The Extermination: Armenian Genocide in The Ottoman Empire 1915.

I will not do justice to the horror of this crime. An organized massacre that beggars description. This is the first of the genocides of the Twentieth Century, implemented in wartime and within a collapsing Ottoman Empire, that was carried out from 1915 to 1920. And all but forgotten. Today what is known as Turkey lies empty of Armenians.

                                                   Armenians and Turks

The Armenians had been in the Middle East for millennia, speaking an Indo-European related language.  Long before the nomadic Turkic Steppe peoples ever arrived in Anatolia the 11^th Century. They were the first nation to declare Christianity the State Church in the early fourth century. Much of the time they subsisted as client states of the Romans, Persians, Arabs or the Turks and the Safavid Persian Empire with some periods of independence (885 A.D. to the 12^th Century).

The Turkic peoples range throughout the vast Asian Steppe and were one of a series of aggressive nomadic Steppe peoples that terrorized or destroyed Civilizations for millennia. The Steppe was a relatively narrow grassy expanse of geography from Mongolia to Hungry, a few hundred miles wide. Huns that devastated the Roman Empire and Xiang Nu that challenged the Chinese civilization were two examples of these devastating Steppe peoples. Their military prowess was unparalleled, such that it was only in their inevitable disintegration into competing tribes that caused them to cease being a threat: formerly united groups would inevitably fall upon each other. The Mongolian succession crisis upon the death of the Grand Khan Ogedei of 1240 may have saved Europe.

In several cases these Steppe nomads subsumed civilization, in the case of the Turks, invading the Anatolian plateau in the 11^th Century a province of the Byzantine Empire. Later heirs of the Seljuks, the Ottoman Turks, created a vast empire from the Baltics to the borders of the great Persian Civilization and included Egypt and some claim to sovereignty over Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. By 1453 they had destroyed the Byzantine Civilization with the conquest of Constantinople and its massive walls, the final bastion of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose political existence in the West ended in 476 A.D but lived on another millennium in the East. The fall of Constantinople meant the control of the Ottomans over the Balkans was decidedly settled; their ascendency lasted over five centuries.

The Ottoman’s reign in the Middle East and Balkans was uncontested from the 15^th Century until the end of the 18^th. Even laying siege to Vienna in 1683. Within a century they were in retreat. Russia gained control over Crimea in 1783. Napoleon carried out a military adventure that briefly took control of Egypt and Palestine in 1798, but left with his army disintegrated, under siege by the British Navy.

Big cracks began to open in the Empire. Greece gained independence in 1818. Egypt rose in revolt in 1805 and was thereafter run by Muhammed Ali. Reverses against Ottoman Empire followed in Crimean War(1853-56), only to be propped up by France and England, and then the so-called Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, resulted in additional loss of territory. Bulgaria became independent, Serbia’s de facto independence was recognized, Cyprus was taken by the British Empire and Russia gained territories in the Caucasus and Bessarabia (Western Coast of Black Sea). Later Romania gained independence in 1881 and Bulgaria incorporated Eastern Romelia in 1885.

The Ottoman Empire was shocked by the sudden collapse of its Balkan provinces in 1912, carried out by the indigenous Macedonians, Serbs, Bulgars and Greeks. They were not aided by the major powers. The Ottoman’s had been present in the European Balkans in some measure over parts of seven centuries, since the 14^th century. This was largely gone. After the Balkan War hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees left to reside in the remainder of the Empire mostly Constantinople and Anatolia. In February, 1914 a consortium of Powers forced Turkey to agree to the oversight by the Russian Empire of its Eastern Provinces with its large number of the populace Armenians. This was the backdrop of the Ottoman Empire entering World War I.

                                                    The Young Turks

The extermination of the Armenians in Anatolia is a monstrous crime, made more monstrous by its denial by the government of Turkey and its people. The genocide of the Armenians was the end result of a policy of a political movement called the Young Turks, presumed democratic. They had gained ascendancy in the Ottoman Empire in 1908, ironically allied with the Armenians; they were to have set up a constitutional government with the overthrow of Sultan Hamid Abdul.

Shortly after CUP took power in 1909 the Armenians suffered a massacre in Adana, much like the series of widespread massacres, suffered under Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1890’s where countless thousands died. The Adana massacres, largely propagated by the Turkish military, rattled the association that the Armenian democratic segment had with the Young Turk.

Leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) directed the genocide. Talat Pasha (1874-1921), born in what is modern day Bulgaria from lower civil service origins, became head postal clerk of Thessaloniki after 10 years. Starting his political career he became deputy from Edirne in 1909; he became minister of interior affairs (1913-17), secretary general of the CUP and Grand Vizier (1917-18). Along with physicians Behaeddin Shakir (1874-1922), head of the Special Organization, the genocidal arm of the CUP and Nazim Bey (1870-1926), also working with the Special Organization, were leading figures responsible for the genocide. In a speech to the CUP Dr. Nazim said: If we remain satisfied with the sort of local massacres which took place in Adana and elsewhere in 1909...if this purge is not general and final, it will inevitably lead to problems. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to eliminate the Armenian people in its entirety, so there is no further Armenian on this earth and the very concept of Armenia is extinguished.

”

And continued by saying, "the procedure this time will be one of total annihilation-it is necessary that not even one single Armenian survive this annihilation".

General Enver Pasha, Minister of War, was the key proponent of cooperation with Germany and thus led the Empire into War against Russia. He was fully implicated in the genocide. He advocated pan-Turkism (an Ideological pipe dream in which all Turkish speaking peoples would unite, much of whom reside in Russia). In the Battle of Sarikamish his life was saved ironically by an Armenian who carried his wounded body back through enemy lines to safety. Later he fought against the Soviets in the Russian Civil war, where he was killed in 1922.

Before long it became apparent to most that the Young Turks began to exercise authoritarian control, not democratic governance. In fact it became evident that the Young Turks biggest fear was the continuing dissection of the Empire and would do what was necessary to maintain the geographic integrity of the Ottoman Empire that was to be made uniformly Turkish. They were in fact Turkish Nationalists, not Democratic Liberals.

Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924) was their luminary. They were in fact a secular nationalist movement, using the propensity of Islam for insistence on ascendancy, and claimed that the progression to ascendancy of the Turkish peoples as rightful and something to be expected in their fancied struggles of peoples. Much akin to the National Socialist idea of the Darwinian struggles of peoples. Gokalp was influenced by the sociologist Durkheim, where the group was superior to the individual: "the individual becomes a genuine personality only as he becomes a genuine representative of his culture". Gokalp hinted that the Turks were the Ubermensch, spoken of by Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19^th Century German Existentialist. A state not based on shared consciousness cannot survive, he said. It was then of prime importance that the Turk should assert themselves within the Empire, violently if need be. Basically, their thought was a toxic concoction, which became deadly to the Armenians.

At the conclusion of the Balkan Wars in 1913 Muslims some hundreds of thousands (413,992 Toynbee’s calculation) were expelled from the Balkans and arrived in Constantinople and Anatolia. This gave pretense for the killings. In 1914 the Ottoman government feared dismemberment of the Empire, especially after the collapse of the Balkans, and thought that Germany could provide protection for them from the Entente and so they ineptly entered the War on Kaiser’s side. There were visions by some Young Turks of a war uniting the Turks across Asia. The Armenians were immediately made suspect of colluding with the Russians. Armenians lived across the border in the Russian Empire as well, and the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia were deemed to have sympathies toward Russia and its Armenia subjects. And some fought for the Russians, as could be expected being subjects of the Russian Czar. However, the Armenians, who yearned for equality in the Empire, were in no position to defend themselves.

There were progressive elements in the Armenian population whose interest was being treated as equals in the Empire. Dissent and perceived disloyalty was treated with naked, brutal and barbaric suppression by the Ottoman Government. In 1895-96 Sultan Abdul Hamid’s widespread massacres killed countless thousands, some estimates as high as 200,000. The Ottoman Empire operated under a governing principle that subject peoples existed at the sufferance of the ruling Ottomans. Any grumbling or discontent by these peoples was given a knee jerk cuff, so to speak. Not finding any positive development in their quest for equality some Armenians began to look European powers for independence.

The Young Turks came to a conclusion that the Armenian Peoples had to be attended to for the preservation of the Empire. The Empire was pressured time and time again by the European Powers and saw in the loss of the Balkans in 1913 that Anatolia itself was about to be dismembered or at the least provide a protectorate for the Armenians in eastern Anatolia. Note at the conclusion of the Balkan Wars in 1913 Muslims some hundreds of thousands (413,992 Toynbee’s calculation) were expelled from the Balkans and arrived in Anatolia.

Best solution, dare I say Final solution, in the mind of the Young Turks was destruction of the Armenians, co-habitants of the Anatolian peninsula for nearly a millennium, residents of the Middle East for millennia. Then the Powers would lose the object of their intervention into the Empire, the oppressed subject peoples, largely Christians. The objectives real purpose, as they saw it, was the partition of a collapsing Empire. The real prospect of the annihilation presented itself under the cover of World War I.  

Initially the progressive elements of the Armenian community allied with the seemingly progressive Ittihadist movement, commonly known as the Young Turks, only to be betrayed. The Young Turks’ primary goal was preservation of the Empire. Once they had overthrown the Sultan and setup the semblance of a parliamentary style government, they had no need of their former allies the Armenians who presented a threat to the homogenization of the Empire.

