The Unexpectedly Fascinating History of Singing at Work

People hum in the shower or in the car, but what about singing in your office? Just imagine the operatic exchanges you could have with your boss.

“Bob, I need that sales report by Mon-day”

“It’ll be on your desk by fi-ve” you sing back, silently wondering where in the office libretto it names you as lead vocal for sales reports.

Can’t quite picture it? Well maybe no operatic exchanges ever took place in business, but company funded music used to actually be a thing.

Nicol Valentin explains.

Frank B. Gilbreth, a leading proponent of singing at work.

Whose Idea Was This Anyway?

Singing during work comes naturally to most people. From the earliest times music has been a way to keep workers movements synchronized, reduce boredom, and increase productivity.  Railway workers sang to keep track laying coordinated, Scottish women sang while fulling cloth, and African slaves sang in the field. Even America’s Yankee doodle began as a Dutch harvest song. With the noise of industrialization, however, singing voices never made it past the door.

Scientific management became a mantra for businesses after its popularization by Fredrick Taylor in 1909. Every movement of a worker was accounted for under Taylor’s system, which was good for the employer, but not necessarily the employee. How to increase productivity was the question in everyone’s mind, including Frank Gilbreth’s. Productivity would improve if the workers were given a break. A little music might help, Frank told people, but the idea wasn’t taking off. It took the First World War to really get the idea going. Companies were looking for ways to get the maximum efficiency from their workers. Thrown into the mix was the Council of National Defense. Composed of mostly industry and labor leaders, the council was relied upon by President Woodrow Wilson to divide resources between the civilian and military worlds. With a vested interest in boosting productivity and limiting fatigue, rest periods, which could include singing, were coming into vogue.

It Doesn’t Take a Genius

All that scientific mumbo jumbo just to figure out what department stores had known since the 1800s. John Wannamaker, for example, had an organ placed in his Philadelphia department store in 1876. Wannamaker liked his employees to start and end the day with a little ditty or two. Filene Department store in Boston likewise opened its doors early. Employees spent the time singing and dancing down the aisles. Such a joyous start made for more pleasant and efficient sales people who kept a spring in their step throughout the day.

Of course, music was also used as a means of bringing in customers. Nevertheless, the part it played in lifting the morale of the worker was real. Besides Wannamaker’s and Filene’s, Chicago’s Marshall Field, New York’s Macy’s and pretty much every other large department store sponsored a band, chorus, or orchestra. Wanamaker was by far the most ambitious of the bunch. He purchased an organ to use for the stores morning sing alongs and had a total of ten different ensembles in order to accommodate different talents and tastes.

Now, maybe if you know what society was like 100 years ago you’re thinking: it’s nice for a bunch of women to get together and sing that fluffy, frilly stuff. But hard working, sweat producing, dirt incrusted men—never!

Well, think again, mon ami.

Men, Sweat, and Music

In January 1915, American Iron and Steel devoted its newsletter to music in the workplace. Why? Well according to the Bulletin, men were often unsatisfied. Not because of low wages—that would be silly—but because of boredom. Still, they needed some way to keep the men involved in wholesome activities after hours. Once again, music came to the rescue.

“Volumes. . . could be written on the moral and intellectual influence of good music,” according to Charles Hook, superintendent of the American Rolling Mill Company in Ohio. For that reason, the company had a minstrel chorus and a glee club among other things. Hook extolled the virtues of singing saying the camaraderie made the co-workers more like brothers, creating a positive effect on the workers’ health and happiness.

American Rolling Mill wasn’t the only one to incorporate music into the lives of their workers. Many mining companies had bands, orchestras and Glee clubs. Bethlehem steel had a pretty sweet band hall that they boasted was: “Probably the handsomest and most completely equipped building of its kind in the United States.”

Kum-ba-yahing with the Company

Music during work hours was a psychological tool to help increase production. The introduction of a musical diversion relieved the monotony of repetitive work and had an uplifting effect on a weary worker.  Scovill Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, Connecticut is one example. The company had been suffering from high turnover and a large number of accidents. After a two-year investigation begun in 1917 the company introduced singing periods. And yes, it did start among the women. It took time for some of the men to accept that singing wouldn’t diminish their manhood. Once they did, however, it was the grandest fifteen to twenty minutes of their day. Men would bring their instruments to practice after work for the next day’s sing along, while the singers took time to learn their parts in harmony. They liked it so much that when the management tried to replace the singing with lectures the workers listened respectfully, then asked to sing anyway.

It Ain’t Over ‘till it’s Over

“Properly selected music would stimulate any class of workers to greater action,” said the self-help author Napoleon Hill - and companies agreed. IBM, Ford Motor Company, Union Pacific, National Cash Register, Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation, Dodge Brothers; all had some type of music program for their employees. Many even expanded the programs to include musical education for family members. The golden age of company supported music didn’t last though. With Wanamaker’s death in 1922, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, people were singing less. Schools began to take on the role of musical education more, helping to make family programs redundant. Money too became an issue. With the economic problems of the Great Depression, money was often shifted from employee programs to national advertising.

Company orchestras and singing groups enjoyed periodical revivals, especially during the period of the Second World War. Using public address systems, many companies could now pipe music into their workers, giving them a little lift with relative ease.  Things may have waned, but what was old has the habit of becoming new again. Some companies are once again realizing the benefits of office music rooms and company choirs. So, while your ability to sing falsetto may not be discussed at your next job interview, a little practice can’t hurt.

Share your knowledge of singing at work – whether from history or personal, modern experiences – below…

References

Singing at work: Italian Immigrants and Music in the Epoch of WWI Fernando Fasce for Italian Americana Vol 27, No.2 (Summer 2009)  

Sing, Play, Dance! Music and Music Education in Industry by Tuohey, Therese Volk, Journal of Historical Research in Music Education, October 2021

Rest Periods for Industrial Workers, Research report #19, January 1919, National Industrial Conference Board

Commerce and Poetry Hand in Hand: Music in American Department Stores, Linda L. Tyler Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 45 #1 Spring, 1992

Monthly Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Institute, Vol. III 1915, New York

Beckett, W., & Fairley, L. (1944). Music in Industry: A Bibliography. Notes, 1(4), 14-20.

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/29/office-workers-who-sing-together-are-healthier-265614.html

http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/economics-terms-and-concepts/industrial-0

What’s in a Statue? The Stories behind Statues in Manchester, England

The city of Manchester, England has countless statues that many people walk past, completely oblivious of the rich history behind them. From Richard Cobden to Abraham Lincoln, this article will tell the brief history of a selection of statues and why Manchester has decided to honor them by placing their statues in the center of the city. Su-Sam Tham explains.

John Bright (1811 – 1889)

John Bright statue in Manchester, England.

John Bright was a British Radical and Liberal statesman. He was born in Rochdale, England to a highly successful cotton manufacturer and was educated at Quaker schools in Lancashire and Yorkshire, where his interest in politics grew and he became committed to political and religious equality and human rights. Bright was a remarkable orator and was also seen as one of the most influential politicians of his time, serving as an MP for Manchester, Birmingham and Durham. He is best known for founding the Anti-Corn Law League with Richard Cobden, which aimed to abolish the Corn Laws. These laws imposed tariffs on imported grain to protect English farmers from cheap foreign imports and were successfully repealed in 1846. He was also a keen supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Union during the American Civil War, though many in Britain showed considerable sympathy for the Confederacy. He supported the boycott of southern cotton despite his own family’s mills relying on it, as he believed slavery was morally wrong and instead advocated for cotton cultivation by free labor in countries such as India.

To acknowledge his successful campaigning for the abolition of the Corn Laws, which had adversely affected Lancashire’s cotton trade as they relied on raw imports and exports for finished goods, Manchester commissioned two public statues in his honor; one inside Manchester town hall and the other in Albert Square facing the town hall, sculpted by Albert Bruce-Joy.

Interesting Fact: Bright is credited for coining the phrases ‘to flog a dead horse’ and ‘mother of parliaments’.

Richard Cobden (1804 – 1865)

Richard Cobden statue in Manchester, England.

Like Bright, Richard Cobden was a Radical and Liberal statesman, born in Sussex and raised in Yorkshire, where he received little formal schooling and became a cloth clerk at 15. He then started his own business selling calico prints and subsequently moved to Manchester, where his political career flourished as he was elected as the MP for Stockport. During this time, he campaigned against the Opium Wars and Crimean War, preferring to advocate for peace, resulting in him and Bright, the MP for Manchester, losing their seats in the 1857 election. However, the public forgave both for their anti-war stance as Cobden was later elected as the Rochdale MP and Bright as the Birmingham MP. As well as forming the Anti-Corn Law League, he was also known for the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty, which reduced or removed most tariff between Britain and France and was thus seen as a key stepping stone to free trade, a policy that Cobden advocated throughout his life.    

