How do you know if a real storm is brewing — or if you’re just reacting to a few passing clouds?
That’s a question that many Hungarians and people keeping an eye on the country are asking these days. Iren Kollanyi, 61, is one of them.
She has lived here her entire life, through decades of Communism, the adjustment to a whole new system and Hungary’s admission into the European Union in 2004.
But the last two years have been among the most peculiar. A conservative party won two-thirds of the seats in Parliament and something akin to legislative carte blanche, which it has used in ways that may spell trouble. At the same time, a party far to its right has become a foul-tempered, foul-mouthed player in the country’s affairs.
And to Kollanyi’s ears and those of many other Hungarians, there’s an authoritarian, nationalistic tenor to things, along with strains of anti-Semitism and antipathy to other minorities.
“It’s not good,” said Kollanyi, who is Jewish, when I spoke with her last weekend. “It’s not even a little good.”
Pay attention to Hungary. It may not have any great economic heft, and it’s home to only about 10 million people with a tropism toward beer and a talent for brooding. But it could turn out to be a test case of the E.U.’s imperiled sway in these days of debt and austerity. Brussels and Budapest have clashed already over the Hungarian government’s attempts at tighter control of the news media, the judiciary and the central bank.
Hungary could also be a window into just how potently economic anxiety fans the flames of bigotry. E.U. membership hasn’t brought Hungarians the broad prosperity they had hoped for; the country has had severe budgetary woes of late. And the far-right party I mentioned, Jobbik, has converted these disappointments into questions about the country’s orientation to the West and, for good measure, about its supposed coddling of Jews, gays and Roma: Hungary’s trusty trinity of scapegoats.
This month Jobbik introduced a bill that refers to homosexuality as a perversion and bans its promotion in language so vague, opponents say, that two men or two women holding hands in public could theoretically be imprisoned.
That bill is almost certainly going nowhere. Jobbik has only 46 of the 386 seats in Parliament and most Hungarians don’t support the party, which is better at noise than change. It has, for instance, been agitating for the ouster of Robert Alfoldi, the director of the National Theater, whom Jobbik supporters publicly deride for his presumed homosexuality.
But in an interview on Saturday, Alfoldi noted that “they have not managed to have me removed.”
“There has been no censorship whatsoever,” he added. For now, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling party, Fidesz, are letting Alfoldi be.
Julia Lakatos, a political analyst with an independent think tank here, said that Fidesz’s repressive, power-consolidating image in the international media isn’t quite matched by reality. When Brussels balks, Orban blinks.
“At the end of the day, he’s a European politician,” she said.
But one danger is that Jobbik, with the third-highest number of seats in Parliament, could continue to rise and tug him in its direction.
I met with one of Jobbik’s members of Parliament, Marton Gyongyosi, who studied in Western Europe, provides an erudite voice for his party and has a measured manner.
Still, he sneeringly referred to the belief of successive Hungarian governments that “the most important thing is to join the glorious West,” which he called “arrogant about basically everything.”
Jobbik has advocated closer ties to Iran, which Gyongyosi recently described as “an extremely peaceful country [ http://www.thejc.com/node/62968 ]” in an interview with a Jewish publication. The publication also questioned the seriousness with which he takes the Holocaust.
He told me: “No normal person can ever question the existence of the Holocaust.” But, he added, the Holocaust isn’t “exceptional and above all sufferings” and genocides, and is perceived that way only because Jews talk about it more, not less, as time passes.
“What the people know about is what gets the most attention,” he said. “Why do people buy Head & Shoulders shampoo? Well, that’s because that’s the most advertised.”
On the coffee table between us were copies of The Economist and Time. But over on his desk, less conspicuously displayed, was the Jobbik magazine, a recent issue of which had an article extolling the party’s effort to stop Budapest’s gay pride parade, the kind of degenerate event that’s too blithely tolerated in other E.U. countries, the article maintained.
“Deviant West, Normal East,” was the headline.
The cover story mentioned historical accounts of Jews using Christian blood in rites. “Whether this is true or not,” the story said, is unknown.
