The Sound of Music is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Set in Austria on the eve of the Anschluss in 1938, the musical tells the story of Maria, who takes a job as governess to a large family while she decides whether to become a nun. She falls in love with the children, and eventually their widowed father, Captain von Trapp. He is ordered to accept a commission in the German navy, but he opposes the Nazis. He and Maria decide on a plan to flee Austria with the children. Many songs from the musical have become standards, including "Edelweiss", "My Favorite Things", "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", "Do-Re-Mi", and the title song "The Sound of Music".
Carl Orff was a German composer and music educator, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education.
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach was a Nazi German politician who is best known for his role as the Nazi Party national youth leader and head of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940. He later served as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna. After World War II, he was convicted of crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Hans Bernd Gisevius was a German diplomat and intelligence officer during the Second World War. A covert opponent of the Nazi regime, he served as a liaison in Zürich between Allen Dulles, station chief for the American OSS and the German Resistance forces in Germany.
Johann Georg Elser was a German worker who planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders on 8 November 1939 at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. Elser constructed and placed a bomb near the platform from which Hitler was to deliver a speech. It did not kill Hitler, who left earlier than expected, but it did kill 8 people and injured 62 others. Elser was held as a prisoner for more than five years until he was executed at the Dachau concentration camp less than a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany.
Marguerita Maria "Mady" Christians was an Austrian actress who had a successful acting career in theatre and film in the United States until she was blacklisted during the McCarthy period.
Kathrine Kressmann Taylor or Kressmann Taylor was an American writer, known mostly for her Address Unknown (1938), a short story written as a series of letters between a Jewish art dealer, living in San Francisco, and his business partner, who had returned to Germany in 1932. It is credited with exposing, early on, the dangers of Nazism to the American public.
Carl Esmond was an Austrian-born American film and stage actor, born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Although his age was given as 33 in the passenger list when he arrived in the USA in January 1938, in his naturalization petition his birth year is stated as 1902. His stage names were Willy Eichberger and Charles Esmond and finally Carl Esmond. He trained at Vienna's State Academy of Dramatic Arts, and made his film debut in the operetta The Emperor's Waltz (1933). He was active in the Viennese genre of shallow romantic comedies so popular in the Austria of the interwar period.
Address Unknown is a short novel by Kathrine Taylor in 1938. Taylor describes and predicts Germany's political and social situation in 1930s. The story is told entirely in letters between two German friends from 1932 to 1934.
Confessions of a Nazi Spy is a 1939 American political thriller film directed by Anatole Litvak for Warner Bros. It was the first explicitly anti-Nazi film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio, being released in May 1939, several months before the beginning of World War II and over three years before American entry into the war.
Josef Wagner was from 1931 the Nazi Gauleiter of Gau Westphalia-South and, as of December 1934, also of Gau Silesia. In 1941 he was dismissed from his offices, then expelled from the Nazi Party (NSDAP), imprisoned by the Gestapo, and likely executed around the time of end of the war in Europe.
Kessler is a television series produced by the BBC in 1981, starring Clifford Rose in the title role.
Margin for Error is a 1943 American drama film directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Lillie Hayward and Samuel Fuller is based on the 1939 play of the same title by Clare Boothe Luce.
The Passerby is a 1982 French-West German drama film directed by Jacques Rouffio, based on the 1936 novel on the same name by Joseph Kessel, and starring Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli. It was Schneider's last film.
Peter van Eyck was a German-born film actor. He was perhaps best known for his roles in the 1960s features The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Shalako and The Bridge at Remagen.
Manfred Freiherr von Killinger was a German naval officer, Freikorps leader, military writer and Nazi politician. A veteran of World War I and member of the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt during the German Revolution, he took part in the military intervention against the Bavarian Soviet Republic. After the Freikorps was disbanded, the antisemitic Killinger was active in the Germanenorden and Organisation Consul, masterminding the murder of Matthias Erzberger. He was subsequently a Nazi Party representative in the Reichstag and a leader of the Sturmabteilung, before serving as Saxony's Minister-President and playing a part in implementing Nazi policies at a local level.
Resisting Enemy Interrogation is a 1944 United States Army docudrama training film, directed by Robert B. Sinclair and written by Harold Medford and Owen Crump. The cast includes Arthur Kennedy, Mel Tormé, Lloyd Nolan, Craig Stevens and Peter Van Eyck. Resisting Enemy Interrogation was intended to train United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) crews to resist interrogation by the Germans.
Hitler is a 1962 black and white American film. The film stars Richard Basehart in the title role of Adolf Hitler; Cordula Trantow stars as Geli Raubal, Maria Emo as Eva Braun and John Banner as Gregor Strasser. The film depicts Hitler through the years, beginning with the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 and focuses mainly on his private life, in particular, his relationships with niece Geli and longtime companion/wife, Eva Braun. According to film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, Basehart "gives a cerebral interpretation" of Hitler during the timeframe he was the leader of Nazi Germany. For her performance, Cordula Trantow was nominated for a 1962 Golden Globe in the category: Most Promising Newcomer - Female. The film was produced by Three Crown Productions, Inc. and distributed by Allied Artists Pictures.
Maud Hester von Ossietzky was a suffragette and the wife of German journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky.
