Of a Homely Painter, Nazi Loot and a State Without Honor

Theft comes natural to the statist. First the Nazis, then the Third Way Eurosocialists sucking into their collective whatever they take to be their own.

DutchNews: "Cash call to unite divided Jan Steen painting"

The Hague city council is to begin raising money to buy half a Jan Steen painting owned by an American heiress, Trouw reports on Tuesday.

The Wedding Night of Tobias and Sarah was cut into two at some point in the 19th century and each half went its separate way. One half is currently owned by the council, the other by the daughter-in-law of Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker.

Goudstikker's collection was confiscated by the Nazis during World War II and later ended up in the Dutch national art collection. The other half had been left to the Hague in its owner's will.

In 1996, the two halves were reunited and repaired and put on show at the Bredius Museum in the Hague. But in 2006, Goudstikker's heiress won the right to claim back 202 works of art from the Dutch state, including half the Jan Steen painting.

The city council had been planning to sell her its half, but a court last week rejected the plan because the painting had been willed to the city. Now the council wants to raise €1.8m to buy out the heiress. However, as Trouw points out, it is not known if she actually wants to sell. >>>

Historical Movie Theater: A Short History of Bad Ideas

Tonight in Politeia's historical movie theater a video version of a British Independent Television News documentary, compiled by the renowned suspense film director, Alfred Hitchcock.

The work was withheld by the post war government because it was deemed to gruesome to be shown. The footage was shot by Allied military on entering the Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II.

The movie illustrates the first in a series of posts on Politeia, "A Short History of Bad Ideas", aiming to chart the lofty ideas underpinning collectivist ideals and the resulting dystopias. The first instalment is entitled, "The Victims".

Watch "The Holocaust", compiled by Alfred Hitchcock.

Adolf, the Suffering Artist

The Daily Beast: "It's a Hitler"

Need some new artwork for the mantle? According to The New York Times, 13 paintings that may be by Adolf Hitler will be sold at auction in Britain in April.

“The artworks, which include a possible self-portrait, would have been made when he was a struggling artist in Vienna, vying unsuccessfully to gain entrance to its Academy of Arts before he fought in World War I.

The auction house Mullock’s, which is conducting the sale, said that the paintings are by Hitler and are likely to fetch roughly $580 to $1,448 dollars each.” (...) >>>

You can admire more 'Hitlers' at the Hitler Historical Museum ...

- Filed on Articles in "Join the Nazi Appreciation Movement" -

"Triumph of the Will", or Defeat of Delusion

On display tonight is a full length National Socialist gem, a propaganda film directed by German artist and photographer, Leni Riefenstahl featuring the 1934 Nazi rally at Nurnberg.

Like Hitler's blueprint for war "Mein Kampf" the classic may well be on the index of some countries in Europe, but it proves that censoring and suppression is a mistake: "Triumph des Willens" - or "Triumph of the Will" - is a revelation as well as an education.

We need to keep in mind that Corporal Hitler was elected into power just a year earlier, in 1933 on a narrative of restoring to its former glory the Fatherland, home of the victims, the German People.

They saw themselves as victims on a number of counts. First of all, of the greedy, selfish, materialistic Anglo-Saxon liberal Capitalism; then from the perspective of the Marxist dialectic, which views the world entirely from a oppressor versus oppressed agonistic.

Furthermore the defeat in World War I for which the Jewry, Communists and other subversives were blamed in a Sorelian myth (the Dolchstoß Legend), was a third contribution to the self image as an underdog. The harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty did the rest for the narrative of victimhood.

World War I had been wholesale slaughter and the Versailles Treaty was no joke. Can you blame a people, a leader or a party for fostering and furthering the ideal to right such a wrong? Many righteous Germans, other Europeans and Americans thought not.

Sir Winston Churchill wrote in his Nobel Prize winning "Memoirs of the Second World War": ""I had no national prejudices against Hitler at the time. I knew little of his doctrine or record and nothing of his character. I admire men who stand up for their country in defeat, even though I am on the other side. He had a perfect right to be a patriotic German if he chose. I always wanted England, Germany and France to be friends."

On the ideological level we find in the title of the movie a somewhat curious statement: the triumph of will, but whose will? Corporal Hitler's? No, its a notion that can be traced back to the collectivist philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideal society can best be summed up as a theofascist tribe, having replaced the role of the sovereign ruler with the community's under the State. That entity was thought of as having an animus of its own - the 'common will' -  the infallible standard of morality to whose sovereignty all drones have a duty to answer and submit.

Corporal Hitler, the National Socialist Party and all that happened as a result, suddenly doesn't seem that enigmatic anymore!

For whatever reason, today we don't speak of the will so much anymore. In Postmodern times it's all about subjectivity, personal taste and "if it pleases us". So, ways are found to pleasantly manipulate us. And when that's the case we may suddenly find it in our hearts that, "Yes, we can". The pragmatism is the same though: we do whatever we want because, hey ... it's Us!

Finally, we can now witness for ourselves the curious observation made frequently by historians: the pounding rhetoric - not just of victimhood - but also of peace and concord from the man we now know to have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the last century.

Here's one of Riefenstahl's master pieces, "Triumph of the Will". More on her formidable legacy on this site.



- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled" -

Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy!

... with a pro human record like the Russian Communist Party's, who wouldn't feel deeply offended at Hollywood's creative license? Everything else aside (!) thanks to their successful agitprop everyone has forgotten they had been secretly wheeling and dealing with their Hegelian brother party - the National Socialists - until Hitler betrayed them. Only then did they come to the Allied side ...

"The 1922 anti-Versailles Rapallo Treaty between the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union against the Western Allies is hardly ever remembered, let alone its secret addendum allowing Germany to train their military in Soviet territory. ["(...) the Soviet Union [was] crawling with German engineers, instructing Soviet generals on the uses of poison gas and the intricacies of tank warfare (...)", Tom Reiss, "The Orientalist", Random House, 2006, p. 187]

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 is today a buried public secret. It remained in effect until 1941 when Hitler in Operation Barbarossa invaded the Soviet Union. The treaty foresaw in another secret protocol that divided Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. All were subsequently invaded, or forced to cede territory to Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. Stalin joined the Allies against Nazism only on 1941 after Hitler treacherously turned his back on his former conspiracy partner. Since then 'Fascist' is the pejorative designation of choice for all opponents of 'progress'".
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Yahoo!News: "Indiana Jones Makes Russian Communists See Red"

Russian Communist Party members condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.

The comments were made at a local Communist party meeting and posted on its Internet site www.kplo.ru. The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, went on release in Russian cinemas on Thursday. Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.

In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.

"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.

Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Party have dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves as the defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones outright to prevent "ideological sabotage."

"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.

"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its "anti-Soviet propaganda." (...) >>>

- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled" -

Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy! - now updated with historical perspective

... with a pro human record like the Russian Communist Party's, who wouldn't feel deeply offended by the Hollywood creative license? Everything else aside (!) thanks to their successful agitprop everyone has forgotten they had been secretly wheeling and dealing with their Hegelian brother party - the National Socialists - until well into WWII when Hitler betrayed them. Only then did they come to the Allied side ...

"The 1922 anti-Versailles Rapallo Treaty between the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union against the Western Allies is hardly ever remembered, let alone its secret addendum allowing Germany to train their military in Soviet territory. ["(...) the Soviet Union [was] crawling with German engineers, instructing Soviet generals on the uses of poison gas and the intricacies of tank warfare (...)", Tom Reiss, "The Orientalist", Random House, 2006, p. 187]

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 is today a buried public secret. It remained in effect until 1941 when Hitler in Operation Barbarossa invaded the Soviet Union. The treaty foresaw in another secret protocol that divided Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. All were subsequently invaded, or forced to cede territory to Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. Stalin joined the Allies against Nazism only on 1941 after Hitler treacherously turned his back on his former conspiracy partner. Since then 'Fascist' is the pejorative designation of choice for all opponents of 'progress'".
______________________________________________________________

Yahoo!News: "Indiana Jones Makes Russian Communists See Red"

Russian Communist Party members condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.

The comments were made at a local Communist party meeting and posted on its Internet site www.kplo.ru. The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, went on release in Russian cinemas on Thursday. Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.

In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.

"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.

Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Party have dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves as the defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones outright to prevent "ideological sabotage."

"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.

"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its "anti-Soviet propaganda." (...) >>>

The Injustice of Revisionism

At times it is simply unbelievable where totalitarian criminals and their spin-doctors can get away with! We did some posts recently on deontology: the field of ethics dealing with good-intent-bad-results-never-mind, the Left's permanent get-out-of-jail card.

Below we have another example. Watch the heading: it is gotspe! No one has the advantage of ignorance these days, or it must be due to the dumbing-down that passes for liberal education since roughly 1965.

The trick is reframing. Not only must we live with the false Left and Right dichotomy (which should read Left and Right Socialism), also they managed to emerge from history as the 'good guys'. This is done by inserting small snippets of text into articles such as the present:

"[they] ... founded the group at the beginning of the twenties after experiencing the horrors of war and revolution." They were the self-same people who were responsible for 'the horrors of war and revolution,' so that their vision of the collective may be build on its ashes. Instead the suggestion is dropped that these sons of peace were the actual victims of the opponent's wars!

It is unimaginable there would be such an exhib on Adolf Hitler's artistic efforts. Picture the outrage! And rightly so. Yet the crimes as a result of the central 'philosopher' of the Cologne exhibit are ongoing to this day!

Here we also have a splendid example of the Postmodern literal use of the metaphor. An entire blog dedicated to 'art as a weapon' (since 1990).

The picture is a work by Franz-Wilhelm Seiwert. Who knows what triggered his outrage of Chicago in 1887 is kindly requested to enlighten us. The Encyclopedia of Chicago surely has no idea! It cannot have been anything as bad as the Russian gulags, or the Great Leap Forward, or Cambodia's killing fields, to name but a few instances. A humane world for all, indeed ...!


Art Daily: "A Humane World for All: The Rhinelandish Artist Group the Cologne Progressives 1920-33

Thinking of the Cologne carnival and Karl Marx doesn´t come into mind immediately. Rhinelandish life style and Marx´s philosophy by Marx don´t have much in common. But the [German] philosopher published a paper in Cologne and the artists which are now on exhibition at the Museum Ludwig were both Marxists and followers of carnival.

"Progressive Cologne 1920-33. Seiwert – Hoerle – Arntz“ presents paintings and prints created by three of the most important representatives of the Cologne Progressives. Their pictures have an exceptional position in German art between World War I and II. The painters Franz W. Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle and the printer Gerd Arntz founded the group at the beginning of the twenties after experiencing the horrors of war and revolution.

