Tag Archives: Adolf Hitler

History

Austrian flap over bell dedicated to Hitler

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By hnn

VIENNA (AP) — Like many others in Austria’s countryside, a tower bell above the red-tiled rooftops of Wolfpassing village marks the passing of each hour with an unspectacular “bong.” But this bell is unique: It is embossed with a swastika and praise to Adolf Hitler.

And unlike more visible remnants of the Nazi era, the bell was apparently overlooked by official Austria up to now.

Ensconced in the belfry of an ancient castle where it was mounted by fans of the Nazi dictator in 1939, the bell has tolled on for nearly 80 years. It survived the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, a decade of post-war Soviet occupation that saw Red Army soldiers lodge in the castle and more recent efforts by Austria’s government to acknowledge the country’s complicity in crimes of that era and make amends….

Source:
SF Gate

Source URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Austrian-flap-over-bell-dedicated-to-Hitler-4691636.php

Date:
7-28-13

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

Articles of Interest

'Hitler' Bell Still Rings Hourly

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By Ruth Brown

For 80 years, a large bell in an ancient castle in the sleepy village of Wolfpassing, Austria, has rung every hour. Charming—except the bell is a monument to Adolf Hitler, complete with a swastika and inscribed with praise for the “unifier and Fuehrer of all Germans.” Even during the… …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Great Finds

Articles of Interest

Nazi-Themed Cafe In Indonesia Sparks Controversy

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

BANDUNG, Indonesia — Authorities in central Indonesia will ask a restaurant owner to explain his reasons for opening a Nazi-themed cafe that has sparked controversy among locals and tourists, an official said Thursday.

Soldatenkaffee includes a red wall of Nazi-related memorabilia, including a large flag with the swastika and a giant picture of Adolf Hitler. Its wait staff dresses in SS, or Schutzstaffel, military uniforms, and can be seen posing in front of the cafe on its Facebook page.

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More on Food

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

News, Politics, Government

Bangladesh police fire on protesters killing two: officer

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Police fired on Islamist demonstrators in southwestern Bangladesh on Tuesday, killing two, amid a nationwide strike in protest at the conviction of a top Islamist for war crimes, an officer said.

Several thousand protesters from the country’s largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, went on the rampage in the streets of Satkhira district, attacking police with sticks, machetes and throwing homemade bombs, the officer said.

Jamaat supporters attacked an officer as police tried to clear a main road blocked by fallen trees in the town of Kaliganj, as part of protests over the conviction of Jamaat’s spiritual leader by a court on Monday.

“They hacked him (the officer) with a machete. We opened fire at them to rescue the officer. Two Jamaat activists were hit by bullets and they died,” district deputy police chief Tajul Islam said.

A war crimes tribunal sentenced 90-year-old Ghulam Azam to 90 years in prison for masterminding atrocities during the 1971 war of independence.

Azam, whom prosecutors compared to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, was found guilty of five charges of planning, conspiracy, incitement, complicity and murder during the war against Pakistan.

Azam was the fifth Islamist and the fourth Jamaat official convicted by the controversial court set up by the secular government. Azam, the wartime head of Jamaat, was spared the death penalty because of his age and health.

Earlier verdicts against Jamaat activists plunged the country into its worst political violence since independence with at least 150 killed in clashes with police and paramilitary forces since the first sentence was awarded in January.

Jamaat called a nationwide strike to protest at the verdict, saying the trials are aimed at eliminating its leaders.

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Articles of Interest

Thai School: Sorry About Hitler Superhero Banner

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By Evann Gastaldo

You may have thought Adolf Hitler was ( almost ) universally reviled, but apparently at least a few people in Thailand aren’t aware of just how controversial a figure he is. For two entire days, a billboard outside Chulalongkorn University, the country’s premier university, read “Congratulations” alongside superheroes like Superman… …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Great Finds

News, Politics, Government

Violent clashes ahead of Bangladesh war crimes verdict

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Bangladesh police fired rubber bullets at protesters on Monday, as violence erupted across the country ahead of the verdict on a top Islamist for allegedly masterminding atrocities during the 1971 liberation war.

Activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami party threw homemade bombs at police, after taking to the streets in cities in support of the Islamist, who could face the death penalty if convicted, officials said.

Journalists were among up to a dozen people injured, after they were caught in the clashes in Dhalpur district of the capital Dhaka, local police chief Rafiqul Islam said.

“One of the journalists was hit by (shrapnel),” he told AFP, adding the protesters hurled at least five small home-made bombs at police.

Police also fired rubber bullets at protesters in the cities of Bogra, Comilla and Rajshahi after activists went on the rampage, attacking and torching dozens of vehicles, police officials told AFP.

A war crimes tribunal in Dhaka is set to hand down its verdict against Ghulam Azam, 90, for alleged crimes committed during the independence war against Pakistan, which the government says killed three million people.

Prosecutors have sought the death penalty for Azam, comparing him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. They describe him as a “lighthouse” who guided all war criminals and the “architect” of the militias which committed many of the 1971 atrocities.

When India intervened at the end of the nine-month war and it became clear Pakistan was losing, the militias killed dozens of professors, playwrights, filmmakers, doctors and journalists.

Azam was described as the “mastermind” of the massacres of the intellectuals. Many of their bodies were found a few days after the war at a marsh outside the capital, blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs.

Security was tight at the International Crimes Tribunal — set up by the country’s secular government in 2010 — ahead of the verdict, set to be handed down on Monday.

Previous verdicts by the tribunal have sparked widespread and deadly violence on the streets of a country that has a 90 percent Muslim population.

The verdict against Azam will be the fifth to be delivered by the tribunal. Three Islamists have been sentenced to death and one given life imprisonment.

Jamaat, the country’s largest Islamic party and a key member of the opposition, called a nationwide strike on Monday to protest the impending verdict, saying the war crimes trials are aimed at eliminating its leaders.

Azam is no longer politically active but is seen as Jamaat’s spiritual leader. He faces five charges — planning, conspiracy, incitement, complicity and murder and torture.

Azam’s lawyer Tajul Islam said the charges were based on newspaper reports of speeches Azam gave during the war, which led to the creation of Bangladesh.

“The prosecution has completely failed to prove any of the charges,” he told AFP.

Violence broke out in several cities on Sunday immediately after the tribunal announced its decision to pass the judgement on Monday.

The opposition has criticised the cases as politically motivated and aimed at settling old scores rather than meting out justice.

Unlike other war crimes courts, the Bangladesh tribunal …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Clashes ahead of Bangladesh war crimes verdict

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Clashes erupted in Bangladesh Sunday between police and supporters of the country’s biggest Islamic party ahead of a court verdict against a top Islamist for allegedly masterminding atrocities during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Some 400 Jamaat-e-Islami activists burnt a police van and hurled crude bombs in the capital Dhaka, police said, to protest what they say are false charges against Ghulam Azam, 90, who could face the death penalty if convicted by the war crimes court on Monday.

Previous sentences by the controversial court sparked the country’s worst political violence since independence.

A police officer was seriously injured in the latest clashes after being hit by a rock, assistant police commissioner Saifur Rahman told AFP.

Azam was the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party during the war in which the government says millions were killed, many by the militias he allegedly helped create to support the Pakistani army.

The International Crimes Tribunal — set up by the secular government in 2010 — will deliver its verdict against Azam on Monday, prosecutor Sultan Mahmud told AFP.

Prosecutors have sought the death penalty for Azam, comparing him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. They describe him as a “lighthouse” who guided all other war criminals and the “architect” of the militias which committed many of the 1971 atrocities.

Jamaat, the country’s largest Islamic party and a key member of the opposition, has called a nationwide strike on Monday to protest the verdict, a statement posted at the party’s website said.

