my journal 3

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

http://orbis.stanford.edu/
excellent web site to calculate travel time in various settings in ancient roman times

Only about a week with "horse relay" to travel from rome to germany

this is how they fought, from the trajan column
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rilievi_della_colonna_Traiana

Ever since watching this documentary/movie on Julius Caesar, I have been sensing that Hitler had something in common with ancient Rome, other than just being a dictator, and, sure enough, I finally came across the part where he himself speaks of ancient Rome, in his speech on December 11th, 1941:
http://www.germanvictims.com/wp-con...erifiedAdolf-Hilter-Krieg-USA-11-Dez-1941.pdf

Speech in mp3 format is here:
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitlerKriegserklaerungAndDieUsa

He talks about Rome for one entire page, page 3 (cfr.pdf above). (He actually talks about Italy, present-day Italy (when he was talking), for the entire speech).

Some good quotes from that long speech (one hour).

On present-day Italy:

In diesem Kampf wurde in der Mitte des vergangenen Jahres Deutschland vor allem durch seinen italienischen Bundesgenossen unterstützt. Viele Monate lastete das Gewicht eine großen Teiles der britischen Macht auf den Schultern des mit uns verbündeten italienischen Staates. Nur infolge der enormen Überlegenheit an schweren Panzern gelang es den Engländern, in Nordafrika vorübergehend eine Krise herbeizuführen.

On the concept of Europe and on ancient Greece:

Denn, meine Abgeordneten, was ist Europa? Es gibt keine geographische Definition unseres Kontinents, sondern nur eine völkische und kulturelle.
Nicht der Ural ist die Grenze dieses Kontinents, sondern jene Linie, die das Lebensbild des Westens von dem des Ostens trennt.
Es gab eine Zeit, da war Europa jenes griechische Eiland, in das nordische Stämme vorgedrungen waren, um von dort aus zum erstenmal ein Licht anzuzünden, das seitdem langsam aber stetig die Welt der Menschen zu erhellen begann. Und als diese Griechen den Einbruch der persischen Eroberer abwehrten, da verteidigten sie nicht ihre engere Heimat, die Griechenland war, sondern jenen Begriff, der heute Europa heißt. Und dann wanderte Europa von Hellas nach Rom.

On ancient Rome:

Mit dem griechischen Geist und der griechischen Kultur verband sich römisches Denken und römische Staatskunst. Ein Weltreich wurde geschaffen, das auch heute noch in seiner Bedeutung und fortzeugenden Kraft nicht erreicht, geschweige denn übertroffen ist. Als aber die römischen Legionen gegenüber dem afrikanischen Ansturm Karthagos in drei schweren Kriegen Italien verteidigten und endlich den Sieg erfochten, war es wieder nicht Rom, für das sie kämpften, sondern das die griechisch-römische Welt umfaßende damalige Europa.
Der nächste Einbruch gegen diesen Heimatboden der neuen menschlichen Kultur erfolgte aus den Weiten des Ostens. Ein furchtbarer Strom kulturloser Horden ergoß sich aus Innerasien bis tief in das Herz des heutigen europäischen Kontinents, brennend, sengend und mordend als wahre Geißel des Herrn.

On Germany carrying on the Roman tradition:

In der Schlacht auf den Katalaunischen Feldern traten zum ersten Male in einem Schicksalskampf von unabsehbarer Bedeutung Römer und Germanen gemeinsam für eine Kultur ein, die von den Griechen ausgehend, aber die Römer hinweg nunmehr die Germanen in ihren Bann gezogen hatte.
Europa war gewachsen. Aus Hellas und Rom entstand das Abendland, und seine Verteidigung war nunmehr für viele Jahrhunderte nicht nur die Aufgabe der Römer, sondern vor allem die Aufgabe der Germanen. In eben dem Maße aber, in dem das Abendland, beleuchtet von griechischer Kultur, erfüllt vom Eindruck der gewaltigen Überlieferungen des römischen Reiches, durch die germanische Kolonisation seine Räume erweiterte, dehnte sich räumlich jener Begriff, den wir Europa nennen, ganz gleich, ob nun deutsche Kaiser an der Unstrut oder auf dem Lechfeld die Einbrüche aus dem Osten abwehrten, oder Afrika in langen Kämpfen aus Spanien zurückgedrängt wurde, es war immer ein Kampf des werdenden Europas gegenüber einer ihm im tiefsten Wesen fremden Umwelt.

