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Leopold Itz, Edler von Mildenstein (30 November 1902 – November 1968〔K() S(): ''Dipl()-Ing() Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein †.'' In: ''Sportjournalist'' Jg. 18 (1968), H. 11, S. 16.〕) was an SS officer of the 1930s and 1940s who is remembered as a leader of the Nazi Party's support during the 1930s for the aims of Zionism. He sometimes worked as a writer and used the pen name LIM (his initials). He was occasionally called an English "Baron" although his rank of ''Edler'' meant "nobleman" and has no exact English language equivalent, perhaps the nearest neighbor would be "Esquire." After the Second World War Mildenstein continued to live in West Germany, where he joined the Free Democratic Party and was elected to its Press Committee. In 1956, he went to Egypt to work for a radio station, and after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 he claimed immunity as an intelligence agent of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, a claim which was neither confirmed nor denied. Nothing was heard of him after 1964, when he published a book on cocktails. ==Life== Born in 1902 in Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary, Mildenstein belonged to the lowest tier of the Austrian nobility and was brought up as a Roman Catholic. He trained as an engineer and joined the Nazi Party in 1929, receiving the membership number 106,678. In 1932 he joined the SS, becoming one of the first Austrians to do so. According to his former SS colleague Dieter Wisliceny, from the First World War until 1935 Mildenstein visited the Middle East, including Palestine, several times.〔Jacob Boas, "A Nazi Travels to Palestine," in ''History Today,'' Vol. 30, Issue 1 (1980), pp. 33-38〕〔Bruckner, Pascal & Rendall, Steven, ''The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism'' (2010), p. 68〕 Mildenstein had taken an early interest in Zionism, even going so far as to attend Zionist conferences to help deepen his understanding of the movement. He actively promoted Zionism as a way out of the official impasse on the Jewish question: as a way of making Germany ''Judenrein'' (free of Jews). Some Zionists, whose movement had grown tremendously in popularity among German Jews since Hitler came to power, co-operated. On 7 April 1933, the ''Juedische Rundschau,'' the bi-weekly paper of the movement, declared that of all Jewish groups only the Zionist Federation of Germany was capable of approaching the Nazis in good faith as "honest partners".〔Jacob Boas, The Jews of Germany: Self-Perception in the Nazi Era as Reflected in the German Jewish Press 1933-1938, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Riverside, (1977), p. 111〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Revelations )〕 The Federation then commissioned Kurt Tuchler to make contact with possible Zionist sympathisers within the Nazi Party, with the aim of easing emigration to Palestine, and Tuchler approached Mildenstein, who was asked to write something positive about Jewish Palestine in the press. Mildenstein agreed, on condition that he be allowed to visit the country in person, with Tuchler as his guide. So, in the spring of 1933 an odd little party of four set out from Berlin, consisting of Mildenstein, Tuchler and their wives. They spent a month together in Palestine,.〔〔''Yad Vashem studies,'' Vol. 37, part 1, p. 134〕 Mildenstein came to write a series of articles for Der Angriff, the Berlin newspaper Goebbels founded in 1927. Mildenstein himself remaining for a total of six months before his return to Germany as an enthusiast for Zionism. He even began to study Hebrew.〔Brenner, Lenni, ''Zionism in the Age of the Dictators,'' (1983), p. 45, (online edition ) at marxists.de, accessed 27 March 2011〕 On his return, Mildenstein's suggestion that the solution to the Jewish problem lay in mass migration to Palestine was accepted by his superiors within the SS. From August 1934 to June 1936 Mildenstein was put in charge of the Jewish Desk with the title of ''Judenreferent'' (Jewish Affairs Officer) in the headquarters of the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD), the Security service of the SS, Section II/112; his title meaning that he was responsible for reporting on "Jewish Affairs," under the overall command of Reinhard Heydrich.〔Williams, Max. ''Reinhard Heydrich: The Biography: Volume 1'' (2001), p 61.