Let us start with this: The fair use doctrine applies to works of parody. This means that we can take something copyrighted and use it in a parody — it’s protected free speech under the first amendment, even if people disagree with it.

But that doctrine doesn’t apply to Hitler, apparently.

Constantin Film, the company that produced “Downfall,” the movie that spawned dozens (perhaps hundreds) of “Hitler finds out…” video parodies, recently ordered YouTube to take down all the parody videos.

The parodies had used a fuming monologue in the German-language movie by Bruno Ganz’s Hitler after he realizes he is about to lose World War II, changing the subtitles to make it appear like Hitler was ranting about everything from the Amy Bishop case to video game bugs.

The parodies, apparently, drew complaints from groups, including Jewish advocates.

Good TV night on Sunday coming up with premieres of AMC’s “The Prisoner” at 8 p.m., “Drive-Thru” on Fuel at 8:30 p.m., “Tough Love” on VH1 at 9 p.m., and a great feature called “WWII IN HD” on History also at 9. Blast has seen “WWII in HD” and we approve, especially for military history buffs.

In news news, CNN quickly replaced Lou Dobbs with the king of the touchscreen, John King. King will host a weeknight political show at 7 p.m.

Spike has a new cars show called “Unique Autosports: Miami,” starting February 28 at 10:30 a.m. There will be eight half hour episodes combining cars, celebrities and beautiful Miami. Guests will include LeBron James, Diddy, and players from the Yankees.

A bunch of news out of SyFy today. The network formerly known as Sci-Fi has a comedy series coming out called “Outer Space Astronauts” starting December 8 at 9:30 p.m. The show is about eight quirky soldiers who travel the stars looking for adventures. It’s basically making fun of Stargate, and it shows how much the network has changed in 10 years.

SyFy got good ratings on the premiere “Ghost Hunters Academy” on Wednesday, drawing 2 million total viewers, the best ratings for a reality series on SyFy since January 2008′s “Ghost Hunters International.”

Famed author Ray Bradbury will executive produce a six-episode miniseries about six of his short stories. “The Bradbury Chronicles” hasn’t been picked up by a network yet.

After an attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, Glenn Berwin’s family and their property was seized along with many other Jews in Munich.

Berwin’s uncle owned two restaurants and a shop there. They were seized along with his World War I veteran’s pension.

“It seemed hopeless” Berwin said in a statement Monday. “I thought the odds were insurmountable. You have to be clever to outsmart people who want to hold onto money they stole.”

Attorney Dan Holloran, a New York City Council candidate said he didn’t think the situation was so hopeless. Halloran , a partner at the law firm Palmieri and Castiglione, LLP, was determined to help.

“I wasn’t going to take “Ëœno’ for an answer” Halloran said. “Glenn has a right to this property. The Nazis never did.”

Halloran is pursuing a legal case to recover money taken from Berwin’s relatives who were killed or imprisoned by the Nazis. He used a federal court decision that accessed the record of World War I pensions.

“If we find specific names and time periods, we can get their pension records” Halloran said. “Courts have been throwing these cases out. I hope this will open the door for others with these kind of claims.”

Berwin, a retired supermarket employee who lives in Whitestone, Queens said he was friends with Halloran from the neighborhood.

“I knew him from karaoke on Bell Boulevard in the early “Ëœ90s” Berwin said, laughing. “He’s a great singer.”

According to a statement released by Holloran, Berwin’s father spent two months in Dachau in 1939 before he was granted immigration to the United States. He hopped on the “last boat leaving Holland.” His father was the only survivor on that side of the family. More than 20 members of Berwin’s family were killed in the Holocaust.

“Jewish people should know that they are entitled to pursue their legacy” said Berwin. “The legacy of my people should be with my family and not with the sons of people who commited crimes against them.”

On February 2 1945, just seven months before the end of World War II, more than 753 sick Jewish men and women are thought to have been killed by the Waffen SS at the Nazi camp of Lieberose in Brandenburg state. Efforts to excavate the site, which is one of the last undiscovered mass graves of Jews killed by Nazis, began on Wednesday after a long court battle over land rights.

The excavation, interestingly enough, is taking place in the garden of a two-story home just 75 miles south-east of Berlin, according to the BBC. Guenter Morsch, director of the Brandenburg memorial foundation, claims evidence strongly suggests that the garden is the site of the ill-named “recuperation barracks” used to house sick Jews at the Lieberose concentration camp. The grave would have to be very close.

Morsch says the Waffen SS killed all 1,342 prisoners at the camp after they were declared unfit to evacuate as the Soviet Red Army advanced on their location in early 1945.

The remains of 589 victims, who were shot and killed the next day, were uncovered nearby in 1971 but the other 753 victims are yet to be discovered. It is thought they lie beneath the garden site.

Until last year, the owner of the land had forbidden any investigation on his property. It wasn’t until this year’s lengthy court battle that local authorities reached a deal with the owner to purchase the property.

Joerg Schoenbohm, Brandenburg’s interior minister, says the excavation is expected to take 21 days. If bodies are discovered a memorial will most likely be erected in the victims’ honor.

“We need to end the uncertainty surrounding the crime so that we will have time for mourning and remembering” he said.

There is no doubt that Nazi Germany was a haunting place to live in the wake of the Holocaust. Bernhard Schlink addressed these hardships in his 1995 novel “The Reader” and through lectures in Boston last week.

“The Reader” personalizes the Holocaust by illustrating the turmoil of a man who is in love with a woman who commits a monstrous crime.‚  Many Germans who lived during the Holocaust dealt with the same struggle.‚  Furthermore, those who were born in the next generation struggled with the guilt of these crimes.

“I think those who commit monstrous crimes are not monsters,” commented Schlink at Boston‚  University.‚  He discussed the presence of the Holocaust in today’s world saying that, “for my generation the past is still very present.”‚  He continued with saying how, “future generations can learn from the Holocaust.”

Schlink said confronting the past is important to‚ prevent equally devastating events in the future and recognize the onset of such events in the present.‚  Although today’s generation, the third after the Holocaust, does not feel as much guilt as its predecessors, the past continues to have a presence in Germany.

“Historical events are always unique and always comparable,” said Schlink.

In The Reader the main character’s, Michael Berg, dilemma falls between love and justice.‚  Eight years after a love affair with an older woman, Hanna, Berg is a law student witnessing Hanna’s trial. She was a Nazi guard.‚  He is in a moral battle between what is lawful and what is moral.‚  Many people found themselves in‚  this situation during the Holocaust.‚  Although, many people do not find themselves in the extreme situation that many of the Nazi workers found themselves in – a unique historical event – moral battles transpire daily.

Despite the necessity to confront the past Schlink clarified that, “fixation on the past is the flipside of the past.”‚  He demonstrates this in‚ Berg, he is a man who does not appear to find happiness throughout his life and is fixated on his love affair with Hanna and her crimes.

Director Stephen Daldry accurately portrays the emotional turmoil of post-Nazi Germany in his adaptation of Schlink’s novel.‚  The many layers of the novel are present throughout the film, which portrayed the struggles and guilt of the Holocaust and post-Holocaust German generations.‚  When a film student asked Schlink what he thought about the movie, which was released Jan. 9, he concisely responded, “I liked the movie.”

Originally, Anthony Minghella had the rights of “The Reader”, starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes.‚  Eventually he let Daldry and David Hare make the movie.‚ ‚ ‚  “The Reader” was nominated for four Golden Globes.‚  Kate Winslet won Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.‚  The film has been nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Directing, and Adapted Screenplay.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The words “World War II” bring to mind images of soldiers crawling up the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, facing down machine guns and dodging shrapnel.

The mere mention of The Holocaust raises visions of emaciated prisoners at Hitler’s concentration camps flashing before your eyes.

What makes the film “Defiance” so unique is that without ever seeing concentration camps and with barely any physical presence from the Germans, director Ed Zwick was able to tell the story of the Jews’ plight during World War II almost as masterfully as Stephen Spielberg did with “Schindler’s List.”

Zwick’s “Defiance” tells the true survival story of four Jewish brothers who were able to evade capture by the Germans by creating camps in the forests of Poland for over three years until the end of the war.

Zwick used the heroic story of the Bielski brothers and their staunch will to survive to represent the untold story of Jews that were not bound to concentration camps.

The fear and pain etched into the faces of the refugees who traveled with the Bielskis and started to learn hope and love again before the Germans came too close, forcing them all to flee start all over again, told a story deeper than its history.

“Defiance” covers a span of little over a year, starting with the Germen’s destruction of the Bielski’s hometown in Poland and ending during one of many near-death escapes from the Germans, who continue to try to find the folklore-ish Jews hiding from them in the woods.

Over the course of that year, and the two subsequent ones that are discussed in the text following the movie, the Bielski brothers gathered a following of fellow Jews who were evading German capture — a following which eventually numbered close to 1200 people. Zwick admitted in an interview that he took liberties with some of the forest camp-dwellers’ stories, but each of the characters created represented a small piece of the bigger picture.

The opening of the film, which was a combination of historical footage and attached textual facts, felt more like the opening scenes of a documentary than the opening of a dramatic film. Though “Defiance” regulated itself about five minutes in once the actual film footage started rolling, the opening sequence was the only part of the movie that felt off-kilter. From the second the documentary footage dissolved into a filmed scene of the German’s attacking the Bielski’s hometown, “Defiance” was flawless.

Zwick drew moving performances from his leading men: Daniel Craig (Tuvia Bielski) and Liev Schreiber (Zus Bielski). Craig shed his ice-blue Bond stare for actual emotion, and Schreiber offered an equally touching performance.

Two performances that really stood out were those of Mark Feurerstein and Allan Corduner, playing a scholar and a rabbi.. Their banter throughout the movie not only provided some much needed comedic relief from the film’s somber and dramatic tone, but the relationship that so beautifully developed between the characters that had such distinctly delineated views on the world was just one of many insights Zwick made about the basis of human nature.

In a scene where a German is caught snooping too close to the forest camp and gets captured by Aron Bielsky, the youngest brother, and the Jews in the camp start mobbing around the soldier, it’s not just another scene about the Jews versus the Germans. It’s about one group of people rebelling against all the injustices in the world. When one woman cried out, “You killed my son! He was only fifteen! He had blue eyes!” before being the first to slam the butt of her rifle into the solider, the agony in her voice was such that any person, ignorant of the persecution of the Jews or not, felt tears fill their eyes in empathy.

What was most important was that “Defiance” wasn’t a story about the Holocaust. It wasn’t about World War II. It was about survival and faith and hope and love.

Call of Duty: World at War, launching Novembr 11 for most major gaming platforms and PC is going to sell millions of copies — it’s inevitable, but in every preview, every write-up, it seemed to be missing something.‚ 

Zombies.

Fear not fans of the undead, on the most recent edition of Game Trailers TV, Developer Treyarch revealed that the upcoming WWII shooter will indeed feature a 4-player co-op mode simply called “Zombie mode.” Unlocked only after the original campaign is finished, Zombie Mode puts players up against limitless waves of Nazi undead, and will feature it’s own “economy system” where making barricades, and upgrading weapons created specifically for zombie slaying (and yes, flame throwers are included) cost money.

Here’s some of the newest artwork Akella has released for the game:

This is one of the rooms in RSHA (Main Imperial Office of Security) at the end of the war in April of 1945.

Under the table is a can of gasoline which Meyer must get. Also, a sculpture of Richard Wagner made by Arno Breaker can be seen. Wagner was a favorite composer of Hitler.

Hitler had his music accompanied by the news from the front, performed at the convention of NSDAP and parades. Breaker was the author of numerous heroic portraits of the party bonzas from the Third Reich.

The implementation of forging signatures in the game process.

Bread cards imposed by the fascist occupying forces in the territory of Ukraine.

Vortex engine by Victor Shauberger

“A Stroke of Fate” will be published in English at the end of the year.

One game we didn’t see much of at E3 was Atari’s Heroes over Europe, the WWII flying combat simulation sequel to Heroes of the Pacific, which was a very strong PC and PlayStation 2 title in its own right.

Heroes over Europe brings the combat to high definition on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in Q4 2008.

The sequel to the mighty World War II flight combat game Heroes of the Pacific, Heroes over Europe takes aspiring combat pilots into the bullet-ridden heart of major World War II European air battles in glorious dogfight-friendly high definition. Heroes over Europe follows the Allied campaign from the attacks on London to the destruction of Berlin, with players under orders to strap themselves into the authentically rendered cockpits of the campaign’s iconic aircraft. Their mission: to survive the most ferocious dogfights ever seen in a flight combat game.

Game features:

• Best tactical dogfights in HD: relive the best tactical dogfights in over 40 types of ultra-realistic iconic warplanes of the era, all presented in stunning high definition graphics with realistic localised damage on aircraft
• Meticulously rendered environments: detailed landscapes and landmarks recreated in painstaking detail including faithful representations of London and Berlin to bring war-torn World War II to life
• Legacy of ‘Heroes’ series: new instalment in the Heroes series builds on its impressive legacy with highly detailed realistic visual presentation and more online options
• Comprehensive online gameplay: fight for the skies with 4 modes of online multiplayer action for up to 16 players
• Downloadable content: additional downloadable content will be available from launch