Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 659, 21 April 1943

1. Germany.

 

Romanian Marshal Antonescu’s visit to Germany.

 

– Adolf Hitler and Ion Antonescu entering the headquarters.

 

– Negotiations involving Ribbentrop and Keitel at the negotiating table.

 

– A meeting around a strategic map.

 

A vocational school for teenagers.

 

– Pupils at their workbenches, alongside instructors and supervisors.

 

– Young turners, fitters and welders at work.

 

– In a blacksmith’s workshop, a young man with a hammer.

 

– An aircraft factory.

 

– A completed aeroplane leaves the workshop.

 

– A procession of young workers – school leavers employed at the factory.

 

Renowned inventor Heinrich Krell at work on a new weapon.

 

– Other worker-inventors, innovation pioneers and top performers.

 

– Foreman Bruno Hartmann.

 

The “Tiger” – a new achievement in German tank-building.

 

– Reich Minister Speer and one of the professor-inventors at the test range.

 

– Two new tanks; the crews take their places.

 

– The tank’s guns.

 

– A commentator discusses the merits of the new tank. The ‘Tiger’ uproots a massive tree.

 

– The tank on terrain with extremely difficult topography.

 

– The tank’s turret; the gun fires at model tanks. The ‘Tiger’ smashes a tree and drives through a brick house.

 

2. The central sector of the Eastern Front.

 

German tanks being dispatched to the front line; a convoy en route.

 

– Unloading of ammunition and provisions near the combat zone.

 

– Convoys moving along washed-out roads.

 

– German soldiers on leave.

 

– Vehicles and equipment being painted.

 

– Vehicles and equipment on the move, travelling along muddy, potholed roads.

 

– A lorry towing a gun.

 

3. The Atlantic coast of France.

 

Reich Minister Speer inspects the Atlantic Wall fortifications.

 

– Workers from the Todt Organisation at work.

 

– Earth-moving machinery in operation.

 

– Workers at a sawmill.

 

– Concrete works.

 

– Preparing sand and water, mixing concrete.

 

– A concrete mixer is in operation.

 

– Concrete being laid.

 

– Construction of reinforced concrete fortifications; compacting the concrete.

 

– Installation of heavy guns using a powerful crane.

 

– Workers reinforcing the gun’s base.

 

– Assembly of the gun barrel; its transport by five lorries.

 

– Assembly work.

 

– View of the completed section of the Atlantic Wall, being coated with camouflage paint.

 

– The gun is being moved into the bunker.

 

– Assembly of the gun barrel, its final adjustment, painting and polishing. Fortifications and construction work on the Atlantic coast.

 

– At the command post.

 

– The barrel of a heavy gun.

Community or Collectivity?

 

by Gunther d’Alquen, 1937

 

When the old National Socialists look back on the early years of the struggle, they see a beautiful picture of a true community. Unencumbered, the men of that time, who were of one mind, had come together and created a community such as the world has rarely seen. Despite the lack of external organisation, these men formed an incredibly strong force.

 

They accomplished great things that took on an almost mystical dimension, expressing the loyalty of the Germanic troop, and culminating in the supreme sacrifice. We see that this strength of the Movement comes directly from this voluntary fusion which nevertheless allows the individual to exist as a personality and thus to be an independent fighter.

 

This community of fighters was the first to give strength to the Movement. It is a matter of nurturing it in the future and of ensuring that, in an age when the Movement should use violence, there is never a danger of the community degenerating into a collective. For never can the organised mass gathering, by destroying the values of personality in the natural man, increase his strength.

 

On the contrary, a good dose of violence is needed to hold together such a fundamentally non-German formation. Anything that destroys the personality for the benefit of a mass is not German, and anyone who thinks only in terms of the mass does so in a Bolshevist way and must eventually come to that idea which a Marxist once expressed when he preferred “to be wrong with the mass than to be right as an individual”.

 

But every community is spiritually based on the old Marxist fallacy of the equality of all men. This is not the case in nature. On the contrary, men are unequal. Some are good, some are bad, some are honest, some are dishonest, some are tall, some are short, some are fat, some are skinny. The spiritual defenders of the community were always faced with a desperate struggle, made all the more difficult by the fact that they had to constantly deny manifest reality.

 

There is no doubt that, apart from those who, as conscious enemies of National Socialism, defend the old error of equality, all those who, by nature and character, cannot understand National Socialism analogously are likely to act unconsciously in a collectivist spirit.

 

This type of man is both dangerous and comical when, in defence of the old Marxist egalitarian theory, he introduces the National Socialist notion of community, and suspects of professing class struggle anyone who notes that in a people there are intelligent people and their opposite.

