Nazi ‘Regions’

EU Regionalism and Historic Nazism

by Rodney Atkinson

I have translated the following Background Report from our colleagues, the German journalists of german-foreign-policy, because it shows conclusively what this site and my books Europe’s Full Circle and Fascist Europe Rising have written for more than a decade – that the European Union is precisely that combination of German Ethnic and Political Imperialism on the one hand and European Fascism on the other which the UK, the USA and their allies had thought to have vanquished in 1945.

What is clear is that the Federal Union of European Ethnic Groups is an anti-semitic (“Jews are excluded from ethnic rights enjoyed by other nations”) Nazi founded, German dominated, promoter of racial politics and the regional principle – which both the Third Reich and the European Union rightly saw as the best method of breaking up democratic nation states. Today that organisation is active throughout Europe and in particular among German minorities in neighbouring countries – Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Poland etc. It also enjoys the support of Plaid Cymru and the Cornish Movement (see Germany Calling on this site).

Since the 1950s when Hans Joseph Graf Matuschka of the “European Union of Germany” succeeded in linking the FUEN to the German Foreign Office the organisation has had the financial support of the German Government. It is involved in the European Union’s “Committee of the Regions” and the European Council’s “Congress of Communities and Regions” and since 1995 in the UN itself. Nothing that we have reported on this site in recent years so vividly shows the crass incompetence – or down right collaboration with fascism – of the British political classes and British newspapers over the last 50 years. There will be a terrible reckoning for this evil.

The Background Report follows:

BACKGROUND REPORT
THE FEDERAL UNION OF EUROPEAN ETHNIC GROUPS
Translated and commentated by Rodney Atkinson from german-foreign-policy website

The “Federal Union of European Ethnic Groups” whose headquarters is in Germany was a leading light in the resurrection of German “Folkdom” and Minority Group activities after the second world war.

Several of its founders were former national socialist racists. The FUEV is directly connected with the German Government and is financed by it. It organises “national minorities” across Europe in the service of the German ethnic “New Order” policy. The FUEV pursues the goal of a “Federal Europe of the Regions” which means in their own words “the end of the unitary and centralised Nation states” (but not of course the end of the centralised European Superstate – RA). The FUEV sees itself in the tradition of German policy for minority rights of the 1920s and 1930s.

This policy, an inseparable part of that German expansionism and aggression which ended in the death of millions in the second world war, was clearly ethnic and racist in its aims. Prominent German scientists taught that “species specific” protection of minorities was only possible in organic collective groups – called “Ethnic Groups”. Assuming homogenous blood and internal lack of group conflict, the “Ethnic Groups” should form “Ethnic Communities and an “Ethnic Body”.

THE ORGANIC RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE

The German politics of minorities aimed at nothing less than an ethnic New Order for the whole of Europe. The “organic cohabitation of the states and peoples of Europe” was threatened in particular by Europe’s dominant concept of the nation state as one of the basic strategic authorities in this field made clear (1). It was necessary first of all to win the fight for the legal basis of the New Order. “In the 19th Century there arose (based on the intellectual ideas of Germans like Herder and Fichte) the demand for the recognition of “Ethnic Personality”. Just as the 18th century saw the recognition of “human rights” for the individual so the 20th century should bring about the recognition of the “Rights of Peoples”. Every ethnic group should have the right to maintain its ethnic condition and develop freely.

The ethnic personalities thus constituted should begin the “organic reconstruction of Europe” which was necessary for Europe’s success in imperial competition. “This close connection between neighbours forms the sine qua non for progress towards organic construction, to the formation of greater economic areas which were necessary if Europe was to assert itself in the competition between continents.

GERMANY’S “NATURAL LEADERSHIP ROLE IN EUROPE”

The strategists of German foreign policy expected that Germany would achieve its “natural leadership role in Europe” if it succeeded in establishing the ethnic New Order:

“It is both the ethnic, geopolitical, economic and cultural position as much as its historic responsibility that the German people should work out and carry forward such basic ideas.”

“If the German people propagate these basic ideas so it will have won what it previously lacked – a political ethical theory of world wide significance, which, depending on the needs of every day politics can adopt various forms. It is no longer necessary to stave off attacks on ourselves and to defend only the German cause. For by representing such ideas of political order for all the peoples of Europe the Germans will serve their own cause best.”

