A

abreaction

48; the resolution of a neurosis by reviving forgotten or repressed ideas of the event first causing it, e.g. bomb blasts; Abreaction of the Lord of the Night, 139; See also ARF

Abteilung A
630; "Nazis' watchdog over the IG [...] in the same office building as [...] the IG's own Army liaison group, Vermittlungsstelle W"

Abwehr-Organizations
630; "duplicate Nazi Party offices [...] set up throughout German industry after 1933"

Acción Argentina
383; for which G. Portales worked "before it got busted"

Achtfaden, Horst
451; German: "fading concern"; "aerodynamics man" on Toiletship; aka "Wenk" (code name on S-gerät project - after State Prosecutor von Wenk in Der Mude Tod - 579); also worked at Electromechanishe Werke, Karlshagen (testing station at Peenemünde which the Schwarzkommando commandeered); 563; and Bland, 582; and Bert Fibel, 586; 687

ACHTUNG

20; Allied Clearing House, Technical Units, No. Germany; 193; 210; See also Mucker-Maffick

Ackeret, Prof. Jacob
Swiss rocket engineer who did the early studies of relativistic rocket mechanics, including important paper, "Theory of Rockets," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 6, 1947; "You have memorized Ackeret [...] But the terror will not go away" 452

Acton, Lord (1834-1902)
277; John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton of Aldenham was an English historian In 1895 he was appointed professor of modern history at Cambridge and was founder-editor of the Cambridge Modern History. In a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, he wrote "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."; "History is not woven by innocent hands" 277

Actors/Directors

Betty Grable, 9; W. C. Fields, 12; Cary Grant, 13, 240, 292, 294, 661, 684; George Formby, 18; Dennis Morgan, 32; Fay Wray, 57, 179, 275; Bela Lugosi, 106, 557; G. W. Pabst, 112; Ernst Lubitsch, 112; Fritz Lang, 112, 159, 578, 753; Maria Montez and Jon Hall, 121; Greta Garbo, 127, 476; Noel Coward (British playwright), 134; Walt Disney, 70,135, 680; Meriam C. Cooper, 179; Van Johnson, 182; Rudolph Valentino, 182; Bing Crosby,184; Groucho Marx, 210, 246, 278, 386, 619; Stuart Lake, 210; James Cagney, 222, 599, 684; Tom Mix, 245, 717; Shirley Temple, 24, 246, 304, 466, 493; Bob Steele, 247, 385; 386; Johnny Mack Brown, 247; Errol Flynn, 248, 381; Sydney Greenstreet, 253; John Wayne, 256; Spencer Tracy, 266; Rita Hayworth, 274, 449; Laurel and Hardy, 375, 583; Don Ameche, 381; Oliver Hardy, 381; Mickey Rooney, 382; Carmine Miranda, 383, 664; Mickey Mouse, 392; Marlene Dietrich, 393; Brigette Helm, 393-94; Asta Nielsen, 415; Carol Lombard, 445; Henry Fonda, 448; Clark Gable, 516, 577; William (Dick) Powell, 516, 622; Basil Rathbone, 534, 536; S.Z. ("Cuddles") Sakall, 534; Cecil B. DeMille, 71, 559; Henry Wilcoxon, 559; Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, 561; Audie Murphy, 563; Rudolph Klein-Rogge, 578; Brigitte Helm, 578; Bernhardt Goetzke, 579; James Mason, 592; Deanna Durbin, 599; Rin-Tin-Tin, 614; Betty Davis & Margaret Dumont, 619; Douglas Fairbanks, 637; William Bendix, 684; Sam Jaffe, 684; Arthur Kennedy, 684; Margaret O'Brien, 690; Bengt Ekerot, 755; Maria Casarés, 755; See also film/cinema references; movies; theatre

Adenoid
Giant, 14; "the Adenoid" 754; [An adenoid is an enlarged mass of lymphoid tissue at the back of the pharynx characteristically obstructing breathing -- usually used in plural.] See also Zhlubb, Richard M.

