title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: In April 1943, a part of the Bergen-Belsen camp was taken over by the SS Economic-Administration Main Office ("SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA"). It thus became part of the concentration camp system, run by the "SS Schutzstaffel" but it was a special case. Having initially been designated a "Zivilinterniertenlager" ("civilian internment camp"), in June 1943 it was redesignated "Aufenthaltslager" ("holding camp"), since the Geneva Conventions stipulated that the former type of facility must be open to inspection by international committees. This "holding camp" or "exchange camp" was for Jews who were intended to be exchanged for German civilians interned in other countries, or for hard currency. The SS divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the "Hungarian camp", the "special camp" for Polish Jews, the "neutrals camp" for citizens of neutral countries and the "Star camp" for Dutch Jews). Between the summer of 1943 and December 1944 at least 14,600 Jews, including 2,750 minors were transported to the Bergen-Belsen "holding" or exchange camp. Inmates were made to work, many of them in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to the camp from all over Germany and occupied Europe. In general the prisoners of this part of the camp were treated less harshly than some other classes of Bergen-Belsen prisoner until fairly late in the war, due to their perceived potential exchange value. However, only around 2,560 Jewish prisoners were ever actually released from Bergen-Belsen and allowed to leave Germany.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: In March 1944, part of the camp was redesignated as an "Erholungslager" ("recovery camp"), where prisoners too sick to work were brought from other concentration camps. They were in Belsen supposedly to recover and then return to their original camps and resume work, but many of them died in Belsen of disease, starvation, exhaustion and lack of medical attention.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: In August 1944, a new section was created and this became the so-called "women's camp". By November 1944 this camp received around 9,000 women and young girls. Most of those who were able to work stayed only for a short while and were then sent on to other concentration camps or slave-labour camps. The first women interned there were Poles, arrested after the failed Warsaw Uprising. Others were Jewish women from Poland or Hungary, transferred from Auschwitz. Margot and Anne Frank died there in February or March 1945.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: In December 1944 "SS-Hauptsturmführer" Josef Kramer, previously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, became the new camp commandant, replacing "SS-Hauptsturmführer" , who had been in post since the spring of 1943. In January 1945, the SS took over the POW hospital and increased the size of Bergen-Belsen. As eastern concentration camps were evacuated before the advance of the Red Army, at least 85,000 people were transported in cattle cars or marched to Bergen-Belsen. Before that the number of prisoners at Belsen had been much smaller. In July 1944 there were 7,300; by December 1944 the number had increased to 15,000; and by February 1945 it had risen to 22,000. Numbers then soared to around 60,000 by April 15, 1945. This overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease: particularly typhus, as well as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, dysentery and malnutrition in a camp originally designed to hold about 10,000 inmates. At this point also, the special status of the exchange prisoners no longer applied. All inmates were subject to starvation and epidemics.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had three satellite camps. These were at regional armament works. Around 2,000 female concentration camp prisoners were forced to work there. Those who were too weak or sick to continue with their work were brought to Bergen-Belsen.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: "Außenlager Bomlitz-Benefeld" at Bomlitz near Fallingbostel was in use from September 3 to October 15, 1944. It was located at the facility of Eibia GmbH, a gunpowder works. Around 600 female Polish Jews were used for construction and production work.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: "Außenlager Hambühren-Ovelgönne" (Lager III, Waldeslust) at Hambühren south of Winsen was in use from August 23, 1944, to February 4, 1945. It was an abandoned potash mine, now intended as an underground production site for Bremen plane manufacturer Focke-Wulf. Around 400 prisoners, mostly female Polish or Hungarian Jews, were forced to prepare the facility and to help lay train tracks to it. This was done for the company Hochtief.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: "Außenlager Unterlüß-Altensothrieth" (Tannenberglager) east of Bergen was in use from late August 1944 to April 13, 1945. It was located at Unterlüß, where the Rheinmetall-Borsig AG had a large test site. Up to 900 female Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Yugoslavian and Czech Jews had to clear forest, do construction work or work in munitions production.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Prisoners were guarded by SS staff and received no wages for their work. The companies instead reimbursed the SS for the labour supplied. Wage taxes were also levied by local authorities.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Current estimates put the number of prisoners who passed through the concentration camp during its period of operation from 1943 to 1945 at around 120,000. Due to the destruction of the camp's files by the SS, not even half of them, around 55,000, are known by name. As mentioned above, treatment of prisoners by the SS varied between individual sections of the camp, with the inmates of the exchange camp generally being better treated than other prisoners, at least initially. However, in October 1943 the SS selected 1,800 men and women from the "Sonderlager" ("special camp"), Jews from Poland who held passports from Latin American countries. Since the governments of these nations mostly refused to honour the passports, these people had lost their value to the regime. Under the pretext of sending them to a fictitious "Lager Bergau", the SS had them transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were sent directly to the gas chambers and murdered. In February and May 1944 another 350 prisoners from the "special camp" were sent to Auschwitz. Thus, out of the total of 14,600 prisoners in the exchange camp, at least 3,550 died, more than 1,400 of them at Belsen, and around 2,150 at Auschwitz.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: In the "Männerlager" (the male section of the "recovery camp"), inmates suffered even more from lack of care, malnourishment, disease and mistreatment by the guards. Thousands of them died. In the summer of 1944, at least 200 men were murdered by orders of the SS by being injected with phenol.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, since the mass-murders took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, current estimates put the number of deaths at Belsen at more than 50,000 Jews, Czechs, Poles, anti-Nazi Christians, homosexuals, and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies). Among them was Czech painter and writer Josef Čapek (estimated to be in April 1945). He had coined the word "robot", popularised by his brother Karel Čapek.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: The rate at which inmates died at Belsen accelerated notably after the mass transport of prisoners from other camps began in December 1944. From 1943 to the end of 1944 around 3,100 died. From January to mid-April 1945 this rose to around 35,000. Another 14,000 died after liberation between April 15 and the end of June 1945, in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp under British authority.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: After the war, there were allegations that the camp (or possibly a section of it), was "of a privileged nature", compared to others. A lawsuit filed by the Jewish community in Thessaloniki against 55 alleged collaborators claims that 53 of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen "as a special favor" granted by the Germans.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and exclusion zone around the camp to prevent the spread of typhus. On April 11, 1945 Heinrich Himmler (the "Reichsführer SS") agreed to have the camp handed over without a fight. SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead. The next day, "Wehrmacht" representatives approached the British, D Squadron of the Inns of Court Regiment, at the bridge at Winsen and were brought to VIII Corps. At around 1 a.m. on April 13, an agreement was signed, designating an area of around the camp as a neutral zone. Most of the SS were allowed to leave. Only a small number of SS men and women, including the camp commandant Kramer, remained to "uphold order inside the camp". The outside was guarded by Hungarian and regular German troops who were returned to the German front lines by the British shortly afterwards. Due to heavy fighting near Winsen and Walle, the British were unable to reach Bergen-Belsen on April 14, as originally planned. The camp was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945. The first two to reach the camp were a British Special Air Service officer, Lieutenant John Randall, and his jeep driver, who were on a reconnaissance mission and discovered the camp by chance. American soldiers attached to the British forces also helped liberate the camp.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: When British and Canadian troops finally entered they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and (including the satellite camps) around 60,000 inmates, most acutely sick and starving. The prisoners had been without food or water for days before the Allied arrival, partially due to Allied bombing. Immediately before and after liberation, prisoners were dying at around 500 per day, mostly from typhus. The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby, who accompanied them:


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Initially lacking sufficient manpower, the British allowed the Hungarians to remain in charge and only commandant Kramer was arrested. Subsequently, SS and Hungarian guards shot and killed some of the starving prisoners who were trying to get their hands on food supplies from the store houses. The British started to provide emergency medical care, clothing and food. Immediately following the liberation, revenge killings took place in the satellite camp the SS had created in the area of the army barracks that later became Hohne-Camp. Around 15,000 prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora had been relocated there in early April. These prisoners were in much better physical condition than most of the others. Some of these men turned on those who had been their overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these "Kapos" were killed on April 15, 1945. On April 20, four German fighter planes attacked the camp, damaging the water supply and killing three British medical orderlies.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Over the next days the surviving prisoners were deloused and moved to a nearby German Panzer army camp, which became the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. Over a period of four weeks, almost 29,000 of the survivors were moved to the displaced persons (DP) camp. Before the handover, the SS had managed to destroy the camp's administrative files, thereby eradicating most written evidence.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: The British forced the former SS camp personnel to help bury the thousands of dead bodies in mass graves. The personnel were given starvation rations, not allowed to use gloves or other protective clothing, and were continuously shouted at and threatened to make sure that they did not stop working. Some of the bodies were so rotten that arms and legs tore away from the torso. Within two months, 17 staff members had died of typhus due to being forced to handle the bodies with no protection. Another committed suicide, and three others were fatally shot by British soldiers after trying to escape.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Some civil servants from Celle and "Landkreis Celle" were brought to Belsen and confronted with the crimes committed on their doorstep. Military photographers and cameramen of No. 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit documented the conditions in the camp and the measures of the British Army to ameliorate them. Many of the pictures they took and the films they made from April 15 to June 9, 1945, were published or shown abroad. Today, the originals are in the Imperial War Museum. These documents had a lasting impact on the international perception and memory of Nazi concentration camps to this day. According to Habbo Knoch, head of the institution that runs the memorial today: "Bergen-Belsen [...] became a synonym world-wide for German crimes committed during the time of Nazi rule."


