A Heroic Bond in World War Two: After Operation Jubilee

A casual chat between two neighbours in snow-covered Edgemont, Alberta, Canada, led to an unexpected connection between two sons—one from the freezing Canadian winter and the other from a bushfire-ravaged property in Queensland, Australia. Their fathers shared a heroic bond during World War Two, and neither family knew of the other’s existence before their contact.

Ken Wright and Anne Gafiuk explain.

Two of the landing craft, returning from the beaches during the Combined Operations daylight raid on Dieppe (Operation Jubilee). Source: Public domain, Imperial War Museum, available here.

The details of their contact date back to April 6 and 9, 1941, when the German invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia began at the same time. The operations against these two countries were examples of precision and efficiency. The daring use of tanks in the mountains, which were thought to be nearly impenetrable to armour, demonstrated what can be achieved with imagination and courage.

In Greece, the first fifty patients admitted to the 2/5 Australian General Hospital were from the battles in the northern parts of the country. As the military situation worsened and it became clear that Greece could not be defended, all female and many male staff were evacuated back to Palestine, leaving a token number of staff and six doctors behind to care for the patients that could not be moved in time. Captain Eric Vernon Barling, a doctor from Sydney, Australia, was one of the medical practitioners to stay behind. Doctor Barling volunteered for military service on 24 April 1940 and served with the 2/5 Australian General Hospital in various theatres of operations, and in April 1941, was transferred from Palestine to Greece.

By April 27, Greece, after fierce resistance by Greek and Allied forces, was in German hands. The British managed to evacuate forty-three thousand Allied troops thanks to the Royal Navy’s brave efforts, but the military had to leave all their heavy equipment behind. Those who remained, including the patients and the limited staff of the 2/5 Australian General Hospital, were now, in the bag, as Prisoners of War.

Almost sixteen months later, on August 19, 1942, code-named ‘Operation Jubilee’, a major amphibious raid involving nearly five thousand Canadians, about one thousand British commandos, and fifty American Rangers took place. They landed at five different points along a sixteen-kilometre stretch of French coastline at Dieppe. Six landings were scheduled just before dawn at locations east and west of Dieppe, with the main attack on the town itself happening half an hour later. Lieutenant Fred J.L. Woodcock, from Winona, Ontario, commanding the 17th Platoon “D” Company of the 1st Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, along with twenty-one others, boarded their designated landing craft assault [LCA]. Once lowered into the sea from the mother ship, they began their journey toward their assigned landing point on the French coast.

It was nearing dawn. Tracers streaked from the shore, seeking targets among the invasion force, while the attacking Allied Air Force tried to give the amphibious force a protective umbrella. Lt. Woodcock was in the LCA landing craft closest to the western headland, under intense German machine gun fire from positions around the castle and casino. Lt. Woodcock ordered two Bren gunners to return fire at the flashes on the cliff. As they neared the shore, there was a massive explosion. It is not known whether it was an underwater mine, a mortar shell, or an 88mm coastal battery round. Whatever it was, the detonation triggered the Bangalore torpedoes stowed among the toggle ropes and grappling irons of the landing craft, destroying it and nearly all its human crew.

Lt Woodcock survived the carnage, but his shoulder was smashed, his hearing was almost non-existent, and one eye was hanging out. According to eyewitnesses, the beached landing craft was a sickening sight full of bits and pieces of bodies. Even the Germans were shocked at the sight and posted a guard to keep onlookers away. Woodcock now faced an uncertain future if he survived.

The entire raid was poorly planned and overly complicated, with insufficient fire support and troops that were inadequately trained, many of whom experienced their first taste of battle. After a brave effort against heavily defended enemy positions, the attackers lost three thousand, three hundred and fifty men killed or wounded, twenty-eight tanks, several landing craft, a destroyer, and over one hundred aircraft trying to shield the landing forces on the beaches. It was the Royal Air Force’s biggest loss of aircraft in a single day during the entire war. In comparison, the German Luftwaffe lost only forty-eight aircraft.

Capture

Those captured faced especially harsh treatment in POW camps, and most remained in captivity until the war ended in 1945. About 180 of the most severely wounded survivors of the Dieppe fiasco, including Lieutenant [later Captain] Woodcock, were sent by train to the 400-bed POW hospital at Obermassfeld, a few kilometres south of Meiningen in Germany. This hospital was an agricultural school built on an island in the river and converted into a hospital. The medical staff mainly consisted of Allied hospital personnel who had been captured before the Dunkirk evacuation. One British doctor who observed the arrival of the Canadians at Obermassfeld recalled that the men were in a terrible state. Covered in excreta, they were whacked. The stench, horror, and tragedy of it all were obvious.

Woodcock’s shoulder was temporarily patched up, but there was nothing that could be done for his eye. Two teams of surgeons operated continuously for more than 24 hours on the other wounded. Fortunately, blood transfusions were available in limited supply.

The German Chefarzt [Chief Medical Officer], Hauptmann Doctor Martin Falke, insisted that Woodcock be transferred to Kloster Haina, where all the blind prisoners were being held. The entire medical staff at Obermassfeld pleaded with him to keep the Canadian Lieutenant where he was until he had sufficiently recovered, as they feared he might die if he made the journey. Their pleas fell on deaf ears as Falke was an exceedingly difficult man to work with and ran the hospital more like a dictator. It is believed that after the war, Doctor Falke was indicted at the Nuremberg trials for maltreatment of hospital patients, which contravened the rules of the Geneva Convention. Although a few patients succumbed to their wounds or ensuing complications, the majority did well at Obermassfeld.

Woodcock, still an extremely sick man, was sent to Kloster Haina [Stalag IXA], a small village east of Frankfurt-am-Main, the following day. Fortunately, he survived the journey. This establishment was a former Cistercian Abbey, situated eight kilometres up in the hills. It now functioned as a convalescent centre specialising in blinded POWs, but also accommodated many others with various disabilities. A German doctor was in charge, supported by Allied medical personnel. Major D. Charters from the Royal Army Medical Corps, an eye specialist, was the officer-in-charge.

Lieutenant Woodcock, in his memoirs, states that his shoulder was operated on late at night by an Australian doctor, Captain Barling, a general surgeon, and another member of the team who had been recently captured in Greece, an orderly named Colin Sommerville. When he recovered from the effects of the anaesthesia, it was nearly midnight, and the doctor asked if there was anything he wanted. He recalls asking for a cup of tea, which the orderly was able to make from sterilizer water.

Woodcock’s hearing, which had been steadily deteriorating throughout the entire period, finally ceased functioning. The drums in both ears had been ruptured by the explosion at Dieppe, and the subsequent immersion in seawater led to an infection in both ears. Ultimately, only the right ear was able to be brought back to normal.

Dr. Barling and other doctors and orderlies had a lot to deal with. There were also Royal Air Force casualties who suffered terrible wounds, including severely burned airmen whose eyes, faces, skin, and arms were affected. Others had broken limbs or legs frozen off after crashing in the North Sea. All kinds of disabilities. One poor man was almost a torso, in the sense that there was no way to fit artificial limbs on him. Another was missing an arm and a leg on the same side of the body. More than one of these poor men was suffering from mental depression, and twenty-seven blind people lived in a small one-storey building.

Doctor Eric Zeiss, nicknamed Poppa Zeiss, was a Viennese brain specialist in charge of the adjoining insane asylum with about six hundred German mental patients. He worked very closely with Dr. Barling and other surgeons on the treatment of disabled prisoners. When he had sufficiently recovered, Dr. Barling asked [now a Captain] Woodcock to serve as an amateur psychiatrist. It was hoped that his appearance and conversations with depressed patients would have a positive psychological effect on their recovery.

Kloster Haina closed in late October 1943 after most of the POW patients returned home through a prisoner repatriation scheme. Those who stayed, including the medical staff, were moved to Bad Soden/Salmünster in Hesse, Germany, until the war ended in 1945. It’s interesting to note that Doctor Barling, during his imprisonment, found the time and motivation to study for the Primary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons exam using books his father sent via the Red Cross.

After the war

Captain Woodcock eventually returned to Canada. He never forgot Dr. Barling and always wanted to make contact to express his heartfelt appreciation. Once again, in his memoirs, he wrote that he had survived a very traumatic experience and credited Doctor Barling and much of the subsequent treatment he received for saving his life. For various reasons, the contact never materialised. His wish to thank Doctor Barling was eventually fulfilled posthumously by his son, through a simple, casual chat with a neighbour in chilly Edgemont, Calgary, which led to a conversation with Doctor Barling’s son in Queensland.

Dr. Barling also survived the war. He went back to Australia and kept practising medicine. Barling’s brothers, Joseph and Geoffrey, also served during the war.

Two men, worlds apart, thrown together in war and as survivors, went on to be honoured in their respective countries.

Captain Barling was awarded the MBE [member of the British Empire] for his wartime service, as well as having been mentioned in Dispatches. He was killed in an automobile accident on April 27, 1978, robbing Australia of a distinguished and dedicated surgeon.  Dr Barling had been the clinical teacher in the Department of Surgery at the University of Sydney.

To honour his memory and achievements, colleagues at the Department of Surgery established ‘The Vernon Barling Memorial Fellowship’ in 1981. There is also a memorial plaque located at the New South Wales Garden of Remembrance adjacent to the Sydney War Cemetery Memorial Avenue in Rookwood.

Captain Woodcock returned to civilian life with only peripheral vision, able to see light from the side of his one eye. He had been a commercial artist before the war and continued with painting and photography afterwards. He was also a talented woodworker. He was awarded the Order of Canada on 17 December 1984, and for many years, on behalf of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Toronto, served as an advocate, counsellor, and friend to blind veterans. In various national and international organisations, he has fought for the rights of veterans and all sightless persons.

Additionally, in 1989, the F. J. L. Woodcock Scholarships were established thanks to the families of veterans who were blinded during combat in World War I, World War II, and Korea. The families generously donate to support blind and partially sighted students in pursuing secondary training and education. Fred Woodcock passed away on 31 July 1998.

Credit must also be given to all those medical officers, medical orderlies, trained personnel, and volunteers who, through their tireless efforts, helped many patients survive that difficult time.

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The authors wish to thank the sons of F. Woodcock and V. Barling, Ray Butterfield, historian 2/5 Australian Hospital Association, Dr Serge Durflinger, author of Veterans with a Vision, and Mark Zuehlke ‘Tragedy at Dieppe,’ for their kind assistance.

Dead Mountain: The Dyatlov Pass Incident and the Cold War Secrecy That Kept It a Mystery

On the night of February 1, 1959, nine experienced hikers pitched a tent on the open eastern shoulder of Kholat Syakhl, a bare, wind-scoured mountain in the northern Urals whose Mansi name is usually translated as "Dead Mountain." Sometime that night they cut their way out of the tent and walked, most of them without boots, toward a forest a mile away. None of them came back.

For sixty years the deaths of the Dyatlov group were treated as one of the great unsolved puzzles of the twentieth century. The facts were strange, but they also sat in a closed file, in a closed region, in a closed country, for long enough that rumor filled the space where the record should have been. This is the story of what the 1959 investigators found, why they closed the case as they did, how the Cold War turned an accident into a legend, and what a modern reopening and a piece of Swiss snow physics have settled.

Ankana Das explains.

The tent as the rescuers found it on February 26, 1959. Source: Public domain,, available here.

A Routine Grade III Expedition

The group came from the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk, the industrial city now called Yekaterinburg. Its leader, Igor Dyatlov, was a 23-year-old radio engineering student. With him were Yuri Doroshenko, 21; Lyudmila Dubinina, 20; Georgy Krivonishchenko, 23; Alexander Kolevatov, 24; Zinaida Kolmogorova, 22; Rustem Slobodin, 23; Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolles, 23; and Semyon Zolotaryov, 38, an outdoor instructor and war veteran who joined the party late. A tenth member, Yuri Yudin, set out with them but turned back with illness on January 28, 1959.

The plan was a winter ski trek to the peak of Otorten, roughly 300 kilometers in all, which would qualify the participants for the Soviet Union's highest hiking certification, Grade III. All of them had winter experience, and the route was approved by the institute's sports club.

They left Sverdlovsk by train on January 23, 1959, and on January 26 reached Vizhai, the last settlement on their route. From there they went on skis. On January 31 they reached the edge of the highlands and cached surplus supplies in a wooded valley. On February 1 they climbed onto the slope of Kholat Syakhl and, at about five in the afternoon, pitched their tent on the open mountainside rather than in the forest below. Yudin later suggested that Dyatlov did not want to lose altitude. Dyatlov had promised a telegram from Vizhai by February 12.

 

The Search

No telegram came. By February 20 the relatives were demanding action, and the institute sent out volunteer search parties, soon joined by the army, the police, and local Mansi hunters.

On February 26, 1959, a search party led by the student Boris Slobtsov found the tent on the slope. Some Russian accounts give February 25. The tent was half collapsed under snow and had been cut open from the inside. Most of the group's boots, jackets, and equipment were still in it. A line of footprints, made by people in socks or barefoot, led downhill toward the tree line.

