Reichsarchiv.  Nachlasse Bach-Zalewski.  Private files–Miscellaneous.

Transcript of Recording.  Private Meeting held at the Villa Remoulade[1] near Theresienstadt.  3 July 1950.  Meeting began at 9:00 PM. 

PART TWO. 

EZB: Yes, of course.  Well, you certainly have landed on your feet. 

WB: I’m a paratrooper, we’re supposed to land on our feet. 

EZB: Laughter. 

EZB: Even so, I might not have expected so much after Latvia.  How do you find the Abwehr? 

WB: It’s an odd collection of people.  Very varied in personalities and interests.  Most of them are very able….in their own sphere of interest.  General Gehlen[2] is a superb leader for such a crew. 

EZB: You’ve been some places?  Done some things…of a covert nature? 

WB: I’ve been some places, done some things.  Although I can’t talk about those any more than I can about my current mission. 

EZB: No, of course not.  I’m just trying to get a sense of things. 

EZB: And your sergeant, Arpke is it? 

WB: We’ve been together for a long time.  Since Gibraltar.  Comrades, friends really.  You know how this is among soldiers.

EZB: Yes.  Shared experience of remarkable things builds a bond.  Another drink? 

WB: If you’re having one. 

EZB: I am. 

EZB: So, you two are settled in town.  I hope that the accommodations are satisfactory. 

WB: The accommodations are very comfortable.  And so many possible exits to several different streets. 

EZB: I thought that someone from the Abwehr would appreciate that.  Have you seen any trace of Lange’s little watchers? 

WB: Yes, although it is being done with a light and skillful touch.  Rather Hungarian really. 

EZB: He likes to know everything that is going on.  He watches the immigrants like a hawk, of course, but also everyone else. 

WB: Even you? 

EZB: Even me.  He’ll want to know what you are up to. 

EZB: Well, it’s getting late.  We both have much to do, so I’ll let you be on your way.  I hope that we can talk again from time to time.  If you are going to be here for some time.  Please contact me directly if I can be of any assistance to your mission. 

WB: Thank you.  General, I’m still very grateful for your help in Latvia. 

EZB: Unexpected things come up.  We deal with them as best we can under the circumstance.  Good night, Colonel. 

WB: Good night, General. 

[1] The Villa Remoulade is a two-story brick residence with verandas on both levels all around the house.  The house was built by a banana planter in the Twenties and requisitioned by the German government in 1941.  It is on the outskirts of Theresienstadt.  Set in the midst of an elaborate garden of tropical plants and surrounded by a stone wall (with broken bottles cemented into the top), it is a calm and very private place.  Bach-Zalewski occasionally spent week-ends there and seems to have used it for private meetings as well.  

[2] Reinhard Gehlen (1902–).  Son of a former officer; joined the “Reichswehr” of the Weimar Republic in 1920; slow climb up the ranks; graduated from the Staff College (1935) and joined the General Staff (1936); various increasingly responsible positions thereafter; appointed head of “Foreign Armies East” (military intelligence, Eastern Front broadly conceived) (1940-1944); replaced Admiral Wilhelm Canaris as head of the Abwehr after the “20 July Plot” (1944). 

            Woodrow Wilson harbored vast ambitions for himself and for the United States.[1]  In one view,[2] Wilson wanted to modernize America’s national government on the model of advanced European states.  He also wanted to assert the primacy of American values in an ever-growing international realm.  The two ambitions intersected within the global context of social and economic change, political division, and international conflict.[3] 

            The Wilson administration (1913-1921) inherited the fruits of a global “generation of materialism.”  The “Second” Industrial Revolution; rapid population growth leading to massive urbanization and international migration; the emergence of the modern corporation; the division of Socialism into reformist, revolutionary, and anarchist factions; the emergence of the problem-solving State; the assertion of power by advanced states over disordered parts of the world; and the beginning of a reaction against pure Reason in intellectual life provided the larger context.[4]  People struggled to understand and impose order on this new society. 

            In domestic affairs, Wilson sought his changing goals in a complex environment.  For one thing, he had been elected by a clear minority of Americans thanks to the Electoral College.[5]  For another, his own vision often proved unworkable, and he had to default to that of his defeated Republican opponents while covering his tracks with high-flown prose.  Finally, the radical Left exerted an unprecedented appeal.  In the elections of 1912 and 1916, the reformist Socialist candidate pulled 6 million votes; and all through the 1910s, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, “Wobblies”) loudly urged “revolutionary industrial unionism.”

