The Impact of "Taking Chance"

Today is Memorial Day. Two years ago I took my daughter Chloe to a Memorial Day parade and tried to give her some idea of what it was about, but as she was just 2 1/2 years old I naturally had limited success. So last evening we sat down together and watched "Taking Chance." It's a 2009 HBO film based on the true story of Marine Lt Col Michael Strobel's experience escorting the remains of Lance Corporal Chance Phelps from Dover Air Force Base to his parents' home in rural Wyoming.  Here's the trailer:




I'd seen the film before, enough to know that it was perfectly suitable for a 4 1/2 year old to watch. It contains no violence and (with one brief exception) no profanity. Chloe asked a number of questions, and periodically we'd pause the DVD while I answered them. One of them had to do with the term "service"; as in "Thank you for your service." Chloe had previously encountered the term only in the context of food service, so I had to explain the larger meaning of "service," what it means "to serve," and so on. Particularly what it means to serve in the military and, by extension, to serve one's country.

Whenever I get a little choked up about something, Chloe interprets it as sadness, and has continued to do so despite my efforts to explain that such shows of emotion often do not signify sadness.  Several times during the film she turned to me and said, "Don't be sad."

The movie had an impact on someone made of sterner stuff than myself.  Early in the Obama administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates conducted a review of the Defense Department's policy of barring media access to the military mortuary facility at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.  The media cried foul, with some charging that the policy was a politically-motivated effort to hide the human cost of war from the American public.  But the military services and a number of groups representing the families of fallen soldiers considered it almost sacrilegious to allow cameras to film the flag-draped coffins returning from overseas.  Gates ultimately decided to modify the policy so as to allow press coverage as long as a grieving family did not object.

In his memoirs, Gates wrote:

In the case of my decision on Dover, an HBO movie, Taking Chance, released in February [2009], had an important impact.  The story follows a Marine lieutenant colonel (played by Kevin Bacon) as he escorts the remains of Marine Lance Corporal Chance Phelps from Dover to his hometown in Wyoming, ordinary Americans making gestures of respect all along the way.  After seeing the film, I was resolved that we should publicly honor as many of our fallen warriors as possible, beginning at Dover.  -- Duty:  Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York, 2014), 307. 

(For more information on the film, see the  "Taking Chance" web site on HBO.)

Enduring the Unendurable: Japan's Longest Day

Reprinted with permission of World War II magazine

At noon on August 15, 1945, millions across Japan craned their ears to radios, listening in amazement to their emperor’s voice, reproduced on a 78-rpm phonograph record. Hirohito gravely read an imperial edict announcing that his government had acceded to the Allies’ demand that the Japanese military surrender unconditionally. In and of itself, this was a stunning moment. Most commoners had never heard an emperor speak. Hirohito delivered his remarks in a classical form of Japanese difficult for most of his countrymen to follow. He never used the words “defeat” or “surrender,” so many listeners did not grasp the meaning of his address. As previously authorized, an announcer afterward drove home the god-king’s stunning point. For the first time in its 2,500-year history, Japan had met defeat.

Twenty-two years later Toho Studio—which had won fans among American moviegoers with its Godzilla franchise—released Japan’s Longest Day, an account of the 24 hours that led to Hirohito’s radio broadcast. Directed by Kihachi Okamoto, a veteran of the Pacific War whose 40 films include many with World War II themes, Japan’s Longest Day—like The Longest Day, its 1962 Hollywood namesake—featured an all-star cast memorably led by Toshiro Mifune, Japan’s John Wayne. The film, closely based on fact, became Japan’s second highest grossing film of 1967, inspiring Toho to make other movies about the Japanese military during the Second World War. Japan’s Longest Day, little known in the United States, was almost unobtainable until 2006, when Wilmington, North Carolina, video distributor AnimEigo (animeigo.com) released an excellent DVD transfer.

The title refers to the gripping sequence of events between noon August 14, when Hirohito importuned his cabinet to end the war, and noon August 15, when Gyokuon-hōsō, “the Jewel Voice Broadcast,” signified the end of the Japanese empire.

In a 21-minute documentary-style open, Okamoto portrays the cabinet struggling to answer Potsdam Declaration demands for unconditional surrender, with the only alternative “prompt and utter destruction.” The cabinet splits. A pro-peace faction centers on Prime Minister Baron Kantaro Suzuki (Chishu Ryu). The diehards’ strongest voice is Japan’s war minister, General Korechika Anami (Mifune).  Reluctant at best to accept surrender, Anami argues that the Potsdam Declaration does not offer adequate assurance that the Allies will permit the emperor to the keep the throne,    The Cabinet, he insists, must force the Allies to be clear on this point. “Because if that is not the case,” the general tells the Cabinet, fist on the hilt of his long sword, “we must fight to the last man.”

Unable to decide even with Hiroshima and Nagasaki in radioactive cinders and the Soviets invading Manchuria, the cabinet finally meets with the emperor to seek resolution.  Suzuki and Anami each make their cases. As Hirohito (Hakuo Matsumoto) rises to respond, Okamoto superimposes a clock, then the film’s title. The documentary structure falls away and Japan’s Longest Day plays out as a drama inter-cutting the cabinet and emperor in their final deliberations, the push to record and broadcast the surrender edict, and hardcore militarists plotting to keep the speech from reaching the Japanese people.

“It is impossible to continue to prosecute this war,” Hirohito tells the cabinet, voice halting as he tries to control his emotions. “No matter what happens to me . . . my people . . . save my people.  I can no longer endure letting them suffer any longer.” Kihachi photographs this scene carefully, not revealing Hirohito’s face. Besides showing deference to the emperor, still on the throne at the time of the film’s release, this framing focuses our attention on Anami’s reaction to his sacred leader’s declaration. When the rest of the cabinet is bursting into tears, the dry-eyed Anami, who knows of the would-be coup, wears an expression of austere resignation. His heart is with the hard-core militarists, but to join the resistance would be to defy his emperor, and he is too much the man of tradition to do so.

Over the next two hours, characters race one another and time. The cabinet wrangles over the language of the edict the emperor will sign and record for broadcast. A cadre of staff-level officers deduces what is underway and plots a coup d’état. Commanders at two key air bases, Atsugi and Kodama, vow to fight on by sending kamikazes against an American fleet off the coast. Anami, after sternly instructing his staff to obey the emperor’s will, goes into foreboding seclusion.

Okamoto’s juxtapositions can be startling. Civilians, including many schoolchildren, throng an airfield to sing an anthem of support for pilots preparing to fly to their deaths. The song continues as the perspective cuts to officials placing the finished edict before the emperor, who signs it. The recording session takes place; the emperor’s men hide the disk at the Imperial Household Agency. The plotters invoke the impending kamikaze attacks as they plead with General Takeshi Mori (Shogo Shimada), commander of the Imperial Guard Division, to join their coup. Rebuffed, the conspirators murder Mori, forge orders in his name, and transmit them to the empire’s remaining forces. Imperial Guard detachments surround the palace and ransack the royal household looking for Hirohito’s surrender recording.

The coup begins to fall apart. The guardsmen cannot find the record. The forged orders’ origins come to light. General Shizuichi Tanaka (Kenjiro Ishiyama), commander of the Eastern District Army, arrives at the palace to stop the plot for good. In counterpoint, Anami, alone but for two young subordinates, resolutely prepares to commit seppuku—self-disembowelment. He tells his companions, who are there to witness his suicide, that they must help to rebuild Japan. “Each and every Japanese must stand by their station, live on, and work earnestly,” Anami urges the pair. “In no other way can the nation be rebuilt.”

Anami kills himself. Separately, so do the plotters, whose bodies are on screen as we hear the announcer’s voice introducing the emperor’s recording. Japan’s Longest Day ends not with an outright rejection of militarism—70 years on, Japan has yet to come to terms with what its aggression wrought—but with the suggestion that for a new Japan to rise the old Japan had to die.

War is Rude: Mrs. Miniver

Reprinted with permission of World War II Magazine

 

Mrs. Miniver tells the story of life in the U.K. 1939-1941 experienced, as the opening crawl explains, by an “average English middle class family”—which just happens to be able to afford servants and a spacious residence whose lawn extends to a dock on the Thames River. Shot in Hollywood starting on November 11, 1941, and released in June 1942, the MGM film became that year’s highest grossing picture and garnered six Academy awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Actress (Greer Garson in the title role), and Best Supporting Actress (Teresa Wright). Its appeal has endured; the American Film Institute ranks the film 40th on its list of “America’s most inspiring movies.”
 

Based on Jan Struther’s 1940 bestseller Mrs. Miniver, a compendium of anecdotal British newspaper columns, the movie has only tenuous ties to the book, whose arc barely reaches the war’s outbreak. Working with six screenwriters, director Wyler extended Struther’s timeline to incorporate Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain.

At the outset, Kay Miniver (Garson), husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon), and eldest son Vin (Richard Ney) are—as that crawl puts it—among England’s “happy, careless people . . . in that happy, easy-going England that was so soon to be fighting desperately for her way of life and for life itself.” Even when war breaks out the Minivers’ comfortable lives change little, though Vin does become an RAF fighter pilot. Reality intrudes only when Clem sails his motorboat to join a  flotilla that—offscreen—rescues the British army from Dunkirk.

While Clem is busy across the Channel, a downed German pilot (Helmut Dantine) finds his way into the Miniver home. The screenwriters, responding to Americans’ increasing admiration for England, reworked this sequence several times. In a draft predating Pearl Harbor, Clem is present; the German, wounded and frightened, yields to Kay’s entreaty to give himself up and get medical attention. But in a post-December 7 version, Clem is absent, the German has a pistol, and Kay clearly in peril. And the finished film portrays the flyer as a fanatic. He holds Kay at gunpoint, demanding food he wolfs down like a wild animal before fainting from blood loss. Barely rattled, she takes away the pistol and phones the police. When the pilot revives, too weak to be dangerous, Kay sympathetically tends him. He’ll soon be “wonderfully looked after in a hospital,” she says. “The war won’t last forever.”

Mrs. Miniver’s trademark benevolence enrages the German. “We will bomb your cities,” he storms. “Rotterdam we destroy in two hours. Thirty thousand in two hours. And we will do the same here!” This is unspeakably rude (as well as inaccurate, since the Rotterdam bombings claimed only 884 people) and Mrs. Miniver slaps the brute. No sooner have the bobbies collected their prisoner than Clem chugs up to the Miniver dock. His Dunkirk circuit has battered his boat. Nonetheless he behaves much as a man just back from a particularly grueling business trip. Clem greets his family, falls asleep, and upon waking ten hours later asks if news of the Dunkirk evacuation is in the papers. It is, Kay says.
 

“Thank heavens,” Clem replies. “I shan’t have to tell you about it.” And he doesn’t.

Neither does Mrs. Miniver mention her adventure, until the household cook interrupts to announce that she has no ham for Mr. Miniver’s breakfast, explaining to Mrs. Miniver: “You gave it all to that German pilot.”  Not a problem, Mrs. Miniver replies; Mr. Miniver likes bacon, too. Naturally Clem asks what German pilot, and in a playful scene Kay treats the episode in an elaborately coy manner that is utterly typical of the film. 

Come what may, the Minivers’ lives remain idyllic. Yes, there are air raids, but the family hunkers in its Anderson shelter and Clem talks about how much he likes Alice in Wonderland. Vin weds the lovely Carol Beldon (Teresa Wright), adding another Mrs. Miniver to the household—and not incidentally a status dimension to the film. Carol’s grandmother is Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty), a local aristocrat who frequently sniffs about the “middle classes” in a successful bid by the filmmakers to make the unpretentious but well-to-do Minivers more sympathetic to egalitarian American moviegoers. In the same vein, the film generally conveys that in wartime England class distinctions do not matter. Even Lady Beldon unbends; at the annual village floral competition—which by tradition she always wins—the grand dame permits a kindly stationmaster’s entry, dubbed the “Mrs. Miniver rose,” to claim first prize.

Tragedy invades only near the conclusion. Just hours after the floral show an air raid claims several villagers, including the stationmaster and Vin’s new bride, Carol. At a memorial service in a heavily damaged church, the Vicar (Henry Wilcoxon) delivers a powerful sermon. In the October 1941 shooting script, his homily was the 91st Psalm, which presents the Almighty as a refuge and a fortress. But after Pearl Harbor, a stirring peroration was inserted just after the scripture passage, composed by Wyler and Wilcoxon just hours before the scene was filmed. In it, the Vicar laments the dead innocents, declaring that theirs is a war in which everyone must share the burden of freedom’s struggle against tyranny. “This is the people’s war,” he concludes. “It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it, then! Fight it with all that is in us!  And may God defend the right.” The camera holds on Mr. and Mrs. Miniver, resolute and dry-eyed, as the congregation sings “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” It then pans upward toward a gaping hole in the church roof.  The camera then dollies toward it, enlarging the hole so that the audience gets the full effect when a squadron of Spitfires passes overhead, flying toward the foe.

The film works because strong performances—especially Garson’s—redeem preposterous characters, and the Vicar’s concluding oration has enduring power. However, Mrs. Miniver presents war more as a case of dreadful manners than as something truly fearful: a sanitized way to promote American solidarity with Britain without hinting at how horrible that “people’s war” would be.

American Iliad: The Sword of General Lee

Millions of American love the Civil War. Last summer I began work on “American Iliad,” a new regular column in The Civil War Monitor that examines one of the major reasons that they do. Some episodes from the conflict are so compelling that readers know them by heart. These episodes transcend mere history because human beings are story-telling creatures who make sense of the world through stories. They have an out-sized importance because they reveal what we want to believe, not just about the nature of the war, but also about the nature of life. Just as the ancient Greeks conveyed profound truths about the human condition through myth, so too does our national myth, the American Iliad. Each column explores a classic story from this myth and discusses the reason it continues to exert such a powerful grip on our imagination.

Here's the inaugural column, published in The Civil War Monitor 6/3 (Fall 2015):28-29, 72. Republished with permission.

Coined by the popular historian Otto Eisenschiml in 1947, the term “American Iliad” brilliantly captures the essence of so many Americans’ passion for the Civil War. A man once told me, in complete seriousness, that the story of the war was his religion. And while a conflict that killed over 2 percent of our country’s population may not be the best thing to construct an entire worldview around, it is probably not the worst thing, either. Abraham Lincoln’s magnanimity, Ulysses S. Grant’s perseverance in the face of all obstacles, and Robert E. Lee’s grace in defeat all provide strong life lessons. Although it is plainly exceptional to regard the Civil War a religion, it is obvious that the Civil War routinely functions as a national myth, a way to understand ourselves as Americans. And like the classic mythologies of old, it contains timeless wisdom of what it means to be a human being. Homer’s Iliad tells us much about war, but it also tells us much about life. The American Iliad does the same thing.

Foundational to the American Iliad is the conviction that the conflict was not a struggle between darkness and light, freedom and tyranny, but rather between two sides, equally gallant, committed to different but morally equivalent visions of the American republic, and therefore caught up in a tragedy larger than themselves, “a war of brothers.”

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels, arguably one of the most influential modern re-tellings of this Iliad, Michael Shaara has Confederate general James Longstreet muse, “The war had come as a nightmare in which you chose your nightmare side.” Robert E. Lee provides the most prominent example of a soldier forced to make this choice. With the exception of Lincoln, Lee is perhaps the foremost protagonist in the American Iliad’s pantheon. In mythic terms he is the ideal man, the perfect warrior, the flawless gentleman—“the Christlike Lee,” as historian Kenneth Stampp once put it. On the eve of the war he is a full colonel, so obviously gifted that Lincoln offers him command of the armies that must extinguish the rebellion should war break out. Lee declines. Despite a lifetime’s service to the United States—and despite telling his siblings that “I recognize no necessity for this [rebellion]”—he feels honor-bound to resign from the U.S. Army when Virginia, his homeland, secedes. “Save in defense of my native State,” he says, “I have no desire ever again to draw my sword.” But of course he must defend his native state. Thus it is the protection of hearth and home, not the abstract principle of states’ rights and certainly not the preservation of slavery, which governs his decision. “I did only what my duty demanded,” he would write in 1868. “I could have taken no other course without dishonor. And if it all were to be done over again, I should act in precisely the same manner.”  Historian Alan Nolan once questioned whether Lee’s fateful choice to draw his sword against the United States was as ethical as the great captain maintained. But the American Iliad is emphatic that it was indeed Lee’s only path.

Lee’s decision provides the opening of the American Iliad, for, like Homer’s Iliad, this Iliad begins with the war underway. It is the first iconic episode, by which I mean an episode that Civil War buffs know by heart. A typical buff can take you step by step through the three days of Gettysburg but generally knows far less detail about the origins of the conflict.  Instead they have rather vague ideas that the South left the Union in defense of states’ rights against a government that embodied centralized political power, or that the war pitted the agrarian South against the industrial North; or even that it was a cultural clash between a supposedly Celtic South against a supposedly Anglo North. These explanations are nearly always asserted, not argued. They function simply to push the sordid political details (particularly the defense of slavery) out of the picture and just get on with the almost purely military story, for the American Iliad is all about generals, soldiers, and battles. The war, in mythic terms, is not “a continuation of politics,” to use the famous definition of war espoused by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. It’s not a continuation of anything. It’s just there.

And thus Lee is helplessly in the grip of something that resembles a natural disaster more than a human-created event. The war forces upon him a choice that is no choice at all, for his honor and integrity require that he serve the Confederacy. And in mythic imagination, Lee’s decision symbolizes the honor and integrity of every one of the 800,000 southern men who take up arms not from any political ideology, but rather because they must protect their families, their neighbors, their homeland.

Los Hombres Armados Redux

Almost three years ago I wrote a post on my encounter with a man who had grown up during the civil war in El Salvador (1979-1992).  I entitled it Los Hombres Armados.  I could be content just to provide you with the link, but the post is important enough to this one that I'm not taking the chance that you won't follow the link.  Here's Los Hombres Armados, reprinted in full:

There’s a neighborhood bar not far from where I live.  I drop by often enough that the bartenders know me and automatically get me my beer of choice.  It’s a friendly place and easy to make conversation.

Back in mid-December the coverage of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was almost wall-to-wall.  One evening it was silently unfolding on one of the bar’s muted televisions. I noticed a Hispanic man watching the images, his eyes wet with tears.  A short time later we began talking and I found out why.

The man–I’ll call him Fernando–was thirty-eight years old and had grown up in El Salvador during its long civil war (1979-1992).  The conflict was between the right-wing government, with its death squads, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMNLF), an umbrella term for several left-wing guerrilla groups.  Fernando’s parents were afraid of both sides.  For them it was simply a matter of los hombres armados:  the men with guns.

When Fernando was a little boy, he told me, his parents would sometimes take him from their house and spend the night hiding in the woods, with a hand cupped over Fernando’s mouth to keep him from crying out. We think of school shootings and civil wars as worlds apart.  But for Fernando, the former was irresistibly reminiscent of the latter.

I have since talked to Fernando on several other occasions.  We never speak of the civil war but it plainly haunts him.  At some point–I have never asked how–he acquired an M-16, perhaps because he eventually joined one side or the other.  Although he left the weapon behind him in El Salvador, he once told me he has never felt comfortable without it, and he alternates between having thoughts of violence and thoughts of running away.  He becomes tearful easily and indeed, never seems far away from weeping.  Although his case is undiagnosed, he almost certainly suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

As a military historian, I have never quite known what to make of Fernando’s equation of the Sandy Hook murders with his own childhood.  But it is the same equation that others make who have to live with the threat or reality of mass killing.  For military veterans present at the recent Boston Marathon Bombing, the scene resembled the aftermath of an IED blast.  People residing in neighborhoods wracked with gang violence must know the same fear that Fernando’s parents did.  Fernando is a reminder, I suppose, that although we define the boundaries of our field as centrally concerned with political violence, the lived experience of people caught up in violence is essentially the same.

Last evening I had another encounter at that same neighborhood bar.  I was having a conversation with Steve, a dj who's worked at this bar--the Crazee Mule Saloon, whose patrons call it simply the Mule--for as long as I've been going to the Mule, which is at this point is going on four years now.

In addition to his job as a dj, Steve is a very serious conservative political commentator.  You'll find his Twitter feed, called Oracle of Ohio, here.    It, in turn, will lead you to Steve's blog, The Future of the Republic.  You have to examine the blog pretty closely to discern that Steve publishes it, but you can do it, hence my decision to use his real first name rather than a pseudonym.

Steve describes himself thus:  "writer/political scientist, capitalist business owner, Reagan republican.
Publisher, The Future of the Republic,  American."  His Twitter feed and blog form a good example of the dominant form of political discourse in America today--and for that matter the past decade and beyond.  That is to say, it's intensely partisan and demonizes the political Left.

I've no intention of picking on Steve or his form of political engagement.  We have contrasting views on practically everything, but Steve represents the substantial segment of Americans who are politically engaged, which is what the Founders wanted, expected, and believed the republic required if their political experiment would succeed.  And needless to add, there are plenty of Left-leaning Twitter feeds and blogs just like it.



Nevertheless, I find this form of engagement disquieting, because it exemplifies the kind of political engagement that the Founders termed the "spirit of faction," which paradoxically they regarded as supremely dangerous to the republican experiment.  I would much prefer the kind of political engagement that is in active dialogue with politically engaged Americans who hold different views.  In this I am not alone.  Increasingly on Facebook I see status updates like one published today by a friend of mine:

Facebook used to be a great way to keep up with what fun things your far-flung friends and family were doing, and to keep them in the loop on your doings as well. It made the world a little smaller and better by keeping us connected.

But now Facebook posts are increasingly about political opinions. This has made it more difficult for us to listen to each other; to acknowledge our differences but remain friends with those whose opinions differ from our own. We're separating ourselves into echo chamber camps of like-thinkers, and that makes us all intellectually poorer. How can we understand each other if we won't listen to each other?

What happened to politeness? Does the wider audience that Facebook reaches cause us to shout louder? Is it the relative anonymity of pronouncing from behind a keyboard that makes us more boldly coarse with our opinions?

I've been as guilty as anyone on this issue, so I have to either walk the talk or curtail my use of Facebook. The jury is out.

My friend's misgivings--I'll call him Bill--are echoed by many Americans, but not enough.  There's little platform for a form of political engagement built to answer Bill's key question:  "How can we understand each other if we won't listen to each other?"

How indeed?

As many of you know, my area of specialization concerns a period in American history that was also characterized by polarizing political engagement:  the American Civil War and the 15 years or so of toxic political discourse that helped give rise to it.

So anyway, Steve was on a break.  I bought him a drink and we settled into a discussion of the imminent nomination of Republican candidate Donald Trump, whom Steve believes, for several reasons, will become the 45th president of the United States.  Steve's approach to political discussion is a barrage of political talking points, which are interesting albeit a little hard to convey with any subtlety in a bar that's pretty loud thanks to the blaring music and the cacophony of other patrons.  Still, we were managing pretty well.  My technique, in such situations, is to stake out few political positions of my own, but rather to ask questions about the second- and third-order effects of his preferred policy choices were they to be implemented.

After a while I noticed a second man--I'll call him Jack--who was standing nearby, listening in on our conversation.  Eventually I turned to him, giving him an open to participate in our discussion.  Because of all the ambient noise, I had trouble at first following what he had to say.  What finaly broke through the noise was a question:  "Do you own an AR-15?"

"I own an AK-47," replied.

Reduced to essentials, he took the position that we ought to keep our weapons well-oiled and our ammunition closely at hand, because sooner rather than later, we were going to need them.  Jack regarded President Obama's executive activism as an unconstitutional overreach.  And if Hillary Clinton were elected to she would simply trample the Constitution altogether,making armed resistance necessary.  I asked what he thought the American military would do in such an instance.  He believed that because Clinton would be shredding the Constitution, a substantial portion of the military--he implied all of it--would refuse to obey her "unlawful orders," and therefore would either join the resistance or else remain on the sidelines.  He believed that in any event, American soldiers would not fire upon American citizens, even if they were armed and intent on toppling the elected American president.  Having once studied the Kent State shootings of May 1970, when a contingent of National Guardsmen had fired upon students, killing four and wounding nine, simply for protesting (and in the case of two of the dead, simply en route to their next class, I doubted that the American military would hesitate to shoot armed insurgents.  (He balked at the term "insurgents," but that is precisely the role they would be playing under the scenario he described.)

Fueled by both passion and alcohol, Jack got a little to close too me and more than a little "in your face."  Eventually I asked him to get his hand of my shoulder and back away a bit.  Steve by this time had stepped in the de-escalate the rhetoric, and presently Jack went away.

I doubt that the scenario Jack described was likely to arise.  I doubted even more whether he had thought through the implications of what he was saying.  Even in the unlikely event that the military remained on the sidelines, there are a lot of Left-leaning Americans who are also armed.  The logical extension of his argument was that Americans would construct their own version of the El Salvadoran civil war.  The men with guns would now be American men with guns.  I have a 4-year old daughter.  The bare suggestion that she might share the same experience as Fernando was, well, intolerable.

Now Jack's an extreme example of the depths to which political discourse in this country has descended.  But his convictions, his prophecies, and his passion had to come from somewhere, and a few bottles of Bud Light was not, of course, the source.  The source is screamingly obvious.

Though Jack may be a lost cause, I have higher hopes for Steve, who, whatever his political point of view, is both capable and willing to have a conversation more or less along lines that would answer Bill's cri de coueur.  Such conversations are vital.  Because if enough Americans are unwilling to have them, Jack's scenario may not be so unrealistic after all.

The Meeting from Hell: Conspiracy

Originally published in World War II magazine.  Reprinted with permission.

We’ve all attended this meeting, convened by the leadership to discuss some new organizational undertaking and—ostensibly—to collect and synthesize the views of all assembled. Neophytes among us believe that; the more experienced know the score. We enter the conference room resigned, wary, even disposed to revolt. But the leadership has the clout to cram its agenda down our collective throats.

Such meetings occur in all walks of life: governmental, commercial, educational, ecclesiastical. The conference held on January 20, 1942, in Wannsee, a lakeside district southwest of Berlin, was like any other of its kind—except that this meeting was organized by the Schutzstaffel, and its agenda was the destruction of 11 million European Jews.

Directed by Frank Pierson and released in 2001, Conspiracy re-creates the Wannsee Conference in nearly real time, using as a set the mansion in which the actual event took place. Writer Loring Mandel based his script on the “Wannsee Protocol”—the meeting’s top-secret minutes. The original document is deliberately vague; its language gives no hint that the subject is mass murder. Nor does the protocol paint the conference as anything less than wholly harmonious. But anyone who has watched bureaucrats war over turf knows differently, and a close reading of the minutes suggests fault lines and objections. The filmmakers have fleshed these out to deliver a riveting drama that takes place almost entirely around a large conference table.

Conspiracyopens with SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolph Eichmann (Stanley Tucci) overseeing final touches for the meeting that include excellent wines, fine cigars, and a lavish buffet lunch for 15. As they enter, the guests, who represent some of Nazi Germany’s most powerful men, introduce themselves to one another and the viewer. Two look decidedly glum: Dr. Friedrich Kritzinger (David Threlfall), deputy head of the Reich Chancellery; and Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (Colin Firth), chief architect of the Nuremberg Laws that have legally stripped German Jews of their civil rights, defining “Jew” using formulas of Stuckart’s devising. Kritzinger and Stuckart believe that their offices have resolved the “Jewish question.” Suspicious that the SS, the meeting’s sponsor, is about to hijack that “question” and impose a solution of its own, the two quietly grouse to one another.

 Last to arrive is the host, SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh), Chief of the Reich Security Main Office. Heydrich, who called the meeting, presides with the jaunty, self-satisfied air of a man who knows that he is going places. He begins by quoting a directive from Reichsmarschall Herman Goering that assigns Heydrich to find “a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe” and stipulates that relevant government agencies are to “cooperate” with the security chief in this endeavor. Kritzinger instantly objects; the Chancellery, he declares, has received no directive on this subject. He fruitlessly tries to gain a hearing but Heydrich smoothly and stubbornly plows on, leaving the sidelined Kritzinger to fume.

 
Hitherto, Heydrich explains, Nazi policy has been to force Jews living in Germany to emigrate “voluntarily” to other countries or involuntarily “emigrate” to ghettoes the Germans have established in Polish cities. That situation has changed, Heydrich says. Jews under Nazi control now number several million, with five million to be added as the conquest of the Soviet Union proceeds. But Operation Barbarossa has stalled. 

“We are standing still in Russia, the Americans have joined the war. Both events are a further drain on our military, our economy, our manpower, our food supply,” Heydrich says. “We cannot store these Jews. Emigration is over.” The new policy, he continues, is “evacuation,” a mysterious term whose meaning becomes clear as the security chief fields querie“

"I have the real feeling I `evacuated’ 30,000 Jews already, by shooting them at Riga,” an SS major remarks. “Is what I did `evacuation’?”

Yes, Heydrich tells him. It was.

 Kritzinger explodes in fury. “That is contrary to what the Chancellery has been told. I have directly been assured!” the chancellery representative says. “Purge the Jews, yes. . . But to systematically annihilate all the Jews of Europe? That possibility has personally been denied to me by the Führer.”

“And it will continue to be,” Heydrich replies, locking eyes with Kritzinger to let his message sink in. The lay of the land is very different from what Kritzinger has understood.

Stuckart protests—not out of humanity, but territoriality—when it becomes obvious that Heydrich is going to junk Stuckart’s elaborate formulas, based on tallying the Jews in a person’s family tree, for racially identifying Jews. Without his system, Stuckart warns, legal chaos will ensue. Kritzinger and Stuckart—supported by others among the bureaucrats on hand—suggest that instead of killing Jews outright the Nazis sterilize them en masse, an option Heydrich sweeps aside.

“We won’t sterilize them and wait until they die. That’s farcical,” the SS man says. “Dead men don’t hump. Dead women don’t get pregnant. Death is the most reliable form of sterilization. Put it that way.”

Heydrich has Eichmann describe programs already under way to annihilate Jews using gas chambers. So far participants responsible for administering occupied Poland have been enjoying the sight of Heydrich running rampant over Kritzinger and Stuckart, but now these men start to comprehend that most of the work Eichmann is describing has been taking place in their Poland, under their noses, and without their knowledge or assent. Soon everyone understands that this consultation has been even more of a sham than any of them could have guessed.

  The meeting adjourns. The officials walk to their waiting cars, a bit shaken—not by the industrialized horror they now realize to be taking place, but by the tour de force of bureaucratic mastery they have witnessed.           

The Rout of the Confederate Flag

Cross posted from Civil Warriors



As surely you already know, in the wake of the murder of nine worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a petition was circulated demanding the removal of a Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state house. It quickly generated a massive number of signatures and a national ground swell of pressure arose for the state government to do precisely that. This story is already well-covered on Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory blog, so I won't rehearse the details any further.


Just for the record, I fully support the removal. The battle flag represents an army that fought for the preservation of slavery and has a long, notorious association with white racism. Yet it flies on the capitol grounds of a state whose population is 30 percent African American, most of them descendants of slaves. But this post isn't about that. It's about recent decisions to eliminate sales of the Confederate flag or to forbid its presence in certain sites. Those sites do not include National Park Service battlefields. But the park service has adopted a policy of ending sales of souvenirs in which the Confederate flag is depicted on "standalone" merchandise; that is to say, merchandise devoid of historical context. Gettysburg National Military Park has reportedly urged private businesses in Gettysburg to do the same. Tragically, this would result in the elimination of merchandise such as this:





I'm still learning about this issue, so consider this post a work in progress. It first got on my radar thanks to a Facebook status update by a friend of mine. Since his privacy settings are limited to friends, I'll quote the update without attribution:

So according to the NPS page, the only Confederate flags allowed are with permitted and approved living history events. You or I couldn't have one, you can't have one on your vehicle (I assume that means stickers too). The Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg has banned them on the outside grounds completely.

He doesn't supply a link to the relevant NPS page, but presumably he refers to the following press release, dated June 25:

For Immediate Release: National Parks Pull Confederate Flag Sales Items

WASHINGTON – Confederate Battle Flag sales items are being removed from national park bookstores and gift shops.
“We strive to tell the complete story of America,” National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said of the agency’s reputation for telling difficult parts of our history. “All sales items in parks are evaluated based on educational value and their connection to the park. Any stand-alone depictions of Confederate flags have no place in park stores.”
Jarvis said the murders of nine church members at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which is near Fort Sumter National Monument, galvanized a national discussion that includes symbols and relics from our nation’s past such as the Confederate Battle Flag.
“As that discussion spread across the country,” Jarvis said, “one of our largest cooperating associations, Eastern National, began to voluntarily remove from the park stores that it manages any items that depict a Confederate flag as its primary feature. I’ve asked other cooperating associations, partners and concession providers to withdraw from sale items that solely depict a Confederate flag.”
In the telling of the historical story, Confederate flags have a place in books, exhibits, reenactments, and interpretive programs. Books, DVDs, and other educational and interpretive media where the Confederate flag image is depicted in its historical context may remain as sales items as long as the image cannot be physically detached. Confederate flags include the Stainless Banner, the Third National Confederate Flag, and the Confederate Battle Flag.
Jarvis said, “All superintendents and program managers will personally evaluate which sales items fit this description, have educational value, and are appropriate for the site.”
There's also this "Statement Regarding the Confederate Flag," issued by Gettysburg National Military Park:

On June 24, National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis asked park superintendents to work with their partners and bookstore operators to voluntarily withdraw from sale items that solely depict a Confederate flag. The National Park Service press release can be found here. "We strive to tell the complete story of America," National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said of the agency's reputation for telling difficult parts of our history. "All sales items in parks are evaluated based on educational value and their connection to the park. Any stand-alone depictions of Confederate flags have no place in park stores." Gettysburg National Military Park Superintendent Ed Clark asked the Gettysburg Foundation to consider this request. This morning, the Gettysburg Foundation President Joanne Hanley requested the bookstore operator, Event Network, to comply with the request. Hanley said, "We are committed to our partnership with the National Park Service at Gettysburg for the preservation of resources and for outstanding educational programs." Effective today, the book store at Gettysburg National Military Park's Museum &Visitor Center will no longer sell stand-alone items that solely feature the Confederate flag, including display and wearable items. This affects 11 out of 2,600 items carried in the book store. The book store continues to sells a wide variety of items that feature both the U.S. and Confederate flags, as well books, DVDs, and other educational and interpretive media where the image of the Confederate flag is depicted in its historical context.

Nota Bene: Neither release forbids that Confederate flag you have on your car bumper or even the one on the roof of your orange 1969 Dodge Charger, so I'm not sure where my friend gets the warrant for his assertion that "You or I couldn't have one, you can't have one on your vehicle (I assume that means stickers too)." However, he's correct that Gettysburg's Seminary Ridge Museum does forbid the presence of the Confederate flag on its grounds, including those of re-enactors. This has resulted in the creation of a Facebook page, "Boycott the Seminary Ridge Museum in Gettysburg.."





As of this writing (the ungodly hour of 3:34 a.m. on Sunday, June 28), the page has 243 "likes," including three of my FB friends--though oddly enough, not the friend I quote above. Maybe he just doesn't know about it yet. The museum is on the grounds of the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg, which created the policy--a fact of which the FB page creators were possibly ignorant (although my friend Eric Wittenberg has since clued them in). Here's the policy statement. See if you can spot the oddity within it, given all I've laid out for you above. Hint: It's the passage I bold-faced and italicized:

Until recently, the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg has permitted the display of confederate flags in historical context, even the more controversial versions of the flag when used in historic and educational contexts. But Seminary officials have agreed that given the brutal murders of nine people in a Charleston, SC church and the identification of certain flags with supremacist movements in America make it impossible to maintain the historic context for the display of symbolism associated with those movements. The policy affirms the exhibit of the Seminary Ridge Museum and notes that the exhibit is the one space where the historical context is clear and appropriately used. (emphasis supplied) Seminary officials continue to appreciate the educational value of living history groups on campus after opening its campus for the first time to the activity in 2011. “It is good for the visitors and students of history” to open the campus for these purposes free and open to the public. But repeated events held in or near Gettysburg by groups sponsoring or threatening to use hate speech have utilized some of the symbols of the Confederate States to communicate racism and employ hate speech. More recently the brutal murders in Charleston, SC, at Emanuel AME Church, “make it impossible to maintain the necessary clear and unambiguous educational context on Seminary Ridge” said John Spangler, speaking for the Seminary. “We are forced by more recent history and current events to declare a total ban on display of confederate symbols and flags used by supremacist organizations, and that unfortunately includes the Confederate Navy Jack and the St. Andrew cross in two of the official flags of the Confederacy.” Seminary officials also note that there are numerous flags used by reenactors of the Confederate States of America which do not employ the graphic symbols in question. The policy change is as follows: As of June 18, 2015, the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg prohibits the display (all or in part) of the flag or flags associated with the Confederate States of America containing graphic symbols utilized after the Civil War to communicate hatred and racism and resistance to civil rights legislation, including what is known as the “Confederate Battle flag, the Confederate Navy Jack, and officially designated flags of the Confederate States of America utilizing the St. Andrew cross. The only exception to this is the historical display included in exhibits of the Seminary Ridge Museum, where it is clearly interpreted in historical context. Recent events have brought to the fore extra sensitivity and sorrow on the Gettysburg campus. Two of the victims killed in Emanuel AME Church, including the Rev. Clementa Pinckney were graduates of Gettysburg Seminary’s sister school in Columbia, SC, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. And the alleged shooter, Daryl Roof, is also a member of a South Carolina Lutheran congregation. The Seminary remains the frequently used place for counter rallies to supremacist meetings in the area, and is committed to honoring the legacy of its most famous graduate, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Alexander Payne, a 19th Century leader in the AME tradition, forced as a young man from Charleston, SC to study theology at Gettysburg. “The problem with the symbolism in question is not about its historical use in the context of interpreting the Civil War, Spangler continued, “it is rather the subsequent used in resisting civil rights and overt and violent racism by individuals and groups that continue to this day. We simply can’t ignore this deeply disturbing and historical usage.”

I'll update this story as I learn more. Based on what I've gleaned so far, however, the news is most disconcerting. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be jonesing for my Confederate battle flag-themed souvenir crap, which I can no longer get at National Park Service stores. As for the seminary, I find its policy a breath-taking infringement of my First Amendment rights. How dare a private institution sharply restrict the use of an offensive symbol on its privately-owned grounds?