Letters

Keeping an Open Mind

As a school teacher, it is my job to keep an open mind and know all sides of history. Thanks to your great website, I can do that. Your articles are well written and informative. It's a nice change of pace from the biased garbage we see on the mainstream news shows.

Keep up the good work.

E. G.
[by Internet]

John Birch Society and IHR

Enclosed please find a $100 check to help the IHR. Originally I intended to send this money to the John Birch Society. While I think the Society has done a lot of good work, they pulled exactly the kind of thing on you that is always being pulled on them, and as a faithful JBS member of 35 years, I didn't like it. [“John Birch Society Takes Aim at Holocaust Revisionism and the IHR,” Nov.-Dec. 1998 Journal.] So, those who are the least afraid to tell the whole truth get my money. Keep up the good fight. (I intend to let the JBS know how I feel.)

S. T. S.
Norton, Mass.

Straight-Forward Style

At school I was taught that six million Jews were gassed to death. In one class we studied a fictional book about a Jewish teacher in Poland and his ordeal that our teacher presented as factual.

When I became old enough to think for myself, I rejected the portrayal of Germans as fantastically evil. I did so instinctively, even though at the time I didn't have the facts to cite in support of this. Thanks to you, now I do.

The material you present on your web site appears to be honest and well documented, with source references cited. Although I have not (yet) checked the references, I am inclined to believe them because your style is straight-forward, “just the facts” and non-emotional.

I posted your URL [Internet web site address] along with a few facts about outrageous Holocaust claims to some e-mail lists I belong to. The replies were amazing: unintelligent, biased, abusive, even ridiculous, with no concern at all for facts, or even curiosity about the other side of the argument.

Thank you again.

G. R.
Australia
[by Internet]

Looking for Truth

My complements on your web site. While most revisionist sources speak favorably about your Institute, I have found some hostile sites that claim, essentially, that you say that the Jews had to be killed. Of course, this is not only untrue, but not even consistent with the tradition of historical revisionism. Above all, a revisionist is someone who is looking for the truth.

R. G.
Italy
[by Internet]

Good Luck

To the entire IHR staff: Merry Christmas and good luck in 1999. Thank you for your indefatigable work. Keep up the good work!

Wilhelm Stäglich
Glücksburg, Germany

Hard to Swallow

Viktor Suvorov's thesis that Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union was a defensive move or a preventive strike is a bit hard to swallow [“Stalin's Plan to Conquer Europe,” July-August 1998 Journal]. Anyway, you should know about a recent book, Thunder on the Dnepr: Zhukov-Stalin and the Defeat of Hitler's Blitzkrieg, by Bryan 1. Fugate and Lev Dvoretsky (Presidio Press, 1997). Citing newly available Soviet military records, the authors contend that Zhukov and Stalin fooled Hitler by causing him to think that German forces had largely destroyed the Red Army during the opening weeks of the war. Actually, they contend, Stalin had huge reserves with heavy modern equipment to throw against the Germans after they had pushed far inland.

Journal articles, I find, are often biased in favor of capitalism. All the same, it is it worthwhile reading more than one side of every subject. Cheers for historical revisionism!

J. E.
Hot Springs, Mont.

Appreciation

I can't even adequately express how grateful I am that you do what you do. Your group is truly to be admired. All I can say is: I'm glad you're out there. I only hope that my contribution [$100] helps a little.

S. Y.
La Plata, Maryland

Suvorov Not Alone

In his letter in the Nov.-Dec. 1998 Journal, P. H. writes that Viktor Suvorov is wrong in claiming that Stalin was preparing to attack Germany in 1941. Well, he should know that Suvorov is not the only historian to make this argument. Austrian historian Ernst Topitsch, for example, makes essentially the same point in his book Stalin's War (St. Martin's Press, 1987). He cites a mass of statistics to show' that the troops amassed by Stalin on the western Soviet border greatly out-numbered and outgunned the facing German troops, who were themselves massed in preparation for attack against the Red Army.

R. H.
[by Internet}

Today's European Unity Foreshadowed in World War II

Few realize that the steady economic and political unification of Europe – manifest, for example, in the recent introduction of the supra-national European currency, the “Euro” – was strongly foreshadowed in the Second World War planning of Germany's leaders.

During the war years, high-level German officials promoted a “European Economic Community,” forerunner of the European Community. As part of this effort, in 1942, for example, the Reich Economics Ministry, in cooperation with Berlin business and economic associations, issued a book, Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (“European Economic Community”).

That same year, a leading National Socialist Party periodical, the Schulungsbrief, reported favorably on the rise of a new all-European economic order. An article featured a statement by Walter Funk, Economics Minister and Reichsbank president: “The economic unity of Europe is already much more in place than most people can imagine.”

An article by army teaching director Dr. Karl Christoffel in a 1944 instruction booklet for the German armed forces pointedly declared: “During the emergency of this struggle for its existence, Europe has begun to recognize that its security and continued existence are possible only in the unification of its nations in a European economic community. The grim attempt by the British and the Americans to starve out the continent, including its onetime allies, has obliged us to work together as if this was already a unified economic zone. Economic barriers between countries, which once seemed insurmountable, have been dropped, thereby releasing productive forces on a previously unimaginable scale … Out of inner necessity, Europe struggles for continental economic freedom with governmental pressure against the international economic hegemony of Anglo-American money imperialism and against the economic enslavement of [Soviet] Bolshevism … Since the outbreak of the war against Bolshevism, the great German struggle for freedom has become a war for European unity…”

Newspapers and magazines in wartime Germany, and in other European countries, reflected and promoted this new vision of Europe. Among the various pan-European periodicals published in wartime Germany was the French-language Devenir, which was boldly subtitled “Combat Journal for the European Community.”

Along with the introduction of the Euro on January 1, 1999, the exchange rates of eleven European currencies were irrevocably “locked in” with each other, and with the Euro. For the time being, the currencies of these eleven countries continue to exist and circulate, but monetary policy for these “Euroland” currencies is no longer set by the central bank of each participating country, but rather by the new Frankfurt-based European Central Bank.

During the Second World War, several European currencies were similarly “coordinated.” While the Polish zloty, the Czech crown, and the Dutch guilder continued to exist and circulate, they were no longer independent national currencies. Monetary policy for these currencies, including the amount of notes in circulation and their exchange rates with the German Reichsmark, and thus with each other, was no longer set in Warsaw, Prague or Amsterdam, but rather in Berlin. Some other European currencies were likewise linked to the Reichsmark, although not quite as rigidly, through various bilateral arrangements. During the Second World War, the Reichsbank in Berlin became, in effect, a European central bank.

Today, more than half a century later, important features of Third Reich Germany's visionary wartime program for European economic and monetary unification are being put into effect.

E. Svedlund
Seattle

Changing Minds

Keep up the good work. People are listening to you, and they are changing their minds.

S. T.
[by Internet}

Non-Stop Reading

The July-August 1998 issue was so good that I feel compelled to write. Thank you for your magnificent Journal of truth. I can't put an issue down without reading it through non-stop. I have been with you since the very beginning, and admire all of you. You are all great and brave men. I truly thank you gallant warriors for being there on the front lines, getting the truth to the public.

H. W.
Wildwood, Penn.

Someone Must Do It

Thank you again for the Journal, and for all the work, effort and toil required in putting it out. It's work that someone must do, and you are doing it.

L. P.
Jackson, Calif

Appreciation from Nippon

Greetings from Japan. Even here in Sapporo, your diligent effort is much appreciated.

W. K.
Sapporo, Japan

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