The Ultimate World War II Axis Secrets Dossier (4 Hours All in One)

Kind: captions Language: en People think Hitler's hatred for Jews was absolute and without exception. They think the SS was a perfectly pure Aryan organization. But he didn't apply his hatred for Jews evenly. And that contradiction is far more disturbing than most people realize. Hidden in the archives of the Third Reich is a terrifying reality. There were Jews that Hitler deemed valuable or that [music] he owed personal debts to. His ideology was secondary to even his personal [music] whims. Even at the height of the Holocaust, a single signature from Hitler could transform a condemned person [music] into what officials chillingly labeled a noble Jew. It was a belief that threatened to tear the inner workings of the Reich apart. This is the story of the Jews that Hitler secretly protected. [music] It started with a pain in the chest. Clara Hitler felt ashamed to complain, telling her doctor in hush tones that the pain had kept her awake at night for weeks. She'd always been hardworking, but it had become too much. The test showed an extensive tumor of the breast. Claraara's 18-year-old son, Adolf, rushed back from Vienna, where, against his dead father's wishes, he'd been trying to become an artist. He slept in the spare room of Claraara's modest apartment in Urfar, a suburb of Lince, Austria, listening to his mother's agonizing groans in the night. She was dying, and he couldn't accept it. Adolf had always tried to protect her from Alloy, his short-tempered authoritarian tyrant of a father. Prior to Alloy's premature death, Adolf had stuck up for Claraara when Alloy always drunk from the ends, had raised his fist to her. And now this woman he so deeply loved and admired, the woman who had spoiled him after losing three children to disease, was fading away before [music] his eyes. He was helpless. Adolf waited on her hand and foot, hoping for a miracle. A miracle that, if it happened, would surely come from the family's dedicated and trusted physician, Dr. Edward BL. Block witnessed for himself how much this young [music] man adored his mother. Standing at her bedside, bringing her water, pushing food into her dry mouth. Adolf truly believed Claraara could beat the disease. His hopes were resting on BL in the wonders of modern German medicine. [music] But it wasn't to be. As Claraara lay silent in the bed one afternoon, BL took Adolf aside. The operation had failed. The cancer had spread. Block later noted his long salow face was contorted. Tears flowed from his eyes. This woman [music] who had endured so much tragedy, so many beatings, such a loving and supportive woman, was too young to die. She was only 47. Adolf pleaded with BL to save her. BL rested his hands on Adolf's shoulder. He would try. His family had been good to him. Claraara, the kids were hardworking, honest people. There was a special treatment available. No guarantees, but without it, Claraara wouldn't last long. It was worth a shot. Adolf waited nervously [music] as Block went to his office and picked up a bottle of Eotform, a disinfectant used for its healing and antiseptic properties. [music] It was believed that it could dissolve deadly tumors. Adolf watched as BL lathered some gauze with the chemical impacted into the open wound, still open from Clara's operation. She screamed out [music] in pain as the chemical burned in her breast. In his heart, BL knew it wouldn't work. He was doing it for Adolf. He couldn't stand to see him so devastated. Block would later write, "She bore her burden well, unflinching and uncomplaining, [music] but it seemed to torture her son. An anguished grimace would come over him when he saw pain contract her face. But Adolf was filled with gratitude." He looked on as Block eased his mother's pain with another injection of morphine. She slowly wasted away, more concerned with what would happen to her children than dying. Rather than help, the costic iota form was not only excruciatingly painful, but it was completely [music] ineffective. It was horrific for Adolf to witness what cancer did to his mom. In the years to come, when he grew into a savage political leader, he shouted into a microphone about the Jewish cancer. Was his dying mother's agony at the back of his mind? But Hitler didn't blame Dr. Blah. That much is certain. After Claraara passed away and Adolf fell into a deep depression, he would express his undying gratitude for what Dr. Blah had done for his mother in her hour of need. Dr. Blah, who was a Jew. A man who the Hitler family greatly respected. A man who was known to treat poor families like the Hitlers at any hour of the night, often not even charging them if money was hard to come by. Blah was a hero to a boy who would go on to take the lives of 6 million people like him. Jews, an undying bond had been created, a contradiction of vast proportions that one day Blah would have to contend with. It set up a collision between an old loyalty and a genocidal