Latest news with #JosephGoebbels
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Incredible True Story of How the Mona Lisa and the French Crown Jewels Escaped the Nazis
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." At 8 A.M. on August 25, 1939, two months after Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels roused the people of Danzig to 'come home to the Reich,' the German warship Schleswig-Holstein entered the port of the city with over 200 naval shock troop soldiers. Hitler was starting to make good on his threats. At 5 p.m., the French museums received a message they knew would come: start packing. To Rose Valland, a forty-five-year-old French art curator at the Jeu de Paume museum, the previous year felt in hindsight like 'one long and continuous slide to the inevitable.' She was used to operating solo but there was a new sense of gravity. Packing materials overflowed from the Jeu de Paume's basement and storage rooms onto the exhibition floors. It would also be a long time before her boss, André Dezarrois—attached to the French Air Force—might return, if at all. The responsibility of the Jeu de Paume—the art collection, the building, and the staff—rested entirely on her shoulders. As Rose reflected later, 'Whatever the threats weighing on its inhabitants, France had above all to save the spiritual values that it held as an integral part of its soul and its culture. Sheltering its works of art, its archives, its libraries was indeed one of the first reflexes of defense of our country.' Rose was incredibly efficient, as usual. By evening on August 25, only hours after the green light, the packaging of the most precious paintings was done. Unlike the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume did not get extra packing volunteers from Parisian department stores like the Samaritaine, the Grands Magasins du Louvre, or the Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville. But under Rose's direction, the handful of guards at the museum did the job, most of whom were tough, independent-minded knew Rose well and trusted her, as she trusted them. They packed a total of 119 paintings from the Jeu de Paume into 18 crates, ready to be trucked to Chambord Castle. The crates could fit between two and 26 paintings, depending on the artwork size. Among the boxes were works of art by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Chagall, Modigliani, Juan Gris, John Singer Sargent, and Mary Cassatt. All the smaller paintings would have been wrapped in fiber quilt batting for cushioning and a special oiled moisture-wicking paper to protect them from humidity, then placed flat into wood packing cases. As per the instructions, each crate was stenciled with 'JP' for Jeu de Paume and the words 'MUSEES NATIONAUX,' 'FRAGILE,' and 'MN.' Each crate also had a unique number. At the Louvre, the largest evacuation ever attempted was underway. Immediately after the museum was closed, the workers and volunteers took the 50 most notable paintings off the walls, gingerly detached them from their frames, and brought them down to the Louvre basement on trolleys to be prepped for departure. They even unhooked the largest history paintings in the Grande Galerie, including Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, Jacques-Louis David's The Coronation of Napoleon, and Paolo Veronese's The Wedding Feast at Cana, which measured 33 feet wide and 22 feet tall. The workers wrote the names of the paintings in chalk on the walls to aid their future return, and placed the empty frames on the ground or left them in place. Where the face of the Mona Lisa once peered inscrutably at visitors, a worker scribbled her French name: La Joconde. He smudged out his first try and rewrote it more neatly just above, perhaps in deference to her iconic status. There was little chatter, just the rustling sounds of paraffin paper and the sound of hammering as the masterpieces were shut in their temporary wooden tombs. The Venus de Milo was also slated for removal, taken off her pedestal and put onto a hand truck. Four men moved her carefully onto a wood platform and tied her waist with rope for additional stability. A custom crate would soon be built around her. The French Beaux-Arts ministry was working furiously to protect Paris's monuments, too. Specialist workers led by Georges Huisman, the director general of the Beaux-Arts last seen in charge of the World's Fair in New York, unsealed and removed the ancient and priceless stained-glass windows in the cathedrals of Notre-Dame, Saint-Chapelle, and Chartres, piece by piece. Each piece was numbered and placed into wooden crates, then trucked away to storage locations, which included the vaults of the Bank of France and the basement of Saint-Chapelle. At Chartres, it would take just four days for 100 artisans to remove the 5,803 pieces of glass—a task that took over five months at the onset of World War I. Overnight, the famous lights of Paris were darkened as a practice run for air raids. Workers climbed up long, precariously perched ladders to put safety caps atop the city's Belle Époque lanterns. New blue lights popped up indicating