CREAMgetthemoney: 2010

The Kill Hitler Interactive Labyrinth (KHIL)
“There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.” – Philip K. Dick, VALIS
SUMMARY
A blown up, mechanized, group-played labyrinth game in the spirit of Giant Joystick themed around the numerous near-death experiences of Adolf Hitler and the far-reaching repercussions of his infamous actions on the modern world.

PRELUDE
At some time during the 1920s, when my grandparents were a couple of young socialites in Chicago, the two decided to go on a date to a restaurant or diner (in all probability, a Speakeasy – my grandfather loved his vodka martinis). But when my grandfather arrived at his date’s early, she managed to keep him waiting another 45 minutes to two hours, depending on the storyteller, refusing to come down from her room because she ‘wasn’t ready’. My grandfather considered himself to have considerable luck in life; he was too young to fight in World War 1, too old for World War 2, and kept a steady income as a sign painter for local businesses and movie theaters through the Great Depression while raising a family. He never complained, and I bet he refused to let on how irritating this must have been. Finally, my grandmother was ready and they drove off to the restaurant. Except when they got there, there wasn’t much of a restaurant left. Al Capone’s gang had driven by with their Thompsons and shredded the place and almost everyone in it, including whoever their target was not more than 20 minutes earlier. This event has numerous implications: yes, my grandfather was extraordinarily lucky, and my grandmother was extraordinarily narcissistic and manipulative, and if she had been reasonable enough to keep him waiting just 25 minutes less, both mine and my father’s existences would have been negated decades in advance. By the transitive property, we are products of my grandfather’s patience and my grandmother’s vanity. It’s bizarre to think that something as trivial as your grandmother meticulously fixing her hair or changing outfits (or just sitting, waiting to build suspense for her grand entrance) could save not only her and her future husband’s lives, but their eight future children, all of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on to eternity.

DESCRIPTION AND CONCEPT:
    The KHIL installation will be within a large concrete room reminiscent of the new media work Panopticon , and more solemnly, a gas chamber. A large photo of Hitler will be projected on the wall opposite the entrance, so that the first thing seen is the sides of the labyrinth with Hitler and the word ‘FATHER’ above. In the center is a large-scale ball-in-a-maze labyrinth, though the two knobs are geared to motors and certain sections of the labyrinth walls can rotate 90 degrees. Essentially, it allows us to program out the direct human control of the labyrinth, and create some internal variation. Each 12” x 12” tile on the floor surrounding the labyrinth will have a pressure sensor so that, after some simple programmatic tinkering, based on all of the inputs, the labyrinth will either tilt X or Y, or one of the wall sections will rotate (or occasionally nothing will happen), once every three seconds. I think this will give it a slow, rhythmic element, especially if the methods to move the labyrinth parts are loud and mechanical; and the constant, ticking pace can be reminiscent of the passage of time and the methodical nature of murder during WW2 and the Holocaust. Using only their body weights and the tiles, participants must try to harness the labyrinth and navigate the sphere through the maze, avoiding the sixteen holes, each of which correspond to one of Hitler’s two near-death experiences in World War I and the fourteen failed assassination attempts against him between 1939 and 1945. If and when the ball falls into those holes, the back wall (opposite Hitler) will project information about that attempt on Hitler's life, the world-changing events and decisions made shortly after, and some potential long-term consequences that wouldn't have happened if the attempt succeeded (See Game Responses pages). The ball is mechanically lifted back onto the start underneath the labyrinth with a conveyor belt or lift. Upon completing the puzzle, getting the ball to the end, the entire room goes dark, the labyrinth turns off, and the digital projector displays “In memoriam to the 70 million deaths between 1937 and 1945 as the result of World War II and the Holocaust” in white over the exit.

