Tag: World War Two
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Saving the starving Soviets with Spam
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army. We had lost our most fertile lands.”1– Nikita Khrushchev In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. The “breadbasket” agricultural regions of Southern Russia and the Ukraine were quickly occupied, causing a food crisis for the USSR. Russian soldiers’ food rations consisted…
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A tale of two physicians and Albert Göring
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Hermann Epenstein Ritter von Mauternburg (1850–1934) was a physician and merchant who played a significant role in the lives of anti-Nazi activist Albert Göring and his family. He was their family doctor, a close friend, and godfather to Albert and his older brother, Hermann. The brothers spent many holidays with him…
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Making radiation visible: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Godzilla
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Gojira (Godzilla) poster. © Toho Company, 1954. Via Wikimedia. Fair use. “The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the bomb.”1 – Tomoyuki Tanaka, producer of Gojira (Godzilla) The Third Reich surrendered to the Allies in early May 1945. This did not yet end World…
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Dr. Alice Miller on Hitler’s childhood
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “All it took was a Führer’s madness and several million well-raised Germans to extinguish the lives of countless millions of innocent human beings in the space of a few short years.” – Alice Miller, Ph.D. Jewish women and children removed from a bunker. From the Stroop Report, a report…
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Scotland’s Anthrax Island
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Cutaneous anthrax lesion on the neck, May 25, 1953. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Image Library. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. “They make a desolation and call it peace.” — Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001) During World War Two, the British government purchased from its owners the Gruinard…
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The first effective chemotherapy for cancer
Marshall A. Lichtman Rochester, New York, United States Caution: Chemotherapy. Photo by Justin Levy. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Sulfur mustard gas had no influence on the outcome of the battle at Ypres during World War I despite the many deaths and severe injuries it inflicted. Since then, chemical weapons have been used in…
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Japanese-American internment camps in World War Two
Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States Bill Mauldin’s cartoons regarding the NISEI 15 “What constitutes an American? Not color…race…An American…(is) one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.”1 “Any person who considers himself…a member of Western Society inherits the Western past from Athens and Jerusalem to Runneymede…
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Philosophy and Medicine
Roger PadenVirginia, United States In 1894, Gustav Klimt and Franz Matsch received a commission to create a series of paintings that were to be installed on the ceiling of the Great Hall of the New University of Vienna. Eleven years later, in the midst of an increasingly bitter scandal, Klimt was forced to take back…