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was then burned to the ground by flamethrowing "Bren gun" carriers and Churchill Crocodile tanks because of the typhus epidemic and louse infestation. As the concentration camp ceased to exist at this point, the name Belsen after this time refers to events at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: There were massive efforts to help the survivors with food and medical treatment, led by Brigadier Glyn Hughes, deputy director of Medical Services of 2nd Army, and James Johnston, the Senior Medical Officer. Despite their efforts, about another 9,000 died in April, and by the end of June 1945 another 4,000 had died. (After liberation 13,994 people died.)


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Two specialist teams were dispatched from Britain to deal with the feeding problem. The first, led by A. P. Meiklejohn, included 96 medical student volunteers from London teaching hospitals who were later credited with significantly reducing the death rate amongst prisoners. A research team led by Dr Janet Vaughan was dispatched by the Medical Research Council to test the effectiveness of various feeding regimes.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Some were too weak to even consume the Bengal Famine Mixture. Intravenous feeding was attempted but abandoned. SS doctors had previously used injections to murder prisoners, so some panicked at the sight of the intravenous feeding equipment.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Many of the former SS staff who survived the typhus epidemic were tried by the British military at the Belsen trial. Over the period in which Bergen-Belsen operated as a concentration camp, at least 480 people had worked as guards or members of the commandant's staff, including around 45 women. From September 17 to November 17, 1945, 45 of those were tried by a military tribunal in Lüneburg. They included former commandant Josef Kramer, 16 other SS male members, 16 female SS guards and 12 former kapos (one of whom became ill during the trial). Among them were Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Hertha Ehlert, , Johanna Bormann and Fritz Klein. Many of the defendants were not just charged with crimes committed at Belsen but also earlier ones at Auschwitz. Their activities at other concentration camps such as Mittelbau-Dora, Ravensbrück, Neuengamme, the Gross Rosen subcamps at Neusalz and Langenleuba, and the Mittelbau-Dora subcamp at Gross Werther were not subject of the trial. It was based on British military law and the charges were thus limited to war crimes. Substantial media coverage of the trial provided the German and international public with detailed information on the mass killings at Belsen as well as on the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Eleven of the defendants were sentenced to death. They included Kramer, Volkenrath and Klein. The executions by hanging took place on December 13, 1945, in Hamelin. Fourteen defendants were acquitted (one was excluded from the trial due to illness). Of the remaining 19, one was sentenced to life in prison but he was executed for another crime. Eighteen were sentenced to prison for periods of one to 15 years; however, most of these sentences were subsequently reduced significantly on appeals or pleas for clemency. By June 1955, the last of those sentenced in the Belsen trial had been released. Ten other members of the Belsen personnel were tried by later military tribunals in 1946 and 1948, with five of them being executed.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Denazification courts were created by the Allies to try members of the SS and other Nazi organisations. Between 1947 and 1949 these courts initiated proceedings against at least 46 former SS staff at Belsen. Around half of these were discontinued, mostly because the defendants were considered to have been forced to join the SS. Those who were sentenced received prison terms of between four and 36 months or were fined. As the judges decided to count the time the defendants had spent in Allied internment towards the sentence, the terms were considered to have already been fully served.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Only one trial was ever held by a German court for crimes committed at Belsen, at Jena in 1949; the defendant was acquitted. More than 200 other SS members who were at Belsen have been known by name but never had to stand trial. No German soldier was ever put on trial for crimes committed against the inmates of the POW camps at Bergen-Belsen, albeit some were tried for participating in death marches headed towards Bergen-Belsen and in the region around it, despite the fact that the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg had found in 1946 that the treatment of Soviet POWs by the "Wehrmacht" constituted a war crime.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: The area of the former Bergen-Belsen camp fell into neglect after the burning of the buildings and the closure of the nearby displaced persons' camp in the summer of 1950. The area reverted to heath; few traces of the camp remained. However, as early as May 1945, the British had erected large signs at the former camp site. Ex-prisoners began to set up monuments. A first wooden memorial was built by Jewish DPs in September 1945, followed by one made in stone, dedicated on the first anniversary of the liberation in 1946. On November 2, 1945, a large wooden cross was dedicated as a memorial to the murdered Polish prisoners. Also by the end of 1945 the Soviets had built a memorial at the entrance to the POW cemetery. A memorial to the Italian POWs followed in 1950, but was removed when the bodies were reinterred in a Hamburg cemetery.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: The British military authorities ordered the construction of a permanent memorial in September 1945 after having been lambasted by the press for the desolate state of the camp. In the summer of 1946, a commission presented the design plan, which included the obelisk and memorial walls. The memorial was finally inaugurated in a large ceremony in November 1952, with the participation of Germany's president Theodor Heuss, who called on the Germans never to forget what had happened at Belsen.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: For a long time, however, remembering Bergen-Belsen was not a political priority. Periods of attention were followed by long phases of official neglect. For much of the 1950s, Belsen "was increasingly forgotten as a place of remembrance". Only after 1957 did large groups of young people visit the place where Anne Frank had died. After anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the Cologne synagogue over Christmas 1959, German chancellor Konrad Adenauer followed a suggestion by Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, and visited the site of a former concentration camp for the first time. In a speech at the Bergen-Belsen memorial, Adenauer assured the Jews still living in Germany that they would have the same respect and security as everyone else. Afterwards, the German public saw the Belsen memorial as primarily a Jewish place of remembrance. Nevertheless, the memorial was redesigned in 1960–61. In 1966, a document centre was opened which offered a permanent exhibition on the persecution of the Jews, with a focus on events in the nearby Netherlands – where Anne Frank and her family had been arrested in 1944. This was complemented by an overview of the history of the Bergen-Belsen camp. This was the first ever permanent exhibit anywhere in Germany on the topic of Nazi crimes. However, there was still no scientific personnel at the site, with only a caretaker as permanent staff. Memorial events were only organized by the survivors themselves.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: In October 1979, the president of the European Parliament Simone Veil, herself a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, came to the memorial for a speech which focused on the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti. This was the first time that an official event in Germany acknowledged this aspect of the Nazi era.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: In 1985, international attention was focused on Bergen-Belsen. The camp was hastily included in Ronald Reagan's itinerary when he visited West Germany after a controversy about a visit to a cemetery where the interred included members of the "Waffen SS" (see Bitburg controversy). Shortly before Reagan's visit on May 5, there had been a large memorial event on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the camp's liberation, which had been attended by German president Richard von Weizsäcker and chancellor Helmut Kohl. In the aftermath of these events, the parliament of Lower Saxony decided to expand the exhibition centre and to hire permanent scientific staff. In 1990, the permanent exhibition was replaced by a new version and a larger document building was opened.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Only in 2000 did the Federal Government of Germany begin to financially support the memorial. Co-financed by the state of Lower Saxony, a complete redesign was planned which was intended to be more in line with contemporary thought on exhibition design. On April 15, 2005, there was a ceremony, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation and many ex-prisoners and ex-liberating troops attended. In October 2007, the redesigned memorial site was opened, including a large new Documentation Centre and permanent exhibition on the edge of the newly redefined camp, whose structure and layout can now be traced. Since 2009, the memorial has been receiving funding from the Federal government on an ongoing basis.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: The site is open to the public and includes monuments to the dead, including a successor to the wooden cross of 1945, some individual memorial stones and a "House of Silence" for reflection. In addition to the Jewish, Polish and Dutch national memorials, a memorial to eight Turkish citizens who were killed at Belsen was dedicated in December 2012.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I've tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but the words won't come. To me Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: I saw my father beaten by the SS, and I lost most of my family there... A ransom deal that the Americans attempted saved 2,000 Jews and I was one. I actually went into the gas chamber, but was reprieved. God knows why.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: After a day’s journey, we arrived at Bergen-Belsen. This concentration camp was hopelessly overcrowded and we were not accepted. The right hand no longer knew what the left hand was doing, so we were sent to an adjoining Wehrmacht compound. As the soldiers of the Wehrmacht marched out, we moved in. The confusion was unbelievable; this time it was disorder with German perfection. We were moved into clean barracks, equipped for human beings with excellent bathrooms and clean beds stacked three on top of each other. After all we had experienced in the preceding year, this was sheer luxury. There was no mention of the usual camp rituals, no roll calls and no work, but also no food.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: The twentieth century has so far produced no more terrifying example of collective human wickedness than the Belsen Concentration Camp, a black spot which it fell to the lot of the British Army to occupy. This book is the personal story of the first British officer to enter the camp on its liberation and the last to leave, after a stay of five months. The author and two of his N.C.O.'s between them spoke five languages, so they had unrivalled opportunities for discovering what the inmates, men, women and children, experienced and felt. The evil which produced the concentration camps is fully exposed, and here too will be found a record of how the psychological and medical problems were tackled, as well as such complicated matters as supplies, welfare and rehabilitation.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: But what should you do when faced with 60,000 dead, sick and dying people? We were in the army to fight a war and to beat the enemy. We were good at that, having been in combat for the last ten months, but none of us had any experience of dealing with the situation in Belsen and we were all more or less traumatized by the sights we had seen. I myself, although a 'senior officer', had turned 25 years of age only a few days before. Most of the men sent to deal with that human disaster were in their late teens or early twenties, even younger than I was. What we suddenly found ourselves faced with was beyond anyone's comprehension.


title: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

text: This list contains some of the notable people who were either imprisoned or died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.


title: Red Hood

text: The Red Hood is an alias used by multiple characters appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The identity was first used in the 1951 storyline "The Man Behind the Red Hood!", which provides the earliest origin story for the Joker. The storyline depicts an unnamed criminal wearing a red dome-shaped hood who, after a chance encounter with Batman, is disfigured by chemicals and becomes insane, giving birth to his future Joker persona.


title: Red Hood

text: Five decades later, the identity was used again in the 2005–2006 story arc, "", in which Jason Todd, Batman's second crime-fighting partner who had been killed by the Joker, comes back to life as a violent vigilante, using his killer's former alias. Since his return, Jason operates as the Red Hood in the main DC Comics continuity. In "The New 52", a 2011 reboot of the DC Comics universe, one storyline introduces a criminal organization called the Red Hood Gang, and retroactively establishes the Joker (prior to his transformation) as its former leader, and Jason as a former member.


title: Red Hood

text: Both the Joker and Jason Todd incarnations of the Red Hood, as well as the Red Hood Gang, have been adapted into several forms of media outside of comics, such as films, television series, and video games.


title: Red Hood

text: The Red Hood first appeared in "Detective Comics" #168 (February 1951), in the story "The Man Behind the Red Hood!". In this original continuity, he became the future Joker; a flashback reveals that a criminal, who at that time called himself the Red Hood after the (seemingly) eyeless red dome-shaped hood worn by him, attempted to rob a playing card factory. While chased, he fell into a catch basin full of chemicals, which disfigured him, then escaped by swimming to safety (a breathing apparatus inside the hood preventing him from drowning). Driven insane by his change of appearance, he recreates himself as the Joker. A decade later, the Joker resumes the guise, while another criminal attempts to adopt the identity, too.


title: Red Hood

text: In "", writer Alan Moore added the new detail that the future Joker, at that time a cash-strapped, unsuccessful comedian, had been made to adopt the Red Hood guise by a gang of criminals so that he could play the patsy for them. This story presented a darker version of the origin and introduced the idea that the Joker acted as an unreliable narrator concerning his own past.


title: Red Hood

text: A retcon appears between the "Batman" #450–451 story line "The Return of the Joker" and the one-shot graphic novel "". In "The Return of the Joker", the Joker resurfaces after his apparent death at the end of the "" storyline. The Joker rummages through his belongings, finds the Red Hood costume and wears it for a robbery in order to regain his confidence and become the Joker again. "Batman: The Man Who Laughs" is a retelling of the Joker's first appearance, a few months after the Red Hood's plunge into the chemicals, thus tying the story into both "" and "Batman: The Killing Joke". Here, Batman is in possession of the Red Hood costume, presumably having discovered it on the banks where the Joker washed up after his swim in the chemical basin.


title: Red Hood

text: Another version of Red Hood appears in the "Daredevil" storyline running through "Batman" comics, written by Judd Winick. Jason Todd, the former Robin killed by the Joker in "", is revealed to have been resurrected by Ra's al Ghul via the Lazarus Pit. But the pit changes him and his emotions and he becomes the new Red Hood. His debut culminates in a fateful confrontation with those he feels have wronged him. He beats the Joker with a crowbar (mirroring the way the Joker had tortured him before killing him with a bomb) and later kidnaps him. The new Red Hood assumes control over various gangs in Gotham City and starts a one-man war against Black Mask's criminal empire. He actively tries to cleanse the city of corruption, such as the illegal drug trade and gang violence, but in a violent, antiheroic way. He eventually comes to blows against Batman and other heroes, including Nightwing, the new Robin (Tim Drake), Onyx, and Green Arrow.


title: Red Hood

text: In the second story arc of "Batman and Robin" by Grant Morrison and Philip Tan, Jason retakes the Red Hood mantle. With the goal of making the very concept of Batman obsolete, he puts a lot of effort into public relations: he drastically alters his Red Hood costume to look more like a traditional superhero outfit, and recruits his own sidekick known as Scarlet. In their war on crime, Red Hood and Scarlet freely kill criminals, villains and anyone who gets in their way, even the police. After all of Red Hood's killings, he leaves behind a calling card which states "let the punishment fit the crime". He describes his vendetta against Dick Grayson as "the revenge of one crazy man in a mask on another crazy man in a mask". At the conclusion of this saga, Jason is last seen escaping from prison, having donned a new costume and sidekick free. Due to the Flashpoint event, his future was never explored.


title: Red Hood

text: After Barry Allen's involuntary tampering with the continuum, Red Hood is shown, along with Arsenal and Starfire, as one of the "Outlaws", a close knit group of anti-heroes. Still not above killing, and still angry at the world, Jason has now reverted to the street clothes costume, forgoing his feud with Batman for stealthier, more cloak and dagger missions. Eventually, Jason and Batman reconcile and call a truce between them.


title: Red Hood

text: In an interview for the "Infinite Crisis" hardcover, Jeanine Schaefer states that Geoff Johns originally planned to reintroduce Red Hood as the Jason Todd of the Earth-Two universe, but such plans were discarded.


title: Red Hood

text: In "The New 52", a 2011 reboot of the DC Comics universe, a gang called the "Red Hood Gang" appears in issue #0 of "Batman" (vol. 2). A young Bruce Wayne, not yet Batman, has recently returned to Gotham to start his crime-fighting career. One of Bruce's early targets is the Red Hood Gang, which he manages to infiltrate. To Bruce's dismay, the leader of the Red Hood Gang knows his group has been infiltrated and manages to weed out a disguised Bruce. Though the Red Hood Gang attempts to kill him, Bruce manages to escape into the sewers after the police show up to break up a robbery. The Red Hood Gang eventually follows him into the sewer system, but a prototype motorcycle hidden in the tunnels allows Bruce to escape. The Red Hood Gang is later seen outside of Bruce's apartment, scoping it out for their next hit.


title: Red Hood

text: The Red Hood Gang subsequently reappeared in the first story arc of the "" event, "Secret City", where, five months prior to the birth of Batman, Bruce gets involved with the Red Hood Gang to spoil their plans to sink a pickup truck full of men who refused to join their ranks. During this encounter, it is revealed that the Red Hood Gang's ranks have expanded. It turns out their leader has begun blackmailing innocent Gotham citizens into joining the group, threatening violence against them if they refuse to be his henchmen. They eventually steal an airship belonging to the Penguin and several weapons from Wayne Industries. Bruce discovers that the Red Hood Gang has been doing business with Bruce's uncle, Philip Kane, who has been selling them weapons after being forced to join the gang. When Bruce discovers this, he goes to tell Alfred, but a bomb from the Red Hood Gang to "welcome him back to the city" blows up the apartment.


title: Red Hood

text: The motivation of the Red Hood Gang comes to light, and it is revealed that they had been inspired by the impact that the murder of Bruce's parents had upon the city. The murders of the famous and beloved Doctor and Mrs. Wayne had made the residents of Gotham fearful, since if even the rich and powerful could be gunned down by a random criminal, no one was safe from crime. Embracing nihilism, the Red Hood Gang killed, robbed, and caused suffering in order to make the average citizen know their lives are worthless and they can and will be murdered at any given moment.


title: Red Hood

text: The culmination of the Red Hood Gang's campaign of terror is their plan to take over the Axis Chemical Plant and use its resources to create a flesh-eating bacteria. Batman lures the Gotham City Police Department to the plant. During the raid and the battle that ensues, Phillip Kane is mortally wounded by the leader, who accuses him of betrayal. Most of the gang is arrested, while Batman goes after the leader, who ultimately falls into a container of chemicals rather than be taken alive. A few days later, police discover the body of the leader of the gang, Liam Distal, stuffed into a barrel of lye. The lye has dissolved the better part of his remains, meaning there is no way to tell when he was killed. Bruce surmises that the Red Hood Gang leader he encountered was an impostor who killed Distal and took his place, but there is no way to confirm this, nor know when the impostor murdered Distal. Later, the remaining members of the gang are killed in an explosion caused by the Joker. After this, the Red Hood Gang seems to be defunct.


title: Red Hood

text: An animated version of the character appears at the end of "The Batman Adventures" #8. It was meant to be a subplot to be resolved later, but the cancellation of the ongoing series prevented that. Though the creative team (Dan Slott and Ty Templeton) behind the story are hoping for a chance to resolve it, they have yet to do so. It has been stated that this Red Hood is someone crucial to the DC animated universe.


title: Red Hood

text: Dan Slott mentioned that the background of the character would tie into a subplot concerning Lucius Fox, the Valestra mob (from "") and the Powers Family (including an infant Derek Powers from "Batman Beyond")


title: Red Hood

text: Though the comics storyline was never followed up, Dan Slott told fan website The Worlds Finest: "Had "Batman Adventures" continued, The Red Hood would have been revealed as Andrea Beaumont's mother, Victoria Beaumont, who also happened to be the real head of the Valestra mob. Years ago, she faked her death in an attempt to get her family away from the Valestra mob, and was disappointed to see her family eventually fall into their clutches. However, when she saw what happened to her husband, and what eventually became of her daughter, she felt it was time to not only get revenge on the Valestra mob, but take Gotham for herself. Inevitably, this would have led to a devastating confrontation between her, Batman, and Andrea Beaumont".


title: Red Hood

text: A version of the Red Hood appears in "Batman '66" (which is based on the 1960s "Batman" TV series). This version of the Red Hood is Professor Anders Overbeck, a psychiatrist who was brainwashed by the Joker through his malfunctioning brain regulator machine.


title: Red Hood

text: The Jason Todd incarnation of the Red Hood appears as a playable character in "Gotham Knights", voiced by Stephen Oyoung.


title: Third Crusade

text: The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was an attempt by three European monarchs of Western Christianity (Philip II of France, Richard I of England and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor) to reconquer the Holy Land following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. For this reason, the Third Crusade is also known as the Kings' Crusade.


title: Third Crusade

text: It was partially successful, recapturing the important cities of Acre and Jaffa, and reversing most of Saladin's conquests, but it failed to recapture Jerusalem, which was the major aim of the Crusade and its religious focus.


title: Third Crusade

text: After the failure of the Second Crusade of 1147–1149, the Zengid dynasty controlled a unified Syria and engaged in a conflict with the Fatimid rulers of Egypt. Saladin ultimately brought both the Egyptian and Syrian forces under his own control, and employed them to reduce the Crusader states and to recapture Jerusalem in 1187. Spurred by religious zeal, King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France (later known as "Philip Augustus") ended their conflict with each other to lead a new crusade. The death of Henry (6 July 1189), however, meant the English contingent came under the command of his successor, King Richard I of England.


title: Third Crusade

text: The elderly German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa also responded to the call to arms, leading a massive army across the Balkans and Anatolia. He achieved some victories against the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, but he died whilst crossing a river on 10 June 1190 before reaching the Holy Land. His death caused tremendous grief among the German Crusaders, and most of his troops returned home.


title: Third Crusade

text: After the Crusaders had driven the Muslims from Acre, Philip—in company with Frederick's successor in command of the German crusaders, Leopold V, Duke of Austria—left the Holy Land in August 1191. Following a major victory by the Crusaders at the Battle of Arsuf, most of the coastline of the Levant was returned to Christian control. On 2 September 1192 Richard and Saladin finalized the Treaty of Jaffa, which recognised Muslim control over Jerusalem but allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims and merchants to visit the city. Richard departed the Holy Land on 9 October 1192. The successes of the Third Crusade allowed Westerners to maintain considerable states in Cyprus and on the Syrian coast.


title: Third Crusade

text: The failure to re-capture Jerusalem inspired the subsequent Fourth Crusade of 1202–1204, but Europeans would only regain the city—and only briefly—in the Sixth Crusade in 1229.


title: Third Crusade

text: King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem died in 1185, leaving the Kingdom of Jerusalem to his nephew Baldwin V, whom he had crowned as co-king in 1183. Count Raymond III of Tripoli again served as regent. The following year, Baldwin V died before his ninth birthday, and his mother Princess Sybilla, sister of Baldwin IV, crowned herself queen and her husband, Guy of Lusignan, king. Raynald of Châtillon, who had supported Sybilla's claim to the throne, raided a rich caravan travelling from Egypt to Syria, and had its travelers thrown in prison, thereby breaking a truce between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Saladin. Saladin demanded the release of the prisoners and their cargo. The newly crowned King Guy appealed to Raynald to give in to Saladin's demands, but Raynald refused to follow the king's orders.


title: Third Crusade

text: This final act of outrage by Raynald gave Saladin the opportunity he needed to take the offensive against the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and in 1187 he laid siege to the city of Tiberias. Raymond advised patience, but King Guy, acting on advice from Raynald, marched his army to the Horns of Hattin outside of Tiberias. Saladin's forces fought the Frankish army, thirsty and demoralized, and destroyed it in the ensuing Battle of Hattin (July 1187).


title: Third Crusade

text: King Guy and Raynald were brought to Saladin's tent, where Guy was offered a goblet of water because of his great thirst. Guy took a drink and then passed the goblet to Raynald. Raynald's having received the goblet from King Guy rather than from Saladin meant that Saladin would not be forced to offer protection to the treacherous Raynald (custom prescribed that if one were personally offered a drink by the host, one's life was safe). When Raynald accepted the drink from King Guy's hands, Saladin told his interpreter, "say to the King: 'it is you who have given him to drink'". Afterwards, Saladin beheaded Raynald for past betrayals. Saladin honored tradition with King Guy, sending him to Damascus and eventually allowing him to be ransomed by his people.


title: Third Crusade

text: By the end of 1187 Saladin had taken Acre and Jerusalem. Christians would not hold the city of Jerusalem again until 1229. Pope Urban III is said to have collapsed and died (October 1187) upon hearing the news of the Battle of Hattin.


title: Third Crusade

text: The new pope, Gregory VIII, in the bull "Audita tremendi" (29 October 1187), interpreted the capture of Jerusalem as punishment for the sins of Christians across Europe; he called for a new crusade to the Holy Land.


title: Third Crusade

text: The crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, was "the most meticulously planned and organized" yet. Frederick was sixty-six years old when he set out. Two accounts dedicated to his expedition survive: the "History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick" and the "History of the Pilgrims". There is also a short tract, the "Letter on the Death of the Emperor Frederick".


title: Third Crusade

text: On 27 October 1187, just over three weeks after Saladin's capture of Jerusalem, Pope Gregory VIII sent letters to the German episcopate announcing his election and ordering them to win the German nobility over to a new crusade. Around 23 November, Frederick received letters that had been sent to him from the rulers of the Crusader states in the East urging him to come to their aid.


title: Third Crusade

text: By 11 November, Cardinal Henry of Marcy had been appointed to preach the crusade in Germany. He preached before Frederick and a public assembly in Strasbourg around 1 December, as did Bishop Henry of Strasbourg. About 500 knights took the cross at Strasbourg, but Frederick demurred on the grounds of his ongoing conflict with Archbishop Philip of Cologne. He did, however, send envoys to Philip of France (at the time his ally) to urge him to take the cross. On 25 December, Frederick and Philip met in person on the border between Ivois and Mouzon in the presence of Henry of Marcy and Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, but he could not convince Philip to go on crusade because he was at war with England.


title: Third Crusade

text: Frederick held a diet in Mainz on 27 March 1188. Because of its purpose, he named the diet the "Court of Christ". The archbishop of Cologne submitted to Frederick and peace was restored to the empire. Bishop Godfrey of Würzburg preached a crusade sermon and Frederick, at the urging of the assembly, took the cross. He was followed by his son, Duke Frederick VI of Swabia, and by Duke Frederick of Bohemia, Duke Leopold V of Austria, Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia and a host of lesser nobles.


title: Third Crusade

text: After taking the cross, Frederick proclaimed a "general expedition against the pagans" in accordance with the pope's instructions. He set the period of preparation as 17 April 1188 to 8 April 1189 and scheduled the army to assemble at Regensburg on Saint George's Day (23 April 1189). To prevent the crusade from degenerating into an undisciplined mob, participants were required to have at least three marks, which was enough to be able support oneself for two years.


title: Third Crusade

text: At Strasbourg, Frederick imposed a small tax on the Jews of Germany to fund the crusade. He also put the Jews under his protection and forbade anyone to preach against the Jews. The First and Second Crusades in Germany had been marred by violence against the Jews. The Third Crusade itself occasioned an outbreak of violence against the Jews in England. Frederick successfully prevented a repetition of those events inside Germany.


title: Third Crusade

text: On 29 January 1188, a mob invaded the Jewish quarter in Mainz and many Jews fled to the imperial castle of Münzenberg. There were further incidents connected with the "Court of Christ" in March. According to Rabbi Moses ha-Cohen of Mainz, there were minor incidents from the moment people began arriving for the Court of Christ on 9 March. This culminated in a mob gathering to invade the Jewish quarter on 26 March. It was dispersed by the imperial marshal Henry of Kalden. The rabbi then met with the emperor, which resulted in an imperial edict threatening maiming or death for anyone who maimed or killed a Jew. On 29 March, Frederick and the rabbi then rode through the streets together to emphasise that the Jews had imperial protection. Those Jews who had fled in January returned at the end of April.


title: Third Crusade

text: Shortly after the Strasbourg assembly, Frederick dispatched legates to negotiate the passage of his army through their lands: Archbishop Conrad of Mainz to Hungary, Godfrey of Wiesenbach to the Seljuk sultanate of Rûm and an unnamed ambassador to the Byzantine Empire. He may also have sent representatives to Prince Leo II of Armenia.


title: Third Crusade

text: Because Frederick had signed a treaty of friendship with Saladin in 1175, he felt it necessary to give Saladin notice of the termination of their alliance. On 26 May 1188, he sent Count Henry II of Dietz to present an ultimatum to Saladin. The sultan was ordered to withdraw from the lands he had conquered, to return the True Cross to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and to make satisfaction for those Christians who had been killed in his conquests, otherwise Frederick would abrogate their treaty.


title: Third Crusade

text: A few days after Christmas 1188, Frederick received Hungarian, Byzantine, Serbian, Seljuk and possibly Ayyubid envoys in Nuremberg. The Hungarians and Seljuks promised provisions and safe-conduct to the crusaders. The envoys of Stefan Nemanja, grand prince of Serbia, announced that their prince would receive Frederick in Niš. An agreement was reached with the Byzantine envoy, John Kamateros, but it required Godfrey of Würzburg, Frederick of Swabia and Leopold of Austria to swear oaths for the crusaders' good behaviour. Bishop Hermann of Münster, Count Rupert III of Nassau, the future Henry III of Dietz and the imperial chamberlain Markward von Neuenburg with a large entourage were sent ahead to make preparations in Byzantium.


title: Third Crusade

text: At the Strasbourg assembly in December 1187, Bishop Godfrey of Würzburg urged Frederick to sail his army to the Holy Land rather than proceed overland. Frederick declined and Pope Clement III even ordered Godfrey not to discuss it further. Ultimately, many Germans ignored the rendezvous at Regensburg and went to the Kingdom of Sicily, hoping to sail to the Holy Land on their own. Frederick wrote to King William II of Sicily asking him to bar such sailings. The emperor and the pope may have feared that Saladin would soon seize all the crusader ports.


title: Third Crusade

text: Frederick was the first of the three kings to set out for the Holy Land. On 15 April 1189 in Haguenau, Frederick formally and symbolically accepted the staff and scrip of a pilgrim. He arrived in Regensburg for the muster between 7 and 11 May. The army had begun to gather on 1 May. Frederick was disappointed by the small force awaiting him, but he was dissuaded from calling off the enterprise when he learned that an international force had already advanced to the Hungarian border and was waiting for the imperial army.


