June 5
1846 Japan: Eighteen American sailors from the US whaler Lagoda, shipwrecked on the northern Japanese island of Yeso, are captured and imprisoned in Nagasaki. [See: Countdown to Infamy: Timeline to Pearl Harbor.]
1883 Birth: John Maynard Keynes: British economist:
Educated at Eton, Keynes won a scholarship in classics and mathematics at King's College, Cambridge. Interested in literature and philosophy, Keynes was invited to join the Apostles, a small, secret society of dons and undergraduates who met to discuss ethical and political issues. The group included Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster and Bertrand Russell. His friendship with Woolf and Russell brought him into contact with leaders of the Fabian Society, including Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw.
When Keynes graduated in 1905 he took up a career in the Civil Service. He gained a Fellowship at King's College in 1909 and as well as teaching Keynes' began writing on economic issues. He became editor of the Economic Journal in 1911 and his first book Indian Currency and Finance was published in 1913.
Keynes was a pacifist but wanted to contribute to Britain's war effort. He eventually decided to join the Treasury Department of the Civil Service that was dealing with the financial side of the First World War. According to Kingsley Martin, his fellow conscientious objector, Bertrand Russell, claimed that Keynes' work at the Treasury "consisted of finding ways of killing the maximum number of Germans at the minimum expense."
By 1919 Keynes was the senior Treasury official sent as part of the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. John Maynard Keynes totally disagreed with the harsh terms negotiated at Versailles and after resigning returned to England and wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). The book was very controversial and although many disagreed with his conclusions, it brought him a great deal of attention. In the book Keynes argued that the war reparations imposed on Germany could not be paid. This he warned, would led to further conflict in Europe.
Although Keynes continued to teach at Cambridge University he also contributed a great number of articles to various newspapers and magazines. In 1923 he became chairman of the Liberal journal, The Nation and used it as a vehicle to attack the economic policies of Stanley Baldwin and his Conservative Government. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill came under attack for his decision to return Britain to the gold standard.
In 1925 John Maynard Keynes married the ballerina, Lydia Lopokova, and moved to Tilton, a farmhouse near Firle in East Sussex. Other members of the Bloomsbury Group, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, and Duncan Grant also lived in the area.
Keynes visited Russia in 1926. He was interested in the economic measures being taken by the communist regime and when he returned to England he wrote The End of Laissez-Faire. After the onset of the Depression in 1929, Keynes began to address the problems of unemployment. In a series of articles, The Means to Prosperity, written in The Times [London], Keynes argued that the government should "spend its way out of the depression."
In 1936 Keynes published his most important book A General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It revolutionized economic theory by showing how unemployment could occur involuntarily. In the book Keynes argued that the lack of demand for goods and rising unemployment could be countered by increased government expenditure to stimulate the economy. His views on the planned economy influenced President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was a factor in the introduction of the New Deal and the economic policies of Britain's post-war Labour Government.
Keynes was extremely active in his campaign to encourage the government to take more responsibility for running the economy. In 1931 he agreed an amalgamation of the Nation with the New Statesman, a journal owned by the Fabian Society. Keynes now became a regular contributor to what was now Britain's leading intellectual weekly.
During the Second World War Keynes was an unpaid advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and wrote the influential How to Pay for the War (1940). He attended the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and the Savannah Conference in 1946. He was also involved in the negotiations on Lend-Lease and the US loan to Britain.
1907 Hitler family (Exact Date Unknown): Klara Hitler, Adolf, Paula, and Aunt Johanna leave the Humboldtstrasse apartment and move into 9 Bluetengasse in Urfahr. Not only are the expenses reduced, but, since the three small rooms are on the ground floor, Klara, who is recovering from a mastectomy (January 18, 1907), will no longer have to navigate the three flights of stairs. [For further details, Click here.]
