Reprint Heaven: Mongo Thinks About Chuck Again

For Chuck (1942 - 2014)
(Originally posted December 30, 2012)


Chaplin: Final Speech From The Great Dictator (1940)

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor. That's not my business.

I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible -- Jew, gentile; black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in -- machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little; More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost...

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure!

Then, in the name of democracy, let's use that power; let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie!

They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness...

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

Even Dogs dream, man.

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Reprint Heaven: True Colors

[Given the sudden amount of reanimated interest in the reappearance of Mitzy as a potential Republican candidate for President, again... it's important to remember exactly what he and the rest of the Rethug front-runners are about -- this, from September, 2012:]

To Mitzy, Chances Are ~ 50% That You're Lazy, Irresponsible, And Don't Matter
 

When the now-infamous Cellphone Video surfaced a week ago, I wasn't at all surprised by Mitzy's comments (You can read the full transcript at Mother Jones online).   After all, he was speaking to a crowd of his people. They all share the same perspectives on America, its population, and what should be done to ensure a top-down, trickle-down vision dominates the future.  Aber natürlich he didn't bother to censor himself.

This One Per Cent notion of our country and culture was highlighted in a short Los Angeles Times article this past July about a traffic jam of wealthy donors, making their way to a gated estate in the Hamptons (don't know about the Hamptons? Go here) where Little Mitt Romney was going to speak to them -- and, oh yes; take their checks.

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach  permits.“Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them. We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, they’re not as educated; two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Mitzy made his remarks on May 17th at the Boca Raton, Fla., home of Marc Leder, co-owner of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, founder and co-CEO of Sun Capital Partners, a Boca Raton-based private investment firm which (according to the company’s website) focuses on leveraged buyouts -- the tactic, along with outsourcing, that made Bain Capital under Romney so successful (for workers in the impacted companies Bain took over... not so much).  Leder's estimated net worth is $400 million.

This is the same Marc Leder who rented a home in the Hamptons  last season, for one month, to throw a long string of "parties" -- real Roman-style, sybaritic, public sexyorgytime, and apparently quite popular with the moneyed set.  Marvelous Marc's rental cost of the house for that 30 days was $500,000 (I don't know if this included the hookers).

That's $16,000 per day -- and  $16K per year is just a little more than the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, about the mean average wage (according to Wikipedia) of Farmworkers, Laborers; Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse workers; Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers; Cafeteria, Food Concession, and Coffee Shop attendants -- Gardeners, and 'Personal Grooming' attendants.  That is, the Nails Ladies. 

So Markie's 30 Days Of Fuckpad cost him the annual salary of thirty Americans, working in what usually gets referred to as the 'service industry'. I've had a few of these jobs, and relative to what I do now, I can tell you the work is hard. But, you know; those are the 'lower income' types who "don't understand".

(Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant)

And. the minimum wage is one of the legacies of FDR's New Deal -- which the One Per Cent would like to drown in a bathtub, with the help of Little Grover. That, and replacing Social Security with a Stock Market Casino and Medicare with Vouchers For All, would be part of Austerity For America -- what Little Paulie Ryan likes to call the "sacrifice", the "pain" that they intend to force on the American people. But not on the One Per Cent, aber natürlich.

So, Romney told people in Boca Raton what they already believe:  47% are Liberals -- lazy, stupid, wanting nothing but government handouts, taking no personal responsibility for their lives. They're serfs,. They lie; they steal and they smell. You have to keep them in line and watch what they're doing every minute.

Audience member: For the last three years, all everybody's been told [by the Obama administration, i.e., 'the government] is, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you." How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody, "You've got to take care of yourself"?

Romney: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. 

And they will vote for this president no matter what... These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And [Obama will] be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that's what they sell every four years. 

And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents...

Also, one attendee at the soiree told Mitzy:

The debates are gonna be coming, and I hope at the right moment you can turn to President Obama, look at the American people, and say, "If you vote to reelect President Obama, you're voting to bankrupt the United States." I hope you keep that in your quiver because that's what gonna happen. 

 Mitzy replied, "Yeah, it's interesting," then proceeded to tell the room that the Federal Reserve is keping the economy afloat by printing money, "just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just ...saying, 'Here, we're giving it.'  It's just made up money."

[A]s soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we’re issuing—which they’ve been doing, the Fed’s buying like three-quarters of the debt that America issues. He said, once that’s over, he said we’re going to have a failed Treasury auction, interest rates are going to have to go up. We’re living in this borrowed fantasy world, where the government keeps on borrowing money.

 Paul Krugman, one of the smartest people on Earth when it comes to economics (certainly smarter than Mitzy), posted on Thursday in the New York Times that Romney was as usual spouting nonsense that had stuck in his head. If you follow the link, The Krug Man will explain why this is so, but the short version is, Mitzy is spewing an urban myth; the Fed purchased large amounts of Treasuries from Q2 of 2008 through Q1, 2009 -- and interest rates still went down.

 I was half-watching Washington Week In Review this evening, but my ears perked up when I heard one of the Beltway guest journalists mentioned that a complaint about Romney, even from people who support him, is that as a person Mitzy is an awkward, hazy cypher: People "just don't know him", or he "doesn't connect" easily with others.


 What the cellphone video showcased, the reporter said, was the real and unvarnished Romney, with all upper-class prejudices and crippled vision on display. His crowd of one-per-centers see the world in near-feudal terms -- it belongs to them, and the unwashed peasantry of "nail ladies", gardeners and salespersons which populates it are lazy good-for-nothings who don't work as hard as the Owners and Makers, like Little Mitt.

And other reporters are seeing the same thing, as Mitzy travels the country, endlessly fundraising as he attempts to bury the Obama and the Democrats under a sea of SuperPAC cash (In fact, some of his Romney's advisors have told him to stop raising money and concentrate in the last six weeks before the election on 'connecting' with voters).

With "His" people, he easily tosses off comments like those in Boca Raton -- however, the problem in Florida is that he was caught on video. This was Mitzy's "Macaca" moment, so politically harmful because it confirmed everything people already knew or suspected about him.

At 10PM Eastern time on Monday night, over a day after the video was released by Mother Jones, Mitzy gave what was referred to as a "shotgun presser".   Romney's campaign had already been hit earlier in the day by a story at Politico, reporting on confusion and disarray. It was expected Romney would offer some explanation or to apologize a seriously embarrassing gaffe.

