Monday, December 31, 2018
What? No scenes of wild December 31, 1918 New Years Celebrations. And none for 1968 either. And New Year's Eve 2018-2019.
Yup, it's December 31 all right.
Nope, couldn't find any.
And I was surprised.
Cameras were obviously in fairly common circulation by then, although frankly the defeated Germans were the masters of snap shots as they already had a lot of personally owned cameras, whereas that would have been unusual for soldiers from other countries. Still, press photographers were common already, as were military photographers and photographers from organizations, such as the Red Cross.
I'm sure somebody took photos, but I didn't find anything for this New Years Eve.
I'm sure celebrations were held too, but I didn't find any record of them. Indeed, outside of one of the Casper newspapers, even the papers didn't really note it. The Saturday Evening Post did run a Leyendecker illustration for the New Year on its issue from the last week of December that was New Year's themed, but oddly enough I couldn't find a copy of the cover either.
Of course in a lot of the U.S. that celebration would have been dry, or if not dry, it would have featured the anticipated last of the suds. Prohibition was coming in strong and it had the force of public sentiment behind it. Indeed, in the same Casper paper I noted the first of the counter waive on that movement appeared with a notation that Tennessee was already becoming the center of bootlegging, and openly so. Anyhow, in a lot of homes the celebrations may already have been dry, in contrast to the way New Years has become, and for many establishments in many states it would have to have been.
It wouldn't have had to have been in Wyoming, but the press was pretty steady in its drumbeat to bring Prohibition on, so the seeming tide of history seemed pretty clear.
But I'm sure a lot of people gathered and celebrated at homes, or in bars and restaurants that evening. Lots of Americans, over one million, were still overseas, and they likely celebrated in barracks rooms, with those on occupation duty in Germany probably restricted to post, I'll bet.
Of course, some took note of the changing of year from posts in Russia, where I'll bet that change, which would probably not have been observed by locals at all, most still acclimated to the Old Calendar, was probably a little somber. Troops stationed near British troops, as some were, I suspect celebrated a bit more. Those in the Navy no doubt celebrated however that's done in the Navy, which I'm not familiar with but as the Navy is long on tradition, not doubt something occurred.
Of course, if you were a German, except perhaps, ironically, if you were in the Occupied Zone, this was a pretty bad New Years, and not just because your army had been defeated in a four year long war that killed huge numbers of your countrymen. The country was in revolution and falling apart, at war with itself and facing a rebellion in Posen. It was bad. Your trip to Mass, if you were in southern Germany or western Germany, was probably pretty somber.
Which it also would have been in you were anywhere in what became Poland or any of the Baltic States, all of which were aflame. And while this was New Years in Russia, probably few observed it both because the peasantry, which most Russians were, were still on the Old Calendar for observances but also because a massive civil war was raging in the country.
Of course, if you were a German, except perhaps, ironically, if you were in the Occupied Zone, this was a pretty bad New Years, and not just because your army had been defeated in a four year long war that killed huge numbers of your countrymen. The country was in revolution and falling apart, at war with itself and facing a rebellion in Posen. It was bad. Your trip to Mass, if you were in southern Germany or western Germany, was probably pretty somber.
Which it also would have been in you were anywhere in what became Poland or any of the Baltic States, all of which were aflame. And while this was New Years in Russia, probably few observed it both because the peasantry, which most Russians were, were still on the Old Calendar for observances but also because a massive civil war was raging in the country.
And so ended 1918. But it's reached continued on. Even until now.
I didn't bother to look to hard for anything from 1968, for which I've been running some dates. I'm not going to do a continual1969 retrospective. 1968 was run specifically as it was such a pivitol year in history but I'm finding myself no more informed on that than I was before I started doing that, and my inquiries here and there as to why it turned out to be remain unanswered. It was, with turmoil in the United States, France, Germany and elsewhere. Something was going on, but what? I was around for the 1968 to 1969 New Year but don't recall it, I think, and if I do its from a child's prospective. Had I been older in 1968, I think I would have been glad that year was over but dreading 1969.
Which is sort of how I feel about this New Years.
It's not like 2018 has been a super bad year for me by any means whatover. Quite the contrary by most measures. But it has been stressful on a personal level and it featured near its end the terminus on something that I had long hoped would have worked out which did not and the fixation of something to the contrary thats has a real element of bitterness about it. I'll continue to deal with that in early 2019 until I become fully used to it (the most likely thing), accept it (ditto), or become just very bitterly disgruntled about it.
And politically the past three years or so have been about all I can take on the nation's politics, which just seem to get wackier and wacker, and which have spilled over a bit to the local. There's really serious things to be done that haven't been done. Maybe 2019 will surprise me and people will start to get to work on them, but right now a person predicting that would have to be doing it based on sheer unsupported optimism.
Oh well.
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
Chorus.-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o'kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
Sin' auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
And there's a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.
The November 11, 1918 Armistice.
Foch with fellow Allied officers after the execution of the armistice.
Here, before the century mark on that fateful year passes, is the entire text:
Between MARSHAL FOCH, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies,
acting in the name of the Allied and Associated Powers, with ADMIRAL WEMYSS, First Sea Lord, on the one hand, and HERR ERZBERGER, Secretary of State, President of the German Delegation, COUNT VON OBERNDORFF, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, MAJOR GENERAL VON WINTERFELDT, CAPTAIN VANSELOW (German Navy),duly empowered and acting with the concurrence of the German Chancellor on the other hand.
An Armistice has been concluded on the following conditions:
CONDITIONS OF THE ARMISTICE CONCLUDED
WITH GERMANY.A. - CLAUSES RELATING TO THE WESTERN FRONT.I. - Cessation of hostilities by land and in the air 6 hours after the signing of the Armistice
II. - Immediate evacuation of the invaded countries - Belgium, France, Luxemburg, as well as Alsace-Lorraine - so ordered as to be completed within 15 days from the signature of the Armistice. German troops which have not left the above-mentioned territories within the period fixed shall be made prisoners of war.Occupation by the Allied and United States Forces jointly shall keep pace with the evacuation of these areas.
All movements of evacuation and occupation shall be regulated in accordance with a Note (Annexe1) determined at the time of the signing of the Armistice.
III. - Repatriation, beginning at once, to be completed within 15 days, of all inhabitants of the countries above enumerated (including hostages, persons under trial, or condemned).
IV. - Surrender in good condition by the German Armies of the following equipment:-
5,000 guns (2,500 heavy, 2,500 field).
25,000 machine guns.
3,000 trench mortars.
1,700 aeroplanes (fighters, bombers - firstly all D.7's and night-bombing machines).
The above to be delivered in situ to the Allied and United States troops in accordance with the detailed conditions laid down in the Note (Annexe 1) determined at the time of the signing of the Armistice.
V. - Evacuation by the German Armies of the districts on the left bank of the Rhine. These districts on the left bank of the Rhine shall be administered by the local authorities under the control of the Allied and United States Armies of Occupation.The occupation of these territories by Allied and United States troops shall be assured by garrisons holding the principal crossings of the Rhine (Mainz, Coblenz, Cologne), together with bridgeheads at these points of a 30-kilometre (about 19 miles) radius on the right bank, and by garrisons similarly holding the strategic points of the area.
A neutral zone shall be reserved on the right bank of the Rhine, between the river and a line drawn parallel to the bridgeheads and to the river and 10 kilometres (6¼ miles) distant from them, between the Dutch frontier and the Swiss frontier.
The evacuation by the enemy of the Rhine districts (right and left banks) shall be so ordered as to be completed within a further period of 16 days, in all 31 days after the signing of the Armistice.
All movements of evacuation and occupation shall be regulated according to the Note (Annexe 1) determined at the time of the signing of the Armistice.
VI. - In all territories evacuated by the enemy, evacuation of the inhabitants shall be forbidden; no damage or harm shall be done to the persons or property of the inhabitants.
No person shall be prosecuted for having taken part in any military measures previous to the signing of the Armistice.
No destruction of any kind to be committed.
Military establishments of all kinds shall be delivered intact, as well as military stores, food, munitions and equipment, which shall not have been removed during the periods fixed for evacuation.
Stores of food of all kinds for the civil population, cattle, &c., shall be left in situ.
No measure of a general character shall be taken, and no official order shall be given which would have as a consequence the depreciation of industrial establishments or a reduction of their personnel.
VII. - Roads and means of communications of every kind, railroads, waterways, roads, bridges, telegraphs, telephones, shall be in no manner impaired.
All civil and military personnel at present employed on them shall remain.
5,000 locomotives and 150,000 wagons, in good working order, with all necessary spare parts and fittings, shall be delivered to the Associated Powers within the period fixed in Annexe No. 2 (not exceeding 31 days in all).
5,000 motor lorries are also to be delivered in good condition within 36 days.
The railways of Alsace-Lorraine shall be handed over within 31 days, together with all personnel and material belonging to the organization of this system.
Further, the necessary working material in the territories on the left bank of the Rhine shall be left in situ.
All stores of coal and material for the upkeep of permanent way, signals and repair shops shall be left in situ and kept in an efficient state by Germany, so far as the working of the means of communication on the left bank of the Rhine is concerned.
All lighters taken from the Allies shall be restored to them.
A couple of comments.
If this seems surprisingly short, there were annexes that provided a great more detail. These are referenced above, but I haven't included them.
Secondly, there's a certain sort of debate that occurs between historians, amateur and professional, about whether the armistace was as surrender or if we have to wait until the Versailles Treaty to get that. Certainly that's how the Germans sot of came to view it, but looking at the text, while the armistice wasn't a treaty of peace in the diplomatic sense, it was a surrender.
The territorial concessions alone would have made it that. But the laying down and surrendering of a designated number of arms effectively gutted the Imperial German Army as a field force capable of waging a resumed war against the Allies (and made it difficult for the same army to suppress the ongoing domestic insurrection, which played into something we'll be seeing shortly. But the surrender of material items beyond that, which predated any such condition in the Versailles Treaty, made that all the more clear.
The end of wars can be messy, and certainly most are. We're so used to the concept of total victory, even though we have achieved it only twice in our own history, that we tend to think of it in that fashion. Most wars end with an armistice with a peace treaty to follow, or more rarely with a peace treaty followed by an armistice. The November 11, 1918 armistice followed the historic norm. It was a German surrender.
One Lost Life and What That Tells Us About the Practice of Law in the early 21st Century.
I don't often lift an entire article, but I'm going to do so here as this one is so remarkable. My commentary comes mostly at the end.
I've done the unusual thing of footnoting some things in this and commented on them, although I think that this stands to be rude an offensive, I don't mean for it to be.
________________________________________________________________________________
I've done the unusual thing of footnoting some things in this and commented on them, although I think that this stands to be rude an offensive, I don't mean for it to be.
Joanna Litt’s husband, Gabe MacConaill, a 42-year-old partner at Sidley Austin, committed suicide in the parking garage of the firm’s downtown Los Angeles office last month.
There's a lot to unpack in this very interesting post and I've put it up as it is interesting in part, both for what it assumes
and what it doesn’t. Keep in mind, additionally, that I don't know these folks and therefore anything I may be saying in connection with this story may not actually apply to them.
Now, let me also note, I have a long draft post on the topic of
suicide in our modern era that’s been stewing for some time in a nearly
completed, but still incomplete, form.
So this post will be rapidly supplemented by that one, but the other one
came first.
Anyhow, the suicide rate for lawyers is high (but not as
high as that for dentists, at least as of the last time I looked). As
this is usually looked at specifically by the legal profession, there’s
a common concept in the legal profession that this means there’s something
specific to the practice of law about this, and there is, but I suspect it’s
part of a larger societal problem.
Getting to this item, however, the first thing I’d note that
I think is in error is blaming this on “Big Law”. I'm not sure there really is a "Big Law" in the way that "Big Law" believes that there is, although there is something that is indeed called Big Law.
The Big Law organizations, i.e., outfits that track what’s
going on in Big Law assumes that there is a Big Law. There is, but frankly Big Law bleeds into
regular law and varies little from it in most ways. The biggest single distinction about Big Law
form regular law is that Big Law is mighty impressed with itself and thinks
that its unique in every fashion, when the only thing really unique about it is
that it’s big and reflects the common ills associated with large entities entities. Big Law is getting bigger and hurting the overall legal profession in my view, but many of the ills attributed to it are widespread indeed.
Anyhow, when the ills associated with the Big Law practice
are addressed, in the contexts of what it is like to practice in front of Big
Law, most lawyers would just recognize that stuff as the law. Big Law doesn’t, because its impressed with
itself. People who work for Big Law don't realize that as they are self isolated as a rule. Big Law tends not to impress people who aren't in Big Law unless they are just impressed by Big, and therefore those in it don't realize that those outside of it face much the same daily factors that they do, and frankly that lawyers outside of Big Law are every bit as good as those within it.
Which goes to this, if something about the profession killed
this lawyer, it wasn’t Big Law, it was just the Law.
Or more accurately, perhaps, the way the law has become and the way it is continuing to develop.
Which goes to the next thing.
There’s lots of hand-wringing in the profession about
conditions which cause its members to become depressed, drink, take drugs,
chase skirts and in some cases, commit suicide. And nothing is being done about
it. Nothing that really matters, however.
Indeed, the profession is actually
seeking to make things worse, at least in terms of its big organizations. The conditions that cause the law to become unbearable for some are encouraged by the developments that organizations like the ABA are taking and which state bar associations have been taking which serve principally, Big Law, intentionally or not. That is, in spite of all of their declarations of sympathy and angst, the profession is actually working towards the consolidation of bars in a fashion which serves bigness. And where Ms. Litt may well be correct, although not in the way that she may have intentionally meant, is that this consolidation makes the conditions she observed worse.
Now, each state, probably, has some state bar program for
distressed lawyers. But that treats the
lawyer and not the cause. I.e., these
are basically emergency rooms that take in the badly wounded the same way that
a big city ER does. ERs in Chicago treat
a lot of gunshot wounds. That’s great,
but it doesn’t do anything whatsoever to stop people from getting shot.
Put another way, my bar card just came for 2019 and attached to it was a sheet going out to every lawyer in the state with their new bar cards that says something like "Feeling stressed" and then makes reference to the bar's service for lawyers who are having a hard time. There's no real effort to find out why lawyers are having a hard time and if something should be done about that. None.
And that’s what this topic is like in the law.
Something about the practice is getting after people. What is it?
Well, it has to be something in the conditions of practice
and nothing is being done about that whatsoever.
The law has never been a perfect profession, if there ever
was such a thing, but the conditions of practice have undeniably gotten worse
over the past half century and the trends towards that are accelerating. Prior to the revolution in communications
most practice was highly local. As communications have gotten bigger and
bigger, the law has reacted in a direction that’s the opposite of efficient and
logical. It’s concentrated and become
more and more inhuman. Lawyers used to
work with and against those they know.
Now they do that less and less. And as that’s
become the case, and things have scaled towards the big, pressure has been put
on lawyers in big firms to be, as one lawyer I know has put it, “rented mules”,
with all the dignity accorded them that a rented mule will have. In litigation a premium has been put on
results at any cost, with the collateral effect that lawyers in larger venues are highly aggressive.
The problem with being that way is that its
difficult to turn off. A lawyers who has
perfected the role of being the designated aggressive person in a case probably tends to
be that way everywhere else. And to
the people who work with him, particularly those who are just rented mules to
start with, the conditions are worse and
worse.
And human behavior towards the aggressive is age old. People come to hate people who act that way and resent them permanently. Ultimately they'll resent the conditions that bring these people to them, whether that condition is the work, or the firms that act that way.
One legal blogger has made the extreme claim that being a lawyer in the trenches is worse, psychologically, than being a soldier in the trenches, as wars end and careers basically don't. That is extreme, but there's something to it. If a person's work has become unrelenting day in and day out combat, they'll begin to have problems with it.
The author here claims that she learned her husband had a "maladaptive personality". I don't doubt that there's something to that, but there's been in the past few months an argument developed by a figure who spent most of their lives on antidepressants that in fact what is going on is that doctors are medicating modern life. If he's correct (and I'm not in the profession, but I suspect more than a little that there's something to that), the "maladaption" may mean as little as "just not suited for".
That concept used to be more popular before modern society became so daft as to actually believe "you can do anything you want to". Some people are just not suitable for some things. I recall in Basic Training meeting a soldier awaiting discharge. He was a nice kid, but the service had found him simply unsuited for military life, so it was letting him go. There's no reason to believe that there aren't people who are unsuited for a life in the law.
If that's the case, however, that would have to be determined at some point early in their careers. That's not going to happen.
Nothing is done by law schools, which are
desperate to find students, to sort out those who will thrive in an environment
of constant human contact form those who will not. Many who are drawn to the law on
introspective introverts with a flare for analysis. Those people may say that they want to “help
people” or “argue”, but what they really want to do is analyze and read. Law schools don't bother with trying to discern anything about a person's talents to practice law. If a person has passed the LSAT, even if they took a few times to do it, and they have the cash, they're in.
And certainly nothing is done by state bars either. Indeed, less is done for admittance now than at any time in recent history.
As recently (granted it isn't that recent) as when I took the bar exam, you had to take a state exam combined with the national exam and be interviewed by the bar examiners themselves. Now, most of this is a thing of the past. The state exam is gone as is the interview.
Indeed, at that time you also needed a sponsor who was a practicing member of the bar. You still need that, but basically you just take the national exam, the Uniform Bar Exam, and you're in. This only shows you know how to take a test of that type and I'd wager that anyone who takes test well should be able to study on the UBE and take it, irrespective of whether or not they've gone to law school (which is of course a requirement) and irrespective of your actual qualifications to practice law.
Could something be done? You bet. But we're not going to do it.
First of all, the entire LSAT should simply go. The LSAT was created to test your ability to think logically. That's great, but people study for it and take it more than once. If it was to work, it would have to at least a one and done type of deal
But combined with that probably should be some sort of psychological test, and nobody is going to want that. And maybe there should be references required to simply be admitted to any law school that are submitted to somebody other than a cash hungry law school. And those references should probably have to include people who will vouch for you not becoming a jerk later on (which I'm not saying that this guy was) or collapsing under the stress. I.e., if you are on of those bookish shy people who are attracted to the law because you are a polymath maybe somebody who is your friend might confidentially note that. Or not.
And perhaps state bars ought to start acting like gatekeepers again by demonstrating that they know that there is a gate. Relying on the UBE instead of doing state tests is a bad idea. The opposite would be a better approach. And with that, they could reinstate interviews. If somebody seems too wired to get through the interview, maybe that says something
Beyond that, however, perhaps they could enforce the requirement that lawyers actually have an office in the state in which they practice, rather than simply a mail drop. Or make that a requirement if they don't have one. If a lawyer is going to practice in State X, he should probably be in State X at least 50% of the time (and yes, I have done out of state work). What's that have to do with this, you ask?
Well, that operates towards making firms smaller and actually your work more local, and that matters. I.e., that operates against Big Law and its bigness. The smaller the law horizon is the more likely it is that somebody is going to catch you before you fall.
And taking that one step further, maybe it would be a good idea to take a page from the English and require lawyers to be admitted to a single practice area, rather than the fiction that all lawyers are admitted to do everything. English lawyers have traditionally been barristers, who do courtroom work, or solicitors, who do not (in Quebec the latter are "notaries"). Making lawyers make that choice forces them very early on to make a choice on what they want to do, rather than simply making them scramble for a job anywhere and then end up where they shouldn't be. Just because a lawyer has courtroom skills doesn't mean that he's able to psychologically carry that weight for the long haul, and chances are a lot of the lawyers who are in that spot know it before they ever fill out a job application. Making them choose early on might keep a guy who is ill suited for the pressures of trial work opt for it.
And taking that one step further yet, the English traditionally did not allow barristers to form firms. With practice being what it is in the United States, that couldn't be strictly applied here, but something like it probably could be. Firms of barristers could be modified in some fashion to keep them small. There's a lot of courtroom talent out there and this would be good for the practice and clients in general, but it would also operate to keep that class of lawyer from becoming grossly overburdened and also from being converted from courtroom lawyers into "trial warriors" or some such thing as their economics became more concentrated and local.
Finally, emphasis should be placed on the concept that if the law is a vocation, any good lawyer has a decent avocation.
No matter what state bars like to pretend, the way things are developing emphasizes creating a situation in which bright young polymaths are put in a situation where they do nothing other than work. Most young lawyers have varied interests. Anyone who has been around older lawyers knows those who have had every single non law interest burned out of them. The best lawyers I know and have known all had very strong interests in something else. Some were pronounced outdoorsmen, some where agriculturalist, some were painters, some were writers, some were deeply religious and active in their faiths, and so on. I think, frankly, that a person can't be a decent lawyer unless they have some other strong interest. But the profession operates night and day to keep that from occurring. Indeed, I recently had it suggested to me that being a rancher in addition to a lawyer was a disqualifying factor for being a judge as it "took too much time", which by extension suggests that all of a lawyer's time as a lawyer should be devoted to the law. That's wrong.
Perhaps that should be a topic of inquiry by state bar committees for new applicants. "What else do you do?", with some proof you do that. If the answer is "I love the law so much I only study it", you aren't qualified to be a lawyer.
And that's because at the end of the day a meaningful life has some deeper connection to something. A profession that things the profession itself gives that meaning has lost sight of that. Lawyers shouldn't.
And individual lawyers will have to carry that ball. The profession isn't going to do anything about it.
________________________________________________________________________________
*My first comment. Ms. Litt has that right, it was "our life".
I'm back to the point that I made here recently on a post on abortion, but our lives aren't really our own. We have a collective nature and the entire individualist concept that modern society, and Americans in general, espouse, is frankly shallow and wrong. And this is particularly the case with married couples, whose lives, by law and by nature, belong to each other and their children. Two do truly join together as one flesh.
**I hear this a lot, but I think that what people do by choosing deliberately to eschew children is to close part of their lives entirely to something deeper. I realize that this is a popular modern choice, but it gets back to that strong sense of individualism that runs so strong through modern life. When Ms. Litt finds somebody else, and she will, I hope that this isn't part of her second calculation.
***And this is what my post is really about, and what the text I've put in is about.
****Here's another modern comment I hear all the time. "Marriage isn't easy".
An old clear thinking friend of mine who married earlier than I did once told me, after he'd been a married a few years, "marriage is easy". And frankly, having been married now for over two decades, it is.
It is at least if you viewed it as a life time commitment and never considered that it had any out, and you didn't expect everything life to be perfect. Life isn't perfect no matter what. Marriage won't make it perfect.
But marriage itself frankly isn't hard, at least in my experience. Based on my observation, people who live single lives live ones that are much harder. Much. And beyond that, people who insist on complicating their marriage with drama by never really being committed to it. . .well they make their lives difficult and their marriages difficult by extension.
But marriage itself? If a person, like most people, was meant to live with another of the opposite sex. . it isn't hard.
*****Litt deserves a lot of praise for this offer.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
December 30, 1918. "Zero Weather" predicted for Cheyenne, Rosa Luxemburg urges a name change for the German Spartacus League in Germany, Goshen County Sheriff held on suspicion of murder.
While this blog still does not seek to become a century ago today in retrospective blog, as we're still tracking stories important to the our overall theme, and the end of World War One and the events flowing from it are part of that story, here we have one.
And it's one that jam packed with myths that are probably so thick that disabusing them is impossible. The story of Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacus Rebellion in Germany of 1919, which was coming to a head, by which we mean a bloody end.
Rosa Luxemburg, who is almost 100% incorrectly remembered by history.
With Germany in revolution and the Socialist government struggling to simultaneously put it down and to deal with the collapse of the state that had made the armistice with the Allies necessary, Rosa Luxemburg, misunderstood member of the German Spartacus League and one of its founders, urged the the consolidation of all of the non Social Democratic German radical Socialist parties into a new party to be called the Communist Party of Germany, somewhat ignoring the fact that there was already a radical left wing German party called the Communist Party which was a participant at the conference at which she was making the proposal.
Luxemburg, who will reappear here in a few days, is a quixotic figure. She had long been a left wing figure in Europe and is romanticized today by the Communists pretty much for the same reason that movie fans romanticize James Dean. . . she died prior to her career really getting started and therefore can be all things to all people.
Luxemburg was a Polish Jew by ethnicity and a citizen of the Russian Empire by birth. She'd grown up, before going to university in Switzerland, in Russian Poland and was the daughter of a father who was interested in liberal causes and a mother who was very religious. She had no familial or perosnal history with Germany whatsoever but rather chose Germany as a place in which she wished to live sometime after obtaining a doctorate, very unusual for a woman at the time, in Switzerland. She had obtained permission to live in Imperial Germany only by contracting a fraudulent marriage with Gustav Lubeck, the son of a long time friend, in order to circumvent German laws and she became a permanent resident of Germany sometime in the early 1900s.
In Germany she was a member, originally, of the Social Democratic Party which prior to World War One housed all of the left of center German political class and which was secure in its radiclalism by the fact that it didn't have a real chance to exercise power. Probably not ironically, however, as she was a Pole, not a German, she was influential in that time in the formation of the Polish and Lithuanian Social Democratic Party.
Prior to World War One it can be argued that her politics evolved. She was a radical in her socialistic views but ran counter to almost all of those who would later lionize her. She was an opponent of Polish nationalism as she did not believe in Polish (or any) self determination, a policy that would run counter to Lenin's stated beliefs but which did fit conventional communist beliefs. She was also, however, dedicated to social democracy and serious about not suppressing the votes of non socialist parties. She came to be an open critic of Lenin and of the German Social Democratic Party. By this point in time she was really a member of the Independent Social Democrats which were part of the first post war German coalition for a time until they pulled out due to their radical beliefs. She opposed the Spartacus uprising in 1919 but naively supported none the less. On this day, she proposed that the various parties of the left that were in the Spartacus League unite as the Communist Party of Germany, in spite of their already being a German communist party, and in spite of the fact that her views really did not match well with those that genuine communist held.
Her role would not go well for her.
Locally, while Germany was aflame, there was going to be "Zero Weather" in Cheyenne, which didn't mean what it sounded like. The Goshen County Sheriff was being held in connection with a killing and Congress was working on a bill for anticipated homesteading discharged soldiers.
Churches of the West: Seward Memorial Methodist Church (and Resurrection Lutheran Church), Seward Alaska
Churches of the West: Seward Memorial Methodist Church (and Resurrection Lutheran Church, Seward, Alaska:
This is a Methodist Church in Seward Alaska. Other than that, I can't relate anything else about it including age, etc. Resurrection Lutheran Church, which I didn't otherwise photograph, is visible immediately behind it.
This is a Methodist Church in Seward Alaska. Other than that, I can't relate anything else about it including age, etc. Resurrection Lutheran Church, which I didn't otherwise photograph, is visible immediately behind it.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
The Best Post of the Week of December 23, 2018
The best post of the week of December 23, 2018.
December 23, 1918. Wyoming Guardsmen of the 148th Field Artillery at the Château-Thierry and beyond.
Churches of the East: The ruins of of Saint Albain Nazaire, France.
Make the Christmas Movie Madness Stop
Christmas 1918
I still can't help but wonder what became of Pvt. Dilley.
December 27, 1918. The Collapse of the German Empire. The Rise of Poland. A League of Nations.
Musing on the Century Link Net Outage
Taking a look at those zones of Occupation, the Peace and what it meant. The Allied Occupation of Germany, 1918-1930.
Taking a look at those zones of Occupation, the Peace and what it meant. The Allied Occupation of Germany, 1918-1930.
Painting of Canadian soldier on early occupation duty in Germany following World War One.
Recently, in another post, we posted the Allied areas of occupation following the Armistice in World War One.
It's worth taking a second look at:
December 27, 1918. The Collapse of the German Empire. The Rise of Poland. A League of Nations.
Contrary to what occurred after World War Two, the allied occupation following the Armistice of November 11 was quite limited in scope. This is also sometimes misunderstood. The occupation following the Second World War was intended to totally demilitarize and remake Germany. The 1918 one was not, but instead was intended merely to prevent a resumption of the war with the West. It was quite limited, but strategic, in scope.
Occupation zones following November 11, 1918. 'Armistice and occupation of Germany map', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/armistice-and-occupation-germany-map, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 15-Jun-2017
It's commonly noted that following World War One the various (Western) Allies occupied Germany, or that various units went into to Germany. That's true, but not that much was occupied, all things being considered, at least at first. But the story of the occupation is really convoluted and somewhat difficult to follow.
It's an important story, however, for what it didn't accomplish.
Immediately following the war, the Allies occupied the zones noted above. The point, as noted earlier, was to recover territory lost to the Germans during World War One and the Franco Prussian War, to run the Allied lines up to the Rhine, and to throw bridgeheads over the Rhine in case it was necessary to resume offensive operations, although the chance of that occurring was slim and the Allies knew that, which is demonstrated by the commencement of a partial demobilization nearly immediately. The zone assigned to the Americans for this, as also earlier noted, was surprisingly large and that assigned to the British was surprisingly small. Belgium,
whose army had to spend most of the war outside of its own country,
occupied quite a bit, in relative terms.
In the interior of Germany, however, i.e., nearly all of Germany save those regions south of the Rhine, the German provisional government was left in charge, and the German Imperial Army was at its service. That provisional government faced a titanic task, however, as Germany was in a state of early Russian Revolution style civil war, with Red soldiers, sailors and civilians openly challenging the government and fighting the Army in may location for control of the country and its future. And, as noted above, an entire province of Prussia, Posen, rose up in a Polish rebellion against Germany in an ultimately successful attempt to separate that province from Germany and join it to Poland. A second smaller revolution, because the territory is smaller, occurred in Silesia with the same goal after that one. Meanwhile, thousands of German soldiers were stranded in regions they'd been sent to by the German Imperial government which were beyond Germany's borders and some of them were still engaged in combat against Red forces in the East under commanders who continued to basically act autonomously and seemingly under some sense that the Crown or at least an Imperial government would revive.
Contrast this to the end of World War Two in which the German government completely ceased to exist, its Army along with it, and 100% of German territory was occupied.
An element of this is that because the war ended in an armistice, rather than a surrender, it was unclear to both sides how long it would take to negotiate a peace. It quickly proved to be the case that it was going to take a lot longer than supposed as arranging for such a peace was much more difficult than at first imagined. The November 11, 1918 Armistice, therefore, actually ran only until December 13, 1918, at which time it was extended in recognition of that. In the meantime, the Germans, by operation of the armistice, did in fact surrender their Navy which went, in large measure, to Skapa Flow. The surrender of the Navy was a further signal that whatever was going on in Germany and whatever it was capable of, it wasn't capable of resumption of a war against the Western Allies. During this period the Allies occupied the areas shown above.
The First Prolongation of the Armistice did not suffice to be long enough to establish a new peace, and on January 16, 1919, it was extended again. This allowed the negotiations on a peace treaty to commence on January 18, 1919. As is well known, the treaty that was arrived upon, while I frankly think it was a good and just one under the circumstances, was regarded by the Germans as harsh for a number or reasons we'll touch on when the time comes (maybe). The Germans at first refused to sign it and the German government then in power fell over the issue of signature. The new German government asked for certain clauses to be withdrawn indicating that if they were, they'd execute the treaty. The Allies, in turn, gave the new German government 24 hours to indicate acceptance or face a resumption of the war.
That threat was not an idle one. In June 1919 Germany was still in the midst of a revolutionary crisis which its army had not been able to put down, Posen had de facto separated, and the government remained highly unstable. The German Army, while not impotent, was obviously in extremely poor condition, suffering attrition by desertion, relying upon militias, and with no remaining industrial base to call upon. Faced with the threat of complete occupation, the Germans capitulated on June 23, 1919.
By that time the armistice that had ended the war itself was in its third prolongation, which ran to January 10, 1920. The formal agreement ending the war (not entered into by the United States) allowed the armistice to end and a new phase of occupation to commence.
The Treaty of Versailles allowed for the ongoing Allied occupation of the Rhineland, specifically providing:
Article 428
Article 429
- As a guarantee for the execution of the present Treaty by Germany, the German territory situated to the west of the Rhine, together with the bridgeheads, will be occupied by Allied and Associated troops for a period of fifteen years from the coming into force of the present Treaty.
- If the conditions of the present Treaty are faithfully carried out by Germany, the occupation referred to in Article 428 will be successively restricted as follows:
- (i) At the expiration of five years there will be evacuated: the bridgehead of Cologne and the territories north of a line running along the Ruhr, then along the railway Jülich, Duren, Euskirchen, Rheinbach, thence along the road Rheinbach to Sinzig, and reaching the Rhine at the confluence with the Ahr; the roads, railways and places mentioned above being excluded from the area evacuated.
- (ii) At the expiration of ten years there will be evacuated: the bridgehead of Coblenz and the territories north of a line to be drawn from the intersection between the frontiers of Belgium, Germany and Holland, running about from 4 kilometres south of Aix-la-Chapelle, then to and following the crest of Forst Gemünd, then east of the railway of the Urft valley, then along Blankenheim, Waldorf, Dreis, Ulmen to and following the Moselle from Bremm to Nehren, then passing by Kappel and Simmern, then following the ridge of the heights between Simmern and the Rhine and reaching this river at Bacharach; all the places valleys, roads and railways mentioned above being excluded from the area evacuated.
- (iii) At the expiration of fifteen years there will be evacuated: the bridgehead of Mainz, the bridgehead of Kehl and the remainder of the German territory under occupation.
Article 430
- If at that date the guarantees against unprovoked aggression by Germany are not considered sufficient by the Allied and Associated Governments, the evacuation of the occupying troops may be delayed to the extent regarded as necessary for the purpose of obtaining the required guarantees.
Article 431
- In case either during the occupation or after the expiration of the fifteen years referred to above the Reparation Commission finds that Germany refuses to observe the whole or part of her obligations under the present Treaty with regard to reparation, the whole or part of the areas specified in Article 429 will be reoccupied immediately by the Allied and Associated forces.
- If before the expiration of the period of fifteen years Germany complies with all the undertakings resulting from the present Treaty, the occupying forces will be withdrawn immediately.
The occupation clause massively offended German sensibilities, but it was just under the circumstances. Germany's own terms it dictated to the Russians in 1917 had been massively more harsh and Germany had shown a pronounced aggressive territory apatite.* A fifteen year occupation (until 1934) was designed to give the Allies space to defend against renewed German hostility and a defensive position on the banks of the Rhine while it was hoped a newly democratic Germany might join the democratic family of nations, a hope that would ultimately fail.**
The occupation did not go smoothly. The United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the war against Germany was technically brought to and end in 1920 by declaring the war at an end. The U.S. participated in the occupation but brought almost all of its combat forces home by December 1919, leaving a force of 16,000 men behind. That force, in the context of American history, was not inconsequential but it was also partially administrative and also partially engaged in efforts to locate American graves left behind by the fighting.*** The British, the other major non continental power, went from eleven divisions as originally formed in 1919 to just over 13,000 men by 1920.****
In 1923 Warren G. Harding ordered the return of the remaining American soldiers, pulling the U.S. out of Europe entirely. French and British soldiers remained, and in fact British soldiers had been called upon by the German government to put down Red revolutionaries, something that reflected the desperate condition the German government was in and the British willingness to prolong its fighting engagements, as it had done in Russia. That same year the French occupied the Ruhr, which they were allowed to do under the Treaty of Versailles, in response to the German governments default on repatriation payments. The French remained until 1925 in a move that proved to be highly unpopular to the Germans, but which (while this is contrary to the normal view), was likely justified under the circumstances.
The Allied occupation of the Rhineland concluded earlier than the Treaty of Versailles called for as under the subsequent Locarno Treated the time had been shortened until 1930. That subsequent treaty was an effort to work towards the repair of German and French relations. Rather obviously, no matter what the goal was, it failed to ultimately achieve that goal.
Much ink has been spilled since 1945 arguing that the Versailles Treaty, including those provisions that allowed for occupation of Germany (and in particular the Ruhr) were far too harsh and responsible for World War Two. In retrospect, however, they weren't harsh enough. Germany had acted barbarously in its behavior and goals in World War One and yet in spite of that, the Allies chose to call the fighting off before they'd entered German soil. In November 1918 the Allies were advancing at a rapid pace and open field warfare had returned. It was known to the Allies that the rank and file of the Germany navy had revolved against the Crown and the Germany navy was not only a nullity, but a new armed internal force against the German government which the German government was not only having to call upon its army to suppress, but which was becoming successful in recruiting rebellious soldiers against the government as well. Austro Hungaria was disintegrating and no longer remained any sort of support to Germany at all. The Allies were planning for a war that would go into the spring and summer of 1919 and result in a complete German defeat. Their error was in thinking it would take that long. While the Germans were still fighting in November 1918, there's very little reason to think that they would have been doing so in December 1918, or January 1919. Had the Allies refused German entreaties for an armistace, the Allies would have entered a Germany aflame in revolution in the winter of 1919. While that would not have been pleasant, the result would have been a complete and total German defeat.
