A THREE PART BOOK: Anti-Semitism:The Longest Hatred / World War II / WWII Partisan Fiction Tale

By Sheldon Cohen

Two parts of this three part book are based upon fact: anti-Semitism and World War 2.

One part of this book represents a fiction tale involving World War 2 Jewish refugees and Russian army soldiers teamed up for behind the lines partisan warfare against the invading Nazi army.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Sep 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781456628956

Book preview

Hatred

PROLOGUE

Who to hate and kill

Jew hating has been with us for many centuries. The main causes are religiously based, but also anti-Semitism has political, economic, social, cultural, and racial roots.

In ancient Rome, Jewish religious and cultural practices were tolerated until Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, fueled anti-Jewish prejudice.

Christianity began its existence as a sect of Judaism rather than a separate religion. For Christians, Jesus was the Messiah, or son of God. For Jews, Jesus was a mortal man. This difference was reflected in the New Testament written in the first century A.D., a treatise interpreted as being a rejection of Judaism’s beliefs. By the second century, many Christians turned against Judaism even though it was Christianity’s parent religion. Early Christian thinkers accused Jews of being responsible for turning Jesus Christ, one of their own, over to Pontius Pilot and supported his crucifixion. This ‘God Murder’ is said to have condemned the Jews to wander the earth forever. In addition, Christians objected to the declaration made in the Torah as well as in rabbinical scripture that Jews are a holy people whom God has chosen to be his treasured people from all the nations that are on the face of the earth. This statement, understood to be blasphemous and arrogant, suggested that Jews considered themselves superior to those not Jewish. By the middle ages, persecution and harassment became the plight of Jews causing most of them to withdraw within themselves and avoid non-Jews. This only maximized their self-isolation interpreted by many to mean that Jews felt themselves superior to Christians.

Martin Luther tried to convert the Jews, but when they did not profess interest in his entreaties, he is quoted as saying, Let the magistrates burn their synagogues and let whatever escapes be covered with sand and mud. Let them be forced to work, and if this avails nothing we will be compelled to expel them like dogs.

In distant pre-scientific times, disastrous and unexpected events were considered to be the result of divine intervention, witchcraft, superstition, black magic, or Jews. Without scientific explanation available, Jews were often considered the cause of these unusual events and natural disasters, so they suffered the consequences including death in many instances. This fate alleviated as time brought scientific advances to the world, but enough anti-Semitism prevailed to curse Jews even to this day.

Long before Adolph Hitler and the Nazis arrived on the scene, anti-Jewish thinking was rampant not just in Germany but in most of Europe’s population. There was one branch of Judaism at that time, the orthodox, very separate and distinct from Christianity with entirely foreign religious dress and practices. Jews were an ancient people with a reverence for learning stretching back to even before the ancient Greek and Roman republics, and when they entered into Europe during the middle ages, the contrast between them and the Europeans was stark in all religious and cultural aspects.

Jews principally abided by the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) consisting of five books of Moses given to them by God on Mount Sinai. The Hebrew bible, also known as the Torah, is in the form of a scroll made from kosher animal parchment. Ancient tradition tells Jews that the Torah existed in Heaven before the world was created, but others have different interpretations making for fine philosophical arguments during Saturday morning Torah sessions with the rabbi and his parishioners. I say his, because female rabbis represent a modern day advance; there were none in ancient times.

Prior to and in the early 1800’s the orthodox Jews kept to themselves. Since Jews were viewed as foreigners by non-Jewish citizens, tensions prevailed. This made for a volatile mixture exacerbating anti-Semitism that would culminate in violence leading eventually to the Holocaust of World War II. As I write this book in the year 2017, anti-Semitism has continued increasing throughout the world.

By the mid nineteenth century the orthodoxy of the Jewish religion began to change in Europe. A reform and conservative form of Judaism evolved and much of Germany, especially Berlin, began to assimilate Jews into the culture so that the period around the late 1800’s and early nineteen hundreds began to be considered a golden era for German Jews. In 1900 there were approximately 587,000 Jews in Germany representing 1.04 percent of the German population.

