User talk:Aerialsprop

ESSAY ON HITLER
Oscar-winning actress Jodie Foster will play the leading role of Riefenstahl in a work that is bound to generate immense argument, as it examines the beautiful woman who became Adolf Hitler's favourite director and whose slick propaganda helped the Nazi war machine. The on-again, off-again project has been in the works for at least seven years, but now a script is being written - by British writer Rupert Walters - and a director is being negotiated. People involved in the movie say the director should be announced within two or three months and shooting should start by the end of next year at the latest. 'I am hoping to be shooting before then,' said Gabriele Bacher, a producer at Primary Pictures, who will make the film along with Foster's own company. Foster is no stranger to controversial roles, including her award-winning portrayals of a rape victim in The Accused and a child prostitute in Taxi Driver. But few parts in modern Hollywood history will generate as much debate as Riefenstahl. It will open Foster to charges of lionising an anti-Semite who played a key role in the Third Reich. Riefenstahl, born in Berlin in 1902, became a dancer and star of silent cinema, before moving into directing. At a 1932 Nazi rally she saw Hitler speak for the first time. It was a mesmerising experience for her, and Hitler in turn saw the young film-maker as someone who could bring Nazi ideals of physical purity to life through the medium of film. It was a task she accomplished with terrifying skill. She first filmed a Nuremberg rally in 1933. A year later came her masterpiece, Triumph of the Will, a documentary that glorified Hitler and the Nuremberg rallies. Though banned in some places in America, it was a huge success in Europe and is often seen as one of the most brilliant pieces of propaganda ever made. It made use of ground-breaking photographic techniques and innovative editing to imbue the Nazis with a mythic quality that was deeply effective. She also brought her talent to bear on filming the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in which she pioneered many camera techniques still used in sports broadcasting today. Riefenstahl's Nazi film-making continued in the late 1930s and into the Second World War. On at least one project she is accused of using slave labour from a concentration camp. She also documented the German invasion of Poland and was present in the town of Konskie when 30 civilians were executed. She later claimed she had tried to stop the killings, but she still went on to film the German victory parade in Warsaw. After Hitler invaded France she sent him a message: 'Your deeds exceed the power of human imagination. They are without equal in the history of mankind. How can we ever thank you?' After the war she spent several years in a French detention centre before being released without charge. She attempted to restart her career, but was largely shunned by a world that despised her Nazi past. Riefenstahl always maintained she had been naive about Hitler and largely ignorant of Nazi crimes. That convinced few of her many critics. Nor did it lessen the role her work played in keeping the Nazis in power. 'She created beautiful surface images for Nazism. With the medium of film she orchestrated that very persuasive image for many Germans. She had a big impact,' said Professor Gavriel Rosenfeld, an expert on the Third Reich at Fairfield University. Yet Riefenstahl did manage eventually to flourish again. She travelled frequently to Africa and achieved huge success with her still pictures of the Nuba tribe in Sudan. Ironically, her images of the Nuba exalted their physical perfection in an African echo of her previous worship of the Aryan physical form. She also took up scuba diving and pursued underwater photography. She even released a documentary, Underwater Impressions, on her 100th birthday. She died, aged 101, in 2003. Whatever the morality of her Nazi past, she led a remarkable life. But it is that 1930s and 1940s period that has guaranteed any film about her will generate headlines. It is also what How The Beetle Began: In the early 1930's, Ferdinand Porsche and his company Dr.-Ing. h.c. Ferdinand Porsche GmbH designed a prototype of the Beetle Car. It was a streamlined sedan with a rear engine so that the driveshaft would be shorter, whilst the weight of the engine would still be distributed safely. This prototype was built by a motorcycle producer called Zundapp and test driven in 1932. It did not go into production though because Zundapp decided to keep making motorcycles as they were in high demand. It is a little known fact that Professor Porsche worked with electric vehicles in the early 1900's. Porsche used a wheel motor in the hubs to propel his vehicles and later when working with the Lohner company, they produced four wheel drive electric vehicles. Later still Professor Porsche worked with Mercedes on an electric hybrid vehicle, where a petrol engine drove a generator which powered the electric traction motors of the "Mercedes Mixt." Adolf Hitler at this time had a vision of his countrymen being able to own a cheap car and had plans on creating great networks of roads called autobahns. Hitler invited Porsche to submit to him a design for this peoples car, it had to be cheap, economical, fast (all of 60 miles per hour) and to accommodate two adults and three children comfortably. So, in January 1934 Porsche gave Hitler a proposal for his car and by June that year work had begun. Some funding was given by the RDA (Reichsverband der Autmobilindustrie - the German Auto Dealers Association), to help pay the bills! On December 22, 1942, Adolf Hitler signed the order approving the production of the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon" and the group developed it to target London. Following von Braun's July 7, 1943 presentation of a color movie showing an A-4 taking off, Hitler was so enthusiastic that he personally made him a professor shortly thereafter.[8] In Germany and at this time, this was an absolutely unusual promotion for an engineer who was only 31 years old. By now the British and Soviet intelligence agencies were aware of the rocket program and von Braun's team at Peenemünde. Over the nights of 17th and 18 August 1943 RAF Bomber Commands Operation Hydra despatched raids on the Peenemünde camp consisting of 596 aircraft and dropping 1,800 tons of explosives.[9] The facility was salvaged and most of the science team remained unharmed, however the raids killed von Braun's engine designer Walter Thiel and Chief Engineer Walther, and the rocket program was delayed Dr. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr ('Baron')[1] von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977), a German physicist and astronautics engineer, became one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. Wernher von Braun is sometimes said to be the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century.