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Mark Twain learned to speak German quite well, enough to make fun over some long German words
that would not be candidates for LoanWords:
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reading Stephen Ambrose's "D-Day" I find this:
...the German command structure was a disaster. Hitler's mistrust of the generals and the generals' mistrust of Hitler were worth a king's ransom to the Allies. So were Hitler's sleeping habits, as well as his Wolkenkuckucksheim ideas.
I assume the big word may be glossed approximately as Cloud-cuckoo-land?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Good assumption, tsuwm.
Wolke - cloud
Kuckuck - cuckoo (the s makes it genitive)
Heim - home
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Carpal Tunnel
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A king's ransom in those days would have been peanuts. A better figure of speech might have been "worth twenty divisions".
I also think that Hitler's intelligence has been erroneously underestimated. It is hard to judge his mental aberrations. I asked a top Boston psychiatrist in 1939 if Hitler was insane, and he replied "Absolutely not!"
I recently read that Hitler's own physician felt differently.
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Carpal Tunnel
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...and your Boston guy might well have changed his opinion by '44 or '45.
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old hand
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old hand
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I just decided to venture below the equator to LfG, and I'll resurrect this in order to publicly bring up the book I'm currently fascinated by - Dr Bill, did your top Boston psychiatrist happen to work at McLean? I'm in the middle of Gracefully Insane, the author of which escapes me currently, but it's an amazing history of the psychiatric hospital in the Boston suburbs. Just fishin' to see what comes out of bringing it up...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Gracefully Insane, the author of which escapes...Get him back quick!  But tell us more - what is it that's particularly got you interested in this tale?
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Carpal Tunnel
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old hand
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Gracefully Insane, the author of which escapes...
Get him back quick!
Didn't Ken Kesey identify most strongly with the Indian? But I digress...
It's a social history of Boston as much as anything. Apparently every prominent family in New England (that is anybody who was *anybody*) had someone take a "vacation" there. Sylvia Plath, James Taylor plus his brother and sister, Ray Charles, and John Forbes Nash (A Beautiful Mind) all did a stint there, along with many others (long gone) whose names I don't remember off the top of my head (likely because they're long gone). Just read last night about the rise of talk therapy and Freud's stint in treating some McLean patients... a great survey of the evolution of psychiatric practices, plus regional social history.
And to think I was drawn to the cover in the bookstore because I saw the picture of the building on the cover and initially misread the first word of the title as "Graceland". I bought it anyway after I read the inside flap!
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old hand
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