Hauling Secrets

Hidden among the pages of the Deutschland Erwacht I found was a mysterious leaflet printed in German and English.

The Safe Conduct Pass, or “passierschien”, was produced by the Psychological Warfare Branch of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, designed to look as official as possible, and eventually dropped into German territory to inform German soldiers of the decent treatment they’d recieve if they surrendered. It has been called “the most effective leaflet of the war”. This version of the leaflet, one of 10,456,000 printed, was dropped from November 1944 to January 1945. The front reads, in German and in English:

SAFE CONDUCT. The German soldier who carries this safe conduct is using it as a sign of his genuine wish to give himself up. He is to be disarmed, to be well looked after, to receive food and medical attention as required and to be removed from the danger zone as soon as possible. (Signed) Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force “

On the back:

The BASIC PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW REGARDING PRISONERS OF WAR (According to the Hague Convention, 1907, and the Geneva Convention, 1929)

1. From the moment of surrender, German soldiers are regarded as P.O.W.s and come under the protection of the Geneva Convention. Accordingly, their military honor is fully respected.
2. P.O.W.s must be taken to assembly points as soon as possible, which are far enough from the danger zone to safeguard their personal security.
3. P.O.W.s receive the same rations, qualitatively and quantitatively, as members of the Allied armies, and, if sick or wounded, are treated in the same hospitals as Allied troops.
4. Decorations and valuables are to be left with the P.O.W.s. Money may be taken only be officers of the assembly points and receipts must be given.
5. Sleeping quarters, accommodation, bunks and other installations in P.O.W. camps must be equal to those of Allied garrison troops.
6. According to the Geneva Convention, P.O.W.s must not become subject of reprisals nor be exposed to public curiosity. After the end of the war they must be sent home as soon as possible.

Soldiers in the meaning of the Hague Convention (IV, 1907) are: All armed persons, who wear uniforms or any insignias which can be recognized from a distance.

The diagonal overprint reads, “Also valid for the Volkssturm” (the territorial army to defend the homefront in WWII).

This leaflet was so effective that the Germans issued a parody of it, with the text on the front changed:

The German soldier who carries this safe conduct is using it as a sign of his genuine wish to go into captivity for the next ten years, to betray his fatherland, to return home a broken old man and very probably never see his parents, wife and children again. (Signed) Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force.

Ouch. On the backside, replacing the Geneva Conventions, is a message to the Allied Forces:

DEAR FRIENDS: We are returning your age old dodge, after having made the necessary rectifications, with sincerest thanks. It was highly amusing, and we must commend you on your efforts. But please refrain from molesting us further in this direction. It should be obvious to you that the ideals for which 90 million Germans have fought (according to Churchill) “like lions” for over five years cannot be so very rotten that we could be lured into surrender through mere ham and eggs. Hoping that we can rely on your sagacity to comprehend, we remain as of old, with Heil Hitler! Hard times, what?

History has shown just how tempting those “ham and eggs” (or the Geneva Conventions) were to many German soldiers, and how hard those times really were for Hitler and the German Army. At that point, the Red Army had driven the last German troops from Soviet territory and began entering Central Europe, and the western allies were also rapidly advancing into Germany. A few more months and Hitler would be dead, the war officially over.

[Special thanks to Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman, whose excellent article at Psywarrior.com's Allied 'Passierschien' Safe Conduct Passes of WWII page provided everything I needed to identify this document.]

So me and Legendary Bobby Gene knock on the front door of this house – no answer. We hear noises, so we follow the driveway around to the back, where an old woman and two middle-aged women have the contents of an extra-deep two-car garage – almost a barn, really – spilling out into the backyard. One of the ladies explains to me and LBG that their father passed away and they plan to sell the house. Only first they have to empty “Dad’s Garage”.

“Dad’s Garage”, it turns out, was a place where only Dad could go. It was off limits even to his wife, who during the job was working in a manic way beside us, expressing an oddly hesitant surprise at each new thing she brought out into the light. But it’s normal for family of the deceased not to want to deal with – or even to know – what their loved one left behind. That’s what haulers are for.

Because I like to salvage as much as can be salvaged, and because I have somewhat of an athropological curiosity, I’m the kind of hauler who glances in bags. Sometimes, even when they’re tightly sealed – okay, especially then – I’ll rip them open. But always discreetly, away from the customer and anyone else. So when one of the daughters said what to me are magic words – “We have no idea what’s in there!” – I started stealing glances into the bags and boxes I was hauling every chance I got. Among the things I later discovered had been hidden in the depths of this garage were the following:

• Hundreds of gun magazines.
• Hundreds of hot rod car magazines.
• A few boxes of books from the Loompanics catalogue – and others – dealing with how to make explosives from household chemicals, how to blow up bridges and other structures, and how to completely change your identity.
• Membership material and other correspondences from little-known Southern-based militia groups.
• Roughly one thousand VHS tapes, each with three or four movies on it. That adds up an entire video store worth of movies. Nothing obscure or exotic, no preponderance of any particular genre or era, just a seemingly random – though totally exhaustive – rundown of the movies shelved at any old corporate rental house. A complete set. As if every single movie the guy ever watched – he recorded.

And this:

DEUTSCHLAND ERWACHT (Germany Awakens or Germany Wake Up!), is what’s known as a Cigarette Card Album of pictures depicting the rise of the Nazi Movement, published as a cooperative effort between the central offices of the Nazi Party and the Cigarette Picture Service in Hamburg. People would buy cigarette packs and collect pictures to paste into the plates of the book. Pictures like these:

(Yes, that’s Hitler feeding a fawn and Goebbels handing out candy to children.)

The person who owned this particular book was rigorous in their collecting and filled every single plate with EVERY SINGLE CARD from the cigarette packs. That’s over 200 total pictures, 62 of them in vivid color. A complete set. And the last page of the book is a fold out wide angle shot of a Nuremberg rally spanning 5 whole pages. [I'll be doing a whole 'nother post on the slip of paper that fell out of the book as I was leafing through. It adds another interesting piece to the puzzle.]

Adding in your mind this collectable Nazi propaganda book with some of the other things from the off-limits-to-everyone garage – books on how to change your identity, links to racist militias – you start to imagine things.

You can learn a lot about someone by their trash. But anything from which you can learn a lot about a person can also make you think you’ve learned a lot about the person. As the potential for understanding grows, so does the potential for misunderstanding. So I’m not jumping to any conclusions here. But still, you start to wonder…

Every now and then a story comes on the evenings news about another Nazi war criminal found hiding in your average American suburb. Who knows how many others have died and taken their secrets to the grave. And how many haulers have hauled their secrets to the landfill…?

Continuing back through the vaults from my days hauling with Legendary Bobby Gene, here’s a little gem found hidden in a pile of adult videocassettes: [hint: Read the copy, it's the best part.]

Good haulers know that if a piece of paper is spilling out of an old-looking box, you should always take a moment to see what it is. Especially if it the box has been gathering dust in the attic of a mansion whose owner claims it was left there by the owner-before-last.

It might turn out to be a phrenological reading from 1855:

Phrenological Character of [name of subject],
given at Fowlers and Wells and Co.’s Phrenological Cabinet,
142 Washington Street, Boston, Mass.
by D P[?] Butter, Professor of Phrenology
April 6th 1855

You have a predominance of brain and of the nervous system over the physical strength and energy. Your sphere will be one that will require some headwork and scholarship rather than physical strength and courage. You are rather delicately organized physically for a man and will never be capable of heavy work, yet it would be well for you to have some physical exercise if the labor is light and out-door, by way of developing your body… (more…)

I’m fine with fur and fuzz. They are quite comfortable when on blankets or coats or even Sean Connery. But when you put fur and fuzz on a door? This week’s “What were they thinking?” features, yess. FURFUZZ DOOR. It wasnt quite fur and it wasn’t quite fuzz but it definitely was something abnormal.

(Also take note of the faux tree branch handle.)

I’ve had many ideas floating in my head. This is one of them. Now we have all made those ugly purchases that we regret but this weekly posting shall feature the worst of the worst. Basically things that make one exclaim: What were you thinking?

This week. A bag that would make even Tina Turner shutter in horror and a chair with an utter.

Everyone has some phobias, be it common phobias such as claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces), uncommon phobias like Ophthalmophobia (fear of being stared at), or just plain strange phobias such as Cibophobia (fear of food) or Defecaloesiophobia (fear of painful bowel movements).  And lest you think The Edge is full of defecaloesio, head over to phobialist.com and see for yourself.

Wait a sec, how do people with Cibophobia survive??

But I digress… while everyone has different phobias, everyone I know shares the same phobia: Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.  Which brings us full circle to the reason for this post: to share two frightening clown images Smidge and I recently unearthed.

The first is less truly frightening and more vaguely unsettling… 

Imagine yourself walking down a long corridor.  You open a door and find a room of animals.  They turn and look at you: “Sit and watch the clown with us… forever and ever and ever…”

Brace yourself!

Could a more chilling image be concieved?  I can’t decide which is more terrifying: It gazing hungrily at the baby, or the Aryan child saluting the Sieg Heil.  This image is from the cover of a film Smidge recently found, and when we work up the courage we will view the film and probably post a clip or two.

We all have those favorite finds. Whether it be pornfaces or letters, mine happens to be magazines. It isn’t uncommon to find me digging into a pile of unwanted magazines for at least 10 minutes before throwing them into the truck. It’s incredible that people don’t want to hang on to things like these. People give away valuable possessions to us all the time but it never ceases to amaze me when I come across 100 magazines from the 1940′s that people want to get rid of willingly.

Haulers, what are your favorite finds?

Not every hauler cares about what they throw into the backs of their trucks. We try to resist that sort of overbored, clockwatching way of working so typical of low wage labor. But some days, or some jobs, there just isn’t time to sneak a look into the myterious old suitcase you’ve just set on its way to the landfill.

And some mornings we’ll have to dump a truck that was filled by the crew from the previous day. We’ll get to the back of the truck, open the doors, and out will spill their leftovers – a complete surprise that for whatever reason they didn’t have the chance or the energy to deal with.

A complete surprise like these:

Artfully rendered in pencil and watercolor during the artist’s “marine love” period. Once doomed to the oblivion of the landfill, now preserved for near-eternity here on the internet.

And the world is about the same for it.