Aftermath

William T Sherman, one of the great Civil War generals, noted that "war is hell."  It is so not only to the families who lost a loved one, to those who came back maimed, or to  those who lost property, but also to those who were in the path of war.  But, there was also the aftermath of war, and one would not wanted to have been a female civilian in Berlin in May 1945.    April and early May saw Soviet forces move from the east to surround Berlin, home of Adolph Hitler.  If the Soviet Union had been on the losing side of the war, it is no doubt that many commanders and soldiers would have been tried for war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  Instead to victors go the spoils, and the writing of history.  For any one not in the Fuhrer bunker, life in Berlin at that time was just plain hell.  Bombs were dropped day and night.  Potable water was scare, but not as scarce as food.  Medical care was primitive. Transit would shut down.  Persons would cluster in bomb shelters not knowing if it was day or night.  With many German men off to fight (or prisoners, injured, or dead) much of the activities of daily life fell to German women.  It was in this dire situation, that the Soviets made life even more miserable for the civilian population. This occurred not only in the closing days of the war, but also after occupation.  If war was hell to the civilians, the indignity they would know upon occupation Soviet forces was personal.  The actions of the Soviet army to the German civilian population have started to become known as documents from over seventy years ago are now being released.  Russia still plays innocent to many of the deeds committed.

Civilians in Berlin at end of war

East Prussia saw the first wave of atrocities committed by Soviet soldiers. In some cases the advance Soviet troops would tell villagers to expect the worst from the back units.  Rape, pillage, and death. I have a co-worker whose family hails from Prussia, and one of his relatives was shot dead cold blank by a Soviet soldier. By late April 1945, as one historian has noted, Soviet soldiers looked upon German women as spoils of war, rather than as an act of revenge against the German Wehrmacht.  Initial atrocities were rationalized as revenge, but by now it was different, humans looked upon as spoils of war.  Antony Beevor, in his book, The Fall of Berlin 1945, recounts a few of the many acts against the civilian population of Germany. Some Germans attempted to make their way west to the Allied lines.  A few made it, many did not.  The Soviet Union was surrounding Berlin and had made it to the Elbe by April 25.  Red army commanders would tell the females of Germany that the Russian men healthy (i.e. now STD's) and not to worry.  That would not be the case.  Just like in Africa today where women are raped by Boko Harem members or other Islamic fundamentalists and are ostracized from their families for having been raped, the German women similarly felt shamed and wondered what the future would hold for them if their husband or boyfriend would make it back from the war. They raped young girls, to old women. The stashes of liquor left behind by the Germans would play a large roll in the actions of the Red army soldiers against the German women. The Soviets apparently did not hold their liquor well. One German woman would write in her diary that "all in all we are slowly beginning to look upon the whole business of rape with a certain humour, albeit of the grimmer kind."  It was not only rape, but German citizens were taken to work camps in Russia.  There is a reason why penicillin was in short supply at the end of the war--it was needed to treat the sexually transmitted diseases.  Graham Greene's "The Third Man" is a portrayal of life in post war Vienna, and the level to which men devolved.  To this, one wonders if the United States bears some complicity.

The victors raise the flag

As pointed out in a blog post last year, the US Ninth Army had made it to and crossed the Elbe, before being ordered to stop the advance into Berlin.  Eisenhower did not wish to risk American lives in the capture of Berlin it is said, but an argument could be advanced that he did not wish to move east of the Elbe, as he knew the decision makers at the top had already divided Germany.  The area east of the Elbe where the US Ninth Army was now located was to be Soviet territory in the occupation. My father, Roy Hovel, was a Counter Intelligence Corps officer attached to the 83rd Infantry Division.  Also known as the Thunderbolt Division, it was this division who had crossed the Elbe and had units advance to within 90 km of Berlin before being told to draw back to the Elbe. In a letter dated April 30, 1945 to his sister my father plainly says that "we have been 'sitting' in the same place now for some time..."   I suspect by this point American intelligence knew that Germans would rather surrender to the western allies than to the Soviet Union, yet, the US Army held their place.  This is not to say they could have entered Berlin easily, but yet, the atrocities to be committed against the civilian population never entered into the equation or if it was,they dismissed the eventuality as the due course of war and desired to look the other way.

Berlin 1945, what a pretty sight

In the meantime, Stalin was ordering his army and secret intelligence units to capture German laboratories, workshops, factories, and scientific research units.  They wanted to make good use not only of German advances in weaponry, but also the scientists who were developing such means of war.  The United States may have gotten Werner Von Braun, but the Russians were able to capture and send to Russia a whole host of scientists.  In that respect, if you were a German nuclear scientist, physicist, or chemist (and immediate family), chances are you were treated quite well by the Soviet Union.  Their female cousin, or niece would not have been so lucky.  The Soviet Union, who had benefited from American know how, and materials over the course of the war, so knew of the large and growing gap between Soviet and American knowledge and armaments, and were depending upon German ingenuity to close the gap.  However, Beevor says that many of the captured items were of little use back in Moscow, as "they required an environment suitable for precision engineering and the purest raw materials."  He notes one Soviet scientist as saying that "Socialism cannot benefit itself even when it takes the whole of another country's technological infrastructure".  Stalin was after infrastructure, and not all was technological.  He wanted land, and was looking to move beyond the agreed upon borders to take other parts of the Europe east of the line to which he had been granted.  Credit goes to the Brits, who recognized this activity and made moves to counter the Soviet land grab.

Russian soldier walking by dead SS officer

As my father wrote that April 30 letter to his only sibling so many years ago he did not know that Adolph Hitler had killed himself that day, but he did expect the way to soon end.  In that April 30 letter to his sister, he writes: "tomorrow is the beginning of another month, one of the nicest of the year, and this year an especially memorable one for you because of your graduation.  May most likely will see the end of the European war and I anxiously hope, the Pacific one too due to the psychological effect of German surrender."

Russian photo of bombers over Reichstag

As for Adolph Hitler, the Soviets would recover his burnt body and keep it secret for many years.  Stalin even kept it secret from one of the lead Soviet Generals who had been charged with locating the body, in order to continually humiliate the general--even long after the war.  Of course, there are many to this day who feel Adolph made his way to South America to live in the Andes mountains.  Some even say the US was involved in arranging his passage.   Even though the Germans started the war, retribution took hold, and after revenge, the Soviets thought the spoils of war, or the aftermath of the war, allowed them to take liberty with the civilian population, particularly the female inhabitants.  The Soviets were not gracious victors.  To this day Russia continues to write their own history of their acts in 1945 Berlin. Berlin was not the place to be in the spring of 1945.

Subjugation

It is as old as civilization itself, but is the antithesis of civilization.  It continues even in the enlightened western era of the 21st century.  I refer to slavery.  Slavery is thought to have been first practiced over 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, I suppose it is possible to have been used in hunter-gatherer societies, but a slave would have been another mouth to feed.  With the advent of agriculture, crops needed to be tended, and slave labor well fit the labor intensive nature of early agricultural practices.  In Mesopotamia a male slave is said to have the value of an orchard of date palms.  Food is essential to survival so it makes sense that value was based on food.

Food is not the only human desire, there is also sex.  Female slaves in Mesopotamia, it is thought, were called on to provide sexual favors for their master.  They would be freed upon the death of their master.  Sex trafficking is common to this day, so sex slaves, usually women and girls, are taken captive in order to provide pleasure to patrons.  The United States fought a Civil War over this peculiar institution, ending slavery once and for all in the mid-1860's.  The Emancipation Proclamation may be all well and good, and it was only applied to the States in rebellion, but from a practical standpoint it had little effect until the south was once again brought in as part of the nation.  This brings me to the interesting case of the slave ship La Amistad in 1839.  A movie, by the name "Amistad" took liberty with the story and portrayal of the events.  A different ship, the Tecora,  departed an African port  for Cuba with a bounty of slaves, who had been kidnapped by other Africans and sold into slavery.   After arrival in Cuba, on the slave ship Tecora, over 50 slaves were sold to two Spanish men, who secured the use of the  La Amistad to transport the persons from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba for use in their agricultural endeavors.  During this journey the slaves rebelled, killed several of the crew and held the 2 Spanish men prisoner and demanded they take them back to Africa.  Attempting to avoid the trip to Africa, the Spaniards would head west at night, and east during the day.  The ship was not made for the rough seas of the Atlantic and it was no where near any one on board thought, as it eventually ended up near Long Island.  The ship would be taken into custody by the US Navy.  The rebellious Africans were imprisoned, and after two years would be freed by action of the U. S. Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court, upholding a lower court ruling, would rule that the rebels had  the right to free themselves from bondage, even if murder occurred.  This is where the movie has an odd interplay. Being a ship under the Spanish flag, Spain, with its eleven year old Queen, argued that the matter should be handled in the courts of Spain, under the terms of the Pinckney Treaty of 1795.  The British are held up in the movie as purveyors of all that is right and good.  While Britain would abolish the slave trade in 1807, (the Dutch first abolished trade in slaves in 1804) slavery was not abolished by Britain until 22 years after having been done so in Spain.  You see,  Spain had abolished slavery for its nation and in its colonies in 1811.  Cuba, while under this rule, continued to trade slaves.  Regardless of law, there are those who choose to break the law.

Most interesting is that the Supreme Court decision would mean little for slaves in the United States.  Slave trading in the nation still occurred (only transporting on the high seas was banned, and as the Tecora shows, it still occurred), there would be the Dred Scott decision, and of course the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Missouri Compromise. One historian has noted "that the Mende (the tribal origin of the slaves on the La Amistad)  passengers had the right to rise up against those who had deprived them of their freedom did not extend to the more than 2.5 million people who were enslaved on plantations and cities across the Unites States at the time."  The court decision in the Amistad case shows the hypocrisy of the United States in regard to slavery.  What the movie does not explain is that Spain was well ahead of both Britain and the United States in banning slavery--in both Spain and its colonies.  Laws do not make habits go away at the start, and Spain had a hard time, and may even have looked the other way in regard to continued subjugation and trading in Cuba.  Spain may have looked the other way as a way to avoid riot and war.  Yet, the United States did much the same, in the compromises made available as part of law to keep the South happy in regard to the peculiar institution.  The United States should not look harshly on Spain for perhaps looking the other way in its distant colony of Cuba.  To end slavery 54 years after Spain, the nation would fight a bloody war.  As for the Mende, the survivors would return to Africa, and in an even greater irony, or hypocrisy, some are believed to have become involved on the other side of the slave trade.  

April 15

April 15 is tax day.  Hearing that day conjures up memories of harried individuals attempting to file their income taxes for the prior year.  In the "old" days, say 15 or so years ago, the local evening news would cover the night-time rush with persons at the local post office completing their paperwork before getting it into the mail.  With on-line filing now being common, people can put off the work a little longer and file right before midnight.  No trip to the post office is required.  For that reason, April 15 is often not looked upon as a great day in the nation, unless of course you work for the federal government.  Yet, April 15 has seen a few events that have captivated or engaged us as a nation.  After a brief discussion of the income tax, this post will briefly touch on three events that occurred on this day in history.

Ford's Theatere

The income tax originally came into being with the Revenue Act of 1861 in order to fund the Civil War.  War is expensive.  By January 1863, the year and month in which President Lincoln executed probably the most known executive order in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War was costing the North about $2.5 million a day.  In 1879 propeller heads calculated the North spent almost $6.2 billion on the four year war.  The South spent almost $2.1 billion.  By 1906, the North would spend another $3 billion in pension benefits for those who had served the North during the War of Rebellion.  Hence, a tax was needed to pay for the war, and the income tax came into being.  However, in 1894 the Supreme Court overturned the tax on the basis that it was contrary to the apportionment clause of the US Constitution.  In 1913 the Sixteenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified which gave power to Congress to establish tax rates for incomes without regard to the apportionment clause.  In 1863, tax day varied.  In 1913 tax day, for individuals, was set as March 1, in 1918 it became March 15 (a celebration of the Ides of March?), and in 1955 it became April 15.  This year tax day is April 18 because Washington D.C. celebrates Emancipation Day this Friday,  on April 15.

Peterson House

The President who signed the Revenue Act, and wrote and executed the Emancipation Proclamation was Abraham Lincoln.  As we all know Lincoln was shot in the back of the head the night of April 14.  His body was taken to the Peterson House across the street from Ford's Theatre where he died the next morning--April 15.  Of his memorable speeches, one ends with encouraging words.  It was his last major speech, his second inaugural address given on March 4, 1865.   This rather short address would conclude with the memorable sentence:  "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."  He would not be present to bind the nation's wounds following the Civil War, and the nation would struggle during the difficult period of Reconstruction.

RMS Titanic

While the nation would stuggle with Reconstruction that era would eventually give way to the gilded age.  An age of the everpresent "Robber Baron's" who would make a boatload of money.  They worked hard and played hard.  Cross Atlantic voyages were common, and shipping companies would work to make larger, faster and more elegant ships.  So it was that the Titanic was billed as an "unsinkable" ship, but as we know on its maiden voyage, the hubris of man was met by a large iceberg.  The ship would hit the iceberg on April 14, 1912, and would sink early the next morning in the cold dark waters of the north Atlantic on April 15.  The 1997 film, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, playing a young man from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, is second on the all time movie money list with almost $2.2 billion dollars.  Famous persons onthe ship, who themselves or their families had made money during the gilded age, included John Jacob Aster, Benjamin Guggenheim, and Molly Brown.  The Titanic, and a large number of souls found their way to the sea floor.  Who would expect a ship to sink on its first voyaage.  Certainly not the ship company as it lacked sufficient life boats for all persons on board.  That would not have made a difference as many of the boats used were only partially filled to the capacity.

Boston Marathon Bombing

Just as persons on the Titanic never expected to see the ship sink, so too three years ago did persons in Boston expect a terrorist attack.  Yet, that it what occurred on April 15--the Boston Marathon bombing.  If 9/11 provided a wake up call for the nation in terms of terrorist activity, the bombing in Boston showed the side of home grown terrorism.  Unfortunately, home grown terrorism has become more common as the Paris and Brussel's attacks over the past several months attest.  Islamic terrorism is reaping havoc over the much of the world.  It extends from the far east to the west.

Tax Day, normally

The old saying is that the only certainty in life is death and taxes.  So today, don't think of it as the common tax filing day, think of it as a day from which the nation has endured three tragedies.  One to a President who vowed, and completed the task of holding the nation together, but was never to implement his sentence in his second inaugraul.  The lost souls on the Titanic, from both those seeking a better life in the US, to those wealthy robber barons who flaunted their wealth.  Finally, there are those affected by an act of domestic terrorism, for which is a just one of a larger struggle against Islamic terrorism.  And, if you have yet to file your taxes, you have until you have until April 18, because of the celebration of Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C.  For that you can thank Abraham Lincoln.

Swing Away

It was on this date forty-two years ago, April 8, that Hammer'n Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit a home run to break a record set  almost forty years earlier Babe Ruth.  Ruth set his record on May 25, 1935.  In that game Ruth not only hit his last home run, but he went four for four at bat, with three of those hits being home runs.  I have never been much of a baseball fan, but most any sports fan can appreciate the power and skill of a home run ball.  I was fortunate to be able to attend two ALCS and one World Series game in 1982 as the Milwaukee Brewers' made a run to claim the title World Champion.

Hank Aaron, Milwaukee Braves

Hank Aaron began his baseball career with the Milwaukee Braves in 1954, less than a decade after the color barrier in baseball was broken by Jackie Robinson.  Twenty years later, while playing for the now Atlanta Braves he was hitting his record breaking 715th home run.  Aaron, who grew up in the south, was perhaps an unlikely candidate to hold the title of home run king until it was broken by Barry Bonds.  Due to the color barrier generations ago there was a Negro League, and Aaron was the last Negro League player to reach the Major leagues.  Aaron was quiet, and hard-working, and lacked the flash and bravado of other ball players who reach such a high pinnacle. But, that personality likely fit Milwaukee.  Milwaukee was community of hard-working blue collar workers, predominantly from German and Polish descent.

Just after hitting #715 on 8 April 1974

 Many of the Polish and German neighborhoods that made Milwaukee famous have transitioned to Latino or other ethnic groups.  As Milwaukee neighborhoods are in transition today, so was baseball and the nation at the time Hank Aaron played.  He was playing ball during the era of Martin Luther King, Jr.  He played during the turbulent 1960's.  He started his baseball career during the rise of the middle class of post World War II America, in the Eisenhower era of the 1950's.  The most home runs he had in a single year during his career was 47 in 1971.  1971 was the same year in which the nation saw the voting age lowered to 18, and the Supreme Court uphold busing.  It is also the year in which Walt Disney World opened in Florida.

Babe Ruth

While playing with the Milwaukee Braves in 1957, he was named Most Valuable Player.  The Braves won the National League Pennant.  In the World Series Hammer'n Hank would hit three home runs as the Milwaukee Braves would  upset the team a good number of persons love-to-hate--the New York Yankees. The Braves would relocate to Atlanta for the 1966 season, and Hank would play there until the conclusion of the 1974 season.  Aaron would return to blue-collar Milwaukee to play his last two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers.

1957 Milwaukee Braves

When baseball returned to Wisconsin with the Brewers in the 1970's, the team was in the American and not National League.  The more true to baseball nature of the National League left some in Wisconsin to become Cub fans.  Yet, Wisconsin enjoys its baseball.  I recall being at a Brewer--St. Louis Cardinal game in the 1990's when Mark McGwire, who was playing for the Cardinals and was chasing the record for most home runs in a single year.  The stadium was pretty much packed, and as McGwire came to bat even the Milwaukee fans stood to cheer to hope they could see him hit a home run.  This would be akin to Packer fans cheering for Tom Brady to get a touchdown pass at Lambeau field and set some sort of record.  The fans from Wisconsin were willing to set aside their home town allegiance for the glory to witness history.  Today there are probably as many persons who claim to have seen Aaron's record breaking hit as those who watched the Ice Bowl.

History is a single event, but those single events are interwoven among the milieu of America.   Hank Aaron, born one of seven siblings to a poor family from the divided south would rise to claim the hearts of many in the nation that evening 42 years ago.  He would swing away, go for broke to set a record.  Growing up he would hit bottle caps with sticks.  You have to wonder if he ever dreamt, as a young boy in the south, being in a major league stadium (the hit was in front of the largest crowd at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium of 53,775 persons) hitting a baseball out of the field for home run #715 and breaking an almost 40 year old record.  

Re-do

It is a cross cultural celebratory day that spans the globe. April Fools’ Day, or All Fools’ Day, provides a designated day of the year in which to prank or be the recipient of a prank or hoax. A light-hearted day for those who enjoy pulling an April Fool joke. April 1 became the designated day most likely due to the calendar re-do in the sixteenth century, some cultures have celebrated a version of April Fools’ Day in the spring for centuries before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.

