December 17 is the anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight

For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life. I have been trying to arrange my affairs in such a way that I can devote my entire time for a few months to experiment in this field.

~ Wilbur Wright (letter to Octave Chanute, 13 May 1900)

SUCCESS FOUR FLIGHTS THURSDAY MORNING ALL AGAINST TWENTY ONE MILE WIND STARTING FROM LEVEL WITH ENGINE POWER ALONE SPEED THROUGH AIR THIRTY ONE MILES LONGEST 57 SECOND* INFORM PRESS HOME CHRISTMAS

~ Orville Wright (telegram to Milton Wright, 17 December 1903)

There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into uncharted seas.

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001) (North to the Orient, Ch. 1)

Per aspera ad astra.

~ familiar Latin tag, often used as a motto

(Through adversity to the stars.)

Today is the anniversary of mankind's first powered flight, achieved at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on 17 December 1903 by pioneer American aviators Wilbur and Orville Wright (wiki) (1867-1912 and 1871-1948, respectively). The Wrights - Dayton, Ohio bicycle mechanics - become interested in aviation as an avocation and embarked on a systematic experimental program that eventually led to their extraordinary success - of which movable wing parts and a lightweight engine were the key elements. 

Via a now-defunct page from BrainFeed:

Prior To the powered flight, the brothers completed over one thousand glides from atop Big Kill Devil Hill. These flying skills were a crucial component of their invention. Through those experiments, they had solved the problem of sustained lift and more importantly they could control an aircraft while in flight. The brothers felt they were ready to truly fly. But first, the Wrights had to power their aircraft.

Zoomable version of the cutaway here.

Gasoline engine technology had recently advanced to where its use in airplanes was feasible. Unable to find a suitable lightweight commercial engine, the brothers designed their own. Using their air tunnel data, they designed the first efficient airplane propeller, one of their most original and purely scientific achievements. (Much more on the engine design here)

The Wright brothers were finally ready on December 14th. In order to decide who would fly first, the brother tossed a coin. Wilbur won the coin toss, but lost his chance to be the first to fly when he oversteered with the elevator after leaving the launching rail. The flyer, climbed too steeply, stalled, and dove into the sand. The first flight would have to wait on repairs.

Three days later, on December 17, they were ready for the second attempt. Now it was Orville’s turn. The flyer moved down the rail as Wilbur steadied the wings. The flyer was unruly, pitching up and down as Orville overcompensated with the controls. He kept it aloft until it hit the sand about 120 feet from the rail. Into the 27-mph wind, the groundspeed had been 6.8 mph, for a total airspeed of 34 mph. The brothers took turns flying three more times that day, getting a feel for the controls and increasing their distance with each flight. Wilbur’s second flight – the fourth and last of the day – was an impressive 852 feet in 59 seconds.

The most striking aspect of this anniversary is how quickly the Wright Brothers' invention led to the air and space age.  Man reached the moon only 66 years later - less than a human lifetime - and this remarkable acceleration of mankind's ability to achieve its most daunting goals is both exhilarating and frightening. 

Because satellites now do it so much better, French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry** (1900-1944) seems almost naive for remarking in 1939 that

"The aeroplane has revealed to us the true face of the earth."

Footage of later Wright Brothers' flights and an explanation of the history and mechanics: 

* N.B. Apparently, the actual time duration of that first flight was 59 seconds.

** A renowned flier, who described his experiences in vivid prose, Saint-Exupéry lost his life flying for the Free French in World War II. His most famous book is the children's story, Le Petite Prince ("The Little Prince").

On July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia, the first declaration of World War 1

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. 

~Sir Edward Grey (remark, 3 August 1914, on the eve of Britain's declaration of war) 

The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted of battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate. 

~Sir Winston Churchill (Preface to Spears, Liaison 1914) 

When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion. 

~Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August, "Afterward") 

Although many consider the opening act of World War I to be the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo - its anniversary was just a month ago (28 June) - the first actual declaration of war took place on 28 July, 1914, when Austria-Hungary initiated hostilities against Serbia, after the latter rejected a draconian Austrian ultimatum intended to give Austria a free hand in bringing Franz Ferdinand's killers to account. As a result, Russia - self-appointed protector of the "South Slavs" - mobilized against Austria, which panicked the Germans (fearful of a two-front war against both France and her Russian ally) and so it went... 

