Adolf Hitler & His Ideology

"By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise."-Hitler's views on totalitarianism

Adolf Hilter is a name which we all have heard a lot but know quite little. As we all know Adolf Hitler was an absolute dictator of Germany, who was actually extremely patriotic and a German nationalist. He was not only anti- Jew but was a bundle of "anti-" attitudes - anti-democratic and anti-Republican. He was an ardent Social Darwinist, which means that he believed that the process of survival of the fittest by natural selection should be artificially speeded up by the government, for example by killing 'incurables' and various 'undesirables'.

Hitler joined the well known Nazi party in 1922 because he was anxious and furious over the defeat of Germany in World War I and very harsh provisions of treaty of Versailles. And he was of belief that it was entirely because of Jews and republic government of Germany. He through his magnetic and ironic charisma was able to inspire millions of fellow Germans that Germany is in grave danger. He was able to persuade them to take “life or death struggle” to save their country.

IN 1933 Hitler became the chancellor of Germany and took power in his hands. In 1934, upon the death of German President Hindenburg in August 1934, he consolidated himself as absolute dictator.

Hitler had two dreams. The first was to bring together all Germans in a vast 'Greater Germany'; the second was the expansion of Germany into the virtually 'boundless' territory of the Soviet Union. After all, Germany has briefly defeated Russia in 1917-1918, but this victory had been of no practical use while they faced defeat in Western Europe. In Operation Barbarossa he gambled all - and lost disastrously.

In fact during second world war also , when Germany was facing huge success initially and had already defeated and captured the arch rival France and huge portions of east Europe including Austria , Hungary ,Czech republic , Slovakia ,Poland , Hitler’s main concern and anxiousness was to taste the rich fruits of Soviet Union .

This was in February, 1942 when German army attacked Stalingrad, a city in Soviet Union that turn out to be the turning point of the war. The people of the city come out in support of army and German army faced one of its major defeats. It was amongst the bloodiest in the history of warfare, with the upper estimates of combined casualties coming to nearly two million.

Hitler completely underestimated the power of Soviet Union. Then the Soviet Union bounced back and turned out to be the main reason for defeat of Germany in Second World War. Germany faced forces from both sides, Soviet Union from east and Britain with other allied powers from west. And on 30th April 1945, Russian army entered Berlin and Hitler committed suicide on the same day with newly wed wife Eva Braun. And with this come the end of the most terrified dictatorship ever in the world.

By: Aman Maggu

Rewind - The Munich Massacre of 1972

It was 4:30 in the morning on Sept. 5, 1972, when five Arab terrorists wearing track sweat suits climbed the six-foot six-inch fence surrounding the Olympic Village. Although they were seen by several people, no one thought anything was unusual since athletes routinely hopped the fence; moreover, the terrorists' weapons were hidden in athletic bags. These five were met by three more men who are presumed to have obtained credentials to enter the village.
The Palestinians then used stolen keys to enter two apartments being used by the Israeli team at 31 Connollystrabe. Israeli wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund heard a faint scratching noise at the door of the first apartment. When he investigated, he saw the door begin to open and masked men with guns on the other side. He shouted “Hevre tistalku!” ( — Guys, get out of here!) and threw his nearly 300-lb. (135-kg) weight against the door to try to stop the Palestinians from forcing their way in. In the confusion, Coach Tuvia Sokolovsky and race-walker Dr. Shaul Ladany escaped and another four athletes, plus the two team doctors and delegation head Shmuel Lalkin, managed to hide.
Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg, attacked the kidnappers as the hostages were being moved from one apartment to another, allowing one of his wrestlers, Gad Tsobari, to escape. The burly Weinberg knocked one of the intruders unconscious and stabbed another with a fruit knife before being shot to death. Weightlifter and father of three Yossef Romano, 31, also attacked and wounded one of the intruders before being killed. The Arabs then succeeded in rounding up nine Israelis to hold as hostages.
At 9:30, the terrorists announced that they were Palestinians and demanded that Israel release 200 Arab prisoners and that the terrorists be given safe passage out of Germany. The Palestinians were led by Luttif Afif (“Issa”), his deputy Yusuf Nazzal (“Tony”), and junior members Afif Ahmed Hamid (“Paolo”), Khalid Jawad (“Salah”), Ahmed Chic Thaa (“Abu Halla”), Mohammed Safady (“Badran”), Adnan Al-Gashey (“Denawi”), and his cousin Jamal Al-Gashey (“Samir”).
After hours of tense negotiations, the Palestinians, who it was later learned belonged to a Palestenian Liberation Organisation’s(PLO) faction called Black September, agreed to a plan whereby they were to be taken by helicopter to the NATO air base at Firstenfeldbruck where they would be given an airplane to fly them and their hostages to Cairo. The Israelis were then taken by bus to the helicopters and flown to the airfield. In the course of the transfer, the Germans discovered that there were eight terrorists instead of the five they expected and realized that they had not assigned enough marksmen to carry out the plan to kill the terrorists at the airport.
After the helicopters landed at the air base around 10:30 p.m., the German sharpshooters attempted to kill the terrorists and a bloody fire fight ensued. At 11, the media was mistakenly informed that the hostages had been saved and the news was announced to a relieved Israeli public. Almost an hour later, however, new fighting broke out and one of the helicopters holding the Israelis was blown up by a terrorist grenade. The remaining nine hostages in the second helicopter were shot to death by one of the surviving terrorists.

Hostages killed at the airport

(middle row, L-R) wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund, age 40; American-born weightlifter David Berger, 28; wrestler Mark Slavin, 18; and weightlifting judge Yacov Springer, 51.

(bottom row, L-R) weightlifter Ze'ev Friedman, 28; track coach Amitzur Shapira, 40; wrestler Eliezer Halfin, 24; shooting coach Kehat Shorr, 53; and fencing coach Andre Spitzer, 27.

At 3 a.m., a drawn and teary-eyed Jim McKay, who had been reporting the drama throughout the day as part of ABC's Olympic coverage, announced: “They're all gone.”
Five of the terrorists were killed along with one policeman, and three were captured. A little over a month later, on Oct. 29, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked by terrorists demanding that the Munich killers be released.
The Germans capitulated and the terrorists were let go, but an Israeli assassination squad was assigned to track them down along with those responsible for planning the massacre. According to George Jonas in “Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team”, eight of the 11 men targeted for death were killed. Of the remaining three, one died of natural causes and the other two were assassinated, but it is not known for sure if they were killed by Israeli agents. The 11 on the list were:

Adwan, Kamal - Chief of sabotage operations for Al Fatah in the disputed territories
Al-Chir, Hussein Abad - PLO contact with KGB in Cyprus
Al-Kubaisi, Dr. Basil Paoud - Responsible for logistics within the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Boudia, Mohammed - Linked with European PLO
Daoud, Abu - Admitted member of the Black September Organization
Haddad, Dr. Wadi - Chief terrorist linked with Dr. George Habash
Mahshari, Mohmoud - PLO member and coordinator of Munich incident
Nassir, Kamal - Official PLO spokesman and member of the PLO Executive Committee
Salameh, Ali Hassan - Developed and executed the Munich operation
Yussuf, Abu - High ranking PLO official
Zwaiter, Wael - Cousin to Yasser Arafat, organizer of PLO terrorism in Europe

The Jonas book was the basis for two movies about Munich, “The Sword of Gideon” and Steven Spielberg's 2006 Oscar nominee, “Munich.” In the subsequent publicity about Spielberg's film, reports have discredited the account in Jonas, which was largely based on what the author was told by a former self-described ‘Mossad’ agent, Juval Aviv, who claimed he was the leader of the assassination team. In fact, journalists Yossi Melman and Steven Hartov found that “Aviv never served in Mossad, or any Israeli intelligence organization. He had failed basic training as an Israeli Defence Force commando, and his nearest approximation to spy work was as a lowly gate guard for the airline El Al in New York in the early 70s.”

In contrast to the account of “Operation Wrath of God” offered by Jonas, Mossad agents have told reporters subsequently that no one team was sent to kill a specific list of terrorists.
Meanwhile, the mastermind of the massacre remains at large. Abu Daoud was shot thirteen times on July 27, 1981 in a Warsaw hotel coffee shop, but survived the attack. Daoud was allowed safe passage through Israel in 1996 so he could go to a PLO meeting convened in the Gaza Strip to rescind an article in its charter that called for Israel's eradication. In 1999, Abu Daoud admitted his role in the massacre in his autobiography, Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist.

Daoud, who lives with his wife on a pension provided by the Palestinian Authority, claims his commandos never intended to harm the athletes and blamed their deaths on the German police and the stubbornness of then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. On December 27, 2005, Daoud reiterated that he had no regrets about his involvement in the Munich attack, and that Steven Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation.

Bassam Abu Sharif, a member of the PFLP at the time, said the motive for the operation in Munich was to attract publicity for the Palestinian cause and to win the release of Palestinian prisoners.
The massacre of 11 Israeli athletes was not considered sufficiently serious to merit canceling or postponing the Olympics. “Incredibly, they're going on with it,” Jim Murray of theLos Angeles Times wrote at the time. “It's almost like having a dance at Dachau.”

