Nicholas
Best wrote Seven Days of Infamy, that
I featured last week. He also wrote Five
Days That Shocked the World. He’s a great storyteller, and this book is
filled with accounts from the end of the war in Europe. For instance…
The
British picketed a London cinema that showed the first film of the
concentration camps. During World War I, British propagandists had spread the
report that Germans were melting down corpses for fat. Now with rumors of
shrunken heads and lampshades made from human skin, they were outraged that
their own government was lying to them again.
When
Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans, one of the
guards spied on Clara as she washed up that night. He reported to his fellow
guard that she had a magnificent physique; no wonder Il Duce kept her as his
mistress.
Clara
wouldn’t have been killed with Mussolini. She was told to get away from him
when he was stood against a wall. Instead, she clung to him, and died.
At
the end, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop discovered he had no
friends, pompous and insufferably overbearing as he was. No important party
members wanted anything to do with him. He’d heard the British spoke of hanging
Nazi leaders, but Ribbentrop couldn’t believe they were serious. Hanging was
for criminals and murderers, not for people like him, not the leaders of a
nation.
Like
Ribbentrop, Heinrich Himmler had failed to make plans for himself. Rather than
fleeing, he was paralyzed with grief, begging an astrologer to tell him what to
do. He thought of going to Czechoslovakia where the army was still in control.
The astrologer, who had been imprisoned and persecuted by the Nazis, told him
the stars didn’t look good for Czechoslovakia. Himmler still wanted to become
the new leader of Germany, the man the Allies would have to deal with if they
wanted peace. Both he and Ribbentrop believed they would be treated with
respect and consideration by the western allies. Many Nazis were convinced the
allies would appreciated their services in the continuing struggle with the
Russians.
A
large consignment of lipstick arrived at Belsen concentration camp. It went far
is raising the morale among the women prisoners. They remembered they’d once
been feminine and might be so again someday.
The
Belsen commandant dumbfounded British officers. He was totally blind to the
realities of what happened in the camp. It never occurred to him that the
Allies would not like what they found there. He’d just done what he’d been told
to do. Many sadistic guards found talk of the death penalty for them hard to
believe. They’d broken no German laws, and the Allies were civilized people.
Among
those working at Belsen were Georg Will, who managed the camp cinema, and his
wife Liesel, who ran the canteen, supplying comforts to the SS and keeping them
entertained. They lived well amongst the dying. Now they wondered if they would
have a price to pay, even though they’d committed no atrocities. They relied on
a trump card. Liesel’s younger sister had renounced her German citizenship and
become an American and sang for the troops. Surely Captain Marlene Dietrich
wouldn’t let her kin suffer.
Nazi
wives were often fatter than other German women, because they’d eaten better
during the war. This was a disadvantage when Berlin fell. The Russians
preferred women with flesh on them, and raped them first.
The
Russians and the Americans thought the Germany countryside they traveled
through was some of the prettiest they’d ever seen. They found it hard to understand
why the Germans wanted to invade so many other countries when their own was so
rich and beautiful.
I’m
reminded of a line from Hogan’s Heroes spoken by Corporal Louis LeBeau, played by Robert Clary, who
spent time in a real concentration camp because he’s Jewish. “It’s a crazy war.”
Sounds like a very interesting book. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete