TIME magazine - old issues online (and I do mean OLD)

[Rev. Austin]

I've only just found out you can read (all?) old TIME magazines on their website!  As a research tool it beats trawling Google, I reckon, plus it's a nice way to get to grips with the language of the time (I'm using it to research something set at the tailend of 1940).  Blimey, this post doesn't half sound like I'm a spambot haha

Anyway  here's a link! http://www.time.com/time/magazine

[Rook]

What a useful link, Rev! Thanks. 

[Ed]

Interesting stuff -- thanks, Rev

[Pharosian]

That should come in handy! I just spent the last hour or so surfing the site. Hmm.... could also prove to be a big time sink! 

[Rev. Austin]

I was a bit naughty and spent most of my shift at work the other day reading it haha I was reading an article (in the Mon Dec 23rd 1940 issue) about Nazis vs Christianity (80% of concentration camp 'residents' were Christian, allegedly) and two thoughts crossed my mind.  The first was 'Wow, I had no idea about any of this' and the second one was 'Hang on, just how much of this is propaganda'.  Still very interesting, mind you.

[Ed]

That's the only problem with reading stuff containing an editorial bias -- you're never quite sure how much the information is skewed. Still, anything that makes us think and question what we know must be a good thing, as long as we take the trouble to find out the truth, I suppose.

I thought the whole idea of concentration camps was to facilitate the demise of the 'enemies of the state', which included political prisoners, prisoners of war, spies, gypsies, gays, the mentally handicapped and, more than any other group, Jews. I don't know what the exact figures are, but I had always thought that the 80% figure was more likely to be the Jewish contingent. 1940 was still very early days, though. This was a couple or three years before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and before Russia even entered the war. So I suppose it's possible that most of the prisoners in 1940 were Christian.

The only thing that surprises and disgusts me more than the 'Final Solution' is that it wasn't the last time it happened in the 20th Century. Nothing was learned, it seems.