ideology. By the early 1920s, Hitler was already very politically active. He had failed as an artist. He'd been injured twice in World War I and lived in abject poverty. But he had burst from humiliating obscurity to become a mouthpiece for the short-lived German Workers Party. Alongside him every step of the way was his friend and associate Emil Maurice. Maurice was so devoted to this man, he copied his clothes and wore a toothbrush. mustache, confidant, enforcer, loyal to the end. He would have done anything for Hitler. But Maurice was hiding a dangerous secret. He was a Jew by blood. At least that was undeniable. And [music] yet, he had still become the supreme leader of the SA stormtroopers, chosen by Hitler to be his chauffeur and personal bodyguard. At the time, Hitler was leading the Nazi party, [music] transforming it into a burgeoning nationalist movement built around his intense speeches of promises of national rebirth. Maurice [music] was still at Hitler's side in 1923 when Hitler launched a coup attempt to remove the corrupt eliteinfested German government of the VHimar Republic. He was still there in prison after the coup had failed and Hitler had been convicted of high treason. Hitler dictated the start [music] of his book Minecom to him later helping out when Rudolph Hess took over the writing as Hitler expressed his views on the Jew. Hitler's power grew and Maurice was there for every triumph. He stood beside Hitler as his radical speeches, once dismissed as the rantings of a fringe activist, [music] started to resonate with the German public. Millions of ordinary people were left hungry, unemployed, and hopeless after the Wall Street crash of 1929 shattered the economy. Meanwhile, the elites remained insulated from the suffering around them. Hitler promised a new beginning, a healthy Germany, strong again after the humiliation of World War I reparations. He swore the country would be free of the greedy, corrupt Jewish bankers who he claimed had destroyed the economy. The timing was perfect for the rise of a tyrant. By 1934, he'd consolidated absolute power. He was now Germany's dictator, [music] the Furer. And still at his side stood the same man who'd supported him from the very beginning. Few people in the world knew Hitler well, but Emil Maurice was one of them. Hitler trusted him with his life, but he was tainted. Emil knew that well. He'd helped Hitler write the book that stated it [music] clearly. According to later SS investigations, his greatgrandfather, Charles Maurice Schwarzenberger, had been a Jewish actor in Hamburg. It wasn't the kind of family history that could remained buried in a regime that went to great [music] lengths to examine people's bloodlines. It made Maurice 1/8 Jewish. And this was problematic for the Nazis. Jews were the bane of mankind, and they made sure the public understood. People saw it in the movies, posters, newspapers, and radio broadcasts. When Joseph Gobble's propaganda campaigns portrayed all Jews as toxic, selfish, and cruel, they were always the villains, the thieves, the traitors, the abusers, parasitical, and predatory. And [music] Maurice was one of them. In terms of optics, if the German public found out, then it would look like a gaping contradiction. Maurice had already received the blood order, one of the Nazis highest decorations. He and Hitler were almost fused at the flesh, blood brothers. [music] Yet his blood was supposedly contaminated. For some of Hitler's inner circle, that meant Maurice was contaminating Hitler and possibly the Third Reich. Hitler had preached to millions of people about the superiority of the so-called Aryan race and what he deemed as the abject inferiority of Jews. By this, he meant something innate and hereditary, not environmental or cultural, but purely a matter of genetics. >> [music] >> He had been influenced by the pseudoscientific racial theories and eugenics movements in parts of the USA and Britain during the early 20th century. It would turn out to be a deadly idea. All great cultures, he said, perished from blood poisoning. The Americans, whose eugenics programs he openly admired, had in his eyes weakened themselves through racial mixing and became a nation of mongrels. Yet there he was, spreading those beliefs with a man at his side whose ancestry, by the Nazis very own doctrine, was the worst kind, part Jew. History doesn't make it clear if Maurice completely hid this from Hitler or if he merely downplayed it. But for one of Hitler's top men, one of the most powerful men in all of Nazi Germany, it mattered. It mattered a lot. Hinrich Himmler, leader of the SS from 1929, would become one of the main architects of the Holocaust and enforcer of the Nazis racial policies. He couldn't sit by and watch as Hitler spent much of his life next to a man whose not too distant ancestors had sullied the German Aryan race. Without question, Himmler made clear Maurice is, [music] according to his ancestral table, not of Aryan descent. He wasn't