March 8, 2010
Madame Sabine Sparwasser
Consul General
Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany
2 Bloor Street East, Toronto M4W 1A8
Canada
Dear Madame Sparwasser
Madame Sabine Sparwasser
Consul General
Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany
2 Bloor Street East, Toronto M4W 1A8
Canada
Dear Madame Sparwasser
Re: German "guilt" for the Holocaust
The published report of your remarks at the recent York University symposium on "Cultures of Memory in Canada, Germany and Poland", if accurate, indicates, in my view, a very serious fallacy in your interpretation of 20th Century history.
I am an economist by training, with degrees from Queen's and Toronto Universities and a diplomat by profession but have devoted intensive study to modern history, concentrating on the origin, events and aftermath of World War II. My first posting in the Canadian Foreign Service was as Assistant Commercial Secretary at the Embassy in Bonn where I had the distinction of initiating and negotiating (in the face of Ambassadorial disapproval!) the sale of 300 Canadian-built F86MkVI fighter aircraft which became the mainstay of the new Luftwaffe.
While living in Germany I came to know the German people at all levels of society. I found that almost invariably in their ourlook and habits they met or surpassed what one would expect of their culture and race. I felt growing remorse that just a few years earlier I had voluntarily joined the RCAF, with many of my similarly misguided teenage friends, to take part in their slaughter. I learned that others who had served in the RCAF at the time later had similar reactions, as would have, I feel sure, my intelligent first cousin, had he survived.
After many thousands of hours of study as a self-taught historian, I concluded that Canada had no legitimate quarrel with Germany in 1939 (nor did Britain and France) and that the war, if a second World War had to be fought, should have been between the Western Christian nations, including of course Germany, and our real enemy, the genocidal Stalin dictatorship that had committed the greatest mass murder of all time in the extermination of up to 30 million of its own Christian citizens - an event of truly "unparalled evil", to quote your reference to the Holocaust.
Inexplicably, the Western democracies allied themselves with the despicable tyrant and thereby abandoned any possibility of victory, since the vicious Stalin was not only kept in power but was enabled to extend his cruel dictatorship throughout Eastern and Central Europe, including Poland, whose independence Britain and France had, hypocritically, guaranteed to defend! An even more disastrous consequence of our failure to keep peace or ally ourselves with Germany was the abandonment by the exhausted British administration of Palestine to the Zionists - a betrayal of the indigenous people and unpardonable desecration of the Christian Holy Land that has created seemingly intractable and extremely ominous problems for World Jewry that never would have arisen, but for the misguided decision to make War on Germany.
As for the "terrible burden" you suggest Germans should accept because of their forbears' alleged "crimes", I hope you were simply playing to your Jewish audience. The crimes committed against Germany and Germans, especially women and children, by the Allies, Russian, British and American, outweigh by a very large multiple the crimes allegedly committed by Germany. That War Crimes Trials were not held for Allied offenders reflects nothing beyond the fact that the motivation for the trials was vengeance, not justice nor, least of all, a search for truth.
Some years ago I had extensive correspondence with the CBC on these issues in response to their extreme anti-German bias. I shall take the liberty of sending you by fax in due course one or more of my salient letters.
With kind regards,
Ian Verner Macdonald
The published report of your remarks at the recent York University symposium on "Cultures of Memory in Canada, Germany and Poland", if accurate, indicates, in my view, a very serious fallacy in your interpretation of 20th Century history.
I am an economist by training, with degrees from Queen's and Toronto Universities and a diplomat by profession but have devoted intensive study to modern history, concentrating on the origin, events and aftermath of World War II. My first posting in the Canadian Foreign Service was as Assistant Commercial Secretary at the Embassy in Bonn where I had the distinction of initiating and negotiating (in the face of Ambassadorial disapproval!
While living in Germany I came to know the German people at all levels of society. I found that almost invariably in their ourlook and habits they met or surpassed what one would expect of their culture and race. I felt growing remorse that just a few years earlier I had voluntarily joined the RCAF, with many of my similarly misguided teenage friends, to take part in their slaughter. I learned that others who had served in the RCAF at the time later had similar reactions, as would have, I feel sure, my intelligent first cousin, had he survived.
After many thousands of hours of study as a self-taught historian, I concluded that Canada had no legitimate quarrel with Germany in 1939 (nor did Britain and France) and that the war, if a second World War had to be fought, should have been between the Western Christian nations, including of course Germany, and our real enemy, the genocidal Stalin dictatorship that had committed the greatest mass murder of all time in the extermination of up to 30 million of its own Christian citizens - an event of truly "unparalled evil", to quote your reference to the Holocaust.
Inexplicably, the Western democracies allied themselves with the despicable tyrant and thereby abandoned any possibility of victory, since the vicious Stalin was not only kept in power but was enabled to extend his cruel dictatorship throughout Eastern and Central Europe, including Poland, whose independence Britain and France had, hypocritically, guaranteed to defend! An even more disastrous consequence of our failure to keep peace or ally ourselves with Germany was the abandonment by the exhausted British administration of Palestine to the Zionists - a betrayal of the indigenous people and unpardonable desecration of the Christian Holy Land that has created seemingly intractable and extremely ominous problems for World Jewry that never would have arisen, but for the misguided decision to make War on Germany.
As for the "terrible burden" you suggest Germans should accept because of their forbears' alleged "crimes", I hope you were simply playing to your Jewish audience. The crimes committed against Germany and Germans, especially women and children, by the Allies, Russian, British and American, outweigh by a very large multiple the crimes allegedly committed by Germany. That War Crimes Trials were not held for Allied offenders reflects nothing beyond the fact that the motivation for the trials was vengeance, not justice nor, least of all, a search for truth.
Some years ago I had extensive correspondence with the CBC on these issues in response to their extreme anti-German bias. I shall take the liberty of sending you by fax in due course one or more of my salient letters.
With kind regards,
Ian Verner Macdonald
--
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
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Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
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