Part of this German “New Order” Strategy was the founding of the “European Congress of Nationalities” in 1925. It was prepared and initiated by the “Committee of European German minorities” (after 1927 the “Confederation of German Ethnic Groups in Europe”) and financed by the German Foreign Office.

Since the demands of the “German Minorities” lacked all authority if they were presented as purely German demands it was necessary “to undertake co-operation with other large minority groups in order to underpin the basis of the German demands with a general European need” so it was calculated.

Thereafter the “European Congress of Nationalities” served the propagation of German demands for cultural and territorial autonomy and the replacement of the individual principle in the protection of minorities by the recognition of “collective minority rights”. The German Foreign Office which laid down the line to be followed before the annual meetings of the Congress, arrived at the following assessment:

“The European Congress of Nationalities” has developed into an important factor with which public opinion in the various countries and the League of Nations is beginning to reckon. The Congress offers the German minorities an international platform for the representation of their interests in the broadest public forum. This is particularly so since the German ethnic groups not only have a majority in the Congress but they also contribute by far the largest resources for the upkeep of the Congress’s office and the organisation of the annual meetings and periodic committee sittings.

As a contribution to the unity of the European Congress of Nationalities a “Journal for the Problem of European minorities” called “Nation and State” was founded. This periodical, which was financed by the German State from the end of the 1920s, pursued, even before 1933 radical anti-semitic propaganda and published up until 1944 aggressive national socialist propaganda in support of the suppression of inferior races and the extremination of the Jews.

NO LONGER MINORITIES BUT ETHNIC GROUPS

The ethnic organisations were put to good use in the murderous politics of National Socialism. A National Socialist proponent of “ethnic rights” declared: “While minority rights in the manner of liberal democracy seeks to create a balance with the majority, National Socialism starts from the basis of the people and their rights and recognises the organic equal rights of all Peoples. It speaks not of minorities but of Ethnic Groups”.

ETHNIC GROUP WORK IN THE GERMAN TRADITION

The FUEV describes itself in its own material as the “Successor” of the well known Minority Movements of the 1930s control of which by the Nazi government is historic fact. At the foundation of the FUEV in the 1950s the majority of the participants spoke German – they came from the German-Danish border area. Particularly well organised was the “Association of Germans of North Schleswig”, the post war organisation of that German speaking minority of which a quarter of the male members had been found guilty of betraying the country during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.

This organisation owes its origins to Rudolf Stehr the former leader of the Propaganda Department of the “National Socialist German Workers Party (ie Nazi Party) of North Schleswig” and later chief of the Nazi “Ethnic Group office” in Copenhagen. Stehr was imprisoned after 1945 as a particularly guilty lackey of the occupation regime not least on account of his racist ideology. A second representative of the infamous Nazi “Ethnic Group” racism in North Schleswig belonged to the FUEV from the beginning: Hans Schmidt-Oxbull, who at the founding congress of the organisation made a speech laying out the principles and programme of the organisation. In the 1930s he had led the “struggle for the national socialist ideal, for Homeland and Germanness” and then after the war he demanded “the right to homeland”. Another founder was Hans Joseph Graf Matuschka from the “European Union of Germany” (which also pursued after the war the theme of removing the nation states and was financed by the German Government). He secured the connections between the FUEV and the German Foreign Office and was elected to the Presidium of the FUEV in 1954.

As Consul for the Nazi Regime in Hungary he had promoted “Ethnic Groups” and spoke continuously after the war about “Ethnic Minorities”. Barely two months after the foundation of the FUEV the German Foreign Office offically announced that it supported the foundation by the FUEV of a “Bureau for Ethnic Questions” and under Graf Matuschka’s Presidency, with financial support from the Foreign office the “Main principles of a Law of Ethnic Groups” was worked out and approved, which were to be implemented throughout Europe.

