Every man and every woman

Let’s switch from one unprecedented 20^th Century global conflagration to another by moving on from the infancy of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Second Reich to the ignominious end of the Third.

At 0241 local time on Monday 7 May 1945, General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) signed the unconditional surrender document at Supreme Allied Command HQ in Reims, France, effectively ending the war in Europe. With Adolf Hitler dead by suicide and his top lieutenants either dead or in flight, with Germany in ruins, and with no resources (much less the long-promised “super weapons” that would save the master race), they were running out of options.

Hitler’s heirs had been equivocating for a few days with the Western Allies over the unconditional surrender requirement, largely to delay the inevitable so as allow tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians to flee westward and not be in Soviet-held territory at the moment that everything was officially frozen. They were also laboring under the pipe dream that they could somehow convince the Anglo-Americans to team up with them and drive eastward to take on their natural and mutual enemy, the Soviet Union.

Because the representatives were all old-school military, they expected to treat soldier-to-soldier with the Allies, with all courtesy attendant upon their rank. I don’t know whether they’d thought that clean uniforms would somehow cause SHAEF command to disassociate them from (among other things) the previously unimaginable horrors of places like Dachau, Bergen-Belsen or Mauthausen. But Eisenhower had visited Ordruf, part of the Buchenwald installation, and he refused to set eyes on Jodl and his entourage until after they’d signed the unconditional surrender.

Whereupon he curtly informed Jodl, "You will, officially and personally, be held responsible if the terms of this surrender are violated, including its provisions for German commanders to appear in Berlin at the moment set by the Russian high command to accomplish formal surrender to that government. That is all."

He refused to salute the Germans.

(They were rather like the German representatives to the Versailles Conference of 1919, who—by the time they arrived—had convinced themselves that Germany was no more culpable for the outbreak of war than everyone else, that the other nations at the conference recognized that, and that they would therefore be engaged in a somewhat technical exercise in diplomat-speak for a while, after which everything would return to normal. It never ceases to astonish me how delusional people can be, or how predictable their subsequent disastrous mistakes can therefore be.)

Later that day, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov and American, British and French representatives signed an identical document in Berlin, drawing a very final line under German resistance.

(And in less than two years, both Jodl and Keitel would be hanged as war criminals at Nuremberg. Their membership in the comrades-in-arms club hadn’t saved them from accountability for their actions while in Nazi service.)

By that time, word was seeping out that Germany was kaput, and—despite Stalin wanting to delay the announcement—Churchill proclaimed the surrender to a Britain that was already half-delirious with relief and hope, and the Western world partied like it was 1918.

In almost six years of war in Europe, 40 million people had died, half of them civilians. Millions were homeless, hundreds of thousands stateless. Pretty much everyone was somewhere on the hunger-to-starvation spectrum. Entire cities had been razed, libraries and museums burnt and looted. Nations had been bankrupted.

And they still faced the continuing war in the Pacific against Japan.

But for a few hours on 8 May there was literally dancing in the streets; laughing, kissing, comradery. In London, Buckingham Palace was lit by floodlights for the first time since 1939, and two searchlights shone a huge “V” above Saint Paul’s Cathedral. For a city that had spent almost six years in blackout, this was proof that people would once again be able to sleep through the night.

Just not that one.

Eisenhower’s message to his troops included these words:

"Let us have no part in the profitless quarrels in which other en will inevitably engage as to what country, what service, won the European war. Every man, every woman, of every nation here represented has served to the outcome. This we shall remember—and in doing so we shall be revering each honored grave, and be sending comfort to the loved ones of comrades who could not live to see this day.":

There are so few of those men and women left among us, but we can take some time to remember what they did then and in the following years, to rebuild society broken by years of total war. It’s V-E Day, 70 years on. What an amazing anniversary.

Sailing into history

When the Cunard liner Lusitania sailed from New York harbor on 1 May 1915 the passengers and crew were essentially spitting into the wind. Although not a warship—not even a merchant vessel—Lusitania was steaming into hostile waters, propelled not only by her four screws but also the sort of British arrogance that fostered the conviction that no one would attack a non-combatant flying the Union Jack, not even in on open seas in the middle of a war.

In one respect, you can sort of see that—there was something in effect called “Prize Rules” (sometimes referred to as “Cruiser Rules”), which dictated that warships could stop and search any merchant ship under any flag, and if contraband (war matériel, goods destined for an enemy, etc.) was found, the vessel could be seized or sunk—with provisions made for the rescue of any crew or passengers. Which seems very 18^th Century, quaint and rather gentlemanly. But submarines can’t operate like that—their effectiveness comes from striking unseen, and they have no capabilities for transporting either goods or persons not specifically useful to their mission.

