Monday

Some of my favorite moments from Berlin Diary:

March 10, 1940, Memorial day:
A front page editorial in the Lokal Anzeiger says: "This is no time for being sentimental. Men are dying for Germany day and night. One's personal fate now is unimportant. There's no asking why if one falls or is broken."
That's the trouble. If the Germans asked why, the flower of their youth might not always be condemned to be butchered on the battlefield. [In another paper], bannerlines in red ink over page one: "OVER THE GRAVES FORWARD!"


November 27, 1940:
Many stories about increasing sabotage in Holland. The Germans are furious at the number of their men, in both the army and police, who are being shoved into the numerous Dutch canals on these dark nights and drowned. X tells me a funny one. He says the British intelligence in Holland is working fine. Both sides in this war have built a number of dummy airdromes and strewn them with wooden planes. X says the Germans recently completed a very large one near Amsterdam. They lined up more than a hundred dummy planes made of wood on the field and waited for the British to come over and bomb them. Next morning the British did come. They let loose with a lot of bombs. The bombs were made of wood.


And obviously, September 22, 1938, about when Hitler would pitch such a fit over Benes and the Czechs that he threw himself on the floor and gnawed on the edge of the carpet. That's why he was called "Teppichfresser", meaning "carpet eater". It sort of reminds me of when Bush the younger pitched a fit at the (third?) debate. There's a pretty big difference between Hitler and Bush, but the comparison is there to be made, as Bush and Hitler were both exhibiting a lack of manners brought on by infantile petulance not befitting adults, never mind heads of state.

In other news, the guy I mentioned yesterdsy who forgot he asked me if I liked Pirates of the Carribean? I worked with him today. And he actually asked me the same question again. I was ready for this by this point, and decided to contradict what I had formerly said, which was itself a contradiction of what I had said in the first place. I said, "Yeah, it's ok." He said, "Yeah, me too." Hilarious.

It's getting cold outside. Must be winter.

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