War Resisters International
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War Resisters International
War Resisters' International (WRI), headquartered in London, is an international anti-war organisation with members and affiliates in over 30 countries. History ''War Resisters' International'' was founded in Bilthoven, Netherlands in 1921 under the name "Paco", which means "peace" in Esperanto. WRI adopted a founding declaration that has remained unchanged: It adopted the broken rifle as its symbol in 1931. Many of its founders had been involved in the resistance to the First World War: its first Secretary, Herbert Runham Brown, had spent two and a half years in a British prison as a conscientious objector. Two years later, in 1923, Tracy Dickinson Mygatt, Frances M. Witherspoon, Jessie Wallace Hughan, and John Haynes Holmes founded the War Resisters League in the United States. Notable members include Dutch anarchist Bart de Ligt, Quaker Richard Gregg and Tolstoyan Valentin Bulgakov. The group had a close working relationships with sections of the Gandhian movement. In J ...
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Broken Rifle
A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a ''Dove'' lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s the "peace sign", as it is known today (also known as "peace and love"), was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a super-imposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's ''The Third of May 1808'' (1814) (aka "Peasant Before the Firing Squad"). The V hand signal and the peace flag also became international peace symbols. Olive branch Classical antiquity The use of the olive ...
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Bart De Ligt
Bartholomeus de Ligt (17 July 1883 – 3 September 1938) was a Dutch anarcho-pacifist and antimilitarist. He is chiefly known for his support of conscientious objectors. Life and work Born on 17 July 1883 in Schalkwijk, Utrecht, his father was a Calvinist pastor. Following in his father's footsteps, he became a theology student at the University of Utrecht. While there, he was exposed to liberal thinking and Hegelian philosophy for the first time and, in 1909, became a member of the League of Christian Socialists. In 1910, he was appointed pastor of the Reformed Church at Nuenen, near Eindhoven in Brabant where van Gogh's father had been pastor 25 years before. First anti-war activities In 1914, de Ligt joined with fellow pastors A. R. de Jong and Truus Kruyt to write "The Guilt of the Churches", charging that the Christian establishment had been complicit in the events that produced World War I. Afterwards, all of his writings became forbidden literature for the Dutch arme ...
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Soviet Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, in opposition to the Capitalism, capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the Second World, whereas the term "First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the Non-Aligned Movement, non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former Tito–Stalin split, pre-1948 Soviet ally SFR Yugoslavia, which was located in Europe. In Western Europe, the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Comecon (East Germany, Polish People's Republic, Poland, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungarian ...
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Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as a number of other First W ...
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Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate Prime Minister of France; Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents. Sachsenhausen was a labor camp, outfitted with several subcamps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area. Prisoners were treated inhumanely, fed inadequately, and killed openly. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used by the NKVD as NKVD ...
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Occupation Of Norway By Nazi Germany
The occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany during the Second World War began on 9 April 1940 after Operation Weserübung. Conventional armed resistance to the German invasion ended on 10 June 1940, and Nazi Germany controlled Norway until the capitulation of German forces in Europe on 8 May 1945. Throughout this period, a pro-German government named Den nasjonale regjering (English: the National Government) ruled Norway, while the Norwegian king Haakon VII and the prewar government escaped to London, where they formed a government in exile. Civil rule was effectively assumed by the ''Reichskommissariat Norwegen'' (Reich Commissariat of Norway), which acted in collaboration with the pro-German puppet government. This period of military occupation is, in Norway, referred to as the "war years", "occupation period" or simply "the war". Background Having maintained its neutrality during the First World War (1914–1918), Norwegian foreign and military policy since 1933 was largely ...
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Olaf Kullmann
Olaf Bryn Kullmann (2 July 1892 – 9 July 1942) was a Norwegian naval officer and peace activist. Early life and career He was born in Stord in the county of Hordaland, Norway. He was a son of vicar and school manager Jakob Kullmann (1852–1910) and Ingeleiv Kristine Mæland (1864–1951). He studied at the Norwegian Naval Academy, and served on a torpedo boat with the rank of Premier Lieutenant from 1916. He later studied law, graduated with the Candidate of Law degree in 1923, served as a deputy in Vestfold, and from 1925 was an attorney in Bergen. From 1925 to 1930 he worked in Oslo. He then returned to the navy, from 1929 with the rank of Captain. He had responsibility for the torpedo battery at Oscarsborg Fortress. Political turnaround Kullmann eventually turned against the ideas of the existing military. He had been an adviser for the Norwegian Labour Party when in 1932 it proposed to replace the entire armed forces with a semi-armed "civil guard", and was a member of ...
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Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism (german: Hitlerfaschismus). The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War. Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates a dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist '' Völkisch'' movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly influenced by the paramilitary groups that emerged af ...
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Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spanish State, Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title ''Caudillo''. This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or as the Francoist dictatorship. Born in Ferrol, Spain, Ferrol, Galicia (Spain), Galicia, into an upper-class military family, Franco served in the Spanish Army as a cadet in the Toledo Infantry Academy from 1907 to 1910. While serving in Spanish protectorate in Morocco, Morocco, he rose through the ranks to become a brigadier general in 1926 at age 33, which made him the #Military career, youngest general in all of Europe. Two years later, Franco became the director of the General Military Academy in Zaragoza. A ...
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Prats-de-Mollo Children's Home
Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste (; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales Departments of France, department in southern France, near the border with Spain and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia. The name ''Prats-de-Mollo'' comes from Catalan "meadows of Molló". Molló is a town just across the border and the Col d'Ares. La Preste is a spa resort town that was a separate village but is now included as part of the municipality. Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste was the capital of the eponymous Canton of Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste, former canton. It forms part of the historical comarca of Vallespir and is part of Northern Catalonia. Geography Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste is located in the Pyrenees, from the Spain, Spanish border and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia, on the banks of the river Tech (river), Tech, and on the south face of the Canigou at an elevation of 735 meters. Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste is located in the canton of Le Canigou and in the arrondissement of ...
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Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti-colonial nationalist politics in the twentieth-century in ways that neither indigenous nor westernized Indian nationalists could." and political ethicist Quote: "Gandhi staked his reputation as an original political thinker on this specific issue. Hitherto, violence had been used in the name of political rights, such as in street riots, regicide, or armed revolutions. Gandhi believes there is a better way of securing political rights, that of nonviolence, and that this new way marks an advance in political ethics." who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific ''Mahātmā'' (Sanskrit ...
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Gandhian
The followers of Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest figure of the Indian independence movement, are called Gandhians. Gandhi's legacy includes a wide range of ideas ranging from his dream of ideal India (or ''Rama Rajya)'', economics, environmentalism, women rights, animal rights, spirituality, the truth, nonviolence, asceticism and others. Thus Gandhians hailing from wide range of work profile attribute their ideas to him. An overwhelming number of Bharat Ratna awardees are such individuals. In a 2012 poll called The Greatest Indian ''The Greatest Indian'' was a poll sponsored by Reliance Mobile and conducted by ''Outlook'' magazine, in partnership with CNN-IBN and The History Channel. The poll was conducted from June to August 2012, with the winner, B. R. Ambedkar, annou ..., the jury decided to keep Gandhi out as it "is impossible for anyone to come close to the father of the nation when it comes to leadership, impact and contribution". The poll included as many as 10 individ ...
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