Have fun with your trains
I remember "The Birdmen!" Chuck Connors, Doug McClure, Rene Auborjonois, Richard Basehart as the Kommandant (does anyone else miss that mans incredible speaking voice as much as I do?), great TV film, one of the better ones, along with "Duel" and "The Night Stalker."
If you've never read the book "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill I'd suggest you do so. It's a great read and possibly the best of the WW2 escape stories.
You know, in some cases people say "the book was better than the movie," or other times (not often) "the movie was better than the book," but in this case the book "The Great Escape" and the movie version complement each other beautifully. My favorite WW2 film.
vsmith Remember HH was two years *before* Mel Brooks put the goosestepping boot right into Hitlers groin with The Producers.
Remember HH was two years *before* Mel Brooks put the goosestepping boot right into Hitlers groin with The Producers.
1942 Jack Benny movie To Be Or Not To Be
"To Be Or Not To Be," great film. Interestingly, it's got one of the best arrangements of "Deutschland Uber Alles" I've ever heard, very stirring and stately. Ironic, since it's an anti-German fim.
You had to mention "The Producers", didn't you? Now "Springtime for Hitler" is going to be running through my head for the rest of the evening!
Firelock76 "To Be Or Not To Be," great film. Interestingly, it's got one of the best arrangements of "Deutschland Uber Alles" I've ever heard, very stirring and stately. Ironic, since it's an anti-German fim. You had to mention "The Producers", didn't you? Now "Springtime for Hitler" is going to be running through my head for the rest of the evening!
From what I've read no one really knows what Hitler's reaction to Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" was. The film was banned in Nazi Germany, for obvious reasons, although it's known that Hitler did get a copy of it and watched it out of curiosity. However, Hitler had seen earlier Chaplin comedys and did enjoy them.
Chaplin's speech at the end of "Great Dictator" is just magnificent! Moving and absolutely timeless. "Great Dictator" was Chaplin's first talkie and when ol' Charlie decided to "speak" what came out of him was just unforgettable.
If Hitler did see the film it's for damn sure he didn't learn anything from it.
Isolationists in the United States came down hard on Charlie Chaplin for making "The Great Dictator". They treated it as a propaganda piece to get the United States involved in a European war.
The opposition to getting involved in Europe was backlash from what happened in WW1, particularly the over the top propaganda effort (e.g. liberty cabbage) and high casualty rate, which would be equivalent to 32,000 fatalaties per month now.
As a kid reading about the run-up to WW2, I had wondered why the isolationist and pacifist movements was so strong in the US. After reading about what happened in WW1, the motives of the isolationist and pacifist movements made a lot more sense. I had also wondered why Orwell used the term "liberty cabbage" in 1984, then later realized he was trying to remind people what happened in the US in WW1.
Isolationists also came down hard on another film, Warner Brothers 1939 movie "Confessions Of A Nazi Spy." It got good reviews at the time and it's considered a classic today, one of an astounding number of great movies that were released in 1939, but it bombed at the box office.
The Three Stooges did an anti-Nazi short of their own, "You Nazty Spy" in 1940, beating Chaplin to the punch by several months. Being the Stooges they didn't get the grief Chaplin did but they were always proud that they did the first film to spoof Hitler directly.
I'm a student of the First World War and yes, the isolationist sentiment of the 1930's is very understandable. After the war many Americans felt they'd been sold a bill of goods by the British and the French, and as a 30's historian W.E. Woodward put it "All the Americans got out of the World War was out."
I should add that despite what some people think or would have you believe isolationism cut right across party lines, there were Republican and Democratic isolationists. The American Communist Party was anti-interventionist as well, at least while Hitler had his non-agression pact with Stalin.
Sadly, it also makes understandable the disbelief of the rumors of the Holocaust when they started coming out of Europe. American leaders had "heard it all before" 25 years earlier. Sad thing was, this time it was true.
Firelock76 Chaplin's speech at the end of "Great Dictator" is just magnificent! Moving and absolutely timeless. "Great Dictator" was Chaplin's first talkie and when ol' Charlie decided to "speak" what came out of him was just unforgettable. If Hitler did see the film it's for damn sure he didn't learn anything from it.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Firelock76 Sadly, it also makes understandable the disbelief of the rumors of the Holocaust when they started coming out of Europe. American leaders had "heard it all before" 25 years earlier. Sad thing was, this time it was true.
Unfortunately some of what was being during wartime about the concentration camps was propaganda as well. Also didn't help that the Ukrainian mass starvation of the early Thirties got swept under the rug. In the collection of old Reader's Digests that included the Dec. 1945 issue with the story on the Great Escape was a late 1933 issue with a story about concentration camps being set up (using that term BTW and presenting them as an evil thing) and a 1934 or '35 issue with a reprint from a Sci. Am. article extolling the eugenics work being done in Germany.
Ironically, one person who was trying to get the US government to take the German military advances seriously and respond with appropriate increases in military preparedness was tarred with the "isolationist" label - that person being C.A Lindbergh.
As for movies...
I remember watching "Away All Boats" with a bunch of OREM buddies - one of them being the late Wally Richards who served on the landing ships in WW2. Wally's comment was the movie was pretty accurate, which may have had a lot to do with a mid-1950's release date (e.g. about the same time as the original "Dam Busters"). WW2 movies made in the 1960's and later have tended to be a lot more cavalier about historical accuracy.
- Erik
Firelock76 ... as a 30's historian W.E. Woodard put it "All the Americans got out of the World War was out."
Is this from the same alternate history where famous locomotive designer C. Vann Woodward developed Super-Power?
Woodward was to history what Elbert Hubbard was to philosophy.
No mention of Henry Ford's quote in 1916, that history is more or less bunk?
"Learn to read and write, then work out your own ideas, mix with people, get experience."
“Railroads should throw their stocks and bonds away as mine did and get down to business and make some money.”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=990CE3D8103CE533A2575AC2A9669D946095D6CF
Holy jeez, I had no idea what I was starting when I invoked the name W.E. Woodward! Somewhere in the Great Beyond that debunking old quasi-socialist is having a giggle knowing he's not forgotten.
I've read Woodward's "A New American History" and to call it a debunking history is putting it mildly. This guy didn't like anybody! Well OK, there were some exceptions like Stonewall Jackson (Woodward was a Southern boy) but everyone else, oh brother.
At least I haven't been accused of taking the name of Will Woodard, that genius from the Lima Locomotive Works who gave us Super Power, in vain!
Hey, I just swerved us back into train content!
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