Romanians
The Romanians are a Romance ethnic group and nation native to Romania, that share a common Romanian culture and speak the Romanian language, the most widespread spoken Eastern Romance language, descended from the Latin language. According to the 2011 Romanian census, just under 89% of Romania's citizens identified themselves as ethnic Romanians. In one interpretation of the census results in Moldova, the Moldovans are counted as Romanians, which would mean that the latter form part of the majority in that country as well. Romanians are an ethnic minority in several nearby countries situated in Central Eastern Europe in Hungary, Czech Republic, Ukraine and Bulgaria. Today, estimates of the number of Romanian people worldwide vary from 26 to 30 million according to various sources, evidently depending on the definition of the term'Romanian', Romanians native to Romania and Republic of Moldova and their afferent diasporas, native speakers of Romanian, as well as other Eastern Romance-speaking groups considered by most scholars and the Romanian Academy as a constituent part of the broader Romanian people Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians, Vlachs in Serbia, in Croatia, in Bulgaria, or in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Inhabited by the ancient Dacians, part of today's territory of Romania was conquered by the Roman Empire in 106, when Trajan's army defeated the army of Dacia's ruler Decebalus. The Roman administration withdrew two centuries under the pressure of the Goths and Carpi. Two theories account for the origin of the Romanian people. One, known as the Daco-Roman continuity theory, posits that they are descendants of Romans and Romanized indigenous peoples living in the Roman Province of Dacia, while the other posits that the Romanians are descendants of Romans and Romanized indigenous populations of the former Roman provinces of Illyria, Moesia and Macedon, the ancestors of Romanians migrated from these Roman provinces south of the Danube into the area which they inhabit today. According to the first theory, the Romanians are descended from indigenous populations that inhabited what is now Romania and its immediate environs: Thracians and Roman legionnaires and colonists. In the course of the two wars with the Roman legions, between AD 101–102 and AD 105–106 the emperor Trajan succeeded in defeating the Dacians and the greatest part of Dacia became a Roman province.
The colonisation with Roman or Romanized elements, the use of the Latin language and the assimilation of Roman civilisation as well as the intense development of urban centres led to the Romanization of part of the autochthonous population in Dacia. This process was concluded by the 10th century when the assimilation of the Slavs by the Daco-Romanians was completed. According to the south-of-the-Danube origin theory, the Romanians' ancestors, a combination of Romans and Romanized peoples of Illyria and Thrace, moved northward across the Danube river into modern-day Romania. Small population groups speaking several versions of Romanian still exist south of the Danube in Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, but it is not known whether they themselves migrated from more northern parts of the Balkans, including Dacia; the south-of-the Danube theory favours northern Albania and/or Moesia as the more specific places of Romanian ethnogenesis. Small genetic differences were found among Southeastern European populations and those of the Dniester–Carpathian region.
Despite this low level of differentiation between them, tree reconstruction and principal component analyses allowed a distinction between Balkan–Carpathian and Balkan Mediterranean population groups. The genetic affinities among Dniester–Carpathian and southeastern European populations do not reflect their linguistic relationships. According to the report, the results indicate that the ethnic and genetic differentiations occurred in these regions to a considerable extent independently of each other. During the Middle Ages Romanians were known as Vlachs, a blanket term of Germanic origin, from the word Walha, used by ancient Germanic peoples to refer to Romance-speaking and Celtic neighbours. Besides the separation of some groups during the Age of Migration, many Vlachs could be found all over the Balkans, in Transylvania, across Carpathian Mountains as far north as Poland and as far west as the regions of Moravia, some went as far east as Volhynia of western Ukraine, the present-day Croatia where the Morlachs disappeared, while the Catholic and Orthodox Vlachs took Croat and Serb national identity.
Because of the migrations that followed – such as those of Slavs, Bulgars and Tatars – the Romanians were organised in agricultural communes, developing large centralised states only in the 14th century, when the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight the Ottoman Empire. During the late Middle Ages, prominent medieval Romanian monarchs such as Bogdan of Moldavia, Stephen the Great, Mircea the Elder, Michael the Brave, or Vlad the Impaler took part in the history of Central Europe by waging tumultuous wars and leading noteworthy crusades against the continuously expanding Ottoman Empire, at ti
Paul Lukas
Paul Lukas was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film Watch on the Rhine, reprising the role he created on the Broadway stage. Lukas was born Pál Lukács in Budapest into a Jewish family, the son of Adolf Munkácsi and Mária Schneckendorf, he was adopted by Mária and János Lukács, an advertising executive. Lukas made his stage debut in Budapest in 1916 and his film debut in 1917. At first, he played elegant, smooth womanizers, but he became typecast as a villain, he had a successful stage and film career in Hungary and Austria, where he worked with Max Reinhardt. He arrived in Hollywood in 1927 and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1937, he was busy in the 1930s, appearing in such films as the melodrama Rockabye, the crime caper Grumpy, Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, the comedy Ladies in Love, the drama Dodsworth. He followed William Powell and Basil Rathbone portraying the series detective Philo Vance, a cosmopolitan New Yorker, once in The Casino Murder Case.
His major film success came in Watch on the Rhine, where he played a man working against the Nazis, a role he originated in the Broadway premiere of the play of the same name in 1941. His portrayal of Kurt Mueller, a German émigré with an American wife, played by Bette Davis, was universally lauded by critics. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times, wrote, "As the enemy of fascism, Mr. Lukas' haggard, resourceful determination becomes heroic by virtue of his sincerity and his superior abilities as an actor." He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role. He received the New York Film Critics Award for his performance. In 1943, he guest starred as the eponymous character in an episode of the radio program Suspense, "Mr. Markham, Antique Dealer". as well as the character of a blind composer in the episode "A World of Darkness". On April 2, 1944, he starred in "The Steadfast Heart" on Silver Theater. Modern viewers remember Lukas for his role as Professor Aronnax in Walt Disney's film version of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
By that time, however, he was, at age 60, suffering from memory problems during the production leading him to lash out at cast and crew alike. Friend Peter Lorre was not immune to the abuse. In the 1940s, Lukas was a charter member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative lobbying group opposed to possible Communist influence in Hollywood. Lukas' film career picked up momentum in the 1960s with six films, including Fun in Acapulco with Elvis Presley in 1963 and Lord Jim with Peter O'Toole in 1965, his final film, The Challenge, was released in 1970. The remainder of his career moved from Hollywood to the stage to television, his only singing role was as Cosmo Constantine in the original 1950 Broadway stage version of Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam, opposite Ethel Merman. Lukas died August 15, 1971, in Tangier, Morocco while searching for a place to spend his retirement years, he is buried in Spain. Lukas was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard on February 8, 1960.
List of actors with Academy Award nominations Works by or about Paul Lukas at Internet Archive Paul Lukas on IMDb Paul Lukas at the Internet Broadway Database Paul Lukas at Find a Grave Paul Lukas at Virtual History
Donald Woods (actor)
Donald Woods was a Canadian-American film and television actor whose career in Hollywood spanned six decades. Born in Brandon, Woods moved with his family to California where he was raised in Burbank. A son of William and Margaret Zink, Presbyterians of German descent, his younger brother, Clarence Russell Zink became an actor. Woods graduated from the University of California and made his film debut in 1928, his screen career was spent in B movies, for example as lawyer Perry Mason in the 1937 film The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. He occasionally played major roles in bigger feature films like A Tale of Two Cities, Anthony Adverse, Watch on the Rhine, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Roughly Speaking. Of considerable importance to his acting career were several seasons as leading man with the Elitch Gardens Theatre Company in Denver, where he performed in 1932, 1933, 1939, 1941, 1947, 1948. In the early days of television, Woods starred as the title character in the 1951 syndicated TV series Craig Kennedy, he was the host of Damon Runyon Theater on CBS-TV.:230 He played himself on the dramatic series Hotel Cosmopolitan on CBS:479, he was one of three hosts of The Orchid Award on ABC-TV.:795 He portrayed Walter Manning on Portia Faces Life on CBS.:847He appeared in such anthology series as The Philco Television Playhouse, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, The United States Steel Hour and General Electric Theater.
On April 11, 1961, Woods appeared as "Profesor Landfield" in the episode "Two for the Gallows" on NBC's Laramie western series. Series character Slim Sherman is hired under false pretenses to take Landfield into the Badlands to seek gold. Landfield, however, is Morgan Bennett, a member of the former Henry Plummer gang who has escaped from prison. Slim has no idea. Series character Jess Harper, Pete Dixon, played by Warren Oates, Pete's younger brother soon come to Slim's aid; the title stems from the talk that the undisciplined Dixon brothers might wind up on a hangman's noose. Woods was a regular in the role of John Brent on the short-lived series Tammy:1052-1053 and made guest appearances on Bat Masterson, Wagon Train, Ben Casey, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Stoney Burke, Bourbon Street Beat, Coronet Blue, Alias Smith and Jones, The Wild Wild West and Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, among many others before retiring from acting in 1976. Besides his film career, he worked as a successful real estate broker in Palm Springs where he lived with his wife, childhood sweetheart Josephine Van der Horck.
They were married from 1933 until his death and had two children and Conrad. He was interred at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in California. Donald Woods at Find a Grave Donald Woods on IMDb Donald Woods at the Internet Broadway Database
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Patriotism
Patriotism or national pride is the feeling of love and sense of attachment to a homeland and alliance with other citizens who share the same sentiment. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, political or historical aspects, it encompasses a set of concepts related to, but mutually exclusive from those of nationalism. Some manifestations of patriotism emphasise the "land" element in love for one's native land and use the symbolism of agriculture and the soil – compare Blut und Boden. An excess of patriotism in the defense of a nation is called chauvinism; the English term patriot is first attested in the Elizabethan era. The abstract noun patriotism appears in the early 18th century; the general notion of civic virtue and group dedication has been attested in culture globally throughout the historical period. For the Enlightenment thinkers of 18th-century Europe, loyalty to the state was chiefly considered in contrast to loyalty to the Church.
It was argued that clerics should not be allowed to teach in public schools since their patrie was heaven, so that they could not inspire love of the homeland in their students. One of the most influential proponents of this classical notion of patriotism was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Enlightenment thinkers criticized what they saw as the excess of patriotism. In 1774, Samuel Johnson published a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." James Boswell, who reported this comment in his Life of Johnson, does not provide context for the quote, it has therefore been argued that Johnson was in fact attacking the false use of the term "patriotism" by contemporaries such as John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute and his supporters. However, there is no direct evidence to contradict the held belief that Johnson's famous remark was a criticism of patriotism itself. Patriotism may be strengthened by adherence to a national religion.
This is the opposite of the separation of church and state demanded by the Enlightenment thinkers who saw patriotism and faith as similar and opposed forces. Michael Billig and Jean Bethke Elshtain have both argued that the difference between patriotism and faith is difficult to discern and relies on the attitude of the one doing the labelling. Christopher Heath Wellman, professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, describes that a popular view of the "patriotist" position is robust obligations to compatriots and only minimal samaritan responsibilities to foreigners. Wellman calls this position "patriotist" rather than "nationalist" to single out the members of territorial, political units rather than cultural groups. George Orwell, in his influential essay Notes on Nationalism distinguished patriotism from the related concept of nationalism: "By'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people.
Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power; the abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality." "It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind." Marxists have taken various stances regarding patriotism. On one hand, Karl Marx famously stated that "The working men have no country" and that "the supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster." The same view is promoted by present-day Trotskyists such as Alan Woods, "in favour of tearing down all frontiers and creating a socialist world commonwealth."On the other hand and Maoists are in favour of socialist patriotism based on the theory of socialism in one country. In the European Union, thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas have advocated a "Euro-patriotism", but patriotism in Europe is directed at the nation-state and more than not coincides with "Euroscepticism".
Several surveys have tried to measure patriotism for various reasons, such as the Correlates of War project which found some correlation between war propensity and patriotism. The results from different studies are time dependent. For example, patriotism in Germany before World War I ranked at or near the top, whereas today it ranks at or near the bottom of patriotism surveys. Since 1981, the World Values Survey explores people's national values and beliefs and refer to the average answer "for high income residents" of a country to the question "Are you proud to be?". It ranges from 1 to 4. Charles Blatberg, From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First, Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-829688-6. Craig Calhoun, Is it Time to Be Postnational?, in Ethnicity and Minority Rights, Stephen May, Tariq Modood and Judith Squires. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Pp. 231–56. Paul Gomberg, “Patriotism is Like Racism,” in Igor Primoratz, ed. Patriotism, Humanity Books, 2002, pp. 105–12.
ISBN 1-57392-955-7. Jürgen Habermas, “Appendix II: Citizenship and National Identity,” in Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of
Gestapo
The Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated Gestapo, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various security police agencies of Prussia into one organisation. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it passed to the administration of Schutzstaffel national leader Heinrich Himmler, who in 1936 was appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler; the Gestapo at this time became a national rather than a Prussian state agency as a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei. From 27 September 1939 forward, it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, it became known as Amt 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organisation to the Sicherheitsdienst. During World War II, the Gestapo played a key role in the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe; as part of the agreement in which Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring—future commander of the Luftwaffe and the number two man in the Nazi Party—was named Interior Minister of Prussia.
This gave Göring command of the largest police force in Germany. Soon afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, Göring merged the two units as the Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated by a post office clerk for a franking stamp and became known as the "Gestapo", he wanted to name it the Secret Police Office, but the German initials, "GPA", were too similar to those of the Soviet Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie or "State Political Directorate", known as the GPU. The first commander of the Gestapo was a protégé of Göring. Diels was appointed with the title of chief of Abteilung Ia of the Political Police of the Prussian Interior Ministry. Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of Marinus van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire. In late 1933, the Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wanted to integrate all the police forces of the German states under his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the state interior ministry.
Göring took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agency's authority throughout Germany. This represented a radical departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was a Land and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with Heinrich Himmler, police chief of the second most powerful German state, Bavaria. Frick did not have the political power to take on Göring by himself. With Frick's support, Himmler took over the political police of state after state. Soon only Prussia was left. Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to counteract the power of the Sturmabteilung, Göring handed over control of the Gestapo to Himmler on 20 April 1934. On that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934 continued as head of the SS Security Service. Himmler and Heydrich both began installing their own personnel in select positions, several of whom were directly from the Bavarian Political Police, such as Heinrich Müller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Meisinger.
Many of the Gestapo employees in the newly established offices were young and educated in a wide-variety of academic fields and moreover, represented a new generation of National Socialist adherents, who were hard-working and prepared to carry the Nazi state forward through the persecution of their political opponents. By the spring of 1934 Himmler's SS controlled the SD and the Gestapo, but for him, there was still a problem, as technically the SS was subordinated to the SA, under the command of Ernst Röhm. Himmler wanted to free himself from Röhm, whom he viewed as an obstacle. Röhm's position was menacing as more than 4.5 million men fell under his command once the militias and veterans organisations were absorbed by the SA, a fact which fuelled Röhm's aspirations. Several Nazi chieftains, among them Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, Himmler, began a concerted campaign to convince Hitler to take action against Röhm. Both the SD and Gestapo released information concerning an imminent putsch by the SA.
Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmler's SS into action, who proceeded to murder over 100 of Hitler's identified antagonists. The Gestapo supplied the information which implicated the SA and enabled Himmler and Heydrich to emancipate themselves from the organisation. For the Gestapo, the next two years following the Night of the Long Knives, a term describing the putsch against Röhm and the SA, were characterised by "behind-the-scenes political wrangling over policing". On 17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in Germany and named Himmler as Chief of German Police; this action merged the police into the SS and removed it from Frick's control. Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as Reichsführer-SS, he answered only to Hitler; this move gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. The Gestapo became a national state agency. Himmler gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies, which were amalgama
