Drawing the Middle East modern borders on map with a ruler certainly seemed simple. Perhaps that’s why the lines, set in 1916 by Englishman Sir Mark Sykes and Frenchman Francois Georges-Picot were straight ones. The infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement was a pact between Great Britain and France, made in the middle of World War I (with Russia’s blessing). With it, they planned to dismember the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. It led to the division of the Turkish-held Middle East into 5 French and British-administered countries.
Contrary to popular myth, Japan’s version of Adolf Hitler was not the Emperor (Showa) Hirohito, but rather its infamous War Minister Hideki Tojo. But who was this powerful man so few outside Japan know of?
The son of an army general, young Tojo followed dutifully in his father’s footsteps, attending the Japanese Military Academy. Over the next 20 years, he received promotion after promotion, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant general. In 1935, Tojo was promoted to Head of the Army’s Military Police. Nicknamed Kamisori, or Razor Tojo by his peers, he was both respected and feared for his sternness, efficiency & ruthlessness. By 1937, he was Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army in Hobei Province China. During the China-Japanese War, he ordered the consumption of Manchuria’s vast natural resources to power and feed Japan’s hungry military industrial machine.
Returning to Japan in 1938, he became Vice Minister of War, adopting an aggressive stance by continuing pre-emptive strikes against China that captured the key cities of Shanghai and Beijing. By 1940, he was appointed Minister of War by then Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe. When Adolf Hitler’s war erupted in Europe, Tojo pushed the Prime Minister for an alliance with Germany where he had briefly served as military attaché in the 1920s. He greatly admired Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Third Reich.
Japan’s continued imperial expansion in Indochina worried the West and eventually led to economic sanctions by western powers with a freezing of all Japanese assets in the US. Then in the summer of 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a fateful oil embargo against Japan as punishment. That was all the fuel Razor needed. By September, Tojo and his naval commanders began boldly and openly discussing war with the United States. Staunchly against war at any cost, Prime Minister Konoe resigned in October 1941.
Emperor Hirohito summoned Tojo to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and named him Japan’s 40th Prime Minister.
He was now the most powerful man in the empire. Tojo’s first task was to conduct a careful evaluation of a Pacific War. He noted: For the past six months, the foreign minister has made painstaking efforts to adjust relations with the United States. Although I respect him for that, the heart of the matter is the imposition on us to withdraw from Indochina. If we yield to America’s demands, it will destroy all the fruits of our China expansion.
In November 1941, Tojo’s diplomatic staff reported their failure in searching for any peaceful solution with the U.S. and Britain. This was the tipping point that Razor was waiting for. Tojo presented detailed war plans to Emperor Hirohito, who formally approved “War Against the United States and England.” As we know, the Pacific War began on the morning of Sunday, 7 December 1941 when Japanese aircraft bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He then opened a second front in the west by invading British-controlled India.
Japan’s early victories greatly strengthened Tojo’s personal prestige in Japan and his “Faith in Victory.” Over the course of the war, he methodically placed himself in direct charge of the Army, Foreign Affairs, Commerce, and even Education. As Education Minister, he began militaristic indoctrination of the Japanese people with his feared Tokko (Gestapo-style) Secret Police. Throughout the war in the Pacific, the ruthless brutality of Japan’s military became apparent to the Allies. There were numerous atrocities committed against Allied American and British POWs including torture, starvation, beheadings, burnings, wholesale massacres and bayonet executions.
By 1944, the U.S. military began winning the war, “island hopping” towards Japan in a series of deadly but successful battles at the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. As an act of desperation, Tojo authorized the Kamikaze suicidal attacks by Japan’s Naval pilots on U.S. and British naval ships.
In 1944, he assumed the role of the Commander-in-Chief as well, effectively gaining dictatorial powers.
Yet despite all his many titles, Tojo was never able to establish a dictatorship on a par with Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin. When Japan’s defeats by the Allies in the Pacific mounted, and its industrial foundation began to crumble, Tojo sought to gather total administrative control of Japan. He still however served at the behest of the Emperor. Without the support of his party, the industrial complex and the courts, he was unable to do so. After the islands of Saipan and the Philippines fell to American forces in July 1944, he was forced by Emperor Hirohito to submit his resignation in disgrace and not even told who would replace him.
The war in Europe ended in May 1945, with the suicide of Adolf Hitler. Faced with a long and deadly invasion of Japan, President Harry Truman ordered the dropping of 2 atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Tojo knew what his ultimate fate would be. As American soldiers surrounded his house, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest. The bullet missed his heart however and he survived the attempt. He was arrested by the Allies while recovering and sent to military prison.
“I regret,” he is quoted as saying, “that it is taking me so long to die. The Great War was justified and righteous.”
Hideki ‘Razor’ Tojo at his military trial in 1946
Razor Tojo was sent to prison and tried by the International Military Tribunal for War Crimes. Hideki Tojo accepted full responsibility for his actions during the war. He was found GUILTY of “waging unprovoked wars of aggression in violation of international law, and ordering, authorizing, and permitting inhumane treatment of POWs.”
Razor Tojo was sentenced to death and hanged by the neck until dead in 1948. Before his execution, he apologized for his actions, and claimed that in regard to the atrocities committed by the Japanese military, he was simply following orders from Emperor Hirohito.
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While the Hindenburg is the most notorious airship that ever flew, primarily due to its Titanic-like end in the U.S., its predecessor, the Graf Zeppelin, was the most successful. Over a period of 9 years, the Graf flew on 590 flights, over a million miles, carrying thousands of passengers with both speed and safety. It circled the globe, explored the Arctic, and became world famous, inspiring the ‘Zeppelin Fever’ of the 1930s.
German Count (Graf) Ferdinand von Zeppelin patented the rigid dirigible in 1895. His airship’s outer envelope was held in place not by internal pressure, like a blimp, but by a rigid metal skeleton. The lifting gas, flammable hydrogen, was housed in a series of gas bag ‘cells’ within the aluminum ribs. The first Luftschiffs (airships) became so successful that the word Zeppelin was used to describe them all.
During World War I, the German military notoriously used Zeppelins to bomb London.
While the air raids did cause damage, their main effect was psychological. Brits dreaded hearing the rumble of Zeppelin engines in the night sky, to be followed by air raid sirens. When Germany surrendered in 1918, its airships surrendered as well. Under the World War I Treaty of Versailles, all Zeppelins were turned over to the Allies and production stopped. Count Zeppelin died and was succeeded by Dr. Hugo Eckener who’d been working with Zeppelin for years.