That’s actually kind of the whole point of submarine warfare, um. Germany had declared unrestricted submarine warfare as of February, and made it quite clear that “unrestricted” included firing on suspect vessels—those flying flags of the Allied Nations (France and Britain, primarily, in the Atlantic), and those under neutral flag suspected of carrying contraband to the Allies. Although passenger ships weren’t really supposed to be on that list, it’s not always easy to distinguish a cargo vessel from a liner through a periscope.

Moreover—let’s understand that the Brits had on more than one occasion run up the Stars and Stripes on their ships as they navigated the waters around the British Isles. A violation of the rules of war, and a serious pisser to the Germans.

And Lusitania was basically the prime focus of both Britain and Germany. A thumping great four-funneled behemoth just screaming “Britannia rule the waves” steaming through open seas like it was 1910 sends messages, you know?

The British Admiralty (headed by one Winston Churchill) and Cunard management both knew that the Lusitania was in danger just because. And so did anyone reading US newspapers, where the German government ran advertisements warning passengers thinking of traveling on her that they were rolling the dice. In the New York Times, this notice ran in juxtaposition to the Cunard sailing schedule.

But—in the spirit of the arrogance I mentioned above—although proclaiming her purely commercial, non-military mission of transporting the mostly well-heeled back and forth between Liverpool and New York, on this voyage (and not for the first time) Lusitania was also carrying a substantial cargo of weapons (small arms) and ammunition destined for the Western Front. Which was spirited aboard and not mentioned to US Customs or on the original shipping manifestos.

Well, everyone basically shrugged their shoulders, crossed their fingers and held their breath. And you know the rest. On 7 May, about 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale (Ireland), the Lusitania’s path intersected that of U-20, which fired a single torpedo, hitting her on the starboard bow. A few moments later there was a second explosion, which has been attributed to various causes.

(The Admiralty insisted it must have been from a second torpedo, rather than open up the can of worms of all that ammunition in her hold. U-20 only fired the one torpedo, but this did not in any way alter the Admiralty’s focus. A boiler explosion has been ruled out, as has the notion that it was any gunpowder in the military consignment—the explosion came from nowhere near that hold. Recent scholarship leans toward the explanation that the single torpedo struck a coal bunker, which kicked up a lot of coal dust, which ignited and blew the second hole in the superstructure.)

At any rate, within a matter of minutes, Lusitania had sunk, with 1,191 of the 1,962 passengers and crew lost. Papers all over the world decried the barbarity (except in Germany, where there was a vast sense of triumph). There was even a push in resolutely neutral America to join the fight (128 Americans were among the dead), but President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan managed to keep that in check.

There was an Admiralty inquiry, which toyed with the notion of blaming the disaster on Lusitania’s captain, but in the end all responsibility and opprobrium was laid entirely at the feet of U-20, and the German High Command. No mention was made at this inquiry of the military cargo or failure to fully inform Lusitania’s captain that intercepted radio traffic had made it plain to the Admiralty that subs were in the area and that she was a named target. It was just Hun frightfulness, attacking a purely civilian target.

For a while—starting in September—the Germans rescinded the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. But in the face of the strangulation of the British naval blockade that was bringing the civilians of Germany close to starvation, the High Command recommenced it in early 1917. And in April, we entered the war.

Look—there’s a whole thing about Lusitania, as you’ll have noticed. It was an appalling choice to target passenger liners (which U-boats did), particularly one as distinctive as this one. Although there was a German attempt to bluster about mistaken identity, and then a claim that she was armed and therefore fair game, it was nothing but bluster and it conflicted with all the evidence that Lusitania was in fact a prized target for the U-boat fleet.

On the other hand, the Allies used passenger ships as auxiliary cruisers and troop transports, so not always so clear-cut a thing to distinguish legitimate targets. Mauretania and Aquitania, sister ships to Lusitania, served in the Gallipoli campaign. Olympic, sister ship to Titanic, was sunk in the Mediterranean in 1916, when she struck a mine while serving as a hospital ship.

Plus—see above about the Brits swapping flags as the occasion suited. Not the same thing as firing without warning, I know—chicanery as opposed to barbarism—but certainly indicative that everyone thought the rules of war were more guidelines than actual commitments.

It’s also indicative that already—nine months into the war—both sides were starting to get desperate to find ways to break the stalemate that had emerged from the confluence of technological advances and outdated tactics. The choices they made—deploying poison gas, Zeppelin attacks on civilian targets, running guns and munitions in the holds of passenger liners, unrestricted submarine warfare—were, in retrospect, bad ones. Bad because they not only didn’t achieve the hoped-for breakthroughs, but because they opened the floodgates for expanding total war in such a way that the lines between combatant and non-combatant just disappeared.

