian Democratic deputy Bernardo Leighton, who had moved to Rome after the 1973 coup (Mayorga 2003, 11). The case of the attempted murder of Bernardo Leighton illuminates the key rôle played by right‐wing groups in implementing Pinochet’s transnational repression plans and explains why the Neo‐Fascists fed to Chile in 1977.

[…]

Prats, a former Chilean army commander at the time of Allende’s government, had moved to Argentina after the coup to avoid the Junta’s prosecution. The general and his wife were killed in September 1974 by a bombing attack. Judicial investigations clarify that ‘the assassinations were carried out by agents of DINA with the assistance of members of the Fascist Argentine group Milicia […] and the complicity of the Argentine army and police’ (McSherry 2005, 69, 70).

The Prats murder was one of the frst extraterritorial DINA’s executions and it proved that the Chilean intelligence could rely on the support of neighbouring countries in targeting political opponents. McSherry argues that the surveillance cooperation established between Chile and Argentina in 1973 was the prototype of Operation Condor. The attack against Bernardo Leighton and his wife, which occurred on the 6 October 1975, should thus be considered as part of the preliminary operations of the Condor prototype led by the Chilean intelligence.

Why was Leighton attacked in Italy? First, the Prats murder suggests that from the very beginning the Chilean Junta carried out a borderless crusade against its political opponents. Whether these were still based in Latin America or elsewhere, they had to be monitored and eventually eliminated.

Second, Leighton’s political rôle and his relations in Italy were considered as particularly problematic by the Chilean régime. The main concern was Leighton’s capacity to unify and potentially organise Chilean political opponents abroad, with unpredictable consequences for the régime (Relazione introduttiva sui fatti e i mezzi di prova 1995, 6).

Furthermore, the DINA was particularly worried about the potential collaboration between the Italian Christian Democratic party and the Italian Communist Party (which had been under discussion at the time). In September 1973, the leader of the Italian CP, Enrico Berlinguer, launched the proposal to collaborate with its main political enemy, the Italian CD party, ‘to restore the economy and maintain public order’ (Clark 2008, 388).

The proposal for a ‘historic compromise’ seemed to pave the way for an involvement of the Communists in the government, a perspective that obviously scared conservative forces. The concerns were echoed by the DINA, which according to its former agent Townley feared that the collaboration between the two parties in Italy would have legitimized a similar convergence in Chile ‘and would have, in great part, unifed the Marxist opposition in Europe against Chile’ (U.S. District Court, Deposition of Michael Vernon Townley 1992, 76).

Hence, the attack against Leighton played a double rôle: on one hand, it aimed at sending a clear message to the exiled opponents of the Junta that they were still under the DINA’s radar, even in Europe. On the other hand, it aimed at discouraging any compromise with Communist forces at a transnational level.

The key element in the Condor operation was covert action. The operation relied on a state parallel structure, which could count on the collaboration of paramilitary squads and non‐state actors such as right‐wing groups. This was crucial to the survival of the military Juntas, as ‘to secure at least a minimal acceptance of their legitimacy, the national security states needed to mask the involvement of the state in the atrocities being carried on’ (McSherry 2005, 21).

This explains why the Argentine right‐wing group Milicia was involved in the Prats assassination and why the Italian Neo‐Fascists were asked to kill Leighton in 1975. The aforementioned relationship between Delle Chiaie and Pinochet, provides a further explanation for the Neo‐Fascists’ involvement. Thanks to the transnational relations between Fascists and Fascist sympathizers, Pinochet could count on the expertise of the Italian Neo‐Fascists to eliminate his enemy in Rome.

As previously highlighted, the political performance of the Neo‐Fascists in Italy was marked by their deep involvement in the Strategy of Tension, which made them experts on political violence and terrorism techniques.

Judicial investigations carried out by the Rome Prosecutor’s office provide an exhaustive overview of the relationship between the Chilean Junta and the Italian Neo‐Fascists. The evidence gathered by judicial authorities highlighted that the murder was first commissioned to the Neo‐Fascists by DINA agent Townley in summer 1975 and eventually carried out by Delle Chiaie’s group. As Vincenzo Vinciguerra¹ reconstructs, despite the direct relationship between Pinochet and Delle Chiaie, it was agent Townley who contacted him about the Leighton operation.

