Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (PO Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009). This report is reprinted from the June-July 1997 issue. When he retired from the US foreign service, Curtiss was chief inspector of the US Information Agency. He is also the author of A Changing Image: American Perspectives of the Arab-Israeli Dispute and Stealth PACs: Lobbying Congress for Control of US Middle East Policy.
My Life for Ireland (German: Mein Leben für Irland) is a NS propaganda movie from 1941 directed by Max W. Kimmich, covering a story of Irish heroism and martyrdom over two generations under the occupation of the evil British.
The film covers the story of two generations of an Irish nationalist family starting with Michael O’Brien (Werner Hinz) and following with his son, also Michael (Will Quadflieg), eighteen years later in 1921.
The film commences in Dublin in 1903. A squad of police officers break into a thatched hovel and evict the family, throwing a young child to the floor. However they are ambushed by a group of Irish Nationalists and a long fire fight ensues. Michael O’Brien is captured and is sentenced to death. While he is in jail, his pregnant fiancée Maeve visits him and they are secretly married. Afterwards, Michael hands his wife a silver cross that would always be worn by the best Irish freedom fighter. On the cross, the words My life for Ireland are engraved.
Eighteen years later, in 1921, his son Michael Jr. is expecting to pass his school leaving exams. As the son of an infamous Irish nationalist, he has been educated at St Edwards College, a school run by British teachers. This way the British government wanted to re-educate Irish pupils into „worthful“ British civilians.
Long lasting success in any human endeavor is never the result of blind luck. The achievement of a clearly defined goal, whether it be the act of walking from point “X” to point “Y”, the building of a house, or the organization of a business, is always the product of three things:
The tragic military disasters which overtook Germany during the late summer of 1944 convinced most members of the National Socialist Party that, short of a miracle, nothing could stave off defeat, and that the best that might be hoped for was a stalemate. There was little that could be done. The wonder weapons which would destroy London had failed, and it was admitted that no new wonder weapons could now save Germany. There remained only the Folk. The Leaders of the National Socialist Party knew that all German men and women burned with revolutionary fervour, and that the political mobilisation of the masses could be harnessed to bring victory out of defeat. Inspired by healthy and true National Socialist philosophy, revolutionary ideas and fervour would bring the whole Nation under arms and it would become a Folk’s War. The struggle of the masses would confound the plans of Germany’s enemies. A military stalemate would be achieved which might weary the Allies and lead to conflict between them. The knowledge that, sooner or later, military hostilities would break out between the Russians and the Western Allies, was the conviction that buoyed the German Leaders.
