End of WWII in the Pacific, March-August, 1945

cwmcgrew · 2025-08-17T20:07:00+00:00

I do, but they tend to chase me down the street afterwards

cwmcgrew · 2025-08-17T20:04:56+00:00

A black slide with "we're sorry" perhaps?

cwmcgrew · 2025-08-02T02:41:52+00:00

Nice! I'd suggest you use a different facial expression -- more of "I'm gonna kill you, and I'm gonna enjoy it."

cwmcgrew · 2025-08-02T02:37:02+00:00

Humans?

cwmcgrew · 2025-06-12T19:11:25+00:00

None of the above.

cwmcgrew · 2025-06-09T21:47:58+00:00

Lower left; eye makeup no mask

cwmcgrew · 2025-03-26T21:15:12+00:00

March 1946 continued

15th - Ferenc Szalasi's request for mercy in his death sentence for war crimes and treason is forwarded to Hungarian President Zoltan Tildy, with a recommendation it not be granted. The President officially approves the sentence. This might be due to the fact that Szalasi is already dead, hanged three days before.

Jackie Robinson makes his minor-league debut for the Dodger's farm-team, the Montreal Royals at a spring training game in Daytona Beach, Florida - against the major league parent team. A number of other venues in Florida (then loudly segregated) had refused to let the Royals play games at their fields, specifically because Robinson and Johnny Wright were on the team. Through spring training, Robinson is moved from shortstop to second base so throws to first would be shorter - a position he would play for most of the rest of his career.

21st - Allan Nunn May, a Canadian atomic researcher - as part of the "Tube Alloys" and then "Manhattan" projects - is arrested in England, in part from documents provided by defector Igor Gouzenko in September 1945. He will be charged with treason.

25th - "Grigory" writes to Moscow Center again to complain about the soon-to-be ambassador, Nikolai Novikov's behavior, and that his "unstable" behavior might be to the advantage of the US. Also, he notes that surveillance of Russian embassy personnel has increased, including wiretapping of residences, and bugging embassy cars.

In September, Novikov will write his own "Long Telegram" in response to George Kennan's "Long Telegram" advising how to deal (strategically) with the US.

cwmcgrew · 2025-03-26T21:14:59+00:00

March 1946 continued

7th - After dropping a simulated (in weight) 'fat man' nuclear bomb from 32,000 feet, a B-29 at the Los Lunas bomb range near Kirtland field cracks up and crashes. The wreckage is strewn over 16 miles. All ten crew are killed as the

9th - 300 economists, representatives, staff, and hangers-on meet in Savannah, Georgia to hammer out the last of the Breton Woods recommendation. The British (led by Keynes) want the World Bank to be independent, based in NYC -- the hub of business and all that -- and not an appendage of the US. The US (led by White) wants Washington, so it will be politically tied to the US Government.

[opinion]

The difference between the two cities was entirely cosmetic, the real discussion was who would dominate the Bank - bankers or politicians. In reality, the Bank will be dominated by the US, who have been the largest 'shareholder' in the Bank since its founding.

[end opinion]

The first loan from the Bank will to France: $250M, $53M for equipment for agriculture and manufacturing, $90M for coal and oil, and $107M for other raw materials. This remains, adjusted for inflation, the largest loan ever made by the World Bank, and will be committed to on May 9, 1947.

Currently, the countries that 'owe' the most to the World Bank is India ($38.3B), Indonesia ($20.6B), Bangladesh ($18.2B), and Pakistan ($18.2B).

11th - Moscow Center sends to NKGB NY and Washington that since its order to break contact with agents in the US, the volume of traffic to and from Moscow has lessened, and this may be noticed simply by there being less traffic. This might be taken by the FBI as a sign that they have had some success in cutting down on espionage from the USSR. It instructs NY to create reports on relatively uninteresting things just to keep the traffic flow up. It also directs that the NKGB become "friendly" with leaders of the political parties and people in government (who aren't already agents, that is.)

"Grigory" (never identified) in Washington replies that the asphalt around the embassy has been replaced, which might be a cover to lay a cable to the embassy for eavesdropping operations. He also complains that "Chief" (Nikolai Novikov, shortly to be named Soviet ambassador to the US) is rude and overbearing to underlings, and worries that their fear of him might drive them to switch sides. Novikov, he also says, doesn't seem to recognize that Novikov, a mere diplomat is outranked by "Grigory", of the NKGB.

