The Rescue of Miss Yaskell and Other Pipe Dreams by Russell Baker

Author:Russell Baker [Baker, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

And the Reich Goes On

To children of the 1930s World War I, though it had ended only 15 or 20 years earlier, already belonged to ancient history. I marveled that my parents had been alive when it was fought. It made them seem very, very old.

The impression of an antique war came from a yellowing old military history book whose photographs, blurred and lifeless, showed soldiers in odd tin-pot hats and puttees. The uniforms seemed almost comically quaint. The occasional war movie usually centered upon the aviators, who seemed dashing and romantic, but the boxy old Spads, Nieuports and Fokkers they flew looked antediluvian compared to the streamlined beauties being flown in the 30s.

We were of the immediate postwar generation, but already the war existed for us largely as a musty relic. When, at precisely 11 A.M. every Nov. 11, we were required to stand by our school desks for a silent minute while the school bugler blew a quavering version of “Taps” somewhere down in the schoolyard, we seemed to be taking part in some primitive ritual whose meaning was beyond our grasp.

What a contrast World War II has been. Though it ended 38 years ago, I doubt there is a sentient adolescent in the entire country who doesn’t have it embedded in his bones.

Since 1945 we have lived constantly with World War II in film, books, comics and television. It’s as though we loved that war so much we couldn’t bear to give it up to the past.

Thirty-eight years later Nazis remain a staple of the best-selling potboiler. It is a rare publishing season without a best-selling tale about Nazi machinations past or present.

In some versions the old Nazi leaders who were supposed to have died in the bunker are discovered alive and deadly in the jet age. “The Boys From Brazil” a few years ago raised the terrible and happy possibility that evil Dr. Mengele had cloned dozens of new Hitlers who, even now, might be loose among us.

Why is such a terrible possibility happy? I think because we need the Nazis as archvillains whom we can loathe without feeling inhuman. This is not a great age for villains; too often nowadays they turn out to be your allies or your victims. Nazis make it possible to fear and hate without guilt.

Reviewing the long postwar history of the Nazi in American entertainment, you wonder whether American writers, actors and producers could have made a living if there had been no World War II.

It is curious to track the style transformations that movies and television worked upon their World War II soldiers over the years in an effort to keep the war up to date. Consider hair styling.

The old 1940s films show G.I.’s correctly with severe crew cuts. By the 1960s, however, fancy hairdos for men had made the crew cut look antique and slightly comic (like the tin-pot hats and puttees of World War I) to younger Americans.

To make the war look up to date movie makers began lengthening the hair on their G.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.