Nanking Massacre: Part 2 - Atrocities

This blog won't be an easy one to write. I've covered some pretty dark stuff, that's for certain, but nothing quite like this before. It poses some unique problems. This entire segment will be about a horrific massacre of an innocent, peaceful city. I've been able to joke around about some truly awful things, but a mass murder that rightfully draws comparisons to the Holocaust isn't something that should be approached facetiously. Worse yet, the degree in which many people still decline to acknowledge what happened in Nanking makes the issue still current, so while saying "too soon" might be off, there have been recent events that have reopened the wound. So, to my avid readers (realistically just my father) this one won't be as fun loving, save for my photo captions - I can't break my mould. In the same breath, I won't go too into detail as many of the stories are too awful for the intents and purposes of this blog. I'll also keep the pictures P.G., but remember - if you search for more information on this independently, brace yourself, because there are things you will not want to see.

Prince Asaka, presumably
before releasing
"When Doves Cry."

Anyways.

The Chinese city of Nanking surrenders to the Japanese in the late months of 1937. The general at the time, Iwane Matsui, wished to take the city but to leave it virtually untouched. He demanded violence only be subjected to those that rebelled against the takeover, and that looting be off-limits. Those that broke those rules would be punished for their actions. This seemed all well and good until Matsui came down with tuberculosis, placing a member of the Imperial royal family in charge - one Prince Asaka Yasuhiko. (Note: it may be Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, and it seems to be written multiple ways due to Japanese naming conventions I do not understand; the same goes for Matsui. From this point on I will refer to them as Matsui and Asaka, as that seems to be most common.) Asaka saw the situation differently; taking that many prisoners (many of them soldiers) would mean feeding and keeping watch over them, which would be an economic strain to the army. Because of this, and with the running feeling of contempt towards the Chinese population, he then put out the order to kill all the captives. It's a matter of some debate whether he directly sent out that order or not, but it did come from a higher up with his seal. Regardless of whether or not the order came from his hand, he certainly did nothing to stop it.

From here, one of the worst, most savage massacres of a large population in history occurred at the hands of the Japanese army. The remaining soldiers, of which there were likely about 90,000 or so, were systematically taken aside and executed. Men were killed in droves in this manner, taken away in groups to limit the chance of an uprising. Many thought they were simply being transported elsewhere until they would see the piles of corpses to which they were being led.

The citizens fared no better. Civilians were killed in the streets and tossed into the adjacent river. Women, children, the elderly - no single person was off limits, and would be killed where they stood. The soldiers would move from house to house, eliminating entire families of Chinese.

The article about the "sword competition". It's like they
knew what Hitler was going to do and tried to match
him on the villany scale.

The women fared the worst; they would be raped regardless of age, sometimes being passed around to up to twenty men. Crimes of that nature would occur openly, and while it was technically against the orders that were sent down, it was shockingly common. It became such an issue that they set up a system of "comfort women" houses, essentially a government sanctioned ring of prostitution, to slow the number of rapes that were occurring. It would be decades before anyone would speak up about this because of the shame that would be wrought on the individual women that had survived the ordeal; Chinese culture placed a strong emphasis on the purity of women, and admitting they were defiled in this manner would be a terrible ordeal in and of itself. The Japanese government would deny that the prostitution ring existed, but documents addressing it from high-ranking officials confirmed its presence.

However, it wasn't only the women that would find hardships. Death from execution is far from the worst that could happen; many of the citizens had to endure much worse. Many were buried alive, mutilated for sport, burned to death, frozen in the river, or ripped apart by dogs. Famously, an article details a competition between two men over who could kill one hundred prisoners with a sword first. While many of the details are simply too grisly to discuss here, I'll leave you with this: one confession from a Japanese soldier is as follows. I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart.

"Few know that soldiers impaled babies on bayonets and tossed them still alive in pots of boiling water. They gang-raped women from the ages of twelve to eighty and then killed them when they could no longer satisfy sexual requirements. I beheaded people, starved them to death, burned them, and buried them alive, over two hundred in all. It is terrible that I could turn into an animal and do these things. There are really no words to explain what I was doing. I was truly a devil."

The death toll skyrocketed in the first six weeks, the most brutal of the killings. The numbers fluctuate, but the best estimates factoring everything in come to around 250,000-400,000 people killed in the city of Nanking alone. Bear in mind that the population of the city was roughly 500,000-600,000 by the time the citizens that had the fortune of getting away had left and by the time the Japanese arrived. These deaths weren't from area bombings or other methods of indiscriminate killing - these were individual and personal, one person killing another. The city itself lay in ruins as well, with $836,000,000 in public property damage and another $136,000,000 in private property. 

John Rabe: One of two Nazis history is
OK with. The other is the guy from
Schindler's List.

What prevented the total destruction of the city of Nanking was a small group of foreigners that were residing in Nanking. A little over two dozen from Europe and America, they set up a safe zone that were off-limits to the Japanese soldiers. They were led by the most unlikely of heroes; John Rabe, a high ranking Nazi. Every last one of them worked tirelessly, bringing members into the safe zone and sending away Japanese that did not respect the boundaries. They did not have weapons, but would scare them off by their status or through physically grabbing soldiers and sending them away. Attacking these individuals would have led to an international incident, so they managed to hold back the army until things began to settle. While the Japanese were not particularly intimidated by the Americans, they were frequently dissuaded by two Nazis (especially John Rabe) that would flash their Swastika badge at every opportunity. Fearful of allied Nazi reprisal, the Japanese held their distance. The zone accommodated 200-300,000 people, saving them from the tortures and brutality of the Japanese army. It's truly a story of incredible heroism, with such a massive number of lives saved by the efforts of so few. 

If this story has your blood boiling, well, I wish I could say it gets better. The response, from seemingly every party, including a number of Japanese officials, the Chinese government, and many others pours salt on the wound. That, however, will be saved for the final installment.

