Showing posts with label Soviet Navy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soviet Navy. Show all posts

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Friday, March 3, 1944. The death of Teresa Gullace and of hope for Poland.

Teresa Gullace, seven months pregnant, was killed by a German soldier when she attempted to pass a sandwich to her husband, who was detained by the Germans in Rome.  She was part of a group of women that had gathered to protest the Germans holding their husbands.

The scene was later depicted in Rosellini's 1945 Rome open city, one of three great films by the director set during World War Two and filmed immediately after, and which used amateur actors to a large degree.

The U.S. Army Air Force hit the Roman rail facilities at the Tiburtino, Littorio and Ostiense marshalling yards.  There were 400 civilian casualties.

Over 500 railroad passengers died of carbon monoxide poisoning during a protracted stall in a tunnel at Balvano, Italy.  It's one of the worst rail disasters of all time.

Stalin shut the door on further negotiations on the Polish border.

The Soviet Union created the Medal of Ushakov and the Medal of Nakhimov, both of which were awarded to sailors.  Interestingly, they were both named after Imperial Russian officers.

Japanese troops on Los Negros launched a night attack, which was repulsed by US cavalrymen.

The 3d Infantry Division repulsed a German attack on the Anzio beachhead at Ponte Rotto.  It would be the last German offensive action at Anzio.

Paul-Émile Janson, a Belgian Prime Minister just before World War Two, died at Buchewald at age 71.

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Wednesday, June 13, 1973. Freeze

President Nixon ordered a sixty-day freeze on prices of gasoline and groceries under the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970.

It was the last of the "Phase III" price controls.

On the same day, prosecutors discovered a memo to John Ehrlichman concerning plans to break into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Also, Alexander Butterfield, former Presidential appointments' secretary, met with Senate investigators and revealed the existence of a secret taping system in the White House.

Butterfield.

Butterfield had known Ehrlichman and Halderman from his college days.  After graduating from college, he became an Air Force officer and retired from that prior to going to work in the White House.  In an interview, prior to the public revelation of Deep Throat's identify, he correctly guessed it and the name was published in his interview, although he was not unique in that regard.

The Soviet K-56 with the research vessel Academician Berg killed 27 people.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Friday, March 19, 1943. Ships lost, Airmen Promoted, Mobster departs.

The Carras (Greek), Glendalough (UK), Lulworth Hill (UK), and Matthew Luckenbach (US) went down in the Atlantic.   So did the U348, which was sunk by a British B-17.

Sarah Sundin notes, in her blog:

Today in World War II History—March 19, 1943: U-boats break off attacks on convoys HX-229 and SC-122, ending largest convoy battle of the war. 

The HMS Derwent, Ocean Voyager (UK) and Varvara went down in the Mediterranean.  

The U-5 went down in a diving accident off of Pilaue, East Prussia.  The Soviet TKA-35 collided with another torpedo boat and sank.

USS Wahoo.

The Japanese lost the Kowa Maru, Takachiho and Zogen Maru, all merchant ships, to two submarines. The USS Wahoo sank two of them.   She would be lost in December 1943.

The Japanese losses demonstrate that the Japanese were enduring in the Pacific what the Allies were in the Atlantic, shipping losses due to submarines.  However, the Japanese were never able to adjust to it to the extent that the Allies ultimately did.


Sundin also noted:

Today in World War II History—March 19, 1943: Henry H. Arnold is promoted to four-star general.

Arnold was a career airman and had in fact received flight instruction from the Wright Brothers.  A West Point graduate, he had wanted to be a cavalryman, but his initial assignment was to infantry.  He switched to aviation in 1911, but did not receive any sort of World War One overseas assignments, being used in other roles, much like Eisenhower, until 1918 at which time he became ill with Spanish Flu.  He arrived in Europe right at the time of the Armistice.

He became chief of the Air Corps in 1938.

56 at the time of this promotion, he was in ill health and starting in 1943 he would have the first of four severe wartime heart attacks which should have caused him to be required to leave the service, but he was allowed to stay due to intervention by President Roosevelt.

