SACRIFICE AT SEA IN THE MIDST OF DISASTER

 

The Dorchester was a 5,649 ton civilian cruise ship, 368 feet long with a 52-foot beam and a single funnel, originally built in 1926 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, for the Merchants and Miners Line, operating ships from Baltimore to Florida, carrying both freight and passengers. It was the third of four liners being built for the Line. The ship was converted for military service in World War II as a troop transport, and renamed United States Army Transport (USAT) Dorchester. The chaplains were honored with a commemorative stamp that was issued in 1948, and was designed by Louis Schwimmer, the head of the Art Department of the New York branch of the U.S. Post Office Department (now called the USPS). This stamp is highly unusual, because until 2011,[39] U.S. stamps were not normally issued in honor of someone other than a President of the United States until at least ten years after his or her death.

Dorchester left New York on January 23, 1943, en route to Greenland, carrying the four chaplains and approximately 900 others, as part of a convoy of three ships (SG-19 convoy). Most of the military personnel were not told the ship's ultimate destination. The convoy was escorted by Coast Guard Cutters Tampa,Escanaba, and Comanche.   Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Escanaba rescues Dorchester survivors. The ship's captain, Hans J. Danielsen, had been alerted that Coast Guard sonar had detected a submarine. Because German U-boats were monitoring sea lanes and had attacked and sunk ships earlier during the war, Captain Danielsen had the ship's crew on a state of high alert even before he received that information, ordering the men to sleep in their clothing and keep their life jackets on. "Many soldiers sleeping deep in the ship's hold disregarded the order because of the engine's heat. Others ignored it because the life jackets were uncomfortable."[9] During the early morning hours of February 3, 1943, at 12:55 a.m., the vessel was torpedoed by the German submarine U-223 off Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. The torpedo knocked out the Dorchester's electrical system, leaving the ship dark. Panic set in among the men on board, many of them trapped below decks. The chaplains sought to calm the men and organize an orderly evacuation of the ship, and helped guide wounded men to safety. As life jackets were passed out to the men, the supply ran out before each man had one. The chaplains removed their own life jackets and gave them to others. They helped as many men as they could into lifeboats, and then linked arms and, saying prayers and singing hymns, went down with the ship.[12] As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the Four Chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets. —Grady Clark, survivor[13] According to some reports, survivors could hear different languages mixed in the prayers of the chaplains, including Jewish prayers in Hebrew and Catholic prayers in Latin.[14] Some 230 of the 904 men aboard the ship were rescued. Life jackets offered little protection from hypothermia, which killed most men in the water. The water temperature was 34 °F (1 °C) and the air temperature was 36 °F (2 °C). By the time additional rescue ships arrived, "hundreds of dead bodies were seen floating on the water, kept up by their life jackets." New book reveals last words of doomed HMS Bounty's arrogant captain who'd sailed INTO the path of Hurricane Sandy Skipper robin Walbridge's last words are revealed in a new book The Gathering Wind out next week He told his 15 crew - one of whom would die alongside him - 'learn from this' The 180ft tall HMS Bounty - built for the 1962 Marlon Brando classic Mutiny on the Bounty, sank off the coast of North Carolina on October 29 last year Walbridge has been painted as an arrogant man who rode his luck one too many times - and claims that the ship should never have set sail at all The family of deckhand Claudene Christian, 42, who died have filed $90 million lawsuit over her death But book reveals that despite withering official report into the sinking, his crew still stick by him He was the captain who led his crew into eye of Superstorm Sandy, the biggest and most brutal hurricane in living memory. But it was only just as the famed HMS Bounty was about to sink that Robin Walbridge finally admitted defeat, MailOnline can reveal. In ‘The Gathering Wind’, a new book seen exclusively by MailOnline before its release next week, Walbridge called the crew of 15 below deck for one last speech in which he ordered them: 'Learn from this.' In sharp contrast to his previous defiance, he shouted above the howling winds tearing the ship apart: ‘What went wrong? At what point did we lose control?’ Destruction: A new book has detailed the final moments of The HMS Bounty, a 180-foot sailboat, which submerged in the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Sandy approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, North Carolina Walbridge’s last, ominous words to them all were: ‘Get some rest while you can. You’re going to need it’. The 180ft tall HMS Bounty, which was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando classic Mutiny on the Bounty, sank off the coast of North Carolina near Cape Hatteras early in the morning of Monday October 29th last year in an area known as the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’. Two of the crew on the ship died; Walbridge, 63, and deckhand Claudene Christian, 42, a former University of Southern California song girl. Fourteen others survived. Afterwards grave concerns were raised about the entire expedition, the Coast Guard began an official inquiry and Christian’s family filed a $90 million lawsuit over her death. Walbridge has been painted as an arrogant man who rode his luck one too many times - with fatal consequences. Critics say he should never have even set sail at all. Sandy, a ‘Frankenstorm’ made up of two storm systems, would go on to affect some 60 million Americans as it tore up the East coast and grow to 1,100 miles wide with winds up to 110mph. The streets of Manhattan flooded and knocked out the power for half of the island, some $68 billion of damage was caused in the US and at least 286 people were killed. Dramatic: An image taken inside the helicopter shows the moment crew members were saved from the ship Walbridge was aware of the warnings about Sandy because he got them on the ship’s computer - but still decided to go directly into its path. He left New London, Connecticut on Thursday October 25th bound for St Petersburg, Florida on board the ship that he had captained for 17 years and was the love of his life. It was a replica of the 1784 Royal Navy vessel which has also appeared in a string of Hollywood blockbusters including two Pirates of the Caribbean films. But it was also not licensed to take the public out to sea and Walbridge had a reputation for bending the rules to keep it afloat with not enough money for extensive repairs. Walbridge was apparently convinced that the hundreds of experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were wrong and that the storm would not continue its path up the Eastern Coast of the US. Instead he thought that it would come out into the Atlantic Ocean and he could creep round it to the West. He was wrong. In one of her last communications before she died, Christian texted a friend in Florida: ‘Wow! Here we go... straight into Hurricane Sandy.’ Struggle: A footage still shows one of the crew of the Bounty being rescued from a life raft by the Coast Guard after the vessel sank after the captain went against forecasters' advice and sailed into the storm The adventure of a lifetime for some of the crew who were young and loving the romance of sailing a tall ship was about to end. Waves up to 30ft high - the size of two story houses - crashed over the vessel, sending deck hand Adam Prokosh, 27, flying between decks, dislocating his shoulder and breaking several ribs. One wave propelled Walbridge into a table, leaving him badly hurt and lying on the floor in pain. The wind ripped down several sails and at 6.30pm on Sunday October 28th the second generator failed meaning that they were unable to pump out the bilge water that swamped the lower decks in a matter of hours, meaning they were were adrift and taking on water in the middle of the storm. The crew had already alerted the coast guard which sent a plane sent from North Carolina to track them down but the winds were so severe it would be sent up two hundred feet in a second, then go back down again a second later. In 'The Gathering Wind' author Gregory A. Freeman writes that as it became apparent that the end was nigh, Walbridge called the crew to the navigation shack and ‘looked over them silently’. Destroyed: An image taken in July 2010 shows the tall ship HMS Bounty sailing on Lake Erie off Cleveland He told them: ‘Water bottles. Don’t forget to take your own water bottle with you….make sure there’s an EPIRB (emergency beacon) activated in each life raft….stay together’. The book reads: ‘But then Walbridge got to what was really on his mind. He must have understood that his decision to set sail from New London was a mistake. ‘And Walbridge always taught his crew to learn from their mistakes. This was to be his last teachable moment for the crew of the Bounty. ‘He said: ‘I’d like everyone to brainstorm where we went wrong’. ‘How did we get here,’ Walbridge asked loudly, looking around the nav shack, still in command of his ship. ‘What went wrong? At what point did we lose control?’ ‘There was only silence as Walbridge looked around the room. His crew watched him intently, but some had trouble meeting his gaze. They knew what Walbridge was saying to them. 'Learn from this,' Walbridge said more quietly.' The book says that Walbridge looked weary in a way that they had never seen before. Walbridge then told them his final words as their captain: ‘Get some rest while you can. You’re going to need it in a couple of hours.’ 