By agreeing to enter into an armistice when they did, the Allies acquiesced to two late state German war aims; 1) the German state, such as it was, was preserved over a country that, while in revolution, still existed; and 2) the Prussianized German Imperial Army continued to exist uninterrupted. Both of those goals would suffer some modification due to the Versailles Treaty, showing how weak the Imperial Army had become, in that its size was severely limited (and the Navy was likewise controlled), and Germany had to give up Posen and part of Prussia to Poland. Be that as it may, most of Germany never had an Allied soldier set foot on its ground, the German army continued to exist with a straight de facto lineage back to early Prussian times, and the Germans could credibly maintain that they hadn't been fully defeated. Maintaining that maintained a fiction, the Allies had saved Germany from total defeat as a desire to end the bloodshed was so strong that they were willing to give up complete victory for an early end of the war even if that meant preservation of a German state with a Prussianized German army.
Allied zones of occupation after World War Two.
That lesson was so strong for the Germans that in formulated their efforts late in World War Two. Historians have often wondered why Germany kept on fighting after its defeat was so apparent in the Second World War. But taking into account that World War Two was only about twenty years distant from World War One, and that the German Army of World War Two retained many senior officers who had been in the German Imperial Army, there was every reason for the German military leadership to suppose that the Western Allies at least would agree to a negotiated peace to end the bloodshed early a second time. Indeed, there was pretty good reason for them to suppose that the Western Allies, and maybe the Soviets as well, would entertain a repeat of the negotiations that brought the fighting to an end in 1918, meaning that if the German military deposed the Nazis, as they had effectively done with the Kaiser, surely the Allies would negotiate in a fashion that would leave the army and country intact. That hope proved delusional as the Allies had learned their lesson the second go around.
Nonetheless its important to note that the apologist for Imperial Germany who maintain that the horrors of World War Two were brought about because of the defeat of Imperial Germany in the Great War, or alternatively because of the "harsh" peace imposed upon the Germans to end that war, really miss the point entirely. It's true, of course, that Imperial Germany did not engage in anti Jewish genocide in 1914-1918, but Germany's actions in the East certainly fit well as a prelude to what happened in the Second war and at least Ludendorff was open about his desires to depopulate regions of the East and resettle them with Germans. And in France and Belgium the Germans in fact acted with barbarism. By 1914, when the war commenced, and indeed much earlier dating back to the late 19th Century, the seeds of totalitarianism were already well planted in the soil of autocratic monarchies and struggling to burst forth. It's no accident that the three most autocratic European imperial states, Russia, Austro Hungaria, and Germany all saw communist revolutions following the war and that their fragile democracies collapsed. Had Imperial Germany been victorious in 1914 and acted in accordance with the desires of its monarch and military, there's plenty of room to suppose that its' history would have at least followed that of Imperial Japans, whose monarchy was effectively deposed and controlled by its military following World War One.
Looked at realistically, therefore, the real act of failure was that the Allies did not, in the fall of 1918, inform Germany that the end had come and there was no hope for anything other than a complete surrender. That would not have occurred, however, in no small part due to Allied fatigue and the unrealistic hopes of Woodrow Wilson. So that is retrospectively hoping for too much, most likely. If that had occurred, however, a more democratic Germany may have survived, or alternatively a series of German states which would have been prevented from combining. Beyond that, the second act of failure was not acting more aggressively to bring that sort of goal about in the treaty that brought a formal end to the war.
________________________________________________________________________________
*Those who argue the treaty was too harsh seemingly forget Germany's behavior during the war, and in particular its behavior late war in the East. They likewise seemingly forget that Imperial Germany had come about by uniting the various German independent states under the Prussian Crown following the Franco Prussian War even though the Prussian Crown had expressly rejected taking a constitutional position over a united Germany as a result of the 1848 revolutions.
**Hence the large zones for Belgium and France, both of which had been directly invaded in 1914 and, for France, also in 1870. The small British zone simply kept them in the game. The big American one reflected its large late war contribution.
***Americans had traditionally made poor occupation troops in general except in Central America, where professional forces in the form of Navy and Marine detachments had been used in that fashion. The Army's prior experiences were limited to the Mexican War, the post Civil War American South, and the Philippines, none of which had gone very well.
Moreover, while all of the occupation troops were largely conscripts, the view of the average American didn't suit their being occupation troops very well. This is perhaps reflected by a report of a Savannah Georgia newspaper from June 1919, at which time Georgia National Guardsmen who had served in the army of occupation were returning to Georgia. That reported noted that they were returning with a significant number of German brides a large number of whom were pregnant, indicating that the marriages, or at least the relationship, had a bit of a history. Keeping in mind that southern Germany was largely Catholic it would be reasonable to assume that the pregnancies were almost all post marriage which means that the relationships with American troops had started nearly as soon as the Army had entered Germany. Friendly relations between Germans and Americans were such a problem that American commanders were issuing orders trying to prevent it nearly immediately while at the same time Germany villages started to incorporate occupying Americans servicemen into significant village events, such as the celebration of Christmas. While its' popular to note that the Germans did not take to the occupation well, it's also important to note that much of the hostility to the occupation was actually outside of it.
****While the United Kingdom had a pronounced colonial history it had traditionally had a very small standing army and it also had to rely upon conscripted soldiers in the war. The UK began to repatriate combat troops almost instantly when the armistice was signed and like the United States its troops were poorly suited for occupation duty. Additionally, the UK had large overseas commitments it retained and it went right into a domestic revolution of its own in Ireland. Finally, a lot of "British" troops were in fact Canadian, New Zealanders, and Australians, none of whom were going to be willing or able to stay for a long occupation.
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