The Atomic Bomb: Part 3 - Nuclear Stockpiling

A picture the Tsar bomb from (literally) 100 miles away.
Hippies everywhere flocked to the explosion upon seeing
the 'shroom, but were disappointed to discover
it was only a cloud. 

We left off with Russia having the bomb, America having the bomb, and both of them staring at each other flexing like two of the toughest guys at the bar who have had a bit too much to drink, believing that they are indeed the strongest. Now, don't get me wrong, nukes are strong - but are they strong enough? The scientists apparently looked at the bomb and thought, yeah, it can blow up a city, but can't it get any bigger? Well, the answer is yes - it certainly can. You just need to use the power of the sun, but not in some sissy "solar power saving the world" type way. We want the "solar power annihilating the crap out of everything" way! Now, it's not putting a solar panel on a bomb, it's fusing hydrogen atoms in a similar manner to how the sun produces energy. Or exactly the same manner on a smaller scale - I don't know. Either way, the result is an explosion that dwarfs the previous ones.

The hydrogen bomb was developed just a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it wasn't the end of ever increasing bomb sizes. Bombs kept getting larger until the Russians developed the Tsar Bomb, a hydrogen bomb that was (and still is) the most powerful nuclear bomb ever created. The Tsar was dropped in 1961 as one of many nuclear tests. The blast was fifty megatons, or fifty million tons of T.N.T., well over a thousand times more powerful than the ones dropped on the Japanese. 

Well, it's a graph. It explains itself. I don't need a caption
for it, but I would feel so empty without one.

Bomb production skyrocketed as well. The idea was mutual for each superpower; if their enemy had a lot of nukes then they could destroy their country, so they had to ensure that they in turn held enough nukes to destroy them back, thus preventing them from firing in the first place. So on they built, ensuring that even if the Russians wanted to bomb Buford, Wyoming (wikipedia tells me it's the smallest town in America, with a population of one, somehow) they could do it, and if America wanted to bomb the smallest Russian town right back they certainly could as well. It was an arms race, which works perfectly with my metaphor of the two tough guys in the bar, but I'll pass on adding another pun to this blog series.

So just how many bombs did they build? In 1947 the U.S. had 13. 1953 saw that number up to 1,100. Late '60s, 31,000. Between the two of them there were 60,000 nuclear weapons with 36 different types hanging around in the world. 

The nukes weren't just sitting there, though; plenty of them were being used for testing, just not on people. A few hundred were tested but the environmental effects were worrisome, causing the signing of a treaty in 1963 to no longer test the bombs in the atmosphere, space, on the ground or underwater. Great! That just meant that they would test them underground, where another eight hundred or so were tested until they stopped in 1992. Take that, mother Earth!

A crater left by a nuclear test, awaiting the winter to be
once more used as a hill for tobogganing.

While I won't delve deeply into the happenings of the Cold War, both sides eventually pulled out and didn't bomb each other to smithereens, leaving us in some post-apocalyptic video game world. But what would have happened had the bomb not been there in the first place? Would the Soviet Union and the United States have fought with troops instead? It could very well have caused another colossal war. Since, the number of nuclear bombs has decreased greatly, but the number of countries that own them hasn't. The U.S. and Russia obviously still have them, but add to that list India, Israel, China, France, Pakistan and North Korea, according to the Huffington Post. Now, those countries have a very, very small piece of the pie, but Japan would be the first to remind you of what just two nuclear bombs, much smaller than what we have now, can do. 

__________________________________________

The information for this blog was taken from the documentary The Bomb, a PBS program. 

The Atomic Bomb: Part 2 - The Bomb in Use

"Hooray," thought the Americans. "We have the bomb! So... now what?"

What happens when you detonate a nuke underwater.
The centre is a massive column of water. They sought to test
"what happens when we blow up a bomb under the ocean?"
and came up with "it explodes". 

Bombing Germany was no longer necessary. They had just surrendered a few months prior to the full development and trial of the nuke, and unless the Americans wanted to prove a point, they weren't planning on using it on them anytime soon (unless in an unlikely Zombie Hitler scenario). So that leaves Japan, the never surrender, everything for the Emperor fighters that in spite of everything around them refuse to back down. The scientists were fifty-fifty with the rather obvious moral implications. Dropping a bomb on a Japanese city is no longer attacking soldiers - it's all civilian casualties, and a massive number of them in one fell swoop. However, to perpetuate the war for however long the Japanese were planning on holding out for (which may well have been to the very last able bodied soldier went down) would have meant losing a great number of American soldiers and postponed the end of the horrors of war. That might not play well with a public (and army) that is weary of battle and believes they have an option to eliminate the enemy without the loss of their own. It's a loaded question with no easy answer - but that's not what we're here to discuss.

Years later, Apollo Creed called out the
Russians in a similar fashion. Living
in America...

The much better route would have been negotiating an unconditional surrender. There was just one burning word in there that the Japanese couldn't accept; "unconditional". They wished to oversee their own war crimes trial, to keep their Emperor, and avoid occupation. The Americans disagreed with the terms, and the "Little Boy" was placed in a B-29 bomber and dropped over Hiroshima. Exploding well above the ground, a ten thousand degree blast levelled a whole quarter mile with a shockwave that pushed out much further. 80,000 die in something that has never been seen in war before; that many losses from one person flying one bomb with one plane - it wasn't an army and there were no risks, but that level of destruction was now on the table at a moment's notice. Even then, the Japanese would not surrender and the "Fat Man" bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. 70,000 were killed. 

This is all common knowledge. What isn't as well known is that Nagasaki wasn't the original target; Kokura was meant to be the victim of the Fat Man but a cloudy day prevented it. Clear skies in Nagasaki is what doomed those people to a fiery death, the blast strong enough to sometimes leave haunting shadowy imprints from where their bodies absorbed the heat. The Japanese Army still did not wish to surrender, but deferred to the Emperor's wishes to finally give in. President Truman says it was unconditional in a speech to the public, but that isn't entirely true - they accepted the condition of keeping their Emperor in which the Japanese held so dear.

