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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 June 17

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June 17

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Could you resign from the SS?

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I was reading about Reinhold Hanning, a guard at the Auschwitz death camp and I was wondering, if you're a member of the SS, and you didn't want to participate in the killing of Jews (or other "undesirables"), could you resign? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:06, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See the article: SS recruitment filtered out anyone who wasn't down with killing "undesirables". I have the feeling anyone who got into the SS and then expressed squeamishness could expect punishment. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 22:55, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not according to an article by Sven Felix Kellerhoff in Die Welt, titled 'Hatten SS-Mitglieder damals wirklich "keine Wahl"?' / 'Did SS members really have "no choice" at the time?'. I'm too lazy to translate the whole thing, and unfortunately there are no direct references, but the author points out that shortly after its establishment in 1958, the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes examined the question, and couldn't find a single verifiable instance of SS men risking life and limb by refusing an order to murder. The study did find numerous instances of murder squads, such as the Reserve Police Battalion 101, who left it up to their members whether they wished to participate in killings or not. It is documented that those who chose not to participate in the murdering weren't punished. They sometimes were called weaklings and ostracized by their fellow officers, but that doesn't constitute Befehlsnotstand (see also the "Nuremberg defense" in our article on superior orders). Apparently SS members assigned to death camps could also request for transfer to the war front, and there are documented cases of SS men opting out in that manner. Now, this is just an article in a newspaper, but perhaps more specifics and references can be found at the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations(...), mentioned above. ---Sluzzelin talk 02:35, 18 June 2016 (UTC),[reply]
I've read somewhere or other the assertion that Soviet officers but not German officers were punished for refusing to participate in atrocities. —Tamfang (talk) 07:39, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not an SS officer, but Those who said 'no' to the Holocaust by David Kitterman (1991), highlights the case of Albert Battel, a Wermacht infantry lieutenant, who did his best to obstruct the liquidation of a ghetto by SS troops and was only threatened that he might be arrested after the war. Alansplodge (talk) 19:21, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bridges over the Rhine in March 1945

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The lead of the Ludendorff Bridge article states that it was one of two intact bridges across the Rhine in Germany in early March 1945. Which other bridge over the Rhine was still standing in March 1945, besides the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen? The article later states that all of the bridges over the Rhine had been destroyed apart from the one at Remagen, accompanied by a Template:Dubious. Alcherin (talk) 19:13, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just checked using de:Liste der Rheinbrücken and de:Liste historischer Rheinbrücken on the German wiki (which I assume to be complete and reliable on the topic of German Rhine bridges) and it lists several bridges intact on 1 March 1945, but none on 1 April 1945. Most were rebuild later, some temporary bridges were ready within weeks. I only looked at bridges between the Swiss border and the Dutch border. In Switzerland and the Netherlands some more bridges were intact. Listing them in downstream order:
PiusImpavidus (talk) 14:16, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. That's quite interesting considering how often I've read the claim that Remagen was the last intact bridge over the Rhine (in Germany) and that the Americans were lucky to capture it. According to your research, even at the time of the collapse of the bridge at Remagen (17 March) at least 7 bridges upstream of Remagen were still intact. Alcherin (talk) 21:35, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Identify the journalist

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I met this journalist at Lea Bridge in London, but I can't remember his name. I believe he said he was from ITV. Can anyone identify him? -mattbuck (Talk) 21:30, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I asked on some forums and they identified him as Nick Thatcher of ITV London. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:13, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jonathan Swift, still copyrighted?

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A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately entered into Holy Orders is not on Project Gutenberg, and has a copyright notice on the page I linked to: Copyright (c) 2011 ProQuest LLC. How can a 1720 work still be copyrighted? --NorwegianBlue talk 21:44, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are types of copyright with no expiration, such as Crown copyright. But I don't think these apply here, so you are correct in assuming the original work has lapsed into the public domain. However, a new copyright may apply to a derivative work, even if the original work is not copyrighted. This is why, say, adaptations of Shakespeare plays can be copyrighted even though the original plays are long out of copyright. Another common instance of this is translations: new translations of public domain works are copyrighted. My guess is they're claiming copyright on the transcription of the letter. Now, they might not be eligible to claim this. The article to read is sweat of the brow, and maybe database copyright too. Some countries allow claiming copyright on anything that takes non-trivial labor to produce. From that article it looks like the situation in the UK is a little muddy. But the thing is there's rarely any penalty for claiming a copyright that you're not entitled to claim. Companies frequently slap blanket copyright statements on everything. If you think they're wrong, you get to take the risk of being sued and defending your position in court. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 22:30, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Gutenberg does have it, in The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, vol 3. -- BenRG (talk) 22:46, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's also on Google Books in Miscellanies [by J. Swift and others] Alansplodge (talk) 23:08, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Copyfraud is all too prevalent, sadly. Doubtless there is content in the Penguin Classic to which you linked which is subject to copyright (and indeed the catalogue page shows a separate copyright notice for the preface, iirc). But it is problematic that the work is represented as under copyright when that's clearly nonsense on stilts. (Which ought to be a Swift phrase, but is, disappointingly in the context of this discussion, Jeremy Bentham's.)
The key words, in the original linked document, are "Edited, with an introduction" - which would be sufficient to copyright the book as a whole, though not to protect Swift's original text. Wymspen (talk) 07:29, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot, everyone, for your replies and links. I see now that a site:gutenberg.org-specific search would have found it. --NorwegianBlue talk 19:29, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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