tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90954016025693318272024-03-13T07:45:21.365-07:00Spartacus EducationalUpdates from Spartacus Educational. Covering subjects about : British History,History of the United States, First World War, Second World War, English Civil War, The Normans, The Monarchy, Making of the United Kingdom,The Medieval World, American Civil War, Russian Revolution, Child Labour, Slavery, Association Football, Women's Suffrage, Parliamentary Reform, The Nazi Germany, Spanish Civil War, American West, Civil Rights Movement,Trade Unions, The Assassination of JFK, Watergate,John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.comBlogger350125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-76093848234011676582015-12-23T03:30:00.000-08:002015-12-23T03:32:18.548-08:00How did governments react to the Jewish Migration Crisis in December, 1938?Since war broke out in Syria almost five years ago, 6.5 million people have been internally displaced, almost 4.4 million forced to flee as refugees, and more than 250,000 killed. One in every five displaced persons worldwide last year was Syrian. A new joint report from the World Bank and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) claims that 90% of the 1.7 million Syrian refugees registered in Jordan and Lebanon are living in poverty. The majority of them are women and children. (1)<br />
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The same day that the report was published, it was announced that the first 1,000 Syrian refugees have now arrived in the UK under the government's scheme to resettle vulnerable people living in refugees camps, David Cameron has said he had met his pledge to bring the first 1,000 people to the UK by Christmas. The UK government has promised to accept 20,000 Syrians over five years. (2)<br />
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European leaders are gathering in Brussels today for an end of year summit which will include discussions on the of one and a half million refugees that have entered Europe this year. The European Commission estimated last month that another three million refugees could arrive before the end of 2016. Cameron is unwilling to become involved in negotiations about taking more refugees and recently told journalists that the current crisis might be the thing that might be responsible for the British people voting to leave the European Union. (3)<br />
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Seventy-seven years ago this month, world leaders were discussing another migration crisis. This one involved the desire by the Jewish community to leave Nazi Germany. The failure to agree on a way of dealing with this crisis resulted in about 180,000 German Jews dying in concentration camps.<br />
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Once in power Adolf Hitler began to openly express anti-Semitic ideas. Based on his readings of how blacks were denied civil rights in the southern states in America, Hitler attempted to make life so unpleasant for Jews in Germany that they would emigrate. The day after the March, 1933, election, stormtroopers hunted down Jews in Berlin and gave them savage beatings. Synagogues were trashed and all over Germany gangs of brownshirts attacked Jews. In the first three months of Hitler rule, over forty Jews were murdered. (4)<br />
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For the rest of the blog see:<br />
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<br />John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-29555992478398502652015-08-24T09:54:00.003-07:002015-08-24T09:54:50.476-07:00Why the BBC and the Daily Mail ran a false story on anti-fascist campaigner, Cedric BelfrageOn Friday morning (21st August), the BBC ran a story on its website entitled, Cedric Belfrage, the WW2 spy Britain was embarrassed to pursue. The right-wing press had the same story. The Daily Mail used the headline, More prized than Philby, the film critic turned Soviet agent who passed secrets while working for British security services in the US - but was never tried whereas the Financial Times went with Cedric Belfrage — ‘sixth man’ Soviet spy who hid in plain sight.<br />
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Later that day the BBC and Channel 4 broadcast the same story. These newspaper articles and television programmes had the same information and was clearly based on some kind of Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) press release about the journalist, Cedric Belfrage, who died in 1990. It must have accompanied the latest release of intelligence documents that had arrived in the National Archives. They all included quotes from Professor Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5. He told The Daily Mail: "Moscow were so pleased with him (Belfrage) they held him as a key asset and held him in higher regard than Philby, a member of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring."<br />
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MI5 also provided quotes from Svetlana Lokhova, who is described as an expert on Russian intelligence (this is not supported by a search on the web although she does seem to have been a student at Cambridge University, where Andrew has taught for many years). Lokhova argues "I think he was one of the most important spies the Soviet Union ever had". Gordon Corera of the BBC tells us that "Ms Lokhova and Prof Andrew both say the fact the KGB has never revealed anything about Belfrage suggests he was important".<br />
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For the rest of the article see:<br />
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http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL57.htmJohn Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-81901230855552223212015-01-15T22:56:00.000-08:002015-01-15T22:56:41.097-08:00History of Freedom of Speech in the UK<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There has been a lot of discussion about freedom of expression since the killing of the eight journalists at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly newspaper, that had published a number of controversial Muhammad cartoons. It has been suggested that there is a long tradition of freedom of speech in the UK and that we need to defend this ancient right in response to this terrorist outrage. Although journalists have been keen to point this out it seems their editors are unwilling to publish any of the offending cartoons. It has also emerged that official guidelines previously published online said that the Prophet revered by Muslims “must not be represented in any shape or form” in BBC output.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Freedom of expression is something that has taken a long time to establish in this country. Dominant religious, political and cultural institutions have always used their power to protect themselves from criticism. An interesting case in our history concerns Anne Askew who was burnt at the stake on 16th July 1546. Anne had taken on every powerful institution that existed in Tudor England. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anne was the daughter of Sir William Askew (1489–1541) a large landowner and the former MP for Grimsby. When she was fifteen her family forced her to marry Thomas Kyme. Anne rebelled against her husband by refusing to adopt his surname. The couple also argued about religion. Anne was a supporter of Martin Luther, while her husband was a Roman Catholic. From her reading of the Bible she believed that she had the right to divorce her husband. For example, she quoted St Paul: "If a faithful woman have an unbelieving husband, which will not tarry with her she may leave him"? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1544 Askew decided to travel to London and request a divorce from Henry VIII. This was rejected and in March 1546 she was arrested on suspicion of heresy. She was questioned about a book she was carrying that had been written by John Frith, a Protestant priest who had been burnt for heresy in 1533, for claiming that neither purgatory nor transubstantiation could be proven by Holy Scriptures. She was interviewed by Edmund Bonner, the Bishop of London who had obtained the nickname of "Bloody Bonner" because of his ruthless persecution of heretics. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After a great deal of debate Anne Askew was persuaded to sign a confession which amounted to an only slightly qualified statement of orthodox belief. With the help of her friend, Edward Hall, the Under-Sheriff of London, she was released after twelve days in prison. She was sent back to her husband. However, when she arrived back to Lincolnshire she went to live with her brother, Sir Francis Askew.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can read the rest of the article here:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL47.htm </span>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-41769223052290176932014-10-13T06:42:00.001-07:002014-10-13T06:42:33.864-07:00The KGB and Martin Luther King<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1992 Vasili Mitrokhin, a retired senior KGB archivist, provided the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) with six large cases of top-secret material from the KGB's foreign intelligence archive. Some of this material deals with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This includes the claim, from Polish sources, that Clinton Murchison and H. L. Hunt had been involved in the funding of the assassination.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The KGB archives show that the Soviet Union helped fund the publishing the books claiming that Kennedy was killed as a result of a right-wing conspiracy. Some of this money was sent to Carl Marzani (codenamed NORD). Among the books published by Marzani in 1964 was <i>Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?</i> by the German writer, Joachim Joesten. The KGB also arranged for Mark Lane to receive $1,500 to help his research. However, the document makes it clear that Lane was not told the source of the money. The same person arranged for Lane to receive $500 to help pay for a trip in Europe in 1964. KGB agent, Genrikh Borovik, was also assigned to help Lane with his research for <i>Rush to Judgement</i> (1965).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Probably the most interesting material from this archive concerns the KGB assessment of the relationship between John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Ever since the Soviets started sending agents into the United States they had been encouraging members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) to become involved in the struggle for civil rights. For example, they enjoyed great success in their propaganda campaign for the Scottsboro Boys in 1931.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rest of the article can be read here:</span><br />
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<br />John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-32516527272704006262014-09-23T11:21:00.001-07:002014-09-23T11:21:41.500-07:00Simulations in the ClassroomIn their book Simulation in the Classroom (Penguin, 1972), John Taylor and Rex Walford argued that an educational simulation has three main components:<br />
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(1) Students take roles which are representative of the real world and involve them making decisions in response to their assessment of the situation that they have been placed in.<br />
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(2) Students experience simulated consequences which relate to their decisions and their general performance in the simulation.<br />
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(3) Students monitor the results of their actions and are encouraged to reflect upon the relationship between their own decisions and the resulting consequences of their actions.<br />
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An essential part of a simulation involves the student playing a role of a character in the past. One of the major objectives of the creator of the simulation is to help the student understand the situation of that person. In other words, helping the student develop a sense of empathy.<br />
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<a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL39.html">http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL39.html</a>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-80749326934769493442014-08-04T08:06:00.001-07:002014-08-04T08:08:13.562-07:00War Propaganda Bureau and the First World War<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, it might be worth looking at the way the government decided to "sell" the war. In August 1914, the British government discovered that Germany had a Propaganda Agency. David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was given the task of setting up a British War Propaganda Bureau (WPB). Lloyd George, appointed the successful writer and fellow Liberal MP, Charles Masterman as head of the organization.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 2nd September, 1914, Masterman invited twenty-five leading British authors to Wellington House, the headquarters of the War Propaganda Bureau, to discuss ways of best promoting Britain's interests during the war. Those who attended the meeting included Arthur Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford, William Archer, G. K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Newbolt, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Gilbert Parker, G. M. Trevelyan and H. G. Wells.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the article see:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL31.html">http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL35.html</a> </span>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-9874753934877471092014-06-14T02:54:00.001-07:002014-06-14T02:56:30.071-07:00Google, Bing and Operation Mockingbird. The CIA and Search-Engines<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January 2005, I wrote an article entitled Operation Mockingbird. At that time very little was known about this highly secret Central Intelligence Agency media operation that dated back to 1948 when Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects. Soon afterwards it was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis, the author of Katharine the Great (1979): "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of this article see:</span><br />