On February 27 the searchers found the first bodies. Under a large cedar about a mile from the tent lay Doroshenko and Krivonishchenko beside the remains of a fire, both in their underwear. Between the cedar and the tent, spaced out as if returning uphill, were Dyatlov and Kolmogorova. On March 5 Slobodin was found between them. A criminal case had been opened on February 26 under the investigator Lev Ivanov.

The remaining four were not found until the thaw. On May 4, 1959, searchers probing a ravine beyond the cedar uncovered Dubinina, Zolotaryov, Kolevatov, and Thibeaux-Brignolles under about four meters of snow, on a platform of branches. Several wore clothing cut from the bodies at the cedar.

 

What the Autopsies Showed

The autopsies were performed in Ivdel. Six of the nine had died of hypothermia. Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, Doroshenko, and Krivonishchenko showed little beyond frostbite, bruises, and scrapes. Slobodin had a hairline skull fracture that the examiner did not consider fatal.

The four from the ravine were different. Thibeaux-Brignolles had a major skull fracture; Zolotaryov and Dubinina had multiple broken ribs, and Dubinina had internal bleeding. The examiner compared the force involved to a car crash and noted that there were no external wounds to match it. Dubinina was also missing her tongue, eyes, and part of her lips; Zolotaryov's eyes were missing too. The examiner attributed this to decomposition in the stream running through the ravine, where the bodies had lain for three months.

This is the core of the mystery: people who left a tent without dressing, walked a mile in the dark, and in some cases suffered crushing injuries with no obvious cause.

 

"A Compelling Natural Force"

Ivanov interviewed the searchers and the Mansi, examined the tent and the slope, and ordered a radiological examination of clothing from the ravine, apparently on his own initiative. On May 28, 1959, the case was closed. The conclusion stated that the hikers had died from what the Russian text calls a "stikhiynaya sila," variously rendered as "a compelling natural force," "an elemental force," or "a spontaneous force of nature," which they had been unable to overcome. No crime had been committed.

The wording was legally sufficient and historically unsatisfying, because it named no mechanism. The file went briefly into a secret archive; it was transferred to the State Archive of Sverdlovsk Oblast in 1974 and became accessible only in the late 1980s. The area around the pass was closed to hikers for years afterward.

 

Secrecy and Suspicion

Everything that followed has to be understood against the geography of Soviet secrecy. The Urals in 1959 were dense with closed cities and nuclear installations, and the group had connections to them. Krivonishchenko had worked as a construction engineer at Chelyabinsk-40, the closed plutonium complex now known as Mayak, and had been there during the September 29, 1957, waste-tank explosion later called the Kyshtym disaster, which the Soviet state did not acknowledge for decades. Kolevatov had studied nuclear physics in Moscow before transferring to Sverdlovsk.

The radiological report by Sverdlovsk's chief radiologist, Levashov, found beta contamination well above background on several items of clothing, the highest on a brown sweater of Dubinina's, and attributed it to contamination rather than natural sources. Whether it came from Krivonishchenko's work clothes, from Kyshtym fallout, or from something done to the bodies after death has been argued ever since and never formally answered.

Then there was Ivanov himself. In November 1990, retired and living in Kazakhstan, he published an article in the Kustanai newspaper Leninsky Put titled "The Enigma of the Fireballs." He wrote that his team had had no rational explanation for the deaths, that witnesses had reported glowing spheres over the area in February and March 1959, and that senior regional officials had ordered him to remove that material and to close and classify the case. It is a genuine primary source, and also the recollection of an elderly man 31 years after the fact who had come to favor an unconventional explanation. It deserves both respect and caution.

The families never accepted the closure, and Yudin, who lived until 2013, spent his later years arguing that the authorities knew more than they said. Add the closed region, the nuclear plant, the radioactive sweater, and the fireballs, and by the 1990s the story had accumulated dozens of theories: avalanche, a missile test, a Mansi attack, escaped prisoners, KGB operations, and more exotic ideas. Donnie Eichar's 2013 book Dead Mountain proposed that a rare wind phenomenon produced infrasound that drove the hikers out in panic. None of this could be tested against a file most people had never seen.

 

The 2019 Reopening

On February 1, 2019, sixty years to the day after the last camp, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office announced that it was reopening the case. At a press conference on February 4, Andrei Kuryakov of the Urals prosecutor's office said his team had catalogued 75 theories and would examine three: an avalanche, a snow slab, or a hurricane-force wind. Criminal explanations were set aside from the start, a choice critics said prejudged the answer.

On July 11, 2020, Kuryakov presented the conclusion. A slab of snow released onto the tent; the group cut their way out and moved about 50 meters down to a stone ridge that would shelter them from further slides. Visibility that night was estimated at between six and sixteen meters. "When they turned around, they could not see the tent," Kuryakov said, as reported in the Russian press. They went down to the cedar and lit a fire. Some tried to climb back and froze on the slope; the others dug into the ravine, where a further collapse of snow crushed them. "It was a heroic struggle," he said. "There was no panic. But in those circumstances they had no chance of escape."

 

The Physics of a Small Avalanche

The physics arrived six months later. On January 28, 2021, Johan Gaume of EPFL in Lausanne and Alexander Puzrin of ETH Zurich published a paper in Communications Earth & Environment titled "Mechanisms of slab avalanche release and impact in the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959."

The objections to an avalanche had always been specific: the slope averaged only about 23 degrees, no debris was seen, the tent was still partly standing, the injuries did not look like avalanche injuries, and nothing had triggered a release hours after the tent was pitched.

Gaume and Puzrin addressed each point. Beneath the gentle surface, a weak layer of depth hoar lay at roughly 28 degrees, steep enough for a slab to fail. When the group dug a level platform for the tent, they cut through that layer and removed its support. Katabatic winds then loaded snow onto the slope above the cut through the evening. Their model put the delayed release at between 7.5 and 13.5 hours after the cut, matching the forensic estimate that the group died 9.5 to 13.5 hours after their last meal.

The slab they modeled was small, about five meters long and under nine meters wide, and would have left little trace once the wind reworked the snow. To test whether it could break ribs, they simulated dense snow striking a person lying on a rigid surface, calibrated against crash-test data on human cadavers gathered by General Motors in the 1970s. Because the hikers slept on their skis, their bodies had no give. The model produced chest injuries that were serious but not immediately fatal, consistent with the Ivdel autopsies.

The authors were careful about the limits of their work. In their words, "we do not explain nor address other controversial elements surrounding the investigation such as traces of radioactivity found on the victims' garments, the behavior of the hikers after leaving the tent, locations and states of bodies, etc." Follow-up expeditions, reported in the same journal in March 2022, filmed two recent slab avalanches on the pass.

 

What Remains Unexplained

It is worth being precise about what is settled and what is not.

The chronology is settled. The cause of death for six of the nine, hypothermia, has never been in doubt. The injuries of the other three are now plausibly explained by a small slab release, and the prosecutors and the Swiss modeling agree on the broad sequence: a slide onto the tent, an evacuation, disorientation in the dark, and death by cold.

What remains open is narrower than the legend suggests but real. Why the group camped on the open slope, and why they walked a mile in the dark instead of digging out the tent, is still argued. The radioactive contamination has never been traced to a source. The soft-tissue loss in the ravine is most plausibly decomposition and scavenging, but that is an inference rather than a proven fact. And Ivanov's claim that he was ordered to strip material from the file has never been independently confirmed or refuted.

The Dyatlov Pass incident is less a supernatural mystery than a study in what happens when a state cannot bring itself to tell nine families a mundane truth. An accident in the mountains, sealed in a secret archive at the height of the Cold War, grew into something far larger. The snow physics is now understood. The silence around it is the part of the history that still deserves attention.

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About the author

Ankana Das is the lead writer at The Case Hunter, an independent online magazine covering European unsolved cases, mysteries, and folklore.

 

References

1.     Gaume, J. and Puzrin, A. M., "Mechanisms of slab avalanche release and impact in the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959," Communications Earth & Environment 2, 10 (January 28, 2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-020-00081-8

2.     Puzrin, A. M. and Gaume, J., "Post-publication careers: follow-up expeditions reveal avalanches at Dyatlov Pass," Communications Earth & Environment 3 (March 2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00393-x

3.     Eichar, Donnie, Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2013).

4.     TASS, "Prosecutors say avalanche killed Dyatlov group in Urals in 1959," July 11, 2020. https://tass.com/emergencies/1177345

5.     Russia Beyond, "Official cause of death of the Dyatlov group revealed," July 12, 2020. https://www.rbth.com/history/332434-official-cause-of-death-of-the-dyatlov-group

6.     The Moscow Times, "Russian Investigators Are Reopening the Dyatlov Pass Case. But What Is It?," February 14, 2019. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/02/14/russian-investigators-are-reopening-dyatlov-pass-case-but-what-is-it-a64461

7.     Andrews, Robin George, "Has science solved one of history's greatest adventure mysteries?," National Geographic, January 28, 2021.

8.     ETH Zurich, "The Dyatlov Pass mystery and what a research article can trigger," March 2022. https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2022/03/the-dyatlov-pass-mystery-and-what-a-research-article-can-trigger.html

9.     Ivanov, Lev, "Tayna ognennykh sharov" ("The Enigma of the Fireballs"), Leninsky Put (Kustanai), November 22–24, 1990. English translation at https://dyatlovpass.com/lev-ivanov

10.  Dyatlov Pass case files, Volume 1, radiological analysis report (sheets 371–377), 1959. Scans and translation at https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-371-377

11.  Wikipedia contributors, "Dyatlov Pass incident," Wikipedia, and the Russian-language article "Gibel turgruppy Dyatlova," accessed September 2026.

12.  The Case Hunter, "Shocking Dyatlov Pass Incident: Truth and Theories", 2026. https://thecasehunter.com/shocking-dyatlov-pass-incident-truth-and-theories/

Russia Since 1991: A Change for the Better?

This December will mark for the people of Russia one of the most defining moments in their history; the 35th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A major world power that had existed for nearly 70 years, its collapse reflected other significant developments in Eastern Europe at that time, where long-established communist regimes fell one by one and national boundaries changed dramatically, with Yugoslavia similarly dissolving, Czechoslovakia splitting into the two separate nations of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and East Germany and West Germany becoming a united country once again. The latter geopolitical development stands in direct contrast to the ongoing situation in Korea and Cyprus, with both lands split for decades into two independent states; one of which, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, is recognised only by Turkey (a similar situation to the breakaway state of Somaliland, with Israel the only country to recognise it as an independent nation).

Vittorio Trevitt explains.

Boris Yeltsin (center), with US President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush in 1992. Source: Public domain, National Archives and Records Administration, available here.

The Soviet Union’s demise has to this day elicited mixed reactions from Russians, but at the time it heralded the chance for the Russian people to put their autocratic past behind them and build a prosperous, democratic society. It is worth assessing, since that time, how much things have changed in Russia and the impact that the decisions of Russia’s post-Soviet leaders have had both within and beyond the nation’s borders.

Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the newly formed Russian Federation, was a political veteran who had previously held a series of posts (including that of the head of Moscow) and received admiration for his stance against a coup attempt by hardliners seeking to turn back the tide of reform opened up by Yeltsin’s predecessor Mikhael Gorbachev; dramatically symbolised by Yeltsin standing on top of a tank and then speaking out against the plot, which ultimately failed. Yeltsin’s presidency, however, would be a far from memorable one. Although prior to its collapse Gorbachev had envisaged a democratic socialist path for the Soviet Union, the course taken by the Yeltsin administration for the new Russian state was diametrically opposed to Gorbachev’s vision. Believing that the quick adoption of a free-market system was the way forward, Yeltsin presided over the rollout of a major economic reform programme which throughout the course of the Nineties resulted in mass joblessness, rapidly rising inflation, and delays in wage receipts and pension payouts.

Two years into his presidency, there was much opposition to the administration’s financial policies both amongst the general public and within the legislature, the latter of which Yeltsin would directly confront in late 1993. Yeltsin proposed changes to the constitution that partly involved giving stronger powers to the presidency; something that encountered strong parliamentary opposition due to concerns that this would emasculate the country’s fledgling democratic system. A standoff between the president and the legislature (with the vice president himself joining the opposition camp) led to tanks being sent against the latter, the arrest of several political figures, and the subsequent adoption of a new constitution; albeit following a public vote. This did not, however, give Yeltsin a consistent pro-government majority in parliament. In elections held in December that year, parties that supported the administration’s economic strategy only won a minority of seats, with the party winning the most seats being an ultranationalist outfit; the inappropriately named Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR). During the election campaign, its leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a racist demagogue who expressed admiration for the idea of Nazism, made bombastic statements directed against all kinds of groups such as the Baltic states (contributing to the case put forward by the latter to join NATO) and the Caucasus; calling for Russia’s borders to be closed off to the “criminal element” of that region. Zhirinovsky also advocated an expansion of Russian territory to where it stood eighty years earlier together with mass arrests and executions to combat crime.

It is worrying that a party led by such a figure could have done as well as it did. Nevertheless, despite its breakthrough, most parties in the Duma did not share the LDPR’s ideology, and further elections in 1995 witnessed the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), a descendant of the ruling party of the Soviet Union, obtain the largest parliamentary representation. Along with other left-wing groups, the KPRF now formed part of a reformist legislative majority. Their triumph demonstrated the extent to which ordinary people yearned for a more progressive course on social and economic policy after years of hardship. Indeed, the KPRF made the ambitious promise of restoring the various social guarantees that existed during the Soviet era. Although they were unable to deliver on this, the communists were nevertheless able to successfully make use of their newfound influence to effect improvements in welfare allowances and the minimum wage.

