Hermann Goering

Hermann Goering, the man who would one day be one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, second only to Adolf Hitler himself, was born into an aristocratic family in Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany on January 12, 1893. His father Heinrich Goering had been an army officer and governor of the German colony of Southwest Africa (modern Namibia) and was known for using rather brutal methods to suppress native rebellions.

However, at the time of Hermann's birth, Heinrich Goering was serving as a diplomat in Haiti, and wasn't often at home. As a result, Goering spent most of his childhood being raised by his godfather Hermann Epenstein (who was ironically part Jewish.) Growing up at Epenstein's luxurious castle Veldenstein near Nuremberg, where he spent his days fantasizing about military adventure.

With a background like this, it was perhaps inevitable that the young Goering would pursue a military career, and he joined the German Army in 1912. A year later, the Goering family had a falling out with Epenstein and he was forced to move out of Veldenstein. (Perhaps the genesis of Goering's antisemitism?)

During World War One Goering would serve in the German Air Force, as a pilot in the "Red Baron" Manfred Von Richthofen's famous squadron, and after Richthofen's death Goering took command. When Germany signed the armistice in 1918, Goering was ordered to surrender the squadron to the Allies. Outraged, he refused, and instead he and his men intentionally crash landed their planes in German territory to avoid having to surrender them.

Embittered by Germany's defeat, Goering spent the nest few years in Sweden, where he married his first wife Carin Von Kantzow. After returning to Germany he met Adolf Hitler for the first time in 1922 and joined the Nazi Party. He was given command of the party militia, the Sturmabteilung, or "Storm Troopers", who were tasked with protecting party meetings and roughing up the opposition. In 1923, the Nazis attempted to overthrow the German government in the so-called "Beer Hall Putsch". They failed, and Goering was wounded in the process.

Goering and his wife fled to Austria, where he was given morphine to treat his injuries. He soon became addicted to it, and the once fit soldier now became the obese lethargic slob who would one day become infamous. Reportedly, the drug made him so violent that he had to be put in a straight jacket at least once.

Goering finally returned to Germany in 1927, and his wife Carin died in 1931. After this, Goering devoted his entire life to the Nazi cause. When Hitler finally came to power in 1933, Goering was given the task of creating the new secret police, the infamous Gestapo, and was also given command of Germany's new air force, the Luftwaffe. He was also allegedly responsible for the Reichstag Fire which the Nazis used as a pretext to seize absolute power on February 27, 1933. In 1935, Goering remarried, this time to Emmy Sonnemann, and had a daughter Edda in 1938.

In 1936, Goering was put in charge of the German economy, and instituted the Four Year Plan, a massive rearmament effort to prepare Germany for the coming war Hitler was already planning. He also helped engineer the occupations of Austria and Czechoslovakia. He reached the height of his career on September 1, 1939 (the same day the invasion of Poland began) when Hitler officially designated Goering as his successor.

At first, Goering's Luftwaffe proved a powerful force, crushing the Polish and French Air Forces, and bombing their cities to rubble. But against Britain's Royal Air Force, he finally met his match. Despite his relentless bombing of British cities, the RAF held firm and beat back the Luftwaffe assault. Things would only get worse for Goering from there. Despite promising Hitler that the Luftwaffe would be able to supply the German troops surrounded in Stalingrad, they were unable to do so enough, and the German 6th Army was forced to surrender to the Soviets in early 1942. To make matters worse, from 1943 onward, the Allies launched massive bombing campaigns against Germany, which the devastated Luftwaffe was virtually powerless to resist. Even as the war raged, Goering have orders to the SS to make plans for a "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", which as we all know, turned out to be the Holocaust, which the SS was ruthless in executing. He also signed orders for the torture and execution of partisans and POWs.

During this time, Goering enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle in his palace, decorated with stolen art from across conquered Europe.

By 1945, it was clear even to Goering that the war was lost. He sent a telegram to Hitler, requesting permission to take charge of the government and negotiate with the Allies. Hitler enraged, ordered Goering's arrest and execution. In a bid to avoid the Fuhrer's wrath, (though unknown to him, Hitler had already committed suicide on April 30) Goering surrendered to American troops on May 6, 1945. A few months later, he was taken to Nuremberg to stand trial for war crimes.

