Monthly Archives: January 2017

January 31, 2017 · 06:30

American Artillery, Doctrine, and Tactics from the Mexican War to the Wilderness

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I continue to work on my Civil War books. Today an excerpt dealing with American artillery during the Civil War. This is the follow-on article to the one that I posted last week,

Have a great day,

Peace

Padre Steve+

American artillery doctrine subordinated the artillery to the infantry. Doctrine dictated that on the offensive “was for about one-third of the guns to occupy the enemy’s artillery and two-thirds to fire on the infantry and cavalry. Jomini liked the concentrated offensive cannonade where a breach of the line was to be attempted.” [1] But being such a small service, it was difficult for Americans to actually implement Napoleonic practices, or organization as the organization itself “was rooted in pre-Napoleonic practice, operating as uncoordinated batteries.” [2]

American artillerymen of the Mexican War could not match the massive firepower and concentration of Napoleon’s army. Instead it utilized mobile tactics, which gave it “the opportunity to maneuver in open country to support the infantry.” [3] During the war the actions of the highly mobile light batteries proved decisive, as did the spirit of their officers and soldiers. The Americans may not have had the organization of Napoleon, but “the audacious spirit was there.” [4] In a number of engagements American batteries employed the artillery rush, even gaining the admiration of Mahan, a noted exponent of the defensive. Among the leaders of the artillery at the Battle of Buena Vista were Captain Braxton Bragg, and Lieutenants John Reynolds and George Thomas, all of who would go on to fame in the Civil War. During a moment when Mexican forces threatened to overwhelm the American line, Bragg’s battery arrived:

“Without support, Bragg whirled his guns into battery only a few rods from the enemy…. The Mississippi Rifles and Lane’s Hoosiers also double-quicked from the rear of the plateau. From then on it was a storybook finish for the Americans, and artillery made the difference. Seventeen guns swept the Mexicans with grape and canister…. Reynolds, Thomas, and the others stood to the work with their captains until 5 o’clock. Santa Ana was through…” [5]

At Casa Mata outside of Mexico City, Americans found their flank threatened by Mexican cavalry. Captain James Hunter and Lieutenant Henry Hunt observed the situation and “Without awaiting orders they rushed their guns to the threatened sector… With Duncan directing them, all stood their posts long enough to spray the front ranks of mounted Mexicans with canister, the shotgun effect of which shredded the half-formed attack columns, dissolving all alignment and sending the lancers scrambling rearward in chaos…” [6] As a result these and other similar instances the artillery came out of the war with a sterling reputation and recognition of their gallant spirit. John Gibbon reflected such a spirit when he wrote: “Batteries derive all their value from the courage and skill of the gunners; from their constancy and devotion on difficult marches; from the quickness and capacity of the officers; and especially from the good condition and vigor of the teams, without which nothing can be undertaken.” [7]

At the beginning of the war U.S. Army doctrine recommended placing batteries equally across the line and concentrating them as needed. The last manual on artillery tactics Instruction for Field Artillery, published in 1859 retained much of its pre-Mexican War content and the doctrine in it provided that artillery was to “be organized at the regiment and brigade level with no reserve.” [8] Nonetheless some artillery officers discussed the possibilities of concentration, Grand Batteries, and the artillery reserve, no changes in organization occurred before the war. However, these discussions were all theoretical, as practical experience of these officers was limited to the small number of weapons employed in the Mexican War, and the “immediate problem was the organization of an unaccustomed mass of artillery.” [9] The Artillerist’s Manual, a highly technical treatise on gunnery was written by Captain John Gibbon in 1859 while he was serving at West Point and used by artillerymen of both sides during the war. In Gibbon described the principle object of the artillery was to, “sustain the troops in the attack and defense, to facilitate their movements and to oppose the enemy’s; to destroy his forces as well as the obstacles that protect them; and to keep up the combat until the opportunity for a decisive blow.” [10]

Since the United States Army traditionally drawn their doctrine from the French this meant going back to the Napoleonic model the foundational unit of which was the battery. The field artillery batteries were classed as either foot artillery or horse artillery. The horse artillery accompanied the cavalry and all gun crews went into battle mounted as cavalrymen. The soldiers of the foot artillery either rode with the guns or walked. The battery was the basic unit for American artillery and at the “start of the war the artillery of both sides was split into self-contained batteries, and each battery allocated to a particular brigade, regiment or even battalion of infantry.” [11]

At the battery level Union artillery was organized by type into six-gun batteries. Confederate artillery units were organized into four or six-gun batteries in which the guns were often of mixed type. This often led to supply problems for Confederate gunners and inconsistent rates of fire and or range. Confederate gunners also had to deal with poor quality power and explosive shells, a condition that only worsened as the war continued. The well-trained Union gunners had better quality ammunition and gunpowder as well as what seemed to the Confederates to have limitless ammunition.

Each gun was manned by a seven-man crew and transported by a team of horses that towed a limber, which transported the cannon and a caisson, which transported the ammunition. The caissons would normally be stocked with four chests of ammunition. For a Napoleon “a standard chest consisted of twelve shot, twelve spherical case, four shells, and four canister rounds for a total of 112 rounds of long range ammunition.” [12] In addition to the ammunition carried in the caissons of each gun, more ammunition was carried in the corps and division supply trains.

As the war progressed the both the Union and Confederate armies reorganized their field artillery. In the North this was a particular problem due to the lack of flexibility and politics in the Army which were prejudiced against large artillery formations, despite the great numbers of batteries and artillerymen now in the army. However the Federal army had good artillerymen. The Regular Army batteries were the foundation of the artillery service. Unlike the infantry units which were overwhelmingly composed of volunteer soldiers, the artillerymen were regulars, many who had served for years in the ante-bellum army.

Since there were few billets for senior artillerymen many artillery officers volunteered or were selected to serve in the infantry to get promoted or to take advantage of their experience and seniority. One of those chose was John Reynolds who promote to Lieutenant Colonel and given orders to form an infantry regiment. Before he could get started in that work he was made a Brigadier General of Volunteers. He wrote: “I would, of course, have preferred the Artillery arm of service, but could not refuse the promotion offered me under any circumstance, much less at this time, when the Government has a right to my services in any capacity.” [13] Other artillerymen who rose to prominence outside of the branch during the war included William Tecumseh Sherman, George Meade, John Gibbon, George Thomas, Ambrose Burnside, and Abner Doubleday, and Confederates Stonewall Jackson, Braxton Bragg, Jubal Early, and A.P. Hill.

However, General Winfield Scott took action to keep a core of experienced artillery officers with the artillery. At Scott’s behest, “the War Department limited the resignations of artillerymen to accept higher rank in infantry regiments, resulting in a core of capable and experienced officers.” [14] This allowed George McClellan to select two exceptional artillery veterans, William Barry and Harry Hunt to “organize the branch and to oversee training.” [15] McClellan appointed Barry, who had been commissioned in 1836 as the head of his artillery. After the defeat at Bull Run, Barry “prepared as set of guidelines or principles for the artillery service. He prescribed a uniform caliber of guns in each battery, four to six cannon in each battery, and that four batteries – one Regular Army and three volunteer – be attached to each division.” [16] In this organization, McClellan and Barry “called for the Regular Army battery commander to take charge of those batteries assigned to the division. This was in addition to his responsibilities to his own battery.” The practical effect of this was that “with the exception of the Artillery Reserve, the highest artillery command remained that of a Captain.” [17]

Hunt was responsible for the organization of the Artillery Reserve and the siege train. The Artillery Reserve was given eighteen batteries, about 100 guns or about one-third of the army’s artillery. It would be a source from which to replace and reinforce batteries on the line, but Hunt also understood its tactical employment. He explained:

‘In marches near the enemy it is often desirable to occupy positions with guns for special purposes: the command fords, to cover the throwing and taking up bridges, and for other purposes for which it would be inconvenient and unadvisable to withdraw their batteries from the troops. Hence the necessary reserve of artillery.” [18]

Hunt’s Artillery Reserve would be of great value in the early battles of maneuver. “The primary advantage of the army artillery reserve was the flexibility it gave the commander, making it unnecessary to go through the division or corps commanders. The reserve batteries could be used whenever or wherever needed.” [19] But this would not be in the offense role that Napoleon used his artillery to smash his opponents, for technology and terrain would seldom allow it; but rather in the defense; especially at the battles of Malvern Hill and Gettysburg. However, “Gettysburg was the last battle of the Civil War in which field artillery fire was paramount…” but “By the end of 1863, the tide of war had changed in the eastern theater, with both sides making more use of field fortifications to cover themselves from the murderous fire of the infantry rifle.” [20]

Even so, lack of promotion opportunity for artillerymen was a problem for both sides during the war, and artillerymen who showed great promise were sometimes promoted and sent to other branches of service. A prime example of such a policy was Captain Stephen Weed “who fought his guns brilliantly in the first two years of the war, and a Chancellorsville even commanded the artillery of a whole army corps.” Henry Hunt “singled him out as having a particular flair for handling large masses of cannon, and wanted to see him promoted.” [21] He was promoted to Brigadier General but in the infantry where he would lead a brigade and die helping to defend Little Round Top. In all “twenty-one field-grade artillery officers in the Regular Army became generals in the Volunteers, but only two remained with the artillery branch.” [22]

Both Barry and Hunt sought to rectify this issue. Barry insisted that a “battery of artillery was the equivalent of a battalion of infantry” [23] and pressed for a higher grade structure for the artillery. Colonel Charles Wainwright wrote of their efforts: “Many officers of the regular artillery have long been trying to get a recognition of their arm of the service, doing away with the regiments and making a corps of it, the same as the engineers and ordnance. McClellan and Hunt drew up a plan soon after Antietam, which by Stanton and Halleck, but nothing more has been hear of it.” [24]

However, Barry and Hunt were opposed by War Department insiders. General Lorenzo Thomas, the Adjutant General used law and regulation to prevent promotions in the artillery beyond Captain and as to General Officers as well. Thomas insisted that the battery was equivalent of an infantry company or cavalry troop. He noted “that laws long in force stipulated that only one general officer could be appointed per each for each forty infantry companies or cavalry troops.” [25] He applied this logic to the artillery as well, which meant in the case of the Army of the Potomac which had over sixty batteries that only one general could be appointed. The result could be seen in the organization of the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, the artillery component, “which included approximately 8,000 men with 372 pieces – almost the manpower (and certainly the firepower) of a complete army corps. It included only two general officers… then there were three colonels and no other high ranks at all. One army corps had its guns commanded by a lieutenant.” [26] Over time the situation would improve and the artillery given some autonomy within the Army, at Gettysburg Meade gave Hunt command authority to employ the artillery as he deemed necessary, even over the objections of the corps commanders.

General Henry Hunt was probably the most instrumental officer when it came to reorganizing Union artillery organizations in the Army of the Potomac. Following the Battle of Chancellorsville, Hunt prevailed upon the army commander, Joseph Hooker to create “artillery brigades assigned to each corps. This overcame a problem at Chancellorsville, where the batteries of uncommitted divisions had gone unused. The reorganization also made a practical adjustment to the situation where the attrition of divisions was making the corps the basic tactical unit.” [27] In the reorganization the infantry brigades retained their assigned batteries for direct support, but the guns of the divisions were organized into brigades at the corps level. The artillery brigades of the infantry corps had “from four to eight batteries, depending on the size of the corps.” [28] Despite being reflagged as brigades the command structure was not increased. This was often due to the fact “that for much of the war commanding officers persisted in regarding artillery as merely a subsidiary technical branch, an auxiliary which might add a little extra vitality to a firing line if conditions were favourable – but more typically would not.” [29] Dr. Vardell Nesmith noted:

“Resistance within the Army to formalizing tactical organizations for field artillery above the level of the battery was a complex phenomenon. Certainly there was some hesitance on the part of the Army establishment to create new organizations that would come between infantry and cavalry commanders and their fire support assets. Also one cannot discount the institutionalized tendency to keep everyone in their proper place – in other words, to keep a new power group from organizing.” [30]

Organized into brigades the Artillery Reserve became the instrument of the Army commander and served as what we would now call “general support” artillery where they were invaluable to Union army commanders to be available to augment other batteries and to replace batteries which had suffered casualties while on line. The organization of the artillery into brigades, even if they were field expedient organizations did much to increase the effectiveness of the arm. They supplanted “the battery in tactics and to considerable degree in administration. Supply and maintenance were improved, and more efficient employment and promptness and facility of movement resulted. In addition, the concentration of batteries was favorable for instruction, discipline, and firepower. Fewer guns were needed, and in 1864, the number of recommended field pieces per 1,000 men was reduced from 3 to 2.5.” [31]

General Henry Hunt

Hunt lobbied the War Department to provide a staff for each brigade, but since the new units were improvised formations no staffs were created and no promotions authorized for their commanders. Colonel Wainwright proposed a congressional bill to organizer volunteer artillery units into a corps of artillery, but lamented:

“Both Barry and General Hunt while commanding the artillery of this army have frequently complained in their reports of the great want of field officers. Were the light batteries of each state organized as a corps, and provided with field officers in the proportion proposed in the bill referred to above, this want would be provided for. The officers of light batteries also have a claim demanding some such change. No class of officers in our volunteer service stand as high as high as those of our light batteries. I say without hesitation that they are very far superior as a class in all respects to the officers of the infantry or cavalry. Yet for them there is not a chance at this time any chance of promotion above a simple captaincy, except in the few light regiments spoken of. I can point to several cases of captains of light batteries who, from this want of field officers, have for the past year exercised all the authority and borne all the responsibility of a brigadier-general.” ^[32]

But change did come, however slowly and with great resistance from the War Department bureaucracy, and the artillery service “did succeed in winning some measure of recognition for its independent status and tactics. After Gettysburg the army’s artillery commander was accept as having overriding authority in gunnery matters, with the infantry relegated to a merely consulting role, although in practice the change brought little improvement.” [33] The beginning of this came in August 1863 when George Meade promulgated an order that “defined Hunt’s authority in matters of control of the artillery in the Army of the Potomac. The order “definitely stated that Hunt was empowered to supervise and inspect every battery in the army, and in battle to employ them “under the supervision of the major-general commanding.” [34] The order was important but still did not go far enough to remedy the problem of a lack of field officers in the artillery, a problem that was not completely remedied during the war although Ulysses Grant did allow a limited number of promotions to provide more field grade officers in the artillery service of the Army of the Potomac and other armies under his command in the Eastern Theater. Likewise some additional billets were created in the brigades as brigade commanders “were authorized a staff consisting of an adjutant, quartermaster, commissary officer, ordnance officer (an artillery officer on ordnance duty), medical officer, and artillery inspector, with each staff officer having one or more assistants…” However the staff officers had to be detailed from the batteries, thereby reducing the number of officers present with those units” [35] However, in most cases the brigade commanders remained Captains or First Lieutenants.

In the Western theater there was a trend toward the centralization of the artillery in the various armies depending on the commander and the terrain and the size of the operation. As the war progressed in the west commanders began to group their artillery under brigades, divisions, and finally under the various army corps. At Shiloh Grant concentrated about 50 guns “in the notorious “Hornet’s Nest,” perhaps saving him from defeat.” [36] Artillery tactics shifted away from the offense to the defense and even during offensive operations western commanders were quick to entrench both their infantry and artillery. During the Atlanta campaign and march to the sea William Tecumseh Sherman successfully reduced his artillery complement first to 2 guns per 1,000 men then to 1 per 1,000. [37] This was in large part because he was conducting a campaign of maneuver and was far from his logistics base. Since supplies had to be carried with the army itself with a heavy reliance on forage, Sherman recognized that his army had to be trimmed down. Likewise, “the terrain and concept of operations must have been very important in his decision.” His “rapid, almost unopposed raid through Georgia gave no opportunities for the massing of large batteries in grand manner.” [38] During the campaign Sherman marched without a siege train and reinforced his cavalry division with light artillery batteries.

Notes

[1] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.21

[2] Ibid, Bailey Field Artillery and Firepower p.195

[3] Ibid, Bailey Field Artillery and Firepower p.194

[4] Ibid. Nesmith Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example p.6

[5] Nichols, Edward J. Toward Gettysburg: A Biography of General John Reynolds, The Pennsylvania State University Press 1958, reprinted by Old Soldier Book Gaithersburg MD 1987 p.43

[6] Ibid. Longacre The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac pp.53-54.

[7] Gibbon, John. Artillerist’s Manual: Compiled from Various Sources and Adapted to the Service of the United States. 1859 retrieved from http://www.artilleryreserve.org/Artillerists%20Mannual.pdf 19 January 2017 pp.345-346

[8] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.22

[9] Ibid. Nesmith Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example p.19

[10] Ibid. Gibbon Artillerist’s Manual: Compiled from Various Sources and Adapted to the Service of the United States. p.343

[11] Ibid. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Civil War p.165

[12] Gottfried, Bradley The Artillery of Gettysburg Cumberland House Publishing, Nashville TN 2008 p.15

[13] Ibid. Nichols Toward Gettysburg: A Biography of General John Reynolds p.75

[14] Wert, Jeffry D. The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac Simon and Schuster, New York and London 2005 p.39

[15] Ibid. Wert The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac p.39

[16] Ibid. Wert The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac p.40

[17] Ibid. Nesmith Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example pp.21-22

[18] Ibid. Longacre The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac p.98

[19] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.65

[20] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.74

[21] Ibid. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Civil War p.166

[22] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.60

[23] Ibid. Nesmith Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example p.22

[24] Wainwright, Charles S. A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journal of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright 1861-1865 edited by Allan Nevins, Da Capo Press, New York 1998 p.336

[25] Ibid. Longacre The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac p.100

[26] Ibid. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Civil War p.166

[27] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.94

[28] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.94

[29] Ibid. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Civil War p.166

[30] Ibid. Nesmith Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example pp.22-23

[31] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.62

[32] Ibid. Wainwright. A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journal of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright 1861-1865 p.337

[33] Ibid. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Civil War p.166

[34] Ibid. Longacre The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac p.181

[35] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.61

[36] Ibid, Bailey Field Artillery and Firepower p.198

[37] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.284

[38] Ibid. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Civil War p.178

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Filed under civil war, History, Military

Tagged as braxton bragg, charles wainwright, civil war artillery, General William Tecumseh Sherman, george mcclellan, george meade, henri jomini, henry hunt, lorenzo thomas, mexican war, ulysses s grant, william barry, winfield scott

January 30, 2017 · 06:30

Survival as What?

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

The events, including the executive orders and actions of President Trump on a number of subject over the past few days have given me cause for much concern. Likewise, seeing the comments of people that I know personally doing backflips to justify actions that had they been done by any other President leave me dumbfounded. I have Muslim friends, including friends who are Naval officers with distinguished careers of service to this country whose families now live in fear because of what has been unleashed. People I know are being threatened by people who don’t just want political power to enact tax cuts, repeal the ACA, or reduce regulations, but who want to crush and destroy their opposition. Some of the memes that I have seen on Facebook and Twitter are to be kind, little better than Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebbel’s Nazi murder inducing racist pornography of the Third Reich. If you have never been physically threatened by such people you have no idea, I have been threatened more times than I can count going back to 2010, well before the advent of President Trump.

In the television series Star Trek the Next Generation there is an episode called The Drumhead. In it there is a dialogue between Captain Picard and his Chief of Security, Lieutenant Worf. It sums up what I am feeling regarding the events of the last week.

Lieutenant Worf: “Sir, the Federation does have enemies. We must seek them out.” 

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: “Oh, yes. That’s how it starts. But the road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think. Something is wrong here, Mister Worf. I don’t like what we have become.”

I do not like what we have become.

For me this is not about political party, though I did have a number of people suggest this. My political beliefs, while liberal and progressive are founded on the premise in the proposition of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, which was reiterated by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, that “all men are created equal.”

Those who have read my writings for any length of time have heard me talk about that time after time, whether it be in the words of Jefferson, Madison, Virginia Baptist leader John Leland, and of course Lincoln himself. What the Trump administration is doing today is destroying that proposition before our eyes in the name of the false god of security, flamed by fear, suspicion, hatred, and ignorance. He promises a utopia where he will “make America great again,” but to quote Spencer Tracy’s character in the film Inherit the Wind: “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.”

If followed to their logical end, it will be then end of the proposition that is the spiritual heart of the United States of America. It is the one proposition that set us apart, even when imperfectly done, that set us apart from every nation on earth. It is the one thing that most Americans ancestors came to this country to enjoy; the proposition that “we hold these truth to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”

Charles Morgan Jr. who I have written about before, wrote these haunting words after the bombing the the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964:

“It is not by great acts but by small failures that freedom dies. . . . Justice and liberty die quietly, because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.”

That my friends is happening today before our very eyes. Judge Learned Hand, perhaps the best qualified man ever to not serve on the Supreme Court wrote,

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. The spirit of Liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of Liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of Liberty is that which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.”

During the climax of The Drumhead, Captain Picard tells his inquisitor, “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”

The question is: Will we sell the very proposition that sets us apart from all other nations for the false god of security? of survival? If so, we have to answer the question: “survival as what?”

That is the question my friends that I leave you with to start this week. Survival as what?

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under civil rights, ethics, History, holocaust, national security, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as abraham lincoln, captain jean luc picard, charles morgan jr, declaration of independence, gettysburg address, inherit the wind, Joseph Goebbels, julius streicher, learned hand, president donald trump, spencer tracy, the drumhead, trump's executive orders

January 29, 2017 · 06:30

The World’s Guilt: The Flaw in Character that Allows us to Look the Other Way

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today just a short follow up to my last few posts about the Holocaust and the other crimes of the Nazi state. A couple of those dealt with the film Judgment at Nuremberg. The film is profoundly disturbing when one looks at the time that we live. This is one of the more disturbing sections because in it, Maximillian Schell who played Hans Rolfe, the defense counsel for Burt Lancaster.

His summation of the defense following his client’s admission of guilt is damning. It is something that when we, and by we I mean people around the world, look at the atrocities of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, the willful starvation of millions by criminal regimes; and then stand by saying little or nothing and doing nothing, sometimes even supporting the regimes that commit these actions.

Please, no matter what your political point of view, take the time to watch the film, and read the transcript of Schell’s speech below:

“Your Honor, it is my duty to defend Ernst Janning, and yet Ernst Janning has said he is guilty. There’s no doubt, he feels his guilt. He made a great error in going along with the Nazi movement, hoping it would be good for his country. But, if he is to be found guilty, there are others who also went along, who also must be found guilty. Ernst Janning said, “We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.” Why did we succeed, Your Honor? What about the rest of the world? Did it not know the intentions of the Third Reich? Did it not hear the words of Hitler’s broadcast all over the world? Did it not read his intentions in Mein Kampf, published in every corner of the world? Where’s the responsibility of the Soviet Union, who signed in 1939 the pact with Hitler, enabled him to make war? Are we not to find Russia guilty? Where’s the responsibility of the Vatican, who signed in 1933 the Concordat with Hitler, giving him his first tremendous prestige? Are we not to find the Vatican guilty? Where’s the responsibility of the world leader, Winston Churchill, who said in an open letter to the London Times in 1938 – 1938! Your Honor – “were England to suffer national disaster should pray to God to send a man of the strength of mind and will of an Adolf Hitler!” Are we not to find Winston Churchill guilty? Where is the responsibility of those American industrialists, who helped Hitler to rebuild his armaments and profited by that rebuilding? Are we not to find the American industrialists guilty? No, Your Honor. No! Germany alone is not guilty: The whole world is as responsible for Hitler’s Germany. It is an easy thing to condemn one man in the dock. It is easy to condemn the German people to speak of the basic flaw in the German character that allowed Hitler to rise to power and at the same time positively ignore the basic flaw of character that made the Russians sign pacts with him, Winston Churchill praise him, American industrialists profit by him! Ernst Janning said he is guilty. If he is, Ernst Janning’s guilt is the world’s guilt – no more and no less.”

Sadly, little has changed in the character of humanity. If we do or say nothing, if we support those who do such things, if we close our eyes and pretend that it is not our problem, then we are the guilty party. As Hannah Arendt wrote: “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under ethics, film, Foreign Policy, History, holocaust, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as burt lancaster, ethnic cleansing, genocide, hannah arendt, hans rolfe, Holocaust, judge ernst janning, judgment at nuremberg, justice dan haywood, maximillian schell

January 28, 2017 · 14:22

Holocaust Remembrance 2017: “Most evil is done by People who never make up their minds to be Good or Evil”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I normally don’t post twice in a day but this I thought was important, for I believe that we are at a point in world history where the not so distant specter of a horrifying past is is rising before our eyes and all too many people cannot see it.