They dedicated their art to the fight for a better society. Painting was for them a "weapon". Art and politics were very closely related. The Progressives´ realism didn´t portray the world at its surface but exposed its inner structures and mechanism. With reduced forms the Progressives give a constructed view of the world and their main theme is the working class. Although rooted in expressionism the pictures don´t depict man in general but the individual as a concrete social subject. After being persecuted by the national socialists the Cologne Progressives fell (...) >>>

Corporal Hitler's Master of Ceremonies

Sir Winston S. Churchill in his Nobel Prize winning "Memoirs of the Second World War" touches briefly on one of the most colourful people of the interbellum. Without context or further identification - we'll fill that in later - he mentions meeting one Putzi Hanfstaengl during the summer of 1932 while on a research trip for the purposes of his book "Life of Marlborough".

"At the Regina Hotel a gentleman introduced himself (...) and spoke a great deal about "the Fueher", with whom he appeared to be intimate. As he seemed to be a talkative fellow, speaking excellent English, I asked him to dine. (...) After dinner he went to the piano and played and sang many tunes and songs in such a remarkable style (...) He was a great entertainer (...) He said I ought to meet him (the Fuehrer), and that nothing would be easier to arrange. Herr Hitler came every day to the hotel about five o'clock, and would be very glad to see me."

Churchill is giving an account of his considerations, in the process giving us a lesson in patriotism, chivalry, and realism. It just goes to show how 'politically correct' we've all become! We'll come back to the subject later in the post.

"I had no national prejudices against Hitler at the time. I knew little of his doctrine or record and nothing of his character. I admire men who stand up for their country in defeat, even though I am on the other side. He had a perfect right to be a patriotic German if he chose. I always wanted England, Germany and France to be friends."

Then Churchill happened to pass a few adverse remarks, questioning Herr Hitler's "so violent views about the Jews," and the arrangement was stopped short from the German side. "This was the last I saw of 'Putzi' (...) Thus Hitler lost the only chance of seeing me."

Putzi Hanfstaengl resurfaces in another literary master piece. The joy of one of the best books I have come across in years could easily have been spoiled by the politically correct activities of the Dutch publishers who, for reasons best known to themselves, are marketing the book to an audience of multicultis, describing the protagonist as pleading for 'the multicultural society' and 'diversity'. This is a ludicrous notion in the context of the interbellum. Perhaps such a philistine approach to marketing has occurred in other countries as well. The English language 2006 Random House Trade Edition I know for a fact to have escaped the addition of 'narrarives'.

"The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss is not a piece of cheap propaganda for activists to exploit for their own purposes. It is a thoroughly and uniquely researched work that accounts hitherto less known historical and personal facts. It is well written, and chronicles a fascinating and remarkable story, encompassing four empires, three continents, three religions, two revolutions and two world wars. I have already written about it on earlier occasions, in "History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!".

An episode during the early period of the advancing Nazi party, touches the surreal and the absurd in a truly hilarious manner. Reiss describes Putzi - "little squirt" in Bavarian dialect - as Hitler's Harvard educated Press Secretary, creative cheerleader and organiser of Hitler's Flying Circus ......

"the fastest political tour in history, using trains, planes and automobiles to shuttle the führer around the country (...) a three-engine Lufthansa D 2001 and three long, black Mercedes saloons (...) raced together across Germany, with Hitler in the lead car, the top down, a leather flight helmet keeping his hair in place. (...) Hitler thrived on the crazy hours and the speed of it all. It was a political blitzkrieg. But the real how was in the air, when the candidate would descend on German cities (...). The sympathetic German papers took to calling these the Freedom Flights, and they contributed mightily to the growing myth of Hitler as Germany's 'dashing' savior - its redeeming angel from the skies, descending on all parts if the fatherland. (...)."

Churchill must have caught Hanfstaegnl in 1932 during one of the Flying Circus' political road tours. Unbeknownst to Churchill the entertainer's full name was Ernst Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, "mother a Sedgwick from the old New England family. (Two of his grandfathers had been Civil War generals; one of them, a German immigrant 48er, was a pallbearer at Abraham Lincoln's funeral.) (...) His father was one of the most prominent men in Munich in the late nineteenth century, and the Hanfstaengls had visitors such as Mark Twain, Richard Strauss, and Fridtjof Nanson, the famous arctic explorer and passport inventor, to their lavish villa. How on earth had this white-shoe boy gotten involved with a bunch of lower class, anti-Semite beer-hall politicians?"

"Putzi was the Nazi movement's only Harvard man. Though a figure of fun among the hard-core Nazis - Putzi played 'Sam' to Hitler's Bogart, entertaining him at the end of the day with his piano playing - he was instrumental in making Nazism salonfähig (...) Hitler used Hanfstaengl's affable nature and white-shoe pedigree to forge many of his important links to German and American rich people (...) Putzi was the connection to old American, British and German families."

In 1922 Putzi talks to a young American military attaché in Germany, Captain Truman-Smith, because "all the revolutionary nonsense down in Bavaria had the embassy concerned". "Putzi wrote in his 1957 memoir 'Unheard Witness' how Truman-Smith provides him with a Press ticket to a meeting with "the most remarkable fellow I've ever come across", Adolf Hitler. Truman-Smith requests him to have a look and report back. He heard Hitler speak at the Kindlkeller about Kemal Ataturk and the example of Mussolini, and ... joined the movement."

