Category Archives: World War II

Empty Boots

March 10, 2013

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Hungary, Joseph Stalin, Nazis, Russia, Short Pieces - GTC, Soviet Union

Mussolini’s Guest

December 24, 2012

MY GUEST
By Benito Mussolini
I did not want to. It was a nauseating notion, me hosting this political charlatan as if he were my equal. I really had to, though. I was determined to do a lot and had to make sure the Huns did not concern me. Hitler certainly needed me more. Russia and France [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, George Thomas Clark, Getty Center, Hitler Here, Italy

Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

December 2, 2012

To read an excerpt from the biographical novel “Here Hitler,” please click here.

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Czechoslovakia, George Thomas Clark, Heinrich Hmmler, Hitler Here, Reinhard Heydrich

Interned American Recalls World War II

October 15, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Aging, California, Short Pieces - GTC

Berlin Jewish Cultural League

October 9, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Germany, Hitler Here, Holocaust, Jews, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Short Pieces - GTC, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Justice Right and Left

September 12, 2012

To read an excerpt from “Hitler Here,” please click here.

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Hitler Here, Nazis, Walther Rathenau

Winton, Not Winston, in Quito

August 16, 2012

A travel newsletter I subscribed to occasionally offered stories by a guy named Winton Churchill. Oh, a wise guy, I concluded. Despite groaning about his humor, and perhaps his stability, I did conclude Churchill knew plenty about computers. He’d worked for Apple, knew Steve Jobs, toiled for other Silicon Valley concerns, some [...]

Also posted in Computers, Ecuador, Immigration, Quito, Steve Jobs, Travel, Winston Churchill

Thugs

August 3, 2012

Please click here to read an excerpt from “Hitler Here.”

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Germany, Hitler Here, Nazis

William H. Johnson Alive

July 25, 2012

On a sultry afternoon first summer of the Twentieth Century in Florence, South Carolina, Alice Johnson is cleaning house for an affluent white man who tells his wife and two kids go on over to her sister’s for awhile. Minutes later he appears behind Alice and says, “No more cleanin today,” grabs shoulders to [...]

Also posted in Art, Denmark, James McNeill Whistler, Nazis, New York City, Norway, Painters, Smithsonian Institution, South Carolina, William H. Johnson

Albert Speer Studs Out

June 30, 2012

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Albert Speer, Architecture, Holocaust, Nazis, Poetry - GTC, Short Pieces - GTC

Protecting Women Surrealist Painters

March 18, 2012

“Security, stop that man,” I shouted at startled employees assigned to guard the distinguished collection of paintings by surrealist women currently living at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
They groped at an athletic young man sprinting by and, along with me, chased him as he ran directly to “Birthday,” a self-portrait by Dorothea Tanning. We [...]

Also posted in Art, Birds, Dorothea Tanning, Families, Hollywood, LACMA, Marriage, Mental Health, Painters, Surrealism

Ivan the Terrible

March 2, 2012

identification card proves
ivan demjanjuk
guarded jews at
sobibor death camp
demjanjuk insists
had to or die
only handful of
two hundred fifty
thousand jews survived
and no aged survivor
remembers so
ivan demjanjuk
though convicted
as accessory in murder
of twenty-eight thousand
was released to german
nursing home
pending appeal
at least he’ll never go
back to cleveland
said one survivor
Source: “Demjanjuk in Munich” by Lawrence Douglas in Harper’s March 2012

Also posted in Germany, Holocaust, Ivan Demmjanjuk, Jews, Poetry - GTC, Poland, Sobibor

Berlin Jewish Cultural League

February 7, 2012

what wonderful idea is
berlin jewish cultural league
comfortably immersed in arts
we hundred seventy five thousand
jewish berliners shall relax until
nazism disappears can’t be long
meanwhile have music and other
outlets here and around germany
unfortunate but tolerable only jews
can perform in our orchestra only
jews attend only jews publish reviews
we enjoy our concerts make money too
don’t need germans who’ve forgotten
we’re [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Germany, Hitler Here, Holocaust, Jews, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Poetry - GTC, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Empty Boots

November 21, 2011

on massive
foundation
in budapest park
great hungarian
patriots
erected me
twenty-five feet
high in bronze
to celebrate
seventieth birthday
and thank
for destroying
nazis
in few years
without me
imperialists
threw steel
ropes around
neck burned
legs with
blow torches
and pulled body
down to desecrate
face beneath
empty boots
To see the “Empty Boots” of Joseph Stalin, please click here
Adolf Hitler, Hungarian Revolution, Hungary, Joseph Stalin, Nazis, Poetry – GTC, Russia, Soviet Union, World War II,

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Communism, Hungarian, Joseph Stalin, Nazis, Poetry - GTC, Russia, Soviet Union

Albert Speer Studs Out

November 9, 2011

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Albert Speer, Architecture, Holocaust, Nazis, Nuremberg, Poetry - GTC

Interned American Recalls World War II

November 3, 2011

doing pretty well for old man
twenty years ago i retired
as gardener at seventy-five
i was in twenties when
pearl harbor hit and things
got bad in california for
people like me
i was born here you know
that didn’t matter they sent
my wife three kids and
me to internment camp
and made us stay we
lost our home and store
and both my parents
and one [...]

Also posted in California, Poetry - GTC, Racism

Otto Dix in “The Trench”

September 13, 2011

I’m amazed people in trenches reported I was calm before battle, seated by myself sketching images and impressions of the Great War, and then roused on command to fire my machinegun and slaughter scores or more of the enemy until hostilities waned and I quietly sat back down and relaxed as I resumed sketching. [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Art, Expressionism, Otto Dix, Painters, World War I

Adolf Eichmann Appears at Film Festival

August 21, 2011

On the final afternoon of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, before a near capacity audience in the large theater, Adolf Eichmann – looking typically banal, bespectacled, and grim – was wheeled in a glass cage onto a stage in front of the screen after completion of “Eichmann’s End: Love, Betrayal, Death,” and he demanded: [...]

