Wednesday, October 16, 1946. Nuremberg sentences carried out.

Joachim von Ribbentrop (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Wilhelm Keitel (Head of the German High Command), Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Head of the Reich Main Security Office), Alfred Rosenberg (Primary Nazi ideologist and racial theorist), Hans Frank (Governor-General of occupied Poland), Wilhelm Frick (Minister of the Interior),  Julius Streicher (Publisher of Der Stürmer), Fritz Sauckel (Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment), Alfred Jodl (Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command) and Arthur Seyss-Inquart (Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands) were executed.

Their last meal consisted of sausage and cold cuts, along with potato salad, black bread, and tea.

Sgt. John Woods was the executioner.

Executions started at 1:30 a.m.

Von Ribbentrop was executed first.  His final words were:

God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be an understanding between East and West. I wish peace to the world.

Von Ribbentrop apparently told the Lutheran pastor who was present that he would see him again. The execution was not done well and it took fourteen minutes for him to die.

Wilhelm Keitel.

I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons—all for Germany.

Keitel was a cousin once-removed of Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner "

I have loved my German people and my fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty by the laws of my people and I am sorry my people were led this time by men who were not soldiers and that crimes were committed of which I had no knowledge. Germany, good luck.

Alfred Rosenberg, nothing.

Hans Frank

I am thankful for the kind treatment during my captivity and I ask God to accept me with mercy.

Wilhelm Frick

Long live eternal Germany.

Julius Streicher

Adele, my dear wife.

Fritz Sauckel

I am dying innocent. The sentence is wrong. God protect Germany and make Germany great again. Long live Germany! God protect my family.

Alfred Jodl

My greetings to you, my Germany.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart

I hope that this execution marks the final act of the tragedy of the Second World War and that the lesson learned from this war will be that peace and understanding should exist between peoples. I believe in Germany.

The News reported that some women were studying engineering in Colorado.

It was also speculating on the political fortunes of Wyoming's Governor, Lester Hunt.

Hunting season was the subject of a cartoon.

The RMS Queen Elizabeth returned to commercial use.

Gordie Howe made his NHL debut.

Actress Suzanne Somers was born.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 15, 1946. Death of Hermann Göring

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 World Series, baseball, Cartoons, Daily Living, Food, German Luftwaffe, Harry S. Truman, Hermann Göring, J.R. Williams, Nazi Germany, Nuremberg Trials, Truman Administration, Uncle Mike, War Crimes, World War Two

Tuesday, October 15, 1946. Death of Hermann Göring

On the day of his scheduled execution, Hermann Göring committed suicide with a poison capsule.  He asked for Lutheran last rights beforehand and was refused.  Guards noticed his convulsions and summoned medical help., but he died too quickly.

Göring had asked to be shot, rather than hung, as he thought that more honorable.  That request was refused.  How he obtained the poison has been debated.  A suicide note he left claimed that he had kept it concealed the entire time.  Former U.S. Army guard Herbert Lee Stivers claimed in 2005 that he had brought the pill to him at the request of a woman named Mona, and that he did not know that it was poison.  The suicide lead to suspicion regarding several people, including an Army officer who died eight years following this event, so that his name was never cleared.

A major figure in Nazi Germany, the World War One aviator was responsible for at least two major German defeats, one being the failure to be able to destroy the trapped British Army at Dunkirk, a failure that Hitler sharead as he had halted the German advance.  The second defeat was his promise to be able to defeat the British by airpower which lead to the Battle of Britain. While the popular myth has the British on their back feet the entire time, in reality the Royal Air Force was more than capable of defeating the Luftwaffe over Britain.  Here too, while it was a real defeat, the Germans were in fact completely incapable of invading Britain.  

The Luftwaffe would, of course, prove to be incapable of defending German airspace as well.

Göring's suicide postponed the other executions planned for this day.

The May company was selling a brand of kids jeans I've never heard of.

Surplus was available at Cooks.

The Out Our Way cartoon featured something that must have been familiar to the readers, but I've never heard of, renting a garage.

The St. Louis Cardinals took the World Series.

October 15, 1946: Enos Slaughter's Mad Dash

Last edition:

Monday, October 14, 1946. Price controls on meat removed.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Dutch East Indies, Food, Harry S. Truman, Indonesia, Indonesian National Revolution, inflation, Netherlands

Friday, October 4, 1946. Truman's announcement on the eve of Yom Kippur.

President Truman announced that he had telegraphed Prime Minister Clement Attlee to endorse the immigration of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine.  Attlee was furious at the public disclosure which made an already difficult situation worse.

Speculation was that Truman may have done this to court Jewish votes in the election.

