Ptak Science Books

Paper Microscope: a 10 Millimeter Photographic View of Great Complexity, 1917

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In this stereographic photograph of a group of 3,000 U.S. soldiers (prepared to fight in Europe in WWI, ca. 1917/1918), there is a smaller contingent in two rows, in front, consierably removed from the rest of the formation.  This is difficult to see in the first image.  However, with a more concentrated view and deeper scan, this is a little more evident, below:

This view still shows the first row of soldiers; that more-distant third row differentiation is much more defined here--the depth of the mass of the formation is starting to really come into focus.  The next image shows the heads of the men in the second row, but mostly concentrates on that third row, and beyond:

The final view is just above the heads of the sldiers in the third rank, and more clearly shows the those men in the rear of the formation, including that final rank, which is a profile of men marching.  This enlargement represents a section in the original photograph that measures less than 10x6mm--60 square millimeters of great density, complexity, insight, and beauty. 

And finally,

The Testimony of Figures: an Infographic of WWI Loss, 1919

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This single-sheet infographic sheet was published seven months after the end of the war, in June 1919, in the Illustrated London  News.  "Great Britain's High Place in the Allied Roll of Honor: the Testimony of Figures" is exactly that, a very significant, visual testimony.  The images speak for themselves.

WWI Photograph: Amusement and Relief, October 1918

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post     Part of Zoomology Series 

 

In a moment of levity at the end of WWI, these sailors from America and the U.K. and France got together for a bit, and turned their little doggie mascot into a small attraction of sorts, entertaining themselves and the small curious crowd surrounding tthem.  The photograph was made anonymously by the Western Newspaper Union and is stamped "British Official Photograph", and published on 10 October 1918. 

Which is a delightful detail from this:

And this intriguing woman, who appears in the upper right corner:

 

World War I Photograph of a Small Kindness

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post  [Part of the series of World War I Photographs]

      

 

This image shows one of the happy moments during the First World War--rather, a happy moment right before the end of the war,  just a few days after the Armistice (11-11-1918, on the 11th minute of the 11th hour).  The image shows the British army being welcomed into the city of Lille on October 17, 1918--the city  had been occupied by the Germans right at the beginning of the war in the middle of October, 1914, and was severely punished for a deception perpetrated in its defense, with the German army burning down an entire section of the ancient city in revenge. 

The picture was published on 15 November 1918, a few days after the end of the war.  In the detail of this photo is revealed a small and unexpected kindness:

World War I Panoramic Photograph of Power and Mistiness

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I recall, I think, that this was the largest photograph of war printed during World War I, looking to be something on the order of 8x16 feet or so.  This photo of the photo was printed by Underwood & Underwood, and stamped "British Official Photograph", printed sometime in 1918.  It seems that this is an actual battle scene, which was a very uncommon thing among war photographs for the Great War--more so for this group of photographs(News Photo Service)  produced by pool photographers for equal distribution among subscribing newspapers and periodicals. Actual combat photos distributed by the News Photo Service agencies were not a high priority, unless they depicted routed or retreating or being-defeated Germans--it was not a popularly-disributed subject, mainly for propagandist purposes. (The original photo is available for purchase here.)

WWI Photos: Hope and Compassion Underground, Verdun 1917

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A bit of calm, or at least a bit of a place that could not be reached by shells or bullets, was found bellow ground in the cellars of Douaumont Fort, in Verdun.  These images were made at the very end of 1916, and published in The Illustrated London News for 13 January 1917.  These images show another side of that battle, of soldiers meeting for religious services and for medical attention in the cellars ("...the subterranean, vaulted, stone-built casements, deep underground beyond possibility of penetration by the heaviest bomb")  of one of the barrier-forts surrounding Verdun, Douaumont.

The Care of the Dead, WWI, 1916

JF Ptak Science Books     Post 1852

 

The Care of the Dead, published by Eyre and Spottiswoode in London in 1916, is a quiet, spare pamphlet, on what was happening to the fallen British soldier in France and Belgium.  It is a big topic--physically the little paper-wrapper work seems barely strong enough to support the implications and heaviness of its title--and I'm sure the issue would've been the most important questions in the minds of the families of the hundreds of thousands of dead British soldiers*--the pamphlet really does seem to be feather-light under the solidity of its title. 

Reading though this  work gave me an insight into the depth of what millions of war dead means--and an insight I think that I've never had before.  The anonymous author writes about touring the battlefields of France in 1915 and 1916, driving in an automobile, "the eye of the traveler along the roads is struck by many low crosses sticking out o the ground--in the fields, in cottage gardens, in corners of farm yards and orchards, even on roadside strips of grass."

