For almost 200 years, the famous Knights Templar had considerable power, wealth, and influence across Europe and the Mediterranean. But it all came to an abrupt and bloody end in 1314. The Knights were originally founded as a Christian, monastic-military order, devoted to protecting pilgrims traveling to and from the Holy Land following the First Crusade. If a “monastic-military” order sounds a bit odd to you, you’re right. Thanks to huge donations from Kings and Cardinals across Europe, the Knights Templar became one of the richest and most powerful orders in the Middle Ages. So how did it all end?
The Knights of the Temple (Knights Templar) warrior monks
White supremacist mob poses in front of the black Daily Record newspaper following the Wilmington Massacre, 1898
On November 10th, 1898, a white supremacist mob brutally massacred African Americans in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. They then deposed the duly-elected city and county government in a violent coup. The Wilmington Massacre has the ugly distinction of being the only successful coup in American history. Lost in the political overthrow were the lives of over 100 black citizens, black businesses & leaders, and a most of all, a thriving southern black community.
Before the violence, Wilmington, NC, a coastal city a few miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, was thriving and remarkably integrated for 1898. Three out of the ten aldermen were African Americans, and Black people worked as policemen, firemen, and magistrates. Two-thirds of the population were African American. Blacks owned barbershops, restaurants, tailors, and drug stores.
November 10th, 1898 changed all that, starting in the morning with a mob setting fire to the Black newspaper building. It ended at sundown with dozens dead in the streets and the overthrow of the city government, replaced by the leaders of the white supremacist mob. Not a single person was later prosecuted for the murders. Even in the era of Jim Crow, such anarchy and brutality was exceptional for the South.
How did the Massacre and Coup come about?
The massacre was part of a carefully orchestrated coup that toppled a rare, multi-racial government in the American South, post-Reconstruction. The city also had a rare, Black Middle Class and some 65 black doctors, lawyers and teachers. The far-reaching goal of the coup stretched beyond just Wilmington – to prevent black citizens across the entire state of North Carolina from ever voting again.
In the election of 1896, 2 years earlier, white Democrats lost control of the state government in Raleigh. A group of white Populists and Black Republicans won control of the state house and senate. The white Democrats were furious and vowed to never let it happen again, at any cost. The party of the old Confederacy promised to forever end “Negro domination” in state elections.
The NC Democratic Party began a broad white supremacy campaign to drive Populist and Republican politicians out of office during the next election in 1898. The campaign used political speeches, printed propaganda, and fear-mongering with the threat of violent “Black Uprisings” to create support amongst whites. And it worked beautifully.
They focused on stoking white men’s bigotry and anger, along with white women’s fears of being raped by rampant black men. Prior to the next election, the white newspaper, The Wilmington Messenger, published a controversial speech given by a wealthy Georgia socialite. She supported lynchings for any “inappropriate relationship” of a Black man with white women to “protect women from the ravening Negro beast.”
Alex Manly, the Black newspaper editor of The Daily Record in Wilmington, wrote an editorial condemning unlawful lynchings. It pointed out the hypocrisy of describing Negro men as “Black Brutes,” when white men were guilty of regularly raping Black women at will. He daringly added that some relations between the races were actually consensual.
This editorial only fueled racial tensions, with Wilmington now the focal point of the state.
Alfred Waddell, a U.S. Congressman and former Confederate colonel, called for the removal of the Black Republicans and white Populists from power in Wilmington. In his own speech, he proposed that white citizens should “choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses,” if necessary, to keep Blacks from the polls. White supremacist rallies across the state kept white outrage at a fever pitch.
On Election Day, November 8th, Klan-like Red Shirts across the state used threats and intimidation to stop Blacks from voting. African American voters however again turned out in large numbers. White supremacists tampered with the returns and stuffed ballot boxes. Because of their illegal tactics, Southern Democrats swept the state election. The next day, The Wilmington Messenger proclaimed, “Yesterday was a glorious day for white supremacy in North Carolina.”
Democrats may have won every seat in the state legislature, but African Americans and white Populists still maintained power in Wilmington’s government. Alfred Waddell, white politicians and businessmen plotted an insurrection, which the city’s white soldiers, police, and vigilantes executed. The soldiers came from an all-white state militia stationed in Wilmington, commanded by white supremacist, ex-Confederate officers.
On November 9th,The Wilmington Messenger published a notice from Waddell:
“Attention White Men: There will be a meeting at 11 o’clock at the Court House. Business of the furtherance of White Supremacy will be transacted.”
Wilmington Messenger notice, 9 November, 1898
An estimated 800 people attended, including ministers, lawyers, doctors, merchants and working men. They drafted a resolution known as the “White Declaration of Independence.” It stated, “We, the undersigned citizens of the city of Wilmington, do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled by men of African origin.” More than 450 angry white men signed the declaration.
A group of African American leaders, the Committee of Colored Citizens, were then summoned to a meeting, and ordered to respond to the Declaration by 7:30 AM the next morning. They went to Jacobs’ Barber Shop and drafted a rebuttal reply. The Committee elected a young Black lawyer, Armond Scott, to deliver their reply. By now, Wilmington’s streets were filled with visibly armed white men. Fearing for his own safety, Scott drops the reply in the mail, and does not deliver it in person.
On NOVEMBER 10th, 1898, a crowd of white men gather at the Court House. When the Committee of Colored Citizens’ response does not arrive, Waddell leads the men to the Wilmington Light Infantry’s Armory where they arm the mob. They then march to The Daily Record’ s office a few blocks away. The whites demanded that both Manly and the newspaper be forever banned from the community. Manly escapes, ironically because he was mistaken for white, due to his light skin. At 9:00 AM, the mob ransacks The Daily Record office.
The white mob then sets the newspaper building on fire.
Word of the arson spreads quickly through both White and Black neighborhoods. Tensions ignite at 11:00 AM when Black men at Walker’s Grocery Store face off against white men at nearby Brunje’s Saloon. A shot is fired and someone yells, “White man killed!” Gunfire erupts from the white mob. Unarmed Black men scatter, but were chased through the streets and gunned down.
Violence quickly spreads and the white mob grows to over 2,000 by day’s end. They poured into Black neighborhoods with rifles, revolvers, and even a Gatling gun. The mob now includes soldiers, police, lawyers, bankers, even clergy. Whites began to hunt and gun down black men, many of them simply running to get home safely. As many as 25 black men are killed trying to cross the 4th Street Bridge. The Gatling gun is even aimed at St. Stephen AME Church.
Waddell telegrams the governor to call out the other militias, falsely claiming Blacks were rioting in Wilmington! Governor Russell puts Colonel Walker Taylor, a local militia officer in charge of the troops and calls for him to “Preserve the Peace,” at all costs. Wilmington is placed under Martial Law. In the chaos, hundreds of African Americans flee into the marshy swamps surrounding the city.
At City Hall, the coup occurs at 4 PM in the afternoon.
Waddell and Tayler throw out all the democratically-elected aldermen and install coup leaders. Republican and Populist city officials are forced to resign at gun point. Coup leaders then “elect” Alfred Waddell as mayor. The mob takes away Black leaders at gun point and jails them “for their own safety.”
The next day, an armed escort forcibly marches the elected city government to the train station and banishes them from the city. This includedThomas Miller, the richest Black man in town and three prominent white men—the Police Chief, County Commissioner and Mayor. The coup leaders then demanded that white men be hired instead of African Americans. So the Fire and Police Departments fire all the Black men and replace them with whites.
The new police force reported that only 25 black men had been killed. However, it’s believed that over a hundred African Americans had been murdered and their bodies dumped into the Cape Fear River. All of those known to have died in the massacre were Black. This official list of names never includes all those murdered.
Over the next few weeks, over 2000 African Americans flee the city in response to the Wilmington massacre and coup. Wilmington turned from a black-majority city into a white supremacist haven. In the months to come, No one was prosecuted or punished for the killings and destruction. A “Black Race Riot” was cited by the white mob as justification for the murder and violence.
In 1900, the NC state legislature effectively stripped African Americans of the right to vote through various Jim Crow Laws. President William McKinley ignored pleas from Black leaders to send in U.S. troops to protect NC Black citizens on election day. Two years before the coup, 126,000 black men were registered to vote in NC. Four years after the coup, the number was just 6,100.
What happened that bloody day was nearly lost to history.
For over 90 years, the perpetrators were cast as heroes in Southern textbooks. The black victims were continually described as rapists and rioters. It took nearly a century for the truth to finally creep back into the general public’s awareness. It was only as the 100 Year Anniversary of the coup grew near, that the city of Wilmington reexamined its own past and the suffering it caused its own Black community.
The 1898 Memorial to the Wilmington Massacre, erected in 2008
Today, there’s little physical evidence of what happened there in 1898. In 2008, one hundred ten years later, the Wilmington Massacre 1898 Memorialwas unveiled in Wilmington. The monument consists of six, sixteen feet high paddles standing in a half circle. They represent the religious belief among African cultures that those who pass from the living to the dead, do so via water.
There are have been many violent moments in U.S. history, perpetrated against Native Americans, immigrants and African Americans.The Wilmington Massacre, committed by a white supremacist mob, was unique: It was the only successful coup d’état ever to take place in U.S. history on American soil.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
Lepa Radic being lead to her execution by the Nazis
Lepa Radic was just a 17-year-old Yugoslavian girl when she was hanged by the Nazis for being a Partisan in 1943. This extraordinarily brave girl had joined the Yugoslav Partisans in the fight against their Nazi oppressors in World War II, and taken on the most dangerous assignments. What turn of events lead to her transformation, capture and ultimate execution?
World War II spread rapidly across Europe in 1940 as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany had conquered Poland, then France, then most of the continent. Local resistance movements quickly popped up in nearly every occupied nation. These groups did everything from publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets, to helping downed Allied pilots, to conducting guerilla raids and acts of sabotage. Most were ordinary citizens, some of them, even teenage girls.
Yugoslavia had been created in the treaties following World War I. The multi-ethnic nation of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Slovenians began as a democracy, but fell into dictatorship in 1929. As the Nazis took control of Europe, Yugoslavia attempted to remain neutral. But in early 1941, the nation’s leaders yielded to the advancing Nazi threat and joined the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. Just two days later, Yugoslavian military leaders conducted a coup, installing 17-year-old King Peter II as the head of a new nationalist government.
The spring of 1941 was key to Adolf Hitler.
He intended to invade the Soviet Union with his Operation Barbarossa. However, the emergence of this new nationalist Yugoslavia forced him to delay that plan. He had to secure his Balkan flank against Josef Stalin before invading Russia. Hitler issued Directive 25, classifying Yugoslavia as hostile and ordered it invaded. The Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia began in April, and the small Yugoslav military surrendered after only 11 days. However, that attack delayed Hitler’s invasion of Russia by 4 critical weeks. That one less summer month to invade the Soviet Union, eventually contributed to Hitler’s failure in Russia.
The Ustaše regime ruled Yugoslavia as a Nazi puppet, that brutally oppressed Jews and Serbs. While the Nazis and Ustaše government controlled major cities, the German invasion failed to reach its remote and rugged mountains. The Nazi victory wasn’t decisive at all. This allowed two Serbian resistance groups to emerge there, theChetniks and the Partisans.
The Chetniks were Yugoslavian ex-military and loyal to the government of Peter II, now in exile. While some Chetniks opposed the Nazis, some factions collaborated with their occupiers. As for the Partisans, Yugoslavia banned Communism in 1921, forcing its Communist Party underground. After the Nazi invasion, the Yugoslav Socialists became the Partisans. As their group held socialist beliefs, the Partisans were opposed by the royalist Chetniks. Their leader was Josip “Tito” Broz, the head of the underground Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The Partisans’ goal was drive out the Nazis and establish an independent socialist nation.
Where does young Lepa Radic figure into all of this chaos?
Lepa was born in 1925 to Serbian parents, in the Bosnian village of Gašnica. During her school years, she was recognized as a serious and studious student. She came from a hard-working family with communist roots. Her uncle, Vladeta Radić, was actively involved in the underground labor movement and Lepa read many books banned by the government. As a teenager, she too became active in the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia. She joined the Yugoslavian Communist Party in early 1941 at only 15. Then came the Nazi invasion in the spring.
Her father Svetor, and two uncles, all joined the Partisan movement that same summer. But by November, their activities attracted the unwanted attention of the puppet Ustaše government. Secret Police arrested the entire Radić family, including Lepa and her siblings, and held them at the Stara Gradiška prison in Croatia. Two weeks later, undercover Partisans managed to help Lepa and her sister Dara escape. Her father and uncles however, were quickly executed. After their rescue, the sisters vowed to avenge their father by joining the Partisans the very next month. Though risking her own life, Lepa Radić courageously joined the 7th Partisan company of the 2nd Krajiski Detachment. She was just 15 years old.
Lepa volunteered for one of the most dangerous assignments. She would be serving as a nurse on the front lines, transporting the wounded off the battlefields and helping vulnerable families flee the Axis powers. She participated in every major combat operation in her area. Her youth and ability to connect with other young people quickly proved to be useful for the Partisans.
She became a field activist next, and later promoted to partisan leader, traveling to villages to recruit new Partisans amongst the young. On one mission, she led a group of young people to harvest fields of grain close to Nazi positions in order to feed the Partisans. For two years, she fought Nazi oppression until her brave actions caught up with her.
In January 1943, the Nazis and their Chetnik allies, launched Operation Case White.
This was a major offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans. This operation would devastate and nearly destroy the Partisan front. At the Battle of Neretva, Lepa was charged with evacuating the wounded to a field hospital near Grmeč. Saving the wounded was one of the Partisans’ pillar strategies. They had vowed to never leave the wounded behind, because the Nazis routinely executed them.
In February 1943, Lepa Radić was organizing a rescue of some 150 women and children seeking refuge from the Nazis. Units from the 7th SS Division caught up with them, flanking Lepa and the refugees. She refused to surrender without a fight. Lepa attempted to give them time to escape by firing at the attacking Nazi SS forces with a barrage of rifle fire. She fired all the ammunition she had left at the advancing Nazis and never ran herself. Once her weapon was exhausted, the Germans stormed forward and captured her.
She was taken to the village of Bosanska Krupa. First, the Germans kept her in isolation, torturing her relentlessly in an attempt to extract information about the Partisans. But she refused to offer anything but her own name. When after three days of giving them nothing, they sentenced Radić to death by hanging for firing upon a Nazi Division. She continued to refuse to divulge any information about her comrades all the way up to her execution.
On February 8, 1943, Lepa Radic was brought outside to a hastily constructed gallows. It was nothing more than a rope swung over a large tree branch in the town square, in full view of the public. Rather than appearing frightened, she looked resolute instead. As they placed the rope noose around her neck, she passionately cried out to the crowd of Yugoslavs and German soldiers:
“Long live the Partisans! Fight, people, for your freedom! Do not surrender to the evildoers! I will be killed, but there are those who will avenge me!”
Lepa Radic, 8 February 1943
The Nazi commander in charge scowled at the girl and offered Lepa one last chance to spare her life by giving them the names and location of her Partisan allies. Instead, she shouted a second time:
“I am not a traitor of my people. Those whom you asking will reveal themselves, when they have succeeded in wiping out all you evildoers, to the last man!”
Lepa Radic, 8 February 1943
Lepa Radic is hanged by the Nazis in 1943
And with that, the angry officer kicked the chair out from under her and she was hanged by the neck until dead. Lepa was just 17. The Nazi officer later reported on her execution: “The bandit girl, hanging in Bosanska Krupa, has shown unprecedented defiance.” In truth, she had intimidated her enemy by showing them a 17 year old Partisan girl having no fear of death.
The execution was captured by the Nazis in a series of haunting photographs meant to intimidate and frighten the population. Instead, it had the opposite effect. She inspired them. The legacy of Lepa Radić lived on. No matter if she made the ultimate sacrifice, her death would be avenged, leading to ultimate victory against the Nazis two years later.
After World War II ended, the Yugoslavian Communists under Tito became the country’s ruling party. As a result, they recognized the Yugoslavian Partisans as one of the most effective guerilla armies in the entire war. In 1951, Lepa Radic posthumously received the National Order of the People’s Hero award, the nation’s second-highest military honor. She was the youngest person ever to receive the award.
The courage and bravery of this amazing 17-year-old girl continues to inspire those who stand up to the forces of tyranny and fascism around the world. Her heroism is still remembered and admired throughout the Balkans and eastern Europe to this very day.
In 1692, Jamaica’s Port Royal was the richest, busiest, and most nefarious port in the new Americas. It was frequented by smugglers, pirates, prostitutes and all other unsavory types who roamed the Caribbean Sea. Feared pirates like Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, and Captain Morgan attacked Spanish ships and returned with their booty. Port Royal was so notorious it was considered the “Sodom of the Seas, The Wickedest City on Earth,” an out-of-control haven of booze, gold, and sex. Think of an R rated Pirates of the Caribbean movie and you get the idea. All that rapidly changed the morning of June 7, 1692 when Port Royal was hit by a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Most of the port city literally sank into the sea like the legendary Atlantis.
Port Royal sat entirely on a triangular sand spit of about 50 acres, sticking out into the deep harbor of Kingston, Jamaica. It was one of the busiest ports in the Americas, with over 200 ships visiting a year. Port Royal was also densely populated, filled with close to 6,500 souls. Founded originally as a Spanish colony over a 150 years earlier, Jamaica was taken over during an English invasion in 1655. In Port Royal, then-governor Edward D’Oyley was forced to a recruit a coalition of pirates and privateers to protect his port against the Spaniards. The English turned Port Royal into a military naval base. Its strategic location in the middle of the Caribbean made it ideal for trade, smuggling, and ill-gotten loot.
Under English control, Port Royal went through a remarkable growth in wealth and reputation.
In 1692, it was the largest and richest English town in the Americas. Visitors were impressed with the numerous brick buildings, in contrast to the wooden houses of other colonial towns. Port Royal was laid out with wide, unpaved lanes, named after familiar London streets, each lined with buildings up to four stories tall. Some were constructed right out onto the water, on top of the coral reef. Rents ran as high as London and it rivaled Boston in size and power.
The riches brought in from trading slaves and sugar, saw Port Royal turn into an unhinged haven of debauchery. A quarter of its buildings were eithers taverns, gaming dens, or brothels. Pirates routinely attacked and plundered poorly-defended Spanish ships and ports of the Caribbean, while spending their riches on a hedonistic lifestyle in Port Royal. The pirate crews’ voracious taste for wickedness became legendary along the coast. The buccaneers had a free hand to do whatever they pleased, as they were technically the ‘defenders’ of Jamaica.
Amongst them lived and worked various professions – bricklayers, carpenters, shoemakers, smiths, tanners, tailors, armorers and their families. They lived and worked in nearly 2,000 multi-story, often brick buildings, all built, not on bed rock, but rather in the loosely packed sand of the spit.
The earthquake struck without warning on Saturday morning, June 7, 1692 at 11:15 AM.
Survivors said it continued for almost 15 minutes, during which time it destroyed nearly every structure on the peninsula. Rev. Emmanuel Heath, the Anglican rector in Port Royal, was new to Jamaica. He was yet to embrace the humid climate, the unwashed populace, or the sordid town itself. That particular day, after finishing his morning prayer service at St. Paul’s Church, he walked to a nearby tavern to meet with a friend, John White, the island’s Council President. Soon goblets of wine were brought to them and White lit a satisfying pipe of tobacco. Suddenly, the wooden floor beneath their feet began to rumble and shake. A shocked Rev. Heath turned to his friend and asked, “What is this?” There was not time for a response as a multitude of screams erupted.
Larger brick houses began crumbling immediately. Smaller ones began sliding off into the waters of the harbor. The earthquake had caused a liquefaction of the spit’s sand, sending it undulating into waves. Large fissures opened and closed, crushing helpless people. Not only were its buildings destroyed with people inside, when the unthinkable happened. A major portion of the liquifying sand then sank beneath the surface of the harbor.
Two thirds of Port Royal sank beneath the sea, drowning thousands more. The city’s graveyard split open! Survivors had to contend with a frightening scene of coffins, bodies, and bones floating around with those just killed. And if all that was not bad enough, the sinking caused an underwater landside which produced a deadly 40 foot tidal wave, which swept into Port Royal and nearby Kingston.
Many of those not killed instantly inside a fallen structure, or swept into the sea, were killed by the massive tsunami. It swept more than twenty vessels off their moorings and sunk them in the harbor. The HMS Swan was carried from the harbor and deposited on top of a building on the mainland.
Over Two Thousand were killed instantly by the Triple Threat.
Another two thousand would die in the days to come from injuries, disease or scavengers. Many stuck alive beneath falling buildings were later devoured by hungry dogs and vultures. As dazed survivors searched the water and rubble for loved ones, thieves were quick to take advantage of the situation, robbing the dead of their valuables and looting the crumbled warehouses.
After the earthquake, only twenty of those fifty acres of Port Royal were still above water. Thousands of the dead bobbed about the harbor for days, causing an intolerable stench. Others disbursed by the tsunami lay unburied on the rocks and sands where they were washed up. In the aftermath, virtually every building in the city was uninhabitable, including two English forts. Meanwhile, throughout Jamaica, deep mile-long gaps were opened, often 20 feet wide. Mountains were levelled, and the courses of rivers had changed.
Rev. Heath survived and describes dashing through narrow streets, “the houses and walls fell on each side of me.” He stumbling his way back to his home, that he might “meet Death in as good a stance as I could.” Heath and White both somehow survived. Many, including Rev. Heath, felt the quake and tidal wave to be a sign of divine retribution for Port Royal’s being the ‘wickedest city in the world.’ He hoped that this terrible judgment would stand as a warning, and that God would make people of ill repute reform their lives.
A depiction of Port Royal, Jamaica after the earthquake
Many survived the disaster by holding on to a tree branch or floating wood. They described the sandy streets rising and falling like waves of the sea. They saw people disappear into the sand, then watched as the sand itself dropped away into the harbor. Geologists now believe it to have been of a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that struck Jamaica, with Port Royal at the epicenter.
Poor Port Royal would never recover.
Aftershocks discouraged survivors from completely rebuilding. Instead, the nearby port of Kingston was expanded and later became the capital. While many colonists relocated to Kingston, some fishermen and merchants remained in Port Royal. A devastating fire swept through the rebuilt town in 1703. Two hurricanes ravaged the area in 1722, and again in 1744, cementing the town’s future. Two earthquakes hit again, one in 1770 and another with a tsunami in 1907, destroying the old fort. Another fire, in 1815, did extensive damage. By the turn of the century, there were less than 100 homes in Port Royal.
For a hundred years, sailors feared the Sunken City, still visible below the blue-grey waves. They noted the unnerving sensation of floating over the tombs of dead. Today, the remains lie under about 40 feet of water, attracting sightseers and scuba divers. Port Royal provides an underwater museum and a unique site of archeological research. The submerged ruins are a time capsule of everyday life in a 17th century colonial port. In 1969, explorer Edwin Link discovered a brass pocket-watch, dated 1686, with the time stopped at exactly 11:43 am.
Visitors to Port Royal today will find a small, isolated fishing village at the tip of a sand spit that extends into Kingston Harbor for about 18 m/29 km. With a few sleepy residential streets and a handful of bars, the town is a far cry from its decadent past. Visitors would never guess that it was once the Sodom of the Seas, or the Pompeii of the Caribbean. In 1981, archaeology expeditions began on the underwater site, yielding a wealth of artifacts. Aside from the relics recovered, the site remains largely unchanged.
History often repeats itself. So, for better or worse, in January of 2020, the first of many massive cruises ships docked at Port Royal. An innovative new floating pier extends out into the harbor, welcoming 4,000 or more smiling passengers onto the small spit, eager to spend their well-earned booty and have some hedonistic fun in the former Wickedest Place on Earth.
Click BOOKS for more by historical writer Paul Andrews.
Earth’s thin protective atmosphere as seen from the International Space Station, 2020
It’s taken nearly a century of research to convince the majority of the earth’s population that humans are polluting the atmosphere and changing the climate of the planet. Decades of data now shows that not only is climate change real, but that our political disregard has now left us near the point of no return, with dire consequences ahead of us. As the earth heats up, climate change has now become the Climate Crisis.But how did we get to this point so fast?
By the 1800’s, coal had replacing charcoal and wood as the common fuel across Europe. Mining made it readily available and it took far less coal than wood to produce the same amount of heat. The invention of an efficient steam engine by James Watt, paved the way for the massive Industrial Revolution of the mid-century. It also began coal’s use across the globe in locomotives, steam ships, and mills.
As early as the 1820s, French physicist Joseph Fourier stated that some of the sun’s energy reaching the earth is held by the atmosphere, keeping our planet warm. He proposed that Earth’s thin atmosphere acts the same way a greenhouse does. Irish scientist John Tyndall explored which gases in the atmosphere played a role in that “Greenhouse Effect.” His tests in the 1860’s showed that coal gas, containing carbon dioxide and methane, was especially effective at absorbing heat energy.
By 1895, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius wondered if increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere from both natural AND manmade means might warm the Earth further. He investigated what might happen if atmospheric CO2 levels doubled. The possibility seemed remote at the time, but his results suggested that global temperatures would increase by a surprising 5C or 9F if left unchecked.
Several events outside the scientific world would change the planet forever.
In 1859, Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, PA, jumpstarting the modern petroleum industry, ultimately led by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. In 1886, German Karl Benz unveiled his curious-looking horseless carriage, the Motor-Wagon, the first true automobile. It had a new-fangled internal combustion engine, running on a new fuel derived from oil called gasoline.
A 2nd Industrial Revolution exploded when Westinghouse’s AC electricity (created by burning coal or oil in power plants), expanded industries even further. The 1920’s saw the opening of vast oil fields in Texas. Then in far off places like the deserts of Arabia and Persia, where the British had discovered oil. Henry Ford produced the inexpensive and wildly successful Model T automobile to the general public. Suddenly the average person could afford a car.
By the 1930’s, British engineer Guy Callendar noticed that carbon emissions from all those tall, factory smoke stacks and car exhausts might be having a warming effect on the planet. He noted that the North Atlantic region had already warmed significantly following the Industrial Revolution. He argued for the next 30 years that the greenhouse-effect was warming the planet.
Our vast oceans naturally absorb some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But in 1957, oceanographers Roger Revelle and Hans Suess showed that even our vast oceans will not be able to absorb ALL the extra CO2 that humans were belching into the atmosphere by burning coal and oil. In addition, the oceans too were warming and threatening aquatic life and the fishing industry.
Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory conducted probably the most famous climate research project. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography started it in 1958 when Geochemist Charles Keeling came up with a way to record CO2 levels. His data become known as the “Keeling Curve.” The upward, or hockey stick-shaped, curve showed an exponential rise in CO2 levels in our atmosphere. Later computer modeling predicted the possible outcomes of such a rise, showing that doubling CO2 could produce a 2 C or 3.6 F warming of the earth within 100 years.
But what exactly did climate change mean practically for the Earth?
By 1968, polar studies suggested the future collapse of vast Antarctic ice sheets, which would cause sea levels to raise catastrophically over a century. Some South Pacific island nations would quite literally disappear. That same year, Apollo astronauts orbited the Moon for the first time. Humans could now see the Earth as a fragile blue marble, with a wafer-thin atmosphere protecting it, an atmosphere we were constantly dumping pollutants into.
In April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day took place in the U.S. co-founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson and Harvard graduate student Denis Hayes. The new Environmental Movement had begun to attain political influence, spreading concern about global pollution. U.S. President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act by year end.
In 1974, the earth’s population reached the 4 billion milestone, doubling in the roughly 50 years since the 1920’s. It would double again in 40 more years to 8 billion in 2014. Droughts in Africa, Ukraine, and India during the 1970s caused famine and world-wide food crises. It fanned fears about climate change and water shortages. The deforestation of CO2-absorbing equatorial Amazon rainforest in Brazil, the so-called Lungs of the Planet, were recognized as a major factor in climate change. In 1975, U.S. scientist Wallace Broecker first coined the term “Global Warming” in the title of a scientific paper, and it was suddenly everywhere.
IN THE 1980’s, the U.S. election of Ronald Reagan, however, brought a backlash against environmental regulations. Political conservatism, along with the petroleum industry, became linked to loud skepticism and ridicule of “global warming.” The meltdown of the ChernobylNuclear Reactor in Ukraine put a pause on more nuclear plants. Japan’s Fukushima terrible tsunami disaster in 2011 more or else put the nail in nuclear power’s coffin. 1988 was a critical turning point when that year’s Summer became the hottest on record (one beaten MANY times since, most recently in 2016).
That year also saw more widespread droughts, wildfires and hurricanes globally.
Drought stricken crops in the Ukrainecaused by climate change, 1988.
Scientists sounded the alarm again about climate change and we finally saw the media, public, industry and some governments pay closer attention. A year later, in 1989, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a scientific, economic and political view of climate impacts. Conservative UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in a speech to the UN, called for a global treaty on climate change.
Researchers began accepting the ramifications of a warming Earth. There would be rising ocean levels, polar ice melting, severe heat waves, droughts, famines, and more powerful typhoons/hurricanes fueled by hotter oceans. Studies predicted that as the poles melted, sea levels could rise between 11 and 38 inches (28 to 98 cm) by 2100. That would be enough to swamp many of the Earth’s low-lying coastal cities like Miami, Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Manilla.
The UN’s IPCC produced an Assessment Report concluding that temperatures have indeed risen over the last century. Humans are indeed adding to the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases and influencing climate. Reports of the breaking up of Antarctic ice shelves and Greenland glaciers began affecting public opinion. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, was the first global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, and was signed by India, China, EU Leaders and U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Kyoto called for reducing the emission of 6 greenhouse gases in 41 countries by 2012. The next year, a freak Super El Nino produced the warmest year on record … once again. The controversial “hockey stick” graph appeared again, indicating that modern-day temperature rise is striking, compared with the last, relatively flat 1,000 years.
In 2001 however, U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol (joining Sudan and Afghanistan). He said it was “fatally flawed” and that it would hurt the U.S. economy. 2003 brought a deadly Summer Heat Wave across Europe, accelerating the split between European and U.S. public opinion. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore released a controversial documentary in 2006, An Inconvenient Truth,on the dangers of climate change. The film won an Oscar and Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Politicization of climate change exploded, with some industry and government skeptics arguing that IPCC predictions and films like Gore’s were nothing but overblown, liberal science fiction.
The next milestone was the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
In the Paris Agreement, 197 countries pledged to set targets for their greenhouse gas cuts and to report their progress. Its goal was to prevent a global temperature rise of 2 C (3.6 F), a critical limit. It was signed by U.S. President Barack Obama. The U.S. had gotten a taste of that when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans a decade earlier, spurring debate over the impact of global warming on storm intensity.
Then President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement (joining Iran and Libya) in 2016. He cited “onerous restrictions” that punished the United States. That same year, NASA and NOAA found Earth’s 2016 surface temps to be the warmest in modern record. Sounding familiar now? By 2018, the UN IPCC concluded “rapid, far-reaching” actions were needed NOW to cap global warming in order to avert dire, irreversible consequences for the planet by 2050. In 2020, President Biden placed the U.S. back in the Paris Agreement, then in 2025, President Trump withdrew it again, calling climate change a hoax.
Meanwhile, the younger generation was watching the adults’ indecision and inaction impacting their future planet. In 2018, a Swedish teenage girl named Greta Thunberg began protesting in front of her country’s Parliament. Her protests to raise awareness for climate change went viral and over 17,000 students in 24 countries participated in her climate strikes. In 2019, Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The UN Climate Action Summit has since set a deadline for achieving net zero emissions in 2050.
The 2020‘s brought the Earth multiple, heavy impacts of climate change.
U.S. Hoover Dam and Lake Mead in 2024 at its lowest levels since 1930
We saw a record number of wildfires in the western U.S., burning 10 million acres. A record number of named hurricanes in the Atlantic , with a dozen reaching U.S. landfall. Record setting droughts experienced in East Africa, Australia and the southwestern U.S. Record setting monsoon season flooding seen in Bangladesh and eastern India. Record setting typhoons, cyclones and flooding hitting the Philippines and South East Asia. Record deaths of large coral reefs and species loss throughout the world. Record setting glacier retreats in mountain ranges including the Alps, Greenland, and Alaska. Record setting melting of the Antarctic polar icecap into the oceans.
Over the last decade, new renewable energy systems have developed exponentially. Cost efficient solar, wind, and geothermal tech are surging in the marketplace. Renewable energy is now profitable and a new source of employment. Investment in coal has stalled, and in some countries stopped completely. More automobile manufacturers, like Elon Musk’s Tesla, are making profitable electric vehicles.
Nevertheless, we are still a fossil fuel-based global economy and any transition away from that faces a massive political struggle. The entrenched and very powerful petroleum industry fights it every step of the way, lobbying and funding politicians. Some political leaders continue to call climate change a hoax and have convinced millions it’s some type of scientist-lead conspiracy.
Generation Z is now young, 20-something adults, raising their voices and votes against the causes of climate change and those politicians choosing to ignore it. Gen Z’ers knows THEY will inherit the resulting planet the Baby Boomers have polluted. Our human adoption of carbon-based energy was turned on by the Industrial Revolution, and can be turned off in the future given pro-active action.
Renewable energy is not a cure-all. We won’t magically stop using petroleum fuels and return to a clean atmosphere, cooler oceans, and normal temperatures. The effects of greenhouse gases will take decades to work themselves out, IF we reduce their output very soon. To not do so is frankly unthinkable, for those living, our children and grandchildren, and those yet to be born.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
The British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was struck by a German U-boat torpedo in May of 1915. It sunk within sight of the Irish coast in just 18 Minutes! Compare that to the rather ‘luxurious’ sinking of the Titanic three years earlier in 1912 that lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. We have all seen the popular Titanic movie, so just imagine our two protagonists, Rose and Jack, having just 18 minutes to escape the massive sinking ship! Welcome aboard the Lusitania.
Bela Kiss, vampire serial killer – Hungarian military photo, 1914
Romania’s Transylvania may be the birthplace of the fictional vampire, Count Dracula, but Hungary holds the distinction of harboring Bela Kiss. He was a real-life serial killer who murdered and drained the blood from at least 24 young women just before World War I. That puts London’s Jack the Ripper, at only seven victims, to shame. But like the Ripper, he was never apprehended, even though his identity was known.
Little is known about his childhood, but by 1901, Kiss was 23 years old. He was living in Cinkota, a town just outside of Budapest, where he rented a house at 9 Kossuth Street. There he ran a prosperous business as a tinsmith. He was well-liked by his neighbors, quite charming, intelligent, and well read, especially in astrology and the occult. Bela was also tall and handsome, with blond hair and striking blue eyes. Townspeople regarded him as a gregarious fellow and eligible bachelor. He would throw well-attended, lavish dinner parties at his house.
Eleven years later, in 1912, Kiss married a local teenage girl, 15 years younger, named Marie.
After only a year of marriage, young Marie began a tryst with a Cinkota artist named Paul Bikari. Soon after Bela discovered the affair, both she and Bikari mysteriously disappeared. Kiss claimed to his neighbors that the adulterous couple ran away together and immigrated to America. But in reality, he had strangled them both to death, becoming his first two known victims. Now alone again, he hired an elderly housekeeper by the name of Mrs. Jakubec.
It was also around this time that Kiss began plotting more horrific murders. He placed personal ads, under the alias of Hofmann, in Budapest newspapers, claiming to be a lonely widower looking for marriage. Kiss then used his considerable charms and good looks, to court select women looking for a husband. He targeted those who were well-off and who had few, if any, nearby relatives. Bela was regularly seen entertaining various higher-class ladies, most of whom resided in Budapest. He managed to convince some of them to give him their money, and even sign over their assets to him.
Thus began a long list of lonely women his neighbors saw him with in town. Rarely the same one from one month to the next. Kiss continued corresponding with wealthy women. Then, after defrauding them of their money, he would lure them to his house. There, like his wife and her lover, he’d strangle them to death with his bare hands or a length of rope. Although Mrs. Jakubec lived in the house, she never saw any of these women for very long.
Soon a neighbor noticed that Kiss was amassing a large collection of metal drums in his back yard.
This nosy neighbor thought he was secretly hiding alcohol and reported it to the police. When the constable arrived to investigate, Kiss simply smiled and laughed. He explained he was simply stockpiling gasoline in anticipation of the upcoming war (World War I) and the rationing that would undoubtedly occur. The policeman accepted this logical explanation and no one bothered to actually look inside the barrels.
In 1914, a teenage Serbian shot the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo and set off World War I – between Austro-Hungary and Germany against Russia, France and Britain. Like most younger men, Kiss was conscripted to fight for the Austro-Hungarian army in The Great War. He was assigned to the 40th Honved Infantry Brigade. Before leaving, he entrusted his rented house on 9 Kossuth Street to his loyal housekeeper, Mrs. Jakubec.
Two years transpire and rumors began to circulate in Cinkota that Bela had been either killed at the eastern front, or captured by the Russians. His brigade had seen heavy fighting in the Carpathian Mountains. Casualties were high at the eastern front and his landlord took these rumors as perfectly believable. He decided to clear out Kiss’s belongings from his rented house and put in a new tenant.
Upon inspecting the back yard, he noticed seven large drums that were soldered shut.
The landlord decided to check inside one of the large drums and cracked it open. He was immediately accosted by the smell of death and decomposition. Horrified, the landlord quickly ran to the house and called the local constable. The police chief remembered the “gasoline cache” at Kiss’ home and went to acquire it for the Hungarian war effort.
The police arrived in July of 1916 and, over the loud protests of Mrs. Jakubec, began to completely open the metal drum. The officers too were overwhelmed by the horrid stench that emanated from it. Rather than finding gasoline, they discovered the barrel contained the submerged, nude body of a woman with brown hair and a rope about her neck!
Submerged in a brine of methanol (wood alcohol) the corpse was only slightly decomposed and relatively well-preserved. Opening the six other drums revealed the same grisly contents: naked corpses of young strangled women submerged in methanol. Like many serial killers, Bela Kiss sought to keep, and even preserve, the bodies of his victims like trophies.
The seven drums were sadly only the beginning.
The constable quickly informed the central police in Budapest, who sent Dr. Karoly Nagy, detective chief of the Budapest Police, out to investigate. Upon seeing the multiple corpses, Nagy immediately notified the Hungarian Army to arrest Bela Kiss at once, if he was still alive. The discovery sparked a frantic search for Kiss throughout eastern Europe. But in the summer of 1916, the Hungarian Army was in the middle of a chaotic World War. And to compound matters, “Bela Kiss” was, believe it or not, a common name among Hungarian men of the time.
The metal drums at Bela Kiss house at 8 Kossuth Street, Cinkota, Hungary, 1916
Nagy and his men conducted a detailed search of the property at Kossuth Street. They soon discovered an entire cache of drums buried around the property. Each one bore another young female corpse pickled in methanol, until 24 in all were accounted for. Two were Marie Kiss and Paul Bikari. All the victims had been strangled like poor Marie. Some reportedly had puncture marks on their neck. Autopsies revealed that Kiss had first drained them of their blood before burial. As the blood was never found, Budapest buzzed with the rumor he had drank it all. That and his supposed ability to mesmerize women led to the nickname of The Vampire of Cinkota.
As Mrs. Jakubec had protested the opening of the barrels, she was immediately arrested as an assumed accomplice in the grisly murders. A distressed Mrs. Jakubec vehemently denied any knowledge of the bodies or of knowing the names of the dead women. She was in fact adamant in her defense of her employer, the charismatic Bela Kiss. They later learned that the serial killer had left her a small amount of money in his will. She was later cleared of all suspicions.
Under questioning, the housekeeper stated that Kiss had told her to NEVER enter a certain room in the house, nor let anyone else enter it. Then Nagy arrived at the locked door, Mrs. Jakubec explained she was not in possession of the key. Police broke down the door, and the chief detective entered the room. Inside, he found Bela Kiss’s murder den, a room stuffed with evidence of his crimes.
Bookshelves were filled with volumes of books on topics like poisoning and strangulation. Inside a desk were letters and documents revealing that Kiss had spent more than a decade corresponding with dozens of women. He advertised in Budapest newspapers under the name Hofmann, claiming to be a lonely man in search of a wife—preferably one with a small fortune.
When such a woman responded, he’d visit her in the city, lavish her with gifts, and generally romance her – all the while learning if she had close relatives nearby. Those who were alone and wealthy he convinced some to send him large sums of money or their entire savings, in order to start a new life together.
It was inside the desk Nagy also found an album with photos of about 70 women.
The documents seemed to indicate Kiss had been a serial killer and murdering women all the way back to 1903 (eight years before he married Marie). The serial killed reportedly received 174 marriage proposals through his advertising, and accepted marriage from no less than 74 women. At least 22 came to Cinkota and met their end pickled in a metal drum at 8 Kossuth Street.
Each of the 74 women had their own packet of correspondence in Kiss’s desk. Nagy reached out to local Budapest precinct police to trace the women. This allowed Nagy to identify several of the bodies as woman reported as missing. In some cases, the women had sued Kiss for defrauding them out of money on the promise of marriage. Their cases were thrown out when they mysteriously failed to show up in court.
Months passed searching for Kiss, when word came to Nagy in October that a soldier named Bela Kiss was hospitalized in Serbia, suffering from typhoid fever. Nagy took off right away and boarded a train for Belgrade. Military authorities at the hospital believed they had the right man and detained him. Poor Nagy would never find out for certain. The slippery Kiss found a way to escape before Nagy could arrive. He threw off the hospital guards by placing, of all things, a dead soldier in his bed as a decoy; perhaps in the hope he’d be pronounced dead.
That encounter would be the closest anyone would come to ever catching Kiss.
Over the decades that followed, several people would claim to spot the serial killer—especially as news of his notorious crime spread across Europe. One witness claimed they saw him right in Budapest in 1919. Others put him in nearby Romania and Turkey. Another man claimed Kiss was with him in the French Foreign Legion in 1920, under the name “Hofmann” again. Kiss supposedly bragged drunkenly one night about his skill at strangulation. When police came to investigate, Hofmann he had already fled and evaded capture again.
In 1932, a New York City detective named Henry Oswald, with a famous memory for faces, was absolutely positive he’d spotted Bela Kiss exiting a subway station in Times Square, but lost him in the crowd. The last reported investigation into a sighting was four years later in 1936. Rumors circulated that Kiss, by now in his late 60’s, was working as a janitor at a New York City apartment building on Sixth Avenue. When police stopped by to check it out, however, they found the janitor had vanished.
And that was the last anyone saw of Bela Kiss. We may never know how or when he met his end, or whether he limited his killing spree just to the brined bodies found at his rented home outside Budapest. What is for certain is that this prolific serial killer somehow, whether through cunning or sheer luck, evaded his entire life the justice he so richly deserved. The final fate of the infamous Vampire of Cinkota serial killer remains a mystery. Where did he go to next? Did he kill again? If so, how many … and who?
Nazi U-boat submarine off the American east coast during World War II
Everyone knows about the Japanese Bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, which brought America into World War II – and the Allies D-Day Invasion at Normandy in 1944, which eventually brought about its end. But in between, few know about Operation Pastorius, when Nazis saboteurs actually landed on the east coast of the United States to carry out industrial sabotage and acts of terror.
Adolf Hitler desperately wanted acts of destruction to occur on American soil. The Abwehr, Germany’s intelligence agency, gave control of an American terrorist operation to Army Lieutenant William Kappe, a long-time Nazi supporter, who had lived in the U.S. for 12 years. They code named it “Operation Pastorius” after Francis Pastorius, who, centuries earlier, had led the first German settlement outside of Philadelphia.
The goal of Operation Pastorius was to cripple the production of U.S. military equipment and its supply chain. Over a two year period, the team would travel to major American cities undercover. Their aim would be to destroy U.S. targets carefully chosen by the Nazis not just to impede wartime production, but to also instill chaos and fear in the American people.
Kappe selected 8 men who’d spent extensive time in the U.S. prior to World War II.
German Intelligence promised them generous salaries, be exempt from military service, and receive choice positions after Germany won the war. Training commencing in April 1942 at the Abwehr’s training camp at an estate in Brandenburg outside of Berlin. With only eighteen days of intensive sabotage training, it covering everything from hand to hand combat to demolition tactics. The eight men were then divided into two teams under the leadership of George Dasch (Team 1) and Edward Kerling (Team 2). They were given orders that if any of the saboteur’s resolve, or loyalty to the Nazi regime weakened, they were to ‘kill him without regret.’
Dasch, the oldest at 39, would lead Ernst Burger, Heinrich Heinck, and Richard Quirin. They would attack several targets: the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City, the hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls, a cryolite plant in Philadelphia, canal locks on the Ohio River, and an Aluminum Company of America factory in Illinois. Kerling’s Team 2 of Hermann Neubauer, Herbert Haupt, and Werner Thiel would also strike several targets: the water system in New York City, a railroad station in Newark, Horseshoe Bend railroad near Altoona, PA, and canal locks at St. Louis and Cincinnati. After landing separately, the teams planned to rendezvous at Cincinnati, Ohio on July 4, 1942.
The two teams left Lorient, France aboard 2 U-boats bound for the United States. Dasch’s Team 1 sailed for Amagansett, Long Island aboard U-202. Kerling’s Team 2 left for Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida aboard U-584. To travel seamlessly within the U.S., they took along counterfeit birth certificates, drivers licenses, and Social Security cards. Their equipment included large quantities of explosives, primers, and detonation devices. German Intelligence also gave the team $175,000 in American currency that would support the team’s efforts in the U.S. for the remainder of the war.
Arriving first, Dasch’s Team 1 landed in the dark of night on June 13th, 1942.
The Operation Pastorius team rowed their raft ashore on a deserted beach near Amagansett, NY. The men purposely wore German Kriegsmarine (Marine Navy) uniforms, to avoid being shot by any patrol as spies. If the men were captured, they would be treated as Prisoners of War instead. Reaching the beach, Dasch’s men drug their raft ashore and began burying their explosives and other supplies in the sand. Dasch then watched U-202 depart in the night fog and submerge.
Patrolling the beach that night was a young Coast Guard Seaman named John Cullen. Cullen was shocked to stumble upon four men in military uniforms unloading a raft on the sandy dunes. Cullen, 21, was unarmed. Nevertheless, he rushed toward the group and called out for them to stop. As Seaman Cullen approached, Dasch waved a friendly hand and walked calmly towards him. He lied in perfect English, telling young Cullen that his men were stranded fisherman from nearby Southampton.
Cullen told them they could spend the night at his nearby Coast Guard Station. But when Dasch refused, Cullen became suspicious. Dasch then attempted to bribe the young man. He grabbed his arm and shoved a wad of cash, $270 dollars!, into Cullen’s hand, saying, “Take this and have a good time. Forget what you’ve seen here.” Knowing he was outnumbered, Cullen faked compliance, took the bribe, and rapidly headed back to his station.
Dasch and his team quickly buried their uniforms, stash of explosives, and detonators to retrieve later when needed. They then walked to the nearby train station. At the Coast Guard Station, Cullen alerted his commanding officer of the suspicious men. The officer initially thought the young man was joking, until he showed him the huge wad of cash. He then led his commander back to the beach, but they were too late, all the men had vanished.
At Amagansett, Team 1 boarded a Long Island Railroad train into New York City.
Dasch and his men easily blended into with the other Manhattan-bound commuters on the 7 am train. When they reached the city, they split into two groups, checking into separate hotels. A search of the beach in the morning revealed multiple footprints leading up from the surf to a patch of freshly turned earth. They dug down and unearthed the buried supplies of explosives, and most shocking, German uniforms! The Coast Guard immediately informed the FBI. When Director J. Edgar Hoover learned of it, he imposed a strict news blackout, then commenced a massive east coast manhunt.
On June 16th, three days later, Kerling’s Team 2 landed off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. As before, U-201 deposited the second quartet of saboteurs in the dead of night. This time, they buried their explosives and uniforms without incident. The four men walked to Highway 1, and that morning caught a Greyhound bus for Jacksonville. There they split up, with two bound for their sabotage operations in Chicago, and the other two in Cincinnati. Operation Pastorius was well on its way.
From the comfort of five-star hotels, the Operation Pastorius teams planned their next moves between fine dining at restaurants and shopping at American department stores. German Intelligence selected the two team’s targets for maximum destruction, suffering and symbolism. Once the plotters confirmed their logistics, they would retrieve their cache of explosives near Amagansett.
At this point, events took a dramatic turn.
George Dasch, called on one of his comrades for a private meeting. Dasch informed Ernst Burger that he secretly despised the Nazis and intended to expose the mission to the FBI and defect to the U.S.! Before doing so, he wanted Burger’s support and backing. He knew that Berger had been persecuted at the hands of the Nazis, spending time in a concentration camp. He told Berger he could either join his planned defection, or Dasch would kill him on the spot. Burger willingly went along with Dasch’s plan.
Dasch did not want to return to Germany. He believed that if he exposed the operation, he would be allowed to stay in America and resume his prior life. He and his Pennsylvanian-born wife had both wished to return and stay in the U.S. Dasch’s plan was to first call the local FBI, then take a train into Washington. Burger would remain in New York to oversee Heinck and Quirin. Dasch then made a phone call to the local FBI office in New York City.
Dasch told the FBI agent who answered that a Nazi submarine had just landed off the Long Island coast and he had important information to relay. He gave them the name Pastorius. “I will be in Washington within the week to deliver it personally to J. Edgar Hoover,” he said, then hung up.
Little did he know, his call had gone through to the “Nut Desk.” The FBI received hundreds of misguided calls during the war, and this seemed to be just one more. But when the same New York office got a call from the Coast Guard about the incident with Seaman Cullen and the stash of explosives and uniforms retrieved on the beach, they took the anonymous call seriously.
Dasch left his team in New York and boarded a train for Washington, D.C. He phoned FBI headquarters when he got there. “I am Pastorius, the man who called your New York office,” he said. “I am in Room 351 at the Mayflower Hotel.” He then asked to speak directly with J. Edgar Hoover himself, but of course was not put through. In his mind, Dasch imagined that the American Government would treat him like a hero for exposing and foiling Operation Pastorius.
The FBI quickly went to the hotel he was staying at and picked him up for interrogation.
Dasch was initially dismissed as a crackpot. At FBI headquarters, they shuffled him around between agents as no one believed his story. The agents finally took him seriously when he opened his suit jacket and dumped $84,000 of the operations money on the desk of the Assistant Director. They immediately detained him, interrogating him for thirteen hours while the branch in New York moved to capture the rest of his team.
Dasch cooperated fully. He provided all their names, aliases and information regarding the whereabouts of Kerling’s team. For the next two days, FBI agents continued to interrogate Dasch in his hotel room with a stenographer taking down every word: from the sabotage training outside Berlin to all the targets identified for both teams, and as well as German spies’ addresses in America. He was able to provide a list which had been written in invisible ink on a handkerchief given to him by the Lieutenant Kappe in the Abwehr. Surely, Dasch thought, he would receive a full presidential pardon for such brave cooperation.
Operation Pastorius Nazi Saboteurs, 1942
Utilizing his information, the FBI was able to track down the rest of his team in New York and all of Kerling’s men in Chicago. It took 14 days, but eventually all eight would-be saboteurs were in custody. With the plot foiled, Dasch who had expected to receive a pardon, instead found himself treated the same as the others. Unbeknownst to Dasch, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took full responsibility for the arrests, as if the FBI had uncovered the nefarious plot all on their own.
Public alarm, however, skyrocketed when the news finally broke.
The New York Times headline on July 4, 1942, was wonderful news to a country in the throes of a frightening world war: “Nazi Saboteurs to Face Stern Army Justice.” The article described a plot thwarted due to a vigilant FBI keeping a close watch against any threats to public safety. The article was chilling regardless. Eight Nazi agents were brought here by German U-boats, successfully infiltrated the U.S.. They were caught on American soil with enough explosives and money to cause two years of panic and terror in the U.S.
The truth of course was far scarier, and far different from the story in the press. The U.S. defense system was caught unaware, saboteurs were captured only due to one who defected, and his confession was nearly bungled by the agency. Meanwhile, Hoover painted the FBI arrests as a great coup. He managed the spin brilliantly, framing the captures as brilliant police work, when in fact Dasch had volunteered the information.
None of the U.S. targets were ever hit. Worried that a civilian court would be too lenient, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered a military tribunal, the first since Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Their court-appointed lawyers attempted to have the case moved to a civilian court, but their efforts were in vain. All eight defendants pled not guilty, saying they had volunteered for the operation only to defect and get back to their German families living in America.
Between July 8 and August 4, the saboteurs stood trial in the Department of Justice Building. Dasch thought he would become an American national hero, but the government branded him a spy and charged him the same as the others. All eight were found guilty on four charges of spying, giving intelligence to the enemy and conspiracy to commit espionage. All eight were sentenced to death.
The Attorney General reminded President Roosevelt that Dasch and Burger had turned themselves in and provided the details that foiled the plot. As a result, the President commuted their sentences. Ernest Burger received a life sentence . A stunned George Dasch still got 30-years. On August 8, the six condemned saboteurs were taken to the District of Columbia Jail and executed by electric chair. News cameras filmed the ambulances carrying the bodies away afterward.
Dasch’s lawyer repeatedly applied for his client’s amnesty.
Hoover argued against it. By 1948, President Harry Truman leaned toward a pardon. After serving six years, Dasch and Berger were released. Dasch accepted deportation as a condition of pardon, and both prisoners were sent to the American zone of West Germany. They were not welcomed at heroes, but rather treated as pariahs.
Dasch settled back with his wife in a small town and started a business, only to have news coverage expose him. They had to flee to taunts of “traitor” and start over elsewhere. He later published a memoir in 1959, laying out his side of the story: Eight Spies Against America. Ernest Burger died in Germany in 1989 and George Dasch followed him in 1992, at age 89.
Operation Pastoriusentered the history books as an embarrassing debacle for the Nazis. After its failure, Adolf Hitler and German Naval Intelligence halted any further grand plans of sabotage on U.S. soil. If Dasch hadn’t given himself up to the FBI, would the two Teams have been successful? Given the weaknesses in U.S. domestic defenses at the time, the odds were certainly in their favor.
The operation’s various military and infrastructure targets in the United States would have crippled production and transportation, killing thousands of people over two years. One can only imagine the fear and havoc it would have caused, not to mention the damage to American morale and its fighting capacity had they actually pulled it all off.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
Many of these revolutions have had a monumental ripple effect, not just on their own country, but on other nations across our entire planet over the centuries to come. For example, the American Revolution inspired the birth of other democratic republics like France and Mexico. The Russian Revolution similarly inspired the creation of other communist nations like Cuba and China.
Call them what you will, Rebellions, Revolutions, Insurrections, or Coups, here are seven of the most impactful in modern history, in the order in which they occurred.
1. The American Revolution (1775-1783)
Painting of General Washington crossing the Delaware River, 1776
The British government in London had aggressively taxed their 13 American colonies without any representation in Parliament. These taxes were met with extreme outrage from many of the colonists. A Revolutionary War eventually began between the original 13 colonies and the British Empire. Skirmishes between colonial militiamen and British Redcoats in New England evolved into a full -blown war. The colonies famously declared their independence from Britain in 1776, forming the new United States. They then appointed General George Washington as Commander of the Revolutionary Army. The war lasted 8 long years until the defeat of the General Cornwallis and the British Redcoats at Yorktown, Virginia in 1783.
2. The French Revolution (1789-1792)
Storming of the Bastille in Paris, 1789
The French commoners began to revolt against the absolute monarchy of King Louis XVI in Versailles. Even though peasants made up over 96% of French society, they had virtually no political power. In addition to this, the Age of Enlightenment and the recent success of the American Revolution had been transforming the way people think all over France. Lead by the bourgeoise class, the peoples’ objective was to create a republic that would embrace Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. On July 14, 1789, an armed Parisian mob stormed and seized the Bastille, a prison fortress and armory. Within days, Louis XVI conceded to the demands of the National Assembly to create a constitutional monarchy. Subsequent years of chaos ensued. The monarchy was abolished and the 1st French Republic declared in 1792. King Louis was ultimately and publicly beheaded, along with his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, in 1793.
3. The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
Governor General Toussaint l’Ouverture
In 1659, the western half of the Spanish island of Hispaniola became a French colony, Saint Domingue. Landowners increased the African slave population of the island into the hundreds of thousands. Haitian slaves endured punishing workdays and lived in squalid conditions, dying from diseases and malnutrition. Inspired by the French Revolution, groups of slaves rose up to fight their oppressors. Over 100,000 slaves and former slaves joined in, killing the plantation owners and wealthy French colonists. Led by former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture, the revolutionaries took control of a third of the island, with l’Ouverture as Governor General. Napoleon’s army captured and imprisoned l’Ouverture, but failed in an attempted to retake the island. In 1804, Saint Domingue declared its independence. The renamed Republic of Haiti became the first ever nation of former slaves.
4. The Russian Revolution (1917-1922)
Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, 1917
The Russian Empire was both impoverished and underdeveloped. When World War I erupted against Germany, it crippled the Russian economy and left thousands dead on the western front. Tsar Nicholas II was an uninspiring and ineffective leader. His wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, was a German and widely unpopular amongst the people. During the February Revolution of 1917, protestors took to the streets of Saint Petersburg, joined by soldiers angry with the Tzar. A new provisional government was formed, and the Tsar abdicated the Romanov throne. The new bourgeoise government continued to support the war. During an October Revolution, later in 1917, armed revolutionaries led by Vladimir Lenin and the Communist Bolshevik Party, stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, seizing power in a coup d’état. Lenin planned a Communist government ruled by a laborer collective. The Tzar and his entire family were executed in a firing squad by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were not widely popular and a five-year civil war erupted. It ended in a victory for Lenin and the beginning of the Soviet Union in 1922.
5. The Chinese Revolutions (1911 & 1949)
Chinese ‘Cultural’ Communist Revolution, 1945
After a century of failed wars, the Qing Dynasty was losing power in Asia. Frustrations sparked rebellion among the commoners. In the fall of 1911, an uprising in Wuchang lead by politician and physician Sun Yat-sen started a wave of revolts across China. The Qing court began promising a constitutional monarchy. Even with this potential for reform, provinces declared their allegiance to the new Revolutionary Alliance. Representatives gathered for a National Assembly and elected Sun Yat-sen President of the new Republic of China. The Emperor Puyi abdicated the throne in 1912, and eventually fled Beijing, bringing an end to centuries of imperial dynastic rule. This rebellion then paved the way 30+ years later for a second revolution. After World War II and the end of Japanese occupation, the Communist Cultural Revolution erupted with a Civil War in 1945. It would eventually lead to the expulsion of the Nationalists to Taiwan and the establishment the People’s Republic of China under the rule of Chairman Mao Zedong.
6. The Cuban Revolution (1956-1959)
Fidel Castro in Havana, 1959
After the Spanish American War, Cuba became a republic in 1902. In 1952, the Cuban president was removed from office in a coup d’état by General Fulgencio Batista. Batista canceled all elections and became a military dictator. A young communist lawyer named Fidel Castro then began planning to overthrow Batista. In 1953, Castro organized an attack on military barracks in Santiago, but the attempt failed and he was imprisoned for two years. Castro and is brother Raul gathered another rebel army in 1956, but was once again defeated by Batista’s forces. He started using guerrilla tactics and began combining together all the rebel groups in Cuba. In 1959, Castro finally forced Batista to resign and flee the country. Castro too permanently suspended elections and proclaimed himself President for Life. He jailed or executed anyone who opposed his dictatorship. Castro began his communist government and became a close ally with communist Soviet Union.
7. The Iranian Revolution (1978-1979)
Iranian Revolution in Tehran, 1979
Iran was ruled for decades by Shah Reza Pahlavi. Anti-Shah protests began in the late 1970’s when anger rose among the working and middle classes, who felt the Shah only supported the wealthy elite. Many Islamic leaders were vocally opposed to the modernization or “Westernization” of Iran by the Shah. One exiled cleric in particular, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, demanded the removal of the Shah, to be replaced by an Islamic State. The flashpoint occurred when security forces of the Shah fired on a group of angry protesters. Hundreds died and thousands were wounded. Within days, thousands more Iranians rioted in the streets of the capital, Tehran. The Iranian Revolution was complete in 1979 when the Shah and his family fled the country into exile. A month later, the cleric Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, took control, and declared Iran an Islamic republic.
So, looking at these 7 modern revolutions, we can see many similarities emerging. Most began with a large disgruntled populace, ignored and often underestimated by the ruling aristocracy. Many had as their instigator a bold, charismatic leader who would later rule. Most resulted in violence, often lasting for years, sometimes escalating to civil war. And let us not forget it often resulted in the execution or expulsion of an antiquated ruling monarch.
Some of the above were inspirational rebellions that lead, by example, to other revolutions elsewhere in the world. Some became peaceful, democratic republics in the end, others ruthless military dictatorships. What does all of this hold for the future of the planet? Perhaps we have gained a few hard-earned lessons in them, if we choose to learn from them.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews click BOOKS.
Throughout our long history, there have been various books that have been banned by the masses, or those in power, and even burned by angry mobs over the centuries. Some were banned for religious reasons, some for political motivations, and some for cultural agendas. As decades have passed and generations changed, these bans have mostly been lifted. But some bans remain or are returning, even in our “modern” times of the 21st century. Here then are 10 of the top banned books, 5 classic and 5 modern, that were forbidden at one time or another … and a few that surprisingly still are.
Classic Banned Books
1. The Bible, by various authors, first published in the 1st Century AD
Holy Bible, one of History’s Banned Books
The Story: The Old Testament books of the Christian Bible detail the Creation of the Earth through Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. The New Testament books detail the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the early history of Christianity via his many apostles.