 

No, it has nothing to do with a division of the people, for these are simply natural facts. But our old National Socialist view of the “decisive minority” is just as much a political translation of these natural facts as the “to each his own” demand that has always opposed National Socialism to the Marxist slogan “all equal”.

 

A fundamental distinction between community and collectivity is also manifested in leadership. The community naturally and necessarily has a leader who holds power over the souls and hearts of his fellows. The despot of a community is the supreme master of the bodies of individuals. His position is based on fear, whereas the leader of a community is driven by the love of the men who follow him voluntarily.

 

It is no coincidence that real leaders see themselves as the servants of their community because of their wisdom and sense of human superiority. Frederick the Great saw himself as ‘the first servant of the state’. Adolf Hitler saw himself as the ‘agent of the nation’, and the Führer’s representative drew the attention of the political leaders at the swearing-in ceremony to their task of being the servants of the people’s community.

 

We thus see that the supporters of the community see their ideal in ‘domination’. Through their sense of human inadequacy, they fall into the other excess and are as despotic towards their subordinates as they feign submission to the higher echelons. They do not know that the leader must have a superior faculty of understanding, but above all that superiority of soul and strength of heart of which Fichte tells us that it is these that bring victory.

 

Moreover, it can be seen that the head of a community calls to him the most capable and qualified men, and that the head of a community naturally has no need of independent collaborators, but only of creatures who are his blind instruments and who must constantly assure him of his worth. Thus it is clear what monstrous danger, arising from collectivist thought, could directly threaten our people in the time of their rebirth.

 

Here, too, the National Socialist Movement has given the nation a principle of inestimable value by presaging in exemplary form the notion of a community of loyal fellow workers. In this way it has set an example for all time of the true pooling of forces and has clearly rejected all collectivist ideas.

 

But the old soldiers of the Movement will never admit that the powerful human masses of our demonstrations and organisations can be wrongly regarded as a reign of the man-mass, and that the National Socialist notion of community is thus consciously or unconsciously distorted and transformed into collectivity.

 

The crowning achievement of any spirit of sacrifice is the dedication of one’s own life for the existence of the community.

 

Adolf Hitler

Reflections on the Leader Principle

 

by Gunther d’Alquen, 1937

 

The greater the tasks that an age gives to men, the more distinctly the group of those who are only apparently qualified for those tasks manifests itself. Where the highest values are concerned, the inferiors will always try to drape themselves in the appearance and attitude of the superior men of the elite.

 

Let us imagine a good and totally insignificant fellow citizen whose ardent wish is to be able to command one day. He does not want to wait until he is finally given a mission that places great responsibility on his shoulders. For he will probably be able to wait a long time; if he has no ability, he has a consuming ambition and this alone would prevent him from achieving it. Let us assume: Little Moritz, with his power complexes, becomes a big Moritz, and the misfortune is that he first learns to simulate non-existent abilities.

 

Our friend becomes a leader in some capacity. He knows that the importance of his personality is now accepted (only for a while). Former comrades who have not risen in rank imagine themselves to be inferior to the above-mentioned figure. Emphatic speeches persuade the citizens of the authority of the great Moritz. In his new offices, the telephone facilities were transformed. A listening table was set up in the chief s room to ‘deepen trust’, the posts were reorganised and the first circular questioned the established competences.

 

Unfortunately, mastering the job is not so simple. The newly-qualified superior does not like to show that he is not yet fully qualified and that he has to be advised. He sees his authority wavering and does not want to show the same little weaknesses as everyone else, nor his lack of basic experience. The lack of internal self-confidence must be compensated for by an even greater external self-confidence. The distance to former comrades is growing by leaps and bounds. Who is his favourite now?

 

The ‘subordinate’ is his favourite, because he willingly and often publicly confirms that he, the ‘superior’, is a particularly deserving individual. In his stupidity he certainly does not notice that the ‘subordinate’ says exactly the opposite behind his back. But if he were to notice here and there realistic objections from one of these “subordinates” or even counter-proposals on any issue, then the “boss” would infallibly see that he has a dangerous opponent before him. So he is brought down and, if necessary, secretly plotted against, being convinced of his own undoubted worth and the other’s ineptitude.

 

But this man is always on the brink. Woe to him when the moment comes when he needs his collaborators to correct his work, in a joyful collaboration, with a sense of absolute and resolute devotion to their leader! This ordeal can happen every day, by chance, when a mistake or an absolute task requires it. A painful situation arises when the superior no longer has the confidence of his men. His fall is therefore certain. Fate is fulfilled with an iron logic.