He was appointed to General of the Army in December 1944, and General of the Air Force, although retired in 1949.  He's the only person to have held five-star rank in the Air Force, and the only one to hold five star rank in two services.

He retired in 1947, before the establishment of the Air Force as a separate branch, and died at age 63 in 1950.

The Albanian Communist Party formed the Sigurimi which gathered intelligence in the fight for Albanian freedom, and then was used post-war to stamp out any chance of Albanian freedom.

Frank Nitti, cousin of and mobster with, Al Capone, died by suicide the day before a scheduled grand jury appearance.  

Nitti had risen high up in the Chicago mob due to Al Capone, although he was not exclusively active with it.  He did become a very significant member of it and was more than mere muscle, contrary to the way he has been portrayed in film.  Born in Italy, and raised in the US under rough circumstances, he was perhaps a natural for crime.

Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, Nitti and Capone were not in the mafia and were not eligable to be as they were not Sicilians or of Sicilian extraction.

Monday, July 11, 2022

Saturday, July 11, 1942. The remanants of PQ 17.

Marine Corps recruiting poster released on this date.
 

Today in World War II History—July 11, 1942: Allied Arctic convoy PQ-17 arrives in ports in northern Russia, having lost 22 of 33 cargo ships plus two auxiliary vessels, to German U-boats and aircraft.

As Sarah Sundin notes on her blog.  The convoy, however, actually lost 24 ships.

The ships had started arriving in Archangel about two days prior.  So few came in that Stalin thought that the Allies had lied about the size of the convoy in order to purposely send less than they promised.  He later accuses the UK of lying about the convoy's troubles.

PQ 17 was the hardest hit convoy of the war.

On the same day, the Soviets sunk another Swedish freighter, this one the SS Lulea which was carrying iron ore to Germany.

The RAF bombed Danzig's submarine pens, with the loss of only two bombers. The raid took place at dusk.  The route over the North Sea was the longest RAF raid up until that point in the war.

Australian troops advanced at El Alamein.

Japan cancelled planned invasions of Fiji, New Caledonia and Samoa, demonstrating that the Japaneses staff appreciated that the war was not going as well as it had been formerly.

Saturday, July 9, 2022

Thursday, July 9, 1942. Hitler splits his forces.

Hitler split his forces by ordering that Army Group South be so divided, with Group A to seize Rostov-on Don and continue into the Caucasus while Group B was to drive through Stalingrad and on to Astrakhan, a city on the Volga near the Caspian Sea.

Stalin authorized strategic withdrawals in the face of advancing Axis forces, the first time this had been done by the Soviet dictator.

To at least a certain extent, the German actions at this point reflected the original thinking behind Barbarossa.  The Germans thought themselves on the verge of capturing the Caucasian oilfield which they needed, to their thinking, to defeat the British.  They had also taken the Soviet grain belt as well.  Beyond the Volga was largely tractless wilderness, in their view, and they didn't fully conceive of the war really extending beyond that point.

The Soviets, of course, didn't regard being driven east of the Volga as defeat.

Sarah Sundin notes the following on her blog:

Today in World War II History—July 9, 1942: US Navy assigns Lt. Cdr. Samuel Eliot Morison the task of writing the US naval history of WWII, which will run to 15 volumes.


Morison was a professional and academic historian, with a profession at Harvard, where he eccentrically became the last professor to arrive at the school on horseback.  His position commenced before World War One, in 1915, but he temporarily left to enlist in the U.S. Army as a private during the war.  Following the war, he served on the Baltic Commission of the Paris Peace talks.  He then returned to Harvard.

He did not enter the Navy until 1942, in which he was asked to take on the role as Naval historian by Franklin Roosevelt.  In his role, he was active in witnessing combat.  His history of the Navy during the war would be fifteen volumes in length.  He retired from the Navy in 1950, and was promoted to the rank of  Rear Admiral.  He retired from Harvard in 1955 and died in 1976.

Of minor note, Samuel Eliot Morison (one "r") is sometimes confused with Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison, who was a career combat officer in the Navy and who was the father of famed rock star, Jim Morrison.

Morison's history of the Navy is regarded as an authentically important and significant work of history.

