I'd already been reading Wayne Hsieh but the others have just been added in the past three days.
As with Covid and other topics where I've quickly put together initial reading lists, I suspect it will also quickly change. Over time you observe which sources follow the evidence regardless of where it leads and which have a preferred narrative they are selling into which they fit what is convenient so, at this point, I read my current list with caution.
We already see this in the effort of some to impose their chosen narratives about the course of the war. It is too early to tell who is winning and who is losing, at least as to the future of Ukraine. I think it clear that due to Putin's miscalculation(1) and the resistance of the Ukrainians, he has lost the bigger strategic issue, mobilizing and uniting a previously inert Europe against him. Regardless of your analysis of the causes of the war, President Zelensky and many Ukrainian citizens have proven to be exemplars of physical and moral courage.
With his decision to launch an invasion of the entire Ukraine, Putin has raised the stakes and the dangers for all of us.
As pointed out at the end of my previous Ukraine post, what happened before February 24 is now academic. We are in a new world and Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. are each faced with a new set of options and decisions. And it is difficult to predict whether Putin is more dangerous as victor or if he is facing defeat, which, in turn, places an obligation on European and U.S. decision makers to be prudent and calm in their actions and in their rhetoric. Things could easily get much worse.
(1) By miscalculation, I refer to Putin's decision not to be satisfied with detaching the Donbass from Ukraine. If he had stopped there Ukraine would have been militarily powerless to reverse the situation, and Europe and the U.S. would have sighed in relief and done nothing meaningful in response.
Recorded by Skip James (1902-69) in 1931. Among his other recordings from the same time were I'm So Glad (later popularized by Cream) and Hard Time Killing Floor Blues (heard in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?). The structure of his songs and style of playing was unique. The man had an amazing sound.
Born in Mississippi, where he lived his entire life, the 1931 recording sessions were done in Wisconsin, after HC Spiers, a white record store owner in Jackson, MS heard James and connected him with a record company. Spiers also did the same with many other blues artists including Son House and Robert Johnson. James made no further recordings until rediscovered in the 1960s.
From 1942, an Art Deco style gas station in North Platte, Nebraska (a town we passed through last fall). According to the caption at Shorpy, the ten pumps offered a choice of Distillate, Mobilgas, Diesel Fuel, Kerosene, Hi-Lite, Ethyl and Metro. You can see more detail here. Shorpy is a remarkable photo archive of America from the late 19th century through mid-century 20th, which I like browsing through every few weeks.
I've no useful thoughts about what to do regarding Ukraine and Russia (as of this moment it looks like the Russian attack has started). It's a terrible situation but as to how to respond I'm not sure. While I've long been in favor of the U.S. and our European allies stating that Ukraine will not be offered membership in NATO, Putin's recent statements make clear what was already obvious to anyone paying attention over the past decade, NATO was never really the issue; Putin views Ukraine as an illegitimate state that should rightfully be part of Russia and NATO's actions merely provided a handy argument for mobilizing Russian public opinion.
Like Russia, Ukraine is an incredibly corrupt state where the prospect of lucrative contracts drawn in and entangled a long series of Republican and Democratic consultants in its scandals (see, for instance, Paul Manafort and Hunter Biden). It's a mess. Putin's actions are outrageous but we and the Europeans are not going to go to war over it. Ideally, the European countries would get serious in investing in their own defense (some Eastern Europeans countries like Poland are already doing so but, then again, the EU bureaucrats hate Poland) and be prepared for the future, while we concentrate on China, but I have serious doubts that scenario will happen. This is no longer the unipolar world of the 1990s. We can't be, and should not be, everywhere - even in the unipolar world we overestimated our ability to impact others; today our capabilities are much more constrained. The world has changed, and so have we. If we don't care about our own borders, why should we care about other borders?
What I do want to spend some time on is addressing the reemergence of the predictable media narrative about Donald Trump versus his predecessor and successor. Some examples:
A recurring theme on my posts regarding Trump is the disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions. Disconnects in political rhetoric are not uncommon, but it is the nature of Trump's disconnect that contributed to his Russia problem and his larger political shortcomings. As is often the case with Trump, he is his own worst enemy, providing his opponents with their best ammunition. His reckless, careless and off the cuff patterns of speech are, I think, reflective of his actual thoughts, but since those thoughts are chaotic, unstructured, improvised, and impulsive, it's just part of the whole package of Trump.
In the case of Russia, Trump made repeated terrible statements during the campaign of 2016, including expressing moral equivalency between Russia and the U.S., statements that if made by President Obama would have sparked outrage by Trump supporters. Unfortunately, it didn't end with the campaign; in 2017 he made embarrassing comments to the Russian Ambassador about firing Comey to help his relationship with Russia, in 2018 his disastrous remarks at the Helsinki Summit with Putin prompted me to write that Trump acts like a star-struck teenage girl around Putin, and, in 2019, getting on the phone to Vlad to gloat over the collapse of the Mueller Report. Trump's own statements are why I gave initial credence to the possibility of the Russia collusion allegations being true.
Trump's pattern followed in many other areas, making it easier to, for instance, accuse him of authoritarianism. It deserves mentioning that Trump's intuitive instincts are what enabled him to survive much of this. On many issues he had the ability to be able to express sentiments broadly reflective of public opinion on issues like immigration and foreign policy though he was unable to formulate or implement solutions on a sustained basis. As I learned in my business career, there is an enormous difference between expressing generalized goals or actions and actually having a plan to carry it out. In 2018 or 2019 I saw Tucker Carlson interviewed on C-Span (I've never seen his Fox show having not watched any cable or network news show in at least a decade) who captured it best - he praised Trump's ability to raise questions on important issues that conventional D and R avoided confronting directly, but pointed out Trump was not capable of solving those issues because of his disinterest in the details of government, ignorance, and laziness. But, at least he had the instincts; his unscripted talk was often a word salad but one from which, if you read a transcript, you could extract the underlying meaning. In contrast, Kamala Harris also produces word salads, but they are empty of underlying meaning so have no nutritional value.
And, as we saw repeatedly, the problem was not just Trump's rhetoric when it came to Russia; it was the also the opposition's strategy of inventing stories to meet the needs of its narrative. One of the stories that emerged during the 2016 campaign was Trump's supposed intervention during the GOP convention to weaken the proposed platform statement on Ukraine because of his sympathy for Russia, a story that got wide play in the press. I took it to be true because it was consistent with Trump's statements at the time. When the Steele Dossier became public in early 2017 it contained an allegation that Paul Manafort, working with the Russians, had influenced the GOP platform on Ukraine via his contact Carter Page who had directly effected the change at the convention.
The truth, when it finally emerged with the release of the four FISA warrant applications on Page and the report of the Department of Justice Inspector General on said warrants, was quite different. The Steele Dossier allegations regarding the platform were included as justification for the warrant and these allegations were certified as being reliable and accurate by a number of senior FBI and DOJ officials, including James Comey. The warrant applications referenced as supporting material the news media stories about the weakening of the GOP platform.
However, as the IG report revealed, the FBI was never able to corroborate the platform allegations (indeed there is no evidence Page ever met Manafort or that he had any involvement in the platform), and that the news stories about it were planted by the Clinton campaign, based upon the Steele Dossier which it had paid for, so the FBI used media stories based on the Dossier to validate the accuracy of the Dossier!
Because its remit did not extend to examining the underlying truth of the assertion that the GOP platform had been weakened, regardless of how it occurred, the IG report went no further. However, I did, as reported in The DC Bubble & The FBI, looking at both the details of how the GOP platform on Ukraine was changed and comparing it with the 2016 Democratic party platform. It turns out the original GOP platform was stronger than the Democratic platform and the changes strengthened it further. The entire story was a lie, propagated by the Clinton campaign and its media allies.
The Actions
Let's look at what the Trump administration actually did starting with an excerpt from my 2018 post on the Helsinki summit:
Last year Walter Russell Mead, writing in The American Interest, had an
interesting take on Trump's policy towards Russia. Mead is a mainstream
foreign policy expert, who seems to be an old-style liberal. I have no
idea who he supported in the 2016 election. Mead pointed out:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to
believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran
He then goes on to note that while these were President Obama's actual policies, Trump was doing the opposite in each area.
You'll note that the Biden Administration has renewed the Obama policies as to four of the five items listed above (the exception is military spending). In the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference with American elections released in January 2017, the appendix includes an explicit finding that the Kremlin supported the anti-fracking movement in the U.S. for the purposes of damaging energy development in this country.
And what else was the administration up to? As I noted in that 2018 post:
. . . the United States has just entered
into an unprecedented joint security arrangement with Sweden and Finland
designed to address the Russian threat. The President just caused a
storm of controversy by accusing Germany of becoming too economically
dependent upon Russian natural gas and has been demanding our NATO
allies increase defense spending.
On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a Trump
appointee, gave a speech at the Hudson Institute in which he said
cyberthreats were our #1 security risk, and that the threat came from
China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, calling Russia as "no question . . . the most aggressive".
Here are some other actions during the Trump administration:
In 2017 authorized the sale of anti-tank weapons to the Ukraine, which the Obama administration declined to do. This news article describes the action as "likely to become another sore point between Washington and Moscow".
Strongly supported the Three Seas Initiative by twelve EU nations in Eastern Europe to cooperate on infrastructure initiatives, designed in part to reduce dependence on Russian energy resources, including building liquefied natural gas terminals in Poland and Croatia.
Withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty because of Russian refusal to address its continued violation of the treaty.
Opposing the Nordstream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany.
On July 6, 2017, President Trump gave a speech in Warsaw, where the Polish government is strongly anti-Russian. Excerpts:
We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and
elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and
Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our
fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.
Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and
sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they
come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over
time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith
and tradition that make us who we are. If left unchecked, these forces
will undermine our courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to
defend ourselves and our societies.
To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would point
out that the United States has demonstrated not merely with words but
with its actions that we stand firmly behind Article 5, the mutual
defense commitment.
Words are easy, but actions are what
matters. And for its own protection — and you know this, everybody knows
this, everybody has to know this — Europe must do more. Europe must
demonstrate that it believes in its future by investing its money to
secure that future.
That is why we applaud Poland for its
decision to move forward this week on acquiring from the United States
the battle-tested Patriot air and missile defense system -- the best
anywhere in the world. (Applause.) That is also why we salute the Polish
people for being one of the NATO countries that has actually achieved
the benchmark for investment in our common defense.
Trump's reference to "our tough stance" is with regards to his insistent that NATO nations live up to their treaty commitments regarding defense spending, which they had failed to do, instead relying on continued American military support. Thanks to Trump's tough stance, many of the NATO countries have increased defense spending.
To what extent can all these actions be directly attributable to Trump? Did he ever have an overall strategic plan on relations with Russia? How much occurred without his knowledge? How much took place where he "knew" but did not understand? I have no idea, but it did occur during his administration. At the same time action cannot be completely separated from rhetoric. Trump bears responsibility for both. That his rhetoric undercut his actions and the perception of those actions is Trump's fault.
There is another element that may have influenced Putin's relatively restrained behavior during the Trump administration and which is directly attributable to Donald Trump - his unpredictability, however "nice" his rhetoric may have been towards Putin.
In December 2016 I attended a talk at Yale by Gleb Pavlovskiy, a supporter of Putin who had worked with him until 2011, when he became an opponent of the regime. In the course of his talk he was asked about the prospects of American-Russian relations with the newly elected president:
His views on Trump were mixed. He started off by saying:
"For the first time Russia has received a worthy partner - almost as unpredictable as we are"
Later, he referred to Putin now having "a strong sparring partner".
He felt the way Trump had wrong-footed his opponents along the way to
victory was very much like Putin's style; splitting your opponents but
keeping together your supporters. On the one hand, with Trump in office
there was an opportunity for "a new strategic dialogue" and "reduction in tensions",
but on the other, the very unpredictability of Putin and Trump made it
difficult to forecast any specifics. He did emphasize the Trump is
playing a much stronger hand than Putin. Overall, I took from the
discussion that he thinks Trump may be as big an improviser as Putin.
There are two specific instances of Trump unpredictably which may have given Putin pause. The first was in February 2018 when a large force of Russian mercenaries and allies were spotted heading towards U.S. military positions in Syria. After failing to heed warnings to halt, our forces attacked, killing 90 Russian citizens and about a hundred of their allies, with the Americans incurring no casualties.
The second occurred on January 3, 2020 when Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, following an attack on the American embassy in Baghdad by Iranian backed militia. It was widely reported that presented with a set of response options, Trump picked the most extreme one - killing Soleimani. The reporting also stated that those presenting the options did not expect Trump to select that option. And despite widespread media predictions, the action led to no large scale response by Iran.
In summary, while it is possible to confuse correlation with causation let's set forth the basic chronology of Putin's foreign adventures:
2008 (Bush) - Invasion of Georgia
2014 (Obama) - Invasion of Crimea, intervention in Donbass region of Ukraine
2015 (Obama) - Intervention in Syria
2022 (Biden) - Ukraine Crisis
Before And After
I've written of the Obama administration interaction with Russia here.
As for Biden, he has followed the opposite course of Trump; very tough rhetorically, much softer actions.
Announced we would extend the INF despite Putin's failure to address violations.
Refused, until recently, to continue providing lethal military aid to the Ukraine.
Labeling Poland a "rising totalitarian" regime, grouping it with a real totalitarian regime, Putin's ally, Belarus.
Refused to impose sanctions regarding Nordstream 2, going so far as to support Senate Democrats in using what the Democrats had been telling us was the "Jim Crow" filibuster to stop a GOP sponsored resolution.
Curtailing American energy development.
Negotiating a renewed nuclear deal with Russia's ally, Iran. For my critique of the original deal go here(I've actually read the JCPOA, unlike most commentators).
I can't resist adding that during the Obama administration, Joe Biden was the point man on American support for Russia's successful application to join the WTO.
Like I said at the start, I have no idea of the best course of action regarding Ukraine. However, the criticism of Trump reveals people in the media and elsewhere who just repeat the same lines to each other over and over again and then believe them, nodding knowingly to each other, because that is all they hear. For more on how this works read Inventing Stories.
I don't want Trump back as president and will oppose him, but the reality is the opposition has nothing better on offer. The vapidity of the Washington crowd is remarkable. The failure to ever re-examine their basic assumptions is appalling. Does anyone really have confidence in Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Wendy Sullivan when it comes to foreign policy, when all they can do is just keep repeating the conventional wisdom as if it were a chant?
In all his shallowness, Donald Trump revealed the hollowness of the Washington crowd in both parties. The reality is there are no adults in the room at this point, whether D or R, even as they point fingers at each other about what is unfolding.
UPDATE: As of last night, debates over the relative responsibilities of American presidents since 1991, European actions, and Putin motivations are now just a matter for historians. The question now is what is to be done given the circumstances we face now?
The choices we and others now face, along with others I anticipate coming over the next few years, will require decisions with full acknowledgement that the consequences cannot be predicted as discussed in Mastering the Tides of the World.
It is remarkable how so many long-buried Roman mosiac tiled floors have been discovered in recent years in the Near East, Anatolia, North Africa, the Balkans, Italy, France, and this one in London. I particularly like the juxtaposition in this photo between ancient and modern. This one is thought to date from 175-225 AD. Imagine how many more await discovery! For more on this find read here.
To celebrate Washington's birthday in 1936, a smartly dressed Walter Johnson tosses a silver dollar a reported 386 feet across the Rappahannock River in Virginia, near the First President's birthplace.
As thousands cheer on both sides of the river, 48 year-old Senator legend Walter Johnson throws a silver dollar to the far side of the Rappahannock, believed to be a 386-foot toss, February 22, 1936. pic.twitter.com/CGZ3bPhthN
February 1936 was a pretty good month for the retired Senators pitcher. On February 2, results of the first election to the Baseball Hall of Fame were announced and Johnson was one of the five players elected. He finished fifth in the voting, with Ty Cobb receiving the most votes, Honus Wagner and Babe Ruth tied for second, Christy Mathewson fourth and Johnson fifth.
It is not often I come across a story about Abraham Lincoln I've not heard before, but it happened this morning while reading Barton Swaim's book review column in the WSJ. Here it is, recounted in full:
On April 8, 1865, Lincoln visited Gen. Grant's headquarters near Richmond and consoled wounded Union soldiers in a field hospital. When he began walking toward a tent separated from the others, a doctor tried to stop him. Those, the doctor said, were for wounded Confederates. "That", Lincoln replied, "is just where I do want to go".
There, too, the president spoke peaceably to the wounded. Years later one of the sick rebels, Col. Henry L. Benbow, recalled Lincoln extending his hand. "Mr President, I said, do you know to whom you offer your hand? 'I do not,' he replied. Well, I said, you offer it to a Confederate colonel, who has fought you as hard as he could for four years. 'Well', said he, 'I hope a Confederate colonel will not refuse me his hand.' No sir, I replied, I will not, and I clasped his hand in both mine. I tell you, sir, he had the most magnificent face and eye that I have ever gazed into. He had me whipped from the time he first opened his mouth."
Henry Benbow enlisted at the start of the war as captain in the 23rd South Carolina Infantry Regiment which spent most of the war with the Army of Northern Virginia. Promoted to Colonel in 1862, he was wounded at Second Manassas later that year and again at the Battle of the Crater in July 1864. Returning to action he was shot through both thighs and captured at Five Forks on April 1, 1865. The hospital was located at City Point which is where Lincoln met him before returning to Washington later that day. Released on June 15, Benbow returned to South Carolina where he died in 1907.
While researching Benbow, I came across a clipping from the February 24, 1909 edition of The Manning Times of Manning, South Carolina which is clearly the source of the anecdote recounted in the WSJ column. In turn, the Times cites Youth's Companion magazine as the original source. Youth's Companion was a popular children's magazine, published in Boston from 1827 to 1929. The newspaper goes on report it also heard from a fellow veteran that Benbow had recounted the same story to him. A couple of other details from the newspaper account:
If he had every walked up and down a Confederate line of battle, there would never have been a battle . . . Not long afterward the news came to us that he was dead, and I turned my face to the wall and wept.
On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing military commanders to designate "military areas" at their
discretion, "from which any or all persons may be excluded." The following month, the removal of Japanese-Americans began on the West Coast. Italians and Germans were also interned under the Executive Order, but for those groups it was limited to non-citizens present in the U.S., while the majority of Japanese internees were American citizens.
I recently became aware of the story of Ralph Lazo, pictured on the right in the photo below.
Ralph is the only non-spouse white person known to have been interned. He did so voluntarily. A 17-year old California high school student, when Lazo learned that his Japanese-American friends were going to be interned he was outraged, and joined them on the train to the Manzanar internment camp (after telling his father he was going to summer camp!). Ralph, interned for more than two years, was elected Senior Class President at Manzanar High School, despite graduating at the bottom of a class of 150. He left the camp in August 1944 when he entered the U.S. Army, serving in the Pacific Theater, where he received the Bronze Star for heroism in combat while in the Philippines, and being discharged with the rank of Sergeant. Returning to the U.S., he obtained his college degree and became a teacher. Ralph, of Mexican and Irish ancestry, was also active in encouraging Hispanics to go to college and vote. He also helped to raise funds for the reparations lawsuit filed by Japanese-Americans against the federal government which resulted in Congressional action granting reparations, along with a formal apology, in 1988.
Yesterday Gail Halvorsen died at the age of 101. I wrote about Halvorsen (though I misspelled his first name) in a post on the Berlin Airlift of 1948-9:
One specific event had a profound impact on both Germans and Americans
during the blockade. On July 18, 1948, while on approach to Templehof
Airport in Berline, C-54 pilot Gil Halvorsen, wiggled his wings and
dropped chocolate bars attached to a handkerchief parachute to children
waiting below. The prior day while at Templehof, Halvorsen while
walking around encountered the children who were watching the planes
land and asked him questions about the aircraft. He gave them gum and
promised he'd drop them candy the next day after wiggling his wing.
Halvorsen continued his daily candy runs and when news reached the
airlift commander he organized Operation Little Vittles; soon American
children sent candy for the drops and eventually U.S. candy
manufacturers made donations; 23 tons of candy were dropped in toto, and
Halvorsen became known as The Candy Bomber, giving title to Cherny's
book. The candy drops became a symbol of America's willingness to help
and of the perseverance of Berliners.
Halvorsen went on to do a lot more in his life.
After the Berlin Airlift, Halvorsen, a Utah native, stayed in the Air Force and went on to obtain a master's degree in Aeronautical Engineering. Gail was assigned to the Air Force Space Systems Division where he was involved with the development of the Titan III launch vehicle and later worked on plans for advanced manned reusable spacecraft and the Manned Orbital Laboratory Project. In 1970 he found himself back at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin as commander of the 7350th Air Base Group. Retiring from the military in 1974, he served for a decade as Assistant Dean of Student Life at Brigham Young University. During the 1980s and 1990s Halvorsen and his wife served as Mormon missionaries in England and Russia.
For his continued humanitarian efforts Gail Halvorsen received much recognition in the U.S. and Germany. In 2014 he received the Congressional Gold Medal and in 1974 he was decorated with Germany's highest honor, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Halvorsen remained active and healthy until recently and spent his winters here in the Phoenix area.
Matmos is a cut from Echo Street, the 2013 album by Amplifier, a band from Manchester UK. I have no idea what Amplifier meant by the title but I have my own theory as expressed in the title to this post. Listen to the song and see if you agree.
There is also an experimental electronic music duo called Matmos and according to their Wikipedia page, "the name Matmos refers to the seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo in the 1968 film Barbarella".
Though it was 1971's Aqualung that made Jethro Tull a huge rock n roll band and major concert attraction, I've always preferred their two prior albums, 1969's Stand Up, and Benefit, released the following year.
The band's first album, This Was, released in the fall of 1968, had a modest impact and featured Beggar's Farm but it was Stand Up that made them well-known in America. The album was released during a remarkable period in the late summer and early fall of 1969 which also saw the release of Abbey Road, The Band by The Band (which I consider a perfect album), Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana's first album and Led Zeppelin II. In November would come Let It Bleed by The Stones.
I purchased Stand Up upon its release. Each track is strong with tight songwriting and playing. Here are two tracks, Back To The Family and Reasons For Waiting.
Aqualung certainly had its high points; the guitar solo on the title song (starts at 3:30 here), and the three short melodic tunes, but much of the rest was too bombastic for my tastes. I saw them play on the Aqualung tour and Tull put on a great show. The followup, Thick As A Brick, had some interesting material but after that I stopped following the group.
MLB and the Player's Union seemed committed to their mutual suicide pact. For the third consecutive year, it looks like spring training will be messed up and perhaps the regular season. More disturbing is that the issues over which the owners and players are squabbling have little to do with problems most critical to the future of the game - the ever increasing length and slow pace and the non-stop growth of strikeouts and home runs, making for a less interesting game whether watching in person or on TV, or listening on the radio, and a firm deterrent to creating a new generation of fans, leaving just us old guys to talk about the old days. For those of us who love the game and wish to see it have a continued future as well as a treasured history, the short-term view of those who run the sport is distressing.
Along about the Rube Foster exhibit I teared up over it all. One can't
make people like things, and desert is not a measure of personality, and
it is sad that this is always going to be an enterprise held afloat by
outside help for symbolic reasons, rather than for its considerable
intrinsic merit.
It's worth it on it's own merit. One could teach the history of race
relations 1860-1960 with this as the framework. And it's got both
stories and statistics, as baseball always does.
As it turns out AVP's visit was in 2014, the same year I and my friend visited it while on one of our annual ballpark tour jaunts. While the museum was not devoid of visitors there were few, apart from us. In my report on the trip I wrote this about the museum:
Best Non-Ballpark Attraction: TheNegro Leagues Baseball Museum
in Kansas City. Go. Kansas City was home of the Monarchs, one of the
most successful Negro League teams and also where, in 1920, the first
independent Negro Baseball League was organized. The museum is small
(you can see the whole thing in 90 minutes) but extremely well done
taking you through the entire history of African-Americans in baseball
from the Civil War through the first decade after Jackie Robinson
integrated the sport in 1947 (for more see 42
and, by the way, did anyone else notice Jackie's widow, Rachel, who
turns 92 next week, sitting with Bud Selig at Tuesday night's All-Star
Game?) which means it tells the larger story of African-Americans in
American society during those years. It honors the accomplishment of
those who played in the Negro Leagues and leaves you wondering how Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, Martin Dihigo, Satchel Paige (of whom you can read more inDon't Look Back and The 1935 Bismarck All Stars)
and others would have fared if given the opportunity to play in the
Major Leagues during their prime. It was an odd period when black
players couldn't play in the Majors but at the same time Paige
was barnstorming with white pitchers Dizzy Dean (who vocally supported integrating baseball) and Bob Feller
throughout the 1930s and 1940s on tours to which they drew black and
white fans in numbers that exceeded the attendance of most major league
games.
I purchased a Kansas City Monarchs jersey at the museum which became my favorite T-shirt. I finally wore it out and discovered that the museum no longer sold it. Thankfully, Mrs THC came to my rescue and was able to find and purchase two shirts which she recently gave to me!
So, owners and players, get your act together and address the real problems of the game. And readers, if you are in the Kansas City area, make sure to visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
Part of the Forgotten Americans series. This is a reedited and revised version of a post previously published. I decided to republish the post because of developments in recent years. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts recently wrote an op-ed calling for the packing of the Supreme Court after denouncing current justices for voting against "widely held public opinion"(1), an echo of Teddy Roosevelt's views during the campaign of 1912, views which prompted his friend and long time political ally Elihu Root to break with him and support Taft. Until recently I was confident that Root's argument remained applicable today, but though I would like to think it does, for the first time in my life I am questioning it. Will his view of America's general principles survive? Or, are they no longer relevant in our current circumstances?
“Democratic absolutism is just as repulsive, and history has shown it to be just as fatal, to the rights of individual manhood as is monarchical absolutism.“ - Elihu Root (1913)
"No anecdotes are told of Elihu Root" - James Morrow (1914)
Today Elihu Root is a Forgotten American, but in the early 20th century he was one of America’s most prominent public figures. The story of his political split with his friend Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 remains relevant to understanding the political conflicts of 21st century America and the danger of the recent ascendancy of viewpoints contrary to traditional American principles that would spell the end of our republic and our democracy should they triumph.
Born in 1845,Elihu Root became a successful New York City lawyer with clients includingJay Gould,Andrew Carnegie andChester A Arthur (who appointed him US Attorney for the Southern District of New York after becoming President in the early 1880s).
Active in the Republican Party, he served as Secretary of War from 1899 to 1904 under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, during his tenure restructuring the National Guard, enlarging West Point, creating the Army War College, while overseeing the suppression of the Filipino insurrection and establishing the governance structure for this new American acquisition.
After briefly returning to law practice Root rejoined the second Roosevelt Administration in 1905 as Secretary of State, supporting the building of the Panama Canal, and negotiating 24 international arbitration treaties for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912.
With the end of the Roosevelt administration in 1909, Root was appointed as Senator from New York, serving until 1915. During and after his term he was also the first president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, leading it until 1925. After WWI he helped design the World Court and was one of the founders of the Council for Foreign Relations. Root died in 1937. And James Morrow was correct, I found no anecdotes about him.
But what prompted me to write this post was Root's political split with Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, the resulting chaos at the Republican Convention that year, and the underlying reasons for that split. Edmund Morriswrote about this episode in the third, and final, volume of his entertaining Roosevelt biography: Colonel Roosevelt. Morris is wonderful at capturing personalities along with their actions and adventures (his recounting of Roosevelt's African safari and the daring, life altering, expedition down the River of Doubt in Brazil are worth the price of the book). He's also enthralled by political machinations, but has little interest in political theory, ideas, philosophy, or governance, which is what prompted the Roosevelt-Root dispute and gets short shrift in his book, leaving readers with little understanding of why Roosevelt provoked such opposition (it also explains the great failure of his biography of Ronald Reagan who was, above all, a man of ideas, while having a difficult to penetrate personality).
Roosevelt and Root had been political allies and friends. Root shared Roosevelt's political progressive beliefs and supported his legislative program, but between the end of his presidency in 1909 and the presidential nominating campaign in 1912, Teddy had come to believe that the next stage of the progressive legislative program could only succeed if linked with a progressive constitutional reform program including the broad use of referendums, initiatives, recall of judges, and popular vote overriding of judicial decisions. At its core was the desire to replace indirect republican representative government with direct democracy or, as Roosevelt put it, "people themselves must be the ultimate makers of their own Constitution". Elihu Root believed this change would be devastating to the American political system because it meant the majority could change the fundamental meaning of the Constitution, avoiding the amending procedures of Article V, and endangering the minority protections embedded in its provisions. For Root it was one thing to advocate for progressive legislation consistent with the Constitution, it was another to attempt to radically change the constitution itself.
It was for the same reason that Root opposed the proposed 17th Amendment providing for the direct election of Senators, arguing the Constitution's framers had grasped that "the weakness of democracy is the liability to continual change; they realized that there needed to be some guardian of the sober second thought; and so they created the Senate" with longer terms and indirect election. A Senate directly elected by the people, would be less likely to "protect the American democracy against itself".
In the view of Root, the essentials of human nature remained unchanged, and the insight of Classical philosophers regarding the tendency of all forms of government to degenerate over time:
Monarchy to Absolutism
Autocracy to Oligarchy
Democracy to Tyranny
- remained a valid critique. Root recognized that the mechanisms of the Constitution were designed to try to correct these defects in the newly created democratic republic.
Roosevelt's decision to challenge his protege and the sitting president, William Howard Taft, for the 1912 Republican nomination forced Root to make a hard choice. At the time, he remarked to a friend:
"I care more for one button on Theodore Roosevelt's waistcoat than for Taft's whole body."
Nonetheless, he felt compelled to support Taft because of the principles involved. It was a wrenching personal decision (and even more so for Senator Henry Cabot Lodge who had been a very close friend of Teddy since college days). Root was elected Chairman of the Convention in a hotly contested election and oversaw its tumultuous course, helping to ensure the renomination of President Taft. In his convention keynote speech he reminded delegates that the Republican Party was "born in protest against the extension of a system of human slavery approved and maintained by majorities."
After losing the nomination, Roosevelt ran on the Progressive Party ticket, losing the election to Woodrow Wilson but ensuring that Taft would not be reelected. Despite Taft's defeat, Root (and Lodge) were satisfied that Roosevelt had not taken over the Republican Party:
"This has not seemed to me to make any difference in our duty to hold the Republican Party firmly to the support of our constitutional system. Worse things can happen to a party than to be beaten."
The following year, Root gave two lectures at Princeton University, subsequently published as Experiments In Government And The Essentials Of The Constitution. Only thirty pages in length it is worth reading today because the views Root expresses are timeless and not dependent on the specific historical circumstances of the early 20th century.
Root starts by reaffirming his belief in the need for new laws to meet modern industrial conditions:
"It is manifest that the laws which were entirely adequate under the conditions of a century ago to secure individual and public welfare must be in many respects inadequate to accomplish the same results under all these new conditions"
"Many interferences with contract and with property which would have been unjustifiable a century ago are demanded by the conditions which exist now and are permissible without violating any constitutional limitation."
He then makes an important distinction between the process of devising new laws to meet new conditions and modifying the principles upon which government is based.
According to Root, we must recognize (echoing Madison's sentiments in Federalist 51) that
"Human nature does not change very much. The forces of evil are hard to control now as they always have been. It is easy to fail and hard to succeed in reconciling liberty and order."
In order to achieve this the Constitution provides for limits on government power in order to preserve individual rights. America was the first polity to take this approach as "The ancient republics, however, put the state first and regarded the individual only as a member of the state . . . they did not think of individuals as having rights independent of the state, or against the state".
Root goes on to say that "It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the consequences which followed from these two distinct and opposed theories of government". The theory of the ancient republics was behind the French Revolution of 1789 and its heirs which:
"followed the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, with the negation of those rights in the oppression of the Reign of Terror, the despotism of Napoleon, the popular submission of the second empire and the subservience of the individual citizen to official superiority which still prevails so widely on the continent of Europe."
Or, as Margaret Thatcher more pungently put it, the French Revolution produced "a pile of corpses and a tyrant" while the American Revolution gave us George Washington and the Constitution. One wonders what Root would have said in the wake of the European rise of Fascism, Communism and National Socialism?
According to the theory of American constitutionalism:
"it is the very soul of our political institutions that they protect the individual against the majority. [The inalienable rights cited in the Declaration] are not derived from any majority. They are not disposable by any majority. They are superior to all majorities. The weakest minority, the most despised sect, exist by their own right. The most friendless and lonely human being on American soil holds his right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and all that goes to make them up by title indefeasible against the world, and it is the glory of American self-government that by the limitations of the constitution we have protected that right against even ourselves. That protection cannot be continued and that right cannot be maintained except by jealously preserving at all times and under all circumstances the rule of principle which is eternal over the will of majorities which shift and pass away."
"Democratic absolutism is just as repulsive, and history has shown it to be just as fatal, to the rights of individual manhood as is monarchical absolutism."
Root asks for humility in considering what government can, and cannot, accomplish pointing out that:
"A very large part of the litigation, injustice, dissatisfaction, and contempt for law which we deplore, results from ignorant and inconsiderate legislation with perfectly good intentions."
"Law cannot give to depravity the rewards of virtue, to indolence the rewards of industry, to indifference the rewards of ambition, or to ignorance the rewards of learning . . . We know all this, but when we see how much misery there is in the world and instinctively cry out against it, and when we see some things that government may do to mitigate it, we are apt to forget how little after all it is possible for any government to do . . ."
"The chief motive power which has moved mankind along . . . has been the sum total of intelligent selfishness in a vast number of individuals, each working for his own support, his own gain, his own betterment. It is that which has cleared the forests and cultivated the field . . . made the discoveries and inventions, covered the earth with commerce, softened by intercourse the enmities of nations and races . . . gradually, during the long process, selfishness has grown more intelligent, with a broader view of individual benefit from the common good and gradually the influences of nobler standards of altruism, of just and human sympathy have impressed themselves . . . but the complete control of such motives will be the millennium. Any attempt to enforce a millennial standard now by law must necessary fail."
