Ladies! Do not attempt to copy a Fred Astaire dance routine without securing yourself to the wall with belts – or the Nazis will have won!
This is the entire section right here, in a nutshell – an oddly staged mishap written in curious Winchelese. Alright, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the slips at see – the Krauts aren’t just hoping you’ll climb up on a stack of books, they’re counting on it!
I’m still trying to figure out the sequence of events. So she piles up the phone books (note the plural; many local exchanges, perhaps) to pound a nail five and a half feet off the ground. Kneeling on the chair was apparently not an option. But why did she get up on the books again? The picture’s been hung. Did she get up to straighten the picture – and if so, why did she place the chair at such an angle that she'd have to point her feet almost parallel to the wall? And how, in God’s name, did she manage to lose purchase on her right foot and respond by steadying herself against the wall?
Carelessness – Herr Schickelgruber’s unseen seventh column! Poorly staged propaganda – his eighth!
This is from an early 40s issue of Parenting magazine, a helpful guide to winning the war by not killing yourself for a completely stupid reason. It’s very much in the vein of the famous poster that suggested you ride with Hitler when you ride alone - but note that the text doesn’t mention Adolph by name. They just said HIM. And everyone knew who they meant.
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