'Arrogant': The late Captain Robin Walbridge, pictured working on the Bounty in 2011, 'recklessly ignored Sandy's size, scope and intensity', according to a lawsuit brought by the family of a victim. Before the storm: Bosun Laura Groves and Chris Malloon work on the rigging in 2010 as the Bounty sailed between New Brunswick and Maine for a haul out. Two crew members died in the storm but 14 survived The crew radioed the C-130 coast guard plane circling over head at 4.45am on Sunday October 25th to say the Bounty was capsizing. Everyone got into a ‘Gumby’ suit, which is a large inflatable survival suit - then all hell broke loose when the Bounty suddenly turned on its side, sending everyone into the water. New details: The final terrifying moments are detailed in the new book, out next week The book recounts how the masts and rigging kept rising up in the water and crashing down on the sailors, hitting first mate John Svendsen and breaking his arm and cutting his face. Every time the rest of the crew tried to swim away - which took a superhuman effort in their bulky Gumby suits - another rope would tangle onto them and try to suck them under. Their suits were so heavy and their hands were so bulky inside them that it took 45 minutes to get the first person in the life raft by grabbing a rope to pull themselves up with their teeth. Somehow 14 of the 16 on board made it to life rafts or clung on to wooden that was floating in the debris until the coastguard helicopter picked them all up. Christian’s body was later found floating by another coastguard helicopter team. Walbridge was never seen again, but soon after the recriminations began. In February the Coast Guard held a week-long hearing in Portsmouth, Virginia into what happened. Its official report is due next year. What came out left Christian’s family appalled. Walbridge was apparently so keen to get to Florida on time because he had scheduled a meeting with a nonprofit organization dedicated to Down syndrome research, which might have helped bring in some money for the ship too. The suggestion was that he and the ship’s owner, New York businessman Robert Hanse, were worried that if they missed the meeting the agreement would fall apart. Team: Captain Walbridge (right) is pictured working with the other Bounty crew. Despite his apparently rash - and ultimately deadly - decisions, the crew has refused to say a bad word against the captain During the hearing it also emerged that, whilst in dry dock before the trip, Walbridge refused to approve the removal of rotten wood on the boat because it would have cost a lot of money. An unfortunate interview he gave emerged in which he bragged ‘we chase hurricanes’ and said that they gave the ship a ‘good ride’. Walbridge also did not tell his crew the full extent of Sandy’s strength and when senior members raised concerns he told them not to worry. No other tall ships were out of port during Sandy, and hardly any other vessels were even with more modern hulls made of steel. Hanse refused to testify at the coast guard hearing and took the Fifth meaning nobody will ever know the full truth. So Christian’s family’s lawsuit against him, Walbridge, the Bounty operating company and the crew alleging that the ship ended up in ‘the greatest mismatch between a vessel and a peril of the sea that would ever occur or could be imagined’. The lawsuit states: ‘Captain Walbridge, who was focused on the rewards lying in St Petersburg, recklessly ignored Sandy's size, scope and intensity. Crew: Chief mate John Svendsen at the helm of the Bounty in 2010. He was second in command on the Bounty and known for his calm authority Working together: Third mate Dan Cleveland doing some maintenance on the rigging of the Bounty in 2011 ‘He also grossly overestimated, to the point of recklessness, Bounty's seaworthiness and overestimated his professional seamanship and weather forecasting abilities to the point of arrogant hubris’. Despite the overwhelming evidence that he put them in grave danger for no reason, Walbridge’s crew still somehow stood by him. It is one of the most puzzling episodes of the whole tragedy, not least as they were being paid just $100 a week for working 18-hour days. Under questioning at the hearing Jess Hewitt, a 25-year-old qualified captain and crew member, refused to put the knife into Walbridge. And when told by a lawyer for Christian’s family that nobody would say a bad word against him, her response was: ‘That’s awesome’. Third mate Dan Cleveland, 25, was even more forthright in his defence of Walbridge. ‘The Gathering Wind’ reads: ‘If Walbridge were alive today and proposed sailing into another hurricane or storm, Cleveland would go with him because the outcome of the Bounty's last voyage was not inevitable. Tragedy: As well as the captain, a woman died and other crew members suffered broken bones and injuries ‘The loss of the ship and two lives was the result of series of problems, he says, and that the sequence of events does not have to repeat itself. If just a few things had turned out differently, the Bounty would have made it through Hurricane Sandy, he insists.' Speaking to MailOnline, Freeman said that in his assessment Walbridge did make a 'serious and tragic mistake'. He thought that in time the crew will eventually 'come to the realization that Walbridge made tragic errors’, but that the camaraderie was so strong the couldn’t see it yet. He said: 'It's hard to call for a mutiny because it's such a powerful word but in retrospect, I think the crew should have more forcefully told the captain that this was a bad idea, yes'. Freeman, who has previously written a narrative non-fiction book about WWII soldiers, added that in those final moments Walbridge ‘realized that he had made this error’. He said: 'I don't see him as the villain. Everyone agrees that he had an admirable career on the sea until that point and he was considered a very fine captain'.

With a cargo of immigrants bound for a new life in America, the William Brown was a ship full of hope. It had set off from Liverpool five weeks earlier, on March 13, 1841, and was nearing the end of its voyage to Philadelphia. A ship of 559 tonnes, it carried salt, coal and china, along with 65 passengers, mostly Irish and  Scottish families, as well as husbands and  wives joining spouses who had already made the journey from the old world to the land of opportunity. There was thick fog as the ship entered the icefield west of Nova Scotia on the night of April 19. But rather than slowing down as other ships nearby were prudently doing, the better to avoid icebergs that might suddenly loom out of the darkness, the American captain, 48-year-old George Harris, kept the William Brown sailing at a brisk ten knots. Harris was an experienced sailor, but he was under pressure from the ship’s owners to complete the voyage quickly because the vessel was about to be sold. Enlarge +7 Chaos: As the ship sank, passengers and crew battled each other to fit into an overloaded lifeboat At 8.45pm, as the sailors on watch peered through the hazy darkness while the passengers relaxed below deck, there was a jolt and an ominous noise. The ship had scraped along a flat ice floe. But if the crew felt relief at getting away lightly, it was short-lived. Fifteen minutes later, there was a horrifying jolt and thunderous noise as the ship collided head-on with a massive iceberg. The iron bows crumpled, a gaping hole appeared in one side and water began pouring into the ship. The impact was enough to knock Mary Carr, the only passenger not in bed, off her feet. Below deck, 12-year-old Owen Carr, travelling from  Co. Tyrone with his large family, was thrown from his bunk. Another passenger, 19-year-old Bridget McGee, rushed on deck, fearing that ‘the ship had broken in two’. She was not far wrong. The iceberg had catastrophically damaged the William Brown. Captain Harris surveyed the damage and ordered his crew to lower the lifeboats. Shipwrecks were horribly frequent occurrences in the 19th century. Too many ships were poorly maintained or, like the William Brown, had too few lifeboats. But what set this shipwreck apart from other disasters was the truly horrifying sequence of events that followed. They led to a sensational court case that captivated newspaper readers on both sides of the Atlantic and raised the ultimate moral conundrum: is it ever acceptable for one man to kill another to save his own skin? +7 Juddering: There was a horrifying jolt and thunderous noise as the ship collided head-on with a massive iceberg. The iron bows crumpled, a gaping hole appeared in one side and water began pouring in (file photo) The terrible tale of the William Brown is featured in a fascinating new book about how people have reacted when they found themselves struggling to survive in remote, dangerous environments with limited supplies. It prompts us all to ask what would we do in such circumstances. Would we do anything to save our fellow humans or would we be willing to sacrifice their lives to save ourselves? For the passengers and crew of the William Brown, these hypothetical questions became a dreadful reality. After Captain Harris had given the order to his crew to abandon ship, they busied themselves launching the two boats on deck, one a longboat, about 20ft to 24ft in length, which had only oars and no rudder, the other a ‘jollyboat’, rounder and smaller, but more seaworthy. Several frightened passengers had, like Bridget McGee, come on deck to ask what had happened. Instead of telling them the truth, Captain Harris and his crew assured them all was well. +7 Usurped: By the time the terrified passengers were on deck, most of the 16 crew were already in the two lifeboats Mollified, they returned below deck. But when a male passenger, James Black, discovered the truth, he shouted down the hatches that the ship was sinking, and panic broke out. By the time the terrified passengers had grabbed coats, roused their sleep-fuddled children and clambered up the hatchways, they found most of the 16 crew were already in the two lifeboats. It was abundantly clear that there was not enough space in the boats for all 65 passengers. When one asked Captain Harris what they should do, he replied that they would have to do the best they could. He seemed to feel no responsibility for his guests. The jollyboat had already launched, with eight sailors and just one female passenger, while the longboat was rapidly filling up. Panicking hordes rushed towards it, but in the stampede, those who were encumbered by young children or were simply too slow were left on deck. Young Owen Carr was pushed into the freezing ocean by another passenger, Julie McCadden. Bridget McGee and 17-year-old Biddy Nugent, who was on her way to join her father in Philadelphia, managed to scramble into the longboat, but a Swedish sailor on board, 26-year-old Alexander Holmes, ordered them out. However, they refused and remained in the boat as it was lowered into the sea. The sailors, worried that the longboat was overcrowded, were picking on  young women, who had no man to protect them, and trying to evict them. Another teenager, 19-year-old Sarah Carr, had raced below deck to grab some warm clothing: ‘When  I returned, the longboat was  in the water alongside the vessel. I jumped.’ She landed on a sailor, Charles Smith, who ordered her to return to the sinking vessel, but she stayed put. The longboat was pushed away from the ship, but remained attached by ropes. A Scottish woman, Margaret Edgar, had managed to get three of her daughters into the longboat, but the fourth, Isabella, had fallen on the slippery deck and failed to get in. Hearing her child’s pitiful cries for help among the screams of the other 31 passengers still on the sinking ship, Mrs Edgar cried out: ‘Someone! Save my daughter for pity’s sake.’ +7 Pitiful: Stricken passengers and crew crammed into a lifeboat, but they were far too many (file image) Swede Alexander Holmes, moved by a mother’s tears, ordered the crew to manoeuvre the boat back  to the William Brown. He bravely climbed up a rope onto the deck of the ailing ship and found Isabella among the petrified huddle of passengers. Hoisting her onto his shoulders, Holmes was about to carry her back down the rope when he was accosted by a doctor’s wife from Ireland, travelling with her three young children. Realising that the ship was about to go down, the woman offered Holmes ‘as much money as he could earn in a month’ if he would save her life, even though this would mean him abandoning Isabella. Incredibly, she was willing to leave her three children to drown in order to save herself, but Holmes refused, saying: ‘Money is not the object. It is lives I wish to save.’ The Swede then carried Isabella back down the rope to the long-boat before giving some of his warm clothing to a shivering Julie McCadden. The two boats pulled further from the sinking ship. Several of their occupants had left relatives behind on the ship and they heard their anguished cries as they realised that they were being abandoned to their fate, the water lapping around their feet as they stood helplessly on deck.  As light dawned, the First Mate, Francis Rhodes, put in charge of the longboat, begged the captain to take more people into the jollyboat. Though there was room, Captain Harris flatly refused Around midnight, the pleading stopped. The freezing air was filled with ‘an eerie silence’. A few minutes later the ship plunged below the waves, with 20 children, seven women and four men still on board. It had taken two hours from the ship striking the iceberg to its sinking. In that time it might have been possible to improvise a raft and save more souls, but the captain never attempted this. The two boats were alone in the vast Atlantic, 250 miles from the Newfoundland coast. It was obvious that the prospects of those in the jollyboat were infinitely better than those in the overcrowded longboat, carrying 32 passengers and nine crew. At the bottom of the boat was a plug, which somehow became dislodged in the night, causing water to flow in until it was ankle deep. Holmes made a new plug with some wood, but water still seeped in and had to be bailed out constantly with buckets. As light dawned, the First Mate, Francis Rhodes, put in charge of the longboat, begged the captain to take more people into the jollyboat. Though there was room, Captain Harris flatly refused. Rhodes then told his captain that the longboat was unmanageable and that unless some of the passengers were transferred, ‘we will have to draw lots’. ‘I know what you mean,’ the Captain replied. ‘Don’t speak of that now. Let it be the last resort.’ The meaning behind that exchange would become grimly apparent within hours. Having given Rhodes a compass and chart, Harris sailed off in the  jollyboat, with his crew and one  passenger, heading for Newfoundland, leaving the sail-less, rudder-less longboat alone. Abandoned by his captain, Rhodes seemed to lose hope. That first day the passengers bailed as the crew rowed. As night fell and rain pelted down on the shivering passengers, Rhodes — fearing that waves would swamp the heavily laden boat — cried out in despair: ‘This won’t do. Help me, God. Men, go to work.’ What followed next was like something out of a horror movie. +7 Icy grave: What followed next was like something from a horror film, with many thrown overboard Julie McCadden heard the crew tell Owen Riley, a young man who was migrating to Philadelphia to join his wife, to stand up. They grabbed hold of him. Realising what was coming, Riley begged Margaret Edgar — a favourite of the crew — to help him. Then Alexander Holmes came towards him. Riley must have thought that Holmes, who was well-liked by crew and passengers, was going to save him. He was wrong. Holmes seized Riley and pitched him overboard into the icy water, still clawing frantically at Holmes’s sleeve and tearing it in the process. No one knows how long it took Riley to die: perhaps as much as an hour, perhaps only ten minutes. The other passengers fell into a  state of terror. They easily outnumbered the crew. Had they collectively defied them, they could have halted the murderous spree that was unfolding. But, immobile with fear, they sat mute, trying to hide their faces with clothing to somehow make themselves invisible. It was futile. The next victim, Scot James Todd, was pitched overboard without protest. Sarah Carr described the next killing. +7 Shipwrecks were all too common in the 1800s - this one happened in the Arctic's Northwest Passage in 1853 ‘When they got hold of James MacAvoy, he asked them to give him five minutes to pray. ‘Some of them refused him, but Murray [the ship’s cook] said he should have it. He then said a prayer and they threw him out.’ Bridget McGee’s uncle, George Duffy, was flung, begging for his life, into the water. The longboat was 38 stone lighter. If it had been in danger of sinking, it  certainly wasn’t then, as the prosecutors argued at the subsequent trial. But the sailors, seemingly driven by a murderous lust, carried on killing. They seized Frank Askins, travelling with his two sisters, Ellen and Mary. He pleaded desperately: ‘I have five sovereigns and I’ll give it for my life till morning, and when morning comes if God does not help us we will cast lots and I’ll go out like a man if it is my turn.’ Mary cried that if they threw her brother over, they should throw her over after him. The sailors, unmoved, hurled all three to their deaths. Still the murders continued. Only two men were spared, at Holmes’s insistence, because they had their wives with them. When dawn came, the crew discovered two men hiding in the stern. They were dragged out, numb with terror. One, Charles Conlin, a friend of Holmes, pleaded not to be thrown over. +7 Drama: The case with strange premonitions of the Titanic disaster (pictured), which would follow more than 60 years later, filled newspapers and astounded readers on both sides of the Atlantic But Holmes replied: ‘Yes Charley, you must go.’ His was the 16th death. Only half an hour later, the survivors caught sight of a ship. They were spotted and hauled on board. Several days later, Captain Harris’s jollyboat was also rescued. They were all taken to France, where the rescuing ships were headed. The French authorities showed no interest in prosecuting the crew, who scattered. But when the passengers reached America and recounted their horrific tale, the authorities, under pressure from the Irish expat community, had to act. Alexander Holmes was the only sailor who could be found, so he was put on trial for murder, reduced to ‘manslaughter on the high seas’. The case captivated the public in Britain and America. Would the crew have tried harder to save the passengers had they been wealthy, rather than mostly poor immigrants? How could Holmes, who had risked his life to save young Isabella Edgar, have turned within hours into the ruthless murderer of so many? Why did the slaughter continue for so long? And — the most terrible question of all — were the sailors justified in taking lives to save their own? Holmes’s defence lawyer argued that it was better to save a few lives rather than let everyone perish. The prosecution countered that the killings were neither necessary — the longboat would have stayed afloat anyway — nor just: ‘The law regards the life of one man as good and valuable as that of any other.’ Holmes was found guilty but given only a six-month sentence. No other members of the crew were tried for their role in the murderous affair, not even Captain Harris, who abandoned 31 helpless passengers, including 20 children, to an appalling death.           