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Weimar Berlin - planes, trains, and automobiles

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
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Early 1930s introduction to Berlin:


Be patient - takes a minute for the picture to start.
 
Thanks Tom. It's interesting to see a thriving, dignified city and to think it was mostly destroyed by a bunch of fanaticals.
 
Elliot - somewhere in what's left of my brain, I recall part of a campaign speech by Hitler. Something like "Give me just ten years, and you will not recognize Germany."
 
Sadly he was on track to accomplish his campaign promise.
Glad he didn't succeed.
 
Very interesting time indeed. I have photos my father as a teenager in what we would came to call "east" Berlin (outside a store they owned). They call got out in 1938 when it was obvious that things were getting bad. And speaking of bad, I'd recommend Gary Larson's book "In the Garden of Beasts" which is about Berlin (and Germany) in 1934 as a new US ambassador was sent there (an academic named Dodd - and his "loose" daughter who mingled with many of the SS people); fascinating real-life stuff a mere year after Hitler came to power.
 
Mark - that is an *excellent* book. So much going on that was never made public. Trying to keep positive diplomatic relations with a fascist racist country. Yikes.

Note that Dodd (ambassador) was a frugal professor who didn't like limousines. He and the family brought their old Chevy along to Germany.
 
Mitsy's parents were caught up in Eastern Europe as everything came unglued. Her mum wrote a short book about her time from 1938 to 1948 as her family ran from the Nazis and Russians. Frightening times.

Elliot said:
it was mostly destroyed by a bunch of fanaticals.
Click to expand...

You're too kind, sir. Me Ol' Fella called 'em Facist Bas*ards!
 
NutmegCT said:
Mark - that is an *excellent* book. So much going on that was never made public. Trying to keep positive diplomatic relations with a fascist racist country. Yikes. Note that Dodd (ambassador) was a frugal professor who didn't like limousines. He and the family brought their old Chevy along to Germany.
Click to expand...

Dodd sure was an interesting (and atypical) ambassador... though maybe he was never meant to become one. His frugality was interesting, and certainly part of the full story in the book. The Tiergarten sure served as a wonderful symbol of that era (right there in the center of Berlin).

I have a few photos of me standing right where the crowds stood as they listened to a younger Hitler speaking in Munich. This spot is still perfectly preserved. This video is of that speech (in 1933). In the next video, in color, is that area celebrated in 1939... and, again, this square in Munich is still pretty much the same (and the big arches with the lions at 12:00 into the video is no different today).
 
Wait... found the one I wanted... notably at 40 seconds in. Almost frightening. Again, this area looks the same. Needless to say, they're touchy about it and one doesn't get too taken by the area (with questions).

This is more during his rise to power (before being "elected" chancellor).
 
DrEntropy said:
You're too kind, sir. Me Ol' Fella called 'em Facist Bas*ards!
Click to expand...
Not a matter of being kind doc, I was choosing my words so as not to cross the lines here. My family also ran from the nazis and their barbarism.
 
Elliot - I think it's better sometimes to cross the line. Niemoeller would agree.

Tom
 
Thanks Tom; I did nazi that coming ;-)
 
 
Love that classic scene... Basil Fawlty with his head-injury.
 
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