The [Fascist] colonial government intervened at the level of East African bakeries and flour types.⁴¹ In 1938 from January to June, the [Fascist] ministers of the East African colonies introduced ‘La disciplina della panificazione’, a set of laws that used the colour of consumers’ skin to determine the colour of the bread they were permitted to eat.⁴²

Article one dictated the standard bread recipe for [Fascist] military personnel. Loaves for the [Regio Esercito] and road construction crews should be made from at least 80 per cent local wheat flour, mixed with no more than 10 per cent of local teff, dura, barley, and corn flours, or with imported soft wheat flours.⁴³

Article two standardised bread recipes available to Italian colonists: ‘Il pane per la popolazione civile di razza bianca deve essere confezionato con farina di grano, abburattate ali 80% miscelata fino al 20% di farine di cereali locali od importati’ (‘Bread for the white civilian population must be packaged with 80% wheat flour, blended with up to 20% of local or imported cereal flours).’

The legislation included some exceptions. Bakers’ recipes could offer as low as 70–72% wheat if their product was prepared for consumers with special dietary needs, like hospital patients. Italian bread products, such as grissini, were also exempt.⁴⁴

Any baker in possession of pure wheat flour was commanded to immediately sell their stocks to the Azienda Annonaria Governatoriale at the price dictated by the Comitato Vigilanza Prezzi della Federazione Fascista.⁴⁵ On 26 July 1938, governor of Addis Ababa Canero Medici established the bread recipes for East African labourers.⁴⁶

Article two stated: ‘Per l’alimentazione della mano d’opera di colore dovranno essere usate dalle imprese soltanto farine di cereali locali diversi dal grano (dura, taft, orzo, ecc.)’ (‘For the feeding of labourers of colour, only local cereal flours other than wheat (durum, teff, barley, etc.) must be used by companies’.)

Put telegraphically, Italians were to eat white bread made from wheat, and East Africans were to eat brown bread made from local grains, like barley. Culinary legislation in the colonies centered on questions of racial identification and division. It allotted different foods to different people, based on skin colour.

To enforce the rules, a new Commission for Control of Breadmaking (Commissione di controllo sulla panificazione) was established, consisting of a representative from the Partito Nazionale Fascista, a health inspector, and a baker.⁴⁷ This group would, from time to time, be called from East Africa to make their reports in Rome. Twice a month, this group would inspect the bread ovens from Gondar to Azozò, making sure that their owners obeyed the law. Violators were subject to jail time of up to one month plus a 500 lire fine.⁴⁸

As Germany sought to rebuild itself [after 1918], establishing the rôles disabled people would hold in society became a means for German citizens to evaluate the success of the new democracy.¹⁰⁶ The 1919 Weimar Constitution, the governing document for the newly created [pseudo]democratic régime, promoted, amongst other things, equality, free speech and freedom to participate in one’s community; however, in practice, the disabled were not granted equal access to this right.¹⁰⁷

While “many remained objects of charity or social outcasts” and “appeared in freak shows,” others were “hidden away by their ashamed families,” perceived to be “crippled beggars” on the streets, or became the focal point for malicious jokes.¹⁰⁸ Of course, non‐disabled Germans undervaluing or preferring to avoid disabled communities does not equate to supporting “euthanasia” practices; however, it does highlight a preference for their removal and exclusion.

[…]

In West Germany, the history of [Fascism] was first treated with a “collective amnesia” during the 1940s and 1950s, where “postwar Germans suffered from an incapacity to ‘work through’ the traumas of the era [the Third Reich].”¹⁵³ It was during this period that [Fascist] perpetrators of “euthanasia” were tried at the Nuremberg Medical Trials from 1946 to 1947 (NMT) and at smaller West German courts.¹⁵⁴

Although Germans supported the larger trials, which convicted a handful of major war criminals, the successor trials, which included the NMT and proceedings in West German courts, involved moving beyond top [Fascist] officials and confronting the complicity to [Fascist] crimes, which permeated multiple levels of German society, and made it difficult for civilians to separate ‘Nazis’ from ‘Germans’.¹⁵⁵ Because of this, Hepburn argues that “the German public was simply not interested in the trial[s]” and Bryant claims they “were highly critical” of them.¹⁵⁶

Thus, the court proceedings failed to convey the seriousness of the atrocities committed against disabled Germans, an act that had ramifications on their postwar memorialization. The majority of the perpetrators of “euthanasia” crimes were never convicted, or served minimal sentences, and prejudiced perceptions of disabled victims were evident during German court proceedings.¹⁵⁷

During the 1951 to 1953 proceedings for Dr. Alfred Leu, who was called to trial for murdering disabled children, he was acquitted of his charges because the court agreed that Dr. Leu had “not acted maliciously ‘because the children or the mentally ill were guideless or defenseless in the first place”’ and that those he had killed were “low forms of existence with no perceptible emotional life”.¹⁵⁸

Even after medical professionals were brought to trial, and the horror of the “euthanasia” program was uncovered, many [Fascist] perpetrators of “euthanasia” did not believe they had committed crimes against disabled Germans.¹⁵⁹ This resulted in an extensive portion of the medical community from [the Third Reich] continuing to practice in postwar Germany and perpetuate their perceptions of disabled Germans.¹⁶⁰

Therefore, the cumulative treatment of “euthanasia” crimes in postwar Germany contributed to the delayed memorialization of disabled Germans because it established a precedent that they were not victims of [Fascism].

However, there were members of the German medical community that spoke out against [Fascist] “euthanasia”. Two early reports, written by Germans about the “euthanasia” program, include Alice Platen‐Hallermund’s The Killing of the Mentally Ill in Germany: From the German Medical Commission at the American Military Court, 1948 (Die Tötung Geisteskranker in Deutschland: Aus der deutschen Ärztekommission beim amerikanischen Militärgerricht) and Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke’s The Dictate of Contempt for Humanity (Das Diktat der Menschenverachtung), which was originally printed in 1947 and later reprinted in 1960 as Medicine without Humanity: Documents of the Nuremberg Medical Trial (Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit: Dokumente der Nürnberger Ärzteprozessess).¹⁶¹

However, neither work was reviewed in German medical journals because no German publisher was willing to distribute works discussing [Fascist] “euthanasia” until the 1960s.¹⁶²

The early works of Platen‐Hallermund, Mitscherlich and Mielke indicate that the crimes committed against disabled victims were not entirely disregarded, but the resistance they faced from the German medical community suggests their viewpoint was a minority. This enforced silence about [Fascist] “euthanasia” contributed to the delay in memorialization because it inhibited Germans from engaging with this area of the [Fascist era].

[…]

The 1980s also witnessed the beginning of disability studies and the use of disability as an analytical lens with which to examine the [Fascist era].¹⁶⁷ During this time disability also became equated with “gender and race as an analytical construct used to define what it means to be human”.¹⁶⁸

These changes re‐established people with disabilities as individuals worthy of scholarly exploration and aided in the recognition of disabled Germans as victims of [Fascist] policies. This assisted in their eventual memorialization within Germany, but this process was delayed due to continued discrimination towards disabled Germans.

The end of World War II did not bring about an immediate shift in societal perceptions of disabilities, even though West German society included a variety of disabled individuals: veterans, coercive sterilization survivors, those who had managed to evade death at a “euthanasia” centre, and those who developed a disability due to malnourishment or disease immediately following 1945.¹⁶⁹

Within West Germany, medical professionals deliberated how best to care for and integrate disabled veterans and those who had a disability due to illness into society; however, “in all these discussions there was almost never any reflection on the fate of disabled people under [Fascism] or the involvement of professionals and special education teachers in carrying out the policies of racial hygiene.”¹⁷⁰ These debates also defined who was labeled as disabled, which further excluded disabled survivors.

In the Federal Ministry for Labor and Social Affair’s commissioned work The Disabled and Physically Handicapped in the Struggle for Existence in Former Times and Today, 1956, the term disabled was reserved for “war or workplace victims whose health had been harmed in the service of society,” and those who failed to meet these requirements were deemed “physically handicapped.”¹⁷¹

Although some survivors of [Fascist] sterilization and “euthanasia” may have rejected both terms, disabled and physically handicapped, their segregation from the German government’s definition of disabled impacted their ability to receive financial support and government services.

Those who matched the Labor Ministry’s definition of disabled were eligible for pensions and the protection of welfare laws. Those whom the Labor Ministry deemed “physically handicapped” were also labeled as “non‐genuine disabled” and were expected to be cared for by their family, the church or a charity.¹⁷²

Therefore, the German government aided in the segregation of disabled victims of [Fascist] crimes from Germany’s disabled community; an act that contributed to their delayed memorialization because segregation and discrimination does not foster an environment for memorialization.

Furthermore, the notion that sterilization and “euthanasia” were medically sound actions permeated beyond Germany’s [Fascist] medical community, and influenced government legislation in both West Germany and reunified Germany.

In 1953, the West German government issued the Federal Law for the Compensation of the Victims of National Socialist Persecution (Entschädigungegesetz), which further segregated the more than 370,000 victims of sterilization and 300,000 “euthanasia” victims by denying them financial compensation for their suffering and official recognition as a victim group.¹⁷³ They were excluded because they were not viewed as victims of racial, religious, or political persecution.¹⁷⁴

Although [Fascist] crimes of sterilization and “euthanasia” were considered crimes against humanity, Germans who were sterilized under the 1933 sterilization law were viewed as having received genuine medical treatment.¹⁷⁵ It was not until 2007 that the 1933 […] sterilization law was officially declared unconstitutional.¹⁷⁶

However, victims of coercive sterilization still did not receive compensation under Entschädigungsgesetz, because their persecution was still not considered to have been racially or politically motivated.¹⁷⁷ This finally changed in 2011 when “euthanasia” victims were officially granted “equal status to those of other [Fascist] crimes” (eg. the Jews) by the German government.¹⁷⁸

However, it was not until 2017 that “euthanasia” victims were included in the German Parliament’s annual remembrance of victims of [Fascism], which takes place on January 27th.¹⁷⁹ Although disabled victims are now officially recognized as victims of [Fascist] crimes, it is evident that it took time for that to be socially accepted and expressed, which impacted and delayed the memorialization process.

It is arguable that one of the most significant factors in the marginalization of disabled victims from postwar memorialization in Germany is the lack of survivors and those who can lobby to promote the interests of the victims of [Fascist] euthanasia and coercive sterilization.¹⁸⁰ There were very few disabled survivors of the “euthanasia” program, and victims of sterilization have continued to face discrimination and ostracism, as this chapter has discussed and will explore further in Chapter Three within the context of deaf survivors.¹⁸¹

Overall, disabled Germans may not have been able to share their experiences because of their marginalized positions. “Marginalized groups can only contribute to the national memory ‘if they command the means to express their visions and if their vision [is] compatible [with] social or political objectives and inclinations.’”¹⁸²

Furthermore, arbitrary categories such as “feebleminded” and “deaf and dumb”, which developed credibility during the Weimar Republic and Third Reich, continued into the postwar years and perpetuated prejudiced categorization and discrimination of disabled Germans. Therefore, disabled Germans were hindered in their ability to advocate for themselves because there were a limited number of survivors and their voices were suppressed by a society that was unwilling to include the plight of disabled Germans in the narrative of [Fascist] crimes.¹⁸³

This directly impacts the memorialization process, because, once again, disabled Germans were recognized as victims of [Fascism].

The Empire of Japan was probably the least antisemitic of the Axis powers, and some Imperialists found antisemitism incomprehensible. For example, the Imperial governor of Shanghai once baffledly asked Rabbi Kalish ‘Why do the Germans hate you so much?’ There simply wasn’t a diuturnal tradition of either anti‐Judaism or antisemitism in the Far East as there was in Europe.

Nevertheless, a number of Imperialists attracted to Germanic Fascism or Russian anticommunism did adopt this prejudice, and in any case the Eastern Axis implemented a few antisemitic policies in some of the spots that it occupied:

As with the Jewish combatant detainees earlier, non‐combatant Jews of the colony were not treated initially as a distinct ethnic or religious group. Those born in the Netherlands and those who held other Allied citizenship were arrested indistinguishably from non‐Jews with similar conditions.

By contrast, the [Eastern Axis] left unharmed the Iraqi Jews, like other ‘Foreign Orientals’; Jews coming from [Western] Axis nations (Germany, Italy, and Romania) like their non‐Jewish compatriots; Jews of non‐belligerent nations and neutral nations (e.g., Switzerland); and, even, a number of Dutch Jews who were fortunate to be born in Indonesia or demonstrated sufficient Asian roots.

On the whole, during the first year and a half of the [Axis] occupation in Indonesia more than half of the Jewish members of the local community were detained, either as soldiers or as non‐combatant Dutch. Their Jewishness, however, was by no means the reason for their tribulation.

This unbiased treatment, so to speak, did not last long. In the latter half of 1943 the [Eastern Axis’s] policy vis‐à‐vis the local Jews changed dramatically. The most salient aspect of it was the arrest of the Jews who remained outside the camps, regardless of their origin and nationality, solely for being Jews. This measure was without a parallel action against non‐Jews and it was accompanied by gradual segregation of many of the Jews already detained. Critically, it occurred only in Indonesia.

Those arrested now belonged to ethnic and national categories that were left unharmed elsewhere in the Japanese empire, notably in Shanghai and Harbin, the two largest single urban communities in East Asia. Despite its uniqueness, this new discriminatory policy vis‐à‐vis Jews, for being Jews, did not emerge without a warning. It was preceded by a minor anti‐Semitic campaign, which the [Axis] authorities had promoted in Java.

