title: Edward G. Robinson

text: Robinson died of bladder cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on January 26, 1973. Services were held at Temple Israel in Los Angeles where Charlton Heston delivered the eulogy. Over 1,500 friends of Robinson attended with another 500 crowded outside. His body was then flown to New York where it was entombed in a crypt in the family mausoleum at Beth-El Cemetery in Brooklyn. Among his pallbearers were Jack L. Warner, Hal B. Wallis, Mervyn LeRoy, George Burns, Sam Jaffe, and Frank Sinatra.


title: Edward G. Robinson

text: In October 2000, Robinson's image was imprinted on a U.S. postage stamp, its sixth in its Legends of Hollywood series.


title: Edward G. Robinson

text: Robinson has been the inspiration for a number of animated television characters, usually caricatures of his most distinctive 'snarling gangster' guise. An early version of the gangster character Rocky, featured in the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Racketeer Rabbit", shared his likeness. This version of the character also appears briefly in "Justice League", in the episode "Comfort and Joy", as an alien with Robinson's face and non-human body, who hovers past the screen as a background character.


title: Edward G. Robinson

text: Similar caricatures also appeared in "The Coo-Coo Nut Grove", "Thugs with Dirty Mugs" and "Hush My Mouse". Another character based on Robinson's tough-guy image was The Frog (Chauncey "Flat Face" Frog) from the cartoon series "Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse". The voice of B.B. Eyes in "The Dick Tracy Show" was based on Robinson, with Mel Blanc and Jerry Hausner sharing voicing duties. The "Wacky Races" animated series character 'Clyde' from the Ant Hill Mob was based on Robinson's Little Caesar persona.


title: Edward G. Robinson

text: Voice actor Hank Azaria has noted that the voice of "Simpsons" character police chief Clancy Wiggum is an impression of Robinson. This has been explicitly joked about in episodes of the show. In "The Day the Violence Died" (1996), a character states that Chief Wiggum is clearly based on Robinson. In 2008's "Treehouse of Horror XIX", Wiggum and Robinson's ghost each accuse the other of being rip-offs.


title: Edward G. Robinson

text: Another caricature of Robinson appears in two episodes of "" season two, in the person of Lt. Tan Divo. Arok the Hutt was inspired by Edward G. Robinson's gangster portrayals in


title: Edward G. Robinson

text: Robinson was played by Michael Stuhlbarg in the 2015 film "Trumbo". His portrayal as a man who named supposed communists is controversial.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The Free City of Danzig (; ; ) was a city-state under the protection of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and nearly 200 other small localities in the surrounding areas.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The polity was created on 15 November 1920 in accordance with the terms of Article 100 (Section XI of Part III) of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the end of World War I. In line with the treaty provisions, the entity was established under the oversight of the League of Nations. Although predominantly German-populated, the territory was bound by the imposed union with Poland covering foreign policy, defence, customs, railways and post, while remaining distinct from both the post-war German Republic and the newly independent Polish Republic. In addition, Poland was given certain rights pertaining to port facilities in the city.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: In the 1920 Constituent Assembly election, the Polish Party received over 6% of the vote, but its percentage of votes later declined to about 3%. In 1921, Poland began to develop the city of Gdynia, then a midsized fishing town. This completely new port north of Danzig was established on territory awarded in 1919, the so-called Polish Corridor. By 1933, the commerce passing through Gdynia exceeded that of Danzig. Notwithstanding this, Poland refused to relinquish trading and other rights awarded to it, further alienating the Danzigers. By 1936, the city's senate had a majority of local Nazis, and agitation to rejoin Germany was stepped up. Many Jews fled from German antisemitism, persecution, and oppression. In 1938, the Free City's population of 410,000 was 98% German, 1% Polish and 1% other.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis abolished the Free City and incorporated the area into the newly formed of Danzig-West Prussia. The Nazis classified the Poles and Jews living in the city as subhumans, subjecting them to discrimination, forced labor, and extermination. Many were murdered at Nazi concentration camps, including nearby Stutthof (now Sztutowo, Poland). Upon the city's capture in the early months of 1945 by the Soviet and Polish troops, a significant number of German inhabitants perished during the ill-prepared and much over-delayed attempts of evacuation over the sea, while the remainder fled or were expelled.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The city was fully reintegrated into Poland as a result of the Potsdam Agreement, while members of the pre-war Polish ethnic minority started returning and new Polish settlers began to come. Gdańsk suffered severe underpopulation from these events and did not recover until the late 1950s.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Danzig had an early history of independence. It was a leading player in the Prussian Confederation directed against the Teutonic Monastic State of Prussia. The Confederation stipulated with the Polish king, Casimir IV Jagiellon, that the Polish Crown would be invested with the role of head of state of western parts of Prussia (Royal Prussia). In contrast, Ducal Prussia remained a Polish fief. Danzig and other cities such as Elbing and Thorn financed most of the warfare and enjoyed a high level of city autonomy. Danzig used the title "Royal Polish City of Danzig".


title: Free City of Danzig

text: In 1569, when Royal Prussia's estates agreed to incorporate the region into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the city insisted on preserving its special status. It defended itself through the costly Siege of Danzig in 1577 in order to preserve special privileges, and subsequently insisted on negotiating by sending emissaries directly to the Polish king. Danzig's location as a deep-water port where the Vistula river met the Baltic Sea had made it into one of the wealthiest cities in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries as grain from Poland and Ukraine was shipped down the Vistula on barges to be loaded onto ships in Danzig, where it was shipped on to western Europe. As many of the merchants shipping the grain from Danzig were Dutch, who built Dutch-style houses for themselves, leading to other Danzigers imitating them, the city was thus given a distinctively Dutch appearance. Danzig become known as "the Amsterdam of the East", a wealthy seaport and trading crossroads that linked together the economics of western and eastern Europe, and whose location at where the Vistula flowed into the Baltic led to various powers competing to rule the city.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Although Danzig became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, Prussia was conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806, and in September 1807 Napoleon declared Danzig a semi-independent client state of the French Empire, known as the Free City of Danzig. It lasted seven years, until it was re-incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia in 1814, after Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig (Battle of Nations) by a coalition that included Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The city remained part of Prussia until 1920, becoming part of the "Reich" in 1871.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Point 13 of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points called for Polish independence to be restored and for Poland to have "secure access to the sea", a promise that implied that Danzig, which occupied a strategic location where the Vistula river flowed into the Baltic sea, should become part of Poland. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Polish delegation led by Roman Dmowski asked for Wilson to honor point 13 of the Fourteen Points by transferring Danzig to Poland, arguing that Poland would not be economically viable without Danzig and that since the city had been part of Poland until 1793, it was rightfully part of Poland anyway. However, Wilson had promised that national self-determination would be the basis of the Treaty of Versailles. As 90% of the people in Danzig in this period were German, the Allied leaders at the Paris Peace Conference compromised by creating the Free City of Danzig, a city-state in which Poland had certain special rights. It was felt that including a city that was 90% German into Poland would be a violation of the principle of national self-determination, but at the same time the promise in the Fourteen Points of allowing Poland "secure access to the sea" gave Poland a claim on Danzig, hence the compromise of the Free City of Danzig.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The Free City of Danzig was largely the work of British diplomacy as both the French Premier Georges Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson supported the Polish claim to Danzig (Gdańsk), and it was only objections from the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George that prevented Danzig from going to Poland. Despite creating the Free City, the British did not really believe in the viability of the Free City of Danzig with Lloyd George writing at the time: "France would tomorrow fight for Alsace if her right to it were contested. But would we make war for Danzig?" The Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote in the summer of 1918 that the Germans had such a ferocious contempt for Poles that it was unwise for Germany to lose any territory to Poland even if morally justified as the Germans would never accept losing land to the despised Poles and such a situation was bound to cause a war. During the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the British consistently sought to minimize German territorial losses to Poland under the grounds that the Germans had such an utter contempt for the Poles together with the rest of the Slavic peoples that such losses were bound to deeply wound their feelings and cause a war. For all the bitterness of the French–German enmity, the Germans had a certain grudging respect for the French that did not extend to the Poles at all. During the Paris Peace Conference, a commission of inquiry chaired by a British historian, James Headlam-Morley, investigating where the borders between Germany and Poland should be, started to research Danzig's history. Upon discovering that Danzig had been a Free City in the past, Headlam-Morley came up with what he regarded as a brilliant compromise solution under which Danzig would become a Free City again that would belong to neither Germany nor Poland. As the British were opposed to Danzig becoming part of Poland and the French and the Americans to Danzig remaining part of Germany, Headlam-Morley's compromise of the Free City of Danzig was embraced.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The rural areas around Danzig were overwhelmingly Polish and the representatives of the Polish farmers around Danzig complained about being included in the Free City of Danzig, stating they wanted to join Poland. For their part, the representatives of the German population of Danzig complained about being severed from Germany, and constantly demanded that the Free City of Danzig be reincorporated into the "Reich". The Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan wrote that a sense of Danzig national identity never emerged during the Free City's existence, and the German population of Danzig always regarded themselves as Germans who had been unjustly taken out of Germany. The loss of Danzig did indeed deeply hurt German national pride and in the interwar period, German nationalists spoke of the "open wound in the east" that was the Free City of Danzig. However, until the building of Gdynia, almost all of Poland's exports went through Danzig, and Polish public opinion was opposed to Germany having a "choke-hold" on the Polish economy.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The Free City of Danzig (1920–39) included the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), the towns of Zoppot (Sopot), Oliva (Oliwa), Tiegenhof (Nowy Dwór Gdański), Neuteich (Nowy Staw) and some 252 villages and 63 hamlets, covering a total area of 1,966 square kilometers (). The cities of Danzig (since 1818) and Zoppot (since 1920) formed independent cities (Stadtkreise), whereas all other towns and municipalities were part of one of the three rural districts (Landkreise), Danziger Höhe, (both seated in Danzig city) and , seated in Tiegenhof.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: In 1928, its territory covered 1,952 km including 58 square kilometers of freshwater surface. The border had a length of 290.5 km, of which the coastline accounted for 66.35 km.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The Free City was to be represented abroad by Poland and was to be in a customs union with it. The German railway line that connected the Free City with newly created Poland was to be administered by Poland, as were all rail lines in the territory of the Free City. On November 9, 1920, a convention that provided for the Presence of a Polish diplomatic representative in Danzig was signed between the Polish government and the Danzig authorities. In article 6, the Polish government undertook not to conclude any international agreements regarding Danzig without previous consultation with the Free City's government.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Unlike Mandatory territories, which were entrusted to member countries, the Free City of Danzig (like the Territory of the Saar Basin) remained directly under the authority of the League of Nations. Representatives of various countries took on the role of High Commissioner:


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The League of Nations refused to let the city-state use the term of "Hanseatic City" as part of its official name; this referred to Danzig's long-lasting membership in the Hanseatic League.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: With the creation of the Free City in the aftermath of World War I a security police force was created on 19 August 1919. On 9 April 1920, a military style marching band, the "Musikkorps", was formed. Led by composer Ernst Stieberitz, the police band became well known in the city and abroad. In 1921, Danzig's government reformed the entire institution and established the "Schutzpolizei", or protection police. Helmut Froböss became President of the Police (i. e. Chief) on 1 April 1921. He served in this capacity until the German annexation of the city.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The police initially operated from 12 precincts and 7 registration points. In 1926 the number of precincts was reduced to 7.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: After the Nazi takeover of the Senate, the police were increasingly used to suppress free speech and political dissent. In 1933, Froböss ordered the left-wing newspapers "Danziger Volksstimme" and "Danziger Landeszeitung" to suspend publications for 2 months and 8 days respectively.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: By 1939, Polish-German relations had worsened and war seemed a likely possibility. The police began making plans to seize Polish installations within the city, in the event of conflict. Ultimately the Danzig police participated in the September Campaign, fighting alongside the local SS and the German Army at the city's Polish post office and at Westerplatte.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Even though the Free City was formally annexed by Nazi Germany in October 1939, the police force more or less continued to operate as a law enforcement agency. The Stutthof concentration camp, 35 km east of the city, was run by the President of the police as an internment camp from 1939 until November 1941. Administration was finally dissolved when the city was occupied by the Soviets in 1945.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The Free City's population rose from 357,000 (1919) to 408,000 in 1929; according to the official census, 95% were Germans, with the rest mainly either Kashubians or Poles. According to E. Cieślak, the population registers of the Free City show that in 1929 the Polish population numbered 35,000, or 9.5% of the population.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Henryk Stępniak estimates the 1929 Polish population as around 22,000, or around 6% of the population, increasing to around 13% in the 1930s. Based on the estimated voting patterns (according to Stępniak many Poles voted for the Catholic Zentrumspartei instead of Polish parties), Stępniak estimates the number of Poles in the city to be 25–30% of Catholics living within it or about 30–36 thousand people. Including around 4,000 Polish nationals who were registered in the city, Stępniak estimated the Polish population as 9.4–11% of population. In contrast Stefan Samerski estimates about 10 percent of the 130,000 Catholics were Polish. Andrzej Drzycimski estimates that Polish population at the end of 30s reached 20% (including Poles who arrived after the war).


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The Treaty of Versailles required that the newly formed state have its own citizenship, based on residency. German inhabitants lost their German citizenship with the creation of the Free City, but were given the right to re-obtain it within the first two years of the state's existence. Anyone desiring German citizenship had to leave their property and make their residence outside the Free State of Danzig area in the remaining parts of Germany.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: In 1924, 54.7% of the populace was Protestant (220,731 persons, mostly Lutherans within the united old-Prussian church), 34.5% was Roman Catholic (140,797 persons), and 2.4% Jewish (9,239 persons). Other Protestants included 5,604 Mennonites, 1,934 Calvinists (Reformed), 1,093 Baptists, 410 Free Religionists, as well as 2,129 dissenters, 1,394 faithful of other religions and denominations, and 664 irreligionists. The Jewish community grew from 2,717 in 1910 to 7,282 in 1923, and 10,448 in 1929, many of them immigrants from Poland and Russia.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The mostly Lutheran and partially Reformed congregations situated in the territory of the Free City, which previously used to belong to the "Ecclesiastical Province of West Prussia" of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (EKapU), were transformed into the "Regional Synodal Federation of the Free City of Danzig" after 1920. The executive body of that ecclesiastical province, the consistory (est. 1 November 1886), was seated in Danzig. After 1920 it was restricted in its responsibility to those congregations within the Free City's territory. General Superintendent (1920–1933) and Bishop (1933–1945) presided over the consistory, one after another.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Unlike the Second Polish Republic, which opposed the cooperation of the with EKapU, Volkstag and Senate of Danzig approved cross-border religious bodies. Danzig's Regional Synodal Federation — just as the regional synodal federation of the autonomous Memelland — retained the status of an ecclesiastical province within EKapU.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: After the German annexation of the Free City in 1939, the EKapU merged the Danzig regional synodal federation in 1940 into the Ecclesiastical Region of Danzig-West Prussia. This included the Polish congregations of the United Evangelical Church in Poland in the homonymous Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and the German congregations in the West Prussia governorate. Danzig's consistory functioned as an executive body for that region. With the flight and expulsion of most ethnically German Protestant parishioners from the area of the Free City of Danzig between 1945 and 1948, the congregations vanished.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: In March 1945, the consistory had relocated to Lübeck and opened a refugee centre for Danzigers (Hilfsstelle beim evangelischen Konsistorium Danzig) led by Upper Consistorial Councillor . The Lutheran congregation of St. Mary's Church could relocate its valuable parament collection and the presbytery granted it on loan to St. Annen Museum in Lübeck after the war. Other Lutheran congregations of Danzig could reclaim their church bells, which the Wehrmacht had requisitioned as non-ferrous metal for war purposes since 1940, but which had survived, not yet melted down, in storage (e.g. ) in the British zone of occupation. The presbyteries granted them usually to Northwestern German Lutheran congregations which had lost bells due to the war.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The 36 Catholic parishes in the territory of the Free City in 1922 used to belong in equal shares to the Diocese of Culm, which was mostly Polish, and the Diocese of Ermland, which was mostly German. While the Second Polish Republic wanted all the parishes within the Free City to form part of Polish Culm, Volkstag and Senate wanted them all to become subject to German Ermland. In 1922 the Holy See suspended the jurisdictions of both dioceses over their parishes in the Free State and established an exempt apostolic administration for the territory.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The first apostolic administrator was Edward O'Rourke (born in Minsk and of Irish ancestry) who became Bishop of Danzig on the occasion of the elevation of the administration to an exempt diocese in 1925. He was naturalised as Danziger on the same occasion. In 1938 he resigned after quarrels with the Nazi-dominated Senate of Danzig on appointments of parish priests of Polish ethnicity. The senate also instigated the denaturalisation of O'Rourke, who subsequently became a Polish citizen. O'Rourke was succeeded by Bishop Carl Maria Splett, a native from the Free City area.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Splett remained bishop after the German annexation of the Free City. In early 1941, he applied for admitting the Danzig diocese as member in Archbishop Adolf Bertram's Eastern German Ecclesiastical Province and thus at the Fulda Conference of Bishops; however, Bertram, also speaker of the Fulda conference, rejected the request. Any arguments that the Free City of Danzig had been annexed to Nazi Germany did not impress Bertram since Danzig's annexation lacked international recognition. Until the reorganization of the Catholic dioceses in Danzig and the formerly eastern territories of Germany the diocesan territory remained unaltered and the see exempt. However, with the replacement of Danzig's population between 1945 and 1948 by mostly Catholic Poles, the number of Catholic parishes increased and most formerly Protestant churches were taken over for Catholic services.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Since 1883 most of the Jewish congregations in the later territory of Free State had merged into the Synagogal Community of Danzig. Only the Jews of Tiegenhof ran their own congregation until 1938.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Danzig became a centre of Polish and Russian Jewish emigration to North America. Between 1920 and 1925 60,000 Jews emigrated via Danzig to the US and Canada. At the same time, between 1923 and 1929, Danzig's own Jewish population increased from roughly 7,000 to 10,500. Native Jews and newcomers established themselves in the city and contributed to its civic life, culture and economy. Danzig became a venue for international meetings of Jewish organisations, such as the convention of delegates from Jewish youth organisations of various nations, attended by David Ben-Gurion, which founded the World Union of Jewish Youth on 2 September 1924 in the Schützenhaus venue. On 21 March 1926 the "Zionistische Organisation für Danzig" convened delegates of Hechalutz from all over for the first conference in Danzig using Hebrew as common language, also attended by Ben Gurion.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: With a Nazi majority in the Volkstag and Senate, anti-Semitic persecution and discrimination occurred unsanctioned by the authorities. In contrast to Germany, which exercised capital outflow control since 1931, emigration of Danzig's Jews was nonetheless somewhat easier, with capital transfers enabled by the Bank of Danzig. Moreover, the comparatively few Danzig Jews were offered easier refuge in safe countries because of favorable Free City migration quotas.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: After the anti-Jewish riots of Kristallnacht of 9/10 November 1938 in Germany, similar riots took place on 12/13 November in Danzig. The Great Synagogue was taken over and demolished by the local authorities in 1939. Most Jews had already left the city, and the Jewish Community of Danzig decided to organize its own emigration in early 1939.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The Free City was governed by the Senate of the Free City of Danzig, which was elected by the parliament (Volkstag) for a legislative period of four years. The official language was German, although the usage of Polish was guaranteed by law. The political parties in the Free City corresponded with the political parties in Weimar Germany; the most influential parties in the 1920s were the conservative German National People's Party, the Social Democratic Party of the Free City of Danzig and the Catholic Centre Party. A Communist Party was founded in 1921 with its origins in the Spartacus League and the Communist Party of East Prussia. Several liberal parties and Free Voter's Associations existed and ran in the elections with varying success. A Polish Party represented the Polish minority and received between 3% (1933) and 6% (1920) of the vote (in total, 4,358 votes in 1933 and 9,321 votes in 1920).