the location of air-raid shelters. The packers at the Louvre, who worked nearly all through the night, could only use the small lamps provided to them for emergency lighting. Over the next few days, Rose and the staff packed up the next batch of important paintings in the Jeu de Paume, 165 in total. The greatest challenge lay ahead—securing the art to be sheltered on-site. Approximately two-thirds of the entire collection still needed to be safeguarded, but the Jeu de Paume's basement was too small, consisting only of a few rooms immediately surrounding the central staircase. Of those, only one room was intended for storage; the rest were functional: a boiler room, a former coal storage area, a break room for the museum guards and caretakers, and bathrooms. Furthermore, the basement storage room was not large enough to accommodate everything that remained, so Rose had the boiler room converted into an additional storeroom. Between the two rooms, they fit 524 paintings, nearly 100 sculptures, and the museum's archives. The doors were then padlocked closed. The museum guards moved 20 sculptures, too large to be lowered into the basement, into the walled garden and piled sandbags to their highest features. The electric torches and lighting apparatuses in the museum were stored and secured. The Louvre staff sent the first artworks, including the Mona Lisa—gingerly ensconced in a red velvet-lined custom crate—to Chambord at 6 a.m. on August 28. Jacques Jaujard, director of the Musées Nationaux, calmly directed the whole evacuation from ground zero in the Cour Carrée, the enclosed open-air courtyard of the Louvre. It was a 100-mile journey on a carefully plotted route. Armored guards rode in each truck, and Musées Nationaux staff bookended the convoys in private cars. The energetic arts administrator Albert Henraux, who valiantly guided the 1938 art evacuation at top speed in his Hotchkiss car, led the first convoy of eight trucks. The French crown jewels and 225 other crates from the Louvre were also on board the first trucks. Another convoy with six trucks left at 2 p.m. From then on, two convoys departed daily from the Louvre. The first 70 paintings from the Jeu de Paume, packed into 15 crates, left for Chambord on the morning of August 30. Outside of the museum world, the English, French, and Americans were still having meetings with Hitler and his ministers, trying last-ditch efforts to stop a major conflict. But privately, the diplomats doubted that war could be avoided. The Western European nations continued to mobilize. The border between France and Germany was closed, and telephone and telegraph communications were shut down. Restrictions on the French populace began, with cafés and restaurants to be closed by 11 p.m. daily. The French military took control of the radio. On August 31 and September 1, a subsequent shipment of 163 paintings from the Jeu de Paume, mostly placed uncrated in padded trucks, left for Chambord. Rose was working so rapidly, she grabbed two tickets to the opening of a Tibetan painting exhibition at the Musée Guimet as scrap paper, noted the convoy number, date of departure, and number of paintings on the back, and pinned it to her inventory lists. These paintings ended up stacked dozens deep in the chapel of Chambord castle. With all the important artwork now at Chambord and the final preparations at the Jeu de Paume fully in process, Rose could take a small breath. But any sense of relief was short-lived. On one hand, Hitler was making assurances that he would meet directly with Poland, a sign that perhaps the conflict could be de-escalated at the 11th hour. But his follow-up demands became more and more unreasonable and contradictory. In addition to Danzig and the Polish Corridor, he suddenly added Silesia and Gdynia to his territorial wish list and stated that he no longer envisioned that Poland could stay independent. He told the British ambassador that he would only meet and negotiate with Poland if they agreed in advance to all his demands. During the night on August 31, German SS officers disguised in Polish military uniforms, under direct orders from Gestapo director Reinhard Heydrich, attacked the Sender Gleiwitz radio station in Germany and broadcast an anti-German message in Polish to make it seem like Polish anti-German factions were behind it. Dozens of similar incidents took place the same night. Polish men, as well as prisoners from concentration camps, were executed, then dressed as Polish saboteurs and left at the sites of the attack as further 'evidence.' In the early hours of September 1, Hitler issued a proclamation to the Wehrmacht, the German Army, that clearly showed his formal resolve to attack Poland, stating that 'the time has come to oppose force with force.' At the port of Danzig, the Schleswig-Holstein fired its cannons on a military depot. As the last cases of art from the Jeu de Paume were loaded up onto trucks, German troops crossed the Polish border at multiple entry points and began their assault. Danzig was officially declared part of the Third Reich. Nazi agents within Poland took over the railways, arrested officials, requisitioned trains, and occupied stations. In a mass attack, German planes dropped bombs on Warsaw and 150 towns all over Poland. Hitler also made a speech at the Reichstag, laying out the basis for his actions and proclaiming the superiority of the German military. He pledged to protect women and children but swore that 'whoever departs from the rules of human warfare can only expect that we shall do the same.' He would fight 'until victory is secured' or 'not survive the outcome.' He also appointed his second in command. 