Quotulatiousness

June 3, 2020

The Wehrmacht‘s License to Kill the Innocent – War Against Humanity 012 – May 1941

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 2 Jun 2020

As the Blitzes of Britain slow down considerably, violence in Croatia increases dramatically as the Ustaše government purges the country of Jews and Serbs and the Wehrmacht gets deadly instructions for their invasion of the Soviet Union.

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Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Joram Appel and Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
Carlos Ortega Pereira – BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…
Cassowary Colorizations – https://www.flickr.com/people/cassowa…

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
IWM D 5984, D 1091
USHMM

Bibliography:
Barton, Brian, “A Belfast Blitz Memorial?”. In: History Ireland 24:2 (March/April 2016) 8-9.
Biondich, Mark, “Religion and Nation in Wartime Croatia: Reflections on the Ustaša Policy of Forced Religious Conversions, 1941-1942″. In: The Slavonic and East European Review 83:1 (Jan 2005) 71-116.
Clapson, Mark, “Air Raids in Britain, 1940-45”. In: The Blitz companion: Aerial Warfare, Civilians and the City since 1911 (2019) 37-76.
Gotovich, Aron, Dictionnaire de La Seconde Guerre Mondiale En Belgique (2008).
MacDonald, David B., “From Jasenovac to Srebrenica; Subaltern Genocide and the Serbs”. In: Nicholas Robins, Adam Jones (ed.), Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice (2009) 103-121, 106.
Tanner, Marcus, “The Ustashe”. In: Croatia: A Nation Forged in War; Third Edition (2010) 141-167.
Williamson, Murray, and Allan Millett, “Barbarossa 1941”. In: A War To Be Won (2000) 110-142.

Primary Sources:
Barbarossa Decree, 13 May 1941. http://users.clas.ufl.edu/ggiles/barb….
Commissar Order, 6 June 1941. http://users.clas.ufl.edu/ggiles/barb….
William Sansom: Westminster in War, 1947.

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Cobby Costa – “From the Past”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
Farell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Peter Sandberg – “Document This 1”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Cobby Costa – “Flight Path”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
2 hours ago
For many living in newly occupied territories in South-Eastern Europe, May 1941 marked the start of a hellish life under fascist occupation. For many more, May 1941 will be the month in which their fate is sealed. Many hundreds of thousands more will suffer by the decisions made this months. From this episode, and the next ones, it will become very clear that there is no such thing as a “clean Wehrmacht“, and that this is very much a myth. Some parts of the internet still seem to hold on tight to this, but we will counter it time and again, wether it is about occupying forces, Operation Barbarossa or Erwin Rommel.

Cheers,
Joram

June 2, 2020

“Calling a modern ‘artist’ a poseur is like calling water wet — what could possibly be the point?”

Filed under: History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Severian on modern “art” and its practitioners:

Picasso’s “Guernica” in mural form in the town of Guernica.
Photo by Papamanila via Wikimedia Commons.

Leszek Kolakowski, in his essay collection Is God Happy?, wrote several fascinating essays on Communism vs. other forms of Socialism, such as Fascism and generic Leftism. He notes that while Communism proper attracted lots of serious intellectuals and artists, who produced some works of real merit, generic “Leftism” had few, and Fascism almost none.

He also notes the degeneration of art on the Left. I don’t want / am not qualified to get deep into the weeds of art history, but let me use an example (mine, not Kolakowski’s): Pablo Picasso vs … oh, pick an artist, they’re all Lefties … let’s say Andy Warhol. Noting that “important” can be diametrically opposed to things like “good,” “aesthetically pleasing,” etc., we can all agree that both were important artists. Whatever else their differences, the most obvious one was:

Sincerity.

Picasso was a lifelong member of the Communist Party. He was also a sincere artist (which, again, can be miles away from “good;” I personally can’t stand Picasso’s art). Guernica is wildly overrated, and its sentiment jejune — we all agree that bombing civilians is bad, mmkay? — but at least it’s sincere. Warhol, on the other hand, never took a sincere breath in his life. Making your work superficial on purpose doesn’t absolve you from the sin of superficiality. Warhol (and Roy Lichtenstein, and the rest of the “Pop Art” crowd) gave wannabes permission to substitute “being ironic” for “having something to say,” and there’s your modern art in a nutshell. Calling a modern “artist” a poseur is like calling water wet — what could possibly be the point?

Which brings us back to Kolakowski. He notes that there are apostates aplenty from Communism, and they all seem compelled to write big long books full of critical self-examination. Cheering for the murder of millions would do that, one supposes… except that, as Kolakowski says, you can’t find one single ex-Leftist doing it. Hell, is there such a thing as an ex-Leftist, as opposed to an ex-Communist? Kolakowski couldn’t find one (as of 1995, I think), and I can’t think of one either. Every former radical I’m aware of was just that — a radical, a card-carrying Communist or at least a virulent fellow-traveler, e.g. David Horowitz. We probably all have heard of someone waking up one day (say, after 9/11) realizing that the Democratic Party they’d been knee-jerk voting for all their lives was out to lunch, but do you know of any True Believers seeing the light?

May 29, 2020

QotD: Historical ways to deal with your “rage heads”

Filed under: Germany, History, Politics, Quotations, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The main lesson I hope our distant descendants draw from the Orange Man Era is: The rage heads ye have always with you, so ye must find a way to channel them into something as non-destructive as possible. The story of modern politics can be written in a sentence: The weaponization of rage heads, combined with the inability of any society to properly dispose of said WMDs.

Set the Wayback Machine to the turn of the 20th century. Lenin’s great insight is that “the masses” will never achieve the proper revolutionary consciousness without a dedicated cadre of hardcore, professional revolutionaries to lead the way. Lenin recognized the prevalence of incipient rage heads in his society — how could he not? — but realized that, absent some guiding hand, they’d flounder around incoherently. At best (from the “furthering the Revolution” point of view), they’d do what his, Lenin’s, idiot brother did: Try to knock off the tsar, and get himself hung for it. Thus, the Bolsheviks.

The problem, though, is that rage heads by definition suffer from poor impulse control. The tiny subset of them that are pure sociopaths (like Lenin), and thus have the icy-veined self-control to hold their fire, have to maintain the very tightest discipline over the Party, or all hell breaks loose. See, for example, the massive street battles in Weimar Germany between the KPD (German Commies) and the SD. Hitler, like Lenin, had to get his rage heads on a tight leash, so he channeled the disciplined sociopaths from the SD into the SS, cooled out the coolable in the SD by buying them off, and shanked the incorrigible remainder. See also the almost-exactly-contemporary Moscow Show Trials.

Note please that this is your best-case scenario for a purely ideological revolution. From Robespierre to Kim Il Sung, the first step in consolidating the Revolution is killing off a large fraction of the original revolutionaries.

The worst-case scenario (again, from the “furthering the Revolution” standpoint) is what the American wannabe-bolshies did / are currently doing. Knowing that you can’t shank or show-trial the dreadlocked poetry majors that make up your goon squad, you try to channel them into academia, the Media, the “arts.” Which fails egregiously, because whatever tenuous contact with reality they once had gets completely severed by those institutions’ social bubbles. They never were very good at holding fire, and now they can’t, literally can’t, see any reason to — life is great here on campus, so why can’t it be that way everywhere?

Severian, “Living in End Times”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-02-28.

May 22, 2020

QotD: “Scientific” racism

Filed under: Education, Germany, History, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… the intellectualized racism that infected the West in the 19th century was the brainchild not of science but of the humanities: history, philology, classics, and mythology. In 1853, Arthur de Gobineau, a fiction writer and amateur historian, published his cockamamie theory that a race of virile white men, the Aryans, spilled out of an ancient homeland and spread a heroic warrior civilization across Eurasia, diverging into the Persians, Hittites, Homeric Greeks, and Vedic Hindus, and later into the Vikings, Goths, and other Germanic tribes. (The speck of reality in this story is that these tribes spoke languages that fell into a single family, Indo-European.) Everything went downhill when the Aryans interbred with inferior conquered peoples, diluting their greatness and causing them to degenerate into the effete, decadent, soulless, bourgeois, commercial cultures that the Romantics were always whingeing about. It was a small step to fuse this fairy tale with German Romantic nationalism and anti-Semitism: The Teutonic Volk were the heirs of the Aryans, the Jews a mongrel race of Asiatics. Gobineau’s ideas were eaten up by Richard Wagner (whose operas were held to be re-creations of the original Aryan myths) and by Wagner’s son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain (a philosopher who wrote that Jews polluted Teutonic civilization with capitalism, liberal humanism, and sterile science). From them the ideas reached Hitler, who called Chamberlain his “spiritual father.”

Science played little role in this chain of influence. Pointedly, Gobineau, Chamberlain, and Hitler rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution, particularly the idea that all humans had gradually evolved from apes, which was incompatible with their Romantic theory of race and with the older folk and religious notions from which it had emerged. According to these widespread beliefs, races were separate species; they were fitted to civilizations with different levels of sophistication; and they would degenerate if they mixed. Darwin argued that humans are closely related members of a single species with a common ancestry, that all peoples have “savage” origins, that the mental capacities of all races are virtually the same, and that the races blend into one another with no harm from interbreeding. The University of Chicago historian Robert Richards, who traced Hitler’s influences, ended his book titled Was Hitler a Darwinian? (a common claim among creationists) with “The only reasonable answer to the question … is a very loud and unequivocal No.”

Steven Pinker, “The Intellectual War on Science”, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018-02-13.

May 13, 2020

Rudolf Hess – Nazi Pacifist, Traitor or Madman? – WW2 Special Episode

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 12 May 2020

In a series of events, Hitler’s second in command Rudolf Hess decides to fly to Britain to enter peace negotiations with the Allies. But the true reasons behind and effects of his action remain ambiguous at best.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Norman Stewart, https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man), https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
Olga Shirnina, https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
Adrien Fillon, https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…

Bibliography:
– Balfour, Michael, Propaganda in War, 1939–45: Organizations, Policies, and Publics in Britain and Germany (London, 1979).
– Fox, Jo. “Propaganda and the Flight of Rudolf Hess, 1941-45”. In: The Journal of Modern History 83:1 (March 2011) 78-110.
– Gorodetsky, Gabriel, “The Hess Affair and Anglo-Soviet Relations on the Eve of ‘Barbarossa'”. In: The English Historical Review 101:399 (Apr 1986) 405-420.
– Görtemaker, Manfred, “The Bizarre Mission: Rudolf Hess in Britain,” in Britain and Germany in the 20th Century, ed. M. Görtemaker (Oxford, 2006), 75–101.
– Heiden, Konrad, “Hitler’s Better Half”. In: Foreign Affairs 20:1 (Oct 1941) 73-86.
– Kettenacker, Lothar, “Mishandling a Spectacular Event: The Rudolf Hess Affair,” in Flight from Reality: Rudolf Hess and His Mission to Scotland, ed. David Stafford (London, 2002) 19–38.
– Schmidt, Rainer, “The Marketing of Rudolf Hess: A Key to the ‘Preventative War Debate’?” War in History 5 (1998) 62-83.