Ruth Barcan Marcus, circa 1943 Courtesy of the Marcus family.
By DIANA RAFFMAN April 26, 2012, 9:30 pm
I first met the renowned Yale professor Ruth Barcan Marcus in the ladies’ room at the Marlboro Music Festival during the summer of 1977. As a music major in Yale College I had taken only a few philosophy courses, and none with Marcus. But word of the arrival in 1973 of the formidable philosopher had reached even the musty practice rooms in the bowels of Harkness Hall; and I had seen her several times, from a safe distance, on campus. Perhaps because this initial encounter occurred on musical rather than philosophical terrain, I managed to ask the woman adjusting her collar in the mirror next to me whether she was Ruth Marcus, “the famous logician.” She laughed and said yes, and then asked what I planned to do with my Yale degree. I told her I wanted to go to graduate school in philosophy, but feared that a major in music, rather than philosophy, would be an obstacle. She replied, “I don’t see why that should stop you.”
Those words were to be my first lesson from Professor Marcus, who died in February [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/us/ruth-barcan-marcus-philosopher-logician-dies-at-90.html ] at the age of 90. They were emblematic of the whole of her intellectual and professional life. Yes she was brilliant, and famous, and powerful; yes her writings changed the course of philosophical history; and yes she demolished her philosophical opponents when she thought they deserved it. But what made Marcus more than a great philosopher were her unflinching honesty, her unfailing integrity and a will of steel. I first thought to describe her as the most courageous person I’ve ever known; but really she wasn’t courageous. Courage requires fear, and Marcus was fearless. She said what she thought and did what she thought was right, no matter the consequences.
Her fight for right began early. At the tender age of 17, Marcus told her mother one afternoon that she was going out to meet friends. In fact she was headed to an anti-Nazi demonstration at Madison Square Garden. She was found out when a neighbor saw in The New York World-Telegram a photo of “Ruthie” kicking a policeman in the shins because he wouldn’t let her join the protesters. In 1939, of course, many Americans were ignoring or even denying the existence of Nazi atrocities. This teenager considered the evidence for herself and determined to get involved. Later in life she received death threats after speaking publicly against the Vietnam War, and she refused to sit in her customary place onstage for the 2001 Yale commencement, at which George W. Bush received an honorary degree.
Most important, though, Marcus scaled the heights of a field utterly dominated by men, at a time when sexism was rife in academia and the “old boys’ network” was still in its prime. She would tell of having to fend off the unwelcome advances of a male professor (thankfully not a philosopher!) with a coat hanger, of being barred from all undergraduate classrooms at Yale while studying there for her Ph.D., and of being forced to publish her landmark papers under her married name — just a few of the indignities she would endure. In her 2010 Dewey Lecture to the American Philosophical Association, Marcus recalled, “Yale had a philosophy club open to undergraduate and graduate students. I was elected president but then received a letter from the chair of the department suggesting that I decline. The reasons given were that Yale was predominantly and historically a male institution and that my election may have been a courtesy. Also, the club’s executive committee met at Mory’s, which was closed to women. I did not respond to the letter and did not decline. It was, to me, obviously unreasonable.”
When she returned to Yale in 1973, Marcus was one of only two tenured women in the faculty of arts and sciences. In a recent correspondence, the scholar and M.I.T. professor Margery Resnick, a junior colleague at the time, described Marcus’s role among the women on campus:
Ruth and I were constantly asked to serve on “how to” panels for undergraduate women. “How to be a female professional,” “How to have a husband and profession,” “How to be a professional woman with children,” etc. … I remember one panel at which a student asked: “But how can you be assertive, direct and professional and still have the men in the department like you?” [Ruth answered:] “You can’t. Whether you smile and bring them coffee, or you demand to be treated equally, they will not like you. So my only advice is to speak your mind, be yourself, and be professional”… Ruth was a constant supporter of every woman faculty member who got in trouble because of her ideas ….[She] gave us hope that things could change.
