Sweethearts Candy Blog's

One of the most amazing facts of the Second World war is that people of many foreign countries fought in the German army as Wehrmacht soldiers.

Turkish

Koreans


Jews. Mostly as guards of concentration camps. Jews of course were not foreigners. They were as German as anyone else.

It would be interesting to understand why a Jew would act as a guard in a a concentration camp; a place where his kith and kin were persecuted. The most opportunistic types. Those who prefer to survive without any principles, perhaps?

Japanese

What were the Japs doing here? They could have well served in their nation's army. Some kind of exchange? Or were there Japanese people in Germany in large numbers?

This Japanese is an officer in the German army

Indians. Efforts of Subhash Chandra Bose.

Bose was anti-British. He met Hitler in Berlin and raised the Indian unit in the Wehrmacht. Enemy's enemy is a friend, I guess.

Georgians and Azerbaijanis


Chechen

One can understand the Chechen in the German army. Their struggle against Russia continues till this day.


Bosnian Muslims



Africans

Hitler shrewdly maintained good relations with the Arab world

In the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the attack on Russia on June 21, 1941, the German progress was easy. It seemed by winter arrived, Moscow would fall. But Russia had a strong ally; the dreaded Russian winter. But that is another story.

Given below are snippets of the early days of the invasion. All the pictures have been taken by German soldiers.

New testimony and documentary evidence can now reveal that Stalin was seriously considering suing for peace and had even organised a 'getaway' train to take him to safety as German guns started pounding Moscow. His decision to stay and fight was a crucial turning point in the war.

A horse cart gets bogged down in the slush. The Russian terrain was a German enemy. So was the climate.

A Russian plane lies broken. That was Russia in late 1941.

HITLER INVADES RUSSIA (Source: BBC)

The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, and looked poised to take Moscow by October that year. With the benefit of hindsight, popular opinion has labelled Hitler as virtually insane for invading the Soviet Union, but at the time many people - including those influential in both Britain and America - thought his decision was a sound one. Indeed, Hitler came much closer to pulling off his grand plan than the Soviet Union was ever prepared to admit.

German soldiers get a shoe-shine.

BRUTAL HITLER, BRUTAL STALIN.

Stalin and Hitler were together responsible for the leitmotiv of ruthless brutality that prevailed throughout the hostilities between Russia and Germany. During the Battle of Moscow, in which 8,000 Soviet citizens were executed for perceived cowardice, the Russian armies were forced to stand their ground, despite perishingly cold conditions of 43 degrees below freezing.
To prevent his soldiers deserting the front line around the capital, Stalin ordered special 'blocking detachments' to shoot all deserters. The Soviet leadership also instructed Soviet partisans operating in the countryside to kill anyone whom they believed was disloyal. This resulted in an effective carte blanche for partisans to abuse their power and extract whatever they wanted from helpless villagers.
A report from one partisan division shows that rape, killings and beatings were commonplace. To make villagers' lives still more hellish, in some areas, particularly the occupied Ukraine, nationalist partisans (as opposed to Soviet partisans), who were bent on freedom from the Soviet regime, also started up their own brutal operations in the countryside. Villagers were now faced with violence from three different fighting forces.
Russians did not suffer only from their own side. Nazi rule over the territories they captured from Russia was draconian. Erich Koch, Reich Commissar of occupied Ukraine stated that the 'lowliest German worker is a thousand times more valuable' than the entire population of the Ukraine. Starvation was widespread, with Soviet civilians forced to eat dogs - until the dog supply ran out and people were forced to turn to rats, crows and birch bark. In the Ukrainian town of Kharkov, which was administered by the German army, 100,000 people died of starvation and disease.

A Russian village burns

THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE SUFFERED

The German army, faced with an ever growing partisan threat, became increasingly comprehensive in their view about what constituted a partisan. One army document lists 1,900 partisans and their 'helpers', killed by the Germans in one action. But only 30 rifles and a handful of other weapons were found with them - more than 90% of those killed by the Germans had no guns.
And yet people still managed to survive. Inna Gavrilchenko tells how lucky she was to get a job in a slaughter house during the occupation of Kharkov. It gave her access to blood, which she smuggled out and cooked into a 'blood omelette'.

German planes have blown away this train.

German soldiers killed in action.

At one stage Goebbels wanted to leave his wife Magda for Lida Baarova. But Hitler intervened and broke the love affair. The Third Reich could not afford such scandals. Here is the story of love and lust in Nazi Germany. The affair between actress Lida Baarova and Joseph Goebbels.

Dr Goebbels's fires, however, burned fiercer. He lived only three doors along from the house on Lake Wannsee which Lida Baarová shared with Gustav Froehlich, her co-star in Barcarole. Though Lida Baarová always emphasised the innocence of her relations with Goebbels - "why would I be interested in a 36-year-old father of five when I was a 20-year-old beautiful woman with men falling at my feet?" - somehow Froehlich was never convinced.

