Notes on The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn

The introduction provides an excellent critique of the concept of war crimes. Particularly of the first two indictments. For instance, how were Stalin and other Russian leaders not indicted for crimes against peace since they were just as guilty as Germany was for the start of the war.

Page ix

Over dinner on November 29, Stalin suggested in passing that if at the end of the war about fifty thousand leaders of the German armed forced were rounded up and liquidated, then Germany's military might would be ended once and for all. Churchill was taken aback by the scale of the liquidations envisioned by Stalin. He said simply that the British Parliament and public would never accept such mass executions. But Roosevelt responded to Stalin more warmly, and when Churchill became upset (or so Churchill recalled), FDR said that the Allies should execute not fifty thousand, but "only 49,000. " Elliott Roosevelt, the president's son, who happened to be present, chimed in to say he was sure the United States Army "would support it."

Page xxiii

The defendants generally tried to get away with everything they could, and as one of them suggested, they sometimes succeeded. That claim was made by Hitler's architect Speer, often regarded as the shrewdest observer among the defendants. He was not pleased at the end of the trial when he saw that Fritzsche, Papen, and Schacht got off, while he was given twenty years. He noted in his diary that their "lies, smokescreens, and dissembling statements had paid off after all." Speer resented not being exonerated by the court, but it was certainly not because he had failed to lie or to cover up the truth. Speer and no doubt other defendants resented people like Goldensohn and Gilbert. So far as we can tell, Speer gave Goldensohn no more than a brief and tersely worded statement (included in this volume). He accused Gilbert of being "always eager to add to his psychological knowledge." In answer to Gilbert's question about his sentence, speer lied when he said the twenty years he got "was fair enough. They couldn't have given me a lighter sentence, considering the facts, and I can't complain." By his own later admission, Speer was not telling the truth, for in fact he felt unjustly traded by the court.

Page 29/30

[Hans Frank] "I met my wife in 1924. The relationship was one of a chance happening and was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I certainly don't want to say anything against the character of my wife, but she is too old - five years older than I am -- and I am of the opinion that it's just to bad.

Page 43

[Wilhelm Frick] Asked if he had any comment to offer on the Reichstag fire, Frick replied: "It can be argued both ways. At the trial some Communists were convicted. There is the rumor that Goering and the SA started it. But I don't know." What is your own opinion? "The only thing I can say is based on the viewpoint of gained what. If the Communists had done it, they were stupid because they were prohibited thereafter. If Goering and the SA did it, I'm unable to say. So far it has not come up in this trial." At the time, what was your opinion? "I had no reason to be suspicious, though rumors, of course, existed at that time, too."

Page 59/60/61/67

[Hans Fritzsche] Propaganda is always done by bringing the attention of the people to one side and taking the attention from the other side. Thus, propaganda is always one-sided, be it for good or for bad. Now during the past year and a half I have been thinking of the propaganda I broadcasted. I can say that I did not try to bring the attention of people to something bad, but to something one-sided - and I did that during all those ten years of my activity. I painted only in black-and-white - no in-between colors. Your country and other Allies did the same thing."

...

"Speaking for myself, I did not believe what the Allies said, though I had opportunity to always listen to Allied stations. The reasons for my not believing it was that it had been drummed into us that the Allies were telling lies in the form of propaganda. The tragedy of it all is that what these Allied broadcasting stations said was literally true. I must have said at least a hundred times during the war, whenever the Allied broadcasting stations talked about cruelties and atrocities, that the same type of Allied propaganda went on in the last war. I would say to my friends that in the last war the Allies talked about Germans chopping off the hands of Belgian children and that after the First World War it was admitted by the Allies that such allegations were false and merely propagandistic. I will say even today, that at the beginning of this war, hundreds of lies about Nazism were spread over the Allied stations. They even broadcast things about me personally -- things that could be proven false. Therefore, that is what I mean by saying that the guilt lies on both sides, because propaganda, whether it be evil or good, tends to make one doubt it. If one refers to the many false statements made by Allied broadcasters at the beginning of the war, then one's belief in foreign broadcasts would necessarily be minimized.

...

This is the satanic triumph of propaganda. It simply closes one's ears to what is right or what is wrong.

....

The only reason for my not believing these statements was that I had heard so much false propaganda and lies from the very same broadcasting stations.

Page ~68 - ~123

[Some good stuff on propaganda]

Page 124

[Hermann Goering] I said that Schirach also told me that Hess was said to have had a pendulum in his office, which he used to detect whether the letters he received were worthy of answering or not - whether the writer was a friend or enemy. If the pendulum swung in one direction, the letter was all right; if it swung another way, the letter was a bad one. Did Goering know anything as the validity of this tale?

"Sure. I saw Hess's pendulum and he used it. I never paid any attention to his strange ideas. he was quiet and bother nobody. I knew a great surgeon who believed in a similar pendulum, using it the same way Hess did. Apparently it's a common superstition." Goering went on to say that obviously it was not Hitler's idea that Hess fly to England, because it was too stupid. "There were many other means to negotiate a peace with England if Hitler wanted that. We could use our representatives in Sweden or Switzerland."

Page 131

I asked him to give me further reflections or impressions about the trials as far as his opinion was concerned. Goering seemed wary and not too inclined to speak at length. he did say, however, "Frankly, it is my intention to make this trial a mockery. I feel that a foreign country has no right tot try the government of a sovereign state. I have desisted from making any critical remarks about my codefendants. Yet they are a mixed-up, unrepresentative group. Some of them are so unimportant, I never even heard of them. I'll admit they are right in including me among the big Nazis who ran Germany. But why include Fritzsche? He was one of many section chiefs in the Propaganda Ministry. And then they try a man like Funk, who is guilty of nothing. He followed orders, and they were my orders. And then they try a fellow like Keitel, who, although he was called a field marshal, was a small person who did whatever Hitler instructed. Of all the defendants, the only ones who are big enough to merit being tried are me, Schacht, Ribbentrop perhaps, although he was a weak echo of Hitler, Frick, who proposed the Nuremberg Laws, and maybe a few others, like Rosenberg and Seyss-Inquart. The rest of them were followers and showed little initiative.

"Then there is the farce of the case against the general staff. These military men were not a part of any conspiracy to wage war but simply accepted orders and obeyed them as any German soldier or officer would do. If there was a conspiracy, it lay among those who are dead or missing - i mean Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann, and naturally, Hitler. I always felt that Bormann was a primitive criminal type and I never trusted Himmler. I would have dismissed them." Goering smiled knowingly and added, "You know, you can get rid of a man in many subtle ways. For example, you can dismiss a man suddenly, but that is less effective if that individual has some power and backing than by slowly diminishing his power by giving him more and more meaningless titles. In the case of Himmler, I would have promoted him on paper and made him chief of this and chief of that, but in the end his power would be gone. I would have taken away from him the police power first, and later I would have assumed control of the SS myself. In this way there would have been no such thing as mass murders. For all that Hitler was a genius and a strong character, he nevertheless was suggestible, and Himmler and Goebbels or both must have influenced him to go ahead with such an idiotic scheme as gas chambers and crematoriums to eliminate millions of people.

Page 132

I don't believe in the Bible or in a lot of things which religious people think. But I revere women and I think it unsportsmanlike to kill children.

...

For myself I feel quite free of responsibility for the mass murders. Certainly as second man in the state under Hitler, I heard rumors about mass killings of Jews, but I could do nothing about it and I knew that it was useless to investigate these rumors and to find out about them accurately, which would not have been too hard, but I was busy with other things, and if I had found out what was going on regarding the mass murders , it would simply have made me feel bad and I could do very little to prevent it anyway."

Page 136

On his desk Hess had written certain words in German, which seemed to be rules for keeping in good health whih he had probably jotted down in order to facilitate his memory. Mr Triest took down notes, which in translation are as follows:

Eat little. Don't take any sleeping pills. They will only lose the effect in case that you should really need them. Also take little other medicine [analgesics]. Instead of egg, ask for marmalade and bread. Don't eat or drink in the morning in order not to get tired. Ask the doctor for orange or lemon juice once in a while. Don't eat salty food. Otherwise the cramps may become more frequent.

Page 147

[Earnst Kaltenbrunner]
"Hitler had an excellent memory for numbers and he knew exactly the tonnage of each warship any nation possessed. He knew this even better than the naval and finance experts. Hitler believed that America had to find a place to get rid of its investments in lend-lease, armaments, et cetera, and that it had to realize the money it had invested over her. That was Hitler's idea. Any attempt to talk peacefully or negotiate a peace with America was unsuccessful because Hitler felt that Germany could not offer America this financial settlement which it desired. Thus Hitler thought that the war with the United States was not an ideological war but one that stemmed purely from economic reasons.

Page 151

Earnst Kaltenbrunner]
"The Hague Convention does not mention a preventive war because owing to modern weapons, preventive war had not yet existed. The quicker humanity advances, the more important it is to be the one who deals the first blow. It was still possible in times of old-fashioned warfare to put up an ultimatum, but with all the new and modern weapons, tanks, and especially the atom bomb, this is impossible."

Page 155/156

The neutrality of Turkey was guaranteed by several countries so that it could perform that job. Any historian will recognize that this is the same as the capture of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. In other words, the English-Russian route through the Mediterranean is not being endangered by Russian boats. Therefore , the neutrality of Turkey, as seen by England, is only an armed neutrality which favors the British Empire.

On the other hand, German foreign policy in Turkey was, of course, conditioned by these things. Turkey only in the first line had to be afraid of Russia. for its neutrality Turkey was paid by England, with money and armaments; and at the same time Turkey was paid by Germany through commercial treaties and armaments. At the very moment when Germany was weakest, Turkey turned to England. As long as Germany was strong, Turkish neutrality was tremendously friendly to Germany. Those are the basic principles of Turkish policy.

One has to add that the Russian interests were exactly the opposite because Russia wanted free access to the Mediterranean either by having possession of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles or by having hem opened by international agreement. Secondly, Turkey is the thinnest-populated country in Europe and western Asia, with only twelve inhabitants to the square kilometer. Therefore, it is an open invitation for southern Russia to spread and place its population. this can be seen y two demands of Russia for Turkish lands: one, Russia demanded souther Turkey, the Black Sea, which would mean the destruction of the whole Turkish commerce, and , two , Russia demanded Armenian territories, very cleverly using long-standing, bitter fights between Armenians and Turks.

...

From the time of Bismark, Germany always kept away from Turkey and gave many assurances to England that it should not be afraid, that it was English territory and would remain as such. The same neutrality was always promised by Hitler and respected by him constantly.

Page 198/199

[Alfred Rosenberg]
The Jewish question was one which required a knowledge of history, philosophy, the Greeks, a study of races, music, art, and so forth. This is not literal but a summation of the generalities and quasi-learned arguments he propounded. The cause of the Jewish question was, of course, the Jews themselves. The Jews are a nation, and like very nation, have a nationalistic spirit. That's all very well, but they should be in their own homeland. Now there were several places for Jews proposed in 1936 by the English (I believe he said the French and Germans, too - implying that a joint proposal was made that the Jews turned down). These places were Alaska, Guiana (didn't say which of the islands), Madagascar, and Uganda.

Why couldn't the Jews be allowed to remain where they were, in other lands? That would have been all right if they didn't do bad things, but they did. What did the Jew do? They spat at German culture. How? They controlled the theater, publishing, the stores, and so on. Of course, Jews have a two-thousand-year-old culture, too, but it is not the German culture, which is so different.

...

Every doctor knows that there are different types of blood, various classes, Rosenberg said at one point, in discussing the differences between races. Would, for example, a blood transfusion from a Negro cause any character differences to ensue if given to an Aryan? Rosenberg said quite seriously, with his "philosophic" smile, he didn't know. That would be a brutal experiment such as was done in the concentration camps. He smiled as if he had scored a triumph of reasoning. We pressed the point though for his opinion; suppose a Nazi soldier were injured and given some Jewish blood, or Negro blood. Would character changes occur? It wasn't proven, he said. Negroes beget Negroes, Jews Jews, so it must be that blood will tell.

...

What was Rosenberg's main objection to Bolshevism? He seemed surprised at that question, as if it were a subject which needed no explanation. After a few moments he said vehemently, "Bolshevism wants to destroy by power a very sensitive state culture without any consideration for the history of the nation. Secondly, Bolshevism wants to do this for the benefit of a single class of the population. Thirdly, Bolshevism fights principally against private property. It creates a collectives among the farmers and destroys the agricultural system. it works against the principles upon which more or less all states are based.

"The Communist Party is under the control of a central office. This central office is in Moscow. Therefor, Communism in various countries is in the making of the individual state or an expression of nationalism. This international Communistic Bolshevism gathers its support from a strong state - Russia. Communism not only makes its policy in Russia but it prescribes the policy of Bolsheviks all over the world."

Page 201

I can mention men like Averell Harriman and Curle, the may of Boston. [who were against the Versailles treaty]

Page 204/205

[Fritz Sauckel]
the main stream of thought which he presented today consisted of the following currents:

• National Socialism did a good job in Germany until the latter years of the war, when too many enemies of Germany banded against her.
• The excesses, atrocities, exterminations within and without the concentration camps were unknown to honorable men like himself, and could be attributed to Himmler, who apparently was not a good man.
• The causes of the war lay in the Versailles Treaty and the economic depression within Germany ever since the end of the last war, augmented by the failure of other countries to buy German products in exchange for wheat, without which Germany would starve. There was a virtual boycott of Germany.
• Anti-Semitism was not Sauckel's department, and the specialists in that were Streicher and Rosenberg, who had devoted almost their entire lives to the subject; but he, Sauckel, believed it was brought on because there was too high a percentage of Jews in positions of prominence in Germany, in state offices, professions, the stage, radio, and so forth. Sauckel stated that the Jews were not really persecuted until late in the war, 1942 perhaps, and then it was part of the general "war psychology" and not really known to him or other Germans, but again the work of Himmler. Sauckel's conscience was clear, and he would do anything he had done over again because it all had been honorable.

Page 209

I asked him what he knew of the reports of the mistreatment of slave labor, of families being cruelly separated in occupied countries and the able ones brought as workers to Germany, and of people having been seized in theaters and public places and shipped without notice as workers to Germany. His reply was evasive. "What would you do if your country's welfare depend on labor? When a ship is in a storm it requires one captain."

Page 218

[Hjalmar Schact]
Schact repeated his indignation "that a man who has never been associated with anything but high finance for forty years, and who was never a soldier and never did anything to hurt anyone, should be locked up and tried as a common war criminal." Again he repeated that he did nothing but live on his farm since 1939 , and besides, he was a party to the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.

It becomes obvious in talking to Schact that he is attempting to devise two distinctly paradoxical pictures of himself: the one , that he was a harmless old man who had been inactive since 1939; the other, a picture of a great national German patriot who worked ceaselessly for Hitler's downfall and frustration, and was actively a participant in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. Clinically, it is obvious that Schact has tremendous energy and vitality for a man of his years.

Page 222/223

"Now what did the Treaty of Versailles do to us? It took away from Germany all of the private assets of Germans. do you realize what this means, Dr. Goldensohn? It liquidated the private assets of German citizens, a thing which has not been done since medieval times. By this, they destroyed one of the foundations of our life. For example, if we had an import or export house in Rio de Janeiro or new York, they took away our license and put us out of business. Such losses amounted to $11 billion, aside from reparations. By doing this the Allies destroyed not only a half-billion-dollar income, but also spoiled our whole sales organization. Then, furthermore, after Versailles, they imposed reparation payments on Germany, and as we had no foreign assets anymore, we could only pay by new exports. How could we pay the Allies otherwise? Therefore, the need for export trade became more urgent since we needed foreign money in order to pay for food and raw material, as well as reparations. The reparations amounted to $50 billion in cash! Can you imagine that? That means fifty thousand million dollars.

"Now, of course, Germany could not do that. An annual amount of money and reparation payment was fixed at about a billion dollars a year, and we could not afford that. And then, you must recall that after the First World War we had for the most part socialist governments, and these socialists followed a very lighthearted policy. they borrowed money from the outside, and with that money they paid for reparations. mostly, the money came from America, and so Germany contracted many foreign debts. During the six years 1924-29, our foreign debts were not less than 8 billion. That is exactly as much as the United States borrowed before the First world war over a period of four decades. And then came the movement when foreign creditors said that they couldn't go on, and not only stopped lending but withdrew all short credits at maturity. This led to a financial crash of frightful proportions in the summer of 1931.

"Immediately after these credits were stopped, the economic situation of Germany became worse and worse. the Bruening government of the middle-class parties, the so-called bourgeois government, followed a deflationary policy. They cut wages and salaries so much that many industries collapsed; and at the same time, the Allied countries had raised customs tariffs. Finally, we arrived at a situation of more than 6 million unemployed. Now if you take into consideration the fact that the farmer is never unemployed, but that only industrial folk are, it means that every third family suffered from unemployment. Therefore, people lost confidence in the socialists as well as in the middle-class parties and wen to the extremes.

"There was only the choice between Communism and Hitler, and I will tell you why Hitler won. People will not give up religion, rights, freedom of personality, the opportunity to develop by individual effort - which includes private property. And the other reason for Hitlers' winning is that if a whole people is treated as the Germans were, everyone will say, 'Are we worse people than others? Are we of a minor race?' Just as every single individual needs and must have self-respect, just as every family is proud of decent traditions s, so every nation want s to maintain her individual manner, culture, language, and customs.

Page 232

I was never a soldier. I detest uniforms because they make one unfree. There is an old quotation that goes something like this: 'Your mind will be trained will, but confined to Spanish boots.' That quotation is very apt. It signifies how narrow the military mind becomes."

Page 245

[Baldur von Schirach]
But in retrospect, and realizing where we have come to, I am absolutely sure that a real system of government must prevent one man or twenty or thirty men from getting all the power of the state into their hands. Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corrupter of mankind.

"Some of the defendant say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil."

Page 255

[Julius Streicher]
As usual, Streicher had no rational explanation for what he called this devilish procedure, but made some inconsequential remarks about how, if circumcision was Jewish, it should not be inflicted on non-Jews. It was clear that he considered circumcision as something which had no medical or surgical import, but merely a racial custom.

...