Before the 1800’s, autocratic German leaders including the Prussian King subjected Jews to discriminatory laws such as excess taxes and limits on family size. Jews were prevented from holding political office and were restricted from certain professions. Other leaders, including Napoleon Bonaparte, completely emancipated Jews. As the world moved into a period of rapid industrialization during the 1800’s, conditions for Jews improved giving them more opportunity to make an impact in the major professions. Anti-Semitism did not die however, and as German unification expanded from its various nation states, and Theodor Herzl founded Zionism calling for the establishment of a Zionist State in Palestine, these dual effects strengthened long-lasting conspiracy theories involving a Jewish plot to control the world. The future would see this theory persist, become amplified and lead to disaster for Europe’s Jews.

Underpinning this development was the fact that Germany in the mid 1800’s was not a single nation, but was a patchwork of many kingdoms; a concept opposed by German nationalists who wanted one unified nation to compete on Europe’s stage with the likes of Russia, Great Britain, and France. Who better to blame for the nationalist’s failure to implement their goal than the Jews who were also trying to unify.

This Jewish unification was viewed by non-Jews as a world-wide Jewish conspiracy theory and it evolved not only in Germany, but also in France where anti-Jewish hatred mushroomed from all sides of the French political spectrum: religious Christian groups condemned Jews on religious grounds while Socialists condemned Jews for having a major impact on business and finance.

An example of the intensity of French anti-Semitism is the Dreyfus affair in 1894: a Jewish French military officer was accused falsely of bringing French military secrets to the Germans. After Dreyfus languished two years in prison on Devil’s Island, Emil Zola, a famous French writer, exposed the false charges and Dreyfus was released and returned to military service.

The worst anti-Semitism of the time, however, evolved in Russia. The Russian and Eastern European Jewish population of five million was the largest in Europe. Under Czar Alexander II, the Jews experienced freedoms that allowed many of them a comfortable middle-class life. Alexander’s reward for this compassionate accomplishment was his assassination. The new Czar, Alexander III, levied many restrictions on Jews; pogroms swept the country killing Jews in ever increasing numbers and resulted in a Jewish exodus. This was the time when my infant mother and four-year-old father and their parents fled to the United States.

The next Czar, Nicholas II, a rabid anti-Semite, enhanced Jewish restrictions in Russia. Nicholas and his entire family were eventually murdered by Socialist (Communist) revolutionaries in 1918. Following this Communist takeover, Russia and surrounding countries would become known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a collection of nations controlled by Russia. For the purpose of this book, I will use the word Russia when referring to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Nicholas’ secret police (Ochrana) developed their famous forgery, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, documenting the so-called ‘Jewish Conspiracy to rule the world,’ which Adolph Hitler would amplify years later. The Protocols have as their ancient origin the anti-Semitism engendered by the falsehood that Jews, by poisoning the wells, caused the plagues that decimated Western Europe in medieval times. Millions died, including Jews, many of whom were burned alive in their homes by the angry non-Jewish population. This was not the only libelous anti-Jewish assertion in the distant past. Word spread that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make their leavened bread (matzos) for the Passover Jewish holiday celebrating liberation from ancient Egyptian enslavement. These twin assertions made life for western European Jews impossible, thus forcing them to flee to Poland where a Polish King who happened to have a Jewish girlfriend welcomed them. This exodus explains the eventual major Jewish population increase in Poland setting the stage for a future German dictator (Adolph Hitler) to zero in and attempt to finish the job, left undone by his predecessors.

In the 1890’s, anti-Semitism was primarily a French and Eastern European phenomenon. The above mentioned Dreyfus affair and the well-known pogroms in Poland and Russia that prompted my grandparents flight to the United States was not part of German culture. Jews in Germany enjoyed unfettered business penetration, excellent assimilation, social and religious freedom, and preeminence in the professions. It was only in the civil service and military where they were prevented assimilation. In contrast, however, prior to the 1890’s, Germany did persecute socialists and Catholics with some governmental support, but even though there were German anti-Semites in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, they had no intra- governmental or political traction. This raises an intriguing question. How did Germany, a relative haven for Jews in the 1890’s, evolve into the master planning agent for the destruction of World Jewry in less than forty years?

Adolph Hitler, in his rise to power in Germany, utilized two principle methods in his efforts to bring the German citizens to his way of thinking. The first approach was anti-Semitism, a two-thousand year old phenomenon. He added to Jew hating by bringing others into the mix; specifically Gypsies and Slavs.

Gypsies were wandering people of Europe who originated in Northern India and arrived in Europe during the ninth century and have been persecuted for much of their existence. They were convenient scapegoats easily added by Hitler to a list of people to hate because they lived in Eastern Europe, an area that Hitler coveted. Hitler would use this fact to invent the fiction that Slavs were untermenschen (inferiors) who must be done away with so as to provide lebensraum (living space) for the German race of superior beings. This was another fiction Hitler used to infect the minds of his citizens, thus offering less opposition to his delusional thinking. To the detriment of the entire world he slowly and inexorably succeeded, paving the way to World War II and the death of 60,000,000 human beings.

This book is a story of that infamy and includes an outline of events leading up to World War II and the war itself written in 11 font Arial Rounded MT Bold intermingled with a fiction tale based upon fact written in 12 font Times New Roman.

CHAPTER 1

Russia 1944 Last Jewish Partisan Battle

Albert Tepper and Sam Rosen knew that the coming battle would be their last. After more than three years of deadly struggle, the Jewish partisans, in conjunction with the Russian army in Byelorussia planned their last battle. The Nazis were in flight. The Russian army had turned the tide finally, and Hitler’s dream of a rapid victory had evaporated as his military was fleeing the tenacious advance of the Russians.

As the Germans fled, they passed through partisan territory where Albert and Sam and their multiple Jewish and non-Jewish colleagues armed with dynamite, rifles, pistols and machine guns awaited them with glee. The Germans would die before ever getting out of the territory they invaded three years ago with the idea that victory would be swift—three weeks at the most.

The partisans took up positions ahead of the retreating Germans and waited. Their signal would be the sound of Russian guns coming ever closer. As they waited, they did what they were good at in order to slow the fleeing Germans; destroyed rail tracks, bridges, laid booby traps and anything necessary to slow the hated enemy and entrap them between the Russian army and themselves. When the enemy was close enough, the Partisans would turn their attention to the retreating Germans and make sure that they would remain, for all eternity, in the Russian territory that they coveted. It took the partisans less than thirty minutes to accomplish that goal.

The guns fell silent. The partisans slowly and warily left their positions. They gathered together alternately crying, laughing and hugging each other.

It took a few minutes until Sam finally noticed that Al was not amongst them. He looked many times in all directions. Panic overcame him. Oh my God, he thought, did his best friend who was born on the same day as he, who he grew up with, who he loved like a brother, fall in battle—for them the last battle of the war!?

CHAPTER 2

Berlin 1896…Birth of Albert and Sam

Early in the afternoon of April 19, 1896, Ms. Frieda Tepper and Ms. Hilda Rosen entered the Berlin maternity hospital within thirty minutes of each other. The 26 year old Jewish ladies were assigned to the labor room to monitor their vital signs and the progress of their first birth. Their nervous husbands paced back and forth in the adjacent waiting room. Both women experienced definite uterine contractions and were monitored by experienced obstetrical nurses. The impressive new medical facility had rows of single beds lined up against opposite walls and was located just down the hall from a sign that read Delivery Rooms from which a pleasant antiseptic smell would waft down to the labor rooms when the doors opened.

Let’s hope we get to that sign pretty quick, grimaced Frieda to Hilda immediately after her most painful contraction yet.

Amen, answered Hilda in a calm voice and compassionate expression delivered between contractions.

Frieda and Hilda occupied neighboring beds. Thus they naturally struck up a friendship as their labor contractions progressed and intensified. They learned that they lived less than one half mile apart, were both married almost two years, were both Jewish, born in Poland, emigrated to Germany, attended the same synagogue (The Neue Synagogue) and hoped that their first child would be a girl. They both agreed, Whatever it turns out to be, Gott es Willen (God willing), as long as the baby is healthy. We’ll meet again after this is all over so we can gloat over our daughters.

Although Frieda and Hilda recognized one another, they had never been close friends. That would change now with the closeness and intimacy of a first birth binding them together for the future.

Midnight passed. The discussion between Frieda and Hilda dwindled as each became more aware of and focused upon the irresistible task at hand. Their contractions increased in frequency, duration, and intensity, Frieda’s son was born at 2:30 A.M. Hilda’s son followed approximately 2 hours later. The date was April 20, 1896. And…

Adolph Hitler was born exactly seven years earlier on the same day, April 20, 1889.

