Hitler Time magazines man of the year 1938 and his American backers

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Thats one of the stories .

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

As you say, the RAF controlled the skies and The Royal Navy more or less controlled The English Channel.
Any succesful invasion would have been impossible without control of at least one of those perferably both.

And unlike some I could mention I very much doubt the British would have rolled over the minute a foreign boot set foot in this land nor would they have meekly surrendered in order to preserve their beloved capital city.

For some reason lots of people don't like the fact that The United Kingdom remained steadfast and resolute in the face of an alleged invincible foe and with only minimal assisstance actually turned them back.

originally posted by: anonentity
Thats one of the stories .

That's actually the facts.

originally posted by: Freeborn
And unlike some I could mention I very much doubt the British would have rolled over the minute a foreign boot set foot in this land nor would they have meekly surrendered in order to preserve their beloved capital city.

I think it was one of the most determined oppositions in history and you had the right leader in place to see it through.

originally posted by: anonentity
This seems to have been removed from the history books, it really was touch and go, whether America would get involved in the second world war. The Ford motor company gave permission for Hitler to use the ford truck as an army truck. American ball bearings were being shipped to Switzerland.Then on to Germany, it looks like in the present the fourth Reich is in full swing. www.youtube.com...

The reason that the US was so willing to invest in Germany and Hitler was that they got the job done, the job being absolutely crushing communism. He appeared to be a good investment and John Foster Dulles, who handled the vast majority of those investments, was a total Germanophile and was great friends with Hjalmar Schacht. IG Farben would never have been had it not been for Dulles's orchestration.

But, besides from some breaches of US Anti-Trust laws, quite major breaches admittedly, those businesses that traded with Germany were not doing anything wrong in building factories, supplying materials and sharing patents until the US allied itself to the UK and declared war on Germany. Neutrals are at liberty to trade with combatant nations, there is nothing wrong with that. However, at the IG Farben trial one of the charges was their role in waging aggressive war and more importantly, the planning of and preparation for it. No members of the US board of IG Farben were prosecuted under those charges, or even brought to question for it. Evidence presented at the trial indicated that the company began running 'war games' as early as 1935 and while companies like Standard Oil (synthetic rubber) and Ford (four wheel drive) were giving Germany exclusive production rights on those inovations, while also supplying raw materials for armament production they generally were also left unquestioned and assumed innocent to charges of waging of aggressive war too.

To get all that working for the Allied Forces was an act of deflection and sleight of hand on Churchill's part. To then get Hitler to go after Russia prematurely, thus completely decapitating the German supply line, was nothing short of genius. But it also led, directly to the Holocaust. It would though have done nothing to stop the genocide of the 'slavic' peoples and those who were otherwise deemed genetically unfit, or generally oppositional.

The thing with wars, when you get past the stage where only the victors get to write about it, is no one really comes out clean. The average American was as likely to have ancestry in an allied country as he was from an axis one. It's perfectly natural that some would find themselves wanting to give back to the old country and not want to go to war against it and feel divided. America therefore was getting bombarded by propaganda from both sides but it was never the US's serious intention to go to war with Germany just to supply them with the means to carry out their ambitions.

Either way, he was man of the year for crushing Commies, they somewhat looked over the little details like the Nuremberg Laws or had them explained to them as a Commie crushing measure which rendered them a thing of marvel and wonder.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

No its one of the stories, it just depends which one you want to believe.

a reply to: anonentity

It's the one with factual evidence like DNA. Your South America angle has no evidence.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

It wasnt about communism what happened is after ww1 Germany became a major trading partner. Most of Europe was still mad at the Germans so this meant the US could trade with Germany without competition. So the United States became very close to Germany in fact in 1928 Herbert Hoover, was the first president of German ancestry to be elected. This was also a huge source of tourism this is why the hindenberg even came to the US. Germany was hoping we would reestabish trade agreements that weere severed after Hiter took power.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: ReadOnly
Largest in Europe (per country), not in entirety.

What does that even mean?

Even your example shows Germany had a population equal to France or you can say 2 countries in Europe.

Making it the largest. Including the conquered territory, where forced labor prevailed, they where the seventh largest in the world.

All i did was post who the allies were. If you think about it, Germany is focused on Russia, already invaded Poland. You would think the rest of the European countries would have consolidated AND then made their push to Germany. Italy was always an outlier, in that large parts would not have sided with Germany.

Europe was beaten. The only countries left were Spain, Axis and neutral countries.

European populations prior to the EU were fairly constant and easy to assess. It has already been pointed out to you, and you already know, that Germany was equal to one or two countries in Europe in population. Germany, or actually Hitler, could rely on very little of the European population for support. This is common sense.

German, as i stated earlier, never defeated Russia. Then add in Poland, which Germany already invaded.

