Category Archives: nazi germany

April 29, 2020 · 03:23

Fighting for the Lives of Others Against those that Value Money over People in a Pandemic

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today, or yesterday as it is now was a difficult day. I didn’t sleep well because of reading about an ER physician who served on the frontline against COVID 19, contracted and recovered from the virus, killed herself. She was the head of an ER Department in the Presbyterian Health Care system in New York. Reading about her death kept me awake thinking about all the other physicians, nurses, other hospital personnel and first responders are seeing things that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. They will be suffering from severe and chronic PTSD, as well as Moral Injury, and many, like Dr. Lorna Breen will end their lives by their own hand. They will commit suicide.

My lack of sleep left me listless and tired for much of the day, even when dealing with serious counseling cases, but thankfully I was able to listen well enough to ensure that I was alert enough to stay focused and remain with these people even though my mind kept trying to drift and my body wanted to simply pass out. What was harder was to go back to my email and to input analytic data on my activity to keep up with what the Navy wants; to quantify the unquantifiable aspects of what Chaplains, or therapists do when they care for others. I feel asleep more than once doing that. I should have got off my ass and the damned analytic tool and gone out and walked around the shipyard and interacted with people. So now, I still am awake, unable to go to sleep.

I don’t get on social media for the most part until after we have dinner. Over the past few days I have had a man who I served with server all years ago doing all he could to attack and discredit me on Facebook. I didn’t break total contact, but I had to block him from seeing my posts. His agenda was not about public health or trying to contain the rates of infection and number of deaths, than it was to defend political positions that put more value on profit than human beings. His attacks on my reliance on history, data, science, and the fact that I cannot put a monetary value on the lives of the people most likely to be infected or die from COVID-19.  I have used the term of the proponents of Euthanasia and the Nazi Regime: “Life Unworthy of Life,” to describe that belief currently.

Then out of the blue a former classmate of mine at the Joint Forces Staff College came after me because I made a sarcasm laced comment about a lady in North Carolina who led a Facebook group devoted to opposing that state’s social distancing and stay at home regulations, who over the weekend announced that she had tested positive for the virus but would still oppose those public health rules. My comment on the article stated that I found it ironic, but that I would find it more ironic if Darwin won and she died. I didn’t mean that I wanted to see her die, it just meant that I saw the irony in her being infected. For that I was condemned. The same was true for my comments about Vice President Mike Pence when he visited the Mayo Clinic without observing their PPE requirements while visiting patients. I criticized him for ignoring hospital policy and endangering the lives of imuunocomprized patients. In both cases I was accused of not representing the grace of God. The conversation continued for more time that I wanted to give it. However, God’s grace and mercy also have to tempered by justice.

When dealing with such people I have to remember the words of Sophie Scholl:

The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Sadly, both men used their fealty to President Trump to completely misrepresent what I said and try to twist my arguments by for all intents and purposes calling me a hypocrite motivated by politics. But truthfully I hold national leaders regardless of their political, religious, or ideological standards to the same standards when it comes to matters of public safety and public health. I insist that they set a personal example, and do all they can to protect life. Those who study, those who read, and those who take the time to think about the human, social, and economic effects of a pandemic, including Presidents Bush and Obama, who are both hated by Trump Cultists, are condemned.

I will put my life on the line for others, and even sacrifice things that give me pleasure to protect the lives of others. However, that is not the case with the cult. The dead, who now in under three months exceed our military deaths in over 10 years of the Vietnam War, and over a million infections, which total more than a quarter of all the deaths from COVID 19 worldwide and over a third of total infections  are inexcusable, especially because Trump and his Administration did all they could to deny, deflect, and blame others for the virus while they take no blame at all. As the President has said multiple times “I take no responsibility…” 

But since I was a young Army Officer I have insisted on higher standards of conduct from leaders. Even as a young officer I have had no problem confronting authorities who shirked responsibility or blame others for their policy or moral failures regardless of their party. That has been a key part of my identity since I was first commissioned in 1983. Since them I have been criticized and condemned for my candor and honesty. After Iraq I don’t fear death. In fact those who condemn me today, really do not know me. Otherwise they would know that my basic instinct to to chose fight over flight, and march to the sound of the guns, regardless of personal consequence. I would rather die with honor knowing my actions have saved lives than expose others to possible death. Jesus said: No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Truthfully, that is 180 degrees opposite of what Trump’s supposedly Christian Cult advocates. For them the whole thing is about their personal loyalty to a serial liar and narcissistic sociopath who has no regard for the Constitution, the institutions, and laws of our country than he has for the lives of its citizens, so long as they get to be power players. My friends, that is not the Gospel, it is the heresy of anti-Christ. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said:

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”

Sadly, the cultish enablers of Trump have forgotten the responsibility that comes with discipleship. I cannot do that. I have seen too much needless death in peace from pandemics, and in war from illegal and irresponsible actions, to to protest that the real complaining party the bar of justice is civilization itself. No country can survive a philosophy that devalues human life in a life and death crisis for the bottom line of the economy, as well as  personal and corporate profit that only sentences the least, the lost, and the lonely to death, so we can go back to enjoying the good times of uninhibited gratuitousness and great. Who cares if the restaurant worker, or grocery clerk making a subsistence living dies because we open up the economy without adequate personnel protective equipment, adequate health insurance, or having effective drugs to save lives, or a vaccine to parent infection in place, even as less than 2% of the total population has been tested? Honestly, I don’t see any of the government or church leaders advocating for the immediate opening of the economy and tossing aside the only means to prevent further mass death, taking a stand against a suicidal policy, that will end up killing too many more and damn our country forever.

Yes, the true complainant at the bar of justice itself is humanity and civilization itself, and the accused are those who would sacrifice all for their financial bottom line, or position of political power.

As long as I have breath I will fight against that kind of regime. To paraphrase General Henning von Tresckow, a leading figure in the attempt to overthrow Hitler: “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Trump’s America.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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April 26, 2020 · 23:09

The Value of a Single Human Life: Personal Responsibility during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have grown tired of the deniers of science and those who when occupying high positions in the Federal and State governments prepare to add to the death and economic disaster we are already experiencing in the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise I have grown very tired of trying to confront their cultish followers with history, science, and facts, especially those who should know better. The sad thing is that I can certainly determine that they have left their conscience, and medical knowledge behind simply to support the policies of President Trump which began with denial, deflection, and outright lies between December 2019 and now.

I have a unique perspective to offer on what is going on now. I am a historian, an ethicist, as well as a Priest and Navy Chaplain. I have served in the military for over thirty eight and a half years, as a Medical Service Corps Officer and Chaplain. I have served in combat, and as an ICU, ER, and Critical Care Chaplain during the height of the AIDS pandemic when there were no drugs to even mitigate the symptoms of HIV, and the H1N1 pandemic of 2009.

As a historian I have studied pandemics, eugenics, and the sterilization, or extermination of people whose lives were considered Life Unworthy of Life, a condition more influenced by eugenics to purify the race, and the economic costs of keeping such people alive. Sadly, many American Christians who lean toward Libertarianism, and Conservatism, even those who claim to be Pro-Life, which should be more accurately termed anti-abortion because once a child is born into this world they couldn’t give a damn if it lives or dies. By their budgets you shall know them. The poor, the disabled, or those with chronic medical conditions are not worth spending tax dollars on, especially if that money keeps the rich from getting richer. As Alfred W. Crosby wrote in his book America’s Forgotten Pandemic, the Influenza of 1918 about the businesses leaders that pressured San Francisco’s board of supervisors to lighten up on Medical and public health and restrictions that had led to a decline of infections and deaths: “The dollar sign is exalted above the health sign,” said Hassler, referring to the influence of the merchants on the supervisors’”

As a Medical Service Corps officer in the Army while commanding a Medical Ambulance Company stationed in Germany during the height of the Cold War I was school trained as a Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Warfare Defense officer. I can describe in detail what radiation poisoning at different amounts will do to a human being, as well as what kind of shelters provide the greatest protection from radiation exposure.  I can tell you what various chemical agents, blood, choking, and nerve will do to a person if they are not properly equipped, or fail to use their provided protective gear as they were trained to do, the same is true of militarized biological agents. Unlike, chemical agents, there is little defense against a biological agent. I was also trained in combat triage in a contaminated environment. I have written about that in the last month so I won’t go into detail here, but it turns normal triage upside down.

Finally, as a young Medical Service Corps Captain helped write the Army’s regulation on personnel policies for HIV infected soldiers, and then because officers senior to me, I had to counsel all of our HIV infected personnel on their career options, and legal restrictions if they violated the commanders order which closely corresponded to the Physicians Medical order, but had the authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice behind it, if the soldier failed to warn a sexual partner that he or she was HIV positive or did anything else to intentionally spread the virus. That was back in 1987. At that time I met and talked with then Major Robert Redfield, now head of the CDC about how HIV could spread and that it would enter the general population. Before effective policies and treatments to mitigate its effects HIV spread like a fire around the country and the world. While we do not yet have a vaccine for it, education, preventive measures, and effective drugs to mitigate its lethal effects have blunted its spread. That being said, HIV is far harder to spread than airborne viruses like influenza and Coronavirus. HIV has to be spread by direct contact and intermixing of bodily fluids, like blood, semen, or other bodily excretions.

At of the time of the writing of this article, the Coronavirus 19 has now killed over 55,000 Americans and infected almost a million according to official tallies, which are probably low since very few health agencies were testing for it before March. Testing in the United States has continued to lag on a per capita basis with only about 1.5% of the population tested. Currently there are over 813,000 active cases in the United States. The United States government leadership knew of the threat through reliable intelligence sources that the virus was raging in China In December 2019  long before the Chinese Communist leadership admitted it, or took action to contain it. Instead the President did nothing until he instituted a travel ban from China at the end of January. However, by then, it was too little and too late. The virus was already spreading and killing in the United States.

The lack of  any action defied the warning of President George W. Bush in a speech to the National Institute of Health on 1 November 2005:

“A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire: if caught early, it might be extinguished with limited damage; if allowed to smolder undetected, it can grow to an inferno that spreads quickly beyond our ability to control it.” 

However, President Trump, a man who prides himself in not reading, and despises the counsel of experts in any field, could not heed the warnings of President Bush or any other responsible member of his administration, or the medical and scientific community at large. Instead he denied the threat, blamed others, and took no decisive action to protect the people of the country or economy from it. instead of being like Harry Truman who had a sign on his desk that said “The Buck Stops Here,” the President refused to take any responsibility for the earlier lack of action or distribution of public warnings, and said “I take no responsibility at all.” But that is no exception to anything he has done in his life. He loves to claim credit when times are good, but when his decisions result in multiple failed divorces, failed businesses, and serial corporate bankruptcies, he refuses to take any blame. But still, his cultish followers refuse to abandon him even as he abandons them to poverty and death.

in 1918 and 1919 before he suffered a stroke that left him incapacitated and unable to lead the country, President Woodrow Wilson said nothing about the pandemic that was then killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, and threw the responsibility to respond on under funded and unready state and local authorities. As Albert Marrin wrote in his book Very, Very, Very, Dreadful The Influenza of 1918:

“Throughout the pandemic, the nation lacked a uniform policy about gathering places, and there was no central authority with the power to make and enforce rules that everyone had to obey. Each community acted on its own, doing as its elected officials thought best.”

As a result over 667,000 Americans died, the economy was hit hard, and the stage was set for policies that help bring about the Great Depression a decade later, and would take the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt to overcome. John Barry wrote in his book The Great Influenza:

“So the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that. Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.” 

Unfortunately, that has been the case today. For every responsible citizen there are those who would preserve their lives and fortunes even if they had to sacrifice the lives of others to do so. They are little different in their morality to the Germans who turned away from Nazi atrocities to maintain or enrich themselves without ever lifting a finger to kill or help anyone. The issue reminds me of an episode of Dr. Who where the leader of a colony on Mars tells the doctor that he would do anything to protect his people and family. The Doctor asks “even if that meant killing innocent men?” Unmoved, the leader reiterated his point, to which the Doctor replied:

“Well then, that’s the difference between us. I’d give up my ownlife without hesitation; it’s mine to give. Just don’t ask me to give up anybody else’s. … This is how evil starts: With the belief that the ends justify the means. But once you start down that road, there’s no turning back. What if you can save a million lives, but you have to let ten people die? Or a hundred? Or a hundred thousand? Where do you stop?”

Truthfully we have to ask the question posed by the Doctor. But for many committed to the dollar, their position, and their loyalty to a President that shoes no loyalty to them the current crisis has proved that they are selfish and more interested in their creature comforts and lifestyle than they are of the deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people. I am reminded of the words spoken in the film Judgment at Nuremberg by Judge Haygood played by Spencer Tracy in the fictionalized account of the Judges Trials at Nuremberg:

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.” 

So, that being said, what do we stand for in 2020? It is something that all of us all have to answer for, not just political, or business  leaders, but all of us.

If we are nor willing to protect and care for the least, the lost, and the lonely, what use are we? As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”

As a Christian and humanitarian I cannot speak otherwise. If I cannot stand up for truth regardless of the cost, I am not worth the powder to blow me to Hell.

Think about that. Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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April 25, 2020 · 23:44

Power, Beauty and Tragedy at Sea: The Battlecruisers Scharnhorst & Gneisenau

Scharnhorst

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I was too tired last two nights to write anything. Thursday I had a long but good day at work and had to clean out much of my private email last night before I could do anything else because I was at over 90% of my email storage capacity. And it took forever to sort through it and get it down to almost 50%. Likewise, I did very little on social media. I finally caught up on my comics from the last couple of days and replied to some correspondence that I needed to do and began to work on this last night, but again found that I was too tired to complete it. So when it appeared that I wouldn’t complete it until after midnight I simply said “what the hell” and put it off until now.

This is another one of those posts to switch things up and write about a class of warships that I find fascinating, the World War II German Battlecruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. First and foremost I think that they were among the most beautiful capital ships ever built. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t have design flaws, or were superior to many other capital ships. Gneisenau’s career was cut short by Germany’s inability to protect her while in port, while Scharnhorst was the victim of an ill planned sortie under the command of an admiral who had no experience commanding large ships and who had only assumed command of her task force the day before. So if you are a Naval history or warship  buff, enjoy.

Have a great day, stay inside and if you have to go out wear a mask and keep a safe distance from others to protect you and them.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

The naval architects of Germany in the early 1930s designed some of the most beautiful as well as deadly warships of the Second World War.  Following Nazi Germany’s rejection of the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles the Kreigsmarine enacted building program to enlarge and modernize the German Navy.

Gneisenau refueling  from Tanker Westerwald in July 1939 

The first major units constructed were actually begun by the predecessor to the Kreigsmarine, the Reichsmarine of the Weimar Republic.  These were the Deutschland class Armored Ships, Panzerschiffe, sometimes called “Pocket Battleships” and later during the war were reclassified as Heavy Cruisers. These ships were designed to replace the old pre-Dreadnaught battleships which Germany was allowed to retain following the Treaty of  Versailles. The ships incorporated electric welds to reduce displacement, diesel engines for extended cruising range to enable them to serve as commerce raiders and a battery of six 11” guns. It was believed that as surface raiders their speed would allow them to avoid battle with all existing battleships except the three British Battlecruisers Hood, Renown, and Repulse, while being able to outgun any heavy or light cruiser they might encounter on such a mission. While they were an advance over anything in the German inventory they were outclassed by Hood, Renown and Repulse, as well as later French Dunkerque and Strasbourg. 

Gneisenau

The next and first truly capital ships built by the Kriegsmarine were the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau battleships which in reality were battle cruisers because of their light main battery of 11” guns as opposed to the 14”, 15” or 16” batteries of other nations battleships. The Hermans did. plan to rearm them with 15” guns but the war kept that from happening.

Scharnhorst before the War 

Despite the disparity in their main armament, their displacement and armor protection was comparable to other battleships of the era and their designed speed of 31.5 knots was superior to almost all other battleships of the era including the British King George V Class and the US North Carolina class.  Only the British Hood was superior to them in speed. However, their speed came at a cost, they did not have the long cruising range to make them truly effective commerce raiders because they were propelled by steam turbines which consumed large amounts of fuel. Since the Germans did not have a fleet replenishment system like the U.S. Navy, nor the secure network of worldwide bases of the Royal Navy, they could only operate in the Northern Atlantic or Arctic for limited amounts of time. If damaged there were few safe harbors for them which had the capability of repairing them without them being exposed to allied bombers.

Gneisenau Main Battery

As built they displaced 31,000 toms, however at full combat load they both weighed in at nearly 38,000 tons and were 772 feet long.  They had an armor belt that was nearly 14 inches thick.  Armed with a main battery of nine 11” guns and a secondary armament of twelve 5.9 inch guns they also mounted a powerful for the time anti- aircraft battery of fourteen 4.1 inch guns, 16 37mm and 16 20mm anti-aircraft cannons.  Additionally they mounted six 21” torpedo tubes and carried three Arado 196 A3 scout planes.  The main battery was eventually to be replaced by six 15” guns but this never occurred although Gneisenau was taken in hand after being damaged in Operation Cerberus to mount the new weapons but the conversion was never completed.

Scharnhorst in Action Against HMS Glorious

Scharnhorst was laid down on 15 June 1935 and launched 3 October 1936. She was commissioned 7 January 1939.  Her sister Gneisenau was laid down 6 May 1935, launched 8 December 1936 and commissioned 21 May 1938.  Upon the commencement of the Second World War the two sisters began a reign of destruction on British shipping in the North Atlantic. On 23 November 1939 they sank the Armed Merchant Cruiser HMS Rawalpindi while on patrol near the Faroe Islands.

During Operation Weserübung the pair surprised sank the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two escorting destroyers HMS Ardent and Acasta on 7 June 1940. It was the only time a Fleet carrier was caught and sunk by battleships during the war. However, Scharnhorst was hit by a torpedo from Acasta which led to her being withdrawn to Trondheim, for temporary repairs before retiring to Kiel for permanent repairs.

Scharnhorst during Operation Berlin and being Refueled during the Operation

From January to March 1941 they conducted Operation Berlin under the command of Admiral Gunther Lütjens against British merchant shipping in the North Atlantic sinking 22 ships before returning to base. During the action the task force encountered the British Battleships HMS Ramillies and HMS Malaya escorting different convoys which Lütjens refused to engage. After sinking ships from another convoy they encountered HMS King George V and HMS Rodney which they escaped using their superior speed, but by now, Lütjens realize that the danger of continuing the outweighed the potential success and headed for repairs in the port Brest, in occupied France.

While in Brest Scharnhorst needed repairs to a superheater for her boilers, while Gneisenau was damaged during a British air raid and were unable to deploy with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen for Operation Rheinübung, during which Bismarck sank HMS Hood, but was damaged by a 14” shell from HMS Prince of Wales which cut the fuel line from the ship’s forward fuel tanks. Lütjens decided to cut the mission short and escape to Brest, but was damaged by an aerial torpedo from a Swordfish torpedo bomber flying from HMS Ark Royal which wrecked her steering gear and allowed HMS King George V, HMS Rodney, as well as cruisers and destroyers to catch and sink her on May 27th. Prinz Eugen returned safely to Brest to join the Battlecruisers.

The Channel Dash Seen from Prinz Eugen above and below


                          Admiral Cilliax Addressing the Crew of Scharnhorst at Kiel

While at Brest Gneisenau was again bombed and torpedoed requiring extensive repairs.  Due to the exposed location of the port, the German high command decided to return the ships to Germany along with the Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen.  Commanded by Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax,  Operation Cerberus took place from 11-13 February 1942. It involved the Battlecruisers and Prinz Eugen, accompanied by destroyers, E-Boats, and R-Boats. The force was protected heavy Luftwaffe fighter cover, Code named Operation Donnerkeil the air operation was commanded by the legendary Luftwaffe fighter ace, General Adolf  Galland. 

