It's less than a decade after the war. This TravelTalks episode visits Hamburg, Bremen, Munich, and Heidelberg. The rubble has been cleared and there is plenty of reconstruction. It's not all finish as many empty lots would attest. Many of the buildings still have their burn marks and other war scars. This is a very fascinating snapshot of post-war Germany. It's a specific time and place. The zoo hasn't necessarily changed but everything else is in flux.
5 Reviews
West Germany
boblipton15 July 2019
In the final Traveltalks, James Fitzpatrick turns his Technicolor gaze and flat voice to West Germany.... an interesting choice of adjectives, since Eastern Germany was established as a separate country, not to be reunited for more than a third of a century. We see pictures of Hamburg, with a lot of time spent at the zoo; Bremen, with time at the docks; Munich; then over the autobahn to Heidelberg
At a time when London still held buildings scarred by the Blitz -- indeed, as I write this, land mines from the First World War are still being pulled out of the battle fields of France -- everything in Germany seems to be in fine shape, from Heidelberg Castle to apartment buildings. It should always be remembered, when looking at the Traveltalk travelogues, that Fitzpatrick's other job was running a travel agency. Tourist prefer to looking at working clock towers where mechanical knights fight medieval buildings than laborers removing the remnants of a once-handsome building.
At a time when London still held buildings scarred by the Blitz -- indeed, as I write this, land mines from the First World War are still being pulled out of the battle fields of France -- everything in Germany seems to be in fine shape, from Heidelberg Castle to apartment buildings. It should always be remembered, when looking at the Traveltalk travelogues, that Fitzpatrick's other job was running a travel agency. Tourist prefer to looking at working clock towers where mechanical knights fight medieval buildings than laborers removing the remnants of a once-handsome building.
Folks want to see their tax dollars at work . . .
tadpole-596-91825616 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
. . . but there's precious little of that on display in GLIMPSES OF WESTERN GERMANY. By the time that this travel short was filmed, "I-Like-Ike" had been elected the U.S. President as a reward for starving to death about a million German P.O.W.s in retaliation for their having given his American troops so much trouble during World War Two, according to Wikipedia. However, the clowns behind GLIMPSES manage to aim their cameras away from all of these Death Camps. We never learn whether U.S. Taxpayers sprung for a million grave makers (and the translators necessary to commemorate these Gentlemen of Genocide in their own lingo), or if Ike economized by recycling the S.S. ovens. (There's an old saying in Kansas that "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the Fuehrer.") If the contemporary audiences watching this travelogue were thinking of traipsing over to Germany, they surely would have been more interested in touring the site of "Mr. Hitler's" barbecue pit (or Ike's liquidation pens) than in some rhino at the Hamburg Zoo or mannequins "dancing" within a Munich clock tower.
TravelTalks
Michael_Elliott16 June 2010
Glimpses of Western Germany (1954)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
This TravelTalks entry takes us to Munich, Bremen, Hamburg and Heldefberg to see how the country has changed since the end of WWII. The movie plays a few minutes in each city and covers the Berlin Zoo, famous churches, the colleges of Heldefberg as well as some of the streets damaged during the war and what they look like now. This is pretty much right on target for this series as we get some great Technicolor as well as some nice narration by FitzPatrick. As you'd expect we get our history lesson and it's a pretty good one but at the same time I think the film really could have centered more on the country and the various changes that has happened from the war. I think this is the most fascinating aspect of the film yet this is only covered in a very short time.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
This TravelTalks entry takes us to Munich, Bremen, Hamburg and Heldefberg to see how the country has changed since the end of WWII. The movie plays a few minutes in each city and covers the Berlin Zoo, famous churches, the colleges of Heldefberg as well as some of the streets damaged during the war and what they look like now. This is pretty much right on target for this series as we get some great Technicolor as well as some nice narration by FitzPatrick. As you'd expect we get our history lesson and it's a pretty good one but at the same time I think the film really could have centered more on the country and the various changes that has happened from the war. I think this is the most fascinating aspect of the film yet this is only covered in a very short time.
By indiscriminately tossing around such terms as "Fatherland" . . .
cricket3011 March 2021
Warning: Spoilers
. . . and "Germany's glorious past," the narrator for GLIMPSES OF WESTERN GERMANY reverts to his infamous role as The Fuhrer's Travel Agent during the mid-1930's. Listening to this "Travel Talk," viewers may expect such an entry in the series to conclude with a plug for M.G.G.A. caps (as in Make Germany Great Again). Never during his spiel does this bloviating bozo provide any pertinent context for the pretty pictures being screened. For instance, how far is Hamburg from the kilns which consumed Ms. Frank and the other six million victims of crazed anti-Semitism? Why does Buffalo Bill appear more concerned about a few bombed-out Prussian munitions plants than millions of slaughtered Allied soldiers? How can anything be considered "plucky" or "hospitable" in the persons of P.O.W. camp torture masters? It's no wonder dozens of this apologist's ilk suffered no ill consequences from parading National Socialist Party flags through America's once-sacred Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 6, 2021. After all, Mr. F. expired in bed--NOT strapped down to a justly deserved guillotine slab.
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