Acquittal for Germany

Freispruch für Deutschland: Ausländische Historiker und Publizisten widerlegen antideutsche Geschichtslügen (Acquittal for Germany: Foreign Historians and Journalists Refute Anti-German Lies about History), Robert L. Brock (publisher), Munich: FZ-Verlag, 1995. 160 pages.

As the subtitle of this book informs us, Freispruch für Deutschland is concerned with writings of non-German historians and journalists who have argued against the war guilt thesis and other accusations of wrongdoing on the part of Germans and their governments. The book contains a good deal of summarization of the arguments against the governments which have sought to crush Germany during two highly destructive world wars and their aftermath's.

The publisher of this book is an Afro-American who states his objectives in a brief preface in German, part of which reads in my translation:

As already after the First World War, after 1945 Germany was also subjected to a flood of lies. In this book there is a carefully prepared and scholarly-based survey of the pertinent international literature.

In this book several hundred persons speak: historians, scholars, politicians and journalists who present a denial of the unjustified accusations and claims directed against Germany and the German people. The multitude of authors includes members of every race, religious affiliation and color of skin and offers in its diversity a unique basis of discussion….

It is my wish that Freispruch für Deutschland will find a wide circle of readers. I call upon the Germans to free themselves of their national inferiority complex which was imposed on them under the bayonets of the victors and by means of a radical process of reeducation.

A two-page introduction points out that many a person in a powerful position in central Europe would lose his power if it were not for the fact that German national self-esteem is low. Even French and British statesmen have exhorted Germans to cease their self-demeaning. The introduction concludes with a quotation from the Japanese prime-minister Yasuhiro Nakasone (1982-7): “A nation which does not love its country and is not proud of itself can neither respect other nations nor be respected by them.”

The organization of the book consists of an alphabetical presentation of authors along with the subjects with which they deal. Some 700 book titles are presented. This arrangement makes the book a handy reference work and guide to the immense amount of historical writing by non-German authors which puts Germany and Germans in a far better light than does the barrage of anti-German propaganda that has been spread with well-calculated objectives since 1914.

There is an index of names (pages 157-160) at the end of the book which is to some extent superfluous in view of the fact that the authors presented are already in alphabetical order. On the other hand, a topical index, which would have been an important contribution to the value of the book, is lacking.

In order to give an idea of the scope of the topics covered by the book, I have compiled the following abridged, far from complete index of some of the most important topics which I have selected as a sample of the contents:

• Allied war crimes: Fritsch, Utley, Veale, de Zayas
• America First Committee: Lindbergh
• Barbarossa: Suvorov
• Blockade, continuation after First World War: Gedye
• Bombing of German cities: Irving, Lindbergh, McKee, Natan, Snow, Spaight, Taylor, Webster
• Churchill: Huges, Irving
• Danzig and the Corridor: Burckhardt
• Expulsions of ethnic Germans: Geoffre, de Zayas
• France, its treatment of “Collaborators”: Huddleston, Pryce-Jones, Rassinier, Seraut
• Gas chambers, homicidal: Mayer, Miksche, Voslensky
• German armed forces, deportment of: Bennett, Benoist-Mechin, Bishop, Cartier, Clostermann, Galbraith, Liddel Hart, Mannerheim, Patton
• German prisoners-of-war, Allied treatment of: Bacque, Gun, Sack, A. Smith
• Germany, occupation of: App, Balfour, Davidson, Gheorghe, Gollancz, Keeling, Kopelow, Launay, Lindbergh, Peterson, Solzhenitsyn
• Japanese-Americans, internment of: Daniels, Drinnon
• Jews, position in USSR: Duranty, Epstein, Margolina
• Katyn, massacre of Polish officers at: Epstein, Fitzgibbon, Mackiewicz
• Keelhaul, Operation: Bethell, Ellion, Epstein, Tolstoy
• Morgenthau Plan: Irving
• Norway, occupation of: Hewins
• Nuremberg and other war crimes trials: Bardeche, Belgion, Conners, Hankey, Irving, Regras, Saunders, B. Smith, T. Taylor, Thompson, Tittman, Utley
• Origins of First World War: Fay, Lang, Morel, Neilson
• Origins of Second World War: d'Argile, Bussi, Hoggan, Taylor
• Pearl Harbor: Barnes, Flynn, Morgenstern, Neumann, Richardson, Theobald, Toland
• Propaganda tactics: Delmer, Hanel, Howe, Klotz, Le Marec, Posonby, Sanders
• Rocket engineers: Franklin
• Roosevelt: Dall, Fish, Hedin, Hughes, Sanborn, Tansill, Wedemeyer
• Stalin: Antonov-Ovssejenko, Bobrenjov, Conquest
• Unconditional surrender: Armstrong, Fuller
• Ukraine, famine in: Conquest, Dolot, Zlepko
• Versailles, Treaty of: Aga Khan, Hedin, Hoover, Keynes, Lansing, Marguerite, Nitti
• Yalta and other wartime conferences: Neumann

