The Danger Zone (DZ)

Toward the end of his life Henry Ford was talking to a young kid by the name of John Dahlinger (more about him later in the programme). Henry was telling the kid how great his education had been when he was a boy, in a single-room schoolhouse. The kid listened to this stuff and then said “But sir, these are different times, this is the modern age and …” Henry cut him off before he could finish. “Young man I invented the modern age”. Now I know if you’re like me, you’re thinking what an arrogant arsehole. But the problem was he was right. And what a character Henry Ford was.

Tag words: history is bunk; Battle of Gettysburg; Clara Bryant; Thomas Edison; Quadricycle; The Ford Motor Company; Alexander Malcomson; Ford River Rouge factory; Adolf Hitler; Albert Speer; Ford Model T; The Dearborn Independent; The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion; International Jew; Mein Kampf; Consolidated Liberator B-24 bomber; Willows Run Factory; John Dahlinger

His eyes burnt into hers. “There's a very fine line between pleasure and pain. They are two sides of the same coin, one not existing without the other.”

Said Christian Grey to Anastacia Steele in “Fifty Shades of Grey”. It was a sentiment that the owners of the publisher, Random House, came to understand during World War 2 when they were working with the Nazis.

Tag words: Gütersloh; Westphalia; Germany; Rhine River; Emperor Napoleon; Grande Armée; C Bertelsmann Verlag; Mohn family; Penguin Random House; Heinrich Mohn; Reinhard Mohn; Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler; Flieger am Feind; Joseph Goebbels;

The Adidas story is the story of an amazing man by the name of Adolf (Adi) Dassler – a man who revolutionised sports from World War I, through Nazi Germany and into the post-war world. He was the Michaelangelo of sports shoes. His equally amazing wife, Käthe, in an incredible story, saved the Adidas factory at the

Tag words: Herzogenaurach; Bavaria; Germany; Adi Dassler; Rudolf Dassler; Karl Zech; Josef Sepp Erhardt; Gebrüder Dassler Sportschuhfabrik; Lina Radke; Josef Waitzer; Jesse Owens; Baldur von Shirach; Hitler; Panzershreck; Adidas; Puma; Uwe Seeler; Cassius Clay; Joe Frazier; 1954

This programme’s about a piano salesman who on the one hand helped the greatest armed forces on earth to a righteous victory and on the other hand helped the commission of one of the most vile crimes against humanity in history. So the lesson is, think twice before you invite a piano salesman into your house – you

Tag words: Herman Hollerith; electro magnetic punch cards; IBM; Willy Heidinger; Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft GmbH; Dehomag; Hitler; Machine Record Units; MRU; Manhattan Project; Auschwitz

The President of General Motors export arm, James Mooney, stood in his hotel room practising his Nazi salute in front of the mirror. Should his sieg heil show

Tag words: William (“Billy”) Crapo Durant; William Durant; Opel; Hitler; Ford Model T; Volkswagen; Wilhelm Keppler; Nazi Party; Opel Blitz; Alfred Sloan; President Roosevelt; New Deal; Führer; SA storm troopers; Standard Oil; IG Farben; Blitzkrieg; Albert Speer; Ju88; President Dwight D Eisenhower; M-4 Sherman tank; Buick; Pershing tank; Cadillac; P-38 Lightning; Chevrolet; Oldsmobile; M3 White Half Track; Bofors

“America never contributed anything to the world but chewing gum and Coca-Cola” said Otto Dietrich, the Nazi Press Chief and head of propaganda in 1942.

But then all of the Nazis fantasies came true with a new amazing drink developed by the Coca Cola company in Nazi Germany called Fanta – it didn’t win the war for them but it made losing a lot easier.

Tag Words: General John Clifford Pemberton; Ulysses S Grant; Pemberto’s French Wine Coca; Pemberton Chemical Company; Drink Coca-Cola; Coca-Cola; General Eisenhower; Robert Woodruff; Fanta; General Georgi Zhukov; Great Patriotic War;

The last time I told you the story of 19 year old Sergeant Daniel Culler. His B-17 bomber, “Hell’s Kitchen”, had just forced landed in Switzerland. He planned to set the plane on fire by pumping out its fuel and then firing a flare into it to stop it falling into German hands. The rumour going around on the American air bases was that the Swiss were swapping American and British planes that fell into their hands for new German military aircraft for their armed forces. Swiss soldiers had prevented him carrying through his plan, and saved his life. He hadn’t noticed that he was soaked in petrol. But with what was going to happen to him as a prisoner of the Swiss, there were undoubtedly long periods of time when he wished that he was dead. This programme, Dan’s story as a prisoner of the Swiss, makes for chilling listening. The Swiss behaved in totally unexpected ways towards some of the Allied airmen that they interned, not as prisoners-of-war because the Swiss were neutral, that the Nazis would have admired.

Tag words: Geneva Convention; General Barnwell Rhett Legge; Straflager Wauwilermoos; Captain André-Henri Beguin;

In the great 1949 movie, “The Third Man”, set in the immediate post war rubble of the then once great city of Vienna but now reduced to rubble from bombing and combat during World War II, Orson Welles, playing the lead character, Harry Lime, talking to the newspaper man and his friend from the past, Holly Martines, played by Joseph Cotton, gives the briefest and most brutal put down of a country that has ever been delivered. The country, is Switzerland, and he says something remarkable about that country. 

During World War II Switzerland was supposed to be neutral, but was it?

In the summer of 1944, there were plenty of stories going around that the men of the American bomber forces, facing what seemed certain death before they could complete a tour of duty of 25 missions, were flying their undamaged planes to land in neutral Switzerland or Sweden to get out of the war. These stories were now reaching the commander of the American Army Air Force, Hap Arnold, and they were a serious concern to him and a situation that he would not tolerate.

And there were other much darker stories about the Swiss more than willingly co-operating with the Nazis. A forgotten story. Aren’t they the best kind. So let’s see what was going really going on in the country where the lawns, even on the mountains, are kept tidy by people armed with and using nail clippers.

Tag words: William Joyce; Lord Haw Haw; Joseph Goebbels; Collier’s magazine; General Carl Spaatz; Bomber Mafia; Norden bombsights; Memphis Belle; Ira Eaker; Allen Foster Dulles; OSS; CIA; Dean Acheson; President Harry Truman

Miss Dior – such a popular and well loved perfume. The very essence of femininity – or is it? Perhaps it’s the very essence of the free spirit too, the free scent of France – maybe even of the world. And what did Dior have to do with melting clocks?

But in 1940 France was humming to a different tune. The sounds of German footsteps on the pavements. Shopping in the stores for that legendary French fashion that the officers of the German Wehrmacht., SS and other German officials were looking for who were lucky enough to get a posting to Paris. Where they could get that oh so oooh la la gift, for their wives, their mistresses and their girlfriends.

Tag words: Miss Dior; melting clocks; Dior; Sidney Toledano; John Galliano; House of Dior; Buchenwald; Belle Epoque; Jacques Bonjean; Galerie Jacques Bonjean; André Breton; Pierre Collé; objets d’art; Salvador Dali; The Persistence of Memory; Julien Levy; Museum of Modern Art; MOMA; Retrospective Bust of a Woman; Robert Piguet; Lucien Lelong; kinetique; Christian Dior; Pierre Balmain; Carven; Fath; Desses; Lanvin; Nina Ricci; Costello; Patou; Cristóbal Balenciaga; Catherine Dior; Carlingue; Ravensbruck concentration camp; Mitzah Bricard;