Their journeys would end in tragic circumstances, crushed up against the rocks with the precious cargo lost and some of the crew members dead. But, no matter the treacherous conditions, every time a ship ran aground off the coast of Cornwall, members of the Gibson family would be there to take photos of the vessel's demise. These ghostly images of shipwrecks were first taken 150 years ago when John Gibson bought his first camera and have now been put together in a collection which is expected to be sold for between £100,000 and £150,000 at an auction next month. History: The Minnehaha was shipwrecked in 1874 as it travelled from Peru to Dublin, it was carrying guano to be used as fertiliser and struck Peninnis Head rocks when the captain lost his way. The ship sank so quickly that some men were drowned in their berths, ten died in total including the captain. Taken by four generations of the family of photographers over a period of 130 years, the 1000 negatives record the wrecks of more than 200 ships and the fate of their passengers, crew and cargo as they travelled from across the world through the notoriously treacherous seas around Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly At the very forefront of early photojournalism, John Gibson and his descendants were determined to be first on the scene when these shipwrecks struck. Each and every wreck had its own story to tell with unfolding drama, heroics, tragedies and triumphs to be photographed and recorded - the news of which the Gibsons would disseminate to the British mainland and beyond. The original handwritten eye-witness accounts as recorded by Alexander and Herbert Gibson in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will be sold alongside the collection of images. Dark: The Norwegian sailing ship the Hansy,was wrecked in November 1911 on the eastern side of the Lizard in Cornwall. Three men were rescued by lifeboat and all of the rest of the passengers managed to escape up onto the rocks. Bad weather: The Bay of Panama was wrecked under Nare Head, near St Keverne, Cornwall during a huge blizzard in March 1898. At the time it was wrecked it was carrying a cargo of Jute, used to make hessian cloth, from Calcutta in India, 18 of those on board died but 19 were rescued. Founder and apprentice: John Gibson (right) started the business after buying his first camera and took on his son Herbert (right) as an apprentice in 1865 The Gibson family passion for photography was passed down through an astonishing four generations from John Gibson, who purchased his first camera 150 years ago. Born in 1827, and a seaman by trade, it is not known how or where John Gibson acquired his first camera at time when photography was typically reserved for the wealthiest in society. However by 1860 he had established himself as a professional photographer in a studio in Penzance. Returning to the Scillies in 1865, he  employed his two sons Alexander and Herbert as apprentices in the business, forging a personal and professional unity which would be passed down through all the generations which followed. Inseparable from his brother until the end, it is said that Alexander almost threw himself into Herbert’s grave at his funeral in 1937. The family’s famous shipwreck photography began in 1869, on the historic occasion of the arrival of the first Telegraph on the Isles of Scilly. At a time when it could take a week for word to reach the mainland from the islands, the Telegraph transformed the pace at which news could travel. At the forefront of early photojournalism, John became the islands’ local news correspondent, and Alexander the telegraphist - and it is little surprise that the shipwrecks were often major news. On the occasion of the wreck of the 3500-ton German steamer, Schiller in 1876 when over 300 people died, the two worked together for days - John preparing newspaper reports, and Alexander transmitting them across the world, until he collapsed with exhaustion. Although they often worked in the harshest conditions, travelling with hand carts to reach the shipwrecks - scrambling over treacherous coastline with a portable dark room, carrying glass plates and heavy equipment - they produced some of the most arresting and emotive photographic works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Crash: The French ship, the Seine was on her way to Falmouth with a cargo of nitrate when she ran into a gale off Scilly on Decermber 28, 1900. She ran ashore in Perran Bay, Perranporth, Cornwall, but thankfully all crew members were rescued with Captain Guimper reported as the last man to leave the ship before she was broken up in the next flood tide. Crash: The German owned 300ft merchant vessel the Cita, sunk after it pierced its hull and ran aground in gale-force winds en route from Southampton to Belfast in March 1997. The mainly Polish crew of the stricken vessel were rescued a few hours after the incident by the RNLI and the wreck remained on the rock ledge for several days before slipping off into deeper water. Generations: When Herbert Gibson died,  the business changed hands to his son James (left) who had assisted him for ten years. Frank (right) left the Isle of Scilly after a family argument and went to learn about new technology which helped advance the business when he returned in 1957 Storm: A French trawler called the Jeanne Gougy pictured being engulfed by waves at Land's End in 1962. It was on its way to fishing grounds on the southern Irish coast from Dieppe in France when it went aground on the north side of Lands End in the early hours of November 3rd. Twelve men including the skipper were lost, swept away by massive waved before they could be rescued. Rex Cowan, a shipwreck hunter and author said: 'This is the greatest archive of the drama and mechanics of shipwreck we will ever see - a thousand images stretching over 130 years, of such power, insight and nostalgia that even the most passive observer cannot fail to feel the excitement or pathos of the events they depict.' Spy author John Le Carre said of the collection: 'We are standing in an Aladdin’s cave where the Gibson treasure is stored, and Frank is its keeper. 'It is half shed, half amateur laboratory, a litter of cluttered shelves, ancient equipment, boxes, printer’s blocks and books. Precious cargo: The Glenbervie, which was carrying a consignment of pianos and high quality spirits crashed into rocks Lowland Point near Coverack, Cornwall, in January 1902 after losing her way in bad weather. The British owned barque was laden with 600 barrels of whisky, 400 barrels of brandy and barrels of rum. All 16 crewmen were saved by lifeboat. 'Many hundreds of plates and thousands of photographs are still waiting an inventory. Most have never seen the light of day. Any agent, publisher or accountant would go into free fall at the very sight of them.' And fellow author John Fowles said: 'Other men have taken fine shipwreck photographs, but nowhere else in the world can one family have produced such a consistently high and poetic standard of work.' The archive will be sold as a single lot in Sotheby’s Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History sale. Lost: The Mildred was traveling from Newport to London when it got stuck in dense fog and hit rocks at Gurnards Head at midnight on the 6th April 1912. Captain Larcombe and his crew of two Irishmen, one Welshman and a Mexican rowed into St. Ives as their ship was destroyed by the waves. Crowded: The Dutch cargo ship Voorspoed pictured surrounded by horses used to help take away the cargo after it was wrecked at Perran Bay, Cornwall in March 1901. All of those on board died in the incident as the ship travelled from to Newfoundland, Canada to Perranporth, Cornwall. Saved: British ship, the City of Cardiff was en route from Le Havre, France, to Wales in 1912 when it was wrecked in Mill Bay near Land's End. All of the crew were rescued Stuck: The steamer City of Cardiff pictured trapped on rocks with steam still coming out of the chimney, it was washed ashore by a strong gale in March 1912 at Nanjizel. The Captain, his wife and son, and the crew were all rescued but the vessel was left a total wreck. Sinking: A British built iron sailing barque, The Cromdale, ran into Lizard Point, the most southerly point of British mainland, in thick fog. The three-masted ship was on a voyage from Taltal, Chile to Fowey, Cornwall with a cargo of nitrates. There were no casualties but within a week the ship had been broken up completely by the sea. THE FAMILY OF EXPERIENCED PHOTOGRAPHERS Apprentice: Alexander Gibson was invited by his father John into the business in 1865 The Gibson family originated from the Isleof Scilly and have 300 years of family history. John Gibson acquired his first camera whilst abroad around 150 years ago when photography was still mainly reserved for the wealthiest members of society. He had to go to sea from a young age to supplement the income from a small shop on St Mary’s run by his widowed mother. Making ends meet on St Mary’s was a constant struggle and he learned to use the camera and set up a photography studio in Penzance. Around 1866 he returned to St Mary’s with his family and he was assisted in his photography by his sons Alexander and Herbert in the studio shed in the back garden of their home. Both Herbert and Alexander learned the art of photography at their father’s knee and Alexander was to become one of the most remarkable characters in Scilly. He had a passion for archaeology, architecture and folk history. He took endless pictures of ruins, prehistoric remains, and artifacts not just in Scilly but all over Cornwall. Herbert by contrast was a quiet man, a competent photographer and a sound businessman. There can be no doubt that without his steadying influence, the business aspect of their photography might not have survived Alexander’s more flamboyant approach. Frank spent some time working for photographers in Cornwall learning about new technology. But Frank returned to Scilly in 1957 and worked in partnership with his father for two years. After this time it was apparent that they could not work together and James retired to Cornwall and sold the business to Frank. Under Frank’s stewardship the business expanded. He produced postcards and sold souvenirs to supplement the photography, and opened another shop. Scilly is always in the news and there is always demand for pictures by the press. James Gibson  was, in fact, the most qualified of all the photographers. He was an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and won various medals and awards through his lifetime. He was an adventurous photojournalist as well as a jobbing photographer. Today, the family runs a souvenir shop which sells books and postcards and they are currently digitising 150 years of photographs.