The Gnostic Nag Hammadi library, discovered in 1945, was accepted into the Coptic Museum in Cairo.

Robert A. Taft publicly criticized the results of the Nuremberg trials as unjust, citing the impossibility of the victor trying the vanquished fairly.

Last edition:

Thursday, October 3, 1946. Game two of the 1946 National League Playoffs.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 World Series, Aircraft, baseball, Disaster, Labrador, Sports, Transportation

Tuesday, October 1, 1946. Crime, Punishment, and World War Two.

Sentences were handed down from the major Nuremberg Trial with verdicts having been rendered the previous day.  Twelve convicted were sentenced to death, those being Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, who was sentenced in absentia and in fact already dead, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner,  Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank,Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Arthur Seyss-Inquart

All told, 19 people were convicted. Three were found innocent, those being Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche.

Mensa was founded.

Kim II Sung University was founded, named in accordance with the despicable strong man trait of naming things after yourself while you are alive. . . kind of like somebody else we could name.

Violence in downtown Denver.

Last edition:

Saturday, September 28, 1946. "I believe the outlawing of the atom bomb is the outlawing of wars... I think the time has come when humanity is intelligent enough to do away with war."

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Bluegrass, Country & Western Music, Dwight Eisenhower, Greece, Monarchy, Nuclear power, Radio, War, Weapons

Friday, July 26, 1946. OPA back in business.

A restored Office of Price Administration issued orders restoring price controls but with less restrictions on raising prices.

Trans Pacific Airlines, laster Aloha Airlines, came into existence.  It continued operations until 2008.

Robert H. Jackson delivered his closing argument at the Nuremberg Trials.

Last edition:

Thursday, July 25, 1946. Crossroads Baker.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Bikini Atoll, Comedians, entertainment, Ethnicities, Georgia, Operation Crossroads, Racism, U.S. Navy, Weapons

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

 Convictions were in the news.

And the Army was hoping veterans would reenlist.

Last edition:

Tuesday, December 11, 1945. Steel Workers announce strike.

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

Friday, November 30, 1945. Executing Germans for ordering the killing of civilian sailors and for directly killing downed airmen.

German U-boat commander Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, age 29, German U-boat , was executed as a war criminal for ordering his crew to shoot the survivors of the Greek merchant ship Peleus in March 1944.

Seems like I've heard of that happening recently . . . 

Rudolf Hess declared he really didn't have amnesia and was prepared to stand trial.

German civilians were executed for killing downed airmen.

The news was full of the return of long absent servicemen.

"Atomic" was already being used as a synonym for powerful.

Even the cartoons dealt with the return of servicemen.

     

Last edition:

Tuesday, November 27, 1945. Slinky first sold.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, China, George C. Marshall, Norway, Personalities, The Cold War, toys, United Nations

Monday, November 26, 1945. Now's the Time, Wolves and War Brides, Questionable claim about Goering, Test tube babies in Virgin hospitals, Japanese social insurance, ties for Christmas.

Recorded on this day in 1945:

 The Sheridan Press reported on wolves and war brides.

The story on the big wolf is ironic in a contemporary context.  Wolves were wiped out in Colorado, probably and in Wyoming, probably, until the major reintroduction effort of the 2000s began.  It's been a huge success in Wyoming, for which I'm glad, in spite of my initial skepticism.  An ongoing effort is occuring in Colorado, which is meeting a lot of opposition in the anti nature Freedom Caucus era.

The Rocky Mountain News, which I remember from the 70s, 80s and 90s, when it was the best, in my view, of the two Denver papers, was a bit sensationalist at the time, which I've only recently come to appreciate.  It was always a "tabloid", with that sort of paper format for some reason having a reputation of that type.  I've never heard of the story related by the headline here:

A little digging finds that this claim was flat out untrue.

The News also reported on, oddly enough, test tube babies, something that is way earlier than I'd have ever supposed.

The first "test tube" baby was born in 1978.  That person Louise Brown, is still with us.  The first example of IVF in a mammal did not occur until 1959.  Apparently the proponent of this suggestion was well ahead of her time in terms of scientific knowledge.

It's notable that the suggestion had a strong eugenics characteristic.  That drive is also now very much coming into fruition, with designer babies now becoming a thing.

On the underlying concern, the explosion in births and the drop in the average age for a woman to first give birth that commenced at this time shows the concern was misplaced.  As a Catholic, of course, I regard IVF as both unnatural and immoral.  The bizarrely pro natalist Trump administration is all in on it.

The News also reported on Japanese social insurance, something being brought in by the progressive and distributist MacArthur occupation.

The cartoons of the day.

A classic gift was suggested.

