20th+

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Guilty Men (July, '40)

Publications ..

Guilty Men was a British polemical book written under the pseudonym "Cato" and published in July 1940. Guilty Men was written by three journalists: Michael Foot (a future Leader of the Labour Party), Frank Owen (a former Liberal MP), and Peter Howard (a Conservative). They believed that Britain had suffered a succession of bad leaders who, with junior ministers, advisers and officials, had conducted a disastrous foreign policy toward Germany and had failed to prepare the country for war. After Victor Gollancz, creator of the Left Book Club, had been persuaded to publish the book, the authors divided the 24 chapters among themselves and wrote it in four days, finishing on 5 June 1940. Gollancz asked for some of the rhetoric to be toned down, fearing the reaction it might provoke, but he rushed it into print in four weeks.

It was under a pseudonym because the writers were employed by Lord Beaverbrook, who banned his journalists from writing for publications other than his own. Beaverbrook, who was active in the Conservative Party, was also a vocal supporter of appeasement, though he was not mentioned in the book.

There was much speculation as to who was Cato. At one time Aneurin Bevan was named as its author. In the meantime, the real authors had some fun reviewing their own work. Michael Foot wrote an article, "Who is This Cato?" Beaverbrook was as much in the dark as anyone but joked that he "made do with the royalties from Guilty Men". The authors earned no money from the book as their literary agent, Ralph Pinker, absconded with the royalties.

[Guilty Men] attacked fifteen public figures for their failed policies towards Germany and for their failure to equip the British armed forces adequately. It is the classic denunciation of appeasement, which it defined as the "deliberate surrender of small nations in the face of Hitler's blatant bullying".

Guilty Men was published in early July ('40), shortly after Churchill took over as Prime Minister, the Dunkirk evacuation had shown Britain's military unpreparedness, and the Fall of France leaving the country with few allies. Several major book wholesalers, W H Smith and Wyman's, and the largest book distributor, Simpkin Marshall, refused to handle the book. It was sold on news-stands and street barrows and went through twelve editions in July 1940, selling 200,000 copies in a few weeks.

Guilty Men remains in circulation and was reprinted for its historical interest by Penguin Books to mark its sixtieth anniversary in 2000.

The book's slogan, "Let the guilty men retire", was an attack on members of the National Government before Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940. Most were Conservatives, although some were National Liberals and one was Ramsay MacDonald, the late leader of the Labour Party. Several were current members of Churchill's government. The book shaped popular thinking about appeasement for twenty years; it effectively destroyed the reputation of former Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and contributed to the defeat of the Conservative Party at the 1945 general election. According to historian David Dutton, "its impact upon Chamberlain's reputation, both among the general public and within the academic world, was profound indeed".

Cato's "guilty men" were:

Neville Chamberlain
Sir John Simon
Sir Samuel Hoare
Ramsay MacDonald
Stanley Baldwin
Lord Halifax
Sir Kingsley Wood
Ernest Brown
David Margesson
Sir Horace Wilson
Sir Thomas Inskip
Leslie Burgin
Earl Stanhope
W. S. Morrison
Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guilty-Men-Brexit-Cato-Younger/dp/1785902415 .

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Heldengedenktag, Berlin 1943

Nazi Day of the Dead - Berlin 1943 - mfp > .

24-6-17 Life Under Adolf Hitler: The First Years Of Nazi Germany - War Stories > .

22-10-6 Rise of Hitler, 1930s, Invasion of Poland | WWII. E 2 (subs) - Katz > .

22-10-3 Comparing Pootin to Hitler | Dream of the Great Past (subs) - Katz > .

Rise of the Nazis - doc | BBC Select > .

In March 1943, Hitler made one of his last public addresses during the annual Heroes Memorial Day ceremony in Berlin. Germany had just been defeated at Stalingrad and among the officers at the ceremony, one was planning to kill Hitler.

On 27 February 1934, the National Socialists introduced national holiday legislation to create Heldengedenktag ("Day of Commemoration of Heroes"), cementing the observance. In the process, they completely changed the character of the holiday: the emphasis shifted to hero worship rather than remembering the dead. Furthermore, five years later the Nazis abolished Buß- und Bettag as a non-working day and moved its commemoration to the following Sunday, to further the war effort.

On 21 March 1943, Adolf Hitler visited the Zeughaus Berlin, the old armory on Unter den Linden, to inspect captured Soviet weapons as part of his Heldengedenktag speech and ceremony in the wake of the catastrophic German defeat at Battle of Stalingrad. A group of top Nazi and leading military officials—among them Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz—were present as well. As an expert, Oberst Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff was to guide Hitler on a tour of the exhibition. Moments after Hitler entered the museum, Gersdorff set off two ten-minute delayed fuses on explosive devices hidden in his coat pockets. His plan was to throw himself around Hitler in a death embrace that would blow them both up. A detailed plan for a coup d'état had been worked out and was ready to go; but, contrary to expectations, Hitler raced through the museum in less than ten minutes. After he had left the building, Gersdorff was able to defuse the devices in a public bathroom "at the last second." After the attempt, he was immediately transferred back to the Eastern Front where he managed to evade suspicion.

Joseph Goebbels as Propaganda Minister, issued guidelines on content and implementation, instructing that flags no longer be flown at half-mast. The last Heldengedenktag was celebrated in 1945.

After the end of WW2, Volkstrauertag was observed in its original form in West Germany, beginning in 1948. The first central meeting of the German War Graves Commission took place in 1950 in the Bundestag in Bonn. In 1952, in an effort to distinguish Volkstrauertag from Heldengedenktag, its date was changed to the end of the liturgical year, a time traditionally devoted to thoughts of death, time and eternity. Its scope was also broadened to include those who died due to the violence of an oppressive government, not just those who died in war.

