Who was George Wood?

The recent death of Justice Anton Scalia raised a lot of eyebrows when it came to light that he'd spent his final hours in the company of high-ranking members of the Order of St. Hubertus (IOSH).  An elite hunting club with aristocratic origins and a 200-year gap in it's online timeline?  Nothing worth pursuing there!  Not even when the sparse details they do provide offer the fact that the American branch was founded at the Bohemian Club in 1968?  Pretty nifty: Bohemian Grove/Wood!  What an anonymous name.  Almost like a pseudonym calculated to be the most bland and innocuous moniker possible.  It's also kind of an occupational name, for what are hunters but woodsmen?  We've already seen that the original military "jäger" units were made up of hunters, trappers and other assorted woodsmen, exactly the kind of fellows that administered the lands of the aristocrats that made up the IOSH.

Scalia's host on the fateful weekend he died was a fellow named John Poindexter.  In an email to the WaPo, P-dex wrote: “I am aware of no connection between that organization [IOSH] and Justice Scalia.”

Well, he should know, he's kind of a Grand Wazoo in the Order.  So surely Austrian magazine Kurier is wrong when they outed Scalia as a member.  Terry Melanson, who recommended our earlier articles on Conspiracy Archive, is the only person, at least when I first accessed his article a few days ago, to have relayed this news to the English-speaking world.  Melanson links to the Kurier article, but I'd have you go to it via his article, because it has a lot of details you won't find anywhere else, above and beyond every article I've read on the subject.  Melanson actually does research, not simply re-hash what other people have written

At the end of my last post I asked the world "Who da fug is George Wood?  Answer:  I still don't know.

We know a George Wood founded the American branch of the Order in 1968 at the Bohemian Club.  When the order was "restituted" in 1950, non-Germans invited to join included Halvor O. Ekern, chief political adviser of the US Armed Forces in Austria; Llewellyn E. Thompson, the American Ambassador, General Mark W. Clark, Commanding General of the Allied Forces in Austria; British Ambassador Baron Harold Caccia and "others".  And also, named but with no title given, George Wood.

George Wood became the Order's Grand Master in 1975.

That word restituted went in quotes in my earlier article because it sounded so strange.  But I discovered that 

'Restitution', or 'rehabilitation' is the process where Germany today seeks to recognise the efforts of individuals as patriotic to Germany, though who had not been seen as such previously.

That quote comes from a page for a movie about a man restituted in 2004, a German diplomat/spy for America named Fritz Kolbe.  Or, as his OSS handler Allen Dulles (later head of the CIA and member of the Warren Commission) had dubbed him in WW2, George Wood!

Let's take a quick look at Wood's fellow inductees:  IOSH Class of '50.  

"Col. [Halvor] Ekern worked as a trapper, logger and dam-construction foreman before graduating from the University of Montana in 1941 with a degree in forestry."  There's those woods again.

....He then was transferred to the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, where he served for the duration of World War II and assisted in organizing the ski troops of the 10th Mountain Division [like French chasseurs or German jägers]....After the war, he transferred from the mountain division to the headquarters of the U.S. Forces in Austria, where he was assigned as the quadripartite adviser to the commanding general and U.S. high commissioner....In 1947, Col. Ekern served on the delegation of Secretary of State George Marshall to the Council of Foreign Ministers....He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1950, remaining at the U.S. Embassy in Austria as a quadripartite director. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Austrian Treaty negotiations in 1955....From 1956 to 1959, Col. Ekern served in the Office of the Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy Affairs in the State Department....He graduated from the State Department’s Senior Seminar on Foreign Policy in 1964 and served in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1964 to 1967....Ekern served as a political adviser to the commander in chief of U.S. Army Europe from 1969 to 1973 and was a member of the U.S. delegation to the NATO/Warsaw Pact negotiations on mutual and balanced force reductions in Vienna, Austria, from 1973 to 1974....After retiring from government work, Col. Ekern worked as an editor, writer and publisher, as well as in the security field. He also was president of the Arlington County Taxpayers Association and was chairman of the Arlington County Republican Committee....(snip snip) 

Llewellyn E. Thompson

You can see why he was an attractive candidate for the IOSH, given his background as an outdoorsman and a liaison to the kind of military units in which the ancestors of today's IOSH members would have served.

