The origins of the Nazis’ secret horse breeding project | Hacker News Reader

The origins of the Nazis’ secret horse breeding project

blog.longreads.com

47 pointsHooke40 comments

>> Gustav Rau pulled a pistol from his hip and pointed it directly at the SS officer.“You have no authority here,” he said. “This horse farm is under the jurisdiction of the German Army. [...] Neither man moved until, with a curt nod, the officer stepped back. He agreed to remove his men."

I like this story. It emphasizes the error in the title. These seem to have been German horses, not Nazi horses. I see so many articles and books reference everyone and everything in the German armed forces of the time as "Nazi". The reality was complicated. There was much conflict as many in the armed forces felt they should remain politically neutral. This idea is not uncommon today. Many members of various armies go so far as to not vote while in active service. Others, notably in the US forces, see political detachment unpatriotic. This boils down to an officer within an older, politically detached force pulling a gun on an officer of a new and fanatically active force. There must have been many such stand-offs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_and_the_Wehrmacht

It's more like some guy managed to get the German army to fund his pet project. A huge herd of white Lipizzaners would have been militarily Cool, but Ineffective. That's a parade unit, not a fighting force.

After the war, the Lipizzaners, both this group and the ones at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, were rescued by US forces under Patton, who was a cavalryman before his tanker days.

A good horse is never the wrong color.

I'm reminded of another horse breeding scheme that got Nazi funding: Hermann Fegelein's SS-Hauptreitschule München: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Fegelein

The reality was complicated. There was much conflict as many in the armed forces felt they should remain politically neutral. This idea is not uncommon today.

Most armies today are not involved in genocide so the parallel is not a very good one. The reality was complicated but the Wehrmacht was very much an essential and willing instrument of Nazism.

A precedent in Nazi horse-detection - in the mid 80s, it was reported that former UN Secretary General and then- Austrian presidential candidate Kurt Waldheim had been a member of an SA mounted unit. In response to Waldheim's denials, Chancellor Fred Sinowatz quipped that Waldheim 'hadn't been in the SA, only his horse had'.

Very much off on this tangent. One of my favourite pieces of trivia in movies concerns the 1969 film Battle of Britain where Kesselring, a German field marshall, almost ironically gives Goring a Nazi salute following their defeat. This detail lead to strong disagreement. From wikipedia: "During filming, Galland, who was acting as a German technical advisor, took exception to a scene where Kesselring is shown giving the Nazi salute, rather than the standard military salute. Journalist Leonard Mosley witnessed Galland spoiling the shooting and having to be escorted off the set. Galland subsequently threatened to withdraw from the production, warning "dire consequences for the film if the scene stayed in."

You're coming dangerously close to arguing for the clean Wehrmact myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Wehrmacht

Only a nut would think that they were clean. That's an answered question. I'm more interested in the internal debates, the clash of culture, within and between the various forces as exemplified by the story above.

I'm interested because we see similar divides within western forces in recent years. They aren't pulling guns on each other but there is an old guard with one set of values and a more political generation (post-9/11) with a very different cultural outlook.

The fact that a gun was pulled also points to a total breakdown of the standards of decorum armed forces reply upon to prevent internal arguments turning violent. This wasn't mutiny, but only because there was no clear mode to determine seniority between these two men.

> I'm interested because we see similar divides within western forces in recent years. They aren't pulling guns on each other but there is an old guard with one set of values and a more political generation (post-9/11) with a very different cultural outlook.

Could you elaborate on this please? Which direction do you think the modern generation are taking?

Take the CIA drone program. During the early days they resisted armed drones. The old guard said they didn't do assassinations, didn't arm spy aircraft else their missions become acts of war (see Gary Powers). A decade later, armed drones are the backbone of the program. Targeted killings are a norm. Or, take the torture program. Despite him being a complete hawk, Senator McCain was against mistreating prisoners. He was a POW himself. But he lost his race for president. The new nominee is pro-torture. The old warriors of the cold war are retiring out and the new batch is moving into senior leadership. The new batch are much less restrained. They don't believe in principals based on reciprocity as they have been brought up fighting asymmetrical enemies. Every fight is now an existential battle to be fought without restraint or compromise, an attitude adopted from politics imho.

You're coming dangerously close to accusing him of something.

Slightly off topic, my wife just sent me this link after a friend mentioned today how Bayer had links to the Nazis. The last paragraph about IBM is particularly funny.

http://www.11points.com/News-Politics/11_Companies_That_Surp...

In September of 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the "New York Times" reported that three million Jews were going to be "immediately removed" from Poland and were likely going to be "exterminat[ed]."

IBM's reaction? An internal memo saying that, due to that "situation", they really needed to step up production on high-speed alphabetizing equipment. (Source: CNet)

When I click on the source link I get redirected to http://www.cnet.com/topics/tech-industry/, which tells me nothing.

It doesn't strike me as very plausible that NYT would be reporting on the extermination of Jews in 1939. If they were, I am eager to learn about it. If anyone knows more about this, please link me to it.

To my knowledge, mass exterminations didn't begin until 1941, carried out by gas trucks and firing squads. The Final Solution was formulated in 1942, with the first death camps going into operation that year. In 1939 the Nazis had already started exterminating some "undesirables" (including at least the disabled and mentally ill) and they were already operating concentration camps, but the nominal goal of these camps was the eventual deportation of Jews rather than extermination. I would be surprised to learn that any Allied governments (or those who would become Allies) knew about the extermination of Jews in 1939, let alone the press.

The link should've been to http://www.cnet.com/news/probing-ibms-nazi-connection/. The claim about the IBM memo comes from Edwin Black, author of the book "IBM and the Holocaust". The reference to a New York Times article is specifically to one from its front page on September 13, 1939, titled "Nazis Hint 'Purge' of Jews in Poland". The article can be purchased from the New York Times at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B06EED81330E.... You can also see bits of the article at http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/590025, and it is also referenced at the New York Times itself more contemporarily in the article http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/news/150th-anniversary-185....

(I haven't actually been able to read the referenced article in full, mind you, because I am cheap; thus, I am not personally vouching for the article saying what it is claimed to. I'm just providing to others the ability to do so if any of you have interest and/or disposability of income greater than mine at the moment.)

I am also too cheap to buy the article, but I think it is noteworthy that the full title is "NAZIS HINT 'PURGE' OF JEWS IN POLAND; 'Special Report' From Invaded Region Discusses Possible Solution of Problem GROUP EUROPE'S LARGEST 3,000,000 Population Involved --'Removal' From Europe Viewed as Benefit." We're primed to associate the word "solution" with extermination, but the Final Solution definitely did not exist as such in 1939. The word "removal" matches my recollection that official Nazi policy at this time was aimed at eventual deportation.

The underlying premise of your comment is, at very least, debatable. Death camps were in operation far earlier than you imply, if you leave the semantics aside.

Take a look at the report from Dachau in the New Republic (1934) [1], the report by Gerhard Seger from Oranienburg (1934) [2] and contrast those with Hitler's word in his speech from January 1939 [3] or in Mein Kampf from 1925 [4]. There were reports by other people I'm unable to find right now. If you combine the information with an open mind a picture emerges, one that could have possibly found its way into the NYT in 1939.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/119850/1934-report-dachau-co... [2] http://library.fes.de/library/netzquelle/rechtsextremismus/p... [3] http://www.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/documents/part1/doc... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf#Antisemitism

You speak about death camps and then list concentration camps that weren't death camps. Death camps were set up not earlier than 1942: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp

The Dachau concentration camp you mentioned has a gas chamber but it wasn't used if I remember it correctly (was there on a school trip).

The T4 programme started in 1940. There were public protests of the T4 programme in 1941. The T4 programme was the mass killing of disabled - mostly learning disabled- people.

The T4 killings are seen as the precursor to the mass extermination of Jews, with refinements of killing methods.

Six different camps were used. People were killed in gas chambers, or by lethal injection, or by starvation.

Hitler authorised this in 1939.

That's all true, but we're talking specifically about the extermination of Jews. Is there evidence that the Nazis planned T4 as a trial run of Jewish extermination, and if so would NYT have known about those intentions in 1939?

What's "alphabetizing equipment"?

That refers to equipment like punch card sorters, which could mechanically put punch cards in order based on the data they held. If you have 100 punch cards with personal data, you could sort the cards by people's names by hand if you needed to, but you couldn't do that for 100,000 cards. That's where sorters and tabulators, which were precursors to modern computers, come in handy.

A link to the Nazis? They were a key player in IG Farben, the people who bought Haber's delightful patent for... Zyclon B. Nazis wouldn't have spread beyond Germany frankly, if not for IG Farben turning conquered areas to mass industrial production.

I wish there was a place I could go to read translated versions of notes kept by German scientists. They did horrible things but some of the other research was really cool like what I've learned about their attempts in creating nuclear power.

Not quite the same, but immediately after the war a number of prominent German scientists were interned at Farm Hall, in England, and secretly recorded for months. The full transcripts are available (https://books.google.com/books?id=pzNjntMMq-oC) and it's interesting to hear what Heisenberg and Otto Hahn thought of the Nazis and the successful American nuclear bomb. The transcripts were also adapted into a pretty good stage play a few years back.

Would that play be Copenhagen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_(play))? If so, I highly recommend the BBC adaptation with Daniel Craig as Heisenberg, Stephen Rea as Niels Bohr, and Francesca Annis as Margrethe Bohr.

Very interesting! I'll definitely be buying a copy of that with one of my next pay checks.

The Nazis had a very strange relationship with science; ideas were rejected because the person to propose them was Jewish. Since many of the top scientists at that time were, in fact, Jewish, they rejected the new development with regards to quantum mechanics and basically most now established new theory in favor of going after 'German physics'.

"German scientists" is rather a broad category, covering people from Joseph Mengele to Werhner von Braun. The latter has a large number of works in English.

Since Lipizzans are mentioned. If you ever get the chance, go visit Lipica, Slovenia [1] it's the place the horses take the name after with a very old stud farm. The place is well underfunded and nothing special from a commercial tourism perspective imho (well, except if you like golf). But the nature and the horses are amazing. I can walk for hours there and get a huge energy boost and mood improvement.

[1] http://www.lipica.org/en/

Cuts out at the most interesting point.

Did you expect something else from a book excerpt? It's intended to draw you in so you buy a copy.

I actually do expect more from a longreads post. They're usually a top-notch site and above dark patterns like that.

Secret Nazi attempt lol

You guys act like you wouldn't jump at the chance to have your pet project subsidized by ANYBODY, literally any government or organization with any ideology if it meant the chance for you to pursue your dream

Aren't most of you guys here interested in VCs, for example.

Interesting story though, any more details about the guys that successfully scammed Nazi taxpayers?

Investment money and government subsidization aren't the same thing but I get the gist. Money for doing what you'd rather be doing instead of what you're currently doing. Sounds lame though. Too many strings attached. Most people here aren't chasing that. They just want a better adblock.

Literally all of Silicon Valley and most of the computing research of the 20th century was built on funds the US government plowed into industry, in the hopes of developing tech that would help us nuke the Russkies while preventing them from doing the same to us.

Sounds even more lame when you frame it like that. Are you supporting my point of view?

I think you mean 'figuratively'. If it was literal there would have been no private industry at all, which is complete nonsense.

I believe the above commenter was being hyperbolic, but plenty of government money has supported private industry. That's not just defense contractors, either. Where would Silicon Valley be without ARPANET?

The Silicon Valley economy were established to develop radar and comms equipment for the military -- before digital computers even became the boom industry they are today.

So when I say "literally all", I'm exaggerating -- but only slightly. Not every dollar in the fucktons of VC money sloshing around out there can be traced back to defense funding, but an awful lot of them can.

That's why I said figuratively. Some support doesn't mean the whole valley is running on government money.

Where would ARPANET be without the discovery of electricity or the massive railroad expansion throughout the US that resulted in a large telegraph network? It's pretty stupid to tie the valley to one particular invention supported by the government when it depends on essentially all of history until this point.

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