the real “Night and Fog” (not the movie with the same name)

“Night and Fog” is the name of a French documentary film, which you can read about on Wikipedia here.  You can watch the film on YouTube here.  The documentary uses the expression “Night and Fog” to refer to the Jews who were deported to camps during World War II. But I’m not writing about the use of the expression “Night and Fog” in a documentary film. I’m writing about the Nacht und Nebel erlass given by Hitler on December 7, 1941 and later used by General Wilhelm Keitel, who was prosecuted at the Nuremberg IMT for the crime of making use of  this directive by Hitler, which the Allied prosecutors maintained was a violation of the Hague Convention.

The phrase “Nacht und Nebel” comes from the writing of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Germany’s most famous poet and novelist, who used this expression when describing clandestine actions concealed by fog and the darkness of night.

Many people today mistakenly think that the term “Night and Fog,” as used by the Nazis, meant that prisoners were condemned to die and their relatives were not notified of their deaths.  The real meaning of the term “Night and Fog,” with regard to the Resistance fighters who were captured during World War II, is that these prisoners were sent to concentration camps and their relatives were not told where they had been sent. For all the relatives knew, their loved ones had just disappeared into the “night and fog.”  The purpose of this order was to put fear into the Resistance fighters and discourage civilians, in countries occupied by Germany, from fighting as illegal combatants in a Resistance movement.   

“Red Tails” — or How African-Americans singlehandedly won WWII

If you are planning to see the new George Lucas film Red Tails, you better hurry, because I don’t think this flick will be in theaters very long.  I predict that it will very quickly be shot down like the Me 262 jet airplane that is shot down by Joe “Lighting” Little, a Negro pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen, who is the hero of the movie.

Black pilot shooting down a jet airplane

Before you get all upset by my use of the word “Negro,” it was pointed out in the movie that African-Americans preferred the term Negro over the term “colored” which was used by whites.  This is news to me.  I was 11 years old when this story was happening in 1944 and it is my opinion that both blacks and whites used the term “colored” which was pronounced “cull-ed.”  The word Negro was only used in a sentence which also had the word Caucasian.

The reason that I think that Red Tails will not be a big hit is because it will appeal to a very limited audience.  This is not a “date movie.”  Women will stay away from it in droves.

The basic premiss of the movie is that black people are superior to whites, but white racists in America would not allow them to fight in World War II until 1944 when black pilots were needed to win the war against the German racists.  There were other black soldiers who fought in World War II, but unlike the Tuskegee Airmen, they were commanded by white officers.  The movie is set in 1944, but filmed though a 2012 lens which shows that the African-Americans back then were no different from white people.

The movie has an all-male cast, except for one Italian girl who is the love interest in the movie.  “Lighting” spots her on a rooftop as he is flying over the pristine Italian countryside which shows no war damage.  She waves at him and he comes back later and knocks on her door.  He speaks no Italian and she speaks no English, but they manage to fall in love and get married.  Her Italian dialogue is not translated.  Only the German words in the movie have sub-titles.  What’s up with that?

The movie begins with a quote from a study done in 1925 which claimed that “blacks are inferior to whites.”  This is quickly followed by a disclaimer:  “Inspired by a true story.”  In other words, what you are about to see is not totally true, but we’re not going to tell you which part is not true. The title of the movie comes from the fact that the Tuskegee Airmen painted the tails of their planes bright red. The Me 262 jet planes are decorated with yellow paint.

Red Tails is about the all-black 332nd Fighter Squadron which was assigned to protect U.S. bombers on a bombing mission to Berlin in 1944.  Nothing is mentioned about Berlin already being bombed into a pile of rubble before 1944.  However, in 1944 Germany had Me 262 jet fighter planes in the air, so this bombing mission was different.  The Tuskegee Airmen were flying P51 planes.

Me 262 jet airplane

This movie is not about history; it is about the African-American heroes of World War II.  If this were a history movie, it would have been pointed out that the Germans delayed getting their jet planes into the air because Hitler disagreed with his generals about the best use of the jet planes.  Hitler wanted the Me 262 to be a bomber plane, not a fighter plane.  If the Germans had used the Me 262 as a fighter plane sooner, all the American planes would have been shot out of the sky and Germany would have had a better chance of winning the war.

