Black Gold: The History of how coal made Britain. by Jeremy Paxman 1922 353pg

This is both a social history of Britain and deals with  Pollution and Global Warming  25/4/23

In was only in 1966 that miners began being paid by shift rather than the amount of coal that they cut. Finally Britain had decided that her coal days were over and cleaner energy should be used.

There is evidence that in the 14Century coal was dug in Wales.

1615 by this time coal was being sent on boats down the Tyne and loaded onto about 400 Freighters mostly to London but soon French, German and Dutch ship were buying coal, later British warships were set up to protect these from foreign navies. Coal loading never stooped day or night but the Keelmen (flat bottomed river boats depended on the tides.

1637 Charles 1 with the Privy council banned breweries from working near his palace because of their pollution.

1666  The Great Fire of London burned down the wooden old city with over 80 churches but it also brough the end of bubonic plague. Sir Christopher Wren was given the job of rebuilding St Pauls.

1667 Samuels Pepys wrote about the cold winter and how necessary coal was despite its high price.

1670 An act of Parlament imposed a tax on coal and money from this went to complete the building of St Pauls.

1712 Thomas Newcomen invented the steam pump to lift water out of flooded mines that previously had closed

1742 John Wesley said he had never encounted and swearing as came from mines and they were suitable for his Methodist religion.

1771 The Hostmen Company basically a cartel  unscrupulous types would meet to keep up the price of Newcastle coal.

1761 The Duke of Bridgewater opened up mines and canals at Wolseley that supplied Manchester.  By this time coal had become essential in making of bricks glass, metals making, sugar and dyes , brewing beer and distilling gin as well as for blacksmiths. By this time over a thousand ships were taking coal  to almost every port in Europe. In the coal mines there was no shortage of labour and people were leaving the land looking for work wherever coal was mined workers would arrive leaving their landlords farms.

1771 James Watt was given and Newcomen engine to repair and realized that it wasted a lot of energy by heating, cooling and reheating he invented the concept of a condenser. By 1800 Watt and Boulton virtually had a monopoly of producing steam engines.

1803 the idea of making gas from coal was developed in Birmingham The Gas Light and Coke Company was established in 1810 by William Murdock and by 1815 thirty miles of piping had been laid lighting up the Palace of Westminster and area. The first visit of Queen Victoria to the Victoria and Albert Museum was at 9.30 pm so that she could see the exhibits lit up by gaslight. This was the first museum in the world to have it. The railways also set up gasworks as the coke left produced a high value fuel without smoke. This coke was also used in steel mills to remove impurities from iron.

1821 Lord Londonderry bought an estate in county Durham on the coast and developed a coal harbour within 20 years he was the richest man in Britain. These mine were a hotbed of miner strife,1831 There was a bond that tied miners to a pit for a year Thomas Hepburn a Methodist preacher led this. Londonderry now became a anti unionis paternalist as he provided doctors for his miners, pensioners for the disabled and schooling for their children but he demanded loyalty of his workers. The Seaham Colliery had an explosion in 1880  136 workers and 180 pit ponies were blown to bits. Children of miners went into the job as these were all isolated communities and had no alternatives.

As a rule for every 83 meters you descend into the mine the temp rise by 1C. You had an enormous rat population in many mines. 1815 the Davy safety lamp was invented and he turned down the patents rights on its manufacture.

1833 Children were now prevented from working in factory for more than 10 hours a day.

1834 Miners who tried organizing a union were transported to Australia

1838 In South Yorkshire a flood put out the boiler that pulled up the lift and then flooded the airshaft leaving workers trapped and dead most were children. So by 1840 research was done on the extent to which children were working in mines. At the time it was quite normal for whole families to work together as on farm everyone had to work to bring in the wheat harvest in summer. When Victorians heard that men and women both worked in the mines and women wore men's clothing and went naked in the hot places they were shocked.

1842 there was a total prohibition of women and girls working in mines and boys under the age of 10. During WW1 women returned to mine work but mostly sorting coal on the top as there was a shortage of labour.

The best role in coal was just owning the land under which coal was and getting the royalty from it. The Bute Family owned most Welsh land and they turned the Cardiff port into the largest coal port in the world. Ther was also a coal exchange there.

Birmingham had become a centre of engineering and sciece invention and you had the Lunar Society and nothing was off limits many of the great invention come from here. Steam had made it possible to manufacture everything , but made people slaves to machines. George Elliot wrote about this in Mill on the Floss.

1867 More coal was being delivered to London by train than by sea. Hard Times by Charles Dickens documented the Capitalist exploitation.

1871 warships clad in iron plate took over. Without masts guns could be mounted on the deck and swivel 280%. Steam ships burned 150 ton of coal a day so the British had to set up coaling stations across the world and coal became the first requisite of Empire. Every British colony had large stores of coal at the ports including Simonstown ,Cape.  Warships produced thick black smoke so could be traced from far and signalling between ships became impossible. Welsh coal or anthracite but it had the highest quality and carried more energy and was the most expensive.

1883 South Island, New Zealand coal was declared high enough quality for the navy. Coal filled warships the coal acted as a protective rocks against the hull.

1890 they started producing electricity from turbines.

1893 the large Gateshead dock developed from the Tyne with trains coal could now be brought from faraway mines to anywhere.

1897 for the Spanish American war the American fleet in Manilla was forced to buy coal from Australia for their fleet in Manilla. While the trip of Teddy Roosevelts Great  White Fleet depended on British collier ships.

1901 by the time Queen Victoria died  steam ships had totally eclipsed sail power. 

1904 / 5 during the Russo Japanese War Britain denied the Russian fleet permission to use the Suez Canal yet allowed their Japanese allies access to their coaling stations.

1906 Over a thousand miners were killed in an explosion at a mine at Courrieres , France. This made it very clear how dangerous coal mines could be and in Britain , Churchill sponsored the 1911 Coal Mines Act , this expected daily checks by mine owners to see how much dust was accumulating and it must be dampened and ventilation fans that could switch direction so as to keep flames away from trapped miners.

1908 The Admiralty started buying oil from Persia. 

 By 1910 the biggest Trade Union in the country was the miners. 

1912 The first national miners strike, demanding a minimum wage, with over a million striking and this resulted in railwaymen , foundries, factories and shipyards ceasing to function.

1913 At this time there were over a million people working in mines and that year producing 292 million tons of coal and a third of that was esported.This was the year that DH Lawrence published Sons and Lovers portraying life in a mining village. 

1917 miners were recruited to undermine the German lines at Messines where a massive series of mines killed an estimation of 10,000 troops. Before WW1 2 thirds of the worlds coal came from Britain, but afte the war the demand for coal plummeted making the situation ripe for a revolution.   

1929 The Labout Party won the election and by 1932 40% of the population of S.Wales was unemployed.

Between the wars over a thousand exhausted mines closed and the number of men working in 1920 was 1,277000 to 782000 in 1938.

1936 by then Britain was reported to have the highest rate of pneumoconiosis in Europe and by in 1970 it was reported that 85% of all receiving benefits for lung related diseases were miners. This was an occupation that always attracted migrant workers like those fleeing the Irish potato famine.  

1938 Coal Act basically nationalised the coal industry and this came into effect in July 1942 when Rommel launched his attack on El Alamein. 

1943 because many miners had been the first to volunteer for the war,  Ernest Bevin the labour minister conscripted 2 birthdays a month for youngest to go into the mines instead of to war. These were the Bevin boys and it was only 2013 taht Gordon Brown recognised and awarded merits to those alive and a memorial was build for them. This was a very wasteful system of talent and there were many desertions and they were kept in this work till 1947. This was very unpopular and since they wore no uniformes were treated as cowards or skivers. They were billited with families whose sons came home in uniforms.

1946 Under the post war Labour government of Clement Attlee. When coal was fully nationalized and mine owners were paid out a total of 81million pounds for coal that was theoretically in the ground but in any case they had no way of getting it out the mine owner though this was Christmas.

1952The coal board made nutty slack a cheap dirty coal available without rationing. There was a cold weather inversion trapping fog over England especially London it was so heavy that busses could not see to drive and the population suffered from respiratory diseases. This resulted in the National Smoke Abatement society of  and the bringing out of the magazine Smokeless Air in 1953. It was reported that the pollution was  costing the nation 250million pounds a year besides the extra medical costs. This was followed by the Clean Air Act of 1956. 

1956 the Queen opened the  first commercial nuclear power station and a second one in 1966 at Caithness and one later in the Severn estuary and 1976 in Somerset.

British rail announced that winth in 12 years they would change from steam to diesel power.

1968 another Clean Air Act put priority onto issues of health and the 60 saw a plunge in the number of collieries. By 1963 labour leader Harold Wilson talked about white heat and a technological revolution. The Coal Board was managing the decline and closing of the pits faster than was necessary. Here the Coal Board had been kind to the miners and the government absorbed millions of pounds of debt in subsidies while banning the import of cheaper imported coal.

1969 the possibility of oil of the coast of Aberdeen was discovered and a year later started being pumped 

1973 OPEC hiked the price of oil and in 1979 it rose even further when the Shah of Iran was deposed.

With Author Scargill as head of the Coal miners Union he started a system of flying pickets bringing strikes from other areas. this was new and illegal.  It was at the Battle of Saltley Gate that Scargill became known on TV, challenging the Prime Minister Ted Heath.

1979 Margaret Thatcher defeated Labours James Callahan as  PM initially had to relent to the Union demand but she decided to prepare for the next winter and made sure that there was a stockpile of coal ready. 

By 1983 when the Conservatives had the biggest majority Margaret Thatcher was ready. A law was passed that to strike you needed a vote of  majority of the strikers. The strike started in March 1984 completely the wrong time of the year for such a strike with the slogan Coal or Dole. It was not supported by the Union of Democratic miners. The strike failed.

1992 the coalfields passed the point of no return and the state was divesting of all it companies from airlines to electricity and trains and the Coal Board which still had 50 pits employing 54,000 workers. The electrical companies were private and could import cheaper coal than it cost locally. Gas power stations was now becoming more profitable.

The NBC in 1980 made great profits by selling mining equipment to China. From 1979 to  2011 China's GDP increased annually and by then was consuming more coal than the rest of the world combined and polluting heavily.

2017  Only 3 million tons of coal was being produced and this came from open-cast mine using buldozers.Thus in 100 times more coal was produced.1917

  2020 North Sea gas could supply less than half the countries needs and the rest was imported from Russia.  

  

Conclusion

In 1889 a Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius had predicted that humans burning of fossil fuel would raise the earths temperature.  In 1938 by checking climate records a British engineer Guy Callander discovered a connection between human activity and global warming.  It took till the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro for governments to agree on global warming at the Convention of Climate Change.  The masses of CO2 is the main cause.                                                                                                                

 

Virus-free.www.avg.com

Spies of no country; Secret lives at the birth of Israel by Matti Friedman 2019 273pg

