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Springtime for Hitler /Friday funny



Someone just sent this in on the AMIA list; if anything about Hitler
is funny, this is, especially the last paragraph.  I read waaay too
much World War II history, and watch too much History Channel
(which we all call the Hitler Channel), and to think of these guys in
this situation is funny.  Later in the war the SS-Liebstandarte
became famous for take-no-prisoners, ferocious fighting after the
Allies landed in Normandy; them in feather boas?

FORWARD BEGINS

For anyone who might be interested, this article,
regarding the 1942 film DIE GROSSE LIEBE appeared in
the June 14-20, 2001 edition of the "Guardian Weekly":

John Hooper (Berlin)

The things they had to do for Hitler. A German
television documentary has uncovered one of the
weirdest secrets of the Third Reich: the Nazi leader's
SS bodyguards dressed up as showgirls to take part in
a song-and-dance extravaganza featuring one of the
Fuhrer's favorite film stars.

The pyramid of angels wrapped in feather boas in the
1942 film DIE GROSSE LIEBE (The Great Love) was made
up of members of the elite Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler.

Wilhelm Schneider, a Liebstandarte veteran, told the
ZDF channel that before the war sections of the unit
were sent to the Babelsberg film studios near Potsdam
and the UFA film production company to appear as
extras. Their appeal to German film-makers was that
they were hand-picked to be about the same height. It
was this that eventually landed them in drag.

The star of DIE GROSSE LIEBE, a propaganda film about
women waiting for their heroic loved ones to return
from battle, was the Swedish dancer turned singer
Zarah Leander.

Leander, who came to Germany in 1937, became one of
the leading show business personalities of the Nazi
era. With her smoky voice and exaggeratedly rolled
"Rs", Leander- who died in 1981, aged 74- had a
blatantly erotic image that was reflected in the
suggestive titles of her songs, such as "Can Love Be A
Sin?"

Some historians have argued that Hitler and his
cultural arbiters saw in her a replacement for the
self-exiled Marlene Dietrich. But the woman who has
been called the Diva of the Third Reich was very much
a beauty in the Wagnerian mould.

Her co-star, Wolfgang Preiss, who lives in retirement
in Baden-Baden, said: "The problem for this scene was
to find women who were just as pretty, just as tall,
and if possible, just as statuesque as Zarah Leander.
But they were not to be found."

So, notwithstanding their questionable prettiness, the
director called in Hitler's bodyguards.

Preiss, who played the part of an officer, recalled an
encounter with the "showgirls of the SS".

"The Liebstandardte were changing, and I came along
dressed as an Oberleutnant, and the sergeant-major saw
me. 'Here comes...Achtung!' he shrieked. They all
snapped to attention, some in women's clothes, some
with their wigs askew or half made-up, others in their
underpants. It was a grotesque sight."



Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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