Tag: Auschwitz

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Noah’s Ark

Official stamp of the Réseau Alliance. Photo by anonymous (date unknown).
Official stamp of the Réseau Alliance. Photo by anonymous (date unknown).

My attention is always drawn to stories about the brave members of the resistance movements who fought the Germans in their respective occupied countries. These men and women were always aware of their potential fatal outcomes if caught but largely ignored it to continue the fight for liberation. I’ve written in the past about some of these fighters including Nancy Wake (read here), the Boulloche sisters (read here), the Sussex Plan (read here), Rose Valland (read here), and the SOE—Special Operations Executive (read here).

Today, I’ll introduce you to the remarkable Hedgehog and the other animals of Noah’s Ark, one of the most successful résistance réseaux (resistance networks) operating in France during the German Occupation.

Did you Know?

Nazi concentration camp prisoners (i.e., those chosen for labor and not sent directly to the gas chambers) received a number tattooed on their arm. The misconception is that all camps tattooed their prisoners. That is not true. Only Auschwitz and two of its sub camps, Birkenau and Monowitz, practiced tattooing the prisoners. Learn more in our next blog, The Auschwitz Tattooist.

 The French Resistance

Most people have the mistaken idea that the French resistance movement was a single organization comprised of men and women with the same motivation: identify and sabotage strategic German targets for the purpose of driving the occupiers out of France. It’s not that simple.

Strasbourg France memorial for the Réseau Alliance agents executed by the Nazis on 23 November 1944. Photo by Rolf Krahl (2014). © Rolf Krahl. PD-Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0. Wikimedia Commons.
Strasbourg France memorial for the Réseau Alliance agents executed by the Nazis on 23 November 1944. Photo by Rolf Krahl (2014). © Rolf Krahl. PD-Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0. Wikimedia Commons.

The French Resistance movement was largely comprised of hundreds of independent networks, each with its own set of politics, motivations, and specific purposes. These networks were Communist, apolitical, right-leaning, left-leaning, and Christian democratic. Resistance activity began to gain strength after Hitler attacked Soviet positions in eastern Poland on 22 June 1941 in violation of the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Prior to the German attack, French communist resistance activities were not allowed by Moscow.

Eventually, Charles de Gaulle assigned Jean Moulin the task of uniting and organizing the various resistance networks. In May 1943, Moulin created the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) under which the primary networks would coordinate their activities with the Free French Forces of the Interior. Read More Noah’s Ark

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“The Good Nazi”

The subject of our blog today is about one of the top Nazi leaders and a defendant in the International Military Tribunal commonly known as the main Nuremberg Trial. Our last two blogs dealt with two topics that will forever be associated with the city of Nuremberg: the Nazi Party Rally Grounds (click here the blog Zeppelin Field) and the Nuremberg Trials (click here the blog Courtroom 600).

In my opinion, one of the sad outcomes of what became the greatest mass murder in the history of mankind is the fact that most of the Nazi criminals who carried out these crimes were either never held accountable or punished. For most of those who were punished, they were likely to suffer lightly with commuted sentences, outright release, or time served. Many who received death sentences were given early release as evidenced by the Einsatzgruppen Trial (Case 9) during the subsequent American Military Tribunal Nuremberg Trials.

Albert Speer at the Nuremberg trial. Photo by Charles Alexander/US Army (c. 1946). PD-US Government. Wikimedia Commons.
Albert Speer at the Nuremberg trial. Photo by Charles Alexander/US Army (c. 1946). PD-US Government. Wikimedia Commons.

I decided to write this blog on Albert Speer because he is the “poster child” for someone who got off with a relatively light sentence (20-years) when in fact, he should have hanged on 16 October 1946 with the other ten former Nazi leaders. Instead, he died a multi-millionaire, a media star, and a world celebrity almost fifteen years after his release from Spandau Prison.

Did You Know?

The English music group, The Cut, was formed in 1979 and eventually the group changed its name to Spandau Ballet after someone saw the term Spandau Ballet scribbled on the wall of a club bathroom. Many people think it refers to Spandau Prison and the “ballet” portion refers to the movement of feet and legs of the condemned struggling at the end of the rope. The term actually originated with Allied soldiers and refers to the German Spandau machine gun and the little dance the soldiers did as the bullets whizzed by their legs.

Let’s Meet “The Good Nazi” 

Born in Mannheim, Germany, Albert Speer (1905−1981) followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps by becoming an architect (Speer’s son, Albert Jr., also became an architect). He married Margarete Weber (1905−1987) in 1922 and they had six children. While pursuing his post-graduate degrees, Speer attended a Nazi rally in December 1930 which changed his life.

Speer always maintained he was apolitical even when he joined the Nazi party in March 1931 as member number 474,481. Recommended to Hitler by Joseph Goebbels, Speer’s first job for the Nazis was to renovate the party headquarters in Berlin. His next major assignment was to design and build the Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg. By 1934, Speer had become Hitler’s favorite architect and would consult on all of Hitler’s grand building ideas.  Read More “The Good Nazi”