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The Oversteegen Sisters – Teenage Resistance Assassins

The Oversteegen sisters were only teenagers when they joined the Dutch resistance in the Netherlands during World War II. Together with a young friend, Hannie Schaft, they gathered intelligence for the Resistance, provided Jewish safe houses, bombed railways and, most remarkably, lured Nazi officers into the woods, and shot them.

When World War II erupted in 1939, sisters Freddie and Truus Oversteegen, and their friend Hannie Schaft were just 14, 16 and 18 years old. Despite their ages, they formed an effective trio in the Dutch Resistance against the Nazis occupiers. Hannie was the intellectual one, Truus their leader, and Freddie the planner.

The Oversteegen sisters initially lived on a barge with their family in Schoten. They were raised with the mindset of resistance. Her parents had hidden Lithuanian refugees in the hold of their ship before the beginning the war. Once their parents divorced, Freddie and Truus were raised by their mother.

They grew up in Haarlem with their now single, working-class mom. Their mother considered herself a free-thinking socialist and taught her daughters the importance of fighting injustice. When the Netherlands was on the brink of war in 1939, she took a Jewish refugee couple into their home.

In their mother, Freddie and Truus witnessed both her moral compass and willingness to act when it really mattered. It’s no surprise the Oversteegen sisters would go on to join the Resistance. They would also learn that to help, you had to make sacrifices yourself. Fighting injustice and doing the right thing took exceptional bravery and fortitude.

They were to also to learn it was harder and far more brutal than they imagined.

In the spring of 1940, the Nazis invaded Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. It began an occupation that lasted 5 long years. In response, the girls joined their mother in distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets for the Resistance. Under cover of darkness, they glued resistance posters over German posters calling Dutch men to work in Germany, then scurried off on their bikes.

These simple acts weren’t just subversive, they were highly dangerous. If the Nazis caught the sisters, they’d likely be shot. The fact that they were both young girls meant that officials MIGHT not suspect them. This might be the reasons why, in 1941, a Haarlem Resistance commander asked their mother if he could recruit Freddie and Truus.

The Oversteegen sisters were eager to formally join and their mother consented. Only later would they learn what they’d actually have to do. Their initial duties included working in an emergency hospital in Enschede, shepherding Jewish refugees to new hiding places, and helping blow up the Haarlem railway line. When the resistance leader saw the girl’s dedication, he initiated their next level of involvement.

The sisters, who had never even held a gun before, were told they must “learn to shoot — and to shoot Nazis.”

How could young girls manage to commit such an act? Freddie described their motivation years later: “While we were biking, we saw German soldiers picking up people from the streets, including children, pushing them against a wall, and shooting them. This aroused such an enormous anger in me, such disgust, a feeling of ‘those dirty bastards.’ At that moment you are just a human being confronted with something very cruel. If you experience something like that, you find it justified to act against it.”

Young Freddie was the first to assassinate someone, a female Dutch official who was handing over lists of Jewish people to their Nazi occupiers. Freddie approached the woman as she was walking alone in a park, asked the lady for her name — and then with her heart pounding in her chest, shot her.

Freddie was the youngest and shortest, and wore her hair in two braids which made her look even more innocent. They enabled her to get away easily after shots were fired. Their method of attack often included drive-by shootings. Truus would cycle their bike near the target, while Freddie rode on the back. Freddie made sure there were no witnesses and then fired.

They always rode a bike, never walked. Freddie and Truus also became adept and famous for a 2nd assassination technique. They would use their natural good looks lure to German officers to their deaths. Freddie or Truus would flirt with an SS officer or Dutch collaborator in a local tavern, asking them if they would like to go “for a stroll” in the woods. The lustful victim would be led to the woods and shot by the other sister in a surprise attack. For Dutch collaborators, they focused on those who arrested or endangered Jewish refugees or Resistance members.

How did killing – even Nazis – make such young girls feel? In an interview, Freddie talked of the strange compulsion to help the victims get up again. “Yes, I’ve shot a gun at them and I’ve watched them fall. And what is inside us at such a moment? As humans, you still want to help them.”

In 1943, they joined forces with another young woman, Hannie Schaft.

Hannie was a red haired, former law student who dropped out because she refused to sign a pledge of loyalty to Germany. Hannie became their best friend and together, the three young women formed an effective sabotage and assassination cell. Young Freddie was particularly good at following targets or keeping a lookout in broad daylight, since she looked so innocent.

The trio did have to draw the line once. The Resistance asked them to take the children of a senior Nazi officer hostage. The children were then to be exchanged for captured members of the Dutch resistance. But if the negotiations fell through, they would have to kill them to demonstrate their resolve. At that point, the girls refused to carry out the mission. “We are not Nazis,” they said. “The Resistance doesn’t murder children.”

A former commander commented. “They were unusual, these girls. There were women involved in the Dutch resistance, but not in the way these girls were.” Both sisters never revealed how many Nazis or collaborators they assassinated. Their response would be that ‘they were soldiers, and soldiers don’t say.’ There are no records of how many “liquidations,” as they called them, were conducted successfully, but they are credited with many during the war.

Hold no romantic image of their escapades. They were not Hollywood spies. While their feats were remarkable, their pursuit of the right thing was nevertheless ruthless. The Oversteegens struggled to come to terms with their actions. All three of them suffered from depression, insomnia, and severe nightmares.

In 1945, Hannie Schaft was caught at a checkpoint and arrested for treason.

She was executed by the Nazis just 3 weeks before the end of the war. When the executioner only wounded her on the first try, Hannie’s last words were, “I’m a better shot.” The ‘girl with the red hair’ went on to become a legendary icon of female Dutch resistance. The sisters were devastated when the Nazis killed their best friend. Truus and Freddie both survived the war, but carried emotional scars for the rest of their lives.

After the war, the Oversteegen sisters dealt with the trauma of killing people and losing their best friend. Freddie lived a quiet life. She went from espionage to coping with more normal things like getting married and having babies. Truus also married and had four children. She expressed herself in her art through sculpture, shared her story in lectures, and became famous in the Netherlands. Truus wrote a book about their experiences during the war, Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever, published in 1982.

Freddie lived a more secluded life, focusing on raising her family. Freddie’s son, Remi, believes the war never stopped for his mother and aunt, and actually lasted 80 more years for them. He expressed a similar sentiment in an interview “We never had to say ‘Remember when’ to them, because we always knew it remained at the top of their minds.”

Throughout much of their long lives, the Netherlands failed to properly recognize the Oversteegen sister’s achievements, even sidelining them as “communists” due to their mother’s leanings. During the last years of their lives they yearned, not for fame, but simply more acknowledgment of their role. It was only in 2014 that Freddie and Truus were awarded the Mobilisatie-Oorlogskruis, Dutch Mobilization War Cross by Nederlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

**Sisters Freddie and Truus Oversteegen** in 2014

It became the highlight in their lives. Two streets in Haarlem were named after them. So many years after doing their heroic work in secret, they were glad for the public recognition. They wanted their stories to be known—to teach people that, even when such acts are necessary, “you must always remain human.” Truus Menger-Oversteegen died in 2016 at age 92. Freddie Dekker-Oversteegen passed 2 years later in 2018, also at 92.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Podcast: Who Burned the Great Library of Alexandria?