The arms race officially begins once Stalin sees pictures of the devastation wrought at Hiroshima. Stalin was not surprised at the knowledge that the Americans had the bomb as he had not one but two men on the inside at Los Alamos. Klaus Fuchs was a communist that sent information back to Stalin. One could say he was Klaus to Fuchs-ing up the operation until the Americans focussed on Stalin the flow of information to the Soviets. (YES!) A second soviet in disguise, Theodore Hall, was also found to be sending information. He must have had a Hall of a time explaining that one. (DOUBLE YES!)

"Sweet Enola Gay, son!"
It was said the bomb was detonated from the height of the man's
shorts on the left.

The post-bombing world effectively started the Cold War, full of proxy battles, Doomsday Clocks, and a whole bunch of movies about Vietnam (Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now 2: Apocalypse Yesterday). Russia was eager to get the bomb and had their own team working on it, and the Americans were eager to perfect it. The Los Alamos lab grew rapidly and tests become far more common. The first mass produced bomb is created, and suddenly you have something capable of dealing out massive quantities of death indiscriminately and all the time it takes to make them is about a week (or half a fortnight). 

To make matters worse, and when the Cold War really kicks off, is when Russia produces their first atomic bomb. Suddenly, they're on the same level as the U.S. again, capable of destroying them just as surely as the States could destroy the Soviets. Nuclear arsenals mount for decades, and fear becomes the predominant emotion of the civilian population as the idea that their lives could be snuffed out at any given moment. That prospect is not only a possibility but a very real and not unlikely one. 

Plus, in the early '70s, Canada heroically defeated the Soviet Union in hockey, which left them really cheesed off. 

The Atomic Bomb: Part 1 - Putting it Together

Thankfully, there aren't a lot of things in the world that could wipe out humanity. Sure, nature has a few tricks up her sleeve (I'm looking at you, Yellowstone National Park) but we've for the most part limited our self-destruction to non-human-race-ending mechanisms. That is, until the bomb. No, not the classic Nintendo game Bomberman 64 - nor Bomberman Ultra, nor Bomberman Jetters, Bomberman Generation, Bomberman Hero, Bomberman Quest or... well, any of the Bomberman series that's put together in the 40 minute YouTube clip about the series' history. I mean the atomic bomb, the one that is capable of knocking out cities and irradiating what it doesn't flatten. The kind of bombs that the world had 60,000 of at one time, and still has well over 10,000. It wouldn't be the blast that would kill the Earth - more so, it would the the drastic changes it atmosphere. Think of global warming, but sped up, but only after a nuclear winter. Similar to volcanoes, dust would cloud the sky and block out the sun, lowering the Earth's temperature enough to cause crop yields to drop, leading to horrible famines. It would also knock out the o-zone, which, if you haven't been listening to the news lately, is really nothing but a negative. 

So how did we come to possess these weapons, and why?

Robert Oppenheimer with Albert Einstein, working
diligently on a crossword puzzle.

In Germany, 1938, scientists discovered they could split the nucleus in the uranium atom - discovering fission. Out of a very small amount of material, they could now produce an absolutely enormous amount of energy. Out of that information, the Allied countries feared that the Nazis were on the verge of creating an atomic bomb. Nazi atomic bombs is about as fear-inducing a stretch of words that could be said while on the brink of a world war. (It would also make a great band name!) Even the U.S., despite not entering the war for some time, were wary of this. Any major power with an unmatched weapon is going to cause an alarm. Right away, Roosevelt authorized a project to get down and dirty with uranium in an attempt to get that bomb before anyone else could. He tasks General Leslie Groves to do this, although it seemed at the time like an impossible task, and perhaps a bit of a career killer. Regardless, Groves then scoured the U.S. in an attempt to round up the best scientists America had to offer, choosing to place Robert Oppenheimer at the helm. It was a team of America's best and brightest, with the average age being... wait, 25?! Groves must have chosen the scientists like television would have cast them - choose mid-twenty year olds regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

Originally thought to be a picture taken within the first
few milliseconds of the Trinity Test, this photo has
been proven to be a pimple.

They took the team of scientists and sent them to Los Alamos, a place built for them to work on the bomb in solitude. The British sent over a number of scientists as well, one of them a German-born communist by the name of Klaus Fuchs. (Remember him for future blogs; I'll likely make a pun on his last name.) They had to be isolated and completely in secret because any slip of information could turn the tide of the whole war. Communication with the outside world was minimal, as there had to be no distractions. This is where the this rag-tag bunch of youngsters begin to build what they refer to only as "the gadget" - the bomb's blueprint and shell, as well as the method in which it detonates. After a while, they figured out how it would work but they had one major hang-up; what are they going to put in it that was actually going to explode?

What they used to drop the bomb in the Trinity
Test. The clouds, sensing the danger, are
bidding a hasty retreat.

It was no easy task; fuel for these explosions was not very easy to come by. Uranium was the prime candidate, but it takes a very long time to strip what you need from it to make it useable. Naturally occurring uranium doesn't cut it (because science) and you need this special kind of uranium that is within regular uranium. Or something. Again, science. Anyways, Groves had a giant complex built to extract it but when you're getting this stuff one atom at a time, it wasn't going to be able to destroy anything any time soon - even if you only needed a few pounds of it. Out of luck on that front, they searched for a new substance to replace uranium and arrived at the more spacey sounding plutonium, which would serve the same explosive purpose. However, plutonium can be manufactured (harvested? created? conjured? I'm not sure how plutonium comes to be) much faster, so Groves went and had another set of buildings created to produce plutonium instead. Remember that this is wartime here; if something needs to get done, it gets done. Cost is irrelevant. It's like giving a credit card to a teenage girl in a shopping mall; you're going to have a lot more things, a lot less money, and you're not entirely sure if you need any of it.

