Germany is, for the first time, trying a non-citizen for crimes committed as part of the Holocaust. John Demjanjuk, originally from Ukraine, is an 89-year-old man, retired US auto factory worker, and former US citizen who has been deported and charged with 27,900 murders for the part he may have played in World War II. This is the second time Demjanjuk has been tried. [more inside]
posted by brina on Nov 30, 2009 - 112 comments

Jack Kirby's Inglorious Basterds
posted by Artw on Nov 18, 2009 - 33 comments

The capture of Adolf Eichmann is one of the more daring spy operations in the post WWII era. The story spans 17 years, beginning with Eichmann's clandestine escape from the Allied forces and the Nuremberg trial, and ending with his hanging in Israel. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Nov 4, 2009 - 23 comments

Former child actor Kirk Cameron and his friend Ray (The Banana Guy) Comfort [previously] seek to distribute the "correct" (aka altered) version of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species to 50,000 students at the nation's top 50 universities as the book is soon to celebrate its 150^th anniversary. Their version includes a 50-page introduction which "...gives the history of evolution, a timeline of Darwin's life, Adolph Hitler's undeniable connection with the theory, Darwin's racism, his disdain for women, and Darwin's thoughts on the existence of God..." Cameron's promotional video for the project: 'Origin Into Schools.' A video response: "Origin of Stupidity." [more inside]
posted by ericb on Sep 24, 2009 - 281 comments

The day after Kristallnacht, Hitler said: "It was necessary not to make propaganda for violence as such, but to explain certain matters of foreign policy to the German people in such a way, that the inner voice of the people all by itself gradually would call for violence." Towards that end, Goebbels commissioned and closely supervised the production of a propaganda documentary titled Der ewige Jude - "The Eternal Jew". Few if any of the inhabitants of the Łódź Ghetto who appear in its footage survived the war. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Sep 1, 2009 - 11 comments

The Corn Refiners Association has created a series of commercials to counter the increasing sentiment against high-fructose corn syrup. One commercial presents a lovely tableau of a couple in a park on a sunny day discussing how HFCS is not much to worry about (previously). A filmmaker reuses the technique to sell something a little bit less sweet.
posted by grouse on Aug 12, 2009 - 136 comments

Varg is free! But, will all the glitter girls go for black metal? [more inside]
posted by geos on May 25, 2009 - 30 comments

The Torture Colony. In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds... [i]nvestigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. It may sound like the farfetched plot of Saw VII (or something out of Kafka) but it's horrifyingly true. [Previously]
posted by dersins on Apr 17, 2009 - 38 comments

In Our Own Backyard: Resisting Nazi Propaganda In Southern California 1933 - 1945, a digital exhibition from the Oviatt Library at Cal State Northridge. "The Nazi Propaganda period, 1933 to 1945, chronicles a crucial twelve years in American history. This exhibit's story about the local threat to American ideals demonstrates how European events reached across the ocean and affected people in Southern California -- in our own backyard." Magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, stickers and more. [more inside]
posted by dersins on Apr 10, 2009 - 33 comments

Indeed, all three of Hitler’s prized leather whips were presents from high society ladies. : Christopher Clark reviews High Society in the Third Reich by Fabrice d’Almeida in the London Review Of Books.
posted by The Whelk on Apr 7, 2009 - 24 comments

Dr. Aribert Heim known to his friends as Dr. Death was the "Most Wanted" Nazi War Criminal whose whereabouts were unknown. He has been found, having lived in Cairo, and died there in 1992 after converting to Islam. Previously, he had been thought to be living in Chile. The long hunt for Heim and previous misinformation had led to some doubts from experts that the case is indeed, finally, closed.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Feb 5, 2009 - 27 comments

Autumn 1944, and London was under attack from space. Hitler's 'vengeance' rocket, the V-2, was the world's first ballistic missile, and the first man-made object to make a sub-orbital spaceflight. Over 1400 were launched at Britain, with more than 500 striking London. Each hit caused devastation. The 13 tonne rocket impacted at over 3000 miles per hour. There was no warning; the missile descended faster than the speed of sound and survivors would only hear the approach and sonic booms after the blast. via Londonist.
posted by swift on Jan 13, 2009 - 84 comments

Fewer than 100 survived Treblinka. I am the last one.
posted by allkindsoftime on Oct 31, 2008 - 30 comments

