Truth about Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor camps

"There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance." -- Goethe

"The search for truth is never wrong.  The only sin is to lack the courage to follow where truth leads." -- Duke.

Lies being taught;

Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor were death Camps.

Now the Truth;

Chelmno

There is no credible evidence that this camp existed

Kulmhof/Chelmno was a small town at the river Ner, a tributary of the Warthe close to the direct railroad line Warsaw - Posen - Berlin. According to the declarations of various authors, it was 40, 55 or 60 km northwest of Lodz. Other publications, however, claim that the "camp" was in Cholm = Chelm, a larger town about 350 km east from it, south of Sobibor and east of Lublin.  Some have tried to prove mass murder in Chelmno by pointing to its railroad connection to Cholm.

The center of the supposed "camp" was allegedly the former manor of the Polish domain Kulmhof/Chelmno, which was also designated as "Palace". According to sketches of the town this building was in the center of the town at the crossing of two streets. Church, pub, school, and administration buildings were all in immediate vicinity.

Chelmno was most likely a transition point for prisoners being transferred to other camps.

Belzec

Belzec was a transit/labor camp used mainly to send Jews further east.  It started in April 1940 and was situated in the Lublin district forty-seven miles north of the major city of Lvov, Poland.  Gypsies and Jews were housed there to build fortifications on the Soviet-German line of demarcation.  The German guards and the administration were housed in two cottages outside the camp across the road. 

Sobibor

Sobibor was also mainly a transit camp set up in early 1940 in the Lublin region of occupied Poland as one of the 16 transit/labor camps in that area.  Most of these camps used abandoned schools, factories or farms for their structures.  Jewish prisoners in Sobibor came primarily from the ghettos of the northern and eastern regions of Lublin. Jews from German-occupied Soviet territory, Germany itself, Austria, Slovakia, Bohemia and Moravia, the Netherlands, and France may have also been in the camp.  It's unknown if Gypsies were in the camp.

On October 14, 1943, members of the Sobibor underground, led by Polish-Jewish prisoner Leon Feldhendler and Soviet POW Alexander "Sasha" Pechersky, succeeded in covertly killing eleven German SS officers and a number of camp guards. Although their plan was to kill all the SS and walk out of the main gate of the camp, the killings were discovered and the inmates made a mass attempt to escape under fire. About 300 out of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped into the forests.

Some died on the mine fields surrounding the site, and some were recaptured in a dragnet and executed by the Germans in the next few days.

The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 British TV movie, Escape from Sobibor, directed by Jack Gold, a Jew.

Within days after the uprising, Heinrich Himmler ordered the camp closed, dismantled and planted with trees.

Jewish Version

Chelmno

Chelmno was a Nazi extermination camp in Poland on the river Ner, 37 M (60 KM) from Lodz. The Germans called it Kulmhof.

Jews transported to Chelmno were forced, or enticed, into vans, the doors were closed and latched and the motors were started. A hose carried the carbon monoxide fumes into the van. It usually required 10 or 15 minutes to murder all who were in the van. The driver then drove the bodies to the pre-dug graves in the forest where Jewish workers unloaded the bodies into the graves. The van then returned to the camp and the operation was repeated.

Estimates of the number of people killed at Chelmno vary from 170,000 to 360,000 men, women and children, virtually all Jews. Most authorities agree on the higher estimate. As the Soviet troops advanced, SS guards liquidated the remaining prisoners.

During 1962-63, twelve former SS officers who had served as guards in Chelmno were brought to trial in Bonn, Germany. All were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging form 1 to 20 years.

Belzek

Jews began arriving at Belzek from Lublin and the towns and villages in the area in late May, 1940. By the mid-August the camp housed 11,000. Conditions were deplorable and inmates died by the thousands died from overwork, starvation, disease and execution.

By mid-March, 1942, the decision was made to convert the camp into a killing center under the command of Odilo Globocnic, the police commander of Lublin. Globocnic also established the killing centers at Majdanek and Sobibor.. The Nazis began deporting Jews from Poland and later from the German Reich, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. For the first few months, extermination was accomplished by using diesel fumes; by August 1942 Zyklon-B (hydrocyanic acid fumes) gas was used experimentally. The gas proved to be so effective that it was also used at other death camps. It is estimated that more than six hundred thousand persons died at Belzec, including two thousand non-Jews.

