Sunday, October 15, 2017

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

.

LOAC - Law of Armed Conflict ..

The Nuremberg trials (Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of military tribunals held after World War II by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.

The first and best known of the trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). It was described as "the greatest trial in history" by Sir Norman Birkett, one of the British judges present throughout. Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the Tribunal was given the task of trying 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich. Primarily treated here is the first trial, conducted by the International Military Tribunal. Further trials of lesser war criminals were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT), which included the Doctors' trial and the Judges' Trial.

The categorization of the crimes and the constitution of the court represented a juridical advance that would be followed afterward by the United Nations for the development of an international jurisprudence in matters of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and wars of aggression, and led to the creation of the International Criminal Court. For the first time in international law, the Nuremberg indictments also mention genocide (count three, war crimes: "the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.")


The Nuremberg Trials were held at the end of the war to try the leading figures of the Nazi regime. This was the first time ever that international leaders had attempted to put another nation on trial for war crimes, and numerous innovations were introduced in the trials, including the extensive use of film.

Newsreels of the court proceedings were screened across the Allied nations and Germany. Those watching this footage had never seen anything like it before. As well as screening the trials across the world, films were used in the courtroom as forms of evidence – one of the first times ever that this was done. These evidence films featured graphic scenes from the concentration camps as they were discovered by the Allied armies.

To the Allies, the use of film and news screenings at Nuremberg was crucial, not just as evidence but as propaganda – these films validated the Allies’ efforts in bringing to the Nazis to justice. The trials were witnessed by a global audience, and the Nazi leaders’ crimes were exposed in the most explicit way possible.

WARNING: Please be aware that this video contains footage of that some viewers may find disturbing.
 
Footage used in this video on IWM's Film website:
https://film.iwmcollections.org.uk/c/... .

German Concentration Camps Factual Survey film, digitally restored by IWM:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/partnerships/g... .

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Olympics as Propaganda

.Hitler Used The 1936 Olympics For Nazi Propaganda - Time > .
22-10-3 Comparing Pootin to Hitler | Dream of the Great Past (subs) - Katz > .

The 1936 Summer Olympics (Olympische Sommerspiele 1936), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (Spiele der XI. Olympiade), were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona at the 29th IOC Session on 26 April 1931. The 1936 Games marked the second and most recent time the International Olympic Committee gathered to vote in a city that was bidding to host those Games. Later rule modifications forbade cities hosting the bid vote from being awarded the games. Milan 2026 was awarded after the vote was moved initially from Italy to Lausanne, Switzerland.

To outdo the 1932 Los Angeles Games, Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler had a new 100,000-seat track and field stadium built, as well as six gymnasiums and other smaller arenas. The Games were the first to be televised, with radio broadcasts reaching 41 countries. Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was commissioned by the German Olympic Committee to film the Games for $7 million. Her film, titled Olympia, pioneered many of the techniques now common in the filming of sports.

Hitler saw the 1936 Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy and antisemitism, and the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, wrote in the strongest terms that Jews should not be allowed to participate in the Games. German Jewish athletes were barred or prevented from taking part in the Games by a variety of methods, although some women swimmers from the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna did participate. Jewish athletes from other countries were said to have been side-lined to avoid offending the Nazi regime.

Total ticket revenues were 7.5 million Reichsmark, generating a profit of over one million ℛℳ. The official budget did not include outlays by the city of Berlin (which issued an itemized report detailing its costs of 16.5 million ℛℳ) or outlays of the German national government (which did not make its costs public, but is estimated to have spent US$30 million).

Jesse Owens of the United States won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin, while Germany was the most successful country overall with 89 medals total, with the United States coming in second with 56 medals. These were the final Olympic Games under the presidency of Henri de Baillet-Latour and the final Games for 12 years due to the disruption of the Second World War. The next Olympic Games were held in 1948 (the Winter Games in Switzerland and then the Summer Games in London).

Operation Blue Jay


American Propaganda surrounding Thule Air Base .
The story of the [US] Corps of Engineers and how they were faced with an almost impossible task of building a huge airbase in the frozen Arctic (1951). "Operation Blue Jay" is the story of the building of one of our northernmost outposts - the huge air base at Thule, Greenland.

Clements panels, improvised-LST piers (dumb barges), permafrost,

Overt & Covert Propaganda


Underground Propaganda against Nazi Germany:

Formerly, the word 'propaganda' carried less negative connotations than today. The word originated in the 17th century Catholic Church when Pope Gregory the 15th established a congregation for the propagation of the faith. A comparatively neutral word, 'propaganda' initially denoted the process of encouraging people to accept certain beliefs or ideas, to convert them to a particular way of thinking. 

During WW1, Britain formed a branch of Military Intelligence, known as MI7b, to undertake what was freely called “propaganda” and to drop “aerial propaganda leaflets” from aircraft over German frontlines.

During the latter 1930’s the meaning of 'propaganda' became more tainted, with its association with the Third Reich’s insidious Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment administered by Dr. Goebbels.

During WW2, the word was in common currency to describe Allied information and influence activities but new euphemisms did appear including “political warfare” and the Americanism, “psychological warfare”.