 

There is another kind, apart from the ambitious turned savage, pocket- sized tyrants, the fussy bureaucrats. They often have unquestionable knowledge. But what distinguishes them from real leaders is the fact that they are absolutely unwilling to accept any responsibility whatsoever. They accept everything patiently and carry out regulations and orders to the letter. They only see the apparatus, the organisation and its cells. The way a York acted in the wars of independence is an abomination to them. They would not have followed a Hitler, but a Kahr.

 

In both cases, these are caricatural distortions of the nature of the leader. The first sees only men. It sees leadership exclusively as a rank of precedence of persons. The century of democracies and parliamentarianism was totally successful in opposing this domination of men over men, and was quite right in the face of those leaders who see only personal preponderance in their rights.

 

The old authority had lost its internal legitimacy. The selfish and ambitious princes no longer had any right to power because they no longer saw themselves as servants of the state, but saw the state as a tool for personal power. When this false authority became a rule and a system, the time had come for a more structured organisation of the people. Thus, in our country, false authority is destroyed by internal logic, while education and selection produce a genuine elite that develops naturally. There is no question of abandoning this mission to the next millennium, for the creation of a new class of leaders was never in history a matter of a few years. What is important is the progress of our people in this history, not the little informers and undisciplined characters. In the end, they serve no purpose and do no harm; our strength lies in action, in creation and in the future. Sincere fighters in the service of an ideal always make history.

 

From character came action.

 

Darré

Ludwig van Beethoven - Overture Op. 72c “Fidelio”

Conductor: Herbert von Karajan

Performance: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Year of recording: 1985

 

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 658, 14 April 1943

1. New Guinea and Australia.

 

Japanese naval units are advancing toward the coast of New Guinea.

 

– American bombing of Japanese ships.

 

– Japanese troops land in New Guinea.

 

– Japanese troops advance through the jungle.

 

– Capture of a British airfield destroyed by the Japanese air force.

 

– Japanese planes take off to bomb the port of Darwin, an important British stronghold in Australia.

 

– Pilots in the cockpit.

 

– A view from the plane of the northern coast of Australia, looking toward the port of Darwin.

 

– Bombs are falling on the port.

 

2. The Eastern Front.

 

The central sector.

 

– A thaw on the front; streams are flowing.

 

– Spring mud.

 

– Vehicles are driving along a flooded road.

 

– Soldiers advance along laid planks; their boots sink into the mud.

 

– Soldiers help motorcyclists pull their vehicle out.

 

– Laying plank roads on strategic routes.

 

At positions between Lake Ladoga and Lake Ilmen.

 

– On Lake Ladoga.

 

– Soldiers are scooping water out of the trenches, using a pump, and carrying water out of the dugouts in buckets.

 

– Cleaning weapons, artillery pieces, and helmets; washing tanks.

 

– Inspection of personal weapons.

 

– A soldier washes his hair by pouring water from a mess kit over his head, while another shaves his comrade.

 

– A soldier stands near a willow tree with swollen buds and breaks off a twig.

 

– Artillery opens fire on Soviet positions.

 

– Damaged Soviet tanks stand after the battle.

 

– The bodies of Soviet soldiers.

 

– Terrain ravaged by battle.

 

– Disabled Soviet tanks.

 

– The famous tank killer, First Lieutenant Nigeman (wearing glasses), recipient of the Knight’s Cross.

 

– Commander of the 2nd Army, General of the Infantry Walter Weiss, greets soldiers who distinguished themselves in destroying tanks; he shakes Nigemann’s hand.

 

3. Northern Finland and Karelia.

 

The Lapland Front.

 

– Soldiers with Haflinger horses.

 

– Small and hardy, they are well-adapted to the conditions of this land and find their way even on narrow trails.

 

– They arrive at a German military base carrying their loads.

 

– Weapons, ammunition, and mail are unloaded every six days.

 

– The horses rest.

 

– A Karelian forest in winter; a reindeer moves among the trees.

 

– Scouts in camouflage gear set out on a combat mission.

 

– They must destroy a recently established Soviet base.

 

– They march through the snow.

 

– The gun is set up; the barrage begins.

 

– A grenade launcher fires.

 

– Infantrymen launch an attack and capture the enemy base.

 

– Soldiers march along a trench and enter a dugout.

 

– A captured gun; the bodies of Soviet soldiers lie in the snow.

 

– A wounded soldier is placed on a sled and pulled by ropes.

 

– A dog sled pulls the sled carrying the wounded soldier.

 

4. Norway.

 

One of the fjords.

 

– Wounded soldiers are loaded onto a hospital ship.

 

– The ship at sea.

