Thursday, February 16, 2017

Crusade in Europe, Episode 1 Prelude to War Crusade in Europe by MPI Media Group the rise of Naziism

The surrender at Reims ended the major phase of the greatest military struggle in the history of man. Film dissolves from surrender ceremony to Hitler during his early years of power, covers the rise of Naziism through the Munich conference to the the Munich conference Dunkirk ,England's declaration of war, the fall of France,  and the German air blitz on England in the historic battle of Britain.
THE RISE OF THE NAZI PARTY

Few would have thought that the Nazi Party, starting as a gang of unemployed soldiers in 1919, would become the legal government of Germany by 1933. In fourteen years, a once obscure corporal, Adolf Hitler , would become the Chancellor of Germany.


World War I ended in 1918 with a grisly total of 37 million casualties, including 9 million dead combatants. German propaganda had not prepared the nation for defeat, resulting in a sense of injured German national pride. Those military and political leaders who were responsible claimed that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by its leftwing politicians, Communists, and Jews. When a new government, the Weimar Republic  , tried to establish a democratic course, extreme political parties from both the right and the left struggled violently for control. The new regime could neither handle the depressed economy nor the rampant lawlessness and disorder. This site explores the consequences of Germany's defeat in WWI.


The German population swallowed the bitter pill of defeat as the victorious Allies punished Germany severely. In the Treaty of Versailles , Germany was disarmed and forced to pay reparations to France and Britain for the huge costs of the war. This site contains the complete Treaty of Versailles as well as maps and related material.
The German Workers' Party , the forerunner of the Nazi Party, espoused a right-wing ideology, like many similar groups of demobilized soldiers. Adolf Hitler joined this small political party in 1919 and rose to leadership through his emotional and captivating speeches. He encouraged national pride, militarism, and a commitment to the Volk  and a racially "pure" Germany. Hitler condemned the Jews, exploiting antisemitic feelings that had prevailed in Europe for centuries. He changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German Workers' Party, called for short, the Nazi Party (or NSDAP). By the end of 1920, the Nazi Party had about 3,000 members. A year later Hitler became its official leader, or Führer. 


Adolf Hitler's attempt at an armed overthrow of local authorities in Munich, known as the Beer Hall Putsch , failed miserably. The Nazi Party seemed doomed to fail and its leaders, including Hitler, were subsequently jailed and charged with high treason. However, Hitler used the courtroom at his public trial as a propaganda platform, ranting for hours against the Weimar government. By the end of the 24-day trial Hitler had actually gained support for his courage to act. The right-wing presiding judges sympathized with Hitler and sentenced him to only five years in prison, with eligibility for early parole. Hitler was released from prison after one year. Other Nazi leaders were given light sentences also. This site details Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch.


While in prison, Hitler wrote volume one of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) , which was published in 1925. This work detailed Hitler's radical ideas of German nationalism, antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism. Linked with Social Darwinism, the human struggle that said that might makes right, Hitler's book became the ideological base for the Nazi Party's racist beliefs and murderous practices. This site discusses many of the ideas contained within Mein Kampf.
After Hitler was released from prison, he formally resurrected the Nazi Party. Hitler began rebuilding and reorganizing the Party, waiting for an opportune time to gain political power in Germany. The Conservative military hero Paul von Hindenburg was elected president in 1925, and Germany stabilized.
Hitler skillfully maneuvered through Nazi Party politics and emerged as the sole leader. The Führerprinzip, or leader principle, established Hitler as the one and only to whom Party members swore loyalty unto death. Final decision making rested with him, and his strategy was to develop a highly centralized and structured party that could compete in Germany's future elections. Hitler hoped to create a bureaucracy which he envisioned as "the germ of the future state."
The Nazi Party began building a mass movement. From 27,000 members in 1925, the Party grew to 108,000 in 1929. The SA  was the paramilitary unit of the Party, a propaganda arm that became known for its strong arm tactics of street brawling and terror. The SS  was established as an elite group with special duties within the SA, but it remained inconsequential until Heinrich Himmler  became its leader in 1929. By the late twenties, the Nazi Party started other auxiliary groups. The Hitler Youth , the Student League and the Pupils' League were open to young Germans. The National Socialist Women's League allowed women to get involved. Different professional groups--teachers, lawyers and doctors--had their own auxiliary units.
From 1925 to 1927, the Nazi Party failed to make inroads in the cities and in May 1928, it did poorly in the Reichstag elections, winning only 2.6% of the total vote. The Party shifted its strategy to rural and small town areas and fueled antisemitism by calling for expropriation of Jewish agricultural property and by condemning large Jewish department stores. Party propaganda proved effective at winning over university students, veterans' organizations, and professional groups, although the Party became increasingly identified with young men of the lower middle classes.
1929

The Great Depression began in 1929 and wrought worldwide economic, social, and psychological consequences. The Weimar democracy proved unable to cope with national despair as unemployment doubled from three million to six million, or one in three, by 1932. The existing "Great Coalition" government, a combination of left-wing and conservative parties, collapsed while arguing about the rising cost of unemployment benefits.Reich president Paul von Hindenburg's advisers persuaded him to invoke the constitution's emergency presidential powers. These powers allowed the president to restore law and order in a crisis. Hindenburg created a new government, made up of a chancellor and cabinet ministers, to rule by emergency decrees instead of by laws passed by the Reichstag. So began the demise of the Weimar democracy.
Heinrich Brüning  was the first chancellor under the new presidential system. He was unable to unify the government, and in September 1930, there were new elections. The Nazi Party won an important victory, capturing 18.3% of the vote to make it the second largest party in the Reichstag.
 The Great Depression has a large impact on Germany.
 Thhttps://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/nazirise.htmis is a description of the Nazi Party's 1930 campaign for Reichstag seats.
1932https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/nazirise.htm

Hindenburg's term as president was ending in the spring of 1932. At age 84, he was reluctant to run again, but knew that if he didn't, Hitler would win. Hindenburg won the election, but Hitler received 37% of the vote.Germany's government remained on the brink of collapse. The SA brownshirts, about 400,000 strong, were a part of daily street violence. The economy was still in crisis. In the election of July 1932, the Nazi Party won 37% of the Reichstag seats, thanks to a massive propaganda campaign. For the next six months, the most powerful German leaders were embroiled in a series of desperate political maneuverings. Ultimately, these major players severely underestimated Hitler's political abilities.

Trump’s Mental State

Opinion

LETTER

An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump’s Mental State

    To the Editor:
    Fevered media speculation about Donald Trump’s psychological motivations and psychiatric diagnosis has recently encouraged mental health professionals to disregard the usual ethical constraints against diagnosing public figures at a distance. They have sponsored several petitions and a Feb. 14 letter to The New York Times suggesting that Mr. Trump is incapable, on psychiatric grounds, of serving as president.
    Most amateur diagnosticians have mislabeled President Trump with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. I wrote the criteria that define this disorder, and Mr. Trump doesn’t meet them. He may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder.
    Mr. Trump causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy. It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither).
    Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely. Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy. He can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.
    His psychological motivations are too obvious to be interesting, and analyzing them will not halt his headlong power grab. The antidote to a dystopic Trumpean dark age is political, not psychological.
    ALLEN FRANCES
    Coronado, Calif.
    The writer, professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical College, was chairman of the task force that wrote the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (D.S.M.-IV).

    Monday, February 13, 2017

    Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: the age of the tannaim.

    • ——— (1927). Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: the age of the tannaim. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674487505OCLC 377315. - original published in 3 vols between 1927 and 1930

    Life[edit]

