That was a really unfortunately designed test for feeble mindedness. I can't even believe it was that simplistic. Ok...so the guy is not a wordsmith. But what if they tested him on math, and he turned out to be a genius? Or what about musical talent? They tested one area of his IQ (his verbal IQ), not very thoroughly, and decided he was feeble minded....It's actually hard for me to believe the Germans could have been so lax in their criteria.
shareYou're talking about a regime that could probably have had him shot for the other remark he made about not knowing or caring when Hitler's birthday was.
Levon Helm... The Best There Ever Was, The Best There'll Ever Be
If you read some thorough histories of the Third Reich, you'll find that people were imprisoned, tortured or killed for things even less "dangerous" than Rolfe's so-called feeble-mindedness.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep.
I had the chance to work with Michael Jackson who was as brilliant as they come.
Tommy Mottola
That's the whole idea behind designing a "master race". Anyone who isn't perfect in every way - physically and mentally - has no place. It's an absurd idea of course because all people are strong in some area and lacking in others. Just because you're not a perfect does not mean you're not fit to live.
Even if a person is perfect in every way, that doesn't mean that they can produce children who perfect. Genetics has a way of throwing curve balls.
Forming a sentence using three nouns is not exactly difficult. Look up the McGuffey readers to see what grammar school students had to know to advance to the next grade in the early 20th century.
let's go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could
It would have mattered little if "Petersen" (Clift) could have formed a sentence. They would have found him lacking in something. Remember he did not know Hitler's birthday. That alone would have been enough. The bar was so low that anyone who who got within their field 0f vision was a potential victim.
Fighting A Never Ending Battle For Truth, Justice And The American Way
It's actually hard for me to believe the Germans could have been so lax in their criteria.
Hitler had followed a group of phoney bs philosophers, theosphists and psuedo-scientists who had invented a pretend history of a German race that supposedly descended from the mythical island of Atlantis. Different people sucked in different things to fill-out this theory...the people were called Aryans, and were blondes with blue eyes. These mythical ancestors of modern Germans were stronger, smarter, healthier, and possibly descended from Gods...Nordic, Roman, Greek..? It's fiction. So put in what you want. ETs? They brought the VRIL, an ancient power that makes you strong... They believed the occult could give them powers, so they began performing rituals....Himmler bought a castle where they performed these rites with women who never cut their hair...all this superstitious craziness to amass powers no one else had...
Himmler (a homely little man who decided to go back to chicken farming...) headed the SS--the thugs of the Nazis. He amassed files on everyone, and ruthlessly blackmailed them to achieve his goals, while he fell for every crazy concept like finding the Ark of the Covenant, locating the descendants of Atlantis, finding the sword that stabbed Jesus on the cross.....but it was his SS who ran the country and held on to power. On the other hand, Goebbels handled propaganda and was a PhD...he engineered the movies and documentaries that told Germans the latest story manufactured to ensure their loyalty and compliance, their sacrifice to the war effort, and their assent to the and those who handled other things like Eichmann (the train system for all the camps to organize the entire Final Solution--which was created by a ruthless military officer named Reinhard Heidrich), Herman Goering was a crack military pilot from WWI who strategized brilliant tactical moves for the 1st years of the war, and Albert Speer was an intelligent man, an architect who took over other duties...
In other words, there were nuts who had crazy ideas, and were racist anti-semites...they met-up with other very intelligent men who were also racist anti-semites and they handled the government, military strategy, and the propaganda that allowed a stranglehold on the country's thought, dreams for the future, etc. Hitler became the candidate the new organization of Nazi thugs put forward in the 1920s, and after electoral failure, they tried to engineer a coup, the Beerhall Putsch. Several were killed and Hitler and Hess went to prison where they wrote Mein Kampf, full of their racist ideology. When they got out, they went back to politicking for votes.
And in 1933 the aging senile President of the Weimar Republic appointed Hitler Chancellor of the Reich, based on his promises to unify Germany and electoral success of the Nazi Party (33% of the vote in a Parliamentary system). He then managed to get himself appointed President of the Reich, and as the last step before he dissolved the legislature, he renamed himself "Der Fuhrer" and got legislation that allowed him sole legislative power in Germany and free of any review. He took away all freedoms of the press, speech, association, expression, and by mid 1933, he was the dictator! He was the sole authority in the country, was the legislature, the Supreme Court.
And he began his program of ridding Germany and then Europe of Jews. At first it was extra-legal attacks, violent attacks on businesses, synagogues, which he appeared to reign in. Then, they took away businesses and civil service jobs from Jews, encouraging them to leave Germany, but no country would take them unless they were Einstein. In 1935, the Nuremburg Laws were passed requiring proof on non-Jewish ancestors to marry, join the SS, even have sex or children...Jews were no longer citizens of Germany. Hitler held a meeting of his generals and explained his Liebenborne plan to take over successive countries of Europe, then the rest of the world, rid them of unworthy populations and give the property to Aryan Germans to populate. And the concentration camps were supplemented by death camps devoted solely to genocide. In 1939, Hitler began expanding into Poland, and beyond...killing every undesirable population. All based on mythical ideas of Aryans....