text:
User talk:JHK/Archive 1

The old talk page of JHK

Just dropped by to welcome you to Wikipedia, and to say that you've gone way beyond the call of duty in certain historical discussions; in such cases you should feel free to change or remove material that is not up to encyclopedic standards. -- Stephen Gilbert

Hello! Thanks for joining us and staying on top of those questionable history entries. History is certainly an area where we need more solid hands like yourself. --LMS

No culpae necessary, J -- my outburst was directed at 207.X.X.X the Prussian Apologist. He/she/they/it copy-and-pasted in (again) her bizarre additions and really screwed things up. I think h/s/t/i is not opening the source text of the version she is trying to revert to, and that doesn't work very well....Yes, I just double-checked and it was version 21 from 207 that broke everything, not you -- Paul Drye

View revisions, and then view the particular revision you want. Amongst the links at the bottom is "Edit Revision XX of this page" (and a fanatical devotion to the Pope). Select that, then you can copy and paste the source of the revision, saving links and lists and my precious sanity :) -- Paul Drye

Just wanted to apologize to any non-cranks (normal, critically thinking, wikipedians), especially those of German citizenship and WWII buffs, for my bold oversimplification of the issues surrounding the Nazi era. Just trying to keep my sanity and hoping that Jimbo will come up with a "reach out and slap someone" button in the near future. JHK
 * He won't; the traffic surge would crash the server. --KQ

That "reach out and slap someone" comment is hardly contributory, even if it's meant as a joke. Your own edits, such as the redirecting/deleting of Heimatvertriebenen after I had spent an hour or two researching the subject, to the Diaspora studies entry you wrote, which is confusing and poorly thought-out, was extremely piquing. --TheCunctator

So blatant that I don't understand the objection, J....I picked that particular word in order to highlight Frederick's motive: to force his way up the pecking order of dukes and kings. In what way is "feudal" an inappropriate description of his behaviour? Prussia needs to be changed too if the choice is inappropriate -- Paul Drye

Hmm, I will try to rephrase then, without losing what I see as the key point. The whole rebranding (no pun intended...ok, it was kind of intended) as "Prussia" makes no sense to the uninitiated without getting across the fact that it was all about technicalities. Come to think, I'll have to go back to my old entry on Savoy and see what I said about the whole Savoy-Piedmont -> Kingdom of Sardinia thing...same trick, different actors, after all. -- Paul Drye

Works for me. Fixed Savoy too, plus another instance of my earlier mental block that there's a "the" in "War of the Spanish Succession" too. Bonus! -- Paul Drye

We have quite a few minor wars around here concerning general policy and specific edits. Never take it personally; just make your points and listen to and consider your opponant's counterarguments (if any are made, of course. ;-) -- Stephen Gilbert - nice feudalism! I changed 'preached a story that said' to 'told this story:'. Other than that, my revisions were minor. I added headers to make the 2 models clearer to layfolks (I hope) and changed a 'former' to an emphasized homage and emphasized the following fealty. --MichaelTinkler

Hi, I see you are happily "slashing away' again. It is going to take me a while, to answer to your one note , that I came across ( the long one). In the meanwhile I found a word , that is all encompassing and no one has come up with a negative touch yet : Displaced persons . I believe if you start a section with displaced persons you have a chance of not getting it destroyed.                             H.J. -

Not slashing away, just putting things into proper perspective. Displaced persons is a great term, and should probably be cross-referenced with the entries in Diaspora studies -- have you looked at these yet? Otherwise, just updating those entries that have suffered from an over use of faulty methodology and misuse of sources to prove a personal POV... JHK -- I know,

I really meant the slashers and all their "charming" comments.

The diaspora site is very good and you have put a lot of work into it. For me it is all too overwhelming, especially right now with that replay of yet another creation of another refugee group , and on and on it goes. I just wish that there would have been someone to start a study as to why and how all these situations arise in our times to cause all this. Alfred de Zaya called for a study chair on refugeees/expelles. I can tell you it is not wise for anyone to put too much time into this. All you get is abuse and worse. John Sack (Eye for an Eye), who documented 1200 prison camps in Silesia, where Communists killed and tortured Germans, was only able to do so because he is of Jewish faith himself and he is already very old. People are persecuted in Canada, for saying that they are refugees. If you are looking for a job, pick some frivolous pleasant subject. Displaced person is much more political correct. H.J.

- I *liked* the concubine thing (having written it myself!). What happened is that I've been distracted -- I mean to come back and write a little about Charlemagne and women - marriages, concubines, etc., and his daughters are a nice way into it. Oh, well. It can wait. --MichaelTinkler - We should ask for a cron job on most-frequently misspelled words. "Separate" would probably be up there (53 just turned up; I left a lot of the ones on Talk pages). But if we include incorrectly-used homonyms (and why not? they are different words) there/their/they're has it hands down. Maybe Malcom Farmer can write us a script. ;-) --Koyaanis Qatsi

 * You can search on word combinations. In the vast majority of cases "their" is preceded by words like "with...", "of..." and "by...". "There" is usually followed by words such as "will, is, was". "They're" is usually followed by a gerund (...walking, riding, etc).

That's an idea. Actually I was joking; it's a bit more work than I'd care to volunteer for (though if the project were started already, I'd work on it occasionally). I think I'll just correct them as I find them. :-) --KQ
 * I just people would realize that it really weakens an otherwise decent article... But my good news for the night is that I've found a few decent sources on Siebenbuergen (all in German, of course), and will be able to write a good revision tomorrow.  I anticipate that it may demonstrate that Siebenbuergen is not by nature German after all -- but, it seems that there's been a German-speaking group there since the 18th century (sorry -- it's just a really cool story...) -- or is that its a really cool story? JHK

________________________________________________________________

As you are demonstrating with your Siebenbuergen article, you need to know German language to find out history.

The same goes for the Albert I Brandenburg deal. Type in Albert I Brandenburg in www.webtop.com or altavista and you will get Albert of Brandenburg Prussia 1470-1568 or 19th and 20th century Alberts, all kinds of Alberts, like Albert Schweitzer etc.

But to get info on ( Albert I Brandenburg) you n e e d to know that he was Albrecht der Baer : Engl. the Baer ).

H.J.

Oh For Lord's sake, Helga! My German is actually fairly good -- it has to be, because the German government made me pass a test in order to study there and because I had no problem taking University courses (including turning in fairly lengthy papers and projects) IN GERMAN, and got the highest possible grades. I taught English in a language school, where the director offered to help me find work teaching German here in the states.

The articles I read on Siebenbürgen were in German -- and they said (in much more detail) what I said in my article. The fact that it shows that there is more to the story than your constant attempts to prove that anywhere Germans lived belongs ipso facto to Germany is not my fault -- it's just the facts. Strangely enough, I actually do have a clue here -- I've spent about 13 years now dealing with German historiography and sources. I've got a decent grip on the Orts- and Personennamenkunde that you keep trying to use to prove your points, and know that, while useful, historians the world over now believe that many of the sources you cite are to be taken with a large grain of salt. If I happen to present the prevailing theories, or note that some older theories that you happen to believe are in doubt, that's just basic scholarship. BTW, if you want to check sources, google Siebenbürgen -- I found most of my sources using that engine. If someone finds other sources that contradict what I've written, then they should edit the article accordingly. My only vested interest was in replacing the disjointed crank cant that you put up there with something actually informative.

Finally, I don't really give a damn what you want to call Albert. What I object to is that you continually write identicle articles under separate titles. If Albert the Bear is better than Albert I, fine, make it a separate article and correctly rewrite the one you mistitled in the first place. Don't leave it to the rest of us to clean up your inept English and weak (probably intentionally) scholarship. JHK

I know, that y o u can read it. I did not question your ability to read German. It was not meant for you personally, but in general.

Unfortunately I am asked constantly by older Americans about any of the historical figures and any history. They do not know any of this. In a survey, it showed, that none of them received any instructions in German history at all. From what I am assuming ,this is somewhat better in schools today ?

That article on Albert I was already there.

I am happy that you care. Thank you. H.J.

Ummm...I noticed you have a new IP address -- are are there two of you, Frau Helga? It would be really good if you could maybe log in, since you already sign your stuff... or is this a hoax? JHK
 * well, I use school and home IP addresses myself. --MichaelTinkler
 * I used to have three -- but also want to be sure this isn't leg-pulling gone horribly astry...JHK

- JHK, please see my request for help in nomenclature on the talk:Samhain page. This will lead to Catholic saints, purgatory, and relics, Muslim saints, Jewish saints, ghosts, Celtic death-stuff, Mormon dead-folk baptism, and whatever non-western things everyone else wants to start adding, so I think the initial name needs to be fairly clear! --MichaelTinkler

 * BTW -- in the Allgäu, they still celebrate a festival very much like a combination of Samhain and the American Hallowe-en. It's one of the few European places I know of that has a "dress up to keep the ghosts from knowing who you are" day...JHK I will work on this more when I get home from the salt mines...

Errrr, you're welcome! (Looks puzzled). Good luck in the tree-grinding business, by the way -- my dad did that for a while many a year ago.... Paul Drye

Well, HJ's tooth-hurting punctuation beat me down for a while, but I thought if I rushed at it all at once....Paul Drye
 * hey, the punctuation's the least problematic part -- it's when you combine it with missing words and coherent thought that it gives me a problem! JHK
 * Better yet, HJ decided on a minor excursion into the field of Norse Mythology, with some bizarre nonsense about some alleged documents allegedly destroyed for some alleged reason... >>REVERT MODE: ON<< sjc

Message for Larry Sanger et al. Please check table in Old Prussian Language -- I'm fairly sure the table is lifted directly from a book or perhaps a non-public domain website. - Don't be shy about putting the above sort of message on my page; I might have missed this one...

Possibly this page? I don't know if that would constitute a violation, if so. Do you have a specific resource in mind? --Larry Sanger

Just wanted to say that your attempts to deal with the Collected Works of HJ are valiant. It feels like we're trying to communicate with an alien. --TheCunctator

Actually, it was horse breeding that I moved. But I'll go and get Horse Breeds now. :) --Stephen Gilbert -

 * Oh wait, you already moved it. I'll go do something else now. --Stephen Gilbert

We need to get active on the primary and secondary source entries, so that we can just refer. I'm getting tired of retyping arguments! --MichaelTinkler
 * You're right -- feel free to add to my to do list...I am now going for writing and editing sans explanation, I think!

Alas, Boots!
 * I'll send you pix one of these days, along with one of the gargoyle I got for my birthday -- still trying to come up with a name -- torn between Ambrose and Kenny, among others. Boots is/was definitely the best feline friend I've ever had, though.  Beats the non-feline gargoyle hands down!

- JHK: Purely out of curiousity, what does the "J" in your name stand for? -- SJK - Oh, there was no great emergency regarding Prussia this time. Larry Sanger was asking if "Old Prussi Land" should not just be redirected to "Prussia", and Stephen Gilbert and I convinced him that deletion was the better option.

Sorry about your cat. -- Paul Drye

SJK -- It's Julie, aka Jules. I think this means I'm still not a guy (for those who persist in thinking I am...). I do watch 6-8 hours of footie a week and change my own tires, though!

Paul Drye: Thanks for the kind thoughts. I just had this horrible feeling the page had been re-done!

Have a good day, all -- off to the stinky mill! JHK

Alan -- I'm not trying to be pain, but doesn't the Bos in the Latin name for Aurochs make it a Cow / Cattle / thingy, and not a Bison? JHK

Yay, Hanseatic League! So, hard at work on the Smalkalds? --MichaelTinkler, junior taskmaster.

FWIW, I've also run across encounters with the wilfully ignorant. I've decided that if someone insists on doing something I think is just wrong, after a few attempts to correct it, I leave it alone. It will not stand for long. Someone else always fixes it, and I spare myself frustration. :-) --Dmerrill

I took out "learned history graduates" and replaced it with "many". JHK you constantly write snide remarks to other wikipedians about my entries on subjects you don't know about. I am assuming that you are referring to this quote. If the truth of the article is too strong for your taste, then look at the Masovia entry, where "yes it was conquered by Polish dukes", was immediately proudly verified. If someone else objects to stating it like it is, let them "water it down". Do me a favor, get enough sleep and do look at a map when I ask you to repeatedly. It does help and then you will not put Luebeck in the communist GDR again, you won't mix up Masuria and Masovia ( which a lot of other people do too) and you can stop sniping at me. We'll both appreciate it ( and thereby I can fully appreciate your fine contributions).

As with the Aurochs, all you had to do , is what Paul Dry did, state the site that gives the exact location and for the time being clarify the question I posted several times, as to whether it was Masovia or Masuria. And do not try to tell me again, that Masovia in German is Masuria. Konrad von Masovien and Cymburga von Masovien ,mother of Habsburg emperorFrederick III, are well known in German history (or at least used to be). H.J. - Right -- the problem here is that generally I don't write something down until I've researched it. As I explained before, in this case, I had read three articles on the Aurochs, all of which specifically said Masovia, which we all agree is in Poland. I didn't notice that someone had changed the Masovia that I wrote to Masuren -- only that you were claiming that the event took place in Prussia. I don't generally check out links that people post, nor do I post them, because I generally looks at several sites and frequently books I own before I start writing. I don't trust the web in most cases, and will only take something from a web site if I can verify it on at least two separate sites.

I have spent so much time reading stuff you've written that ignores any good historical methodology and in which you refuse to accept well thought out arguments against opinions that you have not been able to support, most of which have to do with your inability to accept that Prussia was not always the same entity you believe it was. Unfortunately, this time I didn't realize that you were under a real misapprehension and not just trying to show again that something that didn't belong to Prussia really did. If you go back, you will see that I was talking about Masovia from the beginning, and didn't confuse it till you started speaking about Masuren.

I'm sorry that you don't like my "so-called" sniping -- so-called because I generally say flat out what I mean. Any sniping that does exist is an attempt to avoid being as blunt as I would be if I knew you personally. Early on, I tried to be tactful and help suggest ways you could write better history. That is something I do know a lot about. So do others who have tried to explain legitimate reasons for editing your stuff. You just ignore anything you don't agree with. I will be happy to stop trying to argue with you, because it's fairly soul-destroying for me. I will, however, continue to edit your articles, which are generally badly written, badly researched, and more often promote your personal agenda rather than an informative NPOV. I will also reserve my right to not explain my changes more than once. I hope that satisfies you, because IMO, it's more than you deserve at this point. JHK

To JHK. Ok, I accept your apology ( 1/2 apology ?), since you are still name-calling. You are welcome to edit my stuff and I apologize, that I do not write like you do your perfect American English language. I have never set foot in an American classroom, except just recently I took two beginners computer classes and I did get an A in both of them. I do not have enough time left in my life to reach your level of perfect American English language skills and I am therefore concentrating on substance rather than style.

(On one of your notes you did write "Masovia, which in German is Masuren" though). How many books on Prussian history do you have ? H.J. -- Yes, I did write that, and because I'd been talking about Masovia, I assumed from what you were saying, that we were talking about the same thing and unthinkingly just figured that your Masuren was my Masovia. By the way, I don't ever recall calling you names -- just harshly criticizing your writing and arguments. No one expects you to have perfect American language skills, by the way. However, if you can write well in German, you can write well in English. If written in German the way they are in English, that is, a bunch of barely connected facts and spurious theories, they would also be written badly.

And no books on Prussian history -- why buy when I can use a library. Many books on European History from BC through the 19th c, though. Almost all of the Early Modern books are on Germany. JHK

--

I think you don't "suck" at wiki at all. :-) So you aren't perfect. A number of the Wikipedians who seem to think they are perfect come across as arrogant dorks. Keep on truckin'   :-)

Hmmm, I wonder if the above was directed at me? :) Couldn't be, because I don't think you suck at wiki either. But I agree with you that your history is pretty darn good. --Stephen Gilbert
 *  Thanks, guys! JHK

- On Place-names and their problems, take a look at this: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/045-94e.htm   Very interesting.

--MichaelTinkler

 * That's a really good article, although I'm not sure the message would penetrate anywhere where these things are not already self-evident...! JHK

- Was there a server problem this morning?? I don't see any changes between last night at around 9:30 and this morning at 5:30...

I'll let Jimbo explain rather than guessing myself... I believe I know the source of the problem and that it was, let's just say, a positive change and not indicative of a problem at all! So, please don't worry. --LMS

Hi, J! And Happy Holidays to you too. I'm around, I'm around, but snowed in (figuratively and sometimes literally), turkey-stuffed, present-tense, eggnog-laden, and busy like the Dickens. To answer your question more precisely: if I remember my Dante correctly, the holidays are the fourth circle next to the guys playing dodgems with the boulders; me and Virgil are the ones drinking fire brandy and singing "Abandon All Hope Ye Merry Gentlemen" in the corner. I'll be back on this hobby horse in the next few days I'm sure. -- Paul Drye

Hi, J! I'm a new Wikipedian and still have to learn. Thanks for your tips re talk pages, I'll follow them in future. -- Piotr
 * Hi back Piotr -- it's great to have you here!

Question of the day:

Why the HELL does Phil Thompson make such weird substitutions? And what position DOES Emil Hesky play?

Random Observations of the day:

Jerzy Dudek is probably the best keeper in England at the moment. Sami Hyypia is great -- but damn -- what a mistake! I wish I had hair like Emmanuel Petit.
 * JHK -- I have no idea what on earth you are talking about :) -- SJK

 * I'm talking about football...Liverpool lost to Southampton 2-0 away. The English Premier league is an addiction for me -- like the wikipedia, but more expensive.   If cricket were available, I'm sure we'd watch that, too -- but the last interesting series was something like $20 a game...

Sarcasm aside, HJ, He's right. Have you bothered to even look at the articles I suggested? Let me ask you something -- When you are ill, do you go to a doctor? Most people do. When you go to the doctor, you go because you know he has had a lot more training than you on things that go wrong with the human body. He has studied for years. You know that, even if a doctor is a specialist in one area, he has probably (because of all that study), a lot more knowledge about the human body and its workings than somebody who hasn't studied medicine.

I notice that you (and a lot of other people -- I'm not saying you are the only person) don't go onto the articles on philosophy or math, or the sciences and argue your opinion, and I ask myself, "why not?" The self-evident answer is that most people don't feel comfortable arguing with "experts" in those areas -- and we have people who are experts! So what is it that changes this rule when we talk about history? Just as a trained doctor may not know all the latest stuff on every specialization, but he still has the training to make generally sound medical judgements. Some of us have the training in history and how to approach it equivalent to a doctor's training in medicine. You wouldn't argue with a doctor -- so why do you feel that you have any grounds to argue when a trained historian says that your approach is invalid as far as writing history (which is what you are attempting to do) is concerned? Think about it, please. Your continued arguments against and willful ignorance of historic method is not resulting in good articles -- just generating a lot of debate. JHK Ok -- I have a couple of comments. First, I have already discussed that the methodology regularly used by Fr. Jonat leaves much to be desired. Family History (or annotated genealogy) must still be seen within a wider framework of normal history to be at all valid. Second, the place names in this table are somewhat suspect. I'm not saying that they are incorrect (although some are abbreviations of Latin names that have been used as if they are the full names -- probably because of an unfamiliarity with Latin). Rather, these names seem to be the Latin names as used in a particular time period -- my guess is from the Early Modern period, specifically 16th or 17th c. As such, many of the names are Latinized versions of local names. They are not incorrect, but indicate that there was a non-Latin name in use, which was then given a Latin genitive ending to make it fit in with older place names derived from those given in Roman and Medieval times. The fact that there is a Latin name for something does not mean it existed as such in the pre-Modern period -- In fat, it's looking at history in the wrong direction -- taking a current thing, and making it causative to the past, instead of looking at the past and how changes then affect the present.

Third, since this is an English language encyclopedia, it is appropriate that attention first be paid to Latin-English, then to the translations to other languages. The only reason to focus on German equivalents is to propogate certain irredentist? views which are inappropriate to this site. JHK

Your ever-present overpowering optimism really shines bright again, as always JHK !!! The spellings are taken from actual recordings and I think all the different spellings one comes across should be listed, as I had started it(some were taken off), but then perhaps it would add too many , because spelling in German language was not standardized until the 20th century. Anyway we could add another column with current names and present countries, where applicable.

But your introduction text is very good. It is free of your behind the scene (/Talk section) "charm". H.J.
 * I strongly believe that Wikipedia does not need a listing of every variant spelling of city names that anyone comes across. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, nor is a gazetteer or geographical dictionary.  I think you should keep your own list of every variant, HJ, and maybe even post them on your own web page, but there is no need to burden Wikipedia with them! --MichaelTinkler.

I'm happy to consider myself called out, but what now? Continue the general alertness, sure, but is there something more specific you'd like me to focus on? --Vicki Rosenzweig Re Margrave/Elector thing: Hi, JHK, the dignity of elector went with the title to certain lands, so the margrave of Brandenburg was an ex officio one of the seven named in the Golden Bull of 1356. Before 1356 the electoral function had been assigned to different local rulers in turn, so it's doubly incorrect to speak of an "elector of" somewhere. After 1356 the holder's title remains "duke of" or "margrave of" (and never "elector of" wherever, so the rulers of Brandenburg (one of the electorates nemd in 1356) were "margrave of Brandenburg" until 1614 when they became also duke of Cleve (and four years later of Prussia, the ducal and later royal title which took precedence), just as the holders of electoral Saxony were "duke of Saxony" (originally of Saxe-Wittenberg) until they became king (1806).

I take it then that your preference is for "forename(s) (ordinal), M/margrave of Brandenburg" - should the "m" be upper-or-lower case? As soon as we're decided, I'll help you plough through correcting them all.

--- JHK: i would appreciate explanation why references to very popular myths about history do not suit to popular encylopediae? Kazimierz probably had relationship with some Jewish girl, mythical is her name and her influence...

About Casimir having illegal sons: it is almost sure that he had ilelgal sons. I bring it in entry because irony of that fact struck me: he died without the heir, having only legal daughters, and that's why later Poland united with Lithuania. But he _had_ few sons, just from wrong relationships... szopen]]

 * Szopen -- I removed it because it didn't make sense in English. For example, instead of mythical, I think you mean legendary -- but then you need to say something like, "according to popular legend (or better, a legend originating in XXXX), Casimir was involved with a Jewish woman, who..."  The legend may have been an explanation of why....

Legends are better left out unless you can explain how it fits into the history.

Also, you probably mean illegitimate, not illegal -- and then it needs to be clear that, "although Casimir had several illegitimate sons, his only legitimate heirs were daughters..." -- But then, you may want to discuss why Casimir's illegitimate sons were unable to gain the support to inherit (this was a time when illegitimate sons could occasionally inherit -- with the right support! -- but maybe not in Poland.

So, it's not that the info didn't belong -- just that it doesn't belong as written. User:JHK

Thanks for explanations. And for copyediting entries and pointing my errors, too! szopen]] - "Hi szopen -- I can understand the non-neutrality problem for Poles -- unfortunately, a lot of those places are known to English-speakers mostly by German names, because English-language scholars (except people who specialize in Slavic things) more often researched in German. If the Polish name is listed in the first line as we have been doing, then it will come up in a search and there should be no problem.  I fully sympathize with your feelings, and all I can say is that, since this is an English-language wikipedia, we should probably let English speakers who actually have a clue make final calls on the "correct" English name! Happy New Year! JHK "

To JHK One of the goals of the three partitioning powers (Russia, Prussia, Austria) was to erase Polish language, Polish culture and Polish historical names of cities, regions etc, from the history of Eupope and from the "General Knowledge". They have greatly succeeded in many areas, using the fact that Poland was not on the map for a century and a half. Those times are long gone. Poland was able to reclaim it's territory and it's time for the "English-language scholars" to update their terminology. The point about "the fortress of Kolberg" is so dumb, it hurts. Think of the Battle of Stalingrad. Everybody knows what "Battle of Stalingrad" was. And that name should be used for the article about the battle. But the name of the city is Volgograd, and somebody, who demands, that "English language name" for the city should be Stalingrad, is not a scholar, but an ignorant and a moron. Same with Kolberg. "Fortress Kolberg", "Fortress Breslau" would be correct names for the articles, but not for articles about those Polish cities. It's year 2002. Festung Kolberg fell more than half a century ago! If "scholars" have problems with that, they should write it on a piece of paper, and read aloud every day, before they go to sleep, until they get it right! Space Cadet
 * Sorry, Space Cadet, but I can't agree. The simple reason is this:  Encyclopedias are for people who aren't scholars.  They are collections of general, non-specialist information.  I understand your point entirely.  In fact, scholars these days tend to use different terminology than a couple of generations ago.  For example, today, we talk about Charlemagne rather than Charles the Great (the normal English usage 100 years ago); we say Basle instead of Baal; Frankfurt is no longer Frankfort; Danzig is Danzig for pre-Modern, but Gdansk for modern history.  Congo became Zaire, but by the time it trickled down through contemporary scholarship to students, it was again Congo.  My point is, even when scholars chage terminology to something arguably 'more correct', it often takes 10-20 years to filter down.  Since this is an encyclopedia, it is best to use the most commonly used English name, and then put the more precise name in the body of the article.  This way, people actually can find what they're looking for without feeling stupid because they didn't use the "right" name.  When they read the article, the explanations within should point them in the right terminological direction.

 * As to your specific problems with Kolberg and Stalingrad, please note that my objections have also been directed at German names that we no longer use in English. This is not in any way anti-Polandism -- just an attempt to let native speakers have the final say as to what the English-language norm is.User:JHK

--- No accusations of "antipolonism" intended! But, anyway, after reading your response 10 times, I still don't see, what you can't agree with. All my points were supported by you and none were really contradicted. Thanks! Space Cadet
 * I agree with almost all of your sentiments on what should be (the ideal), but disagree that it makes sense to act on those sentiments in this time and place (the real), because it would be counterproductive to the purpose of an encyclopedia. User:JHK

Hello, could you maybe add a summary of the naming conventions for historical articles to Naming conventions? Right now, the material seems to be pretty well hidden, and I noticed that you spend a lot of your time correcting other people's mistakes in that area. AxelBoldt

 * Hi Axel -- wie geht's? I'll move the stuff from my user page to the naming conventions talk page immediately, and then do some editing on Friday, when I'm done with classes for the week...JHK

 * Danke, es geht gut. Eine Woche noch, dann Freiheit! Anyway, I just noticed that your user pages are a mess: you have different JHK and user:JHK, and both of those pages have separate Talk pages. I suggest you merge the user pages and put the result on user:JHK, put a redirect on JHK, and dump all the talk into user talk:JHK. Cheers, AxelBoldt

Freiheit?? wieso? es gibt hier noch sieben woche, bis ich frei habe... :-(

I've been meaning to merge them -- i'll take care of it this weekend! JHK

title: User talk:JHK/Archive 1


text:
Rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropical rainforests or temperate rainforests, but other types have been described.

Estimates vary from 40% to 75% of all biotic species being indigenous to the rainforests. There may be many millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms still undiscovered in tropical rainforests. Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth" and the "world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered there.

Rainforests as well as endemic rainforest species are rapidly disappearing due to deforestation, the resulting habitat loss and pollution of the atmosphere.

Definition
Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, high humidity, the presence of moisture-dependent vegetation, a moist layer of leaf litter, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. The largest areas of rainforest are tropical or temperate rainforests, but other vegetation associations including subtropical rainforest, littoral rainforest, cloud forest, vine thicket and even dry rainforest have been described.

Tropical rainforest

Tropical rainforests are characterized by a warm and wet climate with no substantial dry season: typically found within 10 degrees north and south of the equator. Mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 C during all months of the year. Average annual rainfall is no less than 168 cm and can exceed 1000 cm although it typically lies between 175 cm and 200 cm.

Many of the world's tropical forests are associated with the location of the monsoon trough, also known as the intertropical convergence zone. The broader category of tropical moist forests are located in the equatorial zone between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. Tropical rainforests exist in Southeast Asia (from Myanmar (Burma)) to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka; also in Sub-Saharan Africa from the Cameroon to the Congo (Congo Rainforest), South America (e.g. the Amazon rainforest), Central America (e.g. Bosawás, the southern Yucatán Peninsula-El Peten-Belize-Calakmul), Australia, and on Pacific Islands (such as Hawaii). Tropical forests have been called the "Earth's lungs", although it is now known that rainforests contribute little net oxygen addition to the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

Temperate rainforest

Tropical forests cover a large part of the globe, but temperate rainforests only occur in a few regions around the world. Temperate rainforests are rainforests in temperate regions. They occur in North America (in the Pacific Northwest in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California), in Europe (parts of the British Isles such as the coastal areas of Ireland and Scotland, southern Norway, parts of the western Balkans along the Adriatic coast, as well as in Galicia and coastal areas of the eastern Black Sea, including Georgia and coastal Turkey), in East Asia (in southern China, Highlands of Taiwan, much of Japan and Korea, and on Sakhalin Island and the adjacent Russian Far East coast), in South America (southern Chile) and also in Australia and New Zealand.

Dry rainforest
Dry rainforests have a more open canopy layer than other rainforests, and are found in areas of lower rainfall (630-1100 mm). They generally have two layers of trees.

Layers
A tropical rainforest typically has a number of layers, each with different plants and animals adapted for life in that particular area. Examples include the emergent, canopy, understory and forest floor layers.

Emergent layer
The emergent layer contains a small number of very large trees called emergents, which grow above the general canopy, reaching heights of 45–55 m, although on occasion a few species will grow to 70–80 m tall. They need to be able to withstand the hot temperatures and strong winds that occur above the canopy in some areas. Eagles, butterflies, bats and certain monkeys inhabit this layer.

Canopy layer
The canopy layer contains the majority of the largest trees, typically 30 m to 45 m tall. The densest areas of biodiversity are found in the forest canopy, a more or less continuous cover of foliage formed by adjacent treetops. The canopy, by some estimates, is home to 50 percent of all plant species. Epiphytic plants attach to trunks and branches, and obtain water and minerals from rain and debris that collects on the supporting plants. The fauna is similar to that found in the emergent layer but more diverse. A quarter of all insect species are believed to exist in the rainforest canopy. Scientists have long suspected the richness of the canopy as a habitat, but have only recently developed practical methods of exploring it. As long ago as 1917, naturalist William Beebe declared that "another continent of life remains to be discovered, not upon the Earth, but one to two hundred feet above it, extending over thousands of square miles." A true exploration of this habitat only began in the 1980s, when scientists developed methods to reach the canopy, such as firing ropes into the trees using crossbows. Exploration of the canopy is still in its infancy, but other methods include the use of balloons and airships to float above the highest branches and the building of cranes and walkways planted on the forest floor. The science of accessing tropical forest canopy using airships or similar aerial platforms is called dendronautics.

Understory layer
The understory or understorey layer lies between the canopy and the forest floor. It is home to a number of birds, snakes and lizards, as well as predators such as jaguars, boa constrictors and leopards. The leaves are much larger at this level and insect life is abundant. Many seedlings that will grow to the canopy level are present in the understory. Only about 5% of the sunlight shining on the rainforest canopy reaches the understory. This layer can be called a shrub layer, although the shrub layer may also be considered a separate layer.

Forest floor
The forest floor, the bottom-most layer, receives only 2% of the sunlight. Only plants adapted to low light can grow in this region. Away from riverbanks, swamps and clearings, where dense undergrowth is found, the forest floor is relatively clear of vegetation because of the low sunlight penetration. It also contains decaying plant and animal matter, which disappears quickly, because the warm, humid conditions promote rapid decay. Many forms of fungi growing here help decay the animal and plant waste.

Flora and fauna
More than half of the world's species of plants and animals are found in rainforests. Rainforests support a very broad array of fauna, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and invertebrates. Mammals may include primates, felids and other families. Reptiles include snakes, turtles, chameleons and other families; while birds include such families as vangidae and Cuculidae. Dozens of families of invertebrates are found in rainforests. Fungi are also very common in rainforest areas as they can feed on the decomposing remains of plants and animals.

The great diversity in rainforest species is in large part the result of diverse and numerous physical refuges, i.e. places in which plants are inaccessible to many herbivores, or in which animals can hide from predators. Having numerous refuges available also results in much higher total biomass than would otherwise be possible.

Some species of fauna show a trend towards declining populations in rainforests, for example, reptiles that feed on amphibians and reptiles. This trend requires close monitoring. The seasonality of rainforests affects the reproductive patterns of amphibians, and this in turn can directly affect the species of reptiles that feed on these groups, particularly species with specialized feeding, since these are less likely to use alternative resources.

Soils
Despite the growth of vegetation in a tropical rainforest, soil quality is often quite poor. Rapid bacterial decay prevents the accumulation of humus. The concentration of iron and aluminium oxides by the laterization process gives the oxisols a bright red colour and sometimes produces mineral deposits such as bauxite. Most trees have roots near the surface because there are insufficient nutrients below the surface; most of the trees' minerals come from the top layer of decomposing leaves and animals. On younger substrates, especially of volcanic origin, tropical soils may be quite fertile. If rainforest trees are cleared, rain can accumulate on the exposed soil surfaces, creating run-off, and beginning a process of soil erosion. Eventually, streams and rivers form and flooding becomes possible. There are several reasons for the poor soil quality. First is that the soil is highly acidic. The roots of plants rely on an acidity difference between the roots and the soil in order to absorb nutrients. When the soil is acidic, there is little difference, and therefore little absorption of nutrients from the soil. Second, the type of clay particles present in tropical rainforest soil has a poor ability to trap nutrients and stop them from washing away. Even if humans artificially add nutrients to the soil, the nutrients mostly wash away and are not absorbed by the plants. Finally, these soils are poor due to the high volume of rain in tropical rainforests washes nutrients out of the soil more quickly than in other climates.

Effect on global climate
A natural rainforest emits and absorbs vast quantities of carbon dioxide. On a global scale, long-term fluxes are approximately in balance, so that an undisturbed rainforest would have a small net impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, though they may have other climatic effects (on cloud formation, for example, by recycling water vapour). No rainforest today can be considered to be undisturbed. Human-induced deforestation plays a significant role in causing rainforests to release carbon dioxide, as do other factors, whether human-induced or natural, which result in tree death, such as burning and drought. Some climate models operating with interactive vegetation predict a large loss of Amazonian rainforest around 2050 due to drought, forest dieback and the subsequent release of more carbon dioxide.

Human uses

Tropical rainforests provide timber as well as animal products such as meat and hides. Rainforests also have value as tourism destinations and for the ecosystem services provided. Many foods originally came from tropical forests, and are still mostly grown on plantations in regions that were formerly primary forest. Also, plant-derived medicines are commonly used for fever, fungal infections, burns, gastrointestinal problems, pain, respiratory problems, and wound treatment. At the same time, rainforests are usually not used sustainably by non-native peoples but are being exploited or removed for agricultural purposes.

Native people
On January 18, 2007, FUNAI reported also that it had confirmed the presence of 67 different uncontacted tribes in Brazil, up from 40 in 2005. With this addition, Brazil has now overtaken the island of New Guinea as the country having the largest number of uncontacted tribes. The province of Irian Jaya or West Papua in the island of New Guinea is home to an estimated 44 uncontacted tribal groups. The tribes are in danger because of the deforestation, especially in Brazil.

Central African rainforest is home of the Mbuti pygmies, one of the hunter-gatherer peoples living in equatorial rainforests characterised by their short height (below one and a half metres, or 59 inches, on average). They were the subject of a study by Colin Turnbull, The Forest People, in 1962. Pygmies who live in Southeast Asia are, amongst others, referred to as "Negrito". There are many tribes in the rainforests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Sarawak is part of Borneo, the third largest island in the world. Some of the other tribes in Sarawak are: the Kayan, Kenyah, Kejaman, Kelabit, Punan Bah, Tanjong, Sekapan, and the Lahanan. Collectively, they are referred to as Dayaks or Orangulu which means "people of the interior".

About half of Sarawak's 1.5 million people are Dayaks. Most Dayaks, it is believed by anthropologists, came originally from the South-East Asian mainland. Their mythologies support this.

Deforestation
Tropical and temperate rainforests have been subjected to heavy legal and illegal logging for their valuable hardwoods and agricultural clearance (slash-and-burn, clearcutting) throughout the 20th century and the area covered by rainforests around the world is shrinking. Biologists have estimated that large numbers of species are being driven to extinction (possibly more than 50,000 a year; at that rate, says E. O. Wilson of Harvard University, a quarter or more of all species on Earth could be exterminated within 50 years) due to the removal of habitat with destruction of the rainforests.

Another factor causing the loss of rainforest is expanding urban areas. Littoral rainforest growing along coastal areas of eastern Australia is now rare due to ribbon development to accommodate the demand for seachange lifestyles.

Forests are being destroyed at a rapid pace. Almost 90% of West Africa's rainforest has been destroyed. Since the arrival of humans, Madagascar has lost two thirds of its original rainforest. At present rates, tropical rainforests in Indonesia would be logged out in 10 years and Papua New Guinea in 13 to 16 years. According to Rainforest Rescue, an important reason for the increasing deforestation rate, especially in Indonesia, is the expansion of oil palm plantations to meet growing demand for cheap vegetable fats and biofuels. In Indonesia, palm oil is already cultivated on nine million hectares and, together with Malaysia, the island nation produces about 85 percent of the world's palm oil.

Several countries, notably Brazil, have declared their deforestation a national emergency. Amazon deforestation jumped by 69% in 2008 compared to 2007's twelve months, according to official government data.

However, a January 30, 2009 New York Times article stated, "By one estimate, for every acre of rainforest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics." The new forest includes secondary forest on former farmland and so-called degraded forest.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Rainforest


text:
Polar climate

The polar climate regions are characterized by a lack of warm summers but with varying winters. Every month a polar climate has an average temperature of less than 10 C. Regions with a polar climate cover more than 20% of the Earth's area. Most of these regions are far from the equator and near the poles, and in this case, winter days are extremely short and summer days are extremely long (could last for the entirety of each season or longer). A polar climate consists of cool summers and very cold winters (or, in the case of ice cap climates, no real summer at all), which results in treeless tundra, glaciers, or a permanent or semi-permanent layer of ice. It is identified with the letter E in the Köppen climate classification.

Subtypes
There are two types of polar climate: ET, or tundra climate; and EF, or ice cap climate. A tundra climate is characterized by having at least one month whose average temperature is above 0 C, while an ice cap climate has no months averaging above 0 C. In a tundra climate, even coniferous trees cannot grow, but other specialized plants can grow. In an ice cap climate, no plants can grow, and ice gradually accumulates until it flows or slides elsewhere. Many high altitude locations on Earth have a climate where no month has an average temperature of 10 C or higher, but as this is due to elevation, this climate is referred to as Alpine climate. Alpine climate can mimic either tundra or ice cap climate.

Locations
On Earth, the only continent where the ice cap polar climate is predominant is Antarctica. All but a few isolated coastal areas on the island of Greenland also have the ice cap climate. Summits of many high mountains also have ice cap climate due to their high elevation. Coastal regions of Greenland that do not have permanent ice sheets have the less extreme tundra climates. The northernmost part of the Eurasian land mass, from the extreme northeastern coast of Scandinavia and eastwards to the Bering Strait, large areas of northern Siberia and northern Iceland have tundra climate as well. Large areas in northern Canada and northern Alaska have tundra climate, changing to ice cap climate in the most northern parts of Canada. Southernmost Argentina (Tierra del Fuego where it abuts the Drake Passage) and such subantarctic islands such as the South Shetland Islands and the Falkland Islands have tundra climates of slight temperature range in which no month is as warm as 10 C. These subantarctic lowlands are found closer to the equator than the coastal tundras of the Arctic basin. Summits of many mountains of Earth also have polar climates, due to their higher elevations.

Arctic
Some parts of the Arctic are covered by ice (sea ice, glacial ice, or snow) year-round, especially at the most poleward parts; and nearly all parts of the Arctic experience long periods with some form of ice or snow on the surface. Average January temperatures range from about −40 to 0 C, and winter temperatures can drop below −50 C over large parts of the Arctic. Average July temperatures range from about −10 to 10 C, with some land areas occasionally exceeding 30 C in summer.

The Arctic consists of ocean that is almost surrounded by landmasses like Russia and Canada. As such, the climate of much of the Arctic is moderated by the ocean water, which can never have a temperature below −2 C. In winter, this relatively warm water, even though covered by the polar ice pack, keeps the North Pole from being the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere, and it is also part of the reason that Antarctica is so much colder than the Arctic. In summer, the presence of the nearby water keeps coastal areas from warming as much as they might otherwise, just as it does in temperate regions with maritime climates.

Antarctica
The climate of Antarctica is the coldest on Earth. Antarctica has the lowest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded: −89.2 C at Vostok Station. It is also extremely dry (technically a desert, or so called polar desert), averaging 166 mm of precipitation per year, as weather fronts rarely penetrate far into the continent.

Mountains
Summits of most mountains also have polar climates, despite being in lower latitudes, due to their high elevations. All mountains of the Rocky Mountains, Alps, and the Caucasus have tundra climate. Some mountains of the Andes, the Saint Elias Mountains, and most mountains of the Himalayas, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush Range, Pamir Mountains, the Tian Shan Mountains, and the Alaska Range, have ice cap climate. Only the summit of Mount Rainier has an ice cap climate in the Cascade Range.

Quantifying polar climate
There have been several attempts at quantifying what constitutes a polar climate.

Climatologist Wladimir Köppen demonstrated a relationship between the Arctic and Antarctic tree lines and the 10 C summer isotherm; i.e., places where the average temperature in the warmest calendar month of the year is below the fixed threshold of 10 C cannot support forests. See Köppen climate classification for more information.

Otto Nordenskjöld theorized that winter conditions also play a role: His formula is W = 9 − 0.1 C, where W is the average temperature in the warmest month and C the average of the coldest month, both in degrees Celsius. For example, if a particular location had an average temperature of −20 C in its coldest month, the warmest month would need to average 11 C or higher for trees to be able to survive there as 9 − 0.1(−20) = 11. Nordenskiöld's line tends to run to the north of Köppen's near the west coasts of the Northern Hemisphere continents, south of it in the interior sections, and at about the same latitude along the east coasts of both Asia and North America. In the Southern Hemisphere, all of Tierra del Fuego lies outside the polar region in Nordenskiöld's system, but part of the island (including Ushuaia, Argentina) is reckoned as being within the Antarctic under Köppen's.

In 1947, Holdridge improved on these schemes, by defining biotemperature: the mean annual temperature, where all temperatures below 0 C (and above 30 C) are treated as 0 °C (because it makes no difference to plant life, being dormant). If the mean biotemperature is between 1.5 and 3 C, Holdridge quantifies the climate as subpolar (or alpine, if the low temperature is caused by elevation).

title: Polar climate


text:
Subarctic climate

The subarctic climate (also called subpolar climate, or boreal climate) is a continental climate with long, cold (often very cold) winters, and short, warm to cool summers. It is found on large landmasses, often away from the moderating effects of an ocean, generally at latitudes from 50°N to 70°N, poleward of the humid continental climates. Subarctic or boreal climates are the source regions for the cold air that affects temperate latitudes to the south in winter. These climates represent Köppen climate classification Dfc, Dwc, Dsc, Dfd, Dwd and Dsd.

Description
This type of climate offers some of the most extreme seasonal temperature variations found on the planet: in winter, temperatures can drop to below -50 °C and in summer, the temperature may exceed 26 °C. However, the summers are short; no more than three months of the year (but at least one month) must have a 24-hour average temperature of at least 10 °C to fall into this category of climate, and the coldest month should average below 0 °C (or -3 °C). Record low temperatures can approach -70 C. With 5–7 consecutive months when the average temperature is below freezing, all moisture in the soil and subsoil freezes solidly to depths of many feet. Summer warmth is insufficient to thaw more than a few surface feet, so permafrost prevails under most areas not near the southern boundary of this climate zone. Seasonal thaw penetrates from 2 to 14 ft, depending on latitude, aspect, and type of ground. Some northern areas with subarctic climates located near oceans (southern Alaska, the northern fringe of Europe, Sakhalin Oblast and Kamchatka Oblast), have milder winters and no permafrost, and are more suited for farming unless precipitation is excessive. The frost-free season is very short, varying from about 45 to 100 days at most, and a freeze can occur anytime outside the summer months in many areas.

Description
The first D indicates continentality, with the coldest month below 0 °C (or -3 °C).

The second letter denotes precipitation patterns:
 * s: A dry summer—the driest month in the high-sun half of the year (April to September in the Northern Hemisphere, October to March in the Southern Hemisphere) has less than 30 mm/40 mm of rainfall and has exactly or less than $1⁄3$ the precipitation of the wettest month in the low-sun half of the year (October to March in the Northern Hemisphere, April to September in the Southern Hemisphere),
 * w: A dry winter—the driest month in the low-sun half of the year has exactly or less than one‑tenth of the precipitation found in the wettest month in the summer half of the year,
 * f: No dry season—does not meet either of the alternative specifications above; precipitation and humidity are often high year-round.

The third letter denotes temperature:
 * c: Regular subarctic, only one–three months above 10 °C, coldest month between 0 °C (or -3 °C) and -38 °C.
 * d: Severely cold subarctic, only one–three months above 10 °C, coldest month at or below -38 °C.

Precipitation
Most subarctic climates have little precipitation, typically no more than 380 mm over an entire year due to the low temperatures and evapotranspiration. Away from the coasts, precipitation occurs mostly in the summer months, while in coastal areas with subarctic climates the heaviest precipitation is usually during the autumn months when the relative warmth of sea vis-à-vis land is greatest. Low precipitation, by the standards of more temperate regions with longer summers and warmer winters, is typically sufficient in view of the very low evapotranspiration to allow a water-logged terrain in many areas of subarctic climate and to permit snow cover during winter, which is generally persistent for an extended period.

A notable exception to this pattern is that subarctic climates occurring at high elevations in otherwise temperate regions have extremely high precipitation due to orographic lift. Mount Washington, with temperatures typical of a subarctic climate, receives an average rain-equivalent of 101.91 in of precipitation per year. Coastal areas of Khabarovsk Krai also have much higher precipitation in summer due to orographic influences (up to 175 mm in July in some areas), whilst the mountainous Kamchatka peninsula and Sakhalin island are even wetter, since orographic moisture isn't confined to the warmer months and creates large glaciers in Kamchatka. Labrador, in eastern Canada, is similarly wet throughout the year due to the semi-permanent Icelandic Low and can receive up to 1300 mm of rainfall equivalent per year, creating a snow cover of up to 1.5 m that does not melt until June.

Vegetation and land use
Vegetation in regions with subarctic climates is generally of low diversity, as only hardy tree species can survive the long winters and make use of the short summers. Trees are mostly limited to conifers, as few broadleaved trees are able to survive the very low temperatures in winter. This type of forest is also known as taiga, a term which is sometimes applied to the climate found therein as well. Even though the diversity may be low, the area and numbers are high, and the taiga (boreal) forest is the largest forest biome on the planet, with most of the forests located in Russia and Canada. The process by which plants become acclimated to cold temperatures is called hardening.

Agricultural potential is generally poor, due to the natural infertility of soils and the prevalence of swamps and lakes left by departing ice sheets, and short growing seasons prohibit all but the hardiest of crops. Despite the short season, the long summer days at such latitudes do permit some agriculture. In some areas, ice has scoured rock surfaces bare, entirely stripping off the overburden. Elsewhere, rock basins have been formed and stream courses dammed, creating countless lakes.

Neighboring regions
Should one go northward or even toward a polar sea, one finds that the warmest month has an average temperature of less than 10 °C, and the subarctic climate grades into a tundra climate not at all suitable for trees. Southward, this climate grades into the humid continental climates with longer summers (and usually less-severe winters) allowing broadleaf trees; in a few locations close to a temperate sea (as in northern Norway and southern Alaska), this climate can grade into a short-summer version of an oceanic climate, the subpolar oceanic climate, as the sea is approached where winter temperatures average near or above freezing despite maintaining the short, cool summers. In China and Mongolia, as one moves southwestwards or towards lower elevations, temperatures increase but precipitation is so low that the subarctic climate grades into a cold semi-arid climate.

Dfc and Dfd distribution
The Dfc climate, by far the most common subarctic type, is found in the following areas:

Further north and east in Siberia, continentality increases so much that winters can be exceptionally severe, averaging below -38 °C, even though the hottest month still averages more than 10 °C. This creates Dfd climates, which are mostly found in the Sakha Republic:
 * Northern Eurasia
 * The majority of Siberia
 * The Kamchatka Peninsula and the northern and central parts of the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island
 * The northern half of Fennoscandia (milder winters in coastal areas) and higher elevations further south.
 * The Western Alps between 1600. and 2100. m, and the Eastern Alps between 1450 and 1800. m
 * Central Romania
 * Some parts of central Germany
 * The Tatra Mountains in Poland and Slovakia, above 800. m.
 * The Pyrenees, between 1600. and 2100. m
 * The Northeastern Anatolia Region and the Pontic Alps, between 1600. and 2100. m
 * Mountain summits in Scotland, most notably in the Cairngorms and the Nevis Range
 * The far northeast of Turkey
 * Northeast Siberian taiga
 * Central Yakutian Lowland
 * Yakutsk
 * Oymyakon
 * Verkhoyansk

 * North America
 * Most of Interior, Western and Southcentral Alaska
 * The high Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Montana and the White Mountains of New Hampshire
 * Much of Canada from about 53–55°N to the tree line, including:
 * Southern Labrador
 * Certain areas within Newfoundland interior and along its northern coast
 * Quebec: Jamésie, Côte-Nord and far southern Nunavik
 * Far northern Ontario
 * The northern Prairie Provinces
 * The Rocky Mountain Foothills in Alberta and British Columbia
 * Most of the Yukon
 * Most of the Northwest Territories
 * Southwestern Nunavut

In the Southern Hemisphere, the Dfc climate is found only in small, isolated pockets in the Snowy Mountains of Australia, the Southern Alps of New Zealand, and the Lesotho Highlands. In South America, this climate occurs on the western slope of the central Andes in Chile and Argentina, where climatic conditions are notably more humid compared to the eastern slope. The presence of the Andes mountain range contributes to a wetter climate on the western slope by capturing moisture from the Pacific Ocean, resulting in increased precipitation, especially during the winter months. This climate zone supports the presence of temperate rainforests, mostly on highest areas of the Valdivian rainforest in Chile and the subantarctic forest in Argentina.

Dsc and Dsd distribution
Climates classified as Dsc or Dsd, with a dry summer, are rare, occurring in very small areas at high elevation around the Mediterranean Basin, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Alaska and other parts of the northwestern United States (Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon, Southern Idaho, California's Eastern Sierra), the Russian Far East, Seneca, Oregon, and Atlin, British Columbia. Turkey and Afghanistan are exceptions;  Dsc climates are common in Northeast Anatolia, in the Taurus and Köroğlu Mountains, and the Central Afghan highlands.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the Dsc climate is present in South America as a subarctic climate influenced by Mediterranean characteristics, often considered a high-altitude variant of the Mediterranean climate. It is located on the eastern slopes of the central Argentine Andes and in some sections on the Chilean side. While there are no major settlements exhibiting this climate, several localities in the vicinity experience it, such as San Carlos de Bariloche, Villa La Angostura, San Martín de los Andes, Balmaceda, Punta de Vacas, and Termas del Flaco.

Dwc and Dwd distribution
Climates classified as Dwc or Dwd, with a dry winter, are found in parts of East Asia, like China, where the Siberian High makes the winters colder than places like Scandinavia or Alaska interior but extremely dry (typically with around 5 mm of rainfall equivalent per month), meaning that winter snow cover is very limited. The Dwc climate can be found in:
 * Much of northern Mongolia
 * Russia:
 * Most of Khabarovsk Krai except the south
 * Southeastern Sakha Republic
 * Southern Magadan Oblast
 * Northern Amur Oblast
 * Northern Buryatia
 * Zabaykalsky Krai
 * Irkutsk Oblast
 * China:
 * Tahe County and Mohe County in Heilongjiang
 * Northern Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia
 * Gannan in Gansu (due to extreme elevation)
 * Huangnan, eastern Hainan and eastern Guoluo in Qinghai (due to extreme elevation)
 * Most of Garzê and Ngawa Autonomous Prefectures (due to extreme elevation) in Sichuan
 * Most of Qamdo Prefecture (due to extreme elevation) in the Tibet Autonomous Region
 * Parts of Ladakh (including Siachen Glacier) and Spiti regions of India
 * Middle reaches of the Himalayas in Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Northeast India.
 * Parts of Kaema Plateau (including Mount Baekdu, Samjiyon, Musan) in North Korea

In the Southern Hemisphere, small pockets of the Lesotho Highlands and the Drakensberg Mountains have a Dwc classification.

title: Subarctic climate


text:
Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (12 January 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs during the entire rule of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), and led Amt Rosenberg ("Rosenberg's bureau"), an official Nazi body for cultural policy and surveillance, between 1934 and 1945. During World War II, Rosenberg was the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (1941–1945). After the war, he was convicted of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on 16 October 1946.

The author of a seminal work of Nazi ideology, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including its racial theory, including its hatred of the Jewish people, the need for Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to what was considered "degenerate" modern art. He was also known for his hatred and rejection of Christianity, however, he played an important role in the development of German nationalist Positive Christianity, which denied that Jesus is the Messiah and rejected the Old Testament.

Family
Rosenberg was born on 12 January 1893 in Reval, now Tallinn (the capital of modern Estonia), then in the Governorate of Estonia (Russian Empire). His mother Elfriede (née Siré), who had French and German ancestry, was the daughter of Louise Rosalie (née Fabricius), born near Leal (modern Lihula, Estonia) in 1842, and of the railway official Friedrich August Siré, born in Saint-Petersburg (Russian Empire) in 1843. Born in the same city in 1868, Elfriede Siré received the Christian sacrament of Confirmation in Reval at 17 in 1885. She married Woldemar Wilhelm Rosenberg, a wealthy merchant from Reval, in the Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (St-Petersburg) in 1886. His paternal grandfather, Martin Rosenberg, was a master shoemaker and elder of his guild. Born in Riga in 1820, and probably partly of Latvian descent, he had moved to Reval in the 1850s, where he met Julie Elisabeth Stramm, born in Jörden (Estonia) in 1835. The two married in the German St. Nicholas parish of Reval in 1856. His mother died two months after his birth.

The Hungarian-Jewish journalist Franz Szell, who was apparently residing in Tilsit, Prussia, Germany, spent a year researching in Latvian and Estonian archives before publishing an open letter in 1936, with copies to Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and others, accusing Rosenberg of having "no drop of German blood" flowing in his veins. Szell wrote that among Rosenberg's ancestors were only "Latvians, Jews, Mongols, and French." As a result of his open letter, Szell was deported by Lithuanian authorities on 15 September 1936. His claims were repeated in the 15 September 1937 issue of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

Education and early career
The young Rosenberg graduated from the Petri-Realschule (currently Tallinna Reaalkool) and enrolled in architecture studies at the Riga Polytechnical Institute in the Autumn of 1910. In 1915, as the German army was approaching Riga, the entire school evacuated to the Moscow Imperial Higher Technical School (Императорское Московское техническое училище (ИМТУ)), where he completed his PhD studies in 1917. During his stays at home in Reval, he attended the art studio of the famed painter Ants Laikmaa - though he showed promise, there are no records that he ever exhibited.

During the German occupation of Estonia in 1918, Rosenberg served as a drawing teacher at the Gustav Adolf Gymnasium and Tallinna Reaalkool ). He gave his first speech on Jewish Marxism on 30 November, at the House of the Blackheads, after the 28 November 1918 outbreak of the Estonian War of Independence. He emigrated to Germany with the retreating Imperial German army, along with Max Scheubner-Richter, who served as something of a mentor to Rosenberg and to his ideology. Arriving in Munich, he contributed to Dietrich Eckart's publication, the Völkischer Beobachter (Ethnic/Nationalist Observer). By this time, he was both an antisemite – influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain's book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, one of the key proto-Nazi books of racial theory – and an anti-Bolshevik. Rosenberg became one of the earliest members of the German Workers' Party – later renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party – joining in January 1919, eight months before Adolf Hitler joined in September. According to some historians, Rosenberg had also been a member of the Thule Society, along with Eckart, although Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that they were only guests. After the Völkischer Beobachter became the Nazi party newspaper in December 1920, Rosenberg became its editor in 1923. Rosenberg was a leading member of Aufbau Vereinigung, Reconstruction Organisation, a conspiratorial organisation of White Russian émigrés which had a critical influence on early Nazi policy.