British troops swept the Sharon plain in reaction to a prior days terrorist attack.

Ezra Pound was indicted for a second time on 19 counts of treason.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 25, 1945. Taxing war profits.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Austria, Christian Democrats, Douglas MacArthur, Japan, Occupation of Japan, Taxes

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

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

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

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

Last edition:

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

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

Friday, October 26, 1945. Cowards.

Nazis awaiting trial were demonstrating themselves to be cowards.

Albert Einstein advocated for a world government to prevent nuclear war in an interview in The Atlantic.

Communists battled their opponents in the streets of Sofia, Bulgara.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 24, 1945. The United Nations comes into being.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Collaborators, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Socialism, United Nations

Tuesday, April 28, 1945. U.S. Troops in Japan.

Flag of the Allied Occupation forces, Japan.

U.S. troops disembarked at Atsugi airfield and the occupation of Japan commenced.

The Red Army completed the occupation of Sakhalin.

Japanese forces surrendered in Burma.

Various Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring, and Ribbentrop, were indicted as war criminals.

Ho Chi Minh announced his provisional government for Vietnam with all the main posts held by communists.

Gee. . . what a surprise.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Health was founded.

The Southern Jiangsu Campaign ended in communist victory.

Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey held a three-hour meeting with Jackie Robinson on his signing up with the Dodgers.

Last edition:

Monday, August 27, 1945. The Allied Fleet enters Tokyo Bay.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, 1947, 1948, Burma, Chinese Civil War, Conscription, Harry S. Truman, Japan (Tokyo), New Britain, People's Liberation Army, Solomon Islands, Texas, The Cold War, Weather, World War Two

Wednesday, August 8, 1945. Japan conditionally accepts the Potsdam Declaration. The USSR declares war on Japan.

The Japanese Supreme War Council agreed to accept the Potsdam Declaration contingent upon the preservation of the Japanese Monarchy.

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan, making the declaration proactive as to midnight, August 9.

The declaration stated:

On Aug. 8, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R. Molotoff received the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Sato, and gave him, on behalf of the Soviet Government, the following for transmission to the Japanese Government:

After the defeat and capitulation of Hitlerite Germany, Japan became the only great power that sill stood for the continuation of the war.

The demand of the three powers, the United States, Great Britain and China, on July 26 for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces was rejected by Japan, and thus the proposal of the Japanese Government to the Soviet Union on mediation in the war in the Far East loses all basis.

Taking into consideration the refusal of Japan to capitulate, the Allies submitted to the Soviet Government a proposal to join the war against Japanese aggression and thus shorten the duration of the war, reduce the number of victims and facilitate the speedy restoration of universal peace.

Loyal to its Allied duty, the Soviet Government has accepted the proposals of the Allies and has joined in the declaration of the Allied powers of July 26.

The Soviet Government considers that this policy is the only means able to bring peace nearer, free the people from further sacrifice and suffering and give the Japanese people the possibility of avoiding the dangers and destruction suffered by Germany after her refusal to capitulate unconditionally.

In view of the above, the Soviet Government declares that from tomorrow, that is from Aug. 9, the Soviet Government will consider itself to be at war with Japan.

Following the war American critics often viewed this as the USSR rushing in to grab the spoils, something the Soviets were certainly not against, but in fact the Western Allies had been asking for the Soviets to declare war on Japan for some time, and had confirmed this intent as recently as Potsdam.  The timing of it, moreover, is not something the USSR could have rushed, due to the necessity to stage troops in Asia for Operation August Storm, it's invasion of Manchuria.

A war with the USSR was one of Japan's single biggest fears during the Second World War. For that matter, a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union was one that the USSR had initially dreaded, but which it new it was safe from due to the intelligence activities of Richard Sorge.

Radio Tokyo gave a full report on the bombing of Hiroshima, accusing the United States of barbarism, stating that the US had used methods that; "have surpassed in hideous cruelty those of Genghis Khan."

It's an interesting analogy in that Japan was never invaded by the Mongols, a point of pride and myth in Japan.

Truman issued a radio broadcast threatening to destroy Japan with atomic bombs. At the time, the US had exactly one atomic bomb left, and one under production, both of the "Fat Man" type.

Working on the bomb that would be dropped on Nagasaki, August 8, 1945.

The Nuremberg Charter was issued establishing the laws and procedures by which the Nuremberg Trials.

Last edition:

Tuesday, August 7, 1945. Fallout.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Aircraft, Army, Heroes, Hiroshima Japan, Japan, Josip Broz Tito, Operation Downfall, Operation Silverplate, press, Radio, technology, U.S. Air Force, World War Two, Yugoslavia