Ruger AC-556. The rifle we wish we all had!

I've written a little about the AC-556, but it's hard to find information on Ruger's early competitor to the M16.

The AC-556 is a selective fire variant of the Ruger Mini 14.  Occasionally you'll see one in the US at a gunshow, one that was sold early on to a police force when police forces didn't want to look like the 82nd Airborne Division. The Mini 14 was regarded as looking less military, or perhaps less hostile, so some police forces favored it.  As I've noted here once before, the Wind River Reservation game warden carried, at one time, a Mini 30, the 7.62x39 variant of the Mini 14.

The selective fire variant is, of course, different in that its an assault rifle and was originally conceived of as a competitor to the M16.  

That it did receive military and paramilitary use if known, but murky.  The Marine Corps, which didn't like the M16, considered adopting them early on but Ruger couldn't supply the anticipated needs for the Corps so they went on to partially redesign it, leading to the later variants of the M16. The Corps, of course, no longer uses the M16/M4 at all, although the rifle it does use is closely related to it, omitting its gas system.

Some AC-556s were used by Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland, which of course is policing use.  French police still use a selective fire variant of the Mini 14, produced in France, some paramilitary units in the Philippines used them.  The British Bermuda Regiment seems to have used them, although some claim they actually used the Mini 14.

Now it turns out that the United Arab Emirates army used them.

This is typical for the AC-556.  You don't tend to find any large military using them, but they were used.  But details are nearly impossible to come by.

Friday, July 30, 1943. Stolen secrets and the Atomic Bomb.

France renounced its Chinese concessions in Shanghai.  It had held them since 1849.

Igor Kurchalov, Soviet physicist, informed Molotov that stolen secrets from the US had much advanced the Soviet nuclear weapons program.

The Luftwaffe carried out the first flight of the Arado Ar 234, the first jet engined bomber.  Only small numbers would be produced, and reconnaissance proved to be its primary role.

Marie-Louise Giraud, age 38, became the last person woman executed by the guillotine.  Her sentence was carried out by the German occupation government and was for performing abortions.

Friday, July 16, 1943. Morire per Mussolini e Hitler, o vivere per l'Italia e per la civiltà.

Italy's Fascist Grand Council, concerned by the arrival of Allied troops on Italian soil, convened for the first time since 1939.  On the same day, Allied aircraft dropped leaflets over the Italian mainland that read "Morire per Mussolini e Hitler, o vivere per l'Italia e per la civiltà" (Die for Mussolini and Hitler, or live for Italy and for civilization).  

Radio broadcast a joint message to the Italian people from Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

Italy, as a fascist state, was coming undone.

The British Air Ministry approved the use of "Window", aluminum strips, as a radar countermeasure.

Effect of Window on radar signature.

The Germans ordered the deportation of 13,000 Jews living in Paris to the Drancy detention center, a way stop for them on the way to Auschwitz.

Yitzhak Wittenberg, a Jewish Lithuanian resistance leader, surrendered to the Gestapo in Vilnius in exchange for an agreement that the Vilnius ghetto would not be liquidated.  He did shortly there after in an undetermined fashion.

The ghetto was liquidated by the Germans in September 1943.

In an event which tends to be misreported, Père Marie-Benoît (Padre Maria Benedetto), a Capuchin Franciscan friar who successfully rescued 4,000 Jews during the war, met with Pope Pius XII in an effort to advance his plan to try to transfer approximately 30,000 French Jews to North Africa, in order to remove them from danger.  The Italian portion of the plan ultimately fell apart when the Germans occupied northern Italy following the collapse of Mussolini's government, but the Spanish portion, which did result in the rescue of 2,600 French Jews on the somewhat ironic pretext that they were Jews of Spanish ancestry, which is the cover that Franco's government operated under. 

He died in 1990 at age 95.

The Battle of Mount Tambu began on New Guinea between the Imperial Japanese Army and American and Australian forces.

The Batman character appeared in film for the first time, this being in a fifteen-minute serial episode before major features.  In the original series, he was called "The Batman", with the first episode being "The Electrical Brain".

Saturday, July 14, 1923. Harding in Anchorage.

President Harding visited Anchorage, where he and Mrs. Harding painted their names on a section house.

Direct link to something else, apparently, going on in Anchorage on the same day.

The Ku Klux Klan holds its first "Konvention" in Washington state.

Once again, it's really hard to imagine this occurring today.

The French celebrated Bastille Day, even though there's next to nothing to actually celebrate about it, or the French Revolution in general.

Oh well, it's a party, there was music, and the girls were there.

Friday, June 29, 1923. Poincaré replies, The Tribune notices the Klan, Harding in Montana.

Replying to the Pope's letter of earlier that week, but not naming him by name, French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré stated in a speech in the French Senate "the only screw that we have on Germany is her desire to recover the Ruhr. We have no thought of annexation, and we energetically refute all accusations of imperialism. France does not wish to confiscate the Ruhr. We will keep it, however, until Germany has paid her debt."

The Tribune finally got around to reporting on recent events in Glenrock.

Preisdent Harding visited Butte and Helena Montana, delivering this speech in Helena:

My Countrymen:

One of the greatest lessons which the World War taught to society was a realization of its stupendous producing capacity under modern organization. When the war started many of us, probably most of us, believed it could not last very long because we could not conceive that it could be economically and industrially supported for a long time. We had been taught to believe that as a whole the community annually consumed pretty nearly all that it produced, and that in order to maintain this ratio it was necessary to keep all the producers steadily at work. We were convinced that when the most efficient producers were taken by millions away from the fields, the shops, the mines, and the offices, and set at the business of armed destruction, they would very presently pull down upon themselves the whole fabric of our complex industrial system, and that the war would be smothered in the ruins. This view was the basis of what became almost an obsession with many people, indeed with most of the best informed people, during the early stages of the war. It was commonly and freely said that economic exhaustion would compel an end to the struggle before a year, and a much more popular limitation was six months.

The event showed how very little we understood either the tremendous producing capacity of the community as a whole or the strength and solidity of our industrial structure. When the first year of the war had passed, the world was just beginning to realize that in all probability the struggle was only in its larger beginning. Millions of men had been called from the fields, and yet still other men were being trained for it. At the end of two years the war was greater than ever, and after three years it had still further expanded until it actually involved, whether as combatants or as the sources of supply for the combatants, the whole world. The industrial, the agricultural, the financial, the social, and spiritual forces of the world were mobilized at last for the great final test of strength. In the end that test was both military and economic. Victory rested upon the banners which were borne by the side that represented the greatest number of soldiers, of ships, of guns; which represented the greatest capacity to bring together, control, and fabricate the necessaries of war and to maintain great civil populations behind the lines.

It became very early a war of conscription. Governments conscripted their men for service in the field; patriotism and public opinion conscripted everybody else for work at home. A new system of division and dilution of labor was introduced through which men and women, boys and girls, old men and old women—millions of people who under the old order of peace days had been rejected from the realm of skilled production—were quickly trained to the most intricate and technical tasks. So, in the midst of the most destructive storm that mankind had ever invoked upon itself, there was presented the marvelous phenomenon of a world producing at a greater rate than it had ever done before.

How was this gigantic industrial phenomenon wrought? By putting everybody at work. By inducing everybody to work to the limit of strength and capacity. By paying the workers at rates which enlisted their utmost eagerness to produce to the limit. Yes, if you please, by letting labor and capital and management all engage more or less in profiteering at the expense of society as a whole. Unheard-of wages were paid to people who in other times would have been considered quite incapable of earning them, but who, under the stimulus of the emergency, became effective and absolutely necessary factors in the industrial organization. Particularly was this true of the women, young and old, who took up tasks in the shop, the field, the transportation systems, and behind the lines of combatants, such as had never before been assigned to them. And the women made good so emphatically, so impressively, that as to-day we look over the whole field of the world mobilization and the world conflict we realize that something very much like a revolution was effected in the varied relationships of the industrial community.

Viewed in the retrospect we see more clearly than ever the sordid side, of war. I have said before, and I choose to repeat it very deliberately now, that if war must come again—God grant that it shall not!—then we must draft all of the nation in carrying on. It is not enough to draft the young manhood. It is not enough to accept the voluntary service of both women and men whose patriotic devotion impels their enlistment. It will be righteous and just, it will be more effective in war and marked by less regret in the aftermath, if we draft all of capital, all of industry, all of agriculture, all of commerce, all of talent and capacity and energy of every description to make the supreme and united and unselfish fight for the national triumph. When we do that there will be less of war. When we do that the contest will be aglow with unsullied patriotism, untouched by profiteering in any service.

Of course, we are striving to make conditions of foreign relations and so fashion our policies that we may never be involved in war again. If we are committed to universal service—that is, the universal commitment of every American resource and activity—without compensation except the consciousness of service and the exaltations in victory, we will be slower to make war and more swift in bringing it to a triumphant dose. Let us never again make draft on our manhood without as exacting a draft on all we possess in the making of the industrial, financial, commercial, and spiritual life of the republic.

If we had been in a state of mind to philosophize about it all, I think we might have recognized that women have been for a long time preparing themselves for this tremendous incursion into the field of industrial production. For a long time before the war began there had been evidence of a reaction among the women against the old ideals of the Victorian period. For three or four decades, the more venturesome women had been timidly breaking away from the old-fashioned home and its old-fashioned ideals. Even those who viewed the new-woman movement with greatest misgiving and least approval had already been compelled to recognize that a new and revolutionary idea was taking possession of them. We might iterate and reiterate, and theorize and dogmatize, upon the old thesis that the place for woman was in the home; but we will have to admit that despite all our preachments, all our urgings, all our misgivings, woman wasn't staying there. She was teaching in the schools, she was accounting for perhaps a majority of the graduates from the high schools, and a big and increasing minority of the student community in the colleges and universities. She was practicing law and medicine, preaching sermons, working in the shops, the offices, the factories; she was, in short, becoming a competitor with her brother in almost all the departments of productive effort and activity.

Then came the war, and all at once even the most dubious among us realized that the women, everywhere, constituted the first line of industrial reserves upon which society must fall back in its great crisis. They volunteered for every service in which they could be useful, and at once established their right to a new and more important industrial status. They built ships, they operated munition factories, they learned to perform the heaviest and most difficult tasks; they tilled the fields, filled the offices, largely conducted the hospitals, and even served as most useful auxiliaries to forces on the battlefield. Not as a boon, but as a duty, full partnership in the conduct of political affairs was conferred upon them.

All this has inevitably worked a profound change in the relation of woman to the social and political organization. We may approve it or disapprove it, we may view it with satisfaction or with misgiving, but the fact is before us that woman has taken a new place in the community. And just as her participation in the industrial sphere expands, so her relations to the home and its interest is necessarily contracted. Whether we account it wise or otherwise, we must recognize that the tendency is to take the modern mother more and more away from the control, the training, the intellectual guidance and spiritual direction of her children. The day nursery, and after that the kindergarten begins to care for her children in the earliest years; after that come the public school, the high school, the college and the university, taking over from her more and more of the responsibility and influence over the children. We may entertain the old-fashioned prejudices against this development; but we are compelled to recognize that under modem conditions a large and increasing proportion of women are bound to be at the same time mothers in the home and industrial producers or professional workers outside the home, or else they must be denied the service and responsibility of motherhood.

Frankly, I am one of those old-fashioned people who would be glad if the way could be found to maintain the traditional relations of father, mother, children, and home. But very plainly these relations are in process of a great modification. The most we can do, to the utmost possible extent, is to readapt our conditions of industry and of living so as to enable the mothers to make the utmost of their lessened opportunity for shaping the lives and minds of their children. We must hope, and we must make it possible, that mothers will not assume, when their babes of yesterday become the schoolboys and schoolgirls of to-day, that the responsibility of the mother is ended, and that the teacher, the school authorities, the college, the state, will henceforth assume it. Rather, we must recognize that no other influence can possibly be substituted for that of motherhood; and we must make it possible for the mothers to cooperate with these social institutions of the new order, to give the children so far as possible the privileges of a home atmosphere which will supplement the advantages of mere education and training. It must be made possible for the mothers to familiarize themselves with the problems of the people, the school superintendents, the college authorities, the health and sanitation officials. In short, the mothers must be placed in such position that despite their obligations outside the home they shall not have to surrender their domestic responsibility. Rather, means must be found to enable them, through the varied instrumentalities which, society affords, to equip themselves for the better discharge of their responsibility toward the children of the land.

Through such effort as this there will be opportunity for a great service. Those mothers who have the advantage of the best material and intellectual opportunities will, if they make the most of these advantages, help greatly to improve the conditions of children that come from families and homes less fortunately situated. They will be able to help in lifting up the poorer, the less fortunate children, to a higher level. The mother who tirelessly seeks rightly to train her own children, to instill into them that indefinable essence which we know as good breeding, will be performing this service not alone for her own children, but in only less measure for the children who come from homes less blessed with the finer things of life. Herein is the supreme advantage of the public-school system. I have never been able to find much satisfaction in die good fortune of families who, when they are able to do it, prefer to take their children out of the public schools and give them the doubtful advantage of more exclusive educational methods. I think we should cling to the democracy of the public schools.

The teacher, and the authorities back of her, must be equally ready to cooperate with the home and the mother. In the home must still be performed the duty of instilling into the child those fundamental concepts of religion and of faith which are essential to rightly shaping the character of citizens, and therefore of the nation. It would be an irreparable mistake if in surrendering to society a larger responsibility for the child's intellectual and physical well being, we should forget the necessity for proper religious training. That duty must be performed in the home; it will always be peculiarly the duly of a mother.

Mankind never has stood more in need than it does now of the consolations and reassurances which derive from a firm religious faith. We are living in a time of many uncertainties, of weakened faith in the efficiency of institutions, of industrial systems, of economic hypotheses, of dictum and dogma in whatever sphere. Yet we all know that there are certain fundamental truths of life and duty and destiny which will stand eternal, through the evolution and the revolution of systems and societies founded by mankind. There must be no mistake whereby we shall confuse the things which are of eternity with those which are of time. We must not let our engrossment with the things of matter and of mind distract us from a proper concern for those which are of the spirit and the soul.

It must be kept ever in mind that the higher and finer attributes of humanity will rarely be developed from a human seedling planted in a soil adapted chiefly to the production of that which is selfish and sordid, in which it will be forced by special circumstances to struggle unduly for the bare continuance of existence. We will not grow strong minds in unsound bodies, nor may we hope that illuminated souls will often seek habitation in human frames weakened and tortured by disease and malnutrition. To an astounding and alarming certainty it has been demonstrated that a large proportion of school children, and even of adults, suffer from undernourishment. I may congratulate you that there is little of it in the West. Perhaps it is true that as to most of the adults the fault is of the individual rather than society. Whether that be true or not we can at least agree that the children are not to be blamed for their share in such misfortunes. If society has permitted the development of a system under which the citizens, of to-morrow suffer these deprivations to-day, then the obligation is surely upon society to right the wrong and to insure justice to the children who are not responsible for being here.

But we can not expect to bring full justice, full equality of circumstances and opportunity to the children, unless we shall make it possible for the parents. We are all too much given, I suspect, to a rather unthinking admiration for our highly mechanized social system under which we have so abundantly produced wealth and the possibilities of comfort and culture. We have not thought enough about the evils attendant upon the great inequities which mark the distribution of our stupendous product. But we are coming into a time when more and more we are giving thought to these things. Our satisfaction in the material achievements of our industrial age is being qualified as it never was before by our questionings along these lines. We are thinking of the weaker links in the social chain. We believe the equality of opportunity must be attended by a fitness to embrace it.

Here, again, the war was responsible for a great broadening of our social vision. It made its demand upon the highest and the lowest, the proudest and the humblest. It demanded a sacrifice that was just as great in the case of the poor man as the rich man. What was more, it brought a realization of the fact that men and women were of real service to the community just in proportion as they were capable of producing the things that were needed. So the workers, the builders, the producers attained a new sense of their dignity and importance. Contemplating its supreme crisis, the community was willing to render to those who were capable of serving it effectively in this juncture a greater share of their product than they had formerly been accustomed to receive. Wages, the world over, went to new high levels, salaries and fixed incomes shrank to lower levels of actual exchange value. There was a leveling up from the lower strata and downward from the higher. On the whole, despite many instances of injustice and of maladjustment in this process, its results marked a long advance on the road to equity and justice as among all elements of the community. A few years of civilization's desperate grapple with destiny brought to the working masses of the world an aggregate betterment of conditions, a general improvement of circumstances and opportunity, which otherwise would, have been possible only through the slow processes of generations.

