Cold War: Map shows areas prohibited to Soviet travelers in the United States
This map shows where Soviet citizens, who were required to have a detailed itinerary approved before obtaining a visa, could and could not go during their time in the United States. Most ports, coastlines, and weapons facilities were off-limits, as were industrial centers and several cities in the Jim Crow South.
These restrictions mirrored Soviet constraints on American travel to the USSR. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had closely controlled the movement of all foreign visitors since World War II. A 1952 law in the U.S. barred the admission of all Communists, and therefore of Soviet citizens. (An exception was made for government officials.)
» via Slate
Image description: The Capitol and Library of Congress Jefferson Building on April 11, 1895 (above) and April 11, 2013 (below).
Photo by the Architect of the Capitol
Alexandra Public School. London, Ontario, ca. 1900-1925
Credit: Albertype Company/Library and Archives Canada/PA-031812
News to Me: Police And Military Facing Tough Choice: Constitution Or Gun Control
Posted 1 min ago by
I have family and friends that have been in law enforcement or still are. When they took their oath of office, they all swore to uphold the Constitution and laws of their city, state and nation. When anyone joins the military, they take a similar oath to protect the country and uphold the Constitution.
There is another thing that all of those oaths of office have in common. The section about protecting the country and Constitution says that they will protect against foreign and domestic threats. Our Founding Fathers and the people that established our military and various law enforcement agencies knew back then that we may face threats to our way of life from within the country as well as from without. Domestic threats have always been a real possibility.
Today, it is more than a possibility, it has become a reality. State and federal governments are the ones posing the domestic threats to the US Constitution and laws of the land. All of the attacks being made at the state and federal level against the Second Amendment are, by definition, domestic threats to the US Constitution and as such could be considered to be acts of treason.
So what do law enforcement officers and military personnel do in this situation? They have all sworn an oath to protect the Constitution. Do they stand by that oath and defy state and federal government officials by not enforcing these unconstitutional laws? Do they face being fired or court martialed for defending the Constitution? These are the tough choices that many will soon be faced with. Listen to this powerful video about them having to make this decision:
The question is easier for county sheriffs because the US Supreme Court has already ruled that they are the supreme law enforcement officers in their jurisdiction, even over federal agencies. Many county sheriffs have already signed letters and told their citizens that they will not enforce any federal gun control law that they believe to be unconstitutional.
But what about city and state cops? What are they going to do? For instance, in Colorado, they recently passed a whole barrage of unconstitutional gun control laws. Do city and state police enforce those laws or do they defend the state and federal Constitution?
This is surely a difficult and troubling time to be in law enforcement or the military. Careers are sure to be ruined by the decisions these men and women are about to make. If their careers are not ruined, then their personal values and duty to country will surely be compromised and they will have to live knowing it.
Years ago, I applied for the city police department back home. I passed the written and physical test and was waiting to hear if I would be accepted to attend the training academy. Then I got a call telling me that they discovered that my eyesight without my glasses was just over the allowable qualifications and I was rejected. Had I been accepted and became a police officer, I know that I would choose to defend the US Constitution over the anti-constitutional gun control laws being passed. Even though it could mean my career and retirement, I believe it’s more important to stand for the Constitution. If not, then the Constitution will inevitably be replaced by something far inferior and totally un-American.
What would you do? What do you want your local and state police to do? What do you expect military men and women to do? The last time they were faced with a situation like this, it resulted in the American Civil War. Are we on the verge of a second one?
30 Years Later, Forged Hitler Diaries Enter German Archives
When the German newsweekly Stern announced in April 1983 that it had acquired Hitler’s previously undiscovered diaries, the magazine’s exclusive prompted a worldwide sensation. The editors promised to later hand over 60 handwritten volumes to West Germany’s Federal Archives for posterity.
Instead the magazine’s scoop turned into a publishing debacle, when it was quickly discovered that the purported diaries were forgeries.
Now, in an unlikely coda 30 years later, fake history was formally enshrined as real history on Tuesday when Germany’s Federal Archives said they would accept a collection of the forgeries from Stern as news media rather than Nazi history.
» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)
Coast To Coast AM - April 24 2013 Conspiracies and JFK Assassination MRC2CAM.com (by C2CAMDAILY2)
George Noory interviews Richard Belzer, best known for his part on Law and Order: SVU. It is about his new book about all the related conspiracy theories related to JFK. Along with other related political conspiracy theories.
12 yr Girl Discovers ALL U.S. Presidents Except One Related to One British King (by SurvivalWithBushcraf)
A bit strange to me. One of my ancestors is John Adams and I am also a distant cousin to the Bushes. Sent some shutters down my spine.
Esfahan by hiddentravel on Flickr.
White House Reunion at the Nixon Library
Although Presidential Library dedications are not the only settings for Presidential camaraderie, the ceremonies offer rare opportunities for the rest of us to see these men interact with each other.When the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum first opened as a private facility on July 19, 1990, it marked the first time that four Presidents were seen together at a public event. The ceremony featured speeches from then-President George Bush, and former Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and Ronald Reagan.
Seventeen years later, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum officially became a part of the Federally operated Presidential libraries system. On July 11, 2007, a ceremony was held to announce the partnership between the Richard Nixon Foundation and the National Archives.Photo: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum dedication. July 19, 1990. Courtesy of the Richard Nixon Foundation.
Watch the live webcast of the George W. Bush Presidential Library dedication today at 10am CT
Don Jail has done its time: After 150 years of controversy, notorious Toronto facility to be shut down
The Don Jail is full of ghosts. Ghosts of the executed, of the murdered, of the suicides; ghosts of their countless victims, whose legacies are forever tied to these men. The terrible history hangs heavy in the hallways, reveals itself in the etchings on cell walls, still preserved beneath layers of thick paint.
But after casting its shadow over east-end Toronto for a century and a half — surviving a raft of controversies and repeated calls for reform — the city’s most notorious jail is preparing to ship out its final inmates and shut down for good. The oldest section, featuring the iconic limestone image of Father Time above its entrance, has already morphed into administrative offices for the new Bridgepoint hospital next door, which begins treating patients this weekend. The rest of the Don, attached to the east end of the original building, will be decommissioned and torn down once the province opens its replacement, the Toronto South Detention Centre in Etobicoke, this fall. (Tyler Anderson/National Post; Illustrations: Richard Johnson/National Post)
News to Me: 100 Years Old And Still Killing Us: America Was Much Better Off Before The Income Tax
By Michael Snyder
Did you know that the greatest period of economic growth in American history was during a time when there was absolutely no federal income tax? Between the end of the Civil War and 1913, there was an explosion of economic activity in the United States unlike anything ever seen before or since. Unfortunately, a federal income tax was instituted in 1913, and this year it turned 100 years old. But there was no fanfare, was there? There was no celebration because the federal income tax is universally hated. Sadly, most Americans just assume that there is no other option to an income tax. Most Americans just assume that it has always been with us and that it will always be with us. This year, the American people will shell out approximately $4.22 trillion in state and federal income taxes. That amount is equivalent to approximately 29.4 percent of all income that Americans will bring in this year, and that does not even take into account the dozens of other taxes that Americans pay each year. At this point, the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long, and those that are honest and pay their taxes every year are being absolutely shredded by this system. But wouldn’t the federal government go broke if we didn’t have a federal income tax? No, actually the truth is that the federal government did just fine before there was an income tax. In fact, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger since the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve were created by Congress back in 1913. As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve system was actually designed to trap the United States in a debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape, and the federal income tax was needed to greatly expand the size of the federal government and to soak the American people of the funds necessary to service that debt. But it doesn’t have to be this way. America was once much better off before the income tax and the Federal Reserve were created, and we could easily go to such a system again.
What we desperately need to do is to teach the American people a little history lesson. The truth is that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913 when there was no federal income tax at all. The following is from Wikipedia…The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873. The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.Sadly, most Americans cannot even conceive of an economy like that. Most Americans cannot even imagine having a nation without a massively bloated federal government and without an unelected central bank centrally planning our financial system.
But you know what?