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Portraits of Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, duke of Hamilton and Duff Cooper, MP, courtesy National Portrait Gallery
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Zentralbibliothek Zürich
Portrait of Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, courtesy Nationaal Archief
IWM D 8987

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 4”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

May 8, 2020

Sending the Jews to Madagascar? – War Against Humanity 011 – May 1941

Filed under: Africa, Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 7 May 2020

The War Against Humanity is accelerating and accelerating. Across the world, people live under oppression. In Nazi Europe, solutions to the so-called “Jewish Question” has taken on new, fantastical, proportions.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Francis van Berkel, Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Olga Shirnina https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/

Sources:
IWM HU 106212
USHMM
Bundesarchiv
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Glaser family photo, courtesy Willie Glaser
from the Noun Project: Letter by Mochammad Kafi, people by ProSymbols, Deteriorated building by Tokka Elkholy, workshop by Gan Khoon Lay from the Noun Project
Page 1 of La Loi Portant Status Des Juifs with Pétain’s annotations, courtesy Mémorial de la Shoah

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Farell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Philip Ayers – “Trapped in a Maze”
Wendel Scherer – “Growing Doubt”
Gavin Luke – “Drifting Emotions 3”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Peter Sandberg – “Document This 1”
Jo Wandrini – “Dawn Of Civilization”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
Philip Ayers – “Under the Dome”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

May 6, 2020

What’s on your bookshelf?

Filed under: Books, Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The self-appointed censors of righteousness demand to know!

Plenty of people like to be filmed against the backdrop of their bookshelves to convey the message or at least create the impression that they are smart. This has become even more common during the current extraordinary conditions of self-isolation, where virtually all the media interviews are conducted from home rather than in studio. Ditto for all the Zoom and other teleconferences. This, in turn, has given some people the opportunity to nose around and check out just what exactly others have on their shelves – presumably having read it and not just for decoration. It should be a fun exercise, but these days of perpetual outrage no fun goes unpunished.

By contrast, the picture of a bookshelf belonging to a Tory minister Michael Gove and his wife Sarah Vine was unsolicited, which probably adds to the regret right about now.

[…]

Books, like other human artifacts, are historical records and documents of our past. You might not like the course that the history took, but it’s important to know it and remember it.

And hypocrisy, because of the double standards.

Sure, Nazis, Nazi sympathisers, Holocaust deniers and assorted other apologists are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But what about communists? How many of those having a go at Gove and his wife for owning an Irving book have on their own shelves works by Marx, if not Lenin, Mao, Che and numerous related others? Those who have been inspired by and followed Marx’s idea (whether you think correctly or not) have been responsible for some 100 million premature deaths in the 20th century and other untold misery and devastation. Mao, the author of the little Red Book, accounts for up to 60 million of those (I happen to have a copy; does that make me a Maoist and a genocide fan?). But socialism is cool and you can’t blame Marx because to do so would be to delegitimise the whole socialist project. And of course the socialist ideals are all beautiful – equality! solidarity! community! dignity! – and, in any case, everyone has had good intentions. So all good, guys.

Read and own whatever the damn you like – and don’t let the fascists of any kind dictate your bookshelf. Except for 50 Shades of Grey. We’ll all judge you for that.

The main picture: some of my shelves – feel free to judge me.

I thought to take a picture of my own shelves, but Arthur Chrenkoff appears to have a broadly similar selection of books (more heavily weighted to British politics than mine), so I just nicked his photo to save the effort. (Thanks, Arthur! Hope you don’t mind!)

May 2, 2020

Gabriel Over the White House – “the most unapologetic celebration of fascism ever put on film”

Filed under: History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Jack Cashill found this “gem” while watching Turner Classic Movies during the Wuhan Coronavirus lockdown and was amazed:

By now, I have seen most of TCM’s movies, but one aired this past week I had not even heard of. On a whim, I DVR’ed it. Good move. Called Gabriel Over the White House, this 1933 liberal wet dream proved to be the most unapologetic celebration of fascism ever put on film.

I watched it wide-eyed. The movie opens with the inauguration of Jud Hammond. A laissez-faire back-slapper, Hammond sees the White House as a way to enrich himself and reward his cronies, Depression be damned. The audience assumes Hammond is a Republican.

Out joyriding one day, Hammond crashes his car and lapses into coma. While still comatose, the Angel Gabriel visits Hammond and turns him into a committed and caring progressive. Is there another kind?

Upon waking, Hammond convenes his cabinet of corrupt self-servers and rejects their plea that the party must come first. Instead, Hammond insists their first priority be the American people. He refuses to use the U.S. Army against a marching mass of the unemployed and fires the secretary of state when he objects.

