Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (PO Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009). This report is reprinted from the June-July 1997 issue. When he retired from the US foreign service, Curtiss was chief inspector of the US Information Agency. He is also the author of A Changing Image: American Perspectives of the Arab-Israeli Dispute and Stealth PACs: Lobbying Congress for Control of US Middle East Policy.
In 1914, 2, 416, 290 German civilians were living in Russia. When World War I began, a wave of hostility began, especially after the Laws of Liquidation passed in 1915. After the Bolshevik Revolution of October 25, 1917, the ethnic Germans of the former czarist empire were subjected to an organized campaign of terror: rape, drownings, torture, burning, mutilations, mass shootings and extermination.
After a visit to the Eastern front in occupied Soviet territory, Hitler flies to Finland for a historic meeting on June 4, 1942, with Finland’s great commander, Marshal Mannerheim, on his 75th birthday, and with Finnish president Ryti. Excerpt from the weekly German wartime newsreel, ‘Deutsche Wochenschau.’ With English subtitles. Runtime: 5:37 minutes.
On the evening of May 10, 1941, the Deputy Führer of the Third Reich set out on a secret mission that was to be his last and most important. Under cover of darkness, Rudolf Hess took off in an unarmed Messerschmidt 110 fighter-bomber from an Augsburg airfield and headed across the North Sea toward Britain. His plan was to negotiate peace between Germany and Britain.
Loot and Plunder: The Ignored Cultural Rape of Germany
It is fitting to begin with a tale of rape. With Tarquin the Proud’s tyrannical reign as the last Roman monarch, Romans were eager to explore a new form of government: the republic. The ‘Rape of Lucretia’ was a popular tale which detailed the downfall of Tarquinius: Roman soldiers away at war decided to return and surprise their wives. Only Lucretia, wife to Collatinus, had been loyal and chaste while her husband was gone, but Tarquin’s son, Sextus, returned and raped her. She told her husband what had happened, then took her own life.