Researching the Past: Not Everything You Think You Know Is True

I have been engaged in researching the past of Richard III as well as my personal past in Munich in the early 1970s, and in both cases there are stories told that are not true.

In the case of Richard III, I am re-reading for my book club Josephine Tey’s brilliant detective novel THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, which looks at the persistent story of Richard III having killed his two young nephews — a story that in the light of neutral research is most likely NOT true.

If you are at all interested in the last Plantagenet king, do read the novel and then look up some of the cited sources.

And now, in preparation for a trip to Germany, I have learned the falsehood of the story I had been told about the U.S. Army building in Munich, Germany, where I worked for the 66th Military Intelligence Group.

I had been told all those years ago that the building had formerly been the headquarters of the Nazi Luftwaffe. Yet, thanks to Wikipedia today, I learned that the building was actually the site of a different Nazi organization — the Reichszeugmeisterei — and Wikipedia explains:

The Reichszeugmeisterei (RZM), formally located in Munich, was the first and eventually the primary Zeugmeisterei (quartermaster’s office), as well as the national material control office of Nazi Germany.

The main building became block no. 7 of the US-McGraw Kaserne. Since the withdrawal of US troops from Munich in the 1990s, the main building has been used by a satellite department of the Police Headquarters of Munich.

On the other hand, I am confident that the following anecdote from my Cold War memoir is true as this happened while my husband had the extra duty of motor officer and the account was told to him then:

The motor pool adjoining the entrance to the 66th MI Group had an interesting story. It seems that German workers were hired to surround the motor pool with a chain fence topped with barbed wire to stop the theft of army vehicles. The German workers assured the army personnel that the workers had been putting up barbed wire-topped fences for many years and were experts at the task.

Imagine the workers’ surprise when an army motor pool sergeant told the German workers that they were incorrectly installing the barbed wire fence top. “This is the way we have always done this,” a worker insisted. The sergeant said, “That may be. But we want the barbed wire to face outwards to keep people OUT, not face inwards to keep people IN.”

And an additional dive into history for me has resulted from my screenwriting partner Susan Chodakiewitz and I working on our screenplay THE RED LETTER. We have been studying various published accounts of the discovery of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, and putting the info together from several books, we may have now come close to deciphering the actual sequence of events.

You can read the draft of my Cold War memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY at http://budurl.com/TAintro

And click here to read my blog post about the Nazi hunter screenplay THE RED LETTER.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Phyllis is available by skype for book group discussions and may be reached at pzmiller@gmail.com

Her Kindle fiction ebooks may be read for free with a Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription — see www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller — and her Kindle nonfiction ebooks may also be read for free with a Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription — see www.amazon.com/author/phylliszmiller