KHIL participants need to recognize a few unpleasant truths about modern society to fully appreciate this work: Firstly, if the universe resembles Borges’ forking paths, the infinitely branching and regressing repercussions of all human decisions and actions is true, then there are certainly decisions made far removed from us in time and space that have shaped us in more ways than we can imagine. Secondly, there has been no single human being whose actions have had a more drastic and far-reaching impact on the last century of humanity than Adolf Hitler. Hence, any slight alteration in the course of Hitler’s life, any minute decision, could have yielded a 2010 not even remotely resembling our own. Initiating World War 2 and the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler’s actions account for over 70 million military and civilian deaths between 1937 and 1945; if you round that to about nine million deaths a year, you have on average 24,658 deaths per day. Not to even mention that Hitler’s war caused the displacement of millions of captured soldiers, orphans and refugees, and reshaped the physical, economic, social, technological and political landscapes of Europe, Africa, North America, East and South Asia, The Philippines and the Pacific Islands. Despite his extreme infamy, is it possible that a failed Austrian painter and vegetarian who had no children, and whose direct actions account for only one of those 70+ million deaths, his own, could be as instrumental in the impossibly complex road to a majority of the current populations existences as my grandmother’s vanity is to my own? Was der fuhrer, in some sense, successful in becoming the father of a new humanity? And will his empire truly last 1000 years, or far beyond? Are we doomed to actualize his dream?

Jorge Luis Borges created the first hypertextual novel with The Garden of Forking Paths, where a German spy in World War I England indirectly, but successfully communicates to his superiors the city to be bombed by killing a man with the same name. The story is an illustration of Borges’ view of the universe as “a universe in which everything that is possible does indeed occur in some branch of reality” or “a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression” . Essentially, the specific reality in which “we” inhabit is not necessarily the ‘one true’ incarnation of the universe; there are realities in which Hitler never came to power, where he did not invade Poland, and France and England might have joined him to fight Russia, or where he could have won the Battle of Britain, occupied the UK and prevented America from ever joining, giving him a winnable one-front war with Russia, or where Mussolini did not strand his tank divisions in Greece, needing to be rescued by Hitler and delaying the invasion of Russia several crucial months and sending the German army into the harsh Russian winter unprepared… by all accounts, Hitler could have won the war just as easily as he could’ve been killed in 1917, or 1939. This total fragility of time astounds me, that something occurred during those eight years so crucial that for it to occur any other way would, by pure statistic probability, negate my own and most other people living todays’ existences. And somehow what came after the world’s one truly horrifying supervillain and the most diabolically transitional period for the human race was neither the Fourth Reich nor a peaceful, free utopia. And I think that everything which has come after is still in reaction to what happened in World War 2 and the Holocaust, especially in America with our individualistic ideology. Each decade has been a different attempt to come to terms with not only our universal capacity for destruction, but also our universal capacity for cowardice and laziness; that not only could evil foreign enemies commit pure atrocity, but that ‘the free world’ could nearly completely fail to prevent it and that millions could walk to their deaths without so much as a whimper, much less a bang. The Kubler-Ross model of grief describes this perfectly: The 1950s as denial, an attempt to return to the innocence of the Garden of Eden, the 60s as anger, a violent reaction to the hypocrisies of denial. The 70s as bargaining; weak, moderate politicians trying to moderate that anger and work within the system. The 80s are obviously depression, a cold embracing of all of our terribleness, and the 90s through now has been at least an attempt at accepting and growing beyond our by-every-definition ‘inhuman’ past. Theodore Adorno spawned the classic phrase ‘there can be no poetry after Auschwitz,’ (he wrote “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” ), and I think this project follows the same mentality: to be human after Hitler and not recognize that same capacity for evil within ourselves, and to not recognize that on and individual level we have benefited from, or even are the result of evil is barbaric and irresponsible. It suggests that perhaps we have sacrificed our ability to understand beauty after we created such ugliness, that we can no longer delude ourselves from the greater demons of our nature. I consider World War II and the Holocaust to be a supreme failing of the human race, and that it is nothing short of miraculous that we survived it ‘intact,’ because it certainly cannot be called a victory.
