Mitläufer

... are people who, during the Third Reich, were merely ordinary Parteigenossen (PG) of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and thus were not involved in the crimes of the Nazi regime.

Law on Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism of March 5, 1946,
commonly known as the Liberation Act (©Alexander Buschorn/Wikipedia)

After Nazi Germany’s defeat, the victorious Allied powers wanted to denazify the about 8.5 million members of the NSDAP. They established so-called Spruchkammern (denazification tribunals). These ad hoc courts classified all Germans into five categories based on their involvement in Nazi crimes. Here is what Wikipedia knows:

V. Persons Exonerated (German: Entlastete). No sanctions.

IV. Followers (German: Mitläufer). Possible restrictions on travel, employment, and political rights, plus fines.

III. Lesser Offenders (German: Minderbelastete). Placed on probation for two to three years with a list of restrictions. No internment.

II. Offenders: Activists, Militants, and Profiteers, or Incriminated Persons (German: Belastete). Subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment up to ten years, performing reparation or reconstruction work, plus a list of other restrictions.

I. Major Offenders (German: Hauptschuldige). Subject to immediate arrest, death, imprisonment with or without hard labor, plus a list of lesser sanctions.

To reduce the workload of the Spruchkammern, the Allied Control Council decided that members of the NSDAP born after 1919 were exempted because they had been brainwashed. Disabled veterans were also exempted.

Within Category I were the war criminals, whose leaders were convicted during the Nuremberg Trials and executed by hanging.

My loyal readers know that I was born in Essen and spent my early school years in the city on the Ruhr River. At the time, my parents and I lived in the Recklinghausen district, at Goldammerweg 4. There I had a friend named Ursula.

At Goldammerweg 6 lived a family with a son, Wolfgang, who was two years younger than me. My parents were such good friends with neighbors Eugen and Friedel B. that in the summer of 1940, we spent a vacation together at Kühlungsborn on the Baltic Sea.

From the right: Eugen, Friedel, Wolfgang, my mother, and father, Manfred.

Eugen was an architect, athletic, and a member of a fencing club. Friedel, also athletic, was the Westphalian breaststroke champion at the time.

From left to right: Manfred, Wolfgang, and Eugen on a walk on the Kühlungsborn promenade

I often saw my father, an engineer, sitting with Eugen in our living room. As far as I could understand as a five-year-old, they talked a lot about technology, especially cars. I also picked up on the fact that Eugen was a staunch Nazi.

 
He must have convinced my father to join the NSDAP during our Baltic Sea vacation.

Recently, the National Archives partially opened its Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1675–1958, and so I was able to make a copy of my father‘s approved membership application.

Application for admission: October 22, 1940; admitted on January 1, 1941

Since I know that our Papi was a thoroughly apolitical person, PG number 8302911 was a Mitläufer.

**

Deus Vult?

Since May 2025, War Secretary Pete Hegseth has hosted unprecedented monthly evangelical worship services at the Pentagon. The war minister’s understanding of Christianity is one that would dominate American life and cast those who disagree with him as God’s enemies.

The worship services have included Doug Wilson, the founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, of which Pete is a member. Wilson has stated that homosexuality should be a crime and that women shouldn't have the right to vote.

Following complaints, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has stated that the services show that Christian personnel are favored over their Jewish, Muslim, or other non-Christian peers in the Department of Defense. These favors would only be given if non-Christians attended the services, which is discriminatory.

Soon after the start of the U.S. war against Iran, there were reports that military leaders told their service members that the war was "part of God's divine plan" and that President Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus. One commander ought to have quoted the Book of Revelation, saying that the war will bring the second coming of Jesus Christ.

A new crusade against Islam that Deus vult?

Multiple members of Congress sent a letter to the military Inspector General stated, “If accurate, these outrageous statements—justifying a war based on interpretations of biblical prophecies, and informing troops that they are risking their lives to advance a specific religious vision—raises not only glaring Constitutional concerns, but potential violations of Department of Defense regulations regarding religious neutrality and breaches of professional obligations and standards expected of military leadership.”

Leading the Operation Epic Fury against Muslim-majority Iran, Pete is in his element as a crusader. So on the Wednesday preceding Palm Sunday, Hegseth prayed for U.S. troops to inflict “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy … We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.”

The War Secretary has repeatedly praised the Crusades and supports the idea of “his” war being a holy war. People who enjoy the "benefits" of Western culture should "thank the crusaders.”