deemed an enemy of the state, but a blood determined character. That meant Maurice could not be completely trusted. Himmler called him a security risk. Few other men in Germany knew the secrets of the furer, and one of them was part Jewish. Himmler wanted Maurice gone, not harmed, but stripped of his position and influence. But Hitler couldn't discard a man that he knew for a fact would never go against him. Still, as Himmler reminded Hitler, the Nuremberg laws clearly stated, "If you couldn't prove Aryan ancestry back to the 1700s, you couldn't be SS." It was clear Maurice did not [music] pass that test. For the populace, ancestry went back to 1800, but for SS men, 1750. Long before Maurice's greatgrandfather had trotten boards in his theater, Himmler was right. There was no getting around it. But was he also envious of a man Hitler put so much faith in? Maurice had co-founded the SS. He was listed as member number two, only behind Hitler himself. Himler wasn't even close at member number 168. Did he really have the right to demand Maurice be thrown to the side? It was a conundrum that refused to die. But in 1935, Hitler found a solution. In August of that year, he wrote a top secret letter to Himmler. His loyal friend Maurice wasn't leaving the SS. Instead, he was becoming an honorary Aryan. He might be part Jewish, a Mishling, but soon he'd be the owner of a special certificate that would hide the Jew in his genetic makeup. A simple workaround, but one [music] that exposed the sheer insanity of believing that bloodline defines a person's character. Loyalty, it seemed, trumped racial purity at the highest levels of the Nazi party. Hitler's willingness to bend his own rules for his inner circle, set a dangerous precedent, one that would expose the vast contradictions in the very foundations of Nazi ideology. Nazi Germany was already in the grips of a delirious anti-semitism. Children learned about the greedy Jew with the hooked nose and the weak posture at the side of the fit, strong, and honest Aryan. They were actively applauded for scrawling Jude on the fronts of Jewish shops and houses. Hitler was busy scrawling, too. His signature would actively save Jewish people from the grave turmoil most Jews faced in Germany. The Nuremberg laws stripped millions of their rights. But behind closed doors, the hypocrisy was codified. Hitler personally signed an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 German [music] blood certificates to exempt specific individuals from racial laws. This was the same man who called the Michelina monstrosities halfway between man and ape. People whose very blood he claimed made them sinful. Yet like Emil Maurice, not all of them were headed for the meat grinder of forced labor or the gas chamber. Instead, they were quietly removed. In 1941, Hines Garlock wrote to Burnernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education. I cannot help it that I am a Micheling. Also, no one should blame my parents for my [music] situation. They married during a time without racial laws. Germany was home to tens of thousands of people who were part Jewish but had become Christian. Once Hitler was in power, they had professed their love for their fatherland and the furer. How is it fair that such people should be punished? Colonel Ernst BL was the son of a Jewish man. He had [music] his face torn apart by a bayonet in World War I and earned the Iron Cross. He went on to fight most of the next war openly Jewish. But it wasn't until 1944 that there was a problem when Himmler demanded his dismissal. On February 15th, 1945, he received a signed letter from Hitler about losing his job because of [music] his heritage. His superior wrote, "It is an honor to thank you on behalf of the Fior for your service rendered during war and peace for our people in Fatherland. I wish you all the best for the future, Hy Hitler." It didn't make sense. Block was a war hero, the kind of man the Nazis mythologized. Sure, he was part Jewish, but he'd still die fighting when the Russians arrived in Berlin in 1945. For him, the fatherland was everything, and he [music] was tossed aside like a poisoned apple. It's not certain how many full Jewish people or partial Jews there were in the German military, but according to the historian Brian Mark Rig, it was many. [music] Rig claimed the Vermach was home to about 60,000 half-Jews and 90,000 quarter Jews, including some generals, admirals, [music] and one man who climbed as high as field marshal. At least 20 received a variation of the Nazis highest military award, [music] the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross. Some had been drafted, others volunteered, following in the footsteps of their fathers who had fought in the first Great War. But for some, it was a matter of survival. The darkest irony was that, as one person said, the Vermacht was the safest place for a Jew in Hitler's Germany. The exact number has been debated, but there is no doubt at all that tens of thousands [music] of Jews fought under Adolf Hitler. Many, it seems, did not think the Nuremberg laws even applied to them. Anti-semitism was for the other Jews, the Oudin. People according to Tablet magazine, who were viewed as uneducated and superstitious by the [music] other Jews. People forget that many German Jews were fiercely patriotic. They were people of high education, cultured Germans, men and women whose roots were firmly embedded in German soil for hundreds of years. But for some, including Himmler, no man who shared [music] his blood with a Jew had a right to serve in the ranks of the Vermacht, the Craigs Marine, or the Luftvafa. In 1940, [music] the message came down from the top. The Jews must go, either full ones or mixed blood. Some officers refused. Their men [music] were a brotherhood. They weren't going to send someone home because their grandfather had married a Jewish woman. [music] They told their Michelin soldiers to lie low. Other officers sent letters back to the Nazi hierarchy in Germany asking how a man with an iron cross could suddenly become the enemy. Not all were so supportive. One officer was furious a Jew had hidden in his ranks. He called for the men took out his pistol and shot him in the head. A part Jewish Vafan SS officer admitted if they'd have found out that he was part Jew, they'd have hung him from the nearest tree. His patriotic family had German ancestors that went back 400 years. But for the Nazis, it didn't matter. There are stories of Jewish soldiers creating or paying for forged papers that hid their real ethnicity. They lived in constant fear, telling lies about childhood infections if they had to take off their clothes, and their circumcised penis was exposed. But many more didn't even consider themselves Jewish. They had brought up Gentile children. They neither followed Jewish customs nor observed Jewish religious practices. For some, finding out they had part Jewish blood was as much a shock to them as the troops they were fighting with. They hadn't even known. A man named Hans Gonzel survived the war, but 57 of his Jewish relatives didn't. He was half Jewish and so were many of his relatives. After the war, he wrote, "The sad thing about all of their deaths is that most had converted to Christianity and didn't consider themselves Jews. And while others were haunted and conflicted by the oppression and violence their Jewish relatives were facing in the ghettos or camps, some applied for a dispensation. It was the only way to get around the order, and it had to come from Hitler. If he deemed it necessary, he could sign the same kind of document he'd signed for Maurice. In what was a profound hypocrisy, thousands of Mishinga considered too valuable to lose remained in the military because of the stroke of the Fior's pen. If they had won combat medals or gained battlefield promotions, there was a good chance Hitler would give them the exemption. It was simple bureaucratic chicainery but a startling contradiction considering what was still happening to the Jews in the concentration and death camps. Still, it was completely legal. Article 7 of the Nuremberg laws clearly stated that Hitler could remove the alleged stain of Jewishness from someone's name if he chose to make them part Aryan. As Jewish children were torn from their mothers and Jews were herded into the gas chamber, Hitler essentially arenized others. He was cheating his own system. As the Nazi war machine expanded, the contradictions were exposed and this terrifying bureaucracy of Nazi annihilation orders arrived right at the doorstep of a man Hitler had once treated like a saint. Dr. Blah. Some of Hitler's last words to him were a promise. A promise that threatened to dismantle Hitler's integrity. After the Nazis marched on Austria in March 1938 and annexed the country, much of the Austrian population greeted the soldiers in the streets waving swastika flags. Britain and France looked on as Austrians against German rule contemplated the arrival of hell. And no one feared the future quite as much as the Jews, as many as 200,000 of them. Thousands were arrested overnight. Jewish children were told school university was over. Jewish homes were plundered as men and women were dragged through the streets. Professionals were made to clean toilets. Synagogues were raised. Shops were graffitied or destroyed. It was almost impossible to hide. Every Jew now forced to sew on their clothes the dreaded yellow badge. All within this chaos, among the tears and blood was Hitler's favorite doctor, Mr. Blah. As the Gustapo terrorized his friends and family, he wondered when it was his turn to feel the full force of Nazi ideological fury. He waited in fear for the worst to happen, knowing the orders for the devastation had come from a boy he had once treated for colds and tonsillitis. For BL, Hitler had been such a lovely boy. How is it possible that he could change like that? The Adolf Hitler that he'd known all those years ago was curious and mildmanne