Restrictions were lifted in 1926 and Eckener quickly began building airships again. After just two years, the LZ-127 was launched – the largest dirigible ever constructed. In 1928, Countess Helga von Brandenstein-Zeppelin, daughter of the famous Count, smashed champagne on her nose, christening it the Graf Zeppelin in honor of her father.
Everything about the Graf was bigger. It measured 775 feet long, over two city blocks long, and 10 stories high. The German public loved the silver giant. No one would fail to recognize the huge dirigible, with its large red letters “Graf Zeppelin” on the nose. The Graf was not only an airship, but also a graceful masterpiece of construction.
The zeppelin’s support girders were made of a light aluminum alloy called duralumin, strong as steel, yet only one-third as heavy. The Graf had 33 tons of it. There were 17 gas cells held in place by a spider’s web of rings and girders. The cotton gas cells were lined with oxen intestines to hold the air – 50,000 of them to line just one.
Hydrogen provided buoyancy, while propulsion was supplied by five Maybach propeller engines, mounted in their own gondolas, big enough for a man to crawl inside for in-flight maintenance. A 98-foot-long gondola was mounted underneath. It housed the control room, chart room, radio room, galley, dining room, and 10 sleeping cabins. The Graf’s keel, inside the envelope, housed the crew bunkhouse, mess, and cargo hold. Its cotton skin was protected by 6 layers of silver paint to reflect the sun’s rays.
The Graf Zeppelin made its first passenger flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928.
It departed from Friedrichshafen, Germany to land at a US naval base in Lakehurst, NJ. The flight, carrying 40 crew and 20 passengers, almost ended in disaster when it encountered a strong squall over the Atlantic Ocean. Black cumulus storm clouds caused the Graf’s nose to rise upward suddenly. Furniture was knocked over and people slid across the floors. Terrified passengers, eating breakfast at the time, fell on each other in an avalanche of food and crashing plates.
Eckener managed to regain control, but the Graf had sustained serious damage. Wind turbulence had shredded the port stabilizing fin. Ripped pieces fluttered outward like streamers, threatening to jam the rudders. Eckener reluctantly sent out a distress call, knowing he risked his ship’s and company’s reputation.
He slowed the Graf to half-speed, and called for volunteers to repair the damage. It would be dangerous as they’d have to crawl outside the protective skin onto the naked girders of the stabilizer, exposed to high Atlantic winds. Four crew members — including Eckener’s son Knut — went out and successfully repaired the damage.
Once in the US, Eckener showed-off the Graf Zeppelin by flying low over the skylines of Washington, Philadelphia, and New York City, before bring his damaged ship to a safe landing at Lakehurst, NJ. Its return flight to Germany took just 3 days. The best steam ships of the day took twice as long to cross the Atlantic.
To keep his airship in the public eye, Eckener undertook a series of demo flights around Europe and the Mediterranean. Word spread that a voyage on the Graf was a marvelous experience, with breathtaking scenery and first-class service. But to Eckener, the Graf Zeppelin was just a demo trial. The public loved the Graf, but the jury was still out on the future of airship travel.
So Eckener decided he would take Graf Zeppelin on an around-the-world flight.
This was something no aircraft had ever attempted. Such a big dream would require big money. American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst offered to bankroll the project with $100,000. Hearst insisted only on exclusive story rights, and that the journey begin and end in the US. Additional revenue came from the sale of thousands of commemorative postage stamps in Germany.
The flight would carry 60 men and only one woman, Hearst newspaper reporter Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, whose reporting only increased the public’s interest. Other passengers included military officers, politicians, millionaires and journalists from around the world. Passengers paid $9,000 (quite a hefty fee in 1929) for a ticket on such a historic flight, and competition was fierce
The flight began on August 8, 1929 with an Atlantic crossing first from the US to Germany. Then in tiny villages around the world, an unfamiliar rumbling filled the air above. Villagers looked up and saw a great silver behemoth floating in the sky. The beast moved against the wind, big as a hillside, its shadow capable of eclipsing an entire village. Panic gripped some, with peasants rushing into homes and barring doors.
Up in the silver colossus, reporters radioed stories and first class passengers played card games. A phonograph in the dining room allowed guests to dance the Charleston. Passengers would gather at the elegant lounge/dining room to feast on fine food and wines, all served on Bavarian china with the Zeppelin logo. All smoking was strictly verboten of course on a ship filled with flammable hydrogen.
For the next few days, the Graf traveled across lower Siberia, floating over an eternity of barren taiga forests stretching for thousands of miles. This far north, the sun barely disappeared at night, leaving a pink dawn-like horizon. It was cold as well. Passengers looked like skiers, bundled up in coats and sweaters.
The ship landed in Tokyo to a massive welcome and Japanese press coverage. A crowd of 250,000 greeted the ship, even in the heat of an August summer. Emperor Hirohito entertained Captain Eckener and guests at tea. The Pacific crossing was largely uneventful. Light clouds wisped past as the Graf raced along at 70 mph. With a view of either clouds or ocean, passengers lapsed into monotony and boredom.
The airship’s arrival in San Francisco was nothing short of spectacular. Emerging from a cloud bank, the late afternoon sunlight glinted off her silver sides. Eckener made sure the airship made quite an impression for the press. The Graf didn’t need to worry about the Golden Gate Bridge, because it had not been built yet.
When the dirigible finally arrived in Los Angeles, it had logged a trans-Pacific flight time of 79 hours. The route next took the Graf across the hot summer deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, then northeast to Chicago. When the Graf reached New York City, it floated over Manhattan to the delight of millions. It ended its record breaking flight in Lakehurst, NJ on August 29 1929. The round the world voyage had taken 3 weeks and just 12 days of actual flying time.
Captain Eckener was given a ticker-tape parade on Broadway that rivaled Charles Lindbergh’s two years earlier.
Graf Zeppelin Captain Hugo Eckener, 1933
President Herbert Hoover praised the globe-trotting argonaut, comparing him to Christopher Columbus. The trip brought worldwide fame to both the Graf Zeppelin and Hugo Eckener. So what next? In the summer of 1931, the Graf Zeppelin carried a team of international scientists on an Arctic exploration, measuring the weather and the earth’s magnetic field. Its size and stability allowed heavy scientific instruments to be used with an accuracy not possible in the small airplanes of the day.
By 1933, Eckener was asked to fly the Graf over the Chicago World’s Fair. He agreed only if the US Post Office issued a special stamp commemorating the event. President Franklin Roosevelt was opposed to the idea, but reluctantly agreed. The Graf Zeppelin’s appearance was one of the highlights of the Fair, however, the now swastika-emblazoned ship lowered the enthusiasm of its earlier visit.
Like the Hindenberg later, the Graf Zeppelin was used as a floating Nazi propaganda tool. The Graf flew to Rome with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ for a meeting with Benito Mussolini and Italy’s fascist government. It flew over the 1933 Nuremberg Rally to herald Adolf Hitler’s appearance before the fanatical crowd.
After capturing the world’s enthusiasm, the Graf Zeppelin began regularly service between Germany and South America. The country had strong business ties with Brazil and Argentina. By 1934, the Zeppelin Company advertised a regular service to South America, departing Germany every two weeks. The Graf would safely cross the South Atlantic an amazing 136 times.
Graf Zeppelin was on the last day of a South American flight from Brazil to Germany in 1937 when it received news of the Hindenburg disaster. On its first trip that year to the US, just as the Hindenburg was mooring in Lakehurst, NJ, it shockingly burst into flames and collapsed on fire to the ground, killing 36. The Graf’s captain did not tell his passengers in flight, waiting until his ship landed safely in Germany.
The Graf Zeppelin never carried passengers again.
The ship made one last domestic flight in June 1937 to Frankfurt. There she was prematurely retired, her hydrogen removed, and she sat there on sad display. The Hitler and Nazis were now in power and Luftwaffe chief, Herman Goring,hated airships, even before the Hindenburg disaster. Two years later, World War II began. In 1940, on Goring’s orders, the record setting Graf Zeppelin and the Graf Zeppelin II (the Hindenburg’s never flown sister ship) were dismantled and their metal skeleton used to build radar towers.
The Graf was the first aircraft to fly more than 1 million miles; the official total being 1,060,000. A frequent visitor to both North and South America, the Graf Zeppelin safely crossed the Atlantic 144 times and carried some 13,000 passengers in its long career. Hugo Eckener was not a Nazi, and was replaced in the Zeppelin company with Hitler flunkies. After the war, he started and wrote for a newspaper.
Today when we think of airships, only the quaint, much smaller Blimps come to mind. They float harmlessly over the countryside and sports stadiums, emblazoned with corporate ads, like Goodyear and MetLife. Or perhaps they appear wistfully in some steampunk reimaging of the future. The Graf Zeppelin is just a fleeting memory, forever overshadowed by the terrible Hindenburg tragedy. But in its day, during the Roaring Twenties, the Graf was the successful symbol of the world’s brief, bygone Airship Era.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
MS Wilhelm Gustloff in port in Hamburg 1938 before World War II
The sinking of MS WILHELM GUSTLOFF was the worst maritime disaster in world history, with more dead than the Titanic AND Lusitaniacombined. It was a German refugee ship fleeing Poland and the advancing Russian army near the end of World War II.
The Gustloff sank in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13 on a freezing, wintery night, January 30, 1945. The WG’s final voyage was part of a German evacuation operation. It was sunk while evacuating Nazi officials, military personnel, wounded soldiers and thousands of civilian refugees. Amongst them are 4 thousand infants, children and youths on their way to safety in Kiel, far from the Eastern Front. The former ‘East Prussia’ was rapidly being surrounded by the advancing Soviet Red Army.
The Wilhem Gustloff was filled to the bursting point with over 10,000 panicked Germans fleeing the approaching Russian military. The vessel was designed to hold a maximum of 1,880 passengers and crew. In the dead of night, in the Baltic Sea, the WG was hit by three torpedoes from the S-13 and sank in just an hour.
An estimated 9,400 people perished, over half of them children and infants.
At the beginning of the war, the German cruise ship was requisitioned into the German Navy. In 1940, it was repainted from pleasure ship white to naval grey and assigned as a floating barracks in the port of Gdynia, located in Nazi occupied Poland, formerly East Prussia. And that’s where it floated until 1945, when it became an escape vessel for German citizens and Nazis in Operation Hannibal.
On Tuesday, January 30th, temperatures of 0 degrees F (-18C) grip the Oxhöft Pier in Gotenhafen (Gdynia). For the first time in four years, the captain will order the sleeping engines to start. Icebreaker ships work to carve a narrow path through the frozen Bay of Danzig to allow them passage through the winter waters of the Baltic Sea.
On the bridge, two senior officers command the ship, Friedrich Petersen, captain of the Gustloff and Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Zahn, head of the naval division of 2000 men who occupied the ship for the last 4 years. The two officers butt heads immediately and cannot agree on much. Two young captains from the local merchant marine are also on the bridge, adding their voices to the mix.
The Wilhelm Gustloff was far from ready for any such voyage. Most critically, 10 of her 22 lifeboats were missing. After 4 years as a floating barracks, they’d gone missing – requisitioned for other harbor duties. Captain Petersen ordered the crew to search the docks, rounding up boats, dinghies, anything that floated, and strapping them down on the Sun Deck. The Captain worried the unused engines would even turn over!
Down in the streets, people flooded into Gotenhafen, tired and desperate refugees waiting their turn to climb the gangplank to safety. The deep booms of the Red Army artillery could be heard in the distance, causing panic to set in amongst the crowd. Rumors spread amongst the refugees that the Russian soldiers committed unspeakable atrocities on the German people they captured. Families bartered what they had, pleading for precious boarding passes. Mothers with babies and small children were given preference.
At the docks, a mass of humanity rushed up the gangplanks and onto the Wilhelm Gustloff.
High level Nazi officers demand entry, threatening sentries with death. By nightfall, tickets and boarding passes were no longer checked as the crowd forced its way onto the docks. The Gustloff’s First Officer could no longer maintain control and count the thousands of bodies streaming onto his ship. The true number of those on board that day will never be known.
Once on the Wilhelm Gustloff, refugees had to navigate standing room only lounges and crowded passageways on every single deck. The spacious upper deck rooms were turned into infirmaries for the wounded soldiers. The Arbor was turned into a maternity ward due to the high number of pregnant women on board. Every possible space on the ship is occupied.
Wilhelm Gustloff docked at Gotenhafen (Gdynia), 1944
The Gustloff would be leaving in a small convoy of 3 other smaller ships on their way to Kiel in western Germany. With fueling complete, her Chief Engineer turned on her dormant engines for the first time since 1940. Even after being silent for so long, her engines churned to life and black smoke began belching out of her single funnel. Finally, at 12:15am, the Wilhelm Gustloff began to pull away from Oxhöft Pier.
Below deck, thousands of passengers attempt to settle in to their assigned areas. All are instructed over loudspeakers to wear the lifejackets and under no circumstances remove them. Above deck, wind and snow pelt the decks. The seas become rough as the quiet bay is left behind. Seasickness begins to set in. Unable to relieve themselves overboard, onboard toilets quickly become clogged. The growing stench is overwhelming.
Refugees find an area of the ship to hunker down for the voyage. Cabins usually assigned 4 passengers were cramped with triple that number. Hallways only 6 feet across were virtual log jams of humanity. The Gustloff’s restrooms were quickly maxed out and clogged. Excrement flowed out of the toilets and spilled to floors. Combined with the heat, sweat, and filth of those who hadn’t bathed in weeks, the smell was suffocating. Even so, it was a small price to pay for their safety.
On the bridge, heated arguments continued among the four captains.
They debated the route, the speed, and the course. One thing they all agreed on: the minimal escort provided by the German Navy was not enough. The Gustloff is accompanied only by the Hansa (another smaller ocean liner) and two aging torpedo boats. Soon the Hansa radioed that she was having engine trouble and had to turn back. Next, the TF-1 torpedo boat had the same issue and also had to turn around. It was now just the WG and Löwe left to finish the journey.
Petersen and Zahn argue over their course to Kiel. They could sail close to the shore, where there was danger of mines, but the waters were too shallow for Russian subs. OR they could use the shipping channel where there would be no mines, but Soviet submarines could be lurking. Wrongly assuming that submarines could not operate in such foul winter weather, Captain Peterson ordered them into the open channel.
They next argued over running lights, ON to avoid collisions with other ships or OFF to avoid detection by submarines. Zahn wanted to follow standard war protocol and run dark. However they’d received a radio message that a convoy of minesweepers was also in the channel, so the Captain ordered the lights turned on. Unfortunately, a second radio message, stating that enemy submarines were also spotted in the area, did to not get through due to the storm.
Approximately 1½ hours after leaving port, the Wilhelm Gustloff settles into a course farther away from the coast in a mine swept channel – Lane No. 58. They also decided that rather than a zig-zag pattern to confuse subs, the ship would run a straight line course to reach Kiel as fast as possible. All of these decisions sealed the Wilhelm Gustloff’s fate.
The weather deteriorated as the two ships pressed on. Heavy snowfall was mixed with hail pelting the ships. The wind howled at near gale strength. Foam from breaking waves is blown onto anyone standing on the decks, where the temperature is far below zero. As cold as the weather was, few could stand for long on her decks.
In the meantime, Soviet submarine captain Alexander Marinesko slips the S-13 into the Gulf of Danzig. Having patrolled with other Russian submarines off the coast, opportunities were scant. Aware of German activity around ports in the Danzig , he hopes for better odds. Given the heavily mined Gulf, it is a calculated risk for the bold captain and his crew of 47 men.
Despite the bitter cold outside, heat and humidity from thousands of bodies rises below decks. Many ignore the Captain’s order to keep lifejackets on – a risk they’re willing to take for some comfort. Cries from the thousands of miserable and unhappy children fill the corridors. Soup and sandwiches are offered to those able to keep it down. Some are even lulled to sleep. The Hitler Suite, meant for the Führer, is occupied by the Gotenhafen mayor and his family.
Sometime before 8pm, the first officer on the S-13 submarine spots lights on the distant horizon.
Captain Marinesko quickly makes his way up to the conning tower. When the snow clears, he spots the silhouette of an enormous ocean liner, with its lights showing! He decided with excitement that it was about 20,000 tons. He felt quite sure it was packed with German men who had trampled Mother Russia and were now fleeing for their lives. It had to be sunk.
Over the next two hours, Marinesko shadows the Wilhelm Gustloff, carefully planning his attack. His crew begins grinning at one another, sensing that their luck is about to change for the better. Finally, the Captain orders the S-13 to dive.
On the bridge of the Gustloff, no one is aware of the danger lurking in the dark, frigid waters. The sensing equipment on board the Löwe has frozen and is useless. German music playing through the ship’s speakers is interrupted at 8pm. Adolf Hitler, live on the radio, makes a typical, impassioned speech commemorating the 12th anniversary of the Nazi Party. It echoes throughout the corridors of the ship, providing little comfort to the fleeing refugees.
The S-13 overtakes the Wilhelm Gustloff on her port side in the shallower water near the coast. This was a daring move as they risked running aground. Minutes after the Führer’s speech ends, around 9pm, Marinesko gives the command: “Fire all Torpedoes!” Each of the 4 torpedoes has been hand painted with a dedication: 1: FOR THE MOTHERLAND, 2: FOR STALIN, 3: FOR THE SOVIET PEOPLE, 4: FOR LENINGRAD
Depiction of MS Wilhelm Gustloff and Soviet submarine S-13
Three torpedoes speed toward the WG. One torpedo – the one FOR STALIN – remains behind, primed and stuck in its launching tube – threatening to blow up the submarine. Thanks to the quick and delicate actions of the crew, it is disarmed in time.
On board the WG, cheerful music resumes from the ship’s speakers – accompanied by the continued whimpering of unhappy children. On the bridge, a round of cognac is poured to toast their good fortune so far. And then at 9:16pm, the 1st torpedo strikes the front of the ship, blowing a hole in the port bow. Moments later, the second hits where the empty swimming pool is located. Finally, the third scores a direct hit in the engine room below the single funnel.
Passengers and crew are thrown off their feet. Those killed instantly are the lucky ones.
The 1st torpedo struck the forward crew cabins and cargo areas in the bow, a huge water plume shooting up in the night air. Many crew members were killed instantly. Survivors thought they had hit a mine. The first reports of damage come to the bridge. Petersen orders the watertight doors closed, sealing off those crew still alive in the bow. Unfortunately, they were the few on board who knew how to operate the lifeboats.
The 2nd torpedo hits at the drained swimming pool which had become the accommodations for the Women’s Naval Auxiliary. The blast creates a shower of splintered mosaic tiles, cutting the girls to pieces where they slept. The large glass ceiling over the pool shatters, raining down shards onto the women. For the first time in years, water rushes into the pool. But this time, floating corpses and life jackets swim in the icy water, turned red with blood. Only two of the 373 girls will escape alive.
The 3rd torpedo hits on the engine room, knocking out engines and power. Lights go out throughout the ship and communications go dead. Not that there is silence. The mayhem of screaming, shouting, and rushing water fills the corridors. Passengers can already feel the ship list to port. Emergency lights flicker on – illuminating only indescribable chaos.
Captain Peterson tries to call the engine room, but there is no reply. The radio room operator has to use an emergency transmitter to transmit an SOS. With a range of just 2,000 meters, only the escort ship Löwe receives it. Without delay, the Löwe turns about towards the damaged ship, and re-transmits the Gustloff’s SOS.
Thousands do not survive the frenzied charge up to the stairs to the decks.
