handsofclay Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 Seen on BBC website that The Sun have access to a film from 1933 showing the future Queen, the future Queen Mother giving Nazi salutes in the presence of the future Edward VIII and the future Princess Margaret. They have printed stills from this film showing the salute. I cannot blame the Queen as she was only about 7 at the time and Hitler had only just come to power. However, I do find it rather hypocritical of the Royal Family to have snubbed the England team who were ordered to give the Nazi salute before thrashing the Germans in a 1938 international in Berlin. I know for a fact that George VI refused to pick our own Eddie Hapgood in his fantasy football team line up for the 1938/39 season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aussie Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 There's nothing in that. In 1933 it didn't have the concentration camp associations etc. Storm about nothing from a gutter paper fit for imbeciles to read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aizoon Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 In 1945 the Irish Government of De Valera sent a message of condolence to the German Embassy in Dublin on the occasion of Hitler's suicide. I do, however, suspect a certain degree of irony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handsofclay Posted July 18, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 There's nothing in that. In 1933 it didn't have the concentration camp associations etc. Storm about nothing from a gutter paper fit for imbeciles to read. Plus I reckon most of us as kids when playing war games with mates gave the Nazi salute...this enabled us to spot where the Germans were hiding to shoot them for one thing. If someone years later produced such photographs with the intention of destroying a reputation it would be grossly unfair, and that is with the concentration camp associations having been known. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelRobartes Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 In 1945 the Irish Government of De Valera sent a message of condolence to the German Embassy in Dublin on the occasion of Hitler's suicide. I do, however, suspect a certain degree of irony A shameful act, and by far the worst of DeV's premiership. The time to continue pretending that our neutrality massively favoured the Allies had, in reality, passed. But even maintaining strict public neutrality was no excuse, other neutrals didn't pass on their condolences and there was absolutely no need for us to do so either. As for the argument that Germany wasn't so bad in 1933, try telling that to the Jews who were living there then. I absolutely agree that it's a disgusting, vile rag of a newspaper though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aizoon Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 A shameful act, and by far the worst of DeV's premiership. The time to continue pretending that our neutrality massively favoured the Allies had, in reality, passed. But even maintaining strict public neutrality was no excuse, other neutrals didn't pass on their condolences and there was absolutely no need for us to do so either. As for the argument that Germany wasn't so bad in 1933, try telling that to the Jews who were living there then. I absolutely agree that it's a disgusting, vile rag of a newspaper though. As I said, I think there was a certain degree of irony on Dev's part. Certainly the Republic did more to bend the rules of neutrality in favour of the Allies than is generally recognised; allowing Allied aircraft to overfly County Donegal, for a start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Portland Bill Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 The Duke of Edinburgh and his sisters have form with Hitler and the Nazi's. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_blacknobil09.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelRobartes Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 As I said, I think there was a certain degree of irony on Dev's part. Certainly the Republic did more to bend the rules of neutrality in favour of the Allies than is generally recognised; allowing Allied aircraft to overfly County Donegal, for a start. And allowing Allied vessels to pursue U-boats into Irish waters, repatriating crashed Allied airmen whilst interning Axis airmen, passing on meterological data and data on Axis U-boat movements to the Allies, the Irish secret service working closely with MI5 and, of course, not preventing men and women from the 26 counties to join the Allied forces or cross the Irish Sea to work in war industries. DeV also sent fire engines to help Belfast in mid-April 1941 when it was terribly bombed. On the condolences, I'm not sure there was any irony of DeV's part. He was obsessed with the maintenance of strict public neutrality and with ending partition. Realistically, Eire couldn't have gone in on the Allied side, we'd have had another civil war, but there is no excuse for what he did. In my opinion it's one of the most shameful acts in 20th century Irish history, and unfortunately there are plenty of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red-Robbo Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 As for the argument that Germany wasn't so bad in 1933, try telling that to the Jews who were living there then. I absolutely agree that it's a disgusting, vile rag of a newspaper though. A very reasonable point, Michael. Even at this early stage it was clear to most that the Nazis were racist, violent, expansionist and anti-democratic. Edward VIII was a big fan. His fascination ran much deeper than the messing about ( which is all that picture shows) to develop into a genuine admiration for Hitler. Had he not been a royal, he'd have been interned in World War 2. As it was, he was packed off to be Governor of Bermuda - out of harm's way - and made a persona non grata in this country thereafter. You still can't read all the reasons though. They have a 100-year seal of secrecy on them in the National Archives. As for The Sun, all I can say is it must have been a very slow news day to put this picture on the front. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aizoon Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 A very reasonable point, Michael. Even at this early stage it was clear to most that the Nazis were racist, violent, expansionist and anti-democratic. Edward VIII was a big fan. His fascination ran much deeper than the messing about ( which is all that picture shows) to develop into a genuine admiration for Hitler. Had he not been a royal, he'd have been interned in World War 2. As it was, he was packed off to be Governor of Bermuda - out of harm's way - and made a persona non grata in this country thereafter. You still can't read all the reasons though. They have a 100-year seal of secrecy on them in the National Archives. As for The Sun, all I can say is it must have been a very slow news day to put this picture on the front. If Britain had been invaded, he would have been considered expendable, and that would have been no great loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Northern Red Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 https://twitter.com/simon_pegg/status/622326144528986112 Still starting them young then. Even got the Hitler haircut. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red-Robbo Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 Am I allowed to say it was Britain, along with France, that declared war on Germany and not the other way around? Yes. But Germany knew that would be the consequence after it invaded Poland. Both countries had given assurances of security to the Poles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelRobartes Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 Yes. But Germany knew that would be the consequence after it invaded Poland. Both countries had given assurances of security to the Poles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0 Someone had to do it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red-Robbo Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 How would you have felt if, for example, Russia said it would declare war on Britain if Britain went ahead with the Falklands war? In other words imo Hitler did the right thing when he invaded Sudetenland and Poland - Germans were being violently persecuted. Germany had been very unfairly carved-up by the Versallies treaty (god knows why) and Hitler rightly decided to go to their aid, as Britain did, again, rightly imo, with the Falkland Islanders. Invading Poland had very little to do with the Versailles Treaty (same with Czechoslovakia for that matter - the Sudetenland had never been part of Germany). It was to do with creating Lebensraum in the East. As detailed in Hitler's various writings from Mein Kampf onwards. Around 2% of the pre-war Polish population were German speaking - not counting German-speaking Jews, incidentally. Many Germans were in government in Poland. Others held extensive landownings. The Falklands comparison is so totally bogus as to be laughable. Nice work defending poor misunderstood Hitler to a guy with a Jewish family BTW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red-Robbo Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 Hey Robbo there's no intention to offend anyone and if this is a sensitive issue for you we can drop it, I don't have an ax to grind about Hitler. I do. He was a massive**** and modern-day Nazi apologists are too. A goodly portion of my wife's family were wiped out because of the invasion we were talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeh Posted July 18, 2015 Report Share Posted July 18, 2015 Sun in disgrace shocker...... Typical of that shit rag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chipdawg Posted July 19, 2015 Report Share Posted July 19, 2015 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_in_Germany Here is a list of things that the Nazi part did in 1933. It includes completing Dachau concentration camp and making it legal to sterilise people deemed to have 'genetic' conditions. So while I don't think a 7 year old Queen Elizabeth can be criticised for the Nazi salute, to say that it was apparent what they were up to is wrong in my opinion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chipdawg Posted July 19, 2015 Report Share Posted July 19, 2015 How would you have felt if, for example, Russia said it would declare war on Britain if Britain went ahead with the Falklands war? In other words imo Hitler did the right thing when he invaded Sudetenland and Poland - Germans were being violently persecuted. Germany had been very unfairly carved-up by the Versallies treaty (god knows why) and Hitler rightly decided to go to their aid, as Britain did, again, rightly imo, with the Falkland Islanders. Surely the 'right thing to do' would be to make political representations to the governments of those regions about their treatment of German speakers (despite German speakers being the wealthiest group within Poland at the time)? And was the subsequent invasion of neutral Belgium or The Netherlands to protect persecuted German speakers in those countries? And the annexation of Austria? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbored Posted July 19, 2015 Report Share Posted July 19, 2015 So a 7 year old queen mimics a nazi salute from the adults around her. Big deal.....don't most 7 year olds mimic other people's behaviour? Big fuss about nothing imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbored Posted July 19, 2015 Report Share Posted July 19, 2015 I thought the fuss was about mum doing the salute? She was aa aristocratic woman of her time and who cares anyway? The Queen mother is dead - even more reason not to care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welcome To The Jungle Posted July 19, 2015 Report Share Posted July 19, 2015 Oh my goodness this picture was taken when she was like 6 years old... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chipdawg Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 Are we going to discuss this given Mr Robbo's issue? More than happy to because I'd like to dig-up some sources that do not come from the usual 'the victor wrote the history' perspective nor the department of propaganda, nor lunatic revisionists. WW2 seems to me to have been an epic cluster **** that could have been prevented, but in the end every European country lost, the only winner being the USA (and I suppose you could argue the USSR despite its insane loses of life). I don't think Robbo has a problem with discussing Nazi Germany's behaviour in 1933, I think his issue is with your apparent Nazi sympathising Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin phantom Posted July 20, 2015 Admin Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 See it now appears that the footage was leaked by Buckingham Palace themselves. By all accounts it was within footage given to a documentary making company Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red-Robbo Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 Nazi sympathizer now am I? Lord help us all. Chip is right. I have no issue with discussing pre-war Poland. It formed part of my post-graduate studies, so I know a smidgeon about it. I was worried about the tone of your post, Rads, suggesting as it did that somehow the German invasion might have been justified. With regards to these books you've read "offering an alternative point of view to the mainstream" I was wondering where we were going - Holocaust denial? Rothschilds global conspiracy? That would be a stage where I'd simply have to terminate friendship and block someone. Not just idiocy, but highly offensive idiocy. Anyway, let's park that and say for now that my fears are unfounded and consider this "violent repression of Germans" in the Second Polish Republic you talk of. After the Western Front Armistice, there were all sorts of militia battles on the German/Polish frontier as the Entente powers had not clearly defined the frontiers of the post-war German state. Poles wanted an area corresponding to the old Kingdom of Poland - the one that was ripped apart by Austria, Prussia and Russia just over a century before. an area that was historically, almost entirely Slavic, but had demographically changed in the intervening time.This left a legacy of bitterness in border areas. Eventually League of Nations approved plebiscites revised this to make East Prussia and most of Silesia German, while giving Danzig "free city" status. In the remaining Poland, 2.2% of the population was ethnic German. Although the 1920s saw democratic rule in Poland, as in surrounding countries, the 1930s brought a form of dictatorship. Marshal Pilsudski's regime was authoritarian, anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalist. There were even concentration camps. However, he was a pussycat compared to AH: opposition parties were tolerated, there were elected councils, there was a free press. Most of this "violent repression" was the invention of Nazi propagandists, but it is true to say that having seen what happened in Czechoslovakia and Austria, the Polish state clamped down hard on irredentist parties of Ausland-deutsch who sought further border revisions. Also the German language was discouraged, and Germanic place names changed. Nonetheless, as Chip says, Germans remained among the wealthiest citizens of the republic, and owned most of the land. Many were part of the administration of Pilsudski and his successors. The country's foreign minister, Jozef Beck, was a German Protestant. The main bone of contention between Germany and Poland after the plebiscites was the German demand, asserted aggressively by Hitler, for a land corridor, to link Danzig and East Prussia with the rest of the German state. However as Hitler himself said: "With minor exceptions German national unification has been achieved. Further successes cannot be achieved without bloodshed. Poland will always be on the side of our adversaries... Danzig is not the objective. It is a matter of expanding our living space in the east, of making our food supply secure, and solving the problem of the Baltic states. To provide sufficient food you must have sparsely settled areas. There is therefore no question of sparing Poland, and the decision remains to attack Poland at the first opportunity. We cannot expect a repetition of Czechoslovakia. There will be fighting." So, as I wrote earlier, it was notions of racial superiority, manifest destiny and the creation of Lebensraum in the East, that