Selection

10 January 2018

Marienburg, 1456

In 1456 an amusing episode occurred involving a Baltic fortress of the Livonian Order. Marienburg was besieged by the Poles. The siege was stubborn but unsuccessful for the Poles: they failed to take the fortress. The Order’s Germans and their mercenaries successfully held them off.

Then the time came to pay the mercenaries whom the Order had hired in Bohemia—that is, the Czechs. The Livonian Order was not especially wealthy in the first place, and because of the war money was tight, so it could not pay the mercenaries.

The mercenaries, however, insisted strongly on being paid. Therefore, as payment toward the debt—or more precisely as a guarantee that the debt would eventually be paid—the Order handed over Marienburg itself to the mercenaries.

After that everything was simple. The mercenaries had no use for some fortress; what they needed was money. They quickly came to terms with the Poles and sold Marienburg to them at an agreeable price.

After the Battle for Hill 875

“The battle for Hill 875 was over, and some of the survivors were being flown by Chinook helicopters to the airfield at Dak To. The 173rd Airborne Brigade had lost more than 400 men, almost 200 of them killed, all in the previous day and the fighting that continued through the night. It had been very cold and wet on the hill. To brighten the lives of the returning soldiers, Red Cross girls had been sent from Pleiku. They waved to the men coming one after another out of the helicopters and smiled at them from behind tables. ‘Hi, soldier! What’s your name? Where are you from, soldier?’ ‘Have some coffee, you’ll feel better.’

“But the men of the 173rd Brigade walked silently past, staring straight ahead with eyes inflamed from exhaustion, their faces gaunt and aged by everything that had happened during the night. One man stepped out of the column and said something to a loud, heavy-set girl who wore a Peanuts T-shirt under her uniform shirt; she began to cry. The others simply walked past the girls and the large olive-drab coffee urns. They did not give a damn about anything in the world.”

— Michael Herr, Dispatches.

The cruiser Helgoland and the submarine Monge

The bow of the light cruiser Helgoland after ramming the French submarine Monge on the night of 28–29 December 1915.

Three days before the beginning of 1916, the command of the Imperial and Royal Navy received aerial-reconnaissance information that two Italian destroyers, Ostro and Euro, were in the port of Durazzo. At midnight on 28 December, the cruiser Helgoland and the destroyers Balaton, Csepel, Tátra, Lika and Triglav, under the overall command of Linienschiffskapitän Seitz, left the Bay of Cattaro to destroy them.

Once beyond the entrance channel, the Austro-Hungarian formation took up cruising order. The cruiser sailed in the center, with destroyers ahead and on both sides. Two hours later the group entered the patrol area of the French submarine Monge, commanded by Lieutenant Roland Morillot, which at that moment was charging its batteries.

After sighting the enemy destroyers, the submarine submerged to periscope depth and soon found itself between two columns of destroyers. Its attempt to attack ended disastrously. While watching the target through the periscope, the commander, because of poor visibility, failed to notice the approaching cruiser and placed his submarine directly in the path of a ramming attack. Monge was badly damaged and sank to a depth of about sixty meters. It managed to surface only after jettisoning all ballast in an emergency. When it emerged in Helgoland’s wake, the destroyer Balaton opened fire on it. The commander refused to abandon the sinking submarine and died with it.

Austro-Hungarian ships rescued two officers and twenty-five enlisted men and then continued the operation.

Source: S. B. Trubitsyn, Fast Cruisers of the Saida Class.

Postscript: the name of Monge’s commander was later borne by two French submarines, both originally German: UB-26, received as reparations after the First World War, and the Type XXI electric submarine U-2518 after the Second World War.

8 January 1942: the Rzhev–Vyazma offensive

On 8 January 1942 a new stage of the Soviet counteroffensive near Moscow began: the Rzhev–Vyazma strategic offensive operation.

The Western Front was ordered to advance with part of its forces toward Mozhaisk and Gzhatsk, while another group was to strike toward Yukhnov and develop the attack toward Vyazma.

On 8 January itself, the shock groups of the Kalinin Front went over to the offensive. The front was to advance generally toward Sychevka and Vyazma, while part of its forces bypassed Rzhev; its 22nd Army was to develop an attack toward Bely.

The overall objective was the defeat of the German Army Group Center.

Chief of the German Army General Staff Franz Halder assessed the situation in Army Group Center on 8 January 1942 as follows:

“A very difficult day!

“The development of the enemy breakthrough west of Sukhinichi is beginning to become intolerable for Kluge. In this connection there are insistent demands for the withdrawal of the 4th Army in order to free forces to cover the highway (the Roslavl–Yukhnov–Moscow road.—German editor’s note).

