Showing posts from category: Regional History
The ‘Battle of Broken Hill’: The Curious Incident of the Afghan Cameleers’ Two-Man War on the Silver City
Image: britannica.comOn New Years Day 1915 two members of the small immigrant Afghan community of Broken Hill launched an unexpected and deadly attack on a passing convoy of open ore-trucks carrying 1,200 industry picnickers to Silverton. The incident itself did not escalate much further, the so-called ‘battle’ was over after a 90-minute shootout, with the perpetrators dealt with and summarily despatched by a contingent of police, soldiers and private riflemen from the town, however it’s ramifications were more lasting and widespread. What was on the surface a random, mindless and unprovoked attack on innocent picnic-goers, had a complicated lead-up.
The picnic train with overflowing “sardine tin” of passengers (Photo: Broken Hill City Lib)The casualties: In the carnage two of the “sitting duck” picnic party were killed by the attackers’ gunfire and up to ten others wounded. The two gunmen then retreated from the scene towards the West Cameleers camp, killing another, unrelated civilian on the way. The police, troops and volunteer militia members of the ‘posse’ caught up with the two attackers at Cable Hill and engaged them in a shootout at a nearby rocky quartz outcrop known as “White Rocks”. During the shootout a fourth victim was killed by stray shots from the perpetrators’ gunsⓐ. A police constable was also wounded and both Muslim assailants were ultimately killed in the affray.
‘White Rocks’ (Source: The Conversation)In the immediate aftermath of the incident the two perpetrators were wrongly identified as Turks—the Ottoman Turkish Empire has recently sided with the German Reich in the world war against Britain (and therefore against Australia)—due to a Turkish flag and a letter pledging allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey found among the possessions of one of the attackers. In fact the two Muslims originated from the northwest frontier of British India (within modern Pakistan or just over the border in Afghanistan).
A still from a 1981 film, ‘The Battle of Broken Hill’The assailants: Badsha Gool Mahomed (aged about 40) a Pashtu-speaking Afghan Afridi tribesman whose two stays in Australia were punctuated by periods of service in the Turkish Army. After a decline in work for cameleers he was employed in the Broken Hill area’s silver mines before being retrenched. At the time of the incident Mahomed was an ice cream vendor in the townⓑ. Mullah Abdullah (aged about 60) a Dari-speaking halal butcher and imam for the local cameleer community. Abdullah too tried camel-driving but finding it not feasible turned to working as a butcher in “The Hill”, supplementing it by presiding as spiritual leader for the Afghan community.
The influential local newspaper the Barrier Miner had a field day with the incident… “War in Broken Hill”, “The New Year’s Day Massacre“, (Attack) “under the Turkish flag”. Some modern writers have described the “Battle of Broken Hill” as a terrorist incident, “terrorist-suicide mission” (and Abdullah as a) “grey-bearded zealot, fiery when insulted” [Christine Stevens, ‘Abdullah, Mullah (c. 1855–1915)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/abdullah-mullah-12763/text23021, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 10 February 2022], and inevitable parallels have been drawn with the contemporary landscape of international terrorism. Giving credence to the train ambush being considered a politically motivated act was the edict of Ottoman sultan Mehmet V that the faithful of the Islamic world take up the fight (jihad) against the enemy in the war, made just two months earlier in November 1914 (which undoubtedly struck a cord with the radicalised Mahomed) [‘History repeating: from the Battle of Broken Hill to the sands of Syria’, Panayiotis Diamadis, The Conversation, 03-Oct-2014, www.theconversation.com].
A union closed shop Imam Abdullah on the other hand had fresh personal grievances against the locals. He had for some time suffered racist harassment from the town’s youths. In addition, Abdullah had fallen foul of the local branch of the Butchers Trade Union which took a discriminatory approach to not-British butchers in the town…only a week or so earlier the non-unionised Afghan butcher had been convicted for the second time of selling meat without a licence by the chief sanitary inspector. Whether the two men were motivated by a sense of persecution or patriotism, relations between the Afghan community and the Europeans in Broken Hill had been disintegrating for some time with the ‘Ghan’ cameleers camp targeted for sabotage. [‘The Battle of Broken Hill and repercussions for the German Community’, The Enemy At Home, www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au].
Photo: brokenhill.nsw.gov.auEconomic downturn knee-jerk A heightening of inter-ethnic tension was a direct result of the grim economic climate of the day, mine closures in Broken Hill meant unemployed miners and the search for alternate work…it didn’t take long for resentments to surface about Muslim immigrants taking white jobs. Afghan immigrants were made to feel unwelcome in Broken Hill and other outback towns with the cameleers relegated to living on the edge of European society in ‘Ghantowns’. Tensions were particularly heated between the local unionised teamsters and the immigrants, largely due to the Afghans cameleers being simply more competitive labour options than the white teamsters…cheaper to hire and providing a quicker service than that of the teamsters’ wagons. This perceived threat to the position of European teamsters in the Broken Hill district led them to retaliate with violence against the Afghan community [‘The Battle of Broken Hill’, Mike Dash, Smithsonian Magazine, 20-Oct-2011, www.smithsonianmag.com].