Pinning Streicher down to any particular subject was most difficult because his ability to discuss anything logically was quite limited.

Page 258

For example, because of the extermination of these Jews, anti-Semitism has been set back many years in certain foreign countries where it had been making good progress.

Page 295

[Rudolf Hoess]
Why didn't you give yourself up before? I queried. "I thought I could get away with it."

Page 296

The general Government of Poland was under my supervision, bu concentration camps farther on in Russia itself came under the aegis of SS generals.

"I was commandant at Auschwitz for four years, from May 1940 until the first of December, 1943." I asked how many people were executed at Auschwitz during his time. "The exact umber cannot be determined. I estimate about 2.5 million Jews." Only Jews? "Yes." Women and children as well? "Yes."

What do you think of it? Hoess looked blank and apathetic. I repeated my question and asked him whether he approved of what went on at Auschwitz. "I had my personal orders from Himmler." Did you ever protest? "I couldn't do that The reasons Himmler gave me Ii had to accept." In other words, you think it was justified to kill 2.5 million men, women, and children? "Not justified - but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews."

How could the Jews exterminate the Germans? "I don't know, that is what Himmler said. Himmler didn't explain." Don't you have a mind or opinion of your own? "Yes, but when Himmler told us something, it was so correct and so natural we just blindly obeyed it." Do you have any feelings of guilt for this? "Yes, now naturally it makes me think that it was not right."

Page 298

Hoess said that while he was commandant of Auschwitz, soap was not manufactured from human fat. "We cut the hair from women after they had been exterminated in the gas chambers. The hair was then sent to factories, where it was woven into special fittings for gaskets." Was this hair also from men and children? "No, in 1943 I received the first orders to do it. We cut the hair only from women and only after they were dead." Did you supervise gas chamber murders? "Yes, I had the whole supervision of that business. I was often, but not always, present when the gas chambers were being used." You must be a hard man. "You become hard when you carry out such orders." It seems to me you must be hard to begin with. "Well, you certainly can't have soft feelings, whether it is shooting of people or killing them in gas chambers."

People were shot at Auschwitz also? "Not Jews, but Poles of the resistance movement were shot. This was done under orders of Rudolf Mildner." Were you a friend of Mildner? "He often came to Auschwitz." Did he have his court at Auschwitz? "After the Poles were sentenced, after the party district administrator signed the death sentences, then they came to Auschwitz to Mildner's court and were told that they were sentenced to death. This amounted to about sixty or seventy men per month." How many months was Mildner there? "Mildner came in 1941 and left in 1943. I would estimate about 1,500 men were sentenced to death by Mildner's court."

Page 300

"In the summer of 1941, I was called to Berlin to see Himmler. I was given the order to erect extermination camps. I can almost give you Himmler's actual words, which were to the effect: 'The Fuhrer has ordered the final solution to the Jewish problem. Those of us in the SS must execute these plans. This is a hard job, but if the act is not carried out at once, instead of us exterminating the Jews, the Jews will exterminate the Germans at a later date.'

"That was Himmler's explanation. Then he explained to me why he selected Auschwitz. There were extermination camps already in the East bu they were incapable of carrying out a large-scale action of extermination. Himmler could not give me the exact number, but he said that at the proper time Eichmann would get in touch with me and tell me more about it. He would keep me informed about incoming transports and like matters.

"I was ordered by Himmler to submit precise plans as to my ideas on how the extermination program should be executed in Auschwitz. I was supposed to inspect a camp in the East, namely Treblinka, and to learn from the mistakes committed there.

"A few weeks later, Eichmann visited me in Auschwitz and told me that the first transports from the General Government and Slovakia were to be expected. he added that this action should not be delayed in any way so that no technical difficulties would arise and that the schedules of transports should be maintained at all costs.

Page 301/302/303

How many people at a time were exterminated in each farmhouse? Hoess stared at the floor and thought for several moments. He shifted his eyes from me to the floor to Mr. Triest, and finally after about thirty seconds of silence, said: "In each farmhouse eighteen hundred to two thousand persons could be gassed at one time. The two farmhouses were separated by a distance of six hundred to eight hundred meters. They were completely closed off from the outside by woods and fences."

How often were these buildings used? "Well, it was like this. These transports didn't come daily; sometimes two or three trains arrived on a single day, every train containing two thousand people, but there were periods when no transports arrived for three to six weeks." How long were these people kept at Auschwitz? "No time at all. A side track went to Birkenau and unloaded, and there the selection was made. Those who were able to work were sifted from those unable to work." What criteria for selection were used? "Well, we had two SS doctors and they sat at tables, and the people from the transports got off the train and walked by these doctors. These people were fully clothed; they just walked by and the doctors judged by their looks, age, and strength."

Out of the transport of two thousand, approximately how many were saved for work? "In all of those years, I figured an average of twenty to thirty percent of the people were able to work." And then what happened? "Those not able to work were marched to the farmhouses. These were a good kilometer from the side track. There they were made to undress. At first they had to undress in he open, where we had erected walls made of straw and branches of trees that kept them from onlookers. After a while we built barracks. We had big signs, all of which read 'To Disinfection' or 'Baths.' That was in order to give the people the impression that they would merely receive a bath or be disinfected, in order to not have any technical difficulty in the extermination process.

"And the internees whom we used as interpreters and general helpers in those stations instructed the people that they should take care of their clothing when they laid it on the ground in neat piles so that they should be able to find their clothe when the came out of the bath or disinfecting room. These internees helped quiet all of the people by answering their questions in a reassuring manner and telling them they would only be bathed in those houses.

" Then the people were brought to the chambers and the internees who accompanied them went along with the people into the extermination chambers so that the people would be quiet, since they saw the attendants go inside themselves It was so done that all of the chambers were filled up at the same time. At the last moment, when the chambers were filled, the internees who worked for us slipped out, the doors were jammed shut, and the Zyklon B gas was thrown through small openings." Was there any panic among the people prior to their murder? "Yes, sometimes, but we worked it smoothly, more smoothly as time went on. The men were always exterminated in a separate chamber, and the women an children together in the same chamber." At what age for example, did you distinguish between a child and a grown-up, that is between a boy and a man? "I can't say. We judged by the looks of the boys - you know, some are grown-up at fifteen years, others at seventeen. We judged mainly by stature."

Page 306/307

From the time you left Auschwitz until the end of the war, how many people were exterminated there? "The figure 2.5 million takes care of 1944" Were there any exterminated in 1945? "No, at the end of 1944 the whole thing stopped. It was forbidden by Himmler." What happened to the transports that arrive in 1945? "Hardly any transports arrived in 1945, and the only people who came were those able to work." Why did the exterminations stop? Was it because there were no more Jews to exterminate? "In November 1944 I was with Eichmann in Budapest and he told me that there were negotiations going on between Himmler and representatives of the Jews in Switzerland through various middlemen and that from then on exterminations would have to stop immediately."

Page 309

Who invented the gas chambers? "They developed out of the situation. the courts brought in a lot of people who had to be shot. I aways objected to having to use the same men for firing squadrons over and over again. During that period one day my camp leader, Karl Fritzsch, came to me and asked me whether I could try to execute people with Zyklon B gas. Until that time Zyklon B was used only to disinfect barracks which were full of insects, fleas, et cetera. I tried it out on some people sentenced to death in the cell prison and that is how it developed. I didn't want any more shootins, so we used gas chambers instead."

How many concentration camps in Germany or outside of it had gas chambers? "Mauthausen, Dachau, Auschwitz, and in the east, Treblinka; in Russia, they used gas wagons." What about Majdanek? "They had temporary gas chambers but that camp came under the Security Polic - the Einsatzkommando and Security Police. In Lublin there was a concentration camp which came under our inspection and supervision but it was not an extermination camp. Majdanek was near the city of Lublin and was an extermination camp under the direction of Lieutenant General Globocnik, who was the SS and political leader of Lublin.

Page 314/315

I asked him whether he subscribed to any religious belief. "I left the church in 1922 and my wife left it in 1935." Why did you leave the church? "During my experiences at the front in Iraq and Palestine I thought that there was a lot of humbug connected with the so-called holy places and that things were not done right, especially by the Catholic Church, of which I was a member. And that diverted me from my formerly rigid, strict Catholicism. Just what humbug did you did you see and what in particular was wrong with Catholic religion as you found it in Palestine and Iraq? "I don't know, it is a long time ago and I was so busy since then I have had no time for thinking about religion, but all of this money that wen to the church, well, it seemed to me that it was humbug."

...

Does the fact that you put the phenomenal number of 2. 5 million men, women, and children to death, not to mention your supervision of exterminations and excursions in all of the other camps that you supervised since 1943 - does that fact not upset you a little at times? "I thought I was doing the right thing, I was obeying orders, and now, of course, I see that it was unnecessary and wrong. But I don't know what you mean by being upset about these things because I didn't personally murder anybody. I was just the director of the extermination program in Auschwitz. I twas Hitler who ordered it through Himmler and it was Eichmann who gave me the order regarding transports." Do you ever have any thoughts of these executions, gassings, or burning of corpses - in other words, do such thoughts come upon you at times and in any way haunt you? "No. I have not such fantasies."

...

That's an interesting observation: you murdered 2.5 million Jews but you disapprove of Der Sturmer. "Oh yes, all people with any sense disapproved of Der Sturmer."

Page 323

[Albert Kesselring]
Do you think your father would approve of National Socialism? "I think that as a Freemason, he would have opposed it. But aside from his own Freemasonry, everyone to his own liking, I don't think he would have opposed it. Father was an absolute German man, and his belonging to the Freemasons was not against that." What was Hitler's objection to Freemasonry? "Because it was international. A cousin of mine was a member of a lodge in Bayreuth and was looked on askance. Understanding of other nations does no mean a feeling against your own country. That's the whole trouble with Germans. They can see only their own country, the local church steeples only. If only German youth could go abroad, and youth from other countries come to Germany. You always have to have criticism if you with sot become better."

Page 326/327

[Keitel's order of December 16, 1942 to Kesselring]

The furher has ordered that the enemy employs in partisan warfare Communist-trained fanatics who do not hesitate to commit any atrocity. It is more than ever a question of life and death. This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans in the East, as well as in the Balkans, is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success. Any consideration for the partisans is a crime against the German people.

Kesselring remembered the order. He was then confronted with his own order of June 17, 1944, which read:

The partisan situation in the Italian theater, particularly central Italy, had deteriorated to such an extent that it constitutes a serious danger to troops, supply lines, war industry and economic potential. The fight against the partisans must be carried out with all means at our disposal and with utmost severity. i will protect any commander who exceeds our usual restraint in the choice of severity of methods he adopts against partisans. In this connection the older principle applies that a mistake in the choice of methods in executing one's orders is better than failure or neglect to act.

Kesselring admitted having issued that order. Furthermore, three days later he issued another "top secret" order saying:

It is the duty of all troops and police in my command to adopt the severest measures. Every act of violence committed by partisans must be punished immediately. Reports submitted must also give details of countermeasures taken. Wherever there is evidence of a considerable number of partisan groups a proportion of the male population of the area will be arrested, and in the event of an act of violence being committed these men will be shot.

Kesselring was reminded of two instances of how his words were carried out. A Colonel von Gablentz was captured by bandits. The entire male populate of the villages on the stretch of road concerned were arrested. As reprisal for the capture of this colonel, 660 persons, including 250 men, were arrested. Maxwell Fyfe asked him if taking 410 women and children into custody was what was meant by his order of "steps necessary to deal with partisan warfare." Kesselring answered equivocally that it was unnecessary.

Page 342/343

[Ewald von Kleist]
he then led a panzer army corps, which consisted of about two divisions and attached troops, in the blitz against Poland. "I was very successful in this operation because I able to use cavalry tactics. I was in Poland for only sixteen days in all. Then I left Poland and got together with the Russians for the first time, on friendly terms. That was the time of the Russo-German Nonaggression Pact, and there was a division of Poland between Germany and Russia. My impression of the Russians then was that they were exceedingly good troops, advanced in military technique, motorized to a surprising extent, and very correct in their behavior."

He then assumed command of three panzer corps which were known to as Kleist groups. "This was in may 1940, and I began organizing this small army, which bore my name, in the territory behind Dusseldor. We then went to the West and if I say so myself, it was my army which is largely responsible for the rapid victory in France. I broke through the Sedan and Maginot Lines and I reached the coast of France within seven days near Abbeville. In the course of my victories I took the towns of Bastogne and Calais and it was the Kleist groups that attacked Dunkirk from the west. This was during the tremendous British disaster which occurred there.

"I must say that the English managed to escape that trap in Dunkirk, which I had so carefully laid, only with the personal help of Hitler. There was a channel from Arras to Dunkirk. I had already crossed this channel and my troops occupied the heights which jutted out over Flanders. Therefore, my panzer group had complete control of Dunkirk and the area in which the British were trapped. The fact of the matter is that the English would have been unable to get into Dunkirk because I had them covered. then Hitler personally ordered that I should withdraw my troops from these heights."

Why had Hitler ordered this? "Hitler thought tit was too risky. It was nonsense - those orders of Hitler's in those days. We could have wiped out the British army completely or taken the whole army as captive if weren't for the stupid order of Hitler. The proof of it is that three days later the English occupied the heights and I was obliged to attack them again to take them back. The masses of English troops, however, had already reached Dunkirk and were escaping in small boats. The sad part of it is that I could have captured the whole English army, or such a great part of it, at any rate, that an invasion of England would have been a simple affair. I did capture man French soldiers, including General Henri Giraud.

"Altogether I captured 1 million prisoners of war on all fronts. I think I did pretty well. Giraud's capture was very amusing. An intelligence officer conveyed an English radio message that the French front had been torn open through tank attacks. My intelligence officer said that the English radio had broadcasted, 'The French general, the beloved General Giraud, would take over command of the French front and restore the situation.' Now the amusing thing about it is that as I was reading this intelligence report, the door opened and in walked a good looking French general who turned out to be Giraud. He had been very brave but was a little mistaken about the situation. He had taken a reconnaissance car and driven into our territory searching for his troops but instead he found mine, and had been taken prisoner by a couple of enlisted men." Kleist chuckled.

Page 346

I asked Kleist what occasioned his retirement at that time. "Well, on December 1, 1943, I told Hitler to give up his supreme command. On March 29, 1944, I again had a very severe argument with Hitler and I had the impression that it was more the people around Hitler than Hitler himself who said that I was an inconvenient subordinate. Hitler himself told me when I said good-bye to him that he could find no fault with me as a soldier. Hitler said many friendly things to me. He said that he had very few people who were capable of leading an operational war. He advised me to take a rest because I had worked so hard and he implied that I would be asked to serve again. I really think that the reason for my going home at that time was that I always told Hitler my frank opinions."

* Page 350 *

"Planned economy is used in Germany at present by he occupying powers. It is done in all countries with the exception of the United States, and sooner or later your country will get around to it. For example, there are the questions of wheat, gold, silver. If the U.S.A wants to sell two hundred pounds of wheat for five marks, and Russia will sell the same amount of wheat for three marks, then you can easily see that free economies cannot exist. It would take only a few such instances and the entire stock exchange would break down."

Page 365

[Erhard Milch]
I also asked him about his statements obtained from records of minutes of meetings of the Central Planning Board, of which he was a member, that Russian labor should be supplied to work the mines and that Russian women should be enlisted in agricultural work. Milch was as evasive as he was in court. He looked more uncomfortable than he had managed to appear in court two days ago, however, and said that "many things were said in the heat of a war, and not all were calculated to be read back to you later."

...

I inquired: What about the statement you are reported to have made regarding the draining off of French young men to work in Germany, so that in the event of an attack of the mainland by the Allies, these Frenchman could not act as partisans? Milch said he gathered that the interpretation put on his words regarding clearing France, and Italy for that matter, of partisans or possible partisans was that he was in favor of forced labor. "Nothing could be further from the truth! But our Fatherland was threatened by defeat from these bands of Maquis and other wild groups, and what else could be done by a loyal German anxious to achieve a victory for his Fatherland?"

Page 366

But Milch looked worried and harried. It was the first time I had seen this little compact man, who looks younger than his fifty-six years, in any way ruffled. I said in parting that his testimony for Goering had incriminated him, in my opinion. he replied, "No. Let them try me. I shall have plenty to say about the Allies. I have some very good friends among the Americans and English, and the French industrialists, too. i have done nothing of which I am ashamed."

It was true enough, he did not appear ashamed - merely worried about his own immunity from trial as a war criminal.

Page 375/376/377

[Rudolf Mildner]
"On September 17, 1943, I got to Denmark. I carried an oder with me from Mueller, to arrest Niels Bohr, a famous atomic physicist. He was a Jew or half Jew. That was the reason for the order." Mildner said he imagined his work was to be different because he had known many Danes in the past fifteen years, including Danish girls. he didn't know actual Danish conditions, he said. "I knew there might be some resistance but I didn't want to mix into Danish affairs any more than I had to. Bohr was a Danish citizen and I didn't like the order Mueller gave me. I was not in Denmark long, but during that time I received an order from Himmler through Best. I had already established a central office of the Security Police in Denmark in the five larger cities. The telegram said that "the evacuation of Danish Jews was to start at once. There were six thousand Jews in Denmark."

These Jews, said Mildner, were people who had fled Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and lived in Denmark for hundreds of years. "I was very distressed. I went to Best and asked why the Jews should be evacuated. They kept quiet and did no harm. They were Danish citizens and Denmark was a sovereign state. Best explained that Ribbentrop had spoken to Hitler and said he thought it was best to have the Jews evacuated from Denmark. Ribbentrop was afraid he might be called on the carpet for not having taken any action against the Jews in Denmark." in other words, Ribbentrop anticipated Hitler's wishes in this regard. "Yes. That was what Best said. I can say that the reason for the deportation of Jews from Denmark is Ribbentrop. Whether it would have been ordered later by Hitler, I don't know." Do you know of any documents int hat regard? "No. Best told me. All of us were distressed, Best as well as my coworkers."