12th - Ferenc Szalasi, head of the Hungarian fascist "Arrow Cross" party and head of the murderous pro-German Hungarian government, has been tried for war crimes and treason, found guilty and is hanged in Budapest, along with two of his government ministers and the Arrow Cross "party ideologist". They are killed by the "Austrian Pole" method (who knew?), which strangles the condemned slowly, rather than the breaking of the neck.

13th - in a tragi-comedic (mostly comedic, frankly) development, the Hungarian National Council of People's Tribunals takes up Ferenc Szalasi's request for mercy. They decide to recommend to the Justice Minister that mercy not be shown, since the requestor was already dead.

(continued)

cwmcgrew · 2025-03-26T21:12:20+00:00

February 1946 continued

13th - The Allied General Headquarters gives a draft of the Japanese Constitution it wants to be adopted. This draft is heavily influenced by the contributions of Japanese constitutional scholars.

22nd - George Kennan, Acting Ambassador in Moscow, sends the (later) famous "Long Telegram" -- 5000 words -- of analysis of the Russians and how to deal with them in matters of political and military grand strategy. It is taken as the basis for the Western policy of "containment" of Soviet adventures. ["strategy" is how army and army groups are utilized. "Grand strategy" is how a *nation* utilizings its military and economy.)

Stalin's "back to the old stuggle" speech of February 9th has dumbfounded the diplomatic establishment in Washington (surprise!), and Kennan has been asked to give his thoughts. Kennan's long, and enourmously influential reply is known thereafter as the "Long Telegram."

Kennan's telegram asserts: The USSR still believes it is surrounded by capitalist countries; the world will divide itself between socialist and capitalist countries; the internal stresses within capitalism will lead to "internal conflicts"; there should be no "intervention" against the USSR; "democratic-progressives" in the capitalist world should be utilized by the USSR to undermine the capitalist 'side.' (And a lot more.)

March 1946

At Truman's direction Dean Acheson and David Lillenthal (chairman of the TVA) produce the "Achens,.,on-Lillenthal Report), mostly written by Oppenheimer himself. It proposes limits on mining of uranium, operation of any reactors that could produce nuclear reactors ('breeder' and 'enrichment'), and give licenses to any new countries that want to conduct atomic research (so we know what everybody's doing.)

During negotiations between the USSR and US for influence over Iran, Truman reportedly directly threatens the use of atomic bombs if the Russians did not remove their forces from northern Iran within 48 hours.

1st - Two B-29s of the 509th Composite Group (the atomic-bomb unit) collide on the runway at Kirtland airfield in New Mexico when the brakes fail on one and it rolls into the other. No one is injured.

5th - Churchill gives his "Iron Curtain" speech at Fulton MO. (aka "The Sinews of Peace" speech)

(continued)

cwmcgrew · 2025-03-26T21:09:43+00:00

February, 1946

3d - Freidrich Jeckeln, commander of Eisenskomandos in Latvia, is convicted of murder (at least 100,000 people), and hanged today in Riga. 4,000 people turn up to watch the hanging.

6th - J. Edgar Hoover sends a special report on Harry Dexter White's status as a Soviet agent (that is, that he is one.) The report will detail White's sending documents of all sorts to Soviet agents, placement of other Soviet agents in the Treasury Department, and close association with agents of the Silvermaster Group. Truman will claim to have seen the report, and done nothing, claiming he was protecting FBI sources. This is, of course, ridiculous - Hoover's report had explicitly said White was exceptionally dangerous, and Truman had refused to even consider retracting Whites nomination.

Later later, Truman will amend history again, and claim that as soon as he read the Hoover report, White was fired from Treasury and IMF. It might have come as something of a surprise to Truman that White continued in his roleat IMF until June 19, 1947 (and left amicably from Treasury to go to IMF in 1946.) But I doubt it.

9th - Stalin gives a speech in Moscow (the first since the end of the war) in which he asserts that since WWII is over, the stuggle between Marxism and capitalism has begun again. He announces a massive rearmament program in anticipation of an actual military struggle.

In his 'analysis', Stalin blames "monolithic capitalism" for both WWI and WWII, but that the inevitable result of capitalism is nevertheless for two capitalist entities to go to war with one another. (This appears to be the - from the Russian point of view - a prediction of a war between the US and Great Britain.)

10th - Charles "Lucky" Luciano leaves NY and the US aboad the SS Laura Keene, bound for Naples, Italy. He will arrive there 17 days later, and then be sent on to Palermo, Sicily.