Then you have this from Wikipedia:

"German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. Slovak military forces advanced alongside the Germans in northern Slovakia. As the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Germany–Poland border to more established defense lines to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, the Germans gained an undisputed advantage. Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom.[14] Those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September; in the end their aid to Poland was very limited, however France invaded a small part of Germany in the Saar Offensive."

If you cannot see Germany's problems then you only have your heart set on it.

So lets see: You have a belligerent aggressor invading 2 major countries in Europe. Countries that "had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September" as shown above, no help came. Then you factor since Germany already stretched thin, occupied in two wars...no less RUSSIA being one.

en.wikipedia.org...(World_War_II)

Since German forces were fighting outside the country why didnt the rest of Europe invade Germany? or at the very least Italy. Still why bother with Italy since it is doubtful Mussolini would have been able to stay in power, at that point especially.

originally posted by: ReadOnly
European populations prior to the EU were fairly constant and easy to assess. It has already been pointed out to you, and you already know, that Germany was equal to one or two countries in Europe in population.

I'm the one who told you that after you said:

To add to that, Germany is a small country, low population etc.

Germany was neither small nor lowly-populated as you claimed.

Germany, or actually Hitler, could rely on very little of the European population for support. This is common sense.

He didn't need to rely on anyone for support, he had most of the continent subjugated and had a huge population of forced labor.

German, as i stated earlier, never defeated Russia.

You asked how they could have possibly defeated Russia, I gave you the scenario and the facts.

Since German forces were fighting outside the country why didnt the rest of Europe invade Germany?

That should be pretty obvious, there wasn't anyone left to invade Germany, they all had capitulated.

a reply to: dragonridr

Well, I think, first of all for the sake of clarity (and to demonstrate that we're both technically wrong on this), according to Time magazine the reason Hitler was man of the year in 1938 was column inches, he littered the most conversations, particularly those that made it into print. The following year Stalin was Time man of the year, then Churchill, then Roosevelt. It should all now make perfect sense, he wasn't being revered as a great man, just the most talked about.

Most of Europe wasn't really all that mad with Germany, many realised that France's vengeful demands at the Paris peace conference had been excessive and detrimental to future peace and stability, and wanted to be friends with Germany help get them back on their feet. This is particularly true of British, Nordic and US relations with Germany especially among capitalists, industrialists and landowners who were terrified of the threat of Bolshevism. JP Morgan, Kuhn and Loeb, as well as other financiers had thrown money into Russia trying to stop the tide once it started, that having failed they looked at ways of preventing the spread of the 'disease'. Making Germany strong was, to many, the best way of doing that.

The US had not only received a great deal of immigrants from Germany but the US elite had also married into Germany's former aristocracy, and there was additionally a strong, wealthy and somewhat powerful contingent of White Russians who supported the Nazis more expansionist goals. John Foster Dulles through Sullivan and Cromwell arranged loan after loan from US bankers and financiers from 1931 onwards. Dulles was a rabid anti-Communist and spent a great deal of time in Berlin, knew first hand what Hitler's tactics were against communists and admired them. However, in 1935, Germany started defaulting on the loans and Sullivan and Cromwell, publically at least, ceased to trade with Germany. Post-war, much of the booty-sweeps of Operations Overcast and Paperclip can be seen as a recooping of those losses.

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

No its one of the stories, it just depends which one you want to believe.

The South American angle was repeatedly and fully investigated to no avail. A guy was even detained in Guatamala at one point on suspicion of being Bormann but it was simply over enthusiasm for the chase. Simon Wiesenthal was convinced Bormann was in South America. Allen Dulles asked Reinhard Gehlen to investigate the South America claims in 1953. Gehlen's investigation, including interviews with eye-witnesses, those who had escaped the bunker with Bormann, concluded that he had probably been killed. A Soviet officer had found Bormann's diary and other effects during the clean up operation. Gehlen believed that Bormann, unrecognised by the Soviet soldiers who found him, had been placed along with countless others in a mass grave. Dulles ordered the park where the grave was located dug up, skulls were taken away to be examined but since Bormann's dental records couldn't be located this proved fruitless.

It was though generally accepted that he had died in Berlin until Gehlen contradicted himself in 1971 when he claimed that Admiral Canaris had confided in him before the end of the war that Bormann was a mole for the Soviets and since the war he had been seen in Russia alive and well. Why he felt the need to further stir the pot is unknown, though it was likely to deflect attention from elsewhere, but the idea of Bormann as a traitor to Hitler developed wings and spawned a few books.

Bormann was probably the greatest prize to post-war Nazi hunters, and they hunted high and low. There was dozens of 'stories' about how he survived, where he was and who he was working for but as Augustus points out, just one of them has subsequently been confirmed, by evidence, to have been true.