Where the ground has changed hands a good deal in the course of a war, you may see, within a few hundred yards of each other, the gabled and eaved cross of the Germans, with "Hier ruht in Gott" and a name painted in white on a dark ground, the beaded wire wreath of the French, with its "Requiescat" or "Mort pour la France: and the plain-lined cross of the English, white or brown or just the unpainted wood, "In loving memory" of officers or men..."  Now I'm sure I read any number of accounts of the views of battlefields from commanders' line and soldiers' views and the like; but I don't think I've had the perspective of an officer driving around a no-longer-a-contested-battlefield in a car and being struck by the appearance of the little white crosses, well, everywhere.  I have a very crisp imagined image in my head, now, with this 92-year-old war memory described from the driver's seat of a car. 

Daily Dose of Dr. Odd: On What Silent Massive Bells Sound Like

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Looking at these pictures, the first thought about what silent bells sound like is pathetic nothingness, and that apart from any secular importance or significance.  But when the Russians pulled out of Poland they took the bells of the churches with them, keeping them from the advancing German army, keeping them so that the Germans didn't melt them down to use in munitions.  The bells disappeared too from many Russian cities, pulled back deeper inside Mother Russia, far from the advancing army.

[Source, above and next three images, from the Illustrated London News, 4 October 1915.]

Help Struggling Poland, 1915

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Between 1914 and 1918 when many of the nations of the world were at war, Poland as a nation did not exist, though its nationalities and spirit and idea certainly did; and though it didn't exist as a country on the map Poland was the home to numerous battles of the Eastern Front, fought on Polish soil. Having been partitioned by the Germans, Russians and Austro-Hungarians, and having Germany and Austria-Hungary pitted against the Russia during the war meant particular hardships and brutalities as the Central Powers and Axis fought for land and the heart of minds of the people who lived on it. 

This ad, which appeared in the Illustrated London News for 2 October 1915, was a display of combined sympathy and support for the Polish people in a particularly bad year, when it was occupied by Germany and retreated through by the once-friendly-notion of Russia (the retreat costing the country a lot in the process).

The advertisement--a public service announcement--was about 10.5 inches by 5 inches, and appeared a number of times in the magazine during 1915 and 1916.  The ads seemed to disappear after that, though the usually-accompaniment of "Holricks Malted Milk" ads pressed on, unabated.

 

 

WWI Photographs: Pigeon Trucks and Medical Dogs

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1822

A fascinating aspect in modern technology and warfare is the reliance upon pigeons and dogs--and their achievements--for war services.  Evidently several hundred thousand pigeons were used to relay messages between divisional headquarters and battlefield positions and such during WWI, with something like 90% of the messages being delivered successfully--a remarkable achievement, since it was not uncommon for the pigeons to fly dozens of miles to perform their task. The services worked so well in fact that the American carrier pigeon service training facility for the army was not closed until 1957.

Dogs were used as guards and ambulance litter carriers, but it seems they were mostly used for communication purposes, taking messages back and forth through the masses and intricacies of trenches. 

The image below comes from The Illustrated London News for 2 October 1915:

Osman, Lt. Col. A.H., Pigeons in the Great War: A Complete History of the Carrier Pigeon Service during the Great War, 1914 to 1918 (London, 1928)  Read more at Suite101.  [All images below are available for purchase from our blog bookstore, here.]

The Face of the Finished Foe: German POWs, 1918

JF Ptak Science Books      Post 1809

I've written a number of times on this blog about WWI images, many of which are in my own collection of News Service Photo Group images, like the one just below, which can be found here. Many of them are remarkable, astonishing even--especially those relating to soldiers whose war has ended, finding them as prisoners of war.  At least they weren't dead, like the dozens of millions of other soldiers.

 

(Original photograph available at our blog bookstore here.)

I uncovered another of these images, tonight, long misplaced.

[Image available from our blog bookstore, here.]

There were over 8 million soldiers taken prisoner during WWI, that in addition to the 21 million who were wounded and the 9.7 million killed:  38 million.  Plus 6.8 million civilians who were killed: 45 million.  And the numbers for civilians wounded are just, well, not reliable, as they were not really collected, or collectible.  At the end of it all, there were probably between 50 to 75 million soldiers and civilians killed or wounded or taken captive during the war...not including civilians who were killed by the hardships or starvation caused by the conflict.  Big, big numbers.