In the Hebrew bible (Genesis 17:10-14), God issues a command to his patriarch Abraham to be circumcised: This is My covenant, which ye shall keep between Me and you and thee: every male among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be a token betwixt Me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generation, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any foreigner that is not of thy seed.

And so it would be. The two babies, born eight days ago, their mother, father, grandparents, family and friends would all be there to celebrate this rite of passage performed by a Mohel, one specifically trained and certified in this discipline. Once completed, the Jewish heritage of Albert and Samuel were fixed in time for the rest of their lives, and their friendship would forever grow…

CHAPTER 3

Family history of Albert and Sam

Albert and Sam’s ancestors can trace their lineage to Germany when their ancestors were forced to flee because Jews were blamed for the plague which decimated Western Europe in the fourteenth century…

This plague was caused by a bacterium within fleas that would infest rats. Bacteria were an unknown entity at that time. The bacteria received the name of Yersinea pestis many years later. Once the rats were killed off by fleas, Yersinea needed to find another host, so they chose the human species. A human who was bitten by a flea would have Yersinea pestis deposited under the skin, which would then spread to regional lymph nodes causing them to swell massively forming a bubo, hence the name bubonic plague. Eighty percent of humans infected would die, and millions did within a matter of days. Most Jews who survived either the plague, or the enmity of the populace who blamed the Jews for the Plague, fled to Eastern Europe. There they settled in Poland in an area which the Russian Government would later designate the Pale of Settlement, a large geographic area consisting of western Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and Ukraine. Jews were allowed nowhere else unless they became Christians.

While living in the Pale of Settlement, the ancestors of Albert and Sam were known as Tepperovitch and Rosenovitch. If there was a different name before that, it was lost to antiquity…

The increase in the Jewish population of The Pale eventually resulted in anti-Jewish pogroms (riots or killings), which started in the nineteenth century. Theories as to the causes of the pogroms ranged from blaming Jews for assassinating the Czar to the fact that some Jews, because they were forbidden many occupations, were forced to become moneylenders, incurring the ire of their debtors and business competitors.

The new Czar, Alexander III, established the May Laws in 1882, which restricted Jews in many aspects of life: Jews could only live in small towns (shtetles) and not large cities. They could not carry out any business on Sundays or Christian holidays. They were restricted to ten percent of college enrollment.

The Czar’s overseer of the Russian Orthodox Church, Konstantin Petrovich Pobyedonostsyev hoped that One third of the Jews would die, one third would convert and one third would leave the country. So with the Pobyedonostsyev threat looming in Jew’s minds...

One third did leave and amongst them were the future parents of Albert Tepper and Sam Rosen who moved to Germany to escape the anti-Jewish sentiment of Eastern Europe…

CHAPTER 4

Adolph Hitler’s Birth

FUR FRIEDEN, FRIEHEIT

UND DEMOKRATIE

NIE WIEDER FASCHISMUS

MILLIONEN TOTE MAHNEN

For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions of Dead Remind Us.

Just before the one hundredth anniversary of Adolph Hitler’s birth in 1889, a memorial stone with the above inscription was laid on the site of Hitler’s birth in Braunau Am Inn, a small town in Austria near Bavaria on the south German border.

Adolph Hitler’s paternity is uncertain. His father, Alois, born in 1837, was the son of Marie Ann Schickelgruber and either an unknown person, or else Johann George Heidler, or the son of a wealthy Jewish man, Frankenberger for whom she worked. Thus Adolph Hitler, steeped as he was in anti-Semitism, was struck numb by the thought that his grandfather may have been a Jew. But since science had not advanced to the point of establishing paternity, the notion was ignored. Johann George Heidler eventually did marry Marie Ann Schicklegruber, becoming Adolph’s stepfather. Because of this, Hitler did change his name, and the Heidler became Adolph Hitler, a name that would go down in infamy.

CHAPTER 5

Albert, Sam, and Adolph as youngsters…Berlin 1909

The early part of the twentieth century was considered a Golden Age for Germany’s Jews, and the Tepper and Rosen family prospered in a peaceful environment. The friendship of Albert and Samuel grew and strengthened over time. They were inseparable and the pride of their respective families. They attended the same nearby grade school as well as the synagogue sponsored school. Both good students, they learned early in life the importance of education. They studied together often, set academic standards, and were at the top of their classes and the pride of their parents who encouraged scholarship at every turn. They had their own competition for grades, but were rarely separated by more than a few points.