An inventive cheerleader for the Harvard football team, Putzi transferred that position to Hitler's Nazi entourage. (...) According to Putzi's memoir, he and Hitler were together at the house of the Nazi's semiofficial photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, in Munich at the time:

I started playing some of the football marches I had picked up at Harvard. I explained to Hitler all the business about cheerleaders and marches, counter-marches and deliberate whipping up of hysterical enthusiasm. I told him about the thousands of spectators being made to roar Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah!" in unison and of the hypnotic effect of this sort of thing. I played him some of the Sousa marches and then my own Falarah [Putzi's contribution to the Harvard cheerleading repertoire], to show how it could be done by adapting German tunes, and gave them all that boyant beat so characteristic of American brass-band music. I had Hitler fairly shouting with enthusiasm. "That is it, Hanfstaengl, that is what we need for the movement, marvelous, and he pranced up and down the room like a drum majorette.

After that he had the SA band practicing the same thing. I even wrote a dozen marches or so myself over the course of the years, including the one that was played by the brown-shirt columns as they marched through the Brandenburger Tor on the day he took over power (...) that is the origin of it and I suppose I must take my share of the blame."

That summer (of 1932) saw daily gun battles between Nazis and Communists on the streets of Berlin. Christopher Isherwood, living in Berlin at the time, thought there was something false and ritualistic about the street fighting, as though both parties were in it mainly for publicity purposes."

(...) There was no doubt that both sides (...) had an interest in breaking down public order and scaring everyone away from the center parties (...) a second round of national elections proved the extremists' violence making strategies effective: both Nazis and Communists gained at the expense of moderate parties (...)."

After the elections of November 1932 "even the pretense of fighting between the Nazis and Communists was dropped. It was time to deliver the coup de grâce to the bourgeois center - the German democracy (...) Communists and Nazis stood arm in arm, one shouting 'Red Front,' the other 'Heil Hitler!" (...) rows of low-rent housing hung with alternating rows of fluttering swastika and hammer-and-sickle flags."

We forget the methods and purposes of terrorism and violence at our peril. Here's the news from Athens a few weekens ago.

- More excerpts from "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss on the history of the two Socialist movements in future postings.

La Vie Nazi en Rose ... II

- Continued from Part I -

Our post "La Vie Nazi en Rose" needs urgent updating. A problem has been detected that is reflected in the latter part of the post's title. Apparently André Zucca's colour photos of Paris during Nazi occupation were a bit too much, well ... en rose. This is hardly surprising given that Zucca was requisitioned by the Nazis to work for propaganda magazine Signal.

EURSOC is reporting on the fall-out of the recent exhibition "Parisians under the Occupation" at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. It would seem that the shadow of World War II is still too overpowering to allow an objective, historical perspective. Either that, or ...

The People's Cube recently commented on the postmodern inability to take emotional distance - even from events as remote as Biblical times. Enjoy the Cube's correct opinions for progressive liberals in "The Renegade Exodus and Other Crimes of Moses". But now back to the Zucca exhibit:
EURSOC: "Don't Mention The War"

It seems the exhibition has caused red cheeks in the Paris city hall. The assistant cultural affairs mayor said that it the expo was "embarrassing, ambiguous and badly explained." The mayor's office quickly released a leaflet claiming that Zucca's photographs gave a "distorted" picture of life under Nazi rule. The work, it added, "chooses to show nothing, or little, of the reality of Occupation and its terrible consequences." The problem seems to be that Zucca depicted life as carrying on much as normal.

It's true, some of the images are almost glamorous. Little is seen of the suffering of the city's Jews (just two yellow stars in the show) and there isn't much in the way of the jackboot of Nazi oppression. According to the Paris city hall, this is because Zucca was following his German masters' brief to show Paris life continuing much as normal - hence his use of colour film for German magazines, a rare commodity in wartime France.

More sceptical souls, including the Independent's John Lichfield, suggest that Zucca was merely showing what he saw: In his defence, Lichfield quotes philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who was scathing about the myth of Parisians being ordered about by gun-toting Nazi officers. Sartre wrote that Parisians invented this fantasy in order to assuage their guilt at not doing enough to resist the Occupation: In the years since the war ended, France has cultivated the image of suffering Paris, doubtless inspired by General de Gaulle's myth that during the war, Frenchmen were either Resistance (the vast majority) or collaborators. (...) >>>

Jean-Paul Sartre was a persistent Mao apologist in the face of genocide towards Rousseauian agrarianism. He should know about myths and self-delusion ...

La Vie Nazi en Rose ...

EURSOC: "Paris in the Occupation"

Opening today at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris is an exhibition of colour photographs by André Zucca titled "Parisians under the Occupation."

At a time when all photography in Paris was strictly monitored by the Nazis, Zucca (who died in 1973) was the only French snapper working in colour. He was authorised to photograph daily life in the French capital for a German magazine distributed in occupied nations: The Nazis wanted to show how life continued in the city despite the Occupation. So there are street and café scenes (in both rich and poor quartiers), with now and again, smiling workers and chic women, with now and again the shock of a Nazi soldier on the street, or, in the case of a photo of the rue de Rivoli, Nazi banners draped on the occupiers' headquarters. The exhibition continues until June 1. >>>


- Update: "La Vie Nazi en Rose", part II

The German Revolution

The present is a review of an episode in "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss, a thoroughly and uniquely researched work that recounts hitherto less known historical and personal facts. Set during the interbellum, it chronicles a fascinating and remarkable story, encompassing four empires, three continents, three religions, two revolutions and two world wars. Earlier posts were "History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!"

xox

On Monday, 11th November 1918, delegates from the new Social Democratic government of Germany officially signed the armistice, ending Germany's part in the Great War 1914-1918. The Kaiser moved to comfortable exile in The Netherlands.