Some of these soldiers were taken in entire armies, surrenders of hundreds of thousands; and some came in pairs, or singles, as in the photo above.  There are two captured Germans here, the two men in the middle, who are flanked by a British soldier and (I think) a Canadian officer, with two locals in the background.  The short man front-and-center was paraded no doubt for his propaganda value--certainly not five feet tall, slender, with a tiny, not-average face.  The Tommy is certainly enjoying the situation, while the officer maintains composure. 

I'm sure the photo could've been made by any photographer for any army at any time.

The photograph was made in 1918, a few months before the end of the war, but there was still fighting to be done, and the value of showing the the British and Allied publics the "face" of a now-wilting enemy must have been considerable.  There was considerable control and tightness over the sort of images allowed to be produced and published coming from the front line, photographs being made by a "pool" of news photographers the contents of which were closely evaluated by military censors before being allowed to circulate to newspapers and magazines.

Playing the Money Card--What it Really Looked Like

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We've all heard of the saying, "playing the money card"  but until this morning I've never actually see it, so far as I know.  While looking for WWI aerial combat games in the patent records I stumbled across "Capture the Kaiser", a card game created by Charles Hopkins  (which was entered into the register at the Patent Office in November 1917 and received the patent less than three weeks after the end of the War)--it was a game of pursuit/capture using 45 cards in which players used the various strengths of nations (airplanes, submarines, battleships) to secure the outcome.  It seems pretty much like a standard game of "War" with a few exceptions, one of which was the "finance card".  It was one of the strongest cards in the deck, or so it seems, rivaling that of another interesting bit, the "fate card".  In any event, it was interesting to see the root of power portrayed so in a card game for kids.

The Invasion of America (Part III)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1688

The New York City harbor looks pretty rough in this picture, tall whitecaps with surprising little reflected in what should be pretty choppy water, meaning that light should be reflecting everywhere, a difficult collection of reflected reflections. 

[Image source:  May 1917 issue of the uncommon magazine, Illustrated World.]

 The submarine, battleship  and zeppelin menaces were real, at least in Europe or in the Atlantic--the aeroplanes far less so¹.  But the applications of these fears directly to American shores were still very distant things, particularly when it came to an attack on New York City--except of course that the U.S. had just declared war against Germany, finally, just a few weeks before this issue was published.

The war began for real in Europe in August, 1914, so the fighting had been going on there in fratricidal earnestness for two and half years, costing millions and millions their lives and limbs.  America had been isolationist and non-interventionist up until this point, remaining sweatily on the sidelines, until the capture of the infamous Zimmerman telegram², which was a coded message sent from Germany (the German Empire) to Mexico (and taken by the Brits as it was sent, the crypto-boys of Room 40 breaking the thing) suggesting that Mexico join in a war against the U.S.  It hit the American press on 1 March, and the story exploded--literally. This is what the beginning of war looks like, sometimes:

So perhaps there was some amount of yellow journalism involved here, and some inflationary propaganda as well, and some good-old profit-taking on a half-sci-fi story--on the other hand, the German Empire did just sink 800,000 gross tons of shipping during the 30 days of April (1917), so sub fears were in general real and palpable.  The issue of them sighting the Staten Island Ferry though was quite another matter. 

The first American soldiers would arrive for fighting in June.  The whole thing would be over in 17 months, which is well less than half of the time that the U.S. spent in WWII. 

The United States would suffer 116,000 military deaths during its part of the war--a small fraction of the overall military deaths (9 million) and a smaller part still of overall deaths including civilians (totaling 16 million).  There would be 205,000 American wounded in this conflict, a little less than 1% of all war military casualties. 

It would be interesting to see the coverage in England of the American invasion fears.

Notes:

1.  This was not so much a war of bombing than it was for air-to-air combat; bombing became more of a realm of aircraft in the suppression of indigenous populations by occupying powers in the 1920's, and then in Fascist Spain in the mid-1930's, and then graduating as it were in WWII. 

2..  The telegram was named for the Foreign Secretary of the German Empire, Arthur Zimmermann,, who sent the thing out on January 16, 1917.  President Wilson delivered his war address to Congress on 2 April 1917. 

A military death pie chart for the Entente Powers [source, Wiki]:

On the Invasion of America, Part I

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1687

See also: Invasion Routes to the U.S.  and this blog's most-viewed posting (with over 500k hits) Maps of the Invasion of America, 1942 . 