Moreover, an unbridled democratic government will ultimately undermine that which it seeks to protect:
"When government undertakes to give the individual citizen protection by regulating the conduct of others towards him in the field where formerly he protected himself by his freedom of contract, it is limiting the liberty of the citizen whose conduct is regulated and taking a step in the direction of paternal government. While the new conditions of industrial life make it plainly necessary that many such steps shall be taken, they should be taken only so far as they are necessary and effective. Interference with individual liberty by government should be jealously watched and restrained, because the habit of undue interference destroys that independence of character without which in its citizens no free government can endure . . . Weaken individual character among a people by comfortable reliance upon a paternal government and a nation soon becomes incapable of free self-government and fit only to be governed."
A nation governed by referendum, initiative and the ability to overrule judicial rulings by popular vote cannot sustain itself because:
"If there be no general rules which control particular action, general principles are obscured or set aside by the desires and impulses of the occasion. Our knowledge of the weakness of human nature and countless illustrations from the history of legislation in our own country point equally to the conclusion that if governmental authority is to be controlled by rules of action, it cannot be relied upon to impose those rules upon itself at the time of action, but must have them prescribed beforehand"
The Constitution attempts to do this by limiting the powers of government, distributing those limited powers among the three branches of government, establishing a federal system, and allowing for the validity of laws to be judged by the courts.
With his defeat in 1912, the reforms proposed by Teddy Roosevelt and other progressives did not come to pass as Root and others feared, but a version of the progressive vision was put into place starting with the New Deal Supreme Court which effectively modified the principles of our government without Constitutional amendment by narrowing the definition of liberty, tearing down the walls separating the branches of government, and allowing the growth of the administrative state. The modern progressive cult of The Living Constitution would further erode remaining constitutional protections, converting the courts into just another legislative body for enacting policy preferences.
In the 21st century, the Progressive move towards majoritarian rule has taken a new turn with the movement towards a national popular vote and the effective political elimination of the states, a movement more recently intertwined with identity politics and other academic theories, along with a growing scorn for, and desire to repress, any speech they find objectionable, in a way earlier Progressives would have found repulsive and un-American, raising the possibility of a hybrid majoritarian state in which certain groups, elevated under the rules of intersectionality and with the guidance of an Elite Vanguard, would hold the trump cards.
This raises a fundamental question. America works to the extent the large majority of its citizens, no matter how they may differ, generally accept common process outcomes or "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains" (yes, I'm quoting Bull Durham). This aspirational belief in neutral processes, supported by freedom of conscience and speech, along with equality under the law and due process rights, is the only way Root's vision can be sustained.
I use the term "aspirational" because none of the elements described above will ever work perfectly, but without those aspirations, what is there to guide us? If, as the dominant institutions are now telling us, these beliefs are really artifacts by which white supremacy is maintained and that power, not ideas, are all that matters, where does that leave us? What is the future of a country with more than 300 million citizens, of varied races, ethnic groups and religions if everything is based on the power relationships of those groups?
Moreover, the idea of common accepted neutral processes, only works if it rests upon a bed of common accepted values. Those values may be very broad but as long as they are generally accepted, disputes about how to best achieve and preserve those values can fit within a process driven system. But what happens when those common accepted values disappear, as may have happened in today's America? At that point do those neutral processes potentially become weapons?
Can we confront and defeat the enemies of liberal democracy merely by using the traditional Constitutional tools to achieve the aspirations set forth in that document? Do we now face the scenario written of by Frank Herbert in Children of Dune:
When I am Weaker than you, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom because that is according to my principles.
Having effectively used our concept of tolerance (as something we owe each other) to seize control of institutions, these forces now seek to destroy the mutuality inherent in that concept and return to the older, medieval meaning of tolerance, as something bestowed by rulers and revocable at their discretion.(2)
Can we effectively oppose them using these long standing general principles, neutral processes and reliance on the Constitutional protections enunciated by Root or does that strategy lead to inevitable defeat if large portions of society refuse to play by the same rules? Does it mean adopting the same techniques in order to defeat those who seek to embed these dangerous principles into our government and culture? If so, how does one ensure that in doing so, we do not become what the enemies of American principles have become? A decade ago, I never thought this question would arise and would certainly have objected to straying from those principles. I underestimated what was happening within those institutions and am no longer certain as to the right answer; an answer that will determine if we will govern ourselves or be governed by others.
For a thorough discussion of Roosevelt's intellectual background and the extent to which it deviated from the views of the Founders and Lincoln, see Jean Yarbrough's book Theodore Roosevelt And The American Political Tradition.
1. The reality is that when Senator Warren refers to "widely held public opinion" what she is referring to is public opinion in her hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Having worked in Cambridge for twelve years and lived in the Boston area for two decades, I can assure you that public opinion in that city bears no resemblance to opinion in most of the United States. What Warren is counting on is that the new judges appointed to pack the Court, trained in law schools that have become increasingly ideological (including, unfortunately my alma mater), and imbued with the notion that judges should act as legislators, devoted to enacting their favorite policies in support of social justice, will vote exactly the way she would.
2. The perplexing aspect of our current situation is that those pushing the New Racism and an authoritarian society are not supported by the majority of Americans (at least according to every public poll I've seen). Yet they have an inordinate impact because of the private and public institutions they control, and their methods, which are designed to disguise what their ultimate goals are and their tactics to cut off any discussion by labeling dissenters as racist, fascist, transphobic et. When it is made clear, they inevitably lose, but they've made the costs of opposition in terms of endangering educational and job opportunities enormous. An example: in 2020 the California ballot included a proposition to remove the provision of the state constitution banning discrimination. The proposition was supported by Progressives, the tech oligarchs, and public employee unions which outspent opponents of the proposition 17-1. Yet the same California voters who by 2-1 supported Biden over Trump, voted 57-43 against the ballot proposition, because they knew it was simply wrong. That result is just one of many reasons the authoritarians are seeking to repress opposition speech in a desperate search for a way to obtain a permanent majority. And a permanent majority is what they seek and what they need. King Abdullah of Jordan told of a meeting with President Erdogan of Turkey, at which Erdogan told him, "Democracy is like a bus, when it gets to my stop, I get off". That is what we face; and many liberals, progressives, and even socialists recognize that danger and are warning against it.
On this date in 1943 the last frozen and exhausted remnants of the German Sixth Army surrendered to the Red Army amid the ruins of Stalingrad, ending a battle that started in the last week of August 1942. Of the 320,000 soldiers in the Sixth Army, 91,000 were still alive to surrender of whom only 5,000 ultimately survived to return to Germany, most released after Stalin's death in 1953, eight years after the war ended. Germany's Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies lost another 300-400,000 dead, wounded and captured. As many as a half million Soviet soldiers may have died in the battle; including wounded and missing, Red Army casualties exceeded one million.
Historians still argue over the turning point of World War Two, and specifically of the Eastern Front - was it the Battle of Moscow in December 1941? Stalingrad? Or Kursk in July 1943? At the time, Stalingrad was seen as the symbolic and psychological turning point by both sides.
The finest pop song about an historical event is undoubtedly Roads To Moscow,
composed and recorded by Al Stewart, which I saw performed
in the fall of 1974 at the Orpheum Theater in Boston while Stewart toured in
support of his new album Past, Present, and Future.
The performance was both musically and visually striking, as Stewart and his band played backed by three enormous video screens stretching across the entire stage showing war footage and ending with a picture of Alexander Solzhenitsyn on all the screens; The Gulag Archipelago had been published in December 1973 and Solzhenitsyn expelled from the Soviet Union in February 1974.
The events described in Roads To Moscow began more than 80 years ago as Operation
Barbarossa, the German surprise attack on the Soviet Union, triggering
the worst of the many conflicts that made up World War Two. By its end in May 1945, 4.3
million Germans were dead, mostly military personnel (along with three quarters of a million of its Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Finnish allies), and perhaps up to
27 million Russians, two thirds of them civilians (German pre-war plans called for the starvation of 30 million Russian civilians in order to free up food supplies for civilians and military and to allow for German immigration to the occupied territories). Horror upon horror piled up. Soviet secret police routinely executed all imprisoned political prisoners in cities from which the Red Army was retreating in 1941 and upon the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe in 1944-45 more imprisonments and executions followed - the Soviets had already executed 15-20,000 captured Polish officers in 1940. When they reached Germany, Soviet forces were unleashed and encouraged by commanders to engage in an orgy of murder and rape. It was in the wake of the German attack in 1941 that the first Nazi organized and systematic killing of Jews took place with roaming units executing more than a million in mass shootings. The beginning of Barbarossa also saw the start of planning for the Final Solution, culminating in the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 which set as its goal the extermination of the eleven million Jews in Europe.
