A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.

I watch very few videos about World War II. I'm more interested in what happened afterward. Accordingly, this one is about what happened following Hitler's death in the bunker in 1945, specifically the Soviet cover-up of the investigation into the Nazi kingpin's suicide.

Deutsche Welle sets the table. it's an uncharacteristically sloppy synopsis, corrected below.

Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker as the Red Army closed in on Berlin on April 30, 1945. But legends about the Nazi dictator's lived on. Was his body ever found? Did he manage to escape?

After Hitler, aides poured gasoline on his body and set it alight in the garden of his chancellery. A few days later, the Soviets discovered the remains. But the body was burned beyond recognition, and they could not be sure it was his. Only after a top-secret investigation could Hitler be positively identified, thanks to information provided by his dentist.

At the same time, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin publicly stated that his army had been unable to find Hitler’s body. Wild rumors swirled about Hitler's death. Stalin even accused some of the Allies of helping him escape. What were the secrets behind this deception? What happened to the two German women who helped identify Hitler's body?

The documentary states that Hitler's dentist, Hugo Blaschke, had left Berlin and could not be located by the Soviets to identify the dead man's teeth (he subsequently was captured in the American zone).

This task fell to Blaschke's assistant, Käthe Heusermann. She's the one German woman who helped identify the body, the other Russian woman being Elena Rzhevskaya, who finally was able to write the book about what actually happened, but only after the USSR disintegrated in 1991.

Evidently Rzhevskaya was a powerhouse; what isn't mentioned in the film is that she was Jewish, a noteworthy fact because of Stalin's anti-Semitic proclivities. Given what she knew, and how Stalin wished it to be kept under wraps, it's amazing she lived to tell the tale.

LIVE TO EAT AND DRINK: "It’s unsurprising that the two crucial figures in Tiki’s history were notorious liars."

Photo credit.

“It’s hard to appropriate a culture that was made up in the first place.”

“A nostalgia that is nostalgic for nostalgia itself.”

"When 21st century Tiki fails to be authentic, it settles for being authentically inauthentic."

Tiki bars aren't my sort of pleasure, but to each his or her own. This duly noted, here's an absolutely riveting overview of how Tiki ever came to exist in America, why it went away, and speculation about the reasons for the genre's comeback.

This is an uncommonly excellent essay.

The Tiki Bar Resurgence of the Trump Era, by Jackson Arn (The Nation)

It’s tacky and willfully inauthentic. Of course it’s popular again.

“It’s gotten too tacky.”
-- Donald Trump, when asked why he was closing Trader Vic’s at The Plaza, 1989

Ignore, if you can, the fact that the man who spoke these words is famous for gold buildings, gold seat belt buckles, and gold hair, and then ask yourself, “Did he have a point?”

By 1988, the year Trump bought the Plaza Hotel, the Trader Vic’s in the basement—probably the most famous branch of the most famous Tiki bar chain in the world—had become that dullest of things, a New York Institution. Three decades’ worth of prep school kids, ad men, and movie stars had been fattened on its spareribs, Samoan Fog Cutters, kava bowls, curry puffs, and pu-pu platters, and when Trump told the Times about his plans for The Plaza, it was predictably outraged. Even Richard Nixon weighed in: “It was always our daughter’s favorite restaurant,” he said, “and it quickly became mine, too.”

Then and now, Tiki provokes these kinds of strong reactions—either it’s insufferable or it’s the best. It’s my friends’ favorite genre of bar, or it’s the worst thing they’ve ever heard of. With their plastic grass, pink paper umbrellas, and yellowing ceramic skull mugs, Tiki bars have been on the cutting edge of tackiness for the better part of their 80-year history. And yet it is the humble Tiki bar, increasingly, where young urban epicures go in search of fresh-squeezed mixers, painstakingly aged liqueurs, wild-fermented imported liquors—in short, “authenticity.” A slew of high-profile new Tiki spots have opened in the last few years—Manhattan’s Mother of Pearl, San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove, Chicago’s Three Dots and a Dash—stocked with world-class ingredients and manned by top-tier bartenders. For Americans who were of drinking age in the middle of the last century, this turn of events must seem especially bizarre—since when were Tiki bars authentic or world-class in any way?

You can’t tell the story of Tiki without bringing up vast ingenuity and equally vast bigotry, heroic soldiers and charming hucksters, avant-garde and kitsch. It’s a cultural phenomenon as crude as the society that birthed it, but in a flailing, babyish way that provokes an amused headshake instead of a gasp. It is also, by its very nature, so overdetermined that it forces people to judge it, second- and third-guessing its excesses. It makes a mockery of indifference. No wonder it’s gotten popular again.

Follow the Auschwitz Memorial page at Twitter and root yourself in reality.

A disturbing number of my fellow Amerikaners have decided the Holocaust didn't occur. Stupidity or ignorance? Either way, dipshittedness of this magnitude is just about as unimaginable as the fact of the atrocity itself.

A few weeks back I saw that the Auschwitz Memorial page at Twitter is seeking to add followers in the run-up to the 75th anniversary of the death camp's liberation in January.