I found only one author, de Zayas, who deals with the massacres of ethnic Germans in western Poland that took place during the early days of September 1939. I know of no extensive non-German treatment of this important topic, these massacres which influenced the further conduct of the war, making it more desperate and frightening. Of course, there is no mention of the infamous Jewish author, T. Kaufman, who advocated as early as 1941 the complete genocide of the German nation by means of sterilization.

A number of famous men who have refuted accusations against Germany of who have eased the burdens of its defeats are mentioned: President Herbert Hoover, the economist J.M. Keynes, Charles Lindbergh, the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, the Russian author Solzhenitsyn and General George Patton.

A number of authors come to mind who might have been included, but were not, for example, Col. John Beaty, whose Iron Curtain Over America (1951) was widely read, and Donald Day, a correspondent for The Chicago Tribune, whose writings should have been taken as an important admonishment against American involvement in the war in Europe which proved to be the war to make the world safe for Bolshevism, which collapsed a lustrum ago from its inherent weaknesses and evil after nearly a half century of a costly, frightening “Cold War.” Perhaps astonishingly, we encounter a number of Jewish authors, such as Howe, Klotz, Kopelow, Mayer and Sack, in Freispruch für Deutschland.

The anonymous compiler(s) of Freispruch für Deutschland devote(s) relatively little space to evaluations of Hitler and when they do mention him it is usually in a quite negative manner. There have been, however, distinguished non-Germans who have praised Hitler at one time or another, even including Churchill. Two quite notable encomia of Hitler were made by two famous Scandinavians, the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin and the Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1920). Even more remarkable is the fact that that these two encomia were written at the time of Hitler's death and the utter defeat of Germany. (See Bulletin 47, which includes the original Norwegian working of Hamun's encomium published in the largest Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten.) Freispruch für Deutschland contains no mention of Hedin's encomium, although considerable space is allotted to Hedin. There is no mention of Hamsum at all, let alone his encomium.

In the general public, one of the most frequently mentioned aspects of the Second World War is, of course, the plight of the interned Jews, the so-called “Holocaust,” a word far more appropriate for the militarily unnecessary burning of Dresden in February, 1945. Freispruch für Deutschland devotes very little space to the “Holocaust” question, although a great deal of writing by authors has been concerned with it in the United States, England and France. It might be said that the compilers of Freispruch für Deutschland walk around the “Holocaust” question like a cat walking around hot porridge, to use a figurative expression from German. A notable exception is the nearly figurative expression from German. A notable exception is the nearly whole page devoted to notable revisionist statements in Why Did the Heavens not Darken? by a Jewish professor at Princeton University, Arno J. Mayer (1988: reviewed in Bulletin 38). Brief mentions of other aspects of the “Holocaust” material can also be found under the names Laqueur, Miksche and Voslensky. It would be hard to imagine that the compilers are unaware of the great deal of revisionist writing on the “Holocaust” question in the United States. In fact, the Journal of Historical Review is mentioned several times.

The compilers frequently reproach contemporary German historians for their masochistic treatment of German history, in contrast to the many examples of more objective treatment by non-German historians. In a number of places they employ the contemptuous word Nesbeschmutzer, German authors who are like birds that befoul their own nests.

The publisher of Freispruch für Deutschland has also published another important book: Ben Weintraub, Keystone of the New World Order, the Holocaust Dogma of Judaism (1995). It argues that the “Holocaust” material is essentially a religious dogma and should therefore not be forced onto children in public schools.

Freispruch für Deutschland is an interesting, constructive and much-needed approach to the history of Germany since 1914. It is a handy reference and guide which should be consulted by all honest students of European history of the twentieth century.

Committee for the Reexamination of the History of the Second World War (Bulletin 74)