German Ju88s damage PQ17's El Capitan and the SS Hoosier, but the first ships of the embattled convoy start pulling into Archangel.  At the same time, Convoy WP 183 comes under heavy attack by German torpedo boats, which sink six ships of the convoy.  German aircraft sink an additional ship.

It's often claimed that torpedo boats didn't live up to their promise during the Second World War, but this event certainly was a successful one for them.

In the Baltic, Soviet submarine S-7 sank Swedish coast freighters ten miles off the Swedish coast, sinking one.  It was carrying coal from Germany to Sweden.

In a part of the war that had grown somewhat quiet, Finns counterattacked a Soviet beached on Someri in the Gulf of Finland and defeated the Soviet invasion force.

Sunday, November 7, 2021

Friday, November 7, 1941. A day of speeches and demonstrations.

Four Freedoms and Arsenal of Democracy posters set for display in Defense Square, Washington for a month beginning November 7, 1941. 

On this date in 1941, a set of massive posters was set on display in Defense Square in Washington D. C.  The posters, after being on display, would then tour major US cities for a month.  The display emphasized the four freedoms theme of the Administration and American industrial might.

On the same day, the U.S. Senate voted to amend the Neutrality Act to allow merchantmen to be armed and to allow the U.S. Navy to enter combat zones.  The vote was 50 to 37.

While this was occurring in the United States, senior members of the Japanese armed forces were informed that war against the United States would commence on December 8, one month away. The date was Japanese local time.

Japan did continue to exchange diplomatic notes with the United States during this period, with there being some slight hope that the US and Japan might reach an accord.  On this date, the Japanese delivered a note regarding Japanese forces in China, which stated:

DISPOSITION OF JAPANESE FORCES

(A) stationing of Japanese forces in China and the withdrawal thereof:

With regard to the Japanese forces that have been despatched to China in connection with the China Affair, those forces in specified areas in North China and Mengchiang (Inner Mongolia) as well as in Hainan-tao (Hainan Island) will remain to be stationed for a certain required duration after the restoration of peaceful relations between Japan and China. All the rest of such forces will commence, withdrawal as soon as general peace is restored between Japan and China, and the withdrawal will proceed according to separate arrangements between Japan and China and will be completed within two years with the firm establishment of peace and order.

(B) Stationing of Japanese forces in French Indo-China and the withdrawal thereof:

The Japanese Government undertakes to guarantee the territorial sovereignty of French Indo-China. The Japanese forces at present stationed there will be withdrawn as soon as the China Affair is settled, or an equitable peace is established in East Asia.

PRINCIPLE OF NON-DISCRIMINATION

The Japanese Government recognizes the principle of non-discrimination in international commercial relations to be applied to all the Pacific areas, inclusive of China, on the understanding that the principle in question is to be applied uniformly to the rest of the entire world as well.

Churchill delivered his Resolution Of The People Speech.

The day is most remembered for a parade.

In spite of hundreds of thousands of German troops attempting to take the city, a giant military parade was held in Moscow on this day commemorating the anniversary of the October Revolution.  The daring of it was such that it became an event in the history of World War Two in and of itself.

Soviet sailors marching in parade.

The massive parade featured tanks, marching infantry and cavalry and truck and horse-drawn artillery.  Some troops deployed directly from the parade to frontline deployment.  Stalin observed as the troops passed in review and then delivered a speech.  

Making it more dramatic, a snowstorm broke out during the parade, with the snow going from light to heavy as the parade went on.

Stalin's speech predicted a German defeat, but suggested it would be coming in a matter of mere months.

In post Communist Russia, the parade still occurs, but it now honors the November 7, 1941 parade itself.  This year it was cancelled due to COVID 19 which is hitting Russia  hard at the present time.

This event and a dramatic stamp depicting it can be found here:

Today in World War II History—November 7, 1941

The Soviets sustained a terrible disaster on this day when the hospital ship Armenia was sunk by German He111s through a torpedo strike.  7,000 people lost their lives, making it one of the worst naval disasters in history.  The ship was marked with red crosses, but it was also armed with light anti aircraft guns.

The Armenia before the war when she was a Black Sea passenger ship.

While the US was heading rapidly towards war, life continued on, as it does.  

Bette Davis became the first woman to be elected president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

In Cleveland a six man high school football team was photographed, this being football season.


Thursday, September 23, 2021

Tuesday September 23, 1941. Dive bombers sink the Murat

On this day in 1941 the Germans achieved a first that we'd no doubt normally suspect some other nation had.

The Luftwaffe sank the Soviet battleship Murat with dive bombers.  Ju87s, i.e., Stukas, to be more precise.


The Murat was a dreadnought that had entered Imperial Russian service in 1915 as the Petropavlovsk.  After sinking, she was partially raised and used as gun battery in the siege of Leningrad.


For what it is worth, the Murat tends to be credited as a victory to Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Germany's most decorated World War Two serviceman.  Rudel, interesting, was a ground attack pilot during the war, not a fighter pilot or something that would be generally regarded as being more glamorous.  His career was spectacular, but he was only one of two German pilots to hit the Murat, which went down after being hit by just two bombs.

Rudel survived the war, ending up an American POW, but in 1946 fled to Argentina.  He was a Nazi and may have feared what remaining in post-war Germany meant at the time.  He returned to Germany in 1953 where he was involved in neo Nazi politics, so he never reformed or excused his views.

On the same day, the US Navy launched the USS Massachusetts.


Saturday, August 28, 2021

Thursday,, August 28, 1941. The Office of Price Administration Created, Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Loses Favor, The Soviet Dunkirk, Slaughter at Kamianets-Podilsky



The Office of Price Administration was crated by the Roosevelt Administration to combat inflationary trends caused by the massive boost in employment caused by World War Two and the countries efforts to get ready for it.


Stalin issued  a Decree of Banishment exiling Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic which had previously been an ethnic German Soviet enclave.  


The VGASSR would be officially disestablished on September 7.  It'd been created in the 1920s when the Soviets still attempted o placate local ethnic groups on the hopes that they'd come to like the Communist regime. 

Volga Oblast in yellow at bottom of map.

The fate of Volga Germans, in the country since the time of Catherine the Great, proved to be grim. The war would permanently impact their position in the country and while conditions improved for them after the death of Stalin, many emigrated to Germany under the German Law of Return, a trend that reached near totality in the 1980s and 1990s.  By that time it had reached a state of pathos and irony in that the remaining Volga Germans retained much of their early rustic nature, while also having lost the ability to speak German to a very large degree.  Their retained cultural attributes tended to shock modern Germans, while their inability to speak the language of their ancestors made it difficult for them to fit seamlessly into modern Germany.

While his action is regarded as one of the great atrocities of the Stalin era, and the Soviets have since apologized for it, at least in this instance Stalin's paranoid brutality was not without some reason to fear that they'd become a fifth column during the war given that anti Communist sentiments were strong in various Soviet ethnic groups.  Having said that, large numbers of Volga Germans volunteered for Soviet service in the Red Army during the war, although their services were not always accepted or wanted.



Emigrating to North America, it should be noted, had been a trend in the region for decades, and was accelerated when the Imperial Russian Government in later years rescinded exemption for the population from conscription.  In an interesting development, resistance to conscription, which in some Anabaptist German communities in Imperial Russia lead to North American emigration, did not tend to repeat itself in North America.

Today in World War II History—August 28, 1941

The Soviet Navy suffered a serious disaster when it lost several ships to mines while evacuating Tallinn, Estonia, in what has been called the "Soviet Dunkirk".   The Germans occupied the city on this day.  Meanwhile, the Germans lost a U boat to capture in Iceland. The boat would be returned to service in the Royal Navy as the HMS Graph.

The Germans also slaughtered 23,600 Jews in Kamianets-Podilsky on this day, as their campaign of slaughter reached new regions in the Soviet Union.

Saturday, August 7, 2021

Thursday August 7, 1941. Bombers and Japanese intentions.

The Soviet Navy bombed Berlin.

Yes, the Navy.

The reason was that the Ilyushin DB-3 used by both the Soviet Air Forces and the Soviet Navy was capable of being both a torpedo bomber and a tactical bomber, although its small 1000 lbs bomb load made it a poor strategic bomber.  The Soviet Air Forces also the aircraft, but the aircraft used in this raid were launched from a Soviet Navy base off of Estonia.

DB-3 in captured Finnish use.

The Germans at first thought that the RAF had conducted the raid, given as the RAF, which was the only combatant then in the war with heavy strategic bombers, had been raiding Berlin for a year. The small payload of the DB-3 meant that the raid was unlikely to be anything other than a propaganda victory, which was all that it was.

In other news of the air, Bruno Mussolini, the son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, was killed test flying an Italian attempt at a heavy bomber, that being the Piaggio P.108.

P.108 in flight.

Australia declared that it would not allow Japanese expansion in the Pacific to go unchecked, should it occur.

On the same day, Imperial Japan, which had recently mediated a dispute between Thailand and the French in Indochina, declared that it had no aggressive intentions in regard to Thailand.

In the US, people went about their regular chores, including outdoor ones.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Thursday July 21, 1921. A big stage.


Personnel of The Tercentenary Pageant, "The Pilgrim Spirit," Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1921.

The landing of the passengers of the Mayflower was apparently celebrated with a large pageant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in July, 1921. These photographs were taken of the very large cast of that play.

Grand finale.

On the same day, David Lloyd George presented the British peace proposal to the Irish delegation.  It featured, as noted  yesterday, Dominion status for Ireland along the same lines as that had been granted to Canada and Australia, among others, with the United Kingdom retaining control of Irish foreign policy and military matters.


In the Black Sea another ship went down, but due to a submarine, as the Soviet submarine Trotsky sank the Soviet ship Sawa as it attempted to make a run to defect to the Whites.  The Civil War was not yet over and sailors were changing their minds.

At some point, although I don't know when, somebody would have changed the name of the Trotsky, assuming she was still in service, as he'd fall out of favor with Stalin after Lenin's death and eventually a Soviet agent would put an ice pick into his head in Mexico.

Russell Stover and Christian Kent Nelson launched Nelson's I-Scream Bar, which later became famous as the Eskimo Pie, and which is now sold as Edy's Pie.  The chocolate covered ice cream bar was rebranded this year as Eskimo is regarded as a derogatory term.

People were experimenting with motor travel:

ALONZO’S DIARY ENTRY, 21 JULY 1921



Sunday, June 13, 2021

June 13, 1941. The Lutzow damaged, the Resistance receives supplies from the air, Vichy arrests Jewish residents

The Royal Air Force commenced dropping supplies to the French Resistance.

Today in World War II History—June 13, 1941

The Australians defeated the French in the Battle of Jezzine in Lebanon.  

On the same day, the French announced the commencement of a campaign to arrest 12,000 Jews for "plotting to hinder Franco-German cooperation".


In spite of a Luftwaffe escort, the RAF torpedoes and damages the German battleship Lutzow, which then returns to port.

The Lutzow torpedoed by Coastal Command


The Lutzow would return to service and end up being sort of emblematic of the German surface navy.  In 1943 she was involved in a failed effort to intercept a convoy off of Norway which so enraged Hitler that he ordered the surface navy broken up for scrap. That event lead Admiral Raeder to resign his position.  Raeder therefore missed the last two years of the war, but was convicted of war crimes in any event, serving prison time until 1955.

His successor, Karl Doenitz, convinced Hitler not to scrap the navy, and the Lutzow went on to serve for the remainder of the war, subsequently being damaged by the RAF in an air raid, and then her fate remained undetermined for years.  It turned out that the ship had been sunk as a target by the Soviets in 1947.

The name of the ship itself is interesting in that the ship had originally been named the Deutschland, after the nation whose service she was in, but Hitler had required the name to be changed.  The German navy had a cruiser by the name of Lutzow which was slightly newer than the Deutschland.  Indeed, the ship was incomplete when the Soviets asked to buy her in 1940 and she was, bizarrely, sold to the USSR.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

February 28, 1921. The Kronstadt Rebellion.

Sailors had been an integral part of the Russian Revolution, and indeed they'd been an integral part of revolutions in Russia, and in Europe in general.  Revolutionary left wing sailors had revolted in Russia in 1904, 1905, 1906 and most importantly, in 1917.  Indeed, in some ways the rebellion of Russian sailors in 1917 had heralded the onset of the Russian Revolution.

All of which made the uprising that started on this day in 1921 a momentous one.  On this day, Russian sailors, taking the view that the Bolsheviks had betrayed the Russian Revolution, rose up against the Communist government on the port island of Kronstadt, just off of St. Petersburg.

Communism was proving to be a disaster.  Indeed, it was such a disaster that even though the Reds had only defeated the Whites, as we now recognize that defeat, a couple of months prior, the unworkable oppressive nature of the Communist dictatorship was already apparent.  The sailors rebellion at Kronstadt was in reaction to that.

The sailors were not "White", but rather left wing revolutionaries themselves.  They were heavily influenced by a concept of localism that some regard as anarchistic, but which might be most analogous to the views of the Greens, who sought to allow individuals the greatest possible freedom in the economy and in their personal lives.  They expressed their goals in the form of fifteen published points.


These read:

Having heard the report of the representatives of the crews dispatched by the General Meeting of the crews from the ships to Petrograd in order to learn the state of affairs in Petrograd, we decided:

1. In view of the fact that the present soviets do not represent the will of the workers and peasants, to re-elect the soviets immediately by secret voting, with free canvassing among all workers and peasants before the elections.

2. Freedom of speech and press for workers, peasants, Anarchists and Left Socialist Parties.

3. Freedom of meetings, trade unions and peasant associations.

4. To convene, not later than 1 March 1921, a non-party conference of workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd City, Kronstadt and Petrograd Province.

5. To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist Parties, and also all workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors who have been imprisoned in connection with working-class and peasant movements.

6. To elect a commission to review the cases of those who are imprisoned in jails and concentration camps.

7. To abolish all Political Departments, because no single party may enjoy privileges in the propagation of its ideas and receive funds from the state for this purpose. Instead of these Departments, locally elected cultural-educational commissions must be established and supported by the state. This is the reason for the inclusion of this document in a collection otherwise devoted entirely to official publications.

8. All ‘cordon detachments” are to be abolished immediately.

9. To equalize rations for all workers, harmful sectors being excepted.

10. To abolish all Communist fighting detachments in all military units, and also the various Communist guards at factories. If such detachments and guards are needed they may be chosen from the companies in military units and in the factories according to the judgment of the workers.

11. To grant the peasant full right to do what he sees fit with his land and also to possess cattle, which he must maintain and manage with his own strength, but without employing hired labor.

12. To ask all military units and also our comrades, the military cadets, to associate themselves with our resolutions.

13. We demand that all resolutions be widely published in the press.

14. To appoint a traveling bureau for control.

15. To permit free artisan production with individual labor.

The resolutions were adopted by the meeting unanimously, with two abstentions.
President of the Meeting, PETRICHENKO.
Secretary, PEREPELKIN.

Suffice it to say, their rebellion would not be a success.  Some have noted that it hastened the implementation of Lenin's New Economic Order, but that program itself was only intended to be temporary and indeed, given Lenin's death, it certainly proved to be.

Some regard the Kronstadt Rebellion as the final practical act of the Russian Civil War.  By this point in time the Whites had been defeated in western Russia and, to a large degree, their defeat in the East was a foregone conclusion.  The rebellion, however, represented a dangerous internal threat from the left.  Had it succeeded, which it always had very little chance of doing, it would have created a more democratic left wing Russian regime, although one that was still likely to be a radical one.

On the same day, Panamanian troops halted an advance by Costa Rica in a border war that had developed between the two nations.  U.S. troops landed in Panama City to protect U.S. interest in that nation, which obviously were centered on the Canal.

France mustered troops, including colonial troops, on the German border in anticipating of occupying the Ruhr due to the failure of Germany to provide timely reparation payments.