AEG
164; German Gen'l Electric Co., founded by Emil Rathenau, father of Walter;

Aether
"as if all tuned in to the same aethereal Xth Programme" 147; "They don't want us to know there is a medium there, what used to be called an 'aether' [...] The Soniferous Aether" 695; "a presence, analogous to the Aether, flows through time, as the Aether flows through space. [...] an Aether sea to bear us world-to-world might bring us back a continuity, show us a kinder universe" 726; "the nostalgia of Aether" 726-27; "a hallway, down, up which the soul is borne by an irresistible Aether" 750;

AG
520; Aktiengesellschaft: "joint-stock company"

Aggadic tradition
"aggada" is the Jewish term for non-halakic (nonlegal) matters, especially in Talmud and Midrash. These include folklore, legend, theology/theosophy, scriptural interpretations, biography, etc. Not to be confused with the Passover Manual called "the Haggada(h)." "from around the 4th century that Isaac, at the moment Abraham was about to sacrifice him on Moriah, saw the antechambers of the Throne" 749

AGO card
372; Adjutant-General's Office

aircraft
B-17s, 87; Spitfires, 96; Stuka, 102; ME (Messerschmidt), 151, 184; "robot weapons" 144; "Flying Fortresses" 169; "howling Thunderbolts" 313; "the singing of Furies" 334; P-51 Mustang, 672; Japanese Zeros, 672, 690, 692

albatross
"'Imipolex G is the company albatross, Yank.'" 261; "Old Czarist albatrosses still hang around the Soviet neck." 354; "[Slothrop's] been changing, sure, changing, plucking the albatross of self now and then, idly, half-conscious as picking his nose" 623; "In its sluggish coma, the albatross stirred." 624; Katje: "'"Yes [Weissmann] matters to me, very much. He is an old self, a dear albatross I cannot let go.'" 661; "But maybe the next best thing is an albatross with no curse attached: an amiable memory." 701; "So is her son Tyrone, but only because by now--early Virgo--he has become one plucked albatross. Plucked, hell--stripped. Scattered all over the Zone. It's doubtful if he can ever be "found" again, in the conventional sense of "positively identified and detained." Only feathers...redundant or regenerable organs, "which we would be tempted to classify under the 'Hydra-Phänomen' were it not for the complete absence of hostility...."--Natasha Raum, "Regions of Indeterminacy in Albatross Anatomy [...]" 712; " The Man has a branch office in each of our brains, his corporate emblem is a white albatross" 712-13;

alchemy
The ancient art of transmuting baser metals into gold, and the search for the Philosopher's Stone, the universal solvent (Alkahest), the Panacea, and the Elixir of Life. It was the forerunner of chemistry; 482

Alexandrevna, Feodora (1872-1918)
352; A German princess and empress of Russia as the wife of Nicholas II, she came under the influence of Rasputin. She was taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution in 1917 and was shot; "she of the kidskin underwear"

Alien Property Custodian
581; disposed of German property in US after WWI

Alkit uniforms
243;

Allan
547; mentioned in Pirate's and Katje's How I Came To Love the People

Allen, Fred (1894-1956)

Fred Allen
Allen, born in Cambridge, Massachussetts, was a top-rated radio comedian of the 1930s and 40s who was the first to take comedy out of the realm of vaudeville and into the realm of satire and political/social commentary. He was unsuccessful in making the transition to television in the 50s, and faded into obscurity. His form of humor is widely considered to be the precursor of the TV comedy as practiced by Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jay Leno, to name a few. Allen once joked that "imitation is the sincerest form of television"; "Wednesday nights over the BBC" 44; MORE

Allgeier, Johann Baptist (1763-1823)
675; "the midget Grandmaster" was actually a "big strong man" according to one source. Allgaier was an Austrian chess master and theoritician who is probably best known for writing the first chess book in German, in 1795. After a stint in the Austrian army he returned to Vienna where he made a living playing chess. He also designed chess pieces. See also Allgeyer soldiers; chess

Allgeyer soldiers

550; "an inch and a quarter to the man, painted cream, gold and blue"; Toy tin soldiers, and especially the flat tin soldiers made by the Allgeyer firm, popular with European children. Dave Henry wrote to tell us that the "painted in cream, gold and blue" refers to the toy soldier's uniform and he suspects a Prussian uniform of some sort from the Napoleanic era, but isn't certain.

