All the evils of Nazism

Every so often, a film is released that absolutely must be seen in a cinema. Nuremberg is one such film. Set for release in November 2025, the story of the Nuremberg war crimes trials after the Nazi defeat in the Second World War has been told before in previous film and television dramatizations, but not like this.

The story centres on Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek, a U.S. Army psychiatrist assigned to evaluate the mental fitness of Nazi leaders imprisoned at Nuremberg. Kelley becomes entangled in a psychological duel with Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second-in-command, who proves to be disturbingly charismatic and manipulative. As Kelley interviews the prisoners, he begins to question the nature of evil, the limits of justice, and his own moral compass.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29567915/

Nyet

What is a "nissin?"

 

Time for reflection

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, the infamous meeting at which a group of high ranking Nazi officials planned the Final Solution, the systematic destruction of Europe's Jewish people. 

https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/01/19/80-years-ago-nazi-command-met-to-discuss-final-solution/

Aural learning style

As a history buff, I recently discovered the History of World War II podcast, produced and narrated by Ray Harris. Clearly a passion project for him, Harris has produced this podcast since 2012. I am still listening to the early episodes. I commend the presenter for his meticulous research, giving detailed accounts of major events of the war, both on the battlefield and in the corridors of power.

It is also noteworthy that he gives time to minor players who would grow in significance in the years after the war, such as Mao Zedong, who fought against Japanese occupation of China. Most television documentaries usually overlook minor players in the war.

I gather that later episodes are more polished as Harris has grown as a presenter, but in the episodes I have heard, his narration is somewhat monotone, and he has difficulty pronouncing foreign names. The subject matter is still endlessly fascinating, though.

We'll meet again

Queen Elizabeth II gave this address to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the end of hostilities in Europe in the Second World War. Unfortunately, public commemorations were not possible due to the pandemic situation. 

Unbridled evil

Belated Happy Easter to my reader. Today Poland will observe Katyn Memorial Day, its annual commemoration of the Katyn Massacre during the Second World War. Under the terms of an August 1939 non aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the the powers agreed to divide Poland between them. The Soviets captured thousands of Polish military personnel. When Germany later invaded Poland in 1941, a Polish military commander requested the release of these prisoners to form a Polish army on Soviet territory.

They could not be accounted for. It was on this day in 1943 that the bodies of thousands of these prisoners were discovered in the Katyn forest in mass graves. Investigators established that they were executed en masse in early 1940. Years later, the Russian Duma officially declared that the massacre was carried out on the orders of Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Katyn-Massacre

http://www.80rocznicakatynia.pl/the-unpanished-crime/

Justice deferred and denied

Just over 80 years since the start of the Second World War, Germany has still not fully come to terms with its Nazi past. The documentary podcast, Germany: Justice and Memory, produced by the BBC, examines these issues. Although many prominent Nazi officials were convicted of war crimes, thousands of them never faced justice. Germany used millions of forced laborers during the war, and many of those who survived never received compensation. Some of the corporations that used these laborers never paid out any compensation. It makes for sobering listening.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zy24g

Australia looks to America

Streaming platforms are great for catching up on old television series and movies that have not been screened on fee to air television for years. During the mini series boom of the 1980s, Channel 10, which was in those days one of Australia's top rating television networks, broadcast The Last Bastion. It was a docudrama telling the story of Australia's involvement in the Second World War, under the threat of Japanese invasion, and the Australian government delicately managing alliances with both the United Kingdom and the United States.

As you can see from this screen capture, it is available on Prime Video. I couldn't help but notice that the release year is incorrectly given as 1994. I know for a fact, as surely as night follows day, that it was released in 1984. I have fuzzy memories of watching snippets of this series with my parents. As it was shown on a school night, I was not allowed to stay up late to watch the whole thing.

False hope

Amongst many significant events in world history, today is the anniversary of the death of former British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). He readily springs to mind whenever a politician or any other public figure suggests that giving into the territorial demands of power hungry tyrants is a good idea, just like he did with his ill-fated 1938 peace agreement with Adolf Hitler. Apparently, war and armed conflict can be avoided by sitting down with militaristic leaders over cups of herbal tea, and giving them the chance to talk through their grievances. Then, as now, appeasement doesn't work.