Razed German Club house (Photo: Broken Hill City Archives)A “lone wolf” attack Despite the assailants leaving a note indicating that they had acted alone, many citizens in Broken Hill connected the event to the Turkish enmity towards the British Empire in the warⓒ. An incensed mob, hell-bent on wreaking retribution against the Afghan cameleer camp, had to be prevented from launching reprisals against the outlier Afghan community. The focus then switched to Broken Hill’s German community who many believed had agitated the brace of Afghans into attacking the picnic train. The police and military this time were unable to stop the rampant mob from torching the German Club to the ground.
Wider ramifications A crackdown of the authorities was not long in coming. With newspapers like the Barrier Miner and the jingoistic Sydney Bulletin beating up the story for all it’s worth and with headlines trumpeting “Turk atrocity” and “Holy War”, “enemy aliens” from Austrian, German and Turkish working in the Hill’s mines were sacked, followed swiftly by Federal attorney-general Billy Hughes’s blanket internment of all foreign aliens in the country.
Photo: Destination NSW Media CentreFootnote: In a bizarre coincidence Broken Hill’s “ice cream cart terrorism” had a resounding echo in the abhorrent 2016 Bastille Day “lone wolf” terrorist attack in Nice, France. The perpetrator who drove his lorry down a seafront promenade, killing 86 pedestrians (most of them mowed down by the speeding vehicle), told the police when questioned at the site prior to committing the atrocity that he was delivering ice cream.
↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝ ⓐ the four victims of the two cameleers’ localised “Holy War” were the only Australians killed on home soil as a result of enemy fire during the Great War
ⓑ Mahomed‘s ice-cream cart was used to transport the duo’s concealed weapons to the railroad ambush site
ⓒ some people in hindsight saw the incident as a prequel on Australian soil to the Gallipoli conflict later that same year
Glasgow’s Postwar Planning Wars: Utopian Visions of Dystopia, Slum Clearances, New Towns and Social Engineering – Part 3
At the conclusion of World War Two no one was seriously of the opinion that Glasgow didn’t need to urgent address the acute housing and quality of life dilemmas besetting the city’ inhabitants. For their part, the planners focusing on the city certainly had (or at least professed) good intentions in their efforts to ameliorate what was for tens of thousands of Glaswegians a polluted, congested and thoroughly unpleasant living environment. For all the planning and the vast sums of money poured into redevelopment however, the results were and continue to be more than disappointing. As discussed in the first two parts of this blog series, the uncoordinated approach of having two rival sets of planners trying to implement conflicting visions of a new Glasgow didn’t help matters at all.
Map credit: Glasgow City Council
Irvine new town (Image: earlyooters.blogspot.com)
Scheme in EasterhouseFamily dislocation Relocation to the edges from the city led to other unforeseen or unaddressed problems, including a major disruption to the extended family network…many residents in the new projects were now too far away from their past abodes and cut off from their extended families and friends, resulting in a heightening of a sense of isolation (Paice). This outcome was even more perturbing for those Glasgow citizens who had been forced into relocating to the schemes and New Towns.
Cumbernauld Town Centre: “the rabbit warren on stilts”
Craigshill 1960s (image: Livingston Devlt Corp)Social engineering, the “Glasgow Effect” Glasgow’s 20th century standing as the British Empire’s “Second City” and an economic and industrial powerhouse in the region came at a cost. Studies have long revealed that Glaswegians have a proportionately higher early death-rate—and not accountable by poverty alone—than other comparable great cities«D̴». A 2016 report by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (‘History, politics and vulnerability: explaining excess mortality’) concluded that the combined historic effects of overcrowding, poor city planning (1960s-’80s) and “a democratic deficit–a lack of an ability to control decisions that affect their lives”—were the causes of the city’s susceptibility to premature death (“Revealed: ‘Glasgow effect’ mortality rate blamed on Westminster social engineering”, Karin Goodwin, The Herald, 16-May-2016, www.heraldscotland.com). The SO took this tact, the GCPH asserted, knowing full-well that the policy would be damaging to the long-term health of Glaswegians (Goodwin).
Castlemilk ca.1965 (Source: Gordon Waddell (Pinterest))
“Skimming the cream” The evidence points to a deliberate government policy of social engineering experiments in Glasgow…Scottish Office documents released under the 30-year rule reveal a calculated policy in determining which inner city residents were relocated where. ”Skimming the cream” (rehousing the best preferred preferred citizens in the choices parts of the new settlements) was practiced. Skilled workforce and young families were chosen to reside in East Kilbride and the other New Towns while the centre was left with “the old, the very poor and the almost unemployable”. This tactic and the steering of economic investment away from Glasgow resulted in a “serious population imbalance” (Goodwin) and putting the vulnerable ’stayers’ in a jeopardy.
