An RAF Mosquito raid destroys the Central Population Registry building in The Hague, destroying the records of the Gestapo.
The Red Army captures Dzhankoy and Kerch, Crimea.
The USS Redfin sank the Akigumo.
The U-108 was destroyed in its pen at Stettin in a U.S. Army Air Force air raid.
Last prior edition:
Savannah, Georgia held its first St. Patrick's Day parade on this day in 1824.
We don't tend to think of the Irish immigrating to the American South, but there were some, although the story is complicated by the conflation of the Irish with the Scots Irish, the latter group actually being a Scottish Protestant population imported by the United Kingdom with the intent to create a sort of Protestant wall in Ulster. The actual Irish were a massively unpopular "race" in the United States at this point in time.
The name "Old Glory" was applied to the U.S. flag for the first time, with that coming from Cpt. William Driver, a commercial captain who received it from his mother and local women of Salem, Massachusetts. The name was applied to the individual flag.
Driver was an interesting character and had originally gone to sea at age 13 as a cabin boy. On an 1831 expedition to the South Pacific, his ship was the only one out of six that survived the trip, and his ship escorted 65 descendants of the Bounty survivors back to Pitcairn Island. He retired from sailing in 1837 and became a salesman. During the Civil War, he remained loyal to the Union while living in Nashville.
It remained in his family's possession until 1922, when it was donated to the Smithsonian.
The Anglo Dutch Treaty was entered into resolving issues that had arisen due to a prior treaty in 1814.
Last prior:
French and German farmers have been protesting.
But why?
Some of it is related to costs. Energy, fertilizer and transport costs have risen in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while at the same time, governments and retailers, have moved to reduce rising food prices in what basically amounts to a joint wartime effort to keep "cheap food" rolling.
It's partially a "cheap food" policy, then, which the US has had since the Second World War.
And ironically, in that wartime category the cost of Ukrainian agricultural imports are down as the EU waived quotas and duties following Russia’s invasion in order to try to make up for the impact on the huge Ukrainian agricultural sector which was stressed due to Russian control of the Black Sea.
And extreme weather, which is been very notable in Wyoming this year, and if things don't turn around will lead to a major drought this summer (although we're not supposed to talk about that here), is impacting production in Southern Europe.
And then just as with Franklin Roosevelt's Depression Era agricultural programs, and the post World War Two cheap food policy in the US, Europe's six decade old common agricultural policy (CAP), a huge subsidy system designed for food security. . . for the consumer, massively favors economies of scale.
That has resulted in farm consolidation, just as it has here, with the number of farms in the EU dropping off by 1/3d since 2005.
Somewhat ironically, however, a EU program designed to combat global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, based on a "farm to fork" or "farm to table" model, has been unpopular, as such things usually are with farmers, even when, if they stop to think about it, it'd help them. Anyhow, the EU has the ability to impose rules, and its imposing rules to force this.
Among the rules being imposed are ones to cut the use of pesticides by 50% by 2030, cutting fertilizer use by 20%, and allowing land to be idled up to the rate of 25% of all European farmland.
That latter, which sort of resembles some policies in the US, no doubt is seen as a shocker, but as agricultural production has become more efficient, and the European population is rocketing into decline, it makes sense.
And environmental programs in individual countries, such as ending tax breaks on agricultural diesel to balance the budget in Germany, or reducing nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands, have been unpopular.
Well, what of this?
Interesting, at the same time, in Southern Europe there's been a trend of people returning to small agricultural holdings and making a go of it. This has been occurring in France and Greece. And maybe there's a thought there.
Farmers are among the most resistant people in the world to change. So much so, that it must be an inherent part of the nature of farming. At the same time, they're also among the people who are most wedded to doing things in an expensive way, once they adapt to it. The disaster that fence to fence farming would bring to individual farmers was something that Willard W. Cochrane warned about in the early 1960s, and he also worried about the evolving scale and expense of farm equipment. He actually proposed to regulate it in favor of small farmers, but of course that's something that Americans, who are addicted to economies of scale to their own detriment, would never do.
European farmers, who were still principally equine powered until the end of World War Two, have become addicted to the petroleum fueled agriculture that the US brought in starting in the 1920s. Sadly, we're likely to go to more and more automated farming, and by extension make large number of Americans more and more miserable. Europeans are likely to follow suit.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
The Ethiopian Revolution began with the mutiny of the Negele Borana garrison over bad food and a lack of water.
They sized Lt. Gen. Deresse Dubale, Emperor Haile Selassie's envoy, and forced him to survive on the same fare they had for a week.
Gasoline rationing commenced in the Netherlands.
Television started operation in Tanzania.
May 15, 2023
Turkey
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has governed the country for twenty years, is headed into a runoff election against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, having failed to secure 50% of the vote.
May 22, 2023
Ulster
Sinn Fein made big gains in local election in Northern Ireland this past week.
May 29, 2023
Turkey
Erdoğan unfortunately won the run-off election in Turkey.
May 30, 20223
Alberta, Canada
Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party won provincial elections yesterday.
July 23, 2023
The With center-right Christian Democratic Party, Partido Popular (PP) came in first, winning 136 seats. The far-right Vox party, which was predicted to be a kingmaker, won 33 seats and it might through in with the PP. The ruling center-left Socialist party won 122 seats, with likely coalition partner Sumar at 31 seats.
But there's no telling, really. The Socialist Party is in power. . . it might throw in with the PP.
So, it's hard to tell who won. They're working out the deals now, but chances are that whoever won will not be in power long.
October 16, 2023
Left and center left parties took 248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of the Polish parliament, compared to the 200 taken by the governing Law and Justice party and 12 by a right wing partner.
The government of Poland will accordingly change in the first European defeat of the king of right wing populism/National Conservatism that most notably emerged in Hungary and recently can be imperfectly argued to have gained ground in several other European countries. It had made statements about openly following Hungary's lead. As recently as 2019 it was gaining ground.
And it might still be. Parliamentary politics are not the same as republican politics. The Law and Justice Party still was the largest vote getter, and the number of votes for it increased. Effectively, it has 212 seats to 248 seats held by various other opposition parties that cross a political spectrum. A government still has to be assembled and it will remain a major voice in the parliament.
November 23, 2023
Argentina.
Difficult to describe, socially conservative, a member of the Austrian school of economics, and sort of a libertarian, Javier Milei won the Argentine presidential election.
This election is so sui generis that it's hard to put in an international context. The temptation is always to view these sorts of shifts as to the hard right, or hard left, and this would sort of be hard right, but it also reflects a rejection of Argentina's political history going back for 90 years or so.
The Netherlands.
The Dutch Party for Freedom made big election gains in the Dutch parliament, signaling a large leap to the far right in the country. While being expressed as a shock, this has been going on in the Netherlands for some time.
This victory makes it possible that its leader, Geert Wilders, could become prime minister of the country, but only if he is able to put together a coalition with other right wing and center right wing parties.
The party is strongly anti immigrant and wishes to leave the European Union.
D+1 of the Invasion of Tarawa. Additional Marines were landed, as is typical for such operations. Troops were also landed on Bairki.
Reporter Robert Sherrod, embedded with the Marines, reported in his notes:
0530: The coral flats in front of us present a sad sight at low tide. A half dozen Marines lie exposed, now that the water has receded. They are hunched over, rifles in hand, just as they fell. They are already one-quarter covered by sand that the high tide left. Further out on the flats and to the left I can see at least fifty other bodies. I had thought yesterday, however, that low tide would reveal many more than that. The smell of death, that sweetly sick odor of decaying human flesh, is already oppressive.
Now that it is light, the wounded go walking by, on the beach. Some are supported by corpsmen; others, like this one coming now, walk alone, limping badly, their faces contorted with pain. Some have bloodless faces, some bloody faces, others only pieces of faces. Two corpsmen pass, carrying a Marine on a stretcher who is lying face down. He has a great hole in his side, another smaller hole in his shoulder. This scene, set against the background of the dead on the coral flats, is horrible. It is war. I wish it could be seen by the silken-voiced, radio-announcing pollyannas back home who, by their very inflections, nightly lull the people into a false sense of all-is-well.
0600: One of the fresh battalions is coming in. Its Higgins boats are being hit before they pass the old hulk of a freighter seven hundred yards from shore. One boat blows up, then another. The survivors start swimming for shore, but machine-gun bullets dot the water all around them. Back of us the Marines have started an offensive to clean out the jap machine guns which are now firing at our men in the water.They evidently do not have much success, because there is no diminution of the fire that rips into the two dozen or more Higgins boats.
The ratatatatatat of the machine guns increases, and the high pi-i-ing of the jap sniper bullet sings overhead incessantly. The Japs still have some mortars, too, and at least one 40 or 77-mm. gun. Our destroyers begin booming their five-inch shells on the Jap positions near the end of the airfield back of us.
Some of the fresh troops get within two hundred yards of shore, while others from later waves are unloading further out. One man falls, writhing in the water. He is the first man I have seen actually hit, though many thousands of bullets cut into the water. Now some reach the shore, maybe only a dozen at first. They are calm, even disdainful of death. Having come this far, slowly, through the water, they show no disposition to hurry. They collect in pairs and walk up the beach, with snipers still shooting at them.
Now one of our mortars discovers one of the machine guns that has been shooting at the Marines. It is not back of us, but is a couple of hundred yards west, out in one of the wooden privies the dysentery-fearing japs built out over the water. The mortar gets the range, smashes the privy, and there is no more firing from there.
But the machine guns continue to tear into the oncoming Marines. Within five minutes I see six men killed. But the others keep coming. One rifleman walks slowly ashore, his left arm a bloody mess from the shoulder down. The casualties become heavier. Within a few minutes more I can count at last a hundred Marines lying on the flats.
0730: The Marines continue unloading from the Higgins boats, but fewer of them are making the shore now. Many lie down-behind the pyramidal concrete barriers the Japs had erected to stop tanks. Others make it as far as the disabled tanks and amphtracks, then lie behind them to size up the chances of making the last hundred yards to shore. There are at least two hundred bodies which do not move at all on the dry flats, or in the shallow water partially covering them. This is worse, far worse than it was yesterday...
From Liveblogging World War Two.
Among the casualties that day which Sherrod wrote about was 1st. Lt William D. Hawkins:
Hawkins had told me aboard the ship that he would put his platoon of men up against any company of soldiers on earth and guarantee to win. He was slightly wounded by shrapnel as he came ashore in the first wave, but the furthest thing from his mind was to be evacuated. He led his platoon into the forest of coconut palms. During a day and a half he personally cleaned out six Jap machine gun nests, sometimes standing on top of a track and firing point blank at four or five men who fired back at him from behind blockhouses. Lieutenant Hawkins was wounded a second time, but he still refused to retire. To say that his conduct was worthy of the highest traditions of the Marine Corps is like saying the Empire State Building is moderately high.
Hawkins would die that day.
FIRST LIEUTENANT WILLIAM D. HAWKINS
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RESERVE
for service as set forth in the following
CITATION:
For valorous and gallant conduct above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of a Scout Sniper Platoon attached to the Second Marines, Second Marine Division, in action against Japanese-held Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, November 20 and 21, 1943. The first to disembark from the jeep lighter, First lieutenant Hawkins unhesitatingly moved forward under heavy enemy fire at the end of the Betio pier, neutralizing emplacements in coverage of troops assaulting the main breach positions. Fearlessly leading his men on to join the forces fighting desperately to gain a beachhead, he repeatedly risked his life throughout the day and night to direct and lead attacks on pill boxes and installations with grenades and demolition. At dawn on the following day, First Lieutenant Hawkins returned to the dangerous mission of clearing the limited beachhead of Japanese resistance, personally initiating an assault on a hostile fortified by five enemy machine guns and, crawling forward in the face of withering fire, boldly fired point-blank into the loopholes and completed the destruction with grenades. Refusing to withdraw after being seriously wounded in the chest during this skirmish, First Lieutenant Hawkins steadfastly carried the fight to the enemy, destroying three more pill boxes before he was caught in a burst of Japanese shell fire and mortally wounded. His relentless fighting spirit in the face of formidable opposition and his exceptionally daring tactics were an inspiration to his comrades during the most crucial phase of the battle and reflect the highest credit upon the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
/S/ FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Hawkins was an engineer who had a very rough start in his short life, being severely injured as a baby and his father having died when he was eight. He nonetheless graduated from high school at age 16, and as noted had gone on to university.
Commentator Drew Pearson broke the story on his radio show of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower reprimanding George S. Patton for a slapping incident, which within Army circles was now old news.
U.S. infantry advanced on Butaritari on Makin.
The following is undoubtedly copyrighted, but I'm posting it here in the fair comment category to show how "rah rah" and frankly stupid American superhero cartoons of this era could be and often were. This was a Superman strip from this date:
In the context of what was going on that day, that was unbelievably dumb.
U.S. Navy air installation on Funafuti (Tuvalu) commenced operations.
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt 1
secret
[ Cairo ] 21 November 1943.2
Former Naval Person to President Roosevelt personal and most secret. No. 506.
1. My arrival in Egypt is bound to be known as I shall pass through to see Catroux and others: moreover British Parliament meets on 23rd and my absence must be explained. Unless I hear from you to the contrary I shall allow it to be stated on 22nd that I am in Cairo.
2. This publicity will be unsupported cover for your movement which I think should not be announced for a few days.
3. You will be receiving a telegram about military precautions, which are excellent.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—November 21, 1943: German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is placed in command of Atlantic Wall defenses in France to defend against an Allied invasion.
The Dutch ban on Sunday driving due to the fuel emergency went into effect.
Netherlands banned private Sunday driving, with a start date of November 4, to conserve fuel.
The Judiciary Committee voted 21 to 17 to consider impeaching Richard Nixon. The vote was split on party lines.
The Bosphorus Bridge was completed across the Bosphorus connecting Europe and Asia for the first time since Emperor Darius of Persia's pontoon bridge of 512 BC.
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Heinrich Himmler issued his "scorched earth" order requiring that German forces completely denude areas in the East they were retreating from in every sense.
Scorched early orders are surprisingly common in warfare, and are designed to prevent an advancing army from using a conquered area's resources. More than most armies of World War Two, both the Germans and the Soviets depended on local resources. For some areas in the East this would be the second time they'd been subjected to this during the war, as the Soviets also practiced it, and for Ukraine, it was part of an ongoing series of disasters afflicting residents of the region.
Sarah Sundin notes for this day:
Today in World War II History—September 7, 1943: German 17th Army begins evacuating the Kuban bridgehead in southern Russia as the Soviets advance. Actor Orson Welles marries actress Rita Hayworth.
I honestly didn't know that Welles and Hayworth had ever been married.
Of course, this scene has been taken over by everyone, male and female, checking their cell phones.
The Country Gentleman simply featured a fine bovine.
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.
Today in World War II History—April 29, 1943: 80 Years Ago—Apr. 29, 1943: US War Labor Board demands equal pay for equal work for women in war industries, retroactive to April 5.
She also notes:
US Civil Air Patrol is transferred from the Office of Civilian Defense to the War Department as an Army Air Force auxiliary.
Strikes spread in the Netherlands, commencing on this day, in reaction to a German decision to reclaim released Dutch POWs. They had been paroled under conditions that they not rejoin combat, a common parole condition for centuries, but many had instead entered the resistance.
British poster urging natural gas conservation.
Germany began deportation of 4,000 Jews from occupied France. They were sent to Sobibor, where only five of them would survive.
The initial deportation of 4,000 was shortly followed by an additional 1,000.
The Germans also began to deport Yugoslavian Jews from Skopje to Treblinka.
The Germans made the first executions of Gypsies at Auschwitz.
The Waffen SS attacked and destroyed Khatyn, Byelorussia in retaliation for the killing of four German officers, including Hans-Otto Woellke of the Order Police. Woelke had been an Olympic shot putter.
Sarah Sundin notes:
Today in World War II History—March 22, 1943: Nazis extend work week in the occupied Netherlands to 54 hours. US II Corps under Lt. Gen. George Patton occupies Maknassy, Tunisia.
Sundin also has a very interesting photograph on her blog, of troops in Maknassy. I wouldn't normally repost it, but the details are quite interesting.
The quality of the photograph isn't fantastic, but the details are really interesting as noted. All of the soldiers except the one on the far right are wearing coveralls, suggesting they're armored vehicle crewmen. They are armed, left to right, as follows: M1903 Springfield, M1 Carbine, M1903 Springfield, M1903 Springfield, unclear, unclear.
British Colonel Edward Orlando Kellett DSO, parliamentarian, British Army officer, and big game hunter was killed in action during the fighting in Tunisia as a colonel of the Royal Armoured Corps.
The U-524 and U-665 were sunk by Allied aircraft in the Atlantic.
The Allesandro Volta (Italy) exploded in port, devasting the harbor, after being hit by bombs from a B-24. The same raid took out the Franco M, the Labor, the Lentini, the Manzoni, the Maria Louisa, the Modena, the Mondovi, hte Moni, the Renato, the Rosa and the Trentino.
It was a bad day for Italian shipping.
The German tanker Eurosee sank in an air raid on Wilhelmshaven.
The British Harbour Defense Motor Launches HMML 1157 and HMML 1212 sank in an air raid in Portugal.
The Imperial Japanese Army (yes, army) auxiliary transport ship Meigan Maru was sunk off of Java by the USS Gudgeon.
Clark Gable appeared on the cover of Look magazine in his airman attire.
Field Marshal Von Manstein received permission from Hitler, who he had flown to see, to fall back on new defensive lines on the Mius River.
The Western Allies appointed Lt. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to the position of commander of the Allied forces in the African theatre of operations, expanding his authority over British and French forces, as well as American.
The Germans arrested 600 Dutch students in reprisal for an assassination attempt on a German officer, blamed by the officer on students. The 600 were sent to Herzogenbusch concentration camp, which was in the Netherlands.
100,000 Francophone Belgians protested the imposition of Flemish at Ghent University, changing "Gand est Français".
The Belgian Chamber of Deputies had imposed Flemish, and prohibited French, by law.
Flemish is, of course, a Dutch dialect spoken in Belgium, one of Belgium's three languages, the third being German, which is spoken in a small area of the country. Territorially, about half of Belgium speaks Flemish as their primary language. Ghent, in northern Belgium, is in fact in the Flemish region of the country.
The Belgians who speak Flemish are also called the Flemis, and make up about 60% of the Belgian population, all concentrated in the north. Flanders is the Flemish region. The French speaking area is part of Wallonia, a region which includes parts of France.
New Zealand cricketer and later Wellington lawyer, Alfred Holdship, died at age 55
Joseph Stalin publically announced that the Red Army's winter offensive had destroyed 102 German divisions and captured 200,000 POWs.
On the same day the Germans rounded up 1,200 Jews in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands and deported them to concentration camps. As German fortunes faded, it's already murderous treatment of the Jews hardened into a campaign of absolute extermination.
Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov, age 55, died of starvation in a Soviet labor camp, his crime being that of so many other Russians of simply falling out of favor with Stalin, but dressed as espionage.
Mandatory screening of airline passengers went into effect in the United States.
The Canadian Parliament unanimously condemned the 1972 "Christmas" bombing of North Vietnam by the United States. This infuriated President Nixon, who was otherwise busy with an Executive Order designed to reorganize the Federal Government and cut the number of White House staff, 4,000, in half.
Mali and Niger broke diplomatic relations with Israel and the Netherlands recognized German Democratic Republic, i.e., East Germany.
The Republic of Ireland amended its constitution removing the "special position" of the Catholic Church, making reference to other religions present in Ireland, and reducing the voting age from 21 to 18. The special position had been resisted by the Catholic Church at the onset of its inclusion but included due to the insistence and influence of Éamon de Valera.
Joe Biden was sworn in as Senator from Delaware at a chapel at the Wilmington, Delaware hospital where one of his sons was hospitalized following a December 18 accident that killed Biden's first wife and his daughter.
Aerosmith released its first album, which was called Aerosmith. On the same day, Bruce Springsteen released his famous debut studio album, Greetings from Ashbury Park, N.J. Both albums showed an evolution away from the Rock & Roll of the 1960s.
Former German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II, a widower of 63 years of age, married Hermaine Reusse of Greiz, a widow of 35 years of age. Very few guests came to the private wedding and town officials from Doom, Netherlands, where the wedding occurred, were booed by a crowed that had gathered.
The American Weekly went to press with a lush illustration. It was a Sunday news supplement for the Hearst newspapers.
Today in World War II History—August 5, 1942: 80 Years Ago: Churchill appoints Lt. Gen. William Gott to replace Gen. Claude Auchinleck over British Eighth Army in North Africa.