'If anything should happen to me in the struggle, then my first successor is Party Comrade Göring,' his portly Generalfeldmarschall in charge of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force. On September 2, French president Albert Lebrun addressed the French Parliament. To loud applause, he confirmed that 'with great calmness, with cool resolve, and in perfect order, France had taken the steps required by her own safety and her faithfulness to her obligations.' 'Vive la France!' he concluded to even more thunderous clapping. Then French prime minister Daladier followed with an even longer speech, stating, 'France rises with such impetuous impulses only when she feels in her heart that she is fighting for her life and for her independence. Gentlemen, today France is in command.' The deputies rose to their feet and applauded loudly and at length. Both England and France demanded that Germany announce a withdrawal from Poland by the next day, September 3. Over at the Louvre, around midday, a large group of museum workers gathered atop the grand staircase where the Winged Victory of Samothrace still stood triumphantly. The sculpture was originally intended to be sheltered in place at the museum, but a new study showed that the vaulted ceiling above her would not survive a bombing. The Louvre's Asian Arts department curator, George Salles, came to tell everyone, on behalf of Jacques Jaujard, that war was about to be declared. The sober news meant that Victory needed to be moved out urgently. Made up of 118 fragile pieces of white Parian marble, the winged sculpture was encased in an open scaffolding and attached to a complex rope and pulley system. At 3 p.m., Victory was lifted off of her prow pedestal. Two groups of men held up the sculpture as it rolled inch by inch down a wooden ramp, shaking perilously. 'The rope is cracking!' one of the men yelled. When the sculpture made it miraculously down the grand staircase without a scratch, the elderly curator nearly collapsed from stress on the stone steps. 'I will not see her return,' he said ruefully, while wiping away a tear. at By nightfall, the Louvre was nearly empty. Over the prior week, 95 trucks had whisked away most of the museum's most precious objects—more than 1200 crates, thousands of paintings, and tens of thousands of sculptures. At half past noon on September 3, Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, met with German foreign minister von Ribbentrop, who informed him that Germany did not agree to the ultimatum. Coulondre responded, 'I have the painful duty to notify you that as from today, September 3, at 5 p.m., the French Government will find itself obliged to fulfill the obligations that France has contracted towards Poland, and which are known to the German Government.' 'Well,' von Ribbentrop replied, 'it will be France who is the aggressor.' 'History will judge of that,' Coulondre replied. And with that, war had come to Europe once again. From the book THE ART SPY: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland. Copyright 2025 by Michelle Young. Reprinted by permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game
Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Riefenstahl — a devastating, five-star portrait of Hitler's propagandist
★★★★★It's not often that films get better on a second viewing, but this dense, challenging and intellectually rigorous documentary about 'Hitler's favourite film-maker' Leni Riefenstahl is one of those exceptions. I gave it a four-star rave when I saw it last year at the heady, buzzy Venice Film Festival. But a subsequent, and more composed, encounter reveals even greater depths and bolder ambition from the German writer-director Andres Veiel. He has delivered an expansive work about the woman behind the Nazi blockbusters Triumph of the Will and Olympia, and someone who was counted as, according to the diaries of Joseph Goebbels, a 'friend' of Hitler and his propaganda minister. It's a disturbing film that knits together previous Riefenstahl profiles (including TV interviews, newsreel
Channel 4
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Channel 4
How Leni Riefenstahl tried to cover up her role in the Nazi regime
'She understands us'. That's how Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels described the German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, who died in 2003, at the age of 101. It turns out she did. Even though she insisted to the end that her award-winning films were only ever about the art, a new documentary – called 'Riefenstahl' – finds out how she covered up her central role in the Third Reich.
