Tag: hitler

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We Barely Escape a War Zone and Then Get All Eagley

We only spent a few days in Krakow, which is just a four hour drive from Lviv, Ukraine, making it the closest we’ve ever come to a war zone (other than some of our kids’ bedrooms when they were growing up). After quadruple-checking that Google Maps wasn’t accidentally sending us east, especially since I hadn’t downloaded any missile-avoidance software, we drove toward Austria by way of Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic, which is itself formerly Czechoslovakia, which had been formed at the end of World War I following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). In 1993, Czechoslovakia separated peacefully into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Later, the Czechs decided they preferred to be called Czechia to, and I quote, “…make it easier for companies and sports teams to use it on products and clothing.”

Damn. I knew right then that I’d have to throw out all my Czech Republic logoed underwear, scarves, ear muffs, and nipple rings because my iconic status as a trend-setting fashionista just won’t be taken seriously if I wear obsolete logos. Also, all that makes me wonder if we’re ever gonna see a country named “Nike” or “Walmart.” Heck, Elon’s getting rich enough to buy a whole country, although “Musk” might not be the best name for one. Except the man just made two million bucks and actually sold out his latest perfume, called (and smells like), “Burnt Hair.” I don’t get it, do people think if they buy even the stupidest thing from an insanely rich person that their wealth will somehow rub off in the opposite direction than it actually does? I don’t understand people sometimes.

The scenic pictures like the above are not necessarily presented in chronological order, nor are they necessarily in the exact country we happen to be talking about at the moment. They’re just offered as an example of the Alpish scenery driving through that area of the world provides. It was also a nice antidote for the horrors we had just walked through in Auschwitz, so I’m kinda sprinkling them everywhere like fairy dust, or peanut shells in the restaurants that allow you to throw peanut shells on the floor.

Speaking of Auschwitz, one of our side trips included a stop at one of Hitler’s old digs, the Eagle’s Nest (aka the Kehlsteinhaus), which was built by Martin Bormann as a gift to the Fuhrer for his 50th birthday, and was something of an engineering marvel.

It turns out Hitler visited it less than twenty times, and then mostly just to show off to important guests. The allies tried bombing it but the target was too small for the bombs of the day and they never could take it out.

But oh, those views. As I stood gazing upon some of the most beautiful nature on earth, I couldn’t help but wonder whether a man with such incredible evil, hatred, and anger in his heart could look at these same mountains and appreciate any beauty in them at all. But the truth is, no one is all-evil like they portray in the movies; even genocidal maniacs can enjoy kids or love art or hold doors for women or have a soft spot for animals or cry during Bambi. We tend to view Hitler as a 24/7 vile-spewing hatred machine, but he was just as human as the rest of us. Well, maybe except for those annoying little genocidal tendencies, and that stupid mustache.

This is the entrance to the tunnel that takes you to the elevator that lifts you up to the house that Bormann built. At the top of the cliff above you can see the Eagle’s Nest house, which sits about 6,017 feet above sea level. A mountain road of about four miles long (6.37 km) was blasted into the mountainside, and was completed needing just one hairpin curve and five tunnels. The road and house were built in only 13 months.

To get into the Eagle’s Nest, you have to walk down this 407 foot long tunnel (this is after being ferried by bus to the base of the cliff; otherwise there’s no driving to Eagle’s Nest, you have to take a 30 euro bus ride which more than makes up for the Nest’s “free entrance”).

At the end of the 407 foot tunnel there’s a golden elevator that rises 407 feet to the top. I couldn’t find any relevance for the number 407, and then I remembered that Germany has used the metric system since the 1800s anyway, so it’s simply a matter of the two tunnels being the same length. However, 407 feet does equal exactly 124.054 meters, which didn’t seem very numerological to me until I remembered that both 7 and 18 are considered lucky and important numbers by the Jews, and if you add the first three numbers of 124.054 (124) together you get 7, and if you divide the last three numbers (054) by 3 you get, you guessed it, 18. This is why numerology is so important, it shows how obvious it is that the Jews were taunting Adolf by making him walk right through Jewish lucky numbers to get to his home away from home. In the end, that may be what did him in. Well, that and the cyanide and gunshot to the head.

