Tuesday, February 16, 1943. Mildred Harnack executed. Theresienstadt temporairly spared. Domenikon not spared. Norwegian paratroopers drop. Stalin asks for a "second front".

Himmler ordered a cessation of deportations of elderly Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto, resulting in a complete sessaion of deportations of all Jews from there for six months.  Oddly, the ghetto had been designated as a location where elderly Jews could live out tehir lives, albeit not comfortably, resulting in the order, but a peson has to wonder to what extent the order simply wasn't practical, given the massive strain hte war had put on the German railways system, which was being compounded by German deportations.

Italian soldiers commenced reprisal murders of Greek civilians at Domenikon which would result in 175 Greek men being killed.

Norwegian paratroopers were dropped by the British at Skrykenvann in preparation for a raid on the hydro plant at Vemork, targeted at heavy water production.

East German stamp in honor of the Harnacs.

Mildred Harnack, née Fish, a 41-year-old Milwaukee, Wisconsin native, was executed by guillotine at Germany's Plötzensee Prison on orders of Adolph Hitler.  

Harnack was an academic who married Arvid Harnack, a German academic. The couple moved to Arvid's native land, and in the 1930s the couple, if not outright Communists, were at least serious fellow travelers, something not that unusual for academics at the time.  While this was the case, they nonetheless were members of the American Church in Berlin, a Protestant church which Americans attended prior to the war.

The Harnacks were members of the Red Orchestra, which lead to her arrest and execution.  

The story of her death is largely unknown in the US and was in fact suppressed by the US government due to their Communist sympathies.   The U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) concluded her execution "justified", which legally it likely was, given that the sentence for treason was death everywhere at the time. That doesn't make her effort any less noble, of course.

Josepah Stalin, who was fighting a one front, if gigantic, war wrote to Franklin Roosevelt, reiterating the need for a "second front".  The United States was, of course already engaged in a second front in North Africa, a third front in the Pacific, and a basically a fourth front on the Atlantic, none of which involved the Soviets.

The Western Allies, throughout the war, loyally plade this sharade with Stalin, who was, of course, a former German ally, none of which is to belittle the giant Soviet war effort, but which is also not to ignore that the effort was being heavily supplied by the Western Allies.  Soviet propoganda, particularly in the USSR itslef, was so effective on thsi score, hoewver, that unfortunately modern Russians still believe it.

Former slave George Washington Buckner, and later U.S. Minister to Liberia (1913 to 1915) died in Indiana at age 87.  He was also a physician.

Saturday, January 23, 1943. Casablanca released.

Casablanca was given its general release.  Our review of it is here:

Movies In History: Casablanca

First of all, let me note that I made an error in my review of The Maltese Falcon.  The 41 variant of that film was released first, not Casablanca.  I don't know why I reversed the order, but I did.

Casablanca was released for general circulation on January 23, 1943.

At that time, Morocco was just recently brought into the Allied orbit.  Allied troops had landed there in November, 1942 with the landings being part of Operation Torch.  The Moroccan landings, much less discussed than the Algerian ones, actually took place at Casablanca.  French forces resisted the Allies briefly in Algeria and Morocco, before formally switching sides as part of a negotiated turn about in early November, 1942.  Casablanca was the host that January to the Casablanca Conference between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, where the policy of unconditional surrender was announced and agreed upon.

So how's the film hold up?

Well, the movie doesn't take place in 1943, it takes place in December, 1941, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The US isn't yet in the war.  Morocco is in the hands of the Vichy French, although at the end of the movie we learn about a Free French garrison in Brazzaville, a city in French Equatorial Africa.  Casablanca is, as the movie depicts it, as sweaty den of vice, filled with refugees seeking desperately to get out of Morocco and on to freedom somewhere else.  In the center of it is Rick's Cafe American, where everyone goes.  Working into this, we have Victor Laszlo, a Central European resistance leader and his beautiful wife Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman.  Lund, we learn, was the girlfriend of Rick of Rick's Cafe, who proposed to her just as Paris was set to fall, not knowing that she was already married to Laszlo.  Laszlo and Lund need "letters of transit" to leave Morocco, and Vichy French control, and the cynical world-weary Rick is believed to have obtained them from the oily Signor Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre.  Through it all a charmingly corrupt Inspector Renault, played by Claude Rains, weaves his way.

If you haven't seen it, see it.  This is another film which, by some people's measure, is the "greatest" movie ever made, although it isn't as great as the film commonly taking that prize, in my view, that being Citizen Kane.  It's a great movie, however.  And it's all the more amazingly great when you realize how much the making of the film was beset by all sorts of difficulties.

But what of its place in history. Was Casablanca of 1941 like the way it was portrayed in this 1942/43 film?

Well, probably surprisingly close.

Places under European colonial administration were bizarrely reservoirs of traditional cultures, advancement of European ideas, and massive corruption.  All three are shown to exist in the film and, if in exaggerated fashion, probably not too exaggerated really.  Morocco was controlled by Vichy at the time.  Brazzaville actually was beyond Vichy control and French Equatorial Africa was held by France Libre, a Free French movement.  Portugal was a neutral and a destination for people trying to get to the United Kingdom and beyond, or for that matter into Spain and then Nazi Germany through France.

Letters of Transit?  Nope, no such thing.  It is, after all, fiction.

In terms of material details, well the film was a contemporary picture, and it has the pluses and the minuses noted in our review of the Maltese Falcon.  Male costumes, more or less correct, with Bogar again wearing a Borsolino fedora, maybe the same one. Women's fashion?  Well, women refugees probably almost never traveled with a radiant wardrobe.

Well worth seeing, however.

The movie had a limited release on Thanksgiving Day, 1942, in New York City.

It was not known to the general public that Franklin Roosevelt was in Casablanca, Morocco, at the time.

The 8th Army captured Tripoli. We erroneously had this date reported a couple of days ago.

US forces successfully concluded all major ground operations on Guadalcanal, effectively bringing the campaign to a conclusion, the second such conclusion in the Pacific in two days.

British commandos, with Norwegian support, raided Stord, a Norwegian island, in Operation Cartoon and put a pyrite mine out of commission for a year.

Friday, September 11, 1942. The raid on Glomfjord

An Anglo Norwegian commando party raided the Glomfjord power plant in Norway.  The raid was a success, although seven commandos were ultimately captured and then executed under Hitler's Commando Order issued in October, which illegally called for the murder of captured commandos.

Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper and guide Taylor Williams went on a duck hunting trip to Sun Valley, Idaho,

Welcome to Norway

Mid Week At Work: How to become a Norwegian conscript