Posted on 11/17/2009 5:11:15 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
As a new addition to Plan D there presently appeared the task of a Seventh French Army. The idea of an advance of this army on the seaward flank of the Allied armies first came to light early in November 1939. General Giraud, who was restless with a reserve army around Rheims, was put in command. The object of this excursion of Plan D was to move into Holland via Antwerp so as to help the Dutch, and secondly to occupy some parts of the Dutch islands Walcheren and Beveland. All this would have been good if the Germans had already been stopped on the Albert Canal. General Gamelin wanted it. General Georges thought it beyond our scope, and preferred that the troops involved should be brought into reserve behind the centre of the line. Of these differences we knew nothing.
In this posture therefore we passed the winter and awaited the spring. No new decisions of strategic principle were taken by the French and British Staffs or by their Governments in the six months which lay between us and the German onslaught.
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
See two perspectives on Plan D in the replies above.
Martin is Cleared by Senate, 28 to 19, in Removal Vote 1-3
Incidents in European Conflict 2
Need for Amen Ended By Election, Mayor Feels 3
Al Capone Is Freed From Prison; Guarded in Baltimore Hospital 4-6
Shoots Ex-Employe Then Ends His Life 5
Fusion Over, Says Baldwin 7
British Ship Sunk by Surface Raider Near East Africa 8-9
End of Britain as a World Power Is Proclaimed as Germanys Goal 11-12
Visiting Editors Praised for Work 13
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1939/nov39/f17nov39.htm
Allies endorse “Plan D”
Friday, November 17, 1939 www.onwar.com
In London... At the third meeting of the Supreme Allied Council it endorses “ Plan D,” proposed by French General Gamelin (see May 10th, 1940). In case of a German attack through Belgium it is decided to defend a line from the Meuse River to Antwerp.
In France... A Czechoslovakian National Committee is established in Paris under the leadership of the former President of Czechoslovakia, Eduard Benes. The group is recognized by Britain and France in mid-December.
In Germany... The pocket battleship Deutschland arrives in Gdynia (in occupied Poland) after her Atlantic raiding cruise in which 2 ships were sunk.
In Occupied Czechoslovakia... SS forces occupy all universities (during the night of November 16-17) and 9 student leaders are executed; some 1200 are sent to concentration camps. This event becomes the basis for marking November 17th as “International Students Day.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Students%27_Day
Origin
The date commemorates the anniversary of the 1939 Nazi storming of the University of Prague after demonstrations against the killing of Jan Opletal and the occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the execution of nine student leaders, over 1200 students sent to concentration camps, and the closing of all Czech universities and colleges.
During late 1939 the Nazi occupants of the Czechoslovakia (at that time it was called the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), in Prague, suppressed a demonstration held by students of the Medical Faculty of the Charles University. The demonstration was held on the 28th of October to commemorate the anniversary of the independence of the Czechoslovak Republic.
During this demonstration student Jan Opletal was shot and died from wounds on the 11th of November. On the 15th of November his body was meant to be transported from Prague back to his home in Moravia. His funeral procession consisted of thousands of students, who turned this event to anti-Nazi demonstration. This however resulted in drastic measures being taken by the Nazis. All Czech higher education institutions were closed down; more than 1200 students were taken and sent to concentration camps; and the most hideous crime of all - nine students/professors were executed without trial on the 17th of November. Due to this the date of 17th November has been chosen to be the International Students Day.
The 17th of November was first marked as the International Students’ Day in 1941 in London by the International Students’ Council (which had many refugee members) in accord with the Allies, and the tradition has been kept up by the successor International Union of Students, which has been pressing with National Unions of Students in Europe and other groups to make the day an official United Nations observance.
Interesting that they called Capone’s illness ‘paresis’ as opposed to terminal syphilis.
Newspaper “standards” were back then somewhat more refined than that of today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_paresis_of_the_insane
Interesting article. Learned a new word, ‘syphilographer’.
“The courts are the last stronghold of democracy. Destroy faith in them and the only resort is to be musket and the sword. If you want to be a judge, you should act like a judge..............Our courts must be kept above the slightest doubt or suspicion. The defendant has lost his usefulness on the bench.”
Germany today rejected any prospects of a negotiated peace or mediation efforts in the European war with a defiant announcement that Chancellor Hitler will be ready to discuss peace terms “only when the war has ended victoriously for us.”
I was in his house one evening for about a half hour. I was a teen on a double date and we were picking up Tony's daughter for the foursome. Tony had a bowling lane in his basement and gold fixtures in his baths.
Sam Giancana lived a few blocks from our home in the southern part of town. During an assassin's break-in, Sam's brains were blown out one evening in the basement kitchen of his solid brick bungalow where he was making spaghetti sauce.
An old geezer friend of mine, now deceased, was caddy for Capone who liked to golf in the many plush golf courses in the suburbs due west or south of Cook County. The geezer was an older young man at the time so he also chauffered Capone around the 'burbs (never on "official business", he avowed)
He said Big Al was a "good boss and a generous tipper".
The gangsters, including Capone, mainly headquartered in Chicago proper, but many preferred to actually live and raise their families in the suburbs. They kept up their homes and were good neighbors, although mostly keeping to themselves. They never "fouled their own nests" and most neighbors never knew who they were.
I saw and met a goodly number of the Outfit over the years, mostly in restaurants, because of the political position I held. The majority all had one thing in common.....hand tailored suits with manicured nails, very foreign, poor English, very unattractive faces pockmarked in a lot of instances, short, stocky body builds......uneducated to the max (deehs, dohs, and dahs).....socially polite but distant in normal verbal interactions.....very short on "personality".......and when you looked into their faces the eyes were dark and dead like they had no souls......it was unsettling to look at them directly.
I met quite a number of interesting and famous people in the course of my political career who were quite the opposite of the hoodlums........ including Ronald Reagan several times, famous athletes, even Ann Landers.
But no more name-dropping, LOL.
And no, I never met Capone....I'm not THAT old.
Leni
Tomorrow's main headline.
I think I’m going to skip a day on those posts from now on. They step on the next day’s NY Times headlines and kind of mess up our sequence.
I'm not sure I agree with you on this. I enjoy seeing how the media responded to and prioritized the events unfolding around them. The uprising in Czechoslovakia is a case in point. Before now I didn't know anything about it. You first notified us when it was beginning. I knew from my prep work that it was going to become a news story in several days, and posted to that effect. If anyone did any stepping on the headline it was me. Maybe I should just stop using your posts for teasers.
Well, ok. I’ll keep putting them up. I guess it’s hard to stay in precise sequence when we use newspaper reports from 70 years ago. It took a day or two for stories to get reported back then.
But there’s no doubt we all are learning many, many minor but important details the TV shows and general history books overlook.
We don't see much of this any more due to the advent of penicillin and other medicines.....plus the decline or outright eradication of small pox here and in most other countries.
Yep, I DO believe that lack of any education at all, extreme poverty and embedded feelings of inferiority and alienation because of their "foreign" looks and ways influenced many of the 1915-1950 gangsters to turn to crime as a way out when they were still yutes growing up in this country.
Many of today's gangsters have smooth skins, are millionaires, wear tailored suits, graduated from an Ivy League, are loaded with self-confidence and arrogance, work in a great domed building and live in Georgetown.
Leni
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.