I feel no justification to state why I went out of my way to watch this documentary . It is probably the most infamous propaganda film of the most murderous regime history has given us . Stalin and Mao might have been responsible for more deaths of human beings and that is not to excuse them but the Nazi crimes are probably of a unique horror , one of a deliberate and systematic genocide against people who were " the wrong sort of Europeans " . People might say the holocaust is consigned to ancient history but on a more personal level I did have the immense pleasure of working with some really wonderful waitresses a couple of years ago four of whom , Maria a moranno converso from Madrid whose grandparents were murdered by the Franco regime , Kristine an ethnic Russian from Latvia , and Anna and Ola from Poland , I had my picture taken with on my Ipod . I took my Ipod to India last year and very quickly learned that every time any male whether Muslim or Hindu asked to look through my photos on the Ipod the ones with Maria , Kristine , Anna and Ola gained the greatest reaction
" Who are these girls ? they're beautiful , are these all your girlfriends ? "
" Oh no " I replied " They're just girls I had to work with all day every day because I'm one lucky b*stard "
Which led to a round of high fives and backslaps . For a small moment in time a thin , bespectacled middle aged man with thinning hair and ears that stuck out became the most envied man on the Indian sub-continent . I could appreciate the irony of being in a land where the swastika is common ( The Nazis stole the ancient Indo-Aryan symbol for themselves and disgraced it ) and being envied because I was in the presence of four women who the Nazis would happily murder for being the wrong sort of Europeans
Nazis obviously don't understand irony . This notorious propaganda piece starts with a column of refugees in occupied Poland and the narrator states " The Jews haven't suffered from the chaos of war as the native Pole " Well if the Nazi invaders were so worried about Poles suffering the chaos of war might it have been a good idea not invading Poland in the first place ? But if nothing else it illustrates that the Nazis blamed everyone else for everything . Alexander The Great , The Roman Empire and world trade are touched upon for " bringing Jewry in to Europe "
There's no consistency even within its own twisted logic . The Jews according to the start of the documentary a religion but then consider Karl Marx - someone who was brought up a Protestant and who along with Darwin effectively proved there's no God - a Jew alongside Albert Einstein who went a Catholic school and who again held atheist views along with Charlie Chaplin who was a self confessed agnostic . The documentary then states the Talmud " is a corruption of religion " . So are Jews a religion or a race or both or neither ?
Actually the one thing the documentary is correct in is that " the idealised the Biblical figures of Hebrew tribal history ... the Hebrews of the Bible couldn't have looked like this " . Indeed they wouldn't because the cultural meme of white Biblical figures perceived by Western culture stems from Da Vinci's The Last Supper. In reality the Hebrew tribe from Bronze Age Palestine would be of Arabic appearance since they were from an ethnic point of view Arabs themselves . Of course the documentary makes a point of who killed Jesus which considering Jesus is purely a mythical figure is -like blasphemy - a victimless crime
In short this is a notorious poisonous propaganda piece . Certainly watching it in 2013 you can understand why it has gained its reputation . No one with a brain can fail to recognise it as anything more than low brow propaganda . That said anyone with a brain can also recognise the bitter ironies such as Peter Lorre in a clip from M a film directed by Fritz Lang being used as an anti-Semitic scapegoat . But I guess having a terminal irony deficiency is the very least reason for hating Nazism ?
" Who are these girls ? they're beautiful , are these all your girlfriends ? "
" Oh no " I replied " They're just girls I had to work with all day every day because I'm one lucky b*stard "
Which led to a round of high fives and backslaps . For a small moment in time a thin , bespectacled middle aged man with thinning hair and ears that stuck out became the most envied man on the Indian sub-continent . I could appreciate the irony of being in a land where the swastika is common ( The Nazis stole the ancient Indo-Aryan symbol for themselves and disgraced it ) and being envied because I was in the presence of four women who the Nazis would happily murder for being the wrong sort of Europeans
Nazis obviously don't understand irony . This notorious propaganda piece starts with a column of refugees in occupied Poland and the narrator states " The Jews haven't suffered from the chaos of war as the native Pole " Well if the Nazi invaders were so worried about Poles suffering the chaos of war might it have been a good idea not invading Poland in the first place ? But if nothing else it illustrates that the Nazis blamed everyone else for everything . Alexander The Great , The Roman Empire and world trade are touched upon for " bringing Jewry in to Europe "
There's no consistency even within its own twisted logic . The Jews according to the start of the documentary a religion but then consider Karl Marx - someone who was brought up a Protestant and who along with Darwin effectively proved there's no God - a Jew alongside Albert Einstein who went a Catholic school and who again held atheist views along with Charlie Chaplin who was a self confessed agnostic . The documentary then states the Talmud " is a corruption of religion " . So are Jews a religion or a race or both or neither ?
Actually the one thing the documentary is correct in is that " the idealised the Biblical figures of Hebrew tribal history ... the Hebrews of the Bible couldn't have looked like this " . Indeed they wouldn't because the cultural meme of white Biblical figures perceived by Western culture stems from Da Vinci's The Last Supper. In reality the Hebrew tribe from Bronze Age Palestine would be of Arabic appearance since they were from an ethnic point of view Arabs themselves . Of course the documentary makes a point of who killed Jesus which considering Jesus is purely a mythical figure is -like blasphemy - a victimless crime
In short this is a notorious poisonous propaganda piece . Certainly watching it in 2013 you can understand why it has gained its reputation . No one with a brain can fail to recognise it as anything more than low brow propaganda . That said anyone with a brain can also recognise the bitter ironies such as Peter Lorre in a clip from M a film directed by Fritz Lang being used as an anti-Semitic scapegoat . But I guess having a terminal irony deficiency is the very least reason for hating Nazism ?