Wednesday, May 14, 1924. Pondering pacifism, charges of communism and executions.

The Methodist general conference committee meeting in Springfield, Massachusetts voted 76 to 37 to recommend to the conference that the church never again participate in the support of warfare of any kind.

The meeting was contentious in general, with charges of communism being levied against church leaders.

Former Constitutionalist general and supporter of the recent rebellion, Gen. Fortunato Maycottee was executed by firing squad at age 32.

A multiracial Legislative Council of Kenya met for the first time.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, May 13, 1924. Conventions wrap up.

1920s, 1924, 1924 Election, John B. Kendrick, Wyoming

A Palestinian Solution (that nobody is going to do).

In this thread, I suggested a solution to the "Palestinian" problem isn't all that hard:

An uncomfortable truth.*

In reality, I'd partially already proposed it:

The Palestinian Problem and its Wilsonian Solution.

Those threads are pretty complete, but let's just set out the basic facts of the problem.

Part One:

• The Palestinian Mandate's Levantines didn't want any sort of Jewish state or any sort of "two-state solution in 1948".  The neighboring Arab states didn't want one either.
• World War Two made it inevitable that Jews would seek refuge in the region they'd held historically and up until 70.
• The British tried and failed to create a two-state solution, and then washed their hands of the matter and left.
• The Israelis won the 1948 war.
• During the 1948 war, a lot of Levantines left out of fear, rational calculation of danger, or were expelled.
• Just would have invited them back in, but the Israeli's were not in the mood for that, and the Arabs largely weren't either.  That is, having fought for it, the Israeli's decided to keep what they had in every sense, and the Arabs were still dedicated to the proposition of pushing them out.
• That's now over 70 years ago and almost everyone involved in the original drama is dead.

Part Two:

• The Arabs have been happy to support a Palestinian diaspora, partially, but not to invite them into their own countries.
• The Palestinians have been unwilling to come up with a new, permanent plan, that doesn't feature, at a bare minimum, the territory that was at least partially in Mandatory Palestine.
• Gaza and to a lesser extent the West Bank were solutions that Israel was willing to put up with, but not the Levantines, even as they took advantage of it.
• The "Palestinians" have been , to a large extent, living on the Arab and Global dole since Gaza and the West Bank were created as entities subject to self rule. They don't have work, and they don't have much to do, other than to do, what people who have an income, but no work, do. . . . fill in the blanks here.

Okay now for the elements of the solution.

Part One

• The Palestinian Levantines need work and need to be taken off the dole.
• In order to do that, the pipe dream of an independent Palestinian state inside the borders of Mandatory Palestine needs to be given up on, unless Jordan, which is a Bedouin state, wishes to become that entity, and it doesn't.

So, what can be done.  There are two, and only two, possibilities.

Solution Number One.

The Palestinian Levantines can be taken in by the Arab states that have work, which would include the Emirates, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia.*

Yes, that's radical, but if they were taken in, taken off the dole, and got to work, within a generation or two, this problem would be over, and they would be better off.

Solution Number Two.

Create a Palestinian state in the Sinai.

That has obvious geoengineering problems, but the Israelis confronted those inside Mandatory Palestine and the states of the Arabian Peninsula have faced them as well.  It's been proven that you can geoengineer these areas productively.  It has been done.

And in that state, Gaza could remain part of it.

This, of course, would require Egypt to give up Sinai, but frankly, it's not making much use of it anyway.

Footnotes:

*And probably Jordan as well, as the West Bank was part of Transjordan and probably ought just go back to Jordan.

Related threads:

An uncomfortable truth.*

1940s, 1948, 70, 70s, Al Nakba, Arabs, British League of Nations Mandates, Hamas, Israel, Israeli Hamas War, Levant, Ottoman Empire, Palestine, Palestinian Revolution, Roman Empire, The Holocaust

The Palestinian Problem and its Wilsonian Solution.

Arabs, British League of Nations Mandates, Israel, Israeli Hamas War, It was because of World War One, It was because of World War Two, Kuwait, MIddle East, Ottoman Empire, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 64th Edition. Things authentic and important.

Why there?

On Saturday, March 30, Pro Hamas protestors interrupted the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

Why St. Patrick's?