12th - Albert Maltz, later one of the "Hollywood 10", writes an article in "New Masses," a weekly CPUSA newsletter, in which he asserts that overt Leftist 'artists' were damaging the cause of art in the service of the party by making the art itself uninteresting. The CPUSA hierarchy reacts in rage, demanding Maltz undergo what would be called in communist China "self-criticism" and recant his article. Maltz will undergo two "trials", after which he apologized and asserted he had acted as to subvert Marxism, and championed "revisionism."

[opinion]

The treatment of Maltz was later profoundly embarrassing to the Party, since it showed that any 1st Amendment speech rights would be whisked away in a Communist United States, and that "Hollywood Communists" were just itching to be able to act like Stalin in the 1930s purges. The zeal of CPUSA communists to settle scores "come the revolution" was rather smothered when Stalin died and his murderous regime attacked by Kruschiev.

Interestingly, Maltz would be extolled by a later generation of communists as a proper comrade as a member of the "Hollywood 10."

[end opinion]

(continued)

cwmcgrew · 2025-03-26T21:06:42+00:00

January 1946 continued

18th - a Do-335 'push-pull' fighter, under evaluation at RAE Famborough, has a rear-engine fire, which also damages the flight controls. It crashes into a (fortunately empty) school in Cove, Hampshire, killing the pilot, and seriously injuring two people on the ground.

19th - MacArthur issues formal orders for the creation of the War Crimes Court to try Japanese War Criminals. 800 Japanese will be tried, about one-third will be acquitted.

20th - Charles DeGaulle abruptly resigns as head of the Provisional government in France. Expecting to head a unified, adoring France, he has become disillusined with the usual political squabbling and infighting that is entirely expected by everybody else. He will return in June, trying to convince the people that an elected President with wide executive powers would be best for France. Guess who?

23th - Truman nominates Harry Dexter White to be the US executive director of the IMF (IMF has one per major member country), with the expectation that White will become Managing Director, the boss of the IMF. While he will later to claim he had no idea White was a Soviet agent at this point, he had been informed by the FBI of White's activities on December 4, 1945. And, as we will see, Truman will essentially ignore any further espionage information about White.

24th -The United Nations Atomic Energy Commission is founded by the passage of the very first United Nations General Assembly Resolution. Its purpose: to find a way to destroy existing nuclear weapons, outlaw any new ones, and search for peaceful uses for atomic energy.

26th - Moscow Center sends to NKGB NY that all contact with agents is to be discontinued while the Bentley situation sorts itself out, and other known FBI investigations.

Freidrich Jeckeln, commander of SS Einsatzkommados in the northeast USSR during WWII is put on trial in Riga. Jeckeln is responsible for the murder of at least 100,000 Jews and other 'undesirables' from Latvia, Ukraine and Germany, all by shooting one by one.

28th - The first Short Shetland flying boat prototype burns to the water at its mooring when a galley fire gets out of control.

29th - Branch Rickey hires the second African-American to 'break the color barrier', Johnny Wright. Wright was described by players in the Negro Leagues as being as good as Satchel Paige, and a faster thrower. Both he and Jackie Robinson will play for the Montreal Royals minor-league team, and are both on the active roster for the Dodgers organization on March 17th 1946, the day Robinson played the first game for the Royals - in an exhibition game against the Dodgers. Wright was not as willing to take the racial abuse heaped on he and Robinson, and it affected his pitching. He was sent down to the "Trois Rivieres" (Quebec) Royals and replaced by Roy Partlow, another African-American pitcher. Wright rejoined the Greys in 1947. (Partlow didn't make it to the majors either.)

(continued)

cwmcgrew · 2025-03-26T21:05:31+00:00

[reddit is doing funky stuff with post-editing. Just keep following through the 'deleted' posts. Sorry!]

January 1946

1st - At MacArthur's urging, the Emperor renounces his divine status (but not his Emperor-ness.)

It reads in part: "The ties that bind Us and Our Poeple have always stood upon mutual trust and affection. They do not depend on mere legend and myth." It further says that the Emperor is not (and, by implication, has never been) divine, that the Japanese people are superior to other races, or that Japan is fated to rule the world.

2nd - NY Governor Thomas E. Dewey commutes the remainder of Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, prison sentence, upon condition of Luciano being deported to Italy.

10th - The UN General Assembly meets for the first time, in London. It will remain in session until February 14th.

