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16:00 local time: The Evening Standard is published, with the following illustration by David Low - known best for his cartoons drawn during the darkest days of the war.
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9:00 local time: President Truman announces the surrender of Germany.
"I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day."
12.30 CET: President Karl Dönitz announces the capitulation of Germany. Having very much supported the war, he nonetheless voices his hope that "our children will have a free and secure existence in a peaceful Europe."
[Subtitles in link]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8tXt0buPbA
Morning: in the Algerian town of Sétif, local Muslims come out to celebrate the end of the war. However, French colonial police take issue with them carrying pro-independence banners. Clashes break out.
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29th April 1945: Dachau is liberated by the US Army. It contains 30,000 living prisoners, of whom about a third are very sick.
Dachau was originally built close to Munich to contain political prisoners such as socialists, communists, and other anti-fascists, before moving to other "undesirables". It gradually grew to massive proportions, with over 100 sub-camps over a system covering many miles.
It was primarily concerned with forced labour. About 41,500 people died there.
Wolfgang Sofsky commented on Dachau that "in the span of twelve years, the concentration camp metamorphosed from a locus of terror into a universe of horror."
19 April 1775: a battle breaks out on Lexington Green between the British and American militia, after an unknown party fires the first shots. This becomes the first battle of the American War of Independence, and continues a bloody breakdown of order in the 13 Colonies.
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The last surviving veteran of the Battle of Britain, Paddy Hemingway, has died aged 105. He piloted a Hurricane during the Battle of France and then during the Battle of Britain, a period when Britain has its back to the wall and Nazi Germany was seeking to destroy the R.A.F. in order to prepare for an invasion.
He had to bailout of his aircraft twice in one month at the height of the battle, seeing intense and vicious dogfights. Hemingway, who was Irish, was one of many pilots who were not of British nationality.
The momentousness of this battle, combined with the relatively small number of airmen fighting in it, caused Winston Churchill to remark that "never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed, by so many, to so few." Later, these airmen would come to be known simply as "The Few." Hemingway, the last of The Few, always regretted the loss of his friends who died during those few pivotal months in 1940.
International Women's Day: we congratulate you, dear women!
(Naum Lisogorsky, USSR, 1963)
22 February 1943: Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst are executed in Munich for distributing anti-war leaflets as part of the Weiße Rose (White Rose) group. They were aged 21, 25, and 23 respectively.
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Today it is Lunar New Year. In China it is the year of the snake. The snake is associated with cunning, intelligence, and charm.
Image source
January 25 1911: Kanno Sugako is executed in Japan for her part in a plot to assassinate Emperor Meiji.
She was radicalised as a teenager after being raped, and finding mental support for this within the socialist movement. She strongly advocated for equal rights for men and women and deplored the terrible state of the working class in Japan.
Before her execution, she became an anarcha-feminist.
Her reflections written before her death can be read here.
Zuni people (a north American Pueblo group) mark the solstice with a sacred dance called the Shalako, which involves people dressed as towering figures. (Image: Ma-Pe-Wi, c.1920
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Image sources:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/orpost/albums/72157632138608676/with/5515922971/
(The uploader talks more about his uncle meeting Krampus there.)
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/greetings-from-krampus/
Krampusnacht in Mitterndorf, Austria (1949).
Krampus is an old alpine folk creature that seems to have arisen out of various pagan traditions, and been mixed with the Christian devil. He comes out just before the Feast of St. Nicholas and swats naughty children with his birch branches. And later, on Christmas Eve, he return, puts them in his basket, and vanishes...
15:00 local time: Winston Churchill announces the surrender of Germany. He immediately gets into his car and drives down Whitehall, but is mobbed by crowds.
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General De Gaulle addresses the French nation. "La guerre est gagnée! Voici la Victoire! C’est la Victoire des Nations Unies et c’est la Victoire de la France!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-RNKykB7Nk
It is VE Day's 80th anniversary. I will live post a few of the events that took place that day.
https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Experience/VE-Day/
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/lexington-and-concord-shot-heard-round-world
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Many of Lisogorsky's cartoons made fun of what he saw as Western hypocrisy.
