As we noted yesterday, Thomas Massie has introduced articles of impeachment upon Pete Hegseth.
They actually stand a chance of passing.
They provide, in relevant part:
Massie needs a simple majority in the House to pass the resolution. It would require 2/3ds in the Senate to impeach and remove Hegseth.
Massie is nothing if not independent. I don't agree with him on everything, but he's been one of the few Republicans in Congress, as opposed to the pack of willing sycophantic cowards that claim to be Republicans. When the history of this era is written, he'll be a hero, whereas people like Mike Johnson will be pathetic weirdos, and people like John Barrasso spineless wimps.
Everything in this bill is correct.
One thing that isn't is incompetence, which this administration has shown itself to be on military matters. The US Military has been revealed to be, frankly, pathetically bad, or at least its Navy has has been. We're losing the war against a power that has outfought us, and out thought us.
Hegseth promised a renewal, of sorts, in the U.S. Military. Frankly, it needs one, and has for a long time.
Hegseth seems to have imagined a military that was pre 1948 in some ways. All white, and mostly men. The date we really need to look back to is this one:
September 16, 1940 is the day the US went from a peacetime establishment and peacetime military to a wartime establishment and a wartime military. We've been there ever since. To at least some degree, we've kept a huge military with a huge military establishment, massive arms requirement, and a very large professional military class.
That needs to end.
What Hegseth got right, sort of, is that the Military began to be used for odd social experiments and it never stopped. People look back to the 1948 integration of the military as being when that started, but that really misses the point. Segregation of the Army (not the Navy) started during the Civil War when the Army took in large number of black troops for the first time. With the inherent racism of the country, it simply would not have been possible to integrate black soldiers into regular units. They would have been killed. Establishing black units in and of themselves was a major accomplishment, and one only the war could have brought about.
Some efforts to integrate the military more fully occured in the 19th Century, but inherent racism in American society really just didn't make it possible until World War Two when it started to occur on a smaller and localized scale. American reaction to German racism reflected back in the face of Americans and made integration of the military not only fully possible, but inevitable, after the war.
Minorities have always been a huge success story in the military, and that's been the case all along. It simply provided opportunities to them that didn't exist elsewhere. That lesson was learned but started to be misapplied in the 1970s when the Carter Administration saw the military as a way to advance the cause of women in society. That evolved into allowing women into combat MOS's which was a huge mistake. Women and men are different. And then the Obama Administration allowed "transgendered" individuals into the military starting in 2016, which was turning a blind eye to a medically enhanced mental illness.
Women in combat units did create an internal reaction in military units that went unnoticed to some degree. Male combat troops didn't and don't like it, and react accordingly whereas the influence of young women had a feminizing and softening, even cutsey, impact on the military. Look up "Battle Boo" on Youtube and you'll see what I mean.
Having troops set against their political leaders is a bad thing. But that has occured. This created the perfect situation for a sort of Curragh Mutiny, and it's happened.
The thing here is that this all needed correction, but competent correction, which would have required a an actually conservative administration to bring about. We don't have one of those. In stead we have a demented megalomaniac octogenarian who is surrounded by sycophants, weirdos, and dimwits. Pete Hegseth is a good example. A Evangelical Protestant Zealot with tattoos recalling the Crusades, which weren't done by Evangelical Protestants, a record of hard drinking and philandering, he presents himself like an insecure frat boy trying to hang out with college football players. He also, as noted, not only claims to want to restore the "warrior" ethos to the military, he seems to have something against minorities and a bias against women that extend to their just being women.
Like much of the overgrown bloated U.S. Military, he doesn't seem to have grasped that its not 1941 any longer either. The war in Ukraine has shown that the age of drones is here. Iran and the Houthis have shown an ability to launch missile strikes that would have made Peenemunde pound. Believing that the US could take on Iran with Naval air alone, something GMT Games had already shown you could not, US forces were left heavily exposed in Middle Eastern bases which were wiped out by Iran nearly immediately. Logistical tails were stepped on and the USS Abraham Lincoln became a symbol for the entire country, a rusting psychologically stressed hulk.
There doesn't seem to have been a lot of clear thinking going on.
Speaking of not thinking, and related to this war:
But with your money.
What the crap?
President Trump’s administration is planning to sell to Israel a munitions package worth $2.8 including 2,000-pound bombs which will be funded by a Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grant.
That's right. The heavily indebted United States will be spending money it doesn't have for Israel's military.
One thing that this war has caused and is causing is a rethinking of the US relationship with Israel. It's long overdue.
The common line is that "Israel is our only ally in the Middle East". Israel isn't a formal US ally at all. Indeed, in terms of formal allies, the only Middle Eastern one we have is Turkey, not Israel.
The US has a close relationship to Israel for historic and demographic reasons. The US was horrified to a greater extent than any other nation to what happened to Jews during World War Two and reacted by giving its strong support to the establishment of Israel, ignoring the fact that importing thousands of immigrants into a land already occupied by somebody else would result in problems.
Put another way, if Europe demanded that thousands of Mexican immigrants be allowed into Texas to create a new country, we'd freak out.
Added to that, the US has a substantial Jewish minority, although it has not been and has never been huge. It's about 2.4% of the population today. Somewhat ignored in this is that the US also has notable population of Middle Eastern immigrants, most of whom up until a couple of decades ago were Lebanese and Syrian Christians and Armenians. Perhaps because they were all members of Apostolic Christian faiths, that was just easy to ignore in some ways. It's France, for instance, that has traditionally defended the rights of the Lebanese. The US once concerned itself with the plight of Armenians, but that's been a long time ago. To some extent, perhaps because they were a more distinct minority, Jewish populations in the US have tended to be relatively better organized.
Anyhow, almost from day 1 Americans really bought off on the concept of the establishment of Israel being a really noble cause. In my household growing up I remember my mother feeling that way, although my father had a much more nuanced opinion. The plight of Arabs in the same region was generally ignored by Americans up until relatively recently, and only because populations of Palestinian and other Arabs have immigrated into the US. They're still a much smaller percentage of the population than Jewish Americans are.
Added to that, Islam has tended to really freak Americans out, and for good reason.
Israel has very divided politics and is going through something akin to what the US is, with the current Israeli government being, in my view, extreme. Nobody has ever stated it, but it seems relatively clear that there are those in Israel who would outright force Palestinians out of what had been Mandatory Palestine. There are Americans who have equally extreme views about modern Israel and its place in the world from a religious perspective.
Whatever brought the current Israeli government to power, it's also clear that there are huge numbers of Israelis who are horrified by recent events and would take Israel in another direction.
At this point, I'm with those who, like my father so many decades ago, take a much more nuanced view on Israel. Like Ukrainian born Argentinian-Israeli author Jacobo Timerman, I view Israel as a Middle Eastern state that has to learn to live in that neighborhood. It also, at this point, has to learn to get by on its own. It can build its own weapons and pay for them itself.
For that matter, while its a topic for another thread, the US wasn't a serious supplier of arms around the world until World War Two. It needs to stop being one now. Selling arms to some countries is, okay, in my view, but not to as many as we do, and for cash, not best wishes.
I'll note that it is interesting that a lot of our former arms client states have stepped out on its own in recent years. South Korea, for example, manufactures its own armored vehicles, artillery and small arms. Israel does produce some weapons of its own, but not all that many. I'm not for selling them arms anymore.
When people are killed by American arms, no matter who uses them, we're implicated.
Back to the illegal war in the Middle East that Israel got us into.
A resolution requiring the US to get out of that war passed the House yesterday.
H. CON. RES. 93
Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
April 28, 2026
Mr. Moulton (for himself, Mr. Crow, Mr. Ryan, Ms. Houlahan, Mr. Panetta, Mr. Auchincloss, Ms. Goodlander, Mr. Vindman, and Mr. Scott of Virginia) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran.
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(c)), Congress directs the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran, other than those elements of the Armed Forces that may be necessary to defend the United States or an ally or partner of the United States from imminent attack provided that the President complies fully with the requirements of section 5(b) the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(b)) with respect to any such use of the Armed Forces, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific congressional authorization for use of military force against Iran.
It's not going to go anywhere, but it's not irrelevant. At least some are speaking up and standing out.
And some who claim to adhere to certain values should take note. In the Particular Judgement Mike Johnson is going to have to explain supporting all this killing and standing with Israel isn't going to excuse it. But then Johnson will have a lot to answer for.
cont:
The Houthis shot down a Saudi F-15 with a domestically produced missile today.
cont:
And Mike Johnson sent the House home early to avoid the impeachment vote.
That'd suggest either there were enough votes to pass it, or there were Republican Congressmen afraid to go on record.
They won't be back until November 9. They'd only been working for seven days since they came back from their last recess.
September 17, 2026
So it turns out the administration sent representatives to meet with the Houthis.
The same man who betrayed the Afghanis and surrendered their country to the Taliban is now negotiating with the Houthis while refusing support to Saudi Arabia.
Figures.
cont:
Apparently a deal was reached:
Yemen’s Houthis have agreed to allow US shipping unfettered Red Sea access if Washington refrains from direct military involvement in the Saudi-led war. That’s according to US reports which say the two sides struck the deal amid a Houthi offensive along Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
Al Jazeera.
So King Donny stabbed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the back, not that he is a nice guy.
Not that the Houthis are either.
The Houthis (Ansar Allah) are a Zaydi revivalist and Shia Islamist organization allied with Iran, which supports them. They've been a player in the Israel/Hezbollah War, as was Iran, and are attempting to gain control of all of Yemen.
Their emblem:
The phrase on it translates as "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam".
Some deluded sots who supported the Trump participation in the ongoing war against Iran maintained early on that it was sort of a Protestant crusade. The US had a Divine mission, some argued who were in the military, or the Department of Defense, to take on Shi'a Islam.
Well, apparently not so much.
For the second time, Trump has surrendered to an Islamist organization and betrayed somebody we supported.
Anyone relying on Trump for support is a fool.
And with this stab in the back, we will conclude this edition.
The "Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack" was released. The report absolved the administration from conspiring to bring about the Japanese attack and assigned blame to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short.
U.S. Senators Homer Ferguson and Owen Brewster dissented, taking the position that President Roosevelt and his military advisors "were just as responsible for the nation's worst military disaster".
Red Chinese forces reached the region of Zhao Family's River (Zhao Jia Chuan, 赵家川) with little in the way of Nationalist forces to impede their further advance.
Look offered an article on what FDR would have said regarding the ongoing intense look back at the events leading to December 7, 1941, a controversy that most Americans have forgotten occurred. But it was probably the slice of cheesecake offered up in the form of actress Colleen Townsend that drew attention to the magazine. Townsend is from California and attended BYU (she was a Mormon growing up). She entered acting through minor roles in the early 40s, but it was magazine covers that drew the publics attention to her. She was one of the Yank pinups. She converted to Presbyterianism in 1948 and married a seminary student in 1950, after which she left acting. She had a long career as a humanitarian and civil rights worker, and is still living.
TWA's "Star of Paris", a Lockheed Constellation, flew from New York to Paris in the first transAtlantic commercial airline flight.
The Allied occupation of the first zone of the Rhineland in Germany ended.
It was a Saturday.
Mitchell was out.
The Army was just introducing its new service uniform.
1926 was the year the U.S. Army adopted an open collared "service uniform", with a different pattern for enlisted men as opposed to officers. Here Maj. John B. Coulter is shown wearing the newly introduced uniform. While the cut is a little different, and breeches are not common now, and were then, this is the same basic color scheme of uniform, "pinks and greens" reintroduced for all ranks in 2018, after having been originally phased out in 1954. While it was a good looking uniform, it was actually not as practical as its predecessor, given that it was supposed to be a combat uniform. This would cause the Army to rapidly develop combat specific clothing immediately before World War Two.
Officers had to buy their uniforms (they still do) and Coulter must have just purchased his. Coulter was a cavalryman (hence the breeches) who had entered the Army in 1912 and who would serve until 1952, retiring as a Lt. General.
Ad from the Sheridan newspaper, December 31, 1945.
December 31, 1945, marked the first peacetime New Years in much of the world, although not all of the world was at peace.
1945 marked the end of what we consider the oddly nostalgically recalled, but undeniably bloody, 1940s. It's the operation of Yeoman's Eleventh Law of History, which provides:
1945 was the end of World War Two, and the beginning of the post war era, and era which we still live in. It was the penultimate year of the 1940s, and to some degree, the penultimate year of the long 20th Century.1 It was the year that the Second World War ended with a massive technological nuclear flash, but it was also the year that featured the bloodiest fighting in a unified war that began as a series of wars in 1937 and 1939.
The end of the Second World War determined, or seemed to determine, questions that had arisen with the end of the Great War in 1918. World War One had caused the death of the old order in much of Europe, an order that saw aristocracies dominate in varying degrees in many of the European, and indeed international, states. The strain on the old order was obvious even before World War One, but it remained strong nonetheless. The Great War killed it.
The death of the old order did not answer the question of what would replace it. Every nation that fought in the war, however, would see immediate political evolution due to the war, with all of it reflecting forces that had been at work before the war. In functioning democratic countries with stable governments, that resulted in an expanded franchise. The UK extended the vote to entire classes that had not had it before the war, allowed Ireland to go independent, more or less, allowed its dominions to be actually independent, and extended the vote to women. The US extended the vote to women and soon made Native Americans citizens, with new states being admitted to the union prior to the Second World War. Canada and Australia obtained true political independence.
In countries that had strong aristocracies that opposed democracy, however, radical elements of the far left that had been underground to some degree leaped forward, the prime example being Imperial Russia, which became the Soviet Union. As forces of the far left advanced, finding a great deal of support in in the formerly disenfranchised working class, forces of the far right appealed to the same base and to conservative aristocratic classes, crushing democratic forces in between, as in Germany, where the Nazis gained power. In unstable democracies without long histories of democratic behavior, forces of the left and the right contested for total control, as in France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Mexico, with democracy faltering in many to some degree, sometimes totally.
World War Two was not, as some like to claim, a continuation of World War One, but rather a violent sorting out of the democratic, anti democratic, and populist forces it had unleashed. Starting in the late 1920s it seemed that the question the world was faced with was whether the future was democratic, fascist or communist. The Second World War determined, at least it seemed, that the world would not be fascist, but left the question of whether it would be communists or democratic undetermined.
Determining the question was bloody on a scale that we can no longer even imagine, although in terms of human history it was not all that long ago. The expenditure of lives in the war by all contestants was enormous, with the fascist and the communists states freely willing to waste the lives of men, and the democratic ones emphasizing technology where they could. All the combatants, however, acclimated themselves to conduct that at least the democratic ones would not have tolerated prior to the war, with mass bombing of urban targets being the most notable. By 1945 the US, arguably the most moralistic of the combatants, was willing to engage in fire bombing and ultimately the atomic bomb to bring the war to a conclusion.
Truman as Time's Man of the Year, posted under fair use exception.
The significance of the atomic age, contrary to the way things are currently remembered, was appreciated immediately. Truman was Time magazine's Man of the Year, pictured in front of a fist grasping nuclear firebolts. Newspapers, even by late 1945, were pondering what atomic warfare would mean.
We've argued it here before, but the Second World War created the modern United States, and more than that, modern American culture, in both good, and bad, ways.
Tire rationing came to an end on this day in 1945.
The most oblivious, at first was the change to the economy, which was little understood. Pent up consumer demand dating back to the start of the Great Depression meant that the country did not slide back into the depression as nearly all Western economist had feared. Adding to this, however, was the fact that none of the European industrial powers, along with Japan, had not suffered some level of industrial destruction. The U.S.'s industrial base was not only left intact, it had expanded. Only Canada could claim to enjoy the same situation, although its economy was much smaller. American workers took advantage of the situation nearly immediately with a wave of strikes demanding higher wages, strikes that were in fact largely successful. The economic golden age that current Republican populists imagine to have existed in the past reached its most pronounced form in the 1950s which is still looked back upon fondly, if inaccurately, in the same way that singer Billy Joel imagined it to have been in his lamet Allentown
Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we're living here in Allentown
The obliteration of European industry created the illusion of some sort of American economic uniqueness that remains to this day and which the country is presently attempting to sort out by restoring it, which will not and cannot work. Part of that also involves an imagined domestic perfection that doesn't' reflect what was going on in reality either.
Prior to the Second World War the domestic culture of the United States was different in nearly every fashion. Even the horrors of World War One had not changes that. Most Americans lived closer to the poverty line than they do today, even if most Americans lived in families. Most Americans did not attend college or university, and most men didn't graduate from high school. There was a minimum of surplus wealth on the part of the average, although that had started to change by imd 1920s, only to be retarded by the Great Depression. Most people did not move far from home. Most men and women married people who grew up near them and were part of the same class and religion, although a surprisingly large lifelong bachelor class existed, particularly in certain occupations.
The war changed nearly all of that, and even during the war itself.
The first peacetime Federal draft in the nation's history took thousands of young men away from their homes starting in 1940 and 41, and of course became the major wartime draft that continued on until after the war, and with some hiatus, basically until 1973. The country would not have tolerated a peacetime draft prior to 1940, and barely did in 1940 and 1941. The country's views on the military, which prior to the war was sort of a type of disdain but acceptance of it as necessary, as long as it was small, completely changed during the war so that by the war's end the concept of a large peacetime military was fully accepted, and even admired, although that would be disrupted again due to the Vietnam War for a time.
Prior to the war, soldiering was, for enlisted men and junior officers, a bachelor occupation with servicemen largely looked down upon as lazy. The enlisted ranks often contained large numbers of immigrants, although that is still true. After the war, the view of servicemen, many of whom for decades were conscripts on relatively short enlistments changed radically.
The expectation of marriage changed as well, even at a time that wartime marriages came into periods of great stress. Prior to the war a fair number of blue collar workers and nearly all non owner agricultural workers were lifelong bachelors.
Cowboys Out Our Way from December 31, 1945. The two working hands are discussing "Sugar", their former ranch cook, who just married a rich widow, and Stiffy, the oldest cowhand on the ranch.
This ended after the war for a variety of reasons, one simple one being that entire classes of men who had never really lived any other life now had seen at least much of the country, and some large sections of the globe. Men who had planned on a life of working on the farm or ranch and living in a bunkhouse no longer found that appealing and no longer believed they had to do that. For those who returned to their states of origin, and huge number of them did not, this often meant taking up a job in towns and cities, rather than in fields. Quite a few used the GI Bill to advance an education that benefited them at a time in which a university education guaranteed a white collar job. Regions that had large reservations found that many returning Native American veterans chose to live in towns and cities near the reservations they were from, rather than on them where living conditions remained comparatively primitive. Lots of men married who would not have otherwise. The average marriage age notably dropped for the first time in decades and remained depressed in the 1950s.
Lots of couples got divorced in fairly quick order as well.
This was because of a "marry in haste" situation that had broken out during the war. Couples who figured that the male's chances of surviving the great blood letting were fairly slim and were willing to accordingly gamble, where as previously they would not have been. Moreover, many of the couples that married were of different backgrounds and different regions of the country, and not the literal "girl next door" so often portrayed. A really good portrayal of the this sort of situation was given in the brilliant 1946 film The Best Years of Their Lives, which gave a dramatic, but fairly accurate, examination of the domestic situation of the post war years. Of note, 1946 also gave the country It's a Wonderful Life, which really portrayed the prewar, not the wartime or postwar, domestic ideal.
The amazing film The Best Years of Our Lives which captured the immediate impact of World War Two on Americans.
It's a Wonderful Life, also released in 1946, but which really portrayed the nature of American life from the 1910s until the late 1930s, although it was set in 1946. It's gone on to be a sentimental Christmas classic.
The Best Years of Their Lives also depicts fairly heavy drinking, and not in an accepting fashion, but in a relatively realistic one .That was also something that the war really brought in. Returning veterans were often very broken men, and alcohol abuse was an enduring feature of their lives, along with chronic cigarette smoking. This bled over into the culture in general and an increased acceptance of heavy alcohol use became common, and indeed is something often featured in post war films in a routine fashion. Men who had endured killing on a mass scale often never really adjusted back to a normal life, and resorted to the bottle in varying degrees.
At least by my observation, some of these men became downright mean. We hate to say that about "The Greatest Generation", but it's an enduring theme of the recollections of many of their children. Alcoholic fathers who were extremely demanding on their male children seems to have been routine. Again, by my observation, many of the same children, who went on to rebel during the 1960s, returned to their childhood roots and became mean demanding fathers to their own children, making World War Two the domestic abuse gift that keeps on giving.
While certainly most returning veterans did not become mean, or abusive, it has to be noted that the Second World War started the country off on a destruction of the natural relationship between men and women we're also still dealing with.
Not since the American Civil War had so many young men been taken away from their homes and never in the country's history had so many young men been kept in the company of young men overseas. War involves the ultimate vice, the killing of other human beings, and all other vices naturally come along with it, in varying degrees by personality, and by military culture.
All wars involve the abuse of women, the most spectacular example during the Second World War being the mass rapes, often accompanied by murder of the victims, by the Red Army late in the Second World War. There are some examples by Western armies as well, but they are much smaller in scale. Also notable, however, was the largescale outbreak of prostitution in Europe, some of which was conducted nearly publicly in places that would never have tolerated it before the war. Economic desperation caused much of it in some areas, which included underaged European women prostituting themselves in some instances and the military simply accepting it.2
Bill Mauldin in 1945. The diminutive Mauldin appeared a little younger than he actually was, being 24 years old at the time of this photograph. Indeed, Mauldin strongly resembled, oddly enough, Rockwell's Will Gillis depiction of an average GI. Mauldin's appearance contributed to a public view of the cartoonist that fit very much in with the public's image of "fresh faced American boys" in general, but he'd already lived a hard life by the time he entered the service. She son of New Mexican farmer/ranchers who were partially native American, Mauldin's early life had been somewhat chaotic and his teenage years were more so, being somewhat on his own by that time and living a somewhat odd life by the time he was in high school. While Mauldin is associated with the typical GI, his status as a member of the staff of two separate Army newspapers lead to an atypical existence including have a teenage Italian mistress when he was in Italy. In some ways Mauldin reflects the best and the worst of Army life in his cartoons and for that matter in actual service life.
Even where not completely sordid, plenty of misconduct occurred in all of the ranks. This is depicted in the recent series Master of the Air with at least one of the affairs depicted actually having occurred. In fictional form, it's portrayed in 1956's The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit.
The Man In the Gray Flannel Suit from 1956, but which starts off in World War Two and the moral failings in combat of the central character, including the violation of his marital vows.
This was bound to have some impact on the wider culture, and we've argued that it lead to the wider acceptance of the objectification of women. Indeed, thousands of men became acclimated to the centerfolds in Yank during the war, making the introduction of Playboy in 1953 not all that much of the big leap as its claimed to be.
Playboy often gets credit for firing the open shots of the disastrous Sexual Revolution, but it can be argued that Yank did. At any rate, by the wars end, millions of men had served in places were morality of all types was at a low ebb, and had ogled the girls in Yank, and perhaps painted topless or nude figures on government aircraft. That this would have some effect, particularly later when bogus sex studies were released as scientific texts, isn't too surprising. The major erosion of the natural order between men and women that came into full fruition after the late 1960s had some roots that went at least as far back as the 1910s, but World War Two gave it a major boost.
The war also gave a major boost to automobiles.
Prior to the war, and during it, the US relied on rail transportation. But new types of automobiles, notably 4x4s, were introduced during the war, and cars overall simply improved. By 1950 it was clear that road building and automobiles had become a major American obsession, spawned in part by the heavy road use, in spite of automobiles, that occurred during the war. 4x4s, which were strictly an industrial vehicle, were introduced into civilian use shortly after the war, with pickup truck variants ending the need for ranches to have cowboys in the high country during the winter, and allowing any part of the country to be accessed to some degree by sportsmen or agriculturalist year around.
1947 Sheridan newspaper advertisement for what was probably a surplus Dodge WC.
Reliance on equine transportation, in contrast, started to decline markedly.
December 31, 1945 brought the news that Hirohito had renounced claims to divinity, with the nature of the Japanese monarchical claim on that point never understood by Westerners in the first place. He did not ever claim to have been a god, and it was soon learned that the majority of the Japanese had never believed in the imperial family's claim to a unique divine status in the first place.
The war ended, seemingly for good, Japanese militarism. It also seems to have ended German militarism as well, something assisted by the fact that the Soviets ended up with Prussia, it's source.
The war, of course, also advanced the frontiers of Soviet domination beyond its 1940 status, something the Soviets had been working on since 1917. This would prove to be temporary, as would the Soviet Union itself, but that could not be foreseen in 1945. A world that had worried about whether fascism, communism, or democracy would prevail, now worried over whether communism or democracy would be the ultimate victors.
In China, where on this day an unsuccessful treaty between the Nationalist and the Communists would be signed, a contest more resembling the pre World War Two one was going on, revived from its 1927 start and temporary hiatus during the Second World War.
1945 was a fateful year. For Americans it started with American troops fighting the Germans in Bulge in Operation Wachts am Rhein and in Alsatia in Operation Nordwind. For the Soviets, January 1945 would be the bloodiest month of the war, as it would be for the Germans. For the Japanese, it marked pitched resistance to Allied advances everywhere, and a desperate effort to advance in China. It all came to an end in August, 1945, and by December 31, 1945, the world was trying to sort out where it was going. Much of it could be anticipated, but much could not be.
*I had typed out a very long and detailed look at the 1940s, and 1945, for the December 31, 1945 entry, before some computer glitch entirely wiped it out. It's completely gone.
I may try to reconstruct it a bit, but the fact that I started working on it some time ago is a deterrent to that. And even if I do, a reconstructed post is never as good as the original.
1. Like decades, centuries don't really track the calendar precisely either. The 20th Century arguably began around 1898 or so, and continued on, perhaps, to 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
2. An interesting sympathetic depiction of a woman engaging in prostitution due to economic desperation in found in the 1946 Italian film Paisa'.
.webp)
.jpg)
.jpeg)