Cobden’s role in the abolition of the Corn Laws and association with other free trade campaigns led to Manchester erecting public monuments in his honor. His statue was created by sculptor Marshall Wood in 1865 and stands in St Ann’s Square.

Interesting Fact: Cobden was extremely well travelled having visited France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Egypt, Greece and Russia. An impressive feat considering he primarily travelled by coach and horse. 

William Gladstone (1809 – 1898)

William Gladstone statue in Manchester, England.

William Gladstone was born in Liverpool to Sir John Gladstone, a merchant and MP. He was educated at Eton and Oxford before being elected to parliament in 1832 as the Tory MP for Newark and he held several posts in Sir Robert Peel’s cabinet, such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1867, he became the Liberal Party leader and the 3rd Liberal Prime Minister in 1868, a position he held on four separate occasions. During his 12 years in office, his government set up a national elementary education program, extended the vote to a greater number of men and introduced secret ballots at elections. His reputation as a wise and respected leader, who championed social, economic and political reform, has seen him frequently ranked as one of Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers, recently coming third in the Daily Telegraph’s 2016 ranking of the top 10 greatest Prime Ministers.

The statue was erected in Albert Square in 1901 at the Mancunian architect William Roberts’ request. Roberts admired Gladstone and in his legacy, left £4,500 to build a statue of him for Manchester where Gladstone had visited and gave speeches on several occasions and he had even unsuccessfully run for Manchester MP as a Conservative candidate. Sculpted by Mario Raggi, the statue depicts Gladstone speaking in the House of Commons during the 1893 debate on the Irish Home Rule.

Interesting Fact: Gladstone was Britain’s oldest serving Prime Minister, winning his fourth election at age 82 and resigning at age 84.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865) 

Abraham Lincoln statue in Manchester, England.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most well-known and highly regarded Presidents of the USA, celebrated for preserving the Union during the American Civil War and for abolishing slavery in the USA. Born in a log cabin in 1809, Lincoln initially trained as a lawyer before entering the political arena by serving several terms in the Illinois state legislature and one in the House of Representative. In 1860, Lincoln won the Presidential election, becoming the 16th US President and 1st Republican President, inadvertently sparking a secession crisis in the South and ultimately the Civil War. During the war, Lincoln blockaded southern ports and some saw this as the cause of the Lancashire Cotton Famine, though the blockades were not entirely successful. Despite this, Manchester and Lancashire, areas heavily affected by the Cotton Famine, decided to support Lincoln and the Union by boycotting raw cotton picked by slaves. This meant many workers in the cotton industry lost their job, but their sacrifice was not unnoticed by Lincoln, who wrote a letter to the ‘working-men of Manchester’ to show his gratitude.       

The bronze statue of Lincoln, sculpted by George Grey Barnard, was commissioned by Charles Phelps Taft, the mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio and son of the former US President, William Taft. Originally meant to stand outside the Houses of Parliament in London, the statue was deemed unworthy for parliament as Lincoln was depicted wearing ‘normal’ clothes, rather than presidential attire and with his hand on his stomach, thus becoming known as the ‘stomach ache statue’. Instead, London received a different more statesmanlike statue and their loss became Manchester’s gain in 1919. The statue currently stands in Lincoln Square and the pedestal is inscribed with extracts of Lincoln’s letter to ‘the working-men of Manchester’, though ‘men’ has been changed to ‘people’ as Lincoln’s gendered address was seen as too sexist by Manchester council.

Interesting Fact: Lincoln obtained a patent in 1849 for a device designed to lift riverboats over sandbars or obstructions in the river and is therefore the only US President to hold a patent.

Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901)

Queen Victoria statue in Manchester, England.

In 1817, the death of Princess Charlotte, the daughter of the future King George IV and only legitimate grandchild of the reigning King George III, caused a succession crisis in Britain. This made George III’s sons realize that it was essential for one of them to provide an heir, so the following year, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and had their only child Alexandrina Victoria. From the beginning, Victoria was raised to be Queen and thus had a difficult upbringing. Her father had died before she was a year old, so she was raised by her mother under the ‘Kensington System’ resulting in a somewhat solitary childhood as her education and company were strictly regulated by her mother who isolated her from the rest of her family. Even King William IV, Victoria’s uncle, was denied access to her causing him to vow that he would survive until her 18th birthday to prevent her mother from becoming reagent. William was successful, as he died just 26 days after she turned 18 and so Victoria ascended to the throne as the sole ruler of Great Britain. Queen Victoria’s 63 year and 216 day reign had many significant successes as the first Wimbledon Championship was held in 1877, the first practical telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, the British Empire reached its peak, and she was even crowned Empress of India.   

The sculptor Edward Onslow Ford was commissioned to create the statue of Victoria for Manchester, which she agreed to sit for, in commemoration of her diamond jubilee. Unfortunately, the statue was only completed and placed in Piccadilly Gardens in 1901 after her death. It was also originally intended for the tribute to be a marble statue, but this later changed to bronze after the Queen expressed concern about marble weathering poorly in Manchester’s smoky atmosphere. The statue is particularly significant because out of the 17 statues in Manchester city center, it is the only one to depict a woman and monarch.

Interesting Fact: Queen Victoria survived 8 assassination attempts with 2 attempts made by John Francis.

James Watt (1736 – 1819)

James Watt statue in Manchester, England.

James Watt was a Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor born in Greenock. He was home-schooled by his mother, before attending the local grammar school where he excelled in engineering and mathematics. After leaving school, he moved to London and trained as an instrument maker, quickly surpassing the other apprentices as he completed his training in just a year, despite training normally taking up to 7 years. This allowed Watt to return to Glasgow and start a small shop making and repairing scientific instruments and it was while working there that the Newcomen engine was brought to his attention. He was given a model of the engine to repair and found it to be inefficient, so he began experimenting with steam to try and improve the engine, which he managed to do by designing a separate condensing chamber for the engine. Further improvements resulted in Watt’s engine being up to 5 times more powerful and over 50% more efficient than the original Newcomen engine. Watt’s engine gave way to highly efficient factories, mills and mines that produced 3 times more mechanical work for every ton of coal brought, meaning the owners earned more money and thus the prosperous economy of the Industrial Revolution was driven by Watt’s developments. His achievements were recognized in many ways - most significantly, the watt was named in his honor.

Manchester owes its titles as the world’s first manufacturing city and ‘Cottonopolis’ to Watt, so it is no surprise that the city commissioned William Theed to produce a bronze copy of Chantrey’s marble statue of Watt, that stood in Westminster Abbey, for Manchester. The statue was erected in 1857 and now sits in Piccadilly Gardens.

Interesting Fact: To explain how powerful his steam engines were in a relatively easy and relatable way, Watt decided to compare them to the power of horses, which were at the time the dominating mode of transportation and thus horsepower, a unit of power, was invented.

I hope that after reading this article you will be inspired to visit Manchester to see the statues for yourself and in the future, you will take time to explore the history of other fascinating statues that you may never have truly noticed.

Let us know what you think of the article below…

All pictures are taken by and provided with the permission of Su-Sam Tham. They may only be reproduced wit Su-Sam’s permission.

An Unlikely Union? How a Group of Miners and Homosexuals Changed Britain

The British miners’ strike of 1984/5 is generally considered a heavy defeat for the miners, their communities, and the trade union movement as a whole. To a certain extent, that assumption has merit. But one outcome that is less well known is the role the strike played in contributing to bettering the lives of homosexuals in Britain. In a decade when vast homophobia was expected and accepted, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) drove a couple of minibuses and a camper van from London to Dulais, a small mining town in South Wales, to present their donations in an attempt to aid the miners’ efforts. The events that followed provide us with an important lesson about the importance of empathy, tolerance, and togetherness in facing common enemies.

Here, Jon Hill tells us a story about solidarity.

A miners' strike rally in London, UK in 1984. Source: Miners' strike really, 1984 via Nick from Bristol, UK. Available here.

