"Call me Meier!"- Statement attributed to Hermann Goering, creator of the Luftwaffe. On August 9, 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, Goering boasted about the strength of his air defenses: "not a single bomb will fall on the Ruhr. If an enemy plane reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Hermann Goering--you can call me Meier!" Many Germans bitterly recalled this boast when, in the late stages of the war, cities throughout Germany were subjected to devastating British and American raids by thousands of planes.
Canned Goods- Code name arranged in August 1939 for a plan to use the bodies of condemned criminals to justify the forthcoming attack on Poland. Conceived by Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Heinrich Miller, leaders of the Gestapo, and condemned German criminals in Polish uniforms, order a Nazi doctor to give them fatal injections, covere them with gunshot wounds, and then place the bodies at a prearranged spot to make it appear that Polish soldiers had been attacking German troops. There were several such faked attacks by "Polish soldiers," the most important of which was the raid on the radio station at Gleiwitz.
Chelmno (Kulmhof)- One of the main extermination camps in Poland. After the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1042, on the Final Solution, Reichsstatthalter (Governor) Arthur Greiser, in conjunction with the SS and Polish police, set up a killing center at Chelmno, in the middle of the Warta River region, as a strictly local enterprise for the Jews of his area. Chelmno later became one of the more important killing centers in occupied Poland. There were no industrial activites in this camp, nor were there any non-Jewish inmates. From all over Poland "sick and sickly Jews" were resettles in Chelmno. The deportees were brought to a large mill in the nearby village of Zawadki and then taken in small groups by truck to Chelmno, where their clothes were collected and they were gassed. The camp guards received a bonus of 15 reichsmarks per day because of dangerous duty in that they were "exposed to infection". Chelmno achieved a special reputation among extermination camps because of its efficient Knochenmuhle (bone-crushing machine). In the summer of 1942, Heinrich Himmler sent a special commando unit to Chelmno to destroy the mass graves by fire and dynamite.
Citadel- Code name for a final giant offensive by the Nazi armies in the war against the Soviet Union. On July 5, 1043, Hitler directed that Operation Citadel be launched against the Russian salient west of Kursk. Seventeen Panzer divisions with half a million men, the best of the German army, were to be thrown into an assault from the southeast in the direction of Moscow. The offensive was a disastrous failure. It was stopped short by the Russians, who countered with a smashing offensive of their own.
Colditz- German prisoner-of-war camp in World War II. Colditz Castle was a fortresslike cluster of buildings dominating the small town of Colditz astride the Mulde River in Saxony. In the interior were two courtyards backing onto each other. The prisoners' courtyard, originating in the early days of the castle, was on one side, while the German administration buildings were located in the adjoining eighteenth-century yard. All around the castle the ground sloped away in terraces.
Colditz Castle was constructed originally in 1014 as a hunting lodge for the kings of Saxony. In the sixteenth centruy it belonged to the Danish princess Anna, who married Augustus, Elector of Saxony. Because Saxony was on the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), Colditiz was sacked by the Imperial Army in 1934. Swedish troops retook the castle and remained there for several years. It was not used again by the Saxon dukes until 1753. The castle became a prison in 1800 and a lunatic asylum in 1828. Colditz was the site of one of the first concentration camps in 1933. Then it became a special work camp for the Hitler Jugend.
In October 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Colditz was set up as a camp for Polish officers; later it was used for Belgian officers. It then became a Sonderlager (special camp) for captured officers held in strict surveillance under Article 48 of the Geneva Convention. It was supposed to hold a maximum of 200 officers, all classed as "undesirables," but many more were confined there. The number of guards usually equaled the number of prisoners.
There was a constant battle of wits between prisoners and guards. The inmates devised ingenious methods of escape, and the warders used every possible defensive means of foiling them. Those escapees who were recaptured were punished by solitary confinement. On about 130 occasions, inmates actualy escaped from the castle grounds. Of these escapees, 30 (14 French, 9 British, 6 Dutch, and 1 Pole) managed to cross the frontier and reach safety.
Conditions in Colditz worsened in late 1944 as the Nazi regime was heading for collapse. By now its guard companies were formed exclusively of veterans between the ages of fifty and sixty-five. Food and fuel supplies steadily decreased, and escape attempts were more and more frequent. As American tanks approached Colditz, prisoners had almost completed preparations for a final bizarre attempt at escape: in the upper attic over the chapel a glider had been built in sections for eventual launching. Colditz fell to the Americans in mid-April 1945.
Columbia-Haus (Columbia House)- The worst and most infamous of the Gestapo prisons set up in various parts of Berlin after Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Columbi-Haus was notorious for its torture chambers in which Communists, Social Democrats, Jews, and other enemies of the Nazi regime were interrogated, beaten, and abused before being sent to concentration camps. Its use was discontinued in 1936 in favor Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Commando Order- A top-secret order, issued by Hitler on October 18, 1942, that called for the execution of Allied commandos captured in the west. As the tide of war began to turn against him, the Fuhrer, angered by Allied air attacks, decided that any captured fliers should be turned over to the SD for summary execution. Until this time captured enemy soldiers had been treated under the rule of the Geneva Convention. However, there never had been any question about Russian guerrillas or partisans: they were executed on the spot.