But mob rule reigned Germany. Leftist leader Emil Eichhorn, self-appointed chief of the People's Revolutionary Berlin Police Department - personally freed 650 prisoners from police headquarters at the head of a mob. Others seized newspaper offices, government buildings, stores, and telegraph offices.

The demobilising army agreed not to oppose the government, in exchange for a free hand in quelling the revolutionary unrest. The government took the responsibility and the blame for the humiliating surrender, while simultaneously delegating political power - the state's monopoly of force - to Rightist officers.

As the army demobilised in Berlin, all moral constraint melted away. Here's an account of artist George Grosz: "The city was dark, cold and full of rumours. The streets were wild ravines haunted by murderers and cocaine peddlers ... People denied all knowledge but whispered about secret manoeuvres by the Black Reichswehr or a newly formed Red Army." Bursts of machine-gun fire and hand-grenade explosions were common. Grosz: "Inhabitants (...) went up on the roof to shoot pigeons and people. Their sense of proportion (...) got misplaced."

Three hundred people perished each day from influenza alone. Demobilised soldiers started selling their weapons on the streets. Those who held on to their arms followed their unit commanders into Mafia-style, loosely connected militias, known as the Freikorps (Free Corps), a proto type of the later Waffen SS, but originally consisting of volunteers in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813-1815.

It was more than just the Red menace which motivated the Freikorps, their originators being the ancestors of all guerilla fighters and revolutionary insurgents of the next century. An even earlier connection identified them with the Teutonic Knights. They were anxious to proof themselves worthy of the medieval battles in the East against Poles and Tartars.

The Western powers restricted the German military, but motivated by fear of the Soviet revolutionary threat, refrained from disarming and restraining the Freikorps. In 1919 the Freikorps spontaneously and without orders moved against Poland, Lithuania and Latvia - the same countries the Nazis re-invaded in 1941.

Despite their symbolism and ancestry the Freikorps did not succeed in turning the tide of the Whites against the Reds and descended on a city in chaos, armed to the teeth, wreaking havoc on the new republic.

The revolutionary neighbourhoods were attacked without restraint. The front was brought to civilian society. This maintained the fantasy that the war had not really ended. Unarmed civilians had become the enemy. It "was a lesson in local brutality and cold-bloodedness that prepared many of them for work as storm troopers or concentration-camp guards in the years to come."

A footnote provides an important psycho-pathological context: "Many returning soldiers, no matter their political disposition, would display signs of sociopathy. Homicides and rapes became commonplace in postwar Berlin, brutal acts committed by men with no previous criminal record (...)"

"The panic evoked in Germany by the fate of Russia drove so deep into the psyche of ordinary Germans that they could not see that the forces of the new Right were equally hostile to bourgeois values like law, order and moral restraint. The Freikorps ethic, every bit as revolutionary as that of the Bolsheviks, masqueraded behind a false aura of conservatism and pacification.

Real conservatives believed in the value of traditions, but the Freikorps believed exactly the opposite - for them, the Great War had proved that the morality and social structure of peacetime were corrupt and meaningless. The politics behind the war had been a fraud, but the fighting had been real, and in this reality, the 'New Man' of the Right-wing revolution was born."

Author of 'Storm of Steel' and 'Battle As Inner Experience' Ernst Jünger hailed the 'storm soldier': "the coming of a whole new race, smart, strong and filled with will, to save Europe from its liberal delusions". "For this New Man, as for the Red revolutionaries, the legal and moral foundations of society were mere bourgeois squeamishness. At the front, only the fundamental values of bravery, ruthlessness, and camaraderie mattered - and the fundamental precept of Freikorps ideology: all society is the front."

The more the Freikorps suppressed the revolution, the faster it spread. Bolshevik cells and councils (Soviets) sprang up in towns and cities across Germany. The Munich Soviet was led by a former mental patient who wrote threatening letters to the Pope and declared war on Switzerland for failing to provide a shipment of locomotives.

In April 1919 the Bolshevik triumvirate led by Lenin associates made an attempt to launch Red Terror. Bourgeois and local aristocrats (every locale was supposed to have one, in the absence of which the village headmaster was supposed to volunteer) were jailed, property was confiscated, opposition presses smashed and schools shut down - "though this was not a real Red Terror but more of Red Terror manqué. But in the event of insufficient ruthlessness on the part of the German Left, the German Right was only too happy to fill the void."

The Freikorps attacked Munich as if it were a foreign city. The Reds held the town for three days, at the end of which more than a thousand were shot, including seminary students.

The next year saw a coup by Dr Kapp and General Ludendorf. According to an anecdote Corporal Hitler came too late to join it. The ousted Social Democratic government being unable to turn out the Freikorps against the Freikorps, called for a general strike. This succeeded, sending the putschists fleeing to Sweden, upon which the Spartacists raised a 80,000 strong 'Red Army of the Ruhr' in order to seize the mining and heavy industry in that area. The reinstated Social Democratic government retaliated by setting the Freikorps loose on Berlin. The Reds in the Ruhr were crushed.

"Finally, the major disturbances ended, though street battles and small uprisings continued to break out in towns across the fatherland. In the spring of 1921" as the protagonist of "The Orientalist" crossed the border into Germany, the country had fallen into uneasy quiet ...

- More excerpts from Tom Reiss' "The Orientalist" on the history of the two Socialist movements in next posts.

- Up next: Both Sir Winston S. Churchill in "Memoirs of the Second World War" and Tom Reiss' in "The Orientalist" touch on one of the most colourful people of the interbellum, Hitler's Master of Ceremonies.