Murray Drive (Photo: Stonehouse Heritage Group)Postscript: Belatedly aborted Stonehouse – New Towns become surplus to needs There was meant to be a sixth New Town built to absorb overspill population from Glasgow…the small village of Stonehouse was slated to accommodate 22,000 new homes and 35,000 people, in fact local farmers had their land compulsorily purchased and the first 96 homes in Murray Drive were not only constructed«E̴» but in 1976 the first residents were already two days in occupancy before the Scottish Office suddenly got “cold feat” and pulled the plug on the development! Why was Stonehouse New Town axed and why did it occur so late in the process? Originally proposed in the early Sixties when planners had identified a continuing need for new houses on the periphery, by 1973 two developments had prompted a policy change — Glasgow city had depopulated dramatically as a result of the dispersals (1970-73: 58,000 Glaswegians left) and the authorities were concerned that too many young people were leaving the centre. The emphasis for the inner city refocused on renovating rather than demolishing and rebuilding and the SO began redeploying resources towards regenerating and rehabilitating the East End of Glasgow. Roger Smith’s answer to the obvious question of why the authorities still kept going with Stonehouse after it was apparent by 1973 that the project was a “no-goer” is that the government machine at both the centralised and local level was simply incapable of “respond(ing) quickly to changing events and new understandings of existing situations”…which seems to sum up many of the urban planning missteps made in postwar Glasgow (Roger Smith (1978) Stonehouse—an obituary for a new town, Local Government Studies, 4:2, 57-64, DOI: 10.1080/03003937808432733; ‘The Scottish town that never was’, Alison Campsie, The Scotsman, Upd. 04-Jun-2020, www.scotsman.com.au).
••••••••••••••••••••••
«A̴» which initially were unfortunately called “townships” until someone pointed out Apartheid South Africa’s use of the same term to delineate non-white homelands
«B̴» the haste of the estate building program contributed to this
«C̴» as a result of multiple factors including lack of investment, cost-cutting on building materials and techniques, poorly maintained estates, apathy and neglect, pollution, loss of community pride, etc.
«D̴» 30% greater risk of dying before 65 than comparable deindustrialised cities like Liverpool and Manchester (Goodwin)
«E̴» everything else planned remained unbuilt, schools, swimming pools, sports centre, factories, etc.
A Prototype for ‘Modern’ Democracy and Universal Suffrage?…the Transitory Ripublica Corsa
Corsica is best known of course as the birthplace of France’s most famous general/ emperor/dictator/ego, the one and only Napoleon Bonaparte. However the rocky island of Corsica is deserving of greater recognition for the novelty of its 1750s experiment with democracy and universal suffrage. Prior to 1755 Corsica was a colonial outpost of the Republic of Genoa. Corsicans under the nationalist, resistance leader Pasquale Paoli rebelled against Genoa’s rule in that year[❂] and drove the Genoese off the island (except for a few coastal towns where they were still in occupancy).
▲ 1757 map of Corsica
Having declared the neophyte entity a sovereign state and a republic, Paoli drafted a revolutionary constitution which predated the more celebrated written constitution of the United States of America by three decades. It provided for universal suffrage for islanders over the age of 25…the inclusion of women in the Corsican franchise was a world first[§], building on the island’s earlier precedent of traditional female participation in the podesta (analogous to mayoral elections)[●̲̅̅] [‘The Real First Written Constitution’, Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily Newsletters, 03-Aug-2018, www.daily.jstor.org].
▲ Moor’s head emblem of Ripublica Corsa
Inspiring the Corsican constitution were the deeply pervasive ideas of the Enlightenment, thinkers such as Rousseau and Voltaire and the ideals of independence, democracy, progress and liberty. Corsica became a constitutional democracy with a Cunsulta (diet or legislative assembly). Enlightened or not, the new republic went unrecognised internationally with the singular exception of the Bey of Tunis [‘Corsican Republic, the small and ephemeral independent state that held the first modern Constitution Jorge Álvarez, LBV, 30 June 2020, www.labrujulaverda.com].
▲ Monument to Pasquale Paoli
Alas, both Corsican sovereign independence and universal suffrage did not sustain for long. The Genoese, unable to supplant Pasquale Paoli’s hold on Corsica by themselves, “horse-traded” Corsica to France, precipitating a French invasion of the island in 1768. The Corsicans fought a guerrilla war against the invaders but were always at astronomically long odds of succeeding. After the decisive Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769[✜] the overpowered Corsican republic’s fate was sealed and Paoli was forced into exile in Britain.
▲ Anglo-Corsican Kingdom blazonry
Postscript: “The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom”
At the time of France’s conquest of Corsica the British debated intervening to restore Corsican rule but rejected it at the time. The state of war between Britain and France from 1793 following the French Revolution prompted Britain to reverse the earlier decision. ‘Invited’ by the Anglophile Paoli (now back in Corsica) to intervene, the upshot was the creation of a unique if ephemeral union between Britain and Corsica. Although there was some flowery talk about common political values and “sister nationhood”, British motives were primarily military and strategic – with its preeminent naval power, control of Corsica gave it a vital Mediterranean base vis-á-vis revolutionary France (especially important after the British fleet’s 1793 expulsion from Toulon by Napoleon). The outcome of the brief experiment of the union (1794-96) with Corsica as a client of imperial Britain was disillusionment on both sides. Aggravating the situation was the relationship between the London-appointed viceroy Sir Gilbert Elliot and the representatives of the Corsican people, especially Paoli – one of mutual distrust. After 1796 Corsica realigned its future to association with France, a province of which it remains to this day [Carrillo, Elisa A. “The Corsican Kingdom of George III.” The Journal of Modern History 34, no. 3 (1962): 254–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1874355.; ‘Britain and Corsica 1728-1796: political intervention and the myth of Liberty’, Luke Paul Long, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews (2018), http://DHL.handle.net/10023/13232].