Its harbinger was Major (and, later, Lieutenant Colonel) Murase Mitsuo (1908–1949), the deputy head of the Sixteenth Army Kempeitai (military police of the Imperial Japanese Army) and the chief of its Tokkō (acronym for Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu, Special Higher Police) unit. His anti‐Semitic speech in front of propaganda officials in Batavia on 4 April 1943 was echoed, during the same month, by pronouncements of similar content in the local Indonesian press (Benda 1958: 255, 272; Kwartanada 2009).

[…]

The question of relative deprivation is in much lesser doubt when one considers the fate of other Jewish communities in East Asia during the war. It seems patent here that the Jews in wartime Indonesia were meted out harsher treatment than any other substantial Jewish community in the territories occupied by Japan. Nowhere else, was an entire community interned, the majority for more than three years in sub‐human conditions.

Even in Japan itself, Jews were treated better. After all, Jews who were allowed to land in Kobe shortly before the war and the few who remained there throughout the war were treated according to their nationality and not on account of their Jewishness (Shatzkes 1991; Kaneko 2003).

In Harbin, where a community of similar size (about 2,500 in 1939) lived since the early 20th century, Jews were not interned, whereas in Shanghai the majority — ‘stateless’ Jews from Germany, Austria, and various other [Axis]‐occupied nations in Central and Eastern Europe — was kept in an open ghetto under much more humane conditions than in any Indonesian camp. Other Jews in this Chinese city, mainly Russian Jews and Iraqi Jews, remained free throughout the war, while a small number of Allied Jewish citizens were interned (Kranzler 1976: 501).

In accounting for the particularly harsh treatment of the Jews of Indonesia, several moderating factors emerge. First, most of them were associated closely with the Dutch colonial regime and thus were meted out the same treatment as other Europeans. Nowhere else in East Asia was such a large civilian population interned and nowhere else did the Japanese face such logistical difficulties to maintain them.

In Harbin and even in Shanghai, the Jews were neither associated with the anti‐Japanese Chinese majority, nor with the Anglo‐Saxon enemies, and therefore were treated better. And second, the Jews in Indonesia were relatively marginal in size and economic importance — despite being a sizable community, and far from the sight of Western media or Jewish organisations.

On the whole, the circumstances of internment in the Dutch East Indies were unfavorable to all internees, but once separated from the gentile majority and within a growing Anti‐Semitic undercurrent, the Jewish internees seem to have faced particularly harsh conditions.

The keyword being ‘seem’; Rosen Jacobson, E.W. had difficulty corroborating Rotem Kowner’s observations:

Despite the certainty expressed in the speech, [Eastern Axis officials] were not at all sure that the [Fascists] were right about the ‘Jewish danger’. According to the eyewitness report of dentist M. Knap, the [Imperialists] began investigating themselves. In Knap’s prisoner of war camp, ten Jews were told out of the blue to line up.

Since the other prisoners thought this order was meant to be followed by some sort of punishment, they selected the ten youngest and strongest Jewish men, but then something unexpectedly happened: ‘The Japanese sergeant walked in front of and behind the row a couple of times, looked at the heads and legs and walked away while shaking his head. He had a newspaper clipping from de ‘Stürmer’ ([Fascist] propaganda paper) with a Jewish caricature in his hand, and none of the ten had the prescribed crooked legs, crooked back, or crooked nose.’^68^

This is a clear indication that [Berlin’s] influence on [Imperial] policy was not decisive. According to A.G. Vromans, the internment of Jews ‘for being of Jewish ancestry’, must be regarded as an extreme concession that Tokyo granted their allies. There were no other measures taken against the Jews.^69^

[…]

However, these are the only pieces of evidence I have found for Jews being treated differently from other internees, so a deliberate [Imperial] policy does not seem plausible. Elisabeth de Jong‐Keesing, another internee, recalled that the Japanese did not take any special measures against the Jews, but still intended to separate them from the non‐Jews by taking them first to Tangerang (the jodenhan) and then to Adek.

She also refers to non‐Jewish women such as Hetty Wertheim who registered as Jewish for the sake of their children, and because they were unaware of what was happening in Germany: ‘our move must have been at the request of a Japanese ally. […] Our Jewish group was very colourful. All Dutch women with a Jewish husband had also come forward and Jewish women with a non‐Jewish husband. Nobody denied it and nobody knew anything about the extermination camps in Germany.’^73^

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

According to the authors, the Estonian Legionnaires fought a patriotic war distinct from the [Axis]–Soviet conflict. Their stated goal was to defend Estonian territory from the Soviets, after which the Allies would guarantee Estonia’s independence, as they had after World War I (Rent 1997, 136; Gailit 1995; 9–11; Kõverjalg 1994, 86). The struggle of the Estonian Legion against the Soviet Union is presented as a national humanitarian effort, supported by the Estonian people (Gailit 1995; 27, 84; Kõverjalg 1994, 90–1, 129, 143).

This argument that the Estonian Legionnaires fought a separate war mirrors that of Finnish Waffen‐SS veterans (Holmila 2013, 218). It is also similar to that of Waffen‐SS volunteers from [the Third Reich] and other countries, who claim they fought only to defend Europe from Bolshevism (Mackenzie 1997; 137–8; Smith, Poulsen, and Christensen 1999, 95; Carrard 2010; chapter 7; Wilke 2011, 126, 379, 405). Clearly, the ‘separate war thesis,’ or a version of it, has been universally employed by veterans of the [Axis’s] armed forces to distance themselves from the Holocaust and emphasize their patriotism.

In the Estonian memoirs, the depiction of the [Axis] authorities and individual Germans ranges from critical to positive. The behavior of the [Axis] authorities is often attributed to sinister motivations, such as bellicosity, racism, narcissism, and a conqueror’s mentality. Observations about this are made after contact with [Wehrmacht] soldiers and Polish civilians in Latvia and Poland, and after hearing rumors of the brutal mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war and Jews (Rent 1997; 10, 30, 135, 137, 150; Kõverjalg 1994, 58, 70, 101). Gailit displays only general disappointment with [Axis] policy in Estonia, which he attributes to the selfish pursuit of German national interests (1995, 75, 113).

Kõverjalg, however, presents a more mixed image of individual Germans. Initial encounters with [Wehrmacht] soldiers gave him a brave and courteous first impression (Kõverjalg 1994, 54–5). He also writes that the Estonian Legionnaires admired one senior Waffen‐SS officer who died trying to save wounded Estonians (74).

Thus, the Germans appear to be motivated by bravery and honor. This praise, which contradicts previous criticism about German arrogance and brutality, reflects a paradox evident in many accounts by non‐German Waffen‐SS soldiers. That is, that men valued the opportunity to learn from and fight in the [Axis’s] armed forces, while simultaneously being disdainful of the [Third Reich’s] superciliousness and brutality in the occupation of their countries (Carrard 2010; chapter 6; Böhler and Gerwarth 2017; Westerlund 2019, 20–1).

The three authors attribute the actions of the Soviet Union to a desire to destroy and dominate its neighbors. The authors accuse it of war crimes against civilians, such as the bombing of defenseless Estonian cities and the subsequent colonization and Russification of Estonia (Gailit 1995, 112; Rent 1997; 14, 151, 216–17, 219; Kõverjalg 1994, 35; 90, 134–5).

The former narrative derives from the [Axis] propaganda of the time, which constantly railed against ‘terror attacks’ by Allied air forces on [Axis]‐occupied cities (Carrard 2010, chapter 5). The latter narrative reflects the post‐Soviet Baltic view that Soviet occupation represented a targeted genocide against the titular ethnicities, worse than [Axis] occupation (Kaprāns 2016; Radonić 2018, 483; Subotić 2019; chapter 4; Kõresaar 2019, 172).

[…]

The three authors paint a rosy picture of actively and positively motivated Estonians fighting a separate war against Soviet aggressors, unrelated to the crimes of the [Axis]. This narrative is evident in many of the postwar accounts of Waffen‐SS veterans from Germany and elsewhere.

The Estonian Legionnaires attribute the behavior of the [Axis] authorities and some German individuals to various sinister motivations, though the image presented is not entirely negative. This reflects the conflicting attitudes held by non‐German Waffen‐SS soldiers about simultaneously being occupied by a brutal regime, while also being able to train and fight in its prestigious army against the hated Soviets. The behavior of the Soviet regime is attributed to one sinister motivation — the desire to destroy and dominate its neighbors.

This is done so in a way that parrots [Axis] propaganda and reflects the post‐[Soviet] Baltic conception of the Soviet Union as a genocidal régime. The behavior of Soviet individuals is interpreted differently by the authors, yet still in a way that presents the war as an existential struggle between the evil Soviet Union and the good Estonian nation.

[…]

Gailit and Kõverjalg provide several examples of how the patriotism of the Estonian Legionnaires was openly demonstrated through spontaneous singing of the national anthem, refusal to leave Estonian territory, and fighting beneath the national flag (Gailit 1995; 82, 85, 87; Kõverjalg 1994, 69). The idea of the separate war is evident here: the inconvenient fact that the legionnaires fought in Hitler’s army is discarded to create a tale of Estonians battling the Soviets alone.

The memoirs also stress that Estonians shared an affinity with other nationalities who were victims of the Soviet and [Axis] régimes, such as Poles, Jews, and Central Asians (Rent 1997; 12, 143; Kõverjalg 1994, 72, 86). Such self‐victimization and appropriation of the suffering of groups who were targeted for annihilation by the [Axis], with the assistance of non‐German collaborators, is a common feature of Waffen‐SS apologists (Wilke 2011, 126) and the national narratives of post‐[Soviet] states (Radonić 2018; Subotić 2019).

To distance them from the European Estonians and Germans, Soviet NKVD soldiers are portrayed as Asian brutes (Kõverjalg 1994, 35) who contrast starkly with polite, Aryan […] soldiers (54–5). Rent, in a racist manner, believes that “the [Germans’] pattern of behavior reflects the European way of thinking, where trust is natural, versus an Asiatic [Soviet] mind‐set where […] everyone is suspected” (1997, 56).

Comical anecdotes about contact between the Estonians and Soviets during the first Soviet occupation depict the Soviet people as uncultured and backward (Rent 1997, 13; Kõverjalg 1994, 32). Again, the impact of [Axis] propaganda, which demonized the Soviet people as a subhuman, rampaging horde, is evident (Bartov 1991, 152; Carrard 2010; ch. 5; Böhler and Gerwarth 2017).

[…]

The memoir of Visvaldis Lācis […] serves as part of the introduction to his book, The Latvian Legion in the Light of Truth (2006). This attempts to prove the innocence of the Latvian Legion against accusations that it consisted of [Axis] sympathizers and participated in genocide. Instead, Lācis emphasizes that the Latvian Legion was made up of patriots, who fought exclusively against the Red Army for Latvian independence.

The book is written with the contemporary political situation of Latvia in mind: the suffering of Latvians at the hands of the Soviet authorities during World War II is used to trivialize accusations of maltreatment against the contemporary Latvian state by Russian‐speaking politicians (8).

[…]

Of all the [Latvian] authors, only Bankovičs makes one small reference to the Holocaust in the chapter about his surrender to the Soviets. When NKVD officers made him and other legionnaires dig what appeared to be their own graves, he was reminded of rumors he had heard from his neighbors back home — Latvian Jews had been made to dig their own graves before they were murdered by the [Axis] (Bankovičs 2014, 199). This passage is important for three reasons.

Firstly, Bankovičs only mentions the Holocaust in order to compare it to his own situation. He thus appropriates its symbolism for his own victimization as a Latvian Legionnaire, in a manner characteristic of post‐[Soviet] national narratives (Radonić 2018; Subotić 2019). Secondly, by omitting the collaboration of ethnic Latvians in the murder of Latvian Jews, ethnic Latvians are depicted solely as victims of the [Axis] as well.

Thirdly, it demonstrates how the argument that [the Third Reich] was a preferable ally depends on the omission of the consequences of [Axis] occupation for Latvian Jews. The nodal point of Latvia’s Europeanness, which led it to side temporarily with [the Axis] to fight against Soviet ‘barbarism,’ thus depends on the omission of numerically greater [Axis] crimes (Ezergailis 1996a, 229).

Analysis of the three memoirs suggests that the family backgrounds of the authors influenced their perception of the Soviet Union. The memoirs tend to contrast the Latvian and Soviet people. Conversely, they allude to the cultural affinity of Latvians with Germans. [The Third Reich] is presented as the better ally for Latvia at the time through the emphasis of Soviet atrocities, omission of ethnic Latvian involvement in the murder of Latvian Jews, and expression of the hope that the Western Allies would intervene to ensure Latvian independence postwar.

These narrative techniques present Latvia as a rightfully independent nation that shared more with civilized, European [Fascist] Germany than the uncivilized Soviet Union, yet was still a victim of both régimes.

(Emphasis added.)

…wow.

Quoting Grzegorz Motyka’s From the Volhynian Massacre to Operation Vistula: The Polish–Ukrainian Conflict 1943–1947, pages 89–92:

The OUN‐B and UPA’s operation in the western districts of Volhynia was to cover — to surprise Poles and thwart any possible attempts at defence — many more localities than in the eastern part of the region as was previously the case.

Over the last months, UPA units in this area became stronger and attained greater fighting capabilities than those Dubovyi’s units had possessed in March–May. The UPA was also able to take advantage of the experience gained through police deserters. The date of the onslaught was set for Sunday, July 11 to attack Poles gathering in large numbers for mass.

