Bett Midler - Albert Einstein - The First World War TV - Mankind: The Story of All of Us TV - August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben - A J P Taylor - Friedrich von Schiller - Richard Wagner - Noam Chomsky - Tom Bower - The Art of Germany TV - The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwif II TV - Jutta Rudiger - Milton Mayer - Louis McFadden - Visions of War TV - Secrets of World War II TV - Third Reich: The Rise & Fall TV - Der Triumph - Jimmy Carr - Adolf Hitler - Joseph Goebbels - Karl Donitz - Loose Change 9/11 TV - World War II: The Complete History TV - The Nazis: A Warning From History TV - Black September TV - Robert Gellately - Make Me a German TV - The Making of Merkel with Andrew Marr TV - Angela Merkel - One Day in September 1999 - Karl Marx City 2017 - Stacey Dooley TV - Carroll Quigley - Storyville: A German Life: Goebbel’s Secretary Remembers TV - Rise of the Nazis TV - Janina Ramirez TV - Divided States TV - The Living Dead I: On the Desperate Edge of Now TV - Adam Curtis TV - Horizon TV - Exterminate All the Brutes TV - Days that Shook the World TV - Secret History TV - A Perfect Crime TV - Cyberbunker: The Criminal Underworld TV - Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War TV - Nazis in the CIA TV -
I married a German. Every night I dress up as Poland and he invades me. Bette Midler
The present state of affairs in Germany is a state of psychic distemper in the masses. Albert Einstein
Germany’s crucial decision to back Austria was made with no care for the consequences; neither the Kaiser nor his senior political and military leaders took any steps to find out what Austria-Hungary had in mind. It was an extraordinary oversight because nothing in the Balkans happened in isolation. Europe was divided into two camps: on one side were Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy; on the other were France and Russia. War with one could mean war with the others. The First World War e1: To Arms, Channel 4 2003
The Kaiser was so sure no war was brewing he went on holiday. ibid.
It was Germany’s idea to take the war beyond Europe. The First World War e3: Global War 1914-1916
The Battle of the Falklands heralded the end of Germany’s Cruiser campaign. ibid.
The call goes out for Jihad – Holy War. Germany hoped her new ally Turkey would do just what it was told. And the allies thought Turkey would be a pushover. The First World War e4: Jihad 1914-1916
The Kaiser had come to see Jihad as the way to foment revolution among the millions of Muslims under British rule. ibid.
The Germans paid over five million pounds in gold securing Turkey as their ally. ibid.
Rome, 455 A.D.: At the gates of the imperial palace Genseric. Known as the Spear King. Chief of a tribe of Germanic warriors – the Vandals. Mankind: The Story of All of Us IV, History 2012
Germany, Germany above everything,
Above everything in the world,
When, for protection and defense, it always
takes a brotherly stand together.
From the Meuse to the Memel,
From the Adige to the Belt –
Germany, Germany above everything,
Above everything in the world! August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Lied der Deutschen
German history reached its turning point and failed to turn. This was the fateful essence of 1848. A J P Taylor, The Course of German History, 1945
We would be a single nation of brothers
Standing together in any hour of need or danger. Friedrich von Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, 1804
I have long been convinced that my artistic ideal stands or falls with Germany. Only the Germany that we love and desire can help us achieve that ideal. Richard Wagner
One early example was in 1952, when the Kremlin put forth a proposal for reunification and neutralization of Germany, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for ‘the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction and assembly’ ... The US and its allies objected. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy p24
After the consolidation of the three Western zones in 1942, the US began to move towards the partition of Germany ... One reason was the fear of democracy. ibid. p340
The main problem, again, was the [German] labor movement and other popular organizations that threatened conservative business dominance. ibid. p340
After the war, German workers began to form works councils and trade unions, and to develop co-determination in industry and democratic grass-roots control of unions. The State Department and its US labor associates were appalled by these moves towards democracy in the unions and the larger society. ibid. pp340-341
It preferred a divided Germany, incorporating the wealthy Ruhr/Rhine industrial complex within the Western alliance. ibid. p341
The United States was determined to prevent expropriation of Nazi industrialists and firmly opposed to allowing worker-based organisations. ibid. p341
Major Nazi war criminals were recruited for US intelligence and anti-resistance activities, Klaus Barbie being perhaps the best known. A still worse Nazi gangster, Franz Six, was pressed into service after his sentence as a war criminal was commuted by US High Commissioner John J McCloy. ibid. p341
Bankers and industrialists convicted of war crimes ... were released and restored to their former roles, renewing their collaborations with US corporations. ibid. p342
Four years after the war, those responsible for the day-to-day management of post-war Germany were remarkably similar to the management during the days of Hitler. Tom Boyer, cited Chomsky
For most of its history Germany was not a unified state, but an assemblage of disparate parts. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Germany, BBC 2010
A love of nature, and also [sic] of the machine. ibid.
It’s the German Gothic Cathedral: Goethe likened it to: ‘A sublimely towering tree of God, with its thousand branches and millions of twigs.’ This is the Cathedral of Saint Peter. It was once the tallest building in the world. ibid.
Most people led feudal lives dominated by trauma and hardship. ibid.
The Bubonic Plague ... Around a third of the population was wiped out. ibid.
All across the German lands there was growing unhappiness with Catholic Rome ... In 1517 a monk called Martin Luther nailed a list of theological objections to the door of his local church. It sparked the Reformation and a new breakaway religion of Protestantism. ibid.
Ludwig II of Bavaria is a legendary figure. The handsome boy king loved by his people … A monarch obsessed by beauty. The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwig II with Dan Cruickshank BBC 2013
A group of princely states and dukedoms including Prussia and Bavaria. ibid.
Architecture would become his manifesto to a better future. ibid.
There was a lot of official harassment. There was widespread hunger, squalor and poverty. And what really affected us there was humiliation. The French ruled with an iron hand. If they disliked you walking on the pavement for instance they’d come along with their riding crops and you’d have to walk in the road. Perhaps they simply wanted to take revenge. Jutta Rudiger, Ruhr resident 1923
It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway ... By the machinations of the ‘national enemies’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us ... One no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing ...
Now you live in a world of hate and fear. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father ... could never have imagined. Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1938-1945
After World War I Germany fell into the hands of the German international bankers. Those bankers bought her and they now own her lock, stock and barrel. They have purchased her industries, they have mortgages on her soil, they control her production, they control all her public utilities ... The international German bankers have subsidised the present government of Germany and they have also supplied every dollar of the money Adolf Hitler has used in his lavish campaign to build up a threat to the government of Bruning. Louis McFadden
The Federal Reserve Board ... has pumped so many billions of dollars into Germany that they dare not name the total. Louis McFadden