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Nov 22Liked by Paul Street

A really excellent presentation!

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Nov 22Liked by Paul Street

Thanks, a great listen! A quick addition to lack of US concern about Hitler's rise to power: That was still the era here in the US when there was a quota on Jews who could enroll at elite universities, when wealthy neighborhoods had covenants in their real estate contracts prohibiting sale of property to Jews, and when Jews could be turned away if they tried to register at expensive hotels (I've heard personal stories of this). So, who cared about Jews being persecuted? Not too many people here.

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Nov 23·edited Nov 23Author

Yes. NIU's great colonial and revolutionary era historian Alfred Young -- a founding father of the New Left re-write of that era --- used to tell us about the academic quotas. A Jewish man from New York, professor Young told us btw that anti-Semitism had a sinister life up through the 1970s in his field of expertise: the colonial and revolutionary era. The nation's colonial and early republic periods were considered too WASP-sacred for Jewish scholars to be published in the William and Mary Quarterly and to hold faculty positions in those periods at elite schools. Part of what Al Young was doing out at little old DeKalb, part of the little red schoolhouse on the prairie. He was a prince, great guy.

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Enjoyed your informative informal discussion French Village is a brilliant film which shows how complex politics is on so many levels.

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Nov 22·edited Nov 23Author

The dynamics of collaboration, resistance and in-between are depicted in remarkable and haunting ways

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I've seen most of 'A French Village', but not the last part about the SS guy getting out. He had just been caught by Americans the last episode I saw. A very good series.

One thing about Operation Torch is that it was carried out during the Battle of Stalingrad. I think it may have affected the outcome at Stalingrad. It certainly must have distracted the German high command. Some outcomes included a major shift in the balance of forces in North Africa, the German occupation of the remaining territory of France, and I recall, the French scuttling of their own fleet in a major French port to prevent seizure by the Germans. The key to success was that Admiral Darlan, in command of French forces in North Africa, changed sides (see Wikipedia on this).

On a personal note, my father was later shot down over Naples, and ended up in Italian POW camp, then Stalag Luft III in Germany. He was the only survivor of his bomber squadron. This was also an F* up. Ground crew had put the wrong lubricant in the tail guns so they froze in flight. The Italians saw this and hit the whole squadron from the rear.

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Our attn: is with yours in 1941 just before Pearl Harbor. Another protege of Dorothy Parker's publishes book the Revolution is On and he tries to generate a picture already revisionist history at that moment about how if the French workers had been willing to work like the by ____law conscripted armaments workers in Germany, that -what? He explicitly says the German freikorp youth made Germany like ancient Sparta. Nothing follows from that except to frame open conflict as religious conflict, Yuval Harraris contriubution to world history was to say Ww2 was a religious war between state level socialism and again, What religion does the Equity class listen to and promulgate? Meersheimer is our prophet , it seems to be GDP growing one percent more than at present. Ivan Illich cuts right through saying "better" trendy products simply steal the moments we have to notice the work "hands" who are going to enact our plans for world domination. For the costars in our lives to receive their spotlight time, that has religious energy to it. Connie for example was a thinking person, that counts these busy, business years later.

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