The Red Army's 3d Ukrainian Front captured Dnepropetrovsk.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—October 25, 1943: 80 Years Ago—Oct. 25, 1943: Adm. Sir Bertram Ramsay becomes Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Expeditionary Force (ANCXF) for Operation Overlord (D-day).
The U.S. Army Air Force raided airfields near Rabaul destroying twenty Japanese aircraft on the ground.
Hong Beom-do (홍범도; Хон Бом До) Korean hunter who became a revolutionary, died on this day at age 75.
Reacting to the Japanese ban on Koreans owning firearms, which precluded hunters from their trade, he formed the 1907 Righteous Army of Jeongmi. Upon Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 he moved to China and became, by 1919, the commander of the Korean Independence Army. It did well, but ultimately was forced to retreat to the Soviet Union in 1921, which resulted in the disarming of the army. He joined the Red Army in hopes that it might liberate Korea from the Japanese, a forlorn hope at the time.
In 1937 he was deported along with other Koreans to Kazakhstan where he died on this day. His body was repatriated to Korea in 2021.
Akcja Fruhwirth (Operation Fruhwirth) was attempted by the Polish underground. The aim was to assassinate S-Scharführer Engelberth Frühwirth but SS-Scharführer Stephan Klein was shot by mistake. He was, however, also a target of the Polish underground.
The newspaper comic strip Batman and Robin debuted.
The Spanish government was deposed in a coup led by Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, a military officer. The coup came about as it's leaders were upset with the Spanish government's inability to deal with the economic conditions which were a precursor to the Great Depression.
Coming during the last days of Spain's Bourbon Restoration, Primo de Rivera secured the support of the King and a significant percentage of the Spanish population and ruled until 1930, when an economic boom brought about during his dictatorship foundered and Spain began a return to democracy. He died later that year, at age 60. The Bourbon Restoration itself would end the following year with the establishment of the short-lived Second Spanish Republic.
Perhaps instructive for us today, the period overall saw increasing tension between Spanish leftists and Spanish conservatives, with the middle ground increasingly evaporating. The government was seized first by the monarchical right, and then restored to democracy which lurched increasingly leftward, resulting finally in a collapse of democracy entirely and a right wing coup which brought Francisco Franco to power.
In common accounts of the period, little attention tends to be given to the fact that the revolution that brought Franco to power was, in some ways, a continuation of one that began on this day in 1923.
A revolution was also occurring in Bulgaria but was put down by the put down by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
Some experimentation was engaged in on this day with tanks converted into tractors.
U.S. forces landed on Baker Island. An airstrip was built within a week.
Baker is a minuscule uninhabited Pacific Island, but was situated to support the campaign in the Gilberts. Despite its tiny size, it had been briefly inhabited in the 1930s, when Baker and Howland saw American settlers brought there under the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project.
Baker in the 1930s.
The remaining three-person population was evacuated in 1942 after the Japanese attacked the island.
U.S. forces took Orete Cove on Vella Lavella.
Minami-Tori-shima, 1,000 miles from Tokyo and the easternmost island of the Japanese archipelago. was attacked by the Fast Carrier Task Force consisting of the Essex, the Yorktown and the Independence.
Minami-Tori-shima. The nearest island is 1,000 miles distant.
The I-182 was sunk in the Coral Sea by the USS Wadsworth.
Vogue hit the stands with a cover that had a stylish woman on the cover, and the words "Take A Job. Release a man to fight". One of the articles was "Why Aren't You Working?" Another was "Does War Drive People Crazy?"
Amon Göth, a central figure portrayed in the movie Schindler's List, decreed that Jewish workers could no longer work in factories in neighboring Płaszów, but excluded non-Jewish Poles in his confinement.
A brutal camp commandant, Göth was an Austrian. He's turned to extreme right wing poliics by age 17, and was an early member of the Nazi Party. His frst marriage to Olga Janauschek, a woman with a notably Slavic name, was brief and ended in 1934. He married again to Anny Geiger, but that marriage, which overlapped with his crimes, ended when Geiger discovered his affair with Schindler secretary, Ruth Irene Kalder. He had several children, including one with Kalder.
