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DALLAS – After fighting his way across Europe during World War II, John Pistone was among the U.S. soldiers who entered Adolf Hitler’s home nestled in the Bavarian Alps as the war came to a close.

Making his way through the Berghof, Hitler’s home near Berchtesgaden, Germany, Pistone noticed a table with shelves underneath. Exhilarated by the certainty of victory over the Nazis, Pistone took an album filled with photographs of paintings as a souvenir.

“It was really a great feeling to be there and we knew, by that time, he was on his last leg,” Pistone told The Associated Press.

Sixty-four years after Pistone brought the album home to Ohio, the 87-year-old has learned its full significance: It’s part of a series compiled for Hitler featuring art he wanted for his “Fuhrermuseum,” a planned museum in Linz, Austria, Hitler’s hometown.

Pistone’s album is expected to be formally returned to Germany in a ceremony at the U.S. State Department in January. Germany has 19 other albums discovered at the Berchtesgaden complex that are part of a 31-album collection of works either destined for or being considered for the Linz museum.

Pistone’s 3-inch thick, 12-pound album’s journey from obscurity began this fall when a friend became curious about the book sitting on Pistone’s bookshelf.

The friend discovered after some Internet searching that the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art was involved in 2007 in the restitution of two other albums that were part of a series documenting art stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families.

Its founder, Robert Edsel, who while living in Italy for a time after selling his oil and gas business became interested in what was done to protect art in World War II, traveled to Ohio this fall to examine Pistone’s album. Seeing it convinced him that Pistone had one of the missing albums of the series on the planned museum.

Stamped on the album’s spine is “Gemaldegalerie Linz” — Gemaldegalerie means picture gallery in German — and the Roman numerals for 13. It still has a sticker from the book’s binder in Dresden.

Birgit Schwarz, a German art historian from Vienna who has written books about Hitler and art, including a book called “Hitler’s Museum” describing the albums in the series, is convinced the album is authentic. She said she recognized paintings in the album along with the volume number and title.

“It’s absolutely clear!” she wrote in an enthusiastic e-mail to the AP after reviewing scanned photographs of the album. “Hans Makart’s ‘Pest in Florenz’ (Plague in Florence), for example, the first picture of album XIII, Hitler got as a gift from Mussolini!”

Souvenir hunting was routine by soldiers during the war, and problems arise when people try to sell rather than return culturally important items, said Thomas R. Kline, a Washington-based lawyer who specializes in art restitution and works for the foundation.

“It’s really important that as people go through their attics and they find the things that grandpa brought home, people are aware that something as simple as a book of pictures could have a cultural significance,” Kline said.

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A Russian billionaire has shelled out several million dollars to join the league of folks who own memorabilia related to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Duesseldorf-based vintage car dealer Michael Froehlich and asked him to track down Hitler’s dark-blue 770 K model Mercedes Benz. After weeks of searching, the dealer learned that Adolf Hitler’s original Mercedes was in Austria at the end of World War II, was later moved to the Classic Car Museum in Las Vegas, and then ended up in the hands of a Bavarian beer magnate in Germany.
The Russian buyer arrived in Germany on a private jet to seal the deal and bought it from the private owner for between 6 and 15 million dollars.

Hitler’s car now resides in Moscow, a place the Nazi dictator was never able to visit, despite the efforts of his troops. More

AACHEN, Germany — A man accused of murdering Dutch civilians as a member of a Waffen SS hit squad said at his trial Friday that he was proud about being chosen as a volunteer to fight for the Nazis.

Heinrich Boere, 88, made his first comments to the Aachen state court since his trial opened at the end of October. As part of that SS unit, he is charged with killing a bicycle-shop owner, a pharmacist and another civilian. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Boere said he remembered his mother waking him up the night in 1940 that Germany invaded his hometown in the Netherlands and seeing Stuka dive-bombers overhead. Instead of fearing the German bombs, Boere, whose father was Dutch and mother German, said his family was elated as the attack unfolded.