The material posted by Auschwitz Memorial on a daily basis at Twitter isn't easy or pleasant reading. It's just essential to being a responsible and responsive human being.

If you are of the tweeting persuasion, go there and give them a follow. There is a Facebook page as well. The web site is here.

Should you be one of the deniers, you're advised to examine your own life with care and precision; if we happen to be acquainted, then get the hell out of my life until yours is placed in the context of reality.

Thank you.

This Second World War "photo thriller" is a worthwhile documentary from Deutsche Welle.

It's another fine Deutsche Welle documentary, this time with a few uncharacteristic twists. If you're interested in the World War II period, especially the little known Polish side of the story, this one's for you. I enjoyed the film.

A box full of photos from the Second World War serves as the starting point for a historical thriller. It was found by a Polish filmmaker whose grandfather had served in the German army. But what does it mean for Michal Wnuk’s family history?

The photos show prisoners of war in France and Russia - and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 from a German perspective: Snapshots of the war in black and white. On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that Michal Wnuk’s grandfather could not have taken the photos himself, because he never served in those theatres, so Michal sets off to find out where they came from. He discovers that the box belonged to his great uncle, who was in the Polish Home Army. How did he get them? Booty? Evidence? And the films are also puzzling, showing an excursion in the summer of 1939. But who are the people in the pictures? Michal’s search finally takes him to Germany. This German-Polish co-production is a historical thriller, full of riddles and surprising twists, as a hoard of private material turns into a sounding board for great historical events.

July 4 flashback: 30 years ago today, "Can someone please explain how the stars and stripes got up THERE?"

Barrie waiting to be weighed.

The following first appeared in 1987 as part of my summer-long revisit of the 1987 Europe trip.

---

Previously: 30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Changing an empty keg the Soviet way.

It is with much confusion that I attempt to describe the events of July 3 and 4, 1987.

My notes insist that the tour group arrived in Leningrad on the morning of Thursday, July 2, after a largely sleepless overnight train trip (described previously). The party began again on the evening of July 2, spilling over into Friday morning, July 3.

On Friday morning, we boarded a hydrofoil to Peterhof (Petrodvorets). Hangovers were rampant, but at least it was a lovely summer day to cruise the Gulf of Finland.

One of St. Petersburg's most famous and popular visitor attractions, the palace and park at Peterhof (also known as Petrodvorets) are often referred to as "the Russian Versailles", although many visitors conclude that the comparison does a disservice to the grandeur and scope of this majestic estate.

Photos follow, below.

Upon returning from Petrodvorets, there was a tour of the Hermitage Museum at the lavish former Winter Palace of the Romanovs, and in the evening, some of us went to the Baku restaurant to celebrate Nick's birthday.

By evening on Saturday, July 4, the group had wrapped its Leningrad tour in the morning (Piskaryovskoe Memorial Cemetery and museum of the WWII siege) and flown to Riga, Latvia for the next stage of liver damage.

The timing matters, owing to one of the most famous episodes of the journey, wherein an American flag abruptly appeared atop the Leningradsky Dvorets Molodezhi Hotel in honor of July 4, U.S. independence day.

It had to have happened at night on July 3, into the morning of July 4.

Seeing as I remember nothing about the Baku meal, it will come as no surprise that details about the circumstances of this flag's novel appearance in the USSR also completely elude me.

Furthermore, I've no idea how the flag was reclaimed, because at some point thereafter it was traded to a cooperative Soviet railway attendant for a tin of caviar the size of a football.

No photos survive of this flag, unfurled atop the brutalist architecture in Leningrad, and tolerated with remarkable equanimity by hotel staff. I wonder if we bribed them?

From July 3, two views of Leningrad's old Tsarist waterfront.

And incredible Petrodvorets, the Versailles of Peter the Great.

I believe the game was to see which stones activated the water jets when trod upon.

Next, Dom Knigi (Singer Company Building), where we loaded up on dirt cheap propaganda posters.

St. Petersburg's largest and most famous bookshop, Dom Knigi ("House of the Book") occupies one of the most beautiful buildings on Nevsky Prospekt - the Singer Company Building, an innovative and richly decorated Art Nouveau masterpiece.

The Neva River.

From July 4: 

Even today, St. Petersburg's Piskaryovskoe Memorial Cemetery continues to speak eloquently to the experience of Leningrad under siege by the Nazis in WWII.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and so we were able to witness the Soviet custom of newlyweds visiting the cemetery to honor the sacrifice of the populace during the siege.

The most significant monument to those who died during the Siege of Leningrad, this enormous memorial cemetery on the north-eastern outskirts of the city holds the graves of around 420 000 civilian victims of the siege, the majority of whom died of cold and starvation, and 70 000 soldiers who died in the defense of the city. On Victory Day (9 May), the cemetery is a centre of activity for the relatives of those who are buried there and anyone who wishes to commemorate the thousands of victims of what is undoubtedly the greatest tragedy in St. Petersburg's history.