Piece in our thyme

The source of this image is unknown. It is a picture of former British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), whose entire career was overshadowed by his ill-fated September 1938 peace agreement with Nazi Germany. A year later, Germany invaded Poland, and Britain declared war on Germany. The Second World War broke out. The agreement turned out to be not worth the paper it was written on, not entirely unlike this picture caption. 

Let each man search his conscience

On this day in June 1940, British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill gave his famous "Finest Hour" speech in the House of Commons. It contributed much to lifting British morale during some of the darkest and most uncertain days of the Second World War.

Cold eyes, cold heart

Over the weekend I went to see The Man with the Iron Heart, a biopic of Reinhard Heydrich. The film charts his rise from a disgraced former naval officer, to joining the Nazi SS, rising through the ranks to become one of its key leaders, and one of the main architects of the Holocaust, later chairing the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which set up the Final Solution, and his assassination in 1942 by Czech agents.

Bearing in mind the limitations of a feature film, key plot points are vaguely sketched. Heydrich bluffed his way into his job in Nazi intelligence, with much of his espionage knowledge gleaned from spy novels he read as a boy. The film also fails to properly explain that the assassination didn't go to plan because the unreliable machine gun used it in jammed when the gunman tried to fire it. The characters of his assassins, Czech resistance fighters who trained in Scotland, are underdeveloped. As a result, their discovery and deaths are not as moving as they could have been. Nor is it adequately explained that Heydrich initially survived the assassination attempt, but later died in hospital from wound infections he sustained in it.

It isn't a bad movie. Jason Clarke and Rosamund Pike were effective in their roles as Reinhard and Lina Heydrich, respectively, as is Stephen Graham as Heinrich Himmler. They were evil personified. The locations were also used well, and the combat sequences were impressive for a low budget film.

History is important

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. As the generation that survived the Holocaust passes away, it is important to keep alive their memory, and the memory of all of its victims.

War is still hell

I've just finished watching the DVD of The World Wars, a mostly excellent docu-drama about the First and Second World Wars. The History Channel's reputation has taken a bit of a battering in recent years, broadcasting programs of questionable quality, such as Ancient Aliens.

I found it mostly riveting, but it isn't without flaws. It took some licence with the reenactment of the death of Adolf Hitler. The actor playing him is shown standing alone in a room, taking a cyanide pill, and then shooting himself. He actually committed suicide with his mistress, Eva Braun. They died sitting on a couch in a small room in the Fuehrerbunker in Berlin.

The DVD contains additional material, which includes 5-minute biographies of the major players in the Second World War. Hitler's biography has a whopping mistake. It shows a picture of what it asserts is Hitler's dead body after he committed suicide. This picture has been in circulation for years. The man in it, who had a "Hitler" moustache, has never been identified, but it has been conclusively proven that it is not of Hitler. This is very sloppy research, and inexcusable.

It's not always good to be the king

Courtesy of my local public library, which offers its members free access to digital magazines via the Zinio iPad app, I've started reading History Revealed magazine. It's a engaging read during my weekday commute to and from work, but it could do with more careful proof reading.

Allow me to explain. This month's issue had an article about Adolf Hitler and Britain. As a soldier in the First World War, and when he began his political career, he respected the Britain and the Empire, and envisaged forming an alliance with them. It wasn't until after the ill-fated 1938 Munich agreement that his attitude changed, and he regarded Britain as an enemy.

The article also mentions that King Edward VII was reputedly an admirer of Hitler. After he abdicated, it is well known that as Duke of Windsor, the former king and his wife Wallace Simpson visited Nazi Germany in 1937, meeting Hitler and his deputy, Rudolf Hess, and visited a concentration camp. Had Hitler achieved his war aims of subjugating Britain, he would have reinstalled Edward as a puppet king.

It was actually Edward VIII who abdicated the British throne in 1936 to marry Wallace Simpson. King Edward VII was his grandfather, and reigned from 1910 to 1936. No doubt an eagle-eyed reader will point this mistake out in a letter to the editor, and this will be acknowledged in a future issue.

http://www.historyextra.com/history-revealed/current-issue

Serious time

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been criticised for directly implicating Amin al-Husseini, then the Mufti of Jerusalem, in the Final Solution. Whilst the Mufti shared the Nazis' antisemitism, there is no evidence to support these claims. However, it is well documented that Nazi Germany had plans to exterminate the Jewish population of what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, had its North Africa campaign succeeded.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.681935

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Historian-Netanyahu-right-on-Hitler-wrong-on-Mufti-429800

http://www.ushmm.org/research/publications/academic-publications/full-list-of-academic-publications/nazi-palestine-the-plans-for-the-extermination-of-the-jews-of-palestine

The post in which I indirectly make a reference to Peter Sellers

70 years after the end of the Second World War, the Greek government is claiming that Germany owes it $236 billion in war reparations. As of this afternoon, the issue is unresolved.

