Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2008 February 19

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[edit] February 19

[edit] Pizarro boats (how did they get there?)

I read that the Spaniards discovered the Pacific coast in 1513 during an expedition in Panama. Later on Pizarro explored the Pacific coast in preparation for the conquest off Peru. (in the 1520 decade). Magelan discovered the Magelan strait and a route to the Pacific in 1520. As the Panama canal certainly didnt exist, how did the boats get on the Pacific side? In 1531 Pizarro used 3 boats for his conquering expedition to Peru.

  • Where the boats built locally on the Pacific coast? And if so, where did they get the metals and other equipment?
  • Or did the Spaniards already use the Magelan strait to get the boats to the Pacific? Very early days and the Pacific South American coast was not yet explored.
  • How did the supply lines run between Spain and Peru? Transport off the gold to Spain and supplies and people to Peru. Did they use a landbridge in Panama?

Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

The Spanish were already well-established in Panama, with Panama City, on the western side of the isthmus, being founded in 1519. The ships for Pizarro's voyage are all likely to have been built locally. The first governor of Panama, Pedrarias Davila, who supported and sponsored Pizarro's expedition to Peru, also started the construction of routes across the isthmus, linking the Pacific and the Caribbean. Clio the Muse (talk) 02:25, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
According to Pedro Cieza de León, Pizarro purchased a ship lying in Panama harbor for his 1524 voyage, said to have been one which Vasco Núñez de Balboa had procured from the merchant Pedro Gregorio. I don't know that this makes much sense, as Balboa had constructed brigantines on the coast from timber and rigging carried overland from Acla. José Antonio del Busto gives Santiago as the name of the vessel.—eric 18:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, i failed to read the question completely, for the 1531 expedition, and again from the account of Pedro de León, at least two of the ships were constructed by Hernando de Soto and Hernán Ponce de Leon in Nicaragua. According to Theodore Maynard (1930) De Soto and the Conquistadores, the two vessels had arrived in Panama during the Spring of 1530, carrying a cargo of slaves.—eric 07:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Correlations to libertarianism

Is it just me, or did any of you notice that many libertarians are male engineers/scientists (although scientists tend to fall more on the liberal side)? Are there's any correlation between profession/gender and political beliefs? -Cecikierk

Well, I am a libertarian, though I am neither male, nor an engineer nor a scientist! Clio the Muse (talk) 01:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I've seen some stats that show that people with business/economic backgrounds tend to be more conservative and those with humanities backgrounds tend to be more liberal. Wrad (talk) 03:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Not just you :D\=< (talk) 05:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Which historian?

Which well-known historian do these attributes describe: -whose book on intellectuals was a bestseller, exposing the moral state of leading thinkers of modern times: Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Sartre, Hellman, and others. -who committed a grave indiscretion himself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dlempa (talk • contribs) 03:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like Paul Johnson, except that his indiscretions are only grave (so far as I'm aware) from a political point of view. Xn4 21:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
He did commit an indiscretion. He was revealed to be having an affair while peddling a line on conservative morality. Our article is silent on this, although it is verifiable and backed up by reliable sources. So you're right, Johnson must be the answer. --Richardrj talk email 06:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Middle East Leader of the 1980's

Who was the leader of the country in the Middle East who deliberately dropped chemical gasses in the late 1980's to citizens of his own country? 99.163.17.176 (talk) 04:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)Dominick

Ali Hassan al-Majid (colorfully nicknamed "Chemical Ali") was convicted in 2007 of using chemical weapons in the al-Anfal Campaign. — Lomn 05:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The leader was Saddam Hussein. See Halabja Day. AllenHansen (talk) 11:35, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rate of evolution of culture

What's the deal with the last century? 100 years ago the American south was chaw-chewin tabackie farmers scratching their heads at plows, and negroes singing zippity doo dah. In the north senators sat around in codpieces and gulped down stolen tea while the townspeople burned women at the stake for menstruating. How did we go from the dark ages of ignorance to a fast-paced modern society capable of tolerating others, adapting to new ideas, and being interested in them instead of frightened or angry? Is this precedented anywhere else in history? Seems to me like there were quite a few like millenium-long empires that never really went much of anywhere other than developing crazy religions and piling up huge rocks on valuable real estate.. why are we different? :D\=< (talk) 05:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!. To translate, I'd contest the view that the US has shaken off its idiosyncrasies. --Tagishsimon (talk) 07:51, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
First: who are "we" in the phrase "Why are we different"? Not everyone who reads this is an American, you know.
Secondly, I strongly dispute the idea that senators were wearing codpieces and women were being burned at the stake in 1908. Someone needs to brush up on his history. 80.254.147.52 (talk) 11:04, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
We as in western society, America as in an example of a western society. And you know what I mean- why have we made more progress in the last few hundred years than like all the rest of recorded history? :D\=< (talk) 11:35, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with 80.254, the decade from 1900 - 1910 was incredible in terms of progress for not just the USA, but the entire world. Most of what we take for granted today (automobiles, telephones, electricity, radio, etc.) was established in that decade. We had people like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt (all of them my biggest idols) around and yet you say it was the "dark ages" - that's just insulting. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 13:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The U.S. still has state like Kansas where elected school boards recently tried to require the "creation theory" be taught in the schools, and a school district in Kentucky within the last few years allowed volunteer parents to go to the school and glue together the pages of the biology books where evolution was discussed. Presidential candidate Huckaby says that the Constitution must be amended to comply with "God's Laws." 100 years ago Negroes were being lynched in the town square for being "uppity." Today people across the world have their countries invaded because they are considered not to like the U.S. or to be plotting the construction of weapons which could someday harm the U.S. (Pay no attention to the oil resources and strategic locations for military bases). About 110 years ago Hawaii was invaded by the U.S. Marines because the native leaders were claimed to be plotting against the U.S. citizens who operated pineapple plantations (ignore the excellent harbor needed by the U.S. Navy). Medieval water tortures are used to extract confessions from suspects who are then to be tried for their lives by secretive military tribunals rife with command influence. Laws are ignored to wiretap citizens. Citizens are placed on secretive no-fly lists. In other words, I cannot see the paradise of enlightenment that the questioner posits. Edison (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
You've got Kansas wrong, there. They didn't decide to require creation theory. They decided to allow the teacher to decide what to teach. Common misconception. Media outlets jumped on the decision as an example of conservative dogma at work. Wrad (talk) 16:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
My answer would be, no. We (or you or they or whatever), haven't changed. At least not fundamentally. We may be fast-paced, but it doesn't mean that we are more enlightened or tolerant. Read some more history, you'll see that just because people lived 100 years ago, it didn't mean that they were ignorant, stupid and vicious barbarians. We have plenty of those around. AllenHansen (talk) 16:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Washington post article : The Dumbing of America 200.127.59.151 (talk) 16:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
We're just more sophisticated in our stupidity. Nothing has really changed. Wrad (talk) 17:54, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Things have changed much less than you realize. In my view, the main difference is that nowadays we have the benefit of a heavily-industrialized and consumer-driven society based almost entirely on the availability of cheap fossil fuels. As these cheap fossil fuels are depleted you can expect to see a rather rapid return to the tabackie-chewin' dark ages you describe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Santegeezhe (talk • contribs) 21:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Much of that which distinguishes us from what we were 100, 200, even 1000 years ago, is technological in nature. Some of these technologies have had vast, vast effects on the expressions of culture: with television, for example, much of American dialect has become General American, as that is the dialect one sees on television primarily. Increased knowledge of other people has in many ways contributed towards increased tolerance, though it has made it possible for people to hate some others that they would never have bothered hating before (could a man in South Carolina have cared much about someone from Afghanistan before the late 20th century?). Unlike the other technological determinists above, though, I would argue that the crucial technological changes went into place primarily after World War II; the US in the early 20th century was still a cultural backwater for the most part, but after the Second World War it became much more expansive on all fronts. Culture, like biology, evolves quickly when there is more hybridization and increased reproduction. For biology this means genetics; for culture, this means communication. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The "dark ages" preceding 1908, were the times of Pythagoras, Euclid, Aristotle, Johann Gutenberg, Nicolaus Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, William Shakespeare, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Isaac Newton, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Kepler, Leonhard Euler, James Watt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, John Dalton, Ludwig van Beethoven, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Gregor Mendel, James Clerk Maxwell, just to name a few. Those in the last century who have seen further than they did, did so by standing on the shoulders of these giants.
"What's the deal with the last century?" you ask. Advances in theoretical physics in the beginning of the period you refer to, the transistor, and the cracking of the genetic code are of course major achievements, as you surely know, which have had a large impact on everyday life in the form of consumer devices and new medical treatments.
"How did we go from the dark ages of ignorance to a fast-paced modern society capable of tolerating others, adapting to new ideas, and being interested in them instead of frightened or angry?" Sorry, I don't recognize your description of current trends in Western society, and as I already suggested, your description of the past millennium is at best a caricature, IMHO.
On a larger time scale, I do agree that the rate of accumulation of knowledge appears to be increasing. It is likely that the artists who painted the walls of the Altamira cave were not very different from us with regard to intellectual capacity. However, the population then was very small, and the population now is very large (and too large to be sustainable, but that's another story). The number of people contributing to progress now is larger than it has ever been. If you found some way to objectively measure progress, and plotted that progress against the sum total of human being years lived since the emergence of homo sapiens, maybe you would find that the correspondence was linear. --NorwegianBlue talk 22:54, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

We deal better with ignorant generalizations now? hotclaws 08:15, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Let's not get too Whiggish about this. History is not the story of the unbreaking strides progressing toward the marvellous utopia of today. Let's bear in mind that the wonderful twentieth century brought us the vileness of two World Wars, the Holocaust, the massacres in Rwanda and Kosovo (among others) appalling brutality in Africa including a calculated programme of machete amputation of the limbs of thousands of civilians in the west, erm, let me see, Global warming, pollution, lives lived in fear of the Cold War turning hot, Nazism, Bolshevism, Hiroshima, AIDS, the rise of cancer and more piles of misery and evil than probably most of the rest of history put together. (This is like an Oscars speech, so if I missed you, please forgive me... there was a cast of thousands to thank.) Yeah, we're more educated than we used to be. Not sure I'm convinced we've put that education to the best use. --Dweller (talk) 11:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Any American who imagines this sort of "progress" should be asked to read one of the pre-World War I pamphlets addressed to the plain working man and give a summary. American literacy has not eroded, it has collapsed. --Wetman (talk) 15:30, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Make that Western literacy, not to mention educational standards. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I notice you are assuming that the majority of Plain Working Men read and understood the pamphlets at the time, which seems a lot to assume. Isn't the 20th century full of well-meaning literature, video and audio which fundamentally fail to understand the audience they are aimed at? You still get things like helpful government advice on packed lunches which is so like the sort of advice criticised in Round About a Pound a Week it's almost spooky. Seems more like plus ca change than improvement or collapse. 130.88.140.5 (talk) 11:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The United States does not seem so advanced from this side of the Atlantic. I mean, you STILL havnt got a universal health care system, while we in the UK have had one since 1948 - sixty years ago! And I understand that in the US, racial intergration is not so advanced, with less inter-racial marriages or children for example. 80.2.205.59 (talk) 22:20, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Waterloo train fares

How much would a Cheap Day Return for one adult, ZONE 6 to LONDON WATERLOO cost? Thanks! Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 11:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I looked on thetrainline.com for Bexley to Waterloo (east) and it says £6 cheap day return. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
God, that's a bit steep! Thanks, though Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 12:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
That fare is correct. Fares in London are very steep compared to the rest of the UK, and you can no longer save money by catching the bus instead of the train.--Shantavira|feed me 14:10, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I think that fare is, unfortunately, comparable or cheaper than equivalent UK journeys (at least for time, maybe not for distance). The same site prices Falkirk to Edinburgh CDR (the same 30 mins or slightly less) at £7.40 and York to Darlinton CDR (again 30 mins) at £15.00. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Mile for mile, pound for pound, it cost less to go to the moon in 69 than it does to go from London to Scotland by train. go figure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 16:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Seriously? I need to see that math for that, it would make some great trivia. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 17:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I assume that "pound for pound" means the cost is not adjusted for 39 years of inflation. On that basis, if you go back far enough, everything looks really cheap. "When I were a lad, you could catch the bus, go to the pictures, have a slap up fish supper, and still have change out of 6d ..." Gandalf61 (talk) 17:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Also consider "mile for mile" -- average earth-to-moon distance is 384,403 km, and the path taken by Apollo craft in 1969 was likely longer. London to, say, Edinburgh is 650 km. So on a mileage basis, the Apollo trip starts with an advantage of 591:1. But still, I wonder if that's enough to make the above factoid valid? Based on some fairly arbitrary numbers plucked from Apollo program and Apollo spacecraft, I come up with: $135 billion (2006 dollars) / 384,403 km / 1,837 kg = $191/(kg*km). Anyone able to come up with the comparable figure for Edinburgh to London by train? jeffjon (talk) 18:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
An off-peak return fare is £102.40 [1], distance is 632km [2]. So that would be 8.1 pence per km versus $159,988 per km, based on return trips. YMMV. Of course, the comparison is not all that valid - we're comparing the capital cost of the space flight against a single operational fare. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)Tagishsimon (talk) 19:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
That £102.40 return is the same price the website above find (I'm not trying to advertise it, honest) - but it also lets you search for singles - booking far enough ahead (april) it finds NXEC Standard Advance 1 type single tickets at £15.70 each way, less than a third of the single price. YMMV indeed, for it also finds First Open Single tickets at £173.50 each way, eleven times more expensive than the cheapest. Apollo prices aside, I think a lot of the sticker shock people have with rail travel in Britain is because they expect things to be run the British Rail way, where there's only one price. But now it's a lot more like the airline market: you can get a good deal if you're savvy and book ahead, but just like with aircraft if you show up at the ticket office on the day (of long-distance travel, at least) you're in for a bad surprise. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Offpeak (before 7, after 5, weekends and public holidays) single fare in zone 1-6 is £2 on an Oyster card, so a return would be £4. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 22:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

But if you don't have an Oyster card, you'll need to invest in the "deposit" to get one. Funny, I don't know if your "deposit" can be refunded... but I guess it must be possible or surely they'd have to call it a "fee"? Also, note that you can't yet use Oyster pre-paid at many overground stations, so Porcupine, it depends where precisely you want to travel between. --Dweller (talk) 10:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
AFAIK there's no deposit required to get an pre-pay Oyster card ... there is a £3 admin charge when you first get the card. But you're right that few overland train operations support oyster. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Found it. "if you decide you've finally had enough of your Oyster Card, you can get a refund for the £3 deposit. The only way to do this is to send it back to TFL. They'll then send you a cheque for £3." (in middle of various hints and tips at ([3])) --Dweller (talk) 11:05, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-Semitism and conspiracy theory

I'm exploring the links between the development of political conspiracy theories and modern anti-Semitism. I came here because I noticed above the interesting comments on Celine, and would like to take this matter a little further. The obvious work of Jewish conspiracy theory is, of course, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But what I would like to know is how this fitted in to the general pattern of political conspiracy theories, and how and when these emerged in Europe? Furthermore, is there any link between anti-Zionism, particularly as expressd in organisations like Hamas, and the more traditional forms of conspiracy theory? This is for a research paper. Thanks for any help you might be able to offer. AtomCat (talk) 11:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

On your comments re Hamas, there's been wide reporting in RS of The Protocols being widely available in the Islamic world. I believe there was also some fuss in the UK about it being sold at a mosque bookshop, but I may have remembered that incorrectly. Blood libels are also perpetuated from time to time in Arab world media. All in all, as Martin Luther King perceived, anti-Zionism is often (though not always) directly linked to anti-Semitism. Which provoked which is an interesting though fairly moot point. --Dweller (talk) 12:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

You will find the links you are looking for, Atomcat, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the real cradle of the modern conspiracy theory. I would refer you in particular to the work of Augustin Barruel, the man who it has rightly been said who created a tradition, one that might be said to have emerged in Fascism, on the one hand, and the likes of the ghastly Da Vinci Code on the other! Barruel, a Jesuit priest, wrote Memoirs to Serve for a History of Jacobinism, in which he claimed the Knights Templar, yes, the Knights Templar, had not been destroyed in the Middle Ages, but had simply gone underground, there plotting to take over the world. It was they, in their hatred of monarchy and the Catholic Church, who had organised the Revolution of 1789 and all that followed. Of course, they did not call themselves Templars, rather they hid under cover names, the Freemasons being the most noted of these.

So, by this, Barruel became the prophet of the counter-revolution. Towards the end of his life he began to find new agents of dissention in the Jews. There was, of course, a long anti-Semitic tradition within the Church, but Barruel was moving away from old notions of religious-based hostility towards an entirely new secular doctrine, where the Jews were not perceived as individuals but as a group, united in a common conspiracy. And as it was the Revolution that liberated the Jews from their old Medieval disabilities, made them part, in other words, of a modern civil society, then the Jews were clearly united with the Freemasons, or the Templars, as architects of the conspiracy that threatened to destroy Barruel's notions of all that was good in the world. I am sure, Atomcat, you can see where this is going, that there is a process that unites the thinking of this clerical oddball with the fantasies of the Okhrana and all else that followed.

Here is a text you might care to ponder on;

For a long time, the Jews have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the attainment of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution...and most of the revolutions we heard about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons...and others in different parts of the world.

Do you have any idea where this is from; Barruel, perhaps, or The Protocols? No, it is from Article 22 of the 1988 Hamas constitution. You have your links. Make of them what you will. Clio the Muse (talk) 02:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I do not know what to say, Clio. This is awesome. Thank you. SubAtomicCat (talk) 20:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC) (PS in this form because I forgot my password. Yikes!!)

[edit] Hitler

What was it that caused his great hatred for the Jewish populas? did he have a bad encounter with some one? was his father to hard on him? was he just racist? ect thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.2 (talk) 16:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hitler and Ludwig Wittgenstein attended the same school, the Linz Realschule, and while there is no direct evidence that they knew one another, some people appear to believe that personal jealousy of Wittgenstein might have had an influence on him. On the other hand there was no shortage of antisemitism in the world in the interwar period, and he would have had ample opportunity to pick up the Jews as a scapegoat to blame for the injustice he perceived in the world. SaundersW (talk) 17:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Nobody knows for sure. SaundersW speaks truly of the general anti-Jewish feeling of the time, and of every time if you look hard enough. Some point to Hitler's failure at art school and the ridicule of his Jewish teachers there. Some point to his stated principle that if he hadn't had the Jews he would have had to invent them, as a common enemy for the internal unification of Germany. Some even suggest that his mother had sex with her Jewish employer, scarring young Adolph emotionally. The theme of anti-Jewishness is there from the beginning, though, and it erupts from his writings each time like a fit of Tourette's. I'm inclined to think that it was at the root an irrational hate given free rein in the psyche of this powerful madman. We have all known "little Hitlers", and he was the big one. --Milkbreath (talk) 17:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I've never had the stomach to read Mein Kampf (but I suppose I really should if I want to consider myself properly educated in such matters. I'll add it to my Books-I've-Been-Avoiding-But-Will-Ultimately-Have-To-Read list, along with Finnegan's Wake and other "kampfen"). However, a section entitled "How I became an anti-Semite" is quoted in The Penguin Book of Fights, Feuds and Heartfelt Hatreds - An Anthology of Antipathy, which I dip into occasionally when I need some uplifting thoughts. Hitler explains quite lucidly and logically (never mind wrongly) how he came to his point of view about the Jews, finishing with the utterly extraordinary statement: Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. I'm sure the whole text is available online. Oh, and nobody is "just racist"; they're not born that way, they have to be "trained" for it. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:37, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Jack my friend, please note that there is no apostrophe in Finnegans Wake. Malcolm Starkey (talk) 00:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Malcolm. Years of correct usage are deeply ingrained in me, but I'll try to remember to omit the apostrophe next time I refer to it. Or does the title refer to plural Finnegans? -- JackofOz (talk) 01:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Precisely. You could interpret it as an imperative, or perhaps a simple present tense. Either way, Finnegans is plural and Wake is a verb. Malcolm Starkey (talk) 08:24, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I think the allusions go deeper than that. Wake could be wake as in funeral, as our article mentions ("HCE's corpse becomes a meal spread for the mourners at his wake"). It could also be a noun, meaning "awakening" (it is a dream novel after all). --Richardrj talk email 08:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I know that, but I didn't want to get into a discussion about Joyce's paronomasia in a thread that is ostensibly about Hitler. Malcolm Starkey (talk) 19:12, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Malcolm. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:07, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I guess you mean "It Has To Be Carefully Taught" South Pacific. :) Steewi (talk) 23:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
You likely mean You've Got to Be Carefully Taught from South Pacific (musical). Those dab pages are tricky. ៛ Bielle (talk) 23:57, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
  • There's an interesting idea put forward in Hitler's Vienna (ISBN 0195140532) that Hitler's Jew-hating rhetoric was a deliberate choice when he decided on a political career, inspired by the success of the fraudulently anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna (among other things.) The book is an interesting read. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 01:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