 A story before Israel became a state    To be edited  17/5/19 again 5/9/19

Gamiel Cohen =Yussef born in Damascus 25 in 1948 Isaac Shoshan =Abdul Karim born in Aleppo 23 in 1948 Havakuk Cohen= Ibrahim born born Yemen 23in 1948 Yakuba Cohen= Jamil born in Jerusalem 23in 1948 1947 November29th UN Partition plan and start of Civil War. 1948 May 14th Israel War of Independence starts Only Isaac Shoshan was alive at 93 to give the author an interview. He arrived as a penniless teenager and was selling peppers at the shuk. We see what was a group of amateurs on a small scale that was the embryo of what later became one of the worlds most formidable intelligence organizations. The Palmach's Arab section the "Black Section" called Dawn which came from the word shachor to become shachar. Jewish leaders had little idea what Arabs were thinking. They would go to Mosques and pray and hear if the preaching was political. In the 1940 9 out of every Jews in Palestine came from Europe. The whole story is from Jan 1948 till August 1949 in Haifa and Beirut. In Haifa then you heard Hebrew English different Arabic dialects as well as Greek Turkish Yiddish Ladino Russian. Now you could not be caught on the wrong sidle of the divide. This was a time and place were Jews were trying to lose their Russian , Polish and Arab identity and create something new. United Nations had no way to enforce the partition plan. The civil war was on amongst Jewish and Arab irregular the Invasion by Arab armies would follow in 4 months once the British had pulled out. Lebanon had Christian's with an affinity to France, Sunnis with an Syrian affinity. there were Greeks, Armenians and communists and Arab nationalists. In Jaffa and Lod 4 Jews were caught posing as Arab and spies- Iraqi or Yemenite. Around this time Holy Jihad detonated a stolen British army truck in downtown Jerusalem flattening building and killing nearly 60 people. The kibbutz was considered the elite of Zionism and the Palmach the elite of the kibbutz. Sa'man had grown up in middle class Bagdad and had a British colonial education, he became the teacher of the spies to follow the most famous spy he trained was Eli Cohen who was born in Egypt to Syrian parents caught in spring 1965. Most Arabic speaking Jews had to learn about Islam and that was Sa'mans job. The Arabic speaking kids would sing Arabic song around the camp fire and were considered unique entertainment by the Europeans but not quite socially part of them, but the Palmach saw their value. Arabs entered Jewish areas in British army uniforms. Germans dropped Arab agents into Palestine in 1944 as Arabic speaking Jews. Jewish immigrant vessels Vrisi sunk in the harbour in Genoa and Pan Crescent disabled in Venice. The Hannah Senesh was beached on the rocks on Christmas eve as it was assumed that British troops were too drunk to deal with this. In summer 1947 President Warfield became known as Exodus. There were Syrian workers in the Haifa port from impoverished Houran region who watched the Exodus crises. Native Arab families were outnumbered by immigrants Arabs from all over the Arab world. In Haifa the Arabs had a lot of guns at the Najada storerooms. In Haifa native Arabs were outnumbered by migrants from the Arab world. Wealthy Arabs were leaving Haifa to wait out in a safer place and the poor said "look at the rich and effendis why should I stay?" Fawzi el Qawugji whose of the Arab Liberation Army had a flag of a maged david with a dagger into that. . There were Arab collaborators willing to work for Jews for money against their political enemies. Sheikh Muhammad Nimr el Khatib (the tiger) a preacher who was organizing fighters. Gamliel heard this Nimr preaching incitement, he praised el Qassam as a hero. Operation Starling was set up to kill him when he returned from Beirut by car, when a Jewish spy in the Haifa phone exchange reported his return and route. They drove after him and shot his guards and wounded him but he got to Haifa survived but left for Lebanon a few months later. Also the Arab military commander in Haifa also fled. Everyone thought that Arab armies would soon arrive to defeat the Jews. These Jewish spies travelled to Lebanon an busses that were taking Palestinian refugees on the way north they saw a well armed Arab army heading south. Jews in Aleppo had from 637 AD taken on Arab culture mista arvim, Sephardim arrived after1492. An English visitor to Aleppo in 1756 described that Jews are held in greater contempt than Christians there. Arabs have a carefully observed etiquette. The teenagers from Arab countries who arrived and were taken in on youth aliya found themselves discriminated against as the other from Europe had a common experience and they worked to become Israeli. Finally when they were wanted for the secret service not to be Israeli's but to be Arabs. On the border in the Jerusalem area General Husseini of Jordon was seen by an Israeli who greeted him in Arabic, thinking he was a British soldier he answered in English and the Israeli shot him. Jewish British cooperation to attack Vichy controlled Lebanon, The Sea Lion carried 23 Jewish fighters but was lost. In the Haifa Arab sector an newly painted British Ambulance Truck that was to be a bomb in a Jewish area was blown up by them by driving a bomb car into this garage. The detonator was a ampule of acid that dropped onto a condom and it took 7 minutes for the acid to get through this onto the explosive. It was reported that Germans were working in Arab countries and the best trained Arab explosive skill came from them. A year later in Beirut he met an old Palestinian who said his sons were mechanics and were killed there. These spies if in Palestine could cross the zone to the Jewish section if in danger or put themselves at the mercy of the British but here the had nowhere to find refuge if caught. Kipling's Kim this was a book that many knew well. and Kim Philby were popular code names for spies and Philby father became a Moslem. Lebanese army units were serving with Yugoslavs volunteers. The mood in the Arab armies had changes and they were no longer confident of routing the Jews. When the army took over the Palmach the Arab sector became the Shin Mem18. The Arabs explained that they lost the war because of American money and Czech planes. Israel was a state in the Middle East but had been dreamed up to solve a European problem but half the population were now Jews of origin in Islamic countries. It was easier to get killed due to friction between sects than for being a spy in the Arab world. Gamiel /Yusuf sent up a dress shop and could support himself and just had to wait for information. He had come from the Jewish quarter of Damascus and crossed the border We saw that in the ME all minorities not only Jews were effected. Lebanese PM Sami Solh was so anti Israel that they asked permission to kill him this was rejected but was assassinated by Arabs in 1951 Spring 1949 Transjordan changed its name to Jordan. Abdulla was perceived as collaborating with Israel. Palestinian refugees moved into old Jewish neighbourhoods in Beirut and Damascus. Most of them however were in camps and they reported back that the refugees were offered pity but little help by the Lebanese. International organizations were giving help but it did not reach the most needy. Rumours had been spread of Jews slaughtering and raping. However enthusiasm for the war was flagging. Some Lebanese Christians saw Israel as a potential ally to Christians this part of Islamic world. The also reported that Beirut was undefended against air attacks. They reported what good were arriving at the port including some weapons. The Palmach achieves show they bought a camera and took pictures that they thought might be of military interest. At a later stage Yakuba arrived with enough money to buy an Oldsmobile and got a taxi licence this way they had an income, transport and could find out from fares what was happening. Aviso Grille was Hitler yacht to be used to land in England and when it was seen in Beirut they blew it up with Limpid bombs. In Beirut there was a small Jewish community but a clear line was kept between Jewish agents and Jewish residents. Yussef joined the neighbourhood fascist party and reported back on all he learned about it. A speech by Antoun Saadeh (a Christian )that he heard against the perfidy of the Jews. Thus Christians could be Arabs but not Jews. There was also a higher chance of getting killed for being in the wrong religious sect, than because you were a spy. When the Palmach was disbanded this became part of the IDF Arab section called Shi Mem18 Yussef signed up again with the IDF and spent years in Europe posing as an Arab embassy clerk and later a journalist. Initially the British didn't want to train Jewish soldiers as they thought it would set up a 5th column or a IRA type militia. When the Germans were winning in Al Alamein they set up the Palmach. They even had a German unit speaking living and marching like Nazis made up of German Jews in case of a German invasion. If Rommel invaded from Egypt the Carmel mountains were organized to be the last defense of the British and the Yishuv. A special operations school near Haifa was set up by the British to train Jews, Albanians, Yugoslavs and others. Patrick Lee Fermor who later kidnapped a German General in Crete was one of the trainers. In 1941 a mission was set up to sabotage an oil refinery under Vichy control in Lebanon. A open boat called the Sea Lion set was lost with all 23 including a British observer. 1948 14th May the HMS Euryalus sailed away with governor Alan Cunningham and the Union Jack came down for good. The book end discussing that Israel was set up to solve a problem of Jews in Europe but half the population that arrived were Jews of Arab countries. Today 70 years later the mainstream Israeli music is connected to Arabic, Persian and Ladino tunes. The fact that secularism never caught on in the Islamic world. Judaism has proved more resilient even with secularism. Westerners don't understand that there is no place for the weak in the Middle East and there is no place for any minority in the Arab world today One of todays problems is that the children of the Jews have been brought up speaking Hebrew and not Arabic.

The Password is Courage by John Castle 1954 220pg 10/4/23

 My father was at POW in Stalig VII in Upper Silesia  and always told us stories of his experience as well as stories of others. At the age of 85 he wrote Hillie's War Story 118 pages which my wife published on Amazon Kindle after he died.  https://www.amazon.com/HILLIES-WAR-ROMMEL-PATTON-MEMOIRS-ebook/dp/B01DLY5Y0W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XEI601FAAN4O&keywords=From+Rommel+to+Patton+by+Hillel+Feldman&qid=1682256197&s=books&sprefix=from+rommel+to+patton+by+hillel+feldm%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C2118&sr=1-1

John Castle's book is a work of  fiction he has taken the license to include all the stories he both took part in and heard from others but they are basically stories similar to what my father told us. Do not regard this as a History book.

The narrator is called Mr. Coward and was a Cockney and did a term of service in India in 1924 and returned home working in entertaining. When WW2 began he volunteered and was captured when his unit was trying to flee back to Calais. While being marched he escaped and hid in a haystack. He was captured but on his second escape was wounded and was hiding in a barn when German orderlies brought in wounded German soldiers he found a blanket and covered himself and received a ration was taken to a hospital where he was treated this whole German troop were awarded Iron Crosses. When he was discovered he was transferred to a POW camp.

In a work camp he claims that he worked at the de Havilland factory and the Germans wanted information on what was happening there, so he asked for double rations for his hut and gave them stories till they realized he knew nothing.

Lambsdorf  Stalag VIIB was build in 1915 for captured British soldiers from the Western front but was extended in 1943 and  house 12000 British POW. A mixture of Australians , Canadians New Zealanders Brits and S. Africans. Suicides were not uncommon by attempting to climb the fence and being shot. The Canadians were captured at the failed Dieppe raid.1943. Once the allies started winning the war there were no new prisoners except RAF pilots shot down and once the American might began US bombers that had crews of 13.

The prisoners used to get a regulars supply of Red Cross parcels and without them wound not have survived.

Army private were allowed to be used for worked which was not connected to the war effort and there gave scope for sabotage and escape. NCO could volunteer for work parties.

He and mate had forged papers of a Bulgarian worker and got a train to Dresden then to Chemnitz (later Karl Markstad in East Germany) and from there to Ulm, hoping to cross into Switzerland . At every station SS checked everyone's documents both coming and going he was finally caught and taken to the Ulm Castle, he was beaten up and sent back to Lambsdorf.  

A captured Frenchman had genuine travel warrants to Stettin in the north and he bought one of them. On arriving at the camp he told the guards his pant were crawling with lice and they never checked what was stitched into them.

On being recaptured escapes were put into the cooler of solitary confinement for a week or more. British soldiers were treated well as Germany wanted German POWs treated well.

There was a Russian POW camp nearby and Russia had not sighed the Geneva convention so had no Red Cross laws and protection. This camp might have had as many as a million prisoners and were in unhealthy condition and typhus spread amongst them. Carts took their bodies for burial when the British complained they should treat these bodies with respect so they were taken in coffins but the returning carts brought the coffins back.

A German guard with his vicious attack dog thought he would release it into a room of Russian for fun, within minutes the dog noise stopped and later its cleaned  skeleton was tossed out by the starving Russians.

Wing Commander Douglas Bader was brought to Lambsdorf after he had been at Luft III at Sargen near Breslau but gave the Germans a hard time. Despite his prosthesis legs he escaped a number of times till he ended up in Colditz.

For the S. Africans and Australians it was the first time they saw snow and played in it like children.

Coward was sent to be in charge of a work team at a sugar factory in Czechoslovakia near Stad-Bau.

The German officer in charge took prisoners money to buy them booze and kept it. Coward made a concoction of the drugs he had and that evening when the officer came for real coffee he had mug full of the drug went out and was found dead in the snow  of a heart attack. On a misty night 15 of them escaped, 3 managed to avoid recapture. You find yourself in a totally hostile world, he got to Bratislava and then Vienne where he was picked up by a prostitutes' and though he would have a warm bed for the night but she walked him hand in hand to the police station.

He was sent to a work group in a camp at Monowitz 3 miles from Auschwitz, This had been an Austrian Cavalry camp before WW1 They were there to install heavy electricity cables.   This was set up by Himmler with Col Rudolf Hoess and Kramer known as the Beast of Belsen. By 1941 Jews started being sent to Auschwitz. Here the average expectancy of life was 40 working to death. In 1945 Hoess the Commandant boasted about his achievements openly in  1947 he was extradited to Poland where he was hanged at Auschwitz.

Prisoner always claimed they were sick to get days off work if they really were they wee sent back to Lamsdorf for treatment under British doctors. Coward was asked as a favour to bring a group of prisoner workers to the marshaling yard.  This was part of the war effort and instead of refusing they arrived. By 1943 the Allied bomber were paying attention to the railways and as no new rolling stock was available there were bottlenecks and Prison labor was need ed to sort out these jams They worked managed  and  got the trains off on time but  switched destination labels and made small holes in the roofs of the cars .  Petrol tankers leaked, contents were wet and spoiled, coupling were unscrewed to the last turn, factory parts instead of food and supplied arrived and the battlefront and in 2 weeks they were quietly withdrawn from the job.

Half the prisoners in Birkenau were non Jews and the Polish underground managed to steel dynamite from the German warehouse and send it into a concentration camp to blow up the furnaces.5 of which had been put out of action and 30 guards. 

When the Normandy landing began they started seeing American aircraft in the air. As the war became more difficult for the German they became crueler. Red Cross parcels became fewer and with the Russians moving in from the east , they started moving POWs westwards.and all over Germany there were Death Marches going on with the German's leading them not having definite plans and the Russians were breaking through. 

Later at the Nuremburg Trials the narrator gave evidence against IG Farbenindustrie official who used slave labour and starved workers to death.

Historic correction noted below

Alon Shapira

The Password is Courage isn't so much 'a novel' but largely a work of fiction. 2 points in your account worth noting. 1) You mention Coward received a German Iron Cross. It's nonsense. 2) 'Half the prisoners in Birkenau were non Jews and the Polish underground managed to steel dynamite from the German warehouse and send it into a concentration camp to blow up the furnaces. 5 of which had been put out of action and 30 guards.' -- By 1942 the Jews were the majority of the prisoners in Birkenau. More significantly, Coward claimed in the book that he was instrumental in blowing up 3 of the 5 furnaces in mid-44. If that was the case, how did so many Jews perish after that period? In fact, the Sonderkommando Revolt was on 7 Oct '44 and only one furnace was destroyed. Himmler gave the order to destroy the rest on Nov 25, '44. The last one was demolished on 26 Jan '45, a day before the Russians liberated Auschwitz. -- Coward's other major claim to have been instrumental in the escape of 400 Jews from Monowitz is not supported by a scrap of evidence and is demonstrably fictitious.--The one story of real interest is Coward's claim to have swapped identity with a Jewish prisoner to enter the concentration camp to look for the 'Jewish naval doctor', (though not Birkenau as related in the book, but KZ Monowitz as Coward testified in Nuremberg). The Jewish naval doctor was Dr Karel Sperber. I've since uncovered the source story in a recently declassified file at The National Archives based on the testimony of another POW. I've also exposed the sham hoax book by Denis Avey 'The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz' - the title being a verbatim plagiarism of the blurb describing Coward in the 1988 & 2001 paperback editions of The Password Is Courage. Avey appropriated Coward's story and Avey's fabrication is disproven by copious Forensics, while revealing his real history, that he whitewashed his own father was with him as a fellow POW in E715 Auschwitz for a period of 3 months in summer 1944. I'm doing all I can to have Avey's fraudulent book withdrawn from publication, and to publish a book of his real history, which is far more fascinating as is often the case.

 

The chancellor : The remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel by Kati Marton 2021 329pg

23/3/2023

No leader of the post WW2 stage has protected liberal democracy as she did. She was a divorced Protestant from East Germany living with her male lover. She got things done quickly without boasting of her achievements.

2009 She appointed a gay foreign minister. She had a scientific ability to break down problems to component part and a ravenous apatite for work. 

1919 After the end of WW1 Weimer was the Capital of High German Culture and deputies gather there to form the Weimer Republic with a Hugo Preuss  a Jewish lawyer who drafted a liberal constitution.

1943 Hamburg was flattened by a fire storm killing 40,000 inhabitants. Born here in 1954

1948 Marshall plan allocated $15 billion to finance the rebuilding of West Germany while the East was stripped of factories and wealth by the soviet dictatorship.

1949 Socialist East Germany was a Russian satelite and in 1953 the workers revolted. The same brutal patter was seen in Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Ukraine in 2014.

1953 the Leipzig University was renamed Karl Marx University.

1954The family lived in Hamburg but her pastor father Horst Kasner was asked to move to East Germany to run a parish there.

1961 The border with West Germany was closed in a desperate attempt to salvage Communist East Germany.

Her mother was an English teacher who was not allowed to teach English but taught her a serviceable English.

In Communist society religion became a private sphere, but she understood that the weakest of the society must not be wronged. She won the Russian Language Olympics and a trip to Moscow. She was admitted to a secondary school instead of a technical school unusual for a clergyman's child.

1969 Heard on the radio clandestinely Andrei Sakharov's essay on the danger of Moscow's arms race.

She received the top honors in mathematics and physics and Russian at the Templin Gymnasium.

1973 Started studies in Physics at Leipzig university. City of Bach, von Schiller, Goethe, Max Beckmann.

Heidrich Boll won the Nobel prize for literature but you had to get permission to read his book in the East. Leipzig university was the altered little since Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner Werner Heisenberg and Gustav Hertz. out of 70 freshmen there were only 7 women. They also had to study Marxist Leninism and English material had to be translated into Russian and only then could they see it.

1974 aged twenty she met Ulrich  Merkel and they married to be able to get an apartment, while she did her masters. Her Masters thesis was "Aspects of Nuclear Physics and it was published in the English journal Chemical Physics.

1977 the fictional US TV drama Holocaust was watched by 20 million Germans and opened a national debate.

1981 she was enthusiastic about her visit to Poland with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement.

1986 received PhD is physics in Berlin and did scientific research on a shoestring budget and divorced Ulrich. When She was approached by the Stasi to become an informer she told them that she was a chatterbox and could not keep secrets so got out of it.

1991 Gorbochev came to power in the Kremlin when the Soviet economy was suffering from the long war in Afghanistan.

On the 40th anniversary of the WW2 she was stunned to hear a recording of West German President Richard von Weizsackers blunt reckoning of the holocaust, 22 million Russians had died fighting fascist and East Germany saw her self as a victims not perpetrator of war crimes. Only communist victims were talked about and that Jews were usually friends of the communists. The Shoah would be central to her leadership and conviction of Germanies debt to the Jews.

1989 In a televised press the spokesment was asked when could free trave begin to the West he answered "Sofort" immediatly. Churchill 1946 Iron Curtain with Gorbochev tacit agreement fell, and bananas suddenly became available in East Germany.

Angela now wanted a new career. The planned economy of East Germany  was now unable to compete and you had the ten-ten generation, Ten years too old to reinvent themselves and ten years to young for a pension.

Instead of a dead end lab job that would not lead to a Nobel Prize she joined a new East German party the Democratisher Aufbruch (DA) of Democratic Awakening. At the first meeting she saw that new computors had arrived and she opened them and set them up. Germany was now Europes biggest county and Britian and France had to be convinced that they did not pose an economic threat.

1990 she resigned her academic job to work full time in politics as the DA spokesperson. Few Est German politician were fmale and most men wer found to be Stasi informers.  1991 took her place in the cabinet next to Helmut kohl knowing that tokenism had got her there.

Bonn became the German Capital after WW2 as it was near Konrad Adenauer home. it is known as the birthplace of Beethoven. Kissinger called on her and they had a lot in common as both had to reinvent themselves  in strange new lands, and she was Germanies youngest minister at 36 and she had a presence. She later campaigned for and won a seat in the Bundestag in Mecklenburg Vorpommern.

She visited Israel and later as Chancellor would return to visit many times.

1994 Clinton and Kohl walked from West to East through the Brandenburg Gate, this followed Kennedys 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" and Reagans plea  "Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall" in 1987.

1994 she got the environment portfolio, and took English classes to improve her speech. In 1995 160 nations came to Berlins Natural History Museum for the UN Climate Conference. The Berlin Mandate was signed and 2 years later this led to the Kyoto Protocol.

When an article criticized a Government  Minister for living in sin in 1998 she married Joachim Sauer.

1998 Helmut Kohl after 16 years in power was defeated through a financial scandal.

2000 Merkle became the CDUs chairman elected without opposition.  That year Berlin became the Federal Republics official capital 

2005 Chancellor Gerhard Schroder call for early election and Angela Merkel was the first female chancellor and was sworn in at the Reichstag building. There are 16 Lander in the that make up Germany. She had a visceral loathing of dictators and she wanted to make Germany strong enough to stand up to Russia. She felt that inspiring a crowd is a dangerous gift and prefers to be an uninspiring wise costodian of the liberal West.

She avoided public media, and she had no flatterers on her staff. Konrad Adenauer tied Germany destiny to the west when he became leader of a ruined nation.  The chancellery houses 500 civil servants and a hundred policy advisors.

2008 She visited the Knesset and spoke in German and met holocaust survivors. She had a good relationship with Ehud Olmert but gave up having a productive partnership  once Bibi was PM in 2009.

2009 she rebuked the Pope a German for reinstating 4 excommunicated Holocaust  denying bishops and the Bishops in question were re excommunicated.

1986 Chernobyl in the Soviet Union and with 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, she decide on an immediate phase out of nuclear energy. Joseph Stiglitz  a Nobel prize winner pointed out that Nuclear energy gets government subsidies.

She had a great bond with George W Bush and a commitment to a trans Atlantic  relationship, and was invited to Bushes Crawford Ranch. She was present at the World Cup soccer in Germany.

2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm Germany she got Bush to publicly recognize climate change. However opposed Bushes plans to offer Ukraine and Georgia NATO membership.  She said  never hate you enemies it effects your judgement.

Putin was a KGB officer in Dresden and his object  was to blackmail and lure scientists and businessmen to be recruits for the Soviets. When the Berlin wall fell he phoned and  Moscow was silent  of what to do. They had to burn all the Stasia and KGB records, this took 4 days at their headquarter and drive with his wife and daughters to Russia. Angela Merkel had hitchhiked to parts of the Soviets that were closed to foreigners. She knew the Soviets and in her Putin had met his match. he could not use his tricks with her. He is believed to be one of the worlds wealthiest men.Putins older brother had died in the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

In 2001 Putin spoke in German to the Bundestag pledging that Russia wanted to be a friendly European nation, the Parlament stood up and cheered while Angela barely clapped, she knew about the KGB and loyalties that others did not.

2006Anna Politikovskaya was shot in her apartment lift on Putin's 54th birthday, and when Putin met her at Dresden Castle she told him that this murder must be solved. Putin released disinformation to weaken Angela electoral chances. He wants to better Stalin 34years holding power.

Angela intervened when Alexei Navalny collapsed brought him to Germany and visited him.

She declined to cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline knowing that Ukraine would be the biggest loser but said the advantages outweigh the disadvantages - big business.

She traded with China which was a big market for German cars but by meeting the Dalai Lama in Berlin started getting a cold shoulder by the Chinese.  

When in Washington she wanted to meet Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan and Senators Susan Collins and Dianne Feinstein and Melinda Gates.

Unlike Merkel, Margaret  Thatcher's closest aides were all men. She had a good grasp on minutiae and was always trong in substance not talk she spent many hours with Australia's PM Kevin Rudd.

2018 in Israel she met Israel business leaders and got a honorary doctorate from Haifa University.

Ronald Reagan and George H W bush were her heroes for enabling German unification. Initially she was skeptical of Obama as he was able to touch people with his speeches. She liked Obamas Affordable Care Act. Putin Erdogan Netanyahu and later Trump she considered world trouble makers. 

She got on well with Obama and both had read Yuval Harari's book Sapiens. She always said wars have unintended consequences and seldom solve problems.

America's whistle blower took a gift of pages of classified documents to the Washington Post and it showed that Angela's private phone was tapped by the US intelligence cooling the relationship.

2008 The financial crises caused discord in Europe where 5 million lost their jobs .Germany has a system that workers go onto short time rather than losing their jobs. Half of Greek youth were unemployed. She was not prepared to give a bailout till she saw responsible behavior of the Greek Government. Note the German word skuld means both debt and guilt, she did not want to support a dependency culture in Greece. Both Italy's Berlusconi and Greece's Papandreou had to accept Eu monitors supervising the countries finances , they had no choice. Higher taxes and spending cuts in exchange for a 3rd bailout. The extreme Right wing party AfD Alternative fur Deutschland was founded as a result this.

2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.

2013 Chemical weapons were used in Damascus and American needed Germany's support.

Ukraine had suffered badly under Hitler's Holocaust and later under Stalin Holodomor the collectivization  and famine .

2014 after having a puppet government held in place by Moscow, Ukraine was on the brink of signing a wide ranging political and economic agreement with Europe, but when Yanukovych refused and his troops opened fire on demonstrators in Kiev, he fled to Moscow.  Putin grabbed Crimea and the Donbas. Europe started investing in helping Ukraine develop its army.

Angela was Obama's contact in Europe and they were on the phone continuously She flew 38 trips trying to deal with Putin's lies.

2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Angela announced that there would be no G8 summit in Sochi and that Russia was no longer a member of the club. Flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Airlines flight was hit by and antiaircraft missile killing all 298 passengers son route to an AIDS conference. Angela eventually got a cease fire agreement from Putin but had no illusions of it poor value. Sanction by European business began, but Putin's oil and gas revenue appeared safe.

2015 Germany became the moral centre of the world when Germany received a million Syrian Refugees even Hungary who blocked the path agreed to allow the mass of humans to pass through Keleti station. Very different from the Avion Convention of 1938 of 32 nation that decided to do nothing about the Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler. The Tempelhof airport (Build for the 1961  Berlin blockade) housed thousands and half the refugees were under 25 and they were quickly absorbed into Germany. Refugees  fleeing become very loyal to host countries, very different from economic migrants. Thousands of volunteers helped and this strengthened the German economy, when half of them were either employed or joined job training. This also resulted in Erdogan of Turkey agreeing to absorb refugees and closing the border.

2016 Brexit was bitter for Angela as in provided 40% of Europes defence budget and good new for Putin.

2017 to 2021  When Trump won the US election the Russian Parliament jumped for joy.

Obama came to Berlin and spend hours meeting Angela that she must now be the leader of  the Free world. If she  left the field Trump, Putin and Xi would have a free hand and she had to keep the Western Alliance united. She thus stood for a forth term, she also said that Trump will not change when he gets into power and will deliver on his promises. Trump had fake Time magazine covers printed of him as Man of the Year till Time threatened to sue. She said I never though we could destroy the West from the inside, when he tried to destroy NATO. She knew she could not lecture this "half page man" but she was able to woo Ivanka Trump at the Women 20 summit.

Germany increased her Defence budget by 40%

From the Treaty of Augsburg in 1555 gave70 years  peace which ended with the 30 Years War 1616 -1648  70 year is because few people have personal recollections of war and these wars decimated European populations.

China rose showing that a autocracy can become a  major economic power. This now is an illusion.

Shimon Stein a former Israeli ambassador became one of her close friend and advisors and he retired in Germany. The AfD also objected to the fact that there was a stage that 80% of Berlins students spoke a first language other than German. Women of the East benefitted better than men and supported AfD far less. More should have been done in retraining Ossies (East Germans) East Germany had become an appendix,  perhaps the Federal Republic should have changed its name. Many refugees came from places where they hated Jews and this could change the delicate balance.

After WW2 Germany received 11 million German speaking refugees and she insisted "we are a nation of refugees"

2018 Angela gave up the chairmanship of the CDU  Christian Democratic Union to have time to deal with foreign matters.

France is the only Weater democracy that holds military parades on Bastille Day. America and Germany frown on this. French German partnership were always the cornerstone of Europe and she managed well with Macron.

2020 March  the Covid crises. As a scientist she was equipped to deal with this challenge  she understood well the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic. German hospital never overflowed and Germany suffered a third of what France did.

German companies kept their workers on their payroll with government help . Germanys GDP suffered only 6% drop as opposed to France 10 to 13 %. A historic Euro 50 billion had the support of both France and Germany made available the worse hit Europeans.

1790 agreement between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson federalized the debts of American states. Europe now was working together to deal with debt.

2012 Xi Jinpings new constitution made clear his priority of absolute power. She understood that China was keen to a agreement with Europe which Trump spent 4 years abusing it, and Europe managed without American help.

Angela role never became her identity, she never left her rent controlled apartment in central Berlin.

2021 Jan 6th she was shattered by the Trump mob in Washington. The big lie of the stolen election reminded her of the Big Lie of Germany being "stabbed in the back "by Communist and Jews after WW1. She was considered the world s most honest politician.

Asked what should be printed on her epitaph she answered "She Tried"

                     Federal Republic of Germany

• Konrad Adenauer (1949–63)                   14 years  
• Ludwig Erhard (1963–66)                       3
• Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966–69)             3
• Willy Brandt (1969–74)                         5
• Helmut Schmidt (1974–82)                  8
• Helmut Kohl (1982–98)                         16
• Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005)             7
• Angela Merkel (2005–21)                     16years
• Olaf Scholz (2021– )
   
  East Germany DDR 
• Walter Ulbricht  1950 to 1971    20 years
  Erich Honecker1971  to 1989     18 years

Duel for Kilimanjaro: An account of the East African Campaign 1914-1918 by Leonard Mosley 1963 229pg

German East Africa became Tanganyika under the British in 1918   4/4/23 

Many Europeans on both sides  who fought with  black soldiers "askaris" treated them badly but not the German Lieutenant General Lettow Vorbeck, Note in Deutsch-Ostafrika some of the sons who fought beside him later went into government positions in Tanganyika.  Lettow Vorbeck was 94 years old when this book was written and helped the writer. Zanzibar was a British colony and the British governor indicated that if German East Africa remained neutral this was possible keep out of the war

1914 July Dar es Salaam was under governor Dr. Heinrich Shnee who wanted to keep this German colony neutral . Lettow Vorbeck was a German soldier of the unorthodox like Gordon , Kitchener, Lawrence or Wingate. He also got  his bush  training in SW Africa where the  Herero's rose up in 1904. He learned that a small force of guerillas can succeed. When the war started he wanted the colony to pin down large British forces to keep them from fighting against Germany in Europe.

