The AfD gained 94 seats in the German parliament. Divided States I: Europe, caption, History 2019
They [Allies] forged a coherent memory of the War. It is the memory of the Good War which we have lived with for fifty years. But in the process the victors buried those fragments that didn’t fit. The Living Dead I: On the Desperate Edge of Now, BBC 1995
The Allies selected certain memories: they used them to build the official version of the Good War. ibid.
The Nazis’ project was far more than a simple reawakening of history. Their aim was to use the power of the past to transform those they governed into new and better people. ibid.
We live, said one, on the desperate edge of now. ibid.
The Allies forged a simple, powerful story. But the memories and experiences that didn’t fit the story were quietly discarded and forgotten. ibid.
The Germans called it Zero Hour: the destruction of all belief in the past. ibid.
What frightened Jackson [prosecutor] was the link between the political ideas that Goering was explaining to the court and the terrible crimes the Nazis had committed. ibid.
What was buried at Nuremberg was any idea of examining why Nazism had happened in the first place. What the social and political forces were that had led ordinary people to such savagery. ibid.
The students were convinced that what they had uncovered was a hidden continuity with the Third Reich. Beneath the facade of a liberal democratic country the fascist state had continued, run by the very same men and women who had run Hitler’s regime. ibid.
They were known as the Red Army faction. The Red Army faction embarked on a series of bombings and shoot-outs with the police. Their strategy was to use violence to provoke the state into exposing its true identity. But as the violence escalated, some of the terrorist leaders began to have doubts. ibid.
Horst Mahler had been born in what was now East Germany. His father had been a fervent Nazi and an anti-Semite … They knew that many of those in charge of the country had been senior members of the Nazi party. But no-one talked about it and they wanted to expose the Nazi crimes of those in charge. A student movement was astonished at the violent reaction of the German government. And Horst Mahler and other radicals began to think the problem was far deeper than just individual Nazis. That maybe the whole Nazi system had also survived and was hiding behind the facade of modern capitalism. They argued that the very system of industrial rationality and bureaucratic control that had made the Nazi state so efficient had simply mutated. It had been taken up by the victors, above all by America, and was now being used to run the new global capitalism and the multinational corporations that were ruthlessly exploiting what was called the Third World. Anything that stood in the system’s way was bombed or burnt. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head II: Shooting and Fucking are the Same Thing, BBC 2021
The Second World War revealed how frightening and deceptive human beings could be particularly in Nazi Germany. ibid.
The members of the Red Army Faction were now planting bombs and robbing banks all across West Germany. They announced that they had now become Moaists, followers of Moa Zedong, and they were going to awaken the popular masses. The government were desperate to catch them. ibid.
Deep inside this ancient mine is the key to one of Europe’s biggest archaeological mysteries. It’s a story that begins with a robbery from a burial site in the dark heart of Europe ... At its heart is one small piece of bronze. This is the extraordinary tale of how one small bronze disc is rewriting the story of how civilisation may have first come to ancient Europe. Horizon: Secrets of the Star Disc, BBC 2004
This forest in eastern Germany contains some of Europe’s oldest human settlements. ibid.
In 1999 three men came combing through this forest with metal detectors ... After a brief struggle the earth gave up a treasure it had kept safe for over three thousand years. What these robbers didn’t realise was that they may have dug up one of the most significant archaeological finds of the century ... A fantastic hoard of what seemed to be bronze-age treasure. There were jewels, tools and swords. But there was something else too: a disc of exquisite design. ibid.
And for the first time Harald Meller [archaeologist] really took in the disc. There inlaid in gold was the reason why it had been called magical. An incredible picture of the sky with the sun, moon and what seemed to be stars. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. ibid.
‘We could securely date the disc to 1,600 BC.’ ibid. expert
The oldest accurate picture of the night sky in all history. ibid.
The Germans did not think that as a higher race they had any need to abide by treaties they made with the natives. As in north America, the German plans for immigration presupposed that the natives were to be relieved of all land of any value. When the Hereros resisted … every Herero found within the German borders with or without weapons was to be shot … 80,000 Hereros died in the desert. Exterminate All the Brutes s1e3: Killing at a Distance or … How I Thoroughly Enjoyed the Outing ***** HBO 2021
The First World War was meant to be the war that ended all wars. But the manner of its conclusion laid the seeds for the most violent century in history. Days that Shook the World: Armistice Day, BBC 2003
Imperial Germany is now a republic. ibid.