In any case, part of the reason Hitler didn’t visit that often is because he had a fear of heights and didn’t like the changes in air pressure (maybe he had a hard time popping his ears, which were probably rebelling because of that stupid mustache). He was also worried about the perceived dangers of lightning, and nervous about simply riding in the elevator. In other words, this loud-mouthed, brash, spittle-spewing mass murderer was also a big fraidy cat.

The house itself is now a restaurant. There’s really not much to see inside other than a restaurant, although one of my WWII-knowledgeable sons (they both are actually) asked about the fireplace Mussolini gave Hitler, and was a bit nonplussed to hear that I didn’t really look for it nor take a picture of it.

So here you go, son, we’ll just pretend we never said we didn’t see it. Sometimes I don’t even know why we travel when almost everything we see can be found on the internet. However, at the risk of upsetting the residents of Barcelona and Mallorca and a bunch of other places that are really getting sick and tired of all the tourists… for the most part being there is far superior to the photos you bring home. The photos provide a 2D glimpse as to what you just experienced, but nothing beats actually being there.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention there were spectacular views up there?

A short but fairly steep hike above the house offered more scenic viewpoints (as if we needed them) as well as this cross, which had a queue in front of it consisting of people waiting to take selfies with it in the background. So naturally I did the same because that’s what you do when you’re traveling: search out the selfie crowds and make sure you don’t miss out on something famous. Of course, some things are famous just because they’re famous. To find out, I searched the web for about ten minutes to see if there was any meaning or particular reason for the cross, and I couldn’t find anything about it. So, I think it’s just the world’s message to Hitler saying, “We’re quite cross about everything you did.” So there.

This is a view of Eagle’s Nest from above and then a view from a little bit below. It’s not hard to understand why the allies had such a hard time bombing it. In those days, bombing accuracy was so poor they had to make up for it by dropping tonnage, which is why you got wipeouts like Dresden and Tokyo. In 1943, only about 20% of the visually dropped bombs hit within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. And this thing is just a lone house. Today, a couple of homemade $100 Ukranian drones could probably take it out.

I’m pretty sure I may have mentioned something about spectacular views already, so the above is just a sampling of the many photos we took while gawking about at the Nest. As I mentioned earlier, photos really can’t do this kind of beauty justice, it is simply incredibly magnificent to see in person.

After visiting Eagle’s Nest, I went into YouTube and watched some of the “home movie” footage they had taken up there with Hitler and Eva Braun, etc. Being there really changed the way I saw those videos; it made it much more real somehow. Anyway, it’s a little, I dunno, haunting to walk in the same footsteps or ride in the same elevator as one of the most infamous mass murderers in history. However, I was thankful that aromas from farts don’t permeate metal, because Adolf was quite the literal gas bag later on in life so if that cable car had been lined with anything that permanently retained fart smells, they’d need to issue gas masks for the duration of the ride.

If I had been a German soldier back then, I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be in the same elevator as the Fuhrer because I’d have to do everything possible to stifle a snicker if he ever let out a long and warbling “Frrrrruuuuumph!”

If I failed, I imagine my headstone would read: “Shot for giggling at the Fuhrer’s farts.”

So now we’re moving on from the Eagle’s Nest and onward to the Hohenwerfen Castle, where they filmed the World War II caper Where Eagles Dare, making this whole blog entry very eagley.

Where Eagles Dare starred luminaries such as Sir Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Terry Yorke. I promise you’ve never heard of Terry Yorke; he was the last uncredited actor in the movie, but now he finally has his name in lights right next to Eastwood and Burton. He’s long dead, but maybe his relatives will send me a thank you note. Possibly with some cash in the envelope? Euros or dollars are fine.

To get into the castle, you have to take a funicular, a mode of transportation that we’re getting pretty used to by now. We bought the whole tour of the castle at the bottom, but were disappointed to discover that the actual tour wouldn’t start for an hour after we landed in the courtyard. Thanks for nothing Ms. Ticket Seller. We wandered around for about half an hour, at which point we looked at each other and both realized that we’d seen enough and that it wasn’t worth spending good time after bad money, so we left before the tour. Which may have been only in German, besides.

