Human Confetti in the Jungle of Guyana April 23, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Beach prides himself in getting together some of the most striking photographs possible to show his students at uni. However, he is dismayed how often good photographs require dead bodies: a revolutionary Spanish soldier with his head disintegrating, Aldo Moro curled in a fœtus in the back of that fiat, Jesse James laid out, the living dead – the to-be victims of the Omagh bombing in the last minute of their lives, Maximilian’s execution shirt… And another picture from this dismal series might be this extraordinary shot taking from the air following the Jonestown Massacre, 17 November, 1978.
Jonestown was the single greatest sect killing in history. Jim Jones was a charismatic sociopath with maturing paranoid tendencies: the kind of man, in short, you pray not to sit next to on the bus. He had created, by his sixties, a religious community of almost a thousand American nationals in the badlands of Guyana. And he was convinced that the United States was attempting to undermine this community, based as the community was on a heady mix of Stalinism, Christianity and, what might be called, ‘Jonesism’.
In an attempt to protect himself and his community he began negotiations with the Soviet Union so as to seek a haven there: Beach can’t help reflecting that the Soviet Union, or Jones’ other preferred destination, North Korea, would have been more effective at dealing with Jim Jones than the federal government. But he also explored other options that he and his flock voted on including fleeing deep into the jungle and committing collective ‘revolutionary suicide’: a phrase that came from Huey Newton, a black panther whose cousin was, incidentally, one of the very few to survive Jones’ death orgy.
It is not clear how Jones justified revolutionary suicide to his flock. But he got them word perfect. Indeed, on one occasion he gave the thousand a red liquid drink, told them that they would die in the next forty five minutes and when they drank this he explained the ritual away as a test of loyalty.
By the autumn of 1978 with Jones’ health declining rapidly and the fury of relatives of sect members back in the States mounting it was maybe only a matter of time. When a visiting US congressman, Leo Ryan came to investigate a number of community members – perhaps a dozen, hardly the numbers that you would have expected – pushed forward to ask to leave. Ryan gained Jones’ permission. But Jones saw even this small defection as a betrayal and ordered that a vat of cyanide be prepared.
It is worth stating that when told to drink poison, the vast majority seemed to have done so without questioning the orders given. If this was murder, it was not the kind easily found in the penal code: that definition should be reserved for the visiting journalists and ‘defectors’ who were killed, with the senator, at the air strip. The result, in any case, were bodies spread through the floor of the jungle like so many bits of confetti. Jones ended his life (or did he ask someone else to do it for him?) with a revolver. An agent of Jones in nearby Georgetown killed two of her own children with a knife on hearing that Jones had spoken. Back in the jungle perhaps fifteen escaped death by various stratagems.
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26/Apr/2012: KMH writes ‘Jim Jones had a similar charisma to Hitler who was often accused of being possessed. The same would apply to Jones even though his community was basically religious -communist. He and his followers were convinced that the Northern Hemisphere was destined for nuclear destruction, but life would go on more or less in the south. His followers drank the Kool-Aid (Flavor Aid) readily because they had drunk it ritualistically (for death) a number of times before with no cyanide, of course. This is where the phrase “don’t drink the Kool-Aid” originated. Kool- Aid and its imitators is made with sugar and mixed with a fruit flavour that came in an inexpensive packet of dry concentrate. In the fifties it was popular in the USA. Today we would call Jim Jones a classic example of a false prophet. The question is, did he have any real spiritual gift besides mesmerizing his audience with speaking ability. The evidence isn’t entirely conclusive. If so, he would fall into the line of Simon Magus of Acts 8:9-24 and qualify as a precursor to the false prophet of Revelation. Thanks KMH!
Stalin Suffering the Children March 18, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
This image of Uncle Joe with a young girl understandably became famous. It shows the softer side of one of the most prolific murderers of all time: something useful in a society that was based on a cult of said murderer. And interestingly this is not just a chance photographic moment: the kind that make bastards into saints or saints into bastards. There is an accompanying film reel that shows Stalin as the mother’s dream: even Beachcombing found himself wishing that his children had a ‘Granddad’ like this next door…
The back story behind the photograph – taken the Kremlin, 26 June 1936 and afterwards published on the front page of Pravda – is both extraordinary and all too depressingly predictable. The six-year-old girl was Engelsina (‘Gelya’ for short) Markizova and she was the daughter of Ardan Markizova, the second secretary of the Buryat Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic with special responsibilities for agriculture. And Ardan was married to Dominica Markizova, Gelya’s mother.
Naturally, it didn’t finish well for any of them: run ins with Stalin rarely did. Ardan was arrested a year after this photograph was taken with several other members of the secretariat of the Republic and shot ‘as a Japanese spy’: Beach suspects that the rather unimaginative Soviet interrogators had this suggested to them by his oriental face. Dominica was killed in a car accident in mysterious circumstances. As one of Beach’s sources notes – David King, The Commissar Vanishes (153) – ‘so mysterious that the case was never investigated by the authorities’. Then just as if to underline Stalin’s life-giving aura the individual in the background, Yerbanov (the head of the Buryat Mongol Soviet) was also offed in 1937. He had, it is needless to say, offed a number of people on Stalin’s behalf so let’s save the tears for Gelya.
Gelya herself got lucky (ahem) and went to Moscow where she lived with an aunt and changed her surname. It would be interesting to know if she made it through to adulthood: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com. But even if the child was thankfully forgotten by the benevolent Soviet authorities: the image could not be, it was just too useful, too effective, too good a lie. It appeared in a multitude of different forms in newspapers, kindergartens, pioneer camps and even as a sculpture at Stalinskaya Metro Station: and they call gold a noble metal…
There is probably a rich seam to mine here of evil leaders pictured with innocent children.
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18 March 2012: Wade writes in with this youtube link to an interview with the elderly Gelya (she made it!: go to 4.50). Merv writes, meanwhile, ‘Geyla survived into adulthood well into her seventies. (?) She died in 2004 during a trip to Turkey. You can find more information here, you need to do google translate from Dutch.’ Tacitus from Detritus includes this photograph for tyrants with children.Thanks Tacitus, Wade and Merv!!
Pulling Things Out of Rivers March 13, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
Rivers are useful guardians of the past: often thousands of years roll by (and millions of tonnes of water) before things that have been thrown in are fished out (sometimes literally) several hundred or thousands of years later. Here are Beachcombing’s favourite they-were-found-in-river things. Others would be welcome: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
1) Claudius’ Head in the Alde: In 1907 a school boy pulled this prize out of the river and brought it to a local antiquary. From then excitement slowly mounted and it has never entirely died down. What is of particular interest is the way that the head of the emperor Claudius seems to have been hacked off a statue and a blow to the back of the head suggests that murder was done on an inanimate object. It looks very much as if a Roman statue was ritually slaughtered and the head was then dedicated to a Celtic river God (i.e. thrown in a river): back in the days when the Alde was called the Itchen. And the suspects? Why not Boudicca’s revolt in 61 AD when Colchester with its Temple of Claudius was overrun by British ‘savages’ and Rome was, at least for a season, lain low in East Anglia?
2) Silver Plate in the Rhone: ‘In 1656 a fisherman on the banks of the Rhone, in the neighbourhood of Avignon, drew to shore in his net a round substance in the shape of a large plate, thickly encrusted with a coat of hardened mud. A silversmith who happened to be present brought it for a trifling sum. He took it home, and upon cleaning and polishing it, found it to consist of pure silver… Fearing that such a massive and valuable piece of plate might awaken suspicion , if offered for sale entire, he divided it into four equal parts, each of which he disposed of at different times and places.’ One of the pieces was sold at Lyons to Mr. Mey, a wealthy and well-educated merchant, who at once saw its value and who, after great effort, procured the other three sections. He had them nicely rejoined, and the treasure was finally placed in the cabinet of the King of France.’ This object is often called Scipio’s Shield. It actually dates to the fourth century AD.
3) A Steamboat in the Missouri River: In 1987 a nineteenth-century steamboat, the Arabia was discovered in a field just off the Missouri. Its excavation proved logistically difficult because river waters kept pouring in as the excavators dug down. In fact, in one episode an excavator was almost killed. The boat had disappeared into the mud of that river almost a hundred and fifty years before, sinking in ten minutes with no casualties save a mule! 700 items are now on display from this victim of ‘the hungriest of all rivers’ at a special Arabia museum: and the boat stands as one of the most impressive archaeological finds from frontier America.
4) A Tank and the Neva. This picture shows a BT-5 one of the most impressive Soviet tanks from WW2 being fished out of the river. A nice question is how it got there! Images of the tank and descriptions of the find suggest that there was no one in it when it went down into its watery grave – so bridges and vodka-sozzled drivers have to be ruled out. And it does not seem to have suffered any damage from the enemy: though Soviet tanks were famously resistant to even point blank blasts. Perhaps its owners, as they were surrounded by the Germans decided to get rid of it and the nearby river offered the quickest way to dispose of their hardware?
5) Hindu finds from the Thames: The Thames has been good for ‘Roman brooches, medieval pilgrim badges, 17th-century tin-glazed tiles, an 18th-century miniature portrait and an early-20th century handgun‘. But for Beachcombing at least some of the most curious finds have been the various Hindu statuettes dredged up in London’s river. So what does this represent: an underground Hindu cult in medieval London? Not a bit of it. The best estimates put these objects from the 1880s to 2000. For London’s modern Hindu community have evidently been using the Thames as a kind of surrogate Ganges, a place to throw their gods in an eerie echo of those rituals carried out in pre-Christian times on the banks of the same waterway. The British Museum at first thought that some of these statues were Roman… An understandable if entertaining mistake.