Thanks in large measure to Marcus’s efforts as chairwoman of the National Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association, an inequitable hiring system of unadvertised positions was replaced with a transparent, professional placement service, and candidates for faculty positions in philosophy could no longer be asked whether they were or planned to be married, or whether they had or planned to have children.
Philosophers who didn’t know Marcus well were often amazed to learn that she had four children, as if her intellectual and professional toughness seemed incompatible with mothering. (She won her Guggenheim during a year in which the winter was devoted almost entirely to “zipping and unzipping snowsuits.”) On the contrary, she was one of the warmest, funniest, most supportive people I’ve ever known. She was a loyal mother hen to her students and junior faculty, coddling and scolding as needed; and many of them became her lifelong friends. Wonderfully down to earth and free of the posturing one sees so often in academia, she would talk philosophy with anyone, anywhere, anytime. (It may come as no surprise that she was also endearingly absent-minded, as for example on one late December day when, in the midst of a frantic search, a call came from the Prime Market to say that her final exams had been found in the frozen meats.)
Perhaps my fondest memory of Marcus is of an evening about 20 years ago when she was my house guest during a stint as a visiting scholar. She had gone to bed and I was watching a small television in the living room. After an hour or so she reappeared.
“I can’t sleep. What are you watching?”
She peered over my shoulder at the screen. At that moment, David Letterman, covered head to toe in a Velcro body suit, took a running leap and hurled himself onto a Velcro-covered wall. There he stuck, motionless, two or three feet off the ground, limbs splayed like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man.
“Why is he doing that?”
“It’s … hard to explain,” I said.
There came from Marcus a characteristic “harrumph” of dissatisfaction with my answer. She insisted on watching Letterman each night for the remainder of her stay.
Diana Raffman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. She received her doctorate in philosophy at Yale University, where Ruth Barcan Marcus was her dissertation supervisor. She writes about mind and language, and has recently completed a book, “Unruly Words: A Study of Vague Language,” forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Hitler's Medical Files Tell of Flatulence, Cocaine Use
Adolf Hitler in 1938. (AP Photo/File)
Also: notes about 'cleansing enemas' and bull-testicle extract injections
By Mary Papenfuss, Newser Staff Posted May 4, 2012 1:20 AM CDT
(Newser) – Adolf Hitler was a blowhard in more ways than one. He frequently used cocaine, ingested some 28 drugs at a time, and suffered from "uncontrollable flatulence," according to his medical records. Someone with enough bucks and a high bid can have those fascinating files, about to be offered in an online auction. The records—including ten X-rays of Hitler's skull, sketches of the inside of his apparently cocaine-eroding nose, and notes about "cleansing enemas" and bull-testicle extract injections to pump up his libido—are being sold through the Alexander Historical Auctions [ http://www.artfact.com/auction-lot/hitler-as-seen-by-his-doctors-1-u-fa3d1b56d1 ].
They include a classified military report on Hitler's health, as well as tests and notes compiled by his six chief physicians. Though the classified report makes no mention of Hitler's love of cocaine, one of his doctors notes he used it frequently to "clear" his sinuses and "soothe" his throat—and craved it because it made him "happy [ http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/washington-secrets/2012/05/docs-reveal-hitler-farted-received-sex-injections-craved-cocaine ]." Bids are being accepted next week. Each document could sell for as much as $2,000, a spokesman believes.
Why Hitler hated being called a Nazi and what's really in humble pie – origins of words and phrases revealed
Nazi - an insult in use long before the rise of Adolf Hitler's party. It was a derogatory term for a backwards peasant – being a shortened version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria, the area from which the Nazis emerged
From Nazis and film buffs to heckling and humble pie, the obscure origins of commonly-used words and phrases are explained in a new etymological guide.
By Jasper Copping 8:14AM BST 23 Oct 2011
Have you ever wondered why we pass the buck, eat humble pie or let the cat out of the bag?
The English language is rich in idioms and expressions which have evolved in meaning over the centuries, often arising from trades or customs which have long disappeared.
The origins of hundreds of everyday words and phrases have been set out in a new guide.