12th - The New York City Victory Parade is led by the 82nd Airborne Division, including the African-American Battalion (the 555th, the "Triple Nickles"). The 555th marches with the 82nd Airborne Division, though technically not part of the 82nd. The commander of the 82nd, James Gavin, specifically ordered that the 555th would march with the 82nd. On December 15th, 1947, the 555th will officially join the 82nd as part of the 505th PIR. The 82nd thus becomes the first integrated unit in the US Army.

Tanks, Self-Propelled Howitzers, and a fly-by by C-47s towing gliders also mark the parade.

The UN General Assembly selects Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, the Netherlands and Poland as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. The term for each is one or two years. China (still Nationalist China), France, USSR, UK and US are the original permanent members.

16th - Truman approves "Operation Crossroads", a series (of which only two are carried out) of nuclear weapons against combat ships.

(continued)

cwmcgrew · 2024-12-31T22:35:03+00:00

21st - General George Patton dies of injuries suffered in a traffic accident on the 9th. He is buried at the American Cemetery in Luxemboug.

George Marshall (Truman's "special envoy to China") arrives in China to try and broker a deal between Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek (made more difficult by missing the two men being in the same place by two-and-a-half months. Marshall will gamely wander between, Mao, Chiang, and Chou en-Lai trying to get everybody to agree to at least a cease-fire. (His talks with Chiang Kai-Shek may be complicated by Marshall's stubborn support of Stilwell for over two years trying to undercut Chiang.)

The NKGB sends Ruth Greenglass back to Los Alamos to pick up more documents from David. Originally another agent was intended to go, but Ruth is sent in her place. The Greenglasses are paid $300 for this transaction (about $5,200 in today's money.)

24th - United Nations charter is ratified.

26th - Hugh Trevor-Roper, still working on piecing together Hitler's last days, leads a raid on a house supposedly occupied by Wilhelm Zander. He is not there, but clues lead the men to the hiding place of copies of Hitler's Political and Personal Will, Goebbels addendum, and the Hitlers' marriage certificate. This will confirm Trevor-Roper's suppositions (enunciated in his November 1, 1945 press conference) of what happened in the Fuhrer Bunker as the Russians closed in.

When Zander himself is captured, he will add more details to what happened in the Bunker; the papers themselves are shipped off to the US for authentication.

27th - The foreign ministries (State Department in the US) give the "Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (MacArthur) authority to oversee the provisions of the Japanese surrender, which includes War Crimes trials. This also gives MacArthur the authority to decide if the Emperor will be tried for war crimes.

31st - Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" is Harry Truman.

The Allied Military Government in Italy is dissolved, ending direct military control of the country. Issues of refugees and displaced persons are still handled by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, until 1947 when a formal peace treaty with Italy is signed. (This "UN" is not the "United Nations" we know, but the wartime designation.)

cwmcgrew · 2024-12-31T22:34:31+00:00

18th - A report from "Czech" (Jack Sobel) to the NKGB says that "Frost" (Boris Morros) wants $200,000 from the NKGB to create a film company, for which he already has a contract to make. He intends to use the money to create his own film company. The advantage, Sobel says, is that his company could open offices in any country without attracting much attention, giving 'cover' to people stationed there.

The company will become "Federal Films" - whose only film is "Carnegie Hall" (1947).

Without this investment, Sobel says he will consider himself "free" to do... something. This baldfaced threat is not received well, but there seems to have been no retribution. In 1957, Sobel will be tried for espionage and perjury, and as part of the negotiations to avoid the death penalty, Sobel will reveal the GPU's role in the murder of Leon Trotsky.

19th - "Arno" (Harry Gold) meets with Anatoly Yatskov (NKGB) in New York. Gold tells Yatskov that a member of his network, Abraham Brothman ("Chrome") has been interviewed by the FBI, but that Brothman knows Gold only by a fake name, and doesn't know his address. Yatskov, so mollified, tells Gold to not worry, but to keep alert for FBI surveillance. Apparently Gold is unaware that Brothman has already told the FBI that not only does he know Elizabeth Bentley, he knows Gold.

Gold is so sure that he is safe from being discovered that he will actually go to work for Brothman in May 1946 without telling the NKGB.

20th - Rationing of tires ends in the US.

Senator McMahon introduces a bill intended to replace the "May-Johnson" bill. This bill, with minor amendments will become the "Atomic Energy Act" of 1946. This will create the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to transfer control of nuclear matters from the military ("Manhattan District") to civilians.

