History

General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2

  • As Edmund Burke once said”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, I would like to add “for good women to do nothing” This is is how the Nazi regime and all its evil could flourish. People saw what was happening, it was often blatantly obvious but…

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  • For most people, the name Geleen will mean nothing, but to me, it means the place where I was born and raised. Although it is far from perfect, my roots are there, and I am proud of that. It is a city in the southern part of the province of Limburg in the Netherlands. With…

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  • A Failure as a Father

    If you did not know the man in the photograph, you would think he was a loving family man, doting on his daughter. However, since we know the man is Joseph Goebbels, the dynamic of this photo changes. Goebbels did portray himself as a good family man and a loving father. Clearly, he had no…

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  • When the rain falls, my face gets wet. When the sun shines, it blinds my eyes. When the snow falls, I want to go out and feel the crunch of the fresh new snow beneath my feet. When it is muddy, I get dirty. When I am hungry, I eat. When I am thirsty, I…

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  • The Computer bug

    Don’t worry I am not going to go into details what a computer bug is and what to do how to resolve it. Nor will I explain what the implications of a computer bug are. That would be a long and tedious blog. In fact this blog will be short and sweet, it will be…

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  • (originally published September 21 2023) The last two nights, I watched the documentary Ordinary Men—The Forgotten Holocaust (now streaming on Netflix). It is a German documentary film by director Manfred Oldenburg and producer Leopold Hoesch from 2022. The documentary examines how and why thousands of ordinary Germans participated in mass atrocities as members of Nazi…

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  • World War II officially started on 3 September 1939. The Nazis wasted very little time in committing their first mass murder during the war. It was only hours after the war was declared. The S.S. Athenia was commanded by Captain James Cook. He left Glasgow for Montreal via Liverpool and Belfast. She carried 1,103 passengers,…

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  • On September 15, 1971, NBC aired the first official episode of Columbo: Murder by the Book. What could have been just another detective drama instead became a genre-defining moment. With Peter Falk stepping fully into the role of Lieutenant Columbo, a script by legendary writer Steven Bochco, and direction by a then-unknown Steven Spielberg, the…

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  • Coping by Using Humour

    A few years ago, on the 22nd of June 2016, to be precise I wrote a blog titled “Holocaust and Humour.” I received loads of criticism for it. The thing I found extraordinary the criticism didn’t come from people who read the blog, but only from people who read the title. I didn’t mean to…

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  • The 25th president of the United States, William McKinley, was assassinated on September 6, 1901, during a public event at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was attending a reception at the Temple of Music, where he was greeting members of the public as part of his duties at the exposition, a grand…

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