“I suggest you read the Constitution of the United States. You’ll find the President has some power,” Hammond warns his cabinet members. Some power? Fully indifferent to the Constitution, Hammond grabs all the power that can possibly be grabbed.

When the cabinet objects to his usurpation of power, Hammond fires the cabinet. When Congress threatens to impeach Hammond, he declares martial law and dispenses with Congress. When accused of being a dictator, Hammond argues that his is a dictatorship based on some imagined Jeffersonian principle of Democracy, namely the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Now with total power, Hammond enacts a national banking law, stops foreclosures, provides direct aid to some 55 million farmers, circumvents private industry and launches his own “Army of Construction.”

A young aide, Hartley Beekman, and his female counterpart, Pendie Molloy, serve as something of a progressive chorus. “The way he thinks is so simple and honest that it sounds a little crazy,” says Beekman of Hammond.

“He’s doing the things you wanted,” Molloy answers. “And If he’s mad, it’s a divine madness. Look at the chaos and catastrophe sane men have brought about.”

The divine madness includes the creation of a Federal Police force, a subset of the Army, with young Beekman at its head. When the nation’s chief racketeer refuses to go back to his unnamed home country, Hammond warns him that the government is about to “muscle in on his racket” and federalize the sale of alcohol.

The racketeer fights back, and Beekman employs a legion of tanks Waco-style against the racketeers. When captured, the racketeers are all hauled before a three-man court martial headed by Beekman, promptly declared guilty, and executed en masse by a firing squad.

Several years ago, the movie was brought to my attention and I found this clip on YouTube that I suspect captures the essence of the film:

James Lileks describes it as “a remarkable movie. And I don’t mean ‘astonishingly good, technically superb, visually ingenious.’ I mean utterly insane.”

April 18, 2020

QotD: Distorting the history of science

Filed under: Education, History, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The most frequently assigned book on science in universities (aside from a popular biology textbook) is Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. That 1962 classic is commonly interpreted as showing that science does not converge on the truth but merely busies itself with solving puzzles before lurching to some new paradigm that renders its previous theories obsolete; indeed, unintelligible. Though Kuhn himself disavowed that nihilist interpretation, it has become the conventional wisdom among many intellectuals. A critic from a major magazine once explained to me that the art world no longer considers whether works of art are “beautiful” for the same reason that scientists no longer consider whether theories are “true.” He seemed genuinely surprised when I corrected him.

The historian of science David Wootton has remarked on the mores of his own field: “In the years since Snow’s lecture the two-cultures problem has deepened; history of science, far from serving as a bridge between the arts and sciences, nowadays offers the scientists a picture of themselves that most of them cannot recognize.” That is because many historians of science consider it naïve to treat science as the pursuit of true explanations of the world. The result is like a report of a basketball game by a dance critic who is not allowed to say that the players are trying to throw the ball through the hoop.

Many scholars in “science studies” devote their careers to recondite analyses of how the whole institution is just a pretext for oppression. An example is a 2016 article on the world’s most pressing challenge, titled “Glaciers, Gender, and Science: A Feminist Glaciology Framework for Global Environmental Change Research,” which sought to generate a “robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.”

More insidious than the ferreting out of ever more cryptic forms of racism and sexism is a demonization campaign that impugns science (together with the rest of the Enlightenment) for crimes that are as old as civilization, including racism, slavery, conquest, and genocide.

This was a major theme of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, the quasi-Marxist movement originated by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who proclaimed that “the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.” It also figures in the works of postmodernist theorists such as Michel Foucault, who argued that the Holocaust was the inevitable culmination of a “bio-politics” that began with the Enlightenment, when science and rational governance exerted increasing power over people’s lives. In a similar vein, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman blamed the Holocaust on the Enlightenment ideal to “remake the society, force it to conform to an overall, scientifically conceived plan.”

In this twisted narrative, the Nazis themselves are somehow let off the hook (“It’s modernity’s fault!”). Though Critical Theory and postmodernism avoid “scientistic” methods such as quantification and systematic chronology, the facts suggest that they have the history backwards. Genocide and autocracy were ubiquitous in premodern times, and they decreased, not increased, as science and liberal Enlightenment values became increasingly influential after World War II.

Steven Pinker, “The Intellectual War on Science”, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018-02-13.

March 26, 2020

The Deadly Dry Run for WW2 – The Spanish Civil War | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1939 Part 1 of 3

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Italy, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 25 Mar 2020

After years of political violence and strife, a military coup in 1936 finally brings Spain into all-out civil war. Mass executions and revolutionary upheaval, as the eyes of the world focus on the Iberian Peninsula.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Watch part one of the Spanish Civil War (1936) here: https://youtu.be/ncUkPavahCU

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Sources:
(Kutxa Photograph Library) – Brigadas de Navarra Photos,
EBNZ; HansenBCN – Emblem of Spanish Legion,
Foto Kutxateka – Eibar in Ruins,
Herbert Behrens / Anefo – Guernica Painting,
Dorieo – Battle of Brunete,

From the Noun Project:
noun_Death by Icon Island,
noun_soldier by Wonmo Kang,
noun_Arm Sling by Sergey Demushkin,
noun_Government by Adrien Coquet,

Photos from Color by Klimbim

Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Julius Jääskeläinen
– Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Watchman” – Yi Nantiro
– “Split Decision” – Rannar Sillard
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “One More Thought” – Johan Hynynen
– “Dark Beginning” – Johan Hynynen
– “Easy Target” – Rannar Sillard
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan Eriksson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 hour ago
Just in terms of the complexity of things, researching and writing this episode has been my biggest challenge so far. So much happens and at such a fast pace that it’s difficult to understand everything as it is, let alone get it into a chronological video that actually makes sense! The amount of actors both nationally and internationally gives you a feeling that you are writing about a continental, or even global, war rather than one in a relatively small country. It is this way for several reasons, a lot of which you’ll know if you watched our last episode on the Second Spanish Republic. But we’d be interested to see what you guys think about the Spanish Civil War? Why was it so complicated? Why does it hold so much significance beyond Spain’s borders? Why did it get so violent so quickly? Let us know what you think, we want to hear your opinions.

Cheers, Francis.

March 25, 2020

Hans Oster – A German Against Nazism – WW2 Biography Special

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 24 Mar 2020

Hans Oster opposed the Nazis and tried to oppose them from early on. As a member of the Abwehr, he tried to do whatever he could. During the war, his efforts increased with a dramatic outcome.

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Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Isabel Wilson, Joram Appel and Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Arnaldo Teodorani and Isabel Wilson
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/

Sources:
Picture of Dresden, courtesy Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
Collection of Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira, N2658
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Picture of Gijsbertus Jacobus Sas, courtesy ANP Historisch Archief https://www.anp-archief.nl/page/21998…
Picture of Hans Bernd Gisevius, courtesy Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/b…
id by Flatart from the Noun Project
people by ProSymbols from the Noun Project
documents by Srinivas Agra from the Noun Project

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation in Time”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Jo Wandrini – “Puzzle of Complexity”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

March 14, 2020

QotD: Apartheid

Filed under: Africa, History, Law, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

To anyone who was exposed to its machinations — let alone directly affected by it, as most South African Blacks were — apartheid was truly evil: only the absence of extermination camps differentiated it from the Nazism of the 1940s. In actuality, Blacks couldn’t live or work in “White” areas except by permit, couldn’t own businesses in White areas, couldn’t be promoted past a certain point when they did work outside the “Black” areas, and were forcibly resettled into Black “homelands” without legal redress or the ability to resist. Social intercourse between Blacks and Whites were restricted, by law, to business interactions only — any kind of interracial sexual activity was legally classified as “immorality” and summarily banned, carrying appallingly-high penalties in the breach thereof. Crimes by Whites against Blacks carried penalties far more lenient — to the extent of semi-official toleration — than those by Blacks against Whites, which were severely punished. The education system favored White children over Black children and continued throughout life — to where “White” universities were ubiquitous but “Black” universities could be counted on one hand, with a couple fingers left over. (Lest anyone is offended by the comparison to Nazism, simply substitute “Jews” for “Blacks” and “Aryans” for “Whites”. That would have been Germany, from 1933 to 1945.)

