Korean War Display, National Museum of Military Vehicles

The Korean War has always had a special fascination for me, as my father was a Korean War veteran.

The T-34/85 is the tank we normally think of when we think of the T-34.  One of the greatest tanks of all time, it was the best tank of the Second World War.

Last edition:

World War Two Naval Warfare. National Museum of Military History

Labels: Imperial Japanese Navy, National Museum of Military Vehicles, U.S. Navy, World War Two, Wyoming (Dubois)

Pretty Nose. 1851-1952.

She fought at Little Big Horn.

Monday, April 19, 1943. The end of the Warsaw Ghetto commences, SMERSH founded.

The final phase of the destruction and reoccupation of the Warsaw Ghetto commenced under SS Polizeifuhrer Jürgen Stroop.

Stroop was an unrepentant Nazi and was sentenced to death in a post-war war crimes trial in 1947, and then handed over to Poland, which also convicted him.  He was executed in Poland in 1952.

233 Belgian Jews bound for Auschwitz escaped when a raid by three members of the Belgian resistance attacked the train.  118 were able to ultimately escape.

Fourteen members of the White Rose resistance group are found guilty of crimes against the German state and executed.

The General Directorate of Counterintelligence ("SMERSH" СМЕРШ) of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR came into existence, but secretly, and maybe actually earlier. It was a counterintelligence directorate.  Like most Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, it was sinister and scary by its nature, and average citizens of the USSR had reason to fear it, a fact that was compounded by circumstances inside contested and occupied regions of the Soviet Union which caused average Soviet citizens to collaborate with the Germans in large and small ways.

The British government removed the restriction on ringing church bells that had been put in effect when the UK was under threat of invasion.  The move marked the passing of that phase of the war.

RCAF P-40 being recovered at  Fort Greeley Kodiak Island, Alaska, on this day.  It had overshot the runway.

Poster Saturday: Guard Your Freedom.

 United States Information Agency for the Philippines, circa 1952.

Wednesday, October 21, 1942. Mark Clark's Mission, Eddie Rickenbacker's plight.

Clark in November, 1942.

Today in World War II History—October 21, 1942: Maj. Gen. Mark Clark lands by submarine at Cherchel, Algeria, for a clandestine meeting with the Vichy French in preparation for the upcoming Allied invasion.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

The photogenic Clark was a favorite of the Press during the early part of World War Two. This event, resulting in the beginning of the formal separation of the French military from Vichy, may have been the high point, in real terms, of his career.  His later command in Italy, where he was in command until the war's end, has been subject to less impressive analysis by historians, and he was held in bitter contempt by veterans of the 36th Infantry Division who had taken huge casualties trying to cross the Rapido.  The sought, and received, a post-war Congressional investigation of that incident, for which Clark was cleared.

During the Korean War he was commander of the United Nations forces following the command of Matthew Ridgeway.  He occupied that role from May 12, 1952 until the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.  He retired that following October, after which he became president of The Citadel.  He died in 1988, at age 84.

That last item is worth considering.  It means, for example, that when Clark was dispatched to negotiate with the French, he was 41, and when World War Two ended he was 44, younger than we often imagine World War Two generals to be.  In reality, in the U.S. Army, they tended to be relatively young.

Sundin also reports that a B-17D provided by the Army to Eddie Rickenbacker went down in the Pacific.  Rickenbacker was on a tour of Pacific air bases to review operations and living conditions.  Faulty navigational equipment caused the plane to go widely off course and run out of fuel over the open ocean.  The crew was adrift thereafter for twenty-four days before being picked, with one of the men dying from dehydration.  Ultimately, the men split up in lift rafts at sea, but they were found.

The experience caused the Navy to alter life raft equipment to incorporate fishing equipment in them.

She also notes that the Revenue Act of 1942 went into effect in the US, which increased individual income tax rates and corporate tax rates, with top tax rates going from 31% to 40%.  The act also reduced personal exemptions.  An excess profits tax of 90% was also put in effect.  Medical expenses became a deduction for the first time.

The war ushered in an era of generally high upper tax rates that remained in effect for the next couple of decades, meaning that they remained high during the boom years of the 1950s.  The concept that American tax rates were unfairly high really didn't come about until Ronald Reagan's presidency.

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.

Wednesday, February 4, 1942. Men of miscalculation.

In North Africa, an odd event known as the Abdeen Palace Incident occurred, as was reported by Sarah Sundin in her blog:

February 4, 1942: In North Africa, British retreat ends at Gazala, Libya. Japanese take Ambon, Netherlands East Indies, from a small Australian garrison. British troops surround Egyptian palace in Cairo to force King Farouk to abdicate.

I'd note, FWIW, that I disagree with that date for the Japanese taking Ambon, I think it was February 3.  But the date for the British coup in regard to King Farouk is quite correct, although he did not abdicate.  Rather, he was forced to accede to a new government.  He remained the king for another decade.

King Farouk in 1946.  He as a member of the Turco-Circassian elite in the country, which owned 3/4s of the land at the time.

Farouk was, suffice it to say, an interesting figure who was the king over an interesting country.  He was of Circassian, Turkish, French, Albanian and Greek descent, meaning he lacked Arab or Egyptian genetic heritage.  His bodyguards were Albanians, the only people he trusted in that role.  His actual heritage was more Circassian than anything else, due to the presence of various Circassian slave girls in his heritage.  He became king at age 16 and never got along with the country's British representative, Miles Lampson.  He strongly favored Italians over the British.

Egypt had technically been an Ottoman possession until World War One, and after that was technically independent but was in fact a quasi British satellite with various treaty obligations to the British.  It was not a declared combatant in the war, but treaty rights in which the British had the right to station troops there to defend it meant that it was in fact a combat theater.  Beset by a complicated domestic travails, including the lack of a male heir, he lived a lavish lifestyle which, early in the war, caused him to lose favor with the Egyptian people who were aware that the British royals were sacrificing during the war.  His palace did not adhere to blackout provisions in Cairo.

The British exerted heavy pressure over who would hold office in the Egyptian government and Farouk generally yielded to them, but on this day their displeasure over the makeup of the government boiled over.  Farouk asked his military leaders how long they could hold out against the British if they refused British demands, and were informed that they could only do so for two hours.  On this night, the British presented Farouk with an ultimatum and troops surrounded his place.  Ultimately, they stormed it.  Farouk capitulated and a new Egyptian government was formed.  The British representative, unbeknownst to him, was lucky to leave with his life, as Farouk's body guards were hidden in the room, ready to open fire if he was touched.

Ironically, the event caused the Egyptian people to rally behind Farouk, who resented the obvious British termination of their chosen government in favor of one that would do the British bidding. Farouk did not rise to the occasion, however, and the event marked part of his slide into increased gross personal excess in every imaginable fashion.  It also marked a turning point in Egyptian politics as Egyptian military leaders became opponents of ongoing British presence, something that would ultimately lead them to depose Farouk and take over the country, with their rule effectively continuing on to the present day.

Farouk's popularity with Egyptians did not last, and he was deposed in 1952 as noted, spending the rest of his life in Italy.  The entire matter ultimately proved to be a British disaster.

As an aside, his sister, Princess Fawzia Faud, would be Queen of Iran in an arranged political marriage with the Shah of Iran from 1941 to 1948. The marriage brought Iran added status, not Egypt, as the latter was the more important state. That marriage ended in divorce.  She remarried an Egyptian army officer/diplomat and lived the rest of her life in Egypt, dying in 2013.

Also on this Wednesday, February 4, 1942, Hermann Goering met with Benito Mussolini regarding the invasion of Malta.  Mussolini wasn't impressed.

Suffice it to say, the day for German invasions had really passed.  The Germans had essentially concluded that it was incapable of invading Great Britain and had turned its eyes East, oddly partially, at least, for that reasons.  That of course brought about the invasion of the Soviet Union, which was not going well.  

The Germans and Italians were not going to invade Malta.

In North Africa, however, the Germans and Italians were doing fairly well, which perhaps gave rise to the delusion that they'd be in the position for a Maltese offensive.  On this day they took Dema, Libya.  British lines, however, were forming.

Lord Beaverbrook was appointed head of the Ministry of War Production, which had been created on this day.  He resigned after occupying the office for two weeks.  The Ontario native clashed with another figure in the administration and determined to depart the agency.

Monday, June 14, 1909 Shackleton returns. The Age of Exploration. The Age of Assassination.

Ernest Shackleton returned to London and received a hero's welcome.  King Edward VII knighted the Antarctic explorer.

After World War One Shackleton, his health no doubt strained due to the rigors of his trials in exploration, died in the Falklands at age 47.  As a practical matter, the Great War effectively ended the final age of exploration.

Japanese Prince Itō Hirobumi was forced to resign as Japan's Resident-General of Korea.  Three months later, he would be assassinated, which would lead Japan to annex what had been a protectorate.

Four Caribbean monk seals (Monachus tropicalis) were brought to the New York Aquarium.  They were the only ones ever held in captivity.

The last known monk seal died in 1952 and NOAA declared them extinct in 2008.

Burl Ives was born.  The charming folk singer and actor was a popular folk figure for many years, in spite of a 1930s association with far left wing politics.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, June 10, 1909. The Lincoln penny introduced.

Labels: 1900s, 1909, 1950s, 1958, Art, Currency