Sobibor

Sobibor extermination camp was built in March, 1942.  The camp operated from May 1942 until October 1943. Its five gas chambers killed an approximate total of two hundred and fifty thousand Jews.

Though it was the smallest of the Aktion Rhinehard camps, Sobibor gained popular national attention with the release of the 1987 made-for-television movie "Escape From Sobibor." The facts of the event are fairly depicted. On October 14, 1943 about 300 Jewish inmates assigned to Sondercommando duties carried out a well-planned revolt. Several SS and Ukrainian guards were killed along with several of the inmates. Those who escaped fled to the surrounding area.  The number of inmates who managed to escape is not certain but all who stayed behind were shot the next day. Following the revolt, the installations for mass extermination were destroyed and the area planted with trees. Only about fifty prisoners of Sobibor survived to tell their story to the world.

Truth

 Chelmno

The gas vans

The so-called gas vans are supposed to have been used for the extermination of Jews in Serbia and Russia, in addition to their use at Chelmno. Kogon/Langbein/Rueckerl, in their book Nationalsozialistische Massentoetungen durch Giftgas, discuss these vans at considerable length, for a total of 64 pages.

In reading the above books, the observant reader will note the following inconsistencies:

- no physical evidence at all is produced for the existence of these vehicles. There have never been any reports of the capture of such a vehicle, nor its presentation in evidence in any trial. Perhaps this is the reason why no illustration of any gas van ever appears in the literature.

- there are only two (alleged) documentary proofs of the existence of the gas vans;

- all the other "evidence" consists of "eyewitness testimony".

Two leading German revisionists, Ingrid Weckert and Udo Walendy, have made a particular study of the two particular documents which are supposed to prove the existence of the gas vans. A detailed study by the French automobile builder Pierre Marais appeared in 1994.

Let we consider the first of these two documents. It was introduced at Nuremberg under number PS-501. This is allegedly a letter supposedly written by a Lt. Dr. Becker to Walter Rauff, Leader of Section II D, Technical Matters, of the Reichs Security Main Office (RSHA). The document discusses technical deficiencies in the murder vans. We will quote a couple of sentences from the original text, paying careful attention to the original style of the German.

"I furthermore order that all men be kept as far away from the van as possible when people are being gassed, so as to avoid endangering their health by possibly outstreaming gas. Upon this occasion, I would like to draw your attention to the following: several Kommandos have had the vans unloaded by their own men after the gassing. I have drawn the attention of the commander of the Sonderkommando to the terrible damage to their emotions and health which this work may have later, if not immediately, on the men... Despite this, I will not deviate from this order, since it is feared that prisoners withdrawn for the work may take a suitable opportunity to flee. In order to protect them men from this danger, I request that corresponding orders be issued."

[Translator's note: the style of this is impossible to imitate in English.

What German would write like that?

The letter is not signed. Instead of a signature, the name Becker is written by typewriter. To the left of the typewritten signature stands the abbreviation (Sgd), which means "signed" in English! Did SS men use English abbreviations when writing letters to each other?

The various hand-written umlauts over the letters (ä) and (ö) leave no doubt about it: the letter is a primitive forgery, probably from an American lie factories.

Hardly less pitiful is the second "documentary proof" for the gas vans, an alleged letter from correspondence between the RSHA and the automobile firm Gaubschat. The letter begins as follows:

"Berlin, 5 July 1942
Einzigste Ausfertigung

"Only copy"

Regarding: technical changes in the special cars used in operation and found in manufacturing themselves .

Since December 1941 for example 97,000 were processed without the appearance of defects in the vehicles."

First, in correct German, it ought to read "einzige Ausfertigung" instead of "einzigste Ausfertigung"; and secondly, it ought to say "an den in Herstellung befindlichen" instead of "an den sich in der Herstellung Spezialwagen"; third, no normal person begins a letter with "for example", and fourth: what the devil were they "processing"?

