More and more white voters are abandoning Trump — and race relations appear be the ‘driving factor’

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/more-and-more-white-voters-are-abandoning-trump-and-race-relations-appear-be-the-driving-factor/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4891

If President Donald Trump is reelected in November, he will do it with a lot of help from white voters — especially older white males in rural areas and small towns. But journalist David A. Graham, in a June 30 article for The Atlantic, asserts that Trump’s support among white voters is decreasing — and the top reason, Graham argues, is race.

“When video of the police killing of George Floyd first emerged, Trump condemned it,” Graham writes. “But he quickly reverted to his standard rhetoric, seeing a chance to exploit and exacerbate divisions over race. It’s hard to believe that anyone is surprised: while not every offensive Trump comment has reached the same wide audience or been interpreted the same way, the president’s most widely covered remarks have touched on race. What is different this time is the way people are responding.”

Many pundits have attributed Trump’s poor performance in recent polls to, among other things, the state of the U.S. economy and the president’s botched response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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“Voters might be feeling bleak and turn against an incumbent at this moment for any number of reasons — just look around,” Graham explains. “A pandemic has killed nearly 130,000 Americans, with no end in sight. And the economy is in the deepest recession in decades, with millions out of work — also without a clear end in sight. But these are not the issues where Trump is hurting the most in recent polls.”

Race, according to Graham, has become the issue that is doing the most to move some white voters away from Trump and in the direction of former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.

“As the political scientist Michael Tesler writes, there’s evidence of real shifts in public opinion on race over the past six weeks or so,” Graham observes. “While views on policing are moving in response to a wide range of incidents, it’s clear that the Floyd case — brutal, senseless and captured in excruciating clarity on video — has captured white attention in a way other deaths at the hands of police have not. One reason for that may be the coronavirus. Ashley Jardina, a political scientist who studies racial attitudes among white people, told me that she suspects because people are stuck at home due to the pandemic, they’re consuming more news and changing their views on race.”

Trump’s overall approval ratings have never been very high, but Graham notes that when it comes to race relations, they are especially bad now.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found Trump trailing Biden by 14%. Graham notes that only 33% of voters in that poll approved of the way in which Trump has handled race relations — and only 29% approve of the way Trump has handled the Floyd protests.

“The driving factor for Trump’s collapse appears to be race,” Graham writes. “Polls have consistently shown that Americans disapprove of his response to protests of police violence and believe that he has worsened race relations…. If reluctant Trump voters from 2016 are undergoing a change on their view of race relations, it could have seismic implications for his reelection.”

History is Once Again Repeating Itself.....

As I was scrolling through my news feed today, I noticed that there is growing similarity in history over what happened in 1929 and what is now happening, almost 100 years later, here in 2020 in the United. States.  The corona virus has truly ruined so many lives and I have pleaded for many to use this golden opportunity to turn to God and FINALLY accept the Peace of God in their lives and to live for one another and to stand against all forms of injustices.  Thankfully some are listening to me while others seek to align me as "insane" but in the end, history will vindicate me and my words.  In that year of 1929, the nation was reeling through The Great Depression and people had lost faith iin the capitalist system.  I am one of the very few who believes that socialism and capitalism can exist together since I am a Progressive Capitalist and I believe that capitalism can work very well for things that people want but not well for things that they need.  That means that things like food, water, shelter, healthcare, and education should be provided onto you as that was what the Lord gave for all of His creatures here on earth.  Of course this has upset those who believe in greed and profits over people and they intend to try and silence me from exposing their satanic ways but I must keep on speaking for I know that the Lord has my soul and I will take my place with him in the skies. Today there are people also seeing that there is a major need to reform American society towards more "racial" equality and economic equality so that the next time the nation faces a health pandemic they can better face it with a brave face.  That will mean that such programs like universal healthcare and paid sick leave becomes a human right for all Americans and I already know that is what is going to happen.  Yet I am going to make another grand prediction because I know that the Lord that I serve created human beings to be good people and human beings are only now corrupt because they have embraced evil and satanic forces.  However, human beings are using this epidemic to unite as one just like in the Great Depression and they are saying no to divisions and are now rallying to stand up for all forms of justice.  This is indeed a great time to be a journalist and a historian to document all of this for future generations to come and to state my own opinions became fact as mankind finally embraced some forms of reform.  Who knows, maybe the truth about global warming will cause mankind to seek more environmental ways to engage in economic trade. 

Trump knew about Russian bounties on US military much earlier than he’s letting on: Ex-RNC head

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/trump-knew-about-russian-bounties-on-us-military-much-earlier-than-hes-letting-on-ex-rnc-head/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4876

https://youtu.be/QgBwXosayt0

Appearing on MSNBC on Monday morning, former Republican National Committee head Michael Steele claimed he had no doubt that Donald Trump was aware that Russia was paying out bounties for the killings of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Speaking with “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the former RNC head was asked if Donald Trump thinks Americans are “stupid” for telling them he was out of the loop on the intelligence reports.

“I will take up that challenge and say they did brief him,” Steele replied. “I do not believe that something as important and severe as this was left untold to the president of the United States.”

“What I think is disturbing is his reaction to it once he was told — the fact that there has been nothing done,” he continued. “There has been no rebuke officially from the United States and the fact that the White House, even over the course of the president’s tweets still has not denied the underlying intelligence that this is, in fact, what happened and this is, in fact, what we do know and the reality is.”

“This is a bounty placed on the heads of American soldiers, you are the commander in chief, alright?” he continued. “So this isn’t about politics. This is about what you do as a leader of men and women in uniform who now find out that you are okay with a bounty on their head by your — by our adversary. So this is what he’s going to have to account for — he can’t spin this out. There may be some Republicans who will run to his defense, that will be curious to watch.”

