dirkdeklein

  • The “P” badge was introduced on 8 March 1940 by the Nazi German government with relation to the requirement that Polish workers (Zivilarbeiter) used during World War II as forced laborers in Germany (following the German invasion and occupation of Poland) display a visible symbol marking their ethnic origin. The symbol was introduced with the intent…

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  • I am not saying there is no climate change, I am actually saying the opposite. In fact there have been several climate changes in this planet’s history. The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer (also the Poverty Year, the Summer that Never Was, Year There Was No Summer, and Eighteen Hundred…

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  • On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, WAS shot three times in a hail of gunfire at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Five others were wounded. The senator had just completed a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary. After winning the California and South Dakota primary elections…

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  • Operation Tonga

    Operation Tonga was the code name given to the airborne operation undertaken by the British 6th Airborne Division between 5 June and 7 June 1944 as a part of Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings during the Second World War. The paratroopers and glider-borne airborne troops of the division, commanded by Major-General Richard Nelson Gale,…

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  • The zoot Suit Riots, a series of conflicts that occurred in June 1943 in Los Angeles between U.S. servicemen and Mexican American youths, the latter of whom wore outfits called zoot suits. The zoot suit consisted of a broad-shouldered drape jacket, balloon-leg trousers, and, sometimes, a flamboyant hat. Mexican and Mexican American youths who wore these outfits…

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  • I am just being a bit cheeky here but sometimes you see pictures of European leaders and you wonder “How friendly were they really?” Above and below are pictures of Kohl and Mitterand,holding hands  in Verdun, 1984 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev embraces Erich Honecker, hardline communist and general secretary of the Communist Party (SED) as members of…

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  • Eugen Weidmann (February 5, 1908 – June 17, 1939) was a German criminal who was executed by guillotine in France, the last public execution in that country On June 17, 1939, Weidmann was beheaded outside the prison Saint-Pierre in Versailles. The “hysterical behaviour” by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned…

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  • Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was cheerful and without a care when he first met photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. In a close-up image the Third Reich politician was caught off guard smiling at the League of Nations meeting in Geneva in September 1933. Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898–1995), the man behind some of the most memorable pictures of…

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  • Chanson d’Automne (Autumn Song) is a poem by Paul Verlaine, one of the best-known in the French language. It is included in Verlaine’s first collection, Poèmes saturniens, published in 1866 (see 1866 in poetry). The poem forms part of the paysages tristes (sad landscapes) section of the collection. In World War II lines from the…

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  • +++++Contains distressing images++++++++ Chased by youth armed with clubs, this woman is fleeing from a “death dealer” whose left leg can be seen at the left-hand edge of the photograph. The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists from 30 June…

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