“(My mother) said ‘they’re coming’ now things will be better,” he told the court, speaking animatedly to the panel of judges.
“It was better,” he added later.

Boere was born in Eschweiler, Germany, on the outskirts of Aachen where he lives today, but moved to the Netherlands when he was an infant.

After the Germans had overrun his hometown of Maastricht and the rest of the Netherlands, he remembers as an 18-year-old seeing a recruiting poster for the Waffen SS, signed by Heinrich Himmler. It offered German citizenship after two years of service and the possibility of becoming a policeman after that.

He showed up with 100 other Dutchmen at the recruitment office and was one of 15 chosen.

“I was very proud,” Boere told the court in a statement read by his attorney before he answered questions from the presiding judge.

After fighting on the Russian front, Boere ended up back in the Netherlands as part of “Silbertanne” — a unit of largely of Dutch SS volunteers responsible for reprisal killings of their countrymen for resistance attacks on collaborators.

Boere admitted the three killings to Dutch authorities when he was in captivity after the war but managed to escape from his POW camp and eventually return to Germany.

He was sentenced to death in the Netherlands in 1949 — later commuted to life imprisonment — but Boere has managed to avoid jail so far.

Still, Boere told the court he was aware of the possibility he would be pursued by authorities, so much so that he never married.

“I always had to consider that my past might catch up with me, and I didn’t want to inflict that upon a woman,” he said in his statement.

Boere refused to comment on his time with Silbertanne, but his attorneys said he would address that period when the trial resumes Dec. 2.

The 63-year-old Hamburg lawyer and NPD deputy chairman had been in a coma since Saturday night, when he suffered a stroke at a meeting of the party’s leadership in Berlin.

He was rushed to hospital, where his condition steadily worsened.

Rieger’s son Harald said the family was considering a cremation or a burial at sea because they did not want his grave to become a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), a government agency that monitors extremists, said Rieger’s death was a serious blow for the far-right movement.

Rieger was a key fund-raiser for the cash-strapped NPD, which was slapped with a €1.27 million fine in May for accounting irregularities.

The BfV’s Lower Saxony president, Günter Heiß, said on Friday that Rieger’s death would leave a hole in the far right scene that could not be quickly filled.

“I don’t see any such prominent personality,” he said. “Rieger was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in right-wing extremism, because he was hyperactive in many areas. He was on the go, around the clock, on right-wing extremist issues.

“He was unbelievably hard-working.”

Rieger was particularly energetic in attempting to acquire property for far-right activities. He made news in August when he tried to buy an old hotel to convert into a neo-Nazi training centre in Lower Saxony, sparking a tense standoff between right-wing extremists and police.

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20091030-22933.html

Carinthian Governor Gerhard Dörfler praised the late right-wing icon Jörg Haider as a “great politician and generous person” as more than one thousand people turned up at a ceremony yesterday (Sun) to mark the first anniversary of the death of the former Carinthian Governor.

Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) Governor Dörfler, who succeeded Haider, and his BZÖ deputy Uwe Scheuch presided at the ceremony in memory of Haider at the site of the car crash in Lambichl in which he was killed on 11 October last year.

As a roadside cross was unveiled the governor praised Haider as a man who had accomplished a lot for the province and its people, adding that he had always considered “the little guy” as important as a big businessman.

“We celebrate together, but we also mourn together. There is no death cult,” Dörfler said.

The media said attendees had discussed a number of conspiracy theories about the real cause of Haider’s death, but the governor said during his speech that the cause had been a car crash.

One man with a tattoo of Haider’s face on his upper arm said “it certainly was not an accident” but declined to be more specific on the grounds it would be “too dangerous.”

Scheuch accused the media of having spread “half-truths and lies” about Haider during his lifetime.

He added that Haider would always live in the hearts of Carinthians.

The Carinthian hymn was sung as the ceremony was brought to a close.

There was also a Requiem Mass at Klagenfurt Cathedral in the morning, a requiem at a church in Ossiach in the afternoon and a concert for invited guests at the town’s music academy in the evening.

