William L. Shirer's contribution to journalism and literature have been well covered both here, and in other sources since his debut in foreign news coverage in the 1920's...His nearly 70 year career made him an indispensable authority on the most momentous event of the twentieth century, World War II and the events which led to it as well as its aftermath...
I have reviewed his most well known work here, and I find I constantly refer to it as I research the various aspects of that period in time...Another of his books is "The Nightmare Years," a coverage of the buildup which became the horror of the Third Reich as it inexorably led to a cataclysmic war engulfing the entire world...
When reading accounts of history as told by a masterful writer such as Shirer, it becomes easy to forget that he was not just a man pecking away at a typewriter in his comfortable library, composing a story to be read at the leisure of others...He was also a man who searched out and found his own sources of information, developed his own contacts, heard the same story from differing viewpoints, then decided where the truth lay, and how to make it believable to others...
"The Nightmare Years" becomes a more personal story as Shirer explains it was also a personal narrative of a young reporter finding his own way not only through foreign lands, but into a budding career in which he must outwit other journalists as well as obstructive bureaucrats to find and bring to print newsworthy items before other members of his trade become aware of the awaiting story...As an example, he related how in India, when stalled in expectation of new developments in a jailed Mahatma Ghandi's struggle, he took the opportunity to pry into an unfolding story in neighboring Afghanistan as a new head was emerging as king for the fourth time in a year...
Shirer's attempts to cross the border from India at the Kyber Pass were thwarted by an uncooperative British government unhappy with Shirer's slant on their methods of reaction to Ghandi's unconventional warfare...Alert for any openings, he struck a friendship with the 16 year old son of the man who would become king...The prince knew little English and had little communication with those around him, but was fluent in French as was Shirer...Their resulting conversations got Shirer invited to join the official coronation party, gaining him entrance to Afghanistan where he reported his exclusive story on the momentous shift in power...
Ever watchful for adventure or a good story, he made his way back to his base of news operations in Vienna, through the Mideast where, mostly by instinct, he found the unreported story of what should have been front-page news, evidence of the location of the Great Flood as told in the Old Testament...Although the authenticity of the findings remain in doubt, others continue to search for new confirmation of the biblical inundation...
At first turned away by the chief archaeologist who had pre-sold the story rights to the Times of London, he soon gained entrance with his honesty and naiveté, and made a deal for the story which would not infringe on the Times...As it happened, his boss at the Chicago Tribune was not impressed, burying the story in the travel section...
Shirer found in later years that he also missed a connection to a budding novelist who had recently married the young assistant to the archaeologist, and would later use the desert setting for one of her novels...He also found romance himself on his return to Vienna, and married his own young bride, a beautiful Viennese, but his joy was soon marred by a telegram from the Tribune, firing him...
In 1932 it was tough finding another job as a reporter during the depression, even in Europe, so he and his new bride decided to go to Spain on a tramp steamer where they could live cheaply until he could find work...They found a three-story double villa in a fishing village, and paid $180,00 up front for a years rent on half of it...
As it turned out the other half was occupied by Andrés Segovia whom he had met casually after a concert in Vienna...He said Segovia was one of the most gracious people he ever met, and when he found out Shirer was writing a book, he moved his morning practice ritual which he did from 7 to noon to the farthest corner of the house so as not to disturb his writing...Shirer could not convince him that his gesture was unnecessary...
He said Segovia visited them 3 or 4 evenings a week where they listened to Shirer's collection of Asian melodies played on the Indian equivalent of the guitar...Segovia learned the notes and played along with the recordings, adding the songs to his own repertoire...Segovia also had a deep interest in literature, especially Cervantes, and gave him a leather-bound edition of Don Quixote as a farewell gift...Sometimes the guitar-playing next door neighbor turns out to be OK...
By this time Hitler and his Nazi toadlings had assumed power in a complacent Germany, and Shirer soon accepted a post with the Paris Herald where he quickly grew bored with the copydesk, and dizzy from the ever-spinning roulette wheel of French government as one corrupt and inept politician after another was shuffled through the revolving door of parliament...But his eye was constantly on Germany as he observed Der Fuehrer's expanding power grab...When offered a position with Universal Service in Berlin shortly after the Nazis' murderous Night of the Long Knives, he jumped at the chance, beginning what became arguably the most comprehensive war coverage of the 20th century...
Shirer came to an early conclusion upon seeing and hearing Hitler that his power only worked when he and his audience had something to mutually hate, for obvious example Jews and communists...I thought the same as I reviewed "Mein Kampf"...Love, whether of nation, family or self, did not hold the same dynamics as hate for the power hungry Hitler...
He found much more camaraderie in post-WWI Germany in the numbers of disillusioned haters than he could ever have gathered among those looking to learn from mistakes, rebuild and move on to peaceful prosperity...I believe fear was also a strong motivator for him also, not fear of Jews and communists, but fear of not being thought of as hating them enough...
Shirer also soon discovered Hitler's outlandish and atrocious taste in art and architecture, and that, although he was raised as a Catholic, the only worship he could accept was that directed toward him...His ignorance of culture was evident as he removed from public view all works from artists identified as Jewish, and even non-Jewish non-Germans, depriving the German public of enjoyment from paintings by Cezanne, Van Gogh and Picasso...
Hitler's taste in art and architecture was bad, but instead of improving his own, he set out to bring the German standard down to match his...He showcased his own talent for art appreciation by commissioning his then favorite architect, Ludwig Troost, to design a particularly soulless building to house the Haus der Kunst in which Der Fuehrer displayed a personally selected collection of what has been almost universally described as some of the most vulgar and embarrassing "art pieces" ever gathered...
At the grand opening Hitler acted as tour guide pointing out to the horrified ladies in his entourage what he described as classical Grecian sculpture, which consisted mostly of statues of nude men with their genitalia exposed...It is thought by many that the disturbing array subconsciously appealed to Hitler's homoerotic personality side...
In the meantime, the confiscated works of genuine art did not gather dust, as Reichsmarshal Hermann Goring lustfully gathered as many paintings, tapestries, rugs, vases and sculptures as possible into his greedy hands for his personal collection...At first paying pennies on the dollar for their value using funds he had already purloined for himself, he later decided not to pay at all, thinking there was nobody left alive to protest...Shirer said he was offered several times a chance to purchase some of the pieces if he paid in dollars (Goring cited "foreign exchange rates" as a reason for the dollar demand), but declined the offer knowing the original source...
Hitler himself also acquired many of the banned artworks intending them for his memorial museum to be built in his hometown of Linz, allowing the purchases to be made in his name using redirected funds from the Reich treasury...Liberating forces from George Patton's Third Army found 6,755 paintings earmarked for this purpose preserved in a salt mine in Alt-Ausee...Hitler's greed was modest by comparison to Goring, who commandeered entire freight trains just to haul the stolen loot he had transported to his home in Carinhall...
Before the robber band divvied up their plunderage, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels decided it would be educational for the German public to view examples of the offending art forms to give them an idea of the difference between "degenerate art," and what they would now enjoy in the Nazi-controlled museums...650 pieces of priceless artworks were viewed for the last time in the poorly lit and narrow rooms of a building in the Hofgarten of Munich...Shirer's figures show over two million visitors attended this showing in the four months before its closing, while attendance at the Great German Art Exhibition held concurrently amounted to an embarrassingly few thousand...
Music associated with Jewish composers and conductors the likes of Felix Mendelssohn and Otto Klemperer, and even Cole Porter and Irving Berlin were considered degenerate art and not fit for the German public...The choice of what was and was not "degenerate" in the visual arts was left to the president of the Reich Chamber of Art, Adolf Ziegler, a painter whose only claim to fame was that he once painted a portrait of Hitler's niece/girlfriend, Geli Raubal, whom Hitler almost certainly killed personally or authorized her murder...His list of taboos included not only Jewish selections, but modernist and impressionist paintings which Hitler despised...
In the field of music, Hitler's only consistent choice was the powerful operatic talent of composer and fellow anti-Semite, Wilhelm Richard Wagner...In his youth in Vienna, Hitler is said to have sat enthralled to many performances of Wagner's operas, never speaking a word until the curtain closed...He then spent the rest of these nights robbing his roommate of sleep with his boring recitations of the importance of Wagner's work as it applied to the Germanic principles of life...