Part of the reason we weren’t all that enamored of the castle was because this was one of those castles where they gussied everything up to make it look as if it was new. We really prefer our castles like I prefer my boobs: all natural.

But there’s no way (or reason) to gussy up the views. As usual for a castle, the scenery was breathtaking.

They did have a hangman’s noose to serve as a warning for misbehaving tourists, a short door for misbehaving tall people, and a partially fuzzy picture that served as a sign that the camera in Carolyn’s iPhone was going to be doing its own misbehaving.

So we took some more photos of the scenery and then, after checking to make sure Clint Eastwood wasn’t around anywhere signing autographs, we skedaddled. The other two luminous actors are dead, so he was our only hope. I sent our itinerary to Dirty_Harry@gmail.com but he must not have read it.

So we put Hohenwerfen Castle in our rearview and headed off to work in the salt mines.

Oh, before you go, I have to finish off this eagley entry with an old and very bad eagle joke:

Question: What’s the difference between unlawful and illegal? Answer: Unlawful is when something is contrary to the law of the region, and ill eagle is a sick bird.

My young nephew at the time, many decades ago, tried to repeat this joke by saying, “The difference between them is, that, um, that unlegal is against the law and illawful is a sick bird.” Now that’s how you turn a bad joke into something pretty funny.

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Why Walt Disney should have hired Adolf Hitler

Our cruise ship made a stop in Svolvær, which I assumed would be very crowded because they don’t even have the room to put a space between the “a” and the “e” in their town name, but I didn’t get much of a chance to prove that because a very interesting museum was only a short distance from the ship, and once I entered those doors I was sucked into history like I’d entered a time machine.

On this nondescript street sits an entrance you can easily miss. There’s just a little sign with the word “museum” built into it to give you a clue. I only knew of this place’s existence from the ship’s crew, who offered it up as an idea in a town where the cruise line didn’t otherwise offer any excursions. None of my fellow sailors had the same level of interest I had in the museum, so I meandered over there on my own.

As soon I walked through the door I could see that it wasn’t just another run-of-the-mill museum. Artifacts were piled everywhere, looking more like the inside of a storage shed than a museum presentation. The owner/operator sat quietly behind his desk, reading a book. I realized I was the only customer in the place, so I glanced around quickly to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently walked into some sort of secret Nazi recruitment nest. The owner didn’t say much, but he took my money and waved casually at the collection, inviting me to simply wander around.

I promptly discovered that this was easily the most extensive collection of World War II memorabilia, especially the Nazi kind, that I’d ever encountered. The stockpile is mostly the result of one man’s obsession, and included uniforms galore, as well as bombs, weapons, medals, magazines, Nazi Christmas ornaments, photos, and other miscellany, all chock-a-block in a space that at first seemed small, but actually had numerous rooms in which to explore.

When I came across this drawing of Dopey, I wondered if it was from some sort of propaganda poster poking fun at Hitler. So I asked the taciturn owner/operator about it, and he immediately brightened up and came over to explain.

According to him, these are originals drawn by Hitler. He admitted that the Disney characters couldn’t be verified 100%, but with the “AH” initials on them plus the fact that Adolf apparently had his own copy of Disney’s Snow White, made him feel fairly certain that these were drawn by the Fuhrer. I’m familiar with some of Hitler’s other art, and the house watercolor certainly evokes the other work I’ve seen. Oh, how much less misery might the world have experienced if Hitler had somehow just become an artist instead of a mass murderer? Walt Disney, where were you when we needed you?

Here’s a close up of the initials and the signature. I didn’t want to peer in too closely at them fearing that the stink of evil might somehow permeate my skin. Actually, the truth is that apparently Adolf was, for example, pretty playful around kids. I mean, no person sits stewing in an evil broth 24/7 no matter how disgusting they are. This particular epitome of evil could draw, he liked cartoons, and could even be charming when he wasn’t planning genocide. None of that, of course, in any way makes up for his murderous ways, I’m just saying no one is completely nefarious all of the time. For example, it’s hard to look all tough and evil when you’re eating Fruity Pebbles breakfast cereal, or sitting on the toilet.

I’ll admit that it was a little unnerving to be surrounded by all of those swastikas as well as other artifacts and imagery from such an unfathomably heinous time. But I’m a strong believer in making sure we remember history. As I write this, an increasing number of radical right wing groups are making inroads into more and more countries’ politics. I think some of this happens partly because as WWII fades into history, too many forget how easy it was to convince, for instance, a comparatively well-educated populace in Germany that an ethnic group which made up less than one percent of their populace was not only responsible for their losing WW I, but that the price the group would have to pay for being the target of such misplaced and preposterous blame would be the killing of as many of them as possible, even those from other countries. Why are people so easily manipulated to support and believe this kind of thing? It’s mystifying. It’s madness.

Today, many people can’t even see the hypocrisy of merging extreme right wing nationalism and religious themes like Christmas. In the United States, the same kind of cult of personality that led to Hitler has reared its ugly head as the world looks on in astonishment. I mean, c’mon, the calculus is simple: if hate and disdain is an important part of any ideology, or politician, or your usual source of information, run away! Hatred never leads to anything good, and stopping hate starts with each of us. In fact, I’d love to make this deal with anyone: if you happen to be following or supporting a politician that, for example, refers to any group of other human beings, much less your fellow citizens, as, let’s say, “vermin,” you will agree to support someone else. Deal? Deal. Because remember, the only thing anyone does with vermin is exterminate them.

Okay, sorry, I had to vent. It’s scary out there, especially with things like Putin’s invasion of Ukraine looking an awful lot like what Germany did to start World War II. We need museums like this to remind us what happens when hate takes center stage. I mean, c’mon, 75 million people died due to World War II. That’s like executing every man, woman, or child currently living in the UK, or France (in fact, any country in the world other than the top 20 or so in population), with room left over for an additional six million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and whoever else was different than them. Madness!

After I saw the extent of the collection I approached the proprietor again with some questions. Once he learned that I had a reasonable amount of knowledge about that era, he began to regale me with stories, including one I found a little hard to believe.

According to him, Hitler most likely escaped from Germany by using a combination of body doubles and pre-arranged underground transportation that eventually landed him in Argentina. When I asked him about the fact that Hitler was seriously ill near the end of the war, he claimed that it was all an act, and that he firmly believed Hitler had lived on for quite a few years after 1945.

I listened to the narrative with a major dollop of skepticism. It flies in the face of pretty much every public piece of information out there, all of which point to Hitler’s suicide. But my host had a whole big book that explained in detail how it all might have been pulled off. Obviously, no one can be 100% certain either way, but my new friend was pretty certain about it all, and of course I didn’t feel like arguing with someone who probably knows more about the Nazis than anyone I’ve ever met.

Anyway, as I told him, none of it matters anymore because obviously Hitler is dead now, so whatever time he had after the end of World War II or beyond is now irrelevant. But people from every political spectrum seem to love conspiracy theories. I’m not sure why, since the track record for truth in conspiracy theories is pretty damn dismal. From vaccines carrying tracking devices to stolen elections to flat earthers to holocaust deniers to Hillary sex trafficking children out of the basement of a pizza parlor that had no basement, some people apparently just can’t stop believing in weird shit.

Speaking of which, this photo will probably start a rumor than I’m a skinhead, but I was actually trying to display my disapproval for the image behind me. Somehow it didn’t come out quite as intended.

I’m sorry this entry wasn’t filled with my usual frivolity, but I guess I get a little grumpy when I see humanity continuing to go down roads that lead to such guaranteed misery. We have the proof people, so just stop it! Achtung! Achtung! Avoid those land mines!

Whew! What a downer! But I can still finish this entry up by drawing from my inventory of photos taken from the ship. I know, I know, once you’ve seen one fjord, you buy a Chjevy (there’s my token dad joke at least, courtesy of my oldest son), but at least nature reminds us that no matter how mean and insane some people can get, there’s always beauty somewhere, even in a drawing of a fairy tale character by Adolf Hitler.

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