ıılılıllllılılıı
▲ Corte & Corsica (Photo: Flickr)
ılılıllllılılı ıılılıllllılılıılılıllllılılıı
[❂] following an earlier uprising by the Corsicans in 1729
[§] Sweden in the early 17th century granted women a limited franchise but only for those holding land and property
[●̲̅̅] Paoli introduced other reforms, a University was established at Corte, the Corsican language was fostered, Corsica minted its own coinage
[✜] the year of Bonaparte’s birth
World War 2’s Little League of the “Fourth Front”: Minor Propaganda Mouthpieces for the Axis Powers
If “Lord Haw-Haw” (William Joyce), “Axis Sally” (Mildred Gillars) and the most significant of the “Tokyo Roses” (Iva Toguri) were the major leaguers of Axis radio propaganda promulgators in WW2, then there was certainly a minor league of active players as well. Most of these other wartime on-air advocates of Fascism and Nazism didn’t come close to achieving the profile of the “Big Three”…names like Paul Ferdonnet, Philippe Henriot(𝓪), John Amery, Frederick Wilhelm Kaltenbach, Edward Delaney, Douglas Chandler, Robert H Best, Donald S Day and Jane Anderson and are not exactly household names of the “Fourth Front” in wartime (although Ezra Pound certainly was) [‘Voices of the Axis: The Radio Personalities of the Fascist Propaganda’, Chuck Lyons, Warfare History Network, www.warfarehistorynetwork.com].
⍓ Goebbels & Hitler with the “People’s Receiver” (Source: badischezeitung.de)Home-grown Gallic Nazi mouthpieces Vichy France had plenty of collaborators with the Nazi occupying forces of course, two who had roles in the propaganda airwaves war on France’s own citizenry and troops were Paul Ferdonnet and Philippe Henriot. Ferdonnet, a right wing anti-Semite, moved to Germany before the war to work for Radio Stuttgart as their French language broadcaster. Labelled le traître de Stuttgart by the French press, Ferdonnet focussed on undermining French faith in the alliance with Britain – a recurring refrain directed towards his French audience was “Britain would fight to the last Frenchman” or its variant, “Britain provides the machines and France provides the bodies” [Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944, (2003)]. Apprehended after the fall of the Nazis, he was executed for treason in 1945.
⍓ Henriot in full flight (Photo: Keystone/France/Gamma vis Getty Images) The “French Goebbels” Philippe Henriot eagerly aligned himself with the collaborationist Vichy regime, rising to become the Vichy minister of information and propaganda in early 1944, waging a verbal and psychological war against the Free French. His 270 broadcasts on Radio Vichy played on the fears, anxieties and prejudices of the French people, like Ferdonnet urging them to break off their association with Britain. Henriot’s airwaves appeal was his “mesmerising rhetoric and delivery” which made him compulsory listening for many French men and women [‘Philippe Henriot and the Last Act of Vichy: Radio Broadcasts, January – June 1944’, (K Chadwick), University of Liverpool, www.gtr.ukri.org]. Assassinated by the French Resistance in 1944.
A son of the British establishment John Amery, son of a British Conservative cabinet minister, is best known for proposing to Hitler the formation of an anti-Bolshevik league, British Free Corps, to fight against communism. Avery made propaganda appeals via radio from Berlin to try to recruit British and Dominion members to the force (he also targeted British POWs). Avery moved later to Italy to resume his stint at the Axis microphone spruiking Mussolini’s “last chance saloon” Republic of Sàlo. Captured in 1944 and transported to London, he was tried for high treason, convicted and hanged in 1945.
Tasked with keping America in isolation It’s interesting that quite a significant proportion of the foreign recruits voicing pro-Nazi propaganda at the mic on German radio were American(𝓫). As early as 1939 Hitler’s regime was actively recruiting expat Yank performers for short wave transmissions to America with the objective of persuading Americans to stay out of the world war, in synch with the mission of the “America First” movement on the home front. For a few of the expatriate American mouthpieces for Nazism like Donald S Day it was a highly lucrative vocation. Day was making $3,000 a month(𝓬) railing against Jews, Bolsheviks and the allegedly “Jew- loving” FDR(𝓭).
It was a standard feature for the expat broadcasters to use (or to be assigned) nicknames. Robert H Best always signed on as “Mr Guess Who”; Jane Anderson was the “Georgia Peach”; Douglas Chandler styled himself as a pro-Nazi “Paul Revere” with galloping horse-hoof sound effects (‘The Nazi Who Infiltrated National Geographic’, Nina Strochlin, National Geographic, 28-Apr-2017, www.nationalgeographic.com). Fred Kaltenbach’s homespun style of commentary and similarity to William Joyce’s creation earned him the derisive nickname of “Lord Hee-Haw” (‘6 World War II Propaganda Broadcasters’, Evan Andrews, History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com).
⍓ Jane Anderson (Source: guerracivildia.blogspot.com)After the war eleven of the expat Americans were prosecuted for treason, the great majority of them were not as lucky as Jane Anderson. Anderson who had ‘upgraded’ herself from being a Falangist mouthpiece for Franco during the Spanish Civil War to broadcasting for the Nazis’ RRG (Reich Broadcasting Corporation) was indicted in absentia for treason, however charges against the Nazi sympathiser were dropped for lack of evidence (the prevailing view seems to be that she was “not a very effective political commentator”) …the case against her further complicated by her being a Spanish citizen by marriage [‘The Propaganda Front’, William L. Shirer, The Washington Post, 14-Feb-1943, www.justice.com].
⍓ Ezra pounding out his Axis radio scripts (Photo: Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
.
Pound’s propaganda pieces By far the most famous of the pro-Axis broadcasters was yet another expat American, the influential poet Ezra Pound. Pound’s disavowal of democracy and egalitarianism took him to Fascist Italy where his hero-worshipping of il Duce and the inducement of Italian Lire resulted in Pound becoming a broadcaster of anti-Allied, pro-Axis propaganda—first from Rome Radio for the Mussolini regime and later from Milan for the Nazi puppet state Republic of Sàlo—churned out in short wave transmissions to Britain and the US. (‘Empty Air: Ezra Pound’s World War Two Radio Broadcasts’, Gibran Van Ert, Past Imperfect, Vol. 3, 1994, pp.47-72, www.journals.libraryualberta.ca). Arraigned for treason after the war, Pound’s comeuppance for his sins was of a whole different kind to the other apprehended foreign broadcasters. Courtesy of his lawyers’ successful insanity plea, the Cantos poet/cum/propagandist avoided prison or worse and was instead committed to a Washington DC psychiatric hospital where he was incarcerated for 12 years, unrepentant and still sprouting extremist and anti-Semitic opinions (‘Ezra Pound: Modernist Politics and Fascist Propaganda’, Matthew Feldman, Fair Observer, 02-Nov-2013, www.fairobserver.com).
⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄⋄
(𝓪) in Henriot’s case however, if only within occupied France, his profile was “movie star” huge
(𝓫) even the notorious Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce), more associated with Britain and Ireland, was American born
(𝓬) placing him the top half-dozen salary earners on RRG’s payroll (‘Donald Day Got $3000 a Month as Nazis Stooge’, Montréal Gazette, 9-July-1945).
(𝓭) the Pro-Nazi radio broadcasters rarely ever deviated from the popular pet topics of their vitriol which were usually interlinked – Jews (associated with international finance), communism (sometimes combined with Jews, ie, “Judeo-Bolshevism”), the “Jew-loving” American President Roosevelt, PM Churchill and ”his bondage to the plutocrats”, etc.
𝓮.𝓯𝓰n𝓱𝓲
The Corfu Channel Incident: International Law Delayed and a Nazi Loot of Monetary Gold
Albania emerged from the Second World War with a communist government led by Enver Hoxha striving to free itself from the clutches of Yugoslavia whose leader Tito was intent on making its smaller neighbour part of the Yugoslav federation, a particularly tricky scenario as Albania, economically stricken after the war, was dependant on Yugoslav for urgently needed aid.
𝒮𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒾𝓉𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒞𝑜𝓇𝒻𝓊 Into this already tense situation in the first half of 1946, a rift developed in UK/Albanian relations. First, in March-April London refused to exchange diplomats with Tirana, citing the latter’s unfriendly and “uncooperative attitude” towards British personnel🅰. In May two Royal Navy cruisers Orion and Superb were navigating through the Corfu Straits (a narrow passageway separating that Greek island from Albania) when fired at by an Albanian land gunnery. The British warships sustained no damage but matters escalating from there…two British destroyers entered the straits in October and hit hitherto undetected land mines, HMS Saumarez in particular was badly damaged and later written off. More importantly there were British crew casualties (44 dead and a similar number injured). The following month the Royal Navy undertook a sweeping operation of the straits and found 22 mines {’Albanian-American Relations in the Fall of 1946: A Stormy End’, (Edward J. Sheehy), Tirana Observatory, 9-Apr-2009, www.tiranaobservatory.com}.
𝐻𝑀𝒮 𝒮𝒶𝓊𝓂𝒶𝓇𝑒𝓏
𝐼𝒞𝒥 𝑒𝓂𝒷𝓁𝑒𝓂 The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland v. the People’s Republic of Albania The UK’s response to the incident was to take Albania to the International Court of Justice in The Hague (the inaugural case brought before the new Court). The protracted case, not concluded until 1949, was a landmark case for the inter-country disputation, helping to lay the foundations for the development of what would eventually become the UN International Law of the Sea (ratified in 1982) {‘Summary of Relevant Aspects of the Corfu Channel Case (Merits)’, www.iilj.org}. The eventual judgements handed down were mixed, the Court found that Great Britain (GB) in entering Albania’s territorial waters did not violate its sovereignty (having a right of “innocent passage”), however it adjudged that GB’s mine-sweeping operation (codenamed “Operation Retail”) was a sovereign violation of Albanian waters, nor did it have permission from the international mining clearance organisations to conduct the operation. Lawyers for the British had argued that it took the action to secure evidence of the minefield’s existence, but the Court threw out GB’s argument of acting in self-protection or self-help {‘The Corfu Channel Case, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland v. the People’s Republic of Albania‘, UN Environment Program, www.leap.unep.org}.
𝐿𝑒𝑔𝒶𝓁 𝒯𝑒𝒶𝓂 𝒢𝐵 𝒶𝓉 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐻𝒶𝑔𝓊𝑒 𝒸𝒶𝓈𝑒 The British legal argument that the mines had been laid by Yugoslavia, acting on a request from Tirana, was denied by Hoxha’s government which blamed Greece for the mines – at the time Albania had involved itself in the civil war in Greece on the side of the Greek communists. The Court determined that collusion between Albania and Yugoslavia in mining the straits could not be proven (www.iilj.org). In a subsequent judgement The Hague ruled that Albania had failed in its responsibility to warn GB of the minefield danger, consequently Albania was ordered to pay GB damages of £843,947 for the material loses of the warships (equivalent to £24.4 million in 2019){‘Corfu Channel Case’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org}. Hoxha rejected the verdict—though in 1950 the regime offered GB a token amount of £40,000 as payment for compensation—making no serious effort to meet its liability.
𝒫𝓊𝓇𝓁𝑜𝒾𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝒩𝒶𝓏𝒾 𝑔𝑜𝓁𝒹 𝒾𝓃 𝑀𝑒𝓇𝓀𝑒𝓇𝓈 𝓈𝒶𝓁𝓉 𝓂𝒾𝓃𝑒 (𝒮𝑜𝓊𝓇𝒸𝑒: 𝓌𝒾𝒹𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓈𝒽𝒶𝓊𝓈𝑒𝓃.𝒹𝑒) Monetary gold stolen from Rome In 1946 the victorious allies (GB, US and France) established the “Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold” to recover gold stolen by Nazi Germany and return it to the rightful owners. Included in the Nazi loot was 2,338 kg of gold seized in 1943 from the Bank of Rome by the Nazis, a treasure claimed by both Italy and Albania (and indirectly and partly by GB who identified in this a remedy for its still outstanding damages verdict). The Commission was unable to resolve the monetary gold issue so an independent arbiter appointed by The Hague determined that the gold belonged to Albania. Italy contested the matter—it’s claim resting largely on Italians having been the majority shareholders in the National Bank of Albania (which had been seized by fascist Italy)—taking the dispute to the ICJ, Italy v France, United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and United States of America (1954). The ICJ however held that it had no jurisdiction to adjudicate the case.
𝒩𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃𝒶𝓁 𝐵𝒶𝓃𝓀 𝑜𝒻 𝒜𝓁𝒷𝒶𝓃𝒾𝒶 𝐻𝒬A post-Hoxha resolution Albania refusal to accept the compensation judgement against it and GB’s blocking the transfer of the gold to Albania occurred as Albania entered a long phase of self-isolation🅱. The recovered Nazi gold sat in the vaults of the Bank of England for over four decades and the diplomatic impasse between London and Tirana was not broken until the eclipse of the communism in Albania. When democracy was established in 1991, diplomatic negotiations began and a deal was done, the new government in Albania agreed to pay GB’s compensation bill from the Corfu episode and in return the British agreed to release 1674 kg, providing the funds that economically weak post-communist Albania needed before it could pay GB the amount owing.
𝑀𝒶𝑜 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝐻𝑜𝓍𝒽𝒶
.
Footnote: The Tripartite Gold Commission did not deliver the gold to Albania until 1996 (the lengthy process required the cooperation of the GB, US and French governments) and the amount ultimately paid by the Albanian government to GB in “full and final settlement” was US$2,000,000.
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
🅰 in relation to war graves identification and limitations on movement with the country, a charge denied by Tirana
🅱 Albania severed its relationships not just with the UK and US (Sheehy), but even within the socialist Second World. Stalinist ideologue Hoxha broke off ties with both USSR (1961) and China (1978) for being too ‘revisionist’
[S̲̅][h̲̅][q̲̅][i̲̅][p̲̅][ë̲̅][r̲̅][i̲̅][s̲̅][ë̲̅]
Returning Serve to the Nazis: Britain’s WWII Radio Propaganda Machine
❝We want to spread disruptive and disturbing news among the Germans which will induce them to distrust their government and disobey it❞ ~ Sefton Delmer
⨳⨳ ⨳ ⨳ ⨳ ⨳
Previous blogs on this site talked about how the Nazis used expat Britons and Americans to launch a blast of psychological warfare against the Allies with the objective of undermining their forces’ morale in WWII, the means utilised, the ‘weapon’ of powerful radio transmission (voiced by role-playing figureheads, in particular the so-called “Lord Haw-Haw” and “Axis Sally”). It wasn’t long into the World War before Britain decided it too would infiltrate the enemy airwaves in a counter-attempt to try to mess with German military minds.