Trump engaged in 3-week ‘flurry of communication’ with Putin this year – and the White House hid some of the calls

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/busted-trump-engaged-in-3-week-flurry-of-communication-with-putin-this-year-and-the-white-house-hid-some-of-the-calls/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4883

President Donald Trump engaged in an unprecedented – and previously unknown – “flurry of communication” with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a three-week period earlier this year, according to a sister-network of Voice of America.

“On March 30, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke by telephone, the first of five calls between the two over a period of three weeks, a flurry of communication unprecedented during Trump’s 3 1/2 years in office,” reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL).

Only one of those five calls, according to research from NCRM, was shared with the press. None were posted to the White House website, a serious deviation from prior practice.

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“For many Russia watchers, the flurry of behind-the-scenes phone calls and other communications is a clear indication that something’s going on,” RFERL’s Mike Eckel adds. He notes, “the two countries’ diplomats have spoken at least three times over that same period, which also coincided with an unusual shipment of Russian coronavirus-related humanitarian aid to the United States.”

NCRM reviewed titles of over 800 news briefings on the White House website, where the Press Office used to post details of all telephone calls between the President and foreign leaders, known as “readouts.”

The White House appears to be hiding readouts from calls between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin. In fact, in a serious deviation, there are no readouts of any calls between President Trump and any foreign leader that took place this year, posted to the White House’s website for the public to access.

In late September the Kremlin announced no calls between Trump and Putin could be released to the public without “mutual accord,” another extreme deviation from prior practice. Notably, the Kremlin repeatedly has released readouts of calls and other interactions between Trump and Putin or other Russian leaders when the White House has not, embarrassing the U.S. The American people, for example, only learned of Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, after a Tass photographer who was in the room published the photos.

It is unknown if the White House agreed to Russia’s demand.

Meanwhile, as NCRM has found, the White House gave the press pool readouts from calls between Trump and Putin for December 29 of last year, and March 30, May 7, and June 1 of this year. Only one of those dates, the March 30 call, is from the time period reported.

But Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen reports Trump and Putin spoke not only March 30 and June 1, but also April 9, April 10, and April 12.

In addition to the fact that Russia attacked the U.S. 2016 election to help elect Trump, the adversarial relationship between the U.S and Russia is at a desperate low, after The New York Times reported Russia is paying the Taliban to kill Americans soldiers in Afghanistan. Other news outlets have confirmed that reporting. The Washington Post reported that “Russian bounties to Taliban-linked militants resulted in deaths of U.S. troops.” Additional reports reveal, despite his denials, President Trump was briefed about the Russian program, yet, in apparent deference to President Putin, took no action, nor has he announced any to date.

Reddit shuts down The_Donald under new policies against hate speech

https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/reddit-shuts-down-the-donald-subreddit/?utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-brief

Reddit has shut down the subreddit called The_Donald after years of it violating content policies. Reddit cited new rules that aim to push hate speech out of the online community.

“All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity,” said Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman in the announcement of the platform’s updated content policy.

Huffman clarified that the shutdown of The_Donald was “absolutely not” about the political views that were discussed in the subreddit, as one of Reddit’s founding principles is to foster political discussion, according to The Washington Post.

“There’s a home on Reddit for supporters of Donald Trump. … We’re not the ones who shut down the community. The moderators are the ones who shut down that community,” said Benjamin Lee, the company’s general counsel.

Reddit placed The_Donald under quarantine last year, which resulted in a warning being shown when people tried to access the subreddit, after it was found to feature content that supported violence. Moderators and most of the community have since moved to another, less restrictive website, so there was relatively little activity on the subreddit as it was banned.

The_Donald is just one of about 2,000 subreddits that are being banned alongside the rollout of Reddit’s new content policy. While most of the affected subreddits were inactive, the most active ones included r/darkhumorandmemes, r/chapotraphouse, r/consumeproduct, r/darkjokecentral, and r/gendercritical.

The new content policy that resulted in the shutdown of The_Donald follows the resignation of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian from the company’s board earlier this month, amid the social unrest caused by the killing of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.

Ohanian, who pledged $1 million to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp, urged for his seat to be filled by a Black candidate. He was replaced by Twitch co-founder Michael Seibel, who has a track record of promoting diversity and inclusion inside startups.

Canadian Polish-Language Newspaper Publisher Arrested for Saying “Jews Have Terrorism in Their Blood”

https://dailyarchives.org/index.php/news/3218-canadian-polish-language-newspaper-publisher-arrested-for-saying-jews-have-terrorism-in-their-blood

A Canadian publisher of a Polish-language publication was arrested on June 11 and then subsequently released for publishing anti-Jew articles.

The Jewish supremacist B’nai Brith Canada filed a complaint against Andrzej Kumor in August 2019, citing stories in his publication Goniec stating that Jews and Zionists have “terrorism in their blood” and that “Jews are spying on you.” Other articles said that the “Jewish political lobby” controls the United States government. Kumor also made the “terrorism in their blood” remarks in a YouTube video.

The articles and YouTube video have since been removed from the internet; the authorities warned Kumor that he would be charged with inciting hatred against Jews if he posted any further anti-Jew content.

“We salute the Peel Regional Police for their diligence in pursuing this matter, and hope that Mr. Kumor has learned his lesson,” B’nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn said. “It is a criminal offence in Canada to willfully promote hatred against an identifiable group. B’nai Brith will continue to relentlessly pursue these incidents, so that incitement against the Jewish community and other groups cannot proceed with impunity.”

Mostyn also told the Toronto Sun, “It’s important news outlets understand that racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism are not fair game and are not going to be tolerated in Canada.”

The Sun noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Semitism has been on the rise in Canada, pointing to three Toronto synagogues being Zoombombed — the term used to describe disruptions of video conference calls with anti-Jew slurs — as examples.