The movie does not mention Herman Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, the German air force.  According to this website,  “In the early part of the war, he remarked, “If Allied planes ever bomb Berlin, you can call me Meyer.” Later on [when] they did, escorted by P-51 Mustangs, he observed, “When I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up.”   It was the Tuskegee Airmen who were flying those Mustangs.  

Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms

Last night I saw a documentary on TV about Martin Luther; the famous “Diet of Worms” was prominently shown in the film.  That brought back memories of my childhood when I was studying the history of the Catholic Church in Catholic school. My classmates and I thought the term “Diet of Worms” was hilarious.  That’s because our teacher pronounced the German word Diet the same as the English word diet which means what a person eats.  Diet in German is pronounced dee-et and it means an administrative assembly. In German, Worms is pronounced something like Vourms.

This documentary was originally shown on PBS in 2003.  It was first presented as a two-part series for British television.  The film is fairly objective and tells the story of Martin Luther accurately; the narrator only briefly mentions Martin Luther’s hatred of the Jews with only one quote from his writings.

Also mentioned briefly is that Martin Luther translated the bible into German.  I was scribbling notes as fast as I could, and I am not sure if it was mentioned that he did this translation in the town of Eisenach.  I was waiting for some mention of Eisenach because Eisenach is the place where Martin Luther holed up in a castle to translate the Bible. A few miles down the road is the town of Erfurt, the place from which St. Boniface set out on his mission to convert the Germans to Christianity. This area has been at the center of German culture since the Middle Ages. Eisenach is where Johann Sebastian Bach was born.

Eisenach is the beginning of “the Classics Road” which ends at Weimar. This is the heartland of German culture, the old stamping grounds of such German greats as Goethe, Schiller, Liszt, Herder, Nietzsche, Cranach, and Bach.  It is also the road that American troops traveled to Buchenwald, arriving on April 11, 1945. Buchenwald is 5 miles from Weimar and it is the only historical thing that Americans are interested in today in that area.

What does all this have to do with anything?  If Martin Luther were alive today, he would be a modern day heretic, railing against Holocaustianity which has replaced Christianity as the world’s foremost religion.  In today’s world, Luther would be brought before a German court, where he would not be able to defend himself. He would not be asked to recant; he would just be sentenced to five or more years in prison for his heresy in speaking out against Holocaustianity.

This video will explain the story of Martin Luther in a way that the modern world can understand.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I went to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yesterday, even though this is not the type of film that I really like.  I am more of a Merchant Ivory films kind of person — I enjoy films like Howard’s End and The Remains of the Day.  I have been reading about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a couple of years now.  And I finally decided to see what all the fuss is about.  The film is based on a book by Stieg Larson entitled Men Who Hate Women, which has sold over 50 million copies world wide. Fortunately, the title was changed for the movie, or people would be staying away in droves.  The movie title is much more intriguing and it has a nice ring to it.  Actually, a better title would be “The Revenge of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Daniel Craig plays the male lead in the movie, which made me think that this was going to be some kind of a James Bond flick, which I would not like.  Boy, was I wrong!  The movie is very complex and it is very fast paced. It might be hard for some people to understand without some background information, so I am going to give a short synopsis of the story.

Daniel Craig plays the part of a journalist who is asked by an wealthy Swedish industrialist (played by Christopher Plummer) to write his biography. The journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, has gotten the industrialist’s attention because he (Blomkvist) was in the news after he had disgraced himself some way.  What the Swedish tycoon really wants is for Blomkist, an investigative journalist, to find out what happened to his great-niece Harriet over 40 years ago. The whole family lives on a private island in Sweden and Christopher Plummer’s character suspects that Harriet was murdered by someone in the family.  But first, the Swedish industrialist hired a computer hacker, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” to check the background of the journalist.  As Daniel Craig’s character (the journalist) begins work on the investigation of the supposed murder of the niece, he hires “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” to be his research assistant. Eventually, the journalist and his assistant become lovers, although the journalist already has a girl friend, played by Robin Wright, who is also his editor.

The part of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is played by Rooney Mara; her name in the movie is Lisbeth Salander.  She is a young girl, who is a ward of the state in Sweden; her case worker is one of the “Men who hate Women.” There is a horrible scene of sexual violence and a later scene where “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” gets her revenge.  Rooney Mara previously played the part of the dissatisfied girlfriend in the movie The Social Network.  When she first meets Daniel Craig in the movie, her first words are “Don’t touch me, or I will …..”  Actually, Daniel Craig plays the part of a nice guy in the movie; he wouldn’t do anything like the caseworker did.

I give the movie a thumbs up.  The opening credits are spectacular.  Rooney Mara gives an outstanding performance, as does Daniel Craig.  This is a great movie, but not for the kiddies, except maybe to teach boys not to rape a girl who has a dragon tattoo.  The movie has a surprise ending, which I guessed right from the start, because I am a suspicious person by nature.

My short review of the movie War Horse

I saw the movie War Horse today on its opening day.  I enjoyed the movie and I found nothing to criticize.  As far as I know, everything was accurate with regard to the battle scenes.  Keep in mind that this movie is rated PG-13.  It is based on a children’s novel.  So there is not much blood and gore.  I was also surprised to find that there was no German-hatred in the film, considering that Spielberg’s movies Schindler’s List and The Last Days are full of lies.  I was satisfied with the way that German soldiers were portrayed in this film.  There was no “cutting the hands off the babies in Belgium” stories and no atrocities shown.  I also thought that the British were portrayed accurately in the film.

There is a funny scene in which a German soldier corrects the English grammar of a British soldier when the British guy says to the German: “You speak good English.”  Technically that is incorrect because good is an adjective and an adverb is required in the sentence.  The German guy then says the sentence correctly: “I speak English well.”

The film is a bit corny, but since it is supposed to be a family movie, suitable for 13-year-old kids, it is O.K.  There are only two female roles in the film, and no romance.  War Horse is essentially a movie for young boys.

The movie does not get into who or what started World War I, nor does it say anything about why the war stopped when it did.  So there is nothing controversial in the film.  This could be considered a good thing, but it could also mean that the movie will be quickly forgotten because it lacks interest.  I did not consider anything in this film to be worthy of an Academy Award.  But I did enjoy it.

Update Dec. 26, 2011

This morning I checked out some other reviews of the film War Horse.  I found several reviews here, some of which agree with me and some that don’t.  Here is a quote about the movie which sums up my opinion:

The Final Word
“War Horse” is a sort of litmus test for how you feel about Steven Spielberg’s films. It’s a beautiful movie, stunning to look at, with echoes of film history all throughout, reaching back to ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘The Searchers,’ Spielberg’s own ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and more. It’s also unapologetically sentimental. Spielberg all but begs you to cry, and unless you’re a heartless cad, you probably will.” ? Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic

I feel that War Horse makes up for Spielberg’s films The Last Days and Schindler’s List, both of which should be withdrawn, or at least not shown to children in Holocaust education classes in schools.

Strasbourg mentioned in new Sherlock Holmes film

Yesterday, I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes film, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law.  Very early in the film, the French city of Strasbourg was mentioned and I perked up because I once spent an afternoon in the city.

Strasbourg is in the province of Alsace which was a German state until France took it at the end of the Thirty Years War.  It took Germany 100 years to recover from the Thirty Years War, but the Germans finally took back Alsace after a war with France that started in 1870, only to lose the state again after World War II.

The Sherlock Holmes Film is set in 1891, which was twenty years after France lost Alsace.

Strasbourg is a beautiful city.  It is the closest city to Natzweiler that has an airport, so I went there when I made a trip to the Natzweiler Memorial Site. I took some photos of the city, which you can see below.

The Cathedral in Strasbourg, shown in my photo below, is famous.  

My review of Lost Airmen of Buchenwald, a new documentary about captured Allied airmen

Mike Dorsey, the producer and director of the new documentary Lost Airmen of Buchenwald has made several comments on a previous post on my blog.  In one comment, he wrote: “I was concerned I might get pulled into the denier rabbit hole, and here I am. So I’ll leave the thread with this: I hope you (meaning me) watch the film with an open mind, and not with the preconceived notion that it’s just veteran-worship propaganda.”

I ordered the DVD from the film’s website here.  My order was shipped immediately and I received it in a couple of days.  I tried to put aside my “preconceived notions” and keep an “open mind” while I watched the DVD.

On the back cover of the DVD box, there is this statement:

Falsely accused of being “terrorists and saboteurs,” the airmen faced a terrifying fight for survival.”

