20th+: children

The Nordic Council is the official body for formal inter-parliamentary Nordic cooperation among the Nordic countries. Formed in 1952, it has 87 representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden as well as from the autonomous areas of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and the Åland Islands. The representatives are members of parliament in their respective countries or areas and are elected by those parliaments. The Council holds ordinary sessions each year in October/November and usually one extra session per year with a specific theme. The council's official languages are Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, though it uses only the mutually intelligible Scandinavian languages—Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish—as its working languages. These three comprise the first language of around 80% of the region's population and are learned as a second or foreign language by the remaining 20%.

In 1971, the Nordic Council of Ministers, an intergovernmental forum, was established to complement the council. The Council and the Council of Ministers are involved in various forms of cooperation with neighbouring areas in Northern Europe, including the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, the Benelux countries, the Baltic states and Russia.

During WW2, Denmark and Norway were occupied by Germany; Finland was under assault by the Soviet Union; while Sweden, though neutral, still felt the war's effects. Following WW2, the Nordic countries pursued the idea of a Scandinavian defence union to ensure their mutual defence. However, Finland, due to its Paasikivi-Kekkonen policy of neutrality and FCMA treaty with the USSR, could not participate.

It was proposed that the Nordic countries would unify their foreign policy and defence, remain neutral in the event of a conflict and not ally with NATO, which some were planning at the time. The United States, keen on getting access to bases in Scandinavia and believing the Nordic countries incapable of defending themselves, stated it would not ensure military support for Scandinavia if they did not join NATO. As Denmark and Norway sought US aid for their post-war reconstruction, the project collapsed, with Denmark, Norway and Iceland joining NATO.

Further Nordic co-operation, such as an economic customs union, also failed. This led Danish Prime Minister Hans Hedtoft to propose, in 1951, a consultative inter-parliamentary body. This proposal was agreed by Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in 1952. The council's first session was held in the Danish Parliament on 13 February 1953 and it elected Hans Hedtoft as its president. When Finnish-Soviet relations thawed following the death of Joseph Stalin, Finland joined the council in 1955.

On 2 July 1954, the Nordic labour market was created and in 1958, building upon a 1952 passport-free travel area, the Nordic Passport Union was created. These two measures helped ensure Nordic citizens' free movement around the area. A Nordic Convention on Social Security was implemented in 1955. There were also plans for a single market but they were abandoned in 1959 shortly before Denmark, Norway, and Sweden joined the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). Finland became an associated member of EFTA in 1961 and Denmark and Norway applied to join the European Economic Community (EEC).

This move towards the EEC led to desire for a formal Nordic treaty. The Helsinki Treaty outlined the workings of the council and came into force on 24 March 1962. Further advancements on Nordic cooperation were made in the following years: a Nordic School of Public Health, a Nordic Cultural Fund, and Nordic House in Reykjavík were created. Danish Prime Minister Hilmar Baunsgaard proposed full economic cooperation ("Nordek") in 1968. Nordek was agreed in 1970, but Finland then backtracked, stating that its ties with the Soviet Union meant it could not form close economic ties with potential members of the EEC (Denmark and Norway). Nordek was then abandoned.

As a consequence, Denmark and Norway applied to join the EEC and the Nordic Council of Ministers was set up in 1971 to ensure continued Nordic cooperation. In 1970 representatives of the Faroe Islands and Åland were allowed to take part in the Nordic Council as part of the Danish and Finnish delegations. Norway turned down EEC membership in 1972 while Denmark acted as a bridge builder between the EEC and the Nordics. Also in 1973, although it did not opt for full membership of the EEC, Finland negotiated a free trade treaty with the EEC that in practice removed customs duties from 1977 on, although there were transition periods up to 1985 for some products. Sweden did not apply due to its non-alliance policy, which was aimed at preserving neutrality. Greenland subsequently left the EEC and has since sought a more active role in circumpolar affairs.

In the 1970s, the Nordic Council founded the Nordic Industrial Fund, Nordtest and the Nordic Investment Bank. The council's remit was also expanded to include environmental protection and, in order to clean up the pollution in the Baltic Sea and the North Atlantic, a joint energy network was established. The Nordic Science Policy Council was set up in 1983 and, in 1984, representatives from Greenland were allowed to join the Danish delegation.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Nordic Council began to cooperate more with the Baltic states and new Baltic Sea organisations. Sweden and Finland joined the European Union (EU), the EEC's successor, in 1995. Norway had also applied, but once again voted against membership. However, Norway and Iceland did join the European Economic Area (EEA) which integrated them economically with the EU. The Nordic Passport Union was also subsumed into the EU's Schengen Area in 1996.

The Nordic Council became more outward-looking, to the Arctic, Baltic, Europe, and Canada. The Øresund Bridge linking Sweden and Denmark led to a large amount of cross-border travel, which in turn led to further efforts to reduce barriers. However, the initially envisioned tasks and functions of the Nordic Council have become partially dormant due to the significant overlap with the EU and EEA. In 2008 Iceland began EU membership talks, but decided to annul these in 2015. Unlike the Benelux, there is no explicit provision in the Treaty on European Union that takes into account Nordic co-operation. However, the Treaties provide that international agreements concluded by the Member States before they become members of the Union remain valid, even if they are contrary to the provisions of Union law. However, each Member State must take all necessary measures to eliminate any discrepancies as quickly as possible. Nordic co-operation can therefore in practice only be designed to the extent that it complies with Union law.

Arctic Cooperation and Politics .
Baltic region .
Baltoscandia .
Baltic Assembly .
Benelux .
Council of the Baltic Sea States .
European Union .
Frugal Four .
NB8 .
Nordic Council Children and Young People's Literature Prize .
Nordic Council's Literature Prize .
Nordic Council Film Prize .
Nordic Council Environment Prize .
Nordic Council Music Prize .
Nordic Identity in Estonia .
Nordic Passport Union .
Nordic Summer University .
Nordic Youth Council .
Nordic countries .
West Nordic Council .

Macroeconomic topics ..

● Economic Geopolitics ..

Geography terminology --

Political concepts --

Political terminology --

Political science terminology --

Arctic Chokepoints and Littorals ~ CIMSEC .

Ruscism ..

Saturday, April 6, 2024

WI - Women's Institute

Canning Machine, WI > .

Cake Bakers & Trouble Makers > .

A Force to be Reckoned With: History of the Women's Institute > .

Women's Institute of 1940 | Wartime Farm - AbHi > .

Women's Institute (1950-1959) - Pathé > .

Harry & Edna on the Wireless ~ WW2 Women's Institute Reenactment > .

>> Homefront WW2 >>>

The Women's Institute (WI) is a community-based organisation for women in the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. The movement was founded in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada, by Erland and Janet Lee with Adelaide Hoodless being the first speaker in 1897. It was based on the British concept of Women's Guilds, created by Rev Archibald Charteris in 1887 and originally confined to the Church of Scotland. From Canada the organisation spread back to the motherland, throughout the British Empire and Commonwealth, and thence to other countries. Many WIs belong to the Associated Country Women of the World organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Institutes .

The first WI in Britain was founded on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales in 1915. The idea for the WI came from Canada where the movement was formed in 1897 to help connect women in isolated rural areas.

By the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, the WI was a well-established pillar of rural life in Britain, with institutes in more than 5,500 villages. But its National Executive Committee initially struggled to decide whether the WI would be able to help with the war effort at all as they had taken a strong anti-war stance. The WI's Chairman, Lady Denman, realised that the WI's members would want to 'do their bit'. She suggested that the WI might be called upon to help with caring for evacuees and with rural food production.

These predictions proved correct. The WI made a significant contribution on the home front. In September 1939, over 1.5 million children, mothers and babies, elderly and disabled people were evacuated from Britain's major towns and cities to rural areas. As well as the evacuation of these vulnerable groups, many businesses and government departments also moved their staff to the countryside. Members of the WI in reception areas were active in billeting and receiving evacuees and helping to settle them into rural communities. WI members often organised activities such as country walks and tea parties to help keep evacuee children occupied and entertained. Early in 1939, members of the WI had also assisted those planning the Government's evacuation scheme by carrying out a survey of rural homes to find out how many households might be able to take evacuees. In 1941, they also published an influential report on their members' experiences of evacuation.

The National Savings Movement was a British mass savings movement that operated between 1916 and 1978 and was used to finance the deficit of government spending over tax revenues. The movement was instrumental during WW2 in raising funds to support the war effort. A War Savings Campaign was set up by the War Office to support the war effort. Local savings weeks were held which were promoted with posters with titles such as "Lend to Defend the Right to be Free", "Save your way to Victory" and "War Savings are Warships".

In January 1940, R M Kindersley, President of the National Savings Committee asked the WI to help raise the profile of the National Savings Campaign. Each branch was asked to display posters and distribute leaflets and to set up its own National Savings Scheme. Stotfold in Bedfordshire raised £8,190 (the equivalent of £283,000 today) in just two years.

The WI had run markets in rural areas since 1919 and in wartime, with food supplies scarce, these became an ever more valuable addition to rural towns and villages. WI markets sold surplus produce – mainly fruit and vegetables – from WI members, from smallholders and allotment holders. In a report on WI markets, the Ministry of Information concluded that they were 'business-like and practical examples of cooperative rural enterprise'. The WI also assisted the Women's Voluntary Service (WVS) distribute and sell pies to agricultural workers as part of the Rural District Pie Scheme.

After the fall of France in June 1940 it was no longer possible for Britain to import food from mainland Europe. This meant a drastic reduction in the availability of onions. The Ministry of Food tried to encourage commercial production in the UK but the first crop failed. People had to try to grow their own. The WI helped by organising the distribution of onion seeds and sets. The Oxfordshire WI harvested 13 tons in 1942. The National Federation of WIs also distributed tomato seeds and seed potatoes in large numbers and sold other seeds to their members at a preferential rate.

Oranges were scarce during the Second World War and, as they were an important source of Vitamin C, when available they were given as a priority to children over adults. But alternative sources of Vitamin C were needed. The WI and other voluntary organisations were asked to collect 500 tons of rosehips. These were used by pharmacists to make rosehip syrup which was very rich in Vitamin C. WI members in Oxfordshire also collected Foxgloves (Belladonna atropa) which were dried to make the drug digitalis, used for patients with heart conditions.

Making jam is probably one of the things that the WI is most famous for. But what is less well known is that during the Second World War, WI members made jam on an epic scale and made a significant contribution to Britain's food supplies. In 1939, realising that much of the fruit from the summer's bumper harvest might be wasted unless it were made into jam, WI's headquarters secured sugar supplies direct from the Ministry of Food. WIs across the country gathered in surplus fruit from gardens and allotments or growing wild. In their first wave of jam making, it is estimated that the WI saved 450 tons of fruit from rotting.