At first, it seemed that Goering might well escape justice. His high position within the Nazi Party made many of the other defendants see him as a leader, and when he was first questioned by chief American prosecutor Robert Jackson, many felt Goering got the better of him. But that didn't last long. A few days later, British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe caught Goering with his own words, exposing his order to the SS to plan the "Final Solution to Jewish Question". After this, Goering was finished. The judges sentenced him to death by hanging.

But Goering had one last trick up his sleeve. Somehow he managed to sneak a cyanide pill into his cell, and committed suicide the day before the executions took place, thus cheating the hangman. To this day, no one is quite sure how he managed it.

And so ended the inglorious career of Hermann Goring.

The Nuremberg Trials

October 1, 1946 marked the end of the Nuremberg Trial- AKA "The Biggest Murder Trial in History". The accused were 24 of the top Nazi leaders. The accusers were representatives of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.... As well as the 6 Million victims of Nazi terror.

Hitler, Gobbels, and Himmler may have been dead, but the Allies were determined that the remaining Nazi leaders be brought to justice at all cost. And over the next few weeks I'll be profiling the most infamous of them. It won't be light reading to say the least, but I think that it's important that we not forget these men or what they did. As they say "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

Return of the King a Kaiserreich Canada Play through Part 2

James McAllister had never liked civilian clothes, not since he'd gone to the British Military Academy at Sandhurst as a youth of 18 back in 1912. That seemed so long ago now, before the horrors of the Weltkrieg, before the Syndicalist Revolution, before the Great Depression. He longed to return home to Scotland, but he couldn't, not while the vile Reds ruled Britain. When he returned home, he intended to do so as part of the victorious Canadian army. But that was getting ahead of himself. For now, he had a mission to accomplish, one that would be vital to Canadian national security.

MI6 (which had gone into exile to Canada with the King in 1925) had been reporting for a while that there was severe unrest in the United States. Between the Syndicalists in the Rust Belt and the America First Party in the South, it looked like America was headed into a Second Civil War. As the higher ups in Ottawa saw it, there was only one man who might be able to save America, and it was McAllister's job to make contact with him. That man was General Douglas MacArthur. He'd arranged to meet with the General at a fancy hotel in Washington called the Watergate. As he approached the door to MacArthur's room, he took a deep breath, and opened it.

"General MacArthur, I presume?" He said in his refined Edinburgh accent.

"That's right." The General replied. "So, what exactly is it you wanted to meet with me for?"

"I'm here to give you this letter. It's from King Edward VIII himself."

"Why didn't you just mail it to me?"

"The intel in it is too sensitive, we couldn't let it go through the postal service..." McAllister responded as he handed MacArthur the letter.

"Dear General Douglas MacArthur. I and my cabinet have been monitoring affairs in your country for quite some time, and needless to say, we find the situation quite troubling. We fear that, if left unchecked, the Syndicalists or America First Party might well attempt to seize power, and our intelligence service has good reason to believe this. After much discussion, the Canadian government has come to the conclusion that you may well be the only man who can save your country in this dark hour. Please rest assured that, if you are forced to take drastic action, the Canadian government will support you in your efforts.
Signed His Majesty King Edward VIII."

The stage had now been set for the bloodiest conflict the American continent had ever seen...

Return of the King, A Kaiserreich Canada Play through Part 1

When Britain went to war against the Germans in 1914, hardly anyone could have predicted that the war would end in 1920 with Russia defeated, France and Italy in revolution, and Britain herself humiliated. And it only got worse from there. The British economy took a sharp nosedive, and in 1925 Britain went through it's own syndicalist revolution, forcing the Royal Family and their supporters to flee to Canada. Like vultures, aggressive neighbors swooped in to seize many of Britain's old colonies. The Irish invaded Ulster, most of British Africa fell to the Germans, the Spaniards took Gibraltar, The Ottomans captured Cyprus, and half on India rose up in rebellion against the Raj. By 1936, all that was left of the old British Empire and Commonwealth was Canada, Australia and New Zealand (now united as the Australasian Confederation) The Dominion of India (Which was in fact nothing but northwest India) and the various Caribbean Islands. Their only remaining ally was the authoritarian democratic French government in exile, based out of old French Algeria.