The Sexual Decadence of Weimar Germany (UPDATE)

 

 

The Sexual Decadence of Weimar Germany  “The decay of moral values in all areas of life—the period of deepest German degradation—coincided exactly with the height of Jewish power in Germany.”   Otto Dix, Metropolis (1928). Berlin in the heyday of the Weimar Republic: a hedonistic hellpit of sexual depravity. No account of the Jewish Question in Germany can be complete without some mention of the tidal wave of sexual immorality that was to engulf the country during the period of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) following World War One. This also happened to be the apogee of Jewish power in Germany. Every single sphere of major influence had now fallen under Jewish control. 1.  THE CULTURAL TAKEOVER OF GERMANY BY THE JEWS  Dr Karl Wiehe, in his Germany and the Jewish Question, is painstaking in the details he provides: Well before 1933 the Jews had taken possession of the film industry even more thoroughly than of the theater. That was understandable, because the earnings in the film industry overshadow the earnings of any other artistic activity…. The biggest step in the direction of the decline of the German cultural life [however] was taken in the field of the light entertainment genre. Here—in the genre of musical comedy and above all in revue and burlesque—frivolity and lasciviousness were to rear their ugly heads. So much so that during these years Berlin was quite correctly considered the most immoral city in the world. It was Jews who introduced this pornographic “art form” to Germany, a debased genre completely unknown before the Great War, and so it is the Jews who can be held responsible for the general decline in morals. The Jewish sexologists Ivan Bloch and Magnus Hirschfeld became the representatives of “sex research” camouflaged as science—a bogus science that was merely an excuse for pornography and propaganda designed to destroy the institute of marriage and the sanctity of the family.  [2] Wiehe provides the following useful facts and statistics: In 1931, over 60 percent of German films were produced by Jews and 82 percent of the film scripts were written by Jewish writers, though Jews made up less than 1 percent of the German population (0.90%). A quick look at the names of directors, producers, stage managers, actors, script writers and critics, “revealed everywhere an overwhelming preponderance of Jews.” Alexander Szekely, German brothel in Ghent A cursory survey of the film titles, Wiehe tells us, shows us that the Jews had only one thing on the brain: sex. Here are some typical titles: “Moral und Sinnlichkeit” (Morals and Sensuality); “Was kostet Liebe?” (What is the Price of Love); “Wenn ein Weib den Weg verliert” (When a Woman loses her Way);“Prostitution” (Prostitution); “Sündige Mutter” (Sinful Mama); “Das Buch des Lasters” (The Book of Vices). “The sensational titles correspond to the sleazy contents,” Wiehe complains. “All wallow in filth and display with cynical frankness the vilest scenes of sexual perversion.” [3] Light entertainment (revue/burlesque) was a Jewish innovation. The revue theaters, all concentrated within great cities such as Berlin, were owned and run almost exclusively by Jews. Shows consisted of little more than excuses for sexual titillation involving the display of the female form in lascivious dances that were to degenerate later into striptease and scenes of public masturbation. “In these revues,” Wiehe notes indignantly, “the uninhibited sex drive surrendered itself to disgusting orgies. All life was reduced to a common denominator of lust and its satisfaction. Chastity and self-discipline were mocked as old-fashioned prejudices.” The Jews had managed, in the space of a mere fourteen years, to bring about a major “transvaluation of values” [4] in Weimar Germany. The vices of the past were now its virtues. The only vice that remained was chastity. A glance at the revue titles is again sufficient:  “Zieh dich aus” (Get Undressed); “Tausend nackte Frauen” (One Thousand Naked Women); “Die Sünden der Welt” (The Sins of the World); “Häuser der Liebe” (The Houses of Love); “Streng Verboten!” (Strictly Forbidden!);  “Sündig und Süss” (Sweet and Sinful). [5] Finally, there was the rich field of sexology: a new science consisting largely of dubious “case histories” purporting to reveal the depraved sexual habits of various anonymous patients. In order to give an air of academic respectability and erudition to these masturbatory fantasies—thrilling adventure stories involving necrophilia, bestiality and handkerchief fetishism—the more exciting details were often given in vulgar Latin “in order to exclude the lay reader.” [6] Otto Dix, The Salon, 1921 Berlin prostitutes awaiting the pleasures of the evening However, it was not long before the Latin was diligently translated into the vernacular for the benefit of the unlatined lay reader, thus defeating the purpose of the prim “schoolmaster’s Latin”. Wiehe reels off a long list of Jewish sexologistswho he claims were in the forefront of writing such salacious treatises that were no more than pornography masquerading as science. Drs Magnus Hirschfeld [7] and Ivan Bloch [8] were the star writers in this field, their books still read avidly today by a gullible public hungry for details of the bizarre, the kinky and the perverse. Drs Ludwig Lewy-Lenz, Leo Schidrowitz, Franz Rabinowitsch, Georg Cohen, and Albert Eulenburg are some of the names Wiehe mentions. Here are some of their depressing titles: “Sittengeschichte des Lasters” (The History of Perversions); “Sittengeschichte des Schamlosigkeit” (The History of Shamelessness); “Bilderlexikon der Erotic” (Picture Lexicon of Eroticism); “Sittengischichte des Geheime und Verbotene” (The History of the Secret and the Forbidden). And here are some of the titles published by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin [9]: Aphrodisiacs, Prostitution, Sexual Catastrophes, Sexual Pathology, The Perverted. Wiehe describes all these books as “the filthy publications of these pseudo-scientists”, all of them written by Jewish authors and published by Jewish publishers. He continues in the same acerbic vein: These books were allegedly supposed to be scientific treatises, their ostensible purpose being to “educate” the broad masses about the dangers of sexual excesses. Under the guise of science, however, they speculated in the lust and lower instincts of their audience. Criminals, prostitutes and homosexuals took center stage in their repertoire. One looks in vain for any known non-Jewish “sexual scientist”! [10] It was in Weimar Germany, long before Hannibal Lecter, that the serial killer was to become an iconic figure — a source of secret fantasies and frissons. Wiehe points out that masturbation, hitherto a hole-in-corner vice, began to be shamelessly promoted for the first time in Weimar Germany by Jewish-run organizations. He mentions Dr Max Hodan, Jewish medical officer for Berlin, and ticks him off for circulating a booklet recommending regular masturbation for the working classes. It is worth noting that one of the world’s worst serial killers, Peter Kürten, committed all his crimes in Germany during the 1925-1930 period. This was of course the  heyday of the Weimar Republic when the German people lay completely under Jewish domination and when the first dress rehearsal for the later Sexual Revolution of the 1960s was arguably being run. Significantly, when asked what his primary motive for murder was, Kürten replied: “to strike back at an oppressive society.” [11] This was a society in which the serial killer was to become a popular icon, enough to create a whole genre of sensational sex crime literature. (See book title on left).  [12] 2.  THE DESCENT INTO SEXUAL DEPRAVITY British historian Sir Arthur Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutesoutside the doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. He adds: “Most of them—the night clubs and vice resorts—were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.” [13] Arriving in Berlin during the hyperinflation crisis (1923), Klaus Mann—son the great German novelist Thomas Mann—remembered walking past a group of dominatrices: Some of them looked like fierce Amazons, strutting in high boots made of green, glossy leather. One of them brandished a supple cane and leered at me as I passed by. ‘Good evening, madam,’ I said. She whispered in my ear, ‘Want to be my slave? Costs only six billions and a cigarette.’ [14] Georg Grosz, Before Sunrise. Prostitutes and their clients in the red-light district… this is how they actually dressed and paraded themselves in the garish, lamp-lit streets. 10-year-old children turned tricks in the railway stations. A group of 14-year-old Russian girls, refugees from the Red Terror in Stalin’s Communist slaughter house, managed to make a lucrative living in Berlin as dominatrices. Little girls were freely available for sex not only in child brothels and pharmacies but could be ordered by telephone and delivered to clients by taxi, like takeaway meals. Particularly bizarre were mother-and-daughter teams offering their services to the same client simultaneously. Mel Gordon writes: “One French journalist, Jean Galtier-Boissière, described, in sickly pornographic detail, the creeping horror of feeling a nine-year-old girl’s tiny, but proficient, fingers stroking his upper thigh while the broken-toothed mother covered his face with hot sucking kisses.” [15] In Mel Gordon’s Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, we enter a depressingly sordid milieu akin to the subterranean world of the sewer rat: a world which owed its existence in large part to German Jewry. Without Jewish money and influence, such a world would never have come into being. Nor was there anything the Germans could do to extricate themselves from this artificially created hothouse of erotomania and sexual deviance in which they now found themselves ensnared. There were no fewer than 17 different prostitute types in this Jew-created brothel city: eight outdoor types and nine indoor ones, each with their specialities and slang terminology. Outdoor prostitutes:  (1) Kontroll Girls: legal prostitutes checked for venereal disease.  (2) Half-Silks: part-time amateurs with day jobs as office workers, secretaries and shopgirls; evening and weekend workers.  (3)Grasshoppers: lowly streetwalkers who gave handjobs and standup sex in dark alleys.  (4) Nuttes: Boyish teenage girls who worked for “pocket money” after school without their parents’ knowledge.  (5) Boot-girls: dominas (or dominatrices) in shiny patent leather boots who offered to stamp all over their clients.  (6)Tauentzien girls: Chic mother-and-daughter teams, fashionably dressed, who offered their services to men who wanted threesomes.  (7) Münzis: Heavily pregnant women who waited under lampposts (very expensive, since they offered an erotic speciality). (8)  Gravelstones: hideous hags with missing limbs, hunchbacks, midgets, and women with various deformities. “The most common German word for them was Kies. In other accounts, they were referred to as Steinhuren.” [16] Otto Dix, Three Wenches.These prostitutes were willing to work individually or in a team. Indoor prostitutes:  (1) Chontes: Low-grade Jewish prostitutes, mostly Polish, who picked up their clients in railway stations.  (2) Fohses (French argot for “vaginas”): Elegant females who discreetly advertised in magazines and newspapers as private masseuses and manicurists.  (3) Demi-castors(or “half-beavers”): Young women from good families who worked in high-class houses in the late afternoons and early evenings.  (4) Table-ladies: Ravishingly beautiful escorts of exotic appearance who came with the reserved table in an exclusive nightclub. Clients had to be fabulously rich in order to afford the cultured conversation of these high-class call girls who accompanied the caviar and champagne and who later unveiled their charms in a sumptuously furnished chamber of delights. (5) Dominas: Leather-clad women, athletic and Amazonian, who specialized in whipping and erotic humiliation. They were often found in lesbian nightclubs which also catered for kinky males.  (6) Minettes (French for “female cats”): Exclusive call girls who offered S&M fantasy scenes, foot worship, bondage, and enforced transvestism. They worked in top class hotels.  (7) Race-horses: Masochistic prostitutes who let themselves be whipped in “schoolrooms” or “dungeons” liberally supplied with instruments of torture. Clients were carefully screened to make sure they didn’t go too far.  (8) ‘Medicine’: Child prostitutes (age 12-16), so called because they were prescribed as “medicine” in pharmacies. All  the client needed to do was tell the pharmacist how many years he had suffered from his ailment (e.g., 12), without mentioning what ailment it was, and  request the color of the pill he preferred (e.g., red). He was then escorted to a cubicle where his “medicine” awaited him: a 12-year-old redhead. (9) Telephone-girls (often billed as “virgins”): expensive child prostitutes (ages 12-17) ordered by telephone like a takeaway meal; the nymphettes were delivered by limousine or taxi. [17] Luigi Barzini, in his social memoir The Europeans, describes the saturnalian scene in the Tingel-Tangels or sleazy bordellos of sex-crazed Berlin in the 1920s, the Golden Age of the Jews: I saw pimps offering anything to anybody: little boys, little girls, robust young men, libidinous women, animals. The story went the rounds that a male goose whose neck you cut at just the right ecstatic  moment would give you the most delicious frisson of all—as it allowed you to enjoy sodomy, bestiality, homosexuality, necrophilia and sadism at one stroke. Gastronomy too, as one could eat the goose afterwards.  [18] In October 1923, when one US dollar could buy 4.2 billion marks and six wheelbarrows of banknotes could barely buy a loaf of bread, it was said that “the most exquisite blow job to be had in Berlin never cost an American tourist more than 30 cents.” [19] “Berlin nightlife, my word, the world hasn’t seen anything like it!” Klaus Mann, son of the great German author Thomas Mann, enthused sardonically. “We used to have a first-class army. Now we have first class perversions.” [20] German author Erich Kästner, writing of Weimar Berlin, was to reflect on the topography of the soul sickness that had now taken possession of the once proud city: “In the east there is crime; in the center the con men hold sway; in the north resides misery, in the west lechery; and everywhere—the decline.” [21] German Jewish author Stephan Zweig has much to say about homosexuality, pointing out that even in Ancient Rome—where fourteen of the first fifteen Roman emperors were gay—the degree of drunken depravity and public shamelessness (“pervert balls”)  was far less shocking than in Weimar Berlin: Bars, amusement parks, honky-tonks sprang up like mushrooms. Along the entire Kurfürstendamm powdered and rouged men sauntered and they were not all professionals; every high school boy wanted to earn some money and in the dimly lit bars one might see government officials and men of the world of finance tenderly courting drunken sailors without any shame. Even the Rome of Suetonius had never known such orgies as the pervert balls of Berlin, where hundreds of men costumed as women and hundreds of women as men danced under the benevolent eyes of the police. In the collapse of all values a kind of madness gained hold. Young girls bragged proudly of their perversion; to be sixteen and still under suspicion of virginity would have been a disgrace.” [22] THE CITY OF DREADFUL JOY Weimar Berlin, 1928 3.  CONCLUSION: WEIMAR GERMANY AS A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE SUBSEQUENT SEXUAL REVOLUTION OF THE 1960s My own impression, though I could well be mistaken here, is that Weimar Germany can be seen as a trial run or dress rehearsal for the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, a revolution in attitudes and behavior that was to convulse America and then spread like a moral virus to Europe and the rest of the world. Recollect that it was in Germany during the Weimar period—in 1923 to be exact—that the Institut für Sozialforschung was set up at the University of Frankfurt. Financed by the Argentian Jew Felix Weil, this was later to become the infamous Frankfurt School. [23] It is my own hypothesis that the Germans were to be the initial guinea pigs of these Cultural Marxists [24], all of them initially Jewish apart from Habermas. These were revolutionaries intent on complete social control by the imposition of their Marxist worldview on the rest of society. It is self-evident that there is no other way to get control of a society with strong moral values than to weaken those values. The formula is simple: destroy the belief system on which that society is founded, especially its religion and its traditional codes of honor and decency. Promote godlessness and a philosophy of despair. To put it in even plainer language: reduce men to beasts if you wish to control them. It was George Lukács [25], one of the founding fathers of the Frankfurt School, who had called for “a culture of pessimism and a world abandoned by God.” [26] And it was one of their most fanatical ideologues, Willi Munzenberg [27], who had said he wanted to turn the world upside down and make life a hell on earth. His exact words: We must organize the intellectuals and use them TO MAKE WESTERN CIVILIZATION STINK! Only then, after they have CORRUPTED ALL ITS VALUES AND MADE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat. [28, emphasis added] With Jewish intellectuals like this at the helm, doing their utmost to promote moral anarchy and create an Orwellian dystopia, is it any wonder that the Germans went helter-skelter down the slippery slope and ended up where they did? In America the Cultural Marxists were to apply a variation of their Weimar techniques, but refined and honed to a high degree. This time, they would use multiculturalism as a weapon of mass destruction in addition to moral corruption. They would flood the country with immigrants, legal as well as illegal. They would turn race against race (engineered ethnic conflict), parent against child (attack on authority), and man against woman (radical feminism). Above all, they would teach the non-White races to regard the White race as the ultimate evil: “the cancer of human history”, to quote Jewish feminist Susan Sontag. [29] The above comments are admittedly controversial and will elicit anger in many quarters. For this I apologize. My purpose is simply to give voice to an urgent and widespread perception. Not to be able to say what many people increasingly believe is clearly undesirable. What did the cultural Marxists learn from Weimar Germany? They learned that the Sexual Revolution, in order to succeed, had to be a slow and gradual process. “Modern forms of subjection,” the Frankfurt School had learned, “are marked by mildness.” [30] Weimar had failed because the pace had been too frenetic. People were aware they were being corrupted. That was fatal. To corrupt a nation effectively one must make sure that the descent into degradation is an infinitely slow and imperceptible process, one miniscule step at a time—just as those who wish to cook frogs alive in a saucepan, reducing them to a state of comatose stupor, are advised to place them in cold water and boil them to death as slowly as possible. [31] Lest I be accused of antisemitism by this portrayal of the systematic sexual corruption of the German people at the hands of their Jewish masters—a classic instance of social engineering practiced on an entire population—let me allow a well-known and respected Jewish authority on the Weimar era to have the final word. He is Dr Manfred Reifer, and he is writing in a prestigious Jewish publication: Whilst large sections of the German nation were struggling for the preservation of their race, we Jews filled the streets of Germany with our vociferations. We supplied the press with articles on the subject of its Christmas and Easter and administered to its religious beliefs in the manner we considered suitable. We ridiculed the highest ideals of the German nation and profaned the matters which it holds sacred.”  —  Dr Manfred Reifer, in the German Jewish magazine Czernowitzer Allegemeine Zeitung,September 1933 In the same month those words were written, September 1933, Adolf Hitler removed every single Jew from positions of influence in the mass media: from the fields of literature, art, music, journalism, the cinema, and popular entertainment in general [32]. The influence that the Jews had exerted on the German psyche was to be regarded henceforth, rightly or wrongly, as pernicious. And Kulturbolschewismus, or “Bolshevik culture”, a derogatory term for Jewish culture itself, became synonymous with moral anarchy and sexual decadence. *            *            * ENDNOTES [1]        Dr Friedrich Karl Wiehe, Germany and the Jewish Question.  Published in 1938 in Berlin by  the Institute for Studies of the Jewish Question, this eight-part booklet runs to approximately 23,500 words in the English translation. As I have quoted this important work extensively both here and in my forthcoming 4-part essay How the Jews Rose to World Power, I felt it would be advisable to paraphrase/translate the defective Germanic English of the English version completely, quoting the original translation only when the English was free from grammatical and orthographical  errors. Readers who know German are invited to consult the original German essay here: Deutschland und die Judenfrage. [2]       Wiehe, Ibid. [3]       Wiehe, Ibid. [4]       “transvaluation of values” [5]       Wiehe, Ibid. [6]       Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis [7]       Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). The first advocate for homosexual and transgender rights  and himself a homosexual, Hirschfeld figured out that there were 64 different types of male, ranging from the extremely masculine heterosexual male to the extremely feminine homosexual male. Whether there are also 64 different types of females, ranging from the extremely feminine heterosexual female to the extremely masculine butch lesbian, is not clear. Described as the “the Einstein of Sex”, Hirschfeld thought abortion was a good thing and approved of miscegenation and the mongrelization of the White race. [8]       Ivan Bloch (1872-1922).  Like Hirschfeld, Bloch was a Jewish homosexual whose main interest in life was sexual perversion. Author of the 3-volume Handbuch der gesamten Sexualwissenschaft in Einzeldarstellungen (“Handbook of Sexology in its Entirety Presented in Separate Studies”), Bloch was an expert on sadism and helped to popularize the work of the Marquis de Sade. He apparently discovered the manuscript of de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom and published it under a pseudonym in 1904, presumably pocketing the royalties. [9]      The Institute for Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft). Founded in 1919 in Berlin, the Institute was housed in a villa purchased by Hirschfeld not far from the Reichstag building. It housed his immense library of sex books, most of them pornographic, and offered the public advice on their sex problems (“medical consultations”). People from around Europe visited the Institute, including the homosexual duo Auden and Isherwood, “to gain a clearer understanding of their sexuality.” (Wikipedia).  The Institute, which encouraged “educational” visits from school children, included a Museum of Sex full of pornographic pictures, dildos, “masturbation machines”, and other curiosities of a similar nature. In May 1933, after the Nazis had come to power, the Institute was attacked and thousands of its pornographic books and erotic artifacts destroyed in a “bonfire of the vanities” — this event later being portrayed by Jewish interests as a tragic loss to civilization, comparable only to the burning of the Great Library at Alexandria in 645 AD. [10]      Wiehe, Ibid. [11]       Peter Kurten, “to strike back at an oppressive society.” [12]      An example: Marina Tatar’s Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. [13]      Sir Arthur Bryant, Unfinished Victory (1940), pp. 144-145 [14]      Mel Gordon, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, p.39 [15]      Mel Gordon, Ibid., p.43 [16]      Mel Gordon, in an email to this author (1 March 2013). [17]      Mel Gordon, Ibid., pp.28-32 [18]      Quoted in Stephen Lemons, Paradise regained: Weimar Berlin’s depraved, sin-filled nights tantalize the imagination anew in Mel Gordon’s “Voluptuous Panic”. [19]     Stephen Lemons, Ibid.  If 30 cents for a blowjob was considered a bargain for the American tourist in Weimar Germany, it is of interest to note that the blowjob rate for sex tourists in Moldova today is considerably lower—only  20 cents a pop. We learn this from a book originally published in Hebrew in Israel (In Foreign Parts: Trafficking in Women in Israel, by Ilana Hammerman. Am Oved. 199pp). “The local rate for sex services at the Chisinau  train station,” we are told, “is about NIS 0.70 for a blowjob.” (Quoted in “Land of Filth and Honey”, by Eli Shai, Jerusalem Post, November 5, 2004).  0.70 New Israeli shekels works out to 20 cents. Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, where the average income is US $300 per month and 20 percent of the population live in abject poverty on $3 per day, is a favorite destination for European and Israeli sex tourists, especially for pedophiles. Chisinau is the capital of Moldova, and it is at its railway station that gaunt, hollow-eyed children—some of them as young as 7—line up to offer their services to the incoming sex tourists. (Seehere). [20]     Klaus Mann, The Turning Point (1942), quote. [21]      Erich Kästner, quoted in “Institute for the study of western civilization: the twentieth century. Lecture 9: Weimar Culture.” [22]     Quoted in Columbia University Press review of Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era, edited by Noah Isenberg [23]     The Frankfurt School: Wikipedia. For an alternative and more dissident viewpoint, see The Frankfurt School: Metapedia and its numerous links. [24]     Readers who wish to know more about the philosophical milieu of modernity—i.e., the cultural swamp of sexual bolshevism in which the benighted masses are forced to flounder today—are advised to make a careful study of the following eight core articles: (1)   Arnaud de Lassus’s The Frankfurt School: Cultural Revolution (2)  Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of Critique, Chapter 5 (3)  William S. Lind, What is Cultural Marxism? (4)  William S. Lind, Who Stole our Culture? (5) Timothy Matthews, The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to Corrupt.  (Or my own shorter adaption of this with extended commentary, Satan’s Secret Agents: The Frankfurt School and its Evil Agenda.) (6)  Michael Minnicino, The Frankfurt School and ‘Political Correctness’ (7) Cultural Marxism: (Metapedia). (8) Sexual Bolshevism: (Metapedia). [25]     Georges Lukács, Wikipedia. [26]     Timothy Matthews, The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to Corrupt. [27]     Willi Munzenberg, Wikipedia.  See also Sean McMeekin’s The Red Millionaire: A political biography of Willi Münzenberg, where Münzenberg  is described as “the perpetrator of some of the most colossal lies of the modern age…. He helped to unleash a plague of moral blindness upon the world from which we have still not recovered.” [28]     Lasha Darkmoon, The Plot Against Art  (Part 1). [29]     “The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Ballanchine  ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.”  — Susan Sontag, Partisan Review,   Winter 1967, p. 57. This infamous quote, once cited in the Wikipedia article on Sontag, has recently been removed. [30]     Arnaud de Lassus, The Frankfurt School: Cultural Revolution. [31]      Boiling Frog (Wikipedia) [32]   The Holocaust Timeline