People also made visits to Haider’s grave, many with candles or flowers, in Feistritz im Rosental municipality in Carinthia’s Bären Valley.

Haider died early in the morning of 11 October 2008 at the wheel of his car on his way back home from Klagenfurt when he lost control of it after reportedly passing another car at high speed. An autopsy found he had a high blood-alcohol level.

Many BZÖ supporters and Haider fans remain convinced that he was murdered.

The controversial right-wing politician became leader of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in 1986 and led it to a second-place finish in the 1999 general election with almost 27 per cent of the vote as a protest party fighting the dominance of the two big parties, the People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democrats (SPÖ).

The FPÖ was junior partner to the ÖVP in two coalition governments beginning in 2000.  But Haider quit the party to found the BZÖ in 2005.

Haider sparked controversy during his political career with public statements praising Hitler’s SS forces and elements of the Nazi regime.

http://www.austriantimes.at/news/General_News/2009-10-12/17153/D%F6rfler_praises_Haider_at_commemoration_ceremony

A skull long believed to be that of Adolf Hitler actually belonged to a woman, according to an American scientist who has taken DNA samples from it.

The skull was taken by Soviet forces in 1945 when they found charred remains outside the Nazi dictator’s bunker in Berlin.

The Russians said at the time that the findings backed claims that Hitler had shot himself on April 30, 1945, and then been cremated along with his wife, Eva Braun.

Now, however, archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni says the skull really belonged to a woman aged under 40 and not Hitler – who was 56 when he died.

Neither does Mr Bellantoni believe the skull belongs to Braun, Hitler’s long-time girlfriend and last-minute wife, who is thought to have killed herself by taking cyanide and would therefore not have had a bullet wound – as this skull has.

The Russians say they have never claimed the skull itself was the chief reason for their belief the skull was Hitler’s.

Instead, they point to dental records as confirmation that Hitler killed himself.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,556343,00.html?test=latestnews

Götz Aly, the popular historian, accused black Allied soldiers of the systematic rape of German women during the Second World War.

He also dismissed their contribution to defeating the Nazis on the grounds that they were forced to fight.

Mr Aly, the author of the controversial Hitler’s Beneficiaries, made the remarks during a press conference at “The Third World in the Second World War”, a Berlin exhibition aimed at recognising the role of thousands of Africans and Asians in defeating Nazism.

Though he was invited to speak, Mr Aly dismissed what he called a “politically correct” version of history and argued that, in fact, people from colonised countries had a “parallel interest” with the Nazis in defeating imperial nations such as Britain and France.

He compared the behaviour of Britain and France’s black soldiers to the notorious mass rapes by the Russians in eastern Germany and Berlin.

“Every town in southwest Germany could tell stories of rape by black soldiers”, which was “no different to the Russian” practice of systematic rape, Mr Aly claimed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/6140002/Mahatma-Gandhi-was-one-of-Nazis-greatest-friends-German-historian-claims.html

Investigative journalists dubbed the “Hitler Hunters” have tracked down 39 relatives of the Nazi dictator living in Lower Austria, it has emerged.

Spanish daily El Mundo claimed their Belgian correspondent Marc Vermeeren and his colleague Jean-Paul Mulders of Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper found them after managing to secure the DNA of one of Hitler’s relatives.

The reporters said they followed three great-grandsons of Hitler’s father Alois who live under the name Stuart-Houston in Long Island near New York for a week.

Vermeeren said Brian and Louis work as gardeners, while Alexander is a retired psychologist.

When Alexander Stuart-Houston – the eldest of the three brothers at 60 – threw a napkin out of a car window after wiping his mouth at a drive-in restaurant, the journalists took samples of his DNA which helped them to trace the other relatives of the Austrian-born dictator.

Mulders said: “Hitler’s other living relatives reside in Lower Austria’s Waldviertel region under new names which slightly differ from Hitler. Most of them probably don’t know of their relationship.

“Hitler’s American relatives agreed not to have children,” he added.

http://www.austriantimes.at/news/General_News/2009-09-14/16338/Hitler_relatives_tracked_down