In October 1914 as Ottoman Empire initiated war with Russia, the Armenia male population was inducted into the Turkish Army. After the devastating defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Sarikamish in December 1914 to January 1915 in Eastern Anatolia, where 60-90,000 Turks died, many froze or starved to death. The General in Command, Enver Pasha blamed Armenian disloyalty rather than his own deficiencies in leadership for the defeat. Afterwards the Armenians within the Army were disarmed and placed into unarmed labor battalions and later starved, overworked or bludgeoned to death. In April 1915 the Armenian elite, many would be shocked to find out, were betrayed by the Ittihadists their former allies and seeming friends, were rounded up and arrested then executed.

                                                       
                                              THE “DEPORTATIONS” 1915

Shortly thereafter the “Deportations” would begin in the Eastern Provinces of Turkey, the region of the majority of the Armenian peoples. Deportation was a euphemism for destruction by starvation, overexertion, brutal death by marauding bands of released criminals, kidnapping and rape of young women, some forced to accept Islam and on occasion allowed conversion under threat. The Armenians were not permitted to bring with them anything other than that they could gather and carry in a matter of a few minutes. They were given no provisions on the way and often had to bribe their “caretakers” for essentials to continue to survive. NO provision was made by the Young Turks for care and sustenance of the “deportees”. Groups largely composed of women, children and the aged did nothing to resist. There are instances of hundreds of “deportees” herded by 2-3 gendarmes; 10,000 by a squadron. In addition to the “Deportations” mass drowning of up to 50,000 were reported by the Italian Consul of Trabzon on the Black Sea. Innocents sent on boats and then the boats would be sunk, all to be drowned.

All Armenian property, untold amounts, was confiscated as well. In large part the Christian minorities were the merchant and financial class of the Empire, although in the Eastern Anatolia there were hundreds of thousands of Armenian peasants. Part of the appeal of the widespread confiscation of Armenian property was an attempt by the Young Turks to create a Turkish Middle Class.  “Assistance offered by Germany, America, and international aid organizations was all refused.”* 

Despite the destruction of much of the documentary evidence of the genocide by the government of the Ottoman Empire, there is still much evidence of the crimes. US Ambassador to Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau recounted much of the atrocities that were occurring. The German Protestant missionary, Johannes Lepsius, reported widespread atrocities. The German military, allies to the Turks in WWI , also made note of these barbarities. The Germans worked closely with the Turkish Military High Command, who relied on them ultimately for leadership in their military operations. Trials after the end of WWI compiled documentation, some of which has survived, as well. Significantly, Taner Ackam’s Killing Orders:Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide, confirms Talat Pasha’s genocidal orders to subordinates. No longer can deniers claim that the killings were not coordinated for the center.

 As anyone knows there are but a tiny few Armenians in the Anatolian peninsula today. This is evidence after the fact of the ethnic massacre perpetrated upon them, despite all the denials. 

It must be noted that the killing didn’t stop in 1915. “Deportations” continued into 1916. In March 1918 the Soviet Russians left the War with the Russian State itself in disintegration. The Turks invaded Russian Armenia; several massacres and atrocities took place in which hundreds of thousands of Armenians lost their lives, one of which in Baku in September 15-17 in which 30,000 Armenians died. Under a later repatriation 5-12,000 Armenians were slaughtered in 1920 in Marash in Turkey’s War of Independence.

There are several parallels to the Holocaust of WWII. The Young Turks were largely an imbedded Ideological party behind the Ottoman Empire after 1908 with agents acting throughout the Empire. Instructions by the Young Turk hierarchy were sent to their functionaries to initiate the “deportations”. Jails were emptied to form criminal gangs that preyed on the deportees. Special Organization, the genocidal wing of the Young Turk political organization led the “deportations” which in most cases led to starvation, exhaustion or butchery. It was systematic and punitive consequences of their crime were largely absent. A pitiable few responsible saw retribution. This undoubtedly influenced the NAZIs’ thinking later that they could escape punishment in their horrific destruction of the European Jewish population.  

Nearly as disturbing, a century later Turkey, its government and the population at large, continue to deny there was genocide. One argument runs; yes, hundreds of thousands died but they, being a Fifth Column, really deserved it. Turkey was simply fighting Armenian Fifth column uprisings. There was no general uprising or civil war involving the Armenians. In additional argument Armenia got what it deserved because thousands of Muslims were expelled from the Balkans and so the Armenians were “expelled” and the displaced Muslims took their place. In fact virtually all violence that Armenia committed was in a futile attempt to defend themselves against slaughter. Little blame can be assigned on the instances where Armenian’s allegiance in Eastern Anatolia leaned to the Russians, who didn’t have a recent history of slaughtering them. The vast majority of the Armenians acted peacefully toward the Ottoman Empire.

How many died? Estimates run from 800,000 to 1.5 million with a million being a figure that’s most often employed. Considering just as in Eastern Europe there are frightfully few Jews, where once were millions, one must presume a vast number of people were killed. There was 1.3 to 2.4 million Armenians in Anatolia prior to the Genocide. Currently one will not find Armenians in their former homeland in Eastern Anatolia, or the Region once known as Cilicia. Istanbul is empty of Armenians as well, except for a few thousands. Somehow they all disappeared, I guess.

It must be noted that the Greeks, resided in Anatolia for three millennia, were forcibly expelled from Anatolia as well, after World War I.

I admit I haven’t done justice to the crime. Individual testimony of the barbarity is nearly unspeakable. And simply recounting it seems only to trivialize it. And few have heard of the atrocities against the Armenians. The silenced don't speak. There are those who hope no one speaks for them. 

*Ackam, Taner, A Shameful Act, pg 10.

Reconstruction 1866-1877: An Assessment

The Reconstruction period is comparatively ignored, when judged by how much interest there is in other periods in American History like the Civil War upon which massive amounts of books have been and continue to be written.  The Reconstruction was the struggle of the American Republic to once again re-integrate the South. A vicious war was fought in which hundreds of thousands were killed in battle and many more wounded as well. The North was vindictive and wanted to punish the South for the rebellion. The South wanted to return to the pre-war economic and political system. They agreed to relieve the Black man from involuntary servitude. They concurred with President Johnson (1865-1868) that reunion should be simple. The Southerner should once again proclaim allegiance to the Constitution and concede the destruction of institution of slavery. And all would be good. The economic system would remain same as it was just without involuntary servitude and the Southerner would begin to govern as he saw fit. The states largely sovereign and retaining a measure of autonomy, leaving the Federal government the powers delimited in the Constitution.

Thus soon after the surrender in the Spring of 1865, the Southerner setup governments, proclaimed allegiance to the Federal government and legislated laws designed to consign the black to the plantation system: the plantation system that was the back bone of the economy. These laws were called the Black Codes. The Southerner was content that the Freedman had been granted right to own property, inherit, sit on a jury. The idea that the Freedman was a social equal was abhorrent to him, something unthinkable. The idea that you would invite the Freedman into your house to have social intercourse or worse yet the Freedman could consort with his daughter, would put the Southerner into apoplexy. Northern attitudes were not all that more different, it must be noted.

The Black codes, instituted just after the Civil War, included vagrancy laws for blacks who couldn’t demonstrate they were employed, whereby they would be consigned to convict leasing then they might find themselves back on the plantation. These laws required that Blacks sign Annual labor contracts and present them to authorities, at the risk of vagrancy. A special tax was levied on Blacks, left unpaid it placed the black in a legal state of vagrancy. Incidentally, Mississippi, Kentucky and Delaware first rejected the 13^th Amendment prohibiting slavery. In Mississippi blacks were restricted to being only able to rent land within the city. The significance of these laws was to consign the Freedman back to a state of involuntary servitude.

Once the North was apprised of the Southern disposition towards the Freedman, it immediately saw these actions as a betrayal of a bloody, terrible Civil War, where hundreds of thousands died.  The Southerner continued a pre-War understanding, claiming sovereignty of the states; meaning the Federal government should have little purview over the political compact of any particular state. In response the North enacted the 14^th Amendment guaranteeing Civil Rights to the citizens of each state, the 15^th Amendment granting voting rights to Blacks without regard to race, color or previous condition of servitude. The Freedman’s Bureau, hated by the White Southerner, was extended in 1866, as well. This provided protection, aid and education among other things to the Freedman. The White Southerner argued it fostered idleness and shiftlessness and fomented an overly aggressive Negro.

The Southerner saw the largely illiterate Freedman as in no condition to exercise the suffrage nor to lead politically. They were largely correct, but the backward state of the Freedman was due to the Southerner keeping them in a state of ignorance, poverty and servitude that was slavery. It could be surmised that a cultured black slave was not the most advantageous thing to be in Ante-Bellum South.

The Republican governments were universally corrupt. Practicing jobbery, selling off favors, funding large bond issues to benefit political allies, meant to be paid off by the White disenfranchised taxpayer. Taxes largely assessed on land rose dramatically in multiples. Large debt and deficits were run up by these states. In the Ante-Bellum political system the Planters kept taxation on land minimal. Funding Public schools was deemed an expensive burden. Once the Republicans began to govern Public Schools were established, although Whites refused to be educated with the Black, deemed their brutish, social inferiors. The White Southerner was soured with Republican rule for a century; even the Pro-Union Whigs went over to the Conservative/Democrats. The White Southerner was convinced that the Radical reform of suffrage to Blacks was a contrivance to insure Republican rule over the nation. 

The White Southern Confederate sympathizer was disenfranchised, under the Iron Clad oath. The Iron Clad Oath insisted the voter had never given help or granted assistance to the Rebellion, the Confederacy, which would encompass virtually all White males in the South. This was far harsher standard than the 14^th Amendment which excluded the political and military leadership of the Confederacy.

The Federal military, at one point in time after the Civil War composed of enlisted Black regiments, gave a measure of protection to the Freedman, from the unremitting hostility of the White. The militarized White supporter of the Confederacy had faced death and injury in the Civil War, then came home to live in a country in which the Black could lord over them. There were some 100,000 Black soldiers in the South shortly after the war. In South Carolina these Black regiments demonstrated their predominance on occasion, marching down Main Street driving the White citizens off the side walk. These would infuriate the White Southerner, the White Southerner fully militarized that had fought the North in an exhausting war for four years until conquered in a campaign of total war. Hostility was such these Black regiments were disbanded eventually. 

The pace and depth of the attempt at Reconstruction varied for each state. However it all finished the same with Blacks disenfranchised. The White southerner struck back violently at first after the Civil War, then more sophisticated political methods were employed not to encounter the wrath of the North. The Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia wrecked terror on the Black population for a brief period in the late 1860s. The Black population no longer created havoc.  Later in South Carolina in 1870’s and elsewhere the Southerner organized himself in armed political groups wearing Red Shirts. They would show up at Republican rallies, largely Black and insist equal time. Later in the Century rabid racism was used in a strange concoction to rally an all-White Populism in the late Nineteenth Century. The Black soil conservatives (Democrats), heir of Plantation political sensibilities, used Black votes either paid for or fraudulently obtained to secure political hegemony. In response by excluding Blacks a block of White votes was formed that allowed the Progressives to gain power at the turn of the next century. See the Strange Case of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward for the interesting story how the South became segregated.  Woodrow Wilson, sympathetic to Southern Progressives, a friend of Thomas Dixon who inspired Birth of a Nation, waged a campaign of segregation in the Federal government once he became President. Wilson went to John Hopkins University with his friend, Thomas Dixon, author of  Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Klu Klux Klan. It’s odd how academics rate his Presidency so high.

Of all the tragedies of the Southern race relations was the obliviousness of the fact in a significant way the American Black is a cousin to the White Southerner. Your cousin has 25% of the genes you do.  Geneticists estimate the Afro-American is something like 30% Caucasian. Blacks today when they take the now popular DNA tests discover much to their shock they might be 50% or more European. In Ante-Bellum South there really had been a large of measure racial admixture, subsequently deemed so abhorrent to the White. The Supreme Court in 1967 finally struck down the anti-miscegenation laws of State of Virginia. This of course was an ironic joke based on the ample mixing of races in the Ante-Bellum South.  The Southern Overseer callously used his position of authority to extract sexual favors. In other cases female chattel might became a recipient of the Plantation owner’s attentions, frustrated with the mother of his children who refused to once again risk the perils of child birth. The Southerner should have known the closeness of relation to his Black servant, but treated the Black as nearly a sub-species. The new Freedman, who was left ignorant and infantile, was hardly in position to run a state; but that was due to the condition in which they were subjected in Ante-Bellum South for generations; left in a condition of ignorance and poverty.

The depth of the notions of racial superiority can be weighed by the following quote: 

The Delaware legislature resolved in 1866, “The immutable laws of God have affixed upon the brow of the white races the ineffaceable stamp of superiority, and that all attempts to elevate the negro to a social or political equality of the white man is futile and subversive of the ends and aims of the which the American Government was established.”

I suspect the newly disseminated ideas of Darwin (Origin of the Species, 1859) had a significant impact on this type of thinking, as well. The same kind of thinking that could lead an entire German political party several decades later to surmise an Eastern European Slav was racially inferior; someone, whose physical characteristics appeared virtually identical to the German individual across the Polish border.

Southerners complaints of the Freedman were plentiful. There was enough report by the White Southerner of mis-behavior of the Freedman to grant credence to it being widespread. The Freedman left the Plantation for a life of freedom and largely undisciplined. The Freedman was not the submissive Step-n-fetch-it portrayed in early 20^th Century cinema; he was loath to take instruction. But previously on the Ante-Bellum plantation the Black slave was brutalized into submission and the fruits of his labor stolen from him and was excluded from any profitable independent opportunities. If you wanted to dis-incentivize someone against industry and entrepreneurial activities, this is the system.  Release from that system tended toward idleness, lawlessness, criminality and mischief. Thievery from such things as vegetable gardens and livestock were common.  There were mysterious fires as well that burned down house and barn.

One attempt to recover order was the establishment of the Klu Klux Klan that did so much to terrorize the Freedman. The economy was in ruin from war and the loss of the free labor of millions of Blacks. The White Southern, impoverished and disenfranchised saw their all too violent activities as justifiable attempt to restore order and suppress the power of the Freedmen and their Freedman Bureau and Union and Loyal Leagues. The terror restored order but also enlisted a response from the North in the enactment of the Enforcement acts 1870 to 1871. The Enforcement acts authorized the use of the Army to combat these para-legal groups. Military Districts were set up in authority above the state governments.  The KKK was suppressed, as a result.

The racial violence in the post-Civil War is shocking. The KKK is well known but actually operated only for a short while; it was never centralized and quickly became infested with criminal elements detached from the original intentions at least as described by the good Southerner. Overt expressions of it were suppressed by the Federal military in the early 1870’s. The KKK aside, there were out breaks of violence and additional violent political movements in the Reconstruction period.

The riots in Memphis in May, 1866 and New Orleans in July saw dozens of Freedmen killed and driven away. In Louisiana some 1,081, virtually all, Blacks were killed between April and November 1868 in Louisiana in political violence. Later in the 1875-1876 Red Shirts acted as a paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party in Mississippi and South Carolina. They broke up Republican meetings, disrupted their organizing, and intimidated black voters at the polls. 

During Reconstruction 1867-1877 there were several Radical administrations of course, that had a large number of Black representatives in the Legislatures, supported by the Federal Military districts that might incorporate disenfranchisement of White Southerner under the Iron Clad oaths. Plus there was a great deal of attempts at black voter suppression that required Federal intervention to counter act them. National politics ultimately intervened to take the focus off the plight of the Black. The sabotage of the Supreme Court insured that Blacks in America would remain a race apart and denied opportunity. 

Republicans were insistent on the suffrage for Blacks. Ultimately the Republicans didn’t deliver on a significant improvement in the economic situation of the Freedman. The idea of 40 acres and a mule was still born, despite Pennsylvania Senator Thaddeus Stevens’s support. Even the suffrage was taken away eventually. 

An astonishingly huge 200,000,000 acres were given to the rail roads. 1862 Homestead Act eventually gave away some 270,000,000 acres. 70,000 Plantation owners were said to have owned over 300,000,000 acres in the South. Yet, nothing was granted to the Freedman, left destitute and dependent on the Plantation for work. Nonetheless, the idea that land could be simply confiscated was a violation of property rights guaranteed by the Constitution. In contrast Radical Senator Thaddeus Stevens deemed the South a conquered province, not rebellious States that had NO right to succeed. Confiscation of the Planters, initiators of the Rebellion, was right and proper. Yet if a State couldn’t succeed then how could it lose its status as one, others retorted. Land grants to Blacks were left a fantasy.

Great blame must be laid on the Supreme Court, much revered in today’s society as a champion of social progress, for the crippling of the Civil Rights Legislation passed in the Reconstruction period. In 1876 Supreme Court pontificated in U.S vs. Cruishank that the Federal Enforcement Acts met to protect the Freedman were void.  This was in response to the Easter Sunday April 13, 1873 Colfax, Louisiana massacre, where over a hundred Blacks were murdered as they convened in the Colfax Court house. Arrests of the perpetrators were made under these same Enforcement Acts. The convictions were annulled under this ruling.

Later in 1883 the provisions of the 1875 Civil Rights legislation, banning discrimination in public venues like hotels and restaurants, were deemed Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled from its Olympian wisdom that The 14^th Amendment pertained only to the actions of the States NOT to individuals within the States, thus opening the way to legalized segregation.

A democratic system in which in most cases Whites were in the majority didn’t induce a situation in which great social renovations could be allowed that would advantage the minority Black. Neither would a government of limits and laws allow for social revolution. Sadly, today we have a system that places the inner city Black in a state of dependency; schools failing and families in disarray and drugs and crime rampant. I can only wonder if a Radical plan of land distribution had been attempted and absent the Supreme Courts gutting of the 14^th Amendment and the Reconstruction Civil Rights Laws, the racial divisions and social division could have been avoided. But it likely would have taken a military regime decades to accomplish it against virulent opposition of the Southern White.

Eisenhower Presidency: An Assessment

Eisenhower (1953-1961) should be listed as one of the great Presidents. For their own reasons academics prefer Truman and Kennedy whose administrations pale in comparison. Just in the popularity with the American People they are sharply in contrast. President Eisenhower’s approval rating was close to 70%. Truman’s approval rating dipped into the 20’s% at the end of this administration. Obama’s averaged less than 50%. Kennedy’s approval in his short tenure was quite high at around 70%. There were no wars during his administration. The Federal Budgets were generally balanced, something that doesn’t currently appear to be realizable.  The economy grew 37% during his administration. Inflation was low as well. The country was tranquil at home and abroad.