In presidential elections the following year, Yeltsin’s main rival was KPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov, who forced Yeltsin into a runoff after coming just a few percentage points behind the incumbent. Zyuganov’s platform was appealing to an austerity-weary public, which included promises like improvements in retirement benefits and earnings, controls on prices, and assured employment. In the end, Yeltsin plucked victory from the possible jaws of defeat; winning over 50%of the popular vote. The fear factor played a major part in Yeltsin’s triumph, with television channels broadcasting negative depictions of Zyuganov together with anti-communist propaganda which implied that a Zyuganov presidency would mark a return to the horrors of Stalinist rule. Yeltsin also helped his cause by making similar pledges to Zyuganov in regards to pay and allowances, while delivering splurges in public spending in the run-up to the elections. Although the KPRF would remain the largest party in the 1999 legislative elections (the last that Yeltsin would preside over as president), it lost much of its representation, and failed to establish itself as a possible alternative party of government.

During his first term, Yeltsin presided over a separatist movement in Chechnya which, as has often been the case throughout history with examples such as Kosovo, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Western Sahara, culminated in armed conflict. After the sending of Russian forces into Chechnya in the latter part of 1994, a war was waged that led to widespread death and destruction. Shortly before the 1996 presidential elections, Yeltsin signed a decree at a military base in Chechnya bringing an end to conscription while describing Russian soldiers as heroes; moves that probably helped save his presidency. Yeltsin’s honeymoon period proved, however, to be short-lived. Two years into his second term (which went off to a good start with the signing of peace accords in Chechnya) Russia’s economy went into turmoil as a result of misfortunes such as the fallout from the 1998 Asian financial crisis and a mounting deficit; with a currency devaluation, a default on short-term debt, and a subsequent fall in living standards the consequence of these.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Yeltsin stood down from the presidency; leaving behind an economically scarred and socially fractured nation. The appointment of then prime minister Vladimir Putin as the one to succeed Yeltsin would prove to be a major turning point. A strong figure, Putin has remained the president of Russia ever since; barring a period from 2008 to 2012 when the post was held by a close associate, Dimitry Medvedev. Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has little independent media and there is the imprisonment and death of journalists and opposition politicians. Although the holding of elections provides the image of democratic choice, in practice Russia is an authoritarian state. Over the years, the administration has facilitated the creation of new parliamentary parties that are partial towards the regime while during Putin’s first term the remaining independent national television networks came under government control (national T.V. being the source where the majority of Russians draw their information on current affairs from), therefore ensuring that the mainstream media broadcasts a pro-government message. Unsurprisingly, the United Russia party (Putin’s political vehicle) has consistently won every national election since its formation in 2001. A more recent example was the legislative elections held in September 2026, with United Russia winning well over two-thirds of all seats while one notable opposition party, the liberal Yabloko (distinct from the other registered political parties in standing against Russia’s war in Ukraine), was prevented from taking part.

Russia is not atypical of the former Soviet Union. Although the Baltic states have been liberal democracies since gaining independence from the Soviet Union, and Armenia has made strides towards democracy in recent years, Belarus has been led uninterruptedly since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko; an autocratic ally of Putin’s. The Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have been under the control of dictatorial regimes since the end of Soviet rule. Further west, Azerbaijan has for the most part been led by dictatorships while Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Moldova have undergone shifts from political liberalisation to authoritarian turns. Ukraine has been different, which since the Orange Revolution of 2004 (a series of protests precipitated by rigging in favour of a pro-Russia candidate, who ultimately lost) has often witnessed the election of reformers favouring closer ties to the West. The most recent of these is former television star Volodymyr Zelenskyy who, in his third year in office, would become a war leader. In 2022, eight years following a decision by Russia to annex the Ukrainian region of Crimea, the Russian military launched an invasion of Ukraine (described in Russia as a “special military operation”) that has to date claimed hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and forced millions of people to flee their homes. The invasion of Ukraine has effectively turned Russia in the eyes of many in the West into a pariah state while having negative repercussions for living standards the world over.

More than three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the idea of Russia becoming a Western-style free and affluent society remain elusive. Although economic conditions have greatly improved since the Yeltsin years, as characterised by a larger middle class, the economic costs of the war in Ukraine have precipitated a squeeze on household incomes more recently. Attacks on freedom of speech continue to be waged, as demonstrated by social media restrictions and literary bans. Despite Putin’s autocratic rule, however, public protests that have taken place over the years against the regime concerning matters such as a proposed rise in the retirement age show that support for the regime is far from universal. As long as there are Russians who challenge it, the dream of Russia becoming a wealthier, more liberal society is one that can still become a reality.

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Charles Hatfield: The Man Who Made It Rain Too Well

In the winter of 1916, a city that had begged the sky for mercy got exactly what it asked for, and then some. Within weeks, dams had burst, bridges had vanished, and an estimated twenty people were dead. Standing at the center of it all was a former sewing machine salesman who had promised San Diego rain and delivered a flood.

His name was Charles Hatfield. History would settle on a simpler title: the Rainmaker.

Ansar Ali explains.

Charles Hatfield in 1922. Source: Public domain, Farmers Almanac, available here.

From Kitchen Steam to National Sensation

Charles M. Hatfield wasn't a chemist, a meteorologist, or even a particularly educated man by the standards of his peers. Born in Kansas in 1875 and raised in the parched landscapes of Southern California, he made his early living selling sewing machines door to door, a trade that taught him something more valuable than any science degree ever could: how to sell an idea to a desperate audience.

The idea came to him, as legend has it, while watching steam rise from his mother's kettle. If steam could draw moisture from the air on a small scale, why not on a large one? By 1902, he had turned that kitchen observation into a full operation — a secret cocktail of twenty-three chemicals, brewed in galvanized tanks and released into the atmosphere from towers he built himself, usually with his brother Paul at his side.

He rebranded himself carefully. Not a "rainmaker," a word that reeked of traveling con men, but a "moisture accelerator." A "pluviculturist." The vocabulary of a serious man doing serious atmospheric work — even if the work itself was, at best, an educated guess dressed up in ceremony.

Building a Reputation for Rain

And it worked, at least often enough to matter. His first real break came around 1904, when a promoter placed newspaper ads on his behalf and a group of ranchers offered him fifty dollars to end a dry spell. Hatfield and his brother built a tower, released their mixture into the air, and when the rain arrived on schedule, the ranchers were so impressed they paid him double. Word spread. Lumber companies needing water to float logs downriver hired him. So did small towns watching their reservoirs shrink. In one especially lucrative job, he promised Los Angeles nearly nineteen inches of rain within three months and collected $1,000 when the skies delivered.

The U.S. Weather Bureau was less impressed. Bureau officials pointed out, correctly, that the rain Hatfield "produced" tended to arrive alongside storm systems that were already approaching the region regardless of his towers. But a skeptical weather bureau made for far less interesting news copy than a man who claimed to command the clouds, and the press kept printing the legend. Not every contract succeeded. Hatfield's failures were simply easier to forget than his triumphs, especially with a hungry public eager to believe in something after years of drought.

Whether Hatfield actually summoned that rain or simply had an uncanny knack for reading weather patterns and timing his towers to storms already rolling in, nobody could say for certain — and Hatfield never seemed eager to clarify.

A Handshake With the Sky

By 1915, San Diego was in trouble. The Morena Reservoir, the city's water lifeline, was dangerously close to empty. Desperate councilmen turned to the man with the towers and the twenty-three chemicals. The deal: $10,000 if he could fill the reservoir to overflowing.

Notably, nobody actually signed anything. The arrangement was verbal — a handshake deal between a city and a man who claimed he could bend the weather to his will. It would prove to be the most expensive unsigned contract in San Diego's history.

Hatfield and his brother built their tower beside Lake Morena in December 1915. On January 5, 1916, the rain began.

What followed wasn't rainfall. It was a siege. Storm after storm hammered Southern California for weeks. Bridges collapsed. Railway lines washed away. The Sweetwater and Lower Otay dams strained under the weight of water they were never built to hold, and on January 27, 1916, the Lower Otay Dam gave way entirely, sending a wall of water through the valley below that killed an estimated twenty people.

The Morena Reservoir didn't simply fill. It overflowed spectacularly, dramatically, undeniably. By the strict terms of his handshake agreement, Charles Hatfield had done exactly what he'd promised. San Diego was not in a grateful mood.

Act of God, or Act of a Man With a Chemistry Set?

The city council's position was blunt: they would pay Hatfield his $10,000 only if he accepted legal responsibility for the flood damage — damage that ran into the millions. It was an offer no rational man could accept, and Hatfield refused. He sued instead.

The case dragged through the courts for over two decades. San Diego, meanwhile, faced its own flood of lawsuits from residents who had lost homes, livestock, and loved ones, and the city had every incentive to pin the disaster on the man who'd promised them rain rather than on inadequate dam engineering. Hatfield, for his part, had a simple defense: he'd been hired to produce rain, not to control how much of it fell, and no verbal contract on earth obligated him to guarantee a specific volume. In 1938 — twenty-two years after the flood — a final ruling arrived: the storms were an "act of God." The verdict absolved Hatfield of liability for the destruction, but it also meant San Diego owed him nothing. Charles Hatfield never collected a single dollar for the rain that broke his own city.

The Chemist Who Wasn't, and the Skill He Actually Had

Modern meteorologists have a name for what hit San Diego in January 1916: a Pineapple Express, an atmospheric river carrying enormous volumes of tropical moisture straight into the California coast. It was a storm system that would have arrived with or without Hatfield's towers.

That doesn't make his story pure fraud, though. Cloud seeding is a real, if modest, science today — using silver iodide or dry ice to give water vapor something to condense around. Hatfield's chemical fumes may have functioned as a crude, accidental version of the same principle. But no chemical cocktail conjures a storm system out of clear sky. What he needed, and what he seems to have understood better than almost anyone of his era, was existing atmospheric moisture and good timing.

That, in the end, may have been his real talent — not chemistry, but meteorology dressed up as showmanship. He read weather patterns with genuine skill, chose his contracts and locations shrewdly, and understood something enduringly human: people are far more willing to credit a miracle than question a coincidence, especially when they're desperate for one.

 

A Legend That Refused to Dry Up

Hatfield kept working for decades after the San Diego catastrophe, though his fame never fully recovered. He died in 1958, largely forgotten, still insisting his methods worked. But his story outlived him. It inspired the 1956 film The Rainmaker, starring Burt Lancaster. Decades later, Widespread Panic guitarist John Bell stumbled across the tale in an old Farmers' Almanac and turned it into "Hatfield," a song that's been a live staple of the jam band's sets for over thirty years. It still gets cited whenever the conversation turns to weather modification, geoengineering, or humanity's long, uneasy relationship with the idea of controlling nature.

Charles Hatfield was never quite a scientist, and he was never quite a con man either. He existed in the space between — a salesman who understood the sky better than he let on, standing beneath his towers, promising the impossible, and once, for one catastrophic month in 1916, delivering exactly what he said he would.

Charles Hatfield died in 1958. San Diego, presumably, still checks the weather forecast before hiring anyone who calls himself a "moisture accelerator."

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References

San Diego History Center, "It's Raining Man!" exhibition, sandiegohistory.org

City of San Diego Official Website, "Rainmaker Charles Hatfield," sandiego.gov

Wikipedia, "Charles Hatfield," en.wikipedia.org

WBUR Here & Now, "In 1915, San Diego Hired A Rainmaker And Floods Ensued," June 2015, wbur.org

The Daily Beast, "Charles Hatfield Made It Rain in San Diego. The Problem Was He Couldn't Make It Stop," September 2024, thedailybeast.com

Famous Toymaker, Olympian and so much more: A.C. Gilbert

The Erector Set construction toy has given joy to boys and girls throughout its existence in America. However, not many people know the man behind the creation of the Erector Set, A.C. Gilbert. He had an active and playful life in his youth. He achieved considerable success in athletics. His creation of the Erector Set was his greatest achievement. He was also credited with “saving Christmas” during World War I. Alfred Carlton Gilbert left a lasting mark on the fields of athletics, entertainment, and educational toys.

Daniel Boustead explains.

Alfred Carlton Gilbert at Pacific University. Source: Public domain, Page 84 of Pacific University's 1902 Heart of the Oak, available here.

Alfred Carlton Gilbert was born on February 15, 1884, in Salem, Oregon.[1] His family moved to Idaho in 1892 when he was eight years old (ibid., 29). As a child, he hauled wood to heat the family home.[2] One of Gilbert’s favorite boyhood pursuits was building a wild wagon hay ride (ibid., 6). His active, playful curiosity would serve him well in his later years.

