Caricatures of Hitler

 

I'm going steadily ahead with Schellberg 7. Protagonist Gabriela knows she must resist and rebel.

In the background there has been the burning of books – and she works in the publishing industry yet has been protected from the consequences of this. The White Rose movement will appear quite soon.

Gabriela has to find her own way of resisting.

She's abandoned her swing-loving friends- the Schlurfs - and now she is being reacquainted with them. She has a flatmate who draws cartoons – specifically satirical cartoons of Hitler.

In my research I have found plenty of cartoons satirising Hitler but many of them were made long after he was dead.  I have to get into the mind-set of a woman who would dare to do that at the time that he was still alive and very much revered. That has given me the wonderful character Heidi Viebeck.

Naturally there are many pro-Hitler cartoons drawn at the time and plenty of anti-Semitic ones too.

These cartoons that Heidi draws will lead later to Gabriela's niece taking part in satirical plays about Hitler.

All of this is really interesting research as is creating an underground venue for where the plays can take place.  

 

             

The Case for War – or not

 

We debated this today in my Creative Writing group. One of our members had written an ode in response to John McRae’s In Flanders Fields. This poem is really a battle cry – exhorting others to join up and avenge the dead.

“Is there not another way?” asked our poet.

What if every person refused to go to war? There are a couple for problems with this. Firstly you need a blanket refusal and that’s unlikely to happen. Secondly what exactly do you do when someone invades your country? If you have a problem imagining that, what would you do if someone invades your home or tried to take your property? Isn’t the latter what justifies fire-arms to many Americans?

I’ve always thought anyway that it’s older upper class people (usually white males but not always – remember Thatcher?) who send young people out to war.

The Great War had a flimsy start but then the men on all sides flocked to do their duty for King or Emperor and country.  By World War II we had become wiser. It was more a case of needs must.   

“Why can’t somebody just go and get Putin?” another member of the group says. My sentiments exactly. Yet it’s proving to be very difficult; he’s elusive and Russia has a big land mass. Look as well at how many attempts were made on Hitler’s life. They failed.

How does Hitler compare, anyway? To me, he seems to have been mainly a figurehead. Although he joined in the evil, he wasn’t necessarily the main driver. And he was very good at public speaking.

What of the latest conflict? The Gaza strip has ever been problematic. The Palestinians and the Israelis find themselves in a curious position anyway. It was only right that room should be made for Jews in Israel. Never again should anything happens to them as happened in the Holocaust. Yet the Palestinians are losing tier territory .Nothing seems fair either way.

However Hamas is not the way. And neither is excessive aggression by Israel.

What if we had no borders?  Was Brexit a retrograde step?

I’ve just finished reading a book in which a blue fox wanders over 2000 miles in seventy-six days. No border official tries to stop her. Yet they do have to stop the mother and daughter who are tracking the fox’s progress; they don’t have the correct visas.

Everywhere we are asking to devolution and for the people to take care of their own affairs. Can you have devolution and open borders at the same time?

It’s all so complex. Maybe we just need to listen to one another a little more carefully.            

Megalomania

We resisted Napoleon. It took a while. We resisted Hitler. It took a while. We are resisting Putin. It’s taking a while. And there are countless others.

Is there something that we can understand that makes these people the way they are? Or are they just complete psychopaths? Is that a mental illness?

Working on this project has enabled me to form an opinion about Hitler. This is just an opinion but it is reasonably well informed.

·         He was a frustrated artist.

·         He was bullied and abused by his step-father.

·         He saw himself as a  martyr when he was imprisoned though his contacts on the outside and the inside made sure his stay wasn’t too uncomfortable.  

·         He really believed in a master race and that he was destined to establish its supremacy.

·         He believed Germany was ill-treated after the outcome of the Great War.

·         He brought some hope and unity to a country that was suffering.

·         He was a figurehead behind whom a much deeper evil existed.

·         He wasn’t very bright.

·         There was a slight trace of Jewishness in him and he was afraid of that.

·         He was very good at making speeches and could incite mass hysteria.

·         His gentler side: he was a vegetarian and towards the end he would rather train his dogs than work on military strategy.

So, my impression of Putin:  

·         He’s more intelligent than Hitler.

·         He is a psychopath and a megalomaniac.

·         He has a belief that the Ukraine is the home of Russian history. He loves the Ukraine. Or this may just be the way he spins it.

·         He may be ill and therefore may want to make a point before he dies.  

I always felt uneasy about the war in Iraq and in fact I’m one of the writers who contributed to Lines in the Sand, the protest / charity book put together by writers who objected to the war. It was so disappointing as I’d been quite impressed with Blair’s government up until then. Double whammy: it was actually his government that stopped compulsory language learning in schools. Yet fast forward a few years and I overhear one of my academic colleagues arguing that it was a positive that we had rid ourselves of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps he was right. My concern anyway about the war in Iraq was how other countries condemned us for it and how the United Nations was divided. I was also worried about how it was harming civilians. That is always the problem with war.

“Hasn’t anybody got Putin yet?” I ask at regular intervals. I’m convinced that if someone did that would be the end of it. There is the fear though that others would just take over the cause.  Though if Hitler really did take his own life in the bunker there was little evidence that the powers behind him carried on after his death though who knows actually what is behind the new wave of fascism that’s on the rise in the world. And getting rid of Hussein did not lift all threats.

And if someone did get Putin what would we do with him?

I’m against capital punishment. We do not have the right to take another human life in peace time other than in self-defence. In any case, life-long imprisonment is more of a punishment though it costs the tax-payer more.

So, we carry on walking on egg-shells around Putin. He seems deranged enough to be too trigger happy with a certain red button. My mother-in-law always used to say that the nuclear threat wasn’t form the Soviet Union. The Cold war was taking care of that; it was if some crack-pot got hold of a nuclear weapon. Oh, the irony!

Emma Craigie “Chocolate Cake with Hitler”

This is a moving account of the last days in Hitler’s bunker for Helga Goebbels. Those of us who know our 20th century history will perhaps find the first person narrative somewhat ironic. Nevertheless, it works and gives us some closeness to this main character.  

Emma Craigie offers us a very convincing character in Helga. Craigie successfully shows us a child’s point of view. And she does show us, rather than telling us. She achieves this partly through very good use of the senses. We can see, hear, smell and taste the life in the bunker. We watch the big “Uncle Leader” gradually disintegrate.   

Craigie seems to face many of the issues that I face in my project.

She too has had to span a long period of time. She attains this by interspersing the days in the bunker with memories form the past. She spans 1936 to 1945. I go from 1938 to 1947, though I also have flashbacks to 1936 and 1925.

She has also had to make up some characters and make up some of the details of the lives of some of the real people.     

She too has had find out exactly which facts might be verifiable.

She too had some really useful help form some people brave enough to tell their stories.   

I’m intrigued to see that she has also included a glossary.

And is there after all some justice? Does my story have a slightly more upbeat ending? Despite the concern about Clara Lehrs? Maybe, maybe not. Both stories rely somewhat on the reader knowing some of the background.