So much for the "documentary proofs": What the exterminationists offer us as "proof" in terms of "eyewitness reports", is even more idiotic. Adalbert Rueckerl outdoes himself in appealing to eyewitness reports in German trials on the "extermination" camp of Chelmno:

"These gas vans were large, grey-painted lorries of foreign manufacturer, with closed chassis construction, separated from the driver's compartment, and approximately 2 m wide, 2 m high, and 4 m long... The Sonderkommando had three of these available, two of which were in constant use, and the third used temporarily."

According to which historian you read, between 150,000 and 1.35 million Jews were gassed in two -- or, temporarily, three -- gas vans, with a useful surface area, according to the above, of 16 m2. Rueckerl furthermore permits a witness named Johann I. to report as follows::

"The gas vans came five or ten times a day, carrying bodies. In the smaller gas vans, there were always an estimated 50 bodies and in the larger, approximately 70 bodies."

How could the "witness" have spoken of "smaller" and "larger" vans, when there were only two, or, temporarily, three of them, all the same size?

The manner in which the legend arose has been revealed by Ingrid Weckert. In revenge for the German revelation of the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn forest, the Soviets accused German prisoners of war in 1943 of murdering Soviet citizens in gas vans. At the Kharkov and Krasnodar trials, several of the accused were identified by eyewitnesses, and executed. A fatal error was that, according to the witnesses, Diesel exhaust gas was relayed to the interior of the vans.

This is why Hans Fritzsche, Assistant to Josef Goebbels in the Propaganda Ministry, testified as follows at Nuremberg:

"That was the moment when the Russians, after they had captured Kharkov, started legal proceedings, in the course of which killing by gas was mentioned for the first time. I ran to Dr. Goebbels with these reports and asked him just what was going on here. He stated he would have the matter investigated and would discuss it with both Himmler and Hitler. ...Dr. Goebbels explicitly informed me that the gas vans mentioned in the Russian legal proceedings were a pure figment of the imagination and that there was no actual proof to support it."

With the death vans, Chelmno disappears from history, because the mass murders are supposed to have been carried out exclusively in these vehicles.

Chelmno as a place of death didn't even exist -- it's a complete fabrication

Was it a place of transit for Jews going to other camps?

Who knows.  But there was no "camp" in Chelmno.

"Deported Jews at their arrival in the death camp Chelmno where many were killed in gas vans."  Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland

This is the only allegedly authentic photo document of Chelmno known to us.

A minimum of 152,000 deaths are blamed on Chelmno -- where are the bodies?  Where's the proof?

Belzec

Belzec was a transit camp which consisted of five buildings, and a small rail spur. In mid 1942 the Germans used Belzec as a transfer point, where people being shipped to occupied Russia, changed trains.  It was a transit camp that was operated for less than a year.  Nothing more.  Did Jews die there?  Of course!  Like in all German camps, disease, starvation and even unscrupulous guards killed some inmates.  But no proof of gassing has ever surfaced.

Gypsies at Belzec

July 30, 1998

1. At least 33 mass graves have been located at the site.
2. ...the largest of these graves measure 70m x 20m and 36m x 18m...the largest graves contained unburned remains.
3. ...the boring methodology involved core samples to a depth of 6 meters at sampling distances of 15 meters.
4. ...the implied cover to these graves is between 2 to 3 to 4 meters, which means that the actual depth of the graves averages about 2 meters.
5. ...it seems likely that the two largest graves are in fact a series of strip graves.
6. ...estimates...for the total number of dead discovered in these 33 mass graves are in the "thousands" -- this suggests periodic burials of comparatively small numbers, which would be consistent with either epidemics, shootings, or small "gassings", but not consistent with the numbers, or the procedures, usually claimed.

There is nothing in the recent revelations to contradict this interpretation. Although the number of graves seems sizable, the current estimates given by the survey participants range in the thousands, and, estimating from the size and depth of the graves, one concludes that at most tens of thousands, but not hundreds of thousands, of people are buried here. This is consistent with John Ball's aerial analyses of some years ago.

