“Send us Wheat or Coffins” | The Axis Occupation of Greece WW2

Greece under the Nazis: The German soldiers’ perspective

The most well-known example of help by Germans to the local Greek population would be Dr. Hans Löber, a German navy surgeon who was stationed on the island of Milos during 1943-1944. Dr. Löber used the area’s girls only school to house a hospital for the people of Milos. There never was a surgeon on the island and it was next to impossible for the locals to travel to Athens for proper medical care. We happen to know of a local who was operated by Dr. Hans Löber at the age of 3, saved from a otherwise inevitable mutilation. Resistance from German Soldiers: The case of the Penal Battalions According to Iassonas Chandrinos, the most dynamic form of support by German soldiers to the Greek people would be from members of Penal Battalions (Strafbataillon).

Greece under the Nazis: The German soldiers’ perspective

Ernst Hanfstaengel

Hanfstaengel later recalled: “In his heavy boots, dark suit and leather waistcoat, semi-stiff white collar and odd little moustache, he really did not look very impressive – like a waiter in a railway-station restaurant. However, when Drexler introduced him to a roar of applause, Hitler straightened up and walked past the press table with a swift, controlled step, the unmistakable soldier in mufti. The atmosphere in the hall was electric. Apparently this was his first public appearance after serving a short prison-sentence for breaking up a meeting addressed by a Bavarian separatist named Ballerstedt, so he had to be reasonably careful what he said in case the police should arrest him again as a disturber of the peace. Perhaps this is what gave such a brilliant quality to his speech, which for innuendo and irony I have never heard matched, even by him. No one who judges his capacity as a speaker from the performances of his later years can have any true insight into his gifts.”

Ernst Hanfstaengel

«Η Siemens χρηματοδοτούσε ΝΔ και ΠΑΣΟΚ»

Σύμφωνα με αποσπάσματα της απόφασης τα οποία δημοσιεύει το dikastiko.gr. η εταιρεία «σταθερά, συστηματικά και διαχρονικά» χρηματοδοτούσε τα δύο μεγάλα κόμματα εξουσίας στην Ελλάδα. «…. Το ΠΑΣΟΚ αποτελούσε τον τελικό αποδέκτη του χρηματικού αυτού ποσού, στο πλαίσιο της παράνομης χρηματοδότησης που υλοποιούσε η Siemens, σταθερά, συστηματικά και διαχρονικά και αφορούσε τα πολιτικά κόμματα εξουσίας στην Ελλάδα, τέτοια δε χαρακτηριστικά είχε και το ΠΑΣΟΚ, το οποίο δέσποζε στην πολιτική ζωή του τόπου ως κυβερνητικό κόμμα για σχεδόν δυόμισι δεκαετίες, από τις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1980 μέχρι τα μέσα περίπου της δεκαετίας τoυ 2000, σημαίνον στέλεχος του οποίου (ΠΑΣΟΚ) ήταν ο τεσσαρακοστός τρίτος κατηγορούμενος, Θεόδωρος Τσουκάτος και στα ταμία του οποίου (ΠΑΣΟΚ). Δεν καταλείπεται καμία αμφιβολία ότι κατέληξε το ποσό αυτό» επισημαίνεται χαρακτηριστικά στην απόφαση.

«Η Siemens χρηματοδοτούσε ΝΔ και ΠΑΣΟΚ»

Operation Mincemeat – Wikipedia

On 14 May 1943 Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz met Hitler to discuss Dönitz’s recent visit to Italy, his meeting with the Italian leader Benito Mussolini and the progress of the war. The Admiral, referring to the Mincemeat documents as the “Anglo-Saxon order”, recorded

The Führer does not agree with … [Mussolini] that the most likely invasion point is Sicily. Furthermore, he believes that the discovered Anglo-Saxon order confirms the assumption that the planned attacks will be directed mainly against Sardinia and the Peloponnesus.^[107]

Hitler informed Mussolini that Greece, Sardinia and Corsica must be defended “at all costs”, and that German troops would be best placed to do the job. He ordered that the experienced 1st Panzer Division be transferred from France to Salonika.^[108][109] The order was intercepted by GC&CS on 21 May.^[110] By the end of June, German troop strength on Sardinia had been doubled to 10,000, with fighter aircraft also based there as support. Two panzer divisions were moved to the Balkans from the Eastern Front;^{[n 11]} German torpedo boats were moved from Sicily to the Greek islands in preparation. Seven German divisions transferred to Greece, raising the number present to eight, and ten were posted to the Balkans, raising the number present to eighteen.^[111]