Roots of Oppression

Firstly, it is perhaps important to refer to the ways in which miners and homosexuals were oppressed in Britain at the time. The strike began in March 1984, in response to Ian Macgregor’s plans to close twenty pits, leading to a projected loss of 20,000 jobs. Margaret Thatcher had previously claimed, ‘the industry cost the taxpayer thirteen billion pounds’ and called for the worst economically performing pits to close. The areas targeted were considered overly reliant on mining. The mining community in South Wales had not been the worst hit, but employment in the coalfields had nevertheless fallen from 108,000 in 1948 to 20,347 in 1984.

Mistreatment by the police was a shared experience between gay people and miners. Amongst other places, picketing miners were subjected to police brutality at Easington in August 1984. Thatcher claimed that the police were ‘upholding the law’ and stated; ‘I find it totally and utterly false to cast a slur on the police for the superb way they have handled this dispute.’ An LGSM member described how ‘a lot of mining communities have found out what police harassment is for the first time, which gay people have known about for years’. Such views were also reciprocated by members of the mining community. Sian James described feeling that ‘we were next in line after lesbians and gays…you cannot sympathise with an oppressed group until you’ve actually been a member of one’.

An Unlikely Union

In the face of such adversity, coordinator Mark Ashton encapsulated the aim of LGSM; ‘It is illogical to say: ‘I’m gay and I’m into defending the gay community but I don’t care about anything else.’

Donovan travelled to Paddington on September 6, 1984 to collect a cheque of 500 pounds from LGSM, mostly collected from poorly paid young people who hankered for a different Britain. Donovan subsequently invited members to Dulais. Tensions were high when the mining community received news of the impending arrival, yet the experiences were generally positive for both sides.

London magazine City Limits described how LGSM members visiting Dulais were welcomed into the miners’ homes for the weekend; whole families discussed gay rights and sexuality ‘over the tea-table’. Prior to the arrival of LGSM, one member of the Dulais group admitted that they were ‘expecting a bunch of weirdos’. Another woman commented that ‘It’s had to take the strike for us to get friendlier with lesbian and gay men’. Such apprehension was mutual; a correspondent of Capital Gay claimed that the mining communities ‘encapsulate all the sexist, patriarchal and anti-gay views which threaten us’. However, experiences reported by LGSM visitors challenged such views. Ashton recalled being overwhelmed with the open-mindedness of the miners; ‘I had this semi-antagonistic attitude towards the organised labour movement, trade unions, macho bully boys, and it just opens your eyes to the attitudes that they had, and the strike up to that stage had kindled in people.’

Members of LGSM returned to Dulais on February 15, 1985 and held sponsored bike rides from London to Dulais during Easter 1985. These continuing visits maintained feelings of solidarity and laid the ground work for the appearance of Blaenant Lodge, a group of approximately 80 miners and sympathisers from South Wales who marched with LGSM at Gay Pride in London in July 1985. Writing to Blaenant Lodge following the march, Jackson enthused; ‘Your presence on Saturday stood out like granite pillars of our mutual trust, solidarity, and hope for the future.’ The words of the NUM’s note, sent to the fringe meeting of gays and lesbians at the 1984 Labour Conference, sum up the sentiments from the other side: ‘Support civil liberties...Our struggle is yours.’

The presentation of a resolution to the British Labour Party Annual Conference that year which committed the Labour Party to gay rights was made. The passing of gay rights resolutions showed that there was a place in the Labour movement for homosexuals. The growing acceptance of gay issues in the Labour movement would play a role in the passing of progressive legislation by following Labour governments on the age of consent, civil partnerships, and the repeal of Section 28 in November 2003.

By the time that the group was wound up in July 1986, LGSM had gathered approximately 22,000 pounds for the mining community at Dulais, collected through street collections, jumble sales and events such as the ‘Pits and Perverts’ gig, named after a derogatory slogan used by The Sun newspaper.

The Importance of Solidarity

Notions of community over class were reinforced by an opinion piece written by LGSM for City Limits. They claimed that; ‘Our support for the strike arises not purely from the fact that we are gay, but because we are members of the same class’. Ashton made a similar point in a separate interview where he argued for the need to ‘organise with my own kind of people. That’s not necessarily lesbians and gay men – that’s working class people’.

The Gay Liberation Foundation marched with the Trade Union Council against Edward Heath in 1971. This kind of cross over support was continued by organisations like LGSM in the 1980s. This idea is summarised by Lucy Robinson, who argues that examples set by LGSM ‘meant that gender and sexuality had fed into a cross-class comradery even if the strike had failed.’

A Brighter Future

In a recent correspondence of mine with LGSM member Jonathan Blake, Blake emphasised the importance of changing attitudes that have occurred since minority movements such as LGSM were formed. Besides referring to the NUM’s contribution to Labour’s inclusion of gay rights in their manifesto in 1985, Blake noted the significance of the movement, and specifically the film Pride, ‘in inspiring youth folk’. This feeling seemed to take effect in South Wales as early as the summer of 1985, when students from University College Cardiff held the city’s first Gay Pride march. The march provided visible evidence of a change in Welsh attitudes towards sexual minorities. The South Wales Echo declared the Welsh capital ‘a place where you can be glad to be gay.’

From the outset of the campaign, Ashton and Jackson emphasised the need for minorities to refrain from hiding, and encouraged gay people and miners to embrace their label. During the meeting with Donovan in October 1984, Jackson said ‘We call ourselves LGSM to emphasise our label - I hope this can encourage people in places like Dulais to say ‘I’m gay and I’m proud’. This self-awareness partly reflected a belief in the importance of the organisation concerning sexual history, but also fitted into wider processes of the 1980s. There was an increasing appreciation arising of migrant histories, signalled by the first Black History Month in 1987. Whilst it cannot be suggested that this was a consequence of the movement, it can be interpreted that minority movements like LGSM contributed to maintaining alternative histories.

Reason for Celebration

Whilst LGSM and the miners ultimately failed in their immediate aims to prevent collieries closing and overthrow the Thatcher government, the legacy that remains is worth salvaging. Whilst gay activists had worn badges for other campaigns, like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Troops Out and Rock Against Racism, this time the gesture was reciprocated. A pamphlet published by the Labour Campaign for homosexual rights in 2006 noted support for the miners ‘including hundreds of lesbians and gay men working through support groups’ and added; ‘the already deepening union backing for lesbian and gay equality has been reinforced by the experience of the miners’ strike.’ Ideas of solidarity were emphasised by Mary Joannou, who suggested that ‘it strongly conveys what solidarity can feel like to those who have been taught, by the legacy of Thatcherism, that all that matters is the individual.’ Mark Steel summed up the legacy well; ‘Defeat did not mean that we’d be better off if it never happened. Apart from anything else, it did so much to bring together disparate groups in British society, justified when a miners’ brass band was chosen to lead a Gay Pride march.’ Steel was right; with courage, dedication, and solidarity, LGSM serve as a reminder that a minority can inspire a majority.

What do you think of the arguments in this article? Let us know below…

Sources

Audio recording of meeting between some members of LGSM and Dulais miners (16/9/84).

‘All Out! Dancing in Dulais’, dir. by Jeff Cole (1986).

Daryl Leeworthy, ‘For our common cause: Sexuality and left politics in South Wales, 1967-85’, Contemporary British History, (2015), 260-280).

Diarmaid Kelliher; ‘Solidarity and Sexuality: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, 1984-85’, History Workshop, (2014), 240-262.

Edward Townsend, ‘Thatcher ‘no surrender’ message on miners.’ Times (London), 18 October 1984: 1.

Julian Haviland, Anthony Bevins, and Richard Evans. ‘Thatcher endorses police conduct in miners' dispute.’ Times (London), 10 Apr. 1984: 1.

Mary Joannou, ‘The Miners’ Strike and Me: A Very Personal Response to Pride’, Contemporary British History, (2016), 107-113.

Personal correspondence with Jonathan Blake (10/03/2017).

Todd, Selina, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class (London: John Murray Publishers, 2014). 

The Real Love story between a Nazi SS guard and Jewish prisoner at Auschw

The Holocaust has left its mark as one of the darkest moments in history. However, even during the darkest of times, there was still love. Here, we tell you about a love story between a Nazi concentration camp prisoner and an SS Guard at Auschwitz.

Helena Citronova (left) and Franz Wunsch (right) fell in love at Auschwitz.

In September 1935, the Reichstag (the parliament during the Third Reich) voted unanimously to for the passing of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, otherwise known as the Nuremberg Laws that not only excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship but from marrying or having sexual relations with people of “German or related blood.”

Persons accused of having sexual relations with non-Aryans faced public humiliation and those convicted were “typically sentenced to prison terms, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps.”

