Wine and War: the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup.- 2002 - 334 Pages

 

Wine and War: the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup.- 2002 - 334 Pages 

Very  soon after  France surrendered to the Nazis, in May of 1940, the Germans made it their goal to appropriate France's  wine.  Wine was a  important part of daily French life and the vast vineyards supported much of the population.  Top Nazis officials fancied themselves experts on wine.

 As the war went on the Germans soon required all wine to sold to Germans, served in restaurants only open to Germans.  Vineyard workers were conscripted to work in Germany.  Vital horses were taken.

Vineyard owners began to seek ways to hide their products. 

They hid their most prized wines immediately, knowing that the Germans would take them and, more importantly, not appreciate them. They built walls in their cellars, closing in the wines behind them, and had their children collect spiders so they'd spin webs to make the wall look older. Dust from old carpets were collected to put on cheap bottles to make them appear rare.

These are the true stories of vignerons who sheltered Jewish refugees in their cellars and of winemakers who risked their lives to aid the resistance. They made chemicals in secret laboratories to fuel the resistance and fled from the Gestapo when arrests became imminent.

There were treacheries too, as some of the nation's winemakers supported the Vichy regime, or the Germans themselves, and collaborated.

Don and Petie Kladstrup are former journalists who have written extensively about wine and France for numerous publications. Don, a winner of three Emmys and numerous other awards, was a foreign correspondent for ABC and CBS television news. Petie, an Overseas Press Club winner, was a newspaper journalist and more recently protocol officer for the U.S. ambassador to UNESCO. The Kladstrups divide their time between Paris and Normandy

The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) - A 1979 German Film Directed by Voler Schlöndorff - 2 Hours 56 Minutes- Based on Gunter Grass's 1959 Novel

The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) - A 1979 German Film Directed by Voler Schlöndorff - 2 Hours 56 Minutes- Based on Gunter Grass's 1959 Novel

Available on YouTube, Dailymotion.com and The Criterion Channel 

I read The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass during German Literature Month November 2013.  Finding the movie online in 2023 was a marvelous surprise 

"I am very glad I have at last read The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass.   It is often listed among the 100 greatest 20th century novels. It is long sprawling account of life in Poland during the few years prior to the Nazi domination up through the war years.  The story is told through the very unreliable narration of Oskar Matzerath.  Oscar decided at age three never to get any bigger physically when he heard his father say he would be a grocer when he grew. He tells us the story partially from a mental hospital where he is confined.  Imagine a collaboration between Rabelais, Pynchon, and Hunter Thompson and you can get a feel for this book. We see how the people in the story, a motley collection of persons close to Oscar including two of his mother's lovers,  deal with and are impacted by the war.  The plot action is very imaginative.  Everyone praises the new translation of Breon Mitchell, which I read, and the quality of the prose is very high.  The novel is grand masterful account of the corruption the war brought to Poland.  Oscar has a weapon in that his voice can shatter all sorts of things.  We are always wondering how accurate are Oscar's perceptions, after all he is in a mental hospital.  I liked this book and I am glad I read it.  It is a challenging book but worth the effort.  It needs to be reread." From my post in 2013.

The Tin Drum (German: Die Blechtrommel) is a 1979 West German satirical war drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff from a screenplay co-written with Jean-Claude Carrière and Franz Seitz, based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It stars David Bennent as Oskar Matzerath, a boy born and raised in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) prior to and during World War II, who recalls the story's events as an unreliable narrator. The film also features Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Katharina Thalbach, Daniel Olbrychski, and Berta Drews in supporting roles.

The Tin Drum chronicles Oskar's life from his birth in 1924 to his adulthood in post-war Germany. At the age of three, Oskar falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing, both physically and mentally. He decides to remain a child and refuses to grow up in a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice. Oskar's primary weapon against the world is his tin drum, which he uses to shatter glass and make a piercing scream that can stun or even kill people.

The film's narrative is non-linear and often surreal, reflecting Oskar's childlike perspective. It jumps back and forth in time, and Oskar frequently breaks the fourth wall to address the audience directly. The film also uses a variety of visual techniques, including black and white, color, and slow motion, to create a dreamlike atmosphere.

The Tin Drum was a critical and commercial success. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 52nd Academy Awards, becoming the first German film to do so. It was also nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. The film is considered to be one of the most important German films of all time.