In 1987, it had been only a little more than 40 years, and most families had suffered losses: "Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten."

A final memento of WWII is this preserved sign, still intact today, reading "Citizens! In case of shelling, this side of the street is most dangerous."

Next: A brief Kvass digression.

Spomenik Monument Database is a book I simply must have.

From the book.

This minor obsession began with a photograph I took very long ago at a rest stop during a bus trip from Dubrovnik to Belgrade, in what then was called Yugoslavia  ...

 ... followed by the helpful intervention of the internet 30 years later, enabling a positive ID.

UPDATE: "Tjentište War Memorial, Yugoslavia, then and now."

The two fractal walls of the memorial were erected in the 1970’s to remember Operation Fall Schwarz, otherwise known as the Battle of the Sutjeska. The military action took place during World War II and saw Axis forces attempt to rout a group of Yugoslavian forces and capture their leader.

If you're the Twitter type, the author of a new book about these memorials maintains an informative presence: Spomenik Database.

The Spomenik Database is an educational resource intended to catalog and demystify the abstract WWII monuments (spomeniks) of the former-Yugoslavia.

As for the book itself, this holiday season it would make the perfect gift for your favorite beer-slinging fan of brutalist monuments.

Spomenik Monument Database, a book by Donald Niebyl

Spomenik – the Serbo-Croat/Slovenian word for monument – refers to the pioneering abstract memorials built in Josip Tito’s Yugoslavia between the 1960s and the 1990s, marking the horror of occupation by Axis forces and the triumph of their defeat during World War II. Through these imaginative creations, a forward–looking socialist society, free of ethnic tensions, was envisaged.

This publication brings together more than 80 examples of these stunning brutalist monuments. Each has been extensively photographed and researched by the author to make this book the most comprehensive survey available of this obscure and fascinating architectural phenomenon. A fold-out map on the reverse of the dust jacket shows the exact location of each spomenik using GPS coordinates.

Eight Days of Gdansk, November 1: World War II and Gdansk.

World War II began the moment the treaty was signed at Versailles, presumably ending the Great War, but actually priming the pump for an even more disastrous continuation of the conflict two decades later.

I'll continue to make the argument that in retrospect, future historians will see World War I as beginning with the first Balkan War in 1912 -- perhap even the Forst Moroccan Crisis in 1905 -- and in terms of cause and effect, continuing through the post-war settlement, global depression and rise of fascist dictatorships, into World War II, then the Cold War, the Berlin Wall's fall and communism's collapse, up to the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s.

It will be renamed the 80 Year War, or some such.

With apologies to the dead in Manchuria, our western-centric textbooks inform us that the German invasion of Poland was the specific trigger for WWII because France and the United Kingdom honored their treaties.

Seeing as the victorious WWI allies had detached Danzig/Gdansk from both Germany and reconstituted Poland, the city became an inevitable flash point, first incited through propaganda and then with bullets.

For Poles, the Battle of Westerplatte and the defense of the Polish post office are "cherished stories of heroism." Günter Grass's fictionalized account of the German attack on his hometown's post office is a central episode in The Tin Drum.

The Defense of the Polish Post, by Nick Hodge (Local-Life)

 ... The Free City of Danzig had two post offices: one municipal and one Polish run. The Polish post office was considered an extraterritorial property of Poland, meaning it was exempt from local law in much the same way embassies or UN buildings are. As such, it became a sort of Polish headquarters within the Free City. As the situation between Poland and Germany worsened, the Polish military made the rather paltry effort of securing the post office by sending reserves sublieutenant Konrad Guderski to the post in April, 1939 to organize and train a security unit composed of official post office employees and civilian volunteers. In mid-August, as hostilities were beginning to seem imminent, 10 more employees were sent from Gdynia and Budgoszcz, bringing the staff of the Polish post office to somewhere near 100 people. On September 1, 1939, however, there were exactly 57 people in the building: Konrad Guderski (the only non-civilian), 42 local Polish employees, the 10 employees from Gdynia and Budgoszcz, and the building keeper, his wife and ten-year-old daughter who all lived in the building.

At 04:00, Germans cut the power from the building and at 04:45, in sync with the Schleswig-Holstein's shelling of the small Polish garrison on Westerplatte, they began their assault on the Polish post office in Danzig. Armed with a small cache of mostly pistols, some machine guns and hand-grenades, the Polish defenders were able to repel the first German attack of the front of the building (though the Germans did enter the front door of the building briefly). At 11:00, the Germans were reinforced with 75mm artillery guns, but despite the extra firepower, the second German attack - through a wall in the side of the building - was also repulsed. Konrad Guderski, the Polish commander (if he can be called that), was killed during this second exchange.

