Posts Tagged ‘Harry S. Truman’

Schloss Cecilienhof – Cecilienhof Palace

Thursday, November 20th, 2014

Schloss Cecilienhof became international known as the site of the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Prior to the end of World War II, the palace had served as the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm, his wife, Duchess Cecilie von Mecklenburg-Schwerin and their six children. Located southwest of Berlin, Germany, the English Tudor-style building resembles a Grand English Country Manor with its half-timbered walls, bricks and many chimneys. With a total of 176 rooms, Cecilienhof is considerably larger than it seems.

Schloss Cecilienhof - Cecilienhof Palace

Schloss Cecilienhof – Cecilienhof Palace

Schloss Cecilienhof’s Pre-1945 History

The castle was the last palace to be built by the Hohenzollern, a dynasty that ruled Prussia and Germany for 500 years. The German Emperor Wilhelm II had Schloss Cecilienhof built for his eldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm. Construction began in 1914 and was completed in 1917. After only one happy year together in their new home, the royal couple remained separated for the rest of their lives. Even before the revolution of 1918, the Crown Prince rarely found time to be with his family. The Duchess and her six children continued to live at the palace from time to time until 1920 when Schloss Cecilienhof was confiscated. The royal couple’s two oldest sons, Wilhelm and Louis Ferdinand, remained at castle to attend public school in Potsdam. But when the Red Army drew close to Berlin in February of 1945, the Duchess and all of her children fled without being able to salvage many of their possessions. At the end of World War II, the Soviets seized Cecilienhof, which was located within the Soviet Zone of Germany.

Schloss Cecilienhof and the Potsdam Conference

From July 17 to August 2, 1945, US President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee Joseph Stalin convened at the Schloss Cecilienhof to decide the future of Germany. The three Allied powers decided to meet at the palace because the capital itself was too heavily damaged.

Prior to the Potsdam Conference, thirty-six rooms and the Great Hall were renovated and furnished with furniture from other Potsdam palaces. The Hohenzollern’s furniture had been removed by the Soviets and stored elsewhere. Cecilie’s music salon and writing room, Wilhelm’s smoking room, library and breakfast room as well as the Great Hall (where the Potsdam Agreement was signed) were among the rooms that were renovated and used during the Potsdam Conference. The various delegations were housed in the suburb of Potsdam-Babelsberg.

The Great Hall at Schloss Cecilienhof where the Potsdam Agreement was signed

The Great Hall at Schloss Cecilienhof where the Potsdam Agreement was signed

Schloss Cecilienhof’s Post-1945 History

After the Potsdam Conference had ended, Soviet troops used the palace as a clubhouse for a while. Later, Schloss Cecilienhof was handed over to the state of Brandenburg. In 1952, a memorial for the Conference was set up in the former private chambers of Crown Prince Wilhelm and Duchess Cecilie. The East German government used the palace for state receptions and other important meetings. In 1960, part of the castle was turned into a hotel. Today, part of Schloss Cecilienhof still serves as a museum. The hotel is temporarily closed for renovations and expects to reopen in 2018.

Since 1990, Schloss Cecilienhof is part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic or current events, people, places or food.

Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.

 

 

Jesse Owens and the big “snub”

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

Jesse Owens was an American track and field athlete and winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. He was the most successful athlete at the Olympic games and won the 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and the 4×100 meter relay. Most of my life, I heard it said that Hitler refused to shake Owens’ hand. He snubbed Owens because he was Black. I recently learned that this is only a partial truth.

Did Hitler snub Jesse Owens?

I am not trying to minimize Hitler’s arrogance and mistaken belief in Aryan superiority. According to his chief architect Albert Speer, it is true that Hitler “was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs of the colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose ancestors came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.” In other words, it is true that Hitler viewed Jesse Owens as racially inferior and, therefore, might very well have snubbed him, but reality apparently played out differently.

Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics

Jesse Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, and the German public received him warmly. On the first day of the Olympics, Hitler shook hands with the German gold medal winners. Cornelius Johnson, another Black American athlete, won the first gold medal for the United States. Hitler left the stadium just before Johnson was to receive the award.There are several speculations relative to the reasons behind Hitler’s departure. In any case, Olympic committee officials prevailed upon Hitler to shake hands with all or none of the winners, and Hitler decided to skip all medal presentations from that day forward. Therefore, technically Hitler shunned Cornelius Johnson rather than Jesse Owens.

Jesse Owens and discrimination in the U.S.

Born in 1913, Jesse Owens was nine years old when his family moved from Alabama to Ohio. His given name was James Cleveland Owens, and he was called “J.C.” But because of his southern accent, J.C.’s new teacher in Ohio thought he had said his name was “Jesse.” And the name Jesse stuck for the rest of his life. Due to racial discrimination, Owens was forced to live off-campus with the other Black American athletes (he attended Ohio State University), eat in “black-only” restaurants, and stay in “black-only” hotels while traveling in the U.S. Following Jesse’s marvelous Olympic triumphs, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not invite him to the White House. The Black athlete even had the ride the freight elevator at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York to attend his own reception. According to Jeremy Schaap, author of “Triumph: the Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics” Owens later said, “Hitler didn’t snub me, it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany (Bundesarchiv)

Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany (Bundesarchiv)

Jesse Owens – finally honored

Neither President Franklin D. Roosevelt nor his successor, Harry S. Truman bestowed honors upon Jesse Owens. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him “Ambassador of Sports.” In 1984, the street leading to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin was renamed in his honor, and in 1990 and 1998, two U.S. postage stamps were issued to honor him.

 

For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic or current events, people, places or food.

Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.

 

Did Churchill coin “Iron Curtain”?

Thursday, March 6th, 2014

In the United States it is often erroneously believed that Sir Winston Churchill coined the phrase “iron curtain,” when he travelled to Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946. It had been a mere ten months since World War II had ended in Europe. Only one of the three signatories of the Potsdam Agreement was still in power: Soviet Union’s Marshal Joseph Stalin. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had passed away and been replaced by Harry. S. Truman. Sir Winston Churchill had lost the British election to Clement Atlee. At this point in time, the U.S. and Great Britain were mainly concerned with the state of their own post-war economies and remained grateful to Russia that she had taken a prominent role in ending the war.

“The Sinews of Peace” Speech by Churchill

On this day in early March 5, Churchill gave an address at Westminster College in Fulton. His speech was entitled, “The Sinews of Peace.” He began by speaking of his admiration for the Soviet Union and by welcoming her into the circle of leading nations. He expressed understanding for Russia’s need for security on her western frontiers. But then he cautioned, “A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies.” He went on to say, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

Following the speech, the phrase “iron curtain” became widely known. To hear Churchill’s speech in its entirety, visit https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/

 

“Iron Curtain” became a household word. Although it is still widely held that Churchill coined the term “iron curtain” during his 1946 The Sinews of Peace speech, that belief is inaccurate. He had used the term for decades already. The phrase was first used in 1920 by British author and suffragette Ethel Snowden in her book Through Bolshevik Russia. In 1945, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels used the term in his 25 February 1945 speech entitled The Year 2000. http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb49.htm But after Churchill’s post-war speech in Fulton, the phrase became synonymous with the way the West viewed the East. The phrase became so popular that I, a post-war child growing up in Berlin, Germany, remember it as one of the givens in my vocabulary. To me at that young age, “iron curtain” meant Cold War, and I was convinced that Sir Winston Churchill had coined it.

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Sir Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill

Churchill’s view on the Berlin situation

Sir Winston Churchill also foreshadowed what, indeed, ended up happening in Berlin a couple of years later when the Russians blockaded all ground access routes to West Berlin. In his speech, Churchill said, “An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist party in their zone of Occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of left-wing German leaders. At the end of the fighting last June, the American and British Armies withdrew westwards, in accordance with an earlier agreement, to a depth at some points of 150 miles upon a front of nearly four hundred miles, in order to allow our Russian allies to occupy this vast expanse of territory, which the Western Democracies had conquered. If now the Soviet Government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American zones.”

 

 

For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.

Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.