Committee of Seven- A group set up in early 1938 in Vienna ostensibly for the purpose of bringing about peace between the Nazis and the Austrian government. Actually, the Committee of Seven was the central unit of the illegal Nazi underground working in Austria for Anschluss. The Austrian police raided the headquarters of the Committee of Seven on January 25, 1938. they found documents initaled by Rudolf hess, Hitler's Deputy Fuhrer, calling for Austrian Nazis to stage a revolt in the spring. Following the revolt the German Army was to cross the border "to prevent German blood being spilled by Germans."
Committee of Three- A committee set up during the Stalingrad crisis in the winter of 1943 to ease Hitler's administration as chief of state. It consisted of Martin Bormann, who for eight years had been Hitler's shadow; Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, who had remained close to the Fuhrer; and Hans Heinrich Lammers, Reich Minister and Chief of the Reich Chancellery. Henceforth all orders to be signed by Hitler were to be cleared through this screen of three men. The committee divided its jurisdiction. Keitel was to be in charge of all orders relating to the armed forces, but problems arose immediately because the commanders of the Navy and the Air Force refused to accept his authority. All constitutional affairs and administrative problems were delegated to Lammers, while Bormann was supposed to handle all domestic matters. As it turned out, both Keitel and Lammers had to defer to Bormann, whose years of experience enabled him to have the final word in deciding who was to see Hitler. Bormann now could make top-level decisions once made by the Fuhrer himself.
Compiegne- The place at which Hitler on June 21, 1940, after the defeat of France, handed French envoys the German terms of surrender. The Fuhrer chose the same railroad coach at exactly the same spot in a little clearing in the forest of Compiegne where, on November 11, 1918, the armistice that ended World War I had been signed. He ordered the German and French plenipotentiaries to meet in the railroad coach that had been used by Marshal Ferdinand Foch. As additional salt for the wounds of prostrate France, Hitler insisted that the same table be used and that he himself occupy the seat on which Foch had sat when the Frenchman had dictated terms to defeated Germany. Undoubtedly, Hitler had in mind what he conceived to be historic justice: in 1919 the victorious Allies had chosen the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles to dictate the peace to Germany-the same hall in which the Second German Empire had been proclaimed by Bismarck on January 18, 1871.
Hitler's hour of triumph was described to the listening world in a dramatic broadcast for the Columbia Broadcasting System by William L. Shirer. Phrasing his reactions quickly, with no opportunity to polish his story. Shirer improvised from notes in what turned out to be one of the memorable reporting events of the war.
Concentration Camps- Institutions used in the Third Reich and in occupied territories for imprisoning opponents of the Nazi regime. The term concentration camp was first used in the twentieth century to describe centers in South Africa in which Boer civilians were interned from 1900 to 1902 to prevent them from helping guerrillas. The camps became notorious because of inefficient administration and bad hygienic conditions. Hitler, too, regarded such camps as an effective tool. In a talk with Hermann Rauschning before he became Chancellor, he stated: "We must be ruthless! We must regain our clear conscience as to ruthlessness. Only thus shall we purge our people of their softness and sentimental philistinism, of their Gemultlichkeit (easygoing, genial nature) and their degenerate delight in beer-swilling. We have no time for fine sentiments. I don't want the concentration camps transferred into penitentiary institutions. Terror is the most effective instrument. I shall not permit myself to be robbed of it simply because a lot of stupid, bourgeois mollycoddlers choose to be offended by it." In accordance with this principle Hitler set up concentration camps shortly after he assumed political power in 1933. It was announced that the goal was to "reform" political opponents and to turn "anti-social members of society into useful members." The German public was convinced in the early stages that concentration camps were needed for the restoration of public order and security and that they were legal under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. A law dated February 28, 1933, suspended clauses of the constitution guaranteeing personal liberties and provided for Schutzhaft (protective custody) for dissenters.
The first three main camps were set up in the early days of the Nazi regime at Dachau, near Munich in the south; Buchenwald, near Weimar in central Germany; and Sachsenhausen, near Berlin in the north. The first inmates were Communists and Jews, but opposition to Nazi totalitarianism was so great that Socialists, Democrats, Catholics, Protestants, and even dissident Nazis were added to the camp population. Trade union leaders, clergymen, monks, pacifists, Jehovah's Witnesses--all were herded into the camps without trial and without the right of appeal. Other camps were added, including Ravensbruck, Belsen, Gross-Rosen, and Papenburg in Germany; Mauthausen in Austria after the Anschluss; and Theresienstadt in Bohemia. Some 200,000 inmates passed through the concentration camps between 1934 and 1939, and more than 50,000 were confined at the outbreak of war in 1939. The population multiplied rapidly after the beginning of the war.
After the conquest of Poland the camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, and Maidanek were transformed into extermination camps. In these death camps a deliberate attempt was made to reduce the inmates to subhuman standards. The SS guards, recruited from the most ruthless Nazi elements, worked the inmates beyond their physical capacity and starved, humiliated, and tortured them beyond endurance. What originally were supposed to be "institutes for reform" became centers of genocide, the deliberate destruction of a people.