𝔓𝔯𝔬𝔭𝔞𝔤𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔞 𝔴𝔞𝔯–𝔣𝔦𝔢𝔩𝔡, 𝔚𝔚ℑℑ (ℭ𝔯𝔢𝔡𝔦𝔱: 𝔉𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔨𝔯)∘
Es spricht der Chef To undertake the task the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was formed with the brief of disseminating ”black propaganda”⦑a⦒ against the enemy.The idea involved setting up a number of fake German radio stations—the first called Gustav Siegfried Eins (shortened to GS1) using shortwave frequency, harder for the Nazis to jam—as the propaganda vehicle for deceiving the Fatherland. From May 1941⦑b⦒ every day at 1648 hours a broadcaster purporting to be an old school Prussian officer known as der Chef would come on the air on German radio and, predictably, denounce the enemy, the ‘Brits’, the ‘Ruskies’ and the Jews, but then launch into a full-blown rant castigating Nazi officialdom too…in “profanity-laced tirades” the Chief would lambast Nazi officials’ “buffoonery, sexual perversity and malfeasance…condemning their incompetence and their indifference to the deprivations” suffered by the German volk⦑c⦒. Because he sounded ‘legit’ the impression many listeners got from the disillusioned Chief’s on-air ‘sprays’ was that there must be a rift within the German high command (‘The Fake British Radio Show That Helped Defeat the Nazis’, Marc Wortman, Smithsonian Magazine,28-Feb-2017, www.smithsonianmag.com).
𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔷𝔬𝔫.𝔠𝔬𝔪∘
Other little parcels of poison delivered by “the Chief” via the radio waves included insinuations that the supposedly ‘Ayran’ army of the Third Reich was being contaminated by the influx of foreign troops in its ranks. He also alleged that injured German soldiers were receiving infusions of “syphilis-tainted blood” of captured Slavs. Another unsubtle avenue pursued by the Chief was to play on German officers’ fears of spouse infidelity at home.
𝔊𝔖1 ℜ𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔬 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔞𝔱 𝔐𝔦𝔩𝔱𝔬𝔫 𝔅𝔯𝔶𝔞𝔫 (𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔅𝔢𝔡𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔅𝔬𝔯𝔬𝔲𝔤𝔥 ℭ𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔠𝔦𝔩)∘
In truth, the voice they heard belonged not to a disaffected Prussian army veteran but to Peter Seckelmann, a refugee from Nazi Germany acting out the role of der Chef. The panicked Nazi commanders combed the Reich to try to locate what they thought must be a maverick German general on the loose, all the time Seckelmann was secretly housed in England, in a small radio studio tucked away in quiet Bedfordshire.
∘
Sefton Delmer at the helm The mastermind behind Britain’s black propaganda campaign was Denis Sefton Delmer, born in Berlin of Australian parents. Recruited by PWE in 1940 because of his fluency in German and familiarity with the Nazi leaders⦑d⦒, Delmer had a thing for colourful descriptions of what his black propaganda unit did…”psychological judo” and “propaganda by pornography”⦑e⦒. The former German-based Daily Express journalist moulded PWE “special operations” into a “veritable fake news mill”, assembling an efficient team of artists, writers and printers who worked tirelessly to create thousands of phoney German newspapers and leaflets (not to neglect the role of American bombers who dropped two million units of the bogus literature every day over enemy territory)⦑f⦒. Gathering information from various sources (British intelligence, German POW interrogations, resistance operatives, bomber debriefings), PWE deceived and bewildered the Axis enemy through a carefully measured mix of lies and fact (Wortman). The tactics of ‘black’ radio were “short-term, rumour-filled⦑g⦒ and deceptive” (Nicholas Rankin, Churchill’s Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945 (2008)).
ℭ𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔢 𝔄𝔰𝔭𝔦𝔡𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞 𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔰𝔪𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔱 𝔚𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔫 𝔗𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔯 (𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔞𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔳𝔢.𝔬𝔯𝔤.𝔲𝔨)∘
The fake news network Soddatensender Calais (G9) was another, British-run, faux Nazi radio station. ‘Aspidistra’, a medium wave radio transmitter located in Crowborough, East Sussex, conveyed the Sefton Delmer blend of music, innocuous information (appealing to German servicemen) together with the manipulated, ‘black’ kind of information (‘Fake News is Nothing New: 5 ‘Black Propaganda’ Operations From the 1930s and 1940s’, Jeanette Lamb, History Collection, 24-Mar-2017, www.historycollection.com).