The term “falsely” implies that the Gestapo deliberately made up a false story about these innocent airmen of “the Greatest Generation” who were fighting bravely in “the Good War.”  Meanwhile, there were around 375,000 German POWs in America, who were being treated fairly, according to the Geneva Convention.  Strangely, the Gestapo had no fear that America would retaliate by killing some of these German prisoners.

The text on the back cover of the DVD also states this:

…”Lost Airmen of Buchenwald” tells their harrowing tale, from hiding with the French resistance, to the darkest days of the Holocaust…”

This implies that the airmen were working WITH the French Resistance, not that they were innocent airmen who were RESCUED by the French Resistance after they were shot down over France.  The Germans used the English word “terrorist” to describe members of the French Resistance who were fighting illegally in violation of the Geneva Convention.  These airmen had been flying bombing missions over German-occupied France when their planes were shot down; they were legal combatants.

The film starts out by describing the planes used by the captured airmen.  The airmen were flying over occupied France in the summer of 1944. However, the film does not reveal what they were planning to bomb in France.  After only 5 weeks of fighting in legal combat against the Germans, the French had surrendered and signed an Armistice, in which they promised to stop fighting.  The French continued to fight, but not on the battlefield.  The Germans referred to the men, who continued to fight after surrendering, as “terrorists.”  This film is about the Allied airmen who were falsely accused of aiding the “terrorists.”  Unfortunately, none of the seven men, who talk about the horror of their capture in the film, tell anything about why they were flying over German-occupied France.  Maybe I missed it, but they did not explain that Allied airmen were bombing railroads and supply places to aid in the invasion.  The film showed the fields where they landed.  They were falsely accused of dropping supplies to the French Resistance.

Overall, the quality of the film is excellent.  There is some great photography in the film and the authentic film footage of the war is spectacular.  I did not observe any photos that were incorrectly identified.  There was also a lot of footage of scenes in the Buchenwald concentration camp which I had never seen before.

I learned a lot from this film that I had not known before.  For example, I learned that captured SOE agents were executed in the basement of the Buchenwald crematorium by being hung with wire on hooks that were put on the wall of the crematorium for the purpose of executions. (I previously blogged about the hanging of prisoners in the Buchenwald crematorium here.) The second batch of SOE agents, who were scheduled to be executed, requested a more humane death and they were shot by a firing squad.   Score one for the Germans!  When the German war criminals requested a soldier’s execution by firing squad, the Allies denied their requests.

Now we go down “the denier rabbit hole”:  One of the pilots in the film says that Buchenwald was a labor camp, not an extermination camp like Bergen-Belsen.  The narrator of the film should have interrupted at this point and explained that Bergen-Belsen was an exchange camp that was set up to exchange prisoners. (You can read about Bergen-Belsen here.) This blooper in the film is quickly followed by another pilot who mentions that the captured pilots were not tattooed which was an indication that they were not going to be kept in the camp very long because the other Buchenwald prisoners had identification numbers tattooed on their forearms.  Again, the narrator should have explained that the Allied airmen were in the “Small Camp” section of Buchenwald where most of the prisoners were Jews who had been recently transferred from Auschwitz where they had been tattooed.  Auschwitz was the only camp where prisoners were tattooed.

Now for the worst part of the film, which I think should be cut out: the testimony of Lt. Jack Taylor who was an American imprisoned at Mauthausen.  In this part of the film, Lt. Taylor holds up a dog tag as he says that the soldier who wore this dog tag was gassed in the gas chamber at Mauthausen; he does not give the name on the dog tag.  Why was this included in a film about innocent flyers in the Buchenwald camp?    Lt. Taylor is not part of the Buchenwald story. This is just asking for deniers to lambast the Lost Airmen of Buchenwald documentary.  At the very least, it should be explained by the narrator why Lt. Taylor was included in a story about American airmen at Buchenwald.  Is it because his imprisonment at Mauthausen was for the same reason as the airmen, or was he imprisoned for a different reason?  Lt. Taylor was captured behind enemy lines on a commando mission; he was not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention because he was an illegal combatant.  After the war, the Allies changed the rules of the Geneva Convention so that the SS men at Mauthausen were war criminals because Lt. Taylor was a prisoner there when he should have been sent to a POW camp under the ex post facto law.

You can read all about the testimony of Lt. Jack H. Taylor on my website here.  You can read about the controversy over the rules of the Geneva Convention and the treatment of POWs on my website here.