Egypt’s Great Library of Alexandria was once the largest of the ancient world, containing the works of Homer, Plato, Euclid, Socrates, Aristotle and hundreds more. Close to one million books and scrolls from across Greece, Assyria, Egypt, Persia and India filled its vast shelves. It’s believed to have been completely destroyed in a devastating fire about 2000 years ago and its thousands of priceless works burnt to ashes. But exactly How, When and Who is responsible remains a perplexing mystery.

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Operation Gunnerside: The Most Important WWII Mission you Never Heard Of

Norwegian Commandos of Operation Gunnerside — **Norwegian Commandos of World War II Operation Gunnerside**

Operation Gunnerside was arguably the most important covert mission of World War II. It’s goal was daunting – to prevent Adolf Hitler from creating the atomic bomb first. Gunnerside would do so by denying the Nazi’s enough heavy water (deuterium oxide) to build a nuclear weapon.

The Vemork hydroelectric plant, located in a remote valley in Norway, produced both electricity and fertilizer. A precious byproduct was heavy water. When the Nazis invaded Norway, they took control of the Vemork plant. Major Lief Tronstad, a former chemist at Vemork, now with British SOE (Special Operations Execution) was assigned the task of denying the Nazi’s heavy water.

In late 1942, the Allies launched Operation Freshman to destroy the plant with a full assault. Norwegian and British commandos were to parachute into Norway.

The mission was a complete disaster!

One airplane and two gliders crashed near the plant in bad weather. The others were forced to run back. Those who survived were captured, interrogated and ultimately executed by the Gestapo, 41 in all. Plus now, the Nazi’s knew of the British interest in destroying Vemork.

The Allies still had to disable the plant, so they attempted a second mission. This time a small covert raid called Operation Gunnerside, the brainstorm of Major Tronstad. Lt Joachim Ronnenberg lead the new mission with 5 hand-picked Norwegian commandos, none over the age of 31. Training for the raid included memorizing a scale model of the Vemork plant meticulously built by Tronstad.

In February 1943, Operation Gunnerside got off to a bad start. A freak snowstorm forced the team to be air dropped 18 miles from the plant! It took the men a week to trek cross country on snow shoes and skies to meet up with 4 Norwegian commandos who had managed to survive Operation Freshman.

The original 4 men had carried out extensive reconnaissance on Vemork.

Following the failed assault, the Germans had laid land mines along the steep mountainside above the plant. Plus they doubled the guards on a narrow suspension bridge, the main entry to the facility. The weak point in the defenses was the steep, 660-ft deep ravine the bridge spanned, which the Germans judged too treacherous and impassable. But 1 of the Norwegians had discovered a way to descend the ravine, cross the frozen river, ascend the other side and reach the plant unseen at night!

So just before midnight, the saboteurs crossed the icy ravine in darkness and below zero temperatures. During a changing of the guards, they managed to creep into the facility undetected. The 10 men split into two teams; five would destroy the equipment while the other five would act as lookouts. Lt Ronnenberg and another man began laying the charges. Their target was a battery of 18 electrolysis ‘cells’ which held the last stage of heavy water production.

They encountered a Norwegian foreman inside the electrolysis chamber, reading the instruments and filling out logbooks. The man seemed more concerned about saving his reading glasses before they lit the charges. They ordered the man to run upstairs, lie down and keep his mouth open so as not to burst his eardrums. There were four main charges with short two-minute fuses. Ronnenberg did not trust the foreman and decided to cut the fuses to just 30 seconds!

He ordered his men from the room, lit the fuses and ran for his life.

**Vemork hydroelectric power plant at Telemark**

The blast was deafening inside the chamber, but the guards outside barely noticed. As the lookout team held their machine guns ready, only one Nazi guard emerged with a flashlight, and after brief inspection, returned to his station! The guards assumed the sound came from the plant’s machinery which occasionally made loud noises.

Ronnenberg’s team met the lookout party just outside the gates. What astonished them all was that the Germans did not yet realize that their facility had been sabotaged. The guards’ attention was probably more focused on staying warm in the below zero winter night than on any loud noise from a noisy powerplant. The foreman would soon report the explosion however.

They hurried back across the ravine’s river and began climbing a zigzag trail leading to the top of the mountain. That was when the plant’s sirens finally began to sound. It took them three long hours to climb 700 meters to the ridge summit. Only then could they could put on their skis and escape faster down the other side of the mountain.

Unlike its predecessor, Operation Gunnerside was a complete success.

Though the plant itself was only slightly damaged, more than 1,000 pounds of heavy water had been destroyed, along with the electrolysis equipment needed to create it. The Nazis responded with a heavily armed search party of 3,000 German soldiers that scoured the mountainsides. They would be too late. All 10 commandoes escaped to the coast alive.

The raid halted production of heavy water for nearly a year, but the Allies knew the Nazis would soon be making it again. Another raid was out of the question due to heightened security, so a bombing raid was launched in November 1943 that severely damaged the facility. This was followed in 1944 by the SOE sabotaging and sinking the ferry SF Hydro near Telemark, carrying a large shipment of heavy water to Germany.

The Gunnerside mission was arguably the most productive act of sabotage of the entire war. The Nazi’s nuclear program never proceeded fast enough to give Adolf Hitler, and his V2 rockets, an atomic bomb before the war ended. The U.S. Manhattan Project, under Robert Oppenheimer, succeeded where the Nazis failed, eventually dropping a bomb on Hiroshima in Japan. Every member of the Vemork team received war honors, with Ronnenberg receiving the Distinguished Service Order. Their exploits were even turned into a 1965 Hollywood movie, loosely based on the facts, The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS

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The Stalin Great Purge and the Brutal Gulags

After the death of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, the infamous Josef Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union. In the late 1930s, Stalin began a ruthless campaign known as The Great Purge, referred to by the Russian people as the Great Terror. Any person or group perceived in Stalin’s twisted mind as a threat to his power was arrested, given a sham trial, and either executed on the spot or sent to the Gulags. The Gulags were the Soviet system of horrific forced labor camps scattered across the USSR, many in Siberia. While Adolf Hitler had his Nazi Concentration Camps, Stalin had his Gulags. They were far from the Bolshevik dream of a Communist utopia – free from the evils of western imperialism.

Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks revolted against Czar Nicholas II in 1917 to create a supposedly equal communist society, free of capitalism. The Soviet Union became anything but. Lenin died of a sudden stroke in 1924. Under his successor Josef Stalin, the USSR became a regime laced with suppression and brutality. The Gulag system was a shrewd punishment. Stalin’s ‘threats to Communism’ weren’t just eliminated, they were turned into forced labor to build his state.

Stalin had to fight his way to power, declaring himself premier in 1929. The United Opposition was a political group which never approved of Stalin’s rule. Some members of the old Bolshevik party questioned his authority. Some Communists saw Stalin as dictatorial and corrupt. Stalin’s authority was questioned by influential comrades like Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin. A suspicious and paranoid Stalin believed anyone with ties to Lenin was therefore a threat and needed to go.