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Initially, the Nazi Party had only a small amount of success (0.8% of the vote in 1927) and was even briefly dissolved. Its influence grew with the onset of difficult economic times and the increasing popularity of the Nazi Party in Germany proper. Albert Forster became the Gauleiter in October 1930. The Nazis won 50 percent of votes in the Volkstag elections of 28 May 1933, and took control of the Senate in June 1933, with Hermann Rauschning becoming President of the Senate of Danzig.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Rauschning was removed from his position by Forster and replaced by Arthur Greiser in November 1934. He later appealed to the public not to vote for the Nazis in the 1935 elections. Political opposition to the Nazis was repressed with several politicians being imprisoned and murdered. The economic policy of Danzig's Nazi-led government, which increased the public expenditures for employment-creation programs and the retrenchment of financial aid from Germany led to a devaluation of more than 40% of the Danziger Gulden in 1935. The Gold reserves of the Bank of Danzig declined from 30 million Gulden in 1933 to 13 million in 1935 and the foreign asset reserve from 10 million to 250,000 Gulden. In 1935, Poland protested when Danzig's Senate reduced the value of the Gulden so that it would be the same as the Polish zloty.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: As in Germany, the Nazis introduced laws mirroring the Enabling Act and Nuremberg laws (November 1938); existing parties and unions were gradually banned. The presence of the League of Nations however still guaranteed a minimum of legal certainty. In 1935, the opposition parties, except for the Polish Party, filed a lawsuit to the Danzig High Court in protest against the manipulation of the Volkstag elections. The opposition also protested to the League of Nations, as did the Jewish Community of Danzig. The number of members of the Nazi Party in Danzig increased from 21,861 in June 1934 to 48,345 in September 1938.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Foreign relations were handled by Poland. In 1927, the Free City of Danzig sent a military advisory mission to Bolivia. The Bolivian government of Hernando Siles Reyes wanted to continue the pre-World War I German military mission but the Treaty of Versailles prohibited that. The German officers, including Ernst Röhm, were transferred to the Danzig police force and then sent to Bolivia. In 1929, after problems with the mission, the British embassy handled the return of the German officers.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The rights of the Second Polish Republic within the territory of the Free City were stipulated in the Treaty of Paris of 9 November 1920 and the Treaty of Warsaw of 24 October 1921. The details of the Polish privileges soon became a permanent matter of disputes between the local populace and the Polish State. While the representatives of the Free City tried to uphold the city's autonomy and sovereignty, Poland sought to extend its privileges.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Throughout the Polish–Soviet War, local dockworkers went on strike and refused to unload ammunition supplies for the Polish Army. While the ammunition was finally unloaded by British troops, the incident led to the establishment of a permanent ammunition depot at the Westerplatte and the construction of a trade and naval port in Gdynia, whose total exports and imports surpassed those of Danzig in May 1932. In December 1925, the Council of the League of Nations agreed to the establishment of a Polish military guard of 88 men on the Westerplatte peninsula to protect the war material depot.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: During the interwar period the Polish minority was heavily discriminated against by the German population, which openly attacked its members using racist slurs and harassment, and attacks against the Polish consulate by German students were praised by authorities. In June 1932, a crisis broke out when the Polish destroyer ORP "Wicher" was sent into Danzig harbour without the permission of the Senate to greet a visiting squadron of British destroyers. The crisis was resolved when the Free City granted more access rights to the Polish Navy in exchange for a promise to not take the "Wicher" back into Danzig harbour.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Several disputes between Danzig and Poland occurred in the sequel. The Free City protested against the Westerplatte depot, the placement of Polish letter boxes within the City and the presence of Polish war vessels at the harbour. The attempt of the Free City to join the International Labour Organization was rejected by the Permanent Court of International Justice at the League of Nations after protests of the Polish ILO delegate.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, the Polish military doubled the number of 88 troops at Westerplatte in order to test the reaction of the new chancellor. After protests the additional troops were withdrawn. Nazi propaganda used these events in the Volkstag elections of May 1933, in which Nazis won absolute majority.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Until June 1933, the High Commissioner decided in 66 cases of dispute between Danzig and Poland; in 54 cases one of the parties appealed to the Permanent Court of International Justice. Subsequent disputes were resolved in direct negotiations between the Senate and Poland after both had agreed to abstain from further appeals to the International Court in the summer of 1933 and bilateral agreements were concluded.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: In the aftermath of the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934, Danzig–Polish relations improved and Adolf Hitler instructed the local Nazi government to cease anti-Polish actions. In return, Poland did not support the actions of the anti-Nazi opposition in Danzig. The Polish Ambassador to Germany, Józef Lipski, stated in a meeting with Hermann Göring


title: Free City of Danzig

text: "... that a National Socialist Senate in Danzig is also most desirable from our point of view, since it brought about a rapprochement between the Free City and Poland, I would like to remind him that we have always kept aloof from internal Danzig problems. In spite of approaches repeatedly made by the opposition parties, we rejected any attempt to draw us into action against the Senate. I mentioned quite confidentially that the Polish minority in Danzig was advised not to join forces with the opposition at the time of elections."


title: Free City of Danzig

text: When Carl J. Burckhardt became High Commissioner in February 1937, both Poles and Germans openly welcomed his withdrawal, and Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Józef Beck notified him not to "count on the support of the Polish State" in the case of difficulties with the Senate or the Nazi Party.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: While the Senate appeared to respect the agreements with Poland, the "Nazification of Danzig proceeded relentlessly" and Danzig became a springboard for anti-Polish propaganda among the German and Ukrainian minority in Poland. The Catholic Bishop of Danzig, Edward O'Rourke, was forced to withdraw after he had tried to implement four additional Polish nationals as parish priests in October 1937.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The German policy openly changed immediately after the Munich Conference in October 1938, when German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop demanded the incorporation of the Free City into the Reich. The Polish ambassador to Germany, Jozef Lipski, declined Ribbentrop's offer, saying that Polish public opinion would not tolerate the Free City joining Germany and predicated that if Warsaw allowed that to happen, then the "Sanation" military dictatorship that had ruled Poland since 1926 would be overthrown. On 24 March 1939, the Polish Foreign Minister, Colonel Jozef Beck, who was part of the triumvirate which ruled the "Sanation" regime and largely ran foreign policy on his own, told a meeting of the Polish cabinet that Poland should go to war if Germany made any attempt to alter the status of Danzig. Beck stated that Danzig "regardless of what it is worth as an object" had become a "symbol" in Poland that was so important that Poland should go to war over the issue. Aside from the possibility that a revolution in Poland might overthrow the "Sanation" regime should it allow Danzig to be returned to Germany, Beck as part of his plans for a "Third Europe" (i.e. a block of Eastern European states under Polish leadership) had sought to develop economic relations with Sweden and Finland. Beck envisioned both Sweden and Finland joining the "Third Europe" block, and German plans to take back Danzig threatened to allow Germany a "choke-hold" on Poland's main link to the sea as the port facilities at Danzig were still better developed than those at Gdynia. Ernst von Weizsäcker on 29 March 1939 told the Danzig government the "Reich" would carry out a policy to the "Zermürbungspolitik" (point of destruction) towards Poland, saying a compromise solution was not wanted, and on 5 April 1939 told Hans-Adolf von Moltke under no conditions was he to negotiate with the Poles.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: On 31 March 1939, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced in the House of Commons a "guarantee" of Polish independence, stating that Britain would go to war with Germany if there was an attempt to end Polish independence, though Chamberlain pointedly excluded the borders of Poland from the "guarantee". In April 1939, High Commissioner Burckhardt was told by the Polish Commissioner-General that any attempt to alter its status would be answered with armed resistance on the part of Poland. Beck had not abandoned hopes of negotiating a settlement with Germany. During the spring and summer of 1939 it was the aim of British foreign policy to build a "peace front" embracing Britain, France, the Soviet Union and a number of other European states such as Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey with the aim of "containing" Germany.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Beck made it clear that he wanted no Polish-Soviet treaty to go along with the British-inspired "peace front" since an alliance with the Soviets would rule out any possibility of a settlement with Germany, which he still had hopes of reaching. Beck declined to have Polish diplomats take part in the talks between British, French and Soviet diplomats about having the Soviet Union join the "peace front", and during a visit to London in April 1939 he declined British offers to create a military alliance of Britain, Poland and Romania designed to block the "Reich"'s offers to expand its influence in Eastern Europe. The Polish historian Anita Prazmowska wrote that Beck's refusal of the British offers of assistance was partly due to his "inflated sense of self-importance and the general overestimation of Poland's military potential" as he believed that Poland was one of the world's great powers that could defeat Germany on its own, but also due to his desire not have Poland join the anti-German "peace front" at a time when he still believed that he could settle the Danzig issue. During his visit to London on 4–6 April 1939 Beck told Chamberlain that any effort to include the Soviet Union in the "peace front" would cause the very war it was supposed to prevent, and wanted to exclude the Soviet Union from the "peace front" for that reason. Before the Danzig crisis, the Polish General Staff had devoted far more time to planning a possible war with the Soviet Union rather than with Germany, and even after the Danzig crisis began, planning for a possible war with Germany went about in a rather haphazard and causal manner suggesting the Polish high command did not see war with Germany as very likely in 1939. On 5 May 1939, Beck in a speech broadcast on Polish radio stated that Poland wanted peace but that "peace...has its price, high but definable. We in Poland do not recognize the conception of peace at any price. There is only one thing..which is without price, and that is honor".


