Originally posted by erictcartman
excellent post,i know heydrich never considered himself a jew but there is a quote attributed to him where he calls himself a zionist.
I apologise I missed your response previously.
As I think I tried to explain, Heydrich was a Zionist, in the traditional sense, he believed that the Jews should have their own state, preferably, in
the Palestinian Mandate. The motives behind those beliefs are less clear. Certainly he supported the Nazi racial ideal, but at the same time,
according to his wife, he also resented being made responsible for dealing with the Jews when an emigration solution failed, and he clearly did his
upmost to facilitate a solution that did not involve mass murder. He worked closely with the Jewish militia, and sent Eichmann to meet with those
leaders in Palestine, but he was hampered in his efforts not only by British Naval and intelligence activity, but also with those within the Nazi
Party who sought to bleed the Jews dry of all their resources and the insistence that those Jews pay their own way. With his close friend Admiral
Canaris he instigated a plan to ship en masse the remaining Jews to Palestine, which failed due to the British blockade, and then to Madagascar, which
also failed due to a leak that alerted Britain to this plan and instigated a further blockade. One could almost wonder why the Allies were so keen
not to allow the Jews to escape from their eventual fate.
Originally posted by erictcartman
everything about hess,from the lone flight,to his death is very wrong,albert speer lived a life of luxury after the war as did field marshall paulus
in communist east germany,as im sure you know.
i dont think any of the nazis who escaped the noose at nuremburg were treated as cruely as hess,werent they all let out of prison after fairly short
sentences in the sprit of reconciliation?
i honestly think hess must have known something that would have been devastating to the allies even after all this time.
obviously this can only be speculation but i do wonder if churchill had put out feelers for peace with germany, only for him to doublecross hess when
he was sure germany was going to invade soviet union.
even this doesent feel quite right though.
woulld you consider starting a new thread on hess and the riddle of the infamous flight,his subsequent imprisonment and very suspicious death?
I think that there are already a few threads covering that topic. Perhaps it might be better to ressurrect one of those rather than start another.
I personally feel that the punishment enacted against Hess was of the cruelest and most unusual kind. In my opinion it would have been kinder to have
executed him. While he did draft the Nuremberg Laws, it was Speer who organised and instigated the slave labour programme, which under international
law at that time, was a criminal offence. It is not an offense to impose laws upon your own citizens, such as the Nuremberg Laws, however heinous,
were, it was, and is, illegal to transport people into your country for the purposes of slavery.
It is worth noting that the Hess file is still under the official secrets act and though due for review in 2013, it is doubtful in my mind that it
will be made public, and if it is, that it will be heavily censored. Many of the records already, it has been claimed, were destroyed by fire, I
expect a similar tragedy to befall the rest.
According to Martin Allen in the Hitler Hess Deception, Churchill did indeed lure Hitler and Hess into believing that peace was a possibility, and
that the condition of that peace was that the Nazis were to declare war against the Soviets. Part of the ploy, according to Allen, and Charles
Whiting, in Hitler's secret war, was to convince Hitler that Churchill was about to be overthrown by a vote of no confidence. Hitler wasn't so
naive as to expect Churchill to make peace with him, but he was well aware that he and his policies had many supporters amongst the aristocracy and
industrial community in the UK.
With Hess's capture, and assuming that Hitler was aware of the motives behind Hess's flight, Hitler was faced with a quandary, and clearly left in a
void of advise. He vacillated over his the date of attack, but all the while he was building up his forces. Britain at the same time, was, by
various means, telling Stalin quite explicitly that the Germans were amassing for attack, Stalin though, assured of the sanctity of the
none-aggression pact, dismissed these alerts.
What is telling about the whole episode, is that right up until his death, Hess was never permitted to be alone with his visitors, even his own son.
I think that it is a disgrace that a human being be treated in that way for so long, especially since most of crimes for which he was held
accountable, occurred after he was in captivity.