            In foreign affairs, Wilson began by sending troops to occupy Haiti, pledging to “teach the Mexicans to elect good men,” and then invading the country when his lessons didn’t take.  The outbreak of the First World War in Summer 1914 led him to declare American neutrality in what looked to be a short war.  By 1916 the troops were still fighting.  Meanwhile, America became entangled in the war.  Britain’s blockade and Germany’s submarines imperiled neutral shipping rights.  American goods flowed from farm and factory to the British and French, as did American loans.  Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and Jewish-Americans[6] sympathized with Britain’s opponents, while “Old Stock” Anglo-Saxons often sympathized with Britain. 

Other forces worked mightily against any foreign entanglements: America’s long tradition of isolationism, horror at the immense loss of life to no apparent purpose, and fear of the expanded power of government seized by the belligerents.  These included propaganda and censorship, controls on movement (passports, emigration restriction), and economic controls.

In November 1916, Wilson won re-election on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” 

[1] Many writers have tried to puzzle out this unusual, unstable, unlikeable, but important, man. Compare Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (1954) and Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921 (1985).  

[2] Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022).  There’s an appallingly bad review by Thomas Meaney, “Extreme Measures,” NYTBR, 9 October 2022. 

[3] So maybe not so different from our own time.  But see Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), p. 1.

[4] Carleton J.H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900 (1941) is a grumpy, antique book by a grumpy antique historian.  Not less valuable for that as a well-written and accessible history of the main developments. 

[5] Wilson won 41.8 percent of the vote; the two rival Republican candidates split 50.6 percent, and the Socialist Eugene Debs won 6 percent. 

[6] Most of the latter were refugees or the children of refugees from Tsarist anti-Semitism.

Reichsarchiv.  Nachlasse Bach-Zalewski.  Private files–Miscellaneous.

Transcript of Recording.  Private Meeting held at the Villa Remoulade[1] near Theresienstadt.  Meeting began at 9:00 PM. 

PART ONE. 

WB:[2] Heil Hitler! 

EBZ:[3] Graf von Blucher,[4] Good evening. 

WB: Good evening, sir.  It’s been a long time. 

EBZ: Yes, a long time, and much has happened.  Would you care for a drink? 

NOTE: A series of social pleasantries follow.  These have not been transcribed.  Then substantive conversation resumes. 

EBZ: What brings you to Madagascar, if I’m allowed to ask? 

WB: You haven’t been told anything? 

EBZ: Only that an Abwehr officer with special knowledge was coming out for what was termed an “inspection tour.”  I didn’t even know that it was you. 

WB: Well, I’m not allowed to reveal my mission.  However, I’ll tell you the bits that you will observe and then put together for yourself anyway.  I’m here to identify possible air strips for transport aircraft along the West coast of the island.  I’m a Fallschirmjager.  I’m serving with the Abwehr, which reports to the General Staff.  Our workhorse transport plane has been the Ju-52 with various improvements.  It has a range of almost 1,000 kilometers,[5] but the Luftwaffe has been developing an improved version of the American C-47.  That has a range of 2,600 kilometers.[6] 

EBZ: And the Mozambique Channel is, what, 400-odd kilometers[7] wide at its narrowest point? 

WB: And about 700[8] at its widest point. 

EBZ: So, Portuguese Mozambique.  And where from there? 

WB: That’s really all that I can say. 

[1] The Villa Remoulade is a two-story brick residence with verandas on both levels all around the house.  The house was built by a banana planter in the Twenties and requisitioned by the German government in 1941.  It is on the outskirts of Theresienstadt.  Set in the midst of an elaborate garden of tropical plants and surrounded by a stone wall (with broken bottles cemented into the top), it is a calm and very private place.  Bach-Zalewski occasionally spent week-ends there and seems to have used it for private meetings as well.  

[2] Wolfgang, Graf von Blucher, Colonel of Fallschirmjager

[3] Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski, General of the SS and Military Governor of Madagascar. 

[4] In background a horse appears to whinny. 

[5] About 620 miles. 

