Tuesday, 30 September 2025

Crown Copyright

 

You're probably familiar with the United States Government's unique relationship with copyright, namely that it doesn't really have one, most works produced by or for the United States Government are public domain, though there are a few small exceptions.

In the UK, works created by or for the Government or the Royal Family which is part of the government, but also its own thing have a separate relationship to copyright that differs from the life+ model that covers most works of media. It's Crown copyright and unfortunately unlike the US it maintains a period of exclusivity and even worse is a nightmare to navigate as there are so many contradictory categories of protection and dates of duration to take into account.

What is Crown Copyright you ask? Well according to the UK government's copyright office:

 

Crown copyright is defined under section 163 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as works made by officers or servants of the Crown in the course of their duties.

Crown copyright covers material created by civil servants (PDF, 0.52MB), ministers and government departments and agencies (PDF, 0.19MB). This includes legislation, government codes of practice, social media content (PDF, 0.1MB), government reports, official press releases, academic articles (PDF, 0.21MB) and many public records. For clarification of the duration of copyright please see the flowcharts for Crown copyright and non-Crown copyright. The National Archives has also produced a Permanent Secretary's Guide to Copyright (PDF, 0.88MB) and Generative AI and Crown copyright: a brief guide for government departments (PDF, 0.82MB).

Crown-owned copyright applies where Crown rights have been secured under contractual arrangements in works commissioned by the Crown (PDF, 0.1MB). Copyright can also come into Crown ownership by means of assignment or transfer of the copyright from the legal owner of the copyright to the Crown. Copyright in a work which has been assigned to the Crown lasts 70 years after the death of the person who created it.

The default licence for most Crown copyright and Crown database right information is the Open Government Licence.

Crown Copyright and the Soviet Union copyright situation are so convoluted that I've tried and failed to tackle both several times in the past. Thankfully I've had assistance, from Tim Padfield who created a flowchart to make it much easier to decipher Crown copyright.

 


 You might be wondering how they determined the different rates of duration and categories of work, or why 2039 is singled out as an important year, I have no idea. Honestly, I'm just thankful I now have an easy guide when determining if something is still in copyright or not.

 

Saturday, 20 September 2025

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗿 𝗚𝗼𝗲𝗯𝗯𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝘆 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶-𝗡𝗮𝘇𝗶 𝗪𝗶𝘁

 

 


 From the Montreal Star, February 4, 1939: 

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗿 𝗚𝗼𝗲𝗯𝗯𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝘆 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶-𝗡𝗮𝘇𝗶 𝗪𝗶𝘁 

Comedians Banned For Humorous Remarks on Leaders

 BERLIN, Feb. 4 (U.P.) When Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels yesterday blasted Germany's cafe society, he called it "society rabble and intellectual snobs," for laughing at comedians who make Nazi leaders the butts of their jokes.

 Goebbels turned his anger upon the "society rabble" after announcing that five German actors had been banned from the stage for publicly ridiculing Nazi party and state functionaries.

 He denied that there was any lack of humor in Nazi Germany, but said that it must be kept "good-natured, decent and clean."

 "There is plenty of humor in Germany, more than enough," he said in a three and one-half column editorial in the Nazi party's newspaper Voelkischer Beobachter. "But we do not permit ourselves to be ridiculed."

 The five actors were Werner Finck, actor-author: Pete Sachse, vaudeville comedian, and Helmut Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi, the latter three members of a vaudeville combination known as "The Three Rulands."

 The five were said to have been warned repeatedly to stop making jokes about the Nazis.

 

Goebbels Ends Careers of Five Aryan Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime

Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES

BERLIN, Feb. 3.-Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels today ended the professional careers of five "Aryan" actors and cabaret announcers by expelling them from the Reich's Chamber of Culture on the grounds that "in their public appearences they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades."

The five include perhaps the best known German stage comedians who survived previous Chamber of Culture purges and still dared to indulge in political witticisms-namely, Werner Finck, Peter Sachse and "The Three Rulands," represented by Helmuth Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi. Their expulsion means that they are henceforth forbidden to appear before the public in Germany.

Besides motivating this action in an official communiqué, Dr. Goebbels also publishes a long article in the Voelkischer Beobachter in which he denounces them as "brazen, impertinent, arrogant and tactless"and generally imitators and successors to Jews. Simultaneously he denounces the "society rabble that followed them with thundering applause-parasitic scum, inhabiting our luxury streets, that seems to have only the task of proving can get along and even acquire money and prominence."

As regards the details of the "crimes" of which the five are accused, Dr. Goebbels mentions that they made political witticisms about the colonial problem, the Four-Year Plan and Chancellor Hitler's monumental building program and one of them even raised the question whether there was any humor left in Germany today. 

What amused the public of most, however, and presumably roiled the National Socialist authorities most -although Dr. Goebbels does not mention it- is that they deftly, but unmistakeably, caricatured some gestures, poses, and physical characteristics of National Socialist leaders -sometimes with bon mots that made the rounds of the country.

Dr. Goebbels says that the National Socialists proved during their struggle for power that they had a keen sense of humor that could kill opponents with ridicule. But as National Socialism proposes to remain in power 2,000 years it has neither the time nor the patience to apply that method to the "miserable literati".

If the anti-German press of Paris, London and New York, Dr. Goebbels says, or the democratic governments in Western Europe, should now again complain about the lack of freedom of opinion in Germany it does not matter, "for after all during the last year the Fuehrer reconquered 10,000,000 Germans for the Reich.  

The Peer Review Issue 02: Ten Theses on Science and Radicalism

 

 

The source zine can be found on the Internet Archive.

Letter from the Editor

The anarchist response to the emergence of COVID-19 put divisions in the movement into stark relief. On the one hand, many recognized its severity and the resulting need for quarantine, social distancing, and vaccination. There was a strong moral imperative to protect those who were immunocompromised, elderly, or at heightened risk, even if it meant sacrificing some personal freedoms. On the other hand, many decried the state response to the pandemic as authoritarian, the enforcement of vaccine mandates as dictatorial, and the involvement of big pharmaceutical companies in producing and marketing the vaccine as encouraging the capitalist stranglehold on health. As the writer of Anathema put it, “In the name of ‘public health’ all sorts of security measures are coming together to create an authoritarian wet dream” (“COVID-19: A Fork in the Road,” 2020, p. 3).

In many cases these are valid critiques. In the Philippines, for example, soldiers with assault rifles patrolled quarantine checkpoints during the early days of the pandemic (Magsalin, 2020), and the steps the Chinese Communist Party took enforce lockdown orders can only be described as despotic. Despite this, though, the pandemic offered opportunities for anarchists to organize—especially in mutual aid networks, eviction protests, and rent strikes (Firth, 2020).

In the five years since the pandemic began, however, I fear these legitimate criticisms have morphed into a broader distrust of science and medicine in the anarchist space. An anonymous writer to Montreal Counter-Information feared that we as a society now demand that “experts tucked away in labs using esoteric methods act as the only voices in the room to generate one-size-fits-all policy declarations for entire nations” (Anonymous, 2021). Another anonymous writer to i giorni e le notti (reprinted in English in The Local Kids) accused the creators of the COVID-19 vaccine of being “eugenicists ––and sterilizers of poor women” (Anonymous, 2022, section iv). I’ve met anti-vax punks at shows, and I’ve heard rumors that others have encountered the same (three6666, 2023). And this is setting aside the existing critiques of science and technology posed by primitivists. All of this echoes the anti-science and anti-health sentiments that have engulfed the right wing.

Years before the pandemic, William Gillis noted, “It’s no secret that a good portion of the left today considers science profoundly uncool” (2015). As our title suggests, The Peer Review runs contrary to that assertion. This issue is devoted to exploring ten theses about science and public health, as seen through a radical anarchist lens.

1. Every Anarchist Should Be a Scientist…

In the article that provides the title for this thesis, Isis Lovecruft (2016) wrote, “We should never allow ourselves to become so rigid as to forget what makes us anarchists in the first place: childlike curiosity, incessant inquiry, and a radical love for taking things to their roots to further our understanding. We seek to dismantle the world around us, knowing that it does not function as well as it could. We want to understand ourselves, our environment, and each other. We want the blueprints for the social machine, so we can sledgehammer the fuck out of it, and build it back up from scratch” (p. 5). And, as she points out, that sounds quite a bit like science.

In describing science, A.R. Prasanna reminds us that it “is not just a collection and collation of known facts,” but “a philosophy derived out of experience, innovation, and verification or validation” (2022, p. 6). It is not simply sterile empiricism or institutional authority, but rather a restless pursuit of understanding. In this light, the anarchist drive to dismantle the social machine and rebuild it “from scratch” echoes the foundations of science—it’s not a dogma to follow blindly, but a process grounded in experience, exploration, and discovery. In that sense, it’s not that every anarchist should be a scientist—it’s that every anarchist is a scientist.

2. …and Every Scientist Should Be an Anarchist

As William Gillis (2016) wrote in the article that—similar to Lovecruft—gave this thesis its name, “Control can only be achieved through disengagement and rigidity. And so any successful power structure must involve mechanisms to punish and suppress habits of inquiry” (p. 1). It is no secret that science, both as an area of study and a community, has its problems. Overreliance on funding either from private industry or from the government places restrictions—both overt and subtle—on what can and can’t be studied. It is exorbitantly expensive to publish in some of the most prestigious journals, with Nature charging authors as much as €9,500 ($10,800 in April 2025) for review and publication (Brainard, 2020). Women, persons with disabilities, and ethnic and racial minorities are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM careers (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2021).

Far from stifling scientific innovation, an anarchist society could work to resolve many of these issues. Bureaucratic inefficiencies will be reduced by dismantling and collectivizing large research organizations. The abolition of social and material hierarchies will provide underrepresented individuals greater opportunity to study science. The embrace of a community model (see thesis #4) will prevent the accumulation of capital by the benefactors of scientific research and instead focus on what benefits specific communities the most. In short, anarchism has a plethora of solutions to offer any scientist interested in improving the existing system.

3. Science is Methodical, Not Political

Unlike what tech billionaires will have you believe, technocracy is not the logical or inevitable result of embracing science. In the worst-case scenario, “Those of higher knowledge, status, or authority—experts—take it upon themselves, justified by their epistemic monopoly, to both define and solve the problem for nonexperts” (Byland & Packard, as cited in Caplan, 2023, p. S107). Nonexperts, in this situation, are expected to simply accept what the experts decide. In response, Arthur Caplan points out that “correcting that problem hardly means rejecting the input of scientific experts…Science tells us what can be done; the political task is to decide what ought be done within the constraints and boundaries that science provides” (2023, p. S107). Technocracy is a failure of democracy—not of science—and good scientists can inform the public on important issues without claiming political authority over those topics.

In fact, scientists oftentimes rebel against contemporaneous political power. The Roman Inquisition burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 for arguing that the universe contained other stars and planets. Apotex, a multinational pharmaceutical company, publicly attacked Nancy Olivieri in the 1990s after her research found that one The Roman Inquisition burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 for arguing that the universe contained other stars and planets. Apotex, a multinational pharmaceutical company, publicly attacked Nancy Olivieri in the 1990s after her research found that one of their drugs, deferiprone, caused liver dysfunction. The German right wing was enraged by Albert Einstein’s work on relativity (as well as his pacifism), which led to Nazi officials stripping him of his academic positions and publicly burning his books. While scientists can sometimes assume positions of authority, science itself is only a method of uncovering empirical facts about the world. And sometimes those facts run contrary to existing power structures.

4. Science Should Be Done with Communities, Not to Communities

Science is most effective when it is the product of collaboration, especially with research subjects. Historically, scientists and researchers have often treated the communities they are working with purely as sources of data, ignoring the impact their research has on the rights and well-being of the participants. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment is one of the most notorious examples: the U.S. Public Health Service spent forty years studying the progression of syphilis in a group of impoverished black men, giving them sugar pills as “treatment” and, for some participants, failing to inform them that they had the disease at all (Jones, 2008). Luckily, we are beginning to see signs of change. There has been a concerted push in recent decades to see communities as partners in research rather than a means to an end.

Citing a long history of exploitation in research, especially among indigenous peoples, Emily Doerksen et al. noted in their 2024 paper “Community-led approaches to research governance” that the communities that are commonly studied have been increasingly “voicing their demands for authority in the governance of research involving them” (p. 2). They identify three strategies that have been employed:

  1. The development of research guidelines by community representatives,

  2. Community review boards to assess the ethics of proposed research initiatives in their jurisdictions

  3. Community advisory boards that work in tandem with researchers to ensure that their cultural norms are being respected

Such governance helps to move science in a more participatory direction that ultimately has the potential to benefit both researchers and research subjects.

There is certainly still much to be done, and a number of scientists doggedly refuse to abide by these practices. However, Doerksen et al.’s work, as well as the work of other clinical ethicists, shows that there are possibilities to move beyond the quasi-colonial approaches of yesteryear.

5. Bring Down the Lab Elite, Not the Lab

Justin Podur (2014) distinguishes between three aspects of being a scientist: Science A, Science, B, and Science C. Science A (for Authority) is the authoritative stance that scientists can take when discussing matters of public interest. Science B (for Business) is the pragmatic, day-to-day routine of being a scientist: applying for grants, trying to publish in elite journals, etc. Science C (for Curiosity) is what science is supposed to be—it is the fundamental curiosity that drives scientists to try to understand the world. In his view, too much emphasis on Science B has turned science into an elitist, profit-driven enterprise that has moved scientists further from Science A and Science C. He writes, “Most of what scientists do is try to raise funds, generate publications in prestigious journals, find students to work on their projects, and keep up with other scientists according to these metrics. Science B operates like other sectors of capitalist society”​ (2014). Science must be liberated from the “dictates of profit” in order to return it to its intended purpose.

William Gillis (2015) sees the same elitism at work. He distinguishes the scientific method from “Science!” (with a capital S and an exclamation point), or the view that the world can be systematized, ordered, and ultimately dominated. The latter functions as a surrogate for corporate domination: “Science! is how our paymasters excuse the damage our widget causes in military or economic application” (2015). He, however, sees science (with a lowercase s) as fundamentally radical—rather than merely an empirical pursuit, it is a search for the “deepest roots” of the physical universe. Scientists must remember to keep “digging for the roots” in order to maintain the spirit of scientific inquiry.

What both writers mean, I believe, is that we can reject the parts of scientific culture that are laser-focused on attaining grant awards, abusing grad students, and kowtowing to the desires of big business. What will remain is the core characteristics of the scientific method: curiosity, hypothesis, and discovery. In short, there’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater—we can focus on moving science away from its dependence on corporate interests and back to its original spirit.

6. Nobody Knows Everything…

The belief that individuals can be wholly self-sufficient is a myth. In reality, each of us has only a scattering of the skills we need to thrive in the modern age (and the pre-modern age too, for that matter). We need to rely on others to help us with the remainder. Human beings are social animals—we have been grouping together for hundreds of thousands of years in order to survive, and that impulse will not be disappearing anytime soon. In fact, the drive to be entirely self-sufficient echoes a profoundly capitalist mindset. In “Against Self-Sufficiency,” Sever writes, “We never bear our own weight, and to speak truthfully, we never feed ourselves” (2017, p. 32). They argue that self-sufficiency—defined here as a complete lack of dependence on others—is in fact an illusion that arose from capitalism, colonialism, and bourgeois individualism. The desire to rely only on oneself for survival obscures an important truth: community is absolutely essential. (Yes, it’s ironic that I’m quoting an Anti-Civ publication in a zine about science. But while I disagree with much of primitivism, Sever still makes some good points).

Mutual aid frameworks begin with this understanding. Dean Spade defines mutual aid as “collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them” (2020, p. 11). Whether in the form of soup kitchens, legal assistance, or housing support, mutual aid is built on cooperation and interpersonal solidarity. No single person is a doctor, a mechanic, an elementary school teacher, and a librarian, but every community needs someone with each of these skills in order to run smoothly.

7. …but Everybody Knows Something

Science, when done correctly, can fit well into the concept of mutual aid. Scientists have developed a specific skillset and corpus of knowledge over lifetimes of study, and these particular competencies are useful not only in laboratories but in daily life. Prasanna, for example, writes that the scientific thought process begins with ordinary curiosity: “It is something we all see and experience in day-to-day routines if only we stop and question after the action as to why did I do it?” (2022, p. viii). Science—good science, at least—doesn’t require researchers to shut themselves in universities away from the world. Rather, science actually opens pathways to participate in community building.

Modern capitalist societies tend to emphasize the partitioning of both individuals and knowledge into tiny, self-sealing pieces. Mutual aid models, by contrast, are built on interdependence—epistemic as well as material. We should be thinking together, not simply living together. Contrary to assumptions connecting science and technocracy, scientists should not act as infallible authorities in a society, but as contributors—trusted, yes, but also embedded in a much larger network of thinking individuals. As Prasanna further notes, science is a “continuous process with a firm beginning but never-ending” (2022, p. x). The more voices that are added to the process, the better.

Thus, scientific expertise can a boon to anarchist societies rather than a detriment. Instead of seeing science as a monolithic authority, esoteric and isolated, we can see it as an essential piece for the survival of a mutually dependent community.

8. No One Is Healthy by Themselves

Health isn’t fully determined by behavior, genetic makeup, or random chance: it is profoundly shaped through our environments. The social determinants of health are well-established—working conditions, housing, social inclusion, access to medical services, and other situational factors all have a lasting effect on one’s health. Similarly, infectious disease control, air and water quality, and crisis management all require community-based solutions. Thus, health is not just a biomedical issue. It is a collective condition that requires collective approaches to address.

Public health, at its root, is about populations, not individuals. This community-centered orientation distinguishes it from clinical medicine, which is largely individualistic, and situates one’s health within the larger social fabric. As Mary-Jane Schneider (2020) puts it, “Whereas medicine is concerned with individual patients, public health regards the community as its patient” (p. 86). The COVID-19 pandemic brought this distinction to the forefront of the public’s consciousness—a person’s risk of becoming ill with the virus didn’t depend only on their choices, but on whether others wore masks, had paid sick leave, and got vaccinated. No single person had the power to stop its spread, and this highlighted the need for population-wide interventions.

9. Care Without Coercion is Possible

Marcus Hill (2009) connects public health with radical values in his pamphlet Fragments of an Anarchist Public Health. In his view, health politics should ultimately be driven by consensus, not structured around an authoritarian approach. Instead, a major aim of public health should be to “encourage individuals to become involved in collective efforts to improve the structural determinants of their health” (2009, p. 3). For Hill, a healthy society does depend on health services. However, equity and participation—values that have been emphasized in anarchist thought for almost two centuries—can and should be incorporated into a more inclusive public health approach.

Hill points to several concrete examples of decentralized public health in action. The Zapatistas organized community-level health services among the indigenous peoples of Chiapas after the Mexican government failed to provide support, eventually founding a hospital in 1991 that runs independently of the state. The Ithaca Health Alliance in Ithaca, NY provides interest-free loans for individuals to repay medical debt. The Gesundheit! Institute, founded by Patch Adams, seeks to entirely redesign the health system in the United States by opposing market-based models of healthcare delivery. These projects have sought to make systemic changes by reshaping institutions “along the lines of participatory social values” (Hill, 2009, p. 5). Along those lines, Hill advocates for the creation of a healthcare system built around anarcho-syndicalist concepts, in which federations of local health groups collaborate to address broad issues in health.

This is only one possible path to a public health that is anti-authoritarian. Ultimately, health is a commons—it is defined by whether our neighbors have care, whether our workplaces both equitable and effective. Though public health has had its failures (sometimes spectacular ones) and has been host to broad abuses of power, it is nonetheless necessary to maintain our collective well-being. The key is to promote non-capitalist and non-centralized forms of public health that can work within an anarchist system.

10. Understanding Comes from Participation

Science is often associated with detached geniuses, corporate research, and ivory towers. There are as many different approaches to science as there are scientists, however: there are curious physicists, auto-didactic engineers, radical biologists, and indigenous ecologists. It can be practiced in basements and squats just as well as it is practiced in laboratories and clinics. Rather than treating it as the enemy, I encourage anarchists to see the radical potential of science and become scientists themselves.

Sources

Anonymous. (2021, February). On the anarchist response to the global pandemic. Montreal Counter-Information. https://mtlcounterinfo.org/on-the-anarchist-response-to-the-global-pandemic/

Anonymous. (2022, Summer). Theses on COVID-1984. The Local Kids, 8, 8–23. https://thelocalkids.noblogs.org/files/2022/06/tlk08.pdf

Brainard, J. (2020, November 24). For €9500, Nature journals will now make your paper free to read. Science. https://www.science.org/content/article/9500-nature-journals-will-now-make-your-paper-free-read

Caplan, A. L. (2023). Regaining trust in public health and biomedical science following covid: The role of scientists. In L. A. Taylor, G. E. Kaebnick, & M. Z. Solomon (Eds.), Time to rebuild: Essays on trust in health care and science [Hastings Center special report, 53(5)] (pp. S105-S109). Hastings Center. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1531

COVID-19: A fork in the road. (2020, March/April). Anathema, 7(3), 1, 3. https://anathema.noblogs.org/files/2020/04/mar-apr_2020.pdf

Doerksen, E, Gunay, A. E., Neufeld, S. D., & Friesen, P. (2024). Community-led approaches to research governance: A scoping review of strategies. Research Ethics, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470161241269154

Firth, R. (2021). Mutual aid, anarchist preparedness and COVID-19. In J. Preston & R. Firth (Eds.), Coronavirus, class and mutual aid in the United Kingdom (pp. 57–111). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57714-8_4

Gillis, W. (2016). Every scientist should be an anarchist. Anarcho-transhuman, 2, 1–4. https://anarchotranshumanzine.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/h2.pdf

Gillis, W. (2018, August 18). Science as radicalism. Human Iterations. https://humaniterations.net/2015/08/18/science-as-radicalism/

Hill, M. A. (2009, July 8). Fragments of an anarchist public health. ZNetwork. Retrieved April 22, 2025 from https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fragments-of-an-anarchist-public-health-developing-visions-of-a-healthy-society-by-marcus-hill/

Jones, J. (2008). The Tuskegee syphilis experiment. In E. J. Emanuel, C. C. Grady, R. A. Crouch, R. K. Lie, F. G. Miller, & D. D. Wendler (Eds.), The Oxford textbook of clinical research ethics (pp. 86–96). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195168655.003.0009

Lovecruft, I. (2016). Every anarchist should be a scientist. Anarcho-transhuman, 2, 5–6. https://anarchotranshumanzine.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/h2.pdf

Magsalin, S. (2020, April 2). Against a quarantine with martial law characteristics. Bandilang Itim. https://bandilangitim.xyz/library/simoun-magsalin-against-a-quarantine-with-martial-law-characteristics-en

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2021). Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21321/report/

Podur, J. (2014). Science and Liberation. Anarcho-transhuman, 2, 19–27. https://anarchotranshumanzine.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/h2.pdf

Prasanna, A. R. (2022). How to learn and practice science. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14514-8

Schneider, M. J. (2022). Introduction to public health (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Sever. (2017, Summer). Against self-sufficiency: The gift. Black Seed, 5, 32. https://archive.org/details/black_seed_5/

Spade, D. (2020). Mutual aid: Building solidarity during this crisis (and the next). Verso.

three6666. (2023, July 9). What’s the deal w anti-vax punks? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://web.archive.org/web/20241216142958/https://www.reddit.com/r/punk/comments/14v3gq8/whats_the_deal_w_antivax_punks/

Thursday, 11 September 2025

1812: Hans in Luck

 

1912 Illustration by Robert Anning Bell

Some men are born to good luck: all they do or try to do comes right:—all that falls to them is so much gain:—all their geese are swans:—all their cards are trumps:—toss them which way you will, they will always, like poor puss, alight upon their legs, and only move on so much the faster. The world may very likely not always think of them as they think of themselves, but what care they for the world? what can it know about the matter?

