Friday, June 25, 2021
June 25, 1941. The Continuation War, Murder and Executive Order 8802
Finland declared war on the Soviet Union with the goal of reclaiming territories lost in the Winter War. It's goals were limited in the war to the recovery of territory lost to the Soviets, which it advanced into, took strategic positions, and then stopped. This date is noted here:
Today in World War II History—June 25, 1941
The action put the Finns in bed with the Germans, and it wasn't a spur of the moment decision. The Finns knew that Barbarossa was coming, and had agreed to the prestaging of German troops on its soil. It was a calculated move betting on a German victory in the war, or at least on Germany obtaining a sufficiently advantageous result such that Finland would regain the territories it had lost.
Dealing with the Continuation War has always been a bit of a problem for Western historians as it does cut slightly against the grain in regard to the story of World War Two. Finland, with one slight exception, is the big exception to the rule regarding the Axis. Finland protected its Jewish population, with the exception of 8 individuals, and refused to hand them over to the Germans. It halted its advance and went on the defensive as soon as it regained the territory it had lost, which in context was probably a strategic failure as it could have gained ethnic Finnish ground in the far north which would have also choked off Murmansk to Allies, which would be a port of resupply to the Soviets during the war.
Finland gambled incorrectly, of course, and would pay the price, albeit not as much of a price as a person might have suspected it would receive from the Soviets.
On the same day Sweden agreed to allow the Germans to transport the German 163rd Infantry Division across its territory from Norway into Finland. The request had been made several days prior and had provoked a crisis in the Swedish government in which the King intervened with the request that it be allowed. The motivations for allowing it are complicated but tied to aiding its neighbor. It's an example of how the neutrals of the Second World War not only were neutral, but frankly made significant concessions to nearby belligerents none the less.
The 163d spent most of the war with the Finns, being transported back to Germany late in the war. It was destroyed by the Red Army in Pomerania in March, 1945.
Anti Jewish pogroms broke out in Lithuania. Centered in Kovno, the murders were conducted by Lithuanian civilians, not the Germans, at first, as the Germans had not yet reached the city. Upon their reaching it the killing would continue under their direction.
In Serbia, the Utashi opened the Slana camp, an island concentration camp, and began transporting Jews, and later Serbian and Croatian communists, to the island to be murdered. The killing would stop when the Italians would occupy the island.
President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which read:
EXECUTIVE ORDER 8802
Reaffirming Policy of Full Participation in the Defense Program by All Persons, Regardless of Race, Creed, Color, or National Origin, and Directing Certain Action in Furtherance of Said Policy
WHEREAS it is the policy of the United States to encourage full participation in the national defense program by all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin, in the firm belief that the democratic way of life within the Nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups within its borders; and
WHEREAS there is evidence that available and needed workers have been barred from employment in industries engaged in defense production solely because of considerations of race, creed, color, or national origin, to the detriment of workers' morale and of national unity:
NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the statutes, and as a prerequisite to the successful conduct of our national defense production effort, I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and I do hereby declare that it is the duty of employers and of labor organizations, in furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin;
And it is hereby ordered as follows:
1. All departments and agencies of the Government of the United States concerned with vocational and training programs for defense production shall take special measures appropriate to assure that such programs are administered without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin;
2. All contracting agencies of the Government of the United States shall include in all defense contracts hereafter negotiated by them a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or national origin;
3. There is established in the Office of Production Management a Committee on Fair Employment Practice, which shall consist of a chairman and four other members to be appointed by the President. The Chairman and members of the Committee shall serve as such without compensation but shall be entitled to actual and necessary transportation, subsistence and other expenses incidental to performance of their duties. The Committee shall receive and investigate complaints of discrimination in violation of the provisions of this order and shall take appropriate steps to redress grievances which it finds to be valid. The Committee shall also recommend to the several departments and agencies of the Government of the United States and to the President all measures which may be deemed by it necessary or proper to effectuate the provisions of this order.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
June 25, 1941
Australia formed its Naval Auxiliary Patrol.
Saturday, June 25, 1921. Peace feelers.
On this day in 1921, Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent an invitation to Eamon de Valera, putative president of the self declared Republic of Ireland, to discuss peace. De Valera would accept the following day.
Blog Mirror: The Agrarian's Lament: An Agrarian Rage
One of the blogs we follow here is The South Roane Agrarian which is posted by an agrarian farmer in Tennessee. It's the best agrarian blog around [1].
Absent Landscapes
It ain't easy being an agrarian in the modern world, or a distributist either. As an orthodox Roman Catholic, agrarian, distributist whose was once a geologist but who practices law out in the world, I can assure that may daily existence is a sort of existential crisis.
The reason for that is pretty simple. You can't really reconcile them, and the world, very easily.
Indeed, being a distributist in economic mindset puts you at odds with a lot of the American economic mindset to start with. Very few people understand what Distributism even is. Deeply conservative in nature, if you take a tour through Reddit's Distributism subreddit you'll find it populated by what are pimply faced teenagers fascinated with socialism and monarchy, which have utterly nothing to do with Distributism whatsoever. It's not even worth bothering with (and the fact that its moderated by one guy is, well, anti distributist. So that leaves you with the half dozen or so people on the continent who grasp and like the Chestertonian species of small, but very real, free marketism to start with. Most Americans now days figure the world is instead divided between Capitalism and Socialism, with the former not grasping the role of corporations in capitalism and the former not even understanding what socialism is, and that its a big giant massive failure (yeah, yeah, I know, some socialist will come by and say "oh, that's because real socialism of the Prudhommeistic, anarchist, monarchist fluffy bunny type has never been tried. . . ").
And being an Agrarian works the same way. People smile and think, how charming, and then wonder on. Maybe they'll tell you that the buy free range squab at the farmers market or something if they're inclined to talk at all. Maybe they think that your into "homesteading", a that term is used in the modern world, which is vaguely.
And we can't even begin to explain how much the remainder puts you outside the world. Apostolic succession. . . the real (and yes, it's real) influence of evolution in our mental makeup, the broken but fixed nature of our biological makeup. Pretty much 95% of contemporary Americans have any sort of grasp of that stuff at all, and depending upon who you are talking to, and why, people are going to assume that you are some sort of flaming left wing radical, or some sort of flaming right wing radical.
Indeed, I guess that latter point is pretty good evidence of being generally on track.
Anyhow, there isn't day that goes by that I don't think of what it would be like to step out of a low ceilinged log cabin and looking out at a range homestead (using that word in the old sense) knowing darned well that at my age that's never ever going to happen. Nope. Never. I have cattle, to be sure, but I'm almost 60 years old and the thought that someday I'll raise my family by that means alone is too late to be realized. Both of my children are in their 20s. When I die, and people ask them what I did, it'll be "he was a lawyer". Same with my friends. Same with everyone I know.
Most days I just keep all of this to myself as I have no choice. I'm like my father that way. To this day I'll occasionally hear "he was a great dentist", which is what his profession was. I oddly never think of him that way. He was an outdoorsman, a Wyomingite, and he put in a garden that was so large that it was effectively a subsistence farm. Dentist? Yes, but I'm more likely to think of him fishing than I am that way. It's not like I hung around at his office admiring that constantly. Indeed, in an era when dentist didn't make gobs of money, what I mostly remember about his work is the extraordinarily long hours he put in.
Same with me. Practicing law has became so time consuming, it's really about all I do for the most part. I have no big garden this year. I'm getting one day per week off due to what I have going on. Tomorrow they're gathering cattle. I'm not. I'll be in the office practicing law.
Bitter screed, I don't mean it to be. Like the Hyman Roth character in Godfather II, I could say that "this is the life we chose", but I don't think that's really terribly accurate for most adults. It is in part, but like T. E. Lawrence's character in David Lean's depiction of the man, we "can't want what we want". Circumstances play a big part in that.
All of which leads up to this. South Roane has posted a new entry (his are weekly, as opposed to the vast flood of meaningless stuff I put out on Lex Anteinternet) which is a Cri de Coeur.
Usually when I see a post like this, there's a back story of some sort to it. Some experience that somebody has had that causes them to put metaphorical pen to paper. I'm guessing there's one here. No matter, it's from the heart and its well worth reading. It sets itself well with this:
I grew up on a dirt road at the end of which was an old-growth wood of many hundreds of acres. It bordered what is called Contraband Bayou. I have written before of this wood and Jean Lafitte, the pirate rumored to have buried his loot among the cypresses. I hunted those woods, fished those waters, was a boy along those banks, in that place. Today, like all the area surrounding, it is concrete pavement illuminated by halogen lights, a Walmart, a Super Target, a casino or two, budget and luxury hotels, homes built on every conceivable patch and lot. It is an absent landscape.
It then goes on with this stout comment:
For those of you still advocating for eternal growth and progress, I pose these questions: What is your secret to finding beauty in what we have achieved? Does your heart flutter at more shopping opportunities and a new strip mall? Are the woods and bayous and rivers an obstacle to your betterment? Do you see productive agricultural land along the highway as an opportunity for a solar farm of concrete and silicon and metal? When you see a pastured hill or a majestic stand of hardwoods, do you calculate only the fill dirt or the timber that can be sold from it. Is your heart unmoved by the leveled and the dead? If so, then I will tell you that you are the enemy.
The past couple of years I've had the odd experience of driving up a road that I've known my entire life. The current owners of the land on both sides of the road have been familiar with it only a fraction of the time I have. It figured two sharp right turns that went around a beautiful hay meadow.
No longer.
Now the road goes right through it. For some reason, I'm told, the current owners, who don't depend on agriculture for a living, wanted it straightened out, possibly so it didn't go so close to their house.
It's a tragedy.
Further down the road WYDOT has taken out an old wooden bridge and put in a new one. It's completely absurd. I don't know what the motivation is, but the new one is a massive concrete structure that they had to elevate the road for in order to put it in. It's a good bridge alright, where no bridge was needed at all.
That bridge goes through a ranch yard that belonged to a family that we knew well. My father employed one of them for years, and we knew them, as a family, for many years longer. Decades. They sold it out to some wealthy people who posted the crap out of it.
At least they didn't bust up all their land for "ranchettes", which in this arid climate become weedettes. Land to fool new arrivals that if they buy a cow they're ranchers, before they go broke, abandon the cow and let the land go to the county.
All that is mild compared to what South Roane is noting, which is the unyielding development mindset. We must develop because we must. Unoccupied land has no value because its unoccupied, they seem to think. South Roane is bitter, and declares them to be the enemy.
Whether they are the enemy or not, we have to keep something in mind. We can't develop every square inch of everything and a society that doesn't allow average people to make their living from the land is fundamentally broken. We're already there.
I can't, or at least shouldn't, complain about my life. My parents were both extremely intelligent people and part of their inheritance to me was a pretty good intellect. I've made my living from it. I've really had no choice, however.
To say that isn't a complaint, but an acceptance of reality. In McPhee's excellent book La Place De La Concorde Suisse one of the central characters who is followed (the book is about a reconnaissance unit of the Swiss Army during its annual training) is a man who has a science degree related to agriculture. He'd wanted to be a farmer, but couldn't, the entry cost of becoming a Swiss farmer, like becoming an American one, being far too high to realistically do. He's not portrayed as bitter, only portrayed as taking a different direction.
Indeed, I know a lot of younger sons and daughters from ranch families who have themselves been faced with the same situation. There are a lot of lawyers and a fair number of doctors and dentists of my vintage and a little older who fit that definition. No place to go on the ranch, so they went into a profession, keeping a tie with the ranch in their communities.
I fit that category to an extent myself, although its a double remote connection in a way. My grandfather owned a packing house in his county which also had farm ground. It owned cattle, had a brand, and raised potatoes. They also owned a "creamery" which is the equivalent to a dairy. My father, as the oldest son in the family, one of two boys (he had two sisters as well) would have stepped into the business. My grandfather's death ended that. It was all sold. He was still a teenager.
That left him with no choice but to find other employment, which he did. But he never lost his interest in things associated with the outdoors, which his early life clearly involved. I've touched a little on that already.
I graduated high school, like my father, at age 17. At that time what I really wanted to do was to be a rancher, but I knew it was unrealistic. I looked into what I could, even looking at the options to homestead, in the old fashioned sense, in the Canadian far north. I decided to become a Game Warden, but concerns about being employed kept me from that. Instead, I went into geology, but when I came out, there were no jobs. Law followed.
Early in my legal career my father and I had an opportunity to buy a small ranch. A real one, but a small one. Had we done it, I would have kept my job for some time, and he his, but ultimately, we would have done that. Then he died.
My mother would have supported me going on with my father's plan, but I didn't know that and I didn't bring it up to her. She'd been ill for a very long time, and as she was in her 60s, my thought is that she'd need every bit of saved money to carry on. She was just 65 at the time and in fact did live many more years. As each passing year went by, the cost of ranch land went up and up.
Now, I am married, as it were, into a ranch family and we do have cattle. That marriage has nothing to do with the above, other than how we met, a story which varies depending upon whose version of it you believe. At any rate, people who travel in common circles will commonly meet each other. I know other "power couples" who are married lawyers or married professionals, but we aren't. We're married rural people.
But as a rural person I've watched the houses spring up outside of Denver or Dallas, or any larger city you can name. And I have heard again and again the cries for progress. But what is that?
The name "progress" implies a progression towards something. And we're always progressing towards something. On the day I'm writing this (it usually takes me several days to write a "thoughtful" entry like one), a column of U.S. battle ships was progressing a century ago towards somewhere, the sailors on board not realizing that the very ships they were on were progressing towards obsolesce. Also on this day, the Wehrmacht was progressing towards Moscow and the Volga, in a progression that would lead to mass rape, murder and ultimately the Red Army in Berlin. And both of those were human planned progressions.
In our own benighted day and age the left wing of one of our two political parties, as we unfortunately only seem to have two that every get anywhere (although in reality, of course, there are several, and at least a grand total of five substantial ones) labels itself as "progressive" and is referred to in the press that way. This would suggest that they're progressing towards something, but what the end goal is, is never stated. You really can't label yourself as a progressive unless you have a plan to progress to a point, and that point has to actually be a final destination. There is no such thing as perpetual progress.
There's no such thing as perpetual growth either. Things that grow without bounds suffer. They grow too big, too fat, or too something, and die.
It's noteworthy that Solzhenitsyn famously noted that there is no progress. He tended to drive westerners nuts, as once he left/was ejected from, the Soviet Union the common assumption is that he was going to say "Wow! Free market economics, K-marts and consumer goods with no restraint, sign me up baby!". He didn't. Instead, he went on to be just as big of critic of the West as he had been of the Communist East.
Solzhenitsyn was deeply intellectual and deeply conservative in an existential sense. He tended to say shocking things. Doing that got him tossed out of Russia and doing that caused him to be criticized in the US. But in a very real sense, he was right. There is progress in various ways, but existentially, we progress very little and perhaps not at all. Indeed, the more removed we are from our natures, and our natures are pretty feral and agrarian, the more unhappy as a society we become.
Not matter what your current view of history may be, one thing that can't be ignored about the US is that it was settled in part because people could do here what they no longer could in their homelands, and that was to own, their own. And what often was, for many, was their own farm. Now that dream is dead for most Americans. We're no more able to own a farm than our ancestors were who stepped off the boat from Westphalia or Cork.
And that, in and of itself, makes the American Dream more than a little bit of a lie. There isn't perpetual progress if you can't progress towards the most basic of occupations. We're told, of course, that progress moved us off the land and into the city for great jobs and the like, but we know better when we go to the big box stores.
A land in which you must live in a big city, and you can't simply be a farmer, or even really want to be, is more than a little sad. It's unjust.
Footnotes
1. Not that there are very many. There are a few, but quality wise, South Roane's is far and away above the rest.
The same is true, I'd note, for Distributist blogs. There's a few, but so far none of them really measure up, and Reddit's Distributist subreddit is a mess. At least, however, its more active than the Agrarian subreddit, which is barely making a pulse.