What I want to highlight here more than the attack is the way Israel took revenge against the attackers. And Israel, following the same ideology, assassinated Hamas leader in Dubai last month by dispatching a team of 11 men. They went to other countries, killing them in their own den. And what we do here, talk and talk and expect other countries to help. Be it Dawood in Dubai or terror leaders in Pakistan and around the world. I feel that they all will die naturally and never from an Indian bullet>>


Get more info at- Complete Book on Munich Massacre
                              The Jewish Library

You Don't Remember "Azad"! Do You?

Today is the 79th Death Anniversary of Shaheed Chandrashekhar Azad. He was 24 years old when he sacrificed his life for the independence of India.

Born: July 23,1906
Died: February 27, 1931
Achievements: Involved in Kakori Train Robbery (1926), the attempt to blow up the Viceroy's train (1926), and the shooting of Saunders at Lahore (1928) to avenge the killing of Lala Lajpatrai; formed Hindustan Socialist Republican Association with fellow compatriots Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru.

Chandrashekhar Azad was a great Indian freedom fighter. His fierce patriotism and courage inspired others of his generation to enter freedom struggle. Chandrasekhar Azad was the mentor Bhagat Singh, another great freedom fighter, and along with Bhagat Singh he is considered as one of the greatest revolutionaries that India has produced.

Chandra Shekhar Azad was born on July 23,1906 in village Bhavra in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. His parents were Pandit Sitaram Tiwari and Jagarani Devi. He received his early schooling in Bhavra. For higher studies he went to the Sanskrit Pathashala at Varanasi. He was an ardent follower of Hanuman and once disguised himself as a priest in a hanuman temple to escape the dragnet of British police.

Chandrashekhar Azad was deeply troubled by the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar in 1919. In 1921, when Mahatma Gandhi launched Non-Cooperation movement, Chandrasekhar Azad actively participated in revolutionary activities. He received his first punishment at the age of fifteen. Chandra Shekhar was caught while indulging in revolutionary activities.


When the magistrate asked him his name, he said "Azad" (meaning free). Chandrashekhar Azad was sentenced to fifteen lashes. With each stroke of the whip the young Chandrasekhar shouted "Bart Mata Kid Jai". From then on Chandrashekhar assumed the title of Azad and came to known as Chandrashekhar Azad. Chandrashekhar Azad vowed that he would never be arrested by the British police and would die as free man. 

After the suspension of non-cooperation movement Chandrashekhar Azad was attracted towards more aggressive and revolutionary ideals. He committed himself to complete independence by any means. Chandrashekhar Azad and his compatriots would target British officials known for their oppressive actions against ordinary people and freedom fighters. Chandrashekhar Azad was involved in Kakori Train Robbery (1926), the attempt to blow up the Viceroy's train (1926), and the shooting of Saunders at Lahore (1928) to avenge the killing of Lala Lajpatrai. 


 "If yet your blood does not rage, then it is water that flows in your veins. For what is the flush of youth, if it is not of service to the motherland."

Along with Bhagat Singh and other compatriots like Sukhdev and Rajguru, Chandrashekhar Azad formed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HRSA). HRSA was committed to complete Indian independence and socialist principles for India's future progress.

Chandrashekhar Azad was a terror for British police. He was on their hit list and the British police badly wanted to capture him dead or alive. On February 27, 1931 Chandrashekhar Azad met two of his comrades at the Alfred Park Allah bad. He was betrayed by an informer who had informed the British police. The police surrounded the park and ordered Chandrashekhar Azad to surrender. Chandrashekhar Azad fought alone valiantly and killed three policemen. But finding himself surrounded and seeing no route for escape, Chandrashekhar Azad shot himself. Thus he kept his pledge of not being caught alive.


A great Indian leader, Chandrashekhar Azad was the heart of all revolutionary leaders and his poetic composition, ‘Dushman ki goliyon ka hum samna karenge, Azad hee rahein hain, azad hee rahenge' is still recited by Indian soldiers fighting for free India.

The body of AZAD after his death kept by police on display to warn people of the consequences. 

Blessed is the city of AIlahabad in whose heart her great son is sleeping, the Ganga which sings his story of martyrdom will crave for that kind of brave heart again.-  Bhagat Singh on death of Azad

Che Guevara- the Cuban Marxist

Ernesto "Che" Guevara,June 14,1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as El Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, military theorist, and major figure of the Cuban Revolution. Since his death, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol and global insignia within popular culture.