America has almost never been invaded. I should clean that statement up a bit: the United States has almost never been invaded.  America–which included North/Central/South once upon a time long in the dim past–was constantly invaded until the invasions no longer counted themselves as such, which I guess means that the “invasion” forces became  “resupply”. (Perhaps an invasion is over once you surpass a certain ratio of houses : forts.)

“Invasion” does not include “attacks”.  A few guys getting off a Nazi sub and wandering around until they got picked up (with some (all?) being executed) does not an invasion make.  9/11 was not an invasion, though the subsequent invention of impending and pervading fear was–that’s why we have “storm centers” rather than “weather reports” on broadcast news–but even that fear business was more home-grown than anything else.

The Japanese Army were on two small islands in the Aleutian chain (which may have been closer to Tokyo than NYC) for a bit in WWII–also does not make for an invasion, even if they were there for a long time.  Or even if they were still there.  Nor does sending hundreds or thousands of paper incendiary balloons across the Pacific an invasion make. 

UFOs don’t count, either.  (I still find it remarkable that such a large percentage of the hundreds of thousands of “sightings” has the UFO with landing or whatever lights on it. I figured out at one point that there has been a report on one of these critters every ____ minutes since Roswell. And in all of those hundreds of thousands or reports, if you took them all and stacked them one on top of the other, they would reach perhaps the height of a grain of sand.)  The Beatles don’t count, either.   

What also doesn’t count (but probably should) but which is not military–not really, though it may have the impact of a military force at some time in the future–are Chinese-made imports of, well, everything.   At Thanksgiving I wondered how much of a dinner could be composed of foods that were shipped from China and to no great amazement an almost-complete table of food could be set, plus napkins, flatware, plates, candles, tablecloths, tables, chairs, paper turkey decorations, carpet, flooring, wallpaper, paint for the walls and ceiling, screws for the Chinese-made door hinges, lighbulbs, tubes for the McIntosh preamps, all of the clothing worn by the guests, and so on.  The electricity is still American-made. The fact that Mott’s Apple Juice is coming from Chinese apples is a bad sniff of the future. The country of origin is usually on juice bottle necks-check it out.)  

Certainly something that does count is the invasion by Great Britain of the United States in the War of 1812--they invaded long and deep enough to burn the White House and cause general havoc.  We won that one.  But of course the Brits were otherwise involved on the Continent.

Perhaps this non-invaded bit explains why the most-viewed post on this blog (with at last 500,000 views, 340k alone coming from the post being carried by IO9.com) was a LIFE magazine article from 1942 on the possible invasion routes to the U.S.  Maybe the volume was driven by war-gamers, though I suspect it was made up largely of the curious who weren’t used to seeing “Invasion of” and “America” together in a military sense.

 

(An another set of maps from Fortune magazine for September 1935, a predecessor to the above,  and from my post here):

But now for the  real stuff:  a map of the 54 invasions of Great Britain (and "the places at which foreign troops have landed on British soil since 1066 (and all that), seen in the Illustrated London News for 27 March 1909):

And then this, where the WWII invasion routes were turned around: 

This map pretty well tells the story of the perilous situation of Europe and England at the beginning of June, 1940.  It appeared in the Illustrated London News on the heals of Churchill's "Blood, Soil, Sweat and Tears" speech, and was a very frank presentation of the wearing of the war.  By this point in the war Nazi Germany had successfully invaded Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, sweeping across Europe in a broad westward movement, backing up British and French troops all the way to the sea at Dunkerque, where a monumental rescue operation ("Operation Dynamo") saved them.  (There was an enormous amount of materiel left there on the beach, a devastating loss for the British Expeditionary Force, nearly crippling it.) This was a bad time for the Allies, this part of the war coined by Winston Churchill in 18 June 1940 in the House of Commons by:  "The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin". There was very little good that came of these few months for the U.K and the Allies, though four things do stand out: (1) as I just mentioned, the saving of 300,000+ troops at Dunkerque; (2) the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, (3) the coming of Winston Churchill  as Prime Minister of the U.K., and (4) the first deciphering of the Enigma at Bletchley.  Other than that, the situation was dim, and these invasion routes (published at t he very time that Germany was studying such a feat in its "Operation Sea Lion", or "Unternehmen Seelöwe"). The endgame at Dunkerque took place almost four years to the day of the invasion of Europe, when the intent (though not placement) all of these arrows were turned around for the Allied operation at the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944..

