The news content and style were similar to those seen in the U.S. tabloid press. […] By the time the reports of the strikes were being published in Paris, the [Fascist] press devoted a large amount of coverage to USSR ‘purges’. The photographs and articles described the USSR as a mass grave. Stalin was presented to readers as the man who allowed and promoted violence, setting the conditions for the spread of moral anarchy. The [Fascist] mass media warned that anarchy would surge up in countries reluctant to join the anti‐communist crusade, as was the case in France.
News coming from Republican Spanish territories was impregnated with the same rhetoric and reports of ‘Republican misdeeds’ helped to further the construction of the socialist enemy in reports of ‘Paris, 1937’. On 18 April 1937, Il Popolo d’Italia published an allegorical cartoon entitled Towards the Bolshevik Heaven, representing the French Republic as a passenger on a roller coaster descending at full speed on a rail called ‘comfort’ before a subsequent arduous climb that represented the strikes.
On a similar theme, Il Popolo d’Italia on 25 April 1937 published a front‐page editorial which reported:
A full‐blown revolutionary scene. A gang of demonstrators stirred up by some angry and disheveled women took to vandalism, looting, attacking the town hall and taking the mayor prisoner, eventually forcing him to resign. One of the most rowdy—while the police were conspicuous by their absence—took the crucifix from above the tabernacle and used it as a baton, conducting a performance of the ‘Internationale’ in the square.
This article contains some recurring elements used in the fascist press as part of the construction of the ‘otherness’ of the French socialists: the unruly crowd; the absence of the police; the weakness of the authorities and the frequent cases of religious worship turning into violence.
[Fascist] journalists emphasised any episode that showed anti‐Catholic behaviour on the part of ‘others’, as was the case with news about Republican Spain. For example, one paradigmatic report of the funeral of a communist described how ‘he died the bourgeois way in his bed’, and how ‘the “comrades” present at the funeral waved a forest of red flags’.
[…]
A reporter wrote that France under the Popular Front ‘lacks national pride, it is a people where the will is missing; nobody is excited by work; nobody remembers the noble traditions of their country, which is now becoming forgetful and apathetic’ (Il Corriere della Sera, 19 June 1937. These opinions in the press, widespread at the time, intended to rhetorically construct a negative relationship between the [pseudo]socialist government, French national pride and the productivity system of the government lead by Blum.
On 23 June 1937, the day after Blum’s resignation, Il Popolo d’Italia printed a cartoon representing the fascist view of the situation: two grotesque characters representing Blum and red Bilbao prancing on a stage with Stalin killing prisoners and a mendicant shown as the international exhibition begging for alms. […] In addition to the reference to the Internationale being played in front of foreign diplomats, Il Popolo presented the French Socialists as ‘Bolsheviks’ in constant internal disagreement and with a total lack of authority.
(Emphasis added.)
Click here for events that happened today (October 15).
1872: Wilhelm Miklas, Austrofascist, was born.
1891: Tadashige Daigo, Axis vice admiral, came to life.
1893: Carol II of Romania, monarchofascist, blighted the earth.
1913: Wolfgang Lüth, Axis U‐boat captain, was brought into the world.
1934: Erwin Rommel’s superiors posted him to the Infantry School at Potsdam as an instructor.
1935: Axum fell to the Fascists, and the Naval Gazette revealed that the Kriegsmarine had already launched twenty‐one U‐boats. Likewise, the first three Panzer Divisions became established in the Wehrmacht. The Fascists placed the 1st Panzer Division under General Freiherr Maximilian von Weichs at Weimar, 2nd Panzer Division under Colonel Heinz Guderian at Würzburg and 3rd Panzer Division under General Fessmann at Berlin.
1936: The Battle of Sigüenza ended in a fascist victory, Imperial Japan founded the city of Toyonaka, Osaka, and the Third Reich officially prohibited Jewish teachers from public schools. On a minor note, Imperial cruiser Kumano launched at Kawasaki’s shipyard, Kobe. Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, a twoth cousin to the Emperor, represented the Imperial family.
1938: Walter Grabmann shot down an I‐16 fighter over Spain, and the Czechoslovakian government resigned after the Third Reich occupied the Sudetenland.
1939: Kriegsmarine pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee refueled from tanker Altmark.
1940: The Spanish anticommunists executed President Lluís Companys of Catalonia, and Berlin noted that about half the Czechs in occupied western Czechoslovakia could be assimilated into the German population. The other half, which included the intellectuals, was to be eliminated. Additionally, the Luftwaffe launched five fighter sweeps toward London and one over Southampton, both in England; the Aixs lost sixteen fighter and three bombers, while the Allies lost fifteen fighters along with six pilots. Overnight, four hundred Axis bombers dropped five hundred thirty tons of high explosives on London, slaughtering four hundred folk and wounding nine hundred; the Axis also asssaulted Bristol and Birmingham.