The Gerd Arntz Web Archive collects graphics from the career of the man who - in creating over 4000 Isotypes for social scientist Otto Neurath in 1930s Red Vienna - can make a serious claim to be the inventor of the modern stick figure. He attacked the corruption of German society as the Nazis rose to power, then joined Neurath in an attempt to create a transnational visual language that bore later fruit in Otl Aicher's 1972 Olympic pictograms and the AIGA passenger/pedestrian symbol signs. [via Mark Larson and Austin Kleon]
posted by mediareport on Jul 7, 2008 - 9 comments

Nazi German Bunker in my Garden: "[...] the previous owner told us that there was a tunnel built by the germans during WW2. He said it was big enough to drive into, [...] So I traced some WW2 reconnaisance photos of the property, which appeared to show the entrance road to my bunker. [...] And that's where the quest began....." (Original thread here, first link is to condensed but more readable blog.)
posted by orthogonality on Jun 29, 2008 - 23 comments

Before developing exotic space propulsion systems like the ion engines on deep space probes, he developed guidance systems for Nazi Germany's ballistic missile, the V2. As Dr. Werner von Braun's Chief Scientist, he was one of the brilliant minds that founded the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and sent astronauts to the moon atop MSFC's Saturn V rocket. Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, one of the last surviving rocket scientists extracted from Nazi Germany in Operation Paperclip, died today at 94.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on May 27, 2008 - 28 comments

Did you know that the original Indiana Jones was an openly homosexual, Jewish, Nazi archeologist [more] and Obersturmführer in the party, hunting the Holy Grail? The documentary The Secret Glory chronicles his story (interview with the director: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). [more inside]
posted by msaleem on May 27, 2008 - 23 comments

Some advice for Mefites who want to run for Congress: It is probably not a good idea to give a speech at a birthday celebration for Hitler. It is also generally considered tacky to discuss segregation in a positive light. Also, posting anti-Semitic comments, links to David Duke's website, and other scary but interesting articles to your official campaign website is probably not a good idea, even if you actually seem to be a reasonably competent lawyer.
posted by cerebus19 on Apr 25, 2008 - 126 comments

The Olympic torch is being welcomed this weekend in the UK as a symbol of the sporting spirit, uniting people around the world in peaceful competition. But the idea of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and then running it through different countries has much darker origins. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite on Apr 5, 2008 - 37 comments

Max Mosley, controversial president of the FIA (the governing board of F1 and other international motorsports), made headline news this past weekend for a "sick nazi orgy with 5 hookers" that was caught on tape (posted, but has since been pulled down). He has apologized, but does not plan to leave his position, despite many who feel his vices may detract from motor racing.
posted by jaimev on Apr 1, 2008 - 87 comments

Photo albums of German soldiers. Fully scanned photos from the personal albums of German soldiers from the Second World War and the years preceding it. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Feb 3, 2008 - 57 comments

"it turned out the abstract compositions in the posters contained hidden letters. (The one above, for example, displays the letter A.) Hung side by side on the streets, they spelled out N-A-Z-I. A public outcry followed, and within six weeks the company was ruined." Can a designer punish a company that helped the nazis? Maybe. Maybe not. (via swiss miss)
posted by wittgenstein on Jan 14, 2008 - 28 comments

"An obsessively detailed alternate-history map, imagining how Manhattan might have looked had the Nazis conquered it in World War II." A project by artist Melissa Gould. The neighborhoods (Charlottenburg, Neukölln, etc.) are named for corresponding Berlin ones. Schrecklich fun. Via strange maps.
posted by languagehat on Jan 10, 2008 - 50 comments

On Friday, October 5th, a group of self proclaimed "National Socialists" burst into the Kulturen Gallery in Sweden and destroyed nearly half of Andres Serrano's exhibit "The History of Sex". They videotaped themselves in the act (alternate youtube link, with stunning comments), set it to a heavy metal soundtrack and released it on the internet. (WARNING: Assume all links are NSFW). [more inside]
posted by Pastabagel on Oct 10, 2007 - 65 comments

An Unfortunate View From the Sky. The U.S. Navy has decided to spend as much as $600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications to obscure the fact that one its building complexes looks like a swastika from the air.
posted by brain_drain on Sep 26, 2007 - 70 comments

Right-Wing Rot: A Village In the Hands of Neo-Nazis Houses torched, pets killed and outsiders chased away: Such is life in the Eastern German town of Jamel. For years, it has been controlled by the neo-Nazis who live there. Even the mayor says he has given up. [more inside]
posted by jason's_planet on Sep 25, 2007 - 46 comments

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was born on 1926 in Hamburg and grew up in Nazi-Germany. He dreamed of joining the Hitler youth but besides best efforts was always rejected. But you can see him here wearing a swastika. [more inside]
posted by yoyo_nyc on Sep 9, 2007 - 26 comments