It worked. In fact, it worked fantastically well.
The period between the Civil War and 1913 propelled the United States to greatness. Just check out all of the good things that Wikipedia says happened for the U.S. economy during those years…The rapid economic development following the Civil War laid the groundwork for the modern U.S. industrial economy. By 1890, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.
An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the “Second Industrial Revolution.” Railroads greatly expanded the mileage and built stronger tracks and bridges that handled heavier cars and locomotives, carrying far more goods and people at lower rates. Refrigeration railroad cars came into use. The telephone, phonograph, typewriter and electric light were invented. By the dawn of the 20th century, cars had begun to replace horse-drawn carriages.
Parallel to these achievements was the development of the nation’s industrial infrastructure. Coal was found in abundance in the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania south to Kentucky. Oil was discovered in western Pennsylvania; it was mainly used for lubricants and for kerosene for lamps. Large iron ore mines opened in the Lake Superior region of the upper Midwest. Steel mills thrived in places where these coal and iron ore could be brought together to produce steel. Large copper and silver mines opened, followed by lead mines and cement factories.
In 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, a step in the process that became known as mass-production.But if we didn’t have an income tax, how did we fund the government? Well, we mostly did it with tariffs and excise taxes. The following is from a recent article by Thomas R. Eddlem…
Prior to ratification of the 16th (income tax) Amendment in February 1913, the federal government managed its few constitutional responsibilities without an income tax, except during the Civil War period. During peacetime, it did so largely — or even entirely — on import taxes called “tariffs.” Congress could afford to run the federal government on tariffs alone because federal responsibilities did not include welfare programs, agricultural subsidies, or social insurance programs like Social Security or Medicare. After the Civil War, tariff revenues sometimes suffered under a protectionist policy ushered in by the Republican Party that supplemented federal income via excises on alcohol, tobacco, and inheritances. But before the war, the need for tariff revenue to finance the federal government generally kept the tariff at reasonable levels. During wartime throughout early American history, the Founding Fathers were able to raise additional revenue employing a different method of direct taxation authorized by the U.S. Constitution prior to the 16th Amendment. These alternative taxing methods gave the young American nation embarrassing peacetime budget surpluses that several times came close to paying off the national debt.So why didn’t we stick with that system?
Well, early in the 20th century the “progressives” and the social planners started to take control in Washington.
And one of the things that “progressives” and social planners love is an income tax. In fact, the second plank of the Communist Manifesto is a “heavy progressive or graduated income tax”.
Of course they promised us that income tax rates would always remain low. And at first they were quite low. The following is from an article by Adam Young…The presidential election of 1912 was contested between three advocates of an income tax. The winner, Woodrow Wilson, after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, called a special session of Congress in April 1913, which proceeded to pass an income tax of 1% on incomes above $3,000 and applied surcharges between 2% and 7% on income from $20,000 to $500,000.But once the “progressives” and the social planners get their feet in the door, they always want more.
And we have seen how things have worked out. Today, the American people are being taxed into oblivion.
In a previous article entitled “Show This To Anyone That Believes That Taxes Are Too Low”, I listed dozens of other taxes that the American people pay each year in addition to federal and state income taxes…
#1 Building Permit Taxes
#2 Capital Gains Taxes
#3 Cigarette Taxes
#4 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#5 Dog License Taxes
#6 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)
#7 Federal Unemployment Taxes
#8 Fishing License Taxes
#9 Food License Taxes
#10 Gasoline Taxes
#11 Gift Taxes
#12 Hunting License Taxes
#13 Inheritance Taxes
#14 Inventory Taxes
#15 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#16 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#17 Liquor Taxes
#18 Luxury Taxes
#19 Marriage License Taxes
#20 Medicare Taxes
#21 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare
#22 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you don’t buy “qualifying” health insurance under Obamacare you will have to pay an additional tax)
#23 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income that goes into effect next year)
#24 Property Taxes
#25 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#26 Toll Booth Taxes
#27 Sales Taxes
#28 Self-Employment Taxes
#29 School Taxes
#30 Septic Permit Taxes
#31 Service Charge Taxes
#32 Social Security Taxes
#33 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#34 Tanning Tax (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)
#35 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
#36 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
#37 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
#38 Telephone State And Local Taxes
#39 Tire Taxes
#40 Tolls (another form of taxation)
#41 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#42 Utility Taxes
#43 Vehicle Registration Taxes
#44 Workers Compensation Taxes
Yet even with all of these taxes, our local governments, our state governments and our federal government are all absolutely drowning in debt.