Stewart's song balances a vivid, poignant, brilliantly constructed, and historically accurate
lyric with a striking melody, a Russian influenced chorus, and an
evocative and emotional arrangement. He tells the story of a Soviet
soldier, one of tens of millions of people caught in the horrific
tragedy caused by two of the most brutal regimes to ever be inflicted
upon the human race - Nazi Germany, led by Adolph Hitler, and the
Communist Soviet Union of Josef Stalin. It's a world of spiritual
darkness and limited and terrible choices for the people trapped
by those events, a dilemma also brought to life by Alan Furst in his
splendid series of novels set in the same time period - particularly Night Soldier and Dark Star. Most of those in Eastern Europe who opposed both Nazis and Communists ultimately suffered a tragic fate (see, for instance, the astonishing and inspiring story of Witold Pilecki, the man who volunteered for Auschwitz).
Let's look at the lyrics and explore the song in more detail.
They cross over the border the hour before dawn
At about 315am on the morning of June 22, 1941, the German army launched
Operation Barbarossa. The attack, including 14 Finnish and 13 Romanian
divisions, involved 3.8 million soldiers, 3,400 tanks, 3,500 aircraft
and 700,000 horses. Facing the onslaught were about 2.5 million
frontline Soviet troops (the Red Army had about 4 million men under arms
in total in the European part of the country).
Though Hitler and Stalin had been allies since the August 1939 signing
of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Treaty, which divided Poland and the
Baltic States between them, they were long-term ideological enemies and a
conflict was inevitable at some point (for more on the treaty, read The Pact). However, the specific timing of
the German attack was dictated by Hitler's desire to remove what he
viewed as Britain's last hope for support in the war, the same motive
that drove Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 (for more on
this read Bonapartaroo Barbarossa).
Ideological considerations drove Nazi decisions as to how the war would
be conducted. The inhabitants of occupied portions of the Soviet Union
were to be starved, driven out, or left as slave labor for German
settlers, captured Red Army communist commissars executed, and
roving extermination squads (Einsatzgruppen) would murder Jews who came under German occupation.
In the months leading to the attacks, Stalin dismissed multiple warnings
from his own intelligence services as well as from Churchill and
Roosevelt, claiming they were provocations designed to entice him into a
war with Germany that would only benefit the Western capitalist
powers. As late as the night of June 21-22 he ordered the execution of
German defectors who entered Soviet lines to warn of the imminent
attack. The result was that Red Army troops were left deployed in
forward positions near the border, in vulnerable formations ill-suited
to defense.
The Soviet Army was still recovering from Stalin's 1937-38 purge
(possibly triggered by information planted by German agents) of senior
military leadership in which at least 75% were killed,
and its poor performance in the 1939-40 Winter War with Finland gave
the German military what proved to be unwarranted confidence that the
Russians would be quickly defeated. This overconfidence also
contributed to the inexplicable lack of attention by the Germans to the
logistical challenges of a massive campaign designed to penetrate deeply
into the Soviet Union, challenges that were ultimately to doom
Barbarossa.
The border referred to in the lyric was different from the 1939 Soviet
border. With the 1939 pact, Stalin was able to occupy half of Poland,
all of the Baltic States and the Romanian province of Bessarabia. By
advancing the border, he gained strategic depth against attack, while
also arresting, murdering, and deporting hundreds of thousands of
citizens of those countries who he believed might oppose his plans (a
sordid tale told in disturbing detail in Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands).
In addition, with his surprise attack on Finland in October 1939 he
gained buffer room for Leningrad and the crucial northern port of
Murmansk.
Moving in lines through the day Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay
The Luftwaffe destroyed over 2,000 Soviet aircraft on the ground that
first day, losing only 35 planes in its attacks. More than 3,900 Soviet
planes were destroyed in the first three days, giving the Germans
overwhelming air superiority.
Waiting for orders we held in the wood Word from the Front never came By evening the sound of the gunfire was miles away Ah, softly we move through the shadows, slip away through the trees Crossing their lines in the mists in the fields on our hands and our knees And all that I ever, was able to see The fire in the air glowing red, silhouetting the smoke on the breeze
In those first days and weeks many Soviet troops found themselves
isolated behind the rapidly advancing Germans and often without orders amidst
the command chaos. "The Front" refers not to the front lines where the
soldiers were, but to the organization of Russian armies into "Fronts",
equivalent to American Army Groups on the Western Front. In other
words, they heard nothing from the High Command.
While many isolated or surrounded soldiers surrendered (3 million
by the end of 1941, 75% of whom would die in German captivity) many
thousands were eventually able to find their way back through gaps
between the rapidly advancing German Panzer units and the slower
infantry following behind, to rejoin their comrades, our narrator being
one of those. Others remained free but behind enemy lines,
becoming the core of partisan units that would harass the Germans
for years (and which make an appearance later in the lyrics).
All summer they drove us back through the Ukraine Smolensk and Vyazma soon fell By autumn we stood with our backs to the town of Orel
In this passage, the narrator uses the terms "us" and "we" in reference not to his personal location but rather to the overall plight of the Red Army.
The German attack was divided into three army groups. Army Group North
advanced through the Baltic States towards Leningrad, while Army Group
South drove the Soviets, "back through the Ukraine", culminating in
September with a great encirclement near Kiev in which more than 700,000
Soviets were killed or captured.
The third, and initially most powerful, group was Army Group Center,
taking the road to Moscow along which Smolensk, Vyazma, and Orel were
located. The Battle of Smolensk lasted from July 10 to September 10,
with the Red Army losing nearly a half million soldiers dead, wounded,
or captured. The battle was prolonged because in its early stages
Hitler diverted panzer units to the south for the Kiev encirclement.
The delay in capturing Smolensk may have fatally delayed the German
drive on Moscow.
With the panzers returning to Army Group Center, the advance on Moscow
resumed in late September, racing against the onset of winter. During
October, the Germans pulled off two more giant encirclements at Vyazma
and Bryansk, in which another million Soviet soldiers were killed or
captured. Orel fell on October 3 to General Guderian's tanks.
Closer and closer to Moscow they come Riding the wind like a bell General Guderian stands at the crest of a hill
On November 15, the Germans began their final push on Moscow. General
Heinz Guderian (1888-1954), commander of the Second Panzer Army, is
considered one of the finest tank generals of the war, performing
brilliantly during the Poland invasion and then leading the armored
spearheads in the 1940 French campaign. Guderian's task was to approach
the Soviet capital from the southwest and encircle it. Though he made
some advances, his overextended forces were halted short of the capital
and left in vulnerable defensive positions. On December 26, 1941 he
would be dismissed from command because of a dispute with his superiors
(including Hitler) over how to respond tactically to the recently
launched Soviet offensive. Recalled to duty by Hitler in 1943 after the
disaster at Stalingrad, he was charged with rebuilding the army's
panzer capabilities. On July 21, 1944, the day after the failed
assassination attempt against Hitler, Guderian was appointed Army Chief
of Staff. Though often arguing with Hitler about tactical decisions, he
remained a faithful supporter of the Fuehrer until the end of the war.
(Guderian)
Winter brought with her the rains Oceans of mud filled the roads Gluing the tracks of their tanks to the ground While the sky filled with snow
In this section, two weather periods are mixed together. From late
October until mid-November came a period of cold rain, turning the
primitive Soviet road network into a sea of mud. Then came freezing
temperatures, making the roads stable and more passable. The final
German push was launched in this window before the onset of brutal cold
and snow made offensive operations much more difficult.
(Mud season, November 1941)
And all that I ever was able to see The fire in the air glowing red silhouetting the snow on the breeze
Now the red is silhouetting "the snow on the breeze" rather than "the smoke on the breeze"
of the first verse, signaling the passage of time from the warmth, sun,
and disaster of June to the bitter cold, snow, and hope of December.
In the footsteps of Napoleon the shadow figures stagger through the winter
The German offensive continued until December 5 under increasingly
taxing conditions with heavy snow and temperatures plunging to well
below zero. Counting on achieving complete victory by the end of fall,
German soldiers had not been issued winter clothing, nor were tanks,
assault guns, and motor vehicles designed and equipped to operate in
these conditions. At these temperatures the recoil fluid, lubricating
oil and firing pins on German artillery, anti-tank, and machine guns
failed, tank turrets would not turn and trucks had to be kept constantly
running, using precious fuel. And all these troubles were amplified by the
already overstressed German supply system collapsing in the
winter conditions.
Yet despite these difficulties, isolated German units got within 15
miles of the Kremlin, while to the northwest the main German forces were
within 25 miles of the city.
