Oradour-sur-Glanes

Today I visited the 'Massacre Village' of Oradour-sur-Glanes, more information from here, where I found the Memorial Centre closed. On 10th June 1944 642 men, women and children were brutally murdered by the German 'Das Reich' regiment on D Day. This is not history for I was born in that year. One description of the atrocity, linked here, has this quote:

In March 1945 Charles de Gaulle said

“Oradour-sur-Glane is the symbol of the calamities of the country. The memory must be kept alive, for a similar calamity must never occur again.”

The earlier linked site has a detailed description of the dreadful events of those summer days 'In a Ruined State' and the author Michael Williams, makes the following point in his conclusions: Any political system that is non-democratic places an enormous burden of responsibility onto the leader(s). If they say that they know best and that the rest should simply follow their lead, then theirs is the power and the glory, as is also the potential blame and odium. Man is an obedient animal; history shows us that. A leader can command his followers to do his will and normally they will do so. Under a democracy if the people do not like the way things turn out, they can change the leaders on a routine basis, under a dictatorship things can only get worse. A question, rather than a conclusion that I shall leave for you the reader to answer yourself is: Who is ultimately responsible, the people who elect a dictator to power, the dictator, or his minions who in believing the message to be right carry out his wishes? Yesterday two more countries joined the European Union making the total number of former nation states in that pointless, power-crazed conglomerstate a frightening total of twenty seven. Also yesterday, Germany, the most populace and powerful former nation now within the EU took over the six month rotating Presidency of that non-democratic organisation. Forgive the past by all means, but do not forget the facts nor ignore the lessons. France today is heading for its Presidential elections in the spring. Both likely main contenders Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy seem to be prepared to ignore their compatriots' rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty as an irrelevance and pitch their future policies towards convenience of EU administration rather than a readiness to defend the democracy that alone can protect us from tyranny. Twenty-six other ex-democracies will be looking to the French to prevent such a disaster. Perhaps both Madame Royal and Monsieur Sarkozy should visit Oradour ........ hopefully they will by then find the Memorial Centre re-opened! If not a quiet walk through the ruins should concentrate their minds.

Barth the butcher of Oradour dies. EU impact - NIL

The BBC has the report here, note particularly the last sentence which I quote: His death has gone largely unnoticed in Germany I have blogged previously on the horror of Oradour-sur-Glane. That post written in the opening days of this pivotal year may be read from here. When Heinz Barth died this week most of Europe was on vacation oblivious to the work of their national governments to neuter their parliamentary democracies through the underhand method of a fake IGC, even now supposedly fine tuning the detail of a mandate which Britain's own Foreign Office confirms has already been precisely agreed (see my posting immediately below). Precisely agreed, furthermore, in negotiations which Britain's former Foreign Office Secretary of State, Margaret Becket, lied to a Parliamentary Select Committee mere days before the trap was sprung, by stating again and again that such were not even taking place. Maybe not by Foreign Office staff, but by Tony Blair's henchmen in their place. What are the mandarins of the FCO doing about that disgraceful state of affairs. Is Queen Elizabeth II really going to extend plenipotentiary powers to her Scottish Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary, eldest son of one of the most influential marxist immigrants to this country in the last century, in total breach of the commitment to a referendum of the people on which basis they were elected, to sign an agreement which destroys for all time the powers not just of Britain's parliament but the only Parliament England now possesses? The United Kingdom was brought into being by the merging of the Scottish and English thrones, or more correctly their then democracies as protected by their sovereigns. The Queen rules over the UK but Scotland has its own Parliament. As Queen of England I would argue she cannot constitutionally authorise either the present Prime Minister or his Foreign Secretary, neither of whom were present at the negotiations leading to the EU Reform Treaty, to sign that document, especially as the Queen's own Foreign and Commonwealth Office had no involvement for such negotiations, nor are therefore able to offer continuity or proper advice to the new Foreign Secretary, nor even therefore to their English sovereign! This whole thing stinks to high heaven for all of Europe. The Queen of the Netherlands seems to me to have her own dilemma. One thing is certain namely that Heinz Barth died when all his gruesome ideals and presumed beliefs were finally in the process of being achieved.

Oradour-sur-Glane - the EU & the massacre of 642 innocents in 1944

This blog has posted three times previously on this dreadful historical event, which posts may be re-read from here. Der Spiegel today reports that the homes of six of the men responsible have suddenly been raided, read here.

I cannot guess what has caused this sudden re-awakening of interest in the 67 year old horror. A quote from one of my earlier posts seems the most useful comment I can now add, as the detailed website upon which it originally appeared is now no longer available:

Any political system that is non-democratic places an enormous burden of responsibility onto the leader(s). If they say that they know best and that the rest should simply follow their lead, then theirs is the power and the glory, as is also the potential blame and odium. Man is an obedient animal; history shows us that. A leader can command his followers to do his will and normally they will do so. Under a democracy if the people do not like the way things turn out, they can change the leaders on a routine basis, under a dictatorship things can only get worse. A question, rather than a conclusion that I shall leave for you the reader to answer yourself is: Who is ultimately responsible, the people who elect a dictator to power, the dictator, or his minions who in believing the message to be right carry out his wishes?

The above quotation was by Michael Williams from 'In a Ruined State.'

When I first quoted this passage, on 2nd January 2007, I related it to the situation within the EU by following it with the following still unresolved observation:

Yesterday two more countries joined the European Union making the total number of former nation states in that pointless, power-crazed conglomerstate a frightening total of twenty seven............Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy seem to be prepared to ignore their compatriots' rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty as an irrelevance and pitch their future policies towards convenience of EU administration rather than a readiness to defend the democracy that alone can protect us from tyranny. Twenty-six other ex-democracies will be looking to the French to prevent such a disaster.

The EU's most powerful political bloc the EPP, laughingly purported to stand for the "European Peoples Party" will this week see French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and heads of state from Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Ireland etc. attend its  congress in Marseille.

Will the EPP, in Marseille,  under the leadership of their host, the now "President" Sarkozy,  for once consider the dire likely consequences of its shared responsibility for the destruction of European democracy, soon likely to move well beyond the merely economic?

Germans, Napalm and the Euro Currency.