It's my guess he always imagined himself as the heroic Teuton who saved the German people as he watched from the cheap seats when he could afford it, or in the SRO section when he couldn't...In 1923, the soon-to-be-convicted Hitler met Wagner's son-in-law, who became his mentor, later having his book placed on the Nazis' must-read-or-else list...
Less talked about has been his criticism, condemnation and abolition of all forms of religion, including Judaism as well as Christianity, in the Reich, followed with its supplanting by the Reichskirche, in which the Holy Bible and Talmud were replaced with the teachings from Mein Kampf, and the Crucifix and Magen David saw their place taken by the swastika...At this time Hitler was less a believer in the 1st Commandment than he was in his Catholic upbringing, and felt that any aspect of religion which could not be bent, reshaped or interpreted as compatible with National Socialism had no place in a modern Germany...
As the elected head of the German Evangelical Church, Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller posted his 30 points by which religion would be practiced...The 30 point proclamation is also attributed to Alfred Rosenberg, although original thought of any kind was doubtful from his clouded mind...The priests, pastors and religious leaders who disagreed risked assignment to concentration camps or death...Shirer recalled in his book a pastor who, knowing the risk, kept him informed of the demands being placed on Christians who opposed Nazism...The pastor was sentenced to death by the Nazi People's Court, but was later commuted to life imprisonment...
Hitler's only serious opposition to nazified religious life in the Third Reich was the Confessional Church, led by Martin Niemoller, a highly decorated former U-Boat commander during WWI...He was a German nationalist who at first welcomed the Nazi regime, but quickly saw its abuses as contrary to God's laws, and as an alternative to the Reichskirche, formed the Confessional Church, inviting all protestant faiths to join him in a solidified front in their worship of God...Out of curiosity for this lone voice against totalitarianism, Shirer attended many of his sermons, none of which were allowed publicity in Germany...
Hitler, who up to this point had considered Protestants to be submissive and docile, found the increasingly vocal and militant Niemoller to be an embarrassment to his regime, but found it difficult to act against a religious leader who was also a respected war hero...As hundreds of the church's pastors were arrested and consigned to concentration camps and eventual death, Niemoller stepped up his attacks from the pulpit, eventually being arrested and tried before the Sondergericht...
He was acquitted of the charges of "underhand attacks against the state" since his sermons had all been public and available for hearing by anyone, but he was fined and sentenced to seven months for "abuse of the pulpit"...He was freed as having already served more than that time awaiting trial, and immediately seized by the Gestapo who incarcerated him in "protective custody" in Dachau until his release by the Allies seven years later...
Niemoller is most famous for this poetic passage from one of his sermons:
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Hitler's taste in art and architecture was bad, but instead of improving his own, he set out to bring the German standard down to match his...He showcased his own talent for art appreciation by commissioning his then favorite architect, Ludwig Troost, to design a particularly soulless building to house the Haus der Kunst in which Der Fuehrer displayed a personally selected collection of what has been almost universally described as some of the most vulgar and embarrassing "art pieces" ever gathered...
At the grand opening Hitler acted as tour guide pointing out to the horrified ladies in his entourage what he described as classical Grecian sculpture, which consisted mostly of statues of nude men with their genitalia exposed...It is thought by many that the disturbing array subconsciously appealed to Hitler's homoerotic personality side...
In the meantime, the confiscated works of genuine art did not gather dust, as Reichsmarshal Hermann Goring lustfully gathered as many paintings, tapestries, rugs, vases and sculptures as possible into his greedy hands for his personal collection...At first paying pennies on the dollar for their value using funds he had already purloined for himself, he later decided not to pay at all, thinking there was nobody left alive to protest...Shirer said he was offered several times a chance to purchase some of the pieces if he paid in dollars (Goring cited "foreign exchange rates" as a reason for the dollar demand), but declined the offer knowing the original source...
Hitler himself also acquired many of the banned artworks intending them for his memorial museum to be built in his hometown of Linz, allowing the purchases to be made in his name using redirected funds from the Reich treasury...Liberating forces from George Patton's Third Army found 6,755 paintings earmarked for this purpose preserved in a salt mine in Alt-Ausee...Hitler's greed was modest by comparison to Goring, who commandeered entire freight trains just to haul the stolen loot he had transported to his home in Carinhall...
