Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Friday, February 2, 2024
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
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.
Saturday, November 11, 2023
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.
Thursday, November 9, 2023
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=5415949The 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.
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Thursday, November 8, 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch.
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.
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, July 13, 2023
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.
Monday, June 26, 2023
Saturday, June 26, 1943. Mutiny in Norway, Choosing Normandy, and Willie Gillis.
Today in World War II History—June 26, 1943: Allied commanders choose Normandy for invasion of France in 1944 and appoint Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory to prepare air plans for D-day.
Sarah Sundin, on her blog.
The crews of six U-boats based in Norway mutinied, refusing to put out to sea in light of high German submarine losses. They were arrested and placed in Akershus Prison in Oslo. The collapse of Imperial Germany began, of course, with sailor revolts in 1918.
Fritz Schmidt, age 39, the German Commissioner-General for Political Affairs and Propaganda in the occupied Netherlands died when he "fell, jumped, or was pushed out of a train".
A famous Norman Rockwell illustration appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, depicting his everyman soldier figure, Willie Gillis, showing the "cat's cradle" string trick to an Indian snake charmer.
Friday, June 16, 2023
Pride and Unintended Consequences.
It seems grotesque in retrospect, but Hitler posed as a moral crusader gallantly battling the forces of iniquity, corruption, and even deceit. Many Germans, horrified by the loosening of moral standards in Germany after World War I, were duped by his promises of moral rejuvenation. Hitler’s project resonated with many who were disgusted by the rampant hedonism and carnality of Weimar high culture and popular culture. Whether one views Hitler and Nazism as a Utopian and technocratic expression of the modernist project, or as an atavistic reaction against modernity, or as some blend of the two (“reactionary modernism” or “conservative revolution”), or as something completely unique, it is clear that Nazism promised a resurrection or awakening of the German people that involved a revival of morality that was in the process of decay and degeneration.
Hitler as Moral Crusader and Liar, Richard Weikart, abstract.
Friday, May 26, 2023
Saturday, May 26, 1923. The Twenty Four Hours of Le Mans
The French executed some Germans who were committing acts of sabotage and the like against their occupation of the Ruhr.
One of the terrorist was one Albert Leo Schlageter, a former German officer of the Great War and a Freikorps officer who had engaged in acts of sabotage against the French. He was not a "Red" and would go on to obtain mythic status in the German far right, including the early Nazis, who in fact murdered his betrayer. The killers of that individual were one Rudolf Höss and Martin Bormann, who would later go on to roles in the Third Reich. They were first captured and sentenced for their role in the murder.
Bormann is well known, but Höss less so. He was Auschwitz's longest commanding officer and was executed in 1947. Facing execution, he came to see his actions as gravely immoral and wrote this out to his wife prior to his execution:
My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.
On this same day, a Communist lead strike in the Ruhr expanded.
The British made the Emirate of Transjordan autonomous, but not independent of British oversight. It would achieve full independence in 1946.
Turkey waived reparations claims against Greece at Lausanne in exchange for the Thracian territory.
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Monday, April 26, 1943. Intrepid launched.
The USS Intrepid was launched in Newport News. The aircraft carrier would serve throughout World War Two and two following wars, and be decommissioned in 1974. She is a museum ship today, docked in the Hudson in New York, and served as the FBI operations center following the September 11 attacks on New York.
Riots broke out at Uppsala, Sweden between Swedish Nazis and anti-Nazi demonstrators.
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Tuesday, March 9, 1943. Rommel departs. Air Force limits. De La Rocque arrested. Goebbels looks in the Stable. We Will Never Die opens. Mardi Gras.
Erwin Rommel was recalled by Hitler from North Africa and put on medical leave. General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim assumed command of the Afrika Korps, and would remain in command until its surrender. Effectively, Hitler had rescued Rommel.
Von Arnim bore a remarkable resemblance to actor Keenan Wynn, who played Col. "Bat" Guano in Dr. Strangelove.
Von Arnim would go into captivity in the UK and then later the U.S. He would not enter the Bundesheer following its establishment, perhaps due to age, and died in 1962 at age 73.
Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:
Today in World War II History—March 9, 1943: US Eighth Air Force Central Medical Establishment recommends 25-mission combat tour for bomber crewmen and 200 hours or 50 missions for fighter pilots.
Of note, making it through 25 bomber missions at the time was against the odds. Also, I didn't know that there was a limit for fighter pilots.
French right wing political figure François de La Rocque, who had gone from accepting the French surrender and Petain's rule to being a secret opponent of it and founder of a right wing resistance movement, was arrested by the Germans. Regarded by some as a precursor to de Gaulle, he would survive the war and die in 1946 at age 60.
De La Rocque had interestingly gone from the far right into moderation prior to the war, first being part of the Croix de Feu and then being a founder of the French Social Party. The latter party was a combination of conservative and corporatist, but it was not anti-democratic. Some credit it with giving the French middle class an alternative to fascism, thereby preventing fascism from rising in France.
German propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary
The anti-Bolshevik theme is the best horse in the stable.
Goebbels' comments are something that are frighteningly relevant in our current society. Communism was the enemy of mankind, but so was Nazism. Indeed, they both shared the common trait of mass murder as a central element of their ethos, which gave the regimes an odd sense of being constantly imperiled by huge plots, in their view, which necessitated murder, in their view, which in turn made millions of people culpable, and therefore loyal, through guilt.
The Nazis, right from the onset, portrayed themselves as the cultural defenders against Communism, which made many forget, and then adopt, their radical views which were not "conservative" in any real sense. After reaching an accord with the Soviets just prior to World War Two, this was downplayed, but it was ramped back up again prior to Operation Barbarossa and kept at a fever pitch through the remainder of the war. The message to Germans was that the Nazis were the only defense of Western culture against an "alien" Communism, although Communism itself was originally a German movement. The message was sufficient for many Germans, including high ranking ones, to put aside their doubts about Nazism on the basis that it seemed to be, based upon what they were hearing, their only alternative to Communism.
Of course, for millions of Germans, the end of the war and Germany's fighting it out past mid 1943 would bring Communism to them.
By way of contemporary analogy, millions of Americans today have been listening, and continue to, to populist propagandist who spread lies and whip up panic over their being the only alternative to "wokeism". Tucker Carlson and his ilk portray the far populist right as the only means of combating a host of truly concerning liberal ideas. By espousing lies, they bring those ideas closer to implementation.
We Will Never Die, a Jewish pageant featuring spectacular artwork (copyright protected) on its cover, opened on the East Coast. It acknowledged that it was held in memory of what it then thought to be Europe's 2,000,000 then Jewish dead, showing that knowledge of the Holocaust was in fact widespread, contrary to what some will claim.
Today was Mardi Gras for 1943. On the same day, readers of the nation's newspapers learned that the wartime ban on sliced bread had been lifted the prior day. The ban had been to save steel needed for slicing machines.
Friday, January 27, 2023
Saturday, January 27, 1923. Nazis meet for the first time, San Marino temporarily ceases to exist, Rifian POWs released.
The German National Socialist Party, the NASDP, commonly called the Nazi Party, held its first party congress. It was held in Munich, where the party was centered at the time, and drew 6,000 members.
The tiny Republic of San Marino was forced by local fascists into union with Italy. The micro state has since regained independence.
The Republic of the Rif released the remaining 326 prisoners of war it held to Spain, in exchange for 4,000,000 pesetas. 261 POWS had died in Rifian captivity.
The Country Gentleman had an age-old theme.
Of interest, that style of winter hat is still very popular with outdoorsmen and agriculturalist. I have two of them.
The Saturday Evening Post had an extraordinarily boring cover.
Friday, January 13, 2023
Wednesday, January 13, 1943. Germany enters Total War.
Adolf Hitler decreed that the "Führer decree on the full employment of men and women in the defense of the Reich", bringing total mobilization into effect, but rather late, given that the war had been going on since 1939, and that the struggle with Russia had been going on since 1941.
The act was designed to bring adult German women into the industrial work force, thereby relieving men to fight in the Wehrmacht. It would only allow, however, for an additional 500,000 men to be mobilized, which in the context of the war was telling as that frankly wasn't that many. The act had been designed to apply to women from age 16 to 50, but Hitler insisted on upping the lower age limit to 17. Soon thereafter, the upper age limit was depressed to 45.
As perhaps that short history reveals, the Nazis were very reluctant to fully mobilize their adult population to the extent it required mobilizing women. The party had always had the view that women's roles were solely familial and domestic, and had discouraged female employment and involvement in civil life in every fashion. While exceptions occurred, women were not supposed to be allowed to join the Nazi Party. Indeed, Nazi fascination with the female reproductive role descended right down to the perverse level in some instances.
With the arrival of the war, therefore, the Germans effectively sidelined its female population until forced to mobilize them due to the inescapable manpower needs of the war.
This contrasts dramatically with the Allied powers. The UK, US and Canada had all encouraged women to work in factories and fields since the onset of the war, and had taken women into non combat military service early on. The Soviet Union went one step further, not only taking women into service, but also allowing small scale use of female combatants. The UK had required women by this point to register for some sort of war support service.
By this point in the war, of course, the Germans were resorting to slave labor for the same purpose.
Some interesting ones from Sarah Sundin for today's date:
Today in World War II History—January 13, 1943:Students at the University of Munich riot after a Nazi speaker blames the German army’s dire situation in Stalingrad on student malingerers.
and
In “Sleepy Lagoon” case in Los Angeles, 17 Mexican-Americans are wrongly convicted of murder; convictions will be overturned in October 1944.
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Monday, September 18, 1922. Canada throws the anchor out on Anatolian Intervention
Friday, June 24, 2022
Saturday, June 23, 1922. Portents.
The Saturday Evening Post hit the stands with an enduringly popular Leyendecker illustration.
Walther Rathenau, German Foreign Minster, was assassinated by right wing German nationalist. Germany's march towards Nazism was commencing.
On the same day Hitler began serving his prison sentence.
The American Professional Football Association voted to change its name to the National Football League.
The English Ladies Football Association hold its only championship.
Japan announced it would withdraw its occupation forces from Siberia, save for Sakhalin Island, by the end of October.