A German officer wrote of conditions during the advance:
It is icy cold . . . To start the engines, they must be warmed by
lighting fires under the oil pan. The fuel is partially frozen, the
motor oil is thick, and we lack antifreeze to prevent the cold water
from freezing.
The remaining limited combat strength of the troops diminish further due
to the continuous exposure to the cold. It is much too inconvenient to
shelter the troops from the weather . . . In addition, the automatic
weapons of the groups and platoons often fail to operate, because the
breeches can no longer move.
On December 3, the commander of Fourth Panzer Group reported its offensive combat power "has run out" because of "physical and moral over-exertion, loss of a large number of commanders, inadequate winter equipment".
Finally recognizing the reality of the brutal conditions and the
disintegration of offensive capabilities Hitler and the High Command
issued a halt order on December 5.
References to Napoleon were also a constant theme of Soviet propaganda
which constantly reminded German troops of the fate of the last western
invader, whose myth of invincibility, along with his army, disappeared
in the Russian winter.
Falling back before the gates of Moscow Standing in the wings like an avenger
What kept the German high command pressing ahead for so long despite the
casualties and exhaustion of men and equipment was the persistent
belief the Russians had exhausted their reserves and were on the verge
of collapse. It was a massive miscalculation and demonstrated the
complete failure of German intelligence assessments. They
underestimated the willingness of Stalin to move troops from the Soviet
Far East as well as the capability of the brutal and ruthless Soviet
system to mobilize an almost endless number of reserves (unlike Hitler,
who resisted fully mobilizing the German economy and populace until
1944, Stalin immediately took such measures). Between June 22 and
December 31, the Soviets lost 4 million men, the equivalent of its entire army on June 22, yet
still had 4 million under arms at the end of the year. It is hard to
believe any other society surviving with that magnitude of human loss in such a
short time.
Less than 24 hours after the German offensive halted, the Soviets began
launching their own attacks, designed to push back and isolate the
German forces near Moscow. In a series of actions lasting until the
beginning of March 1942, the exhausted Germans were forced back more
than 100 miles, permanently eliminating the threat to Moscow.
With the exception of the British medium and heavy tanks which reached the Soviet Union before the Moscow offensive, Western ally aid played a small part in stopping the German advance. However, the scale of British, and particularly American, aid became enormous as the war progressed and without it the speed and scale of the Soviet advances in 1943-44 would not have been possible. For more detail see Footnote 1 at the end of this piece.
While Soviet soldiers were somewhat better equipped for the weather, the
winter conditions still took a toll, a toll only enhanced by Soviet
commanders still favoring frontal assaults. Thus, despite its success,
the tactical shortcomings of the Red Army can be seen in the disparity
in casualties during its three month offensive - 1.6 million for the
Soviets versus 262,000 for the Germans.
And far away behind their lines the partisans are stirring in the forest Coming unexpectedly upon their outposts, growing like a promise
You'll never know, you'll never know Which way to turn, which way to look, you'll never see us As we're stealing through the blackness of the night You'll never know, you'll never hear us
Though not a major factor in 1941, by the following year the partisan
threat became a major problem for the extended supply lines of the
German army. Partisan warfare in Russia was on a completely different,
and larger, scale than in most of the rest of Europe, involving huge
numbers, and semi-organized and large scale assaults on German rear lines.
Big chunks of the Soviet countryside behind enemy lines remained out of
German control throughout the war, forcing many troops to be diverted
to fighting partisans.
And the evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming
Using "amber" in this context is very interesting. Amber is a
fossilized tree resin, valued as a gemstone. From 1500 BC there was an
Amber Road by which this material was moved in trade from the shores of
the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The leading source of amber was near
what used to be the city of Konigsberg in Prussia, now known as
Kaliningrad and part of Russia since 1945.
The famous Amber Room was
initially constructed in Konigsberg and gifted in 1716 by the Prussian
King to Peter the Great of Russia. Installed in a palace outside of
Petersburg (later Leningrad), the room was expanded, eventually covering
590 square feet and containing over 6,000 pounds of amber on panels
backed with gold leaf and mirrors.
(The Amber Room)
During the war the German Army dismantled the Amber Room and transported
it back to Konigsberg. Disappearing at the end of the war, its
location remains unknown, one of the last mysteries of the conflict.
The voice of amber is soothing - its message that things will get better. The next lines tell us how:
The morning road leads to Stalingrad And the sky is softly humming
We've moved ahead several months to the late summer of 1942. Unlike 1941,
when the German Army was powerful enough to attack the Soviets from
across its entire front, the Nazis summer offensive would be more
limited in scope. On
June 28, the Germans attacked in the south, aiming for the oil fields
of the Caucasus region and the heavy industrial town of Stalingrad. The
Germans advanced quickly, nearly reaching the Caspian Sea, but became
bogged down in Stalingrad, with an increasingly obsessed Hitler
insistent upon its capture. The fighting lasted for almost six months
ending in catastrophe for the Nazi regime with the destruction of the
Sixth Army and the allied Hungarian and Romanian armies, along with
heavy losses in other German units. The cost of victory was staggering for the
Red Army - another 1.1 million dead, wounded or captured.
(Russian soldiers, Stalingrad)
In a military sense the failure to knock the Soviets out by the fall of
1941 was the turning point in the war, the point where unconditional
victory by Germany became impossible, but Stalingrad was the symbolic
turning point of the war and both Stalin and Hitler were aware of its
symbolism at the time. The horror of the battle from the Russian
perspective is captured best inLife and Fateby
Vassily Grossman, one of the greatest works of 20th century literature,
in a section recounting the struggle of an isolated Red Army squad to hold a
ruined building amidst the rubble of the city. Of course, being a
Russian novel, everyone dies. Grossman, a Red Army newspaper correspondent during the war, had been present for months at Stalingrad and in a building on the front lines like that described in the novel, and later accompanied the troops who discovered the Nazi extermination camps in Poland (of which he wrote the first accounts). The wartime and immediate post-war experience transformed him, and for years he secretly worked on Life and Fate, a novel portraying Nazism and Communism as equivalent. When he attempted to publish the book during the years of the Khrushchev "thaw" in the early 1960s, the party reacted by sending the KGB to seize the manuscript as well as the typewriter and ribbon on which it had been written. Fortunately, one copy survived and in the early 1980s, years after Grossman's death, it was smuggled to the West and finally published.
After Stalingrad, German military leaders no longer believed the war
could be won, the question being whether it would be lost.
Two broken Tigers on fire in the night Flicker their souls to the wind We wait in the lines, for the final approach to begin It's been almost four years, that I've carried a gun At home it'll almost be spring The flames of the Tigers are lighting the road to Berlin
The lyrics here are very cleverly structured. The first line tells us of "two broken Tigers" followed by a reference to "the final approach" but we don't know where or when it is. The next line tells us it's been "almost four years that I've carried a gun",
placing us in 1945, but still not giving us a location as Soviet armies
are fighting from the Baltic to Hungary. Then it's revealed that the
flaming Tigers are also "lighting the road to Berlin", creating a vivid and precise word picture.
The Tiger was the heaviest and most powerful tank produced by Germany
during the war. Like much German equipment it was over engineered,
overly complex to manufacture and required high level maintenance to
keep operational. The Tiger I was produced from 1942 to 1944 and the
Tiger II from 1944 on, but fewer than 2,000 made it to the army. When
it was available and running the Tiger proved devastatingly effective.
(Tiger II)
It's now April 16, 1945. The Red Army is less than 50 miles from
Berlin. Much has transpired since the German surrender at Stalingrad in
February 1943. In July 1943 Hitler attempted his last major attack on
the Eastern Front near the city of Kursk. It quickly proved
unsuccessful, the Soviets counterattacked, and from then until the end
of the war the Red Army conducted a series of attacks. The German siege
of Leningrad ended and most of the Ukraine was reconquered by the end
of 1943. In June 1944, the Soviets crushed Army Group Center and drove
the Germans out of Russia, advancing into Poland where by late July they
were on the outskirts of Warsaw. Then followed another of the
countless tragedies of the war when the Polish Home Army rose up to
evict the Germans. Stalin, who opposed the anti-communist Poles,
ordered the Red Army to stand by while the Nazis crushed the uprising,
killing 200,000 Poles and razing the city (for more on the uprising read
Warsaw Does Not Cry).
In late 1944, the Soviets advanced into the Balkans, causing Romania and
Bulgaria to switch sides and reaching the borders of Hungary.
On January 12, 1945 the Russians renewed their attack on the Polish
front, sweeping away the Germans quickly advancing to the Oder River
near Berlin, where they paused to regroup for the final assault.