When hearing this news my first reaction was to think of The Mouse That Roared, a 1959 Peter Sellers comedy, in which the smallest country in the world, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, declares war on the United States. It plans to deliberately lose the war so it can receive American financial aid. This film very occasionally pops up on daytime weekend television.

Does the Greek government have a legitimate case against the German government, or is it desperately scrounging around for possible solutions to its dire fiscal problems?

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/02/09/greece-wants-236b-german-wwii-reparations

A hellish nightmare of death and destruction

The Enola Gay in 1945

Theodore Van Kirk, the last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima towards the end of the Second World War, has died aged 93. In an interview, Van Kirk defended the use of the bomb against Japan.

Whether or not using the bomb was necessary has long been debated by historians. Some argue that by July 1945, Japan's navy and air force had been nobbled, and it had little chance of victory. It was probably ready to surrender anyway. For this reason, using the atomic bomb was unnecessary. Having defeated Germany, the Soviet Union was planning to invade Japan, and started an offensive in August. It was overwhelmed. Fanaticism was keeping Japan at war, as was the hope that it could negotiate favourable surrender terms with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. This was a false hope.

Even so, this is the argument that I favour. Japan was still holding out, and the Allies were preparing to invade the Japanese mainland. Such an operation would have resulted in massive military and civilian casualties. Japan surrendered soon after the atomic bombs were dropped, firstly on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki.

As bad as the death toll and destruction from the bombings was, the alternative would have been much worse. This would probably have meant many more months of bloody combat. This course of action saved more lives than it cost. It also arguably curtailed the prospect of greater Soviet influence in Japan and Asia.

Yes, there have been some close shaves, such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but it's a miracle that nuclear weapons haven't been used in war since 1945, and I pray that day never comes.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-30/last-member-of-enola-gay-crew-theodore-van-kirk-dies-aged-93/5635944

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii?page=0,5

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08/14/historians-soviet-offensive-key-japans-wwii-surrender-eclipsed-bombs/

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/5-cold-war-close-calls

Split Enz were wrong

A church acquaintance sent this to me. I don't normally circulate chain emails, so I'm posting it here instead, in slightly edited form. Those listed weren't the only victims of the Nazi Holocaust, but I agree that we need to perpetuate its remembrance. The text of the email reads as follows.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way! Now, more than ever, with Iran and others claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it's imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

Then again, if you look at the genocides that have occurred in the recent past in Uganda, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan, to name but a few examples, it would seem that the world has forgotten the lessons it learned from those dark days, and our world is the poorer for it.

Pedantry corner

This semester I've been studying Church History. In researching one of my assignments, I've inadvertently discovered a trend that seems to be afflicting the publishing industry. It would appear that many books hit the shelves with glaring production errors. Many years ago, I completed a Graduate Certificate in Professional Writing and Editing. This gave me a rudimentary working knowledge of the publishing industry. In several cases, if more care had been taken in editing the draft manuscript before going to press, these errors could be easily avoided.

I'm old enough to remember the days before word processors with spell check features and automatic spelling correction. Thankfully the days of either hand writing assignments or using an electric typewriter are long gone. As great as they are, computers don't negate the need for proof reading. At this point in time, spell checkers haven't advanced to the stage where they can detect the incorrect usage of a word in a sentence.

I noticed this when recently reading a book about the Second World War. For example, one historian, quoting from the personal papers of one of modern history's most notorious war criminals, remarked that he "...wrote in his dairy." Obviously he meant to use the word "diary." Whilst plotting mass genocide, he took time out to stay at his hobby dairy farm to gather his thoughts.

It's also the editor's responsibility to make sure that historical dates are correct. Anyone with a knowledge of modern history would know that the war began in September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, and that Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. It doesn't give you much confidence in a book that you might quote from or reference in an assignment if key dates are wrong. Similarly. where photographs are used, the editor must also ensure that captions are correct. "Insert caption here" doesn't give you much to go on in working out what a photograph is of. It's disappointing to see good scholarship undermined by sloppy editing, not to mention what it might do to the reputation of the author.