Band of Brothers: Episode 9, Why We Fight

NOTE: "Band of Brothers" is a highly realistic World War Two miniseries from HBO in 2001. Part of the "realism" is the profanity used; so, if you are sensitive to such language, the miniseries is definitely not for you. Also, there are numerous highly bloody scenes of killed or wounded soldiers, and scenes of people in a concentration camp, who have been the subject of horrendous treatment. So here too, if you are sensitive to these kinds of scenes, it is probably a good thing if you skip viewing the miniseries. As for this article and those I'll be doing about the miniseries, I have tried to keep things from being too blatant.

This very realistic HBO series is based on the book "Band of Brothers" by historian Stephen Ambrose. Remember, this is NOT a documentary nor an actual reenactment, but rather a series with characters representing the actual men, with their real names, of East Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The series does present events and actions that the men of Easy Company related to Stephen Ambrose, the historian who wrote the book. In the book's "Acknowledgements and Sources," Ambrose writes that he "circulated the manuscript of this book to the men of Easy Company." He goes on to say there were criticisms, corrections and suggestions offered by the men, and that Richard Winters and Carwood Lipton were heavily involved in reviewing the book, the original publication of which was in 1992, while the first airing of the miniseries was in 2001.

As I write about this series, I'll likely use a man's army rank on occasion, but for the most part, I'll use last names, just as the men do. The cast of this series is so large, I decided not to list it, as it would have been overwhelming, although I did decide to list just a few names of the cast who portrayed the men most seen, most heard and most heard about in the stories presented in this series. Believe me, the whole cast is likely 8 or 10 times as large as those I list here, and everyone did a great job.

 

Partial Cast

 

Damian Lewis as Lieutenant, then Captain, then Major Richard Winters

Ron Livingston as Lieutenant, then Captain Lewis Nixon

Scott Grimes as Private, then Sergeant Donald Malarkey 

Shane Taylor as Medic Eugene "Doc" Roe

Donnie Wahlberg as Sergeant Carwood Lipton 

Michael Cudlitz as Sergeant Denver "Bull" Randleman

Frank John Hughes as Sergeant Bill "Wild Bill" Guarnere

Rick Gomez as Technician 4th Grade George Luz

Kirk Acevedo as Staff Sergeant Joe Toye

James Madio as Technician 4th Grade Frank Perconte

Eion Bailey as Private David Kenyon Webster

Dexter Fletcher as Sergeant John Martin

Ross McCall as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Liebgott

Neal McDonough as Lieutenant Lynn "Buck" Compton

Nicholas Aaron as Private Robert "Popeye" Wynn 

David Schwimmer as Lieutenant, then Captain Herbert Sobel 

 

Here is the link to the previous article as Episode 8: The Last Patrol

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/09/band-of-brothers-episode-8-last-patrol.html?m=1

 

This episode takes place in the waning days of World War II, from the latter part of March, through April and up to about May 1 or 2, 1945. We see some German musicians on the street playing Beethoven's solemn "String Quartet No. 14 in C Sharp Minor (Op. 131)." The town has been heavily damaged in the war, and German civilians are clearing debris and trying to put things back in order, a characteristic Germans are known for, but there can be a dark side to that characteristic, too. So, we have German work ethic and desire to bring order to their damaged city; and this, set to the music of one of the greatest composers in history, who was a German; but, why do Germans keeping fighting for Hitler, in a war that has long ago been lost? Some of Easy Company's men are beginning to wonder why they are still in Europe, away from their families, and still at war.

 

We see some events during the first part of the episode that will be contrasted to the second part of the episode (these aren't necessarily in the proper chronology). George Luz and Frank Perconte are searching for eggs in the hen house of a German farm. A woman comes in and Luz tries his luck at "showing her how friendly Americans can be," but she slaps him across the face. We also see Captain Speirs take a couple of silver trays and silver candle holders to the Army Post Office, where Private Vest takes care of the regiment's mail. Speirs gives Vest a couple of packs of cigarettes to take care of sending these "souvenirs" to the Captain's family in the United States. Speirs tells Vest, "Finders keepers." We see the alcohol dependent Captain Nixon out late at night looking for Scotch in a heavy rain, but he's oblivious to the weather, as he breaks the front window of a German shop selling liquor. The owner lives up over the shop and he shouts out the window at Nixon, but to no avail. Nixon doesn't find a liquor to his liking.

 

This episode focuses on Major Winters' close friend, Captain Lewis Nixon, who is also known as "Lew" and "Nix." We soon see Nixon looking very serious after he gets out of a jeep, and when he goes to his quarters, he takes a couple of drinks of whiskey, and then, Winters comes in. We now learn that Nixon was involved in a parachute jump with some men of the U.S. 17th Airborne Division, but that the plane he was on was hit by German anti-aircraft fire, and only Nixon and two others survived (one book on the subject says Nixon and three others survived). The commanding officer of those who died also perished, so Nixon has been ordered to write to the parents of the young men killed on the plane, and it's not a job he's looking forward to doing. (Note: The 17th Airborne Division was involved in a large scale paratroop drop in the latter part of March, 1945 called Operation Varsity. The drop has been controversial since it took place, because it risked the lives of so many personnel, American, British and Canadian, when ground operations were making significant progress, with "seemingly" fewer casualties.) Nixon talks with Winters about what he should say to the parents, and we see how Nixon's feelings have turned downward, as when Winters says to tell the parents that their sons died as heroes, Nixon asks if Winters still believes that (for the record, Winters says he does). Nixon has to look around his quarters to find a bottle that still has whiskey in it, but most are empty. Winters tells Nixon that Colonel Sink has demoted Nixon from serving with the regimental staff (apparently because of Nixon's heavy drinking). Nixon will again serve in the 2nd Battalion staff. When Winters asks Nixon if he heard him say that he's being demoted, Nixon casually replies, "Yeah, demoted, gotcha." The troubled Nixon then goes back to talking about the men killed earlier that day. It takes us back to the D-Day episode, where the jittery Private Hall has his fears calmed by Winters, which brings out the courage in Hall (whose real name was "Halls"), who helps to destroy the German artillery battery, but who loses his life doing so. Winters sees Hall's body and kneels for a moment, but then he must continue the fight. At the end of the day, the situation is reversed from this current episode, as then it's Nixon asking Winters what's bothering him, and Winters tells him about Hall being killed that day. Nixon tries to divert his friend's thoughts, but after a tough day of fighting and killing, Winters takes some more time to be human.

Frank Perconte and recent replacement Private Patrick O'Keefe (played by Matt Hickey) walk along to their shift for outpost duty. O'Keefe asks when Perconte thinks they'll "be jumping into Berlin and see some real action," which brings a swift and tough reply by Perconte about O'Keefe being a replacement. The two men relieve Hashey (played by Mark Huberman) and Garcia (played by Douglas Spain), but O'Keefe stays busy and checks the post machine gun, while humming a happy song, much to the annoyance of Perconte, who is trying to read a book, and who is still rankled by O'Keefe's desire to see action. Twice Perconte tells "O'Brien" (he gets his name wrong, with O'Keefe correcting him) to relax, but now Perconte really turns it on. He tells O'Keefe that he's like all of the replacements, desiring action and chomping at the bit to fight Germans, but that within a few days, they're lying there bleeding and with their guts hanging out, "screaming for a medic and begging for their godd---ed mothers." He continues that this is the best part of the war for him, because he's got "hot chow, hot showers, a warm bed ... I even got to wipe my a-- with real toilet paper today." Perconte finishes by telling the young man, who just left the U.S. two weeks before, "It's been two years since I seen home... This f---in' war!" 

The scene shifts to Winters and Speirs discussing plans in front of a wall map. Nixon steps into the room and says, "The president is dead." (Note: President Franklin Roosevelt died on the afternoon of April 12, 1945, from a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia. Because of time difference, it was nighttime in Germany.)

Nixon is still on a quest for Vat 69 whiskey, and he goes to Private Vest (played by Kiernan O'Brien), who takes care of the mail, but who is also something of a contact for other favors. Vest tells Nixon that now that they are in Germany, that brand of scotch whiskey will be hard to find, and that it will be very expensive if it is found. Nixon comes from a wealthy family, and he tells Vest to try to get him the whiskey, regardless of the cost. Vest gives Nixon a letter that has come for him, and Private Janovec (played by Tom Hardy) comes in and tells them that 300,000 Germans just surrendered, and that the unit is "moving out in one hour." (Note: The Germans who surrendered had been encircled in the German industrial area called "the Ruhr.") When Nixon reads his mail, he finds out that his wife is divorcing him and that "she's taking everything. She's taking the house, the kid, the dog ... It's not even her dog, it's MY DOG," he shouts as he throws his helmet. And no scotch to help him drown his sorrows (and anger). (In an earlier episode, Nixon talks about finding a "certain young lady," where they were stationed in England. He had been seeing her at that time, and I believe his wife may have gotten word of it. Understand, this information is not in the miniseries.)