At 15:00 the Germans called a ceasefire, demanding a Polish surrender. As the Polish post office employees - refusing surrender - holed up inside the building, the Germans received additional reinforcements to the tune of a 105mm artillery gun and a unit of combat engineers who spent the two-hour ceasefire diligently (and efficiently, of course) digging a trench under the building and equipping it with a 600kg explosive device. At 17:00, the device was detonated and the side wall of the building collapsed allowing the Germans to capture the entire building except for the basement. With the Poles holed up in the basement refusing surrender, at 18:00 the Germans brought automatic pumps, gas tanks and flamethrowers into the building [the squeamish should perhaps skip this passage...] and proceeded to flood the basement with burning gasoline. Five Poles burned to death before the rest evacuated the basement. The first two Poles to exit the building - waving white flags - were shot. The rest of the Polish defenders were allowed to surrender.

Sixteen Poles injured in the battle were sent to the city's hospital where six of them died (five from burn wounds, including the building-keeper's ten-year-old daughter). Though six people had managed to escape the building, two were captured the following day and sent with the other 28 survivors to Victoriaschule, a prison where they were interrogated and tortured along with many other Polish inhabitants of Danzig. All 38 survivors were put on trial, denied a defense lawyer and sentenced to death. They were executed by firing squad on October 5th.

Poland quickly was steamrolled by Nazi Germany in unexpected concert with the Soviet Union, which seized Polish territories in the east. Six years later much of the country was devastated, its Jewish population wiped out by the killing fields of the Holocaust, and its territory occupied by the Red Army. After border adjustments and ethnic cleansing, Poland reappeared as an ethnically and religiously homogeneous state, a fact ironically contributing to its ultimate success in resisting the imposition of communism.

Now, thirty years after Solidarity led Poland into the post-communist era, the country is controlled by a xenophobic and populist movement, in itself hardly unusual in the current age; for a certain segment of the Polish population, much of the story I've told so far in this post isn't history at all. Rather, it is disputed history, hence the current example of the Museum of the Second World War recently opened in Gdansk.

Poland vs. History, by Timothy Snyder (New York Review of Books)

In early 2017, Poland was supposed to unveil what is perhaps the most ambitious museum devoted to World War II in any country. A striking cantilevered tower of glass and red cement is now rising above the completed subterranean chamber that will hold the museum’s 37,000 objects. The largest of these—an American tank, a Soviet tank, and a German railway car—had to be installed with the help of cranes during construction. In its exhibitions, the Museum of the Second World War promised to tell the story of the 1930s and 1940s in an entirely new way. Unlike other museums devoted to history’s most devastating war, which tend to begin and end with national history, the Gdańsk museum has set out to show the perspectives of societies around the world, through a sprawling collection gathered over the last eight years, and through themes that bring seemingly disparate experiences together. It is hard to think of a more fitting place for such a museum than Poland, whose citizens experienced the worst of the war.

Yet the current Polish government, led by the conservative Law and Justice party, now seems determined to cancel the museum, on the grounds that it does not express “the Polish point of view.” It is hard to interpret this phrase, which in practice seems to mean the suppression of both Polish experience and the history of the war in general. The new government’s gambit has been to replace the nearly completed global museum with an obscure (and as yet entirely non-existent) local one, and then to claim that nothing has really changed. The substitute museum would chronicle the Battle of Westerplatte, where Polish forces resisted the German surprise attack on the Baltic coast for seven days in September 1939. Heroic though it was, substituting this campaign for the entirety of World War II means eliminating the record of how Poles fought for their country and their fellow citizens over the succeeding five-and-a-half years. Such a move also means throwing away a historic opportunity to redefine the world’s understanding of the war.

It seems a "global" history of the war wouldn't have been Polish enough.

Amid Holocaust law, Poland gives its Second World War museum a nationalist rebrand, by Liam Hoare (The JC)

... A spokesman for the museum said any changes are designed to “complete the message” of the main exhibition by “showing the heroes who dedicated their lives to defending their homeland.”

The Polish point of view “is not represented enough” and “needs to be balanced to show the actual victims and aggressors” in the war, he said.

The fate of Gdansk’s museum is a microcosm of a broader struggle across Europe between those who would come to terms with the past and those who ignore or revise it ...

The museum's web site has more information. I'm planning on a visit, and will provide a report at some point in the future.

Eight Days of Gdansk, October 31: Gdansk, Danzig, The Tin Drum and Günter Grass.

The Tin Drum is a novel about one man's choice of fishing lures.

Well, not really, although reading Günter Grass's masterpiece might well reshape an omnivore's list of dining preferences. Food aside, for some observers The Tin Drum represents a post-war literary peak.

The Tin Drum by Günter Grass – the greatest novel of the 20th century, by Eileen Battersby (The Irish Times)

The Tin Drum combines history, horror story, burlesque cartoon and satiric fable with vibrant, subversive imagery. Stylistically it is light years removed from the stately narratives of Thomas Mann

Sanctuary, at least for some people, may best be found in an insane asylum. From his white-enamelled metal hospital bed, under the watchful, if bewildered eye of Bruno, his nurse, Oskar Matzerath sets out with the help of a family photograph album to tell not only his story but also that of his country.

Oskar, very much his own man despite his chosen lack of growth, elects to move between the first-person and third-person voice. Drumming is his way of detaching from his family and the events unfolding around him. He pulverises each new drum, replacements lasting mere days; such is the frenzy of the story unfolding; so oppressive is the reality he is intent on escaping.

When he says in the opening pages of this angry, swaggering and earthy tour de force: “I’d like to have the bed rails raised even higher to keep anyone from coming too close,” it is not that unexpected. Here is a postwar novel born of that war’s legacy. The Tin Drum broke all the rules and invented a few more. The polemic is there but, considering the boisterousness of the narrative, at times it is not that obvious. But not always; Oskar and his father stand outside the burning synagogue: “….civilians and men in uniforms were piling up books, sacral objects, and strange pieces of cloth”.

And ...

The Tin Drum summarised the 20th century in three words, Darragh McManus (The Guardian)

Fifty years on, Günter Grass's seminal work remains the defining novel of the 20th century, wrenching art and hope from ugliness and horror

Whether it's the greatest is open to debate, but one could argue that Günter Grass's The Tin Drum is the great novel of the 20th century. By that I mean it most completely defines the era in all its glories and catastrophes – the moods, atmospheres, manias, streams, currents, histories and under-histories.

First published 50 years ago this week (on 6 October 1959), it is, technically, an incredible piece of art, a melange of bildungsroman, memoir, allegory, grotesquerie and pure reverie. On a superficial level it tells the story of Oskar Matzerath: incarcerated maniac, self-created dwarf, paranoiac, possessor of supernatural gifts, vindictive genius, fallen angel, miniature/a> tyrant, obsessive beater of the titular drum. Oskar is all of these things and none of them; the ultimate unreliable narrator.

The book charts his progress, and that of the independent port city of Danzig/Gdansk, and greater Germany, and the world as a whole. It is odd, profound, sprawling, poetic, often unnerving. But more than this, never have I read something that so exquisitely and lucidly captures the dazed, eerie strangeness of our misfortunate times ...

Given the Eurocentric nature of my interests, it's mystifying to me that I hadn't read the novel previously. My friend Jon suggested it as an appropriate segue to visiting Gdansk, given that the former Danzig is the foundation for a trilogy of novels written by Grass -- beginning with The Tin Drum.

As usual, Jon was right. The novel is unsettling and completely necessary. The author's life is instructive, too. Grass died just three years ago, and he left behind a powerful and also cluttered legacy, primarily because he omitted an important thing or two from his personal narrative. The corrections began in 2007.

Gunter Grass admitted that in 1944 he had been drafted into the 10th SS tank division Frundsberg and that the aircraft auxiliary episode was one that had lasted only while he was a schoolboy. Naturally his involvement in an organisation infamous for its associations with deaths heads and murder caused a bit of a rumpus in Poland, a country regarded as the primary killing field of the Nazi machine. Local hero, Lech Wałęsa, called on Grass to surrender his honorary citizenship of Gdańsk, while some accused him of trying to hype up the publication of his autobiography, Peeling the Onion. While the belated revelation drew widespread shock and accusations of hypocrisy, following many years where he had criticised Germans for not taking full responsibility for their war-time actions, many high profile names such as the local Archbishop Michalik and novelist John Irving, sprang to his defence. Speaking of the guilt he had carried all his life, Grass claimed to never have fired a shot, adding that once he saw the brutality of war he even tried to infect himself with jaundice in an attempt to escape his military duty. He went as far as to write an open letter of explanation to the people of Gdansk and this appeared to have done the trick with the local mayor Pawel Adamowicz refusing to rescind Grass’ honorary citizenship while even the normally stubborn Wałęsa applauded Grass for coming clean and withdrew his previous objections.

Grass's explanation in his own words is worth reading.

How I Spent the War, by Gunter Grass (The New Yorker)

In 1943, when I was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in Danzig, I volunteered for active duty. When? Why? Since I do not know the exact date and cannot recall the by then unstable climate of the war, or list its hot spots from the Arctic to the Caucasus, all I can do for now is string together the circumstances that probably triggered and nourished my decision to enlist. No mitigating epithets allowed. What I did cannot be put down to youthful folly. No pressure from above. Nor did I feel the need to assuage a sense of guilt, at, say, doubting the Führer’s infallibility, with my zeal to volunteer.

Günter Grass was born into a stateless "free city" of Danzig stemming from the post-WWI reordering of maps, witnessed the rise of Nazism, participated in WWII, saw rise and fall of communism in Poland, and died only six months shy of Polish parliamentary elections in 2015 which brought the populist Law and Justice party to power.

His novel is incredible, my reading of it lamentably belated, and I'll leave it at that.

From the British documentary archive, two examinations of shell shock during the world wars of the 20th century.

I stumbled by accident on the first of two Shell Shock documentaries (above), which was linked to the second part, below. Background is hard to find, although they seem to have been produced in 1998.

War itself is awful, and the notion of using damaged soldiers as guinea pigs for experimental therapies is horrible, too, especially when one considers the objective of rushing them back to the meat grinder as soon as possible.

The archival footage is black and white, and there is little that might be termed gratuitous blood and gore. But it's still very, very disturbing.

