Earlier this year, I wrote the blog, Hitler’s Enablers – Part One – Wannsee Conference. Click here to read the blog. The blog primarily dealt with the first and second level of enablers ⏤ senior Nazi leaders setting policy and leaving the formation of details and final implementation to the second layer. An “enabler” is someone who enables another to achieve an end.
Today, we will examine the third level of enablers. These were the men and women who were responsible for the administration and ultimately, ensuring the end result met senior Nazi leaders’ expectations. In other words, these were the people who carried out the day-to-day activities that ultimately resulted in the murder of millions of men, women, and children. Beginning with arrests and ending with the wholesale exterminations in the gas chambers, Hitler would not have been able to carry out his perverse vision without the assistance of hundreds of thousands of third level enablers.
As we will see, most of these people were sadistic thugs who had no compassion for other human beings. Many of the defendants could not comprehend why they were on trial after the war. The common defense position taken by Nazi war criminals was that they were only following orders ⏤ all fingers pointed to Adolf Hitler ⏤ and when that didn’t work, they boiled it down to “Victor’s Justice.” Read More Hitler’s Enablers – Part Two – The Camps
There are many iconic images of World War II. One of them is a 1943 photograph of women and children exiting a bunker during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising with their hands raised in surrender led by a little boy. Off to the side, holding his machine gun on them, stands SS–Rottenführer Josef Blösche. He was serving as a policeman in the Warsaw Ghetto during the monthlong uprising and according to post-war testimony, carried out his daily duties with such cruelty that Blösche earned the nickname, “Frankenstein.” It also earned him the death sentence twenty-six years later.
Did You Know?
Did you know that the last person executed in the Tower of London was a Nazi spy named Josef Jakobs (1898-1941)? Parachuting into England on 31 January 1941, Jakobs was immediately arrested by the Home Guard. They knew he was coming because the authorities had been tipped off by a double agent working for British intelligence under Operation Double Cross [Read The Double Cross Systemhere]. Found guilty of spying, Jakobs was executed by a firing squad (he was condemned as an enemy combatant and therefore, not hanged). Jakobs’s granddaughter, Giselle Jakobs, began researching her grandfather’s story in the early 1990s. As classified documents were released to the U.K. National Archives, Giselle was able to piece together the story of Josef’s life including his allegiance to Nazi Germany. It was not a pretty story, but it did provide some sort of closure for Giselle as well as for her father, Josef’s son. Her book, The Spy in the Tower: The Untold Story of Joseph Jakobs, the Last Person to be Executed in the Tower of London is available through Amazon.com.
The Warsaw Ghetto
Prior to World War II, a quarter of Warsaw’s population were of the Jewish faith. Immediately after the German invasion in 1939, Polish Jews were subjected to the Nazi anti-Jewish laws. In November 1940, the Germans established the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, and it became the largest ghetto in any of the Nazi occupied countries. More than 400,000 Jews were required to live within the 1.3 square mile area surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall topped with barbed wire. The actual size of the ghetto decreased over time as the population declined due to deportations, executions, and death through disease or starvation along with the deliberate destruction of the ghetto by the Nazis. Beginning in the summer of 1942, approximately a quarter million of the Jews living in the ghetto were rounded up and deported fifty miles to the northeast of Warsaw to the Treblinka extermination camp.
“Another outstanding, well-researched, and presented book by Stew Ross. It gives a detailed guided walking tour full of facts about the activities of the Gestapo during their occupation of Paris during World War II. I highly recommend this book to everyone who has an interest in what life was like during the Nazi occupation in France.”
Richard H.F. Neave, President Royal British Legion Paris branch, member Paris-based Libre Résistance SOE “F” Section and author of SOE: A Life in the Shadows
“Informative and entertaining, Stew Ross’ newest work evokes a difficult and frightening time in the history of the City of Light. The detailed descriptions of sites such as the Vél’ d’hiv’ or Gestapo headquarters reminds us of the choices people made during those years.”
Cynthia Bisson, PhD, Professor of History, Belmont University, French Resistant Expert