Sir Ken Adam: German Fighter Pilot In Brit RAF WW2; Film Design Awards, James Bond, Dr Strangelove..

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Last edited Thu May 27, 2021, 04:53 AM - Edit history (3)

- Sir Ken Adam in 2012.
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-'Hidden History, The German Fighter Pilot Who Flew For The RAF,' Daily Kos, May 25, 2021. - Ed. ('Hidden History' diary series on forgotten & little-known areas of history).

In the early years of the Second World War, a flood of refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe made its way to London. Some of these were former military officers, and among these were a number of pilots who now volunteered to fly with the Royal Air Force against the Nazis. So far as is known, however, there was only one German fighter pilot (and two bomber pilots) who flew for the British.
- Klaus Hugo Adam was born in 1921 in Berlin, where his father Fritz co-owned the Adam sporting goods store. Here, along with his two brothers, Klaus lived a comfortable upper-middle-class life. - That is, until 1933, when Hitler and his Nazis came to power, and over a series of steps they began to implement their anti-Semitic programs. Jews were forbidden from a variety of trades and crafts, racial laws banned intermarriages, and Jewish businesses were the target of Nazi-organized boycotts. "

Assimilated" Jews who had converted to German Protestantism were not spared, and even Jewish veterans who had fought in the German Army during the Great War (WWI) were now the victims of Nazi terror.

The Adam sporting goods store was boycotted, and Fritz Adam, Klaus' father was briefly arrested by the Nazi Gestapo and interrogated for 48 hours. Realizing that things were only going to get worse, the family, aided by their business connections, searched for a way to escape. In 1934, the Nazis granted exit visas to Klaus Adam and his younger brother Dieter, and they went to England where they found a place in a "public school" in Scotland. A few months later, the rest of the family was allowed out of Berlin and made their way to London, where the boys joined them. Here, the refugees were officially classified as "stateless persons". - In 1937, as war clouds gathered in Europe, Klaus was studying architecture in London, and when England declared war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, Adam was put to work designing air raid shelters and helping to write civil defense booklets.

At the outbreak of war, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain issued instructions that all Germans, Austrians and Italians within England were to be interned as "enemy aliens", and they were gathered into makeshift camps in rural school buildings or castles. This included even those anti-Nazi refugees who had fled to England, some of whom had already been there for 5 or 6 years. As a result of his war work, however, Klaus Adam was exempted from the interment order. But he knew better than anyone else in England what the Nazis were really like, and he decided that it was his duty to help fight against them. He was not alone--several thousand internees asked that they be released and allowed to do their part in the effort against Hitler.

So in 1940, the British Government formed the "Royal Pioneer Corps", made up exclusively of Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Austrians, and other refugees who wanted to join the British military. They became known as "His Majesty's Most Loyal Enemy Aliens". The Pioneers were given some infantry training, but were for the most part assigned to noncombat roles: loading and unloading freight, putting up Nissen hut buildings, or digging defensive trenches and anti-tank ditches. (Later they would be recruited as intelligence officers, translators, and special commando forces.)

Adam joined the Pioneers in 1940. What Adam really wanted to do, however, was fly for the Royal Air Force...

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/5/25/2029217/-Hidden-History-The-German-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Flew-for-the-RAF
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- Sir Ken Adam, Wiki excerpts, - ed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Adam

- England: His brother Dieter at the age of 9 having a fight with a playground bully wearing a Hitler Youth uniform & the increasing discrimination against Jews, convinced their parents to send Klaus & Dieter to boarding school in Edinburgh.. The rest of the Adam family stayed in Germany as Adam's father felt that the Nazis were only a temporary aberration, & they would wait it out. Things however continued to deteriorate with Jewish stores being boycotted & targeted for attacks in April 1933...



- Adam designed The War Room set for 'Dr. Strangelove' (1964).

- Film art designer: Adam was hired for the 1st James Bond film, Dr. No (1962). Next he was involved in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964). His work on the film was described by the British Film Institute (BFI) as "gleaming and sinister." Steven Spielberg even called it "the best set that's ever been designed." Adam accrued more major film credits & won his first Oscar for Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon,' (1975)...
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- The making of 'Dr. Strangelove' with Ken Adam. Stanley Kubrick, producer (1964).