Romney didn't. As a campaign reporter noted afterwards, 

[I]t would have helped if Romney had said something that… helped.  [A]ll he really did was say the same thing that got him in trouble, but in a wordier fashion, and with a Church Lady delivery. Even given the chance to explain what he meant, Romney still equated unemployment with a deficit of personal responsibility.

 
 He did not apologize or retract a single word captured on the video. He didn't attempt to address it's real message about the twisted values and lack of principle which define his candidacy -- it's as if he had said  I represent personal wealth, influence and interest, and if elected will do all I can to aid wealth and people like myself.  

We own or control everything. The rest of you are serfs who don't matter a damn; you all work for us, one way or another. When I'm elected, you can shift for yourselves. If you can't pull yourself up, when it gets too tough, you can hang yourself by your own bootstraps. Life is for those who have, and those who don't shall lose.

What he actually said was:

Well, you know, it [Romney's message in the video]'s not elegantly stated, let me put it that way. I’m speaking off-the-cuff in response to a question, and I'm sure I could state it more clearly and in a more effective way than I did in a setting like that. And so I’m sure I’ll point that out as time goes on...

But it’s a message which I’m going to carry and continue to carry, which is, look, the President’s approach is attractive to people who are not paying taxes because, frankly, my discussion about lowering taxes isn’t as attractive to them, and therefore I’m unlikely to draw them into my campaign as effective[ly] as those in the middle. This is really about the political process of winning the election. Of course, I want to help all Americans, all Americans, have a bright and prosperous future and I’m convinced the President’s approach has not done that, and will not do that.

 Any questions?

___________________________________________________________

MEHR, MIT SCHWEIN:

January 16, 2015 (Tim Reid / Reuters) - Mitt Romney's declaration that he is considering a third shot at the White House after being a two-time Republican presidential loser was widely greeted with disdain at a national gathering of Republican activists on Thursday.

Random Barking

Just Because We Can

And, because it doesn't have anything to do with terror, funerals, sagging Oligarchs, rioting Kiddies™, children empowered with canned vegetables, and endless garbage from the paid servants of the Owner Class, all saying "Fear the future! Fear It ! Be afraid and vote for Meeeeeeeeeeeeee !!"

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Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Rupert & Le Front National Ne Est Pas Charlie

 Marianne Statue, Place de la République, Paris, January 11 (Stephanie Mahe / Reuters)

This week, nineteen human beings died in the capital of a great European nation: twelve journalists and cartoonists, four hostages and three police officers (one of them, Ahmed Merabet, himself a Muslim), all murdered in Paris.

The attacks targeted artists in their offices and Jews in a kosher market. They were meant to create maximum public impact and fear.

Hours after the attack on the offices of Charlie Hedbo, Parisians spontaneously gathered in the streets -- more than thirty thousand of them around the statue of Marianne, the symbol of France, in Paris' Place de la République. Many held signs with the phrase: Je Suis Charlie -- I Am Charlie.  The next day, marches sprung up across the country -- tens of thousands in major cities across France.

JeSuisCharlie has become the most used hashtag in the relatively brief history of social media. 

Spontaneous Rally On January 8, Place de la République, Paris (Getty/via CNN)

A mass rally and march took place in Paris today, a memorial for the victims and an opportunity to reject beliefs which use violence and repression as their primary tool and creed -- and to affirm that tolerance, freedom of religious worship and the right to freedom of expression are what France and Europe stand for. 

1.5 million people showed up in the streets -- more than at any time since the city's liberation from nazi occupation in the summer of 1944.  Attendees marching arm-in-arm included the French, German, British, Turkish and Italian Prime Ministers, the Israeli Prime Minister and President of the Palestinians, and a host of other world leaders.

President Obama sent the outgoing U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder.

______________________________________________________

An intended byproduct of the Paris terror attacks was to increase tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims.  A heavy-handed response by the French government, an increase in casual discrimination against Muslims in the wake of the attacks, would be gifts to jihadists.

America's invasion of Iraq following the September 11th attacks allowed a simmering conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to explode into an endless, blood-feud war. The Israelis and Palestinians, and Hezbollah, have had five major confrontations after 2000. Arabic emigration to Europe increased; after the 2008 economic crash, the 'Arab Spring', with high unemployment and cuts in social services in EU countries -- a long string of events which contributed to the resurgence of Europe's nationalist, right-wing political parties.

The message of these parties sounds too familiar to many Europeans: Fear The Other. Radical Islam, the Rightists say, is an infestation, and any Muslim could be infected. They accuse the Left and Center political parties of being too politically correct, too weak to understand the threat, and to act. From the Netherlands to Greece, these parties are relatively small but growing -- only in France are they a serious political force; the National Front could actually take control of the government in the next election.

Anti-Muslim Rally In Lyon, One Day After The Charlie Hedbo Attack (UK Guardian)

One positive note in all this -- Europe has been down this road before and there are people still living who remember it. Many Europeans are determined that 'Never Again' is not only a slogan.

On the weekend before the Paris attacks, Germany's 'Pegida' movement held well-attended anti-Muslim marches in major German cities.  However, they immediately triggered anti-Pegida marches across Germany which were even more heavily attended. Germany, as well as France, remembers its history.

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On this Friday's installment of his cable program, 'Real Time', satirist Bill Maher said flatly, “Hundreds of millions of [Muslims] support an attack like that [i.e., on the staff of Charlie Hebdo].” His guests (including author Salman Rushdie, once targeted by an Iranian death sentence for 'insults to Islam' in a novel), echoed the same sentiments, more or less.

And yesterday, Rupert Murdoch deigned to provide the world with his opinion via Twitter:

Maybe most Moslems [sic] peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible. — January 10, 2015 (@rupertmurdoch)

The majority of responses disagreed (Michael Monan [@MichaelMonan1] asked, "In the same way that you must be held responsible for ordering the hacking of the voicemails of dead school children?").  Undeterred, Little Rupert poured a little more gasoline on the fire:

Big jihadist danger looming everywhere from Philippines to Africa to Europe to US. Political correctness makes for denial and hypocrisy. 

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Murdoch owns one of the largest media conglomerates on earth, a billionaire Oligarch who organized and manages the largest media factory of right-wing distortions and lies ever created -- ranking with Tass and Pravda of the Stalinist era, the national media of modern Communist China, and the media of the nazi state created by Joey Goebbels.