From 1940, the WI's jam making efforts escalated but came under increased supervision from the Ministry of Food. After the introduction of food rationing in January, there were restrictions on how and where jam could be sold. The supplies of sugar needed for jam making were tightly controlled and records had to be kept of all fruit preserved and sold. Preservation centres were set up in villages or near where fruit was harvested.

Some institutes were keen to look for new ways to preserve fruit and other produce and organised professional canning. This was a skill that had to be learnt and practised as faulty cans could explode. In August 1940, the Queen visited a WI canning centre at Hyde Heath in Buckinghamshire. Canning operations received a further boost when the American Federation of Business and Professional Women donated six mobile canning vans to the WI.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-did-the-womens-institute-do-during-the-second-world-war .

https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/history-of-war/gallipoli-myths-no-machine-guns-no-australians-the-forgotten-naval-campaign/ .

Sunday, October 6, 2019

WVS - Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence

WVS > .

1938-5-16 Women's Voluntary Services (WVS) from 1938 to 1966 ⇒ Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) from 1966 to 2004 ⇒ WRVS from 2004 to 2013 ⇒ Royal Voluntary Service.

On 16 May 1938, the British government set out the objectives of the Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence or Women’s Voluntary Services for Air Raid Precautions:

It was seen “as the enrolment of women for Air Raid Precaution Services of Local Authorities, to help to bring home to every household what air attack may mean, and to make known to every household [in the country] what it can do to protect itself and the community.”

In the words of Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, "as regards their civil defence functions, the Minister regards the Women's Voluntary Service as occupying ... much the same relationship as that of the women's auxiliary services for the armed forces of the Crown."

Hidden army - WVS .
Hidden army video - WVS .

The Women's Voluntary Services was founded in 1938 by Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, as a British women's organisation to recruit women into the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) services to help in the event of War.

The WVS/WRVS was a voluntary organisation, and it was Lady Reading's vision that there would be no ranks. It was perhaps the only organisation where you could find a Duchess and a char lady working side by side. While many members of the WVS mucked in on pretty much all tasks, the idea of an organisation without a hierarchy would not have worked and so while there were no ranks, there were titles. Women were recruited for specific tasks, whether that was to drive ambulances, to be a member of a knitting work party or collect National Savings. Inevitably those women who signed up for one thing often ended up being co-opted for other work, especially if they showed aptitude.

The WVS was split into 12 Regions (using the same boundaries as Civil Defence) which started with 1 in the NE of England and moved clockwise down the country and back up. London was Region 12 and Scotland Region 11. Each Region had a Regional Administrator who was paid for by the Home Office. Under this each County had a County Organiser and 'staff' and below that were the Centres. During and after the Second World War, there were almost 2,000 WVS centres around Great Britain (as well as Northern Ireland during the war) each at the sharp end of providing help to their communities. Each was prominently positioned within a town or village and was run by a Centre Organiser appointed by Headquarters in London. Each Centre Organiser had a team of members who were responsible for different aspect of WVS work e.g. evacuation, Training, Food or Clothing. Under their direction were the 'ordinary' members.

The WVS played a key part in the evacuation of civilians from urban areas. The WVS had been asked to pinpoint areas of safety and billeting for evacuated children. Moving children out of the cities proved reasonably easy. Getting them to a known area of safety proved a lot more difficult as trains did not always arrive at an expected destination or would turn up at a reception point unexpectedly. The WVS is credited with helping to move 1.5 million people (the majority were children) out of cities in the early days of September 1939.

The WVS also played a major role in the collection of clothing required for the needy. In October 1939, Lady Reading broadcast to the United States about the need for clothing in the UK. The broadcast led to large quantities of clothing (known as "Bundles for Britain") being sent over to the United Kingdom by the American Red Cross. These were distributed from WVS Emergency Clothing Stores.

When troops returned to ports after the evacuation at Dunkirk, members of the WVS were there to greet them and hand out food, drink and warm clothing. The WVS base at the railway station in Headcorn, Kent was an especially busy place for feeding returning soldiers before they dispersed—a spit was installed so that meat could be roasted there and then. The WVS also played a vital part during the Blitz of London and other cities.

By the time of the Blitz, women in the WVS were adept at providing food and drink around the clock. While ARP wardens and firemen fought the fires, women in the WVS set up mobile canteens to keep them refreshed, thus placing themselves in serious physical danger with collapsing buildings a constant threat. When the raids ended, the WVS also played a part in looking after those who were injured and had lost their homes. Records indicate that the WVS dealt with and helped over 10,000 people every night of the Blitz.

As the Blitz lasted for 57 nights, the WVS helped in total a vast number of people who went to their rest centres. Some people stayed just for a night—many stayed for much longer and stretched the resources of the WVS to the limit. In Barnes, one WVS member fed 1,200 bomb victims in just one day, cooking in her own kitchen.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the work done by the WVS during the Blitz: the rest centres provided shelter, food, and importantly, sanitation. But working so near to the centre of the bombing inevitably led to casualties. 241 members of the WVS were killed during the Blitz and many more were wounded. 25 WVS offices were destroyed.

