WANNSEE CONFERENCE 1942

                                                                        THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE

The Wannsee Conference was held on 20 January 1942, in a villa owned by the SS-Nordhav Foundation in the attractive Berlin lakeside suburb of Wannsee. It was presided over by SS-Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police and Security Service. Heydrich summoned fourteen men representing the governmental and military branches most involved in implementing the practical aspects of the Final Solution. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had charged him with arranging all practical matters concerning the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question.¹ Heydrich was an ambitious and meticulous officer who relished the responsibility of power. One of Heydrich's foremost intentions was to make sure that all these men understood perfectly what duties and responsibilities their office was expected to fulfill.

In the years leading up to World War II, the phrase "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" had taken on a series of increasingly ominous meanings in the Nazi vocabulary.² The various implications had included voluntary emigration, confinement to ghettos in cities located along rail lines, forced removal to concentration camps, and finally, extermination. Heydrich wanted to be certain there was no confusion among the group that, now, the term referred specifically to the murder of all European Jews.

Heydrich's assistant, SS Lt-Colonel Adolf Eichmann tells us in testimony at his trial in 1961, that the meeting was relatively brief, lasting only an hour to an hour and a half, and that the atmosphere of the meeting was one of cooperation and agreement.³ These high-ranking members of the Nazi government met at mid-day over a buffet luncheon to discuss the annihilation of an entire people.

Those attending were:

• Gauleiter Dr. Alfred Meyer and Reichamtsleiter (Chief Officer) Dr. Georg Leibrandt - Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
• State Secretary Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart - Reich Ministry of the Interior
• State Secretary Dr. Erich Neumann - Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan
• State Secretary Dr. Roland Freisler - Reich Justice Ministry
• State Secretary Dr. Josef Bühler - Office of Governor General [Poland] representing Hans Frank
• Under State Secretary Martin Luther - Foreign Office
• SS Senior-Colonel Gerhard Klopfer - Party Chancellery representing Martin Bormann
• Ministerial Director Friedrich Kritzinger - Reich Chancellery
• SS Major-General Otto Hofmann - Race and Resettlement Main Office
• SS Major-General Heinrich Müller - Reich Security Main Office
• SS Lt-Colonel Adolf Eichmann - Reich Security Main Office
• SS Senior-Colonel Dr. Eberhard Schöngarth - Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the General Government [Poland]
• SS Major Dr. Rudolf Lange - Commander of Security Police and Security Service for General Commissariat Latvia, as Deputy of Commanding Officer of Security Police and Security Service for Reich Commissariat Ostland [Baltic States and White Russia] Security Police and Security Service. ⁴

We have access to the minutes of the meeting (Protocol, in German usage) only by chance. In 1947, the Protocol was discovered in the files of one of the attendees, Martin Luther of the Finance Ministry. Years later, Ministerial Director of the Reich Chancellery, Friedrich Kritzinger and Adolf Eichmann described in detail everything that had occurred at the Wannsee conference and acknowledged the criminal nature of the gathering.⁵

Heydrich began the meeting by establishing the primacy of his authority. This authority transcended geographical boundaries. He briefly described the recent history of Nazi action against the Jews. The goals had been to remove Jews from different sectors of German society and then from German soil. The Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration had been established to facilitate and encourage Jewish emigration and through its offices, those who could afford it were allowed to leave the country. This process proved to be too slow and too limited in scope. At the time of this meeting, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had already stopped emigration.

The Führer had approved a new solution: the evacuation of the Jews to the East. The Protocol states, "These actions are nevertheless to be seen only as temporary relief but they are providing the practical experience that is of great significance for the coming final solution of the Jewish question."

Heydrich continues by enumerating the number of Jews in each country and observes, "Approximately eleven million Jews will be involved…" He further states in the Protocol, "In large, single-sex labor columns, Jews fit to work will work their way eastward constructing roads. Doubtless the large majority will be eliminated by natural causes. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the most resistant elements. They will have to be dealt with appropriately because otherwise, by natural selection, they would form the germ cell of a new Jewish revival." In other words, none would be allowed to survive.

Beginning with Germany proper and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Europe was to be cleared of Jews from west to east. This brought up a number of difficult questions to be resolved. First, who was a Jew? Would any Jews be exempt? Jewish Veterans who served Germany and were decorated in WWI? Jews married to Germans? Those of mixed blood (Mischlinge) married to Germans? Would sterilization be an alternative? Would those Jews be spared whose labor was necessary for the war effort? Nearly one third of the Protocol is devoted to these complicated matters, not all of which were resolved at this meeting.⁶

Eichmann tells us that the first part of the meeting was more or less a monologue by Heydrich and the last part, a summary of several positions put forward by individuals at the table.

• SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann was in favor of sterilization instead of "evacuation" for half Jews (Mischlinge). Heydrich replied that a decision should be made on a case-by-case basis. He also spoke of an old people's ghetto, possibly Theresienstadt, to ward off anticipated interventions over individual cases.⁷
• Stuckart of the Ministry of the Interior proposed compulsory divorce for Germans married to Jews.
• Erich Neumann from the Four Year Plan organization said that Jews should not be removed from essential enterprises unless replacement labor could be provided. Heydrich agreed, pointing out that this was already the policy.
• Josef Bühler from the General Gouvernment asked that the Final Solution begin in Poland, since there were no major transport or manpower problems. Bühler said the authorities from the General Gouvernment accepted Heydrich's primacy in all matters pertaining to the Jewish question and would support his work. He had but one request -- "that the Jewish question be solved as quickly as possible." ⁸

A number of those gathered at the conference table had already been actively engaged in the extermination of Jews and Bolsheviks since the summer of 1941. Lange and Schöngarth commanded Einsatzgruppen activities in the Riga District and in Polish Galicia. Heydrich and Müller directed the killing operations of the Einsatzgruppen and Müller forwarded the Einsatz "Incident Reports" [Ereignismeldungen] to the Foreign Office. Eichmann routinely received "Incident Reports" from the Einsatz Units describing the daily tallies of their victims, and had himself witnessed a mass shooting near Minsk.⁹

By the time of the Wannsee Conference, the Einsatzgruppen operating behind the army front lines, had murdered more than half a million people.¹⁰ Mass shootings were not suitable for European Jewry outside the war zone and were also demoralizing for the Nazi troops. This had prompted a search for a more impersonal way of killing large numbers of people. By January 1942, the death camps in Belzec and Chelmno, with their gassing facilities, were already under construction.

The Wannsee Conference was not called to decide the fate of European Jews but to clarify all points regarding their demise. In Eichmann's testimony after the war, he said that Heydrich also intended to implicate, that is, share the guilt with the ministries represented at the table. (The war in Russia had begun to turn against the Germans and for the first time, there was a question about whether or not Germany would win.)

A few days after the conference, each of the attendees received his own numbered copy of the Protocol prepared by Eichmann from shorthand notes. According to Eichmann, Heydrich proofread and polished the summary before he gave it his approval. We also know that the Protocol does not reflect everything that was discussed at the meeting, as Eichmann's words at his trial make clear:

Q. Who spoke of this topic?

A[nswer]. I no longer remember all the particulars today, Mr. President, but I know that the gentlemen sat around together and plotted together, and there they, in very direct words - not the words I had to use in the Protocol, but in very direct words - called things as they were, with no attempt to disguise them. I would be unable to remember these things if I did not know that, at the time, I said to myself: Look at Stuckart, who people always considered to be a very scrupulous and fastidious law and order man, and now his tone and all his formulations were very unlike the letter of the law. That's about the only thing that has really stayed in my memory.

Presiding judge: What did he say about this subject?

A. In particular, Mr. President, I would like ...

Q. Not in particular - in general!

A. Murder and elimination and annihilation were discussed

COLORIZATION 15

Che Guevara

2.

Mark Twain

3.

Charlie Chaplin

4.

Anne Frank

5.

Charles Darwin

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6.

Abraham Lincoln

7.

Alfred Hitchcock

8.

Winston Churchhill

9.

Albert Einstein

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

COVENTRY - THE MARTYRED CITY

COVENTRY THE MARTYRED CITY

DIANA BARNATO

 

Diana Barnato Walker (1918–2008), by Bill Cross, 1943

Walker, Diana Barnato [née Diana Barnato] (1918–2008), aviator, was born on 15 January 1918 at 39 Elsworthy Road, Hampstead, London, the younger daughter of Woolf Joel Barnato (1895–1948), financier and racing driver, and his American first wife, Dorothy Maitland, née Falk. Her father, who was a captain in the Royal Field Artillery in the First World War, had inherited, at the age of two, the millions accumulated by his father Barney Barnato, the South African diamond magnate. After the war he became one of the celebrated ‘Bentley boys’ (he also bought a majority share in the Bentley company, of which he became chairman in 1925), and a highly successful racing driver, winning the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1928, 1929, and 1930. During the Second World War he served as a wing commander in the RAF, with responsibility for the defence of airfields in southern England.