    Moore was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Rev. William Eves Moore and Harriet Foot Moore. He was educated at private schools, West Chester Academy and Wyer's School, entered Yale College as a junior in 1870, then graduated from Yale in 1872,[1] as a Phi Beta Kappa and member of the Skull and Bones society.[2] After teaching at Hopkins Grammar School from 1872–73, he engaged in study and private teaching in Columbus, Ohio, 1873–74, then served as principal of Lancaster (Ohio) High School 1874-75. He studied theology in Columbus 1875-76 and graduated from Union Theological Seminary (New York) in 1877.[1] He was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry at Columbus February 8, 1878 and became pastor of Putnam Presbyterian Church in Zanesville, Ohio from 1878 to 1883. He Married Mary Soper, daughter of Albert Gallatin and Mary Ann (Chester) Hanford on April 25, 1878, in Chicago. They had two sons, William Eves, who died in infancy, and Albert Hanford.[2]
    In 1883 he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew at Andover Theological Seminary where he taught until 1902, serving as president of the seminary from 1899 to 1901 and lectured on the history of religion from 1893 to 1901. During his service to Andover, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1885 from Marietta College, Ohio and 12 years later, from Yale University in 1897. In 1902, he became a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, where he was appointed Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion in 1905, and Cabot Fellow for three years beginning in 1906. During his service at Harvard he obtained a degree of Legum Doctor in 1903 from Western Reserve University. He was a member of Harvard faculty from 1902 until retirement in 1928 and a preacher to the University from 1900 to 1903.[2]
    Moore was a member of the Deutsche Morgenlandische GesellschaftAmerican Philological AssociationArchaeological Institute of AmericaSociety of Biblical Literature, among others,[1] In addition, he was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, serving as its president from 1921–24, and was a member of the American Oriental Society.[3] Besides contributing many articles on Biblical and Oriental subjects in learned journals, he wrote extensively for the "Encyclopaedia Biblica"[4] and served as editor of the Harvard Theological Review.[3] Among his books, History of Religions (1914, 1919) and Judaism (two volumes, 1927) stand out as especially praiseworthy. Mrs. Mary Soper Moore died April 16, 1924. Moore died 7 years later due to general arteriosclerosis and chronic myocarditis, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 16, 1931.[2]





    Books[edit]

    • Moore, George Foot (1895). A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on JudgesInternational critical commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments7. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. ISBN 978-0-567-05004-5OCLC 860107.
    • ——— (1898). The Book of Judges: a new English translation printed in colors exhibiting the composite structure of the book. Sacred Books of the Old and New Testaments, part 7.; Pohychrome Bible. London ; New York: J. Clark ; Dodd, Mead, and Co. OCLC 3343798.
    • ———; Harper, Robert Francis; Brown, Francis, eds. (1908). Old Testament and Semitic studies in Memory of William Rainey Harper. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 3220423.
    • ——— (1911). The Covenanters of Damascus: a hitherto unknown Jewish sect. Cambridge, MA. OCLC 12094453.
    • ———; Lyon, David Gordon, eds. (1912). Studies in the History of Religions. New York: Macmillan. OCLC 2303663.
    • ——— (1913). The Literature of the Old Testament. Home University Library of Modern Knowledge. 65. New York ; London: H. Holt and Co. ; Williams and Norgate. OCLC 9430863.[5]
    • ——— (1913). History of religions, Volume 1: China, Japan, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, India, Persia, Greece, Rome. The International Theological Library. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. OCLC 314138945.
    • ——— (1914). Metempsychosis. Ingersoll Lecture, 1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. OCLC 2490057.[6]
    • ——— (1923). The Birth and Growth of Religion: Being the Morse Lectures of 1922. Morse Lectures, 1922. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. OCLC 322865.
    • ———; Gray, Louis Herbert, eds. (1916). The Mythology of All Races. Marshall Jones Co. - a 13 volume series published between 1916 and 1923.
    • History of Religions (Vol. I, 1913; Vol. II, 1919)
    • ——— (1919). History of Religions, Volume 2: Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism. The International Theological Library. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. OCLC 174399216.[7]
    • ——— (1927). Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: the age of the tannaim. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674487505OCLC 377315. - original published in 3 vols between 1927 and 1930
    • Editor (unfinished work), Albert PikeMaterials For The history of Freemasonry In France and Elsewhere on The Continent of Europe From 1718 To 1859, circa 1905, detached from "The New Age" magazine.
    • ——— (2007). Christian Writers on Judaism: nineteen centuries of apologetics and polemics. Analecta Gorgiana. 7. Piscataway: Gorgias Press. ISBN 978-1-593-33864-0OCLC 171130703. - reprint of journal article