The men get into trucks and DUKWs, commonly called "ducks," which were combined land and amphibious vehicles, that looked a good bit like landing craft. They are heading into Bavaria, in southern Germany, and as Webster says, "the birthplace of National Socialism" (Nazism). Captain Speirs tells them the Allied commanders feel the Nazis will try to form a resistance movement from Waffen SS troops in the mountains of Bavaria and Austria (the Alps). Perconte tells O'Keefe, "It looks like your gonna get your wish, O'Flannery (getting his name wrong again), those (Waffen SS) guys, they're f---in' crazy." O'Keefe simply replies, "It's O'Keefe." As the column moves along, the men sing the famous paratrooper song "Blood on the Risers" (also known as "Gory, Gory, What a Helluva Way to Die," as it is set to the music of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"). The men stop and takeover a German family's home for the night, before moving on again ("presumably" they took over other homes as accommodations for all the men.) Surrendered German troops are seen all along the highway (Autobahn), and Webster yells out to them, "You stupid fascist pigs... You ignorant, servile scum! What the f--- are we doing here?" A few seconds earlier, he told the other guys in the truck, "Dragging our a--es halfway around the world. Interrupting our lives. FOR WHAT?" As the column moves on, the men see two French soldiers bring three German soldiers out of a building, put them on their knees and shoot them in the back of their heads. O'Keefe is stunned and he turns to Perconte, who shrugs his shoulders.

The company comes upon a Nazi concentration camp near Landsberg am Lech in southern Bavaria, located about 40 miles west of Munich.(Note: The 101st Airborne Division did not actually discover the concentration camp, as is shown in the series, but rather the men of the 101st entered the camp the next day, after its discovery by the U.S. 10th Armored Division.) Landsberg is the city where Adolf Hitler served part of his sentence for the "Beer Hall Putsch" in the 1920s, and it was during that time that Hitler wrote his book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle). If you've never seen "Band of Brothers," or at least this episode, it is something I hope you will see, because no written account can describe the horrendous conditions in the camp; you need to see it for yourselves. (Note: This was a subcamp of  the infamous Dachau concentration camp, not far from Munich. It was termed "Kaufering IV," as there were other subcamps of Dachau.) Major Winters has the men open the camp gate, and he and the men enter as prisoners come to even just touch the American troops. Liebgott translates for Winters, Nixon, Spiers and some of the men, as he talks with one of the inmates, who tells him that the guards fled in the morning, but that they first shot as many of the prisoners as they could, and that they also set fire to some of the barracks, with live prisoners still in them. The camp is full of Jews, their only "crime" being their ethnicity in Nazi eyes. He tells them there is a women's camp at the next train station. Many of the stunned paratroopers hold handkerchiefs over their noses to try to keep out the stench. Some of the guys enter the living areas and they find them packed with sick, starving men, too weak to stand up. (Earlier, in Landsberg itself, Nixon enters a house looking for whiskey, and he finds liquor, but not a type he wants. He sees a picture of an older German officer and he picks it up, looks at it and tosses it to the floor, breaking the glass. He also sees a picture of the officer's wife, who enters the room without a word, folds her arms and glares at Nixon, who looks at her, lays the picture down and walks to the door and leaves.)

Winters orders Nixon and Spiers to get food and water from the town to help the desperate camp inmates. They get cheese from one business and bread from a bake shop, the owner of which rants against the men (the baker is played by Hans-Georg Nenning). Webster tells the guy to shut up a couple of times, but when he continues yelling, Webster takes out his pistol, grabs the owner by the collar and shoves him onto a table; then, he puts the pistol right to the man's head and says, "Shut up you Nazi f--k!" The man says he's not a Nazi, which then brings Webster to say, "You fat f--king pr--k! ... How about a human being, are you one of those, or are you going to tell me you never smelled the f---ing stench?" Anyway, the men go back to the camp and start distributing the food and water. 

After a while Colonel Sink, the regimental commander, comes in and he has the regimental doctor (played by Corey Johnson) with him, who tells them that they have to stop giving the prisoners food, because it could actually kill them, and that the prisoners will have to be kept in the camp until proper accommodations can be found, where food and water can be given to them under medical supervision. The men are shocked to hear that they will have to lock the inmates up again, and translator Liebgott says "I can't tell them that, sir," but Winters tells him, "You have to, Joe." Liebgott tells the inmates in German that they have to remain in the camp for a short time. Later, back in Landsberg, Winters tells Nixon that 101st divisional headquarters passed along information that Allied troops have been discovering concentration camps all over the place, and that the Russians had found one ten times bigger than the one outside Landsberg, and that it had execution chambers and ovens to cremate the bodies. (Note: This is an obvious reference to the most infamous of all camps, Auschwitz.) THIS IS WHY WE FIGHT! It is bigger than any one person, or any group of people. HUMANITY. General Maxwell Taylor, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, orders the citizens of Landsberg to bury the dead at the camp the next day. We see German civilians dragging bodies and shoveling dirt. Nixon spots the woman who glared at him earlier at her house, but now he glares at her, until see looks away.

The scene returns to where the episode began, with the musicians nearing the end of Beethoven's song. Nixon tells some of the men that Hitler's dead, and Randleman asks, "Is the war over, sir?" Nixon says "No," and he tells them they are moving out in one hour, destination ... Berchtesgaden. (For those unaware, Berchtesgaden was where Hitler's villa in the Alps was located, with Salzburg only about 25 miles away.)

Photo is of the HBO 2015 Blu-Ray Miniseries release ...

WORD HISTORY:

Nasty-This word has an uncertain history; thus, relatives are lacking. One thing is certain; that is, "nasty" did not come from political cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1800s, as "nasty" had been around well before Nast was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States with his family as a child; however, his later political views were often expressed in harsh cartoons, especially about Catholics and Irish immigrants. For critics, this made his family name fit in perfectly with "nasty" (Note: He was originally Catholic himself, having been baptized as such upon his birth in Germany, but he converted to Protestantism when in his early 20s in the United States). His connection with "nasty" undoubtedly made the word more common in the U.S. So, why do we have the word at all? Well, there are theories, but no conclusive proof. As far as I could find, the word appears in the late 1300s with the meaning "dirty, foul," and with spellings like "naxty," "nasky," "nasti" and "nasty." Some believe English borrowed the word from one of the North Germanic languages, as Swedish has "naskig" (meaning "nasty, messy") and Danish has "nasket" (dirty, filthy), and also possible is Dutch (which is, like English, West Germanic) "nestich," which became "nestig" (dirty, from the underlying meaning, "dirty as a bird's nest"), and there is always the possibility that it's from an Old English form, which was then reinforced by Old Norse. Whatever the case, the 1600s saw the "dirty" meaning expanded to morality; thus, "obscene." The meaning expanded further to include "mean, bad tempered, annoying, unpleasant."

Heinrich Heine Warned The World

Heinrich Heine was one of Germany's great poets and writers. In the early 1820s Heine wrote a play, "Almansor," and that play contains the line, "Where one burns books, in the end, one will also burn people" (German: ,,Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen"). Of course, this was long before the Nazi nutcase Hitler, or his propaganda henchman Joseph Goebbels, or the other Nazi nutcases, or those who became complicit in the terrible crimes against humanity by offering support or silence to the hatred and viciousness, even though they certainly knew better. 

 

Heine's works, as well as the works of many others, like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Hermann Hesse, Victor Hugo, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and many others were burned on the Berlin Opernplatz in 1933 (Opernplatz=Plaza/Square of the Opera; in reference to, the State Opera located there, which was renamed "Bebelplatz" after World War Two). Heinrich Heine was a German Jew who later converted to Christianity (Lutheranism). 

 

Public domain photo of a portrait of Heinrich Heine from Wikipedia (original portrait by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim of Germany)

WORD HISTORY: 

Nascent-This word is related to "gene," a word of Greek derivation borrowed by English via German, to "general," a Latin-derived word borrowed by English from Latin-based Old French, but with some Latin influence and reinforcement (initially borrowed in its adjectival form, then later, also borrowed from French in its noun form for a high ranking military officer), and to "nation," another Latin-derived word borrowed into English from French, and it is distantly related to "kin" and to "kind" (noun and adjective), from the Germanic roots of English. "Nascent" goes back to the Indo European root "gen(e)," which meant "to produce, to give birth, to conceive, to beget, to have offspring." This gave its Old Italic offspring "gnascor/gnaskor," meaning "to be born,"^ which then produced the altered infinitive form "nasci," "to be born," and its present participle form "nascens," meaning "being born, springing from, being produced;" thus in a figurative sense, "coming into existence," also used adjectivally. Borrowed by English as the adjective "nascent" in the mid 1620s and meaning, "being born, coming into existence, emerging." 

 

^ See "Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages" (Volume 7 of the Leiden Indo-European Etymological Series, by Michiel de Vaan, Brill (Publishing), Leiden (Netherlands), Boston (U.S.), 2008. 

Kurt Schumacher About the Nazis, 1932

Kurt Schumacher was a politician in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. He lost his right arm fighting against the Russians in World War One (just to be clear, Russia was an ALLY of Britain and France, and later, the United States, in World War One). Prior to the Nazis coming to power, Schumacher was elected as a delegate to the German Reichstag (parliament) representing the Social Democrats. He detested the communists as much as the fascists, and he said, "communists are red painted fascists" (German: "Kommunisten sind rot angestrichene Faschisten"). Kurt Schumacher died in 1952. A number of German cities have streets and plazas named for Kurt Schumacher, including Berlin, Kiel, Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main and some others.

 

In February 1932, Kurt Schumacher gave a speech in the Reichstag in which indeed he called out the Nazis and he also gave a warning to Germans of what the Nazis were doing. Less than a year later, Hitler was named chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. The "inner scoundrel" of Germany had come to power. AMERICANS, HEED THESE WORDS! : An important quote from Schumacher's speech that day was: "The whole National Socialist agitation is a continuous appeal to the inner scoundrel in people. … If we recognize anything about National Socialism, then it is the fact that for the first time in German politics it (National Socialism/Nazism) has succeeded in the total mobilization of human stupidity." The original German text: "Die ganze nationalsozialistische Agitation ist ein dauernder Appell an den inneren Schweinehund im Menschen. …Wenn wir irgendetwas beim Nationalsozialismus anerkennen, dann ist es die Tatsache, dass ihm zum ersten Mal in der deutschen Politik die restlose Mobilisierung der menschlichen Dummheit gelungen ist."

 

We don't have to agree with everything else, or anything else, for that matter, that Kurt Schumacher believed about the issues of those times, because he got this one essential point right. During World War Two, democracies made an uneasy alliance with Josef Stalin, a ruthless communist dictator. These democracies didn't like him, but the alternative, a possible victory by Hitler and fascism, was even a worse thought. Yes, the end of that war brought direct confrontation with communism in various places around the world that lasted for decades, and it even continues to this day, but the immediate danger of fascist victory subsided, and for a while, we remained vigilant about any fascist revival, especially as more and more information became available about the horrendous crimes of fascism. Also, let's not forget, in the aftermath of World War Two, we took former Nazi scientists to help give us an edge in rocketry, space exploration and in weaponry. Sometimes, being a purist can be hazardous to your health, and at that time, as tainted as these people might have been, we needed them to help us confront the new high-level danger we then faced ... communism. And this is a lesson for us NOW, in our own era of rising fascism; regardless of our political beliefs and opinions, we need to see the overwhelming primary danger, or we will likely lose EVERYTHING, if fascists get a second try at control of the U.S. government. The first time was a trial run, and the "Fascist-in-Chief," Trump, had people storm the Capitol Building to keep him and fascism in power. This is NOT like anything in the past in the U.S. Don't take a lot of comfort in that fascists are not a majority, it doesn't take overwhelming numbers to control a country. Don't forget, William was called "the Conqueror," but he only had something like 20,000 men to control the 2 million people of England. Hitler never won a majority in national elections, even in an election held after he had many opponents locked up and storm troopers were stationed at many polling places not long after he was named chancellor. Let me tell you, those storm troopers weren't there to hand out campaign literature. 

Right wing media, led by Fox News, is the Goebbels-like megaphone blasting out propaganda to appeal to the "inner scoundrel" of Americans in an effort to duplicate the Nazi success at taking over Germany in the 1930s with "the total mobilization of human stupidity," with hatred and viciousness toward their fellow human beings as a part of that stupidity. 

This is a public domain photo from Wikipedia that was taken by a U.S. soldier or employee performing their job at the Nuremberg Trials in the aftermath of World War Two, and it shows Kurt Schumacher as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials. Wikipedia got the photo from the website forum.axishistory.com 

WORD HISTORY:

Asset(s)-This word is related to "saturate," a Latin-derived word, borrowed by English from that language, to "satisfy," another Latin-derived word borrowed by English from Latin-based French, and it is related, through Indo European, to "sad," a word from the Germanic roots of English. It goes back to Indo European "ad," which meant "near, at, by, toward," and this gave Latin "ad," meaning "toward, to." The rest of the word goes back to Indo European "sa(h)," with the notion of "to satisfy, to be full, to be enough." This gave Latin the adjective "satis," with the meaning, "satisfied, enough, filled." The two words together gave Latin the expression "ad satis" meaning "to or toward sufficiency or plenty or having enough." Old French took this as a one word adverbial form, "asez/assez," meaning "enough, sufficiently (in amount)," and this became "asetz/assetz" in the French spoken by the Norman-descendants in England, with noun use as "satisfaction, sufficiency" (used of a person's property "being enough" to satisfy debts or the instructions of a last will). English borrowed the word as "assets" (seems in the 1300s), which many took to be a plural; thus, English speakers created "asset" as the English singular form, but not until about the mid 1800s. It was seemingly initially used in the legalistic sense of possessions being enough to pay off debts, often, but not always, of a deceased person. This led in the mid 1500s to the broader meaning "property, possession" that could be sold to convert it to a monetary amount. A combination of the meanings (sort of) may have led to the accounting idea of balancing debts with assets to determine whether a person or company had a positive or a negative financial value.

Sahara: Bogart & Company Fight The Nazis

This World War Two movie is set in the 1942 North African desert, as the German and Italian forces there are achieving major successes against the Allied forces seeking to prevent the Axis from capturing the Suez Canal. The movie depicts the main Allied troops as being British, but with French, South African and Sudanese also represented, and an American tank crew serving alongside. The movie was filmed during early 1943 in a desert area of southern California near the Mexican border. While the filming location was a desert, the production required tons and tons of sand to be spread out to make it look more like what the production crew wanted to represent a particular part of the desert in Libya.      

 

Actor J. Carrol Naish plays an Italian soldier who is a reluctant German ally, and who is more comfortable working with the Allies (there was certainly more than a little truth to this symbolic representation with many Italians of that era). During my life I seem to recall reading and hearing that J. Carrol Naish played more "ethnic" characters in movies and television than any major star, just as he played an Italian in this film, but in reality, he was of Irish descent (born in the U.S.), and in fact, his uncle had been an Irish official prior to Irish independence from Britain in the early 1920s. And since I mentioned Irish, this movie was obviously tilted more toward American audiences, and Irish-Americans have been a pretty prominent segment of the American population, especially in many metropolitan areas of the eastern half of the country. In the war era, the British and Irish were not necessarily on the best of terms, dating to previous British rule of Ireland. A long time friend of mine of Irish descent was easily riled if England or Britain was mentioned to him, and this was in the 1970s and 1980s (he was born sometime in the 1920s). His grandfather (or grandfathers?) had been from Ireland, and had tremendous animosity toward Britain. Anyway, one of the British soldiers is from Dublin, and it's just my guess that the film wanted to show that the British and Irish could work together in the face of the common danger of fascism. Not only that, the Irish soldier is a captain; thus, he outranks the other British troops and the Americans, too.  

 

Bruce Bennett plays American "Waco" in this film (pronounced as if "wake-o"), and he was the child of German immigrants, as his real family name was "Brix," but he took the stage name Bruce Bennett in the mid 1930s. He actually played Tarzan in the mid 1930s, but Johnny Weissmuller had already captured the public imagination with his performances as Tarzan by that point. And by the way, you'll see American actor Lloyd Bridges playing a British soldier in this movie. Bridges is likely best remembered as the star of the popular television show "Sea Hunt" in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a show I watched regularly. Lloyd's sons Beau and Jeff are actors.     

 

Cast:

Humphrey Bogart as Sergeant Joe Gunn

Bruce Bennett as Waco Hoyt

J. Carrol Naish as Giuseppe (Italian prisoner)

Lloyd Bridges as Fred Clarkson

Rex Ingram as Sergeant Major Tambul

Richard Aherne as Captain Jason Halliday

Dan Duryea as Jimmy Doyle

Carl Harbord as Marty Williams

Patrick O'Moore as Ozzie Bates

Louis Mercier as Jean "Frenchie" Leroux

Guy Kingsford as Peter Stegman 

Kurt Krueger as German pilot and then prisoner

John Wengraf as Major von Falken 

 

In June of 1942, the three surviving American crew members of a US M3 tank, called "Lulubelle" by the crew, are serving in the Libyan desert during heavy Allied fighting against the German and Italian forces there. (Note: The U.S. supplied a somewhat modified version of M3 tanks to the British military in North Africa during the war. The American version was nicknamed the "Lee," while the British version was nicknamed the "Grant.") The crew receives orders by radio to retreat and as they withdraw they come across five British and Commonwealth troops (one is South African) and a Free French soldier. While one of the British soldiers, originally from Dublin, Ireland, is a captain in the medical service, the Americans have the tank, which is commanded by combat experienced Sergeant Joe Gunn; so, the British captain agrees to accept the American sergeant as the commander. The group comes upon a Sudanese sergeant and his Italian captive, who speaks heavily Italian-accented English. (Note: Sudan was in reality a British possession from the latter part of the 1800s, although "in theory" Egypt had a say in the governing of the territory.) With limited supplies, especially water, the Allied group debates whether to take the Italian prisoner along or whether to leave him to his fate in the desert. The man begs for his life and shows pictures of his wife and small child, but Sergeant Gunn doesn't even want to see the pictures. The British captain tries to persuade Gunn to take the Italian with them as the right thing to do, and most of the men seemingly agree, but Sergeant Gunn orders the tank to move forward without the Italian. The tank starts off, leaving highly visible tracks in the sand, and the Italian follows as best he can. Everyone is quiet and rather solemn, and Sergeant Gunn then looks out a hatch and sees the Italian struggling along in an attempt to stay alive. Gunn orders the tank to stop and he agrees to take the Italian with them. The men seem pleased. 

 

As the tank rumbles on, a German planes strafes the tank, but the crew is able to hit the plane with machine gun fire and the pilot parachutes out before the plane crashes. The men capture the pilot, a cocky Nazi, who doesn't want the Sudanese soldier to search him (the Sudanese soldier is black and the Nazi doesn't want him to touch him). Sergeant Gunn wants to turn the pilot over to intelligence officers for interrogation, so that means the group adds another man to its number. The group then learns that one of the British soldiers was badly wounded during the strafing. The Sudanese soldier leads the group to a well, but it is dry, and the situation is getting dire, as the Sudanese soldier tells them the next well is 50 miles away, and of course, there's no guarantee it won't be dry too. The wounded British soldier dies, and a message comes across the radio for all Allied troops to report to their main units to form a defensive line to keep the Axis forces from breaking through to the Nile and the Suez Canal. The group moves out to try to reach the next well amidst a sandstorm, but they finally reach the well where there is an abandoned building for shelter. The storm ends and the men go out to look for the well, as everything is now covered with sand. They find the well and it seems to be dry, but the Sudanese soldier goes down into the well and finds a trickle of water dripping from the rocks. The men send down any containers they can find and at last Sergeant Gunn allows each man to have three swallows of the precious water. Meanwhile, a German column has found the grave of the British soldier, but the Germans are desperate for water too. They have a Bedouin guide who tells them about the possibility of water at the well some 50 miles off, and out of their way, but the German commander knows he, his men and his vehicles need water, so off goes the German column, unaware they are heading to where the Allied group happens to be.  