Diana Barnato and her sister, Virginia, enjoyed the pleasures of high society, though Woolf separated from their mother when Diana was four. While their mother brought the girls up she maintained an amicable relationship with their father (who had two sons with his second wife, and married a third time shortly before his death). Diana was educated at Queen's College in Harley Street, London, until 1936, when she came out as a débutante and ‘did the season’. Disenchanted by the social rounds, she invested her allowance in flying lessons at the Brooklands Flying Club in Surrey at £3 per hour, rather than learn with the Civil Air Guard for a mere 7s. 6d. per hour. She wrote, ‘I was far too much of a snob to go to learn to fly with what I thought would be the hoi polloi’ (Spreading my Wings, 34). Having gone solo after six hours on a de Havilland Tiger Moth she ran out of money and had to stop.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War Diana Barnato worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse and with the Red Cross, but was attracted by the chance of flying with the Air Transport Auxiliary, although she had only ten hours' flying experience. She was tested by the chief flying instructor, but a riding injury then laid her up for six months. Meanwhile the Air Transport Auxiliary had set up a training programme, and after another test in December 1941 she became one of fewer than 170 ‘Atagirls’ (of whom sixteen were to lose their lives during the conflict).

The ATA's pilots ferried all types of military aircraft, from trainers to bombers, from factories to RAF stations or from maintenance units to squadrons. They had minimal pilot's notes and no radios, and often flew in marginal weather conditions. Barnato flew such aircraft as the single-engine Spitfire, Hurricane, Defiant, Mustang, Avenger, Wildcat, Vengeance, Firefly, Barracuda, and Tempest, and twin-engine types like the Oxford, Anson, Wellington, Warwick, Mosquito, Hudson, and Mitchell. She had her share of incidents. While flying a Supermarine Walrus air-sea-rescue amphibian, her least-liked aeroplane, from Cosford to Eastleigh on 19 September 1944, the windscreen was obscured by oil from the failing engine as she approached the Southampton balloon barrage at 1500 feet. Without power she could only push down the nose to prevent a stall and make a steep descent into the sea fog. Luckily she missed the balloon cables and emerged from the cloud a few feet above Eastleigh's grass airfield.

Three weeks after Barnato first met the battle of Britain fighter ace Squadron Leader Humphrey Trench Gilbert in 1942 they became engaged, but days later he died in a flying accident. Two years later, on 6 May 1944, she married another pilot, Wing Commander Derek Ronald Walker, and was docked three months' pay for making an unauthorized honeymoon flight to Brussels four months later in a Spitfire, accompanied by her husband in another. Derek Walker was killed in a flying accident shortly after the war's end, on 14 November 1945.

After the war Diana Barnato Walker, as she was now known, studied for the exams for a commercial pilot's licence, in company with the racing driver and industrialist Whitney Willard Straight (1912–1979), a naturalized American and former RAF air commodore. This led to a thirty-year relationship, and a son, Barney, was born in 1947, though Straight never left his wife, nor did Diana ask him to: ‘I was perfectly content. I had my own identity’ (The Times, 19 Nov 2005). Having gained her commercial licence she became a pilot for the Women's Junior Air Corps, giving the cadets air experience and training flights at weekends and accumulating many hours in the corps's Fairchild Argus and Auster aircraft. She had just taken off in the newly acquired Argus on 11 July 1948 when it burst into flames. Rather than bale out and lose a valuable aeroplane, she switched off the fuel and glided back to the airfield, where the flames were put out. In 1963, for her work with the corps, she was awarded the Jean Lennox Bird trophy, presented annually to a British woman pilot. On 26 August that year she became the first British woman to exceed the speed of sound, and the fastest woman in the world when she attained Mach 1.65 (1262 mph) in an English Electric Lightning T.4 trainer version of the RAF's front-line fighter. Shortly after this she won a battle with cancer.

In later years Diana Barnato Walker took up sheep farming and was master of the Old Surrey and Burstow foxhounds for thirteen seasons, while continuing to fly for the Women's Junior Air Corps (renamed in 1964 the Girls' Venture Corps). She also became commodore of the Air Transport Auxiliary Association. She died of pneumonia on 28 April 2008 in a hospital near her sheep farm in Surrey, and was survived by her son, Barney.

AMERICA INTRODUCES PROHIBITION

AMERICA INTRODUCES PROHIBITION

HIDDEN SPLENDOR NYC

Hidden below the streets of New York City are the long lost subway stations of old. Too small to accommodate the hoards that now travel the system daily, too small for the modern trains and too classy for a no-pants subway ride. This beautifully ornate station below City Hall was built in 1904 and operated until 1945 when it was closed to the public. Few have seen it in person. For a closer look at the city’s abandoned stations, check out Steve Duncan’s urban spelunking exploits.