Friday, January 27^th 2017 was Holocaust Remembrance Day. On that day seventy-two years ago the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the centerpiece of the Nazi Death Camp machine. To be sure, in his panic to save his neck, in late 1944 Heinrich Himmler had begun to switch from his tactic of extermination to using the Jews as bargaining chips., but by then most of the Jews under Nazi control were dead. Those that remained, emaciated and dying by the thousands to starvation, and unchecked disease, as they were marched in ghastly conditions to camps deeper inside Nazi controlled areas.

On Friday two things happened in the United States that caused me to shake my head and wonder if we are becoming a place that will turn its eyes away from current atrocities, genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing, and walk away. President Trump issued a proclamation to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, a statement that did not mention the Jews. How one remembers the Holocaust without mentioning the Jews is beyond me, but some of the President’s closest advisers, including Steve Bannon, are closely connected to the self-proclaimed Alt-Right, a movement of white supremacists and neo-Nazis looking for respectability. The second thing the President did was to issue an Executive Order halting the immigration of refugees from certain Muslim majority countries, and to cap the number entering. I’m not going to go into details about that but it is not the first time that the United States stopped refugees from entering the country on national security grounds, as in the 1930s and 1940s one of the reasons used to keep German Jewish refugees out of the country was exactly that, they might be Nazi spies and saboteurs, but I digress…

However, this is a day that we should never forget. The horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime, all in the name of “race purity” and the extermination of the Jews and others deemed by the Nazis to be “sub-human” or untermenschen is something that is hard for most to imagine. Last year about this time I finished reading Bettina Stangneth’s book, Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. While I am very well informed and educated on the lives, writings, actions, and statements of many of the Nazi war criminals, this new book on Eichmann is the most troubling that I have ever read. In particular it is the accounts of his writings and interviews with other pro-Nazi, or former Nazis in Argentina, particularly the Sassen Interviews, which span hundreds of hours of tape and thousands of pages of transcripts.

I am a Christian, a gentile, and a historian, as well as a thirty-five year military who served alongside our advisors and the Iraqis who fought alongside of us. I have lived in Germany, read, speak and write German and have many friends in that country, including members of the German military, retired and active duty. My study and association with Holocaust survivors goes back to my college days at California State University Northridge when as an undergraduate history major I spent much of my time studying Germany from the first unification and the Kaiser Reich, the First World War, Versailles, Weimar and the Hitler Regime. My professor, Dr. Helmut Heussler, whose family left Germany in the late 1920s, served in the U.S. Army in World War II and was an interrogator at Nuremberg. I took a number of classes from Dr. Heussler, including Hitler’s Germany and the Holocaust. In the latter I had the chance to meet Holocaust survivor Mel Mermelstein, who was later played by Leonard Nimoy in the TV movie Never Forget.

Since my college days I have continued to read and study, and to get a second Masters Degree in History in which much of my work dealt with the Nazi regime. I have visited the sites of former concentration camps including Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I have been to the sites of the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg, as well as to the courtroom where the Nuremberg Trails were conducted. One day, God willing I will get to Auschwitz.

The Nazis had begun their persecution of the Jews shortly after Hitler took power in 1933. Later in the year the Enabling Act gave Hitler and his henchmen the legal means to begin their persecution of the Jews and others. These were followed by the Nuremberg Laws and other laws that targeted the Jews. Persecution increased throughout the 1930s, and sadly most countries refused to accommodate increased Jewish immigration. Then came Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when on 9-10 November 1938, a series of orchestrated attacks on Jewish businesses, Synagogues, institutions and individuals. On that night close to 200 synagogues, 7000 Jewish businesses and 29 major department stores were destroyed or damaged. Over 30,000 Jews, mostly men, were arrested and sent to concentration camps, 91 people were killed outright, and several thousand died in the aftermath.

When the Nazis invaded Poland, its Jews were rounded up and placed into ghettos where many died of starvation and abuse even before the ghettos were liquidated and the people who lived in them were deported to the extermination camps. In 1941 as the German military seemed to be assured of victory in the Soviet Union the Nazis decided to exterminate the Jews of Europe. In the Soviet Union four Einsatzgruppen followed each of the German Army Groups and systematically began to massacre the Jews of every city and village which German soldiers captured. Over a million and a half Soviet Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen, Ordungspolizei battalions, Army Security Divisions and locally recruited units.

At the Wansee Conference of January 20^th 1942 the specifics of the “Final Solution” were mapped out by Himmler’s number two man, SS General Reinhard Heydrich. What followed is beyond the comprehension of most people, but the perpetrators were for the most part men and women who were terrifyingly normal.

The truly terrifying thing about the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust to me is that most of the men at Wansee, men that commanded the Concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen were very ordinary men who simply believed that they were doing their jobs. Very few could be described as psychopathic killers by nature. They were lawyers, doctors, career police officials, businessmen, and bureaucrats who carried out an extermination campaign that killed by their own numbers between 5.5 and 6 million Jews, not to mention others deemed to be subhuman including the handicapped, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and other non-Jewish minorities like the Gypsies not to mention the wide variety of those considered political enemies. But it was the Jews that bore the most tragic fate.

When you read their writings, listen to them when they were interviewed, or watch footage of them during or after the war, you find that they had absolutely no empathy for their victims. When confronted about the evil that they engineered they invariably blamed their victims, just as many like them do today.

Most of the men who coordinated the massive effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe following the Wansee Conference of January 20th 1942 approached their jobs dispassionately. This was a common attitude among the civil service, military and police officials that oversaw the Holocaust. They simply did their jobs and followed the law, and for most of them, their victims meant nothing.

Hungarian Jews being sent to Extermination Camps

Adolf Eichmann summed up the attitude of many when he said regarding his work to deport hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in in just a few weeks during the fall of 1944, “Whether they were bank directors or mental cases, the people who were loaded on those trains meant nothing to me.” Speaking to Willem Sassen in 1957 Eichmann reveled in that accomplishment, “It was an achievement that was never matched before or since.” Eichmann also enjoyed leading his victims on, pretending that he might listen, and they might change his mind. Eichmann was proud of what he did. He told his staff, “I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have five million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction.”

Hannah Arendt wrote of Eichmann:

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”

This was what made the Holocaust committed against the Jews of Europe by Nazi Germany a phenomenon different than other genocides. Many of the perpetrators were not driven by centuries old hate as in the Balkans, tribal blood lust as occurred in Rwanda, or the products of Soviet Communism or Communist Chines Maoist regimes.

It was the racial ideology of the Nazis which deemed the Jews and other non-Aryans to be sub-human. That ideology undergirded the German treatment of the Jews, and the conduct of the war, especially in the East. But the execution of the plan required the bureaucratic, administrative, technical and legal skills brought to the table by ordinary men. Men who sought promotion, advancement and economic security for their families. Individually many would have never killed, but in their positions they ran the rail network, the factories, the banking and finance industries and supported the war effort, most not thinking much about the evil that they abetted or if they did finding a way, be it social, scientific, religious, patriotic, legal or simply in the name of efficiency.

That is what makes the evil committed by them so terrifying. It is the product of “normal” people in an advanced Western nation. Make no bones about it, their actions were evil. They aided and abetted the genocide of the Jews, the disabled, other “sub-human” races, particularly Slavs, as well as those that they deemed less than suitable.

I think that the most chilling thing about the Holocaust was that the greatest atrocities were committed by ordinary men, sometimes well educated, decent family men. These were men who simply executed orders and often went home at night. Arendt wrote that “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” She was right, there was an ordinariness to the evil perpetrated by the Nazis, at the same time there are those who consciously decide to participate in evil.

It is important that we do not forget the Holocaust. It is also important to recognize that the instruments of that horror were on the whole “ordinary” men who as they saw it were simply doing their job. It is something that everyone needs to remember. Bettina Stangneth wrote “Systematic mass murder is not just the sum of isolated instances of sadism but the result of a political thinking that is perverted from the ground up.”