He goes on to conclude that, just as the Romans and the Greeks fought the intruders 2000 years ago, now it is Germany's turn to lead this fight against those who don't belong to European values, and he says that now people will join, because it is a good fight:

Meine Abgeordneten! Männer des deutschen Reichstages!
Ich muß diese Ausführungen machen, denn der Kampf, der sich in den ersten Monaten dieses Jahres allmählich als unausbleiblich abzuzeichnen begann und zu dessen Führung diesmal in erster Linie das Deutsche Reich berufen ist, geht ebenfalls über die Interessen unseres eigenen Volkes weit hinaus. Denn so wie einst die Griechen den Karthagern nicht Rom, Römer und Germanen gegenüber den Hunnen nicht das Abendland, deutsche Kaiser gegenüber den Mongolen nicht Deutschland, spanische Helden gegenüber Afrika nicht Spanien, sondern alle Europa verteidigt haben, so kämpft Deutschland auch heute nicht für sich selbst, sondern für unseren gesamten Kontinent.
Und es ist ein glückliches Zeichen, daß diese Erkenntnis im Unterbewußtsein der meisten europäischen Völker heute so tief ist, daß sie, sei es durch offene Stellungnahme, sei es durch den Zustrom von Freiwilligen, an diesem Kampfe teilnehmen.

...so kämpft Deutschland auch heute nicht für sich selbst, sondern für unseren gesamten Kontinent.

Pretty clear language and at once important. "...so does Germany fight today, not for itself, but for our entire continent".

Yeah, but too bad the others weren't convinced and UK and USA allied with USSR. Once again, I think his big strategical mistake was attacking the USSR. Also, if you're not going to invade England, then just leave it alone, and don't start bombing it or sinking its ships.

You've got all of continental Europe, you let them get away at Dunkirk, then just stop it right there and be happy with what you got. Or go ahead and invade England, but do it immediately, and certainly do not find a new enemy before you've defeated the previous one.

 

[Yamato]

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rémi_Gaillard

Rémi Gaillard, restless genius... bio on wikipedia in 20 languages

This is pretty good, too:

 

[Yamato]

Thanks for the feedback on the previous post.

Trading is going worse than ever, given that I had in my portfolio positions such as short GBL, long NG, ZC, ZW... all now going very badly. Capital down to less than half my peak record of a month ago at 47k.

So, since trading is going so poorly, I figured I have many long months still in the office, so I got back to work on my German. I might as well learn something while I am living this prisoner's life.

So today I was browsing some channels on youtube, being always very interested in Nazism, and came across some channels that are... the writing said they are forbidden in my country - Italy.

So I said, ok, let's find a German proxy server, and see if it works, and, sure enough, it also doesn't work. I tried this one:
http://www.german-proxy.de/

So let's get this straight. I cannot watch a youtube channel that talks about nazism if I am in Italy or Germany.

That's right, because next I tried a US proxy server, and now all these forbidden "nazi" channels work perfectly:
http://proxyusa.org/

Such channels as these two:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Mars4265
https://www.youtube.com/user/DimensonGermania88

So, if you're in a country that has had a past of nazism or fascism, those youtube channels are not allowed. Pretty funny, because that's also where the historians are most informed about the subject.

If instead you're in a country that had none of that, then you can indulge yourself in nazi documentation.

Another thing I noticed is that this "proxyusa.org" proxy shows youtube videos, rather than normally, in a different player, called jwplayer.

By the way, you know something?

Hitler was not crazy. Hitler had opinions that aren't much different from those I hear from my colleagues every morning.

They take the subway and spend their ride with immigrants, whom they complain about, because they say these people smell, beg for money... and have many other deficiencies.

Now, given that if you're a citizen and you kill an ant, the equivalent for your president is killing 100 people or more (even in peacetime, through secret service, wars, embargoes, what have you...) ... then imagine who would represent properly my colleagues who on a daily basis express their hate for immigrants.

Oh, and the chimp in my room occasionally says also that if you're old and in bad health, you're better off dying right away. This, too, would perfectly agree with Hitler's concept of... "Aktion T4":
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4

Now, take these two or three chimps in my room. If Hilter were in power, they'd be ok with it - they wouldn't have to lie and say they ignore the nature of nazi concentration camps. They would be satisfied with them. So what I am saying is that the kind of people who, in the 1930s, allowed Nazism to happen, are still everywhere, not just in Germany, but also in Italy and even more in America.

