Two related anniversaries

On this day......76 years ago, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. In the dying months of the First World War, Hitler had been awarded the Iron Cross (the officer who recommended him for the decoration was Captain Hugo Guttman, a Jew). After the war, his dream of becoming an artist never came true, and he went off to run the propaganda operation of the National Socialist (Nazi) party.

After an abortive Nazi coup, he spent nine months in prison, and used the time to write the first volume of Mein Kampf in which he denounced Communism and the Jews. During the 1920’s the Nazis never managed to poll more than 6.5% in Reichstag elections, but then came Hitler’s big break – the Great Depression. Terrified by the spectre of Communism, big business began bankrolling him, and the rest is disaster history. The Nazis were setting up concentration camps within weeks, and through murder, forced labour, starvation, medical experiments etc, they killed perhaps 20 million people.

On the 12th anniversary of Hitler’s coming to power, on January 30, 1945, a ship named the Wilhelm Gustloff was carrying German refugees along with soldiers and sailors across the Baltic away from the advancing Russian forces. There were up to 10,500 people on board when she was hit by a torpedo from a Soviet submarine. It is believed that not more than 1,000 survived, making this the worst shipwreck in history.

Perils of queueing + debut of a mass murderer

An Australian behavioural economist (!), David Savage has analysed the figures for those who died when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, and discovered that American passengers were 8.5% more likely to survive than those from other countries, and British passengers 7% less likely. He seems to put this down to the idea that the British formed orderly queues to get into the lifeboats (which did not have enough space for everyone on board) while the Americans behaved, as one newspaper delicately put it, in a “brasher” way. The study concludes that even the Americans, though, were not beastly to female passengers. Women were, on the whole, allowed to get into the boats first, and there was little difference between the survival prospects for Britons and Americans.

Mr Savage concedes, however, that there might be another explanation for the figures. We know that passengers in first and second class had a much better chance of getting away than those in steerage. Only one child in first and second class died, while two out of three of those in steerage perished. Maybe there were just fewer Americans travelling steerage. Overall, after analysing four disasters, the behavioural economist comes up with the reassuring thought that "the whole concept of mass panic – everyone looking after themselves – doesn't hold that strong."

On this day......85 years ago, the creator of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, died. Although he tried to prevent it, he was succeeded by Josef Stalin, who, through doctrinaire economic policies, purges, reigns of terror and fearsome labour camps, was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 30 million people, making him one of the greatest mass murderers in history.