No evidence of systematic mass shootings has so far been presented, although there is evidence of some shootings. No evidence of gassing has been presented, indeed, the "gassing barracks" could not be located. There is evidence of some attempts at burning at least partially some of the bodies. Since this practice appears to have been local, rather than general, and involved incomplete combustion, it suggests an attempt to control hygiene rather than an attempt to "hide the traces" of Nazi crimes. This in turn suggests that contagious diseases were the cause of many deaths.

We await further details on this most interesting excavations.

Best Regards,

Samuel Crowell

A minimum of 434,408 deaths are blamed on Belzec from

 March of 1942 to June of 1943

That's over 27,000 a month!

How did the Germans dispose of so many bodies in such a 

short period of time?

Can't burn, bury or dispose of such an overwhelming number

 of bodies that quickly

What a hoax

Sobibor

Karl Frenzel, commandant of Sobibor's Lager I, was convicted of war crimes in 1966 and sentenced to life, but ultimately released on health grounds.

Franz Stangl, chief commandant of Sobibor and later of Treblinka fled to Syria.  Following problems with his employer taking too much interest in his adolescent daughter, Stangl went to Brazil in the 1950s. He worked in a car factory and was registered with the Austrian consulate under his own name. He was eventually caught, arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.  In 1971 he died in prison in Dusseldorf.

Gustav Wagner, the deputy Sobibor commander, was on leave on the day of uprising (survivors such as Tom Blatt say that the revolt would not have succeeded had he been present). Wagner was arrested in 1978 in Brazil. He was identified by Sobibor escapee Stanisław Szmajzner, who greeted him with the words "Hallo Gustl"; Wagner replied that he remembered Szmajzner and that he had saved him and his three brothers. The court of first instance agreed to his extradition to Germany but on appeal this extradition was overturned. In 1980, Wagner committed suicide, though there were suspicions that he may have been killed.

It is claimed that the Nazis managed to murder 200,000 in a fifteen month period.  This is over 13,000 a month.  WOW!  Talk about German efficiency!  One just has to ask, where are the bodies?  How did they dispose of so many corpses?  It's impossible!

Rails leading into Sobibor

Sobibor

**********************

Source;

Mein Kampf Excerpts Vol II Ch 7c conflict with red forces

Lies being taught;

Mein Kampf is unintelligible ravings of a maniac.

Now the Truth; Read and know. VOL II CHAPTER VIIc-THE CONFLICT WITH THE RED FORCES

Part (c) First Conflict with Red Forces;

At the end of January 1921 there was again great cause for anxiety in Germany. The Paris Agreement, by which Germany pledged herself to pay the crazy sum of a hundred milliards of gold marks, was to be confirmed by the London Ultimatum.

Thereupon an old-established Munich working committee, representative of so-called VÖLKISCH groups, deemed it advisable to call for a public meeting of protest. I became nervous and restless when I saw that a lot of time was being wasted and nothing undertaken. At first a meeting was suggested in the KÖNIG PLATZ; on second thoughts this was turned down, as someone feared the proceedings might be wrecked by Red elements. Another suggestion was a demonstration in front of the Feldherrn Hall, but this also came to nothing. Finally a combined meeting in the Munich Kindl Hall was suggested. Meanwhile, day after day had gone by; the big parties had entirely ignored the terrible event, and the working committee could not decide on a definite date for holding the demonstration.

On Tuesday, February 1st, I put forward an urgent demand for a final decision. I was put off until Wednesday. On that day I demanded to be told clearly if and when the meeting was to take place. The reply was again uncertain and evasive, it being stated that it was 'intended' to arrange a demonstration that day week.

At that I lost all patience and decided to conduct a demonstration of protest on my own. At noon on Wednesday I dictated in ten minutes the text of the poster and at the same time hired the Krone Circus Hall for the next day, February 3rd.

In those days this was a tremendous venture. Not only because of the uncertainty of filling that vast hall, but also because of the risk of the meeting being wrecked.