Philips' Communist Recommendation

Christie's in London has the small, but fine art collection of the late Dr. Anton Philips (1874-1951) on auction.

Christie's "About" section on the relevant website yields an eulogy about the entrepreneur, containing a typical example of the double standards that are common in the false dichotomy in dealing with the two Counter-Enlightenment twin ideologies, National Socialism and Communism.

Whereas Soviet propaganda took care that Nazi collaboration eternally constitutes a stain on corporate history, soliciting and associating with Communists comes as a recommendation. Consider the following excerpt:

"(...) Anton Philips ranked amongst the foremost entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Trained as a banker in Amsterdam and London, at the age of twenty he joined the small company his brother Gerard and his father Frederik had founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Anton was responsible for the commercial side of the enterprise and built a network of industrial customers in western Europe.

Anton travelled to Russia at the turn of the century. (...) a Russian anecdote serves as a perfect example for both his perseverance and creativity. In 1922, two decades after his first visit to Moscow, Anton tried to win over Lenin himself by presenting him with a framed picture of his elderly home in the Dutch town of Zaltbommel. In the accompanying note Anton pointed out that Karl Marx, his great-uncle from paternal side, had completed several chapters of Das Kapital enjoying the hospitality of the Philips family. Vladimir Iljitsj declined, saying that the nephew had apparently either not read or understood his uncle's writings."

Image: Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Portrait of a woman with long hair

The collection is great though ... the "Two studies of a young man" by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) is a true gem! The accompanying video comes highly recommended ... by us!

Update:

Art Daily: "New Record for Sir Peter Paul Rubens Oil Sketch at Auction at $7.7 Million at Christie's"

Christie’s evening auction of Important Old Master and British Pictures including Works from the Collection of Anton Philips realised a total of £18,802,200 / $38,021,808 / €26,041,047. The top lot was Two studies of a young man, a little-known work by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), which realised £3,828,500 / $7,741,993 / €5,302,473, the highest ever price for a Rubens oil sketch at auction.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens’ (1577-1640) Two studies of a young man was painted between 1615 and 1617. The panel (46.5 x 65.5 cm.) is a study for Balthasar in The Adoration of the Magi at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and shows a Levantine head, pictured en face and en profil respectively. The sitter is unkown but judging by his tanned skin, plain shirt and leather hat, it is thought that he could have been a contract labourer building the extension of the artist’s house in the Wappen, Antwerp.

The picture was rediscovered in 1934 when Mr Douglas Lewis of Merton Park, near Wimbledon, brought it to Christie’s having acquired the work in a box of paintings at a local West Country auction. The picture was recognised as a Rubens and was offered at Christie’s on 23 November 1934 where it sold for £1,560. It was acquired soon afterwards by Anton Philips who displayed it as a central work of his private collection at his house Villa de Laak. The picture left this sanctuary on very few occasions, and was exhibited at The Museés Royaux des Beaux Arts in 1937 and the landmark Rubens oil sketch exhibition at The Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1953. >>>

The Other Case of Art Appreciation: Nazi Loot

Art Daily: "National Archives Announces Discovery of "Hitler Albums"

Today at a National Archives press conference, Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, Michael Kurtz, Assistant Archivist for Records Services and Robert M. Edsel, author of Rescuing Da Vinci and President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, announced the discovery of two original leather bound photograph albums documenting art that was looted by the Nazis during World War II, both of which Mr. Edsel will donate to the National Archives under separate terms.

These albums were created by the staff of the Third Reich’s Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). This special unit was organized in the summer of 1940 under Reich Leader Alfred Rosenberg, initially to collect political material in occupied countries for exploitation in the "struggle against Jewry and Freemasonry." The ERR established its base of operations in Paris in July 1940 and on November 5, Hermann Goering assigned the ERR the responsibility for the confiscation of "ownerless" Jewish art collections.

Caption: recovered Klimt's portrait of Adele Block-Bauer

On November 18 of that year, Adolf Hitler ordered that all confiscated works of art be brought to Germany and placed at his personal disposal. During the next several years, the ERR would be engaged in an extensive and elaborate art looting operation in France that was part of Hitler’s much larger premeditated scheme to steal art treasures from conquered nations.

The Archivist hailed this discovery as "one of the most significant finds related to Hitler’s premeditated theft of art and other cultural treasures to be found since the Nuremberg trials. It is exciting to know that original documents shedding light on this important aspect of World War II are still being located, especially so because of the hundreds of thousands of cultural items stolen from victims of Hitler and the Nazis that are still missing. Documents such as these may play a role in helping to solve some of those mysteries and, more importantly, helping victims recover their treasures. >>>

Be Cool! Join the Nazi Appreciation Movement!

Bored to death with vacuity? Islam no alternative? Why not join the latest fad? Everybody else does ...

- American Thinker: "Mainstreaming Hitler" - "In an era when a head of state openly threatens to wipe Israel off the map it should come as no shock that Hitler is so popular that he is being used as an advertising icon. ... A Dubai-based company Conqueror Real Estate is standing by a decision to use Adolf Hitler in a national newspaper campaign in the United Arab Emirates."

- Arutz Sheva: "Neo-Nazi Activity Spreading Around the World" - Neo-Nazi activity is rising around the world, as incidents in September and early October were reported in Europe, Southeast Asia and the U.S."