Llewellyn E. Thompson was the U.S. Ambassador to Austria from 1955–1957 and to Soviet Union from 1957 to 1962 and again between 1967 and 1969. He held a number of other positions throughout his U.S. foreign service career, including being the pivotal participant in the formulation of Johnson administration nuclear weapon non-proliferation policy. He also testified before the Warren Commission, which was investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

(snip snip)

Hmmm.  Nuclear energy again.  And what did he testify about before the Warren Commission?  Well, he was ambassador to Russia at the time Oswald presented himself at the embassy to renounce his citizenship.  Thompson had been out of town at that time.  Part of his testimony was to explain how cases like that are usually treated, partially to clarify the events around Oswald's renunciation.

Gen. Mark W. Clark was a controversial general who on more than one occasion during WW2 was accused of bad planning and bad decisions.  But he kept getting promoted. 

Gen. Clark

In 1945, as Commander in Chief of US Forces of Occupation in Austria, Clark gained experience negotiating with Communists, which he would put to good use a few years later....Clark served as deputy to the U.S. Secretary of State in 1947, and attended the negotiations for an Austrian treaty with the Council of Foreign Ministers in London and Moscow. In June 1947, Clark returned home and assumed command of the Sixth Army, headquartered at the Presidio in San Francisco, and two years later was named chief of Army Field Forces.

So, like our previous fellows, this was more than a soldier, but a diplomat with a little intelligence work under his belt (secretly negotiating with pro-Allied Vichy officers in North Africa, for example).  Like Eckert he was at the Council of Foreign Ministers negotiations in 1947.  Though he later withdrew after protests, Truman nominated him to be the United States emissary to the Holy See.  Hmmm.  Ambassador the the Vatican, eh?  Interesting he ended his days in San Francisco.  Could he have encountered the Bohemian Club while there?

Baron Caccia

Baron Harold Caccia, being an aristocrat, was be a perfect candidate for the IOSH.  He was an Oxford man and an athlete of many stripes.  He was Ambassador to Austria from 1951 to 1954, and from 1956 to 1961 he was Ambassador to the USA.  He is also accused of being a part of the Committee of 300, a group said to have been founded by members of the British aristocracy, a "hidden hand" behind international commerce and banking.  Jewish bankers, naturally.  He is considered to have bplayed a critical role in creating the "special relationship" between the USA and the UK.

Caccia was knighted in 1950, the same year he was asked to join the IOSH.  He was created a life peer in 1965. His other knightly titles include being a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.

So, these guys all were well-connected with ties to the diplomatic and intelligence communities.  All of this is pretty logical actually; the aristocracy, the Church and the Anglo-American alliance.  What strikes me, as I said in a previous post, is the following:

At the end of the World War surviving members of the Order, were authorized by Halvor O. Ekern, chief political adviser of the US Armed Forces in Austria to use their sporting guns to provide winter food to the rural population, avoiding not only famine but helping to save the country from falling behind the Iron Curtain.

I would posit that this is a not so indirect reference to being armed by the US in order fight the Communists, if necessary.  I can imagine the IOSH being part of a network of clubs and groups both secular and religious that could have been used to further the goals of the Western Occupation forces, to keep the Soviets in check.

So how does spy Fritz Kolbe, aka George Wood, fit into all this?  Kolbe was no small fry; he is basically recognized as the US's most important intelligence asset of the war.  He was more than likely connected to the others in the diplomatic/intelligence community.

That said, this George Wood is not the droid we're looking for.  Kolbe/Wood died in 1971.  But according to the IOSH, when the first Grand Master Albert Messany of the American branch retired in 1975, he was replaced by....George Wood.

Messany was described as a "big game hunter" in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal in 1936 in an admiring article (24 Nov. 1936) about an innovative camera-gun with which he intended to "hunt" in Canada.  This humane approach to tacking game gives credence to the Order's stated ideals of honoring God's creatures etc.  The Montreal Gazette (24 Jun. 1936) tells us that Messany is from Vienna and that this was his 10th visit to Canada.  The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (20 Nov. 1936) has a little blurb about Messany's trip and the camera gun, but little detail.  The Indianapolis Star also mentions the photo gun in pretty much the same blurb as in Wilkes-Barre -- turns out it was an AP story.  Messany was apparently a doctor, but most sources about him are in German, so I'm not sure what to make of him.  He published several books about hunting, Canada and the great outdoors.  There is a reference to an Albert Messany issuing a

German wireless press message, to the effect that 2,000 soldiers, who were not invalids, had been carried by the hospital ship Britannia.

If it's the same Messany, it's hard to say.  It's definitely possible, depending on how old he was when he retired.  Wood was followed by Karl Weber as GM.  Whereas info on Messany (in English, anyway) is sparse, info on Karl Weber and George Wood is almost non-existent.

Fritz Kolbe

This George Wood of IOSH fame is still the biggest mystery to me.  I find it to be a really strange "coincidence" that a spy and the GM of an Austrian Order with links to the American intelligence community bear the same name.  Obviously, Kolbe/Wood can't be the same George Wood who became GM of the IOSH, but it's weird to begin with and I'm beginning to imagine increasingly weirder possibilities.  I'm still trying to link Kolbe with known Bohemians and/or members of the Order, as well as find more info on the George Wood who founded the American branch.  So far, I haven't found any references to any of the Class of 1950 being members of the Bohemian Club.

To paraphrase Wikipedia, Kolbe tried to settle in the US in 1949 but "could not find suitable work."  He later applied to work for the German diplomatic services again (unsuccessfully) and finally found work representing of an American power-saw manufacturer. After the war, Kolbe was despised in Germany and seen as a traitor until restituted in 2004.  Kolbe died of cancer in 1971.  Not exactly given a cushy job for life and flying high with the aristocratic hunting set.

We'll see if anything  more turns up; so far the record is silent.  The IOSH-USA does have an email address.  Maybe I should write them and ask.  I did paste the addy into an email, but pulled back.  Kind of want to stay out of their sights! (Update:  I wrote and asked for info about Wood on Terry's advice.  Update 29 Dec:  I eventually wrote to two addresses.  Never got a response.)

So again, who's George Wood?  Why was he asked the join the Order, along with ambassadors and generals?  I've actually managed to find quite a few George Woods, but there's always some detail to disqualify them.  Hmph.

The Order of St. Hubertus (and other assorted Bavarians and Bohemians)

Screen shot of IOSH homepage

Back in 2011 I made a facetious post about "evil Masonic braumeisters".  A little jest to be sure, but strangely prophetic.  Five years on and we're in a bit of a constitutional tizzy over how to best go about replacing our recently-deceased Supreme Court Justice.  Doesn't look like the congressional Republicans are going to budge and will block any Obama nominee until he's out of office and can no longer press the issue.

We'll get to the fraternities and alcohol in a minute.

Scalia died at what appears to have been a meeting (perhaps merely informal), of the Order of St. Hubert, an aristocratic order of hunters founded by one Count Anton von Sporck in 1695, a man who is also said to have dabbled in Freemasonry.  The order promotes hunting and sportsmanlike conduct, in addition to respecting animals and minimizing their suffering; responsible hunters, in other words.  These are teachings handed down by their namesake.

Reading about St. Hubert (656-727 CE), I came across a passage about the vision he had one Good Friday; he'd skipped Church to go hunting, a pursuit in which he'd become immersed after the death of his wife.  He had retired from the world to hunt.

Chasing a stag (or hart) on that day, he was astounded to see it stop and turn towards him; a glowing crucifix appeared between its antlers and a voice said to him:  "Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell". Hubert dismounted, prostrated himself and said, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do?" He received the answer, "Go and seek Lambert, and he will instruct you."

Hubert then sought out Lambert, Bishop of Maastricht, becoming his protege and successor.  Hubert embarked upon a life of piety and evangelism, becoming Bishop of Liège in 708 CE.  He laid down several principles for ethical hunting and wildlife management that are still highly-regarded among German-speaking hunters to this day.  He generally seems to have been a decent fellow and died peacefully in 727.

Drive Dull Care away with some Jäger shots

Hubert's vision of the hart made me think of the Jägermeister label; which I've been meaning to use in a post for years.  Finally the opportunity has arisen.  The Jäger label is indeed a reference to St. Hubert's vision.

But it does not only honor St. Hubert.  The label also represents the vision of St. Eustace, another patron of hunters.  Even the church says that Eustace is probably a spurious figure, as no evidence proves he ever existed, but his legend has become mixed with that of Hubert. 

