Who's the Hitler?

Editor and Publisher excerpts a Wall Street Journal editorial from neocon Norman Podhoretz here:

In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force--any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938.

It's all so confusing. I thought Grenada was Hitler. Or maybe it was Nicaragua, no wait, it was Panama. Nope, it was Somalia. Serbia? Iraq?

Funny how Godwin's law never applies to neocons. But at least the neocons are approaching that mythical status called an "opposite indicator." You can be assured that whatever the neocons think should be done is almost certainly 180 degrees from the thing that would work best.

The truly disgusting thing is these people have not one ounce of shame or remorse for their already failed policy in Iraq, and they're all set to attack another country. Sick, twisted old men sending the young to die for ideological fantasies.

Who's the Hitler?

Random Hitler Spotting

Bimbo. Bimbo. Bimbo. Bimbo. Bimbo. Bimbo. Swine.

Boris Artzybasheff - The Pied Piper of Berchtesgaden

"Add Boris Artzybasheff to my list of favorite illustrators I’ve never heard of before but should have. Boris appears to have been active in the 1940s and illustrated a number of children’s books. But his political cartoons are what fascinate and disturb me."

Polish court drops case against 'Mein Kampf' publisher

A regional court in Poland has conditionally dropped a criminal case against a Polish publisher charged with breaking copyright laws for publishing Adolf Hitler’s ’’Mein Kampf’’. The state of Bavaria in Germany, which owns the rights to "Mein Kampf" brought a case in 2005 against the publishing house in Poland.

I'm just shocked to find out that anyone maintained copyright on the book, let alone a governmental agency. I guess it's a good way of controlling the publishing of the book, at least in Germany, but it still strikes me as a little bit creepy and odd.

A tasty little mashup of BEP and amusing Hilter web graphics

Hitler photos taken by British spy made public

I found this on Google news today. The Jerusalem Post ran this story:

Photographs of Adolf Hitler taken by a British spy just before the outbreak of World War II have been made public for the first time. The pictures show the Nazi leader arriving at a concert dressed in tails, receiving flowers from two girls at a music festival and getting out of a black convertible.

However, they didn't actually publish the photos or anything, which begs the question: Why write a story about photos being shown for the first time and then not show the photos in the article? An even better question might be: Why blog about people not showing photos without digging up the photos myself and actually having something worthwhile going on?

I dunno, but here's a picture that has nothing to do with anything:

Lee Evans was Hitler's weatherman

Lee Evans will star as young Jew who goes into hiding during the war and assumes the identity of Nazi meteorologist Ernest Deisin. He excels at the job however, so much so that he is soon promoted to Hitler's personal meteorologist.

Right. There's no way this movie is going to disappoint. When doing a Hitler comedy, it's virtually impossible to fail on the delivery of laughter. Just ask Mel Brooks.

More Hitler than Hitler

Chris Kelly made some really good points in his blog. Here are the highlights:

"It's Hitler season in Washington, and that's a bad sign. Because stopping Hitler is what we say lately whenever we're getting ready to invade somewhere, torture people, and put them in camps. It's a good thing our boogeyman isn't Dracula, or we'd fight him by drinking blood."

"If Bush [had] wanted to go to war with the actual Hitler, who would he say Hitler was like?"

"... maybe the problem was that the Nazis left wounds that will never heal, and calling anyone else Hitler is a really ignorant, ugly and vile way to yank people's chains."

"This raises a whole list of interesting questions. Like: "Wasn't Saddam Hussein Hitler?" And: "Once you've called someone Hitler, and had a war with them, what do you call the next guy?" Giant Hitler? Space Hitler? Hitler EXTREME? Hillary Hitler?"

This is exactly the sort of rhetoric that, no matter how often people say it, never seems to catch on. It makes one wonder where we'd be without our Austrian Bogeyman to compare any so-called enemy to.

Read his full article

Nazi's suck (and so do their girlfriends, har har)

I don't even remember where I found this.

Hitler Beer

I found this collection of celebrity beer at a shop in Venice, Italy last summer. It was 4 euro, so I passed on sampling it because: A) I'm cheap and B) I hate beer.

I'm going to Venice this weekend though, so maybe I'll buy a bottle as a souvenir or something.

The so-called "Hitler Mouse" Show.

Look, I realize this is a stretch, but they're calling him "Hitler Mouse" in the headlines. Apparently, there's a Palestinian children's show featuring a mouse who is openly critical of Isreal's policy on Palestine, if not openly hateful. Here's a transcript from a scene:

Hazem: "Why did you cheat?"
Farfur: "It was against my will, uncle Hazem, because the Jews destroyed our home, and when the Jews destroyed our home I couldn’t find my notebooks."
Hazem: "By Allah's will, we will promote through Islam good, love and justice. Ask history, and ask the Jews, did they ever live in a time period better than the one they live under Islam. And ask the Christians how their security was assured in the churches and monasteries...Once we were! Do you remember Andalus [Spain and Portugal]? This dear Andalus will return one day.
Sara: We remind you dear kids, that the glory and the civilization of the [Islamic] nation, you shall restore!

Personally, I don't find the text to be all that Hitleriffic, but I can see how it would definitely raise some eyebrows. Frankly, it's just another "+2 Sensational Bonus Attack" headline by way of idiotic comparisons to the Nazis.

Hitler Angry with Comparisons to Bush

".... Number one, my name is Adolf Hitler, not Papa Joe. Number two, I am sick and tired of all these nitwits going around and comparing George W. Bush to me. Such a comparison is absolutely ridiculous. Granted, I may be one vile evil bastard. I can live with that. But I am not stupid!" READ MORE...

WTF?