So many of the perpetrators saw nothing wrong in what they were doing, in fact at his trial in Jerusalem Eichmann said, “To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing.”

They believed that their victims were less than human and like so many people even today, they had no empathy. Gustave Gilbert, an American Army Psychologist at the major War Criminal Trials at Nuremberg said it so well: “Evil is the absence of empathy.”

It is important that we never forget, especially now when we could be watching it begin all over again.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under civil rights, ethics, Foreign Policy, History, holocaust, iraq,afghanistan, laws and legislation, national security, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as adolf eichmann, auschwitz, bergen-belsen, bettina stangneth, dachau, einsatzgruppen, genocide, gustave gilbert, hannah arendt, heinrich himmler, Holocaust, iraqi refugees, president donald trump, Reinhard Heydrich, steve bannon, syrian refugees, trump executive orders, wansee conference

January 28, 2017 · 06:30

Truth, Justice, and the Value of a Single Human Life: What Americans Should Stand For

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Yesterday I wrote about a segment of the classic film Judgment at Nuremberg. Today I am following that up with another, albeit, short post regarding one of the most riveting monologues in film from the same film. Since yesterday was also Holocaust Remembrance Day it is appropriate to take the time, and never forget, for while we may not want to admit it, as human beings we are capable of the same inhumanity.

The segment, in which Spencer Tracy plays the role of Chief Judge Dan Heywood gives his verdict is one of the most telling sequences in cinema regarding what it is to be an American. I always show it in the first session of my military ethics class at the Staff College and since the majority of my students have never seen the film, it usually leaves them in silence. So I am just going to leave it with you to watch, read, and contemplate. Who are we, and what do we stand for?

This is especially true when the President, politicians of the majority party in the legislature, pundits, and politically minded preachers make no bones that they have every intent of persecuting those who are of certain races, religions, or political beliefs that they abhor, often using the most scurrilous charges, and outright lies in order to demonize them, dehumanize them, and open the door for normal, decent, and even brilliant people to justify government sponsored cruelty and injustice that defies the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the Constitution itself.

Please, watch the video and read the text. Ponder it in your heart, because it speaks to something that is not a historical aberration, not just a dramatic film, but something that affects the human condition and is present right here and right now in our own country.

“The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. The record of evidence is more than ten thousand pages long, and final arguments of counsel have been concluded.

Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nationwide, government organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The Tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Heir Rolfe, in his very skillful defense, has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of humans beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws — illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.

Heir Rolfe further asserts that the defendant, Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary — even able and extraordinary — men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” — of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient — to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

Think about it…

Have a great weekend.

Peace

Padre Steve+

“Because we Loved our Country!” Why People Believe the Lies

Press Secretary Sean Spicer

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I couple of days ago I asked the question “how did we get here?” when I was discussing drumbeat of lies, which are now called alternate truth by the President and members of his administration. As the past few days have unfolded I have asked the question to myself a number of times as the statements continue, along with the admonitions from Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, and Kellyanne Conway to “always believe” what is being said by the President and for the media and other critics to “shut up.” The media of course now is always lying so it goes, and sadly some journalists have added fuel to the flame by misreporting, that doesn’t mean that journalists or the press as a whole are lying, but it sets up straw men for the President and his advisors to attack. Opposition is considered treason, and opponents must be silenced because it is the patriotic thing to do.

Likewise there is the silencing of Federal workers, and even agencies who simply report the truth, and the quashing of dissent by removing officials who may be troublesome later on. His foreign policy seems like it is going to be a go it alone, aggressive hyper-nationalism, forsaking longstanding and faithful allies to ally himself with the Russian dictator, and to threaten military action, trade wars, and to bring back torture. Yet, those are actions that in the long run are bound to destroy the United States, but there is no push back from the GOP majority in Congress.

Then of course are the executive orders which are being issued daily. President Trump is doing exactly what he promised to do during the campaign when we were told not to take what he said literally. Before his inauguration the President said that he may issue 200 executive orders in his first month in office. Such is to rule by fiat, to bypass Congress, the Courts, and ultimately the people, yet it is entirely legal and at the same time if unchecked by the Congress or the Courts will lead to a totalitarian state.

Yet the President’s supporters and the the vast majority of the Republican Congress say nothing and some are calling him brilliant. So I ask myself why? What is going on when people, people who are basically good, turn a blind eye to emerging tyranny. Why is it that otherwise decent, and even brilliant people will allow such things to happen, and even more, to wholeheartedly support the policies.

Then I began to think of the classic film, Judgment at Nuremberg. The question of how many Germans, who should have known better abandoned all sense and supported Hitler seems to me to be quite similar to what is going on with many Trump supporters. They are afraid of the future, they are frustrated, and their fear of the past, present, and future is such that they are willing to cast aside logic and blindly support a man who can only be called a madman. They are doing it out of “love for country.”

In the movie, Burt Lancaster plays a prominent German legal scholar and jurist named Ernst Janning. As the trial dragged on he was content to allow his defense attorney to use whatever means necessary, even re-victimizing the people who were in fact the victims of his own judgments in support of his government’s policy. When he went to the witness stand his conscience finally got the best of him and he explained his guilt and how he and so many people like him abandoned all sense and morality in supporting Hitler. I could imagine when all of what we are just beginning to see happen before our eyes is done, and our world has crashed in about us, I wonder if some of those who supported the President and asked no questions will have the courage to say like Janning:

“There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that – can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: ‘Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.’ It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded… sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said ‘go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland – remilitarize it – take all of Austria, take it! And then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtroom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a passing phase had become the way of life. Your honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him do it – he has done it here in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the sixteen year old girl, after all. Once more it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth; but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it… whatever the pain and humiliation.”

I do not know what is going to happen, I still hope and pray that the President will do good things for the country and the world; but every word, and every action coming from him and his spokespeople serve to dampen any measure of hope that I have for this very young administration. Thankfully, there are people who are using legal means to resist and to speak out, but I wonder if that will be enough.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under ethics, film, History, laws and legislation, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as burt lancaster, congress, criticism of trump, executive orders, foreign policy, freedom of speech, judge ernst janning, judgment at nuremberg, kellyanne conway, news media, president donald trump, sean spicer, the courts

January 26, 2017 · 06:30

Beer is Proof that God Loves Us and wants Us to be Happy

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Nothing serious today unless you really believe that whatever deity you believe in loves us and wants us to be happy.

But truthfully, in every age, since the people of Mesopotamia discovered the secret of fermenting hops and malts into a bread that one can drink, beer has been proof that God does love us and wants us to be happy.

I love good craft beer as well as imports, especially German and Irish beers. In my years in Germany I learned to enjoy really good beer. In my Navy deployments the the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf I learned to appreciate Irish beer at the Irish expatriate bars that dot both regions.

Last night I went to a tapping party at the Virginia Beach Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant. Those who know me know that this is my version of Cheers, it is a place where everyone knows my name.

No matter how bad things are in the world, or in my life, or in the country, beer is there, because God loves us; and unlike the pie in the sky “God loves you and wants you to be happy” of the Evangelical Christian Four Spiritual Laws, beer is here.

So no matter what happens today I simply remind you that no-matter what your belief or ideology, that the creator of the universe does love you and wants you to be happy. Beer is the proof.

Have a great day.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under beer, Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as beer, benjamin franklin, happiness

January 25, 2017 · 06:30

The Development of Artillery from the Napoleon Period to the American Civil War: Part One

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I’ve been working on revisions to one of my Civil War texts, A Great War in a Revolutionary Age of Change and decided to post one of those today. Hopefully tomorrow I will follow up with the second part of this section, which deals with the development of artillery from the pre-Napoleonic era to the beginning of the American Civil War. This is kind of a post for geeks who study the period.

I hope that you enjoy.