    A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival Hardcover – January 24, 2017 by Melissa Fleming (Author)

    The stunning story of a young woman, an international crisis, and the triumph of the human spirit.
    Adrift in a frigid sea, no land in sight―just debris from the ship's wreckage and floating corpses all around―nineteen-year-old Doaa Al Zamel floats with a small inflatable water ring around her waist and clutches two children, barely toddlers, to her body. The children had been thrust into Doaa's arms by their drowning relatives, all refugees who boarded a dangerously overcrowded ship bound for Sweden and a new life. For days, Doaa floats, prays, and sings to the babies in her arms. She must stay alive for these children. She must not lose hope.
    Doaa Al Zamel was once an average Syrian girl growing up in a crowded house in a bustling city near the Jordanian border. But in 2011, her life was upended. Inspired by the events of the Arab Spring, Syrians began to stand up against their own oppressive regime. When the army was sent to take control of Doaa's hometown, strict curfews, power outages, water shortages, air raids, and violence disrupted everyday life. After Doaa's father's barbershop was destroyed and rumors of women being abducted spread through the community, her family decided to leave Syria for Egypt, where they hoped to stay in peace until they could return home. Only months after their arrival, the Egyptian government was overthrown and the environment turned hostile for refugees.
    In the midst of this chaos, Doaa falls in love with a young opposition fighter who proposes marriage and convinces her to flee to the promise of safety and a better future in Europe. Terrified and unable to swim, Doaa and her young fiance hand their life savings to smugglers and board a dilapidated fishing vessel with five hundred other refugees, including a hundred children. After four horrifying days at sea, another ship, filled with angry men shouting insults, rams into Doaa's boat, sinking it and leaving the passengers to drown.
    That is where Doaa's struggle for survival really begins.
    A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea is an emotionally charged, eye-opening true story that represents the millions of unheard voices of refugees who risk everything in a desperate search for the promise of a safe future. Melissa Fleming sheds light on the most pressing humanitarian crisis of our time and paints a vivid, unforgettable portrait of the triumph of the human spirit.

