Time for some history….(this is where you can tune out if so desired)….
Most of us old farts remember the horrific medical experimentation done by the likes of Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler, et al.,…these quacks used prisoners as guinea pigs….and they were condemned by the rest of the world as purveyors of genocide.
The sad part is the younger generation cannot seem to come up with one prison camp name…..
In 2025, 48% of Americans ages 18-29 could not name a single concentration or death camp, according to a survey by the nonprofit Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which works to secure compensation and restitution for Holocaust survivors.
Another 53% of surveyed Americans said that they had encountered Holocaust “denial or distortion while on social media.”
My research shows that Holocaust education and awareness, though, doesn’t always follow a linear path.
How sad is that? 6 million dead and no one can be bothered to remember them. But I guess you gotta be old to remember this shit.
The US and others were just as guilty of unethical experiments like Tuskegee Syphilis Trials, the UK’s Porton Down Chemical Trials, and others were also involved…..
Research involving human subjects is littered with a history of scandal that often shapes people’s views of the ethics of research. Often the earliest cited case is English physician Edward Jenner’s development of the smallpox vaccine in 1796, where he injected an eight-year-old child with the pus taken from a cowpox infection and then deliberately exposed her to an infected carrier of smallpox.
Although Jenner’s experiment was, fortunately, successful, the method of exposing a child to a deadly disease in this way would undoubtedly nowadays be seen as unacceptable. Perhaps the most notorious cases of unethical research were revealed during the Nuremberg trials concerning Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners. This “research” included involuntary sterilisation, inducing hypothermia, and exposing subjects to diseases such as tuberculosis.
There are also examples of government-run research that took advantage of the vulnerability of the subjects to ensure their participation and which resulted in the subjects experiencing severe harms, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis trials or the UK-run Porton Down chemical experiments in which 11,000 military personnel were exposed to mustard and nerve gas between 1939 and 1989.
Project MKUltra began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects’ mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects’ consent. Additionally, other methods beyond chemical compounds were used, including electroshocks,[3]hypnosis,[4][5]sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.[6][7]
Project MKUltra was preceded by Project Artichoke.[8][9] It was organized through the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.[10] The program engaged in illegal activities,[11][12][13] including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects.[11]: 74 [14][15][16] MKUltra’s scope was broad, with activities carried out under the guise of research at more than 80 institutions aside from the military, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.[17] The CIA operated using front organizations, although some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA’s involvement.[11]
Read this if you are not familiar with the tactics of the CIA and how they manipulated American citizens with horrific experiments.
Do not condemn anyone until you see what the CIA is capable of doing….
Korean prisoners of war in the 1950s were subjected to early MK-ULTRA experiments while in American custody, according to recently declassified CIA documents which confirm these experiments for the first time.
The only reporting that previously referenced Koreans being used as guinea pigs for these experiments was journalist John Marks’s landmark 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” Using CIA documents, Marks traced the now-infamous MK-ULTRA project to its start, when it was known as Project Bluebird. In the book, Marks describes how, in October 1950, 25 unnamed North Korean POWs were chosen as the first test subjects to receive “advanced” interrogation techniques, with the overt goal of “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.”
Lots has been said and/or written about what is going on in the US these days…..some see it as an improvement but most see it for what it is….a return of the fascism of the past.
Donny has set himself up as the supreme leader with is underlings cleaning up his messes…..all this smacks of the aesthetics of yesteryear….
What is most revealing about the MAGA aesthetic is its studied ugliness. On one side stands the grotesque excess of beauty-pageant femininity, plastic smiles, puffy lips, lacquered beach-wave hair, sharpened jawlines, and a hyper-sexualized nostalgia masquerading as “traditional values.” US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem exemplifies this aesthetic as a badge of cruelty. Carefully styling herself in a Barbie-doll register of hyper-femininity, she delivers media performances staged in front of prisons and other sites associated with the punishment and terrorization of immigrants. The effect is chilling: a glossy, pornographic aesthetic fused with images of confinement, state violence, and racialized cruelty. Beauty here does not soften power; it aestheticizes domination and makes authoritarian violence appear natural, even glamorous. This aesthetic of cruelty is not confined to clothing (heavy on tweeds), posture, or setting. It increasingly takes hold at the level of the face itself, where artificiality is no longer concealed but aggressively displayed.
The United States is not merely awash in brutalizing and murderous acts of state-sanctioned violence. It is being restructured by them. The killings of Rachel Good and Alex Pretti are not aberrations or tragic mistakes; they belong to a longer and darker history that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People once named with chilling precision. In earlier periods of American turmoil, such killings were called lynchings, acts “carried out by lawless mobs, although police officers did participate, under the pretext of justice.” Today, this violence extends well beyond the bullet and the baton. It takes form in the expansion of prison camps, what Thom Hartmann rightly calls concentration camps, the war on immigrants, and the routine assault on Black and brown lives made disposable through policy, indifference, and neglect. At the same time, the country is saturated with a culture steeped in fascist spectacle and authoritarian display. Under the Trump administration, aesthetics itself becomes a battleground, a weaponized field where power works on desire, memory, bodies, and pleasure to consolidate domination.
All this is pointing to a problem that we have faced before but not with such approval as today….the GOP today seems to be embracing the policies and actions that this country fought against less than a hundred years ago…..
No less an authority on right-wing extremism than Laura Loomer, Donald Trump’s wacko loyalty policeman, said it: Republicans have a Nazi problem, warning that there are those “trying to redefine” the party “so it can become modern-day Hitler Youth.”
When a Loomer admits it, you know this is a real problem, not just a liberal fabrication.
The Republicans’ entanglement with Nazism — especially after a recent kerfuffle involving conservative hero Tucker Carlson, Nazi apologist Nick Fuentes, and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts (more on that to come) — has been much written about, as GOP stalwarts argue over whether they should denounce Nazi sympathizers or make common cause with them. This is a debate that really shouldn’t be a debate at all, and certainly not one that requires another disquisition on the Republicans’ moral bankruptcy.
But I am delivering one nonetheless, because — no matter how much space this courtship has been given, no matter how many pundits decry the celebration of Nazis and the canonization of Adolf Hitler by large segments of the conservative movement, no matter how often conservatives trot out antisemitic tropes, and no matter how often conservative leaders declare that this would be a much better country if it were a dictatorship — the fact that one of our two major parties actively, publicly, enthusiastically embraces Nazism should be a scandal, a horror, and a disgrace. Not something to be promptly forgotten, as it has been, but something that should be a front-page story every single day.
Lest we forget — and Republicans seem to have forgotten — the Nazis were the bad guys, the very personification of evil, the force that hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat, and the gleeful, bloodthirsty murderers of millions. They needed to be destroyed, forever castigated as the very worst of humanity, not emulated. Yet emulated they are.
So, yes, Ms. Loomer: The Republicans do, indeed, have a Nazi problem, and that means America has one too.
What amazes me is that many average Americans see no problem with the direction the government is taking….I have people I know that see no problem with the direction that I do not understand for they see and hear the same information I do yet they are content with the erosion of our rights as Americans.
How can this be?
We live in a ‘Dual State”…..
Life under authoritarianism is actually, for the most part, weirdly normal. It’s often even, well, boring. The average person can go about their day as usual. You take your kids to school, you head to the office, and yes, you even host dinner parties. You live in the realm that Fraenkel referred to as “the normative state,” and from within that realm, it’s easy to think that if you just keep your head down and avoid making waves, you’ll be perfectly fine, thank you very much.
Fraenkel’s book is called The Dual State for a reason. This first state, the business-as-usual one, actually exists to lull you into a sense of complacency such that you don’t realize that another state is also operating in parallel with it. That second state, which Fraenkel calls “the prerogative state,” only becomes visible to you when you do something that the powers that be don’t like. Then suddenly you’re in a realm where the rule of law does not exist, where citizens can be killed with impunity, where you — even you, who thought you were invulnerable — can become a target.
The dark genius of this setup is that most people don’t realize that the prerogative state is active until it’s too late. They only wake up when the knock comes on their very own door — or when the door is forcefully broken down.
“The Dual State lives by veiling its true nature,” Fraenkel wrote.
That’s why it’s not surprising to me that your friends have been politically inactive. If they think of themselves as “not the target” — if they’re citizens, if they’re white, if they don’t speak with the “wrong” accent or express the “wrong” political views in public — it’s extremely easy for them to think everything is mostly normal, because the whole political apparatus is designed to make them think exactly that.
(yahoo.com)
Cut it any way you like but the ugliness of the Goon Platoon and Donny’s sycophants is getting out of hand.
We are entering into a world that was crushed before and it will again….but only if the American people have the courage to step up.