The casualties in the six hours between the signing and the cessation of hostilities were huge. ibid.
The German people endure terrible hardship. ibid.
When the [First World] War ended in 1918 even the victorious nations had little to celebrate … Up to 2 million Germans had died. Secret History: The War that Made the Nazis, Channel 4 2002
Defeat in 1918 was more than a military setback. It was a national catastrophe … For Germany, 1918 would only be the beginning of a titanic struggle to sweep away humiliation and once again achieve domination of Europe. ibid.
The German experience of the First World War would produce not only Adolf Hitler, it produced his politics too. ibid.
‘War had taken hold of them and would never let them go’. ibid. Ernst von Salomon, The Outlaws
For many German soldiers the experience of war was one of both camaraderie and beyond that the sense of being Germans. ibid.
It spurred many Germans on to even greater desire to sacrifice themselves for Germany. ibid.
The failure to bring home to Germany the reality of defeat led to the growth of a myth that Germany had not been defeated but betrayed. ibid.
Germans seethed with resentment … that would make further conflict inevitable. ibid.
Now Hitler was ready to revenge Germany’s humiliation in 1918. ibid.
A Perfect Crime 2020 -
The city [Dusseldorf] was filled with blue light, ambulances, police, I’ve never seen anything like it … I followed the police cars. A Perfect Crime aka Rohwedder: Einigkeit und Mord und Freiheit I: Martyr, journalist, Netflix 2020
Treuhand president Detlev Rohwedder was murdered in his home in Dusseldorf on Monday night. ibid. TV news
It seems certain that this is a political murder. ibid. politician to TV news
… in the so-far futile attempt to overhaul the economy of what was once East Germany … ibid. Dan Rather, TV news
I wonder where were the security measures to protect him. ibid. Treuhand employee
Rohwedder almost certainly didn’t know the scale of the task in hand. ibid. lawyer
The former GDR has become a de facto colony of West Germany. The economy is being systematically dismantled so that capitalism has free rein to restructure the country, and its uprooted people according to its own demands. The West German government chose Rohwedder to implement this plan, and his brutality and arrogance made him the right man for the job. A Perfect Crime aka Rohwedder: Einigkeit und Mord und Freiheit II: Capitalist, Red Brigade communique
The Red Army Faction has claimed responsibility. ibid. news
By 1980 the Red Army Faction was basically on its knees … The entire RAF leadership was caught. ibid. old boy
The Third Red Army Faction Generation. I don’t believe in it. I don’t think that this Third Generation existed … I just don’t believe that the Red Army Faction from 1987 onwards or even earlier was capable of carrying out attacks like the one on Rohwedder. ibid. former rozzer
I think that Rohwedder was killed by angry citizens of the former GDR … These people must have had excellent military training. A Perfect Crime aka Rohwedder: Einigkeit und Mord und Freiheit III: Occupier, old boy
It could have been some people from the Stasi. ibid. woman
The general impression was here come the occupiers breaking up all kinds of companies to flog them for a quick profit. ibid. old boy
Why didn’t they make a concerted effort to track down the missing millions? ibid. critic
The Rohwedder murder really was the perfect crime, the way it was executed. A Perfect Crime aka Rohwedder: Einigkeit und Mord und Freiheit IV: Victim, old boy
It was either a highly professional killer or a large scale state operation. ibid.
A huge underground bunker became home to international criminal businesses. Cyberbunker: The Criminal Underworld, news, Netflix 2023
A data centre exclusively for criminal businesses worth millions. ibid.
We were hosting porn websites. ibid. partner
He was doing the same thing here as he was doing in the Netherlands. ibid.
You just wondered, What’s going on up there? ibid. town resident
It was clear that Mr Xennt gave orders and others did what he said, but the role of the others wasn’t 100% clear at the beginning. ibid. rozzer
Wall Street Market: Multiple IP addresses and learned that they belonged to the Cyberbunker in Germany. ibid. FBI investigator
The server room was significantly larger than I expected it to be. ibid. rozzer
The Cyberbunker bust had an enormous impact on the darknet scene. ibid.