Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell, 22 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.In recognition of most conspicuous bravery. This officer was the pilot of a Beaufort aircraft of Coastal Command which was detailed to attack an enemy battle cruiser in Brest Harbour at first light on the morning of 6th April 1941. The aircraft did not return but it is known that a torpedo attack was carried out with the utmost daring. The battle cruiser was secured alongside the wall on the north shore of the harbour, protected by a stone mole bending around it from the west. On rising ground behind the ship stood protective batteries of guns. Other batteries were clustered thickly round the two arms of land which encircle the outer harbour. In this outer harbour near the mole were moored three heavily armed anti-aircraft ships, guarding the battle cruiser. Even if an aircraft succeeded in penetrating these formidable defences, it would be almost impossible, after delivering a low-level attack, to avoid crashing into the rising ground beyond.This was well known to Flying Officer Campbell who, despising the heavy odds, went cheerfully and resolutely to the task. He ran the gauntlet of the defences. Coming in at almost sea level, he passed the anti-aircraft ships at less than mast-height in the very mouths of their guns and skimming over the mole launched a torpedo at point-blank range.The battle cruiser was severely damaged below the water-line and was obliged to return to the dock whence she had come only the day before. By pressing home his attack at close quarters in the face of withering fire on a course fraught with extreme peril, Flying Officer Campbell displayed valour of the highest order.- See more at: http://ww2today.com/6th-april-1941-kenneth-campbell-attacks-the-gneisenau?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorldWarIIToday+%28World+War+II+Today*+%29#sthash.rNyGiDWr.dpuf
I haven't read his magnum opus, buddenbrooks but I have read the magic mountain book son. And believe you me, it was tough going. The word dense comes into the picture. I think I was 20-22 when I read it and I was much more bolshie and obstinate then than now. So I struggled through it.
But I never read about how the author felt or his connection with the books and its characters. German literature is something that I haven't really gotten deeper into son. Big fault and hole in my education there. But well we have some time :) so I'm hoping to have fun learning more about this area.
The first book was interesting and the underlying thesis is something that we all struggle with son. What's life for? What do you do? I was quite taken by Steve jobs words when he was on his deathbed. You know what he said? Do you think he talked about iPhone design? Or Mac operating systems? Or the iPad? No. You know what he said? He said that once you have sufficient money, spend time with your friends and family. Thought provoking no? Well he can afford to say that but you do have to get sufficient money in the first instance.
We all have to answer that question son. And another thing. The answer changes. As life goes on, and if you keep asking this question, the answer keeps on changing. You'll find people who find AN answer early in their lives and stick with it. And then there are some like your baba who are ever restless and always thinking there's an answer just beyond the mountain in front.
May you find your answers son. I was so happy to hear the good news tempered by the fact that you're not that well. Hope you get better soon Kannu.
Love you and look forward to seeing you on Thursday :)
Baba
Thomas Mann: An Exploration of Philosophy and Practicality
http://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/thomas-mann-an-exploration-of-philosophy-and-practicality
(via Instapaper)
Thomas Mann was born into the Hanseatic ruling Mann family, a wealthy clan who held great influence over the city republic of Lübeck, in what was then the German Empire. Mann grew up under the aegis of privilege, raised by tales of his ancestors' prosperity and the ethos of bourgeoisie practicality. The Manns, as ruling families are wont to do, were preoccupied with the maintenance of their influence, wealth, and respectability. Thus, when the 21 year-old Thomas Mann announced his plans to become a writer, his family took his artistic calling as a betrayal of his auspicious pedigree. Despite his family's protests, Mann would not abandon his vocation, and he was effectively disowned. The irony of this event, of course, is that Mann would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and earn the reputation for being the most significant scribe in German letters since Nietzsche, becoming the most revered member of the very family that spurned his artistic pursuits.
The conflict between the Mann family and Thomas placed the young man in the middle of a plangent clash of culture and philosophy. On one hand, there was the bourgeoisie pragmatism of the Mann family and the European world at large. It entailed the management of power and wealth, of creating a life that was more abundant, efficient, and comfortable. It earned its many disciples the boons of influence, land, beef, tea, firewood, and all else that made life more ostensibly pleasant. All Mann's comforts, his privileges, were indebted to the work and labors of his parentage.
While Thomas Mann appreciated the efficacy and work ethic of his family, he felt it lacking a greater purpose. To Mann, the pursuit of mere money, comfort, and influence was the recipe of a myopic life. He believed careful thought and philosophy were the necessary tools to rescue oneself from the self-centered paradigms of work and leisure, of toil and compensation, and the like. But the artist's life was not a panacea to the spiritual deficiencies of his European milieu. Mann understood, too, that as nice as they are to have, well-wrought morality and philosophy cannot pay anyone's rent.
Mann's struggle, the grand antagonism between philosophy and practicality, between the artist and the businessman, was the thematic spine of his first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901). Published when he was 26 years old, the title lends itself to the name of the noble family it follows over four generations Mann based the family on his own noble roots. The novel begins at a family feast in 1835. The patriarch of the family is Johannes Buddenbrooks, the head of a prosperous although fraudulent grain company. Here, Mann sets the stage for the ideals of laborious pragmatism and purposeful thought to begin their tug of war, one that will last the entire book.
The fate and history of the Buddenbrooks family significantly mirrors Mann's own. Much like the ruling Manns, the Buddenbrooks experience a decline in influence and prosperity as Germany industrializes and the values and hierarchies that supported them in the past no longer apply. The most prosperous Buddenbrook, Johann, thrives as his determination to succeed permits him to swindle his partners and suppliers. His progeny, like the third generation Thomas and his son, Hanno, yearn for more than the fortune of the family business. Thomas' intellectual and financial success are at odds within him. He says, "what is success? That awareness that alone by virtue of my presence I can exert pressure on the movements of life all around me." Thomas is deeply affected by the works of Schopenhauer, and Hanno is captivated by the music of Wagner. But art does not, and cannot, completely solve their spiritual emptiness. In this family saga, Mann simultaneously brings to life generations of characters and dramatizes a great cultural and psychological crisis. Mann objectively captures this paradox of life, or as critic Daniel Burt says, "the conflicting forces in human behavior and thought that give life its fullest meaning and at the same time constitute its greatest peril."
The Nobel Prize typically honors an author's entire oeuvre, but Mann's honor is somewhat anomalous. In 1929, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for "his great novel,Buddenbrooks, which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature." William Faulkner considered Buddenbrooks to be the best book of the century, and he enthusiastically owned an edition of the novel signed by Mann himself.
Buddenbrooks' success as a work of art is undeniable, but many readers prefer Mann's more mature effort, The Magic Mountain (1924). Called "the great philosophical novel of the 20th century" by Daniel Burt, it illustrates the culmination of Mann's ideological thought, and renders masterfully the very practice of assessing and acquiring beliefs. It has been credited as a grand example of the bildungsroman, as well as a formidable interrogator of the foundations of Western culture itself.
The novel was inspired by Mann's visit to his wife with tuberculosis. Mann caught a cold at the sanatorium where his wife was receiving treatment, and was not allowed to leave. Like his creator, the protagonist of The Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp, cannot leave the sanatorium atop the mountains of Davos. During his stay, he encounters a cast of characters who all introduce Hans to a variety of ideologies. There's the humanist Settembrini, the sensual and carnal Chauchat, the dutiful Ziemssen, and more. The characters often debate and challenge each other, letting Hans listen and take note of the strengths and weaknesses of each philosophy.
Critic Theodore Ziolkowski said that The Magic Mountain, "approaches perfection to a degree rarely achieved on such a monumental scale." Its scope of theme and thought shapes a truly dense novel, leading Mann himself to suggest that one read the book twice to better comprehend it. Much of Mann's thought in other works reaches its apotheosis in this book. Death in Venice, the novella which The Magic Mountain was originally intended to satirically complement, gives way for Mountain to elaborate on the idea of a life of ecstatic triumph over dutiful order.
Illness and death fascinate the novelist, too. Mann wrote of his book, "There are two ways to life: One is the common, direct, and brave. The other is bad, leading through death, and that is the genius way. This concept of illness and death, as a necessary passage to knowledge, health, and life, makesThe Magic Mountain into a novel of initiation." And, as in Buddenbrooks, Mann investigates further the virtues and disadvantages of the bourgeoisie and artistic life, and extends his vital thought to the subjects of political radicalism, time, music, the philosophies of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and beyond.
The magic of The Magic Mountain is in part due to the fact that no ideology is given preference. The novel centers on Castorp's exposure to the many contradictory and beneficial ways to live and interpret the world. When Thomas Mann was asked by high school students what Castorp's fate after the novel's end was, Mann offered a fitting answer. If Castorp had survived the Great War, the author said, he would have likely remained "the learner, the listener, testing, rejecting, choosing." This is a fitting prediction for his character, as Mann has created a book which does not purport to have found any "proper" philosophy for life. Rather, Mann has presented an imaginative illustration of how a philosophy may be gained, and how one may continue to be a student of life, dedicated to its full appreciation.
Reader, specializing in Twentieth Century and contemporary fiction. Committed to spreading an infectious passion for literature, language, and stories.
It's one of the big regrets in my life that I haven't really explored Goethe that much. Faust of course is required reading but This renaissance man is one of my hero's. What a man. Lawyer. Painter. Scientist. Warrior. Writer. Poet. You name it. And he travelled long and hard. Loved many wonderful women. Had loads of kids. Spawned entire genres. Is remembered posthumously. The man is a legend. In my travels in Germany I've come across his signs. But never managed to really get to grips with him like I've done with other Renaissance men like da Vinci or Michelangelo or Adam smith or Newton or Darwin and a host of others. Funny, I actually totted up the numbers of blog posts, papers and books and photo essays and and and that I've written so far. It's about 11000. Of course the quality sucks compared to Goethe but hey ho. I'm still a young man with much to blather on about eh?
Love
Baba
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe
(via Instapaper)
"Goethe" redirects here. For other uses, see Goethe (disambiguation).
"Göte" redirects here. For other uses, see Gote.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (/ˈɡɜrtə/;[1] German: [ˈjoːhan ˈvɔlfɡaŋ fɔn ˈɡøːtə] (
listen); 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and statesman. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour; and four novels. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly 3,000 drawings by him are extant. A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August in 1782 after first taking up residence there in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. He was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe served as a member of the Duke's privy council, sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver mines in nearby Ilmenau, and implemented a series of administrative reforms at the University of Jena. He also contributed to the planning of Weimar's botanical park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace, which in 1998 were together designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[2]
It's one of the big regrets in my life that I haven't really explored Goethe that much. Faust of course is required reading but This renaissance man is one of my hero's. What a man. Lawyer. Painter. Scientist. Warrior. Writer. Poet. You name it. And he travelled long and hard. Loved many wonderful women. Had loads of kids. Spawned entire genres. Is remembered posthumously. The man is a legend. In my travels in Germany I've come across his signs. But never managed to really get to grips with him like I've done with other Renaissance men like da Vinci or Michelangelo or Adam smith or Newton or Darwin and a host of others. Funny, I actually totted up the numbers of blog posts, papers and books and photo essays and and and that I've written so far. It's about 11000. Of course the quality sucks compared to Goethe but hey ho. I'm still a young man with much to blather on about eh?
Love
Baba
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe
(via Instapaper)
"Goethe" redirects here. For other uses, see Goethe (disambiguation).
"Göte" redirects here. For other uses, see Gote.
Can you see the depression? the regular rectangular depression on the green? this is the green in front of our house. And this depression shows that there was an air raid shelter during World War 2 times here. Why you ask its needed? well, London was pretty much heavily bombed during the blitz.
So got this amazing graphic from this site.
This is Harrow…pretty hairy, eh? you can make out the patterns of the bombs..as the German bombers would drop their bombs in a stick, so they will form a line pattern. Fascinating, eh?
And further zooming in, saw that a bomb had fallen just outside the green, on the house behind the house I can see in front of my house. A high explosive bomb fell here sometime between Oct 7 1940 and June 6 1941, no more precise dating. But I found out from this link that the first bombs in the war actually fell in Harrow.
Records have always shown that at 0330hrs on the morning of August 22nd 1940, the first bombs to be dropped on London were at Harrow…..I do recall seeing an item in the past that the Luftwaffe used a guiding point in Harrow which was a sewerage works ( large round cleaning pond) next to the large Kodak works.
Did you know, we also were hit by a V2 Rocket? This hit less than 300 meters from my home and just behind Diya and Kannu’s School.
Harrow Cemetery
Information from Malcolm Hutton:
The V2 rocket map doesn’t show the location of the V2 which fell in North Harrow. It came down next to the cemetery gates. We were living about a mile away and I well remember sitting in our dining room with my mother and father. (at Durley Avenue). It was very eerie at first. Our heavy velvet curtains suddenly billowed out and rose to the ceiling and then came the explosion followed by a fading sound of the rocket. It cracked one of our windows, but that was the only damage we suffered.
Corroborated here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/33/a7999933.shtml
So how was it to live through a bombing in Harrow? We have this story.
The raids started. The siren wailing up and down made my tummy turn over. Nearby we had Northolt Aerodrome, so the noise of planes taking off became commonplace. We used to count them going out, and count them returning, always hoping it would be the same number…. We had an Anderson shelter in the garden. The lady next door with small children had a Morrison shelter indoors, which was like a big reinforced rabbit hutch. They used the top as a table. Every night after I was in my pyjamas I would be sent down the garden to the shelter, and when no-one was looking, I would get up and go down the back alley to play with my friends. Raids were frequent at this time. Every day the children would go out looking for shrapnel, and the competition was quite keen to find the biggest bit..
My father was working in London on something that he was not allowed to discuss with us. We later found out it was to do with the construction of the amphibious craft used in the invasion. As he was a well-qualified St. John first aider, he was also required to help with rescue work. He was always so tired.
While on his rescue duties, he would sometimes find an unexploded shell, or incendiary bomb, which had to be thrown in the water tanks on the streets. I have an unexploded shell, which he made into a table lighter, having made it safe!
I remember the bomb disposal crews on their lorry having completed a job. Sometimes they would actually sit on the land mine or bomb that they had disarmed. They always received a cheer. - Just, as aircrew would not be charged for admission into our local cinema. Everyone felt they had done more than enough for us. During daytime raids we could often watch the dogfights above us as our planes intercepted the Germans. We could always tell the difference between our aircraft and the German’s even at night. Our planes had a steady hum and the German planes made a pulsating noise.
Our house remained intact, but a nearby house had a landmine suspended inside it. The parachute had caught on the roof, and it was hanging suspended a couple of inches off the floor! We had to evacuate our house while the brave disposal team came and made it safe. They drove off with it on the back of the lorry. I was told the German bombers would take Harrow-on-the Hill church as a landmark
And drop a stick of bombs, hoping to hit Northolt Aerodrome. This meant they passed close to us.The raids became intense. Our Anderson shelter had flooded, and we had to go to the nearest communal shelter. During the day if the siren sounded on our way to school, we were told to run home if we were nearest to home, or carry on to school if that was the nearest. We had a large underground shelter built on the playing fields at school, and we spent a lot of time sitting on the hard benches around the walls. At home we had decided we were tired of running to air raid shelters at night, so we decided that if the bomb had our name on it, we would get it! We stayed in our own beds.