28 July Austria declares war on Serbia

1 August Germany declares war on Russia

3 August Germany declares war on France

4 August Germany invades Belgium (to attack France)

England declares war on Germany in support of Belgium

6 August Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia

Serbia declares war on Germany

11 August France declares war on Austria-Hungary

12 August England declares war on Austria-Hungary*

After Germany's long-intended encirclement of Paris (under the Schlieffen plan) was thwarted by the French and British in the Battle of the Marne, the struggle on the Western Front devolved into a four-year stalemate in which the principal protagonists faced off across a line of trenches that ran from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Despite the unprecedented bloodbath that ensued, virtually no additional ground was gained by either side before the end of the conflict in November 1918.

Despite the "war-guilt" clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, which held Germany largely responsible for the hostilities and imposed extraordinary penalties and reparations, the causes of the war have been debated endlessly for most of the last century. I concluded some years ago after a good deal of reading on the subject that although there was certainly enough blame to go around, it was primarily Austria-Hungary that caused the catastrophe because of her reckless determination to settle long-standing scores with Serbia. Nothing I've learned subsequently has much changed that position. Be that as it may... One could argue - and I do - that World War I was the greatest misfortune that ever befell Western civilization. It destroyed the West's belief in inevitable human progress. It brought down the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman empires, bankrupted France and England, and put the British Empire on the skids. It was the proximate cause of the triumph of Communism in Russia and the formation of the Soviet Union, drove the United States into two decades of international isolation, and instilled in Germany a thirst for revenge that led directly to the rise of the Nazis and World War II.

Moreover, in the Middle East, Britain's and France's cack-handed and self-serving division of the remains of the Ottoman Empire was largely responsible for all the turmoil we suffer there today. On hearing the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Germany's much-maligned Kaiser Wilhelm II noted from exile that,

"The war to end war has resulted in a peace to end peace."

*The United States only joined the Allies on 6 April 1917, provoked beyond endurance by Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare campaign and the German "Zimmermann telegram" (wiki) - intercepted by British intelligence - which promised Mexico the return of her "lost territories" in the southwest United States in return for an alliance with a victorious Germany.

(Text above is adapted from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email. Leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to his list.)

If you're interested in further information on the subject there are hundreds of books and films - the best books I know of (and unlike Ed, who's recommendations are above, I'm no expert) are Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August (which won a Pulitzer back when they meant something) and John Keegan's The First World War. 

Here's the The BBC’s Horrible Histories explanation of how the Brits got involved:

Here's a 6 minute overview of World War I:

The Atlantic has a series of photoessays entitled World War I in Photos on various WWI topics.

Previous posts: 

June 28 marks the centennial of the start of World War One: a few quotes/videos/links

Wilfred Owen, the best of the WWI "War Poets", was born 121 years ago today

It's the anniversary of the 20th of July plot, the unsuccessful bomb attempt to kill Hitler in 1944

Unhappy German nation, how do you like the Messianic role allotted to you, not by God, nor by destiny, but by a handful of perverted and bloody-minded men? 

~ Thomas Mann (Order of the Day, "This War")

A few days before the attempt: Stauffenberg standing 

to attention, left, as Hitler visits the Wolf's Lair. To 

the right is Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, later 

executed as a war criminal

In Germany, they came first for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak up. 

~ Pastor Martin Niemöller (attributed, in the Congressional Record of 14 June 1968) 

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist that doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed. 

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Blithedale Romance, Ch. 2) 

Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland!

(Long live our sacred Germany!)

~ Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (wiki) (last words before a firing squad, 21 July 1944) 

Stauffenberg's bomb failed to kill Hitler after a general moved 

the briefcase containing the device; as a result the Nazi leader 

was shielded by a heavy oak table

Today is the anniversary of the denouement of the nearly-forgotten "20th of July" plot (wiki) in 1944, when a courageous, but incredibly quixotic, group of old-fashioned German patriots under the leadership of Army officer Count Claus von Stauffenberg (wiki) (1907-1944)* sought to achieve a compromise end to World War II in Europe by assassinating Adolf Hitler in his headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia, preparatory to opening peace negotiations with the western allies (i.e., excluding Russia). The conspiracy involved a number of high-ranking officers, including Generals Ludwig Beck and Friedrich Obert, but collapsed when a bomb placed by Stauffenberg himself failed to kill Hitler, and plans to seize Berlin fell through.  

Within a day Stauffenberg and the other ringleaders had been executed, but thousands of known opponents of the regime were killed also, and Field Marshals Erwin Rommel, Erwin von Witzleben, and Günther von Kluge were implicated and forced to commit suicide**. Ironically, within a year, the Third Reich had collapsed and Hitler was dead. English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) once wrote,

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die."

* N.B. Stauffenberg, a devout Roman Catholic, was born to a Bavarian noble family, entered a traditional cavalry regiment in 1926, and became an officer in the German Army in 1930. Despite growing misgivings about Nazi policies, he fought loyally in Poland, France, Russia, and Tunisia until he was seriously wounded in the latter, losing an eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand. Subsequently, he served in several staff positions. Throughout his career, Stauffenberg seems to have been drawn to various anti-Nazi movements, and his war experiences, especially in Russia, intensified his feelings of unease with the regime. The 2008 motion picture Valkyrie presents a somewhat fictionalized version of the 20 July plot. 

** Stauffenberg got off easy. Eight of those executed were hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks and their executions filmed and shown to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.

British Pathe has a newsreel which includes footage of the aftermath of the bomb:

And an additional newsreel, apparently from shortly after the end of the war:

Related posts:

June 30, 1934 was the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler's purge of those standing in his way.

The Herd Reich? Brit farmer turned Nazi super cows into sausage because they were too aggressive.

January 27, 1945 - the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz

Nazis with cats.

Hitler’s Last Surviving Food Taster.

Further reading:

The definitive source: Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich.

Parts of the text above are adapted from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email - leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to his list. Ed is the author of Hunters and Killers: Volume 1: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1776 to 1943 and Hunters and Killers: Volume 2: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1943.

Today in Not The Bee (previously known as Not The Onion) - FAA rules for Musk/SpaceX

Marginal Revolution:.

Before Space X can launch its Starship in support of NASA, the Department of Defense, and the greater goal of bringing humanity to the stars, the FAA has required that SpaceX must (among other requirements):

Prepar[e] a historical context report (i.e., historical narrative) of the historic events and activities of the Mexican War (1846–1848) and the Civil War (1861–1865) that took place in the geographic area associated with and including the Area of Potential Effects (APE).

[P]rovide $5,000 annually to enhance the existing TPWD Tackle Loaner Program. This funding may be used to purchase fishing equipment (rods, reels, and tackle boxes with hooks, sinkers, and bobbers) for use at existing, heavily visited sites and/or allow the program to expand to new locations.

Participate in wildlife photography introduction and instruction opportunities on-site.

[M]ake an annual contribution of $5,000 to the Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge Adopt an Ocelot Program within 3 months of the issuance of the BO and by March 1 of each year thereafter for the duration of the BO. Funds donated to the program are intended to pay for…Special events to raise awareness about the ocelot.

It’s hard to take our civilization seriously on some days.

Menstruation in the classical world - an infographic

 Menstruation in the classical world - an infographic. (via https://menstrualhygieneday.org)

Nemi Ships: Caligula's Floating Pleasure Palaces

How Caligula's Floating Pleasure Palaces Were Found and Lost Again. 

The Nemi Ships (wiki) - so named because they were discovered in Lake Nemi, south of Rome: The ships were destroyed during WWII, when the purpose-built museum in which they were held caught fire.

From Imperium Romanum:

"Why were the ships unique? The ships were monumental and full of amazing technology. They were over 70 meters long and 24 wide, a system of supplying hot and cold water (pipes with the name of the emperor), bathrooms and baths. Everything in marbles, gold and ivory. Undoubtedly they served the Emperor’s private pleasures – a large living room, kitchen or bedroom indicate that the ships were treated as mobile palaces. 

People queuing in 1932 to see one of the two ships
 of Roman Emperor Caligula, which were recovered
 from Lake Nemi, Italy, on Mussolini's orders.

They contained Archimedes’ screws (the oldest known to us), an extremely rare anchor of admiralty at that time; piston pumps (discovered again only in the Middle Ages). Both had a system of moving sculptures (modelled on the theatre) with a ball bearing system."

The ships were destroyed by fire during World War II on the night of 31 May 1944. Several shells of the United States Army hit near the museum around 8 pm, causing little damage but forcing the German artillery to leave the area. There are conflicting views on whether the bomb started the fire or the Germans set as they left. 

Much more on this at Wikipedia.

An artistic depiction of a Nemi Ship by CM Knight-Smith, c 1906

June 6 is D-Day: quotes (Shakespeare, Eisenhower, Churchill), videos (footage, FDR's and Reagan's speeches), lots of links

There's so much available on this subject - the information below consists of things I found of particular interest.

It's hard to think of D-Day without thinking of Henry V's speech on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt - the source of the famous Band of Brothers line:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words-

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-

Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

~ William Shakespeare (King Henry V, Act IV, Sc. 3)

D-Day assault routes into Normandy - click here to embiggen.

You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world … Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely… Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men …  The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle… We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

~ General Dwight D. Eisenhower (wiki) (Order of the Day for 6 June 1944, excerpts)

And here's the story of The Speech Eisenhower Never Gave On The Normandy Invasion - he had prepared it in case the mission failed:

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone. 

This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place. It involves tides, wind, waves, visibility, both from the air and the sea standpoint, and the combined employment of land, air and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy and in contact with conditions which could not and cannot be fully foreseen.

~ Winston S. Churchill (wiki) (in announcing the Normandy invasion to the House of Commons, 6 June 1944)

Then darkness enveloped the whole American armada. Not a pinpoint of light showed from those hundred of ships as they surged through the night toward their destiny, carrying across the ageless and indifferent sea tens of thousands of young men, fighting for ... for ... well, at least for each other.

~ Ernie Pyle (wiki) (of the Normandy invasion, in Brave Men)

June 6 is anniversary of D-Day (wiki) in 1944, the date of the long-awaited allied invasion of Europe, on the Normandy coast of France. Preparations for Operation OVERLORD had been underway for over a year, but because of exemplary allied operational security and several elaborate deception schemes, the German high command remained unsure of the time and location of the actual landings and as a result found themselves unexpectedly back-footed in organizing an effective defense.

Thus, in the largest military operation in history, the Allies were able to land 160,000 troops in France on the first day, and by the end of August, three million – 47 divisions – were ashore. Organized under the aegis of OVERLORD’s naval element, Operation NEPTUNE, more than 4,100 landing craft and transports supported the crossing, and these were protected by more than 1,200 warships, including 200 destroyers, destroyer escorts, frigates, corvettes and sloops. By 25 August, Paris had been liberated, and Germany surrendered early the following May. 

Over 4,400 Allied servicemen died in the assault, and 7,500 more were wounded or went missing. Americans made up almost two-thirds of the overall casualties (over 6,600). The German casualty figures were never known, but estimates range from 4,000 to 9,000. That was just the first day of the Battle of Normandy, though: by the time Normandy was secured, over 425,000 casualties had been inflicted on both sides, 209,000 by Allied forces. Another 200,000 troops were captured by the allies, and over 15,000 French civilians were killed.

German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) - in charge of the Normandy defenses - is widely quoted as having observed before the event,

"Glauben Sie mir, meine Herren, die ersten vierundzwanzig Stunden dieser Invasion werden entscheidend sein! Das wird für die Alliierten, aber auch für die Deutschen, der längste Tag werden - der längste Tag."

(Believe me, gentlemen, the first twenty-four hours of this invasion will be decisive! It will become for the Allies, as well as for the Germans, the longest day - the longest day.) This quote is the source of the classic John Wayne D-Day epic The Longest Day.

The Atlantic has an excellent set of Scenes From D-Day, Then And Now, and here are Life Magazine's archives of photos from before and after D-Day in England and France, and their collection of color photos of the ruins of Normandy.

The British D-Day museum has a roundup of information, including this explanation of why the expression "D-Day" was used:

When a military operation is being planned, its actual date and time is not always known exactly. The term "D-Day" was therefore used to mean the date on which operations would begin, whenever that was to be. The day before D-Day was known as "D-1", while the day after D-Day was "D+1", and so on. This meant that if the projected date of an operation changed, all the dates in the plan did not also need to be changed. This actually happened in the case of the Normandy Landings. D-Day in Normandy was originally intended to be on 5 June 1944, but at the last minute bad weather delayed it until the following day. The armed forces also used the expression "H-Hour" for the time during the day at which operations were to begin.

Forecasting The Weather For D-Day - not an easy task in those days.

From 10 years ago - D-Day Ceremony Includes 'Interpretive Dance' of the Battle.

June Is Bustin' Out All Over and the frisky sheep problem

Read the whole thing at Mark Steyn's site...

Rodgers and Hammerstein's June Is Bustin' Out All Over was Mark Steyn's song of the week several years ago in early June (and is now completely stuck in my head), and I loved this bit of background information:

Traditional Northern New England roof-dancing
 as captured in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel

In Carousel, "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" is, in essence, a paean to the mating season, and so at one point Hammerstein opted for a Maine version of the old joke about singing Gershwin in Wales or the Falkland Islands: "Embrace me, my sweet embraceable ewe." As Hammerstein wrote:

June Is Bustin' Out All Over!

The sheep aren't sleepin' anymore

All the rams that chase the ewe sheep

Are determined there'll be new sheep

And the ewe sheep aren't even keepin' score!

Etc. Everybody working on the show liked it. Then they started holding backers' auditions. And among the potential investors who attended a run-through of the songs was Mr G M Loeb, who subsequently sent Oscar Hammerstein a letter:

I do not think rams mate with ewes in June as they do in your lyrics but I am not really certain. We have been told to keep our rams separate at all times except when the ewes are in heat but we did not follow this precaution and in several years all mating seemed confined to September-October - no mounting whatsoever in June, or if so no results.

To modify a later Hammerstein song, the ewes were more likely to decline every mountin' than to exhibit the enthusiasm shown in "June Is Bustin' Out All Over". With the show slated to open on Broadway in April 1945, the author replied to Mr Loeb:

I was delighted with the parts of your letter praising my work and thrown into consternation by the unwelcome news about the eccentricly frigid behavior of ewes in June. I have since checked your statement and found it to be true. It looks very much as if in the interests of scientific honesty I shall have to abandon the verse dealing with sheep.

Sometimes, as Hammerstein liked to say, research "poisons" your work. And it seems to have done so in this case. But, after giving more thought to the matter, he decided to keep the offending quatrain. Which was just as well. A decade later, when Rodgers & Hammerstein were making the film version of Carousel, the Production Code Administration objected to certain "suggestive" sections and the author found himself running short of lyrics. The censors were relaxed about the four-legged friskiness but drew the line at those lines quoted above about the boys in Augusty feelin' lusty. Strange to think that a mere half-century ago, such a couplet was deemed too sexual for a Hollywood movie. But Hammerstein dutifully rewrote:

June Is Bustin' Out All Over!

The moonlight is shinin' on the shore

And the girls who were contrary

With the boys in January

Aren't nearly so contrary any more

- which the Production Code Administration graciously agreed to permit. As for the embraceable ewes, Hammerstein found himself fending off the occasional sheep breeder over the years and took to justifying himself as follows:

What you say about sheep may all be true for most years, but not in 1873. 1873 is my year and that year, curiously enough, the sheep mated in the spring.

Kurt Vonnegut's May 29, 1945 letter home after imprisonment in an underground slaughterhouse during the Dresden bombing

On December 19, 1944, twenty-two year old Kurt Vonnegut (wiki) was captured by Wehrmacht troops. Below is the letter he wrote to his family after the end of the war informing them of his capture and survival. Describing the capture and move to Dresden:

Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.

Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th.

In Dresden they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as "Schlachthof Fünf" (Slaughterhouse Five (wiki)), which, of course, he used 25 years later as the title and organizing principle of his best-known book. During the bombing of Dresden (wiki), which took place in four raids between February 13th and 15th, the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives: 

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people* in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me. 

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city. 

Transcript below the scan - read the whole thing.

Transcript

FROM:

Pfc. K. Vonnegut, Jr.,
12102964 U. S. Army.

TO:

Kurt Vonnegut,

Williams Creek,

Indianapolis, Indiana.

Dear people:

I'm told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than "missing in action." Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the letters I wrote from Germany. That leaves me a lot of explaining to do -- in precis:

The location of the original Slaughterhouse Five
 is now a parking lot in front of an exhibition hall,
 but a stone statue of a cow that once marked
 the entrance to the meatpacking district
somehow survived the bombing. (more here)

I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God.

Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.

Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards. We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor. Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day. After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came. They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: -- one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food.

Dresden after the bombing raid (wiki)

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.