The movie J. Edgar and the Lindbergh kidnapping

I’ve been reading the reviews of the new movie J. Edgar and I am surprised to learn that some of the critics are panning it.  For example: this review.  To me, J. Edgar is one of the best movies ever made, if not THE best.  The problem is that the story of J. Edgar is told through the eyes of the director, 81-year-old Clint Eastwood.  Younger people may not agree with Eastwood’s interpretation of events.

Here is a quote from another review:

It’s the graying Hoover we meet first, dictating his somewhat suspect memoir to a series of young agent-stenographers because he feels that “it’s time this generation learned my side of the story.”

That story begins with a rarely examined event in American history, the 1919 Palmer raids against anarchists and other supposed radicals. In response to a series of bombings, U.S. Atty. Gen. A. Mitchell Palmer in effect took the law into his own hands, collaborating with the 24-year-old Hoover and the newly formed FBI to attack people for their ideas without evidence of crimes. It’s the first of several examples we see in the film of what can happen when unchecked governmental power falls into the hands of the ruthless and the self-righteous, when influential people believe, as Hoover did, that “sometimes you need to bend the rules a little to keep our country safe.”

There is an early scene in the movie when Emma Goldman, a famous anarchist and radical, is shown in court where she refuses to answer questions. In 1919, she was just out of prison after serving a two year sentence for “conspiring to induce men not to register for the draft.”  Not a single review, that I have read, mentioned the Emma Goldman character.  Why is Emma Goldman important?  Emma Goldman was deported to Russia because America didn’t want Bolsheviks, anarchists and radicals back in those days.  If she were alive today, Emma would be leading the Occupy Wall Street movement and she would be a hero to the progressives.

Before I went to see the movie on Friday, I imagined that the plot would dwell on the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr.  They were included, but the most important plot thread was the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in March 1932.  In one scene of the movie, the discovery of the body of the 18-month-old baby is shown.  The body was decomposed and nothing was left but a skeleton; it was found near a road and within sight of the house.  There is a brief moment when the skeleton is shown with the white Lindbergh house visible in the background.  The movie does not show, nor mention, that any effort had been made to bury the body.  Who kills a baby and then leaves the evidence behind, where it can easily be found?  

My review of The Debt, the movie about the “surgeon of Birkenau”

I previously blogged about the movie “The Debt” and wrote (facetiously) that it will win Academy Awards because it is a Holocaust movie.  After seeing the movie today, I think that it will be nominated for several Academy awards — because it is a great movie.  This film is a remake of a 2007 Israeli film, also named The Debt.

I was not expecting to like this movie, but after seeing it, I am giving it high praise.  It is being advertised as a “spy thriller” but it is much more than that.  The story line is about Truth and whether telling lies can sometimes be justified.

Some memorable lines in the movie are

“We have to lie.”  “The Truth stays in this room.”  “Truth is a luxury.”

And regarding the necessity to lie: “The important thing is Justice.”

I doubt that this movie will win the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year because the story line is hard to follow, unless you have some advance knowledge of the plot.  If you prefer to see movies without any idea of what the plot is about, don’t read any further.

CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD 

Jews were sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht in 1938 and released weeks later

According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, which you can read here, there were 70,000 Jews rounded up on Kristallnacht, which was the night of Nov. 9th and 10th in 1938; the Jews were sent to concentration camps, including Dachau.  Kristallnacht is considered by the Jews to be the start of the Holocaust. Prior to that, there were no Jews sent to the concentration camps just because they were Jews, although Jews had been sent to the camps for other reasons.

Jewish men in Baden-Baden were arrested on Nov. 10, 1938

This travesty, which was named Kristallnacht by the Nazis, took place after a three-day death watch over Ernst vom Rath, a diplomat at the German embassy in Paris who was shot by Herschel Grynzspan, a 17-year old Polish Jew. Herschel had fled to Paris when the Nazis announced in October 1938 that all Polish Jews in Germany would be deported back to Poland. The Polish government had already torn up their passports when they evicted them earlier and they would not allow them back into the country. Grynzspan’s parents and sister were forced to live in a refugee camp on the border; his motive for killing vom Rath was to call the attention of the world to the plight of these stateless Jews.

The Dachau Museum puts the number of Jews that were sent to Dachau, following Kristallnacht, at exactly 10,911. According to the Museum, another 20,000 Jews were sent to Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen with 10,000 being sent to each of these camps.