NUREMBERG Coming to U.S. Theaters After Decades-Long Wait
29 July 2010
NUREMBERG was painstakingly restored and the soundtrack reconstructed by Stuart Schulberg's daughter, Sandra Schulberg, with the help of Josh Waletzky. Both are noted independent filmmakers. The Schulberg/Waletzky Restoration uses original audio from the International Military Tribunal thus permtiting audiences to hear the courtroom participants -- prosecutors, defendants & defense attorneys -- speaking in their own voices. NUREMBERG shows how the international prosecutors built their case against the top Nazi war criminals. The trial established the "Nuremberg principles," and laid the groundwork for all subsequent trials for crimes against the peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
20 June 2010
Charles Faddis, a retired CIA operations officer and the author of Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA, spoke to The OSS Society at its annual meeting at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD on May 23, 2010. Congressional Country Club served as the primary OSS training facility and was known as Area F.
Whitney Harris, Nuremberg Prosecutor, Dies at 97
14 May 2010
The New York Times
Dennis Hevesi
28 April 2010
Whitney Harris, one of the last of the prosecutors who brought high-ranking Nazi war criminals to justice at the Nuremberg trials and who, a half-century later, was a significant voice in the creation of the International Criminal Court, died on April 21 at his home in St. Louis. He was 97.
The cause was cancer, his wife, Anna, said.
“Whitney was the last-surviving of the podium prosecutors, or in-court prosecutors, for the international tribunal,” John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University and an expert on the Nuremberg trials, said Monday.
Read More...
Dennis Hevesi
28 April 2010
Whitney Harris, one of the last of the prosecutors who brought high-ranking Nazi war criminals to justice at the Nuremberg trials and who, a half-century later, was a significant voice in the creation of the International Criminal Court, died on April 21 at his home in St. Louis. He was 97.
The cause was cancer, his wife, Anna, said.
“Whitney was the last-surviving of the podium prosecutors, or in-court prosecutors, for the international tribunal,” John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University and an expert on the Nuremberg trials, said Monday.
Read More...
Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today (1948)
19 April 2010
One of the greatest courtroom dramas in history, NUREMBERG shows how the international prosecutors built their case against the top Nazi war criminals using the Nazis' own films and records. These films were found and edited for presentation in the Nuremberg courtroom by a special OSS War Crimes team that was part of John Ford's larger Field Photographic Branch. The trial established the "Nuremberg principles" -- the foundation for all subsequent trials for crimes against the peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Though shown in Germany as part of the Allies' denazification campaign in 1948 and 1949, US officials decided not to release NUREMBERG to US theaters, nor was it shown in any other country. Over the years, the picture negative was lost or destroyed. Sandra Schulberg & Josh Waletzky's restoration uses original audio from the trial, allowing you to hear the defendants' and prosecutors' voices for the first time. The film ends with Justice Robert H. Jackson's stirring words -- "Let Nuremberg stand as a warning to all who plan and wage aggressive war" -- words which leap the decades and make NUREMBERG startlingly contemporary. For more information: www.nurembergfilm.org
Additional information is being sought about the officers and secretaries who served in the OSS Field Photo Branch, based in the South Agriculture building in Washington, DC, and about the men and women assigned to its War Crimes unit and sent to Germany to locate and prepare film evidence for the Nuremberg trial between June and December 1945. Please contact SSchulberg@aol.com.
Glorious Amateurs
18 March 2010
Published in the International Herald Tribune
March 18, 2010
Istvan Rev’s article about Quentin Tarantino’s film “Inglorious Basterds” (“An absurdist film that touches closely on wartime reality,” Views, March 15) referred to my Washington Times opinion article about this and another film.
The subject of my article was the distorted perception about the composition of O.S.S. personnel created by “Inglorious Basterds” and another recent film, “The Good Shepherd.” My objection to “Inglorious Basterds” was that Mr. Tarantino’s fictional Jewish O.S.S. commandos were depicted as little better than the Nazis they were fighting, killing them with baseball bats and then scalping them. Mr. Rev suggested I would be “surprised” to learn the history that he lays out about the fate of Karl Wolff, the model for the Nazi colonel in the film, Hans Landa. I am very familiar with this history, but it was simply not the subject of my article.
Read More...
March 18, 2010
Istvan Rev’s article about Quentin Tarantino’s film “Inglorious Basterds” (“An absurdist film that touches closely on wartime reality,” Views, March 15) referred to my Washington Times opinion article about this and another film.
The subject of my article was the distorted perception about the composition of O.S.S. personnel created by “Inglorious Basterds” and another recent film, “The Good Shepherd.” My objection to “Inglorious Basterds” was that Mr. Tarantino’s fictional Jewish O.S.S. commandos were depicted as little better than the Nazis they were fighting, killing them with baseball bats and then scalping them. Mr. Rev suggested I would be “surprised” to learn the history that he lays out about the fate of Karl Wolff, the model for the Nazi colonel in the film, Hans Landa. I am very familiar with this history, but it was simply not the subject of my article.
Read More...
Congressman Charles Rangel presents Bronze Star posthumously awarded to Joseph Gould by US Army Decorations Board
02 February 2010
However, because of the extended period of time that OSS personnel files remained classified, Joseph Gould was never able to claim his award before his death in 1993. Now, because of the release of these personnel files to the National Archives in August 2008, the long wait endured by his family has finally ended. With the support of Congressman Rangel’s office, the Army Decorations Board reviewed documents obtained from Joseph Gould’s personnel file showing that he had been recommended and approved for the Bronze Star after the war. As a result, the Board formally approved the release of the medal to Congressman Rangel and requested that he present it to Jonathan Gould on behalf of Joseph Gould’s family.
Within months after the United States entered World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Joseph Gould enlisted in the US Army. Because of training he received from the Officer Reserve Corp while attending Columbia Journalism School, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and ordered to report for basic infantry training at Camp Croft in South Carolina in July 1942.
Read More...
Glorious Amateurs Needed
18 January 2010 Author:Charles
Pinck
Published in Sphere
As Congress prepares to start hearings on the Christmas Day attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, there will be an inevitable focus on how to use the latest technology – better databases, full-body scanners and the like – to detect and prevent future attacks.
But the fact is that despite remarkable advances in technology, intelligence remains a distinctly human endeavor. There is no machine that can substitute for a human being's intellect, judgment, instinct or courage.
And if lawmakers want to truly reform our intelligence community, they would be wise to look backward instead of forward – all the way back to World War II's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA and U.S. Special Operations Forces.
This "unusual experiment," as its visionary founder, Maj. Gen. William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, described it in his 1945 farewell address, succeeded principally because of its diverse and brilliant personnel, many of whom probably would never get admitted into today's intelligence services.
Read More...
As Congress prepares to start hearings on the Christmas Day attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, there will be an inevitable focus on how to use the latest technology – better databases, full-body scanners and the like – to detect and prevent future attacks.
But the fact is that despite remarkable advances in technology, intelligence remains a distinctly human endeavor. There is no machine that can substitute for a human being's intellect, judgment, instinct or courage.
And if lawmakers want to truly reform our intelligence community, they would be wise to look backward instead of forward – all the way back to World War II's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA and U.S. Special Operations Forces.
This "unusual experiment," as its visionary founder, Maj. Gen. William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, described it in his 1945 farewell address, succeeded principally because of its diverse and brilliant personnel, many of whom probably would never get admitted into today's intelligence services.
Read More...
Time For A New OSS
08 December 2009
By Charles S. Faddis
New York Post
Last week, President Obama laid out his plan for prosecuting the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan. Thirty-thousand additional US troops will be headed to Afghanistan over the next several months, part of an intensified effort to regain territory from the Taliban and give the fledgling Afghan security forces a chance to take control of that nation. Regardless of what you think of the decision and the President’s announcement of it, here are some indisputable facts:
Al Qaeda, the organization that actually attacked us on 9/11, retains almost no presence in Afghanistan. Its central leadership now operates primarily from an area across the border in neighboring Pakistan. Its members are scattered across a host of other nations. The Taliban, the organization with which we are currently at war in Afghanistan, has almost no capability to stage international terrorist attacks and has confined its goals almost exclusively to the establishment of an Islamic state in Afghanistan. It poses no direct threat to the territory of the United States.
In short, even assuming complete and total victory in Afghanistan, all we really will have accomplished is to prevent the possibility of that nation again becoming a safe haven for use by terrorist organizations bent on doing us harm. We will not have defeated al Qaeda, and, in fact, we may not have even significantly degraded the capabilities of that organization. This entire massive conventional military effort will not win this war.
Read More...
New York Post
Last week, President Obama laid out his plan for prosecuting the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan. Thirty-thousand additional US troops will be headed to Afghanistan over the next several months, part of an intensified effort to regain territory from the Taliban and give the fledgling Afghan security forces a chance to take control of that nation. Regardless of what you think of the decision and the President’s announcement of it, here are some indisputable facts:
Al Qaeda, the organization that actually attacked us on 9/11, retains almost no presence in Afghanistan. Its central leadership now operates primarily from an area across the border in neighboring Pakistan. Its members are scattered across a host of other nations. The Taliban, the organization with which we are currently at war in Afghanistan, has almost no capability to stage international terrorist attacks and has confined its goals almost exclusively to the establishment of an Islamic state in Afghanistan. It poses no direct threat to the territory of the United States.
In short, even assuming complete and total victory in Afghanistan, all we really will have accomplished is to prevent the possibility of that nation again becoming a safe haven for use by terrorist organizations bent on doing us harm. We will not have defeated al Qaeda, and, in fact, we may not have even significantly degraded the capabilities of that organization. This entire massive conventional military effort will not win this war.
Read More...