The WVS began running IIPs (Incident Inquiry Points), places where people came to find out about their loved ones who were in an area that had been bombed in order to free the ARP to work with the fire brigade. The WVS also helped with the Queen's Messenger Food Convoys which took food to areas in need after a bombing raid. The people who survived the bombing of Coventry received help from one of the convoys with 14,000 meals being served.

By 1941, one million women belonged to the WVS. Their work did not slacken after the end of the Luftwaffe's bombing raids. The Battle of the Atlantic and the devastating toll of merchant ships sunk by U-boats led to shortages in Great Britain. The WVS did all that it could to assist in the collection of required material for the war effort and also to educate people not to waste what they had.

Each WVS centre had its own Salvage Officer and Food Leader. The Food Leader did whatever was required at a local level to assist the authorities in the complicated task of food rationing. Educational pamphlets were produced and lectures held. The WVS organised campaigns such as 'Salute the Soldier', 'Wings for Victory', 'Spitfire Funds' and Warship Week.

In the buildup to D-Day, the expertise the WVS had in catering was put to use again. The skills learned during the Blitz were again put to good use when the V1 and V2 rockets fell on London. Once again, the WVS played a key role in evacuation. With the success of D-Day, the WVS moved into Europe to support troops there. The first WVS abroad had landed in Italy with the success of the invasion there.

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

Women's Voluntary Service: 'The army Hitler forgot' .
https://www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/about-us/our-history .
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1419318354/hidden-histories-of-a-million-wartime-women .
https://www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/about-us/our-history/timeline-list .
https://www.mylearning.org/stories/women-at-war-the-role-of-women-during-ww2/480 .
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/categories/c54954/ .
http://www.caringonthehomefront.org.uk/search-the-library/volunteering/ .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6651894.shtml .
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/71/a3384371.shtml .

44-12-3 Home Guard Stands Down ..
Voluntary Organisations ..
Women's Institute ..
Women's Voluntary Service ..

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Komsomol, post-WW2

23-10-1 Summer Paradise for Soviet [Pioneer] Children - Setarko > .

21-4-11 Pioneer Movement in USSR - How Young Soviets Were Raised - Setarko > .

23-9-29 Hitler Youth | State-Mandated Patriotism vs Pioneers (subs) - Katz > .

22-3-13 Tsar Vlad's Юнармия (Yunarmiya) preps Russian Cannon Fodder - VisPol > .

History of the Cold War: Every Month - Dec '45 to Dec '91 > .

Entire History of the Cold War Explained | Life Guide > .

Cold War: Seven Minutes to Midnight | Wars of World > .

Stasi and the Berlin Wall | DW Doc > .

Berlin Wall: Escaping for Freedom and Love - Geographics > .

Reunification: Re-Absorbing East Germany After Fall of Berlin Wall - Megaprojects > .

German reunification – a short history | DW Doc > .

> Capitalism >>

> > Econopolitics > >

Thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the martial rhetoric and other trappings of the "strong men" of the totalitarian era are making a comeback. Why? The film's director Ivo Briedis and the journalist Rita Ruduša were both born in the Soviet Union. Together, they embark on a journey to explore the phenomenon of Homo sovieticus. They want to know if a totalitarian mindset can still be found in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. The thinker Alexander Zinoviev defined as Homo sovieticus as a person who is, at their core, an opportunist. They [RWAs] do not rebel against their [SDO] leadership, and want to take as little individual responsibility as possible. Did these characteristics develop specifically as a result of growing up in the Soviet Union, or can they develop in any society? To find out, they speak with people who lived under the Soviet regime, as well as with members of the first post-Soviet generation.

Scouting, Hitlerjugend, Komsomol ..

Soviet Youth Organizations - Cold War ..

The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, a syllabic abbreviation of the Russian Коммунистический Союз Молодёжи (Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodyozhi), was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it was officially independent and referred to as "the helper and the reserve of the CPSU".

The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban areas in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Young Communist League, or RKSM. During 1922, with the unification of the USSR, it was reformed into an all-union agency, the youth division of the All-Union Communist Party.

It was the final stage of three youth organizations with members up to age 28, graduated at 14 from the Young Pioneers, and at nine from the Little Octobrists.

Active members received privileges and preferences in promotion. For example, Yuri Andropov, CPSU General Secretary (1982–1984), achieved notice through work with the Komsomol organization of Karelia in 1940–1944. At its largest, during the 1970s, the Komsomol had tens of millions of members.

During the early phases of perestroika in the mid-1980s, when the Soviet authorities began cautiously introducing private enterprise, the Komsomol received privileges with respect to initiating businesses, with the motivation of giving youth a better chance. The government, unions and the Komsomol jointly introduced Centers for Scientific and Technical Creativity for Youth (1987). At the same time, many Komsomol managers joined and directed the Russian Regional and State Anti-Monopoly Committees. Folklore quickly coined a motto: "The Komsomol is a school of Capitalism", hinting at Vladimir Lenin's "Trade unions are a school of Communism".

The reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika and glasnost, finally revealed that the quality of Komsomol management was bad. The Komsomol, long associated with conservatism and bureaucracy, had always largely lacked political power. The radical Twentieth Congress of the Komsomol (April 1987) altered the rules of the organization to represent a market orientation. However, the reforms of the Twentieth Congress eventually destroyed the Komsomol, with lack of purpose and the waning of interest, membership, and quality of membership. At the Twenty-second Congress of the Komsomol in September 1991, the organization was disbanded. The Komsomol's newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, outlived the organization and is still published (as of 2019).