I don't have to tell you about the holocaust son. But remember that pretty much the entire German population with very few very honourable exceptions supported or agreed or kept quiet whilst this was happening. It's unfair to hold them just up for scrutiny. Jews have been persecuted for centuries not least here in the UK. If you get a chance son, visit the Jewish museum in London. We've got tons of books on this, including a mildly controversial book, Hitler's willing executioners. Then you can read about how common people turned brutal. And it can happen anywhere. Eternal vigilance son.
But that's not the point which I wanted to bring out. It's the letter writing which I wanted to point to, son.
It's a letter of note. Polished English. And it's a highly intelligent put down. Very smart very very intelligent. Normally I don't recommend writing letters or emails when angry. Then you'll end up writing the best email you'll ever regret. Never do that. If you get upset over an email, by all means, draft a letter but DONT send it. Store it in draft and then send it next day after sleeping over it. Anger is very expensive son. Extremely expensive. It costs huge amounts, not just to you. It has a destructive ability that vastly overpowers the immediate benefit of hurting the other. See people who get angry and you know what their weaknesses are. You know how to control them by observing their anger.
So whilst I can appreciate the intellectual aspect of this letter, I disagree that he should have sent it. How will it change the mind of the publisher? He's going to get pissed and it doesn't help.
There's a time and place for anger. This isn't it. Then again, if he hadn't sent it, then I wouldn't have been able to share this with you :)
Love
Baba
Letters of Note: I have no ancestors of that gifted people
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-have-no-ancestors-of-that-gifted.html
via Instapaper
Kannu
An interesting story about a long forgotten war. But couple of interesting things. These dead fought for money and for religion. And 9000 died. For what? Strange reasons to die.
Second is the last quote. There are lots of quotes like this. History is a vast early warning system. History repeats itself. And now this one. History has habits.
Look at Syria. Uk and France are all gung ho about it. What happened the last time France and UK got involved in the Middle East? Suez happened. But they were involved before during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the infamous Sykes Picot pact screwed up the Middle East for decades. And of course the crusades before. Religion and money.
When people don't learn from their mistakes son, they are idiots. It's just stupid. No blame for making mistakes. That's how you learn. But you make a mistake. Then you don't learn? That means you are stupid over and over again means that you need to be careful of that person society or country.
Love
Baba.
Mass Grave from Thirty Years War Investigated in Lützen Germany - SPIEGEL ONLINE
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/mass-grave-from-thirty-years-war-investigated-in-luetzen-germany-a-830203.html
It was one of the bloodiest battles of the Thirty Years’ War, but until recently there was no trace of those who died there. Now a mass grave is shedding light on the mysteries of the Battle of Lützen. Were those who fought hungry young men or well-fed veterans? And where did they come from?
The morning of November 16, 1632 was foggy, so the mass killing could only begin after some delay. It wasn’t until midday that the mist cleared, finally allowing the Protestant army of Sweden’s King Gustav II Adolf to attack the Roman Catholic Habsburg imperial army led by Albrecht von Wallenstein. The slaughter lasted for hours in the field at the Saxon town of Lützen.
“In this battle the only rule that applied was, ‘him or me,’” says Maik Reichel. “It was better to stab your opponent one extra time just to ensure there was no chance of him standing up again.” The historian und former German parliamentarian for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is standing at the edge of a field on the outskirts of Lützen. After the battles here, the ground was soaked with blood. “About 20,000 men fought on each side and between 6,000 and 9,000 were killed,” estimates Reichel, who heads the museum in the city castle.
When the soldiers in the religious war clashed on the outskirts of Lützen, the road from there to Leipzig was not yet called “B 87,” but “Via Regia.” The Red Cross nursing home and nearby supermarket that now stand on the battle site also didn’t exist back then. But the past is present here when one goes looking for it. So far archaeologists have examined about one- third of the former battlefield, in total 1.1 million square meters (11.8 million square feet). Theoretically, only another one-third could still be examined. The rest has been covered by the nursing home, supermarket and small garden allotments.
This is the story of a remarkable woman. German. Very highly qualified and amazingly talented. Perhaps one of the best directors and a wonderful photographer. But as the downside and the book, hitlers willing executioner and loads of other researchers have pointed out, the common German was as complicit in the holocaust as the nazis, the SS etc etc. As the article shows, she wriggled around trying to explain her actions.
This is why you have to be courageously strong in standing up for what's right and saying it so. Whether its due to religion or ideology or politics son, stand up for what's right. And most importantly be very suspicious of people promising the moon. Whether its hitler or a religious guru, prophet or pandit.
But learn to distinguish art or speech from the artist son. You can admire Wagner or Leni and their work without letting their association with nazism bother you. Will you hate the Pieta because it was made by Michelangelo as he was gay? No.
Love
Baba
![leni-riefenstahl[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmu1iWVDFczAnaBhSIzQtnxYJVYiiWtF9Cx4q184BdpIRcN9D3o2ItorYmYrX7GmKIxgbijZjv_4wnRFiyjzrc_LxCSkXm7nIfYvpz7lc-SobxwqL3VVMzWCeQgMJSw9d4arGRNyOubzc/s1600-h/leni-riefenstahl%25255B1%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg "leni-riefenstahl[1]")
![last_of_the_nuba2[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNg5YhEpuHJboqGKX1F4s8D6BThY9fOoqCu0PhnB2svA16pdYpqf9teEqUpY0zceubD15QobCxRTZbwfFuiF3NfrSL1aA0Ehp9gKiw4K-BbyBGU3pFx_ohKlsP6XSIk8xA79N9vjk0bh4/s1600-h/last_of_the_nuba2%25255B1%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg "last_of_the_nuba2[1]")
Leni Riefenstahl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (German: [ˈʁiːfənʃtaːl]; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, photographer, actress and dancer widely known for directing the Nazi Party propaganda film Triumph of the Will. Riefenstahl’s prominence in the Third Reich, along with her personal association with Adolf Hitler, destroyed her film career following Germany's defeat in World War II, after which she was arrested but released without any charges.[2]
Triumph of the Will gave Riefenstahl instant and lasting international fame, as well as infamy. She directed eight films, two of which received significant coverage outside Germany. The propaganda value of her films made during the 1930s repels most modern commentators, but many film histories cite the aesthetics as outstanding.[3][4][5][6] The Economist wrote that Triumph of the Will "sealed her reputation as the greatest female filmmaker of the 20th century".[7]
In the 1970s, Riefenstahl published her still photography of the Nuba tribes in Sudan in several books such as The Last of the Nuba. Active until her death at age 101, she published marine life stills and released the marine-based film Impressionen unter Wasserin 2002.
After her death, the Associated Press described Riefenstahl as an “acclaimed pioneer of film and photographic techniques”.[8] Der Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin noted, “Leni Riefenstahl conquered new ground in the cinema”.[9] The BBC said her documentaries “were hailed as groundbreaking film-making, pioneering techniques involving cranes, tracking rails, and many cameras working at the same time”.[10]
Another very interesting paper trying to explain the drop of the US savings rate. The savings rate dropped from 8.6% in 1980-90 to 5.5% 1990-2000. The reasons are multiple, such as technology improvements, labour productivity, medical care cost increases, asset appreciation, improved credit access, etc. etc.
The abstract
This paper investigates the effect of mortgage equity withdrawal on saving in the US over the period 1993–2011. A multivariate time series analysis based on a vector error correction model (VECM) is carried out. The saving rate, mortgage equity withdrawal, net wealth, interest rates and inflation are included in the empirical model. The results show that the equity withdrawal mechanism plays a relevant role in explaining the saving rate pattern.