According to the plan, after killing the population of a given village, UPA sotnias were to move quickly to the next village to carry out the next massacre. The intention was to achieve the greatest possible surprise and minimize chances of escape. Only Ukrainian self‐defence groups were to stay on spot and “clean” the area. Poles escaping the conflagration were not favoured by the time of year. Summer temperatures made spending nighttime outside feasible, but the short July night did not give the Poles, who literally became game, much time to escape and hide under the cover of darkness.

UPA units struck, as planned, on July 11, 1943. According to Władysław and Ewa Siemaszek’s findings, they simultaneously attacked ninety‐six villages in Horokhiv and Volodymyr counties and three in Kovel county. The next day, July 12, the same fate befell another fifty villages in Horokhiv and Volodymyr counties².

One of the first villages attacked was Dominopol, where the aforementioned Polish unit maintaining contacts with the UPA was stationed. It was probably liquidated on the night of July 11 by partisans from Porfyryi “Sich” Antoniuk’s zahon (regiment) supported by the OUN Security Service militia.

This is how one member of the OUN Security Service (SB) purportedly described the action to Danyl Shumuk: “We knocked on the door. The lieutenant […] opened it for us. We shot him on the doorstep. We shot the captain in bed as the typist jumped out the window and our boys shot her there. Then […] the SB boys went roaming around the village. Not a single Lakh remained alive by morning”³. About two hundred and twenty Poles were killed. The village was not burned down as the Polish farmsteads were taken over by Ukrainian [anticommunist]s.

The Gurów colony was attacked on the night of July 10–11 at about 2.30 AM. The inhabitants were dispatched inside individual houses with slashing weapons and firearms. About two hundred Poles were murdered there. At 3 AM, UPA men attacked the Wygranka colony. Inhabitants were awakened by the sounds coming from Gurów, with some seeking out hiding places or fleeing, some trying to defend themselves.

Nonetheless, about one hundred and fifty Poles fell victim to the UPA. At around 5 AM tragedy struck the Zamlicze folwark — one hundred and eighteen people were murdered. Approximately another eighty Poles were killed in the Nowiny colony at 8 AM.

In Poryck, UPA units struck when the Poles had gathered in the local church for mass, which started at 11 AM. They shot and threw grenades through the church doors and windows. This is how Jadwiga Krajewska recalled the attack:

The first shots were fired at Father Bolesław Szawłowski and the faithful during the Gloria […]. I was at church with my sister […]. When I heard the murderers walking around the church and saying “oh, this one’s still alive” I quickly grabbed some hat soaked in warm, sticky blood and used it to rub my and my sister’s faces. We pretended to be dead. The smoke was very suffocating, so people tried to flee the church, but machine gun fire ended their suffering at the church entrance. […] The Ukrainians shouted, “come out, whoever’s alive” and killed those exiting at the door […] attempts were made to blow the church up, but we only felt a terrible shock and then everything fell silent⁴.

While the slaughter in the church was taking place, other groups of partisans killed Poles remaining inside their homes. Attack participant Ivan Hrin later testified that the bodies of “up to 200” dead “were buried next to the Polish church. Residents were assembled to do this, [who — G.M.] dug a large hole at the west side of the building and carried the corpses from inside there. The corpses were buried just 25–30 meters from the church”⁵.

Poles gathered at church were also attacked by UPA men in Chrynów. The church was cordoned off and those leaving the 9 o’clock mass were stopped, while those entering for the 11 o’clock mass were let through. Around this time, machine gun fire opened up on the crowd. Once all those who were shot lay on the ground, the UPA men retreated without killing the wounded, thanks to which some of the fallen survived.

Meanwhile, UPA patrols killed Poles inside their homes. About one hundred and fifty people died. Poles were attacked at church in Zabłoćce as well. Seventy‐six people were murdered there.

Adela Preis (née Ziółkowska) recalls the events that took place in Kisielin:

After Mass, around 1 PM, bandits burst into the church […] murdering those inside. They smashed small children against the walls. Some of the congregation hid in the presbytery, including myself, my father, and my brother Stanisław. We went up to the second floor. The first floor was set on fire. The attackers used ladders to get to us. We struck them with bricks we’d attained from dismantling stoves and the walls. My brother […] was killed by a bullet that hit him directly in the heart. It was fired by a UPA man sitting on the roof of a nearby barn⁶.

Around 10 PM the UPA men left Kisielin — the effect of their operation was the murder of about ninety Poles. Most of those holed up in the presbytery survived.

Tragedy also befell Huta Majdańska in Zdolbuniv county. In the spring of 1943, the inhabitants of this village declared their loyalty to the Ukrainian underground and in exchange for a guarantee of safety provided the UPA with food (eggs, milk, grain, meat).

Despite this, on July 12 Ukrainian [anticommunists] murdered most of the inhabitants. 184 people died (including one Ukrainian woman). Eleven Poles survived. In the village of Zagaje, UPA men murdered about 260 Poles, in the village of Linów about 70, at Pustomyty about 90. Over those days Poles were also killed in the colonies of Stasin, Milatyń, Michałówka, Pelagin, Romanówka, Samowola, Smołowa, Rykowicze, Szczeniutyn Mały, Szczeniutyn Duży, Wolica, Topieliszcze, Zaszkiewicze Stare, and Zaszkiewicze Nowe, as well as in many other localities.

The night of July 15 and the day of July 16 saw the second wave of attacks. One hundred and one Poles were killed in the village of Pułhany and about fifty in the Szeroka colony (most of them went voluntarily to a clearing by the forest to hide from an alleged [Axis] pacification of which the Ukrainians had warned them and were shot there).

At noon the UPA attacked the village of Kupowalce, which had good relations with local Ukrainians and even supplied the UPA with food. The UPA men entered the village on carts from several directions at once. Poles were killed in their houses and gardens; the cornfields were also “combed” for escapees. A total of about one hundred and fifty people were murdered at that time. That same day at least 87 Poles were killed in the Lulówka Węgierszczyzna colony.

At the turn of July and August, UPA units in this area only rarely attacked Polish villages. One can suspect the intention was to lull the Poles into a false sense of security, which would allow them to launch another concentrated attack. This was also the purpose of a proclamation made by the staff of Sich‐Antoniuk’s zahon, which declared that the massacres that had just taken place were justified by the need to punish the Poles “with all the severity of wartime‐revolutionary demands” for collaboration with the Germans.

At the same time, “full security” was guaranteed to that part of the Polish population that did not collaborate with the Germans. Poles were urged “not to succumb to hostile agitation and not to leave their settlements”⁷.

Jared McBride sums it up thus in Peasants into Perpetrators: The OUN–UPA and the Ethnic Cleansing of Volhynia, 1943–1944:

The OUN–UPA‐planned ethnic cleansing continued unabated throughout summer 1943. The crescendo came on the night of July 11–12, 1943 when the UPA planned a highly coordinated attack (known among Poles as the “Peter and Paul action” for the holiday on which it occurred) against Polish villages in three raions: Kovel΄, Khorokhiv, and Volodymyr‐Volyns΄kyi.⁴⁶ Over one hundred localities were targeted in this action, and some 4,000 Poles were murdered.

Finally, the last wave of attacks came in December 1943 before Shukhevych decided to move the cleansing operations to Galicia where tens of thousands more Galician Poles were murdered. Following the killings in Volhynia, the UPA‐North group gave the order to “destroy all traces of the Poles” by “destroying all Polish churches and all other Polish places of worship. Destroy all farm homes, so there is no evidence that anyone ever lived there.”⁴⁷

These killings were no secret in Volhynia in 1943. Many historical sources on the occupation, from diaries to official Soviet and German reports, provide details about the cleansing. Likewise, contemporaneous Soviet partisan reports from the area are littered with references to the violence.

One late May report noted, “throughout villages in Stepan’, Derazhanaia, Rafalovka, Sarny, Vysotsk, Vladimirets, Klevan’, and other raions, the nationalists are carrying out mass terror against the Polish population […] the nationalists are not shooting the Poles but are using knives and axes to murder Poles irrespective of age and gender.”⁴⁸

Another report from April 1943 remarked, “The Ukrainian nationalists are carrying out bestial reprisals against the Polish population with the goal of completely destroying the Polish population of Ukraine. In Tsuman’ raion, a sotnia (company) of nationalists was given the order on April 15, 1943 to destroy all of the Poles and burn down their villages.”⁴⁹

Similarly, German reports from this time also noted the killings, as did reports from Polish military units.⁵⁰ Eyewitness testimonies from post‐Soviet investigations and Holocaust survivor collections in the west routinely reference these cleansing actions as well.⁵¹

Not all Volhynian Ukrainians supported the murder of their Polish neighbors. Some Ukrainians warned their Polish peers of impending OUN–UPA attacks, hid Poles, and helped them escape from Volhynia.⁵² Even in the Liuboml’ area (the focus of the next section), Poles acknowledged how Ukrainian neighbors helped them survive.

In Ostrivky, Czesław Kuwałek explained, “There were also incidents in which the Ukrainians behaved decently toward the Poles […] two Ukrainian families […] sheltered my uncle’s family for about three days after the attack and then took them to Wilczy Przewόz, where they could cross the Bug river.”⁵³

Moreover, a few Ukrainian leaders, including religious authorities and organizations, protested against the killings, though their declarations accomplished little.⁵⁴ Calls for restraint did not stem the tide of violence.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

:::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (July 11). 1892: Gustav‐Adolf von Zangen, Axis colonel and aristocrat, came to be.
1921: Adolf Schicklgruber temporarily resigned from the NSDAP due to disagreements with the party executive committee.
1936: Berlin and Vienna signed the Austro‐German Agreement or Juliabkommen.
1937: Tōkyō recalled units of the Imperial Chosen Army and Kwantung Army, previously ordered to march into China on the first day of the Second Sino‐Japanese War, due to political reasons. The Imperial Japanese Army and IJN agreed on a boundary in China. The Army was placed in charge of conducting the war in northern China, while the Navy would take on central and southern China. The IJN’s air power in China at this time consisted of eighty aircraft aboard carriers Kaga, Ryujo, and Hosho. Lastly, Tōkyō assigned Masafumi Arima to Cruiser Division 10.
1938: The IJN issued Order № 261 to raise sunken Chinese light cruisers Ninghai and Pinghai at Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China.
1939: Twenty‐seven Imperial bombers attacked Chongqing, China.
1940: After Fascist submarine U‐34 sank Norwegian ship Janna southwest of Ireland at 0700 hours, Pierre Laval became the 120th Prime Minister of France with the title of the Vice President of the Council, and Marshal Philippe Pétain declared hisself head of state of the French Republic. On radio later on the same day, he spoke of the expected rôles of the young people, the parents, and the government. ‘Let us give ourselves to France. She has always led her people to greatness.’ (Privately, the younger generation responded poorly to Pétain's new vision, criticising it as discriminatory toward young women, enslaving them as homemakers.) As well, one meeting between Admiral Erich Raeder and his Chancellor took place at the Obersalzberg, Berchtesgaden, where matters of how things were in Norway and Berlin’s plans for that area were made clear. They talked about how to continue the war against Britain and again the Chancellor made it clear of his aims and that no invasion was to take place until all efforts had been made to bring London to sue for peace. (Nevertheless, within the next few days the Chancellor would change his mind.) Joachim von Ribbentrop also requested Spain to assist in the detaining of the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom. The Luftwaffe attacked the British Royal Navy Base at Portland in southern England, then Capitano Tarantini attacked Panamanian tanker Beme in the Mediterranean Sea south of Cyprus at 2300 hours as the tanker was in ballast on a voyage from Haifa, Palestine to Istanbul. The first torpedo fired missed, but gunfire disabled the tanker. After removing the tanker’s crew, the next torpedo sunk the ship.
1941: The 1.Panzergruppe marched near Kiev as Maggiore Baracca searched for a reported Allied convoy in the Atlantic Ocean. Alessandro Malaspina took orders to move to a new patrol area in the Atlantic Ocean. At 1130 hours, she sighted Portuguese freighter Quanza and submerged to approach; after positive identification, she abandoned the pursuit. Leonardo da Vinci sighted a freighter in the Atlantic Ocean at 1100 hours. At 1218 hours, they identified the target as the Spanish Navy tanker Pluton.
1942: As the Eastern Axis leadership abandoned the plans to capture New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa, the Western Axis captured Soviet 2nd Shock Army commanding office Andrei Vlasov. Axis submarine U‐203 sank Panamanian tanker Stanvac Palembang northeast of Trinidad at 0352 hours; five died but foty‐five lived. Axis U‐166 also sank Dominican sailing vessel Carmen with the deck gun eight miles off the northern coast of the Dominican Republic at 1900 hours; somebody died but seven did not.
1943: Axis forces in Operation Citadel ran out of momentum, even though there had been some objectives reached. Berlin refused to call off the operation, which could have saved many of the units. In Sicily, General Paul Conrath’s Hermann Göring Panzer Division overran the Yankee outposts at Ponte Dirillo and were only prevented from breaking through the Allied lines by an attack by James Gavin’s paratroopers from the rear. Elsewhere, Conrath personally led a column which assaulted the weakly held Piano Lupo, to get within two thousand yards of the beach before being stopped by the defenders. In Greece, a partisan threw a grenade into an Axis officer’s vehicle, killing the officer.
1944: Berlin summoned Claus von Stauffenberg to see his Chancellor in Berchtesgaden regarding the situation of the Home Army, and coincidentally the last 35,000 men of 4.Armee surrendered to the Soviets at Minsk, Byelorussia. London, England received many V‐1 bombs and somebody reported over thirty‐eight fatalities. The worst incident, slaughtering fourteen, was at Annerley Road in Crystal Palace, southeast London. At Public House, the Axis hit The Paxon’s Arms close by in Clapham, slaughtering eleven in the pub. At Deptford, southeast London, Axis firepower massacred eleven dock workers and destroyed some cranes and workshops. Lastly, the Eastern Axis’s 18th Army under Lieutenant General Hatazo Adachi launched a counterattack in the Aitape area in New Guinea, placing pressure on Yankee troops yet sustaining heavy casualties.
1945: The last remaining Axis ambassador to the Soviet Union, Naotake Sato, failed to convince Vyacheslav Molotov to engage their two nations in a formal peace treaty.