Stalin’s solution was his Great Purge.

It began quietly in 1934 with the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a prominent Bolshevik. Kirov was murdered in broad daylight at Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad. Many believe Stalin himself, a friend of Kirov, ordered the hit. This gave Stalin the perfect excuse to commence his purge. He used Kirov’s death as evidence a traitorous faction in the Communist party was trying to eliminate its leaders. There’s no hard evidence that Stalin ordered Kirov’s death, but it’s simply too much of a coincidence.

Stalin decided to get rid of the loudest dissidents and original Bolsheviks from the 1917 Revolution. He launched his purge claiming he’d uncovered a dangerous cabal of Communist traitors. Kirov’s death led to staged trials in Moscow of Stalin’s rivals and critics, which he labeled the “Leftist Counter-Revolutionary Bloc.” 14 former high-ranking Communists, like Nikolai Bukharin, were arrested for treason. The accused were ruthlessly tortured, or their close families threatened, until the pathetic men admitted to being traitors and spies. Stalin had them all executed.

From 1936 to 1938, the Soviet secret police, the so-called NKVD [People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs], then conducted field trials of lesser threats who were arrested, tried, found guilty and executed as well. While the Moscow Trials were conducted in legitimate courtrooms, the secret police utilized a swift, unjust method, employing 3-member committees responsible for sentencing the ‘anti-Soviets’ to death.

Stalin didn’t stop with executing just his rivals.

Stalin freely used the term The Fifth Column, to identify his “Enemies of the People.” Stalin often used propaganda buzzwords like “subversives, intelligentsia, and counter-revolutionary.” Any of these labels would land a person in a Gulag or firing squad. The labels meant one thing: TRAITOR. In all, about 1/3 of the Communist Party’s 3 million members were purged and sent to the Gulags.

The paranoid Stalin even had 30,000 members of his own Red Army and Navy executed, because he suspected, without evidence, that they were plotting a military coup. The Great Purge removed field marshals, generals, admirals, commanders, and commissars. Over 100 high ranking officers were all executed.

And still Stalin was not satisfied. He expanded his Great Purge to include aristocrats, landowners, ethnic minorities, and foreigners. Then came the educated academics, scientists, even medical doctors. Finally, it included journalists, writers, artists and students. All were sent to the Gulags. No one, it seemed, was safe.

When everyone was a potential suspect, Soviet-wide paranoia meant everyone suspected their neighbor. The rampant Purge caused pervasive fear and eventually broke the will of the Soviet people. At least 750,000 were executed during the Great Purge. Some believe the true death count to be twice as high. More than a million others were sent to the Gulags. Overall, the camps held about 18 million Soviet citizens from the late 1920s until Stalin’s death in 1953.

What was life like in the Gulags, where millions were sent to suffer?

The word “Gulag” is an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, Russian for Main Camp Administration. All laborers were officially known as “political prisoners.” Conditions were brutal: prisoners worked up to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, often in cold, severe weather. Thousands died of starvation, disease, or execution. Even women endured the harsh conditions. Many of them facing the daily threat of rape or assault by guards or male prisoners.

By the time Stalin took control, the Gulag system had 84 small labor camps spread across the USSR, most in Russia and Siberia. Under Stalin’s rule, the prison population grew exponentially. Daily life was organized around forced hard labor as both a tool of ‘Re-education,’ and a source of revenue for Stalin’s regime. He viewed the Gulags both a way to get rid of threats and as cheap labor to boost his industries.

Gulag inmates dug canals, built railroads and highways, constructed dams and cargo ships. They mined coal, tin and copper, and cut acres of timber from Siberia’s thick forests. Prisoners were given sentences, and if they met their quotas and survived their term, they were released. But since there was a constant influx of new prisoners, Gulag officials thought little about preserving the health of their workforce. The Gulag inmates were both expendable and replaceable.

Prisoners were given crude tools and no safety equipment. The daily tasks were so grueling, some would cut or burn themselves to avoid work. Prisoners drudged through brutal Russian weather in sub-zero temperatures. Food was rationed and if prisoners didn’t complete their quotas, they received less. Thousands died of exhaustion, starvation or disease.

Starvation in particular was a constant factor and deliberate. It allowed camp officials to control the population. Even normal rations, which were given to prisoners who exceeded their quotas, did not make up for the calories lost during hard labor. As the hopeless inmates grew physically weaker, and failed to meet their quotas, they earned less food and became weaker still.

Camp conditions were overcrowded and unsanitary. Violence was common among inmates as they stole food and supplies from each other. The environment created a cruel form of Darwinism — survival of the fittest. Any potential friendship with a fellow prisoner was squashed by competition. It was hard to form alliances or rebellions when you’re fighting over food and resources.

‘Any human feelings — love, friendship, charity, mercy, decency — vanished along with your body’s flesh. Bread was not issued in equal pieces, but thrown onto a pile in the dirt. Run fast and grab! Knock down your comrades, and tear it from their hands! … You hate them — they are your rivals in life and death.’
Quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (1973).

By 1939, Stalin had to focus on Hitler and the Nazis in World War II, so he slowed his purge in order to send men to the German front instead. Stalin then had the head of his NKYD shot. Nikolai Yezhov was feared only next to Stalin. Yezhov’s predecessor was in the Moscow trials and executed. After dutifully carrying our Stalin’s orders, he too met a similar fate. Yezhov was executed in 1940, after ‘confessing‘ to anti-Soviet activity. Stalin didn’t just target threats, but also those who served him.

Soviet Gulag prisoners awaiting orders in Siberia

The final act of the Purge occurred when Stalin had his old rival Leon Trotsky killed in 1940. Trotsky was expelled from the Communist party in 1929 and exiled by Stalin. At the Moscow Trials, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia. After several assassination attempts, Leon Trotsky was finally murdered in Mexico. A communist agent killed him with an ice pick to the head.

After World War II, the arrests and exiles continued until Stalin’s death in 1953 at age 74. The Gulag system weakened immediately. Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchez, was a staunch critic of the camps and the Purge. He acknowledged that most prisoners were, in fact, innocent. Within days, millions were released.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics itself later collapsed in 1991.

Over their 30 years, the Gulags killed at least six million, roughly a third of all those imprisoned. A true death toll is hard to determine as the NKVD covered their tracks well. The Gulags left deep scars, both physically and psychologically. The Gulag’s dark history left generations of Russians scarred and damaged. Survivors suffered poverty and PTSD long after their release. Even today, some survivors are still too fearful to talk about their experiences. Perhaps rightly so, under Vladimir Putin.

The true horrors of the Gulags were kept hidden within the USSR for decades. Unlike the Nazi Holocaust Concentration camps, no film or images of the Gulags were shown to the public. In 1973, The Gulag Archipelago was published by Russian survivor Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The book detailed the true atrocities of the Gulags. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union, but returned to Russia in 1994.