One of these lucky beings was neighbour Hans. Seven long years he had worked hard for his master. At last he said, "Master, my time is up; I must go home and see my poor mother once more: so pray pay me my wages and let me go." And the master said, "You have been a faithful and good servant, Hans, so your pay shall be handsome." Then he gave him a lump of silver as big as his head.

Hans took out his pocket-handkerchief, put the piece of silver into it, threw it over his shoulder, and jogged off on his road homewards. As he went lazily on, dragging one foot after another, a man came in sight, trotting gaily along on a capital horse. "Ah!" said Hans aloud, "what a fine thing it is to ride on horseback! There he sits as easy and happy as if he was at home, in the chair by his fireside; he trips against no stones, saves shoe-leather, and gets on he hardly knows how." Hans did not speak so softly but that the horseman heard it all, and said, "Well, friend, why do you go on foot then?" "Ah!" said he, "I have this load to carry: to be sure it is silver, but it is so heavy that I can't hold up my head, and you must know it hurts my shoulder sadly." "What do you say of making an exchange?" said the horseman. "I will give you my horse, and you shall give me the silver; which will save you a great deal of trouble in carrying such a heavy load about with you." "With all my heart," said Hans: "but as you are so kind to me, I must tell you one thing,—you will have a weary task to draw that silver about with you." However, the horseman got off, took the silver, helped Hans up, gave him the bridle into one hand and the whip into the other, and said, "When you want to go very fast, smack your lips loudly together, and cry 'Jip!'"

Hans was delighted as he sat on the horse, drew himself up, squared his elbows, turned out his toes, cracked his whip, and rode merrily off, one minute whistling a merry tune, and another singing—

"No care and no sorrow,
A fig for the morrow!
We'll laugh and be merry,
Sing heigh down derry!"

After a time he thought he should like to go a little faster, so he smacked his lips and cried "Jip!" Away went the horse full gallop; and before Hans knew what he was about, he was thrown off, and lay on his back by the road-side. His horse would have ran off, if a shepherd who was coming by, driving a cow, had not stopped it. Hans soon came to himself, and got upon his legs again, sadly vexed, and said to the shepherd, "This riding is no joke, when a man has the luck to get upon a beast like this, that stumbles and flings him off as if it would break his neck. However, I'm off now once for all: I like your cow now a great deal better that this smart beast that played me this trick, and has spoiled my best coat, you see, in this puddle; which, by the by, smells not very like a nosegay. One can walk along at one's leisure behind that cow—keep good company, and have milk, butter, and cheese, every day, into the bargain. What would I give to have such a prize!" "Well," said the shepherd, "if you are so fond of her, I will change my cow for your horse; I like to do good to my neighbours, even though I lose by it myself." "Done!" said Hans, merrily. "What a noble heart that good man has!" thought he. Then the shepherd jumped upon the horse, wished Hans and the cow good-morning, and away he rode.

Hans brushed his coat, wiped his face and hands, rested a while, and then drove off his cow quietly, and thought his bargain a very lucky one. "If I have only a piece of bread (and I certainly shall always be able to get that), I can, whenever I like, eat my butter and cheese with it; and when I am thirsty I can milk my cow and drink the milk: and what can I wish for more?" When he came to an inn, he halted, ate up all his bread, and gave away his last penny for a glass of beer. When he had rested himself he set off again, driving his cow towards his mother's village. But the heat grew greater as noon came on, till at last, as he found himself on a wide heath that would take him more than an hour to cross, he began to be so hot and parched that his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. "I can find a cure for this," thought he; "now will I milk my cow and quench my thirst": so he tied her to the stump of a tree, and held his leathern cap to milk into; but not a drop was to be had. Who would have thought that this cow, which was to bring him milk and butter and cheese, was all the time utterly dry? Hans had not thought of looking to that.

While he was trying his luck in milking, and managing the matter very clumsily, the uneasy beast began to think him very troublesome; and at last gave him such a kick on the head as knocked him down; and there he lay a long while senseless. Luckily a butcher soon came by, driving a pig in a wheelbarrow. "What is the matter with you, my man?" said the butcher, as he helped him up. Hans told him what had happened, how he was dry, and wanted to milk his cow, but found the cow was dry too. Then the butcher gave him a flask of ale, saying, "There, drink and refresh yourself; your cow will give you no milk: don't you see she is an old beast, good for nothing but the slaughter-house?" "Alas, alas!" said Hans, "who would have thought it? What a shame to take my horse, and give me only a dry cow! If I kill her, what will she be good for? I hate cow-beef; it is not tender enough for me. If it were a pig now,—like that fat gentleman you are driving along at his ease,—one could do something with it; it would at any rate make sausages." "Well," said the butcher, "I don't like to say no, when one is asked to do a kind, neighbourly thing. To please you I will change, and give you my fine fat pig for the cow." "Heaven reward you for your kindness and self-denial!" said Hans, as he gave the butcher the cow; and taking the pig off the wheel-barrow, drove it away, holding it by the string that was tied to its leg.

So on he jogged, and all seemed now to go right with him: he had met with some misfortunes, to be sure; but he was now well repaid for all. How could it be otherwise with such a travelling companion as he had at last got?

The next man he met was a countryman carrying a fine white goose. The countryman stopped to ask what was o'clock; this led to further chat; and Hans told him all his luck, how he had made so many good bargains, and how all the world went gay and smiling with him. The countryman then began to tell his tale, and said he was going to take the goose to a christening. "Feel," said he, "how heavy it is, and yet it is only eight weeks old. Whoever roasts and eats it will find plenty of fat upon it, it has lived so well!" "You're right," said Hans, as he weighed it in his hand; "but if you talk of fat, my pig is no trifle." Meantime the countryman began to look grave, and shook his head. "Hark ye!" said he, "my worthy friend, you seem a good sort of fellow, so I can't help doing you a kind turn. Your pig may get you into a scrape. In the village I just came from, the squire has had a pig stolen out of his sty. I was dreadfully afraid when I saw you that you had got the squire's pig. If you have, and they catch you, it will be a bad job for you. The least they'll do will be to throw you into the horse-pond. Can you swim?"

Poor Hans was sadly frightened. "Good man," cried he, "pray get me out of this scrape. I know nothing of where the pig was either bred or born; but he may have been the squire's for aught I can tell: you know this country better than I do, take my pig and give me the goose." "I ought to have something into the bargain," said the countryman; "give a fat goose for a pig, indeed! 'Tis not every one would do so much for you as that. However, I will not bear hard upon you, as you are in trouble." Then he took the string in his hand, and drove off the pig by a side path; while Hans went on the way homewards free from care. "After all," thought he, "that chap is pretty well taken in. I don't care whose pig it is, but wherever it came from it has been a very good friend to me. I have much the best of the bargain. First there will be a capital roast; then the fat will find me in goose-grease for six months; and then there are all the beautiful white feathers. I will put them into my pillow, and then I am sure I shall sleep soundly without rocking. How happy my mother will be! Talk of a pig, indeed! Give me a fine fat goose."

As he came to the next village, he saw a scissor-grinder with his wheel, working and singing—

"O'er hill and o'er dale
So happy I roam,
Work light and live well,
All the world is my home;
Then who so blythe, so merry as I?"

Hans stood looking on for a while, and at last said, "You must be well off, master grinder! you seem so happy at your work." "Yes," said the other, "mine is a golden trade; a good grinder never puts his hand into his pocket without finding money in it:—but where did you get that beautiful goose?" "I did not buy it, I gave a pig for it." "And where did you get the pig?" "I gave a cow for it." "And the cow?" "I gave a horse for it." "And the horse?" "I gave a lump of silver as big as my head for him." "And the silver?" "Oh! I worked hard for that seven long years." "You have thriven well in the world hitherto," said the grinder; "now if you could find money in your pocket whenever you put your hand into it, your fortune would be made." "Very true: but how is that to be managed?" "How? Why you must turn grinder like me, to be sure," said the other; "you only want a grindstone; the rest will come of itself. Here is one that is but little the worse for wear: I would not ask more than the value of your goose for it:—will you buy?" "How can you ask?" said Hans; "I should be the happiest man in the world, if I could have money whenever I put my hand in my pocket: what could I want more? there's the goose." "Now," said the grinder, as he gave him a common rough stone that lay by his side, "this is a most capital stone; do but work it well enough, and you can make an old nail cut with it."

Hans took the stone, and went his way with a light heart: his eyes sparkled for joy, and he said to himself, "Surely I must have been born in a lucky hour; every thing I could want or wish for comes of itself. People are so kind; they seem really to think I do them a favour in letting them make me rich, and giving me good bargains."

Meantime he began to be tired, and hungry too, for he had given away his last penny in his joy at getting the cow.

At last he could go no farther, for the stone tired him sadly: and he dragged himself to the side of a river, that he might take a drink of water and rest a while. So he laid the stone carefully by his side on the bank: but, as he stooped down to drink, he forgot it, pushed it a little, and down it rolled, plump into the stream.

For a while he watched it sinking in the deep clear water; then sprang up and danced for joy, and again fell upon his knees and thanked Heaven, with tears in his eyes, for its kindness in taking away his only plague, the ugly heavy stone.

"How happy am I!" cried he; "nobody was ever so lucky as I." Then up he got with a light heart, free from all his troubles, and walked on till he reached his mother's house, and told her how very easy the road to good luck was.

Saturday, 6 September 2025

The Peer Review Issue 01: The Anarchists Guide to Critical Thinking

 

 

The original pamphlet with more illustrations can be found on the internet archive.
 

Peer Review Issue 01 Transcript


What is critical thinking...


Some writers and philosophers have approach defining it broad strokes: Robert Ennis, who spent six decades writing about the topic, claimed that critical thinking is simply “reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.” (1991, p. 8). Similarly, Sharon Bailin and her colleagues identified only three characteristics that make thinking critical: (1) it is done to determine what to believe about something, (2) the thinker is trying to meet some standards of adequacy in their thinking; and (3) the thinker does meet those standards to an appropriate degree (1999).


Others have focused more specifically on critical thinking as applied to argumentation. Mark Battersby, for example, defines it as “the ability and inclination to assess claims and arguments” (2016, p. 7), and stresses the importance of evaluating evidence to expose false claims. Regardless of whether the definition is generic or specific, though, most writers agree that critical thinking is a habit that requires practice to master.


..and why should you

give a fuck?


Far from a bourgeois ideology, critical thinking is a necessary tool for anarchists. Anarchism demands that individuals be able to think accurately and effectively. From being able to spot exploitative power structures to understanding the minutiae of alternative economic theories, anarchism is far more than just tossing pipe bombs at cop cars. Even the most aware anarchist is in danger of falling for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and cults of personality— and before you think you're immune, remember that you have identical brain structures to the people who fall for it all the time. To avoid those traps, anarchists need to be able to think for themselves. When done right, critical thinking is a necessary step in the path to liberated, individual thinking.


Here’s the plan


There’s a longstanding debate about whether critical thinking skills are generalizable (in that there is a single skillset that applies to all areas of inquiry) or if it’s domain-specific (in that each discipline—math, science, history, philosophy, etc.—has its own set of critical thinking skills). I’m choosing to split the difference. In Part One, we'll address two generalizable skills: first, we'll discuss evidence gathering and assessment, and second, we’ll talk about heuristics, biases, and fallacies. In Part Two, I'll present a guide to critical thinking specifically designed for anarchists, based on Daniel Willingham’s 2019 paper “How to Teach Critical Thinking.” Willingham outlines four steps that should be taken when teaching critical thinking about any topic: first, identify what “critical thinking” means in that domain; second, identify the knowledge that is necessary for each understanding of critical thinking, third, create a sequence in which that knowledge should be learned; and fourth, revisit and relearn. With that, let’s get started.


PART ONE GENERALIZABLE SKILLS

1. EVIDENCE

When assessing any proposition, argument, or problem, a good thing to ask is: how good is the evidence? Every argument requires evidence: if someone were to claim that leprechauns are real, we shouldn’t take their claims at face value. Rather, we should ask for the proof. After that, we should assess if the evidence they provide is adequate.



In his book Is That a Fact? Mark Battersby divides the assessment process into two steps. First, ask if the evidence supports the determination. He uses the example of a letter to the editor published in 7ime, in which the author claims that her “85-year-old mother powerwalks two miles each day, drives her car (safely), climbs stairs, does crosswords, reads the daily paper and could probably beat [your columnist] at almost anything.” Thus, so the writer believes, people in this era must be “living to a healthy and ripe old age” (2016, p. 14). As Battersby points out, however, just because the writer’s grandmother does these things does not mean that all elderly people can do these things—the premise does nothing to support the conclusion. Whether or not the evidence is true, you should be skeptical of an argument if the evidence doesn’t provide any basis for the conclusion. Second, you should ask if the evidence is credible. If the above mentioned writer had cited a study instead of using her own grandmother as an example, you should ask if the sample size was adequate and if the study was funded by organizations that may have an interest in promoting its conclusion. Or if she had cited a poll conducted among senior citizens, you should pay attention to question bias (when the phrasing of the poll questions influences the responses) and context bias (when the context of the poll, such as a preliminary introduction by the researchers or the environment of the responder, influences the responses) (Battersby, 2016, pp. 29 & 52). Above all, you should seek to verify that the information being given to you is correct—if the premise is false it could point to an invalid or unfounded conclusion.

Philosophical razors are rules of thumb that can be used to metaphorically “shave off” unlikely premises and conclusions. The principle of parsimony, for example, holds that explanations should be as simple as possible. The most famous formulation of it, Occam’s Razor, states that we should only accept the more complicated theory if the simpler one cannot explain the event (Battersby 2016, p. 23). If you hear a crash, walk upstairs, and see a baseball, broken glass, and a group of kids with bats and mitts running away, the most likely explanation is that they were playing baseball and hit a ball through your window. The theory that aliens broke your window and planted the baseball there to frame the innocent kids should likely be rejected unless the first explanation doesn’t account for some aspect of the situation.

Similarly, the Sagan Standard, attributed to Carl Sagan in his book Broca’s Brain, holds that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (1979, p. 73). The claim that a new treatment will cure any type of cancer in less than twenty minutes requires much more proof than the claim that diet and exercise help you lose weight. There are many other philosophical razors in existence, but a word of caution: while razors provide good bases for ruling out bad arguments, they are not foolproof. Though it is overwhelmingly unlikely, perhaps aliens did plant that baseball, and that new treatment does cure cancer. So, while they may provide a quick-and-easy method of detecting bullshit, they are not infallible.

2.HEURISTICS BIASES AND FALLACIES



Heuristics

Human beings (yourself included) are prone to biases, fallacies, and unclear thinking. The work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974) showed that we tend to rely on quick rules of thumb, called heuristics, when making probability judgments. While useful when making quick decisions, heuristics are prone to error, as when one estimates the probability of a heart attack occurring among a certain age group based on how many people they know have had heart attacks. Who you know that has had a heart attack has no bearing on the actual percentage of people that do, similar to how Battersby’s writer assumed that all elderly people are fit and healthy because her grandmother is.

Cass Sunstein (2005) extended Tversky and Kahneman’s work to include moral judgments, identifying a list of heuristics that tend to guide us when making ethical decisions. He includes, for example, the Betrayal Heuristic (in which an offense that includes a betrayal of trust is often judged as more immoral than one that does not include treachery, such as a close friend stabbing someone in the back rather than a known rival) and the Outrage Heuristic (in which most people’s judgment of how harsh a punishment should be is related to how outraged they are by the offense). Like Tversky and Kahneman, he argues that these rules of thumb are prone to giving inconsistent or incorrect guidance. One thing to watch out for when assessing claims (especially your own claims!) is the underlying heuristics that the claimant is using.



Biases

A number of other cognitive biases exist, too. Confirmation bias is the tendency for individuals to unconsciously reject information that doesn’t align with their existing beliefs. As Margit Oswald and Stefan Grosjean put it, confirmation bias means that “information is searched for, interpreted, and remembered in such a way that it systematically impedes the possibility that the hypothesis can be rejected” (2004, p. 79).

Framing effects occur when individuals draw different conclusions from the same information depending on how that information is presented. People are more likely to buy yogurt that is advertised as “92% fat free” than they are yogurt that is advertised as “8% full fat” even though they are the same product. This is because the advertiser is “framing” the first with positive language and the second with negative. Problematically, this means that “people will choose inconsistently in the sense of making different and opposed choices in decision problems that are essentially identical” (Kamm, 2007, p. 424)—in other words, how a problem is framed will affect what people decide to do about it, even though the framing doesn’t actually have anything to do with the problem.



Finally, the illusory truth effect occurs when continued repetition of a claim causes it to seem truer than alternatives, even if it is false. First identified in a 1977 paper by Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino, they found that their test subjects rated a statement as more likely to be true if it was repeated to them rather than if they read it once. Importantly, this is a prominent reason why propaganda techniques such as the Big Lie (like Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election) and the firehose of falsehood (like Trump’s constant and endless lying) work.



Fallacies

Unlike heuristics and biases, which affect how people process claims, fallacies are mistakes made in the reasoning behind claims. There are hundreds, but below are some of the more common ones:

  • Sweeping generalization — The arguer expands a specific case into a general principle that does not always apply. For example, claiming “People from that city are always rude” takes what may be true of some residents (rudeness) and generalizes it to all residents.

  • Begging the question -The arguer leaves out an important premise to their argument, usually because they assume that it is settled and does not need to be addressed. The claim “Killing an innocent person is murder. Murder should be illegal. Therefore, abortion should be illegal” leaves out the controversial premise “abortion is murder.”

  • Ad hominem – The arguer attacks the character of their opponent rather than discussing the issue at hand. For example, claiming, “You don’t know anything about climate change, you’re too young and inexperienced” avoids engaging with the hypothetical young person’s argument by dismissing it based on their youth.

  • Straw man – The arguer takes another’s argument, extends it to an extreme, and then easily dismisses it. This makes it seem as if the arguer succeeded in defeating the original argument, but they have only torn down the extended version of it. For example, the claim “My opponent wants to reduce carbon emissions. Clearly, what he really wants is to ban all cars and shut down factories” takes a reasonable argument (reduce carbon emissions) and blows it up into an extreme not found in the original argument (banning all cars and shutting down factories).



PART TWO

DOMAIN-SPECIFIC SKILLS

1. APPLICATIONS

Now that we’ve covered some general critical thinking skills, let us turn to Willingham’s plan to teach domain-specific skills. The first step is to identify what critical thinking means for anarchists. So, what should anarchists be able to do with their thinking? While this list is by no means exhaustive, below are some ideas.

Power & Hierarchy

Key to an anarchist evaluation of the existing social norms is the identification of existing hierarchies. After all, one of the core axioms of anarchism is that people have no obligation to follow those in power (Crowder, 2005). This set of skills may include spotting classism/racism/sexism/ableism, identifying structural violence, and recognizing cults of personality. Bonus points for assessing the role of police, politicians, and judges in perpetuating injustice.

Economics

Economic theory is one of the cornerstones of anarchist thought. It is not only important to learn and understand anarchist models (anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, etc.) but also to study the captalist model that anarchism is working to overthrow. Skills in this area include the ability to discover and analyze labor exploitation and the basic knowledge required to understand the foundations of neoliberalism, communism, and socialism.

Media

Media can be both a tool of the state and a source of the truth. On the one hand is the corporate media that, as Peter Gelderloos has pointed out, exists only to “fatten the wallets of their executives and shareholders” and maintain social control (2004). On the other is, well, this zine! Skills in this area include identifying propaganda, discovering the sources behind specific information and narratives, and uncovering media bias in all of its forms (cf. Chomsky & Herman, 2002).

Organization

What’s the point of being an anarchist if you aren’t willing to act? Critical thinking skills in this area include identifying methods to engage with activists in other spheres, organizing protests, and advocating for alternative systems. Also included in this area are skills related to the history and praxis of anarchism, especially learning from past and present successes and failures.

2. CONTENT

Now that the goals of anarchist thinking have been identified, the second step in the process is to gather the knowledge necessary to reach those goals. Every problem requires the requisite background information in order to solve it. The example Willingham uses is a historical letter: to analyze a letter written by a sergeant before a battle, one needs to know the context in which the letter was written, the role of sergeants in the military, and knowledge of the war in general (2019).

There is quite a bit of knowledge that is necessary for anarchists to think critically. Existing anarchist theory provides a solid foundation: a working knowledge of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Zerzan, Marx, and others is _ indispensable. With this theory in hand, anarchists can learn to identify exploitation, material and social inequalities, and the class-based structures inherent to capitalism. An understanding of the ideological details of fascism and other ideologies opposed to anarchism can help with spotting propaganda as well, especially if that propaganda is particularly subtle (it doesn’t have to be the Two Minutes Hate to be propaganda).

Familiarity with politics, news, and world events is also essential. The world has seen a resurgence of right-wing populism recently that is threatening to undermine our collective rights. Any good anti-fascist should be able to discuss why it has arisen and how to address it. Knowledge about the struggles of our trans, gay, disabled, BIPOC, and marginalized brethren is likewise necessary to dismantle the barriers preventing us from full equality.

This list is not complete and is only meant to point critical thinkers in the right direction. Remember, knowledge is power, and power begins with knowledge.



3. SEQUENCE

Willingham’s third step is to identify the order in which skills should be learned. In most subjects, complex knowledge is built on a foundation of more basic information: musicians learn scales before they learn to improvise, artists learn to draw basic shapes before they draw hands, and math students learn algebra before they learn calculus. While this sequence can be flexible (as it should be— everyone learns information differently and at different rates), here is the sketch of a plan.

Phase I: Foundations

This includes learning about the core concepts of anarchism, such as anti-authoritarianism, liberty, solidarity, and direct action. One should practice spotting power structures in daily life, such as police presences and workplace managerial hierarchies. This stage should also include practice identifying common statist and capitalist arguments.

Phase II: Critique

This phase begins applying anarchist ideas from Phase I to real-life situations. It includes critiquing capitalism, the state, and the media, analyzing the successes and failures of historical examples of anarchism, and getting involved in collectives, unions, and other groups in the anarchist milieu.

Phase III: Praxis

This phase is advanced practice. It includes tackling complex debates within anarchism (such as violence vs. pacifism and individualism vs. collectivism), critically assessing both anarchist and non-anarchist movements, evaluating (and originating) tactics for organizing, and creating alternative and anarchist media such as zines, papers, and teachins.



4. REVISIT

Critical thinking is not something that one learns once and can simply use forever. Rather, it takes continual practice to cultivate. Willingham stresses that the fourth step is to revisit each critical thinking skill over time in order to master it. Often times the application of these skills will change, as new questions and problems arise in which they are put into use. It helps, however, to be deliberate about putting these skills into practice.

Engaging with fellow anarchists and others can help to keep critical thinking sharp. Start a reading group to discuss anarchist literature or regularly get together with non-anarchists to debate the merits of decentralized systems. Join a mutual aid organization in order to help others or plan a protest with other activists. The opportunities to interact with others are endless.



Critical thinking skills can be honed individually as well. Regularly challenge your own assumptions and thought processses when considering important questions or problems. Consider alternate scenarios to every solution you find and actively test your ideas in the real world. Resist accepting easy answers, and work to apply anarchist frameworks to daily life (like using prefigurative politics to imagine the world as it could be).



Anarchists often rally a round the slogan “No gods, no masters.” While a great phrase, it shouldn’t mean “no thought” as well. In fact, anarchism demands more thinking in order to work. Willingham may show how critical thinking can be taught, but anarchists must take those skills to go forth and build a world without domination. In order for this guide to be useful, it should be used—so please, go forward and practice these skills (for all of our sakes).



SOURCES

Bailin, 8., Case, R., Coombs, J. R., & Daniels, L. B. (1999). Conceptualizing critical thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31(3), 285-302. https://doi.org/10.1080/002202799183133

Battersby, M. (2016). Js that a fact? (and ed.). Broadview Press.

Chomsky, N. & Herman, E. S. (2002). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media (and ed.). Random House, Inc.

Crowder, G. (2005). Anarchism. In E. Craig (ed.), he shorter Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy (pp. 14-15). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-s003-1

Ennis, R. (1991). Critical thinking: A streamlined conception. Teaching Philosophy, 14/1), 5-24. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378057_2

Gelderloos, P. (2004, October). Zhe patriarchal science of corporate media. The Anarchist Library. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloosthe-patriarchal-science-of-the-corporate-media

Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T. (1977). Frequency and the conference of referential validity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1&1), 107-112. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-5371(77)80012-1

Kamm, F. M. (2007). Jntricate ethics: Rights, responsibilities, and permissible harm. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:0so/9780195189698.001.0001

Oswald, M. E. & Grosjean, S. (2004). Confirmation bias. In R. F. Pohl (ed.), Cognitive illusions: A handbook on fallacies and biases in thinking judgement and Iemory (pp. 79-96). Psychology Press.

Sagan, C. (1979). Broca’s brain: Reflections on the romance of science. Ballantine Books.

Sunstein, C. (2005). Moral heuristics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2X4), 531542. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.387941

Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 18X4157), 1124-1131. https://doi.org/10.21236/ad0767426

Willingham, D. T. (2019). How to teach critical thinking. NSW Department of Education. https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/maineducation/teaching-and-learning/education-for-a-changingworld/media/documents/How-to-teach-critical-thinking-Willingham.pdf

Friday, 29 August 2025

Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944


 Last month I was in Germany with some friends. Whilst there I picked up some books, one was a reprinting of a British Servicemen's guide on what to expect and how to behave in Germany. This version came in English and German translation. The translation dating from the 2000s is copyrighted but the original English contents are now in the public domain due to expiration of Crown Copyright. Its an interesting read, despite publication in 1944 many of its views on German attitudes hold up surprisingly well. I was also surprised to see the text directly rubbishes several myths about the period that refuse to go away it has a short but to the point history of the rise of Hitler and analysis of his movement and regime.

I've reproduced the text below, though I've omitted the lengthy phrasebook section, its formatting just would not translate to a blogger format. Though I will say that outside of some dated terms it is also a useful phrasebook. 

 

 Instructions 

for British Servicemen 

in Germany, 1944

This book has nothing to do with military operations. It deals only with civilian life in Germany and with the way you should behave to the German civilian population. This book is published in November, 1944, at a time when our Armies have barely entered Germany and Hitler and the Nazi regime have not yet been overthrown. Many important events may happen between now and the time when you first read this book. Do not be surprised therefore if here and there sentences, true at the time they were written, have become out of date. 

 GERMANY CONTENTS 

To begin with 

The German Land. 

The German Story. 

What the Nazis have done to Germany. 

What the War has done to Germany. 

What the Germans are like. 

What the Germans think of us.

How the Germans live Money. 

Making yourself understood. 

Do's and Don'ts 

Words and Phrases 

Weights and Measures 

Security Note. 

 FOREWORD 

FOR the second time in under thirty years, British troops are entering upon the soil of Germany. The Germany Arm.y, the most carefully constructed military machine which the world has known, has suffered catastrophic defeats in the field. The civilian population of Germany has seen the war brought into its homes in a terrible form. You will see much suffering in Germany and much to awake your pity. You may also find that many Germans, on the surface at least, seem pleasant enough and that they will even try to welcome you as friends. All this may make you think that they have learned their lesson and need no further teaching. But remember this: for the last hundred years-long before Hitler-German writers of great authority have been steadily teaching the necessity for war and glorifying it for its own sake. The Germans have much to unlearn. They have also much to atone for. Never has murder been organised on so vast a scale as by the German Government and the German Arm.y in this war. Death by shooting, hanging, burning, torture or starvation has been visited on hundreds of thousands of civilians in the countries of Eastern Europe occupied by the Germans, and on thousands in the occupied countries of Western Europe. The record of these outrages is not just "atrocity propaganda." It is based in most cases on the evidence of eye-witnesses or on statements made by the criminals themselves.

 Moreover, the writings and speeches of the German leaders show that such outrages formed part of a deliberate policy. The German people as a whole cannot escape a large share of responsibility. The main instruments of German policy were certainly Hitler's Black Guards and Secret Police, but ordinary German officers, N. C. 0. 's and men acted often enough with the same brutality. Individual German soldiers and civilians may have deplored it, but no one was found to protest publicly and in good time against it. From the time Hitler came to power no serious resistance movement showed itself in Germany until the attempted putsch of the German generals on the 2othJuly, 1944. But the cause of that revolt was not the barbarity of Hitler's methods, but merely their lack of success. The history of these last years must not be repeated. The purpose of the British Commonwealth and its Allies, and of the forces which represent them, is not vengeance against the Germans. It is to make sure that they will never again have the chance to submerge Europe and the world in blood. Remember for as long as you are in Germany that you would not be there at all if German crimes had not made this war inevitable, and that it is only by the sacrifice of thousands upon thousands of your fellow countrymen and Allies, and at a cost of untold suffering at home and abroad through five long years, that British troops are at last on German soil. Think first of all this when you are tempted to sympathise with those who to-day are reaping the fruits of their policy, both in peace and war. 

 TO BEGIN WITH

YOU are going into Germany. You are going there as part of the Forces of the United Nations which have already dealt shattering blows on many fronts to the German war-machine, the most ruthless the world has ever known. You will find yourselves, perhaps for some time, among the people of an enemy country; a country that has done its utmost to destroy us-by bombing, by U -boat attacks, by military action whenever its armies could get to grips with ours, and by propaganda. But most of the people you will see when you get to Germany will not be airmen or soldiers or U-boat crews, but ordinary civilians-men, women and children. Many of them will have suffered from overwork, underfeeding and the effects of air raids, and you may be tempted to feel sorry for them. You have heard how the German armies behaved in the countries they occupied, most of them neutral countries, attacked without excuse or warning. You have heard how they carried off men and women to forced labour, how they looted, imprisoned, tortured and killed. THERE WILL BE NO BRUTALITY ABOUT A BRITISH OCCUPATION, BUT NEITHER WILL THERE BE SOFTNESS OR SENTIMENTALITY. You may see many pitiful sights. Hard luck stories may somehow reach you. Some of them may be true, at least in part, but most will be hypocritical attempts to win sympathy. For, taken as a whole, the German is brutal when he is winning, and is sorry for himself and whines for sympathy when he is beaten. So BE ON YOUR GUARD AGAINST "PROPAGANDA" IN THE FORM OF HARD-LUCK STORIES. Be fair and just, but don't be soft. You must also remember that most Germans have heard only the German side of the war and of the events that led up to it. They were forbidden to listen to any news except that put out by their own Propaganda Ministry, and were savagely punished if they disobeyed. So most of them have a completely false impression of what has happened, and will put about-perhaps in good faith-stories that are quite untrue. The impression you have gained of world events is much nearer the truth than the distorted conceptions spread by the German Propaganda Ministry. So don't let yourself be taken in by plausible statements. Of course there are Germans who have been against the Nazis all along, though few of those who tried to do anything about it have survived to tell the tale. Even those Germans who have been more or less anti-Nazi will have their axe to grind. But there is no need for you to bother about German attempts to justify themselves. All that matters at present is that you are about to meet a STRANGE PEOPLE IN A STRANGE, ENEMY COUNTRY. 

 Your Supreme Commander has issued an order forbidding fraternisation with Germans, but there will probably be occasions when you will have to deal with them, and for that reason it is necessary to know something about what sort of people they are. 

 THE GERMAN LAND 

GERMANY is a big country. In area it is twice as big, and in population about one and a half times as big, as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together. As the map on pages 32 and 33 shows you, Germany is landlocked except for the tideless Baltic in the north and a short coastline on the North Sea. In the east and west its frontiers are not defined by great mountains and rivers, which is one reason perhaps why the Germans are always trying to push them further out. Its greatest rivers, the Rhine, Elbe, Oder and Danube, are not purely German, since they flow through other countries before reaching the sea. The climate in North-Western Germany is rather like that in Britain, but as you go south or east you will find it hotter in summer and colder in winter than it is at home. There is more rain in Western Germany than in the east, but everywhere you will get more fine, hot days in summer and more crisp, bright cold in winter.

 Germany has a great variety of scenery. In the north is a great plain, bare except for occasional pine forests and studded with lakes; it is a continuation of the plains of Russia and Poland. In Central Germany the hilly uplands are thickly forested. The valley of the Rhine with its sudden hills, its vineyards and old castles, is well known to English tourists, and further south you come through the foothills to the German Alps. 

Industry. Germany is highly industrial. The German "Black Country" is in the west on the Rhine and Ruhr, where what is left of the towns of Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and many others familiar from our Air Ministry reports, form one great continuous industrial area. Other great centres of manufacture are in Thuringia and Saxony (Central Germany) and in the eastern province of Silesia. The north-western port of Hamburg, which is about half as big again as Glasgow is probably the most "English" of German towns. It has always had close commercial ties with this country. Seventy years ago, Berlin, the capital, was about the size of Manchester. Now, with a population of nearly four and a half millions, it is over one-third as big as Greater London. It is the seat of government of the German "Reich" and is practically surrounded by a broad belt of industrial plants. The German transport system was one of the best in Europe. Apart from its excellent railways, much use was made of the great natural waterways, like the Rhine, which were connected by a system of canals. One of Hitler's positive achievements was to build hundreds of miles of first-class motor-roads, though his object in doing so was largely military. These are called Autobahnen (car-ways). 

 THE GERMAN STORY 

THE most interesting fact about German history is that GERMANY DID NOT EXIST AS A NATION UNTIL 1871. Before then it consisted of a number of states each with its own court, its own laws and customs barriers. Much the largest of these states was Prussia. The credit (if one can use the word) for uniting these various kingdoms and grand duchies belongs to a Prussian statesman, BISMARCK. BETWEEN 1864 AND 1871 HE ENGINEERED THREE AGGRESSIVE BUT SUCCESSFUL WARS against Denmark, Austria and France, and these victories so impressed the other German States that they entered a confederation under Prussian leadership. This confederation was called the German Reich, and the King of Prussia became German Kaiser (Emperor). The vices of militarism and aggressiveness, often thought to be peculiar to the Prussians, soon infected the whole of Germany. The Germans acquired colonies, chiefly in Africa; they challenged British sea-power by building a powerful fleet. And in 1914 they thought they were strong enough to enforce an unchallenged supremacy in Europe. In alliance with Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria they fought and lost the First World War. After the defeat of 1918 Germany went through a sort of revolution. This revolution was largely lath and plaster, but was accepted by the Germans because they are used to political shams. Some of the politicians of the German Republic, who succeeded the Kaiser in 1918, meant well: they established a parliamentary system which gave to the ordinary German more individual freedom from then to 1933 than before or since. But behind the scenes the real power still remained in the hands of the generals, the great industrialists and landowners and the professional civil servants. They waited and watched for a chance to assert themselves. The chance came with the rise of Adolf Hitler. 

