Spanish Civil War: 1936 - 1939


 Largely a forgotten war but important non the less. The Spanish Civil war was between 1936-39 and one of the most brutal ever.


Canadian International volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, 1700 Canadian volunteers traveled to Spain to fight fascism under Franco. A flavor of what happened there is seen in the recent move Pan's Labyrinth.


Les Miserables 2012 Film

 It's been a long time coming but soon we will have Les Miserables the movie. The famous musical is now getting made and will be released this Winter 2012.



A star cast including Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried etc and produced by Cameron Mackintosh. It promises to be visually stunning and an amazing soundtrack. The trailer which was released this week gives us a flavor of the epic feel to it.


Extended first look of the movie means its a must see the Xmas.


Stalingrad Now and Then (Volgograd)

It has more names than most cities but due to wars, change in countries etc we now have it named Volgograd since 1961. Stalingrad is one of the most famous battles in WW2. It lasted months and is well known for the number of casualties and ultimate defeat of the over stretched Germans on the eastern front.

Snipers played a huge part in this long battle. Moving from bullet / bomb broken building to building, it was an excellent environment to hide and snipe off soldiers from afar. After the war the city was left flattened, the buildings that were left were unstable. One famous building left to this day is:

It is part of a museum tour, where people can safely see first hand a typical war torn building from WW2. Note the bomb ridden roof and virtually every window as bullet marks around it. Snipers snipers snipers! No wonder tunnels and underground safe area's were often used for both soldiers and civilians.

Parody Propaganda posters: Star Wars, Communism downloads.



What with Photoshop and the internet we have a little fad where people are making parody propaganda posters. Generally they are similar to famous WW1 or WW2 with a modern day twist. As we can see from the poster above it has a Star Wars theme.


I really like this one as it is a twist on an original warning us against the perils of Communism poster.





WW2 Propaganda Poster: Comic strip twist

I have posted a fair few Propaganda posters on this blog, virtually half of them warning people not to speak  idle words, showing what can happen if they do so. This by the way of a comic strip pretty much tells us a story of what can happen. Not typical for posters but one assumes people stopped and read the thing or were handed to them in leaflets to read. 

Cliffs of the comic: Geezer tells waiter when he leaves on a ship, someone overheard and tells someone else, that person tell spy and they inform enemy who bomb ship. 

Was idle chit chat such a huge problem or was it just paranoia?

WW1 Propaganda Posters: Careless Talk & Fish mouth

 Another set of two posters that were pretty much the standard in WW1. Keeping ones mouth shut! else the consequences are beyond imaginable.
They did make it rather obvious for people to understand. This time a fish is used getting hooked for opening its mouth, clever stuff.