Albert’s father was a former competitive swimmer, so he was anxious to instill in his son the same enthusiasm, and enrolled him as soon as he turned three years of age. Naturally, Samuel was not to be left out, and in time the two boys both became credible swimmers enhancing the appearance of their growing and lean muscular bodies.

The boys continued to prosper, and at grade school graduation they also were preparing for their Bar Mitzvahs, which would be held in the Neue Synagogue on the same day since they both shared the April twentieth birth date...

The word Bar means son and Mitzvah means law or commandment, which literally translates to son of the commandment." Jewish law mandates that age thirteen is a transition point when a boy becomes a man. This is considered an important milestone, and the celebration is attended by family and friends in the synagogue and/or other special venue where prayers are said and all the youngsters and guests have a joint celebration.

In Orthodox Judaism when a boy becomes a man at age thirteen he learns about Tefillin. These are black leather boxes which contain biblical passages and leather straps attached for the purpose of binding around the upper arm and forehead in accord with the biblical passage: You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand and they should be for a reminder between your eyes. This ritual occurs every morning during prayers for the last three thousand years and is a reminder to keep the faith, still performed by orthodox Jews to this day.

A Bar Mitzvah boy is called up to the Torah, stands on the Bimah and reads a portion of the Torah, which varies depending upon the date of the Bar Mitzvah. This is followed by a party usually after the ceremony where the Bar Mitzvah boy presents a prepared speech followed by a festive meal and dancing.

There are 613 Mitzvahs (commands or good deeds) in the Torah, and in more recent times a Bar Mitzvah boy is assigned one Mitzvah to carry out. This could be any one of the Mitzvahs that would impact others in a positive way.

More recently, thirteen year old girls have been included in this Bar Mitzvah ritual under the name of Bat Mitzvah (Bat meaning daughter).

In 1910, the boys headed for high school. Already instilled in their minds were future professions…

Now we will turn our attention to the childhood of Adolph Hitler. We have to do this from the perspective of knowing what a monster he evolved into as an adult, which in the opinion of many boils down to the greatest mass murderer in all of human history. Would there be any clues to such a transformation from an innocent child? I doubt there would be, but I believe it would be an interesting read and thought process if we keep this evolution in mind as we study Hitler’s childhood.

We have learned about his Illegitimate birth, which I believe would have nothing to do with his adult life. He was beaten by his father as a youngster on numerous occasions, or at least until he learned about the stoicism of the American Indian and decided that the next time he was beaten, he would not cry out. Apparently he was successful with this. He never hit me again. But do all those persecuted become persecutors? Well, Hitler did, but we cannot make generalizations.

Would the hatred he apparently felt for his father in his youth somehow promote the hatred that he transferred to Jews as a young man resulting in one of the worst genocides in human history? Such questions could never be answered with certainty, and would remain an impossible to prove conjecture. We do know that his father ruled the home with an iron fist. Could this role model have influenced Hitler’s treatments of his own subordinates in adult years?

When Hitler started grade school he was an excellent student, but he became indifferent in the upper grades. Did he lose interest? He completed schooling and then dropped out at age sixteen having met only the minimum requirements. He moved to Vienna with the idea that he would see if his artistic talents could gain him entry into Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. It did not, but he was advised that his talents would better suit a career in architecture. This was not an option either because owing to his early exit from a secondary education he had not earned the necessary credits to attend architecture school. A very disappointed Hitler had no choice but to work as a laborer and also began to paint watercolors many of which he sold to Austrian citizens and tourists.

Vienna, at the time, was engulfed in a sea of religious, racial, and political prejudice. Anti-Semitism abounded, stirred up by Vienna’s mayor Karl Leuger. Hitler also listened to speakers espousing German nationalism, anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic thinking. How much and what portion of this rubbed off on Hitler molding his future murderous anti-Semitic thought can never be known. Three theories involved in this genesis include the possible Jewish identity of his grandfather, the anger Hitler felt over a Jewish physician who attended to his mother dying of breast cancer, or was he more influenced by the intense anti-Semitic milieu of Vienna. We will never know. The only thing we are certain of is that his anti-Semitism eventually knew no bounds.

CHAPTER 6

Albert, Sam, and Adolph as Young Men…1910-1914

The start of the twentieth century found the world coming closer together due to advances that enhanced communication (radio, telecommunications), transportation (faster ships, trains, airplanes), and warfare (armored vehicles, tanks, airplanes).