He was relieved of his command in September 1944 under suspicion of theft and other crimes, one being failing to adequately feed his prisoners. SS doctors subsequently diagnosed Göth with a mental illness, and he was committed to a mental institution in Bad Tölz in Bavaria. He was arrested by U.S. authorities at the end of the war, and turned over to Poland, which executed him after a trial.
It is so easy for those who have made their money under a given system to think that that system must be right and good. Conservatism is for that reason nothing else than a pseudo-philosophy for the prosperous. -
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, p. 81
This is going to hit California and Baja Mexico:
Coastal Watches/Warnings and Forecast Cone for Storm Center
Forecast Length*
Forecast Track Line
Initial Wind Field
* If the storm is forecast to dissipate within 3 days, the "Full Forecast" and "3 day" graphic will be identical
This graphic shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink), tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center at the times indicated. The dot indicating the forecast center location will be black if the cyclone is forecast to be tropical and will be white with a black outline if the cyclone is forecast to be extratropical. If only an L is displayed, then the system is forecast to be a remnant low. The letter inside the dot indicates the NHC's forecast intensity for that time:
D: Tropical Depression – wind speed less than 39 MPH S: Tropical Storm – wind speed between 39 MPH and 73 MPH H: Hurricane – wind speed between 74 MPH and 110 MPH M: Major Hurricane – wind speed greater than 110 MPH
NHC tropical cyclone forecast tracks can be in error. This forecast uncertainty is conveyed by the track forecast "cone", the solid white and stippled white areas in the graphic. The solid white area depicts the track forecast uncertainty for days 1-3 of the forecast, while the stippled area depicts the uncertainty on days 4-5. Historical data indicate that the entire 5-day path of the center of the tropical cyclone will remain within the cone about 60-70% of the time. To form the cone, a set of imaginary circles are placed along the forecast track at the 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, and 120 h positions, where the size of each circle is set so that it encloses 67% of the previous five years official forecast errors. The cone is then formed by smoothly connecting the area swept out by the set of circles.
It is also important to realize that a tropical cyclone is not a point. Their effects can span many hundreds of miles from the center. The area experiencing hurricane force (one-minute average wind speeds of at least 74 mph) and tropical storm force (one-minute average wind speeds of 39-73 mph) winds can extend well beyond the white areas shown enclosing the most likely track area of the center. The distribution of hurricane and tropical storm force winds in this tropical cyclone can be seen in the Wind History graphic linked above.
Considering the combined forecast uncertainties in track, intensity, and size, the chances that any particular location will experience winds of 34 kt (tropical storm force), 50 kt, or 64 kt (hurricane force) from this tropical cyclone are presented in tabular form for selected locations and forecast positions. This information is also presented in graphical form for the 34 kt, 50 kt, and 64 kt thresholds.
Interestingly, it's going to basically go right over Bakersfield, California, where this lifelong resident of that city is now serving in Congress:
Bakersfield is an oil town, and a rough one. Kevin McCarthy never worked in the oil patch, but he comes from blue collar roots. He graduated with a MBA from California State University, Bakersfield, in 1994, but was already in politics by that time. He's been a member of Congress since 2006.
Kern County is representative of a type of California we hardly think of. An oil and gas province in a state that we associate originally with agriculture, and then with. . . well itself. In some ways, McCarthy has been sort of an odd man out in his native state his entire life. And it must be frustrating, as he's a fourth generation Californian.
That sort of frustration has expressed itself in the nation's politics, on both the left and the right, for some time now. It's given rise to populism, and that populism has morphed into a form of fascism. Right McCarthy's party is struggling to see if it will be, after the nomination process is over, a conservative party, a populist party, or a fascist party. The fascist is in the lead, but he disregards of the law, a common trait for fascist leaders, may be his undoing. If it isn't, it risks being the undoing of American democracy.
The fact that "conservatives" no longer apply the broad scope of the word "conserve" may prove to lead to multiple undoings as well.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen hit on something that ought to be obvious to us all, but in fact It's something rarely occurs to anyone. Liberals, or progressives as they like to think of themselves, decry the rich as evil on the basis that bad things happen due to wealth and therefore that's evil, and the evil must know that it's evil. In truth, "It is so easy for those who have made their money under a given system to think that that system must be right and good.", and that doesn't apply only to those who make vast amounts of money in something. Regular workers feel the same way. Tobacco farmers probably almost never thought to themselves about how their product directly resulted in cancer, and if they did, they must have mentally excused it, for example.
Systems are big, and big systems have to be addressed at a big level. Germans who worked in factories that were converted to war products as the war went on weren't in the same position as Albert Speer. But attempting to sanctify your occupation and livelihood (something I'll note that is very common for lawyers to do) doesn't change the reality of things.
This the first tropical storm to hit California like this in 84 years, the last such one being 1939's El Cordonazo. That storm was not only the last one, it's the only one to have made landfall in California in the 20th Century. We've had the terrible fires in Maui. We've had terrible fires in Canada all summer long. The list goes on.
The GOP is loud on the Biden "radical climate agenda". At least one of our local Congressional representatives, I'd wager, can be guaranteed to come on Twitter or Fox News within the next 30 days and complain about "Biden's radical climate agenda". The truth is, humans should not dare alter the climate, and just because I make money from things that might doesn't mean that it can't happen.
After this storm hits Bakersfield, McCarthy, along with the other top GOP leaders, should go to Kern County and explain what they're doing. McCarthy is Catholic (one of our three Congress people was, but long since adopted a Protestant faith, the latter allowing divorce and remarriage, although I don't know that's the reason that he did so). In Catholic theology, lying about serious matters is a grave sin.
I note that as I feel that most of these people, although not all of them, know better. If they don't know better, they can be excused, I guess, for not knowing better, but they can't be for willfully blinding themselves to the truth, which certainly can and does occur.
We really don't need Kevin McCarthy blathering about Hunter Biden. There's no excuse for ignoring the real, and difficult, problems of the day. You can feed red meat to the dogs, but once that's gone, and they're starving, they'll be coming for you.
People cheered Mussolini when he marched on Rome. They then hung around and celebrated his demise 20 years later. Austrians lined the streets when Hitler visited after the Anschluß, and were pretty glad to see the Nazi go just a few years later.
People who faced reality and undertook to engage it are better remembered than those who buried their heads in the sand and tried to ignore it. People don't sing the praises of John C. Calhoun today. They're not going to sing the praises of Ted Cruz tomorrow. People remember Lindbergh for what he did heroically, not for being an American Firster before December 7, 1941.
There's an opportunity here to be grasped, but will it be. Of couse, is there even an audience for it. The Wyoming GOP has been busy censuring its members for not falling into the fantasy right. People like to hear that they're beautiful, that smoking won't hurt you, and that you can go ahead and have that fourth beer before you drive home.
Wyoming's second, in its history up to that point, special legislative session convened in Cheyenne to address its state farm loan provisions.
Magnus Johnson of the left-wing Minnesotan Farmer-Labor Party was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election. This meant that both of Minnesota's senators were members of the party.
The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was a hugely successful third party in that state, coming to control the legislature during the Depression, as well as providing the bulk of Minnesota's Congressional representation. During the Depression, however, the American Farm Bureau became the primary representative for farmers, and it was hostile to the party. In 1944 Hubert Humphrey took the party into the Democratic Party, and it ceased to exist. Humphrey, moreover, expelled the Communists from the organization, whose presence showed how radical it actually was.
The Democratic Party in that state is technically the Democratic Farmer Labor Party
The Depression arrived for farmers in the U.S. before the rest of the general public, which likely explains the rise of the Farmers Labor Party in Minnesota, which was heavily agricultural and also heavily influenced by the left wing politics of Scandinavia where many of its residents had roots.
Johnson was Swedish born and had a semi successful political career, winning and losing. He was also a farmer.
Italy and the UK agreed to call an international conference on German reparations, irrespective of whether France would participate or not.
Fairbanks, Alaska presented President Harding with a special collar for Laddie Boy.
I don't put up German posters often (I really ought to, to demonstrate what they looked like) as I don't want to give any mistaken impression that there's any admiration for the Germans in World War Two in this quarter. Indeed, it's been a real mystery to me and others as to how a cultured people could go so far astray as to elect the Nazis into power. Having said that, events since 2020 have been a real illustration as to exactly how a country descends into fascism. Anyhow, this is a poster for the Herman Goering Division which, at that time, was one of the two German units fighting in Sicily. Oddly, the division was technically part of the Luftwaffe, not the Herr, in order to honor its namesake. The cap device on the flat cap depicted in this poster demonstrates that. This poster is from 1943 and reads, roughly; "Come to us! Herman Goering Division. Taking volunteers!" The division stands as an example of German military inefficiency, in a way, in that it meant that there were three ground forces all fulfilling the role that the army would have normally, the army, the airforce and the SS, although the Luftwaffe ground forces were only seriously an air arm in the case of paratroopers.
Today in World War II History—July 13, 1943: Battle of Kolombangara: in the Solomon Islands, US & New Zealand ships sink Japanese light cruiser Jintsu, but fail to prevent reinforcement of Kolombangara.
We covered what Sarah Sundin notes here yesterday, as this was a nocturnal battle, but this entry noted above is correct.
What Sundin also notes, and what is a more significant event, is that Hitler ordered a halt to Operation Citadel due to Operation Husky in order to redeploy troops from the Kursk offensive to Sicily.
That actually occured the evening of July 12, when Hitler summoned Kluge and Manstein to is Rastenburg headquarters. Kluge, aware of a coming Soviet counteroffensive, was relieved to receive the order, fearing what that would mean, but Manstein opposed it given that his troops had spent a week of hard fighting and, he believed, were on the verge of breaking through. Manstein argued, "On no account should we let go of the enemy until the mobile reserves he [has] committed [and is] completely beaten."
Manstein may have been overestimating the extent of Red Army losses, but the Red Army had sustained huge losses, including massive losses the day prior. At any rate, Hitler relented to the extent that he agreed to allow the offensive to temporarily continue in the south. However, on this day, the 13th, he ordered Manstein's reserve, the XXIV Panzer Corps, to move south to support the 1st Panzer Army, removing from Manstein the forces he actually needed to continue.
Therefore, it was the American, Canadian, and British armies that brought about the end of Operation Citadel, and one day after a German tactical victory in that offensive that had resulted in huge Soviet losses.
This provides one of the uncomfortable facts about the Germans during the Second World War, that being that quite frankly Hitler's estimation of the battlefield situation was often better than that of his generals. People like to repeat the "Hitler is the best general we've got" quote that some Allied commander said during the war, but in terms of tactical decisions, he was often better at calculating them than generals in his army were. The decision to call off Citadel was probably correct, Manstein notwithstanding, as the Germans had committed very good armored forces with large amounts of armor and had not broken through. Ignoring Husky early on stood a very good chance of resulting in a rapid Allied victory in Sicily which could possibly have taken an already teetering Italy out of the war.
The American League won the All Star Game.
Luz Long, age 30, 1936 Olympic medalist, died of wounds sustained in fighting in the Germany Army in Sicily. His death came in a British hospital. Long had been friends with Jesse Owens and was, prior to entering the German army, a lawyer.
He held the rank of Obergefreiter in the Heer, which is a rank that's somewhat difficult to correlate to American and British enlisted rank structures. It's roughly equivalent to the World War Two US rank of Corporal or the British Rank of Lance Corporal, which would effectively be the first NCO in a squad to command other enlisted men.
White Rose figures University of Munich student Alexander Schmorell, age 25, and Professor Karl Huber, age 49, executed by guillotine for distributing anti-Nazi literature. Wilhelm Geyer, Manfred Eickemeyer, Josef Soehngen and Harald Dohrn were acquitted of the most serious charges and convicted for the less serious crime of failing to report treason, benefitting from the absence of the chief judge and that Judge Schwingenschlögl, the most lenient, was presiding. Soehngen received a six-month sentence, with credit for time served, while the rest were ordered to pay court costs, a truly lucky break for them.
"Fiddlin" John Carson recorded "The Little Old Log Cabin" in the Lane in what is now inaccurately regarded as the first "country" music recording. The flipside was "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going To Crow."
It was "country", but not in the country pop or modern C&W understanding, but rather in the "Hill Billy" music understanding of the word. That type of music, often highly evolved, is still within the "country" genre, but much, indeed most, of modern C&W music is as much related to pop music than anything else.
Carson would record off and on until 1935. He died in 1949 at age 81, spending his final years as an elevator operator.
The US and the UK came to an agreement on the UK's war debt.
It's sometimes claimed, although I haven't researched it, that the moral descent of Berlin in the 1920s lead in part to people voting for the Nazis in the early 30s. I.e., their revulsion over what they were seeing lead them to an extreme reaction, it's claimed. At least one writer has noted:
It seems grotesque in retrospect, but Hitler posed as a moral crusader gallantly battling the forces of iniquity, corruption, and even deceit. Many Germans, horrified by the loosening of moral standards in Germany after World War I, were duped by his promises of moral rejuvenation. Hitler’s project resonated with many who were disgusted by the rampant hedonism and carnality of Weimar high culture and popular culture. Whether one views Hitler and Nazism as a Utopian and technocratic expression of the modernist project, or as an atavistic reaction against modernity, or as some blend of the two (“reactionary modernism” or “conservative revolution”), or as something completely unique, it is clear that Nazism promised a resurrection or awakening of the German people that involved a revival of morality that was in the process of decay and degeneration.
Hitler as Moral Crusader and Liar, Richard Weikart, abstract.
Extreme wealth in upper Russian society certainly contributed to the rise of the Communists in late imperial Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution.
The point of this is this. While the Southern Populist ethics that have spread into the American middle class country wide (more on this soon) are full of hypocrisies, people do have a limit. Most people don't think night and day about politics, which opens the void to people like Rep. Ward of Casper, whose reaction to a Pride event in Casper lead to this headline:
Ward's rise as a legislator in a state that she has almost no connections with stunned me. She's of the extreme right and has a Weltanschauung that she's imported from the Rust Belt, where she previously lived and politiced. She's associated herself in politics with Christianity, but in a way that suggest she doesn't understand her claimed faith very well. In Illinois, she showed up associated with some outrage over a school teacher who claimed that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, which in fact they do. In Wyoming's last legislative session, she made the claim that Christians are not their brother's keeper, and that the story of Cain and Able in the Old Testament really only meant that you just weren't supposed to kill your brother, but otherwise could let him suffer.
Middle Class Germans of the 1920s were heir to a long Christian tradition. Upper class Germans were as well, and frankly lower class Germans were too, that latter class being the one most vulnerable to Nazi and Communist agitation. Russia had a long history of Christianity, leading into 1917.
Wealthy societies produce largess. Largess produces self-indulgence, and a lot of the self-indulgence will, seemingly almost inevitably, turn into sexual narcissism and individual domination. Disgust inevitably results by those who don't chose that path, which is, at the end of the day, most people. But when a society becomes focused on it, those willing to stand most in the opposing spotlight, no matter how extreme they are, will take up most of the opposing light.
Immoderation leads, inevitably, to immodesty, which leads, almost inevitably, to opposing immoderation. When toleration becomes a demand for absolutely acceptance, in categories of extremes, those masses simply trying to get through their days will listen to the loudest voices.
Southern Populism gave us what the Southern Strategy took into the GOP. Losing the moorings on genuine civil rights, amongst other things, gave us a warped left wing view that individualistic self definition is a right, no matter how destructive or delusional. That latter left wing view is pushing the other, far right populist view, to success, at least temporarily.
Soviet delegate to the Conference of Lausanne was shot dead by former Russian White officer and émigré Maurice Conradi in the Cecil Hotel. Two other members of the Soviet mission were wounded when they attempted to resist. Conradi then handed his gun to a waiter and asked him to call the police, which they did.
Conradi.
Conradi was born to Swiss parents in 1896. They were living in St. Petersburg at the time, where they ran a candy factory. Most of Conradi's family were killed during the Russian Revolution, with several being executed by the Bolsheviks. During this period he married his wife, Vladislava Lvovna Svartsevich, and he immigrated to Switzerland following the defeat of Wrangel's army.