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, and literature. It is designed to prepare K-12 teachers to approach this sensitive topic. The content is presented from three perspectives: Timeline, People, and The Arts. Produced by the University of South Florida.
posted by netbros on Aug 29, 2007 - 7 comments

Achtung! Nazis! Nazi amphetamines; Nazis in Tibet (prev); the Thule Society; the Nazi space program; Nazi kidnappers (prev); hidden Nazi weapons cache; underground Nazi slave pits.
posted by Meatbomb on Aug 5, 2007 - 30 comments

One Last Nazi Cumshot for the Road or Kissing Kate Winslet. there's more.
posted by geos on Jun 6, 2007 - 35 comments

How I spent the war. German writer and Nobel Prize winner, Günter Grass tells the story of his tour of duty in the Waffen S.S. (previously )
posted by afu on Jun 1, 2007 - 29 comments

Nazi Robot Attack
posted by kirkaracha on Apr 18, 2007 - 57 comments

Propaganda. The death of Horst-Wessel . A clip from a documentary about the rise of the Third Riche and how it used Horst-Wessel's song "The flag on high" and his death as a tool of propaganda. Then ending with a clip about propaganda from the film Network.
posted by nola on Mar 1, 2007 - 10 comments

Nazi collaborator buried in France with his Légion d'honneur medals.
posted by pwedza on Feb 21, 2007 - 29 comments

Heil Honey, I'm Home! Somewhere in suburbia, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun live next door to a Jewish couple in this curious artifact from the BBC. The curiosity was canceled after one episode, for reasons somewhere between quality and taste, but now you can see it for yourself.
posted by Sticherbeast on Feb 12, 2007 - 33 comments

Nazi Raccoons on the March in Europe.
posted by eriko on Jan 12, 2007 - 52 comments

Blogger goes to Wal-Mart and finds t-shirt with Nazi SS logo. Wal-Mart apologizes and promises to pull the shirts. But have they been doing a good job? [via] the consumerist
posted by paulinsanjuan on Jan 2, 2007 - 112 comments

Hitler's Carmaker:
While GM was mobilizing the Third Reich, the company was also leading a criminal conspiracy to monopolistically undermine mass transit in dozens of American cities that would help addict the United States to oil.
--Edwin Black, author of IBM and the Holocaust explains why the U.S. dependency on oil is no accident. Not everyone agrees, of course.
posted by craniac on Dec 27, 2006 - 38 comments

A multimedia exhibit on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, Wikipedia on gays under the Nazis, Paragraph 175 - a documentary profiling gay survivors of Nazi era policies, and memorials of the gay Holocaust. A few Nazi-era gay and lesbian figures of note:

- A Berlin intellectual and pioneer in sexuality research, and an early advocate for gay rights, (controversial in part for his early support of outing) Magnus Herschfeld died in exile after Nazis destroyed his Institute of Sexual Science.
- The butch orchestra conductor Frieda Belinfante and gay artist William Arondeus were part of the same resistance group that first falsified papers for Dutch Jews, and then when Nazi's began to compare these falsified papers with city records, set fire to the Amsterdam Registry building.
- Lily Wust, the wife of a German soldier, fell for a Jewish woman at the wrong time. Their story became the subject of a book and film.
posted by serazin on Dec 15, 2006 - 26 comments

1942's Weather-Beaten Melody [youtube], an innovative nine-minute cartoon by German animator Hans Fischerkoesen in which insects discover an abandoned phonograph in a meadow. "To fully appreciate Fischerkoesen's daring, one must remember that the Nazis had forbidden jazz and swing as an Afro-Judaic plot to undermine traditional German culture," says William Moritz in "Resistance And Subversion in Animated Films of The Nazi Era: the Case of Hans Fischerkoesen." Before and after subverting Goebbels' battle with Disney, Fisherkoesen made lively cartoons for Philips light bulbs, grocery stores, cigarettes, stockings and digestive aids. [Shorter version of Moritz' article, with pics] [via Glyph Jockey]
posted by mediareport on Dec 3, 2006 - 10 comments

Just don't say the n-word.
posted by Meatbomb on Nov 29, 2006 - 36 comments

Boris Weisfeiler disappeared in Chile. The authorities claim that the experienced outdoorsman had drowned trying to ford a four-foot river. Uncovered documents tell a different story - that Pinochet's military had mistaken the vacationing mathematics professor for a "Jewish spy" and sent him as a political prisoner to the 37,000 acre German expatriate Nazi apocalyptic cult enclave of Colonia Dignidad. There, he was kept alive for at least two years before Paul Schaefer, the founder of the enclave, a Luftwaffe nurse and a serial child molester, most likely had him killed.
posted by Sticherbeast on Nov 22, 2006 - 20 comments

The largest archive of Nazi prison camp records, which has been closed for 50 years, is going public in May 2007. The International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany consists of 16 miles of files in six nondescript buildings in the German spa town and contains the fullest record of Nazi persecutions in existence. This past April Germany finally agreed to open access to the archive, ending a nasty diplomatic dispute between the United States and Germany.
posted by ericb on Nov 19, 2006 - 19 comments

A 10 minute home movie taken by an SS officer has been discovered in an English church. It shows SS officers and secretaries relaxing in the summer of 1942 in southern Russia. The last couple of minutes shows footage from a slave labor camp in that area. The footage was taken at the height of the German success in Russia, a few months before the turning point in the Russian campaign - and probably the turning point in the Second World War.
posted by bobbyelliott on Oct 26, 2006 - 51 comments

Savitri Devi Mukherji. Born Maximiani Portas in 1905, this French woman of Greek and English extraction would, in pilgrimages to Palestine and India, experience a series of strange awakenings - that she was a National Socialist, that she was a Hindu, that the two were entwined in the struggle against the Judeo-Christian order, and that Hitler was the living incarnation of Kalki the Destroyer, the final avatar of Vishnu. Known to many as "Hitler's guru," she stood at the forefronts of Hindu nationalism, Nazi mysticism, Holocaust denial, animal rights, and the international Neo-Nazi movement. The Lightning And The Sun, her most famous work, most directly espouses her philosophy, but perhaps the best place to start would be Long-Whiskers And The Two-Legged Goddess, which is her autobiography as filtered through her many cats. Her nephews were Communists; her own mother was active in the French Resistance; and according to some, the daughter would have shot the mother dead for it. The world is not be a better place for the Savitri Devis of the world, but her presence made this world like none other.
posted by Sticherbeast on Sep 10, 2006 - 22 comments

Frank Collin. Just your average everyday half-Jewish Neo-Nazi pederast occult author. Former leader of the Neo-Nazi group that marched through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie in 1977, triggering protests and court battles. Collin himself was half-Jewish, strangely. He later went to jail for child molestation and seems to have turned to writing books about witchcraft since his release. A truly strange story.
posted by jonmc on Aug 24, 2006 - 14 comments

Furor over Fuhrer Food But it's not the only Hitler-themed restaurant. Taipei had the Prison restaurant with Concentration Camp murals, and Korea had the infamous 1939 Hitler Bar.

Not that the U.S. was spared. Colorado had a Mao-themed eatery.
posted by FeldBum on Aug 21, 2006 - 69 comments

Winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, a peace activist who opposed reunification for fear Germany might once again war against its neighbors, ghost-writer of Willy Brandt's speeches, author of the great fabulist history of World War II and postwar Germany, The Tin Drum, and of My Century, a novel of one hundred chapters, one for each year of the last century, a man considered part of the artistic movement known in German as "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" or "coming to terms with the past", Günter Grass belatedly admits the history he expunged from his personal narrative: his service as a member of the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg of the Waffen-SS. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Grass explained his service would stain him forever, but that only after the war did he feel ashamed of having been in the Waffen-SS:

for me, because I am sure of my recollection, the Waffen SS was nothing frightful, but rather an elite unit that they sent where things were hot, and which, as people said about it, had the heaviest losses.

An official comic book adaptation of the 9/11 commission report is due to hit bookstores this month. The U.S. Army seeks an Arabic-speaking comic book creator. Meanwhile, an Israeli blogger suspects a Kuwaiti company of misusing Marvel and DC comics. These are just the latest incidents in a long-running history of using comic books for propaganda purposes, ranging from Mussolini and Hitler to Captain America vs. the Nazi-affiliated Red Skull to anticommunist comics for Catholic parochial schools to a phony Black Panther comic book created by COINTELPRO to a comic book of the American invasion of Grenada. However, my favorite site of comic book propaganda tends to focus on more innocuous domestic issues such as bicycle safety, USDA nutrition standards, and fighting crack cocaine. (OK, that last issue isn't so innocuous, but comic book propaganda about health & safety issues still generally blows.)
posted by jonp72 on Aug 4, 2006 - 38 comments

The Ghetto Diary of Eli Lesky, The Fifth Horseman, the Buchewald Series, artwork by Joseph Bau; Paintings of the Hmong Migration; Visualizing Otherness - Nazi and other racist propaganda - all this and much, much more from the University of Minnesota's The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 27, 2006 - 18 comments