 

– Disembarkation at a German port.

 

– A medical train en route; further transport of the wounded across Germany.

 

5. Austria.

 

Mussolini’s visit to the Führer, April 7–10, 1943. The train arrives; Hitler waits on the platform.

 

– Mussolini steps out of the train car.

 

– Meeting between the Führer and the Duce at Kessheim Palace near Salzburg.

 

– Ribbentrop and Keitel greet Mussolini.

 

– Colonel General Kurt Zeitzler, Chief of the General Staff, reports on the situation at the fronts.

 

6. Germany.

 

The Führer’s headquarters.

 

– Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz with the Führer.

 

– Dönitz is awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross for his exceptional achievements in submarine warfare.

 

– The Führer converses with the Grand Admiral.

 

– A newsreader reports on the successes of the German submarine fleet.

 

7. Additional film – Im Wald von Katyn a black-and-white short documentary film about the Katyn massacre from 1943, directed by Fritz Hippler.

Adolf Hitler – Final Speech at the Party Congress, 14 September 1936

 

Nuremberg, September 14, 1936

 

Thanks to the National Socialist idea and through the work of the National Socialist leadership, a new Germany has arisen! One can love it or one can hate it, but no one will change it, no one can do away with it!

 

The first and most difficult of our appointed political tasks can be said to be solved today. With the introduction of the two-year period service, the German Reich has once again been liberated, in scarcely four years of National Socialist leadership of state, from the worst consequences of that unscrupulous mutiny that attempted to defame us not only militarily, but first and foremost morally! It may be that the peoples who were not visited by a misfortune comparable to that of Germany have no concept of the emphasis we place on settling this question above all.

 

We did not defend Germany against Bolshevism back then because we were intending to do anything like conserve a bourgeois world or go so far as to freshen it up. Had Communism really intended nothing more than a certain purification by eliminating isolated rotten elements from among the ranks of our so-called ‘upper ten thousand’ or our equally worthless Philistines, one could have sat back quietly and looked on for a while.

 

The aim of Bolshevism is not, however, to liberate peoples from what is sick, but the opposite: to exterminate what is healthy, what is healthiest of all, in fact, and to place in its stead the most degenerated of all.

 

I cannot ally myself with a Weltanschauung which, as its initial action upon taking power, would invariably choose not to first liberate the working Volk, but to liberate instead the asocial scum of the earth concentrated in the penitentiaries, and then to let them loose like animals upon their frightened and stunned fellow beings. [-] We also reject this doctrine as a consequence of the more humane approach we have to our fellow men. The remarks of our speakers at this Party Congress and the events in Spain have once again provided to the world and to our German Volksgenossen an insight into atrocities of Bolshevist combat methods and government maxims. The German Volk is too good and too decent for such hideous monstrosities.

 

I have only been able to score these successes because, first of all, I endeavored to see things as they are and not as one would like to have them.

 

And secondly, because I have never allowed weaklings to talk me out of or lead me away from an opinion I had once formed; and thirdly, because I have always resolved under all circumstances to respond to a necessity once recognized.

 

Today, now that Fate has bestowed such great success upon me, I will not abandon my principles.

 

May the peoples living around us comprehend that, if they respect German independence, freedom and honor, they will nowhere find a more sincere friend than the National Socialist Third Reich. May, however, that very Bolshevism of which we learned only a few months ago that it intends to arm its forces in order to open the door to revolution among other peoples with force, if necessary; may this Bolshevism know that the new German Army stands guard at the German door.

 

The brutal mass slaughter of nationalist officers, igniting the gasoline drenched wives of nationalist officers, the slaughter of the children and babies of nationalist parents, for example in Spain, should be a warning to all like-thinking powers in other countries to shrink from any act of resistance in a similar situation.

 

Should these methods achieve their aim and the modern Girondins be replaced by Jacobins and Kerensky’s People’s Front by Bolshevists, Europe will perish in a sea of blood and mourning. European culture which-fertilized in prehistoric antiquity-will soon celebrate 2,500 years of history, will yield to the cruelest barbarity of all time.

 

No one will harbor a single doubt that National Socialism will defend itself everywhere and under any circumstances against the attacks of Bolshevism, and will conquer and destroy it. [-] We are marching in a rapid step toward turbulent times. The tempo requires men of determined toughness, and not weakly Philistines. It will not judge people according to the superficial manners of society, but according to the quality and toughness of their character in times of heavy burdens.

