Monday, June 23, 1941. The first modern tanks.

This was, obviously, D+1 in Operation Barbarossa.

German Armor in the early days of Barbarossa.  This tank is a Panzer III, one of the more modern German tanks at the time and would remain in production into 1943.  By this time it had already been really made obsolete by the Panzer IV, which had a larger more effective 75mm rifle as its main gun.  Only about half of the tanks that went into Russia in June, 1941, were IIIs and IVs.  It was By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-185-0139-20 / Grimm, Arthur / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5410249

Acting U.S. Secretary of State Sumner Welles stated on this day:

If any further proof could conceivably be required of the real purposes and projects of the present leaders of Germany for world-domination, it is now furnished by Hitler's treacherous attack upon Soviet Russia.

We see once more, beyond peradventure of doubt, with what intent the present Government of Germany negotiates "non-aggression pacts". To the leaders of the German Reich sworn engagements to refrain from hostile acts against other countries--engagements regarded in a happier and in a civilized world as contracts to the faithful observance of which the honor of nations themselves was pledged--are but a symbol of deceit and constitute a dire warning on the part of Germany of hostile and murderous intent. To the present German Government the very meaning of the word "honor" is unknown.

This Government has often stated, and in many of his public statements the President has declared, that the United States maintains that freedom to worship God as their consciences dictate is the great and fundamental right of all peoples. This right has been denied to their peoples by both the Nazi and the Soviet Governments. To the people of the United States this and other principles and doctrines of communistic dictatorship are as intolerable and as alien to their own beliefs as are the principles and doctrines of Nazi dictatorship. Neither kind of imposed overlordship can have or will have any support or any sway in the mode of life or in the system of government of the American people.

But the immediate issue that presents itself to the people of the United States is whether the plan for universal conquest, for the cruel and brutal enslavement of all peoples, and for the ultimate destruction of the remaining free democracies, which Hitler is now desperately trying to carry out, is to be successfully halted and defeated.

That is the present issue which faces a realistic America. It is the issue at this moment which most directly involves our own national defense and the security of the New World in which we live.

In the opinion of this Government, consequently, any defense against Hitlerism, any rallying of the forces opposing Hitlerism, from whatever source these forces may spring, will hasten the eventual downfall of the present German leaders, and will therefore redound to the benefit of our own defense and security. Hitler's armies are today the chief dangers of the Americas.

We have no intent of making this the "World War Two Day by Day Blog".  Indeed, this blog is still focused on the 1890s through 1920, but we are noting notable events that occurred 80 years ago, just as we do when we hit them that happened 50 years ago.

We note that is noting a couple entries that will appear here today.  The first is actually an advertisement email I received yesterday from that vender called At The Front which specializes in World War Two reproductions of clothing.  Their focus is on reenactors, which I am not, but I'm on their email list and indeed their blog, which is not often updated, is one of the ones that's linked in on this site.  The advertisement read:

 

Barbarossa

80 years ago today, the Germans made a grave error, disregarded the results of their own war games and many intelligence assessments and invaded the Soviet Union. A little less than 4 years later, T-34's were in Berlin. The consequences of their decision to attack are still affecting much of the world to this day. The early battles in the East are often brushed over in the history books as quick and relatively easy German victories, often due to the studies having been written in the 50's and 60's by former Wehrmacht officers working for allied historical departments. With the opening of the the Soviet archives in the 1990's, more recent works have been able to shed more detail on the subject and it's now clear that the Wehrmacht had a much rougher time of it and the Soviets were often far less incompetent than previously thought. Twenty years ago, during a rough Winter (the tickets were cheap.), I visited Stalingrad. It was the kind of weather where your face freezes the moment you walk outside. Studying the War for years is one thing- but standing on Mamayev Hill in January adds a perspective that no books or films can offer. At the museum, the granny guarding the displays looked at me indifferently until we told her I had come from the US to see how Russia won the War. Talk about the royal treatment...I got to meet the director, look at anything I wished, and got invited over for tea. No veterans were available, but everyone there had parents or grandparents who had been in the battle. It was an interesting trip. For those interested in the Eastern Front, among the best are the works by David M. Glantz.

I haven't read Glantz, but those who have read him often make similar recommendations.

I note this as what is noted here deserves some consideration. The typical story you hear is that the Germans simply ran over the Soviets up until winter hit in 1941.  It seems, now that we know more, that isn't really true.  We do know that the Germans took absolutely massive casualties in Barbarossa, something we'll discuss further in a moment.

Anyhow, on this date in 1941 the Germans encountered the KV1 and T34 tanks for the very first time.

Early KV1

Today in World War II History—June 23, 1941

The Germans encounter the KV1

The Germans were still advancing, and doing very well at it at that. By the end of this day they'd advanced up to fifty miles in some locations, which in military terms is a very rapid advance.  But they were taking heavier casualties than generally believed outside of German circles at the time, and they were finding that Soviet equipment was much better than they expected. The Germans were not unfamiliar with Soviet equipment, but had been fooled by the overall poor performance and quality of equipment used by the Soviets in the Winter War and the 1939 invasion of Poland.  