On 9 July the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. German signals intercepted by GC&CS showed that even four hours after the invasion of Sicily began, twenty-one aircraft left Sicily to reinforce Sardinia.^[113] For a considerable time after the initial invasion, Hitler was still convinced that an attack on the Balkans was imminent,^[114] and in late July he sent General Erwin Rommel to Salonika to prepare the defence of the region. By the time the German high command realised the mistake, it was too late to make a difference

via Operation Mincemeat – Wikipedia

Η Κατοχή της Ελλάδας στον Β ‘Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο: Ελληνικός και Γερμανικός Πολιτισμός Μνήμης (Ελλάδα στην Ευρώπη) – Die Okkupation Griechenlands Im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Griechische Und Deutsche Erinnerungskultur (Griechenland in Europa): Amazon.co.uk: Ampatzopoulou, Fragkiski: 9783412224677: Books

H Ελλάδα θυμάται ακόμα τη γερμανική κατοχή των ετών 1941-1944, αλλά στη γερμανική μνήμη αυτό το πολεμικό γεγονός ξεχνάται ή σιωπά. Η ασυμμετρία του συμβιβασμού με το παρελθόν γίνεται πιο ξεκάθαρο εάν, όπως έχουν κάνει οι συνεισφέροντες σε αυτό το βιβλίο, εντοπίζετε τους δύο πολιτισμούς μνήμης στη δημόσια συνείδηση, στη λογοτεχνία και στα μέσα ενημέρωσης. Το κλισέ ανθίζει, ιδιαίτερα σε περιόδους κρίσης, αλλά η καθημερινή ευρωπαϊκή ζωή με τις γερμανικές-ελληνικές δουλειές, οικογενειακές και πολιτιστικές σχέσεις συνεχίζεται. Το βιβλίο θέτει τις διεπιστημονικές βάσεις για μια καθυστερημένη αναθεώρηση και μια βιώσιμη και βιώσιμη ιστορική ευαισθητοποίηση και στις δύο χώρες.

 

 

via Die Okkupation Griechenlands Im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Griechische Und Deutsche Erinnerungskultur (Griechenland in Europa): Amazon.co.uk: Ampatzopoulou, Fragkiski: 9783412224677: Books

War and Postwar: The Difficult German-Greek Century (Greece in Europe / Culture – Literature – History) (German) Hardcover – 9 March 2020

Krieg und Nachkrieg: Das schwierige deutsch-griechische Jahrhundert

By Hagen Fleischer

After decades of German silence about the crimes committed in Greece during the occupation from 1941 to 1944/45, public memory has increased in recent years. The underexposed part of the common past now requires in-depth knowledge, especially the pre- and post-history of these traumatic experiences.

Hagen Fleischer is probably the most internationally renowned expert in German-Greek contemporary history. The available selection of his analyzes, which have so far mostly only been published in Greek, provides the necessary factual knowledge on a source-saturated foundation. Among other things, it deals with the image of Greece in German politics after the First World War; the German occupation and plundering of the country in alliance with Italy and Bulgaria; the entire spectrum of Greek resistance and collaboration; the extinction of centuries-old, if not millennia-old, Jewish life on Greek soil and survival far too little; the so-called »reparation« from 1960, as the only reference point for the standard phrase in German politics to this day, »everything is legally and politically settled«.

A necessary book full of painful and necessary lessons from the past.

Marxismus 25: Revolution und Konterrevolution in Griechenland

Marxismus 25: Revolution und Konterrevolution in Griechenland
Entwicklung von Klassengesellschaft und Arbeiter/innen/bewegung in den letzten 100 Jahren Griechische Linke zwischen Repression, Revolte und europäischer „Normalisierung”

via Marxismus 25: Revolution und Konterrevolution in Griechenland

Gerhard Reinhardt – Wikipedia

In 1943, he deserted and went to fight with the Greek partisans as part of the Anti-Fascist Committee for a Free Germany in Greece, which he co-founded[1] with Falk Harnack. Later, he became its representative for the XIII Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) Division. He became a captain in ELAS before going to Yugoslavia, where he became an officer in the Second Austrian Freedom Battalion in the Third Yugoslavian Army.