12.191, this is a fascinating and complex question to which it is probably impossible to provide a defining answer, because it owes as much to psychology and personal circumstances as to recorded history; to factors now unknown and forever unknowable. There are great gaps in our knowledge here into which all sorts of pseudo-scholarly nonsense has been poured, none more so than the truly ridiculous Wittgenstein thesis. Pathological hatred, of the kind demonstrated by Hitler, cannot be traced to alleged schoolboy rivalry. However, what I can do is to build a picture based on such historical information we do have. The crucial text here is, of course Mein Kampf, arguably one of the most honest books ever written by a politician, one which reveals, if properly read, far more, perhaps, that the author ever cared to allow. And, contrary to what you may have heard, the book is quite readable, if clumsy and ill-organised.

Now, to begin with, the first definite proof of Hitler use of anti-Semitism as a political weapon comes in 1919, just after the War when he joined the German Worker's Party. By the time he came to write Mein Kampf several years later he systematized a personal ideology that had become one of the great motive forces of a refashioned NSDAP. What is taking shape here is a combination of political opportunism, the realisation that there was political capital to be made out of hatred of the Jews in post-War Germany, and aspects of Hitler's personal experience which came, as he confesses, from his time in Vienna. There is no evidence at all of any anti-Jewish feeling on his part prior to this time, despite what August Kubizek says in his unreliable memoir.

For Hitler, the time he spent in Vienna prior to the War was by far the worst period of his life. He was young, an orphan, with no qualifications whatsoever; nothing to make him 'saleable', beyond a limited artistic talent, in the great polyglot metropolis, so different from the provincial Linz of his boyhood. It was in Vienna that he sunk lower and lower down the social ladder, descending into what Karl Marx termed the 'lumpenproletariat', those clinging on to the outer margins of society. Indeed, if it had not been for the war it is possible that Hitler would have died in some doss house in Vienna or Munich, just another among the legions of the lost. This was particularly bad when you remember that he came from a comfortable middle-class background, which made his social descent all the more bitter. He never, at any time, lost his petty-bourgeoisie attitudes, even when sleeping in common lodging houses, attitudes that demanded he look outside of himself for the author of his misfortunes. And, of course, in the end, he alighted on the Jewish community for all that was wrong with his life, the most convenient and most obvious scapegoat of all, knitting together so many different strands in his psychological and political outlook.

It was in Vienna that Hitler became the 'outsider' in his own world, surrounded by so many things he feared, from Marxism to prostitution. Vienna, as Mein Kampf, makes clear was Hitler's real university, where he learned his politics and discovered his capacity for hate. The city had a quite poisonous atmosphere at the time of Hitler’s sojourn, where the large Jewish community was an object of hate for the right-wing press; where there was already a vibrant anti-Semitic political force at work, represented by the likes of Karl Luger and Georg Ritter von Schönerer; where 'solutions' were being offered to the Jewish question by the likes of the eccentric and bizarre Lanz von Liebenfels; where some even advocated that a watch should be kept on the Jewish community around Easter, to prevent ritual child murder. It is difficult to believe that such notions could make their way into a European capital in the twentieth century, but, yes, it is perfectly true. This was a time when Hitler was able to read in the Deutsches Volksblatt, his favourite newspaper, that the Jews were the agents of corruption, linked with all sorts of sexual scandals and perversions. Vienna was also a city with a powerful Marxist Social Democratic Party, with many prominent Jewish members. For the young Hitler, déclassé and socially vulnerable, the Marxists came to represent the most dangerous force of all; dangerous to his own sense of status and dangerous to his 'nation', as he came to understand it. And behind the Marxists came the Jews; always the Jews.

For Hitler, hatred of the Jews came to be, as Ian Kershaw points out, a rationalisation of his own personal circumstances in Vienna, rather than a thought-out 'world view'. He was just a bitter and resentful man, who, at the age of twenty-five, was going nowhere but down; resentful of those whom he blamed for his failure and rejection; a Frankenstein monster in the making. But what give these inner demons a unique drive and purpose was the circumstances of Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war, an atmosphere even more poisonous that that of Vienna. Hitler found that there was ground to be made in a strong anti-Semitic message; that in a world upside down he could at last make a personal impact. He had the talent to deliver that message, and a mind-set that would ensure that hatred of the Jews was not political opportunism but the defining essence of his movement; the defining essence of Adolf Hitler himself. Clio the Muse (talk) 02:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant! Have you writen a book yet Clio? If so I would love to read it! Thank you so much —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.3 (talk) 17:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. It's always nice to be appreciated. I have one in preparation, 12.191, which will be ready for publication this summer-I hope! Clio the Muse (talk) 00:07, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Please ID book

I found a book in a book store but I don't remember its name. It was a Humorous fantasy book by a German author, and it was also illustrated by said author. The illustrations featured a lot dogs with horns. Can you help me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.118.79.173 (talk) 19:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you thinking of Art Spiegelman's Open Me, I'm a Dog? If you are, Spiegelman's American, not German, and his father was Polish. Xn4 21:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

no, it was a 900+ page novel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.118.121.127 (talk) 22:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Surely this is Rumo and his miraculous adventures by Walter Moers? Algebraist 22:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] German Artist Jacob Winfried

I have a maritime painting of a ship 24 x 48 in it orignal frame, by the above artist, I have tried to research this artist with no success. I have found out that he is a retired sea captain and he painted ships, he also had an exhibit in Virginia in the 70's (a fire destroyed their records) and he is german. Any direction you could provide would be greatly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.207.226.214 (talk) 20:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

how do i find out what quilty a presendent have or not have —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guilford4 (talk • contribs) 20:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

According to this thread, Mike Mosher at The Mosher Gallery in Fairfax, VA, knows about Jacob Winfried. But the only Mosher Gallery I can find online is now in Rockport, Maine. Xn4 21:10, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Winfried Jacob (1926 Kassel) has an entry on artnet, no biographical info and only one painting listed: Tossa de Mare.—eric 21:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
this must be your painting?—eric 21:54, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The gallery selling the painting mentioned by eric is Hugo Ruef Kunstauktionen in Munich, [4] with a contact at info@ruef-auktion.de. Maybe they have some data on the artist which they share. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quotation

Can anyone identify the source of the following quotation for me: "At every step in the fields you found splinters as big as your arm and as wide as this, bits of iron that it took four soldiers to lift." It comes from a television documentary on the First World War. I'm not sure if I have got the words exactly right. It's obviously from some soldier's battle experience, but I would like to know if it is from a published account or not. I'm sorry I know this is really vague, but I rely on the skill of you experts. Some of you seem well able to make bricks without straw! Regards, Charles Butler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charles Butler (talk • contribs) 21:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I suspect it'll be most profitable to go down the TV documentary angle: can you tell us anything about it? Was it, for instance, the BBC's World War 1 : The Great War? [5]. Note that much of the art of documentary is finding good audio & visual clips - that leads me to expect that there will not be a published textual source; it is more likely that it was an interview done for the documentary or perhaps a library clip from somewhere. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know this. It comes from Bombardment, part of Henri Barbusse's collection, Under Fire, based on his experiences as an infantryman with the French Sixth batallion during the Great War. The exact quotation, which you will find on page 198 of the Penguin edition, is as follows;

At every step, in the fields, you found splinters as big as your arm and as wide as this, bits of iron that took four poilus to lift.

And if you want to know what a poilu is then look here. Clio the Muse (talk) 00:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Clio doesn't even need straw! She just plucks them out of the very air. ៛ Bielle (talk) 02:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Miss Clio. I am deeply impressed. Charles Butler (talk) 08:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)