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John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-72150138985573369832014-06-07T04:27:00.001-07:002014-06-07T04:27:47.283-07:00Is Wikipedia under the control of political extremists?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was recently carrying out research into the Dewey Commission that took place in April 1937. It is a long forgotten event and when I typed in the words “Dewey Commission” at Google I got a short list of relevant pages. Top of the list was of course Wikipedia. When I read the entry I was deeply shocked. In my opinion it had been written from the prospective of a Joseph Stalin apologist. However, if someone did not know too much about the subject, they would be totally unaware of it. As far as I can see there is not one inaccurate fact on the page. It is the information that the entry leaves out that is important. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Wikipedia entry begins: “The Dewey Commission (officially the "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials") was initiated in March 1937 by the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. It was named after its chairman, the philosopher John Dewey. Its other members were Carleton Beals, Otto Ruehle, Benjamin Stolberg, and Secretary Suzanne La Follette, Alfred Rosmer, Wendelin Thomas, Edward A. Ross, John Chamberlain, Carlo Tresca, and Francisco Zamora. It was seen by some at the time, as Dewey feared it would be, as a Trotskyist front organization. Following months of investigation, the Dewey Commission made its findings public in New York on September 21, 1937."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Without explaining what Leon Trotsky was accused of in the Moscow Show Trials or the evidence that the Dewey Commission was a “Trotskyist front organization” it immediately goes onto look at the hearings that took place between 10th April to 17th April, 1937.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of this article see:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL29.html">http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL29.html</a></span>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-23006179534202481482014-05-03T10:11:00.001-07:002014-05-03T10:11:57.362-07:00Spartacus Educational: New URL<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spartacus Educational has a new home:</span><br />
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<a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/">http://spartacus-educational.com/</a>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-52490850727826819422014-04-14T00:29:00.002-07:002014-04-14T00:29:16.661-07:00Why we will never discover who killed John F. Kennedy.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have been a historian for over forty years. I have always been interested in subjects where there is a shortage of evidence. That there is a certain amount of mystery involved. Probably the first research I ever did was into the lives of working people in Britain at the end of the 18th century and the early part of the 19th century. I was drawn to this subject because we knew very little about the way this group saw the world. Most of them were unable to read and write and have left only a small amount of documentary evidence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During my research I read a book that I found disturbing. The book was by the historian, E. H. Carr.<i> In What Is History?</i> (1961) Carr addresses the problem of the politically motivated historian. He points out that the historian is likely to only write about subjects he/she cares about. In the words of another historian, W. H. B. Court: "History free of all values cannot be written. Indeed, it is a concept almost impossible to understand, for men will scarcely take the trouble to inquire laboriously into something which they set no value upon."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Carr argues that the historian starts off with a theory that needs to be tested by the evidence. The theory will reflect the political views of the historian. Carr makes the important point about the nature of the facts that the historian uses: "The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the article see:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blogURL26.html</span><br />
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John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-14330961122240251472014-03-26T03:43:00.000-07:002014-03-26T03:43:47.060-07:00The KGB planned to groom Michael Straight to become President of the United States.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1932 Theodore Maly, a NKVD agent, arrived in London. Two years later he was joined by Arnold Deutsch. Senior MI5 agent, Peter Wright, pointed out that Maly and Deutsch were part of a team of agents based in Europe that included Alexander Orlov, Ignaz Reiss, Richard Sorge, Walter Krivitsky and Leopard Trepper, who were committed to the idea of world revolution: "They were often not Russians at all, although they held Russian citizenship. They were Trotskyist Communists who believed in international Communism and the Comintern. They worked undercover, often at great personal risk, and traveled throughout the world in search of potential recruits. They were the best recruiters and controllers the Russian Intelligence Service ever had. They all knew each other, and between them they recruited and built high-grade spy rings."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first spy recruited was Kim Philby. Deutsch reported back to his superiors in Moscow that Philby was an excellent agent. "His father... is an ambitious tyrant and wanted to make a great man out of his son. He repressed all his son's desires. That is why he is a very timid and irresolute person. He has a bit of a stammer and this increases his diffidence... However, he handles our money very carefully. He enjoys great love and respect for his seriousness and honesty. He was ready, without questioning, to do anything for us and has shown all his seriousness and diligence working for us."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main objective of this conspiracy was to recruit people who had the potential to reach positions of power in politics or the intelligence services. Arnold Deutsch asked Philby to recommended some of his Cambridge University contemporaries as potential agents. Philby suggested Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. By the end of 1934, with Philby's help, Deutsch had recruited both of them, telling them, like he had with Philby, to distance themselves from communist friends. Philby and Burgess actually joined right-wing political organizations such Anglo-German Fellowship. Deutsch and Maly knew that is was in these organizations where British intelligence recruited agents. Deutsch later recruited Anthony Blunt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rest of the article can be read here:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blogURL25.html">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blogURL25.html</a></span>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-20435203570280137092014-03-14T02:26:00.000-07:002014-03-14T02:26:02.332-07:00The Allied Plot to Kill Lenin<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A lot of energy is used by researchers to persuade the authorities to release classified documents concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Is it possible that the CIA and the FBI hold documents that will provide evidence that will reveal the real killers of Kennedy? If they had existed, which I think is unlikely, would they not have been destroyed? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have recently been investigating a case where the British, French and American intelligence agencies joined together in a conspiracy to assassinate Lenin in August 1918. It is nearly 100 years ago that this event took place and although we know virtually the whole story now, it is not because of the release of official documents. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1993 Gordon Brook-Shepherd decided that he would investigate the case. The former intelligence officer worked as a journalist for the Daily Telegraph and was in a good position to discover what had happened as he was trusted by the British establishment. After all, all the people concerned were long dead and the basic outline of the conspiracy had been revealed in 1931 when the wife of one of the agents involved in the conspiracy published an account based on the diaries of her husband, Sidney Reilly, who had been executed in 1925 by the Russian Secret Police (Cheka) for his part in the assassination attempt. In the next couple of years, two other British agents involved in the plot, Robert Bruce Lockhart and George Alexander Hill, published their accounts of the conspiracy. However, the British government refused to release MI6 files that would have confirmed the story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brook-Shepherd had a meeting with an unnamed government minister, who had been a close friend for many years. He later recalled that "over several lengthy sessions, I was briefed on everything that had survived in our closed archives on the subject I was dealing with". Eventually he was allowed to see the official documents held by the British intelligence services. He became suspicious when he could not find one reference to Ernest Boyce, the MI6 station chief in Moscow in the summer of 1918 when the conspiracy took place. Brook-Shepherd writes about finding a file headed "Anti-Bolshevik Activities in Russia" but when opened he found it to be completely empty. He eventually reached the conclusion that every document relating to the assassination plot had been destroyed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of this post see: </span><br />
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John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-76109578995690659102014-02-11T08:52:00.001-08:002014-02-11T08:52:34.814-08:00Winston Churchill and Chemical Warfare<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In April 1915 the German Army used chlorine gas cylinders against the French Army at Ypres. Chlorine gas destroyed the respiratory organs of its victims and this led to a slow death by asphyxiation. General William Robertson recommended Brigadier General Charles Howard Foulkes to General John French as the best man to organise the retaliation. Foulkes accepted the post and on 25th September, 1915, the British Army launched its first gas attack.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brigadier General Foulkes eventually received the title of General Officer Commanding the Special Brigade responsible for Chemical Warfare and Director of Gas Services. He worked closely with scientists working at the governmental laboratories at Porton Down near Salisbury. His biographer, John Bourne, has argued: "Despite Foulkes' energy, the ingenuity of his men and the consumption of expensive resources, gas was ultimately disappointing as a weapon, despite its terrifying reputation." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In July 1917, David Lloyd George appointed Winston Churchill as Minister of Munitions and for the rest of the war, he was in charge of the production of tanks, aeroplanes, guns and shells. Clive Ponting, the author of Churchill (1994) has argued: "The technology in which Churchill placed greatest faith though was chemical warfare, which had first been used by the Germans in 1915. It was at this time that Churchill developed what was to prove a life-long enthusiasm for the widespread use of this form of warfare."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRchurchill.htm">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRchurchill.htm</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the posting see:</span><br />
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<br />John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-64184173455640194312014-02-01T04:14:00.000-08:002014-02-01T04:18:39.309-08:00Pete Seeger and the Media<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pete Seeger received some very complimentary obituaries in the American press this week. They only briefly mentioned his blacklisting and definitely did not say anything about their role in the destruction of his career in the early 1950s. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seeger's parents encouraged him to question authority at an early age. His father, Charles Louis Seeger, was a musicologist who taught at Berkeley University, lost his job when he opposed United States involvement in the First World War. Seeger told his dean that Germany and England were both imperialist powers, and as far as he was concerned, they could fight each other to a stalemate. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seeger's first concert performance was on 3rd March 1940. It was a benefit for California migrant workers. Other singers on the show included Josh White, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Molly Jackson and Huddie Leadbelly. Six moths later joined together with Guthrie, Lee Hayes, Pete Hawes and Millard Lampell to form the Almanac Singers. They specialized in songs advocating an anti-war, anti-racism and pro-union philosophy. Not the sort of material that was liked by the mainstream press. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAseeger.htm">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAseeger.htm</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the article see:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-83558442055019111942014-01-17T23:06:00.001-08:002014-01-17T23:06:54.849-08:00Should history teachers use Blackadder in the classroom?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In an article on the teaching of the First World War in <i>The Daily Mail</i> on 2nd January, 2014, Michael Gove wrote: “Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage. The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as <i>Oh! What a Lovely War</i>, <i>The Monocled Mutineer</i> and <i>Blackadder</i>, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gove then goes on to argue: "The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war. The ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Education Secretary says it is time to listen to historians such as Margaret Macmillan who has “demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order”.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gove then goes on to attack Professor Sir Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian by claiming that he has argued that “the men who enlisted in 1914 may have thought they were fighting for civilisation, for a better world, a war to end all wars, a war to defend freedom: they were wrong”. Just to make sure that <i>The Daily Mail</i> readers will support his argument about Evans, he points out that he also writes for <i>The Guardian</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the article see:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html</span>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-38769006251150545012014-01-06T02:51:00.003-08:002014-01-06T02:53:33.459-08:00Solomon Northup, Wikipedia and the 12 Years a Slave film.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In an article in yesterday's Guardian, the British director, Steve McQueen, of Oscar-tipped drama 1<i>2 Years a Slave</i>, criticised Hollywood for a historical paucity of movies on slavery. The film is based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup. McQueen argues the industry has largely ignored the subject of slavery. The article quotes an interview given by McQueen to Sky News: "The second world war lasted five years and there are hundreds and hundreds of films about the second world war and the Holocaust. Slavery lasted 400 years and there are less than 20 films. We have to redress that balance and look at that time in history."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The same is true of websites in the USA. Do a search at Google for "Solomon Northup" and see what you get. At the top you will get his Wikipedia entry. In its early days Google attempted to give you the best page at the top of its searches. With its reliance of "domain authority"the situation has changed. If Wikipedia has produced a page on a subject, it will appear at the top of any search. Google has a domain authority of 100. Whereas the Guardian has a score of only 96 (American newspapers are rated higher as this is Google's plan to allow its country to dominate mass communications). Even our top universities like Cambridge and Oxford only have domain authority ratings of 94. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Wikipedia entry is fairly detailed account of his life (this has been increased dramatically since the release of <i>12 Years a Slave</i>). My problem with the entry for Solomon Northup is that it makes no attempt to capture what it was like to a slave in the United States. There is no excuse for this as Northup produced a magnificent memoir of his experiences.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASnorthup.htm"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASnorthup.htm</span></a><br />
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<br />John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-48717198748731126492013-12-13T08:43:00.003-08:002013-12-13T08:43:25.656-08:00The Angel of Auschwitz<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gisella Perl was born into a Jewish family in Hungary in 1907. At 16 years old, Gisella Perl graduated first in her secondary-school class, the only woman and the only Jew. She asked her father to send her to medical school, but he refused at first, saying "I do not want my daughter to lose her faith and break away from Judaism.'' Several months later, she approached him again, this time with a prayer book he had given her, and said, ''I swear on this book that wherever life will take me, under whatever circumstances, I shall always remain a good, true Jew.'' Maurice Perl now changed his mind and she was able to enroll in medical school.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She married a surgeon and was working as a gynecologist in Máramarossziget when the German Army invaded the country in 1944. Gisella and the rest of her family, were deported to extermination camps. Anne S. Reamey has pointed out: "As with many Jews across Hungary, Dr. Perl and her family were forced into a ghetto before being transported to Auschwitz in March 1944. After eight excruciating days packed tightly into cattle cars with almost no food or water, Dr. Perl's transport arrived at the gates of Auschwitz. As they entered into what, for many, would be their final resting place, families were separated into two lines: those going to the right were subjected to forced labor (about 3,000 people) while those going to the left were exterminated immediately in the gas chambers (7,000-9,000 people)."</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html</a>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-59038481824200971432013-11-22T09:14:00.002-08:002013-11-22T09:14:49.623-08:00Adolf Hitler and Women<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you study the murder of Geli Raubal in the classroom, a follow up lesson could look at Hitler's relationship with other women. This is always taken into account when examing the death of Geli Raubal. Hitler's first significant relationship took place in 1927. Hitler, then aged 37, became involved with the sixteen-year-old Maria Reiter. Hitler appears to have been strongly attracted to teenagers. He later explained: "A girl of eighteen to twenty is as malleable as wax. It should be possible for a man, whoever the chosen woman may be, to stamp his own imprint on her. That's all the woman asks for." Maria later explained: "We went out into the night.... Hitler was about to put his arm around my shoulders and pull me toward him when the two dogs suddenly attacked each other.... Hitler suddenly intervened, like a maniac he hit his dog with his riding whip... and shook him violently by the collar. He was very excited.... I did not expect that he could hit his dog so brutally and ruthlessly, the dog which he had said he could not live without. Yet he beat up his most loyal companion." Maria asked him "How can you be so brutal and beat your dog like that?" He replied "It was necessary." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ian Kershaw has argued <i>Hitler 1889-1936</i> (1998): "He (Hitler) was thirty-seven years of age; she was sixteen. Like his father, he preferred women much younger than himself - girls he could dominate, who would be obedient playthings but not get in the way. The two women with whom he would become most intimately associated, Geli Raubal (nineteen years younger than he was) and Eva Braun (twenty-three years younger), fitted the same model - until, that is, Geli became rebellious and wanted a level of freedom which Hitler was unwilling to permit." Ronald Hayman has pointed out that there was a regular patten to Hitler's relationships: "Though he found it easy during his twenties and early thirties to make friends with children and with women in their forties and fifties, he was nervous of being rebuffed or humiliated by women of his own age. But at thirty-seven he was old enough to treat a teenage girl as if she were a child. With Maria, once they were sufficiently relaxed in each other's company, there was nothing to stop them from making love." </span><br />