Considering this bleak situation, it is perhaps no surprise that King George V died in Ottawa on January 20, 1936, a broken man. His eldest son, now crowned Edward VIII, was determined to avenge his father by taking back the British Isles from the wretched Reds.

But in order to do so, the political situation in Canada itself would need to be sorted out. The Liberal Party, under Prime Minister Mackenzie King, had been in power for nearly 10 years by 1936. It was no secret that King Edward and the Prime Minister did not exactly get along, to the point that many Canadians joked about "The War Between Two Kings." Edward VIII felt that Prime Minister King was two soft on the Syndicalist menace, while the Prime Minister saw the King as a dangerously ambitious warmonger.

Events abroad soon swayed Canadian public opinion in Edward's favor. The rise of the Totalist demagogue Oswald Mosley in Britain, and Afghanistan's attack on the Dominion of India, convinced many Canadians that a stronger leader than Mackenzie King was needed to lead Canada through the crisis. That leader, Edward believed, was Richard Bennett.

A devout Methodist, army veteran, and Empire loyalist, Bennett was the charismatic leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, nicknamed the Tories after their old British predecessors. Bennett made no secret of his stance on the Syndicalist menace, calling for it to be crushed "with an iron heel." As a result, the 1936 Canadian General Election was a landslide victory for the Tories, and Bennett was swept into 24 Sussex*, determined to crush the Mosleyites in the Union of Britain...

*24 Sussex is the official residence for the Canadian Prime Minister, and more or less the Canadian White House.

Ideologies of Kaiserreich

In preparation for my next Kaiserreich play through, I thought it might be useful to explain some of the political ideologies in Kaiserreich so when these terms pop up you'll know what they mean. To be clear, I won't explain what Conservatives, Liberals, or Social Democrats are, because I assume you already know what they mean. I'm going to focus on explaining terms that are either obscure or unknown outside of Kaiserrech. So. here it goes:

TOTALISM: Totalism, short for "Totalitarian Socialism" is essentially exactly what it says on the tin. Totalists believe that an all powerful government with a cult of personality around the glorious leader is necessary to protect the worker's revolution from the bourgeoisie scum. They oppose traditional religion, considering it a tool of capitalism, and tend to embrace either atheism, or in some cases paganism. Many of them are also hardcore nationalists, and they REALLY want to spread the revolution to other countries by force. The closest example in real life would be Stalin's Soviet Union, or maybe modern North Korea. Basically, they are Orwell's nightmare. One running gag in Kaiserreich is that many of the Totalists are people who in real life started out as socialists but eventually shifted to fascism, most notably Oswald Mosley in Britain, Marcel Deat in France, (google them) and Benito Mussolini in Italy.

SYNDICALISM: Syndicalism is kind of similar to Leon Trotsky's vision, in that it is made up of Trade Unions who run the economy and elect members to represent them in a Trade Union Congress, which serves as the country's government. While they're not quite as extreme as the Totalists, in that there's plenty of room for debate within the party elite, they're still hardly democratic either: non-socialist parties are banned, the media is state controlled propaganda, and religion, while tolerated, is strictly controlled and monitored by the state. The best real life examples would be Khruschev's Soviet Union, or modern Venezuela.

RADICAL SOCIALISM: These guys can be seen as the "nice" socialists. They're basically just a democratic state with a somewhat socialist economy, state's rights, free speech, and freedom of religion. Basically, they're what America might be like if Bernie Sanders were president.

AUTHORITARIAN DEMOCRACY: These guys basically believe that in order to protect the nation from it's enemies, it's sometimes necessary to use... "Questionable" methods, like, say, monitoring or arresting suspected extremists. They also tend to value traditional religious values and nationalism at least somewhat. They aren't total dictators though, they still have regular elections, and as long as you're not a radical or something, you'll probably be fine. Similar to America during the McCarthy era, or the George W. Bush administration.

PATERNAL AUTOCRATS: These people are highly conservative and highly authoritarian. All the subjects are treated as wards of the benevolent and paternalistic leader (either an absolute monarch, or some other kind of dictator.) But don't step out of line, the wise leader's patience has it's limits... Franco's Spain or Saudi Arabia would fall under this category.

NATIONAL POPULISM: National Populism is a totalitarian ideology that supports uniting the nation under a strong leader. It combines socialist economic policies and militarism, with ultra nationalist and even racist beliefs Nazi Germany would be a good real life example, as well as Assad's regime in Syria.

So there you have it. Aside from the regular liberals and conservatives, these are the ideologies of Kaiserreich! I hope this clears things up a little.

Are We Back in the 1930s?

Over the last few weeks, I've been reading a book about one of the most chaotic and dangerous eras in human history: the years leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. And while reading this book, I had a very worrying thought: the tumultuous years of the 1930s were disturbingly similar to our own time...

Think about it. Back then, the world was rocked by a worldwide economic crisis which fueled discontent and anger. There were several blood-thirsty tyrants (Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo...) who were seeking to settle old grudges with the dominant powers by stirring up chaos. They were willing to throw weaker countries like Spain into civil war to give them a battleground to vent their anger and rivalries. We have plenty of tyrants like that today as well: Putin, Kim Jong Un, the Ayatollah Khamenei, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who are using Syria in the exact same way.

Back in the 1930s the Western Powers were mostly led by weak leaders like Neville Chamberlain, who sought to maintain peace at any cost, even if it meant giving in to murderous foreign thugs. Reading about it, I can't help but be reminded of Obama's cowardly deal with Iran.

And finally, the 1930s also had brave men like Winston Churchill, who were willing to stand up and speak out against the tyrants and those who enabled them. I can think of at least one man like that in the world today: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Do we have anyone like that here in the United States?...

I pray to God we do.

Historical Highlights: Avraham Stern, Israel's would be Fuehrer

Jewish Nazis? For obvious reasons, most find the idea absurd, or even a contradiction in terms. But surprisingly, Israel did once have it's very own fascist movement, and it's very own would be dictator...

Avraham Stern was born on December 23, 1907 in the village of Suwalki in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. When World War One broke out, he, his mother, and his brother David, fled to Russia to escape the carnage. Growing up in Russia during the First World War and the Russian Revolution was obviously not easy, so it's not surprising that Stern, like many other Jews of his generation, became attracted to the Zionist movement at an early age.

After his mother's death, he decided he had no more reason to stay in Russia, so at the age of 18, he moved to Israel, then a British colony. When the Arabs of Palestine started a pogrom against the Jews in 1929, Stern served with a Jewish socialist militia. A few years later, Stern was awarded a scholarship to study at a university in Florence, Italy. While in Italy, Stern became impressed with Benito Mussolini's fascist movement. He saw how Mussolini had seemingly brought order and pride to the once disorderly and divided Italian nation, and decided that the Jews needed their own strong leader to save them from the horrors of foreign domination. He decided that he would be Israel's secular messiah.

After completing college, Stern spent the rest of the 1930s organizing Jewish militias, and smuggling Jewish immigrants into Palestine against the will of the British colonial authorities. As a result, the British arrested him in 1939. In mid 1940 he managed to escape, and founded a new militia called the Lehi, a Hebrew acronym that stood for Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, promising to establish a Jewish state based on "Nationalist and totalitarian principles". In addition to adopting fascist ideology, the Lehi copied many of the outward trappings of Mussolini's movement as well. They wore black uniforms, and even used the fascist salute. As their symbol, they adopted the half clinched fist, in reference to Psalms 137:5. ("If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget it's skill!")

Stern's hatred for the British colonial authorities was so great, that he was willing to work with the Axis to achieve his goal of driving the British out of Israel. However, he attracted very little support from either the wider Jewish community, who opposed Nazism and supported the British, or Hitler, who obviously preferred to support the Arabs. As a result, the Lehi was forced to carry out it's guerilla campaign against the British on it's own.

Inevitably, Stern's terrorist campaign failed, and on February 12, 1942, he was shot by British troops in Tel Aviv. After Stern's death, the Lehi movement began to fade away. After World War II they tried to get support from Stalin's Soviet Union, again without success, and by the founding of Israel in 1948, the movement was dissolved.

Stern's story serves as a warning that people of all, ethnic groups, not just white "Aryans" can fall prey to dangerous ideologies...