They didn't all go to Brazil

[I've been looking for this list for years, only to find it in my favorites list buried at the bottom. If we can assume that the escaped Nazis had some effect on the politics of Brazil and Argentina, this area of study, as if any one will be allowed access, is deeply interesting. It's not just about the destruction of the Banu Qurayza or the history of dhimmitude any more.] 

The Iconoclast

The Iconoclast blog of the New England Review 5/10/2009

One More Nazi on the Nile

Unlike the Nazi war criminals who fled to South America, those who fled to Arab countries, like Aribert Heim [1], did not have to hide their identities, and they often were employed by Arab governments, especially by Egypt. [That would be both King Faruck’s royal and Nasserite Egypt.]

Here is a list, found in a footnote in "Il Gotteskamp di Johann von Leers" by Claudio Mutti. The text is in Italian, but the Nazi names, and the Muslim names so many of them took on -- as it says toward the end, "[l]a maggior parte di loro abbracciò l’Islam" (most of them embraced Islam)-- should be easy to make out: [I have added the translation of their military ranks.]

"Tra coloro che svolsero un ruolo politico o militare in Egitto, possiamo citare: Hans Apeler, alias Salah Ghaffar (Ministero dell’Informazione), Franz Bartel alias el-Hussein (Ministero dell’Informazione), il generale della Wehrmacht Wilhelm Farmbacher (consigliere militare di Nasser), l’SS Standartenführer [colonel] Baumann (Ministero della Guerra; istruttore del Fronte di Liberazione della Palestina), l’ex commissario della Gestapo Erich Altern alias Ali Bella, l’SS Sturmbannführer [major] Walter Balmann alias Alì ben Khader, l’ex aiutante di campo di Rommel Fritz Bayerlein, Hans Becher (istruttore della polizia), l’ex ufficiale della Gestapo Wilhelm Beissner, l’SS Sturmbannführer Bernhard Bender alias Bashir ben Salah (consigliere della polizia politica), l’SS Untersturmführer [second lieutenant] Wilhelm Boerner alias Ali Ben Kasher (Ministero degli Interni, istruttore del Fronte di Liberazione della Palestina), Werner Birgel alias el-Gamin (Ministero dell’Informazione), l’SS Untersturmführer Wilhelm Boeckler alias Abd el-Karim, l’SS Hauptsturmführer [captain] Alois Brunner alias Alì Mohammed, l’SS Obergruppenführer[lieutenant general] Friedrich Buble alias Ben Amman (Dipartimento Relazioni Pubbliche), Franz Bünsch, l’SA Obersturmführer[senior captain] Erich Bunzel, il capo della Gestapo di Düsseldorf Joachim Daemling alias Jochen Dressel alias Ibrahim Mustafa (Radio Cairo), l’SS Obergruppenführer Oskar Dirlewanger, il medico SS dr. Hans Eisele, l’SS Sturmbahnführer Eugen Fichberger, l’SS Standartenführer Leopold Gleim alias al-Nasher (Servizi di Sicurezza), l’ex assistente di Goebbels barone von Harder, l’ex giornalista del Welt-Dienst Ludwig Heiden alias al-Haj (traduttore del Mein Kampf in arabo), l’SS Hauptsturmführer Heribert Heim (medico della polizia), l’ex dirigente della Gestapo Franz Hithofer, Ulrik Klaus alias Muhammad Akbar, l’ex dirigente dellaHitlerjugend Karl Luder (Ministero della Guerra), l'SS Standartenführer Gerhard Mertins, Rudolf Midner, l’SS Gruppenführer [major general] Alois Moser (istruttore delle Camicie Verdi), l’SS Sturmbannführer Oskar Münzel (consigliere militare), Gerd von Nimzekalias Ben Alì, Achim Dieter Pelschnik alias el-Said, Franz Rademacher, Walter Rauff, l’SS Sturmbahnführer Schmalstich, l’SS Sturmbannführer Seipel alias Imad Zuher, l’ex funzionario della Gestapo Heinrich Sellmann alias Hasan Suleyman (Ministero dell’Informazione), Albert Thiemann alias Amman Qader, l’SS Standartenführer Erich Weinmann, il dr. Werner Wietschenke, il medico SS Heinrich Willermann alias Naim Fahum, Ludwig Zind alias Muhammad Saleh. La maggior parte di loro abbracciò l’Islam. “Per la verità, l’arrivo di un certo gruppo di ex nazisti al Cairo è precedente alla rivoluzione nasseriana. Già re Faruk si era circondato, tra il 1948 e il 1951, di alcuni esperti tedeschi (…) Giunto al potere Nasser, il reclutamento degli esperti tedeschi si è intensificato ed il senatore americano dell’Alaska, Ernest Gruening, poteva offrirne un lungo elenco, il 3 maggio 1963, nel corso del dibattito sul Medio Oriente” (Angelo Del Boca e Mario Giovana, I “figli del sole”. Mezzo secolo di nazifascismo nel mondo, Feltrinelli, Milano 1965, p. 463 n."

[One wonders; after the Egyptians and Syrians went over to the Soviets for their military supplies, post the war in 1956 and the boycott against Israel, how the senior Soviet officers in the training battalions must have felt. This smattering of Germans of a certain age, blue eyes among the black, in these high offices, must have been slightly disconcerting at first. But the enemy of my enemy is my…what?]  

After the war, all kinds of Nazi war criminals were not merely given refuge, but welcomed, and appointed to important positions in the secret police and the military, especially in Egypt and Syria. Alois Brunner [2] may still be alive in Damascus, where he was put to work. In Egypt, a whole group of Nazis, with the unrepentant Johann von Leers [3] the most famous, not only went to work for Nasser's Egypt -- Nasser's brother had published an Arabic translation of "Mein Kampf" in 1939 -- but also found Islam very much to their liking. [Much like the homeless Communists of our own day.] Von Leers found in Islam what he had been seeking for a long time: something not really to replace Nazism, but to allow everything about the Nazis he liked to be continued, under slightly different auspices.

Meanwhile, the Jews of Palestine, who during World War II had been handed out rifles by the British because the latter feared a German invasion and knew that only the Jews could be counted on, [Certainly not the Egyptian Army. They'd been rooting for Rommel as he worked his way along the coast, and stood on the side lines at El Alamein.] After the war they promptly went around seizing all that weaponry, so that the Jews were left without those arms. And during World War II, it was Jewish volunteers who took on, in the Middle East, the most dangerous, usually suicidal missions, in Egypt's Western Desert, in Damascus, and in the oilfields of Iraq, where David Raziel, the likely successor to Jabotinsky [Still hated by the Far Left in America.] in his wing of Zionism, died trying to keep that oil out of German hands.

As everyone knows, much of the Western world has been flagellating itself over its supposed mistreatment of every conceivable "colonized" people. The Arabs are at the top of the list of those who have won the sympathies of the British left, presumably because of British "colonialism" among the Arabs. But what "colonialism" was there? Arabia was never colonized. The British only established a few small garrisons in order to keep the peace -- that's the "Trucial" in "Trucial States” -- and, early on, to suppress the Arab slave trade. [As quiet as its kept.] That's it as far as Arabia went. As for the British as mandatory authorities, that was not colonialism. The British threw out the Turks, and gave the Arabs freedom, and the states, they did nothing to deserve. And in Mandatory Palestine, the British Mandatory authority, with a few exceptions -- Col. Meinertzhagen, who had been Allenby's intelligence officer, was forced to leave Palestine because of his protests against the whipping up of the Arabs to riot and murder, by Col. Bertie Waters-Taylor, and then the famous Captain Orde Wingate [Whose Chindits were jungle fighters against the Japanese in Burma during WWII.], who dared to train the Jewish settlers in techniques of self-defense during the Arab Revolt [1936-1939] , and was, like Colonel Meinertzhagen more than a decade before, promptly sent out of Palestine because of his sympathies.

If this history were better known, and if the Nazi-Arab alliance, which included not only the Mufti of Jerusalem, but the attempt by Sadat, and Nasser, to aid the Nazis during World War II, not to mention all the other pro-Nazi sentiment, in Iraq, in Arabia, indeed everywhere -- better known to people in Great Britain [Though long since forgotten.], and if they knew further just what the British did in Mandatory Palestine, in refusing to abide by the solemn commitments that had been made in order to be given the Mandate, and if they knew just how many hundreds of thousands of Jews might have been saved, had Palestine been open to the Jews just before and after the war, then perhaps that desire to feel guilty would be transferred from the completely wrong object of such a feeling, to the people to whom, in deed, such a feeling is owed. And that might begin to help everyone stop their apologetics and appeasement of Islam, and perhaps even come to see the overwhelming case, legal, historic, and moral, of the Israelis, who are terrible, possibly hopeless, at presenting that case, but that is not the same thing as saying the case is not there to be made.

[1]

BERLIN (AFP) – One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, Aribert Heim or "Doctor Death", thought to be in his 90s and in South America, actually died in Cairo in 1992, media reports said Wednesday.

Heim was wanted for killing hundreds of concentration camp victims with horrific medical experiments, including performing operations without anaesthetics and injecting petrol directly into their hearts.

German public TV channel ZDF said in a statement that Heim died of bowel cancer in 1992, citing his son and acquaintances in Cairo where he had been living under the assumed identity of Tarek Farid Hussein after converting to Islam.

ZDF and also the New York Times claim they have more than 100 documents including Heim's passport, bank statements, personal letters and medical records that prove without a doubt that Heim lived in a Cairo hotel until his death.

He had been in hiding since 1962. Leading Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said last July that he believed Heim was still alive and living in either Argentina or Chile.

On Wednesday, Zuroff said that the German TV report sounded authoritative but that he would be seeking further confirmation.

"The report on the death of the 'butcher of Mauthausen' is apparently reliable but we don't for the moment have either a body or a grave...," he said.

"Some people have an interest in substantiating this death, so we are going to check the available documents on the subject."

He added: "Personally, I would be very disappointed if Heim had been able to end his life without being tried, but I do not regret the efforts that we have made to try and have him arrested because through this the world came to know what he was."

Born on June 28, 1914, in Radhersburg, Austria, Heim joined the Nazi party before Germany annexed Austria, when membership of the party was still illegal.

He then became a member of Hitler's elite SS guard in 1940 and [LiebStandarte Adolf Hitler, eventually a regiment and then a division in the Waffen-SS, and a werewolf plague on the Eastern Front.], after stints at camps in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen in Germany, was posted to the infamous Mauthausen camp in Austria.

It was at Mauthausen that he became known as "Doctor Death" after performing sadistic and grotesque medical experiments. Survivors of Mauthausen allege the father of three cut prisoners open, removing their livers, among other things. His cruelty was such that he has frequently been compared to Josef Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death" who was a doctor at Auschwitz.

The New York Times -- which carried out the investigation along with ZDF -- said on its website that Heim would decapitate prisoners, boil their heads until only the skull remained and keep them as souvenirs and decorations.

Heim was number two on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's most wanted Nazi list, after Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's main assistant, who is thought to be dead.

Eichmann, one of the leading architects of the extermination of the Jews, was himself hanged in Israel in 1962.

Heim was arrested by US troops in 1945 but was released two-and-a-half years later. He subsequently set himself up as a gynecologist in Germany but fled in 1962 when authorities were poised to arrest him.

There had been numerous reported sightings of him as far afield as South America, Egypt and Spain.

Nazi-hunters thought twice in recent years they were close to pinning him down, once in Spain in 2005 and again last year in a small Chilean town some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Santiago.

However, Heim's son Ruediger told ZDF in an interview that his father went to ground in 1962 and travelled to Cairo via France, Spain and Morocco.

Here he contracted an incurable form of bowel cancer in the early 1990s and died following several months of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

German police said on Wednesday that the reports by ZDF and the New York Times "correspond with the authorities' most recent information" and that a press release would be released on Thursday.

[2]

Alois Brunner (born 8 April 1912, reports of death contested) is an Austrian Nazi war criminal. Brunner was Adolf Eichmann's assistant, and Eichmann referred to Brunner as his "best man."^[1] As commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Parisfrom June 1943 to August 1944, Brunner is held responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jews to the gas chambers. Nearly 24,000 of them were deported from the Drancy camp. He was condemned to death in absentia in France in 1954 for crimes against humanity. In 1961 and in 1980, Brunner lost an eye and the fingers of his left hand, respectively, as a result of letter bombs sent to him by Mossad.^[2]

In 2003, The Guardian described him as "the world's highest-ranking Nazi fugitive believed still alive."^[3] Brunner was last reported to be living in Syria, whose government rebuffed international efforts to locate or apprehend him.^[4]

^[3]

Johann von Leers, alias Omar Amin, (January 25, 1902 – March 5, 1965) was a German professor known for his anti-Jewish polemics. He was one of the most important ideologues of the Third Reich and later served in the Egyptian Information Department. He published for Goebbels, in Peron's Argentina, and for Nasser's Egypt. He converted to Islam, and changed his name to Omar Amin.

How short is our memory.

For the last few years I've been keeping a list of what I feel are pithy quotes. Here I present the first one as an example;

 “Would it be easier, for the Government to dissolve the people and elect another?”                                                                                                                    ---Berthold Brecht after the East German uprising of 1953.

Sort of gets to the point of Communist governance, doesn’t it. No matter what, the Vanguard is always right.

Recently I came across a quote from Christopher Hitchens from 2007:

 Four years after the first coalition soldiers crossed the Iraqi border, one can attract pitying looks (at best) if one does not take the view that the whole engagement could have been and should have been avoided. Those who were opposed to the operation from the beginning now claim vindication, and many of those who supported it say that if they had known then what they know now, they would have spoken or voted differently.

What exactly does it mean to take the latter position? At what point, in other words, ought the putative supporter to have stepped off the train? The question isn’t as easy to answer as some people would have you believe…

The small number of U.N. personnel were not supposed to comb the countryside. They were supposed to monitor the handover of the items on Iraq’s list, to check them, and then to supervise their destruction. (If Iraq disposed of the items in any other way—by burying or destroying or neutralizing them, as now seems possible—that would have been an additional grave breach of the resolutions.) To call for serious and unimpeachable inspections was to call, in effect, for a change of regime in Iraq. --- Christopher Hitchens in 2007

As a recipient of those pitying looks from 2004 on it’s nice to remember what the conditions of the Iraq sanctions regime was; the war that started them, and the cat and mouse games that went on for some twelve years after.

At the end of the Gulf War, when Hussein’s forces had been pushed back into Iraq, the uncovering of stockpiles of chemical and biological WMDs, along with his crushing of risings in the Shia and Kurdish areas led the Americans and British to call for intrusive sanctions and “no fly” zones, boxing Saddam in Baghdad. For the years that followed he pushed at the limits of that box. First flying his MIGs to the limits of the zones, then pushing his forces to the Kuwaiti border in 1994, he finally settled down to painting with radar the fighters on patrol, only to have his radar sites destroyed by anti-radiation missiles. That was the bombing that Ron Paul feels so righteously guilty about now.

But Saddam never allowed his government to open up to the sanctions regime. As far as he was concerned he had not lost the Gulf War and he was the shield of the Palestinians, the chief warrior of the Sunna. He designated sites that the UN needed to search as Presidential sites, and therefore off limits, mosques were also off limits, and the game of UN investigators going in the front door as trucks were loading up at the back door made a joke of the sanction regime by the later 90’s.

By 1998 President Clinton had had enough, signing the Iraqi Freedom Act and instituting Operation Desert Fox.

Both these actions were on the tentative side, with the Iraqi Freedom Act calling for no U.S. “boots on the ground” and Operation Desert Fox not even attempting to fully degrade Iraq’s WMD arsenal, as Henry Kissinger said “I would be amazed if a three day campaign made a decisive difference.”

What it did achieve was to break up any consensus of UN members continuing to support the No-Fly Zones or the sanctions regime. Russia and China, as could be expected, covering Hussein’s back as he made the Oil for Food program his personal source of international bribes, paying of those who aided him with as many barrels of oil as they could carry. Starving children be damned.

So for those that feel that this was a war of choice they should have made their positions known in 1998. By 2003 few believed that Saddam was clean, which is why the congressional resolutions passed with such majorities. Except for the professional Left most cheered as the Army and Marines slashed their way to Baghdad, laughing at the cluelessness of Baghdad Bob. But as soon as the insurgency gained ground, and the masses of WMD didn’t show up everyone knew that this was “the wrong war in the wrong place”, in some cases turning on a dime. (“I voted for the 85 billion before I voted against it.”)

In war no plan survives contact with the enemy, and this one was the perfect example. But in this one we didn’t define the enemy. We still haven’t.

Jim Lacey on the future of the military

[There is very little commentary necessary on my part, just that the beginning of strategic wisdom is based in strategic thought.

JimG33]

DECEMBER 29, 2011 4:00 A.M. on NRO

The Army We Need 
A Pentagon New Year’s resolution: to give us the Army we really need

Blood & Treasure by Jim Lacey

 General Ray Ordierno (left) walking the streets of Baghdad in 2008.   (DOD)

Last week, former Army chief of staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan editorialized that the Army is repeating the mistakes of the post-Vietnam era, when it turned away from a decade’s experience fighting a counterinsurgency war, in favor of building a more capable conventional force. This, according to General Sullivan, forced the Army to improvise its way through conflicts in Panama, Somalia, and the Balkans. General Sullivan went on to say that, despite these three experiences, we still possessed the wrong Army when we invaded Iraq in 2003. One wonders how an Army optimized to fight insurgents would have dealt with the six armored Republican Guard divisions that ringed Baghdad. General Sullivan does not address this question. What he does say is that the Army was well on its way to defeat in Iraq until, after three years of muddling through, it adopted a new counterinsurgency doctrine. Now General Sullivan fears that the Army, in its rush to put Iraq and Afghanistan behind it, will once again put its counterinsurgency skills on the shelf, as it once again turns its attention to preparing for conventional warfare. I have nothing but the deepest respect for General Sullivan, but his concerns are misplaced. His first mistake is viewing today’s global environment as similar to the environment of the last 40 years. According to the general, “We cannot wish away instability, failed states, post-conflict instability, large refugee flows, genocide, terrorism, humanitarian catastrophe, regime change, and the need for intervention.” Far be it from me to predict an end to all of these various forms of human misery. Still, one must recognize that we live in a dramatically different world from the one that existed when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago. It is a world in which the United States does not have to bear every burden, and those we choose to (or are forced to) bear are likely to require a force that can sustain itself in a high-intensity conflict. Africa has been growing economically at 6 percent a year for a while, and many experts believe this is not just another false dawn for that disadvantaged continent. That means Africa’s wealth is on pace to almost double every decade. If we look east, many Asian nations have long experienced even faster growth rates, and even a cyclic slowing will still see them doubling their GDP every decade, if not faster. China, for instance, has been doubling its wealth every six years, and even a slowdown of 50 percent will still leave it on pace to be the world’s largest economy by 2050. In short, the world is getting wealthier at a pace scarcely imaginable when General Sullivan was learning the art of counterinsurgency warfare in Vietnam. There is, therefore, real hope that the world will experience a declining number of failed states, as a rising tide lifts all boats. Increasing global prosperity will also do much to reduce chronic instability in many regions of the world. Increasing wealth in some nations may, for a time, increase internal turmoil, as growing middle classes demand more power over the political and economic direction of their countries. [We’ve been hoping that this growing demand for political liberalization will materialize in China for the last few decades, but it doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. Their gulags are as full as ever as their economy continues to grow. And as the Arab Spring seems to be bringing more branches of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the Middle East the prospects there also don’t seem very promising.] But even in these cases, growing wealth can temper many of the worst effects of regime change. That assumes that a new government moves rapidly to establish free markets and sufficient rule of law to assure a rapid recovery. It hardly needs saying that such a political upheaval in China, or what may be now taking place in Russia, would certainly have much larger and more unpredictable consequences than what, for instance, the Arab world is undergoing. On the other hand, we are unlikely to commit our military forces to quell internal turmoil in either country. And if we did, an Army and Marine Corps optimized to handle counterinsurgencies would be worse than useless. [Land war in Asia anyone?] Moreover, in a wealthier world there is no longer any reason for the United States to continue doing all the heavy lifting. That does not mean we do not help, either where our assistance can do the most good, or where the international community does not possess the wherewithal to accomplish specific tasks. It does, however, mean that we do not have to rush to commit American combat troops whenever something goes wrong in the world. Still, when we do commit American soldiers and Marines to a situation where combat is likely, it is imperative that we have the right force for the job. So, let us take a look at General Sullivan’s examples of where we muddled through in the past. In Panama, soldiers and Marines secured all 27 assigned objectives on the first day. Although fighting continued for some time thereafter, I am at a loss to see where a differently designed military-force structure would have made a substantial difference. In Somalia, a company from the 75th Rangers was severely mauled, causing the United States to declare that any continuing effort in that country was not worth the cost. That company was part of the most elite infantry force in the world, fighting in a counterinsurgency that its men had spent years honing their skills for. But in the narrow streets of Mogadishu they decided to fight the way their enemies were fighting, and they paid dearly for it. What would have made a difference? Heavy armor (tanks and armored personnel carriers) surely would have had a significant impact. Finally, in the Balkans, U.S. intervention brought an end to the worst of the violence in short order. This was not done through a special counterinsurgency doctrine or with a specially trained counterinsurgency force. Rather, it was accomplished by the 1st Armored Division, which crossed the Danube River with hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, fully prepared to take or inflict casualties as necessary to create a lasting peace. In the words of the sign posted by Lieutenant Colonel (now Major General) Tony Cucolo over the gate to his battalion compound, “Peace in the Posavina [Sava River Valley] or deal with us!” That, in a nutshell, is the heart of counterinsurgency; not some doctrine that is more concerned with nation-building than it is with security. The soldiers and Marines in Iraq always knew this. The corps commander in Iraq during the surge, now the Army chief of staff, General Raymond Odierno, reportedly said that nothing he was doing before the Army published its new counterinsurgency doctrine changed once it was published. A new doctrine did not break the back of the counterinsurgency in Iraq. That was done by the addition of 50,000 more soldiers and Marines to the fight. Note: These were not aid workers or even forces imbued with a new doctrine (most of them had never read it). Rather, they were 50,000 mostly combat troops, prepared to take the fight to the enemy. And it was a hard and vicious fight — one that often required the full combined-arms panoply (armor, artillery, and close air support) to win. Somehow, much of the true narrative of this fight is being lost in favor of one that emphasizes getting along with the locals, building schools, and helping farmers. All of these activities were, of course, important, but they pale in comparison to the benefits of increased security, which was only bought by hard fighting. One brigade commander captured it perfectly when he said, “I know all about counterinsurgency doctrine. It means shake hands in the light and kill at night.” And there you have the true purpose of America’s Army and Marine Corps: to fight and win our nation’s battles. Humanitarian assistance, stability operations, and counterterrorism have become military missions mostly by default. There is simply no other organization that can handle a crisis as rapidly and efficiently as the U.S. military. General Sullivan is right to say that the United States will continue to find itself dealing with these kinds of operations. Moreover, he is probably correct in stating that despite our current distaste for such ventures, this country may find itself fighting another counterinsurgency war sooner rather than later. But his fear that we are allowing the Army’s and Marine Corps’ core competencies in this area to wither is unfounded. In fact, our Special Forces, which exist almost solely to handle this type of mission, have tripled in size since 2003, and there appears to be little impetus for shrinking this force. What General Sullivan left out of his history was the crucial importance that heavy armored forces played in Operation Desert Storm and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also neglects to mention what happened to Israeli forces in their 2006 invasion of Lebanon. Israel had optimized its forces and doctrine for a counterinsurgency war, only to pay a high price for the loss of rapidly perishable combined-arms skills when it was forced to fight a heavily armed Hezbollah force. In fact, throughout our own war in Iraq — in the battles for Najaf, Fallujah, and Sadr City — heavy forces were often a crucial factor in the Army’s and Marines’ battlefield success. The truth of the matter is that a heavy force can move rapidly down the spectrum of conflict to engage in a counterterrorism operation. On the other hand, it would take years for a force optimized to fight insurgents to acquire all the skills necessary to fight as a heavy combined-arms force. The Army and Marine Corps this country requires have to achieve a proper balance between their light and heavy forces. Light forces remain crucial because of their rapid strategic deploy ability, their ability to traverse any terrain, and their unparalleled capacity to closely interact with local populations. Still, there are times when nothing will do except a battalion of heavy M-1 tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers. These heavy forces have proven their worth in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, they are absolutely essential for fighting a more advanced enemy. And it is these advanced nations that are our primary worry for the future. As the world becomes wealthier, more and more nations will be able to afford military establishments that can be overcome only by heavy armor. God help us if we ever come to blows with a technically advanced force and all we have to fight with are light forces optimized for counterinsurgency warfare. Some are too quick to forget that the light forces that first deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield referred to themselves as “speed bumps,” to discourage the enemy until the heavy armored divisions arrived to support them. The United States did not turn away from counterinsurgency warfare after Vietnam because it was tired of fighting such wars. It did it so in order to prepare to confront a massive Soviet armored threat to Europe. That force not only held off the Soviet Union, it proved spectacularly good at doing everything else asked of it over the past 20 years. Likewise, the Army is not once again turning its focus away from counterinsurgency warfare because of a sour taste left by Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather, it is peering into an uncertain future and noting that a host of potential enemies can be confronted only by a U.S. Army and Marine Corps capable of engaging in a high-tempo, heavy-force-dominant combined-arms fight. — Jim Lacey is a professor of strategy at the Marine Corps War College and the author of the just released The First Clash: The Miraculous Greek Victory at Marathon and Its Impact on Western Civilization. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not express those of the Department of Defense or any of its members.

A Cabinetmaker's Sketchbook Pt. 1

A Cabinetmaker’s sketchbook using

freehand mechanical drawing.

Part 1

I am One that Transforms into Two.
I am Two that transforms into Four.
I am Four that transforms into Eight.
After This, I am One again.

EGYPTIAN CREATION MYTH

            A sketch book is one of the cabinetmaker’s most important tools. Drawing allows him to work on ideas and by keeping a book he can go back to see how his work is evolving, but at some time he is going to need to produce measured scale drawings in that book or full size drawings for the layout of a finished piece. Another area of study is that of proportion; how does one part of a design relate to the whole. All designers have faced that problem since the time of the Egyptians.

            Before the middle of the 19^th Century measuring tools were crude to say the least. When I was first getting started, back in the 1970s, the old guys still said use only one tape for a job, that way the measurements will all add up. But in the actual old days there were no universally standardized measures. The divider, straight edge and plumb bob were the tools of layout, no matter how large the job was. Yet the work of the last 5000 years puts us in the shade as far as the search for beauty is concerned. So how can we restore these methods and use them in our contemporary world.

            “Of the Arts which are either improved or ornamented by Architecture, that of   Cabinet-making is not only the most useful and ornamental, but capable of receiving as great assistance from it as any whatever. I have therefore prefixed to the following designs a short explanation of the Five Orders. Without an acquaintance with this Science and some knowledge of the rules of Perspective, the Cabinet-Maker cannot make the designs of his work intelligible, nor show, in a little compass, the whole conduct and effect of the Piece. These, therefore, ought to be carefully studied by everyone who would excel in this branch, since they are the very Soul and Basis of his Art”

                                                                                                Thomas Chippendale – 1762

            What did Master Chippendale mean by this, the first paragraph of the preface to his “Gentleman & Cabinet-Makers Director”? Why did he devote five pages to detailed drawings of the orders with another two pages of drawings of the geometry of the column base moldings, and the moldings of the pedestals?  Did he want his fellow workmen to adopt the Classical Orders and apply them directly to their work? Probably not, or at least not in their entirety, as few of the ensuing designs can demonstrate this, maybe he was suggesting something deeper, an actual Science of Design.

One of the advantages to living in New York City, beside the many furniture collections, is the educational institutions. I’ve taken classes at one of these, The Institute of Classical Architecture. Through a study of the Classical Orders, constructive geometry, and proportion I feel I have been introduced to that Science Master Chippendale spoke of.

In Fifteenth century Italy many ideas came together to produce the movement we now call The Renaissance. This was a time when the final collapse of Constantinople before the forces of Islam meant that the wisdom of Classical Greece was being translated from Greek into Latin. There followed the growth of a new humanism where Man became the measure of truth and beauty. One of the strands of those ideas and the one most pertinent to Architecture was the rediscovery of the Ten Books of Architecture by Vitruvius. Although this set of volumes had first come to light in about 1000 A.D., the return of the Pope to Rome and the rebuilding of the Holy City, not to mention the growth of world trade and the growing power of a commercial/military aristocracy, led to a desire to understand the design rules of the existing ruins of the long dead empire. The Ten Books contain the work and research of this first century architect and his compilation of writings on the subject going back to the Hellenistic period, all of those older volumes having been lost. In his books he presents the concepts of Ordinatio and Symmetria as methods of finding numerical ratios so that the parts of a project will have proportional relations to each other no matter how large or small. He presented these families of design by the names that have come down to us. In the later translations Ordinatio became The Orders of Architecture. As these architects and scholars began to measure these ruins they found that what Vitruvius had written was true, that the proportions and details were not random but were the result of numerical, harmonic and geometric relationships. Below is a comparison of the orders and their grosser numerical proportions.

We can see that this is the most basic method of construction, the post, or column, and the beam, or entablature. The numbers show the proportional relations within the order with one, or Unity, being the width of the column shaft at its base. Therefore whatever the size of the order it will always exhibit the same proportions, whether used to define the decoration of a room or the front of a sky scraper from the 1920’s, but is there a way to use this idea in something as small as a furniture piece?

            Start with a sketch pad, 18” x 24” spiral bound with a heavy weight paper, 80 lbs. and smooth as the absence of tooth is very important. Also pick up a newsprint pad of the same size as backing sheets will also be important. The straight edge can be a 24” steel rule or a T-square with the head removed or used upside down. At least two compasses are necessary, one to hold a fixed dimension and another to move between other dimensions as required. A small awl, ground to a fine point, pencils and leads at a hardness of HB, a draftsman’s dry cleaning pad, a sandpaper pad to keep the leads sharp, a kneaded eraser, a pink or green eraser, and an eraser shield completes the basic tool kit.

           Start the drawing by placing six to eight sheets of newsprint under the drawing sheet and with the awl pierce the sheet in the center, this piercing will be designated point Z. Set the compass at a comfortable radius, say five inches, draw a circle centered at Z.

 Using the straight edge drop the vertical diameter of the circle making sure the point of the pencil passes through the piercing at Z.

These, and subsequent piercings, will make plain the points where lines meet or cross as a slight misstep in the placement of these points will add up as the drawing proceeds, defeating the search for accuracy. Where the diameter intersects the circle label these points A and B, and pierce them with the awl.

Using the radius step off from points A & B what would be the vertices of a hexagon around the circumference of the circle. Using points A and B as the vertexes of opposing angles draw lines connecting these points to the opposing vertices. It is not necessary to pierce the ends of the legs of these angles.

At the points where the two angles converge a horizontal diameter can be projected, pierce these points and project the line to strike the circle at points C and D, pierce these points.

We now have two diameters AZB, and CZD, four circles can now be drawn centered at A,B, C, and D.

Where the circles converge we will get points E, F, G, and H, as the corners of our square.

If the square is true drawing the sides of the square will cause the pencil to move through the previously pierced points on the circumference of the unity circle. This is the full construction.

The Unity Square can then be subjected to a variety of cuts and expansions that can give us many different sets of nested rectangles. These cuts can also be used together to give finer divisions, and therefore dimensions, as the design process progresses.

At this point some may be asking what is the point of all this since the drawing process has been reduced by so many CAD programs, both 2D and 3D, to button pushing and toolset manipulation. Hell, they’re demonstrating “Black Box” woodworking at the WMIA convention, feed in a set of Auto Cad drawings at one end and a set of parts pops out at the other, ready for robot assembly.

The point of these exercises is to slow down, engage in the physical process of drawing as part of the physical process of making, gaining a “feel” for the developing proportional relationships, and to also never lose sight of the piece by becoming buried in the zoom tools’ ability to make fine details more important than they really are. As the Greeks might say, we are saying a prayer to Hephaestus the god of craftsmen.

At this point I would like to end this post. In a future one I’ll go into the cuts and expansions of the Unity Square and the proportional relationships they give. Again I would like to thank the teachers who introduced me to this work at the ICA-CA, Richard Cameron and Steve Bass in Constructive Geometry, and Martin Brandwein in the study of The Orders. For those who want to find out more about the Orders and the other aspects of Classical Architecture these books are recommended:

The American Vignola by William Ware

The Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio

A Treatise on the Decorative Parts of Civil Architecture by William Chambers.

Vitruvius on Architecture by Thomas Gordon Smith

The Elements of Classical Architecture by Georges Gromort

Classical Architecture by Robert Adam.

http://decorativearts.library.wisc.edu/images.html is a place to train the eye.

Many think that the study of Classical Architecture is unnecessary to the study of proportion in cabinetmaking, this is erroneous. The questions we ask now have all been answered centuries ago, though transferring them from building to bookcase may not be so obvious at first. The other problem is the war that has been going on in the Arts since the birth of Modernism. For most of the Twentieth Century the Arts have been involved in throwing over not only the work of the last 500 years but the work of the last 5000. Personally, I don’t think we’re that smart. But I’ll grind those political and aesthetic axes at another time.

So Above,

So Below.

JimG33

Happy New Year from Thomas Sowell

[Thomas Sowell, the intellectual from Harlem that official Harlem decries. As always he states some random thoughts at the end of the year. Hell if I’d written as much as he had I’d be able to throw of these types of random thoughts. Check out his bibliography you smart folk and despair. JimG33]

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE 

Thomas Sowell

December 27, 2011 12:00 A.M. Random Thoughts for the New Year Barack Obama and the audacity of hype Random thoughts on the passing scene: Talk show host Dennis Miller said, “I don’t dig polo. It’s like miniature golf meets the Kentucky Derby.” Nothing illustrates the superficiality of our times better than the enthusiasm for electric cars, because they are supposed to greatly reduce air pollution. But the electricity that ultimately powers these cars has to be generated somewhere — and nearly half the electricity generated in this country is generated by burning coal. The 2012 Republican primaries may be a rerun of the 2008 primaries, where the various conservative candidates split the conservative vote so many ways that the candidate of the mushy middle got the nomination — and then lost the election. Because morality does not always prevail, by any means, too many of the intelligentsia act as if it has no effect. But, even in Nazi Germany, thousands of Germans hid Jews during the war, at the risk of their own lives, because it was the right thing to do. In recent times, Christmas has brought not only holiday cheer but also attacks on the very word “Christmas,” chasing it from the vocabulary of institutions and even from most “holiday cards.” Like many other social crusades, this one is based on a lie — namely that the Constitution puts a wall of separation between church and state. It also shows how easily intimidated we are by strident zealots. If you don’t like growing older, don’t worry about it. You may not be growing older much longer. What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice. When an organization has more of its decisions made by committees, that gives more influence to those who have more time available to attend committee meetings and to drag out each meeting longer. In other words, it reduces the influence of those who have work to do, and are doing it, while making those who are less productive more influential. Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments. The wisest and most knowledgeable human being on the planet is utterly incompetent to make even 10 percent of the consequential decisions that have to be made in a modern nation. Yet all sorts of people want to decide how much money other people can make or keep, and to micro-manage how other people live their lives. The real egalitarians are not the people who want to redistribute wealth to the poor, but those who want to extend to the poor the ability to create their own wealth, to lift themselves up, instead of trying to tear others down. Earning respect, including self-respect, is better than being a parasite. Of all the arguments for giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, the most foolish is the argument that we can’t find and expel all of them. There is not a law on the books that someone has not violated, including laws against murder, and we certainly have not found and prosecuted all the violators — whether murderers or traffic-law violators. But do we then legalize all the illegalities we haven’t been able to detect and prosecute? In the 1920s, Rep. Thomas S. Adams referred to “the ease with which the income tax may be legally avoided” but also said some congressmen “so fervently believe that the rich ought to pay 40 or 50 percent of their incomes” in taxes that they would rather make this a law, even if the government would get more revenue from a lower tax rate that people actually pay. Some also prefer class-warfare politics that brings in votes, if not revenue. Can you imagine a man who had never run any kind of organization, large or small, taking it upon himself to fundamentally change all kinds of organizations in a huge and complex economy? Yet that is what Barack Obama did when he said, “We are going to change the United States of America!” This was not “The Audacity of Hope.” It was the audacity of hype. — Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2011 Creators Syndicate, Inc.