Posted on 07/20/2003 7:47:01 AM PDT by knighthawk
Anyone care to raise their glasses to Hitler? No thanks, said a family of disgusted Poles who came across Adolf Hitler wine while on holiday in Italy.
The tourists bought the bottle for 5.30 euros ($9.13) in a supermarket in northern Italy and, upon their return home, they handed it over to Poland's biggest-selling newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, which displayed the offensive item on its front page.
Adolf Hitler was splashed across the bottle's label, his arm raised in the Nazi salute, while the regime's motto "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer" - One People, One Empire, One Leader - was written across the bottom.
"We were shocked. It's disgusting," said one of the tourists, quoted by Gazeta in Warsaw.
"We hid the bottle in the trunk of the car when we crossed the Polish border because we were afraid that customs officers would think we were Nazi sympathisers," he added.
The supermarket also sold bottles graced with the effigy of Italy's wartime dictator Benito Mussolini, the tourists said.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
It's a fruity bouquet, with just a hint of megalomania...
No legs, though and a bitter aftertaste
tia
Winemaker adds new label to his 'Hitler' and 'Stalin' rangeAn Italian winemaker who outraged people with his ‘Hitler’ label says he plans to add a ‘Tito’ to his vintages.
Alessandro Lunardelli started selling wines with faces of great dictators on the labels six years ago.
He now wants to offer Tito wine to cater to the new rich visiting Italy from the Balkan countries of Slovenia and Croatia.
The man from Pasian di Prato in northern Italy currently caters mainly to German and Austrian tourists.
The collection began with a red wine called “Mussolini”, which was a big hit in Italy. But because of the label with a photograph of the Duce, Mr Lunardelli and his son Andrea ended up in court. They escaped fines and threats of jail because the authorities said they were unconvinced he was genuinely promoting fascism.
They later brought a Hitler wine on to the market with the slogan “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer”, as well as ones with pictures of Erwin Rommel and Hermann Goering. They ended up in supermarkets and wine shops all over Italy.
Mr Lunardelli rejects any allegations that he is promoting fascism and Nazism and says he also offer bottles with pictures of Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Che Guevara.
“It’s strange that Stalin murdered 15 million people, but there is no fuss about the bottle. And for the labels with Hitler and Mussolini I ended up in court,” said 36-year-old.
The “historical collection” of 50 different labels represents half of the company’s turnover and in autumn the Lunardellis plan to bring out their Tito plonk .
“There is a lot of demand from Slovenia and Croatia for this,” said the wine-dealer. “I work towards the demand of the market - for example, for the younger customers there is also a Bob Marley bottle.”
Story filed: 15:18 Monday 13th August 2001
Ananova
Ya, that exchange rate is waaaaay off base. Actually, 5.30 Euros costs about $6.00. Just in case anyone wanted to know....
Y'know, he's got a point there...
}:-)4
Indeed he does. I got into a political discussion about this very principle with some fellow from eastern Europe once, here in California.
I said that Communism and Fascism were essentially two sides of the same coin and that from the perspective of the governed, there wasn't really much difference at all.
He just about came unglued on me in with an impassioned defense of Communism. I pointed out that he lives here now and owns a business and just bought into a second one. If he really believed what he said, then why was he here making money and driving a Mercedes when he could be living in some drab, square, concrete apartment block wishing for a Trabant and waiting for some apparatchik to send him off to the Gulag for virtually nothing at all?
Stay Safe !
No, it's not strange, it's very simple actually. The leftist media hates the Fascists because they belonged to the extreme right, as for the media protecting or reporting little about Communists like Stalin, Castro, Che Gevara… we can say, birds of a feather….
Mr Lunardelli rejects any allegations that he is promoting fascism and Nazism and says he also offers bottles with pictures of Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Che Guevara.
I'd love to have a few of those bottles so I could smash it against my fireplace, a la Greek. Lol.
Stay Safe !!
An advertising agency has a problem. The multi-million dollar contract with a certain cereal company owner is in trouble because the owner wants himself identified with the new cereal and his surname is ..... Hitler.
The cereal company owner has even suggested "Hitler Crunchies" as a cereal name. What to do?
Somebody gets the bright idea of choosing a cereal name without the offending surname but having each cereal box sport a large photo of the owner ala Wheaties. The owner would be associated with the cereal and nobody would be offended.
Great idea! They visit the owner to present their idea. Upon meeting him, discover that he is dressed and looks exactly like.........Fidel Castro. :-)
Stay Safe !
BENITO MUSSOLINI, (1883-1945), Fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943. He centralized all power in himself as the leader (il duce) of the Fascist party and attempted to create an Italian empire, ultimately in alliance with HITLER's Germany. The defeat of Italian arms in WORLD WAR II brought an end to his imperial dream and led to his downfall.
Socialist Affiliations
Expelled by the Austrians, he became the editor at Forli of a socialist newspaper, La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle ). His early enthusiasm for Karl Marx was modified by a mixture of ideas from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, the revolutionary doctrines of Auguste Blanqui, and the syndicalism of Georges Sorel. In 1910, Mussolini became secretary of the local Socialist party at Forli.
