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Monopoly- A life or death game
Most of us have heard of or played Monopoly and more often than not we’ve fought with each other over playing it. Many family rows have been fought over who was sneaking whom money and how the banker can’t count. However, despite these grave accusations, Monopoly did play a life or death role for some prisoners of war during World War II. As bombing runs over occupied territory heated up, by 1941 many British Airman found themselves “guests” of the Third Reich in prison camps that sprang up all over Germany. Escape attempts were inevitable. Section Nine of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence in the War Office, or MI9,…
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International Holocaust Remembrance Day – The Nazi T4 Program
This post is dedicated to all those who lost their lives during the Holocaust, in all its guises, and to all those who have been victims of other atrocities and acts of genocide. It was 1st September 1939, when the outbreak of World War Two was declared. The Nazi party under Adolf Hitler had been in power for a number of years and had implemented many changes to law on the domestic front as well as aggressive behavior towards her neighbours. But the day was an important one in history for another reason, in a retrospective way. In order to understand we need to come forward, just a little way,…
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Symbols of Oppression – The Yellow Star of David
Please remember when reading this, that as a Historian, my efforts to recount the past are done objectively. However in matters such as these which lay close to my heart, I cannot help but to allow a little of my own feelings into such topics. You must forgive me for this, but I find it difficult to separate my own emotions when such issues are discussed. It is what makes me human. You may not agree with my views, but I would ask that you respect them when commenting. I started off this controversial series with a look at the battle flag of the Confederate army, now widely and ambiguously…
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Coco Chanel – The Icon, the spy and the little black dress.
Born to an unmarried woman, Eugenie Jeanne Devolle, who worked as a laundry assistant in a convent poorhouse on 19th August 1883, Gabrielle was Jeanne’s second daughter, her older sister Julia having been born almost a year before. Following her birth, in Saumur, France, Jeanne’s family contributed all the money they could raise and gave it to the girl’s father, Albert Chanel, as a bribe for him to marry their mother. Chanel was a travelling salesman, somewhat of a vagrant, selling cheap clothing to the working class. The couple had several more children, three of whom – another daughter and two sons – survived. The family lived in a one…
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Japanese Internment Camps- Paranoia Made National Policy
In the days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America was jittery. We had just been attacked and we weren’t sure if it was going to happen again. The west coast was especially bad because they were the closest to our newly declared enemy. There was also a large number of people of Japanese descent living on the west coast. Everywhere people went, they saw someone that looked like the enemy. Americans were accusing Americans of having loyalty to the country their ancestors were from instead of their home. People feared the large Japanese-American population was a security risk, both for espionage and in the case of a Japanese…