This was necessary as the relationship between Pinochet and the militant, who was a fugitive under investigation for several crimes, had to be covert to protect the dictator from possible scandals (Tribunale Ordinario di Milano, hearing of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, 22/05/02).

In spring 1975, the Neo‐Fascists were asked by Townley logistic support to coordinate the assassination of Carlos Altamirano, leader of the Chilean Socialist party who had found refuge in Spain. At the time, the Neo‐Fascists were mostly based in the Spanish sanctuary, where they had a close relationship with the Spanish intelligence.

According to Vinciguerra (Procura della Repubblica di Roma, hearing of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, 9/09/92), Townley, as a DINA agent, preferred to avoid direct contact with the Spanish intelligence to prevent diplomatic incidents and hence asked for the Neo‐Fascists’ support, given their relationship with the Spanish intelligence. Delle Chiaie discouraged the operation against Altamirano, warning Townley that the Spanish intelligence was not keen on foreign interferences within its territory.

As a matter of fact, the operation was called off (Relazione introduttiva sui fatti e i mezzi di prova 1995, 18–19). While the preparatory meetings for the murder of Leighton between Townley and the Neo‐Fascists took place in Rome in summer 1975, the Altamirano episode highlights that already in the early months of 1975 the DINA relied on the group to implement its transnational repression plan. The agency wanted to target its enemies in Europe and the relationship between Pinochet and the Neo‐Fascists proved to be a valid asset to this end.

(Emphasis added.)

---

Click here for 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.
1935: U‐12 launched at the Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel.
1937: Following the advice of Berlin’s advisor to China, Falkenhausen, Chinese troops dug in at Luodian near Shanghai to defend against an Imperial offensive. The 300,000 Chinese infantry troops would hold on to Luodian for four days against attacks by 100,000 Imperialists with overwhelming firepower.
1938: Rudolf Höss received the rank of SS‐Obersturmführer.
1939: As the Third Reich officially lost its diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, ‘Lord Haw‐Haw’ began broadcasting his ‘Germany calling’ programme on Radio Hamburg. The name was linked to William Joyce, a Yankee citizen who had spent some time in Ireland, had been Propaganda Director of Oswald Moseley’s (qv) British Union of Fascists and who had fled to Berlin a week before the outbreak of war. Additionally, Georg von Küchler’s superiors awarded him Clasp 2nd Class to his Iron Cross, and Wolfgang Falck shot down two Polish aircraft (a bomber and a reconnaissance aircraft).
1940: Northwest of Ireland between 0326 and 0328 hours, Fascist submarine U‐28 assaulted Allied convoy OA‐210, sinking the Netherlandish ship Maas, massacring twenty, and severely damaging the British ship Harpenden, killing somebody. Afterwards, Fascist submarine U‐99 sank British ship Albionic at 0716 hours, slaughtering twenty‐five.

After an entire morning without aerial attacks, three hundred Fascist bombers flew across Kent in southern England and up the Thames Estuary in two waves at about 1500 hours, then some bombers got through British defences and bombed the East End of London. On the same day, the Fascists also bombed Portsmouth and Southampton, then they bombed London and Liverpool overnight. Off Ramsgate, Kent, the Fascists assaulted destroyers HMS Atherstone and HMS Fernie in the Strait of Dover, seriously damaging HMS Atherstone, which also suffered six deaths.

Lastly, as Luigi Torelli began patrolling waters off the Azores Islands, Winston Churchill noted that the coming week was to be dangerous as intelligence showed a Fascist amphibious invasion about to be launched, but IJA Major General Issaku Nishihara reported to Tōkyō, complaining that French authorities were delaying negotiations regarding Indochina matters.
1941: Axis artillery bombarded Leningrad throughout the day, and submarines U‐82, U‐202, U‐207, U‐432, and U‐433 assaulted the Allied convoy SC‐42 east of Greenland, sinking seven merchant ships. Meanwhile, Charles Lindbergh gave a speech accusing the British, Jews and FDR régime of pressing for war with the Third Reich.
1942: Axis submarine U‐404 attacked Allied convoy ON‐127 west of Ireland, damaging Norwegian tanker Marit II at 0016 hours and ending two lives. At 0135 hours, U‐218 also attacked the same convoy, damaging Norwegian tanker Fjordaas. At 0147 hours, U‐584 sank British tanker Empire Oil west of Ireland. Elsewhere, U‐96 sank Portuguese sailing vessel Delães at 1150 hours, U‐517 sank corvette HMCS Charlottetown in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in northeastern Canada at 1300 hours (slaughtering nine but leaving fifty‐five alive), and U‐584 sank Norwegian merchant ship Hindanger at 1925 hours (killing somebody but leaving forty alive).

During the day, USS Saratoga delivered aircraft to Henderson Field at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Axis destroyers landed troops at Guadalcanal; in the past two weeks, six thousand men were successfully delivered to the island. Meanwhile, Axis aircraft attacked Henderson Field.
1943: The Axis commenced its three‐day liquidation of the Jewish ghetti in the Byelorussian cities of Minsk and Lida. Coincidentally, Axis authorities raided Jews in Nice, France. Italian forces in various Aegean islands surrendered to the Axis, and at 1500 hours, Kurt Student ordered Major Harald Mors to have a plan for the rescue of Benito Mussolini ready at his desk as soon as possible, with the plan to be executed on the following day at 0730 hours. Lastly, the Wehrmacht occupied Corsica and Kosovo‐Metohija, thereby discontinuing the Kingdom of Italy’s occupation of Corsica.
1944: Axis troops under Friedrich Schubert and Greek paramilitary fighters under Georgios Poulos exterminated one hundred twenty civilians in the city of Giannitsa, Greece according to an anticommunist operation. On the other hand, the Axis lost at least 11,000 lives to a firestorm that an RAF bombing raid on Darmstadt caused.
1945: Australian 9th Division forces arrived at the Axis‐run Batu Lintang camp, a POW and civilian internment camp on the island of Borneo.

Quoting Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation, pages 60–62:

Joachim Doron observed that: ‘the Jewish self‐criticism so widespread among the German Zionist intelligentsia often seemed dangerously similar to the plaints of the German anti‐Semites.’¹¹⁰ The [Fascist] leadership quoted Zionist sources to validate their claims that Jews could not be assimilated.¹¹¹ It was difficult for German Jews to refute [Fascist] claims that they were aliens ‘when a loud and visible group of their own continually published identical indictments… Zionism had become a tool for anti‐Semites.’¹¹²

Zionist leaders even used the same language as the anti‐Semites. [The Zionist régime’s] first Justice Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth, described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’.¹¹³ Josef Sprinzak, the first Speaker of the Knesset, spoke of the new German immigrants as ‘a great deal of filth in the Yishuv.’¹¹⁴ Klatzkin held that Jews were:

a people disfigured in both body and soul — in a word, of a horror […] some sort of outlandish creature […] in any case, not a pure national type […] some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name of Jew.¹¹⁵

Anti‐Semitic ideologues and politicians in the 19th century were almost unanimous in their universal endorsement of Zionism.¹¹⁶ They considered Zionism ‘a useful vehicle for ridding Germany of its Jewish population and thus found it worthy of support.’¹¹⁷

Heinrich Class, President of the hundred‐thousand‐strong Pan‐German League, who was made an honorary member of the Reichstag on Hitler’s assumption of power, wrote, If I was the Kaiser which was considered by German anti‐Semites as ‘trailblazing’.¹¹⁸ Class outlined a programme ‘for the complete expulsion of the Jews from German public life’, writing that:¹¹⁹

[…] among the Jews themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more adherents […] They also declare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible […] the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews […] have always asserted…¹²⁰

Theodor Fritsch, who was ‘greatly admired’ by Hitler¹²¹ and who wrote Antisemiten Katechismus, which by 1944 was in its 49th edition, quoted approvingly from Klatzkin, who believed that ‘the liberals have understood better than the anti‐Semites how to destroy a nation.’¹²² Other anti‐Semitic supporters of Zionism included Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Eugen Dühring.¹²³ Alfred Rosenberg, [German Fascism’s] main theoretician, wrote in 1919 that

Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.¹²⁴

Rosenberg ‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’ and ‘eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.’¹²⁵ Donald Niewyk asked whether ‘the German Zionists’ assertions of racial and national otherness […] hasten the day when the Nazis might seek to make Germany Judenrein?’¹²⁶ Rabbi Jacob Agus asked if:

the Zionist programme and philosophy contribute[d] decisively to the enormous catastrophe of the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis by popularizing the notion that the Jews were forever aliens in Europe?¹²⁷

Claude Montefiore, a founder of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and President of the Anglo‐Jewish Association, accused the Zionist movement of having aided and abetted the rise of the [Third Reich].¹²⁸

The Union of Jewish War Veterans [RjF] argued that in demanding national minority rights ‘Zionism provided anti‐Semites with political ammunition.’¹²⁹ Robert Weltsch, the Editor of Judische Rundschau wrote that ‘If I am a Jew then I cannot be a German’.¹³⁰ Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a prominent German Zionist leader and later President of the American Jewish Committee [AJC] and Vice Chairman of the World Jewish Congress [WJC] described the [Third Reich’s] assumption of power as the ‘beginning of the Jew’s return to his Judaism.’

It was little wonder that the CV talked about German Zionism having inflicted ‘a stab in the back’ to the anti‐fascist struggle against Hitler.¹³¹ Weizmann wrote:

that unless some radical measures are taken fairly soon, we Zionists may stand charged, when history comes to be written, with criminal indifference in the face of the greatest trial to which Jewry has been subjected in modern times.¹³²

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 10).

1887: Giovanni Gronchi, Fascist Italy’s (briefly serving) Undersecretary for Industry and Commerce, was born.
1938: Hermann Göring claimed at a Nürnberg rally that the Czechs were oppressing Sudeten Germans. Aside from that, new air regulations in the Third Reich prohibited overflight by all foreign aircraft (except along specified air corridors established for civil aircraft).
1939: The Canadian declaration of war on the Third Reich received royal assent, and to make matters worse for the Fascists, Polish insurgents killed their Waffen‐SS general Wilhelm Fritz von Roettig at Opoczno around 1415 hours. (On the other hand, the Third Reich might have been happier to learn that the submarine HMS Triton accidentally sunk HMS Oxley near Norway, becoming the Royal Navy’s first loss of a submarine in the war.) Likewise, the Wehrmacht made a breakthrough near Kutno and Sandomierz in Poland.
1940: The Fascist bourgeoisie postponed by four days the decision to launch Operation Sealion, and foul weather in the United Kingdom restricted the Fascists to flying reconnaissance missions only through most of the day. At 1715 hours, six small raids approached London, yet they lost two bombers and all of the rest turned back because of British fighters. Overnight, the Fascists bombed the East End section of London, damaging the Buckingham Palace among others; the Fascists also assaulted South Wales, West Midlands, and Liverpool during the night. Lastly, the Regio Esercito crossed the Libyan–Egyptian border, and armed merchant cruiser Atlantis sank British ship Benarty 1,250 miles east of Madagascar, then took the entire crew of forty‐nine as prisoners.
1941: Generalleutnant August Krakau succeeded Robert Martinek as the commanding officer of the Wehrmacht’s 7th Mountain Division, and Axis submarines U‐81, U‐82, U‐85, U‐432, and U‐652 assaulted Allied convoy SC‐42 100 miles east of Greenland, sinking six merchant vessels and damaging two more. Axis submarine U‐111 also sank Netherlandish merchant ship Marken three hundred miles north of Brazil, but all thirty‐seven aboard survived and the U‐111’s crew gave them food. Axis submarine Topazio, on the other hand, sank British ferry Murefte off Haifa and killed somebody. Meanwhile, Panzergruppe 1 and Panzergruppe 2 completed the crossing of the Dnieper River in southern and northern Ukraine, respectively, and both headed toward Kiev.
1942: The British Army carried out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to relaunch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign, frustrating Vichy France.
1943: In the course of Operation Achse, the Wehrmacht began its occupation of Rome.
1944: Berlin ordered that all deserters be shot, along with their families.
1945: Otto Skorzeny transferred from Wiesbaden to Nuremberg; he traveled by aircraft with other top Axis leaders. Coincidentally, Vidkun Quisling received the death sentence in Oslo.