Films by German directors are an important part of post World War One German Culture, from the groundbreaking silent classics of the Weimar Republic to the movies of Leni Reisenthal in celebration of Nazi rule, beloved by Goebels, to modern Oscar winners, I am pleased to see German Literature Month XIII now welcomes posts on Films by German Directors

This is a post for German Literature Month XIII 

German Literature Month is hosted by Lizzy’s Literary Life

https://lizzysiddal2.wordpress.com/2023/09/22/announcing-german-literature-month-xiii/

Mel Ulm 

The Newspaper Axis: Six Bress Barons Who Enabled Hitler by Kathryn J. Olmstead - 2022 - 401 Pages

The Newspaper Axis: Six Bress Barons Who Enabled Hitler by Kathryn J. Olmstead is a very valuable highly interesting account of how powerful English and American Newspaper Publishers did all they could to keep England and America from entering what they saw as "continental entanglements" involving the ambitious of Adolf Hitler.

The Press Barons published articles praising Hitler for revitalising Germany, advocating appeasement and trivialising his Anti-Semitic rants. They insisted Hitler did not want a war even as Germany began to rearm in violation of the Versailes Treaty.  Some personally admired Hitler and were thrilled to meet him.

As World War II approached, the six most powerful media moguls in America and Britain tried to pressure their countries to ignore the fascist threat. The media empires of Robert McCormick, Joseph and Eleanor Patterson, and William Randolph Hearst spanned the United States, reaching tens of millions of Americans in print and over the airwaves with their isolationist views. Meanwhile in England, Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail extolled Hitler’s leadership and Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express insisted that Britain had no interest in defending Hitler’s victims on the continent.

 

Kathryn S. Olmsted shows how these media titans worked in concert—including sharing editorial pieces and coordinating their responses to events—to influence public opinion in a right-wing populist direction, how they echoed fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda, and how they weakened and delayed both Britain’s and America’s response to Nazi aggression.

She does also feature how the press Barons began to alter their views once the war started.  They were from the start strong believers in white supremacy, hated Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. However Lord Beaverbrook went to work for Churchill to build up England's airforce and was highly dedicated and successful.  Even as America entered the war the American publishers tried to convince their readers, about 30 percent of Adults that Roosevelt was under the control of a world Jewish cabal and wanted to  become a dictator.

Olmstead tells us as authoritarian style leaders seek power there

 is a warning in her book. Press figures, TV News Networks seek above all profits and will pander to these leaders.

For bio data on Kathryn J. Olmstead check the website of the history department of the University of California at Davis

Mel Ulm

DOCTORS AT WAR:THE CLANDESTINE BATTLE AGAINST THE NAZI OCCUPATION OF FRANCE:by Ellen Hampton-2023 - From Louisiana State University Press

 This is part of my Participation in Paris in July 2023 - Hosted by Words and Peace

https://wordsandpeace.com/

The German military administration in France ended with the Liberation of France after the Normandy and Provence landings. It formally existed from May 1940 to December 1944, though most of its territory had been liberated by the Allies by the end of summer 1944.

When anti-Jewish measures intensified under the Nazi Occupation of France, a group of doctors formed a clandestine group to treat and shelter resistants, to deter deportation and to protect victims of terror. Led by the grandson of the great Louis Pasteur, the Resistance Health Service included the son of a rabbi, the son of a Protestant pastor, and the first woman to direct a French hospital department. They joined forces in Paris to outwit the Nazis, despite terrible danger. The physician founders of another resistance group, Vengeance, were among hundreds of French doctors deported to concentration camps. They went to work in camp clinics, treating and healing ill and starving prisoners with little more than their hands and their knowledge. In the final phase of the war, doctors joined the hidden forest camps of maquisards in combat, operating under parachute tents with car headlights, patching up injuries incurred in guerrilla attacks on German troops. Throughout the dark night of Nazi domination, doctors risked their lives to save others and ease the suffering of their nation. Sworn to aid and assist, most of them felt they could not have acted otherwise.           

"  History tells us where we’re going and literature tells us where we’ve been. In between lies the journey, the transitory space between experience and hope, the stories I love most. I am a PhD historian, author, editor, former professor and occasional journalist. After two non-fiction books on World War II, both born of absolute awe for those who found their way through that dark night, I am reaching back in time to the drama and romance of a historical fiction series based in medieval France, Castle and the Cross." From the author's website 

The book provides lots of data on the individual Doctors, many lost their lives.  

This is a valuable addition to the history of WW Two in France.

I was given a review copy of this book

Mel Ulm 

Sisters of Fog and Night-A Novel by Erica Robuck - 2022

Sisters of Night and Fog by Erika Robuck - 2022 - A WW Two Novel - 2022

Based upon the experiences of renowned WWII SOE agents Violette Szabo and Virginia d’Albert, Sisters of the Night and Fog is set mostly in London, France and Germany during World War Two.  Virginia is an American, from Florida, who against her family’s wishes elects to stay in Nazi occupied France.  Events draw her into the resistance, she helps downed fliers get out of France, at great risk to herself and her husband.  She loses her comfortable life as rationing gets worse. The search for food becomes never ending.

Violette is a 19 year old English woman, a crack shot and desperate to fight the Nazis any way she can.  She ends up being recruited into the Special Operations Executive and trained for clandestine attacks on the Germans in France.  The training is very tough but Viollétte ends up being dropped by parachute into Occupied France.

The two women are both captured and sent to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

There are lots of minor characters ranging 

from Nazis, downed Fliers, fellow resistance fighters and  family members of the women.  All are marvelously done.  The descriptions of Europe are very powerful.

I highly recommend Sisters of Night and Fog to all interested in novels set during World War Two.  There is a return to Ravensbrück set in 1975 that adds depth to the story.

“Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of The Invisible Woman, Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is also a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest essay collection Author in Progress. Her forthcoming novel, Sisters of Night and Fog (March 2022), is about real-life superwomen of WWII, Virginia d'Albert-Lake and Violette Szabo. In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband and three sons.”

I hope to read her novel Fallen Beauty, historical novel set in 1928 in a fictional town in Upstate New York near Steepletop, the home of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Mel Ulm

 

City of Thieves by David Benioff - 2008, 258:pages

 

City of Thieves by David Benioff - 2008 - 258 pages

A New York Times Best Seller 

Set in Leningrad during 1942 during the German siege of the city, 16 year old Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown in the same cell as a 19 year old deserter from the Russian Army.  Both are at risk for quick executions.  The deserter goes by Kolya.  He is blond, handsome, a smooth talker and fancies himself a ladies man.  Of course he denies he is a deserter, claiming he is on a secret mission. Lev looks like he is Jewish.

They are taken to the office of a colonel.  Going in they spot s beautiful young woman ice skating on the Neva River.  Both the boys can see she eats meat every day, she must have a powerful father.  The colonel is her father.  She is getting married in a week and is demanding s big cake, one requiring a dozen eggs.  Eggs are nearly impossible to find.  The colonel offers the two boys a deal.  He gives them a week to roam free and return with the eggs needed,  if they do, they go free, if not he will have them captured and executed.  He feeds them,food anciety dominated almost everyone’s Life, gives them some rubles and sends them on their mission.

Lenigrad is a wasteland, a near necroplolis.  People are even resorting to canabalism.  The Germans are incredibly cruel, vicious monsters.  The Boys have several close calls. They join for a while a group of Russian partisans.  Among them is a female sniper with over 200 confirmed kills. Besides being perpetually hungry, the Boys are preoccupied with sex. The sniper is wrapped up in heavy clothes but they speculate on the size of her breasts.  Of course Koyla brags about his experience with women.

In s very powerful segment the Boys come upon a fancy dacha which turns out to be a comfort House for German officers stocked with Young Russian women.  Everywhere they ask for Eggs but with no luck.cruelty, death, and starvation are around any turn.  The Germans are depicted as worshipping a mad man who wants everyone in Leningrad killed or starved.  

Lev does return with a dozen Eggs.  I would describe the ending as partially happy, partially more meaningless death.

There are lots of close calls, the conversations of the boys are marvelous, Lev’s father was a famous poet.

The minor characters are very well done.  

The Kindle edition is currently available for $1.95

David Benioff worked as a nightclub bouncer in San Francisco, a radio DJ in Wyoming and an English teacher/wrestling coach in Brooklyn before selling his first novel, The 25th Hour, in 2000.

He later wrote the screenplay for Spike Lee’s adaptation of 25th Hour starring Edward Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. In 2005, Viking Press published Benioff’s collection of short stories, When the Nines Roll Over.

