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Mexican mole sauce can include chillies, cinnamon, garlic, chocolate, lard, and plantains.

Though Jones is the most common surname in Wales, there is no ‘J’ in the Welsh language.

A sheet of paper is a million atoms thick.

Sigmund Freud destroyed 14 years’ worth of notes, letters and manuscripts in order to confound future biographers.

The chance of cracking the enigma machine, used by the Germans to scramble their wartime messages, by chance is about the same as winning the lottery 11,000,000,000,000 times.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

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In Britain, it is illegal for a political party in an election to call itself ‘None of the Above’. This is to prevent the words appearing on ballot papers; presumably, there is a fear that the NOTA party would win by a landslide.

Michael J Fox’s middle name is Andrew.

Karaoke means “empty orchestra” in Japanese.

In the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of the word ‘sponge-cake’ is attributed to Jane Austen.

The first treaty Adolf Hitler ever made as a dictator was with the Vatican.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

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Michael Sata, the president of Zambia, previously worked as a cleaner at London Victoria railway station.

The longest duck penis ever found was 17 inches (43 centimetres) in length.

Under extreme high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter.

The film Grease was released in Mexico under the name ‘Vaselina’.

In the autumn of 1940, students at Oslo University started wearing paperclips on their lapels as a non-violent symbol of resistance, unity, and national pride. When the occupying German forces caught on to the fact, wearing a paperclip promptly became a criminal offence.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

On Hitler’s Dictatorship

“Hitler’s dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.”

– Albert Speer

On Questionnaires

‘Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?’

– Currently, one of the questions on document I-94W of the Visa Waiver Program for people visiting the United States of America.

League of German Girls

The Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM) or the League of German Maidens was the girl’s wing of the overall Nazi party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the only female youth organization in Nazi Germany.

The League consisted of:

– Jungmädelbund ages 10 to 14
– Jungmädelbund ages 14 to 18
– Werk Glaube und Schönheit (added in 1938) ages 17 to 21

After the Gleichschaltung – the Nazi Party grabbing total control of society through a so-called forcible-coordination – in 1932, the League of German Girls became the only girls’ organization in the Third Reich. All other groups, including church groups and scouting organizations, were either absorbed into the Hitler Youth or banned.

Emblem of the Bund Deutscher Mädel

In 1936, the First Hitler Youth Law made membership compulsory for all girls aged 10 or older. The same law also made membership in the male Hitler Youth compulsory for all boys above the age of 10.

New members had to register for their service between March 1st and March 10th of every year. Registration was held at a local League of German Girls administrative office. Girls had to have completed fourth grade and meet the following requirements:

– be of racial / ethnic German heritage
– be a German citizen
– be free of hereditary diseases

If a girl met those requirements, she was assigned to a Jungmädel group based on the geographical location she lived at. In order to become a full member, she had to now attend preparatory service which consisted of her participation of one Jungmädel meeting, one sports afternoon which was to include a test of her courage, and a lecture about the tasks of the Jungmädel.

After she fulfilled these requirements, a ceremony was held to introduce new members into the rank of the Jungmädel on April 20th, Hitler’s birthday. During the ceremony, new members were sworn in, presented with a membership certificate, and personally welcomed by their group leaders.

In order to become a full member, however, each girl had to pass the Jungmädel Challenge known as the Jungmädelprobe, which consisted of participation in a one-day trip with the group, and a number of sports requirements. Girls had six months to meet all the requirements of the Jungmädel Challenge and, on October 2nd of each year, those who passed became full members in a ceremony in which they were officially presented with the right to wear the black neckerchief and brown leather knot.

The Werk Glaube und Schönheit or Faith and Beauty Society, was founded in 1938 to serve as a tie-in between the work in the League of German Girls and that of the Nazi Frauenschaft, the women’s wing of the Nazi party.

Bund Deutscher Mädel out exercising

The BDM used campfire romanticism, summer camps, folklorism, tradition, and sport to educate girls within the National Socialist belief system, and to train them for their roles in German society: wife, mother, and homemaker. Their Home Evenings revolved about domestic training, but Saturdays involved strenuous outdoor training. This was praised as ensuring health, which would enable them to serve Volk and country. The so-called home evenings – ideally to be conducted in specially built homes – also included world view training, with instruction in history. The League was particularly regarded as instructing girls to avoid Rassenschande or racial defilement, which was treated with particular importance for young females.

The League encouraged rebellion against parents. More worryingly, lectures were given to the BDM on the need to produce more children. This led to several illegitimate children, which neither the young mothers nor the possible young fathers regarded as problematic.These and other behaviours which were taught led parents to complain that their authority was being undermined. In 1944, a group of parents complained to the court that the leaders of the League were openly telling their daughters to have illegitimate children. 900 of the girls participating in the 1936 Reichsparteitag in Nürnberg came back pregnant.

The outbreak of war altered the role of the BDM, though not as radically as it did the role of the boys in the Hitler Youth. The BDM helped the war effort in many ways. Younger girls collected donations of money, as well as goods such as clothing or old newspapers for Nazi charitable organizations. Many groups, particularly BDM choirs and musical groups, visited wounded soldiers at hospitals or sent care packages to the front. Girls knitted socks, grew gardens, and engaged in similar tasks. The older girls volunteered as nurses’ aides at hospitals, or to help at train stations where wounded soldiers or refugees needed a hand. After 1943, as Allied air attacks on German cities increased, many BDM girls went into paramilitary and military services.

In the last days of the war, some BDM girls joined the Volkssturm, the last-ditch defence of Berlin and other cities in fighting the invading Allied armies, especially the Russians. Officially, this was not sanctioned by the BDM’s leadership which opposed an armed use of its girls. After the war, Dr. Jutta Rüdiger denied that she had approved BDM girls using weapons, and this appears to have been the truth.

See other: Hall of Fame Posts

Die Endlösung

The Final Solution was Nazi Germany’s plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust.

Rows of Bodies of Dead Inmates Fill the Yard of a Gestapo Camp

Mass killings of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest.

This decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe was made either by the time of or at the Wannsee conference, which took place in Berlin, in the Wannsee Villa on January 20, 1942. During the conference, there was a discussion held by the group of Nazi officials how best to handle the final solution of the Jewish question. A surviving copy of the minutes of this meeting were found by the Allies in 1947, too late to serve as evidence during the first Nuremberg Trials.

By the summer of 1942, Operation Reinhard began the systematic extermination of the Jews, although hundreds of thousands already had been killed by death squads and in mass pogroms.