Peace

Padre Steve+

The Gribeauval System, Napoleon, and the U.S. Army

Like the infantry and cavalry the technical specifics and tactics of the artillery of the United States Army had their roots in the Napoleonic era. Artillery theory “emphasized both the offensive and defensive role of field artillery, with the emphasis on the offensive role in support of infantry assault tactics.” [1] Much of this was due to how Napoleon, a master of artillery tactics, employed his artillery. Napoleon depended heavily on his artillery, he “liked to assemble them in a Grand Battery and use them as an offensive, as against a defensive weapon. At Wagram, in 1809, Napoleon had torn the heart out of an Austrian army with a Grand Battery of 112 guns.” [2] Napoleon would also use a tactic called the artillery rush in which just prior to launching an attack, “the greater part of his artillery reserve would rush to the front. An intensive bombardment would pulverize the opposing line at the point of assault.” [3] If successful he would unleash his heavy and light cavalry in pursuit of broken enemy formations, if not, the guns would cover the retreat of the assault troops.

Napoleon used the system of General Jean Baptiste Gribeauval (1715-1789) who was the real father of artillery in the French army. Gribeauval adapted the Prussian system of Frederick the Great for France. “He “undertook a complete overhaul of the French artillery system.” [4] He developed an entire artillery system for the French army including field, siege and coastal artillery manned by specially trained soldiers. These soldiers were trained in specialized artillery schools. Napoleon, who was trained in the artillery school of the Regiment La Fere in 1785, “used Gribeauval’s guns, equipment, and organization as steppingstones on the path to becoming First Counsel of France and later of a large part of Europe.” [5]

In order to improve mobility, Gribeauval standardized weapons in each arm of the artillery, and most importantly for field artillery he reduced the number of gun types found in different artillery units. He “selected 4-, 8-, and 12-pr guns, all plain unchambered pieces of 18 caliber length, and 6-in howitzers. All of these fired well-fitting projectiles with powder charges about one-third the weight of the shot.” [6] To increase accuracy he ordered that the bore of artillery pieces be drilled rather than case which “produced more exact tolerances within the bore and reduced the windage between the projectile and the bore’s wall.” [7] To enhance mobility he designed standardized limbers and caissons for his guns and all field artillery pieces were “mounted on the same basic carriage so that many carriage parts were interchangeable.” [8] Likewise, the Frenchman “introduced a series of innovations that aimed at improving the artillery’s accuracy. He introduced an elevating screw to adjust the guns range instead of a wedge, allowing for more precise ranging. Gribeauval also provided the gun crews with graduated rear sights. The elevating screw and the rear sight were seen as the most significant improvements regarding cannon in two hundred years.” [9]

One of the most important aspects of Gribeauval’s system was that it touched “nearly every aspect of cannon design, construction, carriages, and deployment, the so-called Gribeauval System served France into the Napoleonic Era. It was so far reaching that it also profoundly influenced artillery in other nations, including that of the emerging United States” [10] which adopted the Gribeauval System in 1818.

American Army officers had long been in the thrall of Napoleon and had been educated in Napoleon’s theory of war by Napoleon’s Swiss interpreter, Henri Jomini, through Denis Hart Mahan, the first military theoretician of the United States who had studied in France and taught at West Point. As such the army sent officers to France to study, among them was Lieutenant Daniel Tyler who went to France in 1828. He translated all of Gribeauval’s System and noted that the French were in the process of adopting British designs of weapons and accouterments, which they had found to be superior to the older designs. Tyler recommended that the Army continue with the Gribeauval System.

One of these advancements was the stock-rail carriage to mount artillery, which was superior to the Gribeauval designs. Janice McKenny, in her book The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 noted that Tyler also translated copies of the French evaluations of British designs, and “obtained complete drawings and specifications of the Système anglais modié, which the Americans later named the “stock-trail system” after the design of the carriage. The new trail consisted of a solid block of wood, simpler and stronger than the old split-trail then in use by the American army, and was significantly superior in maneuverability.” [11] In response to Tyler, some American designers “began fabricating stock trail prototypes” [12] from Tyler’s drawings. However, it took over a decade for the Army to adopt the design, but once adopted the army would use the stock-rail system for its field artillery guns until after the Civil War.

This was in large part due to the work of Captain Alfred Mordecai, who traveled to France in 1833-1834 and collected data on the French development of the stock-rail system. His information, “which included detailed drawings, became the basis for U.S. prototypes of the design.” [13] An Ordnance officer, Mordecai went on to become head of the Frankford Arsenal and later was appointed to the Ordnance Board where he wrote the 1841 Ordnance Manual for the Use of Officers in the United States Army. Mordecai was instrumental in standardizing weapons types and carriages. The guns of his 1841 Pattern, 6- and 12-pound guns, as well as the 12-pound howitzer were all mounted on a standard carriage. Larger weapons, the 24- and 32- pound howitzers of the 1841 pattern were developed but did not see as much service due to their weight. Additionally, limbers and caissons were redesigned to lighten them and improve mobility. Though approaching obsolescence, many these guns saw action in early part of the Civil War and Confederate artilleryman Porter Alexander noted that the 24-pound howitzer was “his favorite gun” [14] for the effectiveness of its heavy shells and canister.

M-1841 6-Pounder Artillery Carriage and Limber

The artillery service in United States Army was organized like the French army into batteries of six guns, which in turn were detailed to brigades, regiments or battalions. The regimental system was adopted in 1821, following discussions by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun and Congress. As a result, the existing artillery of the army, “the Corps of Artillery and the Regiment of Light Artillery were consolidated to form the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th Regiments of Artillery. One of the nine companies authorized to each of the four regiments was to be equipped as light artillery…. The number of artillery companies was reduced from forty-two (thirty-two in the Corps of Artillery and ten in the Regiment of Light Artillery) to thirty-six in the four artillery regiments.” [15] The units were dispersed at forts as coastal artillery and depots around the country.

Most of the artillery companies of the period were maintained well below strength and none were organized as horse artillery. In order to give artillerymen practical experience and training working as part of a larger force, Calhoun and the Army established an artillery school at Fortress Monroe. This was an important step. The mission of the school was to provide artillerymen the necessary training in the science of gunnery and artillery tactics, which could not be accomplished in isolated posts. To ensure that the total force was trained the army determined that, “ten artillery companies were to be drawn from the four regiments and assembled as the Artillery Corps for Instruction. The faculty was to be selected from the artillery at large. Through a plan of rotation, all artillery companies were eventually to pass through the school. Cadets assigned to the artillery after graduating from West Point were to receive a year’s instruction at the school before joining their regiments.” [16] The school was closed in 1835 due to the demands for artillerymen in the increased number of coastal fortifications and the need for troops to serve in Florida against the Seminoles.

Though almost all artillery units participated in the war “for the most part, the artillerists were limited in employment to manning the numerous stockades erected to confine the Indians to the Everglades.” [17] Thus they gained no practical experience in their trade. In spite of this by the late 1830s a high percentage of the West Point faculty and staff were men who had served with the artillery in Florida. Major Richard Delafield, an artilleryman became Superintendent in 1838 and gave “artillery instruction wider curricular attention: an artillery “laboratory” would be set up, and practice with lightweight and mobile cannon would receive new impetus.” [18] In another move, Secretary of the Army Joel Poinsett decided to implement the provision of the 1821 regulations to establish four light companies. Using surplus horses from the war he mounted one company as horse artillery in which each crew member had his own horse or rode on the limber, and three as mounted units, “meaning that though the guns were horse-drawn, the cannoneers rode on the carriages or caissons or they walked. In theory the mounted units were to be employed with infantry as regular field artillery and the horse (or light) artillery was to be employed with cavalry.” [19]

The Apex of the Smoothbore

12 Pound M-1857 Napoleons at Gettysburg

Most of the improvements in artillery design between the Napoleonic era and the Civil War were on focused on lightening the weight of the tube, developing better and more mobile limbers, and improvements to fuses and ammunition. During this time the smoothbore cannon reached the apex of its development. In the United States this was realized with the brass M 1857 12-pound Napoleon, which was developed from a French design, however the gun “embodied none of the recent advances in technology” and was “already considered obsolescent by the French Army.” [20] However, much of the choice was dictated by purchasing agents and the budget which required any new ordnance to be cheap. The Napoleon was intended to replace the 1841 patter 6 and 12 pound guns and the 12 pound howitzer. It was nearly 500 pounds lighter than the old guns and “though it was technically a gun, owing to its ability to fire canister and solid shot, the Napoleon was often referred to as a gun-howitzer for its ability to fire explosive shell.” [21] It would see its first action at the Battle of Bull Run and nearly 1,800 of these versatile cannon would be produced in Northern and Confederate foundries during the war. Despite its obsolescence it “proved to be the most popular field piece during the Civil War,” [22] and Union artillery General Henry Hunt later acclaimed the Napoleon as “the best all round field piece of this era.” [23] Robert E. Lee told the Prussian observer to the Army of Northern Virginia, Justus Scheibert: “Nothing surpasses… the impression of a battery of 12-pound smoothbores which approaches to within 400-600 paces of the enemy…. In such moment rifled artillery, the advantages of which in open country I fully appreciate, cannot replace the smoothbore.” [24] Some of these guns remained in service until 1880.