The bomb was created and ready for testing after three years and two billion dollars (but old two billion dollars, so think of a much larger number to convert it to modern day currency, then add a zero). The Trinity Test was the first run at a nuclear bomb, and it was hoisted up a short drop from the ground - notably without the explosive inside (they had mattresses underneath it in case it fell - the whole operation costs billions and they use the same method of cushioning that boys use to practice backflips as teenagers). They then brought in the plutonium, delivered by car in the most casual fashion, and placed the explosive material inside. They retreated to a safe distance and ran the test.

From there, they watched a monumental moment in history. Now, I know, I know, that's a cliche - but if ever there's a time to use it it's then. The atomic age was upon them in a massive blast of ash and fire, and from then on war would never be the same.

Winston Churchill: Part 3 - Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat

So the World War is over and all of Europe is abuzz about this Hitler fella. Many of the Brits thought he was a bright young chap, and the kind of person they could get behind - the Nazis could be a good friend of the British. One politician praised Hitler, even going as far as comparing him to George Washington. Most people were more scared of the Bolsheviks at the time, even going as far to think that the Nazis and Fascism might stand to hold off the reds to some degree. As we have it in the 1930s, Britain seems to be growing ever fonder towards Hitler; Churchill is seen as a man prone to mistakes who had gotten his party kicked out of leadership, and then scuttled back to the Conservatives. It made him appear as an opportunist, and judging by some of his decisions and history, perhaps a bit of a warmonger.

Churchill's smile could light up a room.

It speaks to his character that he could bounce back the way he did. He was frequently controversial, but he was incorruptible and believed in his values. Say what you want about Churchill, but when he was in on something, he was in wholeheartedly. He was also one of few that distrusted the Nazis many years before they went full crazy.

Fast forward to World War II, and it would seem the world had turned topsy-turvy from what many of the citizenship (as well as a number of high ranking politicians) would have imagined. Hitler is destroying Europe, and things are looking bleak. I mean, really, really spectacularly bleak. Neville Chamberlain, then Prime Minister, had grossly underestimated Hitler's power. Appeasement of the Nazis was not only on the table but seemed a very reasonable course of action. The press was lobbying for talks with the Nazis, and the beleaguered forces of Britain would find it difficult to find the resolve to state that yes, they wished to continue fighting on what seemed like steadily diminishing odds. Think about what that would mean - appeasement would likely lead to disarmament, meaning Britain would be effectively taken out of the war. Who is to say how history would have changed had that occurred?

Chamberlain, acknowledging that he is not fit to lead Britain through those trying times, steps down. He advises the king on appointing Churchill, whom at that time was the Lord of the Admiralty as he had been in the first war, and back in those days, the word of the king was something that meant a heck of a lot more than it does now. Shortly after, Britain is on the brink of giving in to the might of the Nazi war machine, and Churchill takes the reins on May 10th, 1940. On the 18th, Churchill gives an impassioned speech to inspire the troops and politicians alike in fighting on, containing this powerful quote: "If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground." Holy crap, I think that just made me want to go to war for Britain. Well, in a video game maybe... and as a Canadian fighting with the British... but still, it's a great line.

One cannot overestimate the gravity of that decision for the British people. Within a year, thirty-thousand British were dead, mostly by the hands of the Germans. The stress must have been so strong one can hardly imagine, but war energized him, reportedly looking healthier and more alive than in decades. That spirit gave him the ability to make another unthinkably difficult choice in July of the same year; this one with the handling of a French harbour. In July of 1940, France was essentially Nazi territory, and the Germans were rapidly approaching their shipyards. The French ships were state of the art, top class vessels that could very well turn the tide of a war if they fell into the wrong hands. Churchill demanded that they either sail the ships out or scuttle them (pop a hole in the bottom of the boat) rather than risk them being used in helping their enemy. It was a dreadfully tense situation, and French reinforcements were coming and would find a number of British ships with their weapon sights locked-on to their own boats. Churchill urged the French, but they wouldn't listen; they didn't believe the Nazis would be able to overtake the harbour and steal their ships before they sailed them out. Churchill didn't want to take the chance, and time was of the essence.

The horrible tragedy that launched the Milton Bradley game.

The British fired upon the harbour, killing 1,297 Frenchmen, damaged five ships, and sinking a battleship. The French saw it as nothing short of a betrayal, and it's easy to understand why. It remains to this day a controversial move. If anything, it shows that Britain was in it to the last, would fight to the end, and any other cliched statements that are now used predominantly in sports movies.

Amidst all the war preparations and strategizing, he had to rally the public and the soldiers through his speeches. Fortunately, Churchill had to be one of the greatest speakers of all time. Both his willingness and history of being up close and personal in battle adds authenticity to when he calls for Britain to stand tall. Take this speech for instance:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. 

Chief Clancy Wig- I mean, Winston Churchill
during an air raid.

I'm not typically one for quoting whole paragraphs, but it's really something else. Plus, it leads me into the next section of Churchill's ambitions: to bring America into the war (and maybe work on reducing run-on sentences in his speeches). Churchill met with Franklin Roosevelt countless times during his run as P.M.. He had a strong relationship with F.D.R., which meant that the U.S. helped provide the British with close military help if not direct aid in manpower. Of course, it was Pearl Harbour that brought more than just American weapons to the European theatre, ultimately turning the tide against the Germans, but in the times leading up to the attack it was Churchill that had them shipping weapons.

Right when the Allies won the war (spoiler) Churchill lost his seat as Prime Minister. From there, he continued warning against the Russian powers (turns out he called that one too) before once again being elected as Prime Minister.