Seoul Apple Store with Nazi Toy display

This whole Nazi thing isn't really a big deal in Asia. I mean, it's a big deal, but not with the negative connotations such things have in the West. Imagine going to an Urban Outfitters and finding a Nazi themed display in the store. Everyone would go ape shit, and the store would be in disgrace.

I dunno, this is just a weird thing, but I guess I'm sort of glad to see Nazi Germany treated with some objectivity as opposed to the "Nazi Germany was Evil" edict we're handed as early as elementary school. Prejudice is rarely a productive part of educating oneself.

Picture and article via BoingBoing

How Hitler's Mustache Came to Be

By TOM WELLS
May 07, 2007
ADOLF Hitler used to have a bushy handlebar moustache — but trimmed it down to his trademark “toothbrush” to wear a gas mask. The revelation emerged after papers belonging to a soldier who served with the Nazi dictator were discovered.

Alexander Frey and Hitler were lowly privates in the German army in World War I. They were among thousands of soldiers who were ordered to cut their beards and moustaches to fit under respirator masks — introduced to combat mustard gas attacks. Until then Hitler had a thick, full moustache. Frey later wrote that the tyrant’s former bushy moustache “covered the ugly slit of his mouth”. Even though Hitler shaved his moustache, he was left temporarily blinded by a gas attack in 1918.

Naked Behavior

NAKED BEHAVIOR
A Provocative New Series by R. Bielenberg

This is like "Men are from Mars" in a suspenseful story form. Scientists study natural human behavior at German hideaway in '44. An innocent staff member falls in love with one of the subjects and rescues her from Nazi experiments.

A man's story that women find irresistible.

L'il Hitler

Code Warrior: Giant Nazi Battle Bot CGI

Time Magazine: Hitler is Man of the Year!... Oops, we mean Betrayer!

In 1938, after Hitler managed to redraw the map of Europe in his favor, bringing 10,500,000 more people (7,000,000 Austrians, 3,500,000 Sudetens) under his absolute rule. These facts helped Time make the decision to name him Man of the Year, a dubious honor that is not an endoresement or a rejection: It simply shows who, of all the newsworthy people, made the biggest impact on humanity that year, according to Time Magazine. Even so, the article is something of a dichotomy with its title that seems to echo reverence and its prose that condemns him for his acts:

"Civil rights and liberties have disappeared. Opposition to the Nazi regime has become tantamount to suicide or worse. Free speech and free assembly are anachronisms. The reputations of the once-vaunted German centres of learning have vanished. Education has been reduced to a National Socialist catechism."

"The genius of free wills has been so stifled by the oppression of dictatorship that Germany's output of poetry, prose, music, philosophy,art has been meagre indeed."

By the time he'd finally killed himself on April 30th, 1945, America had been openly at war with Germany long enough to have lost 200,000 at the hands of German soldiers. Time issued a different cover for that story: Hitler's face with a blood-red X across it and a title "The Betrayer." No dichotomy between the title and the text here. The test drips with hatred for Germany and Hitler.

"Judging by present appearances, it does not seem likely that Adolf Hitler will go down in German history as a martyred leader. . . . Hitler, if he were still able to wonder what his historical function had been as everything crumbled, might say with Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust: I am Ein Teil -von jener Kraft, Die stets das Base will und stets das Gute schafft.(Part of that force, That is forever willing evil, continually produces good.)"

They Saved Hitler's Brain

They Saved Hitler’s Brain is a film you and your family need to see. It’s far from mere entertainment – in fact, it’s not entertaining at all. It’s just a cold, hard look at what happened after the war.

Y’see, when the jig was finally up, these Nazi dudes in the bunker sawed off the Fuhrer’s head and kept it in a jar, where – thanks to surprisingly advanced medical techniques – it continued issuing orders and consulting them on the creation of a Fourth Reich. Fortunately, the good guys found out and chased the Nazi dudes around and, like, somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at the car with the head in it and it melted like a scented candle in a bong shop. There are some facts in between, but the cough medicine I’d ingested to help me “understand” this cinematic milestone was unexpectedly potent. KEEP READING...

Jodie Foster to Play Riefenstahl in upcoming film

by Monika Bartyzel

For seven years there have been efforts to get a biopic on Leni Riefenstahl up and running. The German director, who died a few years ago at the age of 101, was of course, infamous for her friendship with Hitler and her propaganda films for the Third Reich. She filmed rallies, the 1936 Olympics and even the German victory parade in Warsaw after the fall of the city. While she maintained throughout her years that she was naive about the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis, she's been accused of using concentration camp captives in her films and sent a note to Hitler after the fall of France: "Your deeds exceed the power of human imagination. They are without equal in the history of mankind. How can we ever thank you?" The reality of her knowledge probably fell somewhere in the middle.

Her actions made her shunned by most after the end of the war, and it's no surprise that she refused to sign a contract for Jodie Foster to make the project. The actress would not give Leni the right to axe aspects of the film she didn't agree with, and Riefenstahl actually preferred Sharon Stone over Foster to play herself. (Perhaps she would have had a change of heart after Basic Instinct 2?) With the director/photographer having passed away, the Guardian reports that the project is once again gearing up, with Foster set to star and Rupert Walters currently writing the script. With a director planned to be attached in the next few months, producer Gabriele Bacher hopes to get the film into production by the end of the year with the help of Foster's production company. There will, of course, be controversy over spotlighting Riefenstahl, but it should be intriguing. Considering the technical advancements she made in the film medium, I wonder if they will use her artistic vision and eye for imagery when filming her story.

Hitler and Jesus: Second Coming

I suppose the historical irony here is that Hitler may have actually believed he WAS Jesus, according to some historians.