Conradi and his confederate Arkady Polunin were tried that following November and defended themselves on moral grounds, introducing evidence of Communist horrors. The prosecution fell into this, oddly enough, and introduced evidence of the happiness of Soviet citizens, something that would have had to have involved an element of delusion. The jury found that all the elements of murder were present, but failed to convict him 5 to 4 anyhow, leading to a rupture in diplomatic relations between Switzerland and the Soviet Union.
In 1925 the Conradi's moved to Paris. They divorced in 1929. Conradi then joined the French Foreign Legion, returning to Switzerland and remarrying in 1942. He died in 1947. Polunin went to Paris as well and died under mysterious circumstances in 1933.
Of the Soviet survivors, one, was executed in Stalin's purges in 1938. The other was killed in 1942 while serving in the Red Army.
About as much as can be said of this entire episode is that it was downright bizarre.
I'm putting this edition of the Casper Daily Tribune up for one reason.
The article on the Boy Scouts.
It notes its explosive growth at the time, and that there was a troop in Mills. There's no troop there today.
Indeed, church troops, which this article notes, have really dwindled, although they still exist. I know that in the 30s, St. Anthony's Catholic Church and St. Mark's Episcopal Church both had troops. They no longer do, although St. Mark's retains a cub scout troops.
According to the short search of it I did, today the local troops are:
Troop 1094 is dedicated to provide an educational program for boys and young adults to build character, to train in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and to develop personal fitness. Our Troop camps during most months of the year, participates in several community service projects, and meets every Tuesday evening for regular meetings.
Great Troop! Great fun! Meets on Monday nights at the church.
A few things to note.
Two of these are associated with a church, that being the First Christian Church. Way back in antiquity when I was briefly a Boy Scout, even though I'm Catholic, that was the troop I was in. I think this was solely because somebody we knew was in it, and I was invited. In retrospect, I'm surprised that my parents didn't suggest I look at the St. Anthony's troops, which was still around at the time, although its members were no doubt mostly alumni of St. Anthony's school.
The George Vroman legion troop actually meets at College Heights Baptist Church, based on that address. So is it a church troop? That's not clear, but probably not. That Legion post meets at the National Guard armory, so it doesn't have its own meeting site, which might explain it partially.
Two of these troops are associated with service organizations, the Elks and Rotary. Service organizations are on the decline as well, although both of those seem to be doing well in Casper.
Most of these troops have a girls troops associated with them. The introduction of girls into what had been the Boys Scouts happened a few years back, and when it occurred it took all the LDS troops out of the organization. They'd had a big presence in it. The move also irritated the Girl Scouts, for obvious reasons.
I don't know if It's helped the Boy Scouts or not. They've certainly been in decline, but I suspect that the introduction of girls hasn't helped. Mostly what it probably has served to do is to create one more way in which it's impossible for boys to be with men in a formal way. Scouting was reeling under homosexual rape/seduction scandals at the time, although I'm sure that some would object to that characterization, even though there really is no other way to accurately describe it given as it was obviously male on male. I'm not claiming, of course, that male on underage female, and for that matter female on underage male, sexual abuse does not occur. Indeed, in the last year there's been a host of female on underage male abuse reported nationwide from public schools, school teachers in general being the number one sexual abusers of the underage. Something, suffice it to say, is really amiss in our society, as it is likely that all of this reflects a big increase in this conduct, not merely the discovery of it.
At any rate, the introduction of girls into the organization wouldn't seem to be directly related, but in a way it was, designed to show that Scouting was cleaning up its act and becoming inclusive. It could have addressed that in another way, as it really undercut the basic nature of the organization.
As noted, my connection with Scouting is thin. I was only briefly a Boy Scout. I shouldn't, therefore, really care too much about its decline, but still, it says something about the evolution of American society over the past century, and whatever it says, it isn't really a good thing that it's a shadow of its former self.
Scouting no doubt has a lot to compete with these days. However, the irony of that is that when it was first formed, it did to, and in some ways was formed expressly for those reasons.
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Boy Troop
Girl Troop