Chapter 8

(SEP 1939 HITLER AND STALIN DIVIDE UP POLAND)

“Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war? ... He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. It seems to me that they have no time, training, or inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

(This is a snippet of dialogue from the film “Doctor Strangelove” delivered by the American Airborne General to his British Army aide after launching a nuclear air attack on the Soviet Union in a military coup against the Washington bureaucrats.)

The suffering of the Polish people in that brief war against Nazi Germany and The Soviet Army was only to be expected because of their inept handling of diplomatic opportunities and their baseless dependence on the promises of a fumbling British government and the fear sweeping across all of Europe that they would be the next domino to fall to the power hungry forces of the Third Reich and the juggernaut of Russian crushing pressure.

It was unlikely that the unholy alliance would last through the year, but the specter of the two unexpected partners feeding on the carcass of fallen nations was uppermost in most European minds after the Polish surrender.

I wondered how long it would be before the SS “final solution” teams would take to start sending the cattle cars to round up the unwanted sectors of Polish society and how long it would take for the intended victims to appreciate the hopelessness of their position.

I knew from my historical studies all about the terrible treatment of the Polish Army Officer Corps as they were walked to their graves already dug in the deep forests never to be heard of again until some hints and rumors reached London from sources in the general area. Of course, no one in Germany or the rest of the world would get an inkling of the depths of depravity in the SS ranks acting on orders from the Fuhrer himself.

The Russians were more interested in liberating most of the tools of production from the Polish factories and transporting able bodied men to the east for labor in enhancing their military might. If it wasn’t nailed down, the Soviet invaders scooped it up and sent it east on endless trains to help them in the build-up of the Soviet military machine knowing that they would soon be facing their partners in the victory from the other side of the gun.

London knew from the beginning that their pact was a joke.

Unfortunately, the joke was lost on the Polish people and to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, it was not in the least bit humorous as they were led to the train station for their one way trip to a concentration camp designed to keep them alive for a short while for labor purposes and then to be turned into ashes keeping the forensic evidence to a minimum.

I never mentioned a word of these details to any of the Polish females working there in Berlin because I knew even the faint hint of hope was placebo to their fast disappearing morale in the midst of the enemy.

The statistics on the Polish Jewish population was a subject that most European governments to hide inside a locked cabinet and not distributed to the scrutiny of a freedom-loving world. The remaining Jews were conditioned to not resist by a culture that valued peace above all else. The Germans counted on that and they exploited it right up to the last minute as the entire Jewish population was eliminated from existence and they expired with a look of disbelief on their passive faces.

In my regular life, I had visited many of the concentration camp sites and looked at the plaques that described the number of bodies buried in the mass graves. I saw mound after mound of thousand plus burial sites and knew that it was the tip off the iceberg because the bulk of the victims were burned in crematoriums after a quick trip to the showers for a cyanide surprise.

If I had even mentioned a single word of that disturbing fact, I knew that the listeners would think me a demented person because no civilized authority would ever condone such treatment of civilian detainees no matter what the circumstances.

I remembered Bergen-Belsen and the long wooded preserved structures that served as barracks. One of the strange memories was that the ones for the guards were no better than the ones for the prisoners and in some respects, he thought that the minders were no better off than the prisoners because they had to bear the guilt for the policy of treatment. From what I had heard from some of the surviving guards, they didn’t get involved in the prisoner handling except to make certain the counts were correct and nobody was shirking their duties. All of the day to day control was left to the prisoner “elite” that maintained strict control and made certain that the daily assignments to the disposal division were kept in strict balance. The SS commanders were prone to harsh punishment if the numbers were not kept up to snuff and their monthly report of liquidation levels had to be right on the line or there was hell to pay.