A.C. Gilbert went on to achieve great success in athletics. In 1896, Alfred formed the Moscow Athletic Club in his father’s barn when he was only 12 years old.[3] In 1901, Gilbert set a world record with 40 chin-ups.[4] In 1902, he entered Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon (ibid., 26). On June 14, 1902, Gilbert set a world record in the running long dive, with a distance of 15 feet and 9 inches.[5] In 1905, he entered Yale Medical School. While there, he also pole vaulted (ibid., 35 to 36).

Gilbert competed in the pole vault at the 1908 Olympic Games.[6] Gilbert won the first heat, clearing 12 feet.[7] In the second heat, Edward Cook of Cornell won with a vault of 12 feet 2 inches. These heats sent two Americans through to the final (ibid., 47). Later that same day, he topped 12 feet in the final—the only man to do so.[8] Gilbert thought he had won outright, but the British officials ruled that he had only equalled Edward Cook’s mark of 12 feet 2 inches from the heats. With the bar set at 12 feet 2 inches, he missed his first attempt, kicking the bar off, and missed again on his second. On his third try, he cleared it by a fraction of an inch. Before and during the event, the officials had asked whether he wanted to win outright on his own, which spurred Gilbert to a fourth attempt. They then raised the bar by 4 inches, but he failed to clear it. The Olympic records still list the 1908 pole vault as a gold-medal tie between A.C. Gilbert and Edward Cook (ibid., 47 to 48).

A.C. Gilbert’s greatest contribution was the Erector Set. Gilbert came up with the idea of making construction sets for young boys in the fall of 1911 after watching a construction site from the train on his way home from a visit to New York City.[9] A British company, the Meccano Company, already had a similar construction set on the market, but his differed in some important technical respects.[10] The Erector Set had steel beams that were not flat but were bent lengthwise at a 90-degree angle. This allowed four steel beams to be nested side by side, forming a sturdy square hollow support beam. The Erector Set came on the market in 1913, backed by a major American ad campaign originally titled “Mysto Erector Structural Steel Builder” (ibid.). From 1913 to 1966, A.C. Gilbert and the A.C. Gilbert Company sold more than 30 million Erector sets.[11]

In 1916, Gilbert founded and became the first president of the Toy Manufacturers of America.[12] Alfred retired from the group after its 1918 meeting.[13] A hearing before the Council of National Defense—the body that oversaw war production—would prove pivotal for American toy manufacturers.[14] In 1918, during World War I, the Council of National Defense was considering a ban on toy sales for the holiday season.[15] When Gilbert addressed the Council, he argued that toys were not merely playthings but also taught boys to imagine future careers.[16] He added that toys would help shape the men and women who would fight future wars and preserve the peace. Gilbert concluded that depriving boys of toys would mean, in his words, that “the country will lose a generation of doctors, engineers, and scientists” (ibid., 99 to 100). Gilbert’s testimony helped persuade the Council to drop the proposed ban for the holiday season of 1918.[17] The Boston Post (America’s largest-circulation daily newspaper) gave him an enduring nickname: “THE MAN WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS FOR THE CHILDREN”.[18]

On January 23, 1961, Alfred Carlton Gilbert suffered a heart attack and died the following day.[19] Many American newspapers ran obituaries (ibid., 186). The Erector name later passed to the Meccano Company (now Meccano Toys Ltd, Gilbert’s original rival), which continues to sell Erector sets today.[20] 

By 1967, the A.C. Gilbert Company had lost $20 million.[21] Early in 1967, the company laid off its final workers and closed its factory doors in New Haven, Connecticut, after 58 years of operation. [22] The Erector Set is still sold today, including at Walmart.[23]

The Erector Set has delighted millions over the years. Gilbert achieved great success in athletics and won lasting fame for his performance at the 1908 Olympics. During World War I, he raised Americans’ spirits and helped prevent a ban on toy sales during the 1918 holiday season. A.C. Gilbert truly left a positive legacy in business, sports, and educational toys.

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References

Gilbert, A.C. and McClintock, Marshall. The Man Who Lives in Paradise. New York, New York: Rinehart & Company, Incorporated, 1954.

Lemelson-MIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “A.C. Gilbert-Erector Set-Consumer Devices”. Accessed July 24, 2026. https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/ac-gilbert.

McAlister, Mary Ann Nelson, and Robert Young. The Magic of A.C. Gilbert. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Real Writing Press, 2011.

Walmart.com. “Erector Sets STEM model Building Toys Ferris Wheel Model Kit Gifts for Kids Age 8-16 Blue”. Accessed August 5, 2026. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Erector-Sets-STEM-Model-Building-Toys-Ferris-Wheel-Model-Kit-Gifts-for-Kids-Age-8-16-Blue/5372776830.

Watson, Bruce. The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

[1] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made:  The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 29.

[2] McAlister, Mary Ann Nelson, and Robert Young. The Magic of A.C. Gilbert. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Real Writing Press, 2011. 6.

[3] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 33.

[4] McAlister, Mary Ann Nelson, and Robert Young. The Magic of A.C. Gilbert. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Real Writing Press, 2011. 26.

[5] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 35 to 36.

[6] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 43 to 44.

[7] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 47.

[8] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 47 to 48.

[9] McAlister, Mary Ann Nelson, and Robert Young. The Magic of A.C. Gilbert. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Real Writing Press, 2011. 13 to 14.

[10] Lemelson-MIT.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “A.C. Gilbert-Erector Set-Consumer Devices” . Accessed July 24th, 2026. https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/ac-gilbert .

[11] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made : The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 4 to 5.

[12] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 56.

[13] Gilbert, A.C. and McClintock, Marshall. The Man Who Lives in Paradise. New York, New York: Rinehart & Company, Incorporated, 1954. 151. 

[14] Gilbert, A.C. and McClintock, Marshall. The Man Who Lives in Paradise. New York, New York: Rinehart & Company, Incorporated, 1954. 151 to 152; Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 95 to 96.

[15] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 95 to 96.

[16] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 99 to 100.

[17] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 95 to 96 and 99 to 101.

[18] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 101 to 102.

[19] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 186.

[20] Lemelson-MIT.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “A.C. Gilbert-Erector Set-Consumer Devices” . Accessed July 24th, 2026. https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/ac-gilbert .

[21] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made: The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 4 and 191.

[22] Watson, Bruce, The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made : The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 5 and 191.

[23]  Walmart.com. “Erector Sets STEM model Building Toys Ferris Wheel Model Kit Gifts for Kids Age 8-16 Blue”.  Accessed, August 5th, 2026. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Erector-Sets-STEM-Model-Building-Toys-Ferris-Wheel-Model-Kit-Gifts-for-Kids-Age-8-16-Blue/5372776830?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=101506113&wmlspartner=wlpa&cn=FY25-ENTP-PMAX_cnv_dps_dsn_dis_ad_entp_e_n&gclsrc=aw.ds&adid=222222222975372776830_101506113_0000000000_21407473164&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=&wl4=&wl5=9006720&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=5310701070&wl11=online&wl12=5372776830_101506113&veh=sem&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21690411341&gbraid=0AAAAADmfBIphNrgF1335ZnR53rrMv-6Mr&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwKOQ_LaMlgMVQHFHAR3y7hb9EAQYAiABEgK2X_D_BwE

The Painter and the Dictator: Vincent van Gogh, Adolf Hitler and the War on Modern Art

The lives of Vincent van Gogh and Adolf Hitler are rarely considered together. Here, Nethmi Samaranayaka looks at two men who both hoped to make their way as artists, and at how the regime one of them led would later seize the paintings of the other.

Vincent van Gogh - Self-portrait with grey felt hat. Source: Public domain, Van Gogh Museum, available here.

A Death in Auvers

In the early hours of July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in a small attic room at the Auberge Ravoux, an inn in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris. Two days earlier, he had shot himself in the fields outside the village. The doctors who attended him judged it too dangerous to remove the bullet, and his brother Theo hurried from Paris to be with him. According to a letter Theo later wrote to their sister, Vincent's last words were "La tristesse durera toujours"("The sadness will last forever"). He was 37 years old.

At the time of his death, Van Gogh was almost unknown to the wider public. Within a few decades, he would be one of the most celebrated artists who ever lived. And less than half a century later, his paintings would be removed from German museums by a regime led by another man who had once hoped to become a painter.

A Late Start

Born in 1853 in Zundert, in the southern Netherlands, the son of a Protestant minister, Van Gogh came to art slowly. He spent several years working for the art dealers Goupil & Cie, then taught at schools in England, worked briefly in a bookshop, and served as a lay preacher among the coal miners of the Borinage region of Belgium. It was only in 1880, at the age of 27, that he committed himself to becoming an artist.

He had little formal training. Short spells of study, including a few weeks at the Antwerp Academy in 1886, left him frustrated with academic teaching, which he found rigid. Instead, he learned by drawing constantly and by studying the artists he admired, among them Jean-François Millet, Rembrandt, and Eugène Delacroix. In Paris, where he lived with Theo from 1886 to 1888, he encountered the Impressionists and Japanese woodblock prints, and the dark, earthy palette of his early work gave way to bright color and bold, rhythmic brushwork.

Theo

Throughout his career, Van Gogh depended on Theo, who worked as an art dealer in Paris. Theo sent him a monthly allowance and paid for paints and canvases, and the two brothers exchanged hundreds of letters. Most of these letters survive, and they remain the richest source we have on Van Gogh's life and his thinking about art.

Van Gogh's personal life was often difficult. He could be intense and quarrelsome, and many of his relationships broke down. From late 1888, he experienced a series of serious mental health crises, the first of which followed a quarrel with Paul Gauguin in Arles that December. In May 1889, he voluntarily entered an asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he stayed for a year. The exact nature of his illness is still debated today.

A Decade of Work

Despite illness and poverty, Van Gogh was remarkably productive. In roughly ten years, he created about 2,100 works, including around 860 oil paintings and more than 1,000 drawings and watercolors. Many of his best-known pictures, including his sunflower series and The Starry Night (1889), date from the last two years of his life. In Auvers, where he arrived in May 1890 to be closer to Theo and under the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, he produced 74 paintings in about 70 days.

It is often said that he sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, which was bought by the Belgian artist Anna Boch in 1890. In fact, he sold or exchanged a small number of other works. By 1890, recognition was also beginning to arrive: the critic Albert Aurier published an admiring article about him in the Mercure de France that January, and his work was well received at exhibitions in Brussels and Paris.

Posthumous Fame

Theo died just six months after Vincent, in January 1891. It was Theo's widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who did more than anyone to establish Vincent's reputation. She lent paintings to exhibitions, sold works to carefully chosen collectors and museums, and in 1914 published the brothers' letters. Major exhibitions in the early 20th century, including a large retrospective at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum in 1905, secured Van Gogh's place as a pioneer of modern art. His expressive use of color and brushwork influenced the Fauves and the German Expressionists, and by the late 20th century his paintings were selling for record-breaking sums.

Van Gogh is buried beside Theo in the cemetery at Auvers-sur-Oise. The room where he died at the Auberge Ravoux has been preserved and is open to visitors.

A Young Man in Vienna

When Van Gogh died in 1890, Adolf Hitler was a toddler. He was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, Austria, the son of Alois Hitler, a customs official, and his third wife, Klara. After his father's death in 1903, the teenage Hitler left school without qualifications and set his heart on becoming an artist.

In 1907, he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and was rejected. The academy's verdict on his test drawings was "unsatisfactory," with the note "few heads." By Hitler's own later account, the academy's rector suggested that his talents lay in architecture, a course of study for which he lacked the necessary qualifications. Two months later, in December 1907, his mother died of breast cancer. He applied to the academy again in 1908 and was turned away without being allowed to sit the entrance examination.

Years of Obscurity

Hitler remained in Vienna for the next five years. After his money ran out, he went through a brief period of homelessness in 1909 before moving, in early 1910, into a men's hostel on Meldemannstraße, where he lived until 1913. He earned a modest income from small watercolors of Vienna's landmarks, which were sold for him by a fellow hostel resident and by local dealers. His pictures were competent but conventional: carefully drawn buildings and street scenes, usually with few people in them.

Vienna at this time was a city of intense political and ethnic tension, in which German nationalist and antisemitic politics had a wide following. How far Hitler's own views took shape there is debated. In Mein Kampf, written in the 1920s, he described Vienna as the place where his worldview was formed, but historians have found little contemporary evidence that he held the radical antisemitic views he later espoused before the end of the First World War.

War and Politics

In May 1913, Hitler moved to Munich. When war broke out in August 1914, he volunteered for the Bavarian army and served for four years as a regimental dispatch runner on the Western Front. He was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914 and the Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918. He was in a military hospital, recovering from a gas attack, when Germany's defeat was announced in November 1918.

Like many Germans, Hitler embraced the myth that the army had been "stabbed in the back" by enemies at home. Still in the army in 1919, he was sent to monitor a small political group in Munich, the German Workers' Party. He joined it, found that he had a talent for public speaking, and in 1921 became leader of what had by then been renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party.

In November 1923, Hitler led a failed attempt to seize power in Munich, known as the Beer Hall Putsch. He was sentenced to five years in prison but served barely nine months, during which he wrote much of Mein Kampf. For several years afterward, the Nazis remained a fringe party, winning just 2.6 percent of the vote in the 1928 Reichstag election. The Great Depression transformed their fortunes. As unemployment soared, support for the party grew rapidly, and in July 1932 it became the largest party in the Reichstag, with 37.3 percent of the vote. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor.

Dictatorship

Within months, Hitler had dismantled German democracy, banning rival parties and trade unions and establishing a one-party state. Jews were systematically excluded from German life through boycotts, dismissals from public service, and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped them of their citizenship rights.

The War on "Degenerate" Art

Hitler's own career as an artist was long over, but his tastes helped shape the cultural policy of the Nazi state. He favored traditional, realistic art and regarded modern movements such as Expressionism, Cubism, and abstraction as signs of cultural decline. In 1937, Nazi officials confiscated thousands of modern works from German museums. That July, an exhibition titled Degenerate Art opened in Munich, displaying modern paintings alongside mocking slogans, while the officially approved Great German Art Exhibition opened nearby.

Van Gogh's work was caught up in the purge. The regime sold many confiscated works abroad to raise foreign currency. At a public auction in Lucerne, Switzerland, in June 1939, paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, and others were sold, among them a Van Gogh self-portrait taken from the state collection in Munich. Earlier that year, in March 1939, thousands of works judged unsellable had been burned in the courtyard of a Berlin fire station.

War, Genocide, and Defeat

In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, beginning the Second World War in Europe. During the war, the Nazi regime and its collaborators murdered around six million Jews in the Holocaust, as well as millions of other victims, including Roma, disabled people, Polish civilians, and Soviet prisoners of war.

By early 1945, Allied armies were advancing into Germany from east and west. On April 30, 1945, with Soviet troops fighting in the streets of Berlin, Hitler died by suicide in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, together with Eva Braun, whom he had married the previous day. He was 56 years old.

Two Painters

Vincent van Gogh and Adolf Hitler were born 36 years apart and were alive at the same time for little more than a year. Both began adult life without a settled career, both hoped to make their way as artists, and both knew periods of poverty and obscurity. There, the similarities largely end.

Van Gogh devoted the last decade of his life to painting and died with little sense of the recognition to come; the world has since come to see his work as a turning point in the history of art. Hitler abandoned art for politics, and the regime he led brought war and genocide to Europe. In one of history's ironies, that regime's campaign against modern art reached into the collections of the very painter whose work had helped to inspire it. Van Gogh's reputation survived untouched. Today, his paintings hang in museums around the world, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, built around the collection that Theo and Johanna preserved, is one of the most visited museums in the Netherlands.

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References

• Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam): Official historical archives on Vincent van Gogh's life, letters to Theo, and his artistic career statistics. 

• The House of Van Gogh (Auberge Ravoux): Historical documentation of the Ravoux Inn and Room No. 5 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

• The History Place (Rise of Hitler): Detailed biographical chronicles regarding Adolf Hitler’s early life, family background, and his years in Vienna. 

• History.com (Hitler's Frustrated Art Career): Institutional insights into Adolf Hitler’s failed art applications and his subsequent campaign against modern art. 

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Holocaust Encyclopedia): Reference articles on the Holocaust and the Nazi campaign against "degenerate" art.

• Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (London: Allen Lane, 1998).

• Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

• Stephanie Barron (ed.), 'Degenerate Art': The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991).

• Nienke Bakker et al. (eds.), Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: His Final Months (Van Gogh Museum, 2023).

Che Guevara: The Final Years – 1960 - 1967

In January 1959 Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista government and became Cuba’s new leader. Che Guevara had been a prominent figure in that revolution and was one of the few surviving guerrillas who had been with Castro from the start. With victory achieved, Che now had to decide on his future direction.

His contribution to Castro’s cause had undoubtedly won him the favor of Cuba’s new leader and assured him of a position among the country’s ruling elite. As the decade went on, however, it became clear that Che had different ideas about his role and future, not just in Cuba but in the wider world. He went on to make a very strange mix of choices in the last years of his life, and those final seven years would be a concoction of bewilderment, excitement and tragedy.

Steve Prout explains.

You can read part 1 on Che’s early years here, and part 2 on the his path to being a Marxist revolutionary here.

Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. Source: Public domain, Museo Che Guevara, available here.

Cuba 1960-1964

The Che Guevara of 1959 was a completely different man. He was no longer the “young Argentine vagabond who just happened to have a medical degree scrabbling for work in a foreign country.” He was now a high-ranking official in the new Cuban administration with close access to its leader, Fidel Castro. Over the next few years he would hold several posts: commander of the La Cabaña fortress, where he oversaw the revolutionary tribunals that purged the army of Batista sympathizers; president of the National Bank of Cuba; and Minister of Industries. He had few successes in these roles, and it was at La Cabaña that he acquired his fearsome and ruthless reputation. In the first months after the revolution, Che presided over dozens, and by some accounts hundreds, of executions.

It is a matter of debate whether Che was any more ruthless than other members of the new Cuban government. Neither Che’s own comments nor those of his comrades at the time paint a merciful picture. Asked about Che’s part in the legal process, fellow prosecutor Miguel Ángel Duque de Estrada said simply that “he [Che] was in charge… his word was final.” In the first hundred days of Che’s tenure, no fewer than fifty-five executions were carried out.

His role at La Cabaña, and the vigor with which he applied himself to it, revealed a major change in Che’s personality and moral code. Only six years before the revolution, in 1953, Che had qualified as a doctor, a profession dedicated to the betterment and prolonging of life. By the time he took charge of the tribunals he had clearly abandoned that commitment, privately admitting to his father: “As for my medical career, I can tell you that I deserted it a long time ago.” Perhaps we have our answer. Che could have refused the role, but ambition persuaded him otherwise.

However, the Cuban people were also in a vengeful, unforgiving mood toward the former government, and sought reprisals against those who had supported and carried out the Batista regime’s atrocities. Public demand aside, there was another important reason: Castro needed to ensure that no dissent remained that could undermine his victory in those early, vulnerable days. Che remembered the events that had toppled Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954, which he had witnessed first-hand during his second journey through Latin America. In Che’s view, Árbenz had failed to purge his army of dissenters, and they ultimately removed him from power. That mistake could not be allowed to happen in Cuba.

In 1959 the new Cuban government faced a hostile diplomatic environment. The United States was growing increasingly wary of the revolution’s radical direction, and much of Latin America was under heavy US influence. In June 1959 Castro sent Che abroad as an ambassador on a three-month goodwill tour. Like his later tour of 1964–65, it focused on non-aligned countries, which on this occasion included Egypt, India, Japan, Indonesia and Yugoslavia. The priority was to win trade and ease Cuba’s economic vulnerability.

To achieve this, Cuba urgently needed to sell its one major commodity: sugar. Cuba produced around six million tons a year, of which roughly three million tons were sold to the United States under a quota system, a quota the US would cut in July 1960 as relations collapsed. The tour achieved little. It laid some groundwork for trade with Egypt and produced a rice-for-sugar arrangement with Burma, but no major new customers. Some of the fault lay with Che himself. His lack of knowledge of economics and trade put him on the back foot in negotiations, and the outcome was hardly surprising. In short, he was unsuited to the task, though in fairness many others in Castro’s government were probably equally lacking. Cuba would soon turn to the Soviet bloc instead, signing its first major trade agreement with the USSR in February 1960.

On a personal front, Che divorced his wife, Hilda Gadea, and shortly afterwards, in June 1959, married Aleida March de la Torre, whom he had met during the fighting. His marriage to Hilda had been under strain since before the revolutionary campaign in Cuba, and the situation was no doubt exacerbated by Che’s restless ambition. That ambition was undimmed; indeed, he was now heavily focused on a new task: taking revolution to the wider world.

Exporting Revolution

Cuba’s policy of exporting revolution was both a defensive and an offensive strategy. Havana feared that the United States was planning retaliation for Castro’s overthrow of Batista. The US was seeking compensation for American property nationalized by Cuba, valued at around $1.8 billion at the time, and it now had a communist state on its southern flank, an anathema to American ideology. In Castro’s mind, an invasion was only a matter of time, a fear borne out by the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961.

In theory at least, exporting revolution was an alternative to the impossible task of taking direct action against the United States. The plan was to create distractions in other countries that would tie up the time and military resources of Cuba’s potential enemies—or, in Che’s later words, to create “two, three, many Vietnams.” If this produced regime changes friendly to Cuba, so much the better. Cuba became a training ground for several clandestine guerrilla organizations preparing to take up arms across the developing world, and it was here that Che believed he had found his new calling.

Between 1960 and 1964 Cuba was actively planning several clandestine operations in Latin America, and those in Argentina and Guatemala reached an advanced stage. From 1962, large numbers of would-be guerrillas from across Latin America arrived in Cuba to train, mentored by Che, seasoned Cuban guerrilla veterans and Eastern Bloc advisers, for example from Czechoslovakia. Che also used the resources available to him at the National Bank of Cuba to fund guerrilla movements in Central America, advancing $20,000 to the Nicaraguans Tomás Borge and Rodolfo Romero, two guerrilla leaders heavily involved in the region.

Argentina was particularly close to Che’s heart as his homeland and the home of his family. Again without Che being present, a Cuban-backed guerrilla force led by the Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti was gradually established in Bolivia in preparation for an incursion into northern Argentina. After President Arturo Frondizi was removed by the military in 1962, Che saw an opportunity for such an operation.

By the time the operation began in earnest, however, the political climate in Argentina had changed. The military-dominated interim government had given way to elections in 1963, which brought the centrist Arturo Illia to the presidency, lowering the political temperature and the appetite for revolution. Che’s own opportunity for personal involvement in a campaign was coming, but not close to home. It would be in post-colonial Africa.

The Congo and the Disappearance of Che Guevara

In 1965 Cuba backed the Congo’s various rebel movements against the central government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose army was commanded by Joseph Mobutu. Civil conflict had erupted almost immediately after the country gained independence from Belgium in June 1960, beginning with an army mutiny and the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga. The newly elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was unable to contain the unrest. When Belgium sent in troops, Lumumba saw this as a stealthy attempt to preserve its imperial grip on its former colony. He appealed to the United Nations, which sent a peacekeeping force, but when the UN refused to help him end the Katangan secession he turned to the USSR, asking Nikita Khrushchev for assistance, and Soviet aid and advisers were dispatched to the Congo. The Cold War had arrived in Africa, and given the country’s vast mineral wealth—cobalt, copper and much else—this was unacceptable to the West. Lumumba was deposed in September 1960 in a coup led by Mobutu with Belgian and CIA support. After his capture he was handed over to his political rival Moïse Tshombe’s Katangan authorities and brutally murdered in January 1961.

Watching from the sidelines, Cuba believed that the Congo offered an opening for successful regime change. Successes outside the Cuban revolution itself had so far been non-existent, so this time the operation would receive the personal attention of Che Guevara himself. In April 1965 Che was secretly inserted into the country to begin his work. There is little value in recounting the many chaotic engagements of the seven unsuccessful months that followed. Che opened his account of the campaign with the blunt admission, “This is the history of a failure,” and his presence had little or no impact. The diary and other witnesses describe multiple disadvantages: absent leaders, uncommitted fighters, poor logistics, language barriers and insurmountable odds, including Mobutu’s considerable army, supported by the CIA and by elite mercenary units led by the infamous Mike Hoare. Che’s first personal attempt to export revolution had been an abject failure. It was not an auspicious start.

Before his arrival, Che had been given plenty of advice and warnings by African leaders that his venture was highly likely to fail. The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser advised him against becoming “a Tarzan, a white man among blacks, leading and protecting them,” as Africa had had enough of white rule and interference. Nasser warned, prophetically, that it would end “badly.”

Nor did his plans convince the African revolutionaries to whom he presented them in detail in Dar es Salaam. The consensus was that they were too ambitious and naive. In Che’s words, the meeting ended “coldly and dismissively,” with his guests “courteously saying goodbye.” His costly idea of using the Congo as an anti-imperialist springboard for guerrilla struggles in neighboring countries was not the kind of revolution that the Congolese, or Africans more widely, desired. He proceeded regardless, and it would not be the last time Che failed to heed advice and warnings.

Che arrived in the Congo in April 1965 and by November had withdrawn to neighboring Tanzania, where he wrote his account of the campaign in Dar es Salaam. If nothing else, it served as a “lessons learned” log for future operations. He was undeterred by the failure and still vehemently supported the idea of exporting guerrilla warfare, but he needed another opportunity. He would get one in Bolivia a year later, but he failed to heed his own lessons, failures and experiences before embarking on that venture.

Mobutu, meanwhile, seized power in a coup in November 1965, just as Che was leaving, and ruled the country (renamed Zaire in 1971) until 1997.

Diplomatic Blunders and a Rumored Rift with Castro

In February 1965, before leaving for the Congo, Che made a public address in Algiers to delegates from across Asia and Africa. The speech was so inflammatory that it riled Cuba’s principal ally, the USSR. In it Che made a series of catastrophic blunders, once again proving that diplomacy was not among his skills.

In the speech Che delivered a clear criticism, if not a rebuke, of the Soviet bloc. He argued that its “mutually beneficial” trade with developing countries was no better than the West’s, and that socialist countries trading at world-market prices were, to a degree, accomplices of imperialist exploitation. By implication he sided with China over the USSR, suggesting that the Chinese displayed a truer socialist morality than the Soviets. Moscow noted his closeness to China and came to see him as “China’s man,” which was unacceptable to the Kremlin.

This rebuke enraged the Soviets, and the ramifications reached Fidel Castro. What was he to do with Che? As it turned out, Che’s own actions provided the solution. Many still wonder whether it was a stroke of good fortune or some stealthy maneuvering behind the scenes that removed Che from Cuban affairs. Che would later regret his actions.

Before Che’s disappearance into the Congo there were rumors of a rift between him and Castro over his open criticism of Moscow. Nothing has been officially confirmed, but the events that followed are suspicious. The rift, if there was one, was driven by a mixture of Che’s loose, tactless tongue and his ardent Marxist beliefs, which put him firmly on China’s side of the Sino-Soviet dispute. Castro shared some of Che’s frustration with Moscow but kept a quiet restraint.

“The Letter” to Castro and the People of Cuba

On April 1, 1965, while preparing for his insertion into the Congo, Che wrote a farewell letter to Fidel Castro. That letter, in Che’s typically flowery prose, would soon work to his detriment. When Castro read it out in public in October 1965 to explain Che’s absence, it effectively detached Che from his comrades: he had renounced all his government titles and his Cuban citizenship, erasing everything he had worked for. In one short letter he had lost his own stage at a time when he arguably needed its support most.

Extracts from the letter read as follows:

“I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban Revolution in its territory, and I now take my leave of you, the compañeros, your people who are now mine.”

If that was not clear enough, he elaborated in true “Che prose”:

“I formally resign my responsibilities in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank as commander and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legally ties me to Cuba.”

The letter perhaps alludes to tensions with Castro when Che writes: “My only serious failing was not having more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and revolutionary.” (The Sierra Maestra mountains were the refuge of Castro and his depleted band in the early stages of the insurgency.) There were suggestions that Fidel had begun to view Che’s activities and position as a diplomatic liability, especially after the Algiers speech angered Moscow. That speech put Castro in a difficult position: although he privately shared some of Che’s reservations about the USSR, it was nonetheless a vital, if not the only, ally on which Cuba depended during its continued international isolation.

Che added, “with a mixture of joy and sorrow,” that “other nations of the world call for my modest efforts” and that he would “carry to new battlefronts” the faith Castro had taught him, to “fight against imperialism wherever it may be.” These hints of grandiosity and egotism show how far Che’s transformation, and perhaps a growing self-delusion, had developed.

The letter was a baffling act, and it leaves readers wondering whether it was driven by an inflated ego, by the fact that Che, given his catalog of failures, was running out of “proverbial rope” as an ambassador and official of the Cuban government, or by both.

Bolivia and the fate of Che Guevara

Cuba was planning a guerrilla operation in Bolivia while Che was busy managing the disaster in the Congo. Cuba had originally planned an operation in Argentina, beginning with small incursions into the north of the country from across the Bolivian border, but the idea had been abandoned after Masetti’s failed attempt of 1963–64 and the change of government in Argentina. By the time Che returned secretly to Cuba in mid-1966, after months in Tanzania and Prague, he had decided to join the new venture. Still smarting from his failure in the Congo, he needed to repair his damaged reputation, both in his own eyes and in those of his peers. He was still traveling incognito and was effectively stateless. The Cuban public was unaware of his return, and his “disappearance” from Cuban life continued.

An advance team of Cuban and Bolivian communists had already established a secret base in Bolivia, on a farm near the Ñancahuazú River. All Che had to do was get into the country, which was no easy task, as his activities and whereabouts were now of great interest to the CIA. Traveling on false papers under an assumed name, Adolfo Mena González, he arrived in Bolivia in November 1966. Little did he know that he was beginning another fruitless and impossible campaign that would end in his capture and death. Masetti himself had disappeared in 1964 and is presumed to have died in the jungle of Argentina’s Salta province, and the authorities were by now aware of Cuban activity in the border regions.

The Bolivian failure

Before Che’s arrival, approaches had already been made to various Marxist groups within Bolivia with a view to creating a united front, but the Bolivian Communist Party did not share the Cuban belief in armed revolution. Che also reportedly received warnings against the whole idea from Argentina’s exiled former president Juan Perón in Madrid. Perón was candid, urging Che to “suspend that plan” and adding: “You will not survive. Search for alternatives.” Once again, however, Che failed to learn from the Congo and proceeded regardless.

Che arrived secretly in Bolivia in November 1966. The Cubans needed the success that had so far eluded them, though it was unclear what form that success would take: outright victory over “US-backed imperialism” or distractions sufficient to tie down US military resources. In the event, the campaign did nothing to slow US efforts against Cuba and Che; if anything, it was an irritation. The USSR, meanwhile, was distancing itself, preferring peaceful coexistence with the West. Cuba’s targets were not ready for revolution, and support for, and belief in, its ambitions were dwindling.

By mid-1967 the situation in Bolivia already looked hopeless. Che and his band were being pursued relentlessly by superior forces—the Bolivian Army, US-trained Bolivian Rangers and their US advisers. His force had dwindled from around fifty men to just over twenty. The local population gave them no support, nor did other communist-aligned groups. Che had no hope of success, and he admitted in his diary that support from the population was non-existent. Of the Bolivian peasants for whom he claimed to be fighting, he wrote: “Talking to these peasants is like talking to statues. They do not give us any help. Worse still, many of them are turning into informants.” Bolivia had already had its own revolution in 1952, which brought land reform and the nationalization of the tin mines, and it wanted any further change to come by peaceful, electoral means, an approach supported even by its own Marxist and communist groups.

The campaign was reminiscent of the Congo in many ways. Che and his small band spent days on the move with little to show for it, and the whole campaign produced no more than a handful of minor victories against small Bolivian patrols, none of which posed any threat to the government. For those interested in every detail, his Bolivian Diary provides it, but it adds little to this article. The Bolivian military redoubled its efforts to eliminate this troublesome individual and his exhausted guerrillas, and to set an example to any would-be imitators.

The Death of Che

On October 8, 1967, after a relentless pursuit, Che was captured by Bolivian forces in the Quebrada del Yuro ravine. A local peasant had revealed the guerrillas’ whereabouts to the army. Che and a handful of his men were taken alive to the nearby village of La Higuera, where he was held under heavy guard, tightly bound, on the mud floor of the village schoolhouse. His captors debated what to do with him as they awaited orders from their superiors. His end would come swiftly.

There are contradictory accounts of Che’s last moments. One is that he died bravely, looking his executioner in the eye in the La Higuera schoolhouse and daring him with the words, “Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”

Another account concerns his capture the previous day: that he surrendered, calling out to his captors that he was “worth more to you alive than dead.” We will never know the full truth of his final hours. Certainly, photographs taken after his capture show a man visibly shaken and exhausted by his physical ordeal, a far cry from the self-assured diplomat who had graced the world stage.

The last images of him alive unsurprisingly show him dirty, bloodied and barefoot. According to witnesses, including Félix Rodríguez, a Cuban-born CIA officer working alongside the Bolivian Army, Che was disillusioned but unrepentant. He blamed the “provincial mindset of the Bolivian Communist Party” for his failure and hinted that the Bolivian venture had been a mistake. His spirit was not entirely broken: he resisted interrogation and, to the very end, refused to denounce Castro or renounce his beliefs.

Che’s end could have been different. According to Rodríguez, there is credible evidence that the CIA wanted Che taken alive and flown out of Bolivia to Panama for interrogation. This makes sense: Che’s death risked creating a martyr for the communist cause and giving a boost to growing left-wing movements at home and abroad, whereas his capture and imprisonment would have been a significant setback to the revolutionary cause.

The US did not make the final, fateful decision. According to Rodríguez, it was the Bolivian president, René Barrientos, who ordered Che’s execution, which was promptly carried out. Barrientos was determined to deliver a stark warning to other revolutionary groups. Che was executed on October 9, 1967. His bullet-riddled body was flown to Vallegrande and photographed before being buried in a secret location, where it lay undiscovered until 1997. His hands had been cut off for identification purposes. In a sense, this was not the end of Che Guevara. A man of that name had been killed on October 9, 1967, but in his place an iconic image had been born, one that would prove impossible to erase from history.

Assessing Che: Conclusion

It goes without saying that Che’s death immortalized him, and myth and fact soon became blurred. He remains a polarizing historical figure, a dubious honor that comes with a wide mix of supporters, worshippers and critics.

Che Guevara was undoubtedly a remarkable man, but also a restless one. He never appeared to have a life plan beyond seeking greatness and personal triumph. He achieved this, in the enduring image of the anti-imperialist Marxist, on the back of Fidel Castro’s success, almost as if he had simply stumbled upon the opportunities presented to him.

He rarely stayed in any profession or vocation for long. He abandoned his hard-earned medical qualification for the revolutionary adventure with Fidel Castro in Cuba, a country that was not his birthplace. After the fighting, the revolution led him into government and diplomacy, for which he was ill-suited, and his record of achievement there is unimpressive. His two personal attempts at “exporting revolution,” in the Congo and in Bolivia, failed disastrously, the second leading to his death.

We must also never overlook one vital fact: Che was committed to the Marxist cause and closer to the Chinese model of communism, seeing the Soviet version as a diluted form of the doctrine. Whatever its rhetoric, Che’s and Cuba’s anti-imperialism did not deliver freedom: it meant supporting regimes, Cuba’s own included, that were themselves oppressive. The image some retain of Che as a Third World freedom fighter deserves some reflection.

Now, read our highly-rated, fast-paced book on the Cold War here.

Sources

I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervour – Ernesto Che Guevara – Collected letters 1947-1967 – Penguin Modern Classics

Che Guevara – A Revolutionary Life – Jon Lee Anderson – Penguin – 1997

Back on the Road – A Journey into Central America - Che Guevara – 2000 – Vintage Uk

Revolution in the Air – Max Elbaum – 2018 – Verso

The African Dream – Che Guevara – 1999 – Harvill Press

Bolivian Diary – Che Guevara – 2004 – Pimlico

Who Was Noor Inayat Khan and Why Did One of Britain's Bravest Wartime Agents Become a Hidden History?

Today Noor Inayat Khan is commemorated in films, books and memorials. And even though there is more recognition of her role as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during World War Two, she still struggles to be included in popular histories of the war. Who was Noor Inayat Khan, and why did the life of this brave British wartime agents become hidden?

Sophie Riley explains.

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan. Source: Public domain, HU 74868 from the collection of the Imperial War Museums, available here.

Raised in the shadow of peace

Noor Inayat Khan was a young woman whose life revolved around music, storytelling and poetry. She was born to Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan and American poet Ora Baker in Moscow on January 1, 1914. However, the outbreak of the First World War forced the family to leave Russia, first settling in London before making their home in Paris after the war when Noor was still a child.

The family settled in the Parisian suburb of Suresnes, in a house Noor affectionately called Fazal Manzil – or House of Blessing. There she was raised with her siblings in an environment surrounded by music, spirituality, non-violence, and a deep appreciation for cultural diversity.

In 1927, tragedy struck the Khan household when her father died from pneumonia. Noor assumed responsibilities well beyond her years. As her mother turned inwards with grief, Noor assumed a maternal role for her siblings alongside domestic chores. Amid these responsibilities she developed her passion for writing poetry and short stories – some of which were later published in the Sunday literary supplement of the prominent French newspaper Le Figaro.

Nothing in Noor’s childhood suggested that she would one day become one of Britain’s most courageous wartime agents. Raised with a philosophy of peace and compassion, her upbringing stood in stark contrast to the dangerous world of wartime espionage. It is precisely this contrast that makes her story, and its subsequent disappearance from popular memory, so compelling.

Just as Noor stood on the threshold of becoming a children’s author, her life was disrupted again as Europe descended into war. The German invasion of France in May 1940 forced Noor and her family to flee to England.  It was here that Noor and her brother Vilayat made the crucial decision to support the war effort and fight the fascists, a decision that would change the course of Noor’s life forever.

Choosing resistance

In November 1940, Noor joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class and trained as a wireless radio operator. Her fluency in French, knowledge of occupied France, and her aptitude for Morse code soon attracted the attention of recruiters from the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain's secret wartime organization. Established in July 1940 on the orders of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the SOE was tasked with conducting espionage, sabotage and supporting resistance movements throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Churchill famously instructed the organization to ‘set Europe ablaze’, and it was into this dangerous world that Noor was about to step.

In late 1942, she was summoned to the Victoria Hotel in London for an interview with Captain Selwyn Jepson, the recruiting officer for the SOE's French (F) Section. Conducted entirely in French, the interview assessed her language skills and her suitability for clandestine work. Jepson made the dangers explicitly clear: if captured, she would receive no protection under international law and she would be executed. Despite the risks, Noor accepted. On February 8, 1943, she joined the SOE under the codename Madeleine.

Ironically, the secrecy that made Noor an ideal SOE recruit also contributed to her post-war obscurity. Intelligence work depended upon silence, and after 1945 former agents rarely discussed their missions, while many official records remained classified. Unlike soldiers returning openly from the front, Noor's wartime service remained hidden from public view.

Decades later Captain Jepson reflected on Noor’s character, during an interview with the Imperial War Museum.  He described her as ‘a woman with immense integrity, sincerity, and deep devotion to the cause of liberty.’ [1] His admiration also challenged prevailing views of women in espionage. Jepson believed that women had a ‘far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men’, [2] a conviction that saw him champion the recruitment of more women into the SOE's F Section.

From pacifism to espionage

Prior to her starting active duties Noor was sent to an SOE training school in Beaulieu, Hampshire, where she spent four months living and breathing her cover under the codename Madeleine. In addition to learning about her new identity as a children’s nurse, Jeanne-Marie Renier, Noor was also trained in physical combat, weaponry and how to resist during interrogations.  

During her time at Beaulieu, she was continuously assessed physically and mentally while her instructors filled out written observations on her suitability as an SOE agent.  Her reports (which can be seen in The National Archives) show that Noor was skilled as a radio operator, however there were mixed opinions on her ability. One officer noted that she ‘was not overburdened with brains,’[3] to which another responded ‘we don’t want them to be overburdened with brains.’[4] It is also noted that Noor had an unstable and temperamental personality, due to her pacifist beliefs and apparent anxiety around weapons.

Despite these mixed reviews, it was Vera Atkins, F Section's intelligence officer, who had the final word on Noor traveling to France. She summoned Noor for a meeting in a restaurant in Mayfair in May 1943, and offered her a chance to back out of the mission without any loss of honor. Noor adamantly refused, securing her final deployment clearance.

Before leaving England, every trace of Noor’s British identity had to disappear. She was issued with French-made clothes, forged identity papers, and ration cards. Alongside her B2 wireless radio and Webley pistol, she carried a small selection of pills, one for energy, one designed to induce a stomach disorder, and a cyanide capsule to use as a last resort if captured.

During the next full moon, on June 16, 1943, Noor boarded a Westland Lysander aircraft alongside three other SOE agents. As the aircraft disappeared into the night, Noor left England behind under the codename Madeleine. She would never return. 

Behind Enemy Lines

Noor began her role as a wireless operator for the ‘Prosper’ network immediately after her arrival. Her job was to communicate with SOE back in Britain, to coordinate the arrival of agents and weaponry to aid the Resistance. However, the network soon collapsed due to infiltration from the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) and the work of double agents.

This collapse did not deter her as she continued to transmit messages back to London. In addition, she helped around thirty stranded Allied airmen escape occupied France. This work brought her into at least one shooting affray with German troops, forcing her to set aside her pacifist beliefs.

For the next three months Noor was constantly on the move as she transmitted messages back to London. Being the only operator in Paris during this time put her high up on the Gestapo’s most wanted list. This led to many close calls. On one occasion, she entered her home to find a Gestapo officer waiting for her, and through sheer luck and determination she managed to outwit him.  

However, her luck would run out on October 13, 1943, when she was betrayed by a Frenchwoman for 100,000 francs. From there she was taken to 84 Avenue Foch in Paris for interrogation.

Once inside Avenue Foch, Noor refused to cooperate and remained silent despite being tortured. During her time there her fight did not waver as she attempted to escape twice, once through a window immediately after her arrival.  For her second attempt, she escaped with two other prisoners by dismantling the bars on their skylights, but they were ultimately recaptured during an Allied air raid.

Because she was deemed highly dangerous and refused to sign a document promising not to attempt another escape, the Nazis moved her to Pforzheim prison in Germany where she remained in solitary confinement for ten months prior to her transfer to Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany. 

Due to her sheer defiance, Noor was executed alongside three other SOE agents on September 13, 1944. Prior to her execution she shouted her final word ‘Liberté.’

A Legacy reimagined

Noor’s execution marked the end of her mission but not the beginning of her public recognition. Unlike many military heroes whose stories entered Britain’s wartime narrative almost immediately, Noor’s remained largely unknown outside intelligence circles for decades.

Yet secrecy, upbringing, and gender alone cannot explain Noor's absence from wartime history. History, however, has a habit of returning to unfinished stories. The young woman who once dreamed of writing children's stories never had the chance to finish her own. Instead, she became part of one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary stories, one that history was slow to tell. In recent decades, renewed scholarly interest has catalyzed biographies and memorials which have restored Noor among key heroes of the conflict.  

In London, HRH the Princess Royal unveiled a bust of Noor in Gordon Square in November 2012, commenting that ‘the life of the spy princess, while truly remarkable in its own right, also has a real connection to our modern era.’ [5] Noor has also posthumously been honored with the George Cross from Britain alongside the French Croix de Guerre with Gold Star.

The story of Noor Inayat Khan reflects a wider shift in the way the Second World War is remembered. Rather than focusing solely on battlefield victories and military commanders, historians have increasingly explored the experiences of civilians, women, intelligence operatives and Britain's diverse wartime communities. This renewed interest has encouraged historians to reconsider the role of women within Britain's secret war, challenge traditional male narratives of military heroism, and recognize the contributions made by people from across the British Empire. In so doing, Noor's extraordinary service has become part of a much broader effort to recover histories that remained hidden for decades.

Despite all the glory and recognition, her story should end with the recollection of Captain Selwyn Jepson, the SOE’s chief recruiter who met her that fateful winter day just off Trafalgar Square when he recruited her:

‘I see her very clearly as she was that first afternoon, sitting in front of me in that dingy little room, in a hard kitchen chair on the other side of a bare wooden table. Indeed, of them all, and there were many who did not return, I find myself constantly remembering her with a curious and very personal vividness which outshines the rest … the small, still features, the dark quiet eyes, the soft voice, and the fine spirit glowing in her.’[6]

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Further Reading Material

Arthur J Magida, Code name Madeleine: A Sufi spy in Nazi-occupied Paris, (Recorded Books, 2020) 

Noor Inayat Khan and Zia Inayat-Khan, Dream flowers: The collected works of Noor Inayat Khan, (Sulūk Press, 2020)

Shrabani Basu, Spy princess: The life of Noor Inayat Khan, (The History Press, 2025)

Shrabani Basu, Noor Inayat Khan – SOE | SWWEC, 20th June 2021.: https://war-experience.org/lives/noor-inayat-khan-soe/ (Accessed: 07 July 2026).

[1] Jepson, S. (n.d.). Interview with Selwyn Jepson [Oral History Interview]. Imperial War Museums Sound Archive, London, United Kingdom. Object Reference: 80009120. Retrieved from https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80009120

[2] Jepson, S. (n.d.). Interview with Selwyn Jepson [Oral History Interview]. Imperial War Museums Sound Archive, London, United Kingdom. Object Reference: 80009120. Retrieved from https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80009120

[3] Special Operations Executive (1943). Noor Inayat Khan’s SOE Finishing Report (Form T. 4). London: The National Archives. Reference: HS 9/836/5.

[4] Special Operations Executive (1943). Noor Inayat Khan’s SOE Finishing Report (Form T. 4). London: The National Archives. Reference: HS 9/836/5.

[5] Princess Anne, 2012. Speech at the Unveiling of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Bust. [Speech] Gordon Square Gardens, London, 8 November 2012.

[6] Fuller, J.O. and Jepson, S. (1952) ‘Foreword’, in Madeleine: The Story of Noor Inayat Khan, George Cross, MBE, Croix de Guerre. London, UK: Victor Gollancz Ltd, pp. 7–8.

The War of the Worlds Panic: America's Most Famous Media Myth?

Interest in media history and the origins of widely repeated cultural narratives has remained strong among readers of popular history, particularly cases where modern historical research has substantially revised a long-accepted story. The 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast and the panic narrative attached to it represent one of the most thoroughly reassessed cases in American media history, and the gap between the popular legend and the documented evidence is wide enough to constitute its own separate, fascinating story about how historical myths are manufactured, sustained, and eventually, if incompletely, corrected.

Sami Hashem explains.

The Martian, Warwick Goble 1897. Source: Public domain, The War of the Worlds, available here.

The Broadcast Itself (October 30, 1938)

On the evening of October 30, 1938, Halloween Eve, CBS Radio's Mercury Theatre on the Air aired a dramatized adaptation of H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. The production was directed by and starred a 23-year-old Orson Welles, already a rising figure in American theater and radio, working with a script adapted by writer Howard Koch. Koch made a crucial creative decision that would shape everything that followed: rather than preserving the novel's original Victorian-era English setting, he relocated the invasion to contemporary 1930s New Jersey, and restructured much of the broadcast's opening act as a series of simulated live news bulletins interrupting what listeners were told was a routine dance-music program.

The fictional news bulletins described, with escalating urgency, the crash of a mysterious object near the small town of Grovers Mill, in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, followed by the emergence of hostile Martian war machines and a rapidly worsening invasion. The production's realism was, by nearly all later accounts, impressive for its era, employing the same stylistic conventions listeners had grown accustomed to from real emergency news coverage, without the more obvious theatrical framing a modern audience might expect.

The Legend That Followed

The following morning, October 31, 1938, major American newspapers ran dramatic front-page accounts describing what they characterized as widespread public panic triggered by the broadcast. The New York Daily News and the Bergen Evening Record, among others, published accounts of terrified citizens fleeing their homes. The single most frequently repeated anecdote, from the front page of the New York Times, described more than twenty families in one block of Newark, New Jersey, running outside with wet towels pressed over their faces, apparently believing this would protect them from Martian poison gas.

This narrative, of a broadcast so convincingly staged that it triggered genuine, widespread, and irrational public hysteria across the country, became one of the most durable and frequently repeated stories in American media history over the following decades, cited in textbooks, retrospectives, and popular culture as a cautionary parable about the manipulative power of mass media over a credulous public.

What the Contemporary Ratings Data Actually Shows

The panic narrative's central weakness becomes apparent almost immediately upon examining who was actually listening to the broadcast that night. Contemporary audience measurement, conducted by the C.E. Hooper ratings service, found that only approximately 2 percent of the national radio listening audience was tuned into the Mercury Theatre broadcast at the time it aired. The overwhelming majority of the listening public was instead tuned to a considerably more popular program on a competing network: The Chase and Sanborn Hour, featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his famous dummy Charlie McCarthy.

CBS itself, reviewing its own internal audience research in the aftermath of the controversy, reached a strikingly modest conclusion about the broadcast's actual reach. Network executive Frank Stanton, examining the available data, concluded that the substantial majority of Americans had simply never heard the broadcast at all, and that among the smaller audience who had tuned in, most had correctly recognized it as a dramatic radio play rather than an actual news broadcast, particularly since the program had opened, as required, with a clear announcement identifying it as a Mercury Theatre dramatic presentation.

This data point alone substantially undermines the foundational premise of the panic legend: a broadcast heard by roughly one in fifty American radio listeners simply could not have generated the kind of literal, nationwide, door-to-door hysteria the newspaper accounts described the following morning.

The 2013 Reassessment

The most influential modern reassessment of the case came in 2013, when media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow published a detailed investigation for Slate, timed to the broadcast's 75th anniversary. Pooley and Socolow undertook the considerable task of attempting to verify, individually, the specific anecdotal claims that had accumulated around the broadcast over the preceding seven and a half decades.

Their findings were consistently damaging to the traditional narrative. Wire service reports from the days immediately following the broadcast, upon close examination, turned out to rely overwhelmingly on anonymous, unverified anecdotes rather than named, confirmable individuals. Despite persistent claims circulating for decades that the broadcast had caused suicides among panicked listeners, Pooley and Socolow found that no newspaper had ever actually reported a single verified suicide connected to the program. When the researchers attempted to trace specific contemporary claims that hospitals across the country had treated patients for shock or hysteria caused by the broadcast, those claims likewise failed to hold up under direct examination, with no corroborating hospital records or named patients ever surfacing to substantiate them.

Why Newspapers Told the Story They Told

If the panic itself was substantially overstated, the obvious question becomes why newspapers across the country would independently converge on such a dramatic, and largely unsubstantiated, version of events. Media historians have proposed an explanation rooted not in journalistic error, but in direct commercial self-interest: by 1938, the newspaper industry had come to view radio as an increasingly serious threat to its advertising revenue, a competitive anxiety that had been sharply exacerbated only weeks earlier, when radio networks had substantially outperformed newspaper coverage of the unfolding Munich crisis in Europe, delivering breaking updates to the public faster than print could manage.

Sensationalizing the War of the Worlds broadcast offered newspapers a conveniently timed opportunity to publicly argue that radio, as a medium, was fundamentally reckless and insufficiently responsible to be trusted with serious news reporting, an argument that served the newspaper industry's competitive interests regardless of its accuracy. This argument was not merely implicit; The New York Times itself ran editorial commentary in the aftermath of the broadcast explicitly criticizing radio for having, in the paper's words, failed to "master the material it uses." Broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod has characterized the newspaper industry's exaggerated response even more directly, describing it as functioning essentially as an act of professional retaliation, in her words, "revenge for being badly scooped" during the preceding month's crisis coverage.

A Story That Burned Bright, Then Quickly Faded

One further detail undermines the traditional panic narrative: large-city newspapers, having run their dramatic initial coverage, largely abandoned the War of the Worlds story within a matter of days. This pattern of coverage, a brief, intense burst of sensational reporting followed by rapid disappearance from the news cycle, is considerably more consistent with a manufactured story that had served its immediate competitive purpose than with genuine, sustained nationwide hysteria significant enough to warrant continued coverage.