So the disappearance of apartheid cannot be seen as anything other than a Good Thing.

Kim du Toit, “Tough Question, Simple Answer”, Splendid Isolation, 2019-12-05.

March 12, 2020

The Road to the Holocaust – Kristallnacht | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1938 Part 3 of 4

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Government, History, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

TimeGhost History
Published 11 Mar 2020

After years of gradually increasing persecution, the Nazis institute a nationwide pogrom on the night of November 9, 1938. It will signal the end of Jewish life in Germany.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Sources:
Bundesarchiv_Bild:
102-04051A, 102-14469, 102-16475, 119-03-16-06,
119-04-29-36, 119-04-29-38, 119-2671-07, 119-5592-03A,
133-075,_Worms, 146-1970-041-46, 146-1970-061-65,
146-1979-046-22, 146-1982-174-26, 146-1982-174-27,
146-1984-092-26, 146-1988-078-07, 146-1989-071-05,
152-64-25A,_Wien, 152-64-29A,_Wien, 152-65-04,_Wien,
183-1982-0809-502, 183-1987-0703-514, 183-2006-0429-502,
183-R99542, 183-S21437, 183-S72707, 183-86686-0008,

From the Noun Project:
noun_Government by Adrien Coquet,
noun_jail by Strongicon,
noun_Death by Icon Island,

Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “Imperious” – Bonnie Grace
– “Death And Glory 1” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Deviation In Time” – Johannes Bornlof
– “Dark Beginning” – Johan Hynynen
– “An Ancient Dome” – Trabant 33
– “Death And Glory 3” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “First Responders” – Skrya

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

March 5, 2020

Chain Your Woman to the Stove – Feminism in the 1930s | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1938 Part 2 of 4

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Germany, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 4 Mar 2020

Under the yoke of economic depression and more and more authoritarian rulers, Western women face renewed misogyny, patriarchy, and decreasing independence. But not all women think this is such a bad thing.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Sources:
Bundesarchiv_Bild:
101III-Alber-174-14A, 102-04517A, 102-17313, 102-17818,
111-098-069, 137-055879, 146-1973-010-31, 146-1975-069-35,
146-1976-112-03A, 146-2006-205, 146-2008-0271,
183-2000-0110-500, 183-2005-0502-502, 183-2005-0530-500,
183-E10868, 183-E20457, 183-H28245, 183-J02040,
183-S08630, 183-S68014, 183-S68021, 183-S68029,
noun_pipe By Icon Lauk,
noun_company By wardehpillai,
noun_Farmer By Francisca Muñoz Colina.

Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Norman Stewart

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Sophisticated Gentlemen” – Golden Age Radio
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Magnificent March 3” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “Step On It 5” – Magnus Ringblom
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “Step Lightly” – Farrell Wooten
– “Try and Catch Us Now” – David Celeste
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “The Dominion” – Bonnie Grace
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan Eriksson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
2 days ago (edited)
So, we take a little break from the geopolitical developments in 1938 to look at the situation of women in the Western World in 1938. We’ve received a lot of requests on the WW2 channel to cover the situation on the home fronts. While we do mention it in the weekly episodes, and War Against Humanity covers the horrid parts of it, WWII was so much more. It literally changed the world’s culture in just six years. To do that subject justice we have asked Anna to join us as host for a new monthly WW2 series: On the Homefront.

A few years back Anna was a regular feature on German YouTube on her own channel and some of the bigger YouTube entertainment channels. She left YouTube to finish her studies, and because she was searching for more depth than YT entertainment content was offering her. As Astrid’s and my daughter, and having grown up with Indy around all the time, she has a passion for human history form childhood, especially cultural history.

