October 1, 1928: Joseph Stalin Implements His 1st Five-Year Plan

1932 propaganda poster featuring Stalin:

"The Victory of Socialism in Our Country Is Guaranteed"

October 1, 1928: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin institutes his first "five-year plan" for the Soviet Union's economy. It turns out to be great for him, as it increases his control over the economy, and thus over the lives of the people. It turns out to be disastrous for them.

This 1st plan was developed on the theory of the productive forces: Increasing industrial capacity to increase production, thus creating greater supply. Ironically, this leftist plan would also form the basis of the American right-wing's "supply-side economics."

When the plan began, the Soviet Union was 5th in the world in industrial production, despite being the world's largest country by land, and its 3rd by population, behind China and British-controlled India. When Stalin pronounced it completed on December 31, 1932 -- 9 months short of 5 years -- the country had moved to 2nd in industrial production, trailing only America.

But the plan led to a famine in the Winter of 1932-33, killing up to 7 million people, hitting western Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus especially hard. Millions more were weakened to the point of permanent disability. Anti-Communists the world over considered this to be genocide, and made it part of their ideology that Communism killed more people than Fascism. Which is true, unless you bring proportion into play: In countries where Fascism ruled, greater percentages of the people were killed or imprisoned than under Communism.

But the industrial improvement meant that, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the industry was ready to fight them, even though Stalin had ordered the execution of many military leaders in his "Great Purge" of 1937-38. That nearly cost the Soviets to lose their front of World War II. But the sheer numbers of soldiers and equipment, and the Russian Winter, meant that the Nazis could be pushed back, giving America, Britain, France and the exile armies the chance to beat the Nazis in North Africa, Italy, and, eventually, Western Europe.

Stalin instituted a 2nd five-year plan almost immediately after pronouncing the 1st one a success. There would be several five-year plans approved by Soviet dictators, the last by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. But that plan died at the end of the year, along with the country.

*

October 1, 1928 was a Monday. Actors Laurence Harvey and George Peppard were born on this day.

Baseball's regular season had ended the day before, and the World Series would not begin until October 4. The New York Yankees went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals. The NFL was done with its games for the weekend. The NHL season wouldn't start for another 2 months. And the NBA hadn't been founded yet. So there were no scores on this historic day.

August 25, 1936: Stalin's Show Trials

Lev Kamenev

August 25, 1936: Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev are executed, ending the first of what became known as the Moscow Show Trials, designed to consolidate the power of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin formed a ruling triumvirate in 1923, after Vladimir Lenin, founder and dictator of the Soviet Union, had become incapacitated from a stroke. He died in 1924, enabling the triumvirate to effect the marginalization of the People's Commissar, Leon Trotsky. But as Stalin took more and more power for himself, Zinoviev and Kamenev sided with Trotsky. Stalin expelled Trotsky from the country in 1929, and his allies, including Zinoviev and Kamenev, were marginalized.

In 1934, Stalin ally Sergei Kirov was assassinated. No one has ever proven who did it, or ordered it. Both Kamenev and Zinoviev had been secretly tried for it in 1935, but it appears that Stalin decided that, with suitable confessions, their fate could be used for propaganda purposes.

On August 19, 1936, the first of the Moscow Show Trials began, conducted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, and presided over by Vasiliy Ulrikh, who would preside over most of the trials to come. Russian historian Anton Antonov-Ovseenko would eventually describe him as "a uniformed toad with watery eyes."

He looks like he would have fit in more

in Germany at the time.

And those trials, including those of Zinoviev and Kamenev, were pure bred sivoy kobyly. That's Russian for "bullshit." All the "evidence was lies." The verdict was preordained. Zinoviev and Kamenev were convicted on August 24. The next day, Kamenev was executed by firing squad. Zinoviev begged for his life, and resisted being taken to where he was to be shot, until the guards finally got tired of him, dumped him in an open cell, and shot him. Both men were 53 years old.

Grigori Zinoviev

More trials were to come in 1937 and 1938, all with the aim of making Stalin look good and making Trotsky look bad. In 1940, Stalin sent an agent to Mexico City, where Trotsky was living in exile, and had him assassinated. In 1941, Stalin's purges continued, trying and executing generals he thought were disloyal.

Then Adolf Hitler broke the Non-Aggression Pact their countries had signed 2 years earlier. Stalin could have used some of those generals in the Eastern European phase of World War II, known in Russia and the other former Soviet "republics" as "The Great Patriotic War." That war began because Stalin was a shortsighted paranoid egomaniac who thought he knew more than his generals did. It ended because all of those things were true of Hitler as well.

Vasiliy Ulrikh died in 1951, of natural causes, unlike most of those over whose trials he presided.

One final note: I'm not saying that all of the people Stalin had executed, including the 47 former Party officials convicted in the Show Trials of 1936, '37 and '38, were good people. As dedicated Communists, they probably led to the deaths of innocent people themselves. But they were almost certainly not guilty of the specific charges that Stalin saw to it were leveled against them. Even the guilty deserve a fair trial.

*

August 25, 1936 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the St. Louis Browns, 13-1 at Yankee Stadium. Lefty Gomez was the winning pitcher. Lou Gehrig went 2-for-2... with 4 walks. Bill Dickey went 4-for-6 with 4 RBIs. And Joe DiMaggio, putting together perhaps the best rookie season in baseball history, went 5-for-6 with a home run and 2 RBIs.

* The New York Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-5 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Mel Ott went 0-for-5.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-1 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Jimmie Foxx went 0-for-3 for the Red Sox. Hank Greenberg was injured early in the season, and was unavailable for the Tigers.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 13-11 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Two teams, 24 runs -- and none scored on a home run. As Mel Allen, 3 years away from becoming the radio "Voice of the Yankees," would say, How about that?

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-3 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* And the Boston Bees -- as the Braves were known from 1936 to 1940 -- swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Cardinals, 20-3 and 5-4.

August 23, 1939: The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

Left to right: Joachim von Ribbentrop,

Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov

August 23, 1939: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a Non-Aggression Pact between their nations, in Moscow.

This was pretty much the last blockade for the Nazis launching World War II with their invasion of Poland, and for the Soviets invading the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) and Finland.

Their countries agree to not attack each other, and to partition Poland between them. In other words, they’re gonna party like it’s 1795. The invasion of Poland begins 8 days later.

It was also, essentially, the end of Communism as a viable party in America. Horrified that Premier Joseph Stalin would accept a compromise with Fascists, and that half the membership of the CPUSA did as well, the Party lost the other half of its membership. Feeling betrayed, this half of America's "Old Left" began to evolve into a "New Left" that would concentrate on societal ills at home rather than on right-wing aggression abroad.

*

August 23, 1939 was a Thursday. These 3 baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 7-6 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. The Yankees scored 5 runs in the top of the 9th to tie it, including a 3-run home run by Joe DiMaggio. But in the bottom of the 9th, Charlie Gehringer doubled, Rudy York drew a walk, and Michael "Pinky" Higgins doubled Gehringer home with the winning run. Gehringer had homered earlier.

* The Boston Bees beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-1 at National League Park in Boston. After a disastrous 1935 season, the Boston Braves decided on what would now be called a "re-branding," and renamed themselves the Bees, and Braves Field "National League Park." They even promoted it as "The Bee Hive." It never caught on, and in 1941, they switched both the name of the team and the name of the stadium back.

* And the Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 7-4 at League Park in Cleveland. Jimmie Foxx went 0-for-4 with a walk, but rookie Ted Williams have 5 RBIs, including a grand slam, the 1st of 17 he would hit in his career.

August 20, 1940: The Assassination of Leon Trotsky

August 20, 1940: Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City, 23 years after helping bring about the Bolshevik Revolution, and 13 years after being expelled from the country.

He was born on November 7, 1879, in Yanovska, the Russian Empire, what is now Berslavka, Ukraine, under the name Lev Davidovich Bronstein. He began actively fighting the Czarist regime in 1896, and joined the Bolshevik Party in the fateful year of 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution was completed on November 7, his birthday -- not that he cared, because Russian was still using the Julian Calendar, which placed his birthday on October 26 and the revolution's completion on October 25, hence it is also called the October Revolution.

New dictator, and old friend, Vladimir Lenin appointed him Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and he negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that pulled Russia out of World War I. He was then appointed the leader of the Red Army, and won the Russian Civil War.

But when Lenin died in early 1924, his replacement, Josef Stalin, forced Trotsky out of power, expelling him from the country in 1927. Trotsky fled to Mexico, and, paranoid that he might lead a revolution against him, Stalin chose to have him assassinated.

Two attempts, in 1939 and earlier in 1940, failed, before August 20, when NKVD agent Ramón Mercader took an ice axe and hit Trotsky in the head. Not only did he not die immediately, but he had enough strength left to subdue Mercader himself before the authorities could take him. Trotsky died the next day, at age 60.

Mercader confessed, and served 20 years in a Mexican prison. Stalin awarded him the Order of Lenin. Upon his release, Mercader went to nearby and Soviet-friendly Cuba, and died there in 1978. He was buried in Moscow, as no later Soviet regime "rehabilitated" Trotsky's legacy.

To this day, though, some Communists call themselves "Trotskyites" to differentiate themselves from "Stalinists." The murder of Trotsky, every bit as much as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of the year before, split American Communists, and many who still identified with Trotsky turned against the Stalin regime. While Communism is minimal in America today, those who believe in it tend to be more Trotskyist than Stalinist.

*

August 20, 1940 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium, 4-3 and 4-2. Over the 2 games, Joe DiMaggio went 4-for-8 with an RBI, and Hank Greenberg went 3-for-8.

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Mel Ott went 3-for-3 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers were swept in a doubleheader by the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-0 and 4-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Clyde Shoun pitched a 6-hit shutout in the 1st game.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 11-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Bob Feller was the inning pitcher. Jimmie Foxx went 1-for-5 with an RBI, and Ted Williams went 1-for-2 with 2 walks and an RBI.

* A doubleheader was split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Chicago White Sox won the opener, 6-1. The Philadelphia Athletics won the nightcap, 4-3. Benny McCoy stole home plate in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Washington Senators, 6-3 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Bees, 6-3 at National League Park in Boston. This was the last of 5 seasons before the Bees went back to calling themselves the Braves, and their ballpark Braves Field.

* And the Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Claude Passeau pitched a 3-hit shutout.

June 28, 1949: Tito Rebukes Stalin

June 28, 1949: Marshal Josip Broz Tito, leader of Yugoslavia, sends a letter to Premier Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, essentially telling him he's had enough of Stalin's crap.

He was born with the name Josip Broz on May 7, 1892, in Kumrovec, a village in Zagorje, in northern Croatia. At the time, it was part of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, a client state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained as a locksmith, before serving in the Austrian Army in World War I. He was wounded and held as a prisoner of war by the Russians. In the POW camp, he became a Communist, and escaped.

Between the World Wars, he rose through the ranks of the Communist Party in the new nation of Yugoslavia, and was in de facto control of it from 1937 to 1980. When the Nazis invaded, he led the Partisan movement to kick them out. He had stood up to Adolf Hitler, and won.

(On October 4, 1945, 5 months after V-E Day, former members of this movement founded a sports club, JSD Partizan. Their soccer team, FK Partizan, or Partizan Belgrade, won 11 league titles in Yugoslavia; and, since the country's breakup, has won 16 titles in Serbia's top league.)

His leadership against the Nazis led to his admiration by all the ethnicities in his cobbled-together country, partly because he never lost the common touch. American journalist George Seldes, who lived to be 104 years old (1890-1995), had covered the rise and fall of many world leaders. He thought he had been friends with both Tito and Benito Mussolini, once a fellow journalist who had written him a letter calling him "Dear Colleague." But upon becoming dictator of Italy in 1922, Mussolini acted like he no longer cared about all the people who helped him get there. Tito never forgot: According to Seldes, "Mussolini... acted like we had never met. Tito greeted me as an old friend."

But while he was a Communist, Tito was also a nationalist. He wasn't interested in spreading Communism throughout the Balkans. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin was, and managed to turn Romania, Bulgaria and Albania red, and had designs on Greece and Turkey as well.

President Harry Truman's Truman Doctrine provided aid to Greece and Turkey, preventing both from turning Communist, and he discovered that Tito was willing to work with him. On May 4, 1948, Stalin publicly admonished both Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

In 1949, Stalin put Soviet, Romanian and Hungarian troops and the border between southern Hungary and northern Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia). On June 28, the other member countries of the Cominform expelled Yugoslavia, citing "nationalist elements" that had "managed in the course of the past five or six months to reach a dominant position in the leadership" of the CPY.

The assumption in Moscow was that once it was known that he had lost Soviet approval, Tito would collapse. Stalin said, "I will shake my little finger, and there will be no more Tito." He took Tito's resistance as a personal affront, and arranged several assassination attempts on Tito's life. None of them succeeded.

Tito sent a letter to Stalin. In it, he wrote, "Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb, and another with a rifle." He added, "If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."

There were no further attempts. Stalin died on March 5, 1953. This letter was found in his desk. In 1955, the man who succeeded Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, visited Belgrade, apologized to Tito for Stalin's assassination attempts, and congratulated him on his survival: "You did well in protecting yourself. You had good guards and good informants who informed you about everything Stalin was planning for you."

Tito lived on until May 4, 1980. Both his country and Stalin's collapsed and broke into smaller nations in 1991.

Josip Tito was the only man to stand up to both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and live to tell about it. He was no saint. But he was a hero, to both East and West.

*

June 28, 1949 was a Tuesday. Baseball player Don Baylor and football running back Clarence Davis were born that day. And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. This was the season debut of Joe DiMaggio, who had missed the season's 1st 65 games with a bad heel. He hit a home run in this game, 2 in the next, and another in the next, in a 3-game Yankee sweep of the BoSox. Hank Bauer also hit a home run in this game, in support of Allie Reynolds. Bobby Doerr hit a home run for the Red Sox, and Ted Williams went 2-for-5.

* The New York Giants beat the Boston Braves, 2-1 at the Polo Grounds. The Giant runs come on solo home runs by Sid Gordon and Clint Hartung. Hartung, "the Hondo Hurricane," was also a pitcher, a pitcher who could hit, and was one of the most-hyped prospects in baseball history. It never worked out, although, on this day, he was not only the hero, but he outpitched a future Hall-of-Famer, Warren Spahn.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Preacher Roe outpitched Robin Roberts. He was supported by a home run from Duke Snider. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Washington Senators, 6-1 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-2 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Bob Lemon outpitched Virgil Trucks.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Chicago White Sox, 7-6 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Gerry Priddy singled home the winning run in the top of the 12th inning.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 5-0 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Howie Pollet allowed 8 hits, but kept the shutout. Stan Musial went 1-for-4.

* And the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds were rained out at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The game was made up on September 6. The Reds won, 6-3, scoring 4 runs in the top of the 10th inning, while the Pirates could only retaliate with 1.

June 26, 1948: The Berlin Airlift Begins

June 26, 1948: The Berlin Airlift begins, one of the greatest humanitarian efforts in history.

Two days earlier, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin blocked the railway, road and canal access to the sectors of post-World War II Berlin under Western control: American, British and French. He offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly-introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin. This was the 1st true confrontation of the Cold War.

President Harry S Truman ordered the new U.S. Air Force to deliver food, fuel and other supplies to the 2.5 million people then living in West Berlin, with another 800,000 living in Soviet-controlled East Berlin.

The Soviets initially believed that the Airlift wouldn't work. But it did: Under the command of General Lucius D. Clay, an average of 3,475 tons of supplies was delivered every day. At the Airlift's peak, over 12,000 tons were delivered some days, by flights arriving every 30 seconds. Most of the flights were by the USAF, but about 23 percent of the deliveries were by Britain's Royal Air Force and British Commonwealth forces, including Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Not all flights landed safely: There were 17 American and 8 British planes that crashed. Mostly as a result of non-flying accidents, 40 British and 31 Americans were killed during the airlift.

Truman's response to the crisis blunted Republican criticisms of his handling of the Cold War, helping the Democrat win a full term in office the following November. With the Airlift working so well for so long, the Soviets became increasingly embarrassed. On May 12, 1949, the blockade was lifted. The U.S. kept the Airlift going until September 30, anyway, just in case the blockade was restored.

In 1961, the Soviet-controlled East German government built the Berlin Wall, surrounding West Berlin. But they did not stop flights into the city from West Germany, because they didn't want a World War III. In 1989, the Wall was torn down.

*

June 26, 1948 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-5 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Despite being backed by a home run from Johnny Lindell, Allie Reynolds did not get out of the 6th inning. Joe Page pitched the rest of the way, and was backed by a home run from Yogi Berra. Joe DiMaggio went 0-for-5, but had RBIs on a groundout and a sacrifice fly.

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 4-0 at the Polo Grounds. Ten years earlier to the month, across town at Ebbets Field, Johnny Vander Meer pitched his 2nd straight no-hitter against the Dodgers. This time, he allowed 7 hits, but still shut out the Giants. Speaking of the Dodgers...

* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-3 at Ebbets Field. Stan Musial went 4-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-3 with a walk, and Gil Hodges hit a home run.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Braves, 7-1 at Braves Field in Boston.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-2 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 5-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Bob Muncrief pitched a 3-hit shutout.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* And the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns were rained out at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Red Sox swept, 2-0 and 6-3. Joe Dobson pitched a 2-hit shutout in the opener. Ted Williams went 3-for-6 with a home run, 2 walks and 3 RBIs in the 2 games.

June 22, 1941: The Nazis Invade the Soviet Union

June 22, 1941: Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union, breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that the countries had signed nearly 2 years earlier.

It was called Operation Barbarossa, named for Frederick I, the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death in 1190. He was called Kaiser Rotbart, German for "Emperor Red Beard" -- in Latin, then the dominant language of Europe, "Caesar Barbarossa." He seemed superhuman until his death in the Third Crusade.

The Holy Roman Empire of 800 to 1806, founded by Charlemagne (who was more French than German), was called the First Reich by modern Germans, and it lasted over 1,000 years. Following the unification of Germany in 1871, the Second Reich was proclaimed, but it only lasted until defeat in World War I in 1918, 47 years later.

When Adolf Hitler was awarded the title and powers of the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he proclaimed a Third Reich, and called it "the Thousand-Year Reich," aiming for the same staying power as Charlemagne's empire.

It was said of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that he trusted one man in his life, and it was Hitler. It may have been the 2nd-greatest mistake any leader of any nation on planet Earth has ever made.

The 1st was Hitler breaking that trust. Had he not done so, he could have kept most of his troops on the Western Front, and repelled any Allied invasion of the European continent, and maintained his hold on it indefinitely.

Instead, with enough never being enough for him, Hitler opened up an Eastern Front, with the aim of not just conquering the Slavic peoples, whom he considered racially inferior, but taking the Soviet oil reserves in the Caucasus to fuel his empire.

Instead, the Soviets dug in, and fought like their country depended on it -- which it did. They managed to stall the Nazi advance on the doorstep of their capital of Moscow. With victory in the Battle of Stalingrad (a city now named Volgograd), lasting from August 23, 1942 to February 2, 1943, the tide of war began to turn.

Hitler made the same mistake that Napoleon Bonaparte made in 1812: Trying to conquer Russia, and still having your troops there in the Winter, is a bad idea. You know how, in the 21st Century, American right-wingers call liberals "snowflakes"? Well, you know what stopped fascists in the 1940s -- on both the Eastern Front and the Western Front (the Battle of the Bulge)? Snowflakes. Lots and lots of snowflakes.

Speaking of which: Just 6 months after this, America joined the war, on the side of the British Empire (including Canada and Australia) and the exiled troops of France and other conquered nations. The Allies pushed the Nazis out of North Africa and Italy. On June 6, 1944, Allied troops invaded France. In the Spring of 1945, the Allies closed in from the West, the Soviets from the East. Hitler killed himself on April 30, and the Nazis surrendered on May 8.

The Soviets' contribution to the war, something Americans did not want to admit during the subsequent "Cold War," was incalculable. One thing that was calculated was the number of lives lost to the Soviet Union, military and civilian combined: Around 27 million. It is no wonder that they call it not "World War II," but "The Great Patriotic War." That defense, reversal and conquest -- not their achievements in spaceflight -- was, to borrow the phrase of Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill, their finest hour.

Bernard Montgomery, who would become Britain's top military leader of World War II, would write, "Rule 1, on page 1 of The Book of War, is: 'Do not march on Moscow.' Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: 'Do not go fighting with your land armies in China.' It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives."

On the same day that the Nazis invaded, they began a rapid escalation of the Holocaust in Lithuania: By the end of the year, they would kill nearly 200,000 Jews in that formerly (and futurely) Soviet-controlled country, about 95 percent of its Jewish population. That population had once included maternal ancestors of mine.

And on June 28, the Nazis would begin the Iași pogrom, killing over 13,000 Jews in Romania, a nation from which a significant portion of Jews already in America had come. The comedian Zero Mostel once said, "Romanian-Jewish cooking has killed more Jews than the Nazis." Another comedian, Buddy Hackett, backed that up by visiting the infirmary on his first night in the U.S. Army, telling the doctor, "The fire's gone out!" It was his first time away from his mother's cooking: He said he didn't know what heartburn was until he didn't have it anymore.

*

June 22, 1941 was a Sunday. CBS News TV journalist Ed Bradley was born on this day.

It was the off-season for the NFL and the NHL, and the NBA wasn't founded until 1946. But, being a Sunday, there was a full slate of Major League Baseball games, including doubleheaders:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at the old Yankee Stadium. This was the 35th game of Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, which would reach a record that still stands: 56 games. He and Red Rolfe hit home runs in support of Red Ruffing.

Rolfe's home run in the bottom of the 9th tied the game. Bobo Newsom was rattled by this, and subsequently hit Tommy Henrich with a pitch, gave up a double to DiMaggio, walked Bill Dickey intentionally, and walked Joe Gordon unintentionally to force Henrich home with the winning run. Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you.

* The New York Giants swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Cardinals at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The Jints won the 1st game 4-3, and the 2nd game 3-2.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers swept a doubleheader from the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The 1st game went 16 innings. Pete Reiser led off the top of the 16th with a single, and reached 3rd base when Lew Riggs' bunt was mishandled. Reiser then scored on Dixie Walker's groundout, and the Brooks were 2-1 winners. Dem Bums took the 2nd game 3-2.

* A doubleheader was split at Fenway Park in Boston. The Boston Red Sox won the 1st game 7-5, and the St. Louis Browns won the 2nd game 12-3.

* A doubleheader was split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Owner-manager Connie Mack must have forgotten to tell his Philadelphia Athletics that you gotta come out of the clubhouse to play the ballgame, because they lost the 1st game to the Chicago White Sox, 14-0. Three runs in the 2nd inning and 7 in the 3rd put the game away. Ted Lyons pitched a 7-hit shutout. But the A's got serious in the 2nd game, and won it 3-0. Phil Marchildon pitched a 5-hit shutout.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 6-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Bob Feller pitched a 7-hit shutout.

* A doubleheader was split at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Pirates scored 4 runs in both games. In the 1st game, it was enough, as they beat the Philadelphia Phillies 4-1. It was not enough in the 2nd game, as the Phils won 7-4.

* And the Boston Braves swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Braves won the 1st game 6-5, and the 2nd game 3-2. 

May 2, 1945: The Fall of Berlin

May 2, 1945: Nazi Generals Hans Krebs (47 years old) and Wilhelm Burgdorf (50) commit suicide in the Bunker of Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who had done so there 2 days earlier (56). Martin Bormann (44), Hitler's private secretary, tries to escape, but doesn't get far, and also kills himself.

It's all over. Berlin has fallen. The Soviet Red Army raises the Red Flag over the Reichstag, the home of the German national legislature. It's just a matter of what remains of the Nazi government surrendering. What Hitler called "The Thousand-Year Reich" was dead after 12 years.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had seen the photograph of the U.S. Marines raising the American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, and wanted a similar picture of the Soviet red banner with the yellow hammer and sickle over Berlin. He got it. The photographer was Yevgeny Khaldei. The soldier was 18-year-old Aleksei Kovalov -- no relation to the later hockey player of the same name. He later became a fireman in Kiev. Both men were Ukrainians, and both lived until 1997.

In late 1941, the Soviets were, perhaps, a mile away from losing the Eastern Front of the European Theater of World War II. Now, they had won what they called The Great Patriotic War.

*

May 2, 1945 was a Wednesday. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season had ended 10 days earlier, when the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-4 at Yankee Stadium.

* The New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-8 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Boston Braves, 3-1 at Ebbets Field.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 4-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Jim Wilson pitched a 4-hit shutout.

* A doubleheader was split at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The St. Louis Cardinals won the opener, 4-2. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the nightcap, 11-1.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 2-1 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

* And the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds were rained out at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The game was made up on June 8. The Cubs won, 7-3.

March 13, 1940: The Winter War Ends

March 13, 1940: The Moscow Peace Treaty is signed, ending a war between the Soviet Union and neighboring Finland, a sub-conflict of World War II that had been known as the Winter War.

From the 13th Century until the Finnish War of 1808-09, Finland was a part of the Kingdom of Sweden. From that war until 1917, the Grand Duchy of Finland had been part of the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution, on December 6, 1917, Finland declared its independence.

When World War II started on September 1, 1939, Finland knew it faced an attack from the Soviet Union, especially since Leningrad (the once and future St. Petersburg) was only 20 miles from the Soviet-Finnish border. Indeed, when Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia to launch his Bolshevik Revolution, it was by train at St. Petersburg's Finland Station.

The Soviets made several demands, mostly the cessation of some border territories. The Finns refused, and, on November 30, 1939, the Soviets invaded.

But just as the cold and the snow would prove to be the Soviets' ally once Nazi Germany attacked them in 1941, it was Finland's ally on this occasion, as temperatures dropped to less than 40 degrees below zero (the point at which the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales meet).

The Finns were able to use cold to their advantage, but also heat. They filled jars with alcohol, put wicks in them, lit the wicks, and threw them at the Soviets. In Britain, this was already known as a "petrol bomb." In Finland, they named it after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, the man who had presented the Soviets' demands to them: The Molotov Cocktail.

The war turned into a stalemate, and the Soviets took heavy losses: Over 160,000 dead, another 140,000 wounded, and over 60,000 removed from action due to frostbite. Finland, outnumbered 2-1 in total manpower, lost 26,000 dead and 43,000 wounded.

Simo Häyhä, often referred to by his nickname, "The White Death," for his white uniform that blended in with the snow, is believed to have killed more than 500 enemy soldiers during the conflict, the highest number of sniper kills in any major war. On March 6, 1940, the tables were turned, and a Soviet sniper hit him in the face. He recovered, but remained disfigured for the rest of his life -- until 2002, at the age of 96.

A peace treaty was signed. The Soviets got some of what they wanted: Finland ceded 9 percent of its territory, and the war was over. The Finns got the main things they wanted: Peace and the retention of their independence.

The Finns were hailed all over the world for their resistance. Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany took note of the Red Army's poor performance, and would launch his attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. But he couldn't get either Moscow or Leningrad before the Winter set in, and this would be the beginning of his end.

Hostilities resumed in June 1941 with the Continuation War, when Finland allied itself with Germany in an attempt to regain the territory lost to the Soviets barely a year earlier. Finnish troops occupied Eastern Karelia from 1941 to 1944, and assisted the German army in the Siege of Leningrad. The massive Soviet Vyborg-Petrozavodsk offensive in the Summer of 1944 led to a breakthrough until the Finns finally repulsed it at Tali-Ihantala. This partial Soviet success led to a stalemate and later an armistice. This was followed by the Lapland War of 1944-45, when Finland fought retreating German forces in northern Finland. In other words, the Finns were with the Nazis before they were against them.

As a result of the three wars, Finland lost 12 percent of its land area; 20 percent of its industrial capacity; its second-largest city, Viipuri, which the Soviets renamed Vyborg, a name it still has today; and the ice-free port of Liinakhamari. The Finns lost around 97,000 soldiers, and were forced to pay war reparations initially set at $300 million in 1938 prices, later adjusted to $226.5 million.

However, the country avoided occupation by Soviet forces, and managed to retain its independence. Along with Great Britain, Finland emerged from the war as one of the only European countries to have taken part in hostilities that was never occupied and managed to preserve its democracy throughout. In 2022, Finland remains a democracy, home to about 5.6 million people. And, alone among the four mainland Scandinavian countries, it is the only one without a monarchy. (I say, "mainland," because Iceland, unlike Norway, Sweden and Denmark, does not have a monarch.)

UPDATE: In 2025, the YouTube comedy series Epic Rap Battles of History paired Simo Häyhä, played by "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist, with Manfred von Richtofen, the German pilot of World War I known as the Red Baron, played by "Nice" Peter Shukoff. Lloyd cleverly rhymed the brand of rifle the White Death used, Mosin-Nagant, with "frozen savant."

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March 13, 1940 was a Wednesday. Soul singer Candi Staton was born on this day.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA had not yet been founded. There were 3 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat their tenants at the old Madison Square Garden, 4-2. It was considered a Ranger home game. Neil Colville scored twice for the Broadway Blueshirts, while former Toronto superstar Charlie Conacher scored twice for the Amerks. Exactly on month later, on April 13, the Rangers would win the Stanley Cup.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 5-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at the Chicago Stadium.

* And the Boston Bruins were not scheduled.

March 9, 1967: Stalin's Daughter Defects

March 9, 1967: Svetlana Alliluyeva, 41, Joseph Stalin's only surviving child, defects to the U.S. This was a huge deal at the time, with the fuss equal to what might have happened had Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. or Princess Margaret gone Red.

A historian and professor, she had been married twice before. She converted to Catholicism, and married Wes Peters, an architect and an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, and became known in the West as "Lana Peters." They divorced in 1973, and, disillusioned with the West, she returned to the Soviet Union in 1984.

But things had not changed enough for her, and she returned to the West in 1992, and eventually settled in Richland Center, Wisconsin, famous for its association with Wright. She died of colon cancer in 2011.

She had 3 children, 1 with each husband. Iosif Alliluyev was a cardiologist, who lived and practiced in Moscow, and died in 2008. Her daughter, Katya Zhdanova, is a volcanologist (studying volcanoes) in eastern Russia. And her daughter, Olga, manages a clothing store in Portland, Oregon, under the name Chrese Evans.

Stalin also had 4 sons. Yakov Dzughashvili, a son with his 1st wife, was captured by the Nazis in 1943, and died of an illness in a concentration camp. The Nazis offered Stalin a deal to release him, but he refused to take it.

From an affair, Stalin became the father of Konstantin Kuzakov, a journalist, who died in 1996. From another affair, Stalin became the father of Alexander Davydov. Stalin ignored him and refused to accept his paternity. Nevertheless, Alexander was decorated for heroism in World War II. He lived until 1987.

With his 2nd wife, Stalin became the father of Svetlana, and also of Vasily, who could do no right in anyone's eyes, least of all his father's. An alcoholic, he tried to commit suicide, but only grazed his head, leading his father to say, "He can't even shoot straight." He was named head of the Soviet Air Force, but was only a figurehead, and wasn't trusted to actually make decisions. He fell out of favor after his father's death, and died from his drinking in 1962.

Stalin's successor as Soviet dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, famously told the West, "We will bury you." Instead, his son, Sergei Khrushchev, also defected to the West, and, in accented but completely understandable English, taught at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Through Svetlana, Yakov, Konstantin and Alexander, Stalin has known living descendants. His arch-rival, Adolf Hitler, does not, as he is not known to have had any children. China's Mao Zedong is believed to have had 10 children, all of whom have stayed loyal to their country. Cuba's Fidel Castro is believed to have had 11. Juanita Castro, Fidel's sister, and Alina Fernández, his daughter, also defected to the U.S., and spoke out against him and his regime in Cuba.

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March 9, 1967 was a Friday. This was also the day the album The Velvet Underground and Nico was released. I have a separate entry for that event.

This was also the day that Star Trek aired the episode "The Devil In the Dark," introducing the silicon-based lifeform, the Horta. William Shatner (who played Captain Kirk) and Leonard Nimoy (Spock) both called this their favorite episode. It was groundbreaking in 2 ways: It suggested that life could be based on an element other than carbon, and it showed that the good guys might unintentionally become the bad guys. That might make it an allegory for Vietnam.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. And no games were scheduled for either the NBA or the NHL. So there were so scores on this historic day.

March 5, 1953: Joseph Stalin Dies

March 5, 1953: Joseph Stalin dies at the Kuntsevo Dacha, one of his vacation homes, in the Fili District of Moscow. He was 74 years old, and had been absolute ruler of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (a.k.a. the USSR or the Soviet Union) for 29 years.

He was born as Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili on December 18, 1878 (regrettably, I share my birthday with him) in Gori, then in the Russian Empire, now in the Republic of Georgia. He was an ethnic Georgian, and latter russianized his name to "Joseph Vissarionovich."

As with the man who would become his uneasy ally, and then his great enemy, Adolf Hitler, his mother wanted him to become a priest. Instead, he became what we would call a gangster, committing robberies and kidnappings, and running protection rackets, in the name of the Communist Party.

In 1913, he published an article titled Marxism and the National Question, under the name "K. Stalin." The K stood for "Komrade," and his pen name meant "Man of Steel" -- and, eventually, the Soviet people would think of him as something of a superman.

The article got the attention of Vladimir Lenin (who was, himself, using a pen name, as he was born with the surname Ulyanov). Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Stalin joined the Politburo, and became part of the Soviet government at Lenin's invitation.

How close Stalin was to Lenin has been debated for nearly 100 years. But by the time Lenin died on January 21, 1924, Stalin, in anticipation of this, had already shored up support to become the new General Secretary of the Communist Party. By forcing out his rivals, especially Lenin's ally Leon Trotsky, he achieved absolute rule.

Every so often, Russia (at this point, the largest part of the Soviet Union) falls into a backward state, and a strong leader comes along to drag it into the modern world. It happened under Ivan the Terrible in the 16th Century, Peter the Great in the early 18th, and Catherine the Great in the late 18th. In the late 1920s, Stalin tried a modernization plan, and carried the Soviet Union a long way. But it resulted in the imprisonment of millions of political prisoners, the murders of a large number of them, and the starvation of many in rural areas, especially in the Ukraine.

In 1939, he accepted a Non-Aggression Pact with Nazi Germany, with an understanding that the two countries would split Poland between them. In 1941, Hitler betrayed Stalin by invading the Soviet Union. He nearly won, partly because Stalin had "purged" so many officers from the Red Army in the preceding years.

By 1943, with the world's largest army in place and military aid from America and Britain, the Soviets pushed the Nazis back from the brink of victory. In 1945, the Soviets pushed the Eastern Front back to Berlin.

Stalin was now the 2nd-most powerful man in the world, behind America's President, Harry Truman. In 1949, the Soviets made their 1st successful test of a nuclear bomb. The Cold War had already been underway, but now, the Soviets were effectively the equal of the Western democracies.

Stalin had taken control of the Eastern European nations of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and the eastern sector of Germany. And his aid led to the Communist takeover of China and the early gains of North Korea in the Korean War. But he had failed to take West Berlin with his 1948 blockade, lost the support of Marshal Josip Tito in Yugoslavia, failed to take either Greece or Turkey, and the early gains in Korea were lost, as that war became a stalemate.

And his health began to fail. He was a heavy smoker, often photographed with a pipe. Within a few days of victory in World War II (known in Russia as "The Great Patriotic War"), he suffered a mild stroke. Before the year was out, he had a massive heart attack.

In January 1952, one of his doctors told him that he should retire as dictator to help his health. He tossed the doctor in prison. In September of that year, he had several doctors arrested for plotting to kill him and other senior officials. He gave a speech lasting an hour and a half to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in October 1952 -- the month in which Vladimir Putin was born. It was to be Stalin's last public speech.

On February 28, 1953, Stalin gathered some of his inner circle at the Kuntsevo Dacha. These men included Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, Nikolai Bulganin, Anastas Mikoyan and Nikita Khrushchev. They drank until 4:00 AM on March 1, and Stalin went to bed, giving strict instructions that he not be disturbed until they heard sounds suggesting that he had woken up.

But no such sounds were heard. Finally, at 11:00 PM on March 1, his housekeeper went in, and found him lying on the floor, unconscious. He was examined, and found to have suffered a stroke. He died at 9:50 PM on March 5. Like his former wartime ally, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he essentially died due to hypertension -- very high blood pressure. As with FDR, the smoking was a big reason why. (But, somehow, Winston Churchill lived to be 90.)

A rumor got around that Beria had Stalin poisoned. The surviving autopsy report does not support this. Indeed, 3 months later, Beria was arrested, and of all the charges against him, none were connected to the death of Stalin.

Stalin was interred in Lenin's Mausoleum. People rushed to see the funeral, and many were trampled to death. Khrushchev, who would emerge as the absolute ruler, estimated that 109 people died. It may have been thousands. Even in death, Stalin led to the deaths of many of his people.

So were the people happy that the great monster was gone? No: Americans living in Russia, and otherwise observing the Soviet Union, have reported that they were terrified: The cult of personality that Stalin grew was so strong, people didn't think anyone else was possible, when almost anyone would have been better.

Malenkov was named Premier, and consolidated his position by having Beria arrested and executed. But he couldn't secure his position, and was deposed in 1955, replaced by Khrushchev. A coup attempted in 1957 failed, and he was exiled, eventually allowed to return, dying in 1988.

In 1956, speaking before the Politburo, Khrushchev gave a speech denouncing Stalin, and providing evidence for his crimes against humanity. In 1961, on Khrushchev's order, Stalin's body was taken out of Lenin's Mausoleum, and moved to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Not exactly a dishonor for a man who had caused the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Following viewer demands for a battle with a Russian, a 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, featured a five-man "battle royale": "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Rasputin, Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin; while "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev.

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March 5, 1953 was a  Thursday. Baseball was in Spring Training. It was the off-season for the NFL. There were 3 games in the NBA that day, but only 1 of the 6 teams involved still operates under the same name:

* The New York Knicks beat the Baltimore Bullets, 80-69 at the Baltimore Coliseum. The Bullets went out of business early in the 1954-55 season. A new Baltimore Bullets began play in 1963, but moved to Washington in 1973, and became the Washington Wizards in 1997.

* The Philadelphia Warriors beat the Rochester Royals, 78-69 at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center. The Royals moved to Cincinnati in 1957, to Kansas City and became the Kings in 1972, and to Sacramento in 1985. The Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962, to Oakland in 1971 and became the Golden State Warriors, and back to San Francisco but keeping the "Golden State" name in 2019.

* And the Syracuse Nationals beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 94-91 at the Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse. The Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960. The Nats moved to Philadelphia to take the Warriors' place in 1963, and took the name 76ers.

All of the NHL's "Original Six" teams were in action on the day:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Detroit Red Wings, 7-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 5-0 at the Boston Garden. This turned out to be a preview of the Stanley Cup Finals, but the Canadiens would win that series.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at the Chicago Stadium.

February 25, 1956: Khrushchev's "De-Stalinization" Speech

February 25, 1956: Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, addresses the 20th Party Congress in Moscow. It had been less than 3 years since the death of Joseph Stalin, who had ruled the country with an iron fist for 30 years.

Khrushchev gives what became known as the "Secret Speech," laying out some of Stalin's crimes, and the "conditions of insecurity, fear, and even desperation" created by Stalin. He shocked his listeners by denouncing Stalin's dictatorial rule and his cult of personality, as inconsistent with Communism and with Party ideology. Among other points, he condemned the treatment of the Old Bolsheviks, people who had supported Communism before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, many of whom Stalin had executed as traitors.

The speech was shocking. There were reports that some of those present suffered heart attacks, and others later took their own lives, due to shock at the revelations of Stalin's use of terror. The ensuing confusion among many Soviet citizens, raised on permanent praise of the "genius" of Stalin, was especially apparent in Georgia, Stalin's homeland, where days of protests and rioting ended with a Soviet army crackdown on March 9.

In the West, the speech politically devastated organized Communists. The Communist Party USA lost more than 30,000 members within weeks of the speech's revelation to the West. The speech was also later cited as a cause of the Sino-Soviet split, as China's dictator Mao Zedong had been a committed supporter of Stalin.

Khrushchev did stay popular among the Soviet people, and without using cult-of-personality tactics. It could be argued that the country peaked in 1961, with the start of the space program, the building of the Berlin Wall, and their success in international sports. But by 1964, enough Politburo members had had enough of Khrushchev that he was removed from power. He lived in exile until 1971.

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February 25, 1956 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 2 games in the NBA. The New York Knicks lost to the St. Louis Hawks, 99-89 at the old Madison Square Garden. Bob Pettit scored 37 points for the Hawks. And the Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Rochester Royals, 97-72 at the Rochester Community War Memorial (now the Blue Cross Arena) in Rochester, New York.

There were 2 games in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-1 at the Montreal Forum. And the Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks were not scheduled.

And in English soccer, North London's Arsenal went to the North-East, and lost to Newcastle United, 2-0 at St. James' Park.

February 11, 1945: The Yalta Conference

February 11, 1945: The Yalta Conference concludes, after 7 days of meetings between American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, at Yalta, in the Crimea, on the Black Sea -- part of the territory of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin would later annex to Russia. They discussed how to finish off World War II, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. They also discussed how to conduct the postwar world.

Ever since, conservatives have claimed that FDR "betrayed" Eastern Europe by leaving it to Stalin at Yalta. Well, what was FDR supposed to do? Send American troops into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, et al.? In other words, provoke Stalin, and start World War III before World War II was won?

The war was not over. Germany was still fighting, even if the end, there, was in sight. Japan was still fighting, with no end in sight. The Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were yet to come. FDR needed the Soviet Union in that fight. He also knew that the United Nations would be stronger after the war if the Soviets were in it. Roosevelt agreed to some concessions at Yalta, for the same reason he cut his social programs short, telling a reporter, "Dr. New Deal had to give way to Dr. Win the War."

My father, of Polish descent, was a Kennedy Democrat, but he never forgave Roosevelt, the President when he was born, for how he handled the Polish situation at Yalta. But David Reynolds, a professor of history at Cambridge University, has written:

The so-called "Yalta myths" have been a great part of Republican mythology ever since the 1940s. They were a way of attacking Roosevelt and the Democratic party and it’s been brought up at various times since. The assumption behind it is that Roosevelt "sold out" Poland and Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. It’s hard really to square that with the realities of 1945. The Red Army is in control of most of Poland by the time they meet at Yalta. So unless you embarked, say, on a war to evict the Red Army from Poland, there really is nothing you can do about that.

In other words, Poland and Eastern Europe were not Roosevelt's to "sell." Stalin already had them.

If FDR "sold out to Stalin at Yalta," then so did Churchill. Because of Stalin's promises, Churchill believed that he would keep his word regarding Poland and remarked, "Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I am wrong about Stalin."

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February 11, 1945 was a Sunday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. But all of the NHL's "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 4-3 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at the Chicago Stadium.

February 2, 1943: The Battle of Stalingrad

February 2, 1943: The Battle of Stalingrad ends when the Nazis surrender, having exhausted their supplies after 5 months.

It was the largest battle in terms of manpower in human history. The Soviet Union claimed 478,000 military deaths from this single battle, and another 650,000 wounded. On the Axis side, Nazi Germany lost 300,000, Italy 114,000, Romania 109,000, and Hungary 105,000. But the Soviets won.

Why did the Nazis want Stalingrad? Part of it was sheer pettiness on the part of their Chancellor, Adolf Hitler: To claim a city named for the Soviet Premier, Joseph Stalin, whom he considered his ultimate arch-enemy. A strategic reason is that it was an industrial and transport hub.

But the more strategic reason is that Stalingrad was the gateway to the oil fields of the Caucasus Mountains, and the Nazis needed oil. What they got instead was Russian Winter, and death.

A legend is told of a commander who kept reporting back that he was losing no men, even though he had lost hundreds. Why did he do this? So he would continue to get his unit's full supply of vodka, and his men that survived could have more than usual. When Stalin found out about this... he gave the man a promotion for his ingenuity.

Time magazine had named Stalin its Man of the Year for 1939, and did so again for 1942.

Until 1925, the city was known as Tsaritsyn, named for the Tsars (or Czars) of Russia in general. In 1961, 8 years after Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev had the city renamed Volgograd, for the river it was on, the Volga.

Today, it is home to a little over 1 million people, and, in commemoration of the key battle of what Russia calls "The Great Patriotic War" (the Eastern Front of the European Theater of World War II), what was once the world's tallest statue: The Motherland Calls.

At 279 feet tall from foot to the tip of her sword, she remains the tallest statue outside Asia, and the tallest statue of a woman anywhere. For comparison's sake, the figure of the Statue of Liberty is 151 feet high from foot to torch, although the entire structure is 305 feet from ground to torch.

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February 2, 1943 was a Tuesday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. But there was 1 NHL game played that day: The Boston Bruins beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-3 at the Boston Garden. Hall-of-Famer Bill Cowley scored a hat trick for the Bruins.