“We’ve seen such a tremendous and overwhelming effort across social media to blame Jews for creating the virus, for spreading the virus, for profiting from the virus,” Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Campaign Against Anti-Semitism Director Jaime Kirzner-Roberts told the Sun. “And all of this hate on social media has implications for actual hate incidents. People are not just passively absorbing that information.”

(Jewish Journal)

California Lawmakers Vote to Legalize Racial Discrimination Against Whites

http://www.renegadetribune.com/california-lawmakers-vote-to-legalize-racial-discrimination-against-whites/

Okay, so try to wrap your head around this. In order to fight against racial discrimination, the lawmakers of California have voted to remove part of the state Constitution that prohibits any kind of racial discrimination.

Here is what was originally added to the state Constitution back in 1996:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.”

The The Wall Street Journal covers the story, but does not point out the obvious reason why the prohibition on race-based discrimination was repealed.

We live in strange times, and strange indeed is that, while deploring racism, the Democratic Legislature in California has voted to codify racial discrimination in state law. On Wednesday the state Senate voted for a constitutional amendment, ACA 5, that would reintroduce racial preferences for who gets a state job or contract, or who is admitted to a state university.

The state Assembly previously passed the measure, which means the amendment will be on the November ballot. It would repeal Proposition 209, which voters approved in 1996 and outlawed racial bias in state policy. The repeal effort received a boost from the killing of George Floyd, no matter the irony of voting for discrimination by race in the name of eliminating discrimination by race.

The reason why the language had to be removed is so that California can openly discriminate against White people even more than they are doing now. This is the essence of affirmative action, diversity quotas, and all the programs designed to give non-Whites advantages over White people.

“Systemic racism” is against Whites. It’s White genocide.

A Quarter Of All Personal Income In The US Now Comes From The Government

http://www.renegadetribune.com/a-quarter-of-all-personal-income-in-the-us-now-comes-from-the-government/

By Tyler Durden

Following today’s release of the latest Personal Income and Spending data, Wall Street was predictably focused on the changes in these two key series, which showed a record jump in personal spending (to be expected one month after the savings rate in the US hit a whopping 32% annualized), and a record drop in personal income (as government benefits and stimulus checks slowed substantially).

But while the change in the headline data was indeed notable, what was far more remarkable was less followed data showing just how reliant on the US government the population has become.

We are referring, of course, to Personal Current Transfer payments which are essentially government sourced income such as unemployment and emergency benefits, welfare checks, and so on. In May, this number was $5.3 trillion annualized, following the record $6.4 trillion hit last month when the US government activated the money helicopters to avoid a total collapse of the US economy.

Even more striking, is that as of May when total Personal Income was just shy of $20 trillion annualized, the government is now responsible for over a quarter of all income.

Putting that number in perspective, in the 1950s and 1960s, transfer payments were around 7%. This number rose in the low teens starting in the mid-1970s (or right after the Nixon Shock ended Bretton-Woods and closed the gold window). The number then jumped again after the financial crisis, spiking to the high teens.

And now, the coronavirus has officially sent this number into the mid-20% range, after hitting a record high 31% in April.

And that’s how creeping banana republic socialism comes at you: first slowly, then fast.

So for all those who claim that the Fed is now (and has been for the past decade) subsidizing the 1%, that’s true, but with every passing month, the government is also funding the daily life of an ever greater portion of America’s poorest social segments.

Who ends up paying for both?

Why the middle class of course, where the dollar debasement on one side, and the insane debt accumulation on the other, mean that millions of Americans content to work 9-5, pay their taxes, and generally keep their mouth shut as others are burning everything down and tearing down statues, are now doomed.

The “good” news? As we reported last November, the US middle class won’t have to suffer this pain for much longer, because while the US has one one of the highest median incomes in the entire world, with only three countries boasting a higher income, it is who gets to collect this money that is the major problem, because as the chart also shows, with just a 50% share of the population in middle-income households, the US is now in the same category as such “banana republics” as Turkey, China and, drumroll, Russia.

What is just as stunning: according to the OECD, more than half of the countries in question have a more vibrant middle class than the US.

So the next time someone abuses the popular phrase “they hate us for our [fill in the blank]”, perhaps it’s time to counter that “they” may not “hate” us at all, but rather are making fun of what has slowly but surely become the world’s biggest banana republic?

And as we concluded last year, “it is not Russia, nor China, nor any other enemy, foreign or domestic, to blame… except for one: the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States.”

---

Source: Zerohedge

The Jewish Cultural Looting and Plundering of Germany After its Defeat

http://www.renegadetribune.com/the-jewish-cultural-looting-and-plundering-of-germany-after-its-defeat/

German military leaders charged with war crimes at Nürnberg were charged with “destruction et pillage d’oeuvres d’art” based specifically on the violation of Article 56 of the Hague Convention of 1907 regarding war booty. Ironically, the Hague convention got its inspiration from disputes which arose from the Napoleonic Wars regarding Napoleon’s notorious plundering. Article 56 was seen as expressing the prohibition of any unilateral seizure of cultural property and putting an explicit limit to the prior practice of unlimited looting. Sadly, the biggest theft of all, the most massive art heist of all times, the looting and plundering of German treasures has drawn scant, if any, media attention.

While there was no general authorization of the Allied Control Council to carry off German cultural property as a means of reparation or compensation, the Soviets openly ignored international law and regarded the vast amount of treasure and artwork pilfered from Germany as ‘compensation.’ Carrying off cultural property was only to be legally permitted for the purpose of “guarding against wartime dangers,” but this was the disingenuous excuse used by the jewish Soviet Union for its massive looting operations. As early as 1942, the Soviet Union, art lovers that they were, had begun a deliberate plan of collecting art from Germany. In 1945, as the Red Army advanced into Germany, special “trophy brigades” went out to collect the slated works in German museums and ship them back to Moscow. From 1945 to 1949, more than two and a half million works of art were carried off from Germany, mostly to the metropolises of the Soviet Union where many of them are in secret storage even today.