A number of youth organizations of successor parties to the CPSU continue to use the name Komsomol, as does the youth organization of Ukrainian communists: Komsomol of Ukraine.

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

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

MHS - Ministry of Home Security

The Ministry of Home Security was a British government department established in 1939 to direct national civil defence (primarily tasked with organising air raid precautions) during the Second World War. The Ministry for Home Security was headed by Sir John Anderson the Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security. The Ministry's responsibilities covered all central and regional civil defence organisations (such as air raid wardens, rescue squads, fire services, and the Women’s Voluntary Service). It was also responsible for giving approval to local ARP schemes, and providing public shelters.

The Ministry (run under the auspices of the Home Office) produced hundreds of leaflets that were delivered to the population advising on how to deal with the impending air raids. It also managed propaganda poster campaigns to encourage, amongst other things, the carrying of gas masks and for volunteers to join civil defence groups like the Fire Guards.

In October 1940, Sir John Anderson was replaced by Herbert Morrison in a reshuffle precipitated by Chamberlain's resignation over ill-health. Anderson became Lord President of the Council and full member of the War Cabinet.

With the Allied victory in Europe the Ministry was disbanded in May 1945.
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John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, PC, PC (Ire), FRS (8 July 1882 – 4 January 1958) was a British civil servant and politician who is best known for his service in the Cabinet during the Second World War, for which he was nicknamed the "Home Front Prime Minister". He served as Home Secretary, Lord President of the Council and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Anderson shelters are named after him.

.......

Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, CH, PC (3 January 1888 – 6 March 1965) was a British Labour politician who held a variety of senior positions in the Cabinet.

During the inter-war period, he was Minister of Transport during the 1929-31 Labour Government, then, after losing his seat in Parliament in 1931, became Leader of the London County Council in the 1930s. Returning to the Commons in 1935, he was defeated by Clement Attlee in the Labour leadership election that year, but later acted as Home Secretary in the wartime coalition.

In 1940, Morrison was appointed the first Minister of Supply by Winston Churchill, but shortly afterwards succeeded Sir John Anderson as Home Secretary. Morrison's London experience in local government was particularly useful during the Blitz, and the Morrison shelter was named after him. He made radio appeals for more fire guards in December 1940 ('Britain shall not burn').

Morrison had to take many potentially unpopular and controversial decisions by the nature of wartime circumstances. On 21 January 1941, he banned the Daily Worker for opposing war with Germany and supporting the Soviet Union. The ban lasted for a total of 18 months before it was rescinded.

The arrival of black American troops caused concern in the government, leading Morrison, the Home Secretary, to comment "I am fully conscious that a difficult social problem might be created if there were a substantial number of sex relations between white women and coloured troops and the procreation of half-caste children." That was in a memorandum for the cabinet in 1942. In 1942, Morrison was confronted with an appeal from the Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief) to admit 350 Jewish children from Vichy France. Although Case Anton ensured the scheme's failure, Morrison had been reluctant to accept it beforehand, wanting to avoid provoking the ‘anti-foreign and anti-semitic feeling which was quite certainly latent in this country (and in some isolated cases not at all latent)’.

In 1943, he ran for the post of Treasurer of the Labour Party but lost a close contest to Arthur Greenwood.
......
During the Second World War Jacob Bronowski worked in operations research for the UK's Ministry of Home Security, where he developed mathematical approaches to bombing strategy for RAF Bomber Command.

War Ministries WW2 ..

MoF - Ministry of Food

Rationing In Britain - [US perspective] - IWM > .

Mrs. T. And Her Cabbage Patch (1941) (approved by Ministry of Food) - BFI > .

Coping on Rationing ..

https://www.cooksinfo.com/british-wartime-food/ .

Minister of Food

"The Minister of Food Control (1916–1921) and the Minister of Food (1939–1958) were British government ministerial posts separated from that of the Minister of Agriculture. In the Great War the Ministry sponsored a network of canteens known as National Kitchens. In the Second World War a major task of the Ministry was to oversee rationing in the United Kingdom arising out of World War II. The Minister was assisted by a Parliamentary Secretary.

The ministry's work was transferred in 1921 to the Board of Trade which had a small Food Department between the wars. This became its Food (Defence Plans) Department in 1937 and was then constituted as the Ministry of Food on the outbreak of war in 1939."

In April 1940 Lord Woolton, a prominent businessman, was appointed Minister of Food by Neville Chamberlain, one of a number of ministerial appointments from outside politics. Woolton retained this position until 1943. He supervised 50,000 employees and over a thousand local offices where people could obtain ration cards. His ministry had a virtual monopoly of all food sold in Britain, whether imported or local. His mission was to guarantee adequate nutrition for everyone. With food supplies cut sharply because of enemy action and the needs of the services, rationing was essential. Woolton and his advisors had one scheme in mind but economists convinced them to try point rationing. Everyone would have a certain number of points a month that they could allocate any way they wanted. They tried an experiment and it worked very well. Indeed, food rationing was a major success story in Britain's war.

In the dark days of late June 1940, with a German invasion threatened, Woolton reassured the public that emergency food stocks were in place that would last "for weeks and weeks" even if the shipping could not get through. He said "iron rations" were stored for use only in great emergency. Other rations were stored in the outskirts of cities liable to German bombing. When the Blitz began in late summer 1940 he was ready with more than 200 feeding stations in London and other cities under attack.

Woolton was faced with the task of overseeing rationing due to wartime shortages. He took the view that it was insufficient to merely impose restrictions but that a programme of advertising to support it was also required. He warned that meat and cheese, as well as bacon and eggs, were in very short supply and would remain that way. Calling for a simpler diet, he noted that there was plenty of bread, potatoes, vegetable oils, fats and milk.

By January 1941 the usual overseas food supply had fallen to half what it had been. However, by 1942 ample food supplies were arriving through Lend Lease from the U.S. and a similar Canadian programme. Lend Lease was a gift and there was no charge. Most food was now rationed. Worried about children, Lord Woolton made sure that by 1942 Britain was providing 650,000 children with free meals at schools; about 3,500,000 children received milk at school, in addition to priority supplies at home. The bad news was that his "national loaf" of mushy grey wholemeal bread replaced the ordinary white variety, to the distaste of most housewives. Children were sad to learn that supplies of sweets were reduced to save shipping space on sugar and chocolate.

Woolton kept food prices down; eggs and other items were subsidised. He promoted recipes that worked well with the rationing system, most famously the meatless "Woolton pie" which consisted of carrots, parsnips, potatoes and turnips in oatmeal, with a pastry or potato crust and served with brown gravy. Woolton's business skills made the Ministry of Food's difficult job a success and he earned a strong personal popularity despite the shortages."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_Food_(United_Kingdom)

4 September 1939 to 3 April 1940
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morrison,_1st_Viscount_Dunrossil

3 April 1940 11 to November 1943

In April 1940 [Woolton] was appointed as Minister of Food by Neville Chamberlain, one of a number of ministerial appointments from outside politics. Woolton retained this position until 1943. He supervised 50,000 employees and over a thousand local offices where people could obtain ration cards. His ministry had a virtual monopoly of all food sold in Britain, whether imported or local. His mission was to guarantee adequate nutrition for everyone. With food supplies cut sharply because of enemy action and the needs of the services, rationing was essential. Woolton and his advisors had one scheme in mind but economists convinced them to instead try point rationing. Everyone would have a certain number of points a month that they could allocate any way they wanted. The experimental approach to food rationing has been considered successful; indeed, food rationing was a major success story in Britain's war.

In late June 1940, with a German invasion threatened, Woolton reassured the public that emergency food stocks were in place that would last "for weeks and weeks" even if the shipping could not get through. He said "iron rations" were stored for use only in great emergency. Other rations were stored in the outskirts of cities liable to German bombing. When the Blitz began in late summer 1940 he was ready with more than 200 feeding stations in London and other cities under attack.

Woolton was faced with the task of overseeing rationing due to wartime shortages. He took the view that it was insufficient to merely impose restrictions but that a programme of advertising to support it was also required. He warned that meat and cheese, as well as bacon and eggs, were in very short supply and would remain that way. Calling for a simpler diet, he noted that there was plenty of bread, potatoes, vegetable oils, fats and milk.

By January 1941 the usual overseas food supply had fallen in half. However, by 1942 ample food supplies were arriving through Lend Lease from the U.S. and a similar Canadian programme. Lend Lease was a gift and there was no charge. Most food was now rationed. Worried about children, he made sure that by 1942 Britain was providing 650,000 children with free meals at schools; about 3,500,000 children received milk at school, in addition to priority supplies at home. The bad news was that his "national loaf" of wholemeal brown bread replaced the ordinary white variety, to the distaste of most housewives. Children learned that sweets supplies were reduced to save shipping space.

Woolton kept food prices down by subsidizing eggs and other items. He promoted recipes that worked well with the rationing system, most famously the "Woolton pie", which consisted of carrots, parsnips, potatoes and turnips in oatmeal, with a pastry or potato crust and served with brown gravy. Woolton's business skills made the Ministry of Food's difficult job a success and he earned a strong personal popularity despite the shortages.

He joined the Privy Council in 1940 and became a Companion of Honour in 1942. In 1943 Woolton entered the War Cabinet as Minister of Reconstruction, taking charge of the difficult task of planning for post-war Britain and in this role he appeared on the cover of Time on the issue of 26 March 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Marquis,_1st_Earl_of_Woolton

Ministry of Food - Rationing
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/5af393TbvMH

The Ministry of Food: Terry Charman explores Food Rationing in World War Two | Culture24

The Ministry of Food: Terry Charman explores Food Rationing in World War Two | Culture24

War Ministries WW2 ..

11 November 1943 to 26 July 1945
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jestyn_Llewellin,_1st_Baron_Llewellin

Farming: Make Fruitful The Land - 1945 Educational Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5oSmJpB6S4
Medieval 3-field rotation - introduced by Saxons
https://youtu.be/h5oSmJpB6S4?t=1m21s
18th century population explosion
https://youtu.be/h5oSmJpB6S4?t=2m35s
clover introduced from Flanders
https://youtu.be/h5oSmJpB6S4?t=3m17s
Norfolk 4-course rotation
https://youtu.be/h5oSmJpB6S4?t=4m12s
https://youtu.be/hQYpRhkkOKs?t=7m1s
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/hmnY2vHt9uM
Rotation - farming calendar 1940s
https://youtu.be/h5oSmJpB6S4?t=6m43s

The Butcher, The Baker - 1947 Educational Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9yw4Kgl-_g

Village Bakery (1940-1949) - silent, subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4QAaqEsza8
Modern Bakery (1940-1949)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNVhqA_ULy4 .