In defense of an award-winning song: "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe."

Over at Five Thirty Eight on the occasion of the Academy Awards, writer Walt Hickey had not-so-flattering things to say about the "worst best original songs in Oscar history," among which was "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe."

A version is included above for your listening pleasure.

Vocal by The Sentimentalists (later to be known as The Clark Sisters) on Tommy Dorsey's version of the popular Oscar-winning tune from "The Harvey Girls." Four different recordings of the Johnny Mercer-Harry Warren song reached the national top-ten single sales chart: Judy Garland (who sang it in the movie), Dorsey, Bing, and, with the #1 chart-topping version, Mercer himself.

CD audio, originally issued on 78rpm: Victor 20-1682 - On The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (Mercer-Warren) by Tommy Dorsey & his Orchestra, vocal by The Sentimentalists, recorded May 26, 1945

Courtesy of MusicProf78 on Facebook

I haven't watched an Academy Awards telecast since John Wayne's final appearance in 1979, and in truth, drinking Miller Lite, touring Ken Ham's ark or reading the "Collected Works of Jeff Gahan" (written by Mike Hall) sound like way more fun than sitting through the Oscars.

But I'd like to defend the virtue of "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe," which to my ears is far superior to any acclaimed Disney soundtrack excerpt of the last 30 years. This song is weirdly symbolic to me, even if it was recorded 15 years before I was born.

In short, there is an exuberance to music like this from the period when WWII was drawing to a close. Granted, the end was not yet nigh; Hitler was gone, but the war in the Pacific had yet to conclude. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not become household names until August.

And yet, at the time, America surely seemed to be atop the heap, although if we go deeper, it can be seen that this dawning age of well-ordered preeminence was remarkably brief, and a mere historical blip. The situation changed, and quickly.

In the mid- to late-1960s, only 20-something years after Dorsey's version of "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe" was recorded, I was listening to it in company with the other songs on my father's LP collections of the Swing Era. We always listened to them on Sunday mornings over a big breakfast. To my dad, this was church.

For better or worse, he was populist to the core and at the time, much troubled by the Vietnam War, hippies and societal dislocation; in truth, the wealthy fat cats weren't giving the little guy a fair shake, but hadn't he served three years in the Marine Corps for just a little bit of fairness?

I don't think my father ever put all these pieces together. He had strong feelings about injustice, but lacked a consistent framework to express them. It doesn't really matter. The point I'm trying to make is that only two decades after the war, songs like "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe" already had become mile markers for him. When he heard them, all those great things once again were possible.

Circa 1987, Gore Vidal spoke briefly and eloquently about the reality of the period.

The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie “answers” questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.

It's 2018, and Dorsey's recording of "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe" will be 73 in May. The problem isn't so much that "they don't make 'em like this any more," although this is certifiably true.

To me, the real problem is the likelihood of someone reading about the song, and being unable to imagine what a passenger train is, having never experienced one. No wonder we've gone to hell in a hand basket.

UPDATE: "Tjentište War Memorial, Yugoslavia, then and now."

It wasn't until May of 2017 that I finally understood what I'd photographed back in 1987. It was the Tjentište War Memorial, glimpsed somewhere along the route of a 10-hour bus ride from Dubrovnik to Belgrade.

This essay is a far better explanation of the "spomeniks," a word that may not be the best choice to describe them.

The Misunderstood History of the Balkans’ Surreal War Memorials, by Darmon Richter (Atlas Obscura)

As viral images, the so-called “spomeniks” of the former Yugoslavia are often taken out of context.

The memorial house on Petrova Gora is one of many hundreds of unusual, oversized monuments that were built by the former Yugoslavia during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s across the Balkan States. These Yugoslav war memorials—often dubbed “spomeniks” by Western media—have gained a lot of online attention in recent years. However, as viral images, they are increasingly taken out of context.

Here's the post from May 24, 2017.

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It's just a few days shy of thirty years since I boarded a bus in Dubrovnik, bound for Belgrade. I'd already been to Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Mostar, which at the time were located in Yugoslavia. The country ceased to exist after the civil war, which began in 1992.

The bus trip took something like ten hours, traveling on roads that weren't interstates. Every few hours, there'd be a pit stop, and one of them was at the Tjentište War Memorial, in the middle of nowhere. My photo from 1987 is above, and a more recent one below (via Atlas Obscura's article).

At the time, I had no idea what this sculpture represented, only that it seemed strange enough to photograph.

The two fractal walls of the memorial were erected in the 1970’s to remember Operation Fall Schwarz, otherwise known as the Battle of the Sutjeska. The military action took place during World War II and saw Axis forces attempt to rout a group of Yugoslavian forces and capture their leader.

This and other monuments from defunct Yugoslavia now seem calculated to produce melancholy.

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković...), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their "patriotic education." After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

The view in the opposite direction, back in 1987? Just more of those seemingly endless mountains.

30 years ago today: (April 30) A return to Vienna.

At Schönbrunn Palace.

Previously: 30 years ago today: An April interlude in Interlaken and the Swiss road to Vienna.