This legend has it that Eustace was a Roman general.  Once, out hunting, he had a vision of a crucifix between a stag's antlers under pretty much the same circumstances as Hubert.  It seems Eustace's cult pre-existed that of Hubert, but it's possible they both have pre-Christian antecedents.  The stag (or hart, or hind) makes many appearances in various pagan mythologies.

According to the legend, after his vision Eustace converted to Christianity and baptized his family.  Eustace then went through a series of Job-like misfortunes, yet he always remained steadfast in his faith.  His patience served him well, for a time.  He was eventually restored to his position and reunited with his family.  But like many early Christians, the occasion arose where he refused to sacrifice to a pagan altar and thus he set the chain of events into motion that would lead to his martyrdom.  In this case he and his family were roasted to death inside a giant bronze bull (or ox) in 118 CE.

The refusal to sacrifice before a pagan altar is a common theme in the hagiographies of these early Christian martyrs.  St. Sernin of Toulouse (Hubert's birthplace) refused a pagan sacrifice and was killed by being tied to a bull (or ox) and dragged down the street until his head cracked open.  This road is now called the Rue du Taur and the site of his original tomb is a small church called Notre Dame du Taur.  The Matabiau quarter of Toulouse also takes it's name from this event and the big bell in a Toulouse-style carillon is known as the "big bull".

Anyway, Curt Mast, original distiller of Jägermeister, was an avid hunter and so named his drink appropriately; Jägermeister translates to "Hunting Master", a title familiar to Germans for centuries.

When the Nazis reformed the hunting laws in 1934 "Jägermeister" was applied to senior foresters, game wardens, and gamekeepers.  Hermann Göring, who was a particularly active hunter, was appointed Reichsjägermeister at that time, so when the drink was introduced in 1935, some people called it "Göring-Schnaps."  In addition to being an avid hunter, Mast was a local politician and joined the NSDAP on May Day, 1933.  He claimed it was political opportunism and a way to help his fragile business (he was never prosecuted after the war), but Mast did become pals with Göring, probably bonding over hunting. (source)

Now here's something I've just read and had already suspected:

Some historians have noted that Hitler and Göring’s hunting regulations actually had little to do with concerns for animal welfare and were merely part of a concerted attack upon the German aristocracy. Hitler and Göring had a dream of giving each of the Jägermeisters their own private hunting grounds as a symbol of their position of privilege within the Reich. Curt Mast became a Jägermeister and organised hunting parties for leading Nazi dignitaries at the Reichsjägerhof, Göring’s hunting lodge. Sensing an opportunity to rebuild his business interests on the back of his association with the new hunting fraternity, Mast re-branded the herbal liqueur that his company produced as the official drink of the hunt. (boldface added)

Göring's relationship to the Order of St. Hubert bears this speculation out:

In 1938, after Austria was absorbed by the German Reich, Herman Göring demanded membership on the Order [sic] and executed the Grand Prior when he was denied. At the end of the World War surviving members of the Order, were authorized by Halvor O. Ekern, chief political adviser of the US Armed Forces in Austria to use their sporting guns to provide winter food to the rural population, avoiding not only famine but helping to save the country from falling behind the Iron Curtain. (source)

The Order was Restituted on May 1st 1950 by Albert Franz Messany at the request of Chancellor Figi of Austria. In order to better reflect its new multi-national character it was redesignated as International Order of St. Hubertus.

Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring --
1937 Hunting Exposition in Berlin

I wonder if  "helping to save the country" meant using their sporting rifles for more than hunting.  Could they have been re-armed in order to fight the Communists?  The aristocracy had a lot to lose to both the Communists as with the Nazis before them....

Despite the Nazi's attacks on the aristocracy and the apparent sympathy of Curt Mast, the hunting ethics espoused by Jägermeister, the Order of St. Hubert, and the Nazi reforms all kind of match.  There is an un-credited verse from a poem by outdoorsman Oskar von Riesenthal (1830–1898) on each bottle which the company translates as:

It is the hunter’s honour that he
Protects and preserves his game,
Hunts sportsmanlike, honours the
Creator in His creatures.

This is very much the same creed as the Order of St. Hubertus: "Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures". Jägermeister, as the story goes, was intended to go with "a toast with which every hunt would begin and end."