ALLGEYER, Johann Christian, (1821-76) from Furth. This was one of Furth's major manufacturers of flat tin figures and the Allgeyer name was carried on through three generations with the aid of his son, Johann Friederich and then Konrad. Their pieces are signed on the bases. Most of their figures were exported to France.

Allport and Vernon's Study of Values
Devised in 1931 by G.W. Allport and P.E. Vernon, this "values survey" was a questionnaire consisting of 15 items. Each item presented a description of a situation followed by four options representing different possible behaviors. Each option represented one of six types of values: namely, theoretical, economic, political, aesthetic, social, or religious. For each item, subjects were asked to rank-order their preferences for the four options. For example, one question read "Should one guide one's conduct according to, or develop chief loyalties toward," the option "one's religious faith" reflecting Religious values. Another read "To what extent do the following famous persons interest or attract you?" with the option "Charles Darwin" reflecting theoretical values. Results were used to distinguish, among other things, "certainty-oriented" (ambiguity-avoidant) people vs. "uncertainty-oriented people"; seems "more human" to Paul de la Nuit than the MMPI, 81

Alpdrücken
394; [German: "nightmare"] Gerhardt Von Göll's and Greta Erdmann's first film together - featuring "Corridor metaphysics." Greta believes that Bianca was conceived during the filming of the rape scene where Max Schlepzig played the "Grand Inquisitor."

Altrincham
153; "the old ladies in Altrincham trying to summon up the Devil" - Altrincham is a city near Manchester in England.

ambiguities
"perhaps the girls are not even real" 19; "One is lying, or bluffing, or both are" 228; "that octopus didn't [really happen]" 248; Tantivy's reported death ("maybe the whole story was a lie"), 252; Jamf, 261, 738; "lies evidentially, but were certainly the truth clinically" 272; Slothrop would "edit, switch names, insert fantasies into the yarns he spun for Tantivy" 302; "the New Uncertainty" 303; "The status of the name you miss...has grown ambiguous and remote" 303; Tchitcherine & Wimpe, 344; "There are powerful factions in Paris who don't believe [the Schwarzkommando] exist. [...] I think we're here, but only in a statistical way [...]--the slightest shift in the probabilities and we're gone" 361-62; "particle and wave" 398; the "Ellipse of Uncertainty" 425, 427; "Slothrop will think he sees [Bianca]" 491; Anubis, 493; "the lemming may not even exist" 554 (& 556); "S-Gerät, real or fantasized" 564; "Of course it happened. Of course it didn't happen." 667; Region of Uncertainty, 700; Otyiyumbu Indeterminacy Relation, 700

AMERICA

American Army Ordnance
273; 295; "whatever it is your Ordnance types carry around in the way of light armament" 335;

American Food and Drug
452; "took the cocaine out of Coca Cola" in 1904

Analysis
"a spot of combinatorial analysis, that favorite pastime of retired Army officers" 76; " 'I wonder if you people aren't a bit too--well, strong, on the virtues of analysis'" 88; "the stairstep gables that front so many of these ancient north-German buildings [...] They hold shape, they endure, like monuments to Analysis." 576; "It wasn't Europe's Original Sin--the latest name for that is Modern Analysis" 722; "Europe came and established its order of Analysis and Death" 722; See also Routinization of Charisma

Andreas
See Orukambe, Andreas

Andrée, Salomon (1854-97)
589; A Swedish engineer, Andrée disappeared in an attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon from Spitzbergen in 1897. His body was discovered on White Island in 1930; "what did Andrée find in the polar silence"

Andrews Sisters
382; A singing trio consisting of sisters LaVerne, Maxene, and Patricia who had a number of hits between 1938-1958. They were also in several movies and even a Broadway play.