The Development of Rifled Cannon and Breechloaders

While the development of rifled, breech loading, and repeating rifles advanced the capabilities of the infantry in terms of firepower, range, accuracy and battlefield lethality, developments to modernize the artillery around the world lagged behind the rifled musket due to the economic costs involved. Because of the cost “no country would face the cost of re-equipment.” [25] This would begin to change in the mid-1850s as the experience of the Crimean began to give new impetus to weapons development.

However, a number of artillerymen and innovators began to experiment with breech loading and rifled cannon. These were not new ideas, and “when combined, they were first experimented with in England in 1745,” [26] but it would take another hundred years before Italian Major Giovanni Cavalli developed “a cast iron gun, its bore cut with simple two groove rifling to accept an elongated projectile fitted with corresponding lugs that mated with the gun’s grooves.” [27] As Cavalli improved his design others in Europe designed rifled guns. In France Colonel Treuille de Bealieu designed a similar gun to Cavalli; but which fired a cylindrical projectile. Napoleon III who was himself authority on artillery ordered brass smoothbores to be rifled on Bealieu’s design. [28] Swedish Baron Martin Wahrendorf “experimented with smaller, multiple-grooved rifling using lead-sheathed projectiles” [29] Cavalli’s guns were used by the Sardinian army, while the French deployed a number of theirs to Algeria and against the Austrians in Italy.

In the 1850s three English inventors, Charles William Lancaster, Joseph Whitworth, and William George Armstrong began to develop rifled guns. During the Crimean War the British Army modified some old large-caliber guns as breech-loaders. The “first British rifled ordnance consisted of a few old 68-pr and 8-in. cast iron guns, which were made oval and twisted in the bore and so converted to pieces rifled on the Lancaster principle.” [30] Some of these guns saw action during the siege of Sevastopol. Whitworth also produced a breech loading rifled cannon. His gun had a very long range and was exceptionally accurate, however the design was complex and temperamental, and the gun “ultimately proved impractical for general use.” This was in part due to their complexity and the “precise tolerances used in the manufacture… required meticulous maintenance by gun crews to avoid malfunctions, and even moderate bore wear led to jamming in the bores.” [31] A few Whitworth rifles were employed by the Confederate army during the Civil War, two seeing action in Richard Ewell’s Second Corps at Gettysburg.

Armstrong, proposed a lightweight rifled field gun, made of forged rather than cast iron to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for War in 1854. [32] His design incorporated features that remain today. “His rifled breechloader had multiple groves to distribute the twisting force equally around the projectile. The iron projectile was coated with lead to permit a tight sealing into the grooves. Later projectiles have employed copper rotating bands to produce the tight seal without leaving the deposits of lead which tended to foul the cannon.” [33] The only real issues with Armstrong’s guns was that his “breech-loading system was complex and rather advance of its time, and there were a number of accidents due to various mechanical weaknesses.” [34] Likewise, the early breech-loading systems “were so clumsy and slow to operate that a good crew could fire a muzzle-loader faster than a breach loader.” [35]

The United States Army began to examine the possibilities of rifled guns, but the process took time, and much struggle due to the bureaucracy and political infighting. “In the mid-1850s, experiments with the forerunners of rifled cannon began at Fort Monroe. In 1860, a board of artillery and ordnance officers was established to make further tests on rifling, and the board submitted its report late that year. It recommended that at least 50 percent of the guns at forts and arsenals be converted into rifles.” [36]

15 inch Rodman Gun

During the same time period a number of Americans both military, and civilian, began to develop their own variations of rifled cannon for use in the U.S. Army. The most important of these were Captain Robert Jackson Rodman and Captain Robert Parrott. Rodman was a true scientist who understood both metallurgy and gunpowder. Rodman was instrumental in using his knowledge to design the largest guns of the era. Called Columbiads, these heavy guns came in 8 inch, 10 inch, 15 inch and even a 20 inch model. They were used in coastal fortifications. In the 1870s over 200 of the 10 inch model were converted to 8 inch rifles. The Rodman guns remained in service the rest of the century and are considered to be the best cast-iron cannon ever produced.

Parrott was the Superintendent of the West Point Iron and Cannon Foundry of Cold Spring New York. Parrott “became interested in rifled guns after the successes of Krupp in Germany. In the following years he applied his own skills to designing an American rifled gun.” [37] Parrott focused on improving cast-iron guns. He “developed a method for shrinking wrought-iron bands around the breech of a cast barrel.”[38] The band was designed to strengthen the cast iron barrel and “the final result was a relatively lightweight, economical gun and gave the Parrot rifle its distinctive profile.” [39] For field artillery use Parrot designed a 2.9 inch 10-pounder in 1861 which was modified to a 3 inch bore in 1863 to standardized ammunition with the 3 inch Ordnance Rifle. Parrot also designed a 20-pound 4.7 inch rifle for field service. Both models were manufactured in the North and the South and saw wide use with over 2,000 produced for the Federal government. When he was at VMI in 1860, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was “one of the first to test and recommend for adoption the rifled Parrott guns.” [40] At Jackson’s “recommendation, Virginia purchased twelve” of the new rifled guns. [41]

10 Pound Parrot Rifle at Devil’s Den Gettysburg

Parrot also produced heavy guns used by the Navy for use on ships, and the Army for seacoast and siege weapons. The one problem with the Parrot rifles was the fact that the cast-iron barrel was brittle and prone to burst, especially those of large caliber, which made it unpopular among its crews and caused the Navy to withdraw them from service aboard ship. Porter Alexander reported that during the Battle of Fredericksburg that for the first and only time he had 30-pound Parrott rifles in the field and that during the battle “they filled a great want, until they, unfortunately, both exploded towards the middle of the day, one on the 37^th round & one on the 42^nd.” [42]

A civilian, John Griffen of the Phoenix Ironwork of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, “pioneered the use of wrought iron in the construction of field pieces” [43] and patented his prototype in 1855. The designed was slightly modified by the Ordnance Department and adopted by the army in 1861. The weapon was known as the Ordnance Rifle and is had a bore of 3 inches and threw a 10-pound projectile. Unlike the cast iron Parrot, it was “constructed of tougher wrought iron, consisting of iron bands welded together around a mandrel and then lathed to a sleek, modern profile. It was then bored and rifled.” [44] The Ordnance rifles were light, easy to maneuver and beloved by their crews for their accuracy, and dependability. Phoenix manufactured over 1,000 of these weapons for the Federal government.