Azam is no longer politically active but is seen as Jamaat’s spiritual leader. He faces five broad charges of planning, conspiracy, incitement, complicity and murder and torture in regard to the atrocities, alleging a total of 61 crimes, Mahmud said.

Azam’s lawyer Tajul Islam said the charges were based on newspaper reports of speeches Azam gave during the war, which led to the creation of Bangladesh.

“The prosecution has completely failed to prove any of the charges,” he told AFP.

The verdict against Azam will be the fifth to be delivered by the tribunal. Three Islamists have been sentenced to death and one given life imprisonment.

The verdicts triggered nationwide protests by Jamaat, leading to mass violence in which 150 people were killed in clashes with police.

Eight more opposition politicians — six from Jamaat and two from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party — are also on trial.

The court last month also ordered an influential British Muslim and an American citizen to stand trial in absentia.

The opposition has criticised the cases as politically motivated and aimed at settling old scores rather than meting out justice.

Unlike other war crimes courts, the Bangladesh tribunal is not endorsed by the United Nations. The New York-based Human Rights Watch group has said its procedures fall short of international standards.

The government maintains the trials are needed to heal the wounds of the 1971 war in which it says three million died. Independent estimates put the death toll at between 300,000 and 500,000.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Articles of Interest

An Inexorable Slide To Tyranny

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By Gene Daily

With the passage of the NDAA and his use of executive orders, Obama has managed to bring about an inexorable slide to tyranny. On March 16, 2012, he signed executive order 13603 about “National Defense Resources Preparedness.” This act provides Obama with the authority to control food, water, production, material, and labor of almost unimaginable proportions. This, of course, is not the first time it has been done. Like it has been said, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

In 1933, just shortly after his election, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a state of emergency. His actions were covered by the NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act), which essentially gave him the same scope of power that Obama now has. In his inaugural address in January 1933, Roosevelt said, “If we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a scared obligation and with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife. With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.”

In the same year, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In many ways, Hitler and FDR faced similar problems with high unemployment, inflation, a lack of consumer confidence, a lack of industrial output, and a country in the depths of depression. Hitler also managed to unite his countrymen into one unified people under his total control, just as Roosevelt through executive order managed to command the entire nation’s economy. In Germany, this act was called “The Enabling Act”, another name but essentially the same function. For example, after the Enabling Act, Hitler declared public holidays for workers in all industries, while at the same time banning all workers’ unions.

Throughout much of the late 1920′s and into the late 1930′s, Mussolini in Italy enjoyed support and adulation from liberals and progressives in the USA. So great was his support that an image resembling him was contained within a sculpture representing Atlas in Rockefeller Plaza. He was being revered as having unified and put the labor force of Italy to work, creating a fast-growing Italian economy through collective means.

In January 2013, Obama in his second inaugural address said”But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

Articles of Interest

Video: Fischer On Praying For Hitler And Obama

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By NewsEditor

Bryan Fischer makes a bizarre analogy between Adolf Hitler and Obama regarding the effectiveness of prayer…

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From: http://www.westernjournalism.com/fischer-on-praying-for-hitler-and-obama/

News, Politics, Government

Anti-euro party a wildcard in German elections

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It’s a spectacle that Germans are getting tired of: southern European protesters burning their flags and waving placards comparing Chancellor Angela Merkel to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, all in reaction to Berlin‘s insistence on reforms and austerity in return for bailout funds.

And it’s enough to make people like Berlin businessman Horst Freiberg, who never felt much love for the euro currency, pine more than ever for the return of the German mark.

“I’d immediately vote for a party that wants to abolish the euro,” said Freiberg, who has run a small business selling ink stamps in central Berlin for more than 40 years. “How can you have one currency with banana republics like Cyprus and Greece? And they always accuse us of being Nazis. It’s sick.”