A Russians list of 40,000 missing items they blame Germany for taking include the famous Amber Room of the Catherine Palace, but the list is vague and nonspecific. The Germans, on the other hand, have greatly detailed accounts and carefully documented evidence of their lost treasures and they also insist that all the Russian art had already been returned. In reality, by the time of the Cold War, British and Americans had already returned most of the artworks under their jurisdiction to their respective countries of origin, including Russia: Over 500,000 objects were repatriated to the Soviet Union (a fact seldom mentioned by the Russians)! The German position has usually been that international law and the Hague Convention of 1907 on the rules of land warfare require that the works be returned unconditionally.

7,314 paintings belonging to the German bureau that administered the former Hohenzollern estates in Prussia were catalogued in 1939. Today, over 3,000 are still missing. This doesn’t even touch upon the sculpture, porcelain, musical instruments, clocks, silver, furniture, prints and drawings and millions of rare books plundered by Allies and the Red Army alike. Using foresight during the jewish Allied bombing of Germany, museum personnel bravely attempted to safeguard the masterpieces in their charge by shifting collections from various depots in salt mines, churches, cellars and estates to save the objects from destruction. As Berlin was falling, art treasures from the old Prussian castles were hidden in safe places in the countryside. Almost all of the 3,000 missing paintings not destroyed by bombing were taken by the Russians. From the time they conquered Potsdam in April 1945, where many collections had ended up, until 1946, everything that could be moved was taken to Moscow.

The Russians are unrepentant and arrogant about their thievery and seem to go down this brazen path with the tacit approval of civilized nations. The Pushkin Museum’s 1995 show in Moscow ludicrously called “Twice Saved,” unveiled 63 paintings ranging from the late 14th to the late 19th century from German and Hungarian private and museum collections. A month later, St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum opened “Hidden Treasures Revealed,” an exhibition of 74 mostly Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings by artists such as Degas, Renoir, Gauguin and van Gogh, stolen almost entirely from private German collections.

Probably the most famous image of destroyed Berlin is this heroic photo of Russians raising their flag over the smoldering, bombed out city in 1945. It was seen all over the world. The Red Army soldier on the bottom right in the original image, which was recently exhibited in Berlin, is wearing two looted German watches. Photographer Yevgeny Khaldei, who captured the image on May 2, 1945, noticed the watches and edited them out. He also manipulated the flag to make it billow dramatically and then added smoke to the devastated Berlin skyline. An enduring memory for survivors from the days of the jewish Red Army’s conquest of Berlin was the troops’ demand for watches. Part of the frenzied looting was accompanied by the cry: “Wine, women, watches.” They took all three.

Russians liked gold as well. After Berlin fell, Major Feodor Novikov of the Red Army ordered the vaults of the Reichbank opened. 90 gold bars worth 1.3 million dollars and gold coins worth 2.1 million dollars and 400 million dollars worth of negotiable bonds were present. Novikov ordered the vaults locked and demanded the keys. The entire contents of the vault disappeared. The gold was never seen again, but the bonds turn up even today all over the world.

In ‘Twice Saved,’ among the works from German museums and from German and Hungarian private collections were paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hendrick Ter Bruggen, El Greco, Tintoretto, George Romney, Veronese, Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder, Vigee-Lebrun, Goya, Corot, Daumier, Manet, Degas and Renoir, representing approximately one sixth of the disputed paintings remaining in its collection. The prewar provenances of only 37 works were listed and more than half were from German museums, including 11 from the Schlossmuseum in Gotha and two from the Dresden Gallery that the Pushkin acquired from Soviet thieves in 1973 and 1984.

Over a dozen paintings came from private collections; the remainder were described as “collection unknown.” Goya’s Portrait of a Woman is a painting clearly visible in pre-war photographs taken at the home of the well-known German collector Otto Gerstenberg, whose daughter inherited the works after his death in 1935. It was among the works that were stored at Berlin’s Nationalgalerie for safekeeping in 1943 and stolen by the Soviet Union. Additional family art in the Pushkin show included works of Renoir, Daumier, and Renoir. Among other notable paintings from private parties were collections of Otto Krebs and German industrialist Bernhard Koehler, including Tintorettos, Corots and El Grecos.

In another Pushkin exhibition which opened on April 29, 2006 and was entitled “Archeology of War: Return from Nonbeing,” pieces featured from the ancient world were largely based on Russia’s collection of looted German art from World War II. The German based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation was not invited to be involved in the project and was refused access to Russian’s depots of German art treasures.

Some 350 of the antiques displayed in this one show originally came from Berlin collections stolen by the Soviet “trophy brigades” who raped, pillaged and pilfered their way through the ruins of Germany. The Pushkin Museum shamelessly insists, incorrectly and in violation of international law, that all looted art belongs to Russia because it should not go to “those who started the war.” 

Prime targets of the looters were the treasures of the German kings, including those of Friedrich the Great, who maintained strict rules against any plundering by his army and inflicted severe punishment for any soldier found looting. The great paintings he collected, his writings and music and even portraits of him and his family were snatched and taken to Russia.

Joseph Stalin’s minions emptied nearly all museums, collections, archives, and sheltering depots in his zone of occupation and for over four decades his successors hid many of these objects from the world, treasures representing the entire German history. In 1955, Soviet officials publicly staged a return of some major works, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, stolen from the Dresden Picture Gallery, distracting from the fact that they still had thousands more works. A 1990 treaty concluded with the Soviet Union stipulated the return of cultural property that had been moved due to the war. However, Russia reneged and decided that German cultural property was “legally transferred.”

Berlin was fair game for thieves and vandals. In 1945, the Red Army stole Schliemann’s golden Troy collection from its safe keeping space in a concrete bunker at the destroyed Berlin Zoo and it was not until 1993 that they even acknowledged that the treasure was in Russia. In the towns and villages of East Germany, stained glass windows were ripped out of churches and sent to the Soviet Union, bronze monuments were dissolved for their face value and documents dating from centuries past were destroyed or scattered.

450,000 freight-train wagon loads were received in Moscow in 1945 alone, along with ancient printing presses, antique musical instruments, pianos and wine. There were also air cargo planes for transporting loot such as the Troy gold from Berlin and a Gutenberg Bible from Leipzig’s Book Museum. The “trophy brigades” also stole, among the manuscripts, incunabula, Oriental manuscripts and films and folklore recordings from German collections and German medieval Hanseatic archives from Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck which were then scattered haphazardly throughout the USSR.

Thousands of rare drawings from the Kunsthalle Bremen were put in a castle for safe keeping only to vanish under Soviet occupation until some resurfaced on the New York art market in the 1990’s, taking a lawsuit to get them returned. From the same castle, Victor Baldin, then a Soviet Army officer, “rescued” two paintings and 362 drawings which are presently being held by Russian officials.

The cultural property that Russian authorities and soldiers removed from Germany in 1945 included not only works of German art, but two million books and files that if placed end to end would stretch three kilometers, or almost two miles.

The Soviet looting was so sloppy that rare old master paintings were used as table tops and age-old nude paintings were sliced from their frames and plastered on Red Army trucks just for chuckles. Unheated trains carried uncushioned cargoes of precious Rembrandts and DaVincis through freezing weather to Moscow. Other masterpieces were ripped off their stretchers so their frames could be burned for fuel by campfires of drunk soldiers. By the time the treasures made it to Russia, they were left out in the cold and rain in vacant courtyards and alleys until thrown away or stored in attics or basements in awful conditions. Antique furniture was chopped up and burned, rare china smashed, glass broken and ancient metalwork disfigured or melted down.

The Rüstkammer, or armory, of the Wartburg castle used to contain a priceless collection of over 800 pieces from the magnificent period of armour from King Henry II of France, to the items of Friedrich the Wise, Pope Julius II and Bernhard von Weimar. The Soviet Occupation Army stole the collection in 1946 and it has since “disappeared” in the Soviet Union. Only five small pieces were given back by the USSR in the 1960s.

Others played a role in plundering Germany. In 1805, Baron von Hüpsch left his “Kunst und Naturalienkabinett ” (Cabinet of Art and Curiosities) to Hessian Landgraf Ludwig X. Among the Hüpsch collection in Darmstadt were valuable 12th-century ivory sculptures, apostle reliefs and the symbols of the four evangelists. On September 11th, 1944, the museum was destroyed by bombs but the most precious collections of the museum had already been evacuated to Bavaria and stored at castle Weihenzell near Immenstadt.

On April 30th, 1945 the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division of the French troops occupied Immenstadt and its officers moved into the castle Rauhenzell and the medieval ivory pieces disappeared. In 1983, the Louvre had already bought two of the pieces, and in 1993, the Louvre was offered two more. It turned out that one of these pieces matched the group the Louvre had already bought in 1983. Germany and France did another trade for a partial return of the German treasures. In September 1993, five more pieces of the same lot which vanished from the castle Rauhenzell came up for auction in Paris. The “Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt” reported this to the French police and tried to withdraw the artworks from the auction, but French law allows the possession of stolen goods if the owner can prove he bought it unknowingly. Nevertheless, the auction house was put under pressure and the private owner was eventually thwarted. Finally, five pieces were returned to Germany in 1994.

Among German state treasures stolen by the jewish Red Army was the Treasure of Priamus, an important collection of Etruscan sculptures, vases, terra cotta and other items dating back to ancient Greece. In 1992, after the Soviet Union disintegrated, the German and Russian governments made another agreement of cultural cooperation, but after Germany cooperated fully, the Russians again reneged on most of the agreement. In 1997, an alliance of nationalists and Communists in the Duma, or Russian Parliament, passed legislation indefinitely banning the return of Germany’s art to Germany!

In Austria, works of art used or loaned for use by the Third Reich almost all went missing at the hands of the Allies after war’s end: paintings by Breughel, Michelangelo, 73 engravings by Ghisi, c.1650, gobelin upholsteries of tables and chairs and very valuable antique Austrian furniture vanished. The “Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien” (Museum of Art History Vienna) is still missing several valuable 17th century tapestries which were lost at the end of war without a trace as were 9 tapestries which were loaned to the country house of Hermann Göring. Six of these were hunting scenes woven around the middle of the 17th century after sketches by Peter Paul Rubens and three others dated back to the middle of the 18th century. Two were later found in the National Museum of Warsaw/Poland and returned to Germany.

Paintings by Angelika Kaufmann and others that were acquired by Emperor Joseph II are among losses suffered by the Austrian Museum for Applied Arts and by the Austrian Gallery in Belvedere. Properties of the Austrian National Library have been discovered in the Hermitage of St. Petersburg, but Russian bureaucracy has prevented their return. Castles, mansions, universities, convents and churches were targeted by looters all over Austria. 30 boxes with manuscripts and books belonging to the University Library of Graz were stolen by troops from ex-Yugoslavia, and at the Castle Grafenegg/Lower Austria, Soviet soldiers transported all of its artwork and furniture by the wagon load, leaving behind an empty castle. All in all, however, Austria’s Germanic cultural losses were smaller than those of Germany.

A great void has also been left in the cultural literary heritage of Germany since the lion’s share of pilfered German collections were once complete collections. Sometimes thieves only selected the pieces of highest value, breaking up historical series and sets. The great libraries in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where many plundered books and manuscripts ended up, simply integrated them into the existing stock with no attempts to keep collections intact. In 1990, it was revealed that millions of antiquarian German books ranging from aeronautic designs to files on military operations during the Napoleonic wars had been left to rot under pigeon droppings in an abandoned church outside of Moscow. Displaced archival fragments of cultural heritage, so meticulously organized through the ages in Germany, were scattered so widely they will never all be found and identified even if they survived the abysmal storage conditions.

On December 3rd, 1996, the Ukraine returned three precious albums to Germany: albums of lithographs and engravings which had been missing since 1945, including one volume with 57 lithographs after renowned Saxon artist Franz Gareis (1775-1803), a second album with 69 colour etchings of the 18th and 19th century and 95 engravings by Johann Blaeu which dated to 1700 depicting scenes of festivities, ceremonies and the residences of the Dukes of Savoy. In return, the Ukraine received generous donations of art from Germany.

Today, one German museum’s department of prints and drawings still lacks about 640 anthologies, albums and illustrated albums as well as books containing thousands of engravings, woodcuts and lithographs. Also missing are approximately 10,400 prints from the Renaissance to the 20th century, 3,300 drawings in albums and sketching books, the whole art historical library and valuable archival material. Most of all, due to the war, the museum further lost 1,500 mainly unique drawings of exceptional quality by artists such as Dürer, Cranach, Rubens, Kollwitz and Menzel.

Germans regard other items as an integral part of their country’s heritage, including about 5,800 ancient books from the famous Gotha library, two Gutenberg Bibles printed in 1454 and several important paintings. By 1580, this Library was a reference library containing books on theology, history, medicine, surgery, law, mathematics, philosophy, mining, architecture, astronomy, warfare, tournaments and festivals, numismatics, mineralogy, biology and agriculture. The collection also included engravings, maps and illustrations of court life. Needless to say, those treasures fortunate enough to survive the firebombing were greatly plundered and stolen by the Soviets. 

The Saxon State Library began in Dresden 440 years ago first under the auspices of Saxony’s ruling nobility and then to administrators and scholars who carefully selected and purchased the collection. Since Saxony had become one of the most powerful territorial states in German by the mid-16th century, many books were collected by Elector Augustus, 1553-1585, and included manuscripts from the middle ages and also those pertaining to local industry and the professional trades, many of which were uniformly bound by Dresden bookbinders in 1556. By the end of World War II, the Saxon State Library had 2,384 surviving incunabula. Today more than half of these are in Russia.

In the summer of 1999, over 5,100 predominantly manuscript music scores (including a major part of the Bach family archive) once stolen by a Ukrainian trophy brigade from the Sing-Akademie in Berlin were discovered in Kyiv. A cantata by Carl Philip Emanuel Bach which had not been heard in 225 years since its initial premiere in 1785 was among them. Rare printed books and correspondence files from the collection are still missing, and as yet no trace of them have been found.

In 2007, European gold jewellery from between the 5th and 8th centuries A.D. went on show in Moscow for the first time since it was seized by the jewish Red Army from a Berlin museum in 1945. In May and June, 1945, Red Army soldiers plundered three boxes with 1,538 artifacts of jewellery and other objects from the Merovingian era that a Berlin museum had hidden for safety in a bunker in Berlin to protect them from bombing. These are objects from the era of Germanic kings from 482 to 714, an era that has yielded fewer artifacts than any other in European history, such as a German 7th-century iron sword sheath from Sigmaringen-Gutenstein.

700 items of the 1,300 which emerged from their dingy hiding place to be displayed were stolen from Germany. Russia calls the looted trophy art “art stored in conditions of war.” What was modern Germany’s reaction? At the same time the Russian officials were crudely reiterating their official refusal to return cultural loot to Germany, the German Culture Minister attended the official opening and said the exhibition marks “a special event in German-Russian cultural relations” and loaned more than 200 objects to complement the show whose exhibition catalogue was printed in Germany!

In a nauseating display of arrogance, spite, greed… and violation of the Hague Convention, Poland has stubbornly clung to one of its looted German treasures. For decades, Germany has asked Poland to return a vast, priceless collection of original German manuscripts of writing and music once part of the Prussian Library collection which form an integral part of German history. The treasure was hidden in castles and monasteries for safety during the war, mostly in the Benedictine Abbey and its two churches in the German city of Grussau in Silesia, which at the time was still part of Germany.

The collections were found, taken as loot and stored at Jagiellonian University in Krakow since the end of the war. The tens of thousands of documents, now re-named the “Berlinka Collection” by Poland, include composer Robert Schumann’s archives, a letter written by Martin Luther in 1530; a decree signed by Louis XIV dated 1664 and even some correspondence from George Washington. The collection also contains original works of such world-famous German writers and composers as Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, all a crucial part of German history and culture. In this blatantly criminal theft, Poland has been obdurate in its refusal to show good will and do the right thing. Poland feels that they deserve it in return for wartime damage done to Poland by Germany, despite having already received a huge, free chunk of Germany at war’s end, including thousands of German businesses, mines, factories, homes (furnished down to the smallest child’s toy left behind by expelled civilians) and hundreds of intact medieval cities now passed off as part of THEIR cultural legacy, as well as parks, railroads, highways, bridges, forests, rivers, bridges and lakes.

The Americans and Others

Saxon king Heinrich I and his successors had long ago given various treasures to the church at Quedlinburg. These treasures included an intricately carved ivory comb, two manuscripts in jeweled covers, one of which was written entirely in gold ink, and small rock crystal and gold relics embedded with bits of cloth and wood said to be from the Virgin’s robe and the true Cross. Pilgrims from all over Germany once visited the church to view them. During World War Two, the treasures were hidden for safekeeping in a cave near the town.

As World War Two was drawing to a close in 1945, the US Army arrived and briefly occupied sleepy Quedlinburg, one of the lucky hamlets spared destruction by bombing. Twelve of the most precious treasures disappeared, but before an investigation could commence, Quedlinburg was turned over to the Red Army.

In 1983, rumors surfaced which led to an investigation by a German agency dedicated to recovering looted national treasures. The trail led to the State of Texas and to an oddball thief by the name of Joe Tom Meador, once a forward observer for an artillery unit and one of many men who made an advanced art out of thievery during their service in Germany. Although two of the works are still unaccounted for, Germany, managed to buy back the treasures for an outrageous price of 3 million dollars from Meador’s estate. This scene has been often repeated through the years.

Castles were gravely damaged. In the Rhineland, Rimburg Castle’s furniture and artwork was scattered, broken and thrown into the moat, and the locked rooms broken into and rifled. There were slashed pictures, and cases of books from the Aachen library broken open and their contents strewn about by souvenir hunters. At Augustusburg in Bruehl, Allied troops bivouacked in the bomb damaged castle and caused even more destruction. Police had no authority over (or incentive) to control US soldiers who continued to go in and out, looting as they pleased. Two Durer portraits were stolen from the Castle Schwarzburg, which were returned later only after a court battle. The castle Schloß Rurich near Hückelhoven dating in part from the 13th century survived the immense destruction caused by “Operation Queen” on November 16, 1944 which laid waste to several nearby towns and cities only to be hit by a grenade attack on Christmas of 1944, which caused immense, and in part irreparable damage. The valuable castle library of over 18,000 volumes was thoroughly looted by American GIs.

The family treasures of the duchy of Hessen were stored for safekeeping at the palace of Kronberg. In 1945, the US army confiscated the palace for use as an Officer’s Club and they discovered the treasures hidden in the cellar and parceled them out. Some went to the US and some were sold to Switzerland. In 1946, the theft was discovered but it was too late.

British troops stole the jewels of the Duke of Mecklenburg from the palace Gluckenburg in 1945. They also broke open the Sarcophagi in the palace crypt, throwing aside the mummies while rooting for valuables. Palaces in Schleswig Holstein and Buckeburg lost their treasures and antique furniture, which British troops sent home to Britain. It was not only the foot soldier who looted. British General Staff Field Marshall Sir Alan Brook personally removed valuable books and artwork from the Potsdam library of Cecilienhof. His partners in this crime included none other than the Duke of Cummingham, fleet admiral of the Royal Navy, and Sir Charles Portal, the Marshall of the Royal Air Force who so zealously crusaded for the total destruction of Germany by bombing.

Waldenburg in Baden-Württemberg was first mentioned as the home of a castle, a fief of the noble family Hohenlohe, in the year 1253, and it was designated as a city in 1330. In the 16th century, the old castle was converted into a residence of the Prince of the Dukes of Württemberg. In the 19th Century, it was extensively renovated by a line of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg. By 1944, the city of Stuttgart, decided to move its impressive art collection at the Staatsgalerie of Baden-Württemberg, to a safer location. Never dreaming a sleepy old castle would be a target of Allied bombs, they sent many of the treasures to the tiny hilltop town of Waldenburg, 40 miles away. It is said that the citizens of Waldenburg formed a human chain to carefully transport the books and artworks, one at a time, up the steep hill to the castle, shown in the photo before and after 1945, below.

The city of Stuttgart was indeed absolutely levelled by jewish Allied bombing, and in April 1945, on the flimsy pretext that “Nazis were hiding in Waldenburg,” Allied forces pounded the hilltop until the little village and ancient castle were almost totally destroyed by American artillery units. One version of the story goes that “homeless and desperate villagers burned anything they could find in order to stay warm, including the treasures” (the same villagers who made a tremendous effort to get the objects to safety a short time earlier). The other version is that it was thrown into one of numerous bonfires lit by Allied soldiers in the aftermath of their carnage. In any case, after the war, curators assumed that the entire collection was burned. A bound collection of 53 prints showing Augsburg nobles in various states of ornate dress and armor called the “Augsburger Geschlechterbuch” was among the evacuated treasures presumed lost. Created in the first part of the 16th century, it was a very important artifact.

Descendants of an American Army officer who was there in 1945 at the time the 63rd Infantry laid waste to Waldenburg ended up with the book. They were told that he salvaged the book from fires started by Allied soldiers. For most of the next 50 years, it sat on his book shelf, and when he died, the book was sold and resold. After a protracted battle, a New York court ordered a book collector to return the book to its rightful owners, a Stuttgart museum, over six decades after it was stolen.

Throughout Germany, priceless art, religious and secular treasures, were violently torn from church-altars, wretched from museum walls or even stolen from private collections and homes by Allied soldiers. The coffins of Schiller and Goethe were looted by US soldiers who took six of Goethe’s medals. While officially America and Britain were not “seizing” any artwork as war booty, whole squads of Allied thieves were busy personally “liberating” rare books, illuminated manuscripts, gold and silver religious objects, sculpture and paintings as well as bullying German civilians into forking over their few valuables.

The “Salzburg of the Kapuzinerberg,” a 1565 woodcut, was one the oldest portraits of Salzburg. During the bombings, it was hidden for safety in a salt mine nearby. In 1945, soldiers of the US Forces in Austria (USFA) overtook the guarding and restitution of art, and during their watch countless valuables were stolen, including this priceless work of art. It has never been recovered. US troops in Salzburg and Upper Austria under the US General Harry Collins, 42nd US division stole various art treasures from Austria, including a Salzburg gold coin collection hidden in Hallein. 

Seven valuable paintings including a Rubens and a van Dyck, and seven valuable prints, including four Dürers, were stolen from the salt main of Alt-Aussee while under supervision of US personnel with the full knowledge of the Allied authorities. Members of the 83st US infantry division plundered St. Florian Monastery in Austria in 1945, freely taking paintings, antique furniture and Celtic gold treasure which they removed with 5 army trucks.

Six and a half tons of gold worth over seven million dollars in 1945 was recovered from Ribbentrop’s castle ‘Schloss Fuschl’ near Salzburg and turned over to the US Army on June 15, 1945. It totally disappeared and there are no records of it being received at the Frankfurt US Foreign Exchange Depository. Much of the gold “recovered” by the Americans was re-smelted, hence erasing any and all identification marks and numbers.

In the same manner by which panels painted by Albrecht Dürer ended up in Brooklyn and a manuscript of Friedrich the Great’s was brought to the USA by an American G.I., millions of rare books, artworks and other treasures were pilfered, some by means other than theft. The thousands of cameras, antique swords, knives and antique guns which German civilians were required to surrender at war’s end ended up in the states, usually with a bogus provenance. On internet auction sites today, there are pages and pages of “souvenirs” lifted or extorted from pitiful victims of the war by Allied soldiers, even toys, family bibles and photographs.

On a tip that 7 miniature 16th-century paintings stolen from Germany by American GIs at the end of the War were resold in the USA, the German government asked for their return. The new “owner” refused and instead engaged Germany in a protracted legal battle. He was a museum curator who claims he bought them “thinking they were reproductions.”

In the “confusion” of the last days of the War, as forces of the 66th U.S. Infantry Reserve and the 71st U.S. Infantry Divisions occupied bombed out Pirmasens, paintings belonging to the town which had been stored in the air-raid shelter during the war were stolen sometime in March of 1945, while the townspeople were burying their dead. In the year 2003, through the American FBI’s Art Theft Program, three of the fifty paintings by the German painter Heinrich Bürkel were recovered and have since been returned to their rightful owner, the Pirmasens City Museum. But this is rare.

Some loot found its way home. A lovely Baroque ivory figure crafted by Balthasar Permoser in 1700 depicting Omphale and Hercules was last seen on a train-load of art headed for “safekeeping” in Kassel in March 1945. It turned up in 2006 at Sotheby’s auctions in New York, via a collector in California. After proving its provenance, it was returned to Berlin’s Museum of Decorative Arts. US army personnel also stole three original writings from Martin Luther which were found and returned in 1996. A rare manuscript of Robert Schumann was found at an auction in London in the 1990s. 200 famous paintings taken from the Kaiser-Fridrich-Museum in Berlin by American soldiers had to be returned in March 1948 under public pressure.

It wasn’t just the American foot soldier who looted, either. US officers stole an original writing of Aristotle, a Gutenberg bible and 250 original letters to Erasmus of Rotterdam from the University library in Leipzig before turning the city over to the communists. Even US High Commissioner Lucius D. Clay tried to confiscate the stamp collection of the Reich Post Museum for the US but his plan was rebuffed by the higher courts. Eight of the most valuable stamps of the collection, however, were taken.

Das Hildebrandslied is the oldest heroic poem in German literature and the only surviving example in German of its genre. The codex itself was written in the first quarter of the 9th century. The codex was looted by a US army officer in 1945 and sold to a book dealer. It was discovered in California and returned to Germany in 1955, but in greatly damaged condition. The first sheet, which had been cut out and disfigured to avoid identification, wasn’t found until 1972 in Philadelphia. The manuscript is now home, in the Murhardsche Bibliothek in Kassel.

The real estate and whole households of the millions of expelled ethnic Germans provided loot for years to come in those areas. The German books, including some rare manuscripts, banned by the Soviets and Allies alike during ‘re-education,’ while generally burned, often vanished with no accountability. Not only was there was unbridled theft of German patents, copyrights, music, research data, scientific and educational studies, there was massive, unjustified requisitioning of German-owned property in just about every part of the world, often done on the flimsiest of pretexts.

In some areas of eastern Europe where ethnic German property was stolen, there have been some attempts to compensate. In Romania, 90 percent of 128,000 attempts at claiming back confiscated property have failed to produce results so far, but there is progress.

In Bulgaria, former monarch Simeon Saxe-Coburg, who fled his homeland as a child in 1946 after communists took over, returned from exile to his home. He became prime minister from 2001 to 2005. Bulgarian law now allows restitution of nationalized royal property. In 1991, Hungary became the first post-communist country in the region to pass laws on partial compensation for expropriated property. There were 817,811 claims submitted for compensation of property taken away during communism by 2005. In the Czech Republic, having German blood makes it nearly impossible to reclaim one’s rightful property, and it has only very rarely taken place. Poland is the only post-communist country in the region that has not passed a restitution or compensation law.

Another lucrative plunder was scientific. At the end of World War II, both Allied and Soviet scientific intelligence experts accompanied the invading forces into Germany to plunder as much equipment and expertise as possible from the rubble, and they were delighted and shocked at the advanced German technical achievements they found.

German cultural institutions recently issued a catalogue (2008) detailing thousands of objects of art that disappeared from Berlin at the end of the war in the hope that foreign governments will return the stolen art to them. Over 180,000 items disappeared from itemized and inventoried German collections alone along with thousands of other cultural treasures which have never been recovered.

Lastly, at this point in time, many individuals whose families had willingly sold artwork even before the war and were paid for that work are today suing for art supposedly looted by “Nazis,” claiming that their families must have been “under duress.” It has evolved into nothing more than a lucrative racket for some, and is emptying German and Austrian museums of what precious little art they have left. To make matters worse, Germany has paid dearly in compensation for art actually pilfered by the Soviets or destroyed by the Allies in bombing runs. Thanks jews.