To be continued…

Notes

[1] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.21

[2] Ibid. Cornwell Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles p.165

[3] Nesmith, Vardell E. Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example United States Army Command and Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS 1976 p.5

[4] Kinard, Jeff Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford 2007 p.148

[5] Stevens, Phillip H. Artillery Through the Ages Franklin Watts Inc. New York 1965 p.47

[6] Rogers, H.C.B. A History of Artillery The Citadel Press, Secaucus NJ 1975 p.58

[7] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.148

[8] Ibid. Stevens, Phillip H. Artillery Through the Ages Franklin Watts Inc. New York 1965 p.48

[9] Garcia, Manuel R. The Pursuit of Precision in Field Artillery School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth KS 2010 pp.7-8

[10] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.148

[11] McKenny, Janice E. The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 Center For Military History, United States Army, Washington D.C. 2007 p.36

[12] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.170

[13] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.169

[14] Ibid. Alexander Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander p.182

[15] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.32

[16] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.34

[17] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.34

[18] Longacre, Edward G. The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac Da Capo Press, a Perseus Group, Cambridge MA 2003 p.28

[19] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.38

[20] Ibid. Stevens, Phillip H. Artillery Through the Ages Franklin Watts Inc. New York 1965 pp.62-63

[21] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.188

[22] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 p.49

[23] Ibid. Longacre The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac p.70

[24] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.257

[25] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War 1789-1961 p.89

[26] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War 1789-1961 p.89

[27] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.222

[28] Ibid. Rogers A History of Artillery p.94

[29] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.222

[30] Ibid. Rogers A History of Artillery p.94

[31] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.223

[32] Ibid. Rogers A History of Artillery p.94

[33] Ibid. Stevens, Phillip H. Artillery Through the Ages Franklin Watts Inc. New York 1965 p.60

[34] Ibid. Rogers A History of Artillery p.94

[35] Ibid. Stevens, Phillip H. Artillery Through the Ages Franklin Watts Inc. New York 1965 p.60

[36] Ibid. McKenny The Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775-2003 pp.50-51

[37] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.190

[38] Ibid. Stevens, Phillip H. Artillery Through the Ages Franklin Watts Inc. New York 1965 p.61

[39] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.190

[40] Ibid. Gwynne Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson p.88

[41] Ibid. Nesmith Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example p.15

[42] Ibid. Alexander Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander p.172

[43] Ibid. Nesmith Stagnation and Change in Military Thought: The Evolution of American Field Artillery Doctrine, 1861-1905 – An Example p.14

[44] Ibid. Kinard Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact p.192

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Tagged as 10 pounder parrott rifle M'61, 12 pounder napoleon, 3 inch ordnance rifle, alfred mordecai, artillery, Baron Martin Wahrendorf, cavalli rifle, columbiads, daniel tyler, dennis hart mahan, Giovanni Cavalli, gribeauval system, henri jomini, jean baptiste gribeauval, john c calhoun, joseph whitworth, napoleon bonaparte, robert parrot, robert rodman, whitworth rifle, william george armstrong, William Lancaster

January 24, 2017 · 06:30

Where the Distinction Between Fact and Fiction, True and False, No Longer Exists

Hannah Arendt

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Yesterday I wrote about presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway who defended a number of outright lies posited by Press Secretary Sean Spicer as alternative truth. The statement was astounding and was met with much criticism and ridicule, but it reflects an attitude that of cynicism that has swept our nation that facts as they are, are unimportant, that truth itself is malleable.

In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt wrote: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

The world that most of us grew up with is changing before our eyes and it is happening around the world and it is hard to say what is going to happen. I started re-reading Hannah Arendt’s book last night. It was one of my texts as an undergraduate when studying Hitler’s Germany. The book deals with both Naziism and Stalinism which makes it in some sense like Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. While the latter focuses more on how Hitler and Stalin used their power on their own people as well as the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Belorussians, and others who happened to find themselves swallowed up by the two totalitarian states; Arendt’s book more at the underlying social conditions. In a time when populist politicians around the world are speaking in the the language of authoritarians, and promising to deliver their people from various political, racial, and religious enemies, it is important to remember where such talk almost always ends, totalitarian states.

But the fact is based on numerous polls in this country and around the world going back two decades show a rise in people of all ages and ideologies who are willing to accept authoritarian government and to abandon democracy. Well before President Trump ever announced his run for the presidency in 2015 the stage was set for an authoritarian leader to arise in the United States just as many are doing in Europe. Whether President Trump actually ends up ruling as an authoritarian is not yet clear, but the signs keep pointing that he may be heading in that direction, and that his followers will have no problem with it. His inaugural address was marked by his distain for both political parties and the political establishment and linking himself with the people. It was loaded with populism and nationalism, as are the messages of Vladimir Putin, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, and others in Europe.

William Shirer wrote of how Adolf Hitler convinced many Germans to follow him. His message was basic populism in which certain groups were responsible for their problems and he promised to fix it. Yes Hitler was anti-semitic and especially blamed the Jews, but most Germans, many who were raised in a culture of anti-Semitism, just ignored that part and followed him because anti-Semitism was normal for them. Shier wrote:

“To all the millions of discontented Hitler in a whirlwind campaign offered what seemed to them, in their misery, some measure of hope. He would make Germany strong again, refuse to pay reparations, repudiate the Versailles Treaty, stamp out corruption, bring the money barons to heel (especially if they were Jews) and see to it that every German had a job and bread.”

So how did we get here? How did we get to the point that a presidential spokesperson can defend lies and refer to them as alternative facts?

I won’t answer that today in fact I want to think about it more, and do more research, but much is based on the constant repetition of simple propaganda messages that are designed to bypass the intellect and appeal to raw passion. I have written about this trend for several years using different historical examples but today I am just going to leave you with one other thing that Arendt wrote:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

I will discuss that passage in depth at another time but I think it is good just to let it sink in.

Have a good day,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

The World of Alternative Facts and the Danger to the Republic

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

We have entered a world that our founders never expected to happen but warned us about. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 1, that the fiercest enemies of the republic were those men who begin “by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

I think that we have entered that era in our history.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s embarrassing attack on those who disagreed with the President’s claim that the inauguration of President Trump had the highest attendance in history when every analysis of the crowds revealed to be far smaller than the last few inaugurations was defended by President Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway. Conway turned absolutely Orwellian to defend that and a number of other claims that were patently false. She called them Alternative Facts.

Sadly, this has been the modus operandi of Mrs. Conway and the President’s spokespeople since the beginning of his campaign. Rather than admit to a falsehood they reinforce the lie, time after time. The behavior is extraordinary in the American experience but not in history.

I hate to bring up a Nazi example but the the tactic is that of the Nazi, the Soviet, and every other authoritarian and dictatorial propaganda machine. But being a historian who has spent much of my life researching and writing about the Nazi seizure of power I was actually taken aback by her comments and the use of the term “alternative facts.” There are no such thing. John Adams, our second President said it well: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

But such clarity cannot be found in what Mr. Spicer or Mrs. Conway said. They repeated a lie and then Mrs. Conway called it an “alternative fact.” It was absolutely Orwellian, not that it matters to many of the President’s diehard supporters. He told us during the campaign: “You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible,” and he was absolutely correct. Hitler told his generals when he was about to stage a propaganda coup to blame Poland for starting the war, “I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war – never believe if it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward if he told the truth…” It seems that from day one of his campaign the President has followed a similar course of action to first win the nomination of his party and then the general election. I don’t think that he can stop now that he is office. In his inaugural address the President noted: “America will start winning again, winning like never before.” Winning at all costs seems to be everything, and nothing will stand in the way, even facts.

The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels once said:“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”

Sadly, this will not be the last of these kind of statements made by Mrs. Conway or Mr. Spicer. We have entered a new era, and while many people think that the Trump administration will sink itself, and that maybe the GOP will revolt, impeach him, and make Mike Pence the President, they are deluded. That will not be allowed to happen by Trump or his supporters. The stream of alternative facts are going to become so commonplace that people will stop noticing them, they will get numb to them.

William Shirer who served as a correspondent in Berlin from 1934 to 1941 wrote in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

“I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.”

I am sorry, but when it comes to facts and truth, that is the kind of world we on entered on January 20th. Please note I am not saying that President Trump is a Nazi, or commit Nazi style atrocities. I am simply comparing the methods, and the language of his spokespeople to the Goebbels propaganda machine, and I am also calling to mind the words of our founders on the danger of demagogues.

Honestly, I hope that our President governs wisely and gains a sense of humility as he holds in his hands such great power. I want him to succeed for all of us, but this opening weekend has given me much cause for concern and this has less to do with policy than it does the deceptive words that I see coming from those who shape his message.

I know that is a hell of a way to start the week, but this does matter.

Have a great day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Monthly Archives: January 2017

American Artillery, Doctrine, and Tactics from the Mexican War to the Wilderness

Survival as What?

The World’s Guilt: The Flaw in Character that Allows us to Look the Other Way

Holocaust Remembrance 2017: “Most evil is done by People who never make up their minds to be Good or Evil”

Truth, Justice, and the Value of a Single Human Life: What Americans Should Stand For

“Because we Loved our Country!” Why People Believe the Lies

Beer is Proof that God Loves Us and wants Us to be Happy

The Development of Artillery from the Napoleon Period to the American Civil War: Part One

Where the Distinction Between Fact and Fiction, True and False, No Longer Exists

The World of Alternative Facts and the Danger to the Republic

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