The symbolism of Hubert, patron of hunters is reproduced in the crests of various German hunting clubs to this day.  Thus it is so with the Deutsches Jägerverein, the Nazi-era German hunting organization.  Interesting how the swastika has replaced the cross.

http://www.rzmilitaria.com/viewitem.php?id=10066

Göring apparently took his role as Jägermeister seriously and sincerely threw himself into the reforms of German hunting laws.  This page shows a collector's one-of-a-kind Deutsches Jägerverein collar pin, custom-made for Göring himself, a collar pin with the antler/swastika motif we see on the flag above.  Göring posed for a painting wearing this collar pin and in his Jägermeister uniform, and this painting of him appeared on the covers of both Time and Life, in 1940 and 1939, respectively.

If Göring took his role this seriously, imagine his fury when he was refused membership in the Order of St. Hubert.  Furious enough to execute the prior, apparently.  This really is a medieval saga.  Whatever else you want to say about the Order, that their leader would die rather than admit Göring speaks volumes about their attitude towards the Nazis.  This was a microcosm of the tensions and conflicts in Nazi Germany, the uneasy relationship between the old aristocrats, the Church, and the Party.  Although anti-Bolshevism united them, the old guard must have resented this new Nazi power structure and the Church certainly couldn't have been happy with seeing a swastika replace the cross; this wasn't just a question of the hunting clubs.  It also reminds me that assassination attempts on Hitler were organized by aristocrats within the Army; Clause von Stauffenberg was one of the last conspirators, but a quick glance at the list of assassination attempts on Hitler between 1940 and 1944 -- and there are quite a few -- show that most were organized by members of the aristocracy, after the war began.  Before the war, there were also a few attempts on Hitler's life, but these did not seem to implicate the aristocracy.

I'm betting that when it was "restituted" in 1950, those Americans invited to join the Order of St. Hubert were neck deep in de-Nazification and anti-Communist activities.  Just a hunch.  Ambassadors, Generals, and "others", including the George Wood who established the American branch at the Bohemian Club in 1968.  It would be interesting to see what other groups the Order has links to, either within the arcane labyrinth of Catholic lay orders (Knights of Malta, Knights of Columbus, Opus Dei, the Jesuits....) or factions or within the intelligence community.

Something about that period between the Order's dissolution by the Nazis and their Postwar rebirth intrigues me.  A group of powerful men which spread out to include Americans at the highest levels of the Postwar occupation.  It seems a bit strange that five years after the war's end, ambassadors and generals were joining the clubs of their recent enemies, and 16 years later creating an American chapter at the site of the most elite group of men in America, the Bohemian Club.

What intrigues me in this context about the Bohemian Club (despite the name -- remember the Order is of Bohemian origin) is its tangential connection to another German organization called the Schlaraffia.  It would appear that a number of American elite groups have their roots in German culture.

The Schlaraffia is a fraternal society founded in Prague (Bohemia) in 1859.  It is a German-speaking club founded by people much like the founders of the Bohemian Club, people involved in the arts and theater.  Like the Bohemian Club, their symbol is an owl and their philosophy is one of fun; once stepping into their "castle", they remind themselves to leave dull care outside.  The Bohemian Club was founded in 1879 and we know the Schlaraffia existed in San Francisco in 1884.  Is it possible that they are connected, that the Bohemian Club was inspired by the Schlaraffia?  The latter conduct their meetings in German, so perhaps the B.C. was created to make a more accessible organization?  (I'd be remiss not to point out that Terry Melanson first made me aware of these connections).

I almost feel apologetic bringing it up, but I'd also like to mention the Skull and Bones, founded at Yale in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft (father of the future president and no small shakes himself).

Skull and Bones doings are largely unknown, but there is talk of a rebirth initiation ritual which involves the candidate lying in a coffin and recounting their sexual history.  There are photos of Bohemian Grove encampments where a similar ritual is enacted, a man lying in a coffin-shaped array of candles prayed over by robed figures.  This rebirth ritual is a fairly well-known element in various Masonic Rites.  The Schlaraffia has three grades, which also brings to mind Masonic organization.  What interests me here though, is that like the Order of St. Hubert, the Schlaraffia, and the Bohemian Club, the Skull and Bones has a connection to the German-speaking world.  Founder Wm. Russell allegedly got his idea for the Skull and Bones after returning from a trip to Germany, where quasi-Masonic secret societies were quite popular, some of which are said to have modeled themselves on the Illuminati (a group I have purposefully avoided in my writings on this topic thus far).  The Bavarian Illuminati was founded in 1776 at Ingolstadt, about 360 KM from Prague, basically a stone's throw from Bohemia.

Interestingly, there is another order, The Bavarian Order of Saint Hubert, a Roman Catholic dynastic order of knighthood founded in 1444 or 1445 to commemorate a victory on Saint Hubert's day.  There doesn't appear to be a connection to this order and the International Order of St. Hubertus, despite the name, but if we're looking to complete a Bavarian/Bohemia axis, I suppose there's value in following up on this.  St. Hubert was in fact the patron saint not only of hunters, but soldiers as well, which is logical.  At least one historical military unit used the horns and cross imagery:  the Royal Bavarian Jäger Regiment Nr. 1 (again with the Bavarians!). Jäger units were elite light infantry and the word in this sense can translate to "Ranger", which has the sense of both the US Army's elite units and forest rangers.  Think Aragorn in Lord of the Rings: aristocrat, woodsman, badass soldier, Ranger.  The first Jäger units were indeed recruited from gamekeepers, hunstmen, and foresters, people with both a knowledge of the woods and firearms, and who were also closely linked to the aristocracy who appointed them.  The first units of this type were formed in 1632 in Hesse-Kassel and in the modern German army the term is still used for elite Special Forces.

Crest of the 1st and 2nd Battalions and the 2nd  Reserve Battalion - Royal Bavarian Jäger Regt. 1

So, a lot of elements to ponder.  My German history is piss-poor, so I have probably missed some interesting connections someone else might have easily picked up on.  I did, however, think of one other thing, which is almost embarrassing to include; but what the Hell....

The Church of Satan has a rebirth ritual involving sexual rites and a coffin, called the Ceremony of the Stifling Air. Anton LaVey obviously cribbed his work from pre-existing Masonic Rites (like he cribbed everything in the Satanic Bible, from John Dee to Ayn Rand and Ragnar Redbeard).  Interesting time the 60's, especially 1966 (666 get it?); the same year George Wood was appointed Grand Prior, Anton LaVey launched the Church of Satan, on April 30th, which in the occult world goes by the German name of Walpurgisnacht....

Which brings me back to the question....who the f--k is George Wood?

Toys for Totenkopf

Cute Lil' Fascist

On my 2010 vacation to Asturias, Spain, I stayed a week in a fishing village called Llastres.  There just next to the port is an antiques dealer specializing for the most part in WW2 and Spanish Civil War-era militaria.  The collection of wares for sale is largely Nazi and Spanish fascist articles:  banners, uniforms, medals, knives, signs, even an enormous metal bust of General Franco.  The owner is a tall, blond German guy, which makes it all much creepier. (Apparently the owner also plans to create a museum).

When I saw the little fellow above I had to know what it was.  The owner told me it depicted a fascist volunteer who fought with the Nazis on the Russian front. I hesitated, but figured what the hell, I might as well ask how much it cost.  10 euros.  I hmmm'd a bit.  "Oh, It's a good gift for the boy....I will sell it for 5 euros.  It's cute."

Cute?  A 50% discount on a fascist figurine because I was with my son?

Mouth like a blow-up sex doll, jughead ears, shirt open almost to the navel, giving the Nazi salute....call me a freak, but I bought it.

Later I tried to find some more about this figurine and came across an article about the División Azul, or the División Española de Voluntarios....250. Infanterie-Division to the German Army.  According to Wikipedia,

Because the soldiers could not use official Spanish army uniforms, they adopted a symbolic uniform comprising the red berets of the Carlists, khaki trousers used in the Spanish Legion, and the blue shirts of the Falangists – hence the nickname "Blue Division."

A popular name.  A brigade of Irish fascists in who fought for the Falangists in the Spanish Civil War had the same nickname.  Likewise Croatian volunteers in the Wehrmacht during WW2.

Come to think of it, shirts in general seem to have impressed the fascists.  Everyone knows the brown shirts, or SA.  Mussolini had his blackshirts.  America had the Silver Legion of America, better known as the Silver Shirts.  The Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit weren't strictly fascists although some supporters of Social Credit, such as Oswald Mosley, later became prominent in the British Union of  Fascists.  This group grew out of an alternate Scouting group called the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift....or KKK (no relation to our hooded pals).

All these groups pretty much began in the 30's and it's not unlikely this shirt thing is indicative of a kind of fascist fashion statement (fascionistas?), a result of contacts between various national groups.