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Though initially showing some enthusiasm for the promise of the Nazi regime, the Scholls gradually became disillusioned. In 1936 Hans vocally defended Hitler in front of his father and became a flagbearer at the annual Nuremburg Rally, but was disappointed by the restrictive attitude of his superiors.
Sophie, who had lost faith in the regime by 1939, was turned actively against it by her boyfriend, soldier Fritz Hartnagel, who told her of atrocities against civilians in the east.
Christoph wished for an honourable peace and joined the White Rose alongside Hans and Sophie.
Betrayed by caretaker Jakob Schmid, who received 3,000 marks, the trio were inevitably sentenced to death. The guards at their prison were taken aback by their courage and dignity, to the extent that they allowed the prisoners to have a final cigarette together, an unprecedented liberty.
They were executed by guillotine. Their friends Alexander Schmorell (25), Willi Graf (25), and Kurt Huber (49) were murdered later that year.
Advert for the 'Bantam Units' - used during WWI by the British, these units consisted of men 5ft to 5'3", who were too small for ordinary service.
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80 years ago on January 27th, 1945, the Red Army came across Auschwitz.
Primo Levi describes the moment:
"They were four young soldiers on horseback, who advanced along the road that marked the limits of the camp, cautiously holding their sten-guns. When they reached the barbed wire they stopped to look, exchanging a few timid words, and throwing strangely embarrassed glances at the sprawling bodies, and the battered huts and at us few still alive. To us they seemed wonderfully concrete and real, perched on their enormous horses, between the grey of the snow and the grey of the sky, immobile beneath the gusts of damp wind which threatened the thaw."
Many of the inmates at both Auschwitz I, II (Birkenau), III (Monowitz, where Levi was), and the various other subcamps, were near death, because most of the stronger inmates had been evacuated in order to work in camps further from the frontline.
(Photo: Henryk Makarewicz)
The three Biblical magi Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior as depicted by Herrad of Landsberg (France, 1185) and reproduced by Christian Maurice Engelhardt (1818).
The true identities of the Biblical Magi, whose visit to baby Jesus is celebrated on Epiphany, is not known. Their traditional names originate from a lost 6th century Greek manuscript - other Christian groups call them different names, such as Syrians, who call them Larvandad, Gushnasaph, and Hormisdas. A Chinese tradition holds that one of them was from China.
The historicity of the story is debated. It seems possible that the story was more one laced with symbolism, foreshadowing, and allegory than one based on reality. For example, myrrh was frequently used in burial practices at the time - a hint of the fate of the baby they were visiting.
A 'Mari Lwyd' (Thomas Evans, Llangynwyd, Wales, 1904-10).
This strange Welsh custom involves a horse skull being held on a stick, with a sheet hanging down, to create a sort of hobby-horse. A person stands inside. The horse then goes wassailing (an old form of carol singing). The person visited traditionally refuses the horse entry, before giving in and letting it and its companions inside to have food.
The origins, and even the meaning of the name, remain a mystery.
It is the night of the Winter Solstice. This night has much significance in European folklore as a time of ritual, fear, and hope.
The Wild Hunt, a ghostly procession of men and beasts led by Odin, prefer this time most of all. Any unwary traveller caught in its path will meet their doom, although in some tellings Odin is only out to capture some maidens or elves.
This time is also associated with an increase in draugr activity, so be careful.
Partial source
Krampus has not been popular; Krampus traditions were repressed by the church and by Austrian fascism because of their pagan roots. In the 1950s, it was speculated that he may harm the mental health of children, and pamphlets were distributed warning parents about him. Nonetheless, Krampus perseveres.
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This was the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. Many German adults have now only known Germany united, something that once was thought a pipedream.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-commemorates-35-years-since-fall-of-berlin-wall/a-70743233