MoI - Ministry of Information

(Brendan Bracken) New Minister Of Information (1941) - Pathé > .  

MoI & British propaganda of the Second World War - naUK > .

Duff Cooper - May 1940 (1940) after Nazi invasion of Belgium - Pathé > .

Lady Diana Cooper • The Summer That Never Was > .

Governmental Propaganda - Lewis >> .

M.o.I. - Public Information Films - BeSi >> .

Governmental Propaganda .. 

Ministry of Information .

Formed on September 4th 1939, the day after Britain's declaration of war, the Ministry of Information (MOI) was the central government department responsible for publicity and propaganda in the Second World War. The Ministry was located in Senate House at the University of London during the 1940s. The initial functions of the MOI were threefold: news and press censorship; home publicity; and overseas publicity in Allied and neutral countries.

Planning for such an organisation had started in October 1935 under the auspices of the Committee for Imperial Defence, largely conducted in secret; otherwise the government was publicly admitting the inevitability of war. Propaganda was still tainted by the experience of the First World War. In the ‘Great War', several different agencies had been responsible for propaganda, except for a brief period when there had been a Department of Information (1917) and a Ministry of Information (1918) Planning for the new MOI was largely organised by volunteers drawn from a wide range of government departments, public bodies and specialist outside organisations.

In the 1930s communications activities had become a recognised function of government. Many departments however had established public relations divisions, and were reluctant to give this up to central control. In early 1939 documents noted concern that the next war would be ‘a war of nerves' involving the civilian population, and that the government would need to go further than ever before with every means of publicity ‘utilised and co-ordinated', as it fought against a well-funded and established Nazi machine. Threatened by censorship, the press reacted negatively to the MOI, describing it as shambolic and disorganised, and as a result it underwent many structural changes throughout the war. Four Ministers headed the MOI in quick succession: Lord Hugh Macmillan, Sir John Reith and Duff Cooper, before the Ministry settled down under Brendan Bracken in July 1941. Supported by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the press, Bracken remained in office until victory was obvious.

The Ministry was responsible for information policy and the output of propaganda material in Allied and neutral countries, with overseas publicity organised geographically. American and Empire Divisions continued throughout the war, other areas being covered by a succession of different divisions. The MOI was not, in general, responsible for propaganda in enemy and enemy-occupied countries, but it did liaise directly with the Foreign Office. Responsibility for publicity in enemy territories was organised by Department EH (later part of the Special Operations Executive).

For home publicity, the Ministry dealt with the planning of general government or interdepartmental information, and provided common services for public relations activities of other government departments. The Home Publicity Division (HPD) undertook three types of campaigns, those requested by other government departments, specific regional campaigns, and those it initiated itself. Before undertaking a campaign, the MOI would ensure that propaganda was not being used as a substitute for other activities, including legislation.

The General Production Division (GPD), one of the few divisions to remain in place throughout the war, undertook technical work under Edwin Embleton. The GPD often produced work in as little as a week or a fortnight, when normal commercial practice was three months. Artists were not in a reserved occupation and were liable for call up for military service along with everyone else. Many were recalled from the services to work for the Ministry in 1942, a year in which £4 million was spent on publicity, approximately a third more than in 1941. £120,000 of this was spent on posters, art and exhibitions. Many extra designs were pre-prepared in order to cope with short lead-times and the changing events of war. Through the Home Intelligence Division, the MOI collected reactions to general wartime morale and, in some cases, specifically to publicity produced.

In March 1946, the MOI was dissolved. Its residual functions passed to the Central Office of Information (COI), a central organisation providing common and specialist information services.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/inf3.htm .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_propaganda_during_World_War_II .

War Ministries WW2 ..

Public Information Films 1/3 > .
Public Information Films 2/3 > .
Public Information Films 3/3 > .

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/inf3.htm .
https://history.blog.gov.uk/2014/09/12/chaos-and-censorship/ .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Information_(United_Kingdom) .
http://saynotothequo.blogspot.ca/2011/04/wwii-propaganda-wars-british-ministry.html .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Tallents .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Macmillan,_Baron_Macmillan .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Reith,_1st_Baron_Reith .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Cooper .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Bracken,_1st_Viscount_Bracken .

Ministry of Information - public information films

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/inf3.htm
https://history.blog.gov.uk/2014/09/12/chaos-and-censorship/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Information_(United_Kingdom)
http://saynotothequo.blogspot.ca/2011/04/wwii-propaganda-wars-british-ministry.html

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

WWII Information Films
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3DF1E7F69CC6DEC3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Macmillan,_Baron_Macmillan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Reith,_1st_Baron_Reith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Cooper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Bracken,_1st_Viscount_Bracken

MoI - Public Information Films - YouTube

Ministers of Information 1939–46

  Conservative   National Independent   Labour  

Name		Term of office		Political party	Prime Minister
	The Lord Macmillan	4 September 1939	5 January 1940	Conservative		Neville Chamberlain (War Coalition)
	Sir John Reith	5 January 1940	12 May 1940	National Independent
	Duff Cooper	12 May 1940	20 July 1941	Conservative		Winston Churchill (War Coalition)
	Brendan Bracken	20 July 1941	25 May 1945	Conservative
	Geoffrey Lloyd	25 May 1945	26 July 1945	Conservative		Winston Churchill (Caretaker Min.)
	Edward Williams	4 August 1945	31 March 1946	Labour		Clement Attlee

• Paper Salvage 1939–50 .
• Political Warfare Executive – British Second World War white and black propaganda unit
• War Artists' Advisory Committee .
• British War Memorials Committee (1918, Beaverbrook) .
• Central Office of Information . 

? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=british+ministry+of+information+ww2 ? 

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - 39-8-23 to 41-6-22

.

A Soviet-Nazi Alliance - Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact | B2W |1939 2/3 > .

 1939-8-23 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact = Hitler-Stalin Pact | Kotkin | Hoover > .
1939-8-23 Molotov & Ribbentrop sign Nazi-Soviet Pact (USSR, Germany) - HiPo > .

1943-5-15 Stalin dissolves the Comintern: promoter of worldwide communism > .

Molotov-Ribbentrop & Special Military Operation to "liberate" Poland - Researcher > .

Cracks in the Soviet-Nazi Alliance - WW2 - November 23, 1940 > .  

The Road to Moscow - German Invasion Plans - WW2 - December 7, 1940 > .  

Red Beard’s Ghost Returns - German Invasion Plans - WW2 - December 21 1940 > . 

What if the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact were never made? - CaHi > .

WW2 - Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin - Big Three of the 20th Century - Hoover > .

> History of Poland >>

23-10-23 Poland Must Defend Ukraine against Historical Rival: Russia - GeoP > .

> Poland >>

24-3-14 German-Polish Tensions - Modern > .

 

On August 23 1939, two bitter rivals sign a non-aggression pact. But the treaty is something more than just a simple pledge of neutrality. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union have also secretly agreed on how they will carve up Eastern Europe between them. 

The Soviet Union had largely withdrawn from international affairs in the 1920s and early 1930s, but German hostility and the growing threat of Japan drove it to rethink its foreign policy and renew its relationship with Britain and France. But this relationship was marked by scepticism and distrust on both sides. Britain and France began talks with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939, but the three powers struggled to reach an agreement and negotiations collapsed.

1939-8-23: Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Stalin and the USSR deeply distrusted Nazi Germany, suspecting [correctly] that Hitler ultimately intended to invade and annex Russia. Similarly, Britain distrusted Stalin due a fear of communism. Although talks took place between Britain and the Soviet Union in early August 1939 regarding a possible alliance against Hitler, they were never taken seriously by the British who sent their representative by a slow boat and did not grant him authority to make any decisions or sign any agreements on behalf of the government.

Frustrated by Britain’s reluctance to agree to a deal, Stalin’s government received Ribbentrop later that month. He proposed the Nazi-Soviet agreement which, in the face of continued British reluctance to form an alliance, was accepted.

Officially called the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, on the surface the pact guaranteed that neither side would fight against the other in war. However a ‘secret protocol’ also outlined how Eastern Europe would be divided between the two countries in the future. This ensured that the USSR would not intervene in the Nazi invasion of Poland that began just nine days later.

The Soviet government almost certainly knew that Hitler would break the non-aggression pact at some point by invading Russia, but the pact delayed that and gave time to prepare. Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. All the territory gained by the USSR under terms of the ‘secret protocol’ was lost in just a matter of weeks.
---

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to divide-up Poland between them.

It was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939, by Foreign Ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, and was officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Pact's clauses provided a written guarantee of peace by each party towards the other and a declared commitment that neither government would ally itself to or aid an enemy of the other. In addition to the publicly-announced stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol, which defined the borders of Soviet and German spheres of influence across Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The secret protocol also recognised the interest of Lithuania in the Vilno region, and Germany declared its complete disinterest in Bessarabia. The Secret Protocol was just a rumour until it was made public at the Nuremberg trials.

...

The pact was terminated on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union (thus also executing the ideological goal of Lebensraum). After the war, Ribbentrop was convicted of war crimes and executed. Molotov died at 96 in 1986, five years before the Soviet Union's dissolution.

Soon after World War 2, the German copy of the secret protocol was found in Nazi archives and published in the West, but [in accordance with its tradition of dishonesty] the Soviet government denied its existence until 1989, when it was finally acknowledged and denounced. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, condemned the pact. Vladimir Putin has condemned the pact as "immoral" but also defended it as a "necessary evil". On 19 December 2019 Putin went further and at press conference announced that signing of the pact was 'no worse than the 1938 Munich agreement, which led to partition of Czechoslovakia'.

1939-5-22 Pact of Steel ..

MoS - Ministry of Supply

Shell Mex House, The Strand

The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK Government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. There was, however, a separate ministry responsible for aircraft production, and the Admiralty retained responsibilities for supplying the Royal Navy. During the war years the MoS was based at Shell Mex House in The Strand, London. During WW2, the building was home both to the MoS, which co-ordinated the supply of equipment to the national armed forces, and the Petroleum Board, which handled the distribution of petroleum products during the war. It was badly damaged by a bomb in 1940.

The Ministry of Supply also took over all army research establishments in 1939. The Ministry of Aircraft Production was abolished in 1946, and the MoS took over its responsibilities for aircraft, including the associated research establishments. In the same year it also took on increased responsibilities for atomic weapons, including the H-bomb development programme.

The Ministry of Supply was abolished in late 1959 and its responsibilities passed to the Ministry of Aviation, the War Office and the Air Ministry. The latter two ministries were subsequently merged with the Admiralty to form the Ministry of Defence.

The Ministry of Supply instigated the Rainbow Codes designation system. This assigned projects a two-word codename, the first word being a colour and the second a noun. As a result, secret weapon projects—including numerous nuclear weapons—were given lighthearted names such as Green Cheese, Blue Slug or Red Duster.

The Ministry of Supply was responsible for building and running the Royal Ordnance Factories which produced explosives and propellants; filled ammunition; and constructed guns and rifles. However, the Ministry of Works and/or private building contractors acted as agents during their construction. The Ministry was also responsible for the supply of tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, and had a Department of Tank Design where Edward Brisch worked from 1942. Tanks were, however, also designed and built by private arms companies, such as William Beardmore and Company and Vickers, as well as other engineering companies.

The Ministry of Supply also arranged for the construction of a large number of agency factories which were run on its behalf by private companies, such as Nobel Industries. These were similar to the Royal Ordnance Factories but were not part of the Royal Ordnance Factory organisation.

Supply issues - CCS, WW2 > .

Shell Mex House & London's largest clock-face - from Thames, 1959 > .

The M.S. (Ministry of Supply) Factory, Valley was a WW2 site in Rhydymwyn, Flintshire, Wales, that was used for the storage and production of mustard gas. It was later also used in the development of the UK's atomic bomb project. More recently, it became a bulk storage depot for emergency supplies.

The Ministry of Supply was also responsible for the labour force of these factories, although the Ministry of Labour did the recruitment. From the middle of the war onwards the Ministry of Supply was in direct competition with the Ministry of Aircraft Production for labour and the two organisations had to reach agreement. Towards the end of the war the Ministry of Supply released labour so that they could transfer to the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

The Dutch Defence Chemical Laboratory escaped the German occupation of the Netherlands. On 14 May 1940 archives and key personnel were moved to London. The 'Centraal Laboratorium, afdeling Londen' (Central Laboratory, London department) was established and fell under the supervision of the Dutch authorities on the one hand, and on the other hand under the Ministry of Supply which provided housing and materials.

From the beginning of WW2 the army research establishments were put under the control of the Ministry of Supply. It was through the MoS that the essential connections were made between military requirements and the scientists and engineers of the civil service, industry, and academia (many academics were recruited into the civil service on a temporary basis).

• The Experimental Bridging Establishment, Christchurch (later to become part of MEXE)
• The Experimental Demolition Establishment, Christchurch from 1942 (later to become part of MEXE)
• The Experimental Tunnelling Establishment, Christchurch from 1942
• The Fighting Vehicles Proving Establishment (FVPE), Chertsey, Surrey
• The Projectile Development Establishment at Fort Halstead (moved to Aberporth, Cardiganshire, in 1940 where it remained until 1945)
• The Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern, critical in the development of radar
• The Wheeled Vehicle Experimental Establishment (WVEE), Farnborough 1942, then Chertsey from 1943

The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), before finally losing its identity in mergers with other institutions.

The first site was at Farnborough Airfield ("RAE Farnborough") in Hampshire to which was added a second site RAE Bedford (Bedfordshire) in 1946.

The Fisher Aviation Company began to provide flights from fields at the eastern end of Somerford Road in Christchurch (Dorset) in 1930, and by 1933 the company had flown over 19,000 passengers. In 1934, they obtained permission to establish an aerodrome on the site which became known as Christchurch Airfield. During WW2 an Airspeed factory was built on the airfield, and began manufacturing aircraft for the RAF; the USAAF Ninth Air Force established a base there in 1944. A second aerodrome opened at Hurn in 1944 which became Bournemouth Airport. In 1940, with the German 6th Army at Cherbourg, Christchurch was fortified against an expected invasion: the construction of pillboxes, gun emplacements and tank traps in and around the town, made Christchurch an "anti-tank island". Between 1941 and 1942 Donald Bailey developed the Bailey bridge at the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment at Christchurch Barracks.