Although conditions varied somewhat in camps throughout Germany, there were some general features common to most of them. The categories of prisoners consisted primarily of four groups: political opponents, members of "inferior races," criminals, and "shiftless elements" believed to be asocial. The second group, embracing Jews and Gypsies, was marked for special attention. All but an insignificant number of Gypsies perished in the camps. The Jews were the main target. They were divided among all four categories, although they remained segregated in special barracks. They were given the most menial jobs and were subject to cruel treatment by the SS guards. Criminals were divided into two groups. The Befristete Vorbeugungshaftlinge (prisoners in limited-term preventive custody) consisted of convicts who were actually serving sentences. These were commonly known as SV. The political opponents were members of anti-Nazi parties, former Nazi members guilty of some infractions, foreign exchange violators, illegal radio listeners, grumblers, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Included among the "shiftless elements" were homosexuals, who were treated in ghastly fashion.
All inmates of the concentration camps had to wear prescribed markings on their clothing including a serial number and colored triangles affixed to the left breast and the right trouser leg. At Auschwitz the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm. All political prisoners wore a red triangle; criminals, green; shiftless elements, black; homosexuals, pink; Gypsies, brown. Jews were required to wear a yellow triangle in addition to the classification triangle. The yellow triangle pointed up, the other down, thus forming the six-pointed Star of David. Any Jew who had defied the racial laws ("race defiler") had to wear a black border around the green or yellow triangle. Foreigners were identified by letters: F for France, P for Poland. The letter K indicated a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher). The letter A identified a labor disciplinary prisoner, from the German word Arbeit (work). The feebleminded were forced to wear the word Blod (stupid). Inmates suspected of seeking to escape had to wear a red-and-white target sewn on chest and back. Some prisoners were decked out in a variety of colors.
When the victorious Allies swarmed into Germany from both east and west in mid-1945, they captured the concentration and extermination camps. Men hardened by battle were sickened by the sights, sounds, and stenches in the camps, and by cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal human mind. The revelation of the horrors shocked the world. Inmates testified to blows, beatings, and kicking as a part of daily life and described murder through injection, death in cesspools or on the electric barbed wires, and extermination by gas. After the war sentences were passed on SS officials responsible for administration in the camps.
Concordat of 1933- A treaty between the papacy and the Third Reich concerning ecclesiastical affairs. From April to July 1933 negotiations took place between the Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli, the former Papal Nuncio in Berlin and the future Pope Pius XII and high German officials, including Franz von Papen, concerning the status of the Catholic Church in the new Third Reich. On July 20, 1933, the concordat was formally signed and sealed by Pacelli and Von Papen in an elaborate ceremony at the Vatican. A rapprochement between the Third Reich and the Holy See was formally made. The preamble stated that the two contracting parties, led by "their reciprocal desire to consolidate and develop the amicable relations existing between the Holy See and the German Reich," had decided to conclude a solemn agreement.
Condor Legion- A unit of the Luftwaffe detailed for special duty during the Spanish Civil War. In November 1936, Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and Minister of Aviation, assigned Major General Hugo Sperrle to command the Condor Legion in its support of General Francisco Franco and the Spanish Insurgents. The air unit was composed of several squadrons of Junker-52 bombers and Heinkel-51 fighters. In coordination with the German Mediterranean Fleet, which attacked Almeria with heavy guns, Sperrle sent his planes against Spanish towns behind the Loyalist lines. On April 27, 1937, the Condor Legion attacked Guernica with heavy loss of civilian life. This devastating raid, which shocked the world, was immortalized by the artist Pablo Picasso in a powerful painting. In 1938 Sperrle's unit made a series of bombing attacks on Barcelona in a dress rehearsal for the raids on urban centers in World War II. Goering rotated the command of the Condor Legion in order to give his senior Luftwaffe officers combat experience. In Novemeber 1937, Sperrle was succeeded by Major General helmuth Volkmann, and in November 1938 Brig. Gen. Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, who had served as chief of staff to both Sperrle and Volkmann, was appointed the last commander of the Condor Legion.
Coventry- English Midlands manufacturing city attacked by the Luftwaffe in a massive air raid on November 15, 1940. When the British refused to capitulate to Hitler's air attacks in September 1940, the Fuhrer turned to the ports of Dover, Bournemouth, Portsmouth, and Southammpton. In November he shifted his attention to the industrial Midlands. On the night of November 15, there was a devastating raid on Coventry. Some 94 miles northwest of London, Coventry was also a city of 200,000, a manufacturing center whose munitions and war materials took precedence over motorcars and art metalwork. It was a top priority target for the luftwaffe. The greater part of the city was left in flames, and the brownstone cathedral was a smoking wreck. Only the big main spire, 303 feet high, was left standing; all the rest, built from 1373 to 1450, lay in a tangle of broken stone and crumpled debris. There were at least 1,000 dead and injured in the city. Frenzied rescuers tore at piles of brickwork and concrete covering the bodies of the dead. Houses as well as factories were wrecked, and essential services were paralyzed. Later in the war the Royal Air Force retaliated by similar attacks on German cities.