Food Shortages ..

Ministers of Food (1939–1958)

Minister of Food
	Term of office		Political party
W. S. Morrison (subsequently Viscount Dunrossil)	4 September 1939	3 April 1940	Conservative
The Lord Woolton	3 April 1940	11 November 1943	Independent
Colonel J. J. Llewellin (subsequently Lord Llewellin)	11 November 1943	26 July 1945	Conservative
Sir Ben Smith	3 August 1945	26 May 1946	Labour

Monday, July 15, 2019

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei

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

24-10-2 Why Denazification Failed - IWM > .

23-8-21 A Democracy Without Democrats: Weimar Republic Explained - Used > .

23-7-17 Nazis: A Warning from History | BBC Select > .

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

22-10-21 The Rules Of War Must Not Be Broken (war crimes) - OBF > . skip > .

21-11-2 Describing Military Doctrine - Anders Puck Nielsen > .

Was Chamberlain wrong to appease Hitler? - IWM > .

Myth [Excuse] of the Nazi Police State - WW2 Doc Special > .

Rise of the Nazis - doc | BBC Select > .

1925-7-18 Adolf Hitler publishes first volume of 'Mein Kampf' - HiPo > .

Weimar Republic - Stab-in-the-Back Legend - doku > .

10 Times Fascism Overtook Democracy - Tenz > .

Weimar Republic and National Socialism - doku >> .

History of Fascism - Historian's Craft >> .

Weimar Republic and National Socialism - doku >> .

Anti-Nazism in Germany ..

Edelweiß Pirates ..

Eiserne Front und Drei Pfeile ..

Hitlerjugend ..

Nazis & Palestinian Arabs ..
Swingjugend & Counter-Culture Cool ..

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei .

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

Nazi Germany - The Underground Resistance - Resistance to Hitler > .
Pockets of Resistance survived throughout the Nazi era. But in a climate of fear and almost absolute Nazi control, their efforts made little impact.

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Nazi Germany - Night of the Long Knives - Life in Hitler's Germany > .

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Waffen SS > .

Nazi Fanatics The Waffen SS History Documentary > .

What is Fascism? (Political Philosophy) - Carneades > .

Political Philosophy - Carneades >> .

Gladiators of World War II Series >> .

The Schutzstaffel (SS; literally "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall Security") made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–45) it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.

The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units within Nazi Germany's military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organizations. They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.

The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims in the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germany's defeat, the SS and the NSDAP were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organizations. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS main department chief, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and hanged in 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel

Syndrome E .
A syndrome is a group of biological symptoms that together constitute a clinical picture. And E stands for evil. With Syndrome E, Itzhak Fried (1997, The Lancet) identified a cluster of 10 neuropsychological symptoms that are often present when evil acts are committed – when, as he puts it, ‘groups of previously nonviolent individuals’ turn ‘into repetitive killers of defenceless members of society’. The 10 neuropsychological symptoms are:

1. Repetition: the aggression is repeated compulsively.
2. Obsessive ideation: the perpetrators are obsessed with ideas that justify their aggression and underlie missions of ethnic cleansing, for instance that all Westerners, or all Muslims, or all Jews, or all Tutsis are evil.
3. Perseveration: circumstances have no impact on the perpetrator’s behaviour, who perseveres even if the action is self-destructive.
4. Diminished affective reactivity: the perpetrator has no emotional affect.
5. Hyperarousal: the elation experienced by the perpetrator is a high induced by repetition, and a function of the number of victims.
6. Intact language, memory and problem-solving skills: the syndrome has no impact on higher cognitive abilities.
7. Rapid habituation: the perpetrator becomes desensitised to the violence.
8. Compartmentalisation: the violence can take place in parallel to an ordinary, affectionate family life.
9. Environmental dependency: the context, especially identification with a group and obedience to an authority, determines what actions are possible.
10. Group contagion: belonging to the group enables the action, each member mapping his behaviour on the other.

Fried’s assumption was that all these ways of behaving had underlying neurophysiological causes that were worth investigating.

Note that the syndrome applies to those previously normal individuals who become able to kill. It excludes the wartime, sanctioned killing by and of military recruits that leads many soldiers to return home (if they ever do) with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); recognised psychopathologies such as sociopathic personality disorder that can lead someone to shoot schoolchildren; and crimes of passion or the sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain.
.....
Neuroscience gives an interesting physiological model of the emotion of empathy as a complex, dynamic process that unites executive, premotor and sensorimotor functions. It recruits, in particular, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the orbitofrontal context (OFC), with which the vmPFC overlaps in part, and which is crucial for the processing of emotions generated in the amygdala – an evolutionary ancient structure within the limbic system. Lesion to the OFC impairs emotional feeling – and with it, decision-making. With his ‘somatic marker hypothesis’, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles has shown how bodily feelings that participate in signalling emotions, processed in the OFC and vmPFC, enable appropriate, socially situated decision-making, thereby informing our evaluations of the world, including our moral sense.