But that's not really my point here.  My little figurine doesn't match the description given by online sources.  Perhaps the División Azul uniform had variants?  Maybe the figurine is simply inaccurate.  Perhaps it's another thing altogether.

Any info would be appreciated.  I know it's in bad taste this little fellow, but it's a historical curiosity I just couldn't pass over.  And I didn't give it to my son.

The resistance lives on

September 4, 1944.  Toulouse had been liberated by the Resistance two weeks earlier.  One Madame Ramon, farmer, was walking in a place where German trucks had been seen going to and fro during the occupation.  Following a trail of bloodstains on the ground, she discovered a mass grave where the Germans had dumped the bodies of prisoners, résistants they'd shot dead.  27 bodies were eventually identified:  students, farmers, an accountant, an "employee", a train station manager.... (Details from a poorly-written French Wikipedia article can be found here).  A 28th body was never definitely identified.

Every year on May 8, V-E Day,  a ceremony is held to honor these young men in front of a stele bearing their names.  Such stelae, usually marked with the Cross of Lorraine, dot the landscape around these parts of France and presumably elsewhere as well--by some estimates 20,000 members of the Resistance were killed.

In a kind of sad irony, on this day in 1945 a celebratory parade for the Allied victory in Sétif, Algeria ended in violence between anti-colonialists and French gendarmes.  Following this clash, Algerian militants killed 103 French civilians.  Some victims were raped; other were mutilated.  After five days of anarchy, order was restored, but then came the severe French reprisals.  Villages were bombed by aircraft and one town shelled from offshore.  Summary executions were carried out by the army and posses of citizens lynched others.  Nobody knows exactly how many Algerian civilians were indiscriminately killed, although historians estimate the number to be around 6000, perhaps much, much more. Unlike the victims buried in Bordelongue, there were not even summary trials and most of the dead probably had no involvement in the killing of French pieds-noirs

Coincidentally, I just acquired a copy of the 2010 film Hors la Loi which scandalized the French (at least the right) as it compared the Algerian anti-colonialists to....the Resistance.  By implication that would have made the French the equivalent of the Germans.  Provocative to be sure; thousands protested the film when it debuted in Cannes.  But Algeria, though part of France, was indeed a product of colonization, or occupation; whatever you want to call it depends on your agenda.

In any event, unlike the innumerable memorials to the French Resistance I previously mentioned, the Sétif massacre, at least until recently, hasn't even been mentioned in French schools.

But this monument is an interesting affair.  A stele dedicated to the martyrs sits upon a small mound and can be approached by twelve steps.  Five flagpoles fly the tricolor on ceremonial occasions.  When I visited it, only one flag was raised.

As far as I can make out, (a resonant) 13 lines formed by trees radiate out from the center of this off-kilter circumpunct.  Most of these correspond to a series of massive buttresses which are within a grassy berm surrounding the monument like a reverse question mark:  ؟​   The whole thing also brings to mind a stylized teardrop.

The berm seems to have the purpose of shielding the monument from the junction of various motorways at the location.  As you can see from the satellite images, this is far from the farmland it was 60 or even 30 years ago.  I'm not sure if the buttresses serve a structural purpose; in all likelihood they do, for they are widespread and none are visible from the monument itself, nor can they be taken in all at once from any perspective save from above.

I was struck by the fact that the shape also implies a spiral.  I think that this is less by some grand vision of what the shape should be as it is a sort of convenience.....the form of the memorial basically follows the constraints of the surrounding motorways.  As important as it is to honor these dead, the city wasn't going to re-route the motorways in order to accommodate a park in the form of a Lorraine Cross, for example.

I think this is interesting in the context of imposing regular geometric forms upon a landscape, what I've referred to as "tessellation of the plane," as opposed to following the natural boundaries of the existing landscape, even if that landscape is an artificial one as it is here.  We've talked a bit about how in 19th century Toulouse under the guidance of Urbain Vitry, great swaths of the old medieval quarters were razed to impose a more rational and neatly geometrical order upon the cityscape.  Vitry's rather severe measures lead the Count of Montalambert to call Toulouse the "home of vandalism" after a visit in 1832.

The Bordelongue monument, however, both in its spiral form and by following the constraints of its environment, rather than imposing regularity, signifies in part that the importance of such a memorial was not equal to the importance of the motorways.  It also stands in contrast--at least in part--to the idea of creating ceremonial axes at whatever cost, such as the previously discussed "axe historique" in Paris and Lisbon's "Pombaline axis" (my name for it anyway), not to mention to the great cross Vitry "bulldozed" onto downtown Toulouse with the Rue de Metz and Rue d'Alsace-Lorraine--two appellations which seem to be a nationalistic thumbing of the nose at the Germans.

Which leads us back to the monument at Bordelongue.  France's fractious history with its German neighbors is memorialized not just here but in its stelae to the "martyrs" of the Resistance, its monuments to the Great War, and somehow, in the Airbus A380--the fruit of both Franco-German cooperation and competition.  Thousands of Germans live in Toulouse these days; there are numerous German bars and a private German school.  The nearest Leclerc supermarket has an island featuring German products.

Which is (a little) ironic....le maréchal Leclerc is a French hero of the Resistance who participated in the Normandy landing and led an armored division to Paris during the Liberation.  He is memorialized with an obelisk (photo) in Strasbourg....capital of Alsace (and home of Kronenbourg beer).

Alsace and Lorraine are the most "German" regions of France, sitting on the border like geopolitical footballs, possession going back and forth for centuries....and a major prize for Hitler during the Second World War.  By naming a major pair of axes in the dead center of town after them, Toulouse was making a major statement about their Frenchness.  But if all property is theft and possession 9/10ths of the law, one might logically consider it all to be bullshit.  Occupation of territory and control thereof, ahh there's the rub indeed.  Gaza, Aztlan, Alsace-Lorraine, Kashmir.  Who becomes a martyr depends on who's currently controlling the territory.  One man's martyr is another man's terrorist.

The more I learn about the French in the Second World War, the more I realize to what extent they have gotten a bad rap about it.  That said, the ironies of this monument and the date upon which it becomes a ceremonial locus, May 8, open wider questions about who and what the French honor and who....and what, according to the unwritten laws of silence, they don't.

Victory in spite of all terror

I got an email from my mother and she included these memories, all of which I'd heard in dribs and drabs, but this is the first time I've seen some of them written down.  She's referring to her experiences during the Blitz in Sutton (Surrey), and it always fascinates and moves me.  I'll press for details on that and try to get her to write a bit on her eventual evacuation to the Lake Country.  Apparently this was late in the Blitz, and her details confirm this as the V-1 (Doodlebug) bombing began in June '44.  Also note that she's referring to some postwar details as well, as her father was away for most of the War in North Africa and Italy.

I lived through a war and everything it entailed. The house I was raised in had no running hot water. No bathroom. Outside toilet complete with Jeremy the spider (if you saw him then it was ok to go in if you kept your eye on him. If he was not in sight then where was he?) No electricity for years only gas lights etc... No heating except a coal fire (if we had any coal). Then coke that we had to queue up for for hours that we carried in an old pram (baby carriage to Americans).

No TV of course only a radio that transmitted the news on the war efforts. We had an Anderson shelter [I think she's referring to a Morrison shelter] in the front room that when the sirens went off and the searchlights began we had to run for, not forgetting our gas masks. Listening to the doodlebugs was nerve-racking. Also the blackout curtains that had to be put up at the windows.

As we did not have a bath room we had a bath tub in the scullery (kitchen) that had a big board over it, which had to be removed before one could take a bath. We had that bath once a week and we all bathed in the same water. 5 of us. Before we were older we used a tin tub in front of the fireplace (the one that did not put out any heat). That fireplace was the sole heat we had in the house. The kitchen (family room) was so small only mum and dad had a small chair. The only other furniture was a table with six small hard chairs around it so if we children wanted to sit on a chair we had to climb over all the chairs to get to our seat. Or we sat on the floor. Which was stony cold as we had thin rugs not wall to wall carpet.

Everything was on ration. We kids would stand for hours in a queue waiting to buy with our coupon a loaf of bread (not sliced). We would buy a half-pound of broken biscuits. Us children would have hand me down clothes even underwear. Our socks were darned so much it was all darn and no socks. We wore cardboard in our shoes because of the holes in the shoes. This was in winter with snow and ice. I could go on and on. So you see life has not always been good for me and my sisters. But strangely enough we were happy but very cold.

I should write my memoirs.

Indeed!