Talk:Józef Retinger

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The single most important personality connected with the birth and creation of the Bilderberg Group is Joseph H. Retinger (also known as L'Eminence-His Grey Eminence). Retinger had a colourful, lifelong career that raised him to the top of the world power élites.

At his funeral in 1960, Sir Edward Bedington-Behrens said: "I remember Retinger in the United States picking up the telephone and immediately making an appointment with the President, and in Europe he had complete entrée in every political circle as a kind of right acquired through trust, devotion and loyalty he inspired."

and

From the Bilderberger ORG

[1]

Though people persist in calling Retinger an eighteenth-century man functioning in the twentieth century, he was not that at all. He cam,e straight out of the Renaissance. Instead of the sceptical, précieuse attitude typical of the eighteenth century, his Jesuitical conviction that the end justified the means, and a Borgian aptitude for intrigue; but the ends he sought were never selfish. They were good.

Parachuting

Retinger parachuted into Poland on April 4th, 1944 in Operation Salamander of the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) accompanied by 2Lt Tadeusz Chciuk. Retinger was 56 years old at the time, making him the oldest man ever to go on a combat parachute mission. The purpose of Operation Salamander was for Dr. Retinger (code-named Salamander) to talk to the key figures in the Polish Underground, to apprise them of the changes in Poland's international situation as a result of the Teheran Conference, which had essentially turned Poland over to the Soviets. They took US$ 144,000 with them, not millions. The paperwork for this money transfer survives. Retinger and Chciuk were picked up from Poland on July 26th, 1944 in Operation Wildhorn III. This is all documented in detail in Marek Celt's book "Z Retingerem do Warszawy i z Powrotem -- Raport z Podziemia 1944" published by LTW in Poland in 2006. The ISBN for this book is 8388736884. Thank you, Jan Chciuk-Celt 192.220.132.235 (talk) 19:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Google has failed me in a search to verify the facts about his famous incident, when he was parachuted into occupied Poland carrying millions of dollars in cash to fund the resistance movement there. All I could find was mirrors of this wiki artical and more speculative pages about this fabled parachuting. The closest I could find is an excerpt from a book "By Parachute to Warsaw" by Marek Celt, published in London in 1945 by Dorothy Crisp and Co., Ltd.[2]--Pchov 04:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 16:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Jew?

Who says Retinger was a Jew? Are there any sources to prove it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.205.30 (talk) 16:40, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

pre-GA review

Ping User:Po Mieczu. I have one major concern: there are books cited but with no page numbers, ex. Bines (2018)a, Andes (1949) and few others. Also I'd suggest using citation templates for all cites. For non-English sources, please add title translation using |trans-title= parameter. I am also concerned whether the following sources are reliabe: https://web.archive.org/web/20161027232624/http://home.teleport.com/~flyheart/retinger.htm , https://minakowski.pl/tworca-ue-maz-krewnej-kaczynskiego-to-zyd-z-debicy/ , and https://www.historia.fr/content/recherche/article?id=6744 (that one is broken too). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you User talk:Piotrus. Progress report:

Others and I have worked on your suggestions. Further expansion is needed on such matters as the nature of Retinger's "political meddling" as a rookie politician during World War I, e.g. he produced a book objecting to the forced germanisation of Poles in Prussia and his meetings with Jewish leaders at that time. There is also more on him and women and the fact that he appears to have spent time in a prison cell in Texas. The emerging picture suggests that with the collapse of the Polish state in WWII, the slack was taken up by his allegiance to Great Britain as the power most likely to assist Poland's hoped for resurrection. For this there would be a price, he just about avoided paying. Post-war he helped to send supplies from the West to Poland and used his good offices in Moscow to allow him to visit his homeland. His disillusion with the iron curtain arrangements, probably led him to turn his attention to preparations for a further delayed resurrection of a new Europe, a kind of riposte to Yalta which arrived only in 2004. Some new sources and page numbers still remain to be added.--Po Mieczu (talk) 21:56, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

The useful Thomas Gijswijt source unfortunately does not give page numbers on google books. Is there a way round this, please?--Po Mieczu (talk) 22:35, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Ping [[User:]]. Your concerns have been mostly addressed. Would you like to make a new assessment, please?--Po Mieczu (talk) 20:28, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

@Po Mieczu: The only thing remaining from my pre-review would be the question of whether [3] is a WP:RS. And it is best to ping me when you reply, I didn't have this page watchlisted so I missed your earlier replies. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:30, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I have removed the Minakowski WP:RS and replaced it with other sources, especially Adam Pragier, a beautiful writer, in the Controversy section. The article could do with polishing, obviously. Stay well.--Po Mieczu (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2020 (UTC) p.s. There are obituaries in The Times and The New York Times, but I have been unable to access them directly.--Po Mieczu (talk) 20:24, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@Po Mieczu: Perhaps try the Wikipedia:Resource exchange or Wikipedia:Library (or both) to get ahold of those works. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:07, 10 April 2020 (UTC)