[6] About 1,600 miles. 

[7] About 260 miles. 

[8] About 400 miles. 

            On 8 October 2022, the Ukrainian special services blew up the bridge connecting the Kerch Peninsula (which is in Russia) with the Crimean Peninsula (which may or may not be in Russia, depending on how things play out).[1]  On 10 October 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities.  Not all of the attacks succeeded, but the ones that did hit both economic infrastructure and purely civilian targets in the heart of cities. 

            Why did he do this?  Well, it is taken for granted that he was angry.  However, that may not be the sole explanation.  Ukraine’s intelligence officials have stated that on 2-3 October 2022, Russian forces had been ordered to prepare for the missile strikes.  So the bridge attack may have provided a convenient opportunity to do what he was going to do anyway.  Is there a larger purpose or plan or set of beliefs framing-in this expression of anger?  Well, there’s a history of attacking not-purely-military targets that might offer a useful perspective.[2] 

            Aircraft began to be used for military purposes during the First World War.  First for observation, then as fighter planes, and then—in an experimental way—with heavier aircraft dropping bombs.  Between the two world Wars, a revolution in aircraft took place on many technical fronts.  At the same time, air-power theorists debated whether limited resources should be allocated to fighter planes and light bombers (both to be used on the conventional battlefield) or to heavy bombers (to be employed against enemy industrial and transport infrastructure).  During the Second World War the advocates of fighter planes and light bombers clearly proved their case, while advocates of bombing had a murkier case.  The case for bombing to destroy both the means and the psychological will to fight has only grown weaker over time. 

            However, there’s a simpler explanation.  First, Putin has begun talking around the subject of using nuclear weapons.  Second, the recent airstrikes show where he can hit inside Ukraine.  The cities targeted included Kyiv (pop. 2,962,180), Lviv (pop. 717,486), Kharkiv (pop. 1,433,886), Odessa (pop. 1,015,826), Dnipro (pop. 993,220), Khmelnitskyi (pop. 274,582), Zhitomir (pop. 263,507), Ivano-Frankivsk (pop. 237,855), Ternopil (pop. 225,238), Sumy (pop. 259,660), and Poltava (pop. 283,402).  These pre-war population figures have been much transformed by wartime evacuations and refugee movements.  However, a rough total of the pre-war population would be above 8,660,000. 

People have assumed that Putin meant using tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.  Why would that be the case, or the only case?  The casualties from a dozen Hiroshimas would be …  Well ,“appalling” doesn’t really cover it. 

What kind of response might the United States be pressed to make? 

[1] Ukraine’s special services seem to have been busy.  They also attacked a bunch of Russian resources behind the lines of the war and took a swing at a Russian nationalist adviser to Putin, although they killed his daughter instead.  That leaves us with the problem of who damaged the undersea “Nordstream” gas pipeline in the Baltic and who damaged the electrical grid in northern Germany. Not likely to have been the Russians themselves.  If they wanted to interrupt the flow of Russian gas to Germany, they could just turn off the tap at the source.  Also, the Germans have been weak sisters in supporting Ukraine, so why annoy them?  So those attacks could have been the work of the Ukrainians.  My money is on the Poles.  Messing with Germany and Russia at the same time isn’t the last thing that would occur to them. 

[2] Max Fischer, “Putin’s Plan to Bomb Kyiv Into Submission?  History Says It Won’t Work,” NYT, 12 October 2022. 

            From the 1960s through the 1990s, the United States suffered a very high rate of crime and violence, most notably murders.  People continue to debate the causes of this deadly era.  Then it came to an end, with crime and murder rates specifically declining to near their early-1960s level.  People continue to debate the causes of the ending of this deadly era.  In the midst of it, a “get tough on crime” approach understandably found favor.  Mass repression of mass crime logically led to mass incarceration.  Crime rates dropped.  Time passed.  People began to see the costs of crime repression in a different light.  It came to be widely accepted that America’s aggressive policing of some urban areas has produced an unjustified “mass incarceration” and that the burden is born mostly by Blacks and mostly for low-level offenses.  The change of mind didn’t halt at rhetoric.  Between 2009 and 2019, arrests in New York City fell by 25 percent and imprisonments fell by 17 percent.  A 2020 bail reform law in New York barred judges from considering whether the accused person posed a danger to the community in deciding on pre-trial release.  Then, in the last few years, the murder rate in some places—notably some big cities—has jumped upward to an alarming degree.  So, the issues surrounding mass incarceration and decarceration are in play once again. 