Such sentiments are still the exception in Germany, where a sense of obligation to help fellow Europeans in distress is rooted in shame for the crimes of the Third Reich. But a new political party hopes to capitalize on simmering fears that the euro crisis could deepen and drag down Europe‘s biggest economy. It aims to garner enough votes from people like Freiberg in September elections to reach the 5 percent minimum needed for seats in Parliament.

Called Alternative for Germany, the main goal of the party founded by academics and economists is the “orderly dissolution” of the euro, said Frauke Petry, a business owner and party spokeswoman. The stance puts the party in sharp opposition to Merkel’s insistence that there can be no Europe without the preservation of the single currency, repeatedly saying “if the euro fails, Europe will fail.” While still a fledgling movement, the new party could hurt Merkel by sapping support from her main coalition partner — which she has relied on for a stable government.

“For us the euro is at the heart of many problems,” Petry told The Associated Press. “The way decisions are being made in Europe right now shows that many democratic mechanisms don’t work anymore,” she said. Alternative for Germany wants to introduce Swiss-style national referendums so voters can have a say on important matters — including economic rescue packages.

For all the talk about what they don’t like, however, the party has been short on what they do like and its leaders were slammed in an editorial this week in the top-selling Bild newspaper as “political amateurs.”

The conservative tabloid has never shied away from accusing southern Europeans of

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/Z2LABZ2M5PI/

News, Politics, Government

Warsaw Ghetto memorial reflects a changing Poland

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Almost nothing remains of the old Warsaw Ghetto: just a half-dozen buildings, a synagogue, some fragments of a brick wall. The rest was blown up by the Germans in their onslaught against the Jews who took up arms against them.

Now this Holocaust-era prison of misery and death is undergoing a dramatic transformation in time for the April 19th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a revolt that ended in death for most of the fighters yet gave the world an enduring symbol of resistance against the odds.

The change in this district of the capital and its place in Polish consciousness is embodied in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews that has risen up in a vast square in the heart of the vanished ghetto, ringed by Holocaust memorials and shabby communist-era apartment buildings.

It celebrates the Jewish life that flourished in Poland for centuries before the Holocaust, and dares to confront Poles with a truth many would once have strongly denied: that this country has had its own dark chapters of anti-Semitism.

Funded largely by Polish taxpayers, the museum’s existence is a powerful sign of how far Poland has come in embracing tolerance and its own multicultural past since toppling communism 23 years ago — a new openness bolstered by a blossoming economy.

At the same time, the exhibits will take care to emphasize that Polish acts of persecution never approached the scale of Adolf Hitler‘s genocide and that the Holocaust was Germany‘s crime, not a product of any local Polish-Jewish tensions.

Still, many nationalistic Poles prefer an image of their country as a model of heroic resistance to centuries of past oppression, both by Germans and Russians. Many grew up under a communist regime that assumed the right to dictate whose suffering should get attention.

Among painful episodes that the museum will address in the permanent exhibition opening next year are pogroms in the late 19th century, boycotts of Jewish businesses in the 1920s and 1930s, and calls to deport Poland‘s 3.3 million Jews, the largest per capita Jewish population in any European country.

Its materials promise to tell the story of the Jedwabne massacre in World War II, when about 40 Poles hunted down the town’s Jews, shut them in a barn and set it alight, killing more than 300 people. Also to be included is

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/6k4WjSxa0y8/

History

Hitler's food taster: one bite away from death

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By hnn

It might have been something as simple as a portion of white asparagus. Peeled, steamed and served with a delicious sauce, as Germans traditionally eat it. And with real butter, a scarcity in wartime. While the rest of the country struggled to get even coffee, or had to spread margarine diluted with flour on their bread, Margot Wölk could have savored the expensive vegetable dish — if not for the fear of dying, that is. Wölk was one of 15 young women who were forced to taste Nazi leader Adolf Hitler‘s food for some two and a half years during World War II.

The 24-year-old secretary had fled from her parents’ bombed-out Berlin apartment in the winter of 1941, traveling to her mother-in-law‘s home in the East Prussian village of Gross-Partsch, now Parcz, Poland. It was an idyllic, green setting, and she lived in a house with a large garden. But less than three kilometers (1.9 miles) away was the location that Hitler had chosen for his Eastern Front headquarters — the Wolf’s Lair….

Source:
Der Spiegel

Source URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/Germany/hitler-food-taster-margot-woelk-speaks-about-her-memories-a-892097.html

Date:
4-2-13

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

News, Politics, Government

Exhibit of Jews in Germany raises interest, ire

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“Are there still Jews in Germany?” ”Are the Jews a chosen people?”

Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, there is no more sensitive an issue in German life as the role of Jews. With fewer than 200,000 Jews among Germany‘s 82 million people, few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them.

To help educate postwar generations, the Jewish Museum in Berlin offers a Jewish man or woman to sit inside a glass box for two hours a day through August to answer visitors’ questions about Jews and Jewish life. The base of the box asks: “Are there still Jews in Germany?”

“A lot of our visitors don’t know any Jews and have questions they want to ask,” museum official Tina Luedecke said. “With this exhibition we offer an opportunity for those people to know more about Jews and Jewish life.”

But not everybody thinks putting a Jew on display is the best way to build understanding and mutual respect.

Since the exhibit — “The Whole Truth, everything you wanted to know about Jews” — opened this month, the “Jew in the Box,” as it is popularly known, has drawn sharp criticism within the Jewish community — especially in the city where the Nazis orchestrated the slaughter of 6 million Jews until Adolf Hitler‘s defeat in 1945.

“Why don’t they give him a banana and a glass of water, turn up the heat and make the Jew feel really cozy in his glass box,” prominent Berlin Jewish community figure Stephan Kramer told The Associated Press. “They actually asked me if I wanted to participate. But I told them I’m not available.”

The exhibit is reminiscent of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann sitting in a glass booth at the 1961 trial in Israel which led to his execution. And it’s certainly more provocative than British actress Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box at a recent performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Eran Levy, an Israeli who has lived in Berlin for years, was horrified by the idea of presenting a Jew as a museum piece, even if to answer Germans’ questions about Jewish life.

“It’s a horrible thing to do — completely degrading and not helpful,” he said. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

History

2 Out of 5 Austrians: Things Were ‘Not All Bad’ Under Hitler

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By hnn

Forty percent of Austrians believe things were not all bad under Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, according to a poll released Friday by the Market Institute for the Der Standard newspaper. Researchers sampled 502 subjects throughout the country, of varying ages.

They found a rise in the number of respondents – 61 percent this time around, mostly elderly Austrians – who favored the idea of a “strong leader who does not have to worry about a parliament or elections” as a leader. The statistic was three times higher than that seen in 2008, 20 percent at the time, the paper reported.

Of those surveyed, 42 percent said “not everything was bad under Hitler,” while 57 percent said they saw “no good aspects” to the Nazi era….

Source:
Israel National News

Source URL:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/166042#.UUoF3Rns8k0

Date:
3-10-13

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

History

Home towns struggle with legacy of Stalin and Hitler

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By hnn

The birth towns of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler are divided on the issue of how to deal with the legacy of the dictators who slaughtered millions.

In some ways it would be hard to imagine two more different places than Gori in Georgia and Braunau am Inn in Austria.

Gori, with its crumbling Soviet-era apartment blocks, is set in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains.

You can still see scars from the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia, when Russian troops entered the town.

It is poor. Even in winter, pensioners try to earn a few pennies, helping cars to park.

Braunau, by contrast, is a comfortable little Austrian town, with a beautifully preserved medieval centre.

Cross the bridge over the Inn river, close to the main square, and you find yourself in Germany, in Bavaria – one of the wealthiest parts of Europe….

Source:
BBC News

Source URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21715398

Date:
3-9-13

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University