Sunday, August 3, 1924. German memorial day.

Germany observed its first memorial day.  

German communists disrupted a noontime two minutes of silence, with German police moving in to restore order.

Jewish Berliners held a separate service in the memory of Jewish German soldiers who were killed during the war, as a Jewish cleric was not allowed to deliver a prayer at the Reichstag ceremony held that day.

Soviet agents raided Stolpce Poland in a mission to free two members of the Communist Party of Western Belarus.  Seven Polish policemen were killed but the Soviet mission failed and would cause a reassessment of such attacks.

An American plane had made the leap to Iceland in the around the world flight:

It was a Sunday paper, so it had some human interest ones, including the following one, which I"m not sure I grasp:

King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan, declared a jihad against six tribes who had commenced the Khost rebellion.

Ja'far al-Askari resigned as Prime Minister of Iraq in protest of the Constituent Assembly voting to ratify the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty approving the terms of the Mandate for Mesopotamia and making Iraq a British protectorate.

British novelist Joseph Conrad died.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 24, 1924. Around the world flight reaches the Orkneys.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Army, First Around The World Flight, Orkney Islands, U.S. Air Force, United Kingdom

Sunday, August 2, 1874. A new Icelandic Constitution.

Danish King Christian IX handed a new constitution to the Icelandic parliament granting it more independence, but not independence.  He also asked for every church on the island, all Lutheran, to hold a service in honor of the event.  As it was Sunday, they all would have held services in any event.

The date is widely observed in Icelandic communities in North America, but not on Iceland.

A further advance towards independence would come in 1918, when the Danish Kingdom of Iceland was established, and the island declared independence in 1944.

Last edition:

Thursday, July 23, 1874. Custer on Inyan Kara.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Army, Black Hills, Blog Mirror, cavalry, Frontier Wyoming, George A. Custer, The Frontier West

Saturday, June 17, 1944. A stateside tragedy.

B-24J 42-100023 piloted by 2nd. Lt. Richard Zorn of Connecticut crashed on top of Casper Mountain, south of Casper, Wyoming, at about midnight, killing all on board.

The US 7th Corps advanced markedly on this day.  The British, however, were having trouble near Caen.

The 41 Commando, Royal Marines, took the German surrender at Douvres-la-Délivrande.

Royal Marines in Douvres-la-Délivrande.

Iceland declared independence from Denmark.  Large celebrations broke out in the country.

South Dakota suffered a horrific tornado outbreak, killing 13 people and injuring 550.

Last prior edition:

Friday, June 16, 1944. Executions.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Aircraft, Army, British Army, Chichijima, Crime, French Resistance Movements, Gestapo, Guam, Haha Jima, Italy, Iwo Jima, Operation Overlord, Saipan, World War Two, Yugoslav Partisans, Yugoslavia

Tuesday, October 16, 1973. Doubling the price of oil and false peace.

OPEC doubled the price of oil from $2.18/bbl to $5.12/bbl.  It didn't consult with the oil companies before doing so, and in some ways initiated in the modern, post, post World War Two, economy.

$5.12?  Yes, that's what it was.

That would be $33.75 adjusted for inflation.

The UK and Iceland came to an agreement to end the Cod War.

Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  The North Vietnamese negotiation, however, did not accept it, stating:

However, since the signing of the Paris agreement, the United States and the Saigon administration continue in grave violation of a number of key clauses of this agreement. The Saigon administration, aided and encouraged by the United States, continues its acts of war. Peace has not yet really been established in South Vietnam. In these circumstances it is impossible for me to accept the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace which the committee has bestowed on me. Once the Paris accord on Vietnam is respected, the arms are silenced and a real peace is established in South Vietnam, I will be able to consider accepting this prize. With my thanks to the Nobel Prize Committee please accept, madame, my sincere respects.

Saturday, August 11, 1973. American Graffitti

American Graffiti was released on this day in 1973.  It's on our Movies In History list, which discusses it here:

American Graffiti

Like The Wonder Years, I've made frequent reference to this film recently.  I was surprised when I started doing that, that I'd never reviewed it.

American Graffiti takes place on a single night in Modesto California in 1962.  It's the late summer and the subject, all teenagers, are about to head back to school or already have, depending upon whether they're going to high school or college. Some are going to work or already working.  They're spending the summer night cruising the town.  That's used as a vehicle to get them into dramatic situations.

The story lines, and there are more than one, in the film are really simple.  One character, played by Richard Dreyfus, is about to leave for college and develops a mad crush, in a single night, for a young woman driving a T-bird played by a young Suzanne Summers.  Another plot involves a young couple, played by Ron Howard and Cindy Williams, who are struggling with his plan to leave for college while she has one more year of school.  Another involves an already graduated figure whose life is dedicated to cars, even though its apparent that he knows that dedication can't last forever.  The cast, as some of these names would indicate, was excellent, with many actors and actresses making their first really notable appearances in the film.

What's of interest here is the films' portrayal of the automobile culture of American youth after World War Two. This has really passed now, but it's accurately portrayed in the film.  Gasoline was relatively cheap and access to automobiles was pretty wide, which created a culture in which adolescents spent a lot of time doing just what is depicted in this movie, driving around fairly aimlessly, with the opposite sex on their minds, on Friday and Saturday nights.  This really existed in the 1960s, when this film takes place, it dated back at least to the 1950s, and it continued on into the very early 1980s. At some point after that, gasoline prices, and car prices, basically forced it out of existence.

For those growing up in the era, this was a feature of Fridays and Saturdays either to their amusement or irritation.  As a kid, coming into town on a Friday or Saturday evening from anything was bizarre and irritating, with racing automobiles packed with teenagers pretty much everywhere.  Grocery store parking lots were packed with parked cars belonging to them as well.  "Cruising" was a major feature of teenage life, and nearly every teenager participated in it at least a little big, even if they disavowed doing it.  While they did this, in later years they listened to FM radio somewhat, but more likely probably cassette tape players installed after market in their cars.  In the mid 1970s it was 8 track tape players.  In the 50s and 60s, it was the radio.

So, as odd as it may seem to later generations, this movie is pretty accurate in terms of what it displays historically.  And, given that the film was released in 1973, a mere decade after the era it depicts, it should be.  The amazing thing here is that by 1973 American culture had changed so much that a 1973 film looking back on 1962 could actually invoke a sense of nostalgia and an era long past.

The music and clothing are certainly correct, as is the cruising culture.  I somewhat question the automobiles in the movie, as most of those driven by the protagonists are late 1950s cars that wouldn't have been terribly old at the time the movie portrays, but a person knowledgeable on that topic informed me once that vehicles wore out so fast at the time that people replaced them fairly rapidly, which meant that younger people were driving fairly recent models.  Indeed, looking back on myself, I was driving early 1970s vintage vehicles in the late 1970s.

The music, which is a big feature of the movie, is also correct, which ironically often causes people to view this as a movie about the 1950s, rather than the early 1960s.  The music of the early 60s was the same as that of the late 50s, and music from the 50s was still current in the early 1960s, so this too is correct.

This movie was a huge hit, and it remained very popular for a very long time.  It's justifiably regarded as a classic.  More than that, however, it's one of the few movies that influences its own times.

Already by the 1970s there was some nostalgia regarding the 1950s.  Sha Na Na, the 50s reprisal do wop band, actually preformed at Woodstock, as amazing as that seems now.  By the late 1960s seems felt like such a mess that people were looking back towards an earlier era which they regarded as safer, ignoring its problems.  American Graffiti tapped into that feeling intentionally, although it has some subtle dark elements suggesting that not all is right with the world it portrays (the film clearly hints that a returned college graduate student is involved with his teenage female students).  George Lucas, when he made the film, couldn't have guess however that it would fuel a nostalgia boom for the 1950s like none other.

From our entry:

Movies In History: American Graffiti, and other filmed portrayals of the Cultural 1950s (1954-1965).

One of the really remarkable things about this film, well worth noting, is that it depicted a night in 1962.  That means, of course, that it was depicting, with nostalgia, something that had happened only ten years prior and yet already seemed like an earlier era.

Do we feel that way about 2013?  I doubt it.

This demonstrates that our perception of the decades not only depends upon years, and the years we've lived but also on events and eras.  What made the 1962 seem like history in 1973?

Well, probably quite a lot.  The US entered the Vietnam War and had just left the country in defeat, although the collapse of South Vietnam was yet to come.  The US had landed men on the moon more than once.  The Great Society had come and gone.  A U.S. president had died violently.  Inflation was racking the nation.

And 1968, which is to say "the 60s" had come, and was just leaving, although that was not apparent.

By the 80s, those who had "experienced the 60s" were looking back on some of it fondly, although they weren't looking back on the Vietnam War fondly.  So the process slightly repeated itself. But by 1973 people were really aware that the post World War Two world had really passed.  It wasn't as carefree as depictions of the 1950s would have it, not by a long shot.  But a lamenting of what had been lost was starting, and in some ways, has very much returned.

Looking forward, it was on this day that "hip hop", or "rap" was born when Jamaican born Olive Campbell introduced the form under the stage name DJ Kool Herc at a party organized by Campbell and his sister, that being the Bronx, New York, Back To School Jam.

The Soviet Union sentenced for men to death and three to prisoner terms for collaboration with the Germans while they were members of the Red Army during World War Two.

The Icelandic Coast Guard ship  ICGV Óðinn rammed the Royal Navy's HMS Andromeda off the Icelandic coast in a violent exchange in the Cod Wars.

Wednesday July , 1943. Slow Progress at Kursk, Progress at Mubo, Captured arms for Finns, Bishop of Iceland, Social Pressure in Oregon.*

Il-2s at Kursk. By RIA Novosti archive, image #225 / Fyodor Levshin / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15577237

It was day two for the Battle of Kursk. The Germans suffered substantial tank losses due to IL-2 action.

Ground forces highly valued the work of aviation on the battlefield. In a number of instances enemy attacks were thwarted thanks to our air operations. Thus on 7 July enemy tank attacks were disrupted in the Kashara region (13th Army). Here our assault aircraft delivered three powerful attacks in groups of 20–30, which resulted in the destruction and disabling of 34 tanks. The enemy was forced to halt further attacks and to withdraw the remnants of his force north of Kashara.

 Glantz and Orenstein 1999, p. 260.

I'd be skeptical of the number claimed in that entry, but the problem faced is an obvious one. Indeed, the Germans were attacking a salient that was defended in depth, and their air force wasn't what it had once been.  The tactical problem is similar to that which is faced by Ukraine today.

The Wehrmacht's 9th Army, commanded by Walter Model, made only small gains on the Central Front.  Hoth's 4th Panzer Army nearly broke through Voronezh Front defenses around Syrtzevo but Soviet armored counterattacks prevented this from occurring.

The Australians bombed Mubo, New Guinea and captured Observation Hill thereafter.

The Finns passed out captured Russian arms to civilians for home defense.

Jóhannes Gunnarsson, SMM was consecrated as the Catholic Bishop of Hólar, Iceland in Washington, D.C.  He had been appointed to be head of the Catholic Church in Iceland the prior February.  He occupied the position until 1967, when he resigned as he was facing ill health.

Born in Reykjavik, he had been a Catholic Priest since 1924 and was the first Icelandic Catholic Bishop since Jón Arason, who was beheaded with his two sons by King Christian III in 1550. 

Christianity had come to Iceland in the form of the Latin Rite with Irish monks, who inhabited the island prior to Scandinavian conquest, and then with Irish slaves held there, although it seems some early missionary activity may have occured well before the Althing adopted it for the island in 1000. It remained a Catholic country until King Christian III of Denmark and Norway forced it on those countries following a civil war in Denmark.  A civil war over the issue occured in Iceland, where Catholic opposition to Lutheranism was put down by royalist forces.  Catholicism was outlawed after that and the formerly Catholic island became a Lutheran one, with those refusing to convert forced into exile.  Oddly, Latin remained the language of the Church of Iceland, however, until 1686.

The Catholic Church reappeared officially in 1855.  The Church has grown quite a bit in recent years, but remains small.  The Lutheran Church on the island had been in the very conservative branch until after World War Two, when it went over to the liberal branch thereafter.

Women in Oregon applied social pressure to war work:

"No work, no woo" pledge, 1943

Rudolph Foster, age 70, Chief Clerk of the White House Executive Offices since 1897, passed away.

*This was mistakenly run as the July 6 series of events for 1943.  Nope, this all happened on July 7.

Monday, May 3, 1943. The crash of Hot Stuff claims the life of Gen. Andrews.

Lt. Gen. Frank Maxwell Andrews, for whom Andrews Air Force Base is named, died in the crash of the B-24 Hot Stuff in Iceland, when it went down in bad weather.

He had been on an inspection tour in the United Kingdom.

Only the plane's tail gunner, SSgt George A. Eisel, survived the crash.  Eisel had survived a previous B-24 crash in North Africa.  He'd live until 1964 when he died at age 64.  Married prior to the war, he and his wife never had any children.

Hot Stuff was the first B-24D to complete 25 missions, well before, it might be noted, the B-17 Memphis Belle did the same.  Hardly anyone recalls Hot Stuff, as the Army went on to emphasize the Memphis Belle following the crash of Hot Stuff and the death of all but one of its crew.  Of note, Hot Suff, predictably, had a much more salacious example of nose art than Memphis Belle, and it's interesting to speculate how the Army would have handled that had the plane been popularized.  At any rate, the story that Memphis Belle was the first US bomber to complete 25 missions is a complete myth.

Andrews was the CO of the ETO at the time of this death.  A West Point Graduate from the class of 1906, he had been in the cavalry branch from 1906 to 1917, when he was assigned to aviation over the objection of his commander.  A prior objection had prevented his reassignment in 1914.

Sarah Sundin noted this event on her blog:

Today in World War II History—May 3, 1943: Lt. Gen. Frank Andrews, commander of US European Theater of Operations, is killed in a B-24 crash in Iceland. US II Corps takes Mateur, Tunisia.

She also noted the ongoing Allied advance in North Africa and the establishment of the British 6th Airborne Division. 

Mine workers called off the coal strike.

The United States Supreme Court invalidated a Jeannette, PA ordinance that required Jehovah's Witness members to acquire peddler's licenses before distributing religious literature.  The ordinance's license fee was a whopping $10.00/day.

A couple of interesting items. . .

 to ponder.

View from the S H Knight (geology) Building in 1986.

Recent research has indicated that humans reached the Faeroe Islands at least 300 years prior to the Vikings doing so.

This doesn't surprise me a bit, and apparently it's been more or less known for some time, and its what I would have expected, but new studies, involving obtaining DNA from the bottom of a lake, has proven it conclusively.

Evidence of really old sheep defecation was found down there.  Maybe sort of gross sounding in a way, but really cool nonetheless.  So not only was early colonization much earlier than guessed at, but it was true colonization.  I.e, we know about this place and we're bringing our sheep.

Really cool, in my opinion, is that part of the groundbreaking research was done by Dr. Lorelei Curtin of the University of Wyoming. She is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's Department of Geology and Geophysics, of which I'm a graduate.

She specializes, I'd note, in climate research and another study just out notes that global cooling seems to be brought about by global warming. Something I was taught when a student in that department some 35 or so years ago.

Graduates of the other department that I'm a graduate of, the College of Law, have not pegged me out on the pride meter much as time has gone on, but the Department of Geology and Geophysics is different.

Well, go Pokes.

I'll note this as well. The Vikings first settled Iceland starting in 874 and Greenland around 980.  I'm guessing that the last date is correct, but I'll bet that somebody was on Iceland by 874. Rather obviously, the Vikings weren't great at recording who exactly was where they went, when they got there, as the Faeroe Island discovery more or less proves.

Icelanders have mitochondrial DNA from a Native American woman.

So notes a recent study.

I'm only noting this, as it's interesting.

Recent evidence suggests that Vikings first colonized North America in 1021.  Of course, they probably showed up prior to that.  But, at any rate, they were showing up in North America by the 1000s.   They were aware of North America, for that matter, in the 900s, so recent studies not withstanding, I'd be surprised if they didn't have some sort of presence, perhaps only occasional and seasonal, in the second half of the 900s.

And at some point, one of them brought a Native American woman home to Iceland.

Now, we don't know the circumstances, and so far it seems to be only one, which is odd.  But it did occur, and she had children, and some of her children's children, carried down many times, live in Iceland today.

Thursday,, August 28, 1941. The Office of Price Administration Created, Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Loses Favor, The Soviet Dunkirk, Slaughter at Kamianets-Podilsky

The Office of Price Administration was crated by the Roosevelt Administration to combat inflationary trends caused by the massive boost in employment caused by World War Two and the countries efforts to get ready for it.

Stalin issued  a Decree of Banishment exiling Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic which had previously been an ethnic German Soviet enclave.  

The VGASSR would be officially disestablished on September 7.  It'd been created in the 1920s when the Soviets still attempted o placate local ethnic groups on the hopes that they'd come to like the Communist regime. 

Volga Oblast in yellow at bottom of map.

The fate of Volga Germans, in the country since the time of Catherine the Great, proved to be grim. The war would permanently impact their position in the country and while conditions improved for them after the death of Stalin, many emigrated to Germany under the German Law of Return, a trend that reached near totality in the 1980s and 1990s.  By that time it had reached a state of pathos and irony in that the remaining Volga Germans retained much of their early rustic nature, while also having lost the ability to speak German to a very large degree.  Their retained cultural attributes tended to shock modern Germans, while their inability to speak the language of their ancestors made it difficult for them to fit seamlessly into modern Germany.

While his action is regarded as one of the great atrocities of the Stalin era, and the Soviets have since apologized for it, at least in this instance Stalin's paranoid brutality was not without some reason to fear that they'd become a fifth column during the war given that anti Communist sentiments were strong in various Soviet ethnic groups.  Having said that, large numbers of Volga Germans volunteered for Soviet service in the Red Army during the war, although their services were not always accepted or wanted.

Emigrating to North America, it should be noted, had been a trend in the region for decades, and was accelerated when the Imperial Russian Government in later years rescinded exemption for the population from conscription.  In an interesting development, resistance to conscription, which in some Anabaptist German communities in Imperial Russia lead to North American emigration, did not tend to repeat itself in North America.

Today in World War II History—August 28, 1941

The Soviet Navy suffered a serious disaster when it lost several ships to mines while evacuating Tallinn, Estonia, in what has been called the "Soviet Dunkirk".   The Germans occupied the city on this day.  Meanwhile, the Germans lost a U boat to capture in Iceland. The boat would be returned to service in the Royal Navy as the HMS Graph.

The Germans also slaughtered 23,600 Jews in Kamianets-Podilsky on this day, as their campaign of slaughter reached new regions in the Soviet Union.

Saturday August 16, 1941. Lethal discipline in the Red Army.

Red Army soldier, you will not surrender your love to the Hitler's soldiers for the shame and dishonor.

On this day in 1941, Stalin issued Order No. 270

It provided:

Order of the Supreme Command of the Red Army on August 16, 1941, No. 270; "On the responsibility of the military for surrender and leaving weapons to the enemy"

Not only our friends, but also our enemies are forced to acknowledge that, in our war of liberation from German-Fascist invaders, that elements of the Red Army, the vast majority of them, their commanders and commissars conduct themselves with good behavior, courageously, and sometimes – outright heroically. Even those parts of our army who, by circumstances are detached from the army and encircled, preserve the spirit of resistance and courage, not surrendering, trying to cause more damage to the enemy and to leave the encirclement. It is known that such parts of our army continue to attack the enemy, and take every opportunity to defeat the enemy and break out of their encirclement.

Deputy Commander of the Western Front, Lieutenant-General Boldin, while in the 10th Army near Bialystok and surrounded by German-Fascist troops, organized from deep in the enemy's rear Red Army troops, who fought for 45 days behind enemy lines and made their way to the main forces of the Western Front. They destroyed the headquarters of two German regiments, 26 tanks, 1,049 passenger vehicles, transport vehicles and staff cars, 147 motorcycles, five batteries of artillery, four mortars, 15 machine guns, eight machine guns, one airplane at the airport and a bomb arsenal.

More than a thousand German soldiers and officers were killed. On 11 August Lieutenant-General Boldin struck the Germans from behind, broke through the German front, united with our troops, and led out of the encirclement 1,654 personnel and officers of the Red Army, including 103 wounded.

The commissar of the 8th Mechanized Corps, Brigade Commissar Popiel and the commander of the 406th Rifle Regiment, Colonel Novikov, have fought out of encirclement with 1,778 soldiers. During a bitter battle with the Germans, the Novikov-Popel group travelled 650 kilometres, causing huge losses to the enemy's rear.

The commander of the 3rd Army, Lieutenant-General Kuznetsov and Member of the Military Council, Army Commissar 2nd Rank Biryukov fought out of encirclement with 498 soldiers and officers of the 3rd Army, and led out of encirclement the 108th and 64th Infantry Divisions.

All these and many other similar facts show the resilience of our troops; the high morale of our soldiers, commanders and commissars.

But we cannot hide that recently there have been some shameful acts of surrender. Certain generals have been a bad example to our troops.

The commander of the 28th Army, Lieutenant General Kachalov who – together with his headquarters troops – was surrounded, showed cowardice and surrendered to the German fascists. However, the headquarters of Kachalov came out of encirclement, a small group from the encirclement of Kachalov's group, and Lt.-Gen. Kachalov chose to surrender – chose to defect to the enemy.

Lieutenant-General Ponedelin, commander of the 12th Army was encircled by the enemy, but had ample opportunity to get through them, as did the vast majority of his army. But Ponedelin has not shown due persistence and will to win, was panicked, frightened – and surrendered to the enemy, deserted to the enemy, thus committing the crime against the country of breaking a military oath.

The commander of the 13th Rifle Corps, Major General Kirillov, was surrounded by German-Fascist forces and, rather than to fulfill his duty to the country, entrusted to him to organize stubborn resistance of the enemy and to move out of encirclement, deserted the field of battle and surrendered to the enemy. As a result the 13th Rifle Corps was broken, and some of them without serious resistance surrendered.

In all the above situations some military council members, commanders, political workers, special section members, that were present in the encirclement, showed an unacceptable distraction, shameful cowardice and did not even try to become motivated to prevent Kachalov, Ponedelin, Kirillov and others to surrender to the enemy.

These shameful facts of surrender to our sworn enemy testify that there are unstable, cowardly, cowardly elements in the ranks of the Red Army, which is staunchly and selflessly defending its Soviet Motherland from the vile invaders. And these cowardly elements are not only among the Red Army, but also among the commanding staff. As you know, some commanders and political workers by their behavior, not only at the front of the Red Army did not show a sample of courage, strength and love of country, and vice versa hide in crevices in the offices are busy, do not see and do not observe the field of battle, and when the first serious challenges to combat shrink from the enemy, tear off his insignia, a deserter from the battlefield.

Can we put up with in the Red Army cowards, deserters who surrender themselves to the enemy as prisoners or their craven superiors, who at the first hitch on the front tear off their insignia and desert to the rear? No we can not! If we unleash these cowards and deserters they, in a very short time, will destroy our country. Cowards and deserters must be destroyed.

Can we assume battalion commanders and commanders of regiments, who hide in crevices during combat, do not see the battlefield, and make no progress on the field of battle are regimental commanders and battalions? No we can not! These are not commanders of regiments and battalions, they are impostors.

If such impostors are unleashed, they soon turn our army into a massive bureaucracy. These impostors should be immediately dismissed from office, reduced in post to the rank and file, transferred, and if necessary shot on the spot, before appointing in their place bold and courageous people from the ranks of junior command personnel or soldiers.

I ORDER:

•          That commanders and political officers who, during combat tear off their insignia and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, be considered malicious deserters whose families are subject to arrest as a family, for violation of an oath and betrayal of their homeland.

·         All higher commanders and commissars are required to shoot on the spot any such deserters from among command personnel.

·         Encircled units and formations to selflessly fight to the last, to protect materiel like the apple of their eye, to break through from the rear of enemy troops, defeating the fascist dogs.

·         That every soldier is obliged, regardless of his or her position, to demand that their superiors, if part of their unit is surrounded, to fight to the end, to break through, and if a superior or a unit of the Red Army – instead of organizing resistance to the enemy – prefers to become a prisoner they should be destroyed by all means possible on land and air, and their families deprived of public benefits and assistance.

·         Division commanders and commissars are obliged to immediately shift from their posts commanders of battalions and regiments, who hide in crevices during battle and those who fear directing a fight on the battlefield; to reduce their positions, as impostors, to be demoted to the ranks, and when necessary to shoot them on the spot, bringing to their place bold and courageous people, from among junior command personnel or those among the ranks of the Red Army who have excelled.

This order is to be read in all companies, squadrons, batteries, squadrons, teams and staffs.

Headquarters of the Supreme Command, Red Army

Chairman of the State Defence Committee J. STALIN

Deputy Chairman of the State Defence Committee V. MOLOTOV

Marshal S. BUDYONNY

Marshal S. TIMOSHENKO

Marshal B. SHAPOSHNIKOV

General of the Army G. ZHUKOV

This was the beginning of direct lethal action by the Soviets against surrendering and retreating members of the Red Army.  It wasn't unprecedented, however, as Stalin had already decimated the Red Army's officer corps prior to the war for bizarre and trumped up political reasons.  It all provided evidence of his absolute control over the Soviet Union, as at this point many other leaders would have been deposed.

Red Army desertions never stopped during the war, and amazingly occurred even late in the war.  The numbers were quite substantial.  The Germans never took advantage of this to the extent they could have, as they regarded the Russians as subhuman.

On the same day, the Germans began to take Black Sea ports in Ukraine.

And Winston Churchill, on his way home from Newfoundland, stopped by in Iceland.

Friday July 18, 1941. Stalin, ignoring the ongone second front, writes the British about a second front.

On this day in 1941 Stalin wrote the first of his "second front" letters, asking for the British to open up a second front in France and the Arctic.

This would prove to be an enduring Soviet theme during the war which completely ignored that the British Commonwealth had troops on the ground, fighting the Germans, on the day Operation Barbarossa commenced.  The Eastern Front was the second front.  On this particular day British Commonwealth forces were completing day two of the Twin Pimple raid, were besieged at Tobruk, had just defeated the Vichy French in Syria and Lebanon, were occupying Iraq, having just defeated a fascist coup there, were besieged, more or less, on Malta, and were engaged in the titanic Battle of the Atlantic.

None of this of course means that really enormous scale fighting wasn't going on in the East.  Operation Barbarossa is arguably the largest invasion ever conducted (although in terms of per capita population and scale, the Mongol invasion of everything to their west and the Hun invasion of the same is really actually larger).  The Soviets had, in fact, just lost 300,000 men to German captivity the prior day.  Still, it's a fact that the British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Indians, to name a few, were fighting on the ground for months prior to any Soviet soldier firing a shot.

Stalin's repeated requests were so pronounced that they've become part of the myth of World War Two, which has gone so far as to imagine that Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944, opened up that second front.  By that time, the Allies had taken all of North Africa, Sicily, and Rome.  Additionally, the western Allies were keeping the Japanese tied up in the Pacific. While there was little risk of the Japanese entering the war against the Soviet Union. . . they'd never been able to defeat the Chinese, that still helped alleviate a Soviet security concern.

Part of the reason this myth continues to endure has to do with really effective British propaganda and assessment of their foreign audiences.  Churchill wanted to placate, not anger, Stalin, so he went along with the theme.  We really don't need to anymore.

In other war news, the United States Army Air Corps started operating out of Iceland and Secretary of the Navy Knox approved a plan to build 100 destroyers for the Royal Navy.  You can find out about that here:

Today in World War II History—July 18, 1941

Monday July 7, 1941. Marines in Iceland, Churchill writes Stalin, Patton in a turret, protests in New York City, rebellion in Yugoslavia.

U.S. Marines landed in Iceland.  President Roosevelt sent a note to Congress explaining the act as one necessary to protect Greenland, a Danish possession and frankly to protect arms shipments to the United Kingdom.

Marines in Iceland during World War Two.

The July issue of Life magazine featured George S. Patton in the turret of a light tank. The photograph remains a famous one.

On the same day Churchill sent a letter to Stalin praising Soviet resistance and vaguely promising British support to the USSR.  Churchill noted the UK's "growing resources".  On the same day, a protest in New York City urged the US to stop supplying arms to the UK.  Stalin wasn't impressed by the letter and asked for a formal written alliance between the two countries.

Serbian poster urging rebellion and the recruitment of partisans.

The Communist party in Servia revolted against the Serbian puppet regime and a rebellion also broke out in Herzegovina.

It was becoming clear that Yugoslavia was not going to enter the Axis sphere and would require a constant German presence.  The country had rebelled against its own government in order to oppose cooperation with the Axis in the first place and the rebellions of this date were at least the third to break out in that country.

Monday, June 16, 1921. German consulates closed, Iceland occupied, Yeomanry patrol, Washington National opened.

The United States ordered all German consulates closed by July 10, 1941, along with all German news and propaganda organs.  The order did not apply to its embassy.

Today in World War II History—June 16, 1941

The US was clearly walking closer and closer to entry into the war.

In another example of that, the US commenced occupying Iceland, a Danish possession at that time (it'd declare independence in 1944).  This ends up being contrary to an earlier entry here, but this is likely the correct date for the commencement of the U.S. occupation of Iceland.  

This was done by way of a request from the United Kingdom which had been occupying the country, much to its discontent, both with its own troops as well as with Canadian ones.

Our earlier, and I believe mistake containing entry, stated the following:

4,000 Marines, a substantial number, arrived in Iceland to replace British troops garrisoning the country.

USS New York off of Reykjavik, July 1941.

Iceland had not regarded the British invasion of their island, done to keep the Germans from seizing it, as a favor.  US forces were not invited either, but were better tolerated under the circumstances.

The occupation remains controversial in Iceland today.  It lead to Icelandic independence and had a predictable economic development aspect for the island.  It also lead to cultural connections, of all types, with a group of people who were highly self isolated and who remain so to a degree today.

In a much warmer place, the Cheshire Yeomanry, a British Army reservists unit mobilized for the war, was photographed on patrol in Syria.

Winston Church accepted an honorary degree from Rochester University in the US and delivered a speech directed at an American audience from London, by radio.

A significant American airport opened on this day in 41.

July 16, 1941. The Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport opened.

It was the Washington National Airport in 1941.

The airport opened, obviously, just before the United States' entry into the Second World War, it's 1941 opening partially explained by a prohibition in airport funding that was lifted in 1938.

Washington National in 1944.

It was built on grounds near Arlington that had been part of a large plantation, but its location very much constrains it size, so it remains a shockingly small airport in spite of its signficance.

It was renamed for President Ronald Reagan in 1998.  

I've personally never flown into it, having landed at the nearby Baltimore airport once.

Thursday, June 5, 1941. The US starts to occupy Iceland

4,000 Marines, a substantial number, arrived in Iceland to replace British troops garrisoning the country.

USS New York off of Reykjavik.

Iceland had not regarded the British invasion of their island, done to keep the Germans from seizing it, as a favor.  US forces were not invited either, but were better tolerated under the circumstances.

On the same day about 4,000 Chinese residents of Chongquing China died of asphyxiation in a tunnel in which they had sought refuge from a Japanese air raid.

Vichy France's status as a quasi belligerent on the Axis side increased when their aircraft bombed Aman, Jordan.   The Royal Air Force had already bombed Syrian airfields, so the move wasn't wholly unjustified, but it did signal that France was creeping up on being an outright Axis ally under the authoritarian regime of Marshal Petain.

Around 2,500 people were killed in an ammunition storage explosion in Yugoslavia.

Countdown on the Great War: October 19, 1918. Empires and monarchies of all types continue to fall apart, the Allies continue to advance, the German Navy continues to sink ships, and the Flu remains uncontained.

1. The Allies captured Bruges, Courtrai, and Zeebrugge, Belgium.  In the process, 12,000 Germans surrendered.  The Belgian Army engaged in the last cavalry charge of World War One when the Guides Regiment successfully charged at the Burkel Forest.

2.  The Portuguese sailing ship Aida sunk by a German U-boat. The British ships Almerian and the HMS Plumpton struck mines, sinking the Almerian and damaging the Plumpton. The German submarine UB-123 also hit a mine in the North Sea and went down with all hands.

3. The West Ukrainian People's Republic was established in the Ukrainian provinces of the Austro Hungarian Empire.

4.  A flu hospital was established in Casper.

5.  Old allegiances of all types were seemingly being modified everywhere.  Icelanders voted overwhelmingly for becoming a separate kingdom with the Danish king as their sovereign.

Bitcoin and the law of unintended consequences

An interesting energy related, sort of, news item.

KEFLAVIK, Iceland — Iceland is expected to use more energy “mining” bitcoins and other virtual currencies this year than it uses to power its homes.

With massive amounts of electricity needed to run the computers that create bitcoins, large virtual currency companies have established a base in the North Atlantic island nation blessed with an abundance of renewable energy.

The new industry’s relatively sudden growth prompted lawmaker Smari McCarthy of Iceland’s Pirate Party to suggest taxing the profits of bitcoin mines. The initiative is likely to be well received by Icelanders, who are skeptical of speculative financial ventures after the country’s catastrophic 2008 banking crash.

Keflavik has always been odd.  It was founded in the 16th Century by Scottish engineers and entrepreneurs and became a flight hub for the Allies during World War Two.  It's noted for its musicians the Icelandic rock and roll hall of fame is located in the city of 15,000.

Now, Bitcoin.