“I feel the best thing to do is take the war into Europe,” he said last December. “Organize the [Ukrainian] diaspora and refugees, and start striking the russians and their allies in the West.” Later he predicted that the United States will become “a major front in the war.” Meanwhile, he called on American leftists to face the same “consequences” as neo[fascists], as in, it should become morally acceptable to physically assault them.

This includes pro-Palestinian activists (guilty of doing “Nazi shit” and “a ratfucking op”), “tankies” and “dirtbag leftists” (who “are basically Nazis”), members of DSA (after all, “most of these people are more accurately national socialists”), and PSL. (“These groups justify any kind of violence in the name of decolonization. So I guess that means they’re fair game for Ukrainians fighting Russian occupation.”)

Still fantasizing about the “Day of the Rope”? “I’m not even opposed to what some may call vigilante justice,” he said earlier this year. “When I come back to the US I’m going to help clean out the garbage.” It was around this time that I was strangled in Washington by Marko Suprun, the main face of the aforementioned “StopFake.”

For “Spaghetti Kozak” and other rabid NAFO dogs, this was a good start. “Choking, punching, and stomping a Grayzone ‘reporter’ isn’t just okay, it’s morally correct,” said “Fella Hendrix.” (I don’t work for the Grayzone, but this is NAFO dogma.) “Good for Marko,” chimed in James. “These people aren’t journalists; they’re unregistered agents for multiple fascist dictatorships. And because our govt won’t defend its citizens from such rats, people have to do the job themselves.” At the time, I was surprised to see him engage an antisemitic troll calling me “Moss Rosenberg.” Of course, it all makes sense now.

Lying Spaghetti Monster

According to “Spaghetti Kozak,” I’m a “weird stalker” who “likely has mental illness” and is “probably a sex offender.” But these aren’t the blatant lies that concern me. Earlier this year, he spent a week “doing some training” with the 3rd Assault Brigade, an openly neo[fascist] formation of the Azov movement, which James insists is “just a regular military unit.” As a former hardcore [Stormfronter], he would obviously know better, and certainly does.

For example, just last year he said this about the black sun, a neo[fascist] symbol used by several units in the 3rd Assault Brigade: “Many folks erroneously think it’s just a Slavic pagan symbol. But yeah, it’s bullshit and people shouldn’t defend it.” Instead of openly defending it, James intentionally obfuscates the reality. “It’s all very complicated,” he says, and “the least important thing to report on right now.”

Perhaps “Spaghetti Kozak” takes some satisfaction in knowing that, in the worst case scenario, Azov would create an “Aryan state in my lifetime.” As explained by the journalist Leonid Ragozin, “Azov’s Reconquista agenda goes far beyond Ukraine. It envisages the ‘liberation’ of Russia as stage two. Russian neo-nazis played a big role in it from day one.” (“J.P. Slovjanski” would have probably come on board, too, if they let him.)

The economist Branko Milanović added a relevant comment: “I’ve come to the conclusion that in 99% of the cases, ideology of extreme nationalism is purely a way to package a desire to fight, kill, steal, rape, etc. That’s why they can easily change ideologies. They mean nothing to them.” As for “Spaghetti Kozak,” he has continued to call himself a “leftist.”

(Emphasis original.)

James Slavyanski’s (brief) detour into revolutionary leftism is hardly unusual among petty bourgeois men who can’t decide if they hate their corporate competitors or the lower classes more, and grossly misinterpreting successful movements to be more in line with his politics is likewise to be expected given neofascism’s desperate need for long‐term successes to cite as examples. I would be unalarmed about his ‘leftist’ history, especially given how strongly opposed to us he is now.

---

Click here for events that happened today (September 9).

1908: Shigekazu Shimazaki, Axis career officer, was born.
1936: At the NSDAP’s annual rally the Chancellor announced a four year plan for economic and military revival under Hermann Göring’s supervision. Hjalmar Schlat, the Reich Minister of Economics, was insultingly unnotified of the plan until its public announcement. Meanwhile, 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: Vojtech Tuka, with the guidance of SS‐Hauptstrumführer Dieter Wisliceny, enacted the Ordinance Judenkodex, which required Slovakian Jews to wear the yellow Stars of David, annulled all debts owed to Jews, confiscated Jewish property, and deported all Jews from the capital Bratislava. Aside from that, Hans Spemann, Fascist embryologist, expired.
1942: An Axis 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.