We know now that the advances which were thus effected in the direction of social justice and economic equality will not be relinquished without determined opposition. There were those who, regarding the injustices of the old order as inevitable, mistakenly assumed that by a simple process which they called the "deflation of labor" the old relationships would presently be restored. They insisted that "wages must come down"; some of them went so far as to sound the slogan that "organized labor must be crushed." These have forgotten the lesson in organization, in cooperation, in community of sacrifice, by which civilization had been able to rescue itself. They had forgotten that the right of organization, and of cooperative dealings, is not any longer the special prerogative of management and of capital. The right of men, and brains, and skill, and brawn, to organize, to bargain through organizations, to select their own leaders and spokesmen, is no wit less absolute than is the right of management and of capital to form and work through those great concentrations of interests which we call corporations.

Labor, indeed, is fast becoming one of the great builders of capital. Whether it concentrates its savings by depositing them in its own banks, of which the number is rapidly increasing, or pools them with the general savings of society by making its deposits in other banks, the result is the same. Labor is more and more coming to be the financier and backer of its own employment. We shall not go back to the time when considerable elements in the community were wont to assume that a sharp line of demarcation should be drawn between labor and capital. Labor is becoming more and more a capitalist on its own account, and capital is more and more discovering that it must work, must contribute, must give us, through some superiority of method and management, a justification for its existence as a sort of separate estate. Those to whom the management and investment of capital is intrusted must recognize, as I know most of them already do, that the right of organization, and the title to those special efficiencies which come to organization, is not the exclusive prerogative of capital. It is equally the prerogative of labor.

I am quite aware that there were some who imagined, before the present administration was voted into responsibility, that it was going at least to acquiesce if not definitely sympathize with projects for the deflation of labor and the overthrow of labor organizations. Before this time these have come to realize their error. Nothing has been farther from the purpose of the present administration than any thought of destroying the right of either labor or capital to organize, and each to deal in its organized capacity.

We have recognized that there are evils and abuses on both sides of the almost imaginary line which now is presumed to separate labor and capital. We have wished and sought to minimize these abuses, through better organizations and better understanding, without destroying organizations or the right to form them. We have not wished to compel men to work when they did not want to work; we have not wished to compel employers to keep men at work under conditions which were impossible; but we have earnestly sought to lessen the occasions for conflict between the two parties. We have tried to bring to both of them a realization that both owed in this connection an obligation to the great public interest which is always the great sufferer by reason of their conflict.

In this connection let me say quite frankly that I know there were some elements which hoped for a great and decisive conflict between organized employment and organized labor, and that those elements were not all on either side of the imaginary dividing line. On the capital side of the line were those who hoped that the administration would lend itself to their program of breaking down organized labor and sending it back to the era of individual bargaining for the individual job. On the labor side of the line were those who hoped, by exorbitant demands and an attitude of uncompromising insistence, to force the nationalization of some of our most important industries and services. Between these two extreme groups, confident we had behind us the overwhelming public opinion of the nation, we have tried to hold the scales even; to prevent on the one side the destruction of organized labor, and on the other side to frustrate those programs which looked to the ultimate destruction of private capital and the nationalization of all the instrumentalities of production.

How well have we succeeded? At least, we have saved the nation from the extremists of both sides. Those who were sure that our salvation lay in the destruction of organized labor and the precipitated reduction of wages have found -that the national administration was not disposed to Acquiesce in their program. For many months past they have noted that the demand for labor was greater than the supply; that instead of millions of men out of jobs, there were tens of thousands of jobs without workers; that instead of a sharp and progressive reduction of labor's wage, there has been now for a long time a steady; continuing, persistent increase in that wage. On the other side, those who would have been glad to drive the country into an industrial crisis through the stoppage of production, arid to force the nationalization or communization of industry, have been equally disappointed in the outcome.

I believe our policy, and its results, have reflected the sound judgment of the overwhelming majority of the American people. I believe this people is firmly and finally committed to the ideal of preserving the fullest rights of private initiative and private enterprise, together with the right of organization on both sides of the line between capital and labor, and always consistent with the right of the public to be served efficiently and at a reasonable cost.

We have come thus far, and thus fortunately, through the most difficult period of reconstruction that we have ever known. We have been sheltered against the world storm of tendency to social revolution. The best test of policy is by results. By that test, we ask no more than a fair and reasoned verdict on our program; We ask that its results be compared with the showing, in these after-war years, that can be presented by any other country on the face of the earth. We ask that you examine the contrast, thoughtfully and seriously, between the general state of the public weal in this country and in others. For our vindication, we point to a great nation, its credit preserved, its industries crowded to the point of capacity production, its people employed, its wage scales high beyond all comparison with any other in the world, its banking system standing as the final bulwark of sound money and the gold standard, and its average level of comfort and prosperity unexampled among the races of men.

If I could make the fortunate picture stand out by offering contrast, I would speak of Russia and the colossal failure of its mad experiment. The dissatisfied working forces of America, where there are such, and the parlor theorists who have yet to create a single, thing useful to aspiring human kind, will find there less of freedom, much less of reward, and little of hope in much proclaimed emancipation. Royal absolutism has been destroyed, only to be superseded by what appears to be despotism in the name of democracy. To a limited few of democracy's advocates has come vast power. Perhaps wealth attends. Undoubtedly a new Russia is in the making, and there is no doubt the present sponsorship will survive.

Apart from the tragedy of it all, I am glad Russia is making the experiment. If twenty centuries of the Christian era and its great story of human progress and the countless centuries before the light of Christianity flamed have been lived and recorded upon mistaken theories of a righteous social order, then everything is wrong, Christianity a failure, and all of civilization a failure. I think Russia is going to rivet anew our belief in established social order. Meanwhile we know ours is the best the world has revealed, and I preach the gospel of holding fast to that which has proven good, ever trying in good conscience to make it better, and consider and treat as an enemy every man who chooses our land as a haven in which to assail the very institutions which shelter him.

There are two phases of the commitment of the great human family.

It is of little use to advance unless we hold to the advanced position. It is useless to construct unless we preserve. In the recognized test which our civilization is now undergoing America's supreme task is one of preservation. I call upon America to protect and preserve.

His rail route took him through Idaho from Utah the prior day, so this was an example, really of extensive backtracking.

Sunday, June 24, 1923. President Harding stops by Denver.

The Nigerian National Democratic Party was founded.  The party, which advocated for Nigerian independence, was the first in the then British colony.

In other colonial news, France's Chamber of Deputies debated whether to give the French West Indies to the US in payment of war dept.  Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré killed the suggestion, saying, "I never would permit such a proposal to be officially made to the French government."

President Harding was in Denver.

Wednesday, June 23, 1943. Arrests in France, Elections in Ireland.

The "Prosper" network of SOE agents in France, including French woman Andrée Borrel, Francis Suttill, and Gilbert were arrested by the Gestapo after being betrayed by an informer.

Borrel.

 

They'd be executed on July 6, 1944.  Execution would have been legal under the norms of war of the day, as they were spies, but the method was bizarre in that they were rendered unconscious through injection and then burned alive.

As previously noted, the SOE, which frankly was quite amateurish in Europe, had been penetrated by the Germans.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—June 23, 1943: President Roosevelt establishes American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (“Monuments Men”).

She also notes that the coal strike in Appalachia was settled, but that President Roosevelt threatened to conscript the miners if it occurred again. 

In Ireland's general election t Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera, failed to gain a majority but was able to form a minority government.

Wednesday, June 6, 1923. Defeat, no, explosion.

The Red Army defeated the Whites at Okhotsk in the last major battle of the Russian Civil War, although at least one more engagement would occur.  The results, at this point, were a foregone conclusion.

France and Belgium released a joint statement refusing to consider the new reparations proposal of Weimar as long as passive resistance to occupation was ongoing in the Ruhr.

The Army's TC-1 hydrogen filled dirigible was destroyed in a storm when winds blew it into a steel mooring tower.

Saturday, May 26, 1923. The Twenty Four Hours of Le Mans

The first Le Mans automobile race took place.

The French executed some Germans who were committing acts of sabotage and the like against their occupation of the Ruhr.

One of the terrorist was one Albert Leo Schlageter, a former German officer of the Great War and a Freikorps officer who had engaged in acts of sabotage against the French.  He was not a "Red" and would go on to obtain mythic status in the German far right, including the early Nazis, who in fact murdered his betrayer.  The killers of that individual were one Rudolf Höss and Martin Bormann, who would later go on to roles in the Third Reich.  They were first captured and sentenced for their role in the murder.  

Bormann is well known, but Höss less so.  He was Auschwitz's longest commanding officer and was executed in 1947.  Facing execution, he came to see his actions as gravely immoral and wrote this out to his wife prior to his execution:

My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.

On this same day, a Communist lead strike in the Ruhr expanded.

The British made the Emirate of Transjordan autonomous, but not independent of British oversight. It would achieve full independence in 1946.

Turkey waived reparations claims against Greece at Lausanne in exchange for the Thracian territory.

Thursday, May 24, 1923. The IRA ordered to lay down its weapons.

Éamon de Valera and Frank Aiken ordered IRA volunteers to lay down their arms and return home, causing an "official" end to their rebellion against the Irish Free State. 

Chief of Staff Frank Aiken's order, recalled in history as the Dump Arms Order, read:

Comrades — The arms with which we fought the enemies of our country are to be dumped. The foreign and domestic enemies of the Republic have for the moment prevailed. But our enemies have not won. Neither tortures nor firing squads, nor a slavish press can crush the desire for independence out of the hearts of those who fought for the Republic or out of the hearts of our people. Our enemies have demanded our arms. Our answer is, 'We took up arms to free our country, and we'll keep them until we see an honourable way of reaching our objective without arms'. There is a trying time ahead for the faithful soldiers of Ireland. But the willing sacrifices of our dead comrades will give us the courage to face it in the knowledge that these sacrifices have ensured the ultimate victory of our cause. Their examples and their prayers will help us to be like them, faithful to our ideals unto death.

De Valera's order stated:

Soldiers of liberty! Legion of the rear guard! The republic can no longer be sustained successfully by your arms. Further sacrifices on your part would now be in vain. The continuance of the struggle in arms is unwise in the national interest," and added, "You have saved the nation's honor and left the road open to independence. Laying aside your arms now is an act of patriotism as exalted and pure as your valor in taking them up

Ireland would come, in fact, to have very strict gun control, something that reflected Irish independence having come about through an armed Irish minority and the ongoing fear that an armed Irish element would oppose the government. 

The ethos of the IRA at the time can perhaps best be summarized by the statement of Liam Lynch, a general of the IRA,, who stated:

We have declared for an Irish Republic.

We will live by no other law.

Be that as it may, the IRA's fight against the Irish Free State was a dishonorable affair, and one tinged with radicalism.  Asserting a fight for liberation and democracy, it was in the end undeniably sectarian in ignoring the wishes, no matter how despised, of Ulster protestants who did not wish to leave the United Kingdom and the majority of southern Irish who were content with the Free State.

It was also naive to think that it could force British separation of Ulster through fighting the Free State.

The San Pedro Maritime Strike in San Francisco came to an end.

The French government resigned, and then unresigned, over the Senates decision not to put Communist Marcel Cachin, a member, on trial.

Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923

Members of the Wasatch Mountain Club members on the porch of the Hermitage, Ogden Canyon, Utah, Easter Day, 1923

It was Easter Sunday for 1923. 

The silent classic Safety Last!, starring Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis, premiered.   The movie is famous for its harrowing stunts, which were preformed by Lloyd.

The United Kingdom began numbering its highways.

France reduced the compulsory military service period from two years, to 18 months.

Thursday, March 25, 1943. Axis allies looking for the door.

Germany warned Finland, through Joachim von Ribbentrop, that German would not tolerate Finland making a separate peace.

Sarah Sundin reports that Spain closed its border with Nazi occupied France.  

She also notes:

Today in World War II History—March 25, 1943: Battle for convoy HX-231 begins (through April 8), the first time an Allied Atlantic convoy beats off German U-boats without loss.

Tuesday, March 22, 1943. Expanding Murder of European Jews by the Nazis, U.S. Army takes Maknassy, Tunisia, Italian port disaster.

Jewish women in Paris, 1942.  By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N0619-506 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5367011

Germany began deportation of 4,000 Jews from occupied France.  They were sent to Sobibor, where only five of them would survive.

The initial deportation of 4,000 was shortly followed by an additional 1,000.

The Germans also began to deport Yugoslavian Jews from Skopje to Treblinka.

The Germans made the first executions of Gypsies at Auschwitz.

The Waffen SS attacked and destroyed Khatyn, Byelorussia in retaliation for the killing of four German officers, including Hans-Otto Woellke of the Order Police.  Woelke had been an Olympic shot putter.

Sarah Sundin notes:

Today in World War II History—March 22, 1943: Nazis extend work week in the occupied Netherlands to 54 hours. US II Corps under Lt. Gen. George Patton occupies Maknassy, Tunisia.

Sundin also has a very interesting photograph on her blog, of troops in Maknassy.  I wouldn't normally repost it, but the details are quite interesting.

The quality of the photograph isn't fantastic, but the details are really interesting as noted.  All of the soldiers except the one on the far right are wearing coveralls, suggesting they're armored vehicle crewmen.  They are armed, left to right, as follows:  M1903 Springfield, M1 Carbine, M1903 Springfield, M1903 Springfield, unclear, unclear.

British Colonel Edward Orlando Kellett DSO, parliamentarian, British Army officer, and big game hunter was killed in action during the fighting in Tunisia as a colonel of the Royal Armoured Corps. 

The U-524 and U-665 were sunk by Allied aircraft in the Atlantic.

The Allesandro Volta (Italy) exploded in port, devasting the harbor, after being hit by bombs from a B-24. The same raid took out the Franco M, the Labor, the Lentini, the Manzoni, the Maria Louisa, the Modena, the Mondovi,  hte Moni, the Renato, the Rosa and the Trentino.

It was a bad day for Italian shipping.

The German tanker Eurosee sank in an air raid on Wilhelmshaven.

The British Harbour Defense Motor Launches HMML 1157 and HMML 1212 sank in an air raid in Portugal.

The Imperial Japanese Army (yes, army) auxiliary transport ship Meigan Maru was sunk off of Java by the USS Gudgeon.

Clark Gable appeared on the cover of Look magazine in his airman attire.

Tuesday, March 9, 1943. Rommel departs. Air Force limits. De La Rocque arrested. Goebbels looks in the Stable. We Will Never Die opens. Mardi Gras.

Erwin Rommel was recalled by Hitler from North Africa and put on medical leave. General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim assumed command of the Afrika Korps, and would remain in command until its surrender.  Effectively, Hitler had rescued Rommel.

Von Arnim.

Von Arnim bore a remarkable resemblance to actor Keenan Wynn, who played Col. "Bat" Guano in Dr. Strangelove.

Wynn, left.

Von Arnim would go into captivity in the UK and then later the U.S.  He would not enter the Bundesheer following its establishment, perhaps due to age, and died in 1962 at age 73.

Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—March 9, 1943: US Eighth Air Force Central Medical Establishment recommends 25-mission combat tour for bomber crewmen and 200 hours or 50 missions for fighter pilots.

Of note, making it through 25 bomber missions at the time was against the odds.  Also, I didn't know that there was a limit for fighter pilots.

De La Rocque.

French right wing political figure François de La Rocque, who had gone from accepting the French surrender and Petain's rule to being a secret opponent of it and founder of a right wing resistance movement, was arrested by the Germans. Regarded by some as a precursor to de Gaulle, he would survive the war and die in 1946 at age 60.

De La Rocque had interestingly gone from the far right into moderation prior to the war, first being part of the Croix de Feu and then being a founder of the French Social Party.  The latter party was a combination of conservative and corporatist, but it was not anti-democratic. Some credit it with giving the French middle class an alternative to fascism, thereby preventing fascism from rising in France.

German poster in Dutch, part of an effort to recruit occupied Europeans to German arms out of fear of Communism.

German propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary

The anti-Bolshevik theme is the best horse in the stable.

Goebbels' comments are something that are frighteningly relevant in our current society.  Communism was the enemy of mankind, but so was Nazism.  Indeed, they both shared the common trait of mass murder as a central element of their ethos, which gave the regimes an odd sense of being constantly imperiled by huge plots, in their view, which necessitated murder, in their view, which in turn made millions of people culpable, and therefore loyal, through guilt.  