For the same reason, most likely, that LGBTQ+ figures had a protesting funeral there recently. People are drawn to Catholic places, as they're real, and therefore attention is paid to them.

Why her?

Courtney Love, in an interview with Standard, stated; "Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she's probably the Madonna of now, but she's not interesting as an artist."

This followed Billie Eilish criticizing, sort of anonymously, "wasteful artists" who put out multiple vinyl editions, an apparent softball for sustainability.  She later said her comments weren't directed at Swift.

Hmmm. . . 

Why are these chanteuses dissing Taylor?  

I don't really know, but I will note that Love commenting on who is important and interesting in laughable.  Is Love "important" or "interesting"?  If she is, she might be interesting as she's the late wife of the tragic Curt Cobane, whom I don't find to have been particularly important, but certainly tragic.  And for Eilish, she's sort of a teenage train wreck who probably needs to get over her weird diet and flipping between hiding her form and flaunting it.

Taylor is interesting because she's a musical success.  I don't like her music, which I find to be juvenile, but I will note that appearance wise she's a throwback almost to the 1940s, and appears to have gained success while being basically normal in every fashion.  

Culturally, therefore, she might be sort of important in a way.

Love, and Eilish, on the other hand, might be fairly unimportant in every sense.  Musically, right now, it's hard to see what actually is important.  Whoever they are, they aren't in pop music.  

Indeed, much of society seems to be grasping for the authentic and important right now, without much out there in the culture offering it.

Appearances

Back in November, I posted this item:

What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.

Since that time, this trend locally has noticeably increased.  It's really remarkable.

For whatever reason, I'm a student of people, so I take notice of what they wear.  I'm probably in a minority of sorts that way.  What people wear at Mass is a common topic in Cyber Catholic circles, but the recent turn towards the conservative amongst young, white, female Catholic parishioners is really remarkable.  It's a real rejection of the cultural norm of our era.

Indeed, very recently, even amongst those young women who were part of this group, there's suddenly a change.  One young woman who is routinely at Mass with her family on Sundays, and who typically showed a lot of shoulder (no, there's no problem with that) is now covering up hugely.  Something's changed.  It doesn't, however, carry over to Hispanic or Native American young women, both of whom continue to dress the way they have.  Hispanics have always dressed very conservatively at Mass, but not in a trad fashion. They're keeping on keeping on with that.

News, real news but in a rumor fashion, leaked out recently that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Byzantine Church is looking at putting in a mission in Casper, which would be a mission of a mission.  I don't know how many Ukrainian Catholics there may be in town, but I'll bet it's a tiny number.  I also bet that the mission church that's thinking of establishing a mission here, which is out of Cody, serves a mostly non-Eastern Rite community.  

Something is going on there too.  At a time at which some in the Latin Rite seem focused on a topic that's frankly jumped the shark, by and large, and which is really a matter of European culture, not biology, the young and rank and file in the pews seem to be moving on.  

Becoming a parody of yourself

One of the risks of taking the long reach for something is that you can end up actually becoming unauthentic in your quest for authenticity.

I'm reminded of Courtney Love again.

On her Wikipedia page, there's a picture of Love wearing a kokoshnik, a stiff hat associated with Russian women.  Russian women don't wear them anymore, and I'm sure they haven't for eons.  She's wearing it with a miniskirt.  It looked absurd, but was probably meant to make a statement.  Or here's another example:

The kind of dumb stuff you say when you actually really care about "your 'basic' fashion sense".

I don't know who Japanese Breakfast is (or for that matter what an actual Japanese breakfast is) but they've showed up on this Twitter headline:

Japanese Breakfast is too busy returning to Coachella and making 'music for bottoms' to care about your 'basic' fashion sense

Oh, bull.  That's the exact thing you say when you've tuned your fashion sense to look like you don't have a fashion sense, so you can appear to stay edgy for Coachella.

M'eh.

Exactly.  

I note this as in the pews are a young couple, they're not married but perhaps engaged, whose family I somewhat know.  From a very conservative background, they're trying to affect the disaffected but conservative look to the max.  Unwashed hair and, for the young man, probably third or fourth hand overcoats from the 1970s with huge hounds tooth pattern. The young woman wears, of course, a chapel veil but also is affecting plain to the maximum extent possible, which is detracting a bit from her appearance.  I do love her very round, plain glasses, however.