Appeals from the P.A. system to maintain calm and orderly are ignored amongst the alarm sirens. Stairwells instantly jam as mobs of people attempt to escape the rushing waters. To trip and fall means certain death from trampling. Many trapped in the throng can barely breathe – unable to move in any direction. The luckier ones find ways to the upper decks.
On deck, the poor weather and lack of trained crew exacerbates everything. The ship lists more and more to port with each minute. People slide off the icy decks and into the freezing sea. Lifeboats are frozen to their davits. Crew smash at them with bare hands trying to free them. Crew members and civilians alike attempt to free the ship’s lifeboats.
Once one is freed, there’s a mad rush to get on, while others jumped in from upper decks. Several lifeboats capsize into the water, dumping their people into the cold Baltic Sea. Others have cables snap and fall.Some armed officers use their pistols to keep control, shooting in the air to get attention. Only one lifeboat is ever lowered correctly.
The glass enclosed promenade deck is jammed with desperate women and children. People trapped behind the glass struggle to break it before they drown. The windows should slide down, but are frozen shut. Survivors in boats watch through the glass as the water rises and claims hundreds. Other gun shots begin to ring out as Nazi officers took their families into their cabins to kill them.
The Löwe launches her few lifeboats and begins to pick up survivors. Her SOS was picked up by the cruiser Admiral Hipper, which steams in their direction. The Wilhelm Gustloff is listing heavily onto her port side. The infirmary wounded, unable to get off their beds, slide across rooms and into walls, unable to save themselves as the water rushes in to claim them.
On the submarine S-13, Captain Marinesko watches through the periscope.
As the Admiral Hipper arrives, the Gustloff’s funnel was almost touching the water. All 4 captains abandon the bridge. The Wilhelm Gustloff was in her final moments. Thousands of screams filled the night air. Seventy minutes after the torpedoes struck, the WG slips below the surface of the icy Baltic, taking thousands of trapped souls with it. Eerily, the emergency lights and wailing sirens drown out as it descends. The Gustloff was gone, taking 9,343 souls with her in 70 minutes. 1,252 somehow survived.
Those left flailing in the cold stormy waters of the Baltic don’t last long. Many try to grasp at lifeboats or rafts – only to be beaten off by desperate occupants. Bodies of victims, buoyant in their lifejackets, bobbed on the sea. Corpses of younger children float upside down, as the ill-fitting military lifejackets were not designed for them. Both Captain Petersen and Captain Zahn survive.
With the Gustloff gone, the Löwe continues to rescue survivors (472). It’s no easy task as waves were several meters high. Another torpedo boat T-36 arrives and starts rescuing survivors (564). After picking up the sound of the S-13 on sonar, the captain of the Admiral Hipper decides to flee rather than risk getting sunk. The captain of the T-36 orders depth charges dropped in an attempt to destroy the killer sub.
Satisfied with the kill, Captain Marinesko and the S-13 submarine are able to slip away into the deep Baltic Sea. Ironically, the captain had a history with alcohol and was dishonorably discharged before the year was out.
Perhaps because after four long years of war, costing the lives of so many soldiers and civilians on both sides, the sinking of the MS Wilhem Gustloff, though tragic in its scope, did not garner many international news headlines. The Nazis did not publicize the sinking for fear of its affect on morale. By now, the Allies had regained France and Poland and were advancing on Berlin from both sides. As the decades pass, its place in history is all but forgotten, except of course, by the German people.
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Depiction of the Middle Ages Black Death – Bubonic Plague
The Bubonic Plague, better known as the Black Death, was one of the worst catastrophes in recorded history. From 1347 to 1351, it ravaged kingdoms across Europe, eradicating one- third of Europe’s inhabitants. It destroyed a higher proportion of the population than any other single known event since. At that time in the Middle Ages, no one was sure what caused the plague. The living were barely able enough to bury the dead. Over the next four years, the Black Death rampaged through Europe, killing more than 20 million.
The Bubonic Plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 trading ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. Sicilians were horrified to discover most sailors onboard were dead, and those still alive were covered in putrid black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicily hastily ordered the fleet of “Death Ships” out of the harbor … but it was too late.
Europeans had heard disturbing rumors of a “Great Pestilence” spreading across the trade routes to the Far East. In the early 1340s, the disease had already struck China, India, and Persia. It may have originated in the Qinghai Plateau of Central Asia. After landing in Sicily, the Black Death creeped northwest into Italy, Spain, France and England. The plague then spread northeast into the Germanic states, then on to Scandinavia and even Russia. It’s thought the Black Death spread at a rate of about eight miles a day, the rate an average horse-drawn wagon could travel in a single day.
Medieval physicians noted it took as little as 5 days to cause death.
And these were 5 very bad days. European doctors were ill equipped to deal with the Black Death. Swellings in the groin and armpits grew from the size of an egg to an apple, becoming infected plague-boils, called buboes. The disease attacks the body’s lymphatic system, causing swelling in the lymph nodes clustered there. Blood and pus rush out of the swollen boils when they burst, followed by a host of unpleasant symptoms—fever, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible pain—and in short order, death. The infection spreads quickly to the lungs causing pneumonia, and in some cases sepsis.
Medieval folk, both kings and peasants, believed the Black Death was a curse from God. There was no known remedy, but people wanted something – anything. Physicians relied on crude treatments like bloodletting and boil-lancing. Doctors wore long-beaked plague masks, filled with dried flower petals to mask the bad air surrounding the patients. The superstitious looked to gypsy practices like burning herbs and bathing in rosewater.
Meanwhile, panicked, healthy people ran from the sick. Some doctors refused to see them; priests refused to administer last rites; and shopkeepers shut their doors. The only true remedy for the plague was to run away from it. Many fled cities for the countryside. Some, so desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick loved ones on their death beds. But even in the countryside, they could not escape the Black Death, as it affected livestock as well.
The Bubonic Plague was a quick, indiscriminate contagion, merely touching the clothes of the sick appeared to pass the disease. It was also terrifyingly efficient. People who were perfectly healthy one day could be dead the next. The elderly and the children, male and female, royalty and peasants – ALL were affected. No one had immunity. Many wealthy convents and monasteries lost more than half of their members, with some closing down. There were shortages of people to till the farms and tend cattle and sheep.
This pandemic was caused not by a virus, like COVID-19, but rather a bacteria, Yersinia pestis.
The plague bacteria was identified in the 1890s, connecting it to animal fleas. It was transmitted by, of all things, the bite of the fleas of rats. And there was no shortage of rats in the Middle Ages, especially on trading ships. Its lethality arose from the onslaught of two phases: first bubonic, transmitted by rat fleas, and then pneumonic (transmitted airborne, person to person). It’s worth noting that modern antibiotics can easily combat the plague.
50 million people may have died over the course of its 4 year run. It killed from 30-60% of the population in both rural and urban areas. Some communities were wiped out; others abandoned. The term ‘quarantine’ originated in Venice, based on a 40-day Biblical period of isolation. Sailors were kept on board their ships and not allowed to leave. Cities that managed to keep the plague at bay were those that implemented strict quarantines, city gate & dock controls, health passports, and spy networks to signal when plague erupted in other cities.
Survivors decried the abandonment of the sick, and labelled clergymen and doctors who escaped the plague as cowards. They praised those who stayed on to nurse the afflicted, often losing their lives in so doing. Looking for a scapegoat, some municipal governments, bishops, and kings accused Jews of spreading the Black Death by poisoning food and water.
They massacred entire communities of Jews for the supposed crime of causing the plague.
Because they didn’t understand the biology, many people believed the Black Death was divine punishment—retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, and even fornication. By this logic, the only way to beat the plague was to win God’s forgiveness for their community. How to do this? They purged their communities of ‘heretics’ and other troublemakers—like the aforementioned Jews.
The beaked mask of the Plague Doctor
Some wealthy men joined processions of Flagellants,traveling from town to town, engaging in public displays of penance and self-punishment. They would beat themselves bare chested with leather straps, studded with metal, while the townspeople watched. For a month, the flagellants repeated this ritual 3 times a day. They would then move on to the next town and begin the process all over again.
The plague never really ended and returned in smaller outbreaks decades later. There have actually been 3 Bubonic Plague Pandemics. The first was an international epidemic in the sixth century AD, the Plague of Justinian. Second, starting with the Black Death, then breaking out every 20 or so years, until it disappeared after the Great Plague of London in 1665. Third, the disease broke out once more in Asia in the 1890s, where it’s still found in animals today.
One can surely expect that our current public health situation has improved to such an extent as to eradicate medieval bubonic plague, especially through our sanitary regulations and modern vaccines. Right? While antibiotics are available to treat the Black Death, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are still up to 1,000 cases of plague globally every year. An outbreak in the city of Surat in western India in 1994 caused mass panic in the country. 700 were infected and 52 people died. With limited antibiotics available, 300,000 residents fled the city in just 2 days. Still, because of the rarity of the disease, no vaccine has ever been developed.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
Over 100 Years ago during World War I, the famous & haunting poem IN FLANDERS FIELDS was written. It was penned by 41 year old Canadian Physician & Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae in May 1915. He was moved to compose the poem after the hellish Second Battle of Ypresin Belgium. It was in Ypres that poison mustard gas was first used by the German military against the Allies – in the trenches surrounding No Man’s Land on the Western Front. He presided over the burial service of a close friend and fellow soldier, Alexis Helmer. McCrae noticed that red poppy flowers quickly grew on the thousands of fresh graves in Flanders’ fields. He took out his pen and pad, then wrote this brief yet moving poem:
World War I soldier pays his respect to a fallen comrade In Flanders Field
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
* * *
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
* * *
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
His poem was published later that year in 1915 and became one of the most popular and quoted poems of the 20th century. Over 115,000 Canadian, British, French and German soldiers died in the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium. John McCrea himself would die of pneumonia in 1918, just before the war ended, and was buried in France with full military honors.
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I would be over 40 Million souls – British, French, Canadian, Australian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Russian, Italian, Turkish and American.The red poppy became the popular remembrance symbol for those who gave their lives in this war … and sadly the Second World War soon to come.
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19th Century Journalist Nellie Bly, 1889 colorized
Nellie Bly was the penname of the daring 18th century journalist and entrepreneur Elizabeth Cochrane. By the end of her long career, she had exposed the deplorable conditions of women’s insane asylums, circumnavigated the globe ala Jules Verne, reported on women’s suffrage, and even ran her late husband’s Iron Factory. Who was this amazing woman who accomplished so much when women of her century rarely did?
Born in 1865, she experienced firsthand how difficult it was for women to be self-sufficient in the 1800’s. She enrolled as a teenager at the Illinois Normal School – a teachers’ college. After just one semester, she had to abandon the effort when her divorced mother had no more money for her tuition. This however, was fine with the rebellious Elizabeth as she wished bea Writer, most certainly not a teacher.
In 1885, she wrote a decidedly fiery Letter-to-the-Editor of the Pittsburg Dispatch, denouncing in no uncertain terms a sexist article calling any working women a “MONSTROSITY OF NATURE!” The paper’s Editor was impressed with the anonymous writer’s passion and spunk. He ran an advertisement asking her to come forward and identify herself. Never shy, Elizabeth marched down to the newspaper’s office and pleaded her case loudly to the Editor. He promptly hired her for $5/week. She decided to take the penname Nellie Bly, after a popular song of the day by Stephen Foster.
Nellie began her career with her typical gusto, writing articles aimed at social injustice, including deplorable state of labor laws for working women. After just one year, her boss sent her on assignment to Mexico as a foreign correspondent. There, she managed to exposed rampant political corruption. The Mexican government was not grateful, however, and had her promptly expelled from the country. Frustrated with her Pittsburgh paper, she moved alone to a much bigger market, New York City. She was still only 23.
Within six months, Joseph Pulitzer hired her at The New York World.
The assignment he had in mind for her would prove daunting. Bly feigned mental illness in order to be committed to the notorious Blackwell Island Woman’s Insane Asylum. She bravely lived there for 10 LONG DAYS, experiencing firsthand the physical cruelty of the uncaring staff, cold baths, and forced meals of rotted food. Her subsequent article, 10 Days in a Mad-House, prompted public outrage and political action, eventually leading to badly needed reforms at the institution.
Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell’s Island? I said I could and I would. And I did.
Nellie Bly
For the next two years, Nellie Bly continued to work undercover exposing injustices and corruption where ever she found them. Among her most daring exploits, she arranged to be thrown into a New York City jail. There she suffered and later exposed the cruel treatment of female inmates by the male guards. She next worked in a textile factory sweatshop for weeks. Nellie then wrote about the horrid treatment of women workers by the greedy owners and leering foremen. She wrote shocking exposes in the New York World, again leading to long overdue political reforms.
Her most famous exploit was when she mimicked Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days.