The labyrinth game is hypertextual as well, there is no clear victory or defeat, because nothing can actually change, time is irreversible and we can only speculate on other possible realities. It has multiple possible interpretations: if my premises are true, by killing Hitler are you killing yourself? Is to complete the maze to kill Hitler, or for time to have occurred exactly as it did, with him surviving to kill himself and perpetuate his atrocities? Does sinking the holes mean the users’ failure, or that time has been successfully altered so that that attempt succeeded? I think it will matter less than why Donkey Kong wears a necktie to the players (and this is where it gets even more subversive), because I hope for the labyrinth game to have a similar ‘holding power’ to what Sherry Turkle applies to video gamers, who experience through games a similar indoctrination to the Hitler Youth, their “relationship to the machine that seems driven, almost evoking an image of addiction… Reflection has given way to domination, ranking, testing, proving oneself. Metaphysics has given way to mastery.” Video games can function much like cults, they envelop you into their own set of goals and rules until they become your own. I want the players to walk in and methodically work on the puzzle like my friends and I playing through Super Mario World or Jarish with Robotron, obsessively and chaotically; within minutes they become so engrossed that everything but their success loses all meaning. What is a goomba supposed to be? Who cares. How are we supposed to be killing Hitler with just the floor? Doesn’t matter. The mob finds a simple goal and will pursue it rabidly, and often eventually succeed. But with that mob-like power they sacrifice individual analysis and clarity for a one-dimensional ecstasy, and that blind, ecstatic mob mentality is one of the few possible explanations for human actions like the Holocaust, the Rwandan or Armenian Genocides, riots, revolutions, and why people still play World of Warcraft or use Facebook; it has the potential for extraordinary creation and extraordinary destruction, and I think it tends to lean towards destruction. I would hope that the sudden and anti-climactic end of the game give players a pristine moment to reflect on their involvement in that mob mentality, in their ecstatic state of flow, and how it changed the way they acted, and maybe through that they can better understand themselves.

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES: This project is realizable with my current construction, electrical and computing skills. I would appreciate input on rigging the floor sensors, but even Cal Trans figured that out.

GAME RESPONSES
1. 1916 – Hitler is wounded in the groin or thigh by shrapnel at the Battle of the Somme. Returns to front in March 1917.
2. 1918, October 15 – Hitler is temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack and hospitalized, he describes the experience in Mein Kampf as when he realized his life’s purpose was to ‘save Germany.’
Relevant Events 1917 - 1933:
1921 July 29 - Adolf Hitler becomes leader of National Socialist (Nazi) Party.
1923 November 8/9 - Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch.
1925 July 18 - Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" published.
1926 September 8 - Germany admitted to League of Nations.
1929 October 29 - Stock Market on Wall Street crashes.
1930 September 14 - Germans elect Nazis making them the 2nd largest political party in Germany.
1933 January 30 - Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
   February 27 - The German Reichstag burns.
   March 12 - First concentration camp opened at Oranienburg outside Berlin.
   March 23 - Enabling Act gives Hitler dictatorial power.
         April 1 - Nazi boycott of Jewish owned shops.
         May 10 - Nazis burn books in Germany.
   In June - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp.
   July 14 - Nazi Party declared Germany's only political party.
   October 14 - Germany quits the League of Nations.

3. 1939, November 8 – MUNICH. Johann Georg Elser decides to kill Hitler alone by placing a time bomb in one of the columns behind the podium where Hitler was to give a speech in the Burgerbrau Beer Cellar in Munich. The bomb was set to detonate at preciesly 9.20pm on Wednesday, November 8, 1939. At 8.10 Hitler enters the beer hall but at 9.12pm he suddenly ends his speech and departs. Eight minutes later the bomb explodes killing eight people and wounding sixty-five including Eva Braun's father. Seven of those killed were Nazi Party members. Elser, who, since 1933, refused to give the nazi salute, is later arrested as he tried to cross the border into Switzerland at Konstanz. He was held for questioning due to the 'strange content' of his belongings. He was transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and later confined in the concentration camp at Dachau. On the 9th Of April, 1945, two weeks before the war ended in Europe, Johann Elser was executed by the SS.
4. 1944, March 11 - THE BERGHOF. Cavalry Captain Eberhard von Breitenbuch attended a conference at Hitler’s villa the ‘Berghof’ on the Obersalzberg. Concealed on his person was a small Browning pistol with which he intended to shoot his Führer and at the same time was willing to sacrifice his own life in the attempt. Breitenbuch enters the conference room behind Field Marshal Ernst Busch, who suspects nothing, but as he approaches the door he is stopped by the Duty Sergeant who explains "Sorry, no adjutants beyond this point, Führers orders".
5. 1943, March 20 – BERLIN. Colonel Rudolf von Gertsdorff, General Kluge's chief of intelligence, tried to kill Hitler in the Zeughaus. The concealed bomb was to be detonated by acid while he stood close to Hitler in the exhibit hall. Unfortunately Hitler left the building before the acid could act and Gertsdorff immediately entered the men's room and flushed the fuse down the toilet.
6. 1944, February – BERLIN. Infantry Captain Axel von dem Bussche agrees to blow up Hitler and himself while he demonstrates a new army winter overcoat to the German leader. Fate intervenes the day before when during a British air raid the uniforms were destroyed and Bussche was returned to duty at the front. A few weeks later another ‘overcoat’ attempt was made. This time the volunteer model was Ewald Heinrich von Kleist, son of one of the original conspirators and included Major General Helmuth Stieff. Again the RAF saved the day with an air-raid just before the demonstration was about to take place forcing its cancellation.
7. 1944, July 11 – THE BERGHOF. Staff Officer Lt. Colonel Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, convinced that he and he alone could assassinate Hitler, attended another conference at the Berghof. Concealed inside his briefcase was a time bomb. Waiting outside in a gateaway car was his co-conspirator, Captain Friedrich Klausing. Inside the Berghof, Stauffenberg telephones his colleagues in Berlin to tell them that neither Goering nor Himmler is present. They insist that the attempt be aborted. Stauffenberg then returns to Berlin to plan his next assassination attempt.
8. 1944, July 15 – RASTENBURG. Stauffenberg’s second attempt occurs at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia. On July 15, 1944, he attends a Fuhrers briefing and observes with dismay that Himmler is again absent. The attempt was once again aborted.
9. 1944, July 20 – RASTENBURG. Stauffenberg’s final attempt. Four days earlier, the attempt was decided upon during a meeting at his residence at No. 8 Tristanstrasse, Wansee. Himmler or no Himmler, the attempt must go ahead, come what may. At 12.00pm Stauffenberg and General Fromm report to Field Marshal Keitel’s office for a briefing before entering the conference room. At 12.37pm, Stauffenberg places his briefcase, containing 2,000 grams of Plastik-W explosives, under the map table, then leaves the room on the pretext of making a telephone call. The officer Colonel Brandt, No.4 who took his place noticed the briefcase and with his foot pushed it further under the table. The heavy oak table support protected Hitler from the full force of the explosion. At 12.42pm, the bomb explodes. By this time Stauffenberg is on his way back to Berlin. At 6.28pm a radio broadcast from Wolf’s Lair reports that Hitler is alive but only slightly wounded. Later that night, at 12.30am, Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators, Haeften, Olbricht and Mertz, are arrested and executed by firing squad in the inner courtyard of the Bendlerstrasse Headquarters in the glare of a trucks lights.
10. 1940, July 27 – PARIS. Count Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenberg planned to shoot Hitler from the reviewing stand during a military parade in Hitler’s honour. Hitler however secretly visited Paris in the early hours of July 23, visiting all the city’s famed buildings. He began his tour at 6am and by 9am he ended his tour and departed the city. A few days later Schulenberg recieved word that his hoped for July 27 military parade had been cancelled.
11. 1941, May – PARIS. Despite Schulenberg’s failure to lure Hitler to Paris for the special parade, Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben had plans of his own to assassinate Hitler. In May, 1941, he attemped to lure Hitler to Paris under a similar pretext. The visit was scheduled for May 21st but was abruptly called off at the last minute.
12. 1939 – SIEGFRIED LINE. In 1939, prior to the outbreak of WWII, German General Kurt von Hammerstein repeatedly attempted to lure Hitler into visiting the Army’s fortifications along the Seigfried Line near the Dutch border where he commanded a base. Hammerstein and his co-conspirator, retired General Ludwig Beck, had planned a ‘fatal accident’ to Hitler during his inspection of the base. Hitler however, never honoured the invitation, instead he turned the tables on Hammerstein by placing him on the retired list.
13. 1943 – POLTAVA. Another plot to assassinate Hitler was hatched at Army Group B Headquarters at Walki near Poltava in the Ukraine. This time the conspirators were General Hubert Lanz, his Chief of Staff, Major-General Dr. Hans Speidel and Colonel Count von Strachwitz, the commanding officer of the Grossdeutschland Tank Regiment. The plan was to arrest Hitler on his anticipated visit to Army Group B in the spring of 1943. Hitler, at the last minute, changed his mind and instead decided to visit his forces fighting in Saporoshe further east.
14-15. 1943, March 13 – SMOLENSK. Two separate attempts. Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge, commander of Army Group Center on the eastern front, finally managed to lure Hitler into visiting his headquarters at Smolensk. However a number of officers on Kluge’s staff had other thoughts on how to assassinate Hitler. Colonel Henning von Tresckow, who hated Hitler and the Nazis, together with Lt. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff and Cavalry Captain Georg von Boeslager had hatched a plan to get rid of their Führer.
i. Captain von Boeslager and his company were to serve as armed escort to Hitler’s motorcade. During the drive from the airfield the Führer’s car was to be gunned down in an ambush. The attempt was aborted when Hitler arrived with his own armed escort of 50 SS guards.
ii. The second attempt was to take place during lunchtime in the mess hall. At a given signal, Tresckow was to rise from the table and open fire on Hitler as he ate lunch, but the sight of so many SS close to Hitler arouses fear of failure and so once again the attempt was aborted.
iii. As Hitler leaves by plane for Berlin, Tresckow instructs Schlabrendorff to hand over a package to Colonel Heinz Brandt who is flying back with Hitler. The package, containing two bottles of brandy, is a gift for Major-General Helmuth Stieff in Berlin. Concealed in the package is a time bomb but it failed to explode owing to the high altitude cold air freezing the acid in the detonator cap. When news of Hitler’s safe arrival reached the plotters, Schlabrendorf immediately flew to Berlin with the regular courier plane and retrieved the package from Colonel Brandt, replacing it with two genuine bottles.
16. 1945, February – BERLIN. Albert Speer, Hitler’s Armaments Minister, came to the conclusion that his Führer was deliberately committing high treason against his own people. It was then that Speer decided that Hitler must be eliminated. During one of his many walks in the Chancellery gardens he took note of a ventilation shaft leading to Hitler’s bunker. An idea formed in his mind and he discreetly asked the head of munitions production, Dieter Stahl, if he could procure some of the new gas, Tabun, which he intended to conduct into the ventilation shaft of the bunker. Stahl, who was sympathetic to the idea, revealed that Tabun was effective only after an explosion and would not be suitable for the purpose which Speer intended. Another gas had to be found but the whole idea was thwarted when armed SS sentries were placed around the bunker entrances and on the roof. A chimney had also been built around the ventilation shaft to a height of ten feet, which put the air-intake of the shaft out of reach. At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Albert Speer was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, which he served to the very last minute, in Spandau Prison, Berlin.

Relevant Events 1939 – 1945:
January 30, 1939 - Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech.
    March 15/16 - Nazis take Czechoslovakia.
    August 23, 1939 - Nazis and Soviets sign Pact.
    August 25, 1939 - Britain and Poland sign a Mutual Assistance Treaty.
    August 31, 1939 - British fleet mobilizes; Civilian evacuations begin from London.
    September 1, 1939 - Nazis invade Poland.
    September 3, 1939 - Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany.
    September 5, 1939 - United States proclaims its neutrality; German troops cross the Vistula River in Poland.
    September 10, 1939 - Canada declares war on Germany; Battle of the Atlantic begins.
    In October - Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany.
    November 30, 1939 - Soviets attack Finland.
    December 14, 1939 - Soviet Union expelled from the League of Nations.
    May 10, 1940 - Nazis invade France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister.
    June 14, 1940 - Germans enter Paris.
    June 22, 1940 - France signs an armistice with Nazi Germany.
    June 23, 1940 - Hitler tours Paris.
    June 28, 1940 - Britain recognizes General Charles de Gaulle as the Free French leader.
    July 1, 1940 - German U-boats begin attacking merchant ships in the Atlantic.
    July 5, 1940 - French Vichy government breaks off relations with Britain.
    July 10, 1940 - Battle of Britain begins.
    August 23/24 - First German air raids on Central London.
    August 25/26 - First British air raid on Berlin.
    September 3, 1940 - Hitler plans Operation Sea Lion (the invasion of Britain).
    September 7, 1940 - German Blitz against Britain begins.
    September 13, 1940 - Italians invade Egypt.
    September 15, 1940 - Massive German air raids on London, Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool and Manchester.
    September 16, 1940 - United States military conscription bill passed.
    September 27, 1940 - Tripartite (Axis) Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.
    October 12, 1940 - Germans postpone Operation Sea Lion until Spring of 1941.
    October 28, 1940 - Italy invades Greece.
    November 22, 1940 - Greeks defeat the Italian 9th Army.
    December 9/10 - British begin a western desert offensive in North Africa against the Italians.

    December 29/30 - Massive German air raid on London.
    January 22, 1941 - Tobruk in North Africa falls to the British and Australians.
    February 12, 1941 - German General Erwin Rommel arrives in Tripoli, North Africa.
    February 14, 1941 - First units of German 'Afrika Korps' arrive in North Africa.
    April 6, 1941 - Nazis invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
    May 10/11 - Heavy German bombing of London; British bomb Hamburg.
    May 24, 1941 - Sinking of the British ship Hood by the Bismarck.
    May 27, 1941 - Sinking of the Bismarck by the British Navy.
    June 4, 1941 - Pro-Allied government installed in Iraq.
    June 14, 1941 - United States freezes German and Italian assets in America.
    June 22, 1941 - Germany attacks Soviet Union as Operation Barbarossa begins.
    Mid June - Nazi SS-Einsatzgruppen begin mass murder.
    July 3, 1941 - Stalin calls for a scorched earth policy.
    July 12, 1941 - Mutual Assistance agreement between British and Soviets.
    July 26, 1941 - Roosevelt freezes Japanese assets in United States and suspends relations.
    July 31, 1941 - Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for the Final Solution.
    August 1, 1941 - United States announces an oil embargo against aggressor states.
    August 14, 1941 - Roosevelt and Churchill announce the Atlantic Charter.
    August 20, 1941 - Nazi siege of Leningrad begins.
    September 1, 1941 - Nazis order Jews to wear yellow stars.
    September 3, 1941 - First experimental use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
    September 29, 1941 - Nazis murder 33,771 Jews at Kiev.
    October 2, 1941 - Operation Typhoon begins (German advance on Moscow).
    December 6, 1941 - Soviet Army launches a major counter-offensive around Moscow.
    December 7, 1941 - Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor; Hitler issues the Night and Fog decree.
    December 8, 1941 - United States and Britain declare war on Japan.
    December 11, 1941 - Hitler declares war on the United States.
    December 19, 1941 - Hitler takes complete control of the German Army.
    January 1, 1942 - Declaration of the United Nations signed by 26 Allied nations.
    January 13, 1942 - Germans begin a U-boat offensive along east coast of USA.
    January 20, 1942 - SS Leader Heydrich holds the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."
    In April - Japanese-Americans sent to relocation centers.
    April 23, 1942 - German air raids begin against cathedral cities in Britain.
    Early June - Mass murder of Jews by gassing begins at Auschwitz.
    June 10, 1942 - Nazis liquidate Lidice in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination.
    July 1-30 - First Battle of El Alamein.
    July 9, 1942 - Germans begin a drive toward Stalingrad in the USSR.
    July 22, 1942 - First deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to concentration camps; Treblinka extermination camp opened.
    August 12, 1942 - Stalin and Churchill meet in Moscow.
    September 13, 1942 - Battle of Stalingrad begins.
    October 18, 1942 - Hitler orders the execution of all captured British commandos.
    November 1, 1942 - Operation Supercharge (Allies break Axis lines at El Alamein).
    November 8, 1942 - Operation Torch begins (U.S. invasion of North Africa).
    November 11, 1942 - Germans and Italians invade unoccupied Vichy France.
    November 19, 1942 - Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad begins.
    December 2, 1942 - Professor Enrico Fermi sets up an atomic reactor in Chicago.
    December 17, 1942 - British Foreign Secretary Eden tells the British House of Commons of mass executions of Jews by Nazis; U.S. declares those crimes will be avenged.
    January 10, 1943 - Soviets begin an offensive against the Germans in Stalingrad.
    January 14-24 - Casablanca conference between Churchill and Roosevelt. During the conference, Roosevelt announces the war can end only with "unconditional German surrender."
    January 27, 1943 - First bombing raid by Americans on Germany (at Wilhelmshaven).
    February 2, 1943 - Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.
    February 14-25 - Battle of Kasserine Pass between the U.S. 1st Armored Division and German Panzers in North Africa.
    April 19, 1943 - Waffen-SS attacks Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.
    May 13, 1943 - German and Italian troops surrender in North Africa.
    May 16, 1943 - Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto ends.\
    June 11, 1943 - Himmler orders the liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in Poland.
    July 27/28 - Allied air raid causes a firestorm in Hamburg.
    November 18, 1943 - Large British air raid on Berlin.
    November 28, 1943 - Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Teheran.
    June 6, 1944 - D-Day landings on the northern coast of France.
    June 13, 1944 - First German V-1 rocket attack on Britain.
    August 4, 1944 - Anne Frank and family arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, Holland.
    August 25, 1944 - Liberation of Paris.
    September 17, 1944 - Operation Market Garden begins (Allied airborne assault on Holland).
    October 30, 1944 - Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
    January 26, 1945 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz.
    February 4-11 - Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Yalta.
    February 13/14 - Dresden is destroyed by a firestorm after Allied bombing raids.
    April 21, 1945 - Soviets reach Berlin.
    April 28, 1945 - Mussolini is captured and hanged by Italian partisans; Allies take Venice.
    April 29, 1945 - U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau.
    April 30, 1945 - Adolf Hitler commits suicide.

Notes
Panopticon from Rhizome.org, used in my Rhizome Exhibition; a concrete room with bubble security cameras embedded in the floor. Unable to access other information due to the site’s awful membership system.
Montfort, Nick. “[Introduction] The Garden of Forking Paths” The New Media Reader, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. (3)
Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the Medium" The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. (29)
Adorno, Theodor W. “Cultural Criticism and Society” 1951.
Turkle, Sherry. “Video Games and Computer Holding Power” The New Media Reader, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. (500)
"World War II in Europe Timeline." The History Place. 1996. Web. 01 Dec. 2010.   <http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ww2time.htm>.

Duncan, George. "Assassination Attempts on Hitler’s Life." Columbus. Web. 01 Dec. 2010. <http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/assassination_attempts.html>.