I am unhappy to cite this anticommunist, but… quoting Jan T. Gross’s Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, pages 18–20:

Even though the [Axis] gave the order, it was Polish hooligans who took it up and carried it out, using the most horrible methods. After various tortures and humiliations, they burned all the Jews in a barn.

During the first pogrom and the later bloodbath the following outcasts distinguished themselves by their brutality: Szleziński, Karolak, Borowiuk (Borowski?) Mietek, Borowiuk (Borowski?) Wacław, Jermałowski, Ramutowski Bolek, Rogalski Bolek, Szelawa Stanisław, Szelawa Franciszek, Kozłowski Geniek, Trzaska, Tarnoczek Jerzyk, Ludański Jurek, Laciecz Czesław.

On the morning of July 10, 1941, eight gestapo men came to town and had a meeting with representatives of the town authorities. When the gestapo asked what their plans were with respect to the Jews, they said, unanimously, that all Jews must be killed.

When the [Axis] proposed to leave one Jewish family from each profession, local carpenter Bronisław Szleziński, who was present, answered: We have enough of our own craftsmen, we have to destroy all the Jews, none should stay alive. Mayor Karolak and everybody else agreed with his words. For this purpose Szleziński gave his own barn, which stood nearby. After this meeting the bloodbath began.

Local hooligans armed themselves with axes, special clubs studded with nails, and other instruments of torture and destruction and chased all the Jews into the street. As the first victims of their devilish instincts they selected seventy‐five of the youngest and healthiest Jews, whom they ordered to pick up a huge monument of Lenin that the Russians had erected in the center of town.

It was impossibly heavy, but under a rain of horrible blows the Jews had to do it. While carrying the monument, they also had to sing until they brought it to the designated place. There, they were ordered to dig a hole and throw the monument in. Then these Jews were butchered to death and thrown into the same hole.

The other brutality was when the murderers ordered every Jew to dig a hole and bury all previously murdered Jews, and then those were killed and in turn buried by others. It is impossible to represent all the brutalities of the hooligans, and it is difficult to find in our history of suffering something similar.

Beards of old Jews were burned, newborn babies were killed at their mothers’ breasts, people were beaten murderously and forced to sing and dance. In the end they proceeded to the main action—the burning. The entire town was surrounded by guards so that nobody could escape; then Jews were ordered to line up in a column, four in a row, and the ninety‐year‐old rabbi and the shochet [Kosher butcher] were put in front, they were given a red banner, and all were ordered to sing and were chased into the barn. Hooligans bestially beat them up on the way.

Near the gate a few hooligans were standing, playing various instruments in order to drown the screams of horrified victims. Some tried to defend themselves, but they were defenseless. Bloodied and wounded, they were pushed into the barn. Then the barn was doused with kerosene and lit, and the bandits went around to search Jewish homes, to look for the remaining sick and children.

The sick people they found they carried to the barn themselves, and as for the little children, they roped a few together by their legs and carried them on their backs, then put them on pitchforks and threw them onto smoldering coals.

After the fire they used axes to knock golden teeth from still not entirely decomposed bodies and in other ways violated the corpses of holy martyrs.⁶

(Emphasis added.)

The anticommunists massacred at least four hundred of Jedwabne’s Jews, but the actual total could have been as high as one thousand six hundred.

Unfortunately, a great deal of the materials on this subject matter prefer to focus on its presumed legal importance rather than the victims or even the oppressors in the situation. For us socialists, the claim that the SCOTUS’s ruling in favor of the Illinois neofascists set a valuable precedent and prevented a slippery slope into government tyranny is laughworthy. These were the same judges who a few months before outlawed the miners’ right to strike on the grounds of the Taft‐Hartley Act, and a pile of FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that from 1953 to 1959 ACLU officials had been secretly cooperating with the FBI’s witchhunt of ‘Communists and subversives’ within the organization.

(Mirror.)

“Fear of annihilation” appeared in clinical (Bako & Zana, 2018) and community samples (Hogman, 1998; Hirsch & Chaitin, 2010; Lazar et al., 2008; Rosenthal, 2002). However, the expression of such fears varied across the geographic settings. In studies conducted [under Zionism], participants’ fears of annihilation were embedded in the perceived impact of the Holocaust on [a neocolonial] society (Lazar et al., 2008; Hirsch & Chaitin, 2010; Hirsch & Lazar, 2011). Based on a survey data, Lazar et al. (2008), suggested that, “The strongest impact is the fear of annihilation, with almost any incident and event interpreted as a threat” (p. 96).

Grandchildren living in Europe, U.S.A and Australia (Cohn & Morrison, 2018; Rosenthal, 2002), related their fears to being persecuted due to anti‐Semitism and fears of extermination. One grandchild (aged 25) said: “there’s this sensitivity or heightened threat alert when anti‐Semitism happens, which I think is directly related to the Holocaust” (Cohn & Morrison, 2018, p. 203) and “I always have that sense of feeling. Like when’s the next, methodical murder spree gonna happen?” (Cohn & Morrison, 2018, p. 202).

Fears and anxieties manifested as hypervigilant behaviors, such as the constant need to be on guard and being ready for threat. Sometimes these behaviors were modeled by parents to their children. “If you were to visit my parent home, you would see many bags and suitcases […] this is not because we travel a lot” (a 23‐year‐old [grandchild of a Holocaust survivor]; Hirsch & Lazar, 2011, p. 392). The link between these behaviors and their family Holocaust background was made, “I believe it is the Holocaust that makes us feel haunted and that we feel we need to be on guard all the time” (Hirsch & Lazar, 2011, p. 391).

Anxiety‐related to separation
Anxiety related to being separated from family was recorded in community samples (Hogman, 1998; Scharf & Mayseless 2011) and clinical cases (Bako & Zana, 2018; Fossion et al., 2003; Quadrio, 2016). Interpreting their therapeutic work with descendants of HSs Bako and Zana (2018), argued that HSs experiences of separation from family permeated the experiences of descendants.

One female grandchild described her feelings when sending her son off to school: “I would feel again and again that this is the last time I would see him. I often feel that any day spent together may be the last one”. (Bako & Zana, 2018, p. 275). Some grandchildren described how separating from a loved one was perceived as a probable threat for their survival that could lead to loss and death (Scharf & Mayseless, 2011).

A grandchild described the feelings and thoughts he experienced whenever his father left for army reserve duty; “it was quite a difficult separation. I don’t remember why, but I was really afraid that my father would be killed” (p. 1547). Similarly, grandchildren reported a sense of impending danger that was readily activated in the form of misinterpretation of everyday events such as common illness (Scharf & Mayseless, 2011).

[…]

Even though not directly exposed to the trauma, both children and grandchildren described fears about the Holocaust. In this review, grandchildren described “fears of annihilation” concerning anti‐Semitism and the occurrence of another Holocaust (Lazar et al., 2008; Hirsch & Chaitin, 2010).

Similarly, studies that explored experiences of [children of Holocaust survivors] reported of a family environment characterized by anxiety and fear of another Holocaust (Rowland‐Klein & Dunlop, 1998) and parents’ terrifying views of the world as unsafe and unpredictable. In turn, the children reported their constant readiness to respond to potential threats to their survival (Braga et al., 2012).

(Emphasis original.)

Similarly, other researchers found that Shoah survivors’ children behaved more anxiously:

Another main finding of this paper is that a higher level of [the Subjective Holocaust Influence Level] is related to higher average levels of worry, suspicion of others, anxiety about the future, need to survive, risk aversion and unwillingness to discard food.⁶ It seems that the level of SHIL is reflected in the [Holocaust survivors’ offspring’s] daily life, habits and emotions.

A delegation of senior members from the far‐right party in Sweden, the Swedish Democrats, arrived in [Zionism’s neocolony] on an unofficial visit and met on Monday with […] Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chickli in the Knesset.

The party, currently the second‐largest in the Swedish parliament, has roots in neo[fascist] and antisemitic ideologies. It is one of several European parties with which [the régime] has refrained from establishing official ties.

The delegation has visited Yad Vashem, one of the crossings connecting [the neocolony] to the West Bank, and the Old City in Jerusalem.

Officials in Sweden following the party suggest that the visit is part of its attempt to whitewash its antisemitic and racist positions by presenting itself as a friend of [Zionism].

In a post on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the party leader, Jimmie Akesson, wrote: “It is clear that our parties and our nations share common values,” accompanied by a photo of himself with Minister Chikli.

Party members told Haaretz that they met with several ministers during their visit but refused to disclose their names.

[The neocolony] has so far refrained from engaging with the Swedish Democrats not only due to their neo[fascist] roots but also because members of the party have disseminated conspiracy theories and expressed racist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic sentiments in recent years.

[Herzlianism’s] Ambassador to Stockholm, Ziv Nevo Kulman, even declared that [the neocolony] does not maintain and will not establish future relations with the party. The [neocolonial] foreign ministry, which was not involved in coordinating the visit, clarified on Monday that “there is no change in policy towards the party.”

Among the delegation members who visited the Knesset were party leader Akesson, the chairman of the Swedish parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Aron Emilsson, the head of the party’s parliamentary group, Linda Lindberg, and the head of the party’s group in the European Parliament, Charlie Weimers.

Weimers is one of the party’s top members who already visited [the neocolony] in May of last year. During the previous visit, it was reported that party leaders met with Knesset member Amit Halevi from Likud and former Knesset member Michael Kleiner, who now serves as the president of the Likud’s court.

Though part of the Swedish political establishment today, the Sweden Democrats do indeed have roots in [Fascism]. Some of the party’s founders were known [Fascists], such as its first auditor, Gustaf Ekström, who was a Waffen‐SS veteran.

The party’s first spokesperson Leif Ericsson and its first chairman Anders Klarström were both active in various neo[fascist] and extremist right‐wing parties, and the chairman of the party’s youth organization, Robert Vesterlund, was also a known neo[fascist]. During the ’80s and ’90s, the party was a marginal force in Swedish politics, and it began distancing itself from extremism and aligning itself closer to mainstream politics in the mid ’90s.

The party entered the Swedish parliament for the first time in 2010, and in the elections held a year and a half ago, it received over 20% of the votes. Until a few years ago, the party was ostracized by parties across the political spectrum in Sweden and was not considered for inclusion in any coalition.

However, due to a change in approach by two traditional right‐wing parties, the Swedish Democrats became an integral part of the right‐wing bloc after the elections, with the government in Stockholm entirely dependent on their support. Party members wield significant influence over the government’s policies and hold key positions in parliamentary committees, including foreign affairs, justice, and industry and trade.

In recent months, the party has been attempting to position itself as “the most pro‐Israel party in Sweden” and distance itself from its anti[semi]tic and neo[fascist] past. However, in 2021, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet revealed that the party leader in the second‐largest city council in Sweden, Gothenburg, Jörgen Fogelklou, had posted antisemitic and racist statements on social media, such as “It is clear that the Jews are the root of all evil in the world.”

Two years ago, it was exposed that some party members had connections with neo[fascist] movements even in recent years. For instance, one party member in southern Sweden, Jonas Lingren, publicly supported rock bands advocating for “white supremacy” and used the slogan “Skinhead 88” (88 is a known code for Heil Hitler, i.e., HH).

(Credits to Martin Konečný for showing me this.)

As a summer Sunday evening turned into night, a group of five to seven assailants, possibly intoxicated, armed themselves with improvised weapons—truncheons, shovels, metal rods, axes, and boards spiked with nails.⁵⁹ In the glow of what one survivor remembered as a “bright night,” the group then headed on foot toward Tuchyn’s main Jewish neighborhood.⁶⁰

Passing by the ransacked businesses in the main square, the assailants reached the Jewish neighborhood, where they “began to kill everyone they could get their hands on.”⁶¹ A young mother, Teivel Sapoznik, was murdered in front of her infant son.⁶² The fortunate were those who had time to hide, like nineteen‐year‐old Ester Vaksman who hid in her home, or the Portnoy family who hid behind a recently built false basement.⁶³ The Portnoys heard the intruders upstairs, but the only damage was broken furniture and a stolen sewing machine.⁶⁴

As the assailants moved through the neighborhood, the Emmett (Chomut) family—Isaak, Pearl, and their two daughters, Hannah and Laura—waited in terror in their newly built home on Voskodavska Street. Assuming the attackers would only be interested in men, Isaak decided to hide in the garden with the husband of their tenant; he later wrote, “I can never forgive myself for making this error.”⁶⁵

He instructed his wife to say he was at work and give the intruders anything they wanted. From their window, the daughters and their mother watched the group pass their home. Pearl sighed, “Oh, thank God,” believing that they had escaped the worst; however, one member looked over at the house and motioned, “What about here?”

