[Note: Here is a brief connection to Parts 1 and 2: Bernt Engelmann (1921 – 1994) wrote a book, ‘In Hitler’s Germany”, in 1986, in which he presents what life was under Hitler’s Germany. Part 1 stops at the point where Engelmann meets his compatriot named Richter. Richter was a Gestapo Commissar. After high school, in 1938, Engelmann volunteered for Hitler’s Air Force. He was released in October 1942. He joined Wrobel & Co. as a translator of the American, the British , and the French press for the Nazi Government and the Nazi Industry. In 1944 Engelmann was arrested by the Gestapo.. Richter, of the Gestapo, asks Engelman to help him after the fall of Hitler. Finally, Engelman was liberated from Dachau concentration camp in 1945. Part 2 stops at the point where Engelman meets Gudrun.]
Gudrun (Norwegian female name, Gud=God, run=secret)
In 1936 Engelmann was 15 years old. His parents allowed him to go to Berlin by train to meet relatives and friends. In the compartment that Engelmann found a seat there were only two men. The information that the young Engelmann saved for us from this brief encounter on that Nazi train of 1936 is very importantant. Engelmann writes: “As I gathered from their conversation, they were autobahn [construction] workers …” [autobahn = highway].
Later a woman of about thirty joined them in the compartment … She greeted them “with a cheery ‘Heil Hitler!’ … The two workers echoed the Nazi greeting mechanically and continued their conversation …” The 15-year-old Engelmann answered: “Good morning” in English. He writes: “… – a little trick that I had successfully practiced several times since my return from Yorkshire the previous summer. Pretending to be British was a good protective device …”
The woman overheard the workers’ discussion about life at the autobahn construction and after a few minutes “gazed sternly at the workers and remarked, ‘Is this whining really necessary? And in the presence of a young foreigner?’ ” The older worker replies: “Listen here young woman we work outdoors in all kinds of weather for 51 pfennings an hour …” and goes on saying that he was trained as a printer and lost his job to do compulsory service.
The younger worker tries to mend things up saying: “Forget it, Karl, The lady is not interested.” The older worker replies: “But she should be, …” I guess these words of the older German worker under Hitler, apply for all of us this very day.
Before getting off the train the woman asks Engelman where he was headed and after he answers ‘to Berlin’ she says: “Ah to Berlin … in a few months the olympic games will be starting – then the whole world will see what our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler has achieved!”
[Note: It is not difficult to imagine what daily life could be if people were ordered by law instead of ‘Good day’ to say ‘Hail Trump’! However, the most important part of such ‘brutality’ is that depending on the ‘tone’ of a person’s response a fink can infer the pro- or anti- regime attitude of that person. End of Note]
Even today the pro-Nazi assholes all over the Planet use as a “wonderful” proof of the greatness of Hitler his offer of the autobahn to the German ‘folk” and maybe to humanity. From this point on we shall use the term highway instead of autobahn. In essence the highway was born in the US. To solve the problems of the highway pavement the Americans used a tool named ‘road test’. A ‘road test’ is usually an experimental track in the shape of a loop on which heavy traffic is moving 24 hours a day for many years and the accumulated observations are evaluated and help in the design of a pavement. It is an expensive and tedious project.
The first American ‘road test’ took place in 1796 in Philadelphia (49 years after the death of Bach!). Since then there were many dozens of road tests all over the US. Of what I know the most important road test, the ‘AASHO Road Test’, took place in 1958 in Ottawa, Illinois. [AASHO = American Association of State Highway Officials]
Of course we should not forget that Hitler was a great admirer of America and especially of the American …automobile. So, that he would ‘copy’ the American highway is natural.
Let us return to the seriousness of life on Earth. At the turn of the 20th century, around 1905, the automobile appeared among us. Inevitably it ‘demanded’ the construction of the highway, the autobahn, and then both dictated a new way of life to humanity, the auto-society (plus CO2).
I do not know if the young Engelmann went to see the 1936 Hitler Olympics, while in Berlin, if not he lost a rare ‘happening’. The tens of thousands of Nazified Germans, the German ‘Folk’, for many days shouted at the top of their voices ‘Yessy Ovens’ ! [J in German is pronounced Y and W pronounced V, therefore they were shouting ‘Jesse Owens’,… the name of a black American, while Hitler was present and Goebbels wrote in his diary: “We Germans won a gold medal, the Americans three of which two were Negroes. That is a disgrace. White people should be ashamed of themselves” [Susan D. Bachrach,’The Nazi Olympics’, 2000, pp 97,99]
[Sad Note: Owens for a few days was at the top of the world. Jeremy Schaap in his book “Triumph” (Houghton Mifflin, 2007. pp 233, 234) wrote: “Ruth (Owens’ wife) went to New York with Jesse’s parents to see her husband for the first time in two months – but together they spent a frustrating and humiliating night being rejected for service by hotel after hotel. Finally the hotel Pennsylvania gave them rooms – on the condition that they use the service entrance.” End of Note]
Back to the young Engelmann in Berlin. At the train station in Berlin his Aunt Elsbeth, sister of his mother. and Uncle Karl, her husband, were waiting for him. Aunt Elsbeth was a raving Nazi and Uncle Karl, a good-ntured man, seems to have gone along with her Nazism. They had two children, Fritz and Gudrun. Aunt Elsbeth years later, in 1941, after she attended a speech by Hitler, “from the eighth row”, trembling with excitement she told Engelmann: “He’ s so wonderful … There’ s no one like him in the whole world!”