            Raphael Mangual is both a scholar of crime and policing, and a controversialist.  He isn’t buying what the anti-mass incarceration orthodoxy is selling.[1]  Instead, Mangual argues that “more policing means less crime.”  To this end, he deploys historical comparison.  For example, in 1993, the gun homicide victimization rate for Black New Yorkers stood at 40 per 100,000; by 1999 it stood at 10 per 100,000.  For example, the historical record shows that about 4 percent of city street segments account for about 50 percent of crime.  If the police go where the crime is taking place, they concentrate in a few areas.  In these areas, drug arrests often serve as a “pretextual attack on violent crime” and criminals.  Among state prisoners, only 4 percent are imprisoned for drug offenses and some share of those had pled down from more serious charges. 

Violent people are the problem in Mangual’s view.  The average person arrested in Chicago for a shooting turns out to have a rap sheet as long as your arm, averaging almost a dozen prior arrests.[2]  “The vast majority of American prisoners are violent chronic offenders.”  Moreover, the median sentence actually served for a violent offense is under 2.5 years.  The problem isn’t too much prison, but too little. 

Mangual offers another historical comparison.  In 1972, during the violent decades that gave rise to mass incarceration, New York Police Department officers shot 145 people.  In 2020, at the end of the tranquil decades, they shot 12 people.  Even criminals were safer. 

Still, this leaves us with problems.  First, why is so much crime and violence taking place in predominantly Black areas?  Second, how much of the backlash against “stop and frisk” policing sprang from its over-use by police commands that just kept on tightening the screws past the point of any reasonable return on effort? 

[1] Rafael Mangual, Criminal [In]Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most (2022).  See: Rafael A. Mangual | Legal Policy Expert at the Manhattan Institute, City Journal (manhattan-institute.org)  He is currently affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, on which, see” Manhattan Institute for Policy Research – Wikipedia 

[2] An arrest isn’t the same as a conviction. 

      “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in search of a good job, must be in want of a BA.”[1]  Partly this belief sprang from the rise of new industries after the Second World War, ones which assigned a premium to communication and analytical skills.  Partly this belief sprang from the propaganda of the too-many colleges left standing after the Baby Boom passed through.  Partly this belief sprang from the decision of many companies to enhance profits by spinning-off training to post-secondary education.[2] 

            Now the tide may be starting to run in the opposite direction.[3]  For one thing, most jobs never required a college degree and no one could pretend that they should.[4]  Two-thirds of American adults don’t have a BA.  For another thing, after state governments cut support for higher education during the “Great Recession,” colleges had to raise their tuition.  Students and their parents took on much more debt.[5]  Now that is being recognized as unsustainable, even if the Biden administration’s debt cancellation is problematic.  For yet another thing, the Covid pandemic triggered a labor shortage from which the country has not yet emerged.  For yet another other thing, we live an “era of racial reckoning,” even if it isn’t clear how long that era will last.  Requiring a BA for a job will tend to disproportionately exclude Black (76 percent) and Hispanic (83 percent) adults.[6] 

            What to put in place of the BA, both immediately and over the long-term?  One answer is a variant on the “accelerated degree completion” programs that flourished for a while among hard-pressed colleges.  Those programs started from the assumption that working adults had accumulated much applicable knowledge through experience.  All they really needed were some classes in what amounted to the theoretical constructs for making sense of that knowledge.  Now, a variety of organizations are pushing the idea of directly assessing the skills of workers without bothering about completing the BA.[7]  (Even this isn’t entirely new.  Look at the Army discharge papers of World War II GIs.[8])  Facilitative language is being coined: people are “skilled through alternative routes” and they have been held back by the “paper ceiling.” 

            So some businesses are starting to cut back on their previous requirement of the BA.[9]  This will likely create opportunities for some credentialing industry other than colleges. 

[1] Well, Jane Austen WOULD have said this if she had lived two hundred years later.  From 2010 to 2019, the percentage of people age 25 and older with a BA or higher rose from 29.9 to 36.0 percent (i.e. 20 percent). 

[2] Just my reading of developments.  I don’t have sources to cite.  Decide for yourself if it makes sense.  Still, how is it different from spinning-off pensions to 401(k)s? 

[3] Steve Lohr, “Seeing Promise, and a Model to Copy, in Job-Training Programs,” NYT, 3 October 2022.    

[4] Just try to say “Roofing 101” without laughing.  Although what I need right now is somebody who has passed “Roofing 501: Terracotta Tile Roofs.” 

[5] See: College costs: the old eat the young. | waroftheworldblog 

[6] In 2019, among those aged 25 and older, 58.1 percent of Asians; 40.1 percent of non-Hispanic whites; 26.1 percent of Blacks; and 18.8 percent of Hispanics had a bachelor’s degree or higher.  U.S. Census Bureau Releases New Educational Attainment Data

[7] According to one study, up to 30 million current workers have the skills needed to do higher level jobs than they presently hold.  Those jobs pay on average 70 percent more than their present job. 

[8] Still, see The Pacific part 10 Eugene Sledge – YouTube 

[9] Among them are reported to be Chevron, Google, IBM, Walmart, and LinkedIn. 

            As you age, anniversaries (birthdays, weddings) turn from fun to scary.[1]  In October 1962, the United States discovered that the Soviet Union had begun to place medium-range missiles equipped with nuclear warheads in Cuba.  This marked a dangerous turn in the Cold War.  If the Americans caught you doing it, they were likely to “blow your head clean off.”  The Cuban Missile Crisis followed.  Now, sixty years on, Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin has begun threatening to use nuclear weapons as his war of bad choice against Ukraine goes south. 

            In the view of Walter Russell Mead, Mr. Putin isn’t that hard to understand because he keeps explaining himself.[2]  Putin sees an “Anglo-Saxon” hegemony that has long dominated the rest of the world and which continues to do so today.[3]  Given centuries of unavailing grievances, criticisms, and the use of armed force by everyone from Napoleon to Osama bin Laden, there’s probably something to the idea of Anglo-Saxon hegemony.  Many people around the world, including those within the walls the hegemonic powers, share some version of Putin’s critique.[4]  China’s Zi Jinping may well be among the believers, even if he has a somewhat different plan than does Putin.  In any event, Putin sees Russia as the champion of the vast majority of the world.  He has hoped to turn Russia into the leader of a global coalition that could hold the Anglo-Saxons in check. 

            Part of Putin’s effort at Russian revival has been a sustained effort to reassemble much of the old Soviet Union.  Belarus is a puppet state; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization expresses—among other, competing forces—a Russian determination to build tight links with the Central Asian “stans” that one belonged to Russia; and Putin has repeatedly tried to curtail Ukraine’s independence.  Another part has been his effort to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) through energy policy and meddling in the domestic affairs of European countries. 

            For Putin, the war in Ukraine is going badly, but he could be interpreting the larger context of international relations as tilting in favor of Russia.  Global economic conditions are imposing widespread suffering.  Such suffering often produces political strains, conflict, instability, and second thoughts.[5]  Threatening the use of nuclear weapons could intensify discord in the West.  Still, if Putin was playing a long game then he wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine in the first place. 

            Like Lenin and Hitler, Putin seems to feel a special personal urgency.  He may be “walking with Destiny” toward his vision of the Future, but he has to try to bring it into being in his own lifetime.  Observers might consider the possibility that he is determined to rush events to a conclusion without any regard for the consequences of failure. 

            The issue may not be the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine.  It may be the use of the full array against the Anglo-Saxons.  I’d be happy to be wrong. 

[1] For my Mom’s birthday one year, my Dad had a jeweler make a heart-shaped locket surrounded by filigree out of white gold.  Inside was a photograph of their lost daughter.  Still makes me feel very inadequate. 

[2] Walter Russell Mead, “Putin’s Nuclear Threat Is Real,” WSJ, 4 October 2022. 

[3] Although France has joined the resistance to Russian aggression in Ukraine, Putin’s critique of the Anglo-Saxons resembles that of Charles de Gaulle. 

[4] See the litany of carping op-eds in the New York Times and elsewhere upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II. 

[5] To illustrate the availability bias, look at Liz Truss.