Angels

"graceful as a wing" 39; angel's-eye view, 54; snow angels, 57; "Destroying Angel" 93; Katje's "questing shoulders like wings" 97; "windmill known as 'The Angel'" 106, 536; starlings on radar, 112; "the Angels sing new songs" 134; "mock-angel singing" 135; "days of angelic visit" 145; Basher St. Blaise's angel, 146, 151-52 (aka Lübeck angel, 214, 217); "sudden angel, thermodynamic surprise" 143; "Your wings...oh, Leni, your wings..." 162; "as the Angel swooped in" 164; "hark the herald angels" 177; "Jeremy will take her like the Angel itself" 177; "She has swept with her wings another life" 218; "Richard Halliburton...a failed angel" 266; "the Angel who tried to destroy us in Südwest" 328; "star-blotting Moslem angels" 341; "Tenth-Elegy angel" 341; "Angels and sanctions" 355; "to bring down steel angels of exaltation" 437; "like the Archangels" 464; Bianca's "shoulderblades rising like wings" 470; "the windmill called 'The Angel'" 536; "the angel [the Erdschweinhöhlers] have hoped for" 672; "Angel Thanatz" 673; "functions of Moslem angels" 705; "Angels Melchidael, Yahoel, Anatiel, and the great Metatron" 734; "some angel...watching us at our many perversities" 746; "under a sentence of death whose deep beauty the angel has never been close to" 746; "angels at the doorways" 750; "a bright angel of death" 760; See also Metatron

Anilinas Alemanas
According to Sasuly, "one of the principal IG agencies in South America" in Buenos Aires, co-managed by Argentinean Alfredo Moll; "the IG branch in Buenos Aires" 387

Antoine
247; named called out at Perlimpinpin party

Anubis
459; In Egyptian religion, Anubis was a god with the head of a jackal and the body of a man. He led the dead to the abode of Osiris to be judged. The Anubis is a yacht full of affluent Polish refugees from Lublin regime (See page 34) headed for Swinemünde; owned by Procalowski; aka "white death ship"; only a probability, 493; sighted, 528; Slothrop boards, 529; 663; "As long as the Anubis kept moving, there was no need to choose" 667; 668; 706

Apache
Falkman and His Apache Band, 32; One Apache, 70; "Secret Service's notion of an Apache" 244; Apache sideburns, 254; "Waxwing's apache lieutenants" 638; More on Apache

Arbella
204; ship which brought the first American Slothrop to America in 1630

ARF

75; Abreaction Research Facility - run by Pointsman at White Visitation; See also abreaction

Ariadne
In Greek mythology, the daughter of King Minos of Crete and Pasipha&euml. She fell in love with Theseus and helped him slay her father's Minotaur by providing Theseus with a clew to find his way out of the Labyrinth; "Venus and Ariadne! [...] They own everything: Ariadne, the Minotaur" 88; "what there is of labyrinth collapsing in rings outward, hero and horror, engineer and Ariadne consumed, molten inside the light of himself" 143; See also Labyrinth; Thesean brushings

Armageddon
143; the final battle between good and evil prophesized in the Book of Revelations in the Bible

Army Weapons Department
400; 416;

Arnhem
Dutch city on the right bank of the lower Rhine. "Hmm. You must've got out by way of that Arnhem, then, right?" 95; MAP

aromatic rings
"Imipolex G has proved to be nothing more--or less--sinister than a new plastic, an aromatic heterocyclic polymer, developed in 1939, years before its time [...] Structurally, it's a stiffened chain of aromatic rings" 249; "At du Pont, the next step after nylon was to introduce aromatic rings into the polyamide chain." 249-250; "Pretty soon a whole family of "aromatic polymers" had arisen" 250; "giant "heterocyclic" rings, to alternate with the aromatic rings. [...] Such chains would be known as 'aromatic heterocyclic polymers.'" 250; "there would be a field of aromatic chemistry to ally itself with secular power, and find new methods of synthesis" 412; "'The aromatic Ring we know today, [...] 'but who [...] who, sent, the Dream?'" 413; "Imipolex G....It's an aromatic polyimide" 576; See also Imipolex G

