Monday, October 24, 2011

Germany and France started the Italian "rot"


There's a good one.

No one asked you to illegally enter the Roman Empire on 22 August 476.

Then there was this little meeting between France and Germany recounted in Martin Borman: Nazi in Exile by Paul Manning.

Hitler, his intuitions at peak level despite his crumbling physical and mental health in the last year of the Third Reich, realized this and approved of it. "Bury your treasure," he advised Bormann, "for you will need it to begin a Fourth Reich." That is precisely what Bormann was about when he set in motion the "flight capital" scheme August 10, 1944, in Strasbourg. The treasure, the golden ring, he envi­ sioned for the new Germany was the sophisticated distribution of national and corporate assets to safe havens throughout the neutral nations of the rest of the world.

Martin Bormann knew in his heart that the war in Europe was over when Normandy was lost. The day Hitler's troops were defeated at the Falaise Gap was the day he ordered swing indus­trialists of Germany to Strasbourg to hear his plans for Ger­many's future.

Society's natural survivors, French version, who had served the Third Reich as an extension of German industry, would con­tinue to do so in the period of postwar trials, just as they had survived the war, occupation, and liberation. These were many of the French elite, the well-born, the propertied, the titled, the experts, industrialists, businessmen, bureaucrats, bankers. On the other hand, the intellectuals, the writers, the propagandists for the Germans, and the deputies of the Third Republic were among those purged with a heavy hand. The number of French­men who were part of the resistance during World War II was never large, about 2 percent of the adult population. With the liberation of France, old scores were settled: 124,750 persons were tried, 767 being executed for treason or contact with the enemy in time of war. Sentenced to prison terms were 38,000, who also endured "loss of national dignity"-disenfranchisement and ineligibility to hold public office. Even before any arrests and trials could take place, another 4,500 were shot out of hand.

Still, economic collaboration in France with the Germans had been so widespread (on all levels of society) that there had to be a realization that an entire nation could not be brought to trial. Only a few years before, there had been many a sincere and well-meaning Frenchman-as in Belgium, England, and throughout Europe-who believed National Socialism to be the wave of the future, indeed, the only hope for curing the many desperate social, political, and economic ills of the time. France, along with other occupied countries, did contribute volunteers for the fight against Russia. Then there were many other Frenchmen, the majority, who resignedly felt there was no way the Germans could be pushed back across the Rhine.

SPQR

No comments: