German Cars Quotes

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.

You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

I like storms. Thunder torrential rain, puddles, wet shoes. When the clouds roll in, I get filled with this giddy expectation. Everything is more beautiful in the rain. Don't ask me why. But it’s like this whole other realm of opportunity. I used to feel like a superhero, riding my bike over the dangerously slick roads, or maybe an Olympic athlete enduring rough trials to make it to the finish line. On sunny days, as a girl, I could still wake up to that thrilled feeling. You made me giddy with expectation, just like a symphonic rainstorm. You were a tempest in the sun, the thunder in a boring, cloudless sky. I remember I’d shovel in my breakfast as fast as I could, so I could go knock on your door. We’d play all day, only coming back for food and sleep. We played hide and seek, you’d push me on the swing, or we’d climb trees. Being your sidekick gave me a sense of home again. You see, when I was ten, my mom died. She had cancer, and I lost her before I really knew her. My world felt so insecure, and I was scared. You were the person that turned things right again. With you, I became courageous and free. It was like the part of me that died with my mom came back when I met you, and I didn’t hurt if I knew I had you. Then one day, out of the blue, I lost you, too. The hurt returned, and I felt sick when I saw you hating me. My rainstorm was gone, and you became cruel. There was no explanation. You were just gone. And my heart was ripped open. I missed you. I missed my mom. What was worse than losing you, was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home. Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault. There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” I a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school. You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all of those things, and I loved you. But now…you’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

The Winter Woman is as wild as a blizzard, as fresh as new snow. While some see her as cold, she has a fiery heart under that ice-queen exterior. She likes the stark simplicity of Japanese art and the daring complexity of Russian literature. She prefers sharp to flowing lines, brooding to pouting, and rock and roll to country and western. Her drink is vodka, her car is German, her analgesic is Advil. The Winter Woman likes her men weak and her coffee strong. She is prone to anemia, hysteria, and suicide.

I beg you, no matter what happens, no matter where you go in life or how many millions you make, no matter anything, I beg you: never buy a German car.

…We also have friends among the railroad men, and they tell us that so far the Germans of the garrison haven’t dared touch the pumpkins. They’ve blocked the line and have brought in a team of mine detectors from Cracow. They’re more worried about the pumpkins than about the car you stole.

As early as 1930 Schoenberg wrote: "Radio is an enemy, a ruthless enemy marching irresistibly forward, and any resistance is hopeless"; it "force-feeds us music . . . regardless of whether we want to hear it, or whether we can grasp it," with the result that music becomes just noise, a noise among other noises. Radio was the tiny stream it all began with. Then came other technical means for reproducing, proliferating, amplifying sound, and the stream became an enormous river. If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, "regardless whether we want to hear it," it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaurants, in elevators, in the streets, in waiting rooms, in gyms, in the earpieces of Walkmans, music rewritten, reorchestrated, abridged, and stretched out, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, a flood of everything jumbled together so that we don't know who composed it (music become noise is anonymous), so that we can't tell beginning from end (music become noise has no form): sewage-water music in which music is dying.

You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all of those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

Airbag In the next world war in a jack knifed juggernaut, I am born again. In the neon sign, scrolling up and down, I am born again. In an interstellar burst, I am back to save the universe. In a deep deep sleep, of the innocent, I am born again. In a fast German car, I’m amazed that I survived, an airbag saved my life. In an interstellar burst, I am back to save the universe. In an interstellar burst, I am back to save the universe. In an interstellar burst, I am back to save the universe.

I watched as the silver Mercedes without snow tires made its way up Fetterman taking a right on Aspen and thought about a man who had escaped the concentration camps and now drove a German car. The Hun be damned.     I

Dickie Arbiter Once I came across her rummaging in the trunk of a new car. “Not a German car for an English princess, surely,” I said. Quick as a flash she replied, “Well, at least it’s more reliable than a German husband.

You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, and now we have to get French or Korean scientists to help us build nuclear power stations. We perfected the finest cars on earth—and now Rolls-Royce is in the hands of the Germans. Whatever we invent, from the jet engine to the internet, we find that someone else carts it off and makes a killing from it elsewhere.

And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power... Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share — That we lost.

MARCHAND, leaning forward to see Monceau: You would think, though, that with the manpower shortage they’d economize on personnel. In the car that stopped me there was a driver, two French detectives, and a German official of some kind. They could easily have put a notice in the paper—everyone would have come here to present his documents. This way it’s a whole morning wasted. Aside from the embarrassment. LEBEAU: I’m not embarrassed, I’m scared to death. To Bayard: You embarrassed?

Ren crossed his arms over his chest. "is it LoJacked?" "Of course," Andy said indignantly. "That's my baby. I even have a kill switch on her." "Then stop the engine." Andy appeared downright horrified by Ren's suggestion. "Are you out of your mind? What if someone hits it for stalling? I had that thing on order for over a year. Custom hand built. The epitome of German engineering. I even paid extra for the paint on her. Ain't no way I'm going to chance someone denting my baby. Or, God forbid, totaling it." Jess rolled his eyes at the boy's hissy fit. If he kept that up, he'd be putting Andy back in diapers. He turned to Ren. "You take the air. I'll get a bike." Then he focused his attention on Andy again. "And you-" Andy held his cell phone out to him. "Have an app. Track her down, get my car back, and beat the hell out of her...in that precise order.

Your BMW’s a convertible?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Yes, ma’am.” “I like fast German cars.” “Riding or driving?” “Both.” “Is that a request?” “Mm-hm.” “I love my car, Savannah. I’m not a shallow man, but I love that vehicle. What’s your driving record look like?” “This question from the man who made me cry?” “I would love for you to drive my car as far and as fast as you like,” he amended. She leaned back and winked at him. “I thought so. Give me a minute to change?” “Must you?” “I’m afraid so.

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says. It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'" Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

The ladies of the minor bureaucratic set took tea with each other in the afternoon, carrying each her little gold or silver or jewelled sugar-box, and half a loaf of bread in her muff, and wished that the Tsar were back, or that the Germans would come, or anything that would solve the servant problem…. The daughter of a friend of mine came home one afternoon in hysterics because the woman street-car conductor had called her "Comrade!

Mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language... enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

by 1929, one out of every five Americans had a car (as opposed to one out of thirty-seven Englishmen, one out of forty Frenchmen, and one out of forty-eight Germans).

In a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school. You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

He insisted on keeping a Bren light machine gun in the trunk of his car, having vowed on numerous occasions that if the Germans came for him, he would take as many as possible with him to the grave.

It's that buying the Porsche, in all of its German-engineered perfection, just wasn't as special. Nothing will ever compare to the first time I bought myself a car, because it simply can't be done again.

The left-hand lane is exclusively for the use of Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes. Dark-coloured vehicles only please. If you're driving a white or silver car please stick to the middle lane at all times and moderate your speed. Loser!

I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.

Hitler,” he had said, “is not a creator of national values. He’s a usurper. He has plundered the German nation’s industrial culture and zeal for work. He’s like an ignorant gangster who has stolen a magnificent car built by a brilliant scientist.

Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry... reminded one more of great Atlantic rollers than human formations. Clouds of cavalry, avalanches of field-guns and—at that time a novelty—squadrons of motor-cars (private and military) completed the array. For five hours the immense defilade continued. Yet this was only a twentieth of the armed strength of the regular German Army before mobilization. Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene.

Isaac basically knew just one thing for sure: Many are born, few flourish, all die. If you didn’t die as a sacrifice for God today, you would die of an incomprehensible plague tomorrow, or of undeserved starvation the day after, or of good old-fashioned senseless human slaughter before the next harvest. Life was short in those days and people were grateful for whatever they could get. They didn’t expect wireless video game consoles, fast German cars, dental insurance, anti-depressants, and a pension.

you’ve thrilled yourself with these dark imaginings you end with the ultimate in wish-fulfilment: the EU is a front for a German cabal and this will save Brexit. It is hard to overstate the extent to which Brexit depended on the idea of who really runs the EU: German car manufacturers. For some of those at the top of the Labour Party, the idea of the EU as a mere front for the bosses and moguls of Europe was a reason to be secretly pleased that Brexit would allow Britain to escape their clutches and build socialism in one country.

Resistance fighters were Danish people—no one knew who, because they were very secret—who were determined to bring harm to the Nazis however they could. They damaged the German trucks and cars, and bombed their factories. They were very brave. Sometimes they were caught and killed.

The Resistance fighters were Danish people—no one knew who, because they were very secret—who were determined to bring harm to the Nazis however they could. They damaged the German trucks and cars, and bombed their factories. They were very brave. Sometimes they were caught and killed.

On the Auschwitz platform, the Germans shoved them into a freight train and sent them with a group of women to Germany. It was a voyage of hunger, of thirst, of mothers separated from their children, of daughters without mothers. When they opened the stock car in Hamburg, the SS found a container full of broken dolls.

I was a broken half afloat in a great nowhere, and the trains were determined to keep me this way. Let me say this about those days, when the war was still a war, but one soon to end, when refugees were roaming and tanks lay overturned on their backs like great tortoises and one was wise to avoid the marching streams of any soldiers, be they Soviet or German: These trains we never should have trusted again, they appeared to be our only way home. And so people packed themselves into the cars quite willingly and looked the other way when they failed to arrive at their stated destinations. I marveled at our collective belief in an eventual safety.

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness,' 'joy,' or 'regret' . . . It oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.

Czech noun related to the German noun Arbeit and meaning ‘forced labour’, to signify a new type of ‘artificial’ being, assembled like a car and programmed to be of service to humans.14 This choice of word was inspired by a conversation with his brother Josef, a painter of the cubist school. It would become an emblem of the future’s potential. The

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.

Emotion, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." ...most of my emotions are hybrids. But not all. Some are pure and unadulterated. Jealousy, for instance.

Comparing the two cities — the Berlin I knew in the early thirties and the Berlin I revisited in the early fifties — I have to admit that the latter is, in many respects, a far more exciting setting for a novel or a sequence of stories. Life in the Berlin of 1952 had an intensely dramatic doubleness. Here was a shadow-line cutting a city in half — a frontier between two worlds at war — across which people were actually being kidnapped, to disappear into prisons or graves. And yet this shadow-frontier was being freely crossed in the most humdrum manner every day, on foot, in buses, or in electric trains, by thousands of Berliners commuting back and forth between their work and their homes. Many men and women who lived in West Berlin were on the black list of the East German police; and, if the Russians had suddenly marched in, they couldn’t have hoped to escape. Yet, in this no man’s land between the worlds, you heard the usual talk about business and sport, the new car, the new apartment, the new lover.

Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corps alone—out of the total of 40 in the German forces—required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.

There also wasn't one single bit of grass or dirt outside the airport. Even the median strip was a concrete sidewalk. Where did Atlanta's pet travelers pee? Maybe city dogs just learned to use the sidewalk. We kept walking. It looked like if we crossed the road that all the cars used to get onto the highway, we might come to a planted-up area, but we also might get killed. Finally, I just lifted Cannoli up and plopped her down on a great big ashtray built into the top of the trash barrel. "Good thing you're not a German shepherd," I said.

And she knew what Resistance meant. Papa had explained, when she overheard the word and asked. The Resistance fighters were Danish people—no one knew who, because they were very secret—who were determined to bring harm to the Nazis however they could. They damaged the German trucks and cars, and bombed their factories. They were very brave. Sometimes they were caught and killed. “I must go and speak to Ellen,” Mrs. Rosen said, moving toward the door. “You girls walk a different way to school tomorrow. Promise me, Annemarie. And Ellen will promise, too.

Because after all,” Bob said, “any wealth gained by a person beyond what he can produce by his own labor must have come at the expense of nature or at the expense of another person. Look around. Look at our house, our car, our bank accounts, our clothes, our eating habits, our appliances. Could the physical labor of one family and its immediate ancestors and their one billionth of the country’s renewable resources have produced all this? It takes a long time to build a house from nothing; it takes a lot of calories to transport yourself from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Even if you’re not rich, you’re living in the red. Indebted to Malaysian textile workers and Korean circuit assemblers and Haitian sugarcane cutters who live six to a room. Indebted to a bank, indebted to the earth from which you’ve withdrawn oil and coal and natural gas that no one can ever put back. Indebted to the hundred square yards of landfill that will bear the burden of your own personal waste for ten thousand years. Indebted to the air and water, indebted by proxy to Japanese and German bond investors. Indebted to the great-grandchildren who’ll be paying for your conveniences when you’re dead: who’ll be living six to a room, contemplating their skin cancers, and knowing, like you don’t, how long it takes to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh when you’re living in the black.

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.

Our voices sounded small in the noisy darkness. We called her name again and again. We waved our flashlights in hope that she’d see their bobbing light. We were hoarse from calling. And desperate when she didn’t answer. The faint trail gave out, and we began circling back to the house without realizing it until we saw the lights in the windows. “We need to call the police,” Dad said. “We don’t know the land the way they do. We’ll get lost ourselves if we keep going.” Wordlessly, we made our way home. Mom was on the front porch, shivering in her warmest down coat. “You didn’t find her?” “No.” Dad stopped to hug her. Mom clung to him. They stood there whispering to each other, as if they’d forgotten about me. I waited, shifting my weight from one frozen foot to the other, afraid Bloody Bones might be watching us from the trees. Not that I believed he actually existed, not in my world, the real world, the five-senses world. But with the wind blowing and the moon sailing in and out of clouds like a ghost racing across the sky, I could almost believe I’d crossed a border into another world, where anything could be true—even conjure women and spells and monsters. The police came sooner than we’d expected. We heard their sirens and saw their flashing lights before they’d even turned into the driveway. Four cars and an ambulance stopped at the side of the house. Doors opened, men got out. A couple of them had dogs, big German shepherds who

In 1989, I asked the GDR ambassador in Washington, D.C. why his country made such junky two-cylinder cars. He said the goal was to develop good public transportation and discourage the use of costly private vehicles. But when asked to choose between a rational, efficient, economically sound and ecologically sane mass transportation system or an automobile with its instant mobility, special status, privacy, and personal empowerment, the East Germans went for the latter, as do most people in the world. The ambassador added ruefully: "We thought building a good society would make good people. That's not always true." Whether or not it was a good society, at least he was belatedly recognizing the discrepancy between public ideology and private desire.