She also has a personal relationship to this time through her grandparents, Herbert and Renate, Astrid’s parents who served in Germany during the war, on the front and at home. Herbert, a career administrator and later NCO in the Wehrmacht engineer corps, went on after the war to work for the British as translator, and then as a public servant supporting the creation of the Bundeswehr, the German defense forces, and eventually Germany’s contribution as NATO member.

Renate’s father, a bank director, died under mysterious circumstance in 1936 after repeatedly refusing to pay out money belonging to Jewish families to the Nazis. Her mother and sisters soldiered on under the Nazis as best they could, When the war broke out they first suffered under the Allied bombing, losing their home three times. When the bombing became a daily occurrence, Renate was drafted to the German flak and only barely survived the war.

Several years after the war Herbert and Renate met and started a family together. They both passed away only a few years ago, late enough so that Anna had a chance to spend countless hours over 23 years listening to their war stories, and what they took away from it: hope for a better world, and the knowledge that what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945, must never happen again. Please join us to welcome Anna, our daughter to TimeGhost.

Spartacus

March 2, 2020

QotD: The legend of Rommel and the Afrika Korps

Filed under: Africa, Germany, History, Military, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

There is no more evocative phrase to emerge from World War II than Afrika Korps. The name conjures up a unique theater of war, a hauntingly beautiful empty quarter where armies could roam free, liberated from towns and hills, choke points and blocking positions, and especially those pesky civilians. It calls forth a war of near-absolute mobility, where tanks could operate very much like ships at sea, “sailing” where they wished, setting out on bold voyages hundreds of miles into the deep desert, then looping around the enemy flank and emerging like pirates of old to deal devastating blows to an unsuspecting foe. Finally, it implies a bold hero, in this case Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, a noble commander who fought the good fight, who hated Hitler and everything he stood for, and who couldn’t have been farther away from our stereotyped image of the Nazi fanatic. Everything about him attracts us — the manly poses, the out-of-central-casting good looks, even the goggles perched just so. Placing Rommel and his elite Afrika Korps to the fore allows us to view the desert war as a clean fight against a morally worthy opponent. It was war, yes, but almost uniquely in World War II, it was a “war without hate.”

It’s an attractive image all around, and it is unfortunate that practically all of it is false. The desert was hardly a haven of beauty or romance. It was a pain, and fighting in it was a nightmare for both sides. Far from letting the respective tank fleets roam free, the desert chained them irresistibly to their supply lines, and a single failed supply convoy or a lost column of trucks could stop an entire offensive dead in its tracks. Contrary to the alleged mobility of desert warfare, both sides would spend far more time in static defensive positions, often quite elaborate, then they would launching tank charges.

That leaves us with Rommel. Here, too, we should challenge the mythology. He was hardly apolitical. His entire career had been based on Hitler’s favor, and we might reasonably describe his attitude toward the Führer as worshipful. He was Hitler’s fair-haired boy, a young officer repeatedly promoted over more senior candidates. He was a media creation. Nazi propaganda painted him not only as a garden-variety hero, but as a model National Socialist and Aryan, a man who could overcome stronger enemies through the sheer force of his will. He was not merely a passive bystander to the hype; he was an active accomplice. He loved nothing better than having a camera crew along with him on campaign, and he would regularly order scenes to be reshot if his posture was insufficiently heroic or the lighting had not shown him to best advantage. As is often the case, his relationship to the media was both self-serving and self-destructive. During the years of victory, the German propaganda machine used him as an example to the nation. When things went sour, he became a diversion from the increasingly bad news on other fronts. Finally, when he was no longer useful for any purpose at all, the regime dropped him altogether and eventually killed him.

Robert Citino, “Drive to Nowhere: The Myth of the Afrika Korps, 1941-43″, The National WWII Museum, 2012. (Originally published in MHQ, Summer 2012).

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