 

Since the tank has had a lot of wear and tear from travel and the sandstorm, Sergeant Gunn wants to do maintenance on it. The Italian offers his help, telling Gunn that he was a master mechanic in Torino (Turin) before the war. Sergeant Gunn accepts the offer. Gunn mentions Mussolini to the Italian, and the man says that Mussolini talks big and says he has all of the answers, and that he has his slogans written on many walls all across Italy. The Italian says the slogans got into the minds of the people. A German reconnaissance vehicle with three Germans and the Bedouin is spotted moving toward the well area. Sergeant Gunn hopes to capture the Germans to get information. Inside the building, the Italian is put back with the German prisoner, who has heard everything that is going on outside, as he actually speaks English. He lets the Italian know he will tell him what to do. 

 

One German mans a machine gun mounted in the vehicle, and the other two Germans and the Bedouin leave the vehicle to approach the building on foot. Firing starts and the Bedouin and one German are killed and the other two Germans are captured. The British captain speaks some German and Gunn has him ask the Germans some questions, all as Gunn deliberately drinks water in front of the two thirsty men. One German remains uncooperative, but the other finally tells them that they are part of a mechanized battalion of 500 men and Gunn gives him some water. Sergeant Gunn tries the same with the other German and the man takes the water, says nothing and throws the water on the ground. In the meantime, the Sudanese soldier checks the well and finds the water has almost completely stopped dripping and he reports this to Sergeant Gunn, who tells him it won't matter, because they are going to leave, but then he thinks it all over and he wants the group to stay and delay the enemy battalion. Gunn tells them he realizes they could likely die and that no one may ever know what happened here. When one of the soldiers objects, Gunn goes into how the British withstood heavy German air attacks and how so many little boats sailed to Dunkirk to help evacuate the troops there, and how the Russians made a stand at Moscow, and how the American troops stood in the Philippines against the Japanese, and how the Chinese evacuated parts of their country in the face of the Japanese invasion. He gives the men some reasons to fight and they agree, regardless of any skepticism they may have. Gunn wants to offer the German battalion commander a phony deal. Sergeant Gunn will release the two German prisoners and have them tell their commander the Allied group will give the Germans water in exchange for food (of course, there really isn't very much water). In the meantime, Gunn will send one of his men in the captured German reconnaissance vehicle to try to find the Allied lines to get help. The captured German pilot hears the plan and he tries to yell to the two other German prisoners that there is no water, but he is stopped, and Gunn gives orders to kill him if he tries anything like that again.

 

The German prisoners are released and the Allied men find some land mines in the captured German recon vehicle, and they use them to mine the grounds leading up to the building area. They dig in the tank to give it added protection, as its gun is their only real firepower. Gunn sends American soldier "Waco" off in the recon vehicle to try to make it to the Allied lines. As the two German prisoners walk along hoping to meet up with their battalion, the one who had held out against giving information kills the other man, calling him a "damned traitor" ("verdammter Verräter"). Back at the outpost, the men see the German troops advancing to attack. The Allied troops let them get closer then they open fire. The intense fire, including from the tank, throws the Germans back, with heavy casualties. The first attack has been thwarted. Gunn checks on his men, but finds that the South African has been killed. The German commander shows a white flag and he and one of his men meet Sergeant Gunn halfway between the two sides. Gunn tells the German commander he'll trade water for guns and the mortar the German battalion has. The Germans are desperate for water, but no deal is reached. The captured German pilot decides to act and he tries to order Giuseppe, the Italian prisoner, to follow his lead, but Giuseppe will have none of it, and he delivers a sharp rebuke to Hitler and the Nazis: when the German pilot tells him the place will be taken by the German forces and then he will denounce Giuseppe as a traitor, Giuseppe says, "Denounce me then... Mussolini is not as clever as Hitler, he can only dress his Italians up to look like thieves, cheats and murderers. He can't, like Hitler, make them feel like that. He can't, like Hitler, scrape from the conscience the knowledge that right is right and wrong is wrong, or dig holes in their heads to plant his own Ten Commandments, steal from thy neighbor, cheat thy neighbor, kill thy neighbor..... It was for your Hitler that God, my God, created Hell!" This infuriates the German pilot and he knocks Giuseppe to the ground and then stabs him in the back with the screwdriver the Italian had been using to work on the tank. Though badly wounded, Giuseppe gets outside to tell the men that the German has escaped and is on his way to tell the German commander there is no water. The Sudanese soldier takes out after the German and kills him, but he himself is finally killed by German machine gun fire. As Gunn talks with one of the British soldiers, a German sniper kills the soldier. In the German camp, the soldiers are begging the commander for water, and he again goes to meet Gunn, who instead sends the Free French soldier, "Frenchie," out to meet him, as Gunn pretends to be bathing along with the British captain to make it look as if they have lots of water. No agreement is made and as the two men walk away, the German commander orders his men to open fire, killing Frenchie by shooting him in the back. The Allied guys return fire, killing the German commander. Meanwhile, the recon vehicle with Waco breaks down, leaving him to go on foot through the sand. Back at the well outpost, the Germans start another attack, and one of their mortar shells hits the well. One of the men is wounded and the British captain helps him inside the building, but another shell hits there too, killing both of them. Only Gunn and Ozzie, one of the British soldiers, remain alive and they prepare to fight to the end. Gunn calls out to the Germans to come and get the water, all they want, but he doesn't realize that the mortar shell brought water bubbling up out of the sand. The Germans throw down their guns and dash for the water. The two surviving Allies take them prisoner. 

 

Waco struggles through the sand, but finally a British reconnaissance vehicle comes along and the men spot Waco. After a while we see the column of German prisoners guarded by Gunn and Ozzie, as a British column approaches. The two men hear that the British and Commonwealth forces have held the Germans and Italians at El Alamein, stopping their drive for the Suez Canal. Sergeant Gunn looks at the dog tags of the dead men and he says they would want to know that the enemy had been halted. Their sacrifice helped in that effort. (Note: While the Allies halted the German and Italian drive at El Alamein, this desert rail station continued to be at the center of events in North Africa until a major British-led Allied offensive there in the latter part of October 1942, which resulted in the retreat of the Germans and Italians in early November. This was then followed by the Allied invasion of French Morocco and Algeria in northwestern Africa, and this sandwiched the German and Italian forces between the the British and Commonwealth forces pursuing their retreating forces from El Alamein, and the American, British and French forces advancing out of French Morocco and Algeria.)         

 

Photo is of the 2001 Columbia Pictures DVD ...

WORD HISTORY:

Sand-This word goes back to Indo European "samadho," but there are variations in how the Indo European form is rendered, but all beginning "sam," meaning "sand." This gave Old Germanic "sandam," which then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "sand," where it remains all of these centuries later. Besides the "fine rock particles" meaning, the plural "sands" has long been used for desert and beach areas covered in sand. Relatives in the other Germanic languages: German and Low German have "Sand" (all German nouns are capitalized), Dutch has "zand," West Frisian has "sân," Danish, Norwegian and Swedish all have "sand," Icelandic has "sandur." The early part of the 1300s saw the development of the verb "sanden," which came from the noun. The verb long meant "to sprinkle sand over something," and this led to the further meaning "to cover over with sand." The meaning "to rub with a cloth or paper with affixed sand in order to make a surface smooth" seems to have developed in the mid 1800s, as this tool became increasingly popular.  

Law & Order Episode: Blood Libel

This episode originally aired in January 1996. This long running television series was set (and filmed) in the Manhattan area of New York City.

Episode Main Cast:

Jerry Orbach as Detective Lenny Briscoe

Benjamin Bratt as Detective Rey (Reynaldo) Curtis

S. Epatha Merkerson as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren

Sam Waterston as Executive Asst DA Jack McCoy

Jill Hennessy as Asst DA Claire Kincaid

Steven Hill as DA Adam Schiff

Jack Vinson as Matt Hastings

Chris Cooper as defense attorney Roy Payne

Santiago Douglas as Eddie Camarillo 

Lee Wilkof as school principal Dr. Sabloff 

A female art teacher, Sarah Aronson, is found strangled in her high school art room after hours. Detectives Briscoe and Curtis talk with her husband and associates and check into the possibility of the woman having had a boyfriend on the side, but they find no indication of any affair by Mrs. Aronson; however, Mr. Aronson does mention some phone calls to their home, but that when answered, the person hung up. When they talk with the school's principal, the detectives indicate that there was no evidence of a break-in, so the killer had to have a key and knew how to disable the school's alarm system, as no alarm sounded. The detectives also talk with another female teacher, a close friend of Mrs. Aronson, and she tells them Aronson had had some problems with a male math teacher. This information eventually leads to the detectives discovering that the math teacher, Richard Kovax, had been selling grades to some of the students, and that Mrs. Aronson had found out and she confronted him about it. Kovax promised Mrs. Aronson he would stop selling grades, but when he refused to accept anymore payments from students, he also told the students it was due to Mrs. Aronson. (You can now see that this could make Mrs. Aronson a target for any student desperate for a decent math grade to have a chance to get into a good university, but don't let your imagination run too far off just yet, as the real crux of the story will start shortly.) 

