Tag: anti-German propaganda

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During the summer of 1945, when Germany’s cities were piles of smoldering rubble and the German people lived like rats in their cellars, the German Jews who had run away during the 1930s swarmed back into Germany lusting for revenge. Plan A is not only based on “a true story,” “this film from Israeli brothers Doron and Yoav Paz dramatizes an astonishing piece of Holocaust history: a deadly plot by a small group of Jewish survivors to poison the water supply in Nuremberg. ‘An eye for an eye. Six millions for six millions.’” (more…)

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Erik Kirschbaum
Burning Beethoven: The Eradication of German Culture in the United States during World War I
New York: Berlinica Publishing, 2014

Much ink has been spilled over the travails faced by non-white minorities in the United States, but the persecution of German-Americans during the First World War has received scant attention. The few scholars who do address this forgotten chapter in American history, such as Erik Kirschbaum in Burning Beethoven, frame it as a morality tale about the evils of “xenophobia” and cast WASP Americans as the villains. (more…)

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“A splendid little war” was how Secretary of State John Hay described the Spanish-American War of 1898. Since Hay had served in Abraham Lincoln’s administration, he had had a lot of experience with more jaundiced wars like the one in the 1860s. The Spanish-American War was little, and its splendor depended upon where you were when it occurred. In DC’s clubrooms and in Congress, it was quite alluring, and was to most of the country. But if you were on the front line taking rounds from Spanish Mausers or suffering agony from malaria or dysentery — which a good part of the army was — it was not so splendid. (more…)

Theodor Seuss Geisel during his wartime service in the US Army.

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Though it’s been almost a year since our crazed oligarchs decided that Dr. Seuss is racist and several of his books need to disappear, aspects of his cancellation are worth reexamination. Though it pales in comparison to other absurd proclamations from our deranged ruling class — most recently, the Anti-Defamation League schizoiding on the definition of racism, and yet more adults having to apologize for saying bad words –, what makes the Seuss fiasco so hysterical and ironic is that he was one of the Left’s own. (more…)

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One of my all-time favorite movies is The Red Shoes, Michael Powell’s 1948 Technicolor feast about a ballet impresario played by the great Anton Walbrook and his ecstatic, obsessive, and ultimately destructive relationship with his art—and one artist in particular. So you can imagine how eagerly I sought out Powell’s first foray into Technicolor, 1943’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, also starring Walbrook. (more…)