World War II and Poland. How can we hope for a better world if history teaches us that there is no justice? How can we expect people to do good if we teach them that crime and evil pay off?

Now this is real history — history that you were never taught, and which I’ve posted about before. I will attach some other videos that I used in my previous posts. People don’t understand the injustice committed by the West at the end of World War II. The question is: how can we expect people to be good and honorable when history shows us that honorable people died or lived in poverty, while monsters lived happily in luxury?

That’s why, when I write about what Poland did, I say that I don’t support their decision to work with America — but at the same time, I understand why they acted that way. If there is no justice and evil is rewarded — as shown by the fact that many Nazi monsters faced no punishment and lived long, comfortable lives, while Polish heroes were killed or forced into poverty — tell me, why should Poles act honorably again, like they did during the war, only to be betrayed and suffer once more?

If there is no justice, and being a good person only leads to suffering, should anyone continue to act justly?

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This network, the so-called Camaradenberg, has maintained close political, social, and business ties. By most accounts, Ysef Mangallay was its leading representative in Paraguay. Two North American authors with wartime intelligence experience, William Stevenson and Ladislas Farago, have pointed to the role of the extensive post-war assets collected or plundered by the SS and Martin Borman. This came from three sources. The proceeds from the SS forgery of British pound notes, Operation Burnhard, the looting of Jews and other Nazi victims, and most significantly the corporate contributions to a special fund set up to guarantee the survival of German multinationals abroad after the impending collapse of Hitler.

Soon after the war, OSS found the extensive documentation of a meeting in Strasburg on August 10th, 1944. The purpose of which was to establish this fund between representatives of the party and of firms like Kroo, Volkswagen and Messmitt. But as the Cold War encouraged the United States to see the German corporate presence in Latin America in a more friendly light, the role of these firms in providing new careers for war criminals abroad was ignored. In fact, it was the key to the post-war status of the Camaraden. Otto Scotsy acquitted of his criminal charges by the intervention of Western intelligence became a sales representative of Kup. Hans Olrich Rudel never charged but an unrepentant Nazi ideologue in the postwar era became a sales representative of Seammens. Walter Ralph, designer of the gas ovens at Ashvitz, found his first employment in Latin America with a subsidiary of IG Farbin, an employer of slave labor at Avitz. France Paul Stangle, chief of the Trebinka extermination camp, found post-war employment in Latin America with Volkswagen, as did Iman with MercedesBenz, and so on.

But American intelligence may have played a more direct role in the exfiltration of Nazis with the proceeds of operation Bernhard, the SS forgery of British pound notes. Here again, Western intelligence knew enough about Operation Bernhard to protect the postwar pound by a timely issue of new notes and recall of the old. But by this time, much of the SS profits, an estimated $300 million worth, had been converted to genuine currency. Most of this money has never been traced. The man in charge of laundering the forged banknotes was Friedrich Schwend, who in 1945 to 46 in North Italy became an important link in setting up the SS escape route to the Vatican. Farago narrates in detail how Hinrich Müller was driven in Schwven’s chauffeur Mercedes from Morano, North Italy to Rome, where he was deposited at a Croatian seminary and made his historic contact with Bishop Hudal. From documents found in Schwven’s possession in 1972, he reports that the bulk of the money the Bishop Hudal needed was placed at his disposal by a financeier named Friedrich Freddy Mer, partner of Friedrich Schwend in Operation Burnhard. The money came from the horde Schwend had amassed in Swiss accounts by the exchange of counterfeit pounds for hard currency.

What you will not learn from Farago and Stevenson’s accounts is that in 1945 to 46 when Schwend was playing this crucial role in setting up the rat line, Schwend was working for American intelligence. US documents reveal that after passing into the hands of the 44th CIC detachment, he was used as an informant by American intelligence agencies in Austria, the Austrian Troll and Moran, North Italy. These long suppressed details about the postwar American sponsorship of the wanted war criminals Barbie and Schwend confirm the recent accusations of John Loftess that the SS Camaraden were exfiltrated as a result of Operation Sunrise, the secret agreement shortly before VE Day between Alan Dulles of OSS Burn and SS General Carl Wolf.

I have already posted about the stolen wealth of the Nazis, which they exported to places like South Africa and South America. They later used it to live long, comfortable lives, and part of that wealth eventually returned to Germany to help rebuild West Germany with American support. The so-called German economic miracle was not solely the result of German hard work — it was also built on plundered wealth taken by monsters who never paid for their crimes. Here is a great video explaining it, which I used before in one of my posts.

Of course, SS General Karl Wolff was mentioned here, and he was also discussed in another video I used in my previous posts.

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On April 26th, 1945, two weeks before the end of the war, SS General Karl Wolff, Himler’s chief of staff and a high-ranking Nazi war criminal, was surrounded by Italian partisans in an Alpine estate at Lake Como in northern Italy. Wolff had been charged with the occupation of northern Italy following the collapse of the Italian fascist government in 1943. He was particularly hated and targeted by the Italian resistance fighters because of his revenge killing of civilians following attacks on SS locations and the torture of several partisan fighters.

Wolff had distinctive Aryan features, which made him somewhat of a celebrity in Nazi Germany. Allegedly he had a close personal relationship with Hitler, who used to parade him around at high-ranking Nazi dinners as an ideal Aryan specimen. Ultimately, Wolff was a Nazi until his death, recalling his cherished memories with Hitler into his old age.

Luckily for the embattled Wolff, he fit into Dulles’s post-war vision of a separate peace with Nazi Germany to block the Soviet-aligned Italian partisans before they reached the Eastern Front. This would guarantee that the West would have a say in post-war Italy. Wolff was key to this plan, which Dulles called Operation Sunrise.

Dulles realized that he could not take on the operation on his own at the risk of insubordination, as the FDR administration was following a policy of unconditional surrender, as previously mentioned. Dulles instead put Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz on the mission. Gävernitz was the son of an illustrious European family that had funded Hitler’s early rise. His family had broken away from the Nazis shortly after the war broke out, but this was less by volition and more because the Nazis cut them off.

Dulles had helped the Gävernitz family smuggle their money out of Germany during the later years of the war, as he had done with many other Nazis. Having done a massive favor for the Gävernitzs, he decided to cash in that favor and tasked Gävernitz with saving General Karl Wolff.

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Dulles had promised Wolff immunity from trials and stood by his promise, due partly to his respect and use for Wolff but also due to the serious repercussions to his own career if Wolff testified about his treasonous acts in Operation Sunrise. Wolff was later transferred to a small U.S. POW camp in Gmundin, Austria, which featured a lakeside resort and spa. Wolff was then reunited with his family and was also personally delivered his yacht, which he used that summer on the lake nearby.

That same summer, the Nuremberg trials were taking place, and Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson wanted Wolff to stand trial as a “major war criminal,” which he clearly was. Dulles immediately got to work clearing Wolff’s name, burying and destroying OSS documents that labeled Wolff as a mass murderer complicit and instrumental to the Holocaust. Instead of receiving the true reports of Wolff’s atrocities, Justice Jackson of the Nuremberg trial received a report that labeled him as a “moderate Nazi” and, most importantly, a “gentleman.” Wolff did appear at Nuremberg, but as a witness testifying against Herman Göring.

As the first rounds of trials ended, the Nuremberg Committee continued their noble quest to bring justice to outstanding Nazi war criminals. Wolff’s name continued to be floated, as he was a high-ranking member of the SS. Dulles responded by forging a psychiatric assessment of Wolff which diagnosed him with psychosis and landed him in a mental facility. Dulles tirelessly worked to save this horrible man because he saw a future for him in post-war Europe. But Wolff also held a trump card: blackmail. Wolff knew that Dulles was being insubordinate by attempting to save him, and continued to pressure Dulles to take increasingly illegal and immoral steps to free him. Wolff even sent a letter to Harry Truman outlining some details of Operation Sunrise. Dulles was furious, but he had no choice but to continue working to free Wolff.

Finally in 1948, Dulles was able to secure Wolff’s transfer to a jail in Hamburg. There he would be put on trial, not for war crimes, but for “denazification purposes.” During the trial, the judge read a glowing affidavit personally written by Dulles recommending that Wolff not be prosecuted. The ever-loyal Gävernitz appeared at the trial and provided a personal character witness to Wolff. Ultimately, Wolff’s sentencing was influenced by these powerful actors, and he was only sentenced to four years for being a member of the SS and being aware of the horrible crimes. Once again, the restless Dulles lobbied a bit more and got his sentence reduced to time served. Wolff was a free man in Europe in June 1949.

I really wanted to illustrate this story because first of all I think it’s a very interesting story just from a purely intelligence point of view. It reads much like a real-life James Bond story—maybe a bit of a perverted one since, you know, the forces that the OSS were fighting for this time were not exactly noble. But also I wanted to raise this just to show what the fate of these people ended up being, especially Karl Wolff.

Karl Wolff lived out the rest of his days in post-war Germany working as an advertising executive, as he had before the war. In the 1950s he would form a neo-fascist party in Germany called Rexon Ferret (name possibly mispronounced), and in 1956 he formed a men’s club for former SS officers. Thanks to Dulles’s hard work and determination, another horrible Nazi war criminal walked freely in post-war Europe—and that had been the plan from the beginning: to keep as many of these elements around to be used in the post-war environment.

So a Nazi criminal was in prison and even had his yacht delivered there, so he could sail on the lake and enjoy his life. I will provide you another example.

The majority of media on the subject of Project Paperclip has centered on German rocket scientists recruited by the United States to prevent the Soviet Union from establishing military supremacy. Seldom discussed with equal candor is the recruitment of Nazi scientists who specialized in human experimentation.

Among them were Kurt Blome, who tested Sarin nerve gas on prisoners at Auschwitz, and Hermann Becker-Freyseng, who conducted fatal experiments at Dachau. The American government got hold of a certain number of German scientists, but they immediately ran into a problem: many of these scientists were classified as war criminals because of their activities during the war and, therefore, were not eligible for State Department visas and could not be brought into the United States.

So, what the CIA did was create several of these different programs, including Paperclip, and their purpose was to, number one, recruit these scientists and then, number two, bring them into the U.S. while routing them around the State Department ethics requirements.

A well-known doctor who came in under Paperclip was Dr. Hubertus Strughold, who did experiments during the Second World War that were full Nazi-atrocity-type experiments. For instance, they were interested in the effects of high altitude on human beings, so they built a special chamber. They would put a Gypsy, or homosexual, or a Jew, or whoever it might be, into the chamber and suddenly drop the pressure down to the equivalent of 60,000 feet.

This obviously was excruciating and caused the person to die; then, they would take the guy out of the chamber, dunk his head underwater, and cut his skull open underwater to see if there were air bubbles coming out of the arteries in his brain. They did dozens and dozens of experiments of this kind.

So, this guy was brought over under Paperclip and became the “Father of Aviation Medicine” in the United States. He worked at an Air Force base in San Antonio, among other locations, has a library named after him at one of the Air Force bases in San Antonio, and the Texas State Legislature declared a Hubertus Strughold Day in honor of him back in the ’70s.

Now, let’s compare this to another video I have used in my posts, which tells the story of a Polish general who fought for the Allies and his experiences.

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At war’s end Maczek was promoted to Major General and given command of the Polish First Corps, commanding all Polish forces in the UK until they were stood down in 1947. As well as having been honored by Poland many times prior to 1945, Maczek received high honors from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The British government gave him the Distinguished Service Order, and he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath. Yet this long-serving warrior who personally knew and was respected by many of World War II’s most famous leaders was not pensioned off to a comfortable retirement as befitting his rank and military status. Instead, General Maczek ended up working for 20 years as a barman in an Edinburgh hotel just to make ends meet.

Of course there is nothing wrong with working in a bar, but it is not the usual employment for retired generals who have once commanded hundreds of thousands of men in war and peace. How this sad fate came about is quite simple. The new Polish government set up by the Soviets stripped all Poles who had fought for the Western allies of their citizenship, making them effectively stateless. Everyone from major generals to privates, unable or unwilling to return to communist Poland, found themselves on the margins of British society due to their legal status. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, General Maczek was denied a pension by the British government, resulting in impoverishment. All he could find to make a living was pulling pints in an Edinburgh hotel.

However, he did receive some help from the Dutch. The people of Breda never forgot how he had liberated their city and applied to the Dutch government to give Maczek a pension. However, the Dutch government was not keen, as it would cause diplomatic fallout with communist Poland and embarrass the British government as well. But when Maczek’s chronically ill daughter required specialist treatment in Spain in 1965, the Dutch people rallied round, raising money as part of a national campaign. Sadly, the Dutch government continued to deny Maczek a pension following another request in 1972, and the old general continued serving drinks. Touchingly, the hotel bar was often frequented by World War II Polish veterans, and before they ordered their drinks they always came to attention and saluted General Maczek .

It was only in 1989 that the Polish government apologized to Maczek , and in 1994 he received the nation’s highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle. General Maczek died in December 1994 at the incredible age of 102. He requested that his body be buried among the Polish dead in the Dutch city of Breda, which was done. Since 2018, a life-size bronze of the general has been on public display in Edinburgh.

Maczek, however, was not alone in the shoddy and humiliating treatment he received in post-war Britain. Major General Stanisław Sosabowski of Arnhem fame, portrayed in A Bridge Too Far by Gene Hackman, had first entered military service when drafted for the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1913. During World War I, he became an officer and was badly wounded in action and decorated for gallantry. After Poland became independent in 1918, Sosabowski joined the Polish Army and by 1939 was a colonel commanding an infantry regiment. He saw extensive action in the Battle of Poland, receiving the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest gallantry medal.

Captured by the Germans, he escaped and joined the Polish resistance. Reaching France, he commanded an infantry regiment of the Polish forces in exile, and in June 1940 he led 6,000 men who were evacuated to England. Assigned to command the 4th Rifles Brigade, Sosabowski transformed this into a parachute brigade, and he made his first parachute jump at the age of 49. Sosabowski was noted as a strict but just commander, but one with a difficult relationship with his superiors. In June 1944 he was promoted to Brigadier General. The First Polish Independent Parachute Brigade took part in Operation Market Garden, landing in two parts on the 19th and 21st of September 1944, the latter drop being a complete disaster as the Poles landed right on top of German forces, leading to heavy casualties. In fact, 40% of Sosabowski’s brigade became casualties.

After Market Garden failed, Field Marshal Montgomery subsequently tried to blame Sosabowski and the Poles for the disaster. The Polish general staff, leaned on by the British, removed Sosabowski from command. He had famously criticized the entire Market Garden plan from the beginning—and he had been tragically proven right, angering Montgomery. Sosabowski was given a desk job, made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and demobilized in July 1948. Thankfully, he had managed to get his wife and son out of Poland before the Communists took over, settling in West London. Major General Sosabowski obtained work in an electrical assembly factory in Acton, working there as a manual laborer until his death in September 1967. In 1969 the Polish government allowed his remains to be repatriated to Warsaw.

Again, like General Maczek, Sosabowski was only properly recognized and honored after his death. In 2006, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands awarded Sosabowski the Bronze Lion, a high gallantry award. A bust of the general was set up in a park in Kraków, Poland, in 2013. To my certain knowledge, no British or Canadian World War II general in Northwest Europe ended up on the poverty line after the war, reduced to manual labor and living on handouts. That two famous World War II generals who did so much to liberate Europe ended up in such circumstances must remain a stain on the honor of Britain.

So German war criminals and monsters sailed on their yachts and lived in luxury in South America or South Africa, using wealth they had plundered, while Polish heroes lived in poverty. Now, with such a lesson from history showing that there is no justice and that being an evil monster — like those Nazi criminals — pays off, why would anyone expect Poles to act honorably again? Should Poles behave honorably, as they did during World War II, only to be betrayed and suffer again?

Poland acted honorably during World War II and was the “good guy” in the story. Poles lost a larger percentage of their population than the Germans or the Russians, and they lost more wealth than anyone else. They suffered the most for being good. So why would anyone expect Poles to act honorably again if this is the lesson history has taught them?

In the end, I will just say that after the war, during the Victory Parade in London, Polish soldiers were forbidden from taking part, despite having fought for the Allies on all fronts and even defending Britain with the famous 303 Squadron. Soldiers from all over the world took part in the parade, but Poles were excluded so as not to anger “Great Uncle Joe” (Joseph Stalin).

This is the true lesson of World War II: crime, evil, and being a monster pays off, while if you act honorably and do good, you will suffer. Polish heroes and their heroism didn’t fit the narrative of World War II as constructed by the West, so it was removed from history books.

I suspect this is why figures like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz (Polish Jewish), Theodore Shackley (raised by a Polish grandmother), or even Meyer Lansky (Polish Jewish, who considered Poland his native country when asked) and many others had such influence. They understood that there is no real justice in the world and that much of what people believe is shaped narratives constructed from lies. Because they understood this truth, they were cynical – but they also understood how the real world works, and that understanding allowed them to wield tremendous influence.

Thanks to everyone who stuck with me until the end of my post. And, as always…

“Knowledge will make you be free.”

― Socrates

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“Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”

― Richard P. Feynman

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“Freedom is not free, you need to pay attention.”

― Grzegorz Ochman

“Write your own history yourself, for otherwise others will write it for you and get it wrong.”

― Józef Piłsudski