〕 During those years Mildenstein favoured a policy of encouraging Germany's Jewish population to emigrate to Palestine, and in pursuit of this policy he developed positive contacts with Zionist organizations. SS officials were even instructed to encourage the activities of the Zionists within the Jewish community, who were to be favoured over the assimilationists, said to be the real danger to National Socialism. Even the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 had a special Zionist provision, allowing the Jews to fly their own flag.〔〔 Adolf Eichmann, later one of the most significant organizers of the Holocaust, believed that his big break came in 1934, when he had a meeting with Mildenstein, a fellow-Austrian, in the Wilhelmstrasse and was invited to join Mildenstein's department.〔Anna Porter, ''Kasztner's Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust'' (2008), p. 94: "His first big break, as he saw it later, presented itself in 1934, when he was told to report to Second Lieutenant Leopold von Mildenstein at 102 Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. Von Mildenstein ran the SD "Jews Section," or Section II/112. A fellow Austrian with an easy manner, von Mildenstein took an interest in teaching Eichmann the basics of his department."〕〔Padfield, Peter, ''Himmler. Reichsführer-SS,'' Cassel & Co, London, (2001) (), p. 198〕 Eichmann later stated that Mildenstein rejected the vulgar anti-semitism of Streicher. Soon after his arrival in the section Mildenstein had given him a book on Judaism by Adolf Boehm, a leading Jew from Vienna.〔Klarsfeld, Serge & Billig, Joseph & Wellers, Georges, ''The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania'' (1978), p. 12〕 Between 9 September and 9 October 1934 the Nazi Party Berlin newspaper ''Der Angriff,'' founded and controlled by Joseph Goebbels, published a series of twelve pro-Zionist articles by Mildenstein under the title ''A Nazi Goes to Palestine.'' In honour of his visit, the newspaper issued a commemorative medallion, with the swastika on one side and the Star of David on the other.〔〔 In the summer of 1935, then holding the rank of SS-''Untersturmführer,'' Mildenstein attended the 19th Congress of the Zionist Organization in Lucerne, Switzerland, as an observer attached to the German Jewish delegation.〔Francis R. Nicosia, ''The Third Reich & the Palestine Question'' (2000), (p. 61 )〕 Mildenstein's apparently pro-Zionist line was overtaken by events, and after a dispute with Reinhard Heydrich in 1936 he was removed from his post and transferred to the Foreign Ministry's press department. He had fallen out of favour because migration to Palestine was not proceeding at a fast enough rate. His departure from the SD also saw a shift in SS policy, marked by the publication of a pamphlet warning of the dangers of a strong Jewish state in the Middle East, written by another "expert" on Jewish matters who had been invited to join Section II/112 by Mildenstein himself, Eichmann.〔〔Padfield, Peter, ''Himmler. Reichsführer-SS'' (2001) (), pp. 198, 199, 275〕 Mildenstein was replaced as the head of his former section by Kuno Schroeder.〔Yaacov Lozowick, ''Hitler's Bureaucrats: the Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil'' (2005), p. 20〕 Later in December 1939, Eichmann was made chief of the Jewish Department ''Referat IV B4'' of the RSHA, which the SD became a part in September, 1939.〔Padfield, Peter, ''Himmler. Reichsführer-SS'' (2001) (), p. 334〕〔Lumsden, Robin, ''A Collector's Guide To: The Allgemeine – SS'' (2001), pp. 83-84〕 As Germany moved into the Second World War, Mildenstein continued to write propaganda articles and books. After the war, his "Around the Burning Land of the Jordan" (1938)〔Stollberg, Berlin, 1938〕 and "The Middle East Seen from the Roadside" (1941)〔Union, Stuttgart, 1941〕 were placed on the list of proscribed literature in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the German Democratic Republic. Like the Haavara Agreement, Mildenstein's 1933 visit to Palestine and the medal to commemorate it were later sometimes used by anti-Israel authors to argue that there was a relationship between Nazism and Zionism.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Leopold von Mildenstein」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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