Fascism became an organized political movement in March 1919 when Mussolini founded the Fasci de Combattimento. After failing in the 1919 elections, Mussolini at last entered parliament in 1921 as a **right-wing member.**
Fascist Dictatorship
At first he was supported by the Liberals in parliament. With their help he introduced strict censorship and altered the methods of election so that in 1925-1926 he was able to assume dictatorial powers and dissolve all other political parties. Skillfully using his absolute control over the press, he gradually built up the legend of the "Duce, a man who was always right and could solve all the problems of politics and economics. Italy was soon a police state. With those who tried to resist him, for example the Socialist Giacomo Matteotti, he showed himself utterly ruthless. But Mussolini's skill in propaganda was such that he had surprisingly little opposition.
He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist party (formed in 1921) and the armed Fascist militia. In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any rival. But it was at the price of creating a regime that was overcentralized, inefficient, and corrupt.
Most of his time was spent on propaganda, whether at home or abroad, and here his training as a journalist was invaluable. Press, radio, education, films--all were carefully supervised to manufacture the illusion that fascism was "the doctrine of the 20th century that was replacing liberalism and democracy. The principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on fascism, reputedly written by himself, that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana. In 1929 a concordat with the Vatican was signed, by which the Italian state was at last recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.
Under the dictatorship the parliamentary system was virtually abolished. The law codes were rewritten. All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the Fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini himself, and no one could practice journalism who did not possess a certificate of approval from the Fascist party. The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the "corporative system. The aim (never completely achieved) was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or "corporations, all of them under governmental control.
Mussolini played up to his financial backers at first by transferring a number of industries from public to private ownership. But by the 1930's he had begun moving back to the opposite extreme of rigid governmental control of industry. A great deal of money was spent on public works. But the economy suffered from his exaggerated attempt to make Italy self-sufficient. There was too much concentration on heavy industry, for which Italy lacked the resources.
Military Aggression
In foreign policy, Mussolini soon shifted from pacifist anti-imperialism to an extreme form of aggressive nationalism. An early example of this was his bombardment of Corfu in 1923. Soon after this he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and in reconquering Libya. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean "mare nostrum ("our sea). In 1935, at the Stresa Conference, he helped create an anti-Hitler front in order to defend the independence of Austria. But his successful war against Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935-1936 was opposed by the League of Nations, and he was forced to seek an alliance with Nazi Germany, which had withdrawn from the League in 1933. His active intervention in 1936-1939 on the side of Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War ended any possibility of reconciliation with France and Britain. As a result, he had to accept the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939. At the Munich Conference in September 1938 he posed as a moderate working for European peace. But his "axis with Germany was confirmed when he made the Pact of Steel with Hitler in May 1939. Clearly the subordinate partner, Mussolini followed the Nazis in adopting a racial policy that led to persecution of the Jews and the creation of apartheid in the Italian empire.
As World War II approached, Mussolini announced his intention of annexing Malta, Corsica, and Tunis. In April 1939, after a brief war, he occupied Albania. Failing to realize that he had more to gain by trying to hold the balance of power in Europe, he preferred to rely on a policy of bluff and bluster to induce the Western democracies to give way to his increasing territorial demands. Although he had preached for 15 years about the virtues of war and the military readiness of Italy to fight, his armed forces were completely unprepared when Hitler's invasion of Poland led to World War II. He decided to remain "nonbelligerent until he was quite certain which side would win. Only after the fall of France did he declare war in June 1940, hoping that the war had only a few weeks more to run. His attack on Greece in October revealed to everyone that he had done nothing to prepare an effective military machine. He had no option but to follow Hitler in declaring war on Russia in June 1941 and on the United States in December 1941.
Following Italian defeats on all fronts and the Anglo-American landing in Sicily in 1943, most of Mussolini's colleagues turned against him at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on July 25, 1943. This enabled the king to dismiss and arrest him.
Rescued by the Germans several months later, Mussolini set up a Republican Fascist state in northern Italy. But he was little more than a puppet under the protection of the German Army. In this "Republic of Salo, Mussolini returned to his earlier ideas of socialism and collectivization. He also executed some of the Fascist leaders who had abandoned him, including his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. Increasingly he tried to shift the blame for defeat onto the Italian people, who had not been great enough to appreciate his imperial dream. In April 1945, just before the Allied armies reached Milan, Mussolini, along with his mistress Clara Petacci, was caught by Italian partisans as he tried to take refuge in Switzerland. He was summarily executed.
LOL!!!
It was a sarcastic laugh. Fascism and Communism are similar as I said earlier. There is no question that Mussolini embraced many communist ideas, I haven't denied this. All I have said is that he belonged to the right. You are free to believe otherwise and I'm free to believe the facts.
Hey, at least he made the trains run on time!"
Hey RC. No, he was from the East somewhere, and he was an old-timer. I guess there were some folks who actually liked living under Communism. If he was one, then he was the first one that I have met.
I wonder what a complete set of all 14 bottles would go for as a set, on-line at eBay...? Any guesses?
Now, would a collector want to drink these, or preserve them? I guess you'd have to buy two sets -- one to drink and one to collect...
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