Che -The Revolutionary

As a young medical student, Guevara travelled throughout Latin America and was transformed by the endemic poverty he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly capitalism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara's radical ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and invaded Cuba aboard the Granma with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the successful two year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

“I don't know if the Cuban revolution will survive or not. It's difficult to say. But [if it doesn't] . . . don't come looking for me among the refugees in the embassies. I've had that experience, and I'm not ever going to repeat it. I will go out with a machine gun in my hand, to the barricades. . . I'll keep fighting to the end.”

Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian reform as minister of industries, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba’s armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces which repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion and bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by Central Intelligence Agency-assisted Bolivian forces and executed. "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!" were his last words.

“Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.”

Che -A Cult Figure

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was declared "the most famous photograph in the world."

Here's a timeline of Che Guevara's life, Click to enlarge the picture

Rewind - Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Written By- Rahul Bansal

Bhopal Gas Tragedy: On the night of 3^rd December, 1984 the biggest industrial disaster in the corporate history struck at Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. A deadly poisonous gas Methyl Iso-cyanate (MIC) leaked from a tank in the production premises of Union Carbide India Limited (UBIL), Union Carbide being among the biggest producers of chemical products in the world at that time. According to govt. estimates 3000 died that night, others saying the toll to be above 8000 and more than 20,000 died since due to diseases and ailments caused by MIC and 1, 70,000 severely affected. The area around the plant was densely populated and the moon was full, thousands died in their sleeps and many were trampled in the panic.

At that time, the plant was making losses due to declined demand and the management of the company had ordered to reduce the “unnecessary” expenditures. This meant that the plant was sacrificing on many of the safety precautions taken when handling such volatile and dangerous gases as was MIC. Kamal Pareek, former assistant manager of safety at Bhopal plant had resigned in 1982 following this as the company was not ready to listen to his requests of not cutting the safety nets. SEVIN, a carbaryl pesticide, was being produced using MIC instead of less dangerous but more expensive substitutes and was stored in underground tank No.610 at that plant. At around midnight between 2^nd and 3^rd December, around 27 tons of MIC with 61 other hazardous gases escaped from the tank and because all the safety features to contain the escaping gases including a chimney to burn all the gases were dysfunctional or removed due to ‘cost constraints’, the gas quickly started spreading in the air towards the nearby villages with a population of more than 5,00,000.

The emergency alarm bells to warn the people was not activated because “it would have caused panic and stampede in the villages” according to the company officials, but what has happened without warning the people, when they were given no chance of escape, where many died in their sleep due to cardiac arrest and suffocation, the company didn’t want to explain.

The then CEO and chairman of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson was in India at the time of the event. The police arrested him and soon released him within 24 hours without giving any rational reason, soon after which he flew outside India. Subsequent efforts to bring him back proved futile.

The Indian government passed a legislation which made it a legal representative of the victims in the US courts. The government moved to the US court demanding $3.3 billion for the victims in compensation but it settled for $417 million in 1989 which comes roughly to $500 per victim. But when the victims appealed in Indian courts against the order as no one was held guilty and too little a compensation, the Indian court issued summons to the company to which the company openly refused to respond.

In 2001, the Union Carbide was taken over by DOW Chemicals (third largest chemical company in the world in terms of market capitalization) which refused to take over the Bhopal Disaster liabilities, stating that it were not part of their purchase. The Union Carbide India Ltd. was not in their purchase agreement which was taken over by B.M. Khaitan group, renamed as Eveready Industries Ltd., the same companies whose AA batteries we use in toys and remote sets. The Union Carbide has totally refused to take over the responsibility to even clean up the mess it has left behind, including the thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals still left unclaimed in the plant. Till today, not even at the time of the tragedy had the company provided with any information about the exact gases and their quantity which had escaped the plant, nor the methods by which its harmful effects can be contained and people could be saved. They just went away. The official company stand is that “it was an external sabotage” but who is the culprit it can’t say.

"We are not expendable. We are not flowers offered at the altar of profit and power. We are dancing flames committed to conquering darkness and to challenging those who threaten the planet and the magic and mystery of life."
-- Rashida Bee, Bhopal gas leak survivor

On 3^rd December,2009 it will be the 25^th year since that tragedy had struck. But till now the victims are waiting for compensation, for some genuine medical help, waiting that the deadly effects of the gases will wear out, hoping that their next generation will be without any ailments or cancer, waiting for someone to come forward to help them. And god knows that their wait is long.

Compassion wherever there is suffering, Conviction that the compassion is strong enough to eliminate suffering, Courage to make this conviction a reality. This is AID.