title: Free City of Danzig

text: All through the spring and summer of 1939 there was a massive media campaign in Germany demanding the immediate return of the Free City of Danzig to Germany under the slogan "Home to the "Reich"!". However, the Danzig crisis was a just a pretext for war. Ribbentrop ordered Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, the German ambassador to Poland, not to negotiate with the Poles over Danzig as it was always Ribbentrop's great fear that the Poles might actually agree to the Free City returning to Germany, thereby depriving the "Reich" of its pretext for attacking Poland. However, the German propaganda that all the "Reich" wanted was to bring Danzig home did some effect abroad. In April 1943, when mass graves of the Polish officers massacred by the NKVD in Katyn Wood were discovered, the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King wrote in his diary that it was the Poles who caused the outbreak of the war in 1939 by refusing to give in to Hitler's demand that Danzig be allowed to rejoin Germany, and as such it was the Poles' own fault for the Katyn Wood massacre and everything else they had suffered since 1939. The British historian Victor Rothwell described King's view that the Poles had caused their own suffering as one motivated by spite and his resentment at being pressured by public opinion into declaring war on Germany despite his own inclinations towards neutrality. From distant New Zealand, the Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage offered to return Western Samoa, which had once been the colony of German Samoa together with the rest of the former German islands in the Pacific held by New Zealand, in exchange for Germany promising not to use violence to alter the status of Danzig.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: However, in 1938, the "Reich" government had first demanded autonomy for the Sudetenland region and after Prague had conceded the demand for autonomy, had laid claim to the Sudetenland. On 15 March 1939, Germany had occupied the Czech part of Czecho-Slovakia, which had done immense damage to Hitler's claim that he was only trying to undo an "unjust" Treaty of Versailles by bringing all of the ethnic Germans "home to the "Reich"". The British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax late in August 1939 told Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador in London:“Last year the German government put forward the demand for the Sudetenland on purely racial grounds; but subsequent events proved that this demand was only put forward as a cover for the annihilation of Czechoslovakia. In view of this experience… it is not surprising that the Poles and we ourselves are afraid that the demand for Danzig is only a first move towards the destruction of Poland’s independence”.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Tensions escalated into the Danzig crisis during the summer of 1939. F.M Shepard, the British consul in Danzig, reported that the Danzig Nazis were bringing arms from Germany and building fortifications. In July 1939, the British government reluctantly extended its "guarantee" of Poland to the status of Free City of Danzig, stating a German attempt to take Danzig would be a "casus belli". At the beginning of August, the Senate told Warsaw that henceforward the Free City would no longer recognize the authority of Polish customs officers in Danzig, which led Beck in response to warn that the Senate did not have the right to disregard the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and that the German government also did not have the right to speak for Danzig. Much to the chagrin of the British Foreign Office, Warsaw did not consult Britain first when it issued a warning that the Polish Air Force would bomb Danzig if the authority of Polish customs officers continued to be ignored. The Senate backed down while the British who were informed after the fact of the Polish decision to confront the Free City were thrown into panic over the possibility of an armed clash in Danzig plunging Europe into war. The British ambassador to Poland, Sir Howard William Kennard, sought in vain for a promise from Colonel Beck that Poland would take no action in Danzig without first obtaining British approval. Beck disliked Kennard and kept him in the dark about what Poland would do if Danzig voted to rejoin Germany, but also about the state of German-Polish relations, much to the vexation of the Foreign Office.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: In the middle of August, Beck offered a concession, saying that Poland was willing to give up its control of Danzig's customs, a proposal which caused fury in Berlin. However, the leaders of the Free City sent a message to Berlin on 19 August 1939 saying: ""Gauleiter" Forster intends to extend claims...Should the Poles yield again it is intended to increase the claims further in order to make accord impossible". The same day a telegram from Berlin expressed approval with the proviso: "Discussions will have to be conducted and pressure exerted against Poland in such a way that responsibility for failure to come to an agreement and the consequences rest with Poland". On 23 August 1939, Albert Forster, the "Gauleiter" of Danzig, called a meeting of the Senate that voted to have the Free City rejoin Germany, raising tensions to the breaking point. The same meeting appointed Forster the Danzig State President, through this was due to Forster's long-running rivalry with Arthur Greiser, a "völkisch" fanatic who regarded Forster as too soft on the Poles. Both the appointment of Forster as State President and the resolution calling for the Free City to rejoin the "Reich" were violations of the charter the League of Nations had given Danzig in 1920, and the matter should have been taken to the League of Nations's Security Council for discussion.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Since these violations of the Danzig charter would have resulted in the League deposing the Danzig's Nazi government, both the French and British prevented the matter from being referred to the Security Council. Instead the British and French applied strong pressure on the Poles not to send in a military force to depose the Danzig government, and appoint a mediator to resolve the crisis. By late August 1939, the crisis continued to escalate with the Senate confiscating on 27 August 1939 stocks of wheat, salt and petrol that belonged to the Polish businesses that were in the process of being exported or imported via the Free City, an action that led to sharp Polish complaints. The same day, 200 Polish workers at the Danzig shipyards were fired without severance pay and their identification papers revoked, meaning that they legally could not live in Danzig anymore. The Danzig government imposed food rationing, the Danzig newspapers took a militantly anti-Polish line, and almost every day there were "incidents" on the border with Poland. Ordinary people in Danzig were described as being highly worried in the last days of August 1939 as it become apparent that war was imminent. In the meantime, the German battleship "Schleswig-Holstein" had arrived in Danzig on 15 August. Originally, it was planned to send the light cruiser "Königsberg" to Danzig for what was described as a "friendship visit", but it was decided at the last minute that a ship with more firepower was needed, leading to the "Schleswig-Holstein" with its guns being substituted. Upon anchoring in Danzig harbor, the "Schleswig-Holstein" ominously aimed its guns at the Polish Military Depot on the Westerplatte peninsula in a provocative gesture that further raised the tensions in the Free City.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: At about 4:48am on 1 September 1939, the "Schleswig-Holstein" opened fire on the Westerplatte, firing the first shots of World War II.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: On 1 September 1939, the day of the German invasion of the Free City of Danzig, Foster signed a law declaring the Free City to be incorporated into Germany. On the same day, Hitler signed a law declaring the law signed by Foster to be German law and the Free City of Danzig was officially incorporated into Germany.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Up to 4,500 members of the Polish minority were arrested with many of them executed. In the city itself hundreds of Polish prisoners were subjected to cruel executions and experiments, which included castration of men and sterilization of women considered dangerous to the "purity of Nordic race" and beheading by guillotine. The judicial system was one of the main tools of extermination policy towards Poles led by Nazi Germany in the city and verdicts were motivated by statements that Poles were subhuman.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: By the end of the Second World War, nearly all of the city had been reduced to ruins. On 30 March 1945, the city was taken by the Red Army.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies agreed that the city would become part of Poland. No formal treaty has ever altered the status of the Free City of Danzig, and its incorporation into Poland has rested upon the general acquiescence of the international community. In 1947, a Free City of Danzig Government in Exile was established.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: The expulsion of the pre-war inhabitants started already before the decisions of the Potsdam conference of August 1945. From June to October an estimated number of 60,000 residents were expelled by Polish authorities, often units of the Polish Armed Forces, the Polish State Security and the Milicja Obywatelska encircled certain areas and forced the inhabitants to make room for newly arrived Polish settlers. About 20,000 Germans left on their own and by late 1945 between 10,000 and 15,000 pre-war inhabitants remained.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: By 1950, around 285,000 fled and expelled citizens of the former Free City were living in Germany, and 13,424 citizens of the former Free City had been "verified" and granted Polish citizenship. By 1947, 126,472 Danzigers of German ethnicity were expelled to Germany from Gdańsk, and 101,873 Poles from Central Poland and 26,629 from Soviet-annexed Eastern Poland took their place (these figures refer to the city of Gdańsk itself, not to the whole area of pre-war Free City).


title: Free City of Danzig

text: During the Polish post-war census of December 1950, data about the pre-war places of residence of the inhabitants as of August 1939 was collected. In case of children born between September 1939 and December 1950, their origin was reported based on the pre-war places of residence of their mothers. Thanks to this data it is possible to reconstruct the pre-war geographical origin of the post-war population. The same territory which corresponded to pre-war Free City of Danzig was inhabited in December 1950 by:


title: Free City of Danzig

text: At least 85% of the population as of December 1950 were post-war newcomers, but over 10% of inhabitants were still pre-war Danzigers (most of them members of pre-war Polish and Kashubian minorities in the Free City of Danzig). Another 25% came from neighbouring areas of pre-war Polish Pomerania. Almost 20% were Poles from areas of former Eastern Poland annexed by the USSR (many from Wilno Voivodeship). Several percent came from the city of Warsaw, which had been largely destroyed in 1944.


title: Free City of Danzig

text: Historical Danzig is the setting for several works of Günter Grass, including his Danzig Trilogy novels "The Tin Drum", "Cat and Mouse" and "Dog Years", as well as in his memoirs. Grass grew up in the Danzig suburb of Langfuhr (now Wrzeszcz).


title: Jay Shetty

text: Jay Shetty (born 6 September 1987) is an English author, former Hindu monk, and life coach of British Indian descent. As the host of the podcast "On Purpose", his guests have included Alicia Keys, Khloe Kardashian, and Kobe Bryant, resulting in over 300 million downloads. He has appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show",", CBS Mornings," "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" and "Today" to discuss mental health and life purpose.


title: Jay Shetty

text: In business school, Shetty met Gauranga Das, a monk invited to speak at the school on selflessness and living a minimalist lifestyle. Shetty spoke with Gauranga after his talk and followed him for the remainder of Gauranga's lecture circuit around the United Kingdom. He spent four summers in India interning at corporations and training with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, known as the Hare Krishna movement or Hare Krishnas, and three years living a Vedic monk lifestyle at an ashram in Mumbai, India.


title: Jay Shetty

text: Shetty began his career at Accenture, working on digital strategy and as a social media coach for the company's executives. His work caught the attention of Arianna Huffington, who hired him to produce videos for Huffington Post in New York City, during which time he created the most viewed Facebook video of 2018. Topics of his video include relationships, wellness, mental health, and purpose. Shetty has interviewed Russell Simmons, Deepak Chopra, Kobe Bryant, and through Huffington Post, Tim Ferriss.


title: Jay Shetty

text: Shetty was included on Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe in 2017. Shetty was recognized on the National Geographic Chasing Genius Council 2017 and the Asian Media Awards 2016 Best Blog. Shetty has been featured on the BBC and has spoken to audiences at Google, Nasdaq, HSBC, and Barclays. Shetty was the recipient of awards at the 2016 ITV Asian Media Awards and the 2018 Streamy Awards.


title: Jay Shetty

text: The host of the podcast "On Purpose", Shetty reached 64 million downloads in his first year. "On Purpose" became the number one health podcast in the world according to Forbes.


title: Jay Shetty

text: In April 2019, Shetty was honoured with the Outstanding Achievement Online Award at The Asian Awards and in May 2019 he won Best in Health & Wellness at the 11th Shorty Awards.


title: Jay Shetty

text: In 2019, when accused of plagiarizing quotes, 113 posts were removed from Shetty's Instagram. Since the accusation, Shetty has been more careful with attribution.


title: Jay Shetty

text: Shetty was the cover story of AdWeek magazine's Young Influentials issue in 2019. Shetty is the cofounder of a video production company, Icon Media, along with Alex Kushneir.


title: Jay Shetty

text: In 2020, Shetty released the book "Think Like a Monk" through Simon & Schuster. The book offers advice on reducing stress and improving focus, based on Shetty's experiences from the ashram. In September 2020, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Amazon named the book on their bestseller lists. In 2022, Shetty joined meditation-product company, Calm, as its first Chief Purpose Officer.


title: Jay Shetty

text: Shetty, a British Indian, grew up in North London with his parents and younger sister. His mother is a Gujarati and father is a Tuluva. He attended Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet then went on to graduate from the Cass Business School at the City, University of London. Shetty lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Radhi Devlukia Shetty. In 2021, Shetty and wife, Radhi, launched Sama Tea, an adaptogenic brand inspired by Ayurveda.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Multi-factor authentication (MFA; encompassing two-factor authentication, or 2FA, along with similar terms) is an electronic authentication method in which a user is granted access to a website or application only after successfully presenting two or more pieces of evidence (or factors) to an authentication mechanism: knowledge (something only the user knows), possession (something only the user has), and inherence (something only the user is). MFA protects user data—which may include personal identification or financial assets—from being accessed by an unauthorized third party that may have been able to discover, for example, a single password.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: A "third-party authenticator" (TPA) app enables two-factor authentication, usually by showing a randomly generated and frequently changing code to use for authentication.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Authentication takes place when someone tries to log into a computer resource (such as a network, device, or application). The resource requires the user to supply the identity by which the user is known to the resource, along with evidence of the authenticity of the user's claim to that identity. Simple authentication requires only one such piece of evidence (factor), typically a password. For additional security, the resource may require more than one factor—multi-factor authentication, or two-factor authentication in cases where exactly two pieces of evidence are to be supplied.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: The use of multiple authentication factors to prove one's identity is based on the premise that an unauthorized actor is unlikely to be able to supply the factors required for access. If, in an authentication attempt, at least one of the components is missing or supplied incorrectly, the user's identity is not established with sufficient certainty and access to the asset (e.g., a building, or data) being protected by multi-factor authentication then remains blocked. The authentication factors of a multi-factor authentication scheme may include:


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: An example of two-factor authentication is the withdrawing of money from an ATM; only the correct combination of a bank card (something the user possesses) and a PIN (something the user knows) allows the transaction to be carried out. Two other examples are to supplement a user-controlled password with a one-time password (OTP) or code generated or received by an authenticator (e.g. a security token or smartphone) that only the user possesses.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: A third-party authenticator app enables two-factor authentication in a different way, usually by showing a randomly generated and constantly refreshing code which the user can use, rather than sending an SMS or using another method. A big benefit of these apps is that they usually continue to work even without an internet connection. Examples of third-party authenticator apps include Google Authenticator, Authy and Microsoft Authenticator; some password managers such as LastPass offer the service as well.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Knowledge factors are a form of authentication. In this form, the user is required to prove knowledge of a secret in order to authenticate.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for user authentication. This is the most commonly used mechanism of authentication. Many multi-factor authentication techniques rely on passwords as one factor of authentication. Variations include both longer ones formed from multiple words (a passphrase) and the shorter, purely numeric, PIN commonly used for ATM access. Traditionally, passwords are expected to be memorized.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Possession factors ("something only the user has") have been used for authentication for centuries, in the form of a key to a lock. The basic principle is that the key embodies a secret that is shared between the lock and the key, and the same principle underlies possession factor authentication in computer systems. A security token is an example of a possession factor.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: "Disconnected tokens" have no connections to the client computer. They typically use a built-in screen to display the generated authentication data, which is manually typed in by the user. This type of token mostly uses a OTP that can only be used for that specific session.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: "Connected tokens" are devices that are "physically" connected to the computer to be used. Those devices transmit data automatically. There are a number of different types, including USB tokens, smart cards and wireless tags. Increasingly, FIDO2 capable tokens, supported by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), have become popular with mainstream browser support beginning in 2015.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: A software token (a.k.a. "soft token") is a type of two-factor authentication security device that may be used to authorize the use of computer services. Software tokens are stored on a general-purpose electronic device such as a desktop computer, laptop, PDA, or mobile phone and can be duplicated. (Contrast hardware tokens, where the credentials are stored on a dedicated hardware device and therefore cannot be duplicated, absent physical invasion of the device.) A soft token may not be a device the user interacts with. Typically an X.509v3 certificate is loaded onto the device and stored securely to serve this purpose.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Multi-factor authentication also has application in physical security systems. These physical security systems are known and commonly referred to as access control. Multi-factor authentication is typically deployed in access control systems through the use, firstly, of a physical possession (such as a fob, keycard, or QR-code displayed on a device) which acts as the identification credential, and secondly, a validation of one's identity such as facial biometrics or retinal scan. This form of multi-factor authentication is commonly referred to as facial verification or facial authentication.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: These are factors associated with the user, and are usually biometric methods, including fingerprint, face, voice, or iris recognition. Behavioral biometrics such as keystroke dynamics can also be used.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Increasingly, a fourth factor is coming into play involving the physical location of the user. While hard wired to the corporate network, a user could be allowed to login using only a pin code. Whereas if the user was off the network, entering a code from a soft token as well could be required. This could be seen as an acceptable standard where access into the office is controlled.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Systems for network admission control work in similar ways where the level of network access can be contingent on the specific network a device is connected to, such as Wi-Fi vs wired connectivity. This also allows a user to move between offices and dynamically receive the same level of network access in each.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Two factor authentication over text message was developed as early as 1996, when AT&T described a system for authorizing transactions based on an exchange of codes over two-way pagers.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Many multi-factor authentication vendors offer mobile phone-based authentication. Some methods include push-based authentication, QR code-based authentication, one-time password authentication (event-based and time-based), and SMS-based verification. SMS-based verification suffers from some security concerns. Phones can be cloned, apps can run on several phones and cell-phone maintenance personnel can read SMS texts. Not least, cell phones can be compromised in general, meaning the phone is no longer something only the user has.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: The major drawback of authentication including something the user possesses is that the user must carry around the physical token (the USB stick, the bank card, the key or similar), practically at all times. Loss and theft are risks. Many organizations forbid carrying USB and electronic devices in or out of premises owing to malware and data theft risks, and most important machines do not have USB ports for the same reason. Physical tokens usually do not scale, typically requiring a new token for each new account and system. Procuring and subsequently replacing tokens of this kind involves costs. In addition, there are inherent conflicts and unavoidable trade-offs between usability and security.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Two-step authentication involving mobile phones and smartphones provides an alternative to dedicated physical devices. To authenticate, people can use their personal access codes to the device (i.e. something that only the individual user knows) plus a one-time-valid, dynamic passcode, typically consisting of 4 to 6 digits. The passcode can be sent to their mobile device by SMS or can be generated by a one-time passcode-generator app. In both cases, the advantage of using a mobile phone is that there is no need for an additional dedicated token, as users tend to carry their mobile devices around at all times.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Notwithstanding the popularity of SMS verification, security advocates have publicly criticized SMS verification, and in July 2016, a United States NIST draft guideline proposed deprecating it as a form of authentication. A year later NIST reinstated SMS verification as a valid authentication channel in the finalized guideline.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: In 2016 and 2017 respectively, both Google and Apple started offering user two-step authentication with push notifications as an alternative method.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Security of mobile-delivered security tokens fully depends on the mobile operator's operational security and can be easily breached by wiretapping or SIM cloning by national security agencies.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, requirement 8.3, requires the use of MFA for all remote network access that originates from outside the network to a Card Data Environment (CDE). Beginning with PCI-DSS version 3.2, the use of MFA is required for all administrative access to the CDE, even if the user is within a trusted network.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: The second Payment Services Directive requires "strong customer authentication" on most electronic payments in the European Economic Area since September 14, 2019.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: In India, the Reserve Bank of India mandated two-factor authentication for all online transactions made using a debit or credit card using either a password or a one-time password sent over SMS. This was temporarily withdrawn in 2016 for transactions up to ₹2,000 in the wake of the November 2016 banknote demonetisation. Vendors such as Uber have mandated by the bank to amend their payment processing systems in compliance with this two-factor authentication rollout.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Details for authentication for federal employees and contractors in the U.S. are defined in Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12).


