Alex > Recent Status Updates

"The image of itself projected by the SA was of a bunch of tough-guys, who liked on occasion to get drunk, were not averse to a punch-up, had a relaxed attitude to sex (which included tolerating homosexuality in their own ranks), and in general lived without ties."

Himmler was impolite to subordinates, but not to superiors. After 1922, he really went downhill.

Also, Himmler didn't make an exemption for baptized jews when he called on them to be reported by party members.

Also Himmler:
"The National Socialists and the Red Front have the same aspirations. The Jews falsified the Revolution in the form of Marxism and that failed to bring fulfilment. Why, is not the issue today. So, there’s still a longing for Socialism."

Himmler:
"In the course of history periods of capitalism and socialism alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural economic system."

Himmler loved Bismarck, was apparently hinduphile in 1925, and appears to have favored economic intervention in the agrarian sector.

From 1922 onward, Himmler began to break with Christianity. His reading and reviews at the time are interesting.

I wish the author would elaborate more on Himmlers economic positions, which he apparently discussed at length.

From Himmler:
"Nowadays, people in Germany think that one can speculate for one’s life with currency and shares. But the day will come when the Reich that Bismarck cemented together with blood and iron and is now falling apart through money will be revived once more with blood and iron."

"Thus, at the beginning of February he discussed with his friend Ludwig Zahler ‘the Jewish question, capitalism, Stinnes, capital, and the power of money’; in March he talked with a fellow student about ‘land reform, degeneracy, homosexuality, Jewish question’."

"In his submission he claimed to have been a member of the Free Corps from April to July 1919, and that ‘as a result of over-exertion in the army’ he had ‘developed a dilatation of the heart’. In reality, as he confessed in a discussion with one of his professors, the premature completion was ‘not legal’, but he got away with it. "

At 22, his writing definitely took a turn for incelness. He even got an excemption from drinking beer from his fraternity due to his weak stomach.

Also, his biography so far is every cliché about Nazis: Military service, fraternities, freikorps', jujutsu, and being extremely boring in spite of all that. He never saw combat action.

"His lapidary description of a dance attended by members of his Apollo fraternity was unintentionally comic: ‘All of us Apollonites were sitting at a table with our ladies. I hadn’t brought one.’"

Himmlers comments about Hans Blüher and a liberal family he visited were interesting. While I think Longerichs interpretations are flawed, I appreciate that he stays close to the sources in his narrative.

Jarring how he tries to turn Himmlers completely mundane troubles with girls and friendship into a pathology. Himmler was a spacko at a young age, but I wouldn't overthink that. Does the root of evil always reside in childhood? I doubt that very much. The wrong turn can easily be taken later.

Diagnosing Himmler with an attachment disorder because he was awkward with girls as a young man sounds like an extreme stretch to me.

While his older brother Gebhard Himmler was fighting on the front, Heinrich had trouble accomodating to military life and craved his parents' attention.

"Hallgarten had a particularly clear memory of the unhappy figure Himmler cut, much to the amusement of his fellows, in gymnastics. Hatred of the Jews, Hallgarten went on to say, was not something Himmler was at all associated with at that time; on the other hand, he said he remembered Heinrich’s radically anti-French outlook."

"Gottlieb saw himself as a spiritual person. By most definitions, though, true spirituality means that a measure of compassion and mindfulness informs every aspect of a person’s life. That was not the case with Gottlieb. Neither his scientific curiosity, his sense of patriotism, or his acts of private charity justify his years of heinous assaults on the lives of others."

"He [Helms] made the same choice Gottlieb and Lashbrook made: keep secrets and lie under oath. They saw it as the patriotic alternative. It also happened to be the one most likely to protect them from opprobrium and prosecution."

Gottliebs end was tragic, but it was also entirely his own doing. While he has tried to do good and apparently succeeded, it seems to me that he never did any good at all to one of his many victims.

"The murder of the CIA station chief in Athens after anti-CIA campaigners had published his name and address contributed to a backlash against further investigation."
Both of which were already known, as Stockwell wrote.

Gottlieb had a very good lawyer.

According to Gottliebs lawyer:
"As an academic exercise, Sid could go on confidently about the rightness of his activities. But he wasn’t so comfortable talking about individual cases or real people whose lives were affected. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t enthusiastic about talking about Olson."

"The Olson family called a press conference. On the day before it was to be held, Eric Olson invited the reporter Seymour Hersh to the family home in Frederick. Hersh was characteristically blunt.
“This must be the most goddamn incurious family in the United States!” he marveled. “How you could have lived with that bullshit story for twenty-two years is beyond me.”"

Just read about the Israeli plot to create a Manchurian Candidate. How can some people suck so hard at their job?

"“The Israelis spent three months in 1968 trying to transform a Palestinian prisoner into a programmed killer,” according to a study of Mossad’s assassination program. “Within five hours of being released to carry out his mission, he had turned himself in to the local police, handed over his pistol and explained that Israeli intelligence had tried to brainwash him into killing Arafat.”"

In 1968, three Vietnamese prisoners had probes installed in their brain. Then they were put into a room, given knifes, ans the probes were activated to put them into a homicidal frenzy. Nothing happened. Afterwards, some Green Berets shot the prisoners and burned the bodies.