Creator of Nazi Death Camps: The Life of Odilo Globocnik (ISBN 0853035237)

An Architect of Nazi German Genocide:
Odilo Globocnik was of partial Slovenian ancestry. Like Hitler, he grew up with the belief that the Slavic and Jewish elements were corrupting and weakening the Germanic element of his native Austria. Globocnik set up the death camps of Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Settling in Lublin in German-occupied Poland, he was also responsible for the deportation (and frequent murder) of over 100,000 Poles of the Zamosc region and the terror-pacification of Polish guerilla resistance. Like Himmler, Globocnik carried cyanide in his mouth after Germany's defeat, and used it the moment that his cover had been blown. For all the emphasis nowadays upon Jews and Poles being unequal victims, the Nazi opinion of the two peoples wasn't all that different. Konrad Meyer, an agrarian economist who worked for Globocnik, assigned the following scores for "racial worth": Jews--zero percent, Poles and Lithuanians--15%, Latvians--50%, and Estonians-->50% (p. 105). The German-speaking peoples follow this north/south division: "Bavarians--and most Austrians also subscribe to this self-image--are thought of as soft-spoken, beer-swilling, sausage-eating Catholics of dark complexion, while Prussians are for the most part harsh and haughty, blond and blue-eyed Hanseatic Protestants. This division runs along the Main (Mainz?) River. The Prussians (or `fish heads') are considered to be power-hungry, stuffy, and morally rigid; Bavarians are sloppy, lazy, and inept. Hitler, who rose from the `Bavarian' camp to the position of Fuehrer by declaring the `Prussians' as an Aryan ideal, nevertheless preferred to surround himself with `Bavarians'..." (p. 88). Nazi official sometimes attempted to topple their rivals through accusations of partial Jewish ancestry. Henning von Winterfeld's wife had such ancestry, but it had been pardoned by the Fuehrer, hopefully making it a non-issue (pp. 68-69). In refutation of the Holocaust deniers, who had argued that diesel engines produce insufficient carbon monoxide for gassing, Rieger showed that Soviet tank engines actually used a combination of petrol and diesel (p. 204). Moreover, diesel engines, when run in near-throttle mode, produce more CO. Is the European Union a backdoor attempt by present-day Germany to do what she had failed in two world wars--rule over Europe? Dr. Karl Schnurer, a nonagenarian unrepentant Nazi and onetime acquaintance of Globocnik, obviously thinks so: "In his eyes, the German and Italian cultures were all that mattered with regard to civilization, and Slavic countries did not figure. Schnurer felt that the European Union's expansion of our day represented the finalization of the German `Lebensraum' programme for the east." (p. 18)