Their apartment consisted of three small rooms in the two-story house at No. 9 Bluetengasse, which is across the Danube from the main portion of Linz. Its windows gave an excellent view of the mountains. My predominant impression of the simple furnished apartment was its cleanliness. It glistened; not a speck of dust on the chairs or tables, not a stray fleck of mud on the scrubbed floor, not a smudge on the panes in the windows. Frau Hitler was a superb housekeeper. The Hitlers had only a few friends. One stood out above the others; the widow of the postmaster who lived in the same house. What kind of boy was Adolf Hitler? Many biographers have put him down as harsh-voiced, defiant, untidy; as a young ruffian who personified all that is unattractive. This simply is not true. As a youth he was quiet, well-mannered and neatly dressed . . . .
He (Adolf) was tall, sallow, old for his age. He was neither robust nor sickly. Perhaps "frail looking" would best describe him. His eyes—inherited from his mother—were large, melancholy and thoughtful. To a very large extent this boy lived within himself. What dreams he dreamed, I do not know. Outwardly, his love for his mother was his most striking feature. While he was not a "mother's boy" in the usual sense, I have never witnessed a closer attachment. Some insist that this love verged on the pathological. As a former intimate of the family, I do not believe this is true.
Fromelles Watercolor, 1915, by Hitler
1915 World War I: List Regiment: Gefreiter Adolf Hitler's 16 Reserve Infantry Regiment [List Regiment] occupy a position, at Fromelles, which is on a level field with water channels, willow trees and willow stalks, in the distance towards the enemy lines lie an insignificant wood with barbed wire entanglements. Under the direction of their defense-minded commander, Lieutenant General Gustav Scanzoni von Lichtenfels, the regiment works ceaselessly day and night to further fortify their position at Fromelles while fighting off repeated assaults by the enemy. [For further details, Click here.]
1916 World War I: Various:
Death: Horatio Herbert Kitchener—1st Earl of Khartoum:
The son of an army officer, Kitchener was educated in Switzerland and attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1871 , he undertook survey work in Palestine and Cyprus before being appointed second in command of the Egyptian cavalry in 1883 . The following year, during the revolt by followers of the Mahdi in the Sudan, he performed intelligence work and accompanied the unsuccessful expedition to rescue General Gordon from Khartoum. After serving as governor-general for east Sudan, Kitchener was appointed Sirdar of the Egyptian army ( 1892 ). Following his reorganization of forces, in 1896 Kitchener embarked on a campaign to quell the Dervishes in the Sudan. The town of Dongola was captured and Kitchener was promoted to major-general. On 2 September 1898, Kitchener's combined British and Egyptian force routed the Dervishes at Omdurman. Khartoum was recaptured two days later. This victory made Kitchener a national hero in Britain and, after briefly returning to the Sudan as governor-general, he was posted to South Africa as army chief of staff to Lord Roberts , whom he succeeded as commander-in-chief in November 1900 .
Kitchener ordered the destruction of Boer homesteads and the internment of Boer families in camps, where many suffered and died. This typified his cold-hearted, often ruthless, approach. Kitchener's war of attrition against the Boers finally ended in May 1902 and he was transferred to India as army C-in-C. Here he quarrelled with the viceroy, Lord Curzon ( 1859 – 1925 ), who gave priority to the civil service over the military, and Curzon resigned. However, Asquith failed to appoint Kitchener as his successor; instead, in 1911 , he became consul-general of Egypt.
At the outset of World War I in August 1914 , Kitchener was appointed secretary of state for war. He warned that the war would last years rather than months and pressed for massive expansion of the army. Throughout the country, his commanding image appeared on recruiting posters urging "Your country needs you!" But relations with his cabinet colleagues became increasingly strained and in 1915 he was relieved of responsibility for military strategy, although his resignation was rejected by the prime minister. On 5 June 1916 , he was aboard the HMS Hampshire bound for Russia on a diplomatic mission when the vessel hit a German mine off Orkney and sank. Kitchener was not among the few survivors.
List Regiment: Gefreiter Adolf Hitler endures trench warfare in Flanders (Artois) with 3 Company, 16 Reserve Infantry Regiment [List Regiment]. [For further details, Click here.]