People tend to think that the bankers are to blame for the crisis, yes, sir, but as I have already pointed out so many times, don't be a bloody economic illiterate and then blame the Jews for everything. That ship has sailed a long time back and all it does is to expose you as one of the Daily Mail readers. Just like we did pogroms way back and blamed the Jews for everything, blaming the bankers for everything just tells me that you are a doofus :P
Our economic conditions and civilisation is undergoing some serious changes but at the end of the day, one has to recall that basic economic laws are fairly constant. Don't spend more than you have, if you are going to take on debt, then you will have higher fixed costs, the business cycle cannot be wished away, etc. etc. So having more savings is good, very well. So like the paper shows, people shouldn't goose the mortgage market so much. Rental is a perfectly good alternative, see the situation in Germany for one example of a housing market which is not driven by home ownership lemming like behaviour.
Dear Son
The cruelty that we show fellow humans can sometimes be extraordinary. That's why ensure that religions and/or the state never gets too powerful. This is what and where people end up.
Dead and gassed and tortured and and and.
Real tragic and that's why the world decided, never again the holocaust. Didn't succeed that much. We had Bangladesh. We had Rwanda. We had Jordan. Etc etc. still we don't forget!
Love
Baba
The dwarves of Auschwitz | World news | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/23/the-dwarves-of-auschwitz
![The Ovitz family]()
The Ovitzs (from left): Elizabeth, Perla, Rozika, Frieda, Franziska and Avram
‘I was saved by the grace of the devil,” Holocaust survivor Perla Ovitz told us. Again and again, she recounted in detail how she and her family were taken to the gas chamber and ordered to strip naked. A heavy door opened and they were pushed inside. “It was almost dark and we stood in what looked like a large washing room, waiting for something to happen. We looked up to the ceiling to see why the water was not coming. Suddenly we smelled gas. We gasped heavily, some of us fainting on the floor. With our last breath we cried out. Minutes passed, or maybe just seconds, then we heard an angry voice from outside – ‘Where is my dwarf family?’ The door opened, and we saw Dr Mengele standing there. He ordered us to be carried out and had cold water poured on us to revive us.”
The Ovitz family, from the village of Rozavlea in Transylvania, was the largest recorded family of dwarves: a dwarf father who sired 10 children, seven of them dwarves. Perla, born in 1921, was the youngest. In that remote part of Romania in the early 20th century, it was difficult for anyone to eke a living from the land and livestock, and impossible for someone standing less than 3ft tall.
Their mother, anxious for her children’s future, guided them towards a common skill, a profession in which they could together make a living and would be neither isolated nor ostracised. As the five sisters and two brothers were all good-looking and musically gifted, the stage seemed the perfect choice: for where else could they be applauded, courted, honoured?
Firs the story
Just in time for Christmas, Germany's conservative Family Minister Kristina Schröder has sparked a contentious debate about the word most central to the Christian faith: God.
In an interview with the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in which she discussed gender roles in children's literature, Schröder also took on God's gender, and fellow members of her Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, are not impressed.
The German language has three definite articles for nouns to indicate their gender -- der (masculine), die (feminine) and das (neuter). The noun der Gott, or God, is masculine. But Schröder told Die Zeit that the article for God shouldn't matter. It could just as easily be the gender-neutral das Gott, she said, saying the article "doesn't mean anything."
Such a suggestion is an outrage, her colleagues say.
"This overly cerebral nonsense leaves me speechless," Bavarian Social Minister and CSU member Christine Haderthauer told the mass-circulation daily Bild on Friday. "I find it sad when our children, due to blatant insecurity and political correctness, have the strong images that are so important to their imaginations taken away."
Can god have a gender? Have X chromosomes, a penis? A desire for a female? If there can be a male god, where is the female god? Here’s an idea, convert to Hinduism, we have gods of all types, shapes, sizes, genders and and and..
Here’s some interesting statistics by Angela Merkel.
“If Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world’s population, produces around 25 per cent of global GDP and has to finance 50 per cent of global social spending, then it’s obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life,” Ms Merkel said in the interview.
“All of us have to stop spending more than we earn every year.”
Pretty much obvious, but when you consider the levels of government spending across Europe, its shocking. For that matter across the board in the OECD countries, the level of spending is shocking. You know what pissed me off? is that we are spending and asking our kids to pick up the tab. That’s not being very good to our kids now, is it? bah
I quote
Denmark's recently introduced tax on food and drinks is driving shoppers to neighbouring Germany at an unprecedented level, according to a survey by the Danish Grocers’ Trade Organisation (DSK).
The survey shows that 60% of Danish households have bought beer or soft drinks in Germany within the past year. Only four years ago, 60% of the households said in the same survey that they “never” traded at the German border.
A large amount of the beer, which is bought in Germany, actually comes from Denmark. Last year Danish breweries exported 1.2 billion units to the German border shops. In 2011, Danish families on average bought 420 units of beer or soda in the German border shops, and the number is rising.
“This [the rise in the border trade] is due to the tax increases on specific consumer goods which where introduced by the Danish government at the start of the year. This is what we see the effects of now,” Claus Bøgelund Nielsen, vice president at DSK, told EurActiv.
On 1 January, the Danish government introduced higher taxes on beer, wine, chocolate, candy, sodas, ice, cream, coffee, tea and light bulbs. The government also raised the tax on tobacco starting in April.
Pretty much I TOLD YOU SO.
This is what usually pisses me off. Its like the government and institutions tends to force you into boxes and anything outside the box will make you get into trouble. So many times I have personally faced this and have seen this with Kannu as well. I finished my research and the model worked brilliantly, wrote up the dissertation at Manchester in about 15 months and submitted the report which was 36 pages long. My professor was happy but the job worths said, no, it has to be 100k words long and you have to study for 3 years. Mumbled something about it cannot be a PhD if its less than 100k words and our funding stream will get screwed up if everybody started graduating early. Kannu’s education is another case in point, the public schooling system is simply unable to cater for people on either side of the probability distribution and he would get bored so many times. And so on and so forth.
Here’s another example: I quote:
A private German economics and business university is suing one of its students for lost income after he finished his Bachelors and Masters degrees in about a quarter of the normal time.
Marcel Pohl completed 60 examinations in 20 months, gaining a grade of 2.3, and was officially ex-matriculated in August 2011. Such a course usually takes 11 semesters, but he only needed three.
Now the Essen-based School of Economics and Management (FOM) want the 22-year-old to pay his fees up the end of 2011 - an extra €3,000.
"When I got the lawsuit, I thought it couldn't be true," Pohl, who now works for a bank in Frankfurt, told the Bild newspaper. "Performance is supposed to be worth something."
Pohl completed his turbo degree by dividing up all the simultaneous lectures with two friends and then swapping notes. At the same time, he completed an apprenticeship in a bank.
"We didn't get any freebies, and we agreed our plans in advance with the school," Pohl said.
"We're always against slow students," said his lawyer Bernhard Kraas. "But when someone hurries and finishes early, suddenly he has to pay. That can't be right."
But the FOM argues that its fees are the total price for the studies, independent of how long the studies last. But if that it is the case, it remains unclear why they are only calling for a part of the cost for 11 semesters.
Now I ask you, is this fair? From one perspective, I would have said ok, if you said that the degree is going to cost you say $100, irrespective of the length of time you take, then I am fine with you suing me. But guess what? you wont do that because if I take 10 years to do the degree, you will lose out, no? So there is an element of illogicality in this argument.
BAH!
I quote:
A German environmental agency will fly more than 350 tonnes of toxic waste from the Bhopal factory in India to Germany for disposal, it was announced on Friday.
I dont understand this, why is toxic waste being flown from India to Germany? What’s stopping India from generating its own expertise to learn how to dispose of it in India itself? And why the hell is Germany doing this in the first place? This doesnt make sense, why isnt this being done in Bhopal itself and give local employment and engagement? So weird.
Son
Here is an interesting story about a man who tried to kill Hitler and failed. Interesting indeed and read this about how one man's conviction can lead to heroic attempts.
Now here is the difficult question. Technically speaking, this chap was a terrorist at end of the day. Hitler was democratically if elected on a bit of a dodgy basis. When he started, he was no different to any other post war leader. Based upon that, there is no real reason to go kill him, specially when you compare him with the others from UK or Belgium or France (who collectively did much more damage and killings to their colonial subjects in Africa and Asia). So despite the fact that Hitler turned out to be a monster and killed/led to death millions of people, should he have been killed? Difficult question, and if the situation is here today, I wouldnt agree that you can kill any leader like this. Ratko Maladich is under trial in the Hague for what happened in Bosnia but that's the due process, an individual person cannot take responsibility to take another person's life. Same with the death of Osama, even though he was the head of a terrorist leader, you cannot go about killing people in an extra-judicial manner. Otherwise there is no difference between civilisation and barbarity.
But on the other hand, lone wolf terrorists like Georg are the most dangerous. See these links
For a view from USA: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/09/Biden-Bin-Laden-wanted-911-anniversary-attack-546598/1
For the French attack: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/23-03-2012/120873-lone_ranger-0/
For the British view: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16920643
so while we celebrate one terrorist who tried but failed to assassinate Hitler, there are lone ranger terrorists constantly roaming around trying to kill us.
Worth thinking about indeed.
Love
Baba
Georg Elser: The Man Who Almost Killed Hitler | Past Imperfect
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2011/08/one-man-against-tyranny/
August 18, 2011
One Man Against TyrannyGeorg Elser, whose attempt to kill Hitler came within moments of succeeding, commemorated on a stamp. The German phrase means “I wanted to prevent war.” Image: Wikicommons
Maria Strobel could not believe it of her Führer. Adolf Hitler and his party—a group of senior Nazis that included Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich—had spent more than an hour in her Munich bierkeller. Hitler had delivered a trademark speech, and, while they listened, Himmler and the others had run up a large beer bill. But the whole group had left in a hurry—leaving the tab unpaid and Strobel untippped.
Much annoyed, the Bavarian waitress set about clearing up the mess. She had made only a small dent in the pile of steins when, at 9:20 p.m. precisely, there was a huge explosion only a few feet behind her. A stone pillar disintegrated in the blast, bringing part of the ceiling crashing down in a rain of wood and masonry. The explosion hurled Strobel the length of the hall and out through the bierkeller’s doors. Though stunned, she survived—the person closest to the blast to do so. Eight others were not so fortunate, and a further 63 were so badly injured that they had to be helped out into the open air. As they staggered toward safety, the dais where Hitler had been standing eight minutes earlier lay crushed beneath six feet of heavy timber, bricks and rubble.
Hitler always said he had “the luck of the devil,” and during his years in power he survived more than 40 plots to kill him. The most famous of these culminated in July 1944, when Claus von Stauffenberg managed to place a bomb inside the conference room in Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. On that occasion, a table support absorbed most of the blast and the Führer survived to hobble out, his eardrums shattered and his trousers torn to ribbons.
Adolf Hitler
That attempt on Hitler’s life is famous—it was the basis for Valkyrie, the 2008 Tom Cruise film—but it can be argued that it was considerably less astounding, and less courageous, than the bierkeller bombing five years earlier. For one thing, Stauffenberg was well-equipped; he really should have done better with the resources at his disposal. For another, he and his fellow plotters were not convinced anti-Nazis; they may have had an aristocratic disdain for their plebian leader, but their primary reason for wanting Hitler dead was not horror at the barbarism of his regime, but simple conviction that he was leading Germany into the abyss.
The Munich bomb, on the other hand, exploded on November 8, 1939, at the height of the Führer’s popularity and less than three months after the outbreak of World War II—before the final order was given for the invasion of France, and when Russia remained a German ally and the United States remained at peace. Not only that; this bomb was the work of just one man, an unassuming carpenter who was far more principled than Stauffenberg and whose skill, patience and determination make him altogether much more interesting. Yet the Munich incident has been almost forgotten; as late as 1998 there was no memorial, in Germany or anywhere else, to the attempt or to the man who made it.
His name was Georg Elser, and this is his story.
Born in 1903, Elser was just below average height and just above average intelligence. He was not much of a thinker, but clever with his hands: an expert cabinetmaker who never read books, rarely touched newspapers and had little interest in politics. He had voted Communist, and briefly joined the Red Front Fighters’ League—streetfighters who took on their Nazi counterparts, the Brownshirts. But Elser was no Marxist, just a typical member of the German working class in the 1930s. He certainly wasn’t a brawler; for him, the attraction of the Fighters’ League was the chance to play in its brass band. In 1939, the only organization that he belonged to was the Woodworkers’ Union.
Beneath this unremarkable exterior, however, Elser did care—mostly about the way the Nazis and their policies were reducing ordinary Germans’ standard of living. The “economic miracle” that Hitler often boasted of had been achieved at considerable cost. Working hours were long and holidays few. Trade unions and political parties were dissolved or banned; wages were frozen. Meanwhile, members of the Nazi party enjoyed privileges not available to those who refused to join. Elser, who was noted as a perfectionist who took infinite care over his work, found it increasingly hard to make ends meet as real wages declined. Asked later to explain his decision to take on Hitler, he was blunt: “I considered that the situation in Germany could only be changed by the elimination of the current leadership.”
There were only a few signs that Elser might be prepared to take his opposition to Nazi regime beyond the crude jokes and grumbles that his handful of friends indulged in. He refused to listen to the Führer when he came on the radio; he would not give the Nazi salute. When a pro-Hitler parade passed though his home town of Königsbronn, in southwestern Germany, he ostentatiously turned his back on it and started whistling.
Yet Elser never confided to anyone that his views were hardening. He remained almost entirely solitary: unmarried and estranged from his father. And it was typical of the man that when, early in 1938, he finally concluded that something needed to be done about the Führer, he didn’t look for help.
It was then that Elser displayed his hidden qualities. Other anti-Nazis had wavered for years over where, when and how they might get close enough to Hitler to kill him. Elser took a purely practical approach. The Führer was renowned for his security consciousness; he tended to cancel arrangements or change plans abruptly. To have a chance of getting to him, Elser recognized, he needed to know that Hitler would be in a specific place at a particular time. And there was only one annual certainty in the Nazi leader’s program: each November, he traveled to Munich to speak at an elaborate commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch, the risible 1923 attempted coup that had set his party on the road to power. Surrounded by thousands of Old Fighters—Nazis whose party membership dated to 1922 or earlier—Hitler would swap stories and reminisce before delivering the sort of lengthy speech calculated to rouse his loyalists to a frenzy.
Hitler speaking to his Old Fighters in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich
So it was that in November 1938—10 months before the Germans invaded Poland—Elser took a train to Munich and scouted out the Nazis’ celebrations. He visited the beer hall where the putsch had started. Known as the Bürgerbräukeller in 1923 but as the Löwenbräu by 1939, it was a cavernous underground hall, capable of holding more than 3,000 revelers and selected by Hitler as the perfect site for a centerpiece speech. Elser attended the festivities, took note of the cellar’s layout, and was surprised to realize that security was lax. In a typical piece of Nazi fudge, two groups were at loggerheads over which was responsible for the Führer’s safety; Hitler opted for his National Socialist German Workers’ Party over the Munich police, which put Christian Weber in charge of security. But Weber, a fat and corrupt former nightclub bouncer, was not much minded to take the sort of strenuous precautions that might actually have safeguarded his leader. A convinced Nazi, it simply did not occur to him that others might hate Hitler enough to take drastic action of their own.
