George Seldes: Lies Agreed Upon (Part 6)

George Seldes (16 November 1890 - 2 July 1995) was an American investigative journalist and media critic. Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), popularly known as the Nazi Party. He was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as chancellor from 1933 to 1945 and as head of state (Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the Nazi Party (DAP) in 1919 and became leader of NSDAP in 1921. Following his imprisonment after a failed coup in Bavaria in 1923, he gained support by promoting German nationalism, anti-semitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and propaganda. He was appointed chancellor in 1933, and quickly transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideals of national socialism. Hitler ultimately wanted to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in Europe. To achieve this, he pursued a foreign policy with the declared goal of seizing Lebensraum "living space" for the Aryan people; directing the resources of the state towards this goal. This included the rearmament of Germany, which culminated in 1939 when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland. In response, the United Kingdom and France declared war against Germany, leading to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. Within three years, Germany and the Axis powers had occupied most of Europe, and most of Northern Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. However, the Allies gained the upper hand from 1942 onwards and in 1945 Allied armies invaded Germany from all sides. Nazi forces committed numerous atrocities during the war, including the systematic killing of as many as 17 million civilians, an estimated six million of whom were Jews targeted in a genocide known as the Holocaust. During the final days of the war in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress Eva Braun. Less than two days later, the two committed suicide. The Beer Hall Putsch (also known as the Munich Putsch, but in German referred to as the Hitlerputsch or the Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch) was a failed attempt at revolution that occurred between the evening of 8 November and the early afternoon of 9 November 1923, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, and other heads of the Kampfbund unsuccessfully tried to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, and Germany. Putsch is the German word for coup d'état. The Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) was the name for the uniformed regular German police force in existence during the period of Nazi Germany, notably between 1936 and 1945. It was increasingly absorbed into the Nazi police system. Owing to their green uniforms, they were also referred to as Grüne Polizei or the green police. The Orpo brought together the city and municipal uniformed forces that had been organised on a state-by-state basis and covered the towns and cities whereas the Gendarmerie (in Württemberg known as the Landjäger) covered small towns and rural areas. Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (sometimes given incorrectly as von Ludendorff) (9 April 1865 - 20 December 1937) was a German Army officer, victor of Liège, and, with Paul von Hindenburg, one of the victors of the battle of Tannenberg. From August 1916 his appointment as Generalquartiermeister made him joint head (with von Hindenburg) of Germany's war effort. From this point on he ran Germany's war effort in World War I until his resignation in October 1918. Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (written Heß in Germany) (26 April 1894 - 17 August 1987) was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany, acting as Adolf Hitler's Deputy in the Nazi Party. On the eve of war with the Soviet Union, he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom, but instead was arrested. He was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life in prison at Spandau Prison, Berlin, where he died in 1987. Hess' attempt to negotiate peace and subsequent lifelong imprisonment have given rise to many theories about his motivation for flying to Scotland, and conspiracy theories about why he remained imprisoned alone at Spandau, long after all other convicts had been released. On 27 September and 28 September 2007, numerous British news services published descriptions of conflict between his Western and Soviet captors over his treatment and how the Soviet captors were steadfast in denying repeated entreaties for his release on humanitarian grounds during his last years. Hess has become a figure of veneration among neo-Nazis. His son Wolf Rüdiger Hess became a prominent rightist and claimed that his father was murdered.