In another previous article entitled “24 Outrageous Facts About Taxes In The United States That Will Blow Your Mind”, I listed a number of reasons why our federal income tax system has become a complete and utter abomination that can never be fixed…
1 - The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.
2 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. Imagine what our society would look like if all that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.
3 - 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.
4 - There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.
5 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.
6 - Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.
7 - In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.
8 - The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes.
9 - According to The Tax Foundation, the average American has to work until April 17th just to pay federal, state, and local taxes. Back in 1900, “Tax Freedom Day” came on January 22nd.
10 - When the U.S. government first implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority of the population paid a rate of just 1 percent, and the highest marginal tax rate was just 7 percent.
11 - Residents of New Jersey pay $1.64 in taxes for every $1.00 of federal spending that they get back.
12 - The United States is the only nation on the planet that tries to tax citizens on what they earn in foreign countries.
13 - According to Forbes, the 400 highest earning Americans pay an average federal income tax rate of just 18 percent.
14 - Warren Buffett had an effective tax rate of just 17.4 percent for 2010.
15 - The top 20 percent of all income earners in the United States pay approximately 86 percent of all federal income taxes.
16 - Sadly, as Bill Whittle has shown, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38 percent of the federal budget.
17 - The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world (35 percent). In Ireland, the corporate tax rate is only 12.5 percent. This is causing thousands of corporations to move operations out of the United States and into other countries.
18 - Some tax havens are doing a booming business in setting up sham headquarters for U.S. corporations. For example, the city of Zug, Switzerland only has a population of 26,000 people but it is the headquarters for 30,000 companies.
19 - In 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2012, corporate taxes will account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.
The wealthy have become absolute masters at avoiding taxes, and the poor are not able to pay much.
So who always gets squeezed?
The middle class does.
No matter what our politicians promise us, the hammer is always brought down on the middle class.
And now, according to The Huffington Post, the IRS says that it can even read our old emails without a warrant to make sure that we are paying all of the taxes that we should be…The IRS apparently interprets that authority very broadly, the documents show: as long as you’ve stored your email in a cloud service like Google Mail, and as long as those emails haven’t been deleted after a few months, the agency thinks it doesn’t need a warrant to read them.
The idea of IRS agents poking through your email account might sound at the very least creepy, and maybe unconstitutional. But the IRS does have a legal leg to stand on: the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 allows government agencies to in many cases obtain emails older than 180 days without a warrant.
That’s why an internal 2009 IRS document claimed that “the government may obtain the contents of electronic communication that has been in storage for more than 180 days” without a warrant.It should be noted that the IRS is claiming that it does not use emails “to target” specific taxpayers, but notice that they are not promising not to use old emails against taxpayers once they are officially being audited or investigated…
“Contrary to some suggestions, the IRS does not use emails to target taxpayers. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.”In any event, the truth is that we have one of the most complicated and one of the most intrusive tax systems in the history of the world.
Don’t the American people deserve better?
What do you think?
Should America go back to a system where there is no income tax and no Federal Reserve?
Oh, Alright?: The History of North Korea
North Korea has been at the forefront of international politics lately. With its constant threats toward South Korea, Japan, and the United States, and its promises of using nuclear weapons against its perceived enemies, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has many people, and many news agencies, worried. But while it is unlikely that the DPRK would ever launch nuclear weapons or try to engage in a real war against South Korea, due to the certainty of their defeat and mutually assured destruction involved whenever using nuclear weapons, if there was not this limit on their actions they most certainly would try it.
Why is a question that comes to mind when examining the policies and actions of North Korea. The DPRK has been a mysterious and isolated country since the 1950, the start of the Korean War. How can we understand a place that is so alien to us? I think the answer lies in history.
Even in the distant historical past, Korea had been known as the ‘Hermit Country’, though at that time it was unified by the Choson Dynasty that ruled from 1392 to 1910. A theme throughout Korea’s history has been invasion and attempts of influencing the relatively small nation by its larger neighbors, namely China, Japan and in the 19th century, the United States. Yet until the late 19th century, Korea remained mostly independent of these larger powers, with the exception of China, who’s power over East Asia they understood and did not seek to interfere with. However, with the decrease in China’s power and the rise of the Japanese Empire, Korea’s position was about to change. After the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, all other country’s interests in Korea had been forcefully removed by the Japanese. It wasn’t long until Korea was made a part of the Japanese Empire in 1910.
Japanese occupation in Korea was not a benevolent one. The Japanese government sought to remove all traces of Korean culture, forcing Koreans to learn and speak only Japanese. In addition, Korea’s economy was run mostly for Japan’s benefit. Ultimately, Korea was treated by Japan as a sort of colony. There were some attempts at uprising, but most of them were unsuccessful until the onset of World War 2. During the conflict, rebels sprang up and began to weaken Japanese power in Korea, each of the different rebel groups having a different agenda in mind. One of these guerrilla fighters was Kim Il Sung, who believed in a communist Korea. He began fighting to bring down the Japanese allegedly since 1926, though due to the glorification of Kim Il Sung in the DPRK, this date is to be taken with a grain of salt.
When Japan surrendered in 1945, the Allies were quick to split up Korea into the United States administrated South and the Soviet governed North. While the governorship of Korea was intended to be a unified, joint-effort by both the Soviet and US governments, the politics of the Cold War complicated matters. In 1948, the lack of compromise on the idea of a unified Korean government led to the formal creation of North and South Korea as two separate countries. Earlier, right after the surrender, King Il Sung had achieved a position of influence partly due to Soviet help and partly because the public were supportive of his time as a guerrilla fighter. When North and South Korea formally split, Kim Il Sung was made premier of North Korea by the Soviets and head of the Communist Party in Korea.
In Early 1949, Kim saw an opportunity to unify South Korea after the withdrawal of U.S. forces left only an inexperienced South Korean army. He went to the Chinese and Soviet governments for political and military support, eventually gaining the go-ahead from Stalin. The Korean War began in 1950, with a North Korean offensive into South Korea. After three years of bloody fighting, ending in a grisly stalemate. In 1953, a truce was declared, forming the current boundaries between North and South Korea.
After the war, Kim Il Sung introduced his Juche idea, namely the idea that North Korea should remain independent from outside powers. As time went on, the DPRK’s government turned into a hereditary communist dictatorship. After decades of propaganda, North Koreans believe it was the United States who began the Korean War. In recent history, famine and economic weakness plague North Korea this day. Some would argue that propaganda continues to demonize Japan and the United States to distract from the DPRK’s problems at home.
This is just a brief history of North Korea, but one can easily see how the country would think itself a victim of larger global powers. In many ways, North Korea is a communist holdover from the Cold War, making it a country hostile to the capitalist South Korea, Japan, and United States. Propaganda has intensified historical uneasiness about outside powers. At the same time, it makes sense why North Korea would dislike the United States and Japan, since the United States was the one who, using the threat of violence, guaranteed trading rights and Japan organized a brutal occupation of the country. While the DPRK is still certainly fabricating much of the hate toward its neighbors, there was still quite a lot of hate to build on.
Sources: globalEDGE, BBC News, Worden’s North Korea: A Country Study
Thatcher: “No! No! No!” (by ninthwave)
In her honor of her death Margaret Thatcher’s speech that killed her political career. When she so bravely came out against the EU and the euro.
What ever else you can say about her. You have to admire her stance, a no win stance. When both the so called left and right in the UK wanted to be part of the euro and the EU.
Help me tear down walls: In 1932, Fox Helped Make Propaganda Films for Hitler By Webster G....
In 1932, Fox Helped Make Propaganda Films for Hitler
By Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D., 9/30/2010
Observers of the current US election season have noted the prominent role of Rupert Murdoch’s reactionary Fox News Channel, which currently employs GOP and “Tea Party” partisans Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, and others. Some have alleged that a television network carrying so many potential political candidates and propagandists on its payroll is unprecedented. But there is a precedent for large-scale Fox intervention into a political campaign.
In 1932, the German newsreel subsidiary of Fox News Channel’s corporate ancestor, Fox Films, intervened in national elections in Germany.
The candidate Fox supported was Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The basic facts are available in German historian Hans Mommsen’s authoritative study entitled The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, which is translated into English and widely available in over five hundred libraries in this country. Mommsen, one of the most distinguished postwar German historians, is now Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Bochum. In Mommsen’s account of Nazi propaganda techniques, we find the following: “There was nothing that escaped the ingenuity of Nazi propagandists. A case in point was the use of film. Under Goebbels’ influence the party had begun to exploit the potential of the political propaganda film to an unprecedented extent as early as 1930. Such films were shown mostly in places where Hitler and other prominent party leaders were not able to appear as speakers. For the manufacture of outdoor sound film, the NSDAP turned to an American company, Twentieth Century Fox.“1
Scholar William G. Chrystal confirms this account and provides further important details in his 1975 article on “Nazi Party Election Films, 1927-1938.” Chrystal writes: “Support for two additional 1932 election films, Der Führer (The Leader), and Hitlers Kampf um Deutschland (Hitler’s Struggle for Germany) came from the German-based subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Tönende Wochenschau (Fox Weekly Sound Newsreel [i.e., Fox Movietone News]). In addition, they also supplied some mobile sound film vans to be used during the campaign. Thus at least part of Hitler’s support in that critical time was the result of Fox’s help. The background for this assistance is unknown since Fox Tönende Wochenschau records were destroyed during the war,” according to a July 9, 1974 letter to Chrystal from Joseph Bellfort, who was at that time the vice president of the Twentieth Century Fox International Film Corporation.2
Fox Helped Hitler’s Voice to Reach Many Germans for the First Time
Of the first of these two films, Chrystal writes: “…Der Führer (The Leader) was one of two sound films subsidized by Fox Tönende Wochenschau. Released on April 13, 1932, it was originally titledVolk und Führer (Nation and Leader). It was a relatively short film, 263 meters long, but it provided many people with their first opportunity to hear Hitler speak. These films were accompanied by an apparently popular tide which enabled their wider dissemination. In his diary on March 6, 1932, [Nazi propaganda boss Joseph] Goebbels noted: ‘We now also win the movie theater for our propaganda.’”3
This film lasts about five minutes. In it Hitler, speaking in Berlin on April 4, 1932, develops his characteristic theme that the German army was betrayed and stabbed in the back in November 1918 by the Weimar politicians, especially the Social Democrats. This speech was part of Hitler’s campaign for president, in which he was defeated on April 10, 1932 by von Hindenburg but nevertheless received almost 37% of the votes, which represented a new high in Nazi support up to that time. In the subsequent parliamentary election held on July 31, 1932, the Nazis added 19% to their previous totals to emerge for the first time as the largest single party in Germany with 38% of the votes — thanks in part to the assistance rendered to Hitler by Fox Movietone News.
Concerning the second film Fox made for Hitler, Chrystal writes: “…new Reichstag elections were called for November 6, 1932…. The second of the Fox-subsidized productions, Hitlers Kampf um Deutschland (Hitler’s Struggle for Germany), appeared on August 30. It comprised 606 meters of Hitler’s July, 1932 Eberswalde speech. An indication of the effectiveness of this speech and its film record can be found in its later use. When Reichstag elections were held again in March 1933, this same film was re-issued under a new title, Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler Spricht (Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler Speaks).”4
Hitler’s speech in the Brandenburg Stadium in Eberswalde on July 27, 1932, one of three he gave that day, is a classic demagogic performance. As Mommsen points out, “in the hectic 1932 election campaign” the Nazis organized mass rallies featuring “speeches that Hitler tailored specifically to the psychotic public mood that had been created by the deepening crisis.” (Mommsen, p. 338) “We are intolerant,” raved Hitler, promising to drive more than thirty other political parties out of Germany. “We have one goal before us, to fanatically and ruthlessly shove all these parties into the grave,” he added. This was the message which Fox Movietone News helped deliver to the German public. Six months after he gave this speech, Hitler seized power as chancellor and began consolidating his power as dictator — once again thanks in part to the help of Fox Movietone News.
