I want to welcome everyone back to part five of my reading of blockade by Anna Eisenminger.

Quick reminder, Thomas and I were doing movie reviews now.

We did the 1976 classic Martin Scorsese directed Paul Schrader-written taxi driver.

You can get it at Gum Road. You can access to Gum Road links at my website

Freeman Beyond the Wall.com forward slash taxi driver. Taxi driver all one word. All right. Let's get into it. We're going to start on

Christmas day of 1918. Christmas 1918 and still 1918.

and still no peace on earth.

On the contrary, a recent extension of the armistice

without any raising of the blockade,

i.e. without improving the food and fuel conditions for millions of

hungry and freezing persons. A few Christmas presents for us poor harassed Vienna Housewives,

such as the cutting off of electric heat, complete stoppage of the gas supply,

discontinuance of the tram service, and suspension of the railway traffic.

Christmas 1918 is not a Merry Christmas for the people of Vienna.

I turned over the pages of my diary

and found the last Christmas festival before the terrible World War,

December 1913.

How many things have happened in these last years? World War, December 1913.

How many things have happened in these last years?

The official list of casualties for the Central Powers and the Entente give the total number

of dead as 7.5 million. The number of those who have returned from the front wounded or

invalids for the rest of their lives is as difficult to determine by statistics as the

...