The group pounded on the door, and when Pearl answered it, they demanded to know where Isaak was. When Pearl told them he was away at work, the attackers began to beat her with a metal rod, cracking open her skull.⁶⁶ Laura recalled the horrific scene: “I’ll never forget the sound it made when the blood was coming out of her head zhhhhhhh and then she stopped screaming, so they kicked her and they said, ‘She’s finished, let’s go [khody] into the house.’ So, my sister pulled me away from the doorstep. And that’s all I know.”⁶⁷

Isaak would later say of the attackers beating Pearl, “They did not stop beating her until she became quiet, and they thought she was dead.”⁶⁸

The assailants entered the home and first attacked the tenant and her one‐year‐old daughter. They then entered the room where the girls were hiding and beat seven‐year‐old Laura until she was unconscious. Ten‐year‐old Hannah, miraculously, remained hidden and would emerge from the ordeal physically unscathed. Once the attackers appeared to have left, Isaak returned to his home, which he described as a “slaughterhouse.” He later recalled:

My dear wife was lying at the doorway in a puddle of blood and unconscious. I started screaming and tried to bring her inside. I did not notice that the murderers had not gotten far enough away. One of them saw me and came back and beat me in the face. My face swelled up from the beating, but I did not feel the pain because I was trying to save my wife. She was all swollen and blood was coming from her entire body and particularly the head. There was no way to bring the doctor. The murderers were still wandering the streets…⁶⁹

Blood covered the home—the cushions and pillows were soaked in the blood of the women who endured the attack. The tenant was lying face down on the floor of the room where she lived and appeared to be dead. The [anticommunists] had murdered her child.⁷⁰

Isaak ran out for help, and his brother‐in‐law Friedel helped him to bandage up his wife, who had six holes in her head and a broken nose and could not see out of her left eye. He soon realized that Laura was missing. After some time of searching, they found her under a bed in another room. Laura was unable to stand, her head was “soft as dough,” and her face was so swollen, they could not see her eyes. Laura was paralyzed on her right side and was suffering from a blood clot around her brain.⁷¹

As the sun poured its light over the Jewish neighborhood the next morning, the community began to account for the “night of terror.”⁷² Isaak recalled the scene: “Outside I saw the destruction of the night of terror. On the street there were still dead bodies. From the houses, you could still hear the screaming.”⁷³

Feigi Gluss remembered waking up and learning that “half of our town was dead… People were in such a shape. It was terrible to even talk to one another.”⁷⁴ Like many, Feigi learned of the pogrom from the screams across the neighborhood and the sight of the mutilated bodies, with eyes gouged out, tongues cut out, and bodies hacked to death, as a wagon came through town to pick them up.⁷⁵

For those still alive but wounded, medical care was a priority. Because there was no Jewish doctor in town, the community turned to the head local doctor, Vasyl Humeniuk, [an anticommunist] and, as already mentioned, someone connected to the uprava. Those like Iosif Zaltsman brought wounded people to the hospital to be treated.⁷⁶

These bandaged and bleeding victims pleaded for help, to which Humeniuk reportedly responded, “We will not provide any medical assistance to the Jews since you all will be killed soon enough.”⁷⁷ Luckily, a local Polish doctor, Bortnowski, was willing to treat the Jews, despite threats from his colleague Humeniuk, and, together with a Russian nurse, he helped Isaak’s family and others.⁷⁸

By the end of Monday, July 7, the dead numbered at least twenty‐five, with dozens more wounded.⁷⁹ Among the causalities were people from the following families: Agers, Chisda, Zavodnik, Sherel, Gitelman, Halperin, Katzman, Sapoznik, Feldman, Fridman, and others.⁸⁰

As the community reeled from the night of terror, the local village administration, under the authority of Shcherbaniuk, came to the Jewish leadership with instructions, which Isaak recounted: “They ordered us to clean the streets and bury all the victims within two hours. They also warned us not to talk about what we had experienced and seen.”⁸¹ The Jewish community had to hastily bury their dead in a common grave in the local cemetery under threat of more violence.

[…]

In one exchange with a Jewish resident of Tuchyn in the summer of 1941, Hrytsak taunted him, “Death to all Jews; death to Poles [liakhy], death to Russians [Moskali], and Stalin,” and exclaimed that Stalin himself was a Jew.¹⁰⁰

In a more revealing exchange with a fellow Ukrainian, explaining in 1944 why he was hiding from the Soviets, Hrytsak remarked, “You understand what the Soviets will do to people who helped the Germans destroy the Jews.” He added, “In general, I’m not worried, but I’m concerned about what will happen to me [for my actions] related to the Jews.”¹⁰¹ Hrytsak died in the gulag in 1951.

(Emphasis added.)

The majority of the Jews, I mean, the overwhelming majority of Jews were absolutely horrified by the rise of [German Fascism]. They saw quite rightly this was not just another antisemitic government, this was a fascist government which had a programme—a programme of disenfranchisement which rejected the position of Jews, and which was determined to do something about it.

So… there was almost an instantaneous boycott that sprang up, which wasn’t organized, but basically, you wouldn’t—you don’t buy German, for example. Businessmen would not order from [the Third Reich]. And this coalesced, by about March, into an organized movement, which had the [Fascists] terrified because [the Third Reich] was an export economy in essence. It needed hard currency to import goods which it then manufactured then exported, and that’s how it made its way in the world, and this movement was threatening to throttle it from the beginning.

So, I think it was March of 25th, Göring called in the leaders of the Jewish community, and at first the Zionists weren’t invited because they were a fringe movement, but they got themselves invited, and Göring… basically […] threatened them and said, ‘You’ve got to go to Europe and America to get’—it was a big demonstration a couple of days later called off in Madison Square Gardens [sic]. Well, it went ahead, but […] the non‐Zionists prevaricated and made excuses.

The leader of the Zionists, Kurt Blumenfeld, volunteered that they would be more than happy to take on board opposition to the boycott, because the Zionists at no stage supported the boycott of [the Third Reich]. They beli—because they saw the rise of [German Fascism]—they were the only ones who welcomed [German Fascism]. I mean… I can give you… some quotes.

Berl Katznelson, who was the deputy to Ben‐Gurion, he was really… I say… he was a very important guy, but he edited Davar—the editor [sic?], which was the Mapai (Israeli Labor Party) daily, and he saw the rise of [German Fascism] as—and I quote—‘an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have.’ And Ben‐Gurion himself, the first Prime Minister of [Herzlianism], was even more optimistic: the [NSDAP’s] victory would become “a fertile force” for Zionism.

I mean, some were even more enthusiastic! Emil Ludwig was a famous biographer and also a Zionist [and] said that ‘Hitler will be forgotten in a few years but he will have a beautiful in [occupied] Palestine. You know, the coming of the [Third Reich] was rather a welcome thing. […] Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very grateful to him.’

And Nahman Bialik, who is the national Zionist poet, was quoted as saying ‘Hitlerism has perhaps saved German Jewry, which was being assimilated into annihilation.’ Well… I think we know that, uh… although the Jews were assimilated, it wasn’t into annihilation, but that was how the Zionists saw it. Because in peacetime, the Zionists could not move the Jewish masses. It needed a catastrophe, such as the advent of the [Third Reich], and eventually the Holocaust, in order to persuade Jews to emigrate.

And if the Jews were going to emigrate, the Zionists were absolutely determined [that] there was only one place where they should immigrate, because as far as they were concerned, if they immigrated to Europe, other places in Europe, or America or Britain, it would simply take their antisemitism with them. So, if there was to be a solution, they had to go to Palestine. And that was what the Zionists were extremely concerned about: a refugee movement—they called it ‘refugeeism’—would arise, which would try and save Jews anywhere.

They were absolutely… dogmatic about the fact that if Jews were to leave Germany, they had to go to Palestine, and they—they lobbied and pressurised to Gestapo only to allow them to go to [Palestine]. So, I mean, if I quote—say—I mean, and he is a Zionist historian, Noah Lucas. […] ‘As the European holocaust erupted, Ben‐Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism. Ben‐Gurion, above all, sensed the tremendous possibilities inherent in the dynamic of the chaos and carnage in Europe. In conditions of peace, […] Zionism could not move the masses of world Jewry. The forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism. […] By the end of 1942 […] the struggle for a Jewish state became the primary concern of the movement.’

[…]

Ben‐Gurion […] was quoted as saying, ‘Disaster is strength if channelled to a productive course. The whole trick of Zionism is that it knows how to channel our disaster, not into despondency or degradation, as is the case in the Diaspora, but into a source of creativity and exploitation.’ And he was quite clear that Jewish Agency funds should only be for rescue by immigration to Palestine, and he said, ‘rescue by assisting Jews to survive elsewhere was to be funded solely by private’ organizations.

And one could go on, but I think probably the quote which I use which is most damning is in respect to the Kinder transport. If you remember, the Kinder transport organized in the wake of Kristallnacht […] and Ben‐Gurion was clear […] this is very widely documented, no‐one challenges it. He said, ‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.’

And then just a week later, on the 17th of December, he wrote a memo to the Zionist executive outlining the problems that the Zionists faced, and he said, ‘If the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people's entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the agenda and indeed not only world public opinion in England and America but also from Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism's very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.’

[…]

Leading up to the winter of ’33, the [Third Reich’s] economy was extremely weak. It’s quite possible the [Third Reich] could in that period have been overthrown, but the Zionists had an interest in stabilising the [Third Reich], and that’s the conclusion that Edwin Black draws. It’s not my conclusion. And Cesarani says this in his book that it wasn’t wishful thinking that the [Third Reich] was tottering. This was a fact.̸

And number of others, The Investor’s Review for example, also thought [that] the [Third Reich] could come to an end at the end of 1933, and that was the […] last thing that Zionists wanted, they wanted the [Third Reich] to stabilise because between ’33 and ’39 60% of capital investment in the Yishuv, in the Jewish Palestine economy came from [the Third Reich].

It would be an anachronistic exaggeration to say that antisemitism is fascism. That being said, since the 1910s there has been a correlation between the two, which is one of the reasons why we as lower‐class gentiles should care about antisemitism (and it is one of the reasons why I resent Zionists for abusing accusations thereof). When we witness severe or persistent antisemitism, we find out, like a bloodhound sniffing a trail, that neofascism is not far off.

Quoting Jacques R. Pauwels’s The Myth of the Good War, pages 37–8:

During the 1930s, then, all too many Americans did not object to the racism of the [Third Reich], as was revealed by “polls showing the affinity of American with German notions of racial hierarchy.”²² Neither was the anti‐Semitism of Hitler and his fascist cronies a big issue in America. Anti‐Semitism was rather fashionable in the twenties and thirties not only in Germany, but in many other countries, including the United States. Many Americans were anti‐Semitic themselves and were therefore tolerant of, if not sympathetic to, [Fascist] anti‐Semitic actions.²³

American industrialists and bankers, and the country’s élite in general, did not constitute an exception to this general rule. In the exclusive clubs and fine hotels they patronized, for example, Jews were usually not admitted. America’s most notorious anti‐Semite was the industrialist Henry Ford, an influential man who admired Hitler, supported him financially, and inspired him with his anti‐Semitic book, The International Jew, which had been published in the early twenties.

The admiration was mutual; the Führer kept a portrait of Ford in his office, acknowledged him as a source of anti‐Semitic inspiration, and in 1938 honoured him with the highest medal that [the Third Reich] could bestow on a foreigner. Ford also funded the pro[fascist] propaganda campaign waged vigorously throughout the United States by the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, a friend of Göring.

Another fiery and influential American anti‐Semite was Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest from Michigan, who in daily radio broadcasts incited his millions of listeners against a Judaism that he equated with Bolshevism, precisely as Hitler did. As for America’s businessmen, a large number of them, possibly a majority, thoroughly despised President Roosevelt’s policy known as the New Deal, which they condemned as “socialist” interference in the country’s economy.

The anti‐Semites concluded that it was part of a Jewish plot, and they denigrated the New Deal as the “Jew Deal.” They similarly considered the president to be a cryptocommunist and therefore an agent of the Jews, as a crypto‐Jew, and they frequently referred to him as “Rosenfeld.”²⁴ American bankers visiting [the Third Reich] in June 1934 complained to the ambassador of their country in Berlin that the Roosevelt administration was “full of Jews.”²⁵

Readers shall no doubt be tempted to compare accusations of Roosevelt’s supposed Jewish origins to the infamous ‘birther’ conspiracy theory, which alleged that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore had no legitimate claim to Presidency.

As we shall now see, however, Roosevelt engaged in his own casual antisemitism, which would not prevent extremer antisemites from accusing him of being ‘Jewish’ anyway. (This is perhaps comparable to how Obama’s inability to improve living standards for Afro‐Americans would not shield him from white supremacist anger either.) Quoting David Swanson’s Leaving World War II Behind, chapter 2:

Antisemitism was mainstream in U.S. and British culture at the time of WWII and in the decades leading up to it, including among élites and top elected officials. Franklin Roosevelt in 1922 had taken it upon himself to convince the Harvard Board of Supervisors to gradually reduce the number of Jews admitted to Harvard University.

[…]

In “The Jewish Trail of Tears: The Évian Conference of July 1938,” Dennis Ross Laffer concludes that the conference was set up to fail and put on for show. Certainly it was proposed by and chaired by a representative of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt who chose not to make the necessary efforts to aid Jewish refugees, before, during, or after the conference.²⁴

[…]

Five days after Crystal Night, President Franklin Roosevelt said he was recalling the ambassador to [the Third Reich] and that public opinion had been “deeply shocked.” He did not use the word “Jews.” A reporter asked if anywhere on earth might accept many Jews from [the Third Reich]. “No,” said Roosevelt. “The time is not ripe for that.”

Another reporter asked if Roosevelt would relax immigration restrictions for Jewish refugees. “That is not in contemplation,” the president responded. Roosevelt refused to support the child 36 refugee bill in 1939, which would have allowed 20,000 Jews under the age of 14 to enter the United States, and it never came out of committee. Senator Robert Wagner (D., N.Y.) said, “Thousands of 37 American families have already expressed their willingness to take refugee children into their homes.”