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14/Mar/2012: First is Louis with some corrections for the tank story. ‘Actually BT tanks were notorious for their thin armor, which became very clear during the Winter War and the Nomohan incident and which prompted the Red Army to change to the T34 faster then previously scheduled. And, the tank was probably on its way to the Neva Bridgehead, on a pontoon, during a relief offensive for Leningrad, as can be read in this English language website: Second is Tacitus from Detritus: Here is a link to one of my favorite river finds. An early confederate submarine of which no reliable record has ever been produced. Dredged up by accident in 1878. Technically found in a bayou coming off of Lake Ponchartain, but clearly designed for use against an impending Union attack on New Orleans. Even the thought of entering the treacherous muddy waters of the Mississippi in this glorified tin can alarms me! Then Jakub: ‘How about the opposite: pulling boats out of the ground? This happened a few years ago not far south from Warsaw, Poland. In a pond in an apple orchard a 500-year old ship was found and dug out: a 34m-long grain-punt. 500 years earlier Vistula, which is notorious for changing its course (and thus a most unsuitable container for long-lost artefacts), flowed through what is now the apple orchard on the border of a place called Czersk – once the capital of an entire province, dwindled into a tiny village once the river that gave it its prosperity decided to pack up and move a few miles eastward, leaving boats like this one in the middle of a sandy plain (link in Polish). Next is Invisible: My personal favourite [creepy warning!]: I visited the Steamboat Arabia museum a couple of years ago. The amount of organic materials – leather, cloth, foodstuffs – that survived is simply astounding. Apparently the sites of several other wrecked steamboats buried by the shifting river are known and await excavation. The remarkable thing about the Arabia excavation and museum is that it was done entirely without public funds – the Hawley family (with friends and supporters) paid for the arduous, large-scale excavation, the conservation of the artifacts, and the museum out of their own pockets. The book The Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia by David Hawley gives a step-by-step account of the difficulties involved in getting the steamboat and its cargo out of the tons of mud that covered it and includes color photos of many artifacts. An extraordinary story.’ Thanks Louis, Tacitus, Invisibile and Jakub!!
16 March: Some great stuff from Jim W here. ‘Similar to the Arabia steamboat recovery was the USS Cairo sunk in the Yazoo River during the Vicksburg Siege of the US Civil War. Found by old-style geophysics (magnetic dip needle) nearly intact but broken in half during recovery. Massively displayed in National Military Park as half original and half reconstructed. Museum contains quantities of personal and military gear recovered in very good state of preservation. On the other side, the CSS Arkansas is still buried under a mainline levee near Sunrise, LA. She was badly damaged during the Vicksburg Siege and escaped downriver to her coup de gras at Baton Rouge. Steamer Desoto discovered under a bean field near Missouri River, IA, again by 1960s vintage geophysics (flux-gate magnetometer). Excavated and on display with large quantity of personal and trade goods. Carried supplies and equipment to Montana gold rush before snagged. Meandering, large-flow, high sediment rivers like the Mississippi/Missouri system do this kind of thing as a matter of course, generally leaving the wrecks hundreds of yards to miles from the present courses in old meanders. Reference the Mississippi Confederate submarine: The Grand Gulf State Park Museum, Port Gibson, MS has (or had several years ago) a submersible home-built from an old boiler that was supposedly used for bootlegging from Louisiana to Mississippi back in the good/bad old days of Prohibition.’ Thanks Jim!!!!
28 March 2012: Norman writes: Haven’t had any luck tracking an image of it down yet (still working on it), but I remember once seeing a crucifix in a museum in New Brunswick (Canada) that had been recovered from a river. It was made of bone (or maybe ivory, I misremember), and was of the type that missionaries would give out to the local Indians (in this case either Mi’kmaq or Maliseet). The cool thing about it was that the wrists and ankles of the figure, where they were attached to the cross, had been scraped so thin that they had nearly snapped off. Archaeologists conjectured that the natives had scraped thin shavings of the figurine into a broth which would then be fed to sick people – apparently a conflation of religion and magic, or perhaps a misunderstood interpretation of the old “this is my body…” routine that the indians took literally.’ thanks Norman!!
Stalingrad’s Madonna December 25, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
In late 1942 Kurt Reuber (obit 1944) found himself in the Stalingrad Kessel where 300,000 Axis troops awaited almost certain death, surrounded by an understandably vengeful Soviet enemy: only 6000 would survive the war.
As the festivities drew near Reuber – curiously, given his subject a Protestant pastor – sketched this beautiful madonna that became the focus of the Sixth Army’s last Christmas: it measured three by four feet and carries on its left margins the words ‘light’, ‘life’ and ‘love’. It was lifted out of the Kessel in January just before the fall, on the last German transport plane.
Beachcombing wishes his readers a happy Christmas and a better 2012 and leaves them with the words of one of the Wehrmacht survivors, remembering Stalingrad fifty odd years later.
For me that Christmas was heavenly, I felt there was a bridge that stretched over the entire earth, the starry sky and the moon, the same moon that my family could see in Germany.
Impressionist Heresy in the Soviet Union November 22, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Beach has spent the day in bed reading books he once loved and in doing so came across this fabulous picture by Sergei Gerasimov (obit 1964). While not normally a big fan of Soviet art, except, of course, for its kitsch value, Gerasimov’s Mother of a Partisan (1943) is worth making an exception over. For Beachcombing the bovine, impassive face of the mother and the ‘cheekiness’ (an entirely inadequate word) of the boy are archetypal. They call parts of the human condition to mind in the same way that when Beachcombing sees someone in despair on the bus he thinks of Munch or when he feels hunger he imagines the old woman in a Velazquez painting. What Beachcombing had forgotten was the unusual history that surrounded this rare Soviet masterpiece.
First, though a little about Gerasimov himself. A decent artist and, what is even rarer in high up Soviet circles in the 1940s, a decent man, Gerasimov struggled to concentrate on creativity rather than the dictates of Stalin’s regime. He bent his knee when he had to: a natural enough reaction for any Soviet citizen knowing what defiance would mean for self, family and friends. However, he also, Soviet art historian Matthew Cullerne Bown reports, defended his students and other artists from the attacks of authority, taking risks on their behalf. The proof of this was his immense popularity in Stalin’s lifetime and his success after Stalin’s death.
However, given these unSoviet twitches of personality and also a taste and interest in – horrors! – non Soviet art styles, Gerasimov was, sooner or later going to get in trouble. Trouble came not in 1943 when he painted Mother, but strangely in 1949 when he was publicly criticised for ‘impressionism’ in this work. These are disputes that to this age seem bizarre, but in the sweaty post war Russian art world where execution and torture was just a commission away such things mattered. And Gerasimov felt obliged to repaint his most famous war work.
He didn’t, perhaps surprisingly, put shoes on the woman’s feet, but he did ‘pretty’ her ‘up’. The drained wight who knows that her son is about to be shot in front of her has been replaced by a more human and more responsive (but consequently less effective) individual, a woman who appears again and again in Soviet crowd scenes when Lenin is speaking from the balcony or when Stalin is getting off a train.
Beach is lucky enough to have a copy of the original. He was shocked to find that on the WWW the original is only available in black and white though. It is the transmogrified repaint-this-or-we-shoot-you version that has been digitally immortalised. In breve, Stalin and his morons won.
Other manipulated pictures? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Berlin, 30 April 1945 October 22, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Beachcombing had two formative experiences over the last week. One was discovering that peanut, banana and honey sandwiches can be substantially improved through the use of raw ginger. The other was watching Die Untergang (Downfall) the 2004 film describing the final days of Hitler in April 1945. On balance, Beach prefers the liberal use of ginginer to biopics on bastards, though Untergang definitely begs and keeps the viewer’s attention. But Hitler’s death is strangely topical, particularly as two journalists have proved (to their own satisfaction) that Hitler (obit 1962) actually escaped with Eva Braun to Argentina and had two daughters!
Personally, Beach won’t be holding his breath over this one. But there is no question that the evidence for Hitler’s death is not all that it could have been.
The forensic evidence was gathered by the Soviets who muddied the waters: no drawing from the spring of eternal truth for the sons of Lenin. Stalin, playing one of his long games, announced to Truman at Potsdam in 1945 that Hitler was not dead but hiding in Spain or Argentina! And the much vaunted piece of Hitler’s skull in the Soviet archives actually, it has transpired, belonged to a woman.
But before we get carried away it should be remembered that Hitler’s jawbone was confirmed by his dentist: imagine having that job. And the eyewitness accounts are difficult to get around, particularly that of Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet, who was responsible for the burning.
Those who argue that Hitler survived the bunker have to overcome not only jaws and memory though. There are three other difficulties. First, there is the problem that Hitler had again and again said he would commit suicide at the end: ‘I have three bullets… two for you if you betray me, the last for myself’. Second, there is the problem of how Hitler could have escaped from Berlin at that late hour with Soviet troops less than a kilometre away: Bormann almost certainly died doing the same. And, third, the difficulty of how Hitler’s new location in the Alps or on the Pampas or on Franco’s private estate in Galicia was kept secret for another twenty years.
One or two of these could doubtless be knocked down: people lie, scientists screw up, miracles happen. But run the jawbone together with the others and you have a mountain range that make the Himalayas look like fairy foothills.
Any other opinions of Hitler’s death? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Beach prefers his dictators well done and, he should end by saying, the most memorable scene in Untergang was the burning of the bodies. It is a fine example of ‘bad wiring’ in a film that the diehards saluting Hitler’s pyre is the most memorable single scene, notwithstanding the fact that here is the final extinction of a man loathed by this blogger, most of the modern world and the film-makers. Even Goebbels mad eyes, some silly heel clicking and Russian shells sending everyone diving cannot remove the ‘magnificence’ of the occasion. The Valkyries probably didn’t make it down through the Soviet artillery and the Yaks, but the director accidentally created a scene that suggests that they really should have made an extra effort.
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23 Oct 2011: Southern Man writes in ‘Beach there is a lot of rot written about Hitler and suicide, allow me to quote from an excellent piece on Axis History: ‘Hitler contemplated suicide several times in his life (after the Putsch, after the death of his niece), he made speeches attesting that he would either be victorious or ‘would not survive the outcome’ (Reichstag speech, Sept. 1, 1939)…’Germany will find itself either reborn or us dead”…”I have three bullets…two for you if you betray me, the last for myself’ (Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch). ‘Death is so easy..a brief moment of pain perhaps, then eternal sleep’ (Hitler to his ‘chauffeureska’).’ Next up is KMH with some almost metaphysical considerations about dictators: ‘It is perhaps natural to believe that oppressive dictators will die in a similar way that they caused others to die – poetic justice is most satisfying. But strangely, we see it happening only with the second tier of dictators – those who only have national, not international aspirations. So Qaddafi died of bullet wounds, etc. The most important personages don’t seem to die from violence or from legal proceedings (hanging, etc.). Stalin may have been poisoned by his doctor. Napoleon died on St. Helena. Ivan the Terrible, Oliver Cromwell and Mao seemed to have died naturally. So why would Hitler go against the grain? I believe the stories about his escape to Argentina or Antarctica not probable in his physically unhealthy condition. But he may have temporarily escaped to a secret bunker in the southern mountainous region only he knew of in specific detail. He died there perhaps due to his untreated illnesses. Dental records, the Argentina theory, etc., would be for one of his doubles. It is difficult to believe that these predestined personages are immune to a common death by violence, but their incarnation isn’t personally profitable or meaningful otherwise.’ Then several a couple of comments about Downfall. DCR writes: ‘Several people who were in the bunker when [Hitler] and Eva Braun killed themselves and served as technical consultants to the film. One was the radio operator who heard the shot and saw the bodies.’ The historical precision behind the film was much boasted over by the directing crew. On this theme JCC points any German speaking readers to an interesting article by Wim Wenders: thanks Southern Man, KMH, JCC and DCR!!
5 Nov 2011: Gerrard Williams has written in with some details about his book: Grey Wolf – The Escape of Adolf Hitler ‘We’re published in English worldwide by Sterling (wholly owned By Barnes and Noble) and have shifted almost 40,000 copies worldwide in the last three weeks. We have had extensive media coverage here on Sky News, The Sun, Express, The Mail and Western Mail as well as many articles in Foreign Newspapers and web-sites. I’ve been interviewed by Sir David Frost for Al-jaz’s “Frost over the world”, RTL 4 [about 1800], am doing a piece with ZDF in the coming weeks, talking to Dan Snow at “the One Show” and Ch7 Oz are doing an hour long piece on the book in February for their top rating Sunday Night Current affairs show, filming with me in Argentina, London and Berlin. I’ve also appeared on Deutsche Welle, and numerous other radio stations here and in Canada. I’m also due to do a piece with CNN(I)’s Becky Anderson in December on “Connect the World.” Although the book is now available in Barnes and Noble Stores across the States I’m finding it difficult to get any mainstream coverage there. I can promise you I haven’t “lost it”. This really is the exposure of one of the most incredible lies in history. There are over 500 sources in the book. There’s more about me on My Author’s page on Amazon.co.uk plus a video of my interview with Sky news and a clip from the film we’re currently producing. On Tuesday I did a long interview with Michael Harris at CFRA Ottowa , and today we got a full page in the Jewish Telegraph. I’ve also attached a review from the ‘states. Here you can find the first fifty pages or so of Grey Wolf…. and here you can find my interview with Deutsche Welle.’ Thanks Gerrard and good luck!
