X-Message-Number: 18281
From: 
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 05:29:57 EST
Subject: (no subject)

Olaf Henry writes:

>While the architect Albert Speer designed the monumental setting of the 
parade >grounds featured in "Triumph of the Will," he was not the founder of 
the propaganda >technique used in her films. That was clearly the creation of 
'>Reichspropagandaminister Dr. Joseph Goebbels', an unequalled genius in mass 
>manipulation.

Your first hand memories are a delight. Than you for them. I've talked with 
people on all sides of the Third Reich including officers in the SS and 
concentration camp survivors (both of whom were good friends).

I would agree with Olaf's assessment of Goebbels. However, it was Speer who 
came up with the brilliant and practical engineering solutions which allowed 
implementation of Goebbel's visions; the cathedral of ice created with search 
lights for the Nuremberg Rally, the design of the staging and construction of 
an impressive edifice for that rally, and others, using minimal resources -- 
here the credit must go to Speer. His design of the Reichschancellery and his 
many unbuilt designs for Hitler's massive postwar 1,000-year Reich memorials 
and civic buildings are also a testimony to his genius as a practical 
propagandist.

Olaf would probably find my home an interesting place to visit. It is more 
museum than house. It contains artifacts of great importance from almost 
every era in human history going back to meteorites, stromatolites (oldest 
purchasable fossil evidence of life), two pieces of Mars (the planet) in the 
form of DAR al GANI 476, fired rounds from the civil war, artifacts of all 
kinds from W.W.I, W.W.II, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, all periods of 
the Greek, Persian, and Roman empires, pieces of the pyramids and other 
significant tombs from Egypt, fossils from almost every period, including a 
section of the KT layer, and, of course, Nazi and Soviet memorabilia 
including a wide range of war items, a helmet shell, and concentration camp 
armbands from Buchenwald and Dachau. A lot of the history of medicine is 
represented as well. So too is the telegraph (the Victorian Internet) and the 
telephone. I even have a first model Edison Standard phonograph and a 
prototypical typewriter. 

Amidst these many artifacts (and many more) it is always the Nazi items that 
immediately attract attention and set people off. They completely fail to see 
the Confederate and Union currency or munitions from the Civil War, or the 
collection of German bank notes chronicling the inflation of the Deutschmark 
from a 1 Deutschmark to a 10 billion mark single bill! 

No, it is the SS and SA armbands, SS Todenkopf cap and pins, and other items 
that draw their immediate attention and cause them to ask if I am a Nazi or 
NeoNazi? That's like asking if I love the H-Bomb since I have a piece of 
Trinitite, a signed picture of Edward Teller, A real fallout shelter sign, 
and lots of other items related to the dawn of the nuclear age. They also 
miss my American and French Revolutionary War items which include original 
documents from the period.

There is something very, very powerful in the Nazi symbolism which rivets the 
eye in a way my Allied W.W.II items (flags, pins, posters) fail to do. If you 
watch Triumph of the Will (even today) you can't help but be dazzled by what 
was done on every level in Nazi Germany. Am I suggesting that we become 
Nazis? Not at all. But, there are important lessons to be learned there; 
lessons that can be seen at the start of a revolution like the British 
Invasion in pop music that started with the Beatles. 

And Olaf, please don't say it can't happen again because this society is too 
heterogeneous, or otherwise has learned its lesson. Nothing could be further 
from the truth. Hitler was a piker compared with Stalin. The conditions just 
have to be right and the right people just have to be there. Leni Riefenstahl 
was one of those people. The Third Reich produced men, many of whom went on 
to shape the US profoundly. This is not widely know -- how many people know 
of Operation Paperclip or who the people were who were brought into America 
because of it and changed the shape of US society and foreign policy 
enormously?

Mike Darwin

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