The dash up the English Channel, was unsuccessfully contested by the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. The German ships successfully broke through the Channel in broad daylight and protected itself from being damaged by aircraft, motor torpedo boats, destroyers, and shore batteries. Once clear of the channel and headed for home both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau struck mines which caused various amounts of damage, but both got through to Kiel.

The success of the daylight passage through the English Channel shocked and infuriated the British public. The Times of London published an editorial on 14 February which fumed:

Vice Admiral Ciliax has succeeded where the Duke of Medina Sidonia failed. Nothing more mortifying to the pride of our sea-power has happened since the seventeenth century. […] It spelled the end of the Royal Navy legend that in wartime no enemy battle fleet could pass through what we proudly call the English Channel.

Despite the fact that then Operation was successful, the high command of the German Navy Their breakthrough was an embarrassment to the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. The high Command of the German Navy considered it a tactical victory but a strategic defeat, for it had traded a base, albeit exposed from which it could conduct offensive operations, to the defense of Norway, a mission of dubious value at best.

                                    Gneisenau after being Bombed in Floating Dry Dock

While undergoing repairs in a floating dry dock at Kiel Gneisenau was heavily damaged by the Royal Air Force on the night of 26-27 February. The damage was such that the Kriegsmarine High Command decided to elongate her damaged bow section and rearmament to replace her main battery with 15” guns. Once seaworthy she steamed to the port of Gotenhafen for full repairs and rearmament. Although some work was completed the conversion was halted by Hitler who was infuriated by the failure of a German Task Force at the Battle of the Barents Sea, 30-31 December 1942. Hitler fired Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, and and gave an order to scrap what remained of the German surface fleet and concentrate on the U-Boat war. Admiral Karl Donitz prevented the scrapping of the fleet, but most ships were laid up and their crews reassigned to provide crews for U-Boats. Gneisenau was disarmed with her 11” and twin 5.9” removed and installed along the Atlantic Wall. One triple 11” turret, either Bruno or Dora was installed as part of a coastal defense battery in Norway. The battery was taken over by the Norwegians after liberation and remained in commission as Austrått Fort until 1968. Since then it has become a well preserved museum.

When the Red Army approached Gotenhafen her remaining crew moved her to the harbor entrance and sank her as a block ship on 27 March 1945.  Following the war she was raised by the Poles and scrapped in 1951.

Gneisenau Sunk as Blockship 

Turret of Gneisenau at Austrått Fort Norway

 

Scharnhorst was repaired following Operation Cerberes and in March 1943 was transferred to Norway where along with Tirpitz, Admiral Scheer, Lutzow (the former Deutschland), Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen she became part of a “fleet in being” poised to strike the Allied convoys bound for Russia. On Christmas Day 1943 under the command of Rear Admiral Erich Bey the Scharnhorst set sail with several destroyers undertook Operation Ostfront and the ensuing battle became known as the Battle of North Cape. The mission was an attack on two Russia bound convoys. But the orders were intercepted and decoded by the British. Admiral Bruce Fraser planned a trap to intercept and neutralize Scharnhorst. 

Once Scharnhorst sailed the battleship HMS Duke of York, four cruisers and a number of destroyers as she closed on the convoy. However, due to the sea conditions Bey detached his escorting destroyers and ordered them to return to port.  Duke of York and her supporting cruisers and destroyers engaged Scharnhorst. Bey now realized he had no chance of destroying the convoy and attempted to escape.  However, Scharnhorst was damaged and her speed and maneuvering capabilities impaired.  Now virtually defenseless and surrounded the great ship was sunk with the loss of all but 36 of her 1968 man crew. Her wreck was discovered 3 October 2000 some 70 miles north of North Cape Norway.

Sinking of Scharnhorst by Charles Turner ( c) National Maritime Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Survivors of Scharnhorst debark in England 

Thus ended the careers of two of the most beautiful battleships ships to grace the seas. Though their  careers were short they both survived frequent heavy battle damage to return and fight again.  Perhaps  their greatest weakness was the inability of the German Navy to provide them adequate escorts at sea, and the inability of the Luftwaffe to protect them against air strikes while in port. But ultimately their great weakness was the poor naval strategy employed by Hitler and Raeder at the beginning of the war which ensured their destruction. Of the major German surface units only the Pocket Battleships we’re capable of long range commerce raiding operations. The short range of the other heavy German ships, their reliance on steam turbines rather than Diesel engines, lack of air and surface support at sea, and secure overseas bases that that could operate doomed all of them to failure, and resulted in the deaths of far too many brave sailors, fighting for their country in an unrighteousness and evil cause.

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April 23, 2020 · 02:56

It Begins Again: Trump Supporters Embrace Life Unworthy of Life

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The United States is now engaged in a life or death battle on multiple fronts. The first is against the novel Coronavirus 19 pandemic that has killed at least 47,650 Americans and infected at nearly 849,000 more, of which almost 717,000 are still active cases.  Of course we now know that the first deaths occurred in California during February weeks before the first officially recorded deaths began to be counted, there is a strong possibility that many more deaths were chalked up to the Flu and Pneumonia. With barely 1% of the population tested the probability is that hundreds of thousands of others who are probably out roaming about and spreading the virus. Of course many people still go without observing social distancing, unless they are forced to at the grocery store, or do not wear any kind of face mask. The May not care about their lives, but they show a sociopathic distance for the lives of others. Some forget, that the face masks are not simply to to protect themselves, but to protect others, in case the sociopaths are carrying the virus. I had to make two stops on the way home from work and more than half of the people I saw were going about their business without any protection, and one man going into a grocery store had two young boys, neither could have been over 5 or 6 years old. Then I remembered, that the lives of your kids don’t matter neither do the lives of strangers.

The second is against the profound ignorance, pathological narcissism, emotional fragility of a President who does not trust experts be they scientists, Physicians,  economists,  educators, or even military professionals. Instead he relies on his gut instincts, and how the words of experts either support him, or harm his fragile ego.

Because of that he plays to the worst instincts and prejudices of his followers in order to whip them into a frenzy of demonizing, threatening , and if need be, and even harming others. All this to protect his position, power, and fragile, thin skinned ego, he has created a fanatical cult-like following of people who believe that he alone can save them from their misery. It is not that they are inherently bad people, but like their leader they blame others: racial, ethnic, religious, liberals (who they call Communists or Socialists), gays, women, and everyone other than themselves and the political, religious, economic, and ideological propagandists who destroyed their way of life. However, the President’s life hasn’t been destroyed. He is still rich, and is the Chief Executive of the Country, and whether he wins reelection or not, he will be better off than them.

The President’s actions throughout the first outbreaks and reliable intelligence reports of the virulence, spread, and danger presented by COVID-19 ranged from denial, over-optimistic estimates, and deflecting his lack of action in order to blame others. Likewise, he promoted himself as the ultimate victim of anyone who dared tell the truth about what was happening, and repeated conspiracy theories with no scientific, historical, or clinical data to back them up in order to motivate the most violent and conspiracy theory oriented followers to action.

Much of this he did while presiding at daily COVID-19 briefings, often silencing or contradicting well respected scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, and other experts in order to change the narrative from his multiple failures, to how smart he is and how well he has handled it.

President Trump called himself a wartime President but then publicly at one of these briefings, and then denied all personal responsibility for the deaths and the economic costs of the pandemic. In a very real sense he abdicated his office. One cannot claim to be the final authority unless he or she is also willing  to take responsibility for their actions. This is a trait that Trump shares with the Hitler of the final days who blamed his people for failing him and not being worthy or remaining a nation or a people.

Instead of taking action and shouldering responsibility as so many other American Presidents have done in the hour of crisis, Trump blamed the Chinese, who are quite obviously not without blame for covering the virus spread in their county for at least a month and a half. Then he blamed the World Health Organization, which made an early mistake about the transmission of the virus, but quickly corrected it. From there he went on to blame his political opponents, and the free press and media, rather than his own inability to take responsibility and take decisive actions to stop the virus before it could devastate so many lives and our very national security. Instead he chose meaningless window dressing designed to make him look good and blame others to escape any personal responsibility for his actions. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said The Buck Stops Here. For Trump, the only bucks that stop with him are the ones that line his financial bottom line. 

Sadly, President Trump cannot accept responsibility for his actions, and shamelessly claims credit for the success of others. His life is a testimony to this. He has woven a carefully crafted series of excuses and lies about his failures.  In his mind he is the myth that he created: the combat hero who avoided the draft and never saw any military service. He mocks real war heroes, says he is smarter than the generals and admirals, and pardons and praises convicted war criminals. He claims to be the greatest businessman, but has so many corporate bankruptcies and failures that it boggles the mind. He poses as an icon of Christian morality and protector of the Christian Faith, but who lives his life in the most unchristian manner imaginable, to the faithful honest enough to admit it. He has three divorces under his belt, two directly cause by his unfaithfulness where he cheated on his wives, divorced them and married his mistresses. Likewise he admitted to Howard Stern that he has had many mistresses and one night stands. He he cannot dig an abyss deep enough to cover his actions, and words, which are almost always the most base and easily disproven lies. Despite that, he continues to utter the most bold faced lies almost every time he opens his mouth or sends a tweet, and then proclaims that he does not need the forgiveness of God, even as he cannot quote a Bible in its correct context to save his life. Now, in the misst of a raging pandemic which is killing tens of thousands of Americans, he claims to be smarter than highly trained scientists, infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists, virologists, and public health experts.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the President has constantly made many foolish decisions that allowed the virus to spread has taken center stage without taking any personal responsibility, even publicly stating that he didn’t take responsibility for anything, even as the virus claimed an exponential number of victims. Instead he blamed China, which does bear some measure of responsibility, the World Health Organization, which made an initial mistake in the potential for the virus’s spread, but then rapidly on January 5th corrected itself. As it continued to spread he blamed the governors of the states for not being ready, made grandiose promises supplying massive testing programs, ventilators, and PPE for the doctors, nurses, technicians, and EMT and first responders without delivering on them. He could do that as long as the economy appeared strong.

Now his Presidency, which was build around keeping up the economic good times has collapsed around him. He was able to deny, delay, and deflect the blame as long as the economy remained strong. But within weeks the markets had crashed and the unemployment rate jumped from just over 3% to over 10% and continues to rise. These are Great Depression numbers, and real economists and economic historians are predicting a major worldwide recession or depression.