Largely, upon veiled threat of use of tactical nuclear weapons he was able to end the Korean War. The threat was communicated to India who passed it along to the Communist Chinese. The Communist Chinese came to a negotiated agreement that split Korea at the 38^th parallel. The agreement was against the wishes of the South Korean leader Rhee who wanted to continue the propagation of the war but was informed if he wanted to continue the war, it would be alone.

Eisenhower insisted on balanced budgets. He fought the conservative wing of the Republican Party against tax cuts that might imbalance the budget. He fought back against increases in the defense budget, as well. In fact he sharply lowered the President Truman’s defense budget by several billion against the opposition of the chiefs of the three branches of the military. He saw military expenditure as coming out the hard earned labor of the common people.

While war was threated several times, only ONE soldier died in combat under his eight year administration. He refused to become involved in South East Asia as the French wished he would. . Kennedy would make the mistake of becoming more involved in South East Asia by inserting American troops into Vietnam that eventually led to catastrophic failure.  Truman initially drew down the military too much and failed to include Korean as within the American sphere of influence. This led to the aggression of North Korea in 1950. Of course with adept foreign policy he concluded the Korean War in 1953. He offered protocols to reduce the threat of nuclear war to the Soviets. Kennedy despite keeping a cool head brought USA to the brink of all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956 and propaganda from Radio Free Europe led the Hungarians into thinking assistance in the event of an uprising was forthcoming by the West in 1956. But Eisenhower stood pat as the Soviets sent in tanks to crush the revolution in Hungary in 1956. This was a tacit confirmation of the Yalta pact in 1945 that divided Europe into spheres of influence. It would have taken another world war to revise it and this it would be nuclear. Eisenhower sagaciously eschewed conflict. Four decades later the empire fell on its own incompetence and inefficiency.  Eisenhower was busy at the time in 1956 with the Suez Crisis in which France, the UK and Israel conspired to grab back the recently nationalized Suez Canal and secure the State of Israel. Eisenhower insisted they give up colonial aspirations. Nasir of Egypt was allowed to nationalize the canal and Britain and France stood down. 

Kiang Kai Shek, leader of the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan, tried to force a war over two tiny islands, Quemoy and Matsu, within firing distance of Communist China. China threatened to use military force to occupy it. Kiang Kai-Shek hoped to re-ignite the civil war again mainland China with America’s assistance. Eisenhower would have none of it.

Monetary inflation was kept to a moderate level. In contrast during Truman administration inflation ran up to 9% in 1951. Inflation is a product of too much money chasing too few goods. Federal Reserve’s generation of money supply is determinate as to levels of inflation. Any price increase on a particular product like the shortage of oil will not in itself cause general monetary inflation, since an increase in price in one product will likely cause a decrease in other prices. It takes something like the Central bank to effect monetary inflation. Eisenhower’s bank exercised prudence.

Eisenhower won’t get credit for this but large urban areas were quiet and free of upheavals seen in the Sixties. Even crime was historically low. Eisenhower won’t get credit for that either. However, the prescription of Civil Rights legislation of the 1960’s, no matter how much it was justified, didn’t become the magic fix it was meant to be, as it appears from fifty years hindsight

Civil Rights legislation of the 1960’s raised expectations and resulted in race riots in many Cities, alienating Whites, who fled the cities and abandoned the African-Americans in segregated Ghettos. Today these inner cities remain pockets of poverty and crime. In Michigan where I live Detroit and Flint are prime examples. Both were huge centers for auto production and now are essentially devoid of any. Dozens of auto plants have been built in America in the last four decades, most by foreign manufacturers. None in the inner cities. Political solutions to racial issues are limited in their efficacy, when social elements play a large part of the problem. 

1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik to the shock of America. The tiny satellite broadcast a radio signal that could be picked up around the world. Due to budgetary constraints launching satellites were not high on priority, the Atlas missile was designed for delivering nuclear warheads intercontinentally. After being shown up by the Soviets, the space program began in earnest. Kennedy would spend billions on a trip to the moon. Something Eisenhower found largely quixotic, wanting to emphasize the military, scientific and technical aspects.

In 1959 two weeks before a Paris summit to discuss restraints on nuclear weapon, the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane. The Eisenhower administration not aware of the details assumed that both the pilot and planet had crashed and were destroyed. When the Soviets first reported the incident, the Eisenhower administration lied, saying it was weather plane that strayed off course due to a malfunction. A U-2 plane was hastily repainted with NASA colors and sent out to the media. The Soviets latter revealed that not only had the plane been retrieved, the pilot was alive as well. Eisenhower was caught in a lie and the peace conference was cancelled. Relations with the Soviets worsened.

U-2 spy flights did establish the state of the Soviets nuclear weapon competence. They lacked the Air Force and submarine capabilities that USA had, which was well know and had only a few ICBM’s. The USA had some 650 B-52’s, some 300 Polaris missiles deliverable by nuclear submarine plus many more ICBM’s than the Soviets.

Kenney was informed, once nominated for the Democrat Presidency, in 1960 that United States had a massive advantage in ICBM, plane and submarine nuclear capability over Soviet Union. Kennedy continued to lie about the putative missile gap in his campaign to gain voters.

Eisenhower is criticized for not addressing the civil rights issues. Yet, the first civil rights laws in some 80 years were passed in 1957. These were largely gutted by Senate Democrats specifically Lyndon B. Johnson, so they didn’t have the impact of latter Civil Rights legislation. The Dixiecrats held a strangle hold on the advancement of Civil Rights legislation since the Reconstruction ended in the 1870’s. So, Black voter suppression and Jim Crow segregation laws went unchallenged in the South. Something I experienced, as a child in the 1950’s in Missouri when I saw a White’s only drinking fountain and didn’t realize it referred to race.

Eisenhower in addition sent in Federal Troops to enforce school integration in Little Rock, AR in 1957, segregation ordered by the Supreme Court. Admittedly, Eisenhower had little sensitivity to Civil Rights; however his Attorney General Herbert Brownell had much input into these issues and including the nature of judicial picks. Neither Truman nor Kennedy worked actively for Civil Rights in terms of legislation. In fact Kennedy voted against Eisenhower’s Civil Rights act of 1957.  No Civil Rights legislation was passed under their administrations. Driven by events Kennedy became more sympathetic to Civil Rights issues later in his short tenure.

Eisenhower’s Supreme Court picks of Warren and Brennan were the forefront of judicial activism. The first ruling of the Warren Court was Brown vs. School Board of 1954 that struck down separate but equal school systems. The Warren Court went on to remove school prayer, insist on the recitation of Miranda Rights to the arrested and representation being appointed, when none was available, for the accused and the Court increased the standard for search and seizure among other things. Eisenhower seems to get no credit for his revolution in the Court.

Eisenhower has been criticized for secret machinations by the Dulles’ CIA in Iraq, Guatemala, and elsewhere but these underhanded measures where in lieu of a more upfront aggression that could have led to war. Fear of Soviet takeover played a part in both those coup d’états.

As for Truman, highly regarded by academics, he left the country with high inflation and what appeared to be a war without exit and an approval rating in the 20s percentile, lowest approval rating for Presidents since WWII. Truman also had to be forced to accept legislation that engineered labor peace: the Taft Hartley act, passed over his veto. Prior to this labor unrest was allowed to wreak havoc on the economy. 

In balance Truman’s Marshall Plan the provided aid to war torn Western Europe was historic and did much to restore Western Europe to peace and prosperity. A combined military command was created under his administration, NATO; Eisenhower was appointed to lead NATO at this time incidentally in 1951-1952. Truman got much criticism for the failure to support Chaing Kai-Shek Nationalists that led to the rise of Communist China and Mao Tse Tung: a symptom of America’s historic idealistic foreign policy, revisited several times with much failure. Examples being  Wilson’s Fourteen Points at the conclusion of WWI, Iran 1979 and Iraq in 2003, foreign policy that failed to face historical realities and the complexities of culture, religion and politics, only wanting to create a world made safe for Democracy.

Controversially Truman authorized the use of the atomic bomb (something Eisenhower opposed but arguably was NOT in the decision loop) against civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: an act of war that continues to be controversial in its horrific barbarity.    

Tragic Fall of the Russian Monarchy, February 1917

Before the Bolsheviks attained power in October 1917, there was a prior popular revolution in which the Russian Romanov Monarchy fell in February 1917. It was replaced by the Provisional Government composed of democratic elements. This fall of the Russian Monarchy was a catastrophe in the making.

At the time Russia was in a terrible war. Some 1.7 million soldiers would be killed and many more wounded and captured by the enemy. Russia had experienced massive defeats, losing Poland and Western Ukraine. Russia was straining to maintain the massive cost of this war.

There are three basic ways to finance a war. Tax the country. Finance the war through war bonds or loans. Or print money. Governments chose the last option, since it requires only starting up the printing presses. Russia used that option. At first economic activity was booming as is the case when governments fool people with cheapened money, then it becomes known that the prices are rising all around and so people try to beat the rise by raising prices in anticipation. Prices rose by 4 times from 1914. Wages earners are hurt the worst since they can’t set their own prices and will begin to fall behind the inflation spiral. This was the case in Petrograd, where most of the war munitions were produced.

