World War II
oracknows | January 25, 2009
Back in December, I pointed out a Norwegian movie that the Hitler Zombie definitely approves of: Dead Snow (or Død Snø in Norwegian). After all, how can you go wrong with Nazi zombies in a remote, snow bound area in Norway attacking the usual bunch of hapless but beautiful young people? I don't know about you, but that's all I ask for in a movie, even if I have to read subtitles or put up with dubbing.
Good news, fans of Nazi zombies! After a successful run at Sundance, Død Snø has a U.S. distribution deal:
U.S. rights to Tommy Wirkola's "Dead Snow" have been acquired by IFC Films.…
oracknows | December 9, 2008My original post that asked the intentionally provocative question Was Nazi science good science? provoked a lot of comments, some of which made me think, which is good. This post was inspired by an article in which historian of the Nazi era Richard Evans was featured in a story about Nazi science and expressed his amazement at how much Nazi science was treated just like any other science, with little or no comment by other scientists of the era about the completely unethical and downright evil nature of the experiments, which reduced human beings to the status of laboratory animals, and…
oracknows | December 4, 2008I've long had an interest in World War II history. Ever since I was around 11 or 12 years old, a major portion of my reading diet has consisted of books and articles about World War II. Back when I was young, my interest was, as you might expect, primarily the battles. The military history of World War II fascinated me, and I build many, many models of World War II fighter aircraft and warships when I was in my early teens. (No cracks about how the airplane glue obviously affected me, although it is true that back then it was real airplane glue, chock full of toluene and lots of other organic…
oracknows | November 15, 2008Downfall was a great movie, arguably the greatest movie about Adolf Hitler's final days ever made. However, it contains one scene, one incredibly powerful scene, where aides bring Hitler news that the last defenses had fallen, that the divisions that Hitler thought he had no longer existed, and that the forces that were trying to reach Berlin to fight the Russians had been repulsed. It was at this point that Hitler finally realized that there was nothing left to stop the Soviet juggernaut from taking Berlin. At this point, Hitler finally realizes that the war is lost and that there is no hope…
oracknows | July 29, 2008Somehow, someway, a bit of slime oozed its way into a Manhattan church to insinuate itself into that fair city and thereby contaminate it. Somehow, I managed to miss it.
Sadly, the world's most famous Holocaust denier, David Irving, is touring the U.S. to give aid and comfort to anti-Semites, racists, and Nazi wannabes all throughout the United States. I can't figure out why he's allowed in the U.S., but somehow he is, and he takes full advantage of the situation to replenish his coffers with the dollars of the American white power ranger Jew-hater contingent, all the while claiming he is not…
oracknows | May 31, 2008Ever since it appeared as an "adult" spinoff of Doctor Who, I've had a love-hate relationship with Torchwood. The first season was about as uneven as anything I've ever seen, ranging from a truly execrable (and, even worse, unforgivably stupidly and badly written) "homage" to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Countrycide) that ranks among the worst hours of television to which I've ever subjected myself to a handful of pretty darned good episodes (Out of Time, Captain Jack Harkness), with a whole lot of mediocre episodes in between. This season was generally more consistent, but a lot of problems…
oracknows | May 21, 2008Here's how not to allow personalized stamps to be produced:
BERLIN -- German neo-Nazis used a personalized stamp service offered by Deutsche Post to create a 55-cent stamp carrying a portrait of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, the company said Wednesday.
The latest newsletter of the far-right National Democratic Party gloated about being able to slip the stamp past Deutsche Post's quality control personnel.
"The Hess stamp is out there," wrote Hannes Natter in the May edition of Deutsche Stimme, or German Voice.
Deutsche Post spokesman Dirk Klasen confirmed that someone managed to slip an order…
oracknows | May 16, 2008This is too hilarious for words. It's priceless.
It's Chris Matthews applying a little history smackdown--I mean lesson--to an ignorant right wing talk radio host named Kevin James, who was overjoyed at President Bush's use of the Neville Chamberlain gambit the other day and wanted to take the opportunity to throw the same gambit around too about the Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular. Bad idea:
My only complaint is that Matthews didn't deliver what would have been the perfect coup de grâce. That would have been to ask (1) what did Neville Chamberlain do in March 1939…
oracknows | May 11, 2008The ignorance and stupidity, they burn:
Why, yes, actually, we did "allow" Nazi Germany to host the Olympics back in 1936. Hitler even presided over some of the ceremonies. The sign is so wrong that at first I wondered whether it was a Photoshop job, but apparently it's legit.
I realize this photo is from around three week ago, but I didn't see it until Ed pointed me to it yesterday. Given my interest in World War II history and the Holocaust, you just knew I couldn't resist it once made aware of it. True, it's not as hilariously dumb as Tony Zirkle, but it does reveal a shocking level of…
oracknows | May 3, 2008Does anyone remember a few months ago, when I wrote about Ben Stein? No? Here, then, I'll jog your memory. Ben Stein and his involvment in that piece of cinematic excrement Expelled! "inspired" me to--if you'll excuse the term--resurrect a certain recurring character from the very early days of this blog. Yes, I'm talking about the ever-dreaded Hitler Zombie, who returned after more than a year's absence to take a huge chomp out of Ben Stein's brain.
Now we're seeing the results of that chomp, and I'm not just talking about the ridiculous claims in Expelled! that "Darwinism" leads inevitably…
oracknows | April 30, 2008Oh, glorious day!
As hard as it is to believe, it's here once again, and freedom lovers everywhere should rejoice! Yes, indeed, it's the day that everyone who detests fascism should celebrate:
Fuehrerstodestag! (Otherwise known as "Dead Hitler Day.")
Sixty-three years ago today, Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Reich, finally cornered in his rathole, his nation and glorious capital of what he thought would be a "thousand year Reich" in ruins, rather than face his enemies, decided instead to blow his brains out in his bunker as the Red Army was relentlessly advancing on him. After over 12 years…
oracknows | April 26, 2008Yesterday, I wrote about what I thought to be a fairly amusing story. It was the story of one hapless candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in a district in northwest Indiana whose excuses for giving a talk to the American National Socialist Workers Party's Chicago celebration of Adolf Hitler's 119th birthday last weekend can only be characterized as what in LOL Cat lingo one would call "EPIC FAIL" (he claimed he didn't think people there were of a "Nazi mindset"). I've also written more than I now wish I had about the inherent dishonesty of Ben Stein's claim in the movie…
oracknows | March 29, 2008Nasal drone Ben Stein, as you would be hard-pressed not to know if you are a regular reader of ScienceBlogs, is hosting what looks to be a truly execrable crap-fest called Expelled!: No Intelligence Allowed. The movie basically consists of two themes: (1) Whining about "intellectual oppression" by those evil "Darwinists" directed against any valiant "intelligent design" creationist or anyone else who "questions" Darwin and (2) lots of blaming the Holocaust and other atrocities (but mainly Hitler and the Holocaust) on "Darwinism," replete with lots of shots of Nazis, Ben Stein clumsily emoting…
oracknows | March 5, 2008File this one under: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." It's a story that I couldn't resist because it combines my interest in skepticism with my interest in World War II history. Too bad there wasn't a way to throw some medicine in there as well; otherwise I could have had a trifecta.
Yesterday, I was sent a news story that demonstrates how a seemingly good idea can go horribly wrong. In the deepest, darkest depths of World War II, in 1940 and 1941, when Britain's very survival as a nation was in doubt as the Blitz pummeled its cities and even the stoutest Englishman, alone in at…
oracknows | February 20, 2008Deep underneath the brick and steel of a nondescript building somewhere in Manhattan, within the very bowels of the city itself, not far from the Seed mothership, Orac waited. After over a year's absence, the monster had returned to consume the most unpalatable brain of a former Nixon speechwriter who had decided that he knew more about biology than biologists and that calling pseudoscience pseudoscience was akin to that tactics of Hitler and Stalin in suppressing dissent. Since then, Orac had noted an uptick in the monster's activity. Hooked into the primitive human computer network known as…
oracknows | February 3, 2008It's Superbowl Sunday. Even someone who's not much of a football fan and who doesn't really care much one way or the other about either team can't help but get caught up in the hype a little bit. In any case, there seems little point to doing any serious blog posts today, given that (1) it's a weekend and traffic plummets on the weekend and (2) it's Superbowl Sunday, which leads me to expect that traffic will be even lower than a typical Sunday. Oh, and also because I just learned that Hitler was a Cowboys fan:
I've posted a parody of this particular scene from the German movie Downfall…
oracknows | January 17, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 17, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 17, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 16, 2008Only someone who's a bit of a tech geek who hasn't yet decided which format to purchase for HD video and is a World War II and Holocaust history buff could find this video as hilarious as I do. (Not to mention someone who, due to a confluence of craziness in professional and personal life, didn't have any time yesterday to do more substantive posts, as the output of brief and/or lighter weight fare today demonstrates.) I do have to admit that I struggled with whether the creators of this video must have had a visit from a certain undead Führer, who had taken a chomp out of their brains, but…