Since March the President has been talking about restarting the economy and reopening business. He wanted that by Easter, but then backed off. He allowed his public health officials to issue guidelines for governors to use in order to begin reopening businesses, and the recommendations were based on good science. But soon protests sponsored by long time right wing and conservative operatives, with links to White Nationalists, extreme Second Amendment Rights groups, and Fundamentalist Christians claiming that their Constitutional rights to Freedom of Religion were being violated by Stay at Home Orders, were being waged on the steps of state capitals, and the President began attacking the governors that were following the guidelines his administration had issued. He tweeted Free Michigan, Free Wisconsin, and “Free” whatever state refused to reopen business. His Attorney General, Bob Barr threatened to “jawbone” states who were in his opinion being too strict in their protective public health and measures with Federal lawsuits and investigations.

Then leading Republican politicians, pundits, and the OAN and Fox News commentators, who almost all happened to be practicing Evangelical Christians or Conservative Roman Catholics, as well as supposedly Christian preachers began to suggest that some lives are not worth saving. So far they have limited themselves to the elderly, or people with chronic pre-existing medical conditions who require expensive medications or treatments to stay healthy or even remain alive, as worth less than opening businesses while a pandemic is still raging with no effective treatments or vaccine to stop it. While the President and his politically motivated minions didn’t say the exact words, they implied the idea propagated first by American Eugenicists in the 1920’s which were taken up by German Eugenicists in the Weimar Republic, and became key part of the Nazi regime, to cleanse the Aryan Race by eliminating the defective. The Nazis never got a pandemic to justify their actions, but Trump and his cult have been provided with one in order to justify allowing the least, the lost, and the lonely; those who are considered to be a drag on government and private economic resources, to condemn people to death because they are Life unworthy of Life. To me it sounds ironic and hypocritical that many of these same people fight against abortion, for the lives of the pre-born but have never given a damn about the lives of people outside of the womb, or the pre-born that die in American drone strikes in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.


A Nazi Propaganda Poster Showing the “suffering” of Pure Aryans in supporting Life Unworthy of Life

Yale Historian and Holocaust expert Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

The absolutely immoral and anti-life, but pro-Trump, pro-profit, racist, ageists, and anti-semites motives of these people must be exposed. Their motive is not liberty, but it is death.

As pro-Trump governors in Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, and mayors like the Mayor of  begin opening their states even as the virus rages, they will unleash an even worse case situation. Since the virus has an incubation period of 4-14 days there will be a lag between the new infections and when the infections occurred. Georgia, Florida, and Texas promise to be the worst hit states in the beginning of this second wave of infection. First, their governors are the most aggressive in determining to reopen their states, as they oppose and ignore Federal guidelines for reopening that the Trump Administration just put out, even as the President encourages revolt against his own policies. They ignore all the history, experience and science of what slows down a pandemic, and put lives at risk.

Sadly, their efforts will not just endanger them but every worker they put back at work who do not have PPE, and cannot afford to lose another paycheck. Most of these people are minorities, or poor whites. They are also advocating to stop treatment of the elderly and disabled. The Nazis did that, and actually practiced euthanasia. These Trump followers don’t just do that but, but consider their political, racial, and religious beliefs opponents, as life unworthy of life.

The really terrible thing is, that besides the victims whose blood will be on their hands, that many of these protesters have the underlying conditions that would disqualify them from the full extent of treatment if their policies were in place when they become infected. They might assist in the killing of others, but they will not be spared, because they have placed their faith in the social Darwinism, economic eminence, and haughtiness of the Eugenicists, the Nazis, and their own cobbled together incomprehensible philosophy of power, greed, and death.

For them it all comes down to economics, racism, and anti-Semitism. The White Race needs to life and profit, while all others must either die or live as slaves. The truth is that Trump and his most loyal followers only want what is best for themselves, not for others. They do not believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Instead they believe that certain lives are worth less than others, and there are no unalienable rights, except for theirs.

Dr. Marc S. Marcozzi wrote:

“Politicized medicine is not a sufficient cause of the mass extermination of human beings, but it seems to be a necessary cause. The Nazi Holocaust did not happen for some inexplicable German reason; it is not an event that we can afford to ignore because we are not Germans or not Nazis. The history of “Germany from 1914 to 1945 is a telescoping of modernity from monarchy, war, and collapse to democracy and the welfare state, and finally to dictatorship, war, and death.” 

Sadly, unless something happens that drives Trump and his cult out of political power, even before the November elections, we may very well see his administration resort to similar measures to deny treatment to and then eventually euthanize the victims of COVID-19. I personally believe that his desire to reopen the economy is less because he thinks that it will bull the nation out of its economic abyss and get him re-elected, but rather that it will kill off the people he and his cult consider to be life unworthy of life.

I have been working on this article for nearly a week. As I mentioned over a week ago I would be doing more reading, studying, and observing in order to not to shoot from the hip and to get the facts right.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

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April 11, 2020 · 23:59

“If I Offended You… I’m not in the least Sorry” The Liberation of Buchenwald at 75

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

During our trip to Germany last year we visited the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, which as a Major Camp had numerous sub-Camps, including Ohrdruf which Generals George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower visited shortly after its liberation in April 1945. Both went out of their way to describe the horrors they saw.

In our day there are fewer and fewer people who lived through or personal saw or documented the evils of the Nazi Concentration Camps. Likewise, there are a host of Holocaust deniers who produce a plethora of pseudo-scholarly articles claiming to be legitimate historians. Even more frighteningly the rise of apologists for the Nazi regime including those who are active members of allegedly conservative parties in the United States and the European Union is beginning to influence politics. The abject racism, rejection of anyone considered racially inferior, and quite often their unhidden anti-Semitism show that what lies in the dark heart of Naziism is not dead and in fact is rising.

In the United States its rise is being fueled and legitimized by the Presidency of Donald Trump who has referred to American Nazis and White Supremacists as “very good people” after one of their protests where an anti-Nazi demonstrator was murdered and others brutally attacked. In the same time frame a good number of Republican candidates have exposed themselves as White Supremacists and actual Nazis while running for office. A host of new-Nazi and White supremacist organizations openly meet and flood the internet with their race hatred, and it goes unchecked by the Administration and the Justice Department.

The fact is that anyone who denies the Holocaust, attempts to minimize it, or advocates the same policies of race hatred and violence against political, religious, or other opponents is no better than the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Likewise, those who stand by and say nothing are worse. As Yehuda Bauer wrote:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”

The good thing is that there were people who took the time to record what they saw in the Nazi Concentration Camps and exposed those deeds to the world in such a way that only perverted and evil people could brazenly deny those facts.

One of the most detailed descriptions of a liberated Concentration Camp was written by General George Patton in his memoirs entitled War as I Knew It.

… we drove to Ohrdruf and visited the first horror camp any of us had ever seen. It was the most appalling sight imaginable.

A man who said he was one of the former inmates acted as impresario and showed us first the gallows, where men were hanged for attempting to escape. The drop board was about two feet from the ground, and the cord used was piano wire which had an adjustment so that when the man dropped, his toes would just reach the ground and it would take about fifteen minutes for him to choke to death, since the fall was not sufficient to break his neck. The next two men to die had to kick the board out from under him. It was stated by some of the Germans present that the generals who were executed after the Hitler bomb incident were hanged in this manner.

Our guide then took us to the whipping table, which was about the height of the average man’s crotch. The feet were placed in stocks on the ground and the man was pulled over the table, which was slightly hollowed, and held by two guards, while he was beaten across the back and loins. The stick which they said had been used, and which had some blood on it, was bigger than the handle of a pick.

Our guide claimed that he himself had received twenty-five blows with this tool. It later developed that he was not a prisoner at all, but one of the executioners. General Eisenhower must have suspected it, because he asked the man very pointedly how he could be so fat. He was found dead next morning, killed by some of the inmates.

Just beyond the whipping table there was a pile of forty bodies, more or less naked. All of these had been shot in the back of the head at short range, and the blood was still cooling on the ground.

In a shed near-by was a pile of forty completely naked bodies in the last stages of emaciation. These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime – not, apparently, for the purpose of destroying them, but to reduce the smell. As a reducer of smell, lime is a very inefficient medium.

The total capacity of the shed looked to me to be about two hundred bodies. It was stated that bodies were left until the shed was full and then they were taken out and buried. The inmates said some three thousand people had been buried from this shed since January 1, 1945.

When our troops began to draw near, the Germans thought it expedient to remove the evidence of their crimes. They therefore used the inmates to exhume the recently buried bodies and to build a sort of mammoth griddle of 60 cm. railway tracks laid on a brick foundation. The bodies were piled on this and they attempted to burn them. The attempt was a bad failure. Actually, one could not help but think of some gigantic cannibalistic barbecue. In the pit itself were arms and legs and portions of bodies sticking out of the green water which partially filled it.

General Walker and General Middleton had wisely decided to have as many soldiers as possible visit the scene. This gave me the idea of having the inhabitants themselves visit the camp. I suggested this to Walker, and found that he had already had the mayor and his wife take a look at it. On going home those two committed suicide. We later used the same system in having the inhabitants of Weimar go through the even larger slave camp (Buchenwald) north of that town. (Excerpted for G. Patton War as I Knew It)

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote after seeing the camp:

The same day [April 12, 1945] I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town of Gotha. I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I am certain, however that I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.

Eisenhower was so moved that he ordered that the best reporters and newsmen come and record what he had seen. He did not want the horrors to be denied by history. He wrote:

I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that `the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.’ Some members of the visiting party were unable to through the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton’s headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.

One of those reporters was Edward R. Murrow who broadcast his visit to Buchenwald:

There surged around me an evil-smelling stink, men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death already had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over the mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing….

[I] asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description.

They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book — nothing more — nothing about who had been where, what he had done or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled 242 — 242 out of 1200, in one month.

As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.

In another part of the camp they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only 6 years old. One rolled up his sleeves, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. B-6030, it was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them till they die. An elderly man standing beside me said: “The children — enemies of the state!” I could see their ribs through their thin shirts….

