Word: eiffel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Paris' Eiffel Tower is a gaunt, startling skeleton of bare iron bones which hypersensitive esthetes have often called "a horrible thing ... a monster of the imagination." But ever since it was finished in 1889, the 984-foot tower has been jealously adored as a symbol of Paris. It has been visited by 18 millions. It has traveled worldwide by post card, is clearly imprinted on the mind's eye of a large part of the world's population. It has inspired countless little boys playing with sets of Meccano...
...Paris the dream was epitomized by an Exposition, with cascading fountains, noise, crowds, smells and especially the Eiffel Tower. Ugly no doubt, the Tower was a staggering prodigy of science. When its garland of lights went on at night, Pierre Mercadier murmured: "The Fairy Electricity." Pierre had put on his light-colored bowler and taken his pretty, featherbrained wife to the fair. Paulette thought it was dreadful...
Best measure of the campaign's success were the efforts of the Vaterland and its vassals to neutralize it. From the Eiffel Tower hung a V flag. Nazi propaganda photographers snapped V-stenciled trains in Prague, bored workmen V-painting tenders (see cut). To good Nazis, these Vs of course stood for the unfamiliar word Viktoria...
...photographed from a Stuka diving straight down on it, of freight yards in occupied France torn up by British bombs, of French prisoners slaving at construction projects for the Germans, of French children getting rations from the conquerors, of Hitler gaily touring Paris, visiting the Madeleine, looking at the Eiffel Tower...
Beginning with the forcing of the Maastricht defenses, the cameras follow-in plane, tank and lorry-every characteristic move of the Nazi juggernaut across the Lowlands, over to the sea, down to Paris, up the Eiffel Tower, into the armistice car at Compiègne. Residents of Manhattan's German colony sat chilled and stilled in their seats. With fine photography, which in itself emphasizes (in contrast to Russia's Mannerheim Line) the martial superiority of Teutons over Slavs, the picture shows the German Army's crushing, rhythmic power; patience and proficiency in arms; perfect planning...