What precipitated the revolution was the food shortage. Fundamentally the Russian Government could not afford to feed both the soldier and the city resident. The peasant sold grain through middlemen and didn’t receive the requisite increase in price for their grain they required; inflation was raising prices of everything that the peasant bought. So the peasant had little incentive to sell grain; they reverted to subsistence farming and hoarded their grain. As an indication the economic system was collapsing, the Russian government had begun to requisition gain. This was no real solution and the cities continued to be short of food. Nonetheless, the Russian government had to feed the army as well. In addition the transportation rail system was strained as well. Transportation of goods had to be rationed between the war at the front and the populace further contributing to food shortages.

There was much political and labor unrest after the initial euphoria of the first year of war. In fact October 1916 was the heighth of political demonstrations by far with 177 strikes involving 175,000 strikers. In the last 18 months of war labor strikes were common ranging from 13 to 48 strikes a month involving 6,000 to 53,000 workers.

Already, experiencing regular shortages of food, on February 23, 1917 International Women’s Day triggers a strike of the women textile workers that spreads to the metal workers and then to demonstrations on the streets.

The Okhrana, the oppressive and omnipresent secret police, that had infiltrated virtually a aspects of society, warned of the danger of a social explosion. They gave word to the authorities the situation in the working class districts was a tinder box. Living with constant unrest had left the authorities deaf to the real peril that was forth-coming.

The only response by the authorities was crackdowns. Striking workers were being drafted and sent to the front. Labor leaders were arrested and imprisoned or sent into exile. It was at this time that the Bolshevik party was decimated, since all radical groups were infiltrated by Okhrana.

The Russian Empire was suspicious of civil society. So even, labor mutual aid groups were suppressed deemed to be vehicles of political activity and hives for radicals. Despite the authorities opposition Liberal charitable organizations like All-Russian Union of Zemstvos (Local Councils) organized for the sick and the wounded and the All-Russian Union of Towns for municipal self-governments became deeply involved in food supply.

Critically, the Cossacks, a southern Russian nomadic peoples frequently used as the regime’s enforcers, acted with indifference, when asked to suppress the strikes of February 23. Strikes mushroom across all districts of Petrograd on the next day. Cossacks are once again no use to the regime and even chased away the police.

On the third day of strikes, February 25 there is a general strike and the city of Petrograd is paralyzed. Police under provocation fire on demonstrations and 9 are killed. Some soldiers called to quell the rioting defect. Police chiefs, Shalfeev and Krylov are killed by the rioters. General Khabalov, head of the Petrograd military district, got a telegram from Czar Nicholas to quell the demonstrations by any means necessary. Police arrested 100 leaders of the demonstrations.

On the 26^th what were presumed to be loyal Troops began firing on demonstrators. There were some 300,000 troops stationed in Petrograd. Czar Nicholas was confident that they could restore order. Chairman of the State Duma (assembly) Rodzianko contacted the Czar to let him know “the situation is serious. The capital is in a state of anarchy” and to beg him to recognize a consultative body, a cabinet, in efforts to calm the populace. This of course was the weakest step towards reform regarding the upheaval of the populace. This tentative step of a consultative cabinet wouldn’t be close enough to quench popular unrest. Nicholas’ comment was, “Again this fat Rodzianko has written me all sorts of nonsense, to which I will not even reply.” Nicholas, forever the autocrat, refused this conciliation and called for the elected Duma to be prorogued or closed instead. Doing away with the Duma at this point was an ineffectual, belated move and the misguided thing to do anyway. Unbeknownst to him Nicholas would cease to be Czar in four days.

The next day the soldier’s insurrection began in earnest in Petrograd and the military began to disintegrate. Arms are seized, so insurrecting soldiers couldn’t be restrained by their officers. Officers were killed or forced to flee by their subordinates most importantly the NCO’s.  Discipline in the Czarist Army was very harsh, the officer core being alienated from their soldiers. The common soldier demanded to select his own officers. Additionally, prisons are forced open, releasing prisoners.

On February 28 all military units in Petrograd have joined the insurrection. The military leader of the Petrograd district, Khabalov, is arrested and the hated leader of the all too power Ministry of Interior, Protopopov, surrenders to the insurrectionists. The military high command decides to strike back and Nicholas feels compelled leave the war command center at Mogilev near the front to join his wife in the Tsarskoe Selo palace near Petrograd. He would begin a train journey that would end with his abdication.

Nicholas II was hidebound; he wouldn’t budge from the principle of ruling Russia as an autocrat. The Autocrat was designated by God, a divinely appointed regent, with freedom to rule with little or no constraint. He said he promised his father upon his death to maintain this autocracy. In the upheaval of 1905 a Duma, an assembly was granted but Nicholas always insisted it was at his pleasure. He refused to recognize a monarchy constrained by a constitution or allow any designated advisory body or council or any representative cabinet. Liberals urged this upon him throughout the war as a means to reduce the social tensions that were building up. Russia’s only reaction under Nicholas was to use surveillance and crackdown on unrest as a response to social unrest.  Ironically, Russia got her autocrat a decade later with Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist party. He would send millions to their deaths.

Czar Nicholas would spend part of two days attempting to reach Tsarskoe Selo, first heading directly to Petrograd but then shunted east to reach a village, Bologoe, southeast of the capital the next day only to be told the route to Petrograd was blocked as well. He traveled west to Pskov, arriving 8 pm on March 1.

During his meanderings the situation in Petrograd had completely fallen apart, a fragile Provisional government had been coalesced under the idea the Czar Nicholas had to go. This is the only thing that could conceivably quell the populace. With control of the railroad transport there was manipulation of the routing of the Czar’s train schedule to delay his arrival to the capital. They had been in communication with the military and convinced them that an attack on Petrograd would cause Civil War. Russia was in the middle of a war already with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. To preserve Russia they needed to jettison the monarchy.

Czar Nicholas II was convinced in Pskov that his abdication would bring the social unrest to an end. At first it would be his hemophiliac son who would be the next Czar but Nicholas decided his son would abdicate too and the crown would fall to his Uncle Michael Alexandrovich. Unfortunately, he acquiesced to the Provisional government, saying he would wait on them to determine the upcoming form of government. The Romanov Russian monarchy was over. They had written their own death sentences. Czar Nicholas and his whole family were butchered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918.

The fall of the monarchy precipitated a chain of events that led to the rise of the Bolsheviks, Lenin and Stalin and a mass of atrocities. This is the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century.

Much of the blame for the fall of the monarchy I am afraid to say can be placed on Czar Nicholas II himself. He insisted on rejecting any accommodation with reform, a reform that was desperately called for. It must be remembered that the society was tragically divided, which included a revolutionary element, the left Social Revolutionaries who engaged in assassinations of Russian governmental officials, as a matter of policy, which included the assassination of two ministers of interior and the Czars’ uncle Sergei. Nicholas’s grandfather, Alexander II, who freed the serfs and who had a benign policy towards Finland, was assassinated in 1881. Nonetheless, a constituent assembly, much like Germany’s Bundestag with a responsible cabinet would have given the Russian monarchy firmer footing. Czar Nicholas rejected it all and chose to rule with the secret police, Okhrana and oppression. I suspect Nicholas relied on his belief that the vast peasantry supported the monarchy, but they turned out to be simply spectators in the social upheaval. (Richard Pipes [See below.] provides a far more sophisticated analysis of Russia and its collapse, some of which highlights Russia’s unpreparedness for a deliberative parliament with which the Monarchy could work. For example nearly all elements of the political spectrum were quite sympathetic to Social Revolutionaries reign of terror on the Czarist regime administration. Thousands were said to have been assassinated before the War. The peasants on the other hand, which owned 90% of the land, were organized under thousands of communes, led under a patriarchal setup, that was devoid of patriotic allegiance to the monarchy.)

Nicholas in 1915 after devastating loses of Poland and western Ukraine decided to propagate the war at the front, dismissing his cousin Nikolay Nikolayovich. It was a mistake to remove himself from the capital and isolate himself at the front. And leave himself open to the vagaries of the military events. 

The entrance itself into World War I was nothing less than idiocy. Russia had no vital interests in the Balkans other than prestige, acting on the violation of the integrity of Serbia that ignited the conflict. It wasn’t ready for the war and shortly proved it really couldn’t afford a modern war, which caused the death and disability of millions and bankrupted the country. These were colossal blunders that destroyed Russia and brought down the monarchy.  Nicholas made that final decision to declare war, against not a few who cautioned restraint.   

I point you to the brilliant works of Richard Pipes, the Russian Revolution and Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. These offer far more nuance, insight and analysis than this humble monograph presumes to offer.   

BATTLE FOR THE HUERTGEN FOREST, 1944: DEATH FACTORY

The Allied Forces had raced across France the summer of 1944 after the breakout from Normandy in July. The Germans were reeling and in what was deemed to be complete disarray. By mid-September the Allies had reached the Hitler’s Third Reich that was meant to last a thousand years. The Allies expected it to crumble by Christmas 1944. The American forces were anticipating encountering beaten forces as they drew near Germany. Yet, eight months later after much struggle, in May of 1945, the Reich finally was subdued.

