About Michel Cahier Expertise I am a French amateur historian in German history between 1918 and 1945, particularly with regard to the Nazi era, Hitler's character and the occupation of Europe.
Experience I have worked on the subject of Nazism since college and since I retired I developed a complete site with more than 60 chapters devoted to different aspects of the Nazi era. I have developed too a special interest in Nazi Art and the treatment of art by the Nazis. My site had about 2000 hits per week and is very well considered. I would be glad to help some people who have very precise questions about Hitler and the Nazis. My site can be consulted at http://schikelgruber.net/index.html. Needless to say that I am not a supporter of the Nazis and never in this site do I attempt to justify or excuse their policies.
Organizations I used to work for the Agence France Presse, La Tribune, TV Channel France 3 and as the Editor of the Agence Economique et Financiere. I was in position in Brussels, London and Paris.
Publications I published a book about the entrepreneurs and the motives for creating a company in the 80s and a book about the Franco-Swiss jeweller Philippe Charriol in the 90s
Education/Credentials I graduated in Law and Political Sciences, I have a MBA from the Paris Chamber of commerce and I have a license of massage therapy (RMT) of the State of Texas
Question QUESTION: *I sent this Q to you a few days ago but did not recieve an answer reciept so I'm sending it again and apologies if you already recieved it* Hi Michel,this is not a homework Q,I'm just curious at the moment about what happened in WW2. Who initiated it? Who was on who's side? why did it go on for so long and,very important for me to know, were we (the US & the UK) in any real serious danger? Lastly,where can I find an audio of Winston Churchills radio broadcast where he said we will not surrender? Thanks,Caroline
ANSWER: hello
sorry if i did not answer faster but i am currently in France and very busy. WW2 was initiated by the Nazis in September 1939 when they attacked Poland and devastated the country in less than a month.
France and UK declared war to Germany but did not attack her and this period was called the phoney war because there were no belligerents. In May 1940 the Nazis attacked Belgium and France and in 6 weeks beat the French and the British Expeditionary Forces in France who re-crossed the Channel in a sort of panic manner.
The Germans were allied to the Italians and the Japanese and the Italians attacked France and occupied the region of Nice while the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and destroyed a large part of the Pacific fleet of the USA.
It last until 1945 with complete surrender of the German in May 1945 and complete surrender of the Japanese in August 1945. Germany was almost totally destroyed and most main cities were in ruins. Japan suffered less but cities like Tokyo that was heavily bombed and Nagasaki and Hiroshima that were nuked were heavily damaged or destroyed. It last so long because Germany and Japan were two heavily armed nations with huge potential industrial, high technologies for armaments, tanks and planes, a very motivated and patriotic population and determined soldiers ready to fight to the end.
Yes the UK was in very serious danger first during the battle of England in 1941 when the bombers of the Luftwaffe were raiding the cities of England and bombing them constantly, night and day. And again in 1944 when Hitler launched the V1 and V2 rockets on the same cities. In June 1940 after the fall of France nobody seriously thought that Germany would not conquer the rest of Europe and she did. Hopefully the Brits did not surrender, won the Battle of the Skies in 1941 and at then end of 1941 the US declared war to the Japanese and the balance of forces shifted in favor of the Allies. But still it took the full forces of the Soviet army that Hitler attacked in 1941 after his failure in the battle of England to win the war. In 1945 the Soviet army invaded Poland and Germany and their presence in the war in Europe helped the Allies to bring the Germans to their knees.
QUESTION: Hi again,a simple Q which I am sure the answer may be complex I don't know but what I would really like clarification about is WHY did Hitler and the Nazi's hate the Jewish so much??
Answer hello
this is effectively a very difficult question and the answer is not simple but I will try to give you points of clarification :
1- first you must know that early XXth century Europe was largely an anti-semitic world especially Austria where Hitler was born in 1889 and Vienna where he lived between 1909 and 1913 as an aspiring
artist-painter. If Hitler must be taken at face value, he was anti-semitic in high school : according to his teacher Josef Keplinger, young Hitler diligently studied the alleged differences between races and he even once divided the class into two groups : Aryans and non-Aryans according to the color of their hair. Where the dark haired Hitler put himself, the story does not say. Then we know that after he left high school, he used to read in Linz the very anti-semitic Linzer Fliegenden newspaper with writers like the fanatical anti-Semites Guido von List and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels. And if Hitler must be taken verbatim, he would have started to hate the Jews as soon as his second year (1909) in Vienna as he explained profusely in Mein Kampf :" I didn't know what to be more amazed at: their verbal agility or their art in lying." Guido von List divided the world into two groups, the Aryans masters who came from the North and the herd people or slaves. List's worst enemies were the internationals, the Jews and Freemasons and the Catholic church who were waging a war of extermination against the Aryans. Many secret
societies like Armanenschaft proliferated at that time in
Vienna and their mutual sign of recognition was the Swastika, a sign of the invincible : Thule Society, Bayreuth Circle, Sollnian Circle...
2- during this period the young Hitler was particularly impressed by notorious anti-semitic Viennese politicians like
the mayor of Vienna and an Austrian aristocrat and member of parliament called von Schönerer who turned more and more anti-semitic, anti-Slav and anti-monarchy. He even set out a Linz Program that called for an independent Hungary, a Germanized Austria and a lose confederation of Southern Slavs countries, actually prefiguring the Europe of 1945. In 1885, Schonerer added the "Aryan clause" to the Linz Program, hence excluding the Jews from German brotherhood. If you were Jewish, you could not be German. This decision was duplicated by many German fraternities who expelled their Jews : thus he started out the "de-Jewification" and men like Viktor Adler, Arthur Schnitzler and especially Theodore Herzl were kicked out of their fraternity. Please read a chapter of my site devoted to this question at http://schikelgruber.net/gurusB.html
3- the sparkling factor in the hatred of Hitler for the Jews was WW1. At the end of the war, Hitler was convinced that the German Jews had stabbed in the back the honest German soldiers by trafficking, blackmarketing, negotiating with the enemies for an armistice and were responsible for the failure of Germany to win the war. He convinced himself that Reds and Jews were
nothing else than profiteers, responsible for the defeat of his beloved motherland, Germany. His hatred culminated in the conviction that "when he defended (himself) against the Jew, he was fighting for the work of the Lord."
4- after WW1, Hitler nurtured the idea that the Jews were responsible of the sovietization of Russia and of certain German cities like Munich who had a brief Communist government. Hitler was then influenced by a man called Gottfried Feder. From 1917 on, Feder studied financial politics and economics on his own; he developed a hostility towards wealthy bankers during World War I and wrote a "manifesto on breaking the shackles of interest" ("Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft") in 1919. His influence upon Hitler, notably his hatred of the Jewish "international" finance, was instrumental in Hitler's conceptions of a Socialist Germany in the early 20s.
So Hitler was brainwashed by men more intelligent and more cultivated than himself and got eventually convinced that the Jews were a vermin, a bacilla, responsible of all the diseases of the capitalist society. He shared the ideas of many conservatives "thinkers" that "Jews were destroying beauty, dirtying everything, exalting sex, sensuality and pornography in their press and their works."
5-Gradually, Hitler began to hate the Jews to the point of longing for their extermination. In 1920 the first mass meeting of the NSDAP was held under the theme "Why we are against the Jews" and the first national rally of the party in January 1921 was placed under the slogan "Future or Ruin", the latter being the effect of Jewish conspiracy to rule Germany and the world.
I hope that I answered at least partially your question. If you want a more developed comment on this delicate issue you can read more chapters of my site at http://schikelgruber.net. Best regards
Michel Cahier