Numerically our squad of hall guards was not strong enough for this vast hall. I was also uncertain about what to do in case the meeting was broken up--a huge circus building being a different proposition from an ordinary meeting hall. But events showed that my fears were misplaced, the opposite being the case. In that vast building a squad of wreckers could be tackled and subdued more easily than in a cramped hall.

One thing was certain: A failure would throw us back for a long time to come. If one meeting was wrecked our prestige would be seriously injured and our opponents would be encouraged to repeat their success. That would lead to sabotage of our work in connection with further meetings and months of difficult struggle would be necessary to overcome this.

We had only one day in which to post our bills, Thursday. Unfortunately it rained on the morning of that day and there was reason to fear that many people would prefer to remain at home rather than hurry to a meeting through rain and snow, especially when there was likely to be violence and bloodshed.

And indeed on that Thursday morning I was suddenly struck with fear that the hall might never be filled to capacity, which would have made me ridiculous in the eyes of the working committee. I therefore immediately dictated various leaflets, had them printed and distributed in the afternoon. Of course they contained an invitation to attend the meeting.

Two lorries which I hired were draped as much as possible in red, each had our new flag hoisted on it and was then filled with fifteen or twenty members of our party. Orders were given the members to canvas the streets thoroughly, distribute leaflets and conduct propaganda for the mass meeting to be held that evening. It was the first time that lorries had driven through the streets bearing flags and not manned by Marxists. The public stared open-mouthed at these red-draped cars, and in the outlying districts clenched fists were angrily raised at this new evidence of 'provocation of the proletariat'. Were not the Marxists the only ones entitled to hold meetings and drive about in motor lorries?

At seven o'clock in the evening only a few had gathered in the circus hall. I was being kept informed by telephone every ten minutes and was  becoming uneasy. Usually at seven or a quarter past our meeting halls were already half filled; sometimes even packed. But I soon found out the reason why I was uneasy. I had entirely forgotten to take into account the huge dimensions of this new meeting place. A thousand people in the Hofbräuhaus was quite an impressive sight, but the same number in the Circus building was swallowed up in its dimensions and was hardly noticeable. Shortly afterwards I received more hopeful reports and at a quarter to eight I was informed that the hall was three-quarters filled, with huge crowds still lined up at the pay boxes. I then left for the meeting.

I arrived at the Circus building at two minutes past eight. There was still a crowd of people outside, partly inquisitive people and many opponents who preferred to wait outside for developments.

When I entered the great hall I felt the same joy I had felt a year previously at the first meeting in the Munich Hofbräu Banquet Hall; but it was not until I had forced my way through the solid wall of people and reached the platform that I perceived the full measure of our success. The hall was before me, like a huge shell, packed with thousands and thousands of people. Even the arena was densely crowded. More than 5,600 tickets had been sold and, allowing for the unemployed, poor students and our own detachments of men for keeping order, a crowd of about 6,500 must have been present.

My theme was 'Future or Downfall' and I was filled with joy at the conviction that the future was represented by the crowds that I was addressing.

I began, and spoke for about two and a half hours. I had the feeling after the first half-hour that the meeting was going to be a big success. Contact had been at once established with all those thousands of individuals. After the first hour the speech was already being received by spontaneous outbreaks of applause, but after the second hour this died down to a solemn stillness which I was to experience so often later on in this same hall, and which will for ever be remembered by all those present. Nothing broke this impressive silence and only when the last word had been spoken did the meeting give vent to its feelings by singing the national anthem.

I watched the scene during the next twenty minutes, as the vast hall slowly emptied itself, and only then did I leave the platform, a happy man, and made my way home.

Photographs were taken of this first meeting in the Krone Circus Hall in Munich. They are more eloquent than words to demonstrate the success of this demonstration. The bourgeois papers reproduced photographs and reported the meeting as having been merely 'nationalist' in character; in their usual modest fashion they omitted all mention of its promoters.

Thus for the first time we had developed far beyond the dimensions of an ordinary party. We could no longer be ignored. And to dispel all doubt that the meeting was merely an isolated success, I immediately arranged for another at the Circus Hall in the following week, and again we had the same success. Once more the vast hall was overflowing with people; so much so that I decided to hold a third meeting during the following week, which also proved a similar success.