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Day 15 ... Thursday, April 30
Wien (Vienna). City sightseeing

Day 16 ... Friday, May 1
Vienna. May Day parade, Schönbrunn w/John Bridie Murphy

Day 17 ... Saturday, May 2
Vienna. Military museum, Belvedere. Saw John off

Day 18 ... Sunday, May 3
Vienna. Epic hike; Prater. → Night train to Firenze (Florence)

My second-ever visit to Vienna began with an early Thursday morning arrival from Zurich at the Westbahnhof station, just a few minutes from the Hostel Ruthensteiner.

To me, those halcyon early Vienna days are inseparable from the Ruthensteiner, an unaffiliated youth hostel founded in 1968 (!) by a native of the city and his wife from Pittsburgh, whom he had married after attending college in the States. The hostel was a rooted oasis of calm, friendly and efficient helpfulness, certainly one of the finest businesses of its type that I ever encountered while traveling.

With the Ruthensteiner family's younger generations now in charge, the hostel remains alive, well and open for business in 2017, with a 50th birthday coming in 2018 – and as old at it might seem, this still isn't as long as Emperor Franz Joseph reigned (1848 - 1916, or 68 years).

These days, the low season special for a bunk bed in a dorm room is a mere 10 Euros, or circa $12 U.S. The high season price was about $8 during my stay in 1985. That’s not bad, allowing for inflation and the passage of time.

In 1987, on Thursday night, I was occupying a bunk in just such a dorm room and was awakened in the middle night by some of the most cacophonous snoring I'd ever heard, although to say I  felt this snoring in my ribs is more like it.

Groggily concluding that a very large animal was in its death throes, you can imagine my surprise the following morning upon learning that the perpetrator was an older man (probably in his mid-50s), charming, genial and slight of stature.

His name was John Bridie Murphy, and he was a hoot. Snoring aside, we coincided for parts of two days, roaming and seeing the sights. John was one of the first persons I'd ever met who spoke freely about his undiagnosed learning disabilities, and how they hampered him in some ways but impelled achievement in others. He'd made some money shuffling papers, but thought of himself as an artist.

Seeing as Vienna is filled to the brim with art (which he knew) and history (my specialty), the basis of our camaraderie should be obvious.

In ensuing years, we exchanged cards and letters for a while. I'll never forget his inscription on one of them: "We are kindred spirits!" It finally tapered off, and a few years ago I thought to google John Bridie Murphy of Newbury (or Newburyport) Massachusetts, uncovering a relatively recent obituary.

John apparently had a wonderful life. Rest in peace, sir, and thanks for the good times in Vienna way back when.

Insofar as how I experienced the city in 1987, there isn't a great deal to add from 1985, with the obvious exception of the May Day parade, which merits a chapter of its own. These articles from my 1985 travelogue provide partial background of my fascination with the city and its Habsburg offerings.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

From the moment I saw Vienna for the first time, stepping off the train from Venice into Sudbahnhof station, changing money and buying a transit pass, a steadily evolving fascination with the history of the Habsburg dynasty kept percolating in the back of my mind.

John and I visited the military museum so I could commune with Franz Ferdinand.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The history of the Habsburgs was a major reason for my visit to Vienna in 1985, with the single most important objective being the city’s military history museum, appropriately located in a complex of 19th-century buildings called the Arsenal. I wanted to learn more about Franz Ferdinand’s life, and chose to begin with his death.

In 1987, I knew little of Stefan Zweig, but eventually learned.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

Stefan Zweig’s name seldom appears in lists of important 20th-century writers, and yet between the two world wars, he was prolific, and a veritable monolith of the written word. He wrote poetry, plays, fiction, biographies and newspaper commentaries, which were translated into numerous languages and sold all across the planet.

I took few photos apart from the parade. During frequent visits to Vienna in the years to follow, I'd come to understand the appeal of the city's obscure byways and nooks, but in 1987, this was a learning curve still under development, and my focus tended toward the grandiose tourist attractions ... though not always.

The Rathaus (city hall; left) and Burgtheater (right). The twin spires to the rear rise from the Votivkirche (church).

One of the gates to the sprawling Hofburg Palace complex in downtown Vienna. Until 1918, the Hofburg was the nerve center of the Habsburg dynasty.

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Austrian National Library), with Heldenplatz (Heroes Square) in the foreground. Interestingly, the library includes a Museum of Esperanto and Collection of Planned Languages.

As for the equestrian statues, the one closest to the viewer in the first photo is Archduke Charles of Austria, from around 1860. The second photo in greater detail is Prince Eugene of Savoy (1865).

St. Stephen's Cathedral dominates the innermost Altstadt. Like much of Vienna, is was heavily damaged during WWII, but subsequently restored.

Just a few miles removed from the Hofburg, Schönbrunn Palace was the "summer camp" retreat of the Habsburg dynasty. As the photo of me at the top of the page clearly shows, it has long since ceased to be a rural vicinity.

The Belvedere Palace always has been a personal favorite, and is put to good use as a museum.

