We have updates from all three of the authors I have been excerpting during the year. Here is a factoid from Shirer.
By the end of 1938 the Hitler Youth numbered 7,728,259.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 254
Then this interesting bit from Tuchman.
On the last day of 1938 [Joe Stilwell] left Chungking by air for Kunming in Yunnan, now the main air base of Free China and the starting point of the Burma Road. At the Hotel du Lac he spent the evening in dinner and long talk with [Claire] Chennault with no foreshadowing of the conflict between them that was to come.
Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, p. 198
So in December Stilwell spent his first quality time with Chiang Kai-shek and Claire Chennault, who will provide him with numerous headaches over the next seven years.
Finally, here is Churchill on the progress of one of the most important technological developments of the time.
By March 1936 [radar] stations were being erected and equipped along the south coast, and it was hoped to carry out experimental exercises in the autumn. During the summer there were considerable delays in construction, and the problem of hostile jamming appeared. In July 1937 plans were brought forward by the Air Ministry, and approved by the Air Defence Research Committee, to create a chain of twenty stations from the Isle of Wight to the Tees by the end of 1939 at the cost of over a million pounds. Experiments were now tried for finding hostile aircraft after they had come inland. By the end of the year we could track them up to a distance of thirty-five miles at ten thousand feet. Progress was also being made about ships. It had been proved possible to fix vessels from the air at a range of nine miles. Two ships of the Home Fleet were already equipped with apparatus for aircraft detection, and experiments were taking place for range-finding on aircraft, for fire control of anti-aircraft guns, and for the direction of searchlights. Work proceeded. By December 1938 fourteen of the twenty new stations planned were operating with temporary equipment. Location of ships from the air was now possible at thirty miles.
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
And I watched Das Boat just last night.
Is one of these the submarine that Germany is currently preparing to deliver to Pakistan?
;^)
Happy New Year Homey...have cocktail and enjoy!
Harold McEwen Ickes (pronounced Ick-ees) (born September 4, 1939) was deputy White House Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton. He is the son of Harold L. Ickes, who was Secretary of the Interior under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
It's amazing that Washington is like some kind of welfare system for certain families. Generations of people who make a living working and working for the government. No wonder they don't have a clue about the business world.
that Harold Ickes feller sure must be some sort of zombie or something making trouble 70 years ago and still at it!