He returned to Germany in summer 1945 and in 1946, became a member of the Socialist Unity Party.[1] He went to work in the Land and Forest Ministry, part of the Ministry of the Interior. In 1961, he became the Secretary of the Central Committee for Jugendweihe; later, he became the Secretary of the central leadership of the Committees of the Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters.

via Gerhard Reinhardt – Wikipedia

Falk Harnack – Wikipedia

Falk Harnack (2 March 1913 – 3 September 1991) was a German director and screenwriter. During Germany’s Nazi era, he was also active with the German Resistance and toward the end of World War II, the partisans in Greece. Harnack was from a family of scholars, artists and scientists, several of whom were active in the anti-Nazi Resistance and paid with their lives.

via Falk Harnack – Wikipedia

British Forces In Athens (1944) – YouTube

Various shots of naval vessels sailing off the Greek coast. M/S of heliograph signalling from Destroyer. L/S invasion barges, and other small craft, loaded with British troops sailing into Athens. Shot looking up mast of Royal Ensign. General views of British troops marching in Athens, locals applaud. Several good panoramas of Athens. Various shots of of the ruins of the Acropolis. L/S Greek flag being carried in front of Acropolis. Good shots of attractive young women. M/S of the Greek Prime Minister Papandreou hoisting the Greek flag on highest point overlooking Athens. M/S Greek flag waving in the breeze. Various shots showing enthusiastic locals as British troops and vehicles drive through Athens.

via British Forces In Athens (1944) – YouTube

Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for 30 years | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 15.06.2020

The researchers found that several of the foster fathers were high-profile academics. They speak of a network that included high-ranking members of the Max Planck Institute, Berlin’s Free University, and the notorious Odenwald School in Hesse, West Germany, which was at the center of a major pedophilia scandal several years ago. It has since been closed down.

Berlin’s senator for youth and children, Sandra Scheeres called the findings “shocking and horrifying.”

A first report on the “Kentler experiment” was published in 2016 by the University of Göttingen. The researchers then stated that the Berlin Senate seemed to lack interest in finding out the truth.

Now Berlin authorities have vowed to shed light on the matter.

via Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for 30 years | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 15.06.2020

The Coming Avocado Politics | The Breakthrough Institute

Grant was most famous in his own day, however, for his book The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History (1916). Arguably the most influential eugenicist tract ever penned, Grant’s book reasoned that the growing number of Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the United States meant that the “Nordic stock” of American Protestants was at risk of being outbred and “replaced” — a term that continues to be echoed in our contemporary far right’s fears of “white genocide” and their slogan, “You will not replace us.”^[16]For Grant, the immigrant situation was nothing less than a “world crisis”: he argued that a failure to stem the immigrant tide would spell nothing less than “race suicide” for the Nordics.^[17]Grant chaired the Sub-Committee on Selective Immigration of the Eugenics Committee of the US, whose findings were instrumental in the passage of the Johnson–Reed Immigration Act of 1924, which set immigration quotas based on national origins in proportion to the ethnic mix documented in the 1890 Census. Grant also was instrumental in the implementation of several anti-miscegenation laws, including Virginia’s notorious Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which codified a particularly extreme form of the pseudo-scientific “one drop rule” of race and would lead to thousands of involuntary sterilizations

via The Coming Avocado Politics | The Breakthrough Institute

German occupation of Norway – Wikipedia

Even before the war ended, there was debate among Norwegians about the fate of traitors and collaborators. A few favored a “night of long knives” with extrajudicial killings of known offenders. However, cooler minds prevailed, and much effort was put into assuring due process trials of accused traitors. In the end, 37 people were executed by Norwegian authorities: 25 Norwegians on the grounds of treason, and 12 Germans on the grounds of crimes against humanity. 28,750 were arrested, though most were released for lack of evidence. In the end, 20,000 Norwegians and a smaller number of Germans were given prison sentences. 77 Norwegians and 18 Germans received life sentences. A number of people were sentenced to pay heavy fines.

The trials have been subject to some criticism in later years. It has been pointed out that sentences became more lenient with the passage of time, and that many of the charges were based on the unconstitutional^[10] and illegal retroactive application of laws.

German prisoners of war

After the war the Norwegian government forced German prisoners of war to clear minefields. When the clearing ended in September 1946, 392 of them had been injured and 275 had been killed, meanwhile only two Norwegians and four British mine-clearers had sustained any injuries.^[11] Many of the Germans were killed through their guards’ habit of chasing them criss-cross over a cleared field to ensure that no mines remained

via German occupation of Norway – Wikipedia

Karl Wolff – Wikipedia

In 1945, Wolff under Operation Sunrise took over command and management of intermediaries including Swiss-national Max Waibel, in order to make contact in Switzerland with the headquarters of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, under Allen W. Dulles as to surrendering the German forces in and around Italy.[25] After initially meeting with Dulles in Lucerne on 8 March 1945, Wolff negotiated the surrender of all German forces in Italy, ending the war there on 29 April, before the war ended in Germany on 2 May 1945

via Karl Wolff – Wikipedia

Wolfgang Abendroth – 2 – Wikipedia

In 2017 approximately 100,000 pages of documents were leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) with information related to the activities of Reinhard Gehlen (1902-1979), the post-World War II former head of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the CIA-affiliated anti-Communist Gehlen Organisation (1946–56). According to the leaked documents Reinhard Gehlen, who was also a prominent Nazi before the war, authorized the conduct of physical surveillance of Prof. Wolfgang Abendroth: “[t]he archive material includes a carefully composed dossier on the lawyer and political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth, who was banned from working as a legal trainee in 1933 due to his socialist leanings. A few years later, Abendroth was sent into a punishment battalion of the Wehrmacht active in the war in Greece.