After these initial successes early in 1921 I increased our activity in Munich still further. I not only held meetings once a week, but during some weeks even two were regularly held and very often during midsummer and autumn this increased to three. We met regularly at the Circus Hall and it gave us great satisfaction to see that every meeting brought us the same measure of success.

The result was shown in an ever-increasing number of supporters and members into our party.

Naturally, such success did not allow our opponents to sleep soundly. At first their tactics fluctuated between the use of terror and silence in our regard. Then they recognized that neither terror nor silence could hinder the progress of our movement. So they had recourse to a supreme act of terror which was intended to put a definite end to our activities in the holding of meetings.

As a pretext for action along this line they availed themselves of a very mysterious attack on one of the Landtag deputies, named Erhard Auer. It was declared that someone had fired several shots at this man one evening. This meant that he was not shot but that an attempt had been made to shoot him. A fabulous presence of mind and heroic courage on the part of Social Democratic leaders not only prevented the sacrilegious intention from taking effect but also put the crazy would-be assassins to flight, like the cowards that they were. They were so quick and fled so far that subsequently the police could not find even the slightest traces of them. This mysterious episode was used by the organ of the Social Democratic Party to arouse public feeling against the movement, and while doing this it delivered its old rigmarole about the tactics that were to be employed the next time. Their purpose was to see to it that our movement should not grow but should be immediately hewn down root and branch by the hefty arm of the

proletariat.

A few days later the real attack came. It was decided finally to interrupt one of our meetings which was billed to take place in the Munich Hofbräuhaus, and at which I myself was to speak.

On November 4th, 1921, in the evening between six and seven o'clock I received the first precise news that the meeting would positively be broken up and that to carry out this action our adversaries had decided to send to the meeting great masses of workmen employed in certain 'Red' factories.

It was due to an unfortunate accident that we did not receive this news sooner. On that day we had given up our old business office in the Sternecker Gasse in Munich and moved into other quarters; or rather we had given up the old offices and our new quarters were not yet in functioning order. The telephone arrangements had been cut off by the former tenants and had not yet been reinstalled. Hence it happened that several attempts made that day to inform us by telephone of the break-up which had been planned for the evening did not reach us.

Consequently our order troops were not present in strong force at that meeting. There was only one squad present, which did not consist of the usual one hundred men, but only of about forty-six. And our telephone connections were not yet sufficiently organized to be able to give the alarm in the course of an hour or so, so that a sufficiently powerful number of order troops to deal with the situation could be called. It must also be added that on several previous occasions we had been forewarned, but nothing special happened. The old proverb, 'Revolutions’ which were announced have scarcely ever come off', had hitherto been proved true in our regard.

Possibly for this reason also sufficiently strong precautions had not been taken on that day to cope with the brutal determination of our opponents to break up our meeting.

Finally, we did not believe that the Hofbräuhaus in Munich was suitable for the interruptive tactics of our adversaries. We had feared such a thing far more in the bigger halls, especially that of the Krone Circus. But on this point we learned a very serviceable lesson that evening. Later, we studied this whole question according to a scientific system and arrived at results, both interesting and incredible, and which subsequently were an essential factor in the direction of our organization and in the tactics of our Storm Troops.

When I arrived in the entrance halt of the Hofbräuhaus at 7.45 that evening I realizcd that there could be no doubt as to what the 'Reds' intended. The hall was filled, and for that reason the police had barred the entrances. Our adversaries, who had arrived very early, were in the hall, and our followers were for the most part outside. The small bodyguard awaited me at the entrance. I had the doors leading to the principal hall closed and then asked the bodyguard of forty-five or forty-six men to come forward. I made it clear to the boys that perhaps on that evening for the first time they would have to show their unbending and unbreakable loyalty to the movement and that not one of us should leave the hall unless carried out dead. I added that I would remain in the hall and that I did not believe that one of them would abandon me, and that if I saw any one of them act the coward I myself would personally tear off his armlet and his badge. I demanded of them that they should come forward if the slightest attempt to sabotage the meeting were made and that they must remember that the best defence is always attack.

I was greeted with a triple 'HEIL' which sounded more hoarse and violent than usual.

Then I advanced through the hall and could take in the situation with my own eyes. Our opponents sat closely huddled together and tried to pierce me through with their looks. Innumerable faces glowing with hatred and rage were fixed on me, while others with sneering grimaces shouted at me together. Now they would 'Finish with us. We must look out for our entrails. To-day they would smash in our faces once and for all.' And there were other expressions of an equally elegant character. They knew that they were there in superior numbers and they acted accordingly.

Yet we were able to open the meeting; and I began to speak. In the Hall of the Hofbräuhaus I stood always at the side, away from the entry and on top of a beer table. Therefore I was always right in the midst of the audience. Perhaps this circumstance was responsible for creating a certain feeling and a sense of agreement which I never found elsewhere.

Before me, and especially towards my left, there were only opponents, seated or standing. They were mostly robust youths and men from the Maffei Factory, from Kustermann's, and from the factories on the Isar, etc. Along the right-hand wall of the hall they were thickly massed quite close to my table. They now began to order litre mugs of beer, one after the other, and to throw the empty mugs under the table. In this way whole batteries were collected. I should have been surprised had this meeting ended peacefully.

In spite of all the interruptions, I was able to speak for about an hour and a half and I felt as if I were master of the situation. Even the ringleaders of the disturbers appeared to be convinced of this; for they steadily became more uneasy, often left the hall, returned and spoke to their men in an obviously nervous way.

A small psychological error which I committed in replying to an interruption, and the mistake of which I myself was conscious the moment the words had left my mouth, gave the sign for the outbreak.

There were a few furious outbursts and all in a moment a man jumped on a seat and shouted "Liberty". At that signal the champions of liberty began their work.

In a few moments the hall was filled with a yelling and shrieking mob. Numerous beer-mugs flew like howitzers above their heads. Amid this uproar one heard the crash of chair legs, the crashing of mugs, groans and yells and screams.

It was a mad spectacle. I stood where I was and could observe my boys doing their duty, every one of them.

There I had the chance of seeing what a bourgeois meeting could be.

The dance had hardly begun when my Storm Troops, as they were called from that day onwards, launched their attack. Like wolves they threw themselves on the enemy again and again in parties of eight or ten and began steadily to thrash them out of the hall. After five minutes I could see hardly one of them that was not streaming with blood. Then I realized what kind of men many of them were, above all my brave Maurice Hess, who is my private secretary to-day, and many others who, even though seriously wounded, attacked again and again as long as they could stand on their feet. Twenty minutes long the pandemonium continued. Then the opponents, who had numbered seven or eight hundred, had been driven from the hall or hurled out headlong by my men, who had not numbered fifty. Only in the left corner a big crowd still stood out against our men and put up a bitter fight. Then two pistol shots rang out from the entrance to the hall in the direction of the platform and now a wild din of shooting broke out from all sides. One's heart almost rejoiced at this spectacle which recalled memories of the War.

At that moment it was not possible to identify the person who had fired the shots. But at any rate I could see that my boys renewed the attack with increased fury until finally the last disturbers were overcome and flung out of the hall.

About twenty-five minutes had passed since it all began. The hall looked as if a bomb had exploded there. Many of my comrades had to be bandaged and others taken away. But we remained masters of the situation. Hermann Essen, who was chairman of the meeting, announced: "The meeting will continue. The speaker shall proceed." So I went on with my speech.

When we ourselves declared the meeting at an end an excited police officer rushed in, waved his hands and declared: "The meeting is dissolved."

Without wishing to do so I had to laugh at this example of the law's delay. It was the authentic constabulary officiosiousness. The smaller they are the greater they must always appear.

That evening we learned a real lesson. And our adversaries never forgot the lesson they had received.

Up to the autumn of 1923 the Münchener post did not again mention the

clenched fists of the Proletariat.

Adolf Hitler