While Elser was in the bierkeller he noted the stone pillar just behind the speaker’s dais; it supported a substantial balcony along one wall. His rough calculations suggested that a large bomb placed within the pillar would bring down the balcony and bury both the Führer and a number of his chief supporters. The question was how to conceal a device sufficiently powerful to do the job within a piece of solid stonework.
Here again Elser proved to have precisely the qualities needed for the job. Knowing that he had a year to prepare, he went to work methodically, obtaining a low-paying job in an arms factory and taking whatever opportunities presented themselves to smuggle 110 pounds of high explosives out of the plant. A temporary job in a quarry supplied him with dynamite and a quantity of high-capacity detonators. In the evenings, he returned to his apartment and worked on designs for a sophisticated time bomb.
In April 1939, Elser returned to Munich to carry out a detailed reconnaissance. He made sketches of the beer cellar and took more precise measurements. He also visited the Swiss frontier to work out an escape route, finding a stretch of the border that was not patrolled.
That August, as Hitler stoked up tension with Poland and Europe slipped toward war, Elser moved to Munich and began the final preparations for planting his device. The work involved huge risks and revealed an imaginative side to the bomber’s personality that few who knew him realized he possessed. Taking advantage of the Löwenbräu’s lax security, Elser became a regular customer. Each evening he would take his dinner there, order a beer and wait until closing time. Then he would slip upstairs, hide in a storeroom and emerge after 11:30 to get down to the crucial job of hollowing the pillar.
The bierkeller, showing the extensive damage done by Elser’s bomb. Photo: Wikicommons
The work was astonishingly painstaking and slow. Working by flashlight, Elser first neatly cut a hole in some wood cladding; this job alone took him three nights. Next he attacked the pillar itself. The noise of a chisel striking stone echoed so loudly through the empty bierkeller that Elser restricted himself to single blows every few minutes, timing the descent of his hammer to coincide with the passing of a streetcar or the automatic flushing of the urinals. Every fleck of stone and piece of dust had to be swept up to leave no evidence of his work; then the panel he had cut out of the wood had to be seamlessly replaced before Elser made his escape through a side exit early the next morning. The carpenter returned to the bierkeller evening after evening, working on his plan for 35 nights in all. On one occasion he was nearly caught; a waiter found him inside the building as the place was opening and ran to tell the manager. Questioned, Elser insisted he was simply an early customer. He ordered a coffee, drank it in the garden and left unmolested.
It was typical of Elser that he labored to produce the most efficient bomb he could. By modifying a clock, he created a timer that would run for up to 144 hours before activating a lever; that would trigger a system of springs and weights that would launch a steel shuttle into a live rifle round embedded in explosive. Next, Elser added a second timer to act as a fail-safe, then enclosed the whole bomb in a beautifully built box designed to fit precisely into the cavity he had excavated. He minimized the risk of discovery by lining the cavity with cork, which muffled the noise from the bomb’s clock, and then placing a sheet of tinplate inside the wood panel to prevent any bierkeller worker putting up decorations from unknowingly driving a nail into his delicate mechanism. When he was finished, he returned to the bierkeller with the box he’d made and discovered that it was fractionally too big. He took it home, planed it down and went back again to make sure it fit.
Elser’s research had revealed that Hitler always began his speech in the Löwenbräu at about 8:30 p.m., spoke for about 90 minutes, then stayed to mingle with the crowd. On that basis, he set his bomb to explode at 9:20 p.m.—midway, he calculated, through Hitler’s customary tirade.
Finally, having planted the bomb three days before Hitler was due, sealed it in and removed the last traces of his work, Elser returned to Munich two nights later— just 24 hours before Hitler was due to speak. Then, at a time when it was entirely reasonable to suppose that even the inefficient Weber might have stepped up his security a little, he broke back into the bierkeller and pressed his ear against the pillar to check that his device was still ticking.
Had Elser paid closer attention to the newspapers, he might have felt that all his work had been wasted—shortly before Hitler was due to deliver his bierkeller speech, he canceled the arrangement, only to reinstate it the day before he was due to travel. But then, had Elser read the newspapers, he would also have realized that, as a concession to Hitler’s urgent need to be in Berlin, his speech had been rescheduled. It would now begin at 8 p.m. and last for little more than an hour.
In the event, Hitler stopped speaking at 9:07 p.m. precisely. He declined the efforts of the Old Fighters to have him stay for the usual drink, and at 9:12 hurried out of the Löwenbräu and back to the Munich railroad station. Eight minutes later—when Elser’s bomb exploded in a blinding flash, right on time—the Führer was boarding his train with all his retinue and most of the bierkeller crowd had left the building. It was not until the Berlin express halted briefly at Nuremburg that an incredulous Hitler learned how close he had come to death.
By 9:20 Elser, too, was far from the Löwenbräu. That morning he had taken a train for Konstanz, close to the Swiss border, and when darkness fell he set out to walk into Switzerland. But if Hitler’s luck held that night, his would-be assassin’s ran out. Elser’s April reconnaissance had taken place in peacetime; now, with Germany at war, the border had been closed. He was arrested by a patrol as he sought a way through wire entanglements. Told to turn out his pockets, he quickly found himself in trouble. Perhaps hoping to persuade the Swiss authorities of his anti-Nazi credentials, he was carrying with him sketches of his bomb design, a fuse, his Communist party membership card, and a picture postcard of the Löwenbräu—an incriminating collection of possessions at the best of times, and worse when, minutes later, an urgent telegram arrived with news from the bierkeller.
Elser was taken back to Munich for interrogation. Hitler himself took a close interest in the bomber, asking to see his file and commenting favorably on his “intelligent eyes, high forehead and determined expression.” But for Hitler, the sophistication of the plot was evidence that the British Secret Service was behind it. “What idiot conducted this investigation?” he demanded when told that Elser claimed to have worked alone.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler personally interrogated Elser. Photo: Wikicommons
The bomber was subjected to beatings, hypnosis and torture in an attempt to get at Hitler’s truth; he stuck to his story, and even reproduced a version of his bomb to show the Gestapo he had built it. Eventually, the historian Roger Moorhouse relates, Himmler himself arrived in Munich to continue the interrogation:
“With wild curses, [he] drove his boots hard into the body of the handcuffed Elser. He then had him … taken to a lavatory … where he was beaten with a whip or some similar instrument until he howled with pain. He was then brought back at the double to Himmler, who once more kicked and cursed him.”
Through all this, the carpenter stuck to his story, and eventually the Gestapo gave up and packed him off to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp. Strange to say, Elser was not executed or even badly treated there; although held in solitary confinement, he was allowed a bench and his tools, and kept alive until the last month of the war. It is generally supposed that Hitler wanted him alive to star in a war crimes trial in which he would have implicated the British in the Munich plot.
There are those who say that the Nazis were too efficient to allow a lone bomber to hurt them in this way, and that the whole affair had been stage-managed to provide Hitler with an excuse to clamp down further on the left. Martin Niemöller, a Protestant pastor held at the same camp as Elser, would later testify that he had heard this story on the prisoners’ grapevine; Elser himself is supposed to have confessed to it. But now that we have the transcripts of the interrogation, and better understand the inefficient and chaotic way that Hitler ran the Nazi state, this theory no longer rings true. The Nazis, in wartime, needed no reason or excuse to stamp out resistance. Today, historians accept that the attempt on the Führer’s life was serious, and that Elser acted alone.