Arab revolt breaks out against the Turks in the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia. The revolt spreads to Palestine and Syria under the leadership of British archaeologist T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), a brilliant tactician who joins forces with Husayn Ibn Ali. Lawrence, with a force of only a few thousand Arabs, threatens the Turks' entire line of communications through Syria to the Taurus Mountains.
1917 World War I: Various:
List Regiment: Gefreiter Adolf Hitler's 16th RIR redeploy east of Douai for a period of rest which will extend until June 24. [For further details, Click here.]
USA: About 10 million men begin registering for the draft.
1918 World War I: Various:
List Regiment: (June 1-17): Gefreiter Adolf Hitler's 16th RIR hold the Front at Aisne and the Marne. [For further details, Click here.]
The US Second Division begins a drive to uproot the Germans from positions at Vaux, Bouresches, and Belleau Wood.
1919 June 5-12 Gefreiter Adolf Hitler is ordered by Captain Mayr (above) to attend army-sponsored political indoctrination courses at the University of Munich. The purpose of the courses is to give returning soldiers a foundation of political philosophy favored by the Reichswehr, but the various instructors are a rather eclectic bunch, and one can hardly characterize the school as having an organized curriculum. Two instructors in particular influence Hitler:
The first is Gottfried Feder, an economist, who will become Hitler's mentor in finance and economics. Feder, a member of the Thule Society, will school Hitler in "Jewish finance capitalism." When Hitler's 25 Point Party Program is eventually drafted, the "Socialist" planks will be Feder's.
When I heard Gottfried Feder's first lecture on 'The Abolition of the Interest-Servitude', I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people. The absolute separation of stock-exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without at the same time attacking capital as such, for to do this would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence. I clearly saw what was developing in Germany and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations but against international capital. In Feder's speech I found an effective rallying-cry for our coming struggle.
The other instructor is Professor Karl Alexander von Mueller, a nationalist historian who taught that the Germans are a master race. At the end of one of the professor's lectures, a soldier rose and protested against his views on the Jews. Hitler takes it upon himself to defend the professor with an army of arguments, speaking with a rising passion and winning the crowd and the point.
Again, the source for this story is Hitler's own account; but this time, there is good reason to take him at his word. One of the observers recorded that Hitler was: "A born orator, he commands absolute attention from his listeners and speaks with total conviction."
Professor von Mueller asks Captain Mayr: "Do you know you have a natural orator among your students?"
Captain Mayr is sufficiently impressed with Hitler's performance during the course as to list him seventh on a list of twenty-three prospective instructors to be sent for a five-day indoctrination course at the Lechfeld military camp. [For further details, Click here.]
1933 FDR takes United States off gold standard:
On June 5, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable. [For further details, Click here.]
1934 Nazi Germany: Various:
Holocaust: The possibilities for legislating on "race-protection" are discussed at the 37th Meeting of the German Criminal Law Commission. Professor Dahm says: "Ideally, sexual relationships between "Aryans" and "non-Aryans" should be punished." (THP)
1934 Church and Reich: He who sups with the Devil: The Fulda Bishops' Conference notes that "contrary to earlier declarations of the Fuehrer, the National Socialist movement itself now wanted to constitute a Weltanschauung (worldview)." Religion could not be based on blood and race or other dogmas of human creation, the bishops write, but only on divine revelation taught by the Church and its visible head, the Vicar of Christ in Rome. (THP)
1940 World War II: Various: General de Gaulle is appointed French Undersecretary of War.
France: The Germans launch another offensive southward from the Somme.
Prophet unheard: General Erhard Milch, Goering's deputy, inspects the beach at Dunkirk and rushes back to report to Goering, telling him that, "I recommend that this very day all our air units — both the Second and Third Air Forces — should be moved up the Channel coast, and that Britain should be invaded immediately. If we leave the British in peace for four weeks it will be too late." (THP)
1941 China: During one sortie in a five-year bombing campaign on Chongqing, 4,000 people die of asphyxiation when the tunnel they were hiding in becomes blocked. [For further information, click here.]