“Benioff’s screenwriting credits include Troy (2004), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and Stay (2005), directed by Marc Forster, The Kite Runner (2007). Jim Sheridan produced Benioff’s screenplay Brothers, and Hugh Jackman reprised his role as the clawed mutant in Benioff’s Wolverine. He is also screenwriter and executive producer of Game of Thrones, HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels.

Viking published his most recent novel, City of Thieves, in May 2008.

Benioff is married to actress Amanda Peet; the couple has three children.”

From Goodreads 

"The Elephant and its Keeper" -A Short Story by Akiyuki Nosaka. 2003. Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Home Page for The Japanese Literature Challenge 12

Works I Have So Far Read for The Japanese Literature Challenge 12

1. “Insects” - a Short Story by Yuchi Seirai, a post Atomic Bomb work,2012
2. The Great Passage by Shion Miura, 2011, a deeply moving work centered on the creation of a Japanese Language Dictionary 
3. "The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine" A Short Story by  Akiyuki Nosaka- 2003- translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori - 2015
4. “Bee Honey” - A Short Story by Banana Yoshimoto- 2000 - set in Argentina during the annual Mother’s March for Disappeared Children.
5. Killing Commendatore: A Novel by Huruki Murakami- 2017
6. The Master Key by Masako Togawa - 1962 - translated by Simon Grove
7. "The Elephant and its Keeper" - A Short Story by Akiyuki Nasaka- 2003. translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemari

The Japanese Literature Challenge,  #jlc12, runs until March 31.  Everyone is invited to join us.  Maybe as happened to me by participating in JLC 3 back in 2009, ten years from now you will count numerous Japanese writers among your favorite writers.

"The Elephant and its Keeper" is the third story included in The Cake Tree in the Ruins, a collection of short stories by Akiyuki Nasaka, published by Pushkin Press I have now read.  Six of the twelve stories, for sure I will read them all, feature animals in the title.  All of the stories in the collection are set in the final days of World War Two. Much of the population of Japan is near starvation, much of the country, especially Tokyo, is in ruins.  There is no hope left of victory and nothing to look forward to but more misery.  Nasaka's stories focus on the most innocent victims, children, animals, and country people.  His amazing "The Whale Who Fell in Love with a Submarine" reads almost like fairy tale but cuts deeply.  

"The Elephant and its Keeper" begins in Tokyo in 1945.  Government officials are worried that American bombs may free potentially dangerous Tokyo Zoo animals, lions, tigers, wolves etc.  The animals are closed to starving and might attack residents.  Plus it takes too many resources to feed them.  A machine is designed to strangle the animals.  All are killed but for the zoo's biggest resident, the elephant.  The machine does not work on him. The officials decide to stop feeding him and let him die of starvation.  They tell his keeper, of many years, not to come anymore.  It was so sad when the elephant heartbroken looks for his keeper.  The keeper did not just feed him but stayed with him nearly all the time.  The keeper cannot stand the thought of his friend starving.  Against regulations, he begins sneaking food to the elephant, enough so the officials wonder why he lives on.  The keeper discovered they plan to shot his friend.  He tells the elephant they will leave tommorow night and hide in the countryside, where the elephant can eat grass.  The keeper knows he will be in big trouble if they are found.  Under the cover of night they sneak out.  

I don't want to reveal much more of this very poignant story.  It is a love story on both sides as the elephant shows the depth of his returned love

when the keeper's darkest hour comes.

Akiyuki Nosaka was born in 1930 in Japan, and was a member of the yakeato generation, 'the generation of the ashes', who survived the devastating firebombing of their country during the Second World War. Nosaka lost both his parents and sister in the bombing and its aftermath, but went on to become an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, essayist, lyricist, singer and politician. His novel Grave of the Fireflies was turned into a hugely successful Studio Ghibli film and is forthcoming in a new translation from Pushkin Press.Nosaka died in 2015...from Pushkin Press

Ginny Tapley Takemori studied Japanese at the universities of SOAS (London), Waseda (Tokyo), and Sheffield, and now lives in rural Japan. She has translated a dozen or so early modern and contemporary Japanese authors, and her most recent publications include From the Fatherland with Love by Ryū Murakami (with cotranslators Ralph McCarthy and Charles de Wolf), Puppet Master by Miyuki Miyabe, and The Whale that Fell In Love with a Submarine by Akiyuki Nosaka... From Words Without Borders

Four short stories translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori can be read at Words Without Borders.

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/ginny-tapley-takemori

Mel u