Winston Churchill died in 1965, leaving quite the legacy. He had been of critical importance in both world wars, served twice as P.M., won the Nobel prize, and fought in armed combat personally on multiple occasions. I don't think we've seen another politician quite like him. I don't think we ever will.

Winston Churchill: Part 1 - The Man Himself

"Yes, mother, I am quite dapper"
says Winston, aged 7.

Winston Churchill was a politician that in no possible circumstance could exist today. His bravery and constant desire to be close to the line of fire would have his bodyguards shaking in their boots; his strong views would cause the party in which he belonged panic (let alone the fact that he switched from the Conservatives to the Liberals and then back again, which by all means should be political suicide enough); and his quick but often abrasive wit would surely get him in trouble time and time again, causing what would now be a massive political scandal on a bi-weekly basis. My personal favourite quote has Churchill being accused of being a little under the influence. "Winston, you are drunk", she said. He replies, "Madam, you are ugly, and I will be sober in the morning." (Note - a number of his quotes have changed albeit slightly over the years, so you may have heard it slightly differently.) It has to be the best political "burn" since the countless quips of the Spartans. In all fairness to the presumedly ugly woman, he probably was drunk at the time as he had a propensity to be drinking and smoking at every waking hour, adding to his mystique in that one wonders how he survived past thirty with his lifestyle and habits. So in a nutshell - he's as quick with his words as he is rushing into a fight. Somewhere along the way he would find the time to win the Nobel Prize in literature. But that's the understanding of wartime Churchill - let's start with how he got there.

The Churchill family home. I bet they film Downton Abbey
here.

Churchill wasn't a product of a rough neighbourhood that led him to be so astoundingly courageous in the many wars in which he participated. In fact, quite the opposite - he was born into wealth and class, and darn near became the Duke of Marlborough (I assume that's prestigious). His father was a renowned politician, and his family dynasty includes one of Britain's great military heroes that fought with the French - and seeing as how no one likes the French, that must have helped a lot. That doesn't mean he had an easy life, though. His father Randolph was as bristly in personality as colossal Victorian era British moustaches are in feel, always disapproving of Winston and being astonishingly open of his disappointment in his son. He just wasn't what one would call a loving father; in one letter to his Winston, he instructs him to refrain from calling him such an affectionate term as Papa and to use the more formal word, father.

Sheesh.

Winston frequently sought the approval from his father he so sorely lacked. He followed in his footsteps, becoming a wealthy reporter in South Africa (just like his father) and became a politician that was skilled in the art of rabble-rousing (switching parties, just like Randolph). What is strange is Winston seemed like a pretty good kid, and if anything it was Randolph that fell short. He died when Winston just hit his twenties from syphilis, which, just as it does now, has certain connotations that ruined his political career and caused him a great deal of shame. Winston felt Randolph deserved better, and sought to restore the family name. (Spoiler - he succeeds.)

Churchill in full military regalia. Amazingly,
he has retained his ability to stay dapper.

Around the time of his father's death, Winston began his lengthy and prestigious military career. Starting in Cuba at age twenty as a British officer and front lines reporter, he then moved on to India, Sudan and the Boer War, before the big two. During these battles Churchill seemed to almost have a suicidal level of daring, charging into battle and taking a strange level of enjoyment in bullets whizzing past his head time and time again. In his life, he would be shot at on four separate continents, which seems like something only a handful of people could say, let alone arguably the most famous Prime Minister in British history. He revelled in war, feeling a great deal of excitement - somehow. This plays well into his later years, frequently requesting to be closer to the front lines and occasionally succeeding in doing so in spite of being in positions where he could very reasonably stay on the sidelines without anyone batting an eye.

In the coming blogs, we'll see Churchill fight the Germans, become a Prime Minister, then fight Nazi Germans, and provide so many great quotations that you could fill an entire junior high classroom with his motivational statements alone. You might want to omit the times he commented on people "working like blacks" or the time he declared he had "no interest in the quarrels of the yellow peoples" and instead focus on things like "attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."

The Ghost Army

There has been a lack of updates in the last month or so, and not due to lack of personal interest with writing this blog. I've simply not been reading a lot of non-fiction lately. I've turned to the likes of Orwell and Dostoyevsky, mostly for the purposes of being able to use "Orwellian" in a sentence more effectively and so I can smugly tell people "oh, I was just thumbing through some Dostoyevsky", which, I'm fairly sure, is what the vast majority of people read those books for. Regardless, I had to publish something for the month of October and what better than something with a spooky name? 

The fearsome tanks of the American armed forces. Some
assembly required. 

I'll set the tone for what the Ghost Army is all about. It's March, 1945 and Hitler's Germany is on the ropes. Pretty well everyone knows the war is to be over soon, but the Nazis are determined to give it one last go and put up a final stand. The Germans were pushed back to the Rhine river, the last large barrier before getting right at the heart of Germany. The goal of the Allied Powers was to break through the German defence with as few casualties as possible. Unfortunately, tanks and artillery tend to make that a rather difficult affair. 

Knowing they're to have a tough time, the Americans draw up a plan to deceive them as best they can. At first, it's one that sounds more than a little ridiculous - they would create an entire army of decoys to draw fire from the Germans while their actual forces press elsewhere, allowing them to cross the Rhine relatively unharmed. But how can they pull that off? It has to be at least somewhat more complicated yelling or, if it comes down to it, mooning. 

The solution was to create the 603rd Camouflage Engineers, a group of just over a thousand artists. Their goal was to create distractions and deceive the enemy into thinking that forces were there when there actually weren't - a simple goal but an exceedingly complex problem. Previously they were working at on the homefront, disguising such massive projects as airbases to make it look like farmland - which really is as impressive as it sounds. Now they would be thrown into the fray, being told that their job was to get as many Germans shooting at them as possible. Inexplicably, they were fine with this. 