1942 World War II: Various: War with Japan: Poison gas: President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues a stern statement warning Japan to stop using poison gas in its war on China. At this point during World War II, the United States and Japan were engaged in battle in the Pacific; Japan was also at war with China. Roosevelt received intelligence reports that Japanese military forces had used poisonous gas and other forms of what he called "inhuman warfare," including biological agents, on innocent Chinese civilians, which violated the Geneva Convention of 1925, an international agreement on the rules of engagement in war. Roosevelt warned that if Japan continued to use chemical warfare against China, the U.S. would consider such actions tantamount to a chemical or biological attack on America and the United Nations and respond with similar attacks. The president minced no words, stating that "retaliation in kind and in full measure will be meted out. We shall be prepared to enforce complete retribution. Upon Japan will rest the responsibility." Japan had first used chemical weapons in China in 1937 during the Wusung-Shanghai campaign of the Second Sino-Japanese war. U.S. military intelligence learned in 1942 that in addition to poisonous gas, Japan had used biological weapons in Changte, China. After the war, the Allies discovered the existence of Japan s "Unit 731," a special military unit that experimented on prisoners of war to develop biological weapons. Ironically, the U.S. was secretly developing its own biological warfare program with Roosevelt's full knowledge and approval at the time of his warning to Japan. Japan continued its use of these weapons, but on a smaller scale, until the end of the war, managing to keep its activities secret. A 1995 article in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof suggested the existence of evidence that the U.S. prevented Unit 731 from going on trial for war crimes in exchange for its data on human experiments. So far, the infamous Unit 731 has never been placed on trial. (History.com)
Holocaust: From the Warsaw Ghetto Diary of Avraham Levin: One of the most surprising side-effects of this war is the clinging to life, the almost total absence of suicides. People die in great numbers of starvation, the typhus epidemic or dysentery, they are tortured and murdered by the Germans in great numbers, but they do not escape from life by their own desire. On the contrary, they are tied to life by all their senses, they want to live at any price and to survive the war. The tensions of this historic world conflict are so great that all wish to see the outcome of the gigantic struggle and the new regime in the world, the small and the great, old men and boys. The old have just one wish: the privilege of seeing the end and surviving Hitler.
1943 World War II: Various: Joseph Goebbels on "The Winter Crisis is Over": Such a tragedy happened once in German history. It will never happen again. It will not happen this time because we know what is going on, and we hold all the elements for a truly decisive victory in our hands. They cannot defeat us with lies and promises. That was only possible through force. But we are using force against force.
From a report by the German General Commissioner for Minsk: Again a heavy destruction of the population must be expected. If only 492 rifles are taken from 4,500 enemy dead, this discrepancy shows that among these enemy dead were numerous peasants from the country. The battalion Dirlewanger especially has a reputation for destroying many human lives. Among the 5,000 people suspected of belonging to bands, there were numerous women and children. By order of the chief of anti-partisan units, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Vondem Bach, units of the Wehrmannschaften have also participated in the operation. SA Standartenfuehrer Kunze was in command of the Wehrmannschaften, among whom there were also 90 members from my office and from the District Commissariat of Minsk. Our men returned from the operation yesterday without losses.
From a letter addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paris: In the course of the conference which took place yesterday with the representatives of the High Command West and the SD, the following was agreed on concerning measures to be taken: The aim of these measures must be to prevent, by precautionary measures, the escape from France of any more well-known soldiers and at the same time to prevent these personages from organizing a resistance movement in the event of an attempted landing in France by the Anglo-Saxon powers. The circle of officers here concerned comprises all who, by their rank and experience or by their name, would considerably strengthen the military command or the political credit of the resistants, if they should decide to join them. In the event of military operations in France we must consider them as being of the same importance. The list has been drawn up in agreement with the High Command West, the Chief of the Security Police, and the General of the Air Force in Paris...In view of the present general situation and the contemplated security measures, all the authorities here consider it undesirable for these generals to remain in French custody, as the possibility must be considered that either through negligence or by intentional acts of the guard personnel, they might escape and regain their liberty...General Warlimont had asked the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front to raise the question of reprisal measures against the relatives of persons who had joined the resistance and to submit any proposals . . . . President Laval declared himself ready, not long ago, to take measures of this kind on behalf of the French Government; but to limit himself to the families of some particularly distinguished persons.
