My Nazi Granddad, Revisited

What's for dinner?

On Monday this past week, I developed a mild fever. By Tuesday, Bruce did the same. So we've been staying indoors even more than usual. In other words, no more afternoon walks.

To while away the tedium, I've been taking another look at my Nazi granddad.

Readers may recall the post where I recounted Bruno Lohse's story. He was born in Poland (Russia) in 1892, fought in WW I for Russia against the Germans, married and moved to Canada in 1920. His wife Emma died in 1933, just as the Great Depression kicked in. The same year, Bruno joined up with the nascent Nazi movement in Winnipeg, was arrested in 1939 and spent the war in an internment camp, leaving his five children, including my ten-year-old mother, to fend for themselves.

Bruno's arrest and five-year absence inflicted a wound on his family that never healed. My mother showed signs of the trauma her entire life. 

It's natural, in situations like this, to pin the blame on someone. Bruno's family blamed him, of course. 

I have always wondered if that was fair. Could Bruno have been the victim of wartime hysteria? Was he wrongfully rounded up, an innocent man but for his associations? His family said he could have been released. All he had to do was renounce Hitler. But he didn't do that. That's the part they could not forgive.

It is true that, under the law hastily passed to legalize their arrests, Bruno and all the others like him had the right to a hearing to argue for their freedom and be released. 

The records from these hearings are stored at the Canadian Archives. I ordered Bruno's transcript. Since receiving it, I have pored over it like it was a Dead Sea scroll. Honestly, the first dozen reads didn't make a lot of sense to me. 

To learn more about the context for the exchange between my grandfather and the three lawyers interrogating him, I Googled some of the names in the transcript - William Whittaker, Bernhard Bott, Adrien Arcand and Wilhelm Rodde.

These searches led me to other sources, including the book Brothers Beyond the Sea, which is a detailed and scholarly history of exactly Bruno's moment in time. 

So here's the lay of the land - in terms of radical political thought, racism and anti-semitism - in Winnipeg in the 1930's. 

• First, there was the anti-semitism and racism practiced for decades by respectable members of the community - the people who barred Jews and others from joining their country clubs, or owning cottage property on Victoria Beach, or enrolling in law or medical schools.
• Second, there was the grassroots Canadian Nationalist Party, led by former KKK member and hotel detective William Whittaker. He recruited young men to dress up in brown shirts and join him in fascist marches. He got his ass kicked in the all-but-forgotten Battle at Old Market Square in 1934. By 1936, his organization was moribund.
• Third, there was German-sponsored Nazi propaganda, published in the Deutsche Zeitung fur Canada (German Daily News), which was the official organ of the Deutsche Bund (German Club). Both began in 1935, under the leadership of Bernhard Bott and the sponsorship of German Consul Wilhelm Rodde, an under-furher in the SS.

Bruno joined Whittaker's party in 1933, but left when it was clear to him that Whittaker was not going to succeed. He joined the Deutsche Bund in 1935 and subscribed to the Deutsche Zeitung from its first number. 

The purpose of the Bund and the Zeitung was to recruit Germans living in Canada to the Nazi cause. The Zeitung's message was part romanticized notions of the exemplary nature of the German "volk" and part loathsome hate mongering. The Zeitung also railed against the unfair treatment of Hitler's regime in the mainstream press.

I speculate that Bruno fell for racist national socialism and the propaganda of the Third Reich because he fit the profile: he was a young(ish) man in marginal circumstances, had an outraged sense of lost entitlement and yearned for a sense of belonging and status. 

So that may be how granddad fell in with the wrong group. But why did he abandon his family?

Of the 840 men arrested in late 1939 to mid-1940, less than 100 were interned for the entire war. Hard cases like Bernhard Bott were clearly too dangerous to release, but what about Bruno? 

At Bruno's hearing, the three lawyers -- their names were Smiley, O'Meara and Fortier -- tried to get him to admit that he was an agent for the Nazis, and that all of his actions - belonging to the Bund, distributing German publications - were in the service of the Third Reich. 

Bruno did not give them what they wanted. But he didn't help his own cause, either.

They asked him about an incident at the internment camp in Kananaskis. Bruno had joined with other detainees in the condemnation of a young man who had written to Ottawa offering to serve in the Canadian army. The lawyers thought Bruno objected to the letter because it showed disloyalty to Germany.

But that wasn't it. 

Bruno was disgusted by what he saw as the young man's craven attempt to be freed from the camp. Bruno said: "If a man cannot stand up when he is charged and defend himself and not crawl on his knees, I have no use for him."

The history book I found says that "only the most committed and stubborn pro-Nazis" remained interned by Canada until the end of the war. 

Bruno was stubborn for sure.

When I started digging around in the past about my grandfather, I imagined I was looking for some kind of redemption for Bruno. I wanted to do something his family had not done. I wanted to forgive him. 

I don't think I'm there yet.

COVID-19 Update

Bruce's dad tested negative for COVID-19.  We have every confidence in the wonderful staff at New Horizons Tower.  Ken will continue to be well taken care of and safe. Bruce talks to him every other day or so on the phone. He sounds hale and happy.

As for us, according to the on line assessment, our symptoms are sufficiently mild that we don't need to be tested; we just need to hole up for two weeks. And that's what we're doing.

Stay safe! 

Wash your hands!

Karen

Thai red curry chickpeas and veg.