This is the
Reichserntedankfest (Thanksgiving Celebration of the Reich) of 1934 in Buckeberg. That year,
700,000 people participated.
Even those who did not support Nazis were totally blown away and emotionally shaken. They had never experienced anything even remotely like this, there was no rock concerts back then. It created spiritual feeling of sublime and unity among people who were participating.
When they were marching back to their tents in the night, they could still see the huge spotlights piercing the sky in the Buckeberg. They were totally pumped up and fell that things are really going to change better.
For decades, rumors circulated in Russia that
Joseph Stalin had a “twin” who replaced him during certain situations. Decades after Stalin’s death, the decoy finally decided to talk. Felix Dadaev, a former dancer and juggler, had been ordered to work to the Kremlin as Stalin’s
body double.
For more than half a century, Dadaev remained silent, fearing a death sentence should he dare to open his mouth.
But in 2008, at the age of 88, and with the apparent approval of the Putin regime, he finally came forward to write his autobiography. It explains that he was one of four men employed to impersonate the supreme leader, taking his place in motorcades, at rallies, on newsreel footage etc.
Body of
frozen Soviet soldier propped up by Finnish fighters to intimidate Soviet troops, 1939
Finnish defenders sometimes took fallen, frozen Russian soldiers and posed them upright as
psychological warfare.
Russian spy laughing through his execution in Finland, 1942
A Soviet spy laughs at his executioner in a picture taken in Rukajärvi, in East Karelia, in November 1942.
It’s a pretty amazing picture. To capture the last few moments of life.
He knows he will die in a few seconds, in a forest in the snow. And there he will bleed out and be forgotten. His life, his experience, has come to an end. What else could he do but smile? That smile was his final Defiance. Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.
Osama Bin Laden as a teenager (the second from the right in a green shirt and blue pants) on vacation in Sweden with his family
Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937
Fidel Castro and Malcolm X, 1960