"I immediately sent a telegram to Mueller with recommendations that deportation of Jews of Denmark would cause many misgivings. First because the Jews were quiet politically, and did not appear in any way disturbing. Second, the deportation would have serious consequences for the German-Danish relationship, because Danish agriculture sent food to Germany and Danish industry also worked for Germany. Then there were the repercussions it would have on the Scandinavians and in North America. I added that all the Danish people object to it. i said in the telegram, too, that it would result in more sabotage and unrest. I requested that the order for deportation be canceled."

In a few days the order came from Himmler to best, informing him to proceed with the given order. "Desperate about it, I wen tot the airport and flew to Berlin. I wanted to see Kaltenbrunner. I actually saw Mueller. I again told Mueller all the misgivings, although I had to omit the humane reasons - I had to use other arguments." Mueller called his secretary, in Mildner's presence, and dictated a telegram to Himmler. He wrote all that Mildner told him. "I flew back although Mueller said the cable wouldn't do much good. I still had some hope. Paul Kanstein was assigned for liaison between Best and the Danish government. Kanstein knew Denmark well. He was very friendly with all the Danish ministers. A meeting was called with Kanstein, Best, and myself present and we decided that all Jews should be warned. If the order had to be carried out, I had no interest that any Jews should fall into our hands. A few days later another cable came from Himmler - to deport the Jews at once. A representative of Eichmann came with two ships and a detachment from Oslo consisting of a battalion of Ordinary Police. One night, October 1, I think, the action began. I spent that evening with Kanstein. In all they seized four to five hundred Jews. They were put on a ship, and I believe went via Oslo to Stettin to Theresiensadt [Czechoslovakia]. The other Jews, who were warned, were hidden by Danes and by night fled to Sweden. There was very lively traffic. One could
go by rowboat - the distance was only three kilometers. That was the whole action.

...

"In addition, I didn't arrest Niels Bohr because I didn't want to arrest Danish scientists. Bohr fled to Sweden. That was long after the Jewish deportation. From Sweden Bohr went to England, was received by Churchill, and Radio London announced that Bohr decided to his work to the Allies.

Page 378

"I told Mueller that it would be useless to use countersabotage - that it was just murder." What did countersabotage mean? "That I shall explain in a moment. It's very interesting. Whenever a Danish or German businessman who did business with the Germans was murdered, an important Dane should be murdered - at first unofficially; later it became quite official. Or if a Danish factory working for Germany was blown up by sabotage, another factory working only for the Danes should be destroyed." A crazy idea. "Yes. It was Hitler's idea, not Himmler's, I can prove it. And if such was the case, the work of the Security Police in Denmark was finished because there would be continuous murderous activity, blowing up of businesses, and giving the Reich a bad name.

Page 387/388/389/390/391/392

[Otto Ohlendorf]
There were a large number of Jews who held more favorable positions than they should have, according to their percentage of the population. Germans should have held those positions. This accounted for the 1938 action of Goebbels against the Jews." Therefore, all Jews were dispossessed? "No that was the November 1938 action of Goebbels against the Jews without the consent of Hitler. That was in reprisal for the murder of a Paris Nazi official by the Jew Herschel Grynszpan." Do you believe that? "No. Goebbels was just looking for an excuse." did you know Goebbels personally? "Yes." What sort of person was he? "I met him several times. He was clever, fanatic, having a clubfoot he might have suffered a minority inferiority complex, knowing that because of his physical appearance, he knew he never could reach leadership. he was unscrupulous in his propaganda. I always oppose Goebbels. I always tried to have people educated on a broad basis, while Goebbels tried to supply them with knowledge for the moment. Goebbels considered humans as objects to be used for political purposes - for the moment."

Did you do anything concretely against Goebbels? "My reports in the SD always referred to these facts." Anything else about Goebbels? "I always had the feeling that Goebbels didn't respect people as a whole. He was reckless in his contacts in his own office. He had no consideration for anyone. He was only concerned about governing. He took his way of governing from the Catholic hierarchy. As far as I know, Goebbels attended a Catholic school and was brought up in a cloister." He seems to have turned against the Catholics. "Yes. But it did not hinder him from agreeing with authoritarian methods of governing. Goebbels kept faith only with himself."

...

He spent one year in Italy and studied fascism - in 1931. It was an academic exchange service. "I returned as a fanatic antifascist."

...

Were you still in the NSDAP? "Yes." How could you be in a fascist party and be a fanatic antifascist? "It's regrettable that you think they are the same. There is much difference. Fascism is a purely stately principle. Mussolini said in 1932, 'The first thing is the state - and from the state are derived the rights and fate of the people. Humans come second.' In National Socialism, it was the opposite. People and humans come first, and the state is secondary."

Do you believe that? "I did. The bad thing was that Hitler hated the state so much, the government never functioned." Do you think Hitler really liked people? "Oh, yes. The fault I see in Hitler is that he left his original base, his liking of the people, and sought the recognition of other nations by waging wars." Do you think Hitler really liked people if he ordered millions of Jews destroyed? "In this was Hitler's downfall." But do you think Hitler liked people? "In 1933 - 1939, Hitler did tremendous things for the German people." Do you think Hitler liked people in general, or only a concept known as the Volk? "I can't answer it generally." Be as specific as you care to be. "Well, he liked the German people." Any other people? "I don't know." Do you think Hitler liked people when he ordered men, women, and children killed regardless of race, color, or creed, in cold blood, not in battle against a town, or air raids, but in files near ditches, as you know the process better than I do? "I can't answer the questions generally or specifically. I don't know the psychological reasons which brought Hitler to do this."

What do you think of it yourself? "One can't generalize, looking at it from a German point of view. Just how many people were shot because of race or creed, I don't know. not many Germans were shot. Hitler believed in having it done for the good of the German people." How could Hitler love people and shot others? "Hitler did it for his people. Hitler didn't believe it would end this way." What do you think? "Hitler didn't expect world war." The whole world seemed to expect war. "I don' think such questions can be answered simply." What is your own idea? "I didn't say he was a wonderful man - we started out with a discussion on the definition of fascism and Nazism." As it worked out, was there any difference? "The chief of state in Germany adopted imperialistic beliefs. The extermination of the Jews goes back to the campaigns of Streicher, Goebbels, and Ley, who continually stressed the fact that Jews were enemies of the German people." how did you figure a six-month-old Jewish infant must be killed - was it an enemy? "In the child we see the grown-up. I see the problem differently." How? "I saw the Jewish question in 1933-34 in this way: Give the Jews a region where they would have a base and they could have minorities in other countries. Nothing particular happened - and then came the Goebbels action in 1938. Until 1938 there was no plan to exclude Jews from economic life. the econoic experts never agreed with it."

What was you testimony in court? "I described how an Einsatzgruppe received an order to liquidate Jews in Russia. This was not an anti-Semitc order; rather the Jews in Russia were said to be the main carrier of Bolshevism there. It was against my will that I was ordered to an Einsatzgruppe in Russia. There were five hundred men. Mostly Ordinary Police and armed SS. The region included Odessa and from Nikolaiev to Rostov and Crimea." Did you know what your function was to be? "Yes. I knew the orders. Einsatzkommandos in the charge of colonels general executed the orders." And you were a lieutenant general in charge of the Einsatzgruppe? "No. I was only a brigadier general at the time. It was 1941-42." What did your Einsatzgruppe do/ "The Jews were shot in a military manner in a cordon. There were fifteen-men firing squads. One bullet per Jew. In other words, one firing squad of fifteen executed fifteen Jews at a time." Did you supervise or witness? "O was there twice, for short periods. " Were the victims men, women, and children? "Yes." Were the children shot? "Yes." Was Uman in your territory? "No. Uman is in Ukraine." How many Jews were killed by your group? "Ninety thousand reported. I figure actually only sixty to seventy thousand were shot." Any records kept? "Not individual names." Where did these Jews who were shot come from? "From Russian towns."

Did you fell that you were doing the right thing? "I myself didn't have to do it." Didn't you direct it? "Yes. But orders were given to the Einsatzkommandos leaders. All I had to do was see to it that it was done as humanely as possible." Would you do it again? "I didn't do anything." Would you direct it again or obey such an order again? "I don't think such a question is right. I think you can save that question. I suffered enough for years. Many people had to carry out orders they disapproved of. I rejected the order twice, but had to obey it the third time. The order came from Heydrich." Was your appetite or sleep disturbed? "Of course. And I had to relieve people who had nervous breakdowns." Many? "A few." Any sadists among the executioners or on your staff? "No. These people were ordered to do i - they were not selected. They were ordered to do it , and so they did it."

At this point, Ohlendorf is glumly reminiscent. He has shifted the burden of the mass murder onto Heydrich. He feels no remorse now except nominally. he looks like a burned-out ghoul, and his conscience, if t can be called such, is clean as a whistle and empty. There is a dearth of affect, but nothing clinically remarkable. His attitude is "Why blame me? I didn't do anything"

...

Then why did you shoot ninety thousand Jews? "First, I didn't shoot them. Firing squads did that. Secondly, I didn't approve of it."

Then why did you go through with it? "What else could I do?" If you disapproved of it, you could have protested and refused, it seems to me. "Where could I desert to? I was under oath to Hitler." Under oath to commit mass murder? "Under oath." For what? What did the oath state? "I could not have prevented it if I had killed myself. It would still have gone off according to schedule. These orders were given to the Einsatzkommandos in Berlin before they joined my group." Does the commando leader have more power than the group leader - is that what you mean? "No. I too received orders from Berlin."

...

"I told you how I spent sleepless nights, how it upset my inner self." But you went right on working for the Nazis and reached the rank of lieutenant general? Ohlendorf does not answer this, just sits tight-lipped and rather hostile. None of the questions were expressed in a hostile manner.

Did your wife know of this business of the Einsatzgruppe? "No." Have you seen her since 1941-42? "I saw her, but never talked to her about those things. I didn't think it was good conversation for a woman."

But it's all right to shoot women, not all right to talk to them about shootings? "In the first place, I didn't shoot women. I merely supervised."

...

Who is responsible for these crimes? "The Fuhrer and Himmler."

Page 407

[Oswald Pohl]
I asked Pohl if he considered himself in any way responsible or guilty, as an accomplice or a direct participant, in the murder of the 5 million Jews in the concentration camps, and he the countless other thousands of internees who perished through disease, neglect, starvation, beatings, hangings, and shootings. By this time, Pohl looked anxious and no longer the composed practical businessman talking about stocks and bond. That he could still not visualize his own importance in the criminal world of the Nazis was clear, but he was beginning to get an inkling at least of one individual's view of his activities. He replied, "In no way am I responsible or guilty for the murder of the 5 million Jews or the deaths of others in the concentration camps. About the murder of the 5 million Jews, I had nothing whatever to do with it. The fact that I was in charge of all the concentration camps in Germany from 1942 until the end is beside the point. I have explained and explained again that I sent Gluecks, one of my subordinates, to take charge of this program, and that I stayed out of it. Now, as far as the others who died in concentration camps or who were punished because of bad behavior or who might have been executed because of the hostage system - the reprisal system - that too is not my responsibility, but was ordered by the local party district administrator, or police functionary, or Himmler and the Gestapo, and it was a bad policy. I was just an administrator.

Page 420/421

[Walter Schellenberg]
"Himmler hated Russia but I had him convinced that Russia could not be defeated." Was Himmler convinced? "At first Himmler hated me for it but then he began to think about it because of my documentary evidence." It's fantastic. "Yes, but I did it. In 1943 I began to astrology with Himmler. I needed it as an instrument to get more influence with Himmler because he believed in astrology. In my horoscope of Hitler I predicted the Attentat against Hitler in February 1944; as you know it actually took place on July 20, 1944. When the Attentat began, Himmler was very much convinced. Although Himmler himself played a small part in the Attentat, he was convinced. I also predicted Hitler would not survive April 1945. When Hitler did kill himself, Himmler was more than ever convinced."

That was rather late in the game, was it not? "But not too late. I purposely told Himmler that he was supposed to be the successor to Hitler - to be a reformer, and that then he himself must step down."

Himmler a reformer, the man who ordered 5 million Jews murdered, and who according to Bach-Zeleski wanted 3 million Slavs exterminated? "Himmler believed there would be chaos, and I strengthened in him that belief - I used him as a political tool for my own political purposes. i told him that he had to make good all the bad things - that he had to release all political prisoners. Jews were to be released." What Jews? Hoettl said that in August 1944 Eichmann told him between 4 and 5 million of them had been killed to that time. " I didn't know that. In October 1944 I had a conference with jean-Marie Musy, former president of Switzerland, with Himmler present, and later Himmler and Musy had a conference alone. I learned at a later date that Himmler gave positive orders on the treatment of the Jews, showing that my ideas had taken root in him."

Peculiar, because when Allied troops moved into Germany, concentration camps were burned and the inmates burned alive or shot. "I know. I was allowed to take 1,200 Jews into Switzerland. That began in January 1945. Every two weeks a train with 1,200 Jews could leave Germany for Switzerland. It only happened once because Kaltenbrunner went up to Hitler and had the whole ting stopped.

Was Kaltenbrunner then, in your opinion, worse than Himmler? "Yes. Especially during the last phase of the war. Kaltenbrunner had more influence with Hitler - in practice Kalentbrunner was worse than Himmler.

Page 440

[Paul O. Schmidt]
"Therefore, I was opposed to these treaty-breaking methods. I was in opposition both privately and personally. I had a taste of the darker aspects of militarism when I was a corporal in the First World War. I don't believe in the educational value of military training. I felt that military training as practiced in Germany or elsewhere was bad. I disliked the caste system, and bullies. From this general point of view, I was against the reintroduction of compulsory military service. Compulsory military service began again in Germany in 1936. It was a decision taken by Germany in violation of the terms of the Versailles Treaty."

Page 442/443

"In September 1938, there was a meeting at Berchtesgarden between Hitler and Chamberlain. Hitler put forth Germany's claim to the Sudeten territories. Chamberlain did not agree. There were no Czech representatives. The Czechs were not even invited and were hardly informed. One ally quietly signed away territory belonging to another ally. It was a terrible encouragement to Hitler, who saw the weakness of the Allied situation. France was an ally of Czechoslovakia but also ceded Czech territory through the French prime minister, Daladier.

"There was a meeting at Bad Godesberg seven to ten days after the one at Berchtesgaden. Chaberlain and Hitler met without any other parties present, except myself. The famous Munich Conference of September 29-30, 1938, took place two week after Bad Godesberg. The parties met on the basis of the proposition put forth by Mussolini to the French. Mussolini made the initial Munich draft. he saw things more realistically than my own people. That was always so. The Mediterraneans are always greater realists than the people of the north. The fact that war was avoided in 1938 was as much due to Mussolini as to Chamberlain. We Germans had no part in it. Hitler was quite prepared to to go war.

"At Berchtesgaden feelings were strained. The atmosphere improved a little at the Godesberg meeting. At Munich the personal relationships were again strained. But once the agreement had been reached and the famous 'no more war' agreement was arranged between Britain and Germany, the atmosphere was better. I though Chamberlain was very happy to have Hitler sin the paper he had typed and brought along with him from England. Chamberlain was warmly welcomed at Munich. He was the hero of the German people in Munich - not Hitler. the German masses gave flowers to Chamberlain. One could see on their faces that they thanked Chamberlain for saving the peace of Europe despite Hitler.

"Hitler didn't like this show at all. He feared that it would give the impression that the German people were pacifists, which, of course, would be unpardonable in the eyes of the Nazis. Therefore, the Nazis didn't like this Munich show at all."

Page 444

[October 1940]
Franco and Hitler talked together for a long time. Between the lines of the conversation Gibraltar was discussed. It was our idea to conquer Gibraltar. Special troops were being trained in fortress warfare. Specialists in taking fortified places were trained near Liege in Belgium. There were new methods of approach and attack, studied with a view to an assault on Gibraltar. Of course, it was necessary to obtain Franco's consent. As I said, this was one of the subjects of discussion between the lines. The meeting didn't go well at all.

"In the first place, Franco was hesitating, uncertain; he is of weak character. He obviously played for time. WE wanted to precipitate matters as usual. We thought that getting Franco's consent for the attack on Gibraltar would be a matter of one afternoon and that would be enough - but it wasn't. Hitler and Franco separated without achieving anything. Hitler was disappointed and so was Franco.

Page 447

Had Schmidt any impression of Sauckel? "That man who is responsible for slave labor in Germany does not have my sympathy. I did not like the whole idea of what he did. After ll, there are limits to what one can do with foreign populations in the forced labor business. In the first place, the whole idea is completely unproductive. One needs three or four men to watch one compulsory worker. Sauckel deserves the severest punishment. You can see that there were no strong characters surrounding Hitler. There were only weaklings like Ribbentrop, Funk, and so forth. Hitler wanted a silent audience. Even Goering, who superficially gives the appearance of a strong man, was in reality childlike, weak character who was known as a dope addict in the inner circles."

Notes on Our Enemy, The State by Albert Jay Nock

Our Enemy, The State

A PDF of the book is available: http://mises.org/etexts/ourenemy.pdf

Page 1

There's only one way to improve society, he used to say; present it with one improved unit -- yourself.

Page 4/5

Old Whig and Classical Liberal philosophy would schematize competing political theories in the form of answers to three questions:

1. The first question put by non-Whig theorists is: Who shall wield power? Answers range from Monarch backed by divine right to Democracy based on "majority rule."
2. The second question is: For whose benefit shall this power be wilded? Power is a heady thing in itself, but beyond power for its own sake power is invariable sought and used for the economic advantage power bestows. The royal family lived rather well, and so did their aristocratic friends. These two sets of people, in virtue of their privileged position, got something for nothing; the goods and services they enjoyed were not obtained from the goods and services they had produced and offered in voluntary exchanges; they lived on the fruits of others' toil. This was "the good old rule, the simple plan, that they should take who have the power , and they should keep who can."
3. And so there is a third question: At whose expense shall this power be wielded? It follows from the answers given to the first two questions that a society structured along the lines they lay down must have its victims. The victims are people whose interests are deliberately sacrificed in order to prosper those who hold public office and their friends - who comprise The State.

Page 6

If robbery is the first labor saving device, the State is surely the second, and it si by far the safer way to live without working.

...

Homo sapiens will do almost anything to avoid work, so he naturally gravitates to the employment of the political means for the satisfaction of his economic wants and needs -- which is the state.

Page 13

Its [The State] legitimate concern is with but two matters: first, freedom; second, justice.

Page 17/18

Putting the case in plain language, the individual was living in a condition of servitude to the state. The fact that he "furnished the means by which he suffered" - that he was a member of a nominally sovereign body - made his condition none the less one of servitude. Slavery is slavery whether it be voluntary or involuntary, nor is its character at all altered by the nature of the agency that exercises it. A man is in slavery when all his rights lie at the arbitrary discretion of some agency other than himself; when his life, liberty, property, and the whole direction of his activities are liable to arbitrary and irresponsible confiscation at any time - and this appeared to be the exact relation that I saw obtaining between the individual and the state.

...

Mussolini sums up this doctrine very handsomely in a single phrase, "Everything for the state; nothing outside the state; nothing against the state," ...

Page 25

If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely:
a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the
student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing,
wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, “agricultural adjustment,” and similar items of State policy
that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run
up under one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason they
monopolize public attention, but they all come to the same thing; which is, an increase of State
power and a corresponding decrease of social power.

...

Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

Page 26

Students of politics, of course, saw in this merely an astute proposal for a prodigious enhancement of State power; merely what, as long ago as 1794, James Madison called "the old trick of fuming every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government;" and the passage of time has proved that they were right.

Page 27

We can get some kind of rough measure of this general atrophy by our own disposition when approached by a
beggar. Two years ago we might have been moved to give him something; today we are moved to
refer him to the State’s relief-agency. The State has said to society, You are either not exercising
enough power to meet the emergency, or are exercising it in what I think is an incompetent way,
so I shall confiscate your power, and exercise it to suit myself.

Page 33

When, therefore, the inquiring student of civilization has occasion to observe this or any other
apparent recession upon any point of our present regime, he may content himself with asking the
one question, What effect has this upon the sum-total of State power? The answer he gives
himself will show conclusively whether the recession is actual or apparent, and this is all he is
concerned to know.

Page 35

Indeed, it is by this means that the aim of the collectivists seems likeliest to be attained in this
country; this aim being the complete extinction of social power through absorption by the State.
Their fundamental doctrine was formulated and invested with a quasi-religious sanction by the
idealist philosophers of the last century; and among peoples who have accepted it in terms as well
as in fact, it is expressed in formulas almost identical with theirs. Thus, for example, when Hitler
says that “the State dominates the nation because it alone represents it,” he is only putting into
loose popular language the formula of Hegel, that “the State is the general substance, whereof
individuals are but accidents.” Or, again, when Mussolini says, “Everything for the State; nothing
outside the State; nothing against the State,” he is merely vulgarizing the doctrine of Fichte, that
“the State is the superior power, ultimate and beyond appeal, absolutely independent.”

Page 36/37

Mr. Jefferson wrote in 1823 that there was no danger he dreaded so much as "the consolidation [i.e. centralization] of our government by the noiseless and therefor unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme Court.

...

Even the coup d'Etat of 1932 was noiseless and unalarming. In Russia, Italy, Germany, the coup d'Etat was violent and spectacular; it had to be; but here it was neither. Under cover of a nation-wide, State-managed mobilization of inane buffoonery and aimless commotion, it took place in so unspectacular a way that its true nature escaped notice, and even now is not generally understood. The mehtod of consolidating the ensuing regime, moreover, was also noiseless and un-alarming

...

The force of phrase and name distorts the identification of our own actual acceptances and acquiescences.

Page 40

There appears to be a curious difficulty about exercising reflective thought upon the actual nature
of an institution into which one was born and one’s ancestors were born. One accepts it as one
does the atmosphere; one’s practical adjustments to it are made by a kind of reflex. One seldom
thinks about the air until one notices some change, favourable or unfavourable, and then one’s
thought about it is special; one thinks about purer air, lighter air, heavier air, not about air. So it is
with certain human institutions. We know that they exist, that they affect us in various ways, but
we do not ask how they came to exist, or what their original intention was, or what primary
function it is that they are actually fulfilling; and when they affect us so unfavourably that we rebel
against them, we contemplate substituting nothing beyond some modification or variant of the
same institution. Thus colonial America, oppressed by the monarchical State, brings in the
republican State; Germany gives up the republican State for the Hitlerian State; Russia exchanges
the monocratic State for the collectivist State; Italy exchanges the constitutionalist State for the
“totalitarian” State.

Page 45/48

As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types of
political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does not do to take the
one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the other a higher; they are commonly
so taken, but erroneously. Still less does it do to classify both as species of the same genus – to
classify both under the generic name of “government,” though this also, until very lately, has been
done, and has always led to confusion and misunderstanding.

...

They are so different in theory that drawing a sharp distinction between them is now probably the most important duty that civilization owes to its own safety. Hence it is by no means either an arbitrary or academic proceeding to give the one type the name of government, and to call the second type simple the State .

Page 50

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and
confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner. On the negative
side, it has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive State could possibly have had any
other origin. Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation
of one class by another. In this sense, every State known to history is a class-State. Oppenheimer
defines the State, in respect of its origin, as an institution “forced on a defeated group by a
conquering group, with a view only to systematizing the domination of the conquered by the
conquerors, and safeguarding itself against insurrection from within and attack from without. This
domination had no other final purpose than the economic exploitation of the conquered group by
the victorious group.”

...

"Nations in general," he [John Jay] said, "will go to war whenever there is a prospect of getting something by it."

Page 53

The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention,
is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual
has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice
costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality
whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

So far from encouraging a wholesome development of social power, it has invariably, as Madison
said, turned every contingency into a resource for depleting social power and enhancing State
power. As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever
shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. In
Russia and Germany, for example, we have lately seen the State moving with great alacrity against
infringement of its private monopoly by private persons, while at the same time exercising that
monopoly with unconscionable ruthlessness. Taking the State wherever found, striking into its
history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators
and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class

Page 57

Spencer does not discuss what he calls “the perennial faith of mankind” in State action, but
contents himself with elaborating the sententious observations of Guizot, that “a belief in the
sovereign power of political machinery” is nothing less than “a gross delusion.” This faith is chiefly
an effect of the immense prestige which the State has diligently built up for itself in the century or
more since the doctrine of jure divino rulership gave way. We need not consider the various
instruments that the State employs in building up its prestige; most of them are well known, and
their uses well understood. There is one, however, which is in a sense peculiar to the republican
State. Republicanism permits the individual to persuade himself that the State is his creation, that
State action is his action, that when it expresses itself it expresses him, and when it is glorified he
is glorified. The republican State encourages this persuasion with all its power, aware that it is the
most efficient instrument for enhancing its own prestige. Lincoln’s phrase, “of the people, by the
people, for the people” was probably the most effective single stroke of propaganda ever made in
behalf of republican State prestige.

Page 58/59

There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man’s needs and desires can be
satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means.17 The other
is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means. The
primitive exercise of the political means was, as we have seen, by conquest, confiscation,
expropriation, and the introduction of a slave-economy. The conqueror parcelled out the conquered
territory among beneficiaries, who thenceforth satisfied their needs and desires by exploiting the
labour of the enslaved inhabitants.

Page 73

Thus the merchant-polity amounted to an attempt, more or less disingenuous, at reconciling
matters which in their nature can not be reconciled. The ideas of natural rights and popular
sovereignty were, as we have seen, highly acceptable and highly animating to all the forces allied
against the feudal idea; but while these ideas might be easily reconcilable with a system of simple
government, such a system would not answer the purpose. Only the State-system would do that.
The problem therefore was, how to keep these ideas well in the forefront of political theory, and at
the same time prevent their practical application from undermining the organization of the political
means. It was a difficult problem. The best that could be done with it was by making certain
structural alterations in the State, which would give it the appearance of expressing these ideas,
without the reality. The most important of these structural changes was that of bringing in the socalled
representative or parliamentary system, which Puritanism introduced into the modern world,
and which has received a great deal of praise as an advance towards democracy. This praise,
however, is exaggerated. The change was one of form only, and its bearing on democracy has been
inconsiderable.

Page 76/77/78/79/83

Thus "- and here is the important observation, so important that I venture to italicize it - "every essential element long afterward found in the government of the American State appeared in the chartered corporation that started English civilization in America." Generally speaking, the system of civil order established in America was the State-system of the "mother countries" operating over a considerable body of water; the only thing that distinguished it was that the exploited and dependent class was situated at an unusual distance from the owning and exploiting class. The headquarters of the autonomous State were on one side of the Atlantic, and its subjects on the other.

...

A point of greatest importance to remember is that the merchant-State is the only form of the State that ever existed in America. Whether under the rule of a trading0company or a provincial governor or a republican representative legislature, Americans have never known any other form of the State.

...

Their remarkable success in these pursuits is well known; it is worth mention here in order to account for many of the complications and collisions of interest subsequently ensuing upon the merchant-State's fundamental doctrine that the primary function of government is not to maintain freedom and security, but to "help business."

...

By way of summing up, it is enough to say that nowhere in the American colonial civil order was
there ever the trace of a democracy. The political structure was always that of the merchant-State;
Americans have never known any other. Furthermore, the philosophy of natural rights and popular
sovereignty was never once exhibited anywhere in American political practice during the colonial
period, from the first settlement in 1607 down to the revolution of 1776.

Page 85

After conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with
the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every
landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State
distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms.

Page 94

Patrick Henry was an inveterate and voracious engrosser of land lying beyond the dead-line set by
the British State; later he was heavily involved in the affairs of one of the notorious Yazoo
companies, operating in Georgia. He seems to have been most unscrupulous. His company’s
holdings in Georgia, amounting to more than ten million acres, were to be paid for in Georgia scrip,
which was much depreciated. Henry bought up all these certificates that he could get his hands on,
at ten cents on the dollar, and made a great profit on them by their rise in value when Hamilton put
through his measure for having the central government assume the debts they represented.
Undoubtedly it was this trait of unrestrained avarice which earned him the dislike of Mr. Jefferson,
who said, rather contemptuously, that he was “insatiable in money.”

Page 98/99

The main conclusion, however, towards which these observations tend, is that one general frame of
mind existed among the colonists with reference to the nature and primary function of the State.
This frame of mind was not peculiar to them; they shared it with the beneficiaries of the merchant-
State in England, and with those of the feudal State as far back as the State’s history can be
traced. Voltaire, surveying the debris of the feudal State, said that in essence the State is “a device
for taking money out of one set of pockets and putting it into another.” The beneficiaries of the
feudal State had precisely this view, and they bequeathed it unchanged and unmodified to the
actual and potential beneficiaries of the merchant-State. The colonists regarded the State primarily
as an instrument whereby one might help oneself and hurt others; that is to say, first and foremost
they regarded it as the organization of the political means. No other view of the State was ever
held in colonial America. Romance and poetry were brought to bear on the subject in the
customary way; glamorous myths about it were propagated with the customary intent; but when
all came to all, nowhere in colonial America were actual practical relations with the State ever
determined by any other view than this.

Page 101/102/103

There was complete unanimity also regarding the nature of the new and independent political
institution which the Declaration contemplated as within “the right of the people” to set up. There
was a great and memorable dissension about its form, but none about its nature. It should be in
essence the mere continuator of the merchant-State already existing. There was no idea of setting
up government, the purely social institution which should have no other object than, as the
Declaration put it, to secure the natural rights of the individual; or as Paine put it, which should
contemplate nothing beyond the maintenance of freedom and security – the institution which
should make no positive interventions of any kind upon the individual, but should confine itself
exclusively to such negative interventions as the maintenance of freedom might indicate. The idea
was to perpetuate an institution of another character entirely, the State, the organization of the
political means; and this was accordingly done.

There is no disparagement implied in this observation; for, all questions of motive aside, nothing
else was to be expected. No one knew any other kind of political organization. The causes of
American complaint were conceived of as due only to interested and culpable mal-administration,
not to the essentially anti-social nature of the institution administered. Dissatisfaction was directed
against administrators, not against the institution itself. Violent dislike of the form of the institution
– the monarchical form – was engendered, but no distrust or suspicion of its nature. The character
of the State had never been subjected to scrutiny; the cooperation of the Zeitgeist was needed for
that, and it was not yet to be had.

One may see here a parallel with the revolutionary movements against the Church in the sixteenth
century – and indeed with revolutionary movements in general. They are incited by abuses and
misfeasances, more or less specific and always secondary, and are carried on with no idea beyond
getting them rectified or avenged, usually by the sacrifice of conspicuous scapegoats. The
philosophy of the institution that gives play to these misfeasances is never examined, and hence
they recur promptly under another form or other auspices, or else their place is taken by others
which are in character precisely like them. Thus the notorious failure of reforming and revolutionary
movements in the long-run may as a rule be found due to their incorrigible superficiality.

One mind, indeed, came within reaching distance of the fundamentals of the matter, not by
employing the historical method, but by a homespun kind of reasoning, aided by a sound and
sensitive instinct. The common view of Mr. Jefferson as a doctrinaire believer in the stark principle
of “states’ rights” is most incompetent and misleading. He believed in states’ rights, assuredly, but
he went much farther; states’ rights were only an incident in his general system of political
organization. He believed that the ultimate political unit, the repository and source of political
authority and initiative, should be the smallest unit; not the federal unit, state unit or county unit,
but the township, or, as he called it, the “ward.” The township, and the township only, should
determine the delegation of power upwards to the county, the state, and the federal units. His
system of extreme decentralization is interesting and perhaps worth a moment’s examination,
because if the idea of the State is ever displaced by the idea of government, it seems probable that
the practical expression of this idea would come out very nearly in that form.

There is probably no need to say that the consideration of such a displacement involves a long look
ahead, and over a field of view that is cluttered with the debris of a most discouraging number, not
of nations alone, but of whole civilizations. Nevertheless it is interesting to remind ourselves that
more than a hundred and fifty years ago, one American succeeded in getting below the surface of
things, and that he probably to some degree anticipated the judgment of an immeasurably distant
future.

Page 105

Thus while the American architects assented “in principle” to the philosophy of natural rights and
popular sovereignty, and found it in a general way highly congenial as a sort of voucher for their
self-esteem, their practical interpretation of it left it pretty well hamstrung. They were not
especially concerned with consistency; their practical interest in this philosophy stopped short at
the point which we have already noted, of its presumptive justification of a ruthless economic
pseudo-individualism, and an exercise of political self-expression by the general electorate which
should be so managed as to be, in all essential respects, futile. In this they took precise pattern by
the English Whig exponents and practitioners of this philosophy. Locke himself, whom we have seen
putting the natural rights of property so high above those of life and liberty, was equally
discriminating in his view of popular sovereignty. He was no believer in what he called “a numerous
democracy,” and did not contemplate a political organization that should countenance anything of
the kind.

Page 106/107

The sum of the matter is that while the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty
afforded a set of principles upon which all interests could unite, and practically all did unite, with
the aim of securing political independence, it did not afford a satisfactory set of principles on which
to found the new American State. When political independence was secured, the stark doctrine of
the Declaration went into abeyance, with only a distorted simulacrum of its principles surviving.
The rights of life and liberty were recognized by a mere constitutional formality left open to
eviscerating interpretations, or, where these were for any reason deemed superfluous, to simple
executive disregard; and all consideration of the rights attending “the pursuit of happiness” was
narrowed down to a plenary acceptance of Locke’s doctrine of the preeminent rights of property,
with law-made property on an equal footing with labour-made property. As for popular sovereignty,
the new State had to be republican in form, for no other would suit the general temper of the
people; and hence its peculiar task was to preserve the appearance of actual republicanism without
the reality.

....

... the device of judicial review and interpretation, which, as we have already observed, is a process whereby anything may be made to mean anything ...

Page 108

No
one spoke of natural rights and popular sovereignty; it would seem actually that no one had ever
heard of them. On the contrary, everyone was talking about the pressing need of a strong central
coercive authority, able to check the incursions which “the democratic spirit” was likely to incite
upon “the men of principle and property.” Mr. Jefferson wrote despondently of the contrast of all this with the sort of thing he had been
hearing in the France which he had just left “in the first year of her revolution, in the fervour of
natural rights and zeal for reformation.” In the process of possessing himself anew of the spirit and
ideas of his countrymen, he said, “I can not describe the wonder and mortification with which
the table conversations filled me.” Clearly, though the Declaration might have been the charter for
American independence, it was in no sense the charter of the new American State.

Page 112/113

A direct drive at effecting these changes comes as a
rule to nothing, or more often than not turns out to be retarding. They are so largely the work of
those unimpassioned and imperturbable agencies for which Prince de Bismarck had such vast
respect – he called them the imponderabilia – that any effort which disregards them, or thrusts
them violently aside, will in the long run find them stepping in to abort its fruit.

....

Instead of recognizing the State as “the common enemy of all well-disposed,
industrious and decent men,” the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a
final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent. The mass-man, ignorant of its
history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is
willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its
administrators may draw at will. Instead of looking upon the State’s progressive absorption of
social power with the repugnance and resentment that he would naturally feel towards the
activities of a professional-criminal organization, he tends rather to encourage and glorify it, in the
belief that he is somehow identified with the State, and that therefore, in consenting to its
indefinite aggrandizement, he consents to something in which he has a share – he is, pro tanto,
aggrandizing himself. Professor Ortega y Gasset analyzes this state of mind extremely well. The
mass- man, he says, confronting the phenomenon of the State, “sees it, admires it, knows that
there it is.... Furthermore, the mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling
himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the
public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem, presents itself, the mass-man will tend
to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense
and unassailable resources.... When the mass suffers any ill-fortune, or simply feels some strong
appetite, its great temptation is that permanent sure possibility of obtaining everything, without
effort, struggle, doubt, or risk, merely by touching a button and setting the mighty machine in
motion.”

Page 114

Footnote 3

It seems to be very imperfectly understood that the cost of State intervention must be paid out of production, this being the only source from which any payment for anything can be derived. Intervention retards production; then resulting stringency and inconvenience enable further intervention, which in turn still further retards production; and this process goes on until, as in Rome, in the third century, production ceases entirely, and the source of payment dries up.

Page 118/119/120/121/122

The situation, in a word, was that American economic interests had fallen into two grand divisions,
the special interests in each having made common cause with a view to capturing control of the
political means.One division comprised the speculating, industrial-commercial and creditor
interests, with their natural allies of the bar and bench, the pulpit and the press. The other
comprised chiefly the farmers and artisans and the debtor class generally. From the first, these two
grand divisions were colliding briskly here and there in the several units, the most serious collision
occurring over the terms of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780. The State in each of the thirteen units was a class-State, as every State known to history has
been; and the work of manoeuvring it in its function of enabling the economic exploitation of one
class by another went steadily on.

...

Mr. Jefferson's idea of a political organization which should be national in foreign affairs and non-national in domestic affairs might be found continuously practicable.

...

But the general scheme itself was as a whole objectionable to the interests grouped in the first
grand division. The grounds of their dissatisfaction are obvious enough. When one bears in mind
the vast prospect of the continent, one need use but little imagination to perceive that the national
scheme was by far the more congenial to those interests, because it enabled an ever-closer
centralization of control over the political means. For instance, leaving aside the advantage of
having but one central tariff-making body to chaffer with, instead of twelve, any industrialist could
see the great primary advantage of being able to extend his exploiting operations over a nationwide
free-trade area walled-in by a general tariff; the closer the centralization, the larger the
exploitable area. Any speculator in rental-values would be quick to see the advantage of bringing
this form of opportunity under unified control. Any speculator in depreciated public securities would be strongly for a system that could offer him
the use of the political means to bring back their face-value. Any shipowner or foreign trader would be quick to see that his bread was buttered on the side of a
national State which, if properly approached, might lend him the use of the political means by way
of a subsidy, or would be able to back up some profitable but dubious freebooting enterprise with
“diplomatic representations” or with reprisals.

The farmers and the debtor class in general, on the other hand, were not interested in those
considerations, but were strongly for letting things stay, for the most part, as they stood.

...

They had an impressive object-lesson in the immediate shift that took place in Massachusetts after the adoption of John Adams's local constitution of 1780. They naturally did not care to see this sort of
thing put into operation on a nation-wide scale, and they therefore looked with extreme disfavour upon any bait put forth for amending the Articles out of existence.

...

Finally, however, a constitutional convention was assembled, on the distinct understanding that it
should do no more than revise the Articles in such a way, as Hamilton cleverly phrased it, as to
make them “adequate to the exigencies of the nation,” and on the further understanding that all
the thirteen units should assent to the amendments before they went into effect; in short, that the
method of amendment provided by the Articles themselves should be followed. Neither
understanding was fulfilled. The convention was made up wholly of men representing the economic
interests of the first division. The great majority of them, possibly as many as four-fifths, were
public creditors; one-third were land- speculators; some were money-lenders; one-fifth were
industrialists, traders, shippers; and many of them were lawyers. They planned and executed a
coup d’Etat, simply tossing the Articles of Confederation into the waste-basket, and drafting a
constitution de novo, with the audacious provision that it should go into effect when ratified by nine
units instead of by all thirteen. Moreover, with like audacity, they provided that the document
should not be submitted either to the Congress or to the local legislatures, but that it should go
direct to a popular vote!

...

We
therefore go on to observe that in order to secure ratification by even the nine necessary units, the
document had to conform to certain very exacting and difficult requirements. The political structure
which is contemplated had to be republican in form, yet capable of resisting what Gerry unctuously
called “the excess of democracy,” and what Randolph termed its “turbulence and follies.” The task
of the delegates was precisely analogous to that of the earlier architects who had designed the
structure of the British merchant-State, with its system of economics, politics and judicial control;
they had to contrive something that could pass muster as showing a good semblance of popular
sovereignty, without the reality. Madison defined their task explicitly in saying that the convention’s
purpose was “to secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction [i.e.,
a democratic faction], and at the same time preserve the spirit and form of popular government.”

Page 124/125/126

Of all the legislative measures enacted to implement the new constitution, the one best calculated
to ensure a rapid and steady progress in the centralization of political power was the Judiciary Act
of 1789.15 This measure created a federal supreme court of six members (subsequently enlarged
to nine) and a federal district court in each state, with its own complete personnel, and a complete
apparatus for enforcing its decrees. The Act established federal oversight of state legislation by the
familiar device of “interpretation,” whereby the Supreme Court might nullify state legislative or
judicial action which for any reason it saw fit to regard as unconstitutional. One feature of the Act
which for our purposes is most noteworthy is that it made the tenure of all these federal judgeships
appointive, not elective, and for life; thus marking almost the farthest conceivable departure from
the doctrine of popular sovereignty.

...

We may now see from this necessarily brief survey, which anyone may amplify and particularize at
his pleasure, what the circumstances were which rooted a certain definite idea of the State still
deeper in the general consciousness. That idea was precisely the same in the constitutional period
as that which we have seen prevailing in the two periods already examined – the colonial period,
and the eight- year period following the revolution. Nowhere in the history of the constitutional
period do we find the faintest suggestion of the Declaration’s doctrine of natural rights; and we find
its doctrine of popular sovereignty not only continuing in abeyance, but constitutionally estopped
from ever reappearing. Nowhere do we find a trace of the Declaration’s theory of government; on
the contrary, we find it expressly repudiated. The new political mechanism was a faithful replica of
the old disestablished British model, but so far improved and strengthened as to be incomparably
more close-working and efficient, and hence presenting incomparably more attractive possibilities
of capture and control. By consequence, therefore, we find more firmly implanted than ever the
same general idea of the State that we have observed as prevailing hitherto – the idea of an
organization of the political means, an irresponsible and all-powerful agency standing always ready
to be put into use for the service of one set of economic interests as against another.

Footnote: 16

The authority of the Supreme Court was disregarded by Jackson, and overruled by Lincoln,
thus converting the mode of the State temporarily from an oligarchy to an autocracy. It is
interesting to observe that just such a contingency was foreseen by the framers of the constitution,
in particular by Hamilton. They were apparently well aware of the ease with which, in any period of
crisis, a quasi-republican mode of the State slips off into executive tyranny. Oddly enough, Mr.
Jefferson at one time considered nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts by executive action, but did
not do so. Lincoln overruled the opinion of Chief Justice Taney that suspension of the habeas corpus
was unconstitutional, and in consequence the mode of the State was, until 1865, a monocratic
military despotism. In fact, from the date of his proclamation of blockade, Lincoln ruled
unconstitutionally throughout his term. The doctrine of “reserved powers” was knaved up ex post
facto as a justification of his acts, but as far as the intent of the constitution is concerned, it was
obviously a pure invention. In fact, a very good case could be made out for the assertion that
Lincoln’s acts resulted in a permanent radical change in the entire system of constitutional
“interpretation” – that since his time “interpretations” have not been interpretations of the
constitution, but merely of public policy; or, as our most acute and profound critic put it, “th’
Supreme Court follows th’ iliction rayturns.” A strict constitutionalist might indeed say that the
constitution died in 1861, and one would have to scratch one’s head pretty diligently to refute him.

Footnote: 17

17. Marshall was appointed by John Adams at the end of his Presidential term, when the interests
grouped in the first division were becoming very anxious about the opposition developing against
them among the exploited interests. A letter written by Oliver Wolcott to Fisher Ames gives a good
idea of where the doctrine of popular sovereignty stood; his reference to military measures is
particularly striking. He says, “The steady men in Congress will attempt to extend the judicial
department, and I hope that their measures will be very decided. It is impossible in this country to
render an army an engine of government; and there is no way to combat the state opposition but
by an efficient and extended organization of judges, magistrates, and other civil officers.” Marshall’s
appointment followed, and also the creation of twenty-three new federal judgeships. Marshall’s
cardinal decisions were made in the cases of Marbury, of Fletcher, of McCulloch, of Dartmouth
College, and of Cohens. It is perhaps not generally understood that as a result of Marshall’s efforts,
the Supreme Court became not only the highest law-interpreting body, but the highest law-making
body as well; the precedents established by its decisions have the force of constitutional law. Since
1800, therefore, the actual mode of the State in America is normally that of a small and
irresponsible oligarchy! Mr. Jefferson, regarding Marshall quite justly as “a crafty chief judge who
sophisticates the law to his mind by the turn of his own reasoning,” made in 1821 the very
remarkable prophecy that “our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what
road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary
consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the federal judiciary; the other two branches the
corrupting and corrupted instruments.” Another prophetic comment on the effect of centralization
was his remark that “when we must wait for Washington to tell us when to sow and when to reap,
we shall soon want bread.” A survey of our present political circumstances makes comment on
these prophecies superfluous.

Page 127

In his second term Mr. Jefferson discovered the tendency towards
bipartisanship, and was both dismayed and puzzled by it. I have elsewhere remarked his
curious inability to understand how the cohesive power of public plunder works straight towards
political bipartisanship. In 1823, finding some who called themselves Republicans favouring the
Federalist policy of centralization, he spoke of them in a rather bewildered way as “pseudo-
Republicans, but real Federalists.” But most naturally any Republican who saw a chance of profiting
by the political means would retain the name, and at the same time resist any tendency within the
party to impair the general system which held out such a prospect. In this way bipartisanship arises. Party designations become purely nominal, and the stated issues
between parties become progressively trivial; and both are more and more openly kept up with no
other object than to cover from scrutiny the essential identity of purpose in both parties.

Page 128

The anti-Federalist party took office in 1800 as the party of strict construction; yet,
once in office, it played ducks and drakes with the constitution, in behalf of the special interests
that it represented. The Federalists were nominally for loose construction, yet they fought bitterly every one of the
opposing party’s loose-constructionist measures – the embargo, the protective tariff and the
national bank. They were the constitutional nationalists of the deepest dye, as we have seen; yet in
their centre and stronghold, New England, they held the threat of secession over the country
throughout the period of what they harshly called “Mr. Madison’s war,” the War of 1812, which was
in fact a purely imperialist adventure after annexation of Floridian and Canadian territory, in behalf
of stiffening agrarian control of the political means; but when the planting interests of the South
made the same threat in 1861, they became fervid nationalists again

Page 130

In fact, such popular terms of electioneering appeal are uniformly and notoriously what Jeremy
Bentham called impostor-terms, and their use invariably marks one thing and one only; it marks a
state of apprehension, either fearful or expectant, as the case may be, concerning access to the
political means. As we are seeing at the moment, once let this access come under threat of
straitening or stoppage, the menaced interests immediately trot out the spavined, glandered hobby
of “state rights” or “a return to the constitution,” and put it through its galvanic movements. Let
the incidence of exploitation show the first sign of shifting, and we hear at once from one source of
“interested clamours and sophistry” that “democracy” is in danger, and that the unparalleled
excellences of our civilization have come about solely through a policy of “rugged individualism,”
carried out under terms of “free competition”; while from another source we hear that the
enormities of laissez-faire have ground the faces of the poor, and obstructed entrance into the More
Abundant Life.

Page 137

The State is not, as he would have it, a social institution administered in an anti-social
way. It is an anti-social institution administered in the only way an anti-social institution can be
administered, and by the kind of person who, in the nature of things, is best adapted to such
service.

Page 134/135/136

Every intervention by the State enables another, and this in turn another, and so on indefinitely;
and the State stands ever ready and eager to make them, often on its own motion, often again
wangling plausibility for them through the specious suggestion of interested persons. Sometimes
the matter at issue is in its nature simple, socially necessary, and devoid of any character that
would bring it into the purview of politics. For convenience, however, complications are erected on it; then presently someone sees that these
complications are exploitable, and proceeds to exploit them; then another, and another, until the
rivalries and collisions of interest thus generated issue in a more or less general disorder. When this
takes place, the logical thing, obviously, is to recede, and let the disorder be settled in the slower
and more troublesome way, through the operation of natural laws. But in such circumstances
recession is never for a moment thought of; the suggestion would be put down as sheer lunacy.
Instead, the interests unfavourably affected – little aware, perhaps, how much worse the cure is
than the disease, or at any rate little caring – immediately call on the State to cut in arbitrarily
between cause and effect, and clear up the disorder out of hand. The State then intervenes by imposing another set of complications upon the first; these in turn
are found exploitable, another demand arises, another set of complications, still more intricate, is
erected upon the first two;6 and the same sequence is gone through again and again until the
recurrent disorder becomes acute enough to open the way for a sharking political adventurer to
come forward and, always alleging “necessity, the tyrant’s plea,” to organize a coup d’Etat.

Page 138/139

Thus we see how ignorance and delusion concerning the nature of the State combine with extreme
moral debility and myopic self-interest – what Ernest Renan so well calls la bassesse de l’homme
interesse – to enable the steadily accelerated conversion of social power into State power that has
gone on from the beginning of our political independence. It is a curious anomaly. State power has
an unbroken record of inability to do anything efficiently, economically, disinterestedly or
honestly; yet when the slightest dissatisfaction arises over any exercise of social power, the aid of
the agent least qualified to give aid is immediately called for. Does social power mismanage
banking-practice in this-or-that special instance – then let the State, which never has shown itself
able to keep its own finances from sinking promptly into the slough of misfeasance, wastefulness
and corruption, intervene to “supervise” or “regulate” the whole body of banking-practice, or even
take it over entire. Does social power, in this-or-that case, bungle the business of railwaymanagement
– then let the State, which has bungled every business it has ever undertaken,
intervene and put its hand to the business of “regulating” railway- operation. Does social power
now and then send out an unseaworthy ship to disaster – then let the State, which inspected and
passed the Morro Castle, be given a freer swing at controlling the routine of the shipping trade.
Does social power here and there exercise a grinding monopoly over the generation and
distribution of electric current – then let the State, which allots and maintains monopoly, come in
and intervene with a general scheme of price-fixing which works more unforeseen hardships than it
heals, or else let it go into direct competition; or, as the collectivists urge, let it take over the
monopoly bodily. “Ever since society has existed,” says Herbert Spencer, “disappointment has been
preaching, ‘Put not your trust in legislation’; and yet the trust in legislation seems hardly
diminished.”

Page 141

It will be clear to anyone who takes the trouble to think the matter through, that under a regime of
natural order, that is to say under government, which makes no positive interventions whatever on
the individual, but only negative interventions in behalf of simple justice – not law, but justice –
misuses of social power would be effectively corrected; whereas we know by interminable
experience that the State’s positive interventions do not correct them. Under a regime of actual
individualism, actually free competition, actual laissez-faire – a regime which, as we have seen, can
not possibly coexist with the State – a serious or continuous misuse of social power would be
virtually impracticable.

Footnote 14:

... Their miser and degradation did not lie at the door of individualism; they lay nowhere but at the door of the State. Adam Smith's economics are not the economics of individualism, they are the economics of land-owners and mill-owners.

Page 144/145

But there is no need to dwell lugubriously upon the probable circumstances of a future so far
distant. What we and our more nearly immediate descendants shall see is a steady progress in
collectivism running off into a military despotism of a severe type. Closer centralization; a steadily
growing bureaucracy; State power and faith in State power increasing, social power and faith in
social power diminishing; the State absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national
income; production languishing, the State in consequence taking over one “essential industry” after
another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality, and finally
resorting to a system of forced labour. Then at some point in this progress, a collision of State
interests, at least as general as that which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and
financial dislocation too severe for the asthenic social structure to bear; and from this the State will
be left to “the rusty death of machinery,” and the casual anonymous forces of dissolution will be
supreme.

Page 146

[The remnant]

The special reason has to do with the fact that in every civilization, however generally prosaic,
however addicted to the short-time point of view on human affairs, there are always certain alien
spirits who, while outwardly conforming to the requirements of the civilization around them, still
keep a disinterested regard for the plain intelligible law of things, irrespective of any practical end.
They have an intellectual curiosity, sometimes touched with emotion, concerning the august order
of nature; they are impressed by the contemplation of it, and like to know as much about it as they
can, even in circumstances where its operation is ever so manifestly unfavourable to their best
hopes and wishes. For these, a work like this, however in the current sense impractical, is not quite
useless; and those of them it reaches will be aware that for such as themselves, and such only, it
was written.

Baja – Kidnapping Death Adventure, DEFCON 18

This is a slightly cleaned up account of the trip based on emails I sent, the structure is maintained.

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dantheman/BajaDeathAdventure

July 22, 2010

Stage 0

I write this with much foreboding, hoping that the events of today do not indicate the nature of our trip, or we are in for a cluster**** of epic proportions.  As should be expected the MBTA was running slow and consequently I arrived at the airport later than planned. Upon arrival I proceeded to the terminal to check in.  USAIR pleasantly informs me that they contract this route out through Alaska Air. Already running late, I collect my belongings and haul ass to terminal A and queue in the Alaska Air line; however, when I try to check my bag I find out that they contract out this flight to American Airlines – forcing me to rush back to Terminal B, carrying 2 heavy duffle bags, and a backpack.  As I enter the American Airline area, I am presented with the longest line I’ve ever seen at Logan Airport.  Time is getting short, my flight leaves in less than an hour, so I tell one of the line wranglers that I need to be expedited if I’m going to make my flight, whereupon my needs are dismissed with a "there are agents expediting go to the back of the line”.  After about 20 minutes, I progress through the line back to the attendant who decides that since my flight takes off in less than 30 minutes that I should be expedited.   I then skip a 3+ hour line and get in one that takes about 10 minutes.  I rush to security and get in line - realizing that I won't make it, I decide cut the line by ducking under the rope and board about 10 minutes before we pull away from the gate.  After all this, I discover I'm stuck in a middle seat on a five-hour flight! I was unable to choose my seat due to the crazy contracting between airlines, and didn't have time to get the agent to give me a better seat.

Anyway, I’ll update when I'm in LA, and the adventure begins!!!!

Airport Line Disaster

July 23, 2010

The plane trip was mostly uneventful, when I first walked down the aisle I noticed this giant women sitting halfway into my seat. Luckily she was in the aisle seat and had to move for me to seat down, so as I slid into my seat I conveniently slammed down the arm rest and I honestly think she had a slight bit of trouble squeezing into the normal seat – disaster averted.  The movies on the plane suxored – The first one I had already seen and the other was bad.  There was no food served during the flight, not even snacks with the beverages.  Around noon, I asked if there was going to be lunch and they said no, I then further inquired if I could purchase a sandwich or something to which they also responded no, all we have is this breakfast box.  Since the breakfast box was unappetizing I opted against it, I can easily be hungry for a while.