 

Lab tests of the blood found at the murder scene show that the murderer was caucasian and male, but also predisposed to diabetes. The teacher Kovax again denies he killed Mrs. Aronson (the school principal, Dr. Sabloff tells one detective he saw Kovax leave the school about an hour before the estimated time of Aronson's murder), but Kovax does tell the detectives Aronson had told him she was getting anonymous threatening notes left on her desk. The detectives get into Mrs. Aronson's locker at the school, where she kept gym clothes for when she played volleyball at the school. They find an envelope with the written threats to Mrs. Aronson with antisemitic expressions like "Jew bitch," "Hitler was right" and "mud people." One of the threats contains a violent drawing with a swastika, but it's not just any drawing, it's been done by someone with at least some artistic talent. (Is this symbolic of Hitler's art talent; that is, better than the average person, but not good enough to get through art school?) The detectives and an art expert look at drawings made by Mrs. Aronson's art students and they find a drawing of similar art characteristics from a student named Edward Camarillo. When the detectives question Camarillo, he gives them lots of attitude and he denies having made the drawing in the threatening message to Mrs. Aronson or his having had anything to do with her death, adding that he was working in his father's shoe repair store the evening of the murder, which is later verified by customers of the shoe repair shop. The detectives let Camarillo go, but they check the high school yearbook and find he and three other boys, all on the wrestling team, have three unexplained letters under their school pictures. At first they think it might be some kind of wrestling team lingo. Lt. van Buren and the two detectives write out the letters and they finally figure out the letters spell "KILL ALL KIKES" when assembled alphabetically by each boy's last name.* They question the three other boys, all of whom say it was just joking, but one, Matt Hastings, also defends it as "free speech," to which one of the detectives tells him that death threats aren't included in "free speech." The detectives let the principal know about the boys and their "letters." When the principal hears that Hastings is one of the boys, he tells the detectives that he had recently come to the school in the evening and saw Hastings leaving the school, which meant he had a key. He questioned Hastings about it, and he said one of the teachers had given him a key so he could work on a school project. The principal later asked that teacher if the story was true, but she denied it. The principal assumed the teacher was lying to avoid any repercussions for having given a student a key, but the principal let matters go, because Hastings is one of the top students in the school and the class president. 

 

When the detectives talk with Jack McCoy and Claire Kincaid in the DA's office, McCoy suggests getting the school to get a urine test from the members of the wrestling team, then see if the lab determines that Hastings has diabetes. Kincaid explains that schools are permitted to have athletes undergo urine tests for drugs and without a warrant. When the team is tested, the detectives ask for the specimen number for Hasting's sample and then later they go to the doctor in charge and they learn Hasting does indeed have diabetes, but that he and his family probably don't know it. He explains that when a student's urine test shows positive for alcohol, they run a further test to see if the alcohol was from drinking, or if it was produced within the person's body, as can happen with a high sugar level in people with diabetes. Hastings' test showed the latter. The detectives arrest Matt Hastings. With Hastings in custody the police get his fingerprints and they match to fingerprints on one of the notes left on Mrs. Aronson's desk, to which Hastings says he was just trying to frighten her about stopping Mr. Kovax from selling grades. They also match his blood to blood at the crime scene. Hastings' attorney moves to suppress the urine test, saying that while the law allowed for such tests to identify drug users, it wasn't intended to be allowed for murder investigations. The fact that the detectives specifically asked for Hastings' specimen number also showed this was not about drug use, and the judge suppresses the urine test and thus, overturns the whole case, because it was the urine test that prompted Hastings' arrest and this brought about the blood match and the fingerprint match to the threatening note, both of which are thrown out. Hastings is free ... at the moment. 

 

McCoy and Kincaid meet with DA Adam Schiff to determine where to go with the case. Kincaid says the police found white supremacy and racist literature in Hastings' room at his home, along with "white power" music, and she reads some of the nasty, or should I say Nazi, lyrics to the other two. Since the boy's father vouched for his son being home on the night of Aronson's murder, Schiff tells them to check the father's own alibi. Claire Kincaid talks with the boy's mother who was working on the night of the murder, but she says they were both home when she got home from work and that she trusts her husband and her son, "He's not like what they say in the papers. Those people think we're all anitsemites." Kincaid asks, "Those people?" And the mother says, "You know very well what I'm talking about." The mother goes on to say, "Look at that school. How do you think he feels? He's a minority." (Note: While I didn't hear it mentioned earlier in the script, but it might have been, this comment seems to indicate that the high school has a large number of Jewish students. Wow! And in New York City, who would have 'thunk' it? Now ideally none of this should matter, but we're talking about antisemitism, racism and hate here, not "A day at Disneyland." Also interesting, earlier the principal tells the detective that Hastings was elected class president. Hm, I wonder what percentage of the Jewish vote he got?) The mother writes off the yearbook message as her son "just trying to get a rise out of people." When Kincaid mentions the racist lierature found in his room, the mother says, "Matt reads a lot," and she insists her son doesn't have a problem with Jews, and that he dated a Jewish girl. This takes Kincaid to Hastings' former girlfriend who tells how he flattered her with comments about Jews being smart and such, but also that he was using her to build his image, and that he blamed Jewish students for spreading lies about him. She also mentions that she believes Hastings got the basis of his beliefs at home, and that his father once asked her about a family named "Abramson," as if all Jews somehow know each other. She says the father said the Abramsons cheated him out of his printing business and that it was their fault he didn't have enough money to send his son to prep school. Kincaid asks about Eddie Camarillo and the girl says that he and Hastings are good friend and that they would get into the school on weekends to lift weights. When Kincaid asks how they got through the locked door and the alarm system on weekends, she says that Eddie had a key made at his father's store.

 

Now the detectives bring in Eddie Camarillo again and tell him they know about the key and that was how Hastings got out of the school after killing Mrs. Aronson, but Camarillo denies he had a key. McCoy tells him he's an accessory to murder and Rey Curtis, who is part Peruvian and fluent in Spanish, tells him that when Hastings talks about "the mud people," he means both Eddie and himself. This brings Camarillo to say, "My people come from pure Spanish blood, white, Christian blood." (Damn! Now we know blood has religious identifiers. I think he needs to have a blood test.) Eddie tells them that Mrs. Aronson recognized his artwork on the one threatening note and confronted him about it and gave 'them' the chance to turn themselves in. (Interestingly, he says she called 'him' in, but then that she gave 'them' the chance to turn themselves in; so, he obviously told her that Hastings was in on it.) Hastings said he would lose his scholarship and that he wanted to talk with Aronson, so Eddie supplied the key, but, "I never thought he was going to hurt her." McCoy sends the detectives to arrest Hastings. 

 

Hastings' defense attorney comes to the DA's office and introduces them to the attorney who will handle Hastings' defense, Roy Payne, an attorney known as a Klan lawyer; "Klan," as in "Ku Klux Klan." He bluntly says he will present a case that says his client is being framed as part of a conspiracy to protect the "real killer," the teacher, Mr. Kovax, who is Jewish. In court Payne lays out for the judge his theory that a succession of Jewish people were involved in investigating or providing evidence against Hastings. When McCoy objects, the judge says that while the theory is offensive, he'll weigh whether the evidence Payne offers is valid before letting the jury hear it. Afterward Payne tells McCoy and Kincaid that it's a golden age of conspiracy theories, that such theories help people make sense of an irrational world and that if they go out on the street and ask 12 people what they think about Jews, "All I need is one" (for those unaware, the jury must be unanimous to convict). During jury selection, Payne asks one man if he's Jewish, but when McCoy objects, the judge has a private conference with McCoy and Payne and Payne says his client has a right to know if any Jewish jurors can set aside their bias. The judge has another "Susan Collins moment," and says it's all very odious, but bias is relevant, so he'll allow Payne's question. (For those unaware, Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, is noted for saying how troubled she is by Donald Trump's statements or actions, only to then support him. She voted not to convict Trump at his impeachment trial, saying that she was certain he had learned his lesson, a statement which quickly circled the toilet bowl and was flushed along with other doo doo.) Later, Adam Schiff tells McCoy and Kincaid that they aren't trying an antisemite, but rather a murderer who killed Aronson because she was about to stop him from getting a Princeton scholarship, "He would have killed here if her name was McGinty; make sure the jury knows it."

 

At the trial the technician from the lab tells how Hastings' blood sample after his arrest matched the blood found at the crime scene stored in the lab. Payne makes sure to repeat the technician's name, "Rosen," and the technician answers Payne's question about who brought in the blood sample as "Detective Briscoe." ("Rosen" is a fairly common Jewish name, although his family might have been from the North Pole for all we know, but the point is made that Payne is emphasizing the technician's background is likely Jewish.) Payne follows with a question as to the blood from the crime scene being "kept under lock and key 24 hours a day," but the technician says "not when someone is in the lab working." This brings Payne to ask if it was, therefore, possible that Detective Briscoe could have swapped Hastings' blood taken after his arrest for the blood at the crime scene. The technician asnswers, "Anything's possible." Now Detective Curtis takes the stand and testifies that he accompanied Detective Briscoe to the lab with Hastings' blood sample and witnessed Briscoe turning the sample over to Mr. Rosen and signing the required form. Payne asks if Curtis was always with Briscoe in the lab, "joined at the hip," he asks? Curtis says he made a one minute call to report in to the precinct, which Payne says, "So there was a minute when you and Detective Briscoe were separated?" Curtis answers, "Yes." Payne then asks if earlier in the investigation that Curtis was completely convinced that Kovax was truly cleared as a suspect and Curtis says, "Not entirely," explaining that Kovax "had a motive and a window of opportunity to commit the crime." Payne askes if the two detectives discussed the case and then proceeded to look for other suspects, to which Curtis answers, "Yes." Payne asks if Curtis was overruled by his senior partner, which prompts McCoy to object and brings a withdrawal of the question by Payne. He then asks Curtis if he knows if Briscoe is Jewish and Curtis says, "I don't know, I never bothered to ask him." 

 

With the school's principal, Dr. Sabloff, on the stand, Payne goes over how Mr. Kovax was not just a teacher, but also a big fundraiser for the school, which Dr. Sabloff admits he likely mentioned when being asked by Detective Briscoe about Kovax in a phone call. Sabloff says he also learned from Briscoe that Kovax was a murder suspect during the call. Payne then spins this into further conspiracy by saying that Sabloff then conspired with Briscoe to cover for Kovax and that it all came down to implicating Hastings in the murder because Hastings' yearbook message "so inflamed" Sabloff as a Jew. Sabloff says, "Jews don't conspire with each other to protect Jewish criminals, it's ridiculous." Payne then cites the case of Jonathan Pollard, an American intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s. While McCoy objects and the judge stops Payne's rant, the information Payne wanted out before the jury can't be un-heard. (As I noted, Pollard was a Jewish-American, born in Texas, convicted of providing secret information to Israel. The case received much publicity in the mid 1980s, but when this episode of "Law & Order" was filmed, the case had been back in the news, as Israel had recently granted Pollard citizenship. Payne is trying to inflame anti-Jewish sentiment in any of the jurors. Remember Payne's earlier statement, "ask 12 people what they think about Jews; I only need one.") McCoy then asks Sabloff if he conspired with anyone about the case, to which he says, "No," and he further notes that Kovax was fired for selling grades. But is this enough? 

 

Briscoe is naturally upset that he's being used by Payne as part of a conspiracy, but McCoy refuses Briscoe's request to be put on the stand. Briscoe then tells McCoy and Kincaid that his father was Jewish, but his mother wasn't and that he was raised Catholic. (By the way, this was actor Jerry Orbach's own history: Jewish father, Catholic mother, raised Catholic.)  

 

Hastings takes the stand and Payne has him explain that he's tried to get along with the Jewish students, and that he even dated a Jewish girl, but the Jewish students told lies about him and the two broke up. And "they" kept him from becoming the captain of the wrestling team, instead choosing a Jewish captain for the team. "You see, I don't have a problem with Jews, they have a problem with me." (Then I think there needs to be a recount on that class president election. Somebody manipulated the ballots. Let's see... the Post Office? No wait, they didn't have mail in voting in schools. Obama did it! Well wait, he wasn't known back in those days. Hey, whichever hand of Detective Briscoe that's not Jewish did it. Yep, gotta be.) Hastings answers McCoy's question about the yearbook message as being a joke that was not his idea, that the other guys thought it up and he just went along. McCoy then asks about the threatening notes to Mrs. Aronson and Hastings says one of the other guys thought that up. McCoy asks him if Aronson's knowledge of him buying grades made him worry about his (Princeton) scholarship, but Hastings says he never thought about it. McCoy tells of a few of the Jewish students preparing to go to Ivy League schools, and wonders if Hastings was fearful of where he'd end up, and saying further, there wouldn't be anyone to blame this time, because Hastings bought grades and had sent death threats. Hastings insists he's being framed, but McCoy asks who is doing the framing. McCoy then suggests that maybe it's the same Jewish family who 'stole' his father's business. McCoy goes on that it was Hastings' own stupidity that put him into this whole situation, not Sarah Aronson, but this prompts Hastings to scream, "It was her fault. That kike was going to ruin my life." McCoy says, "As in the kikes you joked about killing?" 

 

Later the jury foreman tells the judge the jury is hopelessly deadlocked and the judge declares a mistrial. A new trial date will be scheduled. Hastings and parents celebrate, but later McCoy tells Adam Schiff that Hastings' original attorney is now willing to discuss a plea, because Payne got the publicity he sought and he's now hitting the "Klan lecture circuit," he won't be available for another trial. Kincaid informs them that one of the jurors said in an interview that the vote was 11 to 1 to convict. When McCoy asks, "I wonder which one?" Kincaid says, "Whoever it is, they blended right in," bringing Schiff to say, "What else is new? ... Next case."                

       

* The history of the term "kike" is uncertain, but perhaps the most accepted explanation is that Jews who immigrated into the United States from Tsarist Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s signed immigration forms with an "O," not the traditional "X," which they misinterpreted to be a Christian symbol, as "X" does represent "chi" in the Greek alphabet, and thus is the first letter in the Greek for "Christ." It is most commonly represented in English with "Xmas," instead of the proper English form "Christmas." In Yiddish, the "O" was/is called a "kikel/kaykl," and it was so common, the immigration officials began calling Jewish immigrants by that name, which then was shortened to "kike." It is a derogatory term and I use it here only because it is central to the story.   

 

Photo is of the 2008 Edition of the Universal Home Entertainment "Law & Order Sixth Year" DVD box set

WORD HISTORY:

Libel-This word is distantly related to "leaf," a word from the Germanic roots of English, and to "lodge," a word English borrowed from French, which had it from Germanic Frankish, and it is more closely related to "library," a Latin-derived word borrowed by English via French. It goes back to Indo European "leubh," which meant, "to peel off, to strip away or to break off a plant covering," which produced the noun "lubhro," meaning, "leaf, (tree) bark, rind." This gave Italic "lufro," with the same meaning. This gave Latin "liber," meaning "parchment, paper;" thus also, "written materials;" thus, "book." Its diminutive form, "libellus," meant "booklet, pamphlet, petition, written accusation." This passed into Latin-based Old French as "libelle," also meaning, "booklet," but also legalistically, "a written claim, a written charge (accusation) against someone." English borrowed the word circa 1300, originally with the meaning, "a brief written summary or declaration," but its legalistic meaning in civil law, "written statement of accusation against someone," provided the basis for the more modern meaning which developed in the early 1600s, "a false defamatory statement about someone," and its legalistic sense of "written false statement likely to do harm to a person's reputation and thus damage their life, earnings and well being." The verb developed from the noun in the 1400s, initially meaning, "to have written accusation(s) made against someone," with the "make false written accusation" meaning coming along in the 1600s with that meaning in the noun. The adjective "libelous" (UK English: "libellous") is also from the 1600s and meaning, "having to do with harming a person's reputation with defamatory accusation(s)."    

A Time To Love and A Time To Die: John Gavin Stars

This movie is based on the book of the same English title by German author Erich Maria Remarque. The German title is "Zeit zu Leben und Zeit zu Sterben," which translates as "Time to Live and Time to Die," and that, of course, is slightly different from its given English title. Remarque's antiwar novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" (German: "Im Westen Nichts Neues" = "Nothing New in the West") made the author a target of the Nazis when Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, and Remarque's books were among those publicly burned by the Nazis. Many years ago I bought a paperback copy of the book. Remarque actually appears in the film as Professor Pohlmann, the former teacher of Ernst Graeber and Oscar Binding, and in real life, Remarque had been a teacher in his younger years. Remarque was a devout Catholic, and his religious faith is an important part of "A Time To Love and A Time To Die." Remarque moved to Switzerland in the pre-Nazi era and went to the United States in the 1930s, where he became a citizen within a couple of years of the end of World War Two (the Nazis had revoked his German citizenship in the late 1930s). Remarque's sister remained in Germany and she was beheaded by the Nazis during the war for "undermining morale" because of comments she made about the war being lost. Americans and others the world over need to refresh their memories about what their parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors did to prevent such things from happening everywhere if fascism had won. We've let our guard down and in so doing, we have dishonored the sacrifices made by so many people in the United States and all over the world during the war against fascism in World War Two. For Americans, remember that over 400,000 U.S. military personnel died during that war. The thing is, the war against fascism is never really over, but many people relaxed their vigilance, while the fascists never rested, and they often cloaked their bigotry, racism and hate in the guise of religion, patriotism and constitutionality.    

This movie was directed by Douglas Sirk, born Hans Detlef Sierck in Germany to Danish parents who had emigrated to Germany. He and his first wife divorced (she was a Nazi) and his second wife was Jewish, so he left Germany, eventually coming to the United States, where he changed his name to Douglas Sirk and he directed some well known films from the 1950s, often with Rock Hudson as the star: "Magnificent Obsession," "All That Heaven Allows," "Written on the Wind," "Battle Hymn" and others. "A Time To Love and A Time To Die" can be a little difficult to find on DVD, and apparently it has not been issued by a major home entertainment company in the U.S. I bought the South Korean DVD version a year or two ago, because there were no other versions available. Understand, the DVD is in English, as is the original film, but it has Korean subtitles available for those able to read that language. You can turn the subtitles "off" or "on." I'm pretty sure the movie is periodically shown on "TCM" (Turner Classic Movies), and you might also be able to view it by going to their website, or perhaps on other movie sites. It is well worth seeing.  

Main Cast:

John Gavin ...................................................... Ernst Graeber
Lilo (Liselotte) Pulver ..................................... Elizabeth Kruse
Jock Mahoney ................................................. Immerman
Don DeFore ..................................................... Hermann Boettcher
Keenan Wynn .................................................. Reuter
Erich Maria Remarque .................................... Professor Pohlmann
Charles Regnier ............................................... Joseph
Bengt Lindström.............................................. Steinbrenner
Thayer David .................................................. Oscar Binding
Dorothea Wieck .............................................. Frau Lieser 
John Van Dreelen ............................................ army political officer
Kurt Meisel ..................................................... Heini (SS officer)

Cast Notes: John Gavin was of Latino descent and later served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. "John Gavin" was his stage name. Lilo Pulver was from Bern, Switzerland and she appeared in many German language films. Jock Mahoney was known at about the time of this film for playing the role of Yancy Derringer on a CBS television series. He was also familiar to some for having appeared in several of the Three Stooges' short films, and a few years later, he played Tarzan in a movie. Don DeFore had been in movies and television, but he would become best known beginning a few years after this film for playing George Baxter, the employer of a maid named Hazel (played by Shirley Booth) a comedy series on NBC and later on CBS. Keenan Wynn was a movie and television actor, and he was the son of entertainer Ed Wynn. Charles Regnier was a German director and actor. He had French ancestry; thus, his family name. Bengt Lindström was a Swedish actor. John Van Dreelen was from the Netherlands and escaped the Nazi occupiers there and made it to England, then later to the United States, where he became a well known face, if not name, in movies and on television, often playing Nazis (he was fluent in German) and other villainous characters. "To my knowledge" he was Jewish on his father's side; thus more than the little need to escape the Nazis.

The film is set in Russia in 1944, as spring approaches. Ernst Graeber is a German soldier with forces opposing the Soviet Red Army. Some dialogue tells us the Germans are in retreat, as some of the men have been through this destroyed village before, and as Ernst Graeber notes, it was during the German advance. A hardcore Nazi in the unit, named Steinbrenner, takes issue with Graeber, as his super sensitive ego lashes out at anything even implying truth by declaring that Graeber is now meaning that German forces are retreating. His nasty tone, or maybe that should be "Nazi tone," brings another soldier, Immerman, to speak out saying, "The only person talking retreat around here is you." He goes on mockingly, "The rest of us know everything here is perfect. We're going to annihilate the enemy this year for certain ... we annihilate him every year, sometimes twice a year."

Four Russians in civilian clothes are thought to be guerilla fighters and are put to work digging their own graves. The German troops for the firing squad begin discussing the situation, with one complaining that they are soldiers and shouldn't be shooting civilians, but another answers that they can refuse and they themselves will be shot. Another says, "We didn't sentence them, we're not to blame," but another answers, "That's our excuse for everything." After the executions, one of the young soldiers who has only been with the unit for three weeks is so distraught, he shoots himself, but the captain wants the death reported as an accident, in spite of Steinbrenner the Nazi looking on. Graeber had put in for leave seven months earlier and it finally comes through. The captain tells him to get out quickly, in case leaves are canceled, "If you're not here, you're not here."

Graeber goes to the area behind the front to begin his trip back home. Food parcels are being given to home bound troops and a Nazi political officer tells the men that the food is being given to them to demonstrate to the civilian population that the troops are well cared for and can even bring food home. Further, he tells the men it is their responsibility "to comfort and cheer" their loved ones at home. He also reminds them that criticism is treason. Ernst gets to his hometown and tells an air raid warden that he's just come from the front. The man quickly becomes upset, asking, "The front? And what do you think this is?" He then tells Ernest the town has been bombed 6 times in 10 days and that his wife and child have been killed. Ernst gets no rest from the war, as the air raid warden tells him that the civilian population was being bombed "while you front line soldiers have been running away." The house where Ernst was born is a pile of rubble and no one knows the whereabouts of his parents.

Ernst goes to the home of Dr. Bernhard Kruse, his family's doctor, and he finds the house still intact. The doctor's adult daughter, Elizabeth, is there, but the doctor was taken away by the Nazis a few months before and he has not been heard from since. Frau Lieser, who is the neighborhood Nazi representative, has been placed in the house, after her own home was bombed. While Ernst and Elizabeth talk, the air raid siren sounds and "Frau Crocodile," as Ernst calls Frau Lieser, threatens to report Elizabeth if she doesn't go to the air raid shelter. Inside the shelter Ernst sees a middle aged neighbor couple and hopes they have word of his parents, but they do not. The despondent wife tells Ernst their own children have been killed. The woman is bitter and she begins to utter some critical statement, and the husband tells Ernst of his concern, because they have already been previously reported to the authorities for his wife's statements. Later at Elizabeth's home, Ernst and Elizabeth have a contentious time when he gives her his food packet and she assumes it is an offering for... ah ... a good time and she is offended. Ernst leaves. A former schoolmate, Oscar Binding, sees Ernst while driving by, and he stops and has Ernst go to his house. Oscar has become a Nazi Party official in the town and he has has a well kept house with plenty of food and beverages from all over Europe. Ernst tells him about his parents, and Oscar says he'll check into it. He also tells how people ask favors from him now that he's an important party official in town, including asking him to get loved ones out of concentration camps. He tells Ernst about a former professor of theirs, Professor Pohlmann, who gave Oscar a hard time about passing his school examinations, at a time when Oscar was more interested in the Hitler Youth. When Oscar became a Nazi official, he got the professor fired and then had him thrown into a concentration camp, but he was later released. Oscar lets Ernst bathe with finely scented soap and he gives him some liquor to drink and a bottle to take with him.

Ernst goes to see Elizabeth and she apologizes for her previous behavior. When she asks if Ernst has gotten any news of his parents, he tells her about Oscar Binding checking into it. She is upset that Ernst is using a Nazi Party official, and he says he couldn't turn down Oscar's help and that he was the first person to offer any help in finding out about his parents and that he's planning on asking Oscar about Elizabeth's father. Elizabeth says, "Murderers are never murderers 24 hours a day. Some adore their mothers, some cry when their dogs are dying, but it is enough when they are murderers for one minute a day... What's happened to you Ernst, are you blind, or don't you want to see?"

Elizabeth calms down and Ernst plans a splendid romantic evening for the two of them for the next day at a high priced restaurant patronized by many army officers. Ernst has his pay from two years saved up, and he's prepared to spend it lavishly on Elizabeth while he's on leave. He's seen lots of death and he knows people can be gone in an instant. The next evening they go to the restaurant and are drinking wine and having a good time when the air raid siren blares out its warning. They go to the restaurant shelter, and this time the bombs fall right in that neighborhood. Elizabeth and Ernst flee out to the street with the other people as the bombers fly off after delivering their destruction. When they return to Elizabeth's they hear orders being given out on the street. They look out the window and see concentration camp inmates working to clear the new rubble caused by the bombing raid. Elizabeth looks over the faces of the prisoners, thinking she might see her father, but he is not among them. She tells Ernst her father was arrested because he said Germany could not win the war, and someone reported him to the authorities. Ernst asks Elizabeth to marry him, but she gets offended again when he clumsily tells her that she would be entitled to some monthly money from the government if he is killed, as well as to a one time death benefit payment. She finally calms down again, although Ernst did make it sound like a business transaction. They get married and after a skirmish with Frau Lieser, things seem to settle down, with Elizabeth going to her job at a factory making army coats for the troops.

Ernst checks for notices left in the neighborhood in case someone answers his posted inquiry about his parents. The old air raid warden says a package came for him. Ernst opens it to find it's from his mother, who had sent it to his unit in Russia, and it has been forwarded to his hometown. His parents are alive and his mother will write with a new address soon. Ernst rushes home, but Frau Lieser is waiting with a notice for Elizabeth to report to the Gestapo the next day. Ernst knows where Professor Pohlmann is living, the man Oscar Binding had gotten fired and then temporarily locked up in a concentration camp. When he gets to Pohlmann's house, the Professor is worried that one of the men working out on the street is a Gestapo informer, so he tells Ernst to return later. Another air raid takes place as Ernst leaves, as the Allied aircraft bomb the town and some factory buildings, including the one where Elizabeth works. When Ernst gets home he finds the house is afire and greatly damaged by the bombing attack. Elizabeth makes it home later, but Ernst decides they should spend the night at the partially destroyed art museum, which is also near where Pohlmann lives. Ernst meets up with Professor Pohlmann, who is helping to hide a man named Joseph from the Nazis. Joseph is Jewish. Ernst tells the Professor everything that's happened and asks him if perhaps he should think about not returning to his unit when his leave ends, but Pohlmann tells him the Nazis will use Ernst's parents and wife to get to him, so he advises him to go back to his unit. Ernst tells him he doesn't believe in what is being done by Germans and he asks if there is anything worth believing in. The Professor says, "Yes there is ... God." Ernst asks, "You still believe in Him?" Pohlmann answers, "More than ever," which leads Ernst to ask if the Professor ever has any doubts, and this brings the reply, "Of course I have ... without doubts there would be no need for faith." Ernst asks how anyone could still believe in God in such a time, and Pohlmann sharply counters with, "God is not responsible to us, we are responsible to God for what is going on here." Ernst asks about personal responsibility and carrying out despicable orders and having duty turn into crime, and then blaming the leaders. Professor Pohlmann tells Ernst each man has to decide these things for himself and that the war is lost, and that IT MUST BE LOST for our country to regain its soul! The next morning Joseph comes to Ernst while Elizabeth is still asleep. He makes arrangements with Ernst in case Ernst feels the need to hide Elizabeth, but he still has not told her about the notice from the Gestapo for her to appear.