Part of the story is the Battle of the Huertgen Forest at the western border of Germany. It was a twenty mile by 10 mile forest, some 200 total square miles of forest. The West Wall or what the Allies eventually called the Siegfried line, 390 miles (630km) long with 18,000 bunkers, tank traps and tunnels ran through it. It was built between 1938 and 1040. And contrary to thinking after the Fall of France where the Maginot line was inconsequential to lightning warfare, here Blitzkrieg warfare was stymied. Terrain, weather contributed. The Huertgen Forest removed the tank and the air might from the military equation. The narrow trails or fire breaks through the forest were generally not passible for tanks or a tank in the narrow confines of the forest often hit a mine and blew out a track, ending up blocking it. The Americans could rarely use the Air Force to “soften” targets. In the fall and winter of 1944 in the inclement weather, overcast skies and the dense forest these elements were negated.

Combat here has little relation to the dashing heroics accompanied by complete ineptitude of the enemy so many of Hollywood’s war movies like the Dirty Dozen, Saving Private Ryan, and Fury among many others, portray. In fact the famous Army Rangers, 2^nd battalion spent a few days taking Castle Hill near Bergstein near the Roer fought bravely, but were delighted to get out as torn up as they were. Here a soldier would likely to spend days in a cold, frozen, wet foxhole, being subject to mortar fire, machine guns, artillery shells and infiltration or counter attack,   praying, hoping and sometimes crying that you get out alive. The weather in northern Europe in inclement in the Fall and Winter with rain, sleet, snow. 

Fighting here was no picnic. Land mines were a constant danger for men and military vehicles including tanks. At night in the forest it was normally literally pitch black. You didn’t leave you foxhole for fear of stumbling near someone and  being shot. Tree bursts in the dense forest showered deadly shrapnel down on you and a foxhole was no help unless covered with thick foliage and tree trunks. Standing up was the best policy in that situation.

Thousands of casualties came from combat fatigue: frost bite in which toes and fingers and limbs were lost, trench foot in which feet were constantly wet and cold, mental breakdown, etc. This was as close to hell on earth you will find. This battle was a literal “death factory” as the soldiers who were there called it.

I know of only one movie that accurately depicts combat conditions in the Huertgen Forest; When the Trumpets Fade. This was a 1998 made for TV movie available on YouTube. (This movie is rated R for a reason: strong language and violence.) But it conveys the absurdity of modern combat and the Huertgen Forest combat in particular, completely accurately. No Brad Pitt or Tom Hanks or John Wayne ever stoic and confident, here. Those fearless types were likely to die right away. This is the kind of combat that can break many a good man. That saw desperate prayers and uncontrollable crying and mental breakdown as well as great heroics.

Processions of several divisions were sent into the forest over three months from Mid-September to Mid-December and were basically decimated. Many men found themselves back at the aid stations for a variety of mental distress among other disabilities. Dereliction of assigned duties became a big problem. There were some who gave themselves self-inflicted wounds, like shooting themselves in the big toe to escape the hell. It became such a problem it was decided that someone like Ernie Slovik, a deserter, was executed as an example to others; the first since the Civil War.

This battle is forgotten; just south of the Forest the battle of the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge was fought beginning December 16, 1944.  Essentially 5 to 6 months the Allies were stalled on the Siegfried Line with the Battle of the Bulge punctuating the lack of advancement.

Much of the failure to push the Germans aside in the fall of 1944 hinged on the lack of supplies. Supplies were coming from Cherbourg, France the closest deep water port, farther then Normandy. It was only until November 28 that the major port Antwerp was freed up for shipping, the Netherland coastal areas being held by the Germans up until then.

By the autumn of 1944 there began to be a shortage of front line riflemen. There were 12 men supporting 1 man up at the front in the American Army. The Germans it was 5 to 1. But nonetheless it demonstrates an army operated like other bureaucracies; people tend to avoid the dirty work. And it got no more dirty,  than this. It was the end of the war and people knew it was only a matter of time before Germany capitulated and who wants to die just before the war ends?

In the three months up to December 16 only a few miles of territory were gained. They were trying to reach the Roer River, which flowed north south here, paralleling the much larger Rhine River, the border of ancient Germany. In those three months casualties totaled 32,000. 

Combat in the forest could include house to house fighting and even a rare bayonet charge; the forest and areas surrounding it was dotted with settlements. And in the dense forest infiltration by the enemy was a constant danger; sometimes trenches would be only 30 yards apart.

The Germans were vastly outnumbered, somewhere 5 to 1 but were masters at this type of warfare. The forest was part of the West Wall with bunkers, pill boxes and many a defensive entrenchment not easily spotted. They mined extensively as noted above. Their artillery and mortar fire was accurate and deadly.

The American infantryman was often a teacher, desk clerk, bank teller or some such. Brick layers and construction workers and such went to the Army engineers not the infantry. The American Army had two classifications: general fitness and noncombat. The British had physical fitness classes A through I with the A, top, going to the infantry. The Germans with a similar system sent their top physical specimens to the infantry. When the American soldier fought with the tremendous advantages in the number of tanks, planes and such, it didn’t matter. In the forest few of those standard advantages were present.

Due to the large amount of attrition that occurred in the forest, replacements were individually inserted into the battalions, companies, platoons and squadrons with little or no instruction, training or insight into the type of fighting they were going to encounter. This is no way improved combat effectiveness since the replacements didn’t have the advantage of what prior units had learned.

The greatest irony of the Huertgen Forest is that it lacked any strategic value. The initial idea was to push aside the weak German units in the Huertgen Forest that were presumed to be in disarray and drive straight to the Roehr River. The situation was found to be much different but the upper echelons of the American military continued to pursue that objective. However, it was finally realized after about four months that the true strategic goal was the dams on the Roehr south of the forest that held enough water to flood the Roehr plain for miles downriver. A failed attempt was made in early February to capture the dams but they were too late. The sluices were destroyed by the Germans and huge volumes of water cascaded down the river and flooded the plain anyway. For a period of weeks the Americans were blocked from crossing the Roehr and the Germans on the other side were freed up to attack the British and the Canadians farther north. The Americans were able to cross the Roehr on February 23, 1945, some 5 months after plan. That completed the fustercluck that was the battle of the Huertgen Forest.

Lessons I draw from the battle: 1) lightning tank warfare has limited application where here it ceased to be a factor. There were no rapid breakouts 2) fighting in the Huertgen forest was fiendish and 3) Hollywood’s depiction of combat over the years bears only a slim resemblance to the Huertgen Forest combat  except in a made for TV movie, When Trumpets Fade,  which faithfully recounts the conditions of combat in this battle.

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Final note, learning about this battle gave me even more appreciation for the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation who we owe our freedoms to. They’ve largely passed, only a few remain. A memorial was finally erected in 2004 for those who gave service in World War II. Of course that was 59 years after the war; the majority who gave service had already passed including my father.

Fall of France 1940

American has been pre-eminent for last century or so, largely by the coming to the aid of Europe in World War I and II, specifically France in 1918 and 1944 among other actions. The Fall of France in 1940 is generally attributed to the might of the unstoppable German Panzer Armies. The truth of the history of the Fall of France in May 1940 and its run up is a surprising tale of cowardice and incompetence as much about German military prowess. Truthfully, America might not have been required to come to the rescue in 1944 to reclaim France. On the contrary, France could have forestalled the disaster with a proactive policy running up to the war and stymied Hitler’s schemes at their inception.

The purported reason World War I was fought was to make the “world safe for democracy” and thus the League of Nations was established. This failed. After World War II America setup a similar league, the United Nations. In doing this America was meant to avoid the British hegemony that led to the conflagration of World War I. In large part PAX AMERICANA, that was inaugurated after World War II, has been a Godsend to the world. Peace in the Western Pacific and Western Europe. No cataclysmic conflicts in 70 years. Regardless, President Bush’s military adventurism in the war against Iraq, although needless, would not have failed if the hugely expensive process of nation building was allowed to have been completed over time. Instead, President Obama found it more convenient to retreat as the keeper of world peace and leave Iraq to disintegrate. And yes, in hind sight it would have been far better if the military wasn’t sent there in the first place after September 11. It was a Crusade for Democracy, in an effort to what is called “nation building”, to erect a Jeffersonian Democracy in Iraq. It was tilting at windmills. I think we can safely say there are NO actionable Jeffersonian Democrats in the Arab Middle-East: Libya, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and ISIS among others as patent examples of the absence of liberal democratic governance and sensibilities.

And the fact being the majority of democrats resident in Germany and Japan were put there by America after literally leveling their cities and imposing democratic regimes. It goes without saying this is NOT a standard foreign policy in which you can regularly rely on, otherwise that would have been contemplated when America was the sole possessor to atomic weapons. It hardly goes without saying its neither a workable nor moral foreign policy. Employing that weapon against civilian populations is pure horror and it remains up to debate if ANY use of that weapon is justifiable. America would have been the biggest mass murder of all time, attempting to “Americanize” the world. Retaliation with this weapon against conventional aggression is something like the situation whereby my neighbor kills my dog, so I’ll destroy him, his family and house and neighborhood with RPGs: NOT proportionate. And certainly not anything in which a diplomatic policy could be formulated.   And somebody forgot to think that “wait a minute!” that weapon (atomic bomb) at some time in the future could be used against….US! And that prospect was the linchpin of the MADD strategy. My nuclear gun is pointed at your head and yours at mine….gottcha, let’s not get an itchy finger. So what does it means if American “won” a nuclear war when Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, etc. are smoking radioactive cinders? What does this have to do with the Fall of France 1940?....very little. Let me get back to the issues at hand.