LV had German home defense forces - Schutztruppe attack the railway line from Mombasa to Uganda, this troup was made up of volunteer German farmers under Captain von Prince.

1914 German East Africa  was made up of a population of 7,650,000. 53 tribes 15000 Indians, Arabs and 5336 whites.  White settlers supplanted Masai tribesmen and planted and grew sisal there. Vast expanses known are peri with lots of bogs and anopheles mosquito and tsetse fly.

1885The Congo Act pledged that if these countries went to war they would keep these African colonies neutral. Signed by Germany, France, Great Britain and Belgium. 

In 1885 Chancellor Bismarck laid the foundation for this against the wishes of the Reichstag in Berlin to spite the British who dominated Africa. The German East Africa Company was given the charter. Initially 1889 it was to fight the slave trade. The German foreign minister Caprivi dealt with this and in 1891 it was proclaimed a protectorate under the German Empire.

 The early German Colonists regarded the natives as cheap labour to be exploited, and virtually turned them into slaves. This had resulted in the Majj Majj rebellion of 1905. Berlin ordered a commission of enquiry which whitewashed the administration but the message got across that for Germany to succeed a new start must be made.

The colonial government was meant to act as  a trustee for the native peoples. Dr. Heinrich Shnee the Governor liberalized the harsh labour laws and brought a medical care as well as schooling to the natives who respected him, more than the whites.

The Hamburg Institute of Tropical Medicine worked in Dar es Salaam on research on sleeping sickness.

This colony was not economically viable and was a drain on Berlin. A railway ran from Tanga to |New Moshi by Mount Kilamanjaro and from Dar es Salaam to lake Tanganyika. Cotton sisal and coffee were starting to provide an economy.

When the war began the  German cruiser Konigberg was in the colony Rafiji delta.  It was stuck here for lack of coal eventually a ship Kronberg slipped through the British blockade but hit by the British and ran aground later its supplies were salvaged by manual labor. This gave the German some big guns ammunition and tents and telegraph equipment. The Koningberg was hit by the British but its supplies were also salvaged as in was in the shallows and the Captain and 322 crew members joined the German fighters, and took the heavy guns  cannons of the ship.

Tanga was the second port of the colony from where a thriving trade of copra, bananas, cocoa, pineapples, sesame,  sisal and  cotton took place.  The British brought forces from India and tried invading via Tanga but the Germans were ready for this and it was a great British defeat leaving behind hundred of rifles ammunition's coats and blankets to last the war. This German success resulted in thousands of native volunteering to join the Schutztruppe as well as all Europeans who joined up.

Many Germans soldiers had native wives and the native troops had their wives following the expedition the Arab troops had boys looking after them.

The German's main target was the Ugandan Railway that started in Mombasa then Nairobi and into the hinterland. The German guerillas hid in the wooded slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and in 1915 32 trains and 9 bridges were blown up.  The British put a ruse by putting dead birds near a pool that had a sign "Poison" this rendered 80 miles of track protected but was a breach of international law.

1916 South. Africa's General Botha put together an army of 15,000 soldiers but because he was running for election General J C Smuts was appointed  Imperial  Commander in Chief of West Africa. The Germans under LV just fired their big guns at the advancing British army and fled. Then came the rainy season making transport very difficult through the mud and swelling rivers. As they moved into the swampy areas their animal began to die from tsetse fly and they suffered malaria.

The Belgium's were attacking from the Congo and the German's were worried that they would take reprisals for the German atrocities in Belgium. From Nyasaland General Northey was attacking.

The British occupied the coastal cities first Tanga the Dar es Salaam. 12,000 SA whites troops were sent back to S. Africa to recuperate in a healthy climate. Soldiers were raised from Nigeria , India and the Kings African Rifles from Kenya, also West Indians more familiar to tropical conditions. There were also Cape Coloreds.  Kitchener had believed that sending troops into Tanganyika was futile. Smuts returned to South Africa and General van Derventer took command of the British forces.

LV  badly needed supplies and was running out of quinine. Someone in Berlin had an idea so send a Zeppelin but LV army never had a radio and the British received the message and had the German codes. The sent a message that LV had capitulated and the Zepelin must abort its journey.

1887 the Klonga Triangle that belonged to the Sultan of Zanzibar was taken over by the Portuguese, but in 1894 the Germans took this from them. The Portuguese troops were to be  stationed on the Rovuma river but LV troops set on them before they could establish a fortress and routed them all. The German were able to replenish their supplies get new rifles and dump all their 1871 guns.  In Chirumba  a Portuguese village the Shutztruppe  stayed in the comfort of  the buildings during the rainy season in a far better climate and relaxed and recovered. Spanish flu had reached this part of the world killing or putting hundred of troops out of action on both sides.

1918 10th The German Kaiser abdicated and on the 11th Nov. the Armistice took place. On the 14th Lettow Vorbeck was informed to capitulate, he was now concerned that his askaris and porters be paid and the money involved was 1.5 million rupees. By this stage Spanish flu was raging in Dar es Salaam. LV cabled his betrothed in Germany who still wanted to marry him. 

The book includes a map showing the long rounte that the Shutztruppe  travelled to keep the British chasing them. At most they consisted of 3000 whites and 11,000 blacks. Under Hitler LV he was asked to become the German ambassador to London but he refused to join the Nazi party.