nazis

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Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin

The Knight Shift today is remembering and honoring the life of an army officer from Nazi Germany.  And for good reason…

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin was born in July of 1922.  More than two decades later at the age of 22, he was an infantry officer of the German army.  Ironic, since both Ewald-Heinrich and his father hated everything there was about Nazi ideology (the elder von Kleist-Schmenzin had even tried to arouse support from western countries for a coup against Hitler).

In January of 1944, Ewald-Heinrich was approached by Claus von Stauffenberg for a bold plan: to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a suicide bombing.  Von Kleist-Schmenzin volunteered to take the place of a wounded officer.  However the attempt had to be cancelled because Hitler kept postponing the event which would have him placed near the bomb.

Then came the following summer, and von Kleist-Schmenzin became involved with the now-famous July ...

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During my lifetime, I have met six survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. Each of them Jewish. Some were at Treblinka. Some at Bergen-Belsen. Some at Auschwitz.

Hearing only them tell his or her story would remain as one of the most humbling and heartbreaking and in the end most inspirational tale of human hope that I have ever listened to. To hear the tales of six such people leaves a far greater impression upon one’s mind of the sacredness of even one human life. These people and many more went through Hell on Earth… but not one of them came out of it with affirmation that in spite of the evil that mankind is capable of, there is also a far greater potential for good. Every single survivor of the camps is, has been and forever will be a victory against those who sought their extermination. For all that ...

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That’s not the most weird headline I’ve ever made for a blog post, but I must say: that it’s certainly among the most interesting! It’s not often that the worlds of archaeology, astronomy, chemistry and history come together so boldly.

The statue on the left, dubbed “the Iron Man”, was found in Tibet sometime around 1938, by Nazi scientist Ernst Schäfer. It’s thought that it represents the Buddhist god Vaisravana. The statue isn’t terribly large but given its all-metal composition it is rather heavy. Schäfer thought it would be of particular interest to his superiors because of the swastika symbol carved upon its chest (Schäfer’s expedition was to research the origins of the Aryan race). So the statue was packed up and sent to Germany and eventually found its way into the possession of a private collector.

The statue was likely carved in the tenth century, at most. But ...

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Forty-three years after it first aired on American television in 1968 as part of Star Trek‘s second season, “Patterns of Force”, the episode that had Kirk, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise looking for a Starfleet historian and finding an alien civilization modeled after Nazi Germany instead, will be broadcast for the first time tonight on public television in Germany.

Why hasn’t “Patterns of Force” been widely aired (it was made available as a pay-per-view episode previously) until now? The official reason is that later in the episode, the Nazi era is described as “the most efficient society” in Earth’s history. But widespread consensus is that the extreme hesitancy regarding “Patterns of Force” mostly has to do with what remains the shocking and startling image of James T. Kirk in an S.S. officer’s uniform (along with Spock’s similar attire, before being captured and tortured in the ...

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…and there’s been precious little time for blogging. A shame, that, ‘cuz according to the stats this site’s readership has been increasing this summer rather than going into the usual “lull”.

For the moment, I’ll try to make up for things by posting this portrait of Chewbacca riding a giant squirrel while fighting Nazis.

I can only wish that I had the skillz to pull off an image that awesome! As it is, somebody forwarded it to me this morning, and it was too good not to share. Kudos to whoever it was who executed this startling depiction.

EDIT 4:20 a.m. 07-29-2010: That picture has become crazy popular in the past 24 hours across the Internets and The Official Star Wars Blog has tracked down the artist who created it! A dude named Tyler Edlin is responsible for it… and this was a piece originally commissioned as a wedding ...

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