title: Third Crusade

text: Frederick set out on 11 May 1189 with an army of 12,000–20,000 men, including 2,000–4,000 knights. Contemporary chroniclers gave a range of estimates for Frederick's army, from 10,000 to 600,000 men, including 4,000–20,000 knights. After leaving Germany, Frederick's army was increased by the addition of a contingent of 2,000 men led by the Hungarian prince Géza, the younger brother of the King Béla III of Hungary, and Bishop Ugrin Csák. Two contingents from the Empire, a Burgundian and a Lorrainer, also joined the army during its transit of Byzantium. The army that Frederick led into Muslim territory was probably larger than the one with which he had left Germany.


title: Third Crusade

text: Frederick sailed from Regensburg on 11 May 1189, but most of the army had left earlier by land for the Hungarian border. On 16 May, Frederick ordered the village of Mauthausen burned because it had levied a toll on the army. In Vienna, Frederick expelled 500 men from the army for various infractions. He celebrated Pentecost on 28 May encamped across from Hungarian Pressburg. During his four days encamped before Pressburg, Frederick issued an ordinance for the good behaviour of the army, a "law against malefactors" in words of one chronicle. It apparently had a good effect.


title: Third Crusade

text: From Pressburg, the Hungarian envoys escorted the crusaders to Esztergom, where King Béla III of Hungary greeted them on 4 June. He provided boats, wine, bread and barley to the army. Frederick stayed in Esztergom for four days. The king of Hungary accompanied the army to the Byzantine border at Belgrade. There were incidents during the crossing of the Drava and Tisza rivers, but the Sava was crossed on 28 June without incident. In Belgrade, Frederick staged a tournament, held a court, conducted a census of the army and wrote to the Byzantine emperor Isaac II to inform him that he had entered Byzantine territory.


title: Third Crusade

text: The army, still accompanied by Béla III, left Belgrade on 1 July, crossed the Morava and headed for Braničevo, which was the seat of the local Byzantine administration since Belgrade had been devastated in recent wars with the Serbs. The head of the Byzantine administration was a "doux" (duke). At Braničevo, Béla III took leave and returned to Hungary. He gave the crusaders wagons and in return Frederick gave him his boats, since they would no longer be travelling up the Danube.


title: Third Crusade

text: The Burgundian contingent under Archbishop Aimo II of Tarentaise and a contingent from Metz caught up with the army at Braničevo. The duke of Braničevo gave the army eight days' worth of provisions. The enlarged army, including a Hungarian contingent, left Braničevo on 11 July following the Via Militaris that led to Constantinople. They were harassed by bandits along the route. According to crusader sources, some captured bandits confessed that they were acting on the orders of the duke of Braničevo.


title: Third Crusade

text: On 25 July, Frederick was in Ćuprija when he received word that Peter of Brixey had arrived in Hungary with the contingent from Lorraine. It was there that the problems of communication between Frederick and Isaac became apparent. Frederick's envoys had reached Constantinople, but Isaac was away besieging rebels in Philadelphia. Nonetheless, John Kamateros wrote to inform Frederick that a market would be available in Sofia. It was probably from Ćuprija that Frederick sent another envoy, a Hungarian count named Lectoforus, to Constantinople to see what was going on.


title: Third Crusade

text: Frederick was welcomed by Stefan Nemanja in Niš with pomp on 27 July. Although the Serbian ruler asked the emperor to invest him with his domains, Frederick refused on the grounds that he was on a pilgrimage and did not wish to harm Isaac. A marriage alliance was arranged between a daughter of Duke Berthold of Merania and a nephew of Nemanja, Toljen. Frederick also received messages of support from Tsar Peter II of Bulgaria, but refused an outright alliance. Despite Frederick's care not to be drawn into Balkan politics, the events at Niš were regarded by the Byzantines as hostile acts.


title: Third Crusade

text: Before leaving Niš, Frederick had Godfrey of Würzburg preach a sermon on the importance of discipline and maintaining the peace. He also reorganized the army, dividing it into four, because it would be entering territory more firmly under Byzantine control and less friendly. The vanguard of Swabians and Bavarians was put under the command of the Duke of Swabia assisted by Herman IV of Baden and Berthold III of Vohburg. The second division consisted of the Hungarian and Bohemian contingents with their separate standard-bearers. The third was under the command of the Duke of Merania assisted by Bishop Diepold of Passau. The fourth was under Frederick's personal command and Rupert of Nassau was named its standard-bearer "in absentia".


title: Third Crusade

text: The crusaders left Niš on 30 July and arrived in Sofia on 13 August. They found the city practically abandoned. There was no Byzantine delegation to meet them and no market. The following day the crusaders left Sofia and the Lorrainers under Peter of Brixey finally caught up with the main army. The Gate of Trajan was held by a Byzantine force of 500 men. According to Diepold of Passau, the garrison retreated at the sight of Frederick's scouts, but the "History of the Expedition" says that it retreated only after being engaged by Frederick and a small group of knights. The army arrived at Pazardzhik on 20 August, finding an abundance of supplies.


title: Third Crusade

text: Lectoforus met the army at Pazardzhik and informed Frederick of the disrespect shown to his envoys. On 24 August, the imperial army reached Philippopolis, the Byzantine forces in the area having fled at their approach. On 25 August, Lectoforus' report was confirmed: Hermann of Münster, Rupert of Nassau, Henry of Dietz and Markward von Neuenburg had been stripped of their possessions and openly mocked in presence of the Ayyubid ambassador. That same day, a Byzantine envoy, James of Pisa, arrived with a letter from Isaac, who referred to Frederick as "king of Germany", refusing him the imperial title, and accused him of plotting to put his son Frederick on the throne of Constantinople. He nonetheless offered to fulfill the agreement of December 1188 to ferry the crusaders across the Dardanelles if he received hostages (including Duke Frederick and six bishops) in addition to the envoys he had arrested. Frederick's response that he would consider the offer only after the envoys were released.


title: Third Crusade

text: According to the "History of the Expedition", the receipt of Isaac's letter marked a break in crusader–Byzantine relations. Thereafter, the crusaders resorted to plunder and a scorched earth policy. On 26 August, the crusaders seized Philippopolis and its plentiful supplies. Frederick tried to communicate with the nearest Byzantine commander, the "protostrator" Manuel Kamytzes. When he received no response, he attacked his army on 29 August, killing fifty. The following day (30 August) or a week later (6 September), Duke Frederick and Duke Berthold occupied Berrhoë unopposed. Henry of Kalden occupied a castle called Scribention, while Bishop Diepold and Duke Berthold took a further two towns and ten castles. At this point, the local Armenian and Bulgarian population swore oaths to Frederick to supply the market in Philippopolis as long as the crusaders stayed. They remained there and in partial occupation of Macedonia until 5 November.


title: Third Crusade

text: Isaac ordered Kamytzes to shadow the crusaders and harass their foraging parties. About 22 November 1189, with some 2,000 horsemen, Kamytzes set up an ambush for the crusaders' supply train near Philippopolis. The crusaders were informed of this from the Armenian inhabitants of the fortress of Prousenos, where Kamytzes had set up his main camp. They set out with 5,000 cavalry to attack the Byzantine camp. The two forces met by accident near Prousenos, and in the ensuing battle, Kamytzes was routed. The historian Niketas Choniates, who was an eyewitness, writes that the Byzantines fled as far as Ohrid, and that Kamytzes did not rejoin his men until three days after the battle.


title: Third Crusade

text: After reaching Anatolia, Frederick was promised safe passage through the region by the Turkish Sultanate of Rum, but was faced instead with constant Turkish hit-and-run attacks on his army. A Turkish army of 10,000 men was defeated at the Battle of Philomelion by 2,000 Crusaders, with 4,174–5,000 Turks slain. After continued Turkish raids against the Crusader army, Frederick decided to replenish his stock of animals and foodstuffs by conquering the Turkish capital of Iconium. On 18 May 1190, the German army defeated its Turkish enemies at the Battle of Iconium, sacking the city and killing 3,000 Turkish troops.


title: Third Crusade

text: While crossing the Saleph River on 10 June 1190, Frederick's horse slipped, throwing him against the rocks; he then drowned in the river. After this, much of his army returned to Germany by sea in anticipation of the upcoming Imperial election. The Emperor's son, Frederick of Swabia, led the remaining 5,000 men to Antioch. There, the Emperor's body was boiled to remove the flesh, which was interred in the Church of Saint Peter; his bones were put in a bag to continue the crusade. In Antioch, however, the German army was further reduced by fever. Young Frederick had to ask the assistance of his kinsman Conrad of Montferrat to lead him safely to Acre, by way of Tyre, where his father's bones were buried. While the Imperial army did not achieve its objective of capturing Jerusalem, it did capture the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate and had inflicted considerable damage on Turkish forces, with more than 9,000 Turkish soldiers killed in all battles and skirmishes combined.


title: Third Crusade

text: There were two main international maritime expeditions that travelled independently of the main armies from northern European waters between the spring and autumn of 1189. In addition, there were probably numerous unrecorded sailings on a smaller scale. Some may have sailed as early as 1188.


title: Third Crusade

text: The earlier of the two fleets departed England during Lent. It was already a large international fleet, including some 10,000 men and 50–60 ships from England, Denmark, Frisia, Flanders, Holland and the Rhineland. After a stop in Lisbon, the fleet sacked Alvor and massacred its Almohad defenders. It arrived in Acre on 1 September.


title: Third Crusade

text: The later of the two main fleets is the better recorded, since a short eyewitness account of its feats has survived, the "De itinere navali". It was composed mainly of commoners. It departed from Germany in April with eleven ships, although this was augmented after it arrived in Lisbon in early July by an English fleet that had set out in May. It was recruited by King Sancho I of Portugal to assist in an attack on Silves. At the ensuing siege of Silves, the fleet had 38 vessels, including two from Brittany and Galicia. The city capitulated after 45 days. The second fleet arrived at Acre between April and June 1190. According to the "Narratio de primordiis ordinis theutonici", wood and sail from its cogs was used to construct a field hospital, which ultimately became the Teutonic Order.


title: Third Crusade

text: According to the "Bayān" of Ibn Idhari, a northern fleet fought a naval battle with the Almohad navy near the Strait of Gibraltar in the spring of 1190 and was defeated, with its men being either killed or captured. The fleet may have wintered in Portugal. This incident is not mentioned in Christian sources. In the summer of 1190, a lone English ship separated from its fleet sailed into Silves while the city was besieged by the Almohads. Upon the request of Bishop Nicholas—himself a former member of the 1189 expedition—the English crusaders participated in the successful defence.


title: Third Crusade

text: Henry II of England and Philip II of France ended their war with each other in a meeting at Gisors in January 1188 and then both took the cross. Both imposed a "Saladin tithe" on their citizens to finance the venture. (No such tithe had been levied in the Empire.) In Britain, Baldwin of Forde, the archbishop of Canterbury, made a tour through Wales, convincing 3,000 men-at-arms to take up the cross, recorded in the "Itinerary" of Gerald of Wales. Baldwin would later accompany Richard on the Crusade and would die in the Holy Land.


title: Third Crusade

text: King Henry II of England died on 6 July 1189. Richard succeeded him and immediately began raising funds for the crusade. In the meantime, some of his subjects departed in multiple waves by sea. In April 1190, King Richard's fleet departed from Dartmouth under the command of Richard de Camville and Robert de Sablé on their way to meet their king in Marseille. Parts of this fleet helped the Portuguese monarch defeat an Almohad counterattack against Santarém and Torres Novas, while another group ransacked Christian Lisbon, only to be routed by the Portuguese monarch. Richard and Philip II met in France at Vézelay and set out together on 4 July 1190 as far as Lyon where they parted after agreeing to meet in Sicily; Richard with his retinue, said to number 800, marched to Marseille and Philip to Genoa. Richard arrived in Marseille and found that his fleet had not arrived; he quickly tired of waiting for them and hiring ships, left for Sicily on 7 August, visiting several places in Italy "en route" and arrived in Messina on 23 September. Meanwhile, the English fleet eventually arrived in Marseille on 22 August, and finding that Richard had gone, sailed directly to Messina, arriving before him on 14 September. Philip had hired a Genoese fleet to transport his army, which consisted of 650 knights, 1,300 horses, and 1,300 squires to the Holy Land by way of Sicily.


title: Third Crusade

text: William II of Sicily had died the previous year, and was replaced by Tancred, who imprisoned Joan of England—William's wife and King Richard's sister. Richard captured the city of Messina on 4 October 1190 and Joan was released. Richard and Philip fell out over the issue of Richard's marriage, as Richard had decided to marry Berengaria of Navarre, breaking off his long-standing betrothal to Philip's half-sister Alys. Philip left Sicily directly for the Middle East on 30 March 1191 and arrived in Tyre in April; he joined the siege of Acre on 20 April. Richard did not set off from Sicily until 10 April.


title: Third Crusade

text: Shortly after setting sail from Sicily, King Richard's armada of 180 ships and 39 galleys was struck by a violent storm. Several ships ran aground, including one holding Joan, his new fiancée Berengaria and a large amount of treasure that had been amassed for the crusade. It was soon discovered that Isaac Dukas Comnenus of Cyprus had seized the treasure. The young women were unharmed. Richard entered Limassol on 6 May and met with Isaac, who agreed to return Richard's belongings and to send 500 of his soldiers to the Holy Land. Richard made camp at Limassol, where he received a visit from Guy of Lusignan, the King of Jerusalem, and married Berengaria, who was crowned queen. Once back at his fortress of Famagusta, Isaac broke his oath of hospitality and began issuing orders for Richard to leave the island. Isaac's arrogance prompted Richard to conquer the island within days, leaving sometime before June.


title: Third Crusade

text: Saladin released King Guy from prison in 1189. Guy attempted to take command of the Christian forces at Tyre, but Conrad of Montferrat held power there after his successful defence of the city from Muslim attacks. Guy turned his attention to the wealthy port of Acre. He amassed an army to besiege the city and received aid from Philip's newly arrived French army. The combined armies were not enough to counter Saladin, however, whose forces besieged the besiegers. In summer 1190, in one of the numerous outbreaks of disease in the camp, Queen Sibylla and her young daughters died. Guy, although only king by right of marriage, endeavoured to retain his crown, although the rightful heir was Sibylla's half-sister Isabella. After a hastily arranged divorce from Humphrey IV of Toron, Isabella was married to Conrad of Montferrat, who claimed the kingship in her name.


title: Third Crusade

text: During the winter of 1190–91, there were further outbreaks of dysentery and fever, which claimed the lives of Frederick of Swabia, Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem, and Theobald V of Blois. When the sailing season began again in spring 1191, Leopold V of Austria arrived and took command of what remained of the imperial forces. Philip of France arrived with his troops from Sicily in May. A neighboring army under Leo II of Cilician Armenia also arrived.


title: Third Crusade

text: Richard arrived at Acre on 8 June 1191 and immediately began supervising the construction of siege weapons to assault the city, which was captured on 12 July. Richard, Philip, and Leopold quarrelled over the spoils of the victory. Richard cast down the German standard from the city, slighting Leopold. In the struggle for the kingship of Jerusalem, Richard supported Guy, while Philip and Leopold supported Conrad, who was related to them both. It was decided that Guy would continue to rule but that Conrad would receive the crown upon his death. Frustrated with Richard (and in Philip's case, in poor health), Philip and Leopold took their armies and left the Holy Land in August. Philip left 7,000 French crusaders and 5,000 silver marks to pay them.


title: Third Crusade

text: On 18 June 1191, soon after Richard's arrival at Acre, he sent a messenger to Saladin requesting a face to face meeting. Saladin refused, saying that it was customary for kings to meet each other only after a peace treaty had been agreed, and thereafter "it is not seemly for them to make war upon each other". The two therefore never met, although they did exchange gifts and Richard had a number of meetings with Al-Adil, Saladin's brother. Saladin tried to negotiate with Richard for the release of the captured Muslim soldier garrison, which included their women and children. On 20 August, however, Richard thought Saladin had delayed too much and had 2,700 of the Muslim prisoners decapitated in full view of Saladin's army, which tried unsuccessfully to rescue them. Saladin responded by killing all of the Christian prisoners he had captured. Following the fall of Acre, the Crusaders recaptured some inland parts of Galilee, including Mi'ilya and Bi'ina.


title: Third Crusade

text: After the capture of Acre, Richard decided to march to the city of Jaffa. Control of Jaffa was necessary before an attack on Jerusalem could be attempted. On 7 September 1191, however, Saladin attacked Richard's army at Arsuf, north of Jaffa. Saladin attempted to harass Richard's army into breaking its formation in order to defeat it in detail. Richard maintained his army's defensive formation, however, until the Hospitallers broke ranks to charge the right wing of Saladin's forces. Richard then ordered a general counterattack, which won the battle. Arsuf was an important victory. The Muslim army was not destroyed, despite losing 7,000 men, but it did rout; this was considered shameful by the Muslims and boosted the morale of the Crusaders. Arsuf had dented Saladin's reputation as an invincible warrior and proved Richard's courage as soldier and his skill as a commander. Richard was able to take, defend, and hold Jaffa, a strategically crucial move toward securing Jerusalem. By depriving Saladin of the coast, Richard seriously threatened his hold on Jerusalem.


title: Third Crusade

text: Following his victory at Arsuf, Richard took Jaffa and established his new headquarters there. He offered to begin negotiations with Saladin, who sent his brother, Al-Adil (known as 'Saphadin' to the Franks), to meet with Richard. Negotiations, which included attempts to marry Richard's sister Joan or niece Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany to Al-Adil respectively, failed, and Richard marched to Ascalon, which had been recently demolished by Saladin.


title: Third Crusade

text: In November 1191 the Crusader army advanced inland towards Jerusalem. On 12 December Saladin was forced by pressure from his emirs to disband the greater part of his army. Learning this, Richard pushed his army forward, spending Christmas at Latrun. The army then marched to Beit Nuba, only 12 miles from Jerusalem. Muslim morale in Jerusalem was so low that the arrival of the Crusaders would probably have caused the city to fall quickly. Appallingly bad weather, cold with heavy rain and hailstorms, combined with fear that if the Crusader army besieged Jerusalem, it might be trapped by a relieving force, led to the decision to retreat back to the coast.


title: Third Crusade

text: Richard called on Conrad to join him on campaign, but he refused, citing Richard's alliance with King Guy. He too had been negotiating with Saladin as a defence against any attempt by Richard to wrest Tyre from him for Guy. However, in April, Richard was forced to accept Conrad as king of Jerusalem after an election by the nobles of the kingdom. Guy had received no votes at all; Richard sold him Cyprus as compensation. Before he could be crowned, Conrad was stabbed to death by two Assassins in the streets of Tyre. Eight days later, Richard's nephew Henry II of Champagne married Queen Isabella, who was pregnant with Conrad's child. It was strongly suspected that the king's killers had acted on instructions from Richard.


title: Third Crusade

text: During the winter months, Richard's men occupied and refortified Ascalon, whose fortifications had earlier been razed by Saladin. The spring of 1192 saw continued negotiations and further skirmishing between the opposing forces. On 22 May the strategically important fortified town of Darum on the frontiers of Egypt fell to the crusaders, following five days of fierce fighting. The Crusader army made another advance on Jerusalem, and in June it came within sight of the city before being forced to retreat again, this time because of dissention amongst its leaders. In particular, Richard and the majority of the army council wanted to force Saladin to relinquish Jerusalem by attacking the basis of his power through an invasion of Egypt. The leader of the French contingent, the Duke of Burgundy, however, was adamant that a direct attack on Jerusalem should be made. This split the Crusader army into two factions, and neither was strong enough to achieve its objective. Richard stated that he would accompany any attack on Jerusalem but only as a simple soldier; he refused to lead the army. Without a united command the army had little choice but to retreat back to the coast.