Why was it banned? Not surprisingly, some atheist, Communist countries and strict Islamic nations have banned the Bible in modern times. But there have been many versions and translations of the Bible since it was first compiled by early Jews and Christians. Not to mention that some books within the early Bible did not make it into later versions. When Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, several of the early gospels were banned by church leaders. The medieval Roman Catholic Church banned any translations of the Bible other than Latin Vulgate, even though it was itself translated from Kione Greek. Not surprising, Martin Luther’s translation into German was banned by the Vatican at the time of the Protestant Reformation. By the time the English “King James Version” was translated in 1611, it was recognized by Protestants and accepted by Catholics.
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, published 1884
The Plot: Huckleberry Finn is a young boy, the best friend of Tom Sawyer, who runs away from an abusive, alcoholic father and goes on a grand adventure downriver. He floats down the Mississippi River on a makeshift raft with a runaway slave named Jim during the pre-Civil War south. Together, they encounter mainly memorable characters before finally returning home.
Why was it banned? Though widely recognized as one of the Great American Novels, it nevertheless provokes ongoing debate over whether it is anti-racial OR reinforces racial stereotypes. In the 1950s, the NAACP complained about its frequent use of the N-word. It is used no less than 242 times by Mark Twain, leading some school administrators to brand it a bad, albeit accurate example of Southern slavery and racism. Some towns banned it immediately after publication as ‘coarse, irreligious and obsolete.’ This only increased the sales for Twain – much to the author’s amusement. It has been frequently banned, challenged, and reinstated in schools and libraries ever since, all the way to present time.
3. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, published 1925
Mein Kampf book cover
The Plot: Hitler’s notorious autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) sold millions of copies under the German Nazi regime of the 1930s. In it, Hitler describes what he saw as the “Jewish peril” and conspiracy across Europe. He then goes on to outline his Fascist ideology, later adopted by the Nazi Party, as well as his plans for a new Germain Third Reich.
Why was it banned? After World War II, the new Germany government banned it out of a responsibility and respect for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Some argue that it should be de-banned – so as to release it of any symbol of power it might hold with modern Neo-Nazis. As you can image, Mein Kampf was banned in numerous European countries that had been invaded by the Nazis, but never in the U.S., though Jewish groups frequently opposed its sale. Amazon briefly banned the sale of it in 2020, only to reinstate it a few months later. Today, it’s available as free download on the internet. Perhaps it is best to allow it sold as an example for subsequent generations of absolute evil unleashed. The Nazi regime and Holocaust did more to discredit the book than any book ban.
4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, published 1939
The Plot: It follows the Joad family, dirt-poor evicted tenant farmers as they travel west from Oklahoma to California in the 1930’s. It details the devastating effects of the American Dust Bowl and the Great Depression on families. It was made into an award-winning Hollywood film in 1940 starring Henry Fonda. Today, this classic novel is on the list of required reading by many high school and college English programs.
Why was it banned? It faced opposition in the U.S. for depicting the “Communist” labor movement and supposedly exaggerating the despicable conditions in California’s migrant labor camps of the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s depiction was in fact so brutally honest, it was banned in several California counties, despite selling thousands of copies world-wide. Historians have confirmed that John Steinbeck’s portrayal was spot-on and true-to-life. Other U.S. schools and libraries up to the 1980’s banned the classic book on the grounds that it is “filth,” full of sexual references, vulgar language, and several characters who take the Lord’s name in vain. It other words, it contained real-life situations the schools wished to “protect” its students from.
5. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, published 1951
Catcher in the Rye book cover
The Plot: Famed for being one of the most banned, censored and challenged books ever. It tells the story of a teenage rebel and anti-hero, a 17-year-old, depressed Holden Caulfield. After being expelled from his boarding school for fighting, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery in New York City. There he encounters a prostitute, and old girlfriend, and his sister Phoebe, before returning home to his parents. It popularized Holden’s frequently used term – ‘phonies.’
Why was it banned? Salinger’s novel has the interesting distinction of being one of the most banned and the most taught books in American English classes. It attracted criticism in the 50’s, 60s and 70s for “excessive vulgar language, sexual scenes, and a lack of concern for moral issues.” Its detractors saw it as causing everything from anarchy to suicides to Communism! Its defenders saw it as the definitive look at the joys, frustrations and tedium of typical teenage life. Numerous school libraries across the country banned it from their shelves and curriculum. What school boards failed to realize, is that banning a book from teenagers, due to its forbidden depiction of rebellion, just makes curious teens want to read it even more.
Modern Banned Books
8. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, published 1985
The Plot: In a dystopian, future republic called Gilead, Offred, is one of the Handmaids who lives a life of sexual servitude, producing children for the Commanders, the ruling class of men. Gilead is a patriarchal, totalitarian state that totally subjugates women. Offred has a husband and daughter, but is forced to be a Handmaid nonetheless. The story revolves around her 3rd assignment to a new Commander Waterford.
Why was it banned? School boards banned the book after complaints from parents that it contained vulgar language, was sexually explicit, and offensive to fundamental Christians. Other complaints from women groups stated that it condoned brutality towards, and mistreatment of, women. The true horror of the book isn’t so much the acts the characters commit, but how easily the masses were lulled into accepting such an unthinkable, misogynistic regime as perfectly acceptable. The concept of toxic masculinity and patriarchal societies are back in the forefront of today’s news. The book was adapted into a 1990 movie and the current popular miniseries streaming on Hulu. starring actress Elizabeth Moss.
9. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, published 1988
Satanic Verses book cover
The Plot:The Satanic Verses is inspired in part by the life of the Prophet Muhammad. It tells the story of two men, Indian expatriates, living in England. They are miraculously saved in a plane crash and take on mystical qualities as they struggle to piece their lives back together. It is infused with Islamic culture and the men’s inabilities to cope with Western influences. Dream sequences relay a fictional life of the Prophet Muhammad.
Why was it banned?Few authors have faced more outright hatred than Indian author Salman Rushdie. The novel inspired utter loathing from the Muslim community for its perceived blasphemous treatment of the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran. The book sparked riots across the world and is banned in many Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Qatar, Indonesia, South Africa, and India. The book was burned in the streets around the Islamic world. This forced Rushdie to limit his public appearances and to move homes frequently, all the time employing bodyguards. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni issued a fatwa or religious death sentence on the author for blasphemy against Islam. As a result, Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding for an entire decade.
10. The Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling, first published 1997
The Plot: Harry Potter is a British orphan who discovers on his 11th birthday that he is in fact a wizard; and is sent away to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland. Over 7 novels, each relaying one of Harry’s years at Hogwarts, he fights the evil Lord Voldemort under the tutelage of Headmaster Dumbledore. The novels single handedly revitalized the reading of paper books amongst children around the world.
Why was it banned?This hugely popular series has faced opposition from parents and school boards on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. They claimed the stories were too violent for kids (some characters died), and portrayed Harry as a rule-breaker who willfully disobeys authority figures. Parents objected to the promotion of pagan witchcraft and evil without the counterbalance of any religion, Christian or otherwise. Why wasn’t there a chapel or pastor in Hogwarts? It has stood the test of time and been accepted as a fictional children’s story of a boy hero in a battle between good and evil. The series has been adapted into 8 successful feature films starring Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter.
11. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, published 2003
The Plot: Robert Langdon is an academic symbologist who is asked to consult on a mysterious murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. After much adventure, he solves a series of complex clues and stumbles onto a forbidden discovery. Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child. Their descendant, a female companion of his, lives today and is in fact the true Holy Grail.
Why was it banned?Dan Brown’s best-seller was extremely popular and outsold Harry Potter. It was nevertheless banned over its “insulting,” though entirely fictional, suggestion that Jesus Christ was not celibate, married and had sex with Mary Magdalene, resulting in a child. Book shop owners and librarians across the country were ordered by their local churches to take copies off their shelves as being highly offensive to Christianity. It also portrays the Catholic Church’s highest leaders in a very poor light, and as belittling the role of women over time. The book has sold 80 million copies worldwide was made into a blockbuster 2006 film starring Tom Hanks, with several sequels since.
12. Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James, published 2011
Fifty Shade book cover
The Plot: This notorious best-seller, the first in a very successful trilogy, is about the relationship between naïve literature student Anastasia Steele, who interviews with a wealthy, handsome and enigmatic businessman, Christian Grey. They enter into a relationship where she discovers and accepts his secret passion for sexual domination and bondage. The book is quite graphic in describing their numerous liaisons.
Why was it banned? Cities and towns removed it from library shelves in many U.S. counties, because it contained offensive language and was seen as far too salacious. It graphically portrays sadomasochism as a desirable act in explicitly pornographic scenes between Anastasia and Grey. Many library systems were later forced to reverse their decision, however due to the high volume of requests for the book from predominantly middle-aged female readers. It remains banned in several African and southeast Asian Muslim countries. All three books in the trilogy were made into moderately successful Hollywood films.
So there you have it – 5 Classic and 5 Modern books that have been decried, banned, and sometimes even burned. Yet quite often, they stand the test of time, due to their high quality and/or overall popularity by the masses. Even today, in the modern 21st century, some conservative school boards continue to ban some books, particular LGBTQ books, from their libraries. History has a nasty habit of repeating itself. So if you have not already, I hope you will consider reading at least one of the tomes on this list to expand your horizons into the daring realm of history’s Banned Books.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
