1.
Frank Capra
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Frank Russell Capra was an Italian-American film director, producer and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, during World War II, Capra served in the U. S. Army Signal Corps and produced propaganda films, such as the Why We Fight series. After World War II, Capras career declined as his films such as Its a Wonderful Life. In succeeding decades, however, these films have been favorably reassessed, outside of directing, Capra was active in the film industry, engaging in various political and social issues. He served as President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, worked alongside the Screenwriters Guild, Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, Sicily, a village near Palermo. He was the youngest of seven children of Salvatore Capra, a grower. The name Capra, notes Capras biographer Joseph McBride, represents his familys closeness to the land, and means goat. For Capra, the journey, which took 13 days, remained in his mind for the rest of his life as one of his worst experiences, very few people have trunks or anything that takes up space. They have just what they can carry in their hands or in a bag, theres no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. Its the most degrading place you could ever be, Capra remembers the ships arrival in New York Harbor, where he saw a statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a torch above the land we were about to enter. He recalls his fathers exclamation at the sight, Ciccio, look, thats the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem. The family settled in Los Angeless East Side which Capra described in his autobiography as an Italian ghetto, Capras father worked as a fruit picker and young Capra sold newspapers after school for 10 years, until he graduated from high school. Instead of working after graduating, as his parents wanted, he enrolled in college and he studied chemical engineering and graduated in the spring of 1918. Capra later wrote that his education had changed his whole viewpoint on life from the viewpoint of an alley rat to the viewpoint of a cultured person. Soon after graduating college, Capra was commissioned in the US Army as a second lieutenant, in the Army, he taught mathematics to artillerymen at Fort Point, San Francisco. His father died during the war in an accident, in the Army, Capra contracted Spanish flu and was medically discharged to return home to live with his mother. He became a naturalized U. S. citizen in 1920, living at home with his siblings and mother, Capra was the only family member with a college education, yet he was the only one who remained chronically unemployed. After recovering at home, Capra moved out and spent the few years living in flophouses in San Francisco and hopping freight trains
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Anatole Litvak
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Anatole Litvak was a Russian-born American filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in various countries and languages. He began his training at age 13 in Leningrad. Litvak was notable for directing little-known foreign actors to early fame, in 1936 he directed Mayerling, a film which made Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux international stars. He returned Swedish star Ingrid Bergman to popularity with American audiences in 1956 with Anastasia and he directed Olivia de Havilland to an Academy Award nomination for The Snake Pit in 1948. He also directed Jean Gabin in his debut, and directed Elia Kazan in his earliest acting role. Litvak directed Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939 starring Edward G. Robinson, as a refugee from Nazi Germany, Litvak was among the few directors who tried to open Hollywoods eyes to the threat Germany posed to Europe and the world. During World War II, he enlisted and co-directed documentaries with Frank Capra and his solo-directed, The Battle of Russia, in 1943, won numerous awards and was nominated for an Oscar. Because of Litvaks ability to speak Russian, German, and French and he also filmed aerial warfare with the U. S. For his volunteer efforts, he ended the war as a full colonel, receiving special awards from the governments of France, Britain. Born Mikhail Anatol Litvak in Kiev, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire, as a teenager, he worked at a theater in St. Petersburg and took acting lessons at the state drama school. Litvak worked with Leningrads Nordkino Studios where he was assistant director for nine silent films, for political and ideological reasons, and especially because Russian theaters were nationalized in the 1920s, he fled Russia for Berlin in 1925. In Germany, Litvak made his first few films at the beginning of the 1930s before the rise of the Nazis and he later fled to France prior to the Nazi invasions of World War II. According to film historian Ronald Bowers, Litvak became skilled in using location shooting and he also became known in the industry for emphasizing sound effects over dialogue in sound films as well as preferring to keep the camera running with tracking shots and pans. His preference for achieving motion in camerawork often saw him using crane shots, max Ophüls, who worked as Litvaks assistant in France, would later become a recognized director. American writer Lincoln Kirstein claimed the film became a kind of standard for the film in an historical setting. The worldwide success of Mayerling brought Litvak invitations from Hollywood, including being offered a contract by Warner Brothers. Accepting the contract, Litvak became one of Hollywoods leading directors by the late 1930s and he directed such films as Tovarich, a comedy celebrating outmoded values of the ruined Russian aristocracy. Also with Warners, he directed Confessions of a Nazi Spy, among the techniques he used in the film to achieve realism was the inclusion of actual newsreel footage from U. S. Nazi rallies
3.
United States Office of War Information
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OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other forms of media, the office also established several overseas branches, which launched a large-scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. The Foreign Information Service, a division of the Office of the Coordinator of Information, at the onset of World War II, the American public was in the dark regarding wartime information. Further, the American public confessed a lack of understanding as to why the world was at war, President Roosevelt established the OWI to both meet the demands for news and less confusion, as well as resolve American apathy towards the war. The OWI’s creation was not without controversy, the American public, and the United States Congress in particular, were wary of propaganda for several reasons. First, the press feared a centralized agency as the distributor of wartime information. Second, Congress feared an American propaganda machine that could resemble Joseph Goebbels’ operation in Nazi Germany, third, previous attempts at propaganda under the Committee on Public Information/Creel Committee during WWI were viewed as a failure. And fourth, America was experiencing endemic isolationism and was hesitant to become involved in a propaganda campaign. The OWI’s operations were divided between the Domestic and Overseas Branches. In 1942 OWI established the Voice of America, which remains in service as of 2015 as the government broadcasting service of the United States. The VOA initially borrowed transmitters from the commercial networks, the programs OWI produced included those provided by the Labor Short Wave Bureau, whose material came from the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In conjunction with the War Relocation Authority, the OWI produced a series of films related to the internment of Japanese Americans. The OWI also worked with camp newspapers to disseminate information to internees, in addition, the OWI produced a series of 267 newsreels in 16 mm film, The United Newsreel which were shown overseas and to US audiences. These newsreels incorporated U. S. military footage, for examples see this Google list. The OWI Bureau of Motion Pictures worked with Hollywood to produce films that advanced American war aims, successful films depicted the Allied armed forces as valiant Freedom fighters, and advocated for civilian participation, such as conserving fuel or donating food to troops. By July 1942 OWI administrators realized that the best way to reach American audiences was to present war films in conjunction with feature films, OWIs presence in Hollywood deepened throughout World War II, and by 1943 every Hollywood studio allowed OWI to examine all movie scripts. OWI evaluated whether each film would promote the honor of the Allies mission, the Overseas Branch enjoyed greater success and less controversy than the Domestic Branch. Abroad, the OWI operated a Psychological Warfare Branch, which used propaganda to enemy forces in combat zones
4.
Julius J. Epstein
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It was adapted from an unpublished play, Everybody Comes to Ricks, written by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison. His identical twin died in 1952, a loss that he felt for the rest of his life and he continued writing, receiving two more Oscar nominations. In 1998, he received a Los Angeles Film Critics Association career achievement award and his credits included Four Daughters for which he received his first Oscar nomination, The Bride Came C. O. D. The Man Who Came to Dinner, Mr. Skeffington, The Tender Trap, Light in the Piazza, Send Me No Flowers, Pete n Tillie, and Reuben, Reuben. Epstein was born Julius Epstein as a twin to his brother Philip on August 22,1909 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City and their parents owned a livery stable at a time when horses were widely used in the city. He and Philip both graduated from The Pennsylvania State University in 1931, where they were champions in boxing and he graduated with a BA in Arts and Letters. He maintained close ties with Penn State throughout his life, at his request, he was buried in a Penn State polo shirt. After college, the Epsteins went to Hollywood, hoping to work in the movies and they became successful screenwriters and began collaborating in 1939. They were noted for their Academy Award-winning Casablanca, written together with Howard Koch, jack L. Warner, head of Warner Brothers, had a tortuous relationship with the Epstein twins. While he could not argue with their commercial acumen, he deplored their pranks, their work habits, in 1952, Warner gave their names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. They never testified before the committee, but on a HUAC questionnaire, Epstein married the actress Frances Sage and they had two children, James and Elizabeth. Epstein married Ann and they had a son Philip, who died in 2000 and he died on December 30,2000 in Los Angeles, California. Epstein shared an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of Four Daughters, written with Thyra Samter Winslow as an adaptation from Frances Hursts novel, in 1944, the Epstein brothers attempted their first film in the capacity of both writers and producers with Mr. Skeffington. The picture was a success and won both Bette Davis and Claude Rains Oscar nominations. About writing under the system of the 1930s and 40s, Epstein said in a 1984 interview. Movies in those days were prevented from reality, every leading man had to be a great sexual athlete. Every boy and girl had to meet cute, and the girl had to dislike the hero when they met, if a woman committed adultery, she had to die. Now the woman who commits adultery is your heroine, Four Daughters, for which he received his first Oscar nomination for an adapted screenplay
5.
Walter Huston
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Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor and singer. Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Huston was born in Toronto, Ontario, where he attended Winchester Street Public School. He was the son of Elizabeth and Robert Moore Houghston, a farmer who founded a construction company. He was of Scottish and Irish descent and he had a brother and two sisters, one of whom was the theatrical voice coach Margaret Carrington. His family moved, before his birth, from Orangeville, Ontario where they were farmers, as a young man, he worked in construction and in his spare time attended the Shaw School of Acting. He made his debut in 1902. He went on to tour in In Convict Stripes, a play by Hal Reid, father of Wallace Reid and he again toured in another play The Sign of the Cross. In 1904, he married Rhea Gore and gave up acting to work as a manager of power stations in Nevada. He maintained these jobs until 1909, in 1909, his marriage foundering, he appeared with an older actress named Bayonne Whipple. They were billed as Whipple and Huston and, in 1915, vaudeville was their livelihood into the 1920s. Huston began his Broadway career on January 22,1924 and he appeared in a play, Mr. Pitt. Several more Broadway plays solidified his fame, e. g. Desire Under the Elms, Kongo, The Barker, Elmer the Great, once talkies began in Hollywood, he achieved fame in both character roles and as a leading man. His first major role was portraying the villainous Trampas in the western The Virginian with Gary Cooper and he starred as the title character in the Broadway theatrical adaptation of Sinclair Lewiss novel Dodsworth in 1934 and the plays film version two years later. For his role as Sam Dodsworth, Huston won the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Academy Award, Huston remained busy throughout the 1930s and 1940s, both on stage and screen. He performed September Song in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938, in 1941, Walter Huston portrayed the part of the ships captain, who is shot while delivering the black bird to Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon. Walters son, John Huston, directed the picture, John Huston, as a practical joke, had his father enter the scene and die over 10 different takes. In 1948, he played Howard in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, travens novel, which told the story of three gold diggers in 1920s post-revolution Mexico. In the 1950 release of the entitled, September Affair, starring Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten
6.
Robert J. Flaherty
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Robert Joseph Flaherty, FRGS was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, Nanook of the North. He is considered the father of both the documentary and the ethnographic film, Flaherty was married to writer Frances H. Flaherty from 1914 until his death in 1951. Frances worked on several of her husbands films, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story for Louisiana Story, Flaherty was one of seven children born to prospector Robert Henry Flaherty and Susan Klockner. He was sent to Upper Canada College in Toronto for his education, Flaherty began his career as a prospector in the Hudson Bay region of Canada, working for a railroad company. Flaherty wrote for the Geographical Review, in 1909 he shared stories about information he was told by an Inuk man named Wetallok. Flaherty said he met Wetalltok while visiting the Hudson Bay in search of iron ore, in his story, Flaherty published a detailed map of the Inuit region and shared information about the bay that Wetallok had told him. His writing about Wetallok would go on to be published in his book, My Eskimo Friends, in 1913, on Flahertys expedition to prospect the Belcher Islands, his boss, Sir William Mackenzie, suggested that he take a motion picture camera along. He brought a Bell and Howell hand cranked motion picture camera and he was particularly intrigued by the life of the Inuit people, and spent so much time filming them that he had begun to neglect his real work. When Flaherty returned to Toronto with 30,000 feet of film and his film was destroyed and his hands were burned. Although his editing print was saved and shown several times, Flaherty wasnt satisfied with the results and it was utterly inept, simply a scene of this or that, no relation, no thread of story or continuity whatever, and it must have bored the audience to distraction. Flaherty was determined to make a new film, one following a life of a typical Inuk, in 1920, he secured funds from Revillon Frères, a French fur trade company to shoot what was to become Nanook of the North. On 15 August 1920, Flaherty arrived in Port Harrison, Quebec to shoot his film and he brought two Akeley motion-picture cameras which the Inuit referred to as the aggie. He also brought full developing, printing, and projection equipment to show the Inuit his film and he lived in an attached cabin to the Revillon Frères trading post. In making Nanook, Flaherty cast various locals in parts in the film, the half-igloo had been built beforehand, with a side cut away for light so that Flahertys camera could get a good shot. Flaherty insisted that the Inuit not use rifles to hunt, though their use had by that time become common and he also pretended at one point that he could not hear the hunters pleas for help, instead continuing to film their struggle and putting them in greater danger. Melanie McGrath writes that, while living in Northern Quebec for the year of filming Nanook, Flaherty had an affair with his lead actress, a few months after he left, she gave birth to his son, Josephie, whom he never acknowledged. Josephie was one of the Inuit who were relocated in the 1950s to very difficult living conditions in Resolute and Grise Fiord, according to McGrath, Flaherty knew of his sons difficulties, but took no action. Corroboration of McGraths account is not readily available and Flaherty himself never discussed the matter, Nanook began a series of films that Flaherty was to make on the same theme of humanity against the elements
7.
20th Century Fox
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Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, the studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. 20th Century Fox is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2015, 20th Century Fox celebrated its 80th anniversary as a studio. Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, the studios biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn, at first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century, even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck, the new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31,1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President, Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Foxs longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. The company established a training school. The contracts included an option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, however, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915. The companys films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their credits as well as its opening fanfare. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studios leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple, favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO, while Zanuck went off for eighteen months war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment. The studios—indeed the industrys—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable, in 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Foxs output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razors Edge, Wilson, Gentlemans Agreement, The Snake Pit, Boomerang, and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox also specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney and they also made the 1958 film version of South Pacific
8.
Why We Fight
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Why We Fight is a series of seven propaganda films commissioned by the United States government during World War II to justify to American soldiers their involvement in the war. Later on, they were shown to the U. S. public to persuade them to support American involvement in the war. Most of the films were directed by Frank Capra, who was daunted yet impressed and challenged by Leni Riefenstahls propaganda film Triumph of the Will and worked in direct response to it. The series faced a challenge, convincing a recently non-interventionist nation of the need to become involved in the war and ally with the Soviets. In many of the films, Capra and other directors spliced in Axis powers propaganda footage going back twenty years, why We Fight was edited primarily by William Hornbeck, although some parts were re-enacted under War Department supervision if there was no relevant footage available. The animated portions of the films were produced by the Disney studios – with the animated maps following a convention of depicting Axis-occupied territory in black, director Frank Capra enlisted shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to directly under Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, the most senior officer in command of the Army, Marshall felt that Signal Corps was incapable of producing sensitive and objective troop information films. You have an opportunity to contribute enormously to your country and the cause of freedom, are you aware of that, sir. Shortly after his meeting with General Marshall, Capra viewed Leni Riefenstahls terrifying motion picture, Capra describes the film as the ominous prelude of Hitlers holocaust of hate. Satan couldnt have devised a more blood-chilling super-spectacle, … Though panoplied with all the pomp and mystical trappings of a Wagnerian opera, its message was as blunt and brutal as a lead pipe, We, the Herrenvolk, are the new invincible gods. According to Capra, Triumph of the Will fired no gun, but as a psychological weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as lethal. Capra at this point had no assistants or facilities, and he began to see his assignment as overwhelming, I sat alone, how could I mount a counterattack against Triumph of the Will, keep alive our will to resist the master race. I was alone, no studio, no equipment, no personnel, Capra made his primary focus the creation of one basic, powerful idea that would spread and evolve into other related ideas. Capra considered one important idea that had always been in his thoughts, there was one sentence in it that always gave me goose pimples, Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. As a result, his goal became to let the enemy prove to our soldiers the enormity of his cause—and the justness of ours and he would compile enemy speeches, films, newsreels, newspaper articles, with a list of the enemys hostile actions. He presented his ideas to other officers now assigned to him, I told them of my hunch. Let our boys hear the Nazis and the Japs shout their own claims of master-race crud—and our fighting men will know why they are in uniform and we had found the great cache of enemy films—and it was ours
9.
Dimitri Tiomkin
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Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was a Russian-American film score composer and conductor. Musically trained in Russia, he was best known for his scores, including Duel in the Sun, Red River, High Noon, The Big Sky, Gunfight at the O. K. Corral. Dimitri Tiomkin was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire and his family was of Jewish descent, his father Zinovy Tiomkin was a distinguished pathologist and associate of Professor Paul Ehrlich, and later a notable Zionist leader. His mother, Marie Tartakovskaya, was a musician who began teaching the young Tiomkin piano at an early age and her hope was to have her son become a professional pianist, according to Tiomkin biographer, Christopher Palmer. Tiomkin described his mother as being small, blonde, merry and he also studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova. He supported himself while living in St. Petersburg by playing piano accompaniment for numerous Russian silent films, because the revolution had diminished opportunities for classical musicians in Russia, he moved to Berlin after the Russian Revolution to live with his father. In Berlin, from 1921 to 1923, he studied with the pianist Ferruccio Busoni and Busonis disciples Egon Petri and he composed light classical and popular music, and made his performing debut as a pianist playing Franz Liszts Piano Concerto No.2 with the Berlin Philharmonic. He moved to Paris with his roommate, Michael Khariton, to perform a piano duo repertory together, Tiomkin and Raschs professional relationship evolved into a personal one, and they married in 1927. While in New York Tiomkin gave a recital at Carnegie Hall which featured music by Maurice Ravel, Alexander Scriabin, Francis Poulenc, and Alexandre Tansman. He and his new wife went on tour to Paris in 1928, after the stock market crash in October 1929 reduced work opportunities in New York, Tiomkin and his wife moved on to Hollywood, where she was hired to supervise dance numbers in MGM film musicals. He worked on minor films, some without being credited under his own name. Although he worked on smaller film projects, his goal was still to become a concert pianist. However, that ended abruptly in 1937 when he broke his arm. Tiomkin received his first break from Columbia director Frank Capra, who picked him to write, the film won Tiomkin significant recognition in Hollywood, and came out in the year he became a U. S. citizen. In his autobiography, Please Dont Hate Me, Tiomkin recalls how the assignment by Capra forced him to first confront a director in a matter of music style, e gave me the job without reservation. I could write the score without interference, and he would hear it when it was done, Lost Horizon offered me a superb chance to do something big. I thought I might be going a little too far in the matter of expense, No, Dimi, the lama is a simple man. His greatness is in being simple, for his death the music should be simple, nothing more than the muttering rhythm of a drum
10.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884, by Emperor Alexander III, although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a career in Russia at that time. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovskys training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation, he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task that did not prove easy, Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. This resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the countrys national identity—an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovskys career, despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovskys life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. His homosexuality, which he kept private, has also been considered a major factor. Tchaikovskys sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, there is a debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause of death. While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed, some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. Others dismissed Tchaikovskys music as lacking in elevated thought, according to longtime New York Times music critic Harold C, schonberg, and derided its formal workings as deficient because they did not stringently follow Western principles. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a town in Vyatka Governorate in the Russian Empire. His father, Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky, had served as a lieutenant colonel and engineer in the Department of Mines and his grandfather, Pyotr Fedorovich Tchaikovsky, served first as a physicians assistant in the army and later as city governor of Glazov in Viatka. His great-grandfather, a Ukrainian Cossack named Fyodor Chaika, distinguished himself under Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, Tchaikovskys mother, Alexandra Andreyevna, was the second of Ilyas three wives,18 years her husbands junior and French on her fathers side. Both Ilya and Alexandra were trained in the arts, including music—a necessity as a posting to an area of Russia also meant a need for entertainment. Of Tchaikovskys six siblings, he was close to his sister Alexandra and twin brothers Anatoly, alexandras marriage to Lev Davydov would produce seven children and lend Tchaikovsky the only real family life he would know as an adult, especially during his years of wandering. One of those children, Vladimir Davydov, whom the composer would nickname Bob, in 1844, the family hired Fanny Dürbach, a 22-year-old French governess. Four-and-a-half-year-old Tchaikovsky was initially too young to study alongside his older brother Nikolai. By the age of six, he had become fluent in French, Dürbach saved much of Tchaikovskys work from this period, which includes his earliest known compositions, and became a source of several childhood anecdotes
11.
Teutonic Order
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The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious order founded as a military order in the 12th century in Acre. Purely religious since 1929, it still confers limited honorary knighthoods, the order was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Formed in the year 1190 in Acre, in the Levant, after Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East, the Order moved to Transylvania in 1211 to help defend the South-Eastern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary against the Kipchaks. Starting from there, the Order created the independent Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, adding continuously the conquered Prussians territory, the Order theoretically lost its main purpose in Europe with the Christianization of Lithuania. However, it initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic. The Teutonic Knights had an economic base, and so hired mercenaries from throughout Europe to augment their feudal levies. In 1410, a Polish-Lithuanian army decisively defeated the Order and broke its military power at the Battle of Grunwald, however, the capital of the Teutonic Knights was successfully defended in the following Siege of Marienburg and the Order was saved from collapse. In 1515, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I made an alliance with Sigismund I of Poland-Lithuania. Thereafter, the empire did not support the Order against Poland, in 1525, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg resigned and converted to Lutheranism, becoming Duke of Prussia as a vassal of Poland. Soon after, the Order lost Livonia and its holdings in the Protestant areas of Germany, the Order did keep its considerable holdings in Catholic areas of Germany until 1809, when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its dissolution and the Order lost its last secular holdings. However, the Order continued to exist as a charitable and ceremonial body and it was outlawed by Adolf Hitler in 1938, but re-established in 1945. Today it operates primarily with charitable aims in Central Europe, the Knights wore white surcoats with a black cross. A cross pattée was sometimes used as their coat of arms, the motto of the Order was, Helfen, Wehren, Heilen. The full name of the Order in German is Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus St. Mariens in Jerusalem or in Latin Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Hierosolymitanorum, thus, the term Teutonic refers to the German origins of the order in Latin. It is commonly known in German as the Deutscher Orden, historically also as Deutscher Ritterorden, Deutschherrenorden, Deutschritterorden or Die Herren im weißen Mantel. However, based on the model of the Knights Templar, it was transformed into an order in 1198. It received papal orders for crusades to take and hold Jerusalem for Christianity, during the rule of Grand Master Hermann von Salza the Order changed from being a hospice brotherhood for pilgrims to primarily a military order. The Order was founded in Acre, and the Knights purchased Montfort, northeast of Acre, the Order also had a castle at Amouda in Armenia Minor
12.
Sergei Eisenstein
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Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet film director and film theorist, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and October, as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. Eisenstein was born to a family in Riga, Latvia. His father, Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein was born to a German Jewish father who had converted to Christianity, Osip Eisenstein, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. According to other sources, both of his grandparents were of Baltic German descent. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant, Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution of 1905, taking Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who joined them around 1910, divorce followed and Julia left the family to live in France. Eisenstein was raised as an Orthodox Christian, but became an atheist later on, at the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Sergei studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father. In 1918 Sergei left school and joined the Red Army to serve the Bolshevik Revolution and this brought his father to Germany after the defeat of the Tsarist government, and Sergei to Petrograd, Vologda, and Dvinsk. In 1920, Sergei was transferred to a position in Minsk. At this time, he was exposed to Kabuki theatre and studied Japanese, learning some 300 kanji characters and these studies would lead him to travel to Japan. In 1920 Eisenstein moved to Moscow, and began his career in working for Proletkult. His productions there were entitled Gas Masks, Listen Moscow, Eisenstein would then work as a designer for Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1923 Eisenstein began his career as a theorist, by writing The Montage of Attractions for LEF, Eisensteins first film, Glumovs Diary, was also made in that same year with Dziga Vertov hired initially as an instructor. Strike was Eisensteins first full-length feature film, the Battleship Potemkin was acclaimed critically worldwide. Officially, the trip was supposed to allow Eisenstein and company to learn about sound motion pictures, for Eisenstein, however, it was also an opportunity to see landscapes and cultures outside those found within the Soviet Union. He spent the two years touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zürich, London, and Paris. In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised an educational documentary about abortion directed by Tissé entitled Frauennot - Frauenglück, in late April 1930, Jesse L. Lasky, on behalf of Paramount Pictures, offered Eisenstein the opportunity to make a film in the United States
13.
Alexander Nevsky (film)
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Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein. It depicts the invasion of Novgorod in the 13th century by the Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire and their defeat by Prince Alexander. In 1941 Eisenstein, Pavlenko, Cherkasov and Abrikosov were awarded the Stalin Prize for the film, in 1978 the film was included in the worlds 100 best motion pictures according to an opinion poll conducted by the Italian publishing house Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. The Teutonic Knights invade and conquer the city of Pskov with the help of the traitor Tverdilo, the story ends in the retaken Pskov where the ordinary foot-soldiers are set free, the surviving Teutonic knights will be held for ransom and Tverdilo is swarmed over by the vengeful people. After both Gavrilo and Buslai have been wounded, Buslai publicly states that neither he nor Gavrilo was the bravest in battle, that honor goes to Vasilisa. Thus Gavrilo and Olga are united, while Buslai chooses Vasilisa as his bride-to-be, the film contains elements of obvious allegory that reflect the political situation between the two countries at the time of production. Some types of helmets worn by the Teutonic infantry resemble mock-ups of Stahlhelms from World War I, in the first draft of the Alexander Nevsky script, swastikas even appeared on the invaders helmets. The film portrays Alexander as a hero and shows him bypassing a fight with the Mongols, his old foes. The film also conveys highly anti-clerical and anti-Catholic messages, the film stemmed from a literary scenario entitled Rus, written by Pyotr Pavlenko, a Soviet novelist who conformed to socialist realist orthodoxy. The authorities could rely on Pavlenko, in his role of consultant, while shooting the film, Eisenstein published an article in the official newspaper of record Izvestia entitled Alexander Nevsky and the Rout of the Germans. He drew a parallel between Nevsky and Stalin. As a result, the Kremlin requested a screening and, without Eisenstein being consulted. During the process of screening, one of the reels. But the situation reversed dramatically on 22 June 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Alexander Nevsky is less experimental in its narrative structure than Eisensteins previous films, it tells one story with a single narrative arc and focuses on one main character. The special effects and cinematography were some of the most advanced at the time, the film climaxes in the half-hour Battle of the Ice, propelled by Prokofievs ominous, rousing, triumphant musical narrative, a sequence that has served as a model for epic movie battles ever since. The film was the first of Eisensteins dramatic films to use sound, the films score was composed by Sergei Prokofiev, who later reworked the score into a concert cantata. The creation of Alexander Nevsky was a collaboration in the fullest sense of the word, some of the film was shot to Prokofievs music, Prokofiev viewed the films rough cut as the first step in composing its inimitable score. The strong and technically innovative collaboration between Eisenstein and Prokofiev in the process resulted in a match of music and imagery that remains a standard for filmmakers
14.
Charles XII of Sweden
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Charles XII, also Carl, Latinized to Carolus Rex, was the King of Sweden from 1697 to 1718. He belonged to the House of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, a line of the House of Wittelsbach. Charles was the surviving son of Charles XI and Ulrika Eleonora the Elder. He assumed power, after a caretaker government, at the age of fifteen. Leading the Swedish army against the alliance Charles won multiple victories despite being usually significantly outnumbered, a major victory over a Russian army some three times the size in 1700 at the Battle of Narva compelled Peter the Great to sue for peace which Charles then rejected. Russia was now the remaining hostile power. The defeat was followed by Surrender at Perevolochna, two campaigns met with frustration and ultimate failure, concluding with his death at the Siege of Fredriksten in 1718. At the time, most of the Swedish Empire was under military occupation. This situation was later formalized, albeit moderated in the subsequent Treaty of Nystad, Charles was an exceptionally skilled military leader and tactician as well as an able politician, credited with introducing important tax and legal reforms. With the war consuming more than half his life and nearly all his reign, Charles, like all kings, was styled by a royal title, which combined all his titles into one single phrase. The fact that Charles was crowned as Charles XII does not mean that he was the 12th king of Sweden by that name, Swedish kings Erik XIV and Charles IX gave themselves numerals after studying a mythological history of Sweden. He was actually the 6th King Charles, the non-mathematic numbering tradition continues with the current King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, being counted as the equivalent of Charles XVI. In late 1699 Charles sent a detachment to reinforce his brother-in-law Duke Frederick IV of Holstein-Gottorp. A Saxon army simultaneously invaded Swedish Livonia and in February 1700 invested Riga, Russia also declared war, but stopped short of an attack on Swedish Ingria until September 1700. Leading a force of 8,000 and 43 ships in an invasion of Zealand, Charles rapidly compelled the Danes to submit to the Peace of Travendal in August 1700, Russia had opened their part of the war by invading the Swedish-held territories of Livonia and Estonia. Charles countered this by attacking the Russian besiegers at the Battle of Narva, the Russians outnumbered the Swedish army of ten thousand men by almost four to one. Charles attacked under cover of a blizzard, effectively split the Russian army in two and won the battle, many of Peters troops who fled the battlefield drowned in the Narva River. The total number of Russian fatalities reached about 10,000 at the end of the battle, while the Swedish forces lost 667 men, Charles did not pursue the Russian army
15.
Napoleon
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Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, one of the greatest commanders in history, his wars and campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide. Napoleons political and cultural legacy has ensured his status as one of the most celebrated and he was born Napoleone di Buonaparte in Corsica to a relatively modest family from the minor nobility. When the Revolution broke out in 1789, Napoleon was serving as an officer in the French army. Seizing the new opportunities presented by the Revolution, he rose through the ranks of the military. The Directory eventually gave him command of the Army of Italy after he suppressed a revolt against the government from royalist insurgents, in 1798, he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power. He engineered a coup in November 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic and his ambition and public approval inspired him to go further, and in 1804 he became the first Emperor of the French. Intractable differences with the British meant that the French were facing a Third Coalition by 1805, in 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him because Prussia became worried about growing French influence on the continent. Napoleon quickly defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, then marched the Grand Army deep into Eastern Europe, France then forced the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to sign the Treaties of Tilsit in July 1807, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent. Tilsit signified the high watermark of the French Empire, hoping to extend the Continental System and choke off British trade with the European mainland, Napoleon invaded Iberia and declared his brother Joseph the King of Spain in 1808. The Spanish and the Portuguese revolted with British support, the Peninsular War lasted six years, featured extensive guerrilla warfare, and ended in victory for the Allies. The Continental System caused recurring diplomatic conflicts between France and its client states, especially Russia, unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade, the Russians routinely violated the Continental System and enticed Napoleon into another war. The French launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the collapse of the Grand Army, the destruction of Russian cities, in 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France. A lengthy military campaign culminated in a large Allied army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, the Allies then invaded France and captured Paris in the spring of 1814, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April. He was exiled to the island of Elba near Rome and the Bourbons were restored to power, however, Napoleon escaped from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France once again. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June, the British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died six years later at the age of 51
16.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
17.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
18.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
19.
Leo Tolstoy
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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Tolstoys fiction includes dozens of stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays, in the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy also became an advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George. Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres southwest of Tula, the Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility, tracing their ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian noble Indris. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoys parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University and his teachers described him as both unable and unwilling to learn. Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, in 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about time that he started writing. Others who followed the path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed an execution in Paris. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. Tolstoys concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural and he later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice. His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugos newly finished Les Misérables, the similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugos novel and Tolstoys War and Peace indicates this influence. Tolstoys political philosophy was influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
20.
War and Peace
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War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, which is regarded as a central work of world literature and one of Tolstoys finest literary achievements. The novel chronicles the history of the French invasion of Russia, portions of an earlier version, titled The Year 1805, were serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867. The novel was first published in its entirety in 1869, newsweek in 2009 ranked it first in its Top 100 Books. In 2007, Time magazine ranked War and Peace third in its poll of the 10 greatest books of all time while Anna Karenina was ranked first, Tolstoy said War and Peace is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle. Large sections, especially the later chapters, are a philosophical rather than narrative. Tolstoy also said that the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to call War, instead, he regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, no single English novel attains the universality of Leo Tolstoys War, War and Peace is perhaps best known as one of the longest novels ever written. Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in the year that he married and settled down at his country estate. The first half of the book was written under the name 1805, during the writing of the second half, he read widely and acknowledged Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations. However, Tolstoy developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it, the first draft of the novel was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik published the first part of this draft under the title 1805, Tolstoy was dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published with a different ending in 1867. He heavily rewrote the novel between 1866 and 1869. Tolstoys wife, Sophia Tolstaya, copied as many as seven separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it again ready for publication, the version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending from the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869. Russians who had read the serialized version were anxious to buy the complete novel, the novel was translated almost immediately after publication into many other languages. It is unknown why Tolstoy changed the name to War and Peace and he may have borrowed the title from the 1861 work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, La Guerre et la Paix. The title may also be reference to Titus, described as being a master of war and peace in The Twelve Caesars. The completed novel was then called Voyna i mir, the 1805 manuscript was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1983 and since has been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Albanian, Korean, and Czech. The existence of so many versions make this one of the best insights into the mental processes of a great novelist
21.
Communism
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Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism, and the political ideologies grouped around both. The primary element which will enable this transformation, according to analysis, is the social ownership of the means of production. Likewise, some communists defend both theory and practice, while others argue that historical practice diverged from communist principles to a greater or lesser degree, according to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, in the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Communist thought has also traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on ownership of property. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine, in the early 19th century, Various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the emphasis with a rational. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana, in its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels, in 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to power of Lenins Bolsheviks. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority, the event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development, Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule, the moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenins Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Great Purge of 1937–1938 was Stalins attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party and its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered and Communist parties played a role in many independence movements
22.
Russian Orthodox Church
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The Russian Orthodox Church, alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches, in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox patriarchates. The Primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus and it also exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the autonomous Church of Japan and the Orthodox Christians resident in the Peoples Republic of China. The ROC branches in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Ukraine since the 1990s enjoy various degrees of self-government, in Ukraine, ROC has tensions with schismatic groups supported by the current government, while it enjoys the position of numerically dominant religious organisation. The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, headquartered in New York, New York, the two Churches reconciled on May 17,2007, the ROCOR is now a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to one of the legends, Andrew reached the location of Kiev. The spot where he erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrews Cathedral. By the end of the first millennium AD, eastern Slavic lands started to come under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, by the mid-10th century, there was already a Christian community among Kievan nobility, under the leadership of Byzantine Greek priests, although paganism remained the dominant religion. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus′ to convert to Christianity and her grandson, Vladimir of Kiev, made Rus officially a Christian state. The Kievan church was a metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ecumenical patriarch appointed the metropolitan, who usually was a Greek. The Metropolitans residence was located in Kiev itself, the capital of the medieval Rus state. Following the tribulations of the Mongol invasion, the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival, despite the politically motivated murders of Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver, the Mongols were generally tolerant and even granted tax exemption to the Church. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, the Trinity monastery founded by Sergius of Radonezh became the setting for the flourishing of spiritual art, exemplified by the work of Andrey Rublev, among others. The followers of Sergius founded four hundred monasteries, thus extending the geographical extent of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. However, the Moscow Prince Vasili II rejected the act of the Council of Florence brought to Moscow by Isidore in March 1441, Isidore was in the same year removed from his position as an apostate and expelled from Moscow. The Russian metropolitanate remained effectively vacant for the few years due largely to the dominance of Uniates in Constantinople then. In December 1448, Jonas, a Russian bishop, was installed by the Council of Russian bishops in Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia without the consent from Constantinople. Subsequently, there developed a theory in Moscow that saw Moscow as the Third Rome, the successor to Constantinople
23.
Douglas MacArthur
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Douglas MacArthur was an American five-star general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and he received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Philippines Campaign, which made him and his father Arthur MacArthur, Jr. the first father and son to be awarded the medal. He was one of five men ever to rise to the rank of General of the Army in the US Army. During the 1914 United States occupation of Veracruz, he conducted a reconnaissance mission, in 1917, he was promoted from major to colonel and became chief of staff of the 42nd Division. From 1919 to 1922, MacArthur served as Superintendent of the U. S, Military Academy at West Point, where he attempted a series of reforms. His next assignment was in the Philippines, where in 1924 he was instrumental in quelling the Philippine Scout Mutiny, in 1925, he became the Armys youngest major general. He served on the martial of Brigadier General Billy Mitchell and was president of the American Olympic Committee during the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. In 1930, he became Chief of Staff of the United States Army, as such, he was involved in the expulsion of the Bonus Army protesters from Washington, D. C. in 1932, and the establishment and organization of the Civilian Conservation Corps. He retired from the US Army in 1937 to become Military Advisor to the Commonwealth Government of the Philippines, MacArthur was recalled to active duty in 1941 as commander of United States Army Forces in the Far East. A series of disasters followed, starting with the destruction of his air forces on 8 December 1941, MacArthurs forces were soon compelled to withdraw to Bataan, where they held out until May 1942. In March 1942, MacArthur, his family and his staff left nearby Corregidor Island in PT boats and escaped to Australia, upon his arrival in Australia, MacArthur gave a speech in which he famously promised I shall return to the Philippines. For his defense of the Philippines, MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor, after more than two years of fighting in the Pacific, he fulfilled a promise to return to the Philippines. He officially accepted Japans surrender on 2 September 1945, aboard USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay, as the effective ruler of Japan, he oversaw sweeping economic, political and social changes. He led the United Nations Command in the Korean War until he was removed from command by President Harry S. Truman on 11 April 1951 and he later became Chairman of the Board of Remington Rand. A military brat, Douglas MacArthur was born 26 January 1880, at Little Rock Barracks, Little Rock, Arkansas, to Arthur MacArthur, Jr. a U. S. Army captain, Pinkney came from a prominent Norfolk, Virginia, family. Two of her brothers had fought for the South in the Civil War, Arthur and Pinky had three sons, of whom Douglas was the youngest, following Arthur III, born on 1 August 1876, and Malcolm, born on 17 October 1878. The family lived on a succession of Army posts in the American Old West, conditions were primitive, and Malcolm died of measles in 1883. In his memoir, Reminiscences, MacArthur wrote I learned to ride and shoot even before I could read or write—indeed and this time on the frontier ended in July 1889 when the family moved to Washington, D. C. where Douglas attended the Force Public School
24.
Balkans
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The Balkan Peninsula, or the Balkans, is a peninsula and a cultural area in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with various and disputed borders. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch from the Serbia-Bulgaria border to the Black Sea, the highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala 2,925 metres in the Rila mountain range. In Turkish, Balkan means a chain of wooded mountains, the name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. A less popular hypothesis regarding its etymology is that it derived from the Persian Balā-Khāna, from Antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains had been called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment, a reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, a third possibility is that Haemus derives from the Greek word haema meaning blood. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon, Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhons blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name. The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, there is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊. The concept of the Balkans was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, during the 1820s, Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers. Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term, zeunes goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the Italic and Iberian Peninsula, and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term Balkans again received a negative meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, even in casual usage. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has an area of about 470,000 km2. It is more or less identical to the known as Southeastern Europe. As of 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria, the current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, the Western Balkans is a neologism coined to describe the countries of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania
25.
Defense in depth
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Defence in depth is a military strategy that seeks to delay rather than prevent the advance of an attacker, buying time and causing additional casualties by yielding space. Rather than defeating an attacker with a single, strong defensive line, a defender can thus yield lightly defended territory in an effort to stress an attackers logistics or spread out a numerically superior attacking force. Defence in depth requires that a defender deploy their resources, such as fortifications, field works and military units at, although attackers may find it easier to breach the more weakly defended front line, as they advance, they continue to meet resistance. As they penetrate deeper, their flanks become vulnerable, and, should the advance stall, the defence in depth strategy is particularly effective against attackers able to concentrate their forces and attack a small number of places on an extended defensive line. Defenders that can back to a succession of prepared positions can extract a high price from the advancing enemy while themselves avoiding the danger of being overrun or outflanked. Delaying the enemy advance mitigates the attackers advantage of surprise and allows time to move defending units to make a defence, a well-planned defence in depth strategy will deploy forces in mutually supportive positions and in appropriate roles. For example, poorly trained troops may be deployed in static defences at the front line, defence in depth may allow a defender to maximise the defensive possibilities of natural terrain and other advantages. The disadvantages of defence in depth are that it may be unacceptable for a defender to plan to give ground to an attacker. This may be because vital military or economic resources are close to the front line or because yielding to an enemy is unacceptable for political or cultural reasons. In addition, the continuous retreats required by defence in depth require the defender to have a degree of mobility in order to retreat successfully. Edward Luttwak used the term to describe his theory of the strategy employed by the Late Roman army in the 3rd. Later examples of defence in depth might be European hill forts, during the Battle of Normandy, Wehrmacht forces utilized the bocage of the area to create successive lines of defences to slow the attacking Allies in hopes that reinforcements would arrive. The Pacific Theatre also had examples of defence in depth, with the Japanese inflicting heavy casualties on the Americans in the Battles of Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima. The best modern example of a defence in depth is that of the Battle of Kursk. The initial German offensive never fully penetrated the Red Army lines, by contrast, the subsequent Red Army counter-offensive pushed the front line hundreds of miles westwards. Colonel Francis J. Kelly discussed the employment of defence in depth in Army Special Forces camps during the Vietnam War, while untested, this was also the planned NATO strategy in Europe during the Cold War at the Fulda Gap. Bandwagoning Culminating point Hedgehog defence List of military tactics Loss of Strength Gradient Scorched earth policy Soviet deep battle Strategic depth
26.
