June 24, 1944
Introduction to the content
The Atlantikwall was an extensive fortification system built by German occupation forces along the coasts of Western Europe during World War II. It was intended to prevent an Allied invasion and included coastal defenses, minefields, and other defensive structures. Bloch reiterates the Nazi conviction of the Atlantic Wall’s invincibility, pasting extensive propagandistic documentation of its wondrousness. This makes it all the more astonishing that the walls could be breached within a few hours (on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day), and the allies could not be pushed back.
Germany’s New Chance? begins with a news headline that trumpets the improvements that came with National Socialism. Hitler was “bloated into a mystical figure” who encouraged repopulation, equating childbirth with the soldier’s fight. Curt Bloch foresees the elevation in birth rate as a future opportunity for Germany. The press claims that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini “have revived the will to have children and respect for the mother among the great European peoples,” while predicting senescence in the British population by 1971. Numerical superiority opens up new possibilities for Germany in the distant future – Bloch fears the prospect of that distant war.
Bloch marvels at how – despite his distinctly French name the Belgian nobleman and diplomat – Count de Marchant et d’Ansembourg (1894–1975) volunteered to fight for the German army during World War I. Afterward, he returned to his Dutch homeland, joined the National Socialist movement, and became commissioner of the Dutch province of Limburg in 1941. In 1944, Graaf de Marchant now realizes that his close ties to the Germans have consequences. Marchant et d’Ansembourg was sentenced to 15 years in prison in April 1946 and released in 1954.
Riffing off a news article which describes the dire threat awaiting the German people if Germany loses the war to Russia, Curt Bloch enumerates the consequences in his poem The Red Menace. When “the evil communists” come they will confiscate possessions, kidnap German women and children, send them to re-education camps, and force the people to stand in line in front of stores and to suffer from hunger. But wait! The conditions being described as the threat of Bolshevism are what the Germans are already experiencing at present courtesy of the Nazis!
According to Bloch’s analysis, the Pseudo-democrats who enabled Hitler are to be found in London, Washington, and The Hague. The self-interest of foreign politicians and businessmen along with their governments allowed the Nazi rhetoric and militarization to flourish. These foreign interests and industrialists hoped Hitler’s forceful suppression of minority rights (by scapegoating Jews and non-Aryans of all kinds) would curb the rising popularity of communism in Europe. Bloch accuses these actors of having profited from Germany’s resurgence and the blossoming of fascism. Now they hypocritically distance themselves from “Germany’s heavy guilt.” Bloch suggests that these individuals and their interests cannot avoid the reckoning to come.
