Monday, September 04, 2006

"Why They Hate Us..."

I was re-reading Howard K. Smith's book, "Last Train from Berlin" - just finished it - and came across a passage that struck me with its pathos. He's recounting an experience in 1940 or 1941, before he escaped from Berlin.

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``It is true to say that England has never been more popular on the European continent than she is today. Nor has Germany ever been more hated by her European neighbours than right now. And the Germans know it. Once, in Berlin, I ran into an aged German housewife I know; she was holding her almost empty market-bag in one hand and looking wistfully at a faded, ancient propaganda poster headed "Why They Hate Us...", referring to the plutocracies, which was pasted on the side of a house. I asked her what she found so interesting, and she said: "I was only thinking. That used to be a propaganda slogan--`They Hate Us'--but now the Fuehrer has fixed it. They do hate us. The Fuehrer achieves everything." ''