There remains the vexing question of how, or whether, Elser’s life should be celebrated. Can an act of terrorism ever be justified, even when its purpose is to kill a murderous dictator? Might the innocent lives the bomber took in the Löwenbräu have been balanced by those that could have been saved had Hitler died before the war was fully underway?
Himmler, for one, had no desire to wait for those questions to be answered. In April 1945, as the Americans, British and Russians closed in, he had Elser taken from his cell and shot. A week later, the death was reported in the German press, blamed on an Allied air raid.
In the frantic last days of the Thousand Year Reich, few would have noticed the announcement. And six years and more than 60 million deaths later, fewer still would have recalled the name of Georg Elser.
Sources
Michael Balfour. Withstanding Hitler in Germany 1933-45. London: Routledge, 1988; Martyn Housden. Resistance and Conformity in the Third Reich. London: Routledge, 1997; Ian Kershaw. Hitler: Nemesis, 1936-1945. London: Penguin, 2000; Roger Moorhouse. Killing Hitler: The Third Reich and the Plots Against the Führer. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006.
August 18, 2011
One Man Against Tyranny
Georg Elser, whose attempt to kill Hitler came within moments of succeeding, commemorated on a stamp. The German phrase means "I wanted to prevent war." Image: Wikicommons
Maria Strobel could not believe it of her Führer. Adolf Hitler and his party—a group of senior Nazis that included Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich—had spent more than an hour in her Munich bierkeller. Hitler had delivered a trademark speech, and, while they listened, Himmler and the others had run up a large beer bill. But the whole group had left in a hurry—leaving the tab unpaid and Strobel untippped.
Much annoyed, the Bavarian waitress set about clearing up the mess. She had made only a small dent in the pile of steins when, at 9:20 p.m. precisely, there was a huge explosion only a few feet behind her. A stone pillar disintegrated in the blast, bringing part of the ceiling crashing down in a rain of wood and masonry. The explosion hurled Strobel the length of the hall and out through the bierkeller’s doors. Though stunned, she survived—the person closest to the blast to do so. Eight others were not so fortunate, and a further 63 were so badly injured that they had to be helped out into the open air. As they staggered toward safety, the dais where Hitler had been standing eight minutes earlier lay crushed beneath six feet of heavy timber, bricks and rubble.
Hitler always said he had “the luck of the devil,” and during his years in power he survived more than 40 plots to kill him. The most famous of these culminated in July 1944, when Claus von Stauffenberg managed to place a bomb inside the conference room in Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. On that occasion, a table support absorbed most of the blast and the Führer survived to hobble out, his eardrums shattered and his trousers torn to ribbons.
Adolf Hitler
That attempt on Hitler’s life is famous—it was the basis for Valkyrie, the 2008 Tom Cruise film—but it can be argued that it was considerably less astounding, and less courageous, than the bierkeller bombing five years earlier. For one thing, Stauffenberg was well-equipped; he really should have done better with the resources at his disposal. For another, he and his fellow plotters were not convinced anti-Nazis; they may have had an aristocratic disdain for their plebian leader, but their primary reason for wanting Hitler dead was not horror at the barbarism of his regime, but simple conviction that he was leading Germany into the abyss.
The Munich bomb, on the other hand, exploded on November 8, 1939, at the height of the Führer’s popularity and less than three months after the outbreak of World War II—before the final order was given for the invasion of France, and when Russia remained a German ally and the United States remained at peace. Not only that; this bomb was the work of just one man, an unassuming carpenter who was far more principled than Stauffenberg and whose skill, patience and determination make him altogether much more interesting. Yet the Munich incident has been almost forgotten; as late as 1998 there was no memorial, in Germany or anywhere else, to the attempt or to the man who made it.
His name was Georg Elser, and this is his story.
Born in 1903, Elser was just below average height and just above average intelligence. He was not much of a thinker, but clever with his hands: an expert cabinetmaker who never read books, rarely touched newspapers and had little interest in politics. He had voted Communist, and briefly joined the Red Front Fighters’ League—streetfighters who took on their Nazi counterparts, the Brownshirts. But Elser was no Marxist, just a typical member of the German working class in the 1930s. He certainly wasn’t a brawler; for him, the attraction of the Fighters’ League was the chance to play in its brass band. In 1939, the only organization that he belonged to was the Woodworkers’ Union.
Beneath this unremarkable exterior, however, Elser did care—mostly about the way the Nazis and their policies were reducing ordinary Germans’ standard of living. The “economic miracle” that Hitler often boasted of had been achieved at considerable cost. Working hours were long and holidays few. Trade unions and political parties were dissolved or banned; wages were frozen. Meanwhile, members of the Nazi party enjoyed privileges not available to those who refused to join. Elser, who was noted as a perfectionist who took infinite care over his work, found it increasingly hard to make ends meet as real wages declined. Asked later to explain his decision to take on Hitler, he was blunt: “I considered that the situation in Germany could only be changed by the elimination of the current leadership.”
There were only a few signs that Elser might be prepared to take his opposition to Nazi regime beyond the crude jokes and grumbles that his handful of friends indulged in. He refused to listen to the Führer when he came on the radio; he would not give the Nazi salute. When a pro-Hitler parade passed though his home town of Königsbronn, in southwestern Germany, he ostentatiously turned his back on it and started whistling.
Yet Elser never confided to anyone that his views were hardening. He remained almost entirely solitary: unmarried and estranged from his father. And it was typical of the man that when, early in 1938, he finally concluded that something needed to be done about the Führer, he didn’t look for help.
It was then that Elser displayed his hidden qualities. Other anti-Nazis had wavered for years over where, when and how they might get close enough to Hitler to kill him. Elser took a purely practical approach. The Führer was renowned for his security consciousness; he tended to cancel arrangements or change plans abruptly. To have a chance of getting to him, Elser recognized, he needed to know that Hitler would be in a specific place at a particular time. And there was only one annual certainty in the Nazi leader’s program: each November, he traveled to Munich to speak at an elaborate commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch, the risible 1923 attempted coup that had set his party on the road to power. Surrounded by thousands of Old Fighters—Nazis whose party membership dated to 1922 or earlier—Hitler would swap stories and reminisce before delivering the sort of lengthy speech calculated to rouse his loyalists to a frenzy.
Hitler speaking to his Old Fighters in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich
So it was that in November 1938—10 months before the Germans invaded Poland—Elser took a train to Munich and scouted out the Nazis’ celebrations. He visited the beer hall where the putsch had started. Known as the Bürgerbräukeller in 1923 but as the Löwenbräu by 1939, it was a cavernous underground hall, capable of holding more than 3,000 revelers and selected by Hitler as the perfect site for a centerpiece speech. Elser attended the festivities, took note of the cellar’s layout, and was surprised to realize that security was lax. In a typical piece of Nazi fudge, two groups were at loggerheads over which was responsible for the Führer’s safety; Hitler opted for his National Socialist German Workers’ Party over the Munich police, which put Christian Weber in charge of security. But Weber, a fat and corrupt former nightclub bouncer, was not much minded to take the sort of strenuous precautions that might actually have safeguarded his leader. A convinced Nazi, it simply did not occur to him that others might hate Hitler enough to take drastic action of their own.
While Elser was in the bierkeller he noted the stone pillar just behind the speaker’s dais; it supported a substantial balcony along one wall. His rough calculations suggested that a large bomb placed within the pillar would bring down the balcony and bury both the Führer and a number of his chief supporters. The question was how to conceal a device sufficiently powerful to do the job within a piece of solid stonework.