Axis submarine Enrico Toti fired at submarine HMS Triad, hitting her twice with the deck gun and spraying her with machine guns. As Triad attempted to dive, Enrico Toti scored a hit with a torpedo, sinking Triad at about 0130 hours and massacring the entire crew of fifty‐nine. Similarly, Axis submarine U‐93 sank Hurunui of Allied convoy OA‐228 northwest of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland just after 0000 hours; a couple humans died (but seventy‐two did not). Five hours later in the same general area, Axis submarine U‐138 sank Allied ship Bonheur (without killing anybody) and damaged Allied tanker British Glory (killing three) of Allied convoy OA‐228 between 0510 and 0515 hours. Axis submarine U‐103 sank Allied ship Thistlegarth northwest of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland at 1933 hours, massacring thirty folk but failing to kill nine. Far to the south, Axis submarine Comandante Cappellini sank Belgian ship Kabalo west of Casablanca, killing somebody.
1941: SS General Hans Frank, the Axis Governor‐General of occupied Poland, issued a general order proclaiming that any Jews leaving the Warsaw ghetto would be liable for the death penalty as would any person who knowingly gave shelter to such Jews. SS‐Brigadeführer Franz Stahlecker of Einsatzgruppe A also sent a 130‐page report to Berlin, noting that, among other things, 71,105 Jews had been liquidated in Lithuania and 30,000 Jews in Latvia, and 3,387 Communists in Russia.
Meanwhile in Russia, the 1st Panzer Division turned northwest, thus away from Moscow, to attack Soviet Northwestern Front from the rear. West of Ireland, Axis submarine U‐553 attacked Allied convoy SC‐48 at 0815 hours, sinking Allied ship Silvercedar (twenty‐one died, twenty‐six lived) and Norwegian ship Ila (fourteen died, seven lived). Merchant ship Silverelm attempted to ram the submarine, and hours later Allied destroyer HMCS Columbia attacked with depth charges, but none damaged U‐553. In the Atlantic Ocean, Axis submarine U‐558, en route to attack Allied convoy SC‐48, came across and sank Allied ship Vancouver Island at 2317 hours; all aboard were lost.
1942: Alfred Jodl suggested to his Chancellor to order Vichy to strengthen its defenses in North Africa as intelligence indicated a possible Allied attack; the Chancellor rejected the suggestion as he thought that Rome would object to any moves that strengthened France. Luftwaffe unit I./KG 100 (flying He 111 bombers) briefly returned to Stalino (now Donetsk), Ukraine to conduct three bombing raids on Stalingrad. Stuka dive bombers of Luftflotte 4 flew nine hundred individual sorties against Soviet positions at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, wiping out several Soviet regiments. Pro‐Axis patrol boats VMW‐13 and VMW‐15 assaulted and sank the Soviet submarine ShCh‐311 off Porkkala Peninsula in Kirkkonummi.
After a naval bombardment, 3,000 to 4,000 men of the Eastern Axis’s 230th and 16th Infantry Regiments landed at Tassafaronga, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Despite interference from U.S. Marine Corps SBD aircraft, 80% of the men and supplies successfully made to shore. With the arrival of these reinforcements, General Hyakutake ordered a new offensive against Henderson Field to take place three days later. Meanwhile, after Portland shelled Tarawa Atoll in the Gilberts, the Axis employés on Tarawa executed twenty‐two captured Allied coast‐watchers.
1943: The first squadron of the Luftwaffe Fernaufklärungsgruppe 5 special long range reconnaissance unit became operational at Mont‐de‐Marsan in southwestern France, and U‐23 damaged Soviet minesweeping trawler TSC‐486 Sovetskja Rossiya with a torpedo just off the Georgian coast at 2131 hours. U‐23 attempted to follow the small three‐ship convoy, but gunfire drove her away.
1944: Although Miklós Horthy announced that Hungary and Soviet Union had signed an armistice and asked the Hungarian troops to lay down their arms; the Hungarian generals rejected this order, and the troops continued to fight against the invading Soviets. Thus, Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny’s commandos abucted Admiral Miklós Horthy’s son Miklós Horthy, Jr., and in Horthy’s place, the new head of state, Fenenc Szalasi promised to maintain the alliance with the Greater German Reich. Among the first pro‐Axis policies implemented was the resumption of the deportation of Hungarian Jews.
Rear Admiral Masafumi Arima of the Eastern Axis’s 26th Air Flotilla in the Philippine Islands attempted a special attack with a D4Y Suisei aircraft against an Allied carrier; somebody said that ‘This act of self‐sacrifice by a high flag officer spurred the flying units in forward combat areas and provided the spark that touched off the organized use of suicide attacks in the battle for Leyte.’ Meanwhile, a V‐2 rocket hit Rettendon, Essex, England, damaging the village pub slightly injuring two humans. A total of nine V‐1 flying bombs launched over the East Anglian coast of Britain. One got through the defensive cordon and came down in the London Borough of Southwark at the junction of Athenlay Road and Fernholm Road, massacring eight residents.
1945: The Axis lost Pierre Laval to Allied executors because he committed treason. Coincidentally, the Hadamar trial against the staff of the Hadamar Euthanasia Center in western Germany ended. Finally, somebody abolished the name Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, but the facilities would continue to operate under the control of the U.S. Navy.
1946: Hermann Göring, Axis politician and war criminal, ingested cyanide… no comment.
1954: Captain lieutenant Heinz Assmann died in Hamburg.
1957: Admiral André Marquis, Axis collaborator, died.
1959: Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian fascist, bit the bullet.
Useful info, thanks.