Christchurch is the most easterly coastal town of the administrative county of Dorset, and it lies within the historic county of Hampshire. The town abuts Bournemouth to the west and is approximately 9 miles (14 km) east of Poole, 20 miles (32 km) west of Southampton, 23 miles (37 km) south of Salisbury. The town centre lies between the rivers Avon and Stour which flow directly into Christchurch Harbour. The borough boundaries stretched to Hurn Forest in the north encompassing Bournemouth Airport and eastwards along the coast as far as Walkford. The River Stour forms a natural boundary to the west; the estuary and harbour form the southern boundary.

• Minister of Supply
• Defence Research Establishments
• Filling Factories
• List of Royal Ordnance Factories
• Royal Ordnance Factories
• List of Air Ministry specifications

? https://www.google.com/search?q=Uk+ministry+of+supply+ww2&oq=Uk+ministry+of+supply+ww2 ?

The Military Engineering Experimental Establishment (MEXE) was a British defence research unit. It was formed from the Experimental Bridging Establishment in 1946 and was amalgamated with the Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment to form the Military Vehicles and Engineering Establishment in 1970. MEXE developed the MEXE method (a means of assessing the carrying capacity of arch bridges), the MEXE probe (a field tool to estimate the California bearing ratio of a soil) and the MEXE system (a means of estimating properties of a piece of unknown land by comparing it with known similar terrain).

The Military Engineering Experimental Establishment had its roots in the Experimental Bridging Company of the Royal Engineers (RE), formed from the last un-disbanded battalion of WW1 assault engineers, and under the command of a British Army major. This unit developed into the Experimental Bridging Establishment of 1925 under an RE superintendent (from 1933 a chief superintendent). This was reformed into the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment (MEXE) on 22 March 1946 under a chief superintendent (brigadier) after 5 April 1956 the commander was referred to as director and was sometimes a civilian.

MEXE was amalgamated with the Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment on 1 April 1970 to form the Military Vehicles and Engineering Establishment based out of Chertsey, Surrey and Christchurch, Dorset and commanded by Brigadier RA Lindseell MC ADC. This was amalgamated further into the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment in the 1980s and then the Defence Research Agency on 1 April 1991. A further reorganization into the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency followed on 1 April 1995 before a split into the publicly owned Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the privatised QinetiQ in 2001.

The organisation worked to develop and test new techniques and equipment for use in the British Army. The latter including bridges, rafts, cranes, earthmoving equipment and road pavers. On 6 May 1969 MEXE was awarded the freedom of the borough of Christchurch. Whilst many regiments and corps of the army had been so honoured MEXE was the first experimental establishment to have received such.

Nazi Government

Hitler Never Gave the Order - So Who Did? - WW2 > .

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

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

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 > .

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

1939-8-23 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact = Hitler-Stalin Pact | Kotkin | Hoover > .

Nazis & Palestinian Arabs ..

Rise of the Nazis - doc | BBC Select > .

Operation Sea Lion: Hitler's Daring Plan to Invade Britain... | WarsofTheWorld > .

> Poland >>

24-3-14 German-Polish Tensions - Modern > .

War Against Humanity - WW2 >> .

Special Episodes - WW2 >> .

The structure of decision-making in the Nazi Party and the German government is clouded in ambiguity and implicit power-structures. We explore how this leads to a. rat-race, resulting in an endless spiral of irrational decisions and violence.

Axis logistical weakness ..

40-7-10 Battle of Britain Begins ..

1923-11-8 Beer Hall Putsch 1923-11-9 ..

Defence of the Reich - Reichsverteidigung ..

40-12-18 Directive 21 - Barbarossa ..

41-5-10 Hess Flight ..

Hitler And Night Of The Long Knives - 34-6-30 to 34-7-2 ..

Hitlerjugend ..

Interbellum - Freikorps ..

Kriegsmarine ..

38-11-9 Kristallnacht 38-11-10 ..

Mein Kampf (1925) ..

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - 39-8-23 to 41-6-22 ..

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ..

41-12-11 Nazi Germany declares war on USA ..

Nazi Gold Train - '44 to '45 ..

Nazi Propaganda ..

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

41-6-22 Operation Barbarossa 41-12-5 ..

41-5-27 Paris Protocols - Syria, Africa ..

39-9-1 Polish-German War 39-10-6 ..

Sealion ..

SyE - Syndrome E ..

41-6-22 Unternehmen Barbarossa ..

Wehrmacht ..

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.

Nazi Germany >> .

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

Nazi Germany 2 >> .

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.
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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.
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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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