In 1919, the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) proposed a Volkstrauertag for German soldiers killed in WW1. It was first held in 1922 in the Reichstag. In 1926, Volkstrauertag became a feature on what Catholics considered Reminiscere (the second Sunday of Lent.) In the Weimar years, Volkstrauertag was not a legal holiday.

Volkstrauertag (German for "people's day of mourning") is now a commemoration day in Germany two Sundays before the first day of Advent. It commemorates members of the armed forces of all nations and civilians who died in armed conflicts, to include victims of violent oppression. It was first observed in its modern form in 1952.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstrauertag .

Nazi Propaganda ..

1937-9-21 Hobbit Published

1937-9-21 Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Hobbit 1st published in Britain > .

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, positions he held from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.

On 21 September 1937 J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Hobbit was first published in the United Kingdom.

Tolkien was an academic linguist who held the position of Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, where he was friends with fellow academic and novelist C. S. Lewis. Alongside his academic pursuits he had a creative mind that saw him produce a series playful poems and stories for his children. Tolkien combined both these areas in The Hobbit. While it is primarily a children’s book, part of its appeal is the rich fantasy world that Tolkien created by drawing upon his knowledge of Old English literature and early Germanic mythology.

Tolkien is said to have taken up to two years to write the original manuscript for the book, copies of which he lent to various friends. Through contact with one of his students at Oxford, the publisher George Allen & Unwin Ltd. obtained a copy, which was given a positive review by the 10-year old son of the owner and encouraged Unwin to publish it.

The initial run of 1,500 copies sold out within three months, and further runs proved similarly popular. Arguably The Hobbit’s greatest legacy is that it spawned the creation of The Lord of the Rings, the sequel that Tolkien was encouraged to write after the runaway success of The Hobbit.

The Hobbit has remained in print ever since it was first published, although Tolkien made a number of revisions to the text over the course of the next thirty years. This was done to bring plot elements into line with the storyline of the subsequent Lord of the Rings, and also to retain copyright in the United States.

Hollywood ↱ War

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US Military's Shady Recruitment Practices - Second > .

One Marvelous Scene - Military Ads in Marvel Movies - Just Write > .

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21-12-31 Hollywood's Coming China Problem - Asianometry > .

> Conscription, Recruitment >>

24-4-16 Is Mandatory Military Service Actually a Good Idea? - Context Matters > .

24-1-14 Demography & Armies - Recruitment, Retention, Manpower - Perun > .

24-2-1 Could National Service fix British forces recruitment crisis? | Sitrep > .

Governmental Propaganda - Lewis >> .

Propaganda - Manipulating Emotions - Sutton >> .
Propaganda, Fake News, Cyberpolitics - Chink in Armor >> .

Third Wave Experiment (1967) - "O" is for Obedience ↬

To influence public opinion in favor of WW1, the U.S produced films, commissioned colorful posters, published pamphlets and recruited everyday Americans to “sell the war.” These efforts helped create both modern American wartime propaganda and spurred the 20th century advertising industry.

Propaganda in the United States is spread by both government and media entities. Propaganda is carefully curated information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread, usually to preserve the self-interest of a nation. It is used in advertising, radio, newspaper, posters, books, television and other media. Propagandists may provide either factual or non-factual information to their audiences, often emphasizing positive features and downplaying negative ones, or vice versa, in order to shape wide scale public opinion or influence behavioral changes.

The first large-scale use of propaganda by the U.S. government came during WW1. The government enlisted the help of citizens and children to help promote war bonds and stamps to help stimulate the economy. To keep the prices of war supplies down (guns, gunpowder, cannons, steel, etc.), the U.S. government produced posters that encouraged people to reduce waste and grow their own vegetables in "victory gardens". The public skepticism that was generated by the heavy-handed tactics of the Committee on Public Information would lead the postwar government to officially abandon the use of propaganda.

The 1915 film The German Side of the War was compiled from footage filmed by Chicago Tribune cameraman Edwin F. Weigle. It was one of the only American films to show the German perspective of the war. At the theater lines stretched around the block; the screenings were received with such enthusiasm that would-be moviegoers resorted to purchasing tickets from scalpers.

During WW2, the United States officially had no propaganda, but the Roosevelt government used means to circumvent this official line. One such propaganda tool was the publicly owned but government-funded Writers' War Board (WWB). The activities of the WWB were so extensive that it has been called the "greatest propaganda machine in history". Why We Fight is a famous series of US government propaganda films made to justify US involvement in World War II. Response to the use of propaganda in the United States was mixed, as attempts by the government to release propaganda during World War I was perceived negatively by the American public. The government did not initially use propaganda but was ultimately persuaded by businesses and media, which saw its use as informational. Cultural and racial stereotypes were used in World War II propaganda to encourage the perception of the Japanese people and government as a "ruthless and animalistic enemy that needed to be defeated", leading to many Americans seeing all Japanese people in a negative light. Many people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom were American citizens, were forcibly rounded up and placed in internment camps in the early 1940s.

From 1944 to 1948, prominent US policy makers promoted a domestic propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the U.S. public to agree to a harsh peace for the German people, for example by removing the common view of the German people and the Nazi Party as separate entities. The core of this campaign was the Writers' War Board, which was closely associated with the Roosevelt administration.

Another means was the United States Office of War Information that Roosevelt established in June 1942, whose mandate was to promote understanding of the war policies under the director Elmer Davis. It dealt with posters, press, movies, exhibitions, and produced often slanted material conforming to US wartime purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_propaganda_during_World_War_II .

United States home front during WW2 .

[WW2] How Hollywood became the unofficial propaganda arm of the U.S. military.

Cold War .
War on Drugs .
Gulf War .
Iraq War .
Ad Council .
COVID-19 pandemic .

Hollywood vs Chollywood ↠