At around 11:00 pm on 1 May, Bormann left the Führerbunker with SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann, and Hitler's pilot Hans Baur as members of one of the groups attempting to break out of the Soviet encirclement.[91][92] Bormann carried with him a copy of Hitler's last will and testament.[93] The group left the Führerbunker and travelled on foot via a U-Bahn subway tunnel to the Friedrichstraße station, where they surfaced.[94] Several members of the party attempted to cross the Spree River at the Weidendammer Bridge while crouching behind a Tiger tank. The tank was hit by Soviet artillery and destroyed, and Bormann and Stumpfegger were knocked to the ground.[91] Bormann, Stumpfegger, and several others eventually crossed the river on their third attempt.[91] Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Axmann walked along the railway tracks to Lehrter station, where Axmann decided to leave the others and go in the opposite direction.[95] When he encountered a Red Army patrol, Axmann doubled back. He saw two bodies, which he later identified as Bormann and Stumpfegger, on a bridge near the railway switching yard.[95][96] He did not have time to check thoroughly, so he did not know how they died.[97] Since the Soviets never admitted to finding Bormann's body, his fate remained in doubt for many years.[98]

In 1963, a retired postal worker named Albert Krumnow told police that around 8 May 1945 the Soviets had ordered him and his colleagues to bury two bodies found near the railway bridge near Lehrter station. One was dressed in a Wehrmacht uniform and the other was clad only in his underwear.[113] Krumnow's colleague Wagenpfohl found an SS doctor's paybook on the second body identifying him as Ludwig Stumpfegger.[114] He gave the paybook to his boss, postal chief Berndt, who turned it over to the Soviets. They in turn destroyed it. He wrote to Stumpfegger's wife on 14 August 1945 and told her that her husband's body was "interred with the bodies of several other dead soldiers in the grounds of the Alpendorf in Berlin NW 40, Invalidenstrasse 63."[115]

Excavations on 20–21 July 1965 at the site specified by Axmann and Krumnow failed to locate the bodies.[116] However, on 7 December 1972, construction workers uncovered human remains near Lehrter station in West Berlin just 12 m (39 ft) from the spot where Krumnow claimed he had buried them.[117] Upon autopsy, fragments of glass were found in the jaws of both skeletons, suggesting that the men had committed suicide by biting cyanide capsules to avoid capture.[118] Dental records reconstructed from memory in 1945 by Hugo Blaschke identified one skeleton as Bormann's, and damage to the collarbone was consistent with injuries that Bormann's sons reported he had sustained in a riding accident in 1939.[117] Forensic examiners determined that the size of the skeleton and the shape of the skull were identical to Bormann's.[118] Likewise, the second skeleton was deemed to be Stumpfegger's, since it was of similar height to his last known proportions.[117] Composite photographs, where images of the skulls were overlaid on photographs of the men's faces, were completely congruent.[118] Facial reconstruction was undertaken in early 1973 on both skulls to confirm the identities of the bodies.[119] Soon afterward, the West German government declared Bormann dead. The family was not permitted to cremate the body, in case further forensic examination later proved necessary.[120]

The remains were conclusively identified as Bormann's in 1998 when German authorities ordered genetic testing on fragments of the skull. The testing was led by Wolfgang Eisenmenger, Professor of Forensic Science at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.[121] Tests using DNA from one of his relatives identified the skull as that of Bormann.[121][122] Bormann's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Baltic Sea on 16 August 1999.[121]

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: ReadOnly
European populations prior to the EU were fairly constant and easy to assess. It has already been pointed out to you, and you already know, that Germany was equal to one or two countries in Europe in population.

I'm the one who told you that after you said:

To add to that, Germany is a small country, low population etc.

Germany was neither small nor lowly-populated as you claimed.

Germany, or actually Hitler, could rely on very little of the European population for support. This is common sense.

He didn't need to rely on anyone for support, he had most of the continent subjugated and had a huge population of forced labor.

German, as i stated earlier, never defeated Russia.

You asked how they could have possibly defeated Russia, I gave you the scenario and the facts.

Since German forces were fighting outside the country why didnt the rest of Europe invade Germany?

That should be pretty obvious, there wasn't anyone left to invade Germany, they all had capitulated.

Obviously we do not agree.

en.wikipedia.org...(World_War_II)#Soviet_Union

"In Poland, as the Red Army approached, the Polish Home Army (AK) launched Operation Tempest. During the Warsaw Uprising, the Red Army were ordered to halt at the Vistula River. Whether Stalin was unable or unwilling to come to the aid of the Polish resistance is disputed.[97]"

a reply to: ReadOnly

Not sure what you're trying to prove with your out of context quote.

a reply to: dragonridr

What a load of bull crap. if Germany attacked USA shipping they would have been in the war quicker.

Why did you enter the war oh yeah because Germany declared war on the USA first. Then if by magic you had the ships.

On December 11, 1941, the United States Congress declared war upon Germany (Pub.L. 77–331, Sess. 1, ch. 564, 55 Stat. 796), hours after Germany declared war on the United States.

Then if by magic you had the ships to supply Allies and Russia.