.

 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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Source: eisenhower.archives.gov

Marriage certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun – page 1 (Source: Eisenhower. archives. Gov)

Marriage certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun – page 2 ( (Source: eisenhower.archives.gov)

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The Mayor
of the Capital of the Reich

Before Walter Wagner, City Councillor, as the appointed Registrar of the Capital of the Reich appeared, for the purpose of joining in marriage.

1. Adolf Hitler
Born 20 April 1889 at Braunau
Residence: Berlin, Reich Chancellory
Father:
Mother:
Marriage of the parents
Identified by: Personally known

2. Miss Eva Braun
Born on the 6th of February 1910 in Munich, Wasserburgerst No. 8
Residence: MUnich Wasserburgerst No. 12
Father: Friedrich Braun
Mother: Franciska Braun, Nee Dronburger
Marriage of the parents
Identified by: Special identity card dated 4 April 39 issued by the Chief of the German Police.

3.
Witness: Reich-Minister, Dr. Goebbels, Joseph
Born 26 October 1897 Rheydt
Residence: Berlin, Hermann Goeringst 20
Identified by: Personally known

4.
Witness: Reichs Leiter Martin Bormann
Born 17 June 1900 it Halberstadt
Residence: Obersalzberg
Identified by: Personally known

The persons mentioned under 1 and 2 state that they are of pure Aryan descent and that they are not infected with inheritable diseases which would exclude them from marriage. Considering the war situation and the special circumstances they apply for marriage under special war time laws. They also ask to accept an oral publication of the bans and to disregard all legal delays.

The application is accepted. The oral publication of the bars is checked. The findings are in order.

I come now to the ceremonial act of marriage.

In the presence of the witnesses mentioned under 3 and 4  I ask you,

My Fuehrer Adolf Hitler

Are you willing to take the

Miss Eva Braun

As yoor wife.

If you are, answer “I Do”

Now I ask you

Miss Eva Braun

Are you willing to take

Our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler

As your husband

If you are, answer “I Do”

Since both newlyweds have stated their intentions, I declare this marriage as legal before the law.

Berlin, 29 April 945

Read and Signed:

1.) Husband:                                                                                            (Signed) Adolf Hitler

2.) Wife:                                                                                                   Eva Hitler nee Braun

3.) Witness 1:                                                                                          Joseph Goebbels

4.) Witness 2:                                                                                          M. Bormann

5.) (Signed) Wagner
As Registrar

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.

 . By T.V. Antony Raj

.

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler began preparing for his own death, with the imminent advancing of the Soviets deep in Berlin, compounded by the disloyalty and betrayal by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.

Late in the evening of the April 28, 1945, while the Red Army closed on the Reichstag building, Hitler retired to a room with Traudl Junge, his youngest private secretary, and dictated in a hurry, his last Testaments: a Private Testament - a will (see Appendix A), and a Political Testament (see Appendix B).

In his Private Testament, Hitler stated specifically who was to be the executor of his will, what he wanted done with his body after he died, and the names of people to receive his worldly possessions.

Hitler named no successor as Führer or leader of the Nazi Party. Instead, he appointed Joseph Goebbels as Reich Chancellor; Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was at Flensburg near the Danish border at that time, as Reich President; and Martin Bormann, Hitler’s long-time chief of staff, as Party Minister.

In his Political Testament, he typically blamed the Jews for everything, including the Second World War and expressed many of the same sentiments he had proffered back in 1923-24 in his book Mein Kampf. He also made a reference to his 1939 threat against the Jews along with a subtle reference to the subsequent gas chambers.

It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and provoked solely by international statesmen either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests. I have made too many offers for the limitation and control of armaments, which posterity will not be cowardly enough always to disregard, for responsibility for the outbreak of this war to be placed on me. Nor have I ever wished that, after the appalling First World War, there would ever be a second against either England or America. Centuries will go by, but from the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred of those ultimately responsible will always grow anew against the people whom we have to thank for all this: international Jewry and its henchmen.

Only three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish war I proposed a solution of the German-Polish problem to the British Ambassador in Berlin – international control as in the case of the Saar. This offer, too, cannot be lied away. It was only rejected because the ruling clique in England wanted war, partly for commercial reasons and partly because it was influenced by the propaganda put out by international Jewry.

I have left no one in doubt that if the people of Europe are once more treated as mere blocks of shares in the hands of these international money and finance conspirators, then the sole responsibility for the massacre must be borne by the true culprits: the Jews. Nor have I left anyone in doubt that this time millions of European children of Aryan descent will starve to death, millions of men will die in battle, and hundreds of thousands of women and children will be burned or bombed to death in our cities without the true culprits being held to account, albeit more humanely.

Hitler accused Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Reichsführer-SS and Interior Minister Heinrich Himmler, of betraying him and bringing “irreparable shame on the whole nation” by negotiating with the Allies. He expelled Hermann Göring from the party and sacked him from all of his state offices. He also canceled the 1941 decree naming Göring as his successor in the event of his death. To replace him, Hitler named Großadmiral Karl Dönitz as president of the Reich and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Joseph Goebbels was appointed as chancellor.

Heinrich Himmler was also expelled from the party and sacked from all of his state offices for attempting to negotiate peace with the western Allies without his knowledge and against his permission.

Adolf Hitler’s Marriage

For days there had been rumours of the impending marriage of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

Just before midnight Hitler married Eva Braun in a brief civil ceremony in the map-room. It was conducted against a backdrop of exploding shells. Nevertheless, there was a festive mood as Hitler and Eva stood before a table flanked by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Hitler’s private secretary Martin Bormann as witnesses. Walther Wagner, a minor official of the Propaganda Ministry officiated at the marriage. (See Appendix C to view the marriage certificate.)

A scene from the movie ‘Der Untergang’ – Adolf Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz) and his newly married wife Eva Braun say good-bye in the FührerBunker. (Source – meaus.com)

The marriage ceremony was followed by a celebration in the conference room. Champagne was brought out and those left in the bunker listened to Hitler reminisce about better days gone by. He admitted that the war was lost. Hitler concluded, however, that death would be a release for him after the recent betrayal by his oldest friends and supporters – Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, and confided that he would rather shoot himself than fall alive into the hands of the Russians or the other victorious powers.

Hitler shook hands with all, saying a few words of encouragement and thanks to each.

Gerda Christian – one of Hitler’s private secretaries.

According to Gerda “Dara” Christian, one of Hitler’s private secretaries, Eva showed her the wedding ring on her finger. Hitler talked mostly of the past and of happier times and admitted that the war was lost and said that he would rather shoot himself than fall alive into the hands of the Russians or the other victorious powers. Gerda said she left the room, unable to bear the atmosphere of gloom and despondency.

Hitler confided to Gertraud Junge that the wedding had been an emotional experience for him. He told her that suicide would be the only means to end his many worries.

After the wedding ceremony, Hitler signed his Testaments at 4:00 am, witnessed by Martin Bormann, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, General Wilhelm Burgdorf, and General Hans Krebs. One source says that though the adjutant to Adolf Hitler, Nicolaus von Below’s name had been included, he was an “unofficial” witness and did not sign the document.

Hitler then retired to bed.

The three messengers

To ensure the presence of these two documents for posterity, three messengers were assigned to take them with an attendant document, an explanatory note by Goebbels, out of the besieged Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker.

The three messengers were: Heinz Lorenz, Adolf Hitler’s Deputy Chief Press Secretary; SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander, Bormann’s adjutant; and Major Willy Johannmeyer, the last adjutant to Adolf Hitler.

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← Previous - Part 4: The Doubts About Loyalty to the Führer

To be continued …

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• The Death of Hitler (historyplace.com)

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.  . By T.V. Antony Raj .

Adolf Hitler

Killing of the dogs

Hitler and Blondi

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← Previous – Part 5: Hitler’s Marriage and Last Testaments

Next → Part 7: Suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun

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.

 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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The last lunch

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At 2:00 pm Hitler and Eva sat down for their last lunch, a vegetarian meal as usual.

The Russians were now only a few blocks away from the Reich Chancellery. Hitler began making systematic preparations to commit suicide.

Hitler gave precise instructions for the disposal of his dead body. He ordered his adjutants to burn his corpse. He said: “I do not wish my corpse to be displayed after my death in a Russian panopticon like Lenin.“

He gave his butler, Arthur Kannberg, gold and silver cigarette cases engraved with his name and said: “Look after these until we meet again.”

Hitler gave poison capsules to his female secretaries to use if the Soviets stormed the bunker. He asked them to forgive him as he did not have better parting gifts to give them.

Shortly after 3:00 pm the personal staff of Hitler assembled in the bunker. Hitler and Eva emerged from their suite. They went around the room shaking hands of each staff member silently. Everyone in the room knew that the time had come. Hitler and Eva bade farewell to them and retired to their private room around 3:30 pm, to carry out their decision to commit suicide. Hitler and Eva carried a small box of cyanide capsules. He had two guns and she had one.

At 3:30 pm, after closing the door of their room, with his “Thousand-Year Reich” already in its death throes, Hitler and Eva bit into thin glass vials of cyanide. Hitler also shot himself in the head with a 7.65mm Walther pistol. Eva made no use of the revolver at her side, preferring to let the poison take its course.

Traudl Junge later wrote that while she was playing with the Goebbels children she heard gunshots:

“Suddenly [...] there is the sound of a [gun] shot, so loud, so close, that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. ‘That was a direct hit,’ cried Helmut [Goebbels] with no idea how right he was.“

Hearing a gunshot, Heinz Linge, Otto Günsche, and Martin Bormann, entered Hitler’s suite.

Later, on October 25, 1956, in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden, the site of the Fuehrer’s mountaintop home in Bavaria, Heinz Linge recalled that he saw Hitler almost upright in a sitting position on a blood-soaked sofa. He said:

“Hitler had his head bent forward somewhat and I could see a bullet hole on his right temple and a trickle of blood ran slowly down over his check.”

Otto Günsche said:

“Hitler sat on the arm of the sofa with his head hanging down on the right shoulder which was itself hanging limp over the back of the sofa. On the right side was the bullethole.“

The pair testified that when they first entered Hitler’s study, Martin Bormann, was with them.

Later on, Rochus Misch, Hitler’s telephone operator, said that he peered through the door and saw Adolf Hitler had committed suicide.

Two weeks after the couple’s death, and when the battle for Berlin ended,William Vandivert, a 33-year-old LIFE photographer, was the first Western photographer to gain access to Hitler’s Führerbunker. Vandivert photographed the almost eerie scenes inside the unlit bunker and the room where Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves.

With only candles to light their way, war correspondents examine a couch stained with blood (see dark patch on the arm of the sofa) located inside Hitler’s bunker. (Photograph: William Vandivert—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

In his typewritten notes to his editors in New York, Vandivert described in detail what he saw. For the above photograph published in LIFE magazine in July 1945, he wrote:

“Pix of [correspondents] looking at sofa where Hitler and Eva shot themselves. Note bloodstains on arm of soaf [sic] where Eva bled. She was seated at far end … Hitler sat in middle and fell forward, did not bleed on sofa. This is in Hitler’s sitting room.”

The above narration by Vandivert indicates that Eva Braun was also shot.

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← Previous – Part 6: Preamble to Suicide

To be continued…

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.

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Kempka – Hitler’s personal chauffeur

In 1936, when Hitler’s top driver suddenly died, SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant-colonel) Erich Kempka was appointed as Hitler’s personal chauffeur. He served as Adolf Hitler’s chauffeur until April, 1945. Hitler was particular in providing his drivers the best accommodation and food. He once said: “My drivers and pilots are my best friends! I entrust my life to these men!”

On April 30, 1945, around 3:45 pm, 1945, Kempka was in the underground garages. Hitler’s SS personal adjutant Otto Günsche, phoned him. His voice hoarse with excitement, he said: “I must have 200 litres of petrol immediately.”

At first Kempka thought it was a joke and told him it was out of the question. Günsche began shouting: “Petrol, Erich, petrol!”

“Why would you need 200 liters of petrol?” Kempka asked.

“I cannot tell you on the phone. But believe me, Erich, I simply must have it. Whatever it takes, it must be here right now at the exit to the Führer-bunker!” Günsche shouted back.

Kempka knew that the only source was the Berlin Zoo bunker, where the Nazis had buried a few thousand liters of petrol. But, he also knew that it would be certain death for his men to go there under bombardment. So, Kempka told Günsche: “Wait until at least 5 pm because the firing generally dies down a bit around then.”

“I cannot wait another hour. See how much you can collect from the damaged vehicles and send your men at once to the exit to the Führerbunker in the Chancellery garden. And, then come yourself immediately!” Gunsche ordered and hung up.

The concrete roof of the underground garages had caved in. Except for a few, most of the vehicles there were covered with masonry. Kempka ordered his men to siphon out whatever petrol they could find.

While a heavy Russian bombardment was in progress, Kempka returned to the Führerbunker. As he entered he saw Günsche leaving Hitler’s sitting room. His face was as white as chalk. Kempka hurried over to Günsche.

“For God’s sake, Otto, what is it?” Kempka asked.

Günsche went to the two outer doors with Kempka following hin and shut them. Then he turned and said: “The chief is dead.”

Kempka was shocked. He said: “How could that happen, Otto? I spoke to him only yesterday. He was healthy and calm.”

Gunsche raised his right arm, imitated holding a pistol with his fist and pointed to his mouth.

Hermann Karnau, an SS bodyguard of Hitler, saw four men, subordinates of Erich Kempka, arrive with gasoline cans outside the bunker, which they said was for the air conditioning system inside the bunker. Remembering the air conditioning system was fuelled by diesel, Karnau denied them entrance into the Führerbunker. When pressed he allowed one of the men to enter the bunker. The subordinate found Kempka and told him that he and his men had placed around 180 to 200 litres of petrol at the exit to the bunker. Kempka sent the man back to the surface.

At that time the door of Hitler’s sitting room opened and his SS valet Heinz Linge shouted desperately at Kempka: “The petrol, where is the petrol?”

Kempka replied: “It is in position.”

According to Erich Kempka, he saw the dead Führer in his study. Hitler had fallen across the table with the revolver in his hand and Eva sat at an angle beside him. She had taken poison. Her right arm was hanging over the side of the sofa and on the ground nearby was the pistol.

Linge returned to the sitting room. Seconds later the door opened again. Hitler’s doctor, Ludwig Stumpfegger, and Linge emerged carrying Hitler’s body wrapped in a blanket. Hitler’s face was covered as far as the bridge of his nose and his left arm was dangling out of the blanket.

Bormann followed with Eva in his arms, her head inclined backwards. Kempka took Eva’s body from Bormann. Her side was wet. Kempka assumed that she had also shot herself, but later Günsche told him that when Hitler’s body collapsed across the table it overturned a vase and the water flowed over Eva.

There were 20 steps up to the bunker exit. Halfway up, Kempka’s strength failed and he had to stop. Günsche hurried to help him and together they carried Eva’s body into the open.

It was around 5 pm. The Reich Chancellery was under siege. The Russian shells exploded all around them, sending fountains of sand and grit into the air.

LIFE correspondent Percy Knauth sifting through the dirt and debris in the shallow shell hole where the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were thought to have been burned after their suicides. (Source: dailymail.co.uk)

Stumpfegger and Linge placed Hitler’s body wrapped in the blanket on the ground in a shell crater about three metres from the bunker exit with his legs towards the bunker stairway. Günsche and Kempka placed Eva at an angle to her husband.

Kempka rushed back to the bunker exit. Panting, he seized a can of petrol. He came back and placed the can near the two bodies. As he was about to remove the cap of the petrol can, shells exploded close by, spattering them with earth and dust. So, all ran to the bunker entrance for cover. When the shelling died down, Günsche, Linge and Kempka poured petrol over the corpses. Goebbels, Bormann and Stumpfegger watched from the entrance to the bunker.

Kempka protested when someone suggested that they should ignite the bodies with a hand grenade. He saw a large piece of rag at the bunker exit.

“Get that cloth!” Kempka shouted.

Günsche tore the rag in half. Opening the petrol can Kempka soak the rag with petrol.

“A match!”, Kempka again shouted.

Goebbels took a box of matches from his pocket and handed it to him. Kempka lit the rag and lobbed it on the petrol-soaked corpses.

In seconds a bright flame flared up, accompanied by billowing black smoke. Slowly the fire nibbled at the corpses. For the last time, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Heinz Linge, Otto Günsche, and Erich Kempka, stood at attention and gave the Hitler salute as they watched the two bodies burn.

Under the most difficult conditions, Kempka’s men supplied several hundred more litres of petrol and kept on pouring petrol over the burning corpses.

July 1947 photo of the rear entrance to the Führerbunker in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler and Eva Braun were cremated in a shell hole in front of the emergency exit at left; the cone-shaped structure in the centre served as the exhaust, and as bomb shelter for the guards. (Source: Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-V04744,_Berlin,_Garten_der_zerstörte_Reichskanzlei)

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← Previous – Part 7: Suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun

To be continued…

,

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

.

“For us, we have burnt our bridges. We cannot go back, but neither do we want to go back. We are forced to extremes and therefore resolved to proceed to extremes.”
– Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

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Adolf Hitler with Goebbels’ first daughter, Helga (born September 1, 1932), in Heiligendamm in 1933.

“The Führer has given orders for me, in case of a breakdown of defense of the Capital of the Reich, to leave Berlin and to participate as a leading member in a government appointed by him. For the first time in my life, I must categorically refuse to obey a command of the Führer. My wife and my children agree with this refusal. In any other case, I would feel myself… a dishonorable renegade and vile scoundrel for my entire further life, who would lose the esteem of himself along with the esteem of his people, both of which would have to form the requirement for further duty of my person in designing the future of the German Nation and the German Reich.“

Around 8:15 pm, Goebbels and his wife left the Vorbunker and went up and out to the garden of the Reich Chancellery. They were followed by Goebbels’s adjutant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Günther Schwägermann. While Schwägermann was busy preparing the gasoline, Magda bit a vial of cyanide and, Goebbels shot her with a pistol, to make doubly sure that she died, before turning it on himself. Schwägermann ordered one of the soldiers to shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it himself.

The bodies of Joseph Goebbels and his wife were then burned in a shell crater, but owing to the lack of petrol, the burning was only partly effective.

The Goebbels family in 1942: (back row) Hildegard, Harald Quandt, Helga; (front row) Helmut, Hedwig, Magda, Heidrun, Joseph and Holdine. (Source- Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-086-03-CC-BY-SA)

In the above manipulated vintage image, the visage of the uniformed Harald Quandt, stepson of Joseph Goebbels born to Magda Behrend Rietschel and Günther Quandt, was inserted and retouched. Actually Harald was away on military duties when the photo of the Goebbels family was taken. He was not present when his half-siblings were killed.

Bodies of the six Goebbels children, who were poisoned by their parents (Source: imgur.com)

The bodies of Joseph Goebbels and his wife were then burned in a shell crater, but owing to the lack of petrol, the burning was only partly effective, and their bodies were easily identifiable.

When the first Russians entered the bunker two days later they discovered the bodies of the Goebbels’ children. They were lying in their beds, wearing white nightclothes.

According to the autopsy the Russians carried out, bruising on the face of 12-year-old Helga Goebbels indicated that cyanide was administered to her forcibly.

A few days later, Hans-Erich Voss captured by the Russians and brought back to the bunker identified the partly burned bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and the bodies of their children.

← Previous –Part 8: Burning the Bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun

To be continued…

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  (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix A: Adolf Hitler’s Private Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix B: Adolf Hitler’s Last Political Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix C: Marriage Certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)
• Battle of Berlin (en.wikipedia.org)
• Death of Adolf Hitler (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Death of Hitler (hhistoryplace.com)
• Joseph Goebbels (en.wikipedia.org)
• Goebbels children (en.wikipedia.org)

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.

 . By T.V. Antony Raj

.

General Helmuth Weidling, defense commandant of Berlin.

Although Hitler had appointed General Helmuth Weidling as defense commandant of Berlin, SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke remained free of Weidling’s command to maintain his defense objectives of the Reich Chancellery and the Führerbunker. The aggregated total for the Berlin’s defense of General Weidling’s LVI Panzer Corps and the other few units, and Mohnke’s SS Kampfgruppe (combat group), totaled roughly 45,000 soldiers and 40,000 Volkssturm (people’s militia). They faced a superior number of Soviet soldiers. There were approximately 1.5 million Soviet troops allocated for the investment and the assault on the Berlin Defence Area.

After the death of the Führer the occupants of the Führerbunker were now free to make their escape from Berlin based on the orders issued by Hitler the day before he committed suicide along with his wife Eva Braun. Most planned was to escape from Berlin to the Allies on the western side of the Elbe or to the German Army to the North.

The breakout by SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke’s group

Wilhelm Mohnke, SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Waffen-SS.

Prior to the breakout, Wilhelm Mohnke briefed all commanders who could be reached within the Zitadelle sector about Hitler’s death and the planned break out. They split up into ten main groups. Mohnke, split up the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker soldiers and personnel into ten main groups.

Mohnke planned to break out towards the German Army which was positioned in Prinzenallee. His group included: secretary Traudl Junge, secretary Gerda Christian, secretary Else Krüger, Hitler’s dietician, Constanze Manziarly, Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck, Walther Hewel and many others.

Before leaving the Führerbunker, Traudl Junge approached General Hans Krebs to say goodbye. Hans straightened up and smoothed his uniform before greeting her for the last time.

On the night of May 1, 1945, Mohnke led the group out of the Reich Chancellery. It was an apocalyptic moment for him because he had been the first duty officer of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) at the building and now was leaving it as its last battle commander.

As planned, the group headed along the subway, to the Friedrichstrasse station, but their route was blocked because of the flooding of the Berlin underground on April 28, 1945, to slow the advancing Soviet troops. So, they went above ground and found Berlin in flames, and Russian shells bursting everywhere around them.

Knowing that it was impossible to get through the Soviet cordons, Mohnke decided to surrender to the Red Army. But he was captured by the Soviets on the morning of the following day, while hiding in a cellar off the Schönhauser Alle, one of the most important streets of the Prenzlauer Berg district.

Some members of Mohnke’s group, who eluded capture by the Soviets, later joined hundreds of other German civilians and military personnel seeking refuge at the “Schultheiss-Patzenhofer Brewery” on Prinzenallee.

The breakout by Martin Bormann’s group

At around 11:00 pm on May 1, 1945, Martin Bormann left the Führerbunker in one of the ten breakout groups that included Adolf Hitler’s personal surgeon Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann, Hitler’s pilot Hans Baur and Werner Naumann, State Secretary in Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

They made their way north along the Friedrichstrasse to the Weidendammer Bridge, which was under heavy Russian fire and blocked by an anti-tank barrier at its north end. So, they withdrew to the south end of the bridge where a few German tanks soon gathered.

Martin Bormann – Hitler’s private secretary

Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler’s personal surgeon.

Artur Axmann, leader of the Hitler Youth (Reichsjugendführer)

A Tiger B (Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B) spearheaded the first attempt to storm across the bridge, but it was destroyed by the Soviet artillery. The violent explosion stunned Bormann and Stumpfegger.

The German tanks made two more attempts and on the third attempt, made around 1:00 am, Bormann’s group using the tanks as their shield managed to cross the bridge and pressed forward as far as the Ziegelstrasse, but retreated back to the Weidendammer Bridge.

Realizing they were not going to move ahead as a group, Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Axmann left the rest of their group and walked along the railway tracks towards Lehrter station.

On reaching the station, Bormann and Stumpfegger decided to go east on Invalidestrasse and Axmann decided to go alone in the opposite direction of his two companions.

When Axmann came across a Soviet patrol, he hurried back to catch up with Bormann and Stumpfegger. Axmann was stunned when he saw the dead bodies of Bormann and Stumpfegger near the railroad switching yard. He knew it was them because he saw their faces clearly under moonlight. He could see no signs of an explosion. He did not have time to check the bodies. So, he did not know how they died. He assumed that they had been shot in the back. Axmann avoided capture by Soviet troops and disappeared from Berlin.

After Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Axmann left him at the Weidendammer Bridge, Hans Baur was shot in the legs. Gangrene set in and his right lower leg was amputated later in Posen on June 10, 1945.

The breakout by others

Otto Günsche left the Führerbunker after midnight on May 1, 1945. He was captured by Soviet troops encircling the city on May 2, 1945 and was flown to Moscow for interrogation by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs).

The last courier of the Hitler, the 17-year-old Hitler Youth, Armin Lehmann, mislead to the end, until the suicides of the top Nazis, caught him off guard. After hiding in cellars and disused buildings, he succeeded in reaching the American Occupation Zone two months later. He realized that he was just a minor figure in the grand scheme of things placed in a critical location at a critical time.

SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Georg Betz left the Reich Chancellery as part of one of the groups attempting to break out. By midnight Betz was part of a large group of German soldiers and civilians who crossed the Weidendammer Bridge that was under heavy fire from Soviet tanks and guns. Betz was wounded during the crossing.

Heinz Linge, valet of Adolf Hitler, was one of the last to leave the Führerbunker in the early morning hours of May 2, 1945. He teamed up with Hitler’s chauffeur SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Erich Kempka. They left the bunker complex on the night of May 1, 1945, along with one of the SS-Hauptscharführer Heinrich Doose, a driver who was a member of his staff. During their escape, they came across the wounded Betz and left him in the care of Kaethe Hausermann, but Betz succumbed to his wounds the following day.

Linge got separated from Kempka and was captured near Seestraße station. Several days later, after his identity was revealed, two Russian officers escorted Linge by train to Moscow, where he was thrown into the notorious Lubjanka Prison.

Rochus Misch, bodyguard, courier, telephone operator and attendant of Adolf Hitler, fled the bunker on May 2, 1945, only hours before the Red Army seized it. He was captured by the Russians shortly thereafter. Misch was sent to the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he was tortured in an attempt to extract information regarding Hitler’s exact fate because the Soviets did not believe Hitler was dead.

The surrender of Berlin

In the early morning of May 2, 1945, the Soviets captured the Reich Chancellery.

General Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov, the commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army at 6 am.

Hans Krebs (Wehrmacht General)

General Wilhelm Burgdorf, Chief Adjutant to Hitle

SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Schädle

Some of the SS personnel, opted to commit suicide. General Hans Krebs and General Wilhelm Burgdorf, along with SS SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Franz Schädle of the SS-Begleitkommando des Führers, stayed behind.

In the early morning hours of May 2, 1945, the trio committed suicide by gunshot to the head. Their bodies were found by the Soviet soldiers when they entered the bunker complex.

Johannes Hentschel, the master electro-mechanic for the bunker complex, stayed after everyone else had either left or committed suicide as the field hospital in the Reich Chancellery above needed power and water. He surrendered to the Red Army as they entered the bunker complex at 09:00 am on May 2, 1945.

However, some groups of Mohnke kept up pockets of resistance throughout the city and did not surrender until May 8, 1945.

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← Previous – Part 9: Suicide of Joseph Goebbels and His Wife

To be continued …

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RELATED ARTICLES

• Death of Adolf Hitler – Prelude (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 1: The Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 2: Hitler retreats to the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 3: Life in the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 4: The Doubts About Loyalty to the Führer (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 5: Hitler’s Marriage and Last Testaments (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 6: Preamble to Suicide (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 7: Suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 8: Burning the Bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun
  (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 9: Suicide of Joseph Goebbels and His Wife (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix A: Adolf Hitler’s Private Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix B: Adolf Hitler’s Last Political Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix C: Marriage Certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)
• Helmuth Weidling ((en.wikipedia.org)
• Wilhelm Mohnke ((en.wikipedia.org)
• Martin Bormann (en.wikipedia.org)
• Ludwig Stumpfegger (en.wikipedia.org)
• Artur Axmann (en.wikipedia.org)
• Hans Krebs (Wehrmacht general) (en.wikipedia.org)
• Wilhelm Burgdorf (en.wikipedia.org)
• Franz Schädle (en.wikipedia.org)
• Georg Betz (en.wikipedia.org)
• Armin D. Lehmann (en.wikipedia.org)

.

 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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In the early morning of April 29, 1945, while the Red Army closed in on the Reichstag building, Hitler after his wedding ceremony, retired to a room with Traudl Junge, his youngest private secretary, and dictated in a hurry, his last Testaments: a Private Testament – a will (see Appendix A), and a Political Testament (see Appendix B).

After the three messengers said their farewell to Hitler, Martin Bormann gave each of them a white dossier containing the testaments. Later that day, armed with automatic weapons, the trio left the besieged Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker. They escaped from Berlin, passing through Soviet lines without being captured.

The arrest of Heinz Lorenz

Heinz Lorenz, Adolf Hitler’s Deputy Chief Press Secretary

The British arrested Heinz Lorenz, traveling under alias as a journalist from Luxembourg, for possessing false identity papers. The documents were hidden in Lorenz’s coat-lining. After a lengthy process of interrogation, Lorenz finally confessed the truth.

Lorenz  revealed the existence of two more copies smuggled out of the Führerbunker, and the names of the other two messengers as SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander, and Major Willy Johannmeyer.  He told the British interrogators that they left the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker on April 29, 1945, after receiving a set of documents each.

The next problem that faced the interrogators was how to pursue the two absconding messengers, and find out whether they still had the documents with them.

The arrest of Major Willy Johannmeyer

Major Willy Johannmeyer, the last adjutant to Adolf Hitler.

Hans Arnold Wangersheim was born in Nuremberg on July 25, 1924. His parents divorced when he was six years old, and he was put in a Jewish orphanage.

On 9–10 November 1938, a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria was carried out by SA paramilitary forces and non-Jewish civilians while the German authorities looked on without intervening. This series of coordinated attacks is referred to as Kristallnacht (English: “Crystal Night”), also known as Reichskristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass as the result of the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues had their windows smashed.

The pretext for the attacks was the assassination on November 9, 1938, of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in the French capital.

On November 15, 1938, five days after the Kristallnacht in Germany and Austria, a delegation of British Jewish and Quaker leaders appealed to Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. They requested the British government to permit temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children into Britain, without their parents.

The Kindertransport (children transport), a rescue mission was born. In the months between the Kristallnacht Pogrom to the start of World War II, nearly 10,000 children were sent, without their parents, out of Nazi Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Free City of Danzig, to safety in Great Britain. These children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. A similar, but a much less organised effort to transport unaccompanied children, mostly Jewish, to the United States was known as the One Thousand Children (OTC). The program brought about 1,400 children aged between 14 months and 16 years to the United States.

In 1938, about a year before the Second World War began, Arnold Wangersheim was rescued by a Jewish social services organization.

Arnold was 13 when he arrived in the United States, with only a cardboard suitcase and $5 cash. He did not know anyone in America, nor knew a single word of English. Eventually, he was placed with a family that owned a jewelry store in Janesville, Wisconsin. He changed his surname “Wangersheim” to “Weiss” – a name he borrowed from Howard Weiss, a Wisconsin football star and was known as Arnold Hans Weiss thereafter.

Arnold Hans Weiss in 1945

He studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before joining the Army. In the Army, Weiss trained as a tail gunner until a crash landing broke both his legs. During his recuperation, since he spoke German, he was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II intelligence service, the precursor of the CIA.

In 1945, in the months following the fall of Nazi Germany, the 21-year-old Weiss was back in Germany as a U.S. military intelligence officer in the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC).

Weiss’s unit was given the responsibility of confirming Adolf Hitler’s death because there were endless rumors that Hitler was still alive. Since Berlin was part of the Russian zone, and no witness and neither the body of Hitler nor of Eva Braun had been produced by the Soviets, many Germans refused to believe the Fuhrer was dead. However, Weiss and his unit were certain that he had committed suicide in his bunker. Weiss questioned many members of the Nazi hierarchy in advance of their trials.

The British and the Americans believed that Martin Bormann, the highest-ranking Nazi, the Brown Eminence, the Nazi Party secretary and Hitler’s gatekeeper was still on the loose. If anyone knew what had really happened to Hitler, then it would none other than Bormann. Weiss vaguely remembered that his adjutant Wilhelm Zander hailed from Munich and was still unaccounted for. So, Weiss surmised that there was a good chance that Zander had been in the Führerbunker just before the Red Army stormed it and might know where his boss, Bormann, was hiding. So, Weiss referred the Munich phone book and found several Zanders listed in it.

He rounded up Zander’s mother and sister. They seemed just ordinary people. They insisted that Zander had done nothing wrong. Eventually, he found out from them that the 34-year-old Zander had a young 21-year-old girlfriend in Munich and lived with her parents.

Weiss had Zandeer’s girlfriend arrested. He lodged her in a large jail, on the outskirts of Munich which housed common criminals.  There, he let her sit alone in a cell to ponder over her fate. After two days, she was ready to talk. She said she saw Zander six weeks earlier and that he was working as a farmhand for someone named Irmgard Unterholzener in a village not too far from Munich called Tegernsee. She also told Weiss that Zander was using the alias “Friedrich Wilhelm Paustin”.

Hugh Trevor-Roper, British intelligence officer and historian (1950)

 Weiss immediately sent a coded communique to CIC headquarters in Frankfurt. The U.S. intelligence notified British Intelligence, which dispatched its lead investigator Hugh Trevor-Roper, to join Weiss in the chase.

In November 1945, Trevor-Roper, the British intelligence officer and historian who wrote “The Last Days of Hitler,” was ordered by Dick White, then head of counterintelligence in the British sector of Berlin to investigate the circumstances of Adolf Hitler’s death, and to rebut the Soviet propaganda that Hitler was alive and living in the West.

Weiss and Trevor-Roper made hasty arrangements to raid the farmhouse, but by the time they arrived, Zander had vanished. For the next three weeks, Weiss chased down blind leads without luck. Then, just before Christmas, Weiss got a call from the CIC field office in Munsingen, Germany. A Paustin had registered for a residence permit.

Weiss, Trevor-Roper and a junior American CIC Special Agent Rosener, along with several MPs reached the old stone building where Zander was hiding before 4 am on Christmas Eve.

As the MPs broke down the door, a shot rang out from the house. They found the startled Zander naked in bed with a woman, not the girlfriend Weiss had arrested earlier, and quickly overpowered him.

Arnold Weiss took part, largely as a translator, in the interrogation of Wilhelm Zander. Initially, the arrested person claimed that he was a victim of misidentification. They grilled him for 10 hours. They confronted him with all the facts of his life. Finally, Weiss said: “We have your mother and sister.” This was not true. Weiss had arrested only the girlfriend. But Zander didn’t know that and he solemnly accepted that he was SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander.

That same day Zander led Weiss and Trevor-Roper back to Tegernsee, where he had originally been hiding. He took them to a dry well at the back of the Unterholzener property, and he pointed down it. They retrieved a fake-leather suitcase lying at the bottom of the well. It contained Zander’s discarded SS uniform. But upon closer inspection, they found a hidden compartment and in it was a plain manila envelope containing the Mein privates Testament, the Mein politsches Testament and the marriage certificate of Hitler and Eva Braun, and a covering letter from Bormann to Doenitz.

 The documents were sent to the United States. In Washington, a forensic analysis of the paper and ink by the FBI confirmed their authenticity.

With that the last of the documents in the case was in the hands of the Allieds. Thus, one of the copies fell into the hands of the British while the other two copies of the documents ended up in the hands of the Americans.

By January 1946, the texts of these documents were published widely in the American and British press. However, the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, considered restricting access to these documents. He feared they might become cult objects among the Germans. But the Americans did not share these concerns since they were already public knowledge, but nonetheless agreed to refrain from further publication of them.

Letter to President Truman from the Secretary of War ((Source: eisenhower.archives.gov)

Hitler’s political testament and his marriage certificate were presented to American President Harry S. Truman by the Secretary of War. One set was placed on public display at the National Archives in Washington for several years.

Thus, one of the copies fell into the hands of the British while the other two copies of the documents ended up in the hands of the Americans.

← Previous – Part 10: The Breakout from the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker

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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Prelude (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 1: The Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 2: Hitler retreats to the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 3: Life in the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 4: The Doubts About Loyalty to the Führer (tvaraj.com)
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 10: The Breakout from the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix A: Adolf Hitler’s Private Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix B: Adolf Hitler’s Last Political Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix C: Marriage Certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)
• Heinz Lorenz (en.wikipedia.org)
• Willy Johannmeyer (en.wikipedia.org)
• Wilhelm Zander (en.wikipedia.org)
• Martin Bormann (en.wikipedia.org)
• Kristallnacht (en.wikipedia.org)
• Kindertransport (en.wikipedia.org)
• Arnold Weiss (en.wikipedia.org)
• Hugh Trevor-Roper (en.wikipedia.org)
• Ernst vom Rath (en.wikipedia.org)
• Herschel Grynszpan (en.wikipedia.org)
• Arnold Weiss Dies at 86; Helped to Find Hitler’s Will (nytimes.com)
• Giving Hitler Hell (washingtonpost.com)

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.

 . By T.V. Antony Raj

.

On May 1, 1945, around 11:00 pm, Martin Bormann left the Führerbunker in one of the ten breakout groups that included Adolf Hitler’s personal surgeon Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann, Hitler’s pilot Hans Baur, Erich Kempka and Werner Naumann, State Secretary in Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Martin Bormann – Hitler’s private secretary

Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler’s personal surgeon.

Artur Axmann, leader of the Hitler Youth (Reichsjugendführer)

They made their way north along the Friedrichstrasse to the Weidendammer Bridge, which was under heavy Russian fire and blocked by an anti-tank barrier at its north end. So, they withdrew to the south end of the bridge where a few German tanks soon gathered.

A Tiger B (Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B) tank spearheaded the first attempt to storm across the bridge, but it was destroyed by the Soviet artillery. The violent explosion stunned Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Baur; and the bright flash almost blinded Kempka. Hans Baur was left with gunpowder burns that remained in his pores for many months. Baur then rejoined Bormann, Stumpfegger and Axmann at a ruined tenement. He crawled up the stairs and through a window counted around 20 Russian soldiers in the courtyard and reported to Bormann, and they moved on.

The German tanks made two more attempts and on the third attempt, made around 1:00 am, Bormann’s group using the tanks as their shield managed to cross the bridge and pressed forward as far as the Ziegelstrasse, but retreated back to the Weidendammer Bridge.

Realizing they were not going to move ahead as a group, Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Axmann left the rest of their group and walked along the railway tracks towards Lehrter station.

On reaching the station, Bormann and Stumpfegger decided to go east on Invalidestrasse and Axmann decided to go alone in the opposite direction of his two companions.

When Axmann came across a Soviet patrol, he hurried back to catch up with Bormann and Stumpfegger. Axmann was stunned when he saw the dead bodies of Bormann and Stumpfegger near the railroad switching yard. He knew it was them because he saw their faces clearly under moonlight. He could see no signs of an explosion. He did not have time to check the bodies. So, he did not know how they died. He assumed that they had been shot in the back. Axmann avoided capture by Soviet troops and disappeared from Berlin.

After Bormann, Stumpfegger, and Axmann left him at the Weidendammer Bridge, Hans Baur was shot in the legs. Gangrene set in and his right lower leg was amputated later in Posen on June 10, 1945.

The breakout by others

Otto Günsche left the Führerbunker after midnight on May 1, 1945. He was captured by Soviet troops encircling the city on May 2, 1945 and was flown to Moscow for interrogation by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs).

The last courier of the Hitler, the 17-year-old Hitler Youth, Armin Lehmann, mislead to the end, until the suicides of the top Nazis, caught him off guard. After hiding in cellars and disused buildings, he succeeded in reaching the American Occupation Zone two months later. He realized that he was just a minor figure in the grand scheme of things placed in a critical location at a critical time.

SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Georg Betz left the Reich Chancellery as part of one of the groups attempting to break out. By midnight Betz was part of a large group of German soldiers and civilians who crossed the Weidendammer Bridge that was under heavy fire from Soviet tanks and guns. Betz was wounded during the crossing.

Heinz Linge, valet of Adolf Hitler, was one of the last to leave the Führerbunker in the early morning hours of May 2, 1945. He teamed up with Hitler’s chauffeur SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Erich Kempka. They left the bunker complex on the night of May 1, 1945, along with one of the SS-Hauptscharführer Heinrich Doose, a driver who was a member of his staff. During their escape, they came across the wounded Betz and left him in the care of Kaethe Hausermann, but Betz succumbed to his wounds the following day.

Linge got separated from Kempka and was captured near Seestraße station. Several days later, after his identity was revealed, two Russian officers escorted Linge by train to Moscow, where he was thrown into the notorious Lubjanka Prison.

Rochus Misch, bodyguard, courier, telephone operator and attendant of Adolf Hitler, fled the bunker on May 2, 1945, only hours before the Red Army seized it. He was captured by the Russians shortly thereafter. Misch was sent to the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he was tortured in an attempt to extract information regarding Hitler’s exact fate because the Soviets did not believe Hitler was dead.

The surrender of Berlin

In the early morning of May 2, 1945, the Soviets captured the Reich Chancellery.

General Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov, the commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army at 6 am.

Hans Krebs (Wehrmacht General)

General Wilhelm Burgdorf, Chief Adjutant to Hitle

SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Schädle

Some of the SS personnel, opted to commit suicide. General Hans Krebs and General Wilhelm Burgdorf, along with SS SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Franz Schädle of the SS-Begleitkommando des Führers, stayed behind.

In the early morning hours of May 2, 1945, the trio committed suicide by gunshot to the head.

Johannes Hentschel, the master electro-mechanic for the bunker complex, stayed after everyone else had either left or committed suicide as the field hospital in the Reich Chancellery above needed power and water. He surrendered to the Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) abbreviated НКВД (NKVD) search teams that entered the bunker complex at 09:00 am on May 2, 1945.

The NKVD soldiers captured more than 50 officers and men who were still there in the bunker complex and found out that the bulk of the Reich Chancellery group had decamped during the night and did not know where they were.

They saw the macabre remains of the partly burnt corpses of the Goebbels and filmed them. Then inside the bunker they found the bodies of many Germans who had committed suicide including that of General Hans Krebs, General Wilhelm Burgdorf, and SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Schädle.

Bodies of the six Goebbels children, who were poisoned by their parents (Source: imgur.com)

The Russians discovered the bodies of the Goebbels’ six children only on May 3, 1945. They were lying in their beds in the Vorbunker, wearing white nightclothes with the clear mark of cyanide shown on their faces. According to the autopsy the Russians carried out, bruising on the face of 12-year-old Helga Goebbels indicated that cyanide was administered to her forcibly.

A few days later, Hans-Erich Voss captured by the Russians and brought back to the bunker identified the partly burned bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and the bodies of their children.

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← Previous – Part 10: The Breakout from the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker

Next → Part 12: The Fate of the Three Messengers 

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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Prelude (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 1: The Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 12: The Fate of the Three Messengers
  (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix A: Adolf Hitler’s Private Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix B: Adolf Hitler’s Last Political Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix C: Marriage Certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)\
• Helmuth Weidling (en.wikipedia.org)
• Wilhelm Mohnke ((en.wikipedia.org)
• Martin Bormann (en.wikipedia.org)
• Ludwig Stumpfegger (en.wikipedia.org)
• Artur Axmann (en.wikipedia.org)
• Hans Krebs (Wehrmacht general) (en.wikipedia.org)
• Wilhelm Burgdorf (en.wikipedia.org)
• Franz Schädle (en.wikipedia.org)
• Georg Betz (en.wikipedia.org)
• Armin D. Lehmann (en.wikipedia.org

 

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, Reichspräsident (President of the Reich) and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.

Großadmiral Karl Dönitz had left the Führerbunker on April 21, 1945. He was in a remote hideout at Plön, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He received the following message from Martin Bormann:

“The Führer has appointed you, Herr Admiral, as his successor in place of Reichsmarschall Göring. Confirmation in writing  follows. You are hereby authorized to take any measures which the situation demands. — Bormann.”

This surprised Dönitz. In his memoirs, he describes his reactions:

“… This took me completely by surprise. Since July 20, 1944, I had not spoken to Hitler at all except at some large gathering. … I had never received any hint on the subject from anyone else…. I assumed that Hitler had nominated me because he wished to clear the way to enable an officer of the Armed Forces to put an end to the war. That this assumption was incorrect, I did not find out until the winter of 1945-46 in Nuremberg, when for the first time I heard the provisions of Hitler’s will…. When I read the signal I did not for a moment doubt that it was my duty to accept the task … it had been my constant fear that the absence of any central authority would lead to chaos and the senseless and purposeless sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives … I realized … that the darkest moment in any fighting man’s life, the moment when he must surrender unconditionally, was at hand. I realized, too, that my name would remain forever associated with the act and that hatred and distortion of facts would continue to try and besmirch my honor. But duty demanded that I pay no attention to any such considerations. My policy was simple — to try and save as many lives as I could ...“

On the morning of May 1, 1945, Dönitz received the following radio message, classified as “Secret and Personal,” from Bormann:

“[Hitler's] Will now in force. Coming to you as quickly as possible. Pending my arrival you should in my opinion refrain from public statement.“

On perusing this message, Dönitz presumed that Hitler was dead, but knew not how. The public had to be told of the Führer’s death expressed in respectful terms:

“… To denigrate him … as, I felt, many around me would have liked me to do, would, in my opinion, have been a mean and cheap thing to do … I believed that decency demanded that I should word my announcement in the manner in which it was, in fact, worded. Nor, I think, would I do otherwise today…“

The same day, Dönitz received a third and final radio message from the Berlin chancellery classified as “Personal and Secret” but signed this time by Goebbels and Bormann:

“Führer died yesterday, 1530 hours. In his will dated April 29 he appoints you as President of the Reich, Goebbels as Reich Chancellor, Bormann as Party Minister, Seyss-Inquart as Foreign Minister. The will, by order of the Führer, is being sent to you and to Field Marshal Schoerner and out of Berlin for safe custody. Bormann will try to reach you today to explain the situation. Form and timing of announcement to the Armed Forces and the public is left to your discretion. Acknowledge.“

 Then the voice of Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, named by Hitler in his political testament as his successor with the title of Reichspräsident, was relayed from his remote hideout in North Germany. He said:

“German men and women, soldiers of the armed forces: Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, has fallen. In the deepest sorrow and respect the German people bow.

At an early date he had recognized the frightful danger of Bolshevism and dedicated his existence to this struggle. At the end of his struggle, of his unswerving straight road of life, stands his hero’s death in the capital of the German Reich. His life has been one single service for Germany. His activity in the fight against the Bolshevik storm flood concerned not only Europe, but the entire civilized world.

Der Führer has appointed me to be his successor.

Fully conscious of the responsibility, I take over the leadership of the German people at this fateful hour.

It is my first task to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. For this aim alone the military struggle continues. As far and for so long as achievement of this aim is impeded by the British and the Americans, we shall be forced to carry on our defensive fight against them as well. Under such conditions, however, the Anglo-Americans will continue the war not for their own people, but solely for the spreading of Bolshevism in Europe.

What the German people have achieved in battle and borne in the homeland during the struggle of this war is unique in history. In the coming time of need and crisis of our people I shall endeavor to establish tolerable conditions of living for our women, men and children so far as this lies in my power.

For all this, I need your help. Give me your confidence because your road is mine as well. Maintain order and discipline in town and country. Let everybody do his duty at his own post. Only thus shall we mitigate the sufferings that the coming time will bring to each of us; only thus shall we be able to prevent a collapse. If we do all that is in our power, God will not forsake us after so much suffering and sacrifice.“

 Even as he announced the death of Adolf Hitler, Dönitz was not aware of the suicide of Joesph Goebbels and his wife, and the murder of their children.

Front page of the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Dönitz then authorized a withdrawal of the German forces to the west hoping to save the army and the nation by negotiating a partial surrender to the allied forces. This move enabled about 1.8 million German soldiers to avoid capture by the Soviets. However, the troops continued to fight until May 8, 1945.

← Previous – Part 9: Suicide of Joseph Goebbels and His Wife

.

RELATED ARTICLES

• Death of Adolf Hitler – Prelude (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 1: The Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 2: Hitler retreats to the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 3: Life in the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 4: The Doubts About Loyalty to the Führer (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 5: Hitler’s Marriage and Last Testaments (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 6: Preamble to Suicide (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 7: Suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 8: Burning the Bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun
  (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 9: Suicide of Joseph Goebbels and His Wife (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix A: Adolf Hitler’s Private Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix B: Adolf Hitler’s Last Political Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix C: Marriage Certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)
• Battle of Berlin (en.wikipedia.org)
• Death of Adolf Hitler (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Death of Hitler (hhistoryplace.com)
• Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz: Last President of a United Germany (ihr.org)

.

.

 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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The surrender of Berlin

Hans Krebs (Wehrmacht General)

General Wilhelm Burgdorf, Chief Adjutant to Hitle

SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Schädle

Some of the SS personnel, who did not join any of the breakout groups, opted to commit suicide. General Hans Krebs, Deputy Chief of the Army General Staff, and General Wilhelm Burgdorf, the Chief Adjutant to Adolf Hitler, along with SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Franz Schädle of the SS-Begleitkommando des Führers, stayed behind.

Since the field hospital in the Reich Chancellery above needed power and water, Johannes Hentschel, the master electro-mechanic for the bunker complex, opted to stay even after everyone else had either left or committed suicide.

At 6 am, on May 2, 1945, General Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov, the commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army.

Around 9 am,, the first Russian combat troops arrived at the bunker complex unopposed. They were followed by the Russian search teams of “SMERSH”, equivalent of CIC of the Allieds.

SMERSH (acronym of Spetsyalnye MEtody Razoblacheniya SHpyonov or Special Methods of Spy Detection, but also referred to as SMERt‘ SHpionam; “Death to spies”) was an umbrella name for three independent counterintelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially founded on April 14, 1943.

The Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) abbreviated НКВД (NKVD) soldiers captured more than 50 officers and men who were still there in the bunker complex, including Johannes Hentschel. Then they found out that the bulk of the Reich Chancellery group had decamped during the night.

Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Klimenko, the leader of one of the search teams found the cadaverous remains of the partly burnt corpses of the Goebbels and filmed them. He immediately sent the remains to the Russians headquarters in Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison.

Hitler’s Double

Another search team found an old oak water tank which contained many dead bodies. They pulled out a particular body that resembled Hitler. The dead man must have been one of Hitler’s doubles. The security personnel in the bunker, responsible for Hitler’s safety, may have had him, to camouflage and help Hitler escape, if Hitler decided to take part in a breakout. But, after Hitler’s death, they would have realized that any double if found would be an embarrassment, and therefore would have disposed this person.

When Ivan Klimenko returned to the bunker the next day, May 3, 1945, he found the body resembling Hitler, displayed prominently in the main hall of the Reich Chancellery. Ignoring the darned socks, worn by the dead man, Klimenko assumed the crucial problem of finding Hitler dead or alive had been solved.

Then probing inside the darkened bunker the Russians found the bodies of many Germans who had committed suicide, including that of General Hans Krebs. The bodies of General Wilhelm Burgdorf and SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Schädle were never found.

Bodies of the six Goebbels children, who were poisoned by their parents (Source: imgur.com)

The Russians then discovered the bodies of the six Goebbels children lying in their beds in the Vorbunker. They were wearing white nightclothes with the clear mark of cyanide shown on their faces. According to the autopsy the Russians carried out, bruising on the face of 12-year-old Helga Goebbels indicated that she was forced to ingest cyanide.

Finding Hitler’s body

On the following day, May 4, 1945, Ivan Churakov, a Russian soldier, climbed into a nearby bomb crater strewn with burned paper. He saw some partly burnt furry object and he hollered, “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, there are legs here.“

They started to dig and pulled from the crater two dead dogs, and digging further they found the burnt bodies of a man and a woman. At first Klimenko did not even think that the two burnt corpses might be that of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. Since he believed that Hitler’s corpse was already displayed prominently in the Chancellery and only needed to be positively identified, he therefore ordered the newly discovered burnt cadavers to be wrapped in blankets and reburied.

On Saturday, May 5, 1945, Comrade Klimenko while pondering over his finding the burnt bodies of a man and a woman from the burnt crater rushed back and exhumed the two bodies. He transported both bodies to Plötzensee Prison. There he was ordered to send them on to the 496th Field Hospital in Buch, a German locality within the Berlin borough of Pankow.

On May 8, 1945, the Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day), the first preliminary forensic autopsy was performed on both bodies. Positive identification took place in a very simple yet quite foolproof.

A few days later, the Russians moved Hitler’s body to a different gravesite outside Berlin. This would be just one of several moves the corpse would make in the next few decades.

In early June 1945, the Russians re-buried the body of dead male identified as that of Hitler, in a forest near the town of Rathenau. Eight months later, they moved it again, to the SMERSH facility in the Soviet Army garrison in Magdeburg on February 21, 1946.

Soviet leaders were quite worried about leaving Hitler’s body in the garrison or burying it somewhere away from their watchful eye. They feared Hitler’s gravesite would eventually turn into a shrine for neo-Nazis.

Hitler’s body remained in Magdeburg until March 1970, when the Soviets decided to abandon the garrison and turn it over to the East German civilian government.

KGB director Yuri Andropov decided that Hitler’s remains should be destroyed. He authorized an operation to dispose the body. The KGB kept the fragments of a jawbone and skull, and stored it in government buildings in Moscow.

Yuri Andropov selected a KGB officer Vladimir Gumenyuk to pick a secret final resting place for Hitler’s remains. Armed with a secret coordinate to the last burial spot in the Soviet Army garrison in Magdeburg, Gumenyuk led a three-man team to dig out the remains and take them away for destruction.

Since the Soviet garrison was surrounded by German-built high-rise buildings in Magdeburg, to avoid being seen, Gumenyuk’s men pitched a tent over the spot where the bones had been buried. After some digging with no results, the team realized they had counted 45 meters instead of 45 paces while following the directions to the corpse. They put the dirt back, and moved the tent to the correct spot measuring in paces.

After securing the remains, Gumenyuk’s team disguised themselves as fishermen and drove to the mountains. They stopped along a small stream. There, they lit two campfires. One to make soup and the other to burn the remains further and turn them to ashes.

A general view of what Russian officials claim to be a fragment of Adolf Hitler’s skull, at an exhibition in Moscow, Wed April 26, 2000. (Photograph: Mikhail Metzel-AP)

On September 26, 2009, the History Channel aired a documentary called Hitler’s Escape. For the making of the film, Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni flew to Moscow to inspect the Hitler trophies at the Russian State Archive which included the skull fragment with a bullet hole through it, which the Russians dug up outside the Führerbunker in 1946, as well as bloodstains from the bunker sofa on which Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were believed to have committed suicide. The Russian government has been publicly claiming since 2000 that these articles belonged to Hitler.

Bellatoni said:

“I had the reference photos the Soviets took of the sofa in 1945 and I was seeing the exact same stains on the fragments of wood and fabric in front of me, so I knew I was working with the real thing.” (sic)

Examination of the skull by Bellantoni revealed it belonged to a young woman and not that of the 56-year-old dictator. “The bone seemed very thin. Male bone tends to be more robust,” he said. “And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40.”

Bellantoni applied cotton swabs and took samples for DNA tests during the one hour he was allowed with the Hitler trove. The swabs were then flown back to Connecticut. At the university’s Centre for Applied Genetics, Linda Strausbaugh, worked for three days on the samples sent by Bellatoni. “We used the same routines and controls that would have been used in a crime lab,” she said.

The DNA analysis revealed that the skull undoubtedly belonged to a female, and the only positive physical proof that Hitler had shot himself had suddenly been rendered worthless. The result of the DNA analysis reopened the mystery surrounding Hitler’s death.

If Hitler allegedly shot himself in the right temple, then why did the Russians exhibit what is claimed to be Hitler’s cranium, showing a bullet hole in the back of his head?

Russian officials, however, rejected the findings of Nick Bellantoni.

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← Previous – Part 12: The Breakout by Martin Bormann

Next → Part 14: The Fate of the Three Messengers

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RELATED ARTICLES

• Death of Adolf Hitler – Prelude (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 1: The Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 2: Hitler retreats to the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 3: Life in the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 4: The Doubts About Loyalty to the Führer (tvaraj.com)
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 6: Preamble to Suicide (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 7: Suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 9: Suicide of Joseph Goebbels and His Wife (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 10: Announcement of Hitler’s death to the outside world
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 11: The Breakout from the Reichskanzlei-Führerbunker
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 12: The Breakout by Martin Bormann
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Part 14: The Fate of the Three Messengers
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• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix A: Adolf Hitler’s Private Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix B: Adolf Hitler’s Last Political Testament (tvaraj.com)
• Death of Adolf Hitler – Appendix C: Marriage Certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (tvaraj.com)\
• Helmuth Weidling (en.wikipedia.org)
• Wilhelm Mohnke ((en.wikipedia.org)
• Martin Bormann (en.wikipedia.org)
• Ludwig Stumpfegger (en.wikipedia.org)
• Artur Axmann (en.wikipedia.org)
• Hans Krebs (Wehrmacht general) (en.wikipedia.org)
• Wilhelm Burgdorf (en.wikipedia.org)
• Franz Schädle (en.wikipedia.org)
• Georg Betz (en.wikipedia.org)
• Armin D. Lehmann (en.wikipedia.org

 

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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Judge not others

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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[Jesus said to his disciples:]

“You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet your brothers and sisters only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?

So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

— Mathew 5:43-48

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I had a very difficult time trying to write about loving my enemies. I wrote and deleted, wrote and deleted, more than a dozen times. Then I remembered having read long ago a thought provoking speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., on this subject.

I am just a mole hill before the colossal mountain called Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest champion of Jesus, who still lives in and will never fade away from our memory. So, today, I have taken the easy way out. I want our beloved King to talk to us on loving our enemies.

Martin Luther King Jr. (source: biography.com)

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This is a very long speech; so take your time to read it. I request you  to digest, understand and follow his way of loving our enemies if you really love Jesus.

Here is the speech “Loving Your Enemies” by Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, 17 November 1957.

” …

I want to use as a subject from which to preach this morning a very familiar subject, and it is familiar to you because I have preached from this subject twice before to my knowing in this pulpit. I try to make it a, something of a custom or tradition to preach from this passage of Scripture at least once a year, adding new insights that I develop along the way out of new experiences as I give these messages. Although the content is, the basic content is the same, new insights and new experiences naturally make for new illustrations.

So I want to turn your attention to this subject: “Loving Your Enemies.” It’s so basic to me because it is a part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation—the whole idea of love, the whole philosophy of love. In the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”

Certainly these are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries, many persons have argued that this is an extremely difficult command. Many would go so far as to say that it just isn’t possible to move out into the actual practice of this glorious command. They would go on to say that this is just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth. So the arguments abound. But far from being an impractical idealist, Jesus has become the practical realist. The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.

Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing. He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies. He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn’t playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

Now first let us deal with this question, which is the practical question: How do you go about loving your enemies? I think the first thing is this: In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self. And I’m sure that seems strange to you, that I start out telling you this morning that you love your enemies by beginning with a look at self. It seems to me that that is the first and foremost way to come to an adequate discovery to the how of this situation.

Now, I’m aware of the fact that some people will not like you, not because of something you have done to them, but they just won’t like you. I’m quite aware of that. Some people aren’t going to like the way you walk; some people aren’t going to like the way you talk. Some people aren’t going to like you because you can do your job better than they can do theirs. Some people aren’t going to like you because other people like you, and because you’re popular, and because you’re well-liked, they aren’t going to like you. Some people aren’t going to like you because your hair is a little shorter than theirs or your hair is a little longer than theirs. Some people aren’t going to like you because your skin is a little brighter than theirs; and others aren’t going to like you because your skin is a little darker than theirs. So that some people aren’t going to like you. They’re going to dislike you, not because of something that you’ve done to them, but because of various jealous reactions and other reactions that are so prevalent in human nature.

But after looking at these things and admitting these things, we must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something that we’ve done deep down in the past, some personality attribute that we possess, something that we’ve done deep down in the past and we’ve forgotten about it; but it was that something that aroused the hate response within the individual. That is why I say, begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual.

…

And this is what Jesus means when he said: “How is it that you can see the mote in your brother’s eye and not see the beam in your own eye?” Or to put it in Moffatt’s translation: “How is it that you see the splinter in your brother’s eye and fail to see the plank in your own eye?” And this is one of the tragedies of human nature. So we begin to love our enemies and love those persons that hate us whether in collective life or individual life by looking at ourselves.

A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points.

I’ve said to you on many occasions that each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality. We’re split up and divided against ourselves. And there is something of a civil war going on within all of our lives. There is a recalcitrant South of our soul revolting against the North of our soul. And there is this continual struggle within the very structure of every individual life. There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, “I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do.” There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, “There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue.” There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul, “I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do.”

So somehow the “isness” of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls “the image of God,” you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must not do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.

The Greek language, as I’ve said so often before, is very powerful at this point. It comes to our aid beautifully in giving us the real meaning and depth of the whole philosophy of love. And I think it is quite apropos at this point, for you see the Greek language has three words for love, interestingly enough. It talks about love as eros. That’s one word for love. Eros is a sort of, aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his dialogues, a sort of yearning of the soul for the realm of the gods. And it’s come to us to be a sort of romantic love, though it’s a beautiful love. Everybody has experienced eros in all of its beauty when you find some individual that is attractive to you and that you pour out all of your like and your love on that individual. That is eros, you see, and it’s a powerful, beautiful love that is given to us through all of the beauty of literature; we read about it.

Then the Greek language talks about philia, and that’s another type of love that’s also beautiful. It is a sort of intimate affection between personal friends. And this is the type of love that you have for those persons that you’re friendly with, your intimate friends, or people that you call on the telephone and you go by to have dinner with, and your roommate in college and that type of thing. It’s a sort of reciprocal love. On this level, you like a person because that person likes you. You love on this level, because you are loved. You love on this level, because there’s something about the person you love that is likeable to you. This too is a beautiful love. You can communicate with a person; you have certain things in common; you like to do things together. This is philia.

The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape. And agape is more than eros; agape is more than philia; agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen.

And this is what Jesus means, I think, in this very passage when he says, “Love your enemy.” And it’s significant that he does not say, “Like your enemy.” Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something. There are a lot of people that I find it difficult to like. I don’t like what they do to me. I don’t like what they say about me and other people. I don’t like their attitudes. I don’t like some of the things they’re doing. I don’t like them. But Jesus says love them. And love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, “Love your enemy.” This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.

Now for the few moments left, let us move from the practical how to the theoretical why. It’s not only necessary to know how to go about loving your enemies, but also to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus’ thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends.

Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn’t cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.

I think I mentioned before that sometime ago my brother and I were driving one evening to Chattanooga, Tennessee, from Atlanta. He was driving the car. And for some reason the drivers were very discourteous that night. They didn’t dim their lights; hardly any driver that passed by dimmed his lights. And I remember very vividly, my brother A. D. looked over and in a tone of anger said: “I know what I’m going to do. The next car that comes along here and refuses to dim the lights, I’m going to fail to dim mine and pour them on in all of their power.” And I looked at him right quick and said: “Oh no, don’t do that. There’d be too much light on this highway, and it will end up in mutual destruction for all. Somebody got to have some sense on this highway.”

Somebody must have sense enough to dim the lights, and that is the trouble, isn’t it? That as all of the civilizations of the world move up the highway of history, so many civilizations, having looked at other civilizations that refused to dim the lights, and they decided to refuse to dim theirs. And Toynbee tells that out of the twenty-two civilizations that have risen up, all but about seven have found themselves in the junkheap of destruction. It is because civilizations fail to have sense enough to dim the lights. And if somebody doesn’t have sense enough to turn on the dim and beautiful and powerful lights of love in this world, the whole of our civilization will be plunged into the abyss of destruction. And we will all end up destroyed because nobody had any sense on the highway of history. Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.

There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, you can stand up and see a person and that person can be beautiful, and you will call them ugly. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.

…

Never hate, because it ends up in tragic, neurotic responses. Psychologists and psychiatrists are telling us today that the more we hate, the more we develop guilt feelings and we begin to subconsciously repress or consciously suppress certain emotions, and they all stack up in our subconscious selves and make for tragic, neurotic responses.

And may this not be the neuroses of many individuals as they confront life that that is an element of hate there. And modern psychology is calling on us now to love. But long before modern psychology came into being, the world’s greatest psychologist who walked around the hills of Galilee told us to love. He looked at men and said: “Love your enemies; don’t hate anybody.” It’s not enough for us to hate your friends because—to to love your friends—because when you start hating anybody, it destroys the very center of your creative response to life and the universe; so love everybody. Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life. So Jesus says love, because hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.

I think of one of the best examples of this. We all remember the great president of this United States, Abraham Lincoln—these United States rather. You remember when Abraham Lincoln was running for president of the United States, there was a man who ran all around the country talking about Lincoln. He said a lot of bad things about Lincoln, a lot of unkind things. And sometimes he would get to the point that he would even talk about his looks, saying, “You don’t want a tall, lanky, ignorant man like this as the president of the United States.” He went on and on and on and went around with that type of attitude and wrote about it.

Finally, one day Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States. And if you read the great biography of Lincoln, if you read the great works about him, you will discover that as every president comes to the point, he came to the point of having to choose a Cabinet. And then came the time for him to choose a Secretary of War. He looked across the nation, and decided to choose a man by the name of Mr. Stanton. And when Abraham Lincoln stood around his advisors and mentioned this fact, they said to him: “Mr. Lincoln, are you a fool? Do you know what Mr. Stanton has been saying about you? Do you know what he has done, tried to do to you? Do you know that he has tried to defeat you on every hand? Do you know that, Mr. Lincoln? Did you read all of those derogatory statements that he made about you?” Abraham Lincoln stood before the advisors around him and said: “Oh yes, I know about it; I read about it; I’ve heard him myself. But after looking over the country, I find that he is the best man for the job.”

Mr. Stanton did become Secretary of War, and a few months later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. And if you go to Washington, you will discover that one of the greatest words or statements ever made by, about Abraham Lincoln was made about this man Stanton. And as Abraham Lincoln came to the end of his life, Stanton stood up and said: “Now he belongs to the ages.” And he made a beautiful statement concerning the character and the stature of this man. If Abraham Lincoln had hated Stanton, if Abraham Lincoln had answered everything Stanton said, Abraham Lincoln would have not transformed and redeemed Stanton. Stanton would have gone to his grave hating Lincoln, and Lincoln would have gone to his grave hating Stanton. But through the power of love Abraham Lincoln was able to redeem Stanton.

That’s it. There is a power in love that our world has not discovered yet. Jesus discovered it centuries ago. Mahatma Gandhi of India discovered it a few years ago, but most men and most women never discover it. For they believe in hitting for hitting; they believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; they believe in hating for hating; but Jesus comes to us and says, “This isn’t the way.”

And oh this morning, as I think of the fact that our world is in transition now. Our whole world is facing a revolution. Our nation is facing a revolution, our nation. One of the things that concerns me most is that in the midst of the revolution of the world and the midst of the revolution of this nation, that we will discover the meaning of Jesus’ words.

History unfortunately leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors. And there are three ways that individuals who are oppressed can deal with their oppression. One of them is to rise up against their oppressors with physical violence and corroding hatred. But oh this isn’t the way. For the danger and the weakness of this method is its futility. Violence creates many more social problems than it solves. And I’ve said, in so many instances, that as the Negro, in particular, and colored peoples all over the world struggle for freedom, if they succumb to the temptation of using violence in their struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence isn’t the way.

Another way is to acquiesce and to give in, to resign yourself to the oppression. Some people do that. They discover the difficulties of the wilderness moving into the promised land, and they would rather go back to the despots of Egypt because it’s difficult to get in the promised land. And so they resign themselves to the fate of oppression; they somehow acquiesce to this thing. But that too isn’t the way because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way. Jesus discovered that.

Not only did Jesus discover it, even great military leaders discover that. One day as Napoleon came toward the end of his career and looked back across the years—the great Napoleon that at a very early age had all but conquered the world. He was not stopped until he became, till he moved out to the battle of Leipzig and then to Waterloo. But that same Napoleon one day stood back and looked across the years, and said: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have built great empires. But upon what did they depend? They depended upon force. But long ago Jesus started an empire that depended on love, and even to this day millions will die for him.”

Yes, I can see Jesus walking around the hills and the valleys of Palestine. And I can see him looking out at the Roman Empire with all of her fascinating and intricate military machinery. But in the midst of that, I can hear him saying: ‘I will not use this method. Neither will I hate the Roman Empire.’
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…”

Related articles

• Who Are We to Judge? (tvaraj.com)
• Love My Enemies? (tvaraj.com)
• “Free at last, Free at last, Great God almighty, We are free at last.” (tvaraj.com)
• Martin Luther King on the Futility of Hating the Haters (nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com)
• Loving Your Enemy (tatakimahe.wordpress.com)
• Rev. Martin Luther King (rabbittrails.net)
• Love Your Enemies (meditationsfromthehive.wordpress.com)
• Love My Enemies? (tvaraj.com)
• Martin Luther King on the Futility of Hating the Haters (nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com)

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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Did you ever wonder what the longest film that was ever produced in India?

It is the Gangs of Wasseypur, a 2012 film based on criminal activities, co-written, produced and directed by Anurag Kashyap. Centered around the coal mafia of Dhanbad, Jharkhand, and the underlying power struggles, politics and vengeance between three families well steeped in crime, the story spans from the early 1940s to mid 1990s.

Though the movie ran for 319 minutes,  Directors Fortnight, a non-competitive section at the Cannes Film Festival, selected Gangs of Wasseypur for screening at the 2012 Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

However, in India, no Indian theatre was willing to screen the five hours 19 minute movie.  So, the film was edited into two parts of 160 and 159 minutes for screening in India.

Poster of Thavamai Thavamirundhu, a 2005 Tamil movie directed by Cheran

So, the credit for the longest Indian feature film screened in India as a whole until now is probably Thavamai Thavamirundhu, a 2005 Tamil movie depicting the familial bond, directed by Cheran.

At the box office, the film Thavamai Thavamirundhuwas was moderately received compared to the director’s earlier work, Autograph. However, the film won the National Film Award for Best Film on Family Welfare.

Here is a list of the longest films produced in India, sorted by running time:

Related articles

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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Last week, a youth from Andhra befriended me on Facebook. He had joined Facebook recently. I visited his page and clicked on “Friends” and found to my surprise it showed “No friends to show”.

Last night when I was logged into FB, this youth came on-line to chat with me.

Here is a part of the verbatim conversation:

He: sir u have gud stuff in ur page sir (sic)

Me: Thanks Uxxx.

He: you r welcome sir (sic)

Me: Did you visit my website: http://tvaraj.com ?

He: sir i had good communication skills with me,i can face people,i can motivate people and i am hard worker sir how can i use theses all things for my life and for the nation

am really cnfused

am also good at acting sir

any advice from ur xperience (sic)

Me: Uxxx, we belong to different way of looking at life due to our age difference. So, I never give advice to young people. Sorry.

I have been smitten many times and burnt my fingers and my image by advising youngsters.

He: it’s ok sir no need to tell sorry i jst tried (sic)

I felt sorry for this youngster and the ‘teacher’ inside me gave in and my fingers started typing:

Me: What I find in you is that you are quick learner. Last time I communicated with you, you were using a lot of short cuts. Today, I find you completely changed. Keep it up.

When I was young, I was pulled in to act in the main parts in all college dramas. It gave me courage to face any number of people. But I would say this: “If you want to make a mark in life, forget about acting.”

Don’t emulate film stars and never have them as your idols.

Next, forget about the nation. Always remember “Charity begins at home.”

You are part of the nation, your parents are also part of the nation. If you and your parents grow, the nation will prosper automatically.

So, first obey your parents and don’t let their hearts bleed. In Tamil we have the saying “Maathaa-Pithaa, Guru, Deivam” meaning “[Honour your] parents, teachers, and gods [in that order.]“

When I say parents, it includes your own brothers and sisters also. Your family.

After you have done the needful for your parents and made them happy, then you can think about your poor relatives who are in need.

So, it will take a long time to fulfill these tasks. Be honest with yourself and your friends and relatives.

Forget about taking active part in politics because all politicians are just rogues bent on making money only.

Don’t trust and go after priests of any religion. They too are cheats bent on making money by blessing you.

There is a saying in Tamil: “koduppavanai kandaal deivam kunangi kunangi aadumaam” meaning “if a god sees a donor, it will start dancing obsequiously.”

Here ‘god’ means those rascals in temples and houses of worship and the devil dancers who act as if the gods or demons, the Holy Spirit, etc., have entered into their body and start dancing feverishly and holler nonsense. That is ‘talking in tongues’.

The real blessings come from your parents and your own elders.

After that I waited for about 15 minutes for his response. But there was none from him.

Today morning, when I logged in to FB, I saw the following:

He: thnk u sir goldn wrd (sic)

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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On Saturday, August 30, 2014, Sri Lanka trounced Pakistan by seven wickets in the final One-Day International cricket match played at Dambulla, Sri Lanka, to clinch the series 2-1.

Pakistan had slumped to 81-8 in the 26th over of the first session when, an hour-long rain interrupted the play. The umpires reduced the game to 48-overs-a-side after the rain stopped.

Sri Lanka seamer Thisara Perera claimed 4-34, and Dhammika Prasad took two wickets and the hosts bowled Pakistan out for 102.

PCB has ordered an investigation in the religious comments made by Shehzad against Dilshan.l (Source: sports.ndtv.com)

In the second session, Dilshan Tillakartane hit an unbeaten 50. Sri Lanka surpassed the Duckworth-Lewis target of 101 in the 19th over. It was apparently a one-sided game.

A video footage of the teams while they were leaving the field after Sri Lanka winning the series shows Pakistan’s Ahmed Shehzad allegedly delivering a religious comment to Dilshan Tillakartane. This has created an uproar in the cricketing circle.

The Associated Press report said that as the players headed back to the dressing room after Sri Lanka won the series, Ahmed Shehzad caught on camera told Dilshan “… if you are a non-Muslim and you turn Muslim, no matter whatever you do in your life, straight to heaven.“

Dilshan’s reply was not clearly audible.

Then Shehzad continued saying, “Then, be ready for the fire,” the report added.

Dilshan Tillakartane and the Sri Lanka Cricket Board are unconcerned about the religion-focused comments Shehzad had supposedly made. Dilshan said he thought little of the exchange, and will not consider lodging a complaint. He said he does not remember what he said to Shazad. He further said that he had no issues at all because he was happy with the win. Michael de Zoysa, manager of the Sri Lanka team said, the SLCB Board will consider the matter closed.

The Pakistan Cricket Board became aware of the exchange after a journalist brought it to their notice. The footage went viral in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The PCB set up an inquiry under director of international cricket Zakir Khan and on Wednesday, September 3, 2014, summoned Shehzad for an explanation. The player said he came to know of Dilshan’s religious background during the match, and simply sought a lighthearted discussion. Shehzad said the video only showed part of their exchange, and that he had not wished to offend Dilshan.

Though no complaints have been, the PCB did not find a contract or code of ethics breach in Shehzad’s behaviour, he was officially reprimanded and not to engage in religious exchanges in the future.

Ahmed Shehzad (Source: sports.ndtv.com)

Ahmed Shehzad was born on November 23, 1991 in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. He is a right-handed opening batsman and a part-time leg-break bowler.  He played domestic cricket for Habib Bank Limited. He made his One-Day International and T20 debut for Pakistan against Australia on April 24, and May 7, 2009 respectively.

An incident happened at the end of the 19th over when Shehzad got involved in a debate with Dilshan, which ended with the former pushing Dilshan’s shoulder.

The on-field umpires Johan Cloete of South Africa and Pakistan’s Shozab Raza, as well as third umpire Richard Illingworth from England and fourth umpire Ahsan Raza of Pakistan  laid the charge. The International Cricket Council (ICC) said Shehzad pleaded guilty to the offence.

Shehzad has been fined 50 percent of his match fee for pushing Sri Lankan opener Dilshan Tillakaratne during the third one-day game, the sport’s governing body said on Monday.  The ICC statement said:

“The opener was found to have breached Article 2.2.4 of the ICC code of conduct for players and player support personnel, which relates to ‘inappropriate and deliberate physical contact between Players in the course of play during an international match’.“

Dilshan Tillakaratnee (Source: httpgunapalaalva.blogspot.in)

Dilshan Tillakaratne was born on October 14, 1976 in Kalutara, Sri Lanka, to a Ja (Malay) Muslim father and a Buddhist mother and was earlier known as Tuwan Mohamed Dilshan. His younger brother formerly carried the name Tuwan Mohamed Nishan Sampath was born on June 23, 1982 in Jaffna, Sri Lanka and is a Sri Lankan first class cricketer.

When their parents got separated, Dilshan and his younger brother changed their religion and shed their Muslim names and took up an ethnic Sinhalese-Buddhist identity by changing their names to Tillakaratne Mudiyanselage Dilshan and Tillakaratne Mudiyanselage Nishan Sampath.

Dilshan’s childhood coach Ranjan Paranavitana said that even though Dilshan carried a Muslim name, from their childhood, he and his brothers and sisters followed Buddhism, their mother’s religion.

Another Sri Lanka cricketer Hewa Kaluhalamullage Suraj Randiv was earlier known as Suraj Mohammed.

Roshan Abeysinghe, the manager of both Dilshan Tillakaratne and Suraj Randiv said the players took up their mothers’ religion and identity for personal reasons. Abeysinghe also said that Dilshan wanted a Sinhala identity.

It is rumoured in certain quarters that both players changed their religion and names because being Sinhala-Buddhist enhanced their chances of selection to the highest levels in Sri Lankan cricket. But this rumour is just bull-shit, because Dilhara Fernando, Ajantha Mendis, Angelo Mathews, Dhammika Prasad and Chaminda Vaas are Catholics, and most of them make the sign of the cross before they start their bowling run. Russel Arnold is a Methodist Christian of Tamil descent, and Muthiah Muralidharan is a Tamil Hindu by birth.

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Related articles

• Ahmed Shehzad (en.wikipedia.org)
• Tillakaratne Dilshan (en.wikipedia.org)
• Dilshan’s name-change: Currying favour or not? (islandcricket.lk)
• Convert and You Will go to Heaven, Pakistani Cricketer Told Dilshan (sports.ndtv.com)
• Pakistan probe into Shehzad-Dilshan religious chat (miamiherald.com)

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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On Sunday, August 31, 2014, the Hyderabad police apprehended 23-year-old actress Shweta Basu Prasad, a National award-winner, for her involvement in a high-profile prostitution racket.

Shweta Basu Prasad (Source: indiatvnews.com)

Shweta Basu began her career as a child actress in TV shows such as ‘Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki‘ and ‘Karishma Ka Karishma‘. Later on she acted in many Bollywood films, including ‘Makdee‘, ‘Darna Zaroori Hai‘ and ‘Iqbal‘.

In 2002, Shweta Basu won the National Award for the Best Child Artist for acting in the film Makdee.

Later on, she became a popular actress in Tamil, Telugu and Bengali films.

Shweta Basu Ptrasad (Source: deccanchronicle.com)

Shweta Basu’s involvement in prostitution came to light on Sunday morning when an anonymous person tipped off the police about a high-profile prostitution racket involving Shweta Basu. On receiving the tip off, the police raided a reputed hotel at Banjara Hills in Hyderabad and caught the actress red-handed consorting with some highly-connected businessmen.

Anjaneyulu alias Balu the organizer of the prostitution racket was also arrested. Balu, was reportedly collecting rupees one lakh each from his high profile clients.

The police took all into immediate custody and they expect more would be revealed once interrogations and police questioning begins.

On Monday, the court where Shweta Basu was produced sent her to a rescue home run by the Women and Child Welfare Department.

The actress underwent a medical examination at a government hospital before being sent to the rescue home, where women rescued by police and those facing trial are given shelter during the trial period. The inmates are provided free food, clothing, medical care and vocational training. Shwetha Basu is likely to stay in the rescue home or three months.

The police sources quoted Shweta Basu:

“I was out of money. I had to support my family and some other good causes. All the doors were closed, and some people encouraged me to get into prostitution to earn money. I was helpless, and with no option left to choose, I got involved in these acts.”

After Shweta Basu’s arrest, her fans and the public started analyzing the situation on the internet. Many wonder why the police identified only the actress and not the businessmen who were with her at the time of the raid. The public want to know why the police who normally protect the identity of women caught for prostitution had publicized the name of the actress, and for what purpose.

Several actors including Aditi Rao Hydari and Upen Patel have come forward to speak up for Shweta.

Aditi tweeted:

“A girl is in the news and in prison for prostitution, why not her high profile clients? We are so damn sexist… #Pathetic.”

Upen Patel tweeted:

“Breaks my heart about Shweta Prasad. Remember meeting her when she was a little girl in Iqbal .. Great actress..I’m know she will bounce bck (sic).”

Film Director Hansal Mehta urged the authorities to “expose” the “clients” of the actress. He tweeted.

“I intend to offer Shweta Prasad a role in my next film. She was so good in ‘Makdee’.“

“Stop posting pictures of Shweta. Put out the pictures of her wealthy clients and the pimp. Expose the sc****gs, not the soft target.“

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RELATED ARTICLES

• ‘Makdee’ actress Shweta Basu arrested for prostitution (ibnlive.in.com)
• The actress Shweta Basu Prasad was caught in a sex racket recently(bollywood.webuct.com)
• National Award Winner ‘Makdee’ Star Shweta Basu Prasad Arrested in Prostitution Racket (ibtimes.co.in)
• Shweta Basu Prasad, Child Star of 2002 Bollywood Hit, Arrested for Prostitution(trendingtopnews.com)
• Dark Side of Bollywood: Actress arrested in Prostitution Racket(theeasterntribune.com)
• Actress goes from national award winner to prostitution (rediff.com)
• Former Bollywood child star arrested in prostitution raid (telegraph.co.uk)
• Several well-known businessmen arrested in Hyderabad on Sunday for being involved in a high profile prostitution racket. (indianhomemaker.wordpress.com)
• Former Bollywood child star Shweta Prasad arrested in prostitution raid(dailymail.co.uk)

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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On May 12, 2014, the officials of the Tirunelveli City Police and the District Revenue Department of Tirunelveli assembled at a spot in Asirvatha Nagar in Palayamkottai, Tamilnadu, India, and exhumed the body of a 36-year-old mechanical engineer and a film financier who was reported missing since January 2014.

Ronald Peter Prinzo

According to the Police, Ronald Peter Prinzo, the deceased, hailed from Parapadi village in Nanguneri Taluk, Tirunelveli District, in Tamilnadu, India. He was married and had two sons.

Uma Chandran

Prinzo along with his friend Uma Chandran of Palayamkottai ran computer centers in many towns including Tenkasi, Alankulam, and Pavoor Chathiram. When the computer centers ran at a loss, Prinzo left for Kolkata. There he earned a good deal of money from various ventures. He then came to Chennai and started an online trading business. His friend Uma Chandran joined him as the partner and invested money in Prinzo’s online trading business.

After leasing a house in V.R.S. Nagar First Street, in Maduravoyal, West of Chennai, Prinzo traveled once a month to Tirunelveli to see his family.

Prinzo also financed Tamil films and had acted in a couple of them. Even though the two movies were never released, he got acquainted with many people in the cine field.

Shruti Chandralekha (Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

In 2012, he met the gentle, soft-spoken, 22-year-old Shruti Chandralekha, a married budding actress from Bengaluru, at a film shoot in Salem.

Shruti had acted in minor roles in some Tamil and Kannada films. She had gotten married when she was 16 to a person named Manjunath. But after a few years she left her husband and started acting in minor roles in Kannada and Tamil films.

Shruthi moved into Prinzo’s residence as his live-in partner.

After a few months, Prinzo started bringing many other women to his house for his carnal pleasure. This infuriated Shruthi and she quarrelled with him constantly.

The online trading failed. Prinzo’s business partner, Uma Chandran asked him to return the money he had invested. But Prinzo refused to pay him. After that Uma Chandran constantly pestered Prinzo for the money.

Prinzo forced Shruti into prostitution. He decided to make porn movies and relentlessly pressurized Shruti to take part in group sex in the porn films. He also started bringing many other women to his house for his carnal pleasure. This infuriated Shruthi and she quarrelled with him constantly.

An enraged Uma Chandran waited patiently for a chance to avenge Prinzo. He then came to know that Prinzo and Shruti were not getting along well. He and some of his friends met with Shruti and hatched a plot to murder Prinzo.

On the night of January 18, 2014, when Prinzo came home, Shruti gave him poisoned milk to drink while being intimate with him.

After the poison took effect, Uma Chandran, John Prinson, and their friends from Tirunelveli – Honest Raj alias Saddam, Gandhimathinathan alias Vijay, Vijay, Rafiq Usman, Vinoth Nirmal Singh and Elisa – entered the house and strangled Prinzo with nylon rope.

Shruti and the murderers reportedly took rupees 75 lakh in cash, a Volkswagen Polo car, and other valuables from Prinzo and shared the booty.

They took the body in a car all the way from Maduravoyal to Maharajanagar in Palayamkottai and buried the body in an already dug up deep trench in a vacant plot in Asirvatham Nagar.

A fortnight later, on February 1, 2014, Shruti lodged a complaint with the Maduravoyal police saying that her ‘husband’ Prinzo was missing since January 18, 2014.

Justin, brother of Ronald Peter Prinzo

On April 12, 2014, Justin Prinzo, elder brother of Ronald Prinzo lodged a similar complaint at the Palayamkottai Police Station about his missing younger brother.

On May 10, while returning to Tirunelveli from Chennai, Justin saw his brother’s car in Madurai. When he intercepted it, he found John Prinson driving it. When Justin asked about his brother Prinson gave contradictory answers and said Prinzo had gone to Calcutta. Not satisfied, Justin informed the police about Prinzon driving his missing brother’s car.

The Maduravoyal police picked up Prinson and he confessed to the crime.

By the time the police arrived, Shruti and Uma Chandran absconded. The police arrested Uma Chandran’s accomplices Sadam, Vijay, Rafeeq and Vinoth.

Uma Chandran’s accomplices showing the spot where they buried the body of Ronald Peter Prinzo.

On May 12, 2014, Prinzo’s body was exhumed after Uma Chandran’s accomplices showed the officials of the Tirunelveli City Police and the District Revenue Department of Tirunelveli the spot where they buried the dead body. A post-mortem was conducted on the recovered remnants of Prinzo’s decomposed dead body.

In the meantime, Maduravoyal police received information that Shruti was taking part in a shooting of a Tamil film at Mahabalipuram. Before the police arrived, Shruti took off from the shooting venue along with her new paramour Uma Chandran and his aide Vinoth Nirmal.

The police then received a tip-off that she was hiding in the house of a relative in Bengaluru. But again, she escaped to Hyderabad. Shruti and Uma Chandran confounded the police by skipping from one place to another.

Eventually, on Thursday, September 4, 2014, Chennai police apprehended Shruti in Bengaluru. Shruti was produced before a court and remanded.

The hunt is now on to nab Uma Chandran, the prime accused, and his aide Vinoth Nirmal.

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• Actor held for husband’s murder in Chennai (thehindu.com)
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• Tamil Nadu actress bumps off hubby, held with 5 others (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
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• சினிமா பைனான்சியர் கொலை வழக்கில் தலைமறைவாக இருந்த துணை நடிகை பெங்களூரில் கைது ஆபாச படத்தில் நடிக்க வலியுறுத்தியதால் கொன்றதாக வாக்குமூலம்
  (southindiancrimepoint.com)

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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Bhuvaneshwari means “The Queen of the Universe.” In Hinduism, there are ten Mahavidya goddesses and Bhuvaneshwari is the fourth. The goddess is an aspect of Durga or Devi. She can transform situations according to her wish. The Navagrahas (9 planets) and Trimurti (Trinity) cannot stop her from doing anything, and in Tamilnadu it is the same with actress Bhuvaneswari the dream girl of many South Indians and nothing can stop her from getting involved into avoidable problems.

Actress Bhuvaneswari

According to “Koppiyam” telecast on Raj TV, actress Bhuvaneswari, also known as the poonai kan (cat-eyed) Bhuvaneswari, the voluptuous and sexy actress South Indian B grade actress hails from Sankarankovil, Tirunelveli District, 56 km away from Tirunelveli City. She studied B.Com., at the Rani Anna Government College for Women, Tirunelveli. But other sources claim that Bhuvaneswari was born on June 4, 1975, in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, India; and a Facebook page bearing her name mentions her mother tongue is Hindi.

With her beautiful mien and voluptuous figure she got selected to act in an ad for a leading textile firm in T. Nagar, Chennai. From then on she received calls to act in minor roles in TV serials.

In 2002, due to a misunderstanding with a politician the police arrested her for prostitution. When she came out on bail, her husband left her with her child.

In 2003, film director Shankar offered Bhuvaneswari a chance to play the role of a prostitute in the movie “Boys” directed by him. She performed the role with alacrity using her real-life experiences. This movie was simultaneously released in Tamil and Telugu bearing the same name as the title.

Here is a clip from the Telugu version of the movie:

From then on Bhuvaneswari garnered young fans who revered her as their dream girl.

She was then offered scintillating sexy minor roles in many Telugu and Tamil films and seductive villainous roles in Tamil and Telugu TV serials, and more opportunities to prostitute herself came her way.

Bhuvaneswari speaking at a political meeting.

Politicians approached her for their party propaganda work. However, when problems arose due to her flesh trade, her high-profile clients and the politicians who banked on her glamour for propagating their party ideology, forsook her.

In real life, Bhuvaneswari got arrested more than once for running prostitution rackets in Chennai. In 2008, police arrested her for prostitution. However, she was given a clean chit and was released due to political pressure.

Actress Bhuvaneswari

The proverb “Once bitten, twice shy” does not apply to actress Bhuvaneswari.

When the police received complaints from Bhuvaneshwari’s neighbors, they raided her apartment in Shastri Nagar, Chennai on Friday, October 2, 2009. Caught while entertaining her customers, Bhuvaneswari was once again arrested along with two of her accomplices for allegedly running a brothel at her residence.

Her arrest shook Kollywood and Tollywood. She said that she can name many major and minor actresses in the South Indian cine field who charged their clients lakhs of rupees per hour for entertaining within closed doors.

The police said that Bhuvaneswari ran a high-profile brothel for many years. According to reports from one source, she charged rates ranging from rupees 10,000 to two lakhs per hour for their services while another source said she charged two lakhs to seven lakhs.

She was later acquitted.

In late 2012, Bhuvaneswari went with her friends that included her lawyer Mr. Damodaran to see actor Vijay’s movie “Thuppaki” at Prarthana drive-in theatre in Injambakkam, a town in Kancheepuram district in Tamilnadu. As their car entered the premises of the drive-in theatre, it bashed into the car in front. An altercation ensued between their driver and Mr. Kumar the driver of the damaged car. Police reported that Lawyer Damodaran assaulted Kumar. Bhuvaneswari also got out of the car and harangued Kumar.

Selvaraj, an employee in the drive-in theatre tried to pacify the two parties and Bhuvaneswari’s friends beat him too.

On receiving information about the incident, police from Neelangarai Police Station arrived at the scene. While Sub-Inspector Krishnamoorthy and Jeep drive Bhaskar were admonishing Bhuvaneswari and her friends, a gang of thugs appeared on the scene and assaulted the policemen, the theatre staff, and a few members of the public who were in the theatre premises. The thugs also damaged flower pots and digital banners.

When they saw Sub-Inspector Krishnamoorthy staggering as a consequence of the blows he received, Bhuvaneswari and her friends scooted from the scene in their car.

The police registered a case against Lawyer Damodaran, actress Bhuvaneswari, and her friends under nine sections including attempt to murder, damaging public and private property, and so forth, and were on a constant lookout for them.

The police then received information that the absconding actress, the lawyer and others were on their way to Bengaluru via Velore by road. The alerted Ambur police and the highway police inspected all vehicles plying on that route.

At 10 am they stopped a Lenova car carrying Bhuvaneswari. When the police asked her whether she was Bhuvaneswari, she had replied that she was a businesswoman returning to her home in Bengaluru.

After actress Bhuvaneswari and Lawyer Damaodran were apprehended,. Six others involved in the case surrendered to the police, and all were lodged in the Puzhal Central Prison in Chennai.

Bhuvaneswari has acted in more than 50 films in Telugu and Tamil languages, such as Boys (2003), Donga Ramudu & Party (2003), Sema Ragalaiand (2004) Gudumba Shankar (2004), Konchem Touchlo Vunte Cheputanu (2005), Nuwante Naakistam (2005), Hello Premistara (2007), Kurkure (2008), Pinchu Manasu (2009), Vattapparai (2009), Nagaram (2010), Ranga The Donga (2010), Agarathi (2011), Gaali (2013), Sravya (2013), Ala Jarigindi Oka Roju (2013) and many more. Bhuvaneswari acted as the leading heroine in the film “Kurkure“.

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RELATED ARTICLES

• Et Tu Shweta Basu? (tvaraj.com)
• Police Arrest Actress Shruti Chandralekha for Murdering Her Live-in Partner (tvaraj.com)
• Kannada Actress Shruthi Arrested in Murder Case (bollywood.webuct.com)
• Former Bollywood child star says she is one of many Indian actresses caught in prostitution after arrest (alrasub.com)

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 . By T.V. Antony Raj

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I edit what I write several times before I hit the “Publish” button.

On many occasions I leave my darlings aside for a fortnight or so; and then I read them, cut, append, read, juggle sentences and paragraphs, juxtapose, add, drop, umpteen times in no specific order until satisfied to a certain extent. In most cases I publish only about 60% of what I originally typed.

In her post titled “Kill Your Darlings” W. Michelle says:

Being a good writer means knowing how to edit: taking what you’ve written and stripping out the dulling distractions so your ideas shine. It’s not always easy, but it is necessary.

She quotes American writer and Nobel Prize laureate, William Faulkner: “In writing, you must kill your darlings.”

This is Michelle’s advice to bloggers:

• Today — whenever you’re reading this — start a new post. Write until you’ve said everything you want to say, then save your draft — but don’t publish.

• Tomorrow, open the post and check the word count (hint: it appears at the bottom of the editing box). Edit your post down by 10%, then save it and forget it again.

• Repeat on two more days, until you’ve done three days of editing.

• After three days of editing, hit “Publish.”

If your original draft was 1,000 words, the piece you ultimately publish should be around 730; if you started with 500, you’ll end up with 365 or so. If you’re a flash fiction writer who starts with 50, you’ll need to get yourself down to 36. (If you have a bolt of searing editorial insight and want to cut it down more than 10% on any day, feel free.) Whether you’re a long-form or short-form blogger, learning to wield your red pen ruthlessly will improve your writing.

A fellow blogger and poet Tom Balistreri commented to Michelle’s post:

After I write I go back and remove all my typos.
Then I go back and correct my sentence structure.
Then I correct my grammar.
Then I throw out anything that’s frivolous or doesn’t make sense.
At that point I have a blank page.

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RELATED ARTICLES

• Kill Your Darlings (dailypost.wordpress.com)
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• Top 10 Tips for Better Writing (forwardthinking.ashford.edu)
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