We went to the hospital. It was full. The doctor told me that 200 had died the day before. I asked the cause of death. He shrugged and said: “tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue and there are many who have no desire to live. It is very difficult.” He pulled back the blanket from a man’s feet to show me how swollen they were. The man was dead. Most of the patients could not move.

I asked to see the kitchen. It was clean. The German in charge….showed me the daily ration. One piece of brown bread about as thick as your thumb, on top of it a piece of margarine as big as three sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they received every 24 hours. He had a chart on the wall. Very complicated it was. There were little red tabs scattered through it. He said that was to indicate each 10 men who died. He had to account for the rations and he added: “We’re very efficient here.”

We proceeded to the small courtyard. The wall adjoined what had been a stable or garage. We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised; though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little.

I arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than 500 men and boys lay there in two neat piles. There was a German trailer, which must have contained another 50, but it wasn’t possible to count them. The clothing was piled in a heap against the wall. It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed.

But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last 12 years. Thursday, I was told that there were more than 20,000 in the camp. There had been as many as 60,000. Where are they now?

I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words. 

If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry….

The fact is that as much as we want to pretend that what happened a Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Soribor, Belzec, and Treblinka are images from history that cannot happen again, they are an ever present reality and they cannot be ignored. Sadly, I cannot help but to imagine that this can and will happen again in my lifetime. The late Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian philosopher and survivor of Auschwitz wrote: “It happened, it can happen again.” 

I will now quote from one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation called The Drumhead uttered by Jean Luc Picard:

We think we’ve come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches it’s all ancient history. Then – before you can blink an eye – suddenly it threatens to start all over again.

That is our reality. There are people, even neighbors and those that we think are friends who would become perpetrators or remain bystanders when those that transgress the way of Trump . I would love to be wrong about this, but I am a historian and a theologian and I know the human condition far too well to sit back and remain silent, no matter what the cost.

I often quote historian Timothy Snyder, but he was all too correct when he wrote these words about three and a half years ago:

The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.

If you don’t believe me read the words of the President, his closest supporters, the prominent political preachers of the Christian Right, and any number of Trump leaning columnists, pundits, and politicians. There are some who are so far gone that they will accuse any opponent of being disloyal, not the the Constitution or the law but to President Trump.

Some of the preachers even blame the Jews for the current Coronavirus 19 pandemic, as well as abortion and pornography. One, a supposed “Christian Pastor” and I use those two words loosely, named Rick Wiles specifically blamed the Jews for controlling abortion and pornography. He said that President Trump wouldn’t take executive action to shut down porn or abortion because his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jarod Kushner are Jews. Earlier in the month he blamed the Jews for Coronavirus as well. I can fault Jarod and Ivanka for much, but being Jews or being responsible for abortion and pornography, my God no. Sadly, there a lot more like Wiles out there.

Others don’t directly blame the Jews, but use other terms coined by the American and German eugenicists in the 1920s, 1930s, and were finally put into action by the Nazis in 1939. These people, often very learned decided that others, particularly the elderly, the chronically sick, the mentally ill, the physically or mentally disabled, “asocials”, babies born with disabilities or illnesses, were not worth keeping alive. Bill O’Reilly, formerly of Fox News described most of the victims of the virus “were on their last legs anyway.”  His words reminded me of the terms of the eugenicists and the Nazi killers, “Life unworthy of life.” 

In 2018, one of those people tried to get my commanding officer to have me tried by Court Martial for a sermon in which he lied about what I said. I had to spend my money to hire a lawyer to defend me from the false charges and have them dismissed during the preliminary investigation.

No we are living in the middle of a deadly pandemic that has officially killed over 20,000 Americans, infected a half million more, and has a death rate of 41% among resolved cases, that is those who have died or survived the virus. Sadly, that number represents under 10% of the total official number of cases, of which around 481,00o are still active. Within weeks the economy has crashed, and the unemployment rate is over 10%. Mass graves for the dead are being dug in New York.

If the President desired to use them, there are a host of Executive Orders that would give him nearly absolute power. I am sure that his executive centric Attorney General, Bob Barr would no doubt implement in order to secure total power. So far the President has not shown the will to truly wield his executive powers during the current national emergency. For the first time all 50 States are under emergency declarations. I hope that the President resists the urge to listen to people like the Attorney General, or anyone advocating such action.

Trust me, if this happens and we lat it go, our fate will be worse than that of Nazi Germany because we should have known better. We should have learned from Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton. We should have learned fro Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller, we should have learned from the Nuremberg trials, but we have not.

So with all of that happy commentary I will leave you until tomorrow.

Until then have a good night, and please, never forget.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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April 6, 2020 · 01:59

The Submarine Class that Revolutionized Naval Warfare

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I needed a bit of a break from writing about the novel Coronavirus 19 Pandemic. So tonight I answered some kind comments from friends and other people I met on Facebook, as well as wishing my mother a happy 85th Birthday. I also spent time with my Papillon dogs, while eating vegan bean burritos on low carb tortillas, with lots of jalapeño and habanero sauces, while binge watching “The Blacklist” while sipping a dram of an excellent single malt Scotch.

So tonight I have gone back to one of my staples, navy ships, in this case an older article about the class of World War II submarine, the German Type XXI U-Boat, it was a True Wonder weapon, which was the first submarine to truly be called one. So until whenever, I wish you all the best,

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

Throughout history there have been ships that have changed the course of naval history, strategy and made previous types of ships obsolete overnight. Such ships included the USS Monitor, the HMS Dreadnought and USS Nautilus are but three, but we have to add to the list the German Type XXI U-Boats which forever changed the way that submarines were built around the world, as well as their deadliness. Now nuclear and diesel electric powered submarines have proven to be nearly undetectable, and are armed with torpedoes to sink surface ships or other submarines, conventionally armed or nuclear armed cruise missiles, even hypersonic ones, and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The are capable of inserting special operations teams, and covertly conducting intelligence operations, and the Type XXI is the ancestor and inspiration for them all.

I was thinking of adding one of the first aircraft carriers to the list of three, but which one would I choose? The HMS Furious, Argus, or Hermès; the USS Langley, Lexington or Yorktown; or possible the IJN Hosho, Akagi, or Kaga? I cannot make that judgment. With the exception of Yorktown all the rest were experimental or conversions of other platforms. The aircraft carrier changed naval warfare, but the Type XXI revolutionized it in a way the aircraft carrier couldn’t. While aircraft carriers grew in size and power, they still remained detectable and their reach limited by the range of the aircraft that they carry. They are incredibly powerful warships and national strategic assets, but they are vulnerable and require the protection of multiple surface ships, and yes, even submarines in order to safeguard them and allow them to survive to ensure that they can survive long enough to complete their missions.

type xxi u-boat SRH025-p40

The Type XXI was designed in 1943 in order to regain the German initiative at sea, and thereby reassert German naval power in the Atlantic in order to turn the tide against the Allies. By 1943 the Allies had turned the tide against the Germans as the Type VII and Type IX U-Boats took heavy losses against naval units and convoys which now had air support of carrier and shore based aircraft at every stage of their trek across the North Atlantic. Likewise, the allied capture of an Enigma coding unit allowed the allies to read any any encoded radio transmission from the U-Boats, and their onshore commanders. Until the invention of the the Schnorchel device, the Type VII and Type IX boats had to surface for prolonged periods in order to recharge their batteries. Likewise they had limited range, speed and endurance when submerged. The same was true of allied submarines, but they did not have to operate against the innovations of the allies. The advent of the Escort Carrier, long range patrol bombers, and hunter killer groups of Destroyers and the new Destroyer Escorts took a great toll on the U-Boat Force. 1943 was the watershed in the U-Boat campaign against the Americans and British. Their losses became onerous when compared to the losses that they inflicted, and for all practical reasons the Germans had lost the war at sea.

U3008

U-3008 in U.S. Navy Service

In order to meet the challenge the Germans opted for new technology based on the high speed hydrogen powered Walter turbines for underwater operations. Since these turbines which produced a high underwater speed had short endurance,  the designers modified the design to use conventional diesels, but equipped the boats with batteries that had three times the capacity of previous boats. The Type XXI boats were a radical change from all previous submarine designs which were basically surface ships with the ability to operate underwater for limited periods of time. The Type XXIs were really the first true submarines. They could operate underwater at speeds that were faster than many of their opponents. They had a streamlined hull design which facilitated a higher submerged speed of 18 knots, and enabled silent running making them very difficult to track. They could remain underwater for 11 days while only needing 5 hours to recharge their batteries when using the schnorkel device.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-2008-0214,_Uboot_-Wilhelm_Bauer-_(ex_U_2540)

The Wilhelm Bauer the former U-2540 in 1960

The Type XXI had a full streamlined hull and conning tower. Equipment which were externally mounted such as the radio antennae, hydrophones, DF Ring, and forward planes were fully retractable. They had no deck guns, and their twin 20mm flak guns were mounted in a streamlined housing on the conning tower. The German designers eliminated the traditional open bridge in favor of three small openings for the watch officer and 2 lookouts. They had a superior silent running ability and at 15 knots were quieter than the US Navy’s Balao Class that could only make 8 knots submerged. They had a 1 inch thick steel aluminum alloy pressure hull with a designed crush depth of 280 meters (919 feet), a greater designed crush depth greater than any previous submarine. Based on the experience of the Type VII and Type IX boats which often exceeded their designed crush depth by hundreds of feet during the war.

The Type XXI’s incorporated other innovations which would be incorporated into the post-war submarines of the victorious Allied powers. Among these innovations were a semi-automatic hydraulic torpedo reload system which allowed three 6 torpedo salvos to be fired in less than 20 minutes where prior U-Boats had manual reloads which took over 10 minutes to reload a single torpedo. To make the fullest use of this capability the German equipped the boats with an advanced passive and active sonar system called the called Gruppenhorchgerät and Unterwasser-Ortungsgerät NIBELUNG mounted in the bow. The improved passive system sonar system enabled the boats to approach to where they could emit short active sonar bursts to fix the target location without detection. They could fire torpedoes from a depth of 160 feet, far deeper than any other submarine of the era. The torpedoes themselves were an advanced design called the LUT or Lageunabhängiger Torpedo. The LUT was a guided torpedo that could be fired from the U-Boat regardless of the target’s bearing as it was programmed to steer an interception course that was programmed by the torpedo computer.