Two of Hegseth's tattoos reference the Crusades
©Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia

Multiple former high-ranking military officials, heads of the chaplain corps, some veterans' groups, current Pentagon staff, and current officers criticize the Pentagon’s shift from historical norms as dangerous. Some of these critics made their statements anonymously, fearing retribution from the Trump administration.

However, retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson spoke out, “The American military has had a remarkable ride of equanimity and fairness and justice and all manner of good adjectives with regard to religion. It’s done this in a way that’s really remarkable — until now. Hegseth’s actions are totally violative of everything that transpired before it.”

And an anonymous (sic!) said, “If troops are trained to believe that ‘God is on our side,’ what precludes us from doing anything we want to win?

This reminds Red Baron painfully of the buckle the soldiers of the Nazi-Wehrmacht wore, “God is with us”, committing war crimes.

"Gott mit uns" (Nobiscum deus) is a quote from Matthew 1:23 and has served as the motto of King William I of Prussia from 1861 onward. It adorned the buckles of German soldiers until 1945.

However, all concerns about religious freedom and about the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution pale in comparison to Pope Leo XIII’s reply.

Steven Colbert presented the clip on Monday this week.

According to the prophecy of Zechariah (Zech 9:9): “Your king comes to you … humble and riding on a donkey.” By not entering Jerusalem on a horse, Jesus makes it clear that he is not the expected warlike Messiah to liberate the Jewish people from Roman occupation. He is the king of peace.

Still, many in the crowd hoped for a Davidic king who would overthrow Rome, and cried, “Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna*!”
*Meaning Save us!

Instead, we read further (Zech 9:10), “And I will cut off the [war] chariot from Ephraim, and the horse (sic!) from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”

Later, at his arrest, Jesus tells his disciples, “All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matt 26:52)
**

The Langemarck Myth

Starting in 1946, Red Baron attended a high school in Hamburg that had been founded in 1944 as the Langemarck School.

That is why I was particularly interested in a traveling exhibition of a joint remembrance-and-peace project by the Belgian municipality of Langemark, the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, and the University of Kent. The exhibition has been and will be shown in cities with streets named Langemarck.

Veterans wrote about their romanticized memories.

Early in the First World War, on November 10, 1914, German troops attacked the Allied front near Langemark* in Belgium. More than 2,000 young, inexperienced recruits lost their lives. From this military defeat emerged the "Langemarck Myth" as a symbol of the supposed willingness of German youth to make sacrifices.
*In German, an ungrammatical "c" was added to the original name

Commemorative ceremonies, publications, monuments, and street names emerged in the postwar period.

Following the French Campaign, the Daily Order for Langemarck Day 1940, signed
by the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army (OKH), Walther von Brauchitsch.

Young men willing to sacrifice themselves for their country were exactly what the Nazis needed for their Wehrmacht.

Der Führer visiting the Langemarck site in 1940

The regime permanently anchored the "Langemarck Myth" in the public sphere. 

Macabre: During World War II, young Flemish men were invited
to enlist in the Langemarck Assault Brigade of the Waffen-SS.

Across Germany, more than 30 streets are named after the small Belgian village of Langemarck.

An exhibition at the Freiburg city archives took the material from the traveling exhibition and expanded it to include information about the unique situation in Freiburg.

Admiral-Spee-Straße and Langemarckstraße in Freiburg's Heldenviertel

Initially, the Höllentalbahn, climbing the heights of the Black Forest, ran through the heart of the Wiehre district* at street level. As traffic increased, the required railroad crossings became increasingly problematic.

*Red Baron lives here

On the right, the four-lane Baslerstraße passes under the north-south
Rhine Valley Railway and, further up, the newly built Höllental line.
Note the undeveloped area between Basler Straße, the railroad bypass,
and Merzhauser Straße running through the photo diagonally.

Consequently, the Reichsbahn decided to reroute the Höllental line, featuring cuttings and bridges along the edge of the Wiehre district. Construction started in 1930, and trains began operating in 1934.

The zoning plan for the area west of Merzhauser Straße includes streets named after "heroes" and battle sites from World War I. Consequently, the Freiburges called this part of town Heldenviertel. 

 In 1996, a citizens' group drew attention to this fact.

      

In 1934, the streets in this neighborhood were named after battles, places, and soldiers from World War I. The names of the fallen, who were exploited for the ideological purposes of the Nazi regime, serve as a reminder of the importance of peace and international understanding.