Its compiler, Mark Forsyth, has traced them through books and writings, some back as far as Ancient Greece.
Mr Forsyth, a writer and etymologist, said: "What I love about etymology is not the grand theories but the strange back alleys and extraordinary and ridiculous journeys that words take."
Much of his research was carried out in the British Library, following references through a succession of dictionaries back, as far as possible, to their original sources. There are competing theories about the origins of some phrases, but he has selected those which are supported by the most evidence.
Sir Winston Churchill emerges as a prolific source of words, credited with inventing, among others, the terms out-tray, social security and seaplane.
The book also describes how "hello" was popularised by the advent of the telephone. Until then, it had been an obscure greeting, with people mostly using good morning, good day and good night.
Alexander Bell, credited with inventing the telephone, had favoured the nautical "ahoy" as a short, standard salutation, but it did not catch on.
The research also shows that many words entered the language from India during the days of empire, including shampoo, bungalow, juggernaut and pundit.
From The Etymologicon:
Cold shoulder – cold shoulder of mutton was the sort of leftovers given to unwelcome house guests
Winging it – actor learning lines in the wings
To heckle – originally the process of removing knots from wool, by combing. In eighteenth century Dundee, workers who carried out the task, hecklers, were political radicals and would interrupt their colleague responsible for reading out the daily news
To hector – from the Trojan warrior who would challenge anyone to a fight
Bite the dust – a direct translation of a quote from The Iliad in which a character talks of the death of Hector
Humble pie – a meal made using the "umbles" – innards – of deer and only eaten by the lowliest servants
Pavilion – from the French for butterfly, papillons, which was the name given to the tents erected at medieval tournaments and jousts, because they resembled the insect's wings
Film buff – from buffalo, the leather from which was worn by 19th century New York firemen who attracted crowds of fans when putting out fires. These aficionados became known as buffs, and the use spread to other experts
Pidgin English – from the pronunciation of "business" by Chinese traders encountered by British merchants in the 19th century
Rolling stone – a seventeenth century gardening implement – similar to a modern roller – used to flatten lawns. The proverb about it gathering no moss, which inspired Sir Mick Jagger and other musicians who used it in their lyrics, gave the phrase a more dynamic image than its prosaic origin suggests
Nazi – an insult in use long before the rise of Adolf Hitler's party. It was a derogatory term for a backwards peasant – being a shortened version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria, the area from which the Nazis emerged. Opponents seized on this and shortened the party's title Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, to the dismissive "Nazi"
Let the cat out of the bag – In medieval markets, piglets were sold in bags – a pig in a poke – but a common con was to switch the valuable animal for a worthless cat or dog: buyers were either sold a pup, or, if they discovered the ruse, let the cat out of the bag
The proof of the pudding – from an older meaning of "proof", meaning "test"
Champion – from the Latin for field, campus. The best soldiers in the field were called campiones, hence champions
In the doghouse – from Peter Pan. In JM Barrie's 1911 novel, Mr Darling forces the dog to sleep in the kennel, and as a result the children disappear. As penance, he takes to sleeping there himself.
Through the grapevine – from the "grapevine telegraph", a phrase which emerged during the US Civil War, for an unofficial, word of mouth network along which news was passed, either because Confederate soldiers passed it on while drinking wine after dinner, or because slaves discussed it while picking grapes from vines.
Hoax – from hocus-pocus, which was used by Protestants to ridicule the rite of consecration carried out in the course of Catholic mass, which includes the phrase "Hoc est corpus meum" ("This is my body")
Average – from an old French term avarie, meaning "damage done to a ship". Vessels were often co-owned and when repairs were carried out, owners were expected to pay an equal share – the average.
Castor oil – originally the name of a liquid used as a laxative which was extracted from the glands of a beaver – or Castor, in Latin. It was not until the mid-eighteenth century that it was discovered that the same effect could be got from the oil produced by the seeds of Ricinus communis, which became known as the castor oil plant.
Bizarre – from the Basque word for beard, bizar, because when bearded Spanish soldiers arrived in remote Pyrenean villages, locals thought them odd.