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<br />John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-20774505797345494812013-11-11T09:03:00.001-08:002013-11-11T09:03:40.417-08:00Murder Cases in the Classroom<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I first started teaching in 1977. The school was using some new Schools Council Project materials called "What is History?" It included the "Mystery of Mark Pullen". The lesson went really well until the end when the students were told that Mark Pullen was not a real person. They felt cheated that they had spent time investigating what they considered a murder case that was not true. My response to this was to create a lesson on a real mystery. I had recently read a book on the Mary Celeste. I therefore decided to create a lesson on a real-life mystery. The students loved it and a couple of years later the material became the first publication of Tressell, the teacher-run cooperative based in Brighton. For many years it was our best selling booklet. Children (and teachers) love mysteries. They especially love murder mysteries. Another best selling booklet was the "Assassination of John F. Kennedy".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the reasons that students are attracted to such issues is that it gives them a role in the learning process. Their opinion becomes important and they become active learners. It is also a marvellous exercise for inspecting the evidence. It gives them the chance to be a detective (or more importantly, an historian). The problem is finding enough time in the curriculum to spend on "mysteries". I recently came across a case which might indeed be worth spending a lesson on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The case involves the death of Hitler's young niece, Geli Raubal. Officially, Geli killed herself on 18th September, 1931. She was aged 23 and had been having a sexual relationship with her uncle for over two years. The anti-Nazi press published stories suggesting that Adolf Hitler was romantically involved with Geli and that he had murdered her because she was expecting a child by a Jewish music teacher. Hitler issued a statement denying any involvement in her death but the left-wing newspapers continued to carry these stories. Rudolf Hess claimed that Hitler became suicidal because of the rumours that he had shot Geli. "He was so fearfully vilified by this new campaign of lies that he wanted to make an end of everything. He could no longer look at a newspaper because this frightful filth was killing him. He wanted to give up politics and never again appear in public." </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERraubal.htm"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERraubal.htm</span></a><br />
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<br />John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-20206812294341278412013-11-05T13:12:00.002-08:002013-11-05T13:12:32.889-08:00Major Truman Smith and the Funding of Adolf Hitler<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was reading <i>Hitler: The Missing Years</i> (1957) recently. The book is by Ernst Hanfstaengel, one of Hitler's first financial backers. Hanfstaengel became one of Hitler's inner circle. He was one of his earliest financial supporters and in March, 1923, provided $1,000 to ensure the daily publication of Volkische Beobachter. The newspaper, an anti-Semitic gossip sheet had previously appeared twice a week. With Hanfstaengel's money it was published every day. This was a real breakthrough as it enabled Hitler to build up both membership and funds. Hanfstaengel claims that he was encouraged to meet Hitler by Major Truman Smith, as assistant military attaché at the American embassy in Berlin. This might seem surprising but it reflects the role of intelligence agencies soon after the First World War. We now know that the head of MI6 in America, William Wiseman, was funding anti-Bolshevik groups in Russia since 1917. Was Truman Smith arranging funds for anti-socialist groups in Germany? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I decided to do some research on Truman Smith. I found his papers are lodged at the the Hoover Institution Archives. In a biographical note it said he was involved with Charles A. Lindbergh in the 1930s. I have a copy of Lindbergh's <i>Autobiography of Values</i> (1976) and A. Scott Berg's biography <i>Lindbergh</i> (1998). These sources reveal that that Truman Smith was definitely working for military intelligence in the early 1920s. He completed a course at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth. He then became an instructor at the U.S. Infantry School until 1932 when he attended the Army War College. He then served with the 27th infantry regiment in Hawaii. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1935 Truman Smith was appointed as military attaché in Berlin. He was told that his chief responsibility was "to report to Washington about the growth of the German army, including the development of new weapons and new battle tactics." In 1936 he arranged for Charles A. Lindbergh to visit the country. Lindbergh wrote to his mother about the proposed trip: "Comparatively little is known about the present status of Aviation in Germany, so I am looking forward, with great interest, to going there. Even under the difficulties she has encountered since the war, Germany has taken a leading part in a number of aviation developments, including metal construction, low-wing designs, dirigibles, and Diesel engines. If it had not been for the war she would probably have produced a great deal more. On the other hand, if it had not been for the war it is doubtful whether aviation would be as far advanced as it is today."</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Truman_Smith.htm"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Truman_Smith.htm</span></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlindbergh.htm"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlindbergh.htm</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the article see:</span><br />
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<br />John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-60045117194292405432013-10-30T08:25:00.002-07:002013-10-30T08:25:23.948-07:00Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In June 1933 Unity Mitford and Diana Mitford, joined the British Union of Fascists, the extreme right-wing group founded by Oswald Mosley the previous year. Mosley described her as "young, ingenuous, full of enthusiasm, in a way stage-struck by the glamour and panoply of the national socialist movement and the mass admiration of Hitler" She was active in the women's section headed by Esther Makgill, the daughter of John Makgill: "I created the women's section of the BUF... Unity Mitford didn't mean anything to me in those days. She was swept in by her sister." Her friend, Mary Ormsby-Gore, said that she sold The Blackshirt on the streets of London: "She began to go to the East End, and I went to one meeting with her... One day she took me to Selfridges saying, let's make a record, and she spoke into it, The Yids, The Yids, We've gotta get rid of the Yids." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unity told Armida Macindoe that she was determined to meet Hitler: "She used to go to the Osteria Bavaria restaurant and sit waiting for Hitler. She'd sit there all day long with her book and read. She'd say, I don't want to make a fool of myself being alone there, and so she'd ask me to go along to keep her company, to have lunch or a coffee. Often Hitler was there. People came and went. She would place herself so that he invariably had to walk by her, she was drawing attention to herself, not obnoxiously but enough to make one slightly embarrassed. But the whole point was to attract his attention. She'd talk more loudly or drop a book. And it paid off."</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WRmitfordU.htm">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WRmitfordU.htm</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rest of the Blog can be seen here:</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html</a>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-36425531791843209952013-10-26T04:10:00.001-07:002013-10-26T04:10:07.735-07:00Claud Cockburn and his fight against Appeasement.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Claud Cockburn worked for <i>The Times</i> during the Great Depression. In the summer of 1932 Cockburn decided to resign from the newspaper for political reasons. The editor, Geoffrey Dawson, replied: "It was foolish to give up working for The Times simply on account of one's political views... The Times was a vehicle which could be used by people of the most varied opinions... For myself, I have always regarded The Times as something of an organ of the Left... Though never, I hope, of the extreme Left... It does seem rather bad luck that you of all people should go red on us." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cockburn now returned to London where he intended to start up his own business. He had originally got the idea while working in New York City where he saw for the first time a mimeograph machine. He later recalled: "A mimeograph machine is one of the few remaining weapons which still gives small and comparatively poor organizations a sporting chance in a scrap with large and wealthy ones." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This impression was reinforced in Germany where he had seen supporters of Kurt von Schleicher using mimeograph machines to produce political propaganda. Cockburn had also been inspired by inspired by the French satirical paper <i>Le Canard Enchainé</i>. He considered it "the best-informed publication in France" and although some of it was "in execrable taste" it carried no advertisements, received no subsidies, and still broke "a little better than even". Cockburn was also attracted to the way it exposed government corruption. Something that Cockburn was keen on doing in Britain. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Claud Cockburn had decided to call his newsletter, <i>The Week</i>. As Richard Ingrams has explained: "Started on a capital of £50 provided by his Oxford friend Benvenuto Sheard, the paper, which was all his own work, was produced in a one-room office at 34 Victoria Street, and was obtainable only by subscription. Although he relied on information supplied by a number of foreign correspondents including Negley Farson (Chicago Daily News) and Paul Scheffer (Berliner Tageblatt), it was his own journalistic flair which gave the paper its unique influence. Cockburn was not an orthodox journalist. He pooh-poohed the notion of facts as if they were nuggets of gold waiting to be unearthed. It was, he believed, the inspiration of the journalist which supplied the story. Speculation, rumour, even guesswork, were all part of the process and an inspired phrase was worth reams of cautious analysis."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first issue of the newsletter appeared on Wednesday, 29th March 1933. As Norman Rose has pointed out: "It was preceded by scenes of great editorial confusion. The actual production of the paper was left until Wednesday morning in order, Claud argued, to pre-empt the existing weeklies with as much hot ness as possible. Claud wrote the entire issue - a modest three pages of foolscap - and cut the stencils, touching up the material as he progressed, a routine that excluded any prospect of efficiency... The Week finally emerged in what would become its distinctive format, smudgy in appearance, lively in content." The first edition had as its lead story "Black-Brown-Fascist Plan". It told of how Benito Mussolini had sponsored a four-power arrangement to regulate the affairs of Europe. It revealed that a definite proposal had been forwarded to London and Warsaw that envisaged granting concessions to Germany in the Polish Corridor while compensating Poland with a slice of Russian Ukraine." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rest of the article can be found here:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-72728158267739253132013-10-21T04:23:00.001-07:002013-10-21T04:35:41.576-07:00Secret Negotiations with the Nazis in 1940 <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the outbreak of the Second World War, a former senior figure in MI6, Sir William Wiseman approached Lord Lothian (British ambassador in the United States) and Lord Halifax (British foreign secretary), and promised that for £100,000 he could set up "the best possible intelligence service in the United States" for the British. Lothian and Halifax, both strong members of the pro-appeasement group, now approached Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, with the offer. Menzies told a Foreign Office meeting that Wiseman was regarded with considerable suspicion by the US Embassy in London and that "both his predecessors (Mansfield Cumming and Hugh Sinclair) had very strong views about Sir William Wiseman and had recommended that he should on no account be employed by His Majesty's Government." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wiseman now returned to the United States where he was a partner in the Wall Street banking firm Kuhn, Loeb & Company. However, he was back in London on 6th June, 1940, where he had lunch with Lord Halifax, who was still foreign secretary despite the fact that Winston Churchill had replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. According to Jim Wilson, the author of Nazi Princess: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stephanie Von Hohenlohe (2011): "Halifax briefed Wiseman to assist Lothian and help him to find some way to starting peace negotiations that would be effective. Before the outbreak of war a substantial number of the British Establishment (prime movers in political, aristocratic and financial circles) many egged on by the princess' activities, were totally opposed to the coming conflict. When, despite their efforts, war broke out, these people continued to believe that it should be resolved as quickly as possible through a negotiated peace." Interestingly, Joseph Goebbels was that month recording in his diary that Adolf Hitler had told him that he had been approached by the British about peace negotiations. Hitler had told them he was willing to negotiate but only with Lord Halifax. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scott Newton, the author of Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (1997) has argued that Wiseman represented a group that included Lord Halifax, Lord Rothermere, Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 8th Duke of Buccleuch, Charles McLaren, 3rd Baron Aberconway and Henry Betterton, 1st Baron Rushcliffe. "All its members shared a profound fear that the domestic and international order which had sustained liberal-imperialist Britain was about to be irrevocably changed... With some justification it was believed that total war meant the socialization of Britain and a ruinous conflict in the heart of Europe from which only the Soviet Union could benefit."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Stephanie_von_Hohenlohe.htm">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Stephanie_von_Hohenlohe.htm</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/William_Wiseman.htm">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/William_Wiseman.htm</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fritz_Wiedemann.htm">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fritz_Wiedemann.htm</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the article see:</span><br />
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John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-19851766085128039102013-10-17T11:17:00.000-07:002013-10-17T11:17:07.645-07:00Robert Vansittart's Spy Network<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the age of only forty-eight, Robert Vansittart was appointed permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor on 30th January 1933, Vansittart became his leading opponent in the Foreign Office. He wrote on 6th May: "The present regime in Germany will, on past and present form, loose off another European war just so soon as it feels strong enough … we are considering very crude people, who have very few ideas in their noddles but brute force and militarism." Norman Rose, the author of Vansittart: Study of a Diplomat (1978) has argued: "But how would he combat the German menace? First, by redefining the aims of British strategy, by isolating Germany as Britain's most immediate danger, and then by boosting the British defence programme to meet this changed order of priorities. Well out of the public eye as a member of high-powered government committees, Vansittart laboured ceaselessly to realize these aims." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Robert Vansittart worked very closely with Admiral Hugh Sinclair, the head of MI6, and Vernon Kell, the head of MI5. According to Christopher Andrew, the author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009): "Robert Vansittart, permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office, was much more interested in intelligence than his political masters were... He dined regularly with Sinclair, was also in (less frequent) touch with Kell, and built up what became known as his own private detective agency collecting German intelligence. More than any other Whitehall mandarin, Vansittart stood for rearmament and opposition to appeasement."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vansittart recruited Wolfgang zu Putlitz, First Secretary at the German Embassy and Jona von Ustinov, a journalist to work for MI5. Putlitz later recalled: "I would unburden myself of all the dirty schemes and secrets which I encountered as part of my daily routine at the Embassy. By this means I was able to lighten my conscience by the feeling that I was really helping to damage the Nazi cause for I knew Ustinov was in touch with Vansittart, who could use these facts to influence British policy." Putlitz insisted that the only way to deal with Adolf Hitler was to stand firm. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Charles Higham argues that Vansittart received information from the Russian secret agent Anatoly Baykalov, that Wallis Simpson was was a Nazi collaborator. Baykalov had obtained this information, while posing as a White Russian, in the group that included Anna Wolkoff (she was Wallis's dressmaker). Vansittart had two reliable plants in the German embassy who could inform him when any material arrived for transmission to Germany in the diplomatic bags.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See the rest of the article here:</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html</a>John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095401602569331827.post-25355882936450850032013-10-16T06:15:00.000-07:002013-10-16T06:15:09.899-07:00British Newspaper Reporting of Appeasement and Nazi Germany<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Appeasement provides an interesting way to look at how the subject was reported in British newspapers. The two major press barons, Lord Rothermere (The Daily Mail, The Sunday Dispatch and The Evening News) and Lord Waldorf Astor (The Times and The Observer) were both strong supporters of appeasement and so the public had a very distorted picture of the negotiations. Rothermere and Astor both used their newspapers to provide a positive image of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. So much so that their activities were being monitored by MI5. In doing so, they discovered that both men were seen on a regular basis in the company of Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, a Nazi spy who had been under observation as a German agent since receiving information from French Intelligence in 1928.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the most important journalist in this campaign was George Ward Price. There is virtually nothing available on the web on the activities of Ward Price. I have therefore produced a very detailed page on his reporting. He was the Daily Mail's foreign correspondent. During the 1930s he developed a close relationship with Adolf Hitler. According to the German historian, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: "The famous special correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Ward Price, was welcomed to interviews in the Reich Chancellery in a more privileged way than all other foreign journalists, particularly when foreign countries had once more been brusqued by a decision of German foreign policy. His paper supported Hitler more strongly and more constantly than any other newspaper outside Germany."</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/George_Ward_Price.htm"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/George_Ward_Price.htm</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of the article see:</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html</span></a><br />
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John Simkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13637387408439041634noreply@blogger.com0