Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Auf Wiedersehen
This is my final post for The Boy Who Dared. This book was not the first I have read that takes place during World War II and tells the story of those who had to fight against Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime. We have studied World War II in History class and read other books about it, but they seemed more like history lessons. This book was different though because Helmuth Hubener was my age when he was put to death at Plotzensee Prison. I don’t think I can actually imagine how hard life was for Helmuth Hubener or any of the others who fought and died to stop Hitler. I admire him and all the others for having the courage to stand up against the Nazis. Most teenagers go through life asking questions like, I wonder how much homework I will have tonight?, Am I going to have to mow this weekend?, Who’s going to be online today?, How long can I wait until the garbage has to go out? This all seems so unimportant when you compare these concerns to the life of others like Helmuth Hubener. I can only hope that if something as horrible as World War II were to take place in the United States, we would stand up and fight for our freedom with everything we have.
Executions at Plotzensee Prison
During the period 1933 to 1945 the Nazis executed over 2,500 political prisoners at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin.
Helmuth Hubener – youngest person executed – he was 17.
Otto Carl Kiep was the Chief of the Reich Press Office (Reichspresseamts). He became involved with the resistance against the Nazis and was executed in 1944.
Johanna Kirchner helped the Resistance movement against fascism and Hitler. She was sent to Plotzensee and executed in 1944.
Abdullah Alis was a Russian member of the Red Army. Taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht in 1941 and beheaded by guillotine. He had joined an underground resistance while in prison.
Rudolf von Scheliha was a German diplomat who tried to help his Polish and Jewish friends during WWII. He also attempted to make the world aware of the impending systematic murder of the Jewish people. Suspected by the Gestapo for his critical attitude, he was charged with being a member of the Red Orchestra, sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed in 1942.
Mildred Fish-Harnack was an American-German literary historian, translator, and German Resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. She was born in America but moved with her husband to Germany to study. She was a member of the Red Orchestra resistance movement. She was the only American woman executed on the orders of Adolf Hitler. She was beheaded in 1943.
Ulrich-Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld was a German landowner, officer, and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. He was executed in 1944.
Adam Kuckhoff was a German writer, journalist, and German resistance fighter against the Third Reich. He was executed in 1942.
Hans Coppi was a German Red Orchestra resistance fighter against the Third Reich. He was executed in 1942. His wife was executed a little over a year later.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Random Facts About WWII
Below I have some random facts about World War II.
1. World War II was the most destructive conflict in history. It cost more money, damaged more property, killed more people, and caused more far-reaching changes than any other war in history.
2. The country with the largest number of WWII causalities was Russia, with over 21 million.
3. It is estimated that 1.5 million children died during the Holocaust. Approximately 1.2 million of them were Jewish and tens of thousands were Gypsies.
4. Between 1939 and 1945, the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs, which averaged to 27,700 tons per month.
5. Russia and the Red Army were accused of several war crimes, including systematic mass rape (over 2 million German women aged 13-70 were allegedly raped by the Red Army) and genocide.
6. Many historians believe that the Battle at Stalingrad (1942-1943) is not only arguably the bloodiest battle in history (800,000-1,600,000 casualties), but also the turning point of WWII in Europe.
7. Even after the Allies arrived, many concentration camp prisoners were beyond help. In Bergen-Belsen, for example, 13,000 prisoners died after liberation. Nearly 2,500 of the 33,000 survivors of Dachau died within six weeks of liberation.
8. Max Heiliger was the fictitious name the SS used to establish a bank account in which they deposited money, gold, and jewels taken from European Jews.
9. The longest battle of WWII was the Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted from 1939-1945.c
10. The original abbreviation of the National Socialist Party was Nasos. The word “Nazi” derives from a Bavarian word that means “simple minded” and was first used as a term of derision by journalist Konrad Heiden (1901-1966).
11. The swastika is an ancient religious symbol. It derives from the Sanskrit name for a hooked cross, which was used by ancient civilizations as a symbol of fertility and good fortune. It has been found in the ruins of Greece, Egypt, China, India, and Hindu temples.
12. Out of the 40,000 men who served on U-boats during WWII, only 10,000 returned.c
13. Approximately 600,000 Jews served in the United States armed forces during WWII. More than 35,000 were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Approximately 8,000 died in combat. However, only two Jewish soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor in WWII.
14. The Nazis murdered approximately 12 million people, nearly 6 million of those being Jews killed in the Holocaust (“whole burnt”).i
15. Many Jews were subject to gruesome medical experiments. For example, doctors would bombard the testicles of men and the ovaries of women with X-rays to see the impact of different doses on sterility. Nazi doctors would break bones repeatedly to see how many times it could be done before a bone could not heal. They hit people’s heads with hammers to see what their skulls could withstand. Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of atmospheric pressure on the body. Prisoners were injected with different drugs and diseases, and limbs were amputated and muscles cut for transplantation experiments. Today reference to or use of the Nazi research is considered unethical.
16. Dr. Josef Mengele (the “Angel of Death”) used about 3,000 twins, mostly Romany and Jewish children, for his painful genetic experiments. Only about 200 survived. His experiments included taking one twin’s eyeball and attaching it on the back of the other twin’s head or changing the eye color of children by injecting dye. In one instance, two Romany twins were sewn together in an attempt to create conjoined twins.
17. In addition to Jews and gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses were also persecuted and murdered in German concentration camps.
18. The decision to implement the “Final Solution” or Die Endlosung was made at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on January 20, 1942. Heinrich Himmler was its chief architect. The earliest use of the phrase “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” was actually used in an 1899 memo to Russian Tzar Nicholas about Zionism.
19. WWII ended on September 2, 1945, when Japan signed a surrender agreement on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
20. From 1940-1945, the U.S. defense budget increased from $1.9 billion to $59.8 billion.
21. The Nazis killed millions of Poles. But they thought that some Polish babies and children looked German and kidnapped about 50,000 of them to be adopted by German parents to become “Germanized.”
22. In 1941, a private earned $21 a month. In 1942, a private earned $50 a month.
23. German U-boats sunk 2,000 Allied ships at a cost of 781 U-boats destroyed.
24. More than 650,000 Jeeps were built during WWII. American factories also produced 300,000 military aircraft; 89,000 tanks; 3 million machine guns; and 7 million rifles.
25. The Germans used the first jet fighters in World War II, among them the Messerschmitt ME-262. However, they were developed too late to change the course of the war.
26. The most powerful artillery gun created by any nation and used in WWII was named Karl by its designer General Karl Becker. Used mostly against the Russians, the huge gun could shoot a 2.5 ton shell over three miles. The shells were 24 inches wide and could go through eight to nine feet of concrete.
27. During WWII, hamburgers in the U.S. were dubbed “Liberty Steaks” to avoid the German-sounding name.
28. The Nazis pirated the Harvard “fight song” to compose their Sieg Heil march.
29. Hitler designed the Nazi flag. Red stood for the social idea of Nazism, white for nationalism, and the black swastika for the struggle of the Aryan man.
Taken from: http://facts.randomhistory.com/world-war-ii-facts.html
Volksgerichtshof's Proclamation Announcing Helmuth Hubener’s Execution
Helmuth Hubener was arrested on February 5, 1942, by the Gestapo at his workplace He was working at The Hamburg Social Authority in the Bieberhaus in Hamburg. He was working on translating pamphlets into French which he wanted to distribute among prisoners of war. A Nazi Party member named Heinrich Mohn discovered what he was doing and turned him in. His case was tried at the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin on August 11, 1942. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonous furthering of the enemy's cause. He was sentenced to death. He also sentenced to permanently lose his civil rights, which meant he could be (and was) mistreated in prison, with no bedding or blankets in his cold cell, for instance. The Nazis didn’t usually try an underaged defendant, but the court found Helmuth highly intelligent for his age and punished him as an adult. The Reich Youth Leadership (Reichsjugendführung) stated that the danger posed by his activities to the German people's war effort made the death penalty necessary. Helmuth Hubener was executed by getting his head chopped off by the guillotine on August 11, 1942.
Volksgerichtshof's Proclamation Announcing Helmuth Hubener’s Execution
Translation: Let it be known. On August 11, 1942, the People’s Court sentenced 17-year-old Helmuth Hubener of Hamburg, to being stripped of his citizen’s rights, and in addition, to death, because of his treasonous support of the enemy. His execution has been carried out today, the 27th of October, by the order of the chief attorney general of the People’s Court.
Plotzensee Prison
Helmuth Hubener, the main character in the book, was sent to Plotzensee prison after his arrest for distributing information against the Nazis. Plotzensee prison was built between 1868 and 1879 as a prison outside the Berlin city limits. The prison housed both regular criminals and political prisoners, and was used to carry out executions. During the Nazi regime, a total of 2,891 people were executed in Plotzensee. About half of those executed were Germans, most of whom were sentenced to death for acts of resistance against the Nazi regime. 677 executed prisoners were from Czechoslovakia which Germany occupied in 1938-39. 253 death sentences were carried out against Poles, and 245 against French citizens. These people included both the members of resistance organizations and people who were deported to Germany for forced labor. Helmuth Hubener spent 264 days in the prison and was executed on October 27, 1942.
This chart shows executions in the Plotzensee Prison between 1933 and 1945.
Executions in Plötzensee between 1933 and 1945.
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All information are based upon the analysis of the sources available to the German Resistance Memorial Center up to and including spring 2002.
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