Serendipity – word coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole, son of the first prime minister, after reading a book about the island of Serendip – now known as Sri Lanka
Sardonic – referred to those from Sardinia who, in ancient times, were characterised as unfriendly. The Mediterranean island also gave its name to sardines, which were found in its waters
Dog days – the name for the hottest, sultriest part of the summer which coincides with a period, during July, when Sirius – the dog star – cannot be seen as it rises and sets at the same time as the sun.
Pass the buck – from the horn of a deer (buck), which was commonly used as a knife handle. The phrase emerged in nineteenth century America, from when poker players would signify the dealer for each game by stabbing a knife into the table in front of him
Shell out – from the awkward process of getting a nut out of its shell. Artillery shells are so described because early grenades looked like nuts in their shells.
In a nutshell – Pliny, the Roman writer, claimed there was a copy of The Iliad so small it could fit inside a walnut shell
Grocer – one who buys in gross
Kiosk – Turkish word for palace, which gradually becomes less grand as its use as it moves westward across Europe. In Italy it refers to a pagoda-like garden structure
Bigot – old English for "by god", to describe someone who asserts their own saintliness, while being a hypocrite
Upshot – the decisive, final shot in an archery contest which decided who had won
Soon – was the Anglo-Saxon word for "now" – far more immediate than its current use
When Dr. Seuss Took On Adolf Hitler This explosion of Dr. Seuss absurdity includes many of the wartime themes that troubled him most -- and many of the visual motifs that would later show up in his children's books. Geisel often used the ostrich as a stand-in for American isolationists who, he believed, were hiding their heads in the sand. The children's author drew more than 400 fantastical political cartoons in the early years of World War II. Jan 15 2013 http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/when-dr-seuss-took-on-adolf-hitler/267151/ [with comments]
After mounting political pressure, the Philharmonic commissioned a group of independent historians to examine the orchestra’s archives between years 1938-1945. The report reveals that in 1938, 13 musicians were dismissed for either being Jewish or married to Jews, and that by 1942, 60 out of 123 musicians identified with the Nazi party, reflecting a higher percentage [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21731740 ] of Nazi sympathizers within the organization than among the Austrian population.
The report also explains that the orchestra became an instrument of propaganda for the Nazi party, including its famous New Year’s Day concert. The anti-Jewish sentiment continued after the war as well; only 10 Nazi sympathizers were forced to leave the orchestra after the war ended.
Orchestra Chairman Clemens Hellberg, who the BBC reports [id.] had originally omitted the Philharmonic’s Nazi ties in its history in his 1992 book, “Democracy of Kings,” said the report was “long overdue.”
In 1935, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the highest-ranking female in the Third Reich, recommended that women do their part: “Women must be the spiritual caregivers and the secret queens of our people, called upon by fate for this special task!” In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, in collaboration with Scholtz-Klink, issued a decree requiring women engaged to members of the Schutzstaffel (or S.S., Hitler’s paramilitary henchmen) to complete the course; this meant promising devotion to the Führer and his cause above all. “The woman’s is a smaller world,” Hitler put it at a party conference in Nuremberg, in a speech [ http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1557 ] to the National Socialist Women’s League. “But what would become of the greater world if there were no one to tend and care for the smaller one? How could the greater world survive if there were no one to make the cares of the smaller world the content of their lives?”
To train women within their lesser sphere, a villa was erected in 1937 on Schwanenwerder Island, on Berlin’s Wannsee Lake. In this pretend model household, young women—many of them teen-agers—would live in groups of twenty, spending six weeks, “preferably two months before their wedding day, to recuperate spiritually and physically, to forget the daily worries associated with their previous professions, to find the way and to feel the joy for their new lives as wives.” Scholtz-Klink further barred any woman with Jewish or gypsy heritage, physical disability, or mental illness from taking part. The course cost a hundred and thirty-five reichsmarks (six hundred and twenty-five dollars, in today’s cash), and covered everything from shopping and cooking to gardening and cocktail conversation, from home decorating to boot, dagger, and uniform scrubbing.
But expertise in craftsmanship and the culinary arts was not the essence of the school; it existed to drill Nazi dogma into “sustainers of the race,” those women who, under the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage, would be effectively bribed to produce babies. The course insisted that women “acquire special knowledge of race and genetics” and only when a woman had acquired such knowledge could she gain certificates of accomplishment (which were also found in the archive, embellished with the Germanic ‘Tree of Life’; a woman who did not comply was refused not only this certificate but also permission to marry). The course also entailed a commitment to Nazi doctrine until death, and a placement of faith in the Führer over religious faith: marriages had to be neo-pagan rituals officiated by party members, not in a church ordained by a cleric. Children had to be raised to worship not Jesus, but Hitler.
Graduates of the schools stayed up to date with Scholtz-Klink’s twin mandates of domestication and inculcation with the League of German Maidens, and then the National Socialist Women’s League (N.S.-Frauenschaft). (Membership was strongly required.) The party’s official women’s magazine, the N.S.-Frauen Warte, printed pastoral photos [ http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/fw8-22c.htm ] of the brides-in-training [ http://de.cyclopaedia.net/wiki/Reichsbraeuteschule ] going about their activities in kitchens, gardens, and fields of hay: black-and-white renderings of girls like Heidi in blond plaits, young women in starched aprons, prim petticoats, and demure swim clothes, holding baskets of blooming flowers, making “beautiful things for later use in their own homes.”
By 1940, at least nine Reichsbräuteschule existed in Berlin, and more were established throughout the country, eventually accepting not only S.S. fiancées but those females deemed racially suitable (which is to say, superior). The toll of years of war caused shortages in the labor force—even taking into account Nazi slave labor—and Hitler was forced to allow more women into the German workforce. But there are indications from historians that bride schools—which remain largely unexposed—continued to operate as late as May 1944.
Nazi ideology held that women belonged to the home sphere; it barred them from medicine, law, and civil service. The party awarded a state-and-civil decoration—a brilliant cross presented with a ribbon to wear around the neck—called the Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honor_of_the_German_Mother ], or Cross of Honor of the German mother. Bronze went to eligible mothers with four or five children, silver for those with six or seven, and gold to those with eight or more Kinder. Even today, the German “Hausfrau [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10216510/The-reluctant-hausfrau-being-a-German-mother.html ]” is celebrated, and women looked down upon as Rabenmütter, or raven mothers [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/world/europe/18iht-women.html?pagewanted=all ], when they try to balance work with children—black birds that push chicks out of their nest. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is a woman, but many call it less than incidental that she is not a mother. The BBC reported [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12703897 ] in 2011 that no more than 2.2 per cent of senior management jobs at top German companies are held by women.
The divide between the soldier or protector (productive) and the homemaker (reproductive) is not specific to Nazi ideology. But women enjoyed higher proportional representation in the Reichstag in Weimar Germany than in corresponding bodies in other European countries (all long before France and Switzerland gave women the right to vote). It’s telling that when Hitler came to power, the woman that he appointed the Women’s Führer—Scholtz-Klink—saw her sex’s greatest potential in the womb.
In the past few years, as recession has led many Europeans once more into the far-right, a number of women have been linked to xenophobic extremism [ http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/taking-a-second-look-at-todays-nazi-brides/ ]. Last year, the Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/world/europe/09iht-germany09.html?pagewanted=all ] cited an estimate by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2010 that, of twenty-five thousand far-right extremists in Germany, about eleven per cent were women. And yet, it went on, “although they account for a relatively small number, roughly half of the women who are involved in the scene were recorded as holding leadership positions within nationalist political organizations.” It’s not liberation, but it’s something.
How the Nazi telegram that helped drive Hitler to suicide was nearly forgotten in a S.C. safe
Hermann Goering’s April 24, 1945, telegram to Adolf Hitler, marked “Geheim!,” or “Secret!” (Courtesy of Alexander Historical Auctions)
An undated picture shows Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler followed by commander-in-chief Hermann Goering, second left, and head of the SS Heinrich Himmler, third left, marching in Berlin next to the hotel Excelsior which was Hitler’s base in the city in the early 1930s. (AFP)
A photo circa December 1945 of Hermann Goering at the prison in Nuremberg, Germany. Goering was a leading member of the Nazi party and commander of the Luftwaffe. He was tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46 and sentenced to death. He avoided execution by committing suicide in his cell a few hours before the sentence was to be carried out. (AFP/Getty Images)
Photo Gallery [embedded] Hitler's last gasp When Soviets swarmed Berlin and the fall of Nazi Germany loomed, dictator Adolf Hitler had retreated into a concrete Nazi hive 55 feet underground. It became the place where the Fuhrer drew his last breath. Eight days after Hitler’s suicide on May 8, 1945, the world erupted in celebration for Victory in Europe Day.
By Michael E. Miller July 10, 2015
It is one of the most crucial documents from the most pivotal moment in the most terrible war.
A treasonous telegram from No. 2 Nazi Hermann Goering to none other than the führer himself.
A message that, along with the advancing Allied troops, helped drive Adolf Hitler to swallow cyanide and shoot himself inside his underground Berlin bunker.
Despite its influence on World War II, however, the memorandum ended up inside a South Carolina safe, nearly forgotten for more than a decade until a college student made it his senior thesis.
On Tuesday, the itinerant but now infamous telegram sold at auction for $55,000.
Not bad for a scrap of paper plucked at random in the pitch dark.
This is the story of how a Nazi note changed the course of history, only to slip through the cracks thanks to an American soldier’s ignorance of German.
It was April 23, 1945, almost a year after American troops landed at Normandy. Americans had crossed the Rhine in early March, but it was Soviet troops that now had Hitler and many of his top advisers surrounded.
But not Hermann Goering. An ace fighter pilot in World War I, Goering had helped Hitler take power in 1933 and stayed at his side as the Third Reich hungrily expanded. So close was he to Hitler that in June of 1941, the fuhrer issued a secret decree stating that should he be captured or killed, Goering would take over.
As the war dragged on, however, Hitler became suspicious of his No. 2. And as the Soviets advanced to within two blocks of Hitler’s bunker, Goering was nowhere to be found. He was holed up nearly 500 miles south in the Bavarian Alps.
From a Nazi base in the mountainous town of Berchtesgaden, Goering sent a telegram to Hitler shortly after midnight:
My Führer:
General Koller today gave me a briefing on the basis of communications given to him by Colonel General Jodl and General Christian, according to which you had referred certain decisions to me and emphasized that I, in case negotiations would become necessary, would be in an easier position than you in Berlin. These views were so surprising and serious to me that I felt obligated to assume, in case by 2200 o’clock no answer is forthcoming, that you have lost your freedom of action. I shall then view the conditions of your decree as fulfilled and take action for the well being of Nation and Fatherland. You know what I feel for you in these most difficult hours of my life and I cannot express this in words. God protect you and allow you despite everything to come here as soon as possible.
Your faithful Hermann Goering
According to an autobiography by Albert Speer [ http://www.amazon.com/reader/0684829495?_encoding=UTF8&query=lethargy ], Hitler’s chief architect turned minister of armaments and war production, those close to the fuhrer used the telegram to pollute Hitler’s already fragile mind against Goering:
. . . there was a flurry of excitement in the vestibule. A telegram had arrived from Goering, which [top Nazi official Martin] Bormann hastily brought to Hitler. I trailed informally along after him, chiefly out of curiosity. In the telegram Goering merely asked Hitler whether, in keeping with the decree on succession, he should assume the leadership of the entire Reich if Hitler remained in Fortress Berlin. But Bormann claimed that Goering had launched a coup d’etat; perhaps this was Bormann’s last effort to induce Hitler to fly to Berchtesgaden and take control there. At first, Hitler responded to this news with the same apathy he had shown all day long. But Bormann’s theory was given fresh support when another radio message from Goering arrived. I pocketed a copy which in the general confusion lay unnoticed in the bunker. It read:
"To Reich Minister von Ribbentrop
I have asked the Fuehrer to provide me with instructions by 10 p.m. April 23. If by this time it is apparent that the Fuehrer has been deprived of his freedom of action to conduct the affairs of the Reich, his decree of June 29, 1941, becomes effective, according to which I am heir to all his offices as his deputy. [If] by 12 midnight April 23, 1945, you receive no other word either from the Fuehrer directly or from me, you are to come to me at once by air.