Also posted in Adolf Eichmann, Adolf Hitler, Auschwitz, Europe, George Thomas Clark, Heinrich Hmmler, Hitler Here, Jewish Film Festival, Jews, Poland, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hoess, San Francisco

Germany Attacked Russia 70 Years Ago

June 22, 2011

(On June 22, 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union, unleashing the bloodiest confrontations in history.)
Please click here to read an excerpt from “Hitler Here.”

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Georgi Zhukov, Germany, Heinz Guderian, Holocaust, Joseph Stalin, Leningrad, Moscow, Russia, Ukraine

Book Tour

February 15, 2011

I had secretly taken an earlier flight to elude the media and (I later learned) several dozen readers who, by the standards of literary greetings at airports, constituted a throng. I wasn’t being rude. I was terrified. I couldn’t allow them to see me stagger out after one of those hemmed-in, gut-busting, [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Amazon.com, Auschwitz, Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, Edvard Benes, Europe, France, George Thomas Clark, Germany, Hitler Here, Holocaust, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Middle East, Short Stories - GTC

I Am MacArthur

August 28, 2010

I am General MacArthur. This is my book. This is my destiny. I am born in the barracks at the sound of reveille, and I am bred to lead intrepid men in great wars. My father is exceptionally handsome and brilliant, through less so than I, and rises to be one [...]

Also posted in Alexander the Great, Asia, Australia, China, Dean Acheson, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Japan, John Barrymore, Korea, Korean War, Napoleon, Nuclear Weapons, Pearl Harbor, Philippines, Short Stories - GTC, West Point, World War I

Joseph Goebbels Watches A Film Unfinished

August 2, 2010

May 1942 is an extraordinary time. In the East, ideally situated after our invasion last year devoured thousands of square miles of the Soviet Union and enabled us to kill and capture several million enemy soldiers, we are resuming offensives and will soon surely have the Russian colossus on its knees. In North [...]

Also posted in Bay Area, Documentaries, Douglas MacArthur, Germany, Holocaust, Israel, Jewish Film Festival, Jews, Joseph Goebbels, Movies, Poland, San Francisco, Warsaw

Historian Presents the Statistics of War

May 12, 2010

I bumbled by that smoking, manure-laden vehicle that didn’t explode in New York City last week and felt foolish I wasn’t the one who detected it and that I should have since I’ve spent my career analyzing wars but concede I’m only a historian, hiding in academia, who would’ve cringed at the sound of real [...]

Also posted in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Alexander the Great, Iraq, Taliban, War, World War I

Woman Repudiates Hitler’s Skull

October 9, 2009

Click here to read an excerpt from “Snapshots of Distressing Events”

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Germany, Holocaust, Short Pieces - GTC

Adolf Hitler Greets Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

September 22, 2009

Please click here to read an excerpt from “Obama on Edge.”

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Holocaust, Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Historian Offers to Write Screenplay about Hitler Here

July 13, 2009

How pleased I recently was to receive an email with the subject “Screenplay” and addressed to “Illustrious Sir”.  The correspondent introduced himself with news he’d been reading my biographical novel Hitler Here and thought it was “great” and “what an ordeal (I) must have gone through to produce it.”  Since the book took twenty years [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, George Thomas Clark, Hitler Here, Holocaust, Jews, Movies, Racism

A Jewish Girl in Nazi Germany

May 16, 2007

During the Los Angeles Book Fair at UCLA in late April, sun-splattered readers roamed by the thousands, and scores stopped by Tent 106 to talk to three other authors and me about our books.  Mine is called Hitler Here.  It’s a biographical novel, and the cover bears a menacing, pencil portrait of the man in [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Germany, Holocaust, Jews

From Germany, a Comedy about Hitler

January 24, 2007

“Did you know they’ve been laughing about Hitler in Germany?” asked the publicist.
“Now?” I responded.  “No, I didn’t.  They ribbed him quite a bit until he took power in 1933, and they still did once in a while later in the 30’s.  But they had to be careful.”
“This is different.  They’ve made a movie comedy [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Germany, Holocaust, War

Save Sophie Scholl

March 24, 2006

This mission is going to be difficult and dangerous in the extreme, and only a resourceful person will have even a grim chance to complete the imperative task – save Sophie Scholl in 1943 Nazi Germany.  We are tired of receiving applicants to save Julia Jentsch, star of the new movie “Sophie Scholl: The Last [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Movies, Sophie Scholl

Sixty Years after Hitler

April 30, 2005

Sixty years ago tomorrow gasoline fumes jolted Adolf Hitler and his new bride Eva as they exited their suite to walk a solemn line.  Staff members shook hands with the mentally and physically shattered Fuehrer who was unable to speak.  Eva took each man’s hand and hugged the women, urging one to try to get [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, Hitler Here, Holocaust

Letter to Holocaust Deniers

February 6, 2005

A few days ago I received several e-mails from a group that says it didn’t happen.
To the RePorter NoteBook:
Your insinuations and assertions that the Holocaust never happened are preposterous and insulting, and your general explanation of how the ruse was pulled off is pitiful: Americans in the conquered West and Russians in the occupied East lied about the hell [...]

Also posted in Adolf Hitler, George Thomas Clark, Hitler Here, Holocaust, Jews, Racism