The speakers used to send out the false sounds of war. Now
they're used for Katy Perry concerts. 

They decided the best way to pull this off was to create the deception based on three main ideas: create dummy tanks and artillery to draw the fire; send loud sounds of bridges being built and tanks rolling across to the enemy; and lastly to fake radio announcements, as one of the main ways the Germans found their foe was by intercepting radio reports. Unfortunately, the idea was unprecedented - no one has ever tried to create a whole army full of mimics before. Therefore they had to test a lot of the stuff out until things finally came together. After attempting to use wood, canvas, metal and any sort of materials they could find, they eventually went with inflatables. Yes, large inflatable tanks - that's what would be storming the battlefield. There are a number of hilarious images and videos of tanks being lifted up and bouncing around, or simply rolled over on their side. The best part of it is that they were actually rather effective - from the sky, recon planes would look down below, see the tanks, and think, well, they're... they're tanks. It would be tough to report back and say "yeah, I saw some tanks, but they might have been plastic."

A picture of one of the planes they planted. I really wish they
flew it via remote control to keep with a "Toys 'R' Us" theme. 

Next up was setting up a speaker system. They spent three weeks recording and mixing sounds - much like DJs, but with more talent - and began to create the sounds of an army rolling out to war. Men hammering away on bridges, tanks treading across the open terrain, right down to some guys swearing at each other. It was all there. It would then be pumped out of 500 pound speakers that had the range of fifty miles, which is quite a feat considering that all of this technology was very, very new. This was in addition to bringing in one hundred radio operators to fool the enemy into thinking they were announcing their positions in the land of the inflatables. They would radio in their locations hoping the Germans would pick up on it and start bombing the warfare equivalent of a child's kiddie pool.

There were also a few smaller issues to be taken care of along the way. Tank tracks would be left across the battlefield, except they were actually made by bulldozers; artillery shells were simply left around to make it seem as if they were being used or about to be; they even considered the idea of German spies in the surrounding small towns, so the men of the Ghost Army went to these places regularly talking about their units that weren't actually real, hoping that someone would hear the news and report it back. They even went as far as to get fake shoulder patches made up to make it seem that they really were part of one cohesive unit.

Before they went to the Rhine, they ran a number of trial runs to test if this could actually work. One notable example was the path between a recently liberated Paris and the German heavily fortified city of Metz, which was at that point currently being besieged from the south. They were worried a German contingent could move from the northern route and surround the troops, quickly spelling disaster for the attacking force, so the Ghost Army was called in to take the place and pretend they were another large force coming in to support them. Of course, they held little to no defensive power, but it was all irrelevant. The Germans didn't attack as they couldn't risk leaving their defensive positions to hit the enemy that didn't really exist. The plan worked perfectly. 

After a number of other trials, all of which successful and causing a shockingly few number of casualties considering the risk associated with the task, they launched Operation Viersen, the largest diversion yet. It would take 1,100 men, with a few real infantry to enhance the illusion. They set up fake repair depots, placed their shockingly effective fake tanks and artillery, as well as dummy planes with landing strips. The later was so effective that an Allied plane - a real one - actually landed on one and was promptly ushered away. The result was an American army crossing into a disorganized and tiny resistance, the plan clearly having properly deceived the Nazis. It was estimated they saved up to 15,000-30,000 lives.

So well done, Ghost Army. I may have been a touch disappointed you weren't literal ghosts created through some sort of secret CIA paranormal unit, but... it's a pretty darn great story.

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The info and pictures used for this blog were taken from the PBS documentary The Ghost Army. So, this blog was made possible by readers like you!

The Battle of Stalingrad

It's dangerous talking about the World Wars. Generally speaking it's relatively safe to talk about relatively obscure historical topics (the Dionne Quintuplets, The Plains of Abraham, Louis Riel... well, anything Canadian really) because it's rare that you're going to bump into anyone who knows them well enough to correct you on anything. However, the World Wars are popular enough of a topic to not quite be able to sneak past a mistake or two - not saying that there will be any here... but I'm also certainly not saying there won't be. Because of this, I'm going to be really throwing a full fledged statistic barrage in this blog, because the numbers at the very least will tell the truth. I guess I'm saying something about this blog in that I clearly fear being corrected more than being wrong, but I digress.

A street fight much more intimidating
than those in West Side Story.

The book I read on the topic was Stalingrad: The Battle That Shattered Hitler's Dreams of World Domination. It was well worth the five dollars I spent on it at Chapters while killing time until my birthday in which I would inevitably receive a book or two (you're up next, Canada's national dream of building a transcontinental railway!).

Here's the funny thing about Stalingrad. As far as priority targets go, this one was pretty far down the list. The Germans didn't really need it, and it was more of a "take it if you get the chance" type mission for the generals. There's a good chance they wanted it to prevent reinforcements from Stalingrad to disrupt their forces, sure, but it certainly wasn't a be-all-end-all type city for Russia. A possible reason for the mistakenly high priority was the name itself - defeating Stalingrad would serve as a moral blow to the Russian forces (hint: the name Stalin is in the name Stalingrad). Regardless, they thought it was a good idea to sack the city, but when their first attempt failed, they sent in reinforcements... which failed. Naturally, they would - guess what? - send in more reinforcements. The Russians would in turn respond with more troops, which the other side required more troops to kill those ones. You can see how this builds on each other. All in all, the end result was two kids playing Bloody Knuckles in junior high with both parties being too full of pride to quit and let the other win - except this time the stakes were the lives of millions in what would be one of the most horrible places to be in the entire world.

Russians defending what are already absolutely
annihilated buildings - or it's just how Russia looks.