When it was founded, CNN's news format blurred the lines between news as fact, and as entertainment. In developing his own cable news network, Murdoch could have rejected that and created a higher standard in how information is gathered and news presented. He could have treated viewers with the basic assumption that they were intelligent adults, a public that deserved to be given facts about events -- not distortions or editorializing presented as 'news'. Instead, Rupert raced Ted Turner to the bottom.

Our Business Was Founded On The Idea That A Free And Open Press

Should Be A Positive Force In Society.

-- Rupert Murdoch, July 14, 2011

 Rupert's media 'properties' push a huckster's blend of both "Tits 'n Tattle" entertainment and right-wing propaganda. It's a business model that holds people in contempt -- gullible, easily-led children; lowest common denominators. You don't lie to and manipulate people that you respect.

NewsCorp is the unacknowledged, shadow media arm of the political Right, and Rupert revels in having so much power -- in America, waiting to see which right-wing politician will receive his approval (and media support) as the Republican candidate for President is known as "the Murdoch Primary". 

And to ordinary people, the news Rupert's machine pumps out seems grim, even without political spin -- environmental and political crises; regional wars that are blood feuds which can only end with the extermination of one side; the murderous fanaticism of an ISIS or Boko Harum.

The response of Western governments to these crises (e.g., military action against ISIS; aid to stem the spread of Ebola) frequently seem too hesitant, because finding consensus is hard, and finding money to support that consensus may be even harder; the effects of the 2008 Crash our Masters Of The Universe created are still with us.

So, Murdoch's messages (The future is to be feared; Muslims are enemies, and the throwaway reference to 'political correctness' -- Leftist politicians are spineless; they will not Act Decisively to save you) can seem attractive, to some.

Murdoch's opinions are those of a first-generation Oligarch who wants his family's wealth and influence preserved. His media and his messages reflect his vision of the world -- myopic, fearful, suspicious and conspiratorial. Competitors and detractors must be manipulated and dominated, by brute force if necessary, to maintain control and market share ... a very similar worldview, oddly enough, to that of the jihadists.

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What happened in Paris earlier this week is a reminder of how precarious things in the larger world can be. We live with that awareness; it's part of the legacy of being human -- having no real answer to What Is all This? Why Am I Here? but getting up each day and tending to our lives, not knowing when it all may end, and hoping to find some sweetness, moment to moment.

And we each hold a hope that, in that larger world, some positive direction will begin to take shape -- that the people we recognize as leaders will find a way towards Peace, Security; Purpose and Completion; Rest; Love. We don't talk about this directly, or often -- who wants to appear too sentimental, soft, impractical? But that shared hope is who we are, and it shines through in our moods; in a shared glance; in the pauses between parts of conversations with friends.

Most 'ordinary' people understand, in the larger world, that the fix is in, that we're manipulated and lied to as consumers, citizens and voters. We focus on the day-to-day because we don't believe 'ordinary' people have real power in that larger world. Then, something happens (usually, a tragedy) and we realize that the political and social structures we have to live in are less important than our essential humanity -- and that simply being human is a powerful thing.

For a time, we realize that is what matters -- and, we know the moment is fleeting, that we'll dissolve back into separate tribes and camps and that awareness won't last. But while it does, we can smile wildly at each other and link arms and lift our voices, happy as children. Only later will smaller hearts and minds try to make that moment, that recognition between us, into an embarrassment or a joke.

Have you ever been in a crowd which starts to sing the Marseille? The French Revolution was terrible, in many ways, expressions of the best and worst humankind could offer -- Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and the Terror.

For me, the Marseille (and the 'Internationale', and The Star-Spangled Banner) have always expressed that shared recognition -- our desire for real justice, real peace, and not the illusions we're fed by corporate interests or business-as-usual politics. It's a song of solidarity and courage in the face of not knowing where we will all end. 

Murdoch's message, or that of the political Right in Europe, or in America, is not the spirit of the Marseille.  Murdoch's message was not that of the crowds in Paris today. Theirs was about community, not division, and about the courage to demand a larger world where what we hope for will become the birthrights of every human being -- and that today's recognition that we are part of a common humanity, united against fear and resignation, won't  fade away. 

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Everyone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you're everywhere
Come and get your share

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
...
John Lennon /
Instant Karma (And We All Shine On) [1969]

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Nous Sommes Tous Charlie

They Came For The Cartoonists

 Candles Before French Embassy In Vienna (AAP Photo)

I am both sad and angry at the news from Paris: Two murderous imbecilic whoresons individuals killed over a dozen people, and wounded others, using automatic weapons in what French authorities described as a "military-style attack" on the Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper.

The attack occured as the paper was holding its weekly editorial meeting , as the entire staff was gathered in one place. Among the dead were Stéphane Charbonnier, the newspaper's editorial director and one of France's best-known editorial cartoonists (aka 'Charb'); other artists Jean Cabut (known as 'Cabu') and Bernard Verlhac ('Tignous'); and Georges Wolinski, one of Charlie's original founders. The deranged sociopathic bottomfeeding fuckwads masked gunmen also murdered the paper's receptionist and other staff members, and two French policemen. 

A number of residents in the same building as the Charlie Hebdo offices apparently heard gunshots and immediately escaped up to their roof ; several took cellphone videos of the gunmen, including images as they machine-gunned a French policeman (who had responded to a call about the initial attack) as he lay wounded on a sidewalk, begging not to be killed [Ironically, the man was not only a Flic, but also a Muslim himself -- a Tweet sent from France said, "I Am Ahmed The Cop, and I died defending the right of free speech"]. One of the pathetic excuses for sentient life murderers could be heard, even on a cellphone video taken from a distance away, shouting that they had "avenged the prophet". 

The French believe that the freedom of expression -- to speak, write, or draw anything, even if it offends -- is a basic human right. There is a very old tradition for this style of editorializing and illustration, in France and across Europe, and on all sides of the political spectrum -- and the French see no difference between an offensive cartoon satirizing President Hollande in 2014, and Emil Zola publishing J'Accuse! in 1898 during the height of the Dreyfus Affair.

Zola's Famous Editorial, 1898

Charlie Hebdo was a publication with a small press run, financially always on the edge (this, too, part of a tradition of self-expression on the margins). But, it was internationally known for its no-holds-barred, nothing-sacred commentary and cartoons regarding the politics and cultural collisions in Europe and the larger world. They went for the jugular, and acerbic views included various currents of the Islamic world, and after republishing Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and poking fun at Islamists generally, Charlie's offices in a quiet Paris suburb were firebombed.

In 2012, the paper published a number of its own cartoons of the prophet, forcing the French government to close embassies and other offices abroad in the face of threatened retaliation from unnamed Islamist groups. Within the last year, as Charlie mocked the brutality and savagery of ISIS's assault on the Middle East, threats against the paper escalated and several members of its editorial board began using bodyguards. Within the past few weeks, French intelligence had received information that some form of terrorist action was coming, but had no details.

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The French are correct: The ability to freely speak, write, or draw one's opinion -- to create and to express that opinion even if it offends -- is a basic human right. The things persons who committed murder in Paris yesterday, and the murderous ideology they serve, are an obscenity on the face of the Earth. They deserve to be exposed, ridiculed, reviled, and ultimately brought to justice.

The forces of ignorance, intolerance, degradation and hatred not only use fighter-bombers, drop cluster munitions or use drones. Their leaders don't only speak in parliaments or congresses, wear expensive suits, manage corporations from boardrooms, or are part of families with great hereditary wealth. Darkness and real evil are not limited to that sort of trash.

They are no better than the people, or ideologies, they claim to oppose. They can create nothing; all they can do is destroy, and kill -- and it was demonstrated in the streets of Paris yesterday.  It's demonstrated around the world on a daily basis. And the only comfort we can take from any of it is: What goes around comes around, and there's a certain kind of person who acts as if that particular truth doesn't exist.

In a not-so-great 2013 film, Monuments Men, there's one good scene: Frank Stokes, an art curator-turned-army officer during WW2 (played by George Clooney), questions a captured SS officer about the whereabouts of art which the nazis had stolen from every corner of Europe they could get their hands on. Other works, paintings and sculpture which 'offended' them, were simply burned in the streets, like books. Or like people.

The SS officer smugly declines to help; Clooney smiles a little, then delivers a not-so-bad line (which I'll have to paraphrase from memory, but I think the point is clear):

... I'm going home soon. I've got a nice apartment in New York on the Upper West Side. There's a deli down the street, called Sid's. Every morning when I go to work at the Met, I walk to Sid's, get a cup of coffee and a bagel, and I read the New York Times .

One day, about a year or so from now, on some nice morning in springtime -- you know, when everything just starts to warm up? I'll be sitting there, reading the paper -- and I'll come across this tiny article. It won't be on the front page, but way in the back... and I'll read that you've been hanged for crimes against humanity.

Then I'll finish my coffee, and go to work.  Sid will use the paper to wrap some fish in. And I'll never think about you again for the rest of my life.

What goes around comes around. Some tend to forget that.

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Reprint Heaven: The Why Of Dog

Random Barking As True As It Was In The Olden Days

(From January 6, 2011)

Most people I know who cruise the Intertubes have a handful of sites which they visit regularly. They also use it for topic-specific searches (Which actor played the cop Bruce Willis punched at the end of that movie on a river which I can't remember the name of?), and just for random cruising.

Pretty pictures, writing that makes us laugh, cry, or not; funny videos. As a species, we demand our Entertainment -- and where there's entertainment, there's advertising and data mining and money to be made. Facebook knows. So does Little Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs VampSquid).

For the sites I visit regularly, I'm amazed at the amount of personal opinion about -- well, stuff that gets tossed out there, embedded like raisins or ratshit amongst more 'serious' essays about Our Life In These Times, or posts based on their professional work as financial analysts, historians, or monster truck devotees.

Opinions about the best martini, whether Jimmy Page or Rory Gallagher is the better classic rock guitarist; reports about their vacations; or why, uh, "intimate" relationships in marriage can actually be Teh Hot. It's like reading someone's diary, with misspellings, misinformation and syntax errors intact -- but, I suspect you already know this about the Intertubes.

It's the functional equivalent of a playground (or a neighborhood bar), with all the arbitrary supervision, rules you learn as you go, and ultimately organized for someone else's financial benefit. But you hang out there because it's flashy, and fun, and sometimes you're lonely and have no where else to go. Unlike the neighborhood bar, it can also be a place where everyone doesn't know your name (this blog a case in point).

Some sites are nearly all random junk tossed out of the unsorted, sock-drawer minds of people who should spend less time online (Some people shouldn't be allowed Intertube access, at all -- like refusing to sell certain people Spandex™ clothing. Ever). Occasionally, they find an acorn and publish something enlightening, but it's like hunting for a bomber in the chaff: Your radar has better things to do.

We who blog can't resist posting that personal and meaningless, opinionated Stuff, though -- because we're paradoxical creatures, who crave order and regularity and at the same time seek the "new", the random and surprising. And everybody who blogs does it.

I'm doing it right now. Woof Woof Woof Woof. Bark Bark. Bark.

---

Films We Like: Decision Before Dawn (1951), Part One

Title Card, Decision Before Dawn, 1951 (Photo: The Indefeatagable DVD Beaver. 

You Will Sing, 'O Canada'. Sing It Right Now.)

Saturday Night At The Movies

[Part One was originally posted in 2012. Parts 2 and 3 follow, more recently done.]

I was introduced to some of my favorite films through my parent's black-and-white Zenith, and on NBC's Saturday Night At The Movies, which Wikipedia describes as "the first continuing weekly prime time network television series... to show relatively recent feature films".

On January 5, 1963, at 8:00 PM Pacific Time, they premiered Anatole Litvak's 1951 film, Decision Before Dawn, the story of a young German soldier captured in late 1944 who decides to work for the Americans as an intelligence agent behind German lines. It's a good, if not great, film -- for me, a classic on my Top Ten List.

It was rarely shown on teevee after the 1970's, but released on laserdisc in the mid-1980's. Sadly, that LP-sized technology didn't last; its image and sound quality were amazingly good (better, even, than the DVD technology that replaced them, until the advent of Blu-Ray). The range of titles available on Laserdisc were never matched by DVDs, either.

It took twenty years for Decision to be made available on DVD; the image quality isn't bad, but compared with the laserdisc version I used to own, the sound on DVD isn't as crisp as I know it can be. Just one Dog's opinion.

Morals, Movies, And Mitwissers

Watching the film in 1963, I understood that many of the actors were actual Germans, and their uniforms; the bombed-out buildings in the background of various shots, all looked realistic -- because they were.

I've read some criticisms of the film, made when it was released in 1951: that Decision was made for political reasons -- an attempt to rehabilitate a people who had crossed a moral line which placed them beyond redemption. The real raison d'etre for the movie was to humanize them, so that Western Germany (just founded as a Federal Republic) could become more palatable as a proxy state of the U.S., a bulwark against the new Soviet Russian empire.

It was propaganda, and of the worst sort  -- because to accept it, you would have to ignore what Germany, and Germans, were responsible for in Europe during the twelve years of the Third Reich. The Holocaust topped the list of crimes, but it was a long list.

The U.S. government gave assistance to the film's producers and distributor, 20th Century Fox, by allowing use of U.S. Army vehicles, and active-service troops as extras -- a continuation of Hollywood and the government's collaboration during the war. It was just political expediency.

Creating sympathetic characterizations of Germans ... yes, the war was over; people just wanted to get on with living -- but should anyone try to paper over the ovens, and everything that led to them? The actors in this movie... well, what exactly did they do during the war?

Reichstheaterkammer (State Theater Bureau) ID; Nazi Germany's Equivalent Of A SAG Or AFTRA Card. If Employed During The War, Decision's German Cast Members Would Have Carried One.

Germans after the war went through a denazification process (depending upon whom you talk to, unnecessary, or one which didn't go far enough. I agree with the latter -- and particularly so in places like Austria or the former East Germany) to weed out former nazi party members from positions of authority or influence in public life. Prominent filmmakers and actors (such as G.W. Pabst, Leni Reifenstahl, Emil Jannings, Hans Albers or Zarah Leander), already famous in Weimar Germany and who publicly embraced the nazis, found themselves reviled and out of work.

The political backgrounds of German cast members in Decision had been through that same scrutiny; but like any person living in Germany after 1933, and unwilling or unable to leave, they became accomplices by association, proximity. The word in German is Mitwisser,  "Knows-With", and in law this can mean a person with knowledge of a crime -- as culpable as the ones who actively commit it; they were in the room when things happened.

I asked myself that same question, for years, and a while ago started researching the backgrounds of as many German cast members of Decision as I could find. It's the basis for the notes about them that follow in the description of the film.

The notes are interesting but only show the broad outlines of an actor's career -- unsatisfying for a film biographer, or a historian. As far as I'm aware, only one member of Decision's cast ever put themselves at risk with the nazi regime (who that is may surprise you). Many had been actors before the nazis came to power, or had just broken into the business, and continued trying to develop their careers right through the war.

Life is rarely lived in bold, dramatic moments. It's lived in the spaces between the highs and lows we experience; it's collective, and it does catch up to us. We'd like to believe that if we were faced with similar choices, that we'd act as courageously as any of our film heroes -- maybe, and maybe not.

But we're here to talk about films.

The Director: Anatole Litvak (1902 -1974)

Anatole Litvak (Wikipedia)

Anatole Litvak, Decision Before Dawn's director, was born Kiev in the Ukraine, and directed silent films for the new Communist Russian state in what was then Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) -- but after Lenin’s death in 1924 the revolution began turning even more into a dictatorship, and Litvak fled for Berlin.

Litvak made several films in Germany (A previous version of this post credited him with directing the 1932 classic, Menschen Am Sontag [People On Sunday] -- actually the work of another gifted director, Robert Sidomak, and his brother; screenplay by Wilhelm ['Billy'] Wilder. My apologies; Mongo does not know everything). When the nazis stumbled into power in 1933, as a Ukrainian and a Jew, Litvak knew what was coming and moved to Paris.

In 1936 he directed the film, Mayerling, based on the real-life story of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (French actor Charles Boyer) and his affair with a 17-year-old Baroness (Danielle Derrieux) and their double suicide. It was an international success, making Boyer a full-fledged star; within a year, Warner Brothers offered Litvak a four-year contract in Hollywood.

Litvak quickly became known as one of Hollywood's leading directors, and after the U.S. entered WW2, Litvak co-produced and directed a string of films in support of the war effort -- including, with Frank Capra, the famous documentary series, Why We Fight.

Immediately after the war, Anatole Litvak directed two classic films, Sorry, Wrong Number and "The Snake Pit", both released in 1948 -- and arguably the best performances of Barbara Stanwyck or Olivia de Havilland's careers.

After completing Decision Before Dawn, possibly sensing another political change in the McCarthy Era (a circus that had been running since 1948; the Hollywood Ten, the blacklist, was something he couldn't ignore), Litvak moved back to Europe. He continued to direct films there -- including Anastasia (which resurrected Ingrid Bergmann's career) in 1956.

His last film, "Night Of The Generals" in 1967, with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif (working together for the first time since Lawrence Of Arabia), raised a few eyebrows -- it was filmed almost entirely on location in Warsaw, at the height of the Cold War.

The Project

In 1949, 20th Century Fox optioned a novel by George Howe, set during WW2,  'Call It Treason'. The studio used Peter Vertel to write a sceenplay under the title Decision Before Dawn  -- Vertel was a playwright who would go on to write the novel, "White Hunter, Black Heart" (made into a 1990 film by Clint Eastwood), based on his experiences with John Huston while shooting the 1956 film The African Queen. The character played by Robert Redford in 1974's The Way We Were was based on Vertel.

Fox needed a director to take on the project. It would be the first film production in Germany since the end of the war, with a few recognizable American stars, but primarily featuring German actors and actresses. It would be set in the final months of the disintegrating Third Reich, filmed in German cities still scarred by Allied bombing, and the film's real star would be a German. There were plenty of underemployed Germans, and also U.S. Army troops based in Germany, available to act as extras.

20th Century Fox asked Litvak to direct; he accepted. He was a good choice to direct a film that dealt with both moral ambiguity, and making a moral choice even at the risk of your own life. Like Hitchcock, Litvak's films always had a rising level of anxiety that was resolved, if not perfectly, then (within the limits of the medium) realistically.

Another aspect was that Litvak's anti-communist, pro-American film pedigree was spotless. He had run away from the Soviets, and the nazis -- if Litvak, a Ukrainian Jew, had stayed in Europe after 1936, he would have been swallowed up by the Holocaust. I always wondered what Litvak thought of returning to Europe, and of being in Germany at all, making casting decisions from a pool of persons who had done -- what? -- during the war.

The Film

The Classic Opening: Before Little Rupert Fouled The Name (All Screenshots © 20th Century Fox)

The film opens early in the morning with a line of German soldiers, a firing squad, marching out with a prisoner beside an older building in an urban area of a German city.

Over the sound of a church bell ringing, we hear Richard Baseheart's voice narrating:

Of all the questions left unanswered by the last war -- maybe any war -- one comes back constantly to my mind: Why does a spy risk his life; for what possible reason? If the spy wins, he's ignored. If he loses, he's shot.

... and the prisoner is shot, falling just as distant church bells start to ring. At an order, the firing squad turns and marches away; two other soldiers drag the body to a shallow grave recently dug, shovels still propped against a fence.

But a man stays alive only if he's remembered, and is killed by forgetfulness. Let the names of men like this remain unknown -- but let the memories of some of them serve as keys to the meaning of treason.

Artillery shells begin falling, and the two men hurriedly dump the body into the grave and run for the safety of Somewhere Else.

Baseheart continues his narration, now telling his own story: On the 8th of December in 1944, Lieutenant Rennick (Baseheart), wounded during the campaign across France and now assigned to an intelligence company as their communications officer, gets lost (thanks to his driver’s lack of direction) on the trip to find his new unit. The driver was played by one of the U.S. Armed Forces' personnel detached to appear in the film. His acting wasn't terrible, but unschooled.

While stopped, they flush two German soldiers, Paul Richter (Robert Freitag) and Karl Maurer (Oskar Werner), out of the woods who are just as lost, taking them prisoner. Rennick and his driver get back on the road, and deliver the two Germans at a POW cage. Rennick asks for directions from a Black First Sergeant, carrying a rifle and presumably a combat NCO -- impossible in the American army in France in 1944; a fiction of racial equality for the audience... in Europe, or at home.

Rennick finds his new unit identifies German POWs who could be trusted and train them for Allied intelligence-gathering missions behind enemy lines. Rennick finds this distasteful; he doesn’t like Germans, doesn’t like traitors, and says so. His commanding officer, Colonel Devlin (Garry Merrill), brings Rennick up short -- then orders him along on a trip to the same POW cage where he had dropped his two prisoners earlier that day, to look for new volunteers.

They interview older men (Arnulf Schroder), a whining nazi (a young Klaus Kinski in his first film role), and finally strike pay dirt in an amoral and opportunistic ex-sergeant, Rudolf Barth (Hans Christian Blech).

Arnulf Schröder: "No Sir, Not Me."

Klaus Kinski: "They Forced Me To Join The Party..."

Hans Christian Blech: "My Political Convictions? I've Never Been Able To Afford Any."

Devlin gives instructions to keep the volunteers separated; but they're watched by other POWs -- including Richter and Maurer, who recognizes Rennick as the officer who captured them. Other prisoners say the volunteers will be remembered and dealt with after Germany wins the war; surprised, Richter disagrees.

Jaspar von Oertzen, Charles Reginer; Freitag: "After We've Won?You Still Believe In That?"

That night, Richter is called to meet with the Amis (a slang term from the First World War; using the French, "Ami" [friend], it's a sarcastic reference for British and Americans). But it's a trick; some of the same loyal nazis in the yard that afternoon give Richter a two-minute courts martial, and throw him out a window.

Young Maurer shows up at the offices of the intelligence company ten days later, asking to speak with Lieutenant Rennick and to volunteer for -- whatever it is; "Doesn't matter," Maurer says. Rennick shoots back, "Well, what is it you believe in; do you know? Or does it change when your crowd's taking a beating?"

[A historical note: If Rennick reported to his unit in Mormemntiers on December 8, and Maurer came to see him ten days later on the 18th... On December 16th, the German army began its last offensive in the West, the Ardennes 'Battle Of The Bulge'. In the film, we hear nothing about it.]

"You Know What You're Getting Into?"

Colonel Devlin walks in; he asks Maurer what it is he believes in, and the young soldier convinces them: "I don't know exactly how to say it, but... I believe in a life where we don't always have to be afraid -- where people can be free, and honest with each other. And I know we can't have this in Germany, until -- until we have lost."

Despite an initial skepticism, Maurer is accepted as a volunteer. Because he is outwardly solemn and reserved, is given the code name, "Happy", and turned over to Monique (Dominique Blanchar) for processing. A Frenchwoman with a vague role on the American intelligence team, Monique begins falling for Maurer. Devlin sees it, and later transfers Monique as a result.

Werner And Blanchar

Meanwhile, Barth, accepted as a volunteer under the code name, "Tiger", despite his opportunistic cynicism, returns from a 'tourist mission' (a quick scouting behind the lines), but another agent, a radio operator, who accompanied him was arrested. Devlin is unsure whether Tiger is telling the truth; he has to be, because another mission is coming up that Devlin needs him for -- and Happy.

"Barth, Before Long We're Going To Be In Germany, In Every Village And Town, 

And If You've Been Lying ..."

Devlin explains to his team that a General Jaeger, commander of a key sector of Germany's Western front, has made an offer to surrender -- allowing U.S. troops a route into Germany. A key unit is the Eleventh Panzer Corps; American intelligence doesn't know where it is.

Karl Maurer / Happy's assignment will be to locate its headquarters. The team's radio operator had been arrested, working with Tiger -- and Lieutenant Rennick is the only qualified radioman available. Tiger will have to hide him at a safe house in Mannheim to meet with General Jaeger's representative about the surrender. All three men will be parachuted into southern Germany in the next two days.

No one is sure how well Happy will perform -- but if he fails, or is unmasked as a traitor, the consequences will be considerable.

[Continued In Part 2 Below]

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Films We Like: Decision Before Dawn (1951), Part Two

Saturday Night At The Movies

 German -language poster for Decision Before Dawn,

showcasing Hildegard Knef and Oskar Werner (1951)

Eine Kleiner Redux: I was introduced to some of my favorite films on my parent's black-and-white Zenith, and presented on NBC's Saturday Night At The Movies .

Saturday, January 5, 1963: Two-and-a-half months before, we had escaped the Cuban Missile Crisis.  John F. Kennedy was still President. At 8:00 PM Pacific Daylight Savings Time, NBC aired the television premiere of Anatole Litvak's Decision Before Dawn, a story of a young German soldier captured in late 1944, who decides to work for the Americans as an intelligence agent behind German lines.

The film was important as Hollywood's first German-American co-production in the aftermath of a world war and twelve years of nazi atrocities.  Stretched out on my family's living room floor, I didn't have a more nuanced view of the world. I was aware that I was watching a movie (and a war film! Neat!), a story portrayed by actors -- and that almost every one of them were German, not American.

Years later, I became interested in the production as an artifact of European and American film and culture.  Most of the Germans acting in the movie were anonymous; they received no screen credit, something SAG or AFTRA would never allow in a production made in Hollywood.

So, who were those German actors? I wondered. What were their careers about? And, what did they do during the war?
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The Recap

It's mid-December, 1944. An American officer, Lieutenant Rennick (Richard Baseheart), joins the staff of an American intelligence unit based in France as its new communications officer. Commanded by a Colonel Devlin (Garry Merrill), the group's mission is to determine the strength, positions and intentions of enemy units. To do so, it trains and handles a team of German POW's who have agreed to act as spies, undertaking missions behind the lines and reporting back. 

Devlin explains to his staff that a General Jaeger, commander of a key sector of Germany's western front, has made a private offer to surrender units under his command -- opening a huge hole in the line that would allow Allied forces a route directly into Germany.

One wildcard is the Eleventh Panzer Corps -- American intelligence believes it's in the area of Jaeger's command, but if it doesn't surrender when the rest of Jaeger's troops do, any U.S. forces pushing forward to exploit the sudden opening in the German lines could be walking into a trap.

Karl Maurer (Oskar Werner), an idealistic young German, has volunteered to return to his own country performing intelligence missions under the code name "Happy", and becomes one of the former-soldiers-turned-spies in Devlin's unit. 

 Devlin (Merrill, At Right) Tells 'Tiger' (Blech, Left) That

Lt. Rennick (Baseheart, Center) Will Be Part Of The Mission

The team's German radio operator had been arrested on a previous mission with another volunteer, Rudolf Barth (Hans Christian Blech), code-named "Tiger".  Devlin isn't certain he's reliable -- Barth has an ego, and a need to dominate whatever situation he's in; Devlin thinks this led to his previous partner's arrest. However, 'Tiger' was born, raised, and has personal contacts in Mannheim, where the operation will be focused.

With time running short, Devlin decides to use 'Tiger', but makes it crystal clear he'll be watched -- because Lieutenant Rennick will be part of the mission; he's the only qualified radio operator available who can replace Tiger's missing partner.

Rennick has always seen every German volunteer -- even the quiet, idealistic 'Happy' -- as lower life forms ("They're all a bunch of lice"), but Col. Develin has told him bluntly that his personal opinions don't matter: They have a job to do, "and from now on the only (opinion) is the right one for the job."

'Tiger' will have to hide Rennick at a safe house in Mannheim to meet with General Jaeger's representative about a surrender, while  'Happy' is assigned to locate the 11th Panzer Corps' headquarters, return to Allied lines and report before the surrender operation begins. All three men will be parachuted at night into Germany -- 'Tiger' and Rennick near Mannheim, and Maurer / 'Happy' outside the town of Altmark, near Munich.

No one is sure how well Maurer will perform -- but if he loses his nerve and is unmasked as a traitor, the mission will fail.

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Part Two  
(Click On Images To Enlarge; It's Easy And Fun!)

Maurer is provided with a new identity close to his own; only his new last name (Steiner) and personal details are different -- still a Luftwaffe corporal and a Sanitätsoffizier (Medic), Maurer's cover story is that he is traveling from a hospital after recovering from wounds to rejoin his unit.  In truth, he will go wherever necessary to find the location of the 11th Panzer Corps and then return to the American lines.

Taken out to a nearby airfield, he and Barth / Tiger make final preparations; Barth is asked about his combat decorations ("Bump off any of our guys to get those?") and replies with a smirk, "No sir; I got them in my own special way".

Just before Rennick and Tiger are dropped near Mannheim, Maurer overhears Tiger remind the Lieutenant of the safe house address in the city ("18 Neckarstrasse"). As the plane heads north, Maurer asks for coffee from one of the air crew -- less than pleased to be serving a German. "You hate us, don't you?" Maurer asks. The airman replies, "I've never felt sorry when I see a string of 500-pounders leave the bomb rack."

Maurer lands successfully and makes his way down into Altmark to board a bus for Munich, and its central train station.

On the way, a portly SS Corporal sitting behind Maurer asks for a few Pfenning to buy a copy of a newspaper as the bus stops at a streetcorner. 'Happy' naively pulls out the entire bankroll he was given before his air drop and peels off a Mark note; the Corporal stares at the cash for a moment before handing the Mark to the woman selling the papers ("Here, Mutti; keep the change!"). Finally, the bus stops and Maurer heads into the station.

(Many of Decision's location shots [principally in München, Nürnburg, Würzburg, and Mannheim] show considerable bomb damage and uncleared rubble, even in 1950, when the film was shot.)

Maurer at the Fronsamstelle (Klaus W. Krause, Left)

Any army seems to run on paper, and having your travel orders checked and /or stamped at a transit point was standard for almost any soldier during World War II -- but nowhere more so than in the German army, which had permits, lists and indexes for everything.

Maurer's fictional persona, Corporal Steiner, has to go to the stations' Frontleitstelle (checkpoint for soldiers in transit to forward areas) to have his travel orders checked and stamped. A Sargent checks his papers against an army security 'Blacklist' (names of military personnel to be detained on sight) to check the Steiner name -- the current list hasn't yet arrived, and Karl Steiner isn't on the one they have.

Maurer relaxes a bit, then asks where the 11th Panzer Corps would be located. "Weren't they in Furth?" someone says; the Sargent says no, "They're just outside Nuremberg."

Maurer lines up for another control point to have his transit permit checked in order to board a train -- and runs into the SS Corporal from the bus, who is happy to help Karl, seems to know the lines to Nuremberg are repaired and when the next train is leaving.

Once on the train, the Corporal, Heinz Scholtz (Wilfried Seyferth) reveals he isn't exactly a good samaritan -- or, not one who provides help for free. "Heinz Scholtz! Special courier of the Waffen-SS," he explains. "Sounds good, huh? But, money? No."

