The Straight Dope 06/27/2003

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The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 06/27/2003

Dear Cecil:

During World War II, not long after Germany attacked the
Soviet Union, a Soviet general (Vlasow?) and his entire
army deserted to the German side and fought with the
Nazis against the Allies. After Germany surrendered, the
general and his army requested asylum, knowing they
faced certain death if they were delivered up to Stalin.
Eisenhower adamantly refused their request despite the
pleadings of his own officers, and the general and his
troops were sent to their deaths. I would like to know
the general's full name, the facts surrounding his
desertion and his service with the   Germans, and the
manner in which he and his men met their fate.
--Arnold Bauer, El Cajon, California

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Cecil replies:

The man's name was Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov, and we'll
get to his story in a minute. First you need to grasp
the enormity of what happened to Soviet soldiers
captured by the Nazis during World War II. Between five
hundred thousand and a million Soviet POWs either
volunteered to fight alongside Nazi troops against their
former comrades or were coerced into doing so. Another
six million Soviets, many of them POWs, were forced into
German slave-labor battalions that manufactured war
materiel. At the end of World War II, a total of about
two million Russians came under the control of advancing
American and British forces, many of whom had contributed
(voluntarily or not) to the German war effort. Those in
charge knew that Stalin considered these people
collaborators or traitors, and in truth many of them did
see the Soviet system as a hateful cancer on Mother Russia.
Yet the western Allied forces--under supreme commander
Eisenhower--repatriated virtually all the Russians to the
Soviet Union, in some cases forcibly, knowing full well
they were sending them to their doom.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030627.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

What exactly is a #2 pencil and why isn't there a
#1 pencil? -- Jason Fanguy

SDSTAFF bibliophage replies:

Of course there's such a thing as a #1 pencil. What
else would the mathematician use to work out his
calculus problem? 

All joking aside--did you miss the joking?--there are
#1 pencils, and #2½, #3, and #4 and sometimes other
intermediate grades, and you can buy them all at finer
stationery stores everywhere (and now online too). Some
people believe that the #2 pencil is so called because
it used to be the second most common, but that's not
the case. For as long as pencils have been available in
different grades, the #2 or its equivalent has been the
most popular for general use. It's called #2 because
it's the second darkest of the four major grades of
pencil marketed under this system. There's a trade-off
between hardness and darkness (in pencil leads I mean),
and the #2 is the best compromise for most purposes. 

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpencillead.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 11/18/1983

Dear Cecil: 

What's the straight dope on the aluminum-senility link?
Is it true that deodorants and/or antiperspirants cause 
brain damage if they get in your bloodstream?
--Very Nervous, Baltimore

Cecil replies: 

I first wrote about aluminum as a possible cause of
Alzheimer's disease in 1983, and here it is all these
years later and they're still not sure. But things don't
look promising.   

The deal is this. Aluminum is suspected of playing a role
in Alzheimer's disease, a form of degenerative senile
dementia thought to afflict 5-10 percent of all persons
over 65. Victims of Alzheimer's have been found to have
four times the normal concentration of aluminum in their
brain cells. Aluminum is known to be a neurotoxin that can
cause brain damage if you're exposed to it in sufficiently
large amounts. The question is whether chronic exposure to
small amounts can affect you. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_216a.html

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