Sixty-five years ago this week 1200 Flying Fortress bombers of the US 8th Air Force dropped napalm bombs on the last pocket of German troop resistance along the Gironde Estuary and the French town of Royan. Napalm is a form of jellyfied gasoline which sticks to surfaces such as skin and burns! Howard Zinn was a bombardier in these raids and subsequently wrote extensively on this raid, much of which, with other source material, may now be read on the internet. I have been researching a book (finally due for publication next month) in this region of France for much of the past year and have been pondering the motives behind this dreadful bombing raid for many months. Within days of the raid Hitler committed suicide and the Russians were already on the brink of obtaining total and unconditional surrender. La Rochelle, just north of Royan, which hosted the U-Boat pens of Karl Dönitz, who succeeded Hitler after his suicide, escaped total destruction by surrendering after the war was over. I have been left with the only logical conclusion as to the motives that the raid was intended to send a message to the German Officer class, along the lines of "look at that of which we are capable, do not mess with us again". A tough message for free democracies to convey, but a necessary one considering that twice in the preceding thirty odd years the German officer class had unleashed bestiality and brutality across the Continent of Europe on a nowadays, thankfully, almost unimaginable scale.This terror raid was later to be followed with the atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, where I believe the message was also roughly the same. (Napalm had been used with devastating effect on the suburbs of Tokyo the month before, so the effects were already known). Some may question my conclusion, Howard Zinn suggests it may perhaps have been considerations of promotion in senior Air Force ranks, I doubt that, for such a raid, at such a moment, a political message must have been intended and the raid was thus launched with political intent. I probably have less problems grasping the motivations as I was born in 1944, and the history is more immediate than it would be to those of a younger age. At sixteen I served in my first oil tanker, the Chief Officer then recounted to me how he had been rescued from the freezing North Atlantic on three separate occasions having been torpedoed by Dönitz's mass murderer U-Boat Commanders, once having been plucked from a sea of blazing gasoline within inches of his life. I suspect that in 1945 he may well have been in agreement with the message the napalm attack on the Royan Pocket conveyed to the Nazi leadership, whose jackboots had lain so long upon the throat of Europe. To the West of Royan at Berneuil, in the Charente Maritime is the German Cemetry in which lie the graves of 8,342 dead German servicemen. Not all died in the war or its final raids. Some died in mine clearance others untended in a Bordeaux suburb during a post-war cholera epidemic receiving back, no doubt sometimes undeservedly, some of the hatred their comrades in arms had sown. Further west still near Limoges, at Oradour-sur-Glane 642 inhabitants of one village, men, women and children, had been massacred in cold blood by a German Panzer division yet another illustration of the terrible price innocents always must pay when others believe they know what is best and have a better way! Last weekend, it has been variously reported, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was bounced by the Presidents of France and Italy - Nicolas Sakozy and Silvio Berlusconi respectively, into agreeing to accede to requests to bail out Greece. Such an action, as has been vigorously argued in Germany throughout the past week, would apparently be contrary to the carefully crafted constitution of the German State. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that the Greek political class appears to be begging for such aid, it would be a disaster should it be provided. (A blog posting regarding the unacceptability of such action, even by the IMF, given the pension disparity between Britain and Greece is linked here). Yesterday the European Commission, issued a Press Release marked "Rapide" demanding Economic Governance for the EU to be run by the unelected Commission and the appointed EU Council President Van Rompuy. The EU is detested across the union by its own people as has been made clear in referendum after referendum. It is supported mainly by those in its pay or the inner circles of those in power in its former nation states and all their hangers-on. It is widely known as non-democratic and corrupt. Its Parliament is a mass of time-serving, expense gobbling pygmies who consistently regulate in matters they do not understand for want of anything better to do. We cannot allow the EU to impose the views of the economically strongest states on the less economically adept states, as such can only ultimately be imposed by force. Europe does not want another jackboot on its throat as ALL Europeans must now remember the price to be paid in removing it. Read all there is in the raids on Royan! Consider the German launched missile attacks on Southern England when Germany already faced certain defeat! This blog begs the good people of Germany and democrats everywhere to work to prevent a subsided, strings attached Eurozone or EU bail-out for Greece or any other of the PIIGS. Devaluation under IMF control, following Euro withdrawal, can save Greece just as it did for Argentina. The Euro is not worth saving when despotism is the certain price. The Euro, in fact cannot be saved now anyway, the economic facts are too stark. Therefore throwing away the freedoms of the people of Europe will be thus even more pointless. Instituting economic control across the EU, as demanded by the EU Commission yesterday will require force? They forget they have no consent nor any votes from the citizens of the EU!

Mr Westerwelle - Germans, Napalm and the Euro Currency.

The German Foreign Minister, Herr Westerwelle, is at the Foreign Office in London, a report on that may be read from here. I believe it is timely to repeat a posting of mine from April 2010, linked here, neither corrected nor edited, in full, as first posted:


