Today In History: January 27th, 1945. The Liberation of Auschwitz
To commemorate this day, I thought I'd put up some footage shot some months after the liberation, when Auschwitz I was being used as a hospital for the treatment of…
What Dr. Kritzinger Is All About
After each performance of Dr. Kritzinger's 12 O'Clock, I come out on stage (still in costume) and take audience questions. A question that came up during Sunday matinee, which I'll paraphrase, was…
Denialism and My Comments Policy
On the first day of my college freshman physics class, my professor brought out a boxful of letters from cranks. He read one of them out. It was from a man…
Steve Shives’s Five Stupid Things About Holocaust Denial
I dedicate this post to someone who's recently taken to trip-trapping on my bridge uninvited. Take it away, Mr. Shives: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrxxZunGwtM] What he said.
Steve Shives’s Five Stupid Things About the Nazis
Steve Shives presents another fine entry in his addictive "Five Stupid Things..." series. While I do have one quibble with its description of Nazi administrative efficiency--Hitler's government was many things, but,…
Verschärfte Vernehmung Or, As We Know It, Enhanced Interrogation
With the release of the Senate torture report, I took a look back to see if I'd ever done a post on torture, either in our present context or as…
I Seriously Doubt The Daily Mail’s Jack the Ripper Story
The Daily Mail--I can hear some of you groaning already--claims that an amateur sleuth and a scientist have finally unmasked Jack the Ripper. They claim that their DNA analysis of…
What Should Germany Do With Mein Kampf?
Yesterday, the U.S. Holocaust museum held a Twitter chat about the impending emergence of Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf from copyright and what the former owners, the city of Munich in particular…
Richard J Evans On Conspiracy Theory And the Reichstag Fire
A fascinating article on the Reichstag Fire by historian Richard J Evans appears in the London Review of Books. An excerpt: The Third Reich was founded on a conspiracy theory.…
The Stories We Told After Adolf Eichmann’s Capture
Six days from now we'll have reached the 44th anniversary of the Mossad's capture of SS Lt. Colonel Adolf Eichmann, who'd been hiding in Argentina since the end of World…