Sunday, December 4, 2016

Women's Suffrage, USA

1921-12-9 Lead additive, petrol



Engine knock, sometimes referred to as ‘pinging’, is caused by the improper timing of fuel combustion in an engine’s cycle. By occurring too early, the explosive ignition causes a shock-wave that can cause serious damage to the engine cylinder.

Thomas Midgeley Jr. was a mechanical engineer at the US automobile manufacturer General Motors, where he was tasked with finding a way to prevent engine knock. Although he had already found that mixing gasoline with ethanol would reduce knock by raising the octane level of the fuel, it was a process that was impossible to patent and thus make any significant profit from.

Midgeley continued his search for a suitable additive and on 9 December 1921, after working through thousands of chemicals, he finally identified tetraethyl lead. Ignoring the dangers that this neurotoxin presented, leaded gasoline soon became a standard feature on forecourts across the world while the additive itself became known as TEL under the brand name Ethyl

A few months after his discovery, Midgeley had to take time away from the laboratory due to lead poisoning. Some of his colleagues were not as lucky. Within a year ten workers at the lead plant had died, while dozens more experienced neurological symptoms including tremors, hallucinations and fits. Despite these evident dangers, leaded gasoline continued to be the standard fuel for automobiles until it was ordered to be phased out in the 1970s.

Midgeley himself later went on to develop the first CFCs, making him the creator of two products that have caused serious long-lasting damage to both human health and the environment.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

1920

1920 1/4 - Miracle on the Vistula - Polish Soviet War - B2W > .
1920-1-10: Treaty of Versailles into effect; League of Nations established - HiPo > .


1920-3-13 Start of the Kapp Putsch in Berlin 13th March 1920 > .
Interbellum - Germany - RaWa >> .

The Weimar Republic was established in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Unpopular with both the political left and right, the government faced several threats from the left in early 1919 prior to their reluctant signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In its aftermath the Freikorps volunteer paramilitary units, on whom the government had relied to put down the previous uprisings, were to be disbanded.

In early March 1920 two leading Freikorps units refused the order to dissolve. Already opposed to the democratic Weimar government, the unit under the command of Captain Herman Ehrhardt occupied Berlin with the cooperation of General Walther von Lüttwitz, the district army commander.

Two days earlier Lüttwitz had approached right-wing journalist Wolfgang Kapp and some other leading military figures in preparation for taking over the government. They swiftly occupied government buildings and met no opposition from regular troops stationed in the city, while officials generally accepted the coup.

However, the putsch was far less popular with the general population. After the Weimar government fled to Dresden, President Ebert issued a cabinet proclamation calling for a general strike to defeat the putsch. Supported by the major trade unions and leftist parties, the people of Berlin refused to cooperate with the Kapp government and services ground to a halt. More than 12 million workers went on strike from 14 March, paralysing essential services ranging from water to transportation. Less than a week later, with the putsch a failure, Kapp was forced to flee to Sweden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic

Thanks to RepuGNicans, USA still a backwards country:
Harnessing the power of its new Democratic majority, the Virginia legislature [January 2020] to became the 38th of the 38 states needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which would make women’s rights explicit in the Constitution.

1920-8-20 Ratification of 19th Amendment ..
18th August 1920: Ratification of 19th Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees female suffrage > .

CONservative Catholic RepuGNican anti-feminist Phyllis Schafly had argued that the ERA would take away gender-specific privileges currently enjoyed by women, including "dependent wife" benefits under Social Security, separate restrooms for males and females, and exemption from Selective Service (the military draft).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly .

2020-1-15
Both chambers of Virginia’s General Assembly [finally!] passed the Equal Rights Amendment Wednesday [2020-1-15], fulfilling a promise that helped Democrats seize control of the legislature and marking a watershed moment in the nearly century-long effort to add protections for women to the U.S. Constitution. The votes capped an emotional week in which Democratsparticularly female lawmakers who now hold unprecedented positions of power in Richmond — celebrated [moral] history in the making.https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/2020/01/15/0475d51a-36f1-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html .



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920 .

NDA-20 USA - National Defense Act of 1920 ..
NHT - Naval Hx - Treaties ..

Friday, December 2, 2016

1919

1919-1-18: The Paris Peace Conference begins > .

New Wars and Revolutions - Demobilisation I January 1919 > .
Playlist >> .
Mussolini and D'Annunzio On Rise - Allies in Crisis Over Italy | TGW April 1919 > .
Countdown to War: Italy: Mussolini's Fascists Prepare for WW2 - Waro > .
22-10-3 Comparing Pootin to Hitler | Dream of the Great Past (subs) - Katz > .
The Great War - 1919 >> .
Aftermath 1919 - RaWa >> .
Interbellum - Germany - RaWa >> .
Astor, Nancy ..