Scholz explains he'd seen the "fat roll" Maurer was carrying while they were both on the bus. Karl replies that it isn't much, back pay for three months, but Scholtz proposes that Karl 'loan' him half of it, in exchange for some items he's carrying -- gold.

Dangling a pocketwatch chain, Scholtz says, "The fat stomach this used to go around, I can assure you, is much thinner now," (a clear reference to gold stolen from murdered Jews), then offers Maurer a man's wedding ring as "a better investment for a young man like you... they were together -- thirty-five years. How about it?"

Karl curtly declines, and falls asleep. The next morning, when the train arrives, Maurer slips away, avoiding the Nuremberg Frontleitstelle checkpoint, focused on confirming the location if the 11th Panzer Corps.

Riding a streetcar into the city, Karl ends up in a spy's worst nightmare -- recognized by someone he used to know -- Paula Schneider, a nurse (Helene Thimig), who worked with Maurer's father, a physician, at a clinic in Berlin when his family lived there.

She tells Maurer his father has just been moved to a new hospital, set up in Würzburg. She walks with him to a control point and during a check of identity papers nearly exposes Maurer by using his real name -- but when he admits he hasn't had his travel orders stamped, Karl is told to go to another control point, and slips away.

Ant the next control point, Karl explains to a Senior Sargent in charge (Gert Fröbe) that he hasn't gotten his orders stamped and is looking for the 11th Panzer Corps. Checking the security list -- last week's, like the one in Munich -- the Sargent finds no reference for "Happy"s cover identity, and mentions that the 11th Corps have moved to Glessheim.

Reading through Karl's papers, the sergeant looks up and asks suspiciously, "I see you've been in the army two years. Don't you know you should have your orders stamped?"

Suddenly, a soldier roars up on a motorcycle with a sidecar. "Hey, Heinz!" The Sargent shouts -- it's the SS courier, Scholtz, who identifies Maurer as a friend of his, and the Sargent allows Karl to pass. 

(Above: Publicity Still of Werner, Seyferth and Fröbe, in bomb-damaged Nuremberg.) Karl accepts a lift from Scholtz, saying he needs to get to Glessheim -- and, the courier is happy to oblige, and even knows of a place where they can spend the night... but which might cost a Mark or two.

In Würzburg, Scholtz stops at a petrol station (Above, Werner with original 1944 Volkswagen Kdf Model 87.166 -- worth a whole lot of money, now).  Maurer asks the mechanic, a woman with an eye patch, about the new hospital; she tells him it's "up on the [hill], right next to the factory".  Using her telephone, Karl rings through to the new hospital -- but when his father comes on the line, can't bring himself to speak.

The opportunistic Scholtz stops in a small town, and takes Maurer into a Gasthaus -- which claims to be full, but is really home to a full (if depleted) bar, kitchen, and a number of women who have been forced by circumstances to be good-time girls, down on their luck in the middle of a dying fascist empire at war.

The Gasthaus is lively, with music from a piano and accordion. "Is this place legal?" Maurer asks a barmaid (Elfe Gerhart), who shrugs. "Sure. It's as much a part of the army as you are."

Scholtz knows the woman who runs the place, Fritzi Kollwitz (Loni Heuser), and in short order -- with Maurer's cash -- they both have a room and a meal.

Karl sits next to a radio, broadcasting a report that "the enemy parachutist who landed near Altmark" -- Maurer -- "is still at large". He's joined by one of the girls, Hilde (Hildegard Kneff), who nods at the radio: "That just bores me... One morning we'll open the window, and they'll be here -- the 'Amis'," she says, German slang for Allied troops. She mocks Karl's serious manners and gets him to dance.

 

Afterwards over dinner, someone begins playing a song about Paris; "We're the 'Bosche' again, now," Scholtz says, and flies into a rage when Karl refers to Alsace-Lorraine as part of France, 'taken' by Germany ("No true German thinks that... We took it back; we took what belonged to us! And maybe a little more !").

Claiming to be tired, Karl quickly excuses himself and leaves for the room he and Scholtz are sharing. Hilde follows, bringing his overcoat, cap and cigarettes, all of which he'd left downstairs. She makes a pass at him;  he stiffly declines -- Hilde assumes because she's a 'loose' woman, so she rounds on him. "Oh, I know your type," she spits. "The little German Burgher, pure and honest! Well, you're as dirty as the rest of us now."

She ends by giving Maurer a shorthand version of her life -- once normal, engaged; then pregnant, her betrothed dying in Norway; a factory job; her child killed in an air raid.  "Afterwards, I ... hated everybody -- but probably myself most of all,"she says, crying, "I'm dirty, miserable; and alone. There are thousands and thousands like me."

Karl softens and offers her a drink (in the German army, medics carried a canteen of medicinal brandy), when Scholtz walks in and tells Hilde to leave. "Thought you were tired," he says to Maurer, who ignores him and goes to sleep.

The next morning, Karl is leaving the Gasthaus; Hilde pulls him aside and tells him that Scholtz ordered her to follow and watch him the previous night, and any unwelcome attention from someone in the SS could mean trouble.

Just then, Scholtz appears, apologizes for his previous attitude and gestures to an open truck parked in the street -- "That truck's going your way; driver knows all about you."

Hilde and Maurer get into the back of the truck, but not before seeing Scholtz exchange a few words with another soldier already aboard, another Corporal, wearing glasses. The truck drives off; after a while, Hilde, points out the man -- "He keeps looking at you".

The Corporal (Arno Assmann) has a thick chunk of bacon, which he shares around -- Germans watching the movie in 1951 would have no trouble remembering that possessing any amount of real food above a rationed allotment was illegal. The bacon was a red flag, automatically marking this character as shady, perhaps involved in the black market, or someone with official connections and protection. 

Then, the truck is stopped at a roadblock manned by armed soldiers and armored cars. All the men are ordered to form ranks in the road and march off for an unknown destination. The roadblock belongs to some military unit, and they're commandeering the men in the truck, no matter what -- a not-uncommon occurrence in Germany toward the end of the war.

Maurer, an enemy spy under a false name and with false papers, is being forced into a detour from his mission. Hilde watches him from the back of the truck as he marches on to who-knows-where.

[See Part One Here If You Missed It; See Part Three Continued Below] 

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