by Lawrence Bush on August 22, 2011
The Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Hitler-Stalin Pact, was signed on this date in 1939. Under its terms, both countries agreed to remain neutral in the event that either was attacked. A secret protocol to the treaty divided northern and eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, and in less than a month both countries had invaded Poland, from the west and the east, and the Nazis were internationalizing their anti-Semitic campaign. Soon thereafter the USSR was annexing part of Finland as well as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and adjacent lands. The Pact was considered a necessity by supporters of the Soviet Union who (quite reasonably) did not believe that the U.S., Great Britain, and their allies were committed to the communist country’s defense against Nazism. For the international communist movement, however, the Pact produced a sudden, disreputable political shift from anti-Nazi agitation to anti-war “neutrality,” which would not end until Germany invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941.
“Germany, which has lately united 80 million Germans, has submitted certain neighboring countries to her supremacy and gained military strength in many aspects, and thus has become, as clearly can be seen, a dangerous rival to principal imperialistic powers in Europe — England and France. That is why they declared war on Germany on a pretext of fulfilling the obligations given to Poland. It is now clearer than ever, how remote the real aims of the cabinets in these countries were from the interests of defending the now disintegrated Poland or Czechoslovakia.” —Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov
by Lawrence Bush on August 5, 2011
The first nuclear attack in history took place on this date in 1945 when the city of Hiroshima was largely destroyed by a single bomb dropped by an American B-29. Three days later, the city of Nagasaki was similarly destroyed, and Japan surrendered six days after that, ending World War II. The nuclear bomb was the product of an intensive development campaign in which Jews were prominently involved: Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, three Jewish refugees from Nazism, had co-signed an August 2, 1939 letter to President Roosevelt warning of the consequences if Germany developed an atomic bomb; J. Robert Oppenheimer, David Bohm, Rudolf Peierls, Otto Frisch Felix Bloch, Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, and Edward Teller (as well as Wigner and Szilard) — many of whom were refugees from Nazism — were key leaders among the 6,000 scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the American bomb. After the war, a number of these scientists became leading advocates of disarmament and/or international control of nuclear weapons.
“When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” –Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power
For a catalogue of other surprising statements of opposition to the Hiroshima bombing, click here.
by Nicholas Jahr on August 2, 2011
So this weekend I caught the latest addition to Marvel Comics’/Disney’s $650-million-and-counting franchise, Captain America. If one can ignore the fact that the film proceeds at the level of a video game — and let me be clear, I can — it’s entertaining enough, as long as you don’t actually want to see the whole fight between Cap and the Big Tank Boss at the end of level 3. A direct shot of nostalgia to the medulla oblongata, the flick looks back reverentially at a Golden Age that never existed and the four-color glories of comics in their (and my) youth. But along the way it surrenders what’s probably the only genuine triumph to which the character can lay claim. [click to continue…]
by Lawrence Bush on June 21, 2011
Over four million troops of the Axis Powers invaded the Soviet Union on this date in 1941 in “Operation Barbarossa.” It was the largest military operation in human history in terms of both manpower and casualties. Four mobile killing groups, the Einsatzgruppen, with roughly 1,000 men in each, accompanied the invading armies to round up and kill communist leaders and Jews. By year’s end, the Einsatzgruppen had been beefed up to 60,000, and the mass-shooting of over a million Jews in the Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, and eastern Poland was well underway. During the same months, three million Soviet troops would be taken prisoner and eventually starved, beaten, and worked to death.
“Fifteen of the twenty-five Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzcommando commanders had doctorates.” —Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands
