Opening Day: The Story Of Jackie Robinson's First Season, Eig - B+

             "Segregation suffused the nation's culture, and yet profound changes were rippling across the country." In the spring of 1947, black Americans were denied the vote in the South, did not attend the same schools as whites, served in colored only units in the military, and were proscribed from attending the same parks, beaches, playgrounds, department stores, night clubs, swimming pools, theaters, rest rooms, barber shops etc. as white people. Robinson was not the best Black ballplayer and at twenty-eight, he was a bit old to be a rookie. But he was tenacious and loved a fight. Dodger's president and part-owner, Branch Rickey, signed him to the leagues minimum of $5,000 and told him he wanted someone "with guts enough not to fight back." 

            He had grown up in southern California in a fatherless home and developed a rage against injustice and racism. He played five sports at UCLA, excelling in basketball and football. He was a lieutenant in the army during the war and began playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the summer of 1945 for a $400 per month paycheck. Later that summer, he met with Rickey, who secretly was planning on integrating the majors. In 1946, he batted .349, stole 40 bases and scored 113 runs for the Montreal Royals. During spring training the next year,  manger Leo Durocher told the southerners they could wipe their asses with their petition about not playing with a Negro. On April 15, 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. He scored the winning run. Two days later, he hit his first home run at the Polo Grounds.

        After his initial flourish, Robinson struggled at the plate. There was extensive speculation that he would be benched. On May 9th, the Dodgers left for their first game outside of New York. In Philadelphia, their hotel refused them access because of the "nigra" and the team went directly to the stadium. The Dodger's traveling secretary found Jackie a room at a separate hotel and the rest of the team went to the Franklin later. Branch Rickey, ever the shrewd observer of the league, decided to publish some of the hate mail Jackie had been receiving. He put the naysayers in a defensive position and galvanized support for Robinson. Throughout the eight game road trip, thousands of Black fans came out to see Jackie. His aggressiveness on the base path was unnerving the opponents and the Dodgers were beginning to be more accepting of him as a teammate. The Dodgers continued to improve and, by the end of August had a ten game lead on the Cardinals. The NY baseball world was getting ready for another subway series.

      Brooklyn dropped the first two in the Bronx and won three and four at Ebbets. They lost the fifth and won the sixth. Game seven was at the Stadium. It was a 5-2 victory for the Yanks. Afterwards, in the Dodger locker room, each member of the team shook Jackie's hand and congratulated him for a fine season. Jackie's best  season would be two years later, when he won the MVP. By 1955, he was not an everyday player, but stole home in the first game of the series which the Brooklyn Dodgers finally won against the Yankees. He retired after the 1956 season and five years later, was elected to Cooperstown. He died in 1972. His number 42 has been retired by every team in the majors. April 15th is celebrated throughout the league as Jackie Robinson Day. "Given a chance to change the world, he never hesitated. He played hard and won." Thanks to my brother for the recommendation.

One-Shot Harry, Phillips - B

              Harry is a Black veteran of Korea and a part-time photographer in LA in the summer of 1963. The Black community is abuzz with Tom Bradley's mayoral candidacy and the planned visit of Dr. Martin Luther King. A fellow veteran and friend, a white man, is killed, likely by the Providers, a racist white supremacist organization working hard to keep the Black and Mexican communities down. Harry pursues the murder as far as he can and risks his life along the way. The novel excels at depicting the hard-scrabble times as the US moves from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights movement. Very well done.

The Precipice, Doiron - B+

                Warden Mike Bowditch is assigned to the search team when it becomes apparent that two southern coeds are missing on the Appalachian Trail. The story brings together background on the legendary hiking trail and a realistic all hands on deck search in the wilderness. Mike also has to resolve a run in with a family who was one of Maine's first settlers, and today has a 'Deliverance'-like compound in the wild where they grow pot and cook meth. This is the best in the series so far, and it ends with Mike just possibly getting promoted to be an Inspector.

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, Kertzer - A* ------------ 1,000th blog post

           In 2020, the archives of the papacy of Pius XII were opened, thus providing scholars an opportunity to more accurately assess the pope's conduct during the war. The story told here is "sometimes shocking and often surprising."

          The Fuhrer visited Rome and Florence in 1938. Pius XI was fond of Mussolini, but not Hitler, and did not receive the Chancellor. Pius had signed the Lateran Accords with the Duce in 1928 establishing the Vatican City as a sovereign state. The pope was planning an encyclical denouncing racism and anti-semitism, and a speech criticizing Mussolini's embrace of Hitler when he died. Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican Secretary of State and former nuncio in Germany succeeded as Pius XII in 1939.  Pius' goal as pope was "to safeguard the church and thereby protect its God-given mission of saving souls." He encouraged a peaceful resolution of the tensions in Europe. He said nothing when Italy invaded Albania on Good Friday. He was equally quiet about Italy's race laws, other than to encourage the state to treat baptized Jews as Catholics. Nor was anything said about the brutal invasion of Catholic Poland.

         The pope was concerned about the ongoing suppression of the church and its institutions in Germany, where schools were closed and priests arrested. He engaged in back channel negotiations with Hitler to no avail. At home, the papacy and the government's cordial relationship continued with the pope and the king exchanging Christmas visits as the pope worked to keep Italy out of the war. Pius expressed his sympathy to the rulers of Belgium, the Netherlands and Lichtenstein when Germany invaded. Awed by Hitler's success in Scandinavia and France, Mussolini joined the war on June 10, 1940. Pius, hoping to not offend either of the fascist dictators, said nothing. He gave a speech encouraging Italian Catholics to support their government. Italy's Catholic newspapers enthusiastically praised the war. 

         Mussolini introduced Nazi-like racial laws in the waning days of Pius XI's papacy. The pope enraged Il Duce with his criticisms and opposition. When Italy entered the war, it arrested all foreign Jews. As 1940 closed, Pius' year end speech to the College of Cardinals closed with, "Among contrasting systems of government...the Church cannot be called upon to make itself a partisan of one course rather than another." When he met with France's new ambassador, he thanked him for Petain's reinstatement of church privileges previously lost. Italians were never enthusiastic about the war or the Germans, and after repeated military failures overseas, support further weakened.

          The war abruptly changed on June 22, 1941 when Germany invaded the USSR. All of Italy, the church and the pope excitedly supported the invasion. The Axis cause was now "a Christian crusade." However, the news that the Germans were systematically slaughtering Jews reached the pope a few months after the invasion began. Then, the entrance of America into the war added a new dimension of complexity, as the financial support provided to the church by the US was immense. The Nazi's ongoing dismemberment of the church's place in German society pushed the pope closer to Mussolini. Throughout 1942, every country with a legate at the Vatican begged the pope to speak out as the specifics of the slaughter of Europe's Jewry became common knowledge.

       The second half of 1942 saw a decline in the likelihood of an Axis victory and a dramatic increase in the bombing of Italy's cities. In his Christmas address, on page 24, the pope lamented "the hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction." Hardly the ringing denunciation of Nazi atrocities that his apologists would later claim it to be. Yet, Pius said that is what it was. As the new year unfolded, Pius requested that the Allies not bomb Rome, even though he had never said a word about the bombing of Allied cities. He had spent years worrying about Nazi Germany's disregard for religion but now began to worry that an Allied victory would lead to the spread of communism. 

       On July 19, 1943, the Allies bombed Rome, focusing on outlying railway yards. Pius directed his Secretary of State to write a letter to the Allies decrying their attack on "the city that is the center of Catholicism." Within a week, King Victor Emmanuel removed Mussolini from office, and had him arrested. In September, the new government announced an armistice and the Germans poured in from the north. The king and the prime minister both fled Rome. The Germans occupied the city. A week later, Himmler cabled the SS in Rome that all Jews were to be sent to Germany. On Oct. 16, the SS began to collect the city's Jews in a military base near the Vatican. Various Catholic officials were able to obtain the release of baptized Jews and Jews married to Catholics. Over a thousand people captured on the first day were sent to Auschwitz immediately. Sixteen survived. The German ambassador reported to Berlin that the pope would not intervene in the Aktion. Later in the fall, the SS renewed its policy of rounding up and transporting Jews in the occupied north. The Vatican's daily paper objected in a front page comment. "Over the next several months hundreds more Jews from Rome would be captured and sent north to their deaths, and thousands more from northern Italy. The pope judged it best to say nothing."

       In January, 1944, the Allies landed at Anzio, a mere 50 miles from Rome. The pope sent a message to the British hoping that no colored troops would be part of the Allied occupation of Rome. As Rome was a crucial railroad junction, the Allies bombed it throughout the months before liberation. When a group of partisans killed 33 Italian SS members, the SS responded by killing 335 Romans. The pope condemned civilian attacks on the German military. In early June, the Germans retreated and the Allies arrived. There was no battle. Rome was free. The pope now turned his focus to communism, as he feared it would take over Europe. 

     Postwar Italy whitewashed its support of Fascism and the Axis war efforts. The pope, in a speech a month after the war's end, spent all of his time talking exclusively about how badly the Nazi's had treated the Church. The Church would even later deny it supported the Facist regime. "At the center of this new, well-scrubbed historical narrative stands Pius XII, presented as the heroic champion of the oppressed. Erased from memory are the pope's regular assurances to the Duce that he need only inform him of anti-Fascist priests, and he would have them silenced." Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, died in 1958.

    Pius' defenders would later argue that protesting to Hitler would accomplish nothing. They also reluctantly pointed out that half of the Reich was Catholic. He would have risked losing their allegiance. His focus throughout was protecting the Church, its property and its mission, although neither the Germans nor the Italians ever threatened it. He protected Vatican City, and the church came into the postwar era with all of its rights and privileges intact. "However, as a moral leader, Pius XII must be judged a failure. He had no love for Hitler, but was intimidated by him, as he was by Italy's dictator as well. At a time of great uncertainty, Pius XII clung firmly to his determination to do nothing to antagonize either man. In fulfilling this aim, the pope was remarkably successful."

   I will only add my total agreement with the author's condemnation. I sincerely hope historians will now pursue the issue of the Church's deplorable actions after the war assisting Nazi's escaping Europe for South America.

The King's Shadow: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Deadly Quest for The Lost City of Alexandria, Richardson - B-

         This is a story of the transformation of an English soldier into "one of the great archaeologists of the age." In 1827, a private in the army of the East India Company walked out of camp in Agra, India. "He would change he world - and the world would destroy him." James Lewis walked across India, and emerged in Pakistan using the name Charles Masson. He achieved a degree of self-sufficiency by becoming  a storyteller. He read extensively and became fascinated with Alexander the Great. He decided to find the rumored city of Alexandria beneath the Mountains in Afghanistan. He began excavating mounds around Bagram. He found ancient coins, bits of pottery and porcelain with Greek inscriptions, as well as priceless jewels and artifacts from the country's Buddhist era. He needed money to carry on, and petitioned the East India Company. The Company agreed to fund his work. Soon thereafter, the Company engaged him as their intelligence agent in Kabul.  Because of the quality of his work as a spy and an archaeologist, the Company obtained a pardon for him from the King of England. Masson found thousands of coins, including many with a Greek inscription on one side and an unidentifiable one on the reverse. Thus, he discovered the key to the ancient language of Kharoshthi.  The coins depicted an interconnectedness among Greeks, Buddhists, Chinese, Egyptians and Romans. However, in the spring of 1838, the ruler of Kabul expelled the British at the behest of the Russians. In response, the East India Company declared war on Afghanistan. A subaltern in Quetta arrested Masson on suspicion of treason and kept him imprisoned for months. Once he was freed, Masson left his beloved Afghanistan and headed back to India. No one would publish the book he wrote because it was critical of the Company and its invasion. In the fall of 1841, he sailed for London. While he was at sea, the British were kicked out of Afghanistan and unmercifully slaughtered on the way. One single Englishman returned to India. He received neither compensation nor praise at home. He died a decade later. Today, his work has been catalogued and is featured at the British Museum. Well written, but dare I say - pointless.

Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History Of Germany's Wealthiest Families, De Jong - B+

           Three weeks after the Nazis came to power, they summoned Germany's leading industrialists to a meeting. Gunther Quandt, arms and battery tycoon, Friedrich Flick, steel magnate, Baron Finck, financier, Kurt Schmitt, Allianz and Munich Re executive, Gustav Krupp von Bolen und Halbach, as well as executives from IG Farben and potash giant, Wintershall, were in attendance. Hjalmar Schacht, former Reichsbank president chaired the meeting. Hitler spoke for ninety minutes, and advised them that he would be ending Germany's democracy, and rule as a dictator after an upcoming parliamentary election. Schacht asked the men for three million marks for the election campaign. They agreed.             

           This book is a history of how Germany's richest cooperated with the Nazis before and during the war, profited, escaped punishment afterwards, and how their families still dominate the country today. "Their dark legacies remain hidden in plain sight."

           Gunther Quandt's textile business prospered in WWI, but the Spanish flu of 1918 took his wife. He remarried Magda Friedlander, who would later be known as the First Lady of the Third Reich, when she was the wife of Joseph Goebbels. Their son, Harald, was born in 1921. Throughout the 1920's, Gunther began accumulating industrial businesses. He and Magda divorced in 1929.  Harald was the model for the future Hitler Youth and was heavily involved in the world of the Nazi's. 

          Hitler's appointment as Chancellor was effective January 30, 1933. Soon after the meeting between Hitler and the industrialists mentioned above, the Reichstag burned down and Hitler announced he would rule unilaterally. Because of the tensions between Quandt and Magda Goebbels, the Nazi state bullied Quandt, and at at one point, arrested him, held him in solitary confinement for six weeks, and released him on bail of over one million $US. 

         At the 1934 Berlin Auto Show, Hitler announced that the industry should not be focusing on cars for the rich, but rather build a car for the people. He summoned Ferdinand Porsche, who he had had a chat with a year earlier about race cars, to build the Volkswagen, proceeded to tell him its key features, and set the price for which the people's car should sell. Porsche and his son in law, Anton Piech began to work on the Volkswagen and, at the same time, bought out the firm's Jewish co-founder, Adolf Rosenberger, for a fraction of the value of his interest. Hitler blessed Porsche's design in 1936. In 1938, the Fuhrer lay the foundation stone of the VW plant in Wolfsburg. A year later, Porsche delivered the first VW to Hitler. Only 630 were manufactured prior to the conversion of the factory to the war effort.

         For August von Finck, the Nuremberg Race Laws and the acceleration of Aryanization of Jewish assets offered him the opportunity to greatly expand his private banking business. The Anschluss provided the extraordinary chance to takeover S.M. von Rothschild, Austria's largest private bank.

         When war came, it brought unimaginable wealth to many, but few were as successful as Quandt. His firms provided uniforms, Luger pistols, submarine batteries, and on and on to the Reich. Many of the firms that were part of Quandt's empire had been plundered through Aryanization from Germany's Jews. 

       Also riding high was Friedrich Flick, who built an arms industry in eastern Germany, arguing that it was important to diversify away from the Ruhr, home of Krupp and Thyssen. Flick "became one of the preferred partners for the army." In addition to being an effective manufacturer, Flick was a skilled deal maker, who understood the requirements of acting in the shadows so the world could not see that Germany was rearming. Like Quandt, he utilized Aryanization to buy Jewish businesses at a fraction of their value.

        The war brought to the magnates the acquisition of businesses and properties in Poland, the USSR, and throughout occupied Europe. Many of their sons were at war. Harald Quandt parachuted into Crete in the war's most successful airborne operation. From there, he fought on the front lines in the east. In late 1944, he was wounded in Italy and captured by the British. Rudolph Flick lost his life in the opening week of Barbarossa. With so many men in uniform, the German economy used the labor of twelve million men, women and children brought to the Reich as slaves, as well as prisoners forced to live and work in abhorrent conditions. 

        In the waning days of the war, Quandt, Flick, and Finck fled to Bavaria, where they hoped they would be able to have their future determined by the Americans. The US Treasury Dept. compiled a list of forty-three businessman to be indicted for war crimes. Quandt and Flick were on the list. The Allies planned to break up the industrial behemoths and prosecute their CEO's. Finck too was arrested, but as a financier, he had avoided the dirty work of arms manufacturing with slave labor. Porsche, Piech and Ferry Porsche, Ferdinand's son, were all arrested, but the three were released by year's end. A year later, the French arrested the automakers, but their prosecution floundered. Porsche and Piech negotiated a 1% licensing fee for every VW Beetle ever made, assuring the family's wealth for generations. During the first Nuremberg trial, both Schacht and von Papen were found not guilty, thus making the prosecution of businessmen less likely. The US turned over the evidence it had to German authorities. At Quandt's denazification trial in 1948, he was able to leverage Goebbels hostility into a very light penalty of court costs. He was soon a free man. Von Finck's trial was later in 1948 and led to a two thousand DM fine. The only people who faced serious charges were Alfried Krupp, Flick, and Farben's senior executives. The US indicted Flick for crimes against humanity and the use of slave labor. After a months long trial, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail. As the Cold War evolved, it became apparent that the US desired a strong W. German ally. Flick and many others were released from jail early. By the end of the 1950's, he was once again the wealthiest man in Germany.

       West Germany boomed in the post-war era, and those years eventually became known as the economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder).  Gunther Quandt died in 1954 leaving an estate of 55M DM to his two sons. Included in the inheritance was a 4% stake in Daimler. By the end of the decade, the Quandt's owned 15%, but the Flick family owned 40%. The two families cooperated in the management of the car company for decades. Herbert Quandt, Gunther's oldest son from his first marriage, began to accumulate BMW stock , and became the company's largest shareholder. He successfully restructured the company and built his ownership up to 40%. His two children still own the shares. West Germany joined NATO in 1955, and the Quandt's began making weapons for the Bundeswehr. Ferry Porsche designed and built the new Leopard tank. 

        In 1970, the magazine, Der Spiegel, published an article called Nine Zeroes, pointing out that four of the country's billionaire families had as the foundation of their wealth activities during the war. The Quandts, Flicks, Fincks, and Oetkers were all headed by Nazis. When Friedrich Flick died in 1972, he was one of the five richest men in the world. His heirs sold his businesses and became passive investors. In 1980, Finck died and his sons sold the private bank for 660 M DM. By 1982, both Herbert and Harald Quandt were dead and their half-dozen heirs inherited designated pieces of the empire. 

       By the new century, reunified Germany was taking a hard look at its past. The state and an alliance of major companies paid a settlement to the surviving slave laborers. In 2007, a documentary called The Silence of the Quandt's aired on television and led to a brouhaha when a Quandt dismissed its observations. The family had an 1187 page history published a few years later. And although it whitewashed some of the story, the family made a $6M contribution to a forced labor documentation center. Porsche also addressed the slave labor issue with a contribution. Nonetheless, "the scale remains tipped in favor of money and power. Many German business dynasties continue to sidestep a complete reckoning with the dark history that stains their fortunes, and so the ghosts of the Third Reich still haunts them."

     Seldom is the financial side of history's big stories ever told. I believe Manchester's 'Arms of Krupp' published in 1964 was the first I ever came across. It's a very important topic and one treated here by a journalist who does a superb job.

   

         

 

Sparring Partners, Grisham -B

                There is no better storyteller than John Grisham, and his latest is no exception. The book is referred to as the fourth in the Jake Brigance series, but that is not completely accurate. There is a Jake Brigance story with an appealing twist. But, it's the second of three novellas under this title. The first is about a young man on death row, and the third is about a feuding family law firm. I kept erroneously waiting for the three stories to be tied together, which they obviously never were. Nonetheless, the master remains on top of his game.

The Shadows of Men, Mukherjee - B

                    Capt. Sam Wyndham and Sgt. Banerjee are caught up in a complex tale of intrigue involving rogue units of British agents stirring up Hindi-Muslim hatred in Calcutta and Bombay. After all, if all they're going to do is fight, the British need to stay to keep a lid on it all. The intriguing point is that Banerjee realizes he can no longer work for those suppressing his people. Oxford education aside, the sergeant is becoming an Indian patriot. Unsure of how the series will proceed.