There are multiple candidates running for seats on the Zionsville Community Schools Board of Trustees in Indiana, including Dr. Matt Keefer, an anesthesiologist who calls himself an independent option disliked by both “Republican leaders” and the “extreme left” due to his critical thinking and inability to “be controlled.” Pushback against him has reached new levels, however, after he recently defended some of the Nazis during World War II in comments under an online post, reports FOX59. The controversy started when Keefer, who runs on an anti- “wokeness” and “indoctrination” platform, was asked in a since-deleted Facebook thread if teachers asserting that the Tulsa Massacre was terrible, or that all Nazis were bad, would be considered “indoctrination,” in his eyes. Keefer’s response is what instantly raised eyebrows.
“All Nazis weren’t ‘bad,’ as you specify,” he told his questioner. “They did horrible things. They were in a group frenzy in both cases you site [sic]. Who is to say if we were both there in the same place and same time that we wouldn’t have done the same thing.” He added in a later post: “There were certainly evil Nazis. There were also good people who had to be Nazis (or they would have been killed).” Backlash against his remarks were swift. “When you hear statements like this, it diminishes the Holocaust, it diminishes the memory,” the head of the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council tells FOX59. “This hurts so much inside.” “I just couldn’t fathom” what he wrote, a parent in the district tells WTHR, which notes that despite the outcry by many in the community, Keefer still has some supporters thanking him for his candor and “listening to the community.”
At any rate, Keefer doesn’t seem fazed by the commotion. In a post he has since taken down, per FOX59, he blamed the “far left” for attacking him and wrote, “I know haters gotta hate, so please continue spewing your taunts. I’m only getting stronger in the community!” In a longer post on Facebook Thursday, which remained up as of Friday morning, Keefer tripled down, stating, “A few days ago I made the comment ‘not all Nazis were bad’ … I am correct.” He added, though, that his argument contained “nuance,” and that “to be clear: I never was, am not now, and never will be a Nazi sympathizer.” Some of the comments under that post remained supportive, though one person wrote, “Not everyone in the drug cartels or mafia are bad people either.” WTHR rounds up statements from a few of Keefer’s rivals for the board over his remarks.
This is someone who could possibly decide what your children will learn….is that what you want them to learn the ‘not all Nazis were bad’? And from a moron that slept through history class.
This country continues to slide and we are allowing it to slide down the toilet. WHY?
Weekends are time for me to relax and have a nice wine and some cheese and nuts on the patio…..something that can be done without the worry of the virus finding a home in my body.
Are you a wine drinker?
I am….I prefer French and Spanish wines…although I have found few Argentine wines lovely and even one from New Zealand….but sadly I do not appreciate German or Austrian wines….they just do not pair well for me.
Ever tried a Austrian wine called Zweigelt?
Did you like it?
Did you know that it is wine perfected by a rabid Nazi?
Yep a Nazi viticulturalist came up with this wine…..
Whether or not we want to admit it, we are consuming a lot of alcohol while in quarantine. Nielsen, the market research firm, estimated that online sales jumped 243% during the prime stock-up weeks of the pandemic, with wine sales alone increasing by 66%. After a year of declining alcohol consumption, responses to Covid-19 have effectively undone last year’s teetotalist trends and made alcohol easier to get. Wine shops and restaurants have begun liquidating their inventories, increasing the number of weird, natural, and rare options for wine drinkers to explore at home. Many of these come from unusual places like the Czech Republic, Mexico, or Croatia, containing unusual grapes like malvasia, rebula, or blaufränkisch. And if you’ve been enjoying an Austrian wine called “zweigelt,” you’ve got a lot to learn about a wine with a history you may not want to hear.
Zweigelt is a red grape used in wine that typically bears its name; it tastes like Pinot Noir, but with a bit more boldness and only a fraction of the Sideways-attributed success. The export value of Austrian wine has increased tremendously in the last few years, with a nearly 20% volume increase in the United States in 2018 alone. Accessible to every level of red wine drinker, a bottle of zweigelt typically costs between $14 and $30 and pairs well with a vast range of foods. It is Austria’s second most important wine after Grüner Veltliner. Of the 35 organic wineries officially certified by Sustainable Austria, 32 of them grow zweigelt. The sharp, blue-colored grapes grow easily and in spades, making it readily available for bottling.
When I was in college I took many history courses and one of them the professor would have us students use our brains and come up with a ‘what if’…….
I recently finished that 38 part series on the history of the US….I like series where it takes a little research and hard work to make them…..I found another but this one is about World War 2 and the possibility that the Nazis could have won…if only…..
I am sure that there will be those that will take exception to this series….but remember it is not my research but that of other people…I am just the messenger……I offer it up as a source for discussion….I may or may not endorse the conclusions….
Part 1–Germany could have won WW2 without fighting the Western Allies…..
…
the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, which cost the lives of an estimated 50-60 million people and was the most terrible war in world history. We all know how the war turned out—with an overwhelming Soviet-Western Allied victory over Nazi Germany ending with the destruction and dismemberment of Germany herself and the death by starvation of millions of her citizens. Given the way the events of the war played out, there was no other foreseeable outcome other than her defeat. But as most historians are aware, German defeat in the war would have been far from inevitable had Nazi leader Adolf Hitler refrained from making certain critical mistakes.
This series of articles represents an attempt to summarize the top mistakes and omissions Germany made that cost it victory in this greatest and most terrible of all wars in human history. Of course, the best way for Germany to have won World War II was for it to have avoided fighting Britain, France, and the United States of America altogether. Germany had the military potential to defeat France and likely force Britain to make peace, but with a Navy less than one-sixth the size of Britain’s, it had no means to even attack U.S. territory, let alone defeat it. Here are some actions that Germany might have taken to achieve their territorial objectives without having to fight the Western Powers of Britain, France and the United States of America:
As I stated before….this is offered up as a source for discussion….please let your thoughts be known….but I have written about the Nazi voter…….https://lobotero.com/2017/08/07/the-nazi-voter/
A Saturday and an egotistical douche bag has been put in his place….Tom Brady…..
Tom Brady can still be terrific. He just can’t be Terrific, the US Patent and Trademark Office has decided. The star Patriots quarterback had applied for trademark protection for the “Tom Terrific” nickname, which has long been applied to baseball Hall of Famer Tom Seaver, 74. The applications by Brady’s company involved commercial uses of the nickname on trading cards, posters and shirts, reports Boston.com. Such uses would “falsely suggest a connection” with the retired Mets pitcher, the ruling said. Because the nickname refers “uniquely and unmistakably” to Seaver, he’d have to agree to Brady’s trademarking of it.
Brady’s application outraged many fans, especially Mets fans, and he said he didn’t intend to actually cash in on the nickname. He doesn’t like it, he said, and just wanted to keep others from selling products calling him “Tom Terrific.” The quarterback said: “It wasn’t something I was trying to do out of any disrespect or ill manner or anything like that,” per ESPN, calling the episode a “good lesson learned.” The trademark applications will be dropped automatically unless Brady responds within six months to the ruling.
Weekend begins and of Nazis…..we were talking about Nazis, right? We seem to always be talking Nazis these days.
Not a big fan of German sports cars, especially Porsches….but this one is just cool…..
In the late ’30s, Adolf Hitler commissioned a special “people’s car” to be built for a Berlin-to-Rome road rally, and what resulted was the 1939 Porsche Type 64, or what Jalopnik calls the “missing link between Porsche and Volkswagen.” Only three of these vehicles were built, and just one survives to this day, so when it was announced that RM Sotheby’s was putting it up for auction, the automotive aficionado world lit up, with predictions the car would go for as much as $20 million. But a current glimpse at the auctioneer’s website after Saturday’s much-hyped event shows a “still for sale” notice, the result of what Jalopnik calls a “weird and unsatisfying ending.” Bloomberg explains an opening bid of $30 million jump-started what appeared to be a fierce bidding war, rising all the way to $70 million—until the auctioneer suddenly corrected himself, noting the top bid was $17 million, not $70 million
A video of the auction shows the bizarre incident unfolding. Whether it had been an accident or, as Jalopnik puts it, a joke meant to hype the sale and boost bidding, potential buyers were miffed, and no one ever topped the $17 million bid. MSNBC notes that because $17 million was below the seller’s minimum price, the sale was nixed. “A massive f—up,” one observer notes, per Bloomberg. “As bidding opened … increments were mistakenly overheard and displayed on the screen, causing unfortunate confusion in the room,” RM Sotheby’s says in a statement. “This was in no way a joke or prank on behalf of anyone at RM Sotheby’s, rather an unfortunate misunderstanding amplified by excitement in the room.”
Remember back in the day when red meat and full fat dairy was going to kill you if you kept eating it? All that tasteless cheese and watery milk……that may be changing….
Eating full-fat dairy and red meat will not increase the risk of heart disease or stroke, according to a new study.
The major review of Australian and international research found little evidence to suggest healthy people should restrict their intake.
The study has prompted the Heart Foundation to hose down concerns, going against previous recommendations for Australians to stick to reduced-fat dairy products.
(Sky News)
One of our most visited National Parks, Yellowstone, has a dark tale to tell……
Plenty of op-eds in the New York Times these days worry about a political apocalypse. A new one warns about the old-fashioned variety. More specifically, author Bryan Walsh is reminding everyone that Yellowstone National Park has a supervolcano, one that last blew 640,000 years ago. If it goes off again—there’s a 1-in-730,000 chance of that in any given year, Walsh writes—the “eruption would be like nothing humanity has ever experienced.” The park itself would be wiped out, of course, and as much as 3 feet of volcanic ash would be dumped on large parts of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. But the effects on the rest of the nation and the world would be catastrophic as well, with reductions in sunlight and rainfall, the widespread destruction of crops, and a breakdown of the electrical grid.
This makes it an “existential risk” for the planet, a catastrophe with a capital C that could theoretically wipe out humans. Asteroid strikes and nuclear wars also qualify, and those risks get more attention and money. But the world has 20 supervolcanoes of the Yellowstone variety, and we humans at the very least should make sure that all are being monitored at the highest levels to reduce the risk of surprise. “What has happened before can and will happen again, eventually—but because we remain confined to the brief human time horizons of our own experience, we treat them as unreal,” writes Walsh. This lack of imagination leaves us vulnerable, he warns. (Read the full column.)
Plastic is the big no-no for the environment these days…..and markets are not telling the truth on their use…..
It’s next to impossible to be a plastic-free grocery shopper. Unless you live near a boutique store that offers goods naked, you likely don’t have much choice about buying food wrapped in plastic netting or transparent film.
Walk into any of the biggest grocery chains in the United States, and you’ll see row upon row of items in containers and bags that are designed to be used once and trashed. Americans produced 14.7 million tons of such waste in 2015, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Of that, only 14.6% was recycled.
Plastic is necessary for boosting the shelf life of perishable foods, without adding much to the sticker price. Getting rid of it entirely isn’t realistic. But there is a growing consensus that companies responsible for creating this packaging overuse plastics and could easily cut down on the amount sold to consumers.
On this day in 1945 the Hyena of Auschwitz was executed…..one Irma…….
On December 13, 1945, Irma Ida Ilse Grese, age 22, was executed in accordance with her sentence of death for the crime of committing War Crimes (Crimes Against Humanity) for her service as a concentration camp guard at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz Nazi death camps during World War II.
Irma was born in 1923 to a dairy working family in Germany, but her mother committed suicide by drinking acid in 1936, after finding out her husband was having an affair. Irma’s father remarried and probably joined the Nazi Party. A somewhat troubled girl, Irma quit school at age 14 and was deeply involved (obsessed) with a Nazi program for girls called the League of German Girls. She attempted to become an apprentice nurse, but could only find work at an SS sanatorium. Irma also found work as a dairy helper, but took the opportunity of getting a job as a concentration camp guard at Ravensbruck in 1942. Apparently enthusiastic about her job, she quickly rose to the second highest rank a female guard could hold and transferred to Auschwitz in 1943 where she was involved in selecting which inmates would go to the gas chambers.
Camp inmates learned to hate and fear Irma, who dressed as stylishly as possible and took great pains to prepare her makeup and feminine appearance. Irma was known to deviate from picking the sickest inmates for death, and instead choosing any female that retained a semblance of her beauty. Irma was accused at trial of taking sadistic pleasure in the beatings and general savaging of prisoners, including torture and attacking prisoners with guard dogs. Witnesses testified that Irma often wore heavy boots and carried a whip and pistol, randomly shooting prisoners as she saw fit.
Irma was subjected to a 53 day trial conducted under British jurisdiction, and was one of only 3 female concentration camp guards executed, despite many others being accused of similar crimes. At her trial Irma claimed she was sent to camp duty against her will. Along with the 3 females sentenced to death, 8 male guards from Auschwitz were also sentenced to death and executed. Of all these, only Irma remained defiant of her captors. Her last word before being hanged was “schnell!” meaning “hurry up.”
Another sordid side story to Irma Grese is that she apparently was quite popular with the SS officers and guards (males), and had relations with some of them, reputedly even Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious sadistic camp doctor. Irma reportedly forced an inmate doctor to abort Irma’s baby by one of these Nazis, and Irma planned on a career as a movie actress after the war. In a bizarre twist on her wish to be in movies, Irma was the inspiration for the title character Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, a 1975 Canadian film.
(Warning: This trailer can be disturbing on many levels…..)
In 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland and thus began the last “great” war….WW2….then in 1940 Hitler decided to take over the rest of Western Europe and they began with Belgium, Holland and into France…..
Many observers say that France was doomed because it depended on the Maginot Line for its defense and the Germans basically just went around the fortifications and into the heart of France…..
So the question remains…was France doomed in 1940?
France holds a unique place in the collective military psyche. Once the military paragon of Europe, the French seem to have been doomed to an inexorable decline since Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.[1] France’s recent expeditionary achievements in Mali are praised, but within the range of small-scale operations. When it comes to major wars, many Americans remember France’s military collapse in 1940 and assume it was inevitable, since the French were stuck in the obsolete tactics of Verdun. This is not some kind of a post-2003 French non-interventionism bashing. Rather in Europe, the most severe critics are often the French themselves.
Surprisingly, it is seldom emphasized that the French could quite possibly have imagined something close to the Blitz if they had been not just one but two wars behind in 1939. Indeed, before 1914 they were the strongest advocates of the offensive, which had been taught for years at the Ecole de Guerre by future Marshal Ferdinand Foch, and theorized by the influential Colonel Louis de Grandmaison to the point of the offensive à outrance (attack with no limit). The latter was much criticized later for having inspired the bloody and failed offensives of 1914-1916. But that does not erase the fact that, in the dialectic of the cannonball and the cuirass, the advantage goes successively from one to the other. Hence, the concept of lightning war was really nothing new in 1940, especially to the French. Today, Western armies see the blitzkrieg as the quintessence of military art because it splendidly combined technological innovation with the culture of mission command.
Many stories have been told about the French in 1940 but the one that too many have overlooked is the heroism of the French army to hold off the Germans so that the English could be evacuated off the beach at Dunkirk.
At the end of World War 2 the US ran all over Germany snapping up German scientists, most of whom would be tried for crimes against humanity but their expertise was needed so Operation paperclip protected these criminals and moved most of them to the US under the protection of the government.
More about Operation paperclip here…..
Operation Paperclip, named after the use of the ordinary paperclip attached to the personnel files of select German scientists, was a special operation of breathtaking scope. Instead of highly trained teams tasked for important combat missions, these teams were hunters and gatherers sifting and searching through the wreckage and ruin of a devastated Germany. Theirs was a high-stakes contest against an equally determined Russia and other less malevolent former allies. German scientists and technologies were the pawns, and the prize was nothing less than national security and preeminence as a world power. When it was concluded, hundreds of German scientists and their families, tons of documents, hardware, weapon systems, and technologies would be transferred from Germany to the United States.
Officially, Operation Paperclip concluded on Sept. 30, 1947. In a public statement, the Army announced that the operation had brought into the United States 457 scientists and 453 dependents. But a closed-door decision was made to allow Operation Paperclip to continue, this time as a top secret program. To justify the continuation, the Air Force stated that the 209 German scientists working for it had substantially advanced the development of weapons systems and the scientists were “superlative specialists … the best available in the world today.” They were saving the Air Force millions of dollars and an estimated 10 years in cost and development. The Navy added its praise, stating that German mathematicians, aerodynamicists, and experts in heat transfer had proven that “their professional education and training [were]superior to that of any U.S. personnel available.”
Some of the research that America used in their space program was testing done on Jewish prisoners that resulted in a horrific death and yet we decided that it was somehow okay to use this research if it put us a head of the Russians.
I personally have a problem with this type of program….a war criminal is a war criminal and should face the same judgements that others had to face.
On this day in 1939 Germany attacked Poland and that lead to everyone entering the fray against Germany….everyone but the US.
But do you, my reader know why Germany attacked Poland…..what excuse they used to start a war……
On the evening of 31 August 1939, as tensions in Europe approached the breaking point, there was an unusual broadcast from a radio station in Gleiwitz, Germany. Its broadcasts were momentarily silenced, followed by a hate-filled diatribe by a Polish-speaking man. He urged all Poles to take up arms, and to strike down any Germans who resist. When Gestapo officers arrived at the transmitter to investigate, they found the bullet-riddled body one of the alleged Polish attackers. In the morning there were reports of numerous other incidents of Polish aggression along the border. In response, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler issued his “final directive” to attack Poland, compelling the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany. Thus began World War 2. But it turns out that this incident at Gleiwitz— blamed as the final provocation for the terrible war that followed— was not quite what it seemed.