Meet the heroes

Calls to rename the streets grew louder, but this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the name is erased; on the other, residents are forced to change their addresses, which involves effort and expenses.

One additional argument for retaining the "warlike" street names in the Heldenviertel is that people and places are part of our (inglorious) German history that must not be forgotten.

In 2012, Freiburg's city council engaged a commission of experts to assess the names of Freiburg's streets in terms of persecution of minorities, dictatorship, antisemitism, militarism, nationalism, chauvinism, and colonialism. They cautiously proposed to rename a dozen streets. Among those was the Gallwitzstraße in the Heldenviertel.

Max von Gallwitz (1852–1937) was a general in the First World War. He strongly supported the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth) and was a revisionist of the Treaty of Versailles, viewing it as a Schanddiktat (dictate of shame).

Did they overdo it? Who will read those two loaded explanatory signs?

After World War II, contested street signs were often supplemented with explanatory notes, as was the case in Bad Wildungen.

**

Five Minutes of Silence

Three nameless people who didn't know each other before come together on stage, i.e., in a room filled with the waste of affluence, such as cardboard boxes, beverage cans, plastic tarps, and fabric scraps. They decide to just not say anything for five minutes, to listen to the silence and the wind in the cornfield, to the birds in the branches, to feel their own heartbeats.

So, everyone shut up, everyone just enjoy the silence, five minutes without an opinion, don't say a word for 5 minutes ... starting now.

They are in complete agreement that this would help us move forward, right here, in this very place. Yet, turning off the constant background noise of opinions and attitudes for just five minutes is more complicated than initially assumed.

Leo Meier, actor and the playwright of Fünf Minuten Stille, studied dramatics and philosophy in Bochum and acting at the Folkwang University of the Arts. Meier crafted the play as a self-critical, absurdist, and entertaining play. It is a refreshingly witty drama full of liberating humor about the desire for peace and quiet in a noisy world.

The three actors long for silence but remain stuck in debate and complaint about the state of the world, since "intelligence is only useful if you're smart enough to use it properly."

"I'd thought about that too - saving the world or something along those lines. We already have the evil part down. But it's good that we're saying it again!"

And so the chatter goes on.

During 90 minutes, the three protagonists pour a torrent of words over the audience. The Wallgraben trio performs linguistically brilliant, chaotic theater. They impress with their gestures, anarchic joy, and wonderful wit.

Near the end, the audience lived through five minutes of silence, as the three sat around a freshly planted tree on stage. While Red Baron deliberated how they knew, when the five minutes had passed, a voice from off announced that the five minutes were not yet over.

The world out there needs improvement, but how? The three agree on one thing: It's the fault of those out there. Hell is the other people.

The male protagonist admits that he has a small car with only one door, drives at 120 km/h, and that, living in the countryside, where public transportation is practically nonexistent, he uses his car only in very special emergencies. One such emergency is his terminally ill father, whom he has to visit at the city hospital. Yet it turns out that his father, a retiree, scraped together his savings to fly to Australia. While surfing at the beach, a shark bit off his head. It's simply impossible for the plot of the play to get any more absurd than that.

Near the end, the male and one of the female actors leave the stage not to save the world, but to save his vintage Padoda-style Mercedes convertible from the scratches of an angry mob running amok outside.

Don't just talk - take action. So the last actress on stage finds a transparent plastic jumpsuit, puts it on, and begins filling it, little by little, with the trash of affluence. Then, exhausted, she collapses like an inflated doll onto the rest of the rubbish, which she can no longer dispose of on her own. She is filled up.

©Lars Peterson on Facebook

The thunderous applause and the many curtains were well deserved.

**

Jessica Foster

Red Baron learned that MAGA fans have a poster girl who is in the US Army. Her name is Jessica Foster, and she stands for "America First."

Here Jessica is on a mission in Greenland with her colleagues Shaw and Raya.

Foster is an avatar generated by an anonymous artificial intelligence image generator. Many speculate that it could be US propaganda or worse, foreign government propaganda. Since December 2025, she has amassed nearly one million followers on Instagram, mostly men driven by hormones. So many find her glamorous, but she's not at all my type of girl.

She's posing with Donald Trump and his entourage and, as such, rubbing shoulders with world leaders.

And Foster delivered a speech at Trump's "Board of Peace" meeting in Washington, thanking the president for the invitation to the "Border of Peace Conference." Is it intentional, or did something go wrong when the placard also reads: "Border of Peace"?