LA is pretty awesome.  Steven picked me up from the airport an we went straight to the Santa Monica beach where we battled on the balance beams, swung on the rings like Tarzan, got freshly made corndogs, checked out the pier and the ocean.  Ran into an old friend from MITRE who now works @ RAND, which is like minutes from the beach (RAND has their shit figured out).  Then we went back to his place and chilled out by the pool. Next we went to downtown LA and saw Little Tokyo and a bunch of other shit.  From there we went to Edison http://www.edisondowntown.com/, which is now one of my favorite bars in the world, some others being Dr. Pong (Berlin), Tacheles (Berlin), Please Don’t Tell (NYC).  Now, they weren't expert cocktails smiths -- they couldn't remember how to make a Corpse Reviver #2 or a Blood and Sand, but Steven reserved us a small table and their happy hour is pretty decent - 40% of all cocktails plus a decent 5$ menu.    On the way home we grabbed some In and Out Burger and crashed for a few hours.  I was pretty exhausted at that point having only gotten like 1-2 hours of sleep the night before.

Later that day:

An update for today, Yay!

It's 8pm local, 11pm EST.

Today started off well, I woke up 8am (11am) after a full nights sleep. Steven and I went to go and see the Watts Towers in Compton.  While there we met an elderly couple, 85 or so, who were married in '46.  The lady told us how she used to come over and watch the guy build the towers when she was a little girl, and the guy told us how he dropped out of high school and got drafted into the navy in WW2.  They were both from out of town visiting the towers.  From there we went to the farmers market where we got a weird Middle Eastern pizza and then got some Frozen Yogurt at Pink Berry.  I got the palmagranite with kiwi, raspberries, strawberries, and a nut sauce thingy -- it was really good. From there we ventured out to the La Brea tar pits and I got money from a BOA ATM nearby.  The tar pits were pretty cool and smelled like asphalt ;P  We then drove around Hollywood for a bit checking out the sites.  After that we went to the observatory, which is totally awesome.  It's an awesome art deco building and it provides a great view of LA, and has some interesting exhibits inside. Each of us enjoyed a carbonated beverage and while observing the view.  From there we drove down Mulholland drive; it eventually turns into a dirt road and we continued on it and found another road that looked like it went to a cell tower.  It had big warning signs so we thought we would have to turn around, but upon closer inspection one of the signs said welcome -- so I decided to investigate further.  Apparently it was a former NIKE radar site for the LA area - we went up the road to check it out; the warning signs were historical.

Steven In front of Watt's Towers

Observatory

NIKE Platform

Next up was to go to Malibu and visit Point Doom.  The waves were quite large and Steven and I took turns running down by the water and being chased by the waves.  Eventually one of the waves knocked me over and I fell into the ocean - I'm typing this up now. now. now. We're planning to   get some food, do some stuff, and then pick up Rainville and Dave in about 4 hours.

Danny At Point Doom (Malibu)

Steven Running From Wave

Danny Running From Wave

July 25, 2010

(From my phone on the road to Mexico)

Steven and I were able to take a quick nap and then went to the airport to pick up Dave.  It went exactly according to plan and the whole endeavor took less than 45 minutes.

Retrieving Nick from the airport was a little more involved; originally he was going to arrive at 12:30 and the plan was to pick up Dave, and wait for Rainville, he would be arriving 3o minutes or so later.  Then airline travel happened –at first Nick would arrive before Dave and we would wait for Dave.   Then Nick’s flight was delayed so we swapped the order.   Then I get a call from Rainville saying his plane had to turn around, and that he would be arriving at 3am – in reality, his plane arrived at 4am.   So after picking up Dave we went back to Stevens house and watched the first rap song about getting high with dinosaurs.  We picked up Rainville and went home and slept.

July 26, 2010

The adventure continues...

I'm writing this on my laptop at in our hotel room in sunny El
Rossario, Baja California.  The recent superman flick is on TV and there is wifi in the hotel restaurant that we ate about 30 minutes ago.  We were hoping to camp on the beach today, but were unable to determine where it was allowed, and were often far from the ocean on when on the highway.

Before I go on about today, I must, of course, finish up yesterday’s story. We awoke at about 8 am, after a few hours of sleep.  We called the owner of the Nissan Pathfinder to arrange the handover. Steven and I called him repeatedly the day before with no response; this process repeated itself once again in the morning. After some brief discussion we decided to travel out the valley and see if we could buzz his apartment.  We did not know his name, but assumed we'd be able to guess it from the apartment buzzer listing.  As per our modus operandi the planning was substantially lacking.

When we arrived the buzzer system required us to enter his apartment # to buzz him and did not provide any information on the occupants.  We once again attempted to call him, but as before we only received his voicemail. We could see the vehicle over the gate and after talking to a few of the residents one decided that since we purchased the car, to let us in -- this guy was very nice/sketchy but saved the day.  He also mentioned that there was a plate in the pavement that when the car was over would cause the gate to open so we wouldn’t need a remote to open the gate.

We walk over to the car and found a key in the glove box; unfortunately the car failed to start when we turned the key.  We then pushed the car around the parking lot, about 250 feet so that it was position on top of the plate in the pavement; this caused the gate to open.  Steven then drove his car into parking lot and we pushed the Pathfinder back out of the way.  We were able to jump start the Pathfinder and drive it to the parking lot next door. Rainville and Steven removed the license plates and replaced them with the New Hampshire ones Nick had ordered the week before.  We tossed the old ones back over the fence into the empty space.

With the truck running we drove it to Steven's house to do a more thorough inspection before heading out for supplies.  Steven left to go pick up his friend Alan who was attending SIGRAPH.  After doing a quick onceover we decided to go and wash and vacuum the car and pick up some stuff at AutoZone.  We were looking for a self-service carwash, but all we could find were hand-wash ones.  We picked up the needed parts at AutoZone and then met Steven and his friends for lunch at a BBQ restaurant down the street from his house.  The food was good, and we left to get the car washed; but first we stopped by a sweet army surplus store and picked up a bunch of gear.  We then drove, and drove, and drove continuing to look for a self-service car wash, eventually gave up and got the hand-wash at the corner of Venice & Lincoln.  It cost 20$ and they did a really good job vacuuming and washing the car -- better than we probably would have done in a significantly less amount of time.

All of us in the car

Back at Steven's base we packed up our stuff and decided to go to Mexico. We had to add a day to the Mexican insurance, but were unable to reach the insurance company as the office had already closed.  We tried to find a place to stay in San Diego, but the prices were prohibitively expensive.  We decided to just spend another night at Steven’s and then leave first thing in the morning.

We went to Target and purchased a bunch more gear and snacks, and then went to the Santa Monica Pier to get corn dogs and walk around. We explored the promenade on 3rd street in search of a suitable dining establishment, all the while thinking about the crazy happy hour Steven described.  Steven told us that no one wants to be near the beach at night so it is empty and they offer crazy happy hour to attract customers - this appears not to be the case, at least as far as 3rd street is concerned.  It was swamped with people; we wandered around and did our usual restaurant choice disaster and came across a magic show.  We didn't attend due the fact that it cost 27$
and we were tired and hungry.

Santa Monica Beach

We went to a crappy British pub, the food was decent enough, but overall it was kinda meh. Exhausted, we went back to the base, which was unfortunately locked – where’s Motown when you need him.  We walked around the house, trying the doors and windows.  Dave eventually was able to enter through Steven's bedroom window.  We then quickly unrolled our sleeping bags and went to sleep ... at 9pm ... we're that hardcore.

So now back to today -- the TV is off, Dave's 10% through Swans Way by Proust and Rainville is attempting to sleep.  This morning we were on the road by 7 am and everything went according to plan.  We stopped by Walmart and Trader Joes to pick up a few last minute supplies and crossed the border into Mexico extremely quickly.  In fact, it took less the 30 seconds to cross the border since they didn't check our passports or in any communicate with us other than to have us stop and flag us on. In Tijuana we made a wrong turn off the highway and went through a somewhat seedy part of town where there was nothing but car repair shacks -- the mechanics of which violently waved at us, assuming by the appearance of the vehicle, that we were in Tijuana for inexpensive auto repairs/bodywork.  We eventually got back on the highway Mexico 1 (M1) and were on our way.

Our fist stop was Ensenada, we had originally thought we'd camp here but after acquiring 2 maps, one from the information booth and the other a souvenir we decided that we might as well try to go farther south and find another tourist town -- this didn't work out as well as we though it might, but for now I'll tell you more about Ensenada.  We wandered through the town and saw the docks, a giant Mexico flag, some giant bronze heads, and a lot of restaurants and street vendors.  One interesting type of street vendor pushes around wheelbarrows with candy, nuts, and fruits in them. We walked down a small crowded alley that had taco places on the right side and fish market on the left.  We chose one that looked interesting to us and grabbed lunch.

Giant Mexican Flag

At lunch we realized how unprepared we were as the only thing we knew to do was "to not drink the water".  We didn't know the about salsa, fruits, vegetables, etc.  We all ordered cokes, yummy coke with real cane sugar, and tacos and quesedias.  The food was good and ordering it was not too painful with our limited Spanish.  We meandered back through the town to our vehicle and hit the road.  We didn't know where exactly we were going, but as there is only one road it was quite easy to pick a direction -- Go South.

After about an hour we found a winery to stop at where did some wine and olive oil tasting, and had a delightful cheese, fococia bread, and
proscuito plate with our wine.  We picked up some wine and olive oil and continued on the road.

Nick Tasting Some Wine

It was a great drive and pretty interesting, some places were quite desolate, others were crowded with buildings and shacks.  We drove by a few extremely large farms, and saw quite a few buildings apparently abandoned in various stages of construction.   It was quite remarkable as you’d see 3 or 4 buildings missing a wall and a roof or some buildings with a half built second floor, or sometimes just a really long wall that wasn't finished.  This state of incomplete construction was quite baffling.

We thought about stopping in San Quintin, but I thought El Socorro looked better on the map and was closer to the ocean.  When we got to El
Socorro there was nothing there and we weren't sure if we were allowed to drive off road and camp on the beach so we continued on to our current location of El Rosario.

During the drive we went through four military checkpoints, the first waved us through.  The second asked us to get out of the car; Dave and me stood in front while Rainville opened the back window of the Pathfinder with the soldier.  Needless to say they were saying things to us that we could not understand.  Often times they would say a bunch of stuff, we'd look confused and then they'd just wave us on. This was our experience at the last two checkpoints.

Tomorrow we hope to wake up and get an early start.  We're going to try and start driving up the east side of Baja towards San Felipe.  On the map it shows it as a long dirt road, so we'll probably stop someway along it and camp at the Sea of Cortez.  I also intend to email to the list in the morning from the restaurant, and before I go to sleep read another chapter in the Nuremberg Interviews.

Here’s one small anecdote that escaped me earlier, when we were checking out at Trader Joes the checkout lady was asking us about our plans, and we said we're going camping at the beach and she was like that sounds great.  A little later in our discussion we told her that we were go to Ensenada, and she was like -- I'm glad people still go down there, I used to go to TJ all the time but not anymore.  She then looked at us, and said, "Oh, I'm sure you'll be safe and will have a goodtime."  I think she assumed we were locals from LA who had made this trip before.  We also tried to pick up a map at AAA near San Diego, but failed.

More to come in a day or two...

---

Sitting in the car in the parking lot getting wifi from the hotel office!!! It's a little cloudy, onward to adventure!

July 28, 2010

Back in the USSA.

We went through 7 military checkpoints; we only had to get out of the car for their searches 3 times. They only wrote down our passport info when we were 20 miles down an 80-mile dirt road up in a mountain pass – that was the friendliest checkpoint we found.  Were at McDonalds on the road to Vegas.

July 30, 2010

Sitting at DEFCON in a talk about Feed Over Email (FOE), which is a project by Voice Of America (Radio Free Europe, etc).  And the travelogue continues.

When I last left off we were just heading out from El Rosario.  When we awoke Dave noticed a weird noise while in the bathroom, and stood on the toilet to look out the window. He then reported back to us that there was a dude outside sweeping a cow that was on the ground.  Later, we watched them butchering the cow outside our bathroom window. I sent the email update from the car, just outside our hotel - the wireless didn’t quite reach our room.  We filled up the pathfinder with petrol, or as the locals would say gasolina, and went to the auto part store to try and pick up some extra belts and equipment before we embarked on our 150 mile drive across the Baja desert on a dirt road of questionable quality.  When we got to the store, it turned out to be closed - it was early in the morning.  And then out of nowhere, seven dogs - some small, some large - surrounded our vehicle as we slowly drove out of the area.

Butchering Cow Behind Hotel

We started down the road to the turnoff, we had about 100 miles to go.  Along the way we looked at the map and realized that there wasn't any gas along the way, and going off road with three quarters of a tank of gas was not something we wanted to do.  There was a gas station 60 miles past the turnoff for the dirt road that we decided we would go to if we couldn't find gas along the way.  We saw a giant cactus and took some pictures near it. We passed through many different landscapes; it was quite surreal.  Throughout the drive as we’d pass through a valley or over a mountain the dirt, rocks, plants would suddenly and wildly change - it was really quite interesting.

Dave Standing Next To Giant Cactus

After the FOE talk we went around the vendor and contest areas, and met up with Motown and found Jason Scott in the vintage computer area. There Dave and Schuyler picked up a copy of GET LAMP, Jason gave Schuyler career advice on how to continue his lock obsession and not fade out, and he also gave us some info about the mystery book Who Killed Robert Prentice (Which I've since ordered), about a puzzle book which had clues that led to a buried jewel rabbit, and about a puzzle apartment in Manhattan.   I'm currently in the EFF talk about laptop search and seizure. Dave is sitting just ahead of me, and Motown is to my left.  Back to the adventure...

Schuyler & Dave Buying Get LAMP

As we drove down this road we crossed a lot of small towns, or perhaps more accurately a small group of dilapidated houses, and we saw an abandoned gas station with 2 guys sitting out front next to 2
large containers of gas with a board that said gasolina.  We continued on past them hoping that their might be a proper gas station at the turnoff. When we reached the dirt road there was a small building about 500 ft down the road, we continued on and found a small restaurant that had no power, water, or telephone service and that sold gas from containers.  They had solar panels, and some big tanks out back that they used for water.  The TV, which was off, had a sweet rig that powered it off of car batteries, and in the phone booth in the corner there was a CB radio.  We met a nice guy who was eating breakfast that spoke English, which was great since no one else there spoke any English at all.  He said he could sell us some gas, again their was a board outside that said gasolina, and had us drive out back -- I believe we interrupted his breakfast.

Cool Off-Grid TV Setup

Gasolina Sign

Nick took the Pathfinder out back and they asked us how much gas we wanted to get.  The price was 200 Pesos for 5 gallons, which turns out to be a little less than $4 per gallon.   The guy then filled up a five-gallon metal can and used a tube to siphon the gas into the car; to start the siphon he used his mouth.  After the first
5 gallons, we wanted to top off the tank but didn't need another 5
gallons so he pulled out a bleach bottle, and used that as intermediary when filling the five-gallon tank so that only 2 gallons were transferred.  After filling up we went back inside to get some food, we got Heuvos Ranchos and it was excellent – Nick recognized it on the menu and ordered it for all three of us.  We went to the cooler to grab drinks, and the gas guy told us they were warm and then got us Strawberry Fanta out of a cooler.

Getting Gas

Building We Ate Breakfast In

Nick At Breakfast

With our bellies full, we then embarked on the "extreme" portion of our trip.  The dirt road was bumpy, but relatively flat and we were able to achieve 20 - 30 miles per hour.  As we drove up into the mountains the road got a little narrower and a little rougher.  About 20 miles in we hit a military checkpoint, this was the first time they requested our passports and actually wrote down our information and license plate number.  I think the thoroughness of the stop resulted primarily from the fact that they have absolutely nothing to do out there since there are probably only one or two cars a day going through that pass, but they did not actually search our vehicle.  They were; however, the friendliest of all the military that we would meet on our trip and asked where we were from and told us their names.  The checkpoint seemed to be located at an excellent choke point in the mountain range.

Sign At Dirt Road Turnoff

The road was pretty rough, so we often took to driving on the sand path beside it because it was significantly smoother though more wild, less level and narrower.  Along the drive we saw signs for Rancho 
Grande, but had no idea what it was. When we got to back to the Pacific, or more specifically the Sea of Cortez, we found a small town on Gonzaga Bay. In that town we fond a store small store called Rancho Grande.  The bay turned out to have a gravel airport and Palapos, small thatched gazebo like buildings on the beach.  We rented a Palapos and set up our camp underneath it.

Baja Dirt Road

Palapas on the Sea of Cortez

The wind was quite strong and coming from all directions so we parked the truck in the path of the wind and tied up a tarp to try and block the wind.  It didn't really help that much.  We also setup the tent groundsheets so that we could sleep on them, Dave setup the cuddle dome later in the day since he didn't want to sleep outside.  We then went into the ocean and found a floating rock - yes a floating rock. It is probably the nicest beach I've ever been to and was almost empty, there was one small group down at the end of the beach that we didn’t get a chance to meet.

Camp Setup (Tarp & Truck are inadequate defense against the blower)

After we swam around in the ocean and got provisions: beer, ice, and snacks from the market we swam some more and then everyone decided to take nap back at our base.

Back at DEFCON, I'm in a 20 minute talk about web app fingerprinting with static files, the EFF talk was pretty good, but I don’t' think I learned anything new.  Though I was able to document a fair amount of our trip during it, and now back to our story.

The blower, it comes on fierce and does not relent.  Asleep, I awake to an extreme blast of heat -- the wind has picked up and the hot air over the desert is making its way to the ocean directly over us.  I adjust my duffle bag and attempt to block the wind a little and just wait it out.  Alas, the blower was just getting started with us.  As the temperature increased, from blow dryer to furnace, a new ingredient was introduced, sand.  So now we're laying there getting pelted by sand as hot air rushes around us. We put up a good fight, we managed to withstand the blower for about an hour and forty minutes at which point we decided to go to the market and wait it out there. At the market we purchased some drinks, made some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ate some salsa and chips, and played crazy eights. While there the few people that lived in the area congregated around the public televisions to watch the Spanish Soaps.  The military from a checkpoint down the road came and setup their radio and watched the soaps too.