Nellie Bly during her around the world tour, 1890
It was Nellie Bly’s own idea. She became an international celebrity when she circled the globe alone by ship, train, horse, and balloon in 1889. Nellie took with her just the dress she was wearing, an overcoat, several changes of underwear, and toiletries in a small travel bag. She managed to do it in just 72 DAYS, well ahead of Verne’s male hero, Phileas Fogg. For a woman to do this alone without a male traveling companion was unprecedented. Millions followed her telegraphed journey as she sent back correspondence. It resulting in international fame for her, and vastly increased newspaper sales for Mr. Pulitzer. She came back to the U.S. a famous woman across America.
In 1895, Nellie Bly shocked her fans when she gave up reporting and wed industrialist Robert Seaman. With typical Bly impulsiveness, she married him after just a few days. She was just 31, while he was 72! Their marriage was amicable though and it provided her the financial security she could never achieve as a single woman in the 1800’s. After his death, she stepped up and ran his business, Iron Clad Manufacturing, and in fact improved upon it. Nellie turned the business into a multi-million-dollar company. She continued her social reforms in her own way – by paying both female and male workers an equal living wage.
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman AKA Nellie Bly, 1920
Just prior to World War I, Nellie moved to Austria where, due to the global war, the government forced her to stay for the entire duration until 1918. On her arrival back in the US, she decided to return to her first love, Journalism. Joining the New York Journal, she reported on Women’s Suffrage, labor unrest, and similar causes. She never quite returned to the celebrity status she enjoyed while in her twenties. Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman remained a hard-working journalist until her death of pneumonia in New York City in 1922 at only 57.
Throughout her remarkable life, Nellie Bly exposed countless corruptions and injustices towards women, the sick, and those living in poverty. Her bravery and courage opened the profession to new generations of female journalists for decades and even centuries to come. Her heroic life was turned into a Broadway musical, opera and several movies including, The Adventures of Nellie Bly, starring actress Linda Purl. In 1998, the National Women’s Hall of Fame inducted Elizabeth Cochrane (aka Nellie Bly) posthumously.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
The Aral Sea is actually situated in Central Asia, between Northern Uzbekistan and Southern Kazakhstan. Once the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world, the vanishing Aral Sea is nearly empty now, thanks to a decades-old, poorly-engineered, Soviet-begun desert irrigation program.
The Aral Sea once had a surface area of over 26,000 square miles (67,300 square km). It was circled with booming Kazak and Uzbek towns living off a thriving fishing industry of carp, flounder and catfish. It provided over 40,000 jobs and supplied the entire Soviet Union with a sixth of its fish – but no more.
The Aral Sea is fed by two of Central Asia’s mightiest rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, both originating in the snowy Himalayas to the south, before flowing north and crossing a desert to the Aral Sea. In the 1960s, the Soviet government, led byNikita Khrushchev, decided to turn that vast desert steppe into new farmland, like southern California. So over the next decade, they built an enormous irrigation network, including 45 dams, 80 reservoirs and 20,000 miles of canals. All to irrigate the Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan desert, turning it into sprawling fields of cotton and wheat.
But the Soviet system was very poorly engineered from the start.
Much of the water meant for the Aral Sea leaked out of the canals and never made it’s journey north. So not only was water being diverted to farmland at the expense of the Sea, the majority was soaked up by the desert and wasted. Under normal conditions, the Aral Sea gets about 1/5 of its water from rainfall, with the rest from those 2 big rivers. Evaporation caused the water level to decrease faster than the amount that trickled in, causing the sea to slowly dry up.
In the decades that followed, the Aral Sea was slowly starved of its water source and reduced to a handful of smaller lakes, with a volume 1/10 the original size. As a consequence, the salinity of those remaining lakes increased due to evaporation, causing almost all fish that either survived the shrinking, or salt-tolerant fish that had been reintroduced, in the 1990’s to die off.
As a result, millions of fish perished over the decades. Coastlines receded miles and miles from the fishing towns, leaving boats to rust on the now dry sea bed. Those few Kazak’s and Uzbek’s who remained were plagued by dust storms that contained the toxic fertilizers and pesticides used by the Soviets in the desert. Large herds of antelope dependent on the sea vanished. Grown children of the fishermen abandoned the sea in search of city jobs elsewhere.
Where once you sailed from town to town, now you could drive across!
Fisheries and the villages that depended on them collapsed like Gold Rush ghost towns. The increasingly salty water became polluted with the dust blown fertilizer and pesticides. The salty dust also blew off the dry lake bed and settled onto farm fields, degrading the soil. Farmlands had to be flushed with greater volumes of river water to compensate. It was a vicious cycle the Soviet government was unwilling to stop … and, since its fall in 1991, Uzbekistan has since continued.
Other dramatic consequences include the response by Mother Nature to man’s intervention. The loss of such a large body of water made winters colder and summers drier. The blowing contaminated dust from the exposed lake bed, became a public health hazard for the millions of people still in the region. These include a rise in infant mortality rates, a decrease in over-all life expectancy, and an increase in kidney and liver disease, respiratory infections, and birth defects.
By the year 2000, the lake had separated into the smaller North Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and the larger South Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The southern Sea had further split into western and eastern lung-shaped lobes as it continued to dry up, first in the eastern lobe, then the western one, like an organ with cancer. Moynaq harbor in Uzbekistan had a thriving fishing industry that employed thousands. Now it lies 90 km (56 mi) from the shrinking shore. Fishing boats lie abandoned on the dry sea bed, sitting there for over 20 years.
By 2001, the southern lobes’ water connection had been severed. The shallower eastern part retreated rapidly when drought cut off the flow of the Amu Darya river completely. In 2014, the eastern lobe of the South Aral Sea completely disappeared. The remaining western lobe is a salty toxic turquoise instead of deep blue. 90% of the once massive lake is now gone.
Satellite images shows that the southern basin of the once huge lake is now almost dry.
The Aral Sea before (left image) and after (right image) Soviet intervention
In a last-ditch effort to save the smaller north lake, Kazakhstan and the World Bank built a dam between the northern and southern parts of the Aral Sea. The Kok-Aral dam, finished in 2005, prevents flow out of the North Aral into the lower South Aral. The dam has led fisheries in the North Aral to rebound as water levels rose again, though to the detriment of the South Aral. Uzbekistan has left the South Aral Sea to its deadly fate and shows no sign of abandoning its overuse of the two Himalayan rivers for farm irrigation. Instead, it has opened up the dry lake bed for foreign oil exploration and tourism.
What lessons does the human manipulation of the Aral Sea teach? For the future, the difficulty lies in mankind being capable of predicting the ecological consequences of such massive projects before we undertake them. Our ecosystem is far more fragile than we think. The current worsening climate change, with its decades-long global droughts, proves it. It must be the forefront of any such decision we make BEFORE we commit to such large scale actions. For these profit-driven, well-intentioned, though ill-conceived projects too often result in even larger, deadly repercussions for planet Earth.