(Signed) Goering, Reich Marshal"
Here was fresh material for Bormann. “Goering is engaged in treason!” he exclaimed excitedly. “He’s already sending telegrams to members of the government and announcing that on the basis of his powers he will assume your office at twelve o’clock tonight, mein Fuhrer.”
Although Hitler remained calm when the first telegram arrived, Bormann now won his game. Hitler immediately stripped Goering of his rights of succession – Bormann himself drafted the radio message – and accused him of treason to Hitler and betrayal of National Socialism. The message to Goering went on to say that Hitler would exempt him from further punishment if the Reich Marshal would promptly resign all his offices for reasons of health.
Bormann had at last managed to rouse Hitler from his lethargy. An outburst of wild fury followed in which feelings of bitterness, helplessness, self-pity, and despair mingled. With flushed face and staring eyes, Hitler ranted as if he had forgotten the presence of his entourage:
“I’ve known it all along. I know that Goering is lazy. He let the air force go to pot. He was corrupt. His example made corruption possible in our state. Besides he’s been a drug addict for years. I’ve known it all along.”
According to Speer’s biography (written while serving 20 years in prison following his trial at Nuremberg), Hitler’s fury instantly dissolved into depression.
“Well, all right,” he said, according to Speer. “Let Goering negotiate the surrender. If the war is lost anyhow, it doesn’t matter who does it.”
“Hitler had reached the end of his strength,” Speer wrote. “He dropped back into the weary tone that had been characteristic of him earlier that day. For years he had overtaxed himself; for years, mustering that immoderate will of his, he had thrust away from himself and others the growing certainty of this end. Now he no longer had the energy to conceal his condition. He was giving up.”
A week later, Hitler and his companion, Eva Braun, killed themselves.
Goering was put under house arrest but freed by the Luftwaffe, the Nazi air force. He then made his way west in the hope of surrendering to the Americans instead of the Soviets. He was captured by the U.S. Army on May 6 and imprisoned in Luxembourg and later Nuremberg, where he was among the top Nazi officials to be put on trial. He was sentenced to hang but killed himself hours beforehand by swallowing a cyanide capsule.
Shortly after Hitler’s suicide, his Berlin bunker was overrun by Soviet soldiers.
More than a month later, American troops were wading through the crumbling, water-logged Nazi hideout when U.S. Army Capt. Benjamin M. Bradin entered the bunker. The place was pitch black and damaged by shelling, looting and flooding.
“Standing in the wet darkness of this wrecked bunker in Berlin, Captain [Benjamin] Bradin of the U.S. Army snapped his cigarette lighter shut, scooped an untidy armful of souvenirs off somebody’s desk, and groped his way back up the dark angular staircase to the daylight,” wrote controversial historian David Irving [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111700583_pf.html ] in a 2012 biography of Goering. “In the warm sun the haul seemed disappointing: a brass desk lamp, cream-colored paper with some handwriting on it, blank letterheads, flimsy telegrams typed on Germany Navy signals forms, and a letter dictated to ‘my dear Heinrich.’”
At war’s end, Bradin brought the documents home with him to South Carolina. Apparently unaware of their contents, he put them in his local bank vault, where they stayed until 1958.
That’s when Bradin’s son James — a future Army colonel — took the papers to his history professor at The Citadel, the military college, in Charleston.
Robert Rieke, a German-speaker, examined the telegram and immediately realized its importance. He urged James Bradin to write his senior thesis on the documents.
“He handed it in as part of his senior thesis,” she said over the phone from their retirement home in Tampa. “He really did not realize that he had given it away, I don’t think.”
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