Hitler protected Jewish World War One veteran: letter

BERLIN (Reuters) - Adolf Hitler personally intervened to protect a Jewish man who had been his commanding officer during World War One, according to a letter unearthed by the Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper.

The letter, composed in August 1940 by Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazis' feared paramilitary SS, said Ernst Hess, a judge, should be spared persecution or deportation "as per the Fuehrer's wishes."

Hess, a decorated World War One hero who briefly commanded Hitler's company in Flanders, worked as a judge until Nazi racial laws forced him to resign in 1936. The same year he was beaten up by Nazi thugs outside his house, the paper said.

In a petition to Hitler at that time, Hess wrote: "For us it is a kind of spiritual death to now be branded as Jews and exposed to general contempt."...