"Who is responsible?" Ironically. Or tragically? I am returning to my isolated home from a visit to another 'Medical Professional' when my friendly driver insists that I should watch another video, 'based on real interviews from our human history'. Ironically, this is insisted upon in the same minutes that it is revealed that a blood son of this person's, who works for a federal agency that I started fighting into Canada's courts in 2002, said that he was 'tired' of these repetitive movies and documentaries about what happened in our world to 1945. Why did this mature adult, who insists that Liberal media tycoon, Ralph Goodale, a candidate in the Canadian federal election of 2015, is the epitome of 'good leadership', say he was tired? Because "there have been as tragic events in our world since 1945!"
Hmmm... Goodale is part of the Liberal Party of Canada who ordered my arrest in February 2004. Why? Because 'Independent' I had dared to challenge that elected lawyers had entered what Canada's Criminal Code forbade because of events that happened to 1945. For two long years, as an 'independent citizen', I had warned Canadian 'legal professionals' to get the partisans out of Canada's courts where I was complaining about the conduct of partisans.
"As tragic events in our world since 1945"? Really? Where have 6 million citizens, including dissenting citizens, not just 'those Jews', disappeared into a deliberate system created to remove the right to life of any person, in violation of international law? Oh, there have been mass murders of tragic proportion that continue around this world. But the bigger question is what creates the background to these situations that should never recur, if 1945 were really treated as a credible lesson to what our personal responsibilities are?
So, yes, I sat down to watch Last Days of the Nazis, a History Channel production. As a summary description, apparently written by a person who identifies him or herself as a 'showrunner', apparently from the History Channel, says at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=215174 , the series "... is a story that's rarely been broadcast on television before. This is a dark and compelling history of Nazism from a different perspective – that of the Nazis themselves. In 1945, the Allies rounded up and interrogated thousands of ex-Nazis. The interrogations became a fascinating, but largely forgotten, part of the historical record. The Last Days of the Nazis uses these interrogations to dramatically bring to life accounts by Nazi death camp commandants, Nazi doctors, generals, architects, and members of the Hitler Youth. It is an inside look at the minds and motivations of the most evil regime in history. This is what the enemy told us. ...".
I agreed with some comments then made about the series at that web page. It is frustrating to watch actors appear to mouth the English translations of interrogations of various Nazis from that era. As one commentator suggested, voice overs with less repetition from these historic characters, would have worked better, especially on a DVD version.
Nevertheless, the DVD would be something that I would buy, 'just for the record', and then seek out the books that tell the whole story behind these interrogations and the subsequent documentary footage. The program is worth a watch because, in the end, it leads to an interview with a lady who was a leader in the Hitler Youth. Initially, she admits in the interrogation, she was offended when the Allies, who incarcerated her and her Nazi Youth friends inside 'rehabilitation camps' for nearly three years, posted posters even in the mess tents where these young adults ate. Said Melita Meschmann, initially she was offended. The posters included pictures of what had been discovered at Buchenwald.
Initially, she insisted that they were "faked photos", created by the new camps of Allied concentrated indoctrination. Like Hitler Youth enthusiast, Armin Lehmann (who was the son of a SS Officer of high rank in the German army),many Hitler Youth carried doubts, thinking the American film was Allied propaganda.
Apparently the interrogation records for young Lehmann reveal that he attended a film that documented what Americans did not see until the movie Judgement at Nuremberg used real footage to discuss this era in American movie theatres in the early 1960's. Lehmann recounts an aging German war vet leaning over during the the American Army's film session he attended. "Hollywood!", Lehmann says the old man whispered fiercely.
But, both Lehmann and Meschmann eventually admit that they came to the realization that these things had really, tragically happened. Why? Because both said that they knew that the mountains of bodies and opaque skin could not have been staged.
The good thing about this documentary? It ends up presenting the posters that poised to the citizens of Germany, below these horrific records and images, the question: "Who is responsible?" And uses these interrogations to incriminate those who tried to put the blame for all of this blood and mayhem onto Hitler. While, really, it was a silent citizenry that bore as much culpability in the end.
Hopefully this series will at least arose some citizens in our modern world to awaken to the same question as similar stupidity, to our submission to partisan rhetoric, arises inside nations that claim to be cognizant of the importance of the lessons to 1945.