On one side there was the big Russian kid who wouldn't let the German one on his playground. Stalin instituted the "Not One Step Back" policy for the defenders of Stalingrad, meaning you don't retreat, you don't surrender, and if you're giving an inch of grounds to the Germans you had best be dead, or else they would help you get there. How they managed to put this into action was having a full line of Russian soldiers on the perimeter with a roving, smaller set of men behind them armed with machine guns. If the Russians attempted to retreat - or deemed not fighting hard enough, I kid you not - they would fire on their own men, mowing them down with machine gun fire. Those that survived would be put into "Punishment Companies", which were basically impossible suicide missions that would earn you back your pride. This included high risk areas or walking through minefields to set off the explosives - again, I am quite serious. 422,000 soldiers were placed in these companies in what was the single most vicious form of quality control of all time.

I forgot to mention, they also bombed the place into oblivion.

Inside the city the civilians didn't fare much better. Stalin wanted to keep up appearances, and the idea of having civilians evacuate meant that they were accepting that there was a chance that Stalingrad might fall. This meant that the majority of men, women and children were not allowed to exit, and those that did were shot. The civilians would have to dig tank trenches, build defensive fortifications, or join the Worker Militia Battalion, a poorly equipped force that didn't have enough guns to properly supply their numbers. The logic was they would be sent at the Germans, sometimes two people to a gun. If the man you're following dies, you pick his gun up and shoot things with it, preferably a German.

Regardless of all the extra forces, extreme tactics or tough-as-nails Russian women and children digging trenches, the Germans were still advancing and making their way into the city itself. This meant that the Germans were moving house to house in an unfamiliar urban warfare style. They called it "Rattenkreig", meaning "rat warfare". Death was quite literally around the corner - they would toss a grenade into a room, move in, check if it's clear, and move out. Rinse and repeat. It was terrifying, nervy work.

The Germans were under the impression they were basically going to roll through Russia pretty well unopposed, and for the most part that is how the war on the eastern front began. They would capture so many prisoners and win so many battles, but the Russian forces would resupply and send in more men from what was seemingly an endless supply. Massive losses were irrelevant. They were essentially the "zerg" from the Starcraft franchise. The reason why the superior numbers were not instantly winning was mostly due to inferior tactics and decision making, as well as having technology that was behind the German capabilities. So naturally, when you're getting kicked around by a superior fighter, you adopt his tactics. The Russians decided they were to turn a German warfare staple into their own, and shock the Nazis with a massive force. With tanks moving past the infantry and destined to penetrate deep into enemy lines, they intended to attack with speed - lightning speed. The Russians were going to Blitzkrieg the Nazis.

A modern day picture of "Pavlov's House",
a fortified apartment in which the
Russian forces defended mightily. It
says "We will rebuild you, dear
Stalingrad!"... and they did, just forgetting
to paint it the same colour.

The Russians started forming a massive force; 13,000 guns, 894 tanks, 1,150 aircraft and a million infantry men. They bombarded the German line suddenly, tearing through them and placing them so quickly on the defensive they did not have the time to react. The result of the Blitzkrieg was a massive amount of trapped German troops - 220,000 to be exact. The Russians encircled them, cut off their supply, and waited. Supplies were brought in from the Luftwaffe, but flying past the Russians made it a hugely dangerous and often ineffective mission. The Germans were low on ammunition, didn't have enough fuel for their tanks, and were hungry, cold and fearful in the Russian winter. Conditions became about as bad as you could imagine, and an outbreak of sudden, inexplicable deaths occurred. Men that would be fine - well, at least relatively fine, considering - would die on the spot just a few hours later. Moral dropped as they awaited rescue that would be almost impossible.

The Russians offered surrender, to which the Germans refused. They began to be cut down, although held out surprisingly well considering the situation. A second offer of surrender was taken, but being a German prisoner to a bunch of Russians that you were previously attacking is arguably worse. The 111,465 men that were taken were put to work rebuilding Stalingrad, only half of them surviving to spring. Only 5,000 of them would ever see Germany again. The Russians were incredibly vengeful, and understandably so.

So the battle is over, the Germans defeated after an incredible Blitzkrieg maneuver by the Russians, but the victory is difficult to claim. 200,000 Russian civilians died, with another 13,541 being executed by the Russians themselves for conspiracy to help the Germans. The Red Army fared no better; 478,471 were killed, with another 650,878 injured. On the German side, 750,000 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner, effectively ruining a massive part of the Nazi force in attempting to take just one rather insignificant city.

It makes you wonder how the war would have gone if it was still named Tsaritsyn, having changed it's name to Stalingrad in 1925. Oh, and it's called Volgograd now by the way. Russians just can't keep city names.

Famous Historical Figures Say the Darndest Things!

1. "From above, it was very well visible to the pilots, that civilians were waiting on the shore. Many times we saw enemy pilots acting as professional assassins. They opened fire on the unarmed women and children and selected targets so as to maximize the number of people killed. The pilots dropped bombs in a crowd at the moment they were beginning to board a boat, fired at the decks of the boats, and bombed islands on which hundreds of wounded had accumulated. The people crossed the river not only on boats and barges. They sailed on overcrowded boats, even on logs, barrels, and boards bound with wire. And the Fascists opened fire from the air on each floating target. They were massacring people." A quote on the atrocities committed by the Nazis on the Russian civilian population. It went both ways.
2. "The 6th Army is temporarily surrounded by Russian forces. I know the 6th Army and your commander in chief and have no doubt that in this difficult situation it will hold on bravely. The 6th Army must know that I am doing everything to relieve them. I will issue my orders in good time." - Hitler's message to the trapped 6th Army.
3. "The bitter frost, the cold biting winds and the snowstorms have yet to come. Your men have not been supplied with winter uniforms, and live in appalling unhygienic conditions. You as the commander must realize full well that you have no real chance of breaking out of the ring of encirclement. Your situation is hopeless and further resistance is useless." A Russian message sent to the trapped German forces, suggesting surrender. 

Operation Mincemeat

Operation Mincemeat is one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" stories. Here we have a successful soldier who doesn't exist, used for a plot by men that worked with the creator of James Bond, a corpse-spy that fooled Hitler and his best men, and a British plot that saved countless lives by misinforming the Nazis to pave the way for one of the largest invasions of all time. If it were a movie and not a true story, it would be deemed too unrealistic. It's a tale of sheer luck, expert planning and dressing up the corpse of some poor Welshman. 

Now, for the background. The Allies wanted to attack Germany through initially landing in an invasion in Sicily, believing it to be what they called the "soft underbelly" of the Axis forces. However, the Nazis had this nasty tendency of defending their positions and killing everyone, a frustrating issue for the Brits. Obviously the borders to defend are massive, but that was largely a non-issue. Between any number of spies, wire-tapping and all sorts of espionage, it was darn near impossible to send a full invading force without the enemy finding out about it prior to the landing, giving them time to set up defences, move troops, and go all 300 on the attackers and hold the line. To trick the enemy, there had to be a plan of absolute sheer genius. Aaaaand enter Operation Mincemeat. 

The ID card of Major Martin. He lived by the motto
"live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse
...that can be used to trick Nazis".

Two men spearheaded an idea of tricking the Nazis into believing the attacks would not land in Sicily, but elsewhere close by, likely in Greece. Their plan was an audacious one - find a corpse, plant enough important (although faked) documents to make an enemy spy wet himself with glee, and hope it gets passed up the chain of command until it becomes fact, causing the enemy to move his pieces in all the wrong places. While on paper it sounds like a sound plan, there are an almost endless number of ways the plan would fail; the corpse wouldn't wash up on shore, it wouldn't be believable, it wouldn't be passed up the ranks, or worst of all, the Germans would read it, see it as a ruse, and prepare all the more in the Sicily believing it to be a faint. And then of course there's the matter of finding a corpse... that's not as easy as it sounds, unfortunately.

The dead man that was chosen was a poor Welsh guy with little family to speak of, meaning they could slip past the awkward "would you be so kind as to let us borrow the corpse of your son" conversation. As for the man, he died from accidentally killing himself with rat poison. He lived an uninspired life, with not much to make note of - in a way it's rather sad how his accomplishments in death, through no choice or decision of his own, far surpassed what he had done in life; heck, they blew out of the water the accomplishments of what most people would do with theirs, so maybe it's not depressing at all but morbidly inspiring. That or the most likely conclusion, being it's simply an interesting anecdote and I should continue on with the story.

Charles Chomondeley, a man who
from this picture alone you can tell put on
a quality, British, cracking good show.

Unfortunately for the masterminds behind the operation (Ewan Montagu and Charles Chomondeley) getting the body was only half the battle. If they simply put the corpse in the water with a number of battle plans the Nazis would pick it up as a fake faster than a blitzkrieg through Poland. Their job was to create a life for a dead man; they had to falsify documents, make up a personality, give him family, friends, an attitude, a rank in the military, bank dept, and every number of things that can not only be used to make him look like just an everyday military man but also things that can be completely verified. Montagu and Chomondeley slaved over letters to fill his pockets, trying to make him sound like a real man without forcing an air of honesty that would come across as unrealistic. After countless attempts and interference from higher-ups, they came to their finale - Major Martin was born from the corpse of an Welshman. The newly created Major was placed in obituary papers, had a sweetheart back home, money issues with his wealthy father, and an ID card with his photo taken (the photo was actually a separate man as the corpse was not particularly cooperative in the act of looking alive). He was also fitted for military dress, which involved the unseemly task of temporarily unfreezing his feet (he was frozen to prevent rotting) in order to remove his shoes to put on the tight military boots he needed to look authentic. I sincerely doubt Montagu had that particular moment on any future resume.

The New York Times listed him in their list of casualties.
The book noted it was the only time a fake man was listed in the
obituary pages of the newspaper. I thought this was an unnecessary thing to mention.

Now that the body was prepared (as well as a capsule to transport the corpse that was so notoriously difficult to sink and took so many gunshots when trying to dispose of the evidence it almost ruined the mission) they had to drop the body off in a place where they knew it would get picked up with the documents read and sent up the chain of command. The chosen location was neutral Spain - in particular, a part of Spain that had a large number of German sympathizers, as well as a prominent and high quality German spy. The hope was they would pick up the body, delay the attempts of the British to recover it, pass along the documents and return them untouched. Britain's plan would be to feign casual interest in retrieving the documents (too much interest would be showing their hand too much in the importance of the body, too little would mean it's obviously a fake) and eventually get them back to continue with their plans. The documents themselves stated an attack on Greece was imminent, 

with a feint to distract the Germans through an attack on Sicily - of course, it was entirely the opposite. 

Through a series of chance, the ideal people on the German side to pick up the documents and believe them (namely an expert spy to get them and an incompetent official to believe them so willingly), and absolutely ingenious planning from the Brits back home, the plan worked perfectly. The faked invasion plans made it all the way up the line to Hitler himself. On landing on the shores of Sicily some weeks later, they were met with just a fraction of the defences they had anticipated, the German army set up far, far away unable to reinforce. The Allied army crushed through the weakened line in an absolutely massive military campaign, with so much of the thanks going to a poor Welsh lad who killed himself while trying to bump off a few rats. 

Famous Historical Figures Say the Darndest Things!

1. "The German in Sicily is doomed. Absolutely doomed. He won't get away." Words from British WW2 General Montgomery upon the successful invasion of Sicily. 
2. "Joy of joys to anyone, and particularly a Jew, the satisfaction of knowing that they had directly and specifically fooled that monster." Ewan Montagu, one of the leading ideas men of Operation Mincemeat.
3. "In that case, we shall have to get the body back and give it another swim." Winston Churchill on the worries of the corpse not making it to the shoreline in Spain.
4. "Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin." The words on the gravestone for the created agent, buried in Huelva.