Even with the punishments for forbidden affection severe, especially for Nazi soldiers, that was not enough to stop Auschwitz SS officer Franz Wunsch from falling in love with a Jewish Slovakian prisoner named Helena Citronova. Across the world, Auschwitz concentration camp has become a symbol of genocide, terror, war, and the Holocaust.

However, after 70 years, PBS in America as well as an Israeli television brought to life the forbidden romance story between an SS guard and a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz that highlighted the complexity of human relationships in the most horrifying of world events.

In 1942, Franz Wunsch was serving as a 20-year old SS guard in charge of the gas chambers of Auschwitz. On his birthday, March 21, his Nazi comrades brought in a Jewish girl, Helena Citronova, to sing him birthday songs. Helena was imprisoned at Auschwitz from Slovakia and was forced to sort all of the incoming prisoners’ belongings before they were shipped to Berlin to fuel the Nazi war efforts.

Helena and her sister Rozinka had both been sentenced to die in the gas chambers earlier that very day so Helena attempted to sing the very best she could, melting the heart of the SS guard. When Wunsch realized she wouldn’t be alive the next day, he hurried and managed to postpone the execution of both sisters.

Helena would say years later in Israel, “When he came into the barracks where I was working, he threw me that note. I destroyed it right there and then, but I did see the word "love" — "I fell in love with you". I thought I'd rather be dead than be involved with an SS man. For a long time afterwards there was just hatred. I couldn't even look at him.”

Over time, though unclear of exactly when, Helena succumbed to her feelings for Franz, especially after her SS devotee rushed to prevent her sister and her sister’s children from being sent to the gas chambers.

“'So he said to me, "Tell me quickly what your sister's name is before I'm too late." So I said, "You won't be able to. She came with two little children." Helena later recalled.

'He replied, "Children, that's different. Children can't live here." So he ran to the crematorium and found my sister.'

Helena admitted she had slept with her rescuer and at times had even forgotten who he was and came to terms with the romance. Wunsch would provide Helena with food, clothing, and protection. Though their relationship would not develop any further, Helena would repay him years later for risking his life to protect a Jewish prisoner on the pain of death.

When the war ended, the SS guards fled the Allied advance, even destroying parts of the concentration camps to cover their war crimes. Helena and her sister Rozinka attempted to return home with other displaced people through an Eastern Europe that contained violent and raping Soviet soldiers. Both sisters avoided being raped when Rozinka claimed to be Helena’s mother and defended her. Following the founding of Israel in 1948, Helena moved there while Franz returned to Austria.

Thirty years following Nazi Germany’s defeat and the end of World War II, in 1972, Wunsch was put on trial in Vienna, accused of being cruel towards prisoners by beating men and women alike and operated at the gas chambers to insert the lethal gas. Testimonies include camp survivors describing Wunsch as a “natural Jew hater” and sometimes participated in the selection of inmates all over occupied Europe to live or die. With more than enough evidence for the guilty verdict, life imprisonment and death most likely would have awaited him.

In a twist of events, Helena and her sister defended Wunsch at his trial. Even with ‘an overwhelming evidence of guilt’ as the judge commented in Wunsch’s participation in the Nazi’s largest concentration camp’s mass murder, Wunsch was acquitted of all charges due to the statute of limitations over war crimes in Austria.

“Desire changed my brutal behavior,” Wunsch said. “I fell in love with Helena Citronova and that changed me. I changed into another person because of her influence.”

Citronova died in 2005. Wunsch died in 2009.

Share your thoughts on this article below…

Sources

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193520/Read-real-life-story-Auschwitz-prisoner-Helena-Citronova-falling-love-SS-guard-Franz-Wunsch-amid-controversy-Kate-Breslin-novel-Time.html

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/auschwitz-love-story.html

https://newswire.net/newsroom/pr/00090219-forbidden-love-saved-their-lives.html

http://ww2awartobewon.com/wwii-articles/auschwitz-forbidden-romance-story/

Why did the USSR Collapse? Chernobyl, Gorbachev and Glasnost

The death of the last “Old Bolshevik” General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Konstantin Chernenko, in March of 1985 gave way to the rise of the young, liberal, and ultimately final General Secretary of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. But just over one year after Gorbachev became General Secretary the Chernobyl nuclear explosion took place. Here, Brenden Woldman argues that it was this explosion that was the most important element that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Chernobyl. Last Day of Pripyat by Alexey Akindinov. Source: Alex Akindinov, available here.

Mikhail Gorbachev, newly crowned leader of the USSR in 1985, was a product of the communist system and a firm believer in Soviet ideology. Nevertheless, Gorbachev understood that the USSR was at a crossroads and liberal reforms were necessary for the survival of the Soviet empire.

Gorbachev thought that the enactment of glasnost (openness and a new era of honesty between the government and the people) and perestroika (restructuring of the Soviet economic and political system) would spark a golden age of Soviet ingenuity and would reignite the USSR as a super power. However, the USSR was not ripe for the backlash that would come with glasnost’s emphasis on openness. The reason for Gorbachev to double-down on glasnost was the failed cover-up that came from the Chernobyl disaster. Within a year of Gorbachev’s ascension to power, one of the greatest man-made environmental disasters the world had ever seen placed the Soviet Union in the global spotlight and showed the hypocrisy of the Soviet Union’s new “reformer”.

 The Blast

All was quiet on the morning of April 28, 1986 when Swedish monitoring stations showed an unnaturally sparked heightening of radioactive activity near northern Kiev at the Chernobyl nuclear electricity-generating plant.[1] The Soviet Union did little to confirm reports of the accident or the danger of it. Pravda, the official newspaper of the CPSU, did not report the accident until two weeks after it had occurred and Gorbachev himself did not publically acknowledge the disaster until May 14, nearly three weeks after the initial incident.[2] The reason for this silence was the attempted cover-up of the Chernobyl disaster by Gorbachev and the CPSU, even though the radioactive cloud released was ten times more hazardous than that of the radiation discharged by the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima.[3] However, those two weeks in which the Soviet Union tried to cover-up the severity of the accident showed the fragility and unwillingness of the USSR to implement the so-called media “openness” that was to come with Gorbachev’s glasnost.

The problems with the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were well documented before the accident. Government reports dating back to the initial building of the power plant in 1979 showed the brittleness of the structure with a KGB memorandum stating that the Chernobyl plant, “could lead to mishaps and accidents”.[4] The poor quality of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was not shocking to those who had inspected the quality of the structures around the USSR. An accident involving one of the power plants was not a surprising revelation due to their poor quality. Nevertheless, in the early morning of April 26 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant erupted, causing the CPSU to begin plans for a cover-up.

The Failed Cover-Up

After the extinguishing of the fires and the securing of the scene, in depth urgent reports about the nature of the incident were sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[5] When questioning began on the severity of Chernobyl from Europe and the west, the CPSU began to intensify their cover-up plan by sending statements to ambassadors of the Soviet Union throughout the globe. These statements explain that a minor accident had occurred at Chernobyl and that the level of contamination may have exceeded norms, but “not to such a degree that it requires special measures to protect the population” and that the USSR did not need foreign aid as “no foreign nationals in the Soviet Union (particularly specialists or tourists) have made application to relevant Soviet organizations in connection with the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident”.[6]

However, readings from radioactive stations across Western Europe showed that the Chernobyl accident was far more severe than initially expected, as journalists, foreign and domestic, reported on the severity of the calamity after the USSR allowed press to come to the scene. As one Pravda journalist reported, the low quality standards, lack of safety equipment, lack of evacuation of public citizens, and the overall “silence of the leaders of the republic” proved the unwillingness of the CPSU to report on the severity of the Chernobyl calamity.[7] It became clear that Gorbachev and the CPSU attempted to downplay the disaster which occurred at Chernobyl. The result was not only an environmental disaster but a political one as well, as the Soviet citizenry doubted the claim that Gorbachev was to be a new and honest General Secretary.