And that’s the way they are, even today, a hundred years later.

Mustn't grumble

For all you folks in the UK who go to the polls tomorrow, good on yer for exercising your right and your duty to vote. I understand perfectly that it’s an exercise in trying to send the least offensive, brain-dead and corrupt opportunists to Parliament, and that many of you are basically closing your eyes and hoping for the best.

I also have no doubt that were someone to somehow get on the ballot under the name “None of the Above”, s/he would win by a landslide. Thus has democracy evolved.

However, I do not want to hear a single word—not Peep One—about how painful it’s been for the last six weeks, having to listen to/watch the candidates prancing about the country promising you the moon and slagging off on their opponents. You get six weeks of it; we’re already seeing that for the presidential elections that don’t take place until November of next year. Every six hours we get another bozo declaring his/her candidacy, and it’s only going to get worse as time (but not politics) progresses.

You are—if you’ll forgive my tartness—complete pikers in this regard. So vote your heart, vote your party loyalty, vote your disgust, vote your hope. It’ll all be over by Friday.

And best of British luck on whatever you end up with.

Padding the facts, ma'am

It’s quite rare that I watch television in real time—usually a case of me channel surfing, finding something I think might be mildly amusing and then sticking with it for about 20 minutes before reaching for the remote. Typically 20 minutes is long enough to go through at least two commercial cycles; three if we’re talking USA or any of the Discovery franchise channels.

And occasionally I actually watch a commercial, usually because I find it so completely bizarre that I go slack jawed. As in the case of the one where two women are scolding consumers for “using period pads for pee”, urging us to buy their product and proposing alternative uses for the “period pads”.

You know the one I’m talking about.

But that’s not why I’m here today. Because today’s about one of that category of commercial that starts out like some kind of PSA or alert, and then rolls into a pitch for products related to bodily products. This one is from a while ago, but I found it so gobsmacking that I backed up the DVR and ran it through again, so I could get pictures.

It starts off with a few tones indicating “Alert” and this screen:

Like they’re fixing to give you some important health-related information. But then this blonde appears, with a banner informing us that, contrary to the previous screen, this ain’t nothing but an ad.

Then the pitch, which I frankly never actually heard, because I was too stunned by the visuals. Fortunately, however, this category of commercial always delivers the message in words and voice-over, because they assume you’re too dumb to read.

(Just like those announcements that “the following program contains material that may be unsuitable for all audiences; Viewer discretion is advised.” They flash the text up on the screen, then have a voice-over. What kind of surprises me is that PBS does that, and I rather thought they’d have a higher estimation of their viewers’ literacy levels. But evidently I’d be wrong.)

Here’s the thing that strikes me about their chosen spokes-bimbo: from the preternaturally wide eyes, she looks a little to me like the product is not, in fact, working fast enough to offer her relief.

Gratitude Monday: Wine, whiskey and chocolate

Gratitude Monday, and I’m grateful for the completely unexpected opportunity to talk with an extremely interesting company in the social intelligence sphere (data analytics for making sense of your social media presence), which occupied a good portion of last week.

It came about because I’d gone to a job-seekers meetup the previous week to share some info on hiring companies. I chatted with a fellow there, and then met with him last Monday because I wanted to know more about what he was looking for, to get a better handle on how to help him. In the course of that conversation, he mentioned knowing the CTO of this company, which had quite an interesting product marketing opening.

I mean—not only is the job description within my capabilities (with some room to stretch), but it lists as bonus points going to candidates who have “Familiarity with social media analytics solutions” and “Love of wine, whiskey or chocolate”.

Well, alrighty then.

Okay—I sent my CV to Robert, who forwarded it to the CTO on Tuesday morning. Within 30 minutes the CTO had passed it on to the CMO, who suggested we talk, which we did that afternoon. On Wednesday someone from HR emailed me to ask if I could meet with the SVP of Marketing in San Francisco, which I did on Thursday. It was a very engaging conversation, and I hope I was very kind when telling her that their website doesn’t really give me a lot of information about what they do.

Well, she asked. And it would be part of the job to make sure that they have a website that totally delivers the goods.

I’ve learned over the course of interviewing for jobs that I can’t predict how things will go. But I do know that this time I was focused on telling my story, on connecting the dots outlining how I can really make a difference in their operation, and on determining whether they have a culture in which I would thrive. So I believe I did my job, and we’ll see from here.

In the meantime, I’m really grateful that my impulse to help someone kind of reflected the same sort of generosity back onto me, and gave me this tremendous opportunity.