In the phenomenon of diminished affect, hyperactivity in these same areas of the frontal lobe inhibits activation of the amygdala. Studies have shown dysfunctional activity of the OFC in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It thus might also be involved in the obsessive nature of ideas about one group that justify murderous intent against its members. And the sense of elated hyperarousal – such as that induced by cocaine – that entrains action upon these ideas involves processing in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In short, in cases of Syndrome E emotional pathways in the brain no longer regulate judgment and action. A breakdown occurs in the feedback between the amygdala and higher, cognitive cortical structures. The acting self splits away from the feeling self, a phenomenon that Fried calls ‘cognitive fracture’. He believes that, under given circumstances, about 70 per cent of the population can be subject to it and be able to take part in crimes as part of a group – as might have happened in the Stanford prison experiment, despite caveats regarding its results.
.......
The acting self of the individual with cognitive fracture feels no empathy. But empathy is not always a reliable guide to appropriate behaviour – we don’t feel empathy for the insects dying because of climate change, for instance, but we can decide rationally to act against the disaster. It can even lead to bad decisions with regard to those at whom it is directed – a surgeon who feels empathy for the patient under drapes should really not operate. There is such a thing as a surfeit of feeling. The psychologist Paul Bloom at Yale University has argued ‘against empathy’, in a 2016 book of that title and elsewhere, suggesting that ‘rational compassion’ is a better barometer with which to evaluate our environment and how we should act upon it. That is to say, members of a group whose mission is to kill its perceived enemies might have the ability for emotional empathy for their group, and no rational compassion for their perceived enemy.
.......
Along with what Fried calls this ‘catastrophic’ desensitisation to emotional cues, cognitive functions remain intact – another Syndrome E symptom. A torturer knows exactly how to hurt, in full recognition of the victim’s pain. He – usually he – has the cognitive capacity, necessary but not sufficient for empathy, to understand the victim’s experience. He just does not care about the other’s pain except instrumentally. Further, he does not care that he does not care. Finally, he does not care that caring does, in fact, matter. The emotionally inflected judgment that underlies the moral sense is gone.

Such a state involves the fusion of identity with a larger system within which occurs the splitting of the feeling self and the cognitive self, and the concomitant replacement of individual moral values with that system’s norms and rules. Chemistry is operative throughout, as it is in all cerebral and somatic functions – and tweakable by pharmaceuticals. The neuroscientist Trevor Robbins at the University of Cambridge has studied ‘pharmacoterrorism’, and how, for instance, the amphetamine Captagon – used, inter alia, by ISIS members – affects dopamine function, depletes serotonin in the OFC, and leads to rigid, psychopathic-like behaviour, increasing aggression and leading to the perseverance that Fried lists among the Syndrome E symptoms. It shuts off social attachment, and disables all emotional feeling (empathy included), a condition called alexithymia.
.......
The neuroscientist Mathias Pessiglione and his team in Paris have also shown a central role for vmPFC in value-attribution to a stimulus or an idea, whereby we choose to undertake an action based on its attractive reward or its aversive outcome. But when this function is overstimulated, new inputs – such as cries for mercy – have no impact on the attribution of value to the idea, for instance that ‘all you people deserve to die’, and action cannot change. It becomes automatic, controllable by an external agent or leader, independently of any sense of value.
......
Certain socio-psychological conditions in childhood – such as an absent father or an unstable mother, and a history of foster care – affected the development of identity, in some cases eventually leading to the need to subsume it into a wider group with a transcendental message. Again, group trumps family. As the anthropologist Scott Atran has shown, conflicts are often intractable and non-negotiable because they are conducted in the name of absolute, spiritual values – secular or religious – and not for any utilitarian outcome. These values can seem highly attractive – stronger than family ties.
https://aeon.co/essays/is-neuroscience-getting-closer-to-explaining-evil-behaviour

The lure of fascism: Fascism promised radical national renewal and supreme power to the people. Are we in danger of a fascist revival today?
Lying for science: Psychologists used to manipulate and deceive their subjects with impunity. Did the end justify the means?
https://aeon.co/essays/is-it-ok-for-psychologists-to-deceive-their-test-subjects

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

45-11-20 Nuremberg Trials Filmed 46-10-1 ..

Is neuroscience getting closer to explaining evil behaviour? | Aeon Essays

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichswehr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf

Hitler & The Nazis: The Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjMj2OmLNnZC8M6-wGmZuQdMnX83YkTaa

Lebensborn e.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the goal of raising the birth rate of "Aryan" children via extramarital relations of persons classified as "racially pure and healthy" based on Nazi racial hygiene and health ideology. Lebensborn encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women, and mediated adoption of these children by likewise "racially pure and healthy" parents, particularly SS members and their families.

Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded into several occupied European countries with Germanic populations during the Second World War. It included the selection of "racially worthy" orphans for adoption and care for children born from Aryan women who had been in relationships with SS members. It originally excluded children born from unions between common soldiers and foreign women, because there was no proof of racial purity on both sides.

At the Nuremberg Trials, no evidence was found of direct involvement by the Lebensborn organization in the kidnapping of Polish children. However, Heinrich Himmler directed a programme with other segments of the Nazi bureaucracy, whereby thousands of Polish children were kidnapped and subjected to 'Germanisation'. Germanisation involved a period at one of the 're-education camps', followed by being fostered out to German families.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn

Nazi Germany - Introduction - The Rise of Hitler > .
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Monday, April 15, 2024

Nordic Council