Irish Times
23-04-2025
- Irish Times
Yes, smartphone addiction is unhealthy – but so is getting a dumb phone and pretending it's 2003
Few of us have a healthy relationship with our phones. Chatting with a writer friend recently, I realised that even the people rejecting the ubiquity of smartphones (and there aren't many) are in that camp with the rest of us. As we sat outdoors on a crisp autumnal Australian day, the sun hitting my back and its 23-degree heat calming my bones, she ruined everything. 'I got rid of my iPhone!' my friend said, staring at me over a cup of coffee with unsettling ocular intensity. The irises of both eyes were entirely ringed in white as her brows crept northward. She looked like a skittish horse being backed into a stall. 'I'm not using a smartphone at all any more!' Her voice ascended at the end of the sentence with a weird little laugh, like a panicked question she was putting to the universe. The whole thing had a sort of tremulous 'I'm okay ... Am I okay?' tone that I found depressingly relatable. READ MORE Trying to get on top of the stranglehold these devices have on us is a perpetual and ultimately futile endeavour. The digital equivalent of saying, 'Things will settle down after next week,' every Sunday night until you die of old age, overwhelmed and with an incomplete to-do list that has 'die' still left on it, not crossed out. Things aren't settling down – ever – and your relationship with the phone is not getting healthier or more within your control. [ The way I use my phone feels compulsive. 20 minutes can pass like nothing at all. It's a profound waste of time Opens in new window ] Really, it's going the other way. That's clear from the obliteration of everyone's attention span and banjaxed nervous system. Parting ways entirely is a deep impracticality in this era – we use phones to pay for things, to access bills and bank accounts and work emails. We don't have time to think about how easy these convenient features might make a dystopian government coup in a cashless society where none of us remember our own phone numbers. We need the phone to contact friends and family, to enviously stress over the social media feeds of colleagues we worry seem to be doing better than us. We need them to feel relevant; to feel poor and fat and behind and boring in comparison to influencers whose prodigious use of image manipulation can only be rivalled in its marketing savvy and propagandist vision by Joseph Goebbels. There's no time to think – there are 12 billion dancing videos being released every 30 seconds and there's The White Lotus finale to talk about. My friend's cold-turkey relationship with her now discarded smartphone is no healthier, really. It comes from a place of psychological bombardment, hyperstimulation and existential angst. It's an admission of being so addicted to the technology that you need to simulate a lifestyle that is 20 years out of date just to get through the day. Everything is digital. AI is now more articulate and better at thinking than the average person, and we cannot be arsed to write down all our passwords when our phone can just remember them, no matter how stealable this makes our already insecure data. It's all here to stay. It's all speeding up. Things will not, under any circumstances, settle down after this week. So it's just about management. Gripping on with white knuckles. Trying not to be pitched, spiralling, off the edge of reality while podcasters suggest that Domestos is a good natural sunscreen until the wheels fall off the whole thing and we reset at amoeba level. You can't scroll endlessly on TikTok or worry about already-thin celebrities using Ozempic if you're a unicellular organism. My point is that going cold turkey creates as many problems as it solves. We're two messages in and I've already contemplated death, life's inherent sadness and my own professional inadequacies As an Irish emigrant in Australia who works from home, writing in part about being an Irish emigrant in Australia, a detoxified digital lifestyle isn't an option. I can't get a dumb phone and pretend it's 2003. I need to stay up to date on whatever preposterous gobshitery is going on at Leinster House this week. I need to check what book Ryan Tubridy recently recommended and to see which short-lived theme restaurant is taking over Dublin. I need to look at photos of Cork on friends' social media and think, 'Ah yeah I'd happily live in Cork. Everyone loves Cork.' I also need to stay in touch with my friends and family at home, and must attempt to do this in a way that doesn't raise my cortisol levels to 'You're being chased by a bear' status. It's the time difference. The messages come in while you're sleeping and because you're a mindless idiot droid who is addicted to your phone, the first thing you do on waking at 6.30am is roll over, coughing like an elderly man, and look at your phone. It's automatic. It precedes conscious thought of any kind, and is, I think, the most depressing confirmation of our total capture by the digital reality in which most of us spend worrying chunks of our waking time. When I grab my phone on waking, it is late evening at home. People have sent their queries or their news during their wind-down time before bed, and I awake to a tumult of anxiety and stress. 'Just FYI Albert from down the road died. Very sad,' might be the opening salvo. I'm then pulled back to memories of Albert, and an unsettling cogitation on the merciless march of time and loss of connection in the modern world, and I haven't even had a pee yet. 'How's the book writing going?' goes another, which causes an anxiety spiral as I anticipate bashing my brains against my desk to try to get anything decent out of there during the working day ahead. We're two messages in and I've already contemplated death, life's inherent sadness and my own professional inadequacies. I stuff the phone under my pillow and won't look at it until, mindless automaton I am, I pick it up again six minutes later. We'll definitely be grand. It's just about management. Sign up to The Irish Times Abroad newsletter for Irish-connected people around the world. Here you'll find readers' stories of their lives overseas, plus news, business, sports, opinion, culture and lifestyle journalism relevant to Irish people around the world If you live overseas and would like to share your experience with Irish Times Abroad, you can use the form below, or email abroad@ with a little information about you and what you do. Thank you
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
GOP Rep Quotes Infamous Nazi Joseph Goebbels During Censorship Hearing
A Republican congressman appalled Democrats at a congressional hearing by quoting infamous Nazi Joseph Goebbels. 'A direct quote from Joseph Goebbels: 'It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,' and I think that may be what we're discussing here,' said Texas' Keith Self. Goebbels was the minister of propaganda for the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. His role was to convince the German people to support Hitler's regime, which he did so by spreading anti-Semitism and orchestrating the 1933 burning of 'un-German' books in Berlin. Self, 72, referenced Goebbels' words during a House subcommittee meeting aimed at determining whether a 'censorship industrial complex' existed. The Tuesday hearing was held after Republicans claimed that Biden-era policies aimed to stifle rightwing views. Texas Democrat Rep. Julie Johnson heavily criticized Self's remarks. 'When you're quoting Joseph Goebbels about... the role of state in the public debate, we have a big problem,' Johnson said. 'I mean, that's as alarming as hell to me, when that becomes the gold standard of Hitler.' She said it was concerning that he was referencing a quote associated with 'German atrocities during World War II.' She later posted the clip of Self on X with the comment, 'Joseph Goebbels was a literal Nazi and one of Hitler's closest allies. To my Republican colleagues, it is probably best not to quote him during a congressional hearing.' Self rebutted that Johnson's 'framing is completely misleading.' He said: 'I was referring to the philosophy of Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden's Disinformation Governance Board. Probably best not to throw stones when your party supported funneling millions of dollars through Biden's State Dept. to shape public opinion.' At the hearing, Jankowicz, the leader of a pro-democracy organization and former executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board, said that 'the premise of this hearing, the so called censorship industrial complex, is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety, but on our national security.' She later added that the 'fiction is itself suppressing speech and stymieing critical research that protects our country.' DOGE leader Elon Musk later called Jankowicz and her colleague 'evil people.' Despite Self's defense, it isn't the first time he's used Goebbel quotes. He cited the Nazi in 2010 when he was running for reelection as Collin County Judge. At the time, he tried to bite back at his opponent by saying, 'if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.' At the time, he claimed he was only using the widely-circulated yet unsubstantiated Goebbels quote to show that his opponent was 'using the method.' HuffPost reported that Self's office did not directly comment on his bizarre Nazi quotes but instead said: 'It is indisputable that the Biden administration weaponized its State Department to censor and suppress American citizens from their right to free speech.' Self also recently received backlash after misgendering Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), the first openly transgender congresswoman. The outcries following Self's Goebbels quote comes after Democrats condemned Musk's gesture at the presidential inauguration, which looked like a Nazi salute. He did little to defend the move at the time but instead made Holocaust-related jokes and Nazi puns to his over 200 million X followers. Musk also recently retweeted an X post saying that Hitler and other dictators like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong did not murder millions of people, but 'their public sector workers did' instead.