Ah, quickly we move through the ruins that bow to the ground The old men and children they send out to face us, they can't slow us down All all that I ever, was able to see The eyes of the city are opening now, it's the end of a dream
The Berlin campaign lasted from April 16 through May 2. Though the assault contributed to the "ruins that bow to the ground"
much of the city was already ruined by American and British air
raids, some consisting of more than 1,000 bombers striking the city.
The reference to "old men and children" refers to the Volksstrum
("People's Storm"), a national militia consisting of all men between 16
and 60 capable of bearing arms, formed in October 1944, as the manpower
needs of the crumbling Third Reich became ever more desperate (even boys of 14 and 15 would see service by the end). Poorly armed and
trained, the Volkssturm units were of varying effectiveness and took
heavy casualties.
Notice the contrast with the opening verse of the song. In 1941, the
narrator speaks of defeat, confusion, and retreat; four years later he
is moving triumphantly forwards to victory.
(Berlin 1945)
Despite the claim that "old men and children . . . they can't slow us down",
the Volkssturm and remaining regular Wehrmacht units imposed heavy
losses on the Red Army - 79,000 dead and 270,000 wounded in less than
three weeks, a per day toll higher than any the Soviets had suffered
since the dark days of 1941. The human cost was made higher by Stalin's
cynical move to place Marshals Zhukov and Koniev in competition to be
first to Berlin, relentlessly mocking and scolding them, leading to
reckless frontal assaults, particularly by Zhukov (for more on him readThe Secret of Khalkin Gol).
And, with the encouragement of Stalin and the Red Army command, the
victorious soldiers took a terrible vengeance on German civilians.
I'm coming home, I'm coming home Now you can taste in the wind, the war is over And I listen to the clicking of the train wheels as we roll across the border
The lyric brims with optimism. Against all odds, our narrator has
survived and looks forward to being reunited with his family. In
reality the odds were low that any soldier on the front line on June 22,
1941 would be alive and healthy enough to be in the Berlin fighting.
8.6 million Red Army personnel died in the war; effectively the original
1941 army was killed twice over. In comparison, the United States
suffered 296,000 battlefield deaths with another 100,000 dead due to
accidents and illnesses.
Nor were all the Russian dead solely the responsibility of the German
army. Life for the Red Army soldier during the war was brutal. Commanders
employed tactics that wasted countless lives. If you died, particularly
early in the war, it was unlikely your family would be notified. Any
infraction, real or imagined, was subject to harsh discipline and
extreme punishment. During the first 18 months of the war (the only
period for which we have figures), 160,000 Soviet soldiers were executed
for cowardice or desertion. By comparison, only one American was
executed for these offenses during the entire war. For those not
summarily executed there were the Punishment Battalions and Companies to
which officers and soldiers were sentenced to be used, in Stalin's
words, at "the most difficult parts of the front, to give them the possibility to redeem their crimes against their country with blood".
The Punishment units were deployed for tasks such as suicidal frontal
assaults and the clearing of minefields by marching through them, making
it no surprise that an estimated 400,000 died in the process. Their
existence was such an embarrassment to the Soviets after the war that
the existence of the units was officially denied.
In Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, Antony Beevor tells the tale
of a Soviet lieutenant caught in this madness. Captured by the Germans
in August 1942, he manages to escape and rejoin the Red Army, where he
is promptly arrested, charged as a deserter, and sentenced to a
Punishment Company. Realizing his sentence is an effective death
penalty, he deserts to the Germans! We don't know his fate but it is
unlikely he had a happy ending.
And then there were the Red Army's blocking detachments formed to shoot down retreating soldiers - retreating Red Army soldiers. In this clip from the movie Enemy At The Gates,
which takes place in Stalingrad, you can watch (about 2 minutes in) a
blocking detachment in action (the first 20 minutes of the movie are
stunning and accurate, after that it falls apart). You'll also notice that some of the Soviet soldiers start the attack unarmed. In the early stages of the battle, there were not enough rifles for every soldier, so those without arms were instructed to charge with their comrades and pick up their rifles when they were shot.
The optimism of those that survived extended beyond the relief of being
alive and reuniting with family. The memoirs and recollections of
returning soldiers and officers are filled with belief and hope that
conditions in the Soviet Union would be improved. There was a feeling
that the common Soviet citizen had proven to
Stalin they could be trusted, that the regime need not fear them, that
the fear of being subject to arbitrary justice would end, a new start for the Soviet people and a new and more cordial
relationship with their government. It was not to be.
And now they ask me of the time That I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner "They only held me for a day, a lucky break", I say They turn and listen closer I'll never know, I'll never know Why I was taken from the line and all the others To board a special train and journey deep into the heart of Holy Russia And it's cold and damp in this transit camp And the air is still and sullen And the pale sun of October whispers The snow will soon be coming
In his account of the German-Soviet struggle, Absolute War, author Chris Bellamy writes, "the Red Army was the only one in the world where being taken prisoner counted as desertion and treason".
Stalin believed any soldier who allowed himself to be captured was a
traitor and potential counter-revolutionary, and Russians exposed
to Westerners for any length of time, a danger to the Soviet
state. Bellamy adds:
The Soviet government and military command had absolutely no interest in
what happened to Soviet people in German captivity. When prisoners of
war who survived were released at the end of the war [3 of the 4 million
POWs died due to the German policy of exposing them to the elements and
leaving them to starve, though a small number survived long enough to serve as
guinea pigs for the initial testing of the newly constructed gas chambers at
Auschwitz], they were usually sent to the Gulag or shot, and the same fate even befell many who had fought and crawled their way out of German encirclements during the war.
Our narrator falls into this last group. His years of valiant service and suffering are to no avail.
Also subject to this treatment were civilians who either volunteered or
been seized and taken to Germany as slave laborers. Bellamy estimates
that up to 1.8 million returning Soviet citizens were sent to Gulag
camps or shot.
To their disgrace, both Britain and America contributed to this
horror. In 1945 and 1946, the two countries forcibly repatriated
over a million Russians who did not want to return to the Soviet Union.
While it was the British who insisted on honoring agreements made with
Stalin during the course of the war, the United States eventually went
along. The returnees were among those sent to the Gulag or shot.
For those escaping the Gulag or execution, optimism proved misplaced. Stalin believed that after the "laxity"
of the war years, Soviet discipline needed to be reimposed to prevent any
sliding back from the pre-war accomplishments of the state. The
post-war years proved grimly repressive with further waves of purges and
the elimination of those tiny, fragile zones of personal autonomy some
had carved out during the war. Stalin even ordered the removal of
crippled and disabled war veterans from the streets of Moscow because he
felt their presence demoralizing. It was in this atmosphere that a
young returning officer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, found himself sentenced
to ten years in the Gulag for telling a joke about Stalin.
And I wonder when I'll be home again and the morning answers, "Never" And the evening sighs and the steely Russian skies go on forever
I find these the saddest lines in music and no matter how often I hear
them they affect me as powerfully as the first time. They represent the
betrayal of the hopes and dreams of people caught up in a horrible
time, who thought they'd survived the worst, only to find themselves
condemned to death, exile, and lives of continued fear and hopelessness.
We take leave of our narrator as he disappears into the mist beneath the
steely Russian skies passing to an unknown fate, like so many other
millions. These prophetic lines from the poet Osip Mandlestam
(1891-1938), who himself died in a Gulag transit camp
for committing "counter-revolutionary activities" consisting of writing a
poem mocking Stalin, provide the tombstone for those souls.
Mounds of human heads
Are wandering into the distance
I dwindle among them
Nobody sees me
(Secret Police photo of Mandelstam. He died of typhoid fever on December 27, 1938. His body lay unburied along with others who died that winter, until all were thrown into a mass grave dug in the spring.)
![r/HistoryPorn - Ralph Lazo - The only known American who voluntarily relocated to the Japanese American internment camps in solidarity with his friends (1943) - [1024x841]](https://preview.redd.it/ahmk7je6xpc81.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=dc1ec53934d4cd5eb9673f627345bfe219ca13e2)
Halvorsen went on to do a lot more in his life.
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On
June 28, the Germans attacked in the south, aiming for the oil fields
of the Caucasus region and the heavy industrial town of Stalingrad. The
Germans advanced quickly, nearly reaching the Caspian Sea, but became
bogged down in Stalingrad, with an increasingly obsessed Hitler
insistent upon its capture. The fighting lasted for almost six months
ending in catastrophe for the Nazi regime with the destruction of the
Sixth Army and the allied Hungarian and Romanian armies, along with
heavy losses in other German units. The cost of victory was staggering for the
Red Army - another 1.1 million dead, wounded or captured.
(Secret Police photo of Mandelstam. He died of typhoid fever on December 27, 1938. His body lay unburied along with others who died that winter, until all were thrown into a mass grave dug in the spring.) 