May 20, 1944
Introduction to the content
The official Nazi-controlled press claims – delusionally – that German opportunities for victory are numerous and describes peace talks as unnecessary because of the myriad positive outcomes still possible for German military victory. There’s no need to engage in peace negotiations. Curt Bloch believes that the German people do indeed desire peace but don’t have the power to make it happen as long as the Nazis are in power. The swastika must be overthrown, they must “oust the big wigs,” that’s Germany’s last chance.
An article explains Hitler’s infallibility without irony. He is infinitely wise and what he says goes. He cannot – nor should he – tolerate being contradicted with a “no” or a “but.” The lyric Bloch creates acknowledges this as the view, and in the refrain, Bloch sings There is no ‘but’ and no ‘no’. Hitler does not tolerate dissent nor does he respond to the suffering and hunger of the population. Instead he demands additional sacrifices for armaments to subjugate other countries. Slowly those who followed the Führer begin to have doubts about his wisdom.
The German dictator is also the focus of the poem The Painter. Bloch is dispirited by the lack of new events in the war, so turns his attention to Hitler himself. He recounts how as a young man, Hitler was not accepted for admission to the General Painting School of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Curt Bloch would like him to receive recognition for his talent as a sketch artist who painted a beautiful future for Germany that has instead brought nothing but “much sorrow and suffering and pain.” Now people wish he had never become the “Leader of Germania” and had stuck to his palette. “Soon the painter will die, and we will finally be free.”
A newspaper report from May 1, 1944, reports on awards given to “Pioneers of Labor.” Curt Bloch describes the honorees as “exploiters and oppressors in Adolf’s beautiful wonder state.” He calls out Albert Vögler (1877–1945), the CEO of the world’s second-largest steel conglomerate at the time, and Hermann Röchling (1872–1955), an influential mining magnate and a close confidant of Adolf Hitler as “pioneers of evil,” who weakened workers rights and plunged them into hunger, poverty and unemployment. The Nazis (National Socialists) claimed to protect the people from the dangers of communism but – in fact – they are fascists “who strangle welfare, freedom, life.” “How long will Germany endure their criminal tyranny?”
In the fifth and final poem of this edition, Curt Bloch demonstrates his visionary abilities – or at least that he’s got good intel and is a decent analyst of the current situation. Two and a half weeks before the Allied landing in Normandy, he publishes the hit song The D-Day in this OWC edition. The upcoming event evokes different moods depending on the nationality: the Germans depict the British attitude as nervous, living in fear that the whole affair will end in tragedy, Eisenhower (the Americans) seem hesitant. Bloch is convinced that the Allies’ invasion will bring down the Nazis. Indeed, D-Day on June 6, 1944, marks the beginning of a decisive turning point in World War II. In opening a second front, the Western Allies forced Nazi Germany to fight on the defensive in a two-front war.