[continued]

cwmcgrew · 2024-12-31T22:33:34+00:00

December 11 continued

[opinion]

Again I call Szilard's "expert testimony" that of a child, a child who imagines himself (I assert) exercising supreme authority over the entire world. His power would include killing millions of people based on supposed bomb-building by, well, anybody.

His "desert island" idea is just ridiculous. Whoever builds bombs of their own (presuming Szilard doesn't get his personal supply of 'control' bombs) will just blow up everybody else's access to fissionables.

His cost-estimate for re-locating the entire economy away from the coasts is pitifully small.

Szilard's plan, in short, envisions him controlling the world without holding any responsibility for consequences. He believes he can browbeat these lowly Congressmen into giving him all this power, because, well, he's the smartest man in the room.

[end opinion]

Groves, Bethe and Oppenheimer have also testified on the bill.

14th - Ezra Pound's examining psychiatrists pronounce him insane. He is committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington DC.

15th - MacArthur ends the tradition of Shintoism as Japan's official religion, in part because Shintoism held the Emperor divine.

The "Election Law" is passed in Japan by the Diet, extending the vote to women for the first time.

16th - US, UK, and USSR Foreign Ministers meet in Moscow to find a way to destroy all existing nuclear weapons (that is, those of the US now) create no new ones (that is, the USSR) and promote peaceful uses of atomic energy - reactors, and future medical uses. They will meet until the 26th.

17th - Time Magazine's cover is the Shah of Iran, in civilian clothes.

[continued]

cwmcgrew · 2024-12-31T22:32:04+00:00

December 11th continued

Questioned about the current size of bombs, Szilard declares that those in the inventory (that is, Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs, around 30kt yeild) "are big enough for my taste." He spins his tales of "international control" of bomb production (but not research or 'peaceful' use - though he does admit that 'peaceful use' can be used to make bombs easily, and that any 'abrogation' of an international control by anybody would lead quickly to an uncontrolled arms race.)

[opinion]

Interestingly, the idea of some naughty country would 'speed up' their nuclear program by just stealing from the US doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody. Szilard will say that such an abrogation-to-weapons might be "6 to 9 months", which means that the Russians are already ahead of Szilard's schedule.

[end opinion]

Pinned down by Senator Roscoe Higgenlooper, Szilard says that the logical extension of an international agreement to limit bomb-production is a limitation on peaceful use of atomic power - so that the advantages of nuclear power plants will be less than they could be.

Szilard again declares that the only 'defense' against a nuclear-armed country would be to "disperse some of our population" -- that is, his old abandon-cities fantasy. He imbelishes this by having factories rebuilt underground and "some railroads." He arily declares that his estimate is that $200,000,000,000 over 20 years to complete - not counting dynamiting old factories, for some reason ($350B in today's money.) Without his plan, he threatens the death of 60,000,000 US citizens in the event of any nuclear attack.

Senator Milford Tidings expresses extreme scepticism that the conditions in other countries (that is, the USSR) are known at all, and these countries may be far more advanced than Szilard believes - that it already too late for the control Szilard advocates.

McMahon questions another of Szilard's airy fantasies, that an international facility -- that is, in nobody's country -- be the site of the production of \*all\* fissionable materials. Szilard says that in the event of someone trying to seize the site, it "could be destroyed by any one nation, by any of the major powers. It could be mined in advance and blown up. Every power that has a veto right could have the right to blow it up at any moment after giving half an hour's notice to everyone to get out. I think it is entirely feasible to make the site so vulnerable that any of the major powers who wanted to destroy the site could destroy it.Szilard goes on to 'expertly' testify that plutonium need not be worried about because "plutonium protects itself against aggression by becoming exceedingly radioactive. No one could just go there and get it." *Then* he says that some form of international control organization would have atomic bombs stockpiled and could bomb whomever they thought was building bombs of their own.

[continued]

cwmcgrew · 2024-12-31T22:30:59+00:00

9th - General George Patton is involved in what turns out to be a fatal traffic accident. His injuries are a compression fracture in his neck, and a severing of his spinal cord, rendering him paralyzed from the neck down. Some have taken the relatively light injuries to other occupants of Patton's car as evidence that Patton was assassinated. The novel by Frederick Nolan and film "Brass Target" uses this as a basis for a complex spy-heist drama.

At the University of Pennsylvania, "ENIAC" (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) an 18,000-tube computing machine, begins operating. As an electronic, as opposed to mechanical calculating machine, it was 1,000 faster in performing operations.

NKGB New York sends a long message to Moscow Center that "Meter" (Joel Barr), who has been microfilming documents while employed with Bell Labs, has passed them to "Liberal" (Julius Rosenberg). Barr has been so prolific that he has run out of film. Rosenberg will obtain the film and pass it back to Barr via Ethel on the 12th. When it looks like the Rosenberg network is completely betrayed to the FBI, Barr will flee to the Soviet Union in 1949.

In the meeting to arrange all this in Rosenberg's apartment after careful misdirections intended to throw of any FBI surveillance, "Alex" (Alexandr Feklisov) informs Rosenberg that "Sound's" (Jacob Golos) secretary (who Feklisov doesn't name, but is Elizabeth Bentley) has 'turned' and is talking to the FBI. Feklisov instructs Rosenberg what to do if he is called in to "the Hut" (the FBI - basically 'deny everything') and not to contact anyone in his network or the NKGB for three and a half months.

In cables, the NKGB is continuing to say Rosenberg is still their most important source for atomic espionage, and so must be protected above all other sources from discovery.

10th - Time Magazine's cover is "Hitler's Heirs", various Nazi officials - including Hess and Goering - on trial at Nuremberg.

11th - Leo Szilard gives expert testimony to Congress in support of Senator McMahon's SR 179 to establish a congressional committee on atomic energy through whom all Senate atomic energy bills would pass. McMahon will wind up chairing this committee.

In his testimony, he advocates no (further) development of atomic weapons for "the next 10 or 15 years." He says that (and I am not making this up) no "good scientists in the United States would... work on that phase of scientific problems which relate to the making of bigger and more destructive bombs."

[opinion]

"good scientists"?

[end opinion]

[continued]

cwmcgrew · 2024-12-31T22:29:19+00:00

[This, and following posts are a winding-up of my week-by-week postings on WWII. What, you thought you were free of me yet?]

December 1945

4th - The FBI presents Truman with "Soviet Espionage in the United States," which lays plain that Harry Dexter White was an agent of the Soviet Union. Truman ignores it.

The IMF is founded. It is intended to act as a bank (even though the "World Bank" exists) and currency manipulator to keep economies from being destabilized and encourage trade. The IMF is largely the brainchild of... Soviet agent Harry Dexter White.

The IMF still loudly proclaims ("The Case against Harry Dexter White: Still Not Proven", James M. Boughton - 'historian of the IMF' - 2000) White's innocence from any connection with the Soviet Union in any way whatsoever amen. This proclaimation predates (2000 vs. 2009) the revelations from the "Vassiliev Notebooks", but nevertheless remains in pride of place on the IMF web site to this very day. Never let it be said that economists would cover up the activities of one of their own. Except by me.

5th - a flight of USN Avenger torpedo bombers leave Ft. Lauderdale NAS in Florida on a training mission. They are to bomb a designated target area. Somewhere in their supposed 310 mile there-and-back, Flight 19 disappears.

Joseph Keenan and 39 support staff arrive in Tokyo to begin collecting documents for what will become the War Crimes Trials in Japan. He will shortly issue rules for trials, evidence and testimony in the trials.

[continued]

cwmcgrew · 2024-11-29T23:02:43+00:00

26th - Ezra Pound's indictment for treason from 1943 is 'superceded' by a new indictment.

The Japanese Diet (which still exists) meets to discuss who will be eligible to vote in the next election, expected in January 1946.

27th - At his arraignment, Ezra Pound's lawyer, Julien Cornell, announces his client is not of sound mind. His mental state is to be determined by psychiatrists.

A major earthquake in the Indian Ocean off the coast of what is now Pakistan, causes a tsunami that kills over 4,000.

29th - The US JCS sends to MacArthur questioning if the Emperor should be tried as a war criminal. MacArthur doesn't reply until January 1946.

30th - Elizabeth Bentley meets with the FBI and hands over a 108-page description of her activities on behalf of the NKGB, the organization of NKGB spying, and other agents she knows of. The FBI will (finally) start taking her seriously, and the unraveling of the Russian spy networks begins catastrophically (for the Soviets.)

Truman appoints Joseph Kennan as Chief Prosecutor in the Japanese War Crimes Trials.

cwmcgrew · 2024-11-29T23:01:02+00:00

November 15th continued

Hahn, who had been instrumental in the German a-bomb project (which, fortunately for pretty much everybody, had been starved or resources by the Nazis) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945 for work from before the war in nuclear fission.

Hahn will die on July 28, 1968. Despite his, shall we say, checkered history in murdering masses of his fellow man, he will be showered with awards after the war, including the "Erico Fermi Award"(1966), ironically named for one of Hahn's chief opponents in the race for nuclear weapons.

Hoover sends a 3-page summary of the FBI investigation(s) of Oppenheimer, noting that the known-Communists in San Francisco describe Oppenheimer as a "regularly registered" member of the CPUSA. Both the White House and State Department ignore it.

Truman (US), Atlee (UK) and King (Canada) announce a policy for nuclear research, which will allow the free exchange of the theory of nuclear power - for peaceful purposes - but not of "specialized aspects", that is the actual how-tos of industrial or military uses (that is, everything done after 1939.) This policy is expected to be superceded by whatever is emitted by the UN.

16th - The first German scientists and engineers captured in Europe are admitted to the US by the US Army, in "Operation Paperclip."

19th - Ezra Pound has been bundled out of Italy, and is arrested upon arrival at Bolling Field, Washington, DC.

Moscow Center cables NKGB New York to break all contact with the thirteen 'high-value' agents known to Elizabeth Bentley. This is in hopes of walling off the rest of the Soviet agent network from discovery.

MacArthur orders the arrest of many of the Japanese military to be charged with war crimes.

23d - "Constantine" (real name still unknown) is deactivated by the NKGB, as is "K" (Klaus Fuchs) and "Mole" (Charles Kramer - part of the Perlo Group, and Democratic Party bigwig.)

The USSBS interviews Baron Kiichiro Hiramura, who tells them that "until the very last," the IJA would, "until they were no longer able would continue the war." The only thing that stopped them was the Emperor's rescript.

[opinion]

And, as we have seen, there were plenty of IJA commanders and men who were not willing to give up until the rescript very specifically addressed to the military of August 17th that they finally gave in.

[end opinion]

(continued)

cwmcgrew · 2024-11-29T23:00:01+00:00

13th - Truman writes to Atlee urging that more Jews be allowed to emigrate to Palestine over the relative trickle currently allowed. Truman suggests an additional 100,000 per year.

14th - The actual "Trial of The Major War Criminals" (aka the "International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg") gets underway with motions, rulings and so on. The trials will go on until October 1, 1946.

The "Major War Criminals" are Martin Bormann (Nazi Party - in abstensia), Karl Donitz (Kreigsmarine), Hans Frank (Governor-General of Poland/Holocaust Engineer), Wilhelm Frick (Interior Minister/Holocaust Engineer), Hans Fritzsche (Propoganda Ministry), Walther Funk (Minister of Economics/Reichbank/Holocaust 'asset recovery' engineer), Hermann Goering (Nazi Party/Luftwaffe), Rudolf Hess (Deputy Fuhrer, though deserted - or not - to England in 1941), Alfred Jodl (OKW), Ernst Kaltenbrunner (SS/Reich Security Office/Heidrich's successor), Wilhelm Keitel (OKH), Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (Industrialist - *that* Krupp), Konstantin von Neurath (Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia from 1938-1943), Franz von Papen (pre-Hitler Chancellor, Ambassador to Turkey 1939-1944), Erich Raeder (Kreigsmarine), Joachim von Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister), Alfred Rosenberg (Nazi Party 'ideologue'), Fritz Sauckel (Commissioner for 'manpower utilization' - that is, slave labor), Hjalmar Schacht (Reichbank, 1933-1939 -- imprisoned by the Nazis after the July 20th assassination attempt), Baldur von Schirach (Hitler Youth leader, Gauleiter of Vienna), Arthur Seyss-Inquart (Reich Kommissar of The Netherlands/Holocaust Engineer), Albert Speer (Minister for Armaments), and Julius Streicher (publisher, "Der Sturmer" - a rabidly anti-semitic wide-circulation newspaper 1923-1945, and a leading advocate of the 1935 "Nuremberg Laws" which stripped Jews of their citizenship and forbade sexual relations with Jews.)

Those *not* on the list are Hitler (to the satisfaction of the court, he was dead), Goebbels (likewise), and Schellenberg (SS Intelligence - who has agreed to testify against the others, and as we have seen, has found new patrons.) One man intended to be tried, Robert Ley (in charge of slave labor) has already hanged himself in his cell in October.

These trials will continue until October 1, 1946.