Between many of her pro-Trump posts, Foster also prominently displays her feet. EuroNews writes: "More than a fake, Foster is a fake foot fetish model who is seen duping right-leaning men for OnlyFans cash."

There's no public record of Foster's military service, and on @jessicanextdoor, she collects direct tips from duped "horny MAGA men." Her followers have been interacting with her and thanking her for her service and for championing the Trump cause.

Lately, she walked a tarmac with President Donald Trump on the first day of the strikes on Iran, and this implication is troubling.

More and more "real" US service members have been wounded since the start of Operation Epic Fury, and an increasing number have died in the US war with Iran.

**

Juliette Gréco

When Red Baron was working on his thesis in Munich in the early 1960s, there was a singer he particularly admired.

March 1966 at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands with tulips. What else?
©Ron Kroon/Wikipedia

Juliette Gréco was exactly the kind of woman I was into. Long black hair, striking eyes, and a sexy voice.

That memory came flooding back when I was in Paris last year and discovered the street sign of Place Juliette de Gréco near Café Les Deux Magots, where  during the legendary postwar era the “Muse of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” had spent so many hours in the company of  the “existentialists” including Albert Camus, Jacques Prévert, and  Jean-Paul Sartre who wrote of Juliette Gréco: “Gréco’s voice is like a warm, gentle light whose spark can ignite the flames of poets.”

Existentialism (©Airair/Wikipedia)

Raymond Queneau, of whom Juliette said, “I owe them everything,” wrote the first chanson for Juliette Gréco at their tables in the Café de Flore. Gréco said, “I owe him everything.” Was it the chanson Si tu t’imagines from 1947?

In 1949, when the American jazz musician Miles Davis performed in Paris, Juliette, not speaking a word of English, and Miles, not knowing any French, lived an amour fou. Wikipedia knows: In 1957, they decided to always be just lovers because their careers were in different countries, and his fear of damaging her career by being in an interracial relationship. They remained lovers and friends until Miles's death in 1991.

That’s why I was absolutely thrilled when, a month ago, the Centre Culturel Français in Freiburg announced a chanson reading, Rendez-vous avec Gréco.

There was no stopping me. I had to fully indulge in nostalgia.

Catherine Le Ray was absolutely top-notch in her interpretation of the Greco-Chansons, not only in French but in English and German too. Just to cite two press reviews, “Catherine Le Ray sings with talent, passion, authenticity, and charm […] her remarkable performance moves the audience—it’s a fireworks display!” - Ouest-France, and “She possesses the grandeur of an opera diva, which she combines with the coquetry of a vaudeville star […] a wonderfully expressive voice […]” - Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung. Between songs, Catherine shared with us episodes from the Grecos’ eventful life drawn from the latter's autobiography.

Frédéric Langlais, her companion, is the ultimate expert on the button accordion. He was the French accordion champion in 1993 and became the world champion the following year, the youngest accordion world champion at just 16 years old. He has received numerous awards for his play. On his 30,000 Euro instrument, he perfectly simulated a piano when it became necessary for the interpretation of a chanson.

Juliette in Vienna 2009 (©Manfred Werner/Wikipedia)

There, she certainly performed one of her biggest hits, “Sous le ciel de Paris.”

**

The Forgotten Coat

This was a lecture in the series "Freiburg en détail: Eine Kulturgeschichte in Objekten" of the Studium Generale at Freiburg University in the Winter Semester 2025/2026. Dr. Julia Wohlrab, Director of the Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus, had chosen as the object "The Forgotten Coat."

The bronze coat left behind lies on the railing leading up to the Wiwili Bridge, which spans the tracks at Freiburg main station. A bronze plaque with the following text explaining the monument is affixed to the wall below.

On October 22, 1940, more than 450 Jewish citizens from Freiburg and the surrounding area were deported from the freight depot of the former train station to the Gurs camp in southern France on the orders of the Nazi regional leadership. Many of them perished in Gurs from starvation and disease; most were murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp.

City of Freiburg, October 2003

The express freight handling facility on a siding at the Freiburg Central Station

An eyewitness recalls the events in her youth, "From our school, the Hindenburg School [now the Goethe Gymnasium], we saw people being loaded onto trucks. Somehow, everyone knew they were Jews. And one of my classmates said, 'This is the best day of my life - the Jews are finally leaving.' Another classmate also saw people being loaded onto trucks at the Martinstor. Of course, it was the same in other streets as well. People saw this and were indifferent. The Jews were considered less than animals - vermin, parasites, as they were always called. Many were delighted. People were mostly even more malicious than the laws."