Note that Chrystal speaks of Fox has having “subsidized” Hitler’s critical 1932 election campaigns. This can be considered as the 1930s equivalent of illicit contributions in kind to a politician under current US election law, which is the charge often made against Fox News today, as for example in a recent filing by the Democratic Governors’ Association in regard to the Kasich gubernatorial campaign in Ohio.
Fox Movietone News and the Rise of European Fascism
Robert Edwin Herzstein, in his article entitled “Movietone News and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, 1930-1935,” explored the partial archive of Fox Movietone News for these years now at the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina.5 It is clear from this article that the regular weekly Fox Movietone newsreels also played into the hands of the Nazi and fascist media strategy. Proud of this record, “Fox called its newsreel operations ‘the mightiest of them all.’” (Herzstein, p. 314)
In the Fox Movietone newsreels and outtakes of Nazi rallies, says Herzstein, “one senses the enthusiasm, the communion between leader and masses…. Hitler is often seen standing in the presence of his friend and foreign press chief Ernst Hanfstaengl, apparently oblivious to the prying movie camera…. Hitler, in part a media creation, was better equipped to manipulate the masses by putting them on the movie screen. He made them part of the media action, and the outtakes show us how that was done.” (Herzstein, p. 317) Hitler’s rivals and adversaries, including his predecessor as chancellor, von Papen, the Austrian leader Dollfuss, and the Social Democrat Dittman all appear in the Fox footage in a negative or unflattering light by comparison.
One big fan of Fox Movietone News was the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who was given the opportunity to make one of his famous bravura speeches for the Fox camera. According to Herzstein, one of the first sound newsreels shown in the United States depicted Mussolini in March 1929 speaking in English directly to the American people, saying: “Your talking newsreel has tremendous possibilities. Let me speak through it in twenty cities in Italy once a week and I need no other power.” (Herzstein, p. 318) In the mind of the Duce, newsfilm was thus already the handmaiden of fascist power. Herzstein’s extensive survey of the Fox Movietone archive for 1930-1935 apparently yielded no examples of any criticism or unfavorable coverage of the fascist dictators, since none is mentioned in his article.6
The last Fox Movietone newsreels appeared in the United States in 1963. According to the Wikipedia article on Movietone News, parts of the Fox Movietone newsreel collection are still “owned and managed by the Fox Film Corporation’s corporate successor (and namesake), Fox News Channel. The majority of the collection is stored in New Jersey, mostly unseen since the newsreels were originally shown in theatres. During its early years, Fox News Channel had a weekend show which played the newsreels.”7
As the philosopher George Santayana rightly observed in 1905, “when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
1 Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 339. emphasis added. Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures to form Twentieth Century Fox in May, 1935.2 William G. Chrystal, “Nazi Party Election Films, 1927-1938,” in Cinema Journal XV:1, Autumn 1975, p. 32, published by the University Texas Press for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, emphasis added. See also Hans Barkhausen, “Kurzübersicht: Filme der NSDAP, 1927-1945,” and “Die NSDAP als Filmproduzentin,” in Günter Moltmann and Karl Friedrich Reimers, Zeitgeschichte im Film- und Tondokument: 17 historische, pädagogische, und sozialwissenschaftliche Beiträge, edited by Günter Moltmann and Karl Friedrich Reimers (Göttingen: Musterschmidt-Verlag, 1970).3 Chrystal, p. 33.4 Chrystal, p. 35.5 Robert Edwin Herzstein, “Movietone News and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, 1930-1935: A Guide for the Researcher, Teacher, and Student,” The History Teacher XXI:3 (May 1988), pp. 313-320, published by: Society for History Education.