The French defeat in 1940 was an unmitigated fustercluck (bungle), something for which American boys would have to end up fixing with the requisite sacrifice. In this defeat history paints a picture of French incompetence and dereliction, politically and militarily with the complicity of the French People.  Britain and Canada, as brave and valiant as their contributions were, wouldn’t have had a snow ball’s chance of returning to the Continent without the presence of the United States military.  

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Yes, the French were badly led in World War I. They lost a quarter of their young men killed in a brutal war of attrition, not forgetting to mention wounded and scarred for life (over a million killed). The society was unified in their opposition to committing to the same sacrifice in the run up to WWII. But the political and social situation in France was far more complicated mess than most people understand. The society was deeply divided. The very active French Far Right was sympathetic to Fascism and was anti-Semitic. Antisemitism is incomprehensible to us as it should be but these French Right wing currents ran against what was seen in pre-WW II circles as key Jewish participation in Left wing, Communist and Socialist political movements as well as principal agents in pivotal financial sectors. (No reason to exterminate a race! A true horror that taints and will continue to taint our entire civilization. NAZI’s used Darwinian race theories to justify their hatred.)

The history of democracy in France had a legacy of unbridled mob action, beginning with the French Revolution and the Jacobins which included the Guillotine and war against the tradition adhering peasant, who remained loyal to an idea of monarchy.  One reason one hears no French “folk” music. All culture came from the center; that is revolutionary Paris. To many on the Right democratic rule becomes associated with terror and mob violence. On the other hand, those of Liberal (original meaning) republican sensibilities were hostile to religion and especially the inordinate influence the Roman Catholic Church; removed from being the state religion in 1905.  The Roman Church was closely associated with monarchial sentiments; the monarchy that supported and fostered the Church.  Liberalism today takes on a great deal of socialism, where originally Liberal meant sympathy for Classical economic nostrums of exercise of capital in free markets including free unrestricted labor. The Left, Socialist and Communist (after the German Soviet nonaggression pact), was largely pacifist and international, seeing warfare like the recent Great War as one of a conflict between capitalist nations. Aggression towards Germany and re-arming to prepare for conflict against Germany were seen as not in the interests of the working class.

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The Germans began the invasion of France on May 10^th of 1940. Within a matter of five days after the Germans had attacked, the Premier of France, Paul Reynaud, called Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, to say “we are defeated… we are broken. We have lost the battle. The front is broken at Sedan.” Within the first few days of the invasion the German Blitzkrieg had punched across the narrow lightly defended Luxemburg and Southern neck of Belgium which includes the densely forested Ardennes, across the river Meuse at Sedan to then begin to race west behind the French and English Armies, north of them in Belgium. The Allies had moved forward into Belgium to meet main thrust of the German Army, where they presumed the bulk of the German army was poised to attack.  This move forward east into Belgium about 50 miles insured that the English and French could be trapped, as Germany in its Blitzkrieg, advanced West through France behind them.

After hearing that France deemed itself defeated the British Army began to retreat to Dunkirk on the coast of La Manche, the English Channel, in hopes of being able to evacuate itself from France. Much of the French army was left to fight on even after entrapment but couldn’t re-organize itself to attack. In fact the French armies, completely paralyzed, along the Maginot Line remained on the West and didn’t move to join battle north against the break through.

This collapse could have been avoided. The first blunder was absence of opposition to Hitler’s move to re-militarize the Rhineland. After WWI France wanted to insure itself that Germany would never again rise up to invade it like it had in 1870 and 1914. Part of the Versailles treaty stipulated that the Rhineland adjacent to France’s Eastern border would remain denuded of troops as well as severe limits on the size of the Army, just 100,000 soldiers. Hitler upon attaining power in January, 1933 set to dis-mantle the restrictions imposed on by Versailles.

March 1936 Hitler moved into the de-militarized Rhineland. France had over a million troops at its disposal to counter this. Yet, they remained behind the Maginot Line. Some 295,000 German personnel, most nonmilitary, walked into the Rhineland; virtually all were non-military members of the SA (Storm troopers [Brown Shirts]), the SS (Black Shirts) and Landespolizei (Federal police force) and some 7,000 actual military: 3 battalions of combat ready troops. As we already know this was a phantom army. Wikipedia article referencing this event makes a patently absurd claim that the real reasons for France’s hesitation were discovered after the opening of the French historical archives in the 1970’s. We discover that France was broke and couldn’t afford to advance into Germany for fear of financial collapse. (Stephen Schuker). Funny nobody else (French and German principals in question) mentions that at the time or in retrospect. William Shirer interviewed many of the principals and all confirm the nature of Hitler’s gamble and that France and Britain’s dereliction. They are silent about France’s pending financial collapse.

Just the quantity of military hardware France possessed in 1940 puts a lie to the purported dire financial constraints that would completely harness French military activity. French military was equal in numbers if not superior to the Germans in 1940 based on my readings. They had more airplanes and tanks in May 1940. For that matter the German tank was far inferior to the French. The majority (over 2,000) of the German tanks were Model (Mark) 1 (lightly armored at 6 ton) with simply two machine guns in the turret! And the armor (13 mm) could be penetrated by 50 caliber machine gun. On the other hand the hundreds of Czechoslovakian Skoda tanks (approx.. 12 tons with a 1.5 inch (37 mm) cannons in the turret) the Germans obtained thanks to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in his capitulation to Hitler in 1938, provided a significant contribution in the attack on France.

 Again, the Wikipedia article contends that France was financially incapable in March 1936 to finance an excursion into the Rhineland. Something as vital as this financial factor, would likely to have been a matter of debate but never arises as a contemporary issue, among the principal parties.  William Shirer, author of the masterful Collapse of Third Republic: an Inquiry into the Fall of France, 1940, covers this issue extensively.* It is a very curious view. I have not read the aforementioned Stephen Schuker’s uniquely pointed monograph. The evidence supporting France’s lack of will, not absence of financial resources regarding the re-militarization of the Rhine, as the prime cause, is extensive.

We find that French General Gamelin, Commander and Chief, is a central figure in France’s failure. He insisted that a general mobilization of all French military would be necessary to meet the German move into the Rhineland, which he deceitfully overestimated in size by counting non-military personnel (some 235,000). This insistence in complete war mobilization was known by Gamelin to be a nonstarter and a means to insure no response would be made to Hitler’s aggressive move. Why he would have held this belief is a mystery to many a historian. The presence of the massive Maginot Line and the insistence on a defensive response might be part of France’s thinking.

The Maginot line was hugely expensive, sucking up military resources that could have been used elsewhere like planes, tanks, guns. It is said that just one 87 mile stretch cost $ 3 billion francs (my est. $600 million)… that’s more than 1/3 the cost of the Manhattan project. The Maginot would eventually need to stretch 720kilometer (450 miles) between Switzerland in the south to Luxemburg in the north.  Problem is France has a 200 mile border with what became neutral Belgium.

Construction of the defensive wall along the border would have caused critical diplomatic issues with a country meant to be an ally, so the wall couldn’t be extended there. The Germans went around it in any event. In addition with the Rhineland now re-militarized Belgium saw German soldiers on its border and declared itself neutral again in October 1936.  This meant that France couldn’t pre-empt a German invasion into Belgium but had to wait, which is what happened in May of 1940.

In the re-militarization of the Rhine of March of 1936 before acting against Hitler France insisted on British support and received none. They couldn’t face Germany alone, the thinking ran. Tragically the Hitler’s aggression with the re-militarization of the Rhineland in March 1936 was allowed to pass, much to France’s dismay later as we know. Another factor for France’s lethargy was the imminent prospect of election in the spring of 1936.  The political class feared the French electorate, who was solidly pacifist.

Yet, France in 1936 had a decided military advantage. If France had acted, the German response would have been a quick retreat back across the borders, according to von Blomberg, Germany’s Minister of Defense and Commander in Chief. Hitler had only just announced his intent to violate the Versailles military restrictions, and Germany’s Army was not yet built up. Yet, France would not risk 100 divisions against German 3 battalions. They would pay later for their cowardice; an historic opportunity was missed.

It must be emphasized that French popular opinion favored sticking their head in the sand in 1936, ignoring Germany’s aggression. The Front Populaire (Popular Front), which sprung forth much like the Arab Spring of 2012,  was a collection of left wing Socialists and Communists and the Center Radical parties that opposed Fascism within France, which was small but active. In 1936 there was great outcry by the Popular Front that France hadn’t intervened in Spain’s Civil War, yet they largely ignored the real menace and that was NAZI Germany. My reading tells me that France prior to WW II was almost unanimously pacifist in leanings or at least wanted to ignore the menace that was the re-arming NAZI Germany. There was no middle ground. The French Left except for the Communists was pacifist and the Far Right was sympathetic to Fascist movements in Germany and Italy. The Popular Front was initiated when the Communists changed tact and joined with the Socialists, who they ordinarily considered vile betrayers of Communist advancement, and the Radicals, the center party, to form a coalition.