The Cantril Study and Its Later Reassessment

Perhaps the single most influential piece of evidence supporting the traditional panic narrative came from psychologist Hadley Cantril, whose 1940 study, published as The Invasion from Mars, estimated that approximately one million Americans had been frightened by the broadcast. This figure, produced by a credentialed academic researcher at Princeton University, lent the panic narrative a veneer of scientific legitimacy that persisted for decades.

Later historians examining Cantril's methodology, however, including Pooley and Socolow, have raised serious concerns about the study's underlying data. Cantril's estimate relied substantially on survey data and reporting that had already been shaped by the preceding weeks of sensationalized newspaper coverage, meaning the study may have been measuring, at least in part, the public's reaction to the newspaper narrative about the panic rather than independently verified reactions to the broadcast itself. Critics have specifically characterized the resulting million-listener estimate as an implausibly large figure given what is separately known about the broadcast's small live audience share.

A Legend That Grew Larger With Time, Not Smaller

In an unusual inversion of how historical accuracy typically develops, the War of the Worlds panic narrative appears to have grown more elaborate and more widely believed in the decades following the broadcast, rather than being gradually corrected as contemporary evidence might suggest it should have been. Over succeeding decades, increasing numbers of individuals came forward claiming personal memories of panic, either their own or that of family members, even as the underlying contemporary documentary evidence for widespread hysteria remained thin and, upon direct examination, largely unverifiable. This pattern, in which a historical event's popular retelling becomes more dramatic over time rather than less, is a recognized phenomenon in the study of collective memory and folklore, though it is somewhat unusual to see it documented so clearly around a twentieth-century mass media event with substantial surviving contemporary records.

What the Case Actually Demonstrates

The enduring popularity of the War of the Worlds panic legend says less, ultimately, about the gullibility of 1930s radio audiences than about the durability of a good story once it serves a broader cultural narrative, in this case, an ongoing anxiety about the manipulative power mass media holds over public perception. The significant historical lesson buried inside this case, that the panic narrative was itself substantially manufactured by a rival media industry pursuing its own competitive advantage, has proven considerably less compelling to popular memory than the far more dramatic, and considerably less accurate, story of an entire nation fleeing imaginary Martians. Nearly ninety years later, the myth continues to circulate more readily than the correction.

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Sources

Pooley, J. and Socolow, M., "The Myth of the 'War of the Worlds' Panic," Slate, 2013.

Snopes, "Did the 1938 Radio Broadcast of 'War of the Worlds' Cause a Nationwide Panic?" 2023.

National Geographic, "'War of the Worlds': Behind the 1938 Radio Show Panic," 2021.

Freethink, "'War of the Worlds' didn't panic America. Newspapers did." 2025.

History on the Street in Ireland and Malta

When strolling through hot sandy Malta, strange are the sights that might startle a tourist, especially those of us with an interest in Anglo-Irish history. Among the sacred sites of domes and steeples there’s an occasional red object that resembles and shares the shape of icons back home in the damp cool British Isles.

Here, John O’Dowd looks at history in Ireland and Malta.

WB Yeats by George Charles Beresford. Source: Public domain, National Portrait Gallery, available here.

Yes, Malta is a warm dry dusty paradise; a pearl in the Mediterranean. It’s so far south that it almost touches Africa. On the contrary, for an example, Ireland is an emerald on an opposite edge of Europe, shivering and glittering with wet jagged cliffs reaching towards America. Even in summer, it’s bashed by the cold Atlantic and stung with a razor-sharp wind. The only image nature shares with both outposts is the sky and endless sea, albeit, one island is surrounded with deep growling colours and the other illuminated with sunnier shades.

So, to find a common denominator, some might note that both islands were graced with Ireland’s Nobel-winning poet, WB Yeats. Known for rebellious theatre and love letters, it’s rumoured that he meandered through Malta’s capital, Valetta. However, Yeats wasn’t fit for much walking and was on the resort to see a doctor. It’s understood that he was suffering from Malta Fever, and didn’t do much writing either. However, a first edition of his work was prized and lovingly kept at a local library. To this day, his poetry is read, studied and celebrated in Malta but no, Yeats poetry or any other Irish writing is not what jumps out immediately at Irish tourists as they ramble through sun-drenched streets. Rather, it’s something much more objectively physical and British that stirs an interest in visitors. It’s a chunk of metal, a bit of a bulk that’s cemented into the ground.

As bold as the burning sun, blatantly Britannic icons are the attraction: a British post-box and phone kiosk! These relics of empire stand to attention on Mediterranean squares and street corners. They’re blazingly stark naked in bright royal red polished paint beside palm trees. These metal icons are moulded with a monarch’s mark and standing tall with an imperialist stance. For any historian rambling through Malta, squinting at majestic buildings and dazed by illuminated limestone, the abrupt spasms of royal red metallic street furniture are a feast for the eye.

Visitors are often in awe with these colonial relics of ingenuity, marvelling at how polished they are; such a shine to put councils back home to shame. A child might think of Postman Pat with his black and white cat; children throughout Malta and the world are familiar with the cartoon characters serving the Royal Mail.

Irish streets also inherited such iconic furniture but the sculptured structures were painted green or matching shades of cream long ago. Both Malta and the Emerald Isle are adorned with these metallic monuments to a British monarch, as are numerous other ex-colonies and crown territories throughout the world. Gibraltar is another Mediterranean example but remnants of the late-empire’s infrastructure don’t stop there. A red phone-box buried in jungle has startled many travellers in Africa. Treading through growth in Sierra Leone, a hiker could come upon a British phone-box in need of a coat of paint. It’s indeed red, though blistered by sun but standing tall against towering greenery that threatens to devour it. Neglected and long out of order but, like the metal monuments in Malta, and Postman Pat, it’s loved. It seems that the whole empire, or its remnants, is littered with icons from yesteryear: post-box, kiosk, clock tower, a road sign, bus stop, bus shelter with Victorian wrought-iron railings, together with lengths of railway sunk beneath a jungle floor, not to forget the odd statue of Queen Victoria.

Ireland is an oddity because the street furniture is painted green or a matching shade of cream. Sometimes, a heavy repetitive coat of the thick moss colour was pasted onto a post-box. The new colouring for postal and telegraphy infrastructure erupted with Irish independence. In 1922, the Free State set about installing street names in the Irish language, and rechristening train stations to honour revolutionary leaders. However, nothing was more vibrantly stark and as immediate as painting metalwork on a street. The change of sovereignty was heralded with a thick coat of green paint. The painting of hardware in Ireland was described as the first populist act of the new parliament, the Dail Eireann in Dublin. Decoration was easy but the imprinted symbols of British monarchs were more stubborn and refused to budge; crests remained moulded in metal. In Ireland and Malta, and indeed worldwide, lettering for Queen Victoria and King George remain inscribed and alive to this day. History leaves its mark upon the street.

While post-boxes in Ireland are green, those across the sea remain royalist red. However, there’s the overlapping corner on the Emerald Isle where colours clash. It’s where symbols matter. Tribal colours in Ulster are displayed as patriotically as a flag on a lamppost, changing abruptly at the Gerrymandered border: Green or Red, British or Irish, Loyalist or Republican. Some Unionists and observers alike suspect that these team colours could pose a problem if Irish unity was to proceed. History points to Britannic regalia being discoloured and some demolished: Nelson’s Pillar blown-up in Dublin and Queen Victoria’s statue smashed to smithereens. Could Unionists be robbed of their cultural comforts yet again? Surely, they’d see red if anyone was to paint their local post box in Belfast green!

Maybe Malta, an island that’s a thousand miles away, has the amicable answer. It has significantly more in common with Ireland than a post-box, or a phone-box or the love of Postman Pat with his black and white cat. Malta is declared to be the world’s most Catholic country, even more than the Republic of Ireland. This tiny blessed state boasts more papist churches in relation to population than anywhere else. It has a majestic baroque cathedral that makes the Vatican look like a mere garden shed. This is where Europe stood against Arab invaders, resisted the Otterman Empire, flew the flag and held the frontline for Christendom. The course of Europe’s history was decided in Malta. Ever since establishing a home for Christian knights, a springboard for crusades, and hosting the Order of Saint John, they’ve been blessing themselves and going to a Catholic mass, to confession and kneeling for the Angelus at six o’clock. Like children throughout Ireland, youngsters in Malta will prepare for their First Holy Communion and go on to get married in a Catholic church and maybe receive Last Rites from a priest at the end of their lives.

In a further similarity with republican Ireland, Malta had its own rebellion against British rule, during the time of the Irish Troubles. The bloody Sette Giugnio riots occurred in 1919. This resulted in, initially, a harsh suppression by the colonial authorities and then self-government being reluctantly granted in 1921. The two islands seemingly moved in similar steps at, roughly, the same time. As with the Easter Rising being commemorated in Dublin, Malta marks Sette Giugnio every year.

So, did Malta remove British icons or, maybe, go paint a post-box? No, not a bit of it. Despite its rebellion and papist allegiance, Malta was fighting for empire and its Protestant king a few years later. It held the fort for the Mother Country throughout World War Two. The island garrison in the Mediterranean was under siege. Again! Its history is littered with bombardments because of its strategic location: before and during the Roman Empire, then an Arab conquest and throughout the time of the Ottermans. As late as 1800 the island was blockaded during Napoleonic wars. So, in the early Forties it was rewarded yet again for its stubbornness, for their Maltese tendency to resist surrender. They were bold and resilient to the end. Being a mighty British defender of the sea resulted in it being bombed and bombed again. It was hit more than any other country on planet Earth. Despite being attacked mercilessly it refused to surrender; as always. It held the record for the most battered place during the war until a nuclear blast elevated poor Japan to take that most unwanted prize. At the end of an awful war the whole island was awarded the George Cross Medal for bravery and loyalty.

Some might have thought that Malta would have had enough of British colours and paraphernalia and all things empire. But no! Catholic Malta’s fondness for the red British post-box and kiosk is as staunch as the Irish Protestant’s appreciation for the Orange Lodge; loved, as children would love Postman Pat with his black and white cat.

Unionist or Nationalist, British or Irish, planter or Gael, take heed of Catholic rebels in Malta, proud of their Anglican steeple dominating the Valetta skyline. The tall stout Protestant church, Saint Paul’s, is just down the street from scores of Catholic churches and Saint John’s cathedral. Could Malta be a model for Ulster, a Catholic gesture and promise not to paint the town green again? Could voters for Irish unity still cherish nostalgia and appreciate the British post-box? 

It’s an important question because symbols matter. To this day, tribes fight over colours and words in Ulster, tearing down flags to burn and spit on, and whitewashing road signs into oblivion. A visitor to Malta, Carl Jung, psychologist and author of Man And His Symbols, unfolds the significance of steeples, statues, spirals and the like. Jung had an interest in the miss-mash of sacred sites on the island dating back centuries beyond the arrival of the British or any other empire. Today’s tourist is presented with both prehistoric and post-Roman religious symbols. The sacred structures sit happy alongside icons of Twentieth-century modernity and telepathy. They document religion’s history with domes and spikes, the symbols that Jung wrote about. It seems he did not write about the Great British phone-box, not a mention of its ornate crest to honour a monarch, but disciples of Jung regard technology as an emerging religion, as they did capitalism and all things money. They believe every religion has its symbols. Joseph Campbell, the writer and Jung-follower, suggested that modern structures, such as boastful tech towers and financial skyscrapers, reflect beliefs and are up there with the domes and steeples. Or maybe down there on a street with a red British phone-box.

Despite tourist hotels, Valetta has been spared the latest fashion in high-rise structure. It’s skyline and street scene has everything it needs to reflect ancient gods, Christendom and Twentieth-century modernity. The Internet, digitalisation and virtual space-age clouds may have rendered the post-box and phone-box redundant but the old street icons demand their slot in history. They stand there, alongside church and cathedral, not in a museum. Or is Malta a living museum? Regardless of a visitor’s belief, whether its ancient, modern or futuristic, there’s plenty to entertain the eye of today’s historian, tourist, dreamer, whoever.

Today, visitors walk in the footsteps of both Jung and Ireland’s writer of love letters. Yeats is regarded as the most all-time poetic client of the Royal Mail or any postal service. He is read and quoted here. Unfortunately, he was delivered late for much of Ireland. He was a true servant to Eire through troubled times, being instrumental in making the Irish Free-state function when, as with Malta, the British released its hold. However, he remained loyal to Protestant tradition. He would probably have voted to keep his local post-box painted red. He insisted on being buried in a Protestant churchyard but despite his allegiance to English tradition he embraced, honoured, promoted and even mourned Celtic culture: faeries, banshee and all. In his famous poem, Easter 1916, he wrote of Irish nationalism:

Wherever green is worn…..  A terrible beauty is born.

Maybe Ireland could revisit Yeats poetry, and copy Malta, adopt iconic monuments to a monarch, keep them as an inheritance rather than symbols of suppression. Let all be loved by tourist and locals alike, as Yeats loved Ireland and faeries, as the Maltese cherish symbols of the past, love authentic British icons as children love Postman Pat with his black and white cat.

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