What this says, I'm not sure of. Off the radar in general society perhaps.
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Tuesday, June 24, 1941. Latvia hopes, Madrid rejoices, the UK and the US confirm.
On this day in 1941 Latvia, occupied by the Soviets since 1939, declared independence in hopes of having that supplied by the advancing German army. It would not receive it, instead being part of the German Reichskommissariat Ostland. This was addressed somewhat in yesterday's post, but the overall plan in regard to Lativia was to kill its Jewish population, expel some of its population and "Germanize" the remainder. The Germans considered the Latvians suitable for the latter as the country had been influenced by the Danes and Swedes in prior centuries and therefore were Europeanized, in the view of the Germans. That Latvians, a people closely related to the Finns but with a unique history, didn't see themselves the same way.
On the same day, crowds in Madrid turned out to demonstrate in supporter of the German invasion of the USSR, something noted here:
Today in World War II History—June 24, 1941
As these entries show, not all peoples everywhere were in June 1941, of the same mind as the Allies. Of course, what the German invasion would mean wasn't fully appreciated at the time either.
Elsewhere, British officials confirmed that the United Kingdom would provide aid to the Soviet Union. And the Franklin Roosevelt publicly confirmed the same.
June 24, 1921. 11th Field Artillery Brigade, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Cigar Makers, and Mondell visiting Harding.
"Just before passing in review before the Department Commander in this closely massed formation on June 24, 1921. (About 400 vehicles). No motor failed and formation remained intact, a record that will rarely be equalled and never surpassed. Tiemann N. Horn, Colonel 13th Field Artillery commanding. To General John J. Pershing, with the compliments of the brigade. R. L. Dancy, Army & Navy Photographer.".
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Wednesday, June 23, 1971. The UK goes forward into the EEC and Poland goes east and back to the pre Reformation.
On this day in 1971 the European Economic Community came to a resolution with the United Kingdom on terms for the UK to enter the EEC and its Common Market. The principal point of the resolution involved payments to the EEC by the UK.
And they all lived happily ever after. . . right?
Poland turned over 6,900 former German Churches, many of which had been Lutheran Churches, to the Catholic Church. This came about due to protests that occurred in Poland in December 1970.
This may seem odd, but at the end of the Second World War the Soviets had moved the German population east, clearing out much of eastern Prussia and all of East Prussia from its German residents. Many had already fled the advancing Red Army in 1944 and 1945 in any event, and many who remained were killed by the Soviets. The Soviets also, in turn, shoved the Polish population in eastern Poland west. Effectively the Russians redrew the map tin the way that they favored it and those borders have since stuck. While the forced resettlements may seem barbarous, and really were, they did have the effect of concentrating the populations in a fashion that involved a clearer ethnic concentration than they had previously.
As a Catholic jurisdictional matter, it's always the case that a Catholic diocese includes, from a Catholic prospective, all of the souls within its territorial boundary, and the Parish Priest is responsible for all of them. In Poland's case, nearly 100% of the population were and are observant Catholics. While there were Polish communists, the movement had never been very popular in Poland and such Polish communists as existed tended to have ended up in the USSR in the post World War One period. Catholics resisted the Nazi and Soviet occupation of 1939-1941, the Nazi occupation of 1941-45 ,and the Soviet occupation thereafter and the Church remained a strong force even in Communist Poland. As the Church needed Church buildings, the transfer made sense. Additionally, as a practical matter, many churches in northern and eastern Europe were for Catholic congregations at the time they were built, so the transfer was effectively a reversion to their original status.
As a final note, since fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, there has been a tourist phenomenon of Germans revising their former homes in what is now Poland. They're generally unwelcome.
Monday, June 23, 1941. The first modern tanks.
This was, obviously, D+1 in Operation Barbarossa.
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:
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Barbarossa |
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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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Sunday, June 22, 1941. The German invasion of the Soviet Union commences.
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.
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.
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.
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.