The French popular front outburst could be likened to much more wide spread and virulent “Occupy” movement in America in 2011 which protested income inequalities by holding sit-ins in streets and parks. “We are the 99%” was one of their slogans, as a chant against the 1% that seemed to have made it through the Great Recession of 2008 just fine. The Occupy Movement had no real program however, just an outpouring of popular discontent. The Popular Front likewise had no agenda, other than just an outburst in the name of social justice. That broke out into massive general strikes and demonstrations everywhere, including strikes by retail and department store workers. Strikes involved sit-ins as well; one of the more famous was a sit in the Renault auto plant. One result of the protests was a legislated reduction in the work week to 40 hours with no reduction in pay. Employers couldn’t pay someone the same wage for fewer hours without loss of productivity and so it goes without saying inflation ate up the “gains”. However in addition, they were granted 2 weeks of vacation guaranteed and rights to form a labor union as well. When the Leon Blum, Socialist administration fell in June 1937, the 40 hour limited week was rescinded by the next government.

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The French blunders in the build up to World War II piled up one on another.  In 1938 when Czechoslovakia was being carved up France had a chance to stand up again. Once again the British tried appeasement and granted Hitler the Sudetenland, the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia. Prime Minister Chamberlain claimed “peace in our time” in the act of appeasement to Hitler’s aggression. France, if they didn’t see a need to fight in 1936, didn’t see one in 1938 to take Germany on alone. Note they had signed a defense pact with the Soviet Union in 1935. One small detail in the pact Soviet Union didn’t abut NAZI Germany and would either need the permission or invade a neutral country to reach NAZI Germany. Anyway once Soviet Union saw that the West, France and Britain et al. acquiesced to Germany they lost faith in them as allies. They went courting NAZI Germany and signed a nonaggression pact in late August 1939. Thus France couldn’t have played it any stupider; now Germany could turn on France alone. But of course France had another opportunity in September 1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland. With Britain’s support France declares war on Germany, once Germany invades Poland. Germany held a thin line on protecting the West while virtually all of the Wehrmacht was employed against Poland. Some might think it was time to attack Germany. The best France does is a tentative move some few kilometers into Western Germany then a quick retreat before anybody got hurt. 8 months later they got a full blown war; the Maginot line didn’t save them. 

In 1940 the German air force in raw numbers is outnumbered by the French and the British but tactically Germany handled its air force much more adeptly. Based on my reading the dominance of the German air force in the Invasion of France in 1940 was founded on Germany’s tactical superiority. Aircraft were used to support the Army, not as a strategic weapon, so loved by other air forces including Britain and United States and really French air power advocates. Germany was able to concentrate their aircraft to dominate a local air space, which swept the French and British from the skies whenever they would appear. Germany flew many times more sorties per aircraft than the French, while their far superior anti-aircraft capabilities downed many enemy aircraft. The French inexplicably had only 25% of their airplanes in the Western Front, holding their airplanes back to preserve them for possible later use. Let me say that the French once again was deeply divided as to the strategy and purpose of its Air Force. Leaders of the Air wing looked to see air power as a strategic strike weapon. The Army demanded a tactical Air wing. The Air Force passively fought the Armies aims and as a result the French Air Force failed to have the infrastructure such as airfields and communications to support a tactical effort. In mid-June when it became completely clear that defeat was imminent most of the French air force was flown to North Africa, without ever being utilized.  How do you say dereliction of duty?

On May 10, 1940 after over eight months of inactivity, the Germans attacked. Germany’s Army Group B, comprised of 29 total divisions began a move through Belgium and Netherlands to France, the route they used in 1914 in World War I. This enticed the Allies, France and Great Britain to move forward into Belgium by some 50 to 75 miles. Belgium had insisted on their neutrality so a move before invasion was not possible. Belgium switched to neutrality when France made no move to counter the Germans in 1936.  By occupying the Rhineland German military adjoins Belgium.

Yet, the main thrust of the German invasion was being made not there but through the Ardennes to the south, a heavily forested area with few roads, just north of the vaunted heavily fortified Maginot line with Army Group A with 35 divisions including 7 fully equipped Panzer divisions.  In fact if the French had bothered to notice, they would have seen a huge traffic backup winding its way through the area composed of German military vehicles. The French air force never attacked, though an attack would likely to have been crippling. In the fog of war this thrust was ignored for several days, even as the Germans crossed Belgium and reached Sedan on the River Meuse on May 13, crossing over into France initially with a fragile hold on the opposite bank. The Germans met the 2^nd Army composed of 5 divisions, the two most forward the 55^th and 71^st. The initial assault over the Meuse at Sedan initiated a general panic of the 55^th French Infantry division, which fled in disarray south.

A dilatory counter thrust against the break through at Sedan was ineptly made by France. The 3^rd Armored division was scattered and in training on May 10 and had to be collected and wasn’t prepared to fight on May 13, when the Germans began to cross the Meuse at Sedan, the French Armor lacking anti-tank weapons, fuel, radios, repair companies, etc. The French 3^rd Armor and the 3^rd Motorized divisions sent to staunch the breach delayed their attack by a day to counter the pocket over the Meuse made by the Germans. This permitted two divisions of the German 19^th Armored Panzers Corps led by General Guderian to continue their turn right to the West on May 14. This would lead them driving, along with the 4 Panzers including Rommel’s 7^th mentioned below, across France to the Channel. The French Armor counterattacked north towards Sedan, but due to their dallying of a day, was met and stopped by the Grossdeutschland infantry regiment and the 10^th Panzer division. The French decided to remain stationary content to staunch the German thrust south. The 10^th followed the other Panzers west across France.

Some 50 miles north along the Meuse four Panzer divisions, including Rommel’s7th who insisted on leading from the very front of the spear, along with infantry support broke through a weak French 9^th Army, which lacked armor and anti-tank weapons. They were swept aside by the Panzers. The inept General Gamelin who remained passive throughout the 1936 remilitarizing of the Rhineland up through the breakout of the Panzers in France was asked to step down on May 18 and was replaced by an equally inept 73 year old General Weygand. The Germans would be able to race to the Channel by June 5, keeping the French and British off guard. The British and French Armies in the north were cut off, who evacuated at Dunkirk in the thousands. Meanwhile the Belgians had given up the fight. The defensive strategy of the Maginot failed them.

Britain lost confidence in France’s fighting ability by May 21^st, when Britain attempted a break out south across territory of the Panzer thrust but France could not organize itself to attack north to meet it. The Brits began to contemplate evacuating to fight another day. France felt betrayed, especially when Britain wouldn’t send more squadrons of fighters to attempt to protect their troops; the excuse given was that they were needed to defend an attack by Germany who now possessed the Channel and could easily fly sorties across the Channel.

Britain’s retreat off the continent sealed France’s fate if it wasn’t sealed before by its military ineptitude. The return would have to be made by the Americans in conjunction with the Brits and Canadians four years later in a massive invasion. The Soviets would commence colossal offensive in the East two weeks later as well. France would be restored in about three months.

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The declaration of war by Britain when Poland was attacked was silly. Hitler was nothing but shocked that Britain chose to go to war for Poland. Britain had NO means to rescue Poland. Poland would remain under tyranny for the next fifty years, either NAZI or Communist. For that matter they were of little help to France with their 9 divisions. So when they saw France sinking they beat a fast retreat relying on America to rescue them. In one way of thinking wouldn’t it been easier to have done all you could to remain on the continent, than try to battle your way back on it? If they weren’t prepared to win the war on the continent, they needed to be certain of France’s fighting abilities. After so many concessions, 1936 Rhineland and 1938 Czechoslovakia among others, they might have been better to have remained off the continent. And see NAZI Germany and Soviet Russia eventually fight it out to their exhaustion. Anyone who read Mein Kampf knew about Hitler’s desire for Lebensraum, the needed living space for the Nordic master race in the east and the inevitable conflict between NAZI and Communist Ideologies. Probability of the conflict can be seen in the aftermath of the war, when the two allies, the Americans and the Soviets became dreaded enemies in the Cold War.

The result of World War II for Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe was Soviet domination, not what I call a condign result. One can never forget the horror of the Holocaust. It must be said it could NOT have been any worse for the Jews in Eastern Europe, absent the intervention of the Brits, so intervening in the continent certainly didn’t save Jewish lives. The Jewish population which numbered millions in Poland prior to the war was virtually wiped out.

For all that, contrast the response of the French Republic versus Soviet Russia. Russia suffered some four million casualties in the first months of the war. Of those captured 90% will die in prisoner camps. They lost their agricultural and industrial heartland. Yet, they continued on, obtaining eventually a large amount of supplies from Britain and U.S. to allow them to win the war. Thus, the sacrifice France failed to make fell on Soviet Russia to shoulder and later to the Americans to come to the rescue. Without Lend Lease from America I seriously question if the great sacrifice Russia made would have been enough, but the bottom line is that they were able to rally their people to make it. The Russian incurred 9 out 11 million casualties inflicted by the Germans. Yes, discipline was extremely harsh in the Soviet Army but they were fighting for their lives, not livelihood. And I imagine Stalin was thinking Germany would be locked in battle with France and Britain for years a la 1914 and he could watch them spend themselves.  This was a massive miscalculation. Once France was dispatched Hitler came for Soviet Russia.

 *This is confirmed in other writings including the French work, France and the Nazi Threat by Jean-Baptiste Durosell. See To Lose a Battle, Horne as well.