Submarines influenced by the Type XXI

USS_Gudgeon_;0856710 tang class

USS Gudgeon a Tang Class submarine

ORP_Orzel2 wishkey class

Polish Submarine ORP Orzel a WHISKEY Type Submarine

SS-571-Nautilus-trials

USS Nautilus on trials

The Type XXI boats were unique in production as they had no prototype and went directly in production. They were assembled from prefabricated sections built from factories around Germany and transported to the major shipbuilding yards by train. This was efficient but caused problems that slowed final assembly as many of the factories had no experience building U-Boats and quality suffered because the exacting specifications required by the Kriegsmarine. Likewise Allied air strikes on German factories and rail networks hampered production.

Yet even in spite of these difficulties 119 Type XXI Boats were completed by the end of the war, although only four were rated as combat ready, and only two were fully operational when the war ended. Of these only one embarked on a war patrol. Most of the remaining boats were destroyed in air attacks while in port, or scuttled by the Germans to prevent their capture.

Eight Type XXIs were taken over by Allied navies at the end of the war where they were used to evaluate their advanced technology for use in future submarines. The U.S. Navy Tang Class boats were heavily influenced by the Type XXI as were the GUPPY upgrades to Balao and Tench class boats. The first nuclear submarines of the U.S. Navy, the Nautilus, Seawolf and the Skate Classes all incorporated design features of the Type XXIs. The Soviet Union developed its 613 and 614 project submarines which became the type known by NATO as the WHISKEY class from the Type XXIs that they received following Germany’s surrender. In 1957 the Federal Republic of Germany raised the scuttled U-2540 and commissioned her as the research submarine Wilhelm Bauer. That boat was operated by both the Bundesmarine and civilian crews until her decommissioning in 1982. She is now a museum ship open to the public in Bremerhaven.

The Type XXIs were the first true submarines and influenced every submarine constructed since. Though introduced too late in the war to make a difference they were truly a wonder-weapon. So until tomorrow when I may or may not resume writing about the novel Coronavirus 19. I just might give myself another day or two break from something that won’t end anytime soon.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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April 4, 2020 · 00:20

Pandemics and Their Indirect Effects

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

We are living in difficult times. We have the COVID-19 pandemic which is claiming thousands of people a day while infecting far more, many of who will be permanently damaged by its effects. We have an economic meltdown going on with businesses going under, millions of people losing their jobs. The unemployment rate is skyrocketing, and many people are left without enough to survive on. They are doing so despite the approved yet unissued $1,200 subsidy, as well as increased unemployment coverage. Many of the newly unemployed have also lost their healthcare insurance.

Of course many of the now failed business offered no health benefits to their employees to begin with. But others did, like Craftworks Holdings, owners of numerous restaurants and brewery restaurant chains, started shutting down many of its most profitable locations in January and February, including our own version of cheers, Gordon Biersch, Virginia Beach. On Sunday, Craftworks closed every one of their remaining 338 restaurants. They notified their 18,000 employees that they were fired with no severance pay or insurance, as they made sure that they had ended their policy to continue health coverage under COBRA before they fired their employees.   However, I am sure that the CEO left with a golden parachute worth more than the severance  that they denied all their employees.

But now, in barely two weeks six and a half million people have filed for unemployment assistance!  over 3 million of those last week. It is worth noting that it is economists expect that the unemployment rate will reach 10% and not go down significantly until sometime next year. We are talking unemployment numbers not seen since the Great Depression, and it will get worse because so many American companies shut down their American operations and moved to countries where they could profit from using near slave labor rather than pay American workers what they worth. Now, like in 1929 we are watching everything collapse before our eyes. In 1929 President Herbert Hoover, maintained a policy of austerity, which only deepened the depression. His actions put more people out of work with no safety net. Food kitchens set up by churches and communities sprang up to feed those without the ability to provide food. Likewise, homeless shelters multiplied, while Shantytowns, nicknamed Hoovervilles popped up all over the country as people  lost their homes.

By the summer of 1932 as the Great Depression crushed the economy, and resulted in massive unemployment.  With no relief from the Republican Administration of Herbert Hoover, the Republican Senate stopped a House attempt to pay WWI Veterans a previously approved bonus for their service,  that was deferred until 1948. In response, veterans from all over the country camped out, many with their families at Anacostia Flats, across the Potomac from the White House and Capital Hill. Eventually the veterans numbered nearly 17,000, with thousands of women and children.

The veterans were falsely accused of being the leaders of a Communist attempt to overthrow the government, which would be backed by the Marines in Washington DC.  President Hoover refused to meet with their leaders, and ordered the Attorney General to send the Metro Police to drive them off. The police attempt failed with the death of two veterans. Hoover then ordered in the Army.  Army Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur took direct command of a force of infantry, cavalry, and tanks, the latter commanded by Major George Patton. On the afternoon of 28 July MacArthur took action and attacked the veterans. He even disobeyed the orders of Hoover to not drive the veterans out of their camps on the Anacostia Flats. MacArthur not only did that,  but had his soldiers burn down their shelters. The unprovoked attack wounded over 50 veterans, while over 150 more were arrested.

What happened in the United States set off a crushing economic ripple effect around the world, especially in countries like Germany which had racked up massive loan debts from banks in the United States in order to help it out of the earlier Weimar depression, as they also tried to alleviate the effects of World War One and the Great Influenza.  When the depression it the American bankers called in their loans and the fragile Weimar Democracy was overwhelmed by massive unemployment and hunger. As this happened the Republic was ripped apart by extreme political movements. On the left there was the Communist Party of Germany KPD, and on the Right, the National Socialist Workers Party, the NSDAP, or the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler.both had the same goal of overthrowing the Republic and replacing it with an authoritarian state.

However, Hitler was much better at wooing the Conservative parties of the German Right Center to support him, than the KPD was in its relationship to the mainline, slightly left of Center Socialist Party of Germany. The KPD hated the SPD worse than the Nazis. They hated democracy more than anything, and at its birth they attempted to overthrow the incipient Republic and replace it with a Soviet State. This alarmed the essentially moderate leaders of the SPD who had been given leadership of the new Republic by the outgoing Imperial Chancellor based on their parliamentary majority. The SPD allied itself with the Army high command in order to build up a new Army to defend the Republic. The Republic authorized the formation of Freikorps, units raised up by officers and NCOs to fight the Communist threat. Some of these were lead by SPD leaders or Army veterans with SPD backgrounds, but many were either monarchists, or represented the extreme right of the German political spectrum.

These formations fought the Communists in the German Civil war of 1918-1920. Communists had seized control in many cities, from which the better trained and disciplined Freikorps drove them and defeated them. While the civil war went on Freikorps fought battles with Polish troops in the disputed boundary areas. All of this went on during the Great Influenza. In defeating the Communist threat the SPD worked with the Army, conservatives, and business to show that they were responsible and to be trusted with the reigns of government. Eventually this odd coalition held Germany together, despite the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. For their efforts the SPD was blamed for Versailles and gave up power to coalitions of the German right and center parties, while Friedrich Ebert of the SPD remained President. For their cooperation with the Army the KPD never forgave them. Ebert died unexpectedly in 1925 and Paul Von Hindenburg, Germany’s top General in WWI was elected President.

For a time things looked good, and then the Great Depression hit. When it really mattered, the KPD would not join a left wing coalition government which might have provided enough stability in the Reichstag and Republic, ride our the storm. But like the “My way or the highway ideologues” of any stripe do all the time. The KPD hated the Republic more than it did the Nazis, and frequently coordinated its efforts to destroy the Republic with the Nazis. But only one authoritarian party could win, and many of the people on the German right and center, even non-Nazis trusted them more than the Communists. after numerous coalitions of the right and center failed to establish effective governments to lift the country out of the depression, Hindenburg was encouraged by his son Oskar, and advisor Franz Von Papen to give Hitler a chance. They did not believe that a government led by Hitler, with the Nazis having few seats in the Cabinet could survive which would cause Hitler’s movement to crumble, and if it did not they believed that they could moderate it, and contain its excesses. However, Hitler outmaneuvered all of them. Within six months all political parties and free labor unions were banned, and Hitler given full power. In a year Hindenburg was dead, and Hitler combined his office as chancellor with that of President. He also became the head of the military, while key aids became the heads of the police, and the ministry of justice.

Of course this whole situation was due to a number of factors, all mentioned above, but the Great Flu was significant as it killed another 426,000 Germans on top of the war deaths. The H1N1 pandemic was just one of many factors that resulted in the eventual collapse of the the Weimar Republic, and it did not help the United States, which lost over 600,000 people to it.

Pandemics have direct and indirect effects. Some of those indirect effects are more deadly than the virus itself. I expect that will be the case in many countries as a result of the novel Coronavirus of 2019. It’s effects will be felt for many years to come. It is going to change the course of history, but God only knows how. But as for me, I cannot be a bystander. I must both speak out and care for those in my care and those infected or dying from this horrific pandemic. While doing this it is my full intent and purpose to live through it and to bear witness against those who let it happen.

Until Tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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March 22, 2020 · 23:03

An Exponential Increase in People Killed or Infected by COVID-19


Erring on the Side of Caution 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In early January a dread came over me when I first read about the novel Coronavirus in China, and the head that the first case in the U.S. had been diagnosed in Washington State. I knew then that things would get much worse before they ever got better. But for fear of being labeled a fear monger or crazy person. At that time the threat was being downplayed except by intelligence agencies whose warnings we not heeded.

I guess it was in the fall of 2008 when I had a troubling dream. In it saw our city’s Town Center, still being built up, completely empty, shops and restaurants closed, construction sites abandoned, and trash blowing through the streets. That was in the 2008 crash with the H1N1 flu pandemic just beginning. I chalked them up to my horrible depression and PTSD, and tried to downplay them, and we did recover. But now it seems that that dream, was a portent of what is going on today. I certainly do not claim to be a prophet, nor a son of the Prophet, but now the restaurants and most shops there are closed. Construction projects appear to look like they are being prepared to shut down. Now I feel like I am living in that nightmarish dream as the novel Coronavirus 19 sweeps the world and the United States. The virus is exploding at an exponential rate and the worst is yet to come, not just the infections and deaths, but the complete disruption, and maybe collapse of an old order not seen since the end of the First World War.

Barbara Tuchman wrote something most relevant to the Trump Administration’s response to the COVID 19 threat, decades before it ever happened. However, she was writing about the men who brought Europe to destruction in 1914 and continued to work to destabilize new democracies, and even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic seek to protect their interests above all, including that of their nations and people. Tuchman wrote:

“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.” 

If nothing else that is an indictment of our President, and his enablers in his party, cabinet, Congress, propaganda network, and his devoted cultists who could not tell the truth from a lie if you told them a pie shell filled with shit was an award winning chocolate pie. But on to the current situation and a bit of background.

On December 31st the Chinese Government reported the first death from nouveau Coronavirus 19, or COVID 19. By the end of January there were over 12,000 cases and 259 deaths. The first infected American arrived from China in the middle of January. When I saw that, I knew without immediate intervention by the Federal Government that the spread of the virus would eventually be exponential and devastating, not just in the illnesses and deaths, but to the worldwide economy, and eventually war. If we look at the history of the 1920s-1930s the First World War was followed by economic, political, and the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic. Of course there were the civil wars and unstable governments caused by icily wars between the extremists of the Bolshevik and Fascist extremes, both seeking to destroy the political center to gain power, the brief economic upsurge brought about in the 1920s, the the Wall Street Crash of 1928 that brought about a worldwide economic depression, and a Second World War.

But now we have the Coronavirus which is sweeping across the world at a now breathtaking pace. It is growing at an exponential rate, and it seems that all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men will find it hard to put it together again.

When the COVIS-19 pandemic hit our shoes,  the American Government led by the Trump Administration paid little attention to it or downplayed its significance. It did that until the bottom began falling out of the stock markets, bond markets, and the oil market, the latter was not completely due to due to Coronavirus but the productions and price oil war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The Trump Administration finally labeled the situation a health emergency at the end of January, but did nothing to prepare.  Belatedly, it began to organize a response led by Vice President Pence at the end of February, but even sill the President in his speeches and tweets continued to downplay the situation as members of his political, religious, and media cult amplified his message, until a week ago.

The day I wrote my first article about Coronavirus, March 8th,  there had been almost 110,000 cases and nearly 3800 deaths. That was an increase of 98,000 cases and over 3500 deaths in just 38 daysI wrote me second article on it ten days later. By that time were nearly 198,500 cases and just shy of 8,000 deaths, 7,987 to be exact.

So in ten days there were around 100,000 new cases, and close to 4200 new deaths. As of that evening there were a total of 218,721 cases, of which 125,392 were currently active. 93,329 are closed, meaning either recovery or death. Of the closed cases, 8,983 or 10% had died. This means there were over 20,000 new cases and almost 1,000 deaths in a single night. Italy was hit hardest in the past day, over 4,200 new cases and 475 deaths.  In other European countries the numbers are spiking, and are about a week or two behind Italy in the progression of the disease.

We are now 15 days since my first article and five after my second. Since my last post the numbers have grown exponentially at a rate far faster than even last week. As of this moment in time there are 338,724 total cases of which 225,034 are active. Of the closed cases 14,687 are dead, and 99,003 have recovered. That is a 13% death rate. Since yesterday the number of cases went up by 32,440 with 1631 new deaths. See https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The sad thing, that even where local, state or provincial, and national governments have taken steps to mitigate the the spread of the virus, only the most draconian measures have succeeded in flattening the infection and death curve. South Korea is not far behind, but more to proactive testing, and mitigation efforts. But the United States remains far behind in testing, the availability of test kits, and haphazard quarantine and social distancing and isolation measures, primarily because the Trump Administration has refused to take the leadership, and responsibility to ensure that states get the resources they need when they need them, while failing to provide  overarching policy guidance rather than by shifting blame to experts, journalists, and truth tellers, and of course China by labeling it by the xenophobic and racist term, the China Virus instead of its actual name.

Likewise the President has proclaimed that he is a wartime President but refuses to treat this as a war. He has correctly called it an unseen enemy but has refused to do the things that a real wartime President would to to stop the losses and win the war. He still, dithers, obfuscates, and blames. Instead of saying “the Buck stops here” as Harry Truman did, he passes the responsibility and deflects the blame to everyone but himself, because he claims no responsibility for anything, and makes himself the victim of others, even former allies, friends, and appointees. He is Captain Queeg on steroids, but in defense of the fictional Queeg, he had been exposed to arduous combat duties before he took command of the USS Caine. Queeg cracked under pressure and his officers failed to help him. That is not the case with President Trump, he got rid of the apolitical professionals and surrounded himself with yes men and his family. Queeg should have been so lucky.

Tomorrows numbers will be worse, and the Trump Administration ignored warnings about COVID 19 by intelligence experts as early as January. Until the stock, bond, and oil markets began to collapse at the beginning of March, they did nothing, except deny, deflect, and minimize what would happen. Once the economy began to crash the Administration began to take actions, most not really effective in stopping the spread of the virus, but actions. Sadly, the President could give a serious and even Presidential Statement, and then go back to undercut everything he said with his Un constrained Tweets.

Bank of America has already stated that the United States is now in a recession. Other economists say that we are headed for an economic depression. Depressions are not good, not just for the economy, but for national security, in the midst of the Great Depression, Japan invade Manchuria in 1931, and China in 1936. Italy attack and conquered Ethiopia in 1935-1936, even as Hitler’s Germany began a startling number of bloodless conquests in the 1930s , without much reaction from from democracies mired in economic crisis and political divisions were unable to respond.

We have now reached that kind of watershed in our time. This will get far worse, in so many ways before it gets better. So until this is over, please err on the sid e of caution. Don’t take unnecessary risks, knowing that asymptotic carriers of the virus can spread it without you knowing it, and demand that our elected leaders at all levels of government take real actions to slow and eventually stop the advance of the virus, take action to help all of our population, but especially the millions losing their jobs in the service industries, And the small business and restaurant chains that are being forced to close due to the virus. This is a time for bold actions, not to bail out the corporate elites and oligarchs, but to help our citizens and the companies that they work for survive.

For me this isn’t about politics or the latest money, but for the survival of us as a people and nation who still hold to the belief of the Founders in the Declaration “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 20, 2020 · 01:51

Long Range Predators: The U-Boat Type IX

U-123 returning from patrol

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is late and while I want to write a follow up article to my last on COVID-19 tonight was not the time. So instead I am republishing a very old article about the Type IX U-Boats of the German Kriegsmarine in World War II. I wrote about the Type VII boats last week. The class was one of the most successful classes of all submarines which served in the Second World War. The Type IXB variant which comprised 14 boats were the most success of all submarine classes produced by any nation with an average of 100,000 tons of shipping sunk by the ships of the class. U-123 sank 43 ships totaling over 220,000 tons in 12 war patrols. U-107 made one of the most successful single war patrols by a submarine of any Navy sinking sinking over 100,ooo tons of shipping during a single patrol.

As the Kriegsmarine began its expansion in the mid-1930s the new U-Boat arm developed several types of submarines. The Type IX class was designed in 1935-36 as a long range attack boat and was larger had a greater range and were more heavily armed than the more numerous Type VII boats.  The Kreigsmarine designers envisioned a submarine capable of operating far from German bases for extended periods of time.  The design of these boats was derived from the two boat Type 1 class and incorporated lessons learned from that class.  283 boats of the type were constructed between 1937 and 1944 and the Kriegsmarine continuously sought to improve the type which resulted in five distinct models within the class. The boats grew from just over 1000 tons to nearly 1800 tons, with corresponding increases in speed, range, and armament. The final variant had an operational range of over 30,000 miles. This made them the boat of choice for long range missions, including transport missions to Japan.

Type IXA The first group referred to as the Type IXA or simply the Type IX was comprised of 8 boats built by AG Weser of Bremen.  Ordered in 1936 the group was part of the Kriegsmarine’s Plan Z rearmament plan which began when the Nazi Government announced that it would no longer abide by the Treaty of Versailles.  The initial 8 boats had a 1032 ton standard displacement were 251 feet long and were armed with six 21” torpedo tubes with 22 torpedoes.  They had a 105mm deck gun with 110 rounds as well as a 37mm and 20mm anti-aircraft gun.  They were the first German submarines equipped with a double hull which increased survivability and seaworthiness.  They were powered on the surface by two MAN M9V40/46 supercharged 9-cylinder diesel engines that produced 4,400 shp as well as two SSW GU345/34 double-acting electric motors for underwater operations. As in all diesel-electric boats the diesels were used to recharge the batteries for the electric motors while the boat was operating on the surface. They had a maximum speed of 18.2 knots on the surface and a range of 22,354 miles at 10 knots. Underwater they had a maximum speed of 7.7 knots and range of 166 miles at 4 knots.  The official maximum diving depth was 230 meters or 750 feet.  Of the 8 boats of this type 6 were sunk during combat operations and two scuttled at the end of the war by their crews to prevent their capture by the Allies. The most successful of the Type IXA boats was the U-37 was the most successful boat of the type sinking 53 merchant ships for a total of 200,124 tons as well as two warships, the Sloop HMS Penzance and French Submarine Q-182.

Crew members  of U-107 in Torpedo Room

Type IXB The next group was the IXB of which 14 boats were built by AG Weser Bremen. This was the most successful class of U-boats, or for that matter any class of submarines based on tonnage sunk per boat during the Second World War. Each of these ships sank over 100,000 tons of Allied shipping.  They were slightly larger than the IXA boats and had a significantly longer operational range of 24,600 miles on the surface at 10 knots. The U-107 of this class had the most successful war patrol of any U-Boat in the war sinking nearly 100,000 tons of Allied shipping off Freetown Sierra Leone while U-103 sank over 237,000 tons of Allied shipping during 11 war patrols over the course of 4 years. These boats were involved in Operation Drumbeat off the coast of the United States in early 1942.