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Boxing Day, 1918

The December 26, 1918 edition of Life Magazine, which at that time was a magazine that featured humor, although this image, if it's supposed to be humorous, isn't.

December 26 is Boxing Day, a holiday in almost all of the English speaking world except, for some odd reason, the United States. Given that much of the United States's holiday traditions that are older stem from the United Kingdom,  including some aspects of the Christmas holidays, it's surprising that Boxing Day isn't observed in the U.S. while it is in nearby Canada.*

Australian convalescence soldiers and volunteers out on Boxing Day, 1918.  Photo courtesy of the University of Wollongong, Australia.

In most of the English speaking world, the day is a day off.  It's also a day that has traditionally been devoted to sports and the like.  In British Army units, including units from the Dominions, it's likely that there were games of various types.  Horse racing and equestrian sports, which are a traditional Boxing Day activity, likely was likely part of that.  FWIW, it was in Austria that year (maybe it is every year), as soccer matches were held.

Whatever else was going on in the UK, dignitaries were meeting Woodrow Wilson who was visiting the country.  Elsewhere, British troops were engaged in active combat service, as for example off the coast of Estonia where the HMS Calypso and the HMS Caradoc ran the Red Russian Navy destroyer Spartak aground.


In New York, the U.S. Navy, or rather some elements of it, were committed to a big victory parade.

The Laramie Boomerang reported on the celebrations in New York City.







*Examples of British holidays incorporated into American tradition are Thanksgiving, which isn't really a thing though up by the Mayflower Pilgrims (it was a commonly observed English harvest religious holiday) and the observation of Halloween, which originally was an Irish observation of All Hallowed Eve in which the poor went door to door in search of the gift of food in exchange for a promise to pray for that family's dead.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Movies in History: Stalingrad, Enemy At The Gates, and Stalingrad

By some accounts the battle of Stalingrad is the largest battle in human history, although that unfortunate status is not unchallenged, and therefore it isn't surprising that the battle would be the subject of a variety of films, not all of which I've seen by any means.

Stalingrad.  1993

The best of these movies is the 1993 German production, simply called Stalingrad.  This film follows a squad of German soldiers who are of a specialist, stormtrooper, variety, joining them just as they receive a new officer to replace an officer with a severe head injury. He joins the squad in Italy just as they receive orders to ship out to the Russian front.  From there, the squad is followed over a period of months as the situation in Stalingrad deteriorates.

This film is a surprising one in some ways as it is by far the best of the ones about this battle I've seen. A German film looking at the battle from a post war German prospective as a terrible German tragedy, the film doesn't shy away from depicting German actions as barbarous, although, as is typical for German films about World War Two, it concentrates that in a fashion limited to certain individuals and it distinguishes those individuals from average Germans, a distinction that is not fully warranted by any means.   The Russians, in contrast, are generally portrayed sympathetically.

Combat scenes are highly realistic and this film scores very high in terms of material details, something that's somewhat surprising as this film predates Saving Private Ryan, but it compares favorably with it in these regards.  Artillery and armor, as well as small arms, are accurate for the armies and period, something that is not often the case for pre Saving Private Ryan films.  As in at least one other German work, German soldiers are depicted using Soviet small arms, which must be at least based on some element of truth as it seems to show up fairly frequently.

The story, I'll note, is really grim and depressing, which isn't surprising given its topic.

Enemy At The Gates

In start contrast with Stalingrad, Enemy At The Gates is flat out awful.

This is a British production that uses the title of a fairly well respected straight history on the battle which is now little read.  That's all it shares, however, with the book. This film instead follows what is supposed to be a fictionalized story of real Soviet snipers who fought in the battle.

That's a bit of a problem in and of itself, as the Soviets fictionalized the stories of their own snipers during the war for propaganda purposes, so basing a fictionalized drama on them is basically basing a story on something that's somewhat fictionalized already.  Indeed, at the time this movie was released it started a bit of a boom amongst history fans on the topic of Soviet snipers, which in turn gave rise to some re-analysis of the love story angle between the male and female snipers, showing the extent to which the story of the snipers in general was exaggerated, which isn't to say that the Soviets didn't use snipers a great deal.

The further "sniper duel" aspect this is real Hollywood schlock, even if this isn't a Hollywood film.  The German sniper is even made to be an officer, who is a super sniper. Again, while the Germans used snipers, they were enlisted men.

Just about everything I can think of in regards to the story is bad, and makes this movie worth avoiding. What about the material details?

Well, the weapons are all correct, I'll give it that. And a scene that depicts a Luftwaffe bombing run is nicely done.

Stalingrad, 2013.

My suspicion is that there is more than one Russian movie about Stalingrad, but this is the only one I've seen.  Indeed, it's only the second full length Russian movie I've ever seen in full.  So, when I saw it the other day, I had somewhat high expectations for it.

Those expectations were somewhat let down, but perhaps I was expecting too much of the film.

This movie is centered around a drama involving the story of a 19 year old girl who is the sole remaining resident of a ruined apartment building in Stalingrad.  Everyone she's known before the war in her apartment, including her family, has died in the battle and she won't leave. Early in the film the German occupied apartment changes hands and we're introduced to five Soviet fighting men who strive (with other Soviet soldiers at first) to retain possession of the building from the German forces that have been pushed out. As the movie progresses, all five of the Soviet fighters develop strong attachments to the girl.

That may seem odd, and odder yet the film actually commences in modern Japan, where an elderly Russian man is a on a crew seeking to rescue stranded German girls from the rubble of a building brought down by the recent tsunami.  In this we learn that the Russian man has "five fathers", and as the story develops it becomes apparent that the five Russian fighting men, four soldiers and one sailor (the Soviets did use sailors as infantry on occasion, and the film is accurate in those regards) are his "fathers" (with one being his actual father).

Added into this mix, a subplot involves a German officer who pays his attention to a Russian woman, against her will, and then by force, with that subplot developing into a really odd love story.

None of this sounds, of course, like a war movie, but it is, and during the film the Russians fight desperately against the more numerous Germans.  Early in the film the fighting is in fact spectacular, with some special effects that are truly dramatic.

As a story, this tale is oddly Russian.  It's not a bad story, it's just sort of peculiar.  The subplot is extremely odd from our prospective, as the concept of physical force giving rise to a love story would be regarded as repellent by nearly any modern western audience.

Departing from there, in terms of material details, the film isn't too bad, although it falls in this are somewhere between the best materially accurate films of the 1970s and Saving Private Ryan. All the weapons are correct or nearly so. This movie also includes an offhand example of German troops using Russian equipment, so that shows up again. An effort to make replica Panzerkampfwagen IVs isn't too bad, if not entirely successful.  Use of the weapons, however, is highly exaggerated with some weapon performance being silly.  

In regards to historical accuracy and portrayal of the armies, a much poorer job was done.  On some things, the movie is surprisingly accurate.  The barbarity of the Soviet army is accurately and surprisingly portrayed.  In one scene, one of the "fathers" has a sailor shot simply because the sailor is indicating he's going to return to the rear.  That is pretty accurate.  In another, another "father" shoots the German officer's female love interest in the head, which again, is pretty indicative of how Soviet troops generally regarded things.  On the other hand, the Soviet soldiers are impossibly capable. The Germans are portrayed with varying degrees of evil intent, which isn't surprising, but the tolerance shown by a senior officer for his junior's dalliance is way off the mark in the way portrayed, and would probably have resulted in the junior's court martial.  Chances are the woman who that officer is interested in would have met with a bad end way before she did as well.

On a somewhat interesting note, the Russianess of the film is demonstrated not only in the story line, but in the way it is portrayed.  Less blood and gore is shown than in American films, even though the film is very violent.  In these regards, it is probably actually more accurate than American movies, which tend to be overboard in that aspect.  However, almost all of the male female contact is merely suggested.  There's some scenes in which this isn't entirely true, but only barely, and the film recalls American movies of the 50s and 60s in this fashion.  A little more, but not a lot more, is shown than was shown, for example, in From Here To Eternity.  This harkens back to Soviet production values, in which such portrayals just weren't done, but it also is refreshing in that it takes more skill to suggest something than to just exploit it.