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Existing authentication methodologies involve the explained three types of basic "factors". Authentication methods that depend on more than one factor are more difficult to compromise than single-factor methods.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: IT regulatory standards for access to federal government systems require the use of multi-factor authentication to access sensitive IT resources, for example when logging on to network devices to perform administrative tasks and when accessing any computer using a privileged login.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: NIST Special Publication 800-63-3 discusses various forms of two-factor authentication and provides guidance on using them in business processes requiring different levels of assurance.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: In 2005, the United States' Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council issued guidance for financial institutions recommending financial institutions conduct risk-based assessments, evaluate customer awareness programs, and develop security measures to reliably authenticate customers remotely accessing online financial services, officially recommending the use of authentication methods that depend on more than one factor (specifically, what a user knows, has, and is) to determine the user's identity. In response to the publication, numerous authentication vendors began improperly promoting challenge-questions, secret images, and other knowledge-based methods as "multi-factor" authentication. Due to the resulting confusion and widespread adoption of such methods, on August 15, 2006, the FFIEC published supplemental guidelineswhich state that by definition, a "true" multi-factor authentication system must use distinct instances of the three factors of authentication it had defined, and not just use multiple instances of a single factor.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: According to proponents, multi-factor authentication could drastically reduce the incidence of online identity theft and other online fraud, because the victim's password would no longer be enough to give a thief permanent access to their information. However, many multi-factor authentication approaches remain vulnerable to phishing, man-in-the-browser, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Two-factor authentication in web applications are especially susceptible to phishing attacks, particularly in SMS and e-mails, and, as a response, many experts advise users not to share their verification codes with anyone, and many web application providers will place an advisory in an e-mail or SMS containing a code.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Multi-factor authentication may be ineffective against modern threats, like ATM skimming, phishing, and malware.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: In May 2017, O2 Telefónica, a German mobile service provider, confirmed that cybercriminals had exploited SS7 vulnerabilities to bypass SMS based two-step authentication to do unauthorized withdrawals from users' bank accounts. The criminals first infected the account holder's computers in an attempt to steal their bank account credentials and phone numbers. Then the attackers purchased access to a fake telecom provider and set up a redirect for the victim's phone number to a handset controlled by them. Finally, the attackers logged into victims' online bank accounts and requested for the money on the accounts to be withdrawn to accounts owned by the criminals. SMS passcodes were routed to phone numbers controlled by the attackers and the criminals transferred the money out.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Many multi-factor authentication products require users to deploy client software to make multi-factor authentication systems work. Some vendors have created separate installation packages for network login, Web access credentials, and VPN connection credentials. For such products, there may be four or five different software packages to push down to the client PC in order to make use of the token or smart card. This translates to four or five packages on which version control has to be performed, and four or five packages to check for conflicts with business applications. If access can be operated using web pages, it is possible to limit the overheads outlined above to a single application. With other multi-factor authentication technology such as hardware token products, no software must be installed by end-users.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: There are drawbacks to multi-factor authentication that are keeping many approaches from becoming widespread. Some users have difficulty keeping track of a hardware token or USB plug. Many users do not have the technical skills needed to install a client-side software certificate by themselves. Generally, multi-factor solutions require additional investment for implementation and costs for maintenance. Most hardware token-based systems are proprietary, and some vendors charge an annual fee per user. Deployment of hardware tokens is logistically challenging. Hardware tokens may get damaged or lost, and issuance of tokens in large industries such as banking or even within large enterprises needs to be managed. In addition to deployment costs, multi-factor authentication often carries significant additional support costs. A 2008 survey of over 120 U.S. credit unions by the "Credit Union Journal" reported on the support costs associated with two-factor authentication. In their report, software certificates and software toolbar approaches were reported to have the highest support costs.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: Research into deployments of multi-factor authentication schemes has shown that one of the elements that tend to impact the adoption of such systems is the line of business of the organization that deploys the multi-factor authentication system. Examples cited include the U.S. government, which employs an elaborate system of physical tokens (which themselves are backed by robust Public Key Infrastructure), as well as private banks, which tend to prefer multi-factor authentication schemes for their customers that involve more accessible, less expensive means of identity verification, such as an app installed onto a customer-owned smartphone. Despite the variations that exist among available systems that organizations may have to choose from, once a multi-factor authentication system is deployed within an organization, it tends to remain in place, as users invariably acclimate to the presence and use of the system and embrace it over time as a normalized element of their daily process of interaction with their relevant information system.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: While the perception is that multi-factor authentication is within the realm of perfect security, Roger Grimes writes that if not properly implemented and configured, multi-factor authentication can in fact be easily defeated.


title: Multi-factor authentication

text: In 2013, Kim Dotcom claimed to have invented two-factor authentication in a 2000 patent, and briefly threatened to sue all the major web services. However, the European Patent Office revoked his patent in light of an earlier 1998 U.S. patent held by AT&T.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: The Green Inferno is a 2013 American cannibal horror film directed by Eli Roth, with a screenplay by Roth and Guillermo Amoedo, from a story by Roth. It stars Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Sky Ferreira, Magda Apanowicz, Nicolás Martinez, Aaron Burns, Ignacia Allamand, Ramón Llao, and Richard Burgi. The film follows a young woman who joins an activist group that go on an overseas trip, where they eventually run into a cannibalistic tribe.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: The movie was inspired by and serves as an homage to Italian cannibal films of the late 1970s and early '80s "cannibal boom", particularly "Cannibal Holocaust" (1980), which features a film-within-a-film titled "The Green Inferno".