Stalin’s Gulags demonstrates just one of the evils of Soviet-style Communism. The camps were justified because they were utilized for the greater good. Much like the German people, Soviet citizens didn’t see themselves as villains. Propaganda told them they were living the dream of a “Virtuous Revolution.” However, Karl Marx’s utopian vision only led to a brutal dictator and the horrors of the Gulags.

Under his successor Nikita Khrushchev, some of the camps were turned into criminal prisons. It wasn’t until 1987 that Mikhail Gorbachev, himself a grandson of Gulag victims, officially eliminated the camps. The legacy of the gulags remains forever a part of Soviet history. Today, Russia is lead by President Vladimir Putin, who has his own agenda for reclaiming the former republics of the Soviet Union.

And what of Josef Stalin? After his victory over Germany in World War II, he was seen as a bold, national hero, though still greatly feared by all. He led the Soviet Union to become a global nuclear superpower in the new Cold War with the democratic West.

Today, we see Josef Stalin for what he was – a paranoid, manipulative sociopath, devoid of any humanity or empathy. He used fear and intimidation to rule the Soviet government and the people. I will leave you with one of Josef Stalin’s more infamous quotes.

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Josef Stalin

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Project Castle Bravo was a Human-Made Armageddon

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South Pacific Hydrogen Bomb explosion above ground tes, 1954 — **South Pacific Hydrogen Bomb explosion above ground test, 1954**

On Monday March 1st, 1954, at 6:45 in the morning, the U.S. carried out its largest nuclear detonation ever – CASTLE BRAVO – at the Bikini Atoll in the south Pacific Marshall Islands. Both military servicemen and Marshall Islanders got to experience first-hand what Armageddon would truly be like. The explosion turned out to be 2.5 times bigger than planned and caused far higher levels of radioactive fallout than ever predicted. Castle Bravo was the worst radiological disaster in American atomic history.

The Manhattan Project, lead by Robert Oppenheimer, developed the first atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan. Not long after, the Soviet Union developed the bomb as well, leading to the nuclear arms race and The Cold War. This lead to the issue, for both sides, of where to test such deadly weapons and deal with the resulting radioactive fall out.

The Marshal Islands’ isolation had proved a blessing throughout their history. The small island chain, about 1,800 miles from Papua New Guinea, was free from outside conflict until World War II, when it served as a Japanese outpost. After the war, the US took over the atolls, which is when their remoteness became their curse.

The U.S. military realized its isolation made it ideal for testing nuclear bombs. In 1946, the US military governor asked the native Bikini Atoll residents to temporarily relocate for “the good of mankind.” The islanders agreed believing they would be able to return to their homes after a few months. Bikini Atoll would remain uninhabitable for more than 70 years.

The Bravo bomb was the first in Operation Castle, a series of thermonuclear tests by the US military.

Nicknamed Shrimp, the bomb weighed 23,500 pounds and was America’s first weaponized hydrogen bomb meant to be delivered by bomber. “Shrimp” ended up yielding the equivalent of 15 megatons of TNT. Scientists had seriously miscalculated and expected only FIVE. They based the location of observation posts and ships outside a “Safety Exclusion Zone” on a 5 megaton yield.

Zero hour for Castle Bravo was at just after dawn at 6:45 am local time. Officers, scientists, and serviceman yawned and drank black coffee as they stretched and waited. From the moment the bomb detonated, everyone knew something had gone terribly wrong. A so-called ‘tritium bonus’ occurred in the nuclear reaction, causing extremely energetic fusion. An explosion began that can only be described as Apocalyptic.

The flash was overwhelming, even by the standards of atomic bombs. Men saw their bones appear as shadows through their skin. Blinding light burst through the smallest cracks in secured doors. Bravo’s blast wave was far more intense than expected. 30 miles away from Ground Zero, Navy sailors said the heat was “like having a blowtorch applied to their uniforms.” Battle-hardened World War II veterans took to their knees to pray, believing the atmosphere had caught fire and they were witnessing the end of the world.

Seconds after detonation, a mushroom cloud 4.5 miles wide began to rapidly grow. It rose 1,000 feet per second into the sky, topping out at 130,000 feet. The shock wave destroyed buildings outside of the expected damage zone, and nearly knocked observation planes out of the sky, miles away. The fireball itself was hotter than the surface of the sun!

Castle Bravo ended up being 1,000 times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The explosion left a 250 feet deep crater on the ocean floor, a diameter of 6,500 feet. But that was just the beginning of the disaster. It released so much radioactive debris into the atmosphere that it fell over 7,000 square miles. It contaminated the inhabitants of ALL the nearby Marshall atolls, the US servicemen present, and even the unfortunate crew of a Japanese fishing trawler, miles away.

To make matters worse, weather forecasters predicted that high-altitude winds would blow the fallout away from inhabited islands. Instead, the wind blew the radioactive cloud toward them. Fallout rained down on ships and sailors. Captains ordered entire crews below decks, and sealed all hatches for days to escape contamination. Despite knowing the risk of spreading fallout to nearby inhabited islands, Major General Percy Clarkson had ordered the test to continue as planned.

The wind spread radioactive particles downwind, affecting the inhabited atolls of Rongelap, Utirik, and Ailinginae. Fallout dusted U.S. servicemen stationed on nearby Rongerik Island. Approximately 5 hours after the detonation, it began to rain radioactive fallout at Rongelap. Within hours, the atoll was covered with a fine, white powder. None of the inhabitants knew it was radioactive fallout.

Delighted children giggled and played in the ‘snow,’ even licking it off their hands

About 90 minutes after the explosion, the fallout reached an unfortunate Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Fifth Lucky Dragon), 80 miles east of the test site. All 23 crew members were severely exposed to high levels of radiation, one dying months later. Their irradiated fish were brought back to Japan and unknowingly entered the market, later causing a panic. With the memory of Hiroshima only 9 years earlier, this created a diplomatic nightmare and provoked international outrage. The U.S. eventually agreed to pay more than $15 million in compensation to the Fukuryu Maru survivors.

Emergency evacuations by the US were too slow to limit lethal doses of radiation and islanders didn’t know about the consequences of fallout. The U.S. military evacuated Rongelap 2 days after the test, relocating them to Majuro, the capital. Within a week, the U.S. launched a study on the effects of radiation on the islanders and provided medical care. The military however never explained to the inhabitants that a study was being conducted on them. Rarely was a translator even present. Marshallese were given potassium iodide pills with no explanation as to why. For years later, Marshall islanders experienced numerous health problems, including birth defects and thyroid cancer.

Since Castle Bravo, the U.S. has had to provide more than $1 billion to the affected atolls which includes medical treatment, health care, island rehabilitation and resettlement. The two countries reached a bilateral agreement designed to award compensation to victims of cancers and other serious health effects, such as burns and birth defects.

Atmospheric wind shear and ocean currents continued to spread fallout from the explosion.

Traces of radioactive material were later found in Japan, Australia and even India. Castle Bravo was not the first test at Bikini Atoll, the US held 67 atmospheric tests in the Pacific Ocean through 1958. And the US was not the only country conducting atmospheric testing in its territories. The Soviet Union equaled the US in its Cold War nuclear testing program.

Marshall Islanders finally began to return home in the early 1970s, nearly 30 years after testing began. However, surveillance in 1978 found that the inhabitants of Bikini Atoll exhibited dangerously high levels of radioactivity and the entire population was once again evacuated. The island natives are still in forced exile. Today, the danger comes from consuming contaminated food or water. The detonation crater is still visible from the air and looks like a fierce dragon took a chomp out of the atoll. In a way, it had.

Aerial view of Bikini Atoll Castle Bravo crater — **Aerial view of Bikini Atoll Castle Bravo underwater crater today**

Castle Bravo triggered a backlash around the world against atmospheric nuclear testing. In 1955, the United Nations created the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. In 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, finally prohibited nuclear testing in the atmosphere or underwater. For better or worse, nuclear tests could henceforth only be conducted underground.

Castle Bravo’s fallout even inspired the creation of a Japanese science fiction movie legend, the great reptile Godzilla, “King of Monsters.” Using nuclear power to instead generate electricity became a whole different safety issue. It led to later power plant disasters like Three Mile Island in the U.S., Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS

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Galileo Faced Science Deniers in the Catholic Church

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Galileo's Trial before the Italian Inquisition — **Galileo’s Trial before the Italian Inquisition**

In 1633, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was the Stephen Hawking of his day – both famous & respected across Europe. Nonetheless, he was ordered by the Pope in Rome to stand trial before the Italian Inquisition. Known for its brutal interrogations by torture, it was the most feared and notorious court in all of Europe. His crime – Galileo’s Science, daring to state that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the universe – was pure heresy!

The Roman Catholic Inquisition, be it Italian or Spanish, had been rooting out what it considered sacrilege and witchcraft since the medieval Dark Ages. Throw into this irrational mess Galileo’s clear evidence disproving long held Church teachings when it came to Earth and the heavens and you had the recipe for a life-threatening scientific stand.

The Catholic Church had in essence become the first Science Deniers.

This was actually the 2nd time Galileo was called before the Inquisition. In 1616, he had been forbidden from teaching his “heliocentric” beliefs about the sun. Galileo reluctantly agreed at the time to stop. It’s worth mentioning that the famous astronomer was actually a deeply religious man. He supported the ideals of Christianity, if not all its beliefs. He had even fathered three illegitimate children out of wedlock.

Galileo perfected the refracting telescope, allowing him to explore the nighttime heavens. Amongst his many discoveries was not only did the planet Jupiter have 4 moons, but those heavenly bodies orbited around the planet! He discovered that Venus, like the Earth’s moon, had phases, meaning it too orbited the sun. He published his findings in The Starry Messenger and it became an instant Renaissance best seller. Unfortunately, this also supported the church-banned heliocentric theories of the late astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus.

At that time, Galileo was free to write about anything he wanted, even heliocentricism. That is as long as he wrote it as a personal hypothesis, and did NOT try to pass it off as scientific fact. As a born scientist and stubborn intellectual however, Galileo simply could not abide by such restrictive church laws. He published The Starry Messenger as science fact.

He then convinced his old friend, Pope Urban VIII, to let him write a book that showed both sides of the debate – geocentric and heliocentric. His book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, had a fictional argument between two characters who held either view of where the earth and the sun stood in the near universe. Galileo, however, made the dim-witted geocentric character to be the clear loser of the debate.

A furious Pope Urban ordered Galileo to appear before the Inquisition in Rome on charges of heresy.

Galileo was no fool, understood the risks, and knew the danger he was now in. Men had been brutally tortured in dungeons and burned at the stake for far lesser crimes of ‘sorcery.’ The astronomer however still believed that TRUTH and LOGIC would win in the end. Even with the single-minded, religious fanatics who ran the Inquisition would come to reason. Alas, how naïve and wrong he was.

On the opening day of his trial, he stood before his accuser, the Grand Inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuola. Church officials interpreted his Dialogue as a clear violation of his 1616 Agreement. Galileo disagreed vehemently, but his position hardly mattered. Heliocentricism flew in the face of centuries of Catholic Church teaching. The court used numerous scripture passages from the Bible’s Old Testament to defend their geocentric views. The Grand Inquisitor claimed that Galileo’s revolutionary telescope was nothing more than a magician’s trick.

Found guilty of heresy, Galileo was condemned to imprisonment rather than death.

He was given an opportunity to recant however, and not spend the rest of his life in a cold, dark dungeon cell. At the time, Galileo was already 70 years old and in poor health. At his beloved (illegitimate) daughter’s pleading, Livia herself a nun, he reluctantly agreed to recant. With his head bowed, wearing the white robes of a penitent, he told the scowling Inquisitor that he “cursed any heresies which he may have espoused in the past.”

Galileo hoped his old friend Pope Urban would help him, and in the end, he did. Galileo was placed under house arrest rather than prison. Having avoided burning at the stake, one could say he got off with a mere slap on the wrist. He was forced to retire to his estate in Florence, a defeated and dejected man. In his own house, he could neither write, teach, nor travel without the Church’s express permission. Nevertheless, while under house arrest he wrote one of his finest works, Two New Sciences, which he had published in Holland to avoid the censor. It was in Florence he remained till his death in 1642 at the age of 78.

**Renaissance Astronomer Galileo Galilei**

The Catholic Church finally lifted the ban on all of Galileo’s works over a century later in 1758 by Pope Benedict XIV. In 1992, Pope John Paul II admitted that Galileo Galilei was wrongly charged. He regretted the astronomer’s treatment by the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps as a posthumous consolation, NASA named a Jupiter probe in his honor. The sturdy satellite thoroughly explored the giant planet in 1995, including the four famous moons discovered by the astronomer – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Unfortunately, science deniers still exist in our culture even today, centuries after the cruel Inquisition, often in positions of political or religious power. Disputed subject can range from such hot topics as vaccines to evolution to climate change. Deniers and conspiracy theorists continue to stubbornly refute the basic laws of science and Mother Nature, at their own, and often, our risk. But Mother Nature, like Galileo Galilei, has a stubborn way of proving them all wrong, in the end.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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The Wounded Knee Massacre ended the US Indian Wars

Wounded Knee Massacre of Lakota Sioux, 1889 — Wounded Knee Massacre of the Lakota Sioux, 1889

For decades, the Lakota Sioux watched helplessly as their way of life on the American plains faded away. They’d witnessed a generation of broken treaties by the U.S. government. They’d watched as the white man came come like a flood from the East. First they came after their land, then buffalo, then gold in the Dakota Black Hills. The nomadic Lakota were now confined to small reservations. Wounded Knee would change even that.

From the earliest colonial days, contact between white European settlers and Native American tribes had been troublesome. As white settlers pushed westward, they killed or forced Native Americans off ancestral lands and onto reservations. One of the most infamous was the Cherokee Trail of Tears. The most violent conflicts in the late1800’s were known as The Indian Wars. By the end of the 1880’s, a series of brutal massacres and forced removals had reduced the native population to a fraction of what it had once been.

Reservation life was slowly destroying Native American culture as well, so some tribal leaders attempted to bolster their spiritual traditions. In 1889, a new “Ghost Dance” movement began to grow. It preached that all the bad things happening were because the tribes had abandoned their traditions and angered the gods. Ghost Dance leaders promised that the buffalo would return and the white man would be cast away, IF they performed the “Ghost Dance.”

During a solar eclipse in 1889, a shaman of the Nevada Paiute tribe named Wovoka had a vision.

He said the Great Spirit had revealed to him a bountiful land of love and peace. Wovoka founded the Ghost Dance spiritual movement. He foresaw the uniting of the remaining western tribes, the banishment of the white man, the return of the near extinct buffalo, and a lasting revival of the Native American way, in an Eden like world.

According to Wovoka, the Ghost Dance reunited the spirits of the dead with those of the living, and the collective power of these spirits would protect them in battle against the white man’s army. Dancers wore brightly colored shirts emblazoned with images of the buffalo and the eagle. They believed their “Ghost Shirts” would protect them from the white man’s bullets. It quickly spread to other Indian tribes in the west, including in the Dakotas.

Four years earlier, the infamous Battle of Little Bighorn, better known as Custer’s Last Stand, marked the beginning of the end of the Indian Wars. Nevertheless, the Ghost Dancers triggered one last wave of resistance. As the movement began to spread, white settlers grew increasingly alarmed and feared it was the prelude to yet another armed uprising.

On the reservations, Native Americans found themselves dependent on the government for food. There was widespread anxiety among the Oglala around their federal dependency. The once proud Sioux found their nomadic life destroyed, the buffalo gone, and themselves confined to reservations, dependent on unreliable US Indian Agents for their very existence.

In October 1890, Daniel Royer arrived at the Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, as the new Indian Agent. Unfortunately, he knew next to nothing about Native Americans and in fact had an irrational fear of them. His dispatches back to Washington were full of unwarranted warnings of an imminent Sioux uprising.

In Royer’s paranoid mind, the new Ghost Dance was in fact a War Dance.

In his telegrams to Washington, he urged that troops be sent immediately. “Wild and crazy Indians are dancing in the snow,” he wrote to the Indian Affairs Commissioner in November 1890. “We need protection and we need it now! The leaders must be arrested and confined at a military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done now!”

President Benjamin Harrison ordered the army to the southwest Dakota Territory. On the troop train was a group of newspaper reporters. The “Crisis in the Badlands” had made headlines due to rumors about the Ghost Dancers. These false stories fed a growing anxiety of another Indian War. By mid-December, both government and news reports referred to the Ghost Dancers as “Hostiles.” This news also trickled into the reservations, where the Lakotas heard of an impending troop build-up.

The troops and reporters made their way to Pine Ridge Reservation. General Nelson Miles arrived with 500 troops as part of the US Army 7th Cavalry, General Custer’s old command. He ordered the arrest of several Sioux leaders thought to be the Ghost Dance instigators, including the famous Sitting Bull.

Chief Sitting Bull had led the Sioux victory over the US 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn. He too embraced the Ghost Dance movement and helped spread it throughout the Sioux Nation. They would arrest the Chief at his home in Standing Rock Reservation. On December 15th, officers feared that Sitting Bull was about to flee the reservation. Police tried to arrest the Chief, but a gun fight erupted.

The famous Sioux leader was shot and killed in the melee.

At the Cheyenne River Reservation, the Miniconjou Lakotas grew nervous. Their leader, Chief Big Foot, also a Ghost Dancer, was under close observation by the military. When he heard of Sitting Bull’s death, Big Foot led his people out to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation. On December 23, about 350 left their village under the cover of night and fled towards the Badlands.

Chief Big Foot was also on General Miles’ arrest list. The tribe managed to avoid the military for five days. But on December 28th, the cavalry caught up with them. A cold, bleak winter gripped the snow-covered hillsides in 1890. The Lakota were camped in their teepees near the banks of Wounded Knee Creek, which winds through the Dakota Badlands. Charged with arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors, the Army positioned their Hotchkiss Guns (a deadly cousin of the Gatling gun) on a rise overlooking the Lakota camp.

As a bugle sounded the following morning—December 29th, 1890—American soldiers mounted their horses and entered the Lakota camp. A Medicine Man started to perform the Ghost Dance, praying loudly, “Do not fear. Let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us, but their bullets cannot harm us.” He implored the heavens to scatter the soldiers like the dust as he threw dirt into the air. Both sides were tense and on high alert. Many of the warriors were dressed as Ghost Dancers.

Col. James Forsyth convened a council with Chief Big Foot and his leaders. Big Foot was racked with pneumonia and could not even stand. He sat among his warriors and powwowed with the army officers. Forsyth demanded they surrender all their firearms and told them they’d be relocated to a new camp. The order was interpreted as exile to yet another reservation, a prospect the Lakotas found intolerable.

The cavalry soldiers went teepee to teepee seizing axes, rifles and other weapons. A warrior named Black Coyote refused to surrender his rifle, hidden under a blanket, to a soldier. The two began wrestling over the gun, and in the struggle … it went off.

Within seconds, the troops launched a hail of bullets at the Lakota.

The warriors attempted to retrieve their collected weapons and returned fire. Chaos erupted as troopers fired volley after volley into the Sioux camp. The cavalry’s rifle fire was quickly complemented by the rapid-fire Hotchkiss Guns up on the hillside. Their impact was deadly as they tore the Sioux teepees into ribbons, killing the women and children huddled within.

The shouts of the soldiers and screams of their victims filled the morning air. Clouds of gun smoke blew through the camp as men, women and children scrambled for their lives. Many ran for Wounded Knee Creek only to be cut down in cross fire. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Lakota could offer little resistance. Survivors fled into the hills only to be pursued by the cavalry and killed.

When the shooting stopped and the smoke cleared, approximately 150 Sioux were lying dead in the blood-stained snow. Unarmed Chief Big Foot was among them, shot where he sat at the powwow. Young children who moments before were playing leapfrog and throwing snow, had been mowed down. In just a matter of minutes, almost half the Lakota were killed, along with 25 American soldiers. Nearly half the Sioux victims were women and children.

By midafternoon, the troops had gathered up their dead and returned to Pine Ridge. Dead soldiers were placed in a nearby Episcopal church and laid in rows underneath Christmas decorations. As the cavalry began the grim task of burying the Sioux, a winter blizzard swept in. A few days later in January, they returned to the massacre site to complete the job. Chief Big Foot was still lying in the snow, his corpse frozen where he had been shot.

A burial party dug a single large pit and dumped in the 150 now frozen bodies in the mass grave.

Others killed in the surrounding hillside were late accounted for, bringing the total to more than 250 Lakotas. Reporters observed the burial and took a series of stark photographs. The snowstorm added a cold edge to the grim scene of carnage. Their news stories carried the story of the “Battle” of Wounded Knee worldwide. US public opinion of the massacre was generally favorable. The attack effectively ended the Ghost Dance movement. In the aftermath, an official Army inquiry exonerated the 7th Cavalry of any wrong doing.