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt set aside her antisemitism to support the legislation, but her husband successfully blocked it for years. America rejected the 1939 Wagner‐Rogers bill to admit more Jewish and non‐Aryan refugees, but passed the 1940 Hennings Bill to allow unlimited numbers of British Christian children into the United States.³⁸

Swanson presents more evidence (from the same chapter) that Roosevelt’s casual antisemitism was mainstream in his empire:

U.S. immigration policy, crafted largely by antisemitic eugenicists such as Harry Laughlin — themselves sources of inspiration to [Fascist] eugenicists — severely limited the admission of Jews into the United States before and during World War II.¹⁸ Some segment of the U.S. population is aware of this, I’ve found.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum’s website informs visitors: “Though at least 110,000 Jewish refugees escaped to the United States from [Fascist]‐occupied territory between 1933 and 1941, hundreds of thousands more applied to immigrate and were unsuccessful.”¹⁹

[…]

When a resolution was introduced in the U.S. Senate in 1934 expressing “surprise and pain” at [the Third Reich’s] actions, and asking that [Berlin] restore rights to Jews, the State Department stopped it from emerging out of committee.²⁰

[…]

“[E]ven though nearly all Americans condemned the [Third Reich’s] terror against Jews in November 1938, that very same week, 72% of Americans said ‘No’ when Gallup asked: ‘Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?’ Just 21% said ‘Yes.’ […] Prejudice against Jews in the U.S. was evident in a number of ways in the 1930s. According to historian Leonard Dinnerstein, more than 100 new anti‐Semitic organizations were founded in the U.S. between 1933 and 1941.

One of the most influential, Father Charles Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice, spread [Fascist] propaganda and accused all Jews of being communists. Coughlin broadcast anti‐Jewish ideas to millions of radio listeners, asking them to ‘pledge’ with him to ‘restore America to the Americans.’

Further to the fringes, William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Legion of America (‘Silver Shirts’) fashioned themselves after [Fascist] Stormtroopers (‘brownshirts’). The German American Bund celebrated [the Third Reich] openly, established Hitler Youth‐style summer camps in communities across the United States, and hoped to see the dawn of fascism in America.

Even if the Silver Shirts and the Bund did not represent the mainstream, Gallup polls showed that many Americans held seemingly prejudicial ideas about Jews. A remarkable survey conducted in April 1938 found that more than half of Americans blamed Europe’s Jews for their own treatment at the hands of the [Third Reich]. This poll showed that 54% of Americans agreed that ‘the persecution of Jews in Europe has been partly their own fault,’ with 11% believing it was ‘entirely’ their own fault.

Hostility to refugees was so ingrained that just two months after Kristallnacht, 67% of Americans opposed a bill in the U.S. Congress intended to admit child refugees from [the Third Reich]. The bill never made it to the floor of Congress for a vote.”³²

Therefore, ordinary anticommunists — even if they had some quibbles with fascism and saw it as unsuitable for Imperial America — were in no hurry to do anything about the growth of either Fascism or antisemitism in Europe. Returning to The Myth of the Good War, page 51:

In the United States also, many leading personalities kept hoping that Hitler would soon come to an agreement with Great Britain and France, and would then be free to devote his undivided attention to the Soviet Union.

After [Fascism’s] victory in Poland, for example, the American ambassador in Berlin, Hugh R. Wilson, expressed the hope that the British and French would see fit to resolve their inconvenient conflict with [the Third Reich], so that the Führer would finally have an opportunity to crush the Bolshevik experiment of the Soviets for the benefit of the entire “Western Civilization.”

A few months later, on March 4, 1940, the aforementioned James D. Mooney, a vice‐president of General Motors, visited Hitler in Berlin as an unofficial emissary of President Roosevelt. He made a plea for peace in Western Europe, but suggested “that Americans had understanding for Germany’s standpoint with respect to the question of living space” — in other words, that they had nothing against his territorial claims in the East.

The idea that Germany needed a free hand in Eastern Europe was also promoted by Wilson’s colleague in London, Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the later president, JFK. As for the American mainstream media, they tried very hard to convince the American people that international communism, headquartered in Moscow, represented a far greater danger to their country than the German or Italian versions of fascism.

In Catholic as well as Protestant periodicals, “communist subversion” was identified as “the great threat to the country” and, conversely, Hitler was praised as the great “savior from Bolshevism.”

Those who insisted that fascism was the greater danger were stigmatized as dupes of Moscow; anti‐fascism would become popular later, during the war, but America’s pre‐war anti‐fascists — best exemplified by the courageous members of the Lincoln Brigade who fought against Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War — made the mistake, in the eyes of the U.S. establishment, of being “premature anti‐fascists.”³⁰

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Happy Fourth of July!!!

Well, a large number of the team were captured by the Soviets, and that was the foundation of the Soviet space program. So basically you had Germans working on weapons systems against their coworker Germans from Germany. Except I understand [that] the [Soviets]—my understanding is that they observed, they recorded and documented all the knowledge [that] they could glean from those Germans that they had in their possession they’d captured, and then at some point they just released them back towards, you know, demolished Germany, because they wanted their own space program.

Okay.

And the reason that we probably ended up beating them in the space race [sic], okay, was because they did release their German team members and we kept ours here in the United States and let them go full development for the Saturn V missile to the moon.

[…]

So you’re saying [that] after World War II to [19]69, the Germans were running the show here?

Absolutely.

But they Americanized.

Dr. Wernher von Braun was running the show here.

Yeah, but they Americanized?

Yes. They were given naturalization citizenships.

Japan had an Eugenic Protection Law (EPL) from 1948 to 1996. People with intellectual or mental disabilities, and those with certain hereditary diseases, were sterilised "to prevent birth of inferior descendants from the eugenic point of view, and to protect life and health of mother, as well".

Of the roughly 25,000 people sterilised under EPL, about 16,500 were made to against their will, and some without their knowledge.

A 1,400-page report submitted to parliament last year, and the first official account of the policy, found up to 8,000 patients who gave their consent were pressured into doing so.

Today the Japanese supreme court ruled that Eugenics laws were unconstitutional and ordered Japanese government to pay compensation to 11 people.

The Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology (JSPN) in February apologised for the "irreparable harm" it was complicit in causing to the victims of eugenic policies.

"The JSPN, as an academic society responsible for psychiatric care, offers a sincere and unreserved apology to the victims of forced sterilisation for the harm inflicted upon their lives and for the disregard of their human rights," president Masaru Mimura said.

Pictured: ‘A route within the Soluch (Soluk) concentration camp, which had circa 20.123 Libyan prisoners by 1931.’ (Source.)

Quoting Ali Abdullatif Ahmida’s Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History, pages 138–141:

Recently, I had a discussion with one of my political science undergraduate students at the University of New England, in southern Maine, about her image of Italian culture and society. […] She admitted to knowing nothing about Italian Fascism, and certainly nothing about the internment in Libya.

The view of Fascist Italy was impacted by geographical distance, the Red Scare, the view of Italian Fascism as a modern and developmental ideology, and American society’s acceptance of the dominant view of moderate fascism after World War II and the start of the Cold War. Critical scholarship of Fascist Italy shows strong positive views of the régime.

David Schmitz, a leading historian, investigated the American National Archives and interviews with State Department officials conducted between 1922 and 1940, and concluded that American leaders perceived the rise of Italian Fascism “as meeting of qualifications for supporting political stability, anti‐Bolshevism, and promised increases in trade³⁹.”

Thus, Washington welcomed Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922 and established policies that aided his régime because it believed that fascism would bring equilibrium and strong government to Italy, work against Bolshevism, aid Italy’s economic recovery along acceptable lines, and provide American businesses with favorable investment opportunities. And he added that Mussolini was viewed as a “moderate” leading a progressive administration that would help modernize Italy.⁴⁰

There was silence about the war crimes and no critique of the war crimes in Libya. However, the American Archives on the American Embassy reports from Rome show a different view and clear understanding and documentation of the repressive policies in Libya, which clearly did not persuade the Roosevelt administration to rethink its moderate image of the régime even after it invaded Ethiopia in 1935. The archives show that the American government stayed neutral and refused to condemn the fascist régime’s aggression that led to the end of the League of Nations.

If the American state in the 1920 and 1930s supported and engaged the fascist régime, it follows that the view of the American public was not much different. I examined The New York Times coverage of Italy and colonial Libya between 1911 and 1940 and found only one vague reference to pacification of the rebels and the capture of ʻUmar al‐Mukhtar. Not only did The Times take the fascist side and language it did not even mention the concentration camps. Here is the only reference to the resistance on January 24, 1930:

The rebellion really was crushed last year when General Graziani Stretched 180 miles of barbwire across the weeping sands separating Egypt and Libya and blocked off tribesmen from food and water. After unsuccessful attempt to pierce the barrier, Jusuf Bu Rahil [Yusuf Bu Rahil] chief aide of the rebel leader ʻUmar al‐Mukhtar and his band were pressured into the desert and virtually wiped out.⁴¹

Furthermore, the coverage was short and uncritical of the [Fascist] colonial and orientalist language representation of the native people, such as “Bedouins,” motivated by “religious fanaticism,” and “holy war.” The reporting accepted uncritically the colonial claims and policies, such as the use of “pacification” or the positive reporting of the big fascist celebration of shipping 20,000 settlers to the colony on October 31, 1938: “sixteen ships carrying 1,800 families of agricultural workers to the Italian colony of Libya.”

In short, the reporting did not question the colonial claims, its violence, atrocities, or the genocide in concentration camps up to 1934.⁴² There is one exception to this historical silence and amnesia; the only well‐informed reports came from the American Embassy in Rome, but even this reporting took the [Fascist] side for granted. This is striking if one keeps in mind that the American Embassy in Rome was informed about the camps.

One can conclude from this investigation that the leading American paper, The New York Times, not only did even mention the camps, accepted the colonial fascist narrative, and contributed to the making of moderate or benign Italian Fascism.⁴³

The National Geographic Magazine, which was founded in 1888, had close ties to the American government, as many diplomats and businessmen contributed articles to it. It is the third most popular magazine in the USA and had a high subscription of 37 million readers in 1989.⁴⁴ I discovered 24 articles on Italy and Libya between 1922 and 1940. The magazine published three main articles on Libya. All three accept fascist claims and even the myth of reviving the Roman past by linking it to long‐ago Libya.

Furthermore, the articles are silent on the brutal Italian history of the internment and the military and cultural atrocities including the genocide. Instead, the articles suggested that the régime’s colonial policies helped modernize Libya and developed and civilized the fanatical and savage “Bedouin” natives. The first article was written by Gordon Casserly in 1925 and titled “Tripolitania Where Rome Resumes Sway.” The author takes for granted and supports the [Fascist] claim of a Roman past as justification for invading Tripoli. He had no words for the resistance.

The second article was written by Harriet Chalmers Adams in 1930 and titled “Cyrenaica, Eastern Wing of Italian Libya.[”] It is another apology for [Fascist] colonialism. The author repeated orientalist gazes such as “a primitive land” inhabited by “fanatical Muslims.” The third article was authored by John Patric in 1937 with a propaganda title of “Imperial Rome Reborn.”

He celebrated the great fascist celebration of the rebirth of the new “L’impero Italiano.” No moral or critical question was raised but the right for empire and conquest by fascism was taken for granted.⁴⁵ This coverage by National Geographic Magazine was silent about the concentration camps and the mass killing. Instead, the three articles constructed well‐produced, edited photos and exotic images which contributed to a positive image of fascism and colonialism and the absurd myth that it was benign and modernizing.

Thus, Italian Fascism and its genocidal policies in Libya was accepted and even viewed as a modernization period. This myth of moderate and modernizing Italian Fascism became an influential interpretation among some American social scientists who accepted the claims of pro‐fascist Italian historian De Felice, whose defense of fascism became a well‐respected view and was defended by his students, and the American Journal of Historical Studies.⁴⁶

In addition, American political scientist James Gregor made a career for himself teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in the department of Political Science. There, he advocated Italian Fascism as an aid to development during most of the 1980s. His book Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship (1979), published by the Princeton University Press, supports his view of fascism.⁴⁷

Even the eminent political theorist Hannah Arendt and many German academic refugees from [the Third Reich] advocated this myth of moderate Italian Fascism, as compared with the genocidal [Third Reich].

Perhaps Arendt did not know what was going on in Libya; we know she was very early on in her career, writing her second book on totalitarianism in which she took a moral stand against imperialism and even argued that the route to the German genocide, including the Holocaust, originated in the European genocides in the colonies, especially the Congo and German East Africa.

Arendt was clear about the impact of genocide, but not so for fascist practices in Libya, or the Native American genocide in North and South America between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries[.] She was also wrong about Fascist Italy when arguing that there was no Jewish question and no anti‐feminism in Italy, and also silent about Libya, Ethiopia, and Yugoslavia, to the point that she repeated time and time again that Italian Fascism was just an ordinary dictatorship under fascism.⁴⁸

Popular American culture also portrayed a positive view of Fascist Italy, and one should not forget that some American icons were supporters of Mussolini and his régime, such as American businessman Henry Ford and the American poet Ezra Pound, who not only lived in Italy but worked in fascist Italian Radio, advocating for fascism and Mussolini.⁴⁹

It should be surprising that the Italian election in March 2018 witnessed not only the continued neo‐fascist movement, but also many small fascist parties including one called Casa Pound, in reference to the pro‐fascist American poet Ezra Pound.⁵⁰

Historical and geographical distances, as well as lack of knowledge and awareness, allowed certain policy makers and mass media such as The New York Times and the third‐most widely read magazine, National Geographic Magazine, with its 37 million readers, to reproduce the myth that Italian Fascism was not genocidal but was a moderate, positive force aiming to modernize.