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: "The Green Inferno" premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2013, and was theatrically released on September 25, 2015, by High Top Releasing and BH Tilt. The film earned $12.9 million on a budget of $5 million, and received negative reviews from critics.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: College freshman Justine becomes interested in a student social activism group led by Alejandro and his girlfriend Kara. The group plans a trip to the Amazon rainforest to stop a petrochemical company from forest clearing and displacing native tribes by filming them and streaming footage to raise awareness. Justine suggests she could bring attention to the issue through her father, a United Nations attorney.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: The operation is funded by Carlos, a drug dealer who meets the group in Peru. They journey by boat to the construction site and begin their protest, chaining themselves to bulldozers while filming the land clearing. A private militia hired by the company arrives, and when Justine is nearly killed by an officer, the protest goes viral. The group is arrested, but Carlos bribes the police to release them. They depart by plane, but the plane's engine explodes and it crashes in the jungle, killing several people, including Carlos.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: As the survivors search for a GPS phone, Kara hears something nearby. However, when she goes to check, a native tribe emerges and kills her with an arrow before tranquilizing the others, taking them to their village, and imprisoning them. As a tribal elder and the Headhunter leader kill Jonah and feed his remains to their tribe, Alejandro reveals the protest was staged to benefit a rival petrochemical company and so he could focus on other activism projects, to the others' dismay. The tribe test Justine, Amy, and Samantha for their virginity. Upon learning Justine is a virgin, they take her away for a genital mutilation ceremony while the other two women are returned. Alejandro tells the group to stay put and wait for the next petrochemical company's clearing crews, but they attempt to escape. Amidst a downpour, they distract a watchman while Samantha escapes and hides in a canoe and Justine is returned but does not remember anything from her ordeal.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: The tribe feed the prisoners strange meat. Being a vegan, Amy reluctantly eats, only to discover a chunk of skin in her bowl bearing one of Samantha's tattoos. Realizing they were fed Samantha's remains, Amy breaks the bowl and uses a shard to commit suicide. Seeing an opportunity, Lars stuffs marijuana down Amy's throat, hoping to get the tribe high when they eat her. As his plan succeeds, Justine and Daniel escape, but Alejandro chooses to stay, tranquilizing Lars to keep him company. When Lars regains consciousness, the intoxicated tribe members eat him alive.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: Justine and Daniel reach the crash site and find a phone, but are recaptured and returned to the village. The tribe paints and dresses Justine in tribal attire while an elder ties Daniel to a stake, breaks his limbs, and leaves him to be eaten by ants. News of a forest clearing crew's arrival sends the tribe into a frenzy and the warriors leave to confront them, allowing Justine to escape with the help of a sympathetic child she befriended earlier. Daniel begs Justine to kill him, but the child does so after she refuses. Alejandro begs Justine for help, but she abandons him and flees. Encountering the militia in a firefight against the tribe, in which the Headhunter and most of the tribe’s warriors are killed, she convinces an officer that she is an American and uses the phone to pretend to film the fight so the battle would end peacefully, and they fly her to safety.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: In New York City, she lies to her father and other government workers in an interview saying that she was the sole survivor of the plane crash, the natives were friendly, and that they helped her group before they were slaughtered by the petrochemical company's militia. Sometime later, Justine sees a group of activists wearing shirts emblazoned with Alejandro's face.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: On May 17, 2012, at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Eli Roth announced that he was planning to direct a horror thriller, "The Green Inferno", with Worldview Entertainment stating that they would finance and produce the film. Roth wrote the script with Guillermo Amoedo. Production began in Autumn 2012 in Peru and Chile. In October 2012, it was announced that filming was set to begin in November in Peru. On October 25, Roth announced the full cast for the film. Principal photography began in October 2012 in New York City, and shooting in Peru and in some locations in Chile began on November 5, 2012.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: Roth said in an interview in February 2013 that he wanted the film to look like a Werner Herzog or Terrence Malick film. He has also said that he was inspired by Italian cannibal films such as "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Cannibal Ferox".


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: On July 30, 2013, it was announced that "The Green Inferno" would premiere at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was intended to be released theatrically on September 5, 2014, by Open Road Films. However, financial difficulties with the production company Worldview Entertainment caused Open Road to pull it from its original release. The film had secret screenings on September 22, 2013 at Fantastic Fest and on April 25, 2014, at the Stanley Film Festival.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: "The Green Inferno" was eventually theatrically released in the United States on September 25, 2015, by Blumhouse Productions' multi-platform arm BH Tilt and High Top Releasing. It was released in Filipino theaters on September 23, 2015 by Solar Pictures. Two versions of the film were presented there, depending on the cinema chain: an R-13 "sanitized" version with some gory details removed, resulting in five minutes of footage edited out, and the uncut R-18 version.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: The film opened to 1,540 venues, earning $3.5 million in its opening weekend, ranking ninth place in the domestic box office. At the end of its run, six weeks later on November 5, the film grossed $7.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $5.7 million overseas for a worldwide total of $12.9 million.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 38%, based on 101 reviews, with an average rating of 4.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Green Inferno" may not win writer-director Eli Roth many new converts, but fans of his flair for gory spectacle should find it a suitably gruesome diversion." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 38 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". CinemaScore audiences gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: The film received a glowing response from horror novelist Stephen King, who wrote that the film is "like a glorious throwback to the drive-in movies of my youth: bloody, gripping, hard to watch, but you can't look away." Todd Gilchrist of "The Wrap" gave the film a negative review, stating "Unfortunately, Roth’s abundant gore fails to either offend or exhilarate." Meredith Borders of "Birth. Movies. Death.", reporting from Fantasia Fest, gave the film a more positive notice: ""The Green Inferno" never lets up: it barrels ahead, exuberant and relentless in its brutality, never giving the audience a second to unclench. It's a feast for gorehounds, one with an unsubtle message about the way that uninformed activism harms more than it helps. And it's a total blast."


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: The film was criticized by Survival International, which campaigns for indigenous peoples and indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, as reinforcing colonialism and respectively neocolonialism, as well as their stigmas against indigenous peoples, portraying them as savage. Roth dismissed this argument as unimportant for stopping exploitation: "The idea that a fictional movie about a fictional tribe could somehow hurt indigenous people when gas companies are tearing these villages apart on a daily basis is simply absurd. These companies don't need an excuse—they have one—the natural resources in the ground. They can window-dress things however they like, but nobody will destroy a village because they didn't like a character in a movie, they'll do it because they want to get rich by draining what's under the village. The fear that somehow a movie would give them ammunition to destroy a tribe all sounds like misdirected anger and frustration that the corporations are the ones controlling the fates of these uncontacted tribes."


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: "The Green Inferno" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 5, 2016, by Universal Home Entertainment. The release features a director's cut and an audio commentary by Roth, López, Izzo, Burns, Blanton and Sabara.


title: The Green Inferno (film)

text: On September 7, 2013, it was announced that a sequel would be produced, titled "Beyond the Green Inferno" and directed by Nicolás López. As of May 2016, there have been no further updates, other than articles referring to the original 2013 announcement and a single unsubstantiated comment, with no production details, that a sequel is still under consideration.


title: Contras

text: The Contras were the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to 1990 in opposition to the Marxist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government in Nicaragua, which came to power in 1979 following the Nicaraguan Revolution. Among the separate contra groups, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) emerged as the largest by far. In 1987, virtually all Contra organizations were united, at least nominally, into the Nicaraguan Resistance.


title: Contras

text: During their war against the Nicaraguan government, the Contras committed numerous human rights violations and used terrorist tactics. These actions were frequently carried out systematically as a part of the strategy of the Contras. Supporters of the Contras tried to downplay these violations, particularly the Reagan administration in the U.S., which engaged in a campaign of white propaganda to alter public opinion in favor of the Contras, while covertly encouraging the Contras to attack civilian targets.


title: Contras

text: From an early stage, the rebels received financial and military support from the United States government, and their military significance decisively depended on it. After U.S. support was banned by Congress, the Reagan administration covertly continued it. These illegal activities culminated in the Iran–Contra affair.


title: Contras

text: The Contras were not a monolithic group, but a combination of three distinct elements of Nicaraguan society:


title: Contras

text: The CIA and Argentine intelligence, seeking to unify the anti-Sandinista cause before initiating large-scale aid, persuaded 15 September Legion, the UDN and several former smaller groups to merge in September 1981 as the Nicaraguan Democratic Force ("Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense", FDN). Although the FDN had its roots in two groups made up of former National Guardsmen (of the Somoza regime), its joint political directorate was led by businessman and former anti-Somoza activist Adolfo Calero Portocarrero. Edgar Chamorro later stated that there was strong opposition within the UDN against working with the Guardsmen and that the merging only took place because of insistence by the CIA.


title: Contras

text: Based in Honduras, Nicaragua's northern neighbor, under the command of former National Guard Colonel Enrique Bermúdez, the new FDN commenced to draw in other smaller insurgent forces in the north. Largely financed, trained, equipped, armed and organized by the U.S., it emerged as the largest and most active contra group.


title: Contras

text: In April 1982, Edén Pastora ("Comandante Cero"), one of the heroes in the fight against Somoza, organized the Sandinista Revolutionary Front (FRS) – embedded in the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) – and declared war on the Sandinista government. Himself a former Sandinista who had held several high posts in the government, he had resigned abruptly in 1981 and defected, believing that the newly found power had corrupted the Sandinista's original ideas. A popular and charismatic leader, Pastora initially saw his group develop quickly. He confined himself to operate in the southern part of Nicaragua; after a press conference he was holding on 30 May 1984 was bombed, he "voluntarily withdrew" from the contra struggle.


title: Contras

text: A third force, Misurasata, appeared among the Miskito, Sumo and Rama Amerindian peoples of Nicaragua's Atlantic coast, who in December 1981 found themselves in conflict with the authorities following the government's efforts to nationalize Indian land. In the course of this conflict, forced removal of at least 10,000 Indians to relocation centers in the interior of the country and subsequent burning of some villages took place. The Misurasata movement split in 1983, with the breakaway Misura group of Stedman Fagoth Muller allying itself more closely with the FDN, and the rest accommodating themselves with the Sandinistas: On 8 December 1984 a ceasefire agreement known as the Bogota Accord was signed by Misurasata and the Nicaraguan government. A subsequent autonomy statute in September 1987 largely defused Miskito resistance.


