Monday, July 8, 1946. Germans ordered to go home.

The Soviet military government of Austria began deporting Germans who had moved to the country after 1938.  54,000 would be repatriated to a Germany.

The News reported about a Hughes' accident.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 7, 1946. Mother Cabrini canonized.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Catholic, Christianity, Immigration, Italy, Jimmy Carter, Personalities, Protestant, religion, United States

Wednesday, June 26, 1946. The Nationalist Chinese Strike.

Chiang Kai-shek launched a nationwide offensive against the Red Chinese designed to take control of the entire country. A sign that things might not go well occurred when Nationalist pilot Liu Shanben defected to the Communists with a B-24 Liberator.

The Nationalist Army had the edge on paper.  It was larger and much better equipped.  It also had more combat experience, the Red Chinese having sat out much of the Second World War.  The Nationalist also had the benefit of various degrees of U.S. training, and oddly enough, German training before that.

World War Two vintage U.S. poster depicting a Nationalist soldier and his family. The soldier is accurately depicted in a Nationalist uniform, which was based on German uniforms, including the iconic German feldmutze.  He's carrying a 98 rifle, although the straight bolt handle would indicate that it is not a K98k, many of which were supplied to the Nationalist by Nazi Germany.  The rifle instead is a Mauser Standardmodell, a commercial predecessor to the K98k, or perhaps a Chinese made copy.  Of course, this is just an illustration but it's likely based on photographs.  By this point in 1946 many Chinese troops had American equipment of various types, but many infantrymen remained equipped just like this.  Indeed, Chinese soldiers were more likely to carry Mauser bolt actions than any other rifle.

Last edition:

Tuesday, June 25, 1946. The World Bank commences operations.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Aircraft, China, China (Xuzhou), Chinese Civil War, Economics, Food, Nationalist Chinese Army, Office of Price Administration, World Bank

Death's Head

 

Imperial German Totenkopf.

This election has been a reminder about being careful about getting tattoos.

Maine Democratic Senatorial candidate Graham Platner, in addition to other skeletons (no pun intended) in his closet, has, or at least had, a large Death's Head tattoo on one of his breasts.  Not one like the one above, but one more or less like this:

Shown here:

Well, I say, had, now its this:

We're informed that's a Celtic knot and a dog.

Well, anyhow, this has caused quite a flap, as the design he had is pretty clearly the same one used by the SS during World War Two.

He says he didn't know that.  Frankly, while people are incredulous about that, he may very well not have known that.

Indeed, one of the things that's interesting about this, as an (amateur) historian is that suddenly everyone is an expert on World War Two German insignia.  I doubt that many people, anymore, were before the last couple of weeks.  Indeed, I can recall Walmart getting in trouble some years ago has had a t-shirt it was selling with some Nazi symbology on it, if I recall correctly SS ruins.

Anyhow, the Totenkopf has an interesting and weird  history.  It's been around for a very long time, and is famously associated with pirates from the 18th Century, who flew various variants of death's head flags, nicknamed the "Jolly Roger", to warn a ship they were approaching that that's what they were.  Death's head on a flag threatened death, and the hope was accordingly that the opponent would give up without a fight.  Because of the pirate association, legitimate navies coopted the symbol and you can still find it in use to some degree in navies.

The crew of the HMS Utmost showing off their Jolly Roger in February 1942.

The Prussians started using it as a military symbol under Frederick the Great, when it was introduced to hussars. That use was distinct enough that one US state militia unit, formed as hussars, was still using it with a distinctly Prussian style uniform at the start of the Civil War.  It also spread to other units in the various German states prior to German unification, and to some other European nations.  One Spanish unit, for example used it.

Field Marshall August von Mackensen in 1914 in his full dress hussars uniform.

Infante Fernando wearing the uniform of Spain's 8th Light Armoured Cavalry Regiment "Lusitania" in 1915

After German unification following the Franco Prussian War the pre unification units that used it continued to, with some German units and even individuals adopting it informally.  After the German defeat in the Great War, some Freikorps units used it and it carried on in use in German cavalry units.

After Hitler's rise to power, the SS co-opted it almost immediately at the time of their formation, but that didn't actually cause the German Army or the Luftwaffe from using it as well.  German panzer troops wore a black uniform with the Totenkopf early on, with the design aat first being identical to the SS in that regard. The SS later changed its design, which Heer panzer units never did.

German panzer soldier, wearing a 1939 black flat cap, with a feldgrau shirt, black tie and black jacket with Totenkopf lapel badge. The first version of the panzer uniform featured a very large black beret.

This actually created some confusion at the time and still does, although the confusion was more of a problem to German troops during the war.  By 1944 the Totenkopf was associated with the SS as was the color black, which actually was not worn by most Waffen SS troops.  Tanker POWs were easily mistaken for members of the SS and risked being shot out of hand to some degree.  By 44, however, black was being phased out for tankers, both in the Heer and SS, in favor of feldgrau.  They retained the Totenkopf, however.

As sort of a rough rule of thumb, every member of the SS wore a uniform with a Totenkopf device, including auxiliary units.  Armored units of the Heer wore it also, as did the one oddball Luftwaffe armored unit.  One Luftwaffe bomber unit used it as a symbol as well.  Black uniforms were worn by tankers of all branches early on, and as regular SS dress uniforms, but not as Waffen SS dress uniforms.

This doesn't get into the concentration camp system uniforms, which I don't know anything about, and which were often staffed by auxiliaries. They all wore the deaths head, however.

One Nazi organization that didn't wear the Totenkopf or a black uniform was the Gestapo.  Movies and television shows constantly show them doing that, but they didn't.  For example, an SS dress uniform is shown being worn by a Gestapo member in both Where Eagles Dare and Hogan's Heroes.  In reality, the Gestapo didn't have any uniform at all.  The depiction given in Von Ryan's Express is the correct one. They favored civilian dress clothes and trench coats, often leather ones.  They were, after all, secret police and were dressed like civilians.

Marine Corps Raiders' insignia.

One US ground unit used it too, the Marine Corps Raiders, which took it from Naval use.

By the war's end the death's head, except in naval use, was hopelessly associated with the SS, although amazingly some use continues on.  The South Korean 3rd Infantry Division, the British Army’s Royal Lancers and Brazilian Military Police use it officially.  Some Ukrainian units controversially use it which seems to be an intentional effort to associate themselves with the World War Two era Ukrainian National Army which fought both the USSR and the Germans, but the Germans rather late.

Various navies keep using it, but the Nazis didn't taint the pirate association it had on the seas.

One place it oddly saw use was in civilian groups that wanted to cultivate an edge look after the war.  All sort of Nazi paraphernalia became associated with motorcycle gangs.  And heavy metal bands affected the look as well.

Ian Fraser Kilmister, "Lemmy" of Motörhead who notoriously sported German military and German SS paraphernalia constantly, and who did know what it meant.  He claimed to have no Nazi sympathies.  His father had been a chaplain in the RAF.

The interesting thing there, I suppose, is that the predecessor to the SS was the SA.  The SA didn't use the Totenkopf, but it was comprised of thugs, so in a way the Nazi paraphernalia returned to a demographic that had first used it.

So, what of Platner? 

Darned if I know.  He says he didn't know what it meant, and I suspect a lot of Americans under 70 years of age don't know what it means.  World War Two is simply too long ago for a uniform detail to have much in the cultural memory.  Those younger people who do know what it was used for are likely students of history, members of prison gangs, or white supremacists.  History students don't get tattooed with the Totenkopf.  The other two groups likely do.  That doesn't mean that Platner was a white supremacist, however.

It does require some sort of explanation, however.

While on the topic of the tattoos, let's discuss Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense.

Pete Hegseth is festooned with tattoos.

Pete has a variety of them, which seem to be the following:

• Jerusalem Cross, a type4 of Christian cross associated with the Crusades, rightly or wrongly.
• "Deus Vult", Latin for "God wills it", a phrase claimed to be associated with the Crusaders.
• Kafir, the Arabic for infidel, but also Afrikaans slang for blacks.
• Cross & Sword, apparently referencing Matthew 10:34
• Yahweh, the Hebrew lettering for the name of God, added near his cross and sword tattoo.
• "We the People", The opening phrase of the U.S. Constitution.
• American Flag & AR-15. 
• Roman numerals (1775) & Stars: The year the U.S. Army and the Revolutionary War began.
• "Join, or Die" Snake, the Benjamin Franklin cartoon depicting a severed snake, symbolizing colonial unity during the American Revolution.
• Infantry Patch.

It's really a bit much.  Hegseth is an example of how people become addicted to getting tattoos and won't stop.

So what of it?

Well, the top two tattoos are offensive to some Catholics, myself included.  Hegseth is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, he has stated., which is a collection of Evangelical Churches.  The Crusades are a Catholic thing, grossly misunderstood, and for which Catholics have taken heat from Protestants for five hundred years.  Moreover, the Crusaders would have regarded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches as heretical.

"Kafir" is a flat out weird thing to tattoo on yourself, and for Sub-Saharan Africans its highly offensive, being the Afrikaans equivalent of the n word.  I suppose its supposed to be a taunt at Muslims.

Tattooing Yahweh on yourself is just weird, and potentially offensive to Jews, as well as others.  Leviticus 19:28 prohibits tattoos themselves, although this is not regarded by most Christians as applicable to Christians and many modern day Jews do not follow that as well.

The point here is this.  Tattooing the Totenkopf on your chest is bound to be offensive to the historically aware.  Tattooing Crusader phrases on your body is no doubt offensive to Muslims, although I'm not particularly concerned about that, but it's a cultural appropriation that is offensive to some historically aware Catholics.  Kafir, as a tattoo, is outright calculated to be offensive to Muslims, and it's highly offensive to Sub Saharan Africans.  And the Yahweh tattoo is disturbing.

I suppose the lesson is to be careful about tattoos.  Hegseth is so tatted up its frankly absurd, but he comes across as disturbed.  Platner comes across as just sort of messed up.

Of course, you don't get to vote for or against Hegseth, no matter where you live.  Your view of him has to weigh into your view of the administration.  If you live in Maine, you can weigh the tattoo in your opinion on whether to vote for him or the ancient Susan Collins.

Showing the spirit our age, I suppose, Donald Trump called Platner a pig.  Pigs have a highly hierarchal pecking order, so I suppose that's the big pig reacting to a younger one in the pen, if you accept the analogy.  

Donald might look to have a Porky tattoo. . . 

Republicans. You have reached July 20, 1944. You can either act with the insurgents and save your party (maybe) or go down in the bunker and destroy it for a generation, or more.

And your ongoing support of Donald Trump may have guaranteed that result already.

There were plenty of signs that the Germans were going to lose World War Two well before Hitler put a PPK to his head and blew his diseased brains out.  Conservative Germans knew that.  Some tried to act, with the last major act being the July 20, 1944 plot which nearly ended the Nazi regime.

And no, we aren't advocating that in this thread.  We're advocating the use of the 25th Amendment.

The fact of the matter is that by July 20, 1944, it was too late to save Germany form complete defeat.  It wasn't too late, however, to rescue German conservatism.  Even as it was, the first post war West German governments were conservative.

The Republican Party is not Donald Trump's party.  Just like German conservatives of the 1920s and 1930s, real conservatives made a terrible bargain with radical German populists as they were obsessed with what they thought was German decline, looked back on a mythical German past, and listened to the words of a radical and heard what they wanted to hear.  They then followed along with evil thinking, most likely, that it wouldn't last forever, and at least the Nazis were addressing the Communists.

That's basically what the Republicans did.

Donald Trump spent most of his life registered as a Democrat, but at the end of they day, Trump's political party is Donald Trump.  Unlike Hitler, Trump isn't a very smart man.  He's a semi good salesman who mostly sells what people want to hear, and Donald Trump.  He tapped into Rust Belt, Southern, rural and conservative discontent and sold it all as a movement.  Truth be known, people's interest in that movement was fairly personal.  People were worried about high immigration rates and wanted something done, but they weren't really for violence in the streets.  And in their minds, an illegal immigrant was a guy working a construction job they couldn't get, not Maria who has been doing their shirts at the cleaners, or Jose who takes care of the sprinkler system.  But, just like the German conservatives, once you have blood on your hands its hard not to have a lot more.

Indeed, it's hard not to have a lot more even if you have to endorse outright hypocrisy.  Some were worried about social sexual issues, including gay marriage and transgenderism, both of which are in fact legitimate concerns.  The dear leader is so worried about that such that he has Scott Bessant, a married homosexual who will support any dumb thing Trump says, in his cabinet and who has had his family photographed with Bruce Jenner post "transition".  Some were worried about what they perceived as an irreligious drift in the country to such an extent they've made Trump into a near demigod even though he has no demonstrable attachment to Christianity at all.  Some were worried about endless foreign wars and are now endorsing endless foreign wars.

Most people have absolutely had enough, however.

To add to it, Trump is increasingly erratic.  Signs of dementia were clearly there in his first term, but now he's rocketing into insanity.  He babbles absolute nonsense in the middle of the night with childish tweets that no sane adult would tolerate.  If he was a member of your family you'd be seeking to have him committed.

The end result of this is completely clear.  If Trump is still in office in November, the Republican Party will be destroyed.  Not just defeated, but absolutely destroyed.  The GOP will not regain power nationally in any serious way for a generation, assuming it simply doesn't dissolve.  Local MAGA expressions, even in deeply Republican states will be put in the trash bin.  Politicians who were loyal to Trump, like Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham, J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Chuck Gray, Megan Degenfelder, and a host of others (including John Barrasso) will find their political careers over, even if they are still in office.  Some, such as Graham, Gray and Vance, will be regarded as absolute jokes.

The only way to avoid this, and it might not be avoidable at this point, is for the 25th Amendment, or his obviously bad health, to remove Trump by November.  At this point there's a fairly good reason that Trump's dementia is advancing so rapidly, and his health declining so quickly, that Trump will expire of natural causes any day now.  He's not well.  If death arrives him and takes him to his final reward it would spare people like Vance, Rubio and Barrasso from having to have a spine.  Assuming it does not, only the 25th Amendment stands a chance of saving the Republican Party.

The 25th Amendment option has to be invoked very soon if there's any chance of saving the GOP. And by soon, I mean this month.  Early voting is already starting for primaries.  Voters everywhere are trashing the GOP.  Virginia has been flipped to the GOP in a way that the Republicans cannot recover from for a generation.  Every single day that goes by makes the extinction of the Republican Party that much more inevitable.

Political parties do not last forever.  The GOP is not likely to survive Trump, and if it does, it'll be a minority party the way it was after 1932, standing for. . . well pretty much nothing but a sort of milk toast conservatism.  If it boots Trump now, it stands a chance of reforming itself sufficiently before November that the looming disaster can just be a bad one, rather than a catastrophic one.

Of course, booting the demented would be dictator requires courage, something most of them lack.  Most of them fear MAGA.  But a breach with MAGA, which has nowhere else to go.  It took Soviet tanks in Berlin to free German conservatives from the Nazis.  The Republicans will be freed from MAGA, but at what cost?

If nothing is done, by January 2027, it'll be way too late.  Like Red Army policemen directing the traffic in Berlin, the Democratic Party will be directing the social and legislative traffic of the country.  That might be what's going to happen definitively anyway.  I do not see the Republicans being able to salvage their immediate electoral fortunes.  The absolute stench of Donald Trump and his betrayal of democracy sticks to them too much.  But at a bare minimum, the GOP can avoid the discredit of the metaphorical fighting in the streets of Berlin, which will occur in November through January as Trump and his fanatic backers maintain they didn't loose and they aren't going to recognize the results.  That will occur.

And if that' occurs, a pox on the GOP in general . That's what most Americans will think as well.  

And perhaps its necessary.  The party of Lincoln sold its soul and became the party of Orange Mussolini.  An entity like that needs to be purged to its core, with the Lees, Tubervilles, Millers and all relegated to the political dustbin and recalled in our memories the same way that Trump will be, an embarrassing disaster.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 7th Edition, Do not stand with those who promote the sins that cry out to Heaven.

Labels: 2026 Election, American Solidarity Party, Blog Mirror, Christian Democrats, Christianity, Chuck Gray, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Effect, J. D. Vance, Megan Degenfelder, Pope Leo XIII, Predictions, religion, Utah, War

The 25th Amendment Watch List. A Fourteenth and Special edition. Attacking the Catholic Church.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Christianity, Chuck Gray, Donald Trump, Megan Degenfelder, Mental Health, Pope Leo XIV, religion, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration

Friday, March 22, 1946. First U.S. rocket to escape the atmosphere.

The U.S. Army made the first successful out of atmosphere rocket launch by the U.S.

The rocket, a Bumper-WAC was a two staged rocked based on the German V-2.

Transjordan and the UK signed the Treaty of London giving Transjordan its independence with the UK retaining military bases in the country.

Cardinal Clemens von Galen, the great Catholic German cleric, died at age 68 from appendicitis.  He had only been made a cardinal the prior month.  He had been a fearless opponent of the Nazis.  To some degree, it's hard not to put him in the category of men who died shortly after World War Two after having struggled so mightily during it.

Von Galen is sort of a model of our own time.  He was very German but loyal to higher things.  He came from German nobility but served the Church, and he wasn't afraid to confront the barbarity of the Nazi regime.

Last edition:

Thursday, March 21, 1946. The Strategic and Tactical Air Commands created.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1990s, 1992, Army, Ethnicities, football, French Indochinese War, Laos, law, Sports, U.S. Air Force

Friday, March 15, 1946. Soviets in Iran.

The phony baloney Soviet constitution as amended to increase the number of republics in the U.S.S.R. from 11 to 16, and to give the head of each republic a position in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, meaning nothing whatsoever.

Prime Minister Clement Attlee declared in the House of Commons the government's intention to grant British India its independence, stating. 

India herself must choose as to what will be her future situation and her position in the world", said Attlee, adding that "If ... she elects for independence—and in our view she has a right to do so—it will be for us to help make the transition as smooth and easy as possible.

The UK was, at this time, in the advance stages of divesting itself of its empire while causing its former Imperial subjects to believe that they were forcing it.  To this day, Indian likes to give the UK a guilt trip, which perhaps its entitled to do, but its not like they forced the British out.  The British sprinted out.

Truman exhibited confidence about the Soviets over Iran.

This is quite the contrast to Donny, who loves Putin almost as much as he loves himself.

And:

Seriously, Hemingway, why even bother?

Surplus was proving a problem:

Some interesting back country ski boots were offered. These were much like telemarking boots when I took that up in the 1980s, save for the bindings.  And these were pretty much like what my mother, who learned to ski in the 30s and 40s, used her whole life.

From Uncle Mike:

March 15, 1946: The Arrest of "Axis Sally"

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 13, 1946. Strikes end.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Gambling, Iran, Strike Wave of 1945-1946, The Cold War, United States, USSR

The Trump Administration finds its Ernst Röhm

 

Ernst Röhm, ardent Nazi, founder of the SA, and murdered in a Nazi purse. Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14393 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6591184

Greg Bovino (posted under fair use).  Purged post Pretti killing.

The problem, of course, is that thugs commit their thuggery for regimes that are thuggish, sacrifice of a noted thug or not.

Thursday, December 13, 1945. Crimes against humanity.

Johanna Bormann, 52, SS concentration camp guard; Irma Grese, 22, SS concentration camp guard; Fritz Klein, 57, German Nazi physician; Josef Kramer, 39, German Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; Elisabeth Volkenrath, 26, German concentration camp supervisor were hanged for crimes against humanity

Last edition:

Wednesday, December 12, 1945. Conviction of war criminals.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Aircraft, Cartoons, J.R. Williams, Strike Wave of 1945-1945, U.S. Air Force, Unions

Tuesday, November 20, 1945. Commencement of the Nuremberg Trials.

While it was headline news, the post war investigation of Pearl Harbor was still getting a lot of press as well.

We don't think much about the post war finger pointing now.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 20: 1945  Mindful of an industry that had become significant in the state even well before World War One, Gov. Lester Hunt urged western governors to cooperate in selling the West to tourists who would follow the end of World War Two.  Attribution. Wyoming History Calendar.

Last edition:

Monday, November 19, 1945. Truman proposes comprehensive national healthcare, Life imagines a nuclear war, The French Assembly says "Non".

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Douglas MacArthur, France, French Third Republic, Harry S. Truman, Health, Japan, Occupation of Japan, Paratroopers, Weapons

Saturday, November 17, 1945. Charles De Gaulle says Non to the Communists.

Charles de Gaulle made a broadcast to the people of France announcing that he rejecting the position of president of FRance due to the "excessive demands regarding ministerial posts."  He further announced that he would continue serving but would refuse to appoint any  Communist to "any post related to foreign affairs."

Communist had done extremely well in the recent election and were a major component of the coalition government, taking more votes that any other party.  The French Section of the Workers International, a French Socialist Party, had done very well also, coming in third.  Coming in just behind the Communists, however, was the Catholic Popular Republican Movement. All three parties were in coalition that dates back to the election, with the coalition having De Gaulle's support at the time.

France was, quite frankly, on the very verge of becoming a Communist state, given the strong left wing turnout in the election.  If it had, it would have been a disaster of epic proportions for the West.  Most people looking at it objectively would have supposed that France would fall to the Communist.

This helps put in context, to a certain extent, the degree to which French military and political figures were proactive in trying to reestablish French colonialism, which was cast, with some credibility, as a war between Western ideals and Communism, although only imperfectly so. That France didn't go into a civil war is in no small part due to DeGaulle.  DeGaulle would whether the leftist Third Republic, after which France would pull back from the brink. Still, having said that, why France fought it out in Indochina, and Algeria, makes a lot more sense if that history is grasped.

Josef Kramer, Irma Grese, Dr. Fritz Klein and eight others were sentenced to death by a British military court as Nazi war criminals for their roles in the concentration camps.  

Kramer had come up in the concentration camp system, having been in the SS prior to World War Two.He was the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen.

Grese was 22 years old making her the youngest person to die under British law in the 20th Century. She'd joined the  Bund Deutscher Mädel in 1937 at age 13, causing a rift with her father who did not approve of the Nazi Party. She left home at age 14 and entered the SS at age 18, having already worked for Karl Gelbardt by that time.  In the camps she gained responsibility and became incredibly sadistic as well as extremely perverted perverted sadistic bisexual who had affairs with imprisoned Jewish women, and who is rumored to have a had one with Josef Kramer, until he learned of that. She was a sadist, and clearly an extremely tortured soul mentally. 

Regarding her, inmate Auschwitz Romanian Jewish gynecologist Gisella Perl stated:

She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. And yet, Irma Greze was the most depraved, cruel, imaginative sexual pervert I ever came across.

Perl relocated to Israel after the war with her daughter, whom she hid from the Naizs, and died there on December 16, 1988, at the age of 81

Kramer and Grese, August 8, 1945.

Frankly, a lot of Nazism was an absolute perversion.

News of Grese's death sentence hit the front pages in the United States. The Sheridan newspaper used one of her two common nicknames, the Beast of Belsen (the Hyena of Belsen was the other), its story on her.

The ongoing investigation on Pearl Harbor also made the front news, as did the French political scene.

A selection of Saturday cartoons from the paper:

The Saturday Evening Post ran a cover with a hunting and puppy theme.

This would be subject to copyright, but we run it here under the fair use exception to note how common hunting themes were at the time.

Last edition:

Friday, November 16, 1945. UNESCO founded. USS Laramie decommissioned.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, boats and ships, Dwight Eisenhower, Iran, Scientific and Cultural Organization, The Cold War, United Nations, United Nations Educational, USSR