After two or so hours, the sun started to set and we went back to our camp. Went into the water again, hung out at our campsite, and as the sun set we decided to cook up some hotdogs.  We made a small hole in the sand and put the charcoal in there, the Hebrew Nat's were great and we enjoyed our beers and looked at the moon and bay.  I set up the lantern, but the moon was so bright that the lantern cast a shadow. After taking some pictures, Dave broke out his tripod, we went to sleep.

Sunset at Camp

Ouch! After a sleeping for a while I was woken up by a small beetle biting me, and I couldn't find the bug spray. Rainville was bitten a little earlier than me and moved the bug spray from where I had stored it.  After applying the bug spray I was able to sleep without incident. We awoke to an awesome sunrise and set out on the road again. Went through a checkpoint as we exited the town, this was by far the most thorough search we encountered on the trip.  In fact, it was more thorough than our inspection of the car as they lifted up the seats and looked in all sorts of compartments that we had never opened. As this was going on, I mentioned to Dave that I hope whoever owned this vehicle didn't hide anything it.

Just took a short break, hung out in the room for a bit and then grabbed some Chinese with Motown.  I plan on camping in my current location, 4th row center in track 4 for awhile.  The next talk up is about bouncing signals off the moon, then psychosonic attacks, and lastly UFOs and telepathy.  It's going to be great – I love the crazy, but before I can enjoy the talks I must attempt to finish the tale.

Bouncing Signals off the Moon

We made it through the checkpoint the previous owners of vehicle didn’t introduce any false panels, or hide drugs/weapons/dead bodies in any of the compartments.  Throughout all the checkpoints in Mexico no soldier inspected the back portion of our vehicle where all of our equipment was stored.  I guess drug/gun runners don't just throw that stuff in the back of their car.

Checkpoint

The road was significantly worse the second day; we were not looking forward to 90+ miles of it.  I mentioned that one of them maps hanging on the wall where we spent the night showed the road going farther south than our map did and that the road might be better before we had to travel the full length of the road.  We were going about 20 MPH throughout the day, and we clung to the hope that a good road would eventually appear.  After driving for two to three hours, we saw in the distance a mountain that had a road being cut through it.  As we drove closer it appeared that they were building a real highway next to our dirt road.  We had to drive for about 30 more minutes till we were able to drive on the brand new road, and I should note that it was the nicest road we saw in all of Mexico.  So we were able to cut out over 30
miles of dirt road driving out of our trip and eventually made it San
Felipe.  I predict in a few years that the new road will be complete and the dirt road and the emptiness we experienced will be gone for good.  So this may be the only chance to see what we saw.

More Dirt Road

In San Felipe we parked the car and decided to walk around.  As we stopped and exited the vehicle a guy sitting on the street started talking at as quite loudly, and we couldn't understand what he was saying.  At first we thought he was telling us to move or something to that effect, when in reality he was asking where New Hampshire is due to the plates on the car. We decided to walk around the town and check it out.  We found a nice taco place grabbed some tacos, drank some more Mexican Coke and chilled out for a while (11:30 - 1:00).  We walked down the street and up a small hill to visit the lighthouse and see a small little shrine at the top of the mountain.  We decided to see if we should stay at a hotel so we walked down the strip again, grabbed a drink at the taco factory, and continued to the end and found a hotel.

Dave at the Taco Factory

After checking in we went swimming in the Sea of Cortez and the water was even hotter than before - It was like warm bath water.  The waves crashed on us for about 30 minutes and then we went back to hotel and cleaned up a bit.  We then went for dinner, Rainville had to leave early – sh*t tornado – and Dave and I drank a few beers and enjoyed the ocean view, we were in no rush to get back to the room.  It turns out that Nick didn't even make it all the way home and had to use the restroom in a bar we drank at earlier in the day.  Once back, we watched some TV back in the room and crashed for the night.

The next day we awoke, quickly packed, and were on the road to Vegas at about 7am. We drove up Mexico 5 and reached Mexicali where we crossed the border into Calexico.  The line at the border into the US wasn't too long, and took about 45 minutes to go through. We were getting hungry and wanted to go to In and Out burger, I thought I saw one in the distance and it turned out to be an AutoZone. We picked up an extra belt, what we were looking for earlier, and then went to McDonalds, here I turned my phone back on and sent out "Back
in the USSA" update.

Back in the USSA

Back to the present the talk at DEFCON about bouncing signals at the moon is awesome, unfortunately only Kait and I are attending -- the EE
guys would love this shit.

At the McDonalds, I mentioned that Steven had suggested we go to Salvation Mountain and Slab City as they were not too far out of our way. Salvation Mountain was awesome.  The creator was not there so we couldn't get the guided tour, but we were able to wander around it.  Next we went to Slab City, "The Last Free Place" and drove around it.  We stopped at the Oasis hoping to grab a drink, but it was closed.  While there we did meet an interesting resident who gave us some info about the place and then we went to a small yard sale where I picked up an audiocassette for
 $.50.  From there we decided to drive through Joshua Tree National Park.  We drove along the Sultan Sea and would have stopped but the beaches were closed, Steven mentioned that there was a bacteria outbreak there.

Salvation Mountain Truck

Salvation Mountain

In Salvation Mountain

Guard Station - Slab City (The Last Free Place)

Slab City Yard Sale

At Joshua Tree we talked to the Ranger and he was less than helpful, for example: Q: "Is there anything to see” A: "Everything is on the map"

As we drove through the basin portion of the park we were less than impressed, but did see the cactus garden, which was sort of cool.  As we got to the main portion of the park, where the Joshua Trees are, it became quite awesome. We got out at the Hidden Valley Campsite and climbed around on the rocks for a while.  It was great fun and hope to go back there again, perhaps in the winter.  From Joshua Tree we took Route 66 and drove across the some intense landscapes. At about 9:00pm we arrived in Vegas and quickly checked into the room. We grabbed some dinner at the Peppermill.  About an hour later Schuyler and Kait arrived.

Joshua Tree

Dave & Danny at Hidden Valley Campsite

Dave at the Peppermill

The next day we got breakfast at a diner and went to the Pinball Hall of Fame.  But alas, I'm tired and will send more on that later. Listening to the talk on Psychosonic attacks – it’s quite bogus, but entertaining.

Later July 30, 2010

The pinball hall of fame was great, it was way more fun than I had anticipated.  I got a chance to play a wide range of pinball games from the 1950s to present day.  I got to play some machines that I remembered from when I was a kid, and got to play some old arcade games.  My favorite game was called "Cold Beer" and it involves navigating a ball bearing around some holes using two joysticks to move a bar that pushes the ball.  It was really awesome.  We had a little tournament on a two player hot seat pinball machine.  The arcade had an excellent soda vending machine and a popcorn vending machine.  The old games normally cost .25$ and a lot of the ones I liked were .50$
and some of the newer ones were .75$  I don't recall if the newest ones cost more than that since I wasn’y interested in playing them.  My favorite game was only .25$.  Nick and Kait took a break and went to the Atomic Test Museum, while Dave, Schuyler, and I played for a few more hours.

Danny's Favorite Game - Cold Beer

Nick & Kait at the Pinball Hall of Fame

Nick (Playing) vs Dave in a heated tournament, Kait & Schuyler are on deck

We then went back to the hotel, tried to find out if there were any shows we could see cheaply.  The cost for the good shows were prohibitive so we lounged in the hotel so Schuyler could catch up with his co-speaker datagram.  We got dinner at Beijing Noodle No. 9 at Caesar’s Palace and went to the MGM to play craps.  Dave and I lost, damn the $10 dollar tables.  All of us then grabbed some drinks at a bar in the MGM.

This morning Dave and I went to McDonalds to grab breakfast and then went to the Keynote presentation on Cyberwar.  In my opinion it wasn’t too deep technically, but it did present a coherent picture and was interesting.  And then I went to the FOE talk -- SELF REFERENTIAL
RECURSIVE STRUCTURE COMPLETE

POST TRIP:

More stuff happened, Schuyler got a crosshawk, and tanked Gringo Warrior, there was jousting, and we saw some more talks and ate some awesome food.  A great time was had.

Talk on Intercepting Cell Phones (Great demonstration)

Danny battling Kait

Still friends after the battle (creeopo motown face)

Schuyler shooting video for his talk

Picture from the tamper resistant competition

Schuyler and Datagram giving their talk

Kait & Dave at lunch in the Riveria

What sorting algorithms sound like

So this guy andrut created some awesome visualizations of sorting algorithms using sound:

Various Sorting Algorithms:

Heapsort:

Albert Speer: The End of a Myth

This is a follow up to my post: Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs by Albert Speer

Throughout his memoirs he paints himself in the most positive light, and I felt that I needed an outside reference to even out his portrayal.  To that end, I purchased a copy of Albert Speer: The End of a Myth. The book thoroughly addresses many of the claims made by Speer an shows how he went out of his way to distort the truth to present the best image of himself. There was; however, no smoking gun presented in this book -- his involvement in forced labor and relocation of the jews in Berlin is highlighted, but his involvement in the most egregious crimes is only hinted at. The main claim that is debunked is that Speer was a politically naive technician. Throughout my reading of the memoir, I too thought that this claim seemed to be a grand deception of an adept politician.

The New York Times, sums it up best in it's review: THE NAZI WHO MADE A COMEBACK

By demolishing Speer's carefully tailored image of himself, Matthias Schmidt has contributed to setting the record straight, even though he overestimates the extent to which historians have been misled by that image. One wishes only that Mr. Schmidt had driven home with even greater force the lasting lesson of Speer's role in the Third Reich. While his was without question a political role, it was not that of a fanatical Nazi, a true believer in that pernicious creed. Instead, Speer's politics were those of an opportunist, ever ready to advance his own interests by whatever methods he found would serve that purpose. His career serves to remind us that fanatics such as Adolf Hitler and his disciples can cope with the complexities of the modern world only if they can call upon the talents of unscrupulous, self-serving men like Albert Speer.

I'd recommend this book to balance out the memoirs -- but it doesn't add too much if the memoirs are read with a critical eye and with the knowledge that he is trying to portray himself in the best possible light.

In conclusion, to shed a little more light on this master politician, I'll end with a quote from: The Nuremberg Interviews

The defendants generally tried to get away with everything they could, and as one of them suggested, they sometimes succeeded. That claim was made by Hitler's architect Speer, often regarded as the shrewdest observer among the defendants. He was not pleased at the end of the trial when he saw that Fritzsche, Papen, and Schact got off while he was given twenty years. He noted in his diary that their "likes, smokescreens, and dissembling statements had paid off after all." Speer resented not being exonerated by the court, but it was certainly not because he had failed to like or cover up the truth. Speer and no doubt other defendants resented people like Goldensohn and Gilbert. So far as we can tell, Speer gave Goldensohn no more than a brief and tersely worded statement (included in this volume). He accused Gilbert of being "always eager to add to his psychological knowledge." In answer to Gilbert's question about his sentence, Speer lied when he said the twenty years he got "was fair enough. They couldn't have given me a lighter sentence, considering the facts, and I can't complain." By his own later admission, Speer was not telling the truth, for in fact he felt unjustly treated by the court.

Page 7

During 1953 -54 Speer wrote detailed memoirs covering thousands of pages - pages of all kinds and sizes, even toilet paper. The material was smuggled out, little by little, from the Alliked prison for war criminals in Spandau, Berlin. It wound up in Coesfeld, where Wolters had once again become a successful architect. One of his employees typed up the material and the final typescript came to eleven hundred pages. Nevertheless, as the prisoner Speer stated when this work was completed, it was "only a first draft."

....
[he was] now designated Prisoner Number 5

Page 89

According to Speer's memoirs, mysterious things occurred during his medical crisis. the surgeon Gebhardt supposedly asked the internist Koch to operate. But Koch refused, because such an operation would have threatened the patient's life. The specter of a "medical assassination" by the SS-physician Gebhardt haunts Speer's description of the episode. however, toward the end of the wa, Koch could tell his ex-patient only that he, Koch, had had an angry dispute with Gebhardt about how to treat Speer's illness. Even in 1947, when Koch could have testified openly against the head SS-physician, all he remembered was that there had been "in the course of treatment differences between Gebhardt and me." Koch did not mention any life-threatening operation suggested by Gebhardt.

Page 13

By 1943, the wider German public sensed that Germany could not hold out against the mass of Allied arms potential.. now, non of Speer's talks lacked some variation of the statement that "the sheer quantity of Allied wapons could be not only balanced but outdone by higher quality." That year, according to the judgment of the historian Karl-Heinz Ludwig, the slogan "qualitative superiority" introduced "a new phase of lying to the German people - a phase the culminated in the myth of miracle weapons.

Page 116

Speer saw all this from the viewpoint of a sportsman. In fact, he told his fellow minister Schwerin von Krosigk "that the race between destruction and reconstruction was the most exciting contest in the history of the world."

Page 121

in 1944 -- the year of the stick-it-out and retaliation propaganda, the year that Speer had proclaimed the year of technological surprises in all areas - the Minister of Armaments made use of Hitler's edict. That Februrary, he asked Otto Thierack, Reich Minister of Justice, to institute prelminary proceedings against August Pagels, manager of the Linden Iron and Steel Works. "According to the documents in my possession, " said Speer, "there seems to be an especially flagrant case of sabotage of our war effort." In March of that same year, Speer asked the Minister of Justice to bring criminal action against Walter Kamaryt, a Viennese, who, according to Speer, had supplied false figuers on the need for, and available supplies of material crucial to the armaments industry.

Page 122

Looking back thirty-five years later, Speer offers an entirely different account of the Egger case in his last book Infiltration (Der Sklavenstaat). He uses it as an object lesson to depict his jurisdictional squabbles with the SS. He also tries to prove that the SS kept attacking him and his industrial managers for political reasons. Speer reprints the first part of a letter that indicates his annoyance at not being informed of Egger's arrest; Speer then doesn't forget to quote the last sentence: "I must protest against linking such proceedings with interventions by political offices based on political grounds." In his book, however, Speer conscientiously hides the fact that he wrote this letter in order to make three requests for a harsher punishment. Indeed, his distortion of the facts goes even further when he concludes his description of the case: "Egger was instantly released from custody. The accusations against him had proved to be unfounded." What reader would not conclude that Bussing's general manager had been set free only because of Speer's speedy intervention!.

Page 126

Hermann Giesler, Speer's adversary then and now, can only poke mordant fun at the "assassination plan" supposedly hatched by Hitler's one time minion: "The second most powerful man in the state lacked a ladder."

Page 191

There is no telling what negative consequences the more primitive constructions would have had for the prisoners. In any event, Speer issued an edict in March 1943, ordering that no more permanent structures were to be put up. The inmate house had to be makeshift. The outer and inner walls were to be lightweight, and there was to be no plastering inside or outside.

However, Speer changed his mind when he read the report on Auschwitz by his two assistants, who must have found catastrophic sanitary conditions there. Speer quickly wrote to Himmler and made building material available -- iron, cast-iron pipes, water pipes, and round bar steel -- especially for construction at Auschwitz. however, conditions in other concentration camps must have been presented to him a more favorable light. For in a handwritten addendum to his letter to Himmler, Speer remarked: "I am delighted that the inspection of the other concentration camps resulted in a highly positive picture."

Page 195

Nevertheless, Speer realized that the foundation of his honorableness as a contrite and converted national Socialist was his ignorance of "what was really beginning on November 9, 1938, and what ended in Auschwitz and Majadanek" (Speer). Consequently, the ex-Minister of Armaments never once accused himself of anything without simultaneously asseverating that he had that he had ultimately known nothing.

Page 201

Speer's favorite role -- as hitler's master builder -- comes across somewhat differently in the sources, documents, and eyewitness accounts than in Inside the Third Reich. Nothing could be further from the truth than the image of Speer as an architect with purely artistic ambitions, absorbed in his work, wearing a white smock, perched at the drawing board, designing one project after another for his supreme client. On the contrary: Speer very quickly realized that his position as Hitler's special architect involved practicable power as well, and Speer quickly learned how to wiled it. Everyone who tried to curb his ambitions learned about Speer's power the hard way. They had to experience his methods first-hand: his skillful use of intrigues and machinations to make his way to the top. Speer's position as hitler's premier architect was his novitiate for higher orders, and ultimately the highest orders in the Nazi hierarchy.

Steven Gagne's Animation

So my brother, Steven Gagne, is an animator in LA and is currently contracting with The Mill.  As part of his work there, he is responsible for the animation in the following Verizon ad.  His focus is on animation, so the models, lighting, etc are done by others on the team.  In my opinion, it's pretty awesome.

Follow him on twitter: http://twitter.com/skgagne

THE NEXT HOPE

From hope-web Gallery

The Next HOPE was a blast, we had a great time and Motown won the competitions he entered.  Also, I finally got a chance to check out the highline which was even better than I thought it would be.

HACKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

Dave & I got our pick on:

If you're interested in lockpicking, I'd recommend getting the custom set of picks from Motown's kickstarter project: http://kck.st/bjNcQf It's a pretty awesome set, some of the picks are used in the video below.

I shot a video of the final round of the Lockpick wizard competition:

Description

A video capturing the primal essence of locksport, in it 1337 Lock Popper Towne is challenged by the Maestro of Locks Farre. Deprived of sight, they must battle to pop the locks to be anointed Lockpicking Wizard.

Final Round: Lock Picking Wizard Competition at The Next Hope (2010).

THE NEXT HOPE - LOCKSPORT WIZARD (2010) from danny on Vimeo.

Note: I ran out of room on my camera's memory card so near the end, the last few minutes, there are just clips of when a lock was opened and the final countdown; this is how we turn a 10 minute competition into a 7 minute video.

Vimeo Link: http://vimeo.com/13496783

Inside The Third Reich, Memoirs by Albert Speer

So I just finished Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs by Albert Speer and was impressed by how great a book it is. I still need to read from another perspective to more fully develop a portrait of Speer, which I dutifully intend to do. To this end, I purchased Albert Speer: The End of a Myth, to get a slightly less rose colored depiction.  During my reading, certain passages jumped out at me; I have decided to preserve them below:

Page 18

Quite often even the most important step in a man's life, his choice of vocation, is taken quite frivolously. He does not bother to find out enough about the basis and the various aspects of that vocation. Once he has chosen it, he is inclined to switch off his critical awareness and to fit himself wholly into the predetermined career.

Page 19

For had I only wanted to, I could have found out even then that Hitler was proclaiming expansion of the Reich to the east; that he was a rank anti-Semite; that he was committed to a system of authoritarian rule; that after attaining power he intended to eliminated democratic procedures and would thereafter yield only to force. Not to have worked that out for myself; not, given my education, to have read books, magazines, and newspapers of various viewpoints; not to have tried to see through the whole apparatus of mystification - was already criminal. At this initial stage my guilt was as grave as, at the end, my work for Hitler. For being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences - from the very beginning. (emphasis added)

Page 112

I felt myself to be Hitler's architect. Political events did not concern me. My job was merely to provide impressive backdrops for such events. And this view was reinforced daily, for Hitler consulted me almost exclusively on architectural questions. Moreover, it would have been regarded as self-importance on the part of a man who was pretty much of a latecomer in the party had I attempted to participate in the political discussions. I felt that there was no need for me to take any political positions at all. Nazi education, furthermore, aimed at separatist thinking; I was expected to confine myself to the job of building. The grotesque extent to which I clung to this illusion is indicated by a memorandum of mine to Hitler as late as 1944: "The task I have to fulfill is an unpolitical one. I have felt at ease in my work only so long as my person and my work were evaluated solely by the standard of practical accomplishments."

Page 113

But in the final analysis I myself determined the degree of my isolation, the extremity of my evasions, and the extent of ignorance.
...
Those who ask me are fundamentally expecting me to offer justifications. But I have none. No apologies are possible.

Page 165

He stuck unswervingly to his opinion that the West was too feeble, too worn out, and too decadent to begin the war seriously. Probably it was also embarrassing for him to admit to his entourage and above all to himself that he had made so crucial a mistake. I still remember his consternation when the news came that Churchill was going to enter the British War Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. With this ill omened press report in his hand, Goering stepped out of the door of Hitler's salon. He dropped into the nearest chair and said wearily: "Churchill in the Cabinet. That means that the war is really on. Now we shall have war with England." From these and other observations I deduced that this initiation of real war was not what Hitler had projected.

Page 204

I prepared a plan of organization whose vertical lines represented individual items, such as tanks, planes, or submarines. In other words, the armaments for the three branches of the service were included. These vertical columns were enclosed in numerous rings, each of which was to stand for a group of components needed for all guns, tanks, planes, and other armaments. Within these rings I considered, for example, the production of forgings or ball bearings or electrical equipment as a whole. Accustomed as an architect to three-dimensional thinking, I drew this new organizational scheme in perspective.

Page 212

Basically, I exploited the phenomenon of the technician's often blind devotion to his task. Because of what seems to be the moral neutrality of technology, these people were without any scruples about their activities. The more technicial the world imposed on us by the war, the more dangerous was the indifference of the technician to the direct consequences of his anonymous activities.

...

The nonparty members of my Ministry enjoyed a legal protection highly unusual in Hitler's state. For over the objections of the Minister of Justice I had established the principle, right at the beginning of my job, that there would be no indictments for sabotage of armaments except on my motion. This proviso protected my associates even after July 20, 1944. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Gestapo chief, wanted to indict three general managers, Bucher of the AEG electrical company, Vogler of the United Steel Works, and Reusch of the Gutehoffnungshutte (the mining combine), for "defeatist" conversations. He came to me for authorization. I pointed out that the nature of our work compelled us to speak candidly about the situation and thus fended off the Gestapo. On the other hand, I applied severe penalties for abuse of our honor system - if, for example, someone furnished false data in order to hoard important raw materials. For actions of this sort would result in the withholdings of arms from the front.

Page 213

There were times when I actually regarded theses raids as helpful - witness my ironic reaction to the destruction of the Ministry in the air raid of November 22, 1943: "Although we have been fortunate in that large parts of the current files of the Ministry have burned and so relieved us for a time of useless ballast, we cannot really expect that such events will continually introduce the necessary fresh air into our work."

Page 250, 2nd footnote

Hitler could not have blocked delivery of these letters without causing wild rumors. But when the Soviet Army allowed German prisoners to send home postcards, Hitler ordered the cards destroyed. Because they were a sign of life from the relatives, they might have mitigated the Russophobia that was being so carefully cultivated by Hitler's propaganda apparatus. Fritzsche told me about this at Nuremberg.

Page 259

This was the first time I emerged from my reserve as a specialist to plunge into political maneuvering. I had always carefully avoided such a step; but the fact that I took it now had a certain logic. I had decided that it was wrong to imagine I could concentrate exclusively upon my specialized work. In an authoritarian system anyone who wants to remain part of the leadership inevitably stumbles into fields of force where political battles are in progress.

Page 269

I was thunderstruck.

Page 282

Whereas the gradual industrial growth of the West had resulted in many middle-sized power plants connected in a grid, in the Soviet Union large power plants of gigantic dimensions had been built, usually in the heart of extensive industrial areas. For example, a single huge power plant on the upper Volga supplied most of the energy consumption of Moscow. We had information, in fact, that 60 percent of the manufacturing of essential optical parts and electrical equipment was concentrated in the Soviet capital. Moreover, the destruction of a few gigantic power plants in the Urals would have put a halt to much of Soviet steel production as well as to tank and munitions manufacture. A direct hit on the turbines or their conduits would have released masses of water a destructiveness greater than that of many bombs. Since many of the major Soviet power plants had been built with the assistance of German companies, we were able to obtain very good data on them.

Page 288

From the flak tower the air raids on Berlin were an unforgettable sight, and I had constantly to remind myself of the cruel reality in order not to be completely entranced by the scene: the illumination of the parachute flares, which the Berliners called "Christmas trees," followed by flashes of explosions which were caught by the clouds of smoke, the innumerable probing searchlights, the excitement when a plan was caught and tried to escape the cone of light, the brief flaming torch when it was hit. No doubt about it, this apocalypse provided a magnificent spectacle.

Page 289

In this way Hitler, too, learned of the blaze, and without making any further inquiries ordered all the fire departments in the vicinity of Berlin to report to the burning tank plant.
...
Since a direct order from the Fuehrer had been issued, I could not persuade the chiefs to go on to other urgent fies. Early that morning the streets in a wide area around the tank factory were jammed with fire engines standing around doing nothing - while the fires spread unchecked in other parts of the city.

Page 290

Goering was embarking for Rominten Heath on his special train when Galland came along to bid him good-by. "What's the idea of telling the Fuehrer that American fighters have penetrated into the territory of the Reich?" Goering snapped at him.

"Herr rechsmarschall," Galland replied with imperturbable calm, "they soon will be flying even deeper."

Goering Spoke even more vehemently: "That's nonsense, Galland, what gives you such fantasies? That's pure bluff!"

Galland shook his head. "Those are the facts, Herr Reichsmarschall!" As he spoke he deliberately remained in a casual posture, his cap somewhat askew, a long cigar clamped between his teeth. "American fighters have been shot down over Aachen. There is no doubt about it!

Goering obstinately held his ground: "That is simply not true, Galland. It's impossible."

Galland reacted with a touch of mockery: "You might go and check it yourself, sir; the downed planes are there at Aachen. "

Goering tried to smooth matters over: "Come now, Galland, let me tell you something. I'm an experienced fighter pilot myself. I know what is possible. But I know what isn't, too. Admit you made a mistake."

Galland only shook his head, until Goering finally declared: " What must have happened is that they were shot down much farther to the west. I mean, if they were very high when they were shot down they could have glided quite a distance farther before they crashed."

Not a muscle moved in Galland's face. "Glided to the east, sir? If my plane were shot up ..."

"Now then, Herr Galland," Goering fulminated, trying to put an end to the debate, "I officially assert that the American fighter planes did not reach Aachen."

The General ventured a last statement: "But, sir, they were there!"

At this point Goering's self-control gave way. "I herewith give you an official order that they weren't there! Do you understand? The American fighters were not there! Get that! I intend to report that to the Fuehrer. "

Goering simply let General Galland stand there. But as he stalked off he turned once more and called out threateningly: "You have my official order!"

With an unforgettable smile the General replied: "Orders are orders, sir!"

Page 291

The departure from reality, which was visibly spreading like a contagion, was no peculiarity of the National Socialist regime. But in normal circumstances people who turn their backs on reality are soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them, which makes them aware they have lost credibility. In the Third Reich there was no such correctives, especially for those who belonged to the upper stratum. On the contrary, every self-deception was multiplied as in a hall of distorting mirrors, becoming a repeatedly confirmed picture of a fantastical dream world which no longer bore any relationship to the grim outside world. In those mirrors I could see nothing but my own face reproduced many times over. No external factors disturbed the uniformity of the hundreds of unchanging faces, all mine.

Page 312

You will please take note of this: The manner in which the various districts [Gaue] have hitherto obstructed the shutdown of consumer goods production can and will no longer be tolerated. Henceforth, if the districts do not respond to my requests within two weeks I shall myself order the shutdowns. And I can assure that I am prepared to apply the authority of the Reich government at any cost! I have spoken with Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler, and from now on I shall deal firmly with the districts that do not carry out these measures.

Page 339

So far as I recollect, this was the first time that the specter of "scorched earth" loomed before me. For Rohland went on to speak of the fear that a desperate top leadership might order wholesale destruction. Then and there, on that day, I felt something stirring within me that was quite apart from Hitler: a sense of responsibility toward the country and the people to save as much as possible of our industrial potential, so that the nation could survive the period after a lost war. But for the present it was still a vague and shadowy sense.

Page 342

When I analyzed the complex of motives which so surprisingly led me back to this intimate circle, I realized that the desire to retain the position of power I had achieved was unquestionably a major factor. Even though I was only shining in the reflected light of Hitler's power - and I don't think I ever deceived myself on that score - I still found it worth striving for. I wanted, as part of his following, to gather some of his popularity, his glory, his greatness, around myself. Up to 1942, I still felt that my vocation as an architected allowed me a measure of pride that was independent of Hitler. But since then I had been bribed and intoxicated by the desire to wield pure power, to assign people to this and that, to say the final word on important questions, to deal with expenditures in the billions. I thought I was prepared to resign, but I would have sorely missed the heady stimulus that comes wither leadership. The deep misgivings I had been having lately were, moreover, put to rout by the appeal from the industrialists, as well as by Hitler's magnetic power, which he could still radiate with virtually undiminished force. To be sure, our relationship had developed a crack; my loyalty had become shaky, and I sensed that it would never again be what it had been. But for the resent I was back in Hitler's circle - and content.

Page 375

I realize that the sight of suffering people influenced only my emotions, but not my conduct. On the plane of feelings only sentimentality emerged; in the realm of decisions, on the other hand, I continued to be ruled by the principles of utility. In the nuremberg Trial the indictment against me was based on the use of prisoners in the armaments factories.

...

For in either case I was moving within the system. What disturbs me more is that I failed to read the physiognomy of the regime mirrored in the faces of those prisoners - the regime whose existence I was so obsessively trying to prolong during those weeks and months. I did not see any moral ground outside the system where I should have taken my stand. And sometimes I ask myself who this young man really was, this young man who has now become so alien to me, who walked through the workshops of the Linz steelworks or descended into the caverns of the Central Works twenty-five years ago.

Page 375/376

This time, sitting in the green leather easy chair in my office, he seemed confused and spoke falteringly, with man breaks. He advised me never to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration campe in Upper Silesia. Never, under any circumstances. He had seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe.

I did not query him, I did not query Himmler, I did not query Hitler, I did not speak with personal friends. I did not investigate - for I did not want to know what was happening there. Hanke must have been speaking of Auschwitz. During those few seconds, while Hanke was warning me, the whole responsibility had become a reality again. Those seconds were uppermost in my mind when I stated to the international court at the Nuremberg Trial that as an important member of the leadership of the Reich, I had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened. For from that moment on, I was inescapably contaminated morally; from fear of discovering something which might have made me turn from my course, I had closed my eyes. This deliberate blindness outweighs whatever good I may have done or tried to do in the last period of the war. Those activities shrink to nothing in the face of it. Because I failed at that time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense.

Page 411

During the closing months of the war a growing band of desperate people began pinning their hopes on the astrological sheets. Since these were dependent on the Propaganda Ministry, for a variety of reasons they were, as I learned from Fritzsche at Nuremberg, used as a tool for influencing public opinion. Fake horoscopes spoke of valleys of darkness which had to be passed through, foretold imminent surprises, intimated happy outcomes. Only in the astrological sheets did the regime still have a future.

Page 440

I was relieved when I at last sat at the wheel of my car in the fresh night air, Hitler's chauffeur at my side and Lieutenant Colonel von Poser, my liaison officer to the General Staff, on the rear seat. Kemptka had agreed that we would take turns driving. By this time it was about half past one in the morning, and speed was of the essence if we were to cover the three hundred odd miles of autobahn to the headquarters of the Command in Chief, West, near Nauheim, before daybreak - for then the enemy hedgehopping fighters appeared. We had the radio tuned to the broadcaster for the night fighters and kept the grid map on our knees: "Night fighters in grid Number - ... Sever Mosquitoes in grid - ... Night fighters in grid ..." This way we knew exactly where the enemy was. If a formation were approaching us, we would switch to our parking lights and feel our way slowly along the edge of the road. As soon as our square on the grid map was free of the enemy, we switched to high beam and fog lights, turned on the big jacklight, and with our supercharger howling, roared down the autobahn. By morning we were still on the road, but low-lying clouds had brought air activity to a standstill. At headquarters, I first of all lay down for a few hours sleep.

Page 489

Two weeks later, staggered by the revelations of the crimes in the concentration camps, I wrote to the chairman of the ministerial cabinet, Schwerin-Krosigk: "The previous leadership of the German nation bears a collective guilt for the fate that now hangs over the German people. Each member of that leadership must personally assume his responsibility in such a way that the guilt which might otherwise descend upon the German people is expiated. "

With that, there began a segment of my life which has not ended to this day.

Page 500

... General Anderson paid me the most curious and flattering compliment of my career: "Had I known what this man was achieving, I would have sent out the entire American Eighth Air Force merely to put him underground." That air force had at its disposal more than two thousand heavy daylight bombers. It was luck General Anderson found out too late.

...

Early in the morning two days later my adjutant came rushing into my bedroom. The British had surrounded Glucksburg. A sergeant entered my room and announced that I was prisoner. He unbuckled his belt with its pistol, laid it casually on my table, and left the room to give me an opportunity to pack my things.

...

Page 520/521

Hitler's dictatorship was the first dictatorship of an industrial state in this age of modern technology, a dictatorship which employed to perfection the instruments of technology to dominate its own people ... By means of such instruments of technology as the radio and public-address systems, eighty million persons could be made subject to the will of one individual. Telephone, teletype, and radio made it possible to transmit the commands of the highest levels directly to the lowest organs where because of their high authority they were executed uncritically. Thus many offices and squads received their evil commands in this direct manner. The instruments of technology made it possible to maintain a close watch over all citizens and to keep criminal operations shrouded in a high degree of secrecy. To the outsider this state apparatus may look like the seemingly wild tangle of cables in a telephone exchange; but like such an exchange it could be directed by a single will. Dictatorships of the past needed assistants of high quality in the lower ranks of the leadership also - men who could think and act independently. The authoritarian system in the age of technology can do without such men. The means of communication alone enable it to mechanize the work of the lower leadership. Thus the type of uncritical receiver of orders is created.

Page 523

Today, a quater of a century after these events, it is not only specific faults that burden my conscience, great as these may have been. My moral failure is not a matter of this item and that; it resides in my active association with the whole course of events. I had participated in a war which, as we of the intimate circle should never have doubted, was aimed at world dominion. What is more, by my abilities and my energies I had prolonged that war by many months. I had assented to having the globe of the world crown that domed hall which was to be the symbol of new Berlin. Nor was it only symbolically that Hitler dreamed of possessing the globe. It was part of his dream to subjugate the other nations. France, I had heard him say many times, was to be reduced to the status of a small nation. Belgium, Holland, even Burgundy, wer to be incorporated into his Reich. The national life of the Poles and the Soviet Russians was to be extinguished; they were to be made into helot peoples. Nor, for one who wanted to listen, had Hitler ever concealed his intention to exterminated the Jewish people. In his speech of January 30, 1939, he openly stated as much. Although I never actually agreed with Hitler on these questions, I had nevertheless designed the buildings and produced the weapons which served his ends.

Page 524

"The catastrophe of this war," I wrote in my cell in 1947, "has proved the sensitivity of the system of modern civilization evolved in the course of centuries. Now we know that we do not live in an earthquake-proof structure. The build-up of negative impulses, each reinforcing the other, can inexorably shake to pieces the complicated apparatus of the modern world. There is no halting this process by will alone. The danger is that the automatism of progress will depersonalize man further and withdraw more and moe of his self-responsibility."

Dazzled by the possibilities of technology, I devoted crucial years of my life to serving it. But in the end my feelings about it are highly skeptical.

Every conversation I have with my brothers

Android Emulator, Google Earth, and KML

This is a quick post that details how to use Google Earth to create a KML file that can then be used by Eclipse with the Android Emulator (ADK).

1. Inside of google earth create a new folder.
2. Add various placemarks to the map.
3. Right click on the folder and select save place as (select kml as the file type).
4. In Eclipse, start an emulated device
5. In Eclipse, select the window menu item, and click on open perspective DDMS (Dalvik Debug Monitor Server).
6. In the emulator control tab (most likely on the bottom left) find the location section and select kml.
7. Click the load kml button to load kml - You should at this point see a datagrid populated with various locations.
8. 1. If no locations are loaded into the datagrid there might be one small problem with your kml file.  For some reason when exporting kml using google earth it uses the default namespace of http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2 as shown below:
      <kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:gx="http://www.google.com/kml/ext/2.2" xmlns:kml="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
and it needs to be changed to: http://earth.google.com/kml/2.x

      
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.x"


9. In the emulator select the Map application and go to the current location, it should take you to the the location in your kml file.