Tuesday, January 08, 2019

Today -100: January 8, 1919: The German menace is still there


While German political parties are reshaping themselves in preparation for Reichstag elections (which are being fought without much in the way of rallies and speeches), the Spartacists are seizing telegraph and newspaper offices. Radical Berlin Police Chief Emil Eichhorn was fired by the central government but refuses to go, saying “I received my position from the revolution, and I will only give it back to the revolution” (actually during the revolution in November he just walked into hq and said he was chief now, which isn’t quite the same thing). The government bans street gatherings (and secretly orders Freikorps, non-governmental organizations of former soldiers, to suppress the Spartacist rising).

Sen. Robert LaFollette objects to US troops being kept in Archangel to fight the Bolsheviks, especially with no war having been declared. Claude Swanson (D-Virginia) replies that they’re needed to protect Allied ammunition stores there, because we’re technically still at war with Germany, which wanted to keep Archangel as a u-boat base. “The German menace is still there, for Germany has shown that she is trying to influence the Bolsheviki. It is the Bolsheviki who are making the trouble, and it is to keep the trouble down that our men are being kept there, but back of it all is the German menace.” LaFollette replies that the Bolsheviks are not in fact friends with Germany but the evidence of this has been stifled by the censors. William Kenyon (R-Iowa) points out the the US soldiers don’t have the proper clothes for a Russian winter.

The US military is admitting to 132 deaths in the Northern Russia campaign (half from disease).


Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

No comments:

Post a Comment