Only a few photos - none in Freiburg - captured the moment when Jews were arrested prior to their deportation to Gurs.

Children watch as Jews are loaded onto military trucks in Kippenheim.

There is a charcoal drawing of Freiburg by Fritz Löw, which he created in Gurs.
On the police truck are prisoners, including a boy

Gauleiters Wagner and Bürckel had planned this deportation so ...

Hitler receives visitors at his headquarters in Hornisgrinde in the Black Forest during the French Campaign.
In the photo, from left to right: Josef Bürckel, (?), Martin Bormann (?), Robert Wagner, Adolf Hitler,
and Hitler's valet Heinz Linge.

... that they could proudly report to their Führer on October 23, 1940: Der Oberrhein ist als erster Gau des Reiches judenrein (The Upper Rhine is the first Gau in the Reich to be free of Jews).

Public auctions in Freiburg ...

... and Lörrach

No sooner had the Jews been deported than their former property was sold off.

Among those deported were the Leifmann siblings from Goethestraße 33: Robert, Else, and Martha. While Robert died in Gurs, his sisters survived and lived in Zurich until their deaths.

As early as June 7, 1954, Else Liefmann urged the promotion of a culture of remembrance in Freiburg in a letter sent from Zurich to Mayor Wolfgang Hoffmann, "The fact that Freiburg has not - or not yet - decided to erect such a memorial is, for Jews or Christians living abroad - to the latter group of whom I also belong - a sad testament to how indifferent, how forgetful so many Germans are toward that memory which they would prefer to erase, as if nothing had happened. Yes, we who come from abroad ask ourselves whether such an attitude does not express a fear of those many who still - or once again today - adhere to the spirit of the Thousand-Year Reich in Germany, and against whom the authorities themselves are perhaps divided in their sentiments and apparently too weak?"

Aleksandra Assmann writes about forgetting in her book Forms of Forgetting: "Not remembering, but forgetting, is the foundation of human and social life. Remembering is the negation of forgetting and generally entails an effort, a rebellion, a veto against time and the course of events. Just as cells are replaced in the body of an organism, so too are objects, ideas, and individuals periodically replaced in society. Forgetting happens silently, unspectacularly, and everywhere. Remembering, by contrast, is the probable exception, based on certain conditions." 

Here stood the synagogue of Freiburg's Israelite community, built in 1870 
and destroyed on November 10, 1938, under a regime of violence and injustice.

It was not until 1961 that the city of Freiburg erected a memorial stone at the site where the old synagogue had stood until Kristallnacht.

With all the troubled water, the text on the memorial plaque is difficult to read.

The memorial stone is set into a water surface on the Square of the Old Synagogue. The outline of the surface represents the floor plan of the synagogue building that was burned down on November 10, 1938.

On the 60th anniversary of the deportation, October 2, 2000, the citizens of Freiburg donated
 this commemorative plaque, which provides extensive information about the Wagner-Bürckel Action.

On October 22, 1940, within a few hours, 6,504 Jewish men, women, and children from Baden and the Palatinate were taken to central assembly camps and deported by transport trains to the Gurs camp in southern France. The oldest of the deportees was 97 years old. Among them were also about 300 Jewish citizens from Freiburg.

Only a few of those imprisoned in the camp were saved. Starting in August 1942, most of them—provided they had not already died of starvation and disease in Gurs itself—were deported to the extermination camps in the East, primarily to Auschwitz and Majdanek. Over 5,200 of those deported to Gurs died as victims of violence.

Too many looked the other way back then; too few resisted. This must not and will not be repeated.

Freiburg's new synagogue on Engelstraße

The commemorative plaque at the new synagogue cites Job 16:18 "O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place." and reads: Under the Nazi dictatorship, on October 22, 1940, the Jewish citizens of the city of Freiburg were deported to Gurs in southern France. The city remembers with shame and sorrow, Freiburg, October 22, 1990.

The city of Bad Nauheim incorporated the symbol of the forgotten coat into its memorial bearing the names of the city's Holocaust victims.

 
In the ensuing discussion, someone asked how one could explain that a deportee who was wearing his coat in the autumn month of October could have so easily forgotten it?

The name "Forgotten Coat" for the memorial has caught on among the people of Freiburg. That is why Red Baron suggested trying "The Left-Behind Coat."

The coat was left behind by a deportee, intentionally or unintentionally, as a memento.

**