(Emphasis added.)

Pictured: ‘From a special newspaper supplement of 1962, publicizing the fact that while many immigrants who had been in Canada for decades were denied citizenship because of their progressive politics, much more recent immigrants who were [Fascists] or [Axis] collaborators were given citizenship.’ — Alex Boykowich

Ottawa faced renewed calls for greater transparency about the presence of war criminals in Canada after parliamentarians inadvertently gave two standing ovations last fall to a man who fought in [an Axis] unit in the Second World War.

Yaroslav Hunka, who fought for the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a voluntary unit created by the [Axis] to help fight the Soviet Union, was welcomed to the House of Commons last fall to hear a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The report by researcher Alti Rodal, known as the Rodal report, was prepared as part of a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada in 1985 and was intended to provide the commission with information on the historical policies and circumstances that led to the presence of [Axis] war criminals in Canada.

It was initially released under the Access to Information Act in heavily censored form in 1987, and more details were made public last summer in response to a Freedom of Information request by B’nai Brith Canada.

The newly released and nearly complete version makes 15 previously classified pages public, the immigration minister’s director of communications, Aissa Diop, said in a statement Thursday.

“While additional information that is no longer sensitive due to the passage of time can now be released, some information still remains protected in accordance with the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said in a news release Thursday.

There are no individuals identified in the newly released version of the document, but it does include information Canada received in confidence from foreign governments, details previously protected under solicitor client privilege, as well as information that would harm international affairs and the enforcement of Canadian laws, Diop said.

“Those who suffered under Nazi Germany and their descendants want transparency when it comes to this shameful chapter in our history,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller said in a statement Thursday.

Rodal’s report concludes that in the decade following the war, there was “ample opportunity” for war criminals and [Axis] collaborators to enter Canada.

B’nai Brith Canada has advocated for the release of the full document since the 1980s, and filed several requests under Access to Information Laws in the past year, which the group says the government repeatedly denied.

“We welcome this almost complete disclosure of the Rodal Report,” David Matas, who represented the group during the commission, said in a statement Wednesday.

Though it has been 79 years since the Second World War and 37 years since Rodal’s work was completed, Matas said ongoing mass atrocities and efforts by perpetrators to seek haven in Canada lend contemporary relevance to the report.

“We cannot learn from the past unless we know the past. The almost complete disclosure of the Rodal Report is an important step in coming to grips with our past and applying its lessons for the present,” he said.

Description: A European man’s arm holds up a sword, implicitly likening the Axis to the Crusaders, and behind it are three Baltic flags and two other European ones: the flag of Lithuania, the flag of Latvia, the flag of the Third Reich, a flag of Finland, and the flag of Estonia. In the background is an unarmed Bolshevik skeleton (equating Bolshevism with death) looking at the sword with concern, almost trembling before it.

Quoting Detlev Vagts’s Carl Schmitt’s Ultimate Emergency: The Night of the Long Knives:

A little more than a year into his rule as [Fascist] Chancellor, Hitler felt threatened from two directions. On the one hand there was restiveness among members of the SA (Sturmabteilung), the brown‐shirted street fighters who had done so much to bring him to power. Some of them took seriously the idea that there was meaning to the words “socialist” and “workers” in the title of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. They felt that their contributions had not been recognized or rewarded.

Their head, Ernst Röhm, was a formidable fighter and potential troublemaker. He was intent upon gaining primacy in military matters vis‐à‐vis the army. On the other side, there was unease among the conservatives who had opened the way for Hitler’s appointment. Several of them were planning to meet with President Hindenburg to urge him to curb what they regarded as excesses in Hitler’s policies. Most disturbingly of all, the army leadership was considering forceful means to end the attempt by the SA to gain control over military matters[.]

It seems likely that subjectively Hitler took these threats seriously, though no evidence of any plot to seize power was ever presented. Witnesses describe him as highly excited to the point of foaming at the mouth. He flew to Munich and there confronted leaders of the SA in a resort hotel and had them imprisoned. One of Röhm’s chief deputies was caught in bed with another man, a matter that Hitler stressed in moralistic terms. Röhm was seized and given a chance to commit suicide; when he declined he was shot to death by SS (Schutzstaffel) officers.

Elsewhere in [the Third Reich] murder squads went into action. They killed General Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler’s immediate predecessor as Chancellor, together with his wife and an aide, General Bredow. Also on the list were Edgar Jung, secretary to Chancellor von Papen, who had drafted a critical article about Hitler’s excesses, and Erich Klausener, head of the Catholic Action movement. Schmitt had interacted with von Schleicher in various ways.⁵

Hitler also settled scores with men who had incurred his displeasure along the way: Gregor Strasser, formerly an important Nazi organizer, and Gustav von Kahr, a figure in Bavarian politics in the 1920s. Hitler’s enemies on the left were spared as they were already stowed away in concentration camps.

Some were killed by mistake, confused with a target having a similar name. No list of the assassinated was ever made public and the relevant files were destroyed. Hitler told the Reichstag that the number was 77; subsequent research indicates that the real number was twice or even three times as great.⁶

On July 13 Hitler spoke in the Reichstag to the German people, justifying his actions, and a statute was passed ratifying them. By and large the popular reaction in [the Third Reich] seems to have been favorable. Many regarded the SA as uncouth rowdies that constituted a menace to the public peace and the killings of the rightists were largely ignored, even by their comrades in the army. Only one officer dared to attend von Schleicher’s funeral.

Further reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pages 213–226

Night of the Long Knives: Forty‐Eight Hours that Changed the History of the World

The Night of the Long Knives: The History and Legacy of Adolf Hitler’s Notorious Purge of the SA

Night of the Long Knives: Hitler's Excision of Rohm's SA Brownshirts, 30 June – 2 July 1934

(Mirror.)

In another clip from the Bnei David Yeshiva published by Channel 13, Rabbi Giora Redler can be heard praising [the Third Reich’s] ideology during a lesson about the Holocaust.

“Let’s just start with whether Hitler was right or not,” he told students. “He was the most correct person there ever was, and was correct in every word he said… he was just on the wrong side.”

Redler goes on to say that pluralism is the “real” genocide being perpetrated against the Jewish people, not Nazi Germany’s Final Solution.

Related: Israeli “Hebrew Gaza” Panel Likes Hitler’s Plans:

“The real Holocaust was not when they murdered the Jews, that’s not it. All these excuses — that it was ideological or systematic — are nonsense,” he said. “Humanism, and the secular culture of ‘We believe in man,’ that’s the Holocaust.”

The comments drew wide condemnation from opposition lawmakers who called for pulling all state funding to the Eli-based academy over Kashtiel’s and Redler’s remarks.

Pictured: A ‘Special Night Squads’ unit in the late 1939s. British soldiers recruited from the Zionist militias and carried out a ‘dirty war’ against civilians. Some Zionists were even armed with Fascist weapons.

Quoting Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation page 384:

Feivel Polkes, a Haganah intelligence agent, came to Berlin for talks with the SD and Gestapo between 26 February and 2 March 1937.⁵⁷ According to a situation report of October 1937, Polkes offered to become an informant for the Gestapo, sharing Haganah intelligence information, in return for which the Gestapo would pressure the RVt to require emigrating Jews to settle exclusively in Palestine.⁵⁸ Polkes worked with Dr. Franz Reichert, an agent of the SD, who was nominally a correspondent for DNB, the [Third Reich’s] overseas news service in Jerusalem.

Among other things, he would support German foreign policy interests in the Middle East and use his influence to secure sources of oil for the Reich if German foreign currency regulations for Jews emigrating to Palestine were to be relaxed.⁵⁹

Polkes claimed that he was on the General Staff of the Haganah.⁶⁰ SS files show that in return for information from Polkes on [possible] attempts to kill Hitler, ‘pressure will be exerted on the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland to oblige Jews who emigrate from Germany to go exclusively to Palestine, and not to other countries.’⁶¹

Dr. Franz Six, Eichmann’s boss, wrote confirming this.⁶² In a 1957 interview, the former Chairman of the ZVfD, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, revealed that ‘the Gestapo did all it could to promote Jewish emigration to Palestine, thereby rendering considerable assistance to the Zionist cause.’⁶³

Polkes arranged, in his contacts with Eichmann, for arms supplies, Mauser pistols, to be smuggled to [occupied] Palestine in barrels of cement.⁶⁴ In return Polkes supplied the [Fascists] with information on an illegal communist broadcasting station which drove between the German and Luxembourg border.⁶⁵ He also supplied the [Fascists] with information about two pro‐Soviet Arab leaders, Emirs Sheikib Arslan and Adil Arslan, who were at a conference in Berlin.

Polkes later met with Eichmann in Café Groppi in Cairo on 10 and 11 October 1937, after Eichmann had been deported by the British from Palestine.⁶⁶ Here he assured him that the Zionists ‘were favourably disposed to the extreme German policy.’⁶⁷

In 1983 Lenni Brenner met Yoav Gelber of YV, who told him that he was unable to access Polkes file in the Haganah archives in Tel Aviv. In October 1983 Brenner asked archivist Chaim Zamir to see the file. ‘There is no file,’ Zamir responded. When told about his conversation with Gelber, Zamir replied: ‘There is no file because it would be too embarrassing’.⁶⁸ The question is what is it that is so embarrassing that they have to hide it?

Even the Zionist historian Francis R. Nicosia admitted to this transgression (which he evidently considered ‘insignificant’). Quoting his book The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, pages 63–4:

An interesting episode involving the Hagana and [Fascism] during the 1930s emerges from the documents on the Polkes visit to Berlin in 1937. In his conversations with Eichmann, Polkes referred to Mauser pistols that the Hagana had earlier received from [the Third Reich], observing that they had rendered valuable service to the Hagana dining the recent unrest in Palestine.⁷⁰

In a study of Hagana intelligence activities, E. Dekel, a former Hagana officer, revealed that, between 1933 and 1935, some 300 barrels of cement were shipped from a fictitious exporter in Belgium to a fictitious importer in Jaffa, in reality the Hagana.⁷¹ According to Dekel, about half the barrels contained, in addition to cement, 100‐lb. containers filled with Mauser pistols and ammunition.

He did not indicate the exact source of the pistols, although it would seem that they originated in [the Third Reich], as indicated in the Polkes–Eichmann conversations in Berlin early in 1937. The source within [the Third Reich] remains a mystery. The Mauser‐Jagdwaffen GmbH has informed me that, although most of their records were destroyed during the war, the firm did provide the Ministry of the Interior with large quantities of model C96, which appeared in 1932.⁷²

It is known from Dekel's study that Hagana agents were actively seeking arms and ammunition all over Europe during the 1930s and from the SS records on Polkes that Hagana agents were active in [the Third Reich] at that time.⁷³ While it cannot be determined at this point exactly who provided the pistols to the Hagana, it is certain that someone in [the Third Reich] did and that the police authorities were aware of it.

(Emphasis added in all cases. Click here for more information. Cheers to Bes D. Marx for telling me about this.)

Pictured: Foreign Minister Lászlo Bárdossy (first from right) walks in front of a guard of honor. Visible: Hungarian Ambassador to Berlin Döme Sztójay (first from left) and SS Obergruppenführer Baron von Eberstein (second from left). Dated 1941.

Quoting Deborah S. Cornelius’s Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron, pages 148–152:

Confirming the doubts of Rundstedt, the progress of Army Group South was slower than that of the other two army groups; the Seventeenth Army pushed forward only ten to twelve kilometers on the first day. On June 25, 1941, the chief of staff of Army South repeated his request for the intervention of troops from [the Kingdom of] Hungary. He pointed out that this would be a significant unburdening of the Seventeenth Army’s south wing and help the attack of the Eleventh Army.

The answer came from the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), [the Third Reich’s] High Command of the Army—“the question of Hungarian participation is still open.”⁶ Halder noted in his diary of June 25: “Hungary’s collaboration would be desirable. Hungary, however, wants to be asked officially. The Führer will not do that, for political reasons.”⁷

All this changed on June 26 at a few minutes after one o’clock in the afternoon when three unidentified planes dropped bombs on the Hungarian city of Kassa. The bombs struck the post and telegraph office, a settlement and several homes, leaving several dead and a larger number wounded. One bomb failed to explode and was found to be of Russian manufacture. The planes then disappeared toward the southeast, the direction from which they had come.

The local military authorities concluded that Soviet planes were responsible, but to this day the question of responsibility has not been solved. Many Hungarians believed that the [Third Reich] had used the bombing as a trick to bring [the Kingdom of] Hungary into the war, but absolutely no German documents have turned up to support this thesis. The Russians denied responsibility.⁸

When the news reached Budapest, the minister of defense, Károly Bartha, and Chief of the General Staff Henrik Werth rushed to tell the regent what had happened. Horthy’s immediate reaction was indignation—the country had been attacked! His sense of honor required that he act.

On the spot he ordered that appropriate retaliatory measures be initiated, but it is not clear if he was thinking of a declaration of war or only reprisals. Horthy, who was [supposedly] apolitical, was always prone to making quick impulsive decisions, which he could be talked out of later by calmer minds. His respected advisors, Moricz Esterházy or István Bethlen, had been able to talk the regent out of hasty actions in other situations, but both Bartha and Werth were eager for war.⁹

By the time Bárdossy heard of the incident and reached the regent, Horthy had already given the order for retaliatory measures. A career diplomat, Bárdossy had never had close relations with Horthy, and he did not attempt to counter the impulsive decision. He believed that Horthy wanted immediate action—and that this action would be war. He explained that he must first go to the Council of Ministers since only they could make a declaration of a state of war.

