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Berlin Diary

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Boccaccio said:
{From Episode 17}

The second fascinating possibility that occurs to me now that 'Barb Moore' seems to be Varvara Mohr, is that one Robert Mohr was a well-known officer in the Gestapo, best known for his interrogation, identification of the leaders of the "White Rose" in 1943. The White Rose was a group of young German intellectuals who opposed the Nazis, risking their lives to print and distribute leaflets about the horrors of the Nazi regime. Sadly, as with the July 20 plotters of the following year, most of the activists were tried and executed. Their heroic story deserves to be re-told, just as the film "Valkyrie" re-told the story of the July 20 plot. War and Remembrance, after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mohr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

It's very likely that 'Varvara Mohr' has no connection whatever to either of the semi-famous Mohrs of the Hitler era, but who knows?

Regardless of whether they are or not, the layers of intrigue in "Berlin Diary" are commendable.
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You probably already know it, but I can recommend the 2006 German movie, 'Sophie Scholl - The Final Days', which details the tragic failure of the White Rose movement. Julia Jentsch gives a sympathetic and convincing portrayal of the lead character. Here is a review by Roger Ebert:-
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sophie-scholl-the-final-days-2006

Julia Jentsch sophie-scholl--the-final-days.jpg Sophie Scholl sepia-7-15.jpg
 
bobinder said:
You probably already know it, but I can recommend the 2006 German movie, 'Sophie Scholl - The Final Days', which details the tragic failure of the White Rose movement. Julia Jentsch gives a sympathetic and convincing portrayal of the lead character. Here is a review by Roger Ebert:-
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Thank you very much. I had learned of Sophie Scholl and 'die Weisse Rose' while writing a term paper (do they still call them that?) about the German resistance to Hitler half a century ago, but I was not aware of the film, although I should have been. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film and won a litany of German and European awards.

The conventional wisdom nowadays, I think, is that everyone in Germany kind of looked the other way during the Third Reich, or, like Mohr, simply did their 'duty' as the regime defined it. "Befehl ist Befehl,: as the defendants said at Nurnberg. And of course millions did just go along. But the valiant few (more than a few, really, thousands) who did not were possessed of an almost ineffable courage. All but a few gave their lives, and many died horrible deaths. Hitler is said to have watched films of the executions of the July 20th plotters, many of whom were hanged using piano wire so that they were not killed by 'the drop' as most hanging victims are, but rather left to strangle slowly.

Here's a trailer of the film, for anyone who is interested. The haunting music in the background that begins at 0:32 of the trailer will be familiar to many. It is Samuel Barber's elegaic Adagio for Strings.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3565748505

Danke schoen, bobinder, and please forgive my laziness for not taking the trouble to learn how to type German characters and diacritical marks.

{Re-reading this, I hope that no one gets the idea that i'm honoring the heroes of the German resistance, but ignoring the millions of men, women, and children who fought in the resistance or were simply butchered in the occupied countries.}
 
Boccaccio said:
Thank you very much. I had learned of Sophie Scholl and 'die Weisse Rose' while writing a term paper (do they still call them that?) about the German resistance to Hitler half a century ago, but I was not aware of the film, although I should have been. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film and won a litany of German and European awards.

The conventional wisdom nowadays, I think, is that everyone in Germany kind of looked the other way during the Third Reich, or, like Mohr, simply did their 'duty' as the regime defined it. "Befehl ist Befehl,: as the defendants said at Nurnberg. And of course millions did just go along. But the valiant few (more than a few, really, thousands) who did not were possessed of an almost ineffable courage. All but a few gave their lives, and many died horrible deaths. Hitler is said to have watched films of the executions of the July 20th plotters, many of whom were hanged using piano wire so that they were not killed by 'the drop' as most hanging victims are, but rather left to strangle slowly.

Here's a trailer of the film, for anyone who is interested. The haunting music in the background that begins at 0:32 of the trailer will be familiar to many. It is Samuel Barber's elegaic Adagio for Strings.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3565748505

Danke schoen, bobinder, and please forgive my laziness for not taking the trouble to learn how to type German characters and diacritical marks.

