oped: Lest us not forget that Hollywood in the 1930's was made up of
Closet Marxist and Homosexuals...so it makes sense they supported the Hitler
REGIME also notable is Hitler and the Nazi Party became allied with the Middle East and the underground Ottoman Empire...the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood ~Does not Hollywood of today cozy up to Marxist,LGBT and the Muslim Brotherhood? :
http://sharlaslabyrinth.blogspot.com/2013/07/homosexuality-hitler-and-sochi.html
[ Adolf Hitler (center) and Joseph Goebbels (left) being saluted in 1933. Photo courtesy of Corbis.]
By Ben Urwand
The 1930s are celebrated as one of Hollywood's golden ages, but in an exclusive excerpt from his controversial new book, The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler (Harvard University Press, on sale Sept. 9), Harvard post-doctoral fellow Ben Urwand uncovers a darker side to Hollywood's past.
Drawing on a wealth of archival documents in the U.S.
and Germany, he reveals the shocking extent to which Hollywood
cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis during the decade leading up
to World War II to protect its business.
Indeed, "collaboration" (and its German translation,
Zusammenarbeit) is a word that appears regularly in the correspondence
between studio officials and the Nazis. Although the word is fraught
with meaning to modern ears, its everyday use at the time underscored
the eagerness of both sides to smooth away their differences to preserve
commerce.
The Nazis threatened to exclude American movies --
more than 250 played in Germany after Hitler took power in 1933 --
unless the studios cooperated. Before World War I, the German market had
been the world's second largest, and even though it had shrunk during
the Great Depression, the studios believed it would bounce back and
worried that if they left, they would never be able to return.
Beginning with wholesale changes made to Universal's 1930 release All Quiet on the Western Front,
Hollywood regularly ran scripts and finished movies by German officials
for approval. When they objected to scenes or dialogue they thought
made Germany look bad, criticized the Nazis or dwelled on the
mistreatment of Jews, the studios would accommodate them -- and make
cuts in the American versions as well as those shown elsewhere in the
world.
It was not only scenes: Nazi pressure managed to kill whole projects critical of the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Indeed, Hollywood would not make an important anti-Nazi film until
1940. Hitler was obsessed with the propaganda power of film, and the
Nazis actively promoted American movies like 1937's Captains Courageous that they thought showcased Aryan values.
Historians have long known about American companies
such as IBM and General Motors that did business in Germany into the
late 1930s, but the cultural power of movies -- their ability to shape
what people think -- makes Hollywood's cooperation with the Nazis a
particularly important and chilling moment in history. -- Andy Lewis
'Victory Is Ours'
On Friday, Dec. 5, 1930, a crowd of Nazis in Berlin seized on an unusual target: the Hollywood movie
All Quiet on the Western Front.
Recognized in most countries as a document of the horrors of the First
World War, in Germany it was seen as a painful and offensive reenactment
of the German defeat.
The Nazis, who had recently increased their representation in the
Reichstag from 12 to 107 seats, took advantage of the national
indignation toward
All Quiet on the Western Front. They
purchased about 300 tickets for the first public screening, and as they
watched the German troops retreat from the French, they shouted: "German
soldiers had courage. It's a disgrace that such an insulting film was
made in America!" Because of the disruptions, the projectionist was
forced to switch off the film. Nazi propagandist
Joseph Goebbels
gave a speech from the front row of the balcony in which he claimed
that the film was an attempt to destroy Germany's image. His comrades
threw stink bombs and released mice into the crowd. Everyone rushed for
the exits, and the theater was placed under guard.
STORY: Competing Scholar Challenges Ben Urwand's 'The Collaboration'
The Nazis' actions met with significant popular approval. The
situation came to a climax Dec. 11, when the highest censorship board in
Germany convened to determine the fate of the film. After a long
discussion, the chairman of the board issued a ban: Whereas the French
soldiers went to their deaths quietly and bravely, the German soldiers
howled and shrieked with fear. The film was not an honest representation
of German defeat -- of course the public had reacted disapprovingly.
Regardless of one's political affiliation, the picture offended a whole
generation of Germans who had suffered through the War.
And so, six days after the protests in Berlin,
All Quiet on the Western Front was removed from screens in Germany. "Victory is ours!" Goebbels' newspaper proclaimed. "We have forced them to their knees!"
In Hollywood, the president of Universal Pictures,
Carl Laemmle, was troubled by the controversy surrounding his picture. He was born in Germany, and he wanted
All Quiet on the Western Front
to be shown there. According to one representative, his company had
"lost a fine potential business, for the film would have been a
tremendous financial success in Germany if it could have run
undisturbed."
In August 1931, Laemmle came up with a heavily edited version of the
movie that he was convinced would not offend the German Foreign Office.
He made a trip to Europe to promote the new version. The Foreign Office
soon agreed to support
All Quiet on the Western Front for
general screening in Germany, under one condition: Laemmle would have to
tell Universal's branches in the rest of the world to make the same
cuts to all copies of the film. Late in the summer, Laemmle agreed to
cooperate with the request.
As months passed, however, Laemmle, who was Jewish, grew worried
about something much more important than the fate of his film. "I am
almost certain," he wrote in early 1932, "that [Adolf] Hitler's rise to
power … would be the signal for a general physical onslaught on many
thousands of defenseless Jewish men, women and children." He convinced
American officials that he could provide for individual Jews, and by the
time of his death in 1939, he had helped get at least 300 people out of
Germany.
And yet at precisely the moment he was embarking on this crusade, his
employees at Universal were following the orders of the German
government. In the first few months of 1932, the Foreign Office
discovered unedited versions of
All Quiet on the Western Front
playing in El Salvador and Spain. The company apologized. Afterward,
there were no more complaints; Universal had made the requested cuts all
around the world.
The following year, Laemmle made another concession to the Foreign Office: He postponed
The Road Back, the sequel to
All Quiet on the Western Front. His son,
Carl Laemmle Jr.,
also agreed to change many pictures in Germany's favor. "Naturally,"
the Foreign Office noted, "Universal's interest in collaboration [
Zusammenarbeit] is not platonic but is motivated by the company's concern for the well-being of its Berlin branch and for the German market."
STORY: How Jack Warner Tried to Crush the Postwar German Film Industry (Book Excerpt)
Throughout the 1930s, the term "collaboration" was used repeatedly to
describe dealings that took place in Hollywood. Even studio heads
adopted the term. An executive at RKO promised that whenever he made a
film involving Germany, he would work "in close collaboration" with the
local consul general. A Fox executive said the same. Even United Artists
offered "the closest collaboration" if the German government did not
punish the studio for the controversial 1930 air combat movie
Hell's Angels.
According to the Foreign Office, "Every time that this collaboration
was achieved, the parties involved found it to be both helpful and
pleasant."
All this was a result of the Nazis' actions against
All Quiet on the Western Front.
Soon every studio started making deep concessions to the German
government, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933, they dealt
with his representatives directly.
The most important German representative in the whole arrangement was a diplomat named
Georg Gyssling,
who had been a Nazi since 1931. He became the German consul in Los
Angeles in 1933, and he consciously set out to police the American film
industry. His main strategy was to threaten the American studios with a
section of the German film regulations known as "Article 15." According
to this law, if a company distributed an anti-German picture anywhere in
the world, then all its movies could be banned in Germany. Article 15
proved to be a very effective way of regulating the American film
industry as the Foreign Office, with its vast network of consulates and
embassies, could easily detect whether an offensive picture was in
circulation anywhere around the world.
See a gallery of Yahoo! users's rankings of the greatest war films ever:
They don’t just open the tower at OSH for a week so that “rich people” can fly in.
Hardly any of those people are rich. This is just Obama’s attempt to “make this painful” just like he said he would.
The sequestration plan came straight from the white house.
It was intended to be such a disaster that no one would allow it, supposedly.
he underestimated the stupidity of a few congressman.
Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he planned to destroy the economy all along by doubling the National Debt.
He hates rich people to begin with and he, like a lot of others commenting on here, are stupid enough to think aviation types are part of the rich. Of course he is too stupid to know the “rich” are paying all the bills so the rest of the whiners on here that pay no federal taxes can go to the government hog trough for their free stuff.
And then some nitwit explains to us that it’s the fault of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
That comment is so stupid it doesn’t even deserve a reply.
It does need to be repeated to demonstrate the pure ignorance of anyone that would make it so :
“Hilarious how in an acknowledged time of necessary sequestration to remedy the Bush deficit abyss and deal with Hannity/Limbaugh/RNC-inspired congressional obfuscation and inaction,”
This is laughable. except to say that at least this guy admits that is was deemed “necessary” and planned from the beginning by Obama.
by General Aviation News Staff
FAA officials have “demanded” $500,000 from the Experimental Aircraft Association for air traffic control expenses during its AirVenture convention next month or threatened to pull support for the event, EAA officials said Tuesday. In a report in the Fond du Lac Reporter, EAA Chairman Jack Pelton said the FAA’s demand for a contract and advance payment is akin to holding the organization hostage in exchange for air traffic services necessary to keep the event safe.