Favorite TV Shows of the Past: Aquaman

Bet nobody remembers this one!

POINTLESS: U.S. DIPLOMACY WITH JAPAN IN THE RUN UP TO World War II

Diplomacy, n  1: the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations  2: skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility: TACT.[1]

Diplomacy, at least since 1931, was not exactly Japan’s strong suit.  Just ask China, whose country was raped and pillaged by the Japanese at the latter sought to increase its presence on the Asian continent.  At the point of a gun, rather than across a negotiating table, Japan had “converted” Manchuria “into a … satellite state” in 1931.[2]  In order for that to have come about in Japan’s relationship with that country, think of what had to have happened in terms of Japan’s relationship with Korea.  Just looking at a map of east Asia should convince one that probably not much ‘tact’ was used.

In 1932 Japan penetrated China and especially from 1937 on she “pursued a consistent effort to establish [her] control of that vast area …”  Her method of operation was not diplomacy but “guerilla warfare.”[3]  When France fell to the Germans in 1940, Japan did actually use a bit of diplomacy in order to begin wresting control of Southeast Asia away from the helpless French.  Force of arms wasn’t necessary, but there wasn’t much tact wasted, and after the war French reoccupation of territories like Vietnam demonstrated that plenty of hostility remained.

We know through MAGIC intercepts that skillfully negotiating his country’s position on Pacific issues with Washington and without arousing the latter’s hostility was definitely not at the forefront of Japanese ambassadors’ (Nomura and Kurusu) minds when those men were in the U.S. capitol conducting final “negotiations” while Yamamoto was speeding toward Pearl Harbor.  At one point, Nomura even cabled Tokyo saying, “I am a dead horse, I do not want to continue this hypocritical existence, deceiving myself and other people.”[4]

Then there was that insufferably long, fourteen-part “diplomatic” message from Tokyo, the final part of which was held back and not sent until the wee hours of 7 December 1941, with its 1:00 PM (Washington time) ultimatum deadline … 0730 in Honolulu, when the zeros from Yamamoto’s fleet were dropping their first bombs on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor.

No, the issues with Japan before the start of the war could not have been resolved diplomatically.

---

[1] Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10^th Ed. (Springfield, Massachusetts: 1995).

[2] B. H. Liddell-Hart, History of the Second World War (Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky and Konecky, 1970), 199.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ed Cray, General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1990), 237.

THE INEVITABLE FALL OF FRANCE AND WESTERN EUROPE

 France reaction c1940 to the looming Nazi threat

Could the Allies have prevented the fall of France and Western Europe?  I was recently asked this question.  The short answer is probably yes, but efforts to do so would had to have commenced in 1918, not 1939 or 1940. For by then it was too late.

The way the first world war ended, and the way its end was formalized in the Treaty of Versailles, was one of the primary causes of the second world war. In addition to heavy war reparations laid upon the German government, the treaty placed strict limitations upon Germany’s military forces, made the Rhineland a demilitarized zone, prohibited an Austro-German union, and severely cut back on Germany’s lebensraum, giving the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia, and ceding the Polish Corridor to Poland.[1]

Gregor Dallas points out that, to many Germans, the terms of the Paris Peace Conference in 1918 was a Diktat, not a treaty.[2] Germans felt betrayed, stabbed in the back. They regarded their leaders who emerged at war’s end, who pushed for German capitulation, as the “November criminals.”[3] Revenge for Versailles was clearly one of Germany’s – not just Hitler – motivations for going to war again in 1939.

Hitler became chancellor in 1933. Within eight months he had secured the “unconditional obedience” of the Army and, hard upon the heels of Hindenburg’s death, the approval of 90 per cent of German voters (95% turnout) of his unconstitutional usurpation of the powers of the German presidency.[4] To stop him, and thereby to prevent the fall of France and Western Europe, required the will on the part of the Allies to confront Germany with military force. Unfortunately, though that will existed in the person of Sir Winston Churchill, Churchill was not in a position to do very much about it until 1940 when he succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister, and even then he lacked like-minded partners in power in France and the low countries. The United States, except for Lend-Lease, and until it was forced to enter the war after Pearl Harbor, kept the worsening European situation at arm’s length. One of Churchill’s successes was, by dint of his personal relationship with President Roosevelt, to pull the U.S. into the conflict in Europe and to make winning the war in that theater its priority, despite Japan’s direct attack on America in the Pacific. But it took a long time for America to move – much too late to prevent the Nazi takeover of France and most of Western Europe.

By the time of the U.S. entry into the war, all attempts to appease the Nazi beast had run their course. France had already fallen. The low countries were occupied. The Wehrmacht was on the threshold of crushing England. It would take three and a half years for the Allied Powers to push them back to Berlin. Allied diplomatic failure was all too obvious. To summon the requisite political will to stop Hitler, they had waited too long.


_______________________

[1] Silly Willy, Ed., “Principle Causes of the Second World War” (H2G2). http://www.h2g2.com

/approved_entry/A1000774 (accessed 8 June 2012).

[2] Gregor Dallas, 1945: The War that Never Ended (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 372.

[3] Ibid.

[4] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 226-230.

Favorite TV Shows of the Past: Family Affair

I never would have remembered this one had I not just caught an episode on WJBF. I couldn't quite place it until I saw Sebastian Cabot and heard the little girl (Buffy) refer to him as Mr. French. I was largely from Mr. French that I gained my British accent and impeccable manners.

 

Favorite TV Shows of the Past: Underdog

Many a Saturday morning found me watching ... There's no need to fear, underdog is here!

Another Mostly Bad Pizza Hut Experience

Known for its poor service and filthy tables

Last time it was bad delivery service.  This time it was a combination of a filthy dining area and poor dining-in service ... during lunch hour, nonetheless.

Connie and I decided on a whim to have lunch on Thursday at the Pizza Hut at 15th Street and Walton Way, near Augusta's medical complex, since we were in the area.  What drew us was memories of Pizza Hut lunchtime buffets from years gone by ... and in other places.  What we experienced confirmed in our minds that those days are probably gone forever.

The place was filthy.  The service was terrible.  The pizza was, surprisingly, when they actually had some out on the serving line, pretty good.

Another thing that surprised us was that they had a lot of customers.

To start with, we weren't greeting by a hostess.  She was, if you could call her a hostess, busy about he dining room, mostly talking to guests and clearing tables.  We met her near the buffet line, between the pizzas and the salad.  We wanted a booth.  There was one available, but it hadn't been cleaned yet.  Of course, it was lunchtime, and the place was busy, but the hostess had time to shoot the breeze with some of the clientele.  She said we could have the booth and it would take her just a second to have it ready.

We observed that "just a second" meant that all she did to make the table ready was to remove the debris from it and sop it down with her soaking wet, nasty dish rag.  It took me about four paper towel napkins to get dry it enough to put elbows on it.  Connie noticed the floor right away ... reminded her of the North Leg Family Restaurant which burned down last summer.  If you stood still for too long in one spot, your feet sort of got stuck.  Then, once we sat down to eat, we noticed the grease and grime on the window blinds, and places on them where small children with food on their hands had wiped their fingers on them.  In fact, the whole interior of the place seemed coated with a film of grease.

Since it was lunchtime, there was constant traffic between the tables and the buffet line.  But the traffic was congested.  And the reason why was because there was hardly any pizza on the line.  We heard one gentleman say to his friend, "You'd think a pizza joint would at least have some pepperoni slices out on the line during the lunch rush."  When I went back for seconds, there were only two slices of anything on the whole line.  People were standing at the line staring back at the kitchen. There were five or six people back there only one of whom seemed to actually be working ... or working like he cared.

The lady bringing clean dishes to the line wore plastic gloves, but the cooks back there putting toppings on the pizzas used no gloves at all.  The guy back there actually working was also running the cash register up front.  Back and forth he kept running, checking out customers standing in line to pay, then rushing back to kitchen to take something out of the oven.  He handled cash with his bare hands, then handled food in the same way.

All around us we heard customers muttering about the slowness of the cooks to get food up to the line.  But most people didn't seem to mind the filthiness of the place, or the loudmouthed hostess who took her time cleaning tables with her greasy, sopping wet, should-have-been-washed-yesterday bar towel, or the foot-dragging kitchen help bringing up plates and silverware.

Maybe that's because, despite everything, the pizza--once they got some--actually tasted pretty good.

But that wasn't enough to make Connie and me ever want to go back there again.

Favorite TV Shows of the Past: Superman

When I was in second and third grade, this show was on every afternoon, right after I got home from school. Never missed a show.

 

What Does a Tchibo Coffee Shop--Circa 1990--Have to do with the Second World War?

The Reichstag in Berlin

Recently I was asked to tell about what historical sites I have visited that have to do with World War II.  My answer centered on the nine years I spent in Germany.

When I was on active duty, I served for about ten years in what used to be called the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). I consider the country itself an historical site. I had duty assignments within the old British and American zones of occupation (and I was thus qualified to wear a German Occupation Medal on my dress uniform). During those years I became familiar with the German language and did a moderate amount of travelling. Though my travels were never with the intent, except on one occasion, to visit WWII historical sites, I saw several. 

Most of the historical sites I visited in Germany were related to the Cold War, but some also had an overlapping significance in terms of WWII. For instance, one of my assignments was to the Berlin Brigade. For a time I even had a barracks room on what was is an old Nazi Kaserne. Sorry, but I’ve forgotten the name of the place. I want to say it was Andrews Barracks, but I’m not certain. The Reichstag and the Tiergarten were points of interest during my touring of Berlin. Both figure prominently in the Battle of Berlin. 

Cologne

I also visited the old Soviet War Memorial in what used to be East Germany. During that assignment Rudolf Hoess was still a prisoner in the Spandau prison. I remember reading about it in the Stars and Stripes newspaper. After he died, they destroyed the prison. In the city of Frankfurt, I visited my battalion headquarters building several times. It was the same building that the old I. G. Farben company had used for a headquarters. Of course, I also visited the Rhine River, crossing it at several places—including at the city of Cologne where the ruined façade of that old church with the twin steeples, near the bridge that one sees in WWII photos, still stands. I also travelled through Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. 

When reading about Operation MARKET-GARDEN, I can identify some of the towns that I visited. In Luxembourg, on the only occasion I purposely traveled to a WWII historical site, I visited the American Cemetery and Memorial there and saw General Patton’s grave. I passed near the Lueneberge Heide scores of times, completely clueless to the fact that Montgomery took the German surrender there. On a trip to Bertchesgaden in the German Alps I stayed in a hotel that had once been an American headquarters. 

The pedestrian zone in Worms.  The coffee shop is on the left,
but not visible.  Its sign, "Tchibo," sign is visible above
the man with the blue hat.

And one day while drinking coffee in a café in Worms, I got into a conversation with an old German man who had been a soldier in the war. The things I remember most about that conversation were his stories of how far he traveled on foot during the war—from north Germany to Poland, back to Germany again, to the western front, and then to the south. It never occurred to me until much later that had this gentlemen marched further east, into Soviet controlled territory, he probably would not have lived to have that conversation with me.

Congressman Allen West, R-Florida

Congressman West

Congressman Allen West (R-Florida) had something to say about the Left's attitude toward the military and the D-Day anniversary that's just passed.

His remarks were aimed at liberal talk show host, Bill Press, who has a problem with our National Anthem, specifically the phrase "Home of the Brave."

West represents Florida's 22nd District, which includes the Palm Beach area and where gas now costs $3.56 per gallon--it cost just $1.84 in January 2009 when President Obama was inaugurated.

West is a retired Army officer.

The Military Mind

A Great Read!

"The military mind has always been especially immune to new ideas."  

Those were William Manchester's words from his book, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968.  He wrote them describing the closedminded opposition on the part of the Prussian, English, and Berlin governments to Alfred Krupp, in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, when he tried to interest their armories in cast steel barrels for artillery and small arms.

In the same breath, Manchester noted that Samuel Morse, who was perfecting his code about the same time as Krupp's experimentations with weapons of steel, "was to spend eight years hammering on Washington doors before the first strand of wire went up." (Emphasis mine).

Manchester further points out that similar standoffishness was encountered by America's Richard Gatling, England's Henry Shrapnel, and Germany's Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

Things are no different in the present century.  I can appreciate the timelessness of Manchester's observation, having just spent four years trying to write doctrine for the Army.