Anyhow, when going for something crosses over into sort of a parody, you've gone too far.

Lost

Anyhow, I think this trend has been going on for a while.  It explains the entire Hipster look that's still with us, and was much in force several years ago.

Some days, when I leave the office, there's a young woman coming in.  She's either a Native American or a Hispanic from somewhere south of the border.  She's always dressed very conservatively, with dresses that remind me of what Latin American women traditionally wear.  She always has a big smile when you see and acknowledge her.

She's authentic.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 63d Edition. Strange Bedfellows.

Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Donald Trump, Education, homosexuality, Israeli Hamas War, law, Mormon, Pope Francis, religion, Sex, theology, Zeitgeist

Saturday, April 5, 1924. Fighting the KKK in Lilly.

We haven't featured one for awhile, as they haven't been great, but on this day, The Country Gentleman restored the dignity of magazine cover art with a spring theme.

The Ku Klux Klan shot 22 people in Lilly, Pennsylvania, killing two.  The gunfire was sort of the equivalent of a drive by shooting, with the KKK shooting randomly into the town's railroad station after some townsmen, miner workers who were heavily immigrants from Eastern Europe, had "played a stream of water from the town fire hose upon the visitors(KKK) as they were marching back to the station." 

The KKK was in Lilly for one of their ceremonies in a local field and was returning to the station for transport to Johnstown, PA.  They did catch the train, and upon arrival at Johnstown they were met with 50 policemen who arrested 25 Klansman and confiscated 50 firearms.  The next day, an additional four residents of Lilly were arrested. Twenty-nine people were charged with murder.

Lilly was a mining town, and like most of them it had a strong contingent of Catholic and Orthodox miners, members of ethnicities that the Klan didn't like. A strong UMW union town, the residents weren't cowed by the KKK.  A monument to their efforts has been placed in the town in recent years.

Locally, there were concerns about spring floods. And the flight around the globe was suffering delays.

And the accusations against the former Attorney General Daugherty were getting bizarre.

Last prior edition:

Friday, April 4, 1924. Wolves in Albany County.

1920s, 1924, 2020, 2020s, 2024, Animals, baseball, Crime, Prohibition, The Roaring Twenties, Wolves

Blog Mirror: Black Women in the Wartime Struggle

 

Black Women in the Wartime Struggle

Tuesday, March 28, 1944. Another day in the war.

Jewish Welfare Board Seder at Muskogee, Oklahoma, March 28, 1944.

Mexican National Mercy Martinez harvesting carrots in the field in El Centro, Imperial County, California on March 28, 1944.

The British Parliament voted to give female teachers the same pay as men.

The Italian Communist Party declared cooperation with "bourgeois" parties.

The Red Army took Nikolaev.

Fighting carried on in the CBI.

"Infantrymen of the 66th Regt, 2nd Bn, 22nd Chinese Division advancing upon a group of tanks upon which a Jap Magnetic anti tank mine has been set off by remote control ordnance Intelligence purposes.

These tanks had burnt out. They belong to the First Provisional Tank Group and maintenance men of that outfit will salvage the salvageable parts left on these tanks. They met action against the Japs in the area a few miles north of the village of Shadeazup, Northern Burma. This photo demonstrated though, how the Chinese troops had actually fought with the tank group. This tank group is an American trained Chinese outfit, they having received their training at Ramgarh, India from U.S. Army Armoured Corps instructors. These infantrymen are also American trained. 28 March, 1944."

Ships were inspected:

USS Cleveland (CL-55) during a Captain's inspection, March 28, 1944.

Combat runs were made.

Corsairs on a mission over the Solomons.

Stricken B-17 "Whodat/The Dingbat" of the 381st Bomb Group in flight over Reims, France, 28 March 1944. Just hit, she was dropping out of formation with three dead on board.

B-17 going down over France, March 28, 1944.

Training was ongoing.

M4 Shermans at Camp San Luis Obispo, California, March 28, 1944.

Field Mess, Camp Cooke, California, March 28, 1944.

Tank crews with M4 Shermans, Camp Cooke, California, March 28, 1944.

The final game of the 1944 NCAA Men's Division Tournament saw Utah beat Dartmouth.