Secret Weapons September 22, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary, Modern
Ideas for books very often begin with nagging questions that compulsively irritate authors and that they then work through – think of it as therapy – by writing tens or even hundreds of thousands of words. Beach suspects that the nagging question that saw Brian Ford pen Secret Weapons: Technology, Science and the Race to Win World War II (Osprey 2011) was the issue of why WWII created such unprecedented innovation in so many fields.
It is easy, after all, to say that necessity was the mother of invention. But most wars include a good deal of necessity yet no others had seen the mainstream use of rockets and computers and the splitting of the atom and even an early attempt (on German submarines) at stealth technology.
So what was responsible for this huge leap forward? Was it a can-do spirit among the various powers? Was there a determination to ignore normal bureaucratic procedures? Was it just an absolute ruthlessness in, for example, employing human guinea-pigs in medical experiments? Or was it the ideological nature of the war that saw the scientific community implicated in a way that they had never been before?
As it happens, Brian Ford does not address these questions head on: though they are constantly in the background and they would make for a fabulous companion volume, a Medici Effect for war and technology. He rather produces a complete compendium of the new weapons and defences that came on line in the Second World War.
‘Secret Weapons’ books are typically quirky and their authors’ enjoy the curiosities of war without seeing the bigger picture. This is, instead, a sober, scientifically-based work that addresses all areas of Allied and Axis endeavour from the creation of penicillin, to atom bombs, from a plan to drop snakes on Axis targets to America’s comic dalliance with bat bombs towards the end of the war.
It is not only a good read: it will be the point of reference for general readers and scholars alike for many years to come. Then the volume, as always with Osprey, is luscious, full of illustrations and well-stitched. You could read a chapter a day for ten years before this particularly book starts falling apart.
One of its many achievements is to place these new weapons in the continuum of nineteenth- and twentieth-century science. Very few came ex nihilo. The computer began with Charles Babbage in 1822. The ‘secret’ enigma machine had already been patented in 1918 and a hundred thousand had been produced by the start of hostilities. Penicillin had been discovered in 1911 and it was already being used in a haphazard way for medical purposes by 1930…
Bizarrists, as some of the instances above suggest, will also have plenty to look forward to. There is a precious chapter entitled ‘Doomed to Failure’ where only a dry-as-dust sour puss will fail to smile. Indeed, on one single page there is a plan to make Hitler into a woman, treacle bombs, attempts to make the intransitive transitive and ‘erupt’ mount Vesuvius, planes with swords attached (to cut parachute cords naturally), explosives in chocolate bars and detonators in pencils.
Then, elsewhere in the book, there is a discussion of sound war: with a nod to Tintin and the Calculus Affair. Or what about the two and a half million sticky anti-tank bombs that destroyed between them six tanks and that occasionally stuck, at the worst moment, to soldiers’ hands or clothes? Or the Russian ‘suicide’ dogs used to blow up German tanks, which very often ran, instead, at Russian tanks that were more familiar from their training?
There are also the weapons testings that went horribly wrong. Beach has particularly fond memories of the Panjandrum spinning bomb – an enormous Catherine Wheel designed to roll up beaches that is being tested here before a commission on a Devon beach:
The rockets on the first Panjandrum were successfully ignited and the monster began to roll forward. But within a short distance, the first rocket exploded violently and disintegrated, soon to be followed by others. The great wheel, as it gathered speed , began to weave dangerously from side to side and then erratically to change direction. It was completely out of control, and began to head straight towards a group of terrified photographers. The VIPs leapt behind a sand-dune and fell into a tangle of barbed wire. The roaring device turned again, headed down the beach back towards the sea, then in a cloud of smoke and a series of explosions it crashed heavily on its side. Rockets broke away and screamed across the beach in all directions, at least one being chased by a holidaymaker’s dog. All that remained of the secret weapon was a scorched and twisted hunk of metal beneath a lingering cloud of black smoke.
Beachcombing is always on the look out for good books on weird subjects: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
The Sausage War August 26, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Beachcombing has been paying perhaps too much attention to Finland in the last two months: the result of a long infatuation with Mannerheim, the aristocratic military commander who twice saved his young country from the Soviets. He kicked off with the tale of Mannerheim’s cigar. He moved onto a WIBT moment in the court of the red Tsar when Finnish democrats had the naivety to tell Stalin and Molotov to buck up and respect international law. Today though, before he leaves Finland behind for a while, he will pass from diplomacy and smoking to a weird war episode and one of the most extraordinary moments in the Winter War: the Battle of the Sausages.
It began with a rare Soviet success: we are on the Tolvajarvi front not far from the village of that name. A Soviet battalion has, December 10, marched in silence through the snowy woods and is ready to fall on a crucial Finnish supply position in a brilliantly executed night attack.
The attack worked almost perfectly. Finnish personnel here were few and many were non-military – medical orderlies and the like. The Finns were also – a rare event in the Winter War when the snow boot was normally on the other foot – taken by surprise. It looked very much as if the Soviets had scored an outstanding victory. That was until they reached the kitchens…
The Soviet soldiers in the Winter War were badly led and, more importantly, badly fed. Cannibalism in the Russian ranks is well attested in Finnish photographs from the period. And emerging out of the icy night they suddenly found themselves on the edge of a great victory in front of fleeing cooks and huge pans of sausage soup. They froze, they lowered their weapons – Beachcombing imagines that they looked at each other – and then they began to eat.
It is just possible that they could have got away with this if they were fighting a tired British regiment or demoralized Italians. But these were, for God’s sake, the Finns! A Colonel Pajari rounded up his scattered men: including the outraged chefs and counterattacked with bayonets. The Sausage War was a bloody affair and soon the Russians were in full retreat as the ‘real’ Finnish soldier arrived to finish the job.
Allegedly the battalion was almost wiped out and a hundred frozen Russians were found in the field kitchen the next morning. Beachcombing likes to think that they died with the taste of good Finnish sausage in their mouths. There is something ghastly about men being shot or stabbed while they eat: perhaps eating is a convivial moment or perhaps there is a vague unspoken convention that understands we are at our most vulnerable with food in our hands.
All this got Beach thinking about food and drink leading other armies astray: dr beachcombing AT yahoo DOT com for other examples.
There are the accounts of the half starving Germans in Operation Michael, the last desperate throw of the dice in the Great War, being amazed by Allied supplied of food as they overran trench after trench in 1918. It goes without saying though that the Germans didn’t stop.
Another example is the haunting description in Thucydides of a thirsty Athenian army, 413 BC, running forward to drink from the river Assinarus (another post another day) even though they were under fire from both banks. They drank with all too predictable consequences.
Then there are those many battles where drunkenness has played its part…
Stalin, Molotov and the Finns August 6, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
A brief post to celebrate a WIBT (wish I’d been there) moment from the margins of the Second World War. November 1939 and western Europe has plunged into internecine conflict. However, the non-combatant Soviet Union is enjoying itself. Indeed, it has decided to use this precious period to put the record straight with some of its smaller neighbours. The class bully, in short, has just got out the knuckle dusters and, God help, those little boys with glasses while the teachers are not around.
Part of Poland had already been gobbled up in the September War: the crimes at Katyn have been committed. The Soviets are planning for the ‘incorporation’ of the Batlic Republics: something that will be carried out in the Summer of 1940. And then there is also that annoying little country somewhere up near Sweden – the Soviet planners can never remember its name.
Pity Finland. From anschluss and with more urgency from the beginning of the Second World War Soviet communiqués were sent threatening and coaxing by turns. The Soviets wanted bases on Finnish territory. They wanted Finnish islands. They wanted the Finnish border to be moved backwards. They wanted defensive lines to be abandoned. True, by the normal standards of Soviet negotiations this was tame stuff – the Soviets even offered a land exchange: but Finland was in the ‘western sphere’ and it was not of any particularly strategic importance bar its southern approaches.
However, the ‘stupid’ Finns just didn’t get it. Molotov, Stalin’s foreign minister and a man with the blood of hundreds of thousands dripping from his grotty fingers, was sent in to negotiate a deal. But the Finns argued points of international law at him! One might as well have read the Torah to Hitler or quoted the Geneva Convention at a serial killer.
Many years later Khrushchev summed up the bemused Soviet reactions to this little northern power charmingly refusing to accept the rules of geopolitical physics: ‘All we had to do was raise our voices a little bit and the Finns would obey. If that didn’t work, we could fire one shot and the Finns would put up their hands and surrender. Or so we thought.’
The Soviets were, by their own piss-poor standards, remarkably patient. But by early November negotiations were breaking down. 3 November Molotov lost his patience: ‘Since we civilians don’t seem to be making any progress, perhaps it’s the soldiers’ turn to speak’. However, still the Finns smiled and refused to take the Soviet demands seriously: the fact that the Soviet army was bigger than the Finnish population seems to have escaped them.
Finally, the Russians rolled out the heavy artillery – Stalin himself was brought in to argue the Russian case to the Finnish democrats. This was the meeting that Beach would have done anything save eat celery to have been at. The Finns explained that the Finnish government had decided to reject all the Russian proposals. Stalin, by all accounts, gently argued the case and kept trying to negotiate, refusing to believe that he was being brushed off. But the scrupulously polite Finns stated that their leaders had nothing else to add and apologetically left. The Soviets were so shocked that they forgot to be angry. Molotov actually waved at the Finns and said ‘au revoir’ and Stalin wished them good luck! The implication was, of course, that they were going to need it.
Back at home Mannerheim, Finland’s mythic military leader, was, to borrow a British phrase, ‘having kittens’. He knew full well that the Finns could not resist a full out Soviet attack. He begged his political leaders for negotiations to be reopened. But nothing was done. Typically modern historians present the democratic Finns as unreasonable in these negotiations and stress that aristocratic Mannerheim had a better grasp of totalitarian realities. They are almost certainly right: in fact, Mannerheim’s position was more nuanced and intelligent than can be easily presented here. But if Finland had been forced to give up some of its best defensive positions and then the Soviets had renewed their threats six months later demanding still more…
In any case, the school bully now proceeded to use his knuckle duster in what has come to be remembered as the Winter War. How satisfying to report that before he even landed a punch little Finland kicked the Soviet Union in the gonads with a force normally only given to fly backs. ‘Au revoir’, indeed…
András Toma: The Forgotten Prisoner July 28, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
***This post is dedicated to Tacitus from Detritus of Empire who sent AT’s story Beachcombing’s way***
The Second World War was a time of almost universal suffering. But, at least, when Hitler popped a bullet into his head and the Japanese Emperor retired his divinity it all ended? Well, for most of humanity yes. But there were those unlucky souls who ended up far from home with no hope of a fast return. Beachcombing has previously looked at inmates of the German murder system who found themselves put on trains for Russian gulags. There were the Japanese soldiers on jungle islands who kept fighting the good fight and shooting at over-flying Boeing 747s into the 1970s. Then there were the Axis prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, many of whom remained as guests of Stalin and his successors. András Toma, a Hungarian, was almost certainly the last of these: incredibly he was not repatriated until 2000…
The suffering of the Axis prisoners in the Soviet Union was appalling and it was based on two fuguing facts. First, Axis soldiers had murdered millions of Soviet citizens and this was payback; and, second, even with the best will in the world, the Soviet Union barely had the resources to take care of its own, never mind look after invaders from overseas. The result was a tragedy within a tragedy. If you were a German or Italian or Hungarian or Romanian or Finnish or Spanish soldier who managed to successfully surrender, not always an easy task, then your chances of survival were often obscenely low. Of the 91,000 Germans taken at Stalingrad only 6,000 made it back to Germany. Of the half a million Hungarians brought into captivity, 40% died in the camps. Nor was the Soviet Union in any hurry to give up its prey. For example, the 6000 German survivors from Stalingrad only got home in 1955; Spanish prisoners from the Blue Division, meanwhile, made it back in 1954!
András Toma was in one of these late groups and then compounded his problems by slipping down through the cracks of the Soviet bureaucratic state. He had surrendered in 1944 then in 1947 he was taken to a psychiatric hospital allegedly suffering from schizophrenia, which, in the Soviet Union, might have meant that he trod on a guard’s toes.
Three factors seem to have militated against AT’s return. First, his mental state was possibly not good and very likely got a lot worse so he could not explain himself. Then, second, he seems to have lacked the ability to pick up even rudimentary Russian. And, third, he spoke Hungarian. Hungarian is with Estonian the only East European language that has a non-Indo-European origin. A Slovene or a Czech or a Pole can make themselves understood to a Russian speaker as fellow Slavs. Even if AT had spoken a Romance language – say French or Romanian – things would have gone so much better: sooner or later a hospital orderly would have turned up who would have picked up something.
It was only in 2000 that a visiting Slovak doctor understood that the strange patient who ate all his meals facing the wall was not chattering to himself in an invented language but in Hungarian. To the credit of the Hungarian authorities no expense was spared. AT was given a hearing aid, dentures and a new artificial leg. He was brought home, DNA testing established his relatives – a ghastly detail is that 100 families came forward hoping or believing that he was a missing father or brother. He was then pensioned out of the Hungarian army being given his missing pay (ahem!) and passed into the hands of a sister who took care of him: they are pictured above together. Then, when he died, in 2004, the Hungarian state arranged his funeral.
Was he happy in those last four years? Beachcombing has found no reference and fears the worst. There are few fates more corroding of human dignity than to become a symbol.
While Beach was reading up on AT he stumbled on the following French language site about French citizens who ended up, for a whole host of reasons, lost in the Soviet Union in its worst years. So much useless, stupid suffering. There follows a random sentence concerning one Maurice Hamburger who was ‘liberated’ by the Soviets and was last properly documented on a train heading for Estonia in 1945. In ‘1961 : il aurait été vu, soignant des tuberculeux… dans un dispensaire d’une île de l’archipel François Joseph (océan glacial arctique)’, in ’1961 he was taking care of tb patients… in a ward on the Isle of the François Joseph Archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.’ After that there is a letter that may have been written in 1983, then silence.
Any other overdue prisoners?: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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