title: Third Crusade

text: In July 1192, Saladin's army suddenly attacked and captured Jaffa with thousands of men, but Saladin lost control of his army due to their anger for the massacre at Acre. It is believed that Saladin even told the Crusaders to shield themselves in the Citadel until he had regained control of his army.


title: Third Crusade

text: Richard had intended to return to England when he heard the news that Saladin and his army had captured Jaffa. Richard and a small force of little more than 2,000 men went to Jaffa by sea in a surprise attack. Richard's forces stormed Jaffa from their ships and the Ayyubids, who had been unprepared for a naval attack, were driven from the city. Richard freed those of the Crusader garrison who had been made prisoner, and these troops helped to reinforce the numbers of his army. Saladin's army still had numerical superiority, however, and they counter-attacked. Saladin intended a stealthy surprise attack at dawn, but his forces were discovered; he proceeded with his attack, but his men were lightly armoured and lost 700 men killed due to the missiles of the large numbers of Crusader crossbowmen. The battle to retake Jaffa ended in complete failure for Saladin, who was forced to retreat. This battle greatly strengthened the position of the coastal Crusader states.


title: Third Crusade

text: On 2 September 1192, following his defeat at Jaffa, Saladin was forced to finalize a treaty with Richard providing that Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, while allowing unarmed Christian pilgrims and traders to visit the city. Ascalon was a contentious issue as it threatened communication between Saladin's dominions in Egypt and Syria; it was eventually agreed that Ascalon, with its defences demolished, be returned to Saladin's control. Richard departed the Holy Land on 9 October 1192.


title: Third Crusade

text: Neither side was entirely satisfied with the results of the war. Though Richard's victories had deprived the Muslims of important coastal territories and re-established a viable Frankish state in Palestine, many Christians in the Latin West felt disappointed that he had elected not to pursue the recapture of Jerusalem. Likewise, many in the Islamic world felt disturbed that Saladin had failed to drive the Christians out of Syria and Palestine. Trade flourished, however, throughout the Middle East and in port cities along the Mediterranean coastline.


title: Third Crusade

text: Saladin's scholar and biographer Baha al-Din recounted Saladin's distress at the successes of the Crusaders:


title: Third Crusade

text: 'I fear to make peace, not knowing what may become of me. Our enemy will grow strong, now that they have retained these lands. They will come forth to recover the rest of their lands and you will see every one of them ensconced on his hill-top,' meaning in his castle, 'having announced, "I shall stay put" and the Muslims will be ruined.' These were his words and it came about as he said.


title: Third Crusade

text: Richard was arrested and imprisoned in December 1192 by Leopold V, Duke of Austria, who suspected Richard of murdering Leopold's cousin Conrad of Montferrat. Leopold had also been offended by Richard casting down his standard from the walls of Acre. He was later transferred to the custody of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, and it took a ransom of one hundred and fifty thousand marks to obtain his release. Richard returned to England in 1194 and died of a crossbow bolt wound in 1199 at the age of 41.


title: Third Crusade

text: In 1193, Saladin died of yellow fever. His heirs would quarrel over the succession and ultimately fragment his conquests.


title: Third Crusade

text: Henry of Champagne was killed in an accidental fall in 1197. Queen Isabella then married for a fourth time, to Amalric of Lusignan, who had succeeded his brother Guy, positioned as King of Cyprus. After their deaths in 1205, her eldest daughter Maria of Montferrat (born after her father's murder) succeeded to the throne of Jerusalem.


title: Third Crusade

text: Richard's decision not to attack Jerusalem would lead to the call for a Fourth Crusade six years after the third ended in 1192. However, Richard's victories facilitated the survival of a wealthy Crusader kingdom centred on Acre. Historian Thomas F. Madden summarises the achievements of the Third Crusade:


title: Third Crusade

text: ...the Third Crusade was by almost any measure a highly successful expedition. Most of Saladin's victories in the wake of Hattin were wiped away. The Crusader kingdom was healed of its divisions, restored to its coastal cities, and secured in a peace with its greatest enemy. Although he had failed to reclaim Jerusalem, Richard had put the Christians of the Levant back on their feet again.


title: Third Crusade

text: Accounts of events surrounding the Third Crusade were written by the anonymous authors of the "Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi" (a.k.a. the "Itinerarium Regis Ricardi"), the "Old French Continuation of William of Tyre" (parts of which are attributed to Ernoul), and by Ambroise, Roger of Howden, Ralph of Diceto, and Giraldus Cambrensis.


title: Steve Burns

text: Steven Michael Burns (born October 9, 1973) is an American actor, television host, singer and musician. He is best known as the original host of the long-running children's preschool television program "Blue's Clues" from 1996 until 2002, for which he was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2001. Burns has also done voiceover work for advertising, including Rubbermaid, Gillette, Oral-B, and is the voice of the Snickers satisfies advertising campaign.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns was born in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, to Joseph Burns Jr. (1938–2015) and Janet Burns (née Petaccio). He has two sisters. His father served in the U.S. Navy and later became the human resources director of Safeguard Business Systems. He attended Boyertown Area Senior High School in Berks County, graduating in 1992.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns played in bands called Sudden Impact US, Nine Pound Truck, and the Ivys (which he has called a "Morrissey rip-off band") while in high school and college. He studied theatre under an acting scholarship at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley, where he was discovered by an agent. He dropped out of school and moved to New York City to become a professional actor. He lived in a basement apartment near Times Square, finding his first success as a voice-over artist for ads and making appearances on "" and "Law & Order".


title: Steve Burns

text: In 1995, Burns auditioned for "Blue's Clues", thinking it was a voice-over role for a game show. He modeled his audition performance after Christopher Walken. He had long hair and an earring. "I was a bit of a skate rat," he said. Initially, the Nickelodeon executives were not supportive of Burns hosting their new show; in subsequent auditions, the show's creators requested that he dress more conservatively. (Burns reported that the creators, in a call-back phone conversation, asked him, "Could you not look like yourself tomorrow morning?") It became apparent, however, that he was the favorite with preschool test audiences. Executive producer and co-creator Traci Paige Johnson reported that of the 100 people they auditioned, Burns was "the realest". As Alice Wilder, Nickelodeon's Director of Research and Development, said: "[T]here was just something about this kid, who was fresh out of Pennsylvania, who just knew where to look in the camera to really talk to kids. He was just right."


title: Steve Burns

text: "Blue's Clues" was an instant hit due to Burns's performances as much as the show's format. He became "a superstar" among his audience and their parents, but unknown to everyone else, and enjoyed what he called being a "micro-celebrity, about as small a celebrity as you can be". As "The New York Times" reported, he "developed an avid following among both preteen girls and mothers. The former send torrents of e-mail; the latter scrutinize the show with an intensity that might make even Elmo, the red Muppet, blush." In 2000, "People" included Burns in their annual list of America's most eligible bachelors. According to writer Diane Tracy, Burns was "destined for the part". Also, according to Tracy, Burns was not the typical children's television host: "There is nothing syrupy about him—his humor is sometimes borderline offbeat, but never inappropriate for preschoolers."


title: Steve Burns

text: The show was filmed in a studio in Tribeca, Manhattan. Burns became "very involved" with the production of "Blue's Clues" from the beginning. One of the most challenging aspects of hosting the show was performing on the "blue screen" before the animation was added. Burns called it "maddening" and likened it to "acting at the bottom of a swimming pool".


title: Steve Burns

text: After six years and 100 episodes, Burns left "Blue's Clues" in early 2001, and in his final episodes, which aired as a three-part special on April 29, 2002, "Steve" introduced new host Donovan Patton as his younger brother "Joe".


title: Steve Burns

text: According to Johnson, Burns never wanted to become a "children's host". He loved kids, but stated, "he could not make a life-long career out of it." Burns went on by saying, "I knew I wasn't going to be doing children's television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid's TV show, and it was happening, fast." The day following the filming of his final episode for the show, he shaved his head – something that he wanted to do for several years, but the show's producers would not allow. He explained in a 2016 interview that "a lot of the original people on the show, like the people who created it, were all moving on to other careers. It just felt like time." In a 2022 "Variety" interview, Burns revealed that he suffered from clinical depression while on the show.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns's departure led to the resurfacing of rumors that had circulated about him since 1998, including death from a heroin overdose, being killed in a car accident, and (similar to rumors about Paul McCartney in 1966) being replaced with a look-alike. Burns made an appearance on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" to dispel these rumors, and he and co-creator Angela Santomero appeared on "The Today Show" to help concerned parents extinguish the fears of kids who may have heard these rumors.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns consulted on the casting for the revival of "Blue's Clues", titled "Blue's Clues & You!" and hosted by Joshua Dela Cruz. He and Patton reprised their roles in the premiere episode to welcome their cousin "Josh". Burns has written and directed several episodes of the new show.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns appeared in videos for the 25-year anniversary of "Blue's Clues" in 2021, including a widely watched Twitter video in which he – in character as the host of the show – explained reassuringly that he had never forgotten the viewers after leaving to go to college, and marveling at how much each of them had experienced since then.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns worked on material for his first album, "Songs for Dustmites", for two and a half years at a small studio in his home in Brooklyn before it was produced by PIAS Records in late 2002. He started work on the album after he left "Blue's Clues" in 2002, and it was released in 2003. He posted eleven songs on his webpage and then realizing he needed help with drums and arrangements went to Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips for advice. Drozd assisted Burns with six tracks, Lips bassist Michael Ivins engineered the album, and longtime Lips producer Dave Fridmann produced it. One of the songs from the album, "Mighty Little Man", is used as the opening theme for the CBS series "Young Sheldon". Burns appeared on the series in January 2020, playing a "Star Trek" enthusiast whom the title character meets.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns started a band, Steve Burns and the Struggle, and completed his second album, "Deep Sea Recovery Efforts", which was released in 2009. Members of the Struggle include Drozd and Ryan Smith of A Million Billion.


title: Steve Burns

text: Burns acted in the 2007 horror-comedy film "Netherbeast Incorporated" with Darrell Hammond and Dave Foley, playing the part of a vampire. In 2008, he played an astronaut in "Christmas on Mars", a science fiction film from The Flaming Lips. In March 2012, he appeared in the YouTube comedy series "The Professionals".


title: Steve Burns

text: He appeared in DeSales University's production of "Amadeus" as the title character in 2007 and also appeared in "The Comedy of Errors".


title: Steve Burns

text: In late 2016, Burns released a children's album with Drozd, titled "Foreverywhere" under the name "STEVENSTEVEN". They released a video of the album's first song, "The Unicorn and Princess Rainbow".


title: Steve Burns

text: After residing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for much of his adult life, Burns currently resides near the Catskill Mountains.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: 9/11 conspiracy theories attribute the preparation and execution of the September 11 attacks against the United States to parties other than, or in addition to, al-Qaeda. These include the theory that high-level government officials had advance knowledge of the attacks. Government investigations and independent reviews have rejected these theories. Proponents of these theories assert that there are inconsistencies in the commonly accepted version, or that there exists evidence that was ignored, concealed, or overlooked.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: The most prominent conspiracy theory is that the collapse of the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center were the result of controlled demolitions rather than structural failure due to impact and fire. Another prominent belief is that the Pentagon was hit by a missile launched by elements from inside the U.S. government, or that hijacked planes were remotely controlled, or that a commercial airliner was allowed to do so via an effective stand-down of the American military. Possible motives claimed by conspiracy theorists for such actions include justifying the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (even though the U.S. government concluded Iraq was not involved in the attacks) to advance their geostrategic interests, such as plans to construct a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan. Other conspiracy theories revolve around authorities having advance knowledge of the attacks and deliberately ignoring or assisting the attackers.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the technology magazine "Popular Mechanics" have investigated and rejected the claims made by 9/11 conspiracy theorists. The 9/11 Commission and most of the civil engineering community accept that the impacts of jet aircraft at high speeds in combination with subsequent fires, not controlled demolition, led to the collapse of the Twin Towers, but some conspiracy theory groups, including Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, disagree with the arguments made by NIST and "Popular Mechanics".


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Since the attacks, a variety of conspiracy theories have been put forward in websites, books and films. Many groups and individuals advocating 9/11 conspiracy theories identify as part of the 9/11 Truth movement. Within six hours of the attack, a suggestion appeared on an Internet chat room suggesting that the collapse of the towers looked like an act of controlled demolition. "If, in a few days, not one official has mentioned anything about the controlled demolition part," the author wrote, "I think we have a REALLY serious problem." The first theories that emerged focused primarily on various perceived anomalies in the publicly available evidence, and proponents later developed more specific theories about an alleged plot. One false allegation that was widely circulated by e-mail and on the Web is that not a single Jew had been killed in the attack and that therefore the attacks must have been the work of the Mossad, not Islamic terrorists.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: The first elaborated theories appeared in Europe. One week after the attacks, the "inside job" theory was the subject of a thesis by a researcher from the French National Centre for Scientific Research published in "Le Monde". Other theories sprang from the far corners of the globe within weeks. Six months after the attacks, Thierry Meyssan's piece on 9/11, "L'Effroyable Imposture", topped the French bestseller list. Its publication in English (as "") received little attention, but it remains one of the principal sources for "trutherism". 2003 saw the publication of "The CIA and September 11" by former German state minister Andreas von Bülow and "Operation 9/11" by the German journalist Gerhard Wisnewski; both books are published by Mathias Bröckers, who was at the time an editor at the German newspaper "Die Tageszeitung".


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: While these theories were popular in Europe, they were treated by the U.S. media with either bafflement or amusement, and they were dismissed by the U.S. government as the product of anti-Americanism. In an address to the United Nations on November 10, 2001, President George W. Bush denounced the emergence of "outrageous conspiracy theories [...] that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty."


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: The 9/11 conspiracy theories started out mostly in the political left but have broadened into what "New York" magazine describes as "terra incognita where left and right meet, fusing sixties countercultural distrust with the don't-tread-on-me variety".


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: By 2004, conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks began to gain ground in the United States. One explanation is that the rise in popularity stemmed more from growing criticism of the Iraq War and the newly re-elected President George W. Bush than from any discovery of new or more compelling evidence or an improvement in the technical quality of the presentation of the theories. Knight Ridder news theorized that revelations that weapons of mass destruction did not exist in Iraq, the belated release of the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, and reports that NORAD had lied to the 9/11 Commission, may have fueled the conspiracy theories.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Between 2004 and the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2006, mainstream coverage of the conspiracy theories increased. The U.S. government issued a formal analysis by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the collapse of the World Trade Center. To address the growing publicity of the theories, the State Department revised a webpage in 2006 to debunk them. A 2006 national security strategy paper declared that terrorism springs from "subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation," and that "terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda." Al-Qaeda has repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attacks, with chief deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri accusing Shia Iran and Hezbollah of denigrating Sunni successes in hurting America by intentionally starting rumors that Israel carried out the attacks.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Some of the conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks do not involve representational strategies typical of many conspiracy theories that establish a clear dichotomy between good and evil, or guilty and innocent; instead, they call up gradations of negligence and complicity. Matthias Bröckers, an early proponent of such theories, dismisses the commonly accepted account of the September 11 attacks as being itself a conspiracy theory that seeks "to reduce complexity, disentangle what is confusing," and "explain the inexplicable".


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Just before the fifth anniversary of the attacks, mainstream news outlets released a flurry of articles on the growth of 9/11 conspiracy theories, with an article in "Time" stating that "[t]his is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality." Several surveys have included questions about beliefs related to the September 11 attacks. In 2008, 9/11 conspiracy theories topped a "greatest conspiracy theory" list compiled by "The Daily Telegraph". The list was ranked by following and traction.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: In 2010, the "International Center for 9/11 Studies," a private organization that is said to be sympathetic to conspiracy theories, successfully sued for the release of videos collected by NIST of the attacks and aftermath. According to the German daily "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", the videos that were published shortly before the ninth anniversary of the attacks provide "new food for conspiracy theorists." Many of the videos show images of 7 World Trade Center, a skyscraper in the vicinity of the WTC towers that also collapsed on September 11, 2001.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: 9/11 truth figures Steven E. Jones and Mike Berger have further added that the death of Osama bin Laden did not change their questions about the attacks, nor provide closure.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: According to writer Jeremy Stahl, since Bush left office, the overall number of believers in 9/11 conspiracy theories has dipped, while the number of people who believe in the most "radical" theories has held fairly steady.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Conspiracy theorists claim that action or inaction by U.S. officials with foreknowledge was intended to ensure that the attacks took place successfully. For example, Michael Meacher, former British environment minister and member of Tony Blair's government, said that the United States knowingly failed to prevent the attacks.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Some conspiracy theorists maintain that just before 9/11, an "extraordinary" amount of put options were placed on United Airlines and American Airlines stocks and speculate that insiders may have known in advance of the coming events of 9/11 and placed their bets accordingly. An analysis into the possibility of insider trading on 9/11 concludes that:


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: This study was intended to address the "great deal of speculation about whether option market activity indicated that the terrorists or their associates had traded in the days leading up to September 11 on advance knowledge of the impending attacks."


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: In the days leading up to 9/11, analysis shows a rise in the put to call ratio for United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines from which planes were hijacked on 9/11. Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange recorded purchases of 4,744 "put" option contracts in UAL and 396 call options. On September 10, more trading in Chicago saw the purchase of 4,516 put options in American Airlines, the other airline involved in the hijackings, with a mere 748 call options in American purchased that day. No other airline companies had an unusual put to call ratio in the days leading up to the attacks. The 9/11 Commission concluded that all these abnormal patterns in trading were coincidental.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Insurance companies saw anomalous trading activities as well. Citigroup Inc., which estimated that its Travelers Insurance unit could pay $500 million in claims from the World Trade Center attack, had about 45 times the normal volume during three trading days before the attack for options that profit, if the stock falls below $40. Citigroup shares fell $1.25 in late trading to $38.09. Morgan Stanley, which occupied 22 floors at the World Trade Center, experienced bigger-than-normal pre-attack trading of options that profited when stock prices fell. Other companies directly affected by the tragedy had similar jumps.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: Raytheon, a defense contractor, had an anomalously high number of call options trading on September 10. A Raytheon option that makes money, if shares are more than $25 each had 232 options contracts traded on the day before the attacks, almost six times the total number of trades that had occurred before that day.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: The initial options were bought through at least two brokerage firms, including NFS, a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments, and TD Waterhouse. It was estimated that the trader or traders would have realized a five million dollar profit. The Securities and Exchange Commission launched an insider trading investigation in which Osama bin Laden was a suspect after receiving information from at least one Wall Street Firm.


title: 9/11 conspiracy theories

text: The 9/11 Commission Report concluded that "Exhaustive investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, and other agencies have uncovered no evidence that anyone with advance knowledge of the attacks profited through securities transactions." The report further stated: