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NAZI PROPAGANDA THAT AMERICANS BELIEVE IS TRUE.

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OK. Here is another one of Mark’s bizarre history stories……It is very common for a story that started off as wartime propaganda to be remembered after the war is over as being true. Usually, people just believe their own government’s propaganda stories, but sometimes people wind up believing propaganda and lies that came from their enemies. Here are some completely untrue stories invented by the Nazis but that are widely believed to be true by Americans and Europeans today.
1. The German Language Vote. According to this myth, anti-British sentiment was so strong in the United States after the American Revolution that Congress voted on a bill to change the national language of the country from English to German and that it lost by one vote. This story has been repeated in countless books and magazine articles. I have met many Americans and even a few Germans who had heard this story and believed it was true. This story was started by the German American Bund in the 1930s. The story is absurd if you think about it. All of the original 13 colonies were founded by English immigrants. At the time of the American Revolution, very few Americans could speak German outside of Pennsylvania, and even in Pennsylvania, German speakers were a minority. So – why would Congress vote to change the language of the United States from English to German, a language which neither they nor their constituents could speak?
2. The Anti-Semitic Founding Fathers. According to this myth, the Founding Fathers of the United States were anti-Semites and that Benjamin Franklin tried to put a clause in the Constitution prohibiting Jews from immigrating to the United States. This story was started by the Silver Legion, another Nazi organization in the U.S. in the 1930s. None of the Founding Fathers had any religious prejudices. Religious tolerance was a fundamental principle of the new country. Many of the original 13 colonies were founded by unpopular religious minorities driven out of Europe. Benjamin Franklin was not antiSemitic. Franklin donated 5 English pounds (several hundred dollars in today’s money) to pay off the mortgage on Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia’s oldest synagogue, when it was about to be foreclosed upon.

3. The Polish Lancers. According to this myth, when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Poles attacked their tanks with lancers. A lancer is a cavalryman (a soldier on a horse) carrying a lance (a long pointed stick.) The Polish army did have cavalry at the start of World War 2 (as did many other European countries) and they did have lancers. However, the Poles did not attack German tanks with lances. This story was started by the German propaganda ministry. The Nazis promoted stories designed to make Poles look foolish because that fit into their racial theory, according to which, Poles are stupid, and who but a very stupid person would attack a tank with a pointed stick? As absurd as this story is, a lot of people believe it is true. I once had 2 Polish tenants who had heard this story, and they believed it was true, and they were grad students from Poland!

THE POLISH ARMY IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD (HU 40880) A column of Polish lancers on the move during manoeuvres, 26 July 1939. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205022045

4. Nazi Efficiency. According to this myth, the economy of Nazi Germany was ruthlessly efficient. I think this is one of the world’s most dangerous myths. While the Nazis were certainly ruthless, their economy was incredibly inefficient. Incompetent Nazi party officials took positions of power throughout German industry. Graft, cronyism, and corruption were so rampant that the German economy was never really on a wartime footing. Throughout the war, German factories continued to produce luxury goods for the rich and powerful, products that weren’t being made anywhere else in the world. For example, Mercedes Benz continued to manufacture custom-made limousines until nearly the very end of the war. Below is a photo of a Grand Mercedes made in 1944 for a Nazi party official. Aircraft factories in Germany operated from 9 to 5 and were closed on weekends. In the United States, aircraft factories operated 24 hours a day. They never closed. Trains and airplanes badly needed by the German army were used throughout the war to transport luxury goods from occupied countries back to Germany, including champagne from France, lobsters from Norway, and stolen art from all over Europe. Railroad trains transporting Jews to death camps had the right-of-way over military supply trains heading for the front. The economies of Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan were all far more efficient than that of Nazi Germany.

WERNER GOLDBERG. ‘The Ideal German Soldier.’

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History is full of improbable people, and I have always been fascinated by highly improbable people. Werner Goldberg was one of those improbably person. During World War 2, Werner Goldberg was one of the best known people in Nazi Germany. Photos of Werner Goldberg in his German army uniform appeared on billboards and army recruiting posters all over Germany. He was known to the German public simply as ‘the ideal German soldier.’ Almost nobody in Germany knew his real name or that he was a Jew. In 1933, Werner Goldberg’s father was fired from his job when Hitler came to power because he was a Jew. Werner was unable to get a job for the same reason. Werner needed to make money to feed his family, so in 1938 he joined the army. Werner saw military action soon after completing basic training. He participated in the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Shortly after the invasion of Poland began, a German army photographer took photos of Werner Goldberg and sent them to the Berliner Tagesblatt, a major newspaper in Germany’s capital. They liked the photos and published a full-page picture of Werner Goldberg in their Sunday edition. The newspaper didn’t state his name. They probably didn’t know it. They captioned the photo ‘The Ideal German Soldier.’ Hitler was very impressed by the picture and ordered it reprinted on Nazi propaganda and army recruiting posters. Eventually Nazi officials discovered the truth, that the ‘ideal German soldier’ was a Jew. Goldberg was forced out of the army, but he was never sent to jail or a concentration camp. In 1942, Werner Goldberg rescued his sick father who was being held in a Gestapo prison hospital for Jews. On Christmas Eve, Werner went to the hospital. He gambled that the guards and Gestapo agents at the door would either be absent from their posts or drunk because of the holiday, and he was right. Werner got into the hospital by showing the guards a photo of himself captioned ‘the ideal German soldier.’ The guards recognized the photo and let Werner into the hospital. Once inside, Werner simply went to his father’s room, dressed his father in street clothes that he brought with him and simply walked out the door with his father. Werner Goldberg survived the war and died in 2004.

The Myth of Nazi Efficiency.

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I teach history at a junior high school in Orinda. I talk to my students fairly often about widely held historic myths. Some historic myths are harmless, but others are dangerous. When people believe that a historic myth is true, they will sometimes act on that myth with terrible consequences. I think this will be a big year for historic myth making. This is a presidential election year, and presidential candidates are always a major source of historic misinformation – especially when talking about people in the other party.

One of the most persistent and dangerous of all historic myths is the myth of Nazi efficiency. According to this often-told story, the Nazis were ruthlessly efficient. The logic of this myth is that since the Nazis were not constrained by moral considerations, they were able to maximize economic production through a system of slave labor and confiscation of resources. I have heard this story all my life, and I know people who believe that it is true. While the myth of Nazi effciency sounds logical, it is completely wrong. The Nazis were not ruthlessly efficient; they were just ruthless. For the Nazis, economic efficiency never came first. Proving that their racial theory was correct always came first. As a result, a lot of competent workers and managers were removed from their jobs by the Nazis simply because they weren’t ‘pure Aryans’, a term that was never clearly defined. These people were often replaced by incompetent Nazi party members simply because they had ‘Aryan Certificates’ proving their ‘racial purity’, not because they knew how to do their jobs. Incompetent Nazi party officials took positions of power throughout German industry. Graft, cronyism, nepotism, and bribery were so rampant that the economy of Nazi Germany was never really on a wartime footing. Throughout the war, German factories continued to produce luxury consumer goods for people with money or party connections. Incredibly, many German aircraft and tank factories operated from 9 to 5 and were closed on weekends right until the end of the war. In the United States, on the other hand, the aircraft factories never closed. They operated 24 hours a day, every day, 7 days a week. In Nazi-controlled Europe, trains and airplanes badly needed by the German army were used throughout the war to transport luxury consumer goods to Germany from the occupied countries, including perfume from France, lobsters from Norway, and stolen art from all over Europe. Trains transporting Jews and others to death camps had the right-of-way over troop and ammunition trains headed for the front, and millions of Jews Poles, and Russians with valuable job skills, like doctors and engineers, were simply murdered. After the war was over, economists from the United States, England, France, and Russia went to Germany to study the Nazi economic system. They all returned home with the same conclusion – there was nothing to learn from the Nazis about how to run an economy. The reason that the myth of Nazi efficiency is so  dangerous is that the people who believe that the myth is true think that the way to stimulate a stagnant economy is to ‘go Nazi’, and that is a terrible idea!

Madame de Florian’s Apartment

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deFlorianMadame de Florian was a wealthy French socialite in the 1930s. She lived in a large and lavish apartment in the fashionable Opera Garnier district of Paris. In 1942, Madame de Florian moved from Paris, which was under Nazi occupation, to the south of France, which was not under occupation, but she continued to pay the rent on her Paris apartment. Madame de Florian intended to return to her Paris apartment after the war was over, but she never did. She liked life on the French Riviera. Madame de Florian died in 2010. After her death, an auctioneer hired by her heirs entered her Paris apartment. It was the first time that anyone had entered the apartment since 1942. When the auctioneer unlocked the door to the apartment, he was astonished. He found a perfectly preserved time capsule of what life was like for the French aristocracy in the 1920s and 1930s. The apartment was full of treasures. It took weeks to catalog everything. Some items in Madame de Florian’s apartment have already been sold, including a framed portrait of Madame de Florian herself by Giovanni Boldini. The painting sold for over 2 million Euros. Many other valuables in the apartment are still awaiting sale.

Titanic!

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titanicHave you ever seen the movie ‘Titanic’? No, not the 1997 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, but the 1943 version made in Nazi Germany. I collect movies made in Nazi Germany, and this is one of the best. No expense was spared in making this lavish movie. There are spectacular sets, beautiful costumes, and amazing special effects. The producers of this movie made a detailed 20 foot long model of the Titanic for the sinking scene, and they used a large luxury liner, a real one, to film the deck scenes. The special effects in the sinking scene are truly amazing considering the technology available in 1943. Despite the movie’s tremendous cost, ‘Titanic’ was never released in Nazi Germany. Dr. Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, did not like the movie’s message. In this version of the Titanic story, the hero is a German officer named Petersen. Petersen is convinced that the ship is traveling far too fast and is heading for disaster. He tells his superiors about his concerns, but he is repeatedly told to just obey orders and stop questioning the judgement of higher-ups. Petersen reluctantly does as he is told, and this leads to disaster. Goebbels did not like that message. He wanted the German people to just do as they were told, without asking questions. In this movie, the villain is a greedy, degenerate Englishmen named Ismay. In movies made in Nazi Germany, the villain was usually either an Englishmen or a Jew. Since there are no Jews in this movie, the villain is an Englishmen. If you would like to see this movie, give me a call. I have several copies with English subtitles.