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1521 - Hernando Cortez captured captured Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, now the site of Mexico City.

1906 - Black U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Brown, in Brownsville, rioted, or something. It's one of those obscure episodes of history that has never been settled to everyone's satisfaction.

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1919 - Man O' War, arguably the greatest thoroughbred race horse of all time, suffered his only loss.

1942 - Walt Disney's "Bambi" was shown for the first time.

1961 - The government of East Germany sealed the border between Berlin's eastern and western sectors to stop the flight of refugees (the smart people who wanted to be free).

- Jim

seamusTX wrote: 1961 - The government of East Germany sealed the border between Berlin's eastern and western sectors to stop the flight of refugees (the smart people who wanted to be free).

- Jim

I was stationed at a NATO airbase in Germany when the borders became "unsealed" in 1989. A number of senior German officers were old enough that they had personally experienced the end of WW II and its aftermath as young boys. One was the Senior German Representative on the base, a German Luftwaffe Oberst (Colonel), who led the reunification ceremony at our base on 3 Oct 1990. (I suppose I should hold this story until Seamus puts up the October 3 post, but I thought of it now, so here goes.) This Colonel told us he was born in a part of then-Germany that is now in Poland -- at the end of the war it was well into the Soviet zone. He said his father, a German soldier, escaped to the west to surrender to the western allies. His dad was soon released, and then paid someone else to smuggle his wife and son out of the Soviet zone into the free part of Germany. He said some moving things about what it meant to him to have a reunified Germany, including that it was settled that his birthplace would be part of Poland.

It was not unusual to quarrel with the Krauts (and all our other NATO allies!) about stuff on a day-to-day basis, but at the end of the day, when we all had a few beers, they would often say something like, "We think you Amis* do odd things sometimes, but we thank God you came and we grew up on this side of the border." It was always very moving and sobering, despite the beers, when one of them mentioned that. They had an appreciation for the US that some of the younger ones do not.

elb

*"Amis" is German slang for "Americans." It was not derogatory, it kind of like saying "Yanks" in German.

It says something about a country when they have to build walls to keep their people from leaving, while no one wants to get in.

The phenomenon of German soldiers surrendering to the Allies is also exemplary. The Soviets abused and executed German prisoners.

- Jim

OK, one more. In the community where I grew up, we knew a German immigrant who became a professor of Germanic studies at the nearby university (Indiana U. to be specific). When I was taking military history at IU, the teacher had Professor Reichmann come in and talk to us about growing up under Hitler.

Reichmann had some showmanship -- he walked in, held up in front of his face a 1930-something magazine with a picture of Der Fuehrer on it, and launched into some barn-burner Hitler speech. Having everyone's attention, he went on to describe how when he was a kid, Boy Scouts were replaced with Hitler Youth, how the Nazi party was organized, and so on. He turned 16 very close to the end of the war, which made him eligible to be conscripted. One day the SS showed up at school, set up a horizontal pole six feet off the ground, and made all the boys in the school walk under it. Anyone whose head touched the pole was SS material -- which included Reichmann. They told him they would be back the next day to get him.

He knew he didn't want to go into the SS, so his headmaster arranged through some friends for him to join the Luftwaffe that same day, and off he went. Unfortunately for him, the Luftwaffe was pretty much defeated at that point, so he was diverted into the infantry, and ended up fighting the Russians. He was captured with a lot of others, and started marching east, towards Russia. He figured out this would be a one-way trip, so he ducked out of the mob at a turn in the road, and managed to get back to Germany. He spent some weeks dodging Soviets until he could make his way into the western sectors and finally surrender to the Americans. He spent some time in an internment camp, then got hired as a translator. He and his wife, also a German, both came to the US in the 1950s, settled, and became citizens. (Altho I can't remember if he met his wife before or after immigrating here).

It was a tremendously chaotic time in the aftermath of WWII. I found the stories of the Germans who lived through it fascinating.

I knew a guy like that, too. He was a German, captured by the Americans during the war. He was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Southwest. Somehow he managed to stay in the U.S. and marry an American woman.

I think he loved this country more than half the people who were born here.

- Jim

I think this one is worth a rerun. The Berlin Wall was a flashpoint expected to start WW III for 28 years. It was built and destroyed before some members of this forum were born.

P.S.: I just listened to an interview with a man who came of age in East Berlin at the time the Berlin Wall fell. He said that after the wall was built, so many people built tunnels to escape to the West that the East German government licensed shovels. Shovel control!

I don't know for a fact that this is true, but I don't doubt it. The East German government was among the most inhumanely authoritarian in history.

- Jim