To Regain Your Lost Shadows: A Better U.S. Response To Holocaust Refugees

[Esotariot2002]

Film:​

• January 2 - Actress Thelma Todd, having recently recovered after being found passed out next to her car, mysteriously disappears.[1]​
• January 9 - Silent film star John Gilbert dies suddenly at 38.​
• February 5 - Charlie Chaplin retires the Tramp in the classic, Modern Times.​

• February 15 - Republic Studio releases its first serial, Darkest Africa.​

• March 22 - The Great Zeigfeld premieres in Los Angeles; it would go on to win three Oscars and gross over $3 million.​

• May 29 - Fritz Lang makes his directorial debut with Fury.​

• September 14 - “Boy Wonder Of Hollywood“ and film producer Irving Thalberg dies at 37.​

Top Grossing Films Of The Year:

The Great Zeigfeld - MGM ($3,089,000)
San Francisco - MGM ($2,868,000)
The Plainsman - Paramount ($2,278,533)
After The Thin Man - MGM ($1,992,000)
Modern Times - United Artists ($1,800,000)
Anthony Adverse - Warner Bros. ($1,783,000)
Rose Marie - MGM ($1,700,000)
Swing Time - RKO ($1,624,000)
Libeled Lady - MGM ($1,601,000)


Music:​

• January 1 - Bing Crosby becomes full-time host of The Kraft Music Hall.​

• January 4 - Billboard publishes its first Music Hit Parade.​
• ????? ?? - The Duke Ellington Band release their popularly covered song, Caravan.​

10 Top Songs Of 1936:

Pennies From Heaven - Bing Crosby
The Way You Look To-night - Fred Astaire
The Glory Of Love - Benny Goodman and His Orchestra (Vocals by Helen Ward)
Alone - Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra
Goody Goody - Benny Goodman and His Orchestra (Vocals by Helen Ward)
A Fine Romance - Fred Astaire
The Music Goes Round and Round - Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
Did I Remember? - Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm Orchestra
It's a Sin to Tell a Lie - Fats Waller and his Rhythm
Is It True What They Say About Dixie? - Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra


Animation:​

• April 4 - Porky Pig gets his first starring role in Tex Avery’s The Blow Out.​

• June 20 - Mortimer Mouse debuts in Mickey’s Rival.​

Comics:​

• February 17 - Lee Falk’s The Phantom makes his first appearance in newspaper comic strips, introducing the hallmark skintight costume.​

• November ?? - The Clock is the first fully-masked hero to appear in American comics.​

Radio:​

• January 31 - The Green Hornet debuts on WXYZ.​

• ????? ?? - Eddie Cantor stars in Texaco Town.​

[1] IOTL, Thelma Todd is the subject of many Hollywood conspiracy theories due to her untimely death on December 16, 1935. This ITTL mystery could be mentioned later on (...?)

Source: Wikipedia (1936 in Film, Music, Animation, Comics, & Radio), TV Tropes, Looney Tunes Wiki, Flickr.​

 

[Esotariot2002]

Excerpts from the Second Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 20, 1937):

FDR once again stands at a podium, his second term as President of the United States beginning on January 20th (in accordance with the 20th amendment):

“When four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision--to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.
Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need--the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.
We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.
In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book of self-government.”

“In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily condoned. Hard-headedness will not so easily excuse hardheartedness. We are moving toward an era of good feeling. But we realize that there can be no era of good feeling save among men of good will.
For these reasons I am justified in believing that the greatest change we have witnessed has been the change in the moral climate of America.
Among men of good will, science and democracy together offer an ever-richer life and ever-larger satisfaction to the individual. With this change in our moral climate and our rediscovered ability to improve our economic order, we have set our feet upon the road of enduring progress.
Shall we pause now and turn our back upon the road that lies ahead? Shall we call this the promised land? Or, shall we continue on our way? For ‘each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.’
Many voices are heard as we face a great decision. Comfort says, ‘Tarry a while.’ Opportunism says, ‘This is a good spot.’ Timidity asks, ‘How difficult is the road ahead?’
True, we have come far from the days of stagnation and despair. Vitality has been preserved. Courage and confidence have been restored. Mental and moral horizons have been extended.
But our present gains were won under the pressure of more than ordinary circumstances. Advance became imperative under the goad of fear and suffering. The times were on the side of progress.
To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility, and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose.”

Sources: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, YouTube, The Avalon Project.​

 

[Esotariot2002]

Excerpts from the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern) (March 14, 1937):

(The following excerpts are from an encyclical originally published on 10th March, 1937, protesting the racist ideology of Nazism and violations of the Reichskonkordat Treaty, including the persecution and detainment of Catholics. It was written in German rather than the usual Latin and smuggled into Germany to dodge censorship. On one of the Church’s busiest Sundays, Palm Sunday (21st March), Mit brennender Sorge was read from the pulpits of all German Churches. Here are the excerpts condemning Nazism.)
​

“Venerable Brethren, Greetings, and Apostolic Blessing.

It is with deep anxiety and growing surprise that We have long been following the painful trials of the Church and the increasing vexations which afflict those who have remained loyal in heart and action in the midst of a people that once received from St. Boniface the bright message and the Gospel of Christ and God's Kingdom.”


“7. … Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly" (Wisdom VIII. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.

8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

9. Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.”

Sources: Wikipedia, The Holy See.​

 

[PGSBHurricane]

Watching this timeline with intrigue and interest.

 

[Esotariot2002]

A Summary of narration by Lynda Carter from History’s Terror Blanco (November 20, 2005):

“At the behest of Spanish nationalists led by General Francisco Franco, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sent their respective Luftwaffe Condor Legion and Aviazione Legionaria carried out Operation Rügen, bombing the Basque town of Guernica—allied to the republican resistance—in Northern Spain, killing and injuring as many as 1,654 civilians and utterly destroying the town. Although international law on aerial warfare at the time defined Guernica as a legitimate military target, the aerial raid attracted international attention, with many condemning the attacks as an indiscriminate slaughter intended to demoralize, while the nationalists and their fascist allies either denied any involvement, with Luftwaffe Field Marshall Wolfram von Richtofen claiming that the Mundaca River bridge had been the original target despite little damage to it, if at all.”

“The Pablo Picasso artwork, Guernica, was painted in response to the atrocity and was exhibited at the 1937 Paris International Exposition and then at other venues around the world, raising funds for Spanish war relief and bringing worldwide attention to the civil war.”

Sources: Wikipedia, Britannica, PBS.​

 

[Esotariot2002]

Herbert Morrison’s WLS radio broadcast[1] on the disaster (May 7, 1937):

“It's practically standing still now they've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship; and (uh) they've been taken ahold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; it's... the rain had (uh) slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it (uh) just enough to keep it from...It's burst into flames! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It's fire... and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames and the... and it's falling on the mooring mast and all the folks between it. This is terrible; this is one of the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh it's... [unintelligible] its flames... Crashing, oh! Oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke, and there's flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here! I told you; it – I can't even talk to people, their friends are on there! Ah! It's... it... it's a... ah! I... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. I... I... I'm sorry. Honest: I... I can hardly breathe. I... I'm going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah... I can't. Listen, folks; I... I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.”

Ultimately, of the 36 passengers and 61 crewmen aboard the airship, 13 of the passengers and 22 crewmen would perish; the disaster heralded the sudden end of the age of airships.

[1] The radio broadcast would not be paired with the newsreel footage of the disaster until decades later.

Sources: Wikipedia, Airships.net.​

 

[Esotariot2002]

Narration by Brandon Lee[1] from History’s Empire Of The Sun (September 2, 2006):

“After the July 7th Marco Polo Bridge Incident saw the Chinese garrison’s refusal to allow an Imperial Japanese search of Wanping culminate in violence that worsened tensions, Imperial Japan carried out a full-scale invasion of the rest of China. Unfortunately for them, the Chinese Nationalist Government and nearly—if not—all regional military and political groups rallied together to oppose the Japanese imperialism. One such battle of resistance marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War; the Battle of Shanghai, which saw the use of chemical weapons and aerial bombings—both deliberate and accidental— inflict severe collateral damage on the city and heavy casualties on both sides, before the Japanese captured Shanghai. Horrifically, the capture of Shanghai would ultimately pave the way to the horrors of Nanjing.”

[1] Lee is still alive IITL.

Sources: Wikipidia, Britannica, Department Of Education Washington.​

 

[ajm8888]

Narration by Brandon Lee[1] from History’s Empire Of The Sun (September 2, 2006):

View attachment 909129
View attachment 909137
“After the July 7th Marco Polo Bridge Incident saw the Chinese garrison’s refusal to allow an Imperial Japanese search of Wanping culminate in violence that worsened tensions, Imperial Japan carried out a full-scale invasion of the rest of China. Unfortunately for them, the Chinese Nationalist Government and nearly—if not—all regional military and political groups rallied together to oppose the Japanese imperialism. One such battle of resistance marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War; the Battle of Shanghai, which saw the use of chemical weapons and aerial bombings—both deliberate and accidental— inflict severe collateral damage on the city and heavy casualties on both sides, before the Japanese captured Shanghai. Horrifically, the capture of Shanghai would ultimately pave the way to the horrors of Nanjing.”

[1] Lee is still alive IITL.

Sources: Wikipidia, Britannica, Department Of Education Washington.​

Yay! Brandon Lee is alive.