Showing posts with label Romania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romania. Show all posts

Saturday, July 1, 2023

Thursday, July 1, 1943. Romania seeks a way out, Cadet Nurse Corps established.

Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu met with Benito Mussolini in an effort to secure Mussolini's cooperation for both countries to leave the Axis and exit World War Two.  Mussolini was non-committal.

Romania clearly saw which way the war was going and that the time had come to get out.  It likely figured it couldn't get out on its own, however.

The Women's Auxiliary Army Corps became the Women's Army Corps, reflecting it having achieved permanent status.

On the same day, the Cadet Nurse corps was established.

The organization hoped to relieve wartime and peacetime nursing shortages.

The Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare issued it's An Investigation of Global Policy, with the Yamato Race as Nucleus.  Based on Nazi concepts of racism and Lebensraum, it justified the ongoing attempt at expansion of the Japanese Empire and planned to impose Japanese names, the Japanese language and the Shinto religion on all minorities within the Empire.

President Roosevelt commuted the death sentence of German-born Detroit restaurant owner Max Stephan to life imprisonment.  Scheduled to hang in just seven hours, Stephan had been convicted for harboring a German POW who had escaped captivity in Canada, and even taking the fellow to a tour of Detroit restaurants.

An item about keeping your radio working from this month in 1943, something vitally important as there was no wartime radio production.

Keep Your Radio Working: 1943

Sunday, February 26, 2023

The Lord's Prayer in Romanian.

Tatal nostru care esti in ceruri,

Sfinteasca-se numele Tau

Vie imparatia Ta, faca-se voia ta

Precum in cer asa si pe pamant. 

Pain ea noastra cea de toate zilele, Da-ne-o noua astazi 

Si ne iarta noua gre~elile noastre 

Precum si noi iertam gresitilor nostri 

Si nu ne duce pe noi in ispita ci ne izbaveste de cel rau.

Ca a Ta este imparatia si puterea. si slava,

Acum si pururea si in vecii vecilor,

Amin. 

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Friday, January 26, 1973. The Battle of Battle of Cửa Việt.

The Battle of Battle of Cửa Việt took place one day prior to the Vietnam War supposed cease fire coming into effect as the ARVN and South Vietnamese Marines, supported by US air cover, attempted to retake the port of Cửa Việt in Quang Tri Province.  The battle spilled on over to January 31 before it concluded.

Late war efforts such as this were also common to the Korean War.

The effort was unsuccessful.

The battle was also telling. The effort relied upon US air cover, in this instance supplied by the Navy and Air Force.  

The peace was supposed to take effect immediately, but never really did.

The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation went into effect.


Screen legend Edward G. Robinson, who is principally remembered for playing tough guys in the movies of the 30s and 40s, died at age 79.

Robinson was born Menashe  Goldenberg in Bucharest to a Jewish Romanian family in 1893. The family moved to the United States in 1904.  He joined the U.S. Navy in World War One, and served stateside.  He was already acting before the war, although he'd originally planned on being a lawyer.  He acted up into 1972.

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Monday, January 11, 2023. A generally violent day.


Life Magazine was out with a black and white cover of children in uniform, and a story on "Kid's Uniforms".  Both were Navy style.  No doubt, with the war being so overarching in everyone's life, this resulted in this style for children.

The United States and the United Kingdom signed treaties with the Republic of China renouncing extraterritorial privileges.  Both nations had exercised them since the 19th Century, along with other powers, with the same being a major insult to Chinese sovereignty.  Indeed, this sort of extraterritorial claim had been the primary cause of the Boxer Rebellion.

The British intercepted a telegram from SS Major Herman Hofle to Adolf Eichman noting the murder of 1,274,166 Polish Jews in 1942. The telegram was held with secret status by the British until 2000.

On the same day SS Major General Heinrich Müller began the deportation of 45,000 Polish Jews to munitions factories including 30,000 from Bialystok, Poland, 10,000 Theresienstadt, 3,000 from the Netherlands and 2,000 from Berlin.

Germany and Romania entered into a secret treaty providing for German bases in Romania in exchange for gold and Swiss francs.

President Roosevelt sent a budget message to Congress seeking $16,000,000,000 in new taxes or "compulsory loans" to meet the $100,000,000,000 needed for the war effort and $9,000,000,000 for other purposes.

Radical Italian American Socialist and labor leader Carlo Tresca, an opponent of Communism, Fascism, and the Mafia, was gunned down in a drive by shooting in Manhattan. While theories abound, nobody was ever arrested by the murder and nobody really knows who committed it, although the Mafia seems like the strongest candidate.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Friday, June 12, 1942. Day of the Submarines.

Anne Frank received a diary on this day for her 13th birthday.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Polesti, Romania in a mission which saw 13 B-24s fly from Fayid Egypt to an intended landing in Iraq.  Four of the bombers made emergency landings in Iraq, and two in Syria. The ones in Turkey were interned. 

The bombers were actually in transit to China.  This was not part of Operation Tidal Wave, the famous low level raid that was also performed by B-24s.

On the same day, the Army Air Force raided Kiska for the second day in a row.

The Germans breakout in Libya and close to within fifteen miles of Tobruk.

The British launch Operation Harpoon in a desperate effort to resupply Malta by sea.

The Soviet Navy resupplied Sevastopol by sea, brining in 2,314 additional soldiers to the defense of the besieged city.

The Japanese submarine I-24 sank the SS Guatemala off of Sidney.  The I-16 sank the Yugoslavian flagged Supetar, the I-20 the Panamanian flagged Hellenic Trader, and the British Clifton Hall, all cargo vessels, in hte Mozambique Channel.

The German U-77 sank the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Grove off of Baria, Libya.  The U-124 sank the SS Dartford off of Newfoundland, the U-129 sank the SS Harwicke Grange off of Puerto Rico, the U-158sank the US SS Cities Service Toledo,an oil tanker, off of Louisiana.

The USS Swordfish sank the Japanese transport ship Burma Maru off of Cambodia.

George H. W. Bush graduated from Phillips Academy, turned 18 years old, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy on this day.

The recently completed Grand Coulee Dam was photographed.

Grand Coulee Dam, Washington.

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Friday, May 15, 1942. WAACs formed.



A couple of big events in regard to the American war effort occurred on this day in 1942.

First one on the Home front.
Today In Wyoming's History: May 151942   Gas rationing limits US motorist to 3 gallons per week, except for those in critical industries.
Three gallons per week. . . 12 gallons per month.

In actuality, it was limited to 17 Eastern states at first.

Gas rationing, by the way, was aimed in the US at reducing rubber tire wear more than conserving gasoline. The US remained a petroleum exporter at the time.  Sarah Sundin, however, reports on her blog that it came into effect in the East, when it did, due to U-boat shipping losses.

Second, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was created.


This replicated a move that had been done in World War One, but on a much larger, and ultimately permanent in an evolutionary sense.\

Sundin also reports that this is the date the U.S. dropped a red ball from its aircraft insignia, done in order to prevent U.S. aircraft from being mistaken as Japanese aircraft.

Costa Rica broke diplomatic relations with Hungary and Romania.

Slovakia legalized the deportation of Jews from their territory, following the trail of their German masters.

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Friday, December 12, 1941. The spreading of disaster.

The Struma when she was new in 1867.

With the United States now in the war, Hitler announced in a meeting in the Reich Chancellery that a full scale effort to exterminate European Jews would commence.  This was noted in our item on Today In Wyoming's History: December 12:

Adolf Hitler announces extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

The meeting was held behind closed doors and no official records of it exist, but at least two of the participants noted what was to occur.  Goebbels noted the following in his diary entry for the day:
Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.   

Regarding the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they yet again brought about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation. That was not just a phrase. The world war is here, and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence.

Hitler was referring to an earlier speech of his in which he'd stated that if the Jews caused a second World War, they'd be annihilated.  Of course, the Jews hadn't caused either WWI or WWII.  The first and the second statements show the warped way in which Hitler imagined Jews to be in control of things around the globe, as a bizarre view still held by some today.

This conference is often noted as one of the stepping stones to the German "Final Solution".  The Germans were, of course, already killing Jews en massse in the East so what exactly this meant in real terms is a bit difficult to discern.  All throughout 1941 murder repression had been a constant feature of German policy towards Jews withing their territorial control, and murder certainly had been since the invasion of the Soviet Union.  Things were getting worse for the Jews by the day prior to December 7.

Indeed, on this day:

Germans begin house-by-house search for Jews in Paris.  

Also, on this day the Struma, a cargo ship, left Romania with over 700 Jewish passengers fleeing Europe.  Turkish authorities would not allow it to allow the passengers of the disabled vessel to disembark at Istanbul as it feared they'd be given certificates to travel to Palestine by the British.  The British for their part did not, and urged the Turks to return the vessel to Romania.  Ultimately, Turkey towed the vessel into the Black Sea, where it was sunk by a Russian submarine.

Jews in Germany were forbidden on this day to use telephones.

The wide-ranging Japanese offensive in the Pacific kept on expanding.

1941 British decide to abandon northern Malaya. 

Japanese abandon their first attempt to capture Wake. 

Japanese complete the occupation of southern Thailand. 

Japanese invade Burma. 

Japanese troops land at Legaspi, southeastern Luzon and advance from Vigan and Aparri. 



Filipino pilots engaged Japanese pilots over Batangas Field. They were successful in the air action, in spite of flying obsolete P26 fighters, sustaining one loss.

Naval Air Transport Service is established  


The Navy, going into the war, was extremely short of transport aircraft.  After the war the NATS woudl be ultimately folded into the Military Airlift Command.

U.S. Navy takes control of the ocean liner Normandie while it is docked at New York City.   

UK declares war on Bulgaria.

 Hungary and Romania declare war on the United States. India declares war on Japan.  

Haiti, El Salvador and Panama declared war in Germany and Italy.

1941   The Wyoming Township, Michigan, Police Department founded.

Director Frank Capra joined the U.S. Army.

In other news from the entertainment industry, the move The Wolf Man was released.

Gatherings were happening at college campuses across the US. like this one in Wisconsin.


These members of the Salvation Army were photographed in Australia.
Australian Salvation Army officers, December 12, 1941.

Diana Barrymore sat for a series of portraits in the studios of the famed black and white portrait photographer Arnold Genthe, who was approaching his final months.  



She was the daughter of actor John Barrymore and died of undetermined causes in 1960 at age 38.  Her short life was troubled and her career produced a limited number of appearances.

Sunday, December 5, 2021

Friday, December 5, 1941. A Turning Point.


It's worth noting that this day was a Friday.  For Americans, this would be the last day in which the United States was not a full belligerent in the largest war in modern history.

As a Friday, most people would have been looking forward to a weekend off, when people really did have the weekends off.  Wartime shortages were already a thing, but young adults would have been out on the town, and even older ones such as myself may have gone to the movies or the like in an era when home entertainment of the electronic type was limited to the radio.  Thousands of men, at the end of the day, would have hit bars before going home.

It's also traditionally a day when some soldiers and sailors received weekend leave, but I don't know the situation on December 5, 1941. I suspect, but don't know, that it had largely been cancelled in overseas locations, although that's certainly not the way movies depict it.  On this day the US felt that a Japanese strike was imminent, but they were still not expecting it on Hawaii.  Indeed, as recent posts and today's' make plain, the Navy was just reinforcing some outlying Northern Pacific island now.

Secretary of War Stinson criticized the leakers of Rainbow 5 to be unpatriotic and dismissed the matter as one of simple contingent preparedness.

Secretary of the Navy Knox met with Franklin Roosevelt and expressed the opinion that the Japanese Navy, which was out to sea, was going south. Roosevelt asked it could be going north, which Knox allowed for, but discounted.

As detailed Today In Wyoming's History: December 5, 1941, things were in motion all over the globe.
1941  The USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier, and the cruisers USS Indianapolis, Astoria, Chicago and Portland, together with five destroyers depart the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 

Their mission was to deliver Marine Corps aircraft to Wake Island, where the commander was fearing a Japanese attack.

The USS Arizona arrived at Pearl Harbor, as noted here:

Today in World War II History—December 5, 1941


1941  Japanese diplomats provided the following explanation to the U.S. Secretary of State in response to a question about Japanese ship movements in the eastern Pacific.
Reference is made to your inquiry about the intention of the Japa­nese Government with regard to the reported movements of Japanese troops in French Indo‑china. Under instructions from Tokyo I wish to inform you as follows
As Chinese troops have recently shown frequent signs of movements along the northern frontier of French Indo‑china bordering on China, Japanese troops, with the object of mainly taking precautionary measures, have been reinforced to a certain extent in the northern part of French Indo‑china. As a natural sequence of this step, certain movements have been made among the troops stationed the southern part of the said territory. It seems that an exaggerated report has been made of these movements. It should be added that no measure has been taken on the part of the Japanese Government that may transgress the stipulations of the Protocol of Joint Defense between Japan and France.

 [WASHINGTON,] December 5, 1941.

The Japanese Ambassador and Mr. Kurusu called at their request at the Department. The Ambassador handed to the Secretary a paper which he said was the Japanese Government's reply to the President's inquiry in regard to Japanese troops in French Indochina. The paper reads as follows:

STATEMENT HANDED BY THE JAPANESE AMBASSADOR (NOMURA) TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE ON DECEMBER 5, 1941

Reference is made to your inquiry about the intention of the Japanese Government with regard to the reported movements of Japanese troops in French Indo-china. Under instructions from Tokyo I wish to inform you as follows

As Chinese troops have recently shown frequent signs of movements along the northern frontier of French Indo-china bordering on China, Japanese troops, with the object of mainly taking precautionary measures, have been reinforced to a certain extent in the northern part of French Indo-china. As a natural sequence of this step, certain movements have been made among the troops stationed the southern part of the said territory. It seems that an exaggerated report has been made of these movements. It should be added that no measure has been taken on the part of the Japanese Government that may transgress the stipulations of the Protocol of Joint Defense between Japan and France.

The Secretary read the paper and asked whether the Japanese considered that the Chinese were liable to attack them in Indochina. He said, so Japan has assumed the defensive against China. He said that he had heard that the Chinese are contending that their massing troops in Yunnan was in answer to Japan's massing troops in Indochina. Mr. Kurusu said that that is all that they have received from their Government in regard to this matter. The Ambassador said that as the Chinese were eager to defend the Burma Road he felt that the possibility of a Chinese attack in Indochina as a means of pre?venting Japan's attacking the Burma Road from Indochina could not be excluded.

The Secretary said that he had understood that Japan had been putting forces into northern Indochina for the purpose of attacking China from there. He said that he had never heard before that Japan's troop movements into northern Indochina were for the purpose of defense against Chinese attack. The Secretary added that it was the first time that he knew that Japan was on the defensive, in Indochina.

The Ambassador said that the Japanese are alarmed over increasing naval and military preparations of the ABCD powers in the southwest Pacific area, and that an airplane of one of those countries had recently, flown over Formosa. He said that our military men are very alert and enterprising and are known to believe in the principle that offense is the best defense. The Secretary asked whether the Ambassador's observations applied to defensive measures we are taking against Hitler. The Ambassador replied that he did not say that, but that it was because of Japan's apprehensions in regard to the situation that they had made their November 20 proposal.

The Secretary asked whether, if the Chinese are about to Japan in Indochina, this would not constitute an additional reason for Japan to withdraw her armed forces from Indochina. The Secretary said that he would be glad to get anything further which it might occur to the Japanese Government to say to us on this matter.

The Ambassador said that the Japanese Government was very anxious to reach an agreement with this Government and Mr. Kurusu said that the Japanese Government felt that we ought to be willing to agree to discontinue aid to China as soon as conversations betweem China and Japan were initiated. The Secretary pointed out that when the Japanese bring that matter up it brings up the matter of the aid Japan is giving to Hitler. He said that he did not see how Japan could demand that we cease giving aid to China while Japan was going on aiding Hitler. Mr. Kurusu asked in what way was Japan aiding Hitler. The Secretary replied that, as he had already made clear to the Japanese Ambassador, Japan was aiding Hitler by keeping large forces of this country and other countries immobilized in the Pacific area. (At this point the Ambassador uttered sotto voce an expression in Japanese which in the present context means "this isn't getting us anywhere".) The Secretary reminded the Ambassador of what the Secretary had said to the Ambassador on this point on November 22 as well as on our unwillingness to supply oil to Japan for the Japanese Navy which would enable Japan to operate against us in the southern Pacific and also on our attitude toward continuing aid to China. The Ambassador said that he recalled that the Secretary had said that he would almost incur the danger of being lynched if he permitted oil to go to Japan for her navy. The Ambassador said that he believed that if the Secretary would explain that giving of oil to Japan had been prompted by the desirability of reaching a peaceful agreement such explanation would be accepted. The Secretary replied that senators and others are not even now desisting from criticizing the Secretary for the course that he had hitherto taken.

The Secretary then recapitulated the three points on which he had orally commented to the Japanese. Ambassador on November 22, with reference to the Japanese proposal of November 20, namely one, our difficulty with reference to the Japanese request that we discontinue aid to China, two, our feeling that the presence of large bodies of Japanese troops anywhere in Indochina caused among neighboring countries apprehensions for their security, and, three, public attitude in this country toward supplying Japan with oil for military and naval needs. He asked the Ambassador whether he had not set forth clearly his position on these points to the Ambassador on November 22. The Ambassador agreed.

The Ambassador said that this Government blames Japan for its move into Indochina but that if Indochina was controlled by other powers it would be a menace to Japan. The Secretary replied that as the Ambassador was aware we could solve matters without delay if only the Japanese Government would renounce courses of force and aggression. The Secretary added that we were not looking for trouble but that at the same time we were not running away from menaces.

Mr. Kurusu said that he felt that if we could only come to an agreement on temporary measures we could then proceed with our exploration of fundamental solutions. He said that such a fundamental agreement would necessarily take time and that what was needed now was a temporary expedient. The Secretary replied that the Japanese were keeping the situation confused by a malignant campaign conducted through the officially controlled and inspired press which created an atmosphere not conducive to peace. The Secretary said that we knew the Japanese Government could control the press and that therefore we did not understand what the motives are of the higher officials of the Japanese Government in promoting such a campaign. Mr. Kurusu said that on the American side we were not free from injurious newspaper propaganda. He said that for example there was the case of a newspaper report of the Secretary's interview with the press which created an unfortunate impression in Japan. The Secretary replied that he had been seeing for months and months that Japanese officials and the Japanese press had been proclaiming slogans of a bellicose character and that while all this was going on he had kept silent. He pointed out that now he was being jumped on by the Japanese if he said a single word in regard to his Government's principles. Mr. Kurusu then referred to a press report casting aspersions on Kurusu to the effect that he had been sent here to check on the Ambassador, et cetera, et cetera. The Secretary replied that he had heard only good reports in regard to Mr. Kurusu and the Ambassador. At this point the Ambassador and Mr. Kurusu took their leave after making the usual apologies for taking so much of the Secretary's time when he was busy:

The United Kingdom was expanding the war, at leat on paper. 

1941  UK declares war on Finland, Hungary and Romania.

Soviet territory lost to the Axis by December 1941, from Why We Fight.
1941  Soviets launched a massive counterattack against the Germans in the Siege of Moscow.  
This attack brought Operation Typhoon to an unsuccessful end for the Germans. Indeed, while not really perceptible, with German setbacks in North Africa and the Soviet Union, and Japan about to bring the United States fully into the war, it could be argued that the war was at a turning point.

Closer to Home:

This was a Friday in 1941, so at that time both of my parents would have been experiencing a "meatless" day, meaning that they were restricted to protein other than from animals or birds. This, of course, as their families were, and ours is, Catholic.

For my father, living in the interior of the country, it's likely that meant something like macaroni and cheese, a Catholic meatless staple.  For my mother, however, living in Quebec, that likely meant some sort of ocean fish, perhaps.

My mother, being a few years older than my father, may have gone to the movies with her sisters, brothers and cousins, all of whom lived on the same block, but I don't know for certain.

Monday, October 25, 2021

Tuesday, October 25, 1921. Comings and Goings.


Bat Masterson in 1911.

On this day in 1921, Bartholemew William Barclay "Bat" Masterson, of OK Corral fame, died at age 67.  He'd been working as a columnist there since 1902.

Like a lot of frontier lawmen, Masterson had a few run-ins with the law as well as enforcing it.  He was born in Quebec to an Irish Canadian family and had served in most of the classic frontier roles in the West before becoming well known due to the events in Tombstone.   His family moved to the United States while he was a child, and he grew up on a series of farms before becoming a buffalo hunter and Army scout.  He was at the famous battle of Adobe Walls in 1874.  He became a lawman in 1876 and after his famous career in Arizona he occupied that position in Colorado.  He  moved to Denver in 1882 where he was involved in various scrapes and then to New York in 1902.

Masterson was an acknowledged expert on boxing and became a columnist in New York, a position he occupied for the remainder of his life.

Masterson provides an interesting example of how we tend to compartmentalize figures by their historical period.  He was a classic Frontier figure, but lived well beyond the Frontier's close and, no doubt to himself, seemed to always be living in the present even while depictions of the gunfight would continue to be famous all through his own life.  He was outlived, FWIW, by Wyatt Earp, who died in 1929.


King Michael I of Romania was born.  He was Romania's last king, having became a king as a child due to his father abdicating following his inability to reconcile an illicit relationship with his status as king and renouncing his rights upon his own father's death in 1925.  He lost that title in 1930 when parties dissatisfied with the regency reestablished his father as monarch, but he became king again in  September 1940 when a military coup led by Ion Antonescue returned him to the position of king and removed his father.  He was 18 at the time.

He would be king when Romania declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, but would lead the coup against the military government in 1944, combining with pro Allied officers who also no doubt saw the handwriting of the results of the war on the wall.  He was removed from power in 1948 and died in 2017, by which time he was once again allowed to live part of the year in Romania.



A terrible Categroy Six hurricane hit Tampa Florida. The storm had previously hit Cuba with minimal damage, but Florida was not so lucky.



The government issued a report on the work of government hunters/trappers.



While I know the current thing is to think, "oh, how awful that the Federal Government did that", if I'd been alive then, the life of a government hunter would have appealed to me.  Having said that, you could still homestead in 1921, and likely that would have appealed to me more.


Mrs. Ed Chambers and Mrs. Sid Hatchfield on this day in 1921.

Hatchfield had been the sheriff of Matewan County, West Viriginia and was murdered on August 1, 1921, along with his friend Chambers.  The killings were probably connected with labor problems in the mining industry.  Mrs. Chambers and Mrs. Hatchfield must have been in Washington on this date in some capacity connected with the murders of their husbands.

Friday, October 22, 2021

Wednesday October 22, 1941. Odessa, Châteaubriant and Nantes.

On this day in 1941 the mass murder of the Jewish population in and surrounding Odessa commenced, with over 20,000 people being killed in two days.  The atrocity commenced in supposed retaliation for the detonation of a mine in the NKVD headquarters.  The mine had been placed in the location prior to the Soviet withdrawal.  German and Romanians participated in the atrocity.

In France, Germans executed 27 residents of Châteaubriant and 21 in Nantes in retaliation for the Resistance assassination of German officer Karl Hotz some days prior.

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Thursday, October 16, 1941. Odessa taken, deportations in full swing.

 Romanians and Germans took Odessa after a two-month siege of the Black Sea port.


It had been principally a Romanian operation and indeed was the largest such operation by a German ally on the Easter Front.  The overall performance of Romanian troops resulted in a call to cease offensive operations by Romanian troops against the Soviets, although that was ignored by the country's military dictator.

Deportations of European Jews to the East started for many of them on this day in 1941, with the wholesale relocation of European Jews having started the day prior.  The order included German Jews as well as those living in other western European countries that were controlled by Nazi Germany.

Franklin Roosevelt addressed the nation's draft enrollees.

On this day more than sixteen million young Americans are reviving the three-hundred-year-old American custom of the muster. They are obeying that first duty of free citizenship by which, from the earliest colonial times, every able-bodied citizen was subject to the call for service in the national defense.

It is a day of deep and purposeful meaning in the lives of all of us. For on this day we Americans proclaim the vitality of our history, the singleness of our will and the unity of our nation.

We prepare to keep the peace in this New World which free men have built for free men to live in. The United States, a nation of one hundred and thirty million people, has today only about five hundred thousand-half a million-officers and men in Army and National Guard. Other nations, smaller in population, have four and five and six million trained men in their armies. Our present program will train eight hundred thousand additional men this coming year and somewhat less than one million men each year thereafter. It is a program obviously of defensive preparation and of defensive preparation only.

Calmly, without fear and without hysteria, but with clear determination, we are building guns and planes and tanks and ships-and all the other tools which modern defense requires. We are mobilizing our citizenship, for we are calling on men and women and property and money to join in making our defense effective. Today's registration for training and service is the keystone in the arch of our national defense.

In the days when our forefathers laid the foundation of our democracy, every American family had to have its gun and know how to use it. Today we live under threats, threats of aggression from abroad, which call again for the same readiness, the same vigilance. Ours must once again be the spirit of those who were prepared to defend as they built, to defend as they worked, to defend as they worshipped.

The duty of this day has been imposed upon us from without. Those who have dared to threaten the whole world with war-those who have created the name and deed of total war-have imposed upon us and upon all free peoples the necessity of preparation for total defense.

But this day not only imposes a duty; it provides also an opportunity-an opportunity for united action in the cause of liberty-an opportunity for the continuing creation on this continent of a country where the people alone shall be master, where the people shall be truly free.

To the sixteen million young men who register today, I say that democracy is your cause-the cause of youth.

Democracy is the one form of society which guarantees to every new generation of men the right to imagine and to attempt to bring to pass a better world. Under the despotisms the imagination of a better world and its achievement are alike forbidden.

Your act today affirms not only your loyalty to your country, but your will to build your future for yourselves.

We of today, with God's help, can bequeath to Americans of tomorrow a nation in which the ways of liberty and justice will survive and be secure. Such a nation must be devoted to the cause of peace. And it is for that cause that America arms itself.

It is to that cause-the cause of peace-that we Americans today devote our national will and our national spirit and our national strength.

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Tuesday September 16, 1941. The fall of Reza Shah.

Reza Shah, the Shah of Iran, his country invaded and occupied by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in their interests, and what they deemed, ultimately correctly, the greater interests of humanity resigned in favor of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. 


A victim, essentially, of World War Two.

The Shah had lived in an Iran that was marked by the post Communist variant of the Great Game.  Following the Russian Revolution, the British had intervened, unfortunately unsuccessfully, in the Russian Civil War through Iran, and in turn the early Soviet Union occupied parts of the country. Things had declined to such a state that the Red Army was making plans to advance on Tehran in January 1921, which caused the British commander in the country to elevate Reza, a half Georgian Persian Cossack commander, who soon used that elevation to effect a coup, although he held the position of minister of war in the new administration.

By 1925 he was in a position to overthrow that government, with the intent to create a republic on the new Turkish model.  Upon obtaining control of the country, however, he was dissuaded from that, to history's regret, by both the British and local Muslim clerics.  He curiously ruled thereafter in a Napoleonic fashion, being a liberalizing dictator.  He was a supporter of women's rights within the country.

An autocratic ruler who had come to power through the British and the Persian military, he could not endure the humiliating defeat by the British Army and the Red Army, and on this day resigned.  He lived the rest of his life in exile, dying in South Africa in 1944. His son would rule, of course, until Iran's Islamic Revolution.

On the same day, Iran broke diplomatic relations with Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy and Romania, all nations within German control, or within its orbit.

The Germans decreed that they'd murder 50 to 100 Communists as a reprisal for every German shot on occupied territory

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Sunday, June 22, 1941. The German invasion of the Soviet Union commences.

Horse drawn German artillery crossing Soviet border marker, June 22, 1941.

On this day in 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, commenced.  It was a Sunday, expressing the recent German preference for commencing offensive operations on the traditional Christian sabbath and day of rest.

Crowded road with German armor.

German preparations for the invasion had been going on nearly all year and upwards of 3,000,000 German troops and 690,000 other Axis troops, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian and Finnish, had been mobilized for the assault that commenced on this day.  The original D-Day had been set for May 15, but delay was created by the German invasion of Yugoslavia brought about by its determination to aid the Italian campaign in Greece.  Indeed, between May 15 and this date, Yugoslavia had been invaded, the Germans had conducted their own offensive in Greece, and Crete had been invaded by air.  The Germans had also engaged in major offensive operations in Libya.

During the month long interim the invasion plan was changed a bit, as Finland was brought into it and four German divisions pre-staged there.  Romania was also brought into it.  Italy had ultimately been brought into it as well, in spite of an abysmal combat performance in Greece and North Africa.  Whether it reflected a dawning realization of how difficult the operation was going to be or not, the net result was that what had originally been planned as a German offensive had actually taken on the character of a truly Axis one, albeit one which was by far dominated by the Germans.  

It would significantly omit, however, the one Axis power which had the potential to really greatly compound Soviet difficulties, that being Japan, which was at that time focused on plans to bring the sole remaining major neutral on the globe into the war, that being the United States.  Japan was aware of the German intent, but did not reformulate its own plans.

Slovak soldiers taking Soviet prisoners.

The German army made massive initial gains, although there were problems with the vast territorial campaign right from the onset.  Nonetheless, even its allies, whose forces were far inferior to the Germans, did well in the offensive.


The invasion committed Germany and its allies to a war against a massive well armed enemy in a campaign of conquest that depended upon speed, surprise and Soviet incompetence.  At first, all three of those were realized, but the speed alone required to defeat the Red Army by the winter of 1941, which was the goal, was something that even conceptually is difficult in retrospect to imagine as being possible.  Much about the German campaign seemed to rely on hubris combined with the assumption that reaching certain landmarks equated with victory.  Perhaps they may be somewhat excused for their assumptions by their defeat of the Imperial Russian Army in 1917 and the subsequent collapse of Red opposition to the Imperial German Army in 1917-1918, but the Soviets of 1941 were not the same opponent, in any sense, that had been faced during the First World War.

The invasion itself was accompanied by German, Italian and Romanian declarations of war.  Hitler issued a speech with justifications for the war, but the initial German public reaction was shock and fear.  Stalin also went into shock and near seclusion, being effectively paralyzed by the invasion.  Upon being visited by his minions he reacted with surprise that they had not come to execute him.  Indeed, given the typical Soviet penalty for failure, that Stalin wasn't summarily shot is amazing.  Winston Church also addressed the Allies, noting that the Soviets were now Allies.  Privately Churchill was overjoyed by the German invasion realizing, far in advance of others, that it would lead to German defeat.

Whether the German invasion could have been successful if only this or that had occurred has often been debated by armchair generals, but frankly no Nazi conquest of the Soviet Union was possible.  Nazi ideology guaranteed that a Russian population that initially welcomed the Wehrmacht would soon despise it, and no German invasion of the Soviet Union would have occurred but for Hitler.

On the same day, and not coincidentally, a rebellion broke out in Lithuania that sought to restore that country to its independence.

Lithuanian insurrectionist with Soviet prisoner.

The Lithuanian insurrection would result in the proclamation of a provisional government, but in order for it to survive, it would have needed German support, which it lacked. The Germans quickly operated to make it moot and it dissolved, under protest, on August 5.  Lithuania then joined the ranks of occupied countries, having switched Soviet occupation for German occupation.

The German reaction to the Lithuanian rebellion was telling in numerous ways. The Germans had come not as liberators but rather as conquerors and territorial extirpators.  The Nazi plan for the East was to expand into it, resettle the territory with Germans, and to make slaves of its surviving Slavic occupants.  Initially, it planned to incorporate large portions of  the Baltic states as well as a large portion of Ukraine into the the German Reich, basing those settlements on areas that German minorities had lived in prior to 1918, or still did.  Indeed, Germans living in those areas would soon find themselves liable for conscription, something that many would come to regret.  Ultimately the grain growing belt of the East would have been entirely German, if the Nazis had managed to pull the invasion successfully off.


Given the utter chaos of the Nazi government throughout its existence, and the pressures of the war, the Germans never fully implemented their postwar plans and, beyond that, they never fully formulated them.  They did commence to do so, however, murdering Slavic residents of the region.  Long-term plans that were developed called for the extermination of the Poles, and the expulsion of the Lithuanians, Latvians and many other Slavs.  Starving the Ukrainians to death was planned and commenced.

It should be noted that it is sometimes the case to make Operation Barbarossa a demarcation point for German conduct in the war and to almost excuse their conduct prior to that.  This is really not possible, however.  It is true that German conduct grew worse after Barbarossa, but all of the elements of German barbarity were already present.  Germany was already engaging in mass murder in Poland and it was already rounding up the Jewish population of regions it occupied and pressuring the same from those states which it influenced.  Germany was not about to commence murder, it was already doing it had had been doing so since September, 1939.

All of this makes German conduct all the more inexcusable following this date.  In spite of what some may later wish to claim, every German was aware by this date that its government was homicidal and racists.   German troops had been ordered into murder in Poland already and had shot civilians, under the pretext of their being franc tireurs, in Crete. At home the Nazi government was exterminating the mentally impaired and had recently banned the Catholic press, with which it was having difficulty.  Germany massed 3,000,000 men for the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and very few of those men could have had any realistic doubt about the nature of the regime they were marking for.

Because of all of these horrors, and more, historians have often wondered how it was that a nation that had seemed so cultured could have fallen so low.  No really acceptable answer has ever been provided.  Comparisons to the Soviets and the Japanese have largely failed.  Both Japan and Russia had populations that were much less technologically advanced and much less in communication with each other, let alone the outside world, which seems, perhaps to put them in a different category.

Hilaire Belloc, the great English writer, once expressed the opinion that the English in the Reformation had fallen into a unique category as, in his view, the northern tier of Europe that had gone into the Lutheran sphere had never really been Christianized and the Christianity there merely a thin veneer.  It's tempting to look at the events of the Second World War as proving that true, but there's more than a little reason to doubt that, including that the Scandinavians were never attracted to Nazi barbarity and had been many examples of devotion to the principals of Christianity both before and after the 1500s.  Something, however, went deeply wrong with Germany of the 20th Century in ways that are almost indescribable. 

Operation Barbarossa has been rightly noted as a major turning point in the war for a lot of reasons.  By this point in the war the Japanese had already commenced planning to strike the United States, so an entry of the US into the war, which likely would have tipped the balance permanently in favor of the Allies, was already in the works, but invading the Soviet Union guaranteed a German defeat.  The Russians were impossible for the Germans to defeat without the Russians agreeing they were beaten, and unlike 1914-1918, the Moscow government did not have an internal enemy that was organized and conspiring for its overthrow.  Indeed, the barbarity of the German invasion guaranteed that would not occur.

Of course, major German defeats on land were all in the future. And the German army had won victory after victory.  But even here, it's hard to wonder why things didn't give them pause.  If the Germans hadn't been defeated yet on land in any major engagement, the British army had proven again and again to be highly resilient even in defeat.  If the British hadn't defeated the German in North Africa, they had defeated the Italians and the Vichy French, and they had proven that on the defense they were capable of resisting the Germans in Libya.  The British had, moreover, won in the Battle of Britain and while the Luftwaffe continued to bomb the United Kingdom at night, the Blitz was over.  The Royal Air Force, moreover was hitting Germany itself from the nocturnal air.  The Royal Navy had ended the Kreigsmarine U-boot "happy time", even if it hadn't won the Battle of the Atlantic, and the U.S. Navy was already somewhat of a problem for the Germans.  The United States, under Franklin Roosevelt, was getting as close to combat with the Germans as it could, without declaring war, and the Germans could not afford to declare war on the US.  

All in all, the Germans not only had to hope for a short victorious war against the Soviet Union, having invaded it, they had utterly no choice but to win one.  Failing to defeat the Soviets by the winter would force Germany into a long protracted bloodletting it couldn't win and should know that it couldn't win.  So the gamble was not only that it could defeat the USSR, but that it would do so well before the end of the year.

That was a foolish thing to plan on. But the Germans having followed Hitler into Poland in 1939 had guaranteed a war against the Soviets soon thereafter.  Germany couldn't win a long war against multiple opponents and the Nazis couldn't avoid attacking the USSR.

Some Threads Elsewhere:




Saturday, June 12, 2021

Thursday June 12, 1941. Until Victory Is Won.

Winston Churchill addressed representatives of the Allied powers, as they then were constituted, and delivered this address:

In the twenty-second month of the war against Nazism, we meet here in this old Palace of St. James's, itself not unscarred by the fire of the enemy, in order to proclaim the high purposes and resolves of the lawful constitutional governments of Europe whose countries have been overrun, and we meet here also to cheer the hopes of free men and free peoples throughout the world.

Here before us on the table lie the title deeds of ten nations or states whose soil has been invaded and polluted and whose men women and children lie prostrate or writhing under the Hitler yoke.

But here also, duly authorized by Parliament and the democracy of Britain, are gathered the servants of the ancient British monarchy and the accredited representatives of the British dominions beyond seas of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, of the Empire of India, of Burma and of our colonies in every quarter of the globe. They have drawn their swords in this cause. They will never let them fall till life is gone or victory is won.

Here we meet while from across the Atlantic Ocean the hammers and lathes of the United States signal in a rising hum their message of encouragement and their promise of swift and ever-growing aid.

What tragedies, what horrors, what crimes has Hitler and all that Hitler stands for brought upon Europe and the world! The ruins of Warsaw, of Rotterdam, of Belgrade are monuments which will long recall to future generations the outrage of unopposed air bombing applied with calculated scientific cruelty to helpless populations. Here in London and throughout the cities of our island and in Ireland there may also be seen marks of devastation. They are being repaid and presently they will be more than repaid.

But far worse than these visible injuries is the misery of the conquered peoples. We see them hounded, terrorized, exploited. Their manhood by the million is forced to work under conditions indistinguishable in many cases from actual slavery. Their goods and chattels are pillaged or filched for worthless money. Their homes, their daily life are pried into and spied upon by the all pervading system of secret political police which, having reduced the Germans themselves to abject docility, now stalks the streets and byways of a dozen lands. Their religious faiths are affronted, persecuted or oppressed in the interest of a fanatic paganism devised to perpetuate the worship and sustain the tyranny of one abominable creature. Their traditions, their culture, their laws, their institutions, social and political alike, are suppressed by force or undermined by subtle, coldly planned intrigue.

The prisons of the continent no longer suffice. The concentration camps are overcrowded. Every dawn German volleys crack. Czechs, Poles, Dutchmen, Norwegians, Yugoslavs and Greeks, Frenchmen, Belgians, Luxemburgers make the great sacrifice for faith and country. A vile race of Quislings-to use a new word which will carry the scorn of mankind down the centuries-is hired to fawn upon the conqueror, to collaborate in his designs and to enforce his rule upon their fellow countrymen while groveling low themselves. Such is the plight of once glorious Europe and such are the atrocities against which we are in arms.

Your excellencies, my lords and gentlemen, it is upon this foundation that Hitler, with his tattered lackey, Mussolini, at his tail and Admiral Darlan frisking by his side, pretends to build out of hatred, appetite and racial assertion a new order for Europe. Never did so mocking a fantasy obsess the mind of mortal man.

We cannot tell what the course of this fell war will be as it spreads, remorseless, through ever wider regions.

It will not be by German hands that the structure of Europe will be rebuilt or union of the European family achieved. In every country into which the German armies and Nazi police have broken there has sprung up from the soil a hatred of the German name and contempt for the Nazi creed which the passage of hundreds of years will not efface from human memory.

We know it will be hard; we expect it to be long, we cannot predict or measure its episodes or its tribulations. But one thing is certain, one thing is sure, one thing stands out stark and undeniable, massive and unassailable for all the world to see. We cannot see how deliverance will come or when it will come, but nothing is more certain that every trace of Hitler's footsteps, every stain of his infected, corroding fingers will be sponged and purged and, if need be, blasted from the surface of the earth.

We are here, your excellencies, to affirm and fortify our union in that ceaseless and unwearying effort which must be made if the captive peoples are to be set free.

A year ago His Majesty's Government was left alone to face the storm, and to many of our friends and enemies alike it may have seemed that our days, too, were numbered and that Britain and its institutions would sink forever beneath the verge. But I may with some pride remind your excellencies that even in that dark hour when our army was disorganized and almost weaponless when scarcely a gun or tank remained in Britain, when almost all our stores and ammunition had been lost in France, never for one moment did the British people dream of making peace with the conqueror and never for a moment did they despair of the common cause.

On the contrary, we proclaimed at that very time to all men, not only to ourselves, our determination not to make peace until every one of the ravaged and enslaved countries was liberated and until the Nazi domination was broken and destroyed.

See how far we have traveled since those breathless days of June, a year ago! Our solid, stubborn strength has stood an awful test. We are the masters of our own air and now reach out in ever-growing retribution upon the enemy. The Royal Navy holds the seas. The Italian fleet cowers, diminished, in harbor and the German Navy largely is crippled or sunk.

The murderous raids upon our ports, cities and factories have been powerless to quench the spirit of the British nation, to stop our national life or check the immense expansion of our war industry. Food and arms from across oceans are coming safely in. Full provision to replace all sunken tonnage is being made here, and still more by our friends in the United States. We are becoming an armed community. Our land forces are being perfected in equipment and training.

Hitler may turn and trample this way and that through tortured Europe. He may spread his course far and wide and carry his curse with him. He may break into Africa or into Asia. But it is here, in this island fortress, that he will have to reckon in the end. We shall strive to resist by land and sea.

We shall be on his track wherever he goes. Our air power will continue to teach the German homeland that war is not all loot and triumph. We shall aid and stir the people of every conquered country to resistance and revolt. We shall break up and derange every effort which Hitler makes to systematize and consolidate his subjugations. He will find no peace, no rest, no halting place, no parley. And if, driven to desperate hazards, he attempts invasion of the British Isles, as well he may, we shall not flinch from the supreme trial. With the help of God, of which we must all feel daily conscious, we shall continue steadfast in faith and duty till our task is done.

This then, my lords and gentlemen, is the message which we send forth today to all states and nations, bound or free, to all the men in all the lands who care for freedom's cause. To our Allies and well-wishers in Europe, to our American friends and helpers drawing ever closer in their might across the ocean, this is the message-lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.

On the same day Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu met Hitler in Munich where they reached a deal for Romania to participate in the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union.

Antonescu in 1941, wearing two German Iron Crosses.

Antonescu's Romania is mostly unique in the history of the Second World War in that it not only participated on the German side, right up  until Antonescu fell from power late in the war and Romania switch sides, a rather self serving and belated effort to avoid the inevitable, but it's anti Jewish pogrom's were homegrown.  Certainly they fit into the overall history of the Holocaust but the other Axis nations that participated in them did so under some measure of compulsion or fear of the Germans.  Romania, however, lead by the anti Jewish Antonescu,  acted on its own, although certainly in the evil spirt of the times introduced by the Nazis.

As it would turn out, Romania's army was not very good.  It was antiquated and its uneducated peasantry was not well suited for a modern war.  Officers treated their enlisted men like serfs, which they nearly were, and themselves lacked the professionalism that modern armies had.  Ultimately the Germans tended to coopt Romanian troops and provide them with German officers and NCOs, under whom they preformed well, but which reduced them to a type of cannon fodder.

Antonescu was executed for his role in bringing Romania into the Second World War.  King Michael I of Romania, the titular sovereign, was allowed to go into exile by the Communist government installed by the Soviet Union.

The United States activated the Navy Reserve:


This doesn't mean quite what it might seem to.  There were serving reservists in reserve units, in 1941, and some states had Naval Militia, a marine version of the National Guard.  But the Navy lacked a vast reserve system like the Army had in the National Guard.  For that matter, the Army Reserve, which was also in existence, was likewise lacking the large standing structure it now has.



The concept at the time was to basically prepare officers and specialists for service n the time of war. As with the Army, however, the Navy came to a system during the war during which nearly all commissions into the Navy were in the Reserve, not the Regular Navy, giving the Navy Reserve technically a vastly largely structure than the Navy itself during the war.  Post war, this situation would continue on for many years as well as many Cold War officers in any branch of the service were technically reservists.

By some measures, the U.S. Navy Reserve fired the first shot of the United States during World War Two, as the USS Ward was commanded by reservists who detected a Japanese mini submarine very early in the morning of December 7, 1941 and engaged it, sinking it, although the meaning of that was not appreciated at the time, nor was it fully grasped that the submarine had been sunk.  Indeed, doubts about the sinking persisted until 2002 when the stricken vessel was located.  Be that as it may, Ward's taking the first shot only would be correct if earlier engagements in the Atlantic that same year were disregarded.

Also on this day, President Roosevelt nominated Harlan F. Stone to be Chief Justice of the United States. Stone was serving already as an Associate Justice.


Stone's elevation was made possible by the retirement of Charles Evans Hughes.  He was a supporter of the New Deal, and would remain in this position until his death in 1946.   Given the vacancy, Roosevelt also nominated Robert H. Jackson to the court as well.