All they're missing is leaders who will implement their desires. Hilter wasn't crazy. It's just that the western elites of today are killing people in other countries instead of killing them in their own country.

 

[Yamato]

Juncker at the EU parliament, speaking to the EFDD group, yesterday:

my trading still going very badly, today GBL hit an all-time high of above 148. I do not think it ever got this high.

 

[Yamato]

It's funny how politicians get made fun of for their English, and the differences about it between Germany and Italy.

By our standards this guy speaks very good English:

He speaks maybe even more comprehensibly than I speak. And yet, here's how they make fun of him:

Gee, a German politician is basically expected to be bilingual.


Our standards in Italy for how bad your English has to be, to be made fun of, is this guy, former vice-prime minister:

And he had all the time he wanted to rehearse it, because it was an ad by the Italian government to visit Italy.

 

[Yamato]

A wealth of information on Reichstag and NS time here:
http://www.reichstag-abgeordnetenda...ERUFSFELDER[]=&schlu=reichstag24&recherche=ja
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de....html?fip=193.174.98.30&id=00000008&seite=161
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00000008/images/index.html?nativeno=337

For example, Hitler's profile on the Rechstag's book of 1933 elections session:



...

Among the other things, I found the text of his parliamentary speech on May 4th, 1941, whose audio you can find here:
https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitlerSprichtNachDemBalkanfeldzugImReichstag1941-05-04

Text here:
http://www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt2_n4_bsb00000613_00082.html

Interesting how, even during nazism, in 1941, they decided to switch from the Gothic script to the Antiqua script. However, it is all explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute#The_20th_century

and summarized here:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrittura_gotica#Dal_XVI_secolo_ad_oggi

A parte qualche contestazione durante il classicismo del tardo XVIII secolo, le grafie gotiche rimasero le grafie più diffuse per tutto il XIX secolo. Nel XX secolo il nazionalismo le considerava le uniche "****" scritture tedesche ammesse nel Reich, e così stabilirono sulle prime anche i nazionalsocialisti.

Poco dopo lo scoppio della guerra si diffuse però in ambiente nazionalsocialista l'idea che la Schwabacher avesse avuto un'origine giudaica e così nel 1941, con un improvviso mutamento di idea, fu fatto divieto di usare i caratteri gotici in quanto Judenlettern e si passò all'antiqua.

In other words, it wasn't, as I thought, that Germans stopped using Gothic script because it was associated with nazism. It was the nazi themselves who decided to stop using it in 1941, and Hitler didn't like Gothic script ever since 1934:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute#The_20th_century

Your alleged Gothic internalisation does not fit well in this age of steel and iron, glass and concrete, of womanly beauty and manly strength, of head raised high and intention defiant ... In a hundred years, our language will be the European language. The nations of the east, the north and the west will, to communicate with us, learn our language. The prerequisite for this: The script called Gothic is replaced by the script we have called Latin so far ...

Hitler crazy? He sounds less and less crazy to me, the more I understand of his speeches. Sure, he wanted to kill a lot of people. I am not saying this is the right thing to do. What I am saying is that he wasn't crazy.

 

[Yamato]

In one week in early May 1940 they completely invaded Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_World_War_II_(1940)#May_1940

 

[Yamato]

Amazing link, the best of the last several months:
https://archive.org/details/Hitler_Speeches

The link's path is misleading. It actually lists 500 mp3 files, all available for download, all at once, too, that aren't just by Hitler but by a whole bunch of politicians and similar, most nazis, and some not, from 1900 to 1945.

Amazing resource for any historian.

Also, here's a little clip of something I've been investigating, Goebbels. He was a great orator, according to what I read. Also, I found his longest speech (see below) to be longer than the longest speech by Hitler ("19400719_Hitler_Nach_Westfeldzug.mp3", 95 minutes), almost 2 hours (109 minutes):

Actually this speech is so important that it has its own wikipedia entry, in as many as 14 languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech

The Sportpalast speech (German: Sportpalastrede, Sports-Palace speech) or total war speech was a speech delivered by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large but carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943 calling for a total war, as the tide of World War II had turned against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.

It is considered the most famous of Joseph Goebbels's speeches.[1] The speech was the first public admission by the Nazi leadership that Germany faced serious dangers...

Probably today, in just one day I came across the 3 best links on Nazism that exist altogether. Besides the first mp3 link I gave you above, here's the other two:
http://www.reichstag-abgeordnetendatenbank.de/index.html
http://deutscher-freiheitskampf.com/

 

[Yamato]

September 8th, 1934 (80 years ago), Hitler speaks to the Hitler Youth:

Nowadays something like this is unimaginable, isn't it?

The clip is taken from this amazing movie by Leni Riefenstahl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will

Full speech here (the full speech actually lasts 9 minutes - she edited out half of it):
https://archive.org/details/Hitler_Speeches
https://archive.org/download/Hitler...ie_Jugend_auf_dem_Reichsparteitag_12m_29s.mp3

 

[Yamato]

holy cow... pretty powerful movie by Frank Capra, "Here Is Germany":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Is_Germany

Fantastic movie, except for one detail: how it depicts Americans. Back in 1945, Americans still had apartheid for blacks and even lynchings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

Lynching, the practice of killing people by extrajudicial mob action, occurred in the United States chiefly from the late 18th century through the 1960s.

...

Remarkable ending of the movie, minute 47:00:
"... and they will be forever prevented from plotting another German attempt at world conquest".

That didn't hold true for very long.

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

Another great link:
http://nsl-archiv.com/Tontraeger/Reden/

All the most important Nuremberg trials recordings, and much more, with audio recordings in German, starting after the end of the war.

 

[Yamato]

Great link on the per capita GDP of individual European regions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_regions_by_GDP

This tells me that Italian Campania and Calabria are so poor (16k per capita) that they're poorer than many other regions in Eastern Europe, so for the first time Italians are better off emigrating to Eastern Europe (all other things being equal).

This of course because some of those guys have been catching up, the Czech Republic for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econom...rage_brutto_wage_Czech_Republic_1985-2008.svg

Check out how their average salary has increased, actually "Czech" it out:



Obviously this happened according to the principle of "communicating vessels":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_vessels

You open the borders and wherever they were poorer, they got richer. In Italy, for some reason, it's as if the borders weren't open. Maybe because most of these people in the south would rather steal than work.

I didn't use to think this way, but after spending almost 10 years with people from the south in my office, I can't help but say that they have no sense of duty. They spend half of the day pretending that they're working, and the other half not even pretending at all.

I've been told several times to keep paper on my table to pretend I am working. Well, I am always working, on my computer, which is as orderly as my desk. And I don't care if it doesn't look like I am working. My work should speak for me, not appearances. These people are really despicable, and now I have found out that I can't even say it out loud or they'll mob me. So I am done with complaining about these slackers. For the last 2 weeks I've been quiet.

On the other hand, my complaining and my fights are useless, because the very reason I have slackers around me is that the bosses themselves are despicable, and just think of it: we have had as prime minister Berlusconi, for a decade, a complete crook. So, in a country like this, where a crook becomes prime minister, it's really hopeless. No point in fighting against things. I'll work, but I'll leave them alone. I'll despise them quietly, in my thoughts.

 

[Yamato]

amazing interview by primo levi on nazism:

The video I am posting below this paragraph has English subtitles, so you can understand it, but the one above is still better, in fact it is an unbeatable interview - very short clip but I played three times already, to hear again and again the meaningful things he is saying. The best part is from minute 2 to the end. Some quotes of what he says in Italian:
1I) "fascism, the consecration of privilege and inequality"
2)...

actually let me quote him in Italian, it's easier.
2) "Il fascismo dice: non siamo tutti uguali","non tutti abbiamo gli stessi diritti","alcuni hanno diritti ed altri no".... dove tutto ciò si diffonde appare un Fascismo, un Lager"

I found a link that quotes a lot more of that interview, albeit not all of it:
http://passaggioasudest.ilcannocchiale.it/?TAG=giornata della memoria

"Pochissimi oggi riescono a ricostruire, a ricollegare quel filo conduttore che lega le squadre di azione fasciste degli anni Venti in Italia [...] con i campi di concentramento in Germania - e in Italia, perché non sono mancati nemmeno in Italia, questo non molti lo sanno - e il fascismo di oggi, altrettanto violento, a cui manca soltanto il potere per ridiventare quello che era, cioè, la consacrazione del privilegio e della disuguaglianza [...] Il lager, Auschwitz, era la realizzazione del fascismo, era il fascismo integrato, completato, aveva quello che in Italia mancava, cioè il suo coronamento [...] Io, purtroppo, devo dirlo, lo so questo, non è che lo pensi, lo so: so che si possono fare dapperttutto [...] Dove un fascismo - non è detto che sia identico a quello - cioè un nuovo verbo, come quello che amano i nuovi fascisti in Italia, cioè non siamo tutti uguali, non tutti abbiamo gli stessi diritti, alcuni hanno diritti e altri no. Dove questo verbo attecchisce alla fine c'è il lager: questo io lo so con precisione".

Holy ****, this is what I've been looking for. The sense of nazism, the inner core of it: "Dove questo verbo attecchisce...", that is to say:

Where this concept [fascism] takes root [that we're not all the same, that we do not all have the same rights] at the end there is a concentration camp: this I know with precision.

However there's even more interesting things in that interview, in the last 3 minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Victims_and_death_toll



There is just one problem. He is focusing so much on fascism, but he forgets to say that communism has caused just as many if not more victims:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism#Estimated_number_of_victims

65 million in the People's Republic of China
20 million in the Soviet Union
2 million in Cambodia
2 million in North Korea
1.7 million in Africa
1.5 million in Afghanistan
1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe
1 million in Vietnam
150,000 in Latin America (mainly Cuba)

So maybe we should not find in fascism the root of concentration camps, but in something else, that is shared by both fascism and communism, that is being a dictatorship.

The difference between their two ways of killing people, in much the same way, is that fascism selects victims based on race, whereas communism selects people to be killed on political grounds, as this professor points out at the end of minute 9 and beginning of minute 10 (yep, holy cow, I've understood him in German - I am getting better):

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

this is quite serious research, despite the title ("sex & love in ww II"), with plenty of facts and data - basically it is about French women and their relationship to the German soldiers during their occupation of France

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Sachs
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arletty
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Jürgen_Soehring

 

[Yamato]

Amazing stories... now get this. The Germans soldiers got captured, and so, instead of sitting in a French (or just Allied maybe) prisoners camp, many of them joined the foreign legion, so many that in the Indochina war, the German legionaries were a majority:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indochinakrieg#Deutsche_Beteiligung

Während des Indochina-Krieges starben insgesamt 10.483 Legionäre, ungefähr die Hälfte der Gefallenen waren deutsche Staatsangehörige. Im Indochina-Krieg kämpften circa 35.000 Deutsche, zumeist (Halb-)Waisen des Weltkrieges oder ehemalige Angehörige der Wehrmacht oder SS, als Fremdenlegionäre auf Seite der Franzosen. Dies entspricht etwa einem Anteil von zwei Drittel aller eingesetzten Fremdenlegionäre. In Điện Biên Phủ starben 1.500 Fremdenlegionäre. Von den 7.000 gefangenen Legionären kehrten circa 2.000 zurück. Es ist zu vermuten, dass auch hier die Hälfte deutscher Abstammung waren.[1] Etwa 1.400 Deutsche desertierten während des Krieges, und kämpften in Diensten der Việt Minh weiter. Sie lieferten umfangreiches Wissen über den französischen Gegner, und halfen durch ihre Erfahrung im strategisch organisierten Kampf bei der Organisation von Hinterhalten und Rückzügen.

"Etwa 1.400 Deutsche desertierten...": get this, 1400 of them actually deserted to the Vietcong. From Hitler, to De Gaulle, to Ho Chi Minh. A real odyssey. This is their story:

 

[Yamato]

the best documentary i've ever seen on the relationship between hitler and mussolini

they only died 2 days apart (according to official records, if you buy the story that hitler committed suicide)

if you look at the map the allies kept of world war 2, on May 1st, you notice how Germany had been occupied even faster than Italy, and Berlin had been taken just as quickly as Milan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeli...wer/File:1945-05-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg



If you had to resist as long as possible, as a nazi, the best place to be was the Czech Republic, Austria or Denmark. Some Germany armies surrendered as late as... May 20th:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_World_War_II_(1945)#May_1945

20: Georgian Uprising of Texel ends, concluding hostilities in Europe.