    Local and State Government Can Protect the Constitution From Trump

    Local and State Government Can Protect the Constitution From Trump

    Nov 30, 2016
    IDEAS
    Corey Brettschneider is a professor of political science at Brown University and the author of When the State Speaks, What Should it Say?
    A man who threatened to create a deportation force that would invade private homes without due process, shut down mosques, torture the families of suspected terrorists, "open up" the libel laws and revoke the citizenship of people exercising their right to free speech has been elected president of the United States. He will take an oath to uphold the same Constitution that he repeatedly pledged to violate.
    For those committed to resisting his policies, a rethinking of federalism — the idea that the states and other localities retain sovereign powers and that the federal government, including Congress and the president, is limited in what it can do — might be the most effective tool, especially if other constitutional checks fail.
    The separation of powers at the federal level might be of help if a few Republican Senators stand up for constitutional rights, but it is also likely that the Republican Congress will support him.
    The federal courts might strike down presidential actions as unconstitutional, but court cases often take time, and eventually, with a potential record number of vacancies to fill, President Trump will have a role in reshaping the judiciary. It's possible that all three branches of the federal government could be populated with Trump supporters. The system of checks and balances that were designed to be a safeguard against government abuse would be neutralized.
    What can be done to resist unconstitutional policies enacted into law by President Trump and his Congress, and upheld by his Supreme Court?
    Constitutional resistance can and should come at the state level. California has already signaled its readiness to resist unconstitutional federal action. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon stated recently: “We will lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our Constitution.” The governor, Jerry Brown, reiterated this commitment to fight unconstitutional actions.
    Cities have also taken up the mantle of local resistance to unconstitutional federal action. The mayors of New York City and Providence have suggested that they will refuse to implement or cooperate with the federal government in unconstitutional policy.
    These statements of constitutional resistance speak to a new strategy of federalism in which localities seek to revive a lost constitutional role in undoing federal violations of fundamental rights. State officials have a role to play. Democrats and independents hold at least 19 governors’ offices and about one-third of state legislatures, as vote counting is still underway. Moreover, some Republican state officials are part of the never-Trump movement that sought to protect the Constitution against potential tyranny. They should take up the mantle of states' rights to resist tyrannical policies and to protect individual liberty.
    The resistance would not just be symbolic. The federal government relies on cooperation by the states in enforcing federal policy. If states and localities exercise their right to not cooperate with unconstitutional policies, this will very much impede the capacity of the federal government. Without local law enforcement, the federal government could still use the FBI for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the numbers of officers in these agencies are limited and so state and local resistance would be quite effective.
    Of course, there is an ugly history to the phrase “states’ rights.” In the era of segregation, states' rights were used to resist civil rights laws. But earlier in our history there existed a nobler tradition for states’ rights, one in which the state governments of the 18th and 19th Centuries fought to defend individual rights.
    During the John Adams Administration, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson sought to invalidate the Alien and Sedition acts, which imposed limits on free speech. Those laws were aimed at suppressing the political opponents of the reigning party, the Federalists, who controlled all three branches of the federal government. As president, Adams signed these laws that were passed by his own party. The opposition party, Democrat-Republicans, could not go to the Supreme Court to strike it down because there was no developed First Amendment case law. That branch too was also dominated by Federalist appointments.
    Denied any possibility of “checks and balances” at the federal level, Madison and Jefferson argued that laws punishing criticism of the President were unconstitutional. In the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, they called on states to refuse to participate in the prosecution of dissidents called for by these laws.
    Their strategy of constitutional resistance at the state level was later co-opted by John C. Calhoun in his fight to preserve slavery, but it has also been used to combat slavery. In the 19th Century, the federal government relied on the Fugitive Slave Act to aid slave owners to capture fugitive slaves who found refuge in free territories and states. The citizens of Wisconsin—led by a newspaper editor, Sherman Booth, and with the aid of local public officials—resisted the law. They believed the Fugitive Slave Act violated higher constitutional ideals. Booth outwitted a slave-catcher hired by the federal government, freed the slave, and aided him in escaping to Canada. The Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with the Booth and the escaped slave, ruling the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional.
    Perhaps Trump may abandon his unconstitutional policies, but if he does not, citizens should leverage the sovereign authority of the states to resist him. We must call on our state officials to resist. Governors should not cooperate in any unconstitutional executive actions. If Trump does form a deportation force, state officials should refuse to turn over documents and other records. If Trump threatens to limit press freedoms, state officials and citizens must speak out against him. If he threatens to shut down mosques or creates a registry of Muslims, violating the Free Exercise Clause, state officials should refuse to allow local law enforcement to cooperate or to aid them.
    The 10th Amendment reserves to the states those powers not given to the federal government. States and cities are equally empowered by the 10th Amendment to assert their reserved authority to resist federal transgressions of constitutional limits. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state and local officials to do its bidding. Even if the Supreme Court refuses to confront Trump’s unconstitutional policies by asserting the importance of civil liberties, it could still recognize the right of states and localities to exercise their powers.
    I'm not advocating a radical “states' rights” movement. Instead, focusing on features core to our constitution’s system, my proposal is the antithesis of the call for secession by advocates of the so-called “calexit” movement who want to see California leave the union.
    My aim is not to give states a procedural veto power over federal legislation. Instead, I rely on the idea that state officials have a constitutional duty to uphold the constitution, as stated in Article VI, and to resist any attempt to get them to comply in a violation of constitutional rights. These rights are independent of the federal government’s interpretation of them. When they are violated state officials might be a final resort in their defense. This spirit is captured in the Virginia resolution, suggesting that states "have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties, appertaining to them.”
    Moreover, as Yale Law Professor Heather Gerken and University of Virginia Law Professor Richard Schragger have both argued in the context of gay rights, local protections of rights do not reject a role of the federal government. Instead, they enforce the federal Constitution—rightly aiming at eventual vindication at the federal level.
    The idea of states' rights federalism was once used by segregationists to resist civil rights, but it is the key to protecting our liberties against unconstitutional federal policy. The 10th Amendment must be restored to its earlier and nobler tradition. It is a gift the Founders left us to fight potential federal tyranny.