For Gorbachev, the calamity at Chernobyl came from two fronts. The first was the physical, environmental destruction that had occurred and the cleanup that was going to take years and require a lot of money. Yet the second hurt Gorbachev the most, as the attempted cover-up hurt Gorbachev’s reputation as a reformer and the legitimacy of glasnost. It also did not help that this reinforced the view among some of the Soviet citizenry of the poor infrastructure within the USSR in comparison to the west, which sparked the fall of the “Soviet façade”.[8] The embarrassment that came from Chernobyl left Gorbachev more decisive in implementing glasnost rhetoric, but it was too late for many as Soviet citizens began questioning the validity of glasnost.[9]

Life After Chernobyl

Chernobyl was the perfect storm of all the problems that were to come with Gorbachev’s reforms. However, the Chernobyl accident occurred in 1986, five years before the Soviet collapse. In short, there were more trickle down effects to come from glasnost and perestroika. However, the Soviet government was uneasy about granting complete open expression for the first time in the USSR’s history. Yet the embarrassment that followed the Chernobyl accident led Gorbachev to become more decisive and hardheaded with his implementation of glasnost and perestroika.[10]

Open expression became a staple of glasnost. Individuals connected to media began showing the gritty, more realistic portrayal of Soviet life instead of the utopian society depicted in propaganda. Crime, child abuse, suicide, prostitution, homelessness, declining health standards, poverty, and corruption were detailed extensively.[11] TV exposé’s like the news program Fifth Wheel filmed and broadcast the luxurious homes of the party elite in comparison to the impoverished living conditions of the working-class.[12] Soviet history was rewritten to show for the first time that Stalin was a mass murderer who killed millions of innocents and former General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev lived an extravagant, corrupt, and materialistic life. Glasnost opened up a variety of new problems that angered and humiliated many of the Soviet citizenry. The dissolving of the “Soviet façade” intensified.

Soviet essayist Alexander Tsipko summed up the feelings that many citizens felt during the era. True, glasnost created more opportunities for freedom of speech and of the press, but the revelations that came with glasnost on Soviet history completely demoralized the Soviet populace. Tsipko wrote the following to define the shocking feeling that many Soviet citizens had from glasnost’s “therapy by truth”:

No people in the history of mankind was ever enslaved by myths as our people was in the 20th century… We thought that building communism in the USSR was the greatest deed of our people, but we were purposefully engaging in self-destruction…We thought that our national industry, organized like one big factory…was the ultimate achievement of human wisdom, but it all turned out to be an economic absurdity which enslaved the economic and spiritual energies of…Russia.[13]

This powerful sentiment mirrored the feelings to the majority of Soviet citizenry. The heartbreak felt by Tsipko echoed throughout the Soviet Union, as it seemed that everything that Soviet citizens had learned and believed in were all lies fabricated by the CPSU. The feeling of confusion and loss of the Soviet ideology was quickly replaced by open protest and rage against the system that many Soviets had spent their entire lives trusting. Consequently, glasnost allowed open expression of anti-communist and anti-Soviet views that ultimately gained momentum as organized social movements led to public protest against the CPSU.[14] Between the Chernobyl meltdown and the collapse of the USSR was five years of brutal honesty that destroyed many Soviet citizens’ belief in the Soviet system. What sparked this doubt toward the system and the intensification of glasnost was Chernobyl.  

Gorbachev in Retrospect

In a 2006 interview Gorbachev saw Chernobyl as the real reason the Soviet Union collapsed. Chernobyl showed the hypocrisy of glasnost, the CPSU’s unwillingness to be honest with the Soviet people, the economic and environmental devastation on the USSR, and the embarrassment of admitting a cover-up. Combined, they proved to the Soviet people that Gorbachev was not the reformer he claimed to be. Gorbachev states, “The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later”.[15] Chernobyl was a moment that represented all the problems and hypocrisies that were to come with Gorbachev’s reforms. Yet this loosening of media relations led to more complications than the Soviet Union could swallow, as the policy of glasnost became more of a problem than a solution. Without the intensification of glasnost the Soviet Union could have survived longer than its collapse in 1991. However, if it was not for the Chernobyl meltdown and its failed cover-up, Gorbachev would not have felt obligated to intensify his policy of glasnost.

Why do you think the Soviet Union collapsed? Let us know below…

 

[1] Diane Koenker and Ronald D. Bachman, Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation, 499.

[2] Ibid. 499.

[3] Ibid. 499.

[4] Yuri Andropov. “KGB memorandum from Andropov to the Central Committee, February 21, 1979, on construction flaws at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant”, in Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation, 501.

[5] The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, “Urgent report on the Chernobyl accident from the first deputy minister of energy and electrification, April 26, 1986” in Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation, 501.

[6] The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, “Resolution of the Central Committee, April 29, 1986, on additional measures to be taken concerning the damage caused by the Chernobyl accident” & “Central Committee resolution of April 30, 1986, concerning progress in repairing damage caused by the Chernobyl accident” in Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation, 505-508.

[7] Vladimir Gubarev. “Report by Pravda journalist Gubarev on his observations at the site, May 22, 1986” in Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation, 509-511.

[8] Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, 421.

[9] Strayer, Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change, 99.

[10] Ibid. 99.

[11] Ibid. 100.

[12] Ibid. 100.

[13] Alexander Tsipko. “Novy Mir 4”, in Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change, 105.

[14] Ibid 105.

[15] Green Road Journal Writing Staff, "Gorbachev; Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Was Real Cause Of The Collapse of Soviet Union, But It Took 20 Years For The Truth To Come Out, Just Like TMI And Fukushima, Denial Plus Cover Up Is The Norm," A Green Road Journal, April 15, 2016, , accessed October 24, 2016, http://www.agreenroadjournal.com/2012/12/gorbachev-chernobyl-nuclear-accident.html.

The Unknown British War Hero - The Enigmatic Life of the ‘Genius Britain Betrayed’

Disastrous warfare, lethal weaponry, brave soldiers, French beaches; these are perhaps just a handful of things that come to mind when one thinks about the Second World War - and rightly so. Since the Armistice of the War on August 14, 1945, we have repeatedly paid homage to a generation of predominantly young male soldiers that rescued Europe from Hitler’s fascist clutches. The following article will attempt to uncover the tragically short but eventful life of an altogether different war-hero (but a hero nonetheless), the man that Marvin Minsky called ‘the key-figure of our century’; Alan Mathison Turing. Analysis of Turing has tended to focus on his scientific advances and the role of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park in hastening the end of the war. Yet Bletchley stands as an archetype for a more undervalued aspect of British life: eccentricity. Jon Hill explains.

Alan Turing.

Early Life

Born in London on June 23, 1912, Turing spent much of his childhood under the care of an old army couple whilst his parents spent most of their time in India due to his father’s work with the civil service. At school, he was never one to follow strict principles, spending much of his time in advanced mathematics to the neglect of his work. Turing’s school head teacher ironically claimed ‘if he is to stay here he must aim at becoming educated’. According to Turing’s biographer Andrew Hodges, his academic life changed when he met Christopher Morecambe, a future love interest who helped him become more communicative with his peers and more focused on his studies. Following Morecambe’s early death, Hodges suggests that Turing became even more determined to focus his analysis into his notorious machines. Before he left school, he had rather unintentionally won the respect of his peers for his own peculiar methods.

In 1931, he entered Kings College, Cambridge, as a mathematical scholar, where he enjoyed a more welcoming atmosphere, and was awarded a fellowship at 22.

Making of the Digital Computer

Turing made his most significant contribution to the age of computers in 1935, when he began his investigation into mathematical logic that would lead to the creation of the ‘Turing Machine’. His paper ‘An Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem)’ spawned the idea that a machine could be used to compute anything that a human mind could. In effect, Turing had created the first modern day computer, revolutionizing human activity in the process; every keyboard stroke you make owes something to Turing’s work.

The ‘Turing Machine’ was subsequently used by engineers at the University of Manchester to build the world’s first working digital computer in June 1948. For his work in Computer Science, the ‘Turing Award’ was established in 1966 - the highest accolade in the computing industry.

Wartime Work

In 1939, Turing was headhunted by the government to head the Bletchley Park cipher-breaking mission to crack Nazi encryption. Then, working day and night, Turing and his team oversaw the creation of the ‘bombes’ – the machine built to crack the ‘Enigma code’ in order to enable the government to read German naval signals. Every German U-boat carried an Enigma machine to receive operational orders. To stop them, Enigma had to be broken. This quiet mathematician’s code-breaking endeavors were quite literally a matter of life or death for millions. By 1941 the code had been cracked, thanks, in large part, to this quiet, unassuming, gay man, who wore a gas mask for his allergies, and chained his teacup to a radiator to ensure its safe-keeping.

For his wartime services he was awarded an O.B.E by King George VI in 1946. According to Churchill, Turing made ‘the single greatest contribution to the Allied forces victory in the Second World War.’

