| Kyrgyzstan Votes After Year of Unrest Voters turned out in force in Kyrgyzstan for parliamentary elections to choose a new and empowered parliament that the government hopes will usher in a new era of democracy. online.wsj.com |
Germany's first Hitler exhibition opens Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime aims to expose cult of personality surrounding the rise of the FührerA groundbreaking exhibition about Adolf Hitler opens in Berlin tomorrow, the first time since the war that a major museum has explored the relationship between the Führer and the German nation.Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime, at Berlin's German Historical Museum, has been praised for smashing taboos and opening afresh the debate about how Hitler managed so successfully to seduce a nation. "Whether we like it or not he remains our strongest trademark," said Karl Schnorr, a 68-year-old retired engineer at the preview. "Maybe it's time we shook him off, but first we need to understand how we fell for him so utterly."The opening coincides with a study published this week in which one in 10 Germans professed they would like a "Führer" figure to "govern Germany with a hard hand", while 35% said they considered the country to be "dangerously overrun" with foreigners.The exhibition sets out to explain how the persona of Hitler and his ideals infiltrated the furthest corners of Germans' lives. Among the hundreds of exhibits are collections of Nazi memorabilia and propaganda, including beer mats, postcards, playing cards, lead soldiers and swastika lampshades.Germans' fetish-like obsession with uniforms during the Nazi era, as well as issues such as how the established churches so readily fell in line, are closely explored.But in a reflection of the sensitivity of the subject matter there are almost no objects Hitler might himself have touched. "Such tangible relics would carry with them the danger of encouraging a Führer cult," said Simon Erpel, one of the curators. "We were offered his briefcase by one collector, but we rejected it for that reason."Among the exceptions is an elegant dark wooden chest of drawers from Hitler's chancellery, filigreed with hundreds of swastika forms, which has been hung at a diagonal angle on a corner wall, and is further protected from possible Hitler admirers by a thin gauze panel.In a country where the Nazi salute, Mein Kampf and swastikas remain banned, the nervousness of the curators is palpable. As well as the decision to play no audio recordings of his speeches, no image of Hitler is shown in isolation. The three huge portraits of him in different stages of his life that open the exhibition include a photomontage of his face set against a skull. Behind each picture printed on gauze are images of his supporters, marching soldiers and unemployed workers.As well as SS uniforms there are uniforms of concentration camp prisoners and "Jews forbidden" street signs, to ensure the Nazis' greatest crimes, the murders of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and regime opponents are an integral part of the debate.A propaganda film showing Mussolini's visit to Berlin in 1937 is juxtaposed with extracts from Charlie Chaplin's satirical film The Great Dictator. "We're fully aware of what we're doing and we planned this all very carefully," said Professor Hans-Ulrich Thamer, the chief curator. "The reason this is happening now is that every generation has the need to ask questions. The demon died long ago, what remains are many contradictory impressions and explanations. The current generation is approaching this with a new curious openness," he said.Crammed together in a single glass cabinet is an array of Hitler busts in bronze and terracotta. "We've placed these particularly carefully so that no one can easily pose next to them," said Thamer.The exhibition, which was six years in the making and relied heavily for input on British historian and Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, embraces the thesis that the Nazi leader managed to mobilise Germans' social hopes and fears, but that his ability to seduce them had little to do with his personal characteristics. "He was a rather unprepossessing character as a young man," said Thamer.The exhibition follows a series of recent films, documentaries and even comedies that have sought to demystify the Nazi leader. The most acclaimed attempt was 2004 film Downfall, which dramatised the Führer's last days in his claustrophobic Berlin bunker.An indication that the topic is far from exhausted is a lecture accompanying the exhibition, entitled "We're far from finished with Hitler".GermanyAdolf HitlerMuseumsHolocaustKate Connollyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Czech's Nuclear Tender Is Delayed a Year The Czech Republic's prime minister said the choosing of a winner of the country's largest-ever nuclear power tender will be delayed by a year to 2013. online.wsj.com |
WikiLeaks Iraq war logs: Why Iraq has the right to know the full death toll | Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda The Iraq war logs show the US withheld details of thousands of civilian deaths. This was wrong, and counterproductive• Datablog: every death mapped and data to downlpad• Full coverage of the Iraq war logsAll information about the deaths caused in any disaster, be it a man-made war or a natural catastrophe, is public information which no state has a right to withhold indefinitely. Even in military circles, the latest thinking accepts this view, for a variety of reasons that include its own best interests. We argued exactly this point in a recent article in the British Army Review, co-authored with a British Army colonel.The Iraq war logs contain information on civilian and other casualties that has been kept hidden for more than six years. Also concealed has been the fact that these logs record the names of thousands of Iraqi civilian victims. Whether or not this data is "stolen" from the US military, as a spokesman has asserted, is beside the point. The pertinent fact is that the data on casualties contained within these logs is information about the public (mainly, the Iraqi public) that was unjustifiably withheld by the US government from the public, for reasons that remain unstated.Since the 2003 invasion, Iraq Body Count (IBC) has systematically recorded not just the mounting number of civilians killed in Iraq, but many of the connected details. These have included the time, place and other circumstances of each death and, whenever possible, the name and demographics such as the age, sex and occupation of the dead. Consequently every record in IBC's public database is open to scrutiny, correction (where necessary) and verification. Most importantly, in the context of the Iraq war logs, this detailed level of recording allows IBC's information to be compared and reconciled with new data as it emerges.Our detailed, incident-level analysis indicates that the Iraq war logs are likely to add some 15,000 previously unreported deaths of civilians and police to public knowledge. This is despite the fact that the logs contain a lower total number of civilian deaths than those in IBC's count for the same period of the conflict. This is because the logs miss many deaths that IBC has recorded.Discovering such previously undocumented deaths would have been impossible if the deaths contained in the logs had been presented as simple totals, as is the norm for official announcements or publications of casualty data. Without sight of the incident-level and victim-level details in the logs there is simply no way to establish how such data truly compares to existing sources.From our systematic evaluation of 760 of the logs (including all of those listing more than 20 victims, together with a stratified sample of the many more logs describing smaller incidents), we have already found 113 hitherto unreported victim names, as well as new demographic data for 298 victims. Most victim names appear to be attached to the smaller incidents where one or two people were killed, and which form by far the largest proportion of logs containing casualty data. Retrieving all of the victim names that may be present in all 390,000 logs will require much more work.But like the other casualty details in the Iraq war logs, these names too belong in the public domain – as a memorial to the dead, and public recognition of the loss suffered by their families. Only a list of named individuals, visible to all including those who knew them in life, can ever provide full verification, without omissions or duplication, of the death toll of this war.It is time for governments to realise that the early, voluntary release of casualty information in the conflicts they are embroiled in is the correct thing to do, both from a moral and a pragmatic standpoint. Whatever is holding them back is surely a minor concern when set against the public's right to know the immediate human consequences of war.Iraq: The war logsIraqMiddle EastForeign policyJohn SlobodaHamit Dardaganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Art Stolen by the Nazis Now Cataloged Online in Database During World War II, the Nazis pulled off the biggest art heist in history, looting thousands of paintings worth untold millions. Now, thanks to a newly available online database, some of them can be returned feedproxy.google.com |