When General Patton took Leipzig we were evacuated on foot to ('the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border'?). There we remained until the war ended. Our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians were intent on mopping up isolated outlaw resistance in our sector. Their planes (P-39's) strafed and bombed us, killing fourteen, but not me.

Eight of us stole a team and wagon. We traveled and looted our way through Sudetenland and Saxony for eight days, living like kings. The Russians are crazy about Americans. The Russians picked us up in Dresden. We rode from there to the American lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We've since been flown to Le Havre.

I'm writing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repatriation Camp. I'm being wonderfully well feed and entertained. The state-bound ships are jammed, naturally, so I'll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month. Once home I'll be given twenty-one days recuperation at Atterbury, about $600 back pay and -- get this -- sixty (60) days furlough.

I've too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait, I can't receive mail here so don't write.

May 29, 1945

Love,

Kurt - Jr.

* via a commenter, the book The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe, 1940-1945, by Richard Overy (Viking 2013), asserts: "Recent estimates from a historical commission in Dresden have confirmed that the original figure suggested by the city's police president in March 1945 of approximately 25,000 dead is the best available estimate." The 250,000 figure came about via Goebbels' "judicial addition of an additional zero to the provisional casualty estimate."

Via the always interesting but not frequently-enough updated (that was a hint, you guys) blog of Letters of Note.

Previous posts: In 2006, Kurt Vonnegut sent this excellent letter to a high school class, and here's his 1944 letter from a German prison camp.

Cory Doctorow on right-to-repair, VIN-locking and kill-switching: John Deere (and many others)

Read the whole thing - Right-to-repair, VIN-locking and kill-switching: 

John Deere makes this claim: in its battles against the right to repair, Deere styles itself as the guardian of the world’s food supply, whose information security is all that stands between us and a Russian (or Chinese, or supervillain) shutdown of the world’s ag-tech.

They’re not wrong: John Deere’s decision to build ag-tech that can be remotely controlled, disabled and updated, along with its monopolization of the world’s ag-tech market, means that anyone who compromises its system puts the world’s food-supply at risk.

Which is a terrifying proposition, because John Deere has extraordinarily terrible information security. When Sick Codes probed Deere’s security, they found glaring, serious errors that put the entire food supply chain at risk.

Worse, John Deere seems to have no clue as to how bad it is at security. In the company’s entire history it has never once submitted a single bug to the US government’s Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. As far as Deere knows, its security is literally perfect.

V.E. Day: on May 8, 1945, World War 2 ended in Europe

May 8th is the anniversary of V.E. Day (for "Victory in Europe") (wiki, BBC) in 1945, which saw the German surrender and the end of World War II in the European theater

The beaten foe emerged.

Winston Churchill waves to crowds London on V-E Day.

All over the broad Atlantic, wherever they had been working or lying hid, the U-boats surfaced, confessing the war's end. A few of them, prompted by determination or struck by guilt, scuttled or destroyed themselves, or ran for shelter, not knowing that there was none; but mostly they did what they had been told to do, mostly they hoisted their black surrender flags, and stayed where they were, and waited for orders. 

They rose, dripping and silent, in the Irish Sea, and at the mouth of the Clyde, and off the Lizard in the English Channel, at the top of the Minches where the tides raced; they rose near Iceland, where Compass Rose was sunk and off the north-west tip of Ireland, and close to the Faeroes, and on the Gibraltar run where the sunk ships lay so thick, and near St. Johns and Halifax and in the deep of the Atlantic, with three thousand fathoms of water beneath their keel. 

They surfaced in secret places, betraying themselves and their frustrated plans: they rose within sight of land, they rose far away in mortal waters, where on the map of the battle, the crosses that were the sunken ships were etched so many and so close that the ink ran together. They surfaced above their handiwork, in hatred or in fear, sometimes snarling their continued rage, sometimes accepting thankfully a truce they had never offered to other ships, other sailors.

They rose, and lay wherever they were on the battlefield, waiting for the victors to claim their victory. 

~ Nicolas Monsarrat ("V.E. Day," from The Cruel Sea)

May 8th is the anniversary of V.E. Day (for "Victory in Europe") (wiki, BBC) in 1945, and commemorates the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces, ending World War II in Europe.*

With Adolf Hitler dead by his own hand, German military leaders signed surrender documents at several locations in Europe on May 7, capitulating to each of their victorious foes. Germany’s partner in fascism, Italy, had switched sides in 1943, though many Italians continued to fight alongside their German comrades in Italy.

Upon entering the war in December 1941, the United States had agreed on a “Europe first” strategy: concentrate on defeating Germany, Italy and their satellites rather than focusing the bulk of men and resources on the war in the Pacific. V-E Day, therefore, marked a major milestone for the Allies but did not end the war, as Allied governments pointedly reminded their citizens. Attention turned to finishing the war against Imperial Japan. More on that here:

It's V-J Day, the anniversary of the date of Japan's surrender in 1945 and the end of WWII.

* N.B. It's referred to as "Victory Day" in Russia and is celebrated on May 9th.

People dance in the streets of London on
VE Day, 8 May 1945

English novelist Nicolas Monsarrat (1910-1979) was born in Liverpool and earned a law degree at Cambridge. With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and served on the North Atlantic convoys for several years. This experience led to his crafting perhaps the most highly regarded novel about modern naval warfare yet written - The Cruel Sea - which appeared in 1951 while its author was serving as a British diplomat in South Africa. An equally esteemed motion picture, starring Jack Hawkins, was made of the book two years later, and it remains a classic today. Several other Monsarrat novels followed, but none ever gained the stature of The Cruel Sea.

Below is a generous theatrical trailer for The Cruel Sea, which actually shows some of the best bits.

Here's the Youtube description:

The novel The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monserrat was an unflinching portrayal of life at sea during WWII on a boat tasked with protecting convoys and seeking and destroying U-boats. A runaway success, the novel had already sold over 4 million copies in just 2 years when Ealing decided to make the film version. Filmed aboard an actual Royal Navy corvette, The Cruel Sea tells the story of the sailors aboard the HMS Compass Rose: the bonds that form between them, the daily pressures they face and their epic struggle to overcome the enemy. Nominated for a BAFTA for Best British Film, The Cruel Sea stars Jack Hawkins, Sir Donald Sinden and Stanley Clarke, and is a gripping insight into the lives of unsung heroes at sea during the war, and the agonizing decisions and incredible peril they faced on a daily basis.

And a brief documentary:

Related posts:

It's V-J Day, the anniversary of the date of Japan's surrender in 1945 and the end of WWII.

Churchill's "We shall fight on the beaches...we shall never surrender" speech: the evacuation of Dunkirk by a flotilla of small boats.

June 6 is D-Day: quotes, videos (footage, FDR's and Reagan's speeches), lots of links.

March 5 is the anniversary of Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech.

Churchill on governmental redistribution.

Before there was Laffer: Churchill on the fiscal cliff.

Parts of the text above are based on Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email - leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to his list. Ed is the author of Hunters and Killers: Volume 1: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1776 to 1943 and Hunters and Killers: Volume 2: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1943.

BBC's 1957 Spaghetti Harvest prank

The Spaghetti Tree prank (wiki) from the April 1, 1957 episode of the BBC Program Panorama:

Here's the explanation:

On April 1, 1957 the British television programme Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the shows highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, For those who love this dish, theres nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti.

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best. 

To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fools Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fools Day hoax.

Since 1955 Panorama had been anchored by Richard Dimbleby, whose authoritative, commanding presence had made him one of the most revered public figures in Britain. If Dimbleby said it, people trusted that it was true. Which is one of the reasons why the spaghetti harvest hoax fooled so many viewers. His participation lent the hoax an air of unimpeachable authority.

Almost no one else at the BBC knew about it. The segment was not mentioned at all in the pre-transmission publicity handouts.

The line-up for that days show included a long segment about Archbishop Makarios, leader of the Greek Cypriots, and a clip of the Duke of Edinburgh attending the premiere of the war film The Yangtse Incident.

The second-to-last segment was about a wine-tasting contest, and then it came time for the spaghetti harvest.

Dimbleby, sitting on the set of Panorama, looked into the camera and without a trace of a smile said: And now from wine to food. We end Panorama tonight with a special report from the Swiss Alps.

The screen cut away to the prepared footage. When it was all over, Dimbleby reappeared and said, Now we say goodnight, on this first day of April. He emphasized the final phrase.

Panorama never attempted another April Fools Day spoof, despite numerous calls for a sequel. However, the hoax did inspire a number of similar stunts in its honour.

This film footage is from the Archive Collection held and administered by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.