Scorched earth
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A scorched earth policy is a military strategy that targets anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area. Specifically, all of the assets that are used or can be used by the enemy are targeted, such as sources, transportation, communications, industrial resources. The practice can be carried out by the military in enemy territory and it may overlap with, but is not the same as, punitive destruction of the enemys resources, which is done for purely strategic/political reasons rather than strategic/operational reasons. The strategy of destroying the food and water supply of the population in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions. The Scythians used scorched earth methods against King Darius the Great of Persia, the Scythians, who were nomadic herders, retreated into the depths of the Steppes, destroying food supplies and poisoning wells. Many of Darius troops died from starvation and dehydration, the Greek general Xenophon records in his Anabasis that the Armenians burned their crops and food supplies as they withdrew before the advance of the Ten Thousand. The Greek mercenary general Memnon suggested to the Persian Satraps the use of the scorched earth policy against Alexander as he moved into Asia Minor, the system of punitive destruction of property and subjugation of people when accompanying a military campaign was known as vastatio. Two of the first uses of scorched earth recorded both happened in the Gallic Wars, after the Helvetii were defeated by a combined Roman-Gallic force, the Helvetii were forced to rebuild themselves on the shattered German and Swiss plains they themselves had destroyed. The second case shows actual military value, during the Great Gallic War the Gauls under Vercingetorix planned to lure the Roman armies into Gaul and then trap, to this end, they ravaged the countryside of what are now the Benelux countries and France. This did cause problems for the Romans, but Roman military triumphs over the Gallic alliance showed that this alone was not enough to save Gaul from subjugation by Rome. During the Second Punic War in 218–202 BC, the Carthaginians used this method selectively while storming through Italy, after the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC, the Roman Senate also elected to use this method to permanently destroy the Carthaginian capital city, Carthage. The buildings were torn down, their stones scattered so not even rubble remained, however, the story that they salted the earth is apocryphal. Julian might expect, that a conqueror, who possessed the two instruments of persuasion, steel and gold, would easily procure a plentiful subsistence from the fears or avarice of the natives. But, on the approach of the Romans, the rich, the Danes left Chester next year and marched into Wales. In the Harrying of the North, William the Conquerors solution to stop a rebellion in 1069 was the brutal conquest, williams men burnt whole villages from the Humber to Tees, and slaughtered the inhabitants. Food stores and livestock were destroyed so that surviving the initial massacre would soon succumb to starvation over the winter. The destruction is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, the survivors were reduced to cannibalism, with one report stating that the skulls of the dead were cracked open so that the brains could be eaten. Between 100,000 and 150,000 perished and the area took centuries to recover from the damage, during the Hundred Years War, both the English and the French conducted chevauchée raids over the enemy territory to damage its infrastructure
27.
Urban warfare
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Urban warfare is combat conducted in urban areas such as towns and cities. Urban combat is very different from combat in the open at both the operational and tactical level, complicating factors in urban warfare include the presence of civilians and the complexity of the urban terrain. Fighting in urban areas negates the advantages that one side may have over the other in armour, heavy artillery, some civilians may be difficult to distinguish from combatants such as armed militias and gangs, and particularly individuals who are simply trying to protect their homes from attackers. The United States Armed Forces term for urban warfare is UO, the previously used U. S. military term MOUT, an abbreviation for military operations in urban terrain, has been replaced by UO, although the term MOUT Site is still in use. The British armed forces terms are OBUA, FIBUA, or sometimes FISH, or FISH, israel Defense Forces calls urban warfare לשב, a Hebrew acronym for warfare on urban terrain. LASHAB in the IDF includes large-scale tactics, CQB training for fighting forces, the IDF has a special large and advanced facility for training soldiers and units in urban warfare. Urban military operations in World War II often relied on large quantities of artillery bombardment, in some particularly vicious urban warfare operations such as Stalingrad and Warsaw, all weapons were used irrespective of their consequences. However, when liberating occupied territory some restraint was often applied, Military forces are bound by the laws of war governing military necessity to the amount of force which can be applied when attacking an area where there are known to be civilians. Until the 1970s, this was covered by the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws, sometimes distinction and proportionality, as in the case of the Canadians in Ortona, causes the attacking force to restrain from using all the force they could when attacking a city. In other cases, such as the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin, when Russian forces attacked Grozny in 1999, large amounts of artillery fire were used. Fighting in an environment can offer some advantages to a weaker defending force or to guerrilla fighters through ambush-induced attrition losses. The attacking army must account for three dimensions more often, and consequently expend greater amounts of manpower in order to secure a myriad of structures, and mountains of rubble. Ferroconcrete structures will be ruined by heavy bombardment, but it is difficult to demolish such a building totally when it is well defended. The characteristics of a city include tall buildings, narrow alleys, sewage tunnels. Defenders may have the advantage of detailed knowledge of the area, right down to the layout inside of buildings. The buildings can provide excellent sniping posts while alleys and rubble-filled streets are ideal for planting booby traps, defenders can move from one part of the city to another undetected using underground tunnels and spring ambushes. Meanwhile, the attackers tend to more exposed than the defender as they must use the open streets more often, unfamiliar with the defenders secret. During a house to search the attacker is often also exposed on the streets
28.
Siege of Leningrad
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The siege started on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the city was severed. Although the Soviets managed to open a land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943. It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, Leningrads capture was one of three strategic goals in the German Operation Barbarossa and the main target of Army Group North. By 1939 the city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output and it has been reported Adolf Hitler was so confident of capturing Leningrad that he had invitations printed to the victory celebrations to be held in the citys Hotel Astoria. According to a sent to Army Group North on 29 September, After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban center. Following the citys encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot, in this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population. Hitlers ultimate plan was to raze Leningrad to the ground and give areas north of the River Neva to the Finns, Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Finnish military forces were north of Leningrad, while German forces occupied territories to the south, thus, it is argued that much of the Finns participation was merely defensive. The Germans planned on lack of food being their weapon against the citizens. On 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organised First response groups of civilians, in the next days, Leningrads civilian population was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilised for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defences were built along the perimeter to repulse hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the line ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo. Another line of defence passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino, in the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in Leningrads northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved inland to the Pulkovo Heights to the south of Leningrad, the 4th Panzer Group from East Prussia took Pskov following a swift advance and managed to reach Novgorod by 16 August. The Soviet defenders fought to the death, despite the German discovery of the Soviet defence plans on an officers corpse, after the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepners 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad. However, the 18th Army — despite some 350,000 men lagging behind — forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. On 10 July, both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, the Finnish Army was then expected to advance along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga
29.
Battle of Stalingrad
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Marked by fierce close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as one of the single largest and bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses, the German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in August 1942, using the German 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble, the fighting degenerated into house-to-house fighting, and both sides poured reinforcements into the city. By mid-November 1942, the Germans had pushed the Soviet defenders back at great cost into narrow zones along the west bank of the Volga River. On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, the Axis forces on the flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was cut off and surrounded in the Stalingrad area. Adolf Hitler ordered that the stay in Stalingrad and make no attempt to break out, instead, attempts were made to supply the army by air. Heavy fighting continued for two months. By the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces in Stalingrad had exhausted their ammunition, the remaining units of the 6th Army surrendered. The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days, elsewhere, the war had been progressing well, the U-boat offensive in the Atlantic had been very successful and Rommel had just captured Tobruk. In the east, they had stabilized their front in a running from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. There were a number of salients, but these were not particularly threatening, neither Army Group North nor Army Group South had been particularly hard pressed over the winter. Stalin was expecting the main thrust of the German summer attacks to be directed against Moscow again, with the initial operations being very successful, the Germans decided that their summer campaign in 1942 would be directed at the southern parts of the Soviet Union. The initial objectives in the region around Stalingrad were the destruction of the capacity of the city. The river was a key route from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea to central Russia and its capture would disrupt commercial river traffic. The Germans cut the pipeline from the oilfields when they captured Rostov on 23 July, the capture of Stalingrad would make the delivery of Lend Lease supplies via the Persian Corridor much more difficult. On 23 July 1942, Hitler personally rewrote the operational objectives for the 1942 campaign, both sides began to attach propaganda value to the city based on it bearing the name of the leader of the Soviet Union. The expansion of objectives was a significant factor in Germanys failure at Stalingrad, caused by German overconfidence, the Soviets realized that they were under tremendous constraints of time and resources and ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent to fight. If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must finish this war, Army Group South was selected for a sprint forward through the southern Russian steppes into the Caucasus to capture the vital Soviet oil fields there
30.