SEE ALSO NEWLY OPENED IN 1905 - A TRIP ON THE NEW YORK SUBWAY

Via: pondly.com

THAT HARDY BOY

Considering they're the most profitable film series of Hollywood's Golden Era -- and the only one to receive a special Academy Award ("for its achievement in representing the American way of life'') -- the Hardy Family films are awfully late arrivals on DVD, with six of them released recently by the Warner Archive Collection as "The Andy Hardy Collection, Vol. 1.''

The Hardy films seemed quaintly dated to me when I first encountered them in the mid-1960s on WNBC's "Movie Four'' (WCBS, which began rolling out much of the MGM library back in 1956, passed on the series, the station's head programmer explained to me years later, because of Metro's insistence that stations purchase the Hardy, Kildare/Gillespie and Maisie series as a package). My first article about movies, published for my high school newspaper in Queens, the Bryant Clipper, complained that Mickey Rooney's eponymous Andy Hardy was so totally unlike contemporary teenagers.

I hadn't watched any of the films since. "Love Laughs at Andy Hardy'' (1946) -- the unsuccessful final film that ended the series proper (there was an unfortunate, Rooney-produced attempt to revive the series, "Andy Hardy Comes Home'' that I actually saw on its original theatrical run in 1958 at Astoria's long-gone Grand Theatre) -- slipped into the public domain after MGM failed to renew its copyright in 1974. By 1980 it was among the earliest major-studio titles to turn up in bad dupes on VHS. MGM/UA Home Video didn't get around to releasing six other Hardys (which by then, along with 10 others, were owned by Turner Entertainment) on VHS until 1990.

Those six standalone releases included "Love Finds Andy Hardy,'' the series' most famous episode (featuring Judy Garland), which was released by Warner Home Video on DVD in 2004 and is currently out of print, as well as three films in the new DVD set: "Andy Hardy Meets Debutante,'' "Andy Hardy's Private Secretary'' and "Life Begins for Andy Hardy.''

The Hardy series was a spinoff of Clarence Brown's 1935 adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's family comedy "Ah Wilderness'' (1935) which featured Rooney, new to MGM, as the younger brother (he played the older brother in the flop musical remake "Summer Holiday'' in 1948, which bookends the Hardy series; both are available from the Warner Archive) in early 20th century Connecticut. O'Neill not being amenable to a sequel, the principal cast (Lionel Barrymore, Spring Byington, Rooney and Eric Linden but not Wallace Beery) were reunited for "A Family Affair'' (1937), a contemporary comedy about the family of an Idaho judge based "Skidding,'' a 1929 Broadway hit by Auriana Rouverol.

It was so successful that MGM raja Louis B. Mayer ordered up a series to be directed by "Family Affair'' helmer George B. Seitz, a veteran of the silent era ("Perils of Pauline'') who had turned out a procession of quick but stylish B thrillers for Metro's B-movie unit. The earliest film in the Warner Archive set is the beginning of the series proper, "You're Only Young Once'' (also 1937). Linden's character was given the heave-ho, as was his wife, Andy's married eldest sister. 

Character actors Lewis Stone and Fay Holden replaced Barrymore (who would shortly begin enacting Dr. Gillespie from a wheelchair in the Dr. Kildare series) and Byington, who had begun playing Mrs. Jones in Fox's more downmarket, and frustratingly unavailable, Jones Family series. To explain Holden's accent, they made Mrs. Hardy and her spinster schoolteacher sister (Sara Haden, carried over from "You're Only Young Once'') Canadians.

Jed Prouty, who played Mr. Jones in the rival Fox series, turns up briefly as a newspaper editor who precipitates a financial crisis for the Hardys in "You're Only Young Once,'' which devotes roughly equal time to the romantic travails of siblings Andy and older sister Marian (Cecilia Parker)  while vacationing on Catalina Island.

The non-chronological set skips forward to the Hardys' fifth adventure, "Out West With the Hardys,'' one of eight Rooney films (most notably "Boys Town'') released in 1938. By this point, the Hardys were no longer B pictures (which supported A pictures) but  mid-budget programmers that could play at the top of a double bill. MGM even sent Seitz out to Arizona's Monument Valley to shoot backgrounds projected behind the Hardys -- shortly before John Ford claimed he "discovered'' the place for "Stagecoach.''

