Random Learnings #67
If we know anything about National Socialism, it's that for the first time in German politics human stupidity has been successfully and completely mobilized. -Kurt Schumacher, SPD member of Weimar…
Unexpected Continuity
From the Brittanica Book of the Year 1968, p376: Another in a series of legislative measures designed to establish the separate statehood of East Germany was passed by the People's…
Oh What A Year: 1933
[Nothing like spending a Sunday reading undigitized, bound periodicals at your local university library...] Time Magazine began 1933 by declaring Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president-elect, as Man of the Year.…
Random Learnings #60
I knew that the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact split Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. I knew that post-war Poland's eastern borders moved west, the Soviet Union demanding the…
When Name Recognition Is Not Good
The Netflix show Five Came Back: The Reference Films consists of twelve government-sponsored propaganda films. The first episode is Nazi Concentration Camps is about the well-known and appalling conditions the…
Profits Over Patriotism
Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM, made a bold claim in an editorial published before the United States entered World War II: We are either internationalists or isolationists, and I…
Lofeten Krigsminne Museum
Unlike other late-night ports Hurtigruten's northbound Coastal Express visits, the stop at Lofoten, Norway is lengthy enough to allow passengers to disembark and explore the city. Though the city is…