Soviet invasion of Poland
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The Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939. On that morning,16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland was secretly agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed on 23 August 1939. The Red Army, which outnumbered the Polish defenders, achieved its targets by using strategic. Some 230,000 Polish prisoners of war had been captured, the campaign of mass persecution in the newly acquired areas began immediately. In November 1939 the Soviet government ostensibly annexed the entire Polish territory under its control, the Soviet campaign of ethnic cleansing began with the wave of arrests and summary executions of officers, policemen and priests. Soviet forces occupied eastern Poland until the summer of 1941, when they were out by the invading German army in the course of Operation Barbarossa. The area was under Nazi occupation until the Red Army reconquered it again in the summer of 1944, the Soviet Union enclosed most of the annexed territories into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the end of World War II in Europe, the USSR signed a new border agreement with the Polish communists on 16 August 1945. The USSR played a double game secretly engaging in talks with Germany. The terms were rejected, thus giving Josef Stalin a free hand in pursuing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Adolf Hitler, the non-aggression pact contained a secret protocol dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence in the event of war. One week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, German forces invaded Poland from the west, north, Polish forces gradually withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited the French and British support and relief that they were expecting. On 17 September 1939 the Soviet Red Army invaded the Kresy regions in accordance with the secret protocol, at the opening of hostilities several Polish cities including Dubno, Łuck and Włodzimierz Wołyński let the Red Army in peacefully, convinced that it was marching on to fight the Germans. General Juliusz Rómmel of the Polish Army issued an order to treat them like an ally before it was too late. The result of the Paris Peace Conference did little to decrease the territorial ambitions of parties in the region, the border skirmishes of 1919 progressively escalated into the Polish–Soviet War in 1920. Following the Polish victory at the Battle of Warsaw, the Soviets sued for peace, the parties signed the formal peace treaty, the Peace of Riga, on 18 March 1921, dividing the disputed territories between Poland and Soviet Russia. In the aftermath of the agreement, Soviet leaders largely abandoned the cause of international revolution. The Conference of Ambassadors and the community recognized Polands eastern frontiers in 1923. Germany marched into Prague on 15 March 1939, in mid-April, the Soviet Union, Britain and France began trading diplomatic suggestions regarding a political and military agreement to counter potential further German aggression
31.
Occupation of the Baltic states
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On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the USSR and within weeks occupied the Baltic territories. In July 1941, the Baltic territory was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland of the Third Reich, the Soviet annexation occupation of the Baltic states lasted until August 1991, when the Baltic states regained independence. In its reassessment of Soviet history that began during perestroika in 1989, however, Russia agreed to Europes demand to assist persons deported from the occupied Baltic states upon joining the Council of Europe. De facto independence was restored to the Baltic states in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia started to withdraw its troops from the Baltics in August 1993. The full withdrawal of troops deployed by Moscow was completed in August 1994, Russia officially ended its military presence in the Baltics in August 1998 by decommissioning the Skrunda-1 radar station in Latvia. The dismantled installations were repatriated to Russia and the returned to Latvian control. Early in the morning of August 24,1939, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a ten-year non-aggression pact, the pact contained a secret protocol by which the states of Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into German and Soviet spheres of influence. In the north, Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere, Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its political rearrangement—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula and San Rivers going to the Soviet Union while Germany would occupy the west. According to this protocol, Lithuania would regain its historical capital Vilnius. Following the end of Soviet invasion of Poland on 6 October, the Soviets pressured Finland, the Soviets questioned the neutrality of Estonia after the escape of an interned Polish submarine on 18 September. A week later on 24 September, the Estonian foreign minister was given an ultimatum in Moscow, the Soviets demanded the conclusion of a treaty of mutual assistance to establish military bases in Estonia. The Estonians had no choice but to accept naval, air, the corresponding agreement was signed on 28 September 1939. Latvia followed on 5 October 1939 and Lithuania shortly thereafter, on 10 October 1939, in September and October 1939, the Soviet government compelled the Baltic states to conclude mutual assistance pacts which gave it the right to establish Soviet military bases. In May 1940, the Soviets turned to the idea of military intervention. Their model was the Finnish Democratic Republic, a puppet regime set up by the Soviets on the first day of the Winter War, the Soviets organised a press campaign against the allegedly pro-Allied sympathies of the Baltic governments. In May 1940, the Germans invaded France, which was overrun, in late May and early June 1940, the Baltic states were accused of military collaboration against the Soviet Union by holding meetings the previous winter. On 15 June 1940, the Lithuanian government had no choice but to agree to the Soviet ultimatum, president Antanas Smetona proposed armed resistance to the Soviets but the government refused, proposing their own candidate to lead the regime. However, the Soviets refused this offer and sent Vladimir Dekanozov to take charge of affairs while the Red Army occupied the state, on 16 June 1940, Latvia and Estonia also received ultimata
32.
Winter War
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The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939–1940. It began with the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, the League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the League on 14 December 1939. Finland refused and the USSR invaded the country, the Soviets possessed more than three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. The Red Army, however, had been crippled by Soviet leader Joseph Stalins Great Purge of 1937. With more than 30,000 of its officers executed or imprisoned, including most of those of the highest ranks, because of these factors, and high morale in the Finnish forces, Finland repelled Soviet attacks for several months, much longer than the Soviets expected. However, after reorganization and adoption of different tactics, the renewed Soviet offensive overcame Finnish defenses at the borders, hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland ceded territory representing 11% of its area and 13% of its economy to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses were heavy, and the international reputation suffered. While the Soviet Union did not conquer all Finland, Soviet gains exceeded their pre-war demands and they gained substantial territory along Lake Ladoga, providing a buffer for Leningrad, and territory in northern Finland. Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation, the end of the war cancelled the Franco-British plan to send troops to Finland through northern Scandinavia. One of the goals of the projected Franco-British operation had been to take control of northern Swedens iron ore. For this reason it was also a factor in the launching of Operation Weserübung, Nazi Germanys invasion of Denmark. The poor performance of the Red Army encouraged Hitler to think that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful, until the beginning of the 19th century, Finland constituted the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. In 1809, to protect their capital, Saint Petersburg. While abortive because of Russias internal strife, these attempts ruined Russias relations with the Finns, the new Bolshevik Russian government was weak, and with the threat of civil war looming Soviet Russia recognized the new Finnish government just three weeks after the declaration of independence. Sovereignty was fully achieved in May 1918 after a civil war. Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920, from which it sought security guarantees, nevertheless, the government of Sweden carefully avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Another Finnish military policy was the top secret military cooperation between Finland and Estonia, the 1920s and early 1930s were a politically unstable time in Finland
33.
Propaganda in the Soviet Union
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Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxism-Leninism ideology to promote the Communist Party line. In societies with pervasive censorship, propaganda was omnipresent and vigorously enforced, with truths repressed, falsehoods in every field were incessantly rubbed in print, at endless meetings, in school, in mass demonstrations, on the radio. The main Soviet censorship body, Glavlit, was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials, in the Stalin Era, deviation from the dictates of official propaganda was punished by execution and labor camps. In the post-Stalin era, these measures were replaced by punitive psychiatry, prison, denial of work. Today a man only talks freely to his wife – at night, with the pulled over his head. According to historian Peter Kenez, the Russian socialists have contributed nothing to the discussion of the techniques of mass persuasion. The Bolsheviks never looked for and did not find devilishly clever methods to influence peoples minds and this lack of interest, says Kenez, followed from their notion of propaganda. They thought of propaganda as part of education, an important goal of Communist propaganda was to create a new man. The idea that the upbringing of children was the concern of their parents was explicitly rejected, one schooling theorist stated, We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists and we must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family. From the earliest days of their lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools. To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state – that is our task and those born after the Revolution were explicitly told that they were to build a utopia of brotherhood and justice, and to not be like their parents, but completely Red. Lenins corners, political shrines for the display of propaganda about the founder of the Soviet state have been established in all schools. Schools conducted marches, songs and pledges of allegiance to Soviet leadership, one of purposes was to instill in children the idea that they are involved in the World revolution, which is more important than any family ties. Pavlik Morozov, who betrayed his father to the secret police NKVD, was promoted as a positive example. Teachers in economic and social sciences were responsible for inculcating unshakable Marxist-Leninist views. Children of socially alien elements were often the target of abuse or expelled, early in the regime, many teachers were drawn into Communist plans for schooling because of a passion for literacy and numeracy, which the Communists were attempting to spread. Young Pioneers, the group, was an important factor in the indoctrination of children
34.
Cold War
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The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. The Cold War split the temporary alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state ruled by its Communist Party and secret police, the Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and all organizations. In opposition stood the West, dominantly democratic and capitalist with a free press, a small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, it sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the USSR and USA competed for influence in Latin America, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was stopped by the Soviets, the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The United States remained as the only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare
35.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
36.
National Board of Review
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The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908, the mayor believed that the new medium degraded the morals of community. Its stated purpose was to endorse films of merit and champion the new art of the people, in an effort to avoid government censorship of films, the National Board became the unofficial clearinghouse for new movies. From 1916 into the 1950s thousands of motion pictures carried the legend Passed by the National Board of Review in their main titles, however, the Board was a de facto censorship organization. Producers submitted their films to the Board before making release prints, they agreed to cut out any footage that the Board found objectionable, up to and including destroying the entire film. In 1930, the NBR was the first group to choose the ten best English-language movies of the year and the best foreign films, everson, Alistair Cooke, and Pearl Buck. In addition, the Awards Jury helps to determine the special achievement awards presented at the gala in January. The organization also works to foster commentary on all aspects of production by underwriting educational film programs. In 2016, the NBR reached out to the community to The Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, The Ghetto Film School, the organization also awarded grants to seventeen student filmmakers as part of its annual Student Grant Program. The boardss official magazine had existed in several forms and different names since its inception, in 1950 the magazine changed its name from Screen Magazine, and launched the first issue as Films in Review on February 1,1950. Note, Until 1945, there were awards for Best Picture and intermittent awards for Best Documentary. Motion Picture Production Code Official website
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National Film Preservation Board
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The United States National Film Preservation Board is the board selecting films for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry. It was established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, the National Film Registry is meant to preserve up to 25 culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films each year, to be eligible, films must be at least 10 years old. Members of the Board also advise the Librarian of Congress on ongoing development, the NFPB is a federal agency located within the Library of Congress. The NFPB was established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, Congress in 1996, at the recommendation of the Library of Congress, following four years of hearings and research conducted by the National Film Preservation Board. Funding received through the NFPF’s authorization is secured through the Library of Congress, National Film Registry National Film Preservation Foundation National Recording Preservation Board About the National Film Preservation Board Publications Moving Image Resources
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Propaganda in the United States
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Propaganda in the United States is spread by both government and media entities. Propaganda is information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to influence opinions and its used in advertising, radio, newspaper, posters, books, television, and other media. The first large-scale use of propaganda by the U. S. government came during World War I, the government enlisted the help of citizens and children to help promote war bonds and stamps to help stimulate the economy. To keep the prices of war supplies down, the U. S. government produced posters that encouraged people to reduce waste and grow their own vegetables in victory gardens. The public skepticism that was generated by the tactics of the Committee on Public Information would lead the postwar government to officially abandon the use of propaganda. During World War II the U. S. officially had no propaganda, one such propaganda tool was the publicly owned but government-funded Writers War Board. The activities of the WWB were so extensive that it has called the greatest propaganda machine in history. Why We Fight is a series of US government propaganda films made to justify US involvement in World War II. The core of this campaign was the Writers War Board, which was associated with the Roosevelt administration. Another means was the United States Office of War Information that Roosevelt established in June 1942 and it dealt with posters, press, movies, exhibitions, and produced often slanted material conforming to US wartime purposes. Other large and influential non-governmental organizations during the war and immediate post war period were the Society for the Prevention of World War III, during the Cold War, the U. S. government produced vast amounts of propaganda against communism and the Soviet bloc. Much of this propaganda was directed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBIs COINTELPRO arm solicited journalists to produce fake news items discrediting communists and affiliated groups, such as H. Bruce Franklin and the Venceremos Organization. The Media Campaign cooperates with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, in early 2002, the U. S. Department of Defense launched an information operation, colloquially referred to as the Pentagon military analyst program. The goal of the operation is to spread the administrationss talking points on Iraq by briefing, retired commanders for network and cable television appearances, where they have been presented as independent analysts. Funded by the United States Department of State, the created a public relations front group known as Council of American Muslims for Understanding. The campaign was divided in phases, the first of which consisted of five mini-documentaries for television, radio, through several international broadcasting operations, the US disseminates American cultural information, official positions on international affairs, and daily summaries of international news. These operations fall under the International Broadcasting Bureau, the successor of the United States Information Agency, iBBs operations include Voice of America, Radio Liberty, Alhurra and other programs. They broadcast mainly to countries where the United States finds that information about events is limited
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International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
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Internet Archive
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The Internet Archive is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of universal access to all knowledge. As of October 2016, its collection topped 15 petabytes, in addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating for a free and open Internet. Its web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains over 150 billion web captures, the Archive also oversees one of the worlds largest book digitization projects. Founded by Brewster Kahle in May 1996, the Archive is a 501 nonprofit operating in the United States. It has a budget of $10 million, derived from a variety of sources, revenue from its Web crawling services, various partnerships, grants, donations. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, where about 30 of its 200 employees work, Most of its staff work in its book-scanning centers. The Archive has data centers in three Californian cities, San Francisco, Redwood City, and Richmond, the Archive is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium and was officially designated as a library by the State of California in 2007. Brewster Kahle founded the Archive in 1996 at around the time that he began the for-profit web crawling company Alexa Internet. In October 1996, the Internet Archive had begun to archive and preserve the World Wide Web in large quantities, the archived content wasnt available to the general public until 2001, when it developed the Wayback Machine. In late 1999, the Archive expanded its collections beyond the Web archive, Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software. It hosts a number of projects, the NASA Images Archive, the contract crawling service Archive-It. According to its web site, Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture, without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form, the Archives mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars. In August 2012, the Archive announced that it has added BitTorrent to its file download options for over 1.3 million existing files, on November 6,2013, the Internet Archives headquarters in San Franciscos Richmond District caught fire, destroying equipment and damaging some nearby apartments. The nonprofit Archive sought donations to cover the estimated $600,000 in damage, in November 2016, Kahle announced that the Internet Archive was building the Internet Archive of Canada, a copy of the archive to be based somewhere in the country of Canada. The announcement received widespread coverage due to the implication that the decision to build an archive in a foreign country was because of the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump. Kahle was quoted as saying that on November 9th in America and it was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and it means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions
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IMDb
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In 1998 it became a subsidiary of Amazon Inc, who were then able to use it as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes. As of January 2017, IMDb has approximately 4.1 million titles and 7.7 million personalities in its database, the site enables registered users to submit new material and edits to existing entries. Although all data is checked before going live, the system has open to abuse. The site also featured message boards which stimulate regular debates and dialogue among authenticated users, IMDb shutdown the message boards permanently on February 20,2017. Anyone with a connection can read the movie and talent pages of IMDb. A registration process is however, to contribute info to the site. A registered user chooses a name for themselves, and is given a profile page. These badges range from total contributions made, to independent categories such as photos, trivia, bios, if a registered user or visitor happens to be in the entertainment industry, and has an IMDb page, that user/visitor can add photos to that page by enrolling in IMDbPRO. Actors, crew, and industry executives can post their own resume and this fee enrolls them in a membership called IMDbPro. PRO can be accessed by anyone willing to pay the fee, which is $19.99 USD per month, or if paid annually, $149.99, which comes to approximately $12.50 per month USD. Membership enables a user to access the rank order of each industry personality, as well as agent contact information for any actor, producer, director etc. that has an IMDb page. Enrolling in PRO for industry personnel, enables those members the ability to upload a head shot to open their page, as well as the ability to upload hundreds of photos to accompany their page. Anyone can register as a user, and contribute to the site as well as enjoy its content, however those users enrolled in PRO have greater access and privileges. IMDb originated with a Usenet posting by British film fan and computer programmer Col Needham entitled Those Eyes, others with similar interests soon responded with additions or different lists of their own. Needham subsequently started an Actors List, while Dave Knight began a Directors List, and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST from Hank Driskill, which would later be renamed the Actress List. Both lists had been restricted to people who were alive and working, the goal of the participants now was to make the lists as inclusive as possible. By late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series correlated with actors and actresses appearing therein. On October 17,1990, Needham developed and posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, at the time, it was known as the rec. arts. movies movie database
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YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day. This increased to three billion in May 2011, and four billion in January 2012, in February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day