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. I can’t just sit back and watch from a distance anymore.

crimes at Ravensbrück and her early release, complete with German postage. Three maps, a list of approved gas stations at which to purchase fuel, and detailed travel instructions. A note apologizing for only being able to obtain one set of travel papers, and a whole package of Fig Newton cookies. I tossed the box in my suitcase and clicked the locks. Pietrik stirred in the next room. I froze for a second. Should I leave a note? I scribbled a quick goodbye on the paper from Caroline’s package and made my way down the stairs to the old turquoise car Papa loaned me now and then, the one Pietrik had kept alive for years. As Papa said, that car had more rust on it than paint, but it got us wherever we needed to go. At first, I fretted as I drove. What if it really was Herta? Would she hurt me? Would I hurt her? My head cleared a bit once I was under way, one of the few drivers on the road that early. I spread a map and the

The people around him, his family, his friends, aroused a feeling of shame and rage within him. He had seen them on the road, them and people like them: he recalled the cars full of officers running away with their beautiful yellow trunks and their painted women, civil servants abandoning their posts, panic-stricken politicians dropping files of secret papers along the road, young girls, who had diligently wept the day the armistice was signed, being comforted in the arms of the Germans. “And to think that no one will know, that there will be such a conspiracy of lies that all this will be transformed into yet another glorious page in the history of France. We’ll do everything we can to find acts of devotion and heroism for the official records. Good God! To see what I’ve seen! Closed doors where you knock in vain to get a glass of water and refugees who pillaged houses; everywhere, everywhere you look, chaos, cowardice, vanity and ignorance! What a wonderful race we are!

What cannot help but astound us is that Hasidim remained Hasidim inside the ghetto walls, inside the death camps. In the shadow of the executioner, they celebrated life. Startled Germans whispered to each other of Jews dancing in the cattle cars rolling toward Birkenau: Hasidim ushering in Simhat Torah. And there were those who in Block 57 at Auschwitz tried to make me join in their fervent singing. Were these miracles? Some of those that failed? Perhaps. Yet there is something else. There is the spark lit in the Carpathian Mountains which has refused to go out. On the contrary, it rekindles our own wavering flame. Consolidated in Jerusalem, Hasidism reappears in the Diaspora everywhere. It would be difficult to imagine a more curious phenomenon: with almost the totality of its followers lost in the Holocaust, Hasidism today is throbbing with newly found vigor. At the Lubavitcher court in Brooklyn, you can see hundreds of youths from every corner of the land. I met Hasidim in Leningrad, Kiev and Moscow, and I was deeply moved by their hidden faith.

What had happened to him and the others who faced a judged and said: "You can't make me go in the army because I'm not American, or you wouldn't have plucked me and mine from a life that was good and real and meaningful and fenced me in the desert like they do the Jews in Germany and it is a puzzle why you haven't started to liquidate us though you might as well since everything else has been destroyed." And some said: "You, Mr. Judge, who supposedly represent justice, was it just a thing to ruin a hundred thousand lives and homes and farms and businesses and dreams and hopes because the hundred thousand were a hundred thousand Japanese when Japan is the country you're fighting and, if so, how about the Germans and Italians that must be just as questionable as the Japanese or we wouldn't be fighting Germany and Italy? Round them up. Take away their homes and cars and beer and spaguetti and throw them in a camp, and what do you think they'll say when you try to draft them into your army of the country that is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

We were working on the idea about dogs’ Internet searches, and first we debated whether the sketch should feature real dogs or Henrietta and Viv in dog costumes (because cast members were always, unfailingly, trying to get more air time, we quickly went with the latter). Then we discussed where it should take place (the computer cluster in a public library, but, even though all this mattered for was the establishing shot, we got stalled on whether that library should be New York’s famous Main Branch building on Fifth Avenue, with the lion statues in front, a generic suburban library in Kansas City, or a generic suburban library in Jacksonville, Florida, which was where Viv was from). Then we really got stalled on the breeds of dogs. Out of loyalty to my stepfather and Sugar, I wanted at least one to be a beagle. Viv said that it would work best if one was really big and one was really little, and Henrietta said she was fine with any big dog except a German Shepherd because she’d been bitten by her neighbor’s German Shepherd in third grade. After forty minutes we’d decided on a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua—I eventually conceded that Chihuahuas were funnier than beagles. We decided to go with the Florida location for the establishing shot because the lions in front of the New York Main Branch could preempt or diminish the appearance of the St. Bernard. Then we’d arrived at the fun part, which was the search terms. With her mouth full of beef kebab, Viv said, “Am I adopted?” With my mouth full of spanakopita, I said, “Am I a good girl?” With her mouth full of falafel, Henrietta said, “Am I five or thirty-five?” “Why is thunder scary?” I said. “Discreet crotch-sniffing techniques,” Henrietta said. “Cheap mani-pedis in my area,” Viv said. “Oh, and cheapest self-driving car.” “Best hamburgers near me,” I said. “What is halitosis,” Henrietta said. “Halitosis what to do,” I said. “Where do humans pee,” Viv said. “Taco Bell Chihuahua male or female,” I said. “Target bull terrier married,” Viv said. “Lassie plastic surgery,” Henrietta said. “Funny cat videos,” I said. “Corgis embarrassing themselves YouTube,” Viv said. “YouTube little dog scares away big dog,” I said. “Doghub two poodles and one corgi,” Henrietta said. “Waxing my tail,” I said. “Is my tail a normal size,” Viv said.

The coyote was not a coyote. Or, maybe it was a coyote. Sam still didn't know what the difference was. In any case, it was a young, not much older than a puppy. It had the shaggy look of a coyote, but the muscular build of a pit bull. Its back leg was bleeding, and Sam worried he might have grazed it with the car. The coyote/dog looked scared. "If I pick you up," Sam said gently, "will you bite me?" The coyote/dog looked at him blankly, terrified. It was shivering. Sam took off his plaid shirt, and he scooped the little dog into his arms, and he put it into the back seat of his car. They drove to an emergency veterinary clinic. The dog had broken its leg. She needed stitches and would have to be in a cast for a couple of weeks, but she was strong, and she would recover. When Sam asked the vet whether the dog might be a coyote, she rolled her eyes. She was just a dog, a mutt yes, but likely some combination of German shepherd, Shiba Inu, and greyhound. You could tell by the elbows, she said. Coyote elbows were higher than dog elbows. She brought up a graphic on her computer: a coyote, next to a wolf, next to a domesticated dog. See, she said, isn't it obvious?

At a crucial point of the Battle of Britain, when German warplanes were bombing London daily, every available British aircraft was in the sky to stop the planes from reaching the city. As Churchill sat in a car with his military secretary he said, “Don’t speak to me. I have never been so moved.” Churchill sat quietly for five minutes. He then turned to his secretary and asked him to write down a thought that would become one of the most famous quotes of World War II: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”6 Only four words in that sentence are more than one syllable and, in six words, Churchill told the entire story of British courage and what it meant to the rest of the world: so much, so many, so few. Those six words summarize stories that fill entire books. “So much” stands for freedom, democracy, and liberty—much of which would have been eliminated if Hitler had not been stopped. “So many” represents the entire population of the British empire at the time and those who lived in the countries Hitler invaded. “So few” is a reference to a small number of English pilots, many of whom were killed in the skies as they defended their homeland.

