4 Nobel laureates and other Aryans who firmly refused to cooperate with the Nazis

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The weight of many names has wavered recently, when historians have closely studied certain biographies. Edith Piaf gave concerts in concentration camps not at all to help the prisoners escape; Coco Chanel spied on the Third Reich; many prominent firms in Europe carried out Hitler's orders and used the labor of prisoners and slaves driven from the east. Yet many of the people the Nazis relied on as Aryans refused to cooperate with the Third Reich.

Selma Lagerlöf

The creator of one of the favorite stories of Soviet children, about the journey of the boy Niels with wild geese, was highly valued by the ideologists of Nazism for her books, with which she popularized Scandinavian, which means “truly Aryan,” folklore and culture. When in the thirties the question arose of how to select truly Nordic writers in order to publish their books in the Third Reich (most of the popular books were declared ideologically harmful and sentenced to destruction) - Lagerlöf was one of the first on the list of candidates for cooperation with Nazi Germany …

Her books were included in the books recommended to German children, and the Nazi press glorified her as a poet of the north, but very soon the Nazi ideologists had to become disillusioned with the blonde Swede and urgently pretend that she did not exist in the world. Selma, wherever she could, spoke out in defense of Jews and other oppressed groups of the Third Reich and managed to urgently get a Swedish visa for the poet Nellie Sachs and her mother, which saved the lives of both of them.

It should be noted that at that time Lagerlöf was a Nobel Prize winner, and Sachs became her later. And according to one of Lagerlöf's books, a film was shot with Greta Garbo, an actress who was repeatedly invited to live and act in the Third Reich by Hitler. Garbo refused to cooperate, which she later regretted: maybe, she said, she had a chance to shoot Hitler.

Instead of attempting a political assassination, she eventually sabotaged a Nazi factory where “heavy water” was prepared to make an atomic bomb - this saved Europe from a repeat of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only on the territory of the anti-Hitler allied countries. In addition, Garbo organized and covered the evacuation of Jews to neutral Sweden - for which she constantly had to attend receptions with the participation of prominent Nazi officials.

Another famous actress of the early twentieth century, Danish Asta Nielsen, who starred mainly in Germany, hastily left Germany for good after Hitler talked to her about acting in Reich propaganda films. She also spent her entire fortune helping and evacuating the persecuted in Germany.

Hermann Hesse

The Nazis also pinned their hopes on the fact that the German classic Hermann Hesse, who moved to live in Switzerland, and the English writer John Tolkien, whose surname was of German origin, would agree to represent the power of the Aryan mind. Both of them were sent a letter asking them to confirm their Aryanism in order to cooperate with German publishing houses.

If Hesse simply ignored the letter (after which his books ceased to be published in his homeland, and German publications no longer accepted his articles), then Tolkien responded with a very subtle mocking letter, in which he expressed regret about his lack of Jewish blood and made it clear that he was undesirable in the Third In the Reich, the Gypsies have more rights to be called Aryans.

Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize after the war, and John Tolkien was nominated for the prize in the early sixties, but never received it.

I must say, Hesse not only sacrificed the opportunity to publish in his homeland, he constantly gave shelter in his house to famous people who fled from the Third Reich, for example, found shelter there

Thomas Mann

In the thirty-third year, when the Nazis came to power, the then Nobel laureate in literature, Mann, went with his family to Switzerland. Three years later, the Nazis, having discovered the scale of the loss of celebrities who could represent Germany, tried to persuade Mann to return and publish in his homeland. His wife was Jewish, but at that time the German husband was still considered her protection, and no one knew that soon families would be split up in order to send a wife or husband of the wrong nationality to death.

However, Mann refused on principle, after which he and his entire family were deprived of German citizenship. For two years he remained a citizen of Czechoslovakia, but realizing that soon she would be under Germany, he left for the United States with his relatives. From there he conducted anti-fascist radio broadcasts.

Niels Bohr

The Nazis did not strongly disdain Jewish half-breeds, contrary to their declarations, when they could benefit from them - then it was simply announced that the Aryan principle had won in them. For example, Niels Bohr was considered in this vein … if he is accommodating enough. When Denmark was occupied by German troops, Bohr was offered to cooperate with the Third Reich - to make an atomic bomb. Despite the fact that the scientist could be threatened with arrest and a camp for his not entirely Nordic origin, Bohr categorically refused to cooperate with the Reich.

A little later - and with this, by the way, Greta Garbo is connected - Bora was able to evacuate to Sweden, actually snatching it from the Nazis under the nose. The enraged Germans sent his eighty-four-year-old aunt, the famous teacher Hannah Adler, to a concentration camp. Adler, fortunately, survived, and Bohr managed to reach Britain and get involved in the work to defeat Nazi Germany.

King Haakon

In Norway, at the time of the entry of German troops - which, of course, promised not to harm the local, such a Nordic, population - the brother of the Danish king, King Haakon VII, sat on the throne. Realizing how symbolically important this figure is for the Norwegians, the Nazis began with promises and threats to persuade the king to declare, by his own will (against the laws!), The head of government the protege of the Third Reich.

The king evasively said that he needed to consult with the government. The Germans gave him this opportunity. The king and the government left for a remote town and from there … made a radio message, in which they called on the Norwegians to show fierce resistance to the invaders. After that, realizing that the Germans would punish them, Haakon and members of the government left the village for the forest - so that the locals would not suffer during the hunt.

But the Germans did not waste time on trifles and simply bombed the town, shooting everyone who ran out of the burning houses with machine guns in the hope of escape. In the end, only Haakon and the government survived, becoming unwitting witnesses to the massacre. After that, they went to the mountains, and the Norwegians unleashed fierce resistance to the Germans. Later, the king and his son were evacuated to London. From Britain, Haakon broadcast speeches to support the fighting spirit of the newcomers. In general, he could not do anything else.

Haakon never received a Nobel Prize, but the Norwegians were declared by Israel after the war as a people of the righteous. Whole country. And there was a reason: the Norwegians are still a very special people. Caramel cheese, sun mirror and anti-fascist teachers: Norway's national character.