To quote American orator, Robert Ingersoll: “In nature there are no rewards, only consequences.“
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
On Monday March 1st, 1954, at 6:45am, 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.
Above ground detonation of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific
From 1959 to 1961, the Chinese people were decimated, not by a SARS or coronavirus, but by a devastating modern day famine. The death toll, concealed by the Communist government at the time, is still a matter of debate. The consensus however is that at least 30 million people died, though some estimates take it as high as 50 MILLION. The death toll is staggering, greater than ALL the people killed in World War I. The root cause of the Chinese famine remains a taboo subject in the People’s Republic of China even 60 years later.
With its huge population and historically agricultural economy, China is no stranger to famines. Its food production is easily susceptible to droughts, floods, population growth, and wars. The 3 year Great Chinese Famine of 1958-61 however, was deadlier than any in China’s long history. The causes and numbers of dead have long been hidden by the communists. Though exacerbated by drought, the GCF was worsened by the strict actions of Chairman Mao and the government in Beijing.
According to the Chinese Communist Party, the GCF was caused by a string of natural disasters, referred to rather innocently as the “Three Years of Difficulties.” In 1959, the Yellow (Huang Ho) River massively flooded, causing ruined crops and thousands of deaths. Almost 100 million acres of farmland was destroyed. The flood was followed by a severe drought, several typhoons, more flooding, and a plague of insects. In 1960, the prolonged drought caused crop failures in 6 provinces, cutting their food production by more than half.
China’s coastal and southern provinces also bore the brunt of those major typhoons. In 1961, the northern provinces suffered another drought, while the south endured more river flooding. The bad weather and climate were fairly localized however. Only 10% of Chinese farmland was destroyed. While there is no doubt all these natural disasters had an impact on China’s agriculture, communist mismanagement and bad Maoist policies were far more responsible for the famine to come.
In 1959, Chairman Mao launched his “Great Leap Forward.”
This was a mass mobilization of China’s huge population to achieve, in just a few years, the economic growth it took the West decades to accomplish. Mao Zedong believed Josef Stalin, who had stressed steel production was the key to national success. Peasants were forced to abandon private farming; and agricultural communes planted less grain. Tens of millions of peasants were ordered to mine iron ore, cut trees for charcoal, build clay furnaces, and make steel. This ill-conceived effort produced mostly brittle cast iron, unfit for even hand tools.
The population now ate in commune kitchens, pots and pans were confiscated, and much farming was simply stopped. Local Chinese officials exaggerated the effects of those natural disasters in order to justify their low farm yields and appease the Beijing government. At the same time, provinces reported record grain hauls — greatly exaggerating their figures to meet the high government quotas.
Under Chairman Mao, Chinese farmers were required to give all their grain to the government. Some of this grain was then ‘redistributed’ back to the farmers as their food source. Most, however, was either sent to the biggest Chinese cities, like Shanghai and Beijing, or sold as exports to create the illusion of superior Red China policies.
With the state commandeering all the grain, peasant communes were left with not enough food of their own. Some communes didn’t ration, believing the government would simply send them the promised food relief. That did not happen. In reality, grain harvests plummeted due to the shift in manpower to steel production. By 1959, food shortages outside the cities reached a critical point. Millions in the countryside began starving to death, with famine in a third of China’s provinces.
Chairman Mao then hid or ignored the failings of his own policies.
Mao’s response was to attack any critics, rather than solve the food problem. History was rewritten by the party and the truth covered up. Taking away private farming, forcing peasants into communes, preferentially supplying food to large cities and continuing grain exports were all Communist Party acts. To make matters worse, in never acknowledging the Great Chinese Famine, China’s rulers failed to ask for any foreign food aid.
In some communes, a third of the inhabitants die of painful starvation. Survivors are beaten by the military for refusing to hand over what little food they have, or for stealing from the government simply to survive. Millions of Chinese were dying of hunger. Villages became ghost towns — no chickens, no dogs, even the trees were stripped of bark and eaten. Those who complained, or tried to leave their province, were sent by the Communist Party to forced labor camps.
Without a doubt, the drought in 1960 didn’t help, but caused only a fraction of the nationwide famine. Meanwhile, in the countryside, the peasants starved. Many resorted to eating grass, leather, even sawdust and dirt. Dogs, cats, rats, mice and insects were all eaten until they too were gone. The birth rate sank as malnourished women could not carry to term. Insanity and suicide became common place. 2.5 million people are believed to have taken their own lives out of desperation.
Overwhelming hunger made humans behave in desperate ways, including cannibalism.
Government records reported cases where people ate dead bodies and even fought over corpses. Parents ate their own children. Children ate their parents. Cannibalism was punished by the authorities, but continued nonetheless. There were also many cases of child abandonment and even child selling. Some starving parents killed their children or elderly relatives to relieve them of their misery.
Movement out of affected regions was banned by the military, while communications were cutoff or censored. The Communist Party arrested or killed those who sought to tell the truth. Propaganda posters celebrated Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward, showing bountiful harvests, happy peasants and fat livestock. The reality throughout China, of course, was very different.
No one imagined there was still grain sitting in the city warehouses, that the government was in fact still exporting. The Red China government concealed the famine, both from its own people and the world. Food supplies in the large cities then began to dwindle, causing urban death rates to double. Even these were attributed to the natural disasters.
Chinese famine peasants waiting for government food distribution
The Chinese government continued to export grain, sending 7 million tons offshore during the 3 famine years– an amount that could have saved 16 million Chinese lives. The International Red Cross offered food, but this was turned down by Beijing. Only a return to more reasonable farming policies and food distribution after 1961, including importing desperately needed grain, finally ended the GCF.
At the time, the Great Chinese Famine was virtually ignored by the international press and politicians in the US and Europe. Eyewitness stories of refugees who had fled to Hong Kong were dismissed and rarely reported during the 3 years of famine. What are we to make of the Western indifference to the suffering of Red China’s population at the time? Remember, this was at the height of the US-USSR super power Cold War. And the Red Chinese were die hard Communists.
Today’s modern China is lightyears from Chairman Mao’s.
It’s grown from its agricultural and military past into a technology and manufacturing superpower. There is hope that new generations of Chinese leaders may be willing to revisit the country’s past and acknowledge the mistakes that were made. The archives of the Chinese Communist Party will hopefully someday be opened and yield those long hidden secrets. Even then, we will perhaps never know exactly how many millions of Chinese people perished due to starvation during those three terrible years of the great famine.
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
