Reply to: Not just an ordinary Nazi simpithiser...

[snaw]

He said: "My dear gentlemen, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves.

"Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful."

He then blurted out: "I call my studio in West London - no, I have to stop because you're German."

But when the term "fuhrerbunker" was suggested, he admitted: "You surprised me. Normally I always say to German journalists, 'My headquarters'. That is less shocking."

Hmm. It's borderline enough to be offensive to jews, and if anything seems to suggest at the least a sympathetic view of the nazis. Might not be his views, but if you're getting interviewed in Germany I'm thinking you want to be really clear what you're saying as soon as you veer into conversations like this.

Then again if his son is anything to go intelligence doesn't run in the ferry family.

[Churchill]

since then the reverse has happened and we have ourselves been invaded by Poland

I think they must have someone on the inside...

[wendigo100]

Ach so... I remember driving my VW Polo along the M4 with Wagner on the wireless... I felt like invading Poland & annexing the Sudetenland.

Instead you invaded Earth. Not that we'd know it.

[DodgyAgent]

Ach so... I remember driving my VW Polo along the M4 with Wagner on the wireless... I felt like invading Poland & annexing the Sudetenland.

since then the reverse has happened and we have ourselves been invaded by Poland

[gingerjedi]

Feck me I was only going for the cheap laugh!

I've got to say the SS were the best dressed in WWII but then they did have top designer Hugo Boss as their taylor

[wendigo100]

It is a silly-arse reaction. If the Nazis were brilliant at rallies, why can't he say so?

There's good and bad sides to most things. For example, Kim Jong Il is a spectacularly good golfer, Stalin did a lot to industrialise the USSR, and as for Pol Pot - well actually, he was a c*nt.

[Cowboy Bob]

Not to mention the VW. If you've ever owned a VW you have driven a car descended from Nazi R & D. Doesn't make you one though...

[mcquiggd]

He is guilty by extrapolation

I understand the new labour terminonlogy is 'deemed guilty'.


Ferry was spot on - the Nazis were, for the time, on the cutting edge of propaganda. Im surprised he didn't also mention the autobahn, which to this day puts us to shame. I wonder if there would be such a furore if he had said the same about contempory Soviet works... ?

Once again, proof that these days a rational thought is something to be villified, not discussed.

[Board Game Geek]

He is guilty by extrapolation

Would you care to elaborate ? Or shall we just condemn him based on not what he said, but what he didn't say ?

Can't say all of Speer's building's were "amazing" (but then again, appreciating art is an objective emotion), however Die Neue Reichskanzlei (The New Reich Chancellery) is an impressive and emotion-inspiring building.

I wish we built as impressively as we once used to, with grandeur, with form, with emotion.

Now it's a case of what's the cheapest material we can use and hope it still stands.

[xoggoth]

I did have a look at some of Speer's building on the net. Horrible. One looks like the public toilet in Cheltenham.

All the same, it is absurd to make such a fuss just because of someone saying the Nazis knew how to put on a show. It is hardly praising the holocaust is it?

[Benny]

Nowhere does Bryan Ferry go on to say "and by the way, the mass genocide of several races / social pariahs and enemies of the state, plus the invasion and subjugation of several European Countries, was amazing as well."

No matter how many times you read it, he just doesn't say that.

So why is he being villified ? Sounds like he is being used as a convenient scapegoat for some politicised groups to gain some free publicity. Groups which, ironically, are using some of the propaganda tools of the man/party who once tried to destroy them.

Oh the irony.

He is guilty by extrapolation

[Board Game Geek]

As far as I interpreted Bryan Ferry's comments, he said that Nazi Architecture and Cultural Programming was amazing.

That's completely correct.

Never before, since the fall of Rome, had such great, iconic buildings been envisaged nor built on such a scale. Architecturally, it was amazing.

He said

"My dear gentlemen, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves.

"Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful."

Again, the Nazi's were revolutionary in their use of propaganda and spin. For the day and age, that was amazing too.

Nowhere does Bryan Ferry go on to say "and by the way, the mass genocide of several races / social pariahs and enemies of the state, plus the invasion and subjugation of several European Countries, was amazing as well."

No matter how many times you read it, he just doesn't say that.

So why is he being villified ? Sounds like he is being used as a convenient scapegoat for some politicised groups to gain some free publicity. Groups which, ironically, are using some of the propaganda tools of the man/party who once tried to destroy them.

Oh the irony.

[Benny]

You could argue that Stalin was the saviour of the USSR, without his rapid industrialisation plans would an agricultural based nation have been able to absorb, and ultimately repel the Germany of the 1940's?

[threaded]

Yeah, and that Uncle Joe Stalin turned Russia from a backward agricultural economy into being able to put a man on the moon!

[Benny]

Do you wish you could spell that proper like innit whatever?

What is wrong with admiring a party that transformed pre-war Germany from a bankrupt state to the equal of any nation in such a short time?

Do you believe this European cess pit is better now and was worth the sacrifice of so many 1940's youth?