And I’m not kidding when I say “craziness.” The University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, has come out with a study that compares traders with psychopaths. The study reviewed the results from an existing study comparing 24 psychopaths in German high-security hospitals with a control group of 27 “normal” people. The funny thing is, this control group of “normal” people turned out to be traders. Stock guys, currency and commodity traders, and derivative types happened to be the normal control group that was stacked up against the high-security, barbed-wire-enclosed psychopaths. In the end, the performance of the trading group was actually worse than that of the psychopaths. The study indicated that traders, “Have a penchant for immense destruction,” and that their mindset would lead them to the logical conclusion of “beating one of the neighbor’s expensive cars with a baseball bat with the sole objective of owning the most beautiful car in the neighborhood.” In other words, traders are nuts. Indeed if you look up the textbook definition of a psychopath, here are some of the tidbits you’ll uncover: antisocial behavior, poor judgment and failure to learn from experience, inability to see oneself as others do, inexplicable impulsiveness … sounds like a typical trader who is struggling against the market and can’t figure out why.

It is of more than historical interest to reflect that Henry Ford modeled his assembly line car production after visiting a Chicago slaughterhouse in the early 1900s. He watched the suspended animals, legs shackled and heads downward, on a moving conveyor as they traveled from worker to worker, each of whom performed a step in the slaughtering process. Ford immediately saw that it was a perfect model for the automobile industry, creating an assembly method of building cars. More than efficient, the slaughtering assembly line offered workers a newly found detachment in the whole messy business of killing animals. Animals were reduced to factory products and the emotionally deadened workers could see themselves as line workers rather than animal killers. Later, the Nazis used the same slaughterhouse model for their mass murders in the concentration camps. The factory-style assembly line became a way for Nazi soldiers to detach from the killing--seeing the victims as "animals," and themselves as workers. Henry Ford, a rampant anti-Semite, not only developed the assembly line method later used in the Holocaust, he openly admired the Nazis' efficiency. Hitler returned the admiration. The German leader considered "Heinrich Ford" a comrade-in-arms and kept a life-sized portrait of the automobile mogul in his office at the Nazi Party headquarters.

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. I can't just sit back and watch from a distance anymore. From here on in, everything I'll tell you is colored by the subjective experience of being part of events. Here's where my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. Already the world feels heavier, now I'm a part of it. I'm talking about bandages and sopped cotton, the smell of mildew in movie theaters, and of all the lousy cats and their stinking litter boxes, of rain on city streets when the dust comes up and the old Italian men take their folding chairs inside. Up until now it hasn't been my word. Not my America. But here we are, at last.

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. I can't just sit back and watch from a distance anymore. From here on in, everything I'll tell you is colored by the subjective experience of being part of events. Here's where my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. Already the world feels heavier, now I'm a part of it. I'm talking about bandages and sopped cotton, the smell of mildew in movie theaters, and of all the lousy cats and their stinking litter boxes, of rain on city streets when the dust comes up and the old Italian men take their folding chairs inside. Up until now it hasn't been my world. Not my America. But here we are, at last.

I left Brookstone and went to the Pottery Barn. When I was a kid and everything inside our house was familiar, cheap, and ruined, walking into the Pottery Barn was like entering heaven. If they really wanted people to enjoy church, I thought back then, they should make everything in church look and smell like the Pottery Barn. My dream was to surround myself one day with everything in the store, with the wicker baskets and scented candles, the brushed-silver picture frames. But that was a long time ago. I had already gone through a period of buying everything there was to buy at the Pottery Barn and decorating my apartment like a Pottery Barn outlet, and then getting rid of it all during a massive upgrade. Now everything at the Pottery Barn looked ersatz and mass-produced. To buy any of it now would be to regress in aspiration and selfhood. I didn’t want to buy anything at the Pottery Barn so much as I wanted to recapture the feeling of wanting to buy everything from the Pottery Barn. Something similar happened at the music store. I should try to find some new music, I thought, because there was a time when new music could lift me out of a funk like nothing else. But I wasn’t past the Bs when I saw the only thing I really cared to buy. It was the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which had been released in 1965. I already owned Rubber Soul. I had owned Rubber Soul on vinyl, then on cassette, and now on CD, and of course on my iPod, iPod mini, and iPhone. If I wanted to, I could have pulled out my iPhone and played Rubber Soul from start to finish right there, on speaker, for the sake of the whole store. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to buy Rubber Soul for the first time all over again. I wanted to return the needle from the run-out groove to the opening chords of “Drive My Car” and make everything new again. That wasn’t going to happen. But, I thought, I could buy it for somebody else. I could buy somebody else the new experience of listening to Rubber Soul for the first time. So I took the CD up to the register and paid for it and, walking out, felt renewed and excited. But the first kid I offered it to, a rotund teenager in a wheelchair looking longingly into a GameStop window, declined on the principle that he would rather have cash. A couple of other kids didn’t have CD players. I ended up leaving Rubber Soul on a bench beside a decommissioned ashtray where someone had discarded an unhealthy gob of human hair. I wandered, as everyone in the mall sooner or later does, into the Best Friends Pet Store. Many best friends—impossibly small beagles and corgis and German shepherds—were locked away for display in white cages where they spent their days dozing with depression, stirring only long enough to ponder the psychic hurdles of licking their paws. Could there be anything better to lift your spirits than a new puppy?

It was the economy that troubled most people prior to World War II. Europe, especially Germany, was dealing with a deep worldwide depression. Fascism was gaining a stronghold in Germany as well as in many other European countries. Although small and generally not popular, the Communist Party was the only organized group to stand in opposition to the Nazis. Small bands of these Communists occasionally attempted to disrupt the government by rioting in the streets. Occasionally gunfire would be heard, but very little could be done about it by a people that did not want to get involved. Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” were rapidly solidifying their position, and the Nazi Party was becoming stronger. Even though they frequently violated the National Constitution, they brought order to what had been chaos. The Treaty of Versailles, enacted after World War I, was hated by the German people, who felt that it suppressed them in a most demeaning way. However now Hitler was putting people to work building cars and an autobahn highway system that connected the larger cities. Modernization of airports and the development of a national railroad were all in violation of the imposed international regulations. Workers were again bringing paychecks home and could once more feed their families. Therefore, little thought was given to Hitler’s power grab. Germany was emerging from the dark era following World War I, and things were getting better. The Vaterland was regaining its strength, without regard to what France and other European countries thought.... After all, what could they, or would they, do about it?

What's in the papers then, Son?" he asked with the curtness of a father. "Nothing much, Dad," his son answered. "I saw that those newts have got up as far as Dresden, though." "Germanys had it then," Mr. Povondra asserted. "They're funny people you know, those Germans. They're well educated, but they're funny. I knew a German once, chauffeur he was for some factory; and he wasn't half coarse, this German. Mind you, he kept the car in good condition, I'll say that for him. And now look, Germanys disappearing from the map of the world," Mr. Povondra ruminated. "And all that fuss they used to make! Terrible, it was: everything for the army and everything for the soldiers. But not even they were any match for these newts. And I know about these newts, you know that, don't you. Remember when I took you out to show you one of them when you were only so high?" "Watch out, Dad," said his son, "you've got a bite." "That's only a tiddler," the old man grumbled as he twitched on his rod. Even Germany now, he thought to himself. No-one even bats an eyelid at it these days. What a song and dance they used to make at first whenever these newts flooded anywhere! Even if it was only Mesopotamia or China, the papers were full of it. Not like that now, Mr. Povondra contemplated sadly, staring out at his rod. You get used to anything, I suppose. At least they're not here, though; but I wish the prices weren't so high! Think what they charge for coffee these days! I suppose that's what you have to expect if they go and flood Brazil. If part of the world disappears underwater it has its effect in the shops. The float on Mr. Povondra's line danced about on the ripples of the water. How much of the world is it they've flooded so far then?, the old man considered. There's Egypt and India and China - they've even gone into Russia; and that was a big country, that was, Russia! When you think, all the way up from the Black Sea as far the Arctic Circle - all water! You can't say they haven't taken a lot of our land from us! And their only going slowly .. "Up as far as Dresden then, you say?" the old man spoke up. "Ten miles short of Dresden. That means almost the whole of Saxony will soon be under water." "I went there once with Mr. Bondy," Father Povondra told him. "Ever so rich, they were there, Frank. The food wasn't much good though. Nice people, though. Much better than the Prussians. No comparison.