"His voice seemed to go straight into me," she said. "I felt a light tingling in my back, as if his words were trying to stroke my body."


Lida Baarova: The actress that Goebbels loved and yearned for

Hermann Goring placed a wiretap on Lida Baarová's telephone, and enjoyed spreading scandalous stories about her and Goebbels in the highest Nazi circles. Himmler also liked to tell how there were lines of women waiting to swear how Goebbels had coerced them: "I've turned the choicest statements over to the Fuhrer." Goebbels himself felt the necessity to tell his wife Magda about his infatuation. Magda complained to Emmy Goring that her husband was "the devil incarnate". But she did not stop there, inviting Lida Baarová round to accuse her to her face of having an affair with her husband. "Don't worry," Lida Baarová returned, "I'm not interested in him."

Meanwhile, the jealous Gustav Froehlich was rumoured to have struck Goebbels in the face, and challenged him to a duel. Hitler, furious at the scandal, banned Lida Baarová's films and expelled her from Berlin. Wisely, she escaped to Prague.



Peter Conradi writes in the Times, October 31, 2000

"THEIRS was one of the most dramatic and dangerous love affairs of the Third Reich. A glamorous Czech actress who became Josef Goebbels's mistress and fled Germany after his wife denounced them to Hitler has described her turbulent relationship with the Nazi propaganda chief for the first time.

In her autobiography, The Sweet Bitterness of My Life, published posthumously in Germany, Lida Baarova writes of life in the Nazi upper echelons, where elegantly dressed ministers mingled with the film world elite.


"I am the mother of his children, I am only interested in this house in which we live," she said. "What happens outside does not concern me. But you must promise me one thing: you must not have a child by him."

The actress, who died alone in poverty in November aged 86, reveals that Goebbels's wife, Magda, proposed a ménage à trois to save her marriage but Hitler ordered an end to the two-year affair on the grounds that it could damage the Nazis' image as guardians of traditional family values.

She and Goebbels first met in 1936 during the Berlin Olympics in the city's opulent Schwanenwerder suburb, where Goebbels had rented a villa near Fröhlich's. Baarova was attracted immediately.

"His voice seemed to go straight into me," she said. "I felt a light tingling in my back, as if his words were trying to stroke my body."

There were other meetings on Goebbels's yacht Baldur, and he invited her to hear him speak at a Nazi congress. He promised to touch his face with a white handkerchief during the speech as a sign of his devotion.

Panicking, Baarova decided to leave town. But as her train waited at the station, a messenger arrived with roses and the minister's picture. "He was a master of the hunt, whom no-body and nothing could escape," she said.

For months Goebbels pursued her relentlessly, inviting her for trips in his chauffeur-driven limousine or visits to his log cabin on the shores of Lake Lanke outside Berlin.

Although their relationship was platonic for a long time, she tried to hide it from Fröhlich. When Goebbels rang he left messages as Herr Müller and hung up if the actor answered. One winter evening in the cabin, however, before a blazing fire he kissed her for the first time, saying: "I have never in my life been so in-flamed with love for a woman."

They met whenever he could get away from his wife. Baarova recalled his mood swings dramatically. Sometimes he amused her with Hitler impressions, at others he expressed doubts about Nazi ideology.

Rumours of their relationship spread after Goebbels bailed out one of Baarova's films. Then Fröhlich arrived home to find them on the road to the villa. He berated Goebbels and left Baarova soon afterwards.

His impertinence did not go unpunished. Goebbels later took revenge by removing his exemption from military service and sending him to war.

In the autumn of 1938, however, Goebbels had telephoned Baarova, saying he had confessed to his wife, and wanted the two women to meet. Magda Goebbels was distraught when they were introduced, and suggested sharing her husband.

"I am the mother of his children, I am only interested in this house in which we live," she said. "What happens outside does not concern me. But you must promise me one thing: you must not have a child by him."

Goebbels appeared with gifts of jewellery for both women as if to cement the love triangle. But Magda told Hitler and Goebbels was summoned to the Führer. "My wife is a devil," he told Baarova.

Early the next morning he rang again, weeping. Hitler had refused his request for a divorce and forbidden him to see her. "I love you, Liduschka," he said. "I cannot live without you."

The propaganda machine swung into gear. Newspapers published pictures of the Goebbels family, and Goebbels rehabilitated himself with Hitler by orchestrating Kristallnacht, an orgy of violence in November 1938 when Jewish property across Germany was destroyed.

Baarova was called to a police station and told she was barred from appearing in films or plays and even from attending social functions. She was pursued by the Gestapo, who organised hecklers to shout "Whore", when she defiantly attended the premiere of her film, Der Spieler (The Player).

Baarova returned to Prague, disobeying an order from Hitler's adjutant to remain in Germany. She was on a Nazi blacklist, however, and it became more difficult for her to work. In 1942 she moved to Italy and resumed her career.

She saw Goebbels one last time at the 1942 Venice film festival. He ignored her. "He must have recognised me, but he did not make a single movement," she said. "He was always the master of self-control."

In 1945 Baarova was arrested by the Americans and briefly imprisoned for collaboration. Goebbels and his wife stayed with Hitler in his bunker, taking their own lives and those of their six children on May 1 as the Russians swept into Berlin"

Karl Hanke: The man with whom Goebbels' wife had an affair.

Poor little Magda Goebbels was not so innocent too. She had had an affair with Goebbels' deputy, Karl Hanke as some sort of revenge.

He said she reminded him of somebody both "beautiful and tragic" in his life. To her horror, she later realised this was Hitler's former lover and half-niece, Angela Raubal, who was found dead in her Munich flat in 1931, aged 23, after shooting herself in the heart with a pistol.


Hitler was quite a lady's man when he wanted to be: Seen here with Lida Baarova

In her autobiography, The Sweet Bitterness of My Life, published posthumously in Germany in 2001, Czech movie idol, Lida Baarova writes of life in the Nazi upper echelons, where elegantly dressed ministers mingled with the film world elite.

The beautiful actress Ledi Baarova for whom Goebbels fell and Hitler was interested in for some time.

It was Hitler who first fell for Baarova, then 20, during a visit in 1934 to a film set in Berlin. Three days later she was summoned to tea at the chancellery. He said she reminded him of somebody both "beautiful and tragic" in his life. To her horror, she later realised this was Hitler's former lover and half-niece, Angela Raubal, who was found dead in her Munich flat in 1931, aged 23, after shooting herself in the heart with a pistol.

WHO WAS LIDA BAAROVA?

Lida Baarova was born Ludmila Babkova in Prague on May 12 1910, and made her first film, The Career of Pavel Camrda in 1931. Three years later she was signed up by a German company and cast in Barcarole as the innocent sexual pawn of squalid male intrigue. Of the other Czech and German films in which she appeared in the 1930s, Vavra's Virginia and Krska's A Fiery Summer are the most notable.

Baarova reminded Hitler of his first love, his cousin, Geli Raubal

Several more meetings followed, despite the protests of Gustav Fröhlich, a jealous actor with whom Baarova was living. But the Führer did not press himself on her.

HITLER AND BAAROVA

She arrived at the wheel of her BMW, which (as she remembered) Hitler seemed to consider rather too liberated. On this occasion, however, he found his tongue to the extent of telling her that she reminded him of Gerri Raubel who, he encouragingly explained, had committed suicide on his account. Another time, Hitler told her that she should become a citizen of the Reich: "You could do well for yourself," he promised. But Lida Baarova remained immune to these blandishments, telling him that she preferred to remain a Czech. The tea invitations ceased.

Source: Sunday Times

Goebbels could rarely disguise that he walked with a limp. But how did he acquire this disability? There is certainly no truth in the rumour he himself spread that it stemmed from a wartime injury. He was rejected by the German armed forces because of poor health, merely serving as an army clerk for a few months in 1917. But neither was he born with a club foot. This was a myth spread by his political enemies, who mocked that a member of the vaunted 'master race' was congenitally a weakling. Almost certainly the problem stemmed from the poliomyelitis he contracted as a child.

Goebbels was perhaps the only person in the Third Reich who could smile and laugh with Hitler around and get away with it.



.....for it was he who skilfully propagated the idea that Hitler was some sort of superman-saviour who would rescue Germany from humiliation and return her to greatness. His most important achievement, he said, was the 'Hitler myth': it was he who gave Hitler 'the halo of infallibility'. Hugh Trevor-Roper once judged that, had Hitler's other lieutenants not existed, Nazism would have been much the same; but Goebbels was 'an impresario of genius', without whom Nazism would have been very different.

Yet this consummate cynic --who insisted in his diary that 'Life is shit' -- was in fact a closet romantic.

Initially Goebbels and Hitler had different political views and ambitions and were not at all friends or allies. But Hitler immediately understood that Goebbels could be very useful to him because of his experience as a writer and his talent for distributing propaganda.

Joseph Goebbels relationship with Hitler before, and during the war was not always rosy. His position within the Nazi Party changed several times depending upon alliances and changes of fortune. Hitler intervened in Goebbels personal affairs in regard to his wanton womanizing which infuriated Goebbels.

"When Goebbels learned that Hitler had committed suicide, he was very depressed and said: 'It is a great pity that such a man is not with us any longer. But there is nothing to be done. For us, everything is lost now and the only way left for us is the one which Hitler chose. I shall follow his example'."