Saturday, December 20, 1924. Hitler released from prison.

That really didn't work out the way predicted.

All the magazines had a Christmas theme that Saturday.

 

Last edition:

Wednesday, December 17, 1924. An election and a promise.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, baseball, Greece, Greek Orthodox Church, Orthodox, Personalities, Turkey

Sunday, November 12, 1944. Carving off part of China, Tirpitz sunk, Hitler takes time to release a long Beer Hall message, Dog Faces in chow line.

Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tatars, and some White Russians rally in Ghulja declared the independence as the Second East Turkistan Republic within the northern borders of China, which would be a Soviet vassel, making the White participation rather odd.

The republic would last until 1946/49 and found itself at war with the Republic of China the entire time.

The Royal Air Force sank the Tirpitz near Tromsø.

Hitler released a long message to members of the Nazi Party on the more or less anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

National Socialists! Party Comrades!

The requirements for waging total war have compelled me to postpone the commemoration from November 9 to the next available Sunday. Likewise, work at the headquarters does not allow me to leave it even for a few days at this time. Besides, I regard it less as my task today to give speeches than to prepare and implement those measures that are necessary to force our way through this fight. After all, as in the time of crisis in the year 1923, I am today moved by only one dominating thought: now really to risk everything for the necessary success! And just as the dead comrades were rightly told ten years later that the victory was theirs in the end, so the victory must and will belong in the end to the fighting front and the no less heroically fighting homeland in the great struggle of to be or not to be.

In the past, I repeatedly pointed out that it is necessary for a nation to appreciate and honor its great men. Especially in grave times, a despairing nation can gather courage and strength for the present from its behavior in the past. How much more does this apply to a nation that behaves as boundlessly bravely as the German one! It will be able to learn the only correct lesson for the present from the struggle of its great men, namely, that Providence in the end helps only him who does not despair and takes up the struggle against the adversities of the time and, therefore, in the end decides his own destiny.

Insofar as the Almighty opened our eyes in order to grant us insight into the laws of His rule, in accordance with the limited capabilities of us human beings, we recognize the incorruptible justice which gives life as a final reward only to those who are willing and ready to give a life for a life. Whether man agrees to or rejects this harsh law makes absolutely no difference. Man cannot change it; whoever tries to withdraw from this struggle for life does not erase the law but only the basis of his own existence.

As the National Socialist movement began its struggle to win over the German human beings, every insightful person realized the impending internal collapse of the Volk and nation. The inevitable consequence of this was an increasing threat to our national existence, a slow decline in our birthrates, together with a slow national death many times the number of the dead of the World War. After all, this corresponded to the objective of our enemies. By economic strangulation of the Reich, they intended to destroy the basis for the material existence of the German nation. Thereby, they hoped to realize Clemenceau’s demand for the reduction of the German Volk by twenty million people. The struggle of the years 1914 through 1918 cost two million people their lives, but there were twenty million that had to be taken out of our Volk according to the wishes of the democratic benefactors of mankind. Today, this demand has gone up to forty million. However, since it is not up to people themselves to stop backward movements in the life of a nation whenever there is a need for it, nobody could say when this process of shrinking the substance of our Volk would come to an end. In the same matter, another natural realization forces itself on us: the world does not know any empty spaces! Nations which are numerically or biologically too weak and no longer able satisfactorily to fill their Lebensraum will in the most favorable scenario be put on a reservation that corresponds to their value and size. Other life will flow into the now empty spaces. In accordance with Providence’s law, other nations-and, regrettably, often primitive races-will then take up the fight for existence in an area that an aging nation has lost due to cowardice and weakness, that is, unfitness for life. So, in the year 1919, we faced the realization that only a reform of our Volk from head to foot would in the long run enable it to resume successfully this struggle for existence. Only a complete turning away from the phraseology of the democratic corruption of nations and the Bolshevik destruction of nations could return to our Volk its natural vitality and thus secure the conditions for a successful defense of life in the future.

According to this realization, the National Socialist movement entered the fight. Confronted with these great objectives, the proletarian as well as the bourgeois state of classes had to pale in insignificance. What still appears as the ideal to the existing classes had, in the eyes of the young movement, already proven to be insanity, a deadly poison for our Volk. The intention to erect, for the first time in our history, a Volksstaat encompassing all Germans could be realized only by the mobilization of the entire strength of the nation. By so doing, the synthesis between nationalist and socialist ideas was best able to produce that strength necessary as a prerequisite for such a fight. The proclamation of the young nationalist and socialist Volksstaat immediately elicited the hatred of all those opponents at home and abroad who had represented the earlier system of Germany’s fragmentation and impotence: the parties, small parties, groups, ranks, professions, organizations, classes, and finally creeds as the main beneficiaries of the inner-German divisions, and abroad, the democratic-Marxist world hostile to us as the main party interested in Germany’s impotence. The hatred of this conspiracy of our enemies at home and abroad has since then loyally followed the movement throughout the years of fighting, before and after the seizure of power. It has persecuted us with the refinement and brutality of which that system was capable at the time. Since the march on the Feldherrnhalle, thousands of murdered National Socialists and tens of thousands of wounded have become the victims of this only true aggression.

Since the day of the seizure of power, the old enemies all the more refused to change. Instead, their hatred increased. At the most, they adapted their methods to the new situation. As the ultimate inspiring and driving force, Jewry has not allowed any opportunity to pass since the year 1933, as at the time of the struggle for power, in order to express its satanic will to persecute and destroy this new concept of a state as such and its young state. It regarded them as the first dawn of a general realization of its destructive work against the nations and as an eminent danger. Perhaps times have changed, but the essence of the fight forced on us has remained the same. What has remained is, first, our own objective: the preservation of our Volk and the securing of its future by all means; and, second, the objective of our enemies: the annihilation of our Volk, its extermination, and the ending of its existence.

That this was not nor is it now a slogan of National Socialist propaganda was proved by the fact of Germany’s decline at home and, today, is proved by the proclamations of our enemies. No National Socialist propaganda minister could put the objectives of our enemies more plainly than the Jewish press has done for decades and does so in particular today. Beyond this, the enemy statesmen above all do this publicly through their ministers. The objective of our enemies has likewise remained the same. Promoted by the democracies, Bolshevism at one time tried to destroy our movement by terror at home.

Supported by the democracies, the Soviet Union strives to destroy the Reich and exterminate our Volk. That the bourgeois world, which at the time consciously or unconsciously acted as the accomplice of Bolshevism at home, was struck with blindness by God and headed for its own downfall does not change its behavior. The fact that today’s democracies would be dead with the victory of Bolshevism, which would smash the democratic states with all their ideas against a wall, does not change the reality of their present procedure. You can explain the incomprehensible absurdity of their actions at the moment you realize that the Jew is always behind the stupidity and weakness of man, his lack of character on the one hand, and his deficiencies on the other. The Jew is the wire-puller in the democracies, as well as the creator and driving force of the Bolshevik international beast of the world (Weltbestie).

Even before National Socialism, many at home already had an idea of this danger. However, an effective fight against it only began after this anemic insight became a confession of flesh and blood, which found an organization of combat strength in the National Socialist Party. An understanding of the necessity of rescuing Europe from the Bolshevik monster today also exists on the part of numerous foreign statesmen, parliamentarians, party politicians, and economists. This understanding will only lead to a practical result if a strong European power manages [to succeed], beyond these theoretical hopes, in successfully organizing and fighting through this common struggle of life and death of all. Only the National Socialist German Reich can and will do this.

Almost always, Europe consisted of a multitude of competing nations and states. In spite of this, Europe most of the time meant just one state or a community of related nations. There was certainly a great advantage in the eternal conflict among the European nations. Like any competition, it challenged the fitness and striking power of the individual nations. However, in times of fateful struggle of life and death for all, there was the great danger of a dissipation of the forces of this continent confronted with the impending attack of the Central Asian east, this eternally latent danger to Europe. In long periods of European history, the thesis of the European balance of power was all too often regarded by the obtuse west as a licence for allying itself with the impending danger, contrary to the commandment of European solidarity, in order more easily to strangle one unpleasant competitor or another. For centuries, the old Reich was forced to wage its fight against Mongols and Turks alone, or with a few allies, in order to spare Europe a fate whose consequences would have been as unthinkable as realizing a Bolshevization would be today.

Even though this struggle in the past centuries was accompanied by many setbacks and demanded the greatest sacrifices of our Volk, it led to success in the end. It alone made possible the development and existence, as well as the prosperity, of the European family of nations. Besides, in confrontations of world-historical impact, it is not likely that the outcome of the fight should be decided in months or years, but rather over long periods, with perseverance. In these periods, divine Providence has men line up to try them for what they are worth. It thereby decides whether they deserve life or death. That our National Socialist state will today pass this historic trial is already guaranteed by the stand of our movement up to now. Which bourgeois party would have been able to survive the collapse of November 9, 1923? Which party would have been capable, following such a complete collapse, of reaching a total victory by an unprecedentedly hard fight? Even though this fight may today appear to the superficial observer to have been minimal compared with the present events, this only reveals his failure to understand decisive values. After all, the struggle for the movement at the time was just as much a fight for Germany as the fight of the present Reich is today. It was a fight for our Volk and its future, which had first to be decided at home before it could face our foreign enemies’ will to exterminate us. How hopeless the fight of the party appeared to our adversaries was revealed by their statements that, following November 9, 1923, National Socialism could be regarded as dead and, herewith, the danger for the enemies of our Volk as eliminated. In spite of this, only a few years later, this party, which was thought to have been eliminated at the time, stood in the midst of the decisive struggle for power. For nearly a decade, it waged this fight by the reckless deployment of numerous men and women, suffered only passing setbacks, and brought it to a victorious conclusion in the end. During this time, the movement developed its mental attitude. It has proved that it is today capable of leading the nation and having the Reich lead Europe. And just as we witnessed at the time that the whole world of the bourgeois democratic party, corrupted by its compromises and cowardly renunciations, slowly began to fall apart on its own, and then finally to die, we today observe the same drama on a large scale.

Nations and, above all, their statesmen, generals, and soldiers always find it easy to tolerate days of happiness and visible successes. What is remarkable about the great men of world history, as well as nations destined for great things, is their steadfastness in days of trouble, their confidence at times when their situation appears hopeless, their defiance and courage when they suffer setbacks. As National Socialists, we were always happy about the short or long periods of prosecution in our fight, because they rid the party of all that light ballast: fellow travelers who surely would have boasted the loudest on the day of victory. Likewise, in this mightiest struggle of nations of all time, we see those elements desert us that are cowardly and unfit for life. That monarchs lose their courage, in complete ignorance of their position, which today can only be regarded as prehistoric, and that they thereby become traitors is the result of their mental and moral incapacity produced by centuries of inbreeding. At such times, nations need leaders different from these dynasties that have become ill and morbid. That even so-called statesmen and generals are deluded by the view that such a confrontation of life and death, and its impact on world history, can be decided in their favor by cowardly capitulation likewise only proves the experience of the ages that not too many great men live at the same time. Wherever such a capitulation took place, or was considered, or may be considered today, the result will not be a cheap slipping away from this crisis with its impact on world history, but the inevitable and certain extermination of the nations in question and the annihilation of its leading men.

After all, a first consequence of this will be Bolshevik chaos and civil war in the interior of these states. Second, there will be an extradition of the so-called war criminals, in other words, first the most valuable men, then endless columns of men who will set out for the Siberian tundra to fade away, all a result of the weakness of the leaders of their states. Even though from the beginning the consequences of these betrayals have, from a military point of view, been very grave for Germany as the bearer of the main burden in this war, they have not succeeded, neither in unbending the structure of the Reich nor in eliminating its spirit of resistance. On the contrary, the nation hardened in its willingness to fight and became all the more fanatical.

We are happy that in a number of the nations which have shown signs of decay a number of elements of resistance could be found: in Italy, they gather around the creator of the new state, the Duce Benito Mussolini; in Hungary, around Szalasi; in Slovakia, around the leadership of state president Tiso; in Croatia, around the Poglavnik Ante Pavelich. All these men are the leaders of young nations.

We know that committees and governments were likewise formed by other nations that have decided not to recognize the capitulation and not to accept the extermination of nations simply because a few spineless weaklings failed their honor and sense of duty, or because some blockheads allowed themselves to be deluded by opportunities in which they themselves no longer believe today. From the first day, our greatest ally, Japan, recognized this fight for what it is: a decisive confrontation of life and death. From this day on, it waged it with the bravery of a true nation of heroes.

My party comrades! Volksgenossen! Since the breakthrough of the Russians at the Romanian Don front in November 1942, since the ensuing complete disintegration of the Italian and Hungarian units with all its terrible consequences for our waging of the war, betrayal after betrayal hit our Volk hard. In spite of this, the hopes of our enemies were not realized. Again and again, we managed to cushion our fronts and halt the enemies. Only one hope remained for them: the stab in the back. As always when they are otherwise unable to succeed against Germany, they try to bring about a decision by stabbing us in the back from the inside. Spineless creatures, a mixture of feudal arrogance, bourgeois deficiency, and former parliamentary corruption came together-in the hope that they would immediately receive a reward for this act of perjury (Meineidstat)-in order to cut the German resistance off at its root.

They were right in one respect: as long as I live, Germany will not submit to the fate of the European states swept away by Bolshevism; as long as I have not breathed my last breath, my body and soul will serve only one goal: to make my Volk strong in the defense, for the attack on the deadly danger threatening it.

While wars used to be fought out of dynastic or economic interests, the war we are fighting today is a fight for the preservation of our Volk itself.

Therefore, all the sacrifices in this war will lead, as a logical consequence, to the strengthening of the German Volksstaat. If some outdated individuals are offended by this, I cannot help them. The Volksstaat will pass over them and resume its agenda. If individual subjects of outdated parties, classes, or other splinters in our Volk think that the time has come for their resurrection, they will face their total extermination at exactly this moment. The day after the seizure of power, National Socialism, which was the victim of bloody persecution before, treated its political opponents not only in a conciliatory manner, but generously. Countless men who once persecuted me received pensions from me in this state, or were appointed to new and higher offices: the justice minister of a land where I spent thirteen months locked up in a fortress was nonetheless appointed German Reich minister of justice by me. Prussian ministers and Reich ministers who earlier were our cruelest persecutors received from me high pensions of charity although I was not obliged to do so.

I felt that it was beneath me to subject Social Democrats to hardship, just because they had opposed me as ministers. Judges who had sentenced us were not hindered in their careers because of this and often were even promoted.

Only those who threw down the gauntlet to the new state in word and deed were treated by it according to the law. Through the manner in which I took over power, I have moreover made it easy for every German, especially every state official and officer, to do his duty without throwing them into an inner conflict. For over a year and a half, the departed Reich president was my superior and was accordingly treated by me with admiration and great respect.

Whoever now believes that he can throw others into inner conflicts, without ever having been forced into one by me, should know that this means his end is dead certain. As long as these people only persecuted me, I was able to magnanimously ignore and forget about this persecution. Today, however, whoever raises the sword or bomb against Germany will be ruthlessly and mercilessly annihilated. A few hours sufficed in order to suffocate the attempted putsch of July 20. It took only a few months to round up and completely eliminate this coterie of dishonorable Catilinarian characters.

Just as I took the occasion to cleanse the movement in the year 1934, after the revolt of a small group within, this new revolt likewise started a thorough overhaul of the entire state apparatus. The time for compromises and reservations is over for good. These days the Reich war flag becomes the regimental flag of the German Wehrmacht, as a symbol of the National Socialist idea of revolution and state. The German salute is now in use in the Wehrmacht. The Volk grenadier division and the German youth will help the National Socialist world of thought achieve a completely victorious breakthrough. What most profoundly moved and rejoiced me after the events of July 20 was the realization that the army, the navy, and the Luftwaffe as a whole-the Waffen SS need not be considered here-had already adopted the National Socialist spirit, even though this was regrettably not outwardly visible before, so that hardly anything remained to be done other than to expel the unworthy from party, state, and Wehrmacht in order to bring about a complete agreement of opinions and will in party, Volk, state, and Wehrmacht.

In spite of this, the consequences of this day were bitter. In a fit of hope, our enemies gathered their entire strength, filled with the belief that shortly they would be able to overrun Germany. That they have not succeeded in this, I owe to the brave behavior of the Wehrmacht and, above all, the brave behavior of the German homeland, which is most worthy of praise. The response to the appeal for the expansion of the Reich’s defense and the Volkssturm was only a symbol of the increasingly evidenced German Volksgemeinschaft in this fateful struggle for the future of the nation. Thus, next to the old grenadiers of the army, the soldiers of the navy and Luftwaffe, the soldiers of the homeland step up in complete equality of rank; not only its men, old men, and boys, but also its women and girls. As I consider the total sum of all the unspeakable sacrifices that our Volk makes today, all the suffering that the millions in our cities must bear, the sweat of our men and women laborers, and our people in the countryside, I would like to ask the criminals of July 20 only one question: with what right can you demand these sacrifices if you do not have the sacred resolve, before your conscience, to strengthen the Volksstaat at the end of this fight, develop it ever the more, so that this greatest epoch of our Volk culminates in the birth of a Reich that not only encompasses all Germans at the outside but also makes them happy at home? By fighting for the National Socialist German Volksstaat, I give the only possible moral and ethical meaning to this greatest struggle in our history.

Whoever thinks of the interests only of his class at such an hour, acts not only as a criminal but also as an insane egotist. He must be insane because it takes incredible narrow-mindedness to imagine that you can rally a nation for a fight of life and death for over half a decade on behalf of a medieval feudal state.

My party comrades! As the year 1923 ended I wrote Mein Kampf in prison.

I incessantly had in mind the realization of the National Socialist Volksstaat.

For years after the seizure of power, we fought for this idea and worked for it.

Rage and envy filled our enemies in view of the accomplishments in all areas of our economic and social life, the increasing culture and satisfaction of our classes. If so-called social plans for the future are today published in other countries, then this is only a pale imitation of what National Socialist Germany has already achieved. So today I can only again pledge the continuation of this work. As an old National Socialist, I will not waver in this fight for one second in the fulfillment of the duties incumbent upon me. I did not choose this duty.

Providence imposes it on every German: to do everything and not to neglect anything that can secure the future of our Volk and make its existence possible.

We will respond to the most severe blows of fortune with a defiant fury, incessantly filled with the conviction that Providence often loves only those whom it chastises; and that it tries human beings and must try them in order to arrive at a just appraisal of their value. I have the unshakable will to set posterity a no less praiseworthy example in this fight than the great Germans did ages ago.

My own life does not play a role in this, which means that I will not spare my health or my life in any manner in the fulfillment of this duty conferred to me as the first German. If, at this time, I speak little and not very often to you, my party comrades and the German Volk, then I do this because I work; I work to fulfill the tasks with which time has burdened me and which must be fulfilled in order to bring about a turn of events. After all, since I have this will and see the loyal following of the German Volk, I do not doubt for a minute that, in the end, we will successfully survive this time of trial and that the hour will come when the Almighty again grants us His blessings as before. At the time, we gained the greatest victories in world history but did not become arrogant. At a time of setbacks, we will never bend and will thereby reaffirm in a positive sense the portrayal of the character of the present German Volk for posterity. I therefore believe with imperturbable confidence that, through our work and sacrifice, the moment will one day come when our efforts will finally be crowned by success. The goal of our struggle is no different from what we fought for in the year 1923, and for which the first sixteen martyrs of our movement died: our Volk’s rescue from misery and danger, the securing of life for our children, grandchildren, and distant generations! In the shadow of our nation, a Europe marches which feels that not only Germany’s fate is being decided today but also the future of all nations that count themselves part of Europe and are consciously disgusted by Bolshevik barbarism. So I greet you from afar, my old party comrades, through the person who will speak this confession of my faith, in dogged determination, with my old unbending fighting morale and my unshakable confidence. On this occasion, I again thank the fighters of twenty-five years ago, who also have set us an example for the future of our Volk and the Greater German Reich!

It would be his last such address.  He'd be dead by the next anniversary.

U.S. infantry in France.

Last edition

Saturday, November 11, 1944. Ghastly Japanese losses at Ormoc Bay.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Battle of Ormoc Bay, boats and ships, Clothing, Croatia, German Army, Greece, Imperial Japanese Navy, Iwo Jima, Labor unrest, Music, Red Army, U.S. Navy, Unions, Yugoslav Partisans, Yugoslavia

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Questioner: "Why did you leave the Republican Party?"

George F Will: "The same reason I joined it. I am a conservative."

If I were to listen to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or some of the Freedom Caucus here in Wyoming, it would be go.

If I listen to lifelong residents here in the state, including some lifelong Republicans whom would currently be classified as RINO's by the newly populist Wyoming GOP, it would be stay.  Alan Simpson, who is an "anybody but Trump", former U.S. Senator, and who the Park County GOP tried to boot out as a elected precinct committeeman, is staying.

The problem ultimately is what time do you begin to smell like the crowd on the bus?

Konrad Adenauer of the Christian Democratic Union, West Germany's first post-war chancellor.  He worked towards compromise and ended denazification early, even though he'd speant the remaining months of World War Two in prison and barely survived.  By CDU - This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German political foundation, as part of a cooperation project., CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16173747

To put it another way, I'd give an historical example.  It's often noted that quite a few Germans joined the Nazi Party as it was just a way to get by, or advance careers, etc., during the Third Reich period of German history.  When I was a kid, there was a lot of sympathy, oddly enough, for that view amongst those who were of the World War Two generation, although at the same time, there was a widely held belief that militarism, combined with radical nationalism, were something that was basically in the German DNA.  The US, as is well known, didn't even particularly worry about letting former Nazis into the country.

The Germans themselves pretty much turned a blind eye towards this, so many of them had been in the Nazi Party.  Even post-war German politicians who had spent the war in exile did, as it was the programmatic thing to do.

Since that time, however, that view has really changed.  It started to in 1968 when German students rioted and exposed former Nazis in the police.  Germans haven't really come to terms with it, but having been a member of the Nazi Party is a mark of shame, and it's become to be something despised everywhere, even if a person did it for practical reasons and wasn't really involved in the party.

And it should be a mark of shame.

Americans have been sanctimonious about that for a long time, but starting in the 1970s lots of Americans became ashamed, in varying degrees, of our own ancestors in regard to various things.  Ironically, the backlash to that, symbolized by Confederate battle flags, is part of what brings us to our current crisis.

Ed Herschler, former Marine Corps Raider, and Democratic lawyer, who was Wyoming's Governor from 1975 to 1987.  Herschler probably wouldn't have a home in today's Democratic Party in Wyoming.

I registered as a Republican the first time I was old enough to vote. The first Presidential Election I was old enough to vote in was the 1984 Presidential election, in which I voted for Ronald Reagan. The first election I was old enough to vote in was the 1982 off year election.  I honestly don't know who I voted for Senator.  Malcolm Wallop won, but I very well have voted for the Democrat.  Dick Cheney wont reelection that year against Ted Hommel, whom I don't recall at all.  I probably voted for Cheney.  I know that I voted for the reelection of Democratic Governor Ed Herschler, who was one of the state's great Governors. 

A split ticket.

Split tickets were no doubt common in my family.  My father would never reveal who he voted for in an election.  The first Presidential election I recall was the 1972 Election in which Nixon ran against McGovern, and I asked who he voted for when he came home. He wouldn't say, and I don't know to this day.  

I knew that my father registered Republican, but not everyone in my father's family did.  My grandmother, for one, registtered Demcrat,somethign I became aware of when we were visiting her, which we frequently did, at her retirement apartment here in town.  She was pretty clear that she was an unapologetic Democrat, which made sense given that she was 100% Irish by descent.  Most Irish Americans, at that time, were Democrats, and all real ones were Catholic.  Reagan, who claimed Irish ancestry, woudl have been regarded a a dual pretender for that reason by many of them.

My father's view, and it remains mine, that you voted for the person and what they stood for, not hte party.

But being in a party means something, and that has increasingly come to be the case.

I switched parties after that 1984 election.  I was, and remain, a conservative, but the GOP was drifting further from a conservative center in that period, and as I've noted, the election of Ronald Reagan paved the path for Donald Trump, although I won't say that was obvious then.  And also, Democrats were the party that cared about public lands, as they still do, and cared about rural and conservation issues that I cared about and still do. The GOP locally was becoming hostile to them. So I switched.

Campaign image for Mike Sullivan, Democratic Governor from 1987 to 1995.

I remained a Democrat probably from about 1984 until some time in the last fifteen years.  Being a Democrat in Wyoming meant that you were increasingly marginalized, but finally what pushed me out was that it meant being in the Party of Death.  The Democrats went from a party that, in 1973, allowed you to be middle of the road conservative and pro-life.  We had a Governor, Mike Sullivan, who was just that.  By the 2000s, however, that was becoming impossible.  Locally most of the old Democrats became Republicans, some running solid local campaigns as Republicans even though they had only been that briefly.  Even as late as the late 1990s, however, the Democrats ran some really serious candidates for Congress, with the races being surprisingly close in retrospect.  Close, as they say, only counts with hand grenades and horseshoes, but some of those races were quite close.  The GOP hold on those offices was not secure.

Dave Freudenthal, Democratic Governor from 2003 to 2011.

Before I re-registered as a Republican, I was an independent for a while.  Being an independent meant that primaries became nearly irrelevant to me, and increasingly, as the Democratic Party died and became a far left wing club, starting in the 2000s., it also meant that basically the election was decided in the primaries.  Like the other rehoming Democrats, however, we felt comfortable in a party that seemingly had given up its hostility to public lands.  And frankly, since the 1970s, the GOP in Wyoming had really been sui generis.  Conservative positions nationally, including ones I supported, routinely failed in the Republican legislature. Abortion is a good example.  The party nationally was against it, I'm against it personally, but bills to restrict it failed and got nowhere in a Republican legislature.

The Clinton era really impacted the Democratic Party here locally.  Wyomingites just didn't like him.  That really started off the process of the death of the Democratic Party here.  As center right Democrats abandoned the party in response, left wing Democrats were all that remained, and the party has become completely clueless on many things, making it all the more marginalized.  But just as Clinton had that impact on the Democrats, Trump has on the GOP.

Throughout the 70s and 80s it was the case that Wyoming tended to export a lot of its population, which it still does, and then take in transients briefly during booms.  In the last fifteen or so years, however, a lot of the transient population, together with others from disparate regions, have stayed.  They've brought their politics with them, and now in the era of Trump, those views have really taken over the GOP, save for about three pockets of the old party that dominate in Natrona, Albany and Laramie Counties.  A civil war has gone on in some counties, and is playing out right now in Park County.  In the legislature, the old party still has control, but the new party, branded as the Freedom Caucus, which likes to call its rival the UniParty, is rising.  The politics being advanced are, in tone, almost unrecognizable.

Like it or not, on social issues the old GOP's view was "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone". That attitude has really changed.  Given a bruising in the early 1990s due to a Southeastern Wyoming effort to privatize wildlife, the party became pro public lands for awhile. That's change.  The party was not libertarian.  That's changed.  

Money helped change it, which is a story that's really been missed.

Like the Democrats of the 90s, a lot of the old Republicans have started to abandon the party.  If there was another viable party to go to, floods would leave.  A viable third party might well prove to be the majority party in the state, or at least a close second to the GOP, if there was one.

There isn't.

So, what to do?

While it'll end up either being a pipe dream or an example of a dream deferred, there's still reason to believe that much of this will be transitory.  If Trump does not win the 2024 Presidential Election, and he may very well not, he's as done as the blue plate special at a roadside café as the GOP leader.  Somebody will emerge, but it's not really likely to be the Trump clone so widely expected.  And the relocated populists may very well not have that long of run in Wyoming.  Wyomingites, the real ones, also tend to have a subtle history of revenge against politicians who betray their interests.  Those riding hiding high on anti-public lands, anti-local interests, may come to regret it at the polls later on.

The Johnson County invaders of 1892. The Republican Party, whose politicians had been involved in the raid on Natrona and Johnson Counties, took a beating in the following elections.

Or maybe this process will continue, in which case even if Trump wins this year, the GOP will die.  By 2028, it won't be able to win anything and a new party will have to start to emerge.

We'll see.

None of which is comfortable for the State's real Republicans.

Wednesday, December 26, 1923. Acknowledging disaster.

The Dixmude was lost, there was no doubt, but the French were making that known.

Totally unrelated, France ran a budget surplus of 568 million francs, determined as of this date.

Dietrich Eckart, German writer and Nazi, and a major influence on Adolf Hitler, died of a heart attack at Berchtesgaden at age 55, too early to see the horror that Nazi ideas would bring upon the world and Germany.

Sunday, November 11, 1923. Armistace Day.

It was Armistice Day for 1923.  Secretary of War John Weeks, Pres. Calvin Coolidge, and Asst. Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt paid tribute at Arlington to the Unknown Solder.

German police found Adolf Hitler hiding in the attic of his friend with a country home, Ernst Hanfstaengl and arrested him.

Hanfstaengl was a member of German high society and was instrumental in polishing Hitler's early image with the elite.  He fell out of favor almost as soon as Hitler came to power, however, and worked for the Allies profiling Hitler's psychology, as an exile, during World War Two.

German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann accepted the return of Crown Prince Wilhelm.

Friday, November 9, 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch Fails and Echoes.

Day two of the Beer Hall Putsch 

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, November 8, 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch.:

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 119-1486 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5415949

The Beer Hall Putsch, a large scale Nazi Party attempt at overthrowing the Weimar government combined with far right German support, began when Adolf Hitler with 603 members of the Nazi Party surrounded ll, Der Bürgerbräukeller, where Bavaria's State Commissioner Gustav Ritter von Kahr was making a speech to 3,000 people.  Hitler declared his revolution was aimed at "the Berlin Jew government and the November criminals of 1918".  More Nazi revolutionaries waited in another beer hall, the Lowenbraukeller.

Hitler declared that General Erich Ludendorff would form a new government.  Ludendorff was descending into extreme anti Christianity, although he also held animosity towards Jews as well.

Following that, while the Nazi forces grew, they were disordered and without direction.  Some were arrested early on by German authorities, and a large Nazi force was turned back by a small Reichswehr and police detail. Both Hitler and Ludendorff would be arrested.

Hitler and Ludendorff's attempt at sparking a Bavaria based insurrection against the German government failed on this date, as the Nazi storm troopers encountered the Reichswehr and police and failed.  Casualties were remarkably light.

To the extent there was a plan, the coup was supposed to take over the Bavarian government on this day, after which the Nazis would march on Berlin, as Mussolini had on Rome.

As an element of the failure, Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had been delivering a speech at the time that Hitler interrupted it in Der Bürgerbräukeller coordinated with Gen Otto von Lossow and police commander Hans von Seisser, all of whom had been in the beer hall, and all of whom were plotting their own coup, to get word out to the government and stop the coup.  Von Kahr was later killed in the Night of the Long Knives.  Von Seisser retired in 1930 but was sent to Dachau in 1933, which he amazingly survived.  Von Lossow died in 1938.

The news, by this time, had spread around the globe, including to Wyoming.

This event has always been one of the seminal events in the tragedy of the mid 20th Century, but it's one of those events which also, as some say, if not repeating, certain rhymes.  Hitler tried and in fact did mobilize a section of the Munich public behind him.  In the early hours of the coup, it looked as though the effort might succeed in Bavaria, but it all fell apart due to a lack of cogency and organization.  Hitler and Ludendorff were arrested, but the penalty imposed upon them was relatively light, and they rose again in short order.  Ludendorff dropped out of the scene, and ultimately even ended up disdaining Hitler, but Hitler's far right wing cause would prevail at the ballot box in 1932.

It sounds a warning about current events in the United States.

It's a bit of an open question what would have happened had the coup succeeded in Bavaria, Germany's largest state.  A march on Berlin would have occured, but it may very well have failed.  Indeed, it's worth remembering that this was the third coup attempt in recent months, the first being by elements of the Reichswehr, the second by the German Communist Party, and now this right wing attempt.  A march on Berlin would certainly have brought out the Communists, and Berlin itself was sometimes called "Red Berlin".  So far the Reichswehr had remained reluctantly more or less loyal to the government, and indeed it did throughout the Weimar period and then into the Nazi period.

On this day, the German government banned the Nazi Party.

Calvin Coolidge gave a press conference, in which he stated:

One of the news services wants to know if I have received any communication from the French Embassy today. I haven’t received any communication from them. So that answers the first one, “whether it will be possible to divulge the nature of the communication.”

“The French Ambassador is seeing Secretary Hughes this afternoon. Are you aware yet as to the nature of their communication?” No. I think he is to see him at 4:00 o’clock.

An inquiry as to whether I have any comment on the Marine Congress recommendations that the Shipping Board be abolished, and the fleet turned over to the Department of Commerce. I don’t know the reasons that might have been given for that at the present time. We seem to need al l the talent that we can get for the operation of the fleet. Should it become finally and fully organized, and running smoothly, it might then be possible to turn it over to some one of the Departments, and not operate it as a separate and independent bureau. I don’t see, just at the present time, that we could get any benefit from turning it over to the Department of Commerce, though it is, of course, an arm of that Department, and that was one of the reasons why I thought of calling in the Secretary of Commerce, as well as the Secretary of the Treasury, to advise me about the plan that the Shipping Board had.

I have here a hypothetical question about the debts that are due to us from abroad. There is no change in the situation, and really no comment that I can make about it. Congress, as you know, has passed the law and established a Commission, and laid down the terms on which it is authorized to settle. There is no development along that line at the present time, of which I am aware.

A statement that Lieutenant Heffernon of the Navy suggests that if a stadium is to be built in Washington it should be a double deck affair, capable of seating 30,000 people, and wanting to know if I would express an opinion on that. I don’t know that I can express any opinion that would be very valuable. I am not exactly an expert on athletic affairs. It occurs to me offhand, that the ball field has a very large stadium that can be used on almost any possible occasion. It would be a very fine thing, of course, to encourage athletics, and some time it might be well to consider the building of a stadium in the National Capital. I don’t know of any project of that kind that is under contemplation at the present.

An inquiry also about the immigration law. I have no doubt that the incoming Congress will extend the law, which expires on June 30th next. Just what provisions will be adopted, of course, I can’t tell. It is perfectly apparent I think, however, that we shall have very careful restriction of immigration.

An inquiry about a visit of Adolph Lewisohn. He and another gentleman came in this morning to pay their respects. I had known of his name for a long time, as a very prominent man. I don’t recall that I ever happened to meet him. He was a great friend, I know, of former Governor McCall of Mass., which formed a sort of middle ground of meeting between Mr. Lewisohn and myself. I was Lieutenant Governor for three years when Mr. McCall was Governor. Governor McCall has just passed away within a week, so we were speaking especially of him. Then a short time ago, some one came to get me to address a letter to Mr. Lewisohn, in relation to the encouragement of thrift, which he was connected with in some way with an organization that wanted to promote the encouragement of thrift, and I wrote him the letter. He came in also to express his thanks for the help he thought I had been.

A statement that there is emanating from Paris today a report to the effect that Premier Poncaire will insist upon reparations from Germany to the full capacity of Germany to pay, and wanting to know if I have any sort of statement to make relative to the American position. No, our position is stated fully in the note. If it means our position relative to the restrictions, and more especially that restriction which provides that the experts be limited to an inquiry into the present capacity – actual I think is the word that is used by the French in that connection – I think that I am safe in saying that if it is to be limited to merely present capacity of Germany to pay, that that would be such a limitation as would make an inquiry useless and futile. There wouldn’t be any use for calling together the experts of four or five nations of the earth. That would be something almost that could be done by any ordinary auditor. A limitation of that kind would seem to make the inquiry useless, and I don’t see any reason why we could expect to be of any help by participating in it.

There is a report that the French propose the inquiry to take in the capacity of Germany to pay for six years – up to 1930. Have you heard of that, Mr. President?

Yes, I had heard of such a report, and up to 1930 would include what I have had to say. It would be such a short time that I don’t see any reason to expect that in that short time Germany could reestablish its industrial organization and its production to such an extent that payments could be made which would amount to very much. They could hardly begin, in so short a time, to meet the reparations.

An inquiry about Mr. Brown’s coming to the Cabinet. He came to discuss the plan of reorganization and to answer such questions as the members of the Cabinet might want to make of him. I think perhaps I can best answer one or two of the questions that have been asked in relation to the reorganization by reading a sentence or two from a letter sent by President Harding on the 13th of February last, to Mr. Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Committee of Reorganization. Mr. Brown represents the President, and there is in addition to that a Congressional Committee of three Senators and three Representatives, Mr. Smoot being the Chairman. “I hand you herewith a chart which exhibits in detail the present organization of the Government Departments. The changes are suggested after numerous conferences and consultations with various heads of the Government Departments. The changes, with few exceptions, notably that of coordinating all the agencies of defence, have been sanctioned by the Cabinet. That is the changes, with few exceptions, notably the plan to coordinate the War and Navy Departments. In a few instances, which I believe are of minor importance, the plan has not been followed to the letter, in order to avoid questions which might jeopardize reorganization as a whole.” That was a statement submitted by President Harding and there has been no change in the position.

An inquiry whether Mr. Geissler, Minister to Guatemala submitted his resignation to the President. There was no submission of his resignation which differed in any respect from the submission of several resignations that came to me when I first became President. I regarded it as a formal matter, and at once instructed Mr. Geissler that I very much desired him to continue in the service, and expressed my gratification to him at the good conduct of his office. This perhaps ought not to be published, but I think he had an idea that if he had a letter of that kind from me it might indicate to the people among whom he represents this country, that he not only was there with the approval of President Harding, but he was also there with my full approval.

An inquiry as to when the final Budget estimates will come and their approximate total. I suppose that it will reach me within a very few days. Perhaps within a week. I am not exactly sure about that, and the indication s are that we can bring the total within the figures which were given by President Harding at the las t conference of the business heads of the various Departments, which was held in June, I think, just before he was starting on his trip. At that time he strongly hoped that there could be a reduction of $126,000,000 in the Budget of this year, in order to bring the ordinary expenditures of the Government within 1,700,000,000, exclusive of the Post Office and exclusive of the amount that is required to take care of the debt, — the interest on the debt and the annual amount that is set aside for the cancellation of and redemption of the debt.

I have also here an inquiry about what plans will be adopted, assuming that we are able to negotiate and get ratified the twelve mile limit treaty with Great Britain. So far as I know, no change is contemplated about that in relation to American ships. It is stated that they were prohibited from carrying liquor outside the three mile limit by Executive Order. I haven’t any expectation of changing that order, and of course they were prohibited by the decision of the Supreme Court from bringing liquor within the three mile limit.

An inquiry also about the suggestions of Mr. Meyer and Mr. Mondell as to a reduction in taxes and its effect on the agricultural situation. I think their suggestions speak for themselves, and I don’t know as I could comment on them in a way to add anything to them.

There is no change relative to the pneumatic tubes. There is some investigation on that. I have already spoken about the Budget. That, I think, exhausts the inquiries of the day.

Thursday, November 8, 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 119-1486 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5415949

The Beer Hall Putsch, a large scale Nazi Party attempt at overthrowing the Weimar government combined with far right German support, began when Adolf Hitler with 603 members of the Nazi Party surrounded ll, Der Bürgerbräukeller, where Bavaria's State Commissioner Gustav Ritter von Kahr was making a speech to 3,000 people.  Hitler declared his revolution was aimed at "the Berlin Jew government and the November criminals of 1918".  More Nazi revolutionaries waited in another beer hall, the Lowenbraukeller.

Hitler declared that General Erich Ludendorff would form a new government.  Ludendorff was descending into extreme anti Christianity, although he also held animosity towards Jews as well.

Following that, while the Nazi forces grew, they were disordered and without direction.  Some were arrested early on by German authorities, and a large Nazi force was turned back by a small Reichswehr and police detail. Both Hitler and Ludendorff would be arrested.

The revolution failed by midday the following day, but set the stage for Hitler's rise to power as an extreme right wing figure.

The Imperial Conference ended with an agreement that the British Dominions would be allowed to enter into their own treaties with foreign governments, a major concession.

Monday, October 4, 1943. Monstrous

Himmler delivered the first of his Posen speeches to SS officers and German administrators, in which he stated, in part:

I also want to speak to you here, in complete frankness, of a really grave chapter. Amongst ourselves, for once, it shall be said quite openly, but all the same we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30, 1934, to do our duty as we were ordered, and to stand comrades who had erred against the wall and shoot them, and we never spoke about it and we never will speak about it. It was a matter of natural tact that is alive in us, thank God, that we never talked about it amongst ourselves, that we never discussed it. Each of us shuddered and yet each of us knew clearly that the next time he would do it again if it were an order, and if it were necessary. I am referring here to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of the things that is easily said: "The Jewish people are going to be exterminated," that's what every Party member says, "sure, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination - it'll be done." And then they all come along, the 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his one decent Jew. Of course, the others are swine, but this one, he is a firstrate Jew. Of all those who talk like that, not one has seen it happen, not one has had to go through with it. Most of you men know what it is like to see 100 corpses side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stood fast through this - and except for cases of human weakness - to have stayed decent, that has made us hard. This is an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history, for we know how difficult it would be for us if today - under bombing raids and the hardships and deprivations of war - if we were still to have the Jews in every city as secret saboteurs, agitators, and inciters. If the Jews were still lodged in the body of the German nation, we would probably by now have reached the stage of 1916-17. 

The wealth they possessed we took from them. I gave a strict order, which has been carried out by SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, that this wealth will of course be turned over to the Reich in its entirety. We have taken none of it for ourselves. Individuals who have erred will be punished in accordance with the order given by me at the start, threatening that anyone who takes as much as a single Mark of this money is a dead man. A number of SS men - they are not very - many committed this offense, and they shall die. There will be no mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty towards our people, to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves by so much as a fur, as a watch, by one Mark or a cigarette or anything else. We do not want, in the end, because we destroyed a bacillus, to be infected by this bacillus and to die. I will never stand by and watch while even a small rotten spot develops or takes hold. Wherever it may form we will together burn it away. All in all, however, we can say that we have carried out this most difficult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character.... 

He also stated:

What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me, Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary by taking away the children and bringing them up among us. Whether the other races live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture. 

He went on to refer to these people as animals, noting how the Germans were, he claimed, the only people in the world to have a decent attitude towards animals.

These were words from a German leader, it might be noted, celebrating German murder.

The Germans took the Greek island of Kos, following which they killed 100 Italian officers, following orders from Hitler regarding Italian officers who had followed their government into action against the Germans.

Corsica was liberated from the Axis.

Australian commanders at Dampu.

The Australians prevailed in the Battle of Dampu.

Albanian resistance fighters prevailed in the Battle of Drashovica.

An RAF raid on Frankfurt hit a children's hospital's air raid shelder, resulting in 529 civilian deaths, of which 90 were children.

The U-279, U-389, U-422 and U-460 were all destroyed by aircraft in the Atlantic.

The U.S. Navy attacked German shipping at Bodø, Norway with aircraft from the USS Ranger in Operation Leader.  Five German ships were sunk, four damaged and two aircraft lost for a loss of four Navy aircraft.

Dauntless dive bomber in Opeation Leader.

The operation in far northern Norway was the U.S. Navy's only carrier assault on German targets during World War Two, outside of operations against submarines and in the Mediterranean.

Bing Crosby recorded I'll Be Home for Christmas.

Friday, July 13, 1923. Doubling down.

 

France, undeterred by criticism and results, determined to into German deeper.

And there was an attempted jail break at the Natrona County jail.

What became the famous Hollywood sign, which originally said Hollywoodland, was dedicated.  It promoted a housing development.   The sign would read in that fashion until 1949 when it was shortened.

Paleontologist lead by U.S. expeditionist Roy Chapman found fossilized dinosaur eggs in Mongolia, the first people to do so and realize what they were.

Hermann Ehrhardt, being held by Germany on high treason for his role in the Kapp Putsch, escaped.

Ehrhardt, back left of car, during putsch.

Ehrhardt, an Imperial German naval officer, lead the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt during the attempt to overthrow the government.  Ehrhardt fled to Switzerland, but returned in September.  This would establish a pattern for the rest of his active life, as the German government later sought to arrest him again, and then finally he feld to escape the Night of the Long Knives. As that would indicate, while he was in the far right, and anti Semitic, he was also opposed to the Nazis.