14.06 In Diary, Top Nazi Rosenberg Evokes Dark Plans,
WILMINGTON, Del., June 13 (by Karin Zeitvogel for RIA Novosti) In loops of cursive on now yellow and brittle pages, top Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg bared his soul during World War II, writing warmly about Adolf Hitler and chillingly outlining his plans for what he deemed undesirables, including Soviet citizens and Jews.
The Rosenberg diary is no ordinary diary of the time, John Morton, director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said of the long-lost diary.
Reading Rosenbergs diary is to stare into the mind of a dark soul, a man untroubled by the isolation and violent extermination of Jews and others he deemed undesirable, including Soviet citizens, Morton told a news conference here.
Rosenbergs journal entries and reams of letters he wrote went missing shortly after World War II and were recovered several weeks ago after a lengthy investigation involving three US government entities.
The hundreds of pages recovered by a special unit of ICE that hunts for stolen historical documents and artifacts, the US Department of Justice and investigators from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington include letters from Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler and diary entries littered with the names of Nazi top brass.
Rosenberg wrote in a 1941 diary entry about being invited to dinner with Hitler to discuss, in peace and quiet, the Russian question, which he thought required an immediate military solution.
He seemed almost dreamy as he inked an entry after being named the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, envisioning how, finally, 20 years of anti-Bolshevik work will now have a political and historical impact.
The fate of millions will be in my hands, he wrote.
Rosenberg was named Nazi Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories in 1941, gaining responsibility for crafting German policy in occupied parts of the Soviet Union, including the deportation of millions of Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany and the planned annihilation of Soviet Jews.
In a typewritten letter that was part of the recovered documents, Rosenberg complained about the way Nazi Commissar for Ukraine Erich Koch was treating the local population.