drove the Nazi's Operation Himmler, the false flag operation that aimed to convince the world that Poles had seized a radio station in Gleiwitz and were invading a neighbour who was not only twice their size, but considerably heavier armed. Fortunately, the Germans being such sticklers for meticulous records, we are able to read about all this in their own memos and communiques. It's all in the state archives. ?In the first month of the invasion, almost 250,000 Poles died, mainly civilians, as opposed to 3,000 Germans, almost all military. All this before we get the brutal repression of the General Government and the murder of at least 3,300,000 Jews and up to 3,000,000 Poles and Ukrainians in the following five years. So, you see, this is why I think historical revisionism of the facts can be a dangerous thing. A long reply, but one that might conceivably save you your teeth had you ever repeated to a Polish person that you felt the September 1939 invasion was somehow justified. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red-Robbo Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 Thanks for the long reply, it's much appreciated. Here's my long reply! I don't take any of this subject lightly. I come from a family that was very badly effected by WW2 and we still feel it today - the knock-on effect on my grandfather turned my mother into an alcoholic and destroyed her health. I can't read books about old Bristol without getting depressed at the damage done by the Luftwaffe. I used to be very patriotic: I did 3 years in the Royal Engineers based on a genuine motivation of defending my family and community from the Red Army. Here's my basic position (at this point in time): 1. We live in a world of propaganda. 2. I don't believe the whole story I've been told about WW2, the facts but especially the motivations of the main players. 3. The Allies were not wholly good e.g. Dresden, the treatment of the German population after the war, the nuclear bombing of Japan, etc. 4. As for Hitler, I am free I hope to question or at least try to work-through the 'Hitler was a complete and utter bar-steward' pov. He was a Fascist (totalitarian) dictator, crushed his enemies in Germany (Jews etc) and he attacked other countries, but I'm interested in his motivations, his actions, his ideas. I'm not pre-judging anything, but I want to know how you go from being a failed artist, to decorated WW1 war veteran to what he became? I'm also curious about what was true about Hitler and was propaganda. And it's a mystery to me that a decent people like the Germans would go along with this. They loved Hitler. 5. The only winner of WW2 was the USA. Everyone else got fubared. Regarding Rothschilds and other conspiracy theories. I haven't read anything about the Rothschilds though their name crops-up now and then, but as far as I know bankers (whoever they were) loaned to both sides in the war didn't they? Also didn't the USA sent a ton of cash to Russia during the war? I am beginning to wonder how much the USA's (and UK's) aid to Russia facilitated the USSR. Instead of fighting each other (we Europeans I mean) why didn't we fight Russia? I'm also very interested and will read-up on the economic recovery of Germany under Hitler. Did Hitler need a war to keep his economy afloat? But that's for another time. Btw do you have a source for your Hitler quote, the one in the paragraph starting "However as Hitler himself said:". I'm interested in reading around that. Fair enough, but I think when you say "the Jews were his enemy" you should be saying "the Jews were demonised in an attempt to create an internal and external phony 'enemy' who the rest of the German people could unite against". Many Jews were early members of the NSDAP, before it became an explicitly racist organisation. Most Jews of course, were totally apolitical, and just wanted to get on with their lives in peace. But it was no matter what you did: whether you'd fought for Germany before; were ultra-patriotic; a-religious; a Christian convert; a friend to the community; if you had that bloodline there was one ultimate destination for you - a death camp. The blood libels and other Medieval nonsense and fraudulent bollocks condemned you. I don't think my family suffered to grievously in WW2. I had one great-uncle who was nearly starved to death by the Japs, but I think the rest of my close relatives avoided serious harm. However my wife's extended family in Poland and Romania lost countless members: all for the most ridiculous of reasons - the religion of their forefathers. I love my wife. So you see the sensitivity. Edit: forgot about the quote. It is from the notes recorded of Hitler's speech to German OKW (high command) at Obersalzberg, just before the invasion of Poland. It's quoted by Lloyd Clark, a professor of warfare at the University of Buckingham. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handsofclay Posted July 20, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 Having read the previous interesting and intellectually stimulating responses I feel rather foolish having started this debate, especially as I now realize the future Queen isn't giving a Nazi salute but instead she is playing with a yo-yo that has been air brushed out of the picture. Personally I despise Hitler and anyone who espouses eugenics. However, there are a good many that history has classed as heroes who were disciples of eugenics. Some amazing names among them. Lindbergh for one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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