Commander Richard Wainwright, Jr., winner of the Medal of Honor for action at Vera Cruz in 1914, and recalled to service after having been medically retired in 1921, died in service at Annapolis at age 61.  His Medal of Honor citation reads:

For distinguished conduct in battle, engagements of Vera Cruz, 21 and 22 April 1914. Lt. Wainwright was eminent and conspicuous in command of his battalion; was in the fighting of both days, and exhibited courage and skill in leading his men through action. In seizing the customhouse, he encountered for many hours the heaviest and most pernicious concealed fire of the entire day, but his courage and coolness under trying conditions were marked.

Last prior edition:

Monday, March 27, 1944. Knock Out Dropper.

Thursday, March 20, 1924. Barbarity Codified.

Virginia's Racial Integrity Act and Eugenical Sterilization Act went into effect, seeing two vile trains of thought combine into legislation on a single day.

The former barred that if a person had a great-grandparent who was black, they were black, and were barred from marrying outside of that racial category.  The Pocahontas Clause" provided an exception for Native American heritage, sort of, in that if a person had 15/16th European heritage, they would be deemed white.

An emergency existing, this act shall be enforced from its passage.

Chap. 394. - An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases. [S B 281]

Approved March 20, 1924.

Whereas, both the health of the individual patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives under careful safeguard and by competent and conscientious authority, and

 Whereas, such sterilization may be effected in males by the operation of vasectomy and in females by the operation of salpingectomy, both of which said operations may be performed without serious pain or substantial danger to the life of the patient, and

 Whereas, the Commonwealth has in custodial care and is supporting in various State institutions many defective persons who if now discharged or paroled would likely become by the propagation of their kind a menace to society but who if incapable of procreating might properly and safely be discharged or paroled and become self-supporting with benefit both to themselves and to society, and

Whereas, human experience has demonstrated that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of sanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime, now, therefore

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That whenever the superintendent of the Western State Hospital, or of the Eastern State Hospital, or of the Southwestern State Hospital, or of the Central State Hospital, or the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, shall be of opinion that it is for the best interests of the patients and of society that any inmate of the institution under his care should be sexually sterilized, such superintendent is hereby authorized to perform, or cause to be performed by some capable physicians or surgeon, the operation of sterilization on any such patient confined in such institution afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy; provided that such superintendent shall have first complied with the requirements of this act.

 2. Such superintendent shall first present to the special board of directors of his hospital or colony a petition stating the facts of the case and the grounds of his opinion, verified by his affidavit to the best of his knowledge and belief, and praying that an order may be entered by said board requiring him to perform or have performed by some competent physician to be designated by him in his said petition or by said board in its order, upon the inmate of his institution named in such petition, the operation of vasectomy if upon a male and of salpingectomy if upon a female.

 A copy of said petition must be served upon the inmate together with a notice in writing designating the time and place in the said institution, not less than thirty days before the presentation of such petition to said special board of directors when and where said board may hear and act upon such petition [10]

—Virginia General Assembly, March 20, 1924

Finnair commenced commercial flights.

St. Patrick's Day

A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure.

Recently I ran this item: 

Lex Anteinternet: The Obituary: Mira qué bonita era by Julio Romero de Torres, 1895.  Depiction of a wake in Spain. I didn't have him as a teacher in high school, but I...

One of the things this oituary noted was:

"One more St. Patrick’s day craic for you, Dad."

That's nice, but what does that mean?

From Wikipedia:

Craic (/kræk/ KRAK) or crack is a term for news, gossip, fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland.It is often used with the definite article – the craic– as in the expression "What's the craic?" (meaning "How are you?" or "What's happening?"). The word has an unusual history; the Scots and English crack was borrowed into Irish as craic in the mid-20th century and the Irish spelling was then reborrowed into English. Under either spelling, the term has attracted popularity and significance in Ireland.

A relative who kn3w the decedent well told me that in later years he really got into "being Irish" and had big St. Patrick's Day parties.

But is that Irish?

Not really.  That's hosting a party.

Granted, it's hosting a party in honor of the Saint, sort of. Or perhaps in honor of Ireland, sort of.  And there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.  After all, "holidays" comes from "holy days", which were "feasts".   There are, by my recollection, some feast days even during Lent, and for that matter, it's often noted, but somewhat debated, that Sundays during Lent aren't technically part of it (although this post isn't on that topic, perhaps I'll address that elsewhere.

And St. Philip Neri tells us, moreover,  "Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life; wherefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits."

So, no problem, right?

Well, perhaps, as long as we're not missing the point.

The Irish everywhere honor this day, and some of that involves revelry.  Traditionally it was a day that events like Steeple Chases were conducted, sports being closely associated, actually, with religious holidays on the British Isles.  But the day is also often marked by the devout going to Mass, and as the recent Irish election shows, the Irish are more deeply Catholic than some recent pundits might suggest.

Perhaps it might be best, really, to compare the day to the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in North America, which is widely observed by devout Catholics, and not only in Mexican American communities.

So, I guess, a purely bacchanalian event, which is so common in the US, doesn't really observe the holiday, but something else, and that risks dishonoring the day itself.  Beyond that, it's interesting how some in North America become particularly "Irish" on this day, when in fact the root of the day, and the person it honors, would import a different type of conduct entirely to some extent, if that was not appreciated.  Indeed, with many, St. Patrick would suggest confession and repentance.

Am I being too crabby?  

Probably, but we strive for authenticity in our lives and desire it.  That's so often at war with our own personal desires which often, quite frankly, aren't authentic.  Things aren't easy.

Tuesday, March 17, 1824. Irish in Savannah and Old Glory

Savannah, Georgia held its first St. Patrick's Day parade on this day in 1824.

We don't tend to think of the Irish immigrating to the American South, but there were some, although the story is complicated by the conflation of the Irish with the Scots Irish, the latter group actually being a Scottish Protestant population imported by the United Kingdom with the intent to create a sort of Protestant wall in Ulster.  The actual Irish were a massively unpopular "race" in the United States at this point in time.

The original Old Glory.

The name "Old Glory" was applied to the U.S. flag for the first time, with that coming from Cpt. William Driver, a commercial captain who received it from his mother and local women of Salem, Massachusetts.  The name was applied to the individual flag.

Driver was an interesting character and had originally gone to sea at age 13 as a cabin boy.  On an 1831 expedition to the South Pacific, his ship was the only one out of six that survived the trip, and his ship escorted 65 descendants of the Bounty survivors back to Pitcairn Island.  He retired from sailing in 1837 and became a salesman. During the Civil War, he remained loyal to the Union while living in Nashville.

It remained in his family's possession until 1922, when it was donated to the Smithsonian.

The Anglo Dutch Treaty was entered into resolving issues that had arisen due to a prior treaty in 1814.

Last prior:

Thursday, March 11, 1824. Bureau of Indian Affairs formed.

Sunday, February 27, 1944. The Khaibakh Massacre

Weather prevented over 700 Chechen villagers from Khaibakh from being convoyed in the Soviet mass deportation of Chechens, meaning they could not meet the absurdly short deadline set by Lavrentiy Beria so they were shot.  The order was given by Mikhail Gvishiani, an officer in the NKVD.

Beria, a loyal Stalin henchman, was a first class weirdo who was also a mass rapist, something his position allowed him to get away with.  He fell after Stalin's death, was tried, and executed for treason.

Gvishiani survived the fall of Stalin, but probably only because his son, Dzhermen Gvishiani, was married to the daughter of Communist Party Central Committee member Alexei Kosygin.

It was the start of National Negro Press Week.

The U.S. Office of Strategic Services commenced Operation Ginny I with the objective of blowing up Italian railway tunnels in Italy to cut German lines of communication.

The OSS team landed in the wrong location and had to abandon the mission.

Hitler ordered the Panzerfeldhaubitze 18M auf Geschützwagen III/IV (Sf) Hummel, Sd.Kfz. 165, "Hummel" renamed as he did not find the name Hummel, i.e. bumblebee to be an appropriate name.

You would think that Hitler would have had other things to worry about at this point.

The Grayback was sunk off of Okinawa by aircraft.

Blog Mirror: THE TRIPLE NICKLES: SMOKE JUMPERS OF THE 555TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY BATTALION

 

THE TRIPLE NICKLES: SMOKE JUMPERS OF THE 555TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY BATTALION

Blog Mirror. The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.: 

Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.

Farm in Louisiana, 1940.

A few weeks ago, with John Pondoro Taylor, on our companion blog Going Feral, we made a controversial entry.  Keeping with that theme, we do the same here.

If a person has agrarian interests, there's no escaping The Southern Agrarians as there is not escaping their magnum opus, I'll Take My Stand.  It is one of the great, if highly flawed, works of modern agrarian thought.

The irony, I suppose, of the work and the group needs to be mentioned from the onset. They did not make their living from the land, although it's not necessary to do that in order to be an agrarian. Rather, they were twelve men of letters who wrote what amounted to an agrarian last stand, which they were very conscious of it being at the time.  They were:

• Donald Davidson, from Tennessee, poet, essayist, reviewer and historian. He was also a segregationist.
• John Gould Fletcher, from Arkansas, poet and historian.  He was the first Southerner to win the Pulitzer Prize
• Henry Blue Kline, a writer educated at Vanderbilt who taught at Tennessee, before ironically taking government employment for the rest of his life.
• Lyle H. Lanier, an experimental psychologist from Tennessee.
• Andrew Nelson Lytle,, also of Tennessee and also of Vanderbilt. a poet, novelist and essayist
• Herman Clarence Nixon, of Alabama and a political scientist.
• Frank Lawrence Owsley, also of Alabama and Vanderbilt. a historian
• John Crowe Ransom, of Tennessee and Vanderbilt poet, professor, essayist
• Allen Tate, poet, and of Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
• John Donald Wade, of Georgia, and a professor at Harvard and Columbia, biographer and essayist
• Robert Penn Warren, of Kentucky, and who was a university professor in a variety of universities, and a poet, novelist, essayist and critic, later first poet laureate of the United States
• Stark Young, of Mississippi, a novelist, drama and literary critic, playwright

What marks them is their monumental work, which was a Depression Era, anti-New Deal, strike against the modern world and capitalism. It is flawed, in that its view of the American South was highly romantic, and frankly they were not bothered by its inherent racism and manged to basically not even see it.  The work, while important, includes muted strain of Lost Cause yearning which are not admirable at all.  Indeed, it's hard not to notice that they didn't notice that the class that was hurt the most by New Deal farm policies were African American tenant farmers.

Still, as noted, there'rs no escaping this work.  It remains the magnum opus of American Agrarianism.

Wednesday, February 20, 1924. Non au plan Dawes.

"Let 'em have their fling" Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1924.

The French military objected to the draft Dawes Plan on the basis that it would return the Ruhr's railroads to German control.

The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created in the USSR for Russian ethnic Germans.  The capital city was the ironically named Kosakenstadt, which is now called Engels.  Ethnic Germans had been a feature of the Russian demographic map since Catherine the Great, who was of course German, had invited them in. They were not all of one uniform background, however, as they varied by religious confession considerably.

The German invasion of Russia in 1940 resulted in the Republic being eliminated.  Ultimatly the German population of the USSR was subject to heavy repression, with many people deported to work camps for being ethnic Germans. Some ethnic Germans of military age joined the German forces.  While the heavy repression ended following the march of time and the death of Stalin, remaining German populations in Russian heavily immigrated to Germany starting in the 1980s, before reunification, even though by that time they tended not to be even able to speak German.

Gloria Vanderbilt, socialite, actress and fashion figure was born.  As I don't know much about her and frankly care even less, that's about all I'll note.

The President met with the Good Roads Association, something that relates to something we posted yesterday.

He also met with the Gold Star Mothers.

OROZCO by SK GUNS and Pascual Orozco himself.

Wow, that's a wild commemorative.

Pascual Orozco was a Mexican Revolutionary who originally supported Madero before falling out with him.  He was of immediate Basque descent, something we tend not to think about in regard to Mexico, which is in fact more ethnically diverse than we commonly imagine.  He was an early recruit to Madero's 1910 revolution, and was a natural military leader, and could be rather morbid.  After his January 2, 1911, victory at Cañón del Mal Paso he ordered the dead Federal soldiers stripped and sent the uniforms to Presidente Díaz with a note that read, "Ahí te van las hojas, mándame más tamales" ("Here are the wrappers, send me more tamales.").

On May 10, 1911 Orozco and Pancho Villa seized Ciudad Juárez, against Madero's orders, a victory which caused Díaz to briefly resign the presidency.  Madero would naively choose to negotiate with the regime, which resulted in The Treaty of Ciudad Juárez allowing for the resignations of Díaz and his vice president, allowing them to go into exile, establishing an Interim Presidency under Francisco León de la Barra, and keeping the Federal Army intact.

Like Zapata, he went into rebellion against the Madero government, which he felt had betrayed the revolution.  He openly declared revolt on March 3, 1912, financing it with his own money and confiscated livestock sold in Texas.  His forces were known as the Orozquistas and the Colorados (the Reds). They defeated Federal troops in Chihuahua under José González Salas. Madero in turn sent Victoriano Huerta against him, who in turn were more successful.  A wounded Orozco fled to the US. After Madero was assassinated and Huerta installed, Orozco promised to support him if reforms were made, and he was installed as the Supreme Commander of the Mexican Federal forces.  As such he defeated the Constitutionalist at Ciudad Camargo, Mapula, Santa Rosalía, Zacatecas, and Torreón, causing his former revolutionary confederates to regard him, not without justification, as a traitor.

He refused to recognize the government of Carvajal after Huerta's fall and was driven into exile again.  He traveled in the US in opposition to Carranza along with Huerta.  In 1915, he was arrested in the US, but escaped.  An unclear incident at the Dick Love ranch in Texas led to claims that he and other like-minded combatants had stolen horses from the ranch, which in turn resulted in a small party of the 13th Cavalry, Texas Rangers, and local deputies pursing the supposed horse thieve with Orozco being killed once the party was holed up.  What exactly occured is not clear.

His body interred in the Masonic Holding Vault at the Concordia Cemetery in El Paso by his wife, dressed in the uniform of a Mexican general, at a service attended by a very larger gathering of admirers.  In 1925 his remains were retuned to Chihuahua.

Why the commemorative?  I have no idea.  He is not an obscure figure in the Mexican Revolution, but not a well known one like Villa or Zapata.  I can't see where he's associated with the M1911 either, a weapon that was brand new at the time the Revolution broken out.  The .38 Super, which is apparently popular in Mexico, wasn't intruduced by Colt until 1929.

Friday, February 11, 1944. The Factory Falls.

The Germans took "The Factory" from the British 1st Division at Anzio.

The Red Army took Shepetovka, Ukraine.

Wah Kau Kong (江華九), the first Chinese American fighter pilot, scored his first victory, showing down a FW190 while piloting a P-51B.  He'd be killed in a dogfight just eleven days later.  On that occasion, his wingman reported:

I was leading squadron in leader position of red flight, providing escort and target support for bombers with targets at Oschersleben and Halberstadt. 2nd Lt. Wau Kau Kong was my wingman. Enroute to target area, Northeim and Wernigerode, at 1350 hours I attacked a ME-410 which was pressing attack on a straggling B-17 at 16,000 feet. I fired a long burst from 300 yds, observing parts flying off the tail assembly and smoke pouring out of the right engine. All my guns stopped except one and I broke off attack to let my wingman finish off E/A. I circled and saw Lt. Kong fire at E/A from close range. The right engine of E/A burst into flames. As Lt. Kong broke off over the E/A the rear gunner must have hit him as his plane exploded and disintegrated in the air.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—February 11, 1944: First mission of the US 357th Fighter Group in P-51 Mustangs from England—this group would produce the most aces (42) in the US Eighth Air Force.

The U-424 was sunk off the Faroe's by a Wellington piloted by the RCAF.

Father Claude H. Heithaus, S. J. delivered a homily in what must have been a week day Mass at Saint Louis University denouncing racism.  It ended up getting him forcibly transferred out of state, but the school started admitting African Americans six months later, the first historically white Southern university to do so.

A photographer visited the USS Saratoga.

Commander Maurice Sheehy, Catholic priest and Chaplain Corps, on board USS Saratoga (CV 3), February 11, 1944.  The highly respected Fr. Sheehy would rise to the rank of Vice Admiral, the highest rank ever obtained by a Navy Chaplain.  He had taught at the Catholic University of America before the war, but after it became a pastor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  He passed away in 1972.