𝔅𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔞𝔦𝔫’𝔰 𝔭𝔰𝔢𝔲𝔡𝔬–𝔊𝔢𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔫 𝔫𝔢𝔴𝔰𝔭𝔞𝔭𝔢𝔯Getting back to “the Chief”, Seckelmann under the direction of Sefton Delmer made in all 700 broadcasts to the German population. The Nazis tried to jam the broadcasts coming through the GS1 station but to no avail. Delmer, having decided to close down GS1, orchestrated a dramatic denouement for der Chef charade, having him ‘assassinated’ on-air in the final episode in 1943 (transforming “the Chief” into a kind of martyred loyalist to the Führer⦑h⦒).
Backlash to Delmer’s black propaganda approach Not everyone in Britain including those within government were on board with Delmer’s black radio activities. There were critics inside Churchill’s war cabinet, like Richard Stafford Cripps, who condemned PWE for taking the moral low ground … serving up a cocktail of outrageous lies and dirty tricks – from inventing military sex orgies to discredit the SS⦑i⦒ to fake news of American ‘miracle’ weapons like the new, non-existent ”phosphorus shells” to abrade the morale of German listeners [‘Black Propaganda in WW2’, The History Room, YouTube video, 2014). Delmer himself was a forthright, controversial and sometimes polarising figure, he had no compunction about exploiting sex in its most extreme manifestations including ”beastly pornography” and even pederasty, fabricating atrocities including the rape of German soldiers’ wives and sisters. Delmer was eyed with suspicion by both sides, some Germans thought he was a British spy and some Britons thought he was a Nazi spy (Rankin).
How effective were PWE’s black propaganda broadcasts? PWE’s sheer weight of rumours, lies, half-truths and disinformation from PWE certainly no doubt took some toll on a already sagging German morale in the latter stages of the conflict, but did Delmer’s ”psychological judo” “disrupt the enemy’s will and power to fight on”? (‘Propaganda – A Weapon of War’, NLS, www.digital.nls.uk). It is not possible to definitely answer this question in the affirmative or negative. At the end of the war PWE was disbanded and all its records and documents were shredded. The deficit of data precludes any firm idea of how big and widespread the Germany wartime audience for the phoney radio transmissions was. Praise for PWE’s work however came from on high in the enemy camp, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels no less who conceded that Britain’s black Soldatensender had accomplished a “very clever job of propaganda” (Goebbels’ 1943 diary entry).
𝖁𝖔𝖑𝖐𝖘𝖊𝖒𝖕𝖋ä𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗 (𝖑𝖎𝖙. “𝕻𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊’𝖘 𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖊𝖎𝖛𝖊𝖗”) (𝕾𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖈𝖊: 𝕮𝖔𝖔𝖕𝖊𝖗 𝕳𝖊𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖙 𝕮𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓)
∘
Footnote: ‘Black’ v ‘white’ propaganda Black propaganda is distinguished from the more common type ‘white’ propaganda. The ’White’ kind is propaganda that does not hide its origins or nature, that emanates from bodies from government international information services (eg, BBC, The Voice of America). A third variant, ‘grey’ propaganda, straddles the other two – the origin of the information and messages is concealed so it can’t be discerned, eg, during the Cold War the CIA beamed grey propaganda into the Eastern Bloc through the intermediary of radio stations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (’Grey Propaganda’, www.powerbase.info).
______________________________
⦑a⦒ a form of propaganda (used by both sides in the war) which “is presented by the propagandizer as coming from a source inside the propagandised” (Becker, H. (1949). ‘The Nature and Consequences of Black Propaganda.’ American Sociological Review, 14(2), 221–235. https://doi.org/10.2307/2086855) , ie, by those it is supposed to discredit (Wikipedia)
⦑b⦒ the onset of Der Chef’s broadcasts coincided with the defection of the Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess to Britain
⦑c⦒ the Chief’s main target for ”character assassination” were ”lower-level Nazi functionaries” and their presumed corruption, ‘His Majesty’s Director of Pornography’, Stephen Budiansky, HistoryNet, www.historynet.com)
⦑d⦒ Delmer met Hitler himself while inspecting the Reichstag fire in Berlin
⦑e⦒ he even referred to himself irreverently as “HMG’s Director of Pornography”
⦑f⦒ producing “agitprop masquerading as inside dirt” (‘Fighting the Nazis With Fake News’, Matthew Shaer, Smithsonian Magazine, April 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com)
⦑g ⦒ one baseless rumour spread by the bogus German stations that led the Gestapo on a wild goose chase concerned a resistance group of anti-Nazis supposedly inside the Reich called “Red Circle” ‘Undermining Hitler (Part One of Three)’, Providentia, 07-Feb-2016, http://drvitelli.typepad.com)
⦑h⦒ Seckelmann‘s dissident officer in his radio diatribes had been careful to exclude Hitler himself from any blame, suggesting that it was the subordinates who had betrayed the Führer
⦑i⦒ the PWE artists’ role in the Brits’ deception was to skilfully forge documents which falsely incriminated Nazi personnel in the SS and other arms of the forces
ƿՐ૦ƿค૭คՈძค ८૦Ն૦υՐs