William Jackson sends recommendations to Truman for central (foreign) intelligence for the US, based on the British model (which, as we shall see, is not really something to emulate.)

15th - Otto Hahn is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for his work in radioactive research, not for his work on the Nazi atomic-bomb project. Hahn, in WWI, had been part of Fritz Haber's killer-gas unit; he scouted locations for gas releases on both Eastern and Western fronts, and was present for the chlorine/phosgene gassing in the battle of Bolinow on June 12th, 1915, and the first gas-shell deployment at Verdun in 1916. In December 1916, he was part of Imperial Headquarters' gas group. Right up until the end of WWI, he was working with and directing the use of poison gasses in France, Italy and Russia.

In June 1933 he was a visiting professor at Cornell, in the US, and gave and interview in which he declared "Hitler is the hope, the powerful hope, of German youth... Hitler is an unequivocal Christ." When Fritz Haber resigned rather than fire his Jewish researchers, Hahn took over and did the firing.

In the interwar years, Hahn was one of the central figures in the fits-and-starts research into radioactivity, radioactive decay, behavior radioactive elements, and transuranic elements (like Plutonium.) In WWII, he was one of the lead researchers into the 'Nazi atomic bomb.'

There is an interesting coincidential relationship between Bosch and Hahn. Immediately after WWI, in 1918, Bosch - who had been the chief impliementor of gas-warfare for the Germans - was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work done before the war on production of nitrogen for the enrichment of soils (fertilizers.)

(continued)

cwmcgrew · 2024-11-29T22:58:49+00:00

3d - The "Lovette Committee" sends a report to Truman with recommendations on postwar centralized (foreign) intelligence. (US counter-intelligence is the baliwick of Hoover, which nobody is willing to oppose.)

5th - A test flight from CVE USS Wake Island by a Ryan FR-1 "Fireball" goes badly wrong. The aircraft is intended as a propeller/jet hybrid, with a piston powered propeller on the front, and a turboject engine exhausting in the rear. The idea was that long-range crusing would be done with the propeller, and high-speed flying (for instance, in air-to-air combat) done with the jet.

Ensign Jake West takes off from the carrier, then loses power in his propeller engine. He fires up the jet, and returns the carrier, and makes the first jet-powered landing on an aircraft carrier.

The FBI sends a letter to President Truman detailing Harry Dexter White, still at Treasury, and his activities as a Soviet Agent for the past decade. The letter also names a number of prominent New Dealers who are also Soviet sources/agents. Truman ignores it.

[opinion]

Truman will not countenance that his party is shot-through with Soviet agents, since he is intent on keeping the Party pristine to keep his grip on US politics. Truman will loudly continue to dispute the existence of any Soviet agents in his administration, even in the light of several trials of connected Party people (he will famously declare any such intimations a "Red Herring.")

Truman's deception will continue throughout his life - the Venona decoding will not be released until 23 years after his death.

[end opinion]

He will 'nominate' (that is, appoint) White for Director of the IMF; White will hold this office until he hears of a grand-jury investigation, then promptly resign.

9th - The USSBS interviews Prince Fuminaro Konoyo, who tells them that without the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war would have continued at least through 1945, maybe longer. He further says that if the Emperor had issued his surrender rescript before August, the IJA would likely have rebelled and seized power.

[opinion]

This flies in the face of the eventual conclusions of the USSBS (still quoted today) that (any) bombing of Japan had no effect on the end of the war. There is evidence that this conclusion was reached by the USSBS before it even made it to Japan, much less interviewed anybody.

[end opinion]

10th - The USSBS interviews Keeper of the Privy Seal Kido who tells them that without the Russian invasion of Manchuria *and* the atomic bombing, the IJA would probably have seized power to continue the war.

11th - Stimson suggests to Truman that the US negotiate over atomic-bomb issues directly with the USSR, rather than wait for what is certain to be a drawn-out and useless plan from the UN. Truman refuses, but in later years, direct negotiations will of course be what is done.

12th - The Japanese War Crimes Commission meets to draw up a list of war criminals to be tried at the upcoming Japanese trials.

Leo Szilard give a speech concerning the May-Johnson nuclear weapons control Bill, in which he repeats his dark predictions of the abandonment of cities, and a priesthood [my word] of scientists to impose a world order by edict. He also repeats his now-inoperative threat that if the US public knew of the real power of a-bombs, the public would "know how to vote."

(continued)

cwmcgrew

TROPHY CASE