War Primer. Bertolt Brecht
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Название: War Primer
Автор: Bertolt Brecht
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9781784782092
isbn:
They were the sons of fire, not of the light.
They came from where? They came out of the darkness.
Where did they go? Into eternal night.
Searchlight display
We reproduce a picture from Associated Press, Berlin, showing a German fighter plane caught in English searchlights.
What you see here, caught in your night defences
These steel and glass cocoons for killing people
With tons of bombs, are just the consequences
For all, and not the causes of the evil.
British Bombers over Berlin
In late summer 1940 the RAF mounted several raids on Hamburg, Bremen and other major German towns of industrial and military importance. The British bombed Berlin for the first time on 10/11 September. The picture shows a house in Berlin after a British raid.
Stop searching, woman: you will never find them
But, woman, don’t accept that Fate is to blame.
Those murky forces, woman, that torment you
Have each of them a face, address and name.
You see me here, eating a simple stew
Me, slave to no desire, except for one:
World conquest. That is all I want. From you
I have but one request: give me your sons.
Suffer the old women to come unto me
That they may glimpse, before their graves close o’er them
The man their sons obeyed so faithfully
As long as he had graves left open for them.
On 10 December Hitler gave one of his big speeches in an arms factory near Berlin. Our picture shows the chancellor and supreme commander of the armed forces on the podium, to his left the leader of the Labour Front, Dr Robert Ley, and Propaganda Minister Dr Goebbels.
Promising Socialism, there he stands.
Listen: a New Age will be proclaimed.
Behind him, see the work of your own hands:
Great cannon, silent. And at you they’re aimed.
The saddler I, who helped the Junker scum
To get back in their seat. I’d no excuse
But let them buy me for a princely sum
From paupers’ savings. And escaped the noose.
I am the butcher-clown in this concern.
The Iron Hermann, every time a winner
A Reich Marshal, policeman and thief in turn:
Give me your hand. But, first, best count your fingers.
I am ‘the doctor’, I doctor what gets printed.
It may be your world, but I have my say.
So what? Its history gets reinvented.
Even my club foot seems a fake today.
‘Joseph, I’m told you’re saying it’s a fact
I loot things.’ – ‘Hermann, looting’s not for you.
Who’d grudge you what you want? They’d have more tact.
And if I said it, who’d believe it’s true?’
O swan song! ‘Never seek to question me!’
O pilgrims’ choir! O fiery magic trick!
Song of the Rhine gold on an empty belly!
That’s what I’d call the Bayreuth Republic.
Here’s this stone horse outside the Chancellery
Who gazes glumly at the gloomy future.
‘What’s wrong then, horse?’ ‘My Leader had me try
His eight-year treatment, and I feel no better.’
German Churches on Wheels.The Catholic Church has 38.
Berlin, Wednesday.
According to reports from Catholic circles, the Catholic Church now has 38 churches on wheels. These consist of little altars mounted on motor vehicles so that mass can be offered to isolated and inaccessible villages. A further dozen of these mobile churches are on order, to reach – among others – remote army barracks. In general, the padre himself drives his own mobile church.
A happy headline: God is on the move!
Hitler pushed on, and God could not keep up.
Well, such is war, let’s hope God doesn’t lose
Should he too find his oil’s about to stop.
Ten countries lie prostrate beneath my tread
My own among them. And the bloody trace
Left by my boot has turned the country red
From Mülheim an СКАЧАТЬ