{Re-reading this, I hope that no one gets the idea that i'm honoring the heroes of the German resistance, but ignoring the millions of men, women, and children who fought in the resistance or were simply butchered in the occupied countries.}
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The resistance was very late in coming. The officers who revolted in 1944 did so at a point when the war had indisputably been lost and they were hoping to negotiate a less than total surrender. There was little or no resistance from the Wehrmacht during the build up to the war nor during the initial phases when Germany was winning. So, while I respect the personal courage of those who were involved, I do not give them all that much significance.

I want to tread lightly in drawing any parallels between the 1930s and our own time (as Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes") but lately I cannot help but wonder what would have happened had there been mass protests in January-February 1933 and at various points during the lead up to the war and the Holocaust and had the German judiciary behaved other than as brazen cowards and enablers.
 
windar said:
The resistance was very late in coming.
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I think that most of the resistance by members of the MILITARY was very late in coming, and in some cases, self-serving. Many of the officers were silent as long as Germany seemed to be winning the war.

But there was considerable resistance to the Nazi program in the early to mid 30's. Dachau was established for political prisoners -- socialists, communists etc == as early as 1933, the year Hitler became Reichskanzler. When its substantial capacity proved inadequate, the Nazis opened Buchenwald in 1937, perhaps in anticipation of the Anschluss in March 1938, and the need to provide a 'home' for Austrian intellectuals.
 
Soviet agents around Goebbels as in the story? It could have been reality, for instance the recently revealed story of actress Marika Rökk, who is said to have had an affair with Joseph Goebbels and who was alledgedly a spy for the Soviet-Union.
 
The Surrender Museum in Reims:
naamloos.png IMG_1809.jpg visuel_5.jpg IMG_1801.jpg IMG_1812.jpg visuel_0.jpg

Some six hours after the Reims signing, a response was received from the Soviet High Command stating that the Act of Surrender was unacceptable, both because the text differed from that agreed by the European Advisory Commission (EAC), and because Susloparov had not been empowered to sign. These objections were however, pretexts; the substantial Soviet objection was that the act of surrender ought to be a unique, singular, historical event fully reflecting the leading contribution of the Soviet people to the final victory. They maintained that it should not be held on liberated territory that had been victimized by German aggression, but at the seat of government from where that German aggression sprang: Berlin.

The document was also signed by General Bedell Smith for the Allies, General Ivan Susloparov for the USSR, and witnessed by General Francois Sevez of France. But as German forces through Western Europe laid down their arms, brutal fighting continued along the Eastern Front. The Soviet high command refused to acknowledge the surrender at Reims, maintaining that the official surrender should be signed in Berlin. General Ferdinand Schorner commanding the German army in the East, addressed his troops, “the struggle in the west however is over. But there can be no question of surrender to the Bolsheviks.”

Threatening the further destruction of Berlin, Eisenhower swiftly ordered the the commanders-in-chief of the German army, air force, and navy to the capital where another surrender was signed on May 8th, placating the Soviets. The day was marked in history as VE Day.

The Reims signing ceremony had been attended by considerable numbers of reporters, all of whom were bound by a 36-hour embargo against reporting the capitulation. As it became clear that there would need to be a definitive second signing before the Act of Surrender could become operative, Eisenhower agreed that the news blackout should remain; so that all Allied powers could celebrate Victory in Europe together on 9 May 1945. However, Edward Kennedy of the Associated Press news agency in Paris broke the embargo on 7 May, with the consequence that the German surrender was headline news in the western media on 8 May.
 
Repertor said:
Berlin 1936. Portrait of the era.
(Subtitles in settings)
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Cool! Thanks for posting Rep! :)

And for anyone who is wondering, work on "Barbarossanova", the sequel to "Berlin Diary", is ongoing. It's taking some time but will be released exclusively here on CF as soon as it is ready.;)
 
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