"Judge Hardy and Son'' (1939), the eighth installment, was released the year that Rooney became Hollywood's top box-office attraction (a title he held for two more years) and he received a special Oscar -- Rooney and Deann Durbin were cited for their "significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement.'' (The following year, he received a Best Actor nomination for "Babes in Arms''). Understandably, which far outgrossed MGM's prestige pictures, focused more and more on Andy.

Reputedly the schmaltziest of the series, "Judge Hardy and Son'' centers around a medical crisis for Mrs. Hardy (and no, she isn't treated by Dr. Kildare). Carey Wilson, one of several A-list screenwriters who toiled on the series, claimed that Mayer personally wrote Andy's prayer for his mother's recovery. In the movie's other plot thread, Andy is assigned by Judge Hardy to track down the estranged daughter of an elderly couple (Maria Ouspenskaya, the same year she was Oscar-nominated for "Love Affair,'' and Egon Brecher) facing forclosure on their home. Andy's sleuthing technique includes dating three cute girls who may be the couple's granddaughter, much to the annoyance of Andy's long-suffering steady, Polly Benedict (Ann Rutherford, Scarlett's middle sister in "Gone With the Wind'').

The set skips ahead to three titles presented in chronological order. "Andy Hardy Meets Debutante'' (1940) brings back Garland's afflent "ugly duckling'' character, Betsy Booth, still mooning over Andy who thinks she's too much of a "child'' to see as a prospective romance.

Though she's a debutante, Betsy isn't the title character. That's Daphne, played by Diana Lewis, one of many MGM stars who cycled through the series and best remembered as the future Mrs. William Powell. Andy, smitten with her photographs, fibs to Polly and his best male pal Beezy (George Breakston) that he and Daphe have met.

Andy is mortified when Judge Hardy takes the family along on a business trip to New York (in an orphange subplot designed to bring back memories of "Boys Town'') because Polly and Beezy expect  him to bring back a picture of him with Daphne.

Betsy tries to help Andy on his quest, because hick-town Andy is ill-equipped to handle the Big Apple, which he refers to as a "den of sin.'' But in MGM's version of the city, even the nighclub manager (Cy Kendall) that Andy stiffs for a hefty $37.50 tab turns out to be a soft touch.

Clocking in at 89 minutes, "Debutante'' and the other two films in the set feature "A" picture trimmings, including two musical numbers by Garland (including a wonderful rendition of "Alone'') in this cast. While the cast never left the MGM lot, the studio did send doubles for the busy Judy and Mickey to be photographed from the rear outside Grant's Tomb. Their horse-drawn ride through Central Park at dawn may be totally bogus but it's also quite charming.

The final two films in "The Andy Hardy Collection, Vol. 1'' run longer than 100 minutes and are indistinguishable from MGM "A'' pictures like the Thin Man series. "Andy Hardy's Private Secretary'' (1941) is Kathryn Grayson while "Life Begins for Andy Hardy'' (1941) brings Rooney back to Manhattan again for one last series entry with Garland (whose numbers were unfortunately cut this time).

They don't sing and dance together like in their musicals -- that would make Andy less relatable -- but their chemistry together is perhaps the biggest delight of the Hardy series. Which, I have to admit is also worth seeing for its unusually painstaking depiction of small-town American life before World War II, even if it probably is more reflective of L.B. Mayer's fantasies than the real thing.

Today's Warner Archieve releases are mostly westerns, most notably "The Squaw Man'' (1914) -- reputedly the first feature shot in Hollywood, for the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co., soon to be absorbed into Paramount  -- which is offered as a double feature with Cecil B. DeMille's 1931 MGM sound remake starring Warner Baxter and Dolores Del Rio, aka Mrs. Cedric Gibbons (DeMille shares a byline for the earlier one with Oscar Apfel).

There's also a second volume of "The Monogram Cowboy Collection'' comprised of eight features strarring Whip Wilson or Rod Cameron, as well as Richard Brooks' "The Last Hunt'' (Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger), Burt Kennedy's "Welcome to Hard Times'' (Henry Fonda, Janice Rule) and Jerry Thorpe's "Day of the Evil Gun'' (Glenn Ford, Arthur Kenedy).

Two musical composer biopics that were previously exclusive to Movie Unlimited are now available directly from WAC: "The Great Waltz'' (1938) with Ferdinand Gravet(y) as Johann Strauss the younger, with Luise Rainer; and "Rhapsody in Blue'' starring Robert Alda as George Gershwin and Oscar Levant as himself.