Britain conducted two types of propaganda during WW2. Overt propaganda was labelled as 'White'; covert, clandestine or underground propaganda as 'Black'. A third term, grey propaganda was also developed. Lying in the middle, grey propaganda is either unattributed or has weak attribution. 

White propaganda was the voice of the British Government. With the reputation of His Majesty’s Government and Britain to uphold, white propaganda was truthful. Although not necessarily the whole truth, it did not intentionally lie. Overt propaganda included the BBC’s foreign language broadcasts to Europe and the millions of leaflets dropped by Royal Air Force aircraft over enemy and enemy occupied countries. Both the broadcasts and leaflets stated clearly who they were from and their purpose was obvious. Mostly the white propaganda consisted of reliable war news, statements and talks on our war aims and the speeches of Allied leaders. Throughout the war it built up a formidable reputation for trustworthiness and accuracy. However, human nature dictates that individuals are loath to accept the propaganda of their enemy, no matter how good an international reputation it might enjoy.

Black propaganda was viewed as a means to overcome the stigma of being of enemy origin. Thus, black propaganda appeared to be anything other than the voice of Britain. It was clandestine and falsely attributed and so was disavowable. It deliberately presented itself, or led the audience to deduce it to be something it was not, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. One definition described it this way:
The difference between white and black is the difference between a soldier fighting in the uniform of his country and an underground saboteur fighting the enemy from within the ranks of the enemy.
Black propaganda had no need to protect its reputation; it was free to deceive and lie. Not all black propaganda was false. On the contrary, just as the best white propaganda is based on the truth, so the same applies for black. It is the truth, or partial truth, in a more palatable form.

The Ministry of Information was the best-known source of overt propaganda. Tasked with presenting the Government’s point of view to the British public, its mandate was to inform and advise. The MoI influenced news reporting through control of information and press censorship. It was also responsible for pro-British and anti-Axis propaganda to Allied and neutral nations.

Propaganda directed at the enemy emanated from an organisation known as Electra House, headed by the Canadian Sir Campbell Stuart. Electra House received political intelligence from and liaised closely with the Foreign Office’s Political Intelligence Department. Stuart had previously been the Deputy Director of propaganda to enemy countries in WW1 under Lord Northcliffe. Later he acted as managing director of The Times newspaper and as war approached Chairman of Cable and Wireless. Cable and Wireless were headquartered in Electra House, at the Temple on the Victoria Embankment. 

Section D of the Secret Intelligence Service also generated covert propaganda. Section D planned and conducted sabotage, and produced underground propaganda. Before the outbreak of war, they worked with anti-Nazi groups to spread leaflets inside Germany. They also controlled a Joint Broadcasting Committee, which arranged for pre-recorded radio featuresmade available to broadcasters in central and eastern Europe. Section D also owned a small news agency in which to supply reports to foreign newspapers.

The new Government established under Churchill as Prime Minister, sacked Campbell Stuart and formed the Special Operations Executive. SOE was split into two sections; SO1 was responsible for propaganda and was staffed from both Electra House and the Political Intelligence Department. Reginald Rex Leeper, a PID man, became SO1’s head.

SO2 was responsible for sabotage and subversion. It was created from Section D and a War Office section, MI(R), which had been working along similar lines to it. SOE was under the direct control of the Minister of Economic Warfare.

As far as propaganda was concerned this arrangement did not satisfy either the Foreign Secretary or the Minister of Information. SO1 and SO2 did not work happily together and never became fully integrated. Another reorganisation was undertaken in the summer of 1941 with SO1 being split from SOE into yet another new secret organisation called the Political Warfare Executive (PWE).

PWE was given responsibility for propaganda to enemy and now enemy-occupied countries. The committee controlling PWE consisted of the Foreign Secretary, Minister of Economic Warfare and the Minister of Information. The day-to-day running was through the Director-General Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart.


Friday, October 13, 2017

Paperbacks

.Paperback Revolution - HiGu > .

Today, the most popular book format in the world is not a traditional hardcover book, nor an ebook, but a paperback- a format that changed the what, how, when and how much the world reads.

A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink, and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium.

In Germany, around 1440, goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying. Gutenberg's newly devised hand mould made possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. His two inventions, the hand mould and the printing press, together drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents in Europe, particularly for shorter print runs.

From Mainz the printing press spread within several decades to over two hundred cities in a dozen European countries. By 1500, printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million volumes. In the 16th century, with presses spreading further afield, their output rose tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies. The operation of a press became synonymous with the enterprise of printing, and lent its name to a new medium of expression and communication, "the press".

In Renaissance Europe, the arrival of mechanical movable type printing introduced the era of mass communication, which permanently altered the structure of society. The relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary) ideas transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation and threatened the power of political and religious authorities. The sharp increase in literacy broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstered the emerging middle class. Across Europe, the increasing cultural self-awareness of its peoples led to the rise of proto-nationalism, and accelerated by the development of European vernacular languages, to the detriment of Latin's status as lingua franca. In the 19th century, the replacement of the hand-operated Gutenberg-style press by steam-powered rotary presses allowed printing on an industrial scale.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...