Before the robber band divvied up their plunderage, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels decided it would be educational for the German public to view examples of the offending art forms to give them an idea of the difference between "degenerate art," and what they would now enjoy in the Nazi-controlled museums...650 pieces of priceless artworks were viewed for the last time in the poorly lit and narrow rooms of a building in the Hofgarten of Munich...Shirer's figures show over two million visitors attended this showing in the four months before its closing, while attendance at the Great German Art Exhibition held concurrently amounted to an embarrassingly few thousand...
Music associated with Jewish composers and conductors the likes of Felix Mendelssohn and Otto Klemperer, and even Cole Porter and Irving Berlin were considered degenerate art and not fit for the German public...The choice of what was and was not "degenerate" in the visual arts was left to the president of the Reich Chamber of Art, Adolf Ziegler, a painter whose only claim to fame was that he once painted a portrait of Hitler's niece/girlfriend, Geli Raubal, whom Hitler almost certainly killed personally or authorized her murder...His list of taboos included not only Jewish selections, but modernist and impressionist paintings which Hitler despised...
In the field of music, Hitler's only consistent choice was the powerful operatic talent of composer and fellow anti-Semite, Wilhelm Richard Wagner...In his youth in Vienna, Hitler is said to have sat enthralled to many performances of Wagner's operas, never speaking a word until the curtain closed...He then spent the rest of these nights robbing his roommate of sleep with his boring recitations of the importance of Wagner's work as it applied to the Germanic principles of life...
It's my guess he always imagined himself as the heroic Teuton who saved the German people as he watched from the cheap seats when he could afford it, or in the SRO section when he couldn't...In 1923, the soon-to-be-convicted Hitler met Wagner's son-in-law, who became his mentor, later having his book placed on the Nazis' must-read-or-else list...
Less talked about has been his criticism, condemnation and abolition of all forms of religion, including Judaism as well as Christianity, in the Reich, followed with its supplanting by the Reichskirche, in which the Holy Bible and Talmud were replaced with the teachings from Mein Kampf, and the Crucifix and Magen David saw their place taken by the swastika...At this time Hitler was less a believer in the 1st Commandment than he was in his Catholic upbringing, and felt that any aspect of religion which could not be bent, reshaped or interpreted as compatible with National Socialism had no place in a modern Germany...
As the elected head of the German Evangelical Church, Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller posted his 30 points by which religion would be practiced...The 30 point proclamation is also attributed to Alfred Rosenberg, although original thought of any kind was doubtful from his clouded mind...The priests, pastors and religious leaders who disagreed risked assignment to concentration camps or death...Shirer recalled in his book a pastor who, knowing the risk, kept him informed of the demands being placed on Christians who opposed Nazism...The pastor was sentenced to death by the Nazi People's Court, but was later commuted to life imprisonment...
Hitler's only serious opposition to nazified religious life in the Third Reich was the Confessional Church, led by Martin Niemoller, a highly decorated former U-Boat commander during WWI...He was a German nationalist who at first welcomed the Nazi regime, but quickly saw its abuses as contrary to God's laws, and as an alternative to the Reichskirche, formed the Confessional Church, inviting all protestant faiths to join him in a solidified front in their worship of God...Out of curiosity for this lone voice against totalitarianism, Shirer attended many of his sermons, none of which were allowed publicity in Germany...
Hitler, who up to this point had considered Protestants to be submissive and docile, found the increasingly vocal and militant Niemoller to be an embarrassment to his regime, but found it difficult to act against a religious leader who was also a respected war hero...As hundreds of the church's pastors were arrested and consigned to concentration camps and eventual death, Niemoller stepped up his attacks from the pulpit, eventually being arrested and tried before the Sondergericht...
He was acquitted of the charges of "underhand attacks against the state" since his sermons had all been public and available for hearing by anyone, but he was fined and sentenced to seven months for "abuse of the pulpit"...He was freed as having already served more than that time awaiting trial, and immediately seized by the Gestapo who incarcerated him in "protective custody" in Dachau until his release by the Allies seven years later...
Niemoller is most famous for this poetic passage from one of his sermons:
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."From this point, Shirer moved to a discussion of the Nazi leadership which I will review in another installment...
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