“The Stranger” was a 1946 post-war film noir vehicle about a Nazi SS mass murderer who had escaped to America, and of course, the War Crimes Commission was looking for him. Orson Welles directed it, and played the Nazi, who had disguised himself as a history professor teaching at a small college in Connecticut. He was about to marry the daughter of a Supreme Court justice, played by Loretta Young, and was being stalked by Edward G Robinson, the War Crimes officer.
I hadn’t seen it in probably 30 years, which means I was in my mid-40s, so the deeper meaning of just what it meant to be a certain kind of Nazi never sunk in that first screening.
I recommend the film to you here for it gives you a glimpse of several things you probably didn’t know existed, such as polite, neighborly townspeople in Connecticut, still very patriotic, and not the least bit political. The War had been over scarcely a year, and while Americans-at-large would not see many death camp pictorials appear on bookstands until the mid-50s, Edward G’s character did get a chance to show a 9mm reel of those gory sights to the Supreme Court justice and his daughter.
Orson Wells’ characterization of the Nazi was compelling because, for one, he had a reputation for being down-the-nose anyway (Citizen Kane) so probably understood something of the pSychology of the vain and arrogant. At about the 30 minute mark of the film, at a sit-down dinner with all the principal characters he was asked, as the college historian, what he thought about the Nazi way of thinking.
Regrettably no one has seen fit to tag this segment as a film-cut, but I also expect the folks at YouTube and Google might see a little too much of themselves in what Wells revealed…but for about 2 minutes he reeled off criteria of the “mind and personality” of the German Nazi, describing him as arrogant and superior, remorseless, without conscience, one who defines victory more in the ways Evil would see it versus how Christian civilization envisions it. Of course he was describing himself, which is a major clue to defining of our modern enemies, calling out what they hate most as with who they really are.
(You’d find the same unrepentant attitudes from the Germans in World War I. (Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August) The same thinking and behavior in the German generals of World War i, especially as they regarded King Albert and Belgium because he refused to give them free safe passage across their country to invade France. In this way they justified in their own minds numerous atrocities. Being a recognized “Neutral” country by many treaties, this causing those nations to declare war on Germany…thereby turning what should have been a 60 day war into a world war, over 4 years, killing millions.) A noted German scientist told American reporters this just before the war began, “We Germans are the most industrious, the most earnest, the best educated race in Europe; Russia stands for reaction, England for selfishness and perfidy, France for decadence, Germany for progress. German Kultur will enlighten the world and after this war there will never be another.”
In 1946 no would would have ever thought that Welles’ definition of Nazi would be a Cinderella shoe-fit for what passes as the modern Left’s belief of itself today and what it thinks about the common hoi polloi of America.
Now we may have to revert to a Nuremberg trial process to rectify things.
Since the 1970s we’ve seen not just this attitude, but deeper planning, seep into the university where Haters are now created by SS-type professor-manipulators. Today we’re seeing it expanded with drugs, creating a far broader audience of Haters with social media. Today it is not just what they are capable of, but what they will approve.
So watch this film, and take notes, as we’ll likely have to deal with this in the streets, using our own devices, while our “betters” will be trying to deal with it within the Marquis of Queensberry Rules. This is one of those educational films that helps you know better where “you’re coming from”.
Of all the choices, Left, Communist, Progressive, Liberal, if you have to choose one term, choose Nazi. Modern “Nazism” is the blanket that covers all the other tarot cards most “lefties’ bring into this contest. There is no difference between left and right any more. Only good and evil.
Oh, I’ll have to check, but this might also have been the last flattering thing I’ve seen reported about Connecticut, in what?, 75+ years ago. Still, I know there has to still be nice people there. Just hunkered down in some corner, I suppose. Maybe Scott Pressler could go there and hold a revival?