Over time though, Wounded Knee became the symbol of the inhumanity of US government policy toward Native Americans. Those Sioux were guilty of no crime and were not engaged in combat. A substantial number killed were unarmed women and children. For decades, survivors of the massacre lobbied in vain for compensation. The U.S. Army awarded 20 Medals of Honor to members of the Seventh Cavalry for their heroic roles.

Decades later, a Lakota survivor was interviewed: “I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered along the crooked gulch, as plain as when I saw them with young eyes. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody snow, and was buried in the blizzard. Our people’s dream died there as well.”

The massacre at Wounded Knee was not the last armed conflict in the US Indian Wars, but it marked its end. The remaining tribes were subdued, forced onto reservations on unwanted land, and made to assimilate into white US society. Over the 19th century, 18 million Native Americans had been reduced to about 237,000 by 1900. Since then, the Native American population has recovered somewhat. 2.9 million Americans identified as “American Indian” in the 2010 US Census.

Compared to numerous military monuments standing across the United States, today, only a small, fenced-in graveyard sits at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre in southwest South Dakota. There you will find a small historical sign and a simple, granite monument, just 8 feet high, erected by the survivors. If you visit the crowded grandeur of nearby Mount Rushmore, be sure to drive an hour south, and pay your quiet respects at Wounded Knee as well.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Podcast: White Friday 1916 – History’s Deadliest Avalanche occurred during WWI

The deadliest avalanche in history occurred at the worst possible time in the worst possible place. A powerful avalanche killed hundreds of Austrian and Italian soldiers near Italy’s Mount Marmolada on 13 December 1916 in the middle of World War I. Over the next several weeks, more avalanches in the Alps killed an estimated 10,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers fighting Nature as well as each other. Some claim the White Friday avalanches were purposefully triggered the armies against their enemies, but we’ll never know for sure.

Graves of the victims of the White Friday Avalanche, 1916

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A Diver’s Defection, Summer Love and the Montreal Olympics

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Sergei Nemtsanov diving at Montreal Olympics 1976 — **Sergei Nemtsanov diving at the Montreal Olympics in 1976**

In July 1976, at the Montreal Summer Olympics, 17 year old Russian diver Sergei Nemtsanov makes the gut wrenching decision to defect to Canada from Communist Soviet Union. He had won numerous Soviet diving competitions and was brought to Montreal with medal expectations. He finished only 9^th in the Men’s 10 meter Platform diving competition. As punishment for not earning a medal, his Soviet coaches angrily informed him he’d be banned from further international competitions.

The Russian coaches were always wary of a defector amongst their athletes. Now that the diving competition was over, they had restricted the entire Soviet Diving Team to their rooms in the Montreal Olympic Village. The divers would fly out to Moscow as soon as possible and not stay the remainder of the Games, OR participate in the Closing Ceremony. But Sergei had gotten a taste of western freedom while at the Olympics. The young teen realized if he wanted the same for himself, it was Now or Never. So he quietly approached friends on the Canadian diving team for help.

The Montreal Summer Games was an Olympics to remember, with the likes of Romania’s Nadia Comaneci, Sugar Ray Leonard and Bruce Jenner all winning Gold Medals. Tensions were high though as the terrible murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Summer Games in 1972 was still fresh on everyone’s minds.

Another young diver, a 16-year-old American named Greg Louganis had made a name for himself by winning the Silver Medal. Scott Cranham, a diver from the Canadian team, enlisted Louganis’ help to get the Soviet Team out of their rooms and into the cafeteria for a going away luncheon. In the midst of emotional hugs & goodbyes to new Olympic friendships, Sergei and Scott silently slipped away. They ran downstairs to a Canadian office where athletes could seek asylum. There, the exhilarated yet frightened boy declared in broken English, “I wish to defect to Canada!”

He wanted to be free of Communism, free to live as he wished, free to love who he chooses!

With wavy blond hair and teenage good looks, the affable young ‘Russian Apollo‘ instantly became a darling of the press, and an embarrassment to the Soviets. The Canadian team helped him retain 2 high-profile lawyers pro-bono, David Mathewson and Alex Peterson, to obtain a Visa extension and official entry into Canada. They secretly smuggled Sergei out of Montreal in an ambulance, and into the Toronto area in Ottawa. He stayed on Lake Muskoka at the summer house of a sympathetic Toronto businessman, John Fleming.

The Soviets launched an angry propaganda campaign, his coaches shouting to the Olympic Committee that “The United States and Canada are drugging and brainwashing Soviet athletes to defect!” The Soviet Consul declared this a kidnapping, as Sergei was still a minor at only 17. They said his lawyers were gangsters since all young Sergei truly wanted to do was return to his loving family in Mother Russia. Threats were made that all sporting relationships would be cut off between Canada and the USSR, including their beloved Ice Hockey!

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau entered the mix stating the decision to return or stay was up to the boy alone. The Soviets were allowed one supervised opportunity to convince him to return. They falsely claimed later that Sergei was a pale statue with vacant, dilated eyes, repeating the word ‘I choose Freedom’ over and over again, like a programmed robot.

Watch Sergei dive at the Montreal Olympics – AP Video Archive – 30 July 1976

Nothing could be farther from the truth, for here is where the Wrinkle of Romance entered into the mix. Sergei told his fellow athletes he had begun falling in love with a female American diver named Carol Lindner, then 21. The complicating factor – she was the daughter of the wealthy family that owned the Cincinnati Enquirer and Thriftway Supermarkets. Sergei and Carol had met earlier that year when he came to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for an international diving meet. With an athlete for a daughter, Richard Linder invited all the divers onto his boat, allowing Sergei and Carol more time together. The pair rekindled their relationship when they met again at the Montreal Olympic Pool, meeting for several discrete rendezvous.

Carol’s father released a stern statement saying their relationship was Strictly Casual and the two NEVER discussed defection. At her father’s insistence, Carol wrote Sergei a letter, urging him not to stay due to any feelings he might have for her. Soviet coaches forced his teammates to also send him messages, reminding him of his aged and ailing grandmother waiting for him back in the USSR. His father was a military pilot and Sergei was raised by his grandmother from an early age. They sent him an audio-cassette of her pleading for Sergei to return: ‘Why are you leaving me, Sergei? I am completely alone here!‘ Separated from Carol, alone in Canada, what was he to do?

What would YOU have done? Return to family? Or stay for love and freedom?

It was much like the anxiety an Olympic diver feels during competitions. Imagine balancing on the edge of the hard platform, 10 long meters above the glistening surface of the blue pool, a thousand spectator eyes silently watching, international judges scoring you. The Canadian government wanted his lawyers to give a press conference with Sergei present. It was arranged at a Holiday Inn hotel, then Sergei got cold feet and backed out at the last minute. He was not liking how he was being portrayed by the media. Plus he had just graduated high school and could frustratingly speak but a few sentences in broken English. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who were there to provide security, were frustrated by his absence.

**Soviet diver Sergei Nemtsanov at the Moscow Olympics**

In the end, after 19 nerve-wracking days in isolation, Sergei made the painful decision to return to Russia. The relationship with his Canadian benefactors was growing tenser by the day. The letter from Carol had left him with a broken heart. The audio-cassette of his grandmother’s pleas left him with pit of guilt in his gut. He said sad goodbyes to his new Canadian friends, and his lawyers transported him to the RCMP. They then delivered him back to his coaches at the Montreal Olympic Village. The Soviets told the press he was very tired by the ordeal and would not make any statement. To avoid the press further, within hours they put Sergei on an Aeroflot plane back to Moscow.

Needless to say, Sergei received an icy reception on his return, both from his teammates and the Soviet fans. He admitted in a statement that he was brainwashed in Canada. Only his youth and naivete allowed him to escape the humiliatingly brand of traitor. Even the long-time Soviet head coach was restricted from travel abroad as punishment. Communist Olympic officials never allowed Sergei to compete outside the Soviet Union again. But he was allowed to dive again, in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. These were the game boycotted by the USA due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was now 21 and he sadly won no medals at the Moscow Games, finishing 7th. It was to be his last Olympics.

Sergei attended university in Russia, and in 1982 joined the Soviet military for a brief stint. He then moved back home to Kazakhstan and, after a short time in the Soviet military, opened an auto-repair shop. He struggled with and ultimately overcame an alcohol addiction. A decade later in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Sergei finally got his freedom. He emigrated to the USA … with his Russian wife and two young children. It was in the U.S. where his son too became a competitive collegiate diver. Today, Sergei lives a quiet life with his family in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, Georgia, as an American citizen.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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The Black Hole of Calcutta’s Infamous Night of Horror

Depiction of the Black Hole of Calcutta — **Depiction of the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta**

In 18th century India, the power of the Mughal Empire lay in the despotic hands of the Nawabs, or provincial princes. At the same time, the British and French East India Companies had built competing empires on the lucrative sub-continent. The British had established a trading hub at Kolkata (Calcutta) and built Fort William to guard it from French attack. Within it lie the infamous Black Hole prison.

This British military build-up infuriated Bengals’ volatile, 23-year-old Nawab, Siraj-ud-daula, who took power in 1756. He ordered Calcutta’s British governor to immediately cease all work on the fort. When the predictable Brits ignored him, the hot-headed Nawab marched his massive army of 50,000 on Calcutta, including elephants and artillery. The governor and residents fled to armed company ships on the River Hooghly. They left behind a small garrison of only 170 English soldiers to defend Fort William.

Siraj’s attack came the morning of Sunday June 20th. John Holwell was in temporary command of the fort. He was a surgeon by training and had no military experience. He knew they were hopelessly outnumbered, and the fort was no match against 50,000 Mughal attackers. By the afternoon, the walls were about to be breached by relentless cannon fire. Howell’s options were limited. He reluctantly raised a white flag and was forced to surrender the fort. His only condition was that his men be treated fairly.

That night the Black Hole horror would occur, which would become legend.

Holwell and 145 British prisoners, including two women and all the wounded, were clustered to together in the center of the fort. The Mughal warriors then ordered every single one of them into the fort’s ‘Black Hole.’ This was the name given a single, small cell built to hold a half dozen prisoners. It measured only 18 by 15 feet. The Black Hole had but two small, barred windows near the ceiling of one wall. Still the Mughal soldiers, using their scimitars and own bodies, managed to somehow squeeze ALL 145 prisoners into the single cell. Holwell shouted his objections, but it fell on deaf ears. They then slammed and locked the wooden door behind them.

A depiction of the Black Hole of Calcutta

The heat of an Indian summer is suffocating, even at night, reaching up to 40C/104F. Conditions were so tightly packed the men could barely breath. They could not sit or lie down. The prisoners shoved and trampled each other just to get near the only fresh air – those 2 small windows against one wall. John Howell could do little to maintain order. They fought over the small cups of water they were handed by the soldiers through the window’s bars. The prisoners pleaded for mercy from their indifferent guards, who laughed and jeered while they screamed out in agony. Those who fell underfoot were trampled and quickly died.

They were the lucky ones. The British prisoners were left in the Black Hole to suffer in the oppressive heat. They gasped for fresh air, sucking the perspiration from their own shirts or resorting to drinking their own urine by hand. Holwell finally lost consciousness. As the night progressed, the cries of the pitiful prisoners slowly quieted, then finally ceased as man after man died.

The next morning, the door was finally unbarred. The guards discovered 122 steaming corpses, still standing as they were packed too tight to fall to the ground.

Only 23 of the 145 prisoners survived the hellish night in the Black Hole.

The rest had died throughout the long night from a mixture of suffocation, trampling, or dehydration. Howell was one of the miraculous survivors. The Mughal soldiers dug a large pit for the dead outside the fort. The bodies were dumped unceremoniously into a mass grave. The Nawab later claimed to have had no knowledge of the inhumane incarceration. He said the guards were all to blame. Few would later believe him. John Holwell claims to have seen Siraj-ud-daula himself at the Black Hole’s window, jeering in satisfaction.

British vengeance was swift. When news of the ‘Black Hole’ reached London months later, a rescue expedition led by Colonel Robert Clive was immediately dispatched. They arrived in Bengal by October and found the remnants of the East India Company encamped on the river bank downstream. Clive wasted no time marching his men on Calcutta. He set siege to the Mughals at Fort William, which he bombarded from a fleet of warships in the River Hooghly.

The fort fell to the British after a relentless siege, with the Mughals retreating.

But Robert Clive, a war hero from his last Indian campaign, was not finished with his vengeance. He listened to Holwell’s tale of the Black Hole with simmering anger. He intended to secure Bengal for Britain once and for all. In June 1757, with an army of a mere 3,000 men, Clive marched inland to the Bengal capital at Plassey. Though vastly outnumbered, they defeated the Nawab’s army of 50,000 with their 500 war-elephants and artillery. Siraj-ud-daula fled the battlefield with his entourage to his capital Murshidabad. There he was killed by his own people for desertion.

Mughal Prince Siraj-ud-Daula and Dr. John Zephaniah Holwell

John Holwell later described in great detail the horrors of that night in: A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, who were Suffocated in the Black Hole. Holwell’s tale caused an uproar in Britain. The story inspired patriotic fervor in the United Kingdom and rage at the Indian Mughals. Clive had this to say of his victory over the Mughal army at Plassey:

“There will be less difficulty, as the natives themselves have no attachment whatever to their princes. As they have no security, they would rejoice in so happy an exchange as that of a mild despotic government.”
Colonel Robert Clive

The Black Hole set into motion events that would have a profound impact for India. Colonel Clive’s victory over the Mughals at the Battle of Plassey was the start of absolute British colonial rule in India from Kolkata to Delhi to Mumbai. India became a part of the British Empire. The subjugation of the Indian people would last uninterrupted for nearly 200 hundred years.

That is, until Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi. He inspired a non-violent Indian independence movement against Britain. It finally succeeded in 1947 when an independent Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan were proclaimed. The Black Hole itself was destroyed when Fort William was raised by the British for a new mightier Fort William in 1781. A 50 ft. memorial obelisk was erected in 1901 for the victims of the Black Hole. It stands in the quiet cemetery of St. Johns Church in Kolkata.

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