The Legal Theoretician of the FUEV was Felix Ermacora who established publishing contacts in the field of ethnicity. His work “The Self Determination idea” appeared in the Austrian “Eckartschriften”, an organ which saw itself as a “worthy memorial to the achievements of the Waffen SS” and the new foundation of the “biologically effective ancestral inheritance” of the “ethnic ancestral succession”

Ermacora spoke of the “constructive policies of the German Reich” under Hitler and claimed that through the policy of the victorious allies after the war the very existence of the German ethnic tribes was under threat.

“THE FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION WILL NEVER APPEAR”

To emphasise the continuity of their “Minorities policy” the FUEV re-published their newspaper “Nation and State” under the title of “Europa Ethnica”.

The publisher and author of several essays in this publication was the Nazi anti-semite Theodor Veiter who in 1938 (in “National Autonomy”) had written:

“The Jews destructive questioning of even the highest human values shows that the Jews are excluded (because of their way of thinking which arises from their race) from the sphere of ethnic life enjoyed by other nations and for that reason should be isolated from other peoples”. Up to 1944 “Nation and State” promoted and justified the extermination of the Jews, the destruction of the sovereignty of the nations bordering Germany and the enslavement of their peoples.

Veiter declared to the Federal Ministry for “All German” questions (which provided the financial support) that “Nation and State” presented for all times the documentation of the problems of the European ethnic groups and was academically of the highest quality.” Finance was also available from Austrian Government sources (4). Those responsible who were themselves the recipients of the covert German State transfers assured the “Minister for All German Questions” in Bonn that “The Financial involvement of the Vienna and Bonn ministries will of course never be visible and the knowledge of such transfers will remain confined to a small circle”

“Nation and State”, the Nazi “Ethnic” publication appeared in its final 17th year in 1944 and “Europa Ethnica” number 1 appeared in 1961 describing its as its “18th year”. In order to emphasise the continuity over the years the cover contained the words “Previously Nation and State”. In a conscious continuation of the tradition of the “European Congress of Nationalities” the FUEV called for the resuscitation of that organisation as well. In 1985 the FUEV held the “15th Congress of Nationalities” connecting with the 14th Congress of 1938.

On 9th May 2002 the 47th FUEV “Congress of Nationalities” was held in Subotica, Yugoslavia (5). (In Voivodina – a part of Serbia, one of the most religiously tolerant and diverse areas. Hungarian Catholic minority. Still a target for those, like the German Government, seeking further racial and ethnic break up of Yugoslavia – RA)

“RIGHT OF AUTONOMY FOR ETHNIC COMMUNITIES”

The FUEV succeeded, through “personal contacts” and “special connections” to gain considerable influence in the European Council (“Congress of Communities and Regions” and the “European Congress of Communities and Regions”) and the European Union (through the “Committee of the Regions”) and to contribute to the increasing ethnicisation of Regional policy. The FUEV presented itself as a “non governmental organisation” and in 1989 achieved consultative status at the Council of Europe and in 1995 at the United Nations. It is also represented at the OSCE conferences which are concerned with Minorities questions.

As long ago as 1967 the FUEV set out the “Main Foundations for a European Law on Ethnic Groups” which contributed to the 1992 “Convention on the Fundamental Rigyts opf European Ethnic Groups and which found expression in the work of the KSZE(?) the UN, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.

In the “Convention” several million Turks, Kurds or Italians were categorised as “Migrant Workers” or termed “Asylum Seekers”. For the rest, in particular the “Ethnic Communities” of the “Traditional Ethnic groups” outside Germany – with a total population of 100 million – the FUEV demands the “Right to Autonomy” and in particular “the right of autonomous legal systems wherever possible in the form of territorial autonomy”.

In place of the restrictions of National Sovereignty which are demanded from the nation states the FUEV contrasts the special rights to cross border activities by “autonomous bodies”.

Thus the ethnic groups which possess their own territories must have unhindered access to their own “People” in neighbouring states so that they can “promote and strengthen their ethnic and national common characteristics”.

According to the FUEV those entitled to such demands for autonomy include:

11 “Ethnic Groups” in Italy totalling three million
8 Groups in France totalling 4 million
5 Groups in Spain totalling 9 million
19 Groups in the Ukraine totalling 13 million

Producing a division into “Ethnic Group Areas” which border the 80 million Germans!

To be continued.