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In Search of the Ghoulish Work of Japan’s Unit 731
by Josh Clark | March 3, 2011
There was something about the moment in human history that encapsulated World War II where the idea of vivisecting humans seemed appealing to a lot of people around the world. Either that, or there are a lot of us who really want to dismember alive those people we interact with at any given moment and it was only under the utter attendent loss of humanity that afforded some of those people the opportunity to do it. That Herophilus, the father of anatomy, vivisected about 600 live subjects in the fouth century BC, shows that the curosity of what will happen when a knife opens a live human is an ancient one.
Everyone has heard of the Grammar Nazi. A Grammar Nazi is a person who has taken the rules of grammar deeply to heart, and who then uses those rules mercilessly when other people fail to obey. The following videos make the point, humorously but perhaps a little too strongly (contain blood): Grammar Nazis and Grammar [...]
Sarah and I started off “Who stole the Amber Room?” with a discussion of American Girl dolls, mainly because we talk about them much more often than you’d think two 20somethings would, but also because pioneer Kirsten had a lovely, much-coveted amber necklace. Now imagine an entire room paneled with the fossilized resin and backed in gold leaf, decorated with mosaics in semiprecious stones. When Hitler took a shine to the treasure, it disappeared.
Our next topic was Irish hero Brian Boru, a guerrilla warrior who drove the marauding Vikings out of Ireland and became high king before dying bloodily by Viking hands. But history is never as simple as that.
I spent five weeks of my 20s driving around the U.S., living in a van. It was cool. One of the many things that I learned from that trip — including that there are a surprising number of gas stations have showers you can rent for about $2 per — is the versatility of Dr. Bronner’s All-One Magic Soap. As long as you, as the Dr. suggests, dilute, dilute, dilute, you can use it for brushing your teeth, washing your clothes, your hair and anything else that needs cleanin’.
I’ve come to love Fresh Lemon Sugar soap, though all these years later, I remain a devotee of Dr. Bronner’s soaps. I was recently heartened to learn that the company, which is still run by Dr. Bronner’s kids, buys olive oil from Palestinian and Israeli farmers and mixes them together in equal measure in their soaps. It’s like peace, available in a bar or liquid.
At Stuff You Should Know, it is our goal to give everybody something interesting to discuss around the campfire or the bar or between rounds at a cockfight, even if it means we feel dirty after having reached that goal. So how about today we talk about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement?
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were defined by the story of their love, of a king abdicating his throne for a commoner. But there’s a lesser-known aspect of their relationship: their ties to the Third Reich. Edward VIII could have been the Nazi king.
Wednesday’s podcast brought us a different sort of kingly tale: the matchup between King Porus and Alexander the Great at the Battle of the Hydaspes.
Reason No. 4,599,032,433 to Hate the Nazis: A Very Swastika Christmas
by Josh Clark | November 16, 2009
Everybody hates the Nazis. Except, of course, neo-Nazis, and everybody else hates them too. The reasons are pretty much endless: the Holocaust, the horrific medical experiments, the ones who got away to Brazil and Alabama. Nazis are fun to hate, really. When else has there been a body of people so dedicated to such utterly despicable ideals? It’s like it was totally lost on them, their future place as history’s whipping post.
The Inglourious Leni Riefenstahl
by Katie Lambert | September 8, 2009
I saw Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” yesterday, and I’m still thinking about it. I keep picturing red — red dress, red lipstick, red blood. I also mentally checked off all the Nazi and Nazi-sympathizing names on my historical figures list: Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Emil Jannings, Leni Riefenstahl.
Riefenstahl always denied being a member of the Nazi party, which is true. And then she denied the letters she wrote about Hitler, which isn’t. And then she denied that her films were propaganda, and that Gypsy extras in her films were then sent off to Auschwitz, and that she witnessed civilians being killed.
Riefenstahl was also a fantastic director. Therein lies the problem: the internal struggle over whether you give credit for someone’s accomplishments when you find him or her morally questionable or even disgusting.
Back when I was a younger pup, I used to be interested in all manner of weird phenomena, ghosts especially, and I figured I would grow up to go study at Duke’s now-defunct school of parapsychology. That didn’t pan out; as I grew further away from the ground, so too did I grow apart from the deep interest I held in the abnormal.
I did manage to pick up a few things along the way, however: Borley Rectory, for example, is probably the most haunted house in the world. One of the coolest photographs ever is of spontaneous combustion victim Dr. John Bentley’s charred leg. And! When the UFOs crashed in Roswell, NM, in 1947, along with aliens in various stages of death and dying, the federales also found a strange, lightweight metal that was tough as diamonds but pliable as paper. It looks like the cloned offspring of the Nazi scientists we poached before they could face the music at Nuremberg after World War II have finally managed to replicate it.
Papal Escape Plan From the Nazis Revealed
by Jane McGrath | April 23, 2009
What do you do when the Nazis are coming? Go to Portugal, apparently. That was the plan for the Vatican when Germans were coming with the intent on kidnapping the pope, according to Telegraph. In September 1943, the Allies had secured an armistice with Italy, but the Germans occupied Rome. Hitler had his eyes on the pope as well, however, as he ordered General Karl Otto Wolff to infiltrate and occupy the Vatican. Wolff was supposed to secure the treasures and archives there and take the pope, Pius XII.
The pope had been criticizing Nazi policies, especially the treatment of the Jews. Because the pope, as the head of the Catholic Church, held a lot of sway with European Catholics, Hitler wanted to stifle this criticism. Pius knew he was in danger, and so he came up with a plan for what the church officials should do if he was arrested.
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