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Mid-March to April 1 has been celebrated by pranks, puns and pro-foolish behavior probably since the Roman Festival of Hilaria, which was on March 25. This celebrated the resurrection of the Roman god Atticus. The Hindus have had for years the Holi Festival, another day celebrating the rite of spring. Perhaps spring, a season of new growth, is tied to the pranks and revelry as part of human nature. Everybody likes a good joke, provided that it is not at their expense. April Fools’ Day is like having “The Onion” concentrated into one day of the year. We humans have a tendency to view ourselves and life too seriously, and this one day allows for an expression of foolish behavior, or at least an excuse for such behavior.

Julius Caesar

April 1 became the date of celebrating foolish activity when the change from the Julian Calendar, declared by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, to the Gregorian Calendar was promulgated in 1582 AD. The Julian Calendar called for a leap year every four years, but that puts the calendar off the solar year by about 11 minutes a year. Not much for one year, but in 130 years the calendar is a full day off. Pope Gregory XIII sought to fix the calendar to make it more consistent with the earth’s rotation around the sun. What Pope Gregory promulgated was a calendar devised by Aloysius Lilius, an Italian physician and astronomer, which uses a leap year in every four years except if it is evenly divisible by 100, than it is not a leap year; the 29th day to February is added, however, when the year is evenly divisible by 400. The calendar is still not perfect, however, as it will be off a full day by 4909. Being off a day in 3,327 years is better than off by a day in 130 years. What the Pope had seen was that Easter was being pushed later and later beyond the first full moon after the spring equinox. Hence, it was no longer related to the moon cycle to which it was tied. Many countries that were primarily Catholic quickly decided to use the calendar for civil affairs. This would include Spain, France, Portugal and Italy. Protestant countries, forever fearful of a papal prank, put off adoption of the calendar. Since the Gregorian Calendar is now the common standard for much of the world, the Protestant fears were highly misplaced.

Holi Festival in India

What apparently occurred in France in 1582 is that persons who did not catch on the change in calendar, and that the day was now April 1, had tricks and pranks played on them by those who were more aware. As I study genealogy it becomes apparent that persons even into the 18th century were not as concerned with age and time as we modern folk. To them subsistence was more important than trying to remember their birth date. Luckily, they did not have a social security number with which to remember. The English did not change to the Gregorian Calendar until 1752, and Greece until 1923. Which begs the question, how did April Fools’ Day start in England before the institution of the Gregorian Calendar? Some see this as that fact that the calendar is not the explanation. However, the calendar change may well be the explanation. Those that discount the re-do of the calendar disregard is cultural transfer. Since even though they did not use the calendar, the cultural transfer of a day of pranks and hoaxes may well have made its way to English shore from France in the intervening years. The world is full of the effects of cultural transfer. Just as early Christianity played off pagan feasts, so too is do non-Christians today celebrate some Christian feast days, such as Christmas or Easter, albeit with the secular overtones of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Pope Gregory XIII

In 1984 a professor at Boston University noted his research found that April Fools’ Day actually came about during the reign of Emperor Constantine when the court jester, often the wise man in the room, was allowed to rule the sovereignty for a day. Media outlets liked this explanation. It was only later they found out that the explanation was a grand April Fools’ joke from the professor. Anthony Beevor in his book The Fall of Berlin which takes place in the spring of 1945, says the best April Fools day joke ever played was by Josef Stalin on the gullible Western Allies. He notes that Stalin always saw Berlin as the prize, although Eisenhower  he says never saw it as having strategic importance. Eisenhower did say that , but did he beleive it? Roosevelt was too frail to care. The British recognized and wanted to take Berlin, but minimized themselves by glory actions of Field Marshal Montgomery. Anyway, Stalin, in late March made the Western Allies believe that he too saw no strategic importance in Berlin and was moving forces south to take other areas. Of course, Stalin had no intention of doing this and clearly lied to the West to gain full and complete control of Berlin himself. If Berlin had no strategic importance to the Western Allies why did the Western Allies incessantly bombing Berlin? The reason is that the three powers had cut a secret deal on who would control what sections of Germany. Nonetheless, deceit can be turned into an April Fools’prank, just as a small prank to nag one’s sister, brother, friend or spouse.