“I spoke with Kluge about this in the morning. The matter again produced a discussion with the Führer. No decision was made, but instructions were given to make energetic use of auxiliary means for covering the highway.

“The Führer’s final conversation with Kluge likewise did not lead to a definitive decision. In the second half of the day Kluge again raised the question of freedom of maneuver for the 4th Army—that is, its withdrawal.

“I report this to the Führer; he expresses a desire to speak personally with Kluge.

“Result: the army group is permitted to carry out a gradual withdrawal in order to release forces for covering the highway. At the same time Kluge reports that Hoepner, on his own initiative, ordered a withdrawal without informing army-group command. The Führer immediately issues his usual order expelling Hoepner from the army, with all the legal consequences that follow!

“In the Rzhev area there is a lull. The enemy is concentrating forces and occupying jumping-off positions for an offensive.”

The wartime diary of Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand

Wartime diaries are a unique phenomenon. The diary of Vladimir Gelfand—first a sergeant and later a lieutenant—is doubly unique in its chronology, geography, scope and candor. The first entries date from May 1941, the last from October 1946, when the author returned home from Germany. Historian Oleg Budnitsky, a guest on the Echo of Moscow radio program The Price of Victory, discussed how Gelfand reached the front, fought in the Battle of Stalingrad and took part in the liberation of Ukraine and Poland.

Vladimir Gelfand was born on 1 March 1923 in Novoarkhangelsk, Kirovohrad Region. In 1933 his family moved to Dnipropetrovsk. His parents separated while he was still at school, but this did not affect his studies. He received good marks and was active in school social life. After the eighth grade he entered the Dnipropetrovsk Industrial Workers’ Faculty and completed three courses before the war began.

Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union interrupted his education. On 6 May 1942 Vladimir joined the Red Army. He trained at an artillery school and received the rank of sergeant.

Gelfand reached the front during the Red Army’s grave defeats in the summer of 1942 and the panic-stricken retreat after the “Kharkov catastrophe.” He fought at Stalingrad, helped liberate Ukraine and Poland, and ended the war in Germany.

A private mortar man and later commander of a mortar platoon, Gelfand tried to write every day and under any circumstances, even in a trench under fire. He kept a diary, wrote to relatives and former school friends, and answered letters on behalf of comrades, many of whom could not write.

Gelfand’s diary is genuinely unique and extraordinarily candid. He writes what he sees and records practically everything: his humiliations in the army, his feelings while going into an attack, and much else. Despite numerous problems with fellow servicemen, he appears to have been almost entirely free of fear of death. He was convinced that everything would turn out all right for him.

Gelfand was a genuinely Soviet man and sincerely ideological. He joined the Communist Party at the front. He dreamed of becoming a political officer, repeatedly sought positions as commissar or deputy commander for political affairs, and wanted to re-educate people and explain how they should behave. He also continually fought misconduct and wrote reports about it, something that naturally did not make him popular.

He simply worshipped Stalin. In a 1946 entry written when the “father of the peoples” delivered a speech before elections to the Supreme Soviet, Gelfand wrote:

“And everyone rewards him with such warm applause and love that it is simply touching to watch. Yes, he has earned it—my Stalin, immortal and simple, modest and great, my leader, my teacher, my glory, my genius, my great sun.”

When Gelfand found himself in the hardest period of the war apart from 1941, with flight and desertion flourishing after the “Kharkov catastrophe,” he wrote on 20 July 1942:

“Individuals, small groups and large units. Everyone looks exhausted and tormented. Many have changed into civilian clothes, most have thrown away their weapons, some commanders have torn off their insignia. What shame! What an unexpected and sad contradiction of the newspaper reports. Woe to me as a soldier, commander, Komsomol member and patriot of my country. My heart contracts with shame and helplessness in this disgraceful flight. Every day I become more convinced that we are strong and that we shall invariably win, but with bitterness I am forced to admit to myself that we are disorganized, that we lack proper discipline, and because of this the war is prolonged and we suffer failures.

“The higher command fled in cars and betrayed the masses of Red Army men despite the front being far from here. Things have reached the point where German aircraft allow themselves to fly right above the ground, over us, as though they were at home, not letting us freely raise our heads during the entire retreat.

“All crossings and bridges have been destroyed; property and livestock, smashed and mutilated, lie on the road. Looting flourishes, cowardice rules. The military oath and Stalin’s order are trampled at every step.”

Why did he write like that? Because Gelfand was a Soviet patriot. He simply could not bear what he was seeing.

His description of the Battle of Stalingrad is one of the most interesting parts of the diary. Gelfand reports directly from the scene. These are not memoirs written after the war but living history; such details cannot be found in official reports.

An entry of 1 April 1943, Zelenograd:

“The inhabitants are all state-farm workers. In their stories you no longer hear the word ‘Russians’ used for Soviet troops, as I heard everywhere from inhabitants of all the previous towns and villages, from Kotelnikovo to Mechetka. Instead they say ‘ours’ and ‘the Germans.’ In these expressions there is no sharp separation of themselves, also Russians, from their own people, society and army.”

Curiously, Gelfand’s diary for 1945–46 was published in Germany much earlier than in Russia and caused a genuine sensation. Among other things, Gelfand had a number of romances with German women. Letters and photographs survive among his papers; one of the women even drew his portrait. In Germany he acquired a camera and began taking photographs. His archive contains around five hundred images, another unique aspect of the diary.

Although Vladimir Natanovich was not a major writer, he wrote continuously. In the summer of 1945, after reaching the Reichstag, he wrote:

On the balcony of a Berlin building
I stand with my soldier friends,
I look, and I spit on Germany,
I spit on defeated fascism.

© Diletant

The legendary Professor Bogoraz: the surgeon without legs

At the beginning of the twentieth century, perhaps the best-known surgeon in Rostov was Nikolai Alekseyevich Bogoraz (13 February 1874–15 July 1952). He entered the history of Russian medicine as a pioneer of implant surgery of the penis, or phalloplasty, but such operations were far from his only achievement. He was a surgeon in the fullest sense of the word. His life was closely connected with the Don region: he was born in Taganrog and spent most of his medical and scientific career in Rostov-on-Don, at Rostov State Medical University, where from 1916 to 1941 he headed the hospital-surgery clinic.

On 8 September 1920 an event occurred that radically changed his life and severely tested his will and character. Bogoraz was hurrying to a consultation at the hospital. On Bolshaya Sadovaya Street near the clinic square he jumped onto an overcrowded tram and fell. Both legs went under the wheels of the trailer car, and as a result he lost both legs.

The well-known Rostov surgeons P. P. Kovalenko and I. I. Vaniev wrote of this tragedy:

“The word ‘cripple’ is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a surgeon, just as it is hard to imagine a pilot who cannot see well or an actor who has lost his voice. A surgeon’s work means standing for many hours at the operating table. Healthy legs tire with age; diseases of the legs are regarded as occupational illnesses of surgeons. To return to the profession of surgery after losing one’s legs is truly a great human feat. Two weeks later Nikolai Alekseyevich made the rounds—or rather was wheeled around—to see all the patients in the clinic. Only six months after such a severe injury he performed his first operation, standing at the operating table.”

Legends circulated in Rostov that Bogoraz himself directed the amputation of his legs. That was not true. He underwent the operation under anesthesia. Professor N. I. Napalkov operated, assisted by Professor N. V. Pariysky, who accompanied Bogoraz from the moment of the accident to the operating room, and Dr. D. P. Mukhin, who was on duty in the clinic that day.

Professor Pariysky recalled:

“As an eyewitness I can say that Nikolai Alekseyevich fell with his head toward the rails, but then instinctively threw his head and upper body backward, while his legs landed on the rails. He remained fully conscious throughout and showed astonishing self-control and courage. When I seized his left leg and squeezed it to stop the bleeding, he told me: ‘Take hold higher up; through my clothes I grabbed too low.’”

At forty-six Professor Bogoraz was left without legs, but he continued to work and to operate using prostheses. Kovalenko and Vaniev described his routine in their book N. A. Bogoraz. He arrived at the clinic around noon. Close pupils came out to meet him and helped him climb the steps. He returned home in the evening, went to bed at 8 p.m., woke half an hour before midnight, received the duty doctor’s report by telephone, worked until four or five in the morning, and then slept again until nine or ten. He lived according to this schedule day after day. Roughly the same work style characterized many of his disciples.

The Rostov surgeon G. S. Budagov described how Bogoraz operated:

“Nikolai Alekseyevich washed his hands while seated. After he had been dressed in a sterile gown, two assistants in sterile clothing approached him. Leaning on their forearms, he walked, swaying and throwing his legs forward. This wall of three people moved slowly toward the operating table. The forced ritual made a strong impression. Absolute silence fell over the auditorium. Only the creaking of the prostheses could be heard. Nikolai Alekseyevich usually operated standing, with his legs spread and his abdomen resting against the raised operating table.”

Budagov also wrote that Bogoraz was sincerely loved by patients, orderlies, nurses, surgeons and students. He had a well-developed sense of humor, liked to joke at work, wrote humorous verse at home and parodied friends and acquaintances. At dinners he was invariably the toastmaster, although he himself did not drink alcohol. It was said that he suffered from a liver disease and therefore drank mineral water.

In his free time he liked going to the theater and listening to old romances. He knew foreign languages well and spoke English, French and German fluently.

In 1936 he achieved a breakthrough in surgery, especially urology. Bogoraz developed an operation that attracted worldwide attention: a method for complete plastic reconstruction of a male penis capable of sexual intercourse, using rib cartilage. In 1937, like Professor Preobrazhensky in Bulgakov’s fiction, he performed another extraordinary procedure—a transplantation of a cadaveric pituitary gland into a person with dwarfism.

Some people become legendary while they are still alive, and Professor Bogoraz unquestionably belonged to this group. Enormous courage was required to recover from such a terrible tragedy and, as a man without legs, continue performing unique operations. His life is an example of how genuine love for one’s profession can work miracles. Nikolai Alekseyevich proved that nothing is impossible for a passionate and determined person.

SS Menelaus

SS Menelaus (10,306 gross register tons, built 1923) was the only Allied merchant ship to survive an encounter with a German auxiliary cruiser during the Second World War.

On 1 May 1942 the ship was sighted from the German raider Michel and ordered to stop. Instead, Captain John Blythe ordered Menelaus to flee the suspicious vessel while transmitting a raider-attack signal. Michel, about six miles away, fired roughly twenty 150-mm shells, all of which fell well short. The Germans then launched a torpedo boat which caught up with Menelaus and fired two torpedoes. The British ship avoided both by maneuvering and escaped intact.

Menelaus survived the war and was not scrapped until 1952.

Why Walt Disney points with two fingers in photographs

Anyone studying the history of the Disney company may notice something unusual: in photographs, founder Walter Elias Disney repeatedly points with two fingers of his right hand, the index and middle fingers held together.

The animator used this gesture in many situations—while working in his office, during conversations and simply while posing for photographers.

The explanation offered is this. Disney smoked as many as three packs of cigarettes a day, having become addicted to smoking while working as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War. When someone smokes that much it is difficult to catch him without a cigarette. His dependence may also explain the famous cough that accompanied his public appearances. The founder of the entertainment empire died of lung cancer at the age of sixty-five.

This did not fit the image of the kindly storyteller cultivated by Disney’s successors and set a poor example for children visiting Disneyland. According to the story, cigarettes were therefore retouched out of official photographs. So that visitors would not find the resulting finger position strange, park employees were instructed to make all pointing gestures with two fingers—the so-called “Disney point.” In many countries, pointing at something with a single finger is also considered impolite.

The gesture even made its way into modern cinema: Tom Hanks, playing Disney in the 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks, reproduces the same two-finger gesture seen in the retouched photographs.

The story is, of course, open to question.

“Just Do It”: what is said to lie behind Nike’s famous slogan

Dan Wieden, co-founder of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, described how the famous slogan “JUST DO IT,” which helped make Nike one of the leading sports companies, emerged in 1988. According to his account, the concise phrase was ultimately inspired by the last words of a convicted murderer before his execution.

“I remember a man from Portland,” Wieden said. “I think he grew up in Portland and committed several robberies there. In Utah he killed a man and a woman, then he was caught and sentenced to death. Before the execution he was asked whether he had anything to say, and he replied, ‘Let’s do it.’ I didn’t like it in that form, so I changed it a little to ‘Just do it.’”

The man was Gary Gilmore. In July 1976 he robbed a gas station and killed an employee. The following day he robbed a motel and killed its manager. He made little effort to conceal evidence and, after accidentally injuring himself in the motel, left his blood at the scene. Because of the brutality of the murders he was sentenced to death.

Wieden recalled that Nike owner Phil Knight was initially very skeptical of the slogan. “Phil Knight said, ‘We don’t need that shit,’” Wieden laughed. “I told him to trust me. In the end I was right.” The slogan proved concise, vivid and memorable and helped make the brand instantly recognizable. It first appeared in advertising in 1988.

It quickly became famous and a symbol of sport, determination and an active way of life. Advertising Age later called the “Just Do It” campaign one of the greatest advertising campaigns of the twentieth century.

© feldgrau.info — military history

Text visible in the photographs

The historical sign in one photograph reads: “There it is—the damned Germany!” The remaining photographs are portraits, military photographs or illustrations whose relevant captions and subjects are represented in the translated text above; the English “JUST DO IT” wording is already in English.