Holocaust: Netherlands: The Germans deport 1,266 Jewish children under the age of 16 to Sobibor. All are gassed on arrival. (THP)
1944 World War II: Preparations for D-Day: More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries placed at the Normandy assault area, while 3,000 Allied ships cross the English Channel in preparation for the invasion of Normandy-D-Day. The day of the invasion of occupied France had been postponed repeatedly since May, mostly because of bad weather and the enormous tactical obstacles involved. Finally, despite less than ideal weather conditions-or perhaps because of them-General Eisenhower decided on June 5 to set the next day as D-Day, the launch of the largest amphibious operation in history. Ike knew that the Germans would be expecting postponements beyond the sixth, precisely because weather conditions were still poor. Among those Germans confident that an Allied invasion could not be pulled off on the sixth was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was still debating tactics with Field Marshal Karl Rundstedt. Rundstedt was convinced that the Allies would come in at the narrowest point of the Channel, between Calais and Dieppe; Rommel, following Hitler's intuition, believed it would be Normandy. Rommel's greatest fear was that German air inferiority would prevent an adequate defense on the ground; it was his plan to meet the Allies on the coast-before the Allies had a chance to come ashore. Rommel began constructing underwater obstacles and minefields, and set off for Germany to demand from Hitler personally more panzer divisions in the area. Bad weather and an order to conserve fuel grounded much of the German air force on June 5; consequently, its reconnaissance flights were spotty. That night, more than 1,000 British bombers unleashed a massive assault on German gun batteries on the coast. At the same time, an Allied armada headed for the Normandy beaches in Operation Neptune, an attempt to capture the port at Cherbourg. But that was not all. In order to deceive the Germans, phony operations were run; dummy parachutists and radar-jamming devices were dropped into strategically key areas so as to make German radar screens believe there was an Allied convoy already on the move. One dummy parachute drop succeeded in drawing an entire German infantry regiment away from its position just six miles from the actual Normandy landing beaches. All this effort was to scatter the German defenses and make way for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy. [See: June 6.] 1945 World War II: The Establishment of Occupation Zones: The total breakdown of civil administration throughout the country required immediate measures to ensure the rebuilding of civil authority. After deposing Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler's successor as head of state, and his government, the Allies issued a unilateral declaration on June 5, 1945, that proclaimed their supreme authority over German territory, short of annexation. The Allies would govern Germany through four occupation zones, one for each of the Four Powers—the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The establishment of zones of occupation had been decided at a series of conferences. At the conference in Casablanca, held in January 1943, British prime minister Winston Churchill's proposal to invade the Balkans and East-Central Europe via Greece was rejected. This decision opened the road for Soviet occupation of eastern Germany. At the Tehran Conference in late 1943, the western border of postwar Poland and the division of Germany were among the topics discussed. As a result of the conference, a commission began to work out detailed plans for the occupation and administration of Germany after the war. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, participants decided that in addition to United States, British, and Soviet occupation zones in Germany, the French were also to have an occupation zone, carved out of the United States and British zones. The relative harmony that had prevailed among the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union began to show strains at the Potsdam Conference, held from July 17 to August 2, 1945. In most instances, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was successful in getting the settlements he desired. One of his most far-reaching victories was securing the conference's approval of his decision to compensate Poland for the loss of territory in the east to the Soviet Union by awarding it administrative control over parts of Germany. Pending the negotiation of a peace treaty with Germany, Poland was to administer the German provinces of Pomerania, Silesia, and the southern portion of East Prussia. The forcible "transfer" to the west of Germans living in these provinces was likewise approved. The movement westward of Germans living east of a line formed by the Oder and western Neisse rivers resulted in the death or disappearance of approximately 2 million Germans, while an estimated 12 million Germans lost their homes. The presence of these millions of refugees in what remained German territory in the west was a severe hardship for the local populations and the occupation authorities. The conferees at Potsdam also decided that each occupying power was to receive reparations in the form of goods and industrial equipment in compensation for its losses during the war. Because most German industry lay outside its zone, it was agreed that the Soviet Union was to take industrial plants from the other zones and in exchange supply them with agricultural products. The Allies, remembering the political costs of financial reparations after World War I, had decided that reparations consisting of payments in kind were less likely to imperil the peace after World War II. The final document of the Potsdam Conference, the Potsdam Accord, also included provisions for demilitarizing and denazifying Germany and for restructuring German political life on democratic principles. German economic unity was to be preserved. The boundaries of the four occupation zones established at Yalta generally followed the borders of the former German federal states (Laender ; sing., Land ). Only Prussia constituted an exception: it was dissolved altogether, and its territory was absorbed by the remaining German Laender in northern and northwestern Germany. Prussia's former capital, Berlin, differed from the rest of Germany in that it was occupied by all four Allies—and thus had so-called Four Power status. The occupation zone of the United States consisted of the Land of Hesse, the northern half of the present-day Land of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, and the southern part of Greater Berlin. The British zone consisted of the Laender of Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and the western sector of Greater Berlin. The French were apportioned the Laender of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Saarland—which later received a special status—the southern half of Baden-Württemberg, and the northern sector of Greater Berlin. The Soviet Union controlled the Laender of Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and the eastern sector of Greater Berlin, which constituted almost half the total area of the city. The zones were governed by the Allied Control Council (ACC), consisting of the four supreme commanders of the Allied Forces. The ACC's decisions were to be unanimous. If agreement could not be reached, the commanders would forego unified actions, and each would confine his attention to his own zone, where he had supreme authority. Indeed, the ACC had no executive authority of its own, but rather had to rely on the cooperation of each military governor to implement its decisions in his occupation zone. Given the immense problems involved in establishing a provisional administration, unanimity was often lacking, and occupation policies soon varied. The French, for instance, vetoed the establishment of a central German administration, a decision that furthered the country's eventual division. Because they had not participated in the Potsdam Conference, the French did not feel bound to the conference's decision that the country would remain an economic unit. Instead, the French sought to extract as much as they could from Germany and even annexed the Saar area for a time. The Soviet occupiers likewise sought to recover as much as possible from Germany as compensation for the losses their country had sustained during the war. Unlike the French, however, they sought to influence Germany as a whole and hoped to hold an expanded area of influence. In their own zone, the Soviet authorities quickly moved toward establishing a socialist society like their own. The United States had the greatest interest in denazification and in the establishment of a liberal democratic system. Early plans, such as the Morgenthau Plan to keep Germans poor by basing their economy on agriculture, were dropped as the Soviet Union came to be seen as a threat and Germany as a potential ally. Britain had the least ambitious plans for its zone. However, British authorities soon realized that unless Germany became economically self-sufficient, British taxpayers would bear the expense of feeding its population. To facilitate German economic self-sufficiency, United States and British occupation policies soon merged, and by the beginning of 1947 their zones had been joined into one economic area—the Bizone.
1946 Nuremberg Tribunal: Continued Testimony of Alfred Jodl: To the great impatience of the Soviet members of the Tribunal, German General Alfred Jodl testifies concerning the Russian and German gang rape of Poland: JODL [The] Polish territories east of an agreed demarcation line would be occupied by Soviet Russian troops at the appointed time. When we were approaching this agreed demarcation line, which was shown to me on a map, the line was the East Prussian Lithuanian border, Narew, Vistula, San. I telephoned to our military attache in Moscow and informed him that we could probably reach individual points of this demarcation line in the course of the following day. Shortly afterwards I was informed over the telephone that the Russian divisions were not yet ready. When, the day after the next, we reached the demarcation line and had to cross it in pursuit of the Poles, I once again received news from Moscow, at 0200 hours, that the Soviet Russian divisions would take up their position along the entire front at 0400 hours. This maneuver was punctually carried out, and I then drafted an order to our German troops that wherever they had contacted the troops of the Soviet Union, and in agreement with them, they were to withdraw behind the demarcation line... 1947 George Marshall calls for aid to Europe: In one of the most significant speeches of the Cold War, Secretary of State George C. Marshall calls on the United States to assist in the economic recovery of postwar Europe. His speech provided the impetus for the so-called Marshall Plan, under which the United States sent billions of dollars to Western Europe to rebuild the war-torn countries.
In 1946 and into 1947, economic disaster loomed for Western Europe. World War II had done immense damage, and the crippled economies of Great Britain and France could not reinvigorate the region's economic activity. Germany, once the industrial dynamo of Western Europe, lay in ruins. Unemployment, homelessness, and even starvation were commonplace. For the United States, the situation was of special concern on two counts. First, the economic chaos of Western Europe was providing a prime breeding ground for the growth of communism. Second, the U.S. economy, which was quickly returning to a civilian state after several years of war, needed the markets of Western Europe in order to sustain itself.
On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, speaking at Harvard University, outlined the dire situation in Western Europe and pleaded for U.S. assistance to the nations of that region. "The truth of the matter," the secretary claimed, "is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character." Marshall declared, "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos." In a thinly veiled reference to the communist threat, he promised "governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States."
In March 1948, the United States Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act (more popularly known as the Marshall Plan), which set aside $4 billion in aid for Western Europe. By the time the program ended nearly four years later, the United States had provided over $12 billion for European economic recovery. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin likened the Marshall Plan to a "lifeline to sinking men." (History.com)
1971 Albert Speer writes to Rudolf Wolter, his archivist and long-time friend: Your unusual letter [May 24] requires an unusual and to me distasteful reply. In general it is customary in civilized countries and more than that, among friends, that a delinquent is given a chance to speak before being sentenced. I could say a great deal about the Playboy interview, but for the moment it is enough that I tell you that it was restructured, with words and formulations entirely foreign to me. Whole passages were clearly taken from the book and rewritten in the manner of bad ghostwriting . . . . But on the whole the interview as printed corresponds with my opinions and I imagine that this is decisive for you. What I wrote in the book on the question of my guilt already angered you during the Spandau time. But it remains valid. Whether or not there are people who merely see this as opportunism is irrelevant to me. Your reaction, it is true, dismays me but I realize that, given your position in this matter from the start, it was perhaps inevitable. Edited by Levi Bookin (Copy editor) Click to join 3rdReichStudies Disclaimer: This site includes diverse and controversial materials—such as excerpts from the writings of racists and anti-Semites—so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and anti-Semitic discourse. It is our sincere belief that only the informed citizen can prevail over the ignorance of Racialist "thought." Far from approving these writings, this site condemns racism in all of its forms and manifestations. 
(History.com)
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Exner, now all that the defendant has just been telling us seems to be to me a simple waste of our time, with absolutely no relevance to this case at all; and why you let him do it, I do not know.
DR. EXNER: You have been accused of having used your personal influence and your close relations with the Fuehrer to attack a whole series of neutral countries. Tell me, is that true?
JODL: No, it is untrue. I remember that a witness here spoke of a sinister influence, of a key position of a sinister kind-at any rate, something sinister. But my influence on the Fuehrer was unfortunately not in the least as great as it might, or perhaps even ought to have been in view of the position I held. The reason lay in the powerful personality of this despot who never suffered advisors gladly. [For the full text of today's proceedings, Click here.]
To claim that my moral attitude is incompatible with my way of life is denying the fact that one can quite legitimately lead a good life despite or indeed because of such an attitude.
Besides ... I arranged more than a year ago a modification to my contract with Propylaen [Speer's German publisher, Propylaen/Ullstein] providing that much of my worldwide earnings be consigned to charity. It leaves me, after taxes, with about 12 percent of my earnings . . . .
I should be very glad if you decide one day to pull down the barrier you have now put up between us. I'm sure you will understand that this move can now come from me. Be well. (Sereny)
levi.bookin@gmail.com
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