April 3, 2017

"'Goebbels had very nice eyes but,' she added with a laugh, 'he was a devil!' She said Adolf Hitler, on the other hand..."

"... was always very pleasant to her – and [her husband] Harlan would often remark on his amazing eyes. She was not unimpressed by Hitler’s eyes herself."

She = Kristina Söderbaum, quoted in a Guardian article subtitled "She was the Nazis’ pin-up, the Aryan sex symbol whose films fired up the SS. In this previously unpublished interview, Kristina Söderbaum talks about Hitler’s charm, shooting scenes as the Allies closed in – and being nicknamed the State Water Corpse."

Here's how she looked in one of her less evil and more ridiculous movies:

28 comments:

rhhardin said...

WWII could have been avoided if Hitler had had a Twitter account.

rhhardin said...

Goehring ran the Tierschutzverein, the humane society.

Rob said...

From "The Producers"--the great 1968 original version:

Franz Liebekind: You know, not many people knew it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer.

Max: Really, I never dreamed that...

Franz Liebekind: That is because that you were taken in by that verdammte Allied propaganda! Such filthy lies! They told lies! But nobody ever said a bad word about Winston Churchill, did they? No! 'Win with Winnie!' Churchill! With his cigars. With his brandy. And his rotten painting, rotten! Hitler - there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two Coats! Churchill. He couldn't even say 'Nazi'. He would say 'Noooo-zeeehz, Nooooooooooooo-zeeehz!' It wasn't Noses! It was Nazis! Churchill!...Let me tell you this! And you're hearing this straight from the horse. Hitler was better looking than Churchill. He was a better dresser than Churchill. He had more hair! He told funnier jokes! And he could dance the pants off of Churchill!...Churchill!

Heartless Aztec said...

No doubt the was a PZK V nicknamed after her somewhere on the eastern front.

rehajm said...

She gives off a Meryl Streep vibe.

rcocean said...

I would've loved to have heard/read her actual words unfiltered instead of having the interviewer constantly impose his views on me. I love the "tough-guy" reporter pose and how "he wasn't going to easy on her" in doing the interview. We're talking about 75 Y/o movie actress!

She wasn't even German, but Swedish. But the reporter is full of suspicions that she's a dyed in the wool Nazi in 1995.

I think she's very pretty. Sorta reminds me of Doris Day.

Roughcoat said...

Finally, a Hitler post.

traditionalguy said...

Hitler sincerely believed the insanity that he peddled. And it worked well for him until he invaded Russia. He tried and tried to murder all of the Russians and repopulate Russia with Germans like her. But they out suffered the Wehrmacht.

She must have come over to America with the rest of the Nazis after the War. I swear I knew her daughter in high school. Her daughter was a great Cheer Leader too.

Roughcoat said...

Speaking of Doris Day: Her birthday today. Turns 93. Que sera sera.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Our GIs had Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable as their star pinups. And Dietrich and Hedy Lamarr. They outclassed this Nazi chick by miles.

rcocean said...

93? NPR said Doris Day was 95.

Could be #Fakenews.

Roughcoat said...

93, 95 -- she's an old broad.

YoungHegelian said...

After Dorothea’s rape, in accordance with Söderbaum’s customary fate, she drowns herself while Süß, gibbering for mercy, is punished with a public execution.

Drowning wasn't just Söderbaum’s "customary fate". I'm certainly no expert in late 18th - 19th C German literature, but it shows up again & again as the suicide route of despondent lovers. The most famous example is, of course, Gretchen in Goethe's Faust, who drowns both herself & her/Faust's baby. Another famous example is the despondent young miller in Wilhelm Müller's poem cycle Die schöne Müllerin (later set by Schubert) who also drowns himself.

Why drowning? It appears to be a combination of symbols both of a baptismal like cleansing of the grievous sin of suicide (Gretchen is in Heaven at the end of Faust, after all) & that somehow the troubled soul takes on the peaceful aspect of the waters (brooks, ponds, etc) that swallow it.

David said...

Not a great beauty by any stretch but quite an athlete. Totally at home on that horse.

robother said...

An eye girl. You don't meet many of those.

Fernandinande said...

Goebbels had very nice eyes but,' she added with a laugh, 'he was a devil!'

Tee hee.

Fernandinande said...

rhhardin said...
Goehring ran the Tierschutzverein, the humane society.


Yeah, he was an animal rights activist. The guy in charge of killing 'tards and such was an anti-smoking activist.

New York Times in 1924: ‘Hitler Tamed by Prison’

YoungHegelian said...

@robother,

An eye girl. You don't meet many of those.

Yes, check out the clip at about 3 mins in. Striking eyes, indeed! An aesthetic of feminine beauty that's well-nigh dead now.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Even the horses were white in Hitler's movies.

Bill said...

Söderbaum was so often drowned in her films that she became known as the Reichswasserleiche, the official State Water Corpse.

Was a time when Meryl Streep was lampooned for her waterworks.

Ron said...

Are these Althouse and Meade's home movies from the trip out west? I didn't know Meade had a Tyrolean hat!

Big Mike said...

A little flat chested and a bit thick around the middle by modern standards, but clearly a fine horsewoman and, yes, those eyes.

JimT said...

It seems your readers are all younger than I. That's not underwear, that's a '30s bathing suit. My sisters always put their bathing suits on under their clothes when going to the beach. I remember one tense moment when the older one couldn't remember if she had her suit on. What to do in the middle of a public beach?

~ Gordon Pasha said...

Germany's Japanese Allies had a much higher standard for horse back archery - still do for that matter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHp_tVPCios

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Goes to show that you can have beautiful eyes and still be blind as the proverbial bat.

William said...

I think Jennifer Lawrence is much more convincing in her archery scenes. I didn't, not for a minute, believe Soderbaum's arrows came anywhere near the target. Plus her arrows didn't seem to penetrate very deeply. Jennifer Lawrence's arrow shots look like they could penetrate armor. No wonder the Nazis lost the war. Totally pathetic female archers..........She's very pretty. Her big mistake was moving to Germany and marrying a Nazi sympathizer. If she had moved to America, we'd all remember her for her sunny charm and the plucky way she told Clark Gable that she'd keep the home fires burning for him as they said goodbye in the train station........Not many dictators look like world historical figures. Hitler looked short and unimpressive. Stalin was also short and pockmarked to boot. You just know he had bad breath. Mao was pudgy. Mussolini was the only dictator who looked like someone who was born to be in charge.

William said...

It's damaging for the career of a young actress to appear in Nazi propaganda films. Very hard to make the cross over to Hollywood. Still, there might have been a way to work around it. A past history as a Nazi would possibly give her a leg up in gothic horror films and she could bring a lot credibility to the role of Ilse She Devil of the SS. It's a wonder no one in Hollywood thought up a way to cash in on her notoriety.

Rusty said...

Soory. It always sounds like they're planning to invade Poland.