And so, there it is--a presentation of several maps showing invasions, real and imagined 

On the Invasion of America (Part II)

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1686  Works in the Reverse Esteem of the Gettsburg Address

"The cheek of every American tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, dishwatery utterances of the man who has been pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States"--The Chicago Times, on the Gettysburg Address, 1863.   

We all know today what to expect when we hear something referenced as a Gettysburg Address--and we certainly know what something might be if it was referenced as not-the-Gettysburg-Address. The address as it was when Lincoln gave it didn’t even have a title, named as it was post  facto by the newspapers and periodicals covering the event (on the spot or remotely).  The speech is considered as being among the greatest ever given by an American, though at the time it its reception was very mixed—in many cases it was seen as a failure and even as an embarrassment to the solemnity of the moment and place. There were many newspapers which panned the speech (as in the case above with the Chicago Times, which at the time was considered more of a Democrat paper than anything else), while others (like the New York Times gave the speech a warm reception.   The speech’s presence in national memory was crafted over time (not unlike Mr. Leonardo), its perception formed into the polished gem that it is seen as being today. 

The possibility of the implied actions of the titles of the pamphlet below were somewhat similar, though in reverse.  I’m not saying that some of them were always seen as quacky and the works of demented seers; their titles and possible content, though, were not seen as dismissible, and their concerns were real and a possibility. The concerns over “invasion” today depend on what invasion means.  I don’t imagine that people are seriously considering the possibility of a land or air force attacking this country, though other sorts of invasions (biological, chemical, cyber, etc.) are a possibility. 

The Battle for America/How We Can Avoid It (1939) was published by the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (and headed by William Allen White, iconic middle America newspaper editor and editorialist) which attacked isolationism and advocated strong support of the European effort.  The thinking here was that if America didn’t become involved now it would so later, with battle lines of a Nazi-illuminated truce drawn close to American borders.  So it was a pay-now-or-pay-more-later position from a man who supported the New Deal but whop didn’t support FDR. 

Much of this thinking looks a bit tenuous to me.  For example the position excluded the use of an American expeditionary force in Europe (“for theatre for such a large force elsewhere”), though if nothing at all were done there would be a “certain” use of the AEF in South America combating Nazism.  Also, if the U.S. backed the Allies with supplies and war materiel the “liability” to the US in the consequence of European defeat “would leave America's fate against attack and able to make stalemate peace”.  So at the very least, doing a little bit of something would d at least allow us to make a truce with the German/Japanese alliance.   Doing nothing at all in this area would infer “unlimited” liability, and “defeat of the United States could bring loss of independence”. (“Could”?)

The way aid ourselves in this war “(was) to aid  Britain to hold out to defeat Nazi Germany….the chance for Britain to hold out and win is a good risk for America”.

The second pamphlet, Will America Be Invaded, was published by the Christian Fellowship Press in Akron, Ohio, in 1941, and leans mightily upon scripture to state assumptions about the coming menace to America being presaged in the Bible.  That invasion also seems to be allowed by God (according to prophesies and such) in pursuit of murky results.  The conditions which will prevail “when God permits invasion” (according to this person’s reading of the bible)) include the formation of monopolies, extensive wine and music, “unbelief in God’s judgments”, conceit, “wine and bribes in high places”, and “perverted moral stanfa5rds.  All of this—it is claimed—can be remedied through one medium:  prayer; and prayer through only one mediator, Jesus Christ, who would then take the communications to god’s ear.  

The Attack on America, published by the Friendly Sons of St Patrick (of NYC), was a cautionary pamphlet published in 1920 warning against certain dispassionate evils of British propaganda in the United States.  Freedom or Enslavement for United States of America (sic), published in 1939 for the Mothers of United States of America (sic) advocated a freedom policy that prohibited conscription in foreign wars and would present a state of permanent neutrality. It also made some pretty vicious anti-Roosevelt attacks, finding him the Socialist root of the coming empire of American evils with a wildly power-mad and legislative-grabbing presidency.

 

Quite a grouping of pamphleteers concerned with the potential overthrow of the United States, each seeing the unfortunate possibility of national death via divergent and disparate means:  the fall of the country due to not being part of the Allies during the war and also for being in it; biblical ordination of invasion that is only combatable through prayer; British and European propaganda control of the national welfare; and of course the diabolical Socialist menace of Franklin Roosevelt and the imperial presidency as the ruination of the nation's future.  All of this gently hidden by disturbing titles which really dont give you a hint about what wildly unexpected ways the end was approaching.  And whatever they were, they were definitely not high-order thinking.