Rosenberg sympathized and identified with Talaat Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress that carried out the Armenian genocide, also claiming that there was "a deliberately Jewish policy which had always protected the Armenians" and that "during the world war, the Armenians have led the espionage against the Turks, similar to the Jews against Germany".

Nazi Party
In 1923, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler, who had been imprisoned for treason, appointed Rosenberg as the leader of the Nazi movement. Hitler remarked privately in later years that his choice of Rosenberg, whom he regarded as weak and lazy, was strategic; Hitler did not want the temporary leader of the Nazis to become too popular or hungry for power, because a person with either of those two qualities might not want to cede the party leadership after Hitler's release. However, at the time of the appointment Hitler had no reason to believe that he would soon be released, and Rosenberg had not appeared weak, so this may have been Hitler reading back into history his dissatisfaction with Rosenberg for the job he did.

On 1 January 1924, Rosenberg founded the Greater German People's Community, a Nazi front organization. Headquartered in Munich, it was largely limited to Bavaria, the birthplace of National Socialism, had no substantial presence outside that State and became a haven for Nazi Party members from that area. Prominent members included Max Amann, Phillip Bouhler, Hermann Esser, Franz Xaver Schwarz and Julius Streicher. Rosenberg, one of the least charismatic of the Nazi leaders and lacking in leadership qualities, was soon pushed aside by Streicher, a far more ruthless and abrasive personality, who was elected Chairman on 9 July 1924 with Esser, also a coarse, bullying sort, as his Deputy Chairman.

In 1929 Rosenberg founded the Militant League for German Culture. He later formed the "Institute for Research on the Jewish Question", the first branch of a projected Advanced School of the NSDAP, dedicated to identifying and attacking supposed Jewish influence in German culture and to recording the history of Judaism from a radical nationalist perspective. He was elected as a Reichstag Deputy in 1930 and would continue to serve in this capacity until the end of the Nazi regime. First elected as a representative of the electoral list, from 1933 on he represented electoral constituency 33, Hesse. In 1930, he also published his book on racial theory The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts) which deals with key issues in the Nazi ideology, such as the "Jewish question." Rosenberg intended his book as a sequel to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's above-cited book. Despite selling more than a million copies by 1945, its influence within Nazism remains doubtful. It is often said to have been a book that was officially venerated within Nazism, but one that few had actually read beyond the first chapter or even found comprehensible. Hitler called it "stuff nobody can understand" and disapproved of its pseudo-religious tone.

Rosenberg helped convince Hitler, whose early speeches focused on revenge against France and Britain, that communism was a serious threat to Germany. "Jewish-Bolshevism" became an ideological target for Nazism during the early 1920s.

In Rome during November 1932 Rosenberg participated in the Volta Conference about Europe. British historian Sir Charles Petrie met him there and regarded him with great distaste; Petrie was a Catholic and strongly objected to Rosenberg's anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic sentiments.

The following year, following the Nazi seizure of power, Rosenberg was named leader of the Nazi Party's Foreign Policy Office in April, and on 2 June 1933 he was named a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. In May 1933 Rosenberg visited Britain, to give the impression that the Nazis would not be a threat and to encourage links between the new regime and the British Empire. It was a notable failure. When Rosenberg laid a wreath bearing a swastika at the Cenotaph, a Labour Party candidate slashed it, later threw it in the Thames and was fined 40 shillings for willful damage at Bow Street magistrate's court.

In October 1933, Rosenberg was named as a member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. Then on 27 January 1934, Hitler made Rosenberg the "Führer's Representative for the Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Education of the NSDAP." This was the origin of the Amt Rosenberg.

Racial theories
As the Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies. Rosenberg built on the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Madison Grant and the Klansman Lothrop Stoddard as well as on the beliefs of Hitler. Rosenberg placed Blacks and Jews at the very bottom of the ladder, while at the very top stood the "Aryan" race. Rosenberg promoted the Nordic theory which considered the Nordic race the "master race", superior to all others, including to other Aryans (Indo-Europeans). He was also influenced by the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory promoted by the Catholic counter-revolutionary tradition, such as the book Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens (1869) by Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux, which he translated into German under the title The Eternal Jew.

Rosenberg got the racial term Untermensch from the title of Stoddard's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-men, which had been adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).

Rosenberg reshaped the Nazi racial policy over the years, but it always consisted of Aryan supremacy, extreme German nationalism and rabid antisemitism. Rosenberg also outspokenly opposed homosexuality – notably in his pamphlet "Der Sumpf" ("The Swamp", 1927). He viewed homosexuality as a hindrance to the expansion of the Nordic population.

Rosenberg's attitude towards Slavs was flexible because it depended on the particular nation which he referred to. As a result of the ideology of "Drang nach Osten" ("Drive to the East"), Rosenberg saw his mission as the conquest and colonization of the Slavic East. In ''Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts'' Rosenberg describes Russian Slavs as being overwhelmed by Bolshevism. Regarding Ukrainians, he favoured setting up a buffer state to ease the pressure on the German eastern frontier, while agreeing with the notion that Russia could be exploited for the benefit of Germany. During the war, Rosenberg was in favour of collaboration with the East Slavs against Bolshevism and offering them national independence unlike other Nazis such as Hitler and Himmler who dismissed such ideas.

Rosenberg criticised those who did not subscribe to his racial theories. For example, he attacked Fascist Italy for what he perceived as its incorrect and improper stance on race and Jewishness.

Religious theories
Rosenberg was raised as a Lutheran, but he rejected Christianity later in life. Instead, Rosenberg argued for a new "religion of the blood", which was based on the supposed innate promptings of the Nordic soul to defend its noble character against racial and cultural degeneration.

In his 1920 book Immorality in the Talmud, Rosenberg identified Jews with the antichrist. He rejected Christianity because its universality, for its doctrine of original sin (as he believed that all ethnic Germans were born noble), and for its teachings on the immortality of the soul, saying, "indeed, absorbing Christianity enfeebled our people." Publicly, Rosenberg affected to deplore Christianity's degeneration owing to its Jewish influence. He took inspiration from Houston Stewart Chamberlain's ideas and condemned what he called "Negative Christianity" (which was conventional Christianity preached by Protestantism and Catholicism), instead Rosenberg was arguing for a so-called "Positive" Christianity which was based on the argument that Jesus was not a Jew but a member of an Indo-European enclave which was resident in ancient Galilee who fought against Judaism. Significantly, in his work explicating the Nazi intellectual belief system, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, Rosenberg cryptically applauds the early Christian heretic Marcion (who rejected the Old Testament as well as the notion of Christ as the Jewish Messiah) and the Manichaean-inspired, "Aryo-Iranian" Cathari, as being the more authentic interpreters of Christianity versus historically dominant Judaeo-Christianity; moreover these ancient, externally Christian metaphysical forms were more "organically compatible with the Nordic sense of the spiritual and the Nordic 'blood-soul'." For Rosenberg, the anti-intellectual, religious doctrine was inseparable from serving the interests of the Nordic race, connecting the individual to his racial nature. Rosenberg stated that "The general ideas of the Roman and of the Protestant churches are negative Christianity and do not, therefore, accord with our (German) soul." His support for Luther as a great German figure was always ambivalent.

In January 1934, Hitler appointed Rosenberg cultural and educational leader of the Reich. The Sanctum Officium in Rome recommended that Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century be put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of books forbidden by the Catholic Church) for scorning and rejecting "all dogmas of the Catholic Church, and the very fundamentals of the Christian religion".

Rosenberg has been described as an atheist by some people, including Henry F. Gerecke, the Lutheran chaplain who communed with some of the Nuremberg prisoners with Lutheran backgrounds, like Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wilhelm Keitel. Due to his criticism of Christianity, some polemical texts have called him a neo-pagan.

Wartime activities
In 1940 Rosenberg was made head of the Hohe Schule (literally "high school", but the German phrase refers to a college), the Centre of National Socialist Ideological and Educational Research, out of which the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce) developed for the purpose of looting art and cultural goods. The ERR were especially active in Paris in looting art stolen from famous Jewish families such as the Rothschilds and that of Paul Rosenberg. Hermann Göring used the ERR to collect art for his own personal gratification. He created a "Special Task Force for Music" (Sonderstab Musik) to collect the best musical instruments and scores for use in a university to be built in Hitler's home town of Linz, Austria. The orders given to the Sonderstab Musik were to loot all forms of Jewish property in Germany and of those found in any country taken over by the German army, and any musical instruments or scores were to be immediately shipped to Berlin.

Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Following the invasion of the USSR, Rosenberg was appointed head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete) on 17 July 1941. Alfred Meyer served as his deputy and represented him at the Wannsee Conference. Another official of the Ministry, Georg Leibbrandt, also attended the conference, at Rosenberg's request.

Rosenberg had presented Hitler with his plan for the organization of the conquered Eastern territories, suggesting the establishment of new administrative districts, to replace the previously Soviet-controlled territories with new Reichskommissariats. These would be:

 * Ostland (Baltic countries and Belarus),
 * Ukraine (Ukraine and nearest territories),
 * Kaukasien (Caucasus area),
 * Moskowien (Moscow metropolitan area and the rest of nearest Russian European areas)

Although Rosenberg believed that all of the peoples of the Soviet Union were subhumans because of their communist beliefs, such suggestions were intended to encourage certain non-Russian forms of nationalism and promote German interests for the benefit of future Aryan generations, in accord with geopolitical "Lebensraum im Osten" plans. They would provide a buffer against Soviet expansion in preparation for the total eradication of Communism and Bolshevism by decisive pre-emptive military action.