Among the rude shocks were the quality of new Soviet armor.

The Germans destroyed a massive amount of Soviet armor in the early days of Barbarossa, but a lot of it was of the prior generation of Soviet armor that was being phased out. For that matter, the Germans were still extraordinarily dependent on their early generation of armor themselves and all of their armor was light compared to what the Soviets were just starting to introduce.  The KV1 and the T-34 can be regarded as the first modern tanks in history, and the T-34 was the best tank of the war.  Regarding an encounter with a T-34 that occurred on this day, a German field report would note:

Half a dozen anti-tank guns fire shells at him, which sound like a drumroll. But he drives staunchly through our line like an impregnable prehistoric monster... It is remarkable that lieutenant Steup's tank made hits on a T-34, once at about 20 meters and four times at 50 meters, with Panzergranate 40, without any noticeable effect.

New Soviet armor from the beginning of the "Great Patriotic War". The two tanks on the right are T34s, models of 1940 and 1941 respectively.

Indeed, new Soviet armor was a massive leap ahead of anything anyone else was deploying in every respect.  It's armor protection was superior and the guns heavier.  The tanks clearly outmatched anything anyone else had.  The only problem was that it was brand new, and the Soviets were in the process of reorganizing their armor deployment strategy.

The battles of Brody and Raseiniai, both German victories, commenced on this day.  Brody was a Ukrainian battle, and Raseiniai a Lithuanian one.  At the latter, a single KV1 or KV2, in a battle that was much like that depicted in the move Fury, held up the entire German 6th Panzer Division for a day.

The Germans took Vilnius, the city that had been contested just after World War One between the Poles and the Lithuanians.

It should be noted that a person can take this too far.  A lot about the Soviet defense in these early days was disorganized, a mess, haphazard and ineffective. The Soviets took many, many, more casualties than the Germans did.  Soviet losses were outsized and massive, including armor losses.  Indeed, that was in part because the Soviets were just in the process of switching to a massed armor doctrine, like that used by the Germans, from a dispersed armor doctrine, like that used by the French (and which ironically would be partially implemented by the Germans).

Even that, however, revealed a long term German problem.  The Germans had to win quickly, which right then they were doing, which probably, in their minds, justified the high losses. The Axis had invaded the USSR with 3,500,000 troops.  The problem was, even at that point, the Soviets had over 5,000,000 men under arms, a massive increase from the year prior.  The Germans committed over 5000 aircraft to Operation Barbarossa and destroyed nearly 4,000 Soviet aircraft on the first two days, but the Soviets start the war against the Germans with over 14,000 aircraft themselves.  The Soviet losses, however, were so high in aircraft in 1941 that virtually their entire airforce was destroyed.

Again, none of this is to suggest that early German operations weren't a giant success against the Soviets.  But the success had to be complete and total in 1941 in order to be retained.  And now they were learning that the Soviets had surpassed theme in armor, and by a large margin.

The Soviets, on this day, reorganized their military command and recreated the Stavka, or central military command, which had not existed since Tsarist times.

Hitler took up quarters at the mosquito infested "Wolf's Lair" in East Prussia for the first time on this day in 1941.

That's interesting in and of itself as the construction of the East Prussian fortress suggests that somewhere in the recesses of his mind he know that the war against the Soviets was going to be a long one. The facility operated as an eastern based command center and was built to sustain any kind of attack.  Building a fortress to withstand an attack doesn't make a lot of sense unless you expect to be attacked.

Slovakia declared war on the Soviet Union.  The Provisional Government of Lithuania formed in anticipation of receiving its recognition from the advancing Germans and their allies, and regaining Lithuanian independence.  It would last only a little after a month until Lithuania was simply incorporated into the occupied German territories, slated for future German colonization.  

Eastern Herzogovina rebelled against Italian occupation and against the collaborationist government there.  It had been inspired to do so by the German invasion of Russia, with the Orthodox Russians being the traditional protectors of the Orthodox Serbs.  It's interesting to note that, of course, this assumed early on a German defeat at the hands of the Russians, which was correct, but which would in no way occur so rapidly as to be able to allow the rebels to hold out until the Russians arrived.  And, moreover, it failed to take into account that while Russia continued to look upon the Serbs as people in their sphere of influence, the government in Moscow was hardly sympathetic to Orthodoxy.

Thursday, June 23, 1921. American battleships.

 

Blog Mirror: 65 Years Ago: Ellis Armstrong and America’s Interstate Highway System

 

65 Years Ago: Ellis Armstrong and America’s Interstate Highway System

Blog Mirror: How Will We Learn Our History?

 

How Will We Learn Our History?

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:

Day 661 June 22, 1941

Barbarossa – The invasion of Russia begins

Today in World War II History—June 22, 1941

Uncle Mike's Musings: A Yankees Blog and More

Wedesday, June 22, 1921. Reducing the Army, Hope for Ireland.

President Harding signed a bill reducing the size of the U.S. Army from 220,000 to 150,000 men.

Virginia National Guard being inspected at Camp Meade, July 23, 1921.

Given the events that would occur twenty years later, the reduction of the size of the inter bellum army has often been criticized, but it's frankly highly unwarranted.  You will often hear things like "In 1939 the U.S. Army was smaller than that of Romania.

Well, sure it was.  The US in 39 was a giant democracy with a large militia establishment bordered to the north by the world's most polite people and to the south by a nation that troubled us, but which was unlikely to attack us.

The US had always maintained a very small peacetime Army and that had, frankly, been conducive to its development as a stable democracy.

Indeed, the traditional military structure of the United States had been based on a professional Navy, a large militia establishment controlled principally by the states, and a small standing army.  Very early on the standing army had been so small it basically didn't exist at all, but that had proven impractical so a tiny professional army became the rule.  After the War of 1812 the peacetime army slightly expanded in size and continued to do so after the Army obtained a frontier policing role following the Mexican War, but it was never overall very large.  

It also lacked any sort of foreign deployment application prior to the Spanish American War.  The Army was thought of as mostly defensive in nature, in case of a foreign invasion, save for the potentiality of trouble with our immediate neighbors.  When the need to deploy ground troops overseas occurred prior to the 1890s, which it occasionally did, it was the Marines, a small force that was part of the Navy, and not the Army, that was used.

Large mobilizations did come during times of war and the size of the Federal Army was always expanded during them by necessity. The use of large numbers of mobilized militia were also a feature of such wars.  Really large mobilizations were very rare, and occurred only during wartime, with the Civil War being the outstanding example prior to World War One.

World War One had been a test of a major reorganization of the Army in the early 20th Century when Congress officially made the National Guard the organized reserve of the Army.  The Army itself had been enormously opposed to what became known as the "Dick  Act" after its sponsor, Congressman Dick, who himself was a longtime member of the National Guard.  For years before World War One the National Guard had sought this status while, simultaneously finding itself frequently used as state police.  Perhaps the defining moment in that is when the Colorado National Guard found itself being called out for that purpose to break a strike at Ludlow, Colorado, a use that ended up being bloody and which necessitated the deployment of the U.S. Army as a result.

 Colorado National Guardsmen at Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914.

That event came a good decade after the Dick Act, but it symbolized what Guardsmen hoped to avoid.  In 1916 things began to change for good when the crisis on the Mexican border necessitated the mobilization, in stages, of the entire National Guard, followed by its demobilization just weeks before the U.S. declaration of war on Germany.  

The start of the Great War none the less saw a resumption of the struggle with some in the Regular Army actually arguing that the Guard should not be deployed, a biased, and frankly stupid, argument.  In the end, the Guard basically saved the American involvement in World War One and rendered it effective as the Regular Army was far too small to provide any immediate assistance anywhere.  While the Regular Army remained biased against the Guard, and would all the way into the early 1980s, the direction was set.  Following World War One a major reorganization of the National Guard commenced with state units for the first time starting to be assigned roles by the U.S. Army that contemplated full mobilization in time of war.

In 1921 that full mobilization was something that was regarded as possible, but not immediately likely. Already by that time some visionaries worried themselves about a resurgent Germany, although Germany in 1921 was on the floor.  Many in the military establishment were worried about Japan, which was beginning to flex its naval muscles in a fashion that clearly demonstrated its resentment at not being accorded great power status by other nations.  It is not true that American thought no future war was possible, they did, but they thought that a large militia establishment, a strong navy, and a small army, could rise to any challenge.  In that they were prove correct.

On this day in 1921, John Garfield Emery, the head of the American Legion, had his portrait taken.

The American Legion was a very powerful institution at the time, far more so than now.  The voice of Great War veterans, it represented a group that had come out of the Great War determined not to be forgotten, and not to be silent.

King George V opened the new Parliament of Northern Ireland with a speech calling for Irish reconciliation.

King George V.

His speech stated:

Members of the Senate and of the House of Commons 

For all who love Ireland, as I do with all my heart, this is a profoundly moving occasion in Irish history. My memories of the Irish people date back to the time when I spent many happy days in Ireland as a midshipman. My affection for the Irish people has been deepened by the successive visits since that time, and I have watched with constant sympathy the course of their affairs. 

I could not have allowed myself to give Ireland by deputy alone My earnest prayers and good wishes in the new era which opens with this ceremony, and I have therefore come in person, as the Head of the Empire, to inaugurate this Parliament on Irish soil. 

I inaugurate it with deep-felt hope, and I feel assured that you will do your utmost to make it an instrument of happiness and good government for all parts of the community which you represent. 

This is a great and critical occasion in the history of the Six Counties, but not for the Six Counties alone, for everything which interests them touches Ireland, and everything which touches Ireland finds an echo in the remotest parts of the Empire. 

Few things are more earnestly desired throughout the English speaking world than a satisfactory solution of the age long Irish problems, which for generations embarrassed our forefathers, as they now weigh heavily upon us. 

Most certainly there is no wish nearer My own heart than that every man of Irish birth, whatever be his creed and wherever be his home, should work in loyal co-operation with the free communities on which the British Empire is based. 

I am confident that the important matters entrusted to the control and guidance of the Northern Parliament will be managed with wisdom and with moderation, with fairness and due regard to every faith and interest, and with no abatement of that patriotic devotion to the Empire which you proved so gallantly in the Great War. 

Full partnership in the United Kingdom and religious freedom Ireland has long enjoyed. She now has conferred upon her the duty of dealing with all the essential tasks of domestic legislation and government; and I feel no misgiving as to the spirit in which you who stand here to-day will carry out the all important functions entrusted to your care. 

My hope is broader still. The eyes of the whole Empire are on Ireland to-day, that Empire in which so many nations and races have come together in spite of ancient feuds, and in which new nations have come to birth within the lifetime of the youngest in this Hall.

I am emboldened by that thought to look beyond the sorrow and the anxiety which have clouded of late My vision of Irish affairs. I speak from a full heart when I pray that My coming to Ireland to-day may prove to be the first step towards an end of strife amongst her people, whatever their race or creed. In that hope, I appeal to all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and to forget, and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment, and goodwill.

It is My earnest desire that in Southern Ireland, too, there may ere long take place a parallel to what is now passing in this Hall; that there a similar occasion may present itself and a similar ceremony be performed. 

For this the Parliament of the United Kingdom has in the fullest measure provided the powers; for this the Parliament of Ulster is pointing the way. The future lies in the hands of My Irish people themselves. 

May this historic gathering be the prelude of a day in which the Irish people, North and South, under one Parliament or two, as those Parliaments may themselves decide, shall work together in common love for Ireland upon the sure foundations of mutual justice and respect.

His speech came at least a decade too late. By 1921 Ireland was irrevocably on the path of independence, save for a massive British military crackdown that the British, to their credit, did not have the stomach to make.

The United Kingdom was, it might be noted, not only about to endure defeat in Ireland, it endured defeat at the International Polo Cup on this day in 1921, with the victory going to the United States in a game that could hardly be regarded as an American forte.

President Harding was photographed with what were termed a group of "Georgia Peaches".

The photograph was no doubt completely innocent, but based on what we now know about Harding, it's hard not to get a certain icky feeling with photos of this type.

Tuesday June 22, 1971. Senatorial Surrender

On this day in 1971 the United States Senate, in an amendment to a bill to continue conscription, voted 57 to 42 to pull American troops out of Vietnam provided that North Vietnam release American prisoners of war in that country.  In effect, the Senate voted to more or less abandon the Republic of Vietnam.

Operation Ranch Hand mission in 1971.

As much with this late stage of the war, Congress was behind the curve in any event as the US was already withdrawing under the program of "Vietnamization". While there had been heavy fighting in the war in 1971, it had been largely undertaken by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam with US support.  Having said that, the ARVN had not done wall, although part of that was due to grossly over optimistic South Vietnamese offensive deployments that year.

The House of Representatives rejected the amendment six days later.\

Joni Mitchell, whom I feel so so about, released her well know album "Blue" on this day as well.

We should have told John F. Kennedy to stuff it. . . and we still can.

In trying to pressure Biden, the Catholic bishops forget the lessons of JFK

So runs an opinion headline in the Washington Post.

Well, as the sage Bart Simpson would have it, au contraire, mon fraire.

Or more accuaratley, I suppose ma soeur, as the author is Karen Tumulty.

The article by Tumulty is completely unoriginal, I'd note, with no brilliant insights whatsoever.  Rather, it follows the standard line of thought on this noting John F. Kennedy's 1960 address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, who were all Southern Baptists.  Kennedy, as Tumulty and others have noted, famously stated:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

This speech has been hailed again and again as brilliant strategic move by Kennedy, which it truly was.  But the overall impact, on a really cosmic scale, has rarely been analyzed.  

It may have been good for Kennedy, but it was a disaster for Catholics, and continues to be.  What the US Bishops are doing in some ways is reacting to that disaster, but only at the pint at which they almost have no choice but to do so.

Let's start with Kennedy himself.  He was a Sunday and Holy Day Mass going Catholic and part of an extended Catholic family, but not too surprisingly his own family bore little resemblance to the the Irish Catholics of the Catholic Ghetto who identified with him due to his Irish surname.  The Kennedy's were, and are, extremely wealthy and while as Catholics they were on the periphery of American life, they were on it in the way that wealthy Catholics could be as any member of a minority who was wealthy could be.  I.e., they were part of the in crowed in significant ways.

And as a member of that elite group John F. Kennedy carved for himself liberties that the Catholic faith never sanctioned, and he did so promiscuously literally.  Kennedy had a string of affairs that went beyond that which a person might normally be tempted to somewhat trying to excuse away.  He wasn't Franklin Roosevelt with a long time paramour, something inexcusable but at least not libertine.  

Indeed, under modern definitions, at least one of his affairs in the White House started with what moderns would be tempted to regard as a sort of rape.  It's debatable whether this category is truly applicable or not, but it was shockingly disgusting.  His behavior here, however, didn't stop with that, in regard to this individual, who descended pretty quickly into shocking behavior more expansively.  

We'll forgo detailing this more as its not necessary to this entry.  The point is that knowing what we now know about Kennedy, his willingness to make such a statement really ought to be put in a different light.  If he was declaring that he'd never let his religion directly dictate his actions, well, he wasn't in regard to personal behavior in a significant way, already.

This isn't an attempt to judge the state of Kennedy's soul at the time of his death.  We don't know that.  But what we can say is that in regard to his overall character, Kennedy really wasn't whom he seemed to be.  

And frankly, the statement wasn't that bold.  Catholic leaders of numerous nations had been in power in various places (including, we might note, Rome) since before the time of Constantine the Great.  The Church had never laid claim to a right to tell leaders how to rule, which was the real fear that the Southern Baptists at the time had.  Much has changed in regard to how Protestants view Catholics since 1960s, but some evangelical Protestants at the time, and now, held highly erroneous views of how the Pope's relationship to average Catholics, including politicians, worked.  Indeed, the political cartoon with the Pope directly pulling the strings of American Catholic politicians was a common feature of political debate up until the mid 20th Century.

The irony was that in 2020 the average Catholic is a lot more in tune with the Pope's views, in knowing what they are, than in 1960s, even though the way the Church actually works seems to be no more clear now than as opposed to then.  The current example is a good one in this regard. The Pope seems concerned that the US Bishops are going this direction.  The US Bishops are going this direction anyhow.  The Pope hasn't stopped them.  This is pretty typical over the ages.  When the Pope actually acts in regard to local Bishops, something has usually gone wrong on an extreme level.

And so too with politicians, as for the papacy.  And this overall situation is highly instructive.

Since the Second World War there's been a lot of attacks on the Papacy of Pope Pius XII, even though the actual historical record shows him to have done a remarkably good job during the crisis and the attacks against him unmerited and, to some degree, to have originated in a post war Communist smear campaign.  The Pope did speak against the Nazis during, and before, the war, in the form of proclamations on moral matters with the most noted being Mit Brennender Sorge.  Often forgotten is that some of the most direct attacks on the Nazi regime, however, came from the German Catholic Bishops themselves, one such example resulting in the White Rose movement.

What the Church didn't do is to issue a list of instructions to Catholics in power on "do this".  It did provide stout moral guidance, however.  It is of note here that in both the White Rose instance, and the July 20 plot, the prime movers were Catholics and Catholics were heavily represented.

How's this relate to what we're now seeing?

Well, pretty heavily.

In 1960s, when Kennedy gave his speech, the social issues that exist today and which are so much in the forefront, didn't.  No fault divorce didn't exist until 1970.  Abortion was just coming in as a state issue and didn't become the forced law of the land until 1973's Roe v. Wade.  The millennia old definition of marriage was completely unchallenged anywhere.

Things were moving, to be sure, and that should have been a warning.  The Kinsey report started being popularized right after World War Two and was given serious treatment even though the statistical methodology was grossly inaccurate and the conduct used to generate the badly skewed data heavily skewed. This played right into the hands of a new breed of pornographer lead by Hugh Hefner.  Starting in the 1950s an assault on conventional sexual morality commenced that would explode in the 1960s, but this wasn't obvious to most Catholics. The warnings were there, but they were not fully nor naturally appreciated.

Given this, in the enthusiasm that there might be a Catholic President, most Catholics joined the bandwagon and the Church didn't pull Kennedy in and say "be careful". After all, he wasn't really saying anything that generally shocked Catholics in any fashion in the context of the times.  Charles DeGaulle was a sincere and devout Catholic, for example, and nobody had any thought that the Bishops in France or the Pope was running France.

This would have been harmless enough, and still would be, but for the fact that very rapidly Catholics adopted, due to Kennedy and his speech, something that many evangelical Protestants never did, which was the concept of a completely personal separation of Church and State.  Where as everyone agrees that there should be no state church, many in the evangelical Protestant community do believe that a person's faith should fully inform their political conduct.  Many Catholics do as well, with most sincere ones believing that, but Kennedy's massive popularity, combined with the concept of his being an Irish Catholic, caused average American Catholics to believe that a full separation was a okay.  I.e, as long as I don't personally engage in . . . . it doesn't matter what others do.

The Church has never believed that in any form.  The declarations during World War Two show that.  It was never the case that the Church took the view that individual Germans could participate in the atrocities of the Third Reich and have a clean moral conscience as long as they had purity of heart.  Knowing that is what caused some to attempt tyrannicide.  But in the United States, which had no such overarching moral issue at the time, and where Catholics were on the side of liberal civil rights efforts, it was easy for things to became blurred pretty quickly.

By the 1970s there were liberal Catholic religious in political office.  And liberal Catholics began to side with things that seemed to square with at least some aspects of Catholic thought.  Where as some Catholic clerics had urged Catholics to participate in the fighting in Vietnam in the U.S. military early on, as it was a struggle against Communism, some Catholic clerics were openly opposing it by the late 1960s. And you can see how either view can be squared with the Faith.

But what never could be were developments in social issues that attacked marriage and the nature of sexual conduct, and which were contrary to Catholic views on the sanctity of life.  None the less, acclimated by the 1970s to a personal separation of Church and State, and being Catholic only on Sunday, lots of Catholic politicians went right along with these developments.  Pretty soon, in the tumult of the times, and with other developments inside the Church itself in the 1960s, average Catholics also did.

Unexercised muscles atrophy.  But failing to exercise for somebody who has, doesn't come overnight.  Any single man who used to have an exercise routine is probably aware of that.  The pressures of life and busy schedules, and just the thought that you'll stay home and watch TV lead to a situation sooner or later in which the former athlete has put on fifty pounds and is pretty tired just getting through the day.

Moral authority works the same way.  Things that should have been said decades ago weren't, and after awhile an entire body of Catholics convinces themselves that they're really good and observant Catholics even while omitting anything the Faith that's personally difficult.  Any Catholic with Catholic associates knows this.

At some point, however, there's a point at which you reach that you have no choice.  A person has a heart attack and is sent home with doctor's instructions.  People who smoke are told to knock it off.  You get the point.

And with moral authority, you reach some point where you have to exercise it as you have no other moral choice. That's where we are, and that's what I noted the other day in this entry:

Lex Anteinternet: A Corrective Warning.: We started off to comment on a couple of newsworthy items from the Catholic news sphere the other day but like a lot of things here, we only...

The Pope is saying be careful.  He isn't saying don't.  That's up to the Catholic Bishops in the United States. And looking at where we are now, they really have no choice but to act.

Individual Catholics, of course, also have individual free will.  The history of the world shows that people make difficult choices only when somebody is backing them up, and only when others are obviously doing the same.  There are exceptions, but those exceptions are heroic for that very reason, they're exceptions against the tide.  Observant orthodox Catholics have nearly been that exception for some time now, but things seem to swinging around to them.

Standing in their way, really, is the generation that came up in the 1960s, or just behind them. A lot of them have had nice lives riding the high point of American economic exceptualism, an era that's now really over, and are really not in tune with the world as it is. They're comfortable with the American Civil Religion, which is basically Christian as long as it isn't too hard, and which still, in spite of the Trump assault on democracy, holds that God basically listens to our vote on thing where we find it too hard.  As Catholics, they've acclimated themselves to the erroneous belief that they can omit big chunks of the Faith, as they have for so long.

That isn't Catholic, however.

The Church never acts very quickly.  So what the US Bishops will do, they won't do until fall.  That gives Joe Biden, who attends Mass every Sunday and on Holy Days, and who is openly Catholic, lots of time to comport his conduct to the tenants of the Faith.  But like men who go home from the hospital with instructions not to smoke, not to drink and exercise, that won't be easy.  Physicians state that most people don't actually clean up their personal health issues, but simply carry on.  And that doesn't involve the issue of pride that comes with decades of going down a certain political path that now needs to be corrected.

A path that John F. Kennedy started us out on.

Saturday, June 21, 1941. Revealing open secrets

On this day in 1941 mine layers of the German navy, the Kreigsmarine, deployed from Finland's Archipelago  Sea and deployed to large marine minefields across the Gulf of Finland, followed by the Luftwaffe mining Leningrad's harbor that night. 

While German troops would not commence operations until 0300 the following morning, Operation Barbarossa was effectively on, although Finland itself would not commence offensive operations until July, and after the Soviets had conducted air operations against Finnish targets.

Finnish troops in July 1941.

Earlier in the day in 1941 Hitler informed Mussolini that Germany would invade the Soviet Union the following day, although he claimed that the decision would be held until 7:00 p.m. Berlin time.  In doing so, he stated:

I earnestly beg you, therefore, to refrain, above all, from making any explanation to your Ambassador at Moscow, for there is no absolute guarantee that our coded reports cannot be decoded. I, too, shall wait until the last moment to have my own Ambassador informed of the decisions reached

Mussolini seems to have already known somehow, probably due to Italian intelligence and certainly on troop movements, that a German invasion of the Soviet Union was immanent.  None the less, one can only image what he must have felt knowing that his only solid ally was about to commit to an invasion that, historically, had a bad chance of working out.

Italy would also sustain a loss of its consulates in the US, a reprisal for it joining Germany in closing its, which was in reaction to the US closing of German consulates.

On the same day, the Vichy forces were defeated at Damascus.  Vichy, however, also limited its Jewish university population to 3% of the overall total.

Churchill relieved Wavell and replaced him with Auchinleck.  Wavell went to India, replacing Auchinleck there.

Tuesday, June 21, 1921. Sinking

On this date in 1921, the U.S. Army Air Corps and the U.S. Navy sunk the captured German U117 as a demonstration of air power.

The target U117.

In an event much more impressive then, than now, the undefended unmanned submarine was sunk by three Curtis flying boats.

Curtis F5L flying boat of the type used in the demonstration.

While submarines would prove to be very vulnerable to aircraft, the utility of a demonstration in which the boat could not react was questionable.

The State of Wisconsin passed an equal rights bill affording women the same rights as men in many areas.  It was the first such bill in the United States.

Father's Day

 

Friday June 20, 1941. Diaries and Developments.

The first edition of William Shirer's book, Berlin Diary was published.

The extremely moody Shirer is famous for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a true masterpiece, although one that has been somewhat, but only somewhat, eclipsed in very recent years.  The work was groundbreaking, massive, and highly readable, and refers to Berlin Diary from time to time.  I'm frankly quite surprised that Berlin Diary came out so early.

That it did is something I learned from this very interesting entry, which several of the times on today's 1941 post stem from:

Today in World War II History—June 20, 1941

Included in that, is this item:

June 20, 1941. The Army Air Corps becomes the Army Air Forces.

On this day in 1941, expressing its growing significance and the need to increase its autonomy, the United States Army Air Corps became the United States Army Air Forces.

The date I learned here:

Today in World War II History—June 20, 1941

The evolution had been occurring for some time so the increased degree of separation from the rest of the Army was not surprising.  None the less, it stopped short of full separation, as Air Force would not become a separate branch of service until 1947.

On this day, President Roosevelt told Congress that Germany would be held responsible for the sinking of the SS Robin Moor, and event we recalled here a couple of weeks ago on its anniversary.  Roosevelts announcement had wisely not been immediate, in the heat of the event.

Germany briefed its ally Romania on the plans for invading the Soviet Union, which were likely wisely released only two days prior to the event's D-Day.  On the same day, and giving a very clear signal of what was coming, Finland mobilized its reservists who were under age 45.

Ford Motors, a family owned company, entered into a contract with the United Auto Workers, the first time it had done so.

Harlem Renaissance writer Countee Cullen was photographed in New York's Central Park.

A significant figure in the movement, Cullen was a very shy man who rarely entertained crowds.  He had at least a somewhat tortured personality in that while he was twice married, once to the sole surviving daughter of  W. E. B. Dubois, there is fairly good evidence that he was a homosexual.  He died in 1946 at age 42 due to high blood pressure.

Monday, June 20, 1921. Wheels.

It seemed to be a bicycle themed day.  President Harding met with a group of young men and their bicycles.

And two boys who were joint winners of a bicycle from the Washington Post posed with it, although they didn't look too thrilled. . . perhaps because there were two of them.

Rep. Robertson on June 20, 1921.

In Congress, Representative Alice Mary Robertson presided over the U.S. House of Representatives, thereby becoming the first woman to do so.

Robertson was a strong willed personality who had defeated an incumbent in order to take office, making her the second woman to obtain a position in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The Republican from Oklahoma was a Native American advocate and an opponent of feminism.  She never married and served only one term, after which she retired to a dairy farm, although she held an appointed position in the Harding Administration.  Her farm was destroyed by those angered by her votes in Congress.  She died in 1931 at age 77.

The United Kingdom held a conference with its Dominions that commenced on this day.  Policy in regard to Japan was a focus of it.

A Corrective Warning.

We started off to comment on a couple of newsworthy items from the Catholic news sphere the other day but like a lot of things here, we only got to one, the recent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom's wedding.  We posted on that, we'd note, on a companion blog, which is where we intended and still more or less intend to comment on another thing, which was a recent change in Canon Law regarding punishments under the law for certain things.

The latter item created quite an odd stir on the Internet for reasons that are really unclear.  That was what the second post was going to more or less deal with.

Since that time, however, something we've dealt with here before has come up as a major news story, that being the almost certain move of Catholic Bishops to deny politicians the reception of the Eucharist if they publicly support abortion. This is in the news as it will impact the President, Joe Biden.

For sincere Catholics this news is both way overdue and the reaction to it incredibly surprising.  It's also had the impact of smoking out liberal cafeteria Catholics whose attachment to their faith is tempered by their politics and world view.  

To start off with, the Catholic faithful have long wondered why Catholic Bishops allow politicians to take the wishy washy "I'm personally opposed to abortion but. . ." cop out.  

The entire matter, as Canon Lawyer Edward Peters noted on, of course, Twitter seems pretty canonically clear.  Hence the surprise on the Captain Renault like "shocked shocked" reaction some liberal Catholics have been all atwitter with.

Here's the basics of it.

Catholics believe that every human being, no matter their condition or state in life, have a right to lift and that killing a human is homicide. This is the case whether or not a person is young or old, health or ill, intelligent or unintelligent, physically fit or dramatically impaired.

And it applies whether a person is born, or not. Catholics believe that a person's right to life is absolute, tempered only by the right of self defense.

Indeed, the last time the Church made news on this was when the Church modified the Catechism to provide that penal institutions and measurements had improved so much over the years that the death penalty was no longer morally justified.  This caused Catholic trads to be all atwitter in some instances.

That, however, was a mere development in a direction that Pope St. John Paul II had started decades ago.

The current controversy isn't even a new development in anything.  Catholics have held that abortion is infanticide since ancient times.  The sin has been regarded as so serious in more modern times that technically Canon Law precludes a confessor from forgiving it, requiring a Bishop to do that.  However, in many places, including the United States, the Church also has recognized that the sin is so common that this was unworkable and Bishops have extended permission to all confessors to forgive it.  A few years ago the Pope did that for the entire church worldwide, although I'm not up to speed on the current status that.

The Church has also always had a doctrine regarding "cooperation with evil".  Generally, "remote cooperation with evil" is regarded as inevitable. But direct open cooperation with evil can be a mortal sin.  For example, the driver of a getaway car in a robbery can't take the position that he's only a driver.  He's assisting in a great sin.  

Perhaps more illustratively, selling a handgun over the counter to somebody who intends to commit murder with it isn't a sin at all, if you have no knowledge of what he intends to do with it. But if a person specifically asks for somebody to provide a gun for a murder, a person can't morally do it.

This gets us to our current topic. The Church's concepts in this area, many of which tend not to be fully fleshed out, have long held that where politicians directly cooperate in an evil, just like where anyone else does, they bear moral responsibility for it and can be denied Communion.

For example, during the 1960s when desegregation was taking place, the Bishop of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Bishop Joseph Rummel, took the position that segregation was a great evil and, in 1962, excommunicated three Catholics in the diocese for organizing protests against desegregation in the diocese.  More correctly the excommunications were for defying Church authority. Two of the three recanted and were then reinstated to communion with the Church.

All of that is instructive as actions of this type are designed to be corrective, not punitive.  The thought is that a person is committing a great sin and the action is necessary to instruct them in that fact in a way that can't be ignored.

That's the thought here.

It's openly and obviously the case that Catholic politicians who have openly allowed for advanced positions that the Church has regarded as gravely evil should have correction long ago.  Conservative Catholics have long argued for this, but many rank and file Catholics have been baffled by it as well.  Now its going to happen.

Liberal Catholics, in many instances, are having a fit, but they ought to stop and pause for a moment.  It's always been accepted by the Catholic Church that to be a Catholic wasn't going to win you any friends.  On the contrary, Christ warned and the Church still holds that it would instead draw to you abuse.  It's expected that to be a Catholic, and holding the tenants of the Faith seriously, means you'll lose friends, family and even up to your life in some circumstances.  No "health and wealth" gospel here.  Not by a long shot.

The Church, in may people's views, should have taken this step long ago.  However, the thought seems to have been that there was a fear that taking it would drive people in this category further away.  The risk, on the other hand, was what the title of one of the linked in items below notes, that being scandal.

Now it seems that the Church has finally reached the point where its decided to do what many faithful Catholics in the pews have urged be done for many years, that being to deny Communion, which is not the same we'd note as Excommunication, to public figures who are openly and obviously assisting an evil.  

Some Catholics who take a liberal view of theology are now busy making what amount to real misstatements about the Church's theology.  I saw, for example, somebody who represented themselves as a CCD teacher noting that to be a Catholic doesn't mean accepting Humane Vitae.  Oh, yes, it does.  What being a Catholic means is that your life will be more difficult than others, including other Christians.

The Church, in taking this step, is taking it, at a point in which in some parts of the globe, as is often noted, the Church has been in decline. It's rarely noted that its expanding at an exponential rate elsewhere.  Where its in decline are in those areas where it has sought to accommodate the world the most. The parts of the Church internally that have grown the most in recent years are those parts everywhere which are the most observant.  That's a lesson for every organization everywhere, but the irony of this act now, which really won't occur until at least the end of the year, is that the times actually give liberty for the Church to take the action.  If it doesn't win the Church secular friends, it doesn't have any, anyway.  And if it causes those who have light attachments to the Church's teachings to be upset, perhaps they should deeply consider the nature of a Pearl of Great Price, and if they expected to win Heaven easily.

And if it seems that the Church is now out of sink with the World, well, it's never been in sink with it ever. When its been most in sink with it, things have not gone well for the Church. . . or the world.

Will Biden recant?  Or Pelosi?  That's hard to say.  Decades of supporting grave evil will have built up a great pride that will be hard for them to overcome.  But that they need to overcome it is at least a warning they need to receive.  We can pray that they do.  We can pray that everyone does.

Related threads:

2020 Election Post Mortem VII. Joe Biden and the "Catholic vote".

Archbishop Chaput says what should have been said long ago. Scandal.