U-123 Gun Crew

Type IXC The Type IXC was a further improvement of the type with additional fuel capacity and longer range. They displaced 1120 tons and 54 of the boats were commissioned of which 19 were equipped as minelayers with a capacity of 44 TMA or 66 TMB mines. The boats were built by AG Weser Bremen, Seebeckwerft Bremen and Deutsche Werft Hamburg.  The U-505 of this type is the only surviving Type IX and was captured by a boarding team from the Escort Carrier USS Guadalcanal on June 4th 1944. Her capture was kept secret from the Germans and her crew kept as POWs in a separate POW Camp. The story of the crew and their encounter with the game of baseball is recorded in Gary Moore’s book, Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams. The book is being turned into a movie entitled Playing with the Enemy which is scheduled to be released in 2011. She is preserved at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

U-848 under attack by USN Aircraft

Type IXC/40 This was a further refinement of the IXC with slightly greater range and surface speed. It was the most numerous type of the class built with 87 being built by AG Weser Bremen, Seebeckwerft Bremen, and Deutsche Werft Hamburg.  The remains of the U-534 of the class are displayed at Woodside Ferry Terminal in Birkenhead England after being raised from the North Sea in 1986.

Type IXD The final type in the Type IX Series was the Type IXD.  This was a significantly larger boat than the others in the class 287 feet long with a standard displacement of 1610 tons. They were unique in that they had two sets of diesel engines, one for cruising and the other for high speed runs and battery recharge. There were three variants within the type, the IXD1 which were all converted to transport use due to problems with their engines, the most numerous variant the IXD2 and the IXD42 which had greater horsepower.  Thirty Type IXD2s were commissioned with a further six Type IXD42s which were ordered with only one commissioned by the end of the war.

U-505 at the Museum of Science and Industry in 2005 (Jerry Atherton)

During the war surviving boats would receive increased anti-aircraft armament, the Schnorkel device which allowed them to operate on diesel power while submerged as well as better electronics and detection devices. Most of the boats which survived the war were scuttled by the Allies in Operation Deadlight.  The U-511 was sold to Japan in 1943 and U-862 taken over by the Japanese after the German Surrender in May 1945. Both survived the war and were scuttled by the Allies. U-1231 was taken over by the Soviet Navy and served as the B-26 after the war.

The sailors of these U-Boats like all submarine sailors endured many hardships and during the war approximately 75% of the 40,000 U-Boat sailors never returned from patrol, forever interred in the deep with their proud boats.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 13, 2020 · 02:08

COVID-19, Trump Policy, and “Life Unworthy of Life”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am reflecting about the present in light of the past, and how policy wise, the Social Darwinist policies of the Trump Administration, and the words of his cult propagandists regardless and  and followers direct me to the Eugenics movement of the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, Weimar Germany, and other European nations, as well as Japan. But the eugenics movement was nowhere more malevolent, evident and active than it was in Hitler’s Germany. Likewise it is hard to believe that members of the administration as well as its supporters seem to believe, if you take them at their word that the elderly, disabled, mentally ill, and poor, especially those who are not white or Christian are a burden on the State, and are as the Eugenicists of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as Hitler’s Nazi Party believed, were ”Life unworthy of life .” 

It seems hard to believe for anyone born after the mid 1960s, that government through its laws, decrees, and policies could deem certain people to be “life unworthy of life.” The most malevolent of such governments was the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, but individuals and institutions in the United States promoted the same ideology, but could not carry it to its logical conclusion.

The life that was unworthy of life included the physically and mentally handicapped or disabled, those with Downs Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Polio, and people with other neurological conditions. Likewise the mentally ill, those suffering clinical depression, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses were considered to be life unworthy of life. Even the deaf were included, as well as veterans suffering from what we would now call PTSD or Traumatic Brain Injury. Also included were people labeled as “asocial” a very loose definition that could include almost any metal disorder or criminal act, including being a homosexual.

Tens of thousands Of such people were liquidated at the T-4 Euthanasia centers, most located in former hospitals, psychiatric institutions, or sanitariums.

Once the Nazis decided to eliminate them the same day as they invaded Poland in 1939, most of these people gassed with carbon monoxide gas from the exhaust of trucks or Diesel engines, and their remains were cremated. Others, especially children were either starved to death or given a lethal injection while they slept. In every case the next of kin of each victim was sent a standard form letter telling them that their relative had died of influenza, typhus, or some other disease while being given the best of care. The next of kin were then given the option of paying for an urn that may or may not have contained the ashes of their loved ones for inurnment near their home town. If they could not afford an urn the ashes were disposed of in the cemetery nearest to where they were killed. At Hadamar, it was on the grounds of the institution.

Despite the Nazis attempts to disguise their crime they could not be hidden, and after over 70,000 Germans were Euthanized the official T-4 Euthanasia program was ended in Germany.  The gas chambers, cremation ovens and facilities were disassembled by SS experts, and sent east to Poland, where they and their experienced technicians became key components of the Holocaust of the Jews at Soribor, Belzec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz. 

But the Euthanasia program, despite Nazi lies to senior clerics and officials of neutral countries didn’t stop, it simply moved eastward as the SS Einsatzgruppen killed the patients at every mental hospital, sanitarium, old folks home, or orphanage they came across. Inside Germany at the four T4 centers over 80,000 were gassed. At Hartheim in Austria a Party was held on the gassing of the 10,000th victim. Richard Evans wrote:

“At Hartheim the staff held a party to celebrate their ten-thousandth cremation, assembling in the crematorium around the naked body of a recently gassed victim, which was laid out on a stretcher and covered with flowers. One staff member dressed as a clergyman and performed a short ceremony, then beer was distributed to all present. Eventually no fewer than 20,000 were gassed at Hartheim, the same at Sonnenstein, 20,000 at Brandenburg and Bernburg, and another 20,000 at Grafeneck and Hadamar, making a total of 80,000 altogether.”

The tolls in Poland, the Baltic States, and the Soviet Union were much higher, but outside of the T4 program which “officially” ended in 1941.

Now in the United States the laws guaranteeing health care to people are being challenged, the Secretary of Education has removed funding from the Department’s funding request for the Special Olympics, programs for the physically and mentally disabled under the SSI are being cut to the bone, and even care for disabled veterans is being threatened as not being economical because none of them are economically valuable to an administration for which profit is the bottom line of the insurance industry. Likewise, most supposedly pro-life Christians have no problems in cutting such programs because many have bought into the materialistic, Prosperity Gospel, whose fawning preachers have anointed President Trump if he were King Cyrus.

To them, criticism of the President cannot be tolerated, no matter how factual it may be. Thus, the  sick, then weak, then infirm, or mentally ill, who are not productive have no place in society. Inside the womb they are a remarkably powerful political issue; but once outside the womb they might as well be dead if you listen to Trump’s clique of Reichsbishofs, according to who cannot produce for the economy should not eat, get medical care, or live. They are life unworthy of life.

You see, in the authoritarian world in which we live, where an uninhibited and unhinged executive backed by profit minded billionaires, and greedy preachers, such lives; the old and infirm, the disabled, the mentally ill, the young but physically disabled, those with neurological issues, and birth defects stand in the way of profit, stand in the way of a “perfect” society.

If you directly challenged such people may not advocate euthanasia per say, they would not advocate for gas chambers, or firing squads. Instead they would turn a blind eye to depriving their victims of citizenship, starving them, depriving them of medical care, and turning them out of care facilities knowing that their families lack the capability of caring for them. and if they have any capacity for work, work them until they die, so long as they Confess Christ before they die.

How do we know that life does not matter to them? One way is to note the many times that pharmaceutical corporations have increased the costs of previously inexpensive yet vital life saving medicines by thousands of dollars a dose all for profit with little to no pushback from the White House, or the FDA, much less the Senate GOP majority, or the Evangelical supporters of Trump.

Please understand, this dystopian future need not happen if people of any faith, or no faith at all make a stand against a twisted idea of dictatorship backed up by billionaires and corporate entities that suck billions of dollars from the taxpayer and pay almost nothing themselves. Of course they couldn’t do it on their own in not supported by a de facto State Media, and a cult like legion of followers who would follow Trump even if he shot someone on 5th Avenue. His words, not mine.

I will turn 60 in just over two weeks, and this does bother me enough to speak out. As a senior military officer facing the end of his career and retirement amid multiple physical and emotional issues, it does matter. I keep two things in mind today. First is that of my own responsibility to my Oath, and to fellow citizens.  In that I am reminded of the words of German General Ludwig Beck who wrote:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.”

And like Beck’s compatriot, Major General Henning Von Tresckow stated: “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.” Or in my case, Trump’s America.

Historian Timothy Snyder reminds of a certain truth, which should we forget, as I imagine a large number of Trump supporters have:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

Those are all hard truths to comprehend. As Americans we always presume that we are the good guys, when in fact many times we have acted in means contrary to the ideals of the Declaration as well as the Constitution, and other laws enacted by Congress. But our republic has survived, but its institutions are both resilient and fragile. History has proven this, we have even survived a civil war, but we may not survive an increasingly vindictive and unstable President, his compliant majority in the Senate, and the 35-40% of voters who are in effect no longer Republicans, but a Trump Cult which is largely buttressed by Conservative Evangelical Churches, and inspired by a President who uses force, legal, and extralegal alike to secure his rule.

We live in extraordinary times which call for extraordinary strength if our Republic is to continue in any form that resembles the intentions of the founders and their liberal enlightenment beliefs.

If we do not want to see the return of a full fledged government and industrial sponsored campaign to eradicate life unworthy of life, we have to fight. It is a fight that we did not chose, but if the Republic is to survive without becoming a criminal dictatorship we must speak up, and we must do so now. If we do not we have no one to blame but ourselves.

As Yehuda Bauer said: “Thou shall not be a perpetrator, thou shall not be a victim, and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.”

The choice is ours, and the time is now.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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