January 5, 1920. The first Monday of the year. Ice, Raids, Long and Bobbed Hair, and Fighting the Reds

It was the first Monday of the New Year, and the New Decade, the date, being the first of a full work week, when the new year really begins, at least for adults.  

So how did it start off?

Joseph and Thomas Leiter skating on the basin, Joseph takes a fall.  Washington D. C., 1/5/20.

Washington D.C. was apparently having a cold snap, as the Tidal Basin was frozen and children were taking advantage of it for ice skating.

 Miss Betty Baker, daughter of the Secty. of War and Miss Annie Kittleson skating on the Tidal Basin, Washington D. C., 1/5/20.

Admiral Jellicoe was still making the rounds.

Admiral Jellicoe photographed in Secty. Daniels office at the Navy Dept.  1/5/20.

The Supreme Court upheld the Volstead Act thereby wiping out booze for good, or so it would seem, right down to the ultra light beer level.

At the same time, things were developing and heating up in Ireland, where separatists Republicans were fighting the British in their effort to form a separate republic.  A familiar map was beginning to take place there.

Closer to home the Palmer Raids were still being celebrated and a new effort was underway for a sedition act designed to take on home grown Reds, described by the Casper headline writer as "long haired men and short cropped women". That headline actually did catch a hair style trend in radical women, albeit on that was about to spread.  As described by Whitaker Chambers in Witness, radical women of the time bobbed their hair.  Soon, that style, perhaps boosted by the daring radicalism, would spread to the female population in general.

By 1924, bobbed hair would be a flapper thing.  In 1920, it was a Red thing.

Reds and their opponents were at it tooth and nail elsewhere.

In Poland the Battle of Daugavpils concluded with the Soviets retreating into Latvia and being taken into custody there. That was possible as Poland and Latvia, which had been fighting, had concluded an armistice in the struggle between them and had asked the Poles for help. The anti Red forces were approximately half Pole and half Latvian, and fought successfully under Polish command.

Mustered Polish armor in the form of French tanks at Daugavpils.

June 23, 1919. The collapse of things German.

On this Monday in June 1919, the German government confirmed it would sign the Versailles Treaty.

The German government had collapsed, as we've seen, over the issue which had required the Reichstag to form a new government.  In so doing, that body formally voted to accept the treaty by a comfortable margin.

It didn't happen, of course, before the German Navy took steps to sink itself, which was still in the headlines.  Less noted, German airmen took the same step with Zeppelins on this day, which was more in the nature of an act of defiance.  As it was, it hardly mattered as the day of the airship as an offensive weapon of war was over.

A person could debate these sentiments, but in the next war they wouldn't occur  Aircraft were advancing too fast and there was no escape from the carnage anywhere.

It was a day of defeat of German interest in general, as Estonian and Latvian forces defeated the Baltic German Landswehr, which had been their allies in their wars against the Reds but which had then gone on to install their own pro German government in Latvia, at the Battle of Cēsis. 

Member of the Baltic Landswehr carrying German equipment and uniformed in the German style.

This would end the Baltic German bid for control of the region and bring to an end a process that had started in the Medieval era.  Oddly,as the German empire collapsed German military interest had fought on, and then turned their effort over to the local Germans, with vague imperial aspirations in mind.

Baltic Germans would hang on the region thereafter but a series of resettlement programs commenced in 1939 and carried through during the Soviet administration of the in cooperation with Nazi Germany. Even after the Nazis captured the region after attacking the Soviet Union Baltic Germans were not allowed to return and by the wars end additional efforts were made to take them out, given the fate that the Nazis had dealt them. Today some Baltic Germans remain in the region but the numbers are quite small.

The day is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia, which also traditionally celebrates the day as St. John's Day, an event that stands as a major holiday on the calendar in the region.  The day traditionally marks the commencement of summer.

Elsewhere in the north, more or less, Czech forces were being pulled out of Vladivostok.

Czechs on a tug in Vladivostok harbor waiting to board the Archer on their way out of Russia and war.