Following these plans, when Wehrmacht forces invaded Soviet-controlled territory, they immediately implemented the first of the proposed Reichskommissariats of Ostland and Ukraine, under the leadership of Hinrich Lohse and Erich Koch, respectively. The organization of these administrative territories led to conflict between Rosenberg and the SS over the treatment of Slavs under German occupation. As Nazi Germany's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg considered Slavs, though lesser than Germans, to be Aryan. Rosenberg often complained to Hitler and Himmler about the treatment of non-Jewish occupied peoples. He proposed the creation of buffer satellite states made out of Greater Finland, Baltica, Ukraine, and Caucasus.

During an 18 November 1941 press conference, he made the following statements about the Jewish question: "Some six million Jews still live in the East, and this question can only be solved by a biological extermination of the whole of Jewry in Europe. The Jewish Question will only be solved for Germany when the last Jew has left German territory, and it will only be solved for Europe when not a single Jew stands on the European continent as far as the Urals... And to this end, it is necessary to force them beyond the Urals or otherwise bring about their eradication."

At the Nuremberg trials he said he was ignorant of the Holocaust, despite the fact that Leibbrandt and Meyer were present at the Wannsee conference.

Wartime propaganda efforts

Since the invasion of the Soviet Union intended to impose the New Order, it was essentially a war of conquest. German propaganda efforts designed to win over Russian opinion were, at best, patchy and inconsistent. Alfred Rosenberg was one of the few in the Nazi hierarchy who advocated a policy designed to encourage anti-Communist opinion among the population of the occupied territories. His interest here was mainly in the non-Russian areas such as Ukraine and the Baltic States; however, supporters of the Russian Liberation Army were somewhat able to win him over.

Amongst other things, Rosenberg issued a series of posters announcing the end of the Soviet collective farms (kolkhoz). He also issued an Agrarian Law in February 1942, annulling all Soviet legislation on farming and restoring family farms for those willing to collaborate with the occupiers. But decollectivisation conflicted with the wider demands of wartime food production, and Hermann Göring demanded that the collective farms be retained, save for a change of name. Hitler himself denounced the redistribution of land as "stupid".

There were numerous German armed forces (Wehrmacht) posters asking for assistance in the Bandenkrieg, the war against the Soviet partisans, though, once again, German policy had the effect of adding to their problems. Posters for "volunteer" labour, with inscriptions such as "Come work with us to shorten the war", hid the appalling realities faced by Russian workers in Germany. Rosenberg noted that many joined the partisans when volunteers for work details declined and the Germans resorted to force to acquire workers from the East.

Capture, trial and execution
Rosenberg was captured by Allied troops on 19 May 1945 in Flensburg-Mürwik. He was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty of all four counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. The final judgment against him named him one of the principal planners of the invasion of Norway and the invasion of the Soviet Union. It also held him directly responsible for the systematic plunder of the occupied countries of Europe, as well as the brutal conditions in Eastern Europe. During his trial he wrote his memoirs, which were published posthumously and with analytical commentary by Serge Lang and Ernst von Schenck.

He was sentenced to death and executed with other condemned co-defendants at Nuremberg Prison on the morning of 16 October 1946. His body, like those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.

Throughout the trial, it was agreed that Rosenberg had a decisive role in shaping Nazi philosophy and ideology. Examples include: his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century, which was published in 1930, where he incited hatred against "Liberal Imperialism" and "Bolshevik Marxism"; furthering the influence of the "Lebensraum" idea in Germany during the war; facilitating the persecution of Christian churches and the Jews in particular; and opposition to the Versailles Treaty.

According to Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, who covered the executions for the International News Service, Rosenberg was the only condemned man who, when asked at the gallows if he had any last statement to make, replied with only one word: "No".

Views and influence on Nazi policy
Hitler was a leader oriented towards practical politics, whereas, for Rosenberg, religion and philosophy were key and he was the most culturally influential within the party. Several accounts of the time before the Nazi ascension to power speak of Hitler as being a mouthpiece for Rosenberg's views, and he clearly exerted a great deal of intellectual influence.

The question of Rosenberg's influence in the Nazi Party is controversial. He was perceived as lacking the charisma and political skills of the other Nazi leaders, and was somewhat isolated. In some of his speeches Hitler appeared to be close to Rosenberg's views, rejecting traditional Christianity as a religion based on Jewish culture, preferring an ethnically and culturally pure "Race" whose destiny was supposed to be assigned to the German people by "Providence". But Hitler rejected Rosenberg's spiritual views on race but instead based his views on biology.

After Hitler's assumption of power he moved to unify the churches into a national church which could be manipulated and controlled. He placed himself in the position of being the man to save Positive Christianity from utter destruction at the hands of the atheistic antitheist Communists of the Soviet Union. This was especially true immediately before and after the elections of 1932; Hitler wanted to appear non-threatening to major Christian faiths and consolidate his power.

Some Nazi leaders, such as Martin Bormann, were anti-Christian and sympathetic to Rosenberg. Once in power, Hitler and most Nazi leaders sought to unify the Christian denominations in favor of "positive Christianity". Hitler privately condemned mystical and pseudoreligious interests as "nonsense", and maintained that National Socialism was based on science and should avoid mystic and cultic practices. However, he and Joseph Goebbels agreed that after the Endsieg (Final Victory) the Reich Church should be pressed into evolving into a German social evolutionist organisation proclaiming the cult of race, blood and battle, instead of Redemption and the Ten Commandments of Moses, which they deemed outdated and Jewish.

Heinrich Himmler's views were among the closest to Rosenberg's, and their estrangement was perhaps created by Himmler's abilities to put into action what Rosenberg had only written. Also, while Rosenberg thought Christianity should be allowed to die out, Himmler actively set out to create countering pagan rituals.

Lieutenant Colonel William Harold Dunn (1898–1955) wrote a medical and psychiatric report on him in prison to evaluate him as a suicide risk: "He gave the impression of clinging to his own theories in a fanatical and unyielding fashion and to have been little influenced by the unfolding during the trial of the cruelty and crimes of the party."

Summarizing the unresolved conflict between the personal views of Rosenberg and the pragmatism of the Nazi elite: The ruthless pursuit of Nazi aims turned out to mean not, as Rosenberg had hoped, the permeation of German life with the new ideology; it meant concentration of the combined resources of party and state on total war.

Personal life
Rosenberg was married twice. In 1915, he married Hilda Leesmann, an ethnic Estonian; they divorced in 1923. Two years later, in 1925 he married Hedwig Kramer, to whom he remained wed until his execution by the Allies. He and Kramer had two children: a son who died in infancy and a daughter, Irene, who was born in 1930. His wife died in 1947.

Writings

 * Unmoral im Talmud, 1920, Ernst Boepple's Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich ("Immorality in the Talmud")
 * Das Verbrechen der Freimaurerei: Judentum, Jesuitismus, Deutsches Christentum, 1921 ("The Crime of Freemasonry: Judaism, Jesuitism, German Christianity")
 * Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei, 1922, Ernst Boepple's Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich ("Being, principles, and goals of the National Socialist German Worker's Party")
 * Pest in Russland. Der Bolschewismus, seine Häupter, Handlanger und Opfer, 1922, Ernst Boepple's Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich ("The Plague in Russia. Bolshevism, its heads, henchmen, and victims")
 * Bolschewismus, Hunger, Tod, 1922, Ernst Boepple's Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich ("Bolshevism, hunger, death")
 * Der staatsfeindliche Zionismus. ("Zionism, the Enemy of the State"), 1922.
 * Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion und die jüdische Weltpolitik, 1923 ("The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Jewish World Politics")
 * The Jewish Bolshevism, Britons Pub. Society, 1923, together with Ernst Boepple
 * Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1930 ("The Myth of the 20th Century")
 * Dietrich Eckart. Ein Vermächtnis, 1935 ("Dietrich Eckart: A Legacy")
 * An die Dunkelmänner unserer Zeit. Eine Antwort auf die Angriffe gegen den "Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts", 1937 ("The Obscurantists of Our Time: A Response to the Attacks Against 'The Myth of the 20th Century)
 * Protestantische Rompilger. Der Verrat an Luther und der "Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts", 1937 ("Protestant Rome Pilgrims: The Betrayal of Luther and the 'Myth of the 20th Century)
 * Portrait eines Menschheitsverbrechers, 1949, with analytical commentary by Serge Lang and Ernst von Schenck ("Memoirs of Alfred Rosenberg: With Commentaries")
 * Die Macht der Form, Unknown ("The Power of Form")

Diary
During the Nuremberg trials, Rosenberg's handwritten diary was translated by Harry Fiss, Chief of Documentation for the American prosecution. After its use in evidence during the Nuremberg trials, the diary went missing, along with other material which had been given to the prosecutor Robert Kempner (1899–1993). It was recovered in Lewiston, N.Y., on 13 June 2013. Written on 425 loose-leaf pages, with entries dating from 1936 through 1944, it is now the property of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington. Henry Mayer, the museum's senior archivist, and the son of a Holocaust survivor, was able to access the material and while "not given enough time to read [the] diary entry from beginning to end," he "could see that Rosenberg focused on certain subjects, including brutality against Jews and other ethnic groups and forcing the civilian population of occupied Russia to serve Germany." Meyer also noted Rosenberg's "hostile comments about Nazi leaders," which he described as "unvarnished." While some parts of the manuscript had been previously published, the majority had been lost for decades. Former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert King Wittman, who helped track down the diary, said, "there is no place in the diary where we have Rosenberg or Hitler saying the Jews should be exterminated, all it said was 'move them out of Europe. The New York Times said of the search for the missing manuscript that "the tangled journey of the diary could itself be the subject of a television mini-series." Since the end of 2013, the USHMM has shown the 425-page document (photos and transcripts) on its homepage.

title: Alfred Rosenberg