The War Blog Weekly Update #4

I apologize for my absence. Posting will now resume.

1. WWII enterprise approach applicable in cyber warfare

The Battle of the Atlantic was World War II’s longest military campaign and centered on U.S. merchant ships and German U-boats, but there are lessons from that battle that are applicable to the Defense Department’s enterprise approach to cyber warfare, according to the Defense Information Systems Agency’s second-in-command.

2. WWII hero, academics say Greece can claim reparations

Three academics and Second World War hero Manolis Glezos (photo) pleaded with the government on Tuesday to pursue with Germany the issue of war reparations and an unpaid 1942 loan the Bank of Greece was forced to provide to Berlin by Nazi occupiers. Estimates suggest that Germany would owe Greece tens of billions of euros if the loan were recognized.
[I just want them to try. The prerequisite for reparations would be a peace treaty - which Germany never offered, signed or ratified - meaning that for there to be reparations you'd first have to revert to a state of war, then work out a peace treaty, then have reparations...! Freezing and seizing all Greek assets, interning all Greek citizens on German soil, blocking all trade with Greece... oh, I wish]

3. 1956 Porsche 597 Jagdwagen

Par for the course, Porsche built a car that was too expensive...

4. Dad's heroic actions detailed in CCM worker's WWII book

Author Elizabeth Hogan.

Without the Internet and his daughter’s deep desire and need to write, the remarkable story of Lt. Col. Henry Supchak of Newton as a World War II pilot might never have been told.Elizabeth Hoban of Sussex Borough is the author of “The Final Mission, a Boy, a Pilot, and a World at War.” The book, to be released by Westholme Publishing this spring, tells the story of her father’s courageous actions to save an Austrian village and a shepherd boy’s decades-long search to thank him.

5. The author who uncovered a WW2 double agent

Madoc Roberts is out with a new book, co-written with Nigel West and entitled "SNOW: The Double Life of a World War II Spy," which tells the story of Arthur Owens, a man previously thought to be a Nazi spy. Roberts and West discovered that Owens, whose code name was "Snow," was in fact a British double agent and had been working for MI5 (the British security service) all along.

6. Japan, Russia Still Spar Over Kuriles, 67 Years After the End of WWII

The Western Pacific is a cauldron full of political disputes, from China's unilateral declaration of sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel island archipelagos to Japan and China mixing up over the title to the contested East China Sea's Senkaku/Daioyu island chains.
But looming over it all is Russia's and Japan's ongoing rival claims to the Kurile islands, a thousand-mile-long, 56-island archipelago fog enshrouded series of rocks extending from the southern tip of Russia's Kamchatka peninsula to the northern shore of Japan's Hokkaido.

7. WWII veteran recalls her service

During this month’s Women’s History Month, Winnie Breegle gave local Panama City Navy employees and students a glimpse into history.
Breegle served on active duty from 1944 to 1949 and 10 years in the inactive ready reserves.

On Syria

Please indulge my short rant here, will ya?

To the American Neo-Con

Dear Sir or Madam,

unlike many of my fellow countrymen I try to take the time to actually listen to your arguments on Foreign Policy. I may not agree on many of them, but I pride myself for agreeing with you occasionally when you make a good point. I believe with some degree of justification that this puts me apart from the generally rabidly America-bashing Old European. And when you bemoan and belittle the military impotence and reluctance of us Old Europeans you'll find me in line with you, supporting at least the spirit of that argument lock, stock and barrel.

But whenever I think you've distinguished yourself from your rabidly liberal countrymen or the strain of people who back the idea of a Ron Paul isolationism while still believing you'll keep your standard of living, you end up throwing articles like this one onto my desk! Let me state this as simply as humanly possible: each time you've clamored for an intervention in a Muslim country or for the support of a Muslim "democracy" movement you've created the foundations for radicalization:

• Tunisia is contemplating the introduction of Shariah Law in earnest
• Egypt is now ruled by a 76% islamist majority (and you've got to be seven kinds of deluded that the Muslim Brotherhood of all organizations isn't islamist) with that same majority leading the way for a repeal of the peace agreement with Israel; because that's what we need, another potential cause of war there...
• Lybia's tearing itself apart (just recently the eastern part of the country pretty much stated roundabout that they see themselves as autonomous) after it tortured, impaled and executed the single man keeping it all together

And now you're trying to drum up support for an intervention in Syria. To support who, please? The "Free Syrian Army" who are totally not Muslim extremists even though they draw their support from the very same region and clans that led the 1982 Sunnii/Muslim Brotherhood revolt. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Everything you've done has been to enable a process of radicalization throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. And now your leading figures want to depose another largely secular regime - admittedly an Iranian toady but still a rational actor - in favor of what I GUARANTEE you will be a Sunni islamist regime. Because the region certainly needs that extra portion of instability now, with Israel and Iran already being at each other's throats...

So, dear Sir or Madam, unless it really is your goal to throw that volatile region a) into chaos and b) into the hands of radical muslims who spit on most, probably all values we as westerners hold dear, I suggest you get a grip of yourself. Or, if that is impossible, shut the fuck up once in a while.

Sincerely,

Your War Blogger

Thailand's "Hitler Chic" leaves me scratching my head

Cartoon pandas, Teletubbies, Ronald McDonald. At first glance they don’t seem to have much in common beyond a certain childlike quality. But during a visit to Bangkok you may discover another trait these popular cultural icons now share: their resemblance to Adolf Hitler.
In the Thai capital’s latest outbreak of Nazi chic, pandas, Teletubbies and Ronald have metamorphosed into cutesy alter egos of the Führer, who seems to exert a childlike fascination over some young Thais. With any luck you can spot trendy young souls strutting around in T-shirts bearing cartoonish images of the Nazi dictator.
In a particularly popular design, Hitler is transformed into a cartoonish Ronald McDonald, the fast-food chain’s clown mascot, sporting a bouffant cherry-red hairdo and a stern look. On another T-shirt the Führer is shown in a lovely panda costume with a Nazi armband. On yet another he appears as a pink Teletubby with doe eyes, jug ears and a pink swastika for an antenna. He pouts petulantly like a spoiled brat while flashing the Nazi salute.
Shirts cost from 200 baht to 370 baht (US$7-12) apiece, and some come in matching outfits for couples. Adolf McDonald’s partner is a transvestite with fuchsia hair, lipstick, long lashes and a timid Mona Lisa smile. Panda Adolf’s manlier doppelganger sports a brown stormtrooper uniform. [Source]

Gas all the... cheeseburgers?

I've got to assume the popularity and lack of awareness in part stem from the lack of 'cultural integration' of Hitler's legacy and that of Nazism into other cultures but the US-European ones. Personally, I just don't see the appeal, but then I never got the appeal of other fashion trends either. For example, I never understood why it was hip to wear Che Guevara shirts. After all, he was a butcher and a failure as an revolutionary, too. Or why people felt proud and hip if they wore shirts with Mao or the Red Star on them. The death toll you can lay at Hitler's feet is something in the ballpark of 40+ million people - in wartime. Stalin and Mao managed to kill twice as many people - their own people - peacetime. Making them and their insignias into cultural icons ought to be just as tasteless.

“It’s a lack of exposure to history,” notes Harry Soicher, a Romanian who teaches at a Bangkok high school. “If you don’t live in Thailand, you may find it hard to believe they really mean no harm.”

That may very well be the case. After all, why should the Nazis be a topic one which much emphasis is placed if it has zero significance for Thailand's history? Now, I do find the whole trend exceedingly tasteless, but I also understand why people with no relation to that part of history and WW2 simply wouldn't know or care.

“You don’t want to see memories of the Nazi period trivialized in this manner,” stresses [Israeli] Ambassador Itzhak Shoham, whose embassy is right behind Terminal 21. “It hurts the feelings of every Jew and every civilized person.”

Maybe I'm not a civilized person then? Because if anything the whole chic mildly irritates me, and only barely more so then the whole equally repugnant communist chic does. If our paths cross and you're dressed in that kind of garb I won't believe you're a Stalinist or a Nazi sympathizer. But I will believe that you're a fucking moron.

The War Blog - Weekly Update #3

1. Paintings Hitler bought found in Czech Republic

Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/02/28/2248247/paintings-hitler-bought-found.html#storylink=cpy

A five-year search by a Czech author has discovered that 16 paintings in the Czech Republic were once owned by Adolf Hitler.

The art works, which Hitler bought in Germany during World War II, had been moved to Czechoslovakia after it was occupied by the Nazis to prevent them being damaged by Allied attacks.

Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/02/28/2248247/paintings-hitler-bought-found.html#storylink=cpy

2. 'Ours to Fight For' tells stories of Jews who served in WWII

In all, 550,000 Jews - 11 percent of the total U.S. Jewish population - served. Nearly 40,000 were wounded, about 11,000 were killed and 52,000 were decorated for gallantry. But this exhibition, recognized by the American Association of Museums, is less a celebration of heroism and more about what was universal and unique about the experiences of Jewish veterans.

3. Happy Valley author takes on WWII in second novel

“The Bridge of Scarlet Leaves” is a love story set in Los Angeles in 1941, when violinist Maddie Kern secretly elopes with Lane Moritomo, her brother’s best friend. Pearl Harbor is bombed the next day, and when Lane and his family are moved to an internment camp, Maddie soon follows.

As the war progresses, both Maddie’s brother, TJ, and Lane join the military; TJ becomes a B-17 tail gunner in the U. S. Army Air Force, while Lane enlists in the Military Intelligence Service, a secret branch of the U.S. Army responsible for interrogating and code breaking against Japan. When the war ends, the characters have experienced loss, love and understanding.

4. ‘Band of Brothers’ veteran Buck Compton dead at 90

Lynn D. “Buck” Compton, an Army paratrooper whose World War II service was portrayed in the book and HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers” and who later as a prosecutor secured a conviction of Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, died Feb. 26 at his home in Burlington, Wash. He was 90. In the series he was played by Neal McDonough. Buck Compton also wrote a book about his exploits called "Call of Duty".

5. Readers share their memories about German POWs in Texas

Did you know there were some 50,000 German prisoners of war, staying in dozens of Texas camps, during the latter half of World War II?

6. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors make contact with WWII medic Walter Gantz

As a combat medic with the 9th Army's 95th Medical Battalion, Walter "Babe" Gantz treated somewhere in the ballpark of 19,000 patients over the course of the Second World War.
Perhaps none made a more profound impression on the South Scranton resident than the emaciated, emotionally damaged souls from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The memory of them has haunted him for decades, but never in his wildest dreams did he think he'd come into contact with any of them.

Savages

All hail the wonderful "Arab Spring", that popular uprising of young democrats all around the Arab world. Or so your media outlets have been busy telling you. Regardless of the fact that Tunisia has been contemplating the introduction of Shariah law, that Egypt's elections have seen 75% of all votes go to radical islamist parties (and you've got to be a very special kind of deluded to think of the Muslim Brotherhood as anything other than radical) and that saw Muammar Ghadaffi tortured and impaled at the hands of the Lybian insurgency which has their center at the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. Benghazi also is the center of islamic fundamentalism in Lybia, but I'm sure that has nothing, at all, to do with the way Lybia has moved since Ghadaffi's death, and it certainly has nothing to do with Lybian militia members of that same revolutionary movement desecrating the graves of Allied Christian and Jewish soldiers fallen during WW2 while chanting Allahu Akar! 

You can put lipstick on a pig and it'll still be a pig.