Ernst goes to see Oscar, who has had an all night party at his house. A drunken SS officer named Heini is playing the piano, and when Oscar tells him that Ernst is on leave from the Russian front, the SS man tells them he had his best time serving in Russia, because they have high alcohol vodka which the SS men poured down Russian throats and then set a match to them to turn them into "flamethrowers. "You should have seen them jump ... spitting fire. It was fun baby!" He goes on to explain how they killed other prisoners and he then leaves the room. Oscar tells Ernst that Heini is the new commandant at the nearby concentration camp, but that he (Oscar) doesn't agree with everything Heini does. This prompts Ernst to ask, "But you think it's alright if he does it?" Oscar says he's not responsible for what other people do, but Ernst says that's how he and others have done in Russia about killing hostages. Now Oscar says that since Ernst has shot civilians, "You're one of us," and Ernst says, "I guess I am."  Ernst leaves.

Ernst goes to the Gestapo office himself, without telling Elizabeth. It turns out he has to sign for the ashes of Elizabeth's father, whose cause of death is given by the Gestapo as "heart disease." He takes the cigar box with the ashes and goes to meet Joseph before Elizabeth joins them after her work, as he told her where to meet him. Joseph tells him Professor Pohlmann has been arrested and that he led the Nazis away from the house so that Joseph could have a chance to get away, which worked. Ernst says to Joseph, "How you must hate us," but he answers, "Hate makes one forget to be kosher." He then goes on to say how he prefers to remember the Germany where he grew up, well before Hitler and the Nazis. and he asks if he is supposed to hate Professor Pohlmann, who has risked his life to help him. Joseph says there are others like Pohlmann, although not enough, but that there is hope. Ernst is amazed by Joseph's optimism.

Elizabeth has made arrangements for the couple to stay at an older woman's house, and once there, Ernst lets Elizabeth know that her father is dead. Ernst tries to get an extension on his leave, but it is rejected. The night before Ernst must return to his unit, there is another air raid, but Elizabeth tells him she doesn't want to go to the shelter, so they stay in their room through the bombing. The next day, Ernst heads to the train station, but it takes him a couple of weeks to find his unit. When he gets there, the unit is under heavy artillery fire. Ernst's old friend Immerman is killed when an artillery shell explodes near him when he wades into a river to retrieve a barrel of beer. The shelling eases and the men stop for a rest. The mail is brought by courier and Ernst has a letter from Elizabeth. Steinbrenner brings some Russians in civilian clothes to the captain, telling him he's sure they're guerilla fighters, but the captain is doubtful. He doesn't want Steinbrenner in charge of the prisoners, so he sends Ernst and another man to lock up and guard the prisoners. Ernst takes the time to open and read Elizabeth's letter. She writes that they are going to have a child. Just then Steinbrenner comes running up. He tells Ernst the unit is moving out and that they aren't going to haul the prisoners with them. He prepares to shoot the prisoners, but Ernst blocks his rifle and knocks Steinbrenner to the ground. When Steinbrenner begins to stand up and raises his rifle to fire at Ernst, Ernst shoots and kills him. Ernst unlocks the door to where the prisoners are and tells them to go. He walks away and takes out Elizabeth's letter again. Two of the three prisoners run off, but the third prisoner stops and picks up Steinbrenner's rifle, calls to Ernst, and shoots him. Ernst falls by the river's edge and Elizabeth's letter slips from his hand into the river and he dies trying to grab it from the water as it floats off.

 Photo is of the South Korean imported DVD.

WORD HISTORY:
Scathe-This word goes back to Indo European "sket/sketh," which meant "to damage." This gave Old Germanic "skathonan/skaþonan (þ=th)"  which meant, "to damage, to harm." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "sceaþian," meaning, "to hurt, to harm, to injure." This then became "scathen," seemingly influenced in pronunciation by Old Norse "skaða" (=skatha) by giving the English word the hard "k" sound, even though the spelling with "c" was kept,^ and finally the modern form. There is a noun form in English, although it is a rarity in modern times. It was "sceaða" (=sceatha) in Old English, meaning, "harm, injury," from Old Germanic "skaþon/skaþan," meaning "damage, harm." The adjective "scathing" (harsh, sharp words toward someone or something) is from the participle form of the verb (Example: "The editorial writer unleashed a scathing attack on the mayor for his administration's laxness in maintaining the streets.") Relatives in the other Germanic languages (I'll use the verb forms): German, Low German and Dutch have "schaden" meaning "to harm, to damage, to hurt (someone or something):" Frisian had "skatha/skathia" (not sure if that is also a modern form, but also "skea," meaning "damage" is likely a modern contracted form), Icelandic has "skaða" (to damage, to harm), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have "skada" (to damage, to harm, to hurt someone or something).

^  Old Norse speakers, collectively called "Danes" by the English, landed and often settled in northern England and in parts of eastern England beginning in the 800s AD. This led to various influences by Old Norse on English. Like English, Old Norse came from the Germanic family of languages.

Hitler Gradually Consolidated Power, Part Four/Final

Note: Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other fascists have used rallies to spread hate, to keep their supporters motivated and to get their own extremely weak egos the affirmation they so desperately needed. Trump has used his own rallies for such things, but he has also turned non partisan events with the Boy Scouts, law enforcement, the military and business people into political events for himself. Fascists LOVE chants, and the chants of "Duce! Duce! Duce!" for Mussolini, "Sieg heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg heil! for Hitler, have been turned by Trump into audiences chanting, "Lock her/them up!," depending upon the target of his remarks at the moment.
 
For "Part Three," here is the link: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2019/05/hitler-gradually-consolidated-power_23.html

As I noted in "Part Three," just before President Paul von Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler had the cabinet issue a new law combining the chancellorship with the presidency for when the 86 year old president passed away. With Hitler now Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, all military personnel were gathered in their various locations, where they swore an oath to Adolf Hitler, personally, not to Germany or to the German people. This oath proved to be a major problem for many in the military, including the highest officers, who saw disloyalty to Trump.... I mean Hitler, as "treason," although now Trump is doing the same thing, by declaring it is treason to investigate him.

By late 1941 his armies in Russia were halted before the gates of Moscow, Leningrad (the name for St. Petersburg for much of the communist era), and the naval fortress of Sevastopol in the Crimea, and Hitler, never one to take responsibility for his own decisions, replaced the commander-in-chief of the army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch. Hitler replaced him with himself! So Hitler was now Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht (armed forces), commander-in-chief of the armed forces and commander-in-chief of the army. When would he fire a captain and take charge of a company himself?

Hitler's power was complete and throughout his time in leadership, he and the Nazis used fear to keep people in line by using the powers of the German state to punish enemies and make examples of anyone who dared to challenge Hitler's policies, or threatened the regime in any way, just as Sturmabteiling (SA) leader Ernest Röhm and other SA leaders were murdered or sent to concentration camps, and young brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, and their friend Christoph Probst, were beheaded for distributing antiwar and anti-Nazi leaflets. As the German military was staggered by defeats on a continuing basis beginning in late 1942, and more and more disturbing reports of terrible atrocities swirled around, the oath to Hitler became a shield to hide behind for many military personnel, but not all, and some gallant officers actually joined with existing anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi Germans to come up with a way to rid Germany and the world of Hitler, in hopes of saving their country. *

During the course of the war, Nazi "political officers" (Nationalsozialistische Führungsoffiziere= National Socialist Leadership Officers) were put into units to help ensure the troops were following Nazi ideology of being strong in the face of adversity and to make strict and harsh treatment of designated groups, like Jews and Gypsies, acceptable. After the failed attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944, the traditional military salute was replaced by the Nazi salute in the armed forces,** and the head of the infamous SS, Heinrich Himmler, was put in charge of the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer), a part of the German army, not the Nazi SS. As the war neared its end on German soil, the Nazis couldn't break their old habits, and they formed special squads to look for and execute Germans for abandoning the war effort and going against the Nazi slogan of "final victory" (Endsieg), even when Allied or Soviet troops were advancing just blocks away through the ruins of German cities and towns. In those closing weeks and days of the war, tens of thousands of people, military and civilian, and from all sides, were killed or maimed just to keep Hitler's nasty ass alive. This was the man who called himself a "genius." Let's see... what American fascist leader has recently claimed to be a "genius?"    

* For a bit more on the German resistance to Hitler, here is the link: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/08/german-question-part-one-hundred-fifty_29.html 

** The Nazi salute was/is called "Hitlergruß" in German (Hitler greeting), and it was always used in Nazi organization, but the German armed forces had used the traditional military salute. Wouldn't Trump LOVE to have a salute named for him? I have a salute FOR him, an extended middle finger! 

WORD HISTORY:
Swirl-While the origin of this word is in question, it seems likely to be related to "swarm," a word from the Germanic roots of English. This likelihood means the word goes back to Indo European "swer/suer," which meant, "to buzz;" and was likely used for bees and other insects (thus, "swarm"). I can find no Old Germanic form, but it "could" have been derived from a form of "swarm" later, and there were/are forms of words in Germanic like Old Norse "sverra," meaning "to swirl, to whirl", and "swarra," "to whiz," Swedish dialectal "svirra," "to crackle (of fire)," Danish "svirre," "to buzz or to whiz," Norwegian "svirla" "whirl," German "surren," "to buzz, to whir," and German also has "schwirren," meaning "to buzz, to whir," but it seems to have been taken from Low German "swirren" about 250 to 300 years ago, which referred to the sound made by a swarm of insects, and Dutch "zwirrelen," "to swirl, to whirl." The noun form "swirl" first seems to have been used in the first part of the 1400s, as "swyrl," in Lowland Scots English,^ and it "might" be a borrowing from the Dutch verb, as it meant "an eddy, a whirlpool," or from the Norwegian dialect form.

^ "Lowland Scots" is now classified by linguists as a separate language from English, although it developed from English, and is, therefore, a Germanic language, not a Gaelic language from Celtic, like Scottish Gaelic (also called, "Scots Gaelic").