On October 15

On this day in ...
... 1940 (70 years ago today), more than a year before the attack at Pearl Harbor would draw the United States into World War II, Hollywood released the talking motion picture The Great Dictator, "the only major film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler." Director and star of the movie was Charlie Chaplin, appearing in his first "talkie" role following a celebrated career in silent films. According to this site:

The film is unusual for its period, as the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis, the latter of whom he excoriates in the film as "machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts".

(Prior October 15 posts are here, here, and here.)

Different take on women at Nuremberg

Research for my lecture this Monday on "Women at Nuremberg" turned up a 75-year-old reminder that not only ethnic status, but also gender status, was a target of totalitarianism during that era.
"Hitler Condemns Women in Politics" declared an Associate Press article published in a September 1934 edition of The New York Times.
The article reported on a speech in Nuremberg, at which Adolf Hitler, who’d become Germany’s Chancellor a year earlier, said:

‘Liberalism has a large number of points for women’s equality. The Nazi program has but one: this is a child. ‘While man makes his supreme sacrifice on the field of battle, woman fights her supreme battle for her nation when she gives life to a child.’

He linked notions that women might play other roles in society to his least-favored ethnic group – of course – and also to the apparent curse of "‘intellectualism.’"
In short, Hitler "derided the mixing of women in political matters," and "added that he believed parliamentary life tended to degrade women."
His audience?
Two thousand "woman politicians," Nazi Party organizers who "applauded his statements energetically."

(credit for photo of September 1934 rally at Nuremberg)

On August 1

On this day in ...
... 1936, a New York Times headline reported: "100,000 Hail Hitler; U.S. Athletes Avoid Nazi Salute to Him." The occasion was the opening of the Olympic Games in "the world's newest and biggest stadium," in Berlin, Germany. By 1936 Adolf Hitler had consolidated power in Germany; World War II loomed. These Games remain famous because it was there that, as we've posted, African-American athlete Jesse Owens "would win 4 gold medals, and so give the lie to the master-race theories of" Hitler. The incredible photo at right(credit) -- showing Owens on the winner's stand, in front of a medalist giving the Nazi salute -- says it all.
... 1946, Dr. Fiona Stanley (below left) was born in Sydney, Australia. On account of her father's work as a medical researcher, she met Dr. Jonas Salk, who'd developed a polio vaccine, and stories about scientists' accomplishments were favorites throughout her childhood. She received a degree in medicine from the University of Western Australia in 1970. Her 1st work, with aboriginal children, led to lifelong interests in epidemiology and public health, areas she studied in Britain and the United States before returning home. Since the late 1970s she's been a leader in children's health issues in Australia, serving as founding director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, as a professor at the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at University of Western Australia, as chair of Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, and as UNICEF's Australian Ambassador for Early Childhood Development. Stanley was named Australian of the Year in 2003.

(Prior August 1 posts are here and here.)

On June 20

On this day in ...
… 1981, an Islamic socialist organization known as the People's Mujahedin of Iran (flag at right) demonstrated against the regime then in power. Following the Iranian revolution and a falling out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, hundreds of the organization's supporters and were killed, and some 3,000 were arrested.
… 1933, at age 75, feminist and German communist Clara Zetkin (below left) died in exile in the Soviet Union at Archangelskoye, near Moscow. Zetkin had fought for the economic and political independence of women workers and women in general. International Women’s Day, first celebrated in 1911, was staged thanks to her suggestion. In 1920, Zetkin was elected to the Reichstag as a member of the German Communist Party. Entitled to open the parliament's 1st session in 1932, Zetkin warned of the dangers of national socialism and demanded the coalition of all democratic forces. When Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party took over power, Zetkin's party was banned from the Reichstag, and she went into exile to the Soviet Union. She remained politically active until her death. (photo credit for the image of Zetkin on former East German currency)

(Prior June 20 posts are here and here.)

On September 30

On this day in ...
... 1938 (70 years ago today), in Germany, leaders of that country as well as Britain, France, and Italy concluded the Munich Pact, which took the Sudetenland (below right, in red) from Czechoslovakia and gave it to Germany. Though applauded by some at the time, the effort to avert further German aggression failed so miserably that critics' contemporary description of the Pact -- "appeasement" -- retains pejorative power to this day. (credit for German postcard above, which depicts Pact signers, left to right, Neville Chamberlain of Britain, Édouard Daladier of France, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and Adolf Hitler of Germany)
... 1938 (70 years ago today), the League of Nations unanimously approved a resolution on the Protection of Civilian Populations Against Bombing From the Air in Case of War, which maintained that:
► "The intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal";
► "Objectives aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be identifiable"; and
► "Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in such a way that civilian populations in the neighbourhood are not bombed through negligence".
As was the case with many other acts by the League, this did little to deter massive aerial bombardment of civilians, by both Allied and Axis Powers, in the World War II years that followed.

On August 19

On this day in ...
... 1902, or maybe 1900, Kathleen Morrison was born in Michigan. By age 17 she appeared in her 1st credited Hollywood film. As Colleen Moore, she would become a premier star of silent films, her flapper image an icon of the Jazz Age (left). That era, and her career, ended with the Depression. Moore then would become famous for her Fairy Castle dollhouse, a huge assemblage of detailed miniatures that to this day is on display at Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry. (photo credit)
... 1934, a plebiscite approved "the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor in a single Leader-Chancellor personified by Adolf Hitler." In favor: 89.9% of all German voters.

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes.)

This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.

-- U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) (above left), former Presidential candidate and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. The cause of his objection? President George W. Bush's statement in Israel's parliament, during a commemoration of Israel's 60th birthday. Bush likened proposals to meet face-to-face -- that is, to engage in diplomacy -- with adversaries such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to pre-World War II appeasement of Adolf Hitler. Many others objected. Here's what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) had to say:

I think what the president said in that regard is beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel.

On this day

On March 12, ...
... 1918 (90 years ago today), Elaine Marie Catherine Fried was born in Brooklyn, New York. A student of art, she married the Netherlands-born painter Willem de Kooning in 1943, though the couple spent much of their marriage apart. Elaine de Kooning is known for her own sculpture and painting; in particular, her portraits of luminaries like U.S. President John F. Kennedy (here), not to mention the self-portrait at right. (credit) An art critic as well as an artist, the chain-smoker died from lung cancer in 1989.
... 1938 (70 years ago today), Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, stood clad in a brown stormtrooper uniform, stood in an open car as it drove into Austria's capital, Vienna. The next day he proclaimed that the "Anschluss" -- unification of German-speaking Austria with Nazi Germany -- was complete. Installed to govern the country, now deemed a Third Reich province, was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who would be hanged following conviction as a war criminal in 1946 by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

On November 15, ...

... 1941, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler issued a decree by which members of the security forces who engaged in homosexual conduct were subject to execution or imprisonment. The decree was extended to all males within months, part of a program of persecution, by death and consignment to concentration camps, during the Nazi regime.
... 1999, France enacted the law creating the Pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS, which permits civil unions between couples, of opposite sex and same sex alike.
... 1951, U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Cal.) was born in Newark, New Jersey.

On August 17, ...

... 1906, Hazel Bishop was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. A chemist, she's credited with inventing the 1st "Lasting Lipstick" -- an invention she parlayed into a multimillion-dollar cosmetics enterprise.
... 1987 (20 years ago today), convicted Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess committed suicide at age 93 at Spandau Prison in West Berlin, Germany. He'd been incarcerated there for the 41 years since his conviction in the 1st trial conducted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg -- and for 21 years, he'd been the prison's lone inmate. The onetime top aide to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler'd made a bizarre flight to Scotland, ostensibly a unilateral bid to make peace with the Allies, in the middle of World War II.

On August 3, ...

... 1993, the Senate voted 97-3 to confirm the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a federal appellate judge, to become the 2d woman ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. On the same day 1 year later, Stephen G. Breyer, also a federal appellate judge, was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice. Both remain on the Court to this day.
... 1936, Jesse Owens (right), Alabama-born "son of sharecroppers and the grandson of slaves," won a gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the XIth Olympic Games in Germany. In the course of the games the African-American athelete would win 4 gold medals, and so give the lie to the master-race theories of Adolf Hitler, the leader of the host country. For this achievement the International Olympic Committee calls Owens "The Hero of Berlin."