 

Now more than before, it is the Party’s task to ensure that hard views are established in our Volk and that above all a relentless war be declared on every trace of that pitiful cleverness Clausewitz castigated as the worst symptom of cowardice. We are approaching great historic periods; in courses of time such as these, pure cleverness has never triumphed, but invariably brave courage. Above all, the Party must embody the optimism we National Socialists know so well.

 

Every fault can be overcome, and its manifestations are easier to eliminate than pessimism and its consequences.

 

Let him beware who has no faith. He is committing a sin against the meaning of life as a whole. He is of no use for anything, and his existence will be nothing but a burden to his Volk.

 

In the course of my political struggle-and unfortunately I must stress this again-it was particularly in bourgeois circles that I encountered these sorry pessimists who, in their pitiful state, are incapable of any faith whatsoever and hence could not be used for any redeeming action. And even today I often meet them.

 

I have but one question I must confront them with: What would have happened to Germany had an unknown soldier not had the faith in 1919 that he would one day be able to rescue the German nation from its demise by steadfastness and dedication, by bravery and a willingness to sacrifice? What did Germany rescue after all? Was it the pessimism of these petty carpers, these pitiful doubters, these invariable despondent defeatists? Or was it not the unshakeable confidence that the eternal qualities of our Volk would win out against the inferior and the burdensome? No! It was the miracle of faith that rescued Germany.

 

Today, after all these historically unique successes, it is more than ever the duty of the Party to recall this National Socialist profession of faith and to carry it once more at its force as the holy symbol of our fight and our certain victory.

 

This is why the Party too must penetrate again and again to the heart of the Volk at large which is the best and the strongest supporter of the faith we have.

 

This Volk alone has in itself the courage and the bravery and the confidence Nature provides to primitive beings for their own self-preservation. Had commanders always been as courageous as grenadiers must be at all times, many battles would not have been lost. And if politicians are as strong of faith as the broad masses of a Volk are true, then they are invincible as leaders of their peoples.

Formation of the Volunteer Legion „Wallonie“

Published in „Siegrunen“ Magazine – Volume X, Number 6, Whole Number 62,

Fall 1996

  

ABOVE: The Legion „Wallonie“ transport train arrives at the Regenwurm Training Camp from Brussels in August 1941. The slogan on the side reads: „Stalin We're Coming!“.

 

 

In early August 1941, the first several hundred volunteers of the Volunteer Legion „Wallonie“ left Belgium for the Regenwurm Training Camp near Meseritz, Germany after receiving a big, festive send-off in their homeland. The Walloon volunteers were to be formed into an infantry battalion. Each company had a German training officer along with some German NCO's and translators assigned to it, otherwise the command personnel were all Belgians.

 

Prominent among the first group of recruits was Leon Degrelle, the leader of the Belgian Rexist Pary and one of the most important political figures in all of Europe. He had been offered an automatic officer's position but turned it down so he could undergo basic training and serve first as an enlisted man. Degrelle was trained as a machine-gunner and his progress and conduct was exemplorary. He continually refused any „special treatment“ due to his celebrity status.

 

The Legion training program was hard but conducted at a rapid pace. The Walloon volunteers adapted readily and with enthusiasm to the tough training regimen and within two months the battalion was a reality. On 17 October 1941, the training came to and end and the Legion„Wallonie“ was designated the independent Infantry Bataillon 373. A final inspection parade was held for the Legion at Regenswurm before General of the Cavalry Frhr. von Daiwigk zu Lichtenfels. Immediately afterwards the Legion began its journey to the Eastern Front where it would serve with the German Army and Waffen-SS as a battalion, brigade and finally as a division until the bitter end.

 

ABOVE: Members of the Legion at Regenwurm. On the far left is Leon Degreiie as an ordinary private. BELOW: The first Legion CO, Hauptmann (CpL) Georges Jacobs takes the oath of allegiance on the sword of GeneraI of the Cavalry Frhr. vom Daiwigk zu Lichtenfels. Leutnant Vermeire, on the right, translates.

 

 

ABOVE: Gen. von Dalwigk zu Lichtenfels and Hauptmann Jacobs inspecting the drawn-up Legion „Wallonie“ at Regenwurm on 17 October 1941. BELOW: The Legion color party marching past Gen. von Dalwigk zu Lichtenfels and Hauptmann Jacobs on 17 October.

 

 

Legion „Wallonie“ unit commanders 1941-1943

 

CO: Jacobs, Pauly, Tchekhoff, Lippert. Co.: Van Damme, Lisein, Mathieu, Dum 2nd Co.; Heyvaert, Daulne, Vermeire, Closset. Co.: Tchekhoff, Thys, Ruelle, Vermeire. 4^th Co.: Dupre, Buydts, Daulne, Bosquion, Mirgain.