Here again Elser proved to have precisely the qualities needed for the job. Knowing that he had a year to prepare, he went to work methodically, obtaining a low-paying job in an arms factory and taking whatever opportunities presented themselves to smuggle 110 pounds of high explosives out of the plant. A temporary job in a quarry supplied him with dynamite and a quantity of high-capacity detonators. In the evenings, he returned to his apartment and worked on designs for a sophisticated time bomb.
In April 1939, Elser returned to Munich to carry out a detailed reconnaissance. He made sketches of the beer cellar and took more precise measurements. He also visited the Swiss frontier to work out an escape route, finding a stretch of the border that was not patrolled.
That August, as Hitler stoked up tension with Poland and Europe slipped toward war, Elser moved to Munich and began the final preparations for planting his device. The work involved huge risks and revealed an imaginative side to the bomber’s personality that few who knew him realized he possessed. Taking advantage of the Löwenbräu’s lax security, Elser became a regular customer. Each evening he would take his dinner there, order a beer and wait until closing time. Then he would slip upstairs, hide in a storeroom and emerge after 11:30 to get down to the crucial job of hollowing the pillar.
The bierkeller, showing the extensive damage done by Elser's bomb. Photo: Wikicommons
The work was astonishingly painstaking and slow. Working by flashlight, Elser first neatly cut a hole in some wood cladding; this job alone took him three nights. Next he attacked the pillar itself. The noise of a chisel striking stone echoed so loudly through the empty bierkeller that Elser restricted himself to single blows every few minutes, timing the descent of his hammer to coincide with the passing of a streetcar or the automatic flushing of the urinals. Every fleck of stone and piece of dust had to be swept up to leave no evidence of his work; then the panel he had cut out of the wood had to be seamlessly replaced before Elser made his escape through a side exit early the next morning. The carpenter returned to the bierkeller evening after evening, working on his plan for 35 nights in all. On one occasion he was nearly caught; a waiter found him inside the building as the place was opening and ran to tell the manager. Questioned, Elser insisted he was simply an early customer. He ordered a coffee, drank it in the garden and left unmolested.
It was typical of Elser that he labored to produce the most efficient bomb he could. By modifying a clock, he created a timer that would run for up to 144 hours before activating a lever; that would trigger a system of springs and weights that would launch a steel shuttle into a live rifle round embedded in explosive. Next, Elser added a second timer to act as a fail-safe, then enclosed the whole bomb in a beautifully built box designed to fit precisely into the cavity he had excavated. He minimized the risk of discovery by lining the cavity with cork, which muffled the noise from the bomb’s clock, and then placing a sheet of tinplate inside the wood panel to prevent any bierkeller worker putting up decorations from unknowingly driving a nail into his delicate mechanism. When he was finished, he returned to the bierkeller with the box he’d made and discovered that it was fractionally too big. He took it home, planed it down and went back again to make sure it fit.
Elser’s research had revealed that Hitler always began his speech in the Löwenbräu at about 8:30 p.m., spoke for about 90 minutes, then stayed to mingle with the crowd. On that basis, he set his bomb to explode at 9:20 p.m.—midway, he calculated, through Hitler’s customary tirade.
Finally, having planted the bomb three days before Hitler was due, sealed it in and removed the last traces of his work, Elser returned to Munich two nights later— just 24 hours before Hitler was due to speak. Then, at a time when it was entirely reasonable to suppose that even the inefficient Weber might have stepped up his security a little, he broke back into the bierkeller and pressed his ear against the pillar to check that his device was still ticking.
Had Elser paid closer attention to the newspapers, he might have felt that all his work had been wasted—shortly before Hitler was due to deliver his bierkeller speech, he canceled the arrangement, only to reinstate it the day before he was due to travel. But then, had Elser read the newspapers, he would also have realized that, as a concession to Hitler’s urgent need to be in Berlin, his speech had been rescheduled. It would now begin at 8 p.m. and last for little more than an hour.
In the event, Hitler stopped speaking at 9:07 p.m. precisely. He declined the efforts of the Old Fighters to have him stay for the usual drink, and at 9:12 hurried out of the Löwenbräu and back to the Munich railroad station. Eight minutes later—when Elser’s bomb exploded in a blinding flash, right on time—the Führer was boarding his train with all his retinue and most of the bierkeller crowd had left the building. It was not until the Berlin express halted briefly at Nuremburg that an incredulous Hitler learned how close he had come to death.
By 9:20 Elser, too, was far from the Löwenbräu. That morning he had taken a train for Konstanz, close to the Swiss border, and when darkness fell he set out to walk into Switzerland. But if Hitler’s luck held that night, his would-be assassin’s ran out. Elser’s April reconnaissance had taken place in peacetime; now, with Germany at war, the border had been closed. He was arrested by a patrol as he sought a way through wire entanglements. Told to turn out his pockets, he quickly found himself in trouble. Perhaps hoping to persuade the Swiss authorities of his anti-Nazi credentials, he was carrying with him sketches of his bomb design, a fuse, his Communist party membership card, and a picture postcard of the Löwenbräu—an incriminating collection of possessions at the best of times, and worse when, minutes later, an urgent telegram arrived with news from the bierkeller.
Elser was taken back to Munich for interrogation. Hitler himself took a close interest in the bomber, asking to see his file and commenting favorably on his “intelligent eyes, high forehead and determined expression.” But for Hitler, the sophistication of the plot was evidence that the British Secret Service was behind it. “What idiot conducted this investigation?” he demanded when told that Elser claimed to have worked alone.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler personally interrogated Elser. Photo: Wikicommons
The bomber was subjected to beatings, hypnosis and torture in an attempt to get at Hitler’s truth; he stuck to his story, and even reproduced a version of his bomb to show the Gestapo he had built it. Eventually, the historian Roger Moorhouse relates, Himmler himself arrived in Munich to continue the interrogation:
“With wild curses, [he] drove his boots hard into the body of the handcuffed Elser. He then had him … taken to a lavatory … where he was beaten with a whip or some similar instrument until he howled with pain. He was then brought back at the double to Himmler, who once more kicked and cursed him.”
Through all this, the carpenter stuck to his story, and eventually the Gestapo gave up and packed him off to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp. Strange to say, Elser was not executed or even badly treated there; although held in solitary confinement, he was allowed a bench and his tools, and kept alive until the last month of the war. It is generally supposed that Hitler wanted him alive to star in a war crimes trial in which he would have implicated the British in the Munich plot.
There are those who say that the Nazis were too efficient to allow a lone bomber to hurt them in this way, and that the whole affair had been stage-managed to provide Hitler with an excuse to clamp down further on the left. Martin Niemöller, a Protestant pastor held at the same camp as Elser, would later testify that he had heard this story on the prisoners’ grapevine; Elser himself is supposed to have confessed to it. But now that we have the transcripts of the interrogation, and better understand the inefficient and chaotic way that Hitler ran the Nazi state, this theory no longer rings true. The Nazis, in wartime, needed no reason or excuse to stamp out resistance. Today, historians accept that the attempt on the Führer’s life was serious, and that Elser acted alone.
There remains the vexing question of how, or whether, Elser’s life should be celebrated. Can an act of terrorism ever be justified, even when its purpose is to kill a murderous dictator? Might the innocent lives the bomber took in the Löwenbräu have been balanced by those that could have been saved had Hitler died before the war was fully underway?
Himmler, for one, had no desire to wait for those questions to be answered. In April 1945, as the Americans, British and Russians closed in, he had Elser taken from his cell and shot. A week later, the death was reported in the German press, blamed on an Allied air raid.
In the frantic last days of the Thousand Year Reich, few would have noticed the announcement. And six years and more than 60 million deaths later, fewer still would have recalled the name of Georg Elser.
