Setting the record straight with VK Clark, part 1

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The above is from one of Clark's blogsites which I do not have access to or don't know how to find. Enlarge

I came across some recent commentary by Veronica K. Clark, having to do with my criticism of what she has written about what she calls “Hitler's Platterhof Speech.” It is in such a hysterical mode of writing that I feel the need to present the facts.

Clark obtained this speech quite a number of years ago and asked Wilfried Heink to translate it for her. She then made two books from it: (1) Hitler's Most Significant Speech (only 100 copies printed) and (2) Hitler & Himmler: Uncensored, 

In her first comment (pictured above) she starts out by calling me “Krazy Kahant” (she is projecting) and says I am a “dolt” because I don't change Hitler's words when translating them as she does. She claims that when Hitler said “Volk” (people or nation) he really meant “Rasse” (race). To defend herself from such a serious transgression, she comes up with a completely false assessment of the passage, knowing that her readers will not understand what she's saying or bother to check into it. In other words, she makes something up, which is not unusual for her.

Let me explain. Here is the translated passage from Hitler. It is the 3rd (last) paragraph on the page image, which is the very same page that Veronica and Wilfried Heink worked from: enlarge

I had serious fights with both the right and the left at that time. The left declared: “It’s impossible, we cannot go with the nationalists”, because they understood “Nationalism” to mean the bourgeoisie, and vice versa, the bourgeoisie rejected socialism, because they understood “Socialism“ to mean Marxism, that is, internationalism.

But one thing was clear: “people” and “people” are not the same. I can imagine a “people” with a thin ruling class and a perfectly miserable mass of poor folk, squalid, louse-ridden, filthy, but raised to blind obedience, who simply follow. I can imagine that. This idea awakens no satisfaction in me; I find it horrible. What I believe is the first, most worthwhile ideal to have to see, is a “people” who look healthy. Because I won’t be able to represent for long a governmental interest in the former people; one day it will disintegrate when a catalyst comes along, suddenly uniting and mobilising this left-wing mass, and that [catalyst] is the foreign body of Judaism.

So AH is referring to different forms of government – communist or nationalist – and his idea of “the people” here has nothing to do with race at all. No matter what race you may be, if you're ruled under communism, you're forced to blind obedience as a follower. These "people" are not the same as a people raised under a nationalist government that cares about them. So “People and People” is what he means and what he says. He says what he means. But Clark is trying to spin her substitution of the word “Rasse” for the word “Volk” with this sentence: “His idea of Volk was racially/genetically/merit-based, not wealth-based.” This is something she made up which has nothing to do with the subject at hand. What she's pushing here is that to Hitler, merit was as important as race [in order to find a way in for herself based on merit], but the fact is, to Hitler merit was very important but could never replace one's race! A Chinese could not be selected over a German, no matter how much merit he possessed. Hitler was always very clear and Clark tries to confound her readers into accepting her ideas for his ideas.

Then she calls me a “lying animal” (!) because I didn't read her book where she “qualified this translation choice in a footnote.” But she doesn't tell us what the footnote says – as usual, we have to buy her book if we want to know! Which I refuse to do. [In fact, she even says you can read the "race section" in German if you buy one of her Black Nazi's books, where she has placed it! Well, I guess I'll post that section in German myself.] But I will say, if she has to “qualify her choice” in a footnote, and considering what she wrote above, it makes no sense to have changed the word to begin with. However, it adds to our understanding that she thinks she can create a Hitler of her own invention.

Next, she repeats her false charge that I “robbed” her of something that belonged to her … and now she calls it the “draft version” of the Heink/Berg/Clark translation. Hmm, that's new to me. She always previously said I had the FINAL version, exactly as it appeared in her book, Hitler's Most Significant Speech. Guess she was wrong all the many times she repeated that to me. I had always told her I did not have the same translation that appeared in the book (and is copyrighted by her) but she insisted I did. Now she says otherwise. This is how it is when dealing with Veronica Clark.

But … now I will refute her claim that I “robbed” her by telling you again how I came into possession of the document I published on carolynyeager.net on August 2^nd and 3rd, 2014 in two parts. I have told this before, but it appears that Clark pays no attention, so I will repeat it, and probably add more detail. It was a little before that time that I casually asked Wilf Heink if he had a copy of the translated Hitler Platterhof speech because I'd like to read it. He answered immediately, “I think so. If I can find it I'll send it to you”. He even added, “Do you want the Himmler speech too?” I didn't expect that, but I said, “Sure.” There was no “prodding” necessary, nor any carried out (as Clark accused in the following part of her comment).

Wilf did email me the Hitler Platterhof speech with no strings attached, and apologized that he no longer had the Himmler speech because of a computer crash he had recently had. Since I had not even asked for the Himmler speech, I was just very happy to have Hitler's speech. Wilf told me it was his original translation that he sent to Veronica with the message (something like): This is the best I can do, so do what you want with it. (In other words, he implied he was done with it.) That was his recollection, which I accepted. But it turned out his memory was faulty, and much later he told me that what he sent me was indeed the “final version” that Veronica had sent to him and he filed away without reading. [Although now, after all this time, Clark writes that it was the “draft version.”]

Thus what I had was the translator's own copy (according to him), not the final version that was in the book. I therefore felt it would be alright for me to publish it at my website, which I did without asking Wilf's permission but with all the necessary explanation. Soon after that I heard from Veronica Clark asking me to remove it because I was violating her copyright. Then began a long dispute between us over whether or not I was violating her copyright. It wasn't until I received notice from my website server provider that a DMCA order from Ms Clark's lawyer had been received by them, that I unpublished the two posts.

After that, I determined to try to get the speech from Munich myself and asked Carlos Whitlock Porter if he would translate it. He agreed and several months later, I was finally able to publish my own translation of Hitler's May 1944 Talk to Officers at the Platterhof Hotel.

There was nothing “criminal” on my part about any of this, but if Clark wants to accuse me of wrongdoing, she has to also look at her own role in giving lots of credits to those who work for free to translate the material for her books so she can make money on them (Wilf, the late Hans Krampe, Friedrich Berg and others), while she is the sole owner of the copyright. Her slaves don't have any rights to their work.

When Clark realized Wilf had sent me the Hitler speech, she wrote him a hate-email attacking him and telling him she would never speak to him again. Of course, Wilf did not know or think I would publish what he gave me, so I did do him a wrong on that score. But I didn't commit any wrong against Clark, since I didn't think I had actually violated her copyright. And now she says I didn't!

This ends my first response to Veronica Clark's published comments directed at my criticisms of her Platterhof translation. I'll do a second post to deal with her statements on Himmler and “my criminal record.”