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Quote by Clifford Thurlow

“The days of our lives are quickly forgotten. War days are vivid, protracted, indelible. We are as moths who singe our wings and still fly back into the flame. The soldier exists in a private hell half deaf and half blinded by poisonous fumes.”

Quote by Clifford Thurlow

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We Shall Pass

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Clifford Thurlow

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“The Third Reich made it its mission to use the authority of the state to coordinate efforts within industry to devise standardized and simplified versions of key consumer commodities. These would then be produced at the lowest possible price, enabling the German population to achieve an immediate breakthrough to a higher standard of living. The epithet which was generally attached to these products was Volk: the Volksempfaenger (radio), Volkswohnung (apartments), Volkswagen, Volkskuehlschrank (refrigerator), Volkstraktor (tractor).34 This list contains only those products that enjoyed the official backing of one or more agencies in the Third Reich. Private producers, however, had long appreciated that the term ‘Volk’ had good marketing potential, and they, too, joined the bandwagon. Amongst the various products they touted were Volks-gramophone (people’s gramophone), Volksmotorraeder (people’s motorbikes) and Volksnaehmaschinen (people’s sewing machines). In fact, by 1933 the use of the term ‘Volk’ had become so inflationary that the newly established German advertising council was forced to ban the unlicensed use of the term.”

“There still exists - even today - a yearning, a nostalgia for European solidarity, a solidarity of European culture. Regrettably, solidarity itself no longer exists, except in hearts, in consciences, in the minds of a few great men at the heart of each nation. European consciousness - or what one might call a ‘cultural European awareness’ - had been on the wane for years ever since the awakening of national identity. You could say that patriotism has killed Europe. Patriotism is particularism. ... However, European culture goes back much further than the nations of Europe. Greece, Rome and Israel, Christendom and Renaissance, the French Revolution and Germany’s eighteenth century, the supranational music of Austria and Slavic poetry: these are the forces that have sculpted the face of Europe. All these forces have forged European solidarity and the European cultural consciousness. None of these forces know national boundaries. All are the enemies of that barbarian power: so-called ‘national pride’.”