Asch, Walter
152; present at seance with Sachsa

Askania
425; Pat Brian writes: Askania was an (East) German manufacturer of surveying instruments (theodolites), movie cameras and projectors. The design of their theodolites, with which I am personally experienced, was of an optical precision and ergonomic simplicity and elegance that I have never seen matched by any other brand of survey instrument; crew in Blizna at A-4 testing; "Askanian films of Rocket flights" 567;

Asquith, Margot (1865-1945)
Lady Oxford, 1927
Cecil Beaton
78; daughter of Sir Charles Tennant and second wife of Herbert Henry Asquith (1852-1928), a British statesman; She wrote Autobiography in 1922; Wikipedia entry

Associated Electrical Industries of Britain
649;

astrology
"next you'll be consulting horoscopes" 33; PISCES, 34; "the twelve spokes of a stranded artillery piece. . .a mud zodiac" 79; the ruler of my Sign, 108; "opalescent scorpions (her birth sign) inside gold mountings in triskelion" 150; "Walter Asch ('Taurus')" 152; "born under the Crab" 154; "earth-sign belligerence" 154; "Piscean husband" 154; "[Pökler] kept at [Leni's] astrology without mercy" 159; "two goldfish are making a Pisces sign" 174; "the astrologer's Moon" 220; "The great cusp-green equinox and turning, dreaming fishes to young ram" 236; Twelfth House, 274; "13th sign of the Zodiac" 302; "winged rider, red Sagittarius" 343; "Wernher von Braun's birthday is to the Spring Equinox" 361; "the Zodiac glides" 388; "Pluto is in my sign now" 415; "Bismarck's elevation, at the spring equinox of 1871, to prince and imperial chancellor" 419; "her Neptune is afflicted" 463; "full of the Sagittarian fire" 483; "No pentacle, no cups, no holy Fool" 533; "pre-Piscean fugue" 533; "Piscean depths" 579; "the Spring Equinox, [...] that most singular of the Zodiac's singular points" 588; "It is shaped something like a crab. That's Cancer in Latin." 645; "the green edge of Aries" 681; "an astrologer of the Hamburg School" 683; "The sun was in Leo" 694; "a double Virgo for a son" 699; Proceedings of the International Society of Confessors to an Enthusiasm for Albatross Nosology, 712; "early Virgo" 712, 727; "What you felt stirring across the land...it was the equinox...green spring equal nights" 720; "with a new axis...what happens to astrology?" 753; See also paranoia/connectedness; Pisces

Asturias
605; where Manuela at Putzi's is from;

Atomic Chili
557; Major Marvy's concoction: "a Götterodämmerung of the mucous membranes"

Attila the Hun (c.406-453)
159; Hunnish king who conquered much of Europe and Asia, though he was unsuccessful in his attempts to conquer Gaul (France) and Italy. He died shortly after marrying Ildeco, a Burgundian princess; 159, 578; 579; "[Geli] is off to find her gallant Attila" 717;

ATS
17; Auxiliary Territorial Services, British civilian group helping the war cause; ATS girls, 277

Augustes
708; "two unemployed Augustes leap out in whiteface and working-clothes, and commence belting each other with gigantic [...] foam rubber penises"

Austerity
"this moment of boyhood among [Pirate's] ways imperialized and set (he was 33), his preAusterity, in which Scorpia figured as his Last Fling" 36; " dark, lank, pre-austerity stocking" 150; "every assertion the fucking War has ever made -- that we are meant for work and government, for austerity" 177; "an innocent salute to Postwar, a hope that the end of shortages, the end of Austerity, is near" 593; "into the paper cities and afternoons of this strange peace, and the coming Austerity" 620; "London today can feel advance chills of Austerity." 639

Auschwitz
Largest of the Nazi extermination camps, located 150 miles from Warsaw in Poland. Built in 1940 as a concentration camp, gas chambers were added in 1941. It is estimated that 1.5 million European Jews, Russian prisoners of war and gypsies died here; 666

Avus Autobahn
370; freeway in Berlin

Gravity's Rainbow Alpha Guide
A·B·C·D·E·F·G·H·I·J·K·L·M·N·O·P·Q·R·S·T·U·V·W·XYZ top of page
Personal tools