 Rise of Hitler. This ex-corporal of the First Great War was not even a German, but an Austrian who had fought in a German regiment. At first he was considered rather a joke, but his party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi for short), gained millions of supporters during the great slump of 1930-32. He promised the workers a form of socialism; he promised the industrialists more power and bigger profits; he promised both that he would wipe out the Versailles Treaty and create a single "Great German" State. The Nationalist Party (Junkers-that is, feudal landowners enerals and industrialists) believed they could use the Nazis to restore their old privileges. So they persuaded the President, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, to make Hitler Chancellor of the Reich. This was in January, 1933. To secure his election in March, Hitler engineered the Reichstag fire and by attributing it to the Communists made it the excuse for a reign of terror. But the elections in March did not give Hitler's party a clear majority, in spite of the flood of propaganda let loose in his favour from platform, press and radio; the Nationalists, however, supported him, and to make doubly sure he arrested various members of opposition parties who might have voted against him. His next act was to pass a bill which ended parliamentary government and made him Dictator of Germany. Then he began to "discipline" the country. Law was suspended. Jews, Communists, Socialists, Liberals-anyone who had publicly opposed him-were hunted down by Hitler's private Army, the Storm Troops, shot, beaten to death or systematically tortured in concentration camps. HITLER'S AIM WAS SO TO TERRORISE THE GERMAN PEOPLE THAT NO ONE WOULD DARE TO RESIST HIM BY DEED OR WORD. In spite of these bestial cruelties some Germans were brave enough to carry on the struggle against Hitler, but their power was small and most were killed, beaten into acquiescence, or forced to leave the country. Meanwhile the army was rapidly growing; in 1935 conscription was reintroduced; the industrialists began to make great profits out of re-armament; the Junkers had their privileges confirmed, and the Nazis enriched themselves by plunder and confiscation. 

 Political Smash and Grab. When Hitler had established his power in Germany he began to carry out his plan for conquering other nations. IT WAS A PLAN WHICH APPEALED TO THE GERMANS. In March, 1938, German troops occupied Austria. In September, 1938, at Munich, the British and French Prime Ministers, who knew their countries were quite unprepared for war, reluctantly agreed to the Nazi annexation of important border areas of Czechoslovakia, where many of the people were of German speech. In March, 1939, the rest of Czechoslovakia was occupied-a flagrant breach of Hitler's promise to Mr. Chamberlain only six months before. It was now obvious to everyone that Hitler's dreams of conquest knew no bounds. His next victim was to be Poland. Prussia had held parts of Poland for a hundred and fifty years until, in 1918, the Poles at last won back their freedom. Now Hitler resolved to enslave them again. The British and French Governments solemnly warned him that an attack on Poland would bring both countries into the war. Hitler, drunk with easy successes, did not believe that we would fight. He thought we were too "decadent." On I st September, 1939, he seized the Free City of Danzig, his armies entered Poland and the Second World War had begun. 

 WHAT THE NAZIS HAVE DONE TO GERMANY 

WHEN Germany is defeated, Hitler and his gang of Nazi leaders will be swept away but it will not be possible to make a clean sweep of the millions of Germans who have at some time worn the Nazi badge. The system will leave a deep mark on German life, and if you are to understand the Germans you must know something of how it worked. Germany under the Nazis is a "totalitarian state." Hitler is the Dictator, or "Fuhrer" (Leader). He not only doubles the parts of president and chancellor; he is supreme law-giver, supreme judge, head of the civil service, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and leader of the Nazi Party. The Cabinet is there merely to advise him; the parliament (Reichstag) is there merely to hear his decisions and applaud. His position is more despotic than that of King John in England, before Magna Carta limited his powers more than 700 years ago. At the head of each of the 15 States into which Germany is divided is one of Hitler's yes-men. These state governors (Reichs-Statthalter) appoint the provincial officials; they, on their part, appoint their subordinates and so on down to the smallest employee. No one can be a state or municipal servant in Nazi Germany unless Hitler and Hitler's yes-men are convinced of his loyalty to themselves. But that is only half the story. 

 The Nazi Party. Side by side and interlocking with the Nazi Government is the Nazi Party. The Party has its network of officials from the Gauleiter, who controls one of the 42 gaus into which Germany is divided for purposes of Party organisation, down to the Blockwart with the modest job of ruling a block of flats. Although the same man is often both a government official and a Party official, the functions of the government and the Party are theoretically distinct. The Party's main concern is to keep the people's faith and enthusiasm for Hitler at boiling point and to turn on the heat for any who are still luke-warm. The function of the government is to carry out Hitler's decrees in practice and run the country on the lines he has laid down. The national army is, of course, in the service of the government, but the Party has a private army for its own purposes. This Party-army is called the S.A. (STURM-ABTEILUNGEN = STORM TROOPS). 
But in 1934 there was friction between the S.A. and the regular army and Hitler, who wanted to win the regular army's support, massacred many of the leading S.A. men (including their commander, Captain Rohm). Hitler's body-guard, THE S.S. (ScHUTZ-STAFFEL = BLACK GUARDS), a more carefully selected and better drilled body of thugs, then took the place of the S.A. as Hitler's personal armed force on the home front. The notorious GESTAPO (GEHEIME STAATS-POLIZEI = SECRET STATE POLICE), which is responsible for hunting down opponents and killing them or breaking their spirit in concentration camps, is also one of the pillars of Hitler's strength. All other political parties, and also trade unions, co-operative societies, even boy scout troops and religious organisations for children and young people, were abolished or taken over by the Nazi Party so that no German, man, woman or child, could escape their influence. 
When you reach Germany, this evil system will be swept away, but the German people will find it hard to get rid of much of the Nazi creed. "MEIN KAMPF." Hitler's crude and violent beliefs, few of them original in German thought, are laid down in his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which all Germans are supposed to have read. According to Hitler the State is something above the people. The individual must give up his rights, his liberties, his beliefs, even his religion, for what is held to be the good of the State. But Hitler claims that the Germans are a very special people; they are not only Aryans (by which he apparently meant natives of Northern Europe); they are also the Master Race, and their destiny is to rule and lead all other nations. The natural enemies of the Master Race are Non-Aryans (Jews), Bolsheviks and Plutocrats. By "Plutocrats" the Nazis generally mean ourselves and the Americans. Since it is obviously impossible for a Master Race to have been beaten in battle, the Nazis teach that the German armies were not defeated in 1918; Germany would have won, they say, if the Jews, Bolsheviks and other "traitors" inside the country had not "stabbed her in the back." The Christian virtues of kindness and justice are thought to be unworthy of the Master Race, and the Nazis have tried to uproot them. This involved Hitler in a conflict with the churches. He not only tried to suppress the Protestants and Catholics, but also encouraged the Nazis to invent semipagan religions of their own. It seems strange that such wild ideas could impose on a European nation in the 20th century, but WOVEN INTO HITLER'S DOCTRINE ARE MANY DEEP-SEATED GERMAN "COMPLEXES," SUCH AS HATRED OF THE JEWS, A DESIRE TO DOMINEER OVER OTHERS and a readiness to believe that they themselves are being persecuted. Who, you may ask, are these Nazis, who go in for such perverted ideas and cruel practices? In the early days, there were some misled idealists among them, but the leaders are wicked and ambitious men, who have used their power to enrich themselves by plundering first their fellow Germans and then other nations. In this way they have become fabulously wealthy. They stand outside and above German law; they have been answerable for their crimes to no one but Hitler, and he encouraged them. 

 WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE TO GERMANY 

THE Germany you will see is a very different place from the peace-time Germany. If you come in from the west you will enter the mostbombed area in Europe. Here the destruction is many times greater than anything you have seen in London, Coventry or Bristol. Compare these figures: in eleven months (September, 1940, to July, 1941) the Germans dropped 7,500 tons of bombs on London-we dropped nearly 10,000 tons on Duisburg in two attacks between Saturday morning and Sunday morning, the 14th to 15th October, 1944. In western towns from Hamburg south through the industrial Ruhr and Rhineland-with Essen, Diisseldorf, Duisburg and many other centres-and east to Nuremberg and Munich, you will see areas that consist largely of heaps of rubble and roofless, windowless shells. Cities like Berlin and Hanover in Central Germany will be no better off. In all these places communal life has been broken up. Mass evacuations have been carried out, not only of children, but of the grown-up population. Only those remained who were needed to staff such factories as could still operate, and to run the civil defence, salvage, police and other essential services. As fast as repairs were made, the R.A. F. blasted them and added to the earlier destruction. Tens of thousands of Germans have been killed or injured in these raids, hundreds of thousands have lost their belongings and could not replace them because of the shortage of goods. 

The Biter Bit. In Western and Central Germany you will find a war area of bleak poverty and devastation. The Germans have been well and truly paid for what they did to Warsaw, Rotterdam and Belgrade. But the German people have had other things to bear. Probably more than three and a half million German soldiers have been killed in action and another million severely wounded. The supply of food for German civilians was restricted even before war began so that they could have "guns instead of butter." During the war their rations have been a good deal lower than ours; they have had much less meat, bread and milk and the quality of the food was inferior. Many of the people you will see in the towns may be undernourished, though not starving like the people of Poland and Greece. On top of all this the German workers who remained in industry, and the millions of women who were drafted into the factories, have been worn out by long hours of hard work, which often followed sleepless nights in air-raid shelters. You must therefore expect to find a population that is hungry, exhausted and on the verge of despair. You will probably find that public services and supplies are working very imperfectly, and it will be urgently necessary to get them going again. Apart from the partial breakdown due to bombing and defeat, the collapse of the Nazi Party will mean that a good deal of routine work is left undone, for in addition to their main task of regimenting their fellowGermans, the local Nazi officials have done many useful jobs of organisation and relief. 

To complete the picture, you are likely to find bands of FOREIGN WORKERS trying to make their way home, mostly men and women WHO WERE CARRIED OFF TO GERMANY AND FORCED TO WORK THERE AS SLAVES OF THE GERMAN WARMACHINE. By the end of the war there will be millions of these foreign workers-Russians, French, Poles, Czechs, Belgians, Italians and others-working in Germany. Prisoners of war, of whom Germany has several millions, will also have to be collected from camps, farms and the factories and sent back to their homes. 

  WHAT THE GERMANS ARE LIKE 

When you meet the Germans you will probably think they are very much like us. They look like us, except that there are fewer of the wiry type and more big, fleshy, fair-haired men and women, especially in the north. But they are not really so much like us as they look. The Germans have, of course, many good qualities. They are very hard working and thorough; they are obedient and have a great love of tidiness and order. They are keen on education of a formal sort, and are proud of their "culture" and their appreciation of music, art and literature. But for centuries they have been trained to submit to authority-not because they thought their rulers wise and right, but because obedience was imposed on them by force. The old Prussian army-and the Nazi army too-set out intentionally to break the spirit of recruits. They were made to do stupid and humiliating things in order to destroy their self respect and turn them into unquestioning fighting machines. This method produced a formidable military force, but it did not produce good human beings. It made the Germans cringe before authority. That is one reason why they accepted Hitler. He ordered them about, and most of them liked it. It saved them the trouble of thinking. All they had to do was obey and leave the thinking to him. It also saved them, they thought, from responsibility. The vile cruelties of the Gestapo and S.S. were nothing to do with them. They did not order them; they did not even want to know about them. The rape of Norway, Holland and Belgium was not their business. It was the business of Hitler and the General Staff. That is the tale that will be told over and over again by the Germans. They will protest with deep sincerity that they are as innocent as a babe in arms. BUT THE GERMAN PEOPLE CANNOT SLIDE OUT OF THEIR RESPONSIBILITY QUITE so EASILY. You must remember that Hitler became Chancellor in a strictly legal way. Nearly half the German electors voted for him in the last (comparatively) free election of 1933. With the votes of his Nationalist allies he had a clear majority. The Germans knew what he stood for -it was in his book-and they approved it. Hitler was immensely popular with the majority of Germans: they regarded him as the restorer of German greatness. They welcomed the abolition of unemployment although they knew that it arose from conscription and rearmament. AFTER THE FALL OF FRANCE MOST GERMANS SUPPORTED HIS MILITARY CONQUESTS WITH ENTHUSIASM. IT WAS ONLY WHEN THEY FELT THE COLD WIND OF DEFEAT THAT THEY DISCOVERED THEIR CONSCIENCES. 

 The Mind of the German. 

 The Germans adore military show. In Nazi Germany everyone has a uniform. If it isn't the uniform of the Army, Navy or Air Force, it is that of the S.A., S.S. or some other Party organisation. Even the little boys and girls have been strutting about in the uniform of the Hitler Youth or the Union of German Girls. Such uniforms may still impress the Germans, but they will not impress you. But you must do justice to the position of the ordinary German policeman. He will have no authority over British troops, but you should do nothing to make more difficult any task he may be allotted by the Allies. THE UNIFORMS YOU WILL RESPECT ARE THOSE OF THE BRITISH AND ALLIED FORCES. 

 It is important that you should BE SMART AND SOLDIERLY in appearance and behaviour. The Germans think nothing of a slovenly soldier. You will run across Germans who are genuinely ashamed of being Germans. Even before Hitler made Germany universally hated, they had a sense of national inferiority. They felt that other nations, like the British, Americans and French, were somehow ahead of them. There is little doubt that Hitler realised this, and used his theory of the Master Race to overcome it. He tried to make the Germans think well of themselves, and he overdid it. There will be some especially the young ones-who have swallowed the tale that they are members of the Master Race, and are therefore our superiors. There is no need to say much more about German brutality; it has been unmistakably revealed in the Nazi methods of governing and of waging war. But you may think it strange that the Germans are at the same time sentimental. They love melancholy songs; they easily get sorry for themselves; even childless old couples insist on having their Christmas tree. German soldiers would play with Polish or Russian children, and yet there are enough authentic reports of these same children being shot or burnt or starved to death. This mixture of sentimentality and callousness does not show a well-balanced mind. The Germans are not good at controlling their feelings. They have a streak of hysteria. You will find that Germans may often fly into a passion if some little thing goes wrong. 

 How Hitler moulded them. Hitler set to work, for his own purposes, to cultivate these weaknesses and vices of the German character. He wanted his Nazis to be still more brutal because he thought that in this way he could terrify the German nation, and other nations too, into submission. Tens of thousands of young men in the S.S. have been systematically trained as torturers and executioners. Some went mad in the process, but others reached a point where they can commit any atrocity with indifference or even with pleasure. Ordinary members of the public have been taught to spy on each other. Little boys and girls in the Hitler Youth have been encouraged to denounce their parents and teachers if they let slip some incautious criticism of Hitler or his government. The result is that no one in Nazi Germany can trust his fellows, friendship and family affection have been undermined, and thousands of anti-Nazi Germans have been forced to pretend---even in their own homes-that they admire the men and principles which in their hearts they despise. Lying and hypocrisy became a necessity. Hitler's own breaches of faith---especially in his dealings with other nations-were represented as skilful diplomacy. The Germans admired his success and came to admire his methods. Worst of all, perhaps, it has been drummed into German children in the schools and Hitler Youth that might is right, war the finest form of human activity and Christianity just slushy sentiment. By cramming children's minds with Nazi ideas and preventing any other ideas from reaching them, Hitler hoped to breed a race of robots after his own heart. We cannot yet judge to what extent this inhuman plan has succeeded. So YOU WILL NOT BE SURPRISED IF THE GERMAN PROVES TO BE LESS LIKE US THAN HE APPEARS AT FIRST SIGHT. This does not mean that all Germans are liars, hypocrites and brutes. Even Nazi methods of education have not been so successful as all that; but it does mean that the national character of the Germans has worsened a good deal under Nazi influence. 

 Be on your Guard. When you deal with Germans you must be on your guard. WE WERE TAKEN IN BY THEM AFTER THE LAST WAR: many of us swallowed their story about the "cruel" Treaty of Versailles, although it was really far more lenient than the terms they themselves had imposed on Russia only a year before; many of us believed their talk about disarmament and the sincerity of their desire for peace. And so we let ourselves in for this war, which has been a good deal bigger than the last. THERE ARE SIGNS THAT THE GERMAN LEADERS ARE ALREADY MAKING PLANS FOR A THIRD WORLD WAR. THAT MUST BE PREVENTED AT ALL COSTS. 

When you get to Germany it is possible that some civilians will welcome your arrival, and may even look on you as their liberators from Hitler's tyranny. These will be among the Germans who consistently opposed Hitler during his years of success. Not that they made speeches against him or committed sabotage: any who did that are unlikely to be alive to welcome you. But there are many who kept their own counsel and passively opposed Hitler all along. As a rule they are loyal members of the political parties suppressed by Hitler, mostly workers, but often honest people of the middle classes. Or they are Catholics or Protestants, who have opposed Hitler because of his persecution of Christianity. BUT MANY GERMANS WILL PRETEND THEY HAVE BEEN ANTI-NAZIS SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BE ON THE WINNING SIDE. 

Among them will be many doubtful characters. Even those who seem to have the best intentions cannot be regarded as trustworthy; they are almost certain to have some axe to grind. That is one of the reasons why you have been instructed not to fraternise with the Germans. There are fanatical young Nazis-girls as well as boyswhose heads and hearts are still full of the vicious teachings they absorbed in the Hitler Youth. Their talk, if you ever heard it, might sound plausible and even rather fine, for Hitler's propagandists have naturally dressed up his ideas to make them attractive to the young. But remember that the real meaning of Nazism is shown in its vile practices, not in its fair words. And, quite possibly, you will some day run into one of the genuine thugs, one of the former killers or crooked Nazi bosses. He may try to throw his weight about, or he may cringe and try to curry favour. Such people really respect nothing but force. The authorities will know how to deal with them. 

 WHAT THE GERMANS THINK OF US 

IF we leave the extreme Nazi ideas out of account, the basic German view of the British is something like this: The British do not work so hard as the Germans or take their work so seriously. The British do not organise as well as the Germans. (In fact the German tends to over-organise; this war has shown that our organisation, when we really get down to it, is just as thorough and more flexible.) But on the whole the Germans admire the British. The efforts of the German Propaganda Ministry to stir up hatred against us have not been, in spite of the R.A.F. raids, a great success. It is probable that of all the occupying troops of the United Nations we and the Americans will be the least unwelcome. Even Hitler had a grudging respect for us, as he admitted in Mein Kampf. He envied us the British Empire and admired the national qualities that went to building it up-imagination, enterprise and tough endurance. He thought we had grown decadent and lost them. Our fighting forces-and the civilians at home-have proved the contrary.

 Germans believe we have other national virtues. They think that we are fair, decent and tolerant and that we have political common sense. Now that the Nazi dream of world-conquest has been shattered, these homely qualities look all the more attractive, and many Germans would probably say to-day that their ideal of the new Germany is something like Britain. WHILE YOU ARE SERVING IN GERMANY YOU ARE REPRESENTATIVES OF BRITAIN. 

Your behaviour will decide their opinion of us. It is not that we value their opinion for its own sake. It is good for the Germans, however, to see that soldiers of the British democracy are self-controlled and self-respecting, that in dealing with a conquered nation they can be firm, fair and decent. The Germans will have to become fair and decent themselves, if we are to live with them in peace later on. But the Germans have another pet idea. They claim that we are nationally akin to them, they call us their "cousins." This is part of their theory of the superiority of the Northern races. The likeness, if it exists at all, is only skin-deep. THE DEEPER YOU DIG INTO THE GERMAN CHARACTER, THE MORE YOU REALISE HOW DIFFERENT THEY ARE FROM US. So DON'T BE TAKEN IN BY FIRST IMPRESSIONS. The Germans think of the Americans much in the same way as they think of us, but they do not know them so well and many of their ideas come from Hollywood films, which were once very popular in Germany. That is why they think, for instance, that all Americans are rich. Their first idea of the American troops as "amateur" soldiers has been completely disproved by battle experience. The Germans' attitude to the Russians is quite different. Under Hitler they have been taught to regard the Russians as sub-human. The purpose of this was to remove any scruples they might have had about the barbarous methods of German warfare on the Russian front. The Soviet citizen, Hitler said, was less than a human being, so no treatment could be too cruel for him. The "Bolsheviks" were bracketed with the Jews as Enemy of Mankind No. 1. When the Red Army began to advance Hitler redoubled this propaganda. He hoped to frighten his troops and the civilians at home into resistance to the death. And to some extent he succeeded. The severity of the Red Army's fight for liberation is easy to understand. HITLER, RUNNING TRUE TO FORM, ATTACKED RUSSIA WHILE THE PACT OF FRIENDSHIP HE HAD MADE WITH HER WAS STILL IN FORCE; he has spurred on his soldiers and S.S. to commit atrocities more barbarous than anything in modern history-except their own record in Poland. Ever since the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, their propaganda has been spreading baseless scares about the "Bolshevik menace." The aim was perfectly clear-it was to drive a wedge between us and our Russian ally. Remember this if the Germans try to spread stories against the Red Army.

 HOW THE GERMANS LIVE 

THE INSTRUCTIONS YOU WILL RECEIVE IN GERMANY WILL KEEP YOU VERY MUCH APART FROM THE GERMANS. Probably you will rarely, if ever, enter a house where Germans are living, and neither will you be meeting Germans on social occasions; but you should know something of how they live so as to understand what is going on around you. Life in any country of Central or Western Europe is notunder peace-time conditions-very different from what it is at home, but there are quite a lot of smaller differences. For instance there isFood. Probably you will seldom come across food cooked in the German way. Even if you do, it may be very different from pre-war German food. It is likely to be a long time before German supplies get back to normal. At its best, German cooking produces some characteristic and appetising dishes. The chief difference from English cooking is in the treatment of vegetables. In place of the English boiled greens the Germans serve a white pickled cabbage called Sauerkohl (sour cabbage) or a red cabbage called Rotkohl. Both are very tasty if you eat them with Wiener Schnitzel (fried veal) or Schweine-kotelett (fried pork cutlet). The Germans prefer pork and veal to beef and mutton, and cook them better. But the staple meat dish is the sausage. The best German sausage is eaten cold and there are hundreds of varieties of it. Two excellent kinds of sausage are Mettwurst (Wurst = sausage) and Leberwurst (liver sausage). The Germans are very fond of Torten (pastries), with Schlagsahne (whipped cream), but it will be some time before such luxuries are obtainable again at the Konditorei (confectioner's). The Germans don't know how to make tea, but they are quite expert with coffee. However, for the present their coffee is "ersatz.

 "Beer is best." The favourite German drink is beer. Under war conditions it has been diluted much more even than English beer, but normally it is regarded as the pleasantest beer in Europe. There are hundreds of brews; two of the most famous are Miinchener (from Munich) and Pilsener (from Pilsen in Czechoslovakia). Local beers are either light (hell) or dark (dunkel). All German beers are iced. Western Germany produces some of the choicest wine on the Continent, such as Moselle wine and Rhine wine (which we call "hock"). Compared with prices in Britain wine is cheap. Whiskey and gin will be scarce and of poor quality ( unless imported from Britain), BUT THERE ARE MANY KINDS OF SPIRITS CALLED SCHNAPS. THE CHEAPER SORTS ARE GUARANTEED TO TAKE THE SKIN OFF ONE'S THROAT. 

 Entertajnrnent. Entertainment will be provided for you by E.N.S.A. in your own camp or barracks and most German places of entertainment will be out of bounds. The Germans, of course, will be going to cinemas where it is probable that British, American and Russian films will be shown. There may also be German films-non-political ones. But German films, which were very good before 1933, suffered like so many other things because Hitler insisted on making them an instrument of Nazi propaganda, and there may at first be very few available which are free from this taint. This is also true of German plays. 

Sport. The Germans have only taken to sport during the last thirty years, but they are keen and capable performers. They learnt most of their sport from us. Football is the most popular game, but is played less vigorously than in Britain; charging is regarded as rough play. Football is entirely amateur, and "pools" are unknown. There is no cricket, but plenty of athletics, some tennis and a little golf. Boxing and wrestling are both popular spectacles, and the Germans go in for a good deal of cycle racing. 

Health. The standards of health, normally high, have fallen as a result of the war. Venereal diseases are prevalent. A GERMAN EXPERT STATED (MAY, 1943), "VENEREAL DISEASES STRIKE AT EVERY FOURTH PERSON BETWEEN THE AGES OF 15 AND41." 

Women. Before Hitler came to power the German woman was winning the same freedom to live her own life as British women enjoy, but the Nazis took away her newly won rights and made her again the traditional Hausfrau (housewife). Shortage of man-power in war time brought German women back into the professions, but only on sufferance. Under the shock of defeat standards of personal honour, already undermined by the Nazis, will sink still lower. Numbers of German women will be willing, if they can get the chance, to make themselves cheap for what they can get out of you. After the last war prostitutes streamed into the zone occupied by British and American troops. They will probably try this again, even though this time you will be living apart from the Germans. Be on your guard. Most of them will be infected. MARRIAGES BETWEEN MEMBERS OF BRITISH FORCES AND GERMANS ARE, AS YOU KNOW, FORBIDDEN. But for this prohibition such marriages would certainly take place. Germany will not be a pleasant place to live in for some time after the war, and German girls know that, if they marry British husbands, they will become British with all the advantages of belonging to a victor nation instead of to a vanquished one. Many German girls will be just waiting for the chance to marry a Briton-whether they care for him or not. When once they had their marriage lines he would have served his purpose. During the last occupation there were a number of marriages between British soldiers and German girls. The great majority of these marriages soon came to grief. When the couples returned to England they found themselves lonely and friendless, and this resulted only in unhappiness for the wife, the husband and the children. That is one reasonthough not the only one-why this time they will not be allowed. 


 
Religion. Large parts of Germany have been Protestant since the Reformation in the early 16th century, when Martin Luther led the revolt against the papacy. To-day about twothirds of Germany is Protestant and one-third Catholic; the Protestants are strongest in North and Central Germany, the Catholics in the west, south and south-east. Many of the Catholic churches are of great beauty and antiquity. Some, like Cologne Cathedral, have unfortunately suffered in raids, but there are many other noble and ancient churches which are well worth seeing. A few of the most famous are: in Central Germany, the cathedrals of Naumburg and Hildesheim; in South Germany those of Speyer, Bamberg and Worms. 

Music. The Germans are extremely fond of music and have produced composers and performers of great eminence. Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Wagner were all Germans. There are fine concerts of classical music in most of the larger German towns. Jazz and Swing are frowned on by the Nazis because they are not considered Nordic, but the Germans are fond of dancing, and some dance bands are still playing the latest American and British hits. 

 Literature. Many of the best German writers had opposed Hitler before his advent to power or had expressed a view of life contrary to Fascism. Their books were therefore banned in Germany and copies of many of them publicly burnt. Jewish writers, some of whom had been in the front rank, were also banned. It has been difficult for a writer to earn a living in Germany unless he was willing to use his talents to spread Nazi ideas. So if you know German and wish to read German books you will find few that are not tainted by Hitlerpropaganda, unless they were written by anti-Nazi refugees and published abroad. For the same reasons, modern painters and scientists of independent thought have been silenced or forced to escape from the great intellectual prison of Hitler-Germany. It will take a long time for Germany to reach again the high level she had attained in the things of the mind under the free republic that preceded Hitler.

 General. The rule of the road is: Keep to the Right-not to the Left as in Britain. In Germany every town and village has a mayor (Burgermeister); if it is a town with a population of over 20,000 he is probably called an Oberburgermeister. But whatever his title, he has essential administrative duties to perform and is a more important official than his opposite number in England. IF YOU HAVE TO GIVE ORDERS TO GERMAN CIVILIANS, GIVE THEM IN A FIRM, MILITARY MANNER. THE GERMAN CIVILIAN IS USED TO IT AND EXPECTS IT. The Germans are very short of clothes and foot-wear. Look out for attempts to steal, beg or buy your boots, shirts and underclothes. You don't need to be told that it is a serious offence to sell or give away Government property. IF YOU SHOULD BE BILLETED IN A GERMAN HOUSEHOLD-THOUGH THIS WILL VERY SELDOM HAPPEN-BE COURTEOUS BUT ALOOF, AVOID LOOSE TALK AND LOOSE CONDUCT, AND KEEP YOUR EYES AND EARS OPEN. With their habitual reverence for all things military, the Germans will be quick to notice any slackness in the dress or bearing of British troops. Don't let your Country or your Unit down. It is only natural that Germans who have suffered personally under Nazi oppression will try to take revenge on their local tyrants. They will regard this as their own affair and will resent interference. Don't go looking for trouble. THE NAZIS HAVE HAD GREAT EXPERIENCE IN ORGANISING INCIDENTS TO CAUSE TROUBLE OR TO INFLUENCE PUBLIC OPINION. The die-hards (mostly young products of the Hitler Youth) may try to play similar tricks even when their country has been occupied. IF THE INCIDENT IS SMALL, KEEP YOUR HEAD AND REFUSE TO BE IMPRESSED OR PUT OUT OF COUNTENANCE. IF IT IS BIG, THE ALLIED AUTHORITIES WILL DEAL WITH IT. As soon as the pressure of Hitlerism is removed, political parties will spring up again. Even if they have names similar to our parties they will have different problems and different aims. STEER CLEAR OF ANYTHING CONNECTED WITH GERMAN POLITICS. 

 MONEY 

 THE smallest German coin is the Pfennig. 100 Pfennigs make one Mark or more formally "Reichsmark." When you enter Germany you will be given official information about the number of Marks which go to the£. German coins at present in circulation are: 1, 5, and IO Pfennig pieces, made of zinc, 5 and IO Pfennig pieces made of an aluminium-bronze alloy, an aluminium 50 Pfennig piece, and 2 Mark and 5 Mark pieces of a silvercopper alloy. In addition to these coins you may come across the following notes: 1, 2 and 5 Mark notes issued by the Rentenbank, and 10, 20, 50, 100 and 1 ,ooo Mark notes issued by the Reichsbank. WHEREVER YOU ARE STATIONED IN GERMANY YOU WILL FIND AT FIRST THAT THERE IS PRACTICALLY NOTHING TO BUY. Food, clothing and tobacco will be severely rationed; there will be no little things you can send home as gifts; the shops will be empty. YouR NEEDS WILL BE LOOKED AFTER BY NAVY, ARMY AND R.A.F. ISSUE AND THE NAAFI STORES. The only thing you can buy from the Germans will be a glass of beer or wine. It will be a long time before the basic needs of the German population are satisfied and inessential goods are again produced. So for the time being there is little you can do with your pay except save it. You should therefore draw the minimum. 

 MAKING YOURSELF UNDERSTOOD 

ENGLISH is taught in all German secondary schools and is a compulsory subject in most; it is also taught in large numbers of commercial and language schools throughout the country, so that many Germans have at least a smattering of English. In any hotel or larger restaurant, or government or municipal office, or large shop, there will almost certainly be someone who speaks English. But in the depths of the country or in working-class districts, you may have to speak German if you cannot get through with the language of signs. Many German words are similar to English, especially those in most common use. For instance, Mann= man, Haus = house, Garten = garden, butter = butter, and Brot = bread. This is because the two languages have grown largely from the same root. 

 A list of words and phrases is printed at the end of this book, and indications are given of how to pronounce them. The pronunciation is straightforward except for two or three German sounds which we do not use in English. The golden rule in trying to speak a language you do not know is to be as simple as possible. Take a two-year-old child as our model. Don't try to make sentences; use nouns and verbs. At the beginning try to ask questions which can be answered by Ja (yes) or Nein (no). Speak in a normal voice; you will not make your meaning any clearer by shouting. If you are not understood, point to the word or sentence in your list of phrases. 

 DO'S 

REMEMBER you are a representative of the British Commonwealth. 

KEEP your eyes and ears open. 

BE SMART and soldierly in dress and bearing. 

AVOID loose talk and loose conduct. 

BE FIRM AND FAIR in any dealings with Germans. 

KEEP GERMANS AT A DISTANCE, even those with whom you have official dealings. 

STEER CLEAR of all disputes between German political parties. 

GO EASY on Schnaps. 

REMEMBER that in Germany "venereal diseases strike at every fourth person between the ages of 15 and 41."

 

 DON'TS 

DON'T sell or give away dress or equipment. 

DON'T be sentimental. If things are tough for the Germans they have only themselves to blame. They made things much worse for the innocent people of the countries they occupied. 

DON'T believe German accounts of the war or the events that led up to it. The Gennans got their ideas on these subjects from lying propaganda. 

DON'T fall for political hard-luck stories. 

DON'T believe tales against our Allies or the Dominions. They are aimed at sowing ill will between us. DON'T be taken in by surface resemblances between the Germans and ourselves. 

DON'T go looking for trouble. 

 WORDS AND PHRASES 

Note on Pronunciation 

IN German, the letters of the alphabet are pronounced differently from what they are in English. Therefore under each German word in the following list is an English spelling which reproduces as nearly as possible the sound of the German. It does not always give the sound of the German quite correctly, because there are a few sounds in German which do not exist in English at all and therefore there is no English way of spelling them. In such cases the English spelling has been chosen which comes nearest to the German sound. If you speak plainly, your meaning should be quite clear, and that is all that matters at this stage. Note the following points about this English spelling of German sounds:

1. The syllables printed in italics are those on which the accent falls. E.g.fahter (father), zoldahten (soldiers). 

2. Where a hyphen (-) is inserted, there is a natural break in the word. E.g. vyter-fahren (drive on),fahr-raht (bicycle). 

3. The g sound is always like g in GO, and never like g in GEORGE. 

4. The ow sound is always like ow in HOW. 

5. The y sound is always as in MY and not as in CITY. 

6. The r should be pronounced, except in the sound ur.

[Skipped section on words and phrases]

 SECURITY NOTE

If there is no open fighting in the part of Germany in which you find yourself you may think that there is no longer any special need for security. This is not the case. Germans must still be regarded as dangerous enemies until the final Peace Settlement has been concluded and after the occupation of Germany has ended. Security is therefore as important as ever. In battle, breaches of security may cost men's lives; under conditions behind the line the danger is not so immediate. Such breaches will, however, assist those Germans who are working under-ground against us, and, make no mistake about it, there will be plenty of them. You will have read in this book all about the character of the Germans, and will know what to expect from them, especially from the Nazi elements. Your attention should therefore be firmly and continually fixed on the following points with regard to which the necessity for security remains paramount:

1. Attempts by propaganda and agents to secure sympathy for the German people and to convince you that they have had a raw deal. 

2. Attempts by propaganda and agents to create ill-feeling between us and our Allies, and in particular to stir up antiRussian feeling. 

3. Attempts to sabotage, and to injure the Allied Forces in Germany. 

4. Attempts to obtain information as to the movements, dispositions and activities of our Forces, and other information of a military nature, such as advance information of projected operations, search parties, raids and similar intentions. 

 In order to combat this, you should constantly bear in mind the following:

Be careful what you say-not only to civilians, but in their hearing. Many more Germans than you think understand and speak English. Be guarded in what you say on the telephone. Remember that a telephone line is never private. Remember that propaganda will be used in many forms-some crude and obvious, but much of it subtle and difficult to recognise. Don't be too ready to listen to stories told by attractive women. They may be acting under orders. Pay especial attention to security of documents, and don't leave letters and private diaries lying about. Although apparently harmless, they may contain information of value to the enemy. Report any suspicious characters at once to your Unit Security Officer or to a Field Security Officer. If you have to check identity documents, be scrupulously thorough in assuring yourself that the bearer is all that he claims to be. And finally never leave weapons or ammunition unguarded. Remember the saboteur and the assassin. 

Life in Germany will demand your constant vigilance, alertness and self-confidence. Each one of you has a job to do. See that you carry it through, however irksome it may seem, with goodwill and determination. The more thorough we are now the less likely are we to have trouble in the future. 

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