via Wolfgang Abendroth – Wikipedia

Wolfgang Abendroth 1- German Resistance Memorial Center – Biographie

Wolfgang Abendroth was born in Elberfeld in 1906 and grew up in a family of Social Democrats. His father was a teacher. He joined the Kommunistische Jugend Deutschland (Communist Youth Germany) at the age of 14. As a result of his agitation for a united front of Social Democrats and Communists, he was expelled from the KPD in 1928. In 1933, he lost his job as a junior lawyer for political reasons, and went on to provide legal advice for many opponents of the regime. Following his first arrest, Abendroth emigrated to Switzerland, where he gained his PhD. After acting as a courier for some time, he decided to return to Berlin in 1935. There, he was an active member of the resistance until he was imprisoned for several years in 1937. Forcibly drafted into one of the 999th Division’s “probation units” in February 1943, he soon deserted to the Greek partisan organization “ELAS.” He was taken prisoner by the British, and carried out political education for opponents of the regime in prisoner of war camps in Egypt

via German Resistance Memorial Center – Biographie

How former Nazi official Reinhard Gehlen erected a state within a state in post-war Germany – World Socialist Web Site

The archive material includes a carefully composed dossier on the lawyer and political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth, who was banned from working as a legal trainee in 1933 due to his socialist leanings. A few years later, Abendroth was sent into a punishment battalion of the Wehrmacht active in the war in Greece. He deserted from the Army and joined the Greek resistance movement.

After the war, he commenced teaching as a lecturer at the University of Leipzig. This was sufficient to place him in the first ranks of Gehlen’s list of “enemies of the state.” Abendroth was surrounded by Gehlen’s agents, who diligently sent their observations and notes to Gehlen, all of which are found in the 100,000 files of his private archive.

An open question is how many other cases of BND persecution and harassment of Nazi opponents, socialists and Trotskyists are to be found in the mountain of files.

“Uncontrolled co-ruler of the German Republic”

Probably the most spectacular discovery in this initial review of the archive material is the evidence that the BND planted an informant and probably a provocateur in the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) at a very early stage. Through the work of his agent, Gehlen was able to observe over many years his most prominent target, SPD leader Willy Brandt, who was foreign minister in the grand coalition (SPD and Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union) from 1966 and in 1969 chancellor of the coalition between the SPD and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). As foreign minister, Brandt was spied upon by his own foreign intelligence service

via How former Nazi official Reinhard Gehlen erected a state within a state in post-war Germany – World Socialist Web Site

Max Merten | World War II Database

He was captured by the Americans toward the end of the war, and in Nov 1945 he was officially arrested with accusations of war crimes. A year later, however, he was released by the Greek government. Merten insisted that the anti-Semitic policies had already been in effect prior to his arrival in Greece, and he had little power to alter their course after his arrival. In the 1950s, while on travel to Greece, he was arrested. He was tried in a Greek court, and in 1959 he was found guilty and was given a 25-year prison term. On 3 Nov 1959, he was granted an amnesty by the Greek government and was extradited to West Germany. His release sparked some controversity, with Merten accusing Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis of Greece to have had ties to the German occupation authorities during the WW2 era, which was the reason that led to Merten’s release; both Greek and German authorities regarded Merten’s claims as libelous. He passed away in Germany in 1970.

via Max Merten | World War II Database

Nazi influence on Germany’s post-war government to be investigated | The Independent

The German government has announced an investigation into the influence of the Nazis on the country’s post-war government.

A four-year inquiry will follow 20 other investigations made over the past 70 years to determine how far networks attached to Hitler’s regime reached into the new administration after the fall of the Third Reich.

The probe, which will cost an estimated €4m (£3.4m), will look in particular at how far Nazi influence lingered in the Chancellory – the German equivalent of Downing Street – to see how many staff who worked for the Third Reich remained in the office after 1945, Der Spiegel reported.

In a statement, the cultural ministry said post-war recruitment policies and “the mentality of political culture” will also be looked at, particularly studying the role of Hans Globke, who served as chief of staff to former West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer between 1953 and 1963.

via Nazi influence on Germany’s post-war government to be investigated | The Independent