New York
- Anti-Semites erected a four-foot high swastika at a Long Island, New York school this week in the latest of a rash of anti-Semitic incidents.
- Swastikas were also sprayed at another school and hate mail was sent to at least seven Jewish homes.
- On September 23, Yom Kippur eve, a bus outside the Bnei Shimon Yisroel yeshiva in Brooklyn was found marked up with swastikas and anti-Jewish slurs.
- In Williamsburg vandals used soap or lotion to smear the mirrors and bus interior.

Pennsylvania
- A 60-foot wide swastika was carved in a cornfield.
- Huge 600-foot wide swastika was found carved in another cornfield.

India
- A bed linen dealer in India named a new bedspread collection NAZI.

Korea
- A bar in a Seoul promotes a Nazi theme: the bar features a red Nazi swastika over the entrance.

Portugal
- First-ever desecration of a Jewish cemetery in the country's capital

Germany
In northern Germany, a news anchorwoman for the region’s public television channel was fired after she praised the way the Nazi regime treated women and the family unit.

Austria
Four soldiers had been suspended from service for creating neo-Nazi propaganda: two videos now also on YouTube.

Czech Republic
Prague officials over the weekend banned a march by the neo-Nazi Young National Democrats who planned to parade through the city's Jewish quarter the day after the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Poland
Vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery in the central city of Kalisz in the latest of several desecrations in the same cemetery over the past several months.

Hungary
Hungarian government officials are also on edge after a large neo-Nazi cell marched in the capital in the first week of September.

- Atlas Shrugs (photos courtesy Pam Geller): "Nazi/Islam Nexus: Inspiration or Conspiracy" - "There is a profound debate at the heart of recent revelation's in the evil nexus between Nazism and Islamism. Melanie Phillips merits a new book on the Nazi roots of Muslim antisemitism. Matthias Küntzel's forthcoming book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 run contrary to the arguments put forth in Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad and his soon to released The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. Bostom's first book provides a much more detailed "alignment." Bostom includes a vile, but seminal essay by Nazi propagandist of extermination turned pious Muslim jihadist Johannes Omar Amin von Leers."

More on the German political scientist and author Matthias Küntzel (Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11) in "Berlin-Tehran: The Counter-Enlightenment Axis".

Update: It is a common mistake to mix up the original Indian swastika with the National Socialist symbol. The former is also known as the Wheel of Life, while the latter .... well, the same but only for a limited sort of people.


Note: Irony or sarcasm is lost on some readers. Present posting would be a good example of the latter.

Live Report of the SIOE Demo in Brussels

Updates on the "Stop the Islamization in Europe".

I am reporting on the demo as news breaks from a number of Belgian sites which are mostly in Flemish. I will make on the spot translations. My typing may not be hundred percent, as speed considerations prevail.

12.00 hours: Assembly now at Schuman Square.

12.10 hours: arrest have been made. Reverting. Socialist Mayor apparently issued a "No Passaran".

12.15 hours: Focus TV - Even before noon some 10 people have been arrested on Luxemburg Square. It is uncertain who they are. Apart from the neo Nazi trolls, there's also fear for Arab European League (AEL)presence. This immigrants advocacy organization is closely linked to Hezbollah. They are best described as Radical Islamicist Marxists. The secessionist Vlaams Belang political party - loosely translated as 'Flemish Interests' - were prominently around. Reverting.

12.35 hours: Brussels News Radio is reporting that the anti Islamization rally has "of course" been prohibited by the Mayor. Brussels' European quarter seems under a state of siege. Mounted police and press everywhere. About 200 Vlaams Belang (VB) people have been arrested very heavy handedly and taken away in police vans to the "Palace of Justice". Its chairman has been filmed - kicking and screaming - and shouting: "Is this democracy in Belgium?!". A number of Brussels Council members are present: mentioned were Johan Arkens, Johan Demol and Jos van Assen. Police presence is massive. At the train (or metro) station a number of Dutch neo Nazi trolls have been arrested. There are a few counter demonstrators around, yelling "racists". Of our people, no mention at all ... reverting.

First photo material: arrest of Frank Vanhecke, chairman VB:

13.00 hours: A number of Flemish and Dutch media are marginally reporting that Philip Dewinter, the political leader of Vlaams Belang, has been arrested, while shouting: "We are against the Islamization of Europe". This is bad news, folks. Our demo is being overshadowed by Vlaams Belang, who - as organization of some repute - draw most of the attention. Our message is "lumped" together with their reputation of being nothing short of "extreme Rightist" (by European crypto Marxist standards, that is). Sht!

14.15 hours: Some Belgian MSM are reporing the demo is basically over. The police tactic seems to be have been to concentrate the demo on Schuhman Sq. This was as per agreement however. I'm still screening, but this seems to be basically it ... No mention of if AEL members are around; some considered the planned counter rally by AEL a ploy, an excuse for Freddy to blackball the SIOE demo, anyway.

14.30 hours: Henrik, commentator on Gates of Vienna, reporting as follows: "My Hungarian friend now reports that they held the planned 1 minute of silence for the victims of 9/11, and that there will be a press conference at 16:30. They are at Luxembourg Square (next to the EP), no police brutality has been spotted there." They seemed to have concentrated their violent efforts on Vlaams Belang ... I'll try to find more on this press conference ...

15.20 hours: First images, a sort of slide presentation (scroll down a bit!) on "Het Belang van Limburg", a provincial news outlet. What it comes down to, is the molestation of VB people, VanHecke and Dewinter, by the police. Further on more VB people in tees and blacks bags over their heads. The elderly gentleman shown at the end of the presentation looks like he just had his first demo. It doesn't look good at all, folks ... reverting.

15.30 hours: International Herald Tribune: "Police arrest 2 far-right Belgian leaders at anti-Islam 9/11 protest" >>>

16.15 hours: Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna reporting as follows: "Italian Euro-Deputy Arrested in Brussels" - From the feedback section at the Brussels Journal - Belgian police have stopped the Euro Deputy of the “Lega Nord” Mario Borghezio before an anti-Islam protest. Borghezio in person told that in a phone call, he told he was in a police van and denounced beatings from police officers. He’s supposely being held with another 20 people."

16.25 hours: Vlaams Belang (VB) website reporting without further details, that French MEP Carl Lang is also one of those arrested.

16.55 hours: More pics on Yahoo News: undisputed First Prize ... Cum Laude (above): Solvit! Indeed ...
Update: this bound, gagged and molested gentleman turns out to be the Vice President of the Flemish Parliament, Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen.

17.05 hours: Dutch Socialist news rag De Volkskrant has an article which describes the typical European attitude that will be our undoing: "The Belgian media criticised the heavy handed police actions; Dewinter and Vanhecke can now present themselves as martyrs. "It's correct that Europe and its values are in danger", reacted Secretary General Terry Davis of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. "But the danger is not emanating from Islam. Our common European values are undermined by demogogues and radicals, both Islamic and Islamophobe, who are exploiting fear and bigotry for their own political profit". ... for the time being it's unSolvit, or more probable: deSolvit! And one more observation: I suppose very few are aware of just how fascist their mindset has become, least of all the Belgian media.

19.00 hours: Vlaams Belang (VB) website has a video running of today's disturbing goings-on in front of the Euro Parliament Building in Brussels. One conclusion from this war zone and its preparations is undeniable: there are three parties calling the shots in Belgium (and this is probably true for Europe as a whole): crypto Marxists, neo Nazis and Islamists: the unholy totalitarian threesom. More on this happy all-in-the-family in tomorrow's post.


Image: courtesy Atlas Shrugs

9/11 Demo in Brussels: We Shall Overcome!

The SIOE organization predicts that on 11th September the Belgian capital Brussels, seat of the European Union, will be a little more crowdy than usual this year.

- Christian pilgrims are going to Brussels to visit the religious places of interest: Brussels cathedral and the old churches that litter the historic centre of Brussels.

- Tourists will flock to the outdoor cafes and pubs around the vast square of the Grote Markt (or Grand Place) for a pint of Jupiler.

(Who will be curiously absent are nationalists and extremists.)

As if by serendipity, a great number of visitors will remember that day the old gospel song of protest, that speaks of the promise of liberty, of freedom from slavery and oppression: "We Shall Overcome".

As long as people will not see, that the chains of servitude have been replaced by the shackles of Collectivism - because the mentality of slaves is such, that the uncertainties and responsibilities that come with liberty, fill him with a paralyzing fear - we shall not be free but always seek to impose new tyrants to calm the irrational phobias.

In Europe it has been like that since Rousseau made the fundamental mistake that man - in the absence of God, the magnate that predisposes him towards the good - would instead descend into a ruthless struggle for personal supremacy, Brussels Socialist mayor Freddy Thielemans' "onmenselijke logica van het profijt", the inhuman logic of profit.

Is it any wonder he prohibits the march of free people who stand up for human autonomy - liberty as described by John Locke, de Montesquieu, de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill?

The slaves have found a sedative for their fear of freedom in Collectivism and Egalitarianism, which they erroneously believe is the 'common good'. Their demand we all submit to it - to honour the commonality - should tell them something of the character of their ideology.

Radical Islam is but the latest in a long line of ideological panaceas for a non-existent evil: the result of man's distrust of himself. Consider the words of an essayist we'll hear more of in these pages, Wildmonk:

"... the "common will" that Rousseau developed ... (f)ar from being a moderating influence and a force for preventing the excesses of Capitalism, (it) became the most savage, bloody instrument of oppression in the history of mankind".

The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, the Russian Revolutions, Communism and Socialism in its various other guises, National Socialism (Nazism), China's Great Leap Forward, Cambodia (the latter two thanks to Rousseau's peaceful agrarian tribalism): this is the track record of Counter-Enlightenment ideology. The figures are staggering! Communism alone is good for 110 million dead, casualties of World War II as a result of Nazism, 72 million!

It should put to deep shame the Left's perpetual meme of egalitarian Collectivism's moral high ground!

Wildmonk: "The conclusion is inescapable that Rousseau's multi-headed hydra is genocidal in its practice regardless of its justification in philosophy. Nonetheless, Rousseau's philosophical descendants enjoy considerable support in both American and European academia and among the European media and political elite. Genocide is no deterrent to this support ..."

With this state of conduct the remnants of Egalitarianism, answering to the ridiculous abbreviation, Pomo (Postmoderns), would have us quietly submit to the latest Collectivist concoction, their Unholy Alliance with Radical Islam (see Chart I: The Straight Red Line) under the threat of senseless violence and terrorism.

It's well known they've done away with history, which in their linguistic tradition of hysterical hyperbole is characterised as "just waive after waive of ethnic cleansing". That's probably a good second after hecatomb after hecatomb on the alter of man's fear of himself, of what he'd become, if genuinely free? And so the vicious circle of the delusion of 'forced submission to the common good' perpetuates itself.

Why not celebrate the new millennium with true human progress: let's convince our misguided, fearful brethren of their persistent common error: come visit Brussels on 9/11 and sing away the demons of phobia that keep them shackled to their chains: We Shall Overcome The Fear of Ourselves ... Some Day!