1919-11-11 Geopolitical Change 2019-11-11 .. 
Treaty of Versailles vs the rise of Nazism | Professor Dan Stone > .

Treaty of Versailles 1919 > .
Road to War 1919 to 1939 >> .

Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – DAP (German Workers' Party). The name was changed in 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party). This political party was formed and developed during the post-World War I era. It was anti-Marxist and opposed to the democratic post-war government of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles; and it advocated extreme nationalism and Pan-Germanism as well as virulent anti-Semitism. Hitler's "rise" can be considered to have ended in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues. The Enabling Act—when used ruthlessly and with authority—virtually assured that Hitler could thereafter constitutionally exercise dictatorial power without legal objection.

Adolf Hitler rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Being one of the best speakers of the party, he told the other members to either make him leader of the party or he would never return. He was aided in part by his willingness to use violence in advancing his political objectives and to recruit party members who were willing to do the same. The Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 and the later release of his book Mein Kampf (Translation: My Struggle) introduced Hitler to a wider audience. In the mid-1920s, the party engaged in electoral battles in which Hitler participated as a speaker and organizer,[a] as well as in street battles and violence between the Rotfrontkämpferbund and the Nazis' Sturmabteilung (SA). Through the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazis gathered enough electoral support to become the largest political party in the Reichstag, and Hitler's blend of political acuity, deceptiveness and cunning converted the party's non-majority but plurality status into effective governing power in the ailing Weimar Republic of 1933.

Once in power, the Nazis created a mythology surrounding the rise to power, and they described the period that roughly corresponds to the scope of this article as either the Kampfzeit (the time of struggle) or the Kampfjahre (years of struggle).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power

Interbellum - Freikorps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFLDrPfDGec

"Freikorps were German volunteer units that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, the members of which effectively fought as mercenaries, regardless of their own nationality. In German-speaking countries, the first so-called Freikorps ("free regiments", German: Freie Regimenter) were formed in the 18th century from native volunteers, enemy renegades and deserters, and criminals. These sometimes exotically equipped units served as infantry and cavalry (or more rarely as artillery), sometimes in just company strength, sometimes in formations up to several thousand strong; there were also various mixed formations or legions. The Prussian von Kleist Freikorps included infantry, jäger, dragoons and hussars. The French Volontaires de Saxe combined uhlans and dragoons.

In the aftermath of World War I and during the German Revolution of 1918–19, Freikorps consisting largely of World War I veterans were raised as right-wing paramilitary militias, ostensibly to fight on behalf of the government against the Soviet-backed German Communists attempting to overthrow the Weimar Republic. However, the Freikorps also despised the Republic and were involved in assassinations of its supporters. The Freikorps were widely seen as the precursor to Nazism, and many of their volunteers ended up joining the Nazi militia, the Sturmabteilung (SA). An entire series of Freikorps awards also existed.
..
The meaning of the word Freikorps changed over time. After 1918, the term was used for the paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. They were the key Weimar paramilitary groups active during that time. Many German veterans felt disconnected from civilian life, and joined a Freikorps in search of stability within a military structure. Others, angry at their sudden, apparently inexplicable defeat, joined up in an effort to put down communist uprisings, such as the Spartacist uprising, or exact some form of revenge on those they considered responsible for the armistice. They received considerable support from Minister of Defence Gustav Noske, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Noske used them to crush the German Revolution of 1918–19 and the Marxist Spartacist League, including arresting Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were killed on 15 January 1919. They were also used to defeat the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919.

On 5 May 1919, members of Freikorps Lützow in Perlach near Munich, acted on a tip from a local cleric and arrested and killed twelve alleged communist workers (most of them actually members of the Social Democratic Party). A memorial on Pfanzeltplatz in Munich today commemorates the incident.

● Baltics - WW2 .. 

Freikorps also fought against the communists in the Baltics, Silesia, Poland and East Prussia after the end of World War I, including aviation combat, often with significant success. Anti-Slavic racism was sometimes present, although the ethnic cleansing ideology and anti-Semitism that would be expressed in later years had not yet developed. In the Baltics they fought against communists as well as against the newborn independent democratic countries Estonia and Latvia. In Latvia, Freikorps murdered 300 civilians in Mitau who were suspected of having "Bolshevik sympathies". After the capture of Riga, another 3000 alleged communists were killed, including summary executions of 50–60 prisoners daily. Though officially disbanded in 1920, some of them continued to exist for several years and many Freikorps' attempted, unsuccessfully, to overthrow the government in the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. Their attack was halted when German citizens loyal to the government went on strike, cutting off many services and making daily life so problematic that the coup was called off.

