by Robert J.
Chapman
It has been often said that the first casualty of war is truth. Belligerents
have always had their own versions of history, particularly with regard to
responsibility for wars. And yet certain basic facts and events have not been
totally suppressed, if only due to the lack of total media technology and
control. Roman statesmen never hid their intense hostility toward Carthage, yet
historians have been able to produce rather reliable accounts of the Punic
wars. Rome was the absolute military victor, but does not appear completely
blameless and righteous in history books. Although Carthage was utterly
destroyed by Rome, the feats of Hannibal were duly recorded, his heroism and
his integrity were not denied, his character was not assassinated, his genius
was not called madness and his motives were understood and respected in the
context of his duty to his country.
For four thousand years historians were rather able to keep track of human
events. Despite the triumph of victorious nations, the vanquished were not
eternally execrated. If the victor was particularly vindictive, honest
historians might have to maintain discreet, low profile research for a time but
they were eventually able to record the facts without fear of retribution.
Defeated nations were not prevented from rendering their versions of history.
Historians, like accountants, could gather facts and figures as well as give
their own interpretations.
The phenomenon of distorting or suppressing facts from the historical
ledger is relatively recent. In conjunction with forced military conscription
and absolutist ideology, it first appeared with the advent of the French
Revolution.
While the ancien regime tolerated even those who were determined to
abolish it, and men such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu were feted in
the royal salons, the French revolutionaries stamped out dissent with the
guillotine. Suspected opponents of the revolutionary regime were simply put to
death.
Historians were among the first victims of this democratic reign of terror.
Millions were murdered and historical truth became a casualty. Fortunately for
the world, Danton, Marat, and Robespierre did not prevail, but instead fell
victim to their own terror.
It proved only a short respite. The virus was out of the bottle. During the
nineteenth century, many tyrants and would-be tyrants became infected. Yet
truth, or at least diversity of opinion, survived in countries not subjected to
ideological tyranny.
Marat’s ideological heirs, nurtured by the teachings of Marx and Engels,
took control of Russia in 1917. Another major country fell under the absolutist
rule of ideological fanatics. Once again historians became victims. Events were
erased from memory, „facts“ were invented, and whole classes of people were
exterminated or classified as non-persons in the rewritten history books
produced for the new Soviet man. Recalcitrant historians were quickly
liquidated as counter revolutionaries or anti-Semites. (note 1)
Nevertheless, the facts about this modern-age tyranny filtered out and Western
historians were able to record them. (note 2)
Tyranny took a quantum leap between 1917 and the present. What the French
and Marxist revolutions were not able to accomplish -- namely, control of
history to perpetuate their own regimes -- has become the norm around the
world. The wartime alliance of the Anglo-American Allies and Soviet Russia did
not make the Kremlin’s rulers more democratic. Instead, the „democratic“ Allies
accepted the practices of Soviet tyranny.
For the first time in history virtually the entire world found itself
subjected to the same tyrannical ideology, including a common version of modern
history. Gone were the sanctuaries of countries where dissident historians
could take refuge to record history or wait until passions had abated. Even the
freedom of historians of the defeated countries to write history from the
perspective of the vanquished disappeared. The victorious Second World War
alliance stopped the clock of history in 1945, unconditionally and universally.
It is certainly not without irony that the joint triumph of the Soviet
Union and the Anglo-American democracies over Germany, all in the name of
peace, freedom and democracy, should have ushered in a dark era of intellectual
tyranny. An era dawned during which anyone daring to express dissident opinions
did so at the risk of his life and livelihood. Never before has absolute dogma
been so widely imposed around the globe.
It is this exclusivist historical perspective of Marxism, Capitalism, and
Zionism which has kept the world in intellectual darkness during the last forty
years. Revisionist historians are hounded around the world by the new grand
inquisitors of this intolerant dogma.
More than any other country, Germany remains an occupied and divided land
under illegitimate governments with legal prohibitions against even modest
challenges to the official dogma.
Since 1945 laws have multiplied in many countries to punish recalcitrant
historians. And if legal measures fail, inflammatory and lying propaganda
produced by modern media technology are used.
But in spite of murder, arson and persecution of every possible kind, the
powerful forces of repression and obscurantism have not completely extinguished
the spark of freedom. In fact, forty years of persecution have made its
defenders stronger and more determined than ever that truth and freedom shall
prevail. The annual revisionist conferences sponsored by the Institute for
Historical Review are a manifestation of the indomitable spirit of human freedom.
It is ironic indeed that our persecutors behave in a worse fashion than the
„Nazis“ they execrate. In fact, they have imposed upon the world all the evils,
and then some, that they accuse National Socialist Germany of perpetrating. The
roles have been completely reversed: the allegedly persecuted are the real
persecutors. The historical truth, of course, is that Germany has been
viciously oppressed since the First World War onward, and that those historians
who have attempted to set the record straight have likewise been persecuted.
Although historical revisionism is not at all limited to the Second World
War era, it has been necessary to emphasize this critical period because the
total falsification of modern history was imposed by the Soviets and their wartime
democratic Allies. For the past forty years they have controlled historiography
to perpetuate their rule through an absolutist worldwide ideology. They operate
according to the Orwellian axiom: „Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.“
Today, however, defenders of First Amendment rights and general freedom of
speech have joined with historians to battle for the basic right to express
oneself without fear of sanctions.
As the falsifiers openly admit, their greatest fear is historical
revisionism. They have thus also revealed their greatest weakness: the scrutiny
of revisionist historians. It is a matter of constant amazement that the
historical falsifiers do not rebut revisionism with facts but with abuse,
threats or punishment. The normal exchange of scholarly information common to
other intellectual disciplines has also been absent.
The challenge to the tyranny of worldwide thought control has been issued.
After four decades of lies, we say: Enough. We can be grateful that the United
States is still a bastion where freedom of expression has not been legally
eradicated, but time is running out. If today historians are muzzled by denial
of their First Amendment rights, who may be next? The freedom of us all is at
stake.
The imperative of historians to tell the truth is inextricably linked to
freedom of speech. It is a dual role and a dual burden which we cannot shirk.
At the same time it is a unique and tremendous opportunity to unravel the
falsifications that have held the world captive since 1945.
It would have been of benefit to history if the central figure of the
Second World War, Adolf Hitler, had been retired like Napoleon, to write his
memoirs and answer the questions of history. The contrast between the way
Napoleon and Hitler were treated following their defeats is a measure of how
far the world has fallen into totalitarian tyranny.
Defeat on the battlefield cost Napoleon his throne, but he kept his life
and honor. To this day he is honored as a personality of prominence in the
country he once ruled as well as in the world. In contrast, for Hitler military
defeat meant annihilation in a war of total destruction. This pitiless
hostility began during the First World War and was institutionalized by the Versailles
Treaty. The time is gone when the ultimate price a leader had to pay for
military defeat was the loss of his power and prestige.
The Soviets and their democratic allies, who introduced the concept of
total war, unconditional surrender and unconditional hatred, have
institutionalized bigotry and retribution on a macabre and perpetual basis.
This fanatical stance has brought historical inquiry to a standstill.
The corrosive legacy of censorship and suppression will only end if there
is free debate, inquiry, research, and scrutiny. The perspective of the
vanquished must be given -- not by Nuremberg inquisitors -- but by those who
actually made history on the other side. The academic world and the general
public are entitled to examine both sides of the Hitler era.
More than 200,000 books have been written since 1945 about the Second World
War, but have they let us know the authentic story?
For example, only a handful of those who had any personal knowledge of
Hitler have written about the man. Unfortunately, their ability to tell the
truth has been subordinate to their primary obligation for sheer survival.
The Institute for Historical Review believes that the time has now come to
understand the man who was the central figure of the most momentous era of
modern history: Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately for historians, Hitler and all his
lieutenants can no longer be questioned. All, save one.
In its quest to produce a monumental record of this missing side of
history, the Institute has commissioned the last wartime National Socialist
leader who is still alive and free to fill the gap: Leon Degrelle, the Catholic
leader of the Belgian Rexist movement and wartime leader of the Waffen SS
volunteer legion „Wallonie.“
Degrelle knew Hitler intimately and was one of his most trusted colleagues.
One of the most decorated heroes of the Eastern Front, he may also be uniquely
qualified to observe history objectively. He is not a German. Along with the
people of Belgium and France, he was brought up in an officially anti-German
atmosphere.
In the years before the outbreak of war, Degrelle was a young Belgian
intellectual who published a daily newspaper and organized a national political
party that won elections and sent representatives to the Belgian parliament.
The popular enthusiasm he generated was reflected in the turnout of millions
who applauded his message and supported his program.
When Degrelle returned to Brussels after fighting communism for four years
on the Eastern Front, he was given the largest mass welcome in Belgian history.
[Thousands of] Belgians lined the streets of Brussels to cheer the returning
general only two months before the Allies invaded that country.
One of the outstanding writers in the French language, he has published
more than forty books and essays ranging from poetry to economics, from
architecture to history. He has been acknowledged as a passionate orator and a
soldier of rare valor. He joined the ranks of the 600,000 foreign volunteers of
the Waffen SS as a private and earned all his stripes at the front. After four
continuous years in the inferno of battle, his legion was one of the last to
retreat from Russia.
This titanic struggle is described in his famous epic, Campaign in
Russia, which earned him renown in Europe as the „Homer of the Twentieth
Century.“ (This book has been recently published in English by the Institute
for Historical Review.)
During his final meeting with Adolf Hitler, as bombs rained across Germany,
Degrelle recalled that Hitler was calm and composed. They shared a last supper
together. Hitler served him, cutting his bread and pouring him a glass of wine.
He gazed confidently into Degrelle’s eyes: „We will all die, but you, Leon,
must live. You must live to tell the world the truth.“
In 1945, Degrelle escaped from Germany to Norway where he boarded a
single-engine plane and flew over Allied-occupied Europe to crash land on the
Spanish border as his craft ran out of fuel. He suffered multiple injuries in
the landing including several broken bones. He spent a year in the hospital
recuperating, most of it in a plaster cast, unable to move. Typically, as soon
as his right arm became free he began writing his masterwork, Campaign in
Russia („The Lost Legion“). It has appeared in two French editions.
The Allies threatened to invade Spain unless Degrelle and wartime French
premier Pierre Laval were not immediately turned over for execution. Franco
compromised. He turned over Laval but kept Degrelle on the grounds that he
could not be physically removed from the hospital.
A year later Degrelle was given refuge in a monastery. Members of his
family and many friends and supporters were arrested and tortured to death by
the „democratic liberators“ of Belgium. His six children were forcibly shipped
to detention centers in different parts of Europe after their names were
changed. The authorities ordered that they were never to be permitted contact
with one another or with their father.
The new Belgian government condemned him to death in absentia on three
separate occasions. A special law was passed, the Lex Degrellana, which
made it illegal to transfer, possess, or receive any book by or about Degrelle.
The IHR’s Campaign in Russia is automatically banned in Belgium.
Completely alone, Degrelle went on to rebuild his shattered life from
nothing. With the energy and burning spirit that had never left him, he worked
as a manual laborer in construction. And just as he had risen from private to
general on the battlefield, Degrelle rose to build a major construction company
with important contracts. The quality and efficiency of his company became so
well known that the United States government commissioned him to build major
defense projects, including military airfields, in Spain. Meanwhile his emissaries
searched Europe for his kidnapped children. All were found in the most amazing
circumstances and returned to their father.
On twelve separate occasions over the last forty years Degrelle has
challenged the Belgian government to put him on public trial with a jury. His
repeated demands to be tried in a legitimate court of law (as opposed to an
inquisitional Nuremberg-style show trial) have been met with embarrassed and
guilty silence.
The Institute has commissioned this giant historical figure and first-hand
witness and participant to momentous events to write a definitive, fourteen
volume revisionist historical account. Degrelle’s first-hand experience, as
well as his acquaintance with Churchill, Mussolini and every other major figure
of the Second World War, makes this a project of tremendous historical
significance.
Will these books be biased in favor of Hitler? General Degrelle has already
provided the answer in his other published works. He writes without fear or
favor. His facts have been cursed by his opponents, but never disproved. It is
this approach combined with encyclopedic knowledge that assures a valuable end
result.
The first manuscript of 1268 pages is divided into three parts and is
entitled: Hitler: Born in Versailles. It is the foundation of the
thirteen succeeding books which will average 400 pages each, complete with
reproductions of previously unpublished documents and photographs of key
personalities. Each volume will deal with a specific aspect of Hitler’s legacy.
They will be entitled: Hitler the Democrat, Hitler and the Church, Hitler
and the Germans, Hitler and the United States, Hitler and Stalin, Hitler and
England, Hitler and France, Hitler and the Banks, Hitler and the Communists,
Hitler and the Jews, Hitler the Politician, Hitler the Military Strategist,
and Hitler and the Third World.
„There would never have been a Hitler without the Versailles Treaty,“
Degrelle says. The vested interests joined to eviscerate Germany with
unprecedented iniquity. Hitler emerged as an unlikely champion from the depths
of his nation’s misery and despair. He was a graphic artist with a passion for
music. His battle uniform was his only worldly possession. He had never been
involved in politics. From the abyss of hopelessness and against the combined
forces of established power, Hitler created, directed, and lived his revolution
from beginning to end. He broke through all prejudices and opposition to the
German people, and they responded. He earned every vote he received by
tirelessly addressing peoples in town after town and city after city. Hitler
was democratically elected. When he proceeded to implement his mandate, the
combined forces of Capitalism, Communism, and Zionism once again declared war
against Germany.
Degrelle’s comprehensive historical survey reviews all the facts in the
chain of events that led to Hitler’s election and the beginning of the Second
World War. He also provides a rare look behind the scenes of the Versailles
conference.
Degrelle maintains that Hitler’s social reforms will ultimately be
remembered even more than his military feats. He reviews Hitler’s innovation of
paid vacations and profit-sharing for work. The German leader introduced
affordable and decent housing for all citizens. Hitler insisted that every
German family was entitled to a home with a garden for flowers and vegetables.
He required safe and pleasant working conditions. Every factory was to have a
sports field, swimming pool, trees, flowers, and a pleasant architectural
design. He insisted that working conditions must not impair the physical and
spiritual wellbeing of the workers. He organized the mass production of the
cheap „People’s Car“ or Volkswagen for every German family and offered them on
low payments to every worker. Hitler constructed modern and beautiful freeways.
He abolished usury on the principle that a nation’s wealth is in its work
force, not its hoard of gold. The state, Hitler emphasized, is the exclusive
servant of the people and recognizes no other master. The list of Hitler’s
social innovations and achievements goes on and on.
In 1933 all this was unheard of. His dynamic social revolution of deed, not
rhetoric, infuriated Germany’s enemies and united them in hatred.
The Versailles mutilation of Germany and Austria-Hungary parceled out many
millions of Germans (including German Austrians), Hungarians, and others like
cattle to the hostile rule of alien neighboring countries. General Degrelle
surveys the Franco-British intrigues in the affairs of Central Europe, the
systematic betrayal of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the secret treaties that
doomed Wilson’s mission from the start, and the cynical Franco-British dividing
up of vast territories without regard to the will of the millions of hapless
inhabitants.
Degrelle points out that the history of Hitler and Germany can be
understood only within the context of the Versailles Treaty and the harsh
subjugation of Germany by implacable enemies. „Whenever I hear the Allied side
of history,“ he adds, „I am often reminded of the reporter sent to report on a
brawl. He scrupulously recorded all the blows delivered by one side and none
from the other. His story would truthfully bear witness to the aggression of
one side and the victimization of the other. But he would be lying by omission.
I do not deny anything that Hitler did, but I also point out what the
Communists and their Western allies did, and I let the public be the judge.“ I
am fortunate to have had the opportunity to read the first volume of Degrelle’s
multi-volume survey. I can vouch for its momentous importance. With members of
my family I have visited him at his home in Spain. This project will be a
milestone of historical writing that will shatter the foundations of the great
historical lies of our time. It will be a definitive survey for generations to
come. I believe that its magnitude will change the course of human affairs.
1. For example, the intrepid Roman Catholic scholar J.B. Pranaitis, a
formidable Hebraist, was executed in 1917 by the Cheka (Soviet secret police)
for „thought crimes.“
2. Cf. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, Stefan Possony, Lenin The
Compulsive Revolutionary; Raymond Arthur Davies, Odyssey Through Hell
and Jean Fontenoy, Frontier Rouge-Frontier d’Enfer.
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