With this sexual revolution taking place, the Weimar Republic was basically establishing reasons for Nazi Germany: George Grosz “The numerous copies in multiple editions of [Psychopathia Sexualisand Sexual Aberrations] revealed an unintended secondary readership: other perverts. The salacious case histories of sadists, fetishists, Algolagnists, flagellants, and the like, formed a novel province in Weimar pornography. “Under the guise of psychological research, graphic photographs and illustrations were added to still other strange biographical confessions and fantasies. Berliners seeking stronger erotic sensations and instruction for weird sex scenarios merely had to peruse Galante journals for the current ‘scientific’ offerings. Virtually every deviant practice had a layman’s society and private publishing arm. “One ‘physician,’ Ernst Schertel, headed a hypnotic ‘Dream theater’ and several book clubs devoted to whipping and buttock fetishism. “Schertel’s serialized periodicals explored the dark fantasy games and dramatics of animal lovers, worshippers of obese Dominas, sadistic teachers, bare-hand flagellants, incestuous necklas fetishists, urine drinkers, bondage freaks, high-heel stompers… “German authorities attempted to shut down his Parthenon-Verlag in 1931 and Wilhelm Reich publicly opposed the perverse Dream Theater. But Schertel, working under foreign pseudonyms like Dr. F. Grandpierre, outwitted them all.” Of course Gordon plays down the participation of Jews in the business, saying that while the Jews “dominated certain cultural fields in pre-Nazi Berlin, especially publishing, law, medicine, theatre, graphic art, cinema, music, architecture, and popular entertainment, relatively few Jews were still involved in common prostitution with the exception of two picturesque types: Kupplerinnen (procuresses) and Chontes—zaftig whores from southern Poland.” It is understandable that Gordon is trying to dismiss a body of scholarship, since that would eventually lead to a reevaluation of at least one reason why Nazi Germany was completely against Jewish revolutionary activity. Gordon tells us that Wilhelm Reich, another Jewish sexual revolutionary whose work we have repeatedly examined in the past, believed that Hirschfeld’s work would advance the cause of fascism.[59] Gordon also tells us that as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, “the Institute of Sexology was one of his first targets.”[60] Nazi Germany quickly placed the graphic paintings of George Grosz, Jankel Adler, Rudolf Bauer, Cesar Klein, Max Pechstein, Ludwig Meidner, Otto Dix, Rudolf Schlichter, among dozens of others, under the heading of “degenerate art” because of their pornographic imageries. Throughout his own work, Gordon tells us how the Weimar Republic sought to refashion Germany through sexual revolution. He argues, “Prostitution lost its exact meaning when tens of thousands were involved in complex sex attachments, all of a commercial nature. The vaguely Wilhelmian underpinning of middle-class Berlin slowly cracked and, over time, collapsed. “Venereal disease, not flesh-peddling, threatened the immediate well-being of the capital. Syphilis and gonorrhea spread at an alarming rate. The city fathers, once proud watchdogs of the moral code, turned to Berlin’s public officials and social workers for help… “Public and habitual masturbation, manifestations of shell-shock, grew to epic proportions, shaking morals as well as becoming an embarrassing disciplinary problem. In the countryside, the brutal corralling and rape of foreign women, usually peasant girls, by German recruits was reported with some frequency in the early dispatches… “Roman-style orgies became synonymous with Etappe life…Sex, the historical lubricant for rallying a nation to armed conflict, was destroying the Kaiser’s war. “A dizzying panic overtook Berlin in October 1919. Not since Paris in the 1860s had a European city experienced the Edenic flush of total erotic freedom. “With prostitution and all-night dancing already accepted features of contemporary Berlin life, what else could be added. Drugs and over-the-counter pornography appeared first… “The most sought-after pornographic postcards and films had been imported from Paris and Budapest before the war. Now Berlin was patriotically producing its own brands in oversized graphic portfolios, ‘bachelor’ Galante magazines, photo-sheets, and smokers…   “The sweet qualities of Gallic porno were supplanted in Berlin studios by the psychopathic scenarios from Krafft-Ebing. Forced, intergenerational, scatological, and obsessive fetish sex prevailed…The distinct erotica of Berlin was sold in specialized bookstores and here and there on the street… “Wild sex and all-night antics could be made anywhere. In private flats, hotel rooms, and rented halls, drug parties and nude ‘Beauty Evenings’ were constantly announced and held. “A gala atmosphere enveloped 1919 and 1920…In postwar Paris, a traveler could engage the services of a streetwalker for five or six dollars; but during the inflation in Berlin, five dollars could buy a month’s worth of carnal delights…Sex was everywhere and obtainable on the cheap… “Child prostitution was a searing social issue long before and after the inflation era. It involved both female and male children, sex-workers’ progeny, runaways, and troublesome adolescents. There seemed to be almost no bottom age for those seeking physical companionship with children. And virtually no end to willing girls and boys.” What was even more troublesome during the Weimar era was that sexual magic was used as a form of revival; it was viewed as a form of religion and prayer.[62] Gordon states that sex magic was used as a “bodily manifestation of lost esoteric wisdom, techniques of Gnostic faith, flipped transmogrifications of flesh, even divine rungs for ultimate human salvation…Sexuality was the fuse and hidden spring of Weimar Germany’s newest dogmas.”[63] The early part of Europe in the twentieth century was affected by the revival of occultism, with many occult groups and fringe movements springing up in order to revive old sexual practices and rituals. Occult groups seeking sexual magic were ubiquitous.[64] A year before Hitler came to power, “Berlin alone supported the flashy productions, seances, and publications of 20,000 itinerant telepathists, wonder-working healers, palm readers, storefront clairvoyants, Hollow-Earth adherents, alchemists, stage mesmerists, doomsday prophets, Gypsy-clad fortunetellers, and trans-performers.”[65] It must also remembered that it was a time where black magicians such as Aleister Crowley roamed Europe with their sexual rituals in order to gain entrance into what Crowley would later refer to as the New Aeon.[66] It has been argued by some that Crowley was widely involved in the sex industry in the Weimar Republic.[67] All of these satanic sex ceremonies were done as a form of blasphemy in Berlin, where some of the participants also took drugs in order to enhance their sexual magic.[68] In Gordon’s words, there were “dionysian-like festivities,” where hymns to Pan were chanted and a goat was sacrificed to begin the sexual ceremony.[69] Scholar John Alexander Williams tells us that “By 1930 an estimated one hundred thousand people took part in organizations that were either dedicated wholeheartedly to nudism or practiced it regularly. The movement of some eighty thousand hard-core nudists also became more ideologically diverse, splitting into bourgeois and socialist sectors. An umbrella organization for bourgeois nudists, the Reich Federation for Free Body Culture, was founded in Leipzig in 1924.”[70] Yet by 1932, the power of sexual eroticism began to decline during the rise of Nazi Germany—most pornographic publications were banned and nudist clinics such as Koch’s were shut down. By 1933, Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology was ransacked and vandalized by SA-men and students. Archival files were destroyed, and thousands of books and manuscripts were burned. In Gordon’s own words: “Berlin’s sex industry contracted and nearly disappeared throughout the summer months of 1933.”       Kate Beckinsale is a timeless beauty. She was born in on July 26, 1973 in Finsbury Park, London. The English actress is known best for her roles in Pearl Harbor, Underworld, Van Helsing, and The Aviator. Here is a collection of her most stunning shots.       A snapshot of Berlin between the world wars includes nudist magazines devoted entirely to children; glittering cabaret shows parading acres of sweaty, perfumed female flesh; and an endless supply of cafes, bars and private clubs catering to gay men, transvestites, lesbians and sadomasochists. Inflation is so rampant that the local paper currency is good only for toilet paper. Cocaine, morphine and opium are peddled on every street corner. And more than 120,000 desperate women and girls of every age and stripe sell their bodies for a pittance, including mother-daughter prostitution teams and brazen streetwalkers well into the third trimester of pregnancy. Such was the glory that was Weimar Berlin, a burg American writer Ben Hecht called the “prime breeding ground of evil.” Most are familiar with its reputation as a crime-ridden sewer of frenetic debauchery through period classics such as Fritz Lang’s “M” and Josef von Sternberg’s “The Blue Angel,” stage productions of Brecht’s “The Three penny Opera” or screenings of Bob Fosse’s lurid, leggy movie musical, “Cabaret.” However, very few of our assumptions about that decadent interwar wonderland are based on actual documentation of Berlin’s whorish past. And most of it has been filtered through the arid prose of academia. Now with Mel Gordon’s new tome, “Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin,” connoisseurs of carnal excess have the next best thing to a time machine with which to visit that era of blissfully morbid hedonism. Drawing from his vast collection of pre-Nazi Berlin memorabilia, Gordon, a professor of theater at UC-Berkeley, has assembled an Encyclopedia Britannica of Weimar smut. This 267-page omnibus of Babylon-on-the-Spree’s demimonde is full of antique pornography, guidebooks, magazine illustrations, board games, photos of Rube Goldberg-like masturbation devices and priceless ephemera from bygone restaurants and pubs. Gordon says his massive, wallet-busting collection began as part of a job assignment from the Goethe Institute, a program supported by the German government to promote German language and culture. “Back in 1994, I got a grant from them to do a cabaret extravaganza in San Francisco starring Nina Hagen,” recalls Gordon. “I decided to do a real, three-ring Weimar production based on the life of Anita Berber, the great sex goddess/flapper of the age. We had a lot to go on, research-wise, except the visuals. I went to the library, and I was amazed to find nothing except old George Grosz and Otto Dix paintings and some rather tame photos which had been reprinted endlessly.”

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