The Games went on. But there were also demonstrations demanding the suspension of the Games. There were nine hostages. The Crisis Management Team knew that – but they didn’t know how many terrorists they were dealing with. ibid.
The Israeli team accompanied their slain team-mates home. ibid.
In the Arab world the bodies of the five dead assassins were given a heroes’ welcome. ibid.
The Munich Massacre heralded the dawn of a new age of international terrorism. ibid.
We used to think that the population was manipulated and brainwashed from above. Now what we are beginning to see by looking at the social history of the kind one sees in these Gestapo dossiers, we’re beginning to see that the system was actually manipulated from below by lots of people for all kinds of reasons. Professor Robert Gellately
Germans earn more than us and they work fewer hours … Our challenge is to become German. Make Me a German, BBC 2013
The German birthrate is low and falling. ibid.
Two-thirds of mothers with children under three are stay-at-home mums. ibid.
Britain seems a lot less community orientated, much more individualistic. ibid.
How their hard work, efficiency and orderliness spring from a deep sense of community and responsibility towards each other. ibid.
Berlin 2013: just another night, just another routine public appearance for German’s chancellor Angela Merkel. This is the most powerful woman in the world. And yet she remains to us mysterious, the impassive German enigma. The Making of Merkel with Andrew Marr, BBC 2013
The extraordinary story behind the public image. ibid.
Her father uprooted his family from the West and moved them to East Germany. ibid.
Those caught on the eastern side were locked in. ibid.
A scientist from the provinces who overthrows a failed national leader and grabs the wheel of a heavily male party taking it off who knows where. ibid.
I said, yet again, for Germany, Europe is not only indispensable, it is part and parcel of our identity. We’ve always said German unity, European unity and integration, that’s two parts of one and the same coin. But we want, obviously, to boost our competitiveness. Angela Merkel
A morning like any other in Munich, a city where tradition and modernity exist side by side. One Day in September, 1999
I was given a gun; for the first time in my life I felt inspired. ibid. Palestinian revolutionary
For Andre and the rest of the Israeli team the Olympics held particular significance for they were held in Munich, Germany. ibid.
Security was kept deliberately lax. ibid.
‘I do not believe it! The Russians have got the gold.’ ibid. UK basketball commentary
Now they headed straight for the Israeli men’s quarters. ibid.
‘The one thing the Germans didn’t want them to be – the Olympics of Terror.’ ibid. ABC news
‘13 members of the Israeli team as hostages.’ ibid.
They demanded the release of more than 200 revolutionary prisoners. ibid.
‘A crowd estimated between 75-80,000 people.’ ibid. news
At 6 p.m. the Palestinians issued a new demand: they wanted a long-distance jet. ibid.
‘All hell has broken loose out there [airport].’ ibid.
The German Democratic Republic was the most severe society in history. To observe and control a population of 17 million people, the Ministry for State Security or STASI filled with 92,000 officers and 200,000 informants. Every aspect of public and private life was under surveillance in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Karl Marx City, 2017
She called home to wish her father and mother a happy new year; her brother answered the phone: he told her to come home immediately. When she asked why he told her her father had killed himself. He was 57 years old, happily married, successful, but who was he? ibid.
1990: Her father received a series of anonymous letters that accused him of working for the STASI. ibid.
Who was he? Had he worked for the STASI? Officially or unofficially? Was he an informant, a different man from the father she knew? Were the suicide attempts a reaction to shame? Or was he afraid the truth would come out and ruin him? Who wrote the letters and why? ibid.
Cologne Central Station New Years’ Eve: women are attacked by a large group of men said to be of north African and Arab origin. I’ve come to Cologne to find out who people are blaming for the attacks. Stacey Dooley: In Cologne: The Blame Game, short 2016
Revenge attacks on migrants and refugee shelters are on the increase. ibid.
The unification of Germany in the decade before 1871 ended a balance of power in Europe which had existed for 250 or even 300 years. During this long period, covering almost ten generations, Britain had been relatively secure and of growing power. She had found this power challenged only by the powers of Western Europe. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time ch5
Brunhilde Pomsel was born on 11th January 1911 and grew up in Berlin. She worked simultaneously for Dr Hugo Goldberg, a Jewish lawyer and insurance broker, and Wulf Bley, an avid National Socialist, until taking a job at the Reich’s broadcasting station in 1933. In 1942 she moved to the office of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich’s propaganda minister, and remained there until the end of the war. Storyville: A German Life: Goebbel’s Secretary Remembers, captions, BBC 2019
Everything that is beautiful is also tainted; and whatever’s horrible also has its bright side. Nothing’s black and white. ibid. Pomsel
I have perhaps worked with more criminals in my life than I know. ibid.
It was such a different, narrow-minded life. ibid.
In 1930 Germany is a liberal democracy with elections, parliament and a rule of law. Just four years later freedom of speech is over, most of the political opposition is in jail, and government is in the hands of murderers. This is the story of how democracy died. Rise of the Nazis I, BBC 2019
130: The vote split between 14 different parties: the communists, the social democrats, the centre party is just about able to put together a moderate coalition government. ibid.
They also have a paramilitary wing called the Stormtroopers. ibid.
Back in the halls of power, [Kurt von] Schleicher goes to work to bring down the chancellor … He conspires with the military elite; he used his influence with media and big business. ibid.
The Nazis’ vote has gone from 18 to 37%. Now with the largest party in the Reichstag, suddenly Hitler is too big for even Schleicher to control. Now Hitler makes his big moves and demands to be chancellor. ibid.
The Nazi conspiracy is wider than Litten realised. ibid.
I’ll be on the trail of a cast of remarkable archaeologists each a product of their era: from a self-taught amateur to a pair of charismatic adventurers. And an academic driven by a dark political agenda. They are fascinating tales of intuition, eccentricity and luck. Janina Ramirez, Raiders of the Lost Past II, BBC 2019
I come to the caves of southern Germany where just a week before hostilities began, an ice-age treasure from our distant past emerged from the gloom … Carved from a single piece of mammoth ivory, this half-human half-animal is a modest work of art by modern standards, but it makes a revolution in the human story. ibid.
Numerous chance discoveries across eight decades, discoveries that at times seem to defy belief … The oldest known representational work of art in human history. ibid.
Volgelherd Cave 1931 excavation: It seems we were brilliant artists from the very beginning … There are exquisitely carved mammoths, and powerful muscular lions, an array of tiny masterpieces. ibid.
In the late 1950s as Germany rebuilt after the War, Robert Wetzel was back at the Stadal cave … He completely ignored the exciting find made by his team in the summer of 1939. ibid.
What would become known as the Lion-Man … It caused a sensation … It required a high degree of technical skill. ibid.
In the caves of the Swabian Jura archaeologists have uncovered not only the earliest examples of representational art but the first evidence we have of music. ibid.