It is hard to imagine that such a peculiar group would be amassed by the British government today. Yet the undeniable eccentricity at Bletchley was key to its success. The mission brought together a distinctive cocktail of mathematicians, linguists, cryptanalysts, crossword geeks and other boffins, but left alone in a space to flourish, they experimented their way to greatness.

Betrayal and Death

Although Turing enjoyed popularity in his private life and at Walton Athletics Club (where he was very successful and almost qualified for the 1948 Olympics), the eccentric genius which made him a wartime hero was not as appreciated in peacetime. In 1952, when reporting a burglary to the police, he naively admitted to a relationship with a man. He was subsequently arrested for ‘gross indecency with males’, one of 1,600 men who had been convicted in 1952 alone. Instead of a prison sentence, Turing was ordered to undergo psychoanalysis and a year’s treatment of estrogen injections.

Turing’s homosexuality was not completely secret. Many of his friends and peers at Bletchley and Cambridge endeavored to keep his relations covert, which, according to I.J Good, was just as important to the war effort as the code-cracking mission itself; ‘if the security people had known he may well have been fired and we would have lost the war.’

On June 7, 1954, Turing was found dead at his home, with a cyanide poisoned apple confirmed to be the cause of death. The investigation stated it to be a suicide, although many Turing experts have ruled it to be an accident. With no suicide notes, no prior symptoms of depression, his regular trips abroad, and his knowledge of British intelligence, some have even suggested that he was deemed too much of a national security risk and was subsequently murdered with the knowledge of the government.

Legacy

It seems to me that Turing’s life (and death) is a reminder of much that was terrible about the twentieth century. His genius was suppressed by an embarrassing education system; he was used by the government to make one of the largest contributions to human survival in recent history, before being swiftly sidelined while lesser scientists took his work onto ‘the next level’; he was not only persecuted but tortured for his homosexuality and was allegedly condemned as a ‘risk’.

Bletchley Park now stands as not only a code-breaking museum, but also for the triumph of the outsider. Turing’s posthumous pardon in 2013 stands as a beacon of hope for a suppressed generation of gay people, made to suffer for the prejudices of others.

In his 1937 paper on computer machines, Turing stated ‘the human memory is necessarily limited.’ Turing’s legacy stands as a reminder that one should not allow their memory to become limited. The age of tolerance should remember Turing as a necessary sacrifice made by a man far ahead of his time. And for that, he deserves to be considered as one of the greatest men in human history.  

Do you agree with the author that Alan Turing was one of the greatest men in human history? Let us know below…

Sources

Ben Macintyre, ‘Bletchley Park: a fitting memorial to our enigmatic nature.’ Times (London, England), 22 August 2008.

Ben Macintyre, ‘The genius Britain betrayed.’ Times (London, England), 14 July 2006.

‘Codebreaker’, directed by Clare Beavan and Nic Stacey (2011).

M.H.A. Newman, ‘Alan Mathison Turing, 1912-1954.’ Royal Society, vol 1 (1955), pp. 253-263.

Richard Morrison, ‘The war’s forgotten hero.’ Times (London, England), 22 August 2008. 

Astronaut Chimps – and the US Space Program in the Cold War

The space race was one of the key battlegrounds during the Cold War. And as the space race became ever more important during the 1950s and 1960s, chimps became a key part of the US space program. Andrew Walls explains.

Ham the chimp, prior to his test flight in January 1961.

The era of the spacefaring chimp

The era of the rocket monkeys was a confusing one. Both for the chimps themselves and for those working towards the eventual moon landing. The Cold War was in full swing and the American and Soviet space programs were battling for ideological supremacy. The Soviets had just sent two dogs, Belka and Strelka, up into the Earth’s orbit and had touched them down safely.

The American public wanted a similar milestone for the American space program. So when Ham touched down in the Mercury capsule the public treated him not like a research animal and more like a “short, hairy astronaut”. Gifts and flowers began arriving for Ham. People wanted his autograph. He was one of those golden age American heroes that made people weep with pride.

This didn’t thrill Alan Shepard, who was to go up following Ham’s safe return to prove its safety for humans. Neither really piloted the craft. They both just sat there and let the guys on the ground prove the flights were safe. Alan Shepard in short wasn’t thrilled with this monkey stealing his thunder and reasonably chose not to attend the furry American hero’s funeral some years later.

Space Chimps Made In America

Albert was the first chimponaut to be launched into space. The term launched is right because they strapped him to a V-2 rocket and let him suffocate during the flight. Albert ll, his successor, was killed when the V-2 rocket he was strapped to had a parachute failure. During this suicidal flight Albert ll became the first monkey in space after passing the Karman line of 100km above sea level. In fact the first Albert to survive the landing was Albert Vl, who along with his 11 mouse crewmates touched down safely. However, once they touched down, the monkeys weren’t finished yet.

Next came the battery of medical tests which ascertained what impacts, if any, weightlessness and other phenomena of space travel had on them. They wisely stopped numbering the chimps and just started giving them nicknames. So “Baker” was the first chimp to survive both the flight and the post flight operations. At the age of 27, Baker was buried on the grounds of the United States Space & Rocket Center. Ham, our American hero and Enos, his successor, were the two most well-known astrochimps but there were many others who lived and died with little fanfare.

Ham the chimp is welcomed back with a 'handshake' after his January 1961 flight on the Mercury Redstone rocket.

Furious George

Beyond the States, Russia, France, Argentina and Iran have all launched their own chimps - most of whom also perished during their flights. Astronauts dying mid-flight has always been horrendous for space programs. The Columbia and Challenger disasters crippled the American space program. So for riskier flights, especially during the initial testing phases, it made sense to send a chimp who will garner far less media attention in the event of a malfunction. Chimps are very similar to humans biologically and it is reasonable to assume that any effects they experience from space flight could also be experienced by a human.

What most people don’t realize is scientists of the time had no idea of what to expect from people in space. No person had ever been that far from the ground before. It just hadn’t been possible. We know now that people are fine in space with the appropriate precautions being taken. At the time, however, they were just guessing. Would lessened gravity distort people’s eyeballs and blind them? Maybe the change in weight of body parts would restrict movement, leaving the pilot unable to control the ship at altitude. Would the space radiation kill people before they could safely land? NASA, the Soviet space program and the rest of the world had absolutely no clue. So they sent up chimps and hoped for the best.

Monkey Business

The use of chimps in aerospace was an unfortunate necessity of the time. A space program that had as many astronauts die as chimps did would have been cancelled and condemned very quickly. Chimps were a necessary sacrifice in the vital quest for information. But I want to finish this story with a happy ending. One about what happened to the chimps after the space programs no longer needed them. This story reinforces where using chimps or any surrogates as research tools can go wrong when the agency using them doesn’t respect them as intelligent organisms.

In the 1970s the Air Force decided it no longer needed its chimp colony. The space race was finished; they had all the information launching chimps could give them. So they began leasing them to medical facilities in New York and New Mexico State. That lasted for a while.

Gorilla Warfare

Then in 1997 they decided to officially “retire” them forever. Luckily that didn’t mean putting them to sleep. The Air Force would instead sell the chimps on the open market. In a mock “bidding” process, they only considered one bid, which came from The Coulston Foundation. This foundation had a horrendous track record of animal cruelty and had once had 300 chimps seized because of negligent care. Important people asked that instead these chimps go to a sanctuary.

They still had memories of Ham and other chimp sacrifices in the Space Race and wanted these chimps to be treated with some respect and dignity. Here’s where Dr. Carole Noon comes in. With the backing of Dr. Jane Goodall and Dr. Roger Fouts, Noon fought hard for the chimps to be moved to a sanctuary. The Air Force, in what they must have thought was a “show of good faith”, awarded 30 chimps to Dr. Noon and the rest to The Coulston Foundation. Dr. Noon was less than pleased. She raised the funds herself and built a sanctuary in Florida. After a year-long court battle she finally won custody of the remaining 21 chimps and moved them to her sanctuary. Today she operates the Save the Chimp foundation which is where these chimps are living out their days peacefully and without testing.

Chimpy Meadows

A life of rest and peace is a fitting end for the descendants of the monkeys who helped us reach space. But the fact that the Air Force was going to condemn them to an abusive testing facility reaffirms the lack of respect they have for these animals’ intelligence and their contribution to the space program. Moving forward it would serve any agency using animals for testing to consider the following: Will this test give us information that could not be obtained otherwise? Can we use people instead without putting those people through some significant risk? And in the event they do decide animals are necessary: Are we treating these animals with respect and dignity both during the testing process and afterwards?

Thank you astro-chimps the world over for your sacrifices. You may not realize it, but you’ve helped to start something which could change humanity’s destiny forever.

For more of Andrew Walls’ writing visit his space and entrepreneurship blog: Landing Attempts.

Out of respect for the chimps discussed in this article, Landing Attempts has made a donation to the Save The Chimps Foundation founded by Dr. Noon. Save the Chimps works to reclaim and house chimps affected by biomedical testing facilities. They deserve our support and respect.

Sources

Roach, Mary. Packing for Mars. http://www.maryroach.net/packing-for-mars.html

Cassidy, David and Davy Kristin. Space Chimps. http://www.spacechimps.com/theirstory.html

Wall, Mike. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/monkeys-in-space-a-brief-spaceflight-history/

The Truth about Vladimir Lenin – The Father of Post-Truth Politics?

Just who was Vladimir Lenin? While we know that he came to power after the Russian Revolution, much of his life is shrouded in myths and lies. Author Tanel Vahisalu explains all.

PS - you can find out about Tanel’s latest project on Russian history here.

A painting of Lenin by Isaak Brodsky - Lenin in front of Smolny.

Ninety-three years after his death, Vladimir Lenin continues to make headlines. During 2017’s commemoration of the Russian Revolution, a poll conducted by the independent Levada Center demonstrated that 56 per cent of Russians believe Lenin played a positive role in history. What’s more, many of the remaining 44 per cent of Russians fail to see that Lenin was actually a supreme master of using fake news and mass manipulation.

The question becomes: How much do we actually know about Vladimir Lenin?

Despite a massive collection of history books, we still know surprisingly little about the man lining the pages. Perhaps that is because each of the 653 million volumes of Lenin’s published works – dated through to 1990 – contain fake biographies.

According to Russian historian, Dmitry Volkogonov, during Soviet times, there were at least 3,725 documents that were carefully collected and sealed within the cellars of Party archives that nobody was permitted to see. Many of these documents were said to be classified because they reveal the actual cause of Lenin’s death. Furthermore, many of the documents contain information about the true Ulyanov family tree, which was kept secret within the Soviet Union.

Bearing that in mind, let’s now turn to the most prevalent “alternative facts” of Vladimir Lenin.

Contrary to his official biography, Lenin was neither a Russian by ethnicity nor was he a peasant by descent.

Lenin’s mother, Maria Alexandrovna, had Jewish-Swedish roots. His great-grandfather, Moshe Blank, was known as a “mad Jewish merchant,” who had once set fire to 23 houses in his home village. Lenin’s grandfather, Alexander Blank, was a highly respected doctor and wealthy landowner, who bought an entire village near Simbirsk (today’s Ulyanovsk, Russia), along with 39 peasants and their farms.

The Ulyanov family was relatively affluent in local Simbirsk. Lenin’s father, Ilya was a high state official in the field of education. When he unexpectedly died, while Vladimir was 16, the family had sufficient income to easily support themselves. In fact, they even had servants.

Lenin was neither a kind-hearted, modest child nor was he a devoted revolutionary from a young age.

Already as a baby, Volodya – as he was called – stood out from his siblings. He began speaking at three and had trouble standing up on his weak feet. His head was larger than normal and he used to bang it against the floor in fits of rage. Lenin’s mother was sincerely worried about his cognitive development.

Lenin’s sister recalled - when their parents gave him a toy horse for his birthday – that he creeped away to a solitary space to tear its legs off, one by one. Volodya was a troublesome child, always fighting with his little brother, Dmitry, and purposely frightening his sister, Maria. It was documented that his parents found his behavior very disturbing.

Although Volodya grew up to be an extremely bright child, and was awarded a gold medal upon graduation, there is no evidence that he took any particular interest in revolutionary ideas prior to moving to Saint Petersburg in 1893.

In 1887, Lenin was neither expelled from university, nor was he detained in a Siberian prison camp.

A good example of “alternative facts” in Lenin’s official biography is the story about how the young revolutionary was expelled from Kazan University to a remote village of Kokushkino because of his revolutionary activity.

Truth be told, Volodya had only taken part in a peaceful student meeting and, when confronted about this, he wrote a voluntary resignation letter to the university. It is also worth mentioning that the village of Kokushkino was the same village that Lenin’s grandfather had bought. The Ulyanov family used it as their summer estate. So technically, he was “deported” to a nice vacation at his grandfather’s place.

While in Switzerland, Lenin was neither struggling to make ends meet nor did he have a happy marriage.

Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya lived as refugees in Western Europe for seventeen years, though neither of them had to work. They had several bank accounts in Zürich, and Lenin’s family regularly sent them money and packages of goods.

“In Zürich I messed around quite a bit an ended up in a … Swiss health resort”, Lenin joked in a letter he had written.

History has also revealed that Lenin had many relationships prior to Krupskaya, and he continued to have them during their marriage. The most famous of which was his affair with Inessa Armand, a political activist and family friend.

The cause of Lenin’s death was not cerebral atherosclerosis.

During his final years, Lenin suffered from loss of consciousness, paralysis, hallucinations, and epileptic seizures. His official death certificate stated his cause of death was cerebral atherosclerosis, yet two of his closest personal doctors refused to sign it.

No doubt that is because he likely died of syphilis, contracted at an early age and left untreated. In 1922, a number of doctors prescribed him salvarsan, which is a medication used only for treating syphilis. Additionally, a German physician who specialized in syphilis was summoned and commented: “Everyone knows for which brain disorder I am called”.

Taken together, if we look at Lenin’s life story, there is not too much that can be viewed as factual. Many of these “alternative facts” were perpetuated by Lenin during his lifetime, and were bolstered, posthumously, by Joseph Stalin and his successors to create a god-like cult figure for the Soviet Union.

Quite simply, Vladimir Lenin is the sad embodiment of the very problems that we face today – “post-truth politics” and manipulation based on “alternative facts”.

Learning from history, we would do well to question what we are told, and hold our political leaders accountable by calling truth to power.

Find out more about Tanel’s book, History of Russia in 100 Minutes, here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

References

Volkogonov, Dmitry. Lenin: A New Biography. The Free Press, 1994.

Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography. Harvard University Press, 2002.

Kolata, Gina. Lenin’s Stroke: Doctor Has a Theory (and a Suspect). The New York Times, 2012.

Roig-Franzia, Manuel. Medical Sleuths Discuss the Forensics of Death. The Washington Post, 2012.

Finding a way out of the Great Depression? Roosevelt’s Brain Trust

The Brain Trust was a small group who came together in 1932 to help Franklin D Roosevelt find ways out of the Great Depression. The group’s legacy was significant as they were closely involved with the New Deal as well as a very famous speech. Ted Harvey explains all.

Unemployed men outside a Chicago Depression-era soup kitchen.

They were mocked by some in the media, but the three men who were known as the “Brain Trust” were influential in helping Franklin Delano Roosevelt craft the policies that would become the New Deal. Technically it was a short-lived group, existing primarily during FDR’s run for the White House in 1932. While other advisors became lumped in with the “Brain Trust”, there were originally three who made up the group: Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle. All were professors at Columbia University, Moley and Berle in law and Tugwell in economics.

The idea for the Trust was suggested by Samuel Rosenman, speechwriter and legal counsel of Roosevelt, whom he knew through his time on the New York State Assembly and as a Justice on the New York Supreme Court. Rosenman thought it would be beneficial for the candidate to have an academic team of advisers. The idea was supposedly based on the Woodrow Wilson’s “The Inquiry”, a large group of academics who advised President Wilson on peace negotiations following World War I. “The Inquiry” would eventually become the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Forgotten Man

The “Brain Trust” came together in 1932 led by Raymond Moley, a strong supporter and close ally of then Governor Roosevelt. The country remained trapped in the Great Depression with no obvious end in sight. Moley brought the Brain Trust together to help Roosevelt craft his message, focusing on how his administration would pull the country out of the worst economic depression the country had or would ever face. In some sense the “Brain Trust” was for show, allowing voters to see Roosevelt had a plan to get out of the Depression, and that he wouldn’t stand idly by to let the country work itself out of the depression.

The group’s influence was evident in Roosevelt’s first major campaign speech, now generally known as the “Forgotten Man” speech. In it Roosevelt laid out his plans for his initial 100 days and how he meant to address the continued Depression. The speech focused on the poor, the “forgotten men” who were not receiving the help they needed. It was Raymond Moley who helped write this speech and include the now-famous “forgotten man.” Moley also wrote much of Roosevelt’s first inaugural address. It is also thought that Moley came up with the term “New Deal,” which remains influential to this day. Adolf Berle was also heavily involved with Roosevelt’s speechwriting, helping to write the Commonwealth Club speech, focusing on the importance of government involvement in the economy.

Following the election, the original “Brain Trust” gave way to a more permanent group of advisors. These new Brain-Trusters, people like Frances Perkins, Harry Hopkins, and Harold Ickes, as advisors and Cabinet Secretaries, continued to push New Deal policies forward. As far as the original three, they each pursued a different path. Adolf Berle left the administration soon after Roosevelt’s inauguration, although he continued to be an informal advisor of the President. Later, from 1938 to 1944 Berle returned to work for the White House as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. Raymond Moley became disenchanted with the New Deal policies and with President Roosevelt. He continued writing speeches for the president until 1936, after which he left the White House becoming an ardent critic of the New Deal and liberalism, at least the kind promoted by FDR. Nothing exemplifies Moley’s shift in position than his awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1970 by President Richard Nixon.

Of the three, only Tugwell transitioned directly from the “Brain Trust” to a role in the administration, becoming Undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture. Tugwell would have continued influence as Roosevelt implemented the programs of the New Deal, including the Agricultural Adjustment Agency, the Soil Conservation Service, the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and the Resettlement Administration. He left the administration in 1936 and became vice president of the American Molasses Company. Later he became the first Director of the New York City Planning Commission, where he frequently ran up against the (in)famous Robert Moses. He returned to the Roosevelt administration in 1941 as the last appointed Governor of Puerto Rico.

In perspective

Although the “Brain Trust” was a short-lived loose affiliation, the influence the small group had on Roosevelt and New Deal policies was enormous. While the members of the “Brain Trust” were dismissed by many as advocates of big government and elites, they approached the economic problems of their day through the lens of Progressivism. For example, their goal was not to rely solely on the government or to break-up the large corporations when it came to economic policy, but to have the government regulate businesses. These ideas, supported by President Roosevelt and his Brain Trust, became the backbone of the New Deal economic policies and in many regards remain in place today.

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References

http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2006/200609_FDR_pt3.html

https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/brains-trust.cfm

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/research/economic-thought/economics/roosevelts-brains-trust/

Kennedy, David. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Brands, H.W. Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt . New York: Anchor Books, 2008.

Was Spain Neutral or a Nazi Ally in World War Two?

Of the many officially neutral countries in World War Two, Spain was perhaps the country closest to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Here, Laura Kerr follows up on her article on Switzerland in World War Two, by considering whether General Franco’s Nationalist Spain was a friend of Hitler, or actually neutral between the Allies and Axis Powers.

Francisco Franco is the figure second from the right. Nazis Karl Wolff and Heinrich Himmler, and Spanish minister Ramon Serrano Suner also feature.

Non-belligerent - A nation or person that is not engaged in a war or conflict.

Neutral - An impartial or unbiased state or person.

Spain’s official stance of non-belligerence during World War Two is best taken with a pinch of salt. While its reasons to stay uninvolved appear legitimate, in reality Spain was arguably the most involved out of all “neutral countries”.

“Non-belligerent” normally refers to a state or country that does not get involved in a war, normally resulting in their neutrality. Spain’s reason for not officially getting involved was, of course, the Spanish Civil War.

This was a bloody civil war fought from 1936-1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. From an ideological perspective, the Spanish Civil War could be considered a precursor to World War Two and almost foreshadowed the end to the fragile equilibrium established in Europe.

On one side you had the Republic government. They were largely liberals and fought against the conservative Nationalist rebels. The Soviet Union provided the Republicans with significant military assistance, although France and Britain were more wary about supporting them. The Republic also received volunteer International Brigades from Western Europe and the U.S. More broadly, many in Europe saw the Spanish conflict as a threat to the peace that had settled in Europe and wanted to prevent the spread of the Nationalists’ fascist-linked ideology.

The Nationalists’ rebellion started off as a failed military coup but resulted in their leader, General Francisco Franco, becoming dictator of Spain. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany both provided military aid, not only to support the Nationalists but also as a military testing ground for new weapons they hoped to later use.

The rebels won in 1939 and General Franco was made Head of State. While General Franco leaned heavily ideologically to Nazi Germany and the Axis countries, he was careful to appease the Western allies for trading reasons.

Volunteers

The main way in which Spain entered World War Two was through volunteers. The side with which each man volunteered largely paralleled the side on which they had fought during the Spanish Civil War. Over 18,000 nationalist men volunteered to fight for the Axis Powers, on the condition they would be fighting on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union rather than against the Western Allies. By doing this, General Franco assisted and repaid Hitler while maintaining peace with Western Europe and the U.S.

Conversely, as a result of losing the civil war, many of the Republicans went into exile and fled to refugee camps in southern France. At the outbreak of the Second World War, they joined French forces to fight against the Axis Powers. It is estimated that over 60,000 Spaniards joined the French resistance alone. Just over 1,000 Spaniards (largely the communist leaders) fled to the Soviet Union and fought alongside the Red Army after the invasion in 1941.

Non-belligerence

Diplomacy is where the term ‘non-belligerency’ is distinguished from absolute neutrality. While volunteers technically assisted both the Allies and Axis during World War Two militaristically, General Franco also provided the Axis Powers with both economic assistance and useful intelligence. In 1940, Franco signed the Protocol of Hendaya, which provided for close cooperation among the governments of Spain, Italy and Germany.

Furthermore General Franco and Hitler engaged in numerous talks discussing the possibility of active involvement in the war and the issue of Gibraltar. This was an area of Spain in British control that Hitler was keen to seize. However General Franco repeatedly refused entry to German soldiers, arguing that the United Kingdom and its colonies still posed a major threat to Spain. In these discussions, General Franco often demanded too much in return for active entry into the war. Whether this was simply desperation considering Spain’s war-torn state, or a way of delaying irreversible actions, it resulted in a lack of official action. Among his other demands, General Franco asked for a large supply of grain to feed its population, which Germany could not provide. Pressure to invade Gibraltar was only relieved in 1941 when Hitler focused his attention on the Eastern front by invading the Soviet Union.  After a meeting on October 23, 1940 to discuss details about the alliance between Spain and Germany, Hitler was famously quoted telling Mussolini: "I prefer to have three or four of my own teeth pulled out than to speak to that man again!” This suggests that despite ideological similarities, the two leaders had a hard time making definite agreements.

Allied Trade Pressure

Like most countries during World War Two, Spain was struggling economically. People were starving and it relied heavily on trade and imports to support itself. The Allies worked hard to ensure Spain could not afford to actively enter the war and used trading blockades and economic incentives to enforce that.

Portugal and Spain had long had an alliance, therefore Portugal provided Spain with the much needed grain to ease its food shortages. However, to put pressure on Spain, America and Britain reduced Spain’s access to oil. All told, considering its economic and social depression after the Civil War, entering World War Two would have led to economic pressure which could have effectively brought the country to a halt.

Great Britain also followed a policy of "building a network of mutual interests and creating the conditions, thanks to which any breakup between the two countries would mean a key loss for Spanish trade and industry.” This largely dictated Spanish movements towards the Western Allies during the war.

As a result of tactical trade blockades and other agreements, over the war Spain was inescapably dependent on the United States and Great Britain.

A cowardly ending

Despite its seemingly favorable views towards the Axis Powers in the early years of the war, General Franco changed his tune as Hitler’s indestructible façade began to slip and victory for the Allies seemed inevitable. It was only when this happened that Spain reverted back from ‘non-belligerence’ to true neutrality and began to act that way.

However, this quick change of tact didn’t mean they could escape the consequences of favoring the Axis. As a result of their cooperation with Nazi Germany, not only militaristically but also economically, Spain was isolated by the major powers in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. Although Roosevelt had promised Spain would not suffer sanctions from the United Nations as a result of their alliance, the U.S. president died in April 1945, leaving Truman to take power, who was less forgiving of General Franco. That being said, with the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the US later saw conservative Spain as more of an ally against the rise of communism, rather than a threat.

In conclusion, while it is clear that Franco’s Spain did favor the Axis Powers of the war, it did not technically become involved in the war. Its conduct during World War Two combined flexibility on who her allies were with a desperation to survive. After such a damaging Civil War, Spain was not in the position to wholly side with either the Allies or Axis Powers. It begs the question, therefore, that if they had been a fit state, who would they have chosen? And does that make them any better?

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