After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of the world. But their wallets always waited cold sober in the cloakroom while the Icelandic purse lay open for all in the middle of the table. Our men were the greater Vikings in this regard. “Reputation is king, the rest is crap!” my Bæring from Bolungarvík used to say. Every evening had to be legendary, anything else was a defeat. But the morning after they turned into weak-willed doughboys. But all the same I did succeed in loving them, those Icelandic clodhoppers, at least down as far as their knees. Below there, things did not go as well. And when the feet of Jón Pre-Jón popped out of me in the maternity ward, it was enough. The resemblances were small and exact: Jón’s feet in bonsai form. I instantly acquired a physical intolerance for the father, and forbade him to come in and see the baby. All I heard was the note of surprise in the bass voice out in the corridor when the midwife told him she had ordered him a taxi. From that day on I made it a rule: I sacked my men by calling a car. ‘The taxi is here,’ became my favourite sentence.

Dieselgate fed into a 180-degree turn in thinking that was in process about diesel fuel and urban transportation in Europe, where diesel cars have been popular. But anti-diesel sentiment was a big threat to Germany’s auto industry, which looms large in the country’s economy. German chancellor Angela Merkel decried the “demonizing” of diesel cars. Diesel, she said, was essential for combating climate change, owing to its lower CO2 emissions and greater fuel efficiency. She convened “diesel summits” to try to head off urban bans on diesel cars. But it was all to little avail. European cities, concerned about the higher levels of nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel, began to introduce limits for diesels. The aim for many is an eventual ban.

Max stuck his head out the passenger side window and yelled, “Open the gate, you idiots!” in perfect German. “I’ve got to get this car to Himmler.” The stunned gatekeepers rushed to open the gate, and the five men drove through it to freedom and into the history books.

Within days, an independent analysis by German security experts proved decisively that Street View’s cars were extracting unencrypted personal information from homes. Google was forced to concede that it had intercepted and stored “payload data,” personal information grabbed from unencrypted Wi-Fi transmissions. As its apologetic blog post noted, “In some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords.” Technical experts in Canada, France, and the Netherlands discovered that the payload data included names, telephone numbers, credit information, passwords, messages, e-mails, and chat transcripts, as well as records of online dating, pornography, browsing behavior, medical information, location data, photos, and video and audio files. They concluded that such data packets could be stitched together for a detailed profile of an identifiable person.39

Nearly every organized group on Oahu staked out something to do. Boy Scouts fought fires, served coffee, ran messages. The American Legion turned out for patrol and sentry duty. One Legionnaire struggled into his 1917 uniform, had a dreadful time remembering how to wind his puttees and put on his insignia. He took it out on his wife, and she told him to leave her alone —go out and fight his old enemy, the Germans. The San Jose College football team, in town from California for a benefit game the following weekend, signed up with the Police Department for guard duty. Seven of them joined the force, and Quarterback Paul Tognetti stayed on for good, ultimately going into the dairy business. A local committee, called the Major Disaster Council, had spent months preparing for this kind of day; now their foresight was paying off. Forty-five trucks belonging to American Sanitary Laundry, New Fair Dairy, and other local companies sped off to Hickam as converted ambulances. Dr. Forrest Pinkerton dashed to the Hawaii Electric Company’s refrigerator, collected the plasma stored there by the Chamber of Commerce’s Blood Bank. He piled it in the back of his car, distributed it to various hospitals, then rushed on the air, appealing for more donors. Over 500 appeared within an hour, swamping Dr. John Devereux and his three assistants. They took the blood as fast as they could, ran out of containers, used sterilized Coca-Cola bottles.

It had been Wolff who lobbied the German transportation minister to ensure that the SS had an ample supply of railroad cars to ship Jews to the death camp at Treblinka, in spite of competing demands from the Wehrmacht, which wanted the freight cars to move military supplies to the front.

... I was really rude. Except one time I made a great joke about Bismarck and she laughed, and I laughed, and it was like we were in our own private world. We weren't, though, we were in one of her boyfriends' cars, and he wasn't happy about it." "Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian Chancellor of the German Empire?" "Yes, he created the first welfare state in modern history. The joke wasn't to do with that, though, it was something to do with the Crimean War and cry me a river.

Mrs. Mayfield’s bakery still filled the streets with the smell of fresh bread, the barbershop still seemed empty, and the Dundurn Gazette building still looked dilapidated and about to crumble. Maybe this is what I need, Gen thought. She craved stability right now. Recently she had felt lost and overwhelmed, hating life at university and struggling with her course, but desperate to please her mother. Every Isherwood woman attended the University of Toronto; Gen couldn’t be the exception. There was only one major road entering and leaving Dundurn, and it quickly took them away from the bustle. Soon they could see the arch boldly displaying the farm’s name etched into the metal: The Triple 7 Ranch. Nothing about the ranch seemed to have changed: the barn behind the house, the farmland beyond it, or the wheat fields arranged in neat lines stretching into the distance. Gen waited to hear Whisky, their German shepherd, as they pulled in. She always came out of wherever she was and barked loudly when cars arrived. “Where’s Whisky?” she asked after a couple of seconds. “Oh, Whisky passed on last year, honey,” her mum said. “No! What happened?” “Some hooligans from Saskatoon ran her over, honey.” “Sheriff Liam says we have to be extra careful now that some new businesses have settled out there.” “Who would do such a thing?” It seemed some things changed after all. ><>< Gen turned the knob of the bedroom door, which creaked as it swung open. Peering into her old bedroom, memories flooded her senses; she travelled to a time when the world made sense. She heard giggling and the patter of running feet as she recalled a time when all that mattered was finding the best place to hide while playing with her grandfather. She had been an only child but had never felt the loneliness others in her position described. Her grandfather had been her friend, confidante,

I suppose all Germans were conscripted.’ ‘I am not German.’ A car drove by and the lights dazzled me. I got to my feet. ‘Perhaps I should get back,’ he said. He bowed curtly before unbolting the door. ‘I am Austrian. Good evening, Fräulein.

Nothing,’ he said. ‘Ask her again. Tell her he has been seen. Tell her he is to go into the army, he will sign the list, he will go.’ Tomasz relayed what Bauer told him. She looked at him in amazement. ‘You are Polish,’ she said. ‘You are. Why are you helping them? My son is young. Why does he have to go and fight? He is not German.’ Before Tomasz could answer, footsteps were behind them, quick, fast across the cobbles – Kacper was escaping. ‘Perfect,’ Bauer said, smiling. Schröder ran first; Bauer walked behind. Kacper was quick, and Schröder could not keep

The regime began restricting Jews from working in government or in high-status professions like medicine or the law, fields that incited jealousy among ordinary Germans who could not afford the expensive cars and villas on the lake that many successful Jews had acquired. This was the middle of the Great Depression, and more than a third of Germans were out of work in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power. The Jews’ prestige and wealth were seen as above the station of a group that Nazis decreed were beneath the Aryans.

early 1970s to 1986 East Germans had been allowed to travel to the west, but few had the money (60 DM was a month’s wages to many), a car to travel, or the actual patience to bear the endless bureaucracy of the state, which was designed to keep the applicant in years of limbo, not knowing until the last minute whether the application had been successful. The policy of granting their citizens freedom of travel only for “urgent family business” was relaxed in 1986 and sparked a flood of more applicants. Border crossings rose from 66,000 in 1985 to well over 550,000 the following year. Within eighteen months this would shoot up to 2.2 million.

His name was Erik Yaw, and he was a sergeant in the US Army.” Sergeant Yaw listened carefully to Spitzner’s proposal of wishing to get to the West with Peggy, who was now asleep in a car near the sergeant’s. At first, the American soldier didn’t react, but just stared at the East German while he mulled over what he’d listened to.

This suit is Hugo Boss. That’s not just the name of a brand, it’s the name of a dude—a German dude who got his start making uniforms for the Nazis. Ferdinand Porsche—as in, the fancy sports cars—same thing.

German car manufacturer Daimler has a similar email management policy. The company’s one hundred thousand employees can set incoming emails to delete automatically when they’re on vacation. A so-called mail on holiday assistant automatically emails the sender to explain that the email wasn’t delivered, and suggests another Daimler employee who will step in if the email is urgent. Workers come back from their vacations to an inbox that looks exactly as it did when they left several weeks ago.

There were Harvard history majors and West Virginia coal miners, Wall Street lawyers and Oklahoma cow punchers, Hollywood idols and football heroes. The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. Both served beside men and boys who had washed office windows in Manhattan or loaded coal cars in Pennsylvania—Poles and Italians, Swedes and Germans, Greeks and Lithuanians, Native Americans and Spanish-Americans, but not African-Americans, for official Air Force policy prevented blacks from flying in combat units of the Eighth Air Force.

When she was six months old, Mädchen was hit by a car and killed. Her food was still in the bowl when our father brought home an identical German shepherd, which the same Cindy thoughtfully christened Mädchen II. This tag-team progression was disconcerting, especially to the new dog, which was expected to possess both the knowledge and the personality of her predecessor. “Mädchen One would never have wet the floor like that,” my father would scold, and the dog would sigh, knowing she was the canine equivalent of a rebound.

The last deaths of the Great War on the western front occurred at midnight on the twelfth in Hamont, a Belgian town near the Dutch border. Retreating German troops, believing they were the last to leave the city, mined the Hamont railroad station. But one final train filled with German soldiers arrived from Antwerp. The mine went off with a roar that flung railway cars into the air like matchboxes. Hundreds of German soldiers thus died thirteen hours after the armistice went into effect.

The railroad car stood in the midst of French villages that the war had effaced from the earth. The Germans were confronting an Allied leader who had learned of the death in battle of his only son and his daughter’s husband in a single day. Foch remained cold to all entreaties, reflecting not only his own fixedness but orders from his equally unforgiving superior, Prime Minister Clemenceau.

The car is still the ultimate symbol of German self-belief.

walk. A German shepherd bounded around the corner of the house, barking and snarling. Angel started back to her car when she heard

Now I don’t know how many people like to drive a Beetle at that kind of speed (on purpose) but I know I’d rather go down Brickmaker’s Kloof on a bicycle with no brakes! Driving any car at that speed in anything other than an expensive German luxury car on a long, straight autobahn is enough of a risk (let alone the risk of hitting anything) – but if you try that with a Beetle and add a light crosswind, factor in some rubber peeling off your tire, and you’ll more than likely find yourself dancing alone in a dark corner without any music.

Castro’s revolution, with all of its supposedly good intentions, put a stop to the growth of Havana. Of course it put an end to the Mafia controlling the casinos and entertainment, but for them it was a minor setback. They just packed their bags and went to Las Vegas where they expanded and developed “The Strip!” Batista and his followers fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic, Europe and South Florida. Many Cubans lost everything they had but others fled taking their wealth with them. The upheaval in 1959 marked the beginning of austerity for this former freewheeling city. The communistic de-privatization of all businesses, along with the embargo imposed by the United States, created a serious decline in Havana’s economy. The constant pressure to nationalize, as well as the severe crackdown by the régime to keep people in line, curtailed growth and placed an enormous hardship on the Cuban people. Since the Castro Revolution, the people of Havana have been severely affected, because of the absence of commerce with its former trading partner, the United States, located only 90 miles to the north. In all Havana has taken a severe toll economically, with its dilapidated houses, and the pre-1959 cars on the streets of the city being a testimony to the bygone era. It is only now that with the hope of normalization between the governments of Cuba and the United States that perhaps the people will benefit. For the greatest part, the Port of Havana has also been bypassed, chiefly due to the restrictions placed on them by the United States. However, the Cuban government is now attempting a comeback by attracting tourism from Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Latin America, Asia and Europe. The city of Havana has renovated the Sierra Maestra Cruise Port, but only very few cruise companies consider Havana a port of call. Slowly, German and British ships started to arrive, including the Fred Olsen Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line. Technically Real Estate Brokers and Automobile Dealers are illegal in Cuba, although real-estate offices and car dealerships are blatantly open for business. The buying and selling of real estate and cars, which was forbidden for many years, can now be done because of some changes brought about by Raúl Castro, but only by full-time residents of Cuba. However, gray market sales are thriving through the use of friends and family as proxies.

With the first rays of dawn coming from a huge orange sun, rising out of the Indian Ocean from the East, the Dominion Monarch passed the Durban bluffs and entered the protected harbor. A police boat escorted the ship in and stood by as it was secured. Everybody crowded close to the railings and looked down onto the concrete dock. From the ship you could see that there were police cars blocking the entry to the wharf area and it became quite apparent that something was amiss. The reason was soon made clear when the loudspeakers announced that before clearing the ship, everyone on board would be required to get a smallpox vaccination or present their international immunization card, to verify that they were in compliance. There had been an outbreak of smallpox and yellow fever throughout Africa especially in the Cape Province and in tribal areas. During the previous year, nearby Northern Rhodesia had reported several thousand cases of these diseases. The police boat lay in wait, until every last one of the passengers was immunized. It took hours, however everyone was happy when the health officials finally came aboard to do the vaccinating. Finally the announcement came that the ship was cleared so that we could go ashore. Not until then did the band strike up and play “God Save the King.

It was a glorious experience to travel by rail for the children and the panoramic views of Africa through the big glass window in the back of the last car were beyond description. It was just as you would expect it to be as described in a vintage National Geographic magazine, with springbok and other wild animals abounding. The distance is approximately the same as from New York to Chicago and took an overnight. Adeline and Lucia talked late into the night as the children tried to hear what was being said. There was a lot of catching up to do, but it had been a long and exhausting day and the next thing they all knew, was that it was the following morning and the train was approaching Cape Town, affectionately known as the “Tavern of the Seas.” When the train finally came to a halt, after being switched from one track to another through the extensive rail yards, the realization sank in that this was their new life. Kaapstad, Cape Town in Afrikaans, would be their new home and German, the language they had spoken until now, was history. A new family came to meet them and helped carry their luggage to waiting cars. All of these strange people speaking strange languages were uncles, aunts and nephews. An attractive elderly woman who spoke a language very similar to German, but definitely not the same, was the children’s new Ouma. However, to avoid confusion she was to be addressed as Granny. She lived in a Dutch gabled house called “Kismet” located in a beautiful suburb known as “Rosebank.” This would be their home until Adeline could find a place where they could settle in and start their new life.

TABLE OF GERMAN COMPANIES AND MAIN SS CONCENTRATION CAMPS REPORTED TO BE ACTIVE IN EXPLOITATION OF FORCED LABOR DURING THE THIRD REICH Auschwitz AEG (electronics) [5] Barthl (construction) [5] Bata Schlesische Schuhwerke (leather, shoes, and factory construction) [10] Benton-Monteur-Bau (construction) [10] Berle Hoch- und Tiefbau (construction) [10] Berliner Baugesellschaft (construction) [10] BRABAG (mining, synthetic fuel) [3] Breitenbach Montanbau [10] Borsig-Koks-Werk (coal processing) [10] Charlottengrube (Hermann-Göring-Werke) (tunnel construction) [10] Concordia Kohlenbergwerk (coal processing) [10] Deutsche Gasrusswerke, Gleiwitz [5] [8] Dyckerhoff & Widman (construction materials) [5] Egefeld (construction) [10] Emmerich Machold (textiles) [10] Energie-Versorgung-Oberschlesien AG (electrical construction for Elektrizitätswerk “Walter”) [10] Erdöl Raffinerie Trzebinia GmbH (oil refining) [10] Fürstengrube GmbH (coal mining) [10] Fürstlich Plessische Bergwerks AG (coal processing) [10] Godula (factory construction) [10] Grün und Bilfinger (construction) [10] Gute Hoffnung Janinagrube (coal mining) [10] Heinkel (aircraft components, munitions) [5] [10] Hubertushütte (coal processing) [10] IG Farben—Buna Werke (construction, synthetic fuel) [3] [4] [5] [8] [10] Junkers (aircraft) [5] Klotz und Co. (construction) [10] Königshütte Metallwerke (metal works) [10] Königs- und-Bismarckhütte AG (armored cars and tanks) [10] Krupp (munitions) [4] [5] Krupp—Laurahùtte (munitions) [8] Lasota (tunnel & road construction) [10] Oberschlesische Gerätebau GmbH [10] Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke (construction of synthetic gasoline works) [5] [8] [10] Ölschieferanlagen (oil refinery construction) [8] Ost-Maschinenbau GmbH (OSMAG) (cannon) [2] [5] [8] [10] Pfitzner und Kamper (munitions, loading) [10] Philipp Holzmann (construction) [10] Pluschke und Grosser (construction) [10] Portland-Zement-Fabrik AG (construction materials) [10] Riedel (tunnel and roadbuilding) [10] Rheinmetall-Borsig (munitions) [3] Schuchtermann und Kremer Bau AG (construction) [10] Schweinitz (construction) [10] S. Frankel—Schlesische Feinweberei AG (textiles) [10] Siemens-Schuckert (electronics for aircraft) [2] [3] [10] Union Metallindustrie (munitions) [4] [5] Vacuum Öl (oil refinery) [5] [10] Vereinigte Aluminiumwerke (aluminum) [5] Wayss und Freytag (construction) [10] Zieleniewski (munitions) [10] Zwirnfabrik G. A. Buhl und Sohn (textiles) [10]

While some biographers claim Rommel had retrieved the goggles from an abandoned British vehicle, stating that “even a general was allowed a little booty,” a 2015 Daily Mail article claims that a British POW actually gave his goggles to the general.  After his capture, Major General Michael Gambier-Parry was invited to supper with Rommel, where he informed the field marshal that his hat had been stolen by a German soldier.  Rommel investigated, and returned Gambier-Parry’s hat, but asked if he could keep the British-issue goggles that the general had left in his staff car.[83]  They became part of his signature appearance, and he was rarely photographed without them after 1941.   Rommel would also receive his moniker, the Desert Fox, in the weeks following his victories there.  In German “Wustenfuchs,” it described a “small fox with a habit of burrowing quickly into the sand to escape predators, affording human occupants of the desert only an occasional fleeting glance.

The Directorio Revolucionario (“DR”) existed during the mid-1950’s and it was a Cuban University students’ group in opposition to the dictator President Fulgencio Batista. It was one of the most active terrorist organizations in Havana. Although they were given orders not to attack the rank and file police officers, semantics became important, as their targets were no longer “assassinated,” but rather were “executed.” To them the term sounded more legally acceptable. However, regardless of how it is phrased, murder is murder! At 3:20 on the afternoon of March 13, 1957, fifty attackers from the “DR”, led by Carlos Gutiérrez Menoyo, attacked the Presidential Palace. Menoyo had fought in the Sahara Desert against the German forces under General Rommel during World War II. By demonstrating great courage, Carlos had been decorated and given the rank of second lieutenant in the French army and was uniquely suited for this task. Now, with workers representing labor, and rebellious students from the university, they drove up to the entrance to the Presidential Palace in delivery van #7, marked “Fast Delivery S.A.” They also had two additional cars weighted down with bombs, rifles, and automatic weapons… (Read more in the Exciting Story of Cuba)

The men were not watering the grass; they were spraying it an emerald green. This was Ireland in an atomizer. The workers were coloring the dead, hurrying to finish before the Crown Prince's gaze would zoom by, perhaps peering through the bullet-proofed, tinted, heavily-armored glass of his German car. So much about the Kingdom concerned outward appearances. Veneer was as important as substance, perhaps more so.

It was the economy that troubled most people prior to World War II. Europe, especially Germany, was dealing with a deep worldwide depression. Fascism was gaining a stronghold in Germany as well as in many other European countries. Although small and generally not popular, the Communist Party was the only organized group to stand in opposition to the Nazis. Small bands of these Communists occasionally attempted to disrupt the government by rioting in the streets. Occasionally gunfire would be heard, but very little could be done about it by a people that did not want to get involved. Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” were rapidly solidifying their position, and the Nazi Party was becoming stronger. Even though they frequently violated the National Constitution, they brought order to what had been chaos. The Treaty of Versailles, enacted after World War I, was hated by the German people, who felt that it suppressed them in a most demeaning way. Now however, Hitler was putting people to work building cars and an autobahn highway system that connected the larger cities. Modernization of airports and the development of a national railroad were all in violation of the imposed international regulations. Now however, workers were bringing paychecks home and could once again feed their families. Therefore, little thought was given to Hitler’s power grab. Germany was emerging from the dark era following World War I, and things were getting better. The Vaterland was regaining its strength, without regard to what France and other European countries thought.... After all, what could they, or would they, do about it?

Sir Roy Fedden headed the British team sent to defeated Germany by Sir Stafford Cripps. Fedden, a slim, elegant, clean-shaven man whose photographs usually reveal an expression of focused determination, showed keen intelligence and a fascination with car and aircraft engines at an early age. Passionately fond of his wife Norah Crew, and somehow finding time between engine experiments to sail and fish, Fedden, 60 years of age in 1945, attacked his task with customary gusto. Fedden Years earlier, Erhardt Milch and Hermann Goering, to Fedden's astonishment, permitted him to tour no less than 17 of their secret aeronautics facilities when he visited Germany in 1937 and 1938. The Luftwaffe leaders hoped to overawe Fedden with the potential of German military aircraft design, and thus cause him to influence the British government to reach an accommodation with the Third Reich. Fedden, in fact, urged the English leadership to modernize their aircraft design to match the Germans' potential and was fired.               Realizing their error several years later, the government re-employed Fedden in 1944, and a mix of aeronautics engineers, scientists, and RAF officers comprised Fedden's team.

I also believe strongly in the powerful words: “I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.” They are good ones to live by. The big, final motivator was that I really wasn’t enjoying my university studies. I loved the Brunel and our small group of buddies there, but the actual university experience was killing me. (Not the workload, I hasten to add, which was pleasantly chilled, but rather the whole deal of feeling like just another student.) Sure, I like the chilled lifestyle (like the daily swim I took naked in the ornamental lake in the car park), but it was more than that. I just didn’t like being so unmotivated. It didn’t feel good for the soul. This wasn’t what I had hoped for in my life. I felt impatient to get on and do something. (Oh, and I was learning to dislike the German language in a way that was definitely not healthy.) So I decided it was time to make a decision. Via the OTC, Trucker and I quietly went to see the ex-SAS officer to get his advice on our Special Forces Selection aspirations. I was nervous telling him. He knew we were troublemakers, and that we had never taken any of the OTC military routine at all seriously. But to my amazement he wasn’t the least bit surprised at what we told him. He just smiled, almost knowingly, and told us we would probably fit in well--that was if we passed. He said the SAS attracted misfits and characters--but only those who could first prove themselves worthy. He then told us something great, that I have always remembered. “Everyone who attempts Selection has the basic mark-one body: two arms, two legs, one head, and one pumping set of lungs. What makes the difference between those that make it and those that don’t, is what goes on in here,” he said, touching his chest. “Heart is what makes the big difference. Only you know if you have got what it takes. Good luck…oh, and if you pass I will treat you both to lunch, on me.” That was quite a promise from an officer--to part with money. So that was that. Trucker and I wrote to 21 SAS HQ, nervously requesting to be put forward for Selection. They would do their initial security clearances on us both, and then would hopefully write, offering us (or not) a place on pre-Selection--including dates, times, and joining instructions. All we could do was wait, start training hard, and pray. I tossed all my German study manuals unceremoniously into the bin and felt a million times better. And deep down I had the feeling that I might just be embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. On top of that, there was no Deborah Maldives saying I needed a degree to join the SAS. The only qualification I needed was inside that beating heart of mine.

It was possible we looked out of sorts. And of course we were aware by now that Italians don’t drive bright orange cars (or bright yellow or green cars for that matter) and that the owners of such cars are looked upon with a certain amount of condescension and immediately understood to be Germans, an epithet more or less synonymous with bad taste.

1974 Bangkok   On my way from London to Kuala Lumpur that summer, I stopped in Bangkok for a few days, since I had never been to Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok in Thai). I thought it an excellent idea to visit this vibrant city, known to some as the ‘Sin City of the East’ due to its liberal stance in sexual issues.               As soon as I’d stepped out of the airport to flag a taxi to the legendary Oriental Bangkok Hotel, I was confronted by hordes of haggling Thai men jostling for my business, bargaining with me in broken English to deliver me to my luxury lodging for the best price. But just then, a suave-looking foreigner in his thirties stepped in to dissipate their heated transactions. He wasted no time to disperse all the drivers except one. The gentleman had bargained in Thai for the best price on my behalf. He spoke in German-accented English, “I’m Max. The cab driver will take us to our hotel?”               “Oh, you are also staying at the Oriental?” I chirped.               “Hop into the cab so we can get out of this madding crowd,” he expressed vehemently, opening the car door to let me in.               As soon as we were comfortably situated at the back seat, he asked, “What brings you to Thonburi, Mr.…?” He trailed off.               “I’m Young. Thank you for your assistance! It’s my first time to Bangkok. I wasn’t expecting such a rowdy welcome. If it weren’t for you, I may have landed in a Thai hospital,” I joked. “Where’s Thonburi?”               He sniggered mischievously. “Thonburi, the city of treasures gracing the ocean, is Bangkok’s official name, although some refer to it more appropriately as Meụ̄xng k̄hxng khwām s̄uk̄h kām, the city of erotic pleasures,” he quipped.               Overhearing the words Meụ̄xng k̄hxng khwām s̄uk̄h kām, the cab driver commented, “You want boy, girl or boy-girl or girl-boy? I take you to happy place!”               Max burst out in laughter. He proceeded to have a conversation in Thai with the driver. I sat, silent, since I had no idea what was being said, until my acquaintance asked, “What brings you to Bangkok?”               “I’m on vacation. What brings you to Thonburi?” I queried.               “I’m here on business, and usually stay a while for leisure,” was his response. “Since we are staying in the same hotel, we’ll see more of each other. I’m happy to show you the city,” he added.               “That’ll be wonderful. I’ll take up your offer,” I said appreciatively, glad I’d met someone to show me around.               By the time our cab pulled up at the Oriental’s entrance, we had agreed to meet for dinner the following evening.

I was amused to read recently, for example, that nowadays being British “means driving home in a German car, stopping off to pick up some Belgian beer and a Turkish kebab or an Indian takeaway, to spend the evening on Swedish furniture, watching American programs on a Japanese TV.” And the most British thing of all? “Suspicion of anything foreign.

In 2014, we worked together for the last time. We did a Volkswagen commercial—for German television. It was a simple concept to introduce its new electric car. In recognition of the international appeal of Star Trek, a young German boy recognizes me. As the theme plays in the background, he runs into his room, which is filled from floor to ceiling with Star Trek memorabilia. Then, as the Star Trek theme plays, a garage door slowly lifts open to reveal—the new Volkswagen—with me driving. As the two of us drive along, we suddenly stop next to a futuristic concept car—with Leonard driving. He looks at us, looks at the car, and says the one word that so defined Spock: “Fascinating.” It’s hard to believe that was the last time I saw him, but it was.

The Germans, anyway a hysterical race, are now almost maddened by overwork—particularly in the management class. They spend their days in their offices and then roar off down the autobahns. They fall asleep at eighty miles an hour, and their cars tear across the middle section, head-on into cars in the opposite lane, or dive off the shoulders of the roads into the trees. To prevent this, the drivers munch Pervitin or Preludin to keep themselves awake, thus submerging their exhaustion and heightening their tension. Heart disease, accelerated by over-eating food cooked in the universal cheap frying-fat, carries them off in their early fifties,

Depending on your point of view, Jersey City was the rose, or possibly the thorn, of the Garden State. It is so far back that my memories are rather vague, but they were my first memories, and this is where I have to start. We lived at 77 Nelson Avenue, behind my parents’ German-style delicatessen, in three Spartan rooms counting the kitchen. Supermarkets were not yet prevalent and the neighborhood general store, grocery store or delicatessen was where most folks shopped for food. It was during the pre-World War II years, when very few people owned cars and the general public did not have the modern means of travel, which we now take for granted. Every item people needed came from a different store, so to go shopping was a daily task of which people were not even consciously mindful. Even if they had a car, they would have to deal with constant breakdowns, poor and frequently unpaved roads, and tire problems. Garage rentals were crowded behind and between buildings. Parking on the street was limited and most people respected the concept that the parking space in front of a dwelling was for the resident who lived there. It was much easier to use the available mass transportation or endure long walks.