Victory or Bolshevism was the theme of this poster, which ironically portrayed starving Germans in the manner of which recalls Holocaust victims.  After 1943 the theme of this poster was in fact becoming increasingly true, although victory was no longer possible, as the Red Army was now advancing toward the German frontier.  Germans would have recalled that being a threat during the Russo Polish War of the early 1920s, when Trotsky seriously imagined entering Germany after defeating Poland, but now it was rapidly becoming an inevitability, which the German government implicitly acknowledged through this poster.  In fact, the German government would take no action to withdraw the civilian population from Prussia, although individual German commanders sometimes did, which mean that thousands of German men were shot and tens of thousands of German women raped when the Red Army entered the country.  The final months of the war would be a combat blood bath as German soldiers often went down fighting attempting to let the civilian population get out, a situation which was brought upon them by a barbarous Nazi government.

The Nazis, right from the onset, portrayed themselves as the cultural defenders against Communism, which made many forget, and then adopt, their radical views which were not "conservative" in any real sense. After reaching an accord with the Soviets just prior to World War Two, this was downplayed, but it was ramped back up again prior to Operation Barbarossa and kept at a fever pitch through the remainder of the war.  The message to Germans was that the Nazis were the only defense of Western culture against an "alien" Communism, although Communism itself was originally a German movement.  The message was sufficient for many Germans, including high ranking ones, to put aside their doubts about Nazism on the basis that it seemed to be, based upon what they were hearing, their only alternative to Communism.

Of course, for millions of Germans, the end of the war and Germany's fighting it out past mid 1943 would bring Communism to them.

By way of contemporary analogy, millions of Americans today have been listening, and continue to, to populist propagandist who spread lies and whip up panic over their being the only alternative to "wokeism".  Tucker Carlson and his ilk portray the far populist right as the only means of combating a host of truly concerning liberal ideas.  By espousing lies, they bring those ideas closer to implementation.

We Will Never Die, a Jewish pageant featuring spectacular artwork (copyright protected) on its cover, opened on the East Coast.  It acknowledged that it was held in memory of what it then thought to be Europe's 2,000,000 then Jewish dead, showing that knowledge of the Holocaust was in fact widespread, contrary to what some will claim.

Today was Mardi Gras for 1943.  On the same day, readers of the nation's newspapers learned that the wartime ban on sliced bread had been lifted the prior day.  The ban had been to save steel needed for slicing machines.

Sunday, March 4, 1973. Allende's minority rule.

Chilean elections resulted in the opposition Confederation of Democracy winning control of the Senate and House, but falling short of the 2/3ds necessary to impeach Salvador Allende or block his policies.

The Confederation's symbol.

While not seeking to excuse things in retroactive advance, it might be noted that this meant that Allende's left wing Popular Unit alliance was a minority government, which is very rarely noted.

The Popular Unity alliance's symbol.

Voting also took place in France but failed to yield a clear result.

The British yacht Auuralyn was struck by a whale and sunk off of Guatemala, putting Marice and Maralyn Bailey adrift for 117 days.

A large group of U.S. Air Force and Navy POWs held by North Vietnam was released, including Norman C. Gaddis and Leo K. Thorsness who would be highly decorated.

Gaddis had been in the service since 1941, with a brief post World War Two period in the reserves, having joined after Pearl Harbor.  Born into poverty in Tennessee, he lives there today at age 99.  His Distinguished Service Citation would read:

For exceptionally meritorious and distinguished service in a position of great responsibility to the Government of the United States. General Gaddis distinguished himself while a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam from December 1970 to February 1973. During this period, General Gaddis displayed professional competence, unwavering devotion and loyalty to his country in the execution of his duties in staff and command positions while in potentially volatile daily contact with the Vietnamese guards and officers. General Gaddis performed his duties in accord with the Code of Conduct, exhibiting leadership, courage, and determination, regardless of the cost in the many tortures and beatings which he had to endure. The singularly distinctive accomplishments of General Gaddis reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.

Thorsness had joined the Air Force in 1951 as an enlisted man, before returning to school after the war and later rejoining as an officer.  His Medal of Honor Citation reads:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. As pilot of an F-105 aircraft, Lt. Col. Thorsness was on a surface-to-air missile suppression mission over North Vietnam. Lt. Col. Thorsness and his wingman attacked and silenced a surface-to-air missile site with air-to-ground missiles, and then destroyed a second surface-to-air missile site with bombs. In the attack on the second missile site, Lt. Col. Thorsness' wingman was shot down by intensive antiaircraft fire, and the two crewmembers abandoned their aircraft. Lt. Col. Thorsness circled the descending parachutes to keep the crewmembers in sight and relay their position to the Search and Rescue Center. During this maneuver, a MIG-17 was sighted in the area. Lt. Col. Thorsness immediately initiated an attack and destroyed the MIG. Because his aircraft was low on fuel, he was forced to depart the area in search of a tanker. Upon being advised that two helicopters were orbiting over the downed crew's position and that there were hostile MIGs in the area posing a serious threat to the helicopters, Lt. Col. Thorsness, despite his low fuel condition, decided to return alone through a hostile environment of surface-to-air missile and antiaircraft defenses to the downed crew's position. As he approached the area, he spotted four MIG-17 aircraft and immediately initiated an attack on the MIGs, damaging one and driving the others away from the rescue scene. When it became apparent that an aircraft in the area was critically low on fuel and the crew would have to abandon the aircraft unless they could reach a tanker, Lt. Col. Thorsness, although critically short on fuel himself, helped to avert further possible loss of life and a friendly aircraft by recovering at a forward operating base, thus allowing the aircraft in emergency fuel condition to refuel safely. Lt. Col. Thorsness' extraordinary heroism, self-sacrifice, and personal bravery involving conspicuous risk of life were in the highest traditions of the military service, and have reflected great credit upon himself and the U.S. Air Force.

Other POWs released included Douglas Peterson, who was later the ambassador to Communist Vietnam and William P. Lawrence, who was later Superintendent of the Naval Academy.