Horthy seems to have believed that after council deliberation Bárdossy would return to him with the decision for his approval, but Bárdossy believed he had been ordered to put a decision on war into effect. Therefore there was no need to consult the regent further. Later Horthy charged that Bárdossy had presented him with a fait accompli.¹⁰

One hour and twenty minutes after bombs fell on Kassa, Bárdossy summoned an emergency session of the Council of Ministers, which met so hurriedly that several members were missing. Dezso Laky, minister of public supply, arrived only at the end, and Ferenc Zsindely, secretary of state, was absent, while Antal Ullein‐Reviczky, head of the foreign ministry’s press division, was attending a lunch party and sent a deputy in his stead.

In that short time Bárdossy had made up his mind to a complete reversal of his whole policy. At the council meeting he announced that the Soviets had bombed Kassa, and in his view Hungary should declare that as a consequence she regarded herself as in a state of war.

Opinions were divided. Minister of Defense Bartha condemned the Soviet attack as an uncalled‐for provocation and made vigorous pleas to carry out reprisals. The moderate minister of the interior, Ferenc Keresztes‐Fischer, thought it was too early to declare a state of war, reasoning that the bombing was not that serious an action. He believed the army was not strong enough, and that it was against the country’s interests to start a war against a great power.

Bálint Hóman, the pro‐[Reich] minister of culture, and Reményi‐Schneller, minister of finance, both supported the prime minister, claiming that [the Kingdom of] Hungary should not be the only one left out of the action. [The Kingdoms of] Italy and Romania had joined in the war the day of the [Wehrmacht’s] attack and Slovakia had also joined.¹¹

Bárdossy summed up the opinion of the council, that all were in favor of reprisals, and all, except Keresztes‐Fischer, were in favor of stating that Hungary regarded herself as being in a state of war with Russia, but participation in military action should be as limited as possible. Evidently no vote was taken. The ministers did not seem to have realized that Bárdossy’s summing‐up was equivalent to agreement to a binding resolution.

According to the official record of the meeting signed by Bárdossy, the ministers’ decision to declare the existence of a state of war between [the Kingdom of] Hungary and the USSR was unanimous, although at Bárdossy’s trial in 1945, it was charged that he had falsified the evidence—that four ministers had voted against the decision.¹²

Without consulting the regent, Bárdossy immediately drafted and issued a communiqué describing the attack on Kassa as an act of unprovoked aggression by the USSR and ended by stating that in consequence “Hungary considered herself from this moment on as at war with the U.S.S.R.”

Later, on the advice of Ullein‐Reviczky, he modified the wording to state: “In consequence of the repeated attacks made by Soviet aircraft, contrary to international law, against Hungarian territory, Hungary considers a state of war to have come into being between herself and the USSR.”¹³ That day he did not inform the regent of his communiqué.

The question remains why Bárdossy made the fatal step so precipitously. The Kassa incident was no casus belli; Molotov strongly denied Moscow’s involvement.¹⁴ There was no overt German pressure. Bárdossy said the step was inevitable but in later years historians have blamed him directly for [the Kingdom of] Hungary’s entry into war. Since the fall of State Socialism in 1989, many World War II officers and political figures charged with war crimes have been rehabilitated, but there is still no discussion of clearing Bárdossy’s name.

Bárdossy had been appointed prime minister hastily, immediately following Teleki’s suicide. Although acknowledged to be brilliant, he was often impatient. He could be charming and had been an excellent representative for [the Kingdom of] Hungary in England, and successful in Bucharest in improving Hungarian–Romanian relations, but he was a novice in domestic politics, not familiar with parliamentary rules and conduct.

A proud and sensitive man, he was prone to make quick decisions and to make them on his own. Not patient with those around him who were less bright, he was not good at consulting others nor taking advice. To add to his impatience he had serious stomach problems. It seems that at this point he had come to the decisions on what he believed to be the correct course.¹⁵

The next day, June 27, Bárdossy appeared before Parliament. The standing chairman, Jeno Szinyei Merse, announced with outrage that there had been an air attack by the Soviet Air Force the day before, but there was no mention that the identity of the attackers could be questioned. He then introduced Prime Minister Bárdossy to acclamation by the House (“Hear! Hear!”). Bárdossy repeated the news of the Soviet attack. “Thus the Hungarian Royal Government decided that as a result of the attack a state of war exists between Hungary and the Soviet Union.”¹⁶

The parliamentary record states that his news was greeted by long and lively cheering and clapping from all sides. From the extreme Right came the shouts: “Out with the Social Democrats.” Bárdossy continued, stating that the Hungarian army would take the necessary measures. There was no further parliamentary discussion, the house continued with a long drawn‐out debate on the need to further restrict the activities of the Jews.¹⁷

According to a later report there were at most forty representatives present. The one or two Smallholders and Social Democrat representatives immediately left the chamber and the loud clapping came from the ten to fifteen Arrow Cross representatives. The leader of one opposition party, Rassay, asked as he left the chamber, “Are you happy about this?” The government party representatives were surprised and clapped politely.¹⁸

Bárdossy did not even appear in the upper house which received the same notification read out by the president. His failure to consult the upper house, which was taken as an insult, greatly reduced his esteem in that body.

The declaration of war was not unpopular—none of those in the opposition, neither the liberal parties nor the Social Democrats challenged the declaration. The prominent opposition leader, Bajcsy Zsilinsky, even sent a message to Bárdossy praising him for defending the country’s interests, and the military were especially jubilant.

Hungarians had been permeated with anti‐Bolshevism ever since the catastrophic Soviet Republic of 1919, and the officers, indoctrinated with an anti‐Bolshevik attitude, were infatuated with Germany and its technical advances and rapid victories. A number of the younger officers saw in Hitler’s social reforms a new society. Three military commissions, which had gone to [the Third Reich] in 1940–41, were unanimous in their opinion that no power on the continent could defeat the Wehrmacht.

In light of [Fascism’s] rapid victories everyone thought that it would be a short war. There was no thought that [the Kingdom of] Hungary’s participation might entangle the country in hostilities with the West.

But the simple peasant or worker felt no enthusiasm at the prospect of fighting [Soviets], who meant nothing to him. Closer association with [the Third Reich] was still unpopular among many Hungarians. The regent preserved a curious reticence about the war. It was many days before any Hungarian paper suggested that Horthy had ordered the campaign and he signed no order to the troops. In a speech given on June 29 to unveil a monument to the World War I fallen, he did not include a single reference to the new war.

(Emphasis added.)

Pictured: Axis General von Falkenhorst meeting Finnish General Hjalmar Siilasvuo on June 24, 1941.

Few anticommunists have the audacity to explicitly and unambiguously defend Operation Barbarossa, but Finland’s participation is an important exception. This is when generic anticommunists take a break from repetitively equating us with the Fascists and instead portray them as ‘lesser evils’ whom we forced Finland to choose, otherwise we would have either enslaved or exterminated the entire Finnish population (just because). Whereas presenting facts explaining the German–Soviet Pact of 1939 as anything other than sheer sadism is an offence worse than Shoah denial, justifying Finland’s alliance with the Third Reich is more than welcome.

Quoting Henrik Meinander in Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations, pages 71–4:

The Finnish government and population were […] strategically and mentally prepared for the new war. In fact, the Finnish Army and its related services would from the start mobilize a larger proportion (16 percent) of the country’s population than any other European nation at the time. In the morning of 22 June 1941, Hitler made his famous radio speech, in which he declared war on the Soviet Union and mentioned that “the brave Finnish comrades‐in‐arms” would take part in this huge offensive.

The latter information did not correspond with the Finnish strategy of disguising their participation in the war as a defensive reaction to Soviet attacks. [Berlin’s] authorities thus softened their formulation the same day by describing Finnish involvement as “shouldering a European anti‐communist frontier” together with [the Third Reich] and [the Kingdom of] Romania.³¹

The dilemma was soon solved. The Soviet Air Forces directed strikes against Finnish airports and other military sites used by [Axis] armed forces. Civilian targets were also attacked. This gave the Finnish parliament reason to announce on 25 June 1941 that Finland was again at war with the Soviet Union.

Next day President Ryti gave a radio speech in which he accused the Soviet Union of beginning the war and described the new conflict as Finland’s second defense war. He carefully avoided mentioning the military preparations together with [the Third Reich], but emphasized that the war was now fought together with the “successful German armed forces,” which would guarantee a lucky outcome of the defense war and put a definite end to the eastern threat to Finland.³²

During the first month of war, the [Fascist]–Finnish master strategy worked out according to the original plans, as the [Wehrmacht] had reached the outskirts of Leningrad at rapid speed and the Finnish Army began its own offensive north of Lake Ladoga with success.

Mannerheim was also eager to give bold statements. He had already given the new war a Finnish expression, the Continuation War. On 10 July 1941, he revealed in a famous order of the day—the so‐called “Scabbard Order”—that the aim of the offensive was not only to reconquer the territories lost in the Winter War: “The freedom of Karelia and a great Finland are glimmering in front of us in the enormous avalanche of world historic events.”

The Western Powers required an immediate explanation for Mannerheim’s order from the Finnish government, which answered that his vision did not reflect an official line. This was not a fully honest explanation. Even if [Helsinki] and [Berlin] had not agreed upon any specific future borderlines, they had certainly agreed on a plan, in which the Finnish Army should advance far into Soviet Eastern Karelia and keep its positions there until the war was over.

This was indeed what the Finnish Army did. The Finnish offensive was decisively facilitated by the simultaneous [Wehrmacht] operations, which forced the Red Army to split its forces along its whole western border. In early December 1941, the Finnish Army reached its intended positions in Eastern Karelia and was called to a halt by Mannerheim. The Finnish leadership was not prepared to deliver more than originally promised to its [Fascist] brother‐in‐arms, and this was due to two things.

First, the [Wehrmacht’s] eastward offensive had been a swift Blitzkrieg only during the first two months. In the autumn of 1941, it was increasingly obstructed by both the Russian winter, which arrived early and was even harsher than usual, and the [determined] resistance of the Red Army.

In such a situation the Finnish leadership was cautious not to let the Army bleed more than necessary and rejected repeatedly [Berlin’s] requests for a stronger support for their attacks on Leningrad and the Murmansk Railway. Plus the longer the war continued, the more [that] the Finns had to consider the possibility that the Soviet Union could survive and even beat its enemies. This prospect was also partially behind the second reason for the Finnish resistance to mount further offensive operations.

Despite the outbreak of the war, the Finnish government had maintained diplomatic ties to Great Britain and the United States, which generally speaking stood ideologically much closer to Finland than the [Third Reich]. Regardless of how the war would end, the Finnish leadership was thus strongly motivated to preserve good relations with the West as much as possible.

Throughout the war, Finland rejected an official political alliance with [the Third Reich] and claimed consistently in its westward communication that Finland fought its own defensive war against the Soviet Union. On 11 November 1941, the Finnish government sent a lengthy explanation to Washington DC, in which it was emphasized that Finland fought its own war free of any political bonds to [the Third Reich].³³

The timing for this statement was not a coincidence. The Western Powers had repeatedly demanded a Finnish withdrawal from the war and sharpened their voice in the autumn of 1941, when the Finnish Army began to threaten the railway connection between Murmansk and Central Russia, via which a large proportion of the Western material support to the Soviet Union was delivered. Great Britain had promised its Soviet ally to declare war on Finland if the Finns did not halt their offensive.

In November 1941, it sent this ultimatum to the Finnish government, which however neither for military nor diplomatic reasons could reveal that the request would very shortly be fulfilled. On 7 December, the Finnish Army had reached its most eastern destination and halted its offensive for good.

But this was too late. The day before, on the Finnish Independence Day, the British government declared war on Finland, and from that moment the 3.7 million Finns were officially fighting against not only the mighty Soviet Union but also the whole British Commonwealth. Even if their armed forces never met on the battlefield, the British war declaration undoubtedly complicated the Finnish diplomacy and resulted in Finland having to also sign a peace treaty with Great Britain in Paris in 1947.

As is known, early December 1941 was also a turning point in the war from a global perspective. The same day as the Finnish Army halted its offensive in Soviet Eastern Karelia, [Axis] Air Forces conducted a devastating strike on Pearl Harbor. Within a few days of the outbreak of the Pacific War, [Berlin] had also declared war on the United States, which meant that the conflict had truly escalated into world war.

The Axis Powers still had the initiative, but self‐evidently the American entry into the war had a decisive impact on developments in the longer run. Within a month, the consequences of the Pacific War were also felt at the Finnish–Soviet front.

Stalin had received advance information of the [Axis] attack south‐ and eastward in the Pacific, and in November 1941 he had already ordered the transfer of 20 Soviet divisions from the Far East to the European war scene. This gave the Red Army a momentous boost in the defense of Moscow, and in January 1942, the Red Army also increased its pressure on the Finnish–[Fascist] front sector to secure the threatened Murmansk Railway connection.³⁴

The Finnish High Command naturally followed the development on this larger war scene and had by then become increasingly pessimistic about the possibilities of [an Axis] victory on the Eastern Front. During the winter of 1941–42, Marshal Mannerheim also received alarming reports about how the [Fascists] had gravely missed their chance to win over the population of the conquered areas in the Soviet Union by treating them with horrific brutality.

This not only destroyed the credibility of the anti‐communist arguments in [Axis] propaganda, but also cast a shadow on their Finnish brother‐in‐arms, who had emphasized that they, too, fought a war against communism and for the freedom of the Karelian people.

(Emphasis added. See here for more.)