The two Belvedere palaces were built in the early eighteenth century by the famous Baroque architect Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt to be used as the summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736). One of Europe’s most stunning Baroque landmarks, this ensemble – comprising the Upper and Lower Belvedere and an extensive garden – is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Today the Belvedere houses the greatest collection of Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages to the present day, complemented by the work of international artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Max Beckmann. Highlights from the holdings Vienna 1880–1914 are the world’s largest collection of Gustav Klimt’s paintings (including the famous golden Art Nouveau icons the Kiss (Lovers) and Judith) and works by Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka. Key works of French Impressionism and the greatest collection of Viennese Biedermeier art are further attractions on display at the Upper Belvedere.

I'd noticed this mysterious Pilsner Urquell sign during my 1985 walks, and found it again in 1987. Only now have I thought to ask the Austrian beer writer Conrad Seidl what it was, and whether it still exists. He doesn't know, but is investigating.

Not to neglect this antique neon touting the original Budweiser (brewed in then-Czechoslovakia).

The WWII Soviet memorial still stands amid regular calls to dismantle it.

It is the most obvious landmark on the Schwarzenbergplatz, sandwiched between Palais Schwarzenberg and the Hochstrahlbrunnen fountain, a relic from WWII: The Soviet memorial „Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee". In Vienna, there are several slang terms for it: Looter′s Memorial, Memorial of the Unknown Rapist or "Erbsendenkmal" (pea memorial).

Public housing in Vienna was another topic that fascinated me at the time, although I didn't entirely understand the concept until later. Inscriptions like this were (and probably remain) on virtually every block in the neighborhoods.

These folks looked like they were out for an evening on the town, and while I took this photo solely because of the Gösser Bier sign in the distance, now it seems more atmospheric and richly detailed than that. It's a slice of life, and I wonder where these people are now?

Finally, a universal pictogram suitable for all languages.

Next: May Day in Vienna, 1987.

30 years ago today: Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc and a chance meeting with Leon Bourse.

Previously: 30 years ago today: Bayeux and the fabled day on the Mulberry beach at Arromanches.

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Day 101 ... Saturday, July 25
Bayeux. Bob departs. Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc. American Cemetery.

In spite of the wine intake on Friday, we must have gotten out of bed fairly early on Saturday, presumably to bid farewell to Bob as he began traveling in the direction of his flight home.

Barrie and I were to be going toward the coast again, but first we stopped for a look at Bayeux's cathedral.

The site is an ancient one and was once occupied by Roman sanctuaries. The present cathedral was consecrated on 14 July 1077 in the presence of William, Duke of Normandy and King of England. It was here that William forced Harold Godwinson to take the oath, the breaking of which led to the Norman conquest of England.

After damages in the 12th century, the church eventually was repaired and rebuilt in intervals from the 15th through the 19th centuries.

At this juncture there was a change of film. I had mostly Kodak film and also two or three rolls of THAT OTHER BRAND, which in this instance proved to be an unwise idea. I've applied some fixes and filters to these in order to punch them up a bit.

We continue with Bayeux's cathedral.

Bus schedules were more sporadic on Saturday, but we made do. Our drop-off was near Pointe du Hoc, and judging from the order of the photos, we must have jumped another bus in the direction of the American Cemetery. We were near the Omaha Beach landing sites throughout, although I can't recall descending the headlands to the actual beaches.

The World War II Pointe du Hoc Ranger Monument is located on a cliff eight miles west of Normandy American Cemetery, which overlooks Omaha Beach, France. It was erected by the French to honor elements of the American Second Ranger Battalion under the command of Lt. Col. James E. Rudder. During the American assault of Omaha and Utah beaches on June 6, 1944, these U.S. Army Rangers scaled the 100-foot cliffs and seized the German artillery pieces that could have fired on the American landing troops at Omaha and Utah beaches. At a high cost of life, they successfully defended against determined German counterattacks.

In one of the many tiny hamlets dotting the venerable, manicured fields between Bayeux and the ocean, we found ourselves stranded in mid-afternoon, waiting for the bus connection home.

There was a bar.

We'd had nothing to drink all day, but a few cool beers seemed merited. Reasonably assured of the bus's arrival time at the stop near the bar, we retired inside for what Barrie quickly dubbed as Cancerbrau, a merely serviceable golden lager.

There was a church across the street, and just before the bus was due, I walked over and had a look. The first thing I saw was this grave marker.

"In memory of my son and our dear brother, Leon Bourse, who died for France on Sept. 25, 1915, at the age of 20 years. Pray for him."

You have no way of knowing what items will pass unnoticed, and which of them will tear at your heart and nestle into your skull, never to leave. The unfortunate Leon Bourse's grave is one of the latter, a reminder of the war that came first, setting into motion events that brought Barrie's dad (and uncle) to the beach only a few kilometers away.

Of all the sites I saw in France in 1987, this is the one that made an indelible impression. You can't ever tell.

Next: A ferry ride from France to Ireland, with the help of Super Valstar and Guinness.