In 1920, Adolf Hitler had just begun his political career as the leader of the tiny and as-yet-unknown Deutsche Arbeiterpartei/DAP German Workers' Party, which was soon renamed the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei/NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) or Nazi Party in Munich. Numerous future members and leaders of the Nazi Party had served in the Freikorps, including Ernst Röhm, future head of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, Heinrich Himmler, future head of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, and Rudolf Höß, the future Kommandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hermann Ehrhardt, founder and leader of Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, and his deputy Commander Eberhard Kautter, leaders of the Viking League, refused to help Hitler and Erich Ludendorff in their Beer Hall Putsch and conspired against them.

Hitler eventually viewed some of them as threats. A huge ceremony was arranged on 9 November 1933 in which the Freikorps leaders symbolically presented their old battle flags to Hitler's SA and SS. It was a sign of allegiance to their new authority, the Nazi state. When Hitler's internal purge of the party, the Night of the Long Knives, came in 1934, a large number of Freikorps leaders were targeted for killing or arrest, including Ehrhardt and Röhm. Historian Robert GL Waite claims that in Hitler's "Röhm Purge" speech to the Reichstag on 13 July 1934, he implied that the Freikorps were one of the groups of "pathological enemies of the state"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps


World War I: is it right to blame the Treaty of Versailles for the rise of Hitler?
https://theconversationuk.cmail20.com/t/r-l-jtltuduy-djjiirdtlj-h/
The Treaty of Versailles is often named as the main cause of World War II. But this is an overly simple explanation.
How the Germans Cheated the Versailles Treaty - MHV > .

Joshua Cole on the consequences of WWI on European colonies > .

Astor, Nancy


Constance Markievicz | First women elected to the House of Commons - HiHu > .

Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor, CH (19 May 1879 – 2 May 1964) was an American-born British politician, a Nazi sympathiser [anti-Stalinist], an anti-Catholic conspiracy theorist and the first female Member of Parliament (MP) to take her seat on 1 December 1919. Sinn Fein's Constance Markievicz was the first elected female MP and had refused to take up her seat the previous year in line with party policy.

Astor was an American citizen who moved to England at age 26 and married [fellow American expat] Waldorf Astor. He succeeded to the peerage and entered the House of Lords; she then entered politics and won his former seat in Plymouth in 1919, becoming the first woman to sit as an MP in the House of Commons. Her first husband was American [alcoholic] Robert Gould Shaw II; the couple separated after four years and divorced in 1903. She served in Parliament as a member of the Conservative Party for Plymouth Sutton until 1945, when she was persuaded to step down.

  • I married beneath me. All women do.
  • In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on a woman.
  • My vigour, vitality, and cheek repel me. I am the kind of woman I would run from.
  • One reason why I don’t drink is because I wish to know when I am having a good time.
  • Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.
  • The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything… or nothing.
  • The only thing I like about rich people is their money.
  • The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.
  • Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/my-dear-you-are-ugly-but-tomorrow-i-shall-be-sober-and-you-will-still-be-ugly-winston-churchill-tops-8878622.html .

Cliveden SetThe Cliveden Set were a 1930s, upper class group of prominent people, politically influential in pre-World War II Britain, who were in the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor. The name comes from Cliveden, the stately home in Buckinghamshire, which was then Astor's country residence.

The "Cliveden Set" tag was coined by Claud Cockburn in his journalism for the Communist newspaper The Week. It has long been widely accepted that this aristocratic Germanophile social network was in favour of friendly relations with Nazi Germany and helped create the policy of appeasement. John L. Spivak, writing in 1939, devotes a chapter to the Set. Norman Rose's 2000 account of the group proposes that, when gathered at Cliveden, it functioned more like a think-tank than a cabal. According to Carroll Quigley, the Cliveden Set had been strongly anti-German before and during World War I. After the end of the war, the discovery of the Nazis' Black Book showed that the group's members were all to be arrested as soon as Britain was invaded; Lady Astor remarked, "It is the complete answer to the terrible lie that the so-called 'Cliveden Set' was pro-Fascist."

The actual beliefs and influence of the Cliveden Set are matters of some dispute, and in the late 20th century some historians of the period came to consider the Cliveden Set allegations to be exaggerated. For instance, Christopher Sykes, in a sympathetic 1972 biography of Nancy Astor, argues that the entire story about the Cliveden Set was an ideologically motivated fabrication by Claud Cockburn that came to be generally accepted by a public looking for scapegoats for British pre-war appeasement of Adolf Hitler. There are also academic arguments that while Cockburn's account may have not have been entirely accurate, his main allegations cannot be easily dismissed.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...