Peterson, whose first wife had died, interestingly met Vietnamese born Vi Le who was serving as Australia's senior trade commissioner in the country.  They married, and he retired to Australia so that the couple could be closer to her family.

Lawrence is the author of the Tennessee state poem, which reads:

Oh Tennessee, My Tennessee

What Love and Pride I Feel for Thee.

You Proud Ole State, the Volunteer,

Your Proud Traditions I Hold Dear.

I Revere Your Heroes

Who Bravely Fought our Country's Foes.

 

Renowned Statesmen, so Wise and Strong,

Who Served our Country Well and Long.

I Thrill at Thought of Mountains Grand;

Rolling Green Hills and Fertile Farm Land; 

Earth Rich with Stone, Mineral and Ore;

Forests Dense and Wild Flowers Galore;

 

Powerful Rivers that Bring us Light;

Deep Lakes with Fish and Fowl in Flight;

Thriving Cities and Industries;

Fine Schools and Universities;

Strong Folks of Pioneer Descent,

Simple, Honest, and Reverent. 

 

Beauty and Hospitality

Are the Hallmarks of Tennessee.

 

And O'er the World as I May Roam,

No Place Exceeds my Boyhood Home.

And Oh How Much I Long to See

My Native Land, My Tennessee.

Sunday, February 28, 1943. Norwegians at Vermok.

Norwegian ski born Norwegian commandos raided the Norsk Hydro plant at Vermok, Norway, destroying the heavy water inventory that had been produced there by the Germans.

The plant in 1948.

28,000 Norwegians carried on beyond Norway during the war, joining Norwegian forces that had made it out of Norway when it was invaded in 1940.  15,000 Norwegians joined the German forces, principally in the SS, which mostly fought on the Eastern Front, although Germany attempted to recruit Norwegians for the German Navy as well.  About 40,000 Norwegians participated in the Milorg, the Norwegian resistance.

The Vermok event was memorialized in the 1965 British war movie, Heroes of Telemark.  It was also featured in a 1948 Norwegian movie, Operation Swallow.

This was the third attempted raid on the plan, this one being more successful than the prior two.  Another air attack would take place in November 1943 and a heavy water transporting boat would be attacked in 1944.

The USAAF and RAF made a 1,000 plane raid on Saint-Nazaire submarine base.

Sunday, January 28, 1923. Gand est Français?

100,000 Francophone Belgians protested the imposition of Flemish at Ghent University, changing "Gand est Français".

The Belgian Chamber of Deputies had imposed Flemish, and prohibited French, by law.

Flemish is, of course, a Dutch dialect spoken in Belgium, one of Belgium's three languages, the third being German, which is spoken in a small area of the country.  Territorially, about half of Belgium speaks Flemish as their primary language.  Ghent, in northern Belgium, is in fact in the Flemish region of the country.

Flag of Flanders.

The Belgians who speak Flemish are also called the Flemis, and make up about 60% of the Belgian population, all concentrated in the north. Flanders is the Flemish region.   The French speaking area is part of Wallonia, a region which includes parts of France.

Flag of Wallonia.

New Zealand cricketer and later Wellington lawyer, Alfred Holdship, died at age 55

Thursday, January 18, 1923. French Toast.

France's Rhineland High Commission ordered French troops in the Ruhr to seize customs receipts and mine taxes and to take over the forests.  France seized German coal trucks, and French and Belgian authorities banned singing German patriotic songs, displaying flags, or wearing the national colors in buttonholes.

Meanwhile a massive riot broke out in the French Chamber of Deputies over the topic of suspending French Communist leader Marcel Cachin in order that he could be arrested for treason.  Cachin had denounced occupying the Ruhr and Morocco.

Monday, January 15, 1973. Ceasefire and air strikes in Vietnam, independence for Comoro, Watergate plea bargains.

President Nixon announced the suspension of offensive actions in North Vietnam, effective January 27, in anticipation of a successful conclusion of the Paris Peace Talks.  Effectively, this was the declaration of an impending ceasefire.  The U.S. Navy, however, hit fourteen North Vietnamese bridges on this day.

VFA-25 insignia. VFA-25 carried out today's' raids.

France signed a treaty with the Comoro Island guarantying them independence with five years, subject to a referendum approving the same.

Comoro flag at the time.

Four Watergate defendants accepted plea bargains.  Remember, this was a trial regarding an even that had happened quite recently, showing that justice really did move a lot more swiftly in the pre late Bomber era.

Thursday, January 11, 1923. The French and Belgians Occupy the Ruhr

In one of the most condemned moves of 20th Century history, French and Belgium troops (the Belgians are often forgotten as having a role in this) started their occupation of the Ruhr by crossing into Essen into 0445.

French troops in Dortmund.

100,000 French soldiers were in the Ruhr by the end of the week.

Forgotten in this is that the French were a far more stable political entity at the time than the Germans, and the Germans had breached the Versailles Treaty.  If the French had shown similar backbone in 1936, they would have stopped Hitler cold, caused him to lose the chancellorship, and he'd have been luck to have not ended up in the ground that year.

The Germans get a lot of sympathy here they really don't deserve.

Hitler did use the occasion to attack, in a speech, the German republican government.

Secy. of Labor Davis delivering the opening address at first meeting of the Nat'l Industrial Women's Conference, Jan. 11, 1923, at the Nat'l Museum.

Greek King Constantine 1 died in Italy in exile at age 54.  He reigned, and abdicated, twice, losing his second regnum due to the war with Turkey.

Very oddly, his successor, two intervening kings in between, Constantine II died yesterday at age 82 in Athens.  He was Greek's last king.