The Telegraph's obit for Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld recounts the florid and exciting life of the aristocrat turned French resistance fighter turned UK special forces killer turned escape artist turned colonial enforcer in Indochina. In particular, La Rochefoucauld was a skilled escapologist, and ballsy as all hell about it:

Dropped into the Morvan with two British agents, including one radio operator, La Rochefoucauld teamed up with a Maquis group near Avallon led by a man who called himself The Pope. After destroying the electrical substation at Avallon, and blowing up railway tracks, La Rochefoucauld was awaiting exfiltration by the RAF when he was denounced and arrested. After a series of interrogations, he was condemned to death.

En route to his execution in Auxerre, La Rochefoucauld made a break, leaping from the back of the truck carrying him to his doom, and dodging the bullets fired by his two guards. Sprinting through the empty streets, he found himself in front of the Gestapo’s headquarters, where a chauffeur was pacing near a limousine bearing the swastika flag. Spotting the key in the ignition, La Rochefoucauld jumped in and roared off, following the Route Nationale past the prison he had left an hour earlier.

Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld (via Kottke)

(Image: downsized, cropped thumbnail of a larger image on The Telegraph)

Would you look at these adorable BritishWWII urchins enjoying their wartime carrot-on-a-stick in these stills from a 1941 Pathe newsreel?

CARROTS ON STICKS, 1941

The British Council has posted a fabulous trove of CC-licensed, downloadable "cultural propaganda" videos commissioned during WWII to "refute the idea that ours was a country stuck in the past."

During the 1940s, the British Council was an enthusiastic commissioner of documentary films. Over 120 films were produced as 'cultural propaganda' to counteract anything the Nazis might throw out and to refute the idea that ours was a country stuck in the past. These films were designed to showcase Britain to the rest of the world, at a time when Britain itself was under attack.

Seen by millions of people in over 100 countries worldwide from the 1940's to 1960's, they present a historic snapshot of Britain, portraying its industry, its landscapes, and its people. The Collection is fantastically varied, covering anything from how a bicycle is made, to how the British spend their Saturdays. They provide us with a unique insight - not necessarily into how Britain actually was, but more into how Britain once wanted to be perceived by the rest of the world.

Alongside basic credits and production information, you can find some fascinating pieces of trivia, photos, and screen grabs, as well as the original synopses that the films were distributed with. Some of the films give you the option to go even deeper, to learn a little more about how the films was made. And, perhaps most importantly, you can not only watch the films online but download them too.

British Council Film: British Council Film Collection (Thanks, Sarah!)

GCHQ, the UK government's communications headquarters, has published a set of code-breaking papers written by Alan Turing during WWII. The papers had been held in secret since they were written. The papers are c"The Applications of Probability to Crypt" and "Paper on the Statistics of Repetitions" and they deal with cryptanalysis techniques to optimize breaking Nazi ciphers. They're displayed at the National Archives at Kew. The BBC has more:

According to the GCHQ mathematician, who identified himself only as Richard, the papers detailed using "mathematical analysis to try and determine which are the more likely settings so that they can be tried as quickly as possible..."

Richard said that GCHQ had now "squeezed the juice" out of the two papers and was "happy for them to be released into the public domain".

Alan Turing papers on code breaking released by GCHQ (via /.)

DrawTheShitler sells rolls of toilet roll printed with a caricature of a mustache-less Hitler. You supply the mustache when you wipe.

DrawTheShitler

Here's the backstory behind the iconic "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters. Though 2.5 million were printed, they were never officially issued as they were reserved for crisis or invasion. 50 years later, Barter Books of Northumberland discovered a copy of the poster in a box of books from auction, and framed and hung it. They started selling copies a year later, and the rest is history.

The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On (via Kottke)

Vintage Ads poster Write_light rounds up a collection of WWII "gremlins" safety posters, beauties every one.

Sunday Surplus: Back Up Our Battleskies!

"Inglourious Animals" is a rather clever and well-done mashup of footage from Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox and Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, mostly using the former's footage and the latter's soundtrack.

Inglourious Animals trailer (via Kottke)

In this fascinating hour-long Seton Hall lecture, Art Spiegelman expounds on Maus, his Pulitzer-winning graphic novel history of the Holocaust, providing excellent companion material to Metamaus, the new book that recounts Maus's history, which came out last month.

Art Spiegelman lecture