Wednesday, November 14, 1923. In from the cold.

German Gen. Hans von Seeckt ordered that Berlin cafés, halls and cabarets must admit the city's poor and cold in order to warm themselves, least the Government seize them to be used for that purpose.

Von Seeckt's tomb.

Von Seeckt had been an important figure in the Imperial German Army before going on to be a major figure in the Reichswehr.  He was in the German parliament from 1930 to 32 as a member of a center right party, but turned towards the hard right thereafter.  He was assigned to the German military mission in China in 1933, where he restored the failing relationship with the Nationalist Chinese.  His advice lead to the 1934 Nationalist campaign that resulted in the Communist Long March.

Germany suspended payments on its reparations.

New Zealand's laws were extended to Antarctica as Governor General John Jellicoe applied its jurisdiction to the Ross Dependency.

Tuesday, July 13, 1943. Operation Citadel ends due to Operation Husky

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.

Could Citadel have achieved its objectives?  That's much more difficult to say.  The Germans and the Soviets were still fighting at Prokhorovka, although the Germans had arrested the Red Army attack the day prior, with large losses being sustained by the Soviets in a battle that is still so murky that partisan historians, professional and amateur, declare victory for each side. Model, however, had completely committed his reserves and the Soviets, while sustaining huge casualties, had not yet broken.  Given this, it seems unlikely that the Germans would have reduced the Kursk salient, but they would have taken enormous losses attempting to do so.  

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.

Monday, April 9, 1923. Minimum Wage Struck Down.

The United States Supreme Court held that a Federal Minimum Wage was unconstitutional, ruling to that effect in Adkins v. Children's Hospital.

The holding was, rather obviously, later overruled.

On the topic, it's worth noting that generally wages, even the lowest paid wages, tend to be well above minimum wage.  The minimum wage is near and dear to the hearts of political liberals, but it basically ceased to function as a floor years ago.

The Tribune had some notable headlines:

Harvard University passed a resolution that whites and blacks (all men) could not be compelled to live or eat together, but that no man could be excluded by reason of color

Los Angeles won its bid to host the 1932 Olympics, a bid made easy by the fact that it was the only city to put in for it.

Friday January 29, 1943. Japanese assaults, German conscription.

The Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro broadcast on German radio that all men from 16 to 65 years of age and all women from 17 to 45 years of age were to be conscripted for labor.  

Adolf Hitler had been Chancellor for nine years and 364 days. 1

The Battle of Rennell Island saw the Japanese commit significant air assets against the U.S. Navy in an effort to protect the Japanese withdrawal from Guadalcanal.  The heavy cruiser USS Chicago was sunk in the action.

The Battle of Wau also began on New Guinea where the Japanese outflanked the Allies to land at Lae and advance on the Australian base at Wau.

The Marine Corps Women's Reserve was created.

Wednesday, January 20, 1943. Senseless deaths.

Attila Peschauer, Hungarian Olympic fencer and gold medalist in 1928 and 1932, is commonly thought to have died in the Davidovka concentration camp in Ukraine where Hungarian Jews had been deported by Nazi Germany, an act which required cooperation of Hungary.

It's commonly misunderstood by those in the West that all the victims of the Holocaust were gassed in camps, which is far from true, and in the few camps whose names are in common circulation in the West.  In reality, bullets and starvation were the most common means of death and most of the killing took place in the Poland, Ukraine and Belorussia in those areas where they were occupied by the Germans.

While, as noted, it's been commonly thought that Peschauer died in a concentration camp, and may even have been ordered into execution by a fellow Hungarian serving the Germans, some recent information is that he actually died in a Soviet POW camp.  The irony here would be that Hungary was a German ally during World War Two.  This might actually be more likely as while Hungary was repressive towards its Jewish citizens, it didn't deport those who actually held Hungarian citizenship, that being done to Jews who lived in areas that Hungary took in after it invaded the Soviet Union.

By this point in the war, it should be noted, countries like the Kingdom of Hungary should have been seriously reconsidering their role in the war as, at least to an astute advisor, there was no way for them to come out on the winning side.  Of course, they were also captive to their earlier decision to side with the Germans.

The Luftwaffe bombed the Sandhurst Road School in a daytime raid of the London suburb of Catford, killing 41 school children. By this point in the war, Luftwaffe raids over the UK were increasingly rare.  Six teachers were also killed.  Eleven of the German aircraft were downed by Typhoons.

The Red Army continued to advance, with the New York Daily Post noting that the Germans were now back on their 1941 line as a result.  The British took Homs and Tarhuna in Libya.  The Germans advanced in Tunisia.  Chile broke diplomatic relations off with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Wednesday, November 22, 1922. Unintended Consequences.

 Tampa Bay Times, November 22, 1922.

A mine explosion in Dolomite, Alabama killed 90 people.

Wilhelm Cuno.

Businessman Wilhelm Cuno was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Friedrich Ebert.  It was an appointment, not an elective, commission.

An independent politician, Cuno would serve in the role for less than a year and then retire from politics.  He'd become an economic advisor to Hitler in 1932, which he didn't do long either, given his death in 1933.

Saturday, September 2, 1922. Anthracite Coal Strike Ends.

 

Country Gentleman, for its Saturday issue, ran the second part of a story that it started the week prior.

It's interesting to note, FWIW, that in depictions of rural children from this era, such as this one, they're commonly depicted sans shoes.  A lot of these illustrations, while romanticized, are fairly accurate, which would suggest that farm children, at least in some parts of the country, did typically omit footwear in the summer.   That certainly doesn't ever seem to have been the case here, however.

The Saturday Evening Post came out with a portrait by Charles A. MacClellan of an attractive, but very serious looking, woman which is apparently entitled "Back To School"

Judge went to press with certainty that at least beer was going to be exempted from Prohibition.

Judge was correct, of course.  Not only beer, but alcohol in general, would come back starting a decade later, although not all at once with a sudden repeal of Prohibition at the national level, as so often imagined.

Interestingly, this has a modern parallel in that what had been constitutionalized, a ban on alcohol, was reversed even though not everyone was in favor of that reversal, leaving the states to sort it out, which they did, but not instantly.  The Dobbs decision effectively does that with another issue.

Whether allowed or not, today, even eventually, it's not now for me, as this is colonoscopy day.  

I've been dreading it and really pondering changing course.  It's not so much the procedure itself, it's the medications they require the day and early morning of which cause . . well. . . diarrhea.  I hate being sick, and I'm not sure if it's worth it.

Having said that, according to something I read, 1 in 23 men get colorectal cancer, which sounds like a lot.  But that's 4.35%, which doesn't.  In an abstract fashion, I feel that everyone ought to get this simple diagnostic tool, but I'm hypocritical enough to be reconsidering it.

Again, it's the diarrhea medication that I'm dreading at the time I type this out.  I'd rather skip eating several days prior, which seems like it ought to do the same thing.

The United Mine Workers and the Policy Committee of the Anthracite Coal Operators came to an agreement for a year, which brought to an end the dangerous strike that had been going on for some time.

Friedrich Ebert, President of the German republic, declared the Deutschlandlied to be the national anthem, but only the third stanza of the song.  It remains the German national anthem today, having regained that position in the Budesrepublik in 1952, again starting with the third stanza.  The militant first stanza was used during the Third Reich.

Monday, June 22, 1942. Laval wishes for a German victory.

Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of (Vichy) France, stated in a radio address; 

I wish for a German victory, because, without it, Bolshevism tomorrow would settle everywhere.

He was in his third period of being the Prime Minister, with the second and third both being during the Vichy period.

The statement came as a shock to many of his countrymen, who assumed that Vichy France was playing a waiting game until an Allied liberation would come.  Laval, however, had come to heavily sympathize with the Nazis.

Laval had been Prime Minister in 1931-32. He originally had been a pacifist Socialist politician and a lawyer who championed working men, but by the 1940s he'd migrated towards fascism.  He was executed following a trial after the war.

Sarah Sundin reports the following for today:

Today in World War II History—June 22, 1942: Germans take Bardia, Libya. US Flag Code becomes public law, regarding the Pledge of Allegiance and treatment of the flag.

May 14, 1941. Descent

On this day in 1941, 3,700 foreign Jews were rounded up by the Germans in France to be sent to internment camps in France.

By this point in the war Germany was acting in a full scale genocidal way against the Poles.  It was, moreover, openly oppressing the Jews everywhere it occupied territory.  It had already engaged in, and failed in, a terror campaign against British cities.  It's descent into evil was very far gone already, and getting worse.

This should have been, and frankly likely was, obvious to the Germans themselves.

It was definitely obvious to others.

One of those people was Maurice Bavaud, a Swiss Catholic theology student, who was executed in Germany on this day in 1941 for attempting to assassinate Adolph Hitler in November, 1938.

Bavaud had been studying theology in France when he fell under the influence of an anti communist figure who claimed to be a Romanov who asserted that family would be restored to the Russian thrown following a communist downfall. While it's exceedingly complicated, the belief was that assassinating Hitler would somehow bring this about and, further, Bavaud rightly judged Hitler an enemy of faith in Germany.  He planned to shoot Hitler as the annual gathering of those who had participated in the Beer Hall Putsch but a combination of bad planning and events frustrated his plan and he was ultimately arrested.  He confessed to his intent as a captive.

Bavaud's unilateral attempt on Hitler's life was far fetched and lacked funding, a fact which in part ended up in his having to abandon the effort after a selection of failed planned rendezvous with Hitler failed.  Indeed, Bavaud's actions were so flighty that it isn't too much to ponder the degree to which he was an unstable thinker, and certainly believing that assassinating Hitler would do anything for the Romanovs as nonsense.  But that somewhat clouds the often forgotten fact that the July 20, 1944 plot was far from the only serious attempt on Hitler's life.  Indeed, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 was equally whacky and it succeeded.

Hitler was in fact the target of forty-three attempts on his life, the first coming in 1932 and the last one in July, 1944.  Some were one off attempts, like that of Bavaud's, but others were well thought out plots by organized men, including more than one by members of the German military.  Two known plots were carried out by unidentified individuals, one by poisoning in 1932 and a second by a man dressed in a SS uniform in 1937.  The simplest plot was by a German general who simply individually planned on shooting him when he came to inspect his troops, although he ended up retiring prior to the opportunity presenting itself.  And these are all plots that are known about.  It's almost certainly the case that there were individual plotters whose intents were never revealed.

The fact that so many plots were attempted and failed actually ended up contributing to Hitler's aura with the convinced.  He seemed protected in their minds.

On this day the British evacuated Greek gold reserves from Crete, well aware that the Germans would be hitting the island soon.

After spotting German aircraft at a Syrian airfield during an overflight, the British government issued authority to the RAF to strike airfields in Syria, a French League of Nations mandate, which was done all on this day.  This was a strike against the territory of a neutral nation, France, but it wasn't the first time the British had hit the French following their 1940 surrender to the Germans.  The fact that France as allowing German use of Syrian airfields was itself a violation of French neutrality in any event.

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