FrontPageMagazine Interviews Anomalos Publishing Author and Former Hitler Youth, Hilmar von Campe: Pat Buchanan Comments

Frontpage interview's guest today is Hilmar von Campe, a world renowned intellectual, speaker, and author. He grew up under the Nazis and was at one time a member of the Hitler Youth. A WWII veteran, he made a sensational escape from a POW camp in Communist Yugoslavia, after which he gave his life to God and dedicated himself to never again be a bystander to injustice and to make restitution for the Nazi atrocities – which would include his investigation of what made them possible. He has a degree from the Hamburg University and appeared in the 1992 "International Who is Who of Intellectuals" of the International Biographical Center in Cambridge, Britain. He was for many years the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Foreign Investments in the American/Mexican Chamber of Commerce.

FP: Hilmar von Campe, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

HVC: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain my message and my purpose.

FP: I would like to talk to you today about how the Holocaust was made possible, what impulses thirst for it today within radical Islam, and what the West must do.

But let's first begin with your background. Tell us about your young years and how you ended up in the Hitler Youth.

HVC: My father was a Landrat, the equivalent to an American county commissioner. The difference between the two is that a Landrat was a public servant appointed by the government whereas in the US a commissioner is elected.

After the Nazis came to power on January 30, 1933, they approached my father and asked him to become a member of the Nazi party, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). It was a radical left Socialist and not a right Fascist party. My father declined and was nearly immediately dismissed and sent to a remote corner of the country. I was then 7 years old but clearly remember the morning after the day the Nazis took power. On that day our nanny came through our room where we four children were playing lamenting out loud that "this painter has made it after all." The painter she referred to was Hitler.

The Nazi ideology infested our greater family. The conflict was so sharp that we were split into two groups that didn't even talk to each other: the Nazis and the Anti-Nazis. My parents detested the Nazis and saw through the way these pinheaded people with no education tried to impose their arrogant views on everybody. The Nazis in our extended family were led by my uncle Hans, my mother's brother, a colonel in the German army, and my uncle Adolf, my mother's brother-in-law who became a highly decorated General. I do not think they committed any crimes but they did fit the description of what makes a person a Nazi. A Nazi is somebody who accepts the Nazi ideology and Hitler's opinions as his own set of values and acts accordingly. My uncles went to war for their ideology, for revenge of the Versailles Peace Treaty at the end of WWI, and to pursue world conquest. I went to war to defend my fatherland which I thought was being attacked by France and Britain.

The Hitler Youth was the only youth organization in existence. Hitler had liquidated all others. By law, all boys at the age of 10 years had to join. My parents had to send their children if they wanted to stay alive and keep control over them. We children of course had no idea of what was going on. For us the Hitler Youth represented mostly a good time playing with other youth... continue to original story