A hodge-podge of independent nations had difficulty coping with each other. Rivalries around the world increased and threatened war. Attempts at compromise were rarely successful. The absence of international bodies to resolve disputes left each country to fend for itself. This was a worldwide phenomenon and tensions around the world surfaced: Russia and Japan fought over Manchuria; Russia itself faced revolution and expanded southward to the Caucusus; Japan colonized Korea; Turkey lost control of the Balkans and independent nations rose up including Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Rumania and Serbia. European countries formed alliances for mutual protection. Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy formed the Triple Alliance, a relationship which Italy strained when they sided with the Balkan States against the Turks; in addition, Russia, France, and Great Britain formed the Triple Entente.

Some past history may be appropriate here.

Germany as a modern state originated through the efforts of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Prussia. In an effort to unite the country, Bismarck went to war, once with Austria and once with France in the latter part of the 1800’s. This was done with the idea of achieving a second German Reich (kingdom).

The First German Reich (800-1806) was the Holy Roman Empire founded by German emperors of medieval times. The second German Reich once formed developed its own constitution and a parliament (Reichstag) headed by a Kaiser (Latin for Caesar). The second German Reich was in power when Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia declared war. World War I ignited in June of 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian national, shot dead Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie. The flashpoint had been reached. Europe instantly became involved in The Great War, the war to end all wars.

The vagabond, Adolph Hitler, was politically astute. He was twenty-five years of age at the start of the conflict and was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Although an Austrian, he was allowed to join the German army. He felt that his life would now have meaning and he could participate in the development of a Greater German State worthy to take its place as the leader of the world. By this time he had unknowingly prepared himself for the future by steeping himself in political philosophy and geography.

Albert and Sam had only a peripheral understanding of international affairs, wrapped up as most eighteen year olds were in graduating high school and planning their next academic step. With the start of war, that would all change for the two boys—as well as for Adolph…

FIRST, Adolph.

In 1909, Hitler was still in Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, barely supporting himself with his paintings and odd jobs. By now both his parents were dead and what little inheritance he had was gone.

Vienna’s anti-Semitic environment molded his thinking even more in the direction of anti-Semitism which he vigorously embraced. Plus the dangerous geopolitical international situation in the world convinced him that democracies were doomed to failure. Countries could only prosper under strong leadership by one man: a dictatorship. He viewed Germany and Austria as failed states and preached the unification of Germany and Austria under one strong leader. He is quoted in his rambling treatise Mein Kampf (my struggle), written in 1923, as saying: My inner aversion to the Hapsburg State was increasing daily. This was a motley of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs and Croats, and always the bacillus which is the solvent of human society—the Jew." As was obvious, he had an early start on his future deadly course.

SECOND Albert and Samuel

With relationships between countries the way they were in the first part of the twentieth century, conscripted armies became an essential part of government policy. Young men were registered in case it became necessary to send them to war. This became a mindset for teen agers who realized their lives could take a sudden turn...

And that is exactly what happened to Albert and Samuel while sitting in class one day in 1914. The classroom door opened and a stern looking man entered and handed the teacher a note. When the teacher finished reading, he looked up at the classroom and solemnly announced, Gentlemen, Germany is at war! The class, along with Albert and Sam leaped up as one and rushed outdoors to join the hordes celebrating on the streets. They knew they would soon be called up to serve and reflected this enthusiasm to their frightened parents who were powerless to do anything but pray that they would not be sacrificing their sons to an unknown future…

The next four years of this expected short war would be hell on earth for millions of young men.

CHAPTER 7

Adolph Hitler—World War I…1914-18

Immediately Hitler came forward to volunteer for military service. Now he had a chance for glory and fame. When screened in Austria, he was found to be unfit. Undaunted, he petitioned to serve in the German Bavarian forces in Munich I came to love that city more than any other place known to me; a German city, how very different than Vienna. He asked for and received permission to serve in a German Bavarian regiment, and as he describes later in his famous autobiography, Mein Kampf, he wrote, I opened the document with trembling hands. No words of mine can describe the satisfaction I felt. I sank down upon my knees and thanked Heaven out of the fullness of my heart.

He was accepted and became a member of the German List regiment named for Colonel List.

After preliminary training, he became actively involved in the First Battle of