The papers reported followup information on the Kemmerer mine disaster.
At the same time, De Valera made the front page of the Casper page for his arrest.
De Valera, like other Irish Republican leaders, had come out of hiding and many of them were being arrested. He was campaigning for a position in the Dail, oddly enough, but under the abstentionism thesis in which people were elected and refused to take office. It's a policy I've frankly never grasped and De Valera was soon to abandon it.
Tidal waves killed over 300 people on the west coast of Korea.
The first U.S. Navy Reserve air station was founded near Boston.
A KKK rally was broken up in Steubenville, Ohio by a crowed that reacted to their presence in a hotel violently.
President Harding was reported to e in "grave" condition, which indeed he was.
Summer life, of course, went on for many, which included camps for some.
And protests for others.
And Reserve training, as in these men from D.C.'s Naval Reserve were doing.
The British Empire claimed the Ross Dependency in Antarctica and expressed a desire that, save for some territory belonging to Chile, Argentina and France, the Empire should come to own the entire continent.
The Dependency today is claimed by New Zealand, a claim recognized only by other countries claiming Antarctic lands.
200,000 people attended a Ku Klux Klan rally in Kokomo, Indiana.
Boy Scouts at Lincoln Memorial.
333 soldiers of the White Army surrendered at Ayan on the Pacific Russian coast, ending the Russian Civil War.
Washington D.C. Naval Reserve.
Turkey affected prohibition.
The French occupied the Dortmund railway station, leaving only a single rail line functional between the Ruhr and the remainder of Germany. In Germany, rioting broke out in Brandenburg over hyperinflation.
President Roosevelt sent to a message to Congress asking it to declare a national emergency in order that military reservists could be retained.
The message read:
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES
Last year the Congress of the United States recognizing the gravity of the world situation held that common prudence required that American defence, at that time relatively very weak, be strengthened in its two aspects. The first called for the production of munitions of all kinds. The second called for the training and service of personnel. The Selective Training and Service Act authorized the annual induction into military service of a maximum of 900,000 men for this training and service, of whom 600,000 are now in the army. The Congress also authorized the induction into service of the National Guard, the reserve officers, and other reserve components of the Army of the United States.
In the absence of further action by the Congress, all of those involved must be released from active service on the expiration of twelve months. This means that beginning this Autumn about two-thirds of the Army of the United States will begin a demobilization.
The action taken last year was appropriate to the international situation at that time. It took into consideration the small size and the undeveloped state of our armed forces. The National Guard, which then formed the bulk of these forces, had to be seasoned; its technical training and general efficiency greatly improved. The ranks of the National Guard and the Regular Army had to be brought to full strength; and, in addition, the army required for its tremendous expansion the services of approximately 50,000 reserve officers.
In effect, two steps were taken for the security of the nation. First, the Selective Service Act initiated annual military training as a prime duty of citizenship. Second, the organization and training of field armies was begun-training in team-work-company by company, battalion by battalion, regiment by regiment, and division by division. The objective was to have ready at short notice an organized and integrated personnel of over 1,000,000 men.
I need scarcely emphasize the fact that if and when an organized and integrated company, battalion, regiment or division is compelled to send two-thirds of its members home, those who return to civil life, if called to the colors later on, would have to go through a new period of organization and integration before the new unit to which they were assigned could be depended on for service. The risks and the weaknesses caused by dissolving a trained army in times of national peril were pointed out by George Washington over and over again in his Messages to the Continental Congress.
It is, therefore, obvious that if two-thirds of our present army return to civilian life, it will be almost a year before the effective army strength again reaches one million men.
Today it is imperative that I should officially report to the Congress what the Congress undoubtedly knows: that the international situation is not less grave but is far more grave than it was a year ago. It is so grave, in my opinion, and in the opinion of all who are conversant with the facts, that the army should be maintained in effective strength and without diminution of its effective numbers in a complete state of readiness. Small as it is in comparison with other armies, it should not suffer any form of disorganization or disintegration.
Therefore, we would be taking a grave national risk unless the Congress were to make it possible for us to maintain our present full effective strength and during the coming year give training to as many additional Americans as we can, when immediate readiness for service becomes more and more a vital precautionary measure, the elimination of approximately two-thirds of our trained soldiers, and about three-fourths of the total officer personnel, would be a tragic error.
Occasional individuals, basing their opinions on unsupported evidence or on no evidence at all, may with honest intent assert that the United States need fear no attack on its own territory or on the other nations of this hemisphere by aggressors from without.
Nevertheless, it is the well-nigh unanimous opinion of those who are daily cognizant, as military and naval officers and as government servants in the field of international relations, that schemes and plans of aggressor nations against American security are so evident that the United States and the rest of the Americas are definitely imperiled in their national interests. That is why reluctantly, and only after a careful weighing of all facts and all events, I recently proclaimed that an unlimited national emergency exists.
It is not surprising that millions of patriotic Americans find it difficult in the pursuit of their daily occupations and in the normal lives of their families to give constant thought to the implications of happenings many thousand of miles away. It is hard for most of us to bring such events into focus with our own readily accepted and normal democratic ways of living.
That is why I must refer again to the sequence of conquests-German conquests or attacks-which have continued uninterruptedly throughout several years-all the way from the coup against Austria to the present campaign against Russia.
Every move up and down and across Europe, and into Asia, and into Africa has been conducted according to a time schedule utilizing in every case an overwhelming superiority not only in materiel but in trained men as well. Each campaign has been based on a preliminary assurance of safety or non-aggression to the intended victim. Each campaign has been based on disarming fear and gaining time until the German Government was fully ready to throw treaties and pacts to the winds and simultaneously to launch an attack in overwhelming force.
Each elimination of a victim has brought the issue of Nazi domination closer to this hemisphere, while month by month their intrigues of propaganda and conspiracy have sought to weaken every link in the community of interests that should bind the Americas into a great western family.
I do not think that any branch of the Government of the United States will be willing to let America risk the fate which has destroyed the independence of other nations.
We Americans cannot afford to speculate with the security of America.
Furthermore, we have a definite responsibility to every country in the Western Hemisphere-to aid each and every one of them against attack from without the Hemisphere. I do not believe that any branch of the American Government would desire today to abrogate our Pan-American pacts or to discard a policy which we have maintained for nearly a century and a quarter.
If we do not reverse this historic policy, then it is our duty to maintain it. To weaken our army at this particular time would be, in my judgment, an act of bad faith toward our neighbors.
I realize that personal sacrifices are involved in extending the period of service for selectees, the National Guard and other reserve components of our army. I believe that provision now can and will be made in such an extension to relieve individual cases of undue hardship, and also to relieve older men who should, in justice, be allowed to resume their civilian occupations as quickly as their services can be spared.
Nevertheless, I am confident that the men now in the ranks of the army realize far better than does the general public, the disastrous effect which would result from permitting the present army, only now approaching an acceptable state of efficiency, to melt away and set us back at least six months while new units are being reconstituted from the bottom up and from the top down with new drafts of officers and men.
The legislation of last year provided definitely that if national danger later existed, the one year period of training could be extended by action of the Congress.
I do not believe that the danger to American safety is less than it was one year ago when, so far as the army was concerned, the United States was in a woefully weak position. I do not believe that the danger to our national safety is only about the same as it was a year ago.
I do believe-I know-that the danger today is infinitely greater. I do believe-I know-that in all truth we are in the midst of a national emergency.
I am not asking the Congress for specific language in a specific bill. But I can say frankly that I hope the Congress will acknowledge this national emergency either for a specific period or until revocation by the Congress or the President.
The objective is, of course, the all important issue. It is to authorize continuance in service of selectees, National Guard and reserve components of the army and the retired personnel of the Regular Army, with the understanding that, should the exigencies of the situation permit, early return to civil pursuits will follow in due course.
Because of the swiftness of modern events, I think the Congress should also remove the restrictions in regard to the numbers of selectees inducted each year for training and service.
And, in order to reduce individual hardships to a minimum, I urge that the Congress provide that employers be asked to continue to keen jobs open for their employees who have been held in the army. For my part I will direct the return to civil life of officers and men whose retention on active duty would impose undue hardship and that selectees and enlisted men of the National Guard, who have reached the age of twenty-eight, be transferred from active service to a reserve component as rapidly as possible.
At great cost to the nation, and at increasing dislocation of private buying, we are accepting the material burdens necessary for our security. In such matters we accept the fact of a crisis in our history.
It is true that in modern war men without machines are of little value. It is equally true that machines without men are of no value at all. Let us consolidate the whole of our defense-the whole of our preparation against attack by those enemies of democracy who are the enemies of all that we hold dear.
One final word: time counts. Within two months disintegration, which would follow failure to take Congressional action, will commence in the armies of the United States. Time counts. The responsibility rests solely with the Congress.
Roosevelt's obvious concern was that a failure of Congress to authorize the emergency would result in the release of hundreds of thousands of National Guardsmen and large numbers of reservists, something that would have been crippling to the build up of the U.S. military in anticipation of war.
The address also illustrates the difference between the Regular armed forces and the Reserves. President Roosevelt noted the numerous reserve commissions in the Army system. It's often not appreciated that most of the military in really big build-ups is officered by men who are commissioned as reservists, not regulars. In World War Two the reserve officers vastly outnumbered the regular officers in the Navy and the Army. This distinction doesn't exist for enlisted men, but for officers in wartime, or even in large peacetime buildups, it very much does. For example, most of the officers in the service during the Cold War, up until the elimination of conscription, were reservists.
The opposition to the President's request, and it did exist, was focused on the obvious fact that the US was so deep into preparing for war, imagining the country avoiding it was becoming very difficult to do.
The following photos, taken at Ft. Benning on this day in 1941, show some of that build up.
They also demonstrate the nature of the Army at the time, and it as a mirror on American society. These troops are African Americans going to new permanent billets. The Army was, of course, segregated.
It would remain mostly segregated throughout the war, something that was the topic of criticism even at the time.
Some significant and very interesting entries on the Today In World War II History blog for this date:
Among these are the expansion of the Concentration Camp system in Poland and the Luftwaffe commencing bombing of Moscow.
Also very interesting is the start of an aluminum salvage drive in the U.S., which of course wasn't yet at war as noted. Material shortages were already a concern.
On the same day the Luftwaffe commenced nighttime bombing over Moscow, Hitler visited his officers on the Eastern Front.
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.
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.
