On the night of February 13th, 1945 there began one of the most controversial raids of World War 2 – the bombing of Dresden. It is a controversy which still rages today. This documentary, taking into account the latest historical evidence, attempts to shed new light on this event.
Contemporary witnesses, previously unheard, describe the events and the terror of what it was like to be in Dresden through the night of bombing.
The film combines archive images of pre-war Dresden with a night of remembrance 45 years later in the Palace of Culture. Using information from Winston Churchill’s diaries the outspoken historian David Irving painted a comprehensive picture of the time, the background to the bombing, and the strategies employed.
Above all this film was made as a memorial to the loss of human life and of great works of art, and as a warning of the future. It is a demand for peace and a plea for humanity.
The footage here is from the spectacular National Socialist pageant called the Day of German Art, held in München on the weekend of 14-16 July, 1939. The festival extolled the roots of Germanic culture down through the ages and the original German character, and reflect the power and grandeur of the Third Reich.
The Germanic tribes were brave, warlike, generous and noble minded; their pagan religion was based on the natural cycle and worship of the Sun as a symbol of ever renewed life — the meaning of the Swastika. Their cardinal virtues included: loyalty to the family and clan, heroism in the face of death, readiness for battle, and closeness to the soil. These warrior values of the Nordic spirit find symbolic expression in the Nibelungenlied and other sagas; in the cult of Valhalla, and in the Viking ships which expressed the fearlessness, love of adventure, of booty, and the freedom residing in the ancestral spirit. These Nordic sagas are in fact the religion of the Germanic people and a reminder of its unbroken racial continuity and strength.
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.