title: Contras

text: U.S. officials were active in attempting to unite the Contra groups. In June 1985 most of the groups reorganized as the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), under the leadership of Adolfo Calero, Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo, all originally supporters of the anti-Somoza revolution. After UNO's dissolution early in 1987, the Nicaraguan Resistance (RN) was organized along similar lines in May.


title: Contras

text: In front of the International Court of Justice, Nicaragua claimed that the contras were altogether a creation of the U.S. This claim was rejected. However, the evidence of a very close relationship between the contras and the United States was considered overwhelming and incontrovertible. The U.S. played a very large role in financing, training, arming, and advising the contras over a long period, and the contras only became capable of carrying out significant military operations as a result of this support.


title: Contras

text: The US government viewed the leftist Sandinistas as a threat to economic interests of American corporations in Nicaragua and to national security. US President Ronald Reagan stated in 1983 that "The defense of [the USA's] southern frontier" was at stake. "In spite of the Sandinista victory being declared fair, the United States continued to oppose the left-wing Nicaraguan government." and opposed its ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan, who had assumed the American presidency in January 1981, accused the Sandinistas of importing Cuban-style socialism and aiding leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. The Reagan administration continued to view the Sandinistas as undemocratic despite the 1984 Nicaraguan elections being generally declared fair by foreign observers. Throughout the 1980s the Sandinista government was regarded as "Partly Free" by Freedom House, an organization financed by the U.S. government.


title: Contras

text: On 4 January 1982, Reagan signed the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the CIA the authority to recruit and support the contras with $19 million in military aid. The effort to support the contras was one component of the Reagan Doctrine, which called for providing military support to movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments.


title: Contras

text: By December 1981, however, the United States had already begun to support armed opponents of the Sandinista government. From the beginning, the CIA was in charge. The arming, clothing, feeding and supervision of the contras became the most ambitious paramilitary and political action operation mounted by the agency in nearly a decade.


title: Contras

text: In the fiscal year 1984, the U.S. Congress approved $24 million in contra aid. However, since the contras failed to win widespread popular support or military victories within Nicaragua, opinion polls indicated that a majority of the U.S. public was not supportive of the contras, the Reagan administration lost much of its support regarding its contra policy within Congress after disclosure of CIA mining of Nicaraguan ports, and a report of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research commissioned by the State Department found Reagan's allegations about Soviet influence in Nicaragua "exaggerated", Congress cut off all funds for the contras in 1985 by the third Boland Amendment. The Boland Amendment had first been passed by Congress in December 1982. At this time, it only outlawed U.S. assistance to the contras "for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government", while allowing assistance for other purposes. In October 1984, it was amended to forbid action by not only the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency but all U.S. government agencies.


title: Contras

text: Nevertheless, the case for support of the contras continued to be made in Washington, D.C., by both the Reagan administration and the Heritage Foundation, which argued that support for the contras would counter Soviet influence in Nicaragua.


title: Contras

text: On 1 May 1985 President Reagan announced that his administration perceived Nicaragua to be "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States", and declared a "national emergency" and a trade embargo against Nicaragua to "deal with that threat". It "is now a given; it is true", the Washington Post declared in 1986, "the Sandinistas are communists of the Cuban or Soviet school"; that "The Reagan administration is right to take Nicaragua as a serious menace—to civil peace and democracy in Nicaragua and to the stability and security of the region"; that we must "fit Nicaragua back into a Central American mode" and "turn Nicaragua back toward democracy", and with the "Latin American democracies" "demand reasonable conduct by regional standard."


title: Contras

text: Soon after the embargo was established, Managua re-declared "a policy of nonalignment" and sought the aid of Western Europe, who were opposed to U.S. policy, to escape dependency on the Soviet Union. Since 1981 U.S. pressures had curtailed Western credit to and trade with Nicaragua, forcing the government to rely almost totally on the Eastern bloc for credit, other aid, and trade by 1985. In his 1997 study on U.S. low intensity warfare, Kermit D. Johnson, a former Chief of the U.S. Army Chaplains, contends that U.S. hostility toward the revolutionary government was motivated not by any concern for "national security", but rather by what the world relief organization Oxfam termed "the threat of a good example":


title: Contras

text: It was alarming that in just a few months after the Sandinista revolution, Nicaragua received international acclaim for its rapid progress in the fields of literacy and health. It was alarming that a socialist-mixed-economy state could do in a few short months what the Somoza dynasty, a U.S. client state, could not do in 45 years! It was truly alarming that the Sandinistas were intent on providing the very services that establish a government's political and moral legitimacy.


title: Contras

text: The government's program included increased wages, subsidized food prices, and expanded health, welfare, and education services. And though it nationalized Somoza's former properties, it preserved a private sector that accounted for between 50 and 60 percent of GDP.


title: Contras

text: The United States began to support Contra activities against the Sandinista government by December 1981, with the CIA at the forefront of operations. The CIA supplied the funds and the equipment, coordinated training programs, and provided intelligence and target lists. While the Contras had little military successes, they did prove adept at carrying out CIA guerrilla warfare strategies from training manuals which advised them to incite mob violence, "neutralize" civilian leaders and government officials and attack "soft targets" — including schools, health clinics and cooperatives. The agency added to the Contras' sabotage efforts by blowing up refineries and pipelines, and mining ports. Finally, according to former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro, CIA trainers also gave Contra soldiers large knives. "A commando knife [was given], and our people, everybody wanted to have a knife like that, to kill people, to cut their throats". In 1985 "Newsweek" published a series of photos taken by Frank Wohl, a conservative student admirer traveling with the Contras, entitled "Execution in the Jungle":


title: Contras

text: The victim dug his own grave, scooping the dirt out with his hands ... He crossed himself. Then a contra executioner knelt and rammed a k-bar knife into his throat. A second enforcer stabbed at his jugular, then his abdomen. When the corpse was finally still, the contras threw dirt over the shallow grave — and walked away.


title: Contras

text: The CIA officer in charge of the covert war, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, admitted to the House Intelligence Committee staff in a secret briefing in 1984 that the Contras were routinely murdering "civilians and Sandinista officials in the provinces, as well as heads of cooperatives, nurses, doctors and judges". But he claimed that this did not violate President Reagan's executive order prohibiting assassinations because the agency defined it as just 'killing'. "After all, this is war—a paramilitary operation", Clarridge said in conclusion. Edgar Chamorro explained the rationale behind this to a U.S. reporter. "Sometimes terror is very productive. This is the policy, to keep putting pressure until the people cry 'uncle'". The CIA manual for the Contras, "Tayacan", states that the Contras should gather the local population for a public tribunal to "shame, ridicule and humiliate" Sandinista officials to "reduce their influence". It also recommends gathering the local population to witness and take part in public executions. These types of activities continued throughout the war. After the signing of the Central American Peace Accord in August 1987, the year war related deaths and economic destruction reached its peak, the Contras eventually entered negotiations with the Sandinista government (1988), and the war began to deescalate.


title: Contras

text: By 1989 the US backed Contra war and economic isolation had inflicted severe economic suffering on Nicaraguans. The US government knew that the Nicaraguans had been exhausted from the war, which had cost 30,865 lives, and that voters usually vote the incumbents out during economic decline. By the late 1980s Nicaragua's internal conditions had changed so radically that the US approach to the 1990 elections differed greatly from 1984. A united opposition of fourteen political parties organized into the National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Oppositora, UNO) with the support of the United States National Endowment for Democracy. UNO presidential nominee Violeta Chamorro was received by President Bush at the White House.


title: Contras

text: The Contra war escalated over the year before the election. The US promised to end the economic embargo should Chamorro win.


title: Contras

text: The UNO scored a decisive victory on 25 February 1990. Chamorro won with 55 percent of the presidential vote as compared to Ortega's 41 percent. Of 92 seats in the National Assembly, UNO gained 51, and the FSLN won 39. On 25 April 1990, Chamorro assumed presidency from Daniel Ortega.


title: Contras

text: With Congress blocking further aid to the Contras, the Reagan administration sought to arrange funding and military supplies by means of third countries and private sources. Between 1984 and 1986, $34 million from third countries and $2.7 million from private sources were raised this way. The secret contra assistance was run by the National Security Council, with officer Lt. Col. Oliver North in charge. With the third-party funds, North created an organization called "The Enterprise", which served as the secret arm of the NSC staff and had its own airplanes, pilots, airfield, ship, operatives, and secret Swiss bank accounts. It also received assistance from personnel from other government agencies, especially from CIA personnel in Central America. This operation functioned, however, without any of the accountability required of U.S. government activities. The Enterprise's efforts culminated in the Iran–Contra Affair of 1986–1987, which facilitated contra funding through the proceeds of arms sales to Iran.


title: Contras

text: According to the London Spectator, U.S. journalists in Central America had long known that the CIA was flying in supplies to the Contras inside Nicaragua before the scandal broke. No journalist paid it any attention until the alleged CIA supply man, Eugene Hasenfus, was shot down and captured by the Nicaraguan army. Similarly, reporters neglected to investigate many leads indicating that Oliver North was running the Contra operation from his office in the National Security Council.