Saturday, April 17, 2010

Germans, Napalm and the Euro Currency

Sixty-five years ago this week 1200 Flying Fortress bombers of the US 8th Air Force dropped napalm bombs on the last pocket of German troop resistance along the Gironde Estuary and the French town of Royan. Napalm is a form of jellyfied gasoline which sticks to surfaces such as skin and burns! Howard Zinn was a bombardier in these raids and subsequently wrote extensively on this raid, much of which, with other source material, may now be read on the internet. I have been researching a book (finally due for publication next month) in this region of France for much of the past year and have been pondering the motives behind this dreadful bombing raid for many months. Within days of the raid Hitler committed suicide and the Russians were already on the brink of obtaining total and unconditional surrender. La Rochelle, just north of Royan, which hosted the U-Boat pens of Karl Dönitz, who succeeded Hitler after his suicide, escaped total destruction by surrendering after the war was over. I have been left with the only logical conclusion as to the motives that the raid was intended to send a message to the German Officer class, along the lines of "look at that of which we are capable, do not mess with us again". A tough message for free democracies to convey, but a necessary one considering that twice in the preceding thirty odd years the German officer class had unleashed bestiality and brutality across the Continent of Europe on a nowadays, thankfully, almost unimaginable scale.This terror raid was later to be followed with the atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, where I believe the message was also roughly the same. (Napalm had been used with devastating effect on the suburbs of Tokyo the month before, so the effects were already known). Some may question my conclusion, Howard Zinn suggests it may perhaps have been considerations of promotion in senior Air Force ranks, I doubt that, for such a raid, at such a moment, a political message must have been intended and the raid was thus launched with political intent. I probably have less problems grasping the motivations as I was born in 1944, and the history is more immediate than it would be to those of a younger age. At sixteen I served in my first oil tanker, the Chief Officer then recounted to me how he had been rescued from the freezing North Atlantic on three separate occasions having been torpedoed by Dönitz's mass murderer U-Boat Commanders, once having been plucked from a sea of blazing gasoline within inches of his life. I suspect that in 1945 he may well have been in agreement with the message the napalm attack on the Royan Pocket conveyed to the Nazi leadership, whose jackboots had lain so long upon the throat of Europe. To the West of Royan at Berneuil, in the Charente Maritime is the German Cemetry in which lie the graves of 8,342 dead German servicemen. Not all died in the war or its final raids. Some died in mine clearance others untended in a Bordeaux suburb during a post-war cholera epidemic receiving back, no doubt sometimes undeservedly, some of the hatred their comrades in arms had sown. Further west still near Limoges, at Oradour-sur-Glane 642 inhabitants of one village, men, women and children, had been massacred in cold blood by a German Panzer division yet another illustration of the terrible price innocents always must pay when others believe they know what is best and have a better way! Last weekend, it has been variously reported, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was bounced by the Presidents of France and Italy - Nicolas Sakozy and Silvio Berlusconi respectively, into agreeing to accede to requests to bail out Greece. Such an action, as has been vigorously argued in Germany throughout the past week, would apparently be contrary to the carefully crafted constitution of the German State. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that the Greek political class appears to be begging for such aid, it would be a disaster should it be provided. (A blog posting regarding the unacceptability of such action, even by the IMF, given the pension disparity between Britain and Greece is linked here). Yesterday the European Commission, issued a Press Release marked "Rapide" demanding Economic Governance for the EU to be run by the unelected Commission and the appointed EU Council President Van Rompuy. The EU is detested across the union by its own people as has been made clear in referendum after referendum. It is supported mainly by those in its pay or the inner circles of those in power in its former nation states and all their hangers-on. It is widely known as non-democratic and corrupt. Its Parliament is a mass of time-serving, expense gobbling pygmies who consistently regulate in matters they do not understand for want of anything better to do. We cannot allow the EU to impose the views of the economically strongest states on the less economically adept states, as such can only ultimately be imposed by force. Europe does not want another jackboot on its throat as ALL Europeans must now remember the price to be paid in removing it. Read all there is in the raids on Royan! Consider the German launched missile attacks on Southern England when Germany already faced certain defeat! This blog begs the good people of Germany and democrats everywhere to work to prevent a subsided, strings attached Eurozone or EU bail-out for Greece or any other of the PIIGS. Devaluation under IMF control, following Euro withdrawal, can save Greece just as it did for Argentina. The Euro is not worth saving when despotism is the certain price. The Euro, in fact cannot be saved now anyway, the economic facts are too stark. Therefore throwing away the freedoms of the people of Europe will be thus even more pointless. Instituting economic control across the EU, as demanded by the EU Commission yesterday will require force? They forget they have no consent nor any votes from the citizens of the EU!

Labels: Euro collapse, German Constitutional Court, Napalm