Fritz was four years older than Engelmann, that is he was 19 years old. Aunt Elsbeth said proudly to Engelmann: “You know of course that he is in the Hitler guard …” Engelmann did not know, but in his book he writes; “I had no idea that this cousin who was … so quiet … had even gone near the SS. And now I had a cousin in the Adolf Hitler Guard.”
Then Engelmann asks Aunt Elsbeth, how is his cousin Gudrun doing.
Here is Gudrun in 1936:
Aunt Elsbeth said that Gudrun “works hard at the office … it’s often eight or nine before she’s finished, and then her bosses usually invite her out to dinner …”
The following afternoon Engelmann visited Aunt Martha, his mother’s unmarried sister also in Berlin, who was anti-Nazi. Asked by Engelmann about Aunt Elzbeth’s Nazism she replied: “(Elzbeth) is the most kindhearted woman in the world, but she has no more brains than a chicken, and her son, my dear nephew Fritz, is even worse.”
On the other hand as revealed to Engelmann by Commissar Richter the Gestapo was trying hard to locate his mother as a leftist and anti-Nazi, because they had lost her whereabouts and could not bring up to date her Gestapo file. What are the experts saying about this strange differentiation of siblings on so serious matters as … Hitlerism?
As he was leaving he asked Aunt Martha: “And what exactly is Gudrun up to?” Aunt Martha replies: “… I don’t really know. She is working in some new government agency, but Karl and Elsbeth won’t talk about it. … All I know is that she’ s often brought home at night in a big car and the driver wears an SS uniform…”
Here is Gudrun in 1939:
Engelmann visits Aunt Elsbeth’s in Berlin. They are alone and they discuss the situation in Germany.
Engelmann, now a member of the Nazi Air Force: “So that means there will be war by September (1939).” (That is World War II)
Aunt Elsbeth: ” Sh! Not so loud! Gudrun knows there will be. She works for an SS Gruppenfuehrer – they see each other too – and he told her … here comes Gudrun. Not a word!”
[Note: We should wonder how many people in the world knew what Gudrun knew! End of Note]
“Through the open window” Engelmann and his Aunt Elsbeth hear “a male voice saying, ‘Well, Heil Hitler. darling!’ ” A minute later Gudrun appeared, her eyes glowing her face radiant”. She announces: “Mother, Mother, we are engaged … And on Sunday Horst-Eberhard will come to speak with you …” We have to admit that Hitler was a rare human. He cheapened even a rather precious human quality by dictating the necassary “… Heil Hitler, darling” !
Here is Gudrun in 1940:
She had to prove Aryan ancestry back to 1750 before Horst-Eberhard could receive permission to marry her, which she did. Gudrun’s father informes Engelmann that the couple had a beautiful house in Grunewald and takes him there. Engelmann writes: “I could easily guess how the house in Grunewald had been obtained”, meaning that it belonged to an ‘eliminated’ Jew. It was situated in a huge plot of wooded land and it had an SS guard. Horst-Eberhard, now a general, was given a command in occupied Poland’ She had two maids and two girls for the kitchen. Polish women on whose dress was sewn a cloth patch with a ‘P’ on a yellow background, even though they were not Jewish!
Gudrun is complaining that her husband all he sends to her from Poland is “bacon, lard, and geese.” And that she used to love roast goose, but (she was) sick of it now.” Of course, ordinary Germans were striving to get coupons for some food. [See below a similar case in Nazi-occupied Greece]. Also, she advised Engelmann not to say “please and thank you” to the servants “and let them know who’s boss”.
Later Engelmann asks Gudrun why she isn’t working. She answers that it is out of the question since Horst-Eberhard is a general. Then Engelmann asks what is he doing in Poland, rebuilding the Polish police force? Gudrun laughed and said that Poland now was kind of a colony and that Horsed-Eberhard told her that the Fuehrer “wants to give the whole country to the SS as a present … and every deserving SS leader will get his own estate and a few thousand Poles as workers. It sounds boring to me – I’d rather be in Berlin”.
Here is Gudrun in 1941:
Engelmann writes: ” When I reached Berlin on October 4 (1941) no one was waiting at the station for me.” (This is October 1941, I am 11 years old in Athens, people start dying in the streets of hunger. The German soldiers, the occupiers of Athens, are happy, proud of their Aryanism, well fed, and they are certain that their future is bright.) Uncle Karl says: “I don’t understand it . Just last week the Fuehrer told us the Soviets had lost eight to ten million people and he said ‘No army in the world can recover from such losses …’ ” He finished his tea and left.
Engelmann: “After he left, Aunt Elsbeth told me almost in a whisper, ‘I spoke to Gudrun yesterday. Horst-Eberhard was home for the weekend and told her what was happening on the Eastern Front – but I haven’t told Uncle Karl. He always gets so upset.” Again Gudrun knows what is going on in the world, while the young German ‘supermen’ in Athens do not know that they are doomed. My opinion is that Gudrun did not give a shit about them or their Fuhrer.
Here is Gudrun in 1942:
It is June 1942. Uncle Karl picks Engelman at the usual Berlin station. He says that he called Engelmann’s mother (the Leftist !) because he wanted to talk with him. He asks Engelmann, taking a precaution to not be heard: “How much longer do you think this infernal war can go on?”
Engelmann asked Uncle Karl about Gudrun and her husband. From his reaction he surmised that by now he had “realized” that Gudrun’s marriage to an SS general “might have disastrous consequences for him in case of a German defeat”. He said that Gudrun was in Berlin and that if her pregnancy went well she would spend the last months of it in Bad Toelz (Bad in German means Bath).
Her husband had bought a country house at Bad Toelz , close to the Alps, so that Gudrun would be safe from the heavy bombardment of Berlin by the British. Also, she would take along her Polish servants and a trained nurse.
As their conversation goes on Uncle Karl Says that “Horst-Eberhard (Gudrun’s husband!) is completely beside himself over that business in Prague. He figures some of his commanding officer’s duties will go to him now.”
* The commanding officer was: The thirty-eight-year-old Reinhar
* The duties were: Head of the SS, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, deputy Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia, head of the SD (security Service of the SS) and the Gestapo, chief architect of all the atrocities committed by the Germans in the occupied territories (including Greece) and since January 1942, it later emerged, he had been in charge of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Problem’.
* The business in Prague was: The assassination of Heydrich in Prague.
SUGGESTION
(To any teenager that happens to read the text that follows.
: Read it carefully, courageously, and Honestly)
“Tall, slim, blond-haired, with slanting, deep-set blue eyes, Heydrich with his military bearing and ice-cool hardness seemed to epitomize the ‘Nordic-Aryan type’ of Nazi mythology. His athleticism – he was a first-class fencer, an excellent horseman and a skilled pilot – allied with his talent as violinist and his orderly, disciplined exterior impressed Himmler … Yet the arrogant facade disguised a deeply split personality, a neurotic temperament and pathological self-hatred which found its outlet in aboundless greed for power, morbid suspiciousness and exhibitionism. A sense of racial inadequacy, the gnawing uncertainty by his suspected half-Jewish origins … added to his built-in sense of inferiority aggravating his tendency to see treachery, intrigue and potential hostility everywhere. [Robert Wistrich, ‘Who’s Who in nazi Germany’, Bonanza Books, N.Y., 1982, p. 134]
Here is Gudrun in 1949
World War II ended in 1945, In 1949 Gudrun lived alone in the “lovely country house at Bad Toelz”. Uncle Karl “begged” Engelman “to look her up”, which Engelmann did. The last time they had met was in1942. Engelmann: “She had become a little plumper but was no less gay or effervescent than I remembered her. Now in her late twenties, she was an elegant, well-groomed woman…”
She said that she had a misscarriage and lost the child she expected. She had visited Horst-Eberhard, her husband, in Poland a few times, where he was doing the ‘work’ for Heydrich. She said: “It was terribly boring there. And the food was too fatty. I put on three or four kilos every visit! And then all these executions – that was not for me. Of course I knew there was no other way. Drastic measures had to be taken …” The last time she had seen her husband was at Christmas of 1944.
Then Engelmann asks Gudrun what had become of her husband. She said that he was executed in 1946, as he was sentenced to death by a Polish court. And Gudrun goes on; “I didn’t find out about his death until a month later…The American major that brought me the news was very nice. ‘You must be brave’ he said. ‘Just say to yourself that your husband, the general, died for the Fatherland like so many others….’ And she added: “After that we saw each other more frequently … He was from General Patton’s staff… He hated the Jews and the Bolsheviks… Unfortunately, he was relieved of his duties and his successor wasn’t half as friendly.”
She said that this did not matter. She had her American friends, otherwise she would have been lonely and described the parties they “threw then in April 1945”. She added: “Bryan – that was the lieutenant I was closest to – was only twenty-three years old, just a year older than me. He came from New Hampshire… he would have married me and taken me back to New Hampshire. But at that time I was in love with someone else, a captain from Texas, and I just laughed at him. Two years later Bryan came back … But at that time I was having a relationship with that nice major; and besides that, I was already receiving my pension as a general’s widow. A buddy of Horst’s had arranged it, someone that had cooperated with the Amis [Americans] from very early on. Not one of my American friends would have been able to offer me so much money – certainly not Bryan …”
No need to go any further. A final conclusion, which is known to all of us, is that a Nazi or a crypto-Nazi is a person who:
a) Is mentally dishonest and b) He or she was brought up by parents who were also mentally dishonest.
Commies [i.e. communists]
I did not estimate correctly the length of Part Three, so I have to split it in 3a and 3b.
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