Wednesday, July 3, 1946. Breaking the meat famine in Denver.

 Well, I guess you could more easily get meat.

An odd illigal immigration story was reported on.

Last edition:

Tuesday, July 2, 1946. They were Nazis, but maybe they didn't know what they were doing?

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 at the movies, 2026 Election, Colorado (Denver), Immigration, inflation, Office of Price Administration, Philippines, Post War United States (and Canada), Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Rebecca Bextel

Tuesday, July 2, 1946. They were Nazis, but maybe they didn't know what they were doing?

The Luce–Celler Act of 1946 was signed into law giving all Philippines citizens living in the United States the right to become naturalized U.S. citizens.

Lucius Clay

Deputy Military Governor of the American Zone of Occupation in Germany Lt. Gen. Lucius D. Clay pardoned all Nazis under 27 years old, except for those accused of war crimes, and restored one million men to German citizenship.

His act was based on the presumption that men of that age had largely not appreciated what they were doing.

The great postwar accomodation of the Nazis in West Germany had begun.

The News discussed the first OPA free day.

Of note, the Pappy O'Daniel was the Senator from Texas, for which he'd previously been Governor.  Hh also hosted a radio show.  He'd become Senator O'Daniel in the controversial 1941 special election following the death of Morris Sheppard by defeating defeated Lyndon Johnson by 1,311 votes.  He as a Southern, anti Roosevelt, Democrat.  He ran again for governor in 1956 and 1958 during which he claimed Brown v. Board of Education was part of a Communist conspiracy. He finished third in the Democratic primaries both times. After his 1958 loss he accepted the nomination of the Constitution Party, but did not appear on the general election ballot due to the state's "sore loser" law.  That nomination is somewhat interesting in context in that far right wing wackadoodle Rebecca Bextel, who is from the well funded Teton County carpetbagger wing of the GOP, is running on their ticket this year due to moronic thesis that cross over Democrats are going to get Barlow nominated for the GOP Governor slot and then she can come in and save the day by all the real Republicans voting for her in the general, something that shows a real deficit in mathematical understanding.

Orson Wells released The Stranger, his first film noir.

Last edition:

Monday, July 1, 1946 Crossroads Able.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Bikini Atoll, boats and ships, Economics, Office of Price Administration, Operation Crossroads, Pacific, Post War United States (and Canada), Sex, U.S. Navy, United States Air Force Academy, Weapons

Monday, July 1, 1946 Crossroads Able.

 

Crossroads Able, "Gilda" July 1, 1946.

Atomic weapons were detonated, this time on Bikini Atoll, for the fourth time in human history.   The testing was on ships.  The device was not on target, so the impact was less than expected.

It was front page news, of course, but it was mixed with economic news and concerns.

Ameican troops were fighting German uniforms again, but over a different cause.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 30, 1946. Wartime powers expire.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, actors and actresses, Communism, Economics, Internment of Japanese, It was because of World War Two, Office of Price Administration, Poland, Rationing, Teenagers, Trucks, USSR, War Assets Administration, Women

Sunday, June 30, 1946. Wartime powers expire.

The OPA's emergency wartime powers ended at midnight in spite of an effort by President Truman to extend them.

The Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) authority also expired at midnight as did the authority of the War Relocation Authority.

Surplus military vehicles  were being sold.

Sunday was apparently the cheesecake edition of the News.  A photo of an actress was given the full page treatment for no other discernable reason, while later in the paper the famous Jane Russell Outlaw poster was also.

And an add depicted teenagers advertising at home.

A sham election in Poland placed the country under the Communist Party and approved the post war borders with the USSR.

Last edition:

Saturday, June 29, 1946. Operation Agatha.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Art, British Army, Hagenah, Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, Operation Agatha, Palestine

Tuesday, June 25, 1946. The World Bank commences operations.

The World Bank commenced operations.

Nationalist Chinese troops killed ten demonstrating middle school students at Xuzhou when their commander, Feng Yu-xiang Fang Jingxing ordered them to be fired on by machine guns.

The US was struggling through a post war meat shortage.  Denver newspapers were reporting that the Office of Price Administration was accordingly being kept in operation and that Denver butcher shops were nearly bare.

The YB-35 flew for the first time.

Long considered a real oddball, the aircraft anticipated the B-2.

Last edition:

Saturday, June 22, 1946. History rhyming

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 Election, 1947, Democratic Party, Ethnicities, History repeating itself or at least rhyming, Mississippi, Personalities, Racism, Republican Party, trends

Wednesday, January 6, 1943. No pleasure driving.

The Office of Price Administration banned pleasure driving in seventeen Eastern U.S. states, with the ban to commence at noon the following Thursday.

It also limited the amount of fuel oil that could be used by schools, churches, stores, theaters and other non-residential establishments.

German Admiral Erich Raeder tendered his resignation after a difficult meeting with Hitler over the Battle of the Barents Sea, which Raeder had not informed Hitler about.  Hitler actually learned about the battle in the foreign press.

Raeder was promoted on January 30 and put in a ceremonial post, but effectively his service was over.  He was captured by the Red Army towards the end of the war, which is surprising given that he was not serving and theoretically could have attempted to evade them.  He was sentenced to life in prison at Nuremberg, which surprised him, as he expected to be sentenced to death.  He was released in 1955 due to ill health and died in 1960.

Nisei serving in the U.S. Army began to accompany U.S. and Australian troops in New Guinea.

The Red Army continued to advance in the Caucasus, U.S. Troops were pushed off of the summit of Jeb el Azzaq in Tunisia, and the Free French took Oum-el-Arnaeb.

Marian Anderson sang at the dedication of a mural for the Department of the Interior.  Present were vocalists from the U.S. Navy, and JrROTC cadets who participated.

Thursday,, August 28, 1941. The Office of Price Administration Created, Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Loses Favor, The Soviet Dunkirk, Slaughter at Kamianets-Podilsky

The Office of Price Administration was crated by the Roosevelt Administration to combat inflationary trends caused by the massive boost in employment caused by World War Two and the countries efforts to get ready for it.

Stalin issued  a Decree of Banishment exiling Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic which had previously been an ethnic German Soviet enclave.  

The VGASSR would be officially disestablished on September 7.  It'd been created in the 1920s when the Soviets still attempted o placate local ethnic groups on the hopes that they'd come to like the Communist regime. 

Volga Oblast in yellow at bottom of map.

The fate of Volga Germans, in the country since the time of Catherine the Great, proved to be grim. The war would permanently impact their position in the country and while conditions improved for them after the death of Stalin, many emigrated to Germany under the German Law of Return, a trend that reached near totality in the 1980s and 1990s.  By that time it had reached a state of pathos and irony in that the remaining Volga Germans retained much of their early rustic nature, while also having lost the ability to speak German to a very large degree.  Their retained cultural attributes tended to shock modern Germans, while their inability to speak the language of their ancestors made it difficult for them to fit seamlessly into modern Germany.

While his action is regarded as one of the great atrocities of the Stalin era, and the Soviets have since apologized for it, at least in this instance Stalin's paranoid brutality was not without some reason to fear that they'd become a fifth column during the war given that anti Communist sentiments were strong in various Soviet ethnic groups.  Having said that, large numbers of Volga Germans volunteered for Soviet service in the Red Army during the war, although their services were not always accepted or wanted.

Emigrating to North America, it should be noted, had been a trend in the region for decades, and was accelerated when the Imperial Russian Government in later years rescinded exemption for the population from conscription.  In an interesting development, resistance to conscription, which in some Anabaptist German communities in Imperial Russia lead to North American emigration, did not tend to repeat itself in North America.

Today in World War II History—August 28, 1941

The Soviet Navy suffered a serious disaster when it lost several ships to mines while evacuating Tallinn, Estonia, in what has been called the "Soviet Dunkirk".   The Germans occupied the city on this